Winter in Full Bloom

by Anita Higman

  “I was just asking Marcus here to let me come visit you,” Pamela said. “I’m so glad you’re here. What a surprise.”

  I’ll say. Had I once again fallen down the rabbit hole like Alice? “But why would you want to meet me?”

  Pamela looked incredulous. “Because I wanted to thank you for what you did.”

  “I haven’t told Lily yet,” Marcus said to Pamela. “I wanted to surprise her at tea tonight.”

  “Surprise me?” Did I need any more surprises for the day?

  Pamela slapped her hands together. “Have I spoiled your happy time? Oh, I’m so sorry, Marcus.”

  “It’s fine. Why don’t we all sit down?” Marcus escorted me over to the corner of the lobby with Pamela in tow.

  When Marcus and I were situated in a posh love seat with Pamela across from us, he said, “Go ahead, Pam.”

  “Me? Okay.” The woman named Pamela held up the book that she and Marcus had been staring at together when I arrived. “This is it. A sketchbook. Because of you, Lily, Marcus has decided to go back to writing and illustrating for kids again. It’s wonderful, and you’re the miracle that brought Marcus back. Or I should say Miles Hooper.”

  Oh, my. “Yes, you’re right. It is wonderful. That is what I had hoped for. Prayed for.” I licked my lips, knowing I was about to ask something stupid. “But do you mind if I ask who you are?”

  Marcus and Pamela laughed.

  “I’m sorry. I said my name but not how I’m involved,” Pamela said.

  “Ms. Sky is my agent,” Marcus said.

  “Ohhh.” I chuckled, feeling drenched in relief. “I guess I should have figured that out.” If I’d had a sparkler I would have run through the hotel twirling it and shouting.

  Pamela waved me off. “Not at all. That was my fault. I’m just so excited to have Marcus back for a client … or I should say Miles Hooper … that I forgot to add the ‘agent’ part.”

  “But how did I help make any of this happen?” I searched Marcus looking for an answer.

  “Surely you know,” he said to me. “Because you were relentless in trying to bring your family back together. It’s inspiring. So much so, that I’ve dedicated my new book to you.”

  His words made my face heat up, enough to rival a sizzling summer day in Houston. “Thank you. I would never have expected that.” I leaned over and kissed his cheek. It felt so good to do that. Better than a piano concerto or hot fudge on ice cream or even a trip around the world.

  “Look at you two. You make the sweetest couple.” Pamela turned the sketchbook around and showed me one of Marcus’s drawings.

  A family of kangaroos played on a hilltop in a state of merry reunion, and the most adorable joey peeked out of its mother’s pouch. “The drawing is amazing. Such rich color and detail and … warmth. Kids will love it. So do I.”

  “It’ll be his best work ever, but the setting will be Australia.” Pamela was effervescing all over the place. “This is going to be a book about families coming together. That there really is no place else on earth like home.”

  “It sounds like a much-needed story for kids … for everyone. What’s the title?”

  Marcus kissed my hand. “The title is Love Will Bring Me Home.”

  I hummed to myself in the grocery store, and I sang along with the tunes on the car radio. I was officially in a good mood, and nothing was going to squelch it. Not Mother. Not anyone.

  I glanced in the rearview mirror. A pleasant glow covered me like a fuzzy towel after a warm bubble bath. Marcus was obviously a man who kept his promises, and my silly fears had been proven so wrong they’d been ridiculous. To celebrate, I opened a fresh pack of gum and popped a stick in my mouth for a cheery chew.

  Hope seemed to be in everything, even in Mother’s mixed response to our reunion. Autumn was around the corner, and the air had turned a little drier and made the breeze a little cooler. Nice. The mums would start peeking their pretty little heads out soon. And, of course, the fact that Marcus was coming to dinner added to my overall giddiness. My Julie being in college, I’d still have two of my favorite people under the same roof.

  I parked the car, grabbed my bags of groceries, and scurried into the house to check on Camille. Hopefully she felt rested and well enough to enjoy a big spaghetti supper. But when I’d put away the groceries and made it to the guest bedroom, the room was empty. “I’m home,” I yoo-hooed and then listened.

  A cough erupted from the bathroom.

  The door was shut. “Sis?” I walked down the hallway and tapped lightly on the door. “You okay?”

  After a pause, Camille emerged. Her face looked pale and damp and drenched in fear, like she’d awakened from a nightmare.

  “What is it?” I rubbed her back as she headed to her bedroom.

  She shivered beneath her thin nightgown. Camille sat on the side of the bed and slumped over. Then after taking in several slow breaths, she crawled under the covers and rested back on the pillow.

  I tucked her in with the quilt. “Was it Mother?” I asked softly. “Was she too much for you today? I thought maybe we should have rested up more for the onslaught. I mean, she can be—”

  “It wasn’t your mother. I mean, you’re right. She was no picnic to deal with, but it’s not why I’m feeling the way I do. It’s something else.” She slipped her hands on top of the quilt and started to pick at her fingers.

  I rested my hand over hers. “Please, don’t you start with that habit.”

  “Better than my TMJ.”

  “What is it?” I sat down next to her on the bed. “Do you want to talk about it? You can tell me anything. I hope you know that.”

  “I do.” She laid her arm across her forehead. “I might as well talk about it. There’ll be no hiding it soon anyway.”

  “No hiding what?”

  “Lily, you’re so innocent. Can’t you guess?”

  “Not really.”

  She covered her face with the quilt. “The glow. The wild mood swings. The woozy stomach.” Her words came out muffled from under the quilt, but I’d heard them well enough to know what she meant.

  I chuckled at the absurdity of it. “Do you mean you’re pregnant?”

  Camille made no more sounds from under the covers.

  I swallowed my gum. Lord, have mercy.

  I peeled the quilt back from Camille’s face. There was no teasing or joy in her expression. “Really? How do you know?”

  “I brought one of the home pregnancy tests along with me. Since I’d missed three periods I thought there was a chance. I’ve missed periods before, though, so at first I didn’t think much about it. But lately I started having other signs. I’ve been woozy on and off, but I’d never really been sick at my stomach … until today. Now I know for sure. A few minutes ago the test came out positive.”

  “Oh, wow.” I felt like I’d just fallen off a cliff, and I saw no bottom.

  “Just guessing I think I’m probably just over three months along, although I don’t seem to be showing much. I just thought I’d put on some weight lately.”

  “I assume it’s Jerald’s baby.” The words were out before I’d even thought about them.

  “Of course it’s his.” Camille slapped her palms on the quilt. “How could you ask such a thing?”

  “I’m sorry.” I fluttered my hands. “I realize how unkind that came off. I didn’t mean it. I’m just so stunned that I didn’t know what to say.” In fact, my head still buzzed with the shock.

  “It’s not what you think, Lily.”

  “What do you mean?” I wasn’t sure what I thought, except that it was the last thing I’d ever imagined in the middle of our homecoming.

  “You’re thinking I gave my consent to Jerald, but I didn’t.”

  I stiffened. “Do you mean he raped you?”

  “I really thought God would come through for me on this one, since what I did wasn’t really …”

  “Wasn’t really what?” I asked the words as lovingly as possible, but my
mind screamed for the answers.

  “Let me just start from the beginning.” Camille scooted up in the bed and rested against the headboard. “As you know already, we’d dated a year. I’d said no to him about sex. I wanted to wait until we were married. But he got tired of waiting, and so one evening while we were watching TV on my couch, well, things got out of hand. He knew I desperately wanted to marry and have a family before I was too old. He promised to marry me. He even whispered his love to me right there, to show me how serious he was. I still told him no and tried to push him off, but he overpowered me.” Camille didn’t cry, but her words were full of tears.

  “He raped you.” I ground my fist into the bedding. “What a fiend.” I stood then, enraged at her boyfriend. “Too bad we’re not back in Melbourne. I would have pushed him into the Yarra River. Did you call the police? Why didn’t you give him the boot then?”

  She took my hand, and I settled back down on the bed.

  “I didn’t call the police,” she said, “and I didn’t give him the boot.”

  “Why in the world not?”

  “Because somehow things got muddled in my head as they usually do … and in the end, I blamed myself.”

  “Why?” The word seemed to echo around the room, but I said it again, this time more softly. “Why, Camille?”

  “Isn’t that what women like me do?” Camille asked. “They always blame themselves?”

  “What do you mean … women like you?”

  “I don’t know. My father, the way he treated me … well, I felt so worthless for so long that I …” She looked at me. “He never sexually abused me, but he did hurt me in other ways. I got used to the rough treatment and the cruel words. Eventually, it felt like I deserved it. That I was inferior to other girls. That no matter how hard I tried I would never rise above what he thought of me. The names he called me, well, I can’t even repeat them. He made me feel dirty. Maybe that’s why I’m always wearing the color white. I want back the innocence and self-esteem and youth that my father stole from me.”

  “Oh, Camille, it was never how things were supposed to be. I apologize for your father, for Jerald, and for my mother.”

  “Sweet Lily.” Camille smoothed the quilt with her hand.

  “But don’t you want to see justice? Put Jerald behind bars where criminals belong? I would.”

  “But you’re not the one having a baby. You might feel differently in my shoes. It changes my priorities. It changes everything. I don’t want a courtroom scene or a legal battle of any kind, and that’s what it would turn into if I told the police it was rape.”

  A sparrow flew over to the window and landed by the glass, fluttering its wings, looking so contented and innocent that it broke the spell of our despair for a moment. I know, Lord, if You watch over the sparrows You are certainly watching over us right now, in these rough circumstances.

  Hard to believe there were people in the world who had no remorse, no shame in crushing innocence. To know Jerald walked the earth a free man while he needed to be in jail for what he did to my sister made me ill. What if Jerald were to do it again—to his next girlfriend? “But that’s how thugs like Jerald get away with such wickedness,” I said in a tender voice, “to not press charges.”

  Camille looked back at me, no longer full of energy as I had seen her that morning. “I know that, and it would be satisfying to see justice. But I want life to start fresh for my baby. I don’t want to have us embroiled in more ugliness.”

  I sighed. “I do see your point … sort of.”

  “I’m just glad that Jerald is out of our lives for good. I’m grateful to be far away from his clutches. Being away from the control he had over my life. I can now see so many things clearly. I’d been blinded to his polluted spirit. Making excuses for him. You’ll never hear me take up for him again.” Camille worked her finger along the patterns of the quilt as if it were a maze. “But a little of my defensiveness might have been connected to Marcus.”

  “How so? You mean, because of the comparison?”

  “You don’t really notice how tarnished a penny has become until you set it next to a brand-new shiny one. You see, you had someone fine and wonderful falling for you, and I had someone horrible who only pretended to love me. A man who was capable of rape. Does the comparison get much worse? I mean, I wanted Jerald to be good like Marcus. I guess some of the time I pretended he was good, since I wanted it so badly.”

  “I’m sorry that my joy added to your unhappiness.”

  Camille smiled. “You’re the only person I know who could apologize for joy. But I love you for that. The kindness. There’s so little of it left in the world, that when you see it, experience it, the beauty of it stands alone.”

  “That means a lot to me … to hear you say it.”

  Camille placed her hand in mine. “Promise me something, Lily.”

  “Sure. What is it?”

  “I want to be accountable to you as my child grows up. I can see that it’s been easy for me to fall into the clutches of dysfunction because of my background, but no more. I don’t want to use that as an excuse to raise my child in dysfunction because that is what I’ve known. I want the generational oppression to stop now. Promise me you’ll tell me in the future if you see me sliding off into the muck again. Okay?”

  Seemed like in the course of minutes, with the news of her child, Camille had grown up. “Okay, as long as you’ll do the same for me.”

  Camille nodded. “Done.”

  I went over to the bureau and pulled out an album. “I have some photos I want to show you.”

  “Do you have any pictures of us together? You know, that first year? Never mind. What was I thinking? You wouldn’t, since you didn’t know about me.”

  “I’m sorry. We should ask Mother about that when we go over there again.” Although that didn’t have a promising feel to it. “These are photos of Julie mostly, when she was a baby.”

  “I want to see them, of course.” She waved me to bring the album over to the bed. When we’d both gotten cozy under the covers with the album, Camille cracked open the book to the first page. She grinned and pointed to the photo with Julie still inside me. “Look at you, pregnant.”

  “I was nine months there. Ready to bust. Even my belly button bulged.” I scooted closer to Camille.

  “You’re as big as a house.” She tapped the photo. “A two-story with a triple-stall garage and awnings.”

  “Hey.” I gave her a sisterly push and laughed. “But I know it’s true.”

  “Guess I’ll look just the same. I don’t really mind.” She moved her hand to the next photo—one of Julie as a newborn at the hospital. “Ohh, your daughter is so tiny here but as cute as a rosebud.” She tapped her finger on a picture of the whole family, the one where we were building a birdhouse. “So, this was your husband, Richard. Tall, attractive. Looks like he has a sunny disposition. The perfect family.” She leaned closer. “But …”

  “What is it?”

  “Something in your expression. Something’s missing. Only one side of your mouth is turned up, like the person taking the picture has sweet-talked you into a smile. It didn’t come from your soul.”

  Camille could see. She knew. “Well, no marriage is perfect.”

  “I’ve heard that.” She didn’t look convinced but went back to the photo. “Looks like your family was making a birdhouse together. Sweet idea. I hope to do those sorts of hobbies with my child.”

  Little did Camille know that our birdhouse never sheltered any birds. After we’d made it and put it in the garden I sealed it with a mesh screen to keep the birds from making a nest inside. I didn’t want them to foul it up with their artistic doodles. But even with my extra measures, a swarm of wasps came and made a mess anyway. So like my life with Richard—in spite of the fact that I’d fortified our marriage against adultery—I had failed. Some woman named Vontella had shown up and had fouled it up anyway. I would tell Camille the rest of my marital story, but today was n
ot the right time for that tale.

  “But even without the perfect marriage, it must have been great to be a team … makes life easier. Mmm. And all that help with dirty diapers.” Camille looked up at me. “You know, the scariest part of my situation is that I’m going to be a single mom.”

  I took her hand and placed it against my cheek. “You’re not alone. You have me. And you have God.”

  “That’s good. I’m going to need you both. I wonder if God will help us with the dirty diapers.”

  I chuckled, which made her laugh. She would need lots of that kind of therapy as the months ticked by.

  Camille took on a more subdued look. “And I know this too… because of my age and because of my weakened condition health-wise, the doctors will call it a high-risk pregnancy. And because of the circumstances some people might try to encourage me to have an abortion. But I want you to know that nothing could convince me to take that course. I know what it’s like to be unloved and to be unsafe, and I want my baby to know safety and love, while she’s growing up but also while she’s inside me.”

  I leaned over and kissed her forehead.

  “I’ll rest as much as I can too. That will help us both.” Camille smiled and turned the page of the album. “I’ll play the flute for her. Julie will play her guitar, and you’ll play the piano. She’ll be born with a song in her heart. That’s it. I’ll name her Melody. How about that?”

  I smiled. “Lovely name. But what if it’s a boy? Or twin boys?”

  She gasped and then grinned. “You’re right. It might be twin boys for all I know. Well, if they have big ears and they’re as homely as Jerald, that’ll be okay too. Two things for sure … they’ll be loved, and they’ll never be separated.”

  “I’m sure they won’t.” Suddenly remembering the dinner I needed to fix, I rose off the bed. “If you don’t need me, I’d better get supper going. Marcus is coming.”

  “Tonight? Over here? Oh, I’m sorry I forgot to ask you about Marcus.”

  “Well, you’ve been a little bit preoccupied with your own situation.”