The Gardens of Covington

by Joan A. Medlicott

  “You’d think they’d have had the wit to RSVP no,” Hannah said.

  “Then there are a few business friends of Russell’s, and of course most of the people on Cove Road are coming, and Mike of course, I just got P. J. Prancer, who said yes. Ginger’s sister and family, that’s four, are coming in from New York, and Emily has three friends coming up from Florida. Tyler asked four of his friends. I’d figure on about seventy-five. I’ll have an exact count for you in a day or two.”

  Roger made rapid notes. “Figure on ten tables of ten, in case there are extras.”

  After a flurry of measurement taking, phone orders, and confirmations, Charles was free for the afternoon to accompany Amelia on a photo shoot. Charles liked spending time with Amelia. While they were gone, Roger and Grace visited Bob at his condo, where Roger stood on the balcony and raved about the view.

  “We ought to buy a place here,” Roger said.

  Grace thought of hillsides sliding away and ice-slicked roads.

  “We had a hell of a time with slides and mud and water in December, but you can see they’re building retaining walls and seeding the hillsides. The loose stuff probably came off the first time. Couple of condos weren’t touched at all.”

  Like Lance’s place, Grace thought, and grimaced.

  “You might want to stop at the office and inquire,” Bob said, refilling Roger’s wineglass.

  “Lovely, just lovely. I’ll bring Charles over. If he likes it, we’ll talk to them at the office here, and then we’ll call Miranda and Paul.” He turned to his mother. “We’d buy it in the name of the business, you see, Mother. That way they’d come for several weeks a year to see Hannah, and we’d come and see you and Amelia.”

  Grace knew Roger quietly preferred Amelia to Hannah. Charles especially enjoyed her company, and during their brief times together often spoke of their travels, referring to Europe as the Continent. Roger said they liked to include Amelia because the had no family. Grace smiled at her son. “It would be nice seeing you more often.”

  A crisis broke one week before the wedding. Emily arrived at the farmhouse in tears and found the women sitting out on their porch. “Mom was right about one thing. I went to every bridal shop in this city, even your friend Mrs. Lerner’s, Grace. I thought I could find one that I could buy off the rack, but no, it has to be ordered.” With her anxious eyes and frown, she looked as she felt, distraught. “What am I going to do?” The corners of her lips quivered. “I’m down to one week. One week. What do I do, get married in a suit?”

  “I’m shocked you’re having so much trouble finding a dress. What size are you?” Amelia asked.

  “Size six.”

  How do I suggest Lurina’s gown? Grace wondered. I can’t. Emily would never consider wearing Lurina’s fifteen-minutes-of-fame wedding gown.

  After the wedding, Lurina had said, “You can take the dress back now, Grace. I ain’t gonna use it no more.”

  “A store won’t take back used wedding dresses.”

  “Then you just take it along to someplace like Salvation Army and let ’em give it to some girl who can’t afford a dress.”

  But Grace hadn’t the heart to just give the lovely dress away, so after being dry-cleaned and bagged, the dress hung in Grace’s closet.

  It was Amelia who saved the day. “J’ai une idee. Grace, don’t you have a brand-new, gorgeous, expensive wedding gown in your closet in a size six?”

  “You do?” Emily looked puzzled. “Why?”

  “It’s Lurina Masterson’s gown. It’s lovely. She wanted to be married in something special.”

  “Grace picked it out for her,” Amelia said.

  Emily drew back. “But she’s eighty years old.”

  “Eighty-one, to be exact. It’s a stunning gown, however old she is, and it should be worn by a young and beautiful bride. Lurina was proud as punch walking across her front parlor in it, and that’s all the wear it’s had. Within twenty minutes it was off of her,” Hannah said.

  “Just take a peek at it, Emily,” urged Amelia.

  “Someone’s used wedding gown?” Emily shook her head, then her eyes flared. A mischievous look rollicked across her face. “Mom would croak over that.” She grinned. “I’ll look at it, if I may, Grace?”

  From the moment the gown slipped over Emily’s head, it was clear that, even without a decollete neckline, it was perfect, molding softly about her breasts and tiny waist. She loved it.

  “On you it’s a vision of grace and beauty.” Amelia clapped her hands.

  Emily turned round and round trying to see it all in Grace’s over-the-dresser mirror. “Have you a full-length mirror?”

  “Back of my door.” Hannah led the way from Grace’s room to hers.

  “It’s wonderful. You picked it out, Grace? I absolutely love it.” Emily gave Grace a hug. “Thank you for showing it to me. Can I buy it from Miss Lurina?”

  “No, you cannot,” Grace said, and as she saw the disappointment in Emily’s face, she hastened to add, “My dear, you can have it. Lurina’s wedding gift to you, you might say.”

  “Really? May I wear it, really?”

  Grace nodded. Emily’s eyes danced, her smile that of a gleeful child, and like a gleeful child she hugged Grace hard. “Thank you, Grace. Thank you so much.”

  “Thanks, Amelia. I wouldn’t have had the nerve to even suggest it. And look at you, Emily, so beautiful. Why, it’s perfect on you.”

  A scramble within the wall of Hannah’s room distracted them all. “What is that?” Emily asked.

  “A possum friend of Hannah’s,” Grace said. “What are you going to do about that creature?” she asked Hannah.

  “Mon Dieu. Can it get through the walls to my room, do you think? This is worse than ladybugs.” Amelia shuddered.

  “I called the people Harold suggested. They’re coming tomorrow with special traps.”

  The thing in the wall scuttled about as if it were stuck and trying to free itself.

  “How can you stand that? I’m getting out of here,” Amelia said.

  Emily turned around one last time and followed them back to Grace’s room, where they helped her remove the dress. “I love it,” she kept repeating. “Russell’s going to love it and Tyler too.”

  “Do you want to take the gown now?” Grace asked.

  Emily tilted her head and considered this, then she shook her head. “I’d like to dress here. I can’t bear my mother trying to interfere in this. After the wedding, she’ll have plenty to say, I’m sure.”

  Not long after that, on a quiet afternoon, after the lights had been strung and the shutters repainted a lovely soft rose, Roger and Charles visited Grace in her bedroom. She was resting, propped up in bed reading. Roger plunked his tall frame into her rocker by the window, and Charles sat beside her on her bed, his shoulder touching hers, his back against the wrought-iron headboard. “With all the reading you do in bed, Mother Singleton, why’d you choose a wrought-iron headboard?”

  “It was me being impetuous. I wanted something pretty and different, I imagine. Everything in my life had been so staid, I thought wrought-iron would be fun. But, you’re right. I stuff a half dozen pillows, at least, behind me to get comfortable. One of these years I’ll change it.” She wanted to spend some time alone with Charles. Alone, they could really talk. He would share bits of gossip about a customer, or tell her stories from his own life, or about the dogs, both friendly and unfriendly, that they encountered on their daily walks, or about a new restaurant they had been to, or about his health. She wanted to talk to him about the tearoom, to explain why she had gone into it, and why they were selling it. He would understand the stress, the responsibility, the time pressure of a business, especially one having to do with food services.

  Roger squirmed in the rocker and extended his legs. Long legs needed a long chair seat, and her rocker’s seat was short and low to the ground. Grace considered her son. Where had Roger gotten his height from? Ted had not been much taller than her,
and none of their parents had been more than five feet ten inches tall. Roger was six feet and more, and handsomer than any of his forebears. A wonder.

  The rocker creaked. Roger pushed up and out of it. “I can’t sit here,” he said. “Coming, Charles?”

  Alongside Charles’s leg, Grace tapped her hand. A quick look urged him to sit awhile and chat. “I’m going to visit with your Mum a bit.” Charles waved Roger from the room, turned, and took Grace’s hand in both of his. “Now, Mother Singleton, we can have a bit of a chat, what say? Why, for goodness sake, are you selling that absolutely beautiful tearoom? I adore tearooms. Granny had a tearoom once. Smaller than yours, tucked away on a little twisting street.” He squiggled his hand through the air. “No money in it, what with her regulars, and how they’d sit and gab for hours over a cup of tea, then go off for a quick fish and chips. She had to give it up eventually. Got to be too much for the old girl. Why’d you go off it?”

  “Same reason as your grandmother. It got to be too much. It consumed our time. I found myself constantly on the run, playing catch-up. I was hardly able to get to the school where I’d been tutoring children. I just couldn’t give that up, Charles. It’s an important part of my life. Then, we were open until five o’clock, so I couldn’t even have tea with Hannah and Amelia in the afternoons anymore. I missed that. And Bob likes to golf, and he has his teaching. I guess we got overly excited initially, and didn’t think clearly.”

  “I understand.” Charles pushed up higher on the bed, then rummaged behind him to readjust the pillows. “You must get a solid headboard.”

  She nodded, settled herself the best she could, for she had given him another one of her pillows. She told him how the tearoom consumed their lives, then related the hullabaloo caused by the TV people, and about Lurina’s wedding, and her inviting the crew in when she’d protested against them from the beginning.

  “Is it possible Lurina phoned them in the first place?”

  Grace had considered and rejected this idea. “She wouldn’t.”

  He laughed. “Well. She certainly sounds like a character, and feisty, as you say yourself. So, why not, then? Maybe the idea caught her fancy but the reality was overwhelming.”

  “Should I ask her?”

  “Think she’d admit it?” Charles asked. He was silent a moment, then he laughed. “Grace, why not let it be the great mystery of Covington?”

  She patted his arm. “Now, my dear, tell me how you really are,” Grace said. “What are those dark circles under your eyes all about?”

  He sighed. “I get so knackered some days. I go home for a rest at noon. Miranda can tell how I’m feeling. She pushes me out the door.”

  “And Roger?”

  Charles heaved a deep sigh. “Dear Roger. It’s hard on him. I haven’t the stamina I used to have. We adored traveling, Grace.” His laugh held a bitter edge. “How do you Americans say? Johnny-on-the-spot, suitcase packed, ready to hit the road.” His eyes grew dreamy. “The adventure of it all: Morocco, Bengal, Nepal, Israel. Where haven’t we been?” He looked at her. “It’s different now.”

  “My goodness, Charles, you’re working six or seven days a week, what would you expect?”

  “Even without the business, I’ve lost interest in traveling. It’s hard on me, uncomfortable, waits in airports, long flights, cramped seats. My ankles swell. Takes me days to recover from jet lag.” He grimaced. “I’ve lost enthusiasm for the whole thing.”

  “I’m less enthusiastic about things, myself. More even-keeled actually,” Grace said. “That’s part of getting older, maybe, for some people, and it’s all right. I’m still very much alive and enjoying my life, my friends, my family.”

  Charles coughed, swung his feet over the side of the bed, and sat up straight. “I find that personal comfort’s more a priority, my own bed and pillow, food that won’t upset my stomach.”

  “I know what you mean.” Silence came easily and comfortably to them, then Charles said, “I better go find Roger,” and he stood and smoothed his trousers. Grace also rose.

  “Tell me, Charles, how’s the T cell count?”

  “Amazingly good. Ta! Ta! I’m a lucky one, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I’m very glad.”

  He hooked his arm around hers as they headed for the door. “Maybe I’m just working too hard.” He laughed. “Well you know, how can you not with a new business?” At the door, he stopped and turned to look at her. “There are other things.”

  “What things?”

  He did not answer for a long time. It was so still in her room that Grace could hear the humming of the battery in her bedside clock. She did not press him. Charles sighed, and said, “It’s a marker, you see, our daily walks. Used to be able to go three miles a day. Then it was two, then one. Now I make it around our block. Roger slows down for me, but he’s like a dog straining at a leash. I say, toddle off, Roger, get a good run, but he won’t.” Charles’s eyes clouded. “Roger’s getting restless.” He turned to her. “I can feel it.” His chin quivered. Then his face tightened. Charles fastened his eyes on some spot on the far wall. “I’m scared to death he’ll leave me.” He hit the wall with his palm. “There. I’ve said it.”

  Grace stood next to him silent, aching for him.

  “After all,” Charles went on, “I contracted this horrible disease through no fault of Roger’s, and it’s changed not just my life, but his too. He’s a young man.” He stifled a moan. “Maybe it’s age. I’m older than he is.”

  Pity for this man she cared about like a son filled Grace’s heart. “Charles,” she whispered, “I don’t believe Roger’s going to leave you. He loves you.”

  “Did love me,” Charles said.

  “Roger’s loyal. You have a life, a business, friends together.”

  Charles shook his head. “Not many friends. Miranda and Paul, that’s all.”

  “One true friend is better than many shallow ones.”

  “Miranda and Paul have kids, a life, they’re busy. Roger and I don’t talk like we used to, now, it’s mostly about business.”

  “That’s how it is when you’re in business together.” The house was very quiet. Grace wanted to weep. Charles’s pain filled her as if it were her own. Taking his hand Grace held it tight. “Dear Charles,” she said softly, “whatever life brings, please know that you’re not alone. I’m here. I love you as if you were my own son. You are my son, never doubt that.”

  Like a wounded child, Charles buried his face in his hands. His shoulders heaved. Grace put her arms about him and he succumbed to wrenching sobs. She held him until his sobs subsided. “Thank you, love,” he said. “I think I need to freshen up before we go down,” and he headed for the bathroom.

  She could hear Roger calling from the side yard. “Charles, let’s get going. We’re going to meet with the caterers.”

  Grace replied to her son from her window, “Charles is in the bathroom. He’ll be right down.”

  A moment later Charles came from the bathroom, looking somewhat better, but with his eyes still puffy, and ran down the stairs.

  Grace stood alone in her room in the silent house. Where was everyone? She ached for Charles and Roger. She couldn’t imagine Roger walking out on Charles, but you never know. Roger was approaching those middle years, that crazy mixed-up time of life.

  At that age, she recalled, Ted had dipped into their savings and bought a speedboat. He’d spent every Sunday of a long and worrisome summer careening across Lake Bixby looking as if he’d capsize any second. By winter he’d lost interest and sold the boat. But he’d given her months of aggravation and anxiety.

  That day, Ginger called, her voice cold. “What the hell have you done?” she demanded.

  Grace set down the onion. She turned off the fire under the pot of stew on the stove. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, Grace Singleton, that ghastly dress.”

  Grace picked up the knife and stared at the onion. The phone sat in the crook of her neck. She har
dly cared if it clattered to the floor. “You’ve seen the dress?”

  “Don’t have to. If it suited an old lady, it won’t suit my daughter.”

  “It’s a lovely gown, expensive. Lurina spent twenty minutes in it. It’s been in my closet ever since.”

  “You planning to wear it too?”

  Grace bridled at the sneer in Ginger’s voice. The knife came down hard, lopping the onion in two. One half of the onion gyrated on the cutting board, then lurched to the floor. Grace stared at it.

  “I’m in charge of this wedding, the dress, the music,” Ginger was saying. “What right have you . . .”

  “Something’s burning in the oven, Ginger. Have to go now.” Grace hung up. Hadn’t Emily wanted to shock her the day of the wedding? Oh well, maybe her mother had aggravated her to the point where she simply had blurted it out.

  Within seconds the phone rang again. Sticking her fingers in her ears, Grace hastened outside and walked away from the house. Weddings made people irrational. Ginger, of course, was like this much of the time. Grace had tried to like her. She and Bob had gone for dinner with them several times. Ginger invariably found fault with the food, the service, the lighting, the seats. Too hard, too soft, too low, too high. Nothing pleased her. Just the other day, they had even gone on a picnic to Hot Springs with Russell and Tyler and Emily. That had been ghastly.

  Ginger had worn slacks and a long-sleeved shirt, a hat, and dark glasses, yet even after smearing her face with a thick white lotion she continued to swat flies no one else could see or feel. And, she called Tyler “boy.” “Come here, boy. Get my bag from the car, boy.”

  How had a mild-mannered man like Martin Hammer ever fallen in love with and married such a woman? What kind of mother had she been to Emily, and how had Emily turned out to be such a sweet, kindhearted young woman? Grace wondered. She looked at Martin sitting at a table, deep into a checkers game with Bob and undisturbed with anything else going on. Men had a way of being tunnelvisioned, shutting out all they chose not to see or hear or feel. For a moment she wished that her antennae were not always alert to everything going on around her.