Sweetwater Creek (9 page)

She did not look up at first, and all Emily could see was the top of her silvery blond hair, so like her mother’s that she thought perhaps Maybelle did not bleach hers after all. Her daughter’s was skinned back into a careless ponytail.

“This is my daughter, Lulu. Or Louisa, but I always have to check her birth certificate to remember,” her mother said.

The assorted Parmenters murmured hello. There was something almost eerie in the young woman’s stillness. The word “taboo” popped idiotically into Emily’s mind.

Lulu Foxworth lifted her head to them then, and Emily felt a tiny frisson of…was it shock? The first thing that went through her head, also idiotically, was that Lulu Foxworth was dead, mummified. Her face and arms and neck were so pure and carved that she might have been an effigy on a medieval tomb, or a marble saint. She was all-over tan, a matte bisque with no tonal gradations and almost no shadows, as if someone had carefully and lovingly painted her. Only her eyes were alive, but they made up in living flame for the rest of her. They were her mother’s blue, but in her face they blazed out like leaping fire, sparking blue. There was a very small sound as if a little wind had come up and then danced on by. Emily knew that it was the indrawn breath of the Parmenters. Those eyes made of Saint Lulu Foxworth something else altogether.

“I’m pleased to meet you,” she murmured, looking back down at her feet. They were narrow and tanned in glove-soft driving moccasins.

Emily’s eyes left the moccasins and traveled up the rest of Lulu. She wore jeans seated so low on her hips that it seemed that centrifugal force alone held them up, and in her navel there was a tiny gold ring. A cutoff T-shirt that just cleared her breasts showed an expanse of silky, tanned skin. She was thin; her ribs and collarbones and wrists were sharp. But her hips and breasts were sumptuous, and as tan as the rest of her.

“Holy shit,” Emily heard Walt Junior whisper reverently. Her father’s face turned a dark red, and he kept his gaze squarely on Rhett Foxworth. Emily looked down at her faux milkmaid outfit and shot him a glance of pure triumph. But he did not see.

“Well, I think the already-broke youngsters first, don’t you, Emily? Show the Foxworths what Sweetwater Boykins can do.”

Without a word, Emily went into the kennels and brought out three of her prize pupils, in various stages of their training, and put them through their paces. She had them sit, stand, heel, and go through their basic play-retrieving. After that she put Maggie, a full-grown, field-trained bitch, through her entire repertoire, including water retrieving and mock gunfire. Maggie performed flawlessly, returning the dummy to Emily with her soft mouth and leaping golden eyes alight. There was a spontaneous spatter of applause from the Foxworths, and Emily looked up and blushed. Even Lulu Foxworth was smiling and applauding. It was like seeing a statue come to life.

As she was taking the dogs back to the kennel, she heard her father say, “Yes, Emily is pretty handy with the dogs. She’s a great little helper.”

Before the flood of acid hurt and resentment could reach her throat, she heard her aunt say, sweetly and clearly, “Actually, Emily trained every one of those dogs. She has a kind of magic thing she does with them.”

“I’d love to talk to her about that,” Rhett Foxworth said. “I didn’t see her give a single hand command, or hear one.”

“I’m sure she’ll be glad to talk to you,” Walter Parmenter said. He sounded as if he was choking on the words.

When Emily returned to the group, Rhett Foxworth was deep in conversation with her father, and Maybelle Foxworth was chatting with her aunt, and the twins were shifting their too-big feet around and staring at Lulu.

Emily hesitated on the edge of the group, reluctant to be left with Lulu Foxworth and be expected to chat. But Lulu came toward her with a smile on her wide mouth and a flush of soft color on her cheeks, and eyes that seemed to spill out light.

“That was wonderful,” she said in a soft, slow voice that seemed to have no breath behind it. “They were simply beautiful. So were you. I wish I could do that.”

Emily stammered her thanks, and then they all went down to the kennel, where Daisy’s puppies, three weeks old now, were tumbling around in the box and over their mother’s curly bronze back, and trying valiantly to escape the high sides of the box.

“I don’t know if I can pick,” Rhett Foxworth said. “That’s as pretty a batch of puppies as I’ve ever seen. Their mother—has she got any older ones I can see?”

“The oldest one that Emily showed is hers,” Walter said. “The sire is in the far kennels. Buck is our nearest to breed standard. He has several ribbons for it. We’ll see him on the way out.”

They started out of the barn. Looking back, Emily saw that Lulu Foxworth was still crouched before the puppies, seemingly spellbound. She could hear her murmuring to the little dogs in a soft singsong.

Her father chuckled. “Haven’t seen her perk up like that since she got home from school. Mostly stays in her room playing that tribal music. Good to know something can get to her.”

“For heaven’s sake, Rhett,” Maybelle said sharply, and Emily saw that two hectic red splotches flamed on her cheeks. “You know she’s tired to death. She’s done way, way too much at school, with her activities and keeping her grades up, and then the flu on top of that. No wonder she needs a little sleep. Maybe we could take home one of the puppies, though….”

“Too young,” her husband said. “Besides, I want this young lady to train them, if she will. It’ll be a while before they can come to us.”

“Well, maybe she can come and visit them?” Maybelle looked at Walter Parmenter.

“Of course,” he said quickly. “We’d be glad to have her any time. Emily can show her around.”

Lulu Foxworth did not come up to the group around the Land Rover until its engine was idling and her father had tapped the horn.

“They are the most beautiful things I have ever seen,” she said in her soft voice. At close range, Emily could see that her eyes were red and deeply circled. For a moment her face seemed as stark and bleached as a skull. The blue eyes were dark, all pupil. Emily stepped back involuntarily. Buddy had once told her about changelings, infants changed for another being at birth. For some reason the notion had frightened her badly. Now the word rang in the silent air. And then, Lulu was Lulu again.

When they had said their good-byes and the Land Rover had driven away, Walter Parmenter turned to his family.

“He bought three,” he crowed. “We’re on our way. They were nice people, didn’t you think?”

“Very nice,” they all agreed, the twins fervently. But as they followed her father into the house, Emily glanced at her aunt and saw a shadow of thoughtfulness in her eyes, a tiny frown between them.

Had she seen the changeling too?

They were midway through dinner that evening when the phone rang. Her father went to answer it. When he came back to the table, his stride was military and forceful, and he radiated excitement.

“You’ll be pleased to know that I just had a call from Maybelle Foxworth,” he said. “She said that she had a favor to ask of me, and of course I told her anything, and she said that they were worried about Lulu, that her fatigue was almost dangerous, and the flu was just hanging on and on, and all the pre-debutante hoopla was gearing up, and they were afraid that without a long period of total rest she just wouldn’t be able to get through the big Christmas business. She said Lulu had been so restored, I think was her word, while she was with the dogs that it seemed almost a miracle, and they were wondering if there was any possible way she might board with us this summer and help with them. Her mother says she’s good with animals. And I’d mentioned that there’s an apartment over the barn, and if it wasn’t occupied, might we consider it for Lulu? They would furnish it, of course, and she would get her own meals; they would bring what she needed for that. She said she doubted we’d even see her, except for her time with the dogs. She said it was the first thing Lulu had been enthusiastic about since she got home from school; it was her idea, in fact. She said Lulu could find some way to be helpful even if it was cleaning out the kennels, and it would literally be a lifesaver for all of them. So I said of course, we’d be delighted.”

There was a silence. The twins broke it with groans of joy. Jenny broke it in her quiet voice. “What a very strange thing for a tired debutante to want. Surely there are other, more upscale, retreats. Do you think it might ultimately be a bit much for you, Walter? The girl seemed pretty shaky to me.”

Emily did not break in at all. From the moment her father had opened his mouth, she had known, as certainly as she had ever known anything, that this would be the summer of Lulu Foxworth. The summer of the changeling. It would happen no matter who opposed it, or for what reason. It was inevitable. It had been written in the air around Lulu. She felt cold and angry.

“I’m not going to let her hurt my dogs,” she thought fiercely. “I’m not even going to let her touch Elvis.”

For the rest of the meal her father exulted. His face, so often stony and abstracted, was literally illuminated.

“A Foxworth in our house for three months. We’ll get her well. She’ll get to be part of the family. Of course we’re not going to let her sit out there all by herself all summer. We’ll have her to dinner, and she can go with us to trials and shows….And her friends will come to visit her, and her parents—it’s the chance of a lifetime!”

“A chance for what?” her aunt Jenny asked, interestedly.

“A chance for this family to…finally be something, for us to be somebody. We’ll be just as much a part of her world as she’ll be of ours. And think of the things she can teach Emily, all that Charleston girl stuff she needs to know. Her friends will get to know her, too. Emily will be making her debut before we know it!”

“Aren’t you jumping the gun a bit, Walter?” her aunt said. “Her mother said she needed rest and quiet and simplicity. Some time alone. If she wants our company, she’ll ask for it. I think it would be kinder just to let her call the shots. And besides, it’s going to cost the earth to redo that old apartment. It’s a total mess.”

“Maybelle said they’d gladly pay for renovating it,” Walter Parmenter said. “And they’ll pay board. Lulu doesn’t want to be paid—simply to help work with the puppies, to learn. That, and read, and sleep. Maybelle said we won’t even know she’s there.”

“I’ll know,” Emily thought fiercely. “Oh, I’ll know.”

Soon after dinner she took Elvis and went up to her room. She snuggled him against her on her bed while she watched TV. She told him about the Foxworths, Maybelle and Rhett, and Lulu, and what her father had told them at dinner, and about the change in Lulu, gone in an eyeblink, that she had seen. Or thought she had. Now it seemed ephemeral, like a fever dream. She shook her head.

“But she’s not getting her hands on you,” she said to Elvis. He gave her his golden stare and then nestled in against her ribs. Soon his breathing, and then his dream-twitching, told her that he was asleep.

But sleep did not come as easily to Emily. She stayed awake as long as she could, certain that her aunt would come up to say good night, and she could tell her what she had seen, or thought she had, and ask her what she had thought about Lulu. But Jenny did not come. Emily could hear her aunt and her father talking for a very long time downstairs, and at some point the talk slid into the easy, desultory talk of long acquaintance. Soon they were laughing. Emily had seldom heard her father laugh. She lay listening. No matter how angry and disturbed she felt, it was somehow comforting to lie in bed listening to the adults in the house laughing together. Finally she slid into sleep on a gentle surf of laughter.

Maybelle Foxworth brought Lulu out to look at the apartment the following week.

For days, Walter and the twins and GW and, periodically, a sullen Kenny Rouse had been laboring in it, tossing out years of accumulated junk, scrubbing and polishing the old pine floor, painting the white stucco walls. The windows were still scummed and painted shut when the Foxworths arrived, and there was still a powerful odor of dust and dog hanging over it. The tiny kitchen had not been touched. Walter was displeased with the progress they had made. He had wanted to have everything ready for Foxworthian inspection.

He and Emily followed the Foxworths up the sagging stairs to see the lair proposed for Lulu. Emily had not been there for a day or so, and suddenly she saw it fresh, through Maybelle and Lulu’s eyes. Her heart rose joyfully. The room was inalterably banal and shabby despite the new paint and polish; surely no Foxworth had ever spent a night in a room like this. Lulu was undoubtedly used to marble and mahogany and drifts of down pillows, and damask curtains and silky-cotton sheets. It seemed impossible that she would like it, or that her mother would approve.

There was a long, uncomfortable silence while they stood in the hot, bare room, dust motes dancing in the pallid rays of sun that penetrated the filthy windows.

Finally her father said, “We’re not done with it, of course. New windows will go in, and we can do any kind of floor covering and paint that you want. The bath is being totally retiled, and we’re putting in a shower in place of that old clawfooted tub. It can be really nice, I think.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Maybelle Foxworth said slowly, clearly appalled but too well bred to say so. “I’d thought it might be a bit…more finished. And it’s much smaller than I thought. And we’d have to have an air conditioner. Lulu would die in this heat up here.”

“Oh, of course,” Walter Parmenter said desperately. “We can do that in a day.”

“Still, that kitchen…” Maybelle let her voice trail off. It had not trilled or fluted once today. This was a Maybelle down to business.

There was another little silence, and then Lulu said, “I love it. It looks clean and rough and stark, like a room in a Greek island house or a monastery. I don’t want anything on the floor, and I want the walls white, like they are. If I could have just shutters in the windows like they have in Italy, I would. But I’ll settle for plain windows. No air-conditioning, though. I’ve got a big floor fan; that will do fine. And I would
love
a clawfoot bathtub. And as for the kitchen, all I need is a microwave and running water in the sink. I have a little refrigerator that I had at school. It’ll do fine.”