The Gardens of Covington

by Joan A. Medlicott

  That very afternoon, Hannah put in a call to Laura. The phone in the bait and supply shop on the dock rang. This was the only way to contact her daughter. They radioed messages to boats anchored out in the harbor. In Hannah’s mind the dock at Rockport, the boats, many of them fishing vessels, smelled of salt and fish. She pictured weathered gray docks, small skiffs tied to piers, stacked lobster pots, tourists posing for pictures or holding high the day’s biggest catch. And back from the shore, Victorian houses with their widows’ walks, perched on hillsides and converted now to bed and breakfasts, inns, restaurants, or shops catering to the tourist trade.

  Captain Marvin and Laura hosted day passengers along the Maine coast as far north as Penobscot Bay and Mount Desert Island, or on whale-watching excursions. Laura crewed and cooked for their guests. Laura a cook, imagine. Laura refused to boil an egg when she lived at home. When the phone rang a half hour later, it surprised Hannah to hear her daughter’s voice.

  “I just walked into the store,” she said. “Ron said you’d called. How are you? Anything wrong?”

  “No, everything’s fine, they’ve even predicted an early spring, which is great.” Hannah’s heart raced. So much she wanted to say. In the background on Laura’s end she heard muffled voices, a door slam. “Can you speak louder?” Laura asked.

  “How was Christmas?”

  “Quiet. We went to friends’ over in Camden, not far. Yours?”

  “Pleasant. Your sister tells me you’re going to the Caribbean. When?”

  “I was going to phone you, Mother. The ketch is in dry dock. Soon as she comes off, we’ll provision and take off.”

  “What island are you going to?”

  “American and British Virgins. Once we get there, we’ll see where we want to be.”

  “It’s supposed to be beautiful down there,” Hannah said, skirting her real reasons for calling Laura: to wish her well, to say she understood her wanderlust, her attachment to Marvin. The words stuck in Hannah’s throat. On Laura’s end of the line it sounded as if someone were pouring nails onto a metal scale to measure them. Did they sell nails in a bait shop?

  “Do they sell hails there?” Hannah asked, feeling stupid.

  “No.” Laura’s voice sounded puzzled. Then she said, “Oh, what you hear are weights. Someone’s buying weights to use in fishing.” Then silence. Hannah shifted from one leg to the other.

  “Laura,” she began.

  “Yes, Mother, what is it?”

  Hannah heard the tinge of impatience in Laura’s voice, and she reacted with her own measure of irritation. Why was there never a time or place where Laura could talk to her without Hannah feeling rushed?

  Hannah tried to picture Laura as she was today. Business suit discarded for jeans, cotton shirt, sneakers. Hannah closed her eyes for a moment. Where Miranda was tall like herself, Laura was of middle height, and firm and round, never skinny. Pretty, prettier than Miranda, with blue almond-shaped eyes and high cheekbones inherited from a distant ancestor, eyes old beyond their years, yet when Laura laughed, they twinkled like those of a happy little girl filled with trust, and hopeful. Did they still shine like that? Hannah wondered. Had Laura’s smooth olive skin grown darker in the sun? Was it blotched or wrinkled from years of wind, and sea, and salt air? A cheerleader and dancer, Laura had developed strong, muscular legs, perfect for working on the boat, she imagined.

  “A ketch is a boat, Mother,” Laura had once explained. “A boat is not necessarily a ketch. A boat could be a yacht, or a trawler, many things. Please call the Maribow a ketch.”

  Marvin’s ketch was sixty feet long with four sails: a mainsail, a smaller back sail Laura called a mizzen, and two smaller sails in front, a jib and a foresail. In the library, Hannah had located a book on boating and found a picture of a ketch, so she knew where the sails were positioned, although she had no concept of their use.

  Hannah cleared her throat. “Want to wish you good luck, girl. Safe passage. Send postcards.” She wanted more than postcards. “Send me an address so I can write to you.”

  “You never write, Mother,” her daughter said.

  “Miracles happen.” Hannah laughed somewhat self-consciously.

  “I’ll be in touch. Bye now.”

  “Laura.”

  “What?”

  “I, I . . .” She couldn’t get “I love you” out. “My best to Captain Marvin, and you take care of yourself.” They hung up. Hannah stood there with her hand on the phone thinking about Laura. Laura had been so angry, petulant, and defiant as a teenager. Hannah had suspected Laura was sexually active at fourteen, but chose to ignore her suspicions. If asked, would Laura have admitted it? Probably not, only taken umbrage at the question. How did a mother ask a teenage daughter such a question, anyhow? How come, Hannah thought, she had no trouble questioning others or holding her own in an argument, but with Laura, her tongue twisted and curled? She would write to her daughter as soon as Laura sent an address.

  This resolved, Hannah walked into the foyer and took her coat from the rack. She’d drive over to the tearoom. If Grace had time they’d sit and have a cup of tea. If not she’d visit with her in the kitchen, tell her about the television crew’s courting of the Reynolds, and that she had spoken, finally, to Laura.

  39

  Lurina Does It Her Way

  Then, as suddenly as they had come, the television van with Jill Moran and its crew disappeared. Rumors circulated. Timmy, the clerk at P. J. Prancer’s, whispered to everyone, “I heard they got them a better story down in Atlanta.”

  Buddy, at the gas station, told his customers, “Old Miss Lurina and Old Man weren’t a good enough story for national TV.”

  And one of the Herrill cousins said, “They ain’t the best TV show anyhow.”

  And after a week or ten days, disappointment gave way to resignation, and the rumors subsided.

  Spring lay upon the land. In a glory of white, the Bradford pear trees burst into bloom. Rows of Bradford pears at the Asheville Mall resembled the bouffant skirts of wedding dresses held high on lollipop sticks. Forsythia bloomed brilliant yellow, and redbud trees blossomed a glory of pink. On Cove Road, houses swam in seas of white and yellow daffodils. It was, everyone declared, the most glorious March in recent memory.

  The tearoom opened each day to waiting crowds. Grace and Bob found themselves with time for little else but work. Lurina called Grace every day, and seemed to need reassurance that all was well and would be well. One afternoon when she phoned Grace at the tearoom, Lurina’s voice was teary. “I ain’t gonna do it, Grace.”

  “Do what, Lurina?” Grace shoved a tray of pastries into the oven.

  “Marry me up with Joseph Elisha.”

  “Now, Lurina, you’ve got normal jitters. Every bride goes through this before her wedding.”

  “Ain’t jitters. It’s all those nosy TV people hangin’ about just the other side of my land, out of range of my shotgun.”

  “You mean they’re back? Bob,” she called, “Lurina says the TV people are back.”

  “They been sweet-talkin’ Joseph Elisha to where he thinks we oughta let ’em take our pictures and all. I don’t want to be on no television show, Grace.” Lurina began to weep in earnest.

  That was a Monday. On Wednesday morning the phone woke Grace. “Get Bob, and get you over here before noon today,” Lurina said.

  Grace faced a long day at the tearoom. She sighed. “What’s the matter?”

  “Just you come, and bring Hannah, and Amelia too, and that nice fellow, Amelia’s friend, Mike, but no one else, you hearin’ me, no one else.” She was whispering as if there were spying ears and eyes all about her.

  “Is there someone with you? Why are you whispering?”

  “Them Yankee TV folks campin’ out real close to the bridge.”

  “They can’t hear you from out there.”

  “You never know about folks like that with all their fancy contraptions.”

  For a moment, Grace wondered if Jil
l’s crew had managed to bug Lurina’s house. She shook her head. Lurina was paranoid, and she was making Grace paranoid.

  Lurina whispered, “Joseph Elisha and me’s gonna get us married today.”

  “What? Today?” Grace sat up and swung her legs to the floor.

  “Sure ’nuff. Pastor Johnson’s comin’. Don’t you tell no one now, Grace. You’re my matron of honor, so wear your fancy dress, and come on over.”

  They would either have to call and have Sybil, their new waitress, come in and pick up the keys and open the tearoom or put a sign on the door saying they were closed. Her usual equanimity was fast fading, and Grace found herself struggling against irritation and the sense of having been put upon. She had spent hours organizing this wedding, shopping for the wedding dress, arranging for flowers, food. The wedding date was set for July 1 with a reception at the tearoom. Invitations, one hundred of them addressed by herself, Amelia, and Hannah at their kitchen table, had been mailed to everyone in Covington, and the Reynolds clan in Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, and Alabama.

  Grace calmed herself. It took several minutes for her mind to process the change and its ramifications. After all, who wouldn’t be nervous getting married for the first time at eighty-one? Lurina’s entire life would change. And it occurred to Grace that perhaps this was Lurina’s way of avoiding a big church wedding and all the people staring at her as she walked down the aisle. “You’re upset, that’s all,” Grace said.

  “Sure am. Don’t want no television people hangin’ about my weddin’.”

  Grace would have liked to give a good dressing down to whomever it was that had phoned these people in the first place. She resented Jill’s persistence, and the way locals reacted, as if they dreamed of being on television themselves. Now, she would have to cancel the flowers for the church, cancel the food ordered for the reception, and he invitations. Grace was beginning to get a headache. How do you cancel invitations? Send out un-invitations.

  Burina Masterson and Joseph Elisha Reynolds

  request that you not attend their wedding on July 1.

  To avoid unwanted publicity, they were married at home

  in a private ceremony on March 13.

  People had enjoyed the TV crew. Having them about was exciting for them. Many of the younger residents of Cove Road had visited, and chatted, and brought them cakes, casseroles, and pies. Jill and her crew pandered to their egos, took their pictures with crew members, handed out T-shirts and caps. Brenda had explained that having the crew there enlivened Covington and lent an air of excitement and mystery to most folks’ lives.

  Suddenly it seemed funny. Grace giggled, covering her mouth so that Lurina would not hear, but the old lady was gifted with sharp hearing.

  “You laughin’ at me, Grace?”

  “No. With you, Lurina. I’m laughing with you. Just thinking how you’ll fool Jill and her people.”

  Lurina laughed. “It’s a fine day for a weddin’, Grace, wouldn’t you say? All them redbuds out back bloomin’ and all.” Her voice grew serious, lost its conspiratorial whisper. “Ask Hannah to pick me some redbud branches to fix up the place, well, you know, cheerful-like.” Then, as if she spotted prying eyes peering through her window, she whispered into the phone, “Don’t say nothin’ ’bout this to no one else, Grace, you hear me? That gown we bought is sure heavy, hard for me to put on by myself. Come an’ help me dress, will you?”

  “You’re wearing your wedding gown at home?”

  “Sure ’nuff. Amelia can take our picture.”

  What would people think? Say? Grace gathered her wits about her and pushed away such concerns. Who cared what people thought or said? Lurina was a character. Few of her neighbors had paid her much attention in years. “We’ll be there, Lurina,” she said.

  Lurina’s voice on the phone turned contrite. “You ain’t mad at me, are you, Grace? You’ve been to so much trouble for me and all.”

  “No, I’m not mad. I understand the pressure you’re under. You just go ahead and do it your way, Lurina.”

  When Grace hung up, she phoned Bob and relayed the news. “Well,” he said, after thinking about it for a moment, “you’ve got to hand it to her. Rugged determinism’s alive and well in Covington.”

  Hannah was shocked at the news that Lurina and Old Man were getting married in her house, at noon, that very day.

  “She wants us to be there. She’s asked if you’d cut redbud branches from her trees behind the house to decorate the parlor.” Grace stopped to catch her breath.

  “She’s doing what?” Amelia poked her head into the room. Even in this awful post-Lance period, no matter how her heart ached, immediately on getting out of bed and before opening her window shades or using the bathroom, Amelia brushed her hair and put on makeup.

  Once, recently, Grace, whose every mood was reflected on her face, asked Amelia how she could look so good and feel so bad.

  Amelia had tossed her head. “Habit. Training. Mother said you always put on your best face. No one likes a crybaby or a whiner.” What choice did she have? Her heart ached, as if someone had died. Not someone, something: hope. Still, as much as Amelia wanted to lie down and die, she knew that she must take one step at a time, one day at a time. Hadn’t she survived hell before? “Oh, God,” Amelia asked God when she lay in bed at night, “why so much pain again?”

  Mike had suggested another photography book. The focus on people this time, perhaps, and in black and white.

  “No,” she yelled at him, then regretting it, said, “maybe later.” Enthusiasm for photography seemed also to have been laid to rest, yet Amelia still loaded her camera and shot pictures, pictures without heart.

  Grace studied Amelia’s face. Behind the makeup, Grace could make out the tiny lines about her drooping mouth, the pain in her friend’s eyes, yet Amelia never uttered one word about Lance. This is not good, Grace thought, not good at all. Lance had humiliated and crushed Amelia. It was impossible for her to brush it away this soon. Her heart went out to her friend. It was easy to ignore someone’s pain when they went to such lengths to mask it. It would take time and patience to pry Amelia’s suffering into the light of day. Grace experienced a pang of guilt, for she had no time at the moment to stop and ask, and listen to her friend. Like tumbleweed, her own life careened along: the cemetery visits, the wedding dress, Lurina’s wedding plans, the tearoom, squeezing out one morning a week for the children at Caster Elementary. It dismayed her that she, and Hannah, and Amelia had not shared a good old-fashioned tea and a relaxed chat at home in months. Hannah came to the tearoom some afternoons, and if there was an empty table and it was slow, they sat awhile, had tea, and chatted; but there were distractions, and it wasn’t the same. As a result of choices made, her life lacked cohesion and calm, and Grace did not like it. With all she had on her mind, it was a relief, this change in Lurina’s wedding plans. It would be done with, and she would have time to sit and talk to Bob about how she really felt about the tearoom, about how at night she lay awake regretting having gone into business at all.

  Cars driving across the wooden bridge to Lurina’s farmhouse an hour before noon must have alerted the television crew camping at the edge of her property. Three young men in jeans and jackets scrambled to set up tripods and trained their incredibly long lenses on the cars, on the house. As they crossed the bridge, Grace looked away. Amelia, however, waved at the crew, raising Grace’s suspicion again that Amelia had made the original call. Hannah, who was driving, ignored them.

  “They’re just doing their jobs,” Amelia said, “and their being here has livened up Covington.”

  Hannah bridled. “Livened it up for whom?” She too was suspicious that it was Amelia who had tipped them off.

  “You think Lurina should let them film her wedding, probe into her life, blast it all over this country?”

  The instant they pulled up behind the house, Hannah tromped off to cut redbud branches, and Grace hastened inside. She shoved the sherbet for the punch
into the freezer, and set the ginger ale and grape juice alongside the cut glass punch bowl Lurina had set out on the kitchen table. Minutes later, Mike breezed in, all smiles, eager to help, and when Hannah appeared with her arms loaded with branches of pink blossoms, he and Amelia took them and started into the living room to decorate.

  Wearing a blue-and-white-checked housedress, Lurina shuffled into the kitchen. “Grace, help me get dressed. I see Wayne’s truck comin’ over the bridge. They’re bringin’ Pastor Johnson.”

  As Grace helped Lurina up the stairs, Lurina whispered, “After the weddin’ Old Man and me, we gonna live here.”

  They moved along the narrow hallway. “What about his pigs?” Grace asked.

  “We gonna get us a pen and a shed for them out by that old fallin’-down bam,” Lurina said. Grace nodded. One more problem solved.

  Lurina opened the door into a large front bedroom with a high ceiling and an enormous four-poster bed, whose heavily scrolled and scalloped headboard spoke of another era. “Ma and Pa’s bed,” Lurina said. With its bare wood floor and dark high chests placed like sentinels along walls, even the floral wallpaper failed to warm or tie together the cavernous room. “I don’t sleep here,” Lurina said. “This is where Pa passed away. Some days, lately, I come an’ sit by that there window and study those folks over yonder, make sure none of ’em get on my land.” She yanked down the shade. “See whatcha can now, city boys.”

  The bridal gown, its smooth satin glowing, sprawled across the bed like a lovely woman. “You ready?” Grace asked.

  “Ready as I’m gonna be.” Slowly, Lurina shed her housedress and stood there shivering in her cotton slip. She raised skinny arms and slid them into the wedding gown until all Grace could see of her were her hands and fingers. Grace held the neck of the dress wide, trying not to disturb Lurina’s crown of braid. It settled in heavy folds about the tiny woman. And when Lurina studied herself in the standing mirror, she laughed with pleasure and preened. “Not half bad, eh? I look so good, maybe I shoulda let them boys over there make a picture.”