The Story of Beautiful Girl (21 page)

“No. Please, go on. Except for one possibility that went kablooie, I don’t know that I’ll ever have anyone important in my life, let alone a kid. It’s embarrassing to admit.”

“Don’t be embarrassed. I’m in your house. With a child.”

“Then don’t you be embarrassed, either.”

She knit awhile. Finally she said, “I think I can say that having Julia around has returned the feeling of a presence to my life, though in a different way from the one I lost.”

“What do you mean?”

She stopped knitting and closed her eyes. “Even down here in the living room, I feel as if I can hear her breathe through the ceiling. With my eyes shut, I can see her sleeping in the crib, her face so peaceful in the streetlight coming through the curtains. I feel she knows I’m here, too. And that is… very nice.” She opened her eyes.

He poured another glass of wine. “You want?”

She shook her head. “My husband was a teetotaler.”

“Excuse me. Isn’t he, you know, dead?”

“A person gets set in her ways.”

“I’ll say. At seventy she takes up with her grandniece’s baby and leaves the only home she’s known most of her life. That’s set like concrete.”

She allowed herself a small laugh.

“Come on, Mrs. Zimmer. Live a little.” He snatched a glass off a shelf and hovered the carafe over it. “Just a thimbleful?”

“All right.”

He poured a full glass. “Then you’ll have more than enough.”

She had not touched alcohol in fifty years, and it seemed ludicrous for her to do so in this situation. Though to her surprise, the wine was delicious.
Earl is not here.
She took a second sip.
Julia is here. Landon is here. And I am here. Whoever I am.

She set down the empty glass, aware that she already felt askew. It was not a feeling she wished to have, but it softened the awkwardness of sitting here with a young man who had opened his house to her. She lifted her knitting. It took effort to move her hands.

“Can I ask you something?” Landon said. “You don’t have to answer. She’s not your great-grandniece, is she?”

In spite of herself, Martha smiled into her knitting. Then, regaining control of her face, she looked up and said, “Tell me why you have two homes, Landon.”

He ran his hand through his hair. “Some people are just restless. Remember how I always wanted to sharpen my pencils? I did that about ten times a day just to look outside.”

“I do remember.” She smiled more openly.

“When I started getting sales in galleries, I wanted to have a second place to retreat to. You know, my parents moved to New Jersey before I went to college, and this house was a little close to them, and I don’t know about you, but I can’t be myself around some people. Yet I didn’t want to ditch this place, so I started going away for the summers, renting places up and down the coast. Then I visited a friend on the Cape, and decided to buy a home there.”

Martha heard Julia make a sound in her sleep.

“Do you need to check on her?” Landon said, overly worried.

She shook her head. “That’s the sound she makes when she’s having a happy dream. I wondered at first how to tell if she was having a dream or a nightmare, but it’s gotten easy.”

“You really love her, don’t you.”

She nodded, head down, and felt her eyes fill.

Landon said, “I have an idea. My place on the Cape is just sitting there all winter. It’s in one of those all-year-round towns, so it has heat. And privacy. You could stay there instead of here.”

“That is so… That is very generous.”

“Like I said when we talked in May, it’s nice being able to do something for someone who meant so much in my life. Besides, something’s happening to you, Mrs. Zimmer.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You look less… oh, I hate to say it, but I will. You look less lonely.”

She peered up at him.

“In school, you were always cheerful. And also at those Christmas parties. Yet there’d be moments when you’d get another look, a sad look. Far away.”

Had her struggle been so apparent? How could she hide Ju-Ju if she couldn’t even hide herself?

“That’s why I made that lighthouse man for you,” he went on. “I wanted you to have company.”

“Really? I didn’t know that.”

“But you don’t have that look at all now. And you’re wearing pants and blouses, not dresses all the time. And your hair is different. Not tied up.”

She felt herself blush. “Sometimes, with Julia, combing and ironing aren’t convenient.”

“The point is, you look less sad. I think this is all—whatever it is—good for you.”

She eyed him. “Even though you don’t know whatever it is, Landon?”

He took one last sip. “Even though I don’t know. And I don’t need to know, either.”

And so on a day in October, when the leaves were at the height of their color, Martha and Julia pulled into a driveway in the town of Harwich Port, on Cape Cod.

It had been hard to say good-bye to Ivamae and Betty, especially in a cloud of dishonesty: She told them her niece’s family was moving and she’d been asked to accompany them. She would stay in touch, she promised; and could they give her pictures of themselves? Then she drove away, trembling with loss. How long
could they keep living like this? Would she ever be able to have not just friends, but friends who would know her autobiography?

Landon’s house was on a side street off the main road, Route 28, and set high above the water. Like its neighbors, the gray-shingled, two-story house was entered from the side and had a small side lawn, hydrangea bushes, cedar trees, window boxes, rosehips growing along the back fence—and a view of a calm Nantucket Sound. Martha opened the car door and brought Julia out, almost intoxicated by the salty scent.

She jiggled Julia. “Look,” she said. “Our next home.”

She gazed around. None of the other houses had lights in their windows.

“Well,” she said. “We do indeed have privacy. We just have to make sure that privacy doesn’t become loneliness.”

She peered down the street. One of the houses had a ladder reaching up to the second floor. A man was climbing down the ladder, a golden retriever waiting faithfully at the bottom.

“Ju-Ju,” she said, “what do you say we do?”

Julia looked into Martha’s face, then reached out her hands and tapped Martha’s cheeks. One of their many habits, it always made Martha laugh, and that made Julia laugh, too.

It’s always best when you do your own deciding,
Ivamae had said.

“That’s right,” Martha said. “We can make new friends.” She shut the car door and nuzzled Julia’s face. Then they went to meet the man with the dog.

1970

S
am rapped on the dashboard with his stick and pointed to the roadside stop up ahead, but Homan had already seen them.

He’d gotten a lot of practice spotting Ride Thumbers in the months they’d been together. Having a third person around meant one more body in the van, throwing off any police on the prowl for a young white boy on the run with a colored man. A third person also meant one more set of hands to help Homan maneuver Sam into campgrounds or up steps too high for the portable ramp they kept in the van. And it meant one more companion to join their amusement. Though even when it was just them, life with Sam was constantly amusing. So much so, Homan thought as they’d entered this cloudless land of red-rock mountains, it sometimes even took a homing pigeon’s mind off the problem of finding his way home.

These Ride Thumbers weren’t like any they’d picked up before. For one, they were a pair, and two, they were girls. But maybe they’d be as much fun as the long-haired kid who’d invited them for an overnight stay in his family home or the gray-haired hiker who’d bought them beans from a roadside stand or the men of all ages and colors who’d escorted them to every manner of wonder: a desert of white sand, houses carved into cliffs, a humongous canyon of red, orange, and yellow plunging down to a river. What adventure might they have with these two?

Homan pulled the van over, and the girls grabbed their bags and ran toward them. They were far younger than him and a little older than Sam. The tall blonde wore a blue top and purple skirt. The short, dark-haired one had a cowgirl look, with a red vest over a white shirt and jeans.

Like everyone, they were surprised when they opened the side door. The front of the van had a driver’s seat, though on the passenger side were tracks that kept Sam’s wheelchair in place. The back of the van had no seats, just a lounge chair secured in place, egg-carton foam laid out flat, the portable ramp, and their clothes. Homan leaned over to unroll Sam’s window. Homan didn’t know what Sam was saying but figured it amounted to,
Welcome, ladies. My name Sam, and this my friend, he deaf and I don’t know his name. Him and me do some things different from you. That chair help keep me from setting too long in this one, and you can make yourself at home in it, ’cause I like being co-pilot. Or set on the foam, it for when I sleep. Just get yourself situated and tell me where you off to. We ain’t got nowhere to be, so we’ll go wherever you please.

Homan watched over Sam’s shoulders as the girls’ faces got playful, which always happened when Sam talked to ladies. Sam had the kind of pleasure-loving manner and young-boy cuteness girls couldn’t resist, with his thick black hair, knowing smile, and blue eyes never far from a twinkle. So it was no wonder the blonde was giggling when she tossed her bag in the van, bringing the scent of strawberries. Her friend came in after, a sack on her shoulder, beaded bracelets around one wrist. Strawberry threw herself into the lounge chair. Beaded Circles sat on the foam.

Homan waited to hit the gas while they talked, Sam no doubt asking how to get where these Thumbers were going. Strawberry found a pen and drew on her arm—maybe a map—then leaned forward and laid her arm on Sam’s thighs. He ran his thumb over her inky skin, and when she sat back he made the gesture he and
Homan had invented early on, one of the few he could easily do, holding his hands in the air and indicating by their distance apart how far they’d be going now. This drive would be short, though how short—till afternoon? tomorrow?—Homan couldn’t tell. He wished Sam knew his signs. But Sam could barely bend his wrists, his elbows went only so far, and except for one thumb, his fingers were more for show than action. That’s why he used his stick to point, and a mug with a handle to drink, and a leather sleeve that held eating utensils. Mostly they relied on their faces and sweeps of their hands, Homan keeping his disappointment inside. It was the price he had to pay to be with Sam. That, and the fear of police bearing down on them, this time for kidnapping. Homan had painted the white van brown, and Sam had chucked his navy suit. And if that wasn’t enough and they got caught, then going to prison for stealing the Silvers’ car would be a walk in the park by comparison.

Strawberry sat back then, grinning like a just-fed cat, and as Sam gestured to the road ahead, Homan felt the now-familiar burn in his gut. It could happen anytime—during a laugh with Sam, at a scenic overlook with a Thumber, while drinking orange pop—and suddenly Homan would wish Beautiful Girl were along, then remember why she wasn’t. The anytimeness of it was hard, but mornings were worse. Beautiful Girl would be waiting for him, just like when he first got lost, only now she’d be on the far side of a window. Sometimes she’d be drawing and look to the glass. Sometimes she’d be lifting Little One from a high chair and gazing outside. He’d come near, signing,
Good morning, beautiful girls,
over and over. But they’d just keep searching out the window.
How in the blazes you ever finding your way back?
he’d ask himself when he’d open his eyes. Then he’d take in the grandness of the view, or the sight of his friend on the foam, and wonder:
Is it bad to want fun till you do?

Homan bumped his knuckles against his stomach to push the
burn down deep. Then he placed his hands on the wheel and drove.

That first day with Sam, so many months ago, as Homan had sped off from the church, Sam moving his forearms like a bandleader, both of them laughing, they went onto and off roads for the longest time, hoping to throw any pursuers off the scent. Finally, after a tangled-enough path and seeing no one in their rearview, Sam gestured for Homan to pull over, then open the glove compartment, get out his stick, and unfold a page. From its ropy design Homan knew it was a map, and the sight of it distressed him even more than the prospect of rotating red lights. He’d been lost so many times over, and maps were such a snaggle, and Sam couldn’t tell him where they were, and Homan had no idea how far he’d gone since he’d stood in Roof Giver’s bedroom with Little One sleeping in the basket and placed a pretend wedding ring on Beautiful Girl’s finger. He set his head on the steering wheel in despair.

A moment later, Sam tapped him with his stick. Homan looked over and saw Sam eyeing him with concern. Sam waited a few moments, then pointed to a paper bag on the floor.

Inside was a heap of candy bars in silver-and-blue wrappers. Sam directed Homan to get one, tear off the wrapper, and fit the candy between his thumb and index finger. As Sam chewed, he nodded for Homan to take one for himself. Homan hesitated. Except for what he’d found in garbage cans, he’d never eaten candy outside the Snare circuses. Sam nudged him on with a push of his chin. So Homan peeled off a wrapper and sank his teeth in, and for a moment the chocolate and peppermint swept his hopelessness away.