by Cathy Lamb
But things like this got out.
It would only be a matter of time.
I knew that.
And then we would see what people were made of.
I dreaded it.
Toran was working long hours on the farm, the potatoes were being harvested, but he was also delegating more of the responsibility to the people he trusted so he could spend time with Bridget. I continued to do the books, take calls, and write checks. I worked when Bridget was asleep, bringing my work to Toran’s house. I set up a table in his home office, across from his desk. Sometimes we would work together, in silence, then look up, smile, and work more.
There was something intimate about it. I had Toran, I had my numbers, and together we were taking care of Bridget.
We participated in naked gymnastics on his desk.
Maybelle Courten called and left a message.
“I can’t believe this. I call. I’ve left two messages. You don’t call me back. Why don’t you write me a letter, Charlotte? You love letters. You love letters more than anyone I know. So use your stationery with Einstein’s face or the green stationery with ‘Save the Whales’ written across the top and write to me. You have writer’s block, I get it. Write anyhow. And call me. Hang on. The kids are monsters.”
She tried to muffle what she was yelling at her kids. I still heard it.
“Randy, put that beer down right this minute or I’ll crack it over your head. That’s mine. Jamie took the keys to my car. Go and get him before he takes off. No. He’s fourteen, he does not need to practice driving. Get him!
“Sorry, Charlotte. Write or call me immediately. Hit me in the face with a pan, pull my toes with pliers, I can’t believe this literary disaster we’re in. I have a whole bunch of things to talk to you about. First, get that book done so my hot flashes don’t get worse. Second, a book tour. I know you want to vomit at the thought and you’re going to say no because you hate people, small talk makes you nauseated, and flying on a plane sends you into a tailspin. Sorry. Wrong word. I want you to think about it. And don’t ask if you can present with a bottle of tequila in your hands. The answer is no.”
I called Maybelle back. She wasn’t home. I talked to Randy.
We sang together and worked on his lyrics for about an hour. “Well done, young man,” I told him later. “Your voice is melodious and it has a hard-rock overtone.”
“Thanks, Ms. Mackintosh,” he gushed. “Thanks.”
“Take out that one line about guzzling beer with naked women so I don’t get in trouble with your mother.”
“Okay, ma’am, I will. Hey. Can you talk to Sandy about math? No one here understands what she’s talking about. You can? Radical, man.”
I did math with Sandy. Once again, it was encouraging to talk to a young person as enthralled with numbers as I am.
“How are you doing, Toran?”
He held my hand as we walked toward the hills, through the blueberry bushes, the fruit gone now. “I’m not doing well. How are you, luv?”
“Same.” From the second I saw Bridget, heard her diagnosis, understood the limited time she had left, I felt as if I were falling through the black holes of the universe, fast, irreversible, suffocating.
We walked and didn’t talk for a long time. We went up the hill to the lookout point and studied the ocean waves in the distance. There were storm clouds coming in. Grays and darker grays, streaks of white, a hint of blue, the waves frothing.
“I cannot believe, Charlotte, that you came back into my life, into Bridget’s life, right now, but I cannot tell you how grateful I am that you’re here.” He put an arm around my shoulders.
“I am, too. If Mr. Greer hadn’t died, if Olive Oliver hadn’t gone looking for her chickens when she did and discovered him, I would not have come. I wouldn’t have been here.”
We watched the storm clouds hover, the rain pouring through a funnel in the distance.
“We’re going to get wet if we don’t leave soon,” Toran said.
“Yes, we are.”
He put up a hand. I put my palm flat on his. “Clan TorBridgePherLotte together always,” we said together, then I stood on my toes and kissed him.
We stayed there, on the hill. The storm clouds came closer and closer, thick and dark. The rain when it came was soft.
We let it shower down on us.
It was easier that way.
It blended with the tears.
I went too far out into the ocean once when King Toran, Queen Bridget, King Pherson, and I were playing mermaids and mermen when I was twelve. My parents had strict rules about how far I could go out into the water without them—to my knees only.
I swam out too far because I was a magical mermaid. I was tossed through a wave, the freezing cold North Sea pouring over my head. My mermaid tail did nothing to help me as I struggled to get above the waves, my body somersaulting, the water chilling, slowing my movements.
I felt a hand on mine, yanking me to the surface. I gulped in air before another wave crashed over my head.
I was pulled up again, I breathed, and the water slammed over my head. That hand never left mine, the grip strong and sure.
My feet touched the rocks, then sand, my magical mermaid tail gone. Toran yanked me out of the water with both hands, then picked me up in his arms. Bridget and Pherson helped me, too, and the four of us collapsed on the sand.
I threw up water again and again as Bridget hit me on the back.
“I don’t think I want to play mermaid and merman again,” King Toran said, his chest heaving with exertion.
“Me either,” Queen Bridget said, bursting into tears. “I was so scared for you Charlotte.” She turned and hugged Toran. “Thank you for saving her.”
“Excellent work, King Toran,” King Pherson said. “I crown you King Hero of the day.”
I threw up again.
I knew who my hero was.
Later, before we went home, when Toran and I were way behind Pherson and Bridget, making a pathway through a field strewn with blue narcissi, I thanked Toran.
He smiled at me, his brown curls still damp. “You’re my best friend, Charlotte. I’d come and help you anytime.”
“I thought Pherson was your best friend.”
“No,” he said, yanking on my hair. “He’s my second-best friend. You’re my very best friend because you like science and biology and chess and making butterscotch treats and you always listen. And I like your green eyes.”
I ran home through our fields, the sun going down, shooting lush pinks and thick golds through the sky. I had almost drowned, but I was happy.
I was Toran Ramsay’s very best friend!
“I’m drawing you a plan for your and Toran’s garden, Charlotte,” Bridget said. She was propped up on a couch I had bought in town and put on my back porch. The couch was red. It was elegant and old-fashioned, with a curving back.
I had added red pillows with gold thread and planted pink geraniums in clay pots. Bridget had wanted to see my parents’ home, after I told her about the remodeling, so I drove her there for lunch. She loved the house and she loved sitting on the old-fashioned red couch. “I feel like I’m in an outside parlor,” she’d drawled. “Where’s the butler?”
“You’re drawing a plan for my and Toran’s garden?”
She grinned, her blue eyes twinkling, though she was having a bad health day and was wrapped in a blanket. “Yes.”
“I don’t have a garden with Toran.”
“You will.” Silver Cat jumped on her lap. “It will happen soon. I want to create a garden for you two so that when I’m gone you’ll both still see me and know that I love you.”
“That’s so thoughtful, I think I’ll cry and sniffle.” I sniffled, blinked my eyes quick. I didn’t want to think about the time when she was gone.
“Sniffle away, Char. I want there to be color all year long. I want a place where you two can have meals, read, relax. A water fountain for hot days.”
She starte
d drawing, those weak hands strengthened somehow when she held the colored pencils. She drew birch trees, three in one corner, a willow in another. Sweet cherries, ash, aspens. I watched as she added pathways. One led to a pond in the corner with lily pads.
One pathway led to a deck with a trellis, painted blue, with two wire chairs and a red wood table between them. A flowered tea set sat on the table. “This is your garden planning corner, Charlotte.” She drew petunias in hanging baskets on either side.
She would never garden there with me.
Another path led to a red picnic table on a patio, a bouquet of pink roses in a glass vase in the middle. “This is where you and Toran can have dinner together with the kids.”
Our kids. Here, without their aunt Bridget.
She drew a shed but colored it with purple, yellow, and red swirls, with blue and shimmery green hummingbirds between them. “You need a shed, but a shed need not be ugly.”
She drew grass in the center, “for the kids to run on,” and off to the right a rose garden. “Your mother had roses. I know you love them.”
“I’ll plant them, Bridget.” I wiped tears from my cheeks. She would never see them bloom.
“Hang your mother’s birdhouses.” She drew the red schoolhouse birdhouse, the Japanese one, the cottage, and the cat birdhouse.
Bridget knew how important those birdhouses were to me. She knew me. The person who knew me best would not be here long.
She drew a raised cutting bed with daffodils, irises, and tulips. She drew pink roses dripping from an arch and wisteria hanging through a patio overhang. She drew a blue door that opened to a private garden, and drew steps down to another expanse of green lawn. She drew glass bottles with candles inside hanging from tree branches.
“And this, in the back, is your writing house.” She drew a small house and colored it yellow. “Inside it will be one room, lots of windows, a fireplace.” Outside the writing house was a white bench. On the white bench she stacked our favorite books as kids and sketched in the titles. The Chronicles of Narnia. Charlotte’s Web. Beezus and Ramona. A Little Princess. The Secret Garden.
We had read those books together, at my house, her father forbidding them in her house. We would not read many more books together. Our reading time was ending.
“This is your vegetable garden.” The vegetables, orange carrots, fluffy green lettuce, sweet peas, purple turnips, stalks of golden corn, appeared in minutes.
Silver Cat meowed, soft.
Bridget drew everything to its finest detail. From the craggy bark on trees, to every vein in the leaves, to the gray rocks in the pathways, to the mosaic design on the birdbath, to our old red wagon filled with marigolds, to a swing hanging from a willow branch.
She drew and drew, her face pale, her body emaciated, her fingers sure. I watched art come to life, a garden come to life, sitting close to her on the old-fashioned red couch, the breeze floating over the hills where Mackintoshes and Ramsays had been buried for centuries, where she would be buried, too. Soon.
We did not comment on the tears we both shed as the afternoon passed. We did, however, make absolutely sure that they did not smear the mango orange, eggplant purple, and soft cotton candy pink that swirled across the paper under Bridget’s talented fingers.
“It’ll be the love garden, Charlotte. Now, that sounds appropriately silly, doesn’t it? From me to you and Toran forever.”
I couldn’t even talk.
The Love Garden.
The loss of Bridget into drugs, of what she could have done, could have become, had she not been forced, with such violence, on such a wretched, lonely path, took my breath away so hard, so fast, it felt as if my lungs had deflated.
Silver Cat licked a tear, then jumped back up on Bridget’s lap.
Sometimes I think that cat’s part person.
“Thank you, Bridget,” I wobbled out.
She patted my hand. “Thank you, Charlotte. I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
Loving a person who is dying is a horrendous experience.
When an older gentleman named Mr. Adair died in our village, my father told Bridget and me a story about a white unicorn. “When you’re dying, the unicorn up in heaven gets a note from an angel telling her there’s a person who’s going to need a ride up soon. The unicorn finds out what the person likes. Favorite foods and books, colors and activities, pets and games. She gets a room ready for him, or her, near people who she knows they’ll enjoy being with, maybe other friends and family who have died before.
“When the unicorn is done, she jumps off of heaven’s perch, flies through the blue sky, around the clouds, over any rainbows, and down to the person. She’s invisible to everyone. She patiently waits. When the person dies, she gathers them up on her back, using her hooves and horn. All of a sudden, they sit up straight and smile, they laugh, because they’re on top of a unicorn and alive again. They hold on tight to her golden reins and the unicorn takes them to their new home, where they’re happy.”
“You mean heaven?” Bridget asked.
“Aye, lass, yes, I do.”
“A unicorn takes you there?” I asked, enthralled.
“Yes, she does,” my father said.
We loved that story.
A unicorn would come for Bridget. Too soon.
Pherson Hameldon came over to Toran’s the same day he arrived home. Pherson is almost as tall as Toran, with black hair and brown eyes. He reminded me of a black lab when we were younger. He stood straight and smiled hugely.
“Charlotte,” he said, arms outstretched for a hug, “warms my heart to see you. You are a beautiful lady.”
I hugged him. “Pherson. It’s been way too long. Glad they let you escape from the rig in the middle of the ocean.”
“They let me out now and again. And yes, it has been way too long, Queen Charlotte.” He mock bowed and I curtsied back, as we had when we were kids.
“Your majesty,” I said, trying to nod regally.
“Your highness,” he said back, grinning.
We did one of our secret handshakes. “Clan TorBridgePherLotte united again!”
“How’s work in the ocean, battling storms, sharks, and oil leaks? I understand that you dive all the way down to the bottom of the ocean floor like an overgrown fish, fix pipes, and come back up. A nice, calm, quiet, safe profession.”
Pherson laughed. “Yes, that’s what I do. Couldn’t sit behind a desk in an office. I would rather knock myself out than be trapped like that. Toran and I have to be outside.”
He shook Toran’s hand, then his eyes widened and held . . . as Bridget came down the stairs.
He couldn’t talk. She couldn’t talk. Pherson walked right past us and wrapped Bridget in his arms. Toran had told Pherson she had AIDS.
They both cried, and Toran and I took a walk on his property so they could be alone.
Pherson and Bridget had been in love when we were teenagers. They were supposed to be together. I know they would have been had Angus Cruickshank not ripped them apart. They would have been married, had a bunch of kids, built a home.
That would never happen now.
It’s hard not to feel like killing Angus Cruickshank.
Two days later, Bridget and I walked, slowly, through part of Toran’s farmland. She stopped and stared at the cliffs in the distance.
“That’s where it happened,” she said.
“I know.”
“It was my fault.”
“No, it wasn’t. Not at all.”
“It was, Charlotte.”
“You have no responsibility for it.”
“I do.”
I could not have predicted, with any statistical success, the venom from some people in town.
How they found out about Bridget’s diagnosis, I don’t know. Maybe a nurse told her husband in the quiet of their bedroom and he told his brother as they built a brick wall . . . that sanctimonious doctor told his sister who was an awful gossip . . . maybe it was
someone in the lab who told his mother and she told her best friend over tea and hot cross buns.
They knew. Everyone knew.
The reaction was instantaneous. Toran took the brunt of it.
It started three weeks after Bridget came home from the hospital. Two men from a neighboring farm drove up to the office. I walked out with Toran. I knew the men—Baen Lusk and his son, Gowan. I remembered both of them from when I lived here. My mother had called Baen a “knuckle scraper,” as in, a monkey, and of Gowan she said, “Think of a slug with legs. No determinable brain. That’s Gowan.”
“Toran. Charlotte,” Baen said. He was in his sixties. He had slitty eyes in a fleshy face. His son, brawny like his dad, thick in the body and thick in the head, nodded slightly at us.
“Hello Baen, Gowan,” Toran said. He was wary, I felt it.
We exchanged pleasantries for about one second, then Baen said, “I want to talk to you about your sister, Toran.”
Toran stiffened beside me. “What about her?”
“We hear things.”
“Good to know,” Toran drawled. “I had my doubts.”
I stifled a laugh, coughed. “It’s been something we’ve wondered about.”
Our comments went straight over Baen’s head. He seemed momentarily perplexed, then let the confusion slide. He had to let a lot slide in his life. “We hear she’s got a contagious sickness and it can be spread to all us innocent peoples through the air and we want to make sure you’re keeping her inside and locked up tight.”
Toran’s face stilled. I had seen this anger before when we were younger. Toran never had a temper with Bridget, Pherson, or me, but he could blow if he saw a kid getting picked on or anything else he didn’t think was right.
All of his anger toward his father came out—flaming bright and crushing. A couple of times a group of boys at school cornered me, once against a wall and once in the cafeteria. Toran knew because I ran home, crying.