Tiger Lillie (13 page)

“Lillie?”

He knoweth us by our footfalls.

“Hi, Daddy.” I kiss his chamois cheek.

“Good wedding today?”

“Yes. And I have good news. We have the chance of signing on a huge contract for a celebrity wedding.”

“No kidding. Who?”

“SNAP, of Great Guns.”

“No kidding! Mr. ‘God on the Rocks’ himself, huh?”

“Wow, good memory.”

He taps the side of his head.

“He’s a Christian now.”

“Not all that surprising. You could see he was asking all the right questions years ago.”

My father astounds me sometimes.

“How did this come about?” he asks.

Of course I tell him everything, even how much I enjoyed Gordon’s presence. He congratulates me and says he’ll be praying and he knows God will reward my faithfulness. And then, “I’m retiring, Lillie.”

“Okay, Daddy, I know it’s late. But I was just so excited. I had to come up.”

“No. I mean retiring, retiring.”

Whoa.

“Now?”

“In a couple months. We’re going to move into that place at Tacy’s. Your mother is tired. We need to rest. God knows, I really would rather not, but…” He shrugs his shoulders.

He’s really saying this: I’ve given up. We’re tired of eking out an existence. We’re giving up our independence and placing ourselves beneath the surefire rain of Rawlins’s “almsgivings.”

“Oh, Daddy.”

He closes his beautiful eyes and tears slip from between his graying lashes. Oh, God. Oh, please, God. This is Daddy, my sweet Daddy.

“Come live with me,” I hear myself say, and I can’t believe I never thought of it before. Things always seemed so set. “I’ll take care of you.”

“Thank you, Lillie.”

I expected more, but apparently this is all he needs. Me too.

It takes some doing to convince Mom. After all, she might have been in the lap of luxury, and Rawlins did already build the house, Corian counters and all. Several years ago, of course. But I say this. “You rode that bike out of Hungary all those years ago to end up in slavery to Rawlins McGovern?”

She nods. “All right.”

Pretty easy considering I’m dealing with Superwoman.

So I guess I get to move my bedroom down to the basement now. I call Cristoff right away, as my mom brews us some tea. I tell him the news.

“Wonderful idea, girlfriend.”

“You don’t mind? I mean, you live there too.”

“Of course not. To him who knows to do good and doesn’t do it…”

“Well, that’s sin.” Two voices.

Snap snap.

“Will you help me decorate the clubroom in the basement for my bedroom?” I ask.

“You got it, sweetie.”

“I’m thinking Arabian Nights.”

“Or Barbara Eden’s bottle.”

Yep, I think that will do. We’re good at this sort of thing now. “Mind if I bring Pleasance in on this?”

“She gets a good discount at the Fabric Warehouse, doesn’t she?”

“Big time.”

“Well, there’s your answer then. You know what a cheapskate I am.”

You know, Cristoff should have his own show on TLC.
Flower Power with Cristoff.
It’s too easy to imagine how great he’d be. Man, I love my friend.

Tacy

For Christmas the first year of our marriage, I gave Rawlins a gift I thought he’d never forget. Our lovemaking was gentle and he was kind and giving, but I wanted mora. What came over me, I can’t say. Perhaps my own passionate nature consulted me, but that night, I was willing to try anything. I became a wanton woman, stripping for him as he sat in a chair. Hesitating, I said, “Is this okay?”

Even now the memory embarrasses me.

“Marriage is honorable, the bed undefiled. Continue, Anastasia.”

I loved the way his eyes feasted on my body, but in the end he was just the same lover. I wanted him to take me just once, with a wild, happy abandon. But nothing seemed to work. I wanted to be ravished, caught up in the mighty whirlwind of desire. The next night, he asked me to do the same thing, only wearing the ruby necklace he brought home with him that evening after work.

It felt dirty then. Wrong.

When I invited his mother for lunch the next week, I wanted to ask if she had experienced the same coolness with Rawlins’s dad. Mr. McGovern seemed so austere. Of course, I would never ask such things. They were none of my business really, and if my paying got back to Rawlins…

The night Rawlins brought Alban Cole home for dinner I realized things were about to change, that we were going to be allowed full membership in The Temperance Church of the Apostles. Pastor Cole’s eyes burned through me, not in a sexual way, but they told me he knew everything and he didn’t trust me one bit. I was dismissed soon after dessert.

The two talked long into the night.

I called Lillie to complain. “My life is so different than I thought it would be. I figured we’d join a country club, go out to dinner a lot, make friends. We’re in such a beautiful part of Baltimore County. But I am sequestered. We have a housekeeper and a cook. I have nothing to do but read and paint. I’d just like to use the barn loft for that, but I don’t want to hurt Rawlins’s feelings. Anyway, my artwork doesn’t come out like it should these days. I try and try. I try writing my stories and the words are only chunky blocks sitting on the page like firewood.”

But she wasn’t home and I only left a breezy message on her machine. That was a mistake. I see that now. I realize that was the time I needed to make a move, because not long afterward, it was just too late.

Maybe it always was.

After that dinner with Pastor Cole, Rawlins gave me a portion of Scripture each day to read, and then we’d discuss it at supper eack night. Rather, I was allowed to ask him questions and he’d explain. We started with the book of James, Faith without works is dead. I didn’t want to tell him what Daddy once told me, that Martin Luther wished to throw the book out of the canon! I missed my discussions with Daddy.

9

Lillie

Talk about your research!

Stan Remington. Stan Remington. Stan Remington. Stan at the periodicals. Stan on the Internet. Stan on the microfiche. I’m telling you, it’s hard to take in such fame, such glowing accolades and, even more indicative of his popularity, the vast amount of criticism.

“Sadly entertaining, the
Sex, Sexty-Sex
tour, nevertheless, left me unfulfilled. SNAP’s onstage antics, once powerfully agile and animalistic, were no more than a caricature of his early vitality. I expected provocateur. I was disappointed to instead find a servile, aged jack-in-the-box leaping about as if trying to recapture his lost youth and conform to imagined expectation.”

Well!

Ouch!

“Poignant and raw, Remington’s lyrics, which seem to emanate from his troubled psyche by way of a thesaurus, offer the masses a fast-moving intellectual current in which to swim, flounder, or be cast ashore like flotsam.”

You know you must being doing something right when that many people need to vocalize their misgivings about you and your work.

I like Stan though. At least what I’m reading about him endears him to me. Of course, it might all be hype. A lot of his pictures smile at me. Now, how bad can a rock-‘n’-roller be who smiles for the camera?

He’s extremely orange. Neon orange.

I saw this poster in the music store window the other day. Lots of, I’m sure, famous guitar players touted this foot pedal, and it was obvious some people were pasted in later because some heads were just way too much bigger than others. But here’s the thing. They all wore black, sported leather, tattoos, and silver jewelry, were weighted down by mops of unwashed hair.

When they had their picture taken they had to be thinking, “Dang, if I don’t look cool.”

And then this poster comes out, and whoa, it’s like, “Hey, did you all go to the guitar players’ uniform store or something?”

I thought how peculiar some guitar player dressed in Dockers would appear on that paper. And I’d think, “Hey, that’s
really
different. That’s a true individual.”

See, here’s the bottom line. So the group you hang out with doesn’t look like the moms and the dads. You wear weird clothes and makeup or what have you and think “I’m so different.” But I defy anybody to actually ensconce themselves in a Goth group or a skater group or the artsy group, and then one day, just walk in rebelling against
them.
Hah. I’d like to see that just once.
That’s
courage. Rebelling against authority is so passé. But rebelling against your peers? Now that takes moxie.

I doubt Stan would have looked much different from the other guitarists though, despite the smile. Still, I like him. “I can’t believe I get to meet SNAP.”

“The last thing you should tell him is that you’ve always been a fan of Great Guns,” Pleasance says. The three of us sit at a large table in the periodicals room of the library, poring over old magazines.

Cristoff slides a copy of
Wake Up!
magazine off a stack he gathered. “The girlfriend’s right. By the way, nice hairpiece, Pleasance. Is blond your natural color?”

“Nice button-down. Been moonlighting at T. Rowe Price lately?” Pleasance shoots back, flipping through some obscure British publication. “The last thing we need to do is look as pathetic as we are.”

“Well, call 911. I’m about to have a heart attack!” Cristoff blurts out. “Duran Duran is still around. Did you know that?”

Nope.

Pleasance shakes her head too.

“It says right here in
Wake Up!
they have a Web site devoted to them. Ultrachrome, Latex, and Steel, it’s called. I’ll be right back.” And he hurries off to the Internet servers in the other room.

“Sounds like a gay thing,” I say.

“Duran Duran?” Pleasance screws up her feline features. “Never heard of them.”

“No, the Web site.”

“Who’s Duran Duran?”

“Mid-eighties, new wavish, lyrics that made absolutely no sense to some pedestrian like me.” I pick up an old issue of
Rolling Stone
magazine. SNAP curls his lip on the front cover. So much for all those smiles.

“Lillie Pad, if it came out after 1965, I don’t know it.”

“They were big news. But I haven’t heard anything from them in years.” Yep, there he is, the British-rocker bad boy in 1979, the stadium years. I locate the article, but Gordon isn’t in the picture of the band. Not that he should be, but a girl can hope. Another Remington brother clenches an upraised fist above his bass guitar. My eyes scan the list of band-member names. The guy with the bass is named Hale Remington.

That’s right, Fitz and Hale Remington were identical twins. Hale on bass, Fitz on drums.

“I’ll be right back, Pleasance. I need to find Cristoff.”

Hunched over and deep into the Duran Duran Web site, his mouth hangs open like it used to when he first arrived at our school. When we used to call him Gilbert.

I sit down. “Remember one of the twins died? It was Hale. What did he die from?”

Cristoff types “Hale Remington death” into a search engine.

“Drowned on his own vomit.”

“Oh, great.”

“I’m telling you, sweetie, don’t bring up much about the band. These people relish their anonymity.”

“How do you know?”

He pulls his eyes from the computer screen. “Wouldn’t you enjoy just being treated like a regular person after living all that hoopla?”

“I’m treated like a regular person every day. What’s so hot about it?”

Cristoff turns back to the Web site. “Trust me on this, baby doll. Act like you know his work but don’t get all gushy. He gets gush every day, but genuine artistic appreciation is always welcomed by creative types.”

“Okay.” I have to trust him because he is one of those creative types. And me? Well, I’m still living at dead Grandma Erzsèbet’s and basically haven’t changed a thing, except for electronic equipment and a gas grill. (Love that gas grill, and I got it cheap at Watson’s end-of-the-year sale. It even has a little burner attached to it for boiling up a pot of sweet corn.)

So Hale Remington should be listed as a taboo subject. Definitely.

Still, drowning on your own puke. Poor Gordon. That must have been hard on the family. I can’t imagine having such information about me and mine available to the general public. It’s plain scary. I mean, I’d hate the world to know my sister is married to some psycho control freak.

“Cristoff, see if you can find me some kind of profile or interview just on Stan and then print it out.”

“Will do.”

“And can you do Gordon while you’re at it? I don’t think it will hurt to get a little background information on him either.”

“You got it. Good idea.”

I glance at the time. Planning to make the return phone call to Gordon at three thirty, I check in one more time with Pleasance, who has graduated to an old issue of French
Vogue.
I didn’t honestly think I’d have her for long on the whole Remington-information-gathering sortie.

“Wish me luck. I’m going to make the callback.”

“Break a leg, Lillie Pad. If you had a cell phone you could make the call from here.”

Right.

Hurrying back to the office, passing one of the places Edgar Allen Poe used to live, I skid into my office just in time to lift the handset. The wall clock clicks the half-hour and chimes once.

I hesitate, looking at my skeleton hand as it holds the receiver. Can I do this?

Ride that bike, Lillie. You can do it. Over the border, Hungarian Woman. And don’t forget he’s got a skeleton inside of him, too. Just like everybody else.

I dial the number, sweat hydrating my forehead. How should I greet him?
Hi, this is Lillie Bauer, remember me?
No. Of course he remembers me. He made the first call, for pity’s sake!

First ring.

What about,
Hi, Lillie Bauer here, returning your call!
Not that either. Of course I’m returning his call! Good grief He knows he called first. No sense in playing that game of “who called first.”

Second ring.

Maybe,
Hi, Gordon. This is Lillie!
and just leave it at that. But what if he knows other Lillies?

Third ring.

“Hello?”

“Urn, yeah, is this Gordon?”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Um, well, I got your message on my answering machine and I thought I’d call.”

How stupid can you get? Not much more than that, judging by the dead silence on the other end of the line.

“Who is this?” he finally asks.

“We met in the ER at Bay View.”

“Lillie!”

“Exactly!”

“Well, why didn’t you just say so?”

“I was going to. In fact, I’d practiced just saying, ‘Hi, Gordon, this is Lillie!’ just like that, and then I heard your voice and got all frustrated like some stupid star-struck person or something.”

He laughs that great “ha!”

“You figured it out then? The music thing?”

The music thing.

“Yeah. And the art thing, of course, which shouldn’t be downplayed. I come from a family of art lovers. I thought you looked familiar, but I couldn’t place it.”

“You liked Great Guns then?”

“Especially in high school.”

He laughs again. “That pretty much sums it up all over the world, much to my brother Stan’s chagrin.”

This actually seems to be going well now. Yeah boy.

“So am I presuming correctly that you’d like to bring your brother and his fiancée around to talk about the wedding?”

“The lady’s a mind reader!”

I almost blurt out, “Well, I didn’t think you’d called to ask me out on a date.” But years of holding my tongue around men keep me under control.

“Do they want something private or a big
Enquirier
-worthy bash?”

That loud “ha!” pushes my ear away from the phone once more. What a cool thing, to just laugh like that. This fluid issue of mirth unable to be controlled even for a second was in all actuality quite alluring. Imagine that. A sense of humor. How sexy.

“They want big. Really, really big.”

Thank you, God! Thank you, God! Thank you, God! I do the electric slide—a reception favorite.

Still. “Really? How come?”

“Stan’s never really done anything halfway.”

“Well, we can sure handle big at Extremely Odd. Extremely big, in fact.”

Oh brother. I’m an idiot.

“Good then. I’ll call him and we’ll set up a time for an appointment. What days are good for you, Lillie?”

“Any day but Friday through Monday.”

“That’s four days of the week, sweetheart.”

“It’s an odd business.”

“And I thought rock-‘n’-roll was crazy.”

I open my planner. “How about tomorrow at three? Can SNAP make it then?”

“I’ll call him and find out. But I’d really try to call him Stan if I were you. SNAP is a stage name, nothing more.”

“Got it.” I try to sound cool, but man, how stupid and awkward and, well, non-show biz can a girl be?

“Don’t sweat it, love. Everybody does it. I just care enough to give you a heads-up. I’ll get right back to you then.”

“Sounds good.”

And we ring off.

He’s so nice. He’s so nice. I keep saying the words to myself over and over. To my horror I look down and see that I’ve hugged my planner against my breast, hiding a furiously beating heart that threatens to just up and lift me off my feet.

To my horror. To my horror.

What if he’s like the other twits out there?

Suddenly guys like Cliff the Architect and Mr. Dutch Treat boo and hiss and laugh like scary clowns. What am I doing? Why do I feel like this?

Those guys hadn’t broken my heart. I’d broken my own, set my hopes and dreams upon a train track just before the train arrived. And then I blamed the train!

Teddy poured so much love into me for so many years, and I’ve wasted it on spoiled buffoons who take Saint Paul so literally that women are really just a second-best offering in the life of a dedicated Christian male.

What is wrong with me? Why this desperation? Why this date book pressed to my thumping heart? Oh, God, why all of this? Why am I acting like a junior-high girl? I mean, Gordon has said nothing to lead me on.

Right?

Tacy

On our first anniversary I asked Rawlins for a baby. He said not yet.

On our second anniversary I asked Rawlins for a baby. He said, “you’re still so young, Anastasia.”

When Rawlins was away on a trip, one of those convention things for the advertising industry, he told me to stick close to home. But I really wanted to head on down to the ocean, walk the beach, maybe take some pictures. I had a painting in mind and wanted to start on it when I got back. I was sure he wouldn’t mind.

The September day flew in and out on a warm breeze. The sand, heated with sunshine, accepted my feet so lovingly. Such a comfort from God overcame me, and I praised Him there on the beach, a blanket spread beneath me. I took pictures, talked to the man at the caramel-corn stand, sketched, and ate Boardwalk Fries. Even the drive home felt supernatural and so important, giving me that assurance that just living was suck a noble thing.