In a Dark Season (10 page)

He hung up just a little too quickly and Elizabeth sank down on the sofa in front of the fire.
This is ridiculous. It’s supposed to be the other way around—but I’m the one who doesn’t want to commit.

She reached out to stroke Molly’s sleek coat, but the red hound slid from beneath her hand and off the sofa with a languorous grace, stretched, and retreated to the bedroom. Elizabeth picked up a throw pillow, still warm from the dog’s body, and clutched it to her chest.
What’s wrong with me?
Behind the glass door of the fireplace, the silent flames danced.

Chapter 11

Big Lavinia

Thursday, December 14

A
unt E, Manda and I are going into the ’ville to do the deliveries and some Christmas shopping. You still want me to get you a tree? I’m gonna be out near the farmers’ market.”

Elizabeth looked up from the purloined laptop, blinking as she returned to the here and now. She had been lost, fathoms deep, years long gone, in Nola Barrett’s tale of the old stand on the Drovers’ Road and the tangled lives of those who had passed through its doors.

“Tree?”

“Christmas
tree. Big, green, pointy on top, lights, doodads, and the popcorn-and-cranberry chain that takes all afternoon to string. Didn’t you say Rosemary and Laur would be here this weekend and we’d decorate the tree Sunday afternoon?”

Her nephew loomed over her, regarding her with an amused look. “Or were you just going to skip the whole Christmas thing this year?”

“No, of course not. I was just…”
I sat down with my second cup of coffee to take a quick look at this stuff of Nola’s, and my god, it’s a quarter of ten.
A feeling of guilt assailed her.

“Oh, Ben, I meant to go down to the greenhouses first thing this morning and pack the lettuce for delivery, but I got sidetracked. Let me get my—”

“No worries, Aunt E, Amanda did it while I was taking care of the watering. I seeded some more of the arugula and the red oak leaf too.” His smile was complacent. “It’s worked out really well, hasn’t it—having Amanda helping take up the slack while Julio and Homero are back in Chiapas for the winter?”

He looks like a big sleek happy tomcat,
Elizabeth thought, watching as her nephew sank into the chair at the end of the dining table. He stretched in the morning sun streaming through the dining room windows, and his long hair pulled back in the usual ponytail glinted, more gold than red, in the strong winter light.

“You’re right; she’s been a huge help. I wish we could pay her more, but—”

“It’s not a problem, Aunt E, Manda’s fine with things the way they are.” A casual wave of his hand dismissed crass money matters.

“I’m glad she’ll be here for Christmas, but what about her folks? Don’t they want her home?”

“Manda says her folks always like to go somewhere for the holidays. This year it’s Vail so they can ski. They have a house there along with the beach place at Casey Key.”

“My god,
two
vacation homes? They must have more money than God.”

“Yeah, pretty much. Her father has a bunch of different businesses.” Ben had yawned, and added, “They invited Amanda and me to come with them to Colorado but we told them we had work to do here. Besides, she’s not into spending a lot of time with her folks.”

I wonder what the story is with Amanda and her family. She’s hardly mentioned them or her life in Tampa or her career in modeling. Her interests seem to be totally here—Ben even said she’s been spending time at the library, reading up on the history of the area.

Pulling on her heavy jacket, Elizabeth dug in its pockets in search of her gloves.
I wish I’d known—I would have taken Amanda to meet Nola, the
old
Nola. She could have told Amanda so much about the county. But it’s too late now, unless there’s something like a miracle.
The three dogs milled about her feet, eager to be out and doing. As she pulled open the front door, they shot onto the porch, barking with joy, each breath accompanied by a puff of white.

“You dogs, stay,” she told them. “I’m going to the store.”
And I’m going to see Nola.

The Christmas decorations at the Layton Facility were drooping and worn, a little limper and a little sadder than they had been the week before. The sparsely decorated tree in the lobby sat at a tilt, its tinsel garland trailing on the floor. And the same frail woman in the wheelchair sat by it. Her robe was blue today but her hair was still in curlers and she still cuddled the worn baby doll.

Down the corridor, past room after room where occupants sat gazing dully at flickering televisions or lay open-mouthed staring at the ceiling.
Please God, don’t let me end up like that—a sudden heart attack or something—oh, please—I’ll take dying sooner rather than living on like this.

And here it was, number 167 with the name cards on the door for Nola Barrett and Ronda Mills. Elizabeth took a deep breath and stepped into the room. “Hey, Nola, it’s Elizabeth.”

The bed nearest the door was empty—not merely empty, but stripped and draped with a single sheet that revealed the rigid and uncompromising angles of the foam mattress. The small clutter of personal items that had covered Ronda Mills’s bedside table had been removed.

In the other bed, Nola Barrett lay curled on her side. Her eyes were squeezed shut but her lips were moving. Elizabeth moved closer, hoping for a miracle.

“Nola, it’s me. Are you doing better?” She laid a tentative hand on her friend’s shoulder.

The sick woman’s eyes opened slowly. Elizabeth smiled and spoke in what she hoped was a normal and optimistic tone. “How do you feel today, Nola?”

Nola’s head, its short-cropped black-dyed hair now showing a rising tide of white at the roots, rolled to and fro in hopeless negation. The tip of her tongue appeared and moistened her dry lips. Glittering eyes were fixed on Elizabeth’s face, and a garble of nonsense syllables poured from the twisted mouth. The woman in the bed struggled, growing more and more agitated, but intelligible phrases would not form. Then, just as she had done on Elizabeth’s previous visit, Nola Barrett spoke clearly and precisely—

“Like one that on a lonesome road

Doth walk in fear and dread,

And having once turned round, walks on,

And turns no more his head;

Because he knows a frightful fiend

Doth close behind him tread.”

As Nola Barrett completed the verse, Elizabeth listened with a dawning comprehension.
She’s using lines from poems she’s memorized to communicate! She can’t put together new sentences but she can repeat ready-made ones.
The woman in the bed waited, gray eyes intent on Elizabeth’s face, willing Elizabeth to understand.

“Nola, you’re
in
there, aren’t you?” Elizabeth sat down on the bedside chair and pulled it nearer to the bed. She took Nola’s hand and leaned closer. “I wonder—”

One of the young aides breezed into the room, bearing a cup of some clear red liquid with a bent straw in it.

“Hey there, Ronda honey; here’s you some juice. You got some more company today, I see.” The plump young woman thrust the cup onto the tray table and pushed it to the bedside.

“Her name’s not Ronda.” Elizabeth tried to hide her indignation.
I know how many people this poor girl probably brings juice to but, dammit, at this point her name is about all Nola has left.
“Ronda Mills is gone. This is Nola Barrett.”

But the wide-hipped aide was out the door without looking back and on her way to the next room, pushing her jingling cart down the hall. Elizabeth squeezed her friend’s hand. “I hope the nurses with the medications are better at knowing who’s who. What happened to your roommate, anyway?”

Nola’s mouth worked again and this time the words seem to come more readily.

“No motion has she now, no force;

She neither hears nor sees;

Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course,

With rocks, and stones, and trees.”

“That’s Wordsworth—but I can’t remember the name of the poem.”

There was authority in the husky voice that came from the doorway. Elizabeth swung around to see an enormously fat woman, well past middle age, dressed in flowing black trousers topped by a long tunic of the same material. A brilliant red and green silk scarf, secured by a flashing diamond brooch at the left shoulder, hung in artful folds around an almost nonexistent neck. The newcomer’s massive legs ended in improbably tiny feet jammed into low-heeled pumps of gold and silver leather that matched the huge shoulder bag she carried.

She made her way toward the bedside, puffing slightly with each step. Nola had closed her eyes—whether in response to the visitor’s approach or out of weariness, Elizabeth couldn’t decide.

After a swift glance that took in not only the invalid but everything in the little room, the woman cocked her head to one side, fixing Elizabeth with her penetrating gaze.

“Has Nola said anything yet that wasn’t poetry—anything that makes any sense?”

“No, not really. But she—”

“I’m Lavinia Holcombe. Nola and I are friends from way back.” The new arrival’s eyes were back on the woman in the bed, taking in every detail of her condition.

Elizabeth stood. “Please, would you like to sit here?”

“Heavens no, you stay put.” With an almost inaudible grunt of relief, Lavinia Holcombe plopped down on the edge of the empty bed. “My lord, what have they done to her hair?” Pale blue eyes, almost buried in doughy flesh, swept appraisingly over the sick woman. “Look at those roots—snow white, poor thing!”

She raised a well-manicured hand to fluff her own ash blonde coiffure. “Are you from Nola’s church?”

“No, I’m just a friend. I live on Ridley Branch—the old Baker place.” Elizabeth glanced at Nola, whose eyes were still tight shut. “My name’s Elizabeth Goodweather.”

“Goodweather? That’s not a Marshall County name. Is it your married name?”

“Yes, it is. You’re right; I’m a transplant. My husband and I moved here back in ’84.”

“Did
you?” The pale eyes were assessing her. “And how do you come to know Nola? I don’t remember her mentioning you.”

I didn’t expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition,
Elizabeth retorted mentally but, exercising a little control, she explained sweetly that she and Nola shared an interest in old quilts. “I only met Nola a few months ago.”

Then with a prod from the devil that always lurked just beneath her inherited Southern-lady politeness, she added, “I guess you all have known each other for years and
years.”

It
had
been years. Almost fifty. Lavinia Holcombe explained that she had been the mentor Nola Barrett spoke of—the recent graduate who had eased Nola’s transition from poverty and rural Appalachia to an exclusive women’s college in Atlanta.

“I always got such a kick out of Nola—a scrawny little country girl with big wide innocent eyes. She was as smart as they come—had memorized umpteen hundred poems and parts of poems. You know, English teachers used to be big on making students memorize verse—I still know a fair amount myself. Amazing, isn’t it, how some things stick with you and others…”

Lavinia made a pretty flickering motion with her fingers. “Well, they’re just gone with the wind. Lord, I couldn’t remember a geometry theorem—or is it algebra that has theorems?—to save my life. But ask me to recite verses from ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ that I learned in grade school, and stand back to hear me volley and thunder! Of course, these days, they spend all their time teaching students how to take tests—there’s not much time for poetry.”

“Did you teach?” Elizabeth asked, warming to this somewhat fantastical personage. Nola lay motionless, either asleep or feigning sleep, and Lavinia Holcombe seemed ready to chat.

“Oh, I taught at the high school for a couple of years when I was first out of college. But then when I married Big Platt, he had other ideas—Platt had the old-fashioned notion that he didn’t want his wife working
and
he was set on starting a family right away.”

Lavinia’s face creased into a wide smile and she gave an irrepressible wiggle of pleasure. “And, lord, how that man went at it! Platt had his office at home, right there in our house at Holcombe Hill, and when we were first married, he counted it time lost if we weren’t bouncing in the bed first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Not to mention midafternoon, often as not, if he didn’t have a client coming in.”

The big woman settled herself more comfortably on the bed, ignoring Nola and continuing her narrative in an uninterruptible flow.

“Well, it was no wonder when our first, that was Little Platt, came along as quick as he did—nine months and one day after our wedding. I can tell you, I would have been
mortified
if that child had been earlier. You know what small towns are and how people used to wear out their fingers counting the months. Of course, it’s different now; girls having babies, even announcing it in the paper without a husband in sight. I still call it trashy behavior, but with movie stars carrying on the way they do, it’s no wonder young women think it’s the ‘in’ thing to be an unwed mother.”

The spate of words paused momentarily as Lavinia Holcombe opened her purse, drew out a package of cough drops, and began to unwrap one with a busy crinkling of cellophane.

Taking advantage of the intermission, Elizabeth ventured, “Well, I—” but Lavinia had already popped the lozenge into her red-lipsticked mouth, lodged it in one rouged cheek, and resumed the story, with a grand disregard of her captive audience’s futile attempt at a response.

“Lord, those were hectic years, believe you me. Little Platt was hardly walking before I was expecting again. And the babies kept coming—one every two years, till, after three girls in a row, I put my foot down. ‘Platt,’ I said, ‘I believe four’s a gracious plenty. Any more children and people will think we’re either ignorant white trash or Roman Catholics.’”

Lavinia looked at Elizabeth, light blue eyes twinkling, and lowered her voice. “Not to mention that I was putting on weight with every baby—pounds that I could
not
shed no matter
how
many grapefruit and hard-boiled eggs I consumed. Of course, Platt didn’t care a lick about that. ‘I glory in your flesh, my dear,’ that’s what he told me. Why even there toward the end, whenever I had to give him his insulin shot, why, here’d come those fingers, grabbing at me. That man never lost interest, old and sick though he was.”

As Lavinia ran a preening hand over one voluptuous thigh, Elizabeth remembered illustrations from a recent magazine article. The subject had been the varying standards of beauty at different times and in different cultures.
She’s like one of those primitive Earth goddesses—the Venus of Willendorf or whatever. Or a Rubens—“acres of nacreous flesh,” who used that phrase?