Come Sunday: A Novel (19 page)

At first gardening was something my mother did to get out of my father’s way, especially on the weekends, especially when he would come back from the pub queasy and bad-tempered. But then it became something else, something that seemed to take her far, far away. I would watch her from my bedroom window tending the calla lilies, trimming back the African daisies and the king protea. She would leave the roses for last, where she would spend most of her time. By the time she lay down her pruning shears, there would be spent blossoms in plump piles beside her. Sometimes she would come back in only after the sun went down, scratched up and sunburned, with a look that almost matched whatever it was she felt the fateful day she sat laughing on the phone.

“Do you miss your mum?” she asks.

“Every day,” I reply.

“I wish my mum were here to see my baby when it’s born,” she says, and, like a cloud crossing the sun, the cheeriness is sopped from her face.

“C’mon, then, you haven’t opened your card,” she says suddenly, blinking back the darkness.

To the moon and back
, is penned in Greg’s careful cursive.

“What does it say?” she asks, and I hand her the card. She frowns, “What does it mean?”

“It’s something he promised me a long time ago,” I reply, remembering the night thirteen years ago when I was packing up, ready to leave San Luis Obispo and its finger-pickin’ folksiness for a real job on a real newspaper. How deliberate our lovemaking was, as though we could slow down the night, keep the dawn from creeping up over the frosted windowsill. “Don’t go,” he had said. And when I argued about the merits of following my lucky break, he proposed. “Marry me,” he said. “Then I’ll follow you wherever you want to go, even if it’s to the moon and back.”

Petal stands the card on the table next to the roses. “He’s a Taurean, isn’t he? I dated a Taurean once. People always think of them as
being bullheaded, but they aren’t. They are very loyal, and they always keep their promises.” She tucks her henna-dyed bangs behind her ears and I see that with her topaz eyes this tall girl-woman is on the fence of beautiful. “The bullheaded ones are the Aries, like my grandfather. Mum said that’s the reason why Daddy never left England to come back here—he needed to put a continent between him and Granddad.”

“What does your grandfather have to say about your moving in with Jeff?”

“He’s not happy about it; he doesn’t think Jeff is mature enough to be a father, but he just needs to get to know Jeff better, that’s all. Jeff is going to be a brilliant dad.”

“Mmm,” is my only comment, and I take a bite out of my toast.

“It’s my birthday next month and I’m going to have a big party and invite all my new friends.”

“That’s nice,” I respond, suddenly feeling much older than my thirty-seven years.

“You must come, Abbe. Jeff and his friends are going to bring their guitars and we’re going to build a big bonfire on the beach and have a cookout.” She goes to the fridge, retrieves from it her lunch box, and sets it down across from me. Sitting down, she unwraps a roll and dips it into a cup of vanilla-flavored yogurt. “I’m always hungry. Got to keep my little Blossom happy,” she says, patting her belly. She is already starting to show and celebrates each week with a new craving. A fortnight ago it was canned tomatoes (halved, not diced, she was quick to point out; “Isn’t that so weird?”) with brown sugar. Who can guess what it will be next time she comes?

I sit watching her mouth form words, occasionally hearing what sounds to be a lecture on the evils of modern-day cleaning agents. I am just about to excuse myself when she abruptly changes course. “Soon I will have to quit my job,” she says with regret. “Jeff says I won’t have to work when his invention is patented because we will have plenty of money.” Jeff’s invention is top secret, she’s told me on a number of occasions, but it is going to make him a millionaire because every bar owner is going to want one.

“What about your family, Petal? And all your friends back home?
Don’t you think you should get back to England before the baby is born, so they can help you and support you?”

“But I have Jeff now,” she says.

“Right,” I say, pushing back from the table.

“Don’t you think your husband should come first?”

“Yes, but Jeff isn’t your husband,” I say, and she looks like I’ve just slapped her.

“What about you, Abbe, are you going back to work?”

“They’ve offered to throw some freelance work my way until I decide, but I don’t know yet. Depends on whether your grandfather gets his way and we’re kicked off the island.”

“I feel awful he’s been so rotten to Reverend Deighton, I really do. But maybe a move someplace new will be good. As they say, ‘A change is as good as a jest.’ ”

“A
rest
,” I correct.

“What?”

“It’s ‘A change is as a good as a rest,’ ” I repeat. “And I’ve been having my share of that, although it hasn’t done a damn bit of good.”

She starts to giggle, then laughs and puts her hand on her belly. I smile wanly and finally get up.

“Abbe!” she shouts, and grabs my hand. “The baby just moved!” In one shattering moment, with my hand pasted to the warm hill of her stomach, I feel the gentle nudge in the heel of my hand. My grief parts like the Red Sea, long enough for me first to feel the leap of new life, and then the thundering hoofbeats of despair gaining ground.

Solly barks suddenly and we both jump. The doorbell chimes and I move to answer it, leaving Petal with her hand on her belly and peering into the space between the atoms. I open the door and there stands Jenny, holding a very pink cake. “Happy Birthday, old lady,” she says, and gives me a kiss, then quickly sees the brimming tears and says, “What’s wrong?”

I shake my head as though to say, Tell you later, and take the cake. She follows me in and I say, “You remember Petal, Jen. We’ve just felt the baby move.”

“How wonderful,” Jenny says.

“I think it’s a girl, but Jeff thinks it’s a boy because it moves so much,” says Petal.

“Do you have names picked out?” asks Jenny, putting her hand in the vacancy that mine just left.

“We’re not telling everyone, but I’ll tell you if you promise to keep it a secret.” She waits for us both to nod our vows of silence. “It’s going to be Blossom if it’s a girl, and Budd if it’s a boy. In honor of Mum. Aren’t those the best names?” she asks.

Jenny lights the lone candle and insists I blow it out. “Make a wish,” she says. “A good one.” Petal picks up her bucket and mop and heads for the stairs. “Aren’t you going to have cake?” Jenny offers.

“No thanks, I don’t eat anything with food coloring.”

Jenny slices the cake and we eat standing at the sink.

“Is it that she is just young, or have I turned into my mother?” I ask.

“Having never met your mother, I cannot answer that, but I can say with relative confidence that you have turned into mine!”

“Were we ever that age?” I sigh.

“The good Lord knows I wasn’t,” she snorts, and I remember why Jenny is my friend. “I was raising two babies and a good-for-nothing husband at that age, and working two jobs to pay for his good-for-nothing ass! What were you doing?”

“Oh, nothing as risky as getting my navel pierced or boycotting cake icing,” I say. “I guess I was falling in love with Greg. Probably was risky, if I knew then what I would eventually have to give up.”

“You mean, losing Cleo?” she asks.

“No, I mean losing me.”

Jenny shakes her head. “You’ve always seemed ‘all there’ to me. And he’s always struck me as a good man.”

“He is,” I agree. “I knew the first time I met Greg he was a safe bet. He was going to be everything my father wasn’t—he was going to love me and stick by me and never leave me. He was going to wake up every morning and be exactly the same man I went to sleep with the night before.”

“Nothing wrong with that.”

“Unless you don’t mind dying of boredom.”

“You think that’s fair?” Jenny asks.

“I don’t know. It’s just that Greg has spent a decade hoping and praying I would be the perfect preacher’s wife, who doesn’t get her back up so easily. That I would turn out to be the superwife and the supermom. And every time I’m not, I swear Greg leaves me just an inch. You add up all those inches over time and see the miles you come up with.” I can’t say I have given this theory a lot of thought, but as I say it I know it is at least one version of the truth.

“But he loves you, girl,” Jenny adds, insisting on a happily-everafter.

“He loves me most when I’m least me,” I counter. “When I don’t ‘take things personally,’ when I’m not out fighting lost causes or fighting back.” Or giving up. Greg is equally uncomfortable with this side of me, but for the same reason—because it is driven by the same tip-thescales passion.

When Jenny says, “I don’t know, honey,” I don’t argue; I change the subject. “I feel old today. Older than Mrs. Worthington,” I say. Althea Worthington, whose age no one knows for sure, has outlived a husband, both her children, and the doctor who all but signed her death certificate fifteen years ago when they found the first lump. Althea, who appears always to address your navel because she does not have the spinal agility to stand fully erect, whose root-bound fingers clasp around her great-grandson’s arm each Sunday as he helps her make the circuitous route from the car to the sanctuary to the communion rail to the cookie table and back to the car. Althea, whose remaining obligation—which some say keeps her alive—is to water the sanctuary’s potted plants, has more fight in her than me. “When I’m dead and buried,” she once instructed me, “hire someone who knows how to take care of plants; don’t leave it to that bunch who work in the church office.” “I think you are going to outlive us all, Mrs. Worthington,” I told her, to which she smiled with obvious pleasure.

“That reminds me,” Jenny says, and digs around in her handbag. “There’s a card from the women in the auxiliary. And last Sunday Mrs. Scribner gave me this to give to you.” She hands me a little box
wrapped in last year’s recycled Christmas paper. Inside is a key ring with a polished nut suspended from it and a note that says,
I don’t need this anymore. Happy Birthday
.

“What is it?” Jenny asks.

“An acorn.” I smile. “My grandmother used to stash them all over her house. They’re for luck and longevity.”

“Did it work?”

“She did live a long time, but I would have to say her luck ran out before she did. Right around the time my mom died.”

We finish our cake, and Jenny rinses the dishes.

“I don’t know how the world works anymore,” I say. “Life was easier to bear when I thought there was meaning to it, when there seemed to be reasons for why things happened or didn’t happen. When life was one great algorithm. But it’s not. Bad things happen, good things happen, then more bad things happen. There’s no logic to it.”

“Honey,” Jenny says, and holds me tight. There is only the humming of the fridge, which gets empty and filled without any effort on my behalf, the ticking of my mother’s clock, and the everydayness of my quiet house. The nagging thought that every fourteen or fifteen days Petal will use my spare house key to let herself in and remind me that there are barbecues on the beach and budding fetuses in the wombs of other women. That the world is filled with people who aren’t dying, like Mrs. Worthington, or who want to die, like Mrs. Scribner; people who walk straight up, and dance around bonfires, and have babies and name them after rose parts.

After a while, I pull away and Jenny and I nibble at our cake crumbs.

“Can I fire her for being cheery?”

“Why, sure, honey, but then that just leaves Carolyn Higa to gossip about.”

GREG COMES HOME exactly at five o’clock, just as Petal has folded the last of the towels fresh from the line. I put down the stack of mail and greet his hesitant smile with a tepid “Hello.”

“Brought you a present. Well, two actually,” he says, and from behind his back produces two wrapped gifts, each tied with a bow.

“I want lots of presents for my birthday,” says Petal.

“I’ll remember that.”

“Oh, Reverend Deighton, I didn’t mean it like that.” She blushes. “But you are coming to my party, right?”

“Sure,” he says as I unwrap the presents—one a book of collected poems by Emily Dickinson, the other an anthology of South African liberation music.

“Thank you,” I say, and turn my cheek so he can pester it with a kiss.

“You’re welcome.” And then to Petal, “Are you ready?”

She says goodbye to me and lifts her box of cleaning supplies. “Let me get that,” says Greg. And he turns to look over his shoulder. “I made reservations at the Bamboo Lanai—we’ll head out as soon as I get back so we can catch the sunset.”

That gives me an hour, long enough for a poem and a bath. I open the book at random:

Mine enemy is growing old,—

I have at last revenge.

The palate of the hate departs;

If any would avenge,—

Let him be quick, the viand flits,

It is a faded meat.

Anger as soon as fed is dead;

’Tis starving makes it fat.

“SHE HAS an inexhaustible supply of cheeriness,” says Greg, putting down his menu and glancing around for the waiter.

“It’s a front,” I say without looking up, debating between the oriental chicken salad and the linguini.

“Covering her grief for her mother, you mean?”

“Maybe. Or maybe she’s hiding something.”

“Oh, come on, Abbe, the girl’s as transparent as glass.”

The waiter comes over, apologizes for the long wait, and takes our order.

“I don’t think so. It’s almost as though she’s trying too hard.”

“Maybe to get over her mother dying,” he repeats.

“Possibly.”

The restaurant overlooking the harbor is busy at this hour. Several teams of paddlers are slicing through the turquoise water in their outriggers. The yachts dawdle at the harbor mouth like reluctant children called in for supper. Along the boardwalk, tourists are out with their cameras, waiting for a yacht to sail in front of the dipping sun, while behind them flows a stream of runners, rollerbladers, and cyclists. Nobody pays any attention to the person with the wobbly shopping cart making a marathon of his own, each trash can a rest station.