It wasn't like she had never trusted before or like she was new at this. She'd done it a hundred times, more than a hundred, everyday, and it had never been this...this nerve- wracking. She looked up at him, eyes big with fear. He nodded encouragement, cocked his head in that little way he had. Raised his eyebrows. She stepped back from the edge and took a breath,. With unthinking irony she fumbled for his hand to reassure herself that she hadn't fallen into something stupid, that she was still standing and not tumbling wildly through some fevered unknown. She looked down and up again at him.
The memories are difficult. The first time had been with Mom and Dad. She was just a child and barely remembers but they had been overjoyed and so proud of their little girl. They were her world and so, in complete and wild-eyed fear, she listened to them and climbed aboard. She had taken the ride. And it had been great! Afterward they had hugged her and smiled at each other and bought her favorite chocolate ice cream. Safely on the ground, she had smiled and beamed back at them.
And then she had spilled chocolate ice cream on her new white denim skirt from Wal-Mart, Her lower lip had quivered and for the first time she wondered if they still loved her, could they love her with a stain on her new white skirt from Wal-Mart. And Mother had laughed, "Bethy, it's okay! Just be careful next time, Ladybug," and wiped off her skirt with spit and a napkin. Ladybugs were her favorite. She had been wearing ladybug socks that day.
She still wore ladybug socks. They never matched anything but she loved them anyway. She loved the willow tree outside her window, too, still cimbed over the sill to sit in its branches and look at the world through its veil of green fronds. Things looked different when she saw them from the tree. Softer. More beautiful. She felt different in the tree, too. Softer. More beautiful. More like the girl with the long brown hair and high cheekbones and less like the really quiet chick with thick glasses. And she did too talk, yes, just not in class. She had talked a lot when she was younger, before....
Grandpa was sick a long time before he died. He retired, and suddenly the problems appeared. He couldn't remember. He didn't remember Bethy, didn't remember that he gave her the bug barn where she kept her ladybugs. She still had it. All these years later, she had the silly little bug barn with the torn screen and the little piece of grass stuck in the corner. It was all she had left of him.
They took walks in the park. Sometimes he gave her bread to feed the ducks and pushed her on the swing. When he visited he tucked Bethy into bed and drew clown makeup on her face with the tips of his fingers while he told her bedtime stories. She loved it when Grandpa tucked her in. "I love you, Grandpa," she said. "I love you, too, Ladybug." Then he'd kiss her forehead and tuck her in from her ribs to her feet,. He would turn off the light and leave the door open just a crack. She liked the way the light from the hallway slipped into the room and left a yellow stripe on the wall.
After the funeral it was Spanky she talked to at night. She would look deeply into his shiny glass eyes and whisper secrets into his furry bear ears. Spanky understood. He loved Grandpa and he, too, loved to sit in the willow tree. Bethy knew it reminded him of the times she and Grandpa walked in the park. She took Spanky everywhere then. He had his own seatbelt on car rides; he even came to dinner. Spanky was in every birthday picture from the time she was three until she was twelve. Then she stopped and Spanky disappeared into a box in the attic with her three Barbies and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle that she'd found on the beach with Grandpa..
Which is where Bethy met him. She had offered to treat her parents to popsicles that day and he was in the truck selling ice cream. When the crowd of kids had finally thinned she walked up to the window and silently met his eyes. They were gray and green and golden, somehow, and they sucked her in. She realized she was staring then and was embarrassed.
"Three cherry ice pops, please," she said in her soft low voice. He looked at her for a moment...turned...opened the freezer...and handed them to her. She pulled the five dollars from her bathing suit and slid it across the counter. There had been pennies in change.
"Thank you," she said and walked back to the umbrella where her parents sat. Her mother had on her big straw hat and was reading from a magazine to her father. Something about skin cancer. They accepted the ice pops and laughed as the three of them licked up the drips before they fell to bare, beautiful, sunburned skin. "Your hair's getting long, Bethy," "I know. I like it." Beth's hair liked the ocean, and it liked the sun. Beth did too. Grandpa was gone now and Spanky had been boxed up in the attic for months and months.
Beth saw him in the hallway months later. Their gazes crossed and she couldn't quite place him. She remembered the eyes, though, and he remembered the long hair hanging down her back.
When she turned and walked away, he saw her ladybug socks and realized that he had never really looked at someone's socks before. He told her so later. Then he told her he thought she was beautiful. Beth just looked at him and didn't say a word.
"You don't say much, do you," he observed. Remarkable grasp..., she thought. "I do when I need to." He waited for more. "I listen," Beth said. "When you really listen, you hear things no one else does."
Beth loved the willow tree outside her window. She could see the sidewalk and the river, her back yard and the back-and-over-one neighbor's yard. They had a dog and four small children who yelled a lot.
Beth didn't sit in the tree much during the day anymore. She preferred the night. She liked looking at the moon and the stars through the dark, wispy tendrils. She sang there, sometimes, and Mr. and Mrs. Back-and-Over-One would come out on the deck (after the children had gone to bed), and listen. She could hear them guessing about the "where" and "who" of her songs.
She would sit there and braid her hair, look at the stars and sing her songs. After the moonrise and while she was still singing, they would go inside. Her songs rarely had words. and when they did, they didn't rhyme. That night she sang herself stories and thought about his eyes. She listened to the river and remembered the smell of the ocean and the salty kiss the spray left on her lips.
"I need you," he told her once. "No you don't. You need air and you need sunlight." "You are my sunlight." She looked into his eyes, shook her head and pointed upward. "There's your sunlight."
Her hair was in a long plait that day and she was wearing brown corduroy pants. They didn't fit because she'd gotten them at a thrift shop for fifty cents and she never checked for size. Her feet were bare. They generally were unless someone made her wear shoes. She never polished her toenails and she never wore makeup. He liked that about her. She didn't take compliments, though, and that frustrated him. She didn't care.
And she wouldn't sing for him. Once he caught her climbing down from the willow tree. It was dinnertime and the back-and-over-one children were eating inside with their parents. She was furious when she realized he had been listening to her. It was a week before she spoke to him. He talked and she would listen, but she refused to answer. She ate lunch outside alone.
The sixth day he sat beside her on the grass...and waited. She said nothing. The seventh day he sat beside her on the grass until she looked at him. "Hello," he said. "Hi." The eighth day he sat beside her on the grass and touched her hand. "I'm sorry." She looked into his eyes and nodded. The ninth day she waited for him by her locker. The tenth day he walked her home.
It was hot when they got there. She led him to the back yard and brought him a cherry ice pop. They ate a lot of cherry ice pops. The weather was nice enough (even in winter), and they spent a lot of time in the sun.
"What do you want to do when you grow up?", he asked. "Have a garden." He looked at her for a moment to see if she was serious. She was. He tried again. "What do you want to be?" "Happy." He sighed. "Are you trying to be difficult, Ladybug?" "No. Are you?" Silently they looked at each other, then burst out laughing. They laughed a lot in the sun.
Beth decided that Spanky should come down from the attic. She went up and dug around until she found the box with Spanky and the three Barbies and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Spanky looked shabbier, somehow, his eyes less shiny. Her eyes were older. Maybe that was the problem.
She asked Spanky about it later, after the cherry pops and after the goodbyes were said. Spanky looked old. He looked like Grandpa their last Christmas together, right before he died. Beth remembered the swim trunks Grandpa got from one of her aunts. She and Spanky cried thinking how sad it was that he'd be too sick to use them before he died. Beth wondered if her aunt returned them. Spanky didn't think so; Beth didn't know.
She wished she and Grandpa and Spanky could go to the ocean again. She'd buy him a cherry ice pop and tell him she loved him. They'd take a walk with Spanky and feed the gulls and pretend they were ducks again. Her song that night was sad. Wordless and sad. Mrs. Back-and-Over-One sat on the deck and listened alone because her husband worked late that night. She remembered the night her father died and cried and wished her husband there beside her.
Spring arrived with summer hot on the horizon. Beth spent a lot of time in the tree that spring. She and Spanky both did. They went on walks in the park. Old people on their outings would stare at her and she and Spanky would stare right back. She would whisper to Spanky and point until they grew uncomfortable and looked away. She swung on the swings higher than she ever had before and wanted to be a bird.
The next time he asked her what she wanted to be, she thought a moment...a bird. But again she said, "Happy". He was exasperated. "Don't you want to be happy?", she asked him. He looked at her the same way the old people in the park looked at her and she laughed. "You don't know what you want," Beth declared. "Neither do you." "I want to be happy."
Her parents asked her about him over dinner one night. "Do you like him, Ladybug?" "He's my friend. Of course I like him." They exchanged smiles over her head like they had when she'd spilled chocolate ice cream on her new white skirt from Wal-Mart.
They walked to the playground after school the next day. He pushed her on the swing and she bet him she was faster and could beat him to the baseball diamond. She was winning but he cheated and tackled her and pinned her. Her hair was loose and she had been hampered by a long skirt. He was bigger, but she was feisty. He held her down and laughed as she tried to push him off.
"You're even more beautiful when you're losing, Ladybug." Beth growled at him, still struggling. His face got serious. "Bethy?" "What?" She was still trying to flip him over and was very close to succeeding. "I love you." She stopped struggling.
Beth avoided him for a week. He called, but she stayed outside so she wouldn't hear the phone ring. She could hear it in the tree when her window was open, so she went out the back door and climbed up from the yard. Her mother stood with the phone under the willow on the fifth day, but Beth shook her head and returned to her book. She could hear her mother mumbling apologies into the phone as she went back inside. Because Mom agrees...somehow he says, "Ladybug" the same way Grandpa did.
The seventh day he came over but she had gone for a walk along the river. Her parents didn't know when she would be back. They apologized and suggested he go home. They would tell Beth he stopped by. "Tell her I'm sorry." "She knows you're sorry."
She didn't come home until after dark. Beth had known he would come and she didn't want to be there. She returned too early, though, and saw him standing by the tree. She turned and walked the other way. She went back to the river by the old bridge and sat and cried...and cried until all her tears were gone.
As she washed her face in the cold, clear water her hair spilled from her back over her arm and into the river. And because she hadn't rolled them up before going wading, her favorite pair of jeans were wet. First the tears, now everything was wet. She climbed the willow by the river and sat there to dry. She dreamed of being a bird but with the sun low in the sky, at last, she wished for rain. A thunderstorm was what she needed.
There had been a thunderstorm the day of Grandpa's funeral. The clouds had been nearing for hours and as they were leaving the cemetery the sky suddenly let loose in torrents of lightning and rain. Grandpa and Bethy used to watch thunderstorms together and he would tell her that she was an old soul. She didn't understand until after he was gone. Now she did and she wanted to talk to him about old souls and ask if old souls could love.
When she was little and Mommy had to go somewhere without Bethy and Daddy was at work, she went to Grandpa's. They always made cookies when it rained, the kind she got to slice and put on the cookie sheet. While they were in the oven, Grandpa would pull half dollars out of her ear and show her magic tricks. Bethy used to get so lost in the tricks that she would forget to check the cookies. Her face would get very somber when they burned and that was the first time Grandpa told her she was an old soul. "Ladybug, don't be so serious! It's just cookies and I like them crispy anyway."
The next day was Monday and he was waiting by her locker when she got to school. "You've been hiding from me." You're learning. "You're upset?" Had he no brains at all?. She looked at him and waited for what would come next. He noticed that she was wearing the ladybug socks. They looked awful with her purple corduroy skirt, but she didn't care...and he didn't either. "Why won't you talk to me, Ladybug? I can't listen if you won't talk to me" "Yes you can. If you really listen, you can."
He left her alone for two days after that. He didn't call. He didn't stop by after school. He didn't sit with her during lunch. Mrs. Back-and-Over-One had gotten tired of the four yelling children and enrolled the two older ones in some aftenoon activity while the preschooler and baby played with the new sitter. Mrs. Back-and-Over-One had asked Beth to do it but Beth wanted to sit in the sun without hearing the little Back-and-Over-Ones' bickering.
She was glad she said, "no". She and Spanky sat in the willow tree and listened to the river. Spanky wanted to know why Beth wasn't on the patio with a cherry ice pop, but Beth looked so very sad he didn't dare ask.
"You haven't been spending much time together, Bethy." "I know." "Is everything okay?" "Yes." "He can come over for dinner this week." "That's okay, Mom" "Are you sure?" "I'm sure."
"Let's go for a walk." Beth looked down at him from the willow tree. "Come on, let's go." She looked at him for a moment, debating, and reluctantly climbed down. "Where?" "Anywhere." "The bridge?" "Okay."
They crossed the yard, the street and finally the field. He walked on the gravel path while she walked on the grass with bare feet. Neither one spoke. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye thinking she wouldn't notice. But she did of course. She kept walking when they reached the bridge and climbed the willow tree there. He followed and sat on the branch opposite.
"You're upset." "Yes." "Why?" "Why did you say that?" "Say what?" "What you said." "What did I say?" "You don't remember?" "I remember. I want you to tell me." "No." "Why not?"
She blinked at him. "Why did you tell me that?" "Because it's true. I love you." "No, you don't." "I do. Why don't you believe me?" "You can't." "Why not?" "You just can't." "But I already do."
"No."
