A Life of Bright Ideas Read online

  CHAPTER

  27

  BRIGHT IDEA #96: When you go on a trip to buy a special surprise for your best friend, sing “You Are My Sunshine” and think of all the big people and the little people who are your sunshines. Then look at the old houses you pass, and think about the people who lived in them, and hope that they were somebody’s sunshine, too.

  One thing I liked about sewing was that it made sense. You had a pattern—even if someone else cut it out for you—and you followed it. You sewed seams together, keeping your eyes close to where you were stitching, and there was no worrying, no guesswork about how it would turn out.

  For the next few days, Winnalee was quiet. A couple of times, she said she was going out for a while, and didn’t say where she was headed. Maybe looking for work. Or maybe sitting down at Dauber Falls, thinking. I missed her. Even when she was right beside me at night, I missed her. But mostly, I worried. Before Freeda came, Aunt Verdella was over at my place almost more than she was home. But not so much anymore. So she startled me when she suddenly appeared in my sewing room, so early that the dew was still on the grass. I hurried to shut my stereo off, but Aunt Verdella stopped me. “I like this song,” she said, doing a little dance to the last chorus of “I Want You Back.” She ha-ha’d when the song was over, then leaned and peered into the hallway. “Uh-oh, I probably woke Winnalee.”

  “No, she’s not here.”

  Aunt Verdella cocked her head. “I didn’t think she got up this early.”

  “She normally doesn’t. She usually sleeps until nine or ten.”

  “Where’d she go?”

  “I don’t know. I was sleeping when she left. I’m sure she’ll be back soon,” I said, hoping I was right.

  “Okay,” she said, giving me a hug and cooing over the hardly made dress. “Your ma would be so proud of you, making your first wedding gown.” I smiled, knowing this was true.

  I moved some folded fabric off the only spare chair I had in the room and Aunt Verdella sat down. “Freeda’s giving Cupcake her bath, and Boohoo and Rudy are out in the garden, so I thought I’d come see my favorite girl.”

  “Cupcake.” I repeated the nickname that was starting to stick, and giggled.

  Aunt Verdella tapped the bolt of fabric. “Oh, this is pretty.

  What’s it for?”

  “One of Cindy Jamison’s bridesmaids’ dresses. It isn’t exactly what she wanted, but when I told her it was Winnalee’s idea to do the dresses in the same fabric, only different colors, she decided it was cool.”

  Aunt Verdella smiled, then she tapped my arm excitedly. “You aren’t gonna believe it, but I weighed myself this morning, and I lost four pounds since Freeda got here. In just one week!”

  “Way to go, Aunt Verdella!”

  “Freeda’s helping me. She makes me eat my meals on a dessert plate—whatever I want, but not sweets—as long as I eat it on that plate. And if I try snitchin’ anything from the pan or Boohoo’s dish, she slaps my fingers like I’m a baby puttin’ a fork in a light socket. Good thing, too, because I don’t even notice I’m doin’ it until she taps me.”

  I didn’t know if people were supposed to notice a four-pound weight loss, but I pretended I did. “Your uncle Rudy couldn’t tell. But that’s a man for you. Freeda’s going to color my hair tonight, too. She said it’s two-toned. I didn’t think it looked two-toned, did you?”

  “I don’t know …,” I said.

  “Well, Fanny and Freeda sure did.”

  Aunt Verdella picked up a spool of thread and snagged the loose end back onto the groove along the rim. “She’s sure got your dad coming out of his shell.”

  “Who? Fanny Tilman?” I joked.

  Aunt Verdella laughed. “Oh, Button, you know who I meant. We drove over there last night to bring him some supper, and I couldn’t believe how she got him laughin’. She decided his house better get fixed up before it crumbles, and like it or not, she’s going to see that it does. I’m gonna watch Cupcake and she’s going over there tonight after she does my hair and he heads to work, and she’s gonna start ripping up that water-ruined linoleum in the kitchen.” Aunt Verdella’s laugh had the jitters. “He’s probably gonna have a conniption fit, but Freeda said she’ll deal with him.”

  “I wish she’d find a way to deal with Winnalee,” I said.

  The corners of Aunt Verdella’s eyes drooped, and I was sorry I’d let those words pop out. “Oh, Button, she’s trying, but those two … sometimes I think Freeda and Winnalee are just too much alike for their own good. Both are headstrong and set in their ways. But they love each other.”

  I nodded.

  “Button, do you talk to Winnalee about Freeda?”

  “I can’t, Aunt Verdella. She just gets mad.” I didn’t mention that the last time I tried to, Winnalee cut me off, saying, “I’ll cozy up to Freeda about the time you cozy up to your dad.” Winnalee didn’t realize that my situation was different: Freeda actually loved her. But she shut me up on that one, all the same.

  Aunt Verdella shrugged. “I guess it’s just harder to fix things with your blood relatives than it is to fix things with the family you choose.”

  Aunt Verdella stood up and peered out the window, pulling back the curtain. “What on earth is that boy doing now?” she said. “He was in the garden with Rudy when I left.”

  I stood up and squeezed beside her to take a look. Boohoo was by the lean-to, crouched over Knucklehead.

  “He’s probably wrapping him in yarn,” I said.

  “Well, he’s up to something. That little dickens. Come on, walk me home.”

  Aunt Verdella must have noticed me staring longingly at the mailbox. “You must be waiting for some mail from that boy.”

  “He’s taking me to a movie when he gets home on leave,” I told her.

  “Oh, boy.” She giggled a little, then said, “My little Button, getting popular with the boys. But then I’d expect that, you being such a pretty, sweet thing. Tommy’s gonna be jealous,” she said in a singsong voice. I rolled my eyes. Aunt Verdella would say that—even if I’d been born with feet where my hands should be, and a head the size of a pea. She always assumed that everyone loved me just as much as she did.

  When we reached her yard, Knucklehead was standing on spindly legs drinking from his water dish, a Pampers strapped around his hindquarter and his tail poking out of a raggedy hole. Aunt Verdella laughed so hard that she had to cross her legs and hop to the house. “Good heavens, maybe I’d better start wearing Pampers!”

  Winnalee came barreling down the road while we were still outside, and relief dropped my shoulders. Aunt Verdella was just about to tell me “one more thing,” but a loud crash in the house interrupted her. “Oh dear, I’d better get inside and see what that boy did now.”

  Before I even reached the sandbox, Winnalee was coming out of our house—her duffel bag and army purse slung over her shoulder.

  Panic slammed me in the stomach and I started running, shouting, “Winnalee! Where you going?”

  Winnalee didn’t look at me, she just hurried to her van all the faster. She yanked open the passenger door and tossed her bags in. “Winnalee!” I screamed. “What are you doing? Where are you going?”

  She was already behind the steering wheel, and the metal door was hot to the touch when I hung my hands over the door frame.

  “Crissakes, announce it to the whole world, will you?” she said. She glanced in her rearview mirror.

  I was almost panting and near tears. “You’ve got your duffel bag.”

  Winnalee didn’t look upset. She looked almost happy.

  “I’m not leaving for good, Button,” she said. “Just for a couple of days.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To Hopested, Minnesota, to see Hannah,” she said. “To ask her if she’ll raise my kid.”

  CHAPTER

  28

  BRIGHT IDEA #5: If your sister tells you that nine times seven is sixty-three, but you think it’s sixty-seven,
don’t bother drawing nine dots and counting them seven times. You’ll miss Bewitched, and be wrong anyway.

  I stared at Winnalee in disbelief. Was this what she’d been contemplating when she slipped away? And did she really believe Hannah should raise Evalee? I’d heard Freeda confront Hannah with my own ears. I wanted to shout, “Are you crazy?” but instead, I said as calmly as I could, “Winnalee, you do know what happened to Freeda when she was little, right?” Winnalee’s grip on the steering wheel whitened her knuckles. “Winnalee … look at me. You do know that your uncle Dewey was molesting Freeda when she was little, don’t you? And when Freeda told, Hannah slapped her and called her a liar.”

  “Freeda does lie,” Winnalee snapped.

  “About little things maybe, but not about something like this. Are you forgetting that I was there when Hannah showed up at Aunt Verdella’s? That I saw Freeda confront her? Freeda brought up specific instances, Winnalee, and she was not lying. If you’d been there, you’d know it, too. It’s why she rushed back to Hopested to get you. She’d learned that Dewey was back living with Hannah, and she wasn’t about to let him hurt you. Yeah, maybe she was wrong in how she did it, but she wasn’t wrong in getting you out of there.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’ll tell you this much. After I leave Evalee, I’m never, ever gonna take her back. I wouldn’t do that to her.”

  She glanced in the mirror again. “I’ve gotta go,” she said.

  Winnalee let the van roll backward, but I didn’t let go of the door. “Wait!” I shouted. “I’m going with you.”

  “Why?” she asked, suspicion squinting her eyes.

  Because I don’t want you facing Dewey, Hannah, the truth, alone.

  “Because I’m your best friend,” I said. “And I could stand to get out of Dauber and go on a little adventure.”

  “Cool. Jump in,” she said.

  “I have to grab my purse,” I told her. I glanced across the road. Our pens were always strung around the house, except for the one I always kept tucked in my stationery box. But it was upstairs, along with Winnalee’s sketching pencils. But if I hurried, I could scratch Aunt Verdella a—

  Winnalee interrupted my thoughts as if she’d heard them. “It should take you five seconds to run inside and grab it from the hook inside the door. You aren’t back in that time, I’m pulling out without you.”

  So I got my purse and hurried back to the van, feeling every bit like I did at nine, and tagging along after Winnalee searching for beings that didn’t exist.

  Winnalee jutted out her chin to blow air into her face. “Roll your window down, will you?” She shook her head. “I don’t know how you can stand wearing jeans in summer. You make me sweat just looking at you.” Winnalee flicked on the radio then, and turned it up until the dashboard pulsed. She bounced with the music, and sang with carefree abandonment, as though we were two hippies going off to Woodstock.

  CHAPTER

  29

  BRIGHT IDEA #10: Never eat cotton candy in the rain.

  When we got to Hopested, Winnalee started pointing out the stores she remembered, and I had to reach over and grab the wheel a few times, or we would have rammed into the cars parallel-parked on Main Street. “Oh, oh, Ma got her prescriptions filled at that drugstore right there! I always got Pixy Stix.” And “Oh, oh, there’s the Laundromat where we used to go. I liked climbing in the dryer and pretending it was my spaceship. And that restaurant, right next to it? Right there? A lady named Doris worked there. She always gave me extra pickles.” Winnalee spotted the flag waving above the rooftops a few blocks ahead. “My school! I didn’t know it was this close to town!”

  When the one-story brick building came into sight, Winnalee swerved to the curb rather than pulling into the empty parking lot, and jumped out. “Oh my God, look at how small it is! Come on,” she said. She took off running.

  I tagged her into the school yard, where she stopped and spun in slow, starstruck circles. “Isn’t it cool?” It looked like most every other school building to me: one story, brick, windows lined in rows like desks, with a blacktopped playground filled with the usual assortment of equipment: swings, a slide, a jungle gym, a merry-go-round.

  There was something heartbreaking about watching Winnalee cupping her hands over the sides of her face to peer in the windows. “My kindergarten room!” she shouted. “They still have the little playhouse! Come see, Button. Come see!” She pointed out where they lined up to get their milk, and where the napping mats were kept. “And there’s the table I fell against when I tripped over my shoelace. I split my lip open. Ma thought it would scar, but it didn’t.”

  Winnalee took off for the playground toys, giggling like she was five again, while I tried to subdue the unease I felt when I heard Winnalee call Hannah Ma. She insisted that I get on the merry-go-round with her, then spun us until the horizon smeared, and leapt off before the spinning stopped. “Come on!” she yelled. I dragged my foot in the dirt until the merry-go-round stopped and staggered after Winnalee.

  Winnalee hiked up her long dress and tied it in a knot at her thigh, then climbed up the monkey bars. She braced her feet on the two opposing poles near the top and elevated herself up above the highest tower. She lifted her arms above her head, and shouted, “Winnalee Malone! Maker of Magic! Fairy of Fun! Princess of the Playground!” She peered down and giggled. “Debbie Rutherford used to get so mad at me when I’d say that. So I’d do this …” She stepped down one wrung and clutched the bars. Then, using her whole body, she jerked side to side so that the jungle gym wobbled. Winnalee stopped. “She’d scream then, because she thought I was using magic to make the bars shake. Like I could make the whole thing crumble and crash to the blacktop and bury her alive if I wanted to.”

  Winnalee didn’t climb down until her cheeks were flushed, then she stood quietly, blinking against the breeze as she looked over the playground and building. “Freeda didn’t have any right taking me away,” she said slowly. “I was happy here. I could have stayed in the same school for all my grades.”

  We stopped at a gas station I was sure I remembered from my trip to Hopested with Aunt Verdella when I was nine. I used the restroom first, then Winnalee. While she was gone, I dug in my purse for change. I wasn’t sure how much a three-minute call home would cost, but certainly more than the few cents I managed to scrounge up. There were two customers waiting in line, and the old clerk was so putzy that I knew I wouldn’t have time to cash a couple of dollars before Winnalee stepped out. I dialed O for the operator and told her I wanted to make a collect call.

  Boohoo answered.

  “Collect call from Evelyn Peters. Will you accept the charges?” the operator asked.

  “You ain’t Evy. Who is this?” Boohoo asked.

  “Operator, he’s only six years old. He doesn’t understand,” I hurriedly explained.

  “Collect call from Evelyn Peters. Will you accept the charges?” she repeated, as if I hadn’t spoken.

  Say yes, Boohoo. Say yes!

  “Boohoo? Who’s on the phone?” Aunt Verdella’s voice sounded far away, like maybe she was talking from the living room, or even out on the porch. Give her the phone, Boohoo. Please!

  “It’s Crackpot again,” Boohoo groaned, and the line went dead.

  “I’m sorry, Miss. The party you dialed did not accept charges. Please try again another time.” She hung up.

  The restroom door opened, just as I was hurrying to press down the receiver so I could try again. “You called them, didn’t you?” Winnalee barked from across the room. The elderly clerk leaned around a customer to gawk. Winnalee marched down an aisle lined with motor oil and antifreeze, her eyes pinched.

  “I tried to,” I said when she reached me. “Aunt Verdella will be worried sick tonight when we don’t show up and she doesn’t know where we are.”

  “What did you tell her? I don’t want Freeda knowing my business.”

  “Nothing. I didn’t get to talk to her. I called collect and Boohoo answered.”


  The clerk grabbed a pen and peered out at Winnalee’s van. When Winnalee noticed, she snapped, “Geez, we’re eighteen. Legal adults. Not a couple of stupid-assed runaway kids!”

  Hannah’s house was small and dirty white. A section of the roof on the nearby barn was caved in, and broken farm equipment was scattered across the overgrown yard. A stack of windows, some broken, were leaned up against the house, and chickens were feeding near the front door.

  Winnalee stopped the van and pointed. “I remember them,” she said, as if the chickens could possibly be the same birds that had been there when she was a kid.

  A face appeared in a window, the head too small to belong to someone the size of Hannah. Winnalee grabbed her fatigue-green purse off the seat and we got out. “I’m nervous,” she whispered. I took her hand.

  A man opened the door before we cleared the chipped cement steps. He was short and had narrow shoulders. His eyes were bright blue, like Winnalee’s, and his boyishly round face looked at odds with the Uncle Rudy–deep wrinkles. He reached up and scratched his grizzly cheek.

  “Uncle Dewey?” Winnalee asked.

  “Who is it, Dew?” came a wheezy voice from inside.

  Winnalee started crying then, and brushed past Dewey. He backed up and let me in, tipping an imaginary hat. I stepped over the ladies’ flats with sides stretched wide like boats and an array of work boots that cluttered the doorway, and followed Winnalee into the kitchen. Hannah—every bit as big as I remembered—was sitting at the table, a sheet of notebook paper pinned under her forearm. She had to be at least fifty—Freeda was thirty-three—but any lines that had tried crinkling her face had obviously been stretched to lie flat. She still wore a crucifix around her neck, but either a different one than the one she wore to Dauber, or the same one on a longer chain, because it was no longer embedded in the folds of her neck.

  “Maaaaaaaaaaa,” Winnalee cried, as if she’d just jumped out of our magic tree and landed in yesteryear.