Sis turned to the window and saw her nephew in the backyard, surrounded by boxes.
“Is Andy building a fort out there?”
“No. A rocket ship. He’s planning to fly me to the moon.”
“Maybe he’ll take me, too.” She looked back at her baby sister standing there oblivious in her long-sleeved shirt, expecting every downpour to yield a rainbow. “I’m sorry, Em. I’m such a grump.”
“You’re not totally grumpy. Just a little.”
“I’m going outside to cool off and visit with Andy, and when I come back inside, we’ll plan a wedding that will turn your enemies green with envy.”
“I don’t have enemies,” Emily said without a single hint of irony.
Lord, Sis hoped that was true. She raced through the door, the scent of Amen cobbler following her all the way, so strong it felt like somebody squeezing her heart. Outside, she leaned against the wall, trying to catch a deep breath. What would become of her family if she worried herself into a heart attack? It could happen. Last year a woman not three years older than Sis had keeled over on the front pew of the Biloxi Baptist Church, and her with three children to look after and a husband, besides.
“Hey, Aunt Sis,” Andy called. “How many batteries you got?”
He was standing on top of a TV box in his Superman suit, his blond cowlick sticking up in front like the crest of a baby bird, his sturdy legs beneath the too-short pants turned dark gold from a summer in the sun, the big red S on his shirt faded from too many washings. His feet were bare and his face was filled with excitement.
“I don’t have any batteries in my pockets, but I’ll bet I can find some. What are they for?”
“My rocket ship. It’s gonna take lots to get to the moon.”
Hope is such a fragile thing, a butterfly wing you could crush with one finger. Walking a thin line, terrified of leaning too far to the left or the right, Sis squatted beside her nephew at the pile of boxes.
“Let me help you with that rocket ship.”
“Me and you’s gonna build the bestest one!” Andy scrambled among the pile and came up with a box still smelling of laundry detergent. “Mommy won’t let me use a knife. Can you cut the window, Aunt Sis?”
“I can.”
As she pulled out a pocketknife and cut a window right over the T on the Tide box, Sis missed the family she might have had as if they were real, as if she had a husband who kept her picture on his desk, a daughter named Susan who had inherited her aunt Emily’s beautiful blond hair and a sturdy son named Bill after her own father, a son who loved baseball and digging for worms and sitting on the banks of the Tchoutacabouffa River with a fishing pole.
When Andy raced inside to peer out through the hole, her phantom family vanished, leaving her in the backyard of the café with a nephew whose grin lit a candle in her heart.
“Oh, boy. When I fly to the moon, I can see my daddy up there in the stars.”
If Sis were in her sister’s shoes, she’d never have painted Mark Jones as a hero. In her book, there was nothing heroic about leaving a pregnant girlfriend to face the fallout in a Bible Belt society. But what did she know about love and children? She’d never had either.
“Do you think I’ll see my daddy, Aunt Sis?”
“Maybe.”
Andy got that little boy skeptical look that said I know you’re going to break my heart with the truth but I love you enough to stand here and smile while you do it.
“If you look with your heart, and maybe wear a special pair of glasses.”
“What kinda glasses?”
“The kind I’ve got back home in my dresser drawer.” It was an old pair of sunglasses, red with white polka dots and cat-eye frames. “Every astronaut ought to have a pair. I’ll give them to you.”
Andy clambered out of the box, then raced to the base of a live oak and dug a while in the dirt. When he came back, he handed Sis a white rock the size of a hen egg, along with a good-size chunk of soil.
“You the bestest, Aunt Sis. This is for you.”
“Thank you, Andy.”
“It’s a magic rock.”
“What does it do?”
“Wish real hard and rub it. See? Like this.” He put his grubby little hand on the rock and rubbed with all his might. “Then your wish’ll come true.”
Sis kissed the top of his head, which smelled like sunshine and salty sea air and optimism.
“I’ve got to get back inside, but you keep up the good work, Andy.”
Grinning, he made a fist and bumped it against hers.
“Later, ’gator,” he said.
“After a while, crocodile.”
Before she got to the back door, she rubbed the rock in her pocket. Just in case it might still contain a little boy’s belief in magic.
* * *
That afternoon Sis left the café early, and if you looked close enough you’d see a cloud of anxiety over her head as dark as a flock of blackbirds. You’d see a woman who has lost her moral compass, one who stopped seeing in black-and-white the minute she dug under the rosebushes.
Driving by the seawall as familiar as the peaches in Sweet Mama’s Amen cobbler, Sis glanced at the beach, hoping for distraction, longing to see a little boy in a baseball cap hitting a fly ball into a blue surf pounding the white sand. But all she saw were shades of gray. No color. No right. No wrong. Just a vast shadowy land where the truth was hidden under a rosebush and anything at all was possible.
Finally, the Victorian house came into view, but it no longer put Sis in mind of a tall glass of sweet tea on the front porch swing. She parked and hurried straight to the kitchen, but there was no sign of Beulah or Jim.
Perhaps it was movement in the backyard that caught her eye, or it could have been instinct, sharpened by years of trouble and perfected to art by constant vigilance.
Beulah wore a red hat with a brim wide enough to shade two people, and in her hand was a shovel.
Sis barreled through the back door and took the steps two at a time.
“Beulah! What on earth are you doing?”
“What does it look like, Sis? I’m planting roses.”
There they were, new rosebushes all in a row, standing like sentinels over the bones. Even the bush that had sheltered the foot had vanished, and in its place was a Don Juan climber, its petals dripping to the ground red as blood. Closer inspection revealed that these end-of-summer bushes were hardly better than the disease-ravaged ones they’d replaced. Instead of rich, green branches full of life, the new bushes were mere skeletons, their limbs holding a puny offering of sparse leaves and small blossoms.
“Good Lord. Where did you find these?”
“Closeout sale at the corner market.”
“They won’t live in this heat.”
“Yes, they will. I aim to water ’em every day.” Beulah stripped off her gloves and handed Sis the shovel, as matter-of-factly as if she’d just planted prizewinning roses in a spring garden. “Stow this, will you, Sis? I’m gonna get some sweet tea before I melt.”
Sis held on to the shovel and stared