The Lavender Hour Read online

  “This was sweet of you,”Nona said, as she put the flowers in the tumbler.

  “It isn't anything,” I said.

  “I never see a daffodil but that I don't think of my mother,” she said.

  “Did she like them?”

  “You should have seen our yard in the spring. It was a carpet of yellow. Just a carpet. One year, there was even a picture in the Cape Cod Times. There must have been a thousand bulbs in that yard, and she planted every one herself.” She set the flowers on the table and crossed to where I was standing and gave me a quick hug. This was the first time we had embraced in the three weeks I had been coming to the house. Then she pulled away and sat at the table. “We had a fight,” she said.

  Her words were so totally unexpected that I wasn't sure I'd heard her correctly. “What?”

  “We had a fight. Last night.”

  “Who?”

  “Luke. And me.”

  “Oh,” I said. Words flashed through my brain, the precise phrases of glib sympathy we had been trained to withhold. Don't worry. Everything will be fine. It wouldn't be fine. Everyone knew that.

  “It was so stupid,” she said.

  “Arguments sometimes are.” I thought about Ashley and the foolish things we clashed over.

  “It was my fault.”

  “Do you want to tell me what happened?” A safe question. Neutral.

  “It was stupid,” Nona said again, shaking her head. She looked fragile and every minute of her seventy years. “It was about the damn inspection sticker.”

  “Inspection sticker?”

  “For his truck.”

  I waited.

  “It expired last month.” She took a little breath.

  “And…,”I said. We had both lowered our voices.

  “Well, he's been all upset about it. There isn't a day goes by but that he doesn't harp on it, saying I need to get it taken care of.” She pulled a tissue out of her pocket and wiped her nose. “Leave it to me to say the dumbest thing. I told him there was no point in spending thirty dollars for a sticker when the truck was just sitting in the driveway not going anywhere.” She looked over at me. “I probably shouldn't have said that. But I kept thinking of the cost. Thirty dollars. I know it might not sound like a lot, but money is just melting away here.”

  I reached out, touched her shoulder, nodded.

  “Well, Luke just started yelling at me. He said why didn't I go the hell back to Wellfleet. He said he didn't need me just hanging around waiting for him to die. He told me to forget about the goddamned sticker, he'd get someone else to take care of it.” Nona twisted the tissue in her fingers. “There I was worrying about thirty dollars. What does it matter?”

  She looked beaten, exhausted, heartbroken. The last weeks would have been hard for anyone, but at Nona's age, the unrelenting burden had to be harrowing. I knew from our training that the stress of constant care often led to illness or early death of the caregiver. At that minute, I wanted to go straight into Luke's room and tell him that he had no excuse to be cruel to his mother, that she was doing the best she could. All the wrong things, of course. For the first time, it occurred to me that it made sense that most of the volunteers were retired. They had more experience in life and knew how to handle tricky situations. I struggled to think of the exact right thing to say, but before I could come up with anything that seemed right, I heard the door to Luke's room open and then close. Jim came into the kitchen, his arms full of soiled sheets. I watched the effort it took for Nona to pull herself together.

  “Hey, Jessie,” Jim said.

  “Hi, Jim.” He was short and solid. James Cagney with a pony-tail.

  “Nice shoes,” he said, nodding at my paint-stained and worn-out Nikes.

  “Yours, too.” His Doc Martens had to have been born sometime back in the eighties.

  He crossed to the basement door and dropped the sheets on the floor. “So, Nona,”he said, “did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during his root canal?”

  Nona shook her head.

  “He wanted to transcend dental medication.”

  “That's terrible,” she said, but for the first time since I arrived, she was smiling.

  “Ya like that, huh?” He crossed and stood behind her, placed his hands on her shoulders, and began to massage her neck. She sighed softly.

  “Did you hear about the skunk that went to church?” he said. “He had his own pew.”

  Nona and I rolled our eyes, groaned.

  “Bad,” Nona said.

  “Pitiful,” I added.

  “What are you talking about? That's my best stuff.” He kneaded Nona's shoulders. “You ladies are killing me here.”

  I looked at Nona and froze. Whenever I let a word like that slip into the conversation with her—death, kill, dying—it seemed to hang in the air sparking neon until I could cover it with a spew of words. Jim let them out as if they carried no more weight than any other ordinary, run-of-the-mill words. Faye had the same natural way about her. I doubted I would ever attain that kind of ease.

  Jim's pager beeped. He checked the number.

  “Okay,”he said. “You two can beg me all you want, but I've only got time for one more, then I've got to run.”

  Nona and I looked at each other, shook our heads.

  “This guy and girl had sex,” Jim started, glanced over at me. “I don't know if you're old enough for this one, Jess.”

  I grinned. “Chance it.”

  He grinned back. “If you insist. So he said, 'If I'd known you were a virgin, I'd have taken more time,' and she says, 'If I'd known you had more time, I would have taken off my panty hose.'”

  While we were laughing, he leaned over and kissed Nona on the cheek. “See you tomorrow, sweetheart. You've got my number if you need anything before then.”

  “Honestly,” Nona said, after he left, “if he was seven inches taller and twenty years older, I'd make a play for him.”

  “He's gay, Nona,” I said, although—sexual preferences aside— Jim had started to look pretty good to me, too.

  She looked surprised. “Do you really think so?”

  Before we could get into the specifics of Jim's sexual orientation, a car pulled into the drive.

  “There's Helen,” she said, and sighed. “I know she means well, but sometimes I don't feel like getting out.” She sighed again and ran a hand over her hair. “I must look a mess.”

  “You look fine,” I said. She did look a little better. Jim medicine.

  She fished a tube of lipstick out of her handbag and smeared some on. It was a vivid magenta, as much a mistake as the coal-dyed hair. “How cold is it out?” she said.

  “It's raw.”

  She chose a jacket from the coat pegs by the back entry. I got up and picked up the sheets Jim had left by the basement door.

  “Oh, leave those. I'll do them when I get back.”

  “It's no bother.”

  “Please,” she said, “just leave them.” It was as difficult for her to accept assistance as it was for Luke. I had told her that volunteers were to help in any way. Clean. Do laundry. Run errands. Write letters. Nona always refused. She said I was doing enough just coming by and giving her a break for an hour. Pigheaded pride, Lily would call it. A Cape Cod native's stubbornness, said Faye, who saw it reflected in herself.

  “Plant a potato, get a potato,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Just noticing that Luke came by his obstinacy naturally.”

  “Don't you be getting fresh with me,” Nona said, but she was smiling. That smile made me feel as if maybe, for the first time, I was doing something worthwhile.

  AFTER SHE left, I had the customary moment of anxiety at being alone with Luke, but with each visit, it was becoming easier to control. I washed out my cup, wiped down the Formica, listened for sounds from his room. I wondered what joke Jim had told him that caused that deep and surprising laugh. Personally, I thought men's laughter was just about the sexiest thi
ng. God, talk about grim to no prospects. Now I was getting turned on by a short, gay nurse and a dying man. The fact was, I was so horny even widowers with halitosis were starting to look good. Like I said, I'd been giving serious thought to Faye's suggestion about a vibrator.

  At the window feeder, a pair of blue jays were feasting. Below, a chipmunk was munching on sunflower seeds that had spilled on the ground. On impulse, I opened the box of muffins, crumbled one. I unlatched the window and tossed the crumbs to the chipmunk, spread a few more in the feeder. Completely wasteful of good food, but it cheered me up and in an odd way gave me hope. I left the rest of the muffins for Nona. Until that morning, when she told me about not wanting to spend thirty dollars for an inspection sticker—what had she said? money was just melting away—I supposed I hadn't fully appreciated the toll Luke's illness was exacting on this family.

  Ignoring Nona's instructions, I picked up the sheets Jim had thrown in the corner and took them down to the laundry. I swallowed against the smell of sour sweat and stuffed them in the washer, then measured out detergent, set the water temperature to hot. When the cycle clicked in, I checked out the basement. It was cluttered with fishing gear, paint cans, lawn furniture. A white enameled picnic table and some plastic yard chairs were piled by the steps leading to the bulkhead. There was a coffee can on the floor by the water heater, placed to catch the drips of a slow leak. One corner of the basement had been converted into a gym with a set of free weights and workout bench. I pictured a dark-haired man in cutoffs doing reps, building up biceps, carving out a six-pack. I crossed to the bench. The weight bar was cool beneath my fingers. I lost track of time, standing there and staring at the bench, and then became aware of the creaking of floor joists overhead. Luke's dog, I thought. I had encountered the Lab once or twice when Nona brought him to the kitchen to let him out before she left, though mostly he stayed with Luke or just outside Luke's door. I switched off the light and headed up the stairs, heard a woman's voice from some daytime talk show. I was halfway across the kitchen before I realized it wasn't a TV program but a real voice coming from Luke's room.

  I was checking out the car in the drive, an ancient blue Volvo, more rust than metal, when a girl came out of Luke's room, leading the black dog. She wore tooled turquoise boots and low-rise jeans that went so far beyond tight, they could cause internal injury. Tendrils from a tattoo snaked up out of the waistband and disappeared beneath an orange cropped T-shirt. She had hard, dark eyes and yellow hair the wrong side of unruly that framed a slender, strong-jawed face. The total effect was what Grandma Ruth called trailer trash. Over the years, I'd had this type in my classroom. They always looked tougher than they were, and often, curiously, they were the most creative. Usually they ended up being the ones I missed the most at graduation. I held out my hand. “You must be Paige,” I said. “I'm Jessie. From hospice.”

  “I know,” she said. She barely brushed my hand with hers before placing the dog's leash in my palm. “Rocker needs to go out.” The dark eyes defied me to argue.

  The Lab came right to me, sniffed my crotch. I nudged his head away.

  “When he's finished,” Paige went on, “just bring him in. Then you can go along.”

  “Nona's gone out,” I said.

  Paige gave me a well, duh look. Obviously Nona was not there. “I'll stay with Luke,” she said. “There's really no need for you to hang around.” She returned to her father's room before I could get out one word.

  Difficult. Can be confrontational. The notes in Luke's file didn't half sum up his daughter. I was thinking more along the lines of Impossible. I didn't bother to put on my jacket and got rain-soaked while Rocker sniffed around for a spot to take a dump. (Rocker. What was he? A chair?) While he deposited a remarkably rank pile, I replayed the scene with Paige. No How are you? Nice to meet you. Just Rocker needs to go out. If Ashley were here, she would demand an apology from the girl, but that was another way I differed from my sister. And apparently from Paige. I tried to avoid confrontations. No doubt Paige felt like she was the only one in the universe to ever lose a parent or to be estranged from her mama. If opportunity presented itself, I would tell her that, in some ways, she was fortunate, in that she could tell Luke that she loved him and he could say it right back to her. At least, they still had time. They had been given that.

  Inside, I unclipped the leash while Rocker shook his coat dry, spraying water three feet in every direction. I yanked a couple of squares from a roll of paper towels and blotted my hair and face. While I waited for Paige to reappear, I found a stainless steel mixing bowl, which I filled with tap water and set on the floor. The Lab attacked it with doggy enthusiasm. I found a ballpoint pen and a small pad of ruled paper by the phone and jotted a couple of lines for Nona, telling her the wash was ready to put in the dryer, and tucked it beneath the tumbler of daffodils.

  “Are you all set, then?”

  Paige stood in the doorway, arms akimbo. I saw in her eyes a familiar expression, one I'd seen reflected in every mirror I had passed during the summer and fall that I turned fifteen, the year my daddy died. Anger and defiance. The twin masks of fear.

  A long moment passed before I let out a deep breath. “All set,” I said.

  “Okay,” Paige said.

  “I've left a note for Nona.”

  “Yeah. Whatever,” she said, enunciating it in that bored two-word way that drove me nuts. What ever.

  I bit back a retort.

  She watched as I gathered up my things. Listen, I wanted to tell her, I know what you're going through. My daddy died when I was fourteen. It sucks. Before I could open my mouth, the girl turned and went back to Luke's room. Rocker looked up with grave retriever eyes.

  “It stinks,” I told him. “Big time.” Even after seventeen years, the sense of missing my daddy hit me hard and left me dry-mouthed, like I was sucking on a stone.

  But as I headed back to the cottage, despite my encounter with Paige, my mood lifted. I recalled Nona's smile, her confidences, the birds at the feeder. Small matters, and yet I felt that things were changing. I was making a difference. I could feel it clearly, like spring. Rebirth was in the air.

  five

  SATURDAY DAWNED CLEAR and beautiful. Earlier that morning, I had opened the south-facing windows of our cottage, and now the air spread around me, heavy with the raw, marly smells of spring. Armed with a cup of coffee and a pad and pencil, I settled in by the phone.

  The previous week, I had received an Easter card from Lily, and at the sight of my mama's handwriting, I was so overwhelmed with home-longing that I actually considered flying down to Richmond for the holiday weekend. I'd been trying to justify the cost of the flight on my overstretched budget when Nona called and asked if I would come over on Sunday morning to stay with Luke while she went to a church service, and that settled the matter. For the first time, Nona had actually asked me for something. My feeling of hope was reinforced. We were making progress.

  I had planned on picking up a box of chocolates at the Candy Manor, and in fact had been on my way into Chatham, when I had gotten the idea of making Nona the Easter bread that has been a holiday tradition in our family for as long as I could remember. I turned right around and headed back to the cottage, all the while imagining Nona's face when I handed her the bread, an intricate braid of raised yeast dough with eggs nested in the plaits, their shells colored with natural infusions. Onion skins for the yellow, beets for red, spinach for green. “Jesus be, Lily,” my daddy said one year as he watched our mama steeping the vegetables, “wouldn't it be a damn sight easier if you just bought an egg-dyeing kit at Winn-Dixie?” His suggestion was so blasphemous, Lily hadn't even bothered to respond; this, after all, was a woman who used a toothbrush to clean the insides of the Lucite faucets in the guest bathroom. Dyeing eggs with vegetables was kid's play for her.

  As I dialed, I pictured my mama's delight at the reason for my call. For years and years, Lily had been after both Ashley and me to make copies of family reci
pes.

  “Sweetie,” Lily said when she picked up, “I was just thinking of you.”

  “You were?”

  “This very minute. Just last night, I was asking Ashley if she'd heard from you lately. I've been wondering how you're doing.”

  “I'm fine. Busy. Missing you all.” I fiddled with the pencil and tried to calculate what was so different about my mama's voice. It sounded like Lily and yet not like her. “I wish I could be there tomorrow,” I said. “Ashley's boys must be big enough now for the egg hunt.”

  “The egg hunt,” Lily said, and gave an easy laugh. “Well, that brings back memories.”

  “It does, doesn't it?” I remembered how Ashley and I would wake at dawn and race outside, our bare feet and the hems of our nightgowns quickly soaked through as we looked for the foil-covered candy eggs our parents had hidden in the tulip beds. Now that ritual had passed to another generation. Another generation. Talk about feeling old. “And then we'd have brunch,” I said. “With Great-grandma Helfgott's Easter bread.” I drew a quick sketch of a circular braid on the pad, added the eggs. “In fact, that's one of the reasons I'm calling.”

  “Now that was a good deal of work,” Lily said before I could continue. “Lord knows I'm not grieving to see the last of that.”

  “The last of what?”

  “The Easter braid. That's what you're talking about, isn't it? God, when I think of all that work. I swear I must have been brain-dead.”

  “What do you mean the last of it? You aren't making it this year?” I pictured Lily standing at the marble-topped counter kneading dough, the kitchen fragrant with the scent of cardamom. “I always thought you liked making the bread.”

  Lily laughed again, and in the laugh, I identified the change in my mama's voice. She sounded lighter. Younger.

  “There's a hard way of doing things,” Lily continued, “and an easy way, and the hard way isn't always the path to virtue. More often it's a downhill road leading directly to a martyr's grave.”