Heart and Home (8 page)

Anything at all. I hoped the
warmth in my cheeks wasn’t evidence of a blush, because despite not having let
my thoughts wander too far over that anything at all, it didn’t seem to take
much to make me feel flustered when it came to Troy.

“All right,” I hoped I
didn’t seem too eager as I nodded my appreciation. Not that’d I’d actually have
the guts to call him, but it was the thought that counted. “Thanks, Troy.” For
a moment I was drawn into his gaze. I’d never seen eyes that particular shade
of blue before, and there was a comfortable warmth about it that made me want
to stand there like that for as long as he’d let me. “I mean it, thanks for
everything. You’ve been so kind to me this last week, and I really appreciate
it.”

“Don’t mention it.”

I think he told me to take
care before he walked away, I wasn’t sure. In fact, I felt so wobbly-kneed that
it actually took me a few seconds to figure out how to make my legs work after
he left. It was embarrassing in retrospect. I mean, in all honesty I hadn’t had
a guy make me feel like that ever, and I wasn’t sure exactly what it was about
Troy (all right, aside from the fact that he was incredibly attractive,) that
was making me crumble like half-dried clay every time he was around.

Just thinking about calling
him made me squirm nervously, but the greater part of me started hoping like
hell I needed something before the week was out. Anything at all.

Chapter Eight

I headed home and
immediately hit the shower, completely embarrassed that I ran into Troy looking
the way I did. Vain, yes, but I wasn’t about to risk running into him again on
my way home from Becky’s house dressed like Burt the Chimney Sweep from
Mary Poppins
. By the time I left to
visit with Becky and pick up my mother’s scrapbooking materials order, I felt
more confident, even as I continued to deny I had any need to impress anyone.

I cruised through the
streets of my old hometown and tried to curb my nostalgia, but an extra burst
crept up on me as I passed by the old
Sonesville
Standard
building. The
Standard
was my first real journalism job, even if all I did was hit the movie theater
at the mall every weekend and then write up reviews. It really wasn’t
journalism at all, but despite my small role, I had been a part of the
Standard
during one of the biggest news
story to ever hit our little town.

Just before my senior year
eleven-year-old Bethany Moss was abducted from her bedroom while her parents
slept three rooms away. During the six week search for Bethany the environment
at the
Sonesville Standard
had been
electric. It was during that time that my longtime dream of becoming a
jet-setting journalist was confirmed. As horrible as it seemed to me even then,
I realized for the first time that beyond our small town there were newspapers
that experienced that kind of excitement every day.

Three days before I left for
college my final task for Mr. Sanders was to fill the marquis in front of the
building with a neighborhood-friendly warning that read: SCHOOL’S IN WATCH FOR
BUSES. I was both saddened and surprised to see that the marquis hadn’t been
updated since I’d left, and it now read: S OOL S I ATC F R BU ES.
The fact that no one bothered to
update it in years was disheartening. Even worse, I couldn’t believe that no
one rearranged the letters to spell something clever like: FOOL I C UR ASS,
leaving the final letters to dangle at
the end without purpose.

A disappointed sigh left me
feeling deflated long after I passed the building. Mr. Sanders was old long
before I worked for him. Even then I’d known it was only a matter of time
before the poor excuse for a paper fell apart. Regardless of how far
The Standard
had fallen in the last ten
years, I would still clip my mother’s obituary from its pages when I got home.

During the rest of the drive
I thought about scrapbooking. I hadn’t even known my mother was into that.
She’d never mentioned it, but then I wasn’t surprised. Personally, I knew very
little about the art and couldn’t see myself memorializing her obituary or the
collection of condolence cards that poured in through the mailbox all week. Did
people even scrapbook death? Would that be in any way, shape or form
appropriate? Fortunately, my train of thought was interrupted when I realized I
arrived at the address Becky gave me over the phone.
 

I scanned the street and
double checked the address. The greater part of me expected to find her still
living along the river in the trailer park where she’d grown up, but the
address she’d given me led to one of the oldest Victorian homes in downtown
Sonesville. As I checked the address a third time, shame crawled across my
conscience. The fact that I hadn’t expected Becky to live anywhere outside the
trailer park made me no better than Amber Williams or anyone else who believed
those born without money couldn’t rise above their circumstances.

Becky opened the door and
stepped out onto the porch before I even got out of the car. “I saw you pull
up,” she explained, hiking up the toddler on her hip.

I almost didn’t recognize
her without the bright red-rimmed glasses that took up half her face at my
mother’s wake. Her long hair was coiled into a braided bun at the back of her
neck while a few loose tendrils framed her oval face. She wore just a hint of make-up,
but that subtle addition was enough to make me second-guess the impressions of
her I surmised on Saturday. I really was no better than Amber, I realized, and
instantly made myself promise to stop judging everyone I came in contact with.

I tried not to gawk at her
as I started up the steps, but my curiosity got the best of me. “You look
different.”

A smile lit up her entire
face. “You mean without those hideous glasses?” she shifted the little boy on
her hip to the other side. “I had a bad infection last week and couldn’t wear
my contacts at all. Unfortunately, the only pair of glasses I have on hand came
straight out of the nineties.” She chuckled. “Come on in,” she stepped aside.
“I was just getting ready to put my boys down for a nap.”

I slipped past her and into
the vast, but cozy foyer. “I’m sorry,” I glanced down at my watch. “I didn’t
know you had little ones.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it,”
she waved me off. “In fact, if you don’t mind having a seat in the den, it’ll
just take me a minute to get them situated.”

“No problem,” I nodded and
followed the direction of her finger toward the den.

It was the kind of room
proper ladies had afternoon tea in, I thought. A smile nagged at me when I saw
evidence of a more casual lifestyle just beyond the den. A host of toys
littered the floor, and the television in the family room blinked images of
some yellow sponge in a pair of brown shorts marching circles around a
cardboard box. I made myself comfortable on the love seat and folded my hands
nervously in my lap. Eyes closed, I breathed in the scent of Becky’s house,
which held vague hints of cinnamon and apple, and I wondered if she spent a lot
of time baking. I listened in the distance as she talked to her children
upstairs and my grin grew wider.

We hadn’t exactly been the
best of friends growing up, but most of the girls in our year were friends in
grade school. We’d all been to each other’s houses and birthday parties and
knew what to expect from each other personality-wise.

Becky was been shy and
withdrawn, but she was also the first person to come out of her comfort zone
and step up when someone else was in need. By the time we reached junior high
school Becky’s shyness was intensified by shame about her family life. Amber
and her friends tormented a lot of girls, including Becky, but feeling safer
out of the line of fire, I kept my nose out of it instead of stepping in and
standing up for those other girls. Did Becky hate me for it?

“Coffee or tea?” Becky
leaned in from foyer.

“Coffee, please.”

“Let’s have it in the
kitchen,” she gestured with her head. “I keep a monitor out there to keep an
ear out for the kids. Sometimes they sneak across the hall to play when they’re
supposed to be sleeping, and well, that expression ‘boys will be boys’… let’s
just say there’s some truth to it. If I don’t at least keep an ear on them, the
cat will wind up painted purple, or something.”

I followed her into the
kitchen and took a seat at a café-style table she gestured toward. As she
bustled around the kitchen putting on a pot of coffee, I couldn’t help but
notice the absence of her nervousness. On Saturday she’d been unsure about what
to say to me, which was completely understandable, but when Amber walked into
the picture Becky’s apprehension grew worse. Just under the buzz of the baby
monitor, I could hear the children rustling around in their beds.

“How many children do you
have?”

“Just the two boys,” she
pressed her back into the countertop and turned to face me with her arms
crossed as the coffee brewed. “Marty’d love to fill the whole house with kids,
but I’d be happy with just one more if we had a little girl.”

“Marty?” I combed through
the list of names in my memory bank, and at first I could find no recollection
of a Marty.

His face formed in my mind
the minute she said, “Marty Kaufman. He was a few years ahead of us in school.”

“I remember,” I nodded.
“Wasn’t he in the theater club?”

Becky pursed her lips
together in thought, “You know, now that you mention it, I think he was. He
played the father in
Death of a Salesman
the year we were in eighth grade.”

“Oh, yeah,” I pictured him
in my memory dressed in a suit that made him seem much older than his mere
eighteen years. “He did a good job.”

“Yeah,” Becky grinned. “He
doesn’t have much time for acting these days, but he’s still a real character.”

“So you’re Becky Kaufman
now?”

“That’s me,” she walked
toward the table with a creamer and sugar bowl. “It used to shock me too,
especially when we first starting dating, but it didn’t take much convincing on
his part to know he was just what I needed.”

“Awe,” I lowered my head.
“That is so sweet.”

She turned back toward the
table again with the coffee pot in hand. “And what about you? Your mom said you
weren’t serious with anyone in Pittsburgh. Was there anyone she didn’t know
about?”

“No, not really.” I
admitted. “My job keeps me pretty busy, and there doesn’t seem to be much time
for relationships.”

“That’s too bad,” she tilted
her head. “I bet you meet a lot of really interesting people.”

“A few,” I laughed. “Not
many I’d want to date though.”

“I can’t imagine moving away
from here.” She poured coffee into my cup and sat down across from me with her
own mug, which she quickly sweetened with cream and sugar. “Do you get lonely
at all?”

My first instinct was a
stubborn no, but the revelation I had after talking to my father at brunch
stabbed at me like a dull knife. “You know,” I started, “I do get a bit lonely
sometimes. It’s not easy to make many real friends when you’re tied to such a
sketchy schedule.”

Becky frowned and clucked
her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “That’s too bad.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I don’t
think I realized how lonely I really was though until…” I waved my hand in a
flourish. “I don’t know, until all of this happened.”

“You mean your mom passing?”

I nodded and reached for the
creamer. I watched the dollop of cream swim against dark liquid, making it
blonde and rich.

“Coming back here again,
seeing how tight the community is, and seeing how many people here just loved
my mom… I don’t know.” I paused, not sure I really wanted to go on spilling my
guts out to someone I hadn’t really known since the third grade. “This sounds
crazy in my head because I spent my whole life doing everything I could to put
as much distance between me and this town as I could, and now there’s this
secret part of me wondering why I was so eager to leave.”

“Wow,” Becky’s brow furrowed
as she listened, and I couldn’t believe that within less than fifteen minutes
at her house I was already telling her things I’d barely even revealed to
myself on a conscious level. “Maybe it’s just grief and confusion.” She tried.
“I mean, your mom just passed away, and that’s never easy. Maybe there is a
part of you that feels like you can connect with her if you’re here, even
though she’s gone.”

“Yeah,” I looped my fingers
through the handle of my mug and stared into my coffee. “Maybe.”

“I’m sorry,” she spoke up.
“We barely even know each other anymore, and here I am digging at your private
life like some kind of psychotherapist or something.”

“Don’t apologize.” The
ceramic mug warmed the insides of my hands as I lifted into a sip. Hot liquid
nipped at my lips and tongue, momentarily numbing the skin there. “There are a
lot worse people I can think of to have digging at me.”

Becky’s quick laughter lit
up her entire face, and though neither of us said any names, we both knew who I
meant. It was the curse of small town life, living with those who thrived
solely on the fumes of everyone else’s garbage. Even as we spoke, someone
somewhere was discussing my visit to Becky’s house, probably even talking about
my clumsy face-to-face with Troy in the store earlier that morning. Everything
was news for the grapevine in Sonesville, which was one of things I did not
miss about living there.

“Oh, I have your mom’s
scrapbook projects here, before I forget.” She hopped up and gathered two
scrapbooks from the edge of the hutch. She plunked them down in front of me,
and while I was sure she had already seen everything inside of them, I resisted
opening them up to have a peek.

“Thanks,” I laid my hand
over the cover, briefly glancing down at the picture of me she’d used to fill
in the cover frame. “I’m going to have a look when I get home, if you don’t
mind.”

“Not at all.” Understanding
flooded her features as she nodded. “They’re yours now.”

Like so many of the things
my mother left behind, I realized. As much as I knew my dad would miss her, he
was practical about material things. He wouldn’t want her clothing hanging
around feeding moths, and I certainly couldn’t see him getting nostalgic over
any of her hobbies. It would be up to me during the rest of my visit to find a
place for as much of her stuff as I could, and like a divine nudge, an idea
sparked.

“Becky, you do a lot of
scrapbooking,” I started. “And I know I came over here to pick up her order,
but I think she’d probably like you to have her stuff. Her supplies and
everything.” I watched as her face grew thin in attempted protest. “There’s a
ton of it at the house, and if I don’t find someone who can use it I’m telling
you, my dad will just chuck it.”