The Gardens of Covington

by Joan A. Medlicott

  “Ready?” he had asked after their first glass of wine. And Amelia had extended her hand to be led out onto the dance floor. To dance with Lance was a dream come true. Thomas had been a decent dancer, but a novice compared to Lance. With his dancing skills, his graceful, elegant manner, his self-assurance, each step executed with finesse, they had been the center of attention.

  Dancing with Lance was like floating on air. Together they were a team, virtuosos of the dance, astounding onlookers with their lithe movements, masterly dips and whirls, and moving effortlessly across the smooth, shining floor.

  Once, long ago, in another lifetime, in another era, she had danced the night away with Thomas in a palatial room at the French Embassy in Morocco. And then the dancing had stopped. On Thomas’s last mission, Korea, 1954, he had been diagnosed with gout. South Korea was bleak, devastated by war, boring. A young captain, Bob Richardson, strikingly attractive in his uniform and not at all boring, had been assigned as their guide. What a shock it was when he had resurfaced with Grace these many years later.

  Suddenly, Lance slammed on the brakes, jarring her. Muttering curses he began to reverse into a newly vacated space a block down from the gallery. She could see Mike standing under the sign, his feet planted firmly, arms akimbo, looking hurt, and here, next to her, was Lance, grim-jawed, his eyes an angry gray. Lance, she had come to realize, did not deal with frustration well.

  “Just let me out, why don’t you?” Amelia started to open the door. “You can still catch up with your friends at the Biltmore House.”

  Half in, half out of the space, Lance slammed on the brakes. “Okay,” he said, ignoring horns blowing.

  20

  Hannah Intervenes

  At the moment that Amelia and Lance left the restaurant, Hannah was presiding over a tuna salad lunch. It takes great courage to face pain directly and with honesty, which is why the conversation during this lunch Hannah had put together dealt with matters of the weather and population. “We’re having an unusually warm winter,” Russell said. “Hardly any snow. I worry about the reservoirs being too low this summer.”

  “Mother Nature’s hardly acting motherly,” Bob said. “She’s capricious, mercurial.”

  “Maybe there’s an innate wisdom in nature,” Hannah said.

  “How so?” Russell asked.

  “Overpopulation will probably destroy this planet, unless Mother Nature takes matters in her own hands and makes certain it doesn’t happen,” Hannah replied.

  “Are you referring to Malthus’s theory?” Russell asked.

  “Yes, Thomas Malthus. In the eighteenth century he projected that population growth would exceed the food supply. Then nature, he believed, would intervene, controlling populations by famine, disease, or war. He’s been accurate historically. Recently we’ve had wars in Yugoslavia, famine in Ethiopia and other places in Africa. For a while, it looked as if we had it licked, what with increases in the food supply due to the use of pesticides, and with birth control, but it’s all gone hay wacky. Too many people.”

  “All this frightening projection,” Grace said, “because of a warm winter in western North Carolina, when a cold one was predicted. Can we talk about something else?” She left the dining room and returned with Tyler’s favorite dessert, a Vienna cake, moist and rich and with colored layers.

  “This is incredible cake, Grace. Do you share recipes?” Emily asked.

  “Recipes are meant to share. I’ll write it down for you.”

  It grew quiet in the room except for the tap tap of Bob’s fingers on the table. Grace squeezed his hand, and the sound of silence returned, broken only when Tyler patted his tummy and pushed his plate away. “Full. Can I go upstairs and play a game on your computer, Aunt Hannah?”

  “Not now, love,” she said. She had seated Tyler between herself and Grace. Hannah took his hand in hers. It was cool and dry and she noted that his fingernails needed cutting. Who took care of such matters in their household? “I’ve asked everyone for lunch today,” she told Tyler, “so we can talk.”

  Tyler squirreled his hand from hers and stared down at the tablecloth. With his fork he raked indentations in the tablecloth. “Nothing to talk about,” he muttered.

  “Yes, there is. Right now, at this table there are three very unhappy people.”

  Tyler stopped raking and looked at her. “Three?”

  “Three. You, your father, and Emily. They’re just as unhappy as you are, Tyler.”

  “Sure. I believe that,” he muttered.

  Russell gave him a “Watch yourself, young man” look.

  “Emily, why don’t you tell Tyler, tell us all, what’s been going on for you?”

  Emily flushed. Her eyes swept over them and stopped at Tyler. “I’m leaving, Tyler. I am going home to Ocala. I know how unhappy you are about your dad and me, and I’m sorrier than you’ll ever know.” Her chin trembled. She swallowed hard and took a moment to gain control. “I wanted you to like me. I just didn’t know how to reach you. I’ve never been around children. I have no brothers or sisters.” She fumbled in her pocket for a tissue and wiped tears from her cheeks. “I love your father, but I can’t marry him. You hate me. I sense you want to throw up every time I come into the room.”

  Tyler made a gesture he had made behind his father’s back many times, for the benefit of Emily and Emily alone. He stuck a finger in his mouth and mimicked gagging.

  Russell’s napkin hit the table, nearly tumbling his glass. Across the table Tyler flinched as if someone had struck him.

  Reaching up, Bob grabbed his son’s arm. “Now, son. Easy. I know you’re angry. That’s why we’re here. Control yourself. Let’s hear Emily out.”

  “Russell, please,” Hannah said. “We’re here to talk, to listen to one another. This is how your son feels. Emily’s hurt. You’re hurting. Emily feels helpless, and perhaps you do also. I know Tyler feels helpless.” She fixed Tyler with kind but firm eyes. “You are not helpless, my boy. Emily’s planning to leave. You have the power to end this relationship between your dad and Emily.” She hesitated then, thinking how precious love was and how easily frayed or lost it was. Her eyes turned to Grace for help.

  Grace’s arm cradled Tyler’s shoulders. She spoke softly. “It’s true, Tyler, love. You are so powerful that you can drive Emily out of your lives. She’s a gentle woman. She’s going to leave, rather than come between you and your father.”

  Tyler stared at Grace, his mouth open. His eyes filled with pain and tears.

  Grace squeezed his hand. “You see, my love, power carries enormous responsibility. Power can hurt, or it can help and heal. It’s how you, or anyone, handles power that’s important.” Grace’s heart pattered. “Do you understand?” Grace lifted Tyler’s tear-stained face to hers, bent, and kissed his cheeks.

  “Mommy’s dead. I don’t have a dad anymore,” Tyler said. His voice was resigned and pained, tears just below the surface.

  “I know.” Grace hugged him gently. “It’s very hard. It’s been hard for your father too.” She wanted to weep for this little boy.

  “No. It’s not. Dad’s found someone to replace Mommy. I don’t matter anymore.” He nodded toward Emily. His voice took on a defensive tone. “Dad’s got no time for me.

  “That’s not true,” Russell said. “You’re my boy. I love you.”

  Tyler stared at his father. “How do I know, when you drive with Emily, that you aren’t holding her hand, or kissing her, and not paying attention to the road? I’ve heard Grandpa tell you to pay attention to the road. You can get in a car crash and die, like Mommy.”

  “Is that what this is all about?” Russell let out a breath. He sank back into his chair. A slight quiver at the comers of his mouth added to the look of pain and confusion in his eyes. It was clear he did not know what to say or do. Emily helped him.

  “And I didn’t do anything right,” Emily said. “I didn’t take time to be with you, take you to the movies, get to know you. I was scared you wouldn’t
like me. I didn’t know how to talk to a boy your age. I thought when your dad and I got to know each other better, I’d feel more relaxed, and could get to know you more easily. By then of course, it was too late. You’d made up your mind about me, and I didn’t know how to bridge the gap.”

  “And I,” Russell said, standing, “did not help.” His voice was soft, now, and his eyes loving as he spoke to Tyler. “I didn’t explain to you, son, what I was feeling. I loved your mother with all my heart. But she’s gone, son.” His voice cracked. “She’s gone.” He lifted his head and cleared his throat. “I never expected to marry again, but then I met Emily. I liked her. I thought you’d like her.” He shrugged. “Well, it’s too late.” He looked at Emily, and the pain in his face was palpable. “She’s leaving, going back to Florida.”

  A long silence followed. Bob jiggled his feet under the table. Grace placed a hand on his leg. The jiggling stopped. Everyone’s attention turned to Tyler, who, in a motion that sent his dessert plate spinning, flung his head into his arms on the table and sobbed and sobbed.

  Russell raced around the table to his son.

  “You don’t miss Mommy,” Tyler managed between sobs. “You never cried for her.”

  Russell reached his son and knelt beside him. A moan issued from his throat. “Oh, God, Tyler, son. I cried. How I cried, at night, alone, scared if you saw me, it would just hurt you more. Thank God your grandpa came to be with us.” He could see it now. In trying to shield his son from his pain, Russell realized that he had created a wall between them, and it had widened with the passing months. He had sent Tyler two messages: don’t cry, and that his dad didn’t miss and long for his mother. He realized, then, how infrequently Tyler cried. Withdrawn, yes, stopped functioning at school, yes, but he had hardly cried. How presumptuous to assume that a child would recover fully from the loss of a mother he loved in just a year or two. And who knew what incident, big or small, could trigger grief, again, and yet again? So immersed in his own grief had he been that when Grace came into the picture, he had abnegated many of his responsibilities for Tyler. Russell knew that he had messed up big time.

  Russell took the boy’s freckled face between his hands and looked deep into the dark, anguished eyes. “I love you, Tyler. With my whole heart, I love you. I never meant to hurt you.” He swooped the child into his arms. Tyler’s arms fastened about his father’s neck, and he clung, sobbing.

  There was not a dry eye at the table. Lines from The Prophet came to Hannah’s mind. Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

  It was close to midnight. Hannah and Grace sat on Grace’s bed in their bathrobes talking about the day, as they often did when they were alone in the house at night, which happened more often lately, with Amelia gone so much and often returning quite late. “Do we ever stop grieving for someone we’ve loved?” Hannah asked. She had confided in Grace about Dan Britton, her great passion, her finest love, found late and lost.

  Grace clasped Hannah’s hand. “No. I don’t think we ever do get over it completely, and things like today surely trigger the memories and open wounds.”

  “Like a powder keg waiting to ignite.”

  It had certainly seemed that way at their dining room table that winter afternoon. The sun seemed also to grieve, for it dove behind compact and clotted cirrus clouds, and the temperature dropped, and within the hour a gentle snow had begun to fall.

  “Good that Amelia wasn’t here. She’d have been a basket case, her daughter, her husband,” Grace said.

  “Gotta be hell. Left with those burn scars. Probably grieves every time she looks in the mirror.” Hannah shifted and straightened her legs, which were cramped under her on the bed. “Your legs go on and on forever, like a stork,” her mother used to mock her. She’d been the tallest girl, taller than many boys right through high school, and had hated her height. But like so much in life, you get used to things, learn to live with them.

  “What’s with Lance?” Grace suddenly asked. “Amelia go off with him and stand up Mike, again?”

  “Yes.” Hannah shook her head. Her lips drew into a thin line. “I don’t like the way Lance controls Amelia, how she thinks, what she wears, everything. Why can’t Amelia deal with a man in her life like you do, Grace? You haven’t dropped me, Amelia, any of your friends. You maintain a balance.”

  “Amelia’s hungered for a man of her own for a long time,” Grace said. “Some women do.”

  “He’s so manipulative. Can’t she see that? Disappears for a week, won’t say where, comes back bearing gifts like that gorgeous amber necklace, and she forgets she’s been angry at him or hurt by him. To me that’s sick.”

  Grace considered this. “She’s vain, that’s just Amelia. Finally getting the attention she’s craved probably muddles her thinking.”

  A thoughtful quiet settled about them, then Hannah said, “She’s walked right back into a situation like she had with Thomas. She’s abandoning her work, Mike, hardly has teatime with us anymore. It’s all about Lance and pleasing Lance.”

  “Amelia’s not stupid. She’s bound to recognize what’s going on, eventually.” But Grace wasn’t sure she really believed that.

  “Optimist,” Hannah said.

  Grace pulled her covers over her feet. “Cold toes all winter.”

  “Rag socks’ll keep your feet warm,” Hannah said. Moments later they said good night, and Hannah left Grace’s room. Neither of them had heard Amelia come upstairs, or realized that she had stood outside of Grace’s room and overheard their conversation.

  21

  Holding On

  Amelia unfastened the amber necklace from about her neck and placed it on her dresser. Then, she pulled a long, flat rosewood box, a gift from Lance, from her top drawer. Inside the box a narrow velvet-lined space lay empty, awaiting the amber necklace. It was as if Lance had made a sketch of the interior of the box, for his gifts. He had to date presented her with a gold charm bracelet with zodiac signs dangling from it, magnificent sterling silver buckles for a pair of plain, black shoes she had bought because he liked them, pearl earrings, a pearl-encrusted pin, a strand of onyx beads. All fit the sections. The box was nearly full. Two empty slots for rings remained. What kind of rings would he give her? Her heart skipped a beat.

  Amelia slipped her feet into her old, worn, comfortable slippers. Every year she bought a new pair of bedroom slippers intending to give away, or throw away, the old ones. Every year she gave away the new ones. She found it impossible to discard her ragged, comfortable bedroom slippers, just as she found it impossible to discard a thread-bare, comfortable chair she never used anymore and had stored in their attic. Impossible to dispose of a chipped, favorite teacup. Impossible to end her relationship with Lance, no matter that at times he made her anxious.

  Although Amelia fussed and complained while he was away, Lance’s reappearance inevitably galvanized her energy and set her quivering with excitement. Always she hoped, dreamed that he had missed her, and was ready to embrace her and their relationship totally. She loved Mike, treasured his friendship, but Lance needed her, she knew it, felt it. Mike and Lance hated one another, and Amelia hadn’t a clue how to weave a bridge she could safely walk between them. Yet she could give up neither man.

  Slowly, Amelia undressed and hung up her clothing. The warm flannel nightgown that Hannah had given her last Christmas hung on a knob inside her closet door. She inserted her arms into the long sleeves of the nightgown, then remembered the conversation she had overheard between Hannah and Grace. Yanking her arms out, Amelia threw the gown on the floor. Deciding not to shower or brush her teeth, she climbed into silk pajamas, slipped into bed, and lay there wide-eyed, her mind racing.

  Once, long ago, speaking about her growing intimacy with Bob, Grace had said, “It seems to me that relationships follow a logical sequence of change. First you meet someone. If you’re both attracted to one another, the dance of courtship begins, revelations take place, intimacy grows, and e
ventually comes commitment.”

  If this was true, then something was wrong in her relationship with Lance. They had met and been attracted, and Lance was decidedly romantic in his courting of her. But revelations were not forthcoming, and although being together was fun and exciting, no deepening intimacy occurred. Someone, Amelia decided, had hurt Lance terribly. She was determined to prove her love by her sweetness, consideration, cooperation, even if his demands on her time sometimes overwhelmed her. Once he knew and trusted her, he would relax and open himself to her. Surely he would not shower her with gifts, court her with such intensity if he did not care deeply, even if he never said, “I love you.”

  There was a positive side to the lack of intimacy, however. Lance never pressured her to go all the way sexually, until recently, and that was fine with Amelia. Famished as she was for the affection of a man, she instinctively resisted his increasingly intense sexual advances, and, suddenly, lying there in the dark, she knew why. With Lance it was one long courtship. By not revealing himself, he froze intimacy. It wasn’t her scars, or her sixty-nine-year-old body that held her back. It was a lack of trust. If she trusted Lance, master of evocative compliments and enticing endearments, Amelia would, long ago, have placed her yearning body, all her senses, in his hands. And then, the other night, Lance had said, “I love the chase, but for how long? We’re not teenagers.” He’s ready to go all the way, Amelia thought. She needed someone to talk to about all this, yet pride barred her from sharing her confusion with Grace. She certainly couldn’t with Hannah or Mike.

  At breakfast the following morning, Hannah said, “Mike called. He’s coming over. Says he needs to talk to you.”

  “I haven’t much time.” Amelia looked anxiously out of the kitchen window. “Lance will be here any minute.”

  Hannah rested her hands on her hips. “Heaven, Amelia. You’ve been out with Lance every day and every night this week.”