Authors: Mollie Cox Bryan

Scrapbook of Secrets (5 page)

BOOK: Scrapbook of Secrets

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Chapter 6

Annie seemed completely unaware of her beauty, Vera mused as she looked at the new arrival enjoying a slice of chocolate pie. Beautiful, naturally curly, chestnut-brown hair, long eyelashes framing hazel eyes—and that skin, so smooth, wrinkle free. Those cheekbones—to die for. She sighed. The woman didn’t even wear an ounce of makeup. Vera closed her eyes as she sipped her wine and leaned back in her chair. She glanced over at the painting of morning glories climbing up a barn. No artist captured the brilliance of morning glories. She loved them. They grew all over her backyard and patio.

The purple of the morning glories always surprised Vera. Each morning, while having her coffee on the screened-in patio, it mesmerized her. There were other colors, some pleasant, some foreboding, that she reckoned with every morning. But the splash of purple offered a respite for her eyes, which feasted on the flowers—until her husband came bounding clumsily through the door, always making more noise than any one person ever needed to do for just the simplest of life’s maneuvers. Did he have to slam the screen door? Couldn’t he pick his feet up when he walked? Every morning, when he was home, it would happen—just yesterday, for example.

“Well, I’m ready to go,” he said, bending down to kiss her in the everyday, mechanical, see-ya-later kiss.

“I’ll see you in a couple of days,” she whispered back, and smiled at him. He looked for it—every morning.

“You’re not one to smile easily. The world has to work to get a smile from you,” he had said to her once.

Maybe that was true. But she did smile every morning.

It wasn’t as if she were unhappy, or so depressed that she wanted to kill herself, and, the way she looked at it, if anybody had a right to be depressed, she did. But that wasn’t it. She just felt flat. Nothing excited her anymore. This Maggie Rae death made her wonder how bad a person would actually have to feel to take her own life. Must be pretty damn bad.

Vera placed her wineglass on the hospital table and it clanked. She wondered if this was how it felt to get older. The wisdom she thought would come with age hadn’t. Instead, she had gotten, well, ambivalent. She looked out the window as her friends were chattering in the hospital room.

“I’m glad I got my run in this morning,” Sheila said. “I probably won’t get to tomorrow.”

“You’ll live,” Vera said.

That damn running. Doesn’t she have anything better to do?
Vera smiled—of course, she did. There was always the house to keep, the kids to feed, and yes, Sheila’s business, Creative Scrapbooking, which she ran out of her basement. But Sheila, insisting her run was where she had time for herself, carved it out every morning—right after her youngest was put on the bus to kindergarten.

Choices,
thought Vera,
they can make all the difference.
And Sheila was in incredible shape. Vera thought about the choices that she had made in her life and the ones she didn’t get to make.
Some things just are and there’s nothing you can do to change them.

She admired people with the clarity of mind that enabled them to make the right choices at the right time. She was always too pensive. By the time she’d make a decision, often things had changed.

She wondered how her life would have been different if, say, she had decided on a real dancing career in New York, instead of opening a dance studio in Cumberland Creek. Her business was one of the most successful in the county. Which really didn’t say much.

Vera ushered several generations of dancers through the door of her dance studio. Some of them went on to fame—or near fame. She followed their careers closely. They were almost like her children, since she did not have any of her own. She kept scrapbooks on all of them—and gave them to the dancers usually as a high-school graduation gift.

Now that she was in her forties, her dancing career would have assuredly moved into teaching. But instead, she taught all that time, her own passion for performing poured into her students. And a performance—once a year, at the recital—was something she looked forward to.

Her recitals were efficient masterpieces. One number after the next. Children lined up and ready to go. Plenty of adult supervision. She worked hard to get the right music with the right costumes with the right theme. And she saw to it that the production people were top-notch.

Vera was always complimented about the professional quality of her shows.

“Why didn’t you go on Broadway or something?” Sheila wanted to know at the last crop.

Vera shrugged. “There was Bill.”

“You mean he didn’t want you to do it?”

“Well, he never said so, not in so many words. But the hours that dancers work just don’t fit into the hours lawyers work. We’d have never seen each other, for one thing,” she replied.

“And that’s a bad thing?” one of the women said, and they all laughed. The subject was changed and Vera was grateful.

It wasn’t as if she kept secrets from her dearest friends. Some things were too private to talk about at a crop. After all, crops were primarily for scrapbooking. Oh, yes, the social aspect couldn’t be denied. But nothing deep or heavy should be broached.

Vera glanced at the clock and realized her mother had been in surgery for three hours. What was going on?

“You’d think they’d let you know something,” Sheila said, her coral lipstick long faded.

“I’m sure they will soon,” Paige offered, reaching for a muffin, her bracelets jingling as she did so.

Just then, the door opened and the doctor stepped into the room.

He looked tired, but he was smiling, with pleasant, deep creases framing his smile. “Are you having a party?”

“We just wanted to make it as pleasant for Mama as possible,” Vera said, standing.

“Well, I have good news and bad news. Your mom is fine—but the party will have to move into the hallway or go,” he said.

Vera sighed as she felt her heart race. She grabbed her chest, and then fell into Sheila’s arms. She felt unraveled suddenly, awash in emotion and tears and sweat, sobbing in relief.

“Vera?” the doctor said.

She turned to look at him.

“Have you been drinking?” He looked amused as he took in the scene of empty wine bottles and spent plates sitting around the hospital room.

“Well, of course, she has,” Sheila said, as if it were a matter of course.

“Well,” he said. “That’s a first. I was just going to suggest that you go on home and get some rest. But I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I’m not drunk, Doctor,” Vera said.

“But you’re not sober, either.”

“I’ll drive her home,” Sheila said, swaying a bit.

“No offense, but you’re drunker than she is,” he chided, but he was obviously amused.

Sheila placed her hands on her hip. “Now, look here—”

“I’ll drive them both home,” Annie spoke up.

“Finally a voice of reason,” said the doctor, looking straight in Annie’s eyes, with an obvious spark of interest.

Like most beautiful women, Vera noted, Annie completely ignored the doctor’s spark. That endeared Annie to Vera even more.

The women cleaned up the room a bit and, one by one, filed out. Annie, Sheila, and Vera hung out in the hallway until they wheeled a sleeping Beatrice by them.

“You both look tired,” Annie said. “Let’s go home.”

Vera and Sheila stood outside Annie’s minivan while she moved books and blankets and God knows what else from the front seat to the back of the van. Sheila climbed in the front and Vera sat in the middle seat, next to a car seat.

As Annie drove by the Dasher house, which was still brightly lit, and had strange cars sitting in the driveway, Vera gasped.

“My Lord,” she said.

Annie slowed down. “What is it?” she asked; then she saw the huge pile of boxes piled out at the curb for the trash, which came every Wednesday.

“They are already cleaning her stuff out,” Sheila whispered.

“But she just died last night ... ,” Annie said. “And the trash collector doesn’t come until Wednesday. So what the heck is going on?”

“Oh Annie, this is Cumberland Creek, not Washington, D.C. Sometimes you just have to put the trash out. No problem. Go around the block,” Vera said. “Please.”

Vera and Sheila gaped at the pile of boxes, the streetlights were shining directly on them.

When Annie pulled around again, Sheila whispered, “Stop. I recognize those boxes.”

Annie glanced at the well-lit house. “I don’t know. I’m not sure if I should.”

“Go around one more time and pull the car behind those shrubs over there,” Vera said.

“I don’t know if this is a good idea,” Annie said, suddenly catching on.

“They obviously want to get rid of her stuff,” Vera said.

“It’s her scrapbook stuff,” Sheila said with a note of steel in her voice. “The bastard.”

Chapter 7

Beatrice’s head ached more than it ever had in her whole life. She struggled to open her eyes. When she did, she just shut them again. The bright light sent jabs of pain through her skull.

She sank into a pleasant dream about making love with her husband. They were in their bedroom, on their own chenille bedspread. As he took her, she saw the sheer curtains blowing in the breeze just over his bare shoulder, and she smelled the lilacs just outside the window. She cherished that moment with him. It felt the same every time; yet, it thrilled her: the thought of the man she loved inside of her like this, being a part of her—that he would want this as much as she. He had desired the same woman, the same love, for all of these years. It was such a comfort to have love like this in one’s life—even if it felt so brief. Once a woman had it, it was always hers. His love had comforted Beatrice for most of her life. It was a thing her science could not explain.

She felt his hands on her face, cradling her head. Her pain now was lifting through her dream—as if his hand was healing her. She smiled as she woke up to see her daughter looking out the window. She loved looking at Vera’s face as the sun streamed in on it. She looked so much like her father, with that strong, almost square jawline and her heavy-lidded blue eyes.

Beatrice cleared her throat. Her tongue still felt heavy.

“Mama?” Vera turned around, came to the bed, and reached for her mom’s hand. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” Beatrice answered, with a little trouble. “I had a headache, but it’s gone. My neck is a little sore.”

“You did have a knife lodged in it.” Vera smiled at her.

“Well, I know that,” Beatrice said, finding her tongue, looking around the room. “Look at all the flowers.”

“Oh, yes, Mama, almost everybody in town sent you flowers. Isn’t that something? Even the new family—the Chamovitzes. By the way, Annie Chamovitz was here last night and gave Sheila and me a ride home,” Vera told her.

Bea thought a moment. “Too drunk to drive?” “That’s what the doctor thought, but we were both fine,” she said, and smiled. Then she changed the subject. “Bill will be home today.”

“Bully for him,” Beatrice said, grimacing. Her son-in-law was okay. Vera could have done worse. But damn, he was boring. What on earth did her daughter see in him?

“You know the oddest thing happened last night,” Vera said, changing the subject again. She then told her mother the story of the boxes of scrapbooks.

“What was in them?” Beatrice wanted to know.

“We didn’t have a chance to look through them. It was late and we just left them in Annie’s van. We’re going to get together Saturday night and look through them. Isn’t that awful? I mean, dead less than twenty-four hours. ”

“It does seem odd, like someone couldn’t wait to get rid of her—and her memories.”

“Those poor children,” Vera said after a silence.

A nurse came into the room.

“How are you feeling?” she asked, while checking Bea’s IV.

“I’ve been better, ” Beatrice said, felling a sudden wave of weariness. “I think I need another nap.”

What is wrong with people? Is there any love left in the world? How could her husband pile up her scrapbooks on the pavement the day after she died?
It took Beatrice months to even think about going through her husband’s things when he passed away—and, in truth, she still kept a few things. His pipe still sat on the dresser with a chunk of that tobacco that she loved to smell. His camel hair scarf and three silk ties hung on the back of her closet door. Then there were the books, which she would never get rid of—they would have to pull Walt Whitman’s
Leaves of Grass
from her cold dead hands—if she was lucky enough to die with the book in her hands, remembering the sound of Ed’s voice reading Whitman’s words to her:

“‘A woman waits for me—she contains all, nothing is lacking,’”
he would whisper to her in the wee hours of the morning after he had just delivered a baby or performed an emergency appendectomy. He would wake her gently and they would make love until they both were spent. He would lie next to her, snoring and murmuring.

About a year after he had died, he came to her. He sat on the edge of her bed and told her that she needed to get rid of his clothes, that the living needed them. And so the very next day, she boxed up the bulk of it and gave it to Goodwill.

It didn’t frighten her to see her husband’s ghost—for she always believed in the possibility—one doesn’t study physics, then quantum physics, for a whole life, without seeing the possibilities of life after death—and the possibility that there is more to the world than what people think they see and feel. Besides, it gave her hope that she’d join him when the time came. She also felt a great comfort, knowing he was still around. It would help, of course, if he would come to her when she wanted him. Instead, he showed up at the damnedest times.

Once, she was on the toilet. He knew she didn’t like him being anywhere around when she was using the bathroom. Gas pains ripped through so badly that she thought she might die—and there he stood next to the sink.

“Don’t worry, Bea. It’s not your destiny to die in the bathroom on the toilet.”

“Well,”
she told him,
“thank God for that. Now, get the hell out of here, Ed.”

Ah, well, maybe she was crazy. Maybe he was a figment of her imagination. But even if he were, she knew it didn’t matter. Imagination was a powerful thing. Sometimes she wondered if half the world wasn’t based on it. Where was the line between imagination and so-called reality?

Now, this knife-in-the-neck business concerned her. Who would do such a thing? And what would have happened if it had not been lodged just exactly where it was? She could have died—or worse, been paralyzed, at the mercy of the likes of Vera and Sheila, a pair of midlife fools, if ever there were two. Sheila and her damn scrapbooks; and Vera and her damn dancing school, flitting around town like a diva, made up like a hussy half the time. It never mattered what Bea told her daughter. Vera had always had her own mind—if it could be called that. Her daughter was so different from her that it was hard to believe that she carried her in her womb. Didn’t give a lick about the beauty of mathematics and could care less about chemistry, let alone physics. She wanted to dance.

Beatrice smiled. Oh, but to watch her dance. Her daughter inherited her father’s long limbs and the grace—Bea just figured it was a gift from the universe. It was like watching an angel move across the stage. She would never understand why Vera insisted on coming back to Cumberland Creek to open the dance school, rather than staying in New York. But she was sure that Bill was at the root of it. Boring old Bill, who was steady and stood by her daughter, and that was a good thing. But she never saw a spark between him and Vera. Curious.

But she did see an enormous amount of tenderness between them, at times. She always knew that Bill loved Vera, but Vera never behaved like a woman in love, even from the very start. Never even took his last name—Ledford. Was dance the only thing that Vera loved?

Damn, her neck hurt. Suddenly a shot of pain rippled through Bea and woke her from her revelry. Had she been sleeping or just thinking?

She hit the button for the nurse. She could do with a little more morphine. Yes, she could.

BOOK: Scrapbook of Secrets

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