Rain Song (5 page)

Chapter Eight

After our dinner of pepperoni pizza and hot dogs sliced beside a pool of ketchup, Grable tucks Monet into the guest room’s double bed.

As the two snuggle together and Grable reads
Pinocchio
to Monet, I wash the dishes in the sink. I have a dishwasher but sometimes choose to wash by hand because hot suds are therapeutic. They clear my mind and help me think. I am still wondering how to tell Grable what Mr. McGuire saw at his shop. Three times tonight Grable commented that Dennis was on a business trip in Boston. Each time I was tempted to let her know that he was really buying minnows with another woman. A woman “acting all cozy” with him. But even though my hands are deep in the hot, lemon-scented suds, the words to tell my cousin won’t emerge. Why can’t my therapy work for me tonight?

When Grable enters the kitchen, I have the oven on and am pouring the batter for double chocolate fudge brownies into an aluminum pan.

“Remember the brownies we made for the reunion last year?” Grable lets out a laugh. She has a book in her hand and sits with it at the kitchen table.

“You mean the ones Monet helped us with?” Monet managed to add a quarter of a bottle of vanilla extract to the mix while Grable and I stood at the front door of her house convincing a Jehovah’s Witness solicitor we didn’t need his literature. After a lengthy discussion and not at all convinced, the man left us with several pamphlets. Grable and I baked the brownies as we talked about the Bible, not realizing what had happened. It was at the reunion’s Friday night dessert party when we heard our cousin Aaron comment on how “vanilla-y” the chocolate brownies tasted.

“Uh-oh,” Grable said after she took a bite of one. “I thought they smelled awfully strong.”

“Monet,” I said with certainty.

“Did she help you cook?” asked Aaron, approval swelling in his voice. Cousin Aaron is the youth pastor at Third Presbyterian, and one of his beliefs is that children should learn early on what he calls survival skills. For Aaron, these include baking, cooking, sewing, and cleaning.

“She’s two, Aaron,” Grable reminded him. “She needs to work on the skill of potty training first, and then she can be creative in the kitchen.” That summer was when Grable thought Monet should be out of diapers, even though the older relatives muttered she was expecting “too much from that poor child.”

Now Grable opens a hardback book on koi, filled with photos of actual ponds and aquariums in Japan. Aaron gave me the book when I graduated from UNC-Greensboro. He thinks I should be proud of my birth land and has supplied me with the pagoda in my fish tank, a fan a friend brought back from a trip to Osaka, and a framed woodblock print of an Asian lady in an orange-and-silver kimono. “Roots are important,” he tells me.

I’ve never bothered to explain to Aaron why I don’t care to be reminded of Japan. Why should I attempt to get him to see things from my perspective? He knows my mother died there one winter night in a house fire and my father has never been the same. He’s been told I flew back to Virginia with Father shortly after her death. That Ducee brought me to North Carolina to console herself and me, certain she could do a better job of it than Father’s emotionally challenged family in Richmond. Father stayed with his parents awhile and then came to Ducee’s to pick me up. He bought a one-story white house for us. Aaron and his parents even visited us there a few times.

Yet Aaron continues to find ways that I can be connected to “my roots.” Ducee says to graciously accept these Japanese items from him. Pressing her wrinkled hands together, she explains that this is how Aaron shows he cares for me. “Sometimes,” she whispers, “you just have to let people be who they are.”

“This book is gorgeous,” says Grable as she turns the glossy pages. “Look at the fish ponds. I heard some people really do have ponds like these in their backyards.”

Does she want me to agree? To tell her that I do know one person in Japan with an outdoor pond? I consider sitting at the kitchen table with her, smiling and saying, “Grable, guess what? I’ve been writing to this man who lives in Kyoto.”

What would Grable say? Probably something like, “Don’t you know he could be a stalker or a mass murderer? Be careful.”

I open the bag of M&Ms and pour them into a bowl. I offer the bowl to my cousin.

“Oh,” she says hungrily to the chocolate, “I shouldn’t.”

I place the bowl by her right elbow. “You should.”

Grable closes the book, takes a handful of M&Ms, and declares, “I want to go somewhere!” She pops two pieces of chocolate into her mouth. “I signed up for this travel club where they send you brochures on trips. Costa Rica looks like a dream in the pictures. Beautiful mountains, beaches, and palm trees. I’ve never seen a real live palm tree.” She chews a blue M&M. “I wish Dennis and I could go there.”

I want to tell her she isn’t going to Costa Rica with her husband because Dennis is canoeing with another woman. Now, just how would I phrase that? “Uh, Grable, Mr. McGuire saw Dennis this morning with a woman. They had a canoe on top of a SUV. Doesn’t Dennis drive a BMW?”

Instead, I take the brownies out of the oven and ask if she’d like one with Chocolate Nutty Chocolate.

“I’ll have to diet for weeks,” she cries and then says she’ll take one with a small scoop of ice cream. “Dennis used to say he wanted to travel. We would lie in bed on Saturday mornings and make plans.”

I don’t care to think about Dennis in bed right now, thank you. I want to push Dennis, and everything about him, far from my mind.

She sighs. “Oh, Nicole, I wish he would spend more time at home.”

Me too, I think, but I just nod.

She licks ice cream off her fork as I bite into my chocolate brownie. It is warm and gooey, soothing every crevice of my mouth.

Suddenly, Grable says, “You’re lucky you got to go to Japan.”

“What?”

“You know, that you lived there.”

“I don’t remember anything. It doesn’t count.”

She takes a bite of her brownie with the mound of ice cream melting over it. “But you were at least there.”

Okay, I won’t argue with her. Apparently she is trying to make some point.

“I’ve been nowhere.” She licks a smudge of chocolate off her top lip. “Nowhere.”

“Well, you’re still young. Your life isn’t over.”

Casting her eyes down, she softly says, “Maybe not.”

Suddenly I wish I could make her laugh. Where is clowning Uncle Jarvis when you need him? He’d tell a few jokes and have us both feeling giddy, not that the jokes would be funny, but as he threw back his head and roared, we’d laugh
at
him.

I remind her about the time Uncle Jarvis sat on the picnic bench Ducee had just painted.

Grable’s face shines. “He had paint all over the backside of his leisure suit.”

“And no one could bear to tell him because he was so proud of that ugly suit.”

“He got it at the Goodwill, didn’t he?”

Together we chime, “For seventy-five cents!”

Grable laughs, and so do I until a small snort escapes through my nose.

“It was green, wasn’t it?”

“The paint or the suit?”

She can’t remember. “Didn’t Richard end up telling him?”

I give her a sour look.

“Didn’t he?” Finishing her brownie, she asks, “How is Richard these days?”

I shrug. “I don’t know.”

Grable looks horrified.

Okay, if she must know. “We broke up.”

“Why?”

“Differences.” I avoid her eyes by looking away. My kitchen ceiling fan needs cleaning. There are rows of dark dust lining each blade. One day I’ll use a chair so I’ll be high enough to wipe off all that unsightly dust. One day, but now I just stare at the fan, refusing to say more about Richard.

Grable respects my desire to not discuss Richard and me. Says she is sorry we broke up and then drops the subject. Moves on to this year’s dessert night at the family reunion. “Think we should get Monet to help us make the brownies again?”

I laugh. It’s not that funny, but I just want to be able to laugh at something.

She joins me.

I’m sure Mr. McGuire was mistaken. The man who entered his shop this morning was just a Dennis look-alike. Had to be. Dennis, who loves his daughter and wife, is in Boston this weekend.

———

I retrieve Sazae from the closet, spray her with a lavender spritzer to cover up the moldy orange aroma, and lie in bed with the lights out. There is a tap at my bedroom door. “Yes?”

Grable eases into view. She’s wearing a salmon nightgown with lacy sleeves. She smells of cold cream. “Nicole, I’m sorry.”

I sit up. “About what?”

“All the travel talk. I know Japan holds your sad past.” The warmth from her voice spreads over me. “I’m sorry.”

I swallow, pause, and murmur, “It’s okay.”

“If I could change it all for you, oh, I would.”

“Thanks, Grable.”

She yawns, turns to leave, then faces me again to add, “I wish we could do this every Friday night.” Even in the darkness, I see her smile. “Well, good night.”

After she closes the door, I think about Dennis and that other woman. I wish I could change things for Grable, too. Then it is as though Ducee, smelling of soft lilac, is sitting beside me, gently patting my hand and saying, “You aren’t in control of everything or anybody.”

A hard Southern Truth for anyone.

Chapter Nine

Of course I have wondered what Harrison really looks like. In my recent dreams, he is a remarkably large carp with a scaly orange body and face. He has a rich, deep voice. I don’t think they let carp, even talking ones, teach English at universities in Japan, so I am certain Harrison Michaels is a human being.

As I watch my fish, I hear Kristine’s squeaky voice asking,
“Is he cute?”
She doesn’t know about Harrison, of course, but she would ask this if she did. He could be wildly handsome, traffic-stopping gorgeous, or as ugly as Uncle Jarvis’s leisure suit. What if he has the features of a hunchback or a gnome? What if he looks like a serial killer? Maybe I prefer pretending he is the large and gentle fish of my dreams.

Then why did I ask that he send a picture? He knows what I look like because there are thumbnail color photos of each contributor on the Pretty Fishy Web site. My picture was taken by Ducee in her kitchen. My hair is tamed, my freckles barely noticeable, and I actually have a happy smile on my face. My bio says I teach English at Mount Olive Middle School and owned my first goldfish at age six.

Ducee says to look at the heart, not the face. She tells us God puts more value on matters of the heart than those of the face. That’s fine to say, but how many people can really do that? I’ve known many wonderful people who never get second glances, yet they have hearts of gold. Those of us with only hearts of gold going for us have to strive a little harder to make it in this world where beauty is immediately appraised.

So when Harrison Michaels sends me an email message with an attachment, my fingers feel tingly. The message says:

Nicole,

You asked for a picture and so here it is. If you look closely, you can see one of my Kohaku koi in the pond. He’s to the left, by the lily. He’s the one guilty of eating most of my plants.

Harrison

All I have to do is click on the attachment and I’ll be looking at Harrison Michaels. Cute guy or gnome. Beast or cover man of
GQ
.

It’s only eight-fifteen on this Saturday morning as I sit in my lumpy computer chair and stare at the little paper clip to the left of Harrison’s email message. Just one click on the paper clip and the mystery will be solved. I lift my finger, then stick it in my mouth.

“Nicccc!” Monet is by my side, tousled brown curls swinging as she greets me. She climbs into my lap, breathing heavily as she moves, her stale cheese breath filling my nose. The pink Dora the Explorer pajama bottoms she’s wearing slide off her hips and twist around her legs. She pulls at the flannel material and starts to whine.

I take her off my lap, adjust her pajama bottoms by straightening them on her tiny waist, and then lift her onto my lap again.

She giggles and starts to sing the theme song from the Dora show. I know she inherited the inability to sing from Ducee. Every note is off-key. Suddenly she stops singing and shouts in my ear, “Hooot doooo!”

Hot dog for breakfast, I think. Well, it sure beats having to make scrambled eggs or eggs Benedict.

“Hooot dooooo!”

“Shh,” I whisper. Grable is probably still sleeping in the guest bedroom. I carry the girl into the kitchen and sit her on a chair at the table. “I’ll make you a hot dog. Just wait.”

When I place the plate with the sliced hot dog and mound of ketchup in front of her, she lifts her arms in the air and squirms in her chair.

“What do you need?”

Monet’s lips are puckered, stretched as far out as they can go.

I step closer to her. “Do you want some juice?”

Her large blue eyes are on me. She is asking for a kiss.

I bend toward her lips, and she plants a fleshy kiss against my chin. I have never been kissed on the chin before.

Content, she laughs and dips a hot dog slice into the ketchup.

I watch her eat. Last night Grable said another appointment was scheduled for next week with a neurologist at Duke. He’s new, straight from London or New Delhi. What will he find wrong with Monet this time? It’s a good thing Dennis has exceptional health insurance.

The phone rings, Monet reacts by mimicking the sound, and a coughing Iva says in my ear, “Nicki, is Ducee all right?”

I pause. “Yes.”

Iva sputters, “She invited me over for tea this morning, and she’s not answering her door.” She gasps for air.

“Did you ring her doorbell?”

“I did, Nicki. She didn’t come to the door. What do you think is wrong with her? I counted to at least twenty waiting for her to answer. Remember you told me to always do that since Ducee can be slow getting to her front door?”

Well, this certainly puzzles me, because I never recall giving my great-aunt this advice.

Iva inhales. “But she didn’t come to the door.”

“The doorbell is broken.” Doesn’t she remember this about Ducee’s house? Broken doorbells, phones the woman won’t answer.

“What? What?” Iva sounds like a kid who has just learned that there is no Santa Claus.

“The doorbell doesn’t work.” I use my calm and clear teacher’s voice.

“I thought she got that fixed.”

“No. Knock loudly.”

Slowly, Aunt Iva says, “Are you sure?”

“Sure as the sun.”

“I called her on the phone after I got home. There was no answer.”

“Aunt Iva, you know that Ducee never answers her phone.”

“What am I going to do?”

“Ducee is fine.”

Iva’s coughing reminds me of my garbage disposal when a fork gets stuck in it.

After clearing her throat, Iva says, “Are you sure?”

Aunt Iva is a lot like one of my students. Clay’s known for asking questions, and while the rest of the class might be bothered by them, these very questions are what endear me to Clay. “Ms. Michelin,” he’ll say as he raises his arm, “how do you know that Walt Whitman was a man? Huh? George Eliot was a woman. How do you know?”

I can’t find fault with Clay or Iva. I’m the one with a past of uncertainties, the looming questions. It is only fair for me to allow them their barges of apprehension to motor down their streams of life.

Softly I say, “Ducee is fine. She was fine yesterday, remember?” Yesterday, Iva called wondering where Ducee was, only to find her in the backyard feeding a baked potato to Maggie, the donkey. Maggie is fond of baked potatoes, making my grandmother convinced that the beast is Irish.

“Why won’t she let us have cucumber sandwiches?”

Is Iva whining now? “She’s just being Ducee.”

“Do you really think it’s not proper etiquette?”

“I don’t know.”

“Cucumber sandwiches are my favorite.”

“I know.”

“Do you think she’s okay?” Iva is lighting a cigarette; I hear the lighter click. I know it’s the silver lighter she received upon retiring from the Mount Olive Pickle Company, where she worked for thirty years.

“Yes, you better hurry over there for tea.”

After inhaling, Iva says, “I suppose I should. If it gets cold on account of my tardiness, she’ll never let me hear the end of it.”

I smile. “You know Ducee despises cold tea.”

“Unless it’s iced tea.”

“That’s right.”

Monet is now jumping on one leg and laughing. The hot dog has been consumed; the ketchup is smeared on her mouth.

“Nicki? It’s hard to hear. Is your TV on?”

“No.”

A slight pause and then, “Nicki?”

“Yes.”

“I hope there’s room.”

“Where?”

“What if someone takes my plot?”

Her plot! She must be talking about The Meadows, the cemetery where all of the relatives from North Carolina are buried, even Mama. “If you’ve paid for it, it’s not going to be given to anyone else.” I rest the receiver against my right shoulder and neck. I hear Monet squealing in the living room. She was just here in my sight. I hope my fish are okay. I carry the phone into the living room to find Grable cradling Monet on Aunt Lucy’s chair,
Pinocchio
open in her lap.

Grable sees me and gives me a sleepy smile.

“But what about Usella?” Iva’s voice cracks.

“What?” I enter the kitchen again.

Iva lets out a long cough. “In the paper this morning. Do you get the
Tribune
?”

Okay, I’m cheap. I’ve never subscribed to the local paper, the
Mount Olive Tribune
. If I really want to read the news, I can always find a wrinkled copy in the teachers’ lounge at school.

Iva continues. “She bought a plot to be buried in, and when she died it wasn’t hers anymore.”

This doesn’t make sense. “What do you mean?”

“They had no room to bury her. They had to take her body to Canada. And the car broke down so they had to carry it the rest of the way in a taxi and the bill came to over one thousand dollars.” Iva sounds as though she’s going to cry.

Before I can think of anything to say, Iva blurts, “Do you think Ducee will get there first?”

“I don’t think she cares about going to Canada.”

“No, no, Nicki. Do you think she’ll get to The Meadows?”

“No, she has nine lives, remember?”

“I remember, Nicki.” She lets out a cough, and I’m reminded of a freight train rolling into the center of Mount Olive. “I just don’t think I could live without her, so it’s good that everyone thinks these cigarettes will kill me before she kicks the bucket.”

“I know.”

“Why won’t she go to the doctor?”

Here we go again. “She doesn’t like them.”

Iva makes a sniffling noise. “Who does? Unless you meet an eligible one.” She then laughs, deep and strong. “Oh, Nicki?”

“Yes?”

“Do you reckon we could tell Ducee we need to have cucumber sandwiches at the reunion?”

“Well . . . we are in the pickle capital of the world.”

“I think that might work. We have to have cucumbers because we grow them here. It would just be un–Mount Olivelike not to have them.” She seems satisfied, and I have this beautiful feeling rising from my marrow that seeps into my veins and makes me want to jump on one leg. This might actually be the end to this conversation. I chance it by saying, “Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Nicki.”

———

Monet and Grable leave only after Monet begs to feed my fish. I give in when the ketchup-smeared puckered lips say, “Pleeeze, Niccc,” about a dozen times.

Together we stand by the fish tank, she on a dining room chair, as I show her how to sprinkle a little food from the container onto the water’s surface.

After she watches the fish eat, she looks at me and asks, “Niccc maaddd?”

I’m confused. “No, Monet. I’m not mad.”

“Nicccc maadddd?”

It dawns on me. Last time she overfed the fish, I was angry. I’d better give her positive reinforcement for the job well done today. Smiling, I say, “You did a good job this time, Monet.”

Monet claps her hands, loses her balance, catches herself against the sharp corner of the aquarium. I grab her elbow before she does any damage. I’m still catching my breath when she frees herself from my grasp, slides off the chair, races across the hardwood, stops midway, hops on one foot, and sails into her mother’s arms. “Niccc nooo maaddd!”

Grable gives her a kiss, and then I kiss the wild child, too.

Of course, moments later, after she and Grable have left my driveway for Lady Claws, the salon where Grable gets her nails done, I’m ready to raise my voice at Monet. I cannot find the most recent email message from Harrison. The attachment he sent earlier today is nowhere in my mailbox. I check, scroll here and there and wonder what happened. Then I know. Monet deleted it while I was on the phone with Iva. This is not just a theory; it is a fact. There is a ketchup stain on my keyboard. A little dollop on the right corner of the delete key.

I sit in my fuzzy desk chair and shake my head. In my mind I can see Monet’s rosy cheeks with the wayward curls framing her face, hear her sing the Dora the Explorer song, and the robust shrills and shrieks of excitement. Has there been a happier child to walk the earth? The doctors in the white lab coats don’t know what’s wrong with her; perhaps in her defiant way she is determined not to fit into any of their array of diagnoses. What if she were somehow wiser than they, and all of her strange antics were carefully skilled methods to outsmart the lot of them?

I call Grable’s cell phone. She answers on the fourth ring and tells me she’s getting her nails painted a rusty red while Monet looks at fashion magazines on the salon floor. “I think it’ll be a nice color. Flora Jane is painting my left hand now.”

Flora Jane has been at Lady Claws since the discovery of fire. She likes to dye her hair sky blue in the summer and violet in the cooler months.

“Thanks for coming over,” I say. “I’m glad you and Monet could come here.”

“Really? Because I know Monet is loud and destructive and hard to—”

I cut her off. “Grable.” With ease I say, “Monet is fine.”

She is silent and then I hear her talking to someone else. I also hear Monet squealing and laughing. “Nicole?”

“Yeah?”

“Monet found an angelfish in one of the magazines. Some shoe advertisement with a fish swimming in a high-heeled shoe.”

“She really likes fish.”

Grable says she has to go because Flora’s ready to paint her right hand. But before she ends the call, she tells me, “Monet really likes you, too.”

I sit in the chair and just breathe in and out for a bit after hanging up the phone. Out the window I see two cardinals darting around my oak tree as the neighbor’s gray cat prowls by the trunk.

Then I write to the carp owner in Japan.

Harrison,

My cousin’s three-year-old daughter Monet was here and deleted your message. I know that sounds a little odd, but she is quite gifted at causing chaos. I didn’t get to see the photo of you at all. Could you send it again?

Thank you.

Nicole

I hope he writes back, but if he doesn’t, I tell myself it’s really okay. He lives in Japan, and I am, after all, avoiding anything to do with that country.