“But what if we’re the unsafe ones?”
“Then you’ve got a far larger problem, honey.”
Lloyd appears with a tray of iced tea, lemon and orange slices floating in the pitcher.
Leslie frowns. “Oranges! Lloyd, whoever told you to adulterate iced tea with oranges!”
“My mother did that until the day she died.”
“Well, God rest her soul, then.” Leslie picks up two glasses, hands one to me. “Bottoms up!”
Plain to see, Lloyd has already cracked the code to Leslie. He winks at me, and I thank him. I take a sip as he walks away. “This is pretty good if you ask me.”
Leslie watches until the screen door shuts entirely. “It’s ghastly, truth be told. But I’m not about to speak ill of the dead. Not at my age, anyway.”
“Seems to me you’ve settled down, haven’t you?”
Leslie wrinkles her nose. “I was a handful, certainly. Daddy relied on me quite a bit, Mother being the glorious drunk she was.”
Mercy!
The dame waves it aside. “But I’m too old to worry about a woman like my mama. She’s been dead too many years to lay the blame about much at her feet anymore.”
The patio door slides open. Lark steps out. “Look!”
Leslie actually hops to her feet. “Goodness gracious, Larkspur. I don’t . . . quite know what to say!”
“Isn’t it pretty?”
In actuality, Lark looks like Cleopatra via shrink-ray. Did she really think straightening all that hair would make it lie flat and shiny?
Lark turns like a little girl in a swingy dress. “What do you think, Heather? Isn’t it cute?”
“Well, it’s certainly—”
“Holy mackerel, Miss Lark! What did you do to your hair?” Will emerges with a platter of raw salmon in one hand and tongs in the other.
Lark folds into laughter, then does the ninety-degree-angle Egyptian dance.
“Isn’t it horrible?” Lark cries. “What was Flannery thinking?”
Leslie sits back down. “Thank heavens I didn’t make a mess of that one.”
A tension always seems to run like a fine thread between these two. It’s my one beef with my friend. Doesn’t she realize how wonderful it is to have a parent at all?
* * *
Lloyd grilled enough salmon to feed both of our families for two days. He divided up the spoils into Styrofoam take-home boxes.
“Wherever did you find those?” Leslie asks when he brings them to the table as we wrap up the feast with some hot drinks: tea for Lark and myself, coffee for Leslie and Will. I’ve never before seen Leslie Summerville embarrassed, but for some reason, the sight of those Styrofoam take-out boxes on her magnificent burled walnut dining table deepens the pink in her face.
“Costco, Mrs. Summerville.”
“Oh, that Costco. I hate that place. It’s the ghastliest store I’ve ever been in. In my day, shopping was a personal experience.”
Lark rolls her eyes. “Mother, in your day, everybody came to you.”
“And it was so much nicer that way.”
Thirty minutes later, the two Summerville women wave us on. Leslie grabs Lark’s hand and sags into her a bit as they turn and walk inside the house.
I start the car. “Four years ago they couldn’t stand each other, Will. Now at least they don’t crash on the rocks with every interaction.”
“Maybe they both realize how little time they have left together.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“Can we stop at Towson Art on the way home?” he asks.
“Sure.” I take a right onto Charles Street. “I can’t imagine having wealth like that.”
“You’d never know Miss Lark was rich.” Will pulls a small sketchpad out of the glove compartment.
“No, not at all.”
“Mrs. Summerville’s a little bit what you’d expect.” Next comes a pencil bag filled with drawing implements, his car bag. “But I like her!” Will rolls down his window a bit and spits his gum out. Dear Lord, please don’t let it fly into someone else’s car. “She’s got great gams for an older gal.”
I turn and look back at him despite my seventy-five-miles-per-hour travel speed. “Great gams?”
“Yep. I just call it like I see it.”
Mercy! He would be fifteen now, wouldn’t he? And she does have some great gams.
Still. “That Lloyd can really cook, though, can’t he?” I jerk the wheel to the left, crossing two lanes to skid into the turn lane for Towson Boulevard at the last second.
Yes, I am that person.
Will draws a bold line with the side of his pencil point and he’s nailed Leslie’s jawline. “Most definitely.”
I love him. As much as I love Jace and even God, I never realized that love like this existed until I had Will, and each year turns it into something so much deeper, I cannot begin to climb down into the well.
Knowing I wanted a dozen, God only blessed me with one. In a kingdom of children He might have given me, He was merciful enough to give me the prince.
* * *
I tell Will to clean his room before he watches TV.
“But you watched TV all the time growing up, Mom! You’ve even said so.”
“I was a child of the ’60s and ’70s. We didn’t know how bad it was for you.”
“Please. I’ll bet you watched at least four hours a day.”
“Definitely. In the morning, after a soft-boiled egg on toast or cold cereal, I watched The Little Rascals with my father; after school I watched reruns of the old Mickey Mouse Club, The Boys of the Western Sea, Speed Racer via The Captain Chesapeake Show, and then Gilligan’s Island came on before dinner.”
“See? It’s hardly fair, Mom.”
“Wait, it gets better. By the time I made it to late elementary, The Brady Bunch came into the afternoon lineup. Then in the evenings, military comedies like Gomer Pyle USMC and Hogan’s Heroes were on. I’d watch them with dessert, usually junket or 1-2-3 Jell-O. My dad always made dessert, believe it or not. He actually was a good cook.”
“What about McHale’s Navy?”
“McHale’s Navy came on Saturdays. I hated McHale’s Navy.”
I still hate McHale’s Navy. Everyone must hate it, surely.
“It is a little stupid.” Will.
Come to think of it, I really didn’t enjoy Gomer Pyle all that much either. I liked Jim Nabors, true, but that Sarge needed an enema or, at the very least, a big old Valium.
Will places his foot on the first of the steps leading upstairs from the kitchen. Yes, we have two staircases. Because I enjoy vacuuming steps so gosh darn much. The thought of that housekeeper returns.
“So what did Mrs. Summerville’s husband do? What’s that foundation you guys are always talking about?”
“He was a great humanitarian.”
“In other words, he put his money where his mouth was?”
“Pretty much.”
“Cool.”
“Are you going to go back sometime to that hotel you and Dad found?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“I’d like to go if you do.”
And he’s gone. Will doesn’t hang around for the pleasantries.
I decide to look up the Summerville Foundation online instead of just taking Lark’s and NPR’s word for it that it exists. An easy Google.
“Dedicated to bettering the human condition.”
Yeah, I’m all for that. Who isn’t?
But there’s enough of that distrusting evangelical church lady in me that suspects any organization that uses such words. Are they . . . liberal?
I click away down the menu sidebar, suddenly privy to all sorts of poverty issues, wrongful imprisonment, torture, human trafficking, medical experimentation on street children.
Female genital mutilation and honor killing or mutilation by throwing acid.
And there’s more.
Rape camps in California. Dear Lord, please. Some of these girls are
only seven!
I shut my laptop.
And it had been such a nice day.
How does Lark do it? Day after day after day?
Well, her daughter’s grown, for one thing. She’s from money and has no financial concerns, for another. Lark doesn’t live in the real world.
* * *
I wake Jace up in the middle of the night.
“You okay, Hezz?”
“I’m having a personal crisis. I think so, anyway.”
“What is it, hon?”
“I saw Lark today and looked at the Summerville Foundation website. Lark does a lot to fight injustice, and I’m sitting here wondering how she does it.”
“How do you think she does?” He’s going to drift back at any second. I can tell.
“Her faith is very simple, I can tell you that.”
His voice emerges thick. “Maybe because she’s God’s answer and she realizes that He has a plan for all these horrors, a plan of redemption and that He uses people to carry it out.”
Maybe.
I focus on the lace edging of my pillowcase, such as I can see it in the darkness of the room.
“I’ve battled with God for years over the fact that if He is good, why do some children grow up without love, abused every day? Why do they pass it on when they know how bad it feels? Why are seven-year-old girls servicing dozens of men every day? And why do some of them, having lived such horrors, never even grow up at all, but are snuffed out before love has come?”
The snore begins. But I am not finished.
“I say I’ve battled,” talking to the pillowcase. “I haven’t really. I’ve only skirted around the issues because I’m scared that God will ask more of me than I feel like giving. Not so much time—I’m used to not having time. But my life, my comfort.”
I look at my husband sleeping peacefully, a man strong in his faith who isn’t cracked with fissures of doubt like I am, and I realize these are questions I must answer on my own. And I remember my father, a man who took a little girl without a mother and gave her the best childhood he could. He was my answer to the hand I was dealt.
FIVE
This morning I found I just couldn’t stand my towels. So mismatched. Pretty, yes, but all those patterns and trims, everything from ribbons to ball fringe, unnerve me every time I open up the linen closets. I threw out everything that wasn’t white. Well, actually, I packed it up for Goodwill.
All white towels. Peaceful, easy, uniform. Simple.
The good feeling lasted exactly nine minutes until I thought about the Summerville Foundation all over again. And I’ll need to stop by the Linen Loft during swim team and fill in the gaps my purging left behind.
And I still haven’t written that check to the Hotel.
So to cheer myself up, I bake a cake. Will took some misdelivered mail next door earlier in the day, and Jolly invited him for Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes—English peas from the garden too. Jace is working late, so I’m going straight for the dessert.
Pride may not be becoming, but I make the best cakes most people have ever eaten. No hunch on my part, this, because they tell me all the time. Why mine turn out so well using the same recipes as anybody else, however, is a topic for Unsolved Mysteries. Jace says I have “the gift of cake.” Maybe he’s right about that. It does seem a smidge supernatural, and they do look professional despite what Carmen thinks.
Sitting up in bed against the mound of pillows I bought from some ridiculous catalog, the same pillows that enable me to make the bed in five minutes as opposed to one, I dig into a slice of triple mocha cream cheese torte. Mercy, but this one turned out smoother than Lauren Bacall’s voice. Cream cheese comforts your tongue like nothing else can. A cup of decaf coffee rests on my nightstand, the last rays of sunlight lying across the walnut surface. Can’t do tea with chocolate.
When faced with the fact that seven-year-old Mexican girls are ending up in rape camps in Southern California, this all feels just a bit silly, not to mention full of denial, not to mention, and dare I say it to myself, downright sinful.
I set the cake aside and try to picture that little Mexican girl in the video clip online, try to remember Will at that age and the girls in his class. And as the tears begin to collect like salty mist, the phone rings.
The Mighty and All-Powerful Phone!
Its shrill alarm shatters the sun and the sweat and the tears. I may just be having a real moment with the Holy Spirit here, and what do I do?
“Hello?”
“Hi, Heather. It’s Carmen.”
“Hey, Carmen.”
“Are you all right?”
I take a sip of decaf. “Oh yeah. Just allergies.”
“Seems to be the worst season yet for allergies. And you know what they say about Maryland.”
Everybody dubs her state as the worst allergy state in the U.S.
“Listen, Heather. I know you’re really busy these days, so I went ahead and ordered professional bakery cakes for the welcome dinner for the new ninth graders and their families. Remember that new family that enrolled their child last year that owns that new bakery on Stevenson Lane? I thought we’d throw a nod their way, get them involved.”
I pick at the Battenburg edging of my sheet. “Ah, they’re doing it for free?”
“No. But they did offer a 10 percent discount.” She clears her throat.
Okay, some things really are just funny.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she says.
“Of course not!” Of course so! My cake tastes better, I love doing it, and it’s free. What is she thinking?
“They’re delighted to help, of course,” she says.
Help? No. It’s a sale.
“I’m sure they are.”
“Oh, good. I’m glad you’re not offended.”
“No. You know me, Carmen. Just glad to help out.”
It’s like the powder room to-do never happened! Or is this retribution?
My mask is pretty much superglued to my face right now. Mercy! I feel like I’m at church!
“I figured you’d be fine.”
Just a thought, Carmen. Maybe a quick run-by first would have better served the overall grand scheme of your purposes. “Listen, Jace is due any minute. He had an emergency surgery this evening. I’d better go.”
“Oh, sure. Thanks, Heather.”
So I lounge here in my six-hundred-count Egyptian cotton sheets, look at my cake, and think about flour and eggs, cream cheese and chocolate, and it pretty much comes up short when compared to the doings of people like James Summerville, who not only wrote checks but rolled up his sleeves and dug ditches and spirited endangered human beings away in the night with no thought for his own safety. The stories Lark tells.
I call Lark.
“Hi, Heather!”
“Thanks for yesterday. It was really great.”
“Mother loves it when you guys come. She feels a little useless in her dotage.”
I bark out a laugh. “That woman in her dotage? What a crack-up. Hey, where are you going to church on Sunday?”
“I’ve been going to this small Catholic church. St. Peter Claver. I take a cab.” Defiance weighs down her words.
“So are you jutting your chin out over the cab drive or the Catholicism?”
“Please. I was the organist at a Catholic church for years.”
“The cab ride? Oh, Lark! Come on.”
“Easy for you to say. You just get in your car and drive like a bat out of . . . you know where, Heather. And I have to fight to even get one foot out the door. Of course I’m defensive.”
Lark lives inside her anxiety like other people would live inside their underwear if it were made of fiberglass insulation but somehow can’t imagine wearing anything else.
“How about if I drive down and we go in the cab together?”
“Shoot, if you’re going to drive all the way down here, you might as well just drive. I’m defensive, not stupid.”
“What time
should I be there?”
“Eight forty-five. Mass starts at nine thirty.”
“Okay. I’ll pick you up then.”
“Why don’t you want to go to your church?”
“We left a year ago, Lark. Too big, too busy, a lot of activity but not a lot of Jesus.”
“How come you didn’t tell me?”
“I’m still processing.”
“Oh gosh, Heather, that sounds so jargony. Okay. I’ll see you when you get here.” And she clicks off.
When Lark’s done talking, she’s done.
I need to take a lesson from her.
SIX
My tea is pretty much fabulous. I normally go for spare, but today I started thinking about Gary and Mary and drizzled in I don’t know how much honey.
“So what do you think?” I ask Lark. “Do you think I should take Will out of that school?”
“Beats me.” Lark, looking out the car window, sips on the tea I brought her. To say her hair is downright massive this morning would be like saying Billy Graham did a little preaching. “I’d just start praying that something bad happens to Ronnie Legermin.”
“Oh, Lark!”
“Seriously, though, Heather. Will is so gifted in art. What does that school have to offer him?”
“Not a whole lot.”
“You might want to check out Baltimore’s School of the Arts. I would have killed to go somewhere like that.”
“It might give him an in when he applies to Maryland Institute.”
“What about you? You know, I have no idea what your college major was, Heather.”
“I didn’t go to college.”
Her brows raise, and I’d love to pluck those hamsters. “Really?”
“Why’s that so surprising?”
“Well, you seem so, I don’t know, prep school like.”
“Nope, Joppa Road gal born to and raised by a plumber. I’m a trained stylist. I was pretty good. I was going to major in business and open my own place someday, but with Jace and medical school, I found myself on a different path. I upped my hours in the salon instead of going to college.” I pause for effect. “I sold Mary Kay, too.”
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