“This is me charming.”
“Where’s your tie?” I asked. “Your friend said you’d have to buy one.”
“Boon says a lot of things that aren’t true. I own ties. I just don’t like wearing them.”
“So Boon says things that aren’t true?”
“All the time.”
“So when he said you couldn’t stop looking at me the other night . . . that was a lie?”
“It was a lie.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling my face flush.
“I wasn’t looking at you. I was ogling you.”
“Is this the real you or the charming you?”
“Come out with me tomorrow and find out,” he said.
We’d made it through the afternoon before our first kiss. We stayed below deck until the sun went down. He never hauled one trap, and I never asked him one question about being a lobsterman.
A year later, I became Hope Kelly.
“Earth to Hope,” my mother said, waving her hands at me from the sink. “Did you hear what I said?”
“Oh, sorry, Mom. I was just . . . daydreaming. Start again.”
“I was saying that I was thinking about something the other day. Something I don’t think I ever told you.”
“What’s that?” I asked, blinking, not wanting to come out of the memory of me and Jack on the boat.
“I used to stutter when I was younger. Not a bad stutter, but enough to make me not want to talk. Mostly only with the Y words, but still, you’d be surprised at how many words start with the letter Y. You, for instance.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said. “When did it stop?” I’d never heard my mother stutter. Not even once.
“Yesterday,” she said, her eyes roaming the ceiling. “Yellow, year, yes. That was a doozy, the yes. I’m lucky my head’s not wobbly on my neck after all the nodding I did. Anything to keep from saying yes. The way I’d go on forever, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya. Like that S was just running away from my tongue, torturing me.”
“Mom.”
Her gaze came down from the ceiling, and she squinted, bringing me into focus. “Oh. Sorry. Anyway, this went on for some time . . . they didn’t do the stuff they do now to help kids, and my mother used to interrupt me, finish my sentences. She was trying to help, but you know, that doesn’t help.”
“I imagine not,” I said, glancing at the clock on the wall. I was going to be late getting Kat to camp. “So you stuttered . . .”
“So the year I turned ten, the school decided to put on a play. The Wizard of Oz. Which was exciting as it was, but then the PTO got involved, and someone’s husband was on the board of selectmen, and somehow it was decided that the play would be held on the enormous stage at the town hall, the biggest one in three counties, and tickets would be sold to the public. Well, I wanted to be Dorothy, of course, but I was terrified of auditioning for the part because of my stutter. So your grandfather spent hours with me going over the script. Hours and hours we practiced. I still stuttered on some words, but he convinced me that I’d always regret it if I didn’t at least try. Hardest thing I ever did, but I went to that audition.”
“That was brave.”
“Yes, it was. Wasn’t it?”
“Did you get the part?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Jennifer Ann Maloney got it. I didn’t even audition because Ms. Waters pulled me aside the minute I got there and said she’d heard me in chorus and didn’t I have the prettiest voice! That’s what she said. I’ll never forget her saying that. She asked me if I wanted a singing part in the lullaby league. I almost fell over with shock. Of course, I said yes, because you don’t say no to a compliment like that. And the lullaby league . . . turns out they had the most beautiful costumes in the play. And we got to dance, well, it was just hopping from foot to foot, but in that costume, it seemed like ballet.”
“Did you stutter onstage?” I asked.
“I never stuttered when I sang,” she said blankly.
I cleared my throat. “And the stutter stopped when?”
“I don’t know. It just sort of went away. Strange.”
I waited for her to continue, but she reached up to her head, felt one of the rollers, and looked at the clock.
“I’m going to look like an ancient Shirley Temple if I don’t get the rest of these rollers out.” She bent over the sink, pulled a roller from her head, and placed it on the dish towel.
“Okay. Tell me. What’s the connection between you stuttering when you were younger and spreading the ashes?”
“It’s not a direct one,” she said. “But I know you think spreading her ashes is going to be hard. And, I thought I’d tell you about something that I did that was difficult as well.”
She glanced up, a curl flopping over one eye. “I guess my point is that sometimes in life what you think is going to happen is nothing like what actually happens.”
“It was a lovely story, Mom. Thank you for sharing.”
“I did love that play,” she told me from inside the sink.
Ten minutes later, I was on the floor of my bedroom, one flip-flop in hand while reaching for the other under the bed, when I heard singing coming from the heat vent that was level with my head. I heard a toilet flush, and then my mother’s voice singing over and over: We represent the Lullaby League, the Lullaby League, the Lullaby League. And in the name of the Lullaby League, we wish to welcome you to Munchkinland.
I sat on the floor and looked at the closet, and suddenly there was no air in the room. I closed my eyes and tried to envision the moment the wind lifted her ashes. I tried to fight against the suffocating feeling, tried not to think about how she was gone and all that was left were memories and ashes and I didn’t know how to live with either of them.
A minute passed. I opened my eyes and listened to the sound of my mother’s singing trickling through the vent. I pictured a ten-year-old girl with an awful stutter in a beautiful costume hopping from foot to foot, singing her heart out on one of the largest stages in three counties. And note by note, my breath returned to my body.
?8
Kat
My sister’s ashes were in a box in Mom’s bedroom closet, hidden behind boots she used to wear out to dinner with Dad.
The boots were leather with high heels, and when she wore them, Dad always said something like Holy Smokes, or Shazaam!, and looked at her in a way that made me giggle, with his eyes crossed and tongue hanging out.
Last night I’d heard Dad say to Mom that now that Grandma was leaving, they should spread Maddie’s ashes. I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom outside their room, and I heard him say it in a careful way.