Love Mercy (10 page)

His sun-browned face broke into a deep-creviced smile. “I love her pumpkin bread. I do believe it’s even better than . . .”

“I know, I know, Shug’s. And I won’t tell him.”

His eyes turned hazy. “Shug? What kind of name is that? You hire someone new at the feed store?”

Mel paused a moment, trying not let the worry she felt show on her face. “Shug’s the cook at the Buttercream, August. Magnolia’s cousin. He’s worked there since they bought it.”

August stared at her a moment, then turned his head and called Ring. “Here, you old hound. You want to chase this here stick?” He picked up a small piece of firewood and chucked it toward the corral. Ring bounded after it, grabbed the stick and ran off.

“Worthless mutt,” August said, chuckling.

“So, horses first, then what?” Mel asked, sticking her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. It was cold today, and she’d forgotten to bring gloves.

“Got some fence down up on the pasture near Tripod Hill,” he said. “It’s kinda steep getting up there and . . .”

“Got it,” Mel said. “I’ll ride Duke up there and kill two birds with one stone. Anything else?”

“That’ll take you a good little while,” he said. “Daisy’s a bit lame today, so it might be better if she rests.” He leaned against his knobby stick. “I tell you, Mel, seems like everything and everyone around this place is going to pot.” He shook his head. “And I don’t mean that stuff the hippies smoke.”

Mel smiled. “Hippies? I think you’re about thirty years behind. No, make that forty years.”

He peered at her through sharp, sky blue eyes. “You said it, girlie. And times were better back then too.”

“I wouldn’t know. I was still five years away from being born.”

“Trust me, times were better.” He looked past her, his cheeks drawing inward.

She didn’t argue with him, but wanted to say, not better, August. You were just younger and so was Polly. Your son was still alive, and the world was full of hope.

“I’ll get to that fence,” she said, glancing at her watch. One thirty. “Probably take me until suppertime.”

“Fence?” His face looked genuinely confused.

Her chest felt like it held a brick. “Over by Tripod Hill. It needs fixing.”

“Does? Then you’d best take a flashlight with you. And Ring. I’d go with you myself if I wasn’t so stoved up.”

“That’s okay. I think Polly might need your help inside. She said something about getting the Christmas decorations down from the attic.”

“Guess we should go looking for a tree.” He poked the dry ground with his walking stick. “Darn Christmas. Seems like we just had one.”

“We did,” Mel said, smiling. “About a year ago.”

His grin was as mischievous as a young boy’s. “So, why do we need to do it again?”

“Who knows? But I’ll cut down a pine tree on my way back from fixing that fence. I think I saw one a good one a few weeks ago.”

“Fence?” he asked. “What fence?”

SIX

L
ove and Rett’s ten-minute walk from the Buttercream to Love’s house was mostly silent and definitely awkward.

“Are you sure I can’t carry something?” Love asked Rett again. She’d offered when they stepped out of the café, but her granddaughter refused any help, even though the banjo case and backpack looked heavy.

“I’m sure.” Rett shifted the awkward case to her other hand, switching places with her backpack.

Love was curious about her granddaughter’s trip, about who’d given her rides, but when she gently quizzed her, Rett was evasive in that frustrating way that adolescents perfected from the minute their hormones starting churning. That shouldn’t have surprised her. Though Tommy had been an uncomplicated child to raise, even he had his moments when a veil dropped over his eyes and he refused to relate to anyone except his friends.

After they’d used up the sparse conversation about her trip, Love fell back on that always dependable subject, weather. She told Rett that it might be a damper cold than she was used to in Tennessee, but that Love had many sweatshirts and jackets she could use.

“Thanks,” Rett replied, stopping again to reposition her grip.

When Love opened the door to her house, Ace, after sniffing Rett’s outstretched hand, instantly attached himself to her, shadowing her like a pesky younger brother.

“Would you look at that?” Love said. “You know, he’s usually a bit standoffish with strangers. I think he knows you’re family.”

A small smile softened Rett’s serious face. Love immediately wished she had her camera so she could photograph the moment. She stared down at the fawning dog. It
was
odd how Ace warmed up to her right away. Could he smell Love and Cy’s DNA on Rett?

Love gave her a quick tour of her three-bedroom house, telling her that it was one of Morro Bay’s oldest beach cottages, built at the turn of the twentieth century. “Back in 1968 when your granddad replaced some boards in the built-in bookcase next to the fireplace, he found some old letters. One was addressed to someone named Liberty from a man named Jim and was obviously a love letter. When I showed it to one of our older members of the county historical society—she was ninety-six back then—she said, ‘I didn’t know she was dating Jim!’ Apparently, Liberty had been one of her best friends back in the thirties, and Jim was married to someone else at the time.” The words tumbled out of Love’s mouth like rocks down a hillside.

Rett’s expression was polite but slightly bored.

“Well, never mind that,” Love said, embarrassed that she’d sounded like a historical home tour guide. “Here’s the guest room. Make yourself at home. I use the bathroom off the master bedroom, so the hall bathroom is all yours.”

Rett glanced up at her, and then back down at the glossy oak floor. “Thanks.” Ace sat down on the trout-shaped rug next to the maple bed.

“Ace, give her some space,” Love scolded the dog in a good-natured tone.

“He can stay,” Rett said, bending down to run her hand down his long back. “I like him.”

“Okay, then.” Love waited, not sure what to do.

Rett nodded, closing the door softly.

Love stood in the hallway, trying to sort out the questions running through her mind. How long did Rett plan to stay? Did Karla Rae know she was here? Was her granddaughter in some kind of trouble? She walked over to the living room window that looked out at the backyard and, farther out, the bay and the Pacific Ocean. Her house was old and small, so not much that happened inside the rooms was private. She could hear Rett’s settling-in noises, the toilet flushing, the opening and closing of closet doors. After the last thirteen months alone, hearing human sounds other than her own in this house was odd, both comforting and unsettling.

“Oh, Cy,” she whispered, watching the whitecaps dance on the gray blue water. “I wish you were here to see your granddaughter. She’s beautiful.”

For a moment, a lit match of anger flared behind her eyes. “You could have been here.” In the next instance, remorse extinguished the flame. She hadn’t had these feelings in months. Something about seeing Loretta—Rett, she corrected herself—brought back all the pain of losing Cy, of the one argument she’d had with him about the cancer. That’s how she’d referred to it: The Cancer. Not
his
cancer. She never wanted him to take it as his own, like if they didn’t give it a pronoun, it couldn’t become real. It couldn’t overcome him. Couldn’t steal him from her.

Except it did. And the disease caused her to do things, feel things that she’d regret the rest of her life. She couldn’t forget the day he confessed to her that he was tired of fighting, that he wanted to stop treatment, he wanted to just go home. At first, she thought he meant their house in Morro Bay. But his next sentence made it all too clear.

They were in the hallway of the medical center in San Celina. The doctor had said they could try again, another round of chemo and radiation, but the chances of remission were slim and, in his weakened state, the side effects would be even rougher this time.

“Love,” he said. “It’s time. I want to see Tommy.”

“No,” she’d lashed out, exhausted by months of inadequate sleep, worry over his pain and struggles with hospitals, doctors, pharmacies and insurance companies. All the nights on the Internet, reading through websites, Listservs, chat room archives, looking for some hope in this vast inner space of souls.

“Please,” he’d said. That was all. Just
please
.

Like a spoiled five-year-old she’d pressed her hands over her ears. She knew what he was asking. “No, no, no,” she said and walked away from him. She couldn’t . . . wouldn’t give him what he wanted. Permission to leave her. How could she bring herself to give him that? How could he ask that of her? If he left, she would have no one. She ran out of the building, leaving him there.

He found her three blocks away sitting on a curb in front of a taco stand popular with Cal Poly students. He sat down beside her and, without a word, took her hand and kissed her palm, his lips chapped and dry. It was his customary way of asking for her forgiveness.

“Okay,” she whispered, staring into the gutter, unable to meet his eyes.

She called hospice the next day, and the focus of their life moved from helping him live to helping him die. To this day, she regretted that she never apologized to him for making that moment harder than it had to be. She never said she was sorry for behaving so selfishly. But, the truth was, she never stopped being angry. God forgive her, but she couldn’t help wondering if he’d just hung in there, something would have happened, he would have conquered the cancer. He would
be
here to see his granddaughter.

She shook her head, trying to dislodge her troubling thoughts and concentrate on the joy of seeing Rett again.

It was disconcerting to see this almost grown woman in the place of the four-year-old burned into her memories. So many years lost. Love closed her eyes and tried to recall the particular things she remembered about Rett. The last time she saw her, she was playing with stuffed animals; Love vaguely remembered a pink and black skunk named Lily. Rett carried it with her everywhere, even throwing a little tantrum when Karla Rae wouldn’t let her take it to Tommy’s funeral. Or was that Patsy? The two girls, so close in age, blended in Love’s memories, despite the fact that physically they’d been very different. Patsy was tall and redheaded, like Love. Rett was shorter, thin, but solid-boned, like Polly.

Polly and August. Heavenly stars, it just occurred to her that she needed to call them. They’d want to know right away that their great-granddaughter was in town. Polly had mourned the lack of relationship almost as much as Love had, though August had been more pragmatic.

“You marry a person, you marry everything that ever happened to them,” August had stated bluntly after hearing what happened at Tommy’s funeral. They’d wanted to come, but Polly had been recovering from a hysterectomy. “Tommy didn’t look close enough at what kind of history he was taking on.”

There were a thousand things Love longed to ask Rett about so she could fill in the gaps of the last fourteen years. But how and when should she do that?

First things first. She turned away from the window and picked up the telephone. Polly and August would never forgive her if she didn’t tell them about Rett right away. Gossip flew around this town faster than a sea otter. She should have called the minute Magnolia told her about Rett.

She’d dialed the first three numbers, when the guest room door flew open. She set the phone back down.

“All settled in?” she asked, walking toward Rett.

Rett stood in the bedroom’s doorway, her cheeks flushed a dark pink; a stricken expression covered her face. Behind her, the contents of her backpack were strewn across the Ocean Waves quilt, a Christmas present from Polly ten years ago.

Love’s mother instincts kicked in. “Are you all right?”

Rett’s eyes blinked rapidly. “I . . . I . . . it’s . . .” The stutter caused her to clamp her lips tightly. She took a deep breath and spoke slowly. “I guess I didn’t realize what time of the month . . . Is there a drugstore . . . ?”

“Oh.” Love let out a sigh of relief. The girl had started her period. That crisis was one Love could handle. “The drugstore is over by the highway. I can drive there in five minutes. Any certain brand?”

Rett shook her head, her face still red. “Any is fine. Tampons, that is.”

“I’m sorry I don’t have any here. It’s been years since I’ve had to worry about that.”

Rett let out a small huff of air. “Lucky.”

Love shrugged. “There’s good and bad with both, like most things. Make yourself at home. There’s food and drinks in the kitchen. I’ve got cable, more channels than I’ll watch in a lifetime. I don’t know how to find most of them, but I’m sure you can figure it out. How about steak for dinner? I have a couple in the freezer.” She brought a hand up to her cheek. “If you’re vegetarian, I can always make macaroni and cheese. Or if you don’t eat dairy . . .” Why was fixing someone dinner so hard anymore?

Rett held up her hand. “I’m not a vegan. Steak is fine.”

“Then, I’ll be off. Like I said, make yourself at home.”

Rett hesitated, then said, “Okay.”

 

 

 

 

 

At Goody’s Drug Supermart, Love wandered up and down the womAen’s personal care aisle, not certain what brand to buy. The tinny sound of Christmas Muzak—“Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”—played over the store’s PA system. At fifty-eight, it had been years since she’d bought these products. She paused in front of a display of brightly colored boxes, the brand a familiar name. Someone had placed a small, neatly written flag under the flowery boxes. Great Stocking Stuffer!

Who in the world would consider a box of tampons a stocking stuffer? Was that a joke? She chose a box that had a young-looking design, hoping it would be the right one. She already had every kind of pain medication at home if Rett had cramps. What else did one need at that time of month? A hot water bottle? No, that was old-fashioned, something her mother used to do back in Kentucky, before pharmaceuticals rescued them all. Still, when she walked down another aisle, she saw a display of hot water bottles and bought one on a whim. It came with a pink flannel cover decorated with little red hearts. She added a navy blue sweatshirt, size small, with a discreet Morro Bay, California, embroidered on the chest in light blue thread. Maybe Rett had a thing about borrowing clothes. Maybe she’d think anything that Love had would be too old ladyish, even though she bought most of her clothes from Columbia and L.L. Bean. Weren’t their styles ageless?