Enchanting Lily (4 page)

Then she wrapped herself in the covers and lay in the darkness, feeling suddenly small and alone, and she thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to have a cat sleeping next to her. But no, a cat would have needs. A cat would grow old and die, or maybe it would die before growing old, as Josh had done. And she didn’t have time for a pet. She needed to get the local computer guru to set up the retail system for the shop. She needed fixtures. She needed to arrange her vintage displays. Dust the house, pull weeds, write bills—the to-do list went on. She half hoped the tuna would still be there in the morning, an indication that the cat had moved on, but of course, she found the plate empty.

Kitty

I’m back. How could I leave her alone? I’ve returned for the promise of more tuna, and also for her unhappy heartbeat. Something is off in the rhythm of blood rushing through her veins. I’ve listened to heartbeats this sad before, only not on the island. Mostly in the city, where people often live alone in tiny apartments with high windows that could kill me if I were to fall out. Not that I’m afraid of heights.

I trot up to a low bay window of the woman’s little yellow cottage. In the overgrown grass, a new sign swings in the wind, indicating a shop, not a restaurant. I can smell
restaurants from blocks away. Salmon, grilled chicken, maybe a crab or two. Does she have any food? I can’t tell for sure—this shop smells musty and complicated.

I leap onto a rock for a better view inside. Two front rooms are full of clothes. They would make perfect scratching posts in a pinch. Dresses, scarves, hats. Big white statues decked out in colorful, scratchable clothes. Spirits of the lost and lonely have found sanctuary here in the dust and stains and folds. A young woman lingers in a long knit dress, then rises to the ceiling and fades away.

A vague shadow slips along the floor, then up onto a table and expands, taking the barely discernible shape of a man. He’s watching the woman, sadness in his empty eyes. He can’t see with them, not really, but he senses the woman the way I can sense a mouse hiding beneath a bush.

The woman looks toward him, as if she perceives him, too, but she’s staring at a dress on a statue behind him. She reaches right through him, and in touching him, she makes him disappear. Is she aware of these souls that inhabit her shop? Perhaps I need to warn her, but I can’t get into the house, can’t reach the doorknob, and a doughy woman and skinny man are coming up the sidewalk, stinking of denture cream and the dog they left in the car.

I jump off the rock and move onto the stone path. If only the shop woman would open the door. At times like
this, I could use a thumb or two. I stop and pretend to lick my paw, while I secretly assess my situation.

“Oh, look, George, it’s a poor little stray!” Just my luck, the doughy woman comes lumbering toward me. Do I look disheveled? I keep my coat groomed.

“You could use a good brushing.” She stretches her arms toward me. Arms, so strange, all hairless and dangling. She’s the kind of lady who would give me a bath and dress me in doll clothes. I’m not going that route again. But I’m also not the type to dash off at the slightest provocation. No nearby bushes in which to hide, and I can’t cross the road with cars rumbling off the ferry.

“Do you think he’s hungry?” the doughy woman asks, tiptoeing toward me. “He’s probably cold out here with winter coming.”

She, thank you very much. How would she like it if I mistook her for a man or even, God forbid, a dog?

George glances at his watch. “Probably belongs to someone, Ida. Let’s go.”

“Weird eyes!” Ida exclaims, bending down to peer closely at me.

So are yours, all puffy and red.

Ida points at my face. “One eye’s green and the other one’s blue!”

So what? Ida’s about to grab me, so I run up onto the
porch and sit on the prickly welcome mat. I have to pretend I live here.

George wipes his nose with the back of his hand, a crude human gesture. “There you go. This is the cat’s house.”

I’m closer to the shop now, right at the wooden front door, smelling alcohol, sweat, and soap in the clothes. I hear the sighs and mumblings of phantoms. Something else strange—the shop woman is talking to herself inside, the way crazy people do; but I know she’s not crazy, only grieving. Don’t ask me how I know. The same way I know when earthquakes are coming or when the spirits won’t leave.

Ida won’t leave, either. “Maybe he went up on the porch for shelter. It’s starting to rain.”

George looks at the darkening sky, then at me. “It lives here for sure. We can’t have a cat. What about Fifi?”

“She’ll get used to having a little brother.”

I’ll be a dog’s sibling when litterboxes freeze over and tuna flies.

“We can’t take the cat home,” George says with impatience.

“I’m going to see. Wait a minute.” She’s shuffling up the path. I could run out into the rain, but I hate getting wet. I could hiss at her, but I’m aggressive only when necessary.
Sometimes I almost scare myself, and I don’t want to frighten Ida, so I stay put and allow her to pet my head. Then I slink out of reach, jump down off the porch, and slide through a narrow space between the wooden slats.

“Darn! He went in where I can’t get him.” Ida hesitates a moment, then turns away. She doesn’t need me, anyway. She has George and a smelly dog named Fifi. But the shop woman doesn’t have anyone except the ghosts that haunt her, and besides, I need shelter from the rain, a warm bed for the night, and at least one decent meal before I sleep.

Lily

This reminder of Josh threw Lily for a loop—a pristine pullover hiding in a box of treasures from a Seattle estate sale. Josh had loved turtlenecks and his favorite color had always been turquoise. If she could banish all shades of blue from the planet, maybe she could forget him for good, but then the world wouldn’t have everything beautiful in it—the twilight sky over the Cascade Mountains, the indigo in a double rainbow, the blue-gray waters of the Puget Sound.

But the sweater had to go, even if it was Ralph Lauren
in perfect condition. She couldn’t bear to look at it. So she folded the pullover and set it neatly in a box marked
Donations for Families in Need.

“Why did I bid on this entire collection sight unseen?” she asked the male mannequin by the window. “Now I have to go through all these boxes and—never mind.”

When had she started talking to the statue, anyway? It didn’t look real, but was only the suggestion of a man—broad shoulders, vague eyes, vague lips. Yet, sometimes she had the strong sensation of being watched, as if Josh’s essence had dropped into the mannequin and regarded her through opaque, fiberglass eyes. The prospect should’ve comforted her, but instead she felt jumpy and spooked.

She turned the statue to face the front window, so he could gaze out across Harborside Road. Josh would’ve loved the morning mist, the air wafting in fresh from the Pacific Ocean. But he wouldn’t have liked the customers traipsing into The Newest Thing across the street, ignoring her boutique. And he wouldn’t have liked the noises the cottage made—creaks and groans and strange sighs.

She’d already had a leak repaired in the roof. The contractor had told her the cottage would need a new roof eventually, and maybe she would need a new heating system, too. She’d only been here a month. The rooms felt
drafty in spots and too warm in others, as if the house were a planet unto itself, complete with microclimates and self-contained ecosystems swirling inside its walls.

One thing at a time. Right now, forget the house upgrades. I just need to bring in the customers.
Why weren’t they knocking down the door? She’d installed a painted sign in the yard, on an ornate iron pole that suggested it was a vintage shop. A few curious people had come in, smiling and browsing—stragglers who’d already bought crisp, new outfits at The Newest Thing. What should she expect? She didn’t even have a window display, not yet at least. The cottage had stood empty for a long stretch, and it still looked a bit like an abandoned space. She had to give it time—create a pretty tableau in the window, plant flowers in the garden. But would her efforts pay off?

As she rummaged through the last garments in the box, she felt a sudden, sharp panic. What if she failed? What if she ran out of money? What if nobody ever came in? What if The Newest Thing sucked away all her potential customers? She needed to visit the nearby businesses. She’d only been into the Island Creamery. She would go, soon. She would meet her neighbors.

Right now, these dirty shirts needed to be washed with mild, fragrance-free soap. How could people mistreat their clothes, storing cotton in plastic bags? Delicate fabrics
needed to breathe, and what was with the toxic mothballs? Herbal southernwood made a much better insect repellent.

She needed a break from the details of laundering, so she got up and stretched, stiff from sitting cross-legged for so long. She headed back to the office for her usual breakfast of grapefruit, toast, and Market Spice tea. The office wasn’t another room, really, but rather the dining room closed off from the shop by a standing partition. As always, she perused the
Island Bugle
obituaries—a morbid habit, but she couldn’t help herself, and the memorials often celebrated successful lives: a ninety-one-year-old inventor remembered for creating the teleprompter; a ninety-four-year-old Chilean writer known for his “lyrical explorations of eroticism and mortality.”

Josh’s obituary had read,
Celebrated owner of Vilmont Designs for over a decade, Joshua Vilmont will be remembered for his period costume creations used in theater and film productions far and wide.…
She had cried while writing the memorial.
Will be remembered. Will be remembered.
She’d felt as though her fingers bled as she typed, as though her rage would consume her. The universe had cheated her, forcing her to go on living. Somehow she’d believed that if two people were deeply in love, the gods would leave them alone. Josh should’ve lived to enjoy their golden wedding anniversary. He should’ve survived long enough to play with their grandchildren.

What was she looking for in these narrow columns of newsprint? To commiserate with others who might understand her pain? She’d written a note to another young widow,
I know exactly how you feel—the disappearing dinner invitations, the looks of pity, the sense of slowly becoming invisible.
She had not heard back.

But she heard from her mother all the time—e-mails, notes, postcards. She also called often, like now, when she should’ve been at her yoga class. “Are the customers breaking down your door, honey?” Her tinny voice sounded so far away, she could’ve been talking from the moon instead of California.

Lily gazed out into her empty shop. Well, not empty. Full of the best Chanel, Ralph Lauren, Ferragamo. The clothes were here. The people would come. “Boatloads, Mom. I can’t hold off the stampede.” She felt a little guilty about lying, but in saying the hopeful words, she could make them come true.

“You’re so remote out there.”

Lily heard all the things her mother didn’t say.
Why did you take off like that? Are you crazy? You can’t just uproot yourself. You’re losing your mind.
And on a deeper level still:
How could you leave me? Abandon your parents?

“I don’t go to the well for water. I don’t use an outhouse. I have electricity—”

“You know what I mean. You’re on an island.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude, but lots of people live on islands.” Lily tightened her grip on the phone. Had she become bitter? She imagined turning into a crotchety old battle-ax of a widow, or however the cliché went. The eccentric woman living alone in her shuttered, dingy house in the boondocks, lashing out at every well-meaning stranger.

“Honey, Dad and I can’t help wondering…”

Wondering what? Whether she planned to jump off a cliff? Drown herself in the sea? “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”

“I hope you’re getting out. Is there anything to do in that small town?”

“Farm festivals. Chocolate tastings. Mammoth fossil hunts. But I don’t have time for luxuries. It’s a lot of work to set up a shop.”

“If you don’t go out you might, oh, I don’t know. You might get too isolated. Some people end up that way. Or they do drastic things or make decisions they wouldn’t otherwise make.”

Like move to a sleepy island? Like use all her savings to open a clothing shop in a drafty old cottage? “Moving here
was
getting out.” Lily turned the page in the newspaper—another row of obituaries.

“Maybe you could take a buying trip to San Francisco?”

“I’ve got to get this place off the ground first.” Perhaps it would be an impossible task. Lily imagined her parents hopping the next plane, and she would have her social worker mom and high school teacher father offering kind but useless advice about how to run a vintage clothing boutique.

“Dad and I read that fifty percent of all businesses fail in the first year, and ninety-five percent of them fail within five years.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Lily focused on the last obituary, for a woman who died of breast cancer at twenty-five. She’d already outlived the woman by several years. She should be grateful for the extra time, for her health, but…

“You could move your shop to the city. People are buying used clothes in San Francisco like crazy. Probably in Seattle, too.”

“I appreciate the suggestion. I just opened. I have to give it time.” Lily closed the newspaper, carefully folded it for the recycling bin.

“If things don’t work out, you can always move back home,” her mother went on. “The extra room is always here.”

A nearly forty-year-old woman living with her parents? Worse things had happened. But it would be a last resort. “Thanks, Mom. Give Dad a hug for me.”

She hung up and inhaled the scents of silence, dust, and mothballs. What decision would she have otherwise made? She’d done what was expected of her, at first. She’d attended a widows’ support group, but she’d felt light-years removed from the other women, who’d either been much younger or much older than her. She’d fallen into a strange middle zone—not young enough to start fresh, not old enough to share fond memories. So where was she, exactly? In crazy limbo-land, surrounded by old clothes in a quaint but flawed cottage on a remote island where she’d met only a handful of people.