How Sweet It Is - Alice J. Wisler [36]
She eyes the water buffalo drawing. “This is like being in a museum of sorts.”
“Of sorts.”
“So when the place becomes yours, do you get to redecorate?”
I think of the few pictures of mine that are stored in my parents’ shed. There is a print of a piglet resting in the sun beside a run-down barn. I’m not sure where I’d hang that in this living room. Before I can answer, Sally says, “What’s the woman with the fan about? Is she hiding behind it?”
I study the framed drawing of the kimono-clad woman with the fan discretely covering half her face. I still have no idea what she’s hiding or why, yet I know that picture, with all its mysteries, belongs on that wall, like marshmallows go with hot chocolate and jackets with spring mornings. I could never replace it with anything else. “I’m not much for redecorating,” I tell Sally.
She laughs. “Oh yeah, I remember when you wanted to paint your room orange with yellow dots to look like a sunset.”
“Yeah, I’m not a decorator.” I smile.
“Only of cakes,” she says with admiration. “Those, you do well.”
Sally brushes her teeth as I climb the stairs to the loft bedroom where I have grown used to sleeping. When she lies on the couch-bed I hear her turn over a few times until she’s comfortable. The cabin is dark when, minutes later, she calls up to me. I’m watching the flickering stars from the windows in the ceiling over my bed and hearing chords of wedding music that will never play for me. Before that, I was realizing that Sally really stepped out on a limb to try to make Lucas jealous.
“Deena?” Her voice sweeps through the cabin.
“Yeah?”
“I think your moving here was the best thing you’ve done in a long time.”
I’m still not sure myself, but it’s nice to have her approval.
I turn onto my stomach. Since I can’t picture a doctor I would run off to Europe with, I fall asleep thinking about a curly-haired social worker who plays basketball.
————
The next afternoon, as Sally places the rods and fishing gear in her Honda, I want to jump in the passenger seat like Giovanni and head back to Atlanta with her. Instead, I tell her to come back to visit me soon, to have a safe trip, and I smile until I think my face will break. She says she envies my life. I merely swallow and nod.
“Next time I’ll bring Jeannie.”
“That would be great.”
Her car is long gone before I head back inside. I view the mountain peaks, lush and green before me and pale blue in the distance where they kiss the horizon. It’s funny how humans are never quite content with what they have. Yet, according to Grandpa, the key to happiness lies in putting your whole hand into God’s. I wonder if just holding the hand of the Almighty is enough to cure this sadness inside of me?
eighteen
Charlotte, the quiet girl with long, dark hair and large round eyes, has a face that looks like a doll in the American Girl collection. While she might smile and show rows of bright teeth, she rarely says a word except to ask if she can go to the restroom. Miriam told me that this girl was abandoned by her mother at age five. Her mother, then only twenty-four, ran off with a Native American blackjack dealer. They left secretly in the night while Charlotte and her sister slept in their beds at home. Their maternal grandmother took care of them until her death, and then an aunt. Now twelve-year-old Charlotte lives with her sister, Cindy, who is twenty. Cindy works as a waitress at the Fryemont Inn’s restaurant, and rents an apartment on the edge of town.
“Is she always so quiet?” I asked Miriam once about Charlotte.
“Yes,” Miriam answered. “She is afraid of people, and especially of people leaving her.” She was in her office sipping from a mug of fresh coffee, taking a break from a hectic morning meeting with The Center’s accountant. I watched as she rubbed tension from her neck with one hand, balancing the chipped ceramic mug in the other. “Charlotte thinks, like most of these kids, that it was something she did to cause all those she cared about in life to abandon her.”
“Her fault? How could it be her fault?