Earnest (24 page)

C
HAPTER
48

A
nna shook out the blue down comforter, which Jeff had left in a heap on the sofa before rushing to the ferry. His familiar masculine smell lingered in the cotton, along with a whiff of his shaving soap. She hugged the comforter and thought,
Nothing stays the same for five minutes. Life is one never-ending change.

The most monumental recent one was her change of heart toward Jeff. This morning she'd given back his condo key. She'd never have believed that she'd feel grateful he was staying here, but now she welcomed his presence. Her attitude shift astonished her.

You'd better enjoy it while you can,
she thought as she folded the comforter and set it on the sofa again. Soon, one way or another, a decision would be made about the house, and everything would change again. If Jeff didn't get to build Cedar Place, he'd be angry with her. If the house got demolished, she'd be angry with him.

Anna again remembered when she and Grammy had been driving through fog after the Huskies game, and Anna had kept wiping the windshield and craning her neck to see ahead. Grammy had said that the past was gone, and the future hadn't happened yet, so enjoying the present was all there was. But how could Anna enjoy the present with Jeff when a threatening future loomed over them? No matter who won about the house, she and Jeff would be at odds again.

It was easy to predict that their relationship would end with a spear-tipped exclamation point. Anna felt as if she and Jeff were riding through Central Park behind six white horses in Cinderella's glass coach, and up ahead they'd hit a concrete wall. It was hardly a happy-ever-after ending. Yet there was no alternative.

 

As Anna washed the dishes, she stared out the window at hyacinths and tulips in a bed across the street. Earnest napped in a rectangle of sunlight from the window above the sink.When she ran hot water over Jeff's mug, she kept thinking about time. Her future was a problem, and her present could fall apart at any minute. So what about her past, which Jeff had accused her of clinging to?

He and Grammy had insisted that the past was over, but was that always true? Anna sometimes felt that it was a living thing that clung to
her.
It followed her around, insisted on being her dancing partner, and then stepped on her toes.

Such as all the times she'd remembered finding Grammy dead, and a lightning bolt of panic zigzagged through her in the present the same as it had on that terrible morning. Or all the times when she'd thought of spending holidays at boarding school with whatever teacher was assigned to girls not going home—and she'd felt lonely, as if at that very moment it was Christmas all over again. So how could she say the past was past if it was still a part of her, a ball and chain of memory?

Anna took a clean dishtowel from the drawer and dried her and Jeff's granola bowls. She stooped down for Earnest's dish to wash next. He was snoring softly and impersonating a sack of potatoes, and he seemed happy despite the plastic cone.

As Earnest's chest rose and fell, he also seemed indifferent to his stitches and injured leg.
It is amazing how he rolls with life's punches,
Anna thought. As she watched him sleep, she remembered finding him at Second Chance Shelter. And it suddenly struck her that in one day he'd lost his home and the person he loved most—just as in one morning twenty-five years earlier, Anna had lost her home and Grammy.

Perhaps Earnest had felt as sad and hurt as Anna had, but no one would have guessed that he'd ever been troubled. He'd seemed to accept his fate. From the moment he'd plopped his paw into Jeff's hand at the kennel, as far as Anna could tell, Earnest had never looked back with longing or resentment.

Like all dogs, he lived in the present. What's done is done, he seemed to feel, and he greeted the future with joy. Change, whichever way the wind blew, seemed to pose no problem for him. He embraced it. He trusted. Even when a truck hit him, he moved on.

As Anna bent down and petted his shoulder gently, so as not to disturb him, she thought that she should be more like him. Enjoying the now. Trusting fate. Reconciling with hardship. Not being so stubborn, as Jeff had said.

Maybe Anna's parents had hurt her, but that wasn't all that filled her past. Along the way, she'd gotten plenty of love—from Grammy, teachers, friends, Earnest, and even Jeff for three years—and she could sip from a nearly full glass. And maybe life was not just an endless change, as she had thought, but also a jumble of pluses and minuses. Both the good and the bad had strengthened her, nudged her along her path, and gotten her where she was meant to be. And that place was the here and now. In her kitchen with the best dog on the planet.

Earnest rolled over and bonked his cone on a chair leg. He yawned and resumed his nap. All this time, he'd been setting an example for Anna, but only now did she see it.

 

Anna spritzed cleanser in the bathroom sink. If the rest of the condo looked like a hoarder's nest of plants and boxes, at least she could keep this one room clean. She scrubbed the porcelain and faucets and sloshed around water. A few of Jeff's whiskers from his morning shave washed down the drain.

On the glass shelf above the faucets, he'd left his Dopp kit, unzipped. In such a precarious place, it was asking for an accidental poke to send its contents flying to the floor. Though she had no idea how long Jeff would stay here, Anna set the kit in the drawer where he used to keep it, safely out of the way.

Strange
. She'd never filled the drawer with her own belongings. For months it had sat empty, though Anna could have used the extra space. The drawer seemed like a living thing, with its own opinions and expectations. And what those came down to, the drawer might say if it could talk, was that it had been waiting for Jeff to come back.

C
HAPTER
49

O
n the midday ferry, a few men read newspapers, and a woman with Nordstrom shopping bags watched gulls dive-bomb for fish. A mother whispered to her son as they returned from what Jeff guessed had been an orthodontist appointment. In the quiet, he missed his commuter friends' raucous card games and political discussions on their usual five-thirty ferry.

Nearly two weeks after Earnest's accident, however, Jeff still had to get back by noon so Anna could go to the bare-bones operation at her shop. As odd as a midday ferry felt, he'd willingly swim Puget Sound at midnight to live up to his part of their deal, because he wanted her to be happy.

At the condo they'd slipped into an amicable routine, and to his amazement, without discussion, they'd smoothed their wrinkles of past umbrage. They'd also evaded mention of the future council vote. But it was always there, about to cause another rift between them. Because of the future, Jeff had accepted his place on Anna's sofa as her temporary roommate—without pushing for more.

He'd be glad if the council delayed the vote for a decade. But as he leaned his head against the ferry's window, his cell rang, and the caller ID said “City of Gamble.” As he answered, he said good-bye to his and Anna's pleasurable days of ignoring the vote, and hello to their inevitable split.

“Jeff Egan,” he said as if he were still at work.

“I thought you'd like to know the council voted not to send your permit to the hearing examiner,” Grabowski said.

“Fine.” Jeff's word came out more as a sourdough lump than a Joy-to-the-World frosted sugar cookie. A month ago he'd have been ecstatic, but now all he could think of was how unhappy Anna would be.

“The council knew Naomi Blackmore had lawyers lined up and ready to go. Nobody wanted to waste money on a legal fight when she had a right to develop commercial property in a commercial zone,” Grabowski said.

At last he acknowledges the zoning laws.
Jeff had traveled a long and torturous route to what should have been that easy goal. “So what next?”

“Proceed as planned. You have a green light. You can start the demolition whenever you want.”

“Okay.”

“Our building inspector will be keeping an eye on you.”
Taunt, taunt.

On his deathbed, Grabowski would gather strength to be a jerk. “I'm sure the inspector and I will get along. My plans are up to code,” Jeff said.

For the rest of the trip across the Sound, he stared out the window at distant Olympic Mountains.
Funny about success,
he thought.
You struggle to get ahead in life, but it doesn't mean much if you have no one to share it with. And when the person you'd like to share it with will hate you for it.

 

Jeff was about to call Mrs. Blackmore and tell her the news, but he decided to send an e-mail. He wasn't in the mood to hear her crow about a victory that made him feel sorry.

He pressed his phone's e-mail icon and typed with two thumbs:

 

To: Naomi Blackmore

Re: Cedar Place

 

And to break Anna's heart.

 

When Jeff walked off the ferry, he felt drained. The spring day should have warmed him, but then the weather was probably a teaser and rain would soon roll in. Nevertheless, he held up his face to the sun as he walked toward Rainier. In ten minutes he'd be at the condo to spell Anna and see Earnest, who was now gleeful about his cone liberation.

This time, as Jeff had learned from past mistakes, he would break the news to Anna himself so she wouldn't hear it from someone else. He owed her that, though he had no idea what to say or how to make her feel better. He'd been racking his brain for a way out of the mess, but nothing had come to him. Because he had to follow through and do his job, he was trapped. The council's vote marked the end of his and Anna's new friendship, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Jeff approached the intersection of Rainier and Witt's End, so named because George Witt's house, perched above the beach, was the last one on the road. Everybody laughed about that name, and tourists took selfies in front of the street sign. Next to it was another sign, yellow and black, block print: NO TURNAROUND. Once you'd started down the road, that was it.

Farther along Rainier, Jeff came to a Jones & Mulligan Realty sign that had not been up when he'd walked to the ferry that morning. From the Plexiglas box attached to the post, he pulled out a copy of the realtor's brochure. The lot was for sale. A quarter acre. Flat. One lone apple tree grew at the back in a clump of weeds next to an alley.

The lot was on the edge of the commercial district, far enough from the heart of town to keep the price affordable, but close enough that no one would think twice about walking an extra two blocks.
Hmmm. Interesting.
Jeff would keep it in mind.

He folded the brochure and slipped it into his pocket. He had to hurry. Jeff would give Earnest raw carrots and zucchini for lunch.

C
HAPTER
50

P
erched on stools around Plant Parenthood's counter, Anna, Joy, and Lauren arranged tiny Easter bouquets of violets and lily of the valley in vases made of eggshells, which Anna had hollowed out and dyed soft pastels. With all but her barest essentials moved to the condo, her shop was nearly empty. There was nothing left to carry home at the end of the day but the stools and a few more boxes. That would be it.

“So what are we going to do?” Because Joy had been comforting herself with cookies since the council's vote, her face looked plumper.

“There's nothing more we
can
do. It's over,” Anna said.

“Isn't there somebody we can strangle?” Joy asked.

“That wouldn't help anything,” Lauren said.

“It would help
me
. I'd feel better if I could strangle Mrs. Scroogemore,” Joy grumbled.

“Anger doesn't do any good. It's not worth it,” Anna said. Look what it had done to her and Jeff, and how hard it had made life for Earnest.

Lauren, in a long flowered skirt and velveteen matador's jacket, sorted through violets. “This fight's worn me out.”

“I've still got plenty of venom to spread around,” Joy said.

“Save it for John and Penelope. They're going to need it if they have to fight their way back to England,” Anna said.

“He hasn't escaped from the salt mine yet, and then he has to find her. It's going to take a while,” Joy said.

“You haven't written much lately.” Lauren set her elbows on the counter and rested her chin on her palms.

“As you both know, we've had other things going—not that preparing for the council meeting did us any good,” Joy said.

“We gave it our best shot. We can't ask more from ourselves than that,” Lauren said.

“But we lost,” Joy said.

“Lost” seemed to echo around the room and bounce off the walls.

That was how Anna felt: lost. Later today she would put daffodils and tulips in Easter bunny vases for April Pringle and Peggy LeClerc, and chocolate eggs into a bird's nest she'd found in the woods for Tommy, who'd given Igor a new home. The gifts would mark the end of Anna's floral career in Grammy's house. Her work and history here would be over.

Also over was her peaceful interlude with Jeff, who'd tried hard to cushion the blow of the council's vote. He'd moved back to his apartment supposedly because Earnest could now be left at home alone—but Jeff had probably also thought that the sight of him was salt in Anna's wound. Now the condo felt like it was missing something, and Earnest had gone into a funk. Easter was supposed to be about rebirth, but in Anna's air hung death by stoicism.

She pulled tiny heart-shaped leaves off a violet's stem. “This morning I looked on craigslist for another place to rent. There's nothing.”

“Something has to come up sometime. We'll find a way to stay together,” Lauren said.

“I wish we could find another old house,” Anna said.

Joy worked a lily of the valley into her bouquet. “Damned Mrs. Scroogemore. And Jeff.”

“He meant well. I believe that now,” Anna said. “He tried to get us into a warehouse, but it won't be vacant for a few more months.”

“He's still right up there with the Twit, as far as I'm concerned,” Joy said.

“No, the Twit was cruel. Jeff may have hurt me, but he didn't intend to.” Anna fluffed up her tiny bouquet and started a new one in another eggshell.

 

As Anna climbed upstairs, she felt as if she were dragging her heart behind her on a string. Tattered, bruised, and heavy with sadness, her heart bumped on each step. When she reached the turret, she closed the door and wished that Earnest were here, but he had to stay confined in the condo kitchen for another week. She'd brought home his faux oriental rug and her white wicker rocker, so the turret was as spare as a monk's cell.

With a sigh, she sat on the floor and leaned against the wall. The peace she always felt here evaded her.
Dear house,
she said in her mind,
I've lost you. A bulldozer is going to destroy you in a few days, and there's no more I can do. I've tried hard to save you, but I've let you down.

I'm just bricks and boards,
the house replied.
You can picture me in your memory. That'll be enough.

Grammy and I won't be connected anymore,
Anna replied.

Piffle!
Grammy jumped into the conversation.
Girl, I'm not going anywhere. Don't you know that love is eternal? We'll always love each other. Stop being glum.

I've lost my shop. I can't find a place to rent,
Anna said.

Just wait. Good things come with time,
Grammy said.
Hope for the best and expect even more.

Right,
Anna thought with suspicion. But then, she remembered the love in her nearly full glass. It was a good thing that had come with time. Also, Earnest was healing, and she and Jeff didn't hate each other anymore.

Go out there and meet your beautiful life like that butterfly did. Remember?
Grammy asked.

Anna closed her eyes and pictured the butterfly's empty chrysalis on the windowsill and the flap of her glorious wings as she'd crossed the lawn. Instead of begrudging her fight to free herself, she'd gone out to greet her fate. It had been waiting for her, full of hope.

Grammy urged,
Don't hold back! Let go! Enjoy!

Till what would have been closing time if Anna still had her shop, she pulled her knees to her chest, looked out at Gamble's roofs, and thought about Grammy, the house, and the butterfly. Its joyful swoop across the lawn had been a kind of Easter—a pupa's rebirth in a new form. Slowly, it occurred to Anna that maybe rebirth was going on every minute, everywhere, and, like fights, it was a fact of life. Phoenixes rose, reborn, from ash heaps. In a burst of renewal, daffodils rose from the earth every spring. New ideas sprang from old tired ones. Maybe Anna herself could rise above the spirit-crushing disappointment of losing the house, and, as Grammy had suggested, go out to meet her own beautiful life.

That's my girl,
Grammy intruded in Anna's mind.

As Anna smiled to herself, Joy shouted from downstairs. “Anna, you've been gone so long. Are you alive up there?”

Yes, Anna was alive. Very alive. She untied her heart from the string she'd been dragging it by, and she put it in her chest again. With a lighter step, she went downstairs. She had bouquets to finish. There would always be more bouquets. They, too, were a fact of life.