The Violets of March

by Sarah Jio

  He nodded. “Yes, but you were a child.” He shook his head at Bee with astonishment.

  “We should get you home, child,” Bee said, hurriedly stepping past Henry. “It must be at least two a.m. New York time.”

  I was tired, but not so much as to forget that a Beetle’s trunk is in the front, and I loaded my luggage. Bee revved the engine, and I turned for a parting glance and a wave at Henry, but he was gone. I wondered why Bee hadn’t offered her neighbor a ride.

  “It’s so good to have you, dear,” Bee said as she sped away from the terminal. The seat belts in the car didn’t work, but I didn’t care. Being here with Bee, on this island, made me feel safe.

  I looked out the window up into the starry winter sky as the Beetle jerked along. Hidden Cove Road wound its way down to the waterfront, the route’s sharp and winding curves evoking Lombard Street in San Francisco. No cable cars could navigate the tangled clumps of trees that part to reveal Bee’s beach home. Even if you saw it every day of your life, it never failed to be breathtaking, the old rambling white colonial with its pillared entryway and ebony shutters flanking the front windows. Uncle Bill had urged her to paint them green. Mom said they should have been blue. But Bee always insisted there was no sense in having a white house without black shutters.

  I was unable to see if the lilacs were flowering, or if the rhododendrons were as lush as I remembered, or if the tide was low or high. But even in the dark, the place seemed effervescent and sparkling, untouched by time. “Here we are,” Bee said, braking so hard that I had to brace myself. “You know what you should do?”

  I’d anticipated her next words exactly.

  “You should go put your feet in the sound,” she said, pointing to the beach. “It would do you good.”

  “Tomorrow,” I replied, smiling. “Tonight I just want to go inside and sink into a sofa.”

  “OK, honey,” she said, tucking a stray lock of my blond hair behind my ear. “I’ve missed you.”

  “Me too,” I said, squeezing her hand.

  I lifted my luggage from the trunk and followed her along the brick pathway that led to the house. Bee had lived here long before she married Uncle Bill. Her parents died in a car wreck when she was in college, and left her, their only child, a fortune, with which she made a singular significant purchase: Keystone Mansion, the expansive old eight-bedroom colonial that had been boarded up for years. Since the 1940s, a local debate had raged over which was Bee’s most eccentric act: buying the enormous house or having it redone, just once, inside and out.

  Nearly every room afforded a view of the sound through big casement windows that rattled on windy nights. My mother always said the house was far too large for a woman who didn’t have children. But I think she was just jealous; she lived in a three-bedroom rambler.

  The big front door creaked as Bee and I entered. “Come,” she said. “I’ll make a fire and then get us a drink.”

  I watched as Bee piled logs into the fireplace. It occurred to me that I should have been doing this for her. But I felt too tired to move. My legs ached. Everything ached.

  “It’s funny,” I said, shaking my head. “All those years in New York, and I never once made a trip to visit you. I’m a terrible niece.”

  “Your mind was elsewhere,” she said. “And besides, fate has a way of bringing you back when it’s time to come back.”

  I remembered the words on her postcard. In a way, Bee’s definition of fate felt more like my failure, but her intention was kind.

  I looked around the living room and sighed. “Joel would have liked it here,” I said. “But I never could convince him to leave work long enough to make the trip.”

  “It’s a good thing,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t think we would have gotten along.”

  I smiled. “You’re probably right.” Bee didn’t have much patience for pretense, and Joel was wrapped in layers of it.

  She stood up and walked around the corner to the room she called the “lanai,” where she kept a full wet bar. The space was enclosed almost entirely by windows, aside from one wall where a large painting hung. I remembered the canvas I’d tucked into my suitcase before leaving New York. I wanted to ask her about it, but not yet. I’d learned long ago that discussing Bee’s art, like many subjects in her life, was off limits.

  I thought of the night when I was fifteen, when my cousin Rachel and I snuck into the lanai, found our way into that cabinet with its dark British cane doors, and drank four shots of rum each while the adults played cards in the other room. I remember wishing the room would stop spinning. It was the last time I drank rum.

  Bee returned with two Gordon Greens, a mixture of lime and cucumber muddled together with gin, simple syrup, and a sprinkle of sea salt. “So, let’s hear about you,” she said, handing me a glass.

  I took a sip, wishing I had a story to tell Bee. Any story. I felt that lump in the back of my throat again, and when I opened my mouth to say something, there were no words, so I looked down at my lap instead.

  Bee nodded as if I had just made perfect sense.

  “I know,” she said. “I know.”

  We sat there together in silence, staring at the fire’s hypnotic flames, until I felt my eyelids get heavy.

  March 2

  I don’t know what woke me the next morning: the waves crashing into the shore, so loud it seemed possible they were reaching out like sea arms to knock on the door, or the smell of breakfast in the kitchen—pancakes, which no one ate anymore, certainly not adults, and certainly not adults in New York. Or maybe it was my phone that jarred my eyes open, the cell phone that was ringing somewhere between the cushions of the couch. I hadn’t made it to the guest room the night before; fatigue got the better of me—fatigue or emotional exhaustion. Or both.

  I pushed the quilt aside—Bee must have draped it over me after I’d fallen asleep—and started digging around frantically for the phone.

  It was Annabelle.

  “Hi,” I said quietly.

  “Hi!” she said, startling me with her cheerfulness. “I just wanted to make sure you made it all right. Everything OK?”

  In all honesty, I wished I could be like Annabelle and let it all out. I wanted to cry big fat glorious tears. God knows, I needed to.

  She was staying at my place for the month, as her upstairs neighbors had taken up the trumpet. “Have there been any calls?” I asked, knowing that Annabelle would understand exactly whom I was talking about. I knew I sounded pathetic, but we had long since given each other permission to be pathetic around one another.

  “Sorry, Em, no calls.”

  “Right,” I said. “Of course. So, how are things there?”

  “Well,” she said, “I ran into Evan at the café this morning.”

  Evan is Annabelle’s ex, the one she didn’t marry on account of his dislike of jazz, and, well, other things, too. Let’s see . . . he snored. And he ate hamburgers, which was a problem because Annabelle is a vegetarian. And then there was the business of his name. Evan is not a marriageable name.

  “Did you two talk?”

  “Sort of,” she said. Her voice suddenly sounded distant, as if she might have been doing two things at once. “But it was awkward.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Well, he introduced me to his new girlfriend, Vivien.”

  She said Vivien as if it were a name for some kind of dreaded health condition—like a rash, or maybe a staph infection.

  “Do I sense some jealousy here, Annie? Remember, you’re the one who broke it off with him.”

  “I know,” she said. “And I don’t regret the decision.”

  I didn’t buy it. “Annie, I know Evan,” I said, “and I know that if you called him right now and told him how you really felt, he’d be yours. He still loves you.”

  There was a silence on the other end of the line, as if she was considering my idea.

  “Annie?” I said. “Are you there?”<
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  “Yeah,” she said. “Sorry, I had to set the phone down. The UPS guy just showed up at your door and I needed to sign for a package. Do you always get this much mail?”

  “So you didn’t hear a word I just said?”

  “Sorry,” she said. “Was it important?”

  I sighed. “No.”

  Despite the fact that she believed she was a hopeless romantic, and despite her research, when it came to love, Annabelle had honed the fine art of relationship sabotage.

  “Well, call me if you want to talk,” she said.

  “I will.”

  “Love you.”

  “Love you too, and stay away from my Laura Mercier moisturizer,” I said half playfully, half seriously.

  “I think I can manage that if,” she said, “you promise me you’ll work on things in the tear department.”

  “Deal.”

  When I found my way into the kitchen, I was surprised not to find Bee there tending the stove. Instead, there was a plate of pancakes, a few strips of bacon stacked in a neat little pile, and a jar of homemade raspberry jam waiting at the table next to a note:

  Emily,

  I had to go into town to run some errands, and I didn’t want to wake you. I’ve left you a plate of your favorite buckwheat pancakes and bacon (reheat in the microwave—forty-five seconds on high). I’ll be back this afternoon. I put your things in the bedroom down the hall. Make yourself comfortable. And you should take a walk after break fast. The sound is beautiful today.

  Love,

  Bee

  I set the note down and looked out the window. She was right. The gray-blue water, the patchwork of sandy and rocky shore—it was breathtaking. I had the urge to run out there right at that moment and dig for clams, or lift up rocks and look for crabs, or strip down and swim to the buoy the way I had done in the summers of my childhood. I wanted to immerse myself in that big, beautiful, mysterious body of water. The thought, for a second, made me feel alive again, but it lasted only a second. So I slathered my pancakes in Bee’s raspberry jam and ate.

  The table was just as I remembered, covered with the yellow oilcloth printed with pineapple, a napkin holder decorated with seashells, and a stack of magazines. Bee reads each issue of The New Yorker, cover to cover, and then clips out her favorite stories, plasters them in Post-it notes containing her comments, and mails them to me, no matter how many times I tell her that she really shouldn’t bother; I have a subscription to the magazine.

  After I’d set my plate in the dishwasher, I walked down the hall, peering into each room until I found the one where Bee had placed my bags. In all the years I’d visited her as a child, I had never set foot in this room. In fact, I didn’t recall it ever being there. But Bee had a habit of keeping certain rooms locked, for reasons my sister, Danielle, and I would never understand.

  Yes, I decided, I would have remembered this room. The walls were painted pink—which was strange, because Bee hated pink. Near the bed there was a dresser, a nightstand, and a large closet. I looked out the paned window that faced the west side of the shore and remembered Bee’s suggestion to go on a walk. I decided to unpack later and head for the beach. I was too weak to resist its magnetism any longer.

  Chapter 3

  Ididn’t bother changing my clothes or brushing my hair, preparations I would most certainly have made in New York. Instead, I threw on a sweater, jammed my feet into a pair of army green rubber boots that Bee kept in the mudroom, and made my way outside.

  There is something oddly therapeutic about trudging through marshy sand, the feeling of squishiness below the feet signaling to the brain that it’s OK to just let go for a while. And that’s what I did that morning. I didn’t scold myself, either, when my mind turned to Joel and a thousand little random memories from the past. I crushed a hollowed-out crab shell with my boot, crunching it into a thousand pieces.

  I picked up a rock and threw it into the water as far and as hard as I could. Dammit. Why did our story have to end like this? Then I picked up another, and another, throwing them violently into the sound, until I slumped over on a nearby piece of driftwood. How could he? How could I? In spite of everything, there was a small part of me that wanted him back, and I hated myself for it.

  “You’re never going to skip a rock with a throw like that.”

  I jumped at the sound of a man’s voice. It was Henry, walking slowly toward me.

  “Oh, hi,” I said self-consciously. Had he been watching my tantrum ? And for how long? “I was just . . .”

  “Skipping rocks,” he said, nodding. “But your technique, sweetheart—it’s all wrong.”

  He bent down and picked up a smooth sand-dollar-thin rock and held it up to the light, scrutinizing every angle. “Yes,” he finally said. “This one will do.” He turned to me. “Now, hold the rock like this, and then let your arm flow through like butter as you release it.”

  He threw it toward the shore and it flew across the water, where it did a little six-hop dance on the surface. “Rats,” he said. “I’m losing my touch. Six is terrible.”

  “It is?”

  “Well, yeah,” he said. “My record’s fourteen.”

  “Fourteen? You can’t be serious.”

  “As I live and stand here,” he said, crossing his heart with his hand the way you do when you’re eleven years old. And a member of a Boy Scout troop. “I was once the rock-skipping champion of this island.”

  I didn’t feel like laughing, but I couldn’t help myself. “They have competitions for rock skipping?”

  “Sure do,” he said. “Now you try.”

  I looked down toward the sand and reached for a flat stone. “Here goes,” I said, winding up and then letting go. The rock hit the water and belly flopped. “See? I’m terrible.”

  “Nah,” he said. “You just need practice.”

  I smiled. His face was worn and wrinkled like an old leather-bound book. But his eyes . . . well, they told me that somewhere inside the smile lines resided a young man.

  “May I interest you in a cup of coffee?” he asked, pointing up the shore to a little white house above the bulkhead. His eyes sparkled.

  “Yes,” I said. “That sounds wonderful.”

  We walked up the concrete steps that led to a moss-covered pathway. Its six stepping-stones deposited us at Henry’s entryway, under the shadow of two large old cedar trees standing sentry.

  He opened the screen door. Its screech rivaled that of a few seagulls from the roof who squealed in disapproval as they flew back toward the water.

  “I’ve been meaning to get this door fixed,” he said, slipping off his boots on the porch. I followed his lead and did the same.

  My cheeks warmed from the fire roaring and crackling in the living room. “You make yourself comfortable,” he said. “I’ll put the coffee on.”

  I nodded and walked to the fireplace, with its dark mahogany mantel lined with seashells, small shiny rocks, and black-and-white photos in simple frames. One of the pictures caught my eye. Its subject wore her blond hair curled and styled close to her head, the way women did in the 1940s. She oozed glamour, like a model or an actress, standing there on the beach with the wind blowing her dress against her body, the outline of her breasts and her thin waist visible. There was a house in the background, Henry’s house, and those cedar trees, much smaller then, but just as recognizable. I wondered if she had been his wife. Her pose seemed too suggestive for a sister. Whoever this was, Henry adored her. I was sure of it.

  He approached with two big coffee mugs in hand.

  “She’s beautiful,” I said, picking up the photo and sitting down on the couch with it for a closer look. “Your wife?”

  He looked surprised by my question, then answered, simply, “No.” He handed me a mug and then stood up and ran his fingers along his chin, the way men do when they’re confused or unsure about something.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, quickly replacing the frame on the mantel. “I didn’t mean to pry.” />
  “No, no,” he said, suddenly smiling. “It’s silly, I guess. It’s been more than sixty years; you’d think I’d be able to talk about her.”

  “Her?”

  “She was my fiancée,” he continued. “We were going to be married, but . . . things didn’t work out.” He paused as if changing his mind about something. “I probably shouldn’t be—”

  We both looked up when we heard a knock at the door. “Henry?” It was a man’s voice. “Are you home?”

  “Oh, it’s Jack,” Henry said, turning to me. He said the name in a familiar way, as though I was expected to know him.

  I watched from the living room as he opened the door and welcomed a dark-haired man about my age. He was tall, so tall that he had to duck a little when entering the house. He wore jeans and a gray wool sweater, and even though it was only midmorning, the faint shadow visible on his jawline hinted at the fact that he hadn’t yet shaved, or showered, either.

  “Hi,” he said a little awkwardly, as his eyes met mine. “I’m Jack.”

  Henry spoke for me. “This is Emily—you know, Bee Larson’s niece.”

  Jack looked at me, and then back at Henry. “Bee’s niece?”

  “Yes,” Henry replied. “She’s visiting for the month.”

  “Welcome,” Jack said, tugging at the cuff of his sweater. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt; I started cooking and halfway through the recipe realized I was out of eggs. You don’t happen to have two, do you?”

  “Of course,” Henry said as he headed to the kitchen.

  While Henry was gone, my eyes met Jack’s, but I quickly looked away. He rubbed his forehead; I fiddled with the zipper on my sweater. The silence was as thick and stifling as the murky sand on the beach outside the window.

  A splash sounded in the water outside. I startled, catching my foot on the edge of the side table, helplessly watching the little white vase sitting atop a stack of books topple to the ground, where it broke into four jagged pieces.