Daisy Lane (7 page)

“You should be ashamed,” Bonnie said. “I raised you better than that.”

“And you and Dad are such great role models for marital happiness?”

“Only a fool thinks marriage will make a woman happy,” Bonnie said.

“Exactly my point,” Maggie said. “So why do it?”

“It’s what the Lord wants us to do,” Bonnie said. “Cleave unto each other. Be fruitful and multiply.”

“Well, we may eventually get married but Scott and I aren’t having any children.”

“What?” Bonnie demanded, and Maggie cringed, knowing what was coming. “What do you mean you and Scott aren’t having any children? I know you’re not a spring chicken but it’s not too late. Mrs. Deacon had Pip when she was 40.”

“And look how he turned out,” Maggie said.

“Why are you so intent on breaking my heart?” Bonnie asked. “You know how badly I want grandchildren. Your brother Sean’s not likely to give me any and Lord knows how Patrick’s avoided it, but so far he has.”

“You have Brian’s children.”

“I want you to have children,” Bonnie said. “I want your grandchildren; it’s only natural. What have you got against children?”

Maggie stopped rolling the dough, turned, and looked her mother straight in the eye.

“Scott can’t give me children,” Maggie said. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Oh,” Bonnie said, and Maggie could see her mother’s brain recalculating like she was the GPS for Maggie’s life.

Maggie knew her mother well enough to know her thought processes. Bonnie adored Scott and had wanted nothing more than for Maggie to marry him. She was so close to getting what she wanted, but if they couldn’t give her grandchildren, did she still want it?

“Well,” Bonnie finally said. “They just grow up and break your heart. You’re probably better off.”

Maggie smiled, shook her head, and turned back to her task. That was about as good of a reaction as she could hope for.

“You could adopt,” Bonnie said.

“No,” Maggie said. “Just, no.”

Sal Delvecchio was dressed in a running suit and thick-heeled, bright white athletic shoes, but Scott knew for a fact that he never did any exercise. A lifetime smoker, Sal had emphysema and heart failure. The slightest exertion caused him to have coughing fits. He wheezed as he talked.

“Grace’s notes, they are not so good,” Sal said. “Antonia had the idea to read them out loud to me, and it sounds as if he was saying he knew death was coming but he was not afraid. Italians on the north end of Sardinia have a much different dialect than my Sicilian family. Still, I think this is what he was saying.”

“Does the name mean anything to you?”

“There was a Vincenzo who was a glass blower back when my father was head glass blower,” Sal said. “He was famous for making hand-blown glass animals. Many young men would come over from Italy, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Germany, and eventually bring over their entire families. There were so many different languages spoken in Rose Hill at that time that the city employed an interpreter who spoke seven languages.”

“Was that only because of the glassworks?”

“No, no,” Sal said. “There was also the timber industry, coal-into-coke processing, as well as the glassworks; that’s why my family came here.”

“How would I find out if Nino worked at Rodefeffer’s?”

“They have all the records down at the museum,” Sal said. “If he worked there, he will be listed there.”

“Museum,” said Sal’s wife as she entered the room. “How they can call that tiny shack a museum is beyond me.”

Sal was referring to a small house on the corner of Rose Hill Avenue and Daisy Lane, next to Eldridge College, which contained a large collection of Rodefeffer Glass and all the records pertaining to the business.

“Knox created that museum and made it a nonprofit just so he could apply for grant money,” Sal said. “That man is always looking for ways to get his hands on some money, and he doesn’t care how he gets it.”

In comparison to her tiny husband, Antonia Delvecchio was an Amazon of a woman, with a lush hourglass figure and a passing resemblance to Sophia Loren that she played to the hilt. Although she had lived in Rose Hill for most of her life, she had made no attempts to assimilate, and still spoke with a heavy accent.

“That man is no good,” she said. “I would not cross the road to spit on him if he were on fire.”

Sal cackled gleefully, which turned into an awful cough as Scott accepted the hot coffee Antonia offered. They both waited until he had recovered to resume their conversation.

“Maybe Mamie will remember him,” Scott said.

“Mamie worked in the office at the glassworks after the war started and all the men went into the service,” Sal said. “She did the payroll, so she may remember him.”

“That woman is crazy in the head,” Antonia said. “She is the richest woman in town and dresses in rags.”

“Not like my beauty,” Sal said, caught her hand, brought it up to his mouth and kissed it.

She smiled, pleased, but pulled it away, saying, “Sal, we have company.”

Antonia smoothed her skirt and patted her hair as she left, swaying languidly as she walked. Sal watched her all the way out of the room and then turned to Scott.

“There were richer and better-looking men chasing her, but she chose me,” he said, shaking his head. “I ask myself every day what I did to deserve such good luck, and I still don’t know. But you know what? Whatever it is, I’ll take it!”

Scott thanked the man and told him not to get up, he would see himself out. He was headed to the door when he heard Antonia say, “Scott.”

She came with him to the door and wrapped a sweater around her shoulders.

“Come,” she said. “I will walk with you outside.”

She walked down the front stairs of their large Georgian brick home and out to the long, curving driveway. The view from their front yard encompassed all of Rose Hill, from the manicured campus of Eldridge College down to the Little Bear River, where the hulking glassworks building sat.

“They’ve sold it,” Antonia said, gesturing at the glassworks.

“I heard,” Scott said, but he was looking at Grace’s house, the lower floors hidden behind overgrown hedges and tall, waving pines, with just the tall Victorian turrets and peaked roofs visible above the treetops.

“I was so sorry about your mother’s passing,” Antonia said, putting a warm hand on his upper arm.

Her eyes were filled with compassion and sympathy, and Scott felt his throat close as if he might cry. He cleared it instead, and looked away.

“Thank you,” he said. “It was very quick.”

“My Sal,” she said, as her own eyes filled with tears. “My Sal is not going to be with us much longer, I fear.”

“He seems like he’s doing well,” Scott said, knowing as he said it that it was the same kind of lie people told him about his mother, as if false hope ever helped anyone face anything horrible and heartbreaking.

“Dr. Machalvie says if he gets any kind of infection, even just a little cold, he may die.”

“I’m so sorry,” Scott said. “He’s such a good man.”

“He is,” Antonia said. “He is the best of men; that is why I chose him.”

There was a challenge in her eyes, as if someone might disagree with her on this point.

“You were both lucky,” Scott said.

Antonia blinked her tears back and smiled.

“Oh no,” she said. “I was the lucky one. I know that.”

Scott drove down Morning Glory Avenue to Pine Mountain Road and then turned right toward downtown. At Rose Hill Avenue he turned left and drove two blocks toward the end of the street, which ended at the gates of Eldridge College. He turned left onto Daisy Lane and parked outside the small cottage with a big sign outside that said, “The Rodefeffer Glass Museum and Gift Shop.”

There were no other cars parked in the lot next to the alley. The tiny Gothic style cottage had been restored and painted, so that it looked very much like an oversized playhouse for children. Scott was not quite six feet tall but still had to duck as he entered through the front door. Inside, the place smelled musty; dust tickled his nose so that he felt he might sneeze.

A weak voice called from the back, “Hello?”

Scott replied and waited for the proprietress to make her way to the front room. Meanwhile, he looked around at the gift shop, which was filled top to bottom with shelves full of blown glass items. Small glass animals, vases, plates, cups, and assorted other hand-blown pieces were crowded onto clear glass shelves with seemingly no rhyme or reason to their placement. Everything was covered with a thick layer of dust.

Shuffling footsteps soon produced the museum manager, an ancient woman named Lavinia Bonecutter, who had run the museum for as long as Scott could remember. She had worked for the Rodefeffer family for many years, and this position was created for her when she could no longer cook or clean for the family. She was hard of hearing, so Scott shouted who he was.

“What’s that?” she said.

“It’s Scott Gordon, Miss Bonecutter,” he yelled. “I came to ask a question about the glassworks.”

“We don’t have a public restroom,” she said, “on account of the bad condition of the plumbing.”

Scott took a deep breath and then changed his mind.

“Never mind,” he yelled.

“The bookstore’s open until ten on Sunday,” she said. “But Maggie won’t let you use the toilet unless you buy something.”

“I’ll just look around,” he yelled.

“Thanks for coming in,” she called out as she turned and shuffled back into the nether regions of the small house.

Scott left the front room and entered the middle room of the house, which had been created by combining two smaller rooms. Along the walls from floor to ceiling were lighted cases full of beautiful glass objects hand-blown by the artisans at Rodefeffer Glassworks. At intervals there were black-and-white photos of the artists at work, and exterior shots of all the workers lined up outside the factory on the side steps.

The workers were all sorrowful looking, gaunt and hollow-eyed, wearing dirty clothing. There was also a photograph of the house in which Grace now lived; the one the Rodefeffers had built during the early part of the twentieth century. There were no trees around it back when this photograph was taken. Servants dressed in formal clothes lined the long front porch, and Scott wondered if the “Mary” Nino was looking for was one of the servants of the house.

In the forefront of the photograph were Gustav Rodefeffer, his wife, and his children. There was a small boy dressed in an uncomfortable looking suit, like a tiny adult’s but with short pants. A taller, thin girl with pale curls stood in the very front. She was dressed in a drop-waist sailor dress and boots buttoned up her ankles. She had a huge white bow in her hair and a fierce, bad-tempered scowl on her face.

“That has to be Mamie,” Scott said. “I’d know that look anywhere.”

There was a later photograph of Mamie which must have been taken just after the start of the Second World War, when she worked in an office at Rodefeffer’s. She was standing outside the glassworks on the loading dock, next to the train tracks, with what looked like a small coterie of female office workers. She had the same blonde hair, now done up in a forties style with a high roll over her forehead. She wore a jacket with big shoulders that only accentuated her gaunt frame, and a pencil skirt and heels that did no favors for her stick-thin legs.

Mamie didn’t look as foul-tempered or fierce in this photo; she was looking off to the side and not at the camera, with a curious half smile on her face. The other women looked a little more down-at-the-heels. They all held glass animals in their hands.

Scott continued on around the wall, looking at the glass as well as the old photos on display, but Mamie wasn’t featured in any other pictures. When he came to a case full of delicate glass animals, he recognized the bird Mamie had held in her hand in the staff photo. It was a graceful, delicate swan, abstract in execution to the point that it communicated more the essential swan-ness of the species rather than the exact physical attributes of the bird.

This, Scott thought, is what makes something art rather than just a knick-knack. He looked for the coded key that matched the piece, and to his surprise, saw that the artist’s name was none other than Nino Vincenzo.

Mamie Rodefeffer’s housekeeper answered when Scott rang the doorbell. Mamie’s house was a Gothic monstrosity on the end of Morning Glory Avenue that culminated in Morning Glory Circle. The biggest, most elaborate displays of architecture were there: at the southern most end of the circle was the Edwardian mansion belonging to Gwyneth Eldridge, whose great-grandfather built Eldridge College; the identically styled Eldridge Inn was right across the street from Mamie’s house. Mamie’s home afforded a beautiful view of Rose Hill City Park, situated between Morning Glory Avenue and Lilac Avenue, south of Pine Mountain Road.

Mamie’s housekeeper looked as beleaguered and put-upon as Scott imagined she must always feel.

“Yes?” she said. “What is it?”