Winter in Full Bloom

by Anita Higman

  After a while the tears subsided.

  Mother sat down in her chair next to Camille but didn’t let go of her hand.

  Julie went over and gave her grandmother a hug. This time Mother hugged her back. Then Julie whispered to me over Mother’s shoulder, “Marcus is here.”

  “Marcus? Where is he?”

  Julie released Mother and circled her arm through mine. “He didn’t want to interfere with our family time, so he went to the chapel.”

  Oh, the enduring kindness of Marcus Averill. “Thanks, Julie.” Camille had drifted back to sleep, so I turned to Mother.

  Before I could even ask, she said, “Go to Marcus. It’ll be a good break for you.”

  “But what about you?”

  Mother looked at me, really studied me as if seeing me in a new light. “I want to stay with Camille for as long as she will let me.”

  I nodded, understanding her. “Okay.”

  Julie sat in the recliner where I’d been resting, pulled out her phone, and began texting someone. Then she stopped, stared at her grandmother, and put away her phone. She too must have realized what a profound family moment we were in the middle of—something not to be taken lightly, not to be missed.

  I left Camille’s room, passed the nurses’ station, and then found the elevator. When I made it to the first floor I saw the chapel sign and took a long corridor to an arched door. The sanctuary was empty, except for Marcus, who sat on the front pew. I stepped across the threshold. The amber light streaming through the stained-glass windows, the candles flickering across the front of the chapel, and the faint sounds of Gregorian chants gave the chapel an old world feel. It was a place of quiet reflection and of Christ’s hope, the only true hope this weary earth would ever know.

  Marcus looked back at me when I entered the room. That face—such a great face.

  I smiled at him, glad to see him. We’d only been parted for hours, and yet it had seemed much longer. Wishing I looked better, I tried smoothing my hair. My makeup had long since melted away, so Marcus was going to get his first dose of me looking untidy as well as mournful for my sister’s loss. Marcus didn’t seem to notice my disheveled appearance as I walked up the aisle and sat down next to him in the pew.

  He took my hand and cradled it in his. So warm and welcoming.

  “Thanks for coming.”

  “I’m really sorry Camille lost her baby.”

  “Yes, it’s a terrible thing.”

  We sat quietly for a moment. The silence didn’t feel empty, though, but full of comfort.

  “How’s your mom?”

  “Devastated. I can hardly believe I’m saying those words, but she is. I’ve never seen her like this before. She broke down and cried earlier, and I’ve never seen her cry in my whole life, not even when Dad died.”

  “I know a little how she feels. From what you told me on the phone, your mother and I now have something in common. Because of a grave error on our part, someone has died on our watch. It’s not anything you ever recover from. You go on with life, and you do the best you can, but you never truly mend.”

  I tugged on the cuff of his sleeve. “Especially when you have a father who is willing to remind you of your error at every possible opportunity. Maybe it’s not my place to say it, but even though I feel sorry for him, it’s not right what he’s doing.”

  “He will forgive me someday.”

  I stared at the ornate cross, which sat in front of us just beyond the altar. “I’ll remember your words as we build a relationship with Mother. Forgiveness has begun, but it will take more time, especially for Camille.” I rested my head on his shoulder. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to do. As if I’d always known him, always trusted him with my life, my family. I thanked God that He’d sent Marcus into my life. It was a miraculous event that day in the botanic garden. I needed him during this time, and he needed me. But please, Lord, let it be more than merely a season of helping each other. I love this man dearly.

  I opened my mouth to tell him those very words when Marcus said, “Lily, you are such a keepsake.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. It’s the word that always comes to me when I think of you.”

  I smiled.

  “But I want to talk to you about something.”

  “Okay.” I loved being referred to as a keepsake, but didn’t treasures usually get put aside into a dusky trunk somewhere? In a back closet? I laughed at myself for such a gloomy thought, and yet I braced myself.

  He rubbed his thumb back and forth across the top of my hand. “You know when we stopped during the rainstorm on our way from Dallas?”

  “Yes. How could I forget?” It was when Marcus had first told me that he loved me. Perhaps there’d be more on the subject. The chapel was a good place for declarations of love and promises.

  “I wanted you to know I’ve thought about what you said, and you were right. I got way ahead of myself when I hinted about marriage. It’s too soon. I know we spent a lot of time together in Melbourne, and we’re certainly old enough to know our hearts and minds. We know how we feel about each other, and we’re safe in that for now. But both our families are in the middle of some pretty heavy heartache right now. They need us. That should be a priority for us … for a while. Thank you for showing me that.”

  “You’re welcome.” I guess. My voice had lost all its buoyancy, and so had my heart. It was exactly what I’d asked him for. Exactly what I knew we needed. But why did I feel as though the bottom of my world had fallen out—like those rides at the carnival that drop you suddenly, and your stomach gets an ugly surprise?

  “In fact, I’m going to Dallas fairly soon. My dad called, and he wanted to meet with me. He’s pretty broken up about Mom leaving him. He didn’t sound like he was in a very good mood, but he wanted to talk, and that’s at least one step in the right direction. I want to be there for him. I have to.”

  “Of course. I understand. You should. I’m proud of you for always wanting to do the right thing.” I love you for it.

  “Thanks. I know I flew over from Australia for us, but—”

  I placed my finger over his lips. “No. You came over for your family too. This is a season for mending. Of new beginnings for all of us.”

  “So, you don’t mind that I’ll be away awhile?”

  “No, not at all.” On second thought. “Well, how long will it be?”

  “Maybe a few days. I’m not sure. I just want to make myself available to him while I’m there.”

  I smiled. “It’s the right thing.”

  “So, you miss me already?”

  “I do.” Someday, Lord, when it’s the right time, I’d love to say those two words to Marcus in a lovely and holy place like this.

  “Mom?”

  We both looked back toward the voice.

  Julie stood at the entrance of the chapel, staring at us.

  “Is Camille okay?” I stood. “What’s happened?”

  “Yes, yes, she’s fine.” Julie came up the aisle to join us. “Hey, Marcus.”

  “Hello again.”

  Julie sat down next to me. “I came to tell you that Granny is acting sort of weird.”

  “What do you mean?” I placed my arm behind her on the pew.

  “Granny is ordering the nurses around,” Julie said, “telling them they’re not taking good care of Aunt Camy. And Granny even threatened to fire one of her doctors.”

  Oh, dear. “What did the doctor do wrong?”

  “He forgot that Camille wasn’t married, and so he asked if her husband had been in to see her yet.”

  When Camille got home from the hospital, changes of every kind were so thick in the air that it was like Texas barbeque in the heat of the summer. Marcus had driven to Dallas, Julie had headed back to college, and Mother had insisted that Camille live with her until she could regain her health or for as long as she wanted to live there. Since I still had a bit more time on my leave of absence from work, I decided to s
ee how Camille and Mother were getting along. If they were pulling out each other’s hair, or if the transformation I’d seen at the hospital had been lasting.

  I rang Mother’s doorbell and waited for Dragan the Terrible to answer the door.

  The deadbolt unlocked and the door swung open. Ms. Humphreys stood in the entry, looking foreboding enough to play the role of an evil queen at a Renaissance festival.

  “Hi. Is everything okay?”

  Dragan glared at me through half-lowered lids.

  Glad to see you too.

  “No, it’s not good,” Dragan said. “Now I have two invalids to take care of.”

  Was she referring to my mother and sister? Goodness. “But that shouldn’t be a problem,” I said, “since you and Mother are such good friends.” I tried not to sound too sarcastic. But I failed.

  “Right.” Dragan blew out some hot air, which she had in limitless supply. “They’re both in the solarium. You can find your own way back.”

  “Yes, I can. I grew up here.”

  Dragan didn’t grace me with further comments—thank goodness—but instead flip-flapped her way toward the kitchen. In her case, though, maybe “flim-flammed” her way toward the kitchen was a more accurate description. I couldn’t imagine why my mother continued to keep that woman around. Perhaps Dragan’s days in the Gray house were numbered. One could dream.

  I made my way back to the solarium. The voices of two women arguing wafted out of the glass room. Not angry voices, just loud. What a relief.

  By the time I opened the solarium door, both Mother and Camille were standing by a hibiscus flower in deep contemplation.

  “Greetings, Lily.” Mother waved me inside. “Come in. Come in. Glad you’re here.”

  “Hey, Lils.” Camille’s face had a little more color, and it didn’t appear to just be from the dispute.

  “Grab a health nut cookie on the table, dear,” Mother said. “Wholesome roughage for the constitution. Keeps the bowels persuaded to do the right thing.”

  I gaped at the cookies. Somehow putting the two words bowels and cookies together didn’t inspire me to take a nibble. “Sounds frightening.”

  Mother and Camille chuckled.

  I ignored the pile of cookies.

  “We need your help to settle a debate.” Mother worked her mouth like she was chewing on something. Probably one of those ghastly cookies. “I’m busy trying to convince your sister that she couldn’t be more mistaken about—”

  “Mistaken my eye.” Camille grinned through her frown. “Lils, please tell Iris that you really can make paper out of the hibiscus.”

  I put up my hands. “I have no idea. You guys are on your own.” My stomach growled. Hungry, I stared at the miserable plate of health nut cookies, at the bits of nuts poking out their hapless little heads and arms like they were trying to escape from the dung-like cookie. Hungry or not, guess I’d pass.

  “Paper … how preposterous.” Mother turned the potted plant this way and that.

  “But I’m only talking about one species, the hibiscus cannabinus. It’s commonly used for paper. Everyone who knows angiosperms is aware—”

  “Shouldn’t you sit down, my dear?” Mother asked. “Camille, the doctor said to take it easy.”

  My sister looked over at me, rolled her eyes, and grinned. Then she sat in the wheelchair Mother had rented for her. Camille snuggled under the quilt, looking more content than I ever imagined.

  “I’ll have Dragan make you another veggie shake. I’ll have you in excellent working order before you know it.”

  “I appreciate the raw juice, Iris, but if I drink one more kale and spinach drink I’m going to turn permanently green.” Camille made a platypus kind of expression with her lower lip.

  “Oh, you are so funny. Then how about some hibiscus tea? Even if people can’t make paper out of hibiscus they can surely make tea.” Mother chuckled. Then she plucked one of the biggest hibiscus blooms off the plant and slipped it into Camille’s hair. “There, that looks pretty, doesn’t it?”

  Apparently, Mother was going to squeeze four decades of nurturing into a week. But what an exquisite sight, watching my sister and my mother go after it in an almost musical dance of affectionate disagreement. It had to be the sweetest wrangling I’d ever witnessed, and it did my heart good to see it.

  Mother swiped at a housefly that buzzed around our heads. “By the way, where is Dragan?” She picked up a swatter, gave the fly a good smack when it landed on the table, and then scooped it off onto the floor. “I asked that woman for some hot tea an hour ago.”

  Dragan was suddenly “that woman.” Guess Mother was still making some serious progress.

  “Humph. I’ll go and see about it.” Mother hurried out the door with her cane dragging behind her.

  When Camille and I were alone in the solarium I asked, “So, how are you and Mother doing together?”

  “Not bad actually.”

  “Mother is trying hard. I’ve never seen anything like it. Ever. It would give me the creeps if I didn’t love it so much.”

  Camille laughed. “Yes, I know. It’s so sweet, sometimes I find myself getting all misty-eyed. And I don’t generally cry, but lately everything seems to bring on the waterworks.”

  “You’ve been through a lot.” I made little circles on her back. “If you need to cry, let it out. Take your time. I heard Mother say that she hopes you’ll live here for good.”

  “Yes, she’s told me that, but I don’t want to impose.”

  “You wouldn’t be. There’s a whole other wing of the house that never gets used for anything. It would be nice to have a little life and laughter back in this huge empty place.”

  “Well, when you both put it that way … maybe.” Camille looked up at me. “I called the grocery store where I worked and told them I wasn’t sure when I was coming back, if ever. They were fine with it. I liked the people, but it’s not like I had a big career future there.”

  I leaned down and looped my arms around her neck. “We’re all hoping you’ll call America your home. You are a citizen here, after all.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  “We’ll just hug that nomadic lifestyle right out of you.” I gave her quilt a pat and chuckled. “Say, look at us. We’re both wearing floral blouses. We blend right in with Mother’s solarium.”

  “I noticed.”

  “And from the looks of it, Mother has some caregiving instincts beyond just taking care of flowers.”

  “Although the mossy drinks and bark cookies are really giving my gag reflex a workout.”

  I laughed.

  Camille pulled the hibiscus from her hair and twirled it in her fingers. “This morning Iris said she only had two flowers that mattered to her now … her Lily and her Camille Violet. Yeah.”

  I grinned.

  “I missed my mother terribly when she died. I was so young, and you know I didn’t get much of any fathering. So, this does feel good for a change, this intense mothering … even though Iris’s change of heart came at a great cost.”

  “Yes, it did.” A great cost indeed.

  Camille said nothing for a while, so I milled around the solarium.

  I fingered a long-stemmed rose, bent it toward me, and took a whiff of its heady fragrance. The solarium was friendlier, more than I ever remembered it, since now it was being used for pleasure rather than experiments. “I’ll be glad for someone else to be in this house besides that miserable Dragan woman. It’s obvious that she’s no real friend to Mother, and I worry that Mother is being taken advantage of.”

  “We’ll just have to convince Iris.”

  “By the way, there’s something I wanted to ask you. When you were in the hospital, Mother told a story of her youth, her past, that explained a lot of whys when it came to your—”

  “Sorry to interrupt you, but I already know what you’re going to ask me.” Camille gave me a sheepish grin. “I heard the whole thing.”

  “So, you weren’t really asleep
?”

  “I was drifty from the meds, but I heard it all.”

  “Well, maybe that helps us both to know. Like Mother said, it doesn’t excuse her actions, but it helps us to understand.”

  “It did help, but I had a pretty dreary night when I first came here. I kept playing that scene over and over in my head … the one when Iris shoved open the door and I fell. I know what happened was an accident, but I couldn’t get it out of my head. If I hadn’t fallen, I’d still have my baby. I mean, we don’t know for sure, because of my age and health, but I had a fighting chance. My baby had a chance to live. So, it was hard not to hate her even with the tragic story she told us in the hospital.”

  Camille ran her hands along the arms of the wheelchair. “But I knew if I didn’t find a way to forgive her, I’d eventually end up like Iris. That is, the way she’d lived her life until now. Let me tell you, it was enough to scare me into forgiveness.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “But some of my anger that first night was inspired by Dragan.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” I crossed my arms. “How do you mean?”

  “Well, after Iris went to bed, Dragan came in to check on me… to ask me if I needed anything before she went home. It sounds thoughtful, but before Dragan left she said she was sorry that my mother could have done such a thing. Bring about the death of her own grandchild.” Camille set the quilt to the side and stood up. “I don’t need this wheelchair, but it makes Iris happy, so …”

  “Dragan actually said that? How awful.”

  “Yes, especially since I’d just come home. And Dragan had this strange twinkle in her eyes as she was saying it. That woman wasn’t sorry for me or the baby at all. She just wanted to stir up trouble to make me angry enough at Iris to leave.”

  “I’m sure that’s true. But you can’t let her win.” I drummed my fingers on a worktable. “I should find Mother right now and demand she fire Dragan, but I don’t think she’d do it. Dragan has some kind of strange hold on her.”

  “But there’s more to my story. About Mother anyway. This morning I felt kind of woozy, so I got up and lost my way a bit, since I’m not used to the house. But I heard someone crying, so I followed the noise to Iris’s bedroom door. I leaned in to listen. It was Iris weeping. I guess she was grieving over what happened. But her tears made me curious. Well, you might as well know … I’m kind of a snoop.” Camille grinned.