A Life of Bright Ideas Read online

  I felt itchy. Hazel and Marge always measured the customers they were sewing for themselves.

  I handed Linda the sketches, while Hazel leaned over her shoulder. “What’s this here?” Linda asked, smearing her finger in tight circles over the glob at the back of the dress.

  “Roses made out of chiffon,” I said, because by now that’s what I decided they would be. “You know, like a bouquet. I already figured out how to make them.” (It would have been more honest to say that I was trying to figure out how to make them, since my three attempts so far looked like nothing but clumps of snow left on the edge of the road by a snowplow.)

  Linda looked up at Hazel. “What do you think? Can you make a pattern for this?”

  “Well, I don’t see why not. Most everything I made for the first twenty years I sewed, I made from my own patterns.”

  What could I say to that? I forced a smile and thanked Hazel for offering to help, and Linda for being understanding.

  Linda gave a nervous laugh. “Well there, I feel better. I have to admit, when I first heard that your little friend came up with the design, I was a tad worried. I didn’t know what she’d come up with. A see-through gown maybe?”

  Obviously, she’d heard the gossip. I stared at Linda’s tight, painted smile, and wondered if I looked that fake when I used a smile like a shield over what I was really feeling and thinking.

  “Okay, then,” Linda said with maybe too much enthusiasm. “I’ll find some pretty fabric and some … is this ribbon under the bust?”

  “I bought everything I’ll need already. For the bridesmaids’ dresses, too. It’s out in the car.” Linda sat up tall, her arched brows rising so high they disappeared under her bangs.

  “You bought it already?”

  Linda went to the car with me to haul everything in. She fanned her hand over the bridal fabric and nodded with relief, but she was not so relieved when she saw the bridesmaids’ fabrics. “I see you didn’t find any tie-dyed pastels—Mrs. Jamison will be relieved—but why are there four different shades of the material here? Were you unsure which color to get? If so, you should have brought back a small sample … this had to be costly.”

  “I figured if Cindy couldn’t have tie-dyed material, she’d at least want something different,” I said as I fingered the rainbowy print, each bolt of the design a different color. One in peach tones, one in soft shades of turquoise, one in buttery yellows, and one in lavender colors. “Doing a garden variety of colors is in for bridesmaids’ gowns. That’s what the clerk at JoAnn Fabrics told me.”

  “They’re lovely,” Hazel said.

  “But if Cindy Jamison will think so is another matter. It’s not what she asked for,” Linda said.

  I didn’t tell her that it was the closest to tie-dyed as I could get, but there wasn’t enough of any of the colors for four dresses. Instead I said, “She’ll like them when she learns that Winnalee thought this idea was cooler than tie-dyed.” (I didn’t see any point in telling Linda that Winnalee hadn’t even seen the fabric yet.)

  I was glad when Hazel invited me into the work room to show me how she goes about making patterns. Hazel was as dull as oatmeal, but she minded her own beeswax and stuck to business.

  It was early afternoon when I got home, carrying the wedding gown fabric and the bag of sewing notions. I was about to call to Winnalee to tell her that I was heading over to grab Evalee as soon as I’d brought in the rest of the fabric, when I heard the shouting coming from upstairs.

  “Maybe so, but I never slept with a married man! Messed-up as I was, I had some scruples!”

  “I don’t even know what scruples are!” Winnalee screamed back at Freeda.

  “Obviously not!” Freeda snapped.

  “And like hell, anyway! You’re such a hypocrite.”

  I couldn’t move. I just stood there, inside the door, holding my breath.

  “I was messed-up, Winnalee. I’ve been over it with you a million times. And although I don’t expect you to understand, because you were never hurt the way I was, I at least hoped that you wouldn’t see my wild ways as about having fun. I at least hoped you wouldn’t mimic me!”

  “Yeah, yeah … do what I say, not what I did. You’re a joke, Freeda. Now get out of here, and leave me alone.”

  “I’m not going anywhere, Winnalee. I’ve had Terri managing the shop for six weeks now, because dragging Evalee there wasn’t working out so good—the kid was starting to stink like perming solution and peroxide! That baby needs some stability in her life, damn it!”

  “I know that! You think I’m stupid? And that’s exactly why you’re not gonna be the one raising her. You don’t know a damn thing about giving a kid a stable life—hauling me around from school to school, dump to dump.”

  “We’ve been in the same place for seven years now, Winnalee, so don’t give me that crap. Let the past stay there, already. Evalee is your baby. She needs her mother.”

  “Yeah, well. I needed mine once, too, and all you did was stuff a vase with ashes and tell me that it was her. I was coming back to get my kid, Freeda. I wasn’t gonna wait until she was five.”

  Winnalee came flying down the stairs in bare feet, while Freeda screamed, “Winnalee, where in the hell do you think you’re going? Get back here! We are not finished!”

  In her fury, I don’t think Winnalee even noticed me standing there. Or if she did, she didn’t care. She dashed out the door, and before I could set down my things, her van was spitting gravel.

  It took Freeda a while to come downstairs. When she did, she walked with heavy, sad steps. She reached the bottom of the stairwell and paused, one hand on the banister. “Damn it,” she said. “I told myself I wouldn’t yell.”

  Freeda sat down on the landing, her feet on the floor, her elbows propped on her knees. She mumbled fractured sentences as she sobbed, “Evalee needs … we can do this … no life … my God, what a mess.” I swayed from foot to foot and wished Aunt Verdella was there.

  “She’ll come around when she cools down,” I told Freeda, and Freeda huffed, “I’ve been telling myself that for nine years—I don’t believe it anymore.”

  Freeda shook her head. “Look at the mess I made, Button. She’s like a lost sheep. Always looking for someplace that feels like home. Sleeping with anybody who will have her. I just want the running to stop. Here. With her. I want them to be like a real mother and daughter—whatever the hell that is. It might be too late for me and her, but it doesn’t have to be too late for her and Evalee.”

  Freeda dried her eyes and sighed. She stood and shuffled to the door and peered out absentmindedly. “It’s gonna be a scorcher today,” she said with a tired sigh. “You’d better get something cooler on.”

  Winnalee came home around eight-thirty the next morning. The butt of her cutoffs was damp, and she smelled like marijuana. Small flecks of debris were tangled in her hair—the tip of a twig, crumpled bits of last year’s leaves—telling me I was right when I guessed she’d gone to Dauber Falls. “My van’s acting up,” she said in a tired voice as she headed up the stairs. “Can you give me a lift to work? I’ve gotta be there by three today, and wait tables till the music starts.”

  “Sure,” I said. “We’ll have to leave a little early, though. I need to get gas. You okay?”

  She didn’t answer. She only said she needed a nap before work.

  I went to the stairs and looked up. “Winnalee? Bright Idea number ninety-nine and one half: When it seems the whole world is on your case, just remember that your best friend is on your side.”

  Winnalee nodded. “Thanks.”

  We were only about a mile down Peters Road when Winnalee asked, “What does Evalee look like? The last time I saw her, she looked like a raisin, only red and peely.”

  I smiled. “She doesn’t look like a raisin anymore. Her skin is fair, like yours—the color of sugar cookies. She’s got the cutest little mouth, and right before she smiles, she blinks two or three times, real fast, like she’s startled. Her
eyes are perfect circles. Darker than yours, but they’ll probably lighten in a month or two. She doesn’t have much hair, and it’s too soon to tell if it’s going to be curly, but you’d think so, since it’s blond like yours. Aunt Verdella says she’s a good-natured baby.”

  “She doesn’t look like she’s gonna be a gray person, does she?” Winnalee asked.

  I still didn’t know what a gray person was exactly, but I did know that Evalee wasn’t one. “Winnalee,” I said. “She’s your daughter. How could she be?”

  Neither of us commented when we reached the end of Peters Road and Freeda’s car was parked in Dad’s drive. Ma had always kept the drapes pulled on the windows facing the road after it got dark, but Dad kept them shut even when the sun was shining. They were opened now, but I couldn’t see inside.

  When we reached The Corner Store, Winnalee said, “Oh, look who’s here. The Grim Reaper.” I glanced at the building. Fanny Tilman was peeking out of the door in her winter-wool sweater.

  Fanny moved out of the way to let me in when I went in to pay for my gas, and as usual, she didn’t acknowledge me. Ada did, though. She was all smiles as she glanced out at my car, then back at me. “Where you girls off to today?” she asked, not because she was nosy, but because she was friendly.

  “I’m running Winnalee to work,” I said.

  Ada smiled. “Where’s your aunt been? I haven’t seen her in a few days.”

  “That’s because the Malones are back in Dauber, wreaking their havoc,” Fanny said. She had a quart of milk sweating on the counter—it would probably curdle before she decided she had enough gossip to take home along with it.

  “Fanny,” Ada scolded.

  I wanted to shout at that heartless, judgmental old bag, and defend the Malones, but instead I ignored her, just as Ada was doing.

  “Freeda was in here buying diapers a couple days ago, though. She sure is an outgoing gal, isn’t she? And pretty as ever. She showed me a picture of the little one. Such a little dolly.”

  “Just what this world needs. Another illegitimate child,” Fanny said.

  I gouged at my arms as I went to fetch two pops from the cooler and clunked them down on the counter. Ada looked out between the paper signs tacked on the window to see Winnalee heading toward us. “Fanny, that’s enough now. I like those girls and I won’t have anyone bad-mouthing them.” I kept my head down to dig in my purse for change, hating myself because I wasn’t the one who said those words.

  I said goodbye to Ada—ignored Fanny—and had just slipped back into the car when Tommy pulled in.

  “He’s got Craig with him,” Winnalee said.

  “Craig?”

  “Yeah, that new guy Ada introduced me to. Come on!” She got out of the car, peeking in through the window to say “Come on” again.

  “Hey, Tommy,” Winnalee said. “… Craig.”

  “I’m taking Craig up in the Piper,” Tommy said, more to me than Winnalee.

  Craig was cute, but short. So short that I found myself slouching even more than I normally did as I stood across from him. He kept his head half down, a shy, close-mouthed smile playing on his lips. A raindrop, it seemed, making me wonder why Winnalee was interested in him.

  She whacked Tommy. “You still haven’t taken me up yet. How many times do I gotta ask?”

  “Well, I start haying tomorrow, so it won’t be for a while. I’ll be busy from sunup to sundown for at least three weeks—five if that dipstick Bishop doesn’t show up to help.”

  “Does that mean Button will actually get some work done, then?” Winnalee asked, giving me a nudge.

  “She’ll be crying her eyes out, she’ll be missing me so much,” Tommy teased. I rolled my eyes.

  “I could give you a hand haying after work,” Craig said. “I get off at four.”

  “Cool,” Tommy said. “Rudy’s gonna run the bailer, so that’ll help.”

  “Hey, maybe we could swap some of my help haying, for time in the air.”

  “I’m not licensed to teach, you know.”

  “I know. But just being up there with you, you telling me things, would help.”

  “Sure,” Tommy said.

  “We’d better get going, Winnalee,” I said.

  “Yeah, we’ve gotta burn out, too,” Tommy said. Craig said goodbye, while giving us each an instant’s worth of eye contact, then they headed to the store, and I headed to the van.

  “Wait up!” Winnalee called. I stopped and turned. But Winnalee wasn’t talking to me. She was calling to Craig. I slipped into the Rambler, and Tommy headed inside the store. The vinyl seat felt scorching hot even through my jeans, as I worried about if she’d be late for work and watched Winnalee playing with her hair as she talked to Craig. The breeze was plastering her dress to her naked body, and she didn’t tug at the material even once.

  “What did you say to him?” I asked, when Winnalee got back.

  “I asked him if he wanted to go out sometime.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  I cranked the key. “Hell no,” Winnalee said. “It’s a new era, Button. We don’t have to sit on our asses hoping a guy will ask us out. We can be the ones asking.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said sure.”

  “Man, Winnalee. How did you even know if he likes you enough to want to take you out? Weren’t you afraid he’d say no, and then you’d have to feel stupid?”

  She looked at me like I’d just asked her how she knows she’s a girl. “I suppose you would ask that. You still haven’t figured out that Tommy has a crush on you.”

  I squirmed.

  She opened her soda pop and took a chug. “You’ve got a broken radar, Button. Which means that this guy you write to could either be madly in love with you, or just be stringing you along. Not like you’d know the difference. And let me guess. You haven’t figured out yet that your dad and Freeda are getting it on, either.”

  First the comment about Jesse and my broken radar, and now this? I kept my face turned to the side window. “She’s just lending him a hand, Winnalee, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, I don’t doubt she’s lending him a hand,” she said with a sarcastic laugh.

  When we reached the Purple Haze, Winnalee opened the car door and kicked it wider with her boot.

  “I pick you up at two, right?”

  “I can probably get a lift.”

  “No. I’ll pick you up. Two?”

  “Two-thirty,” she said.

  I drove home slowly, watching the sunset brighten with pinks and lavenders through my dusty windshield, and trying hard not to wonder if Winnalee’s assessment of me with guys was true.

  CHAPTER

  25

  BRIGHT IDEA #72: When you can’t find a bright idea for three weeks, but you need one or you’ll never get to 100, ask a big person for one and write it down. Even if it’s something stupid like “If you lay down with dogs, you’re gonna get fleas,” at least you’re one closer to 100.

  When I got home, I dragged the alarm clock into my sewing room so I wouldn’t have to keep getting up to check the time. I’d have to wait another day or two before Hazel got me the pattern for Cindy’s dresses, but I took out the fabric and pattern I’d picked up when I bought the rainbowy material, and had kept hidden in the sewing room for a night like this.

  It must have been near midnight when I saw the two beams of light swing across the yard. When I lived with Dad, there were lots of evenings when someone came to the house while I was alone, and I never got scared. And when I moved into Grandma Mae’s house, I knew I would never suffer a moment’s fear of intruders, not with Aunt Verdella and Uncle Rudy right across the road. But that was before Winnalee started bringing scary guys home from the Purple Haze—five since Chet. I stayed to the side of the window and peered out through a small gap in the curtain, hoping it wouldn’t be somebody scary.

  I sighed with relief when I recognized the outline of Tommy’s truck. That is, until he opened his door and the interi
or light came on. Brody was with him.

  I headed downstairs and yanked the door open. “What are you doing here?” I snapped at Brody as he was getting out of the truck. In a million years, I would have never guessed I could use that tone with Brody Bishop, but just the sight of him made me angry, and that made me brave. Brody blinked at me, so I turned to Tommy. “I can’t believe you’d bring him here.”

  “Never mind that,” Tommy said. “We were heading out for a beer and saw three squad cars heading down 8. We waited a bit, then followed to see what was going down.”

  “Man,” Brody said. “The Purple Haze is lit like the Fourth of July. Pigs squealin’ all over the place. This whole county can’t have more than four cruisers, so they must have pulled in some pigs from other counties. They had the road blocked off and made us turn around.”

  My chest tightened. “Why? What happened?”

  Brody’s eyeballs lifted. “Duh.”

  “A drug bust, no doubt,” Tommy said.

  “A drug bust?”

  Brody’s eyeballs lifted. “What? You didn’t know Reefer’s a pusher? Everybody and their cousin knows that.”

  “I was coming to tell you,” Tommy said, “thinking Winnalee was there. But I see she’s off tonight.”

  I shook my head. “Winnalee’s not here. She’s working. I dropped her off myself. Something’s wrong with her van.”

  “Man, she’s screwed,” Brody said.

  Fear swirled in my stomach. “Can she get in trouble for just being there as an employee?” I asked Tommy, as if he was supposed to know.

  “Depends, I suppose, on what she’s been doing.”

  “Yeah, well I can tell you what at least some of the girls there are doin’,” Brody said with a chuckle. “At least the ones he’s been bringing up from Chicago.”

  “What?” I asked.