Child of My Heart Read online

  “No one would steal her” Tony said, and the two of them laughed at the joke.

  “She could have been run over,” I said again, louder this time. “I can’t believe you guys did this—you’re idiots. Perfect idiots.”

  Suddenly Petey’s face changed. He stepped closer, his fists clenched. “Well, we kept looking for you,” he said, squinting, matching his angry voice to mine.

  “Yeah,” Tony said indignantly. “Where the hell were you?”

  Petey stepped forward again. “Yeah, where were you?” He was right under my nose and his dirty baby sister was staring down at him from my arms. He was all open mouth under Flora’s mother’s wide straw hat, and his blackened eye was half closed. His voice was loud enough to hurt my ears. “We kept going back to the beach and you weren’t there.” He gestured wildly, like an adult. There was spit forming at the corners of his mouth. “You weren’t where you were supposed to be.” He jabbed a finger at me. “You’re the idiot.”

  Softly, staring him down, I said, “You two left your baby sister alone in the road. It’s about the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.”

  First I saw the tears come into his pale eyes and then I saw his fist. I turned to protect baby June’s knee and he hit me solidly on the forearm. “Well, to hell with you,” he cried, sounding for all the world like his grandpa. And then he turned, skidding down the incline of dirt that separated the road and the field, and, as if for good measure, punched Daisy, too, on the shoulder, hard enough to make her step back, her face filled with surprise and pain. Then he ran, Tony at his heels.

  With June still in my arms, I went to Daisy, who was holding her shoulder and whispering, “Ow, ow, ow,” but not crying. A girl with brothers. I put my free arm around her. “Go get your bikes, idiots,” I called after the boys. “And bring me back that hat.” But Tony just turned and thumbed his nose, and stuck out his tongue, and the two of them kept running.

  I held Daisy tighter, and little June reached down to pat her head. In her stroller Flora began to cry, but I hushed her. “Daisy’s okay,” I told her. “You’re okay, aren’t you, Daisy Mae?”

  She nodded, being brave. “It’s okay, Flora Dora,” she said. “I’m all right.”

  I told them we would forget the beach for today. I gave Daisy one more pat on the head and then with my free hand turned Flora’s stroller around. “Margaret Mary,” I said, “do you think you can push the stroller while I carry baby June? Something tells me she’s done enough walking.”

  Daisy said sure, and then had some trouble keeping the stroller straight. I put my hand on it briefly to guide her, and then let her go on her own. It took some effort, I could tell, the smooth soles of her pink shoes slipping and sliding against the macadam, but she put all her legs and her sore shoulder into it, all of that tiny body, muscle and bone.

  “What would I do without you, Daisy Mae?” I said. “One day here and already you’re indispensable.”

  Back at my house, Rags was tied to the side fence with a short bit of clothesline. He barked viciously as we approached, even growled—as if the few hours he’d spent on the property had made him responsible for the security of the house. I told the girls to stay where they were—I could see them drawing back anyway, and then I approached him and said, “What are you growling at, you silly dog?” At the sound of my voice he immediately cowered a bit and thumped his tail, whining an apology. He was a sweet but odd mutt, mostly collie, I think, by turns skittish and friendly and shy, schizophrenic, I supposed. And stupid. He came and went, a stray for the most part, probably left behind by some summer people who didn’t want the year-round responsibility of a pet; occasionally—those times when we didn’t see him for weeks—adopted by another summer family who made him theirs for whatever time they were out here. The Moran kids weren’t allowed to keep him, but they dragged him back to me whenever he came around. Rags, being stupid, tolerated them for the most part, although I’d seen him nip their fingers once or twice. Now he rolled over in joyful submission as I petted him and talked him into calming down. I then let the girls bring him some water and dog biscuits.

  With Rags still tied to the fence but happily subdued, I stripped off baby June’s dirty clothes in the yard and washed her off with my father’s garden hose. Then I wrapped her in a beach towel and carried her into the bathroom, where I filled the tub with water and shampoo and let June and Flora both play in the bubbles. Daisy laughed, watching them, but didn’t want to join in, not even in her bathing suit. Out on the lawn again, in what were now the long shadows of the afternoon, I gave everybody cookies and fruit punch. Judy and Janey wandered over to take Rags for a walk, but there was no sign of the boys. I turned baby June over to her sisters and asked Daisy if she might possibly want to get out of her bathing suit, and maybe even change her shoes for the afternoon walk. To my surprise, she nodded and went into the house, coming out a few minutes later not in her new sneakers but in the old saddle shoes she had worn on the train. “They look comfortable,” I said, mostly because she seemed so disappointed to be wearing them again.

  We got Flora into her stroller and walked her home, singing loudly most of the way—“Barnacle Bill the Sailor,” a song that came to me as we passed Mr. Moran, standing, swaying, shirtless in his driveway, mumbling to himself. We were trying to keep Flora from falling asleep before she had her dinner. The lights were still on in her father’s painting place, but there was no sign of him, or Ana either, which was just as well, since I didn’t have the straw hat. Inside, there was the familiar smell of the place: her perfume, his cigar, something new and complicated riding on the scent now. The cook was in the kitchen, just taking a single baked potato out of the oven, and when I told her Flora had already been bathed, back at my house, she reached up and ran her hand over my hair. She was a lady who went to our church, a vague friend of my mother’s, fat and grandmotherly but not, I now realized, unaware. “Thank you, dear,” she said. “That helps.” As if she knew, and I knew, that Ana’s duties would fall to her tonight.

  As tired as she was, and perhaps because she was tired, Flora cried when Daisy and I said goodbye. She didn’t cling, or even run after us, she was too exhausted for that. But she sat at the kitchen table in the terrycloth bib the cook had tied around her neck and simply sobbed. On the plate in front of her were the steaming baked potato, a few peas, some cut-up bits of poached chicken. She sat on a couple of phone books, but still her chin was only just above the food. She cried with her mouth open, the tears streaming down her cheeks. The cook sat at the table with her, wiping away the tears with her thumb. Under her fat elbow were Flora’s mother’s scarves, all but the turquoise-and-white one, just where she had left them.

  Daisy and I backed out of the room, waving. The house behind us seemed empty. I took her hand as soon as we got outside. The spattered canvas was still against the wall of the garage, and I thought about what he had said, about masterpieces unfinished. I told Daisy, as we walked to the Kaufmans’ to give Red Rover his evening walk, that maybe tonight we could sleep in the attic, in the two old beds. We could push one of the chairs over to the window, and maybe, I said, if we wake up and see the ghost Uncle Tommy always saw, we could ask him his name, and the name of the little boy in his lap. “What do you think their story is, Daisy Mae?” I asked her. She thought awhile and then she said, “The ghost is the little boy’s father. And he was waiting by the window for him to come back. And then the little boy came back and sat on his father’s lap, in the chair.”

  I nodded. “Reasonable enough,” I told her. “Now we just have to figure out where the little boy had been.”

  “On a ship,” she said without hesitation. “That finally returned.”

  I laughed. The sun was lower now, and the grackles were going crazy in the trees, preparing for night. Somewhere from behind one of the high hedges we heard children’s voices calling, laughter and a shout. From somewhere else came the sound of a tennis ball. There was the lovely scent of fading summer afterno
on in the air—maybe a hint of the unseen children’s suntan lotion. I began to sing, “And it finally returned, it finally returned, it came back from the sea. And from that day to this”—I glanced down at her and she looked up at me, expectantly. “Fond hearts,” I said clearly, “are happy”—she seemed relieved: the air was too lovely for more bad words—“because the ship had finally returned.”

  We heard Red Rover whining and yelping even before we reached the house. Clearly, he’d had a miserably lonely day, and I let him lick my face, and Daisy’s, to make it up to him. We walked him back to the beach, and sure enough, Petey’s and Tony’s bicycles were still in the sand. Daisy and I picked them up and rested them against the garbage cans while Red Rover explored the shoreline, then we brought him back to his pen. A light was on in the Kaufmans’ front window, as was the side porch light, but this house, too, was empty. Dr. Kaufman had not returned from the city yet. I hoped he would remember to visit Red when he did.

  Going back to the beach to fetch the boys’ bicycles, we ran into the Richardsons with their Scotties. Mrs. Richardson looked Daisy up and down as I introduced her, and I feared for a moment that she would actually say—the word was all over her mannish face—pitiful. Poor Daisy did indeed look like a waif. Her braid was coming undone and her sash was limp and there were streaks of dirt, baby June’s handprints, Red Rover’s paws, on the skirt of her white-and-yellow (and now, suddenly, under Mrs. Richardson’s all but monocled eye, outdated) hand-me-down dress. And then the unpolished saddle shoes, merely two shades of gray, rather than black and white. I had the notion that the shoes alone had transformed her from the charming sprite she’d been this morning, walking the Scotties under the tall green trees, that those cheap pink things had some magic in them after all. “And where in the city do you live?” Mrs. Richardson asked her, and Daisy, mumbling, shy under her scrutiny, bowed her head and said, “Two Hundred and Seventh Place.”

  Mrs. Richardson put her big face into mine. “What did she say?” (The implication being, of course, that the child should really be taught to speak up.)

  I smiled, pushing Daisy along. “She lives on Sutton Place,” I said. “Shall I come by for the dogs in the morning?”

  Mrs. Richardson glanced at her husband, who had his pipe stem in his mouth. “Yes, of course,” she said. “Nice meeting you, Daisy,” and Daisy, even in the worn-out shoes and the dirty dress, did a splendid curtsy and said, “Nice meeting you, too.”

  “Can you imagine living with that woman?” I asked her as we went on, and Daisy shook her head. “Poor dogs,” she said.

  We rode the wobbling bicycles back to the house, leaving them both in the Morans’ battered yard. My parents weren’t home yet, so I went into the kitchen and peeled some potatoes and put them on to boil. Daisy was sitting on the couch in the living room, looking at some magazines, but when I went in to join her, I saw that she was crying quietly, the tears just rolling out of her eyes. I pushed the magazines onto the floor and sat down beside her. I put my arm around her, drawing her close.

  “What is it, Daisy Mae?” I asked, and she sniffed and said softly, “I miss my mother.”

  This surprised me a bit, and immediately I regretted having made fun of Aunt Peg, back at the Clarkes’ house this morning. Of course, of course, it seemed perfectly sensible now—crazed Aunt Peg was, after all, Daisy’s only mother. “I miss my house,” she added.

  I kissed the top of her head. “You can go home whenever you want,” I said softly, into her hair, the sweet odor of her warm scalp. Although the very notion of it made me realize, perhaps for the first time in my life, that I would be lonely without her, here in my own house, where I had always been alone. “I can take you home on the train tomorrow, or whenever you want. Just say the word.” But she quickly shook her head, and then turned to look at me earnestly. “Oh, I don’t want to leave,” she said. “I love it here. I could stay forever.” Tears came into her eyes again. “I just miss them,” she said.

  I told her I understood. “It’s hard when you’re used to people,” I said, and she nodded. “You can miss them but not necessarily want to be with them.”

  She nodded again.

  “You sort of wish you could be two places at once. With them, because you love them and you’re used to them, but also away from them, so you can be just yourself.”

  “That’s right,” Daisy said, leaning against me, her skinny elbow pressing into my thigh.

  “You wish you could appear and disappear, like a little ghost. Be around them, but not be stuck with them.” She nodded again. “It’s the mystery of families,” I said.

  She rested her head on my shoulder. Her face was drawn and tired. I could hear the boiling potatoes drilling in their pot, and knew they should probably be turned down, but I didn’t want to leave Daisy to get up and do it. I told her to put her feet up, instead, to take a rest, and when she did, I said, thinking more of my mother’s love of the rose-colored slipcover than of all the nonsense we’d gone through today over the pink shoes, “You’d better take off your shoes.” Obediently, wearily, she leaned down and untied the worn-out saddle shoes, no argument here, of course, because the shoes, ordinary school shoes, contained no magic. “And those sandy socks,” I said. With only the slightest, saddest nod, a mere remnant of her earlier hesitation, she slipped off each of the thin white socks and placed them into her shoes. She drew her feet up on the couch again, her knees pulled up into the generous skirt of my old Sunday dress, and put her head in my lap. On the wall next to the fireplace was the sketch Flora’s father had given me back in April, now carefully matted and framed. Framed in what my parents had called a museum-quality frame—“a small fortune”—they’d said. But the man in the frame shop had offered them one hundred dollars for the drawing, which pleased and surprised them no end. When they brought it home, they hung it up with great ceremony. Although they still thought the drawing itself looked “like nothing,” it was, nevertheless, the first real evidence of my success by association, the very reason they’d moved out here. I saw Daisy looking at the picture, her hands under her cheek, and I said, “Flora’s father drew that.”

  She nodded. “I thought so.”

  “I don’t know what it’s supposed to be,” I said. “He drew about fifty of them and gave one to me.” I moved my arm down the length of her little body, stroking her side.

  “It’s a picture of something broken,” she said matter-of-factly, not as sleepy as she had been, revived, it seemed, by her own thoughts. “Something you sort of expected to break, but you still wish it hadn’t. You still think maybe it won’t.”

  I moved the hem of the dress off her thin ankles. The sun was coming through the living-room window in that heavy red gold of near-dusk, but it did not hit the couch and so there was no glare to blind me and no real shadow to convince me I was mistaken in what I saw. I leaned over her a bit. “Daisy,” I said. And then I touched her shoulder and asked her to sit up again. She seemed for a moment to hold her breath. I slipped off the couch and knelt down among the magazines. Gently, I took both of her feet into my hands. Across each instep, tracing, it seemed, the outline of her old saddle shoes, an unmistakable bruise—I licked my finger and rubbed it a bit, just to make sure—a black-and-blue crescent that reached nearly to her toes. I touched it softly, and then with some pressure, but she did not flinch.

  “Does this hurt?” I said, and she shook her head sheepishly. “Not really,” she said.

  “What is it, then?” I whispered.

  She shrugged, her two hands politely folded together in the lap of her skirt. “Just a black-and-blue mark,” she said cautiously, raising her chin and turning her head away from me just a little.

  “How did you get it? Your brothers?”

  Now there were tears in her eyes again and her voice was very soft, nearly inaudible. “No,” she whispered. She met my eye and nodded as if to admit that here, then, was the thing she had worked so hard to conceal. “I don’t know how I got it,” she
said. “It was just there one day, a little while ago. I don’t know why.”

  I looked at it more closely. It was a mottled bruise, yellowish in spots, in some spots almost black. “Did you tell anyone?” I asked her. “Did you show your mother?”

  Daisy shook her head again, and now her mouth was trembling. “I was afraid they wouldn’t let me come,” she said softly. “I was afraid they’d make me go to the doctor and then I wouldn’t be able to come.” A tear slipped over the brim of her eye and ran down her face and hit the pretty collar of her dirty dress. “I really don’t want to go home,” she said earnestly. “I was just missing my mother, but I don’t want to go home.” I moved back onto the couch and again took her into my arms. Like a baby, she put her open mouth to my shoulder.

  “I thought it was because of the shoes,” she said. “My school shoes. I thought the pink ones would make it go away. But I wore them all day. It’s not going away.” She moved a hand up to my face. “I don’t want to go home already,” she said.

  I held her for a while, stroking her arm, patting her back, hushing her, hushing her. I thought of the discoloration I had seen on her hip as she changed. The pale wash of her skin this morning, the heat of her scalp and her forehead when I leaned to kiss her. All the things Aunt Peg and Uncle Jack, in their busy, child-infested lives, could have missed, could have been missing for quite some time. Poor Daisy. Poor Daisy, we all said. Poor Daisy, the jolly family story went, poor Daisy doesn’t get much attention, what with her noisy brothers and fat, fragile Bernadette, and the house to keep orderly, the rules to enforce, the long, dangerous nights her father has to work (not to mention all the busy, closed-door nights he was at home). Poor Daisy’s a good little thing, the family story went: obedient, polite, wonderfully independent—getting herself her own bath, putting on her own pajamas, coming down for school in the morning all ready to go. She’s a quiet little thing, poor Daisy, but around here, she doesn’t have much chance to be anything else, does she? (This from Uncle Jack in his gun and holster, his dish of fruit salad with tiny marshmallows placed on the Formica table before him, and Aunt Peg hovering, touching his shoulder, his scarred cheek, all the children in bed but me. The kitchen window behind him sprayed with false snow. “Poor Daisy,” he said, and swallowed a bright spoonful. Uncle Jack at one in the morning, in his own kitchen, finally returned. “She’s a quiet little thing, but I guess we’ll keep her.”)