Stardust A Novel (9 page)
“Of course. I wasn’t thinking.” He reached in his drawer and pulled out a velvet pouch with a gold cord. “It’s not much, but…” He handed it over. Avril slipped off my lap when I took them.
“I appreciate it. Now, about his commissions?”
“Yes, well… the news there is not very encouraging, I’m afraid.”
A queasy feeling rose to my throat. “As in?”
“O’Dell’s sales for this quarter are, shall we say, slim. We’ll honor his current orders, but we’ll have to send one of our other employees to pick up the merchandise from the warehouse and make the deliveries. The expense of that will come from O’Dell’s commissions, I’m afraid.” The jerking in his jaw was more pronounced, making the leaders in his neck protrude with each twitch.
Avril had crept closer to him and now stood at his elbow, squinting her eyes at him. “How do you make your face wiggle like that?”
“Avril!” I jumped from my chair and in two giant leaps was behind the desk. I snatched her up, my face flaming. “Oh, sweetie, it’s not nice to ask personal questions of strangers.”
She dipped her head, burrowing into my chest. I hefted her to my hip and looked at Mr. Baxter. “I’m sorry. Now, you were saying?”
He had his own sheepish look and said, “The final check is probably less than you were hoping for. He only had commissions coming for five weeks.” He pulled an envelope from the folder and slid it across the desk.
Inside was a check for two hundred and twenty-three dollars. Good gravy. I swallowed the O’Dell-size lump in my throat. What did I expect?
I forced a smile and thanked him for his time.
He extended his hand. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Juggling Avril on my hip and holding the check in my hand, I didn’t have a free hand to shake his. I nodded and turned to go. When I reached the door, he said, “You do have the cuff links.”
I sailed out the door and put Avril in the front seat of the car, went around, and let myself in. As I jammed the key into the ignition, a twitch came in my own jaw. And rather than spit nails, which is what I wanted to do, I turned to Avril.
“How about we find ourselves an ice-cream parlor? ’Twould be a shame to come all this way for nothing.”
A
fter supper I took the girls over to see Mary Frances and take her the cuff links. She got teary eyed and blamed it on the head cold she thought was coming on, but no doubt she was proud of O’Dell’s accomplishment. Under different circumstances I might’ve been, too.
But stuffy sinuses or not, she still had a Pall Mall dangling from her fingers when she offered the girls an RC Cola. While they sipped from the ice-cold bottles, Mary Frances asked what our plans were for the summer. Polite, almost formal, she kept her lips drawn, her line of vision veering off to the pleated drapes behind me. Rosey asked if she and Avril could sit on the front porch, and I sent them on their way.
Then I plunged right in and asked Mary Frances if she’d heard about my inheriting the Stardust. No, she hadn’t heard. I explained about Paddy’s death and taking over right away.
“Getting out is so difficult, with reminders everywhere of O’Dell and my own Earl. Life is just passing me by. You and the girls didn’t even stop by yesterday like you usually do on Sunday afternoon.”
“I should’ve called, but after church—”
“I waited all afternoon.” She wiped her nose with her hankie, her eyes bleary. Could have been the head cold. Or the gin.
“I’m sorry. I’m trying to get ready by Memorial Day, when the first summer guests usually arrive. The girls and I went to the Stardust and cleaned out one of the cottages so I can paint first thing tomorrow. I’m going to have paint in my pores forever with all the work to be done.”
“Guess I know where that leaves me.”
The whining was getting to me. Dank, smoky air hung like dingy organza around my mother-in-law. Ex-mother-in-law, but I wasn’t sure if till death do us part applied only to O’Dell and me or his mother, too. And in my gut, I knew the answer.
I lifted my chin and looked square into her eyes. “I know where you think it leaves you, but you do have other options. You could get your driver’s license and a nice car so you could get out more, or you might volunteer down at the library. O’Dell always told me he got his love of books from you.”
She almost smiled. “That O’Dell. Yes, he was a book-lovin’ boy.” Then she drifted off into some other world, her rheumy eyes misting.
“Or there’s your cousin over in Corsicana—”
She snapped back to the present. “Bertha? You call that an option? I’d rather wither away here than spend an hour listening to her go on about the latest cocktail party she went to and how many ties the mayor has hanging in his closet.”
“I’m just saying you can’t depend on me and the girls for all your social contacts. You’re barely fifty years old. There are a lot of things you could do.”
“That’s fine for you to say—you’ve already moved on. Didn’t spend five minutes grieving over O’Dell now, did you?”
I bit my tongue to keep from pointing out O’Dell’s infidelity. Had I wanted to, I could’ve yanked the one last thread that kept Mary Frances hanging on—the memory of a son whom she’d always seen as the embodiment of perfection. As it was, I stuck with keeping things on track. For her sake
and
mine.
“We all grieve in different ways, Mary Frances. But I have to move on. It’s fortunate for me the Stardust fell in my lap when it did since O’Dell didn’t leave much in the way of provision for the girls and me.”
She tapped out another Pall Mall from the pack. The last one. She crumpled the wrapper and tossed it on the coffee table atop a pile of envelopes and papers. She flicked the lighter and lit up, then had a coughing fit. “Blasted head cold,” she said.
We sat in silence while she puffed and I tried to think of an excuse to leave. I ambled over to the picture window and drew the drapes so I could check on the girls. They’d set their coke bottles on the porch and were playing with the girls from next door. The late afternoon light shimmered from Rosey’s tangled mop of poppy-colored curls. A protective fire tumbled through me. I had O’Dell to thank for my girls, and although it might seem irrelevant, they also had a smidgeon of Mary Frances in them. Abandon her? Not hardly.
Turning back to the living room, I said, “You know you’re welcome to come out to the Stardust and have a look around.”
“For heaven’s sake, it’s practically next door to where O’Dell drowned. Or have you forgotten that the way you forgot to come over yesterday?”
I heaved a sigh. Back to square one.
“I said I was sorry. Why do you keep bringing it up?”
“Because.”
It was like dragging something out of a stubborn child. “Because why?”
She stubbed out the cigarette and crossed her arms over her chest. “Because I had something exciting to tell you. I waited and waited and you didn’t come.” She leaned over and whisked the wadded-up Pall Mall pack on the floor, then picked up a large envelope.
“Here. See for yourself.”
I undid the clasp and removed a document similar to the life insurance policy with Fiona Callahan’s name on it. This, too, was an insurance policy. Five thousand dollars. And my name as the beneficiary.
Heat crept up my neck. “Oh, my.”
“I finally remembered where I’d put it.” Her voice, though husky, was small, penitent. “O’Dell didn’t leave you penniless as you’ve implied. And I couldn’t wait to tell you. I kept waiting and watching for you… but you never came.”
I winced. My heart’s cry since I was six years old, waiting, always waiting for the mommy and daddy who never came. I dropped onto the sofa beside Mary Frances and took her cold, bony hand in mine. “It’s all right, sweetie. I’m here now.”
T
oward the end of the week, a thunderstorm came during the night, lightning flashes followed by booms of thunder. Avril crept into my bed first. “I’m scared, Mommy.”
“It’s okay, baby.” I pulled her close as another jagged streak lit the room, thunder on its heels, so loud it shook the walls and brought Rosey flying into the room and under the covers.
Rosey covered her face when another flash and clap of thunder came. “I wish Daddy was here.” Her voice was small, timid in the dark, as rain pelted the windows.
“I know you do.” Even with the girls snug as bookends on either side of me, the bed felt cavernous without O’Dell. We’d always squeezed the girls between us on stormy nights.
Rosey whispered, “Rub my arms, Mommy.”
I ran the back of my finger over her goosefleshed arm, up and down, then in lazy circles. Beneath my fingers, the taut muscles relaxed, her breathing settled, and she slipped into the arm-sprawled comfort of slumber.
Avril sat up. “Will Daddy be at our new house?” A blue-white shimmer lit her face, her dark eyes so much like O’Dell’s it pierced my heart.
“No, sweetie. He’s in heaven with Jesus now.”
“Can Daddy stop the thunder?”
“I think that’s God’s job, but I bet Daddy’s thinking it’s time Avril went to sleep like her sister Rosey did. Here, let me rub your arms.”
“Not my arms. My back.” She flopped over, and I reached across and ran whisper-light caresses on Avril’s back. Over the nape of her neck, slowly outlining first one shoulder blade, then the other, neither as big as a china saucer. The storm had calmed outside the window, drippy and no longer rattling the windows, but it left in its wake an empty spot. O’Dell had rubbed my back, too. Long strokes that eased away the weariness when I’d been up all night with Avril and her colic or the time Rosey had the big red measles and I didn’t sleep for a week. There was no doubt, O’Dell had his charms. If only he hadn’t felt compelled to share them with so many others. Maybe if I’d been a better wife…
No use crying over spilt milk.
Merciful and her momma had it right. The next morning brought sunshine. The air wrapped a muggy film around me the minute I hurried the girls out to the car. Beads of moisture collected on my face, and I wished for a breeze to blow through the open windows of O’Dell’s Ford as we drove toward the school. Instead, a swarm of gnats danced around my head. I waved them away, leaned over to give Rosey a kiss, and then watched as she skipped up the walk.
Avril and I stopped for a donut and coffee for me, a carton of chocolate milk for her, and headed out to the Stardust. The rain had brought out the smell of mothballs and Paddy’s illness, which I’d hoped the new paint would take away. I went into our living quarters searching for the source of the odor. In the wardrobe Doreen had left behind, I found a box of partially dissolved mothballs tucked in the folds of an old quilt. I opened the windows to let the rooms air out, hoping the smell hadn’t permanently penetrated the walls and pine floors. The quilt, a heavy wool patchwork, was tied with embroidery thread. It looked like it still had some use as a picnic blanket, so when I tossed the mothballs in the trash barrel, I toted the quilt along and threw it over the clothesline.
“C’mon, chipmunk,” I said to Avril, then stopped. I’d never called her that. Never. That was O’Dell’s name for her since her first baby teeth were two miniature Chiclets on top, tiny pearls that weren’t joined by any other teeth until she was thirteen months old. How and why
chipmunk
popped out of my mouth came from some part of me I didn’t know. Or trust.
Avril, though, seemed not to notice, and followed me along the sidewalk as I went to check on the first cottage I hoped to paint. Every few yards, she sidestepped to stomp her feet in a rain puddle. She was singing the ABC song at the top of her lungs, and I joined her in the last line. “Now I’ve said my ABC’s. Tell me what you think of me.”
I ruffled her head. “I think you’re the best Mommy’s helper in the world, and today we’re going to paint. What color should we use—the blue or the green in this cottage?”
“Pink!” Avril wanted everything pink, and after giving her opinion took a giant leap to the left to jump in a puddle with both feet.