Crystal Grader - Tag Cavello (reading women .TXT) 📗

car horn to get Crystal to put the box back and storm outside, kicking stones.

It was no wonder the box was pink. It was dedicated to a girl. Someone near and dear to Jarett’s heart. Someone he would never forget.

Well…perhaps not that last. Perhaps, Crystal thought, slamming the car door shut opposite her mother’s curious expression, Jarett wouldn’t have a choice in the matter. If indeed he was still hanging on to some high school princess he’d once loved and lost, the time for jettisoning had arrived.

Because the new princess was here. And as Crystal had already figured out months earlier, there was only room in his world for one.

9

 

The trig quiz on the 17th went about as well as Crystal could have hoped. Some of the questions stymied her, but not all. After the break Mr. Emmons handed it back with a C+ written at the top of page one.

“Good enough,” she said to Lucy at lunch. “A+ for you?”

The other girl had raised her can of Diet Pepsi in mock salute. “Of course.”

“Well don’t fall off the balance beam this afternoon or I’ll feel like a freeloader.”

Before all of this, of course, were the holidays. They provided a welcome respite from the unpleasant discovery Crystal had made in Jarett’s shoebox. Her thoughts, busy with baking cookies and wrapping presents, had very little time to spend on the outside world. At just after midnight on the 22nd, Hannah knocked on her door bearing gifts. She stood in the candlelit hallway with a scarf in one hand and a pair of pink mittens in the other. Crystal was overwhelmed. Thanking her sister as best she knew how, she invited her in. They chatted on the bed for a few minutes before Crystal presented her own gift: a music box with a twirling ballerina on the inside. By this time snow was falling beyond the frosted glass of the reading nook (which now twinkled with Christmas lights), and the girls lay in bed together watching it until three in the morning, at which point Hannah at last fell asleep, freeing Crystal to sneak downstairs for a secret glass of Canei Mellow Rose.

On Christmas Eve Lucretia woke up with a cough. By the middle of January, she was in the hospital with pneumonia. It wasn’t serious, the doctors assured, but she needed to be confined until the affliction was under control. From this announcement there came a swift and awkward dilemma.

“Who’s going to stay with the two of you at home?” Lucretia asked as a nurse wheeled her to her room.

Crystal looked at Hannah, who only shrugged. Both girls were a little out of breath keeping up with the nurse’s brisk pace, but perhaps that dealt them a helping hand, for an idea sprang into Crystal’s stimulated mind that was as brilliant as it was spontaneous.

“That’s a lot to impose on a man I’ve never even met,” was Lucretia’s response after hearing the pitch.

“He won’t mind. He’s all alone in that big house.”

“And how well do you trust him? Not that the judgment of an eleven year-old girl is something to bet on.”

The nurse helped her into a bed. An IV was tapped into her arm. She coughed, took in a ragged breath and let it out slow. Seeing it almost made Crystal want to quit cigarettes cold turkey.

“I trust him a lot, Mom, he’s my teacher. Look how well my writing’s improved since Halloween.”

A choked laugh came from the other side of the bed. Crystal shot Hannah a look but said nothing. She knew that for this to work any and all conflict with her sister had to be cut for at least the rest of the day.

“Let’s call him up,” she proposed. “I know his number.”

Lucretia’s brow wrinkled as if something awful had just been put in her mouth. “Are you out of your mind? I’m not going to call your teacher up on the phone and dump two bodacious girls into his lap for a week.”

“What’s bodacious?” Hannah wanted to know.

“It’s something like a pain in the ass.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, forget it.”

Crystal stamped her foot. “Come on, Mom!”

“I said forget it.”

“Then what are we going to do?”

“I’m thinking, I’m thinking.”

Except Lucretia couldn’t think when she was sick, or so it appeared to Crystal. She closed her eyes, put her hand on her head, and snuffled through her nose for several minutes without uttering a word.

“Your grandparents live in Florida,” she pointed out with finality.

“Yeah, we know,” Crystal replied. “What, are we gonna pack for a trip?”

“Shut up.”

More minutes went by. Hannah found a chair in the corner of the room and sat down. Crystal took the edge of the bed. January, gray and brutally cold, idled outside the window. The icy sepulcher of an Ohio winter.

“I’m burning up with fever,” Lucretia went on with eyes still closed, “otherwise the ill-mannered, imposing suggestion you made a few minutes ago would never come close to entertaining my thoughts.”

“You’ll be feeling better soon,” Crystal said.

“Uh-huh. Then I can go to this Jarett Powell’s house on my knees and beg him to forgive me my trespass.”

“So I can call him?”

Lucretia thought about it for one, final moment before acquiescing to a weak nod from the pillows.

Things didn’t turn out as bad as she feared. Jarett was not only very kind and understanding over the phone (as Crystal had already known he would be) but eager to meet the mother of his student after so many weeks of delay. He arrived at the hospital within the hour carrying a bouquet of roses with a get well soon card. A blade of unexpected anxiety cut across Crystal’s heart as her mother gushed out one thank you after the next. Both the adults were single; both were about the same age. What if a terrible explosion were to occur beneath the bridge Crystal had so carefully been building over the past months? Terrible and—yes—goddamned grotesque?

She shot over to the bed, almost knocking the flowers out of Jarett’s hand. Her mom made a face and asked what the hell was going on.

“You can’t put those flowers here,” she said to Jarett, “the table’s way too small. How about by the TV?”

“Good idea.”

“No!”

The author jumped and looked back at her. “No?”

“Changed my mind,” Crystal told him. “My mom will see them by the TV.”

“That’s sort of the whole point—“

“I mean they’ll block the screen!”

“You can put them in the window, Mr. Powell,” Lucretia came out with after a second grimace towards her daughter, “and I thank you again for the thought.”

Jarett blushed. “I had pneumonia a few years ago, ma’am. It’s an uphill battle but you’ll get through.”

The two spent the next half hour getting further acquainted, but to Crystal’s great relief there didn’t seem to be any sparks. Her lessons were the hotter topic of interest. Lucretia asked a great many questions, to which Jarett provided satisfactory if not especially meticulous answers. One of those questions was in concern of payment for his services. Lucretia informed him that she would be more than happy to provide these in the form of cash on a per lesson basis.

“Perhaps we can talk about that at a later time, ma’am,” Jarett said. Then, with a glance towards Crystal: “But honestly, you daughter is pulling her own weight. She cooks and cleans for me. She looks after my dog when I’m away. Having an extra pair of hands like that is invaluable on a farm.”

“If you like her cooking,” Hannah put in from her corner chair.

“In which case you might be suicidal,” said Lucretia amidst another flurry of coughs.

Crystal raised her hand. “That’s enough, Mommy Dearest.”

Indeed it was. Seconds later a nurse arrived and told everybody to leave. Goodbyes were exchanged. Crystal kissed her mother on the cheek and promised to return the next day. Hannah did the same.

Before they went out Lucretia had one final piece of instruction for Jarett Powell. “Don’t let the girls bully you,” she said, “don’t let them push you around. You’re the boss.”

“Of course.”

She snorted. “Yeah, this time next week you’ll be regretting that casual tone.”

***

Only there were no acts of insubordination in the days that followed. Crystal continued with her lessons, delivering subtle smiles of invitation over the coffee table from time to time, as well as the occasional light-hearted comment in regard to wanting more practice with holding her breath. Much to her delight, Jarett’s responses became less and less awkward. He seemed to be turning braver by the day. More suave. On Thursday he told her not to worry about her time limit, that she had a gasp as pretty as a summer breeze. Crystal knew the birthday kiss she wanted next month was in the bag.

Hannah proved herself an obedient if somewhat shy houseguest. She made quick friends with Chubby…as everyone who visited the farm did. She fed the chickens and washed the dishes.

On Friday afternoon the good news came that Lucretia was out of the woods, though her doctor would hear nothing about dismissing her at this time. He wanted another forty-eight hours of observation as a safeguard against relapse.

The family doctor—a silver-haired man of a thousand strong opinions--agreed.

“Jesus Christ,” he growled, when Lucretia asked for the third time to go home. “You wanna be discharged and get goddamned sick again and have to come back? Wait two days like the guy said.”

Thus the three of them—Jarett, Crystal, and Hannah—left the hospital without her to attend, of all things, a farmers meeting at an old church in the hills outside of Monroeville. Crystal had known about this meeting since early in the week, but was unsure of what to expect. They arrived at dusk under a clear, icy sky. Middle-aged men dressed in denim idled in the parking lot. Some of them waved to Jarett. Breath puffed in the cold air. Tires crunched on gravel.

Eager to get warm, Jarett hustled Crystal and Hannah into the church. They walked past an open door to a cavernous sermon area lit with candles. Then it was down a flight of steps to the basement. Here a meeting room had been prepared. Rows of folding chairs, most of them occupied by men and women in their fifties, faced a podium with a microphone.

“Aren’t there any kids here?” Hannah asked, looking around.

“I don’t think so,” Jarett said. “At least not tonight. Crystal?”

“Right behind you.”

He turned, startled. “I think that’s the coffee table on the far wall. You’ll be helping us hicks to stay awake for this.”

“Got it. All I have to do is pour?”

“Yeah. Most farmers take it black anyway.”

“You take yours with cream, darling.”

He blinked down at her. There were fifty other people in the room, filling it with chattering voices. But Crystal wasn’t fooled. At that moment she and Jarett were completely alone.

“I do,” he said at last. “But I’m still a whipper-snapper compared to these folk.”

“Black, then.”

The meeting fumbled through a few minutes of stop-and-go discussion. Crystal and Hannah both served cup after cup of strong coffee to clown-faced men in overalls who drove Ford Rangers and Dodge Dakotas. None of them spoke very much beyond the occasional why thank you, young lady, or well that’ll dooder. The topic for the night—how best to take shelter during a tornado—was a serious one. Many suggestions put forth in regard to the matter were not.

“You get yourself two hands and a shovel, and you dig yourself a hole,” a man wearing a John Deere cap with the D crossed out and the letters Qu scribbled in its place said at one point. “Then you furnish that hole and you stock it with enough shit to get your family by for a day or two.”

“What the hell, Joey?” someone called from the audience. “This isn’t the Wizard of Oz. I don’t wanna dig a goddamned shelter.”

“Too much work for ya?”

“Shit no. But I’m a practical man. What’s wrong with going down the basement when the weather gets bad?”

“Well, when