Twillyweed (40 page)

“Wendell's faith in you saved you, too,” I said.

“Yes.”

I looked through the open window at the sky.
And Daniel
, I confided in silence to God.

Epilogue

The sun shone golden and a faint breeze stirred the trees. The sky was cerulean blue. It was the seventeenth of July, the day of the new moon, and Jenny Rose and Glinty were getting married. She looked beautiful, Jenny Rose did, in a white Mexican dress we'd bought at Anthropologie then tea-stained ecru in the bathtub. She wore my sparkling button earrings and sat in the backseat of Jupiter Dodd's borrowed blue Bentley, waiting to enter the church. Wendell, the ring bearer, wriggled beside her in brown satin shorts and what he scornfully called a
girl
's ruffled shirt, his brand-new Nintendo game there in his lap to keep him occupied. A burst of organ music filled the church

Father Steger, guest sacramenteur, rocked on pigeon toes, robed and ready at the front of the church. (You should have seen his face the day I took the statue back to him. One sunny morning after we found Annabel, I took a ride down to Broad Channel with Daniel. It was a kind of ceremony for the two of us. There are times Daniel understands more than he lets on. Anyway, that was a good day. I remember we went for Carvel on the way home.)

My parents sat waiting in the first row on Our Lady's side, my mother jittery with excitement, her hair in the tight, fancy marcel of a stringent new perm; my father sat rigidly beside her, wishing they'd get on with it, his mind out in the Buick on his old carpet slippers she'd brought along despite his firm insistence she not do so.

Oliver stood smoking a Cuban cigar out on the church steps, standing there talking to my sister Zinnie and Johnny, my ex. Johnny always has to be in on all the fun—you get the picture.

My sister Carmela, her silver bangles alerting everyone in the vicinity to her presence, arrived from the airport fashionably late and making a scene as usual, just as the bride was about to walk into the church. She was magnificent in a pink shantung Miu Miu suit and large-brimmed straw hat—looking like a bride herself. She backed out of the cab and paid the driver.

It was an odd sort of driver, I thought. Not odd that he was a turbaned Sikh—there seem to be as many of them driving cabs nowadays in the city and suburbs as there once were in Delhi—but that when he got out of the taxi, he beheld our Jenny Rose in such a significant way.

Carmela turned around and saw Jenny Rose for the second time in her life.

Jenny Rose stood on the floor of the fancy blue convertible she'd arrived in, at eye level now with her mother, the both of them spellbound. Carmela took four steps toward her.
Damn
, I thought,
now Jenny Rose will ruin her mascara
. But that wasn't what happened. Jenny Rose opened her arms and Carmela dropped her purse and fell into them, sobbing. I hadn't seen my sister cry like that since she broke her arm when she was ten. Jenny Rose held her. She didn't cry. She held her. It was funny Carmela was the one to be crying. But not so funny maybe, after all, knowing Jenny Rose. Knowing all she'd been through. When Carmela was finished weeping, Jenny Rose cupped her chin and gazed at her with a dazzling smile. She'd made it. She was here. Her mother was here.

Inside, a restless organ prompted, and Carmela tore herself away. Solemn and jingling, she took the church steps and came in, stealing over to me for a brief hug.

“Carmela,” I said with a frown, “your taxi driver is still standing outside.”

“I know.” She looked back at him standing out there on the street while she straightened her hair. “It's very odd.” She grabbed hold of my arm. “Evidently I'm the second girl he's brought all the way out here from Kennedy airport.”

Together we watched him praise thanks to the good and mystical God up above, bow charmingly to Jenny Rose, get back into his cab, and sweep away with majesty.

Carmela relinquished my arm, minced inside, and sat with dainty haste beside my father. He patted her hand with his big mitt. It hadn't worked out with her Italian. Just as well, we all thought.

The Irish aunts from Skibbereen sat in a grim knot behind her, looking past her, both of them scented with a lot of lily of the valley.

Annabel was not entirely well yet and wouldn't be for some time, but there she was beside me in the vestibule, weepy, but smiling. I'd been assigned the task of looking after her.

She was swathed in a fringed senorita white silk shawl embroidered with red roses. Oliver had insisted she be warm. They had her in a lightweight, red travel chair. She didn't look too bad for someone who'd been through what she had. It had been touch-and-go at first—she'd been so ghastly thin, but she'd plumped up pretty well, I thought—and she'd been quite firm that she be here for Glinty's wedding.

A burst of organ music filled the church.

“All right.” I mopped at her blue eyes with my churchgoing hankie. “You're all right, now.”

“It's being here in this place.” She smiled through her tears. “It's—I don't know—it's the exact opposite of where I was.”

“Sanctuary,” I said.

“Yes.” She shivered.

Hopefully, Annabel would thrive with so much love coming at her from Oliver and Wendell, from all of us really. She's a survivor. I'm looking forward to becoming friends. And Oliver is a different man, contrite and grateful and counting his blessings for the first time in his life.

I remembered to say an extra prayer of thanksgiving, relieved to have had a clean bill of health come from the hospital. That weight, too, had been lifted.
Breathe
, I kept reminding myself.
Breathe and be grateful!

Mr. Piet, all sewn together and fully recovered from the horrendous gash on his back, tuxedo sleeves rolled up over his lewd tattoos, had been assisting the chef in the Once Upon a Moose kitchen with all the appetizers. He trotted now past us into the church, rolling his sleeves back down, hurrying to get in before the bride. It hadn't been Teddy who'd attacked him, but when he and Morgan fell through a hole in the floor, he'd fallen onto a broken, gaping flat hook left over from the loading dock. It almost went right through him, just missing puncturing a lung. He'd fainted from the pain and it was a wonder he hadn't bled to death; an inch right or left or if he'd flung himself off and he would have. As it was, now he flinched with every step as his punctured rhomboid muscle painstakingly healed. He was grateful to be alive and had given his blessing to Radiance and Paige.

Thanks to Jupiter Dodd's connections, Radiance has already been offered several modeling jobs and she and Paige are putting a deposit on a condo on Perry Street down in the Village. They love it there, even talk about one day adopting a baby from Guardian Angel House. And as they turned in their pew, their faces shining with goodwill, I wondered how the hell I'd ever missed the most obvious passion of all.

Daniel was in attendance. Paige had seen to that. Jenny Rose had trimmed his hair, but it was still long enough to fill a slithery braid.

I don't know if he'd meant to kill Teddy when he'd flung him off that ledge; I like to believe he'd only meant to stop him. Accidental death, the investigation determined as to cause of death, due to trauma to his head. Or, I've often imagined as I lay in bed, it might have been that crack I gave him myself with the stone. That certainly hadn't helped.

Daniel meditated now, I reckoned, on Darlene Lassiter's soon-to-be-savored pastry.

My two children were in town for the wedding. Good sorts that they are, they sat determinedly at Daniel's side. He would huddle away from them toward the far corner. And they would shuttle back toward him. He would move away. They would wriggle near.

Darlene Lassiter was friends again with Mrs. Dellaverna. After it came to light that it was Teddy who'd pitted them against each other, it hadn't taken them long to make up and they sat together now on St. Joseph's side, the groom's side, where Morgan stood as best man. They whispered animatedly together, having big plans for opening a teashop in town. They were going to take Jenny Rose's idea and hang her paintings on the walls and Tuesday nights they'd stay open late and serve spaghetti; Thursdays, shepherd's pie; and on Friday, salmon. No stress. Nice and easy. It was, by the way, Mrs. Dellaverna who won the charity garden contest money—and kept it, I might add.

The organ music rallied into the wedding march and everyone rose. Oliver looked very dapper walking the bride into the church. Jenny Rose was a picture, her ribbon sash matching the borrowed blue Bentley, all cream and powder blue and thick in the middle, a wreath of rosemary and stephanotis decorating her short, shining black hair. No tattoos today. Glinty looked as though he'd burst with pride as he gently took her hand. They glowed with love. I couldn't help thinking—cynical old thing that I am—just wait till that baby starts squawking all night long with teething. But I heard on the radio that bitterness is just amplified self-pity. That sounds right, doesn't it, when you think about it?

Anyway it was a lovely ceremony, punctuated with my mother's boisterous, happy sobs, and afterward we all walked in a sunlit troupe up the road to the village. Jenny Rose and Glinty hadn't wanted a conventional catering hall with a loud disc jockey and so everyone was to come back to the Once Upon a Moose, whose rafters Paige and Radiance had swathed in peonies and the revived, and astonishingly flourishing, wisteria. Streaming, thick, pale-pink ribbons wrapped the banisters and the doors were thrown open to the street by the new owners. Morgan had arranged for a piper and the music sounded up and down the hills of Sea Cliff. We were just approaching the top of the hill when a nosy, rangy cat with big paws and glassy yellow eyes appeared along the side of the road and strode impudently before us. Wendell let out a cry. “Mama! It's Weedy! Noola's cat! She's come back!”

Annabel clapped her hands in delight from her transport chair. “It
is
Noola's cat!” she cried. Wendell was beside himself with joy and lifted the cat into his little arms.

“What do you know! She came home to Sea Cliff,” Mrs. Dellaverna exclaimed. “I'll bet that's the mother of your kitten, Claire. She looks like Sam and Weedy both!”

“You can name your little kitten Sweetie, Wendell,” Annabel suggested. “A cross between Weedy and Sam. How about that?”

Wendell stood momentarily transfixed. Then, “Auntie Claire”—he grabbed my hand and pulled me aside in solemn conspiracy. “Sweetie,” he explained helpfully to the city bumpkin, as only a country child would. “It's both. Get it?”

“That sounds perfect,” I agreed.

Once everyone was inside and had a glass, Oliver, his arm circling Annabel's thin waist, shouted, “Hear, hear! Let's have a toast!”

Morgan, the best man, stood up reluctantly and held his glass in the air. He looked around the room of beaming faces, the white tablecloths, the candles and flowers. He cleared his throat and, in his priestly from the pulpit voice, holding the couple's eyes, said, “All right. Here's one I know that fits. This is from Corinthians.” He recited:

“If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging symbol. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.”

He paused. “Here's to love.” With this he lowered his glass to his lips, those sweet lips I have begun to cherish, and drank the cool sparkling wine. And then, in a moment of pure hope, so did we all.

That kitten, Sweetie, will do all right living with Sam and Weedy. A big establishment like Twillyweed can well use three cats. Wendell proclaimed that you have to keep the cat family together and Wendell runs the joint over there, you know. Whatever he says goes, under the watchfulness of Annabel and Oliver. It was Mrs. Dellaverna who came up with the idea they turn their fancy, airy rooms into a hotel when she was at town hall digging up commercial licenses for the teashop. She had noticed that Twillyweed still was registered in the books as a commercial property.

If you ever come to stay at Twillyweed and enter the main hallway, three languid sets of yellow eyes will scrutinize you from antique nooks and any old-fashioned sofa they choose.

Glinty and Jenny Rose have the turret and the rooms below to themselves. Glinty took most of the money he'd saved and together he and Oliver are redoing the place into, I must say, a very grand bed-and-breakfast. Mr. Piet has retained his rooms and bought in with a vested interest as cook. Though
The Black Pearl Is Mine
turned out to be impractical for a family to live on, Jenny Rose and Glinty are going to keep it and use it for holiday tours around the gold coast, a perk of the B&B. The
Dream Boat
has been sold and the money invested for Daniel.

Jenny Rose has a tidy little side business making jewelry from vintage buttons and frame-able hand-painted cards, for sale to all and sundry in the Twillyweed gift shop. They put the gift shop down in the basement in Patsy Mooney's old place. Isn't it said that every great fortune begins with a crime?

Carmela comes out weekends. She and Jenny Rose circle each other like a pair of prizefighters—each of them unwilling to be hurt, yet mad for the prize. Love. She drives out with Jupiter Dodd and Enoch in Enoch's truck.

Enoch and Jupiter Dodd met up at the baby shower. Jupiter took one look at Enoch's big red truck and that was it. “Such transport!” he reportedly exclaimed in hero worship. Of course Enoch says they're just buddies, but I heard from Carmela the three of them are looking for a place out here to rent, so hold on to your hat. I don't know who's more excited about the baby among the three of them. Jupiter had no intention of wasting a good masquerade, he says, and without telling a soul he went and showed Twillyweed's treasure to the real Sotheby's. It turned out to actually be worth quite a bit.