Season of the Dragonflies (8 page)

“Tell me what?” Mya said.

“I just thought she'd tell you first,” Lucia said.

Mya lined up tacks on the empty message board above Lucia's dresser. “Sometimes she forgets things,” Mya said.

Lucia tied her oily hair into a long braid down her back and said, “Last year I landed a role playing a mother in North Carolina who leases herself and her fifteen-year-old daughter to a pimp. Rehearsals were fine and preview nights were fine, and then opening night with the theater critic for the
New Yorker
sitting in the front row, I had a panic attack, and it made me blank out on the Acorn Theater stage. They fired me and gave the part to my understudy, but that didn't keep the critic from mentioning it in his review. And I just couldn't get past it, and then my voice-over contract for that teenage soap opera show wasn't renewed, and that had been my steady income. My agent hasn't sent me anything since. So, any other Band-Aids you'd like to rip off for now, or could we take a break from playing twenty questions?”

Mya stood to the side of Lucia like she might sit down, but Lucia crossed her arms. Mya said, “You need a facial. Something with strawberry and honey.”

This was a kind way for her sister to tell her she looked like shit. Lucia said, “I'm fine.”

Mya nodded, but for once, she didn't tell Lucia what she was thinking. For that Lucia felt grateful. “Is there coffee?”

“If you make it,” Mya said, and turned to leave the room.

“And moonshine?”

“Same place it always was,” Mya said.

Lucia massaged the base of her neck, then walked out of the room and instinctively went to close the door behind her. Still no doors, just curtains. Mya liked that no doors blocked her energy in the house, but for Lucia, it just meant less privacy. She walked into the open reading area and looked up at the loft. When they were little girls, Mya had spun tales of the men who would surely come into their futures, and she'd always led the way, just as she did now. Mya would crumble dried red rosebuds in their palms with three drops of lavender oil. She tied yellow ribbons around their fingers and described the men who would sweep them away. Mya's man lived for adventure—caving, biking, swimming, climbing, hunting. Lucia's man lived for enterprise—amassing wealth, building a home, and creating a family. Back then Mya and Lucia were friends and wanted to live next to each other and have husbands who would be like brothers. Together they blew away the pieces of petals from the loft above to the couch below and let the ribbons fall like confetti on their mother. “Watch out for my books,” she'd say.

Books were still scattered about the room, along with mountains of overflow paper from Willow's office and dirty plates and cups from the kitchen. The space had never been tidier or messier than this. No matter how much time passed, the same thought still haunted Lucia: Why, if her family had so much wealth, did they live in such an outdated, cluttered, and small way? She had never understood her mother's need for simplicity. Willow invested in small businesses in the town of Quartz Hollow and in conservative bonds and concentrated on personal savings, just like Grandmother Lily and Great-Grandmother Serena. Willow kept investing in the fund Serena had chosen in the thirties with a reliable 30 percent return. But for what? Willow rarely spent money. She preferred to watch it grow, like the flowers.

“How's business?” Lucia said as she poured grounds into the coffeepot filter. She seated herself at the circular kitchen table and checked underneath for the wobbly leg. Still broken. She watched her sister float about the kitchen, pulling dishes from the refrigerator and placing them on the gas stove.

“Which business?” Mya said.

The coffeepot trickled, and Lucia said, “Is there another one I should know about?”

“I've got an herbal tea store in town now,” Mya said.

“Willow didn't say. Good for you, but I meant the family business.”

Mya shrugged and said, “Everything's okay.”

“Number twenty-seven on the
Forbes
list,” Lucia said, and helped herself to a cup of coffee and a generous drop of cinnamon moonshine from a Mason jar. She braced herself against the Formica countertop. “Better than just okay, right?” Mya frowned after Lucia said this, she was sure of it. Should they have been higher on the list? Being home always made Lucia feel like she was missing something.

Lucia took a sip. The coffee burned her tongue and the liquor warmed her body. Mya dropped a muffin pan on the wooden floor, and Lucia jumped, almost spilling her drink. There stood their mother in the doorway to the reading room, still holding on to her travel bag.

Willow's hair fell farther down her shoulders than Lucia recalled—it was shimmering white and thicker too. Her delicate features defied her age. How could she be sixty-one already? Why had her mother and sister seemed to stop aging while Lucia was away? She took this personally, as though her absence had helped them to remain beautiful.
Stop being irrational, say something to her,
Lucia told herself, but she couldn't find the words.

Before Lucia could open her mouth, a loud snap and a crash came from outside the kitchen window. Lucia and Mya both whipped around to find a large branch of an oak tree split from its trunk. Not a single cloud hung in the sky, and the sun shone as brightly as ever. Either the branch had just given up or their mother's anger had peaked. Her fury had a history of cracking tree limbs, like the time an FDA inspector came snooping around and a massive maple limb flattened his company car. Willow dropped her luggage on the hardwood floor. Her stare remained fixed on Mya. “I've called and called you.”

“I didn't hear the phone.”

Willow looked up to the ceiling and then said, “I'm sure you didn't. I need a shower but when I'm done, be in my office.”

Was Lucia invisible? Willow turned around and headed for her side of the cabin.

Impulsively, Lucia said, “Um, hello?”

Willow stopped. She said, “You just show up? You could've called first.”

Lucia's mouth fell open. Exactly what had she expected? On the plane ride and drive over she had imagined a hug at some point, but that had not yet happened with Mya or her mother. But protocol? Politeness? Remember your manners and call a day before you arrive?

“I didn't exactly know I was coming,” Lucia said.

“I did,” Willow said.

“What's that supposed to mean?” Lucia asked, charging after her mother. Within moments she was transported to her teenage years, fighting with Willow over comments she made about Lucia's desire to go to New York City.

“You; your career; the city; that husband, Jim—no, John—damn it, what's that boy's name?” Willow said, more to herself than to Lucia.

They'd all had lunch together a couple times in the city and Willow had visited Jonah's studio once. She liked his paintings—at least she said she did. And now she couldn't remember his name. Did she care so little? “Jonah,” Lucia said. “His name is Jonah. And he's my ex-husband now.”

“Well, I'm sorry for you and Jonah, I really am, but it was all coming to this. For years it has been, and it's taken you this long?” Willow massaged her forehead like she had a headache. Lucia remembered this gesture from the first time she introduced her mother to Jonah. After their dinner together, Lucia had hoped Willow would offer her approval for Lucia to tell Jonah about the family business. But Lucia had chided him about something small, like oversalting his food, and he'd walked out of the restaurant in front of Willow. Willow had massaged her forehead just like that for the entire hour they waited for Jonah to return, but he never did.

“You found me out, Mother,” Lucia said. “I'm a total and utter naïve failure. And I came home—of all fucking places—thinking I might not be judged.”

“Sometimes too much time passes,” Willow said, and closed her eyes.

“Can't you be happy I'm here now?” Lucia said.

“You won't stay,” Willow said. “What's the use?”

Lucia said, “How loving.”

“You left us a long time ago and rarely call. Don't talk to me about loving.” Willow frowned and retreated to her room.

Lucia walked outside through the front door and the damn birds flew inside, but she didn't care. She slammed the door behind her, hoping they'd poop all over the reading room and her mother's books. Lucia sat on the porch floor, next to the cast-iron bench, and surrounded by the hanging ivy she tucked her knees to her chest and put her face in her hands. She had absolutely no place to call her own, and she'd have to return to the city tomorrow and try to make her life work without Jonah, even if she wasn't ready. How did a person lose everything, including a mother's welcome? Not even the dragonflies seemed to notice she'd arrived. She hadn't thought of herself as a loser before, had always hated the slang silliness of that word, but right now she had no other term to describe how she felt.

Lucia heard a shuffle in the grass and lifted her head from her arms to see her sister standing out in the meadow, a herd of deer behind her, guarding her. Mya did not motion for Lucia, nor did she come to the porch to check on her. Instead, she walked off into the surrounding woods with the deer following her. Her mother might've held a grudge all these years about Lucia's leaving, but Mya certainly didn't. Lucia's being gone ensured Mya would be the next president of the company. Lucia had never coveted the title anyway; Mya had made no other plans for her life. Even when they were little girls, Lucia had assumed the business was Mya's to inherit. All she ever wanted to do was make Willow proud the only way she thought she could, by succeeding on her own as an actress.

Lucia stared at the slivers of space between the wooden planks on the porch, convinced she could slip right through them, and she traced her fingers in the emptiness between. Willow wasn't the mother Lucia had expected to find—the exhaustion and bitterness, it all came as a surprise. This wasn't the woman who had marched her daughters on a weekly hike or into the tree house on a rainy day to have a picnic catered by a downtown French café, her mother's favorite—baguettes, brie, roast chicken, apple tarts and imported chocolates and cold sparkling grape juice. Far too much for the three of them to consume, but she did this each week without fail, as she refused to leave town on business for more than four days at a time. And in the woods her mother rolled on the ground with them and climbed young poplar trees and made cups from the leaves and scooped water from streams to drink. They buried treasure rocks together and they all promised to remember where they left them, but of course they never did. On the hikes back to the cabin they often stopped to say hello to the flowers, and if they were in bloom, Willow stood at the edge of the field, palms open and eyes closed, and Mya and Lucia held hands and their breath as they waited for the flowers to lean toward their mother, who looked so much like a superhero in those moments. Mya and Lucia tried, but the flowers only moved for Willow, Grandmother Lily, and Great-Grandmother Serena. Willow hugged them with a smothering intensity and seemed so young and vital. Lucia had believed Willow could do anything—so had Mya—and she wished she could rewind to just one of those days. But her mother was no longer that woman and Lucia no longer that girl.

A dragonfly crossed her vision, and she looked up but couldn't see where it went. And then it returned and landed on the tip of her nose, so close she went cross-eyed trying to focus. She shook her head because the tiny legs tickled her skin, and the dragonfly took off again, but this time slowly enough for Lucia to track its flight in Mya's direction.

M
YA STOOD ON
top of the hill before the many acres of flowers in full bloom. The dark, glossy leaves relished the full sun, and the white flowers congregated like a crowd of summer-blond children, more beautiful than any stretch of sunflowers or Queen Anne's lace you might stumble upon in the Blue Ridge. The woody shrubs stood six feet tall in dense rows that stretched far back toward the forest line but stopped with just enough space to ensure there was no root competition between the trees and the
Gardenia potentiae
plants
.

June reigned as Mya's favorite month and most anticipated time of year. She wished things were less chaotic so she could enjoy it before the workers cultivated all the flowers and transported them to the factory down the road to capture the scent for the family's perfume. But time still remained for Mya to inhale the warm summer winds saturated with the smell of these most unusual flowers, nothing like the scent of their cousin the common gardenia
.
No,
Gardenia potentiae
smelled like ocean gusts of lavender, vanilla, and cedar, and something much deeper and elusive, like the smell of lust or envy.

Mya lay down on a bed of clover and reached her palms out to the thick hedge of flowers, just to see if they'd move. They remained blithely unaware of her presence, just as they always had. She picked a bloom and held it in her hand. Mya touched the stamen, and the pollen from the anthers stuck to her fingertip like a stamp. The sepal encasing the pistil and ovary seemed overgrown compared to past years, she was sure of it. How strange. And the petals felt harder, less supple. Maybe they hadn't finished blooming. She'd inform her mother in case they needed to push back the harvest a week or two—another first for their company.

The herd of deer that had accompanied her on the walk circled around her, and one nudged her arm as if to ask when she'd be ready to go. The thick clouds above formed a walkway like a footbridge over a deep canyon, and Mya placed her hand over her eyebrows to shield her eyes from the sun. And then Lucia's face appeared above her. Mya squinted to make sure she wasn't hallucinating, then said, “You found me.”