Girlhearts Read online

  “And what are you saying, Mrs. Krall? Jane was supposed to give you a month’s notice before she had the heart attack?”

  “Don’t get smart with me,” Dolly said. She looked as if she was ready to pick up Leo and shake him.

  “So Sarabeth has a refund coming, I guess,” Leo said.

  “Are you joking? The condition that place was in? Had to be painted from head to toe. A door had to be replaced, plus some tiles in the bathroom. Let me tell you, I’ll give you an itemized bill and you can see for yourself.”

  “Good!” Leo said.

  “What about our stuff?” I said. “Mom’s stuff. Where is it?”

  “We took care of it. Don’t you worry about that,” Dolly said. “Fred and me did it together. We got it all stored, waiting for you, and why don’t you get that sour look off of your face, Sarabeth. You think we want your things? Fred and me got a lot nicer stuff than you and your mom ever had, no offense meant.”

  She crooked her finger at me. “Come on in, take a load off. You, too,” she said to Leo. “I’ll put on my boots and walk you over to the storage shed. You can see everything for yourselves.”

  “That’s okay; we’ll wait out here,” Leo said.

  “Suit yourself.” Dolly let the door slam behind her.

  “Jeeze, oh man, she’s a piece of work,” Leo said. He blew on his hands again. “I’m going to get my gloves. You warm enough? You’re not wearing a hat. I’ve got an extra in the truck.”

  “No, I’m okay,” I said, but I was cold, and I followed him to the truck. This morning, I’d had a brainstorm and called to ask if he’d bring Tobias along, so I could have a visit. Now I climbed into the front seat and picked him up.

  “You’re beautiful again,” I said, holding Tobias up to my face. “Do you know me? Have you forgotten me? You better not!” Leo had left the engine running, so the truck was warm. I kissed Tobias’s nose, his ears, and each of his paws. He furled and unfurled his claws, his eyes half-closed.

  Dolly came out of her house, wearing a red hunting jacket and black rubber boots. “Yoo hoo!” she called.

  I put Tobias down, and Leo and I followed Dolly through the trailer park, way to the back, past the rows of homes. At the end of the last row, the one closest to the sheared-off cliff behind the court, she stopped in front of a rusting silver trailer.

  “I saved you a lot of work, Sarabeth, in case you don’t know it,” she said, unlocking the door. “That was no little easy moving job that Fred and I did. Those beds alone were killers.”

  She held the door open. “Look around, get whatever you want. Take your time.”

  It was colder inside than out—cold, damp, and dim. All I could see at first was a clutter of lumpy shapes. Then Mom’s bureau, with a couple of kitchen chairs on top of it, came clear. After that, everything. My bed frame, the old rocker, lamps, chairs, mattresses on end, and boxes and plastic bags heaped everywhere. I’d seen this storage trailer so many times before, but I’d never thought about it, never wondered who used it or what was in it. Now I knew. We were in it. Mom and me.

  “Where’s that red couch?” Leo said. “The love seat?”

  “Oh, that thing.” Dolly was half in, half out, holding the door open. “Fred and I put it in our place, so as it wouldn’t get ruined here.” She shifted, and her shadow fell over Leo. Behind her, the sun was going down behind the cliff.

  “Well, hey,” Leo said, crossing his arms. “I think we just want that couch back in here. Don’t we, Sarabeth? And what else, Mrs. Krall? Anything else missing from here?”

  “There’s nothing missing from here. Don’t start with me, fella. That moth-eaten couch isn’t missing; there’s nothing missing or illegal here. You should be thanking me, not mouthing off at me.”

  “You’ll bring the couch back here then, until Sarabeth decides what to do with it, right?” Leo turned his back on her. “Sarabeth, what are we looking for?” He propped the door open with a chair. “We’ll let you know when we’re done,” he said to Dolly.

  “You do that!” She went down the stairs, making a lot of noise with her boots.

  I watched her walk away, stomping her feet into the snow. “Thanks, Leo.”

  “What for? Don’t tell me. I know. I got rid of the dragon lady.”

  “Not just that.” I knelt and opened a box. The toaster was in it and newspaper-wrapped plates and glasses with a bunch of Mom’s scarves stuffed in at the sides, the ones she wore over her hair when she worked. I put her favorite scarf, a white one with yellow fish, in my backpack, then pulled the tape off another box. This one was filled with shoes and boots.

  “I mean thanks for everything,” I said to Leo. “The couch and, you know, everything. Driving me here. You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Come on,” he said, “it’s nothing. Don’t embarrass me. We’ve been friends for a long time, you and me.”

  “You and Mom,” I said.

  “The three of us were friends,” Leo said. He looked at me. “The three of us. Okay?”

  “Sure,” I said, shrugging.

  Leo sighed. “So, what are you wanting to find here? Give me a clue, Sarabeth. I’ll start looking, too.”

  I closed up the boot box and put it to one side. “Do you remember my old quilt, the one with rabbits on it?”

  “Rabbits? Really?”

  “Yeah, bunny wabbits. It was my baby quilt. You could look for that.” There were a few other things I wanted, nothing big. Mom’s gold sun catcher, a hairbrush I was missing, some of my clothes. “You gave me a book of cat cartoons for my birthday a couple of years ago. I’d like that.”

  “Send it back with me, so Tobias can have a laugh.”

  “Cute,” I said. I was looking into a black plastic garbage bag. Utensils, shampoo, cookbooks, clothes. “Is Tobias okay?” I asked. “Is it working out all right for him to live with you?”

  “It’s working out great. He and Pepper really clicked. He gets big-time attention from her.”

  “He does?” I said. “What if he forgets me?”

  “He’s never going to forget you. You’re his mom.”

  I opened another box, then another. I rearranged stuff, picking up things that had been Mom’s and putting them back carefully. “Leo, here’s that garlic press you gave us.”

  “Did you guys ever use it?”

  “Not me. Mom was the garlic lover.”

  Way at the bottom of a box, I found a small address book with a faded blue cover. Most of it was filled with names of neighbors and the people Mom had worked for. Next to some names, she’d drawn little symbols—a question mark, a frowny face, an exclamation point. In the back of the notebook under “Hinchville” was a handful of names and phone numbers. Doreen and Thomas Halley—555-3311. Netta Bishop—555-3090. Elizabeth Wardly—555-4466. Judith and Martin Silver—555-6085. Doreen and Thomas Halley were Mom’s parents, that much I knew. The other names didn’t mean anything to me.

  “Sarabeth.” Leo looked up from a box he was pawing through. “I found the sun catcher.”

  “Great. Leo, did you know Mom put a heart next to your name in her address book?”

  He knelt down and took the notebook. “Oh man …” He gave a kind of whimpering laugh. “She was the one who deserved it, not me. She had the big heart.”

  I reached over and flipped to the Hinchville page. “Look at this.”

  “Yeah, I know. I think your mom always believed that someday she’d pick up the phone and someone from her family would be on the line, her mother or—”

  “Her mother, my so-called grandmother? I don’t think so.” My heart seemed to speed up and beat very hard. I wrapped my arms around my knees. “I hate those people, Leo. I really hate them.”

  Leo took my chin in his hand, but I pulled away. “Don’t go there, Sarabeth,” he said. “I’m telling you, don’t go to that place where you hate people. Your mom never did.”

  “Yoo hoo.” Dolly was back, filling the doorway. “Sarabeth, forgot to say that you
can leave your stuff sit here for another week, max; then you got to get it out or pay storage. Whichever, is okay with me. I’ll charge you less than those big rip-off storage companies, anyway.”

  I stood and dusted off my jeans. “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay, you want to do it?”

  “I don’t know.” I put Mom’s address book in my pocket. “I have to think about it.”

  She shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She was gone again, stamping down the steps.

  “Leo, what do you think? What do I do with all our stuff? I can’t bring anything over to Cynthia’s. There’s no room there.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” he said. “I think we should store it someplace better than this, one of those metal sheds where you know it won’t get water-damaged or anything.”

  “Can I afford it?”

  “Don’t worry about it. If you can’t, I’ll take care of it. Not a big deal.”

  We didn’t find the book of cat cartoons, but when we left, I had my quilt, the sun catcher, the address book, and a framed photo that Mom had always kept on her bureau, a studio shot of her and my father. It was their wedding picture, just the two of them—no family. My father was wearing a suit and a tie, and Mom was wearing a dress, her hair cut short and draped over one side of her forehead. They were sitting next to each other, their heads touching, very serious. No fake “take my picture” smiles. Just their real faces looking out at me. Cynthia always said I looked like Mom, but Leo said I looked like my father. Half and half, I always thought.

  In the truck, I put Tobias on my lap and took the picture out of my backpack to look at it again. I noticed that the glass was cracked across one edge. “It wasn’t cracked before, when Mom had it,” I said to Leo. “It must have happened when Dolly and Fred packed up our stuff.”

  I held the picture up to the light. Mom’s dress was red and close-fitting, almost a twin to the one she’d worn the night we ran through Roadview holding hands and looking for the rain. Mom had been sixteen when the picture was taken, and pregnant. So, really, I was in it, too. The three of us, our family, we were all in it together. I kissed the picture. “You guys were so brave,” I said.

  EIGHTEEN

  “Dolly Krall just loomed in the doorway,” I said, looking around the table at my friends. We were in the Waffle Iron, sharing one of their “extraordinary superstrawberry waffles,” and while we ate, I was making a story—a good one, I hoped—out of Leo’s and my foray to the storage trailer.

  “Dolly filled that whole space. She was steaming! You could practically see it coming out of her ears.”

  Remembering that Mrs. Hilbert had said good storytelling was detailed, I stuffed in as many details as I could remember. The black garbage bags tumbled every which way, Leo going mano a mano with Dolly over her renting the trailer, the chairs perched on the bureau, the cracked glass in my parents’ picture, and Leo’s almost crying when he saw the heart near his name in Mom’s address book.

  I even mentioned the fish scarf, which I planned to keep with me all the time now. “Here it is,” I said, taking the scarf out of my backpack.

  “How cute!” Jen said.

  “I love it,” Asa said, and she reached for it.

  “No, no, no. No touch.” I put the scarf back in my backpack and kept talking. I was talking a lot, telling them the whole story of that afternoon.

  No, not really. I fudged it. I left out stuff. I left out my sadness. I knew what I was doing. Pretending to be so okay. Normal. No more long face. I made my eyes big. I talked fast. I made it all as funny as I could. I even made Dolly funny, someone you could laugh at, someone you could laugh off.

  “You could probably go on the stage, Sarabeth,” Asa said. “You could be one of those people who make their lives into a show. A one-woman show. The story of your life, with chapters. This one would be called ‘Dearest Dolly.’”

  Jennifer, always having to go Asa one better, said, “I’d call it ‘The Dolly Krall Kommando Raid.’” Then we all started making up chapter titles, the sillier the better, for different parts of our lives. It was the first time I’d really laughed since Mom died.

  I took to carrying around Mom’s address book in my back pocket, maybe because it was the only thing I had in her handwriting. We’d never been separated long enough to write letters. Saturday, when Cynthia and I were in the park with Darren, taking turns pushing him on the swing, I showed her the address book. I pointed out her name with stars around it, and then I showed her the page with Mom’s relatives, the Hinchville people.

  “That kills me,” she said. “Her keeping those names all these years.”

  “Leo says Mom never stopped thinking someone would get in touch with her someday.”

  “She should have ripped those names out and burned them. I would have! Such nice people, those Halleys. Open them up, and, what do you bet, you’d find gravel where their hearts ought to be. Your mom and dad were just kids. So they rushed things—so what!” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Think how hurt she must have been! Her own mother kicking her out.”

  Cynthia lit a cigarette and gave Darren another push. “And then not even out of her teens, and she’s on her own with you. But she never lost heart, never threw herself around and bawled, like someone else might have.”

  Someone else. That meant me, didn’t it?

  The cigarette hung on the edge of her lip. The wind picked up the smoke and blew it toward Darren. “Don’t you worry about secondhand smoke?” I said.

  Did she even hear me? She waved her hand in the air, maybe to brush me off, maybe to push away the smoke. Maybe both.

  “Jane never felt sorry for herself,” she mused. “She was so tough. If she’d lived, she would have been one of these tough old ladies—you know the type, tough old birds. She was a trouper, a fighter.” Cynthia looked up. A mist of clouds traveled in a high wind across the sky. “God, I miss that woman,” she said. She crossed her arms over her chest and stood there, smoking and staring up at the clouds.

  I gave Darren a push.

  And what about you, Sarabeth?

  What about me? Push.

  Are you a fighter?

  I don’t know. Push.

  Are you a trouper?

  I don’t know. Push.

  Are you tough?

  I don’t know. Push. I don’t know. Push. I. Don’t. Know. Push. Push. Push.

  Push until arms ache.

  Push until Darren’s feet hit the sky.

  Push until he screams with pleasure and Cynthia screams with anger. “What the hell are you doing? He’s too high. Stop that, Sarabeth! Stop!”

  Then walk away to the fence, grip the metal diamond-work, look at the clouds wavering across the sky, and wait until the trembling stops.

  NINETEEN

  “Is the box with your mom’s ashes really under the couch where you sleep?” Grant asked. She was sitting behind me on the bed, braiding my hair.

  “Yes, it’s there,” I said.

  “What does it look like?” Jen asked.

  “Like a regular square white cardboard box, about the size of a cake box. Weighs about the same, too. Any other questions?”

  It was New Year’s Eve, and we were all in Grant’s bedroom, in our pj’s, or what passed for pj’s, Jen in footy pajamas, the kind little kids wore, the rest of us in T-shirts and sweatpants. We’d had a little supper and a lot of dessert, including a double-chocolate cake that Grant’s mom had bought at the best bakery in the city. We were planning to stay up until at least midnight, but probably later, to see in the New Year.

  Asa raised her soda can. “A toast to mom-in-a-box. Here’s to her.”

  “Asa!” Grant and Patty spoke at the same time.

  Asa’s face reddened. “I’m just trying to make Sarabeth laugh.”

  “So when you got the box from the funeral home,” Jen said, “where’d you put it in the car?”

  “I held it in my lap. And I opened it and looked inside.”

  Jen shuddered. “Y
ou didn’t.”

  “What’s the big deal, Jen? It’s not her mom in there,” Asa said. “It’s just ashes. What do they look like, Sarabeth?”

  “Asa!” Grant and Patty said again.

  “They’re gray, Asa,” I said, “and there’s bits of hard white stuff mixed in. Bone.”

  “Wow,” Patty said. “That’s … I really think that’s spiritual. Don’t you think so? Don’t you think there’s something of your mom in there, Sarabeth? I mean her essence, her spirit.”

  I nodded. I had thought the same thing. It was really why I didn’t mind having the box under the couch.

  “Cynthia wanted me to give the box to Leo to keep,” I said. “She thought having it in the apartment would upset me. She was ready to go right over to Leo’s after we left the funeral home. She said if no one was there, we could leave it in the mailbox.”

  “She didn’t say that,” Grant said. “Tell me she didn’t say the mailbox. That sounds like something Asa would say.”

  “I bet Leo’s girlfriend, Pepperandsalt, would have really wanted your mom’s ashes in her mailbox,” Jen said.

  They finally changed the topic when Jen decided to make up Asa’s face. “I know you hate makeup, but let’s just give it a whirl,” Jen said. We all began making up one another and talking about boys. For the first time in years, probably since kindergarten, Jen said, she didn’t have a secret love, a passionate crush, or even a so-so boyfriend-on-a-string thing going.

  “Now I’m really worrying about Jen even more than about Sarabeth,” Patty said.

  Which could have been my cue to say something about James, not necessarily to confess my crush, but just to mention him casually as someone I liked and thought maybe liked me back. I could have told them about talking to him in algebra, lending him paper one day, his lending me a pen another day, and both of us saying hi in the halls—big smiles—whenever we passed each other.

  But I wasn’t really thinking about James. Cynthia was on my mind and had been lingering there since two nights ago when I overheard her on the phone talking to someone about me and Mom.