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“I love you too, Honey bear.” Aunt Betty hugged me back even tighter.
Later that day in class, after Kid had pulled on my hair twice, I waited a few minutes and yelled OUCH for a third time even though he hadn’t laid one hair on my head. Kid got three checks and had to stay after school that day. When it was time to go, I made sure I was the first one in line for the door. Then I turned my head around and stuck my tongue out at Kid Harding.
The next morning when he stood waiting for me at the classroom door, I figured he was getting ready to knock me on the floor. But instead of being mad, Kid Harding gave me a wide smile just filled with admiration.
“Well played, pretty Liddy. You win.”
In answer, I just grinned smugly at Kid and walked away thinking that my problems with that boy were over.
And they had been.
For a while.
A few years later…
“Henry Peters is coming over to fix the car tomorrow,” Auntie said way too casually as she sorted through the racks of the junior department at Wellingtons Boutique. Tomorrow was my birthday, and we were on a small shopping spree to mark the occasion.
“You have been spending a lot of time with Henry Peters.” I pointed out just as casually.
“And I’ll be spending more if I have anything to say about it.” Auntie looked at me then and the smile on her face made her eyes twinkle.
“You and Henry? I just don’t see it.” I pulled out a pink t-shirt that clashed perfectly with the color of my hair and sighed before I put it back on the rack.
Aunt Betty pulled it back from the rack and put it in the cart with the rest of the stuff. “Don’t ever be afraid of color, Liddy. And why not?”
“Why not what?” I went back to sorting through the racks.
“Why don’t you see me and Henry as a thing?”
“Big belly, hairy ears, and two strands away from a comb-over is why not.”
“Okay, so maybe his looks don’t stack up.” Aunt Betty admitted as we headed towards check out. “But he’s kind, Liddy, and I think you and I could use some of that kindness in our lives.” Then she paused and tucked a curl behind my ear. “I’ve been with a lot of men whose looks were the best thing about them. I’ve learned to look deeper.”
It was true that since Henry bought the trailer park a year ago, there had been lots of improvements. He put in a building filled with washers and dryers where we could all do our laundry for free. There were new swings, a teetertotter, and a tetherball set in the yard thanks to Henry’s kind generosity. I thought about Henry’s too big belly, his bad eyesight, his balding head, and those hairy ears. But I also thought about how nice of a man he was. And all that thinking brought my daddy to mind. Jeb Hall with his handsome face, bright blue eyes, and body full of hard muscles had made the women go crazy even though every one of them knew he was a mean, dumb, fall-down drunk. Suddenly, Henry didn’t look so bad to me anymore.
“Let’s invite Henry over for birthday cake tonight,” I said suddenly.
After that night, Aunt Betty and Henry started to see a whole lot more of each other. Life moved on the way it does, and soon my thoughts were taken up by something a lot more important than Aunt Betty and Henry Peters. Mrs. Di Croce, our art teacher decided to offer an afterschool program. I loved to draw, paint, and sketch more than anything in the world. And best of all, it had been the one thing in school that I was good at. I had worked hard at every assignment that Mrs. Di Croce had given us, even staying after school so I could use the good pastels that she kept locked in a closet during regular school hours. Every lesson for me was like being a part of a wonderland full of magic.
When she told us about the contest being hosted by the Liberty Museum Art Festival, I had to stop myself from jumping up and down. The contest would feature one painting from an elementary school student, a middle school student, and a high school student. After pouring over pictures for a week, I decided to paint flowers in a vase. Probably not the most original idea, but my talent had its limits, and I was very good at painting flowers.
Aunt Betty was as excited about the whole idea as I was. Henry took us both to the city the following weekend where we got to go to a real art museum. Then after spending hours perusing the exhibits, he bought me a sketchbook and a special set of brushes from the gift shop. The next day Auntie and I went shopping for the subject matter. After spending half the day at the Lakeshore Mall looking through half a dozen houseware departments and coming up empty, we found the perfect vase at our local thrift shop. It was made of white carnival glass and sold for twenty-five dollars, which was an extraordinary amount for Molly’s Second Chance Store, but the swirls of colors against the pearly white glass might have been the most beautiful thing that I had ever seen. Then Aunt Betty surprised me with a trip to Johnson’s Fern and Flora Emporium where we spent a long time picking out the perfect ferns, stems of baby breath, and a dozen roses of varying colors and phases of bloom. Artie Johnson knew all about the Liberty Museum Art contest and gave us a healthy discount on the flowers, and his good wishes. When we got home, I arranged the flowers carefully in the carnival glass according to an online tutorial. After arranging and rearranging a dozen times, I was finally satisfied and took several pictures of the final result. I sent the pictures to Spoon’s pharmacy where they printed copies out for me. That way I would have them in case the blossoms did not last as long as I needed them to.
I was never very lucky, and school was still a big challenge for me, but the moment that contest was announced I knew I could win it. I spent every day thinking about the composition of my painting, and every evening working on it. When Mrs. Saunders was teaching us Algebra, I was mixing colors in my mind.
Kid Harding and I had pretty much made our peace by then. And the older we got the more evident it became that that boy had been born under a lucky star. Kid was the kind of person who was good at almost anything without much trying. He ran the fastest, could climb the rope to the top, aced all the tests and the prettiest girl in the whole school was sweet on him. Kid and I didn’t have any classes together except for homeroom which was fine with me. But still, Kid just being Kid annoyed me. Sometimes, I would catch him staring at my chest as if he was waiting for something to sprout out any minute. I kind of was waiting for that too.
Life was going pretty much as it should have. I had friends, I was making a little extra money by babysitting, and I had finally finished the still life painting and submitted it to Mrs. Di Croce to be considered for the art show. I had decided to name itLate Bloomersbecause secretly I hoped that someday I would be as pretty as those flowers. The day I found out that I had won that blue ribbon and that my painting was going to be displayed in the museum was both the happiest and maddest day of my life.
The happy? That had everything to do with me.
But the mad? That was all Kid Harding.
“Hey Liddy, wait up!” He called out to me from the steps of Harper Middle School. I had stayed late to talk to Mrs. Di Croce, and Kid was on the baseball team, so he always stayed late. “I’ll walk home with you.” He hurried to catch up to me.
“Can’t!” I quickened my steps and didn’t take the time to turn around. “I need to get home right away, and I can’t be waiting on a slowpoke like you.” I threw the taunt over my shoulder. I knew I shouldn’t have made it sound like a challenge, but that boy always brought out the worst in me.
Of course, Kid being Kid, the boy who was good at everything including track, caught up to me fast. “What’s up?”
