Blue Willow

by Deborah Smith

  “How is he?” Little Sis asked plaintively.

  Scrutinizing the graph, the doctor grunted mildly. “What did you have for lunch, Mr. Estes?”

  He glanced at Lily accusingly. “Turnip greens, peas. Corn bread. Lily and me stopped at a diner. I wanted fried chicken but she talked me out of it. Said it’d clog my arteries.” His lower lip trembled. “I’m already clogged. Now, you see. There ain’t no hope. Might as well have had the chicken.”

  Lily frowned at him. “He ate about a gallon of hot onion relish, too, even though I told him not to do it.”

  The doctor sniffed in amusement and laid the EKG printout down. “Mr. Estes, please promise me that you’ll take your blood-pressure medication regularly from now on. You know you have angina. You must have aggravated it today.”

  “It’s not too late to be good? I’m not a goner?”

  She pulled a packet from her coat pocket and held it so he could see. “No. For now, I’m sure this miracle drug will save you.”

  He craned his head. “What is it?”

  “Antacid tablets. You aren’t having a heart attack. You’re having heartburn.”

  There was stunned silence. Little Sis leaped forward and pinched one of his nipples, which made him jump as if the electrodes had backfired. Her expression was furious. “You scared me over onion relish?”

  “I, I—”

  “And now you’ll go back to your cranky ways and be as much of a son of a bitch as even.” She whirled on one heel and stomped out. He sat up, speechless, his mouth working. Lily took his shirt from a peg on the wall and held it out, silent with diplomacy. Mr. Estes’s alarm turned to a look of bitter regret. “I will fix things, somehow,” he muttered. He stared at Lily as if she were the source of his misery, too, and snatched his shirt away.

  • • •

  Stephen must be bouncing a ball on the floor. He was going to play Little League in the spring. The sound reassured Lily. But when she looked into his bedroom, he wasn’t there. Instead, she heard his voice whispering, Mommy, why are you still so sad?

  Lily woke up, sweating and disoriented. Rain whipped the house. Thunder rumbled behind the mountains. A tree branch was thudding against the room’s outside wall.

  She sat up, sank her hands into her hair, pressed her fingers into her temples, and tried to force the dream away. The familiar anguish washed over her. Had he been conscious and terrified until the last moment, under all the jagged concrete? Suffocating and broken against his father’s bloody chest, had he tried to call out to her?

  She stumbled out of bed and ran into the main room, her cotton nightgown molded, cold and damp, to her body. Lupa bounded up from a rug on the fireplace hearth and whined. Lily switched on a lamp by the couch and stood, shivering, fighting for control. Would these nightmares never stop?

  Some instinct propelled her to a stack of boxes in one corner of the nearly empty room. She searched through them frantically until she found a small, lumpy cloth bag with a drawstring top. Lily sank onto the couch and cupped it in her hands. She knew its contents by heart, and hadn’t been able to look at them after Richard and Stephen’s deaths.

  She untied the tight little bow and reached carefully inside. Withdrawing an oval of white plaster, she ran her fingertips over the imprint of Stephen’s tiny foot, made the day they brought him home from the hospital. Cupping that keepsake in one hand, she pulled others from the bag. His first baby tooth, inside a delicate, enameled pillbox that had belonged to Richard’s mother. A lock of his hair, from the first time she’d cut it. It made a small bright red curl, tied with a bit of white ribbon.

  Her trembling fingers found Richard’s fraternity pin next. He’d given it to her the night they’d made love the first time, in his room at Georgia Tech. She laid the treasures in her lap. The bag also contained a brooch Daddy had given Mama. It was a tarnished spray of flowers, and Mama had worn it even after some of the minuscule chips of garnet had fallen from the petals.

  The bag should have been empty. It wasn’t.

  Frowning, Lily delved into the bottom. A rectangular object no bigger than a matchbook met her bewildered touch. It was wrapped in a sheet of white notepaper and bound with a rubber band. She examined it for several seconds, testing the hard surface beneath the paper. Whatever it was, she hadn’t placed it in the bag.

  The mystery made her heart pound. Her reluctance bordered on fear, without reason. Rebuked by her morbid and irrational reaction, she unwrapped it quickly.

  A miniature cassette tape lay in her palm. She stared at it, perplexed. Then recognition snapped into place. The breath rushed out of her lungs, and her vision clouded.

  It had fit the answering machine in their office. Richard had said the machine was broken. He’d thrown the tape away, he said.

  But he hadn’t thrown it away. He’d put it with her most cherished mementos. To hide it? To protect it?

  Lily ran back to the boxes and shoved desperately through their contents until she found the answering machine. She sat on the hard wooden floor and jammed the plug into a wall outlet. The tape pressed neatly into the machine’s console. When she turned the volume up and touched the playback button, there was an efficient whir, followed by a beep signaling that someone—Richard—had begun recording a conversation.

  Lily knelt over it with her hands knotted against her stomach. Frank’s honeyed drawl, clipped and angry, burst forth. You stupid bastard, why did you tell Julia about the budge?

  Mr. Tamberlaine looked strange—out of kilter without his pinstripes. He was dressed in soft black jogging sweats and bedroom slippers. But after all, she’d awakened him in the middle of the night and told him a garbled, shocking story. He surveyed her from head to toe, the jumbled hair, the hollow eyes, the shirt stuffed haphazardly into her jeans, one tennis shoe unlaced. “You’ve been driving for over an hour. You look absolutely on the verge of collapse. Please let me fix you some toast and tea.”

  She shook her head and said, her voice little more than a rasp, “You have to hear this tape first. I need your advice.”

  “Very well.” He guided her into his living room of white-and-gold antique French mixed with African sculpture, and she sank down on a plush couch. He busied himself attaching the answering machine to an extension cord, while she watched dully.

  Finally, when he was seated beside her with a notepad and small gold pen in his hands, she pressed the playback key. “There are several different conversations,” she told him. “Frank and Richard, Richard and Julia, Richard and Oliver Grant, and a conference call between all four of them. About thirty minutes, total.” Lily propped her elbows on her knees and dropped her head into her hands. Tamberlaine made notes, at first. But he slowed, then stopped. The pad fell off his knee and he ignored it, leaning forward, listening. When she glanced at him, she could tell he was too stunned to do more than that.

  Her back felt as if it would break with tension. She knotted her hands in her hair. Richard’s voice, his anger and distress, and finally his terrible compromise, tore into her.

  When the tape ended, she turned the machine off and leaned back on the couch, shutting her eyes. Tamberlaine sighed as if all the energy were being released from his body. “What a god-awful paradox this is,” he said.

  She stared at the room’s creamy, filigreed ceiling, fixated on the pattern, trying to find some pattern to her thoughts. “Richard warned Julia that he couldn’t guarantee the bridge’s safety. He told her there was a possibility the concrete hadn’t been allowed to cure properly. He told her they’d have to take core samples to determine whether it was strong enough. And that if it wasn’t, the bridge would need extensive repairs. But Oliver and Frank convinced her that Richard was being too cautious. And she was so anxious to open the building on schedule that she believed them.”

  Tamberlaine got up and paced. “Ah, Julia, Julia.” Disappointment and sorrow graveled his voice. “Why did she let pride overwhelm her own judgment? The risk must have been obvious, even to her.
”

  “Richard should have stopped her.”

  “The others gave him very little choice,” Tamberlaine reminded her. He added grimly, “Nor did Julia give him much, with her threats. She forced him to choose—was he being overly cautious? Was that caution worth risking a lawsuit for delaying the construction schedule and going over budget?”

  Lily dug her fingers into her hair. Her scalp was tight, squeezing like a rubber band. “He allowed Stephen up on that bridge with him. Obviously he had no idea that the structural flaws he suspected could have such immediate, catastrophic consequences. Obviously he was worried only about the bridge over many years. If only he hadn’t let Stephen stay up there.”

  Tamberlaine rewound the tape partially, searched until he found Julia’s phone call to Richard, and played it again.

  Listen to me, Porter. If Frank says that bridge is safe, it’s safe.

  Julia, he can’t be certain of that. Frank’s desperate. He’s scared to death you’re trying to ruin us in retaliation for his lousy behavior on the personal side. He’s letting that distort his common sense. And Oliver is nervous too.

  Good. If Frank’s that frightened of me, he’s not lying about the bridge being structurally sound. He wouldn’t dare.

  Dammit, you’ve punished Frank for months. Isn’t that enough? Are you willing to take foolish chances just to twist the screws a little more?

  I’m not going to let him make me look incompetent in front of my family!

  For God’s sake, Julia, this is business, not your personal crusade. All you have to do is inform your family that there are going to be delays, while we check the bridge out and do whatever’s necessary.

  The bridge is saje. My family is never going to know about this. Do you understand? I’d feel dirty for the rest of my life.

  Dirty?

  Stupid, inadequate, feeble, foolish—all because I let Frank Stockman screw up my life.

  Julia, that doesn’t make any sense. Your family won’t look at it that way. That’s crazy.

  My family’s respect is more important to me than your damned opinion of my sanity. The building will open on schedule. If it doesn’t, and if you let even one word about your concerns get back to my family, I’ll run you and Frank into the ground. You’ll be lucky if anyone asks you to design a doghouse.

  Tamberlaine stopped the tape.

  Lily hunched over, her hands steepled against her mouth. I’d feel dirty for the rest of my life echoed in her thoughts. Those were the words of an abused child. She started to tell Mr. Tamberlaine, then realized she’d have to reveal who had given her the information about Julia’s abuse, and why. Oh, Julia, I understand now. Julia hadn’t known how to ask for help. She was accustomed to suffering alone. Feeling ashamed, alone. She couldn’t trust anyone but herself.

  “She felt she had no choice,” Lily said finally. “In essence, she was convinced she was solely responsible for the building.”

  “You’re being very generous. More than the facts warrant.” His movements leaden, Tamberlaine sat down across from her. “Artemas and the family will have to accept the fact that Julia was capable of this inexplicable vanity and pettiness, and that she had so little integrity that she let her personal vendetta against Stockman overwhelm common sense.”

  But that’s not true, Lily wanted to tell him. The roller-coaster emotions tortured her. They’d judge Julia unfairly, unless Elizabeth helped them understand what she and her sister had gone through as children. Only Elizabeth had the right to reveal that history, but Lily doubted she would. Elizabeth had just begun coming to terms with it herself, and Lily vividly remembered Elizabeth’s determination to keep her brothers and sisters from ever knowing.

  There was no satisfaction in attacking Julia any longer. Richard had left the tape for her in case anything happened, though he must have known it wouldn’t pardon him. For the first time she felt a sad brand of serenity. It was still possible to love all that had been good and decent about Richard. She couldn’t forgive him for Stephen’s death or the others, but she could go on with her life.

  Tamberlaine was watching her intently. “Your husband let Julia’s threats overwhelm his convictions. You have the strength to deal with that sorrow.” He paused. “Just as Artemas has the strength to accept Julia’s failings.”

  Artemas. His pain was so entwined with hers, there were no boundaries. Help herself. Help him. Protect herself. Protect him. But revealing the tape would accomplish neither.

  Lily straightened and gave Tamberlaine a direct, uncompromising look. His eyes widened. He began shaking his head. “You can’t keep this information from Artemas.”

  “Knowing the truth doesn’t change what Richard did. The fact that he had good intentions doesn’t make him less guilty. If this tape had shown that he was innocent, I’d want the whole world to hear it. But that’s not the case.”

  “But Artemas and the others need to know that Julia bears part of the responsibility. They have to be told, Lily It might cast a different light on your problems with them. It might help you.”

  “It might. We can’t be certain how they’d react. But I know one thing—if they hear this tape, it will hurt them. I don’t think it does any good for them to know she was afraid to come to them for help. In a way she wanted them to accept the responsibility too, if anything went wrong. That’s exactly what will happen. Artemas will blame himself.”

  Tamberlaine considered that in troubled silence. “Are you asking me to say nothing to him about this tape?”

  “Yes.”

  He sighed. “You have my word.”

  “I’m sorry to do this to you.”

  “It’s what you’re doing to yourself and Artemas that I question.”

  “I’m doing it because I love him.”

  “I know.” Tamberlaine looked pensive. “This time, however, it will haunt you.”

  Lily couldn’t argue with that. But so many ghosts whispered to her. She had room for one more.

  Artemas strode down a hall through the labyrinth of bright, airy kitchens and pantries and laundry rooms in the house’s basement level, carrying a dark tie he had not yet slipped under his shirt collar. Cool, clear morning sunlight filtered through large windows. A helicopter was waiting on the bare back lawns to take him to Atlanta for the day.

  He bounded into a room filled with tables and shelves. Masses of cut flowers stood in buckets of water. The shelves were filled with vases, baskets, and floral supplies. “Good morning, Maria.”

  The small dark-haired woman smiled from her place at a desk. “Good morning, Mr. Colebrook. You look so happy.”

  “Really? That’s a shock to you—and me, as well.”

  Her four-year-old daughter, Anita, darted out from behind a table and ran to him. Lifting the girl into his arms, he said, “Maria, I’m having the whole family in for the weekend. I want the house full of flowers.”

  “Si, no problem.” Maria’s eyes glowed with plans. “I’ll call my supplier as soon as his office opens.”

  Artemas grinned at the little girl, who had befriended him. She attended a nursery school for children of the estate’s staff. He often wandered down to the classrooms before leaving for the office each morning, to speak to them. As he had gotten older, his own childless state had become one more regret. He tried not to think of the redheaded children he and Lily might have had together.

  “Chef Harvey is cooking funny things for breakfast,” Anita said solemnly. “They look like rocks.”

  Maria shushed her. “He’s boiling pots full of oysters, for some kind of seafood salad,” she explained to Artemas. She clucked her tongue at her daughter. “You are too curious for your own good.”

  Artemas set the child down and ruffled her dark hair. “Go tell Chef Harvey to make you some oyster pancakes.”

  Giggling, the girl ran out of the office. When they were alone, Artemas said to Maria in a low voice, “Call Mrs. Porter. Ask her if she’ll sell you some of those incredible flowers she has growi
ng all over her place.”

  “But, Mr. Colebrook, I’ve tried to coax her before, and—”

  “Tell her it’s for Elizabeth—Elizabeth and Leo. I doubt she can resist, in this case. Tell her I said that she had a hand in creating this celebration, and if she won’t participate with us any other way, she can at least contribute some flowers.”

  “Ah. She will understand this message, yes?”

  “She will.”

  He thanked her and walked back into the hall, his head bowed in thought. Elizabeth and Leo were trying to work out their problems. They were living together again. Elizabeth would only say that Lily had given her the courage to try. He was so proud and pleased. If only Lily could participate in his celebration. If only …

  He stepped into the main kitchen. The room was empty except for Anita, who was perched on a stool at one of the gas stoves.

  Steam hissed from an enormous steel pot on a front burner. Anita stood on tiptoe, a bulky oven mitt looking ridiculously large at the end of her arm. Curiosity had gotten the best of her. Artemas watched in alarm as the child clasped a handle on the boiler’s side and tried to peek over the edge. The boiler slid to the edge of the stove.

  “No!” Artemas vaulted toward her. She jumped in surprise, stumbled on the stool, and fell, pulling the huge pot after her.

  He caught her in his arms and sank to one knee, shielding her. Scalding water poured over his right shoulder and arm.

  Artemas lay atop the jumbled covers of his bed, trying to read a stack of company paperwork one-handed, groggy from the pain pills he’d taken, his gauze-wrapped arm still throbbed.

  Mr. LaMieux, small and lean, as elegant as a greyhound in his gray trousers, vest, ever-perfect white shirt, and neatly knotted tie, came into the main room and halted by the bed’s far side. “You have a visitor. I’ll show her in.”