dropping
down
from
the
sky.
How
can
the
word
love
the
word
life
even
fit
in
the
mouth?
(Found on a piece of paper under the big willow)
Sarah and I are hanging half in, half out my bedroom window, passing the bottle of vodka back and forth.
“We could off her?” Sarah suggests, all her words slurring into one.
“How would we do it?” I ask, swigging a huge gulp of vodka.
“Poison. It’s always the best choice, hard to trace.”
“Let’s poison him too, and all his stupid gorgeous brothers.” I can feel the words sticking to the insides of my mouth. “He didn’t even wait a week, Sarah.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. He’s hurt.”
“God, how can he like her?”
Sarah shakes her head. “I saw the way he looked at you in the street, like a crazy person, really out there, more demented than demented, holy Toledo tigers bonkers. You know what I think? I think he put his arm around her for your benefit.”
“What if he has sex with her for my benefit?” Jealousy mad-dogs through me. Yet, that’s not the worst part, neither is the remorse; the worst part is I keep thinking of the afternoon on the forest bed, how vulnerable I’d felt, how much I’d liked it, being that open, that me, with him. Had I ever felt so close to anyone?
“Can I have a cigarette?” I ask, taking one before she answers.
She cups a hand around the end of her smoke, lights it with the other, then hands it to me, takes mine, then lights it for herself. I drag on it, cough, don’t care, take another and manage not to choke, blowing a gray trail of smoke into the night air.
“Bails would know what to do,” I say.
“She would,” Sarah agrees.
We smoke together quietly in the moonlight and I realize something I can never say to Sarah. There might’ve been another reason, a deeper one, why I didn’t want to be around her. It’s that she’s not Bailey, and that’s a bit unbearable for me – but I need to bear it. I concentrate on the music of the river, let myself drift along with it as it rushes steadily away.
After a few moments, I say, “You can revoke my free pass.”
She tilts her head, smiles at me in a way that floods me with warmth. “Done deal.”
She puts out her cigarette on the windowsill and slips back onto the bed. I put mine out too, but stay outside looking over Gram’s lustrous garden, breathing it in and practically swooning from the bouquet that wafts up to me on the cool breeze.
And that’s when I get the idea. The brilliant idea. I have to talk to Joe. I have to at least try to make him understand. But I could use a little help.
“Sarah,” I say when I flop back onto the bed. “The roses, they’re aphrodisiacal, remember?”
She gets it immediately. “Yes, Lennie! It’s the last-resort miracle! Flying figs, yes!”
“Figs?”
“I couldn’t think of an animal, I’m too wasted.”
I’m on a mission. I’ve left Sarah sound asleep in Bailey’s bed and I’m tiptoeing my thumping vodka head down the steps and out into the creeping morning light. The fog is thick and sad, the whole world an X-ray of itself. I have my weapon in hand and am about to begin my task. Gram is going to kill me, but this is the price I must pay.
I start at my favorite bush of all, the Magic Lanterns, roses with a symphony of color jammed into each petal. I snip the heads off the most extraordinary ones I can find. Then go to the Opening Nights and snip, snip, snip, merrily along to the Perfect Moments, the Sweet Surrenders, the Black Magics. My heart kicks around in my chest from both fear and excitement. I go from prize bush to bush, from the red velvet Lasting Loves to the pink Fragrant Clouds to the apricot Marilyn Monroes and end at the most beautiful orange-red rose on the planet, appropriately named: The Trumpeter. There I go for broke until I have at my feet a bundle of roses so ravishing that if God got married, there would be no other possible choice for the bouquet. I’ve cut so many I can’t even fit the stems in one hand but have to carry them in both as I head down the road to find a place to stash them until later. I put them beside one of my favorite oaks, totally hidden from the house. Then I worry they’ll wilt, so I run back to the house and prepare a basket with wet towels at the bottom and go back to the side of the road and wrap all the stems.
Later that morning, after Sarah leaves, Big goes off to the trees, and Gram retreats into the art room with her green women, I tiptoe out the door. I’ve convinced myself, despite all reason perhaps, that this is going to work. I keep thinking that Bails would be proud of this harebrained plan. Extraordinary, she’d say. In fact, maybe Bails would like that I fell in love with Joe so soon after she died. Maybe it’s just the exact inappropriate way my sister would want to be mourned by me.
The flowers are still behind the oak where I left them. When I see them I am struck again by their extraordinary beauty. I’ve never seen a bouquet of them like this, never seen the explosive color of one bloom right beside another.
I walk up the hill to the Fontaines’ in a cloud of exquisite fragrance. Who knows if it’s the power of suggestion, or if the roses are truly charmed, but by the time I get to the house. I’m so in love with Joe, I can barely ring the bell. I have serious doubts if I’ll be able to form a coherent sentence. If he answers I might just tackle him to the ground till he gives and be done with it.
But no such luck.
The same stylish woman who was in the yard squabbling the other day opens the door. “Don’t tell me, you must be Lennie.” It’s immediately apparent that Fontaine spawn can’t come close in the smile department to Mother Fontaine. I should tell Big – her smile has a better shot at reviving bugs than his pyramids.
“I am,” I say. “Nice to meet you, Mrs Fontaine.” She’s being so friendly that I can’t imagine she knows what’s happened between her son and me. He probably talks to her about as much as I talk to Gram.
“And will you just look at those roses! I’ve never seen anything like them in my life. Where’d you pick them? The Garden of Eden?” Like mother, like son. I remember Joe said the same that first day.
“Something like that,” I say. “My grandmother has a way with flowers. They’re for Joe. Is he home?” All of a sudden, I’m nervous. Really nervous. My stomach seems to be hosting a symposium of bees.
“And the aroma! My God, what an aroma!” she cries. I think the flowers have hypnotized her. Wow. Maybe they do work. “Lucky Joe, what a gift, but I’m sorry dear, he’s not home. He said he’d be back soon though. I can put them in water and leave them for him in his room if you like.”
I’m too disappointed to answer. I just nod and hand them over to her. I bet he’s at Rachel’s feeding her family chocolate croissants. I have a dreadful thought – what if the roses actually are love-inducing and Joe comes back here with Rachel and both of them fall under their spell? This was another disastrous idea, but I can’t take the roses back now. Actually, I think it would take an automatic weapon to get them back from Mrs Fontaine, who is leaning farther into the bouquet with each passing second.
“Thank you,” I say. “For giving them to him.” Will she be able to separate herself from these flowers?
“It was very nice to meet you, Lennie. I’d been looking forward to it. I’m sure Joe will really appreciate these.”
“Lennie,” an exasperated voice says from behind me. That symposium in my belly just opened its doors to wasps and hornets too. This is it. I turn around and see Joe making his way up the path. There is no bounce in his walk. It’s as if gravity has a hand on his shoulder that it never did before.
“Oh, honey!” Mrs Fontaine exclaims. “Look what Lennie brought you. Have you ever seen such roses. I
sure haven’t. My word.” Mrs Fontaine is speaking directly to the roses now, taking in deep aromatic breaths. “Well, I’ll just bring these in, find a nice place for them. You kids have fun…”
I watch her head disappear completely in the bouquet as the door closes behind her. I want to lunge at her, grab the flowers, shriek, I need those roses more than you do, lady, but I have a more pressing concern: Joe’s silent fuming beside me.
As soon as the door clicks closed, he says, “You still don’t get it, do you?” His voice is full of menace, not quite if a shark could talk, but close. He points at the door behind which dozens of aphrodisiacal roses are filling the air with promise. “You’ve got to be kidding. You think it’s that easy?” His face is getting flushed, his eyes bulgy and wild. “I don’t want tiny dresses or stupid fucking magic flowers!” He flails in place like a marionette. “I’m already in love with you, Lennie, don’t you get it? But I can’t be with you. Every time I close my eyes I see you with him.”
I stand there dumbstruck – sure, there were some discouraging things just said, but all of them seem to have fallen away. I’m left with six wonderful words: I’m already in love with you. Present tense, not past. Rachel Brazile be damned. A skyful of hope knocks into me.
“Let me explain,” I say, intent on remembering my lines this time, intent on getting him to understand.
He makes a noise that’s part groan, part roar, like ahhharrrrgh, then says, “Nothing to explain. I saw you two. You lied to me over and over again.”
“Toby and I were—”
He interrupts. “No way, I don’t want to hear it. I told you what happened to me in France and you did this anyway. I can’t forgive you. It’s just the way I am. You have to leave me alone. I’m sorry.”
My legs go weak as it sinks in that his hurt and anger, the sickness of having been deceived and betrayed, has already trumped his love.
He motions down the hill to where Toby and I were that night, and says, “What. Did. You. Expect?” What did I expect? One minute he’s trying to tell me he loves me and the next he’s watching me kiss another guy. Of course he feels this way.
I have to say something, so I say the only thing that makes sense in my mixed heart. “I’m so in love with you.”
My words knock the wind out of him.
It’s as if everything around us stops to see what’s going to happen next – the trees lean in, birds hover, flowers hold their petals still. How could he not surrender to this crazy big love we both feel? He couldn’t not, right?
I reach my hand out to touch him, but he moves his arm out of my reach.
He shakes his head, looks at the ground. “I can’t be with someone who could do that to me.” Then he looks right in my eyes, and says, “I can’t be with someone who could do that to her sister.”
The words have guillotine force. I stagger backward, splintering into pieces. His hand flies to his mouth. Maybe he’s wishing his words back inside. Maybe he even thinks he went too far, but it doesn’t matter. He wanted me to get it and I do.
I do the only thing I can. I turn around and run from him, hoping my trembling legs will keep me up until I can get away. Like Heathcliff and Cathy, I had the Big Bang, once-in-a-lifetime kind of love, and I destroyed it all.
All I want is to get up to The Sanctum so I can throw the covers over my head and disappear for several hundred years. Out of breath from racing down the hill, I push through the front door of the house. I blow past the kitchen, but backtrack when I glimpse Gram. She’s sitting at the kitchen table, her arms folded in front of her chest, her face hard and stern. In front of her on the table are her garden shears and my copy of Wuthering Heights.
Uh-oh.
She jumps right in. “You have no idea how close I came to chopping your precious book to bits, but I have some self-control and respect for other people’s things.” She stands up. When Gram’s mad, she practically doubles in size and all twelve feet of her is bulldozing across the kitchen right at me.
“What were you thinking, Lennie? You come like the Grim Reaper and decimate my garden, my roses. How could you? You know how I feel about anyone but me touching my flowers. It’s the one and only thing I ask. The one and only thing.”
She’s looming over me. “Well?”
“They’ll grow back.” I know this is the wrong thing to say, but holler-at-Lennie-day is taking its toll.
She throws her arms up, completely exasperated with me, and it strikes me how similar her expression and arm flailing resembles Joe’s. “That is not the point and you know it.” She points at me. “You’ve become very selfish, Lennie Walker.”
This I was not expecting. No one’s ever called me selfish in my life, least of all Gram – the never-ending fountain of praise and coddling. Are she and Joe testifying at the same trial?
Could this day get any worse?
Isn’t the answer to that question always yes?
Gram’s hands are on her hips now, face flushed, eyes blazing, double uh-oh – I lean back against the wall, brace myself for the impending assault. She leans in. “Yes, Lennie. You act like you’re the only one in this house who has lost somebody. She was like my daughter, do you know what that’s like? Do you? My daughter. No, you don’t because you haven’t once asked. Not once have you asked how I’m doing. Did it ever occur to you that I might need to talk?” She is yelling now. “I know you’re devastated, but Lennie, you’re not the only one.”
All the air races out of the room, and I race out with it.
Bailey grabs my hand
and pulls me out of the window
into the sky,
pulls music out of my pockets.
"It's time you learned to fly."
she says,
and vanishes.
(Found on a lollipop wrapper on the trail to the Rain River)
I bolt down the hallway and out the door and jump all four porch steps. I want to run into the woods, veer off the path, find a spot where no one can find me, sit down under an old craggy oak and cry. I want to cry and cry and cry and cry until all the dirt in the whole forest floor has turned to mud. And this is exactly what I’m about to do except that when I hit the path, I realize I can’t. I can’t run away from Gram, especially not after everything she just said. Because I know she’s right. She and Big have been like background noise to me since Bailey died.
I’ve hardly given any thought to what they’re going through. I made Toby my ally in grief, like he and I had an exclusionary right to it, an exclusionary right to Bailey herself. I think of all the times Gram hovered at the door to The Sanctum trying to get me to talk about Bailey, asking me to come down and have a cup of tea, and how I just assumed she wanted to comfort me. It never once occurred to me that she needed to talk herself, that she needed me.
How could I have been so careless with her feelings? With Joe’s? With everyone’s?
I take a deep breath, turn around, and make my way back to the kitchen. I can’t make things right with Joe, but at least I can try to make them right with Gram. She’s in the same chair at the table. I stand across from her, rest my fingers on the table, wait for her to look up at me. Not one window is open, and the hot stuffy kitchen smells almost rotten.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Really.” She nods, looks down at her hands. It occurs to me that I’ve disappointed or hurt or betrayed everyone I love in the last couple months: Gram, Bailey, Joe, Toby, Sarah, even Big. How did I manage that? Before Bailey died, I don’t think I ever really disappointed anyone. Did Bailey just take care of everyone and everything for me? Or did no one expect anything of me before? Or did I just not do anything or want anything before, so I never had to deal with the consequences of my messed-up actions? Or have I become really selfish and self-absorbed? Or all of the above?
I look at the sickly Lennie houseplant on the counter and know that it’s not me anymore. It’s who I used to be, before, and that’s why it’s dying. That me is gone.
“I don’t know who
I am,” I say, sitting down. “I can’t be who I was, not without her, and who I’m becoming is a total screw-up.”
Gram doesn’t deny it. She’s still mad, not twelve feet of mad, but plenty mad.
“We could go out to lunch in the city next week, spend the whole day together,” I add, feeling puny, trying to make up for months of ignoring her with a lunch.
She nods, but that is not what’s on her mind. “Just so you know, I don’t know who I am without her either.”
“Really?”
She shakes her head. “Nope. Every day, after you and Big leave, all I do is stand in front of a blank canvas thinking how much I despise the color green, how every single shade of it disgusts me or disappoints me or breaks my heart.” Sadness fills me. I imagine all the green willowy women sliding out of their canvases and slinking their way out the front door.
“I get it,” I say quietly.
Gram closes her eyes. Her hands are folded one on top of the other on the table. I reach out and put my hand over hers and she quickly sandwiches it.
“It’s horrible,” she whispers.
“It is,” I say.
The early-afternoon light drains out the windows, zebra-ing the room with long dark shadows. Gram looks old and tired and it makes me feel desolate. Bailey, Uncle Big and I have been her whole life, except for a few generations of flowers and a lot of green paintings.
“You know what else I hate?” she says. “I hate that everyone keeps telling me that I carry Bailey in my heart. I want to holler at them: I don’t want her there. I want her in the kitchen with Lennie and me. I want her at the river with Toby and their baby. I want her to be Juliet and Lady Macbeth, you stupid, stupid people. Bailey doesn’t want to be trapped in my heart or anyone else’s.” Gram pounds her fist on the table. I squeeze it with my hands and nod yes, and feel yes, a giant, pulsing, angry yes that passes from her to me. I look down at our hands and catch sight of Wuthering Heights lying there silent and helpless and ornery as ever. I think about all the wasted lives, all the wasted love crammed inside it.
“Gram, do it.”