Poison Flowers (16 page)

“You feel that way sometimes?” Marya asked quietly.

“Sure.” Dorry tilted her head to look at Marya. “And that’s the way you looked that night. What were you thinking about?”

“Old loves.” Marya dropped her eyes.

“Old loves,” Dorry repeated hollowly. “I can tell you about old loves. The woman you saw me with? One of my old loves. Isabel.”

The way she said the name made Marya’s heart ache viscerally. She glanced at the portrait, still so prominent, and knew the extent of Dorry’s love. One had to wonder…did she still feel the same way about her or was there room in her life for someone new?

“I thought…” Marya paused, unsure how to proceed. She moved across the room and sat at the opposite end of the sofa. “Why isn’t she here with you?”

Dorry jerked herself to a standing position and walked back to the bar before turning and facing Marya. “Complications. She’s married.”

“To a man?” Marya stood as well and moved two steps toward her. She paused when she realized she was approaching Dorry and stopped to finger a silver snuff box atop the sideboard.

“Yes. A man who hates me.” Her tone was neutral, no emotion evident in it at all.

Suddenly it dawned upon Marya—her second true epiphany of the day. She knew exactly what had happened during that horrible time ten years ago. She lifted her eyes and saw Dorry watching her, the rim of her glass hiding a small, self-deprecating smirk as she took another sip of whiskey.

“You weren’t in love with Francie, were you? It was Isabel, her mother, you were involved with.”

Dorry’s eyes grew sad. “You’re wrong. I loved Francie dearly—but as a daughter. A daughter, not a lover.”

Indignation grew in Marya. “Then how could you allow her name to be sullied by that accusation?”

Dorry took a deep swallow of whiskey this time and turned away. “I know,” she whispered. “I know.”

Sympathy replaced Marya’s indignation. She could not look at Dorry. Unsettled, she fetched her own drink from the coffee table, forced her eyes to roam the room.

“Tell me,” she said, eyes still avoiding her. “What brought all this about? Won’t you tell me the whole story? Please?”

Silence fell. High tide brushed insistently against the house’s foundation. It was as if Dorry and she were on a ship together adrift in a sea no one knew existed—a ship of intimate sharing, of the passing of secrets, shameful or otherwise, on which she could tell Dorry everything and Dorry would tell her whatever she asked of her. This realization proved both alarming and somehow gratifying. She, who had always held a part of herself back, protecting some self-perceived sanctum of mystery, stood defenseless before this woman.

Why her? As was her wont, Marya analyzed the revelation.

Was it her seniority—the fact Dorry was a full two decades older than Marya? Or was it the cloak of defensiveness that Dorry also had wrapped about herself? The vulnerability within the steel of her defenses matched Marya’s; they were two of a kind. This gave her an odd feeling of security, a type of freedom. That, or…she had fallen in love with Dorry.

She returned her drink to the table and quickly reclaimed a seat on the sofa. She wasn’t sure her shaky knees could handle this latest wave of epiphany.

“It was all so tacky,” Dorry began, her gaze taking in the wide expanse of sea outside the glass doors. “Nicky and I had been friends forever. He met Isabel while working there just outside Paris and they had Francie almost immediately. We kept in touch with letters and he kept inviting me to come over. Then about ten years ago, I was in a place where I could plan a short trip to Europe and arranged to meet them.”

“Where?”

“In Germany. They were on the Rhine in a little village called Lebenstraum. Isabel’s parents had a ramshackle estate there. Of course, Nicky insisted I stay with them. It was all fine at first in the hubbub of arrival.”

She paused to drink. “But within a week Isabel and I knew we were in trouble.”

“How do you mean?”

Dorry looked at her pointedly. “Chemistry.”

“Ah.” Marya relaxed back into the cushions. Chemistry. “So what did you do?”

“What’s the old saying? Beat feet? I backpedaled as much as possible. We kept very busy, sightseeing and going here, there and yonder. It was fun, but I was like a lovesick puppy, making a fool of myself every minute.”

She laughed and shook her head at the memory.

Marya couldn’t imagine Dorry making a fool of herself, but then she was beginning to realize she had no clue about the real Dorry. Ice clinking in her glass was the only sound for a long minute.

“Then one night when Nicholas and Little Bit had gone to one of her endless ballet classes, Isabel and I found ourselves in the house alone. We made light of it at first, but the chemistry grew and then she was in my arms and…” The memory seemed to stab into Dorry. Marya watched her face change into angles of grief, then resume its normal placid facade.

“We soared after that. Life was good even though we were sneaking around behind her family’s back. We were in love and that was that.”

“Didn’t you need to come home?” Marya was rocking to and fro at the waist, the recounting of those passionate feelings hurting her. She
did
love Dorry. She knew it then.

“Sure, and that was when it became insane. I couldn’t bring myself to leave her. Then Nicky mused that he wished Little Bit, who was fifteen at that time, could have had an American education and together we all hit upon the idea she was to come back with me and spend a few years here. I agreed because of the maternal way I felt toward Francie and because I knew it would keep Isabel in my life.”

“And it did.”

Dorry paused. “We had a little over a year together…she visited Francie often. Francie knew about our affair, I think, but she loved us both and didn’t care. She would have had to be deaf and blind not to see our joy and our affection. Then she got sick.”

“What happened?”

Dorry took a seat in a forest green Queen Anne chair next to the bar. She sat slumped with legs spread apart as if for support.

“She got sick,” she repeated dully. “At first I—we—thought she was just not happy here, and I began making plans for her to return to Europe to her parents. But I knew something just wasn’t right. She ran persistent fevers and looked…she looked gray, sickly. Isabel came in and we took her to the doctor.”

“The hospital?”

“No, just Doc Hastings, here in town. He ran tests and sent us on to a specialist in Myrtle. And she never got better.”

“So why did everything fall apart? How did the newspapers get involved? How did…?”

Dorry sighed and sat up straighter in her chair. Gulls called outside, the sound mournful.

“Isabel and I were stupid. We always slept together when she was here and we especially needed one another during that time for comfort. Nicky seldom came here because he was so tied up in his business. When he did he always phoned first. He didn’t one time while Little Bit was under treatment and he’d been over to the hospital. He found us sleeping like two peas in a pod. Naked.”

“Oh, my God,” Marya murmured.

Dorry nodded agreement. “It seemed as though the earth had cracked wide open. Isabel’s new pain terrified me, alienated me, and I realized how stupid I’d been to let myself get involved with her. Now all four lives were destroyed.”

“And that’s why he brought the charges against you?”

“Mmhmm, that’s why.” She lifted her drink, found it empty and absently held it in her lap.

“But it doesn’t make sense. Why would he accuse you and Francie of being together when it was actually you and Isabel?”

“I wondered that at the time. I found out later that he hadn’t said anything at all about her lifestyle and about Isabel and me. That came from someone else, an ‘anonymous tip’ delivered to Ed at the paper. I’ve always wondered who hated me enough to betray me that way.”

She paused and watched Marya. “I’ve thought it was Isabel, as a way of assuaging her own guilt. At times I’ve thought it was Ed, just voicing something he suspected. I don’t think Nicky would have said that about his daughter. Not like that.”

“Why didn’t you say something? Defend Francie?”

Dorry’s smile tugged at Marya’s heart. “Why? Why feed the monster? Little Bit was gone; papers were selling like mad. I couldn’t care about anything at that point.”

Marya understood how it must have been during that time and compassion welled in her. She wanted to touch Dorry, smooth her arm and let her know it would be all right. She could only sit there, a stone trapped full of swirling emotion.

“So, that’s my story. If you want to write it, go ahead. The old ghosts won’t stir and media sensations are even more short-lived now than they were then. I don’t much care.”

They sat then in a rocky but amicable peace and watched the candles that flickered around them. The house of sadness lent quiet to the night, Marya savored it before returning to the world of reality pressing in from outside. She reached into her pocket and drew forth the bracelet she’d found in the bedroom of the cottage. She rose and moved next to Dorry’s chair.

“This was in my bedroom. Did you leave it there?”

Dorry squinted at the bracelet, setting aside her empty glass so she could take it from Marya. “My God, I haven’t worn that since college,” she muttered. “Where’d you get it?”

“I told you, from the bedroom, at the cottage. It was left in my bed.”

Dorry looked up at Marya, eyes darkened by shadow. She reached out one hand and rested it against Marya’s denim-clad flank. The heat of her palm sent electric lacings throughout Marya’s body. She stiffened. Dorry continued to stroke her outer thigh, moving her palm slowly up and down. If she didn’t stop, Marya was going to swoon.

“I didn’t leave it there, Marya. And you need to go now.”

Dorry took her hand away from Marya’s leg and lifted it to her mouth as if quietly scolding it for its presumptuousness.

Marya walked to the door, moving through a thick jelly of desire. She wanted to get away as badly as she wanted to press her body against Dorry’s. She needed to figure out what was going on, to ponder these feelings. Never before had she felt them this powerfully.

Marya closed the door behind her and, buffeted by sea wind, made her way across the sand. Once home, she stripped to T-shirt and panties and sprawled across the bed. She regretted returning the bracelet, no longer able to fondle it in lieu of Dorry as she drifted toward sleep. What had driven Dorry to touch her? Did she too feel the attraction?

She lay still, listening to the ocean noises—the clank of a buoy bell at the end of the cove, the sound of the wind tickling the treetops into dance, the knock of her hanging flowerpots as they swept the porch uprights—willing them to lull her to sleep. As she did, a new sound registered, the cautious creak of a step on sand. It was repeated, making slow, careful progress toward the house. Her heart leapt in her chest. Who was out there?

She rose and made her way to the bedroom doorway. She had drawn the curtains earlier so she could not see beyond the windows. She could no longer hear the footsteps either; her heart was beating too loudly to make them out. Cursing roundly to herself, she used every technique she had learned from the martial art, calming herself until she could hear the stealthy footsteps again. She started when the porch step creaked under someone’s weight.

Whoever it was seemed to be intent on coming in for a visit.

Scanning the room for a weapon, Marya settled upon a heavy wooden candlestick. Plucking it from the kitchen table, she hoisted it high. She waited a long beat but nothing happened. Had he gone away? She moved toward the door, still wielding the candlestick, swallowed her heart and flung the door wide.

I hated Lucy. I hated the way she teased me. She said I could hope all day to be pretty like her but that it would never happen. She said I was ugly and smelled bad and that no one would ever want me.

“What are you doing?” Mama asked as she poked her head around my bedroom door.

“Studying,” I told her, holding up the oversized blue manual as if in proof.

“You should do well,” she said with a nod of her head. Her hair was wrapped around a dozen curlers, and she had on her glasses so I knew she’d been reading even though I’d heard the television droning earlier. “I’m off to bed. Work tomorrow.”

“Goodnight, Mama. Sleep well,” I said dutifully.

She studied me with her dark, weighing eyes. “Don’t stay up too late, hear?”

“Okay, I won’t.”

Her thoughtful gazes had been making me uncomfortable lately. It’s like she was weighing possibilities. Was it about me? Whether or not she should continue to let me live here with her? It had worked well all these years. It’s not like she could abandon me in the woods again. The way she had done when I was little.

She closed my door, and I heard the squeal of her bedroom door as she closed it as well.

“Don’t stay up too late,” I mimicked, then grinned. I knew what I was going to do. I was gonna be up very, very late.

After a couple of infuriatingly long hours had passed, I raised my window and slid through it one leg at a time, taking it slow so that I made no sound at all. I left the window open for later and crept along the wall, away from Mama’s bedroom. She was a light sleeper so I had to be careful.

Once out on the road, I was able to get some speed up, veering off to the left after about a quarter mile of fast walking. I knew this shortcut well.

Before, when I still liked Lucy, I had gone over there almost every day after school, plus lots of Saturdays. Most of the time when I was getting there she was just getting up from a long night at the lounge. Mama never cared if I went there as long as I was home for dinner and never said anything about her and who she is. Not that Lucy would have cared.

I did have to make up a big lie about who my daddy was because Lucy asked about that a lot in the beginning. Guess she wanted to see if she’d slept with him yet. I said he was an astronaut down at Cape Canaveral. That way I could just say my mama was a stay-at-home wife, another lie but it was one that had shut that nosy Lucy up.