A Life of Bright Ideas Read online

  The car pulled in—a Ford Galaxie, dusty white, with a dent in its front fender. I expected to see some old codger looking for Uncle Rudy sitting behind the wheel, but instead, it was a woman. She wore dark sunglasses, and her hair was gleaming like a pot of melted pennies. The chunk of watermelon in my mouth suddenly felt as dry as old toast. I stood up, my heart pounding. Boohoo and Winnalee were still arguing.

  “Winnalee,” I whispered.

  Winnalee, still bent over, stopped chattering and turned her head toward the drive when I said it again. “Jesus Christ,” she muttered.

  The car door squealed as it opened, and Freeda stepped out. She was dressed in a pair of white shorts, her sleeveless blouse tied at her waist as it had been the day I first laid eyes on her. She was tanned, and shorter than I remembered, and her hair wasn’t long anymore. It was parted on the side, the bangs falling down over the side of her face to the bottom of her ear. The crown was ratted high and formed a bubbled arch down to the nape of her neck.

  “Who’s that?” Boohoo asked.

  I kept my voice low and even. “Go get Aunt Verdella. Now.”

  Freeda stood looking at us for a moment, her car door hanging open, her hand on her hip. She pulled off her sunglasses and poked them into her fiery hair. Her eyes narrowed to two black-lined slits.

  “Winnalee,” she said. “You forgot one of your little mementos from Woodstock, so I thought I’d bring it by.” Freeda ducked into the backseat. Winnalee straightened and went stiff as a colored pencil. I glanced at the door, hoping for Aunt Verdella to appear, then turned back to Freeda. Just as she was lifting a tiny baby out of the car.

  CHAPTER

  18

  BRIGHT IDEA #40: If you bring a kitten home from the box outside the Piggly Wiggly, somebody’s gotta clean the litter box.

  Fear looked foreign on Winnalee’s face, but there it was, freezing her eyes so they couldn’t blink, and stretching her neck taut so she couldn’t speak.

  The front door opened and Aunt Verdella stepped out. I took one look at her face—joyful, flooded with relief and love—and knew, just as Winnalee had to know, that it was no coincidence that Freeda was here. I stared at the baby girl, dressed in a pink sundress and a white bonnet that was too big for her head, and grappled to make sense of it all.

  That’s when Winnalee bolted, the half-eaten slice of watermelon spinning from her hand like a loose wheel as she raced toward home. “Winnalee! Goddamn it, you get your ass back here! You hear me?” Freeda screamed.

  But Winnalee didn’t stop. She jumped in her van and rammed it into reverse. Backing out with such force that she couldn’t spin the steering wheel quickly enough, and the rear end dipped into the ditch. “Oh dear, I knew she’d be upset!” Aunt Verdella said as the back tires of Winnalee’s van kicked up grass.

  Who knew which direction Winnalee intended to go—probably west, toward town. The Purple Haze maybe, or maybe straight out of Dauber—but when she jerked the van into first gear, her wheels ended up pointing her south, proving that escape doesn’t care which way it goes, as long as it’s someplace else.

  I didn’t think. I just reacted. Running across the yard as fast as I could to get to my Rambler and go after Winnalee, Aunt Verdella fretting behind me to not speed and to find her.

  Winnalee’s van, cumbersome as it was, sped down the dirt road, the colors of peace and love lost in a swirl of dirt. I tried to keep up with her, but the only thing that could race at that speed was my thoughts. A memento from Woodstock? A baby? Winnalee had a baby? How could she not have told me? I racked my brain, searching for any clues that I’d missed. The small pouch below her navel? Her withdrawing before and during Marls’s baby shower? Her insisting that she had changed? None of these, even added together, were enough to make me suspect she had a kid. Why hadn’t she told me? And how could she have left it?

  As Winnalee’s van neared the end of Peters Road, I begged her to slow down, then held my breath, fearful that she’d miss the turn and smash into the woods. One of her taillights lit and she made a precarious wide turn down Marsh Road.

  I didn’t need to think long or hard about where Winnalee was headed then. She was headed for the one place she might believe could take her back to the magical land of fairies and make-believe. The place where things like reality and responsibility didn’t exist: Dauber Falls.

  In the summer in 1961, Winnalee was convinced that we’d find fairies at the falls, after reading a book called The Coming of Fairies, which claimed that two girls had found them down near a beck. We spent our summer making plans to sneak off to find them. And the day that Hannah showed up and Winnalee learned the truth, she’d run off to the falls herself. I’d followed, and when I couldn’t find her, I hid from Fossard’s ghost in an old bomb shelter, quaking under a cot until I was found.

  Dauber Falls might have held the power to soothe and comfort Winnalee, but I’d been terrified of the old Fossard homestead you had to cross in order to get to the water, ever since I was a child. Mainly because of Tommy, who pulled out the ghost story of Hiram Fossard, the humpbacked grave digger who’d lived there, whenever he wanted to antagonize me. Fossard had carved a bomb shelter into the hill near his home because he believed the Russians were going to nuke us. But Fossard was equally afraid of going underground, and one day, when his fears proved too much for him, he went berserk and shot his dog, his wife, and then hung himself. When Winnalee and I were nine, Tommy told us that folks claimed Fossard’s ghost—still afraid of going into the ground—walked the property at night, his shovel scraping behind him. When I was a kid, I used to duck on the rare occasions we passed the Fossard place, the hair on my arms standing on end, my teeth gnawing at my cheek. Granted, maybe the story of Fossard’s ghost was nothing but a scary story to tell around the campfire, but just being on his property made it feel real and gave me the heebie-jeebies all over again.

  I reached the dead-end sign and slipped down the driveway that once took Fossard to and from the cemetery (about the only place he ever went). I leaned close to the windshield and focused on the two ruts that provided local fishermen or partying teens with the shortest route to the water, and tried hard not to look at the old house slumped to my right, with its peeled paint and busted windows. Or toward the patch of red pine to my left where the bomb shelter sat. I tried to keep my mind on Winnalee as my Rambler rattled over the ruts, but with the tall blades of grass scraping the bottom of my car like a shovel over dirt, it wasn’t easy.

  Near the end of the drive, there was a gap in the woods where a pickup or two could wait in the shade for its owner. Winnalee’s van was parked there, under a canopy of leafy limbs. I butted the Rambler up close to her vehicle and got out, pressing the door shut behind me. I hurried to reach the clearing (as if ghosts were more likely to linger in the shade). Once in the open, the sun turned the skittering insects into metal-shiny streaks, and I felt safer as I headed toward the sound of rushing water.

  I spotted Winnalee at the water’s edge, sitting on a gray boulder, her back rounded, the wind ruffling her hair. Below her, water foamed like root beer as it whooshed over boulders deposited like stepping-stones. I didn’t call out to Winnalee, but pecked my way down the steep bank, careful to not lose my footing on the coating of loose rocks.

  She must have sensed me behind her, because she drew her legs up and bowed her head against her knees.

  “Winnalee?” I said, speaking only as loud as the rushing water dictated I needed to.

  She didn’t say anything, but the tightening of her back told me she’d heard me.

  I took a few careful steps forward and sat down on the boulder beside her. Her hip was soft against mine.

  “You must think I’m terrible,” she finally said. “Sleeping with Brody, getting high, … cuttin’ out on my kid.”

  “I don’t think you’re terrible,” I said, hoping I was telling the truth.

  “I’m not like Freeda, though.” She turned her face toward mine and her eyes were we
t and pleading. “I love my kid, Button. That’s why I came. To find you guys and see if you’d raise her.”

  Wind swirled into my mouth, drying my tongue.

  Fresh tears, clear as rain, glossed Winnalee’s eyelashes. “It’s true,” she said. “You’ve gotta believe me. I’m not like Freeda, but I’m no better for a kid than she was for me. I know that. Look at how messed-up I am, Button. You saw what happened when you left Boohoo alone with me. Shit, I’d be cussin’ at her in no time, and draggin’ her ass all over the country. She’d grow up just like I did, and she’d turn out just like me, not making a damn thing out of herself. I don’t want that for her, Button. Not for my kid. So I thought maybe Aunt Verdella could raise her. Teach her how to be more like you.”

  I put my arm around Winnalee and she leaned into me. “I swear, I was only coming here to ask, then I was going to go back to get her. But when I got here and learned about your ma, and saw that Aunt Verdella had all she could do to keep up with Boohoo, I didn’t know what to do. So I just smoked up, screwed, and danced … you know?”

  “I’ll help you raise her, Winnalee. Aunt Verdella will, too.”

  Winnalee shook her head. “No. I can’t raise her, Button. I’d be no good for her. You know it’s true. Freeda said she’d help me, too, but we’d only be at each other’s throats. Shit, it started the minute we got home from the hospital. I was still hurting bad from the stitches they sewed into my crotch, and my boobs were hard as rocks and leaking all over the place, and there was Freeda, stuffing my lap full of books on how to introduce solids to your kid, and how to potty train. Shit like that. Now why’d we need to know that right then? Hell, I didn’t even know how to hold her yet! And I was so tired I could have died, and Freeda was waking me up in the night every time that baby cried. So there we were, fightin’ like always. A kid shouldn’t have to listen to that shit, you know?”

  I wrung my hands. “Freeda left you for the same reasons,” I said in a scared whisper.

  “Bullshit! She left me because she didn’t give a shit about anybody but herself.”

  I tucked my head down, wanting with everything I had to tell her that I’d once overheard Freeda tell my ma her reasons for leaving Winnalee. And those reasons were almost word for word the same as Winnalee’s. But Winnalee was too upset to hear me, and I knew it.

  Winnalee sighed. “I thought it was just the weed making me gag—like an allergy or something. So I quit smoking and drinking, and my stomach settled down. But I started getting fat. And then I felt her, like a flutter of fairy wings inside me. I couldn’t stay with the thought, Button. Does that make sense? I put on baggy granny dresses and I didn’t look down. I stopped lying on my stomach. And I took my bath in the dark.

  “I never did tell Freeda. She just figured it out when my gut got so big it would have been like trying to hide a watermelon under your clothes. Even then, I denied it.”

  I took Winnalee’s hand and the breeze tickled her hair across my wrist. “I would have been scared, too.”

  “I was scared. Scared half to death. Especially when Freeda started talking to me about giving birth. I didn’t want to hear that shit! So I kept telling myself that later, later I’d deal with it and figure something out. I said that until I didn’t have any time left, and Freeda finally yelled at me, ‘Listen kid. That baby’s in there, and like it or not, one way or another, it’s coming out.’

  “Freeda said we’d do okay with her, but I knew that wasn’t true. I knew she’d be tryin’ to raise her like she tried raising me after she saw that shrink. Knockin’ down any spirit that girl was born with, and tryin’ to raise her like some Brady kid, when that’s something we Malones are not. That’s what I was afraid of. You gotta believe me, Button.”

  “Of course I believe you,” I said.

  We sat quietly, watching the water swirling with the same chaotic intensity that swirled in Winnalee’s eyes.

  “It’s bad enough,” she said, “that my kid, like me, won’t have a father. I don’t know who her dad is, any more than Freeda knows who mine is. A kid should have a dad. Just like you and Boohoo do. But if she can’t have that, then she can at least have a good mommy, and that’s not me. And that’s not Freeda.”

  I looked down, suddenly wanting to draw up my knees, too, but not having enough room to do so. Not like ours, Winnalee. Your baby shouldn’t have a dad like ours.

  One thing I learned from grieving over Ma is that people can’t cry forever. Even if they think they might. Sooner or later the weeping stops, leaving your eyes scratchy and as dry as your heart. And even if you want to cry again because you remember getting the tears out giving you at least some temporary relief, you can’t. Winnalee cried until the sun dropped to scrape against the backsides of the trees. And when no more tears would come, I tugged Winnalee’s hand, coaxing her up, and we climbed the bank. It was almost dark, the sunset faded to a muddy gray. Clouds of gnats hung in the weak rays of sunlight loitering between trees, and I swatted at them as I kept my eyes peeled to what might be lurking in the dark patches. “You’re crushing my hand,” Winnalee said. “You’re not still afraid of Fossard’s ghost, are you?” She gave a tired laugh when I didn’t answer. “Button, you’re a piece of work.”

  . . .

  Winnalee wouldn’t go over to Aunt Verdella’s, where Freeda and her baby were. Instead she headed upstairs and dropped into bed, bunching the pillow in her arms as if it was her baby, then curling herself around it as if she was the baby.

  “You want me to go call Reefer and tell him you won’t be in?” I asked, mainly because I knew Freeda and Aunt Verdella were waiting for some word.

  Winnalee glanced at the clock. “Yeah, call him, though if he hasn’t figured out yet that I’m not coming in, he’s a total idiot.”

  I paused at the bedroom door. “Should I bring the baby back so you can see her?”

  “Tomorrow,” she said.

  I nodded and stepped out of the room.

  “Button?” she called.

  I stepped back. “Yeah?”

  “Her name is Evalee. That’s your name and my name put together. E-v, Ev, like the beginning of Evelyn, and a-l-e-e, like the end of Winnalee.”

  I smiled. “What’s her middle name?”

  “Woodstock,” she said.

  CHAPTER

  19

  BRIGHT IDEA #41: If you try to help your new friend write a G in cursive, when you aren’t sure how to write one yourself, you’re probably both going to get the letter circled on your paper.

  “Button, that you?” Aunt Verdella called from the kitchen, when I came through the front door. I could hear Uncle Rudy and Freeda talking.

  “It’s her!” Boohoo yelled back. He was sitting on his knees next to a playpen, winding a ball of yarn while he watched Evalee.

  “Shhhhh,” I told him.

  “It’s okay, Evy. She don’t wake up for nothin’ when she’s sleeping. That’s what Freeda said.”

  I smiled. Just like her mommy.

  “Tomorrow’s her birthday,” Boohoo said. “Guess how old she’s going to be? Six weeks old. That’s how many. She was born two weeks early. Freeda said that’s why she’s such a peanut.”

  The lamp shade had a sheet of Reynolds Wrap capped over it to mute the light, so I crouched down by the playpen to get a better look. Evalee’s legs were tucked under her bottom, her mouth sucking. Her face was round, her skin sugar-cookie white. Eyelashes the color of milk chocolate were curled against her full cheeks. Her tiny mouth was squished to one side in a cute pout, and her bottom lip was making sucking movements. I reached down and fingered the wispy blond hair that I was sure would grow into loops like Winnalee’s. She was beautiful, just as I knew she’d be, and I wanted so badly to pick her up and sniff her baby smell.

  “Guess how much long she is?”

  “Um …”

  “Twenty-one inches! So small that if she was a musky, you’d have to throw her back.”

  My cheeks bulged with a laugh, and
I gave Boohoo a hug.

  “Was I ever that little, Evy?”

  “You were exactly that long when you were born,” I told him, my heart swelling for them both.

  “When I was zero old, I was that long? I don’t think so,” he said.

  “Sure you were. I’ll dig up a picture and prove it,” I said, hoping I could find one in the album at Dad’s without Ma in it, so as not to hurt him with that sad story.

  Aunt Verdella peeked into the room. “She’s cute as a cupcake, ain’t she?”

  “She is,” I said with a smile.

  “Button? Get your ass in here and say hello!” Freeda hollered.

  “Come on,” Aunt Verdella said. “And Boohoo, you go upstairs and get your jammies on now, okay? It’s late.”

  Boohoo started to protest, but Uncle Rudy stepped into the dining room. “Hey Spider-Man, how about coming upstairs and givin’ your old uncle Rudy a hand finding his slippers. I go crouching down to look under my bed, and I might get stuck on all fours for good.”

  “In which case you’d be wearing a leash forever, too,” I said. Uncle Rudy’s grizzly face folded into a smile.

  Boohoo scooped up his yarn balls and got up. “I’ll bet Chameleon took them,” he said. “I’ll find them for you, Uncle Rudy, and wrap them in my web so he can’t steal them again.”

  I headed to the kitchen, but stopped by the stairwell, looking up at Boohoo as he thumped up the stairs behind Uncle Rudy. “Boohoo? Don’t go trying to make a web around the baby, though, okay?”

  Boohoo stopped and peered over the banister. “I know that, Evy. Aunt Verdella already told me.”

  Freeda was standing at the counter, measuring formula powder into a line of baby bottles, and Aunt Verdella was filling the coffee pot. Freeda turned when I came in, and spread her arms. “My God,” she said. “I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw you today. All grown up, and pretty as a goddamn model. Come here, kid.”