The Gardens of Covington

by Joan A. Medlicott

  He caught up with her on the sidewalk. “I’ll take you home,” he said grasping her arm.

  “I’ll get a cab.” She shrugged him off and walked faster. The lampposts were decorated with lanterns etched in tiny white lights. Amelia’s new high heels, shoes she bought because Lance liked her in high heels, pinched her toes. Tears scoured her cheeks. She could hardly see the pavement. Her scarf loosened and trailed behind her. Through her unbuttoned coat she felt no cold, although the temperature was in the thirties. “Oh, God,” she prayed aloud, “please, send a cab.”

  Miraculously, a taxi cruised by. Amelia waved it down and offered the reluctant driver a twenty-five-dollar tip to take her to Covington. Inside the cab, she lay her head against the seat and pressed her fists against her temples. The throbbing persisted. Ripping off her shoes, Amelia opened her window and tossed, first one, then the other, into the street.

  “They got a litter law, you know,” the driver said.

  “Expensive shoes are hardly litter,” she replied and closed her eyes.

  From the kitchen window, Grace, who was having a bout of insomnia, watched Amelia stagger from the taxi. She’s ill, Grace thought. Hurriedly wiping her hands on a kitchen towel, she hastened to open the door for her friend, only to find Amelia barefoot

  A hysterical Amelia fell into Grace’s arms, sobbing. Grace led her into the living room, where tiny white lights on the Christmas tree—Grace liked them on day and night—blinked cheerily, and softened the black-and-white photograph of an older couple on a park bench feeding the pigeons that Amelia had taken from her motel window on a field trip to Savannah. (B. L., Mike called it—Before Lance.)

  “Now, tell me what’s happened,” Grace said.

  Pride, regret, shame, a deep sense of loss mixed like soil and water and stuck like mud in AmeUa’s throat. She could only heave low, gasping sobs.

  Grace handed Amelia her bandanna. “What’s happened, Amelia?”

  Outside, rain fell. A scrim of water hid the Maxwells’ house and barns and landed with a pinging sound on the edge of the porch floor. Grace asked, “It’s Lance, isn’t it?”

  Amelia nodded, covered her face with her hands. Her shoulders shook.

  “I’m sorry,” Grace whispered. “Would talking help?”

  “If you swear you won’t tell Hannah,” Amelia muttered from between her fingers.

  “That serious?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hannah isn’t one to gloat. She’d be sorry whatever it is.”

  “She hates Lance.”

  “Hannah loves you. She doesn’t like the way Lance treats you.”

  “It’s hard, so hard,” Amelia said, and her sobbing continued.

  “I’ll guess,” Grace said. In the dark night with rain cascading and the bitter cold beyond their walls, time seemed to stand still. The lights flickered. Grace wondered if the storm would plunge them into darkness. She looked about her. Where were those flashlights? Hannah had put one in every room.

  Amelia wiped her eyes. As if the bandanna were a precious object, she held it scrunched tight in her hand. “Okay,” she said, “guess.”

  Grace set aside her concern about the lights going out. By making it into a guessing game, she would ease Amelia’s tension. Ametlia could defer telling, and would only have to nod, yes or no.

  Amelia curled her legs beneath her and snuggled into the cushions. Her chin quivered. She grabbed a pillow and hid her face. “I’m waiting.” Her words were muffled by the pillow.

  “Let’s see.” Grace tapped her cheek, made funny noises with her teeth, and clapped once, as if indicating, let’s get the show rolling. “Lance wants you to give up photography.”

  Amelia shook her head, but she knew he would prefer she packed away her camera. “Guess again.”

  “How many guesses do I have?”

  Amelia’s eyes narrowed as she considered the question. Then she raised a hand and spread apart her fingers.

  “Five,” Grace said. Seconds passed. Amelia squirmed.

  “Lance wants you to move in with him?”

  “No.” In the beginning, she had hoped and prayed he would invite her, and in those early days she had experienced nothing but excitement, and never considered the consequences of moving out, of splitting up their household. “No,” she said again, firmly.

  “Lance proposed?” Grace asked.

  Amelia snickered. “No.”

  “That’s three. I’m not doing well, am I?”

  “Don’t give up.” The game diverted Amelia, and prolonged the inevitable telling.

  Grace pushed up from the sofa. “I think better on my feet.” Crossing the room, she straightened a lamp shade she herself had tipped for reading. In front of Hannah’s armchair, the hassock was askew. With her foot, Grace pushed it straight and closer to the chair. Then she bent and retrieved from the carpet a small rose-colored button she had lost the other day, and then she opened several table drawers seeking a flashlight.

  Amelia scrunched in the corner of the sofa, defeat masking her face, her shoulders slumped, her head low, an uncharacteristic pose for the graceful Amelia.

  “Lance doesn’t want to be with us for Christmas; he wants you to go off with him somewhere,” Grace said.

  “Christmas isn’t involved in this.” Or was it? Lance didn’t like Hannah any more than she liked him. He abhorred Mike, tolerated Grace, and considered Tyler too rambunctious.

  “Undisciplined child,” he’d said with contempt. “I’ve no patience with children. Never have.”

  Did he have children? She never knew. “You have one more guess.” Amelia sat a bit straighter and stretched out her legs on the couch.

  “My last guess.” Grace set her hands on her hips and looked down at Amelia. “Lance demands you do whatever he wants, that’s what I really think it is. Sorry.”

  Amelia sighed, and tipped her chin up. “It is, and it isn’t.” Her reserve broke. She told Grace how Lance was making travel plans without consulting her, of his denigrating her work, his reviling Mike, and her walking out of the restaurant.

  Grace felt a momentary pride in Amelia. She had actually walked out of that restaurant and come home without Lance.

  Amelia was speaking. “When he attacked Mike, something snapped in me.” She longed to admit to Grace how desperately she wanted Lance sexually, and how afraid she was to sleep with him, and why. But sex was something one didn’t talk about. Once, only once, when she was married a year, she’d complained to her mother about the in-frequency with Thomas.

  ‘Take a cold shower, and be glad you don’t have a man who’s all over you,” her mother had replied. “And, Amelia, don’t tell people about your private life. It’ll just drive them away.” She made a tish-tish sound between her teeth. “Lousy for your husband’s career.” She peered at Amelia over her glasses. “One more thing. Don’t trust so-called girlfriends.”

  Stupid advice, Amelia reflected. It may have served her mother, but it had never served her well. Life in this farmhouse, with these two women, was good, and it was safe. She trusted Grace and Hannah. Hadn’t she transferred the deed for the farmhouse into all their names? And she trusted them to attend to her last wishes; her living will gave them authority. Amelia’s fists tightened. She uncurled, pushed up from the couch, walked to Grace, and hugged her. The need to confess all her longings and fears hammered at her chest. Tell Grace. If you can’t trust Grace, the closest friend you’ve ever had, then who?

  Amelia hesitated. She must find the right words, so that she would not sound foolish, or tasteless, or just plain gross. She thought of the night Grace told them that she and Bob had “done it.” Grace shared no details; her wide-eyed excitement, her sheer joy, said it all. Amelia knew that Lance did not love her. Oh, she guessed he liked her. Certainly he wanted her sexually. How could she find the words to tell Grace how she yearned for him, after all he had done and said, and not be utterly humiliated?

  “Where’s Hannah?” Amelia walked to the wi
ndow.

  “In Asheville.”

  “She won’t be back soon?”

  “No. Wayne drove her. They were going to drop off plants at a retail nursery and run some errands. He wanted to go to Calabash West for a fried fish dinner.”

  With Grace’s bandanna, Amelia wiped the mist off of a section of the windowpane and peered out. “Look. Hannah’s rosebushes are sitting in puddles of water.”

  Another swipe of the bandanna cleared a larger patch of pane. Grace peered out. “I’m glad I don’t have to be out in this weather. Any colder, this rain will turn to snow and ice. What a mess the roads will be. Look at that river running down our driveway. I bet the stream’s overflowing.”

  “Let’s look, shall we?” Amelia asked, relieved to think and talk about something other than Lance, and at the same time annoyed with herself for not having taken Grace into her confidence.

  Minutes later, they stood shoulder to shoulder at Grace’s half-opened bedroom window watching in astonishment and growing alarm as their stream, a raging river now, spilled over its banks, splayed across the grass, and slipped in and out of the swale twenty feet from the house.

  “Will the house flood?” Amelia tugged at the end of her scarf so hard, Grace worried she would hinder her breathing. Reaching for Amelia’s hand, she took it in her own and held it firmly.

  “No, Amelia. We’re a good three, three and a half feet off the ground. Cove Road would have to flood first and the front lawn, the driveway, the roses would have to already be underwater. What worries me are those villas on the river in Loring Valley.” She looked away, pensive. “Bob says they’ve anchored the condos into bedrock, but I don’t know. What if the hill behind gives way? He’s up there alone. I wish he hadn’t moved out of Russell’s house so soon.”

  “Oh, Grace.” Amelia flopped into Grace’s rocking chair and hid her face in her palms. “I’m so miserable.”

  “Why, Amelia?” Grace asked just as the fist of a thunderbolt smashed into the night. Grace shuddered, tore her mind from Bob, and turned to face Amelia.

  “I want to sleep with Lance,” Amelia whispered. “I know it seems vain, or silly, or adolescent, but I want to experience sex with a skilled lover. It was so indifferent with Thomas.” Rain pelted like gravel on the tin roof of the farmhouse. Amelia’s words were washed away. Grace had not heard her.

  Amelia drew a deep breath. Reprieved. “Is it hail?” she asked more loudly, pointing up with a finger.

  “I don’t think so, just heavy rain.”

  “I’ve never heard it this loud.” Amelia’s grim visage spoke of depression. As much as Grace wanted to be attentive to her friend, she couldn’t help but think anxious thoughts about Bob. “I’m worried about Bob in that condo, on that mountainside. I need to phone him.”

  The phone, when she picked it up, was dead. Grace stifled rising anxiety. “Amelia. Let’s go down. I’ll make tea.”

  Without a word, Amelia followed Grace downstairs and into the kitchen. “I’ve got to find out if Bob’s all right,” Grace said.

  “How?” Amelia asked, then cowered as an explosion of thunder rattled the house.

  Grace didn’t know. Outside the windows, lightning speared a leaden sky. Grace flinched. Amelia screamed and covered her eyes. The lights faltered, blinked, and went out; the soft hum of the refrigerator ceased. Under the kettle, gas flames leaped gaily.

  “I don’t remember anyone predicting this storm,” Grace said. She turned on another of the stove’s burners, then began to rummage through drawers and cabinets. “Where does Hannah keep the battery weather radio? Ah, here’s a flashlight. I’m going to run up to her room, see if it’s there.” She dug out several candles and holders and lit them. One she set in the sink, the other in a glass platter. “You okay here?”

  Amelia lifted a hand. “Okay.”

  The radio sat on Hannah’s bedside table. Grace pressed the on button. A man’s voice broke through the crackle. “A storm has dipped into the Carolinas from West Virginia bringing wind gusts to eighty miles an hour. Roads are slick and dangerous, particularly at higher elevations. Sam’s Gap reports ice. Accidents have been reported. Traffic is at a standstill. Rain, turning to sleet and snow flurries, is predicted into tomorrow morning. Listeners are advised to remain indoors.”

  Were Hannah and Wayne driving in this weather? Even in Wayne’s four-wheel-drive truck it could be dangerous. Picking up the radio, Grace started from the room, then stopped. How incongruous on a night like this, to see, on a stand near a window, Hannah’s Christmas cactus blooming brilliant red.

  Grace started downstairs with the radio, thinking how different Amelia and Hannah were. Hannah kept no secrets from Grace, nor she from Hannah. And yet how hard it had been for Amelia to speak of her desire. Grace, like Hannah, wished that Amelia would dump Lance, only she was less verbal about it. Relationships between men and women were more complicated than relationships between women. Involvement and intimacy between women could lead to deep friendship. Sleep with a man, and everything changed. Live with him, and a kind of ownership set in.

  “Let there be spaces in your togetherness,” Kahlil Gibran had written. Having had more than her share of togetherness with Ted, she agreed with Gibran. Easy to fall into old patterns. Their generation, hers, and Hannah’s, and Amelia’s, had been programmed to please, to be caretakers. How easy to consign one’s life to a man, as she, as they all had done when they were young. And the problem was ongoing. Here it was 1998, with women’s lib and feminism all around, and still Amelia would never go to a movie with a woman in the evening, or have lunch in a restaurant alone.

  “I prefer an escort. I feel more comfortable,” Amelia had said on more than one occasion. “Otherwise, I think people are staring at me, wondering why I’m alone, if something’s wrong with me.”

  Another clap of thunder sent Grace scurrying downstairs to Amelia. Again she tried the phone. Dead. Was the hill behind Bob’s condo stable? Was Loring Valley flooding? She thought of Tyler, Russell, and Emily. Hopefully they were sleeping through this. No way to find out, no way to know. It would be a long night, and where was Hannah?

  32

  Have Him Checked Out

  Gusts of wind pummeled the farmhouse with the ferocity of a sledgehammer. The rain, at times a fairy’s laugh tinkling on the roof, more often the drumming of a giant’s fingers, never ceased.

  Grace had lit candles, which now flickered under glass covers on the mantel, and on every table in the living room, casting light insufficient to read or sew by, yet enough to render a measure of comfort. “It’s coming down even harder now.” Grace beckoned Amelia to the living room window. “You can’t see Maxwell’s house, barns, outbuilding, not even the windmill. Lurina would call this rain a goose drownder. Lord, I hope she’s all right.”

  Amelia averted her eyes. “I don’t care what it’s called. I don’t want to look.”

  Grace felt an urge to go out onto the porch, to stand as witness to the wind and rain. She started toward the front door. Amelia’s plaintive cry brought her back to the living room. “Grace, Grace, please don’t go out. It’s freezing out there.” She was at the window now. “It’s turning to sleet.”

  For a moment, Grace leaned against the front door, then in consideration of Amelia, she walked back into the living room.

  “I’m scared.” Amelia stretched out on the couch and spread a fleece throw across her legs. “Since we’ve been in Covington, there hasn’t been a storm like this.”

  Cocking her head, Grace listened carefully to a new sound. “It’s hail.”

  “Oh, Grace, it’s going to snow and freeze. Sounds like buckets of stones, big, the kind that can smash windshields and windows,” Amelia wailed. “I wish Mike were here.”

  “Mike, not Lance?”

  “Mike. He’s reliable. I trust Mike.” Amelia looked at Grace sheepishly. They were cocooned, she and Grace, in this room, in this house with a fire in the hearth and candlelight to hide her blushes. If ever t
here was a time to confide in Grace, this was it. “Mon ami,” Amelia began in a low, confidential voice.

  Grace leaned toward her.

  “Can you guess why I’m still seeing Lance?”

  “No guessing game now.” Grace shook her head.

  Tugging the fleece with her, Amelia squirreled down the length of couch until she sat across from Grace. This time she wanted to be heard. “Because, he’s like poison oak in my brain.”

  “Poison oak?”

  “Like an itch I can’t reach, that won’t go away. Lance stirs passion in me that I thought was dead. When he touches me, I feel, well, that if I were a tree, I’d blossom. Even his voice moves me. I like to hear him talk, laugh.” She tossed her head. “I dream I’m in bed with him.” Amelia waited a moment, unsure how to continue, how much to say without revealing all of the self she concealed beneath a thick veneer of propriety. “Would it be wonderful like I imagine?” Her hand touched her neck.

  “When you love someone, and he loves you, being overweight like me . . .” She pinched her middle. “. . . or having scars doesn’t matter.”

  “But do I love him, or is my body off on some wild, irrational adventure and my mind locked away in a drawer? I’m afraid. I don’t know if he loves me. He flatters me. I’m intoxicated, giddy with his words, his touch, and I’m frightened, Grace. A little fellow like Tyler does something so brave, and I’m afraid to go to bed with Lance.”

  Grace was uncertain how to respond. Amelia had bared her soul, and Grace, who did not trust Lance any more than Hannah did, feared that he could easily crush Amelia’s fragile self-esteem. Her mind shifted to those early days with Bob. She’d met him in June, run away to Roger and Charles in July, and when she returned in early August, she and Bob had come together, a perfect fit like adjoining pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.