And especially difficult to explain to Grady, who just couldn’t get it into his head why she loved her house so much and why she wanted to live there alone—especially now that he was a widower and they could begin their relationship again. He agreed that her house was too small for a family, but he couldn’t see any reason why she wouldn’t marry him and move into his house, which was just down the street.
“We could rent your house,” he suggested in a practical tone. “It would bring in enough money so you could quit your job.”
But the idea of somebody else living in her beautiful little house made her shudder. And what if they didn’t take care of it?
She thought of this again, when she walked up the porch steps on this gloomy December day and saw a beautiful red poinsettia sitting beside her front door. It was brilliantly, splendidly red, the pot wrapped with silvery paper and tied with a red velvet ribbon. A small white envelope was tucked into the foliage.
With a sigh, Lizzy scooped up the plant. It was truly lovely, yes—and timely, to boot. She was writing next week’s Garden Gate column about this very plant. This could be the inspiration she needed to get started.
But the poinsettia could only be from Grady, who was in the habit of dropping off small gifts and flowers—for example, the pot of bronze chrysanthemums he’d left beside her front door on the day before Thanksgiving. He would phone that evening to ask how she liked it and suggest that they go to a movie—which she didn’t want to do. Going out with Grady encouraged him to think they could be a couple again.
Lizzy sighed. The poinsettia obligated her, and she was a woman who took her obligations seriously. She viewed this as a serious character flaw, and perhaps a particularly female one. Men never seemed to feel obliged to meet other people’s expectations. Or maybe it was Southern, or a product of her vexed relationship with her mother, whose expectations she had for years forced herself to meet, no matter how much she resented them.
Daffodil had heard her key in the lock and was meowing an enthusiastic welcome on the other side of the door. She pushed it open and went in, with the poinsettia in her arms. “Hey, Daffy,” she said happily, as her orange tabby wound around her ankles, turning up the volume on his purr. She put the plant on the hall table and picked him up, rubbing her cheek in his luxuriant fur and wishing that her other relationships were as simple and straightforward as her relationship with Daffy—unconditional, uncomplaining, unreserved affection on both their parts.
After a moment, Daffy asked to be put down and she set him on the floor. She took off her coat and red woolen cap and hung both up on the hallway rack. Then she turned to Grady’s poinsettia.
“It’s lovely, isn’t it, Daffy?” she said, touching the bright red leaves. “Nothing says Christmas like a poinsettia. I just wish . . .” Her voice trailed off. It was too bad that she couldn’t accept it in the same spirit in which Grady sent it.
The envelope was about half the size of a penny postcard. Her name—Miss Elizabeth Lacy—was written in black ink in a strong, masculine hand on the outside. Not Grady’s hand, she thought, in some surprise. There was no florist in Darling, so perhaps he’d had the plant delivered from the flower shop in Monroeville. Extravagant of him, she thought.
She opened the envelope and pulled out the card, expecting it to say something like “From Grady, with love. Looking forward to spending Christmas with you.”
But it didn’t. The note was in the same strong hand that had addressed the envelope. It said:
I’ve been thinking about our October conversation and will be getting in touch again soon. In the meantime, please accept this poinsettia and my best wishes for a happy holiday season.
Yours,
Ryan Nichols
Lizzy stared for a moment at the hand-drawn sketch of the four-leaf clover, remembering Ryan Nichols’ surprising visit and feeling an odd little flutter around her heart. And then she smiled.
And smiled again.
* * *
*The story of Lizzy’s house is told in The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree.
CHAPTER TEN
“IMAGINE! OUR LITTLE GIRL IN THE MOVIES!”
Over at the Darling Diner, it was the middle of the afternoon. Myra May was finishing the lunch cleanup and getting ready to start supper prep. The last lunch customer was gone, and she no longer had to listen to the men’s conversations about the piss-poor cotton yields, the CCC camp’s tree-clearing project in Briar Swamp (which most people thought was a waste of good labor), and the gruesome end of Baby Face Nelson, Public Enemy Number One, who was dead after a wild shootout with federal agents.
It was Myra May’s first quiet hour in a busy day, and she was enjoying the interlude. Lenore Looper was handling the switchboard—the new switchboard, so well-designed that one operator could do the work of two with half the effort. Violet was upstairs in their flat, putting Cupcake down for her afternoon nap. Raylene had gone home after lunch and would be back soon to make the meatloaf and apple pie on the Thursday night menu.
Meanwhile, the Philco radio on the shelf behind the counter was tuned to Mobile’s station WALA (which supposedly stood for “We Are Loyal Alabamians”). Jack Hylton’s Orchestra was playing “You’re the Cream in My Coffee.” Myra May, dressed in neatly pressed khaki slacks, plaid blouse, and apron, was happily singing along as she stacked the clean coffee mugs. “You’re the cream in my coffee, you’re the salt in my stew, you will always be my necessity, I’d be lost without you.”
This was one of the songs that Violet was teaching to Cupcake, who had already made up a cute little tap dance to go with the tune. The customers loved it, and always dropped a penny in Cupcake’s fancy china pig, which sat on a shelf at the end of the lunch counter.
But Myra May often wondered about the wisdom of letting Cupcake show off her talent. Was it a good idea for a little girl to get so much attention? Would the applause turn her head? Would the attention spoil her? Would she grow up believing that all she had to do to succeed in the world was sing and dance and smile prettily? That might work for an adorable four-year-old, or even five or six. But what would happen when Cupcake lost her baby prettiness and became a gawky teen?
Myra May was still considering these questions when the door opened and Liz Lacy and Verna Tidwell came in. They brought with them a puff of chilly air that cleared out some of the cigarette smoke left behind by the lunch crowd.
Myra May turned from her work. “Well, hi, girls,” she said with a warm smile. “Haven’t seen the pair of you for a while.” She reached for mugs. “Got time for coffee? A piece of pie?”
But Liz’s unsmiling response—“We need to talk to you and Violet”—told Myra May that her friends weren’t just taking a midafternoon coffee break. And when Verna added, “Someplace where we won’t be interrupted,” she knew that something was up. Something serious.
“Let’s go upstairs,” she said, and hung the Closed sign on the front door.
A few moments later, they were sitting around the kitchen table in the large, comfortable flat that Myra May and Violet shared. The parlor looked out over the courthouse square, while the kitchen at the back looked out across the large garden that supplied the Diner’s kitchen with beans, peas, corn, carrots, and lettuce. And although the December sky was bleak and the air was chill, Violet’s red geraniums at the window, the fragrant coffeepot perking on the stove, and the red-and-white checked oilcloth on the table made the kitchen seem warm and cheerful.
“So what’s this all about?” Myra May asked, after Violet had joined them. She was wearing a sunny yellow cotton housedress and a blue-checked wraparound apron. She smiled when she saw their company but quickly sobered at the expressions on their faces.
She sat down at the table and echoed Myra May’s question. “Something’s up, isn’t it? What?”
“I got a phone call from a Los Angeles lawyer this morning,” Liz said. “He wants Mr. Moseley to help him locate a missing child—a four-year-old girl named Dorothy�
��and her aunt, Violet.”
Myra May’s heart seemed to skip a beat and she gasped. Violet gave a little cry and reached out to Myra May. The two of them held hands while they listened to Liz, who reported the phone call from start to finish.
“I talked to Verna about it,” she concluded, “because I wasn’t sure what I should do. Tell Mr. Moseley right away and ask him what we should do? Or talk to you first, and figure out where to go from there.”
“We decided it would be better to talk to you,” Verna said. She opened her purse, took out a cigarette, and lit it. Her voice was somber when she added, “We know this is awf ’lly hard, girls. We want to help in any way we can.”
By now, Violet was crying, her head down, her shoulders shaking with hard sobs, and Myra May got up to stand behind her and gently stroke the back of her neck. She always felt utterly helpless in the face of Violet’s tears, but this was worse. It was as if a hurricane wind was suddenly blowing their tranquil world apart. She thought of herself as the strong one, the one who was responsible for protecting Violet and their daughter. But there was nothing she could do against this threat. She was nearly overwhelmed by a wave of helpless impotence.
Still, for Violet’s sake, she had to say something. She bent over and gave her a hug, then took a deep breath and forced herself to sound resolute. “Chin up, sweetie. We’ll fight this, and we’re going to win. Nobody is taking our Cupcake away from us. Not her father, not some big-shot Los Angeles lawyer. Nobody.”
But as she took her seat again, she had to admit she was not surprised that this had happened. Ever since the day Violet had walked through the door with the blanket-wrapped baby in her arms, Myra May had been afraid that Cupcake’s father would show up and stake his claim. As time went on, the fear—as fears usually do—had faded into the sunlit background of their busy daytime lives. But it still returned as a nightmare terror that left her shaken and breathless in the long, dark hours of the night. And now that fear loomed over her like a menacing storm cloud, poised to sweep over the horizon and obliterate them.
Liz folded her arms on the table. “It would help us to hear the whole story, Violet—about you and Cupcake. I know it’s painful, but if we understood everything that’s happened, maybe we could figure out how to deal with this. Can you tell us?”
They all waited. Violet looked to Myra May, asking what she thought. Myra May forced herself to smile. “Go ahead, dear,” she heard herself say in a comforting voice. “They’re here to help. Tell them.” The words seemed to come from somewhere very far away, and she knew the comfort in her voice was false.
Violet took a handkerchief out of her apron pocket and blew her nose. “Cupcake’s real name is Dorothy,” she said. “She’s my niece. My half-sister, Pansy, was living in Memphis. She asked me to come up and help her when she had the baby—her first.” Her voice grew bitter. “She knew she couldn’t count on help from Neil. Neil Hudson. He was the man she was living with. The baby’s daddy.”
“So they weren’t married?” Liz asked, and Violet shook her head.
“Did he have a job?” Verna asked.
Violet leaned forward. “He had a regular song-and-dance act at the Orpheum, which is one of the biggest vaudeville theaters in Memphis. Before the Depression, that’s where all the important entertainers appeared—Eddie Cantor, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington. Pansy met Neil there when she auditioned as a dancer. Right away, she became part of his act, and then they moved in together. Within a few months, she got pregnant. He was upset when she told him, because it meant she couldn’t dance—and her salary was helping to pay the rent. He pressured her to get an abortion, but she stood up to him. She wanted the baby.”
“Good for her,” Liz murmured. Myra May, who had heard this story before, felt a wrenching sadness. She also knew that Violet had once considered a dance career for herself and had decided against it, for which Myra May was eternally grateful.
Violet picked up her coffee cup and took a sip. “The birth was hard, and when Pansy came home from the hospital, the doctor said she had to stay in bed. I took care of her and the baby and cooked for Neil and did his laundry and the baby’s diapers.” Her voice took on a sharper edge. “He was always out until the small hours of the morning. Part of it was the work, but there was also a lot of drinking. He was jealous of the baby, because she took so much of Pansy’s attention. Wasn’t it bad enough that she was sick, without him acting like a spoiled little boy?”
Myra May felt her insides twist, but she made a small encouraging sound. They didn’t talk about this often, because each of them was so afraid—afraid that Cupcake’s father would show up one day and take her away from them. And now that awful possibility was looming in front of them, like an evil genie escaped from its bottle.
Violet’s hands were trembling and she put the cup down. “Pansy died three weeks after Dorothy was born, and things went from bad to terrible.” She glanced at Myra May. “I loved the baby dearly, but my life was here in Darling, and I told Neil I couldn’t stay indefinitely. He was acting like a jerk, but I tried to see it from his point of view. He had just buried Patsy, and he was faced with the task of taking care of a baby all day. On top of that, he had to work all night. How in the world would he manage? And to make matters worse, the Orpheum’s owner had just put the theater up for sale. He wasn’t even sure he’d have a job the next week.”
Verna wrinkled her forehead. “Was Neil any good? As a performer, I mean.”
“Pretty good, yes. He also helped to manage the theater,” Violet said. “When the Orpheum began to fail, I think he just gave up. Without saying a word to me about what he was planning, he went to an adoption agency and signed some papers. Then he came back to the flat and told me that the baby was going to an orphanage until somebody came along and adopted her. He said I had to get her ready to go with the social worker.”
“But how could he do that?” Liz asked, baffled. “How could he give his baby away?”
“Sounds like he didn’t have a lot of choice,” Verna said in a practical tone. “I’m surprised that he didn’t ask you to marry him, Violet. From his perspective, that would have been ideal.”
Violet bit her lip. “Actually, he did, which made things even worse. I told him it was out of the question. He . . . didn’t want to take no for an answer.”
Myra May, who knew something of the ugly episode that Violet was leaving out, reached for her hand again, feeling a deep concern. Violet wasn’t as strong as she looked. It had taken a long time for her to get over what had happened in Memphis that night. The man had been drunk, which was a convenient excuse. But his apologies hadn’t changed anything. The pain of the violation was still there and this was bringing it up all over again. She could feel Violet’s hand trembling in hers.
There was a moment’s silence. Then Liz said, “Did you offer to take the baby, Violet?”
Violet started to say something, then bit her lip again and looked down. Mutely, she shook her head.
There was a hard lump in Myra May’s throat. She tried to clear it but couldn’t. She spoke around it. “That was my fault, Liz. Violet was thinking of me. She was afraid I wouldn’t want the complications of a baby, with all we have to do here—the Diner and the Exchange. That year was really tough. She knew I wasn’t crazy about kids and she didn’t want to impose a baby on me.”
“It was not your fault, Myra May!” Violet retorted hotly, retrieving her hand. “It was my fault. I should have telephoned you. If we had discussed it, you would have told me to ask Neil if we could take Dorothy. He would have said yes, and then we wouldn’t be in this fix.”
“But there was no phone in Neil’s flat,” Myra May reminded her. “The nearest phone booth was blocks away, and you couldn’t leave the baby.”
“And even if he had given you permission to take her,” Verna said, “there was no guarantee that he’d let you keep her. She is his child. He could come and get her any time he felt like it.”
Violet gave a
muted whimper. She turned her head as if she had been slapped. Her hand went to her throat and her face was white. Without a word, Myra May got up, found the bottle of rum on the shelf beside the sink, and splashed a hefty slug into Violet’s half-empty coffee cup.
“Drink,” she commanded, and put her hand on Violet’s shoulder. She frowned angrily at Verna. “Really, Verna. Did you have to say that?”
Still, she knew that it was the truth—the brutal truth that she and Violet had been evading, all these years. They couldn’t evade it any longer. They had to face it.
Obediently, Violet drank, coughed, then drank again. After a moment, the pink came back to her cheeks. She took a deep breath and said, “I know you’re right, Verna. But still, if I’d had any idea what Neil was planning, I would have begged him to give Dorothy to me and taken my chances with Myra May.” She took another sip of the rum-laced coffee. “Anyway, it all came apart when Neil told me to get her ready to go to the orphanage. I just couldn’t do that.”
“You didn’t consider meeting the social worker and telling her you wanted to adopt the baby?” Liz asked.
Violet nodded. “I thought of it, yes. But I’m not married, and I was afraid she would tell me I couldn’t provide a real family for the baby. I didn’t sleep a wink that night, thinking about it. So after Neil was safely asleep, I packed her diapers and the little things I’d bought for her and the two of us left the apartment. I walked to the station with Dorothy in one arm and our suitcase in the other and caught the earliest train heading south. I didn’t even leave a note.”
“So what happened after that?” Verna stubbed out her cigarette in the glass ashtray in the middle of the table. “He had to know that you had taken her, Violet. Did he get in touch with you? Did he come looking for her? Did the social worker contact you?”
The Darling Dahlias and the Poinsettia Puzzle Page 9