The Gardens of Covington

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The Gardens of Covington Page 17

by Joan A. Medlicott


  “Just to a movie, lunch, dinner, the theater.” Amelia turned exasperated eyes to Hannah. “Grace understands. I wish you did.”

  “Understand what? You behave like a foolish schoolgirl the second Lance’s car pulls into our drive.”

  Amelia’s jaw tightened. Hannah was neither her mother nor a jail warden. She wouldn’t let Hannah intimidate her. “He makes me feel young. It’s flattering to be told you’re charming, interesting. . . .” She looked at her hands. “Pretty. It’s been a long time, and besides,” she said, with a toss of the head, “I’m having fun.” She looked Hannah up and down. “And where are you going?”

  Bundled in a dark green down jacket and wearing wool pants and high boots, Hannah looked as if she were about to climb a mountain. “To meet with a woman named Karla Margolin,” she replied.

  “Dressed like that?”

  “It’s cold out there. Not going above thirty-five today.”

  “Who’s Karla Margolin?”

  “An environmentalist. Woman who’s made the French Broad River her cause. She’s working to clean up the river and turn the area around it into green space and parks.”

  Amelia snorted. “There’s nothing down there but old factories and junkyards.”

  “Wrong. They’ve created a lovely park over on the west side of the river off of Amboy Road. It takes a person with fire in her soul to change things. Karla Margolin’s got that fire.”

  “And I suppose you think you do.”

  The crunch of tires on the gravel driveway sent Hannah and Amelia to the window. “Ah, there’s Wayne,” Hannah said.

  Amelia didn’t care.

  Hannah hurried to the door.

  Wayne wore creased and dusty knee-high boots. Below the sleeves of his blue flannel shirt, winter underwear hugged his arms and wrists. A worn leather jacket hung loose about his shoulders. “I’m gonna get onto Anson’s up high, through Lund’s. Probably take me all day,” he said.

  “Grace packed you a lunch and cookies, lots of them, and drinks.” Hannah handed him a brown paper bag.

  Wayne took the bag she held out to him. “Appreciate that. I dropped Old Man at Miss Lurina’s. They been seein’ a lot of one another since the party over at the tearoom.” He shrugged. “Ain’t many of their generation left. Guess they talk about old times.”

  Hannah pulled a red knit hat over her hair and worked her hands into soft blue gloves. Her clothes were often mismatched. She lacked style in clothes. She knew that, and didn’t care. “Bye, Amelia. See you later.”

  At that moment, Grace ambled down the stairs just as the phone rang. Lance would be late. Relief flooded Amelia. I can talk with Grace alone, she thought.

  Sometimes crying, sometimes laughing, brows furrowed, eyes intense, Amelia shared with Grace her fears of losing Lance, and of losing Mike. “Mike’s on his way over here. What shall I tell him?”

  “What can you tell him? You’ve known Lance a few months, and look what’s happened to your photography, and your relationships with your friends. Make time for your work and for Mike, I’d say.”

  “Mike hates Lance and vice versa. It was awful last night. Lance came to the gallery. I was to have dinner with Mike. What could I do? I couldn’t ask Lance to join Mike and I, so I asked Mike to forgive me and went with Lance. I felt like such a heel, Grace. The anger and disappointment in Mike’s eyes, and the resignation.” She shivered. “That was the worst.”

  “What troubles me in all this,” Grace said, “is you throwing away a friendship that’s important to you. Lance can’t be jealous of Mike. It makes me wonder who’s next on Lance’s list. Hannah, me?”

  Amelia’s head ached. Her stomach knotted. She rubbed her temples. Lance seemed so self-assured. Didn’t anyone understand that he needed her?

  “What did Lance think of the work you chose for the gallery?” Grace asked.

  Amelia studied her fingernails.” He didn’t really look at them.” She hastened to add, “He was in a hurry. It was late.”

  “I see.”

  Quiet enveloped the room, only to be broken by the sound of heavy vehicles, rudely intrusive as they roared by on Cove Road. The house seemed to shiver. Amelia started. Somewhere a dog barked, and then another. Then the house grew still again. Amelia spoke. “Last night, when I came home, I heard you and Hannah talking about me and Lance.”

  “I’m sorry you heard. We worry about you, Amelia. What’s going on with Lance seems to be a repeat of your relationship with Thomas.”

  Amelia bridled. “I don’t care what either of you think. Lance excites me. He makes me feel like a real woman.” Amelia’s face seemed to crumble, showing the ravages of a sleepless night, shadows beneath her eyes, lips turned down, trembling. Her eyes felt gritty. She rubbed them with balled fists. “Hannah thinks I’m a silly fool.”

  “Hannah worries that Lance is manipulating you.” Grace stood up, moved to the sink, and washed sticky jam she had smeared on toast off her hands.

  Amelia’s shoulders slumped. “Lance is like Thomas, and he’s not. Thomas was all business, and not at all romantic. He worried all the time about appearances, how things looked, what other people thought of him, of me.” Amelia’s eyes suddenly lit up. “Lance doesn’t give a hoot what anyone thinks. Oh, Grace, I feel so alive when Lance touches me, when we dance. Isn’t it like that for you with Bob?”

  “Yes, to some extent, but with a quieter passion.”

  “I can see the way you two are together. Don’t I deserve that also?”

  Another noisy vehicle rumbled down their road. Grace stifled the urge to peer out the window and stayed focused on Amelia. Drying her hands, she returned to the table. “Of course you do. Have you tried setting parameters with Lance, say you have two nights a week, or two days a week to yourself when he’s in town?”

  “I can’t do that. He needs me.” Amelia averted her eyes.

  “I doubt that Lance needs anyone,” Grace blurted. She cared deeply for Amelia and was increasingly disturbed by her unhappiness when Lance went away, and Amelia’s willingness to forgive everything when he returned. Grace wondered what kind of hold the man had on her friend, and worried that Amelia could be so tunnel-visioned.

  “What does he do when he’s away?” Amelia’s voice cracked; tears gathered behind her lower lids. A sad silence followed, before Amelia collected herself. Then she asked, “Tell me, what’s it like to, you know, be with a man again. It’s been so many years.”

  “You haven’t gone to bed with him?”

  Amelia wished she had never asked the question. She lowered her head into her hands. “Not yet.” She lifted her chin. “But I’m going to.”

  Grace went to Amelia and put her arm about her. “Don’t worry, Amelia. It’ll come naturally. The feelings come back, and it just happens.”

  “You didn’t worry about being older?”

  “Of course I did. I was a mess thinking about it, but when it happened, it was the most natural thing in the world.”

  “You and Bob love one another,” Amelia said.

  “Would you go to bed with someone you didn’t love or who you felt didn’t love you?”

  Amelia wrung her hands. “I don’t know.” No one spoke. Amelia walked to the blue woodstove. Embers, the remains of a fire, glowed. She added kindling. A flame shot up. “I’m cold,” she said, “aren’t you?”

  Grace rubbed her arms rapidly with her hands. “Yes, I am, as a matter of fact. Thanks.”

  “Sometimes,” Amelia confided in a low voice, “I think Lance loves me, sometimes not. He certainly excites me.” Strands of hair hung about her face. Amelia brushed them back as she moved slowly to the table and leaned on it. “More tea, Grace?”

  “That would be nice.”

  A car’s tires stirred the gravel in the driveway. “Mike,” Amelia said distractedly. “Talk to him while I run up and finish making up, will you, Grace?” Amelia headed for the stairs.

  “Hey there,” Grace said. “Where’s the spring in your step
, Mike?”

  “I walk like I feel,” Mike said. “I’m not someone who can put on an act.”

  True enough, starting early in his life, Mike had never been a closet gay, and life had blessed him with unconditional love from a family who recognized early on that he was gay and accepted him. Secure with who he was, Mike was easygoing, creative, and helpful, a loyal friend. He fit right into the surrogate family the ladies had unwittingly put together. Grace believed that if any of them needed him, rain, snow, or shine, Mike would be there, and this, she knew, compounded Amelia’s guilt.

  “She’ll be right down. Sit. Let me get you coffee. You like hazelnut, right?”

  He nodded. His shoulder-length brown ponytail was combed back in a careless manner. Yanking off his jacket and gloves Mike stood holding them as if he were a stranger in the house. “Cold out there,” he muttered.

  “Hang your things in the hall, then come sit with me,” Grace said.

  He needed no further urging, and did as told. Mike had no permanent companion like her Roger had Charles, and Grace prayed that in his occasional affairs Mike was extra careful. Charles strayed from Roger once, only once, and had gotten HIV. That’s all it took, one time. Mike looked terrible, dark under his eyes, his skin pale and dry. He was thinner. He loved Amelia as a sister, and Grace understood how much he depended on Amelia’s companionship and friendship. Now it was being snatched away, and Mike was understandably hurt.

  Bright as sunshine, smiling, wearing yellow, Amelia floated into the kitchen. Makeup almost hid the effects of sleeplessness. “Mike.” She hugged him and kissed his cheek.

  Mike beamed, then his eyes clouded. “Amelia . . .”

  Grace set his coffee on the table, along with a plate of brownies. “I’ll leave you two alone.”

  “Oh, Grace,” Amelia said. “You don’t have to go.”

  “Yes, please stay, Grace,” Mike said. He fixed his hands snugly around the mug of coffee. “Amelia, I understand that you want someone who can give you more than I can, but many married people have business partners, and lives, and friends outside their marriages. There’s no room for me in your life anymore.”

  Amelia wept softly. “I’m sorry, Mike. I do love you. You’re the best friend in the world. There is room for you in my life.”

  He looked deep into her eyes. “Amelia, your work’s suffering.”

  A chill sent rapid fingers flying across her arms and neck. Her work. Her beloved work. He was right. Rush, hustle, dash, that’s how she spent her days when Lance was here, and when he was gone, scrambling to catch up with a million little things. “I’ll work it out,” Amelia said. “I’m going to start saying no to Lance.”

  The phone rang again; Amelia stiffened, then rose to answer it. “He’s coming, Mike. I’ll take care of it. I promise.”

  22

  The Conservation Roller Coaster

  As she drove to Asheville, Hannah reviewed what she had accomplished to date. Phone calls to the national office of the Nature Conservancy in Virginia led to referral to their North Carolina field office in Raleigh, who suggested she contact the North Carolina Department of Environmental and Natural Resources. They in turn directed her to the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program, where, they said, a biologist would explain the protocol for surveying land to identify endangered species. They did supply her with a list of active inventories of threatened sites, already priorities of the state. Days later no biologist had returned her call. A hopeless tangle of red tape and time, more time, probably, than she had, for just yesterday she had seen surveyors’ vans on Cove Road, heading north. If Wayne found a rain it could provide a stay of execution. Karla Margolin, Hannah anticipated, with her years of experience fighting to preserve the river, must have uncovered funding sources that might help Hannah.

  She met Karla Margolin for lunch in a restaurant filled with people who leaned over their tables and spoke in controlled low voices. Karla was a forty-something woman with ash blond hair that came almost to her shoulders. Her eyes were brown, soft, and intelligent, her gaze direct and open. Hannah liked her instantly. “We began in 1987,” Karla explained, “with a planning committee to study and create a plan of action for public uses for the French Broad River’s waterfront. There are,” she said, “one hundred and seventeen miles of river running through four counties. It’s a wonderful river, gentle in places with wide river valleys, narrow in others, rapids, some quite dangerous.”

  “Four counties. I didn’t know that,” Hannah said.

  “It starts in Transylvania County near a town called Rosman and flows north through Brevard, Buncombe, and Madison Counties and into Tennessee. You get strong, at times dangerous, rapids in Madison County where you live, but in some places sections of the river have been used as a dump.”

  Hannah was embarrassed that she had never visited the river. She’d seen it of course at Biltmore Estate flowing wide and clean and gentle along a section of that property. She had seen it on various visits to the town of Marshall, the seat of government for Madison County. The river ran wide there and shallow with boulders visible at low tide. Grace had once suggested a picnic at Hot Springs further down the river, at a place where river-rafting trips began, but they had never done it.

  “How are you funded, if I may ask?” Hannah said.

  “A variety of sources. Unless the project’s put together by the Nature Conservancy or some other state or national organization with clout, and they undertake to write grants and push papers, it takes multi-sources, local, private, government.”

  They fell silent when the waitress brought their salads. Karla smiled across the table at Hannah. “We do a great deal of fund-raising ourselves now. We own several of the buildings, the old cotton mill, and the warehouse studios where our offices are, and we rent space in both to artists and craftspeople.”

  “I’ve heard of events sponsored by River Link, river trips, cleanups, tours.”

  “We’re active and busy,” Karla said. “We offer monthly bus tours of the riverfront. We help prepare wildflower beds. We help monitor water quality, publish a quarterly newsletter called Water Mark. We work closely with many organizations planning fund-raising events: river races, parades, bridge parties, French Broad Cabaret.”

  “I’m impressed,” Hannah said. “I’ve been to the park you built on the west side of the river. It’s quiet and pleasant.”

  “We hope it’ll serve as a model for a series of parks along the length of the French Broad.” Karla’s eyes flashed with enthusiasm. Hannah could tell that ten years had not dampened her passion for this huge undertaking.

  “What’s your dream for this project?” Hannah asked.

  “A wonderful, vital waterfront, with restaurants, clubs, and other entertainment, development on hillsides overlooking River Road, greenways, bike and walking paths, water activities, trips on the river. Chicken Hill,” Karla said. She stopped to sip her iced coffee. “It’s the hill behind the old cotton mill. Four builders have bought it with plans for mixed housing, small and large homes, apartments, restoration of what’s there in some cases.”

  They finished eating and sat chatting for a time. The restaurant emptied. A young waitress apologized for running a carpet sweeper. Finally, Hannah told Karla about Loring Valley, her concerns about flooding and mudslides, and about the developers’ interest in Cove Road, and that Jake Anson was determined to sell his land. “I know he has a right to do what he chooses with his land, but development will destroy the quality of life on Cove Road for the rest of us.”

  “It’s hard to locate just the right source of funds for that sort of thing,” Karla said. “It takes a great deal of time.”

  “Which I haven’t much of.” Hannah rubbed her forehead and sighed. “I’ve contacted the Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy. They work with cooperative landowners. The Land Trust Alliance promotes voluntary land conservation. The Trust for Public Lands has a wonderful mission statement: protect land for the well-being of people, for recreation
and spiritual nourishment. But, again, it works with community groups, and I haven’t got one, or willing landowners, or government agencies that exhibit interest.

  “On the Net I found the National Religious Partnership for the Environment. They’re concerned with advocacy, and with teaching the care of all creation. It made for interesting reading. Catholic Bishops in the Pacific North-west sending a pastoral letter advocating for the Columbia River, “Redwood Rabbis” working to protect the red-woods, evangelical Christians lobbying Newt Gingrich against the rollback of the Endangered Species Act and citing God’s covenant with all living creatures. Turns out they were quite instrumental in saving that piece of legislation.”

  With a heavy heart, Hannah drove back to Covington. Her project differed so from River Link, which was a vital community project. North Carolina abounded with national forests, state forests, and parks making Anson’s land redundant to potential funders.

  Then she thought of the Maxwells and began to wonder if perhaps she could enlist their interest, their help. They were reputed to be the wealthiest landowners on Cove Road. Huge trucks purveyed milk to processing plants from Maxwell’s Dairy Farm three days a week. Several times a month, the fat round rumps of cows crowded into wood-slatted trucks were shipped off to the stockyard. But the most lucrative business the Maxwells operated, according to Harold, was a stud farm, and there were days, when the wind was right, that she, and Amelia, and Grace could hear the calls and laughter coming from the fenced pasture used for this purpose behind the bam. George Maxwell, known as Max, had given Amelia a ride home after her accident in the fog. Amelia said he was pleasant and seemed concerned about her. It was time to visit the Maxwells, maybe they could at least point a direction.

  23

  Bella Maxwell

  Walking briskly, Hannah crossed Cove Road, passed between open iron gates, and proceeded up the winding drive to the Maxwells’ beautifully maintained two-story farmhouse. She climbed the steps to the front porch, which were built with six-inch risers, making them easy to ascend. Spanning the entire front of the first floor and wrapping one side was a wide porch furnished with rocking chairs, tables, and huge clay pots, bare now of greenery. In summer she had seen red geraniums spilling from them. Above, off the second floor, a matching roofed porch ran the length of the house.

 

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