Spring Fever (3 page)

Weeds and sapling trees had sprung up in the narrow lane, and it struck Annajane that since she and Mason had moved out, the rest of the family had very likely forgotten the place even existed. Maybe, she thought, in one panicky moment, the house had finally succumbed to the inevitable, and simply tumbled all the way to the ground.

But the little stone cottage was still there, nestled beneath the leafless limbs of a huge old water oak. Acorns crunched under her tires as she rolled to a stop a few yards away from the house, and, as she stepped out of the car, she glimpsed the gray-green glimmer of the lake through a raggedy hedge of privet that had replaced the lawn Mason had so carefully cultivated.

Briars caught at the legs of her jeans as she pushed open the rickety cedar gate. Annajane plucked a dried bud from the canes of the New Dawn roses that twined through the pickets of the fence. The rosebushes, two of them, had been a wedding gift from her stepfather, who’d planted them himself, promising that the fast-growing climbers would blanket the fence with carefree pink blossoms within a year. And they had. The rosebushes had survived, even if the marriage had withered.

Annajane frowned when she got to the front door of the cottage. The periwinkle-blue paint she’d coated the old door with only three years earlier was already cracked and peeling. Worse, a rusting iron hasp and shiny new padlock had been fastened to the door. They’d never even had a key to the house when they’d lived there. But now that it was abandoned, somebody had seen fit to lock the house up tight. She tried to peer in through the front windows, but the inexpensive bamboo blinds were drawn, and anyway the windows were caked with dirt.

She walked around to the rear of the house and tried the back door, which led onto a small utility room. The wooden door was spongy with rot, but it had apparently been latched from the inside, and she was afraid if she tugged too hard the whole door would collapse on top of her. Which wouldn’t do. Annajane didn’t want to advertise her visit to the cottage.

So she moved over to the left, to the wide set of triple windows that looked out over the lake. Or at least, they’d looked out on the lake when it was their master bedroom. Now those windows mostly looked out on the tops of dead weeds. A lanky camellia bush partially blocked the center window, but she managed to slither behind it, praying as she did so that no snakes were hidden in the thick carpet of dead leaves underfoot. She grasped the window sill with both hands, grunted and shoved the window upward. She climbed inside.

Instantly she wished she hadn’t. Her muddy shoes left footprints in the thick carpet of dust on the worn wooden floor, and cobwebs festooned the ceiling fan overhead. The furniture in the room, an old wooden dresser, matching mahogany four-poster bed, and chest of drawers of no particular vintage or value, had come from Cherry Hill’s attic. But Mason hadn’t bothered to remove any of it when he moved out. Now a pale green mist of mold dotted the dark varnished wood surfaces. Some kind of animal had been chewing at the bare mattress.

Annajane walked around the room, her shoulders sagging, fingers trailing across the walls she’d repainted three times in one crazy, Quixie-fueled weekend, before arriving at the exact right shade, Benjamin Moore Morning Sky Blue, cut to half-strength.

She shouldn’t have come. She opened the closet, so small they’d once joked that it wouldn’t hold even one of the Bayless family secrets. Not much left there. Some rusty wire coat hangers, a folded green wool blanket on the one shelf. On a hook on the back of the door she found a faded plaid flannel shirt of Mason’s, which he’d worn for yard work. On the floor she spied his mud-spattered laceless work boots lined up companionably next to a pair of her own grungy tennis shoes. Without thinking, Annajane pulled the flannel shirt on over her own denim shirt. She burrowed her nose into the collar, seeking some sense memory of her former husband, of those happy times they’d spent making this cottage their own. Instead, she sneezed violently, expelling a tiny dried-up spider into the mildew-scented air.

Her footsteps echoed in the closed-up house as she walked from room to room. To be precise, the house only had three rooms, the bedroom, an L-shaped living-dining room, the kitchen, and of course a bathroom, which was not much bigger than their bedroom closet.

One by one, she opened and closed the kitchen cupboards. The cabinet beside the stove held a yellowing box of pancake mix and an opened carton of baking soda. Kernels of rice trailed from a sack of Mahatma, where a mouse had nibbled a hole in the plastic bag. The cupboard by the refrigerator held two mismatched coffee mugs and a stack of green-tinted Quixie promotional glasses. Rust spots freckled the fridge.

Annajane stood in front of the window over the sink and looked out at the lake. From here, she could see the weather-beaten dock that stretched out into the water. They’d sunned themselves on that dock, dove naked into the surprisingly cool water on moonlit summer nights, paddled out into the middle of the lake on another night to make a drunken attempt at lovemaking in the bottom of the old wooden rowboat, an attempt that had ended up dunking them both into the lake.

They’d had big plans once: to build a double-decker boathouse at the end of the dock, one with a deck and a screened porch and a stone fireplace up top, for cookouts and parties, with davits below to hold the
Sallieforth,
a derelict 1967 seventeen-foot Chris-Craft ski boat that Mason hoped to eventually restore to working condition.

So many plans. Once that lake had been a clear blue-green, lapping wavelets against a shore lined with the blue hydrangeas, red geraniums, and drifts of Shasta daisies planted by the original caretaker’s wife. Now weeds and water lilies choked the shoreline and obstructed the water views. She felt a melancholy, as cold and gray as the winter lake, seep into her soul.

Turning away from the window, she wandered into the living room, where the only furniture that remained was a lumpy brown sofabed, handed down from one of Mason’s college roommates. The sofa faced the fireplace, where a stack of half-burned logs perched atop a small mound of coals. The old copper tub on the hearth had once held pieces of kindling, matches, and twists of newspaper. She reached in, found a couple sizable twigs, a long wooden kitchen match, and some yellowing newspaper.

Annajane placed the newspaper and the kindling on top of one of the half-burned logs, lit the match, and held it to the paper until it caught fire. In a moment, the dry sticks were burning merrily. She sat on the edge of the sofa, watching, waiting for the fire to build. When it threatened to die down, she searched around the house until she found an old phone book. She ripped out the pages, wadded them up, and tossed them onto the fire, crouching in front of the fireplace, ready to feed the fire more paper, lest the blaze die down again.

Finally, the logs caught, too. She could feel fingers of warmth creeping into the chill, stale air. She sat back on the sofa, watched and waited. Waited for what, she asked herself? Some catharsis? A cleansing? A healing? Coming here had been a mistake. She stood, stripped off the flannel shirt, and tossed it onto the flames, which claimed it with a whoosh of orange and red flames.

She let herself out the window, closed it, and drove off without a backward glance.

*   *   *

Three years later, Annajane forced herself to study her ex-husband, standing there on the altar, waiting for his new bride. Marrying Mason off to Celia was the final step in her self-prescribed cure. It was the only solution. And once it was done, once she heard Father Jolly pronounce the happy couple Mr. and Mrs. Mason Sheppard Bayless, Annajane could move on with her own life. Away from Passcoe, the Bayless family, and, yes, even dear old Quixie, the Quicker Quencher.

*   *   *

Everybody in town said that if you were born in Passcoe, North Carolina, the home of Quixie and the Quixie Beverage Company since 1922, you were born with the cherry-flavored cola running through your blood. It wasn’t quite true of Annajane Hudgens.

Ruth, her mother, always claimed she couldn’t stand the taste of the stuff, but Annajane knew the truth of the matter was that it was the Bayless family who left a bad taste in Ruth Hudgens’s mouth.

Annajane always secretly wondered if Ruth hated the Baylesses because her daddy, Ruth’s first husband, Bobby Mayes, had been killed by a drunk driver while driving a Quixie truck, when Annajane was barely two years old. Ruth had married Leonard Hudgens a year later, and Leonard quietly adopted the little girl when she was four. Even though Leonard worked at the plant, Ruth wouldn’t allow Quixie in her house, and she certainly wouldn’t allow her only child to drink the stuff. No, it was milk or apple juice or lemonade for Annajane, never Quixie.

Annajane could still remember the first time she tasted Quixie. It was in kindergarten, when she was invited to Pokey Bayless’s fifth birthday party.

Her mama had thrown the pink engraved invitation right into the trash. “Think they’re better than us and everybody else in town,” she’d overheard Ruth tell Leonard. “Probably only asked Annajane because they want to lord it over us.”

“Ruth, for Pete’s sake, the girls go to kindergarten together. They’re friends,” Leonard had protested. “Just ’cuz you can’t stand the parents, that don’t mean those little girls can’t play together.” In the end, Annajane cried and begged, until, finally, Leonard had persuaded Mama to let her go to Pokey’s party.

It was a tea party, and for the event a caterer set up a big round table draped in pink tulle on the front porch at Cherry Hill, the Baylesses’ rambling old Greek Revival estate.

The table was set with a child-sized bone china tea set that had been one of Pokey’s birthday presents, and there were real sterling silver forks and spoons and cloth napkins. Each of the six guests—all girls—was presented with her own silver sequined tiara and a pink feather boa. And at every place setting on the table stood a perfectly chilled chubby little bottle of Quixie soda with a pink and white striped straw sticking out of the neck.

Annajane could still remember that first icy sip. She’d never tasted a carbonated beverage before, and the bubbles tickled her nose and gave her the hiccups.

To her, Quixie didn’t taste like cherry Kool-Aid or cherry Life Savers, or even cherry Popsicles. The fruit flavoring was bold and spicy and tart and sweet all at the same time, like a sour cherry exploding on her tongue with sparkly after-notes, and Annajane had never tasted anything as delicious in her entire life.

Besides the bottles of Quixie, the party refreshments included trays of tiny little crustless tea sandwiches and cookies and petit fours and a three-tiered Care Bears birthday cake that Mrs. Bayless had ordered from a bakery in Pinehurst, but for Annajane, nothing could match that first taste of Quixie.

Pokey’s daddy, who’d played butler and head waiter at the party, had been delighted at Annajane’s enthusiasm for the family product, and he had gladly replaced that first empty soda bottle with two more bottles in quick succession.

When the party was over, each girl in attendance was given a huge goodie bag containing a full-sized Cabbage Patch doll, a monogrammed grosgrain ribbon hair bow, and yet another bottle of Quixie cola, this one with a special commemorative label that said:
IN CELEBRATION OF POKEY BAYLESS’S FIFTH BIRTHDAY
.
A VERY SPECIAL DAY
.

Even at five, Annajane knew better than to share all the details of the party menu with her mama. She hid the commemorative bottle of Quixie at the bottom of her toy box, and two hours after she got home from the party, still wearing her treasured silver tiara and feather boa, she found herself crouched over the commode, silently retching up the contraband soft drink.

But the upset stomach did nothing to dim Annajane’s enthusiasm for Quixie, or for her new best friend, Pokey, who’d earned the nickname because she’d been born nearly two weeks after Sallie’s due date.

Pokey was as blond and fair-skinned and round as Annajane was dark and skinny. To Ruth Hudgens’s consternation, the girls became inseparable, alternating sleepovers at each other’s house nearly every weekend. Ruth never said a word to Annajane against Pokey—how could she? Silly, sunny-natured, fair-haired Pokey was the golden child everybody—even Ruth, against her will, loved.

As for Sallie Bayless, she was always cordial to Pokey’s best friend, but as Annajane grew older, she came to realize that she would never measure up to Sallie’s standards. Not as a friend, and certainly never as a daughter-in-law.

At the Bayless house, Pokey’s brother Davis was an annoying constant in the girl’s lives, bossing, teasing, and tormenting the girls until they would retreat, in tears, to Annajane’s house, out of his reach. Annajane heard a lot about Mason, the adored oldest brother, who was four years older than Pokey, but she saw him rarely. Mason went to boarding school in Virginia and spent summer vacations sailing and water-skiing at Camp Seagull on the coast. According to Pokey, Mason was very near to a saint. He was the hero who stood up for her against Davis, whipped everybody at every sport, and, during summer vacations, when the family spent a month at their house at Wrightsville Beach, took her fishing and taught her to play spades.

On the handful of occasions when she’d been around Mason as a kid, Annajane had been so tongue-tied in his presence that she was sure they’d never even exchanged more than a “hey-howyadoin?”

Every summer, the Baylesses would invite Annajane to join them for their August trip to the beach, and every summer, Ruth would refuse to let her go. Sallie Bayless would write Ruth Hudgens a polite note on her pale blue engraved stationery, and when that didn’t work, Pokey’s father, Mr. Glenn Bayless, would seek out Annajane’s stepfather, Leonard, at the plant, clap him on the back, and declare loudly, “Now, Leonard, my daughter Pokey is fussin’ and fumin’ at me because y’all won’t let your little Annajane come to the beach with us. It’d sure give me some rest if you could do without her for a week or so.”