A Life of Bright Ideas (3 page)

“For looks, I guess.”

Aunt Verdella shook her head. “He must have been a little goofy in the head,” she said.

I started to explain the notion Winnalee had that launched the bright ideas, then decided to just read the first entry, because it said it all: “Bright Idea number one:
If you don’t want to keep making the same mistakes over and over again like Freeda says big people do, then you should find a book with nothing inside it and write down the things you see and hear that you think might be the secrets to life, because nobody’s going to tell you shit. By the time you get to 100 you’re probably going to know everything there is to know about how to live good
.”

“Ohhhh, isn’t that precious,” Aunt Verdella said, her hand warm on my arm.

My stomach suddenly got that hot sensation in it. The same one you feel when your eyes warm before you cry. “Aunt Verdella? Do you ever wonder why we think of the Malones so often, and still miss them? They were our friends over one summer. That’s all. Penny was my friend for six years before she moved, and though I missed her for a time, I hardly ever think of her anymore.”

“Oh, Button. It’s not the length of time we knew someone that makes them so special. It’s what they brought to our lives.”

Aunt Verdella rested her head against mine. “You know, when the picture on your TV screen starts rolling. Or when your bread’s coming out of the toaster with only one side brown, you admit the dang things are broken, and you either fix them, or you get a new one. But when your life is broken, you’ll let that misery roll by for years, and ignore the side of
you that isn’t finished. Your uncle Rudy, who is, as you know, smart as a whip about most everything, says that’s just human nature. And I suppose it is. But still …”

Aunt Verdella straightened up and stared across the room at nothing. “When Freeda and Winnalee pulled into town—Freeda with that fiery red hair and temper to match, and Winnalee, cute as a bug’s ear in that big mesh slip and ladies’ blouse, carrying this urn and that book—I brought them back to rent your grandma’s place because I saw something in them that was broken that I wanted to fix. I don’t know that I fixed even one thing in their lives, but what I do know, is that they fixed plenty in ours. Without even tryin’.”

She made a soft
hmmmm
in the back of her throat. “I don’t like thinking about those times, back before Freeda and Winnalee came and changed our family for the better—we were so broken then—but I can’t help it sometimes. Your ma and dad’s marriage had gone sour so long ago, that I doubt they even tasted the bitterness anymore. And your ma, so judgmental and jealous, and cold to you and your dad. I told myself that’s just how she was made, because nothing ever seemed to change it. It broke my heart, though, the way she had you so scared of doin’ something wrong, that you couldn’t stop scratching yourself. Remember how you used to chew the insides of your cheeks until they bled?” I slid my tongue over to cover the jagged, tender skin in my mouth, as if she’d see the damage right through my cheek if I didn’t.

“Auntie tried to help you loosen up—you were such a serious little thing. Like a little old lady in a child’s body. But I couldn’t do nothing to change that, any more than I could change Jewel’s behavior. All I could do was love you both. But Freeda? She knew what to do.”

“Yes,” I said, remembering how, after Ma accused Freeda of having an affair with Dad, Freeda had flown into a rage and yelled at Ma for her jealousy, and for how she treated her family.
Ma had cried so hard Freeda had to help her to a chair. That’s when it came out that she felt ugly and undeserving of Dad, and Freeda helped her understand that she was putting those feelings about herself onto me. “But after Freeda took Ma under her wing, helping her fix up, loosen up, and feel better about herself, Ma turned butterfly bright and wasn’t so hard on herself—or us—anymore.” Of course, she never became as vibrant or as much of a free spirit as Freeda—nobody probably could—but she started giving Dad back rubs and me hugs. And when Boohoo came along, she cuddled him just like Aunt Verdella did, melding his little curled body against her every time she held him.

“Yep. Your ma was like a new person, after Freeda got done with her … and you got happier and more outgoing after Winnalee got done with you, too.”

Aunt Verdella sighed. “That’s why I got my heart so set on buying Hannah Malone a final resting place, like Winnalee wanted her to have. So that sweet little girl could set down this urn, and we could show the Malones how much we appreciated them. Remember when you and me went to Hopested, Minnesota, to buy the plot and stone, and how shocked we were when the funeral director told us that Hannah Malone was still alive? Lord, I couldn’t hardly believe my ears! And then a few days later, after the funeral director told Hannah Malone that we’d come and why, there she was on our doorstep, wanting Winnalee back.”

I flinched at the memory of Aunt Verdella and me learning—along with Winnalee—that Freeda was
not
Winnalee’s sister after all, but her mother, and that she’d returned to Hopested to take Winnalee, only after she’d learned that her uncle Dewey was back living with Hannah. Freeda didn’t want Dewey molesting Winnalee as he had her, and she was going to get her out of there even if she had to lie to Winnalee and tell her that
their
mom was dead, and put woodstove—
fireplace, cigarette, whatever kind of ashes they were—in an urn for Winnalee to carry so she’d go willingly, or not. And that night, after the secrets came out, Freeda and Winnalee pulled out of town. Without saying goodbye.

“I just wanted to do something nice for those two, you know?” Aunt Verdella repeated.

I nodded.

“We were so broken then,” she said with a sigh.

I stared down at the Book of Bright Ideas. Then I asked in a whisper, “Do you know that we’re broken now?”

Aunt Verdella put her arm around me and rested her head back against mine. Then she said, “Yes.”

On my first morning waking up in Grandma Mae’s house—my second day of freedom from Dauber High—I stepped outside, my skin still damp from my bath, and checked the sky as I headed across the road. Boohoo was digging in his tractor tire sandbox. Uncle Rudy’s truck was gone, and Aunt Verdella was coming around the side of the house with an empty laundry basket. “I need to go to Dad’s to find my good sewing scissors. Do you think you could give me a lift?” I asked. “I went to get them late last night, but a warning light came on the dash and the car started smelling burny. I didn’t know if I’d make it the six miles to Dad’s house, so I turned around. Smoke was rolling out of the hood by the time I got home.”

“Oh, I wish you had a more reliable car,” Aunt Verdella
said. “That thing you’re driving is nothing but a pill.” Who knew what that expression meant, or if she was using it correctly. But if “a pill” meant an old, rusted heap of ugly maroon junk, then she was using it accurately. Dad had picked up the Rambler Classic right before I got my license. He paid two hundred for it, which is about how many times he’d had to fix it since then. “Course, I’ll run you, dear. I could use some milk from The Corner Store, anyway,” Aunt Verdella said. “Hopefully your dad will be home so you can ask him to look at your car.”

“Yeah,” I said. What I didn’t say, though, was that I was relieved she’d be with me when I brought it up. Not that I anticipated Dad yelling if I was alone—either way, he’d only stare off and say with a sigh, “Well, bring it over, then”—but with her there, I knew I was less likely to turn into the big-eared kid I’d been, too mousy to talk to her dad.

“We going to Dad’s?” Boohoo asked. I nodded.

Aunt Verdella told him to empty the dirt from his shoes and brush the sand off his bottom, then went inside to put the basket away. I watched Boohoo as he upside-downed his sneaker, letting the sand filter through his fingers as he made cartoonish sounds of a plane plummeting toward earth.

Once, Verdella had told me that Dad was a “change of life baby,” meaning my grandma Mae—Dad and Uncle Rudy’s mother—had him when she was old (forty-four, I think) and that she “never had the time of day for him.” Some years after Uncle Rudy’s first wife died, Uncle Rudy and Aunt Verdella got married and built a house across the road from Grandma Mae’s. Dad was still just a kid, and he began hanging around more and more, and little by little, his toys and clothes moved across the road, until, without anyone verbally agreeing to anything, Aunt Verdella and Uncle Rudy were raising him. Just as now they were raising Boohoo.

Boohoo was too little to understand death, but the grief he
absorbed from the rest of us when Ma died, along with his missing her, caused him to wake and cry in the night. Nobody could comfort him except Aunt Verdella. Probably because after Ma opened her bridal shop, while Boohoo was still in diapers, Aunt Verdella took care of him during the day. Dad didn’t seem to notice that Boohoo never came home after Ma’s death. Same as he didn’t notice that each night after our supper was finished and the dishes done, I got in my Rambler, crossed Highway 8, and drove down Peters Road to Aunt Verdella and Uncle Rudy’s house, where I stayed until bedtime. So to Boohoo, it was “Dad’s house,” not his, and “Dad” was just a name. Obviously. Because when Aunt Verdella helped him make a Father’s Day card last summer, he gave it to Uncle Rudy, and Uncle Rudy had to explain to him that it belonged to Dad.

After Ma died, her sister Stella came, wanting to take Boohoo. She claimed I was old enough to get along without a mother, but that Boohoo wasn’t. Dad threw her out of the house, shouting, “Are you fucking nuts? You think I’m going to give my son away?” I wondered if Dad realized by now that he
had
given Boohoo away.

As far as Boohoo went, it was déjà vu all over again, proving that not only do people repeat the same mistakes
they
already made, but sometimes, the same mistakes their
family
already made.

“Okay, I’m ready,” Aunt Verdella called as she came down the steps, swinging her crocheted purse, and carrying a paper plate covered with Reynolds Wrap. “How you coming there, Boohoo?” she called, and he answered, “One down, one to
go!” Aunt Verdella sent a string of ha-has floating through the air like pollen.

“I brought your dad some supper,” she said, handing me the plate once we got in her Buick. “Chicken from yesterday, which is what we’re having tonight. And some German potato salad.”

“Ew, I don’t like that stuff,” Boohoo said, wrinkling his nose as he hung over the seat. “It’s snotty.”

Aunt Verdella told him that she had mashed potatoes for him, and I told him to sit down. When he wouldn’t, she said, “You don’t sit down, and Button and me are gonna give you a love sandwich!” Since Boohoo turned six, he claimed he didn’t like kisses anymore. Still, he hovered over the seat until Aunt Verdella and I smothered his cheeks with smooches, one pair of lips for each side. Boohoo shrieked and threw himself back against the seat.

Dad was sitting on the couch when we got there, looking groggy from working the graveyard shift at the paper mill—his preference since Ma’s death. He tried to show enthusiasm when Aunt Verdella peeled back the aluminum foil. “You want me to heat it up for you, Reece?”

“Nah, I just had a sandwich. I’ll have it after a bit.”

I took the food from Aunt Verdella, offering to put it in the fridge so she wouldn’t see the other plates she’d left him in the past week or two, or realize that Dad didn’t have anything with which to make a sandwich.

Boohoo ran toward his bedroom to search for the Tonka truck that he’d forgotten when Aunt Verdella and I were packing my things. “No running in the house, Boohoo,” I called. Dad didn’t glance up as Boohoo raced by.

As upset with Dad’s neglect of Boohoo as I was, I couldn’t
help but feel sorry for him as he sat there staring at the television set, smudges of blame the color of bruises under his eyes, his body sunken with regrets. But I felt sadder still for Boohoo. Dad had gotten more approachable after the summer the Malones were here—when Ma was happier, warmer—and for a time, Dad and I had conversations like a real dad and daughter, even if they were short and not about much of anything. But not anymore. Now Dad hardly ever talked to anyone in the family, but for Aunt Verdella when she barged in, and Uncle Rudy when he ran into him. That made me sad for all of us, but especially for Boohoo. I remembered what it felt like to be little and have him look through you as if you were made of fog. Dad should have remembered how it felt, too.

Aunt Verdella plopped down on the couch and chattered to him—about Tommy Smithy asking to pasture some of his cows at the farm for the summer, about the tomato plants she’d started—while I went to my room to dig for my good pair of sewing shears.

I hated being in that house. The ambush of memories, and the thought of Ma cringing as she looked down from Heaven over her ruined house overwhelmed me. Ma’s floors were gritty, her end tables littered with old newspapers and coffee cups. The kitchen linoleum was scraped in the shape of a fan because the back door no longer hung level, and there was a stained, bubbled patch in front of the sink, two feet in diameter, where water had leaked from loose pipes. Dirty shirts were bunched over the backs of chairs, and socks pried loose with the opposing big toe lay in crusty balls where they’d fallen. That is, until Aunt Verdella came along once a week to scoop them up and take them home for washing.

I would have continued to show up every day to clean the house for Ma’s sake, had Dad not stopped me. Aunt Verdella explained it and I think she might be right. Maybe when Dad came home to kitchen sounds or the whir of the vacuum, he
forgot for a moment that Ma was gone, and the truth, when it came, was just too jolting. In spite of how Dad felt, though, I vowed to sneak into the house once a week after he left for work to take down Ma’s bells and dust them. Ma loved her bell collection.

I found my scissors and stalled in the hall until Aunt Verdella called for me, then gave me a reminder nod toward Dad. The insides of my left arm itched, and I scraped it with the cold edge of the scissors as I told him that my car was broken again.