The Lavender Hour (21 page)

“He has pancreatic cancer.”

“So this thing—this crush you have on him or whatever it is— it doesn't even make sense.”

“Not everything in life makes sense,” I said, an edge to my voice. I polished off the drink. I'd barely been back an hour, and we were already circling close to an argument.

Ashley set her drink—still barely touched—on the counter. “Come on,” she said. “I'd better get you over to Lily's before she sends out a search party.”

A
s
A
SHLEY
pulled up the drive to Lily's, I felt that jolt of nostalgia that returning home always gave me. With the exception of a series of rented apartments, which hardly counted, this was the only home I'd ever known. Two-thirds of my history had occurred here. After my daddy died, I'd been afraid Lily would make us move, a groundless fear, since our mama had never even hinted at the possibility, but one I could not shake nonetheless. The house, a brick Georgian, sat on a rise, surrounded on three sides by trimmed boxwood hedges. There were lilacs and dogwoods in the side yard, plantings of hostas and bleeding hearts on the east, a graceful bed of dahlias and peonies and camellias edging the front porch and the wider veranda on the side. I'd helped Lily plant some of those bulbs. Our love of flowers, of gardening, was one of the few connections we had managed to maintain during my teen years, and as I stared at the blossoms, memories, softened by time, flowed in.

“Who's taking care of the house while she's away?” I asked.

“She's hired a house sitter.”

“You mean some stranger's going to be living here?”

“Not a stranger. Someone Jan knows from the university. Well, here we go.”

I had a constricted feeling in my chest. Then the front door flew open, and Lily stepped out. The photo she'd sent at Easter hadn't fully prepared me. Her hair was not just gray but nearly completely white, fuller and freer than I ever remembered.

“Your hair,” I said as we embraced.

“Not one word about it,” Lily said. She hugged me, and then held me at arm's length, searched my face. “Are you—?” she began.

“I'm fine, Mama,” I said.

She hugged me again, then set me loose. Her hug felt familiar, but different, too. It took me a moment to identify the off note. Lily no longer smelled of Shalimar, the scent I had associated with my mama my entire life. She used to call it her signature scent, but apparently it had gone the way of her monthly color and cut at the Elkwood Salon. What had caused so dramatic a transformation? Why the dentist, the gray hair, sailing across the Atlantic, for God's sake? Had she joined a women's group, started therapy? What?

“Come on,” Lily said. “I want you to meet Jan.”

He'd been there all along, in the shadows of the front hall, watching us, and now he stepped forward. He was solidly built with sandy hair and the burnished complexion middle-aged men acquired playing golf or tennis. Lily took his arm, beamed.

Seeing them like that, side by side, was much worse than I had feared. My face flushed with shame for my mama. Did strangers think Jan was her son? Or worse, a gigolo? I couldn't help but wonder what her friends were saying, if they laughed behind her back. I had a vision of my daddy standing next to Lily, tall and strong and dignified, with that puzzled look he always wore in photos, as if he were the last to get the punch line. I willed myself not to cry. I couldn't understand how Ashley had let this happen. It could be worse, but I didn't know how.

“Hello,” he said. “I've been looking forward to meeting you.”

“Nice to meet you, too,” I murmured dutifully. I felt hot, dizzy.

The drink had been a mistake. Or maybe the mistake was in not having had two.

“Jan wants to take us to lunch,” Lily said. She still clung to his side. With her free arm, she circled my waist and pulled me close. “We thought Julep's.”

“Sounds great,” I said, forcing enthusiasm into my voice, remembering the Sundays my daddy would take us there for lunch, pronouncing their cheese grits the best in Richmond.

“I'll see you all later,” Ashley said.

“Oh, you come, too,” Lily said. “You and the boys, and Daniel if he's free. It's so seldom we're all together, I don't want to lose a minute of it.”

“Daniel's playing golf,” Ashley said. “But count on the rest of us.”

“I'll have to change,” I said.

“You look fine,” Lily said, although I was dressed in jeans and a cotton shirt, wrinkled from the flight.

“Really?” I said, recalling the many fights we'd had in the past, the times Lily refused to let me leave the house unless I'd been “properly attired.”

And later, at Julep's, Lily didn't say a word when the boys sat through lunch wearing their new baseball caps. It was as if she didn't care anymore about things like manners. I chose a seat between my nephews and listened to their repertoire of knock-knock jokes, rescued from having to make conversation with the Yawn. Lily didn't seem to notice. I kept sneaking glances at her, trying to understand what had caused her to change and why it was so deeply unsettling. Wondering, too, what this man saw in her, a woman who looked every year of her age and a good deal more than his. I remembered when George H. W had been president how everyone thought Barbara looked like his mother. When the gossip hit about his having had an affair, Lily had said, Well, I'm not surprised. Why would the president want to be with a woman who looks so much older? She should color her hair. Had she forgotten that?

Occasionally, during lunch, the Yawn faked an interest in my life
and tossed a question down the table, but I pretended to be too engrossed in my nephews to hear. Ashley kicked me under the table. “Be nice,” she whispered once. Lily just kept smiling and saying how wonderful it was to all be together, oblivious to any tension.

When the lunch was finally over, Lily and Jan went home to rest up for the party while Ashley and I returned to her house to ransack her closet for something for me to wear. Ashley finally decided on a black sheath with a cowl neck that draped open in the back, nearly exposing my entire spine.

“Smashing,” Ashley declared, pleased with herself.

“No one will be looking at me, anyway,” I said. “It's Mama's party.”

“You never can tell,” Ashley said, with a smug look that, if I hadn't been so preoccupied, would have tipped me off.

W
HEN
A
SHLEY
dropped me off at the house, Lily was already dressed. She wore a sleeveless linen dress in teal, and even from halfway across the room, I could see the loose skin on her upper arms and throat. It was as if she was deliberately trying to look her age. The Yawn wore a pair of white slacks; a pale blue shirt, open at the neck; and a blue blazer. All he needed was a commodore's cap.

“Jan and I are going to get to the club a little early,” Lily said, “so we'll be there to greet the first guests, but there's no need for you to be there early unless you want to. Ashley and Daniel can pick you up.”

“I have to shower and change,” I said, “so I'd better ride with them.”

“See you there, then,” Lily said, and hugged me again, as if she couldn't get enough.

After they left, I roamed through the house in a time warp, so little had changed, and I found some comfort in this. Even my bedroom had remained as I'd left it, right down to the ivory trim, blue-flowered wallpaper, and matching blue spread on the bed. I wondered if the house-sitting professor had a daughter, if she would
be sleeping in this room. I took a shower and slipped on the black sheath. I pulled my hair back in a knot. I hadn't thought to bring earrings and crossed the hall to Lily's room. I raided her jewelry box, choosing a dangly sapphire-colored, cut-glass pair. On the other side of the dresser top, there was a man's tie clip and a short black comb. The photo of my daddy that had been there as long as I could remember had disappeared. I was both mad and sad to see it gone, exactly the way I'd felt earlier when I thought about anyone else living in this house.

I was ready by seven, and when the phone rang, I was watching for Ashley's headlights to sweep up the drive.

“Hey, Jess, I'm running late. The babysitter's sick, and we haven't been able to find another. Daniel's going to stay with the boys. I'll pick you up in ten minutes.”

“No problem,” I said. I checked the clock, wondered what Luke was doing. All that day while I was teasing my nephews and picking out a dress with Ashley and having lunch and talking with Lily, he had never been far from my thoughts. My mind flashed on the plastic bag in the bottom drawer of the desk. I wished I had thought to hide it before I left.

I picked up the phone, dialed his number. “Nona?” I said when she answered.

“Yes.”

“It's Jess.”

“Jessie? But Luke told me you were going away this weekend.”

“I am. I'm calling from Virginia.”

“Long distance? You're calling long distance?”

“I just wanted to see how Luke is doing.”

“About the same. He's sleeping right now.”

“Well, tell him I called, will you?”

“He'll be happy to hear that.” She lowered her voice. “He doesn't say anything—'course he won't say anything to me—but I think he misses you. We both do. You're good for him, Jessie.”

Her words made me happier than I had any right to be. What
the hell was I doing in Virginia? “I'm due back tomorrow night. If I get on the Cape early enough, I'll come by.”

I
HADN'T
been to the VCC since one of Ashley's baby showers. The Virginia Country Club was the site of every important occasion in our family's history: our parents' wedding reception; my mama's baby showers; Ashley's sweet sixteen bash, complete with DJ; Ashley's wedding reception; the gathering after our daddy's funeral. Inside, the party was already under way. Every friend Lily had in Richmond was there, people I'd known since childhood and some others who were unfamiliar. I was no more in the door than Polly Collins—one of Lily's oldest friends—dashed over to say hello, still wearing her blond hair in a stiff bouffant the shape and size of a football helmet. Another time warp. Ashley headed off to say hello to some friends. I made straight for the bar and ordered a gin and tonic—my daddy's drink. Lily hadn't noticed our arrival, and I watched from a distance as she made her way from table to table, the Yawn in tow, laughing and greeting friends. Off to one side of the room, a large easel had been set up with a display of photographs of his boat, a fifty-seven-foot sloop with “Odyssey” painted in black on the stern. Propped on a second easel was a map someone had drawn of the Atlantic, a cutout of the Odyssey stuck in the middle atop a yellow line depicting their voyage. There was an arrow indicating the starting point in Norfolk and another showing the journey's end in the Azores, off the African coast. Colored drawings of mythic sea creatures decorated the borders. I could have done without the monsters.

I was just turning away when Ashley appeared at my side, her arm looped inside that of a man. “Well, look who I found,” she said in a phony what-a-surprise tone of voice.

“Hi, Jess,” he said, freeing his arm from Ashley's and reaching for my hand.

“Bill,” I said. I flashed my sister a wait-until-later look. Now I understood why she had insisted on the backless dress.

“I'll just leave you two to get reacquainted,” she said, then winked at me and melted into the crowd.

“God, you look better than ever. I was a fool to let you get away.”

As if it was your choice, I thought. “You're looking good, too,” I said, fulfilling my half of the social contract. Actually, he didn't look so bad. He was thick through the chest, heavier than in high school, but not yet fat. It would be another ten years before he had the bloated look of an ex-athlete. He smelled of English Leather, the same aftershave he had used in high school. He was tan—recently back from Saint Bart's, he explained. I stared at him and remembered the sexual intensity we had once shared, chemistry that had made him the object of my total obsession throughout our senior year.

“Ashley tells me you're just here for the weekend,” he said.

I nodded. “For the party.”

“That is some trip they have planned.” We both looked at the map.

“So everyone seems to think. Personally, I think it's insane.”

He was momentarily caught off balance by my response, but he regained his footing within seconds. “Ashley tells me you're an artist.”

Ashley talks too much, I thought. “I make jewelry,” I said, wondering how soon I could get another drink. If I didn't pace myself, I'd be drunk before dinner.

“Well—” Bill started.

“William. William Miller. I thought that was you.”A woman with chestnut brown hair swooped in and claimed him with a smile.

“Doe?” he said.

I recognized her then. Dorothy Jarvis had been in Ashley's class and had gone on to Sweet Briar or maybe it was Hollins; Lily used to cochair bake sales with her mama.

“I heard you were back in town,” Doe said to Bill. “You must come sit and tell us what you've been doing and what brings you back to us.”

I remembered what Ashley had said. Fresh meat. “Go,” I said. I knew enough not to say everything I was thinking.

He shrugged apologetically. “I'll catch up with you later.”

Around the room, people were gathered in clusters, and I felt like an alien in their midst. I could imagine what Faye's take on this event would be. Some of the women still wore girdles. Foundation garments, Lily used to call them. I took refuge in the ladies' room. Ashley found me there.

“So?”

“What?”

“Don't be clueless, Jess. Bill. What do you think? Isn't he hunky?”

I shrugged. “I don't know.”

“What's not to know? The man's gorgeous and loaded. And I sensed the chemistry between you two.”

“I don't think so.”

“You're kidding.”

I shook my head. “He's wearing English Leather.”

Ashley looked at me as if I were daft. “And that's a crime?”

“That's what he wore in high school,” I said, trying to make it sound like a joke. “I could never take anyone seriously who still wears the same shaving lotion he wore when he was sixteen.”