The Fragrance of Geraniums (A Time of Grace Book 1)

by Ruggieri, Alicia G.

  Mama gave a huff. “Grace! You ask so many questions. Whatever you want, girl. It don’t matter. Beets’ll do. Just open the jar.”

  “Okay, Mama.” Grace went back inside, peeled the potatoes, and opened the can of beets, red and reeking of vinegar.

  When she’d finished, she went back to the screen door. Mama sat there, the chicken now plucked lying across her lap, blood staining Mama’s apron. “Mama,” Grace said hesitantly, “I’m going upstairs to do my homework now. The potatoes are boiling on the stove.”

  Mama didn’t reply, so Grace turned after a moment and retrieved her books from the kitchen table. She pocketed a few soda crackers to stave off hunger pangs before trotting up the staircase. Not bothering to knock, Grace pushed open the door of the bedroom she shared with her three sisters.

  Evelyn lay stretched out on the pale pink coverlet, washed by the sunlight weakly filtering in the windows. She seemed asleep, but when Grace closed the door with a click, Evelyn’s eyes sprang open, bluebells in the tan field of her face. Wordlessly, the younger girl propped herself up on her elbows, staring at Grace, who sat down on the edge of the bed.

  Grace touched a hand to Evelyn’s face, which showed the path tears had taken earlier that afternoon. “Mama said you stepped on some glass,” she said, wrinkling her nose in sympathy.

  Evelyn nodded, tears rising in her eyes again. She sniffled and pointed a skinny little finger toward her feet. One foot still wore its white sock, cuffed over, but the other olive-toned foot lay bare except for a bandage.

  Grace bent to look more closely at it. She could see a reddish spot oozing through the gauze, despite its double-thickness. “Mama got all the glass out?” she questioned, surprised that their mother had allowed Evelyn to hobble up to her bedroom with a still-bleeding foot. That wasn’t Mama’s usual way, to deal haphazardly with things. Especially when it came to her darling youngest.

  Evelyn shrugged, her slight shoulders rising and falling in her floral print dress. “I think so,” she mumbled, her glance turning toward the window, avoiding Grace’s eyes.

  For a long quiet moment, Grace looked down, studying her fingernails. Oh, God, why can’t our family be like everybody else’s? She wondered this but knew instinctively that the Almighty’s ears were shut to her, a poor wretched sinner.

  “What happened? Mama dropped a jar or something?” she asked at last.

  Evelyn looked away. “No.” She picked at her fingernails, just like Grace had been doing a few moments ago.

  “What happened, then? You dropped something?” probed Grace, fresh fear entering her heart as Evelyn avoided answering her simple question. Mama had evaded answering, too.

  “Mama threw a can at Papa,” Evelyn blurted out, like she’d swallowed something terrible and couldn’t keep it down.

  Grace’s spine straightened, and her breath became shallow before she could even process the thought. It was unthinkable. Often, Papa had given one of the children the back of his hand for disobeying him, or he’d even occasionally hit Mama when she gave him lip. Nothing bad. But Mama, throwing a can at Papa?

  “It was a can of green beans,” Evelyn said, as though that detail was important. She traced the spot of crimson in the center of her bandage.

  “Did it hit him?” Grace heard herself ask as she stared unblinking at Evelyn, as if the action of throwing the can didn’t matter, as if it only mattered if Mama’s aim had been true or not.

  Evelyn shook her head fiercely. “No, it didn’t hit him. But she meant to.” Evelyn’s eyes met Grace’s and the favoritism that had gone on perpetually didn’t seem to matter. What mattered was, they were sisters. Sisters caught on the Picoletti train, a vehicle seemingly meant for destruction. “She hit the blue lamp,” Evelyn explained. “It was right next to Papa’s head, see.”

  “Oh.” That fragile blue oil lamp was Mama’s favorite, handed down from her grandmother, who came from the Old Country. The lamp had survived the sea voyage sixty years ago and two households since, but the Picoletti family had killed it. “What happened, Evelyn?” whispered Grace.

  Tears brimmed again in Evelyn’s eyes. “I don’t know why Mama did it,” she mumbled. “I came home from school, and I could hear Mama screaming from the street. I was so embarrassed in front of Natalie Quivers that I just ran to the back door. When I came in, Mama had the can in her hands. Papa stood all quiet near the telephone. Mama pitched it at him. That’s… That’s when the lamp broke,” Evelyn finished. “I stepped on the glass coming in the door.”

  Hearing the story, Grace’s chest hurt. Thinking of Mama in that way, screaming at Papa like a wild animal… What could have possessed her to do it? And throwing the can at him? Grace closed her eyes. That was even worse. “And what’d Papa do?” she breathed.

  Evelyn wiped her nose on the back of her hand and pushed her tousled stray hair out of her eyes. “He just stood there for a second. Then he walked out the back door past me, got in the car, and drove off. I don’t know where he went.” She shrugged and flopped back down on the bed, eyes on the ceiling. “That was, I don’t know, maybe an hour ago.”

  Grace opened her mouth, unsure of what to say next, but before she could speak, she heard a car grinding its way into the hard-packed dirt-and-pebble driveway out front. She listened as the car moved around the house – to park, she guessed. Evelyn’s eyes met hers. Grace rose from the bed, quick as a cat, and walked to the bedroom window overlooking the backyard and barn area. Ever so gently, she lifted the curtain to the side, veiling herself in the shadow and dingy lace. If whoever was below looked up, he would not catch sight of her.

  Grace’s peering eyes found Papa just stepping out of the car, his short stature masked by the vertical distance between them. He wore his good hat, a clean-looking shirt, and dress pants. All this, Grace took in at a glance. When Papa closed the car door with a bang, her focus switched to the person in the car’s passenger seat. Grace couldn’t make out the face from her position above them, but she could see tightly-permed blond hair under a smart little hat that seemed to match the woman’s brown tweed suit. Papa strode to the woman’s side of the car and opened her door. He gave her one of his heavy tanned hands, and she stepped out, one hand clasping a small carpetbag. Another bang closed her door, and Papa went around to the trunk. The woman waited for him, hands smoothing her skirt, head turning to look this way and that. Another moment, and Papa pulled out two large suitcases, their obvious heft having no effect on him as he toted one in each hand.

  “Who is it?” Evelyn’s question broke into Grace’s inspection of the scene below their bedroom.

  Briefly, Grace turned her head to answer her younger sister. “Papa’s back.” Something stopped her from telling Evelyn about the woman he’d brought with him, something gnawing that made her hands shake a little as she turned back to the window. She gripped the ledge this time for strength before allowing her eyes to fall on the scene below.

  But she needn’t have concerned herself. Papa and the strange woman had already gone inside. Grace heard the screen door whack shut. Suddenly, she thought of Mama, plucking that chicken on the stoop. Of the broken glass. Of Ben’s words to her the night before he’d left. The night he’d given Papa a solid blow in the kisser, as he put it.

  He’s bringing her here. To live.

  Grace choked. Oh, please, no. It was one thing for Papa to run around a bit. Mama was sick all the time, pregnant often, with so many kids to care for… Really, Papa couldn’t be blamed for needing some reprieve from responsibility. So what if the good kids from school snickered at her family behind their hands? They didn’t have to wear rubber bands around their shoes; their Papa didn’t sell junk for extra money. They couldn’t understand.

  But this… She’d thought Ben had too much booze running through his brain that night. To bring another woman into Mama’s house, a woman with permed, bleached hair while Mama plucked a chicken for Papa’s supper… “I’ll be right back,” she stammered to Evelyn. Her feet took the s
tairs two at a time, never stopping their forward motion until Grace reached the archway that opened into the kitchen.

  It was like seeing a waxwork museum scene. Mama stood motionless, a frazzled, frumpy china doll. She leaned against the kitchen counter, while the dead chicken’s feet hung out of a pot of scalding water on the stove next to her.

  Mama looks like she’s been gutted. Mama’s eyes stared from her white, white face. Her hands still wore traces of blood from the fowl; they hung useless before her soiled apron. Her gaze – that unblinking gaze – fixed on Papa, who had taken his stand at the head of the kitchen table, suitcases still in his hands.

  His face, though – His face wore such an expression! Grace had never beheld that look embedded so deeply upon Papa’s countenance. It… It held hatred; it held disdain; it held triumph, all mingled together there, a bitter cup for the witness to drink. His arm curved around that woman, who stood next to him, her twitching eyes and willowy hands the only movements in the room.

  All at once, it seemed, the threesome became aware of Grace’s presence. She trembled as Papa kept his narrowed eyes intent on Mama and yet addressed Grace. “Grace, this is your Uncle Jack’s sister, Gertrude. She ain’t got work right now, so she’s staying with us for the time being.” He let his eyes drop to the blond woman for a second. “One of my daughters. Grace.”

  The woman seemed to gain courage from Papa’s introduction. She threw a little contemptuous glance at Mama and moved a couple of steps from under Papa’s protection. The thought flitted through Grace’s mind that the strange woman might have been pretty, in a coarse sort of way, if it had not been for the arrogant politeness that haunted her eyes and her painted mouth.

  The woman extended one of her slim, polished hands toward Grace. “So pleased to meet you, Grace,” she purred, low and throaty. The scent of cheap tobacco stained her breath. Grace’s own hands remained clasped, trembling, behind her back, as her eyes darted from Mama’s eviscerated face to the woman’s smile-pasted one.

  Grace would not shake hands with this snake.

  The kitchen rang silent. The woman glanced at Papa from under thick-lined eyelids, then back at Grace. She opened and closed her pouty lips twice before any sounds emerged. “You… You’re how old, Grace? Chuckie told me, but I’m sorry to say, I can’t remember,” she tittered with an expression of exaggerated apology plumping out her cheeks into a lopsided smile.

  Chuckie? With a start, Grace realized that the woman meant Papa. Chuckie! Nobody called him that. Mama always called him Charlie, just as Papa’s family and the men at the lunch counter did. For the first time in her life, Grace raised eyes of contempt to her father. To let this woman nickname him something different, and to stand there smugly as if he approved it!

  Papa hadn’t answered the woman, though, because his eyes still pinned Mama against the countertop. The scalding water nearly boiled over the pot, the chicken legs bobbing up and down. Mama had forgotten it; usually the chicken only hung scalding for a couple of minutes at most. It’ll be ruined.

  As if it mattered. As if anything at all mattered except the terrible scene taking place now. And she, Grace, was one of the actors.

  “You’re what, seventeen?” the voice asked in determination, obviously anxious for Grace to answer, for this awkwardness to somehow dissipate. As if it ever could with her here.

  “Fifteen. Grace’s goin’ on fifteen,” Papa said, snapping out of his rigor mortis.

  Grace just stared at him. Going on fifteen… I’m fifteen now! Did he really not know her age? The thin blade of her Papa’s self-interest bit a little deeper into her chest. She couldn’t bear to watch Mama expire before her eyes.

  “I have to go check on Evelyn,” Grace gasped. Her feet found the stairs – she didn’t know how – and she fled to the attic, where the spiders could listen unsympathetically to her sobs.

  CHAPTER NINE

  One more, and she’d be done. Emmeline closed the hymnbook before settling her fingers upon the ivory keys again. She didn’t need the music to guide her on this one. Pressing her fingers gently down, sweeping them along the keyboard, the chords sang out:

  Be still, my soul, the Lord is on thy side;

  Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain.

  Leave to thy God to order and provide;

  In every change, He faithful will remain.

  Be still, my soul, thy best, thy heavenly Friend;

  Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

  As the final notes lingered in the still room, Emmeline let her hands rest on the piano, tears dropping from her eyes, running between the keys. The late afternoon sunlight trickled through the white curtains, fell across the old wood floor, and puddled at her feet, gilding all it touched, turning the fallen teardrops to prisms. A great sigh tore from her chest.

  For many moments, Emmeline sat bowed at the instrument, not putting off what she knew she would do but waiting until the Lord Christ ripened the desire in her heart. At last, she heard Geoff’s footfalls on the porch. He hadn’t whistled a cheerful hymn as he usually did on his way home from school, she noted briefly.

  But Geoff’s approaching presence gave her the impetus to drive forward. This will eat away at me, at him, at us, if I continue to carry it. Slowly, ever so slowly, Emmeline turned her hands over, palms open. She had no strength to raise them but kept them resting on the ivory-and-black expanse. “Lord,” she whispered – and a witness would have testified to the iron in her tone, “I am Yours. All of mine is Yours. You give what You deem is best, and I will pour it back at Your feet as an offering.”

  As she continued there in silence, she felt the burden of the weekend – no, of the years she and Geoff had waited for a child – lift from her shoulders. The relief felt so palpable that Emmeline nearly gave into the desire to look in the mirror on the far wall to see if anything had changed in her appearance. A sorrowful peace had replaced the anxious weight. She felt she could breathe again without the anchors of unmet expectations holding down her lungs.

  Emmeline heard Geoff making his way upstairs and turned on the bench to greet him. Knocking once, her husband pushed open the door. He stood there, a burnt-out match, expression full of care. Emmeline rose and kissed the worn cheek. Geoff’s tense arms gathered her against him. They were strong arms, yes, but not nearly strong enough to carry their trouble alone.

  She nestled her head against the five o’clock shadow of his cheek. “Don’t fear, beloved one,” she whispered. A tear – one of his – dropped into the dark ocean of her hair. “He will not give us a stone for bread. He will not.” Her eyes closed, sharing his weeping. “He’ll give us what is good, beloved.”

  The moon had shone for hours by the time Grace finished her homework. She leaned back as much as possible in the upright desk chair, stretching out her overworked arm. Her gaze fell on the two double-beds, occupied by her three sisters. Evelyn appeared as a round lump under the covers, curled up like a cat. Only her two braids showed, spread out on her pillow. Evelyn nestled right in the center of the bed, and Grace knew that she would have a difficult time of getting her little sister to move onto her own side.

  In their own bed, Lou and Nancy lay, the latter’s mouth open in a light snore. Both had come home too tired to hear much about the new situation with Mama, Papa, and the woman he’d brought into their house. When Grace had explained what had happened, Lou had just shrugged and Nancy snorted, “Oh, Grace, you always think of the craziest things.”

  When Grace had persisted in talking about it, whispering furtively in the privacy of their bedroom, her older sisters became angry. “Look,” Nancy had finally said, “just keep your trap shut about it. Our family is embarrassing enough as it is. If you keep talking like that, how d’you think Lou and I’ll ever get dates?”

  So Grace had shut her mouth and given the smallest possible account to Evelyn, who didn’t understand all that adult stuff yet anyway. Cliff lived in his own world, so Grace didn’t waste her breath on explana
tions to him. While Nancy and Lou did their hair up in rags and Evelyn played with her homemade paper dolls on their bed, Grace sat and did her homework. But now that all of her sisters slept, she closed her textbooks and tiptoed to the open window. She thought of her Mama’s face – unfair, partial Mama; hardworking, dogged Mama – and of what Papa had decided to do to her, and the tears rose to Grace’s eyes. They bubbled over, streaming down her cheeks so steadily she didn’t think they’d ever stop. Why? Why would he do this? To Mama? To us? Have we done something so awful, so bad that he needs something else, that it’s right for him to bring this woman here?

  And no answer came. The tears continued to flow, Grace as helpless to stop them as she was to dam the breakage in her home, to mend Mama’s surely-bleeding heart, to make Papa into a real father. No hope, she thought numbly, digging her fingernails into the white-painted windowsill, watching as her tears splattered there. There is no hope.

  After many long minutes, Grace ceased weeping, having nothing left to cry, and what was worse, knowing no one cared whether she shed tears or not. No catharsis awaited her, but rather a raw, empty ache. She drew the curtains shut, still allowing the warm September breeze to make its way into the room.

  She turned off the dim lamp on the desk all three sisters shared. In their bureau’s bottom drawer, Grace fished around in the dark until she found her old-fashioned white cotton nightgown, so unlike Lou and Nancy’s silky and skimpy nightwear. She removed today’s clothing and laid it over the desk chair, so that it would be ready for tomorrow, relatively unwrinkled. As she arranged her cardigan, she saw a sheet of white paper sticking out of one of her books. Frowning, Grace pulled it out, holding it in the moonlight to see what it was.

  The permission slip. She’d meant to ask Mama to sign it, but with everything that had happened, Grace had forgotten completely. She bit her lip, thinking. Mr. Kinner had wanted that permission slip back as soon as possible. The special choir would start to rehearse later this week. I can’t ask Mama about it now that Papa has gone and done this. Her mother had too much to worry about without Grace complicating their family life even more. With a sigh, Grace tossed the permission slip into the waste paper basket, letting it fall next to the pencil shavings.