Twillyweed (34 page)

“Call Jenny Rose,” I said.

“What?” I could hear her shifting her phone, see the twinkling lights around the lake.

I started to say something reprimanding and then, thinking better, I said, “Carmela. She's wonderful. She has hazel eyes just like Daddy.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.” I could hear her mind ruminating, telling herself all the reasons a knockout like herself should not, definitely not, have a grown daughter around. I could see her as a girl, proud, jealous—as we both were of each other. I knew her so well. I prayed fervently she'd move on to a higher, better level. I waited.

“Stop praying.” She laughed. “I can feel you.”

“What? I wasn't.”

“
Tch!
You're just like Mommy.”

“Okay, I was, but for the right reason.”

“We're just coming to the border. I'll call you back.”

“No! Call Jenny Rose!” But she'd gone.

I stood there for a moment, close to her regardless how far. And then I realized something; someone could have lured Patsy's ex-husband to town … but who? I poured the morning's coffee into a cup with milk and ice and Jake and I went out.

Mrs. Dellaverna was standing in her yard. I walked over. “Hi,” I said. “What are you doing?”

“I'm tricking the roses.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah. You chop off the heads after they bloom and it tricks them into blooming twice.”

“Ah. I'll remember that.”

“What's the matter? You look depressed. Because Patsy died?”

I shrugged. “I dunno. I can't seem to figure things out.”

“Come in my house.”

“Just for a sec,” I said, following her in. To my surprise, there sat Mr. Piet with his shoes off, his legs crossed and the
Times
folded open in front of his face. “Mr. Piet! How nice.”

“Mademoiselle Breslinsky.” He bowed his head.

We commiserated about Patsy Mooney. Then I said, “I never thanked you for my headlight.”

“So many things have happened.” He smiled sadly and his eyes crinkled up.

Mrs. Dellaverna pulled me into her sunporch. Down the sides of an aluminum trellis, hanging almost to the ground, were several incredibly long, skinny green squash.

“It's a
cucuzza
,” she confided with intimacy.

“Isn't it too early for squash?”

“Yes, yes.” She nodded rapidly. “I plant them early, in March already, here in the house. Look how big! Look how
bellissima
!”

I frowned suspiciously. “You're going to enter them in the contest?”

“No, no, not these. They'll be too many seeds in these by then. They'll be too old and tough. No. Outside I started the others. But I'll make a nice soup. And a little red pepper to make the zest; you have to have the zest!” She motioned me back into the kitchen. There on the countertop was a Tupperware container filled with squash soup and an aluminum foil envelope of red pepper. She nudged them both toward me. “For you.” Then she frowned and lowered her voice, “Death … it's a part of life, but I don't like this murder. Maybe you need a protection against a
malocchio
.”

“Evil eye? Very funny.”

“I'm not joking.” She yanked my shirt down over my shoulder. “Hold still!” she barked, giving a quick glance toward Mr. Piet—who was pretending to be absorbed in the financial page—and proceeded to fumble with my bra strap, pinning a tiny red ribbon to it. “So nobody gives you the horns!”

“Okay. Okay.” I went home and sank into bed, protected now by the Wicked Witch of the Zest. I slept. Then, with something like zeal that I can only imagine came delivered by osmosis from Mrs. Dellaverna, I went to work. I opened the button safe and sat down at the window and polished every little one of the buttons with a spray bottle of hot water and a little vinegar. The summer solstice was drawing near and it took a long time for dark to fall. I welcomed it, the sound of the birds settling in, the boats whistling and groaning into port, and the dark, safe feeling of a cozy dwelling. I lit a candle and some incense and was standing at the stove stirring boiling water into red Jell-O—my mother's daughter that I am—when someone tap, tap, tapped on the screen.

“Hullo, hullo, anybody home?”

Jake let out a bellow and trotted over. My hand went to my hair as I went to the door. It was Morgan. But I'd known it was him, hoped it was him from the moment I'd heard his knock.

“Brought you a weather stick,” he said, holding it up in its plastic wrapping. “I got it at the yard sale after you left.”

I laughed happily. “I've wanted one since you told me about it!”

“I know. And I've brought you an instruction book on sailing.” He ducked through the doorway and handed me a soft cover book called
Basic Keelboat.
I flipped through the pages, filled with diagrams of heavings to and soundings in fathoms. “Thanks,” I said, putting it neatly on the end table with other good intentions.

He had an arm up and held the back of his neck, turning this way and that. “I can't believe how much you've accomplished!” He tousled politely and energetically with Jake over the dog's dirty pink Spalding.

Trying not to look smug, I asked, “Time for a cup of tea?”

We stood there for another moment, poised and unsure. I was so happy he was there I didn't know what to do first. But he remained and I realized he was gaping at my feet. I was wearing Noola's mukluks. I could have sunk through the floor. “I'm sorry,” I stammered. “I fell in love with them and couldn't resist—”

“Don't apologize.” He bent down again and gave Jake a good stroke. “She'd have liked that someone else shared her taste. She walked around like an American Indian half the time, with buckskin skirts and shawls made out of hemp! You mentioned there might be tea?”

“Well, decaf, if you don't mind, at this hour. Yes. Please. Sit. Jake, go sit down. C'mon. Here. Here's a biscuit. Give it to him, will you, Morgan? He won't settle until he's got something to treasure. Make him sit first.”

With Jake contented at Morgan's feet—he couldn't get closer if he was wrapped around him—I took out my secret stash of blackberry tea and the prettiest teapot, black-tea brown with yellow daffodils painted on it, and fussed about him as though he were the man of the house come home from a long day's journey. I couldn't stop myself. I didn't want to. The pot in one hand with a dishtowel over my hand, I lowered myself across from him. For a moment there was silence. It would be the first time he'd sat here since Noola died.

“Claire … What you've done with this place! I don't know what lucky star I walked beneath when you stomped onto me sloop …” Then he said, shaking his head, “I love it so much that you've taken it to your heart. That you seem to respect my mother's memory. Christ, I get so tired of everyone tiptoeing around me so I won't remember my mother's dead. But you see, I'm living her death. I'm in a place of grief. There's no one I'd rather talk about or think about. She's all around me anyway.” His voice broke. “I'll not be over it for quite some time—nor do I want to be.”

“Well, you're entitled to your grief. Are you hungry?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said, as though he'd just remembered food. He touched the teapot and eased his handsome finger gently down the belly of it. “This is the pot she liked the best.” A thrill went up me. He said, “Sitting here at this window with you …” He shook his head. “I don't want to be anywhere else.”

Our eyes met. There it was. That intoxicating fizz of significance. But because it was so new, I was unsure what he meant and feared almost physically to make a mistake and chase him off with my eagerness. I took a sip of tea to avoid saying anything. It was so hot I saw oblivion and had a bad moment taking it down, feeling the wall of pain between my lungs as it scorched my insides. But I'd promised him food. I busied myself, hauling from the refrigerator everything I had worth giving. I had a cheese that was as close to heaven as food can be. Carefully, I peeled away the cellophane and lowered it reverently onto a board, placing beside it a curved silver fish knife. Normally I'll cut it in half and stash the better part for myself when I was alone. Not this night. It merited the center of the table and there I placed it.

“Uh-oh,” he lamented appreciatively, taking in the exquisite, firm, grayish crust and just-before-loose insides, “what is it?”

“Brillat-Savarin, it's called. It's named for a famous chef.” I sliced some vine tomatoes, sprinkled them with sea salt and black pepper and poured balsamic from Modena and Sicilian extravirgin all over them, eying Jake fiercely as I did. Jake is mad for cheese and he's liable to whine until he gets some.

“I am starving,” Morgan realized, resting his long fingers over his knees and taking it all in appreciatively. “I love food, really.”

“Me too,” I said, laying out his mother's creamy napkins and two pretty etched glasses. I'd bought a nice 2010 Côtes du Rhône for a special occasion and hauled it out now. “Water or wine?” I held up the bottles.

“Both,” we said together and laughed.

“What's your very favorite food?” I risked, hoping he wouldn't find the question childish.

He thought a moment. “The core of the Boston lettuce, when you just cut it open. I love that,” he said while I found an opener in the drawer and joined him. I was waiting for him to ask me what mine was but his head drooped down and he held his hands behind his hips. “I'm going to tell you something. Something I've never told a living soul.”

His words frightened me and I wasn't sure I wanted to hear what was to come.

He began, “I don't know how much you know about my past …”

“A little. I know a little because Teddy mentioned—”

“Years ago,” he interrupted, “at just this time of year, almost to the day it was, right before the race—”

“I know what you're going to say,” I stopped him, hoping to spare him. “Your mother ran over Daniel in the water. Mrs. Dellaverna told me. And that's why he's … that way.”

He looked at me wearily then down at Jake, tickling behind his ear. “Yes, but you see, it wasn't my mother drove over that lad, Daniel, that beautiful young lad.” Looking back up, he held my eyes. “'Twas me.”

The way he said it. With such sadness in that picturesque way. It broke my heart. “Oh,” was all I could say. Then, “I'm so sorry.”

He sucked a deep breath in and kept looking at me. I'll never forget that look. He was waiting for me to judge him.

“You were just a boy yourself …”

“Ah, but you see, I knew better.”

“… And your mother took the blame. I would have done the same for my son.”

“Would you? Do you really think you would have spared him by doing it?”

I didn't know how to answer. He was right. Because it was clear he'd been spared nothing.

“While she was alive, I could never tell anyone. It would have cost her, see?”

“Yes. Is that why Daniel is afraid of you?”

He flinched. The fact of it wounded him; I could see that.

We must have sat there for more than two hours. He talked—oh, he could talk, recounting tales of his youth, stories of Daniel and himself growing up on the North Shore when Daniel was still normal—how grand it had been, fishing and sailing back in those days without the McMansions and the country clubs, Oliver and Paige trailing behind as youngsters, too young to join in their hot competitions. I watched and listened with growing affection. His short hair had lengthened since the first time I'd seen him and now looped around his ears and down his sun-darkened neck and I knew I was sunk. But he must have mentioned five times how good Paige had been to his mother. “All the long while I was overseas, and when I was away at school, it was Paige who looked after her. It can't have been easy for Mother, without me. But she always wrote and told me she was well looked after, then later Annabel came over with Wendell, or Radiance and Paige had stopped by that day or the day before … bringing her a package of Lorna Doones or a pint of cream, things she held dear.” He squinted, as though he were seeing the past.

I sat there with a smile plastered to my face. It was already perfectly clear to me that he felt duty bound toward Paige and I wished he'd drop it.

“She was so good to my mother, you see. Tended to her all the time.” He eyed me steadily. He cleared his throat. “And then there's Radiance. She's very young, of course. One must take care. But we're all very close. Very close.”

I understood. He was telling me that while he and I liked each other, he had obligations, commitments. Or was he making a move on me and laying out the rules? Suddenly I was confused. Did he intend to marry Paige and have a little on the side? Is that what this was about? And what did he mean about Radiance? Was he having it off with her, too? Or was that in the plan? I had no doubt he thought he could handle us all. Even if I might not mind being his little bit on the side, I'd be damned if I'd be a little bit on the side of a little bit on the side! I stood ungraciously, went to the sink, and washed and rewashed a couple of dishes, signaling it was time for him to go.

He stood awkwardly, upsetting his chair. “Have I said something wrong?”

“God, look at the time!”

“Oh. Sorry. I was carried away. Will you forgive me? I didn't mean to overstep me bounds. It's just … it's so pleasant here.” Our eyes were drawn out the window. The sky hung so close and black and thick with stars. “
Ti a braw bricht t'nicht
,” he murmured, then looked up and laughed. “It almost feels like if you leaned out you could grab one of the stars.” Then, when I didn't reply, he said, “Ah, well.”

“Well,” I echoed, “thank you so much for the weather stick. It looks like Pinocchio's nose.”