Lilac Avenue (3 page)

Her stomach rumbled
, but she was damned if she was going to take a morsel of that charity meal Phyllis had sent. She could survive on her own for a few days if she didn’t eat much. There were still canned goods in the larder. She understood from hearing her servants talk that by using the telephone, one could order unhealthy food to be delivered for cash payment. She could sleep here in her chair and use the downstairs half bath for her toilette. She could crawl if she had to get to the lavatory.

How long before someone even noticed she was missing?

The house was so quiet; she could hear the steady click of the pendulum in the grandfather clock in the central hallway. It took six men to carry that clock out of the big house down by the factory, a cart with two horses to bring it up to Morning Glory Circle, and the same six men to carry it into the hallway of the new house. Her father set his pocket watch by it every morning when he wound it. Years later he had paid a man to come all the way from Germany to modernize it, so it did not need to be wound.

She could hear the hum of the refrigerator all the way down the hall in the kitchen. When she was a child they had an ice house out back of the big house. Using his pocket knife, her brother would shave off slivers from the big blocks of ice, and then they would sit on the front porch in the summer and lick them.

S
he could hear a bird outside, singing, “Bob White.”

‘
Terrible pests, birds,’ she thought. ‘Probably nesting in the gutter, damaging the house.’

Some children were playing in the park across the street; she could hear them calling, “Red rover, red rover, send
Destiny over.” Destiny was a name for a heroine in a romance novel, not for what was no doubt some wild little beastie with sticky hands and a belly fat from all the candy and fluorescent-colored soda pop her parents fed her.

Mamie had always been thin, and it was each new nanny’s duty to coax her to eat
, to try to fill out her gaunt frame. Mamie had delighted in thwarting their attempts to fatten her up. The nannies got in such awful trouble over their failure to do so.

Mamie
shifted in the chair and the mail on the floor crackled beneath her feet. She would never know what the letter said; probably someone wanting money. It hardly mattered now.

She was tired, so tired.

She knew this was only the beginning. First it was this knee, then that hip, while every day her sight would worsen until the world was dark, and she was completely and totally at the mercy of her horrible nephews, their stupid wives, and the idiot peasants who worked wherever they put her. Everything gone to hell, and she would not be able to escape into her books.

‘This is the e
nd,’ she thought. ‘If I don’t do it myself, while I still can, I will not have the strength later.’

Her heart fluttered and was silent,
and this time it was a bit longer before it fluttered again.

“Go ahead and stop,” she told it. “Save me some trouble.”

She laid her head back against the chair and thought about her father’s gun in the drawer of her desk in her bedroom. Her father had a servant named Berthold who had taught her how to shoot; she had once been quite accurate in her aim. It wouldn’t take great aim to kill oneself, only a firm resolve. But how to get upstairs and down the long hallway to her bedroom? It would take hours to crawl.

S
he had been raised a Catholic, so she knew all about sin. She had faithfully attended Mass every Sunday for her entire life, but now she found she didn’t care about any of it. Hell seemed preferable to whatever lay in wait for her at the hands of her family and the strangers to whom they would consign her fate. Besides, her fate had been sealed the first time she lay on the warm grass with Nino, under the cherry tree down by the river. She had never confessed it nor asked for forgiveness. Actually, if given the chance, she’d do it all over again, only this time she’d stand up to her father and run away with her lover; they’d raise their child in poverty if need be.

‘I was
weak and proud when I had the chance,’ she thought, ‘and look at me now.’

She heard a key turn in the lock of the front door, and then the door open
ed.

“Who is it?” she called out.

No one answered.

She heard the door close and footsteps on the wood floor between the foyer carpet and the
Oriental rug in the parlor. The figure was fuzzy, but she could tell it was female.

“Hi Mamie,” she said.

“Sandy?” Mamie said. “Is that you?”

The woman didn’t answer. She had come closer, and Mamie didn’t like not knowing what she was doing.

“What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?” Mamie said. “Identify yourself immediately or I will call the police.”

“You know me, Mamie.”

“I know that voice,” Mamie said. “Who is it? Don’t play games with me. I’m warning you.”

“
There’s no need to be afraid. Your nephew sent me over to see how you’re doing.”

“Couldn’t be bothered to come himself, I guess,” Mamie said.

“How are you doing?”

“Well, I’m sitting here wishing I were dead, if you want to know the truth.”

“Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Why? What do you want
?”

“
Just to check on you, make sure you’re all right.”

“
You don’t owe me anything,” Mamie said.

“
Your nephews just want to be sure you’re well taken care of.”

“The joke’s on them
, then. I haven’t got any money.”

“You’ve got this nice, big house, though, and all these pretty antiques.”

“I recognize you now,” Mamie said. “You never did have the brains God gave a goose.”

“I’m a lo
t smarter than everyone thinks.”

“Get out of my house,” Mamie said.
“You’re trespassing.”

“Your nephew gave me this key, remember?”

“If you think he’ll appreciate this you’re a fool.”

“Would you
like a cup of tea?”

“Well, I would like a cup of tea, as it happens. My staff has deserted me, as you can see.
My heart is just about to give out on me, and I have a terrible headache.”

“
He said this is your favorite tea. I’ll go and make some, and then we’ll have a nice long chat.”

“
I don’t know how he’d know what my favorite tea is,” Mamie said. “He never takes an interest unless he wants something.”

“He must care or he wouldn’t have asked me to come and check on you.”

“He won’t take you back,” Mamie said. “He’s in trouble with the law.”

“Money has a way of making troubles go away. You relax and I’ll get us some tea.”

“I never thought I’d see you again,” Mamie said as she heard the woman’s footsteps going down the main hallway to the kitchen. “I hoped it, is more to the point. I never could see what Knox saw in you to begin with. She’s nothing but a gold digger, I told him, plain and simple. But he never listens to me. No one ever listens to an old lady. But I was right, as it turned out. You will never admit it, probably, but I was right about you.”

Mamie’s mind wandered as she waited for the woman to return. Her heart sped up, paused, and then beat slowly, reluctantly.

“I might not be alive by the time you get back with that tea,” she called out. “My heart’s failing me.”

She could hear the woman moving around in the k
itchen, and then eventually coming back down the hall to the parlor. The tea service clinked on the tray.

“Took you long enough,” Mamie said. “I don’t like tepid tea;
I like it hot, with four cubes of sugar.”

“I think you’ll find it very hot, very sweet, an
d very strong,” the woman said.

The woman helped Mamie take the cup and saucer, which were both very hot.

“What is this?” Mamie asked. “Smells funny.”

“It’s a very expensive blend,” the woman said.

“I’m parched,” Mamie said, and took a tentative sip.

“Thi
s is terrible,” she said. “Tastes like medicine.”

“It’s the herbs,” the woman said. “It
will make your headache go away.”

Mamie took another sip and
although the warmth felt good as it spread down into her belly, the taste was bitter.

“I had a nanny who used to give me medicine that tasted like this,” Mamie said. “What is it?”

“It’s herbal,” the woman said. “Drink it all down and you’ll soon feel better.”

Mamie finished the tea in a big gulp, with a grimace.

“Nasty stuff,” she said. “I’d prefer a cup of Darjeeling.”

Mamie
felt a searing pain in her chest. She dropped the cup.

“
What was that?” she said. “Poison?”

“Relax,” the woman said. “You’ll feel better soon.”

The pain spread from her chest into her shoulders, back, and down both arms. It was excruciating. She drew up her arms to her chest to try to contain the pain, but it was overwhelming, sharp, and relentless. Unbearable. She cried out, but the woman did not respond, did not lift a finger to help her.

Then
the pain left as suddenly as it came, but when Mamie opened her eyes she found she was completely blind.

“Where are you?” she called out, but there was no sound or any indication that anyone was with her in the room.

She could no longer hear the clock in the hall, the refrigerator in the kitchen, or the bird singing, “Bob White.”

“Help me,” she cried, but there was no response.

She could discern no color, light or shape. She wept then, afraid, until she was weak and disoriented. Then she slept.

When she awoke, t
he first surprise was that she could see very clearly. The second was whom she saw.

“Leibling,
you’re finally here,” her grandmother said. “Nino has been telling me the funniest story.”

Chapter Two
- Tuesday

Claire Fitzpatrick used a flat brush to paint hair color cream around her hairline at the temples and forehead, where an alarming number of gray hairs had begun to show themselves among their shiny dark neighbors. She used a hand mirror and the medicine cabinet mirror to examine the rest of her scalp for any other signs of encroachment. So far all of the white harbingers of her impending senior status had been monitored and dealt with. She would turn forty in two months. She had to be vigilant.

She set the egg timer for twenty minutes, and then turned her attention to hair removal. She slathered her legs with drugstore depilatory cream, and then applied a more expensive department store brand, which she was trying to make last, to her upper lip. She sat down on the edge of the tub, and had just applied honey wax to her bikini line when someone banged on the bathroom door.

"Claire," her father called out. "I need in there."

"I thought you went to breakfast," she responded.

"I'm back," he said. "I need in there."

Claire considered the sticky wax she had just applied to her nether regions. She went ahead and stuck the cotton strips to the sticky surface on each side, wrapped a towel around her naked torso and opened the door.

"You've got shaving cream on your lip," her father said.

"It's not shaving cream," Claire said, as she stepped aside so her father could enter the bathroom.

"Stinks in here," her father said as he shut the door.

Claire sighed, adjusted her towel so that it was more firmly wrapped around her, and went down the hall to the living room.

"Hi, Claire," Ed Harrison said.

Ed, whom Claire had grown up living next to, was the editor of the
Rose Hill Sentinel
. He was sitting on the couch, holding her Boston terrier, Mackie Pea, and rubbing her little furry belly. He seemed to be suppressing a laugh.

Claire considered the attractive picture she must make, waved, and hurried into the kitchen, where her mother was making coffee.

"Lord, look at you," Delia laughed.

"It would have been nice," Claire said, "if someone had seen fit to tell me that we had company."

"I'm sorry, honey," Delia said. "I didn't realize you were beautifying in there."

"Why is everyone here?" she asked. "When I went in the bathroom
, he was out to breakfast, and you were still in bed."

"After breakfast Ian decided he wanted to use his own bathroom,
so Ed brought him home, and he forgot his key so I had to let them in," Delia said. "Once I'm up I can't lay back down, so I thought I may as well get my day started. As soon as he's done, Ed will take him to the service station so your Uncle Curtis can watch him. Then you can have the bathroom all to yourself."

Over the past few years
, Claire's father Ian had experienced multiple mini-strokes, which the doctor called TMIs. Every time he had one of these small strokes, sometimes so subtle you couldn't tell they were happening, more brain cells died. As a result of this slow deterioration of his brain, he had developed what was called vascular dementia.

Although the word dementia c
onjures pictures of wild, crazy behavior, Ian's had manifested itself more as severe memory problems and confusion. He sometimes thought Claire was still in high school, or that her brother Liam, who had died of leukemia in childhood, was still alive. He liked a routine that didn't vary, so it was surprising that he had come home between breakfast and going to her Uncle Curtis's gas station.

Claire waited in the kitchen, sipping hot coffee, until her father came down the hall. Then she scurried through the living room and down to the hall to the bathroom.

"Are we running tomorrow?" Ed called out.

"Yes," Claire called back. "I'll meet you at your office at the usual time."

"I don’t know what she's doing in there," she heard her father say to Ed. "But it smells like tear gas."

Claire cringed and shut the door behind her. She rinsed the depilatory cream off her legs, wiped it off her upper lip, and rinsed her face. She sat back down on the edge of the tub and co
nsidered the cotton strips stuck to the tender skin of her nether regions. She had never before left it on this long. She decided it would be better to do both at once lest one hurt so bad she couldn't face the second. She firmly grasped both strips at the top and pulled as hard as she could.

The pain was so excruciating she cursed loudly, then pressed her legs together and cried.

"Claire," her mother called through the bathroom door. "Are you all right?"

"What's wrong?" she heard her father say. "Did she fall in the tub?"

"I'm fine," Claire called out. "Just fine."

The kitchen timer sitting on the bathroom counter dinged, letting her know it was time to rinse the color paste off of her hair.

"I have got to get my own place," Claire said.

Claire turned on the taps in the bathtub and then stepped into a steamy hot shower that stung her inner thighs like fire. She had just finished rinsing the hair color out of her hair when she felt a cool draft of air. She wiped her eyes and looked toward the edge of the shower curtain, where a tiny boy was regarding her. His tangled golden curls framed a freckled, tawny face with peanut butter and toast crumbs stuck to the skin around his mouth.

"Hi Sammy," Claire said.

"You's naked," Sammy said.

"Hannah!" Claire called out.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry," her cousin Hannah said as she entered the bathroom and picked up her three-year-old son. “Sammy, do you remember the talk we had about privacy permission? People in bathrooms don’t like other people watching them do their business.”

"Claire's naked," he said as they left the bathroom.

“Claire’s taking a shower,” Hannah said.

"Claire's being driven mad," Claire said.

"Claire?" her mother said from the doorway, "I'm taking Sammy to school and Ed's taking your father to Curtis's. Do you mind moving the clothes from the washer to the dryer before you leave?"

"I don't mind at all," Claire said, as the cold air from the open door turned her skin to goose bumps.

"Love you," her mother said.

"Love you," Claire said.

After her shower, Claire dried her hair and slid on her silk satin robe, snagged now in so many places from Mackie Pea's claws that it no longer made the elegant statement she had envisioned when she purchased it in Hong Kong years before. Nowadays it got washed with her father's flannel shirts and blue jeans. She slid on her cashmere-lined slippers, almost worn through the soles after so many years of use, and went down the hall to get more of the coffee her mother had made. Her cousin Hannah was sitting at the table drinking the last cup, her feet propped up on another chair, as she read the paper.

"Hey, glamour girl," Hannah said. "Sorry about Sammy. You know, I should get that tattooed on my hand, so I could just hold it up seventy times per day instead of wasting my breath. Being Sammy's mother means always being sorry about something."

"No problem," Claire said.

She measured out the grounds to make another pot of coffee. Long used to drinking the most complicated cappuccino drinks money could buy, Claire now had to settle for coffee from a blue plastic bucket.

Hannah had also used the last of the milk. Claire considered her options and finally spritzed canned whipped cream into the bottom of her coffee cup. Inspired now, she also tipped in a little vanilla extract and a half teaspoon of sugar. She’d run it off tomorrow.

"What's on your agenda today?" she asked Hannah.

"Oh, you know," Hannah said. "Stray dogs, orphaned kittens, treed
raccoons, possums being where they have no business possuming."

"Mom said Sammy's doing great at preschool."

"When she's there to watch him like a hawk so he can't escape," Hannah said.

“I’ve been thinking,” Claire said. “I’d like to get my own place somewhere close by.”

“Hmmm,” Claire said, setting down her paper. “How about the Davis place next door? It’s been on the market since they moved to Florida.”

“Doesn’t Phyllis live there?”

“Her parents said she could live there until it was sold,” Hannah said. “Every time Trick puts up a realty sign Phyllis takes it down. He finally got tired of wasting signs and quit putting them up at all.”

“That would certainly be close,” Claire said.

She went to the window and looked at the Davis’s backyard, which was separated from her parents’ by a tall, weathered board fence. The Davis’s house was a small three-bedroom-one-bath brick ranch, just like her parents’ home. Phyllis Davis was probably trashing it, she thought. She also wouldn’t take kindly to being made homeless.

“Is there anything else?” she asked.

“Scott has to sell his mother’s house,” Hannah said. “Plus if he stays shacked up with Maggie above the store then he may sell his house.”

“I’ll ask him about it.”

“Other than that, I can’t think of anyplace,” Hannah said. “There’s the Branduff’s place, but it needs a complete renovation, plus it’s so big. You could always move to Glencora, I guess. They have fancy condos and ski houses up there.”

“Too far to drive every day,” Claire said. “Especially when the weather’s bad.”

“I’ll keep my eyes pealed and ear to the ground,” Hannah said. “How’s your dad doing?”

“He’s getting a little paranoid,” Claire said. “Doc Machalvie says that’s normal.”

“Everyone’s a little paranoid,” Hannah said. “That’s just cause there’s always some evil bastages out to get ya.”

Because Hannah had a
three-year-old and a penchant for swearing, she had taken to substituting like-sounding words for her usual profane ones. It wasn’t always an improvement.

After Hannah left, Claire checked the trash folder on her email account where a specially set up filter transferred messages she received from certain people to whom she no longer wished to correspond. There were multiple messages from her former employer
, famous actress and demanding diva Sloan Merryweather; the most recent one was from the previous day.

“Call me,” it said. “I can’t find Umberto’s number.”

Claire felt a shiver of dread.

Claire had been ignoring
any call from Sloan, so at least she didn’t have to hear that voice, except in her head: the pitiful whine that could quickly turn into a deadly growl, or the baby talk that so often preceded a spine-tingling shriek. She didn’t miss it.

Her phone rang in her hand, startling her. It was Denise, the woman who owned the Bee Hive Hair Salon that Claire was running while Denise was on maternity leave.

“Hey, Sweetie,” Denise said. “Have you decided what you’re gonna do?”

“Not yet,” Claire said. “I thought I had until the end of the month.”

“The buyer just upped the offer,” Denise said. “But I only have until the end of the week.”

“Who is this person?” Claire asked. “Are you sure it’s legit?”

“I just speak with their attorney,” Denise said. “They overnighted me a contract. I had Maggie’s brother look it over and he checked on the lawyer; he’s for real; some hoity toity rich guy in New York.”

Claire was pretty sure it was her former boss who was putting this pressure on, trying to drive Claire back into her employment. Sloan employed New York attorneys that Claire would not want to be on the wrong side of again.

“I’ll let you know,” Claire said. “I promise. By Friday.”

“It would suit me to keep on this way,” Denise said. “But it’s an insane amount they’re offering me.”

This only confirmed Claire’s suspicions about the origin of the offer. It was just like Sloan to do something so crazy, vindictive, and expensive.

Claire was looking over the day’s upcoming appointments when she heard someone tapping on the window of the Bee Hive Hair Salon.

“This day just gets better and better,” she muttered as she unlocked the door to let in her ex-mother-in-law, Frieda Deacon.

“Hello,
Frieda,” Claire said.

“I was hoping to catch you before you got busy,”
Frieda said.

The older woman had an ingratiating smile on her normally scowling face.

“What can I do for you, Frieda?” Claire asked her, trying to strike the right note between common courtesy and what she wanted to convey, which was, “I’m not giving you any money.”

“Can you do something with this mess?”

Frieda pointed to her hair, an unevenly cut mop she obviously bleached at home with something she bought at the drugstore. The ends were so dry Claire thought that, subjected to a stiff wind, they’d break off and fly away like dandelion fuzz.

“Sure,” Claire said. “Come on over and I’ll shampoo it for you.”

Claire felt a little nauseated as she washed Frieda’s hair, which reeked of both cigarette smoke and the heavy layer of perfume she used to cover up that smell. She regarded the woman’s rhinestone-studded jeans, low-cut, sequined top, and the collection of gold rings she wore, one or two on every finger. Frieda always did dress like someone much younger with an active night life, but the contrast between her youthful clothing and her deeply wrinkled face and age-spotted hands now only made her look foolish. Her eyelid skin was so loose and hooded it nearly covered her eyes, and her slapdash makeup application betrayed her failing eyesight. Claire felt her heart soften, despite their contentious history.