PART THREE

1. PATTY

September 1982

There had been several home nursing assignments where Patty felt she was a member of the family, but the Quinns was the first assignment that made her feel like a patient in the asylum. When she got to the house, the only person there besides the patient was Casey, the day nurse.

“Nobody’s been here. When the ambulance and I got here with Mrs. Quinn, the back door was unlocked,” Casey said. She was one of those perky, up-and-at-’em people who harangued injured patients out of bed and into their physical therapy.

The house was cleaner than Patty had expected. The outside hadn’t been painted in years, but the floors had been mopped and the bathroom smelled of bleach. There were fresh sheets on the bed and clean dishes in the cupboard.

She knew there were children—a little boy who had been injured in the wreck and an older girl—but there was no sign of them. Mrs. Quinn’s bedroom was in the front, off the parlor. The other bedroom was off the dining room. There was a full-sized bed in there. No toys or children’s clothes, just some crayon marks on the wall behind the bed.

After she gave Mrs. Quinn her next dose of pain medication, Patty ventured up the narrow attic stairs. There, she found a bed with a handmade quilt on it. Only the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling suggested it was a child’s room.

It was dark when a vehicle pulled up outside. After a few minutes the back door opened, and Patty got to the kitchen just as a blond girl came in and slammed the door.

“Hi. I’m Patty. I’m the night nurse who’s here to take care of your mommy. What’s your name?”

The girl took two cautious steps into the kitchen.

“It’s okay, honey. Did your daddy tell you that a nurse was coming? I’m here to make sure she takes her medication and gets better.”

The girl moved around the other side of the table, and it dawned on Patty that she was planning to dash past her. The back door opened again and a large man with greasy black hair came in. He looked at Patty for an instant before his gaze went to the girl, who turned and ran up the stairs.

“Wavy. Goddamnit, Wavy!” The man started after her, yelling, “You can’t just say something like that. What did I lie to you about?”

He thundered up the stairs, and Patty heard his footsteps and his voice overhead, but nothing from the girl. They were up there for nearly two hours, long past what should have been the girl’s bedtime. Several times, Patty considered going up to check on them, but each time, she convinced herself it was better to wait.

Eventually, the man stomped down the stairs slowly. He seemed startled to find Patty sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee in front of her. She didn’t let it bother her. Sometimes she had to fend for herself. Standing up, she held out her hand.

“Hello. I’m Patty Bruce, the night nurse that Mr. Quinn hired to take care of his wife.”

“Sorry about the ruckus. I hope we didn’t wake her up.” He shook her hand. “I’m Jesse Joe Kellen. I’m a friend of the family.”

“Is that Mrs. Quinn’s daughter?”

“Yeah, that’s Wavy. She’s a little upset.”

“It’s not unusual. Having a parent badly injured can be very troubling for children. They’re not used to seeing their parents helpless.”

He nodded and absently brought a hand to his hair to smooth down a rooster tail that stuck up on his crown.

“I’m real sorry for barging in here. Is there anything you need? I’ll be back in the morning to get Wavy, so I can bring you whatever groceries you need. And Wavy did the laundry, so there’s clean towels.”

“Do you know when Mr. Quinn is coming?”

“Well, he—he don’t actually live here. He lives down the hill. You know where you pass that other road, where there’s a couple trailers?”

“Am I to understand that Wavy will be here alone tonight?”

“Not if you’re here,” he said.

“I don’t say this to be rude, but my duties don’t include childcare.”

Mr. Kellen laughed. “Wavy don’t need a babysitter. She’ll get herself to bed, get her own breakfast. It’d be best if you didn’t bother her.”

“Bother her?”

“Just pretend she’s not here. If you hear her get up in the middle of the night, don’t come checking on her. She likes to be left alone.”

Patty was so confused, she couldn’t think of anything to say. She pushed her glasses up on her head and rubbed her eyes, feeling a headache coming on. While she was doing that, Mr. Kellen walked out the kitchen door. She thought of going after him, but it seemed pointless.

After she checked on Mrs. Quinn at midnight, Patty went into the living room and lay down on what looked like a new sofa. She must have dozed, because she woke to the sound of someone in the kitchen. Looking into Mrs. Quinn’s room, Patty found her still asleep, or as close to sleep as the pain medication brought her.

For a moment, a light flashed in the kitchen, the fridge being opened and closed, but otherwise it was all darkness. Then a cupboard opened and a dish clinked softly on the countertop. Was the girl eating? At that hour? In the dark? Or was she sleepwalking?

Standing on the other side of the swing door, Patty was about to say the girl’s name, when she remembered Mr. Kellen’s cryptic warning: if you hear her get up in the middle of the night, don’t come checking on her. Wasn’t there a fairy tale with a warning like that? Beauty and the Beast? Blackbeard? After a few minutes the girl went back up the stairs and solved Patty’s dilemma.

In the morning, as Casey was arriving, the girl came downstairs already dressed. Casey said, “So, this must be Wavy. Did you two meet last night?”

“After a fashion we did,” Patty said.

From outside came the sound of a car horn. Again, Wavy slipped around the table, maneuvering her escape, and Casey and Patty followed her to the kitchen door. An old truck sat in the drive. Mr. Kellen rolled down the window and called, “I’m sorry! The bike’s gonna take a while, okay?”

Wavy stomped down the stairs and got into the truck.

“Odd little girl,” Casey said.

“You have no idea.” Patty told her everything, even though it put her an hour over her shift.

She needed to compare notes with someone, and talking with Casey every day at least convinced her that she wasn’t the only one who thought the family was strange.

According to Casey, there wasn’t much to know about the day shift. Mrs. Quinn slept most of the first two weeks, and never said anything, except to complain about the pain she was in. And to ask where her husband and her children were.

“What am I supposed to tell her? I haven’t seen her husband since he hired me, I’ve never seen her son, and her daughter comes home late every night with some big biker.”

“And she doesn’t spend the whole night here, either,” Patty offered.

“Are you serious?”

“I’m sure she sneaks out at night.”

“What is she? Thirteen? And she sneaks out at night?” Casey said.

“A few times she hasn’t come home at all.”

“Have you told anyone?”

“Well, I told Mrs. Quinn. She said, ‘She’s probably with Kellen.’ I suppose that’s good enough for her.”

“Good grief. Have you thought about talking to Marjory?”

Marjory was their supervisor, and the suggestion irked Patty. Casey was eager for Patty to go to Marjory with it, but Casey wouldn’t. That way if the Quinns said, “How dare you accuse our dear family friend,” Patty would be the one who had made the accusation. If Patty didn’t report it, and something improper was going on, Casey could always say, “Why didn’t you tell someone?”

“So, what else have you noticed?” Casey said.

“Wavy sneaks into the kitchen at night and eats, but honestly, I’ve been known to do that.”

Casey laughed, and Patty was glad she hadn’t said the other thing she couldn’t stop thinking about. The night Kellen had gone up to Wavy’s room and argued with her, there was one phrase she’d overheard. “I do love you,” he’d said, his voice rumbling through the floor. “I love you all the way.” Not the sort of thing a family friend says to a thirteen-year-old girl. Now it was too late to tell Casey, who would want to know why Patty hadn’t mentioned it right away.


     2. WAVY


The motorcycle was beautiful, the stars sprawling over the fenders and spinning out around the gas cap on a field of deep shimmery blue, like August when the moon was dark. No matter how much he teased me, Kellen put the stars on the way they were supposed to be. Cassiopeia and Cepheus in the center and the rest of them tumbling away on the sides. Squeezed under Kellen’s thigh while he rode was Orion, the three stars of his belt glinting. Every star was a tiny scrap of silver foil sealed to the gas tank under clear enamel.

Looking at it, my heart hurt so much I almost couldn’t breathe. Not because the motorcycle was beautiful, but hoping it was for me and knowing it might not be. Nothing belonged to me, but the rule didn’t keep me from wanting Kellen to be for me only. I put my hand on the tank and tried to smile, but there were too many hot things trapped in my mouth.

Kellen smelled like the shop, so I knew he had just finished the bike. He had come straight to school to show it to me as soon as it was ready, and waited in the parking lot until I came out.

“Do you like it?” he said.

I nodded once, to say, “Yes, it’s beautiful.”

From the way he shifted on his feet, wanting to touch my hair but not doing it, I knew he thought my answer was small.

“I used that book you gave me to make sure I put them on right. Are they right?”

I nodded again.

“So, you like it, but you’re still mad at me?”

Resting his hand on the seat, he leaned over and breathed on me. I loved that. His breath was warm and wintergreen-smelling. He needed me to speak, because his heart hurt, too. I didn’t want to be mean, but sometimes, it was dangerous to open my mouth and let words out. Other times, my throat closed up so tight the words couldn’t come out. Looking at the Panhead, at all the work he did, the words trapped in my throat weren’t nice ones. They were words to say, I don’t like it, if you’re going to let girls with snake tattoos ride on it.

I knew I was breaking the rule, but I laid my hand on the seat next to his. It was a new seat, tall in back for a passenger.

“Me,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s your spot, Wavy. I love it when you ride with me. I’m sorry it took so long to paint, but that’s … I don’t even know how many coats of clear enamel. And I wanted it to be a surprise, but getting all those little stars right was a bitch without you to tell me where they go.”

“Only me.” I didn’t care if it was against the rules.

“Only you?” He straightened up and sunlight fell on my hair where he had shaded me. “Oh. Oh. Come on, put your helmet on and let’s ride this thing.”

That was another thing I loved, the way he swung his leg over the bike, started it with one solid kick, and settled his weight on it. But the bike wasn’t for me. There would be other girls. Snake tattoo girls. Perfume-wearing girls he loaned his jacket to. I wished the bike weren’t so beautiful. I wished it were still primer gray, or green-and-yellow flames like the day he wrecked it. I wished it didn’t feel so good to ride behind him with my arms around him. I didn’t want to enjoy the way the wind spun around me and pulled at my dress. It soothed me and I didn’t want to be soothed.

 3. MISS HUMPHRIES


It had happened often enough in the last forty years that Miss Humphries had a well-rehearsed response. Because of the store’s proximity to the County Courthouse, once or twice a month, a scruffy-looking man stepped in off the street and said, “I need to buy a wedding ring.”

This one followed pattern: a big man in grease-stained jeans and engineer’s boots, ham-sized forearms covered in tattoos. He looked nervous, not quite making eye contact. Sometimes, as in this instance, the man had a child with him. Perhaps a soon-to-be stepdaughter. She was too old and too blond to be his natural child.

Before they could get more than a few steps into the store, Miss Humphries offered her warmest smile, one intended to reassure. Then she said, “You know, there’s a nice little drug store on Fourteenth and Mohawk. They sell plain gold bands at a very reasonable price.” She was never rude, but she considered it a kindness to dissuade people from embarrassing themselves.

“Not a band,” the man said. “A real ring. A diamond ring.”

“Well, we have a variety of engagement rings. In this case, I have some simple and elegant rings, starting at a quarter-carat weight.”

“Come and look, sweetheart. I want you to pick it out.”

The girl stepped up to the display and in the bright lights meant to make the stones sparkle, she was not what Miss Humphries had expected. Not a grubby girl, of the type who usually accompanied the scruffy-looking men. Her cheeks were scrubbed pink and her hair clung to her scalp not because it needed washing, but because it was so fine. She wore a pale blue dress with pin tucks down the front. Velazquez’ Infanta Margarita in motorcycle boots.

Miss Humphries hated cleaning fingerprints off the glass cases, but the girl didn’t touch the display cabinet. She stood with her hands at her sides and peered in.

“Or if you’re looking for something unusual, my brother occasionally purchases estate jewelry. We have some lovely antique rings in this case.”

Stepping down the counter, the girl looked into that display. Her stepfather followed, watching her, but not interfering. The scruffy men usually got uncomfortable by then, having glimpsed the occasional price tag, but he seemed more at ease now.

Miss Humphries took her cue from him and didn’t say anything, but she recognized the moment the girl found something she liked. Her gaze sharpened and she leaned forward. Perhaps all women were born with that attraction to diamond rings. A magpie instinct.

“Which one do you like?” Miss Humphries said. There were a few lower priced rings in the estate case. Diamond chips in delicately scrolled ten karat Victorian settings. More than a twenty-dollar gold band from the drug store, but under two hundred dollars. The girl’s father leaned over her head to look in the case.

“I see which one. What are those called, those ones that look like stars?” he said.

“Star sapphires.” She knew the ring and it broke her heart that the girl had picked such a lovely ring for her mother. Something her future father wouldn’t be able to afford. Normally at that point, Miss Humphries indicated the price before opening the case. That got rid of the persistent ones, who said, “That’s a little more than I was looking to spend.” The girl had been respectful and the afternoon was quiet, so Miss Humphries took the keys off her wrist and unlocked the display.

“It’s Victorian, late nineteenth century. The diamond is natural, slightly more than one carat, E in color with no inclusions visible to the naked eye, surrounded by five natural star sapphires, each a tenth of a carat.” She said it all for the pleasure of saying it, aware that neither of them understood what it meant. When she placed the ring on the velvet mat, she was careful to flip the price tag with her pinky, so that it lay exposed. The girl rose on her toes to look down at the ring. After a moment, she glanced up at the man.

“That one?” he said.

She nodded.

“That’s the one we want then. You can make it fit, right?”

“Yes, of course it can be sized. Do you know what size you’ll need?”

“Whatever size she wears. I don’t know how you measure that.”

Only when the girl held out her hand did Miss Humphries understand the ring was for her. To hide her shock, Miss Humphries turned away and retrieved the sizing rings. She fumbled with them, not sure where to begin. Usually she started with the size six. The average woman was somewhere near that, but for a child? She held out the size four, but it swallowed the girl’s finger. The size three was still loose. The two, the one, and the three-quarter remained, but they were problematic.

“The dilemma here,” said Miss Humphries, “is the width of the setting. I’ll check with my brother, but I worry anything smaller than a three would require the setting to be curved to fit on the band. Of course, she’ll grow and the setting would have to be redone to permit the band to be resized. I suppose, if we went with the four, and put in a plastic sizer, that might work. Then the plastic sizer could come out when she’s a bit bigger. After that the ring would need to be resized again.”

She was chattering and she couldn’t stop. The dilemma, she wanted to say, is that people don’t buy engagement rings for children.

“Whatever’ll work,” the man said. “How long will it take?”

“Oh, I should think it could be ready by Friday afternoon.”

He and the girl both looked disappointed, but he nodded.

Miss Humphries wrote out the ticket in an unusually crooked hand for her, glancing up at them as she did it. They didn’t touch, even by accident. The girl stood with her hands clasped behind her. He kept a thumb hooked in a belt loop and the other hand in his pocket. When Miss Humphries laid the ticket on the counter, he pulled his hand out of his pocket, removing a roll of bills held with a rubber band. He snapped the rubber band off and began counting out hundred-dollar bills. She felt corrected for having assumed he couldn’t afford the ring.

“The resizing fee will be adjusted, because so much excess gold will be removed. After that’s weighed, we’ll refund that amount to account for it.” She watched the bills pile up and when he finished, she counted them into the cash drawer. “You’ve given me one too many.”

“That’s for you, for being so nice,” he said.

“I, well, that’s not—”

“It’ll be ready Friday?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks.”

A moment later, they were out the door, leaving her to stare at the hundred-dollar bill. In more than forty years behind the jewelry counter, she had never before been “tipped.”

*   *   *

When the man and the girl returned on Friday, Clifford was at the counter. He was about to make his own less diplomatic discouragement speech, but Miss Humphries intervened.

“Ah, here you are,” she said in the same bright voice she had used before to try to send them away. “Clifford, they’re here for the resized ring with the star sapphires.”

Her brother raised his eyebrow, but rose stiffly and went to the back room. He had said more than a few choice words about resizing an adult’s engagement ring to fit a child.

When he returned with the ticket and the velvet presentation box, he still had his eyebrow up. Worse, he stood at Miss Humphries’ elbow while she counted out the refund for the gold removed from the ring. It made her glad she hadn’t mentioned the extra hundred dollars which had gone discreetly into her purse instead of the till.

“Well, shall we make sure it fits?” she said after she closed the cash drawer.

Now that the moment came to open the box, Miss Humphries didn’t know how to proceed. Normally, when it was a regular ring, she laid it out on the velvet mat for the customer to try on. When it was an engagement ring, the man usually opened the box, and sometimes they had a little impromptu pre-wedding right there in the store. Miss Humphries loved those moments, when the woman got starry-eyed and the man looked thrilled and mildly terrified. It was the closest she ever got to romance outside a movie theater.

She passed the box to the man and, after a momentary hesitation, he opened it and took out the ring. It looked ridiculously small pinched between his thumb and finger. The girl didn’t hesitate. She held out her hand and he slipped the ring onto her narrow finger. The setting was too large for her hand, but the plastic sizer had done the trick for the band.

It turned out to be one of those moments Miss Humphries loved. The girl looked at the ring on her finger and up at the man with sparkling eyes. He looked nervous but happy. They were not father and daughter. Romance. For better or for worse.

When the man leaned down over the girl, Miss Humphries thought he would kiss her. Instead he said, “Now you know, okay? From here on out, only you. I promise.”

The girl nodded.

His gaze flicked to Miss Humphries and he blushed. “Thanks.”

“Thank you. I hope she enjoys the ring. Don’t forget your box, dear, and I’m sending you some jewelry cleaner, too.” On impulse she reached under the counter for it. “The sapphires are delicate and they need to be cleaned properly.”

After they were gone, Clifford said, “There’s something very wrong there. I wish you’d talked to me before you sold them the ring.”

“And what would you have done? He paid in cash.”

Going to the front window, Miss Humphries looked out. Across the street, the two stood next to a motorcycle, the girl smiling as she buckled on her helmet. After she climbed on the cycle, the man ducked his head and then, then he kissed her.

 4. CUTCHEON


Jesse Joe come back to the shop with Wavy, her looking happy for a change. Girl that age ought not to have so many troubles, but she did. Looking at it that way, them two was about made for each other. He’d swum his share of sorrows.

That day, they was both smiling.

“Well, you’re sure in a fine mood,” I said. I figured she’d do what she always did. Give me that shy smile and dart off like a spooked cat. But no, she waltzed right over and held out her hand like she was the Queen of England. On her finger was a diamond ring. Bigger than the one my Paola wore for forty years.

“That is a real purty ring. Where did you get that?”

Damned if she didn’t open her mouth and say, “Kellen and I are getting married.”

He got this real uneasy look on his face and said, “I don’t know if you better tell people that, Wavy.”

She frowned at him, so I knew they were gonna have a few words once she got him alone. Instead of going in the office, though, he changed his mind and they got back on the bike and left.

He come back an hour later by himself and went into the office. I followed him, just meaning to talk to him about the Lewiston’s lawnmower, but Jesse Joe closed the door, so Roger wouldn’t hear us. Then he sat down in his chair and give me a hard look. I didn’t know how to feel about that, because I don’t think business partners oughta give each other them kinda looks.

“Before you start in, old man, I’m not gonna marry her.”

“Well, she thinks you are. Don’t know if you noticed that.”

“It’s not what it looks like. I’m not that kinda guy.”

“I didn’t say a word.”

“No, you just come in here and give me that look,” he said.

“Now, see here, I didn’t give you no look. Your business is your business.”

I could see it was gonna be a while before we got to talking lawnmowers, so I parked my old bones in the other chair. Jesse Joe reached back to the ice box and pulled out two cokes, slid one across the desk to me. His way of apologizing.

“You know,” I said. “I married Paola when she was fourteen. And I was twenty-six. Her parents had eleven kids and they was glad to get her settled.”

“Those were different days, Mr. Cutcheon. I don’t suppose you could marry a fourteen-year-old these days.”

“That may be. Only thing is, why’d you buy her a ring if you ain’t planning on marrying her? You go talking that way you’re gonna break her heart.”

Now I didn’t set out to make him feel guilty, but women are sensitive about those things. Especially thirteen-year-old women. Lord, my oldest girl, by the time she was ten you couldn’t hardly tease her about nothing before she’d rear up and say, “Stop treating me like a child!”

“I love her,” he said in this low voice. “I wanna take care of her.”

“I can see how she trusts you. And that ain’t a small thing to a girl like her.”

Truth was she took care of him as much as he did her. There was a few times when he was younger that I thought to myself, One of these days, he ain’t gonna show up for work, ’cause he’ll be at home with a gun in his mouth. I had an uncle did that. Jesse Joe was a man with a deep streak of lonely, until Wavy came along.

“Nobody else looks out for her,” he said. “Her folks are…”

Her folks were trouble. Never saw nothing to fix it in my mind as certain, but I had me a suspicion Liam Quinn was into some bad dealings.

“That’s how it was for Paola. Her folks couldn’t hardly feed themselves, and with the Army set to send me home, I couldn’t leave her in Italy to starve. Them was dark days after the Armistice. That’s why you need to watch yourself. If there’s nobody else looking after that girl, she’s gotta be able to count on you.”

Look at the old man giving advice he ain’t been asked for.

“She can count on me,” Jesse Joe said.

“Then you can’t be making her promises you don’t intend to keep. If you don’t plan to get married, why’d you tell her you was?”

“Because I love her and I want her to know I mean that. And I know, me saying I love her, that’s one thing, and the ring is a whole other deal, but that’s what she wanted. It’s a big deal to her. To me, too. That’s why I bought her a nice ring. Not some cheap piece of shit.”

“How much did you spend, if you don’t mind my asking?”

I thought I’d overstepped, but it was hard to tell with him. Kinda man who come to work the day of his mama’s funeral and never said a word. He stood up, made me think I had gone too far, because he was a big man. He didn’t shift that bulk around unless he had to. Like watching a grizzly bear heave up on his hind legs, a smart man’d think about making himself scarce. Alls Jesse Joe did was pull out his wallet, toss a receipt on the desk, and set back down. I leaned over and took a look. More’n two thousand dollars.

“Well, I don’t believe I did it justice when I said it was a purty ring.”

“Same as I paid for my Panhead.”

“It’s a good bike.”

He laughed, figuring me for a superstitious old man, but it was good luck, him having a bike the same age as him.

“Didn’t seem too much to pay for the ring, as happy as it made her,” he said.

“It’d make you happy, too, if you’d let it. Ain’t nothing wrong with thinking you’re gonna marry her someday. I knew I was gonna marry Paola first time I met her, and she was only thirteen. I didn’t touch her ’til we was married, but I knew.” Truth was we did fool around some, but not much, ’cause Paola was a good Catholic.

“I just want Wavy to know I’m gonna be there for her. I don’t think she’ll grow up and wanna marry me. Why would she?”

“She could do a whole lot worse than you.”

“Far as I can tell, I’m not even the kinda guy girls go home with at last call, never mind the guy they marry.”

“Them’s two different things entirely, son. Speaking of last call, you got any more of that bourbon in the drawer?”

Hallelujah, he did. Not that I’m big on drinking in the middle of the day, but I could do with a drop if we was gonna keep jawing about serious things. Jesse Joe give me the bottle and I tipped out a little into my coke. He didn’t take none, though. His mama and daddy both was hard drinkers. They say it’s the Indian blood, got a weakness for liquor. Drink and misery killed his mama dead.

“Anyway, that’s all,” he said. “I didn’t buy her that ring planning on hanging around like a dog. When she grows up and meets a nice guy, as long as he’s good to her, I’ll be happy.”

“And what if she grows up and wants to marry you?”

Jesse Joe laughed and damned if he didn’t take out the bourbon again and add some to both our cokes.

“That ain’t no way to run a business, pouring me drinks while I’m on the clock. I ain’t so much as picked up a wrench to put the Lewiston’s mower back together.”

“It’s almost time to knock off, old man. Drink up.”

I could see what he meant to do, so I said, “Well? What if?”

He drained that bourbon and coke in three big swallows, and shook his head.

“Hell, if she grows up and for some crazy reason she still wants to marry me, fine. That ring is a sincere promise. If she wanted to get married, we’d go to the courthouse and do it. You know I’m not much for going to church, but if she wanted a church wedding, we’d have a church wedding, white dress, the whole deal.”

“And some new boots to go with it.” I said it to make him laugh, ’cause I could see it upset him. Either thinking about her wanting to marry him, or more likely thinking about her growing up and not wanting to marry him. Boy had got himself in a hell of a spot. Maybe she would outgrow the notion and he’d still be in love with her. I just hoped I’d be with my Paola before he put that gun in his mouth.