The Fragrance of Geraniums (A Time of Grace Book 1) (8 page)

But she needn’t
have concerned herself. Papa and the strange woman had already gone inside. Grace
heard the screen door whack shut. Suddenly, she thought of Mama, plucking that
chicken on the stoop. Of the broken glass. Of Ben’s words to her the night
before he’d left. The night he’d given Papa a solid blow in the kisser, as he
put it.

He’s bringing
her here. To live.

Grace choked.
Oh,
please, no.
It was one thing for Papa to run around a bit. Mama was sick all
the time, pregnant often, with so many kids to care for… Really, Papa couldn’t
be blamed for needing some reprieve from responsibility. So what if the good
kids from school snickered at her family behind their hands? They didn’t have
to wear rubber bands around their shoes; their Papa didn’t sell junk for extra
money. They couldn’t understand.

But this… She’d
thought Ben had too much booze running through his brain that night. To bring
another woman into Mama’s house, a woman with permed, bleached hair while Mama
plucked a chicken for Papa’s supper… “I’ll be right back,” she stammered to Evelyn.
Her feet took the stairs two at a time, never stopping their forward motion
until Grace reached the archway that opened into the kitchen.

It was like
seeing a waxwork museum scene. Mama stood motionless, a frazzled, frumpy china
doll. She leaned against the kitchen counter, while the dead chicken’s feet
hung out of a pot of scalding water on the stove next to her.

Mama looks like
she’s been gutted
.
Mama’s eyes stared from her white, white face. Her hands still wore traces of
blood from the fowl; they hung useless before her soiled apron. Her gaze – that
unblinking gaze – fixed on Papa, who had taken his stand at the head of the
kitchen table, suitcases still in his hands.

His face, though
– His face wore such an expression! Grace had never beheld that look embedded
so deeply upon Papa’s countenance. It… It held hatred; it held disdain; it held
triumph
, all mingled together there, a bitter cup for the witness to
drink. His arm curved around that woman, who stood next to him, her twitching
eyes and willowy hands the only movements in the room.

All at once, it
seemed, the threesome became aware of Grace’s presence. She trembled as Papa
kept his narrowed eyes intent on Mama and yet addressed Grace. “Grace, this is
your Uncle Jack’s sister, Gertrude. She ain’t got work right now, so she’s
staying with us for the time being.” He let his eyes drop to the blond woman
for a second. “One of my daughters. Grace.”

The woman seemed
to gain courage from Papa’s introduction. She threw a little contemptuous
glance at Mama and moved a couple of steps from under Papa’s protection. The
thought flitted through Grace’s mind that the strange woman might have been
pretty, in a coarse sort of way, if it had not been for the arrogant politeness
that haunted her eyes and her painted mouth.

The woman
extended one of her slim, polished hands toward Grace. “So pleased to meet you,
Grace,” she purred, low and throaty. The scent of cheap tobacco stained her
breath. Grace’s own hands remained clasped, trembling, behind her back, as her
eyes darted from Mama’s eviscerated face to the woman’s smile-pasted one.

Grace would not
shake hands with this snake.

The kitchen rang
silent. The woman glanced at Papa from under thick-lined eyelids, then back at Grace.
She opened and closed her pouty lips twice before any sounds emerged. “You…
You’re how old, Grace? Chuckie told me, but I’m sorry to say, I can’t remember,”
she tittered with an expression of exaggerated apology plumping out her cheeks
into a lopsided smile.

Chuckie?
With a start, Grace
realized that the woman meant Papa.
Chuckie!
Nobody called him that.
Mama always called him Charlie, just as Papa’s family and the men at the lunch
counter did. For the first time in her life, Grace raised eyes of contempt to
her father. To let this woman nickname him something different, and to stand
there smugly as if he approved it!

Papa hadn’t
answered the woman, though, because his eyes still pinned Mama against the
countertop. The scalding water nearly boiled over the pot, the chicken legs
bobbing up and down. Mama had forgotten it; usually the chicken only hung
scalding for a couple of minutes at most.
It’ll be ruined
.

As if it
mattered. As if anything at all mattered except the terrible scene taking place
now. And she, Grace, was one of the actors.

“You’re what, seventeen?”
the voice asked in determination, obviously anxious for Grace to answer, for
this awkwardness to somehow dissipate. As if it ever could with
her
here.

“Fifteen. Grace’s
goin’ on fifteen,” Papa said, snapping out of his rigor mortis.

Grace just
stared at him.
Going on fifteen… I’m fifteen now!
Did he really not know
her age? The thin blade of her Papa’s self-interest bit a little deeper into
her chest. She couldn’t bear to watch Mama expire before her eyes.

“I have to go
check on Evelyn,” Grace gasped. Her feet found the stairs – she didn’t know how
– and she fled to the attic, where the spiders could listen unsympathetically
to her sobs.

O
ne more, and
she’d be done. Emmeline closed the hymnbook before settling her fingers upon
the ivory keys again. She didn’t need the music to guide her on this one.
Pressing her fingers gently down, sweeping them along the keyboard, the chords
sang out:

Be still, my
soul, the Lord is on thy side;

Bear patiently
the cross of grief or pain.

Leave to thy God
to order and provide;

In every change,
He faithful will remain.

Be still, my
soul, thy best, thy heavenly Friend;

Through thorny
ways leads to a joyful end.

As the final
notes lingered in the still room, Emmeline let her hands rest on the piano,
tears dropping from her eyes, running between the keys. The late afternoon
sunlight trickled through the white curtains, fell across the old wood floor,
and puddled at her feet, gilding all it touched, turning the fallen teardrops
to prisms. A great sigh tore from her chest.

For many
moments, Emmeline sat bowed at the instrument, not putting off what she knew
she
would
do but waiting until the Lord Christ ripened the desire in her
heart. At last, she heard Geoff’s footfalls on the porch. He hadn’t whistled a
cheerful hymn as he usually did on his way home from school, she noted briefly.

But Geoff’s
approaching presence gave her the impetus to drive forward.
This will eat
away at me, at him, at us, if I continue to carry it.
Slowly, ever so
slowly, Emmeline turned her hands over, palms open. She had no strength to
raise them but kept them resting on the ivory-and-black expanse. “Lord,” she
whispered – and a witness would have testified to the iron in her tone, “I am
Yours. All of mine is Yours. You give what You deem is best, and I will pour it
back at Your feet as an offering.”

As she continued
there in silence, she felt the burden of the weekend – no, of the years she and
Geoff had waited for a child – lift from her shoulders. The relief felt so
palpable that Emmeline nearly gave into the desire to look in the mirror on the
far wall to see if anything had changed in her appearance. A sorrowful peace
had replaced the anxious weight. She felt she could breathe again without the
anchors of unmet expectations holding down her lungs.

Emmeline heard
Geoff making his way upstairs and turned on the bench to greet him. Knocking
once, her husband pushed open the door. He stood there, a burnt-out match,
expression full of care. Emmeline rose and kissed the worn cheek. Geoff’s tense
arms gathered her against him. They were strong arms, yes, but not nearly
strong enough to carry their trouble alone.

She nestled her
head against the five o’clock shadow of his cheek. “Don’t fear, beloved one,”
she whispered. A tear – one of his – dropped into the dark ocean of her hair.
“He will not give us a stone for bread. He will not.” Her eyes closed, sharing
his weeping. “He’ll give us what is good, beloved.”

T
he moon had
shone for hours by the time Grace finished her homework. She leaned back as
much as possible in the upright desk chair, stretching out her overworked arm.
Her gaze fell on the two double-beds, occupied by her three sisters. Evelyn
appeared as a round lump under the covers, curled up like a cat. Only her two
braids showed, spread out on her pillow. Evelyn nestled right in the center of
the bed, and Grace knew that she would have a difficult time of getting her
little sister to move onto her own side.

In their own
bed, Lou and Nancy lay, the latter’s mouth open in a light snore. Both had come
home too tired to hear much about the new situation with Mama, Papa, and the
woman he’d brought into their house. When Grace had explained what had
happened, Lou had just shrugged and Nancy snorted, “Oh, Grace, you always think
of the craziest things.”

When Grace had
persisted in talking about it, whispering furtively in the privacy of their
bedroom, her older sisters became angry. “Look,” Nancy had finally said, “just
keep your trap shut about it. Our family is embarrassing enough as it is. If
you keep talking like that, how d’you think Lou and I’ll ever get dates?”

So Grace had
shut her mouth and given the smallest possible account to Evelyn, who didn’t
understand all that adult stuff yet anyway. Cliff lived in his own world, so Grace
didn’t waste her breath on explanations to him. While Nancy and Lou did their
hair up in rags and Evelyn played with her homemade paper dolls on their bed, Grace
sat and did her homework. But now that all of her sisters slept, she closed her
textbooks and tiptoed to the open window. She thought of her Mama’s face –
unfair, partial Mama; hardworking, dogged Mama – and of what Papa had decided
to do to her, and the tears rose to Grace’s eyes. They bubbled over, streaming
down her cheeks so steadily she didn’t think they’d ever stop.
Why? Why
would he do this? To Mama? To us? Have we done something so awful, so bad that
he needs something else, that it’s right for him to bring this woman here?

And no answer
came. The tears continued to flow, Grace as helpless to stop them as she was to
dam the breakage in her home, to mend Mama’s surely-bleeding heart, to make
Papa into a real father.
No hope,
she thought numbly, digging her
fingernails into the white-painted windowsill, watching as her tears splattered
there.
There is no hope.

After many long
minutes, Grace ceased weeping, having nothing left to cry, and what was worse,
knowing no one cared whether she shed tears or not. No catharsis awaited her,
but rather a raw, empty ache. She drew the curtains shut, still allowing the
warm September breeze to make its way into the room.

She turned off
the dim lamp on the desk all three sisters shared. In their bureau’s bottom
drawer, Grace fished around in the dark until she found her old-fashioned white
cotton nightgown, so unlike Lou and Nancy’s silky and skimpy nightwear. She
removed today’s clothing and laid it over the desk chair, so that it would be
ready for tomorrow, relatively unwrinkled. As she arranged her cardigan, she
saw a sheet of white paper sticking out of one of her books. Frowning, Grace
pulled it out, holding it in the moonlight to see what it was.

The permission
slip. She’d meant to ask Mama to sign it, but with everything that had
happened, Grace had forgotten completely. She bit her lip, thinking. Mr. Kinner
had wanted that permission slip back as soon as possible. The special choir
would start to rehearse later this week.
I can’t ask Mama about it now that
Papa has gone and done this.
Her mother had too much to worry about without
Grace complicating their family life even more. With a sigh, Grace tossed the
permission slip into the waste paper basket, letting it fall next to the pencil
shavings.

But, wait. Mama
had pretty much said yes when Ben had asked her if Grace could join Mr.
Kinner’s special choir. She’d never really denied Ben anything he’d wanted in
earnest. Grace’s eyes lighted on the pencil near her schoolbooks. Not daring to
let herself think, she flattened the slip of paper on the desk and picked up
the pencil, sharpened just enough for the job. With a quick, flowing hand, Grace
scratched out her mother’s signature. And – relief of reliefs – she felt a
guilty courage course through her heart.

T
he soft knock
came just after school the next day. Geoff didn’t turn from erasing the stray
marks on the blackboard. “Come in,” he called, trying to keep up the effort
he’d made all day: to give his voice its usual upbeat sound. “Be right with
you,” he continued as he heard the classroom door open and click shut quietly.
With a few brisk strokes, he finished up and turned, ready with a brave smile.

The Picoletti
girl stood there, silent and grave as always. Her guarded eyes turned to the
clock, then back to him. Geoff smiled again to put her at her ease. “Did you
need something, Miss Picoletti?” he asked.

The student
nodded. Wordlessly, she opened one of the textbooks she carried and drew out a
sheet of paper. Geoff recognized it as the permission slip for the choir. “Wonderful!”
he exclaimed with a cheerfulness he didn’t feel. “You’ve got it signed?”

The girl
hesitated for a brief moment and then nodded. She held the paper out to him. He
saw callouses marking the bird-like hand, signs of repetitive hard labor, and
he looked into her face for just a moment. There, he found other marks of
difficulty, yet of a different kind.

“Thank you, Miss
Picoletti,” Geoff said, more gently, as he took the paper, running his eyes
over the signature briefly. “We start practice this Friday after school.
Attendance is mandatory at all rehearsals.” He waited for her agreement and
received a short, unsmiling nod. “Alright, that’s it,” he finished, seeing that
she seemed anxious to go.

The girl turned
toward the door. Geoff looked after her for just a moment, wondering what her
little story was – the literature teacher in him made him curious, he supposed.
Then the clock above the door arrested his attention. Nearly three o’clock.
Emmeline would be returning from her ladies’ Bible study, where he knew she
would share her need – their need – for prayer. Geoff wanted to be home when
she returned. To comfort her.

If she needed to
be comforted. Last evening, her strength had amazed him. Here he had expected
to find her curled up on their bed, weeping in the certainty that she would never
hold their child in her arms.

But Emmeline had
risen like a robin from its nest when Geoff entered the piano room. Yes, Emmeline
had cried; that much evidenced itself on her weary pale face, her washed-out
eyes, her hoarse voice. But a new intensity undergirded all of that, made the
sorrow a set of notes rather than the entire opus. She’d lain her head gladly
on Geoff’s chest, but he rather suspected she’d taken that action to console
him
.

A
unt Mary had
never thought well of Papa, and when Grace walked into the kitchen after
school, her mother’s sister sat there at the table, reminding Mama of just
that. “I warned you, Sarah,” she jittered out in her high-heeled voice. Aunt
Mary pursed her lips together into a tight sandwich around the teacup’s rim.

She paused
mid-sip and lifted narrowed eyes to Mama. “This teacup’s chipped,” she
proclaimed, as if everybody in the Picoletti household needed to know.

Mama’s weary
face didn’t show its usual shame when Aunt Mary made that kind of announcement;
she just stared down, blank as fresh notebook paper. Without turning, she
asked, “Grace, get your aunt another cup of coffee, will you?”

Grace nodded,
her chest caving at the sight of Mama leaning her chin on her plump hands, too
tired to support her head without a prop. “Yes’m,” Grace answered quickly,
dropping her stack of schoolbooks on the table and moving toward the cupboard.

“Leave it! Leave
it,” Aunt Mary’s command interrupted her actions. Grace turned to look back at
her and Mama, unsure.

“I do not want
another cup of coffee, Sarah,” Aunt Mary explained to Mama. “I am just stating
that this cup is chipped. It was part of our grandmother’s china set, you know,
Grace.” Her blue eyes glared at Grace, as if she was to be blamed.

Grace nodded. In
Aunt Mary’s economy, offspring were to blame for mostly everything that went
wrong in life.

“Disgraceful.
That’s what this household is, Sarah. Just a disgrace.” Aunt Mary paused and
switched her weight from one crossed leg to the other. Grace noticed how
perfectly straight her aunt’s stocking seams were.

Mama sat there,
slumped silently over her full cup of cooling coffee, waiting for her childless
sister’s next pronouncement of doom. Grace stood motionless, listening.

“And now this:
Your husband has a woman. Living in the cottage. Behind your house.” She punctuated
the phrases precisely, like the priest did during Confession when he especially
wanted someone to feel sorry for their sins.

She talks like
Mama and us kids should be the ones repenting.
Aunt Mary raised
her thinly-penciled eyebrows. Grace thought they could compete with the arches
in their church for height. She bit her tongue to keep from saying anything.
After all, Aunt Mary was Mama’s sister and Evelyn’s godmother.

“Mary…” Mama
murmured, her gaze darting toward Grace, who had stayed right near the
cupboard, ears fully open, mouth shut.

Aunt Mary gave a
mirthless smirk. “Oh, really, Sarah, you think the girl doesn’t know what her
daddy’s doing out late at night? She knows what’s what, don’t you, Grace?” Aunt
Mary directed the last part to her.

Grace pressed
her lips together and said nothing.

“I thought so.
Well,” continued Aunt Mary Evelyn brusquely and, Grace thought, mercilessly, “it
is
true, isn’t it, Sarah?”

Mama nodded and
looked down into the dark liquid of her cup. “Where did you hear it?” she
asked, softly.

Aunt Mary Evelyn
snorted. “Where did I hear it?” she asked in mock wonder. “My Johnny’s second
cousin heard it at the club last night. He told Johnny on the telephone this
morning, so I rushed on over here. Your husband evidently has no problem
tossing the news around. It’s only in this house – and maybe the church, I
suppose - that he keeps it hush-hush. As if a wife didn’t suspect something
when her husband keeps a mistress. Behind her house, to boot! Who does he think
he is, the king of Greece?”

Grace looked
over at Mama, but Mama didn’t say anything. She just kept her eyes lowered,
looking into her coffee as if it would give her some answers that might halt
her sister’s tirade.

“Well,” Aunt
Mary continued, “there’s nothing to be done for it. Of course, you can’t leave
him, what with
six
children. Going on
seven.
And the Church would
never approve. So that’s out of the question. Though I have no idea why you
thought that so many children were necessary with that bum of a husband of
yours.”

“Charlie’s a
hard worker,” Mama inserted in that tone of hers that disallowed argument. At
last, having found the right words, she picked up her cup and took a deliberate
sip, her pale lips clinging to the china edge.

“Yes, in more
ways than one,” Aunt Mary retorted, setting her teacup down with such a force that
Grace feared it might break altogether.

Rebuked, Mama
sat silent.

“I’ll come for
her on Friday, then,” Aunt Mary said, rising to her feet. She layered her words
with an official air. “I’ve been telling you I’d take her for years. I’m glad
to see that you’ve come to your senses.”

Grace glanced at
Mama. What did Aunt Mary intend? For whom would she come? And why?

But Mama didn’t
say anything to enlighten Grace. “Yes,” Mama said in the same voice with which she
would give an order at the grocer’s. “Come for her on Friday.” When Grace
looked into Mama’s eyes, they seemed like holes in the night sky, places where
the stars had died.

Without a
good-bye to Grace, Aunt Mary swept out of the kitchen, her shiny black heels
tattooing her path with efficiency. Grace heard the door of Aunt Mary’s car
slam shut, the engine start, and the wheels grind their way out of the drive. In
the ensuing quiet, Grace listened as the grandfather clock ticked the seconds
of their lives away.

“Mama,” she
asked finally, “what did Aunt Mary mean?”

Mama turned
toward her, eyes floundering, unfocused. “What? What?” The words tumbled out,
unsure if they could find their footing. “What do you want, Grace?”

“Nothing, Mama.
Just,” Grace began tentatively, “Aunt Mary said she would be back on Saturday
to pick up someone. What did she mean?”

“She’s going to
take Evelyn, Grace.” Mama’s voice remained vacant. To Grace, the sentence made
no sense.

“What do you
mean, Mama? ‘She’s going to take Evelyn?’ What do you mean? Take her where?” Grace
dared to place a trembling hand on her mother’s shoulder, rounded under her
faded print dress.

“Home.” With the
suddenness of a Rhode Island thunderstorm, Mama’s face crumpled. Grace watched
in dismay as the sobs gained control over her mother’s petite frame. “To live…
with her and Uncle J-Johnny.”

Mama gasped for
breath, choking and weeping, but Grace couldn’t comfort her. She’d heard the
words that her mother had spoken, but they seemed to have no meaning. “Why?”
she finally managed, feeling nothing. “Why?”

Mama didn’t
respond, but as soon as Grace had asked, she’d known the answer, spoken or not.
Evelyn is Mama’s favorite, outside Ben. Mama wants Evelyn at least to have a
chance. A chance to live without the stain of… this.
Grace swallowed hard,
desperate to accept the truth of the kind of life her papa was creating for
them. She sat there as Mama wept, shoulders shaking hard, nose running. She
waited until Mama had no more tears to cry, and then she asked, “Does Evelyn
know yet?”

Mama shook her
head. Wiping her eyes and nose on her dirty apron, she muttered, “No, not yet.”
She hiccupped from the sobbing. “But she’ll be glad. Your aunt and uncle have
the money to give your sister the right kind of life. The kind of life she
deserves.”

With one harsh
motion, Mama stood and pushed her chair into place at the table. Her small,
quick feet brought her over to the cupboards and countertop, where she began to
prepare supper for the family.