Read Online Rust by Julie Mars - Free Book Online

turned red. Open her eyes and stare into the blue sky; close them, it turned orange. She didn’t know why, or care. She took it as a reminder that all things change constantly, depending on a million things, such as perspective, light, time, water, wind, angle, and the ability to notice in the first place. Again, she stared intensely into the sky and then closed her eyes to pleasantly drift in a sea of orange, which carried her along for a while, backward in time, and then delivered her to a memory.
    Soon after her parents had dropped her off with her grandfather, she and Donny had had their first incident. Donny had long ago painted one wall of his tiny kitchen a deep shade of burgundy in an effort to tone down the morning brightness, which got on his nerves after a long night in the Bit O’ Blarney bar. He also had a broom with an orange handle which he usually left propped up against it. Margaret had found both shock and comfort in the collision of those two colors—the deep red and the fluorescent orange. She would sit at the kitchen table eating her morning cornflakes and watch them vibrate.
    One day when she came home from kindergarten with Donny, who was a little short of breath from climbing the four flights to their apartment, he had unlocked the door and pushed it open, stepping back so she could enter first. Immediately, her eyes moved to the burgundy wall, but the broom was gone, and all she saw was the wide expanse of deep red, with no hope in it. She collapsed to the floor and began to sob.
    “Margaret, honey, what is it?” Donny had asked, dropping to his knees beside her, so stunned he didn’t even think for a moment to collect her into his arms. “Tell Grampy what’s wrong, Margaret? Do you hurt? Tell Grampy where you hurt.”
    But Margaret couldn’t utter a sound, couldn’t even raise her eyes from the linoleum floor, with its specks of blue and green and white. Waves of grief, one after the other, slammed her down and kept her there. Donny gathered her up. He sat back on the floor, holding her so tightly she finally felt safe enough to whisper, amid great splashing tears, “What happened to the broom, Grampy?” And he had held her even tighter and roared with laughter, surprising her since she felt so much in the grip of tragedy.
    “Grampy swept the floor, that’s all, my darlin’,” he said. “We still have the broom,” and he got up, lifting her with him, and closed the door to the building hallway, and there behind it was the broom. “We can put it wherever you want it,” he whispered into her hair, which was damp now, as if all the exertion of crying had caused her to break into a serious sweat. “That broom is here to stay.”
    “Put it where it goes,” she had sobbed, her voice shaking and her arms wrapped around her grandfather’s neck, as if he were a rock in a great sea of misery and she had to hold on for dear life.
    He grabbed the broom. “Tell me where you want me to put it, honey,” he said, and she had vaguely pointed and he placed it against the wall. He had a look on his face that told Margaret, even at that young age, that he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, and she had climbed down and adjusted it; and then he had scooped her up again and carried her to the living room, which he was in the process of converting to her bedroom, and sat with her in his lap for a long, long time.
    That moment between them had become a bit of a landmark, so tender that it took years for them to even make a joke about it. Margaret remembered the first joke, too. Donny had held up the broom—which by that time had lost many of its bristles—and the ones that were left stuck out at every possible angle, so using it for its original purpose was a waste of time. “Margaret, me girl, I’m afraid to bring it up, but I think we’re in desperate need of a new broom,” he had said, and she had glanced up from her bed, where she was lying on her stomach reading a school book, and