Written on My Heart (9 page)

A
bout a week after my birthday, Arlee began to master walking, when it became clear to her that getting from one place to another would happen faster if she used the funny-looking things on the ends of her legs. She hung on to edges and curves to make her way from here to there, and Bud and I held her between us for hours, walking from the kitchen to the living room and back and taking her outside when the weather was nice.

On June 12, 1972, our first wedding anniversary, Bud, Dottie, and I sat in lawn chairs and watched Arlee play with pieces of grass and clover on the lawn. Suddenly she stopped, frowned, placed her palms on the grass, pulled herself to her feet ass-end first, and began to walk. Three steps. Plop. Up again. Three steps. Plop. Four steps, teeter, recover, then five steps. The three of us laughed and clapped for her as she made her way to us, her face lit by joy and the June sun.

“Oh, boy,” Dottie said. “You're in for it now.”

Arlee headed for Bud and he stood and caught her, throwing her into the air with a look on his face that made me say “I do” again, out loud.

“Do what?” Dottie said.

“Marry Bud,” I said. Dottie raised her eyebrows and shrugged.

Bud put Arlee down and they moved across the lawn. He seldom grinned, but as he walked with his daughter his face cracked open
with happiness. As I watched them, I mourned the part of Arlee's life where she had needed me for everything. Now she would be under her own steam while I trailed after her, trying to keep her from breaking her head, and her heart, on hard, pointy surfaces.

“Well,” I said, “guess it's time to have another one.”

“Let's wait until we move,” Bud said.

“You moving?” Dottie said. I hadn't told her yet. Cecil needed help, at last.

“Yep,” I said.

“Got a job in Stoughton Falls,” Bud told Dottie. He caught my look and his smile grew smaller. I could ruin his good day by being cranky or I could ball up that feeling and toss it away. I took a deep breath and let it out. I thought about something I had overheard Carlie say to Patty on the phone once. “Being married means never having your own way again,” she had said with a sigh. She had been right.

“Got to find a place to rent for fall,” I said to Dottie. “Want to go on a road trip?”

“Sure,” Dottie said. “Who knows? Might look around myself. More bowling alleys near the city. Could get a job there in some school after I graduate.”

It cheered me up to think that Dottie might be teaching gym to schoolkids in Portland, Maine's biggest city, or somewhere else near Stoughton Falls, so that she could drop in anytime. I settled that it would happen in my mind, and with that, she and I got up and chased Arlee around the yard until we wore her out.

Three weeks later, on a warm July day, Glen came home.

Arlee might have known that something about the day was different. I had opened up the storm door to let a summer breeze drift through the locked screen door, and of course Arlee was attracted to it. She loved hitting the screen and shouting, “BAM! BAM! BAM!” I chased after her and brought her back to the kitchen, time and again.

In between bouts of chasing Arlee, I was baking bread to sell at Ray's. I had upped my bread making because Ray had gotten a lot of requests for it. I was making all the bread he would take, because it gave us extra money to move and set up in Stoughton Falls.

When fall came, we planned to leave Grand's house empty. The house would have plenty of minders, though, in the persons of Ida, Maureen, Bert, and Madeline. If it worked out, we would stay in Stoughton Falls for the fall, winter, and spring, after which Arlee and I would come back to The Point and reopen the house for summer.

“Slow down,” I called to Arlee, who had dashed for the door again. I was worn out and it wasn't even noon. It had crossed my mind to take her down to Ida's house so I could finish with the bread, but I needed to be more independent. After all, Arlee and I would be alone in Stoughton Falls. We would be partners in crime, she and I. I ran into the hall to grab my daughter. But I stopped suddenly. A tall figure stood just outside the screen door, blocking the light. I hurried toward Arlee, who had been shocked into standing still. “Come here, honey,” I said. I picked her up and backed toward the kitchen, where I supposed I could grab a knife or something to defend us.

“Florine, it's just me,” a familiar voice said.

“You scared the shit out of me,” I said. I flipped the lock up on the screen door and let Glen into the hallway. “I'm so glad you're back,” I added. I reached up to hug him with Arlee squeezed between us. My nose, pressed against his uniformed shoulder, picked up sweat and the smell of something burnt. He wrapped his big arms around the both of us and held on until I finally said, “You can let go. We won't run away.” He did, but slowly, and we stepped back from each other.

I saw Bud every day, so noticing any changes in him came slow to me. But I hadn't seen Glen for a year. This was no pudgy high school graduate standing in front of Arlee and me. This was six feet two inches of man. He wasn't thin—he would never be thin—but the army had sanded down his softness and varnished his body with muscles. He stood straight and looked down at us with sharp eyes that had seen
what there was to see far outside of our little world and beyond that. He looked strange to me until he opened his mouth and the Glen I knew came out.

“She what become of you and Bud foolin' around?” he asked, reaching for Arlee, who reached back.

“Here,” I said, and handed her over. “I meant to send pictures . . .”

Glen shook his head. “It's okay,” he said. He bent his right arm and made a seat for Arlee. She reached for his chin and patted his shaved face and he laughed.

“She likes you. Arlee doesn't take to just anyone,” I said.

“Well, she heard her uncle Glen talk while she was baking in your oven,” he said. “'Course she knows me.”

“You want to come in?” I said. I had a million questions but I couldn't think of what to say first. We headed for the rockers on the porch. “How long you home?” I asked.

“I got about a month,” Glen said. “Then I go back for six more months.”

He sat down with Arlee still in his arms.

“Want a beer?” I said.

“Sure,” he said. I flipped the top on one of Bud's Schlitz cans and handed it to him. He sipped at it and lowered it to the floor next to the chair. Arlee watched every move he made without a sound.

“Can we talk while I finish making this bread?” I said. “I'm supposed to have it up to Ray's sometime this afternoon.”

“Sure,” Glen said. “Or not talk. I could just as soon sit here with this princess and watch that beautiful water move.”

“Good,” I said. I went back to the bread, kneading it down and tearing it into two rounds. I plopped them into bowls and set them on the wide windowsill Billy had added on when he'd replaced the window Stella had broken. The sun shone down on the damp dish towels. The heat from it would fire up the dough beneath the towels. I washed and dried my hands and wandered back onto the porch. I opened my mouth to say something, then shut it as I took in Glen, sound asleep in the rocking chair, my little girl snoozing against his chest.

The bread was baked and finished by the time Arlee woke up. I took her from her still-sleeping buddy and she fussed for a little bit as she came back to Earth. I took her into the yard and fed her a late picnic lunch, but she was more interested in getting back to Glen and she headed for the house.

“Glen's asleep,” I said. “Let's walk up to Ray's with the bread.” I picked her up, crept into the kitchen, and tucked the four warm, wrapped loaves of bread under my arm. We snuck out again to the sound of Glen's soft snores.

On the way up to the store, Arlee wandered off to pick up a blade of grass or to bring me a rock. I would take each thing home and put it into an old cigar box that had belonged to my grandfather, Franklin, for safekeeping. I pocketed a gray rock, a tired blue jay feather, and a dusty daisy. It took us a half hour to take the five-minute walk up the hill. Ray's face lit up when he saw her. He pulled a crinkled paper bag from underneath his counter, reached in, and took out a gumdrop. He held it in the palm of his hand and Arlee grabbed it.

“What do you say, missy?” he said.

“Sa,” she said.

I handed over my bread.

“Glen's at my house,” I said. Ray's eyes widened.

“Glen's home?” he said.

“You didn't know that?”

“He don't tell me nothing,” he said. He handed Arlee another gumdrop, rolled down the top of the bag, and stashed it beneath the counter.

“I would've thought you'd know,” I said.

“Christ, no,” Ray said. He turned away and stuffed packs of cigarettes into their slots.

“I'll tell him to—”

“Don't bother,” Ray said. “Don't bother.” He didn't turn back around,
even when Arlee said, “Bye.” We left the store just in time to catch a ride down to the house with Bud. “Glen's asleep on the porch,” I said.

“He's here?” Bud said.

“Either him or his ghost.”

“Cecil called today. Wants to know if I can start earlier.”

“When?”

“Middle of August,” he said. “He's going to put me up in a little shed down by the water on his property.”

“Great. Does it have water and a bathroom?”

Bud shrugged. “I can deal.”

We pulled up in front of the house and he got out. Arlee scrabbled off my lap and crawled over to the driver's seat. Bud lifted her out while I sat in the car counting whitecaps on the water. Bud came around and opened the passenger door, leaned down, and said, “You sitting there all night?”

“Do I have a say in whether you go or not?”

“You do, but I'm going. I got to get started, Florine.”

That settled, we went into the house, where Glen was fixing us some kind of hash from stuff he'd dug out of the refrigerator.

“Rations,” he said. “Thought I'd best move my lazy ass.”

“Why?” Bud said. “You never cared about moving your lazy ass before.”

“True,” Glen said. “Good to see you too.”

I left them all in the kitchen and went outside. I walked down to the wharf, sat down on the edge of it, slipped my sneakers off, and stuck my feet into the water. It was cold until my feet got used to the temperature. I looked down at my toes, the nails unpainted since I'd given birth. “You look like hell. What do you have to say for yourselves?” I asked them. One foot rubbed itself over the other, as if it were embarrassed.

The ramp shook as someone else walked down to the wharf. I thought it might be Bud coming to tell me that he loved me more than life itself and so he would wait until the fall as we had planned, but it was Dottie.

“Bud's going to Stoughton Falls soon to start work,” I said.

“Hello, Dottie, how was your day? Fine, thank you,” she said.

“How was your day, Dottie?”

“Good enough. Water warm?”

“Takes a few seconds.” She rolled up her summer-job state-park uniform pants, took off her shoes and socks, and eased herself down beside me. We both looked at our feet in the water. “Feels good,” she said. “Look at how fat my toes are.”

“Mine look like worms,” I said.

A cormorant poked its sleek head above the water's surface, spied us sitting there, and ducked back down.

“I guess Bud's got to work,” Dottie said. “Wants to do his best. No harm in that.”

“You're supposed to say, ‘Oh, Florine, my best friend in the world, you poor thing. How can I help? What can I do? How can I ease your pain?'”

“Screw that,” Dottie said. She shifted beside me. “Did we ever meet Andy Barrington's mother?”

My toes curled at the sound of “Barrington.” “Never met the woman,” I said.

“She fell off the rocks by that bench Mr. Barrington put up.”