A Life of Bright Ideas (5 page)

“No you didn’t, honey. You said, ‘Peters house, Spideyman speaking.’ ”

Boohoo clunked down on his knees to wind the yarn around the legs of a kitchen chair.

“Oh well. Who was it, honey?” Aunt Verdella asked.

“I don’t know. Some lady.”

“Well, what did she say?”

“Just if Rudy Peters was there.”

“She used our last name?”

“Yeah,” Boohoo said, then he went on to make
whooshes
and
whams
, as he ducked under the chair.

“Did it sound like the same lady who called yesterday?” Aunt Verdella asked, her hands propped on her knees as she bent over her belly and peered under the chair. Boohoo didn’t answer.

Aunt Verdella straightened up. “Ada gave my number to a lady who’s looking to have an afghan made to match her new living room set. I hope that wasn’t her … though why she’d ask for Rudy instead is beyond me. Oh well, hopefully she’ll call back.”

I gave her a kiss, then headed toward the door. “I’m making meat loaf for us tonight,” I said. “So don’t start any supper.”

“Oh, how nice,” she said. I was on the porch when she called, “You invited your dad, didn’t you?”

I hesitated. “He wouldn’t come,” I called back.

“Oh, I think he would. He doesn’t work tomorrow. I’ll give him a call.”

It was fun cooking in my very own kitchen, even if the pots and pans were scuffed and dented. I cranked the radio up high, since I didn’t need to worry about waking anybody, and while I chopped onions I waited for slow love songs to play.

Jesse was cute. Real cute. Six feet tall, so I didn’t feel like an Amazon when I stood next to him. He had straight dark hair that he used to let grow past his ears every spring after basketball season, since the coaches were the only ones who enforced the dress code.

When I was a freshman, Jesse’s family moved to Dauber and built a house on a forty they bought from Mike Thompson—Freeda’s old boyfriend—after he married a
woman from South Dakota who missed her family too much to stay in Dauber. Jesse was a junior. He rode my bus for a few months as he worked to buy another car, after the engine blew up in the one he had. I still remember looking up from my book when the bus slowed down to pick him up that first day, and how my head filled with whooshy noises when he boarded. He was cuter than any boy in Dauber High—and he actually smiled at me.

I thought Jesse liked me, the way he sought me out on the bus, and even in the halls. But it turned out his attention was only meant in friendship, because two weeks after he came, he was suddenly going with Christine Conner, his first in a long string of girlfriends before he graduated.

One day, just weeks after Jesse moved to Dauber, he rode his bike over to get the book report I’d written for him, since he didn’t even have a book picked out, and the reports were due on Monday. Dad called Jesse a “long-haired hippie” after he left, but Jesse wasn’t a hippie. He didn’t run around high, shouting antiwar slogans and making peace signs. He listened to Bob Dylan, but that was about it. “Not exactly the kind of boy I want to see you date,” Dad grumbled, a year later, when Jesse dropped me off after school one night. I smiled inside because Dad thought Jesse
could
be my boyfriend.

The day I learned that Jesse had enlisted in the Army, I told Dad—even though it felt awkward since about the only exchange we ever had was about my car, or which one of us would pick up something at the store. Dad’s dark brows dipped when I told him. “Jesse who?”

“Dayne. The ones who built a house on Mike Thompson’s property. The one you called a hippie when you met him?”

“Well I’m glad to hear that he felt enough responsibility to his country to enlist, even if that might mean fighting in ’Nam. That’s more than I can say about the rest of that goddamn hippie bunch who are running off to Canada.” I stood quiet in my
awkwardness, then left the room as soon as Dad looked down again.

That night, Aunt Verdella and Uncle Rudy and Boohoo came over a few minutes before six, and I could tell that it took everything short of another yarn-wrapping for Uncle Rudy to keep Aunt Verdella from coming earlier to help. Dad wasn’t coming, of course. “He sounded tired,” Aunt Verdella said. As if that was an anomaly.

If they noticed that the meat loaf was on the dry side, or that the skins on the potatoes were tough, they didn’t say so. Uncle Rudy ate seconds, while Aunt Verdella, who normally did, too, stuck to a bowl of salad (swimming in a sea of French dressing). “She’s gonna get skinny now,” Boohoo said. “Because she’s fat as Fred.”

“Don’t say things like that,” I scolded. “You sound like Fanny Tilman.”

“Well Aunt Verdella said it!”

I gave Boohoo’s plate a turn so he’d stop dropping corn kernels on the floor, and told him to hush and eat.

Aunt Verdella swallowed another gob of salad. “He did hear me say it, Button. Well, not the part about Fred Flintstone, but the part about being fat and needing to diet.”

By the time we finished our ice cream, Aunt Verdella was peacock proud of herself for skipping desert. The corner of Boohoo’s mouth cranked to the side when she bragged, though. “You finished mine, Aunt Verdella. My plate stuff,
and
my bowl stuff.”

“Just a couple of bites,” she said.

Uncle Rudy shook his head. “All this fuss over a few pounds, Verdie.”

“That’s not just a few, Uncle Rudy,” Boohoo said. “Two
hundred is a lot!” Then Boohoo started counting. “One … two … three …”

Aunt Verdella helped me do dishes, even though I told her she didn’t have to, and Uncle Rudy dozed in the living room. He probably would have snored until Aunt Verdella woke him to leave had Boohoo not taken a leap from the back of the couch and landed on his belly. We heard Uncle Rudy’s loud grunt. When he recovered, he shuffled into the kitchen. “Boy, I don’t know,” he said, patting his big belly. “Two good cooks on my corner now, I’ll be
twice
the size as Fred by winter. Now if you ladies don’t mind, I think I’ll head home and turn in.”

He thanked me for the meal and gave my shoulder a pat. Aunt Verdella grabbed him to smooch his cheek. “I’ll be home after I help Button clean up,” she said.

Boohoo started tagging Uncle Rudy to the front door. “You stay here now so your uncle Rudy can sleep,” Aunt Verdella told him.

“But I wanna go with Uncle Rudy,” Boohoo whined.

“Why don’t you go upstairs and look at the room I’m putting together for you? I brought toys over from Dad’s that you haven’t played with in a long time. Monkey is up there.” Monkey was the crocheted monkey Aunt Verdella made him when he was about three. The one with crocheted-on plastic eyes that were humorously cocked. Monkey had been Boohoo’s playmate and sleeping companion for a couple of years.

Boohoo wasn’t up there but ten minutes when he came down, Monkey in hand, and said he had to run “home” to get some yarn. He asked for some leftovers to bring to Knucklehead, since the dog was “too tired” to hike over with them, then headed out the door.

“Watch for cars,” Aunt Verdella and I called in harmony,
even though we lived on a road that only saw about four vehicles in a whole day, and three of them were usually ours. “And you let Uncle Rudy have his nap,” Aunt Verdella added.

I poured two cups of coffee and handed Aunt Verdella one. She looked down at my cup and frowned. “Oh, Button. Coffee? It’ll stunt your growth.”

“Aunt Verdella, I’m five feet nine already. How tall do you want me to grow?”

We had just settled into the living room when Boohoo returned, Monkey dangling from a yarn leash, a ball of ratty yarn in each hand, and his elbow wedging another two skeins against his belly. Yarn Aunt Verdella had unraveled from old afghans so he’d leave her new skeins alone, since those were for making the blankets and clothing and appliance “cozies” she’d sell at the Community Sale again this summer.

“You didn’t wake your Uncle Rudy, did you?” Aunt Verdella asked.

“No. He wouldn’t get up. Even when I tried to wake him ’cause somebody was on the phone.”

“Oh? Who was it, Boohoo?”

“Probably Crackpot,” Boohoo said as he headed out of the room.

Aunt Verdella and I exchanged glances and I stifled a laugh.

“Crackpot?” she said, then hurried after him. Boohoo was right, she didn’t go any faster when she ran, only higher. I followed them both. “Boohoo,” she was saying. “You shouldn’t call people crackpots.”

Boohoo was thumping up the stairs, Monkey banging behind him, stopping only when he dropped the ball of yellow yarn and it bounced down the steps. “Oh dear, not my new Harvest Gold,” Verdella said. I grabbed it, holding it like a baseball. “Stay out of Aunt Verdella’s new yarn,” I scolded. “And don’t talk rude about people.”

Boohoo stuck out his chin, which wore a glossy finish of dried, dribbled milk. “That’s what Uncle Rudy calls people on the phone!”

“Boohoo, honey. All Auntie wants to know is who called.”

“I told you. A lady. Now give me my string, Evy, or I’m gonna kick you.”

“This is new yarn, Boohoo.”

Aunt Verdella took the ball from me and gave it a high toss. Boohoo caught it on the first bounce. “Who did she ask for? Me, or Uncle Rudy?”

“Not you or him. Somebody else.”

I rolled my eyes. “Just tell them, ‘Sorry, you have the wrong number,’ next time.”

“No. I’m just gonna tell Crackpot to stop calling us all the time.”

Boohoo came downstairs a few minutes later, with Monkey and a couple of Matchbox cars and asked Aunt Verdella if they could go “home” now.

I made my voice sound as fun as it could. “You could stay here tonight, Boohoo.”

Boohoo walked past me, without even a pause in his step. “No. I’m gonna go home.”

The next morning, bright sunshine pried my eyes open. I startled, thinking, just for a sleepy second, that I’d missed the bus. I flopped back down, wondering how many days it would take before my mind caught on that I didn’t have to go to school anymore. A fact for which I’d be eternally grateful, since my love for school died shortly after Ma did.

I’d returned three days after her funeral, feeling foggy, achy, and weak—like I had the flu. There was a group of freshman boys standing inside the door when I walked in, and I knew by the way they suddenly hushed and bowed their heads, that just seconds ago they were simulating Ma’s death the moment the lightning struck her.

Every group of girls that passed me that morning, glanced
at me with pity-eyes that made my skin flush. A few of them stopped and awkwardly told me they were sorry, then flew off like flocks of starlings. All except Lydia Marks, who had tears in her eyes when she hugged me. Tears swelled in mine then, too. Her older brother had died in a car crash the year before, and I hadn’t said a word to her because I hardly knew her.

Most of the teachers gave me their condolences. A couple of them offered to help me catch up on the work I’d missed—as if the issue at that point was simply that my grades shouldn’t suffer.

And then there was Jesse. He came up to me first thing when I got to school and told me he had something for me. I followed him, while his new girlfriend Karen waited nearby with her best friend.

Jesse pulled an oblong envelope from his messy locker. One corner was bent over like a terrier’s ear. “Here,” he said. He handed me the card, then stood there like he expected me to open it right then. So I did. Inside was a rhyming verse with the word
sympathy
written in delicate, scrolling letters, as if that’s how words are written in Heaven. We’d gotten the same card from two others: Ben Franklin and the drugstore were the only places in town that sold greeting cards.

“Thank you,” I said, feeling close to tears for a couple of reasons.

Jesse looked me directly in the eye—unlike most others—and he didn’t cower when he said, “I wish I knew what to say besides I’m sorry, Evy, but I don’t.” He gave me a hug. A firm one. No pat of platitude to my back, or shuffling of the feet when he let go. Karen looked impatient, so I thanked him and walked away, the card pressed against my chest. I was glad he didn’t ask me to let him know if there was anything he could do, as so many others had:
What did that even mean?

•   •   •

I rolled to my side and ran my fingers slowly through my hair. Once upon a time, Ma and I talked about which college I’d attend—Ma sure that with my 4.0 I could get into any school I wanted to, and she hoped I’d choose U-W Madison. There seemed to be too many choices. But not anymore.

I nuzzled my face into my pillow, remembering Mrs. Hanson, my math teacher’s face contorting with
Sympathy
as she talked to me about my grades, two or three weeks before the end of the semester. “I’d like you to go see Mr. Schnell,” she said. “I think he could help you get back on track.” Mrs. Hanson said this as though I had derailed, rather than my life. She took my hand like I was a toddler and walked me to the guidance counselor’s office. They’d obviously spoken beforehand, because Mrs. Hanson led me inside and left without a word.

Mr. Schnell told me that Mrs. Hanson remembered how my ma beamed at the last conference when she saw my grades and was told what a delightful girl I was. He asked me how my mother would feel if she could see how my grades had plummeted. I didn’t hear much else of what he said because I was watching a fly walk in circles on the desk near his clasped hands, and wondering how it was that God could choose to let a measly fly live, but decide that my mother should die. Suddenly I wanted to smash that fly with my fists until it was black pulp. I’d never felt rage like that before, or since, and it made me feel like a monster. On the bus ride home that day, I scratched so hard that my ankle bled through my sock.

The next day, Mr. White, the science teacher, stood before the class, his rubbery lips the color of chalk and contorting as he reviewed facts about cloud-to-cloud lightning, cloud-to-ground lightning, ball lightning—oblivious to the storm brewing in my head and swirling in my stomach. I bolted from my desk and raced to the restroom without asking for permission because my mouth was full of vomit. Jennifer Martin was
standing at the mirror ratting the crown of her hair when I rushed into a stall to retch and she called to me that she’d had stomach flu the week before, but that it was only a twenty-four-hour bug.