All About Evie (ARC)

by Cathy Lamb

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  people in need. She said she looked for people who needed a smile.

  She would put on a flowered dress and a tutu and sparkling glitter on her face and tell everyone she was the flower fairy.”

  “When Gene Sheldt lost his wife, she brought him flowers each week for two months,” Aunt Iris said.

  “When Jory Lefts was ill, same thing,” Aunt Camellia said.

  “For months.”

  “When Abigail’s husband left her with three kids, she brought the little girls each a bouquet every Tuesday all summer.”

  Everyone loved her. She may have been on the mental health spectrum somewhere, but the spectrum was a generous, kind spectrum.

  “There was not a drop of unkindness in her,” Aunt Camellia told me.

  “It’s why everyone loved her, everyone took care of her, and us,” my mother said. “The neighbors often brought us meals.

  Cookies. Pies. Cakes. They wanted to help. Mom would greet them at the door in a princess dress and wand, welcome them in, hold their hands, smile.”

  “That’s why the three of us were never teased in school about her,” Aunt Iris said. “Even when she would walk to town naked with one of our dogs on a leash.”

  “Even when she wore wings,” my mother said.

  After high school, one by one, they all left for college. In fact, they were in college when their mother took a flying leap off a cliff. They have all told me how guilty they felt: If they had stayed on the island, would their mother have jumped? Probably not, they thought. And the guilt never left.

  “She loved us, we knew that,” my mother said. “Was it so hard to bear, having all her girls gone, that she couldn’t stand it anymore? Could she not endure the battle in her head any longer? I have cried during a hundred black nights trying to answer that question.”

  “Guilt has plagued my soul,” my aunt Camellia said. “My soul will never be able to remove that stain of responsibility in leaving her, of abandoning her, of not being there for her each day, when I knew she was ill.”

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  My aunt Iris was direct: “The vision of her jumping will never leave me. Because behind her I see myself, pushing her.”

  And yet I have also listened to my mother and my aunts talking about their mother, how they intellectually knew that they shouldn’t feel guilty, how they were not responsible, how they did everything for her, and were they never to go to college?

  Never to leave the island? Lucy had their father, who loved her, cared for her, as best he could. She had friends and neighbors she had known for years. My mom and aunts came home to visit all the time, including all summer to work in the family grocery store, in shifts, so someone would always be with Lucy.

  My mother became a nurse, her interest in medicine, in healing her mother, sparking that interest, but then, as she traveled the world, following my dad in the military, where she often couldn’t work, she started her own small floral business. She loved arranging flowers and making bouquets, as she had with her mother, so that’s what she did.

  My aunt Camellia owned a huge nursery and a mail order bulb business outside of Seattle. “I wanted to calm people’s spirits, soothe their angst, comfort them in their need, through flowers and gardens.” Again, you can see my grandma’s love of flowers in the business Aunt Camellia started. She sold it for a huge profit when she moved to the island ten years ago and changed her career to become a “Lotion and Potion Pixie.”

  Aunt Camellia was married for two years, but her husband, as she says, “turned the other way and decided that I did not have the right plumbing,” and never married again. When her husband was trying to pretend he wasn’t gay, they did get pregnant twice, but Aunt Camellia miscarried. Then something happened, she won’t say what, and she was no longer able to have children, which broke her heart.

  There have been a number of long-term boyfriends for Aunt Camellia. “I like romance, and there is nothing wrong with bringing a new spiritual romantic partner into your life, regularly, every three years or so for a new physical and mental awakening.

  Tra la la.”

  Aunt Iris is a botanist. She traveled the world for decades,

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  studying plants and flowers through her job as a university professor. Her husband of forty years, Arvid, was with her when he died in Kenya of a heart attack, and she’s missed him every day since. Her love of photographing flowers came from Lucy. She photographs them from under the stem, or with half the flower in the frame, or drooping. They’re lovely, but people always stop and stare and try to figure the photo out. Somehow the flowers look emotional, sad or alone or joyous, or as if they’re going to straighten up and talk to you.

  Even their business reflects Grandma Lucy. The inside of Flowers, Lotions, and Potions is painted pink, the ceiling a lighter pink.

  They play country music, rock, or classical depending on their mood. In the center is a round antique table where a huge bouquet is always flourishing.

  They’ll hang tiny people dressed in ethnic clothing from branches stuck in the middle of a bouquet of sunflowers. A sign will read, “Let’s make our world welcoming.” Or they’ll hang red Valentine hearts from the ceiling in front of a wildflower display, with photos of their Hollywood boyfriends attached: Jimmy Smits. The Rock. Keanu Reeves. Robert Redford. Denzel Washington. Morgan Freeman. “Who Is Your Hollywood Boyfriend?” a sign says, and people are invited to write down names on hearts.

  They might have a pink tulip display, but then they’ll have birth control packets attached to bamboo shoots. They’ll make a sign that says, “This Is Birth Control Awareness Month. Remember That Health Insurance Pays for Viagra, So It Should Pay for Your Birth Control! Call Your Senators and Representatives Today!”

  They’ll make “political statement bouquets” before an elec-tion. Two years ago they hand-painted a lovely sign with red letters next to a calla lily bouquet. It said, “Don’t Vote for a Dick.”

  The person running was named Richard. He lost.

  A minister protested about one of their flower displays because it was titled “The Glories of Being a Feminist.”

  “Feminism is a threat to marriage,” he intoned, so piously.

  “A man who wants to dominate and control his wife is a threat to marriage,” my mother snapped at him, his quiet, cowed

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  wife standing beside him. “Pretty soon the wife won’t take it anymore and she’ll leave her balding, paunchy, middle-aged husband for someone smarter and handsome.” She eyed the middle-aged minister’s bald head and bulging stomach. “It does get tiresome in bed to sleep with a man who has a medieval attitude about women.”

  The quiet, cowed wife then laughed to her sanctimonious husband’s surprise.

  My mother and aunts say they’ll always be together, “unless,” as Aunt Camellia says, “I find another lover. Then you two are going to have to leave, or at least move to the barn when he spends the night so I don’t have to worry about you listening in. I should make a lotion called Sexy Lotion. Or Nighttime Naughtiness. Or, simply, Lust.”

  “It would sell,” Aunt Iris said. “Sounds like it’ll appeal to a carnal audience, particularly to people like us in our horny years.”

  “You could make a lot of money,” my mother said. “Maybe I’ll find a lover, too. Sorry, dear.” She glanced at me.

  “It’s okay, Mom.” My dad had been gone a long time. She deserved a lover.

  “I think I’m up for a lover,” Aunt Iris said. “It’s unlikely I’ll get pregnant, no matter how exuberant I get with my new man.

  But if I did get pregnant, I would know it was an act of God and I would know that the second coming of Jesus Christ was in my uterus. I would then act accordingly and stop drinking wine and scotch and I would stop smoking an occasional cigar and I’d quit eating pie for dinner and eat more carrots. God,” she groaned, “that sounds awful.”

  “I’d love to se
e you knocked up.” My mother laughed.

  “White hair and a huge stomach.”

  This started a conversation on getting pregnant at seventy and how a body would hold up.

  They’re hilarious.

  They are their mother’s daughters, and Lucy’s love for them burns brightly, still shining from every inch of her magnificent island garden.

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  * * *

  Every year I fill a number of pots on my front porch with white geraniums right when summer is starting. I like white, and the white geraniums look sharp next to two white roses I have on either side of my porch.

  I couldn’t find my trowel, so I headed over to the greenhouse.

  I knew I could find one in there. My aunts and mother were keeping lights on in the greenhouse because they were growing more seedlings, as usual. And orchids. They love orchids. They love exotic flowers, too, the ones you’d find in Africa or Hawaii or Thailand, so they needed warmth and lights.

  I opened the door. Inside the greenhouse, right in the middle, there’s a circular table with a mosaic top. My mother and aunts made the mosaic together. It’s the three of them, three sisters, only they’ve turned themselves into fairies, wearing silver and gold wings and flowered hats, sitting at a table drinking tea and eating pink cake. They are quite artistic.

  There are four black iron chairs with red pillows around the table. They also have a shelf filled with books, poetry, mugs, and art supplies.

  There were seedlings, pink plumeria, birds-of-paradise, yellow hibiscus, and orchids. I stopped to admire the orchids, the lavender, pink, pure white, purple, coral, scarlet, and butter yellow colors that blended right in the middle to make flower miracles.

  I headed toward the back where I knew they had a bucket of tools. Then I stopped. Right by the lights.

  Whoa.

  Oh, whoa.

  I said some bad words. I could not believe this. I put my hands to my head.

  It’s like dealing with rebellious teenagers sometimes, it really is.

  “I want to give you this book.” I held out a heavy coffee table book on Italy to the couple in front of me. She looked to be about seventy, her husband about seventy-five.

  “I beg your pardon?” the husband asked.

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  “I want to give this to you. I overheard you talking about wanting to see Italy one day, and I think you should have this book. It’s on me. I’m the owner here, and I want you to have it.

  No charge.”

  They glanced at each other in confusion. Was she serious?

  Should we do it? Is it wrong to take it? Should we pay her?

  Take the book, I thought. Take it. Book the trip you’ve always wanted to go on.

  I turned the pages of the book and showed them Italy.

  Venice. Rome. Florence. I showed them photos of mountains and streams, charming villages and ancient cities, pizza and wine. “Please. Take it.”

  “Oh, we couldn’t,” the husband said, his voice gravelly, his smile gentle. “We’ll pay for it, if you think we should have it that much.”

  “I insist.” Take the book. “Maybe you should plan that trip to Italy.” I smiled. Encouragingly. Hopefully.

  The wife smiled. “Herman. Maybe we should.”

  Herman’s eyes lit up. “Maybe you’re right, honey.”

  “We’ve always wanted to go. We’ve talked about it for fifty years. The kids even say we should go.”

  “We like pasta,” Herman said. “And we like wine and bread, Rubina.”

  “It’s our time, honey,” Rubina said softly. “Our time. Six kids. Decades of work. We should go.”

  They smiled at each other. Herman raised his eyebrows at her. She nodded her head back. They walked out with a mystery for Herman, a biography on Abe Lincoln for her, and my free Italian book.

  They came back in the store three days later and bought two travel books on Italy. They were so excited. “We’re going,” the wife gushed. “We called a travel agent and we’re leaving in one week.”

  The husband rocked back on his heels. “We’re old, but we’re not too old.”

  “We’re young enough to have an Italian romance, right, Herman?”

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  He laughed.

  “Thank you,” they both said to me.

  “You pushed us to jump on the dream,” Herman said.

  “And now we’re going to Italy!” Rubina raised her fists in victory. “For one month!”

  I bagged their purchases as we chatted. They looked at each other with such love. How many people get that?

  Herman would be dead soon. I saw his body in my premonition, wracked with disease in the hospital. He would die during the Christmas holidays. I saw a tree in the background, the stockings, and how he had collapsed.

  Rubina would have the memory of their Italian trip forever.

  That meant something.

  That night I had dinner with my mother and aunts. We sat on their back patio, pink, white, and red roses soon to be in full bloom like a wave of glory on the trellis above. I could not bear to bring up the dreaded, ridiculous subject. I was confounded that I had to bring it up at all. It had been a long day at the bookstore, then I’d come home and taken Shakespeare and Jane Austen on a ride. I was not up to it. I sighed.

  Aunt Iris told me, “When we were younger I took off my bra and swung it around my head and launched my belief in feminism. Equal rights, that’s all feminism means. Equal rights for women.”

  “That was a wild time,” my mother said. “Protests. Marches.

  Demonstrations.”

  “What?” I put down my fork.

  “We danced and took off our shirts and drank too much and sat and talked with other people and learned from them,” Aunt Camellia said, flipping her white curls back. “We launched our feminine enlightenment. We grasped our own freedom, our power, our voices.”

  “You never told her about all this?” Aunt Iris said.

  “Not in graphic detail. I am her mother,” my mother said.

  “The sixties were an uncontrolled, changing, revolutionary time.”

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  “And amidst all that,” Aunt Camellia said, “we had to dance.

  We had to celebrate. And we had to get angry at what was going on.” She raised her fist and shook it.

  “We had to sing,” my mother said. “And find ourselves. Find ourselves within a society that had repressed women. We had to find our place and our role and what we wanted, not what we were told to want.”

  “We had to grow and learn and change and think,” Aunt Iris said. “We had to break barriers. We had to deal with men who wanted to keep us down, to keep us in traditional roles that would smother us, keep us from becoming who we wanted to become.”

  “I never knew this,” I said, as they chatted on about Vietnam.

  Marches they participated in. Civil rights. Social issues.

  “We learned about our sexuality during that time,” Aunt Iris said. “We finally talked about that taboo subject. Who controlled our bodies? Us, or a man who had control over us? We learned we weren’t bad girls for liking sex. So many of us had been raised in a puritanical era that said if you had sex before marriage you were a slut. It was very damaging, misogynistic, and cruel.”

  “It led to women feeling horrible about themselves,” Aunt Camellia said. “Me included, when I was younger.”

  “So I shed my fear of sex,” Aunt Iris said. “And I walked away from the ‘good girl rules’ of sex, which were written by patronizing, paternalistic men who lived by a double standard.

  Being a ‘good girl’ was so dreary, so dull. By the way, I’m not going to tell you which band leader I slept with during a three-day concert even if you beg.”

  “Who was it? I’ll beg!” I said. “Totally willing to beg.”

  “Why should I tell you?”

  “Because I’m curious. I shouldn’t be. But I am. I want to know.”

>   She raised her eyebrows at me, then she tilted her head and looked proud of herself. She told me whom she’d slept with.

  “You’re kidding.” I leaned forward. He was famous.

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  “No. I did. It was fun. He wanted to see me again.”

  “Did you?”

  “No. Because the next night there was another band, and I slept with another man in that band.”

  “Who?” My gosh. What was going on here?

  “Why should I tell you?” Aunt Iris asked, one eyebrow lifting.

  “Same reason. I’m curious.”

  She told me.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. Why do you keep asking me if I’m kidding? Do you think I’m lying, young woman?” She tsked. Then she grinned, then tried not to grin, then grinned again.

  “Romantic memories,” Aunt Camellia gushed.

  “I think it was lustful memories,” my mother said.

  “Romance. Lust. Whatever.” Aunt Iris moved a hand back and forth. “I’m glad I have them.”

  “Those memories are delicious,” Aunt Camellia said. “I still get a kick out of my love affairs here and there.”

  “They make you smile when you go to sleep at night,” my mother said.

  “This has been a surprising and entertaining conversation, and I’ve learned a lot about you three,” I said. There is so much that we don’t know about our own mothers and aunts. They were younger, they were us, and yet . . . we know only what they’ve chosen to share with us, to talk about.

  “No one is who you think they are,” Aunt Camellia said.

  “We all have different sides to us, and some sides we hide from everyone. We’re different people at different times in our lives, too. Plus”—she winked—“there are the secrets.”

  “All women have secrets,” Aunt Iris said. “Some juicier than others.”

  “Let’s talk about . . .” I named the rocker she slept with.

  “Was he . . .”

  “Oh yes.” She rolled her eyes. “He was heavenly. Totally worth it. I still have his records. You know that song ‘Iris on the Wind’?”

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  I nodded.

  She raised her eyebrows at me.