The Queen of Sleepy Eye (14 page)

A woman dressed as an awning in green and white stripes picked that unfortunate moment to purchase a sun catcher. “Miss?”

My reply curdled in my mouth. “What?”

The woman froze with her hand in her purse.

I smiled an apology. “This is my favorite. What a great choice.”

She opened her wallet. I glanced at Falcon, but he was talking with an eager-faced couple about living in Cordial. Falcon told them he was just passing through. My chest caved in. My customer pressed the money into my hand and leaned closer. “Honey, you better take it easy with the pot.”

Pot?

I'd just experienced my first kiss, albeit a peck on the cheek, and the ecstasy of being
with
someone, and a woman dressed as a window covering thought I'd been smoking too much pot? I took the money for the sun catcher and handed it to Falcon.

“The cash box is under the table,” he said over his shoulder and smiled.

I sat in the chair to drink the smoothie. The banana had turned bitter. Falcon stood with one foot on the seat of a chair. He talked and laughed with a couple from Connecticut who lived near the town where Falcon had grown up. “Is old man Kinsley still the county sheriff there?” he asked.

“He won re-election last fall,” said the man.

Falcon threw his head back and laughed. “Oh man, I'll give you a ten-percent discount if you promise to keep mum about my whereabouts.”

The couple laughed with him, but the woman looked over her shoulder, looking for Sheriff Kinsley, no doubt. “It's a deal,” said the husband.

Falcon greeted fairgoers as they passed his booth. Most couldn't resist coming closer to get a better look at his wares. A couple wearing crease-pressed slacks and polo shirts admired a larger work displayed in front of a light box. Falcon had created the piece from the perspective of an inquisitive child who had dipped below the surface of a cool, green pond to watch the watery dance of a koi pair. Looking up through the water, a shimmer of sky and a blooming water lily awaited the diver. Did the boy squirm in the mud and catch a bulbous root in his toes? Of course he did. So enchanting was the piece that I held my breath, waiting to surface.

“How much?” asked the man.

When Falcon named his price, the man rocked back on his heals. The woman leaned into him as if to say,
Come on, you spend that much
playing a round of golf with your buddies.

“Is that firm?”

“I get where you're coming from, man,” Falcon said. “The sun catchers are my bread-and-butter. They're cute. Most people come to these fairs looking for a souvenir to take home to their dog sitter. I know that. That's why I make them. I like to eat and drive my van around.” Falcon spoke evenly. His eyes remained cloudless, playful. “The difference between the sun catchers and the koi piece is similar to the difference between a LTD Brougham and a Pinto. Both cars are made by Ford, but they are very different vehicles.”

The man's head bobbled with understanding.

“The koi are a work of artistic passion. I researched my subject, sketched maybe twenty preliminary ideas. I searched five states to find the glass for the water with the right balance of translucence and depth, a shade of green that evokes the freshness of a pond on a hot summer day and the organic richness of underwater life. I finally met a glassmaker who worked with me until all those elements came together, and then I started looking for the sky glass. If you prefer a piece that looks like a coloring book, there's a real nice guy around the corner who'll sell you one of his pieces for half my price.”

The woman kept her eyes on the koi as she tilted her head toward the man. “It's like you always say, Marvin—”

“Yes, yes, Joan, I know. You get what you pay for. We'll take it.”

After the couple left with their package, Falcon rubbed his face. “Oh man, Marvin and Joan were not who I had in mind when I designed that piece. I pictured someone like you, Amelia, someone with a heart and a soul who would dream of being a water sprite among the tangle of water lily stems.” He groaned. “That woman will hang the koi like a trophy in her front window where her neighbors will stop to gawk.” He mimicked the couple's nasal accent. “Oh, Gladys, look what Joan's got in her window. Are those fish? What's with that? She goes out west and she brings back fish? She never had any sense.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I doubled the price, hoping he wouldn't buy it.” His shoulders slumped. “I'm bummed.”

“Maybe you're all wrong about Marvin and Joan. Maybe he paints seascapes and burns incense. Or better yet, Marvin is an architect. While designing a skyscraper for a toy manufacturer in Tokyo, he fell in love with the simplicity of traditional Japanese architecture.
The floors of their home are covered by
tatami
mats, and the rooms are separated by
fusuma
, those sliding doors made of wood and rice paper. The koi will be hung in the place of greatest honor, the
tokonoma
, in a Japanese home.”

“You're full of surprises.”

“I read a lot.”

“You have a beautiful mind, little sister.”

Little? Sister?

It happened like this every morning of the summer I lived in Cordial. A chill woke me by settling on my arms around four in the morning. I welcomed the interruption of my sleep and dreams. That may seem crazy, but waking to find that I had three more hours of sleep somehow made pulling the bedspread up to my neck and turning away from the clock decadent. Later, when I surrendered my dream world for the waking world of polishing and dusting, I left the bed without regrets. I had beaten the system.

That morning I woke up ravenously hungry. My heart sank. I pulled the covers over my head. The scent of sweet lemons seeped under the door of my room. Mom was baking lavadores, and that could only mean one thing: An outing with Bruce was imminent. Mom believed cookies bridged the distance between me and her boyfriends. I'd never given her a reason to continue believing this myth, but about some things Mom was a hopeless optimist.

I dressed in cleaning clothes and shuffled into the kitchen. Mom rifled through the refrigerator, filling her arms with plastic
containers of fried chicken, potato salad, and
bagna cauda,
an Italian dipping sauce that tasted like rancid envelope paste.

Over the weeks she'd been dating Bruce, I had watched her transform herself into a coal miner's gal. She wore Wrangler jeans and pearl-snapped blouses with the first four snaps left undone. Her name was tooled on the back of her belt. We had argued over her frivolous spending for things she'd only wear to Halloween parties once we left Cordial. In the end, she cried that I never gave her boyfriends a chance, which I didn't. The promise of long life being tied to the honor we give our parents never failed to pop into my head during these arguments. I promised to give Bruce a chance. That didn't mean a get-to-know-you picnic sweetened my attitude.

My opening argument: “You'll go off alone with Bruce to—”

“I wouldn't.”

“You
always
do, and I'll be left sitting on a log with nothing to do. I'd rather stay home, please.”

Mom held my hands. “This time is different. Bruce is different. I want you to get to know him. That's been hard with him commuting between two work sites and our responsibilities at the funeral home.”

Our
responsibilities? “Mrs. Clancy will have a cow if we leave for the day.”

“I've already talked to her,
fofa.
She says we deserve a day off.” Mom looked at her watch. “She'll be here in a half hour, and Bruce will be here soon after.”

“Why so early?”

“Bruce is working the swing shift.”

“Mom, pl
eee
ase.”

“This is an important day for me. Everything has come together to make it special. Bruce told his father he wanted to stay in Cordial
to spend time with us this weekend. And you know how cranky Mrs. Clancy can be. Please,
fofa,
for me?”

* * *

THE TRUCK CLIMBED steadily on a narrow gravel road out of the lush North Fork Valley to wind through miner's huts no bigger than shoeboxes among mountains of coal and mammoth concrete silos. I groaned inwardly at each squiggly-arrow sign that warned Bruce to slow to 20 mph. He did not. On the north-facing slope, the forest deepened, but I took no delight in the scenery. Beyond the ittybitty shoulder, the mountainside plummeted. I leaned toward Mom to gain a millimeter of safety. Mom's hand massaged Bruce's thigh, which seemed like an especially bad idea, considering the concentration required to drive a serpentine track of road.

“Mom,” I said, hoping to distract her, “have you talked to Tommy about the transmission?”

“Let's not talk about our troubles. It's too beautiful. Look at that view. I feel like I'm flying.”

When Mom warned Bruce about my queasy stomach, he insisted I roll down the window. “Fresh air helps, and keep your eyes on the road,” he said. This bit of information turned out to be the gold nugget I took from Mom's relationship with Bruce.

We entered a forest of conifers and trees with round, dancing leaves. The curves softened, and I sighed. We passed beaver ponds and welcoming roads that led off into a Christmas-tree forest. This could have been Lake Kaskaskia, only much, much higher.

“This here is McClure Pass,” Bruce said. “It's all downhill from here.”

The force of each turn either pressed me against the door or into Mom. I glanced at Bruce before the curves to make sure his eyes
stayed on the road, which they did, but both hands did not stay on the wheel. His arm remained around Mom's shoulders. At each curve, he held his cigarette with his teeth to shift with his left hand as he steered with his knee. He grabbed the steering wheel just in time to navigate the turn. I whimpered at the bottom of a long, downward slope when a sign warned of a right-angle turn.

“She always been this nervous?” Bruce asked.

“Only on windy roads.”

Only on curves taken at the speed of light.

Once we reached the V-shaped valley, Bruce turned the truck toward Marble and stopped at a campground called Bogan Flats. Mom selected a picnic table in a stand of pine trees as holy as a cathedral. Bruce and Mom insisted on pre-lunch cigarettes, so I excused myself to walk toward the hiss of the river. From the dimple of skin between Mom's eyes, I knew she wasn't happy with me for wandering off, but Bruce offered the use of the binoculars he kept in the truck. “You might see an eagle or a red fox. A fella at the mine has seen bears roaming around heres somewhere.”

Mom's dimple deepened. “Bears?”

“Don't worry, Mom. If I see any bears, I'll come right back.”

Sitting on a cushion of moss by the river, I enumerated all the ways my life would improve once I lived on my own. Number one: No more suicidal drives on mountainous roads. Number two: No more picnics with men who used bad grammar. Number three: Absolutely and positively no more get-to-know-you picnics. With that settled, I closed my eyes to enjoy the slosh and glug of the river's song.

A throaty thrum startled my eyes open but not soon enough. Whatever had come to visit left only a blur of movement for me to wonder about. A giant bee? A dragonfly? A flying bear?

Don't be stupid.

Soon a hummingbird hovered within a foot of my nose. I sat breathless, completely cowed by his boldness and awed by his aerobatics. “I guess your mom didn't tell you about personal space.” He squeaked as if to say I'd taken his seat. The bird lost interest in me and revved his throttle to fly away. I sat as still as a stone. Within minutes another hummingbird hovered before my face. Curious? Hungry? “Do I look like a flower you once knew?” I laughed and our relationship shattered. I sat there for some time, watching, waiting, even holding my finger out for a roost. Not one hummingbird accepted my hospitality.

* * *

MOM AND BRUCE snuggled on the opposite side of the picnic table.

“Sing a song for Bruce,” she said.

“You told me to leave my guitar at home.”

“You sing all the time without your guitar.” She leaned into Bruce. “She sings like an angel, and not one of those high-pitched angels like you hear at Christmas. Amy sings like a velvet angel.”

“I refuse to sing Elvis songs.”

Bruce squirmed. “She don't have to sing if she don't want to.”

Mom stood. “Let me just clean up this mess, and I'll get the cookies out. Bruce, I brought coffee. Would you like some?”

I rose to help her.

“No, no,” she said, pushing me back on the bench. “You talk with Bruce. I'll only be a minute.” She gave me one of those pleading looks meant to make me feel guilty. I didn't. This was not my first picnic with men like Bruce. I'd sung “I'm a Little Teapot” and “He's Got the Whole World in His Hands” over potato salad since I was three. In Mom's eyes each boyfriend had arrived to love her and provide for
her in a manner befitting a queen. My unenviable job was to keep her grounded in reality, but that didn't mean I had to be pleasant if I didn't want to.

“So, Bruce, how long have you lived in Cordial?”

“I don't know. Six weeks, maybe.”

This could mean a fresh beginning or trouble keeping a job.

“Do you like living there?” I asked.

“I guess. I ain't thought about it much. It's a nice enough town. Housing ain't too bad. The grub's okay.”

So if children came from this union, we wouldn't be expecting rocket
scientists, now would we?

“Do you like being a coal miner?”

“It's a living.”

Uh-oh, this guy lacked ambition. The future meant more waitress jobs for Mom and yet another break-up. This was getting depressing.

“Do you know Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior?” I asked.

“Amelia!”

“I'm trying to get to know him. Isn't that what you wanted?”

Bruce squirmed and looked at everything but me.

“For goodness' sake, religion is a personal issue. Talk about the weather. Tell him about Westmont.”

I had a better idea. “I think we should take the coffee and cookies on a hike to the marble mine. What do you say to that?”

“Sounds good to me,” Bruce said, standing up. “But it ain't far, is it?”

I read from the pamphlet Bonnie had given Mom. “‘The hike to the base of the mine is an easy walk along a tributary of the Crystal River.'”

“That's a beautiful name for a river,” Mom gushed.

“‘Along the trail you'll see wildflowers like Indian paintbrush and fireweed. A waterfall and a dramatic slope of marble awaits you at the end of the trail. To view the quarry, follow the signs through the massive marble blocks to the trailhead. This portion of the hike is steeper and should only be attempted by healthy individuals acclimated to the elevation.'”

“We're all accumulated, aren't we?” Mom asked.

Bruce looked sideways at Mom.

“Let's go,” she said.

* * *

WE HIKED ALONG a chiseled wall of granite. The valley below us was no wider than a country road. A stream rushed over stony steps, like someone had forgotten the water running in the bathtub upstairs. Where a slab of granite had sloughed away from the wall, a niche of gunmetal gray had been created. Instead of a statue of a perpetually pious Mary, the niche housed a choir of purple flowers with leaves as slender as fingers. Mom and Bruce walked right by the spectacle until I asked Mom if I could use the camera. Then she wanted a photograph of her and Bruce kneeling next to the flowers. Mom reapplied her lipstick, wiping away the excess at the corners of her mouth. Bruce knelt on the pebbled path and Mom sat on his knee. Chest up. Shoulders back. Smile dazzling.

“Smile,” I said, but Bruce only cocked his head.

When Mom and Bruce walked ahead, I took a picture of the flowers to send to Lauren, knowing she would put them in her to-paint-someday box she kept under her bed. Lauren was about the worst artist I'd ever seen, but that didn't stop her from being one. I hoped she remembered her promise to take art lessons in St. Louis. Then she could paint the purple flowers and give the painting to me
for a birthday present. I couldn't imagine Lauren being happy tinting little old ladies' hair all day. I fingered the cross necklace she'd stolen for me. Thinking about Lauren made my heart ache, but it was difficult maintaining a worthwhile funk in the narrow canyon that cupped its walls like hands to project the stream's aria.

Farther up the trail the stream cut a smooth trough through solid marble where we rounded a curve, and the three of us stood slack-jawed at what we saw. A landslide of marble, like sugar cubes the size of Volkswagens, some bugs and some vans, covered the mountainside.

“Oh my,” Mom said. “Now why do you suppose they left all that beautiful marble lying there like that?”

Her question was my cue to read from the brochure. “‘The Italian and Austrian—'”

“Not Portuguese,
fofa
?”

Mom's Portuguese pride confounded me. Her family had left Portugal before World War II, and she hadn't even been born yet. Even so, Portuguese was her first language. How she'd found a nice Portuguese boy to marry in America was a piece of wonderment and statistical improbability meant for more developed intellects than mine. As proud as she was of her heritage, she never spoke of her parents unless I asked. She had answered me with, “They didn't understand me, and then they died. End of story.”

I looked up from the brochure. “None that they mention, no.” I continued reading. “‘The Italian and Austrian stonecutters left the area in 1917 to fight in World War I. All of the marble for the Lincoln Memorial had been shipped in five hundred train cars by the end of 1918.'”

“Ah, that's it,” she said. “The Portuguese stonecutters stayed in Washington to finish the work of the Italians and Austrians. That wasn't the first time.”

I ignored her. “‘In 1926, a flawless block of Yule Marble was sent to Washington D.C. for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.'”

“I seen that when I was a boy.”

Arrows painted on the marble blocks directed us to the trail that led up the mountainside to the quarry entrance. Bruce leaned against a block of startling, white marble with an unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth as he fished around his shirt pocket for matches. “If it's all the same to you, I'll sit here for a smoke. You girls go ahead.”

Mom and I exchanged glances. “You don't have to sit here alone,” she said. “We'll wait. I wouldn't mind a cigarette myself.”

“I think I'll start up,” I said.

Mom started to protest, but Bruce was already tapping a cigarette out of a pack for her. He nodded toward the trailhead. “Be careful.”

You're not much of a Marlboro Man, cowboy.

The grade steepened. Within a few yards my heart pounded in my chest. Mrs. Clancy had warned me about the effects of high altitude. I stopped to gulp water from the canteen she'd loaned me and waited for my heart to settle down. I resumed the climb through the forest at a slower pace, stopping to take pictures down the trail I'd climbed. Lauren would be impressed. Cresting the trail, I stood at eye level with the surrounding mountains. Not one tree grew on their peaks. The air, light and congenial, made me giddy. I wished H was there to tell me about the bare mountaintops. That was how magnanimous the scenery had made me.