Heart of Palm (39 page)

“I don’t know,” Elizabeth said. “I honestly don’t know what to do about anything, Sofia.”

A toilet flushed upstairs.

“Except make coffee,” she said. “We gotta start somewhere.”

She went back upstairs with the last two blueberry waffles on a plate. Bell was still sitting in the bed, her spiral notebook on her knees. She seemed to have brightened a bit.

“I have a new list,” Bell said.

“Slay me,” Elizabeth said. “Go.”

“Shoes.”

“Shoes?”

“Shoes I Want,” Bell said. “Ready? (1) Ballerina Barbie’s pointe shoes. (2) Mary Poppins’s boots.” She smiled. “Remember those?”

“I’ve got one,” Elizabeth said. “Cinderella’s glass slippers. But where could you
wear
them?”

And then they were off: Napoleon Dynamite’s moon shoes, Beatle boots, Pocahontas’s moccasins, and, of course, the ruby slippers, which were wasted on Dorothy after all, thought Elizabeth—red lipped and beautiful but trapped forever in white bobby socks and a gingham dress, a girl who had everything she needed but just didn’t know how to use it.

“Why isn’t Daddy here?” Bell said.

“He was here yesterday.”

“But why isn’t he here today?”

Elizabeth sighed. “Make me a new list,” she said.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Make me a new list.”

Bell stared at her, hard for a moment. Then she shook her head, muttered something that Elizabeth was willing to bet was a profanity.

“What’s the title?” Bell demanded.

“Bell’s Freckles.”

“My
freckles
?”

“How many can you list?” Elizabeth said.

“Well, first I have to name them,” Bell said.

“Well, all right then.”

Bell turned a page in her notebook, pulled her nightgown up to her knees to stare at her legs. “Here we go,” she said. “Brooke.” She pointed at a freckle on her ankle. “Sofia.” She pointed at one on her calf. “Arla. Bell.”

“They’re all girls?”

“All girls. No boys.”

“You missed one,” Elizabeth said.

“Elizabeth,” Bell said. “My favorite.”

Elizabeth reached for a box of tissues on the nightstand.

“You have a cold?” Bell said.

“Allergies,” Elizabeth said, and she pressed the tissue against her eyes. “Dern things.” She blew her nose, tried to swallow past the lump in her throat.

“You still didn’t answer my question,” Bell said. “But I guess you’re not going to.”

By the time she’d helped Bell find her clothes and had come back downstairs, the rest of the house was stirring. Dean wandered into the kitchen and helped himself to a cup of coffee, then walked out to the back porch to smoke. Sofia was running a shower upstairs. Arla was bumping around in her bedroom.

Elizabeth fought back a growing feeling of aimlessness and thought hard about how to spend the day. It was Thursday. She pictured Carson, already at his office, leaning over his computer keyboard and hacking at the keys angrily, firing off responses to the e-mails that had amassed since he’d left his desk the night before. “I’m lonely,” he’d said. “I need you.” She opened the refrigerator door, looked in at near emptiness. Why was it always about
him
?

She poked through the Little Debbie boxes on the countertop and found only two cellophane-wrapped Star Crunches and a Pecan Spinwheel amid a mess of empty cartons. Fine—she’d work on groceries today. The necessity of the moment came to her as a relief. With five of them now staying here at Aberdeen, with Carson seeming to come and go with alarming frequency, and with the shocking level of uncertainty that now seemed to plague every facet of their lives, this, at least, was one sure, comforting fact. They had to eat.

She and Biaggio were already in the van, ready to pull out, when Dean approached. Earlier, Elizabeth and Bell had visited Arla in her bedroom to put together the grocery list, and Elizabeth was struck by both the mess in the room and the confusion in Arla’s face as she sat in her nightgown on the edge of the bed. A tower of tattered cardboard boxes slouched in one corner of the room, and even from the doorway Elizabeth could see the dust on the top box, a quarter of an inch thick. Everywhere else, on every possible surface of the room, rested books, discarded plastic tumblers, articles of clothing, outdated junk mail. Elizabeth tried not to gasp. She hadn’t been upstairs to Arla’s room in years. She remembered coming up once to borrow a sweater from Arla’s closet—it had to be twenty years ago, or more. Before Will died. She remembered Arla’s shoes lined up neatly in the closet, Dean’s wallet on the nightstand, a thick quilt smooth across the bed. She’d felt invasive, then, a stranger in a clean, private place.

“What is he
doing
here?” Arla had said to Elizabeth this morning.

“It’s all about the house sale,” Elizabeth replied. She moved into the room, found a clear spot at the foot of the bed, and sat down with Arla. “Are you okay?”

Arla sighed. “I will be.”

“Are you going to do it?” Elizabeth said. “Sell the house?”

“Oh, Elizabeth,” Arla said. “How do I know?” Then Bell had taken dictation, and they’d narrated the grocery list: chicken breasts, barbecue beans, Tang, bananas, hot dogs, watermelon, Cheerios. The usual, Arla said. Just
more
of it.

“
Buttermilk
waffles,” Bell said. “For crap’s sake.”

“Oh, my Lord, you watch your mouth, missy,” Elizabeth said, but then she glanced at Arla and they both had to look away, stifle their smiles.

“And there’s something else, Elizabeth,” Arla said, lowering her voice. “Sofia—Sofia and you-know-who?” She tipped her head toward the window, where Biaggio’s trailer was visible through the trees. “They’re getting
involved
.”

Elizabeth nodded. “I just found that out,” she said.

“She thinks I don’t know,” Arla said. “I know plenty.”

“Do you think it’s a problem?” Elizabeth said.

Arla sighed. “No. No, I don’t suppose,” she said. “It just scares me. Do you think he knows what he’s getting into?”

Elizabeth didn’t know how to answer that. Then Arla turned again to Bell, who was still holding the grocery list and was now dotting the margins with penciled paw prints. “Little Debbies, Bell,” Arla said. “Jesus, get me a case of them.”

They’d gone downstairs then, leaving Arla in her bedroom, and Bell had opted for a SpongeBob DVD instead of a hot grocery run, so Elizabeth set her up in the living room and kissed the top of her head. Now, as Biaggio’s van idled in the driveway, Dean approached Elizabeth’s window. He looked restless, displaced. “Where you headed?” he said.

“Winn-Dixie,” Elizabeth said. She hesitated a moment. “You want to come?”

Dean climbed into the back of the van, bringing a wave of cigarette smoke with him. Lord, Elizabeth thought. This should be an interesting ride.

They drove through the quiet, palm-lined roads of North Utina and hooked a left at Seminary Street to head down County Road 25 toward the beach, toward the Winn-Dixie. It was early still, and though the temperature was quickly rising, the sun was gentle through the trees, tolerable. The gray Spanish moss hanging from the oak boughs looked like tears. Biaggio whistled. The van rattled and shook. They were quiet until they passed the place where Will had been hit.

“Dean, you okay back there?” Elizabeth said. She turned around. Dean was ashen, and his hands trembled on his knees.

“Oh, I’m okay,” he answered. “Just wishing I had a drink.” He exhaled. “Just gotta get through this. I’m detoxing, you know.”

Elizabeth cleared her throat. “We know,” she said.

Biaggio looked in his rearview mirror and regarded Dean.

“You try green tea?” he said. “I heard it helps.”

“I’ll try anything,” Dean said.

“We’ll get you some green tea,” Biaggio said, and he nodded at Elizabeth. She added it to the list.

“Where you from, Biaggio?” Dean said.

“West Virginia. But I been here a long time.”

Dean nodded. “Strange place to end up. Utina.”

“No stranger than where I’m from, let me tell you.”

“We got some characters around here,” Elizabeth said.

“Oh, we had ’em, too,” Biaggio said. “When I was growing up, I knew all kinds of nuts. Maybe that’s why I kind of became one.” He grinned, winked at Elizabeth. She’d never seen him so buoyant. She loved Biaggio. Who wouldn’t? She was happy for Sofia.

“Like the
kids
. Even the kids were weird,” Biaggio said. “I could tell you some stories.” He hunched forward, rested his forearms across the top of the steering wheel.

“Biaggio likes to tell stories,” Elizabeth said to Dean.

“Yep. Like Denny McLaughlin,” Biaggio said. “Now
there
was a pisser.”

“Hold on,” Dean said. “Can you pull over?”

Biaggio pulled the van to the side of the road and turned off the engine, and Dean slid open the back door, climbed woodenly out of his seat, and made it to a thicket of palmettos before starting to retch. Elizabeth stared straight ahead, tried not to listen, but the sounds were horrible, brutal. She and Biaggio did not speak. When he was finished, Dean walked slowly back to the van. His shirt was spotted with sweat. His face was slick.

“Aw, Mr. Bravo,” Biaggio said.

“Dean,” Dean said. He coughed. “It’s Dean.”

Biaggio slid out of the driver’s side and helped Dean back into his seat; then he walked to the back of the van, opened it, and found a roll of paper towels and a bottle of water. He wet a couple of the towels, brought them around to the side of the van, and held them against Dean’s brow, and Elizabeth nearly caught her breath at the tenderness of the action, at how Dean’s eyes fluttered under the damp towel, how Biaggio’s hand was steady, unafraid. Something caught her eye, then, and she turned to see an armadillo plod noisily out of the scrub, stand for a moment in the center of the road, regarding them, then disappear into a culvert on the other side of the blacktop.

“So tell me about Denny McLaughlin,” Dean said. He mopped his face with the towels, pushed himself a little straighter in the seat. “Tell us some of your stories.”

Biaggio climbed back into the van. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I got me loads of stories.”

“I’ll bet you do,” Dean said.

Biaggio started the van and pulled back onto the road. “All right, so Denny,” he said. “He had a thing for clocks. Ever since he was a little kid. His bedroom was full of clocks of all kinds. On the dresser, under the bed, on the walls—just clocks, everywhere, everywhere. No watches. Just clocks.”

“Maybe he liked to be on time,” Dean said.

“Nah, it was more than that. This kid was weird. But I liked him. I hung with him. One summer me and Denny got jobs at an old movie theater. It was crazy old, this theater, Victorian old, with all kinds of antiques inside. Really beautiful stuff. I wish I could see it now.” Biaggio downshifted to maneuver a tight turn in the road, then shifted again and accelerated. “Anyway, we got these jobs there,” he said. “I think we were fourteen, maybe fifteen. We had to clean up the popcorn and cups after the people left every night. We liked it, got to see all the movies for free, and sometimes you’d find stuff people left behind. One time, after we finished, we went back to Denny’s house and got one of them wagons—you remember them? Them Radio Flyers?”

“I remember,” Dean said.

“Well, it was late and I should have been home,” Biaggio said. “But I followed Denny back to the theater. When we got closer, Denny picked up the wagon and held it over his head so it wouldn’t make noise. I followed him around to the back of the building and up to the back door, and he pulled out a key. Turns out he’d taken the manager’s key home and made a copy.

“He walked behind the concession stand, where a huge old antique clock hung, and I knew in a second what Denny was up to. That clock must have been worth a fortune. It was some sort of dark polished wood—cherry, maybe, or walnut—with an enormous ornate face and a deep chime that rang every hour. That clock was something. ‘You’re crazy,’ I told Denny. But he wanted that clock. So we did it.”

“You took the clock?” Elizabeth said.

“Well . . .” He hesitated. “Denny took the clock. I helped a little bit.” As they drove the air rushed in through the open windows, and Elizabeth wrapped her hair in her hands to keep it contained.

“So you know what the moral of the story is, Mr. Bravo?” Biaggio said. He was grinning widely.

“Dean,” Dean said. “For shit’s sake, son, call me Dean, would you?”

“Tell us, Biaggio,” Elizabeth said.

“It’s that you really can steal time,” Biaggio said.

Dean chuckled. “Well, that’s good to know,” he said. He nodded, still smiling. “I think you’re all right, Biaggio,” he said. “But I want to ask you something. What, exactly, are you doing with my daughter?”