“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 ma
rrying 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.
5
WAVY
October 1982
Mama kept her makeup and pills in a drawer, like secrets. Sandy spread hers out on a fancy table in her bedroom. She had lots of makeup, too, and a round plastic case with a pharmacy label on it. Real pills from a doctor.
That’s what I was looking at when Sandy walked in and turned on the light.
“Oh, fuck, oh, fuck. You scared the crap out of me, Wavy. What are you doing?”
Never get caught was the rule, but sometimes I was careless at the trailers. All I was really scared of was Liam catching me, so I mostly only listened for his voice.
“Are you stealing stuff from me? Or just snooping, so you can report back to your mommy?” Sandy said.
I shook my head and showed her my empty hands. Just like that, she stopped glaring at me and smiled.
“I’m sorry, honey,” she said. “You weren’t taking stuff, were you? You were just looking. God, you’re sneaky quiet. I didn’t even hear you come in. Do you like to put on makeup?”
Sometimes Sandy talked to me like a little kid or like I was stupid. A lot of people did. Scott used to say, “She’s a couple sandwiches shy of a picnic, ain’t she?” Before I beat him at poker. People thinking I was stupid wasn’t all bad. Sometimes they told me secrets because they knew I wouldn’t repeat them.
“Do you want to try on some of my makeup? Go on and sit down,” Sandy said.
I took a step toward the door, but she was in the way.
“No, don’t go, honey. I’m sorry I yelled at you. You just surprised me. Don’t go.”
Sandy wasn’t like Dee, who only talked nice to me when other people were around. Plus, she had come with Kellen to get me from the sheriff’s office, even though Liam hit her for that. She walked over to the makeup table, away from the door. She wasn’t going to make me stay.
“You need something pale. Pink, because you’re so fair. This is a good color, this lipstick. It’s called Cherub’s Kiss. Do you like this one?”
She said it so singsongy, so nice, the way she talked to the cat who lived under the porch. Kitty-kitty, do you want some of my tuna sandwich? I put my finger on the box of brilliant blue and green eye shadow squares. It was like a set of watercolors, but more beautiful.
“That’s eye shadow. You have to be careful because you’re so fair. Dee wears too much eye makeup because her eyebrows and her eyelashes are pale, but that’s not right. You’re a natural beauty, so you don’t need much makeup. But when you’re older you’ll have to stay out of the sun or you’ll wrinkl
e.”
We went down the table with me touching things and Sandy telling me what they were: mascara, eyeliner, lip liner, blusher, eyelash curler. I liked how she explained everything. Mama never explained anything. She just made rules and that was that.
I put my finger on the plastic case from the pharmacy.
“Oh, that’s not makeup, honey. That’s my pills. Are you old enough to know about where babies come from?”
I nodded. The health class textbook called it intercourse, but the book’s drawings didn’t look anything like real fucking.
“Well, those are the pills I take so I don’t get pregnant. Because a lot of guys don’t like to use condoms. Your daddy sure doesn’t. Anyway, that’s what those pills are for. Now, let’s put some makeup on you. Is that okay? If I touch you?”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to be mean, but there were rules. Liam touched Sandy, and if she touched me, it might be the same thing as Liam touching me.
“Well, maybe I can show you and you can put it on yourself.”
Sandy showed me how to use the little wand to smudge on eye shadow. She gave me lipstick, too, but I didn’t like the idea of touching the tube to my mouth.
“Well, you can rub your finger on it and put it on your lips,” she said.
I did it that way, using my little finger to smooth the pink stuff on my lips.
“Don’t you look pretty? Oh and your ring! Where did that come from? Are you—are you supposed to be wearing that?” Sandy frowned.
“Kellen.” It was the one word that was always safe to say.
“Kellen gave you that?”
The rule was that only people Kellen knew could know about the ring. That meant Sandy was safe.
“We’re getting married,” I said.
Sandy giggled and clapped her hand over her mouth.
“Are you teasing me? Because that’s the only thing you’ve ever said to me besides no.”
To show her, I did what Kellen did: kissed the ring. My lips left behind a little smudge of pink on the diamond.
“Wow. It’s gorgeous. That’s your engagement ring? He must really love you if he bought you that. So you—you love him, too?”