Wild Orchids

by Jude Deveraux

  “I think he probably knows a lot more about this than he’s told me. It changed his life—just as it did mine. I really think that…that…”

  “Your mother was one of the people who put rocks on…Amarisa?” The name sounded strange, but it fit her. Part of me wanted to show Jackie the photo of the woman’s reconstructed face, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. First of all, I was sure that Jackie would see the resemblance to herself. And I was just as sure that she’d remember the woman. She remembered everything else in town, so why not her own relative? I’d heard that we never forget traumatic events in our lives, so I doubted if Jackie could look at that photo and not recall what she’d seen.

  But I couldn’t get past my hurt. I’d been honest with Jackie since the day I met her. I’d told her everything about my life. Well, okay, actually, I’d written my life story, sold it, and made a lot of money off it, but still, Jackie knew all about me. Maybe it was true that I’d not told her much about my dinner with Dessie, but then I’d not found out anything that I could share with Jackie. Except about the sculptures in Dessie’s locked cupboard. And the fact that I thought one of the women in the sculpture was Jackie’s mother. But still, I wasn’t hiding anything as big as what Jackie was keeping from me. Except maybe the photo in the FedEx envelope.

  “Jackie,” I said softly, “if you had another vision, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you? Me. Not someone you hardly know.”

  When she looked at me, she seemed to be trying to decide whether or not to answer me. And whether or not she should tell me first—or him.

  What had this man done to win her loyalty so completely? I wondered. She couldn’t have spent too much time with him because she’d been with me nearly every minute for the last few days. Yet she was contemplating telling him and not me about something that I’d come to think of as a secret between us.

  “Yeah, I’ll tell you,” she said after a while, and gave me a small smile. “But what do I do if—”

  “You see evil inside a person’s head?” I had no idea. That was a question that would take a philosopher a lifetime to answer. I wanted to lighten the mood between us. “Look into my eyes and tell me what I’m thinking about Russell Dunne,” I said, leaning across the desk and staring at her hard.

  “That you want him to move in here with us, along with your father and cousin,” she said instantly, without a hint of a smile.

  Groaning, I leaned back in my chair. “Very funny. You should have been a comedian.”

  “I have to be around this house. What are we going to do with your family?”

  “Why don’t we ask Russell?” I said.

  “Before or after we ask Dessie?”

  I clamped my mouth closed before I let it out of the bag that there was nothing between Dessie and me. Right now I wished I’d not been such a great guy and smoothed things out between Dessie and her young boyfriend. I should have grabbed Dessie in front of the windows and kissed her. At least now I’d have a girlfriend to balance out Jackie’s boyfriend.

  I forced myself not to ask Jackie if she could repair her last wedding dress, and instead said that my father and Noble absolutely, positively could not, under any circumstances in the world, live in this house with me. As I hoped it would, that set Jackie off and took her mind off Russell Dunne. I got to practice my sleeping-while-sitting-up-with-my-eyes-wide-open again, and was on the verge of mastering it, when a delightful smell wafted up through the old floorboards. “What’s that?” I asked and knew by Jackie’s sly look that she was up to something.

  “Did you know that your cousin can bake?”

  I just blinked at that. It was certainly my day for shocks. If Jackie had said that Noble was secretly Spiderman I couldn’t have been more surprised.

  “It smells like he’s taken something out of the oven. Shall we go down and sample the wares?”

  I wanted to be aloof. I wanted to tell Jackie that I had work to do and couldn’t be bothered with something as lowly as doughnuts. Or cinnamon rolls. Or whatever was making that divine smell.

  But I followed her like a dog on a leash all the way down to the kitchen. The table in the middle of the room was loaded with baked goods, and from the sheer quantity of it all, it wasn’t difficult to figure out where Noble got his training. I was sure he was used to cooking for many men at a time, maybe a whole jail full of them.

  Toodles and Tessa were already seated at the table, both of them with big glasses of milk and wearing white mustaches. Once again, my jealousy flared. First some stranger takes away the loyalty of my assistant, and now my own father was taking away my sidekick.

  As Noble dumped a bunch of fat, and extremely sticky, cinnamon buns onto a plate about four inches below my nose, he punched my shoulder and said, “It looks like it’s just you and me.”

  The real trouble with relatives is that they know you too well. If you’ve grown up with them, they knew you when you were too young to have developed disguises. Maybe I could hide my feelings from Jackie, who hadn’t known me very long, but I couldn’t hide anything from Noble. He knew that I was jealous as I watched my former buddy, Tessa, practically sitting on my father’s lap.

  Once I’d eaten one or two of Noble’s baked goods—certainly not enough to warrant Jackie’s remarks about Henry the Eighth being alive and well—I decided to keep my mouth shut and think about things for a while. I needed to see what was going on around me and make some decisions. And, no, I wasn’t “sulking” as Jackie said I was.

  I got a book, stretched out in the hammock in the garden, and watched the lot of them as they interacted. Okay, so what I really wanted was a reason to send my father to an old-age home, and to tell Noble that he definitely had to make his own way in life. I’d willingly given Noble’s kids a start in life, but I didn’t owe anything to my cousin.

  But, oh, hell, why did it all have to be so damned pleasant?

  It seemed that my father had a thousand ways to sit in one place and occupy himself. I watched with fascination while he showed Tessa how to weave a cat’s cradle with a loop of string. I’d seen that done in books but not in real life. With a twist of his wrists, he could make a swing dangle from the loop, then he’d twist again and make a rowboat.

  What really fascinated me was when he said that my mother used to send him books that showed him how to do things. I knew my mother had never visited my father in prison. In fact, she didn’t go to the trial, or, to my knowledge, had she ever seen him after their wedding night. To say that she’d discouraged me from wanting to visit him was an understatement. Pat had tried to get me to visit my father, but I hadn’t even bothered to answer her.

  But I heard Toodles say that his wife—and he said the name with great affection—had sent him how-to books, so he’d learned to do a lot of really interesting things. “She sent him kids’ books,” Noble said softly when he saw me staring. “Get him to do some magic tricks.”

  I looked down at my book and pretended I wasn’t observing the lot of them.

  Noble had always been one of those really useful men. From an early age, he’d taken to tools the way I’d taken to words. As pre-schoolers, I’d imagined things and he’d built them.

  First, Noble tore into the grapevines that had overgrown a rotting covered seat. Within minutes, he’d pruned the vines in what I was sure was a professional manner. Nate was there and he stood back in awe. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

  “Worked for a landscape company for a few years,” Noble said as he wiggled the old wood that supported the vines.

  “I’ll help you tear it out,” Nate said, but Noble stopped him.

  “There’s good in it yet. You got any wood around here, something I could use to repair this?”

  “Sure,” Nate said. “There’s a pile of boards behind Jackie’s house.”

  “Jackie’s house” turned out to be her studio. Looking over my book, I watched as Nate and Noble disappeared behind the studio to look for wood that I didn’t know was there. Meanwhile, my jea
lousy flared up again when I saw my father disappear into the tunnel that led into Tessa’s “secret” house. It wasn’t very secret if she let everyone in the neighborhood in, was it?

  Minutes later, Jackie came out of the kitchen with a tray holding tall glasses of lemonade and more things that Noble had baked, this time savory, topped with cheese, onions, and rings of black olives. She handed me a plateful, and I had begun picking the olives off the third one when I heard a loud whoop that almost made me drop everything.

  Noble came out from behind the studio holding a big black portfolio and flipping through what looked to be photographs. “These are great!” he was saying, looking at Jackie. “These are the best pictures I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  Jackie told Noble he had no right to look at something that she considered private.

  But Noble rattled off some long story about how he’d “accidently” opened a window in her studio when he’d picked up a board, then “accidently” dropped the board inside. When he’d climbed through the window to get the board, he’d “accidently” knocked the portfolio down and “accidently” seen the pictures. Two seconds after he finished this B.S., Jackie was asking him for praise. Begging for it.

  Noble couldn’t stop himself from glancing at me, and under his skin, darkened from years in the sun, I saw a blush. We both knew he was lying. How many windows had Noble and I climbed through when we were kids? Between my rampant curiosity and his inclination toward criminality, no one in our family could hide anything.

  Nate called to Toodles and Tessa to come out of the house that I had heretofore thought was mine and Tessa’s, to look at the pictures and have some food. I stayed in my hammock, the book in front of my face, as the lot of them oohed and aahed over photographs that Jackie hadn’t shown me. Were they of Russell Dunne? I wondered.

  But after a while Toodles held one up beside Tessa, facing me, and I saw a knockout picture of the kid. I was several feet away, but even at that distance I could see that it was good. Jackie had shown Tessa as she really was: not a cute kid, but one who lived on another plane than the rest of us live on.

  After the lot of them had run out of words to praise the photos, Jackie took the pictures out of everyone’s hands, put them back into the portfolio and brought them over to me. Pulling up a chair beside the hammock, she handed me the portfolio as though it were an offering.

  With great solemnity, I took it from her, and went through the photos one by one. Man, oh, man, were they good! I was really and truly and deeply impressed.

  Even though I’m a writer, I couldn’t think of anything adequate to say to convey what I thought of those pictures. I knew Tessa so I could tell how perfectly Jackie had captured her, but even if I hadn’t known her, I could have written an essay about the child.

  Closing the portfolio, I tried to think of how to tell Jackie what I thought. But there were no words in any language to explain how amazed I was. So I turned and pressed my lips to hers; it was the only thing that seemed appropriate.

  However, what was meant to be a kiss to tell her that I thought her pictures were fabulous, turned into something more. I didn’t touch her except with my lips, but for a moment I thought I heard bells ringing. Or maybe it was stars tinkling like little silver bells. When I pulled away, I looked at her in shock. It was one more shock in a day that could have put an earthquake to shame. And she seemed to be feeling the same way because she just sat there staring at me with her eyes wide.

  “I don’t know about anybody else, but I’m hungry,” Noble said, and broke the spell that was on Jackie and me.

  Turning, I looked at the four of them standing there, and had to blink a couple of times to clear my vision. Noble had an I-told-you-so expression on his face and Nate looked embarrassed. Tessa was frowning, while Toodles was looking at me, well, kind of fondly, like a father might look at his son. I turned away and studied the façade of Jackie’s studio.

  A minute later, everyone was back to normal, except that I thought I’d had enough of lying in the hammock and watching, so I got up and, after we’d eaten all of Noble’s cheese-things, I helped him put that old frame over the broken seat back together. I got out Pat’s father’s toolbox and we used the tools. Noble didn’t comment when he first saw the tools, but when he got one dirty, he apologized. I said it was okay, and a minute later, he mumbled, “Sorry about your wife.”

  I didn’t say anything, but his words meant a lot to me. They were of sympathy, yes, but the words also showed that he’d been interested enough to learn about the contents of my books.

  In the late afternoon, Nate went home, and when Allie came to pick up Tessa, I thought Toodles was going to cry. Allie kept looking at Toodles, trying not to, but he was indeed an odd-looking little man. Since Toodles and Tessa were holding hands and looking at Allie as though she were an evil social worker about to take Tessa away from her beloved grandfather, Jackie asked if Tessa could have a sleep-over.

  Allie said, “You mean I could have an evening to myself? Take a long, hot bath? Watch a movie on TV that has sex in it? Drink wine? Naw, I don’t deserve such happiness.” She practically ran through the garden gate before anyone changed his mind.

  Eventually, Noble and Jackie went into the kitchen to fix dinner, while Toodles, Tessa, and I stayed outside. Tessa ran around chasing fireflies while I sat on a chair next to my dad.

  What a strange thought: my dad. All my life he’d been nothing but a head in group photo shots. I don’t think there was one picture of him alone. And none of my uncles spoke about him. It was hard to believe in a family like mine, but I think they felt guilty. At least one good thing had come of my dad’s incarceration: My uncles never again intentionally committed a crime. Sober and planned, that is.

  Toodles and I didn’t say much. Actually, we didn’t say anything. Me, the wordsmith, had not one word in my head that I could think of to say. So tell me, Dad, what was it like to spend forty-three years in prison? Do you hate your brothers? Or maybe I should have asked if he had any of my favorite June bugs on his vest.

  When Jackie called us in to dinner, Tessa ran into the kitchen. It was late and we were all hungry. I let my father go ahead of me into the house, but in the doorway, he paused. He didn’t look at me, but stared at the sight of Noble and Jackie loading the table with food.

  “You’ll have me?” he asked in that thick accent that I hadn’t heard in years.

  For a moment it was as though the earth stood still. Even the fireflies seemed to pause as they waited for my answer.

  What could I say? As Jackie had pointed out, the man had been put in jail because he was trying to get money to support his wife and son. Me.

  I guess it was my turn to support him.

  As Jackie said, I tended to get weepy, so I needed to say something that wouldn’t put me there now. “Only if you show me how to make a cat’s cradle.”

  It was at that moment that I found out where my weepiness came from. I was trying to be cool, but my dad made no effort toward restraint. Burying his face in my chest, he began to bawl. As he held on to my shirt for dear life, he cried loud enough to knock the plaster off the walls.

  “What did you do to him?” Jackie yelled as she clutched Toodles’s arms and tried to pull him away from big, bad me.

  Part of me wanted to grab my father and hug him and cry with him, but another part was put off by his display. Toodles kept bawling, his face pressed hard against my chest. He started saying that he loved me and was glad I was his son, and that he was so proud of me and he knew men who’d read my books, and he loved me and wanted to be with me all his life, and—

  Noble was clearly enjoying my discomfort, while Jackie was still trying to pull Toodles off. It was my guess that Jackie couldn’t understand what my father was saying. I think you needed to grow up with an accent like his to be able to understand it, especially when a man was howling and his mouth was full of shirt.

  The part of me that was affected by my father’s copious tears seem
ed to be the part attached to my muscles because I couldn’t get Toodles off. Jackie was pulling, but making no headway as he was a strong little guy. I had my arms on his shoulders, but every time he said he loved me, my arms turned to wet spaghetti and I couldn’t push. “I love you” was not something I’d ever heard before from a blood kin. Heaven knows that my mother never said the words to anyone.

  Noble finally took pity on me, pulled my father off, and got him seated at the table, where he hung his head and kept sobbing. Tessa moved her chair beside him, held his hand in hers, and got the hiccups as she tried not to cry with him. She kept looking at me in puzzlement. Had I done something good or bad to make her friend cry like that?

  I was so weak I could hardly sit up.

  We were a strange group. Toodles and Tessa sat on one side, him sobbing as though his heart was broken, her holding his hand and hiccuping. Jackie was at one end of the table looking like she was going to cry too but not knowing why. I was across from Toodles, feeling like a deflated ball, and Noble was at the other end of the table laughing at the lot of us.

  Noble picked up a bowl of mashed potatoes and slapped a mountain of them onto Toodles’s plate, then put an equal amount of meat loaf and green beans beside the spuds. I saw where I got my good appetite.

  But Toodles didn’t even look at the food.

  “Did you know that Ford here can tell stories?” Noble said loudly, his words directed at Toodles. “He never was good around the house, hardly knows one end of a crowbar from the other, but he can tell stories like nobody else. My mom used to say that meals were never the same after Ford left home.”

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Yeah,” Noble answered. “My dad said that all the lying of the Newcombes had gone into you so that you could tell the biggest, best lies of anybody on earth.”

  “Yeah?” I said again. This was high praise indeed. I turned to look at Jackie to see if she was taking note of this, but she was looking as though she couldn’t tell if this was good or bad.