A Life of Bright Ideas (22 page)

“I’ll help you raise her, Winnalee. Aunt Verdella will, too.”

Winnalee shook her head. “No. I can’t raise her, Button. I’d be no good for her. You know it’s true. Freeda said she’d help me, too, but we’d only be at each other’s throats. Shit, it started the minute we got home from the hospital. I was still hurting bad from the stitches they sewed into my crotch, and my boobs were hard as rocks and leaking all over the place, and there was Freeda, stuffing my lap full of books on how to introduce solids to your kid, and how to potty train. Shit like
that. Now why’d we need to know that right then? Hell, I didn’t even know how to hold her yet! And I was so tired I could have died, and Freeda was waking me up in the night every time that baby cried. So there we were, fightin’ like always. A kid shouldn’t have to listen to that shit, you know?”

I wrung my hands. “Freeda left you for the same reasons,” I said in a scared whisper.

“Bullshit! She left me because she didn’t give a shit about anybody but herself.”

I tucked my head down, wanting with everything I had to tell her that I’d once overheard Freeda tell my ma her reasons for leaving Winnalee. And those reasons
were
almost word for word the same as Winnalee’s. But Winnalee was too upset to hear me, and I knew it.

Winnalee sighed. “I thought it was just the weed making me gag—like an allergy or something. So I quit smoking and drinking, and my stomach settled down. But I started getting fat. And then I felt her, like a flutter of fairy wings inside me. I couldn’t stay with the thought, Button. Does that make sense? I put on baggy granny dresses and I didn’t look down. I stopped lying on my stomach. And I took my bath in the dark.

“I never did tell Freeda. She just figured it out when my gut got so big it would have been like trying to hide a watermelon under your clothes. Even then, I denied it.”

I took Winnalee’s hand and the breeze tickled her hair across my wrist. “I would have been scared, too.”

“I
was
scared. Scared half to death. Especially when Freeda started talking to me about giving birth. I didn’t want to hear that shit! So I kept telling myself that later, later I’d deal with it and figure something out. I said that until I didn’t have any time left, and Freeda finally yelled at me, ‘Listen kid. That baby’s in there, and like it or not, one way or another, it’s coming out.’

“Freeda said we’d do okay with her, but I knew that wasn’t
true. I knew she’d be tryin’ to raise her like she tried raising me after she saw that shrink. Knockin’ down any spirit that girl was born with, and tryin’ to raise her like some Brady kid, when that’s something we Malones are
not
. That’s what I was afraid of. You gotta believe me, Button.”

“Of course I believe you,” I said.

We sat quietly, watching the water swirling with the same chaotic intensity that swirled in Winnalee’s eyes.

“It’s bad enough,” she said, “that my kid, like me, won’t have a father. I don’t know who her dad is, any more than Freeda knows who mine is. A kid should have a dad. Just like you and Boohoo do. But if she can’t have that, then she can at least have a good mommy, and that’s not me. And that’s not Freeda.”

I looked down, suddenly wanting to draw up my knees, too, but not having enough room to do so.
Not like ours, Winnalee. Your baby shouldn’t have a dad like ours
.

One thing I learned from grieving over Ma is that people can’t cry forever. Even if they think they might. Sooner or later the weeping stops, leaving your eyes scratchy and as dry as your heart. And even if you want to cry again because you remember getting the tears out giving you at least some temporary relief, you can’t. Winnalee cried until the sun dropped to scrape against the backsides of the trees. And when no more tears would come, I tugged Winnalee’s hand, coaxing her up, and we climbed the bank. It was almost dark, the sunset faded to a muddy gray. Clouds of gnats hung in the weak rays of sunlight loitering between trees, and I swatted at them as I kept my eyes peeled to what might be lurking in the dark patches. “You’re crushing my hand,” Winnalee said. “You’re not still afraid of Fossard’s ghost, are you?” She gave a tired laugh when I didn’t answer. “Button, you’re a piece of work.”

.   .   .

Winnalee wouldn’t go over to Aunt Verdella’s, where Freeda and her baby were. Instead she headed upstairs and dropped into bed, bunching the pillow in her arms as if it was her baby, then curling herself around it as if
she
was the baby.

“You want me to go call Reefer and tell him you won’t be in?” I asked, mainly because I knew Freeda and Aunt Verdella were waiting for some word.

Winnalee glanced at the clock. “Yeah, call him, though if he hasn’t figured out yet that I’m not coming in, he’s a total idiot.”

I paused at the bedroom door. “Should I bring the baby back so you can see her?”

“Tomorrow,” she said.

I nodded and stepped out of the room.

“Button?” she called.

I stepped back. “Yeah?”

“Her name is Evalee. That’s your name and my name put together. E-v,
Ev
, like the beginning of Evelyn, and a-l-e-e, like the end of Winnalee.”

I smiled. “What’s her middle name?”

“Woodstock,” she said.

“Button, that you?” Aunt Verdella called from the kitchen, when I came through the front door. I could hear Uncle Rudy and Freeda talking.

“It’s her!” Boohoo yelled back. He was sitting on his knees next to a playpen, winding a ball of yarn while he watched Evalee.

“Shhhhh,”
I told him.

“It’s okay, Evy. She don’t wake up for nothin’ when she’s sleeping. That’s what Freeda said.”

I smiled. Just like her mommy.

“Tomorrow’s her birthday,” Boohoo said. “Guess how old she’s going to be? Six weeks old. That’s how many. She was born two weeks early. Freeda said that’s why she’s such a peanut.”

The lamp shade had a sheet of Reynolds Wrap capped over it to mute the light, so I crouched down by the playpen to get a better look. Evalee’s legs were tucked under her bottom, her mouth sucking. Her face was round, her skin sugar-cookie white. Eyelashes the color of milk chocolate were curled against her full cheeks. Her tiny mouth was squished to one side in a cute pout, and her bottom lip was making sucking movements. I reached down and fingered the wispy blond hair that I was sure would grow into loops like Winnalee’s. She was beautiful, just as I knew she’d be, and I wanted so badly to pick her up and sniff her baby smell.

“Guess how much long she is?”

“Um …”

“Twenty-one inches! So small that if she was a musky, you’d have to throw her back.”

My cheeks bulged with a laugh, and I gave Boohoo a hug.

“Was I ever that little, Evy?”

“You were exactly that long when you were born,” I told him, my heart swelling for them both.

“When I was zero old, I was that long? I don’t think so,” he said.

“Sure you were. I’ll dig up a picture and prove it,” I said, hoping I could find one in the album at Dad’s without Ma in it, so as not to hurt him with that sad story.

Aunt Verdella peeked into the room. “She’s cute as a cupcake, ain’t she?”

“She is,” I said with a smile.

“Button? Get your ass in here and say hello!” Freeda hollered.

“Come on,” Aunt Verdella said. “And Boohoo, you go upstairs and get your jammies on now, okay? It’s late.”

Boohoo started to protest, but Uncle Rudy stepped into the dining room. “Hey Spider-Man, how about coming upstairs and givin’ your old uncle Rudy a hand finding his slippers.
I go crouching down to look under my bed, and I might get stuck on all fours for good.”

“In which case you’d be wearing a leash forever, too,” I said. Uncle Rudy’s grizzly face folded into a smile.

Boohoo scooped up his yarn balls and got up. “I’ll bet Chameleon took them,” he said. “I’ll find them for you, Uncle Rudy, and wrap them in my web so he can’t steal them again.”

I headed to the kitchen, but stopped by the stairwell, looking up at Boohoo as he thumped up the stairs behind Uncle Rudy. “Boohoo? Don’t go trying to make a web around the baby, though, okay?”

Boohoo stopped and peered over the banister. “I know that, Evy. Aunt Verdella already told me.”

Freeda was standing at the counter, measuring formula powder into a line of baby bottles, and Aunt Verdella was filling the coffee pot. Freeda turned when I came in, and spread her arms. “My God,” she said. “I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw you today. All grown up, and pretty as a goddamn model. Come here, kid.”

Freeda hugged me hard, then backed away. She jabbered about my long hair, my flat ears—she insisted they needed to be pierced—and my big “knockers,” while my face heated. “Where’s Winnalee?” she asked when she was done marveling at me.

“Home. She’s exhausted.”

“I suppose she is,” Freeda said. “With the life she’s been living since she pulled into Dauber.”

Aunt Verdella’s head dipped sheepishly. “Button, you understand why I had to find Freeda, don’t you?”

I nodded.

Aunt Verdella tilted her head. “I knew she’d be worried. And I was worried, too.”

“Good thing you found me, too,” Freeda said, “since Reece doesn’t pick up his goddamn phone. I finally got smart and asked for Rudy’s number—Rudolf, who knew—but when I called here all I kept getting was a little boy calling me Crackpot and hanging up.”

“That was
you
?” I said, and we all laughed.

Freeda leaned her butt against the counter and propped her hands behind her, her eyes softening and saddening at the same time. “Button, I’m so sorry about your ma. I couldn’t believe it when Verdella told me. Jewel was too young to die, and you kids were too young to lose her.”

Freeda shook her head slowly, her green eyes dampening. “Jewel was the first female friend I ever had. I could kick my own ass for not lookin’ back after I left here, but hell, all I knew how to do back then was run without looking over my shoulder. Especially from anything that looked like love. I just didn’t trust it. And with Hannah on my trail, well … It’s just the best I could do at the time. But oh, I missed you guys.”

Freeda looked up, her milky neck swan-pretty. “It’s going to take me a while to realize Jewel’s gone.”

“I still forget sometimes,” Aunt Verdella confessed. She started crying then, and as always, her tears broke my heart.

“Evalee is so cute,” I said, to steer her—to steer us all—to something joyful. “I’ll bet Winnalee looked just like that when she was a baby.” I cringed after I’d said it. Freeda left Winnalee when she was a newborn. How would she know?

Freeda turned back to the sink and started filling the bottles. “I love that little baby in there with everything I’ve got,” she said. “
And
I love Winnalee. That’s why I don’t want her making the same mistake I made. She takes Evalee back now, and that little one never needs to know her mommy left her in the first place. She doesn’t, and Evalee will never forgive her, just as Winnalee will never forgive me. I don’t want that for Winnalee. It’s hell.”

Aunt Verdella’s head snapped up. “Oh, Freeda. Winnalee will forgive you in time. You’re her mama. And she’s got a kind heart. You watch. In no time, she’ll be calling you ‘Ma.’ ”

I guess Aunt Verdella didn’t see the absurdity in that comment. Winnalee had refused to call Freeda “Ma” for all the nine years since she learned that’s who she was. It was doubtful that she’d start calling her it now.

Thinking the word
call
startled me into remembering that I was supposed to make one. Aunt Verdella helped me dig through cluttered drawers for the phone book. I had to shout so the bartender on the other end could hear me over the jukebox. “At least she’s working,” Freeda said after I hung up. “Though I can’t imagine her waiting tables—hand her a plate or a cup and she’s as klutzy as a fawn on roller skates.”

“Well, she
does
seem to come home wearing more beer than she probably serves,” Aunt Verdella said. They laughed, and I cringed. I busied myself carrying the filled bottles to the refrigerator, grateful that neither of them knew that on weekends, Winnalee set down her order pad and climbed into a cage to dance for dollar bills.

Aunt Verdella poured three cups of coffee, and we sat down at the table. “Verdella told me about your dad,” Freeda said, as she tucked the short side of her hair behind her ear. “How he’s checked out of life. Out of you kids’ lives.”

“Well, I didn’t exactly say it like that,” Aunt Verdella said.

Of course she didn’t. Aunt Verdella always used her love for Dad to smooth over the sharp edge of the truth.

Boohoo came barreling down the stairs then, marching into the kitchen proudly. “I found his slippers,” he said. “And I tied them right to the bed legs so Chameleon can’t run off with them again.”

“Oh dear. Freeda, remind me to take my sewing shears
upstairs when I turn in.” She looked at Boohoo. “Honey, didn’t Auntie tell you to get your jammies on and get to bed?”

“I’m hungry,” Boohoo said.

Freeda looked at him. “For a kid with an imagination like yours, I would have thought you could come up with a more original excuse than
that
?”

Aunt Verdella hurried to dab a baking powder biscuit with jelly. “Oh, he’s a bottomless pit, this one,” she said, while Boohoo studied Freeda under tucked brows.

Freeda watched him, too. “He sure looks like Reece.”

Boohoo took two bites of his biscuit, then tossed it on the rug for Knucklehead. Freeda looked at the poor dog and shook her head. “And that old thing looks ready to kick the bucket.”

Aunt Verdella stiffened, the same as I did. Knucklehead had slept with Boohoo up until climbing the stairs became too much for him, yet feeble as he was, when Uncle Rudy and Boohoo settled down to watch TV at night, Knucklehead always stretched out on the floor alongside Boohoo. Aunt Verdella and I often shared a secret smile when Boohoo unconsciously rubbed the dog’s floppy ear against his cheek as if it was the silky edge of a blanket. Whether Boohoo found Knucklehead dead, or we did, we both dreaded the day we had to explain to him why Knucklehead wasn’t getting up.