“We’re real proud of him,” Bob said. “Didn’t know he had the spunk to do something like that.”
Men, Grace thought, and their heroics. “Tyler could have been killed.”
“But he wasn’t, and he saved the day, remember. The newspapers are going to do a story about it.”
“How’s Emily?”
“Quite shaken. Bruised, but she’ll be fine.”
“We’ll have to do something special for him for Christmas.”
“Just bake Tyler a Vienna cake, and let him eat it all himself. He’d love that.”
But there was so much to celebrate this Christmas. Yes, she would bake Tyler’s favorite cake, and she, and Hannah, and Amelia would plan something for Tyler, something that would express their pride in him, and their gratitude that neither he nor Emily had been seriously injured or killed.
29
Roger and Charles
Grace spoke to Roger and Charles every week, sometimes only a quick hello. It was Charles who updated her on their lives with little notes dashed off in his fine calligraphy: sales were brilliant, doubled in a year, Miranda was a love to work with, Miranda’s younger son, Philip, a great help in the shop during the holidays. Charles sent her an article from their local Sunday paper raving about the Gracious Entertainment Shop. He was sure, he wrote, that her name in the title brought them good luck.
Charles also kept Grace abreast of their health—Roger had a cold, Roger was better, Charles was feeling fine, he and Roger were walking an hour and a half every day—and about their lives. They had bought a lorry, a truck, he explained, when she asked what a lorry was. They had recently entertained at home, and he had prepared her meatballs and prunes. Everyone raved, wanted the recipe. Could he pass it along to friends? Would she write it out for him?
“Of course, I will,” she assured him.
Grace appreciated Charles staying in touch and his willingness to share their lives with her.
Her talks with Roger were more perfunctory and brief. She would tell him all the latest news from Covington. “Yes, our tree’s up. We decorated it last night, Russell, Bob, Tyler, Mike, same as last year. Oh, and Emily too.” She told Roger about the purse snatcher and what Tyler had done. “Our Tyler was very brave,” she ended her story.
“Brave, yes, and foolish, really. That man could have smashed the boy’s head in,” Roger declared, sounding concerned.
Grace agreed wholeheartedly, but had been trying to see it from Bob’s vantage point and to give Tyler credit. He was a gentle child, and his behavior had taken her totally aback. He had told her that all he could think was that he had lost his second mom, and he didn’t care if the bad man hurt him.
Then Grace told Roger about Lurina and Old Man.
“Well, that’s something.” Roger laughed.
Was she the only one who did not think this wedding was funny? Lurina would have a family, and not live in that rambling old house of hers alone.
“I imagine we’ll have two weddings next year, Russell and Emily too.”
She listened then to her son explain, unnecessarily, that they would not be able to come for Christmas. She hadn’t expected them to come. It was their busiest time of year. “I do understand. We’ll miss you,” Grace said.
Then Charles picked up the extension, and she had to repeat all about Emily coming, and Tyler’s act of bravery, and the two upcoming weddings, although Russell and Emily had not announced officially as yet.
“Poor little guy. I hope he’s well enough to come to you for Christmas.”
“He’ll be here. How are you, Charles?”
“Good. We hired help. I’m not knackered at night like I used to be.”
When Roger first brought Charles to Dentry to meet his parents, Grace found Charles’s English accent strange and had to ask him, sometimes, to repeat himself. Now, she was quite used to his referring to the hood of a car as a bonnet, the trunk as a boot, to a line as a queue, or a bathroom as a loo. Over the years, Charles had endeared himself to Grace, and she worried about him no less than about Roger. Last year, the news that he was HTV positive had devastated her, but so far he remained healthy and careful with his health.
Then Charles told her about a recent event in nearby Philadelphia at which Prince Charles of England was the guest of honor. “It was brilliant, brilliant. You should have been there. The Prince is much warmer in person than on the telly. Some people just are, you know.”
She could picture her Charles’s round pleasant face, flushed and happy.
“The Prince was brilliant,” Charles was saying. “Came over to thank us. When I spoke, straightaway he asked where I was from ‘at home’ and about my family. You should have seen me, Mother Singleton. My legs went weak, thought I’d faint.”
Grace imagined them standing there trying to appear cool and confident, Charles, short, compact, graying, beaming with pride, trying to maintain his dignity, and Roger, tall, blond, handsome, smug. “How nice of the Prince,” Grace said. “And I’m sure you deserved every bit of his praise.”
Charles turned chatty. “So, Russell’s going to marry his Emily? Wait a sec.” She heard him calling to Roger, who had hung up his phone. “Pick up in the kitchen.”
Roger came back on the line. “Russell’s getting married next year. When they set the date, what say we block out the time, toddle on down there, and do their wedding? We could make it a smash, brilliant. A present from you, and me, and Mother Singleton.”
Grace pictured him standing there, one hand on his chest, his eyes aglow, a huge smile on his face. “Can you really do that, get away, come here?” Then her enthusiasm faded. How would this play with Queen Ginger, as the ladies referred to her among themselves?
On the line, Roger was silent. “Roger?” his mother asked. “Are you there?”
“Here, Mother.”
“What do you think?”
“Well.” He hesitated.
Charles’s voice came over their extension. “Come on now, Roger. Once we have a date we can straightaway mark off those dates. We’ll write the trip off as business. It’ll be fun. We can spare two weeks.”
“Well, okay.” Roger sounded cautious. “First we have to clear it with Miranda and Paul.”
“Of course. Of course,” Charles said. Moments later they said good-bye.
“Have a happy holiday. Talk to you Christmas Eve,” Grace said.
“Late night for us,” Roger said.
“Christmas Day, then.”
Grace returned the phone to its cradle and sat immobile in her rocker. Outside the stream gushed and swished. For several weeks now, rain, though intermittent, had been consistently upon them. Rivers, creeks, and streams ran high, near to cresting. Her eyes swept the room, her room, everything in it chosen by her for her own comfort. Her bed, low to the floor, so that when she sat her feet lay flat on the carpet. The peach-apricot walls, so warm and pleasing. By her bed, on a wooden stand, sat a glorious fan, a gift from Amelia last Christmas, from Amelia’s fan collection.
Such a lovely collection it was: fans from Europe, one whose painted facade bore in great detail the ruins of Pompeii, an Edwardian-era fan that advertised corsets, a Brise fan whose sticks, Amelia explained, simulated the arches of the Cathedral at Chartres.
Grace’s fan gave her pleasure every time she looked at it. “It’s a copy of an eighteenth-century European fan,” Amelia had said. In vivid color and minute detail it depicted a ballroom scene from the era of Louis XIV. Grace could almost hear the minuet playing, the swish of satin skirts, and the gay laughter.
And there were her clowns. Bob had started her on a clown collection, and last Christmas gave her two clowns one somersaulting, one sitting on the ground cross-legged petting a small dog. She loved them. I’m happy, Grace thought, and saw Tyler’s bright little freckled face in her mind. So much to be grateful for. Then Grace remembered that Lurina was waiting for her. They were to go over some of the plans for Lurina’s wedding.
30
Lurina opened the front door of her farmhouse and grinned at Grace. “I been waitin’ to show you somethin’.” Her eyes twinkled. Her bony hand grasped Grace’s solid fingers, and she led her into what had once been a pleasant dining room and now was cluttered with grocery store boxes stamped CAMPBELL’S SOUP and busting with heaven only knew what. Grace never asked. One day perhaps Lurina would tell her. The original table had long been supplanted by a small, round oak pedestal table, and its grainy finish was now burdened with stacks of photo albums.
“Sit you down,” Lurina said. She patted Grace on the back and pulled out a cane-backed chair. Opening one album, she pointed to a faded picture of an old couple. “Found me this here picture.” She tapped the heads in the picture. “Aunt Emma and Uncle Elvin. Passed too young, fifty-nine, and he done caused it.”
Lurina shook her head. “Day clear as today. Aunt Emma cut her foot on a piece of rusty roof tin. Doctor was thirteen miles, and one mule to carry ’em. What’d Elvin do?” She eyed Grace seriously, challenging her to guess, knowing she’d never get it right.
“He put her on the mule and led her to the doctor?”
Lurina flung back her head and laughed so heartily she nearly toppled the chair. “Well that there’s a good one. What he done is get him a pot of hot bacon grease and pour it on that there cut. Aunt Emma screamed so loud you coulda heard her a mile down the road, ’cept nobody lived a mile down the road.” Her forehead furrowed above thin white eyebrows. Lurina shook her head again. “A no-gooder, that Elvin. Spent his days gommin’ and piddlin’.”
“What’s gommin’ and piddlin’?” Grace asked.
“Loafin’. He was real fine at loafin’.” She uttered a sigh of resignation. “Before you know it, she took to her bed and plain old died, while her lazy drunk husband was a-jawin’ with hired help out by the pigsty.”
“Why’d he put hot grease on it?” Grace asked.
“People tell ’bout hot grease curin’ everything on the outside of your body, and corn whiskey takin’ care of what’s inside.” She laughed lightly, then deeply, and Grace laughed with her. She couldn’t help laughing with Lurina. It was one of those things that drew her to the woman. Grace always left the Masterson farmhouse with a spring in her step and laughter on her lips.
Grace studied the photo. Elvin’s lean, pinched face was lined and hostile. Fifty-nine-year-old Aunt Emma looked seventy-five, her face gaunt, and her eyes preached resignation. They peered at Grace from the grayness of time.
“I don’t like his face,” Grace said.
“Nobody did. That’s probably why the lawman carried him off. They said he killed her. Pa gave Aunt Emma a right proper burial.”
“Lurina,” Grace asked, changing the subject. “When do you want to go hunt a wedding dress?”
“I ain’t goin’, honey. I want for you to go lookin’ and when you find what you like, you just bring it here, and it’s done.”
“I can’t choose your wedding dress.”
“Ain’t nobody else I trust to be pickin’ me a dress. You knows me best of all the folks around here.”
How was that possible? Grace wondered. Where was community and caring? She found it hard to believe that Cove Road folks didn’t pay much attention to Lurina.
“We’ll measure me up and you can tell ’em at the shop.” She stood, holding to the table. Years of damp had penetrated the faded striped wallpaper of the dining room, and sections curled while other strips hung loose near the ceiling. Family pictures of Lurina’s stern-faced parents bore jagged water stains on their mattings. The original crystal chandelier hung above them, coated with dust. There were no windows in the room, only a door into the hall, and another to the living room. Once started, Grace could not stop sneezing. Lurina seemed unfazed by damp and dust.
“I guess you’re about a size six.” Grace measured her, then jotted numbers on a small pad and rose to leave. “Bob’s waiting for me at the tearoom.”
Lurina tucked the tape into her apron pocket, which already held a small paperweight, chunks of balled papers, hairpins, and a small comb. To this mélange, Lurina added the tattered tape, then she tottered after Grace to the door. “You best be off. Rain’s comin’ agin.” And then one last admonition, “Now mind you, I don’t want to show no shoulder, and no bosom.”
“I’m sure they’ll let me bring several gowns so you can choose.”
“Fancy a shop that’d do that?”
“Sure they will.”
Lurina clapped her hands like a child and laughed. Her eyes vanished among wrinkles. Grace hugged her goodbye.
Grace went straight from Lurina’s to the tearoom, which was fast becoming a popular watering hole. Tea came with a platter of French pastries, Danish pastries, tiny crustless sandwiches, and sugar cookies. People always said her sugar cookies were great for dunking.
Sybil, their new employee, hovered at a large table of mostly older women, probably retirees living in Loring Valley, taking their orders. Voices rose and fell. Bob stood behind a counter taking credit cards. There were several people in line.
Along the back wall, a fire flickered cheerily in the fireplace. With its floral wallpapered walls and soft curtains, the room was warm and welcoming. Grace admired the room. Were she a customer, she would enjoy taking tea here.
Later, in the kitchen, Bob turned from arranging another platter of sweets Grace had prepared last night. “Missed you,” he said.
She kissed his cheek, then wiped where her lipstick had smeared.
“Don’t wipe it off,” he kidded. “Makes the women wild with jealousy.”
She kissed him again and left the smear. “Roger and Charles offered to come down here and do Emily and Russell’s wedding, when they announce their date. What do you think?”
“I think it’s great, but I’m not the one to ask.”
“I know.” Her shoulders fell. “Ginger.”
He shrugged. “She might consider it fashionable. What’ll they charge her?”
“It’s a wedding present from them.”
“Well, she just might go for that deal. That’s real generous of the boys.”
“I agree, and I’m pleased.” Grace tied an apron over her skirt, turned on the oven, then reached into the refrigerator, where a tray of unbaked croissants waited. “Hannah found this recipe on the Internet. Did you know croissants were not originally French?”
“Really?”
“They’re Viennese. In 1863 Vienna was under siege by the Turks. Bakers working at night heard noises underground. Turks digging a tunnel under the city. They reported it, and the army wiped out the Turks. To celebrate, they designed these crescent rolls, shape taken from the crescent in the Turkish flag. Imagine, all that information came with the recipe on the Internet, straight from a bakery in Vienna.”
“When we reprint our menu again, let’s put that story in a box to the side,” Bob said.
“Good idea.” A ping from the oven indicated 350 degrees had been reached, and Grace slipped the tray onto the center rack.
“Please, will you ask Russell what their plans are?”
31
Lance Insists
“We’ll use my frequent flier miles,” Lance said. “Rome would be nice, or Vienna? Or maybe the Côte d’Azur and Italy.”
Amelia set down her wineglass. Rome? Vienna? France? A long plane trip, swollen ankles, cramped seats, jet lag. She’d done it all for years with Thomas. She had not the slightest desire to return to any of those places, not even with Lance. His suggesting travel at this time was a clear indication that he did not value her time, or respect her work. It occurred to Amelia then that she had set this whole thing up. Why should Lance take her commitment to photography seriously when she had canceled field trip after field trip, and had even canceled the Florida workshop with Mike in January, just to accommodate him?
Amelia sighed. If a time was ever right to say no to Lance, this was it, here, in a busy crowded re
staurant that was overdecorated for Christmas. Blaring music made it hard to talk. Already her blood beat like a drum in her temples. She preferred quiet, preferably French restaurants. Lance sought out crowded, loud eateries. Amelia endured them. She hesitated. If she opposed him, would he explode in anger? Ignore her? Reject her?
Lance leaned forward and stroked her fingers. Amelia’s resolve melted. Lance’s power over her, she realized, was his sensuality. The prospect of someday sleeping with him enthralled her. She dreamed of it. Only her lack of trust in him, and her fear of sexually transmitted diseases, held her back. She couldn’t ask about his relations with other women, she knew that, so how would she ever dare to bring up the subject of HIV testing?
“So?” Lance set down his knife and fork and leaned back against the tufted leather booth.
He’s gorgeous, Amelia thought, and accustomed to having his own way.
The music grew suddenly quieter, or had it been supplanted by the crash of breaking glass from somewhere behind a partition? A muffled curse followed. Someone in the booth behind them laughed. Someone clapped. Behind the partition, feet shuffled.
Amelia waited and when the hubbub receded, she lied. “I’d love to go with you, but . . .”
“But?” He leaned forward. The movement was abrupt and nearly sent his wine spilling.
“But, I have work . . .”
“Are you saying you’d rather spend time in a smelly, stuffy darkroom?”
“I have a show coming up, and I’m behind by five photographs. I have to shoot dozens to get five good enough to exhibit.”
He scowled and shook his head.
She tried another tack. “Lance, dear. You’re always welcome to come with me on a shoot, like you did that day we went to Velma Herrill’s.”
“Well,” he said pulling back. His eyes were gray. “Guess you prefer that fag’s company to mine.”
Amelia raged inside. Don’t let him get away with disparaging Mike. Sliding to the edge of the booth, she hesitated a moment, remembering where she was. I can’t confront him here. She sat silent, stewing. A wave of disgust swept over her. Drawing on every ounce of courage she possessed, Amelia slid from the booth. “I have to go now. I don’t feel well.” Grabbing her jacket, she fled toward the lobby of the restaurant. She could hear his voice, calling loudly, “Waitress. Check.”
The Gardens of Covington Page 21