15 Tales of Love (16 page)

Erwin accepted the help and Lucinda went back into the kitchen, leaving the men to work together. When they had the sheets of plastic neatly folded and stored, they went on to the garage and filled the back of Erwin’s pickup with all the things that didn’t fit into Lucinda’s little blue Focus: the winter accumulation of empty boxes, bird seed bags, and several broken chairs Lucinda had removed from the attic, finally acknowledging she would never get them fixed.

“Ted’s kind of a neat guy,” Erwin told Lucinda when he came in for coffee before going to the recycling center. “Sounds very knowledgeable, told a lot of stories about things.”

She wondered what kind of stories Ted had told, but she didn’t ask since it was probably guy stuff. She said, “He comes over sometimes when I’m working outside. He likes my palm tree.”

Erwin laughed. “It is kind of neat, now that it’s green and growing again. It’s different, but it doesn’t look like a palm tree. What are you going to do with it?”

“I’ll keep it, I guess, since I rescued it. What else could I do with it?”

“I have no idea. You’ll have to make a place inside for it. It can’t stay on the porch when it’s cold.”

“I have all summer and fall to decide that,” she said. “Who knows what’ll happen?”

“Who indeed?” Erwin said. “I’ll come by next week and do some more raking.” He stood up and stretched. “I’ll get ours done this week, weather permitting.”

Do your own first. Keep Glenna happy, if that’s possible
. “That would be great. I’ll do as much as I can. I need to keep busy.”

Thursday was warm and sunny following two days of cool dampness, prompting Lucinda to decide to go out into the yard again. She was sitting on the porch with her second cup of morning coffee wondering where she would begin when Ted wandered over. He was dressed in jeans, apparently for outside work, which surprised her a little since he was usually much more formally attired.

“Good morning, Ted. I think it will be a nice one.”

“I thought you might be outdoors today.” He stopped at the bottom of the steps and looked up at her. “I finished up the yard work Jim left and noticed you have some bushes that need trimming back a little, and the old lilacs are putting up a lot of suckers, like they always do.”

“They do that,” she agreed. She put her cup down on the table and stood up, resigned to having his help even if she didn’t want it. She knew she would get a lot more done with his help and besides, she had never liked cutting lilac suckers. All of that bending over was hard on her back, or her knees if she decided to kneel. “I’ll get the rake and the pruners.”

And they did accomplish a lot–all of the shrubs along the side of her yard were now trimmed back with the dead branches removed, and all the brush in a pile for Erwin to dispose of. In addition to the numerous lilacs, they trimmed a weigela, a mock orange, a flowering quince, and what she had been told was an unusual white double syringa. They raked under all of the hedges that separated her yard from the Carson’s, uncovering the irises and daylilies. Most of her bushes were old varieties, dating to long before she and Carl had purchased the property. The only fault she found with them was that they only bloomed once and for a short period of time, while newer varieties bloomed longer, but she had never considered changing them, or even adding to them.

I don’t change myself, so why should I change my bushes?

Ted professed a liking for the old varieties and displayed more knowledge of them than she had. He spoke of other colors of lilacs and quinces, and of places where he had seen them, including her double syringa, and said he couldn’t wait to see it in bloom.

Working companionably with Ted, Lucinda enjoyed his company more than she had thought she would, appreciated his help and knowledge, with only a small twinge of the guilt that usually accompanied activities she had enjoyed with Carl.

She invited Ted to stay for lunch. “After all that work, I can at least feed you.”

“Dear lady,” he said, ever gallant, “your lovely presence is food enough.” But he agreed to join her for a bowl of tomato soup and a sandwich.

He paused on the porch and somberly regarded the palm tree. After a moment, he said thoughtfully, “It may be a Southwestern plant, but that pot does nothing for it or your charming surroundings. Who could ever have imagined that chartreuse and brown mustard are compatible with anything? To say nothing of those fake Indian designs.”

She laughed. “Those colors are a bit much, but I haven’t gotten around to looking for something else to put it in.” She didn’t add that she had found the idea of repotting it more than she wanted to handle. It was much too heavy.

“Then allow me to find something. To repay you for all your kindness.”

She started to protest that she had done nothing, but he held up his hand for silence. “I have to go to a garden supply store for Dolly’s pansies and Memorial Day flowers. That’s the best place to find large pots.”

She thanked him for the offer. What else could she do?

Ted brought the new pot several days later, plain brick red terra cotta with a flat, matching pottery dish for it to sit in. “To protect the furniture. Dorcas always complained about that, water overflowing onto the table or leaving stains. And allow me to help you repot it. The tree must be heavy.” He added after a moment, “I did a lot of that for Dorcas in her last years, when she was fragile.”

She silently sympathized–she had done the same for Carl-and agreed that it was indeed large. She said gratefully, “I was wondering how I would manage. I was going to ask my son-in-law.”

“No need to bother Erwin. I’ve done a few. But none as big as this. We didn’t have any palm trees.”

With two people, the removal of the tree from its garish pot and the transfer to the new one was easily accomplished, and Lucinda again found the working together to be companionable, much more than she had imagined. It had been so long.

When the tree was at last settled in its new and roomier pot and well-watered, Ted stood back a little and looked at it on the table. “It does need a few orchids around it. For atmosphere.” He glanced at her. “But you do have those nice ferns. That would work, too.”

She laughed, agreed that the plain pot was indeed much better, said she would return the brightly colored one to the recycling center, and offered him a cup of coffee.

He sat at her kitchen table, stirring his coffee and not looking at her. She found that odd and asked if something were wrong. “Was the job too tiring?”

He glanced up at her, then away. “No. I was just wondering . . .”

She was gripped by sudden panic.
What does he expect in return for all of this help? For the new pot?

He said slowly, “I don’t know your taste in music. An old estate in western Massachusetts has a lovely arboretum with a lot of early flowering shrubs. They have an open house every spring when the dogwoods bloom, a Sunday afternoon lunch on the lawn with a chamber orchestra and then a tour of the gardens. I wondered if you would go with me.”

She hesitated, wondering, but it did sound nice.
It’s been so long, but I do like chamber music and seeing other people’s gardens . . .

Ted said, “Dorcas and I used to go every year, but I haven’t gone since . . .”

She didn’t know how long he had been a widower and couldn’t ask. “Let me think about it.”

“Of course. It’s not for a couple of weeks.”

Lucinda smiled. “And thank you so much for the new pot. The change really made a difference.”

“My pleasure, fair lady.” Ted was back to his former self.

When he had gone, she picked up the ugly green and yellow pot to put in the garage with her other recyclables. She looked at the newly replanted tree, noting how the new container made the leaves appear greener
. I guess all it needed was a change of venue. Is that what I need?

She mentioned the dinner and concert to Glenna and Erwin when they came on Saturday. Mostly, she told herself, to get a reaction, although she hadn’t wanted to mention it to Glenna at all. “It sounded interesting,” she said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been anywhere like that and I do love gardens.”

Glenna just sniffed. “He doesn’t look like much. I wouldn’t bother.”

“About time you got out,” Erwin said, then added quickly, “Ted’s certainly an interesting character.”

Lucinda laughed. “He is that.”

“And you don’t have to go anywhere with him again.”

“True, and I’d like to see that estate. It’s a place I’ve heard of but never visited.”

Erwin said, “And the palm tree does look a lot better in a new pot.”

Even Glenna agreed with that.

When they had gone, Lucinda looked critically at the ponytail palm
. Not very attractive, maybe, but certainly interesting, and changing pots did wonders for it. Maybe a change of scene will do something for me, let me get on with life.

She laughed to herself
. Maybe I should take Ted’s advice and grow some orchids. Why stick with the same old plants?

The next time Ted came over she would accept the invitation. There were a lot of places she would like to visit but had not wanted to go alone
. And Ted is interesting. And a little different, just like my tree. Isn’t it time for both of us to make some changes?

She laughed at herself.
And all because somebody threw away a palm tree. Who would have known?

PEONY ROSE

Chickie McArdle despised her nickname. She pictured herself as anything but a “chick.” She was short, a little on the plump side, preferred glasses to contact lenses, and tended to wear jeans and big tee shirts whenever possible. Her dresses were the least feminine she could find–no lace, no ruffles, and no revealing necklines, since she had little to reveal. That was all in keeping, she told herself, with her more intellectual pursuits. So what if she looked like the proverbial librarian, or old maid schoolteacher?

But as an adult it wasn’t a name she wanted to be known by, and especially not in her byline. She wanted more of those bylines, almost as much as she wanted to shed the old maid image and find a social life. Professionally she was Rose, but few people called her that. Maybe she was no more a ‘rose’ than she was a ‘chick.’

The nickname had been given to her by a favorite uncle when she was three and maybe looked like a Chickie, but that didn’t make it any better. Still, she consoled herself, her given name was almost as bad. Why, she asked her mother, had she been named Peony Rose? Especially since it had prompted an obnoxious older cousin to call her “Pee,” which he sometimes still did just to push her buttons.

She had little use for Cousin Eddie, who was inclined to be insufferable, and her private names for him were never uttered in the presence of family. Eddie had gone on to a successful career in computer engineering, which didn’t help at all. Chickie wasn’t yet successful at anything.

“Your father and I think it’s a lovely name,” her mother said. “Two of our favorite flowers.” Her father sometimes called her Rosie, which wasn’t too bad, her paychecks were made out to Rose McArdle, and legal documents apparently required the first initial, but everyone seemed to prefer Chickie.

She considered her older sister’s name, which was as bad as Peony Rose, and her nickname was even worse than Chickie. Autumn Rayne was known in the family as Pudge, even though she had long ago outgrown her baby fat, and was as slim and elegant as Chickie was not.

“And what would you have named a son if you’d had one?” Chickie once asked her mother, dredging up some old Hollywood names. “River Phoenix or Moon Unit, or something?”

“Of course not,” her mother said. “Boys need to have regular, usual kind of names, ones that sound professional. He would have been Brian George for your grandfathers. Girls,” she explained patiently, as she had before, “should have romantic, lovely names, something memorable.”

“Like Autumn Rayne?”

“Your sister was born on a warm, misty sort of September morning,” her mother said, recalling the event fondly, and we decided to commemorate the day. Besides, it’s a lovely name. “Pudge,” she added a little darkly, “doesn’t complain about it.

Chickie wondered, silently, why her mother didn’t use her given name if it was so pretty. Wasn’t using “Pudge” a little contradictory? She knew her sister’s private thoughts about both name and nickname, but she was too good-natured to complain. Besides, she was perfectly happy teaching third grade and was married to a nice guy named Arthur who generally called her “Hon.” They had named their kids Lisa and Brian.

Chickie was convinced that her nickname was one source of her current problems. But she couldn’t think of anything that was a logical form of her name, other than the despised “Pee,” and no one she knew seemed able to use Rosie. Eventually, wherever she went, someone would hear her called Chickie, and that would stick. And who could take a Chickie seriously? Apparently no one.

Chickie desperately needed to be taken seriously. She was a writer, a would-be novelist as yet unpublished, but finding employment she liked in the writing field was proving difficult. She had worked in advertising for a while right after college, preparing copy for publication, but that was far from fulfilling and she found she couldn’t keep being enthusiastic about products and services she didn’t use and sometimes didn’t like. It certainly didn’t make much use of her degree in journalism, a degree that had left her with high hopes and grand ambitions. She sometimes thought she should have majored in English, instead of minoring.

She had spent another year working part-time as a regional correspondent for a weekly newspaper, having been advised that was a good place to start a journalism career, and then working up to being a full-time reporter. She had enjoyed the job, learned a great deal about local events and politics, and a lot about news writing, but it had totally stifled her social life since it involved attending the evening meetings of many boards and commissions, sometimes three or four of them a week, and then occasionally covering weekend events. Her few male friends wanted more than that.

Consequently, there was no man in her life. Her last boyfriend had stopped calling to see if she was free. He wanted more than an occasional Saturday night out, and so did she, but she couldn’t find a solution and still earn a living.

Pay for a part-time correspondent wasn’t great, either, so she had taken a second part-time job as a clerk in a small trucking company office. That had been a dead bore and she was now working full-time at a daily paper as a proofreader. There were no openings on the reportorial staff, and she was beginning to wonder if she actually wanted to be a reporter. It wasn’t the kind of writing that she wanted to do. She wasn’t a reporter; she was a storyteller.

And social opportunities were nil. All of the staff were committed elsewhere and she did not find the local singles scene at all appealing. She wanted somebody she could talk with, someone with her own interests. Such people seemed to be nonexistent.

In her spare time, Chickie wrote short stories. Mostly they were contemporary, “aha” moment kind of stories, but she had found no publishers beyond a local weekly’s literary magazine, that didn’t pay anything but copies. Usually her submissions came back maddeningly fast and without comment. Just the terse email: sorry, this doesn’t fit our current needs.

And what were those current needs? She didn’t know. She had tried to fit the story to the magazine’s stated desires as published online. Maybe she wasn’t really a writer. Maybe she was fooling herself.

But she took one step to help solve the dilemma. Acting mainly on a sudden impulse, Chickie signed up for a twice weekly evening course in feature writing at the local community college. She thought she might be able to show the editors what she could do, and perhaps she could find some like-minded people. Features would be closer to what she wanted to write, and a lot better than proofreading. Why, for Pete’s sake, did reporters rely so much on their spell checks?

The class turned out to be small and mostly adults, many of them already employed and looking to improve skills. She saw no social opportunities. No one suggested coffee afterward because the class ran too late.

But last week she had found another, intriguing source of inspiration. Among the regular contributors to the paper was a new columnist, one she had not yet met. His name was Phillip Smith and he wrote entertainingly about local history, customs, and oddities. The picture that ran with his column showed a thirty-something with a shock of light hair, tortoise shell glasses, and a provocative smile. His writing style was light and breezy, offering a wealth of details about his subject without being boring.

If only I could write like that.

Out of idle curiosity, or so she told herself, she checked his resume: 34, not married, lived in a neighboring town, previously employed as a reporter at several newspapers in nearby states, author of two books of historical essays. She wondered if she would ever meet him. As far as she knew, he never came into the editorial offices, doing all of his filing by email.

She indulged in a little idle daydreaming: sitting with him in a small cafe, conversing over coffee and her favorite apple-walnut Danish, sharing her aspirations with an understanding writer. She knew such thoughts were futile, bordering on dangerous for her serenity, but Philip Smith was a nice looking man
. And what harm is there in dreaming?

Chickie’s class assignment this week was to write an article about a local event or person. She chose a woman mentioned a few weeks ago in the paper’s social news, an older woman with a collection of antique table linens. She had displayed a selection of them at a club meeting and spoken about the history of flax and home weavers. Calling people she had never met was not her strong point, but she contacted the woman before she lost her courage and set up an appointment.

The visit proved much more interesting than Chickie had imagined old tablecloths could possibly be. The writing was fun and she submitted the resulting article to her writing class instructor on Tuesday. Needing to find another subject for the following week, she picked another topic from the social news page, the tenth anniversary of a stamp collectors’ club, even though she knew nothing about stamps. She got her linen lady story back on Thursday with a good grade and some helpful comments. She rewrote it, using some of the suggestions, and, on an impulse, gave it to the paper’s lifestyles editor.

Marion Olsen was not usually very approachable, but she seemed to be impressed. “This looks good,” she said. “I’ll see if I can use it.”

Encouraged and hopeful, Chickie mentioned her writing class and the stamp club story.

“That is the sort of story I need,” Marion said. “I’m trying to get more local stuff.”

After writing the stamp club story, Chickie then looked around for another topic and found it in a young farmer who was trying to preserve some rare breeds of sheep. He was particularly interested in Jacob sheep, which have four horns. With one pair of horns curling out as most sheep, and the other pair downward, she thought they’d make great photos.

The antique linens story came out in her paper’s Lifestyles section on Wednesday with a nice photo of the woman, but it had been edited to such an extent it left Chickie depressed and wondering if she really was a writer. She didn’t mention it to Marion, however. Rewriting was an editor’s prerogative, after all, and gave her the stamp club story. Marion said she wasn’t sure she could use it, but she’d see.

Chickie called the sheep farmer, set up an appointment, and mentioned it to Marion.

The stamp club story came back from class with a good grade, and a few hints. It ran on Wednesday but again was extensively edited, and Chickie felt it was no longer her writing. She wondered if she should try again, but she already had her appointment with the farmer. She knew she had to keep it in spite of her feelings of dejection, and anyway, she needed something for class. Since she was paid for stories at the regular correspondents’ rate, the extra money from the stamp club story came in handy, and, she kept telling herself firmly, she needed the experience
. I am learning, but apparently not what Marion wants.

Thursday was the day the paper ran Phillip Smith’s “Around the County” column. As usual, it was entertaining, brightly and tightly written. She wondered how long he had been writing and where he had developed his unique style. At the end of the column was an email address and she saw him listed as E. Phillip Smith, and wondered what the E stood for.

She read the column several times, noting his choice of words, a turn of phrase, and was discouraged. He was a professional, a real wordsmith, and she wasn’t. She wondered if she ever would be and if anyone would ever take her, or her writing, seriously.

She met with the sheep raiser and his two young children and marveled at the four-horned sheep. She learned a lot about sheep, and tried to write the article in Phillip Smith’s light-hearted style. She liked the way it came out, but her professor did not.

“This isn’t your usual writing,” he wrote on her paper. “Go back to the style you were using. This seems too forced.”

Discouraged, she rewrote the story in her usual style and gave it to Marion, who said she couldn’t use it. “Sorry, Chickie. There isn’t much story here about the farmer, and I’m interested in people, not odd sheep. But I do have a story for you if you want to do it.” She handed Chickie a piece of paper. “This woman has been running yard sales for years, not just hers but all her neighbors and sometimes for charities. I gather she’s something of a neighborhood icon.”

Chickie looked at the address in a nearby small town.

“Could you have that for me by Monday?”

Chickie said, “Sure,” wondering how she would fit it in. And who cares about women running yard sales? But it was an assignment, her first, and she wanted it, needed it. She asked, “When on Monday?”

“By five would be great,” Marion said. “Thanks, Chickie.”

Chickie contacted the woman and set up an appointment for the next afternoon. The story would also work for her next school assignment so she’d get two for the price of one.

The woman, a jolly, plump, middle-aged widow who was known to her friends as “Pokey,” proved to be highly entertaining. She had invited a couple of neighbors to the interview, which turned into a coffee klatch with several kinds of homemade cookies, lots of side stories and hilarious recollections of sales gone horribly wrong. Chickie forgot her doubts and simply enjoyed the occasion.
What a great story I can make of all this!

Writing the story was easy. She just let it flow, ignoring the usual space constraints, telling herself that Marion could always cut it. She was surprised, and elated, to see the story featured on a section front on Sunday, using pictures taken by one of the paper’s photographers at a yard sale the day before, and with very few changes. Marion hadn’t said anything to her.

On Monday there was a note in her in-box that left her breathless: “Great yard sale story. I’ve been enjoying your stuff. Phil Smith.”

She replied with a simple, “Thanks. I like yours, too.” She was too flabbergasted to think of anything else.

At her Tuesday class, she learned they were to have a series of guest speakers on Thursdays, writers with local papers and magazines, offering tips and advice. The next topic assigned was unusual pets. She wished she still had the Jacob sheep piece.

She asked around, got nowhere, and in desperation wrote about a man who raised Shar-Peis. She found the wrinkled Chinese puppies adorable, but she didn’t want one, and couldn’t get very excited about them. She turned in a paper she was unhappy with
. Can I ever write anything good? Why am I even bothering?