Suncatchers (4 page)

A thin, gangly boy walked partway into the room and stood at the other end of the sofa looking embarrassed. His whole face was spattered with reddish-brown freckles, as if he had leaned over a hot skillet of grease. His jeans were neatly rolled up several turns, and his flannel plaid shirt was tucked tightly inside and buttoned up snug to the neck.

“This here's Joe Leonard,” said the old woman, smiling at the boy proudly. “He's fourteen and is learning to play the tuba.”

No wonder he looks embarrassed, thought Perry. Joe Leonard came forward awkwardly and extended his hand. Perry was surprised at the firmness of his grasp. But he supposed that hauling a tuba around would have to develop finger strength. As they shook hands, Joe Leonard gave a lopsided grin and studied the carpet—olive shag, Perry had already noted. Perry relaxed somewhat as he always did when he saw someone who looked even more uncomfortable than himself. “What grade are you in, Joe Leonard?” he asked.

“Ninth,” the old woman said.

“You like sports?” Perry asked.

“He's too spindly for football,” the old woman said. “For which I'm grateful, since he doesn't have any business playing that anyway. Nobody does unless they're bent on killing theirself.”

“I like basketball,” Joe Leonard said. His eyes met Perry's briefly.

“And tennis, too,” the old woman added. “He and his mother play together some. She can usually win, but he's improving, she says. I used to play myself when I was younger.”

An image filled Perry's mind of the old woman serving an ace in her black rubber boots. He narrowed his eyes and stared hard at his knees.

No one spoke for a few moments. Perry glanced quickly around the living room, which had the look of an overcrowded souvenir shop. Everything was in its place, but there was so much of it that the first impression was one of clutter. There was a long shelf mounted on the wall above the gas heater, which held a collection of ceramic owls. Perry tried to imagine how hot they must be.

He wondered what made it so bright in the room. Did they use special lightbulbs? Or maybe it was just the contrast from Beth's plain, dull little house next door. He wished he could have borrowed some of this brightness last night when he had arrived and found the electricity off. Beth must have anticipated it, for there were assorted candle stubs laid out on the kitchen table, along with a book of matches and a note in Beth's bold script: “Electricity comes on Sat., the 18th. Use candles in a pinch. Extra blankets in hall closet.” Leave it to Beth to cut it that close. But then how was she to know he would decide to leave Rockford a day earlier than he had said? He had lit all the candles and set them in the living room on saucers, then carried in his boxes and piled them in front of the bookcase. Then he had blown out the candles and slept in his clothes on the sofa. Welcome. Welcome to your luxurious quarters, distinguished guest, he had thought before drifting off to sleep, wrapped in borrowed blankets. Sometime early in the morning the electricity had come on. He heard a sudden low hum throughout the house and was dimly aware of a digital clock somewhere in the room insistently flashing its red numbers.

Perry looked around Jewel's living room and counted five colorful afghans—two folded over the back of the sofa, two draped over chairs apparently as replacement upholstery, and a small one laid across the piano bench. He was going to ask the old woman if she had made them when it occurred to him that he didn't know her name. It wouldn't be Blanchard since she was Jewel's mother. And he couldn't very well call her “Mama.”

“I'm bad with names,” he said, trying not to look at her boots. “Jewel probably told me yours at the door, but I can't remember.”

“No, she didn't,” she said. “It's Rafferty, Eldeen Rafferty. You can call me Eldeen.”

“Eldeen?”

“E-L-D-E-E-N, Eldeen,” she repeated. “Not a name you hear very much, is it? We had us some real original names in our family.” She began laughing silently, shaking all over.

“Is it a family name?” Perry asked. Joe Leonard had disappeared, he noticed.

She picked up a photograph from the dozen or more on the table beside her and motioned him over. “This is me, here, and my sister Nori, N-O-R-I, and my brother Klim, K-L-I-M, and my other brother Arko, A-R-K-O. Get it? Eldeen, Nori, Klim, Arko?”

Perry didn't.

She set the picture down and sighed. “Nobody ever does,” she said. “I don't know what got into my mother naming us that way. She was a character, she was.”

He still didn't understand.

“She couldn't ever do things the way everybody else did,” Eldeen said. “Not that I would of wanted her to. No, sir. She made life real interesting. See, about the names—my mama wanted to name her children after everyday things around the house to remind us of our humble beginnings, which we never would of forgot anyhow. But instead of just naming us the thing itself, she switched it around and spelled it backwards.”

“Oh, I see,” Perry said slowly, studying her eyes. No twinkle of mischief and she wasn't smiling. Standing over her this way, he caught a strong whiff of Mentholatum. He noticed also for the first time that the soft down of a mustache feathered her upper lip.

“Eldeen, needle . . .” he said.

“Yes, sir.” She laughed a throaty laugh, showing teeth too perfect to be her own. “Well, like I always say, I guess I'd a heap rather be named Eldeen than Needle.” And she laughed again as she set the picture back in its place.

Perry's mind wheeled. He thought of other common words Eldeen's mother could have chosen to spell backwards for names. Words like
tar
and
mud
. Could this be possible? Was this woman leading him on?
Straw
and
rail
. Hello, my name is Warts. Glad to meet you, mine is Liar.
Tub
and
knits
. He grew feverishly hot. He felt dazed trying to imagine the mother of this old woman sitting inside a little house somewhere, looking out the window, maybe writing down lists of what she saw, sounding out all the words backwards and trying them out as names for her children.

“She already had Sessalom and Eram picked out for the next names,” Eldeen said, “but then she had female problems and never could have any more babies. She was satisfied with four, though, since she never expected to have even one. She used to say she was such a ugly little girl, looks-wise that is, that people thought she'd been in some kind of a accident. But then my daddy saw her one day when he was helping his uncle build a barn in Fiona, Arkansas, when she brought out some pie and iced tea for the men in the middle of the afternoon, and he just fell in love with her laugh, he said, and she always said she was sure glad that rooster had flapped its wings and scared that fat man or else Daddy never would of heard her laugh. She always dreamed of marrying and having babies but never thought it would come her way. I don't know how many times I heard her recite that verse when we was kids, ‘He maketh the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children. Praise ye the LORD.' She was sure a fine, fine mama, she was. And I never once looked at her and thought she was ugly.” She shook her head briskly. “No, sir, not a bit of it. To me she was the prettiest mama in the world!”

Perry looked down again at the photo of Eldeen's family. If he wrote something like this in a work of fiction, he could never get away with it. A mother who would name her kids Needle, Iron, Milk, and Okra spelled backwards would be just too weird.

3

Decorative Trinkets

As Jewel had promised, the meal wasn't fancy. The four of them ate at a dinette table in the kitchen, and Perry was glad to find out that it wasn't as hot in the kitchen as it was in the living room. Afterward he felt slightly stunned from the whole experience. It wasn't the food exactly or his three dinner companions or the conversation or the kitchen itself. It was just everything together. He had never spent an evening that so overloaded his senses.

The food was better than any he had eaten for a long time, but the combination was unusual. Jewel had made a ground beef and macaroni dish that she called Burger in a Skillet, though it was in a Pyrex dish, and with it she served baked squash, hashbrowns, black-eyed peas, applesauce, corn bread, and iced tea. No one else seemed to think it funny that all the food was a shade of brown or gold. Even the dishes were tan with a sprig of golden flowers painted in the middle.

Jewel asked the blessing, concluding with “And we pray your loving watchcare, Lord, on this, our new neighbor, and your hand of success on all his daily endeavors, in the dear Savior's name, amen.”

No one spoke at first, and Perry busied himself arranging his napkin in his lap.

“What exactly do you write, Warren?” Eldeen asked as she handed him the Burger in a Skillet to start around.

“Warren's his last name, Mama,” Jewel said. “Remember, it was Beth's last name, too. His first name's Perry.”

Eldeen emitted a noise that was part laugh and part snort. “Now aren't men's names funny that way?” she said. “My first husband had a name like that. Norton Malcolm. And people used to get it mixed up so much that half the time I forgot whether I was Eldeen Malcolm or Eldeen Norton. I had a uncle the same way. His name was Palmer Westwood, but it could just as easy been Westwood Palmer. And I had a second cousin once named McLeary McSpadden of all things. They used to call him Big Double Mack, but that was way back before them hamburgers came along. He was the
tallest
man you ever seen! And there's that poor old man at church named Mayfield Spalding. You know, Jewel, the one who sits in the back that I think looks a little like Barney Fife. Anyway, it sure was a relief when I married Jewel's daddy and got somebody with a name you could keep straight—Hiram Rafferty. Least I never
heard
of anybody with the last name Hiram, though I reckon somewhere on God's green earth there's probably a Mr. So-and-so Hiram. Maybe over in one of them Arab countries.”

Perry glanced at Jewel and noted her bland expression as she passed the hashbrowns to Joe Leonard, as if all she heard was some background music on the radio. Eldeen's speech rolled on.

“But when I work on remembering a name, I can usually do it. Perry Warren, not Warren Perry. Perry Warren. Perry Warren. I'll put it in my file box up here.” She pretended to open a lid at the top of her head. “Here, take a helping of Jewel's applesauce. We thought those little old wormy trees out back never would bear, but then all of a sudden they must of healed theirselves, because we started getting the prettiest little green apples.”

“We sprayed them, Mama, remember?” Jewel said. “We talked to that man at the nursery, and he told us what to do.”

“Well, whatever happened, it worked. Anyway, a name's a funny thing. Joe Leonard here, you'd think his real name'd be Joseph Leonard, but it's not. It's just plain Joe Leonard. That was Hiram's middle name—Leonard. And the Joe came from his daddy, of course. Joe Bailey Blanchard, but for some reason the Joe didn't stick with him, and he was just Bailey. Bailey Blanchard. That's another one of them names you could say either way. Bailey died three years ago this June. I didn't know if you knew that or not.”

Jewel reached over and set the glass lid on top of the casserole dish with a loud clap. Beth had told him Jewel was a widow but never talked about her husband.

“But a name's just something you get stuck with and can't do anything about,” said Eldeen. “‘Course even with the prettiest name, you can make people think it's ugly by the way you act. And vice-a-versa. A good name's better than precious ointment, the Bible says.”

Perry was beginning to breathe more easily now that he realized he probably wouldn't be called on to do much talking. He wondered if Eldeen had ever had some kind of throat operation that made her voice sound that way. One of those Sesame Street characters had talked like that, Perry recalled. Was it the one named Grover?

The corn bread was wonderful—crisp on the outside and soft and warm and mealy on the inside. Perry wasn't fond of squash but took some to be polite. It was surprisingly good, though, with a slight tang of what must be some kind of spice or herb. Perry wondered if the family ate food this good all the time. Jewel refilled his tea glass.

Eldeen stopped talking for a moment while she chewed a spoonful of black-eyed peas. Joe Leonard was sopping up his bean juice with a piece of corn bread, and then he dipped what was left of it into his applesauce. Could the boy have already eaten his helping of Burger in a Skillet? Perry wondered.

“Now what was I asking you?” Eldeen said. “Oh, yes, what exactly is it you're writing?” Her bushy eyebrows were drawn down as she looked at him, but she was smiling. It was that same peculiar grimace with which she had met him at the front door. She looked back at her plate and stabbed a forkful of hashbrowns.

“It's something new,” Perry said. “I haven't really gotten a good start on it yet.” He didn't want to come out and say he hadn't written even the first word, and for sure he wasn't going to discuss the subject.

“Is it going to be a book or what?”

“Well, yes, it's a book.”

Joe Leonard scooted his chair back suddenly and got up. Eldeen jumped.

“That makes the awfulest sound, Joe Leonard! It sounds like a hurt dog.”

Joe Leonard got an ice tray from the freezer and brought it back to the table. Jewel took it from him and gave it a quick twist. Then she lifted out ice cubes one at a time with just the tips of her fingernails and began dropping two or three into each glass.

Eldeen was still looking at Perry as she chewed a large mouthful of something. “Is it going to be a romance or a mystery or something like that?”

Perry hesitated. “Well, no, it's not exactly a . . .”