The Scent of Lilacs

by Ann H. Gabhart

  Now Jocie’s cheeks went hot. “I didn’t exactly say that.” “Well, you can if that’s what you think,” Leigh said. “Come on. Let’s go sit at the table while you tell me what you think. And just so you’ll know, I’m the type of person who’d rather hear the truth straight out than to have somebody lie to me to keep from hurting my feelings.”

  Leigh pulled out a chair at the table for Jocie and then sat down across from her and waited.

  “I wouldn’t do that. I nearly always tell the truth,” Jocie said as she sat down.

  “Good, now we’re getting somewhere.” Leigh drummed her fingers on the table while staring at the wall over the top of Jocie’s head before she said, “Surely your dad has had a girlfriend or two since your mother left. That’s been forever ago, before I even came to Hollyhill.”

  “If he has, he never let me know about it.”

  “Really? No other woman has ever been after him?”

  “Gee, I don’t know.” Jocie scooted the sunflower dish towel over in front of her and began tracing the petals with her finger. “I didn’t know you were till Wes told me.”

  Leigh laughed. “I guess I’ve been too obvious, but I thought if I could get your dad to notice me, he might think going on a date was fun.”

  “I don’t think Dad worries too much about having fun.”

  “You don’t worry about having fun. You just have it.”

  “I guess,” Jocie said.

  Leigh broke off a piece of a chocolate chip cookie but didn’t put it in her mouth. “Well, if he doesn’t think about having fun, what does he do?”

  “Work. Pray. Preach. Visit the sick.”

  “Surely he does something just for fun?” She picked a chocolate chip out of the cookie and put it in her mouth. “Read?”

  “Mostly the Bible or other newspapers or magazines. For the Banner or for church.”

  “Does he like to take walks?”

  “Yeah. Early in the morning when he’s praying about something.”

  “Then he probably wouldn’t want company. TV?”

  “We have a TV, but it doesn’t come in too good. Dad says we need a real antenna instead of just the rabbit ears on top of the set.”

  “Okay.” Leigh studied the cookie and then picked out another chocolate chip. “Baseball?”

  “He takes pictures of the kids playing Little League. That’s sort of fun.”

  “I could watch little kids playing baseball,” Leigh said. “But he’d be down on the field taking pictures, and I’d be on the sidelines looking like a mom who forgot to bring her kid. Not much of a date. Anything else he does for fun?”

  Jocie thought about it. “He plays horseshoes with the men at church picnics, and they talk about going fishing.”

  “I’m horrible at horseshoes, and I hate fishing. Nasty, slimy fish.” Leigh shuddered.

  “Yeah, when I have to go, I just don’t bait my hook.”

  “But that’s the problem. I am trying to bait my hook and I can’t think what bait might work. Music?”

  “Not Elvis. We saw him once on Ed Sullivan, and Dad just thought he was funny. Of course, the screen was pretty snowy.”

  “At least he thought something was funny.”

  “Dad thinks lots of things are funny,” Jocie said. “He’d probably think this was funny.”

  “This?”

  “Us talking about him. He laughs a lot. He says God wants us to be happy.”

  “Is he happy?”

  “I guess so. I don’t know. He’s got a lot on his mind right now with a new church and the paper and Tabitha coming home and Aunt Love going a little more bananas every day and trying to keep me out of trouble.”

  “Do you get into trouble often?” Leigh pulled the last chocolate chip out of the cookie and popped it into her mouth before she pushed the crumbs away from her.

  “I try not to, but I have this bad habit of talking too much. I’m probably talking too much right now.”

  “I know I am. But your dad is just so nice, and he’s not all that much older than me. I’m thirty-two and what’s he? Forty?”

  “Forty-four.” Jocie bit off a piece of cookie. She hadn’t tasted anything as yummy since the last dinner on the grounds at church. Maybe Wes was right and cooking was something important to consider in a stepmother.

  “Well, that’s still not so bad. I don’t have to listen to Elvis.” She pulled her shoulder-length hair back and twisted it into a bun on the back of her neck. “I could start wearing my hair like this and get some glasses. I may need some anyway. I have to squint my eyes to make out the small print.”

  Jocie laughed. “I don’t think trying to look like Zella or Aunt Love will do the trick.”

  “Oh well.” Leigh dropped her hair back onto her shoulders. The timer went off, and Leigh showed Jocie how to stick a toothpick down in the middle of the cake to see if it was done. When the toothpick came out clean, Leigh turned the cake layers out onto a cooling rack. “We’ll give it a few minutes to cool and then make the icing.”

  “Can we go listen to some more records while we’re waiting?” Jocie asked.

  “Sure.”

  Jocie picked out some songs she’d never heard before and put them on the player. “I guess all songs are about somebody loving somebody or not. Even the church songs are about loving God or other people or God loving us.”

  “Love, it’s what makes the world go round.” Leigh sat on a cushion on the floor in front of the fan. “How about you? Have you ever had a boyfriend?”

  Jocie made a face as she plopped down on the floor beside Leigh. She leaned back against the couch and said, “I don’t like boys.”

  “I used to say that. All the way through high school I figured I was too fat for any of the boys to like me. Not that you’d ever have that problem. Being too fat, I mean. So I just said I didn’t like them. The only date I had was with my cousin Kenny to the senior prom, and that was just because my mother nearly took to her bed when I said I wasn’t going. She wanted to see me all decked out in a prom dress. She talked me into asking Kenny to go with me. He’s a year older than me and didn’t go to my high school, so I thought it might work. But you can’t really date a cousin. It was awful.”

  “Why?”

  “We just sat there drinking punch till we were about to float while all the couples were cuddling up on the dance floor. I was home by ten.”

  “You’ve surely had a boyfriend since then?”

  “Nope. Half the kids in my class got married the summer we got out of school, and the rest of them went off somewhere looking for fresh faces. I thought about going off to college, but we didn’t really have the money, and besides, I was chicken. So I got a job as a secretary in a transport business over in Grundy. Some of the truck drivers were nice, but every one was married. After a couple of years, I came here for a change of scenery, and it’s just as bad here as it was back in Grundy. Maybe worse. All the good guys are married. Except, of course, for your dad. But him being single doesn’t do me much good if he’s not interested.”

  “Maybe he’ll get interested. Wes says he should. That he needs to find somebody.”

  “Wes asked me to take a ride on his motorcycle. Maybe I should make eyes at him.”

  “He’d probably notice,” Jocie said with a laugh. “And riding the motorcycle is fun.”

  “Really? I think I’d be scared silly.”

  “What do you do for fun?” Jocie asked. “Besides cook.”

  “Read. I’ve read nearly everything Wes has donated to the library. That man is in some strange book clubs. And I like to dance and listen to music.”

  “Some churches think dancing is sinful.”

  “How about your dad? Does he?”

  “I’ve never heard him say so if he does.”

  “That’s encouraging.”

  Jocie didn’t think anything she’d said was encouraging for a romance between her father and Leigh, but she didn’t say so. Instead she changed the subject. “Ma
ybe we should make the frosting. I need to get home before dark.”

  The icing was easy, just a matter of mixing butter, powdered sugar, cocoa, and milk in the top of a double boiler and then using their beating muscles some more. Leigh put in extra cocoa, and when they smeared the icing on the cake, it hardened into a nice glistening dark-brown finish. Then Leigh made bright yellow icing and showed Jocie how to use her metal decorating tips to write “Happy birthday, Tabitha” and push out a ribbon of yellow around the edge of the layers.

  “I hope it tastes as good as it looks,” Jocie said as she licked yellow icing off her fingers.

  “Hardly anything ever does. The cakes that usually taste the best are the ones that look the worst. I dropped a jam cake one time getting it out of the oven. I just scraped it up off the floor and put it on saucers and drizzled caramel over the top. Best cake I ever ate.”

  “You’re funny, Leigh.”

  “Tell your dad that and that I’m way older than I look.”

  “But you’re not.”

  “Oh shoot. And I thought I looked sixteen.”

  “You might to Dad.”

  “Then see, you wouldn’t be lying.”

  The air was thickening into night as Jocie pedaled her bike through town. She thought about stopping at the Banner and getting Wes to take her home but decided if she pedaled fast she’d skid into her lane a few minutes before full darkness fell. It was a funny thing about night, she thought as she passed houses with lights shining out every window. Outside it was plenty light, but inside looking out it was dark already.

  If her dad had noticed she wasn’t home, he might be worried. But she’d told him where she was going. Maybe if he got worried enough, he’d call Leigh to see if she was still there. Leigh might like that, and Jocie owed her for all the help with the cake. Jocie stopped pedaling as fast.

  Once she got out of town, she had the road to herself. She glided in and out of the deepening shadows of the trees. The hum of her tires on the blacktop blended with the crickets and katydids. Fingers of darkness crept up toward her from the sides of the road, and a shiver ran down her back. She began to pedal faster again.

  When she was just a little girl, she’d cry out when she opened her eyes on a moonless or cloudy night and could see nothing but black. Her father would come out of the darkness to sit with her, but he never turned on a light. He’d said there had been times when he worried about the dark and that’s when he reminded himself that God made the night as well as the day and that there was no dark so deep that Jocie couldn’t still see God if she tried.

  Jocie used to lie awake and stare up at the blackness after her father left to go back to his bed. The dark air would pull together and make circles in front of her eyes. She’d stare and stare trying to make the circles into a face, but she never could. Her father told her she didn’t have to see a visible face, that God could be just a presence, just a feeling that everything was going to be all right.

  And then Jocie would hear her father’s step in the hallway or hear him snoring in his bedroom and she’d be asleep in a minute.

  It was full dark when Jocie turned her bike into the lane that led up to the house. The porch light was on, so she had been missed. With a yelp of welcome, Zeb came running at the first crunch of her bicycle tires on the gravel lane. He ran alongside her bike to the garage where her father was leaning against the trunk of the car.

  “I was just fixing to come hunt you,” he said, but he didn’t sound mad or anything.

  “Sorry I’m late. It takes longer than I thought to make a birthday cake. You didn’t say anything to Tabitha, did you?”

  “No, she hasn’t got a clue what’s going on. I think she’s forgotten it’s her birthday tomorrow.”

  “It’s okay that I asked Leigh and Zella, isn’t it?” Jocie leaned her bike against the edge of the garage under the eave. The dew had already fallen, and the toes of her shoes were wet. “I mean, I couldn’t very well ask Leigh to bring the cake and just deliver it after she helped me make it and everything without asking her to stay to eat a piece. And Zella sort of invited herself.”

  “I’m sure Tabitha will enjoy seeing Zella again and meeting Leigh.” He was quiet for a minute before he said, “What’d you think about Leigh?”

  Jocie tried to see her father’s face, but the shadows were too deep. “She’s a good cook,” she said and then decided that wasn’t fair to Leigh, who’d supplied everything she’d needed to make Tabitha a great cake. So she added, “Actually, she’s funny.” That was what Leigh had asked her to tell her father.

  “Funny?”

  “Yeah. And not all that young. She may have to get glasses soon.” Jocie leaned over to rub Zeb’s ears. The dog’s teeth glistened in the moonlight as he grinned at her. “I’m so glad God sent me a dog.”

  “You’re the one who’s funny.” Her father put his hand on her shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go see if Aunt Love saved you any cabbage casserole.”

  Jocie held back a groan. “You know, Dad, I’m not very hungry. I must have eaten too much chocolate frosting.”

  “Well, there may be a baked potato left over too. That might go better with chocolate frosting.”

  Together they climbed up the porch steps. “I hope Tabitha still likes chocolate,” Jocie said.

  “She will,” her father said, but he didn’t sound all that sure. He’d said just last week that California changed people. California chocolate might taste different.

  David was up early the next morning. He had praying to do. Bible school was only a couple of weeks away at Mt. Pleasant, and they were still two or three helpers short, even after Ogden Martin’s wife had finally agreed to teach.

  The Martins were still hoping David would disappear. He hadn’t gotten an inch closer to convincing Ogden Martin they could work together for the Lord. The man had sat like a stone through the deacons’ meeting after church last Sunday and hadn’t said so much as an amen during their season of prayer to close out the meeting.

  Of course, the deacon had had a bad morning. A couple of renegade wasps had dive-bombed the poor man while he was taking up the offering. Ogden had swiped at the wasps with the offering plate, sending dollar bills and checks flying in the breeze coming in the open windows. Quarters, nickels, and pennies had hit the wooden floor and rolled for the corners. A couple of boys had given chase under the pews, and laughter had broken out all over the church until the only person not smiling was Ogden himself. Ogden’s ears had gone pink as he replaced the felt lining in the bottom of the empty offering plate.

  Then, with as much dignity as he could muster, Ogden had plucked a five-dollar bill out of old Mrs. Ramsey’s hair and passed the plate around to those who’d snagged the other checks and bills. He’d had to wait for the two boys to crawl out from under the pews with the change before he could take the plate back up to the front. By the time he got back to his seat by his wife, the whole top of his bald head was pink.

  All through the sermon, Ogden had glared at David as if he personally had sent the wasps to attack the man. After the deacons’ meeting, David had caught up with Ogden before he got to his car, but Ogden wasn’t about to forgive the wasps or David. He’d told David in no uncertain terms that there were some things that weren’t a bit funny and as preacher it was David’s duty to maintain a sense of decorum and reverence in the worship place. And by the way, what had he done about Sadie White?

  “I’m not sure what you mean, Ogden. Sadie is looking forward to helping with the refreshments at Bible school. She told me last week she’d been doing that for over forty years and she’d never yet met a child she didn’t like.” David had kept his smile steady. Sometimes he wanted to just grab people by the shoulders and give them a good shake until they realized what was really important.

  Ogden had frowned. “Who doesn’t like kids? But the wife says Sadie’s getting so senile that she can’t remember half the time whether she put sugar in the drinks or not. Have you ever drank grape drink w
ith no sugar, preacher? Lela says it’ll make the mouth pucker.”

  “Well, tell Lela we’ll try to work out something to stop the pucker mouth.” That had made Ogden’s frown deepen, so David had rushed on. “And tell her I really appreciate her volunteering to work with the juniors. That’s a lively bunch to teach sometimes.”

  “Lela’s always worked in Bible school, preacher. She’s not doing it because you asked, but for the Lord.”

  “And the Lord will reward her,” David had said. Even that had seemed to insult Ogden, who had hurried off to his car, where his wife and children waited.

  David had been pastor at enough churches to know there were some people you couldn’t please even if you did backflips. Maybe the problem was that David wasn’t very good at backflips, and there was no way he was going to do any kind of flip about Miss Sadie. The fact was, it didn’t seem like all that much of a problem to David. Just taste the drink and then dump in some sugar when Miss Sadie turned her back. If he had to do it himself, he would. For sure, he wasn’t going to be the one to end a forty-plus-year run of loving kids.

  David had never been good at replacing people in church jobs, or anywhere as far as that went. Look at Zella. And it would probably be easier to get her out from behind her desk than it would be to get Miss Sadie out from behind the church kitchen counter.

  Look at Adrienne. She’d been gone for years, and he hadn’t even thought about looking around for a replacement. At least not until Wes had started needling him about Leigh.

  David climbed through the hole in the rock fence and walked through the apple trees. He picked up one of the June apples that were beginning to fall and rubbed it off on his shirt. It was still so tart it set his teeth on edge, but he kept eating around the bruises as he went through his prayer routine in the apple trees. As he passed each tree, he repeated one of the Beatitudes and prayed for someone on his prayer list.

  “ ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ Dear God, please bless and protect Hazel Warren as she goes to the doctor this week. ‘Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.’ Watch over James Perry as he continues to grieve the death of his wife.”