The Lavender Hour (8 page)

“The truth of it is, I'd rather die sailing to Europe than at home in bed.”

Or hunched over a steering wheel, stopped short in the prime of life by something a lot bigger than a red light. I pushed the thought away, got back to Lily's transformation, which I couldn't explain. “This doesn't even sound like you,” I said.

“Life doesn't stay the same, honey. People change.”

“I do. I stay the same.”This, I suddenly realized, was true. In spite of all I'd been through, in spite of wanting a new beginning, I
was essentially the same person I'd been before the tumor, before my move to the Cape.

“Maybe you shouldn't.”

“What?”

“Stay the same.”

I ignored this. “So, what are you saying? You're having some kind of late-onset change-of-life crisis?”

Another pause, this one longer. “Jessie, honey,” Lily said, her voice calm, “two things: I love you. And I'm not having this conversation.” And then, to my amazement, my mama hung up.

A
HALF
hour later, I was still sitting there staring at the pad and the doodle of the nest and eggs, immobilized by my conversation with Lily. The sound of the UPS truck roused me.

“Hey, Kenny,” I said, as the driver approached with a package. During the last six months, he had made so many deliveries for the jewelry business that we had developed a first-name friendship. He was married with two kids and a wife who worked days at a retirement home in Hyannis.

“About time we had some sun,” he said.

“Sure is,” I said, as I signed for the padded envelope. The return address was marked Sonoma, California. I recognized the customer's name from earlier correspondence. Another cancer patient.

I carried the envelope up to my studio. The morning's work— the piece for the young leukemia patient—was still on the table. I had nearly completed weaving the braid and could soon begin fashioning the bracelet.

I opened the envelope. Like most of my customers, this one had sent the hair sealed in a plastic bag, bound by elastic. When I withdrew the duplicate order form, I checked for a note and was surprised to find none. People often included personal anecdotes or histories along with the hair, and although many were from women who had cancer, there were other stories, too, like that from the
mother whose son had just joined the navy. She sent a strand she had kept ever since his first haircut. Now she wanted it preserved in a locket. (Imagine, I thought when I received the order, keeping those flaxen strands so carefully for all those years. I had held the hair and wondered if I would ever know the terrifying joy of having a child.) A coed at Mississippi State sent her hair braided into a plait as thick as the arm of a child. She wrote that, all through her childhood, her mother had braided her hair every morning, pulling it with a vengeance, so tight that she wept. Now she was setting herself free. A woman from Fond du Lac told me that her hair held all her power. She wanted me to create a “power piece” for her that she could pin on her clothes. A widow from Sante Fe told me the An-deans believed that, after death, hair was braided into a bridge that helped the soul of the dead cross a dangerous ravine to reunite to the body. She had sent strands of her husband's hair, the yellowish off-white of blond gone gray. A natural blond from Washington asked me if I knew that Princess Diana had spent more than six thousand dollars a year having her hair bleached. I hadn't known that but didn't doubt it for a minute.

But, as I said, the envelope Kenny delivered contained only the order form and the customer's hair caught up in an elastic band. I set it aside and tried to concentrate on my morning's work and replaying my earlier conversation with Lily.

L
ATER THAT
afternoon, as prearranged, Faye picked me up, and we headed over to Brewster.

“Okay, what's going on?” Faye said, as she swung out onto Route 28, cutting in front of a pickup and ignoring the driver, who was honking furiously.

“What do you mean?”

She turned to look at me. “Not hard to figure out. You haven't said five words since you got into the car.”

“Watch the road,” I said. There. Three words.

Faye tailgated the car in front of us, edging left to pass when an
opportunity presented itself. Unmindful, the car ahead crept along. LORPs, Faye called them. Little old retired people who flooded the roads, driving along at a pace twenty miles south of the limit, turn signals perpetually switched on, chins held level with the hubs of their steering wheels. Although Faye was saintly in a number of ways, patience while behind the wheel wasn't her long suit. The LORPs drove her nuts. If it were up to her, she'd have them outlawed. Or permitted on the roads one hour per day. Ten to eleven
A.M.
Max. Her idea was to clear the roads of everyone else and let the LORPs duke it out, which they often did, backing into one another in the post office lot on a regular basis. Last fall, she advised me not to venture anywhere near there until after noon, by which time, the last of them had picked up their mail. According to Faye, most of them drove like they'd undergone vertebrae fusion, unable to turn their heads more than two centimeters left or right. Nights you were safe, she said, since they didn't like to drive in the dark, but days you definitely were throwing the dice.

“Y
OU DON'T
have to tell me if you don't want,” Faye said.

“Tell you what?”

“What it is that's bothering you.”

“It's nothing, really.”

“Nothing?”

I sighed. “Okay, it's Lily. I talked to her this morning, and I've barely been able to work since.”

“And…”

“I don't know.” I really didn't want to get into this and most certainly didn't want to tell Faye about my mama hanging up on me. Talking about Lily to Faye made me feel disloyal. “I guess I'm just worried about her.”

“Isn't that backward? Isn't the mother the one who's supposed to worry about the daughter?”

I bit at my lip.

“Okay,” Faye said. “What specifically are you concerned about?”

“Well, it's this man she's with, for one thing,” I said. “This dentist person. Who is he? What does he want with her?”

“I think that should be pretty obvious, Jessie.”

“You think he's after her money?”

Faye cocked an eyebrow. “I was thinking along the lines of something more carnal.”

I stared at her. “Sex?”

“Desire doesn't dry up with the passing of decades, you know.”

“Jesus, Faye.”

She laughed. “More power to her, I say. I don't know why she didn't start seeing men years ago.”

“Not another word, okay. I don't even want to go there.”

Faye laughed again. “So what's the other thing?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said you were worried about the dentist for one thing. What's the other?”

“Well it's everything, really.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“It's like she's not even the same person.” I told Faye about how Lily wasn't hosting the traditional family Easter brunch.

“Well, that's the best thing I've heard in a long time.”

“It is?”

“It means she's letting go of what no longer fits. She's changing.”

“That wins the Understatement of the Year Award.”

Faye looked at me. “Why exactly are you upset about what she's doing?”

“It's crazy. Especially this sailing thing. You've seen her on the ocean, Faye. She doesn't know a boom from a broom handle.”

“True,” Faye said, laughing. “Okay. What's the worst that could happen?”

I stared at Faye. “Hellooooo? She's crossing the Atlantic. Storm at sea. Death.” Death. There. I'd said it.

“And that's the worst?”

“Isn't that bad enough?”

“I don't know.” Faye reached over and clasped my hand. “Is it worse than dying from cancer?”

I stared at her, again wondered if Lily had broken her promise not to tell Faye about my illness. At the same time, perversely, I wished Faye did know, since I was finding it increasingly difficult to keep from her.

“We don't get to choose our deaths, Jessie. But we can choose how to live.”

“Okay, maybe it's totally selfish on my part, but I don't want anything to happen to her. I don't know what I'd do if she died.”

Faye slipped her hand free from mind and reached up and adjusted the visor. “You'd go on.”

“I don't know.” I couldn't imagine life without Lily.

“You would,” Faye insisted. “We all do.”

I assumed she was talking about her late husband and about all the deaths she had seen in her work with hospice, but Faye surprised me.

“When I was a little younger than you,” she said, “I had a dog, an Irish setter named Rusty. He was the most important thing in the world to me.”

I thought about Rocker and wondered if the Lab was the most important thing in the world to Luke.

Faye fell silent, then took a long breath. “Sorry. Even now, after all these years, it's hard to remember.”

“What happened?”

“He got sick, and the vet said he had to be put down. He gave me a form to sign, and I managed to scrawl something. I didn't think I could bear to stay there in that room—I always believed I was weak that way, avoided funerals like the plague, but I didn't want Rusty with strangers. No one should have to die alone, not even a dog.”

I thought of my daddy, slumped over the steering wheel, dead before the light changed to green, then willed my mind away. “That doesn't sound like you. The part about not being strong, I mean.”

“Believe me, it was. Anyway, I knew I had to be there with Rusty. I had to. When I went in, he was too weak to lift his head off the table. He had just vomited, and I can still remember the horrific smell. I held him in my arms and talked to him until it was over.”

“I couldn't have done that,” I said.

“Yes, you could have, Jessie. We're stronger than we know. Each of us. We don't know what we're capable of until we are tested. Look at Lily. She believed she had to be the perfect wife, the ideal mother, and now she realizes she doesn't have to be perfect at all.”

“Do you think that explains why she's let her hair go gray?”

“Well, in all the years I've known Lily, I've never seen her without makeup. She even wore mascara when she was swimming.”

I laughed, relieved to be off the subject of death. “It's true,” I said.

“So she's changing and challenging herself. Can't you see what a good thing it is that she is daring to try something new?”

“I guess,” I said. “I just wish she'd choose something less ambitious to start with than a transatlantic crossing.”

“It sure is a bold choice, I'll say that,” Faye said.

“Again with the understatement.”

Faye swung the Toyota into a parking spot off the road. “Well, here we are.”

I stared at the building we faced. You could drive right by the little stone mill and miss it entirely if you weren't paying attention. “This is it?” Faye had been building up my expectations for days. I expected something a bit more substantial.

“Have a little respect for history,” Faye said. “This mill was built in 1873.”

“And this is where the famous herring run is?”

“Technically, they're alewives, not herring. But, yes, this is it. The run starts over there.” Faye pointed to the north side of the road, and before I had even unlatched my door, she was on her way. I caught up by the edge of the stream.

T
HE
L
AVENDER
H
OUR

“It's early in the season,” Faye said, “but in a few weeks, the run will be thick with them.”

I concentrated on the stream and, after a moment, caught the glint of silver weaving through water. “I see one,” I said, unexpectedly excited. I followed its progress as the silver-scaled body fought its way upstream and over a concrete step, only to be propelled back again and again by the force of the water. “Will it make it?”

“Eventually.”

“Do they ever give up?”

Faye shook her head. “They're hardwired not to.”

“Amazing,” I said.

“Every year they return here to spawn.”

“How do they find their way back?”

“It's their home stream. They recognize it.”

“By instinct?”

“By smell.”

“Smell?” I assumed she was kidding.

“Biologists have discovered that every brook or river or stream has its own distinctive chemistry, its own particular odor.”

“Just like people.”

“Exactly. And that's how an alewife identifies its home stream.”

We watched as the alewife continued with its fierce, determined futile leaps. It seemed impossible that the fish would ever make it over the step of the concrete ladder. I knelt and dipped a hand in the stream so icy it made me gasp. The fish circled in the pool at the base of the step. Without thinking, I bent forward and cupped my hands, prepared to scoop it up and deliver it to the next level.

“Don't,” Faye said, reaching out to stop me.

“I was just going to help it.”

“I know, but it won't help.”

“Why?” The alewife made another futile attempt.

“Just by touching it, you can harm it.”

“Oh,” I said, chastised. The alewife disappeared beneath the shadow of the water, hidden and quick. “I didn't mean to hurt it.”

“To wish to do no harm is not at all the same as not doing any,” Faye said. She put her hand on my shoulder. “Things have to find their own way, Jessie.”

Just at that moment, the fish reappeared, made a last leap, and in glistening triumph, scaled the ladder. I couldn't describe the elation this small victory brought me.

We stayed on at the mill for another hour, walking the length of the run and then circling the millpond, where gulls swooped overhead, one occasionally diving to capture a fish in its bill.

As we walked, Faye's words eddied in my head like the water swirling at each step of the run. Things have to find their own way.

E
ASTER DAWNED WITH
a return to the cold and rain. When I arrived at the Ryder house, Nona's friend Helen was already in the drive, engine revving, and Nona was waiting at the door.

“It was good of you to come,” she said, “it being the holiday and all.”