Part 30 (1/2)
She was very interested in the picture of the heart and she put it under her pillow to sleep with, since no one she knew ever came to put her to bed anymore. Her mother came and got her in the morning, but she wasn't in her own house, she was in the bed next to her cousin Patty. Patty said to her one night, ”My mommy says your daddy suffered a lot, but now he's released from suffering. That means he's dead.” Lucy said yes, he was, but she didn't tell anyone that the reason she wasn't crying was that he'd either come back or take her with him.
Her aunt Iris, who owned a beauty parlor, took her to B. Altman's and bought her a dark blue dress with a white collar. That's nice, Lucy thought. I'll have a new dress for when I go away with my father. She looked in the long mirror and thought it was the nicest dress she'd ever had.
Her uncle Ted took her to the funeral parlor and he told her that her father would be lying in a big box with a lot of flowers. That's what I'll do, she said. I'll get in the box with him. We used to play in a big box; we called it the tent and we got in and read stories. I will get into the big box. There is my father; that is his silver ring.
She began to climb into the box, but her uncle pulled her away. She didn't argue; her father would think of some way to get her. He would wait for her in her room when it was dark. She would not be afraid to turn the lights out anymore. Maybe he would only visit her in her room; all right, then, she would never go on vacation; she would never go away with her mother to the country, no matter how much her mother cried and begged her. It was February and she asked her mother not to make any summer plans. Her aunt Lena, who lived with them, told Lucy's mother that if she had kids she wouldn't let them push her around, not at age seven. No matter how smart they thought they were. But Lucy didn't care; her father would come and talk to her, she and her mother would move back to the apartment where they lived before her father got sick, and she would only have to be polite to Aunt Lena; she would not have to love her, she would not have to feel sorry for her.
On the last day of school she got the best report card in her cla.s.s. Father Burns said her mother would be proud to have such a smart little girl, but she wondered if he said this to make fun of her. But Sister Trinitas kissed her when all the other children had left and let her mind the statue for the summer; the one with the bottom that screwed off so you could put the big rosaries inside it. n.o.body ever got to keep it for more than one night. This was a good thing. Since her father was gone she didn't know if people were being nice or if they seemed nice and really wanted to make her feel bad later. But she was pretty sure this was good. Sister Trinitas kissed her, but she smelled fishy when you got close up; it was the paste she used to make the Holy Childhood poster. This was good.
”You can take it to camp with you this summer, but be very careful of it.”
”I'm not going to camp, Sister. I have to stay at home this summer.”
”I thought your mother said you were going to camp.”
”No, I have to stay home.” She could not tell anybody, even Sister Trinitas, whom she loved, that she had to stay in her room because her father was certainly coming. She couldn't tell anyone about the thorn in her heart. She had a heart, just like her father's, brown in places, blue in places, a muscle the size of a fist. But hers had a thorn in it. The thorn was her father's voice. When the thorn pinched, she could hear her father saying something. ”I love you more than anyone will ever love you. I love you more than G.o.d loves you.” Tfa'nf went the thorn; he was telling her a story ”about a mean old lady named Emmy and a nice old man named Charlie who always had candy in his pockets, and their pretty daughter, Ruth, who worked in the city.” But it was harder and harder. Sometimes she tried to make the thorn go thint and she only felt the thick wall of her heart; she couldn't remember the sound of it or the kind of things he said. Then she was terribly far away; she didn't know how to do things, and if her aunt Lena asked her to do something like dust the ledge, suddenly there were a hundred ledges in the room and she didn't know which one and when she said to her aunt which one did she mean when she said ledge: the one by the floor, the one by the stairs, the one under the television, her aunt Lena said she must have really pulled the wool over their eyes at school because at home she was an idiot. And then Lucy would knock something over and Aunt Lena would tell her to get out, she was so clumsy she wrecked everything. Then she needed to feel the thorn, but all she could feel was her heart getting thicker and heavier, until she went up to her room and waited. Then she could hear it. ”You are the prettiest girl in a hundred counties and when I see your face it is like a parade that someone made special for your daddy.”
She wanted to tell her mother about the thorn, but her father had said that he loved her more than anything, even G.o.d. And she knew he said he loved G.o.d very much. So he must love her more than he loved her mother. So if she couldn't hear him her mother couldn't, and if he wasn't waiting for her in her new room then he was nowhere.
When she came home she showed everyone the statue that Sister Trinitas had given her. Her mother said that was a very great honor: that meant that Sister Trinitas must like her very much, and Aunt Lena said she wouldn't lay any bets about it not being broken or lost by the end of the summer, and she better not think of taking it to camp.
Lucy's heart got hot and wide and her mouth opened in tears.
”I'm not going to camp; I have to stay here.”
”You're going to camp, so you stop brooding and moping around. You're turning into a regular little bookworm. You're beginning to stink of books. Get out in the sun and play with other children. That's what you need, so you learn not to trip over your own two feet.”
”I'm not going to camp. I have to stay here. Tell her, Mommy, you promised we wouldn't go away.”
Her mother took out her handkerchief. It smelled of perfume and it had a lipstick print on it in the shape of her mother's mouth. Lucy's mother wiped her wet face with the pink handkerchief that Lucy loved.
”Well, we talked it over and we decided it would be best. It's not a real camp. It's Uncle Ted's camp, and Aunt Bitsie will be there, and all your cousins and that nice dog Tramp that you like.”
”I won't go. I have to stay here.”
”Don't be ridiculous,” Aunt Lena said. ”There's nothing for you to do here but read and make up stories.”
”But it's for boys up there and I'll have nothing to do there. All they want to do is shoot guns and yell and run around. I hate that. And I have to stay here.”
”That's what you need. Some good, healthy boys to toughen you up. You're too G.o.dd.a.m.n sensitive.”
Sensitive. Everyone said that. It meant she cried for nothing. That was bad. Even Sister Trinitas got mad at her once and told her to stop her crocodile tears. They must be right. She would like not to cry when people said things that she didn't understand. That would be good. They had to be right. But the thorn. She went up to her room. She heard her father's voice on the telephone. Thint, it went. It was her birthday, and he was away in Was.h.i.+ngton. He sang ”Happy Birthday” to her. Then he sang the song that made her laugh and laugh: ”Hey, Lucy Turner, are there any more at home like you?” because of course there weren't. And she mustn't lose that voice, the thorn. She would think about it all the time, and maybe then she would keep it. Because if she lost it, she would always be clumsy and mistaken; she would always be wrong and falling.
Aunt Lena drove her up to the camp. Scenery. That was another word she didn't understand. ”Look at that gorgeous scenery,” Aunt Lena said, and Lucy didn't know what she meant. ”Look at that bird,” Aunt Lena said, and Lucy couldn't see it, so she just said, ”It's nice.” And Aunt Lena said, ”Don't lie. You can't even see it, you're looking in the wrong direction. Don't say you can see something when you can't see it. And don't spend the whole summer crying. Uncle Ted and Aunt Bitsie are giving you a wonderful summer for free. So don't spend the whole time crying. n.o.body can stand to have a kid around that all she ever does is cry.”
Lucy's mother had said that Aunt Lena was very kind and very lonely because she had no little boys and girls of her own and she was doing what she thought was best for Lucy. But when Lucy told her father that she thought Aunt Lena was not very nice, her father had said, ”She's ignorant.” Ignorant. That was a good word for the woman beside her with the dyed black hair and the big vaccination scar on her fat arm.
”Did you scratch your vaccination when you got it, Aunt Lena?”
”Of course not. What a stupid question. Don't be so G.o.dd.a.m.n rude. I'm not your mother, ya know. Ya can't push me around.”
Thint, went the thorn. ”You are ignorant,” her father's voice said to Aunt Lena. ”You are very, very ignorant.”
Lucy looked out the window.
When Aunt Lena's black Chevrolet went down the road, Uncle Ted and Aunt Bitsie showed her her room. She would stay in Aunt Bitsie's room, except when Aunt Bitsie's husband came up on the weekends. Then Lucy would have to sleep on the couch.
The people in the camp were all boys, and they didn't want to talk to her. Aunt Bitsie said she would have to eat with the counselors and the K.P.s. Aunt Bitsie said there was a nice girl named Betty who was fourteen who did the dishes. Her brothers were campers.
Betty came out and said h.e.l.lo. She was wearing a sailor hat that had a picture of a boy smoking a cigarette. It said ”Property of Bobby.” She had braces on her teeth. Her two side teeth hung over her lips so that her mouth never quite closed.
”My name's Betty,” she said. ”But everybody calls me Fang. That's on account of my fangs.” She opened and closed her mouth like a dog. ”In our crowd, if you're popular, you get a nickname. I guess I'm pretty popular.”
Aunt Bitsie walked in and told Betty to set the table. She snapped her gum as she took out the silver. ”Yup, Mrs. O'Connor, one thing about me is I have a lot of interests. There's swimming and boys, and tennis, and boys, and reading, and boys, and boys, and boys, and boys, and boys.”
Betty and Aunt Bitsie laughed. Lucy didn't get it.
”What do you like to read?” Lucy asked.
”What?” said Betty.
”Well, you said one of your interests was reading. I was wondering what you like to read.”
Betty gave her a fishy look. ”I like to read romantic comics. About romances,” she said. ”I hear you're a real bookworm. We'll knock that outa ya.”
The food came in: ham with brown gravy that tasted like ink. Margarine. Tomatoes that a fly settled on. But Lucy could not eat. Her throat was full of water. Her heart was gla.s.sy and too small. And now they would see her cry.
She was told to go up to her room.
That summer Lucy learned many things. She made a birchbark canoe to take home to her mother. Aunt Bitsie made a birchbark sign for her that said ”Keep Smiling.” Uncle Ted taught her to swim by letting her hold on to the waist of his bathing trunks. She swam onto the float like the boys. Uncle Ted said that that was so good she would get double dessert just like the boys did the first time they swam out to the float. But then Aunt Bitsie forgot and said it was just as well anyway because certain little girls should learn to watch their figures. One night her cousins Larry and Artie carried the dog Tramp in and pretended it had been shot. But then they put it down and it ran around and licked her and they said they had done it to make her cry.
She didn't cry so much now, but she always felt very far away and people's voices sounded the way they did when she was on the sand at the beach and she could hear the people's voices down by the water. A lot of times she didn't hear people when they talked to her. Her heart was very thick now: it was like one of Uncle Ted's boxing gloves. The thorn never touched the thin, inside walls of it anymore. She had lost it. There was no one whose voice was beautiful now, and little that she remembered.
Eileen.
”There's some that just can't take it,” Bridget said. ”No matter what they do or you do for them, they just don't fit in.”
”You certainly were good to her, Kathleen,” said Nettie, ”when she first came over. No one could have been better when she first came over.”
”That was years ago,” Kathleen said. ”We never kept up with her.”
Nora thought of Eileen Foley when she had first come over, twelve years ago, when Nora was eleven and Eileen, twenty-one. They'd had to share a bed, and Kathleen had apologized. ”There's no place for her, only here. I don't know what they were thinking of, sending her over, with no one to vouch for her, only the nuns. The Foleys were like that, the devil take the hindmost, every one of them. You'd see why she wanted to get out.”
But Nora hadn't minded. She liked Eileen's company, and her body was no intrusion in the bed. Her flesh was pleasant, fragrant. Though she was large, she was careful not to take up too much room. They joked about it. ”Great cow that I am, pray G.o.d I don't roll over one fine night and crush you. How'd yer mam forgive me if I should do that.”