Rust by Julie Mars Read Free Book Online Page B

She would hear the monkeys from the zoo as she daydreamed.
    Besides, having a hammock was a family legacy of which there were precious few in Margaret’s life. In the months after her parents left for India and before they disappeared, she had received a long letter with a photograph tucked into the envelope. In it, her parents relaxed in a wide hammock, Vincent settled into it on his back and Regina on her side next to him, her face pressed into his chest and their legs intertwined. Vincent’s arms were wrapped around her, and in one hand he held a tall bottle of Kingfisher beer. He was smiling at the camera, while Regina’s face was barely visible. Vincent had written little messages on the picture, like in a comic book. Out of his own mouth came the words, “I love you, my sweet little girl!” and out of Regina’s came, “We miss you every day, every minute, every second! Don’t grow up too much before we get home!” On the back of the picture, in Vincent’s hard-to-read scrawl, it read, “Mommy and Daddy in Goa, thinking of Margaret with Grampy in New York.” Donny had hung it on the little vanity mirror in her bedroom, where it stayed for a good ten years before she finally tucked it into a box of mementoes which included all the gifts from India; and then later—after Donny’s death—his gold-plated pocket watch, his certificate of U.S. citizenship, and a small stack of family photos, mostly people Margaret didn’t recognize who lived, she assumed, in County Cork, Ireland.
    When she finally got the hammock strung up, taut and secure, she climbed in, placing her head on the little pillow and letting her arm trail over the side to ruffle Magpie’s fur from time to time. She felt like a pretty magician’s assistant in a levitation act. She felt like a new baby in a cradle of love. High above the trees were white clouds which slowly passed over, first removing and then releasing the blue sky into the little patches between the leaves. A great peacefulness worked its way into her, maybe from the ground up, maybe from the sky down, maybe it hovered in the air at that elevation, she didn’t know. But absorbing it, she felt invited to close her eyes and gently rock in a drifty, dreamy way, and when she did, who should appear in her mind but Rico. “I got the wrong idea and made an asshole of myself . . . which is not unusual,” he had said. And the words were true and he meant them and she knew it, and something in the visual of him outside the screen had hit her hard.
    Maybe in some way he reminded her of Donny in that moment. Her grandfather had a humble streak that ran neck-and-neck with his rough-and-tough side. He would yell at her for something—which she probably deserved—and then later stand before her, filling up all the space by the side of her narrow bed, and say how sorry he was; how he didn’t know what he’d done wrong with her mother, how he had contributed to the personality of a woman who would run off and leave her daughter with a man who clearly didn’t have the skill to do a good job of raising her; how he desperately wanted to do everything differently now—first and foremost was not yelling—and then he would ask for her forgiveness. Every time it happened, Margaret felt her heart stagger until, somewhere along the line, she’d find her voice and say, “Don’t worry about it, Grampy. It’s okay,” and he would lean in and kiss her on the cheek and Margaret’s heart would ache more for him than for herself, even in those times when she felt he had been unreasonable and maybe even cruel. The truth was, she loved her grandfather three times the normal amount. She loved him as Grampy but also as a father and a mother.
    Of course, she didn’t love Rico. She had erased him the instant he’d left the yard and climbed into his truck yesterday. Erasing was a skill Margaret had, her way of keeping power. Even as a little girl in the Catholic school Donny sent her to she’d