Written on My Heart (8 page)

F
all was mild that year. The leaves were slow to change and what storms we had lacked spirit. October moseyed in with a lazy yawn and absently brushed September aside like a tattered cobweb.

October 13 would have been Carlie's thirty-ninth birthday. I spent much of that day wishing that she could have played grandmother. Ida was wonderful, but Carlie would have perked things up, had she been around to do it.

“Someday,” I told Bud at supper that night, “I'll find out what happened to her.”

“Someday, you will,” Bud said.

Arlee went down early that day, just as an almost-full moon rose. Bud and I stood in the side garden and watched it come up over the trees, silvering The Point from tip to root. Bud said, “Good night for a walk. You feel like it?”

He fetched Maureen to sit with Arlee. We decided to walk through the woods to the state park, but to do that, we had to cross Daddy's yard and climb over The Cheeks, a cracked boulder that led to a trail that would take us to the park proper. The kitchen light was on in Daddy's house and we stopped to consider Grace's wackiness on our way through the yard.

“Think she'll shoot us?” Bud whispered.

“Let her try,” I growled.

“If it comes to it, I'll talk her down,” he said.

“Yes, that's worked well so far,” I said, and he nudged me.

We snuck across the lawn, stepping onto the fallen leaves heel to toe so that they wouldn't crackle and pop under our feet. We scrambled up over The Cheeks and Bud turned on his flashlight. The childhood path was not as worn as it had been once, when we had used it on a regular basis. When we reached the park, Bud switched off the light and we became part of the moon's blue-tinted mystery as we stood underneath the trees.

“Which way do you want to go?” Bud asked.

“Let's go down to the ledges and sit on the bench,” I said. We held hands and listened to the night's tiny whispers as our lungs filled with the nighttime scent of the sea. In just a short time, we made out the outline of a bench overlooking the ocean.

The bench had been put there by Andy's father, Edward Barrington, along with a plaque that read:
On life's vast ocean diversely we sail, Reason the card, but passion is the gale
. Once I had thought the man who had written it, Alexander Pope, had been a relative of Edward's, but Dottie, now college educated, had told me he was a poet.

I couldn't think of Edward without memories of Andy. Thinking of either of them made me uncomfortable, made my injured back twitch, made me recall terrifying things. I wished they didn't live anywhere near The Point, but their family had settled close by ages ago, and if I had to be fair, they had a right to be there, even as we had claimed our pieces of land.

We were fishermen's kids and we came from different worlds. We should never have had anything to do with them. We got involved in their lives because of one of Glen's grand schemes. We were twelve, we were bored, it was summer, and Glen had piles of firecrackers from his father's back storeroom in his possession. When Glen suggested a firecracker raid on the cottages, Bud tried to warn us off, but the rest of us longed for adventure. One night we four snuck through the park to the
Barringtons' cottage, where Andy caught us and offered to help. While the Barringtons and their friends partied above us on their big porch, we piled up firecracker hills, lit fuses, and bolted. But the porch caught on fire and we got caught. All of us had to go up to the Barringtons' the next day to say we were sorry. Andy stood in back of his father, not looking us in the eyes as Edward made us apologize, acting high-and-mighty in front of our sets of parents. Dottie had said it best. “
He passed down the line of us like we was fresh recruits.
”

“I wish we'd never met them,” I said out loud.

“Who?” Bud asked.

“Edward and Andy Barrington.”

“Let's not spoil a nice time.”

We reached the bench, sat down, and looked out over the moonstruck water. Bud kissed my cheek. “You okay?” he asked.

“I'm so glad you picked me,” I said.

“Well, I'm glad you picked me.”

We grinned at each other and kissed, and as we did we heard a thump in back of us. We broke apart and turned in time to see the figure of a man hurry back up the path. Bud jumped up, but I grabbed his wrist. “No,” I said. “Whoever that is, let him go.”

“Let's go back anyway,” Bud said. “The mood and the moon aren't getting along.” He hustled me up the path and we glanced to the left and to the right, hoping not to glimpse the running man.

That night, I dreamed of Carlie. She paced back and forth from one side of my brain to the other, like a caged animal. She was wearing a black leather coat that came down to the tops of her thighs. High, black boots covered her knees.

“Carlie?” I said to her.

She stopped pacing and looked at me.

“Where did you get those clothes?” I asked her. “I've never seen those clothes.”

“We're not what we are,” she said. “And we're exactly what we are.”

“Okay,” I said. “But what about your clothes?”

“I'm just telling you.” She started to pace again.

“The way out is through my eyes,” I said. She turned, walked toward me, and when I opened my eyes, she disappeared. I got up and went into Arlee's room, where I sat in a small rocker next to her crib and watched the moon kiss her pure, smooth face.

At the general store the next day, Ray told me that Stella had gone somewhere to dry out. “'Least, that's what Grace told me.”

“She tell you where?”

“You going to visit her?” Ray looked up at me over his half-glasses. The bristles of his gray crew cut glinted in the overhead light over the cash register.

“No,” I said. “But she attacked me one day, and she was gone the next. It's kind of like Grace killed her, buried her somewhere where no one will find her, and then took over her house and her life.”

“I guess you got a right to have that much imagination,” Ray said. “I got a letter from Glen the other day. Says the food is crap and he's got bug bites from the top of his head to the bottoms of his feet. Says he has to keep his boots on to keep things from crawling inside of 'em. Says it isn't like he thought it would be. Don't know what he thought. The army ain't a vacation. Got to work during a war.”

“Guess he thought he was doing the right thing,” I said.

“He don't know the right thing from the left thing,” Ray said.

T
he snarling, hateful winter we had in 1972 shredded autumn. Incoming and outgoing tides bulldozed ice cakes into the harbor and piled them on shore like the teeth of broken sea monsters. Cold slathered a sheet of sheer ice along the dirt road leading to and from The Point.

The sound of spinning, smoking tires became part of January and February's song. We spread salt and sand outside, but finally Bud and everyone else, except for Grace, who didn't seem to need to go anywhere, parked their cars and trucks up the hill by Ray's. Every time we went outside, an unforgiving wind pounced on us with bitter, sharp claws. No one went out unless they had to work, go to church, or buy groceries.

On rare days when winter pulled back to regroup and allowed an exhausted sun to burn through the low-down clouds, I bundled up Arlee until she couldn't move, strapped her to my chest with a thick, shawl-like sling I had knitted for her, and minced my way in toddler-style steps up to Ray's or down to Ida's.

Once, we ended up staying overnight at Ida's house when a hideous blizzard swooped in during a late-afternoon visit and made it clear that even walking back up the hill to Grand's house wasn't going to happen in a way that would be safe for us.

“I read once about farmers tying ropes between their houses and barns so they wouldn't get lost going back and forth during storms,” I said to Ida as we sat in her kitchen after supper, watching snow skirls spin around like hula hoops on tricky hips.

“I believe it,” Ida said.

“No school tomorrow,” Maureen sang.

Ida winked at me and said to her daughter, “Good. Bible study.”

Maureen's smile faded just a little and I had to laugh.

“You too,” Ida said. “Do you good.”

“Most likely,” I said.

“Hah,” Maureen said. “Now you're trapped.”

“Not if I walk up the hill before breakfast tomorrow morning,” I said.

“
The wicked flee though no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion
,” Ida quoted. “Where is that from?” she asked Maureen.

“Proverbs 28:1,” Maureen said.

“Name that tune,” I said. Maureen's eyes lit from within but she didn't dare to smile. Ida shook her head at the both of us, and thankfully, Arlee began to cry from her crib in Bud's old room. “Well,” I said, “no rest for the wicked,” and I went to fetch her. I settled us in the rocker next to the crib and as I fed her, Bud stamped his way in through the front door. “Holy shit, it's bad out there,” I heard him say. I snorted, imagining the look on his mother's face. I heard his step as he walked through the living room and into his bedroom. He bent down and kissed my cheek.

I gasped at the cold.

“Yeah,” he said. “No work tomorrow. Fred threw out his back when he fell in the parking lot. Told us all to go to hell, then he told us to stay home tomorrow.”

“We may have Bible study if we don't get out of here tomorrow morning,” I said.

“Well, we'll have to do some sinning tonight, then,” Bud said, “and pray for sun in the morning.”

“How did you get out of it?” I asked. “Growing up?”

Bud grinned. “Sam, believe it or not. Told Ida that church on Sunday was enough and that he needed me on the boat. So, I went on the boat. How'd you get out of it?”

A trickle of regret slipped through me. “Grand asked me once if I wanted to come down here with her. I was kind of an asshole about it. I think I rolled my eyes and told her that I wasn't going to sit with her and Ida and talk about begetting and smiting. I had better stuff to do.”

“Wow,” Bud said. “She didn't get mad? How come you're still alive?”

I switched Arlee over to my right boob. “Grand was disappointed,” I said. “She said something like, ‘Well, Jesus loves you, anyway. And so do I.'” I sighed. “Would it have been so much to do? I was so horrible to her, a lot.”

“Well, now you got someone to do that to you when she gets old enough,” Bud said. “I imagine Grand's up in heaven, happy as hell because you'll get to see what it's like. So it all evens out in the end.”

We did commit some hushed-up sinning in Bud's narrow bed that night. Afterward, as we slept, the latest blizzard beelined it out to sea to beat the waves up into twenty-foot rollers hissing froth and fury. On land, the sun shook itself awake in time to light the day. Bud and I tried to make a quick getaway the next morning. Ida beat us to it, but she didn't mention Bible study and neither did we and after cornflakes and tea, I gave her a big hug and my little family struggled up the hill to home.

It was chilly inside, as if the absence of us gave it no reason to keep up the warmth. Bud turned up the heat and I put Arlee into her playpen in the living room.

“You watch her while I take a bath?” I asked Bud.

“Got to shovel, but the snow will be there when I'm ready,” Bud said.

“I noticed you got some new muscles last night.”

“Bullshit.” Bud laughed. “You buttering me up?”

“I mean it.”

“Not to change the subject, but to change the subject, I got the mail at Ray's last night before I come down to Ida's. It's on the kitchen table.”

I picked up the envelopes and started upstairs. Four of them were white and long and probably had bills tucked inside of them. The fifth one was small and cream colored, like special stationery, with a little note tucked inside. My name was on the front, printed, all capital letters. Freeport postmark. I stopped on the landing, worked my thumb under the flap, and ripped it open. I pulled out a folded white piece of paper, not the matching cream color, as I had expected. I shook it open and read the following words:
I will love you forever
.

“Hey,” I said. “Hey. I love you forever too.”

“What?” Bud called from the sofa, where he was watching the
Today
show, bouncing Arlee on his knees.

“I said, ‘I'll love you forever too.'”

He turned and looked up at me on the stairs. “That's nice. I'll love you forever, back.”

I walked down the stairs. “Who's bullshitting who now?” I said, and I handed him the letter. “I got your note,” I said. “What's the occasion?”

Bud frowned. “I didn't send this,” he said.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “If you didn't do it, who did?”

Bud shook his head and looked at me, his black eyes serious as could be.

“I didn't send this,” he said. “I'm not kidding. I don't write like that.”

I studied the words again. “It's printed,” I said. “Could be anyone's writing. I thought it was yours. Who else would have written this to me?”

Bud shrugged.

“You really didn't?”

“No,” Bud said. He handed Arlee to me and looked at the letter again. He looked up at me. “Is this from Barrington?” he snapped.

“What?”

“Andy Barrington. He's around, you know.”

“I didn't know that,” I said. “He's not stupid enough to mess with me, or with you. Why would he do that?”

“Well, who the hell would have sent it?”

“Bud, I really don't know. I'm as freaked-out as you are.”

“Fuck,” Bud said. “I got to shovel.”

“You don't believe me?” I said.

“Well, someone goddamn sent it,” Bud said, his eyes blazing. He punched his arms through the sleeves of his plaid flannel jacket.

“Calm down,” I said. “I don't know who sent this. I thought you did. You didn't. So, as far as I'm concerned, I don't give a damn who did it.”

“Well, it's fucking weird.”

“Yes, it is,” I said. “I'll ask around as soon as I get a few minutes or when the ice melts. Is that okay with you?”

“I'm going outside,” he said, and he left.

Arlee grabbed a piece of my hair and pulled. The pain brought me back to the present. As I unwound my curls from her little hand, I said to her, “Maybe we should have stayed for Bible study.”

Bud was outside for about an hour. He was still steaming when he came inside. I pointed to Arlee in her bassinet on the porch.

“Okay,” he said as we sat down on the sofa, “we got to figure this out.”

And we tried. We thought about all possibilities. I called Dottie at school. We wondered if Glen might have done it. I even thought about Stella or Grace. Bud brought Andy Barrington up again, saying he was going to take the letter up to the cottage and ask him about it. The next day he did just that, but no one was there. “He's cleared out,” Bud said, and even though I hadn't known he was there, I felt relieved. “I'll talk to him when he gets back. He's like bad news. He always comes back.”

“How do you know?”

“I keep an eye on him,” he said, and the subject of Andy shut tight with a bang.

The mysterious note bothered us for a little while, but sometime around March, I tucked it away in the bottom of my underwear drawer and forgot about it as days dipped and rose according to the whims of my baby.

March was lost to winter, but spring fought back in April. In May, the war was over, and spring took its rightful place. I had my twenty-first birthday on May 18, and when Dottie came home from school we celebrated her birthday too. What time and love Arlee didn't take up belonged to the man who would love me forever. Bud didn't need to send me a letter to let me know that. It was written on my heart.