The Book of Bright Ideas Read online

  “I remember Rudy helped him make Mae a bird feeder for her birthday, that first summer after your uncle and I were married. Making it was my idea. Mae liked birds in her yard, cardinals especially, so I thought she’d like a feeder. That poor boy worked for days on that thing, making it all square and nice. Paintin’ it red so it would match the shutters on the house. It should have made her happy, but all she had to say was that it would be too much bother to traipse through the snow to keep it filled come winter, and that in the summertime, the birds could find their own food. She said the squirrels would just gobble up the seeds anyway. I was so mad!” Aunt Verdella’s lips puckered up like the top of a drawstring purse tugged tight, then her mouth fell open and she clicked her teeth with her tongue.

  “I didn’t blame that boy for smashing it to bits. Even though I would have taken that bird feeder myself and propped it right in the front yard, proudly.”

  Aunt Verdella shook her head. “Then she dared resent me, because that boy took to me. Your grandpa was dead by then, and your uncle Rudy had built our house across the road, because Grandma Mae said it never works, two women living under the same roof—even though Betty and Rudy lived with her the whole while they were married. So Reece just hung around Rudy when he wasn’t in school. He helped Rudy with the farm chores, and they’d go fishing and hunting together. Things like that. And I made him peanut butter cookies, and pancakes, and rhubarb pie, because those were his favorites. And I listened to him when he talked. Not like her. Before you knew it, he was spendin’ a night here and there with us, and little by little, his things got moved over to our place. I don’t think Mae even realized he’d moved out. She’d work over there in her flower garden and not so much as glance over to our yard. Guess that’s why your daddy is so special to me. It’s like I raised him myself.”

  Aunt Verdella wrapped Grandma Mae’s picture in newspaper and set it in the box next to her feet. “She was cold. That’s all I can say about her. Cold, long before she went to her grave.” I put my head down and rolled a little vase in newspaper, and I thought about those people who are cold before they get put in a grave. One night I woke from my sleep because I heard arguing, and I heard Daddy say to Ma that she was as cold as a corpse. So the next day I reached out and touched Ma’s arm to see if it was cold, and it was, a little.

  When Aunt Verdella came to Aunt Betty’s picture—a little one that sat on the buffet—she showed that one to me too. Aunt Betty was pretty. Not the kind of pretty like Freeda Malone, but pretty in that churchy sort of way. “How come she died?” I asked, wondering that for the first time.

  “Well, Button. She was gonna have a baby, but things didn’t get that far. The poor thing, she wasn’t far along when she lost it. Bled to death right on her bed while your uncle Rudy was taking your grandma into town to see the doctor because she had a bad chest cold. Oh, that must have been so awful for Rudy,” she said, and tears squeezed out of her pale gray eyes. “Losing his pretty, young wife and his one chance to become a daddy at the same time. He don’t talk about it, but I know it still pains him to this day.”

  “Maybe you could have a baby for him,” I said, and Aunt Verdella smiled a sad smile, then said, “Well, that’s it for this box.” She leaned over to fold the four flaps of cardboard so that the box would stay shut.

  “Aunt Verdella?” I asked, still thinking about Aunt Betty bleeding to death in this house. “Is that bed she died in one of the beds upstairs, or the one down here?”

  “Good Lord,” she said then, slapping her skinny knees. “You’re such a serious little thing that I forget sometimes that I’m talking to a little girl. I shouldn’ta said that about her bleedin’ to death. You just put that thought right out of your head, Button.”

  All the talk about dead people made me think of Winnalee’s dead ma. “Aunt Verdella,” I asked, “is that really Winnalee’s ma in that jar?”

  Aunt Verdella was leaned over a box, her belly hanging low, bumping up against the top of her legs. She was still tipped over when she said, “Yes, it is, Button. And what a pity it is, a little one like that losing her ma, then carrying around her ashes because she can’t bear to part with her.”

  “They burned her ma up?”

  “Yes, Button. It’s called cremation. It gives me the shivers to think of a body being burned up like a trash heap, but I guess some people don’t mind such a thought. It about breaks my heart, though, seeing that little girl carrying her ma around like that.”

  “She ain’t gonna carry her around forever, though. She told me that when she grows up and gets money, she’s gonna buy her a nice stone and a final resting place.”

  “Bless her heart,” Aunt Verdella said, and she looked about ready to cry. So then I thought about dead mas, and mas that aren’t dead, and I realized that maybe I had just found one of those clues about life. So I made a place in my mind to keep it till I could tell Winnalee Bright Idea #85: If your ma liked you, then even if she’s dead and burned up in a jar, you can still talk to her. But if she never liked you, then even if she’s across the road, you can’t.

  For three days, Aunt Verdella and I worked hard. We packed up all of Grandma’s pictures and knickknacks and her good dishes and silver. Then we packed up her clothes and put them in a box to go to people so poor they have to wear dead people’s clothes. We put the boxes of clothes by the front door, and we hauled the dishes and stuff up into the attic. There was an old guitar propped up in the corner. The varnish was worn off right under the hole in the front, and there was a spider’s web tangled over the four strings it had left. I wanted to strum it, but I didn’t want the spider’s web to cling to my fingers.

  Aunt Verdella smiled as she picked up the guitar. “This was your daddy’s first guitar,” she said, touching it as soft as if it was a baby. “Rudy and I gave it to him for his fifteenth birthday. My, but that boy could play, right from the start. I was so proud of him the first time I heard him play with Owen Palmer at Marty’s. Before your ma and dad were married, your daddy played out all the time. Rudy wasn’t much for dancin’, but we’d go down there on Friday nights, have their fish fry, then stay till closing time. Your uncle Rudy would waltz, that’s about it, but I’d always find some women there to jitterbug with. Course, your daddy didn’t just play at Marty’s either. Sometimes they drove a good hundred miles on a Saturday to play for some wedding dance or other kind of party. Folks still shake their heads over your daddy quittin’. They all say he could have made it big.” She set the guitar back down and it made a hollow-sounding ring.

  Aunt Verdella started singing a couple of lines from a song I didn’t know, then she grabbed my arms and started swinging them, her feet moving this way and that way, and her big belly rocking. We laughed, then she dropped my hands. “I’m gonna teach you to jitterbug someday,” she said. She laughed again, then sighed. “It’s such a shame Reece doesn’t play anymore, but your ma said that was no life for a married man. I understand, I suppose, but I just think that it’s such a pity when people stop doin’ the things that make them happy. And I still say, if your ma would have gone with him, learned to dance, and let herself have a little fun, he’d still be playing.”

  When we had all the boxes in the attic, we took down the yellowed curtains from all the windows and washed them in Aunt Verdella’s wringer washer. Then we hung them on the line to dry. It was a warm and windy day, and we giggled as those curtains flapped and snapped and wrapped themselves around us. Then we got busy washing the wallpaper, so it don’t look dingy.

  Me and Aunt Verdella worked till she said her arms and legs were aching like they had a cold in them. The house sure did look spiffy though, and it smelled clean too, from all that scrubbing and the breeze blowing in to air the place out, like Aunt Verdella said.

  When we were done, Aunt Verdella drove to the Daverson’s Motel to tell the Malones that the house was ready. Then, soon as supper was done that night, she made Daddy and Uncle Rudy and Tommy help unload the junk from the Malones’
pickup and wagon. While they started unloading, I brought Winnalee upstairs, like Aunt Verdella told me to do, and I told her to pick out which of the four bedrooms she wanted for her very own.

  Winnalee didn’t pick the one I thought she’d pick—the one with curtains the color of Freeda’s cheeks, and with flowers on the wallpaper in the same color—instead, she picked the room with wallpaper covered in pointy, dark green leaves creeping up the walls on brown ropes. The one with the ceiling that dipped where the room drooped down on the edges. “Why you want this ugly one?” I asked her, while she was setting her ma down on the bench that sat in front of two tall windows that overlooked the fields.

  “Because,” she said. “My ma always wanted a window seat. Now she has one.”

  “I bet your sister is gonna pick the pretty room across the hall, then,” I said.

  “No, she won’t,” Winnalee said. “She won’t sleep in an upstairs. She’ll use the one downstairs.”

  Winnalee and I put her play clothes under the lid of the window seat and her for-real clothes in the dresser and in the closet. We put her shoe box with her “special junk” in it on the shelf above where we hung her clothes. Then, as she was looking for a place to keep her book, I told her that I thought I might have found our next Bright Idea. I told her about how Grandma Mae didn’t like my daddy much, and then I told her what that made me think. When I was done, Winnalee’s eyes looked up for a time, then she smiled and opened her book and wrote down my bright idea, and titled it Number Eighty-Five. And this made me smile.

  4

  It wasn’t but one day since Winnalee moved into Grandma Mae’s house, and already it felt like she’d been my best friend forever. I jumped out of bed before Ma even had the chance to wake me, and I peed and washed and dressed so fast that she didn’t even have to yell at me to get to the breakfast table, because I was already there. I couldn’t wait, because Winnalee promised me she was going to show me a secret from her shoe box this morning.

  Aunt Verdella said that what we get is heritated. Like the way I got eyes the color of mud with some green speckles in them from Ma, and the way Aunt Verdella got her happy-go-lucky ways from her daddy. I thought about this heritatary stuff when Daddy came to the table and didn’t look at me. Not even once.

  Daddy stabbed at his scrambled eggs with his fork and brought a wad to his mouth, then stopped. He turned his fork over and saw that the bottoms were brown, then dropped the fork. Ma was watching him. “I could make some more,” she said. “I was busy buttering the toast, and answering the phone, and…well…” Ma was a good cook most of the time, but sometimes she wasn’t.

  “I’m gonna just have juice this morning,” I said to Ma, quietly, when she tried to give me some burned eggs too. “Aunt Verdella is making pancakes this morning.”

  “Reece?”

  “Never mind, Jewel,” Daddy said. “I’ll have something at Verdella’s, like the kid.” Daddy never called me Evelyn, or even Button. If “The Kid” was supposed to be another nickname, it didn’t feel like one to me.

  Ma took away our plates, with fingers that had nails chewed down so far that they looked like thin little half-moons. Her nibbled-up fingers shook a bit as she set our plates on the counter with a little clank.

  “Is your coffee strong enough?” Ma asked, and Daddy told her it wasn’t. She reached for the can of Folgers, saying she’d brew a fresh pot, but Daddy told her not to bother. That he’d fill it at Verdella’s, along with his stomach.

  “Why do you have to go there this morning?” Ma asked.

  “I brought Rudy a tool from the mill yesterday,” he said. “I’d best get it back there today.” Daddy worked fixing machines at the Dauber Paper Mill. They made boxes, and toilet paper, writing paper, and whatnot. Daddy brought home free toilet paper that scratched your butt when you wiped, and he brought home notebook paper that they were going to throw out because it wasn’t perfect. I used it to draw on, but I couldn’t use it for school, even if it was free, because the lines were crooked, or the ink almost invisible.

  Daddy grabbed his lunch bucket and his empty thermos from the counter. Then he grabbed a hunk of ham with his fingers as he passed the table. He headed out the door without saying good-bye.

  “Did you put your pajamas in the hamper?” Ma asked me. I nodded, and she said, “I can’t hear a nod, Button. You speak up when I ask you a question.” She glanced out the window as Daddy’s truck rumbled down the driveway. “He’s going right over there, but do you think he could drop his daughter off and save me the trip? Like he’s the only one here who has to get to work.” She turned back to me, blinking like she just remembered I was there. Some sad was sitting in her eyes. “Get your sweater on, and get in the car, please.”

  When I got to Aunt Verdella’s, Daddy was there, leaning against the counter holding a coffee cup and a piece of coffee cake. Aunt Verdella was standing at the counter making pancake batter. They were all laughing, so I figured that either Uncle Rudy or Daddy had just told a funny story. “Get over here and give Auntie a hug,” Aunt Verdella said. She moaned like she was eating chocolate when she hugged me. “You ready for some breakfast?”

  “Good thing you feed her, or she’d starve to death. Crissakes, you should have seen the eggs we had this morning,” Dad said. “Like rubber. And they stunk like a skunk!”

  “Oh Reece,” Aunt Verdella said. “Jewel isn’t much of a cook, that’s true, but she is good at so many things. Don’t be mean, now.”

  Daddy looked at his watch and said he’d better get going. He set down his cup and picked a big tool off of the corner of the table. Aunt Verdella handed him his filled thermos. “You have a good day, Reece,” she said. She moved me in front of her. “Give your daddy a hug good-bye,” she said, as she pushed against my back. I leaned back against her, not budging. “Bye, kid,” Daddy said.

  Winnalee came over while we were sitting at the table. She pressed her face against the screen—which wasn’t easy, since she had her ma in her arms and had to lean over the vase—and we told her to come in. She was wearing another mesh skirt. Pink, this time, but she had on a girl’s shirt and a pair of shorts under the slip so her undies didn’t show.

  Aunt Verdella poured three ladlefuls of pancake batter onto the skillet, then stretched the two blobs on top into long bunny ears with the back of her spoon. When the batter bubbled up, she dropped two raisins on the face for eyes, then flipped him over. “You eat breakfast yet, sweetie?” she asked Winnalee. Winnalee told her no, because they hadn’t shopped yet, so Aunt Verdella told her she’d make her a bunny pancake too. Winnalee giggled, because she’d never heard of bunny pancakes before.

  “Hey, where’s my bunny pancake?” Uncle Rudy said, and all three of us giggled. Uncle Rudy shoved the last strip of his bacon into his mouth, saving the fatty part for Knucklehead—his old chocolate Lab with a jagged scar by his lip—who waited by his chair. Knucklehead caught it with a snap, then came over by me to see if I had some for him too. I didn’t, but I had a pat, so I gave him that instead.

  Uncle Rudy got up and grabbed his hat from the post of his chair. “Verdie, send Tommy over to the east forty when he gets here, will ya?” He smiled down at me and Winnalee. “We’re fixing that fence up so good that those cows will have to grow wings if they want to get loose now.”

  Aunt Verdella wrapped her arms around him and gave him a big squeeze. “Don’t you go working too hard or your back will start acting up again. Let that boy do the heavier stuff, Rudy. That’s what you hired him for. You be good, and tomorrow morning maybe I’ll make you bunny pancakes too.” She started giving him noisy smooches on his cheek. Uncle Rudy spread his elbows a bit to break out of her hold, but Aunt Verdella just leaned over his arms and kept right on smooching.

  “Verdie, you keep mauling on me and those cows are gonna have the time to grow wings before I get that fence fixed too.” Aunt Verdella let go of Uncle Rudy, and he said, “Come on, Knucklehead, before she starts slobbering on you too.” Me and
Winnalee and Aunt Verdella giggled.

  “Well, girls,” Aunt Verdella said after Uncle Rudy left. “I’ve got orders for two more pairs of booties, so I’m gonna have to crochet as soon as I get these dishes done. Afterward, I’m gonna hightail over and see how Freeda’s coming along. You girls got anything planned for this morning?”

  Winnalee’s mouth was full of pancakes and the corners of her lips were sticky with syrup, but she answered anyway. She had one elbow on the table too, which you’re not supposed to do. “We’re gonna look for fairies,” she said. I looked down at my earless bunny, wishing Winnalee hadn’t said such a stupid thing. Everybody knew that there wasn’t such a thing as fairies. Winnalee promised me she was going to prove it to me today, but I doubted it.

  “Fairies! Oh, I loved fairies when I was a girl! In school, we had to learn a poem to recite in front of the class. I learned a poem by some Yeats fellow. I don’t remember the whole thing anymore, but I do remember one part.” She set Uncle Rudy’s dirty dish and coffee cup on the counter, brushed her hands on her apron, then folded them against her fat belly.

  There lies a leafy island

  Where flapping herons wake

  The drowsy water-rats;

  There we’ve hid our faery vats,

  Full of berries

  And of reddest stolen cherries.

  Come away, O human child!

  To the waters and the wild

  With a faery, hand in hand,

  For the world’s more full of weeping than you can

  understand.

  Winnalee started clapping her hands, so I did too, even though I thought that poem sounded sad at the end. Aunt Verdella took her skirt and held it out at the sides, then did one of those curtsies that fancy ladies in old movies do before they let a man dance with them. She giggled then and said, “Oh, I can’t believe I still remember that silly ol’ thing.”