The Violets of March (17 page)

Bee nodded at Henry, and I followed her up to the house. It occurred to me that they would have made a very odd couple. They looked awkward standing there together, and it erased any suspicions that they had ever been romantically involved, not that a short man and a tall woman couldn’t have an explosive love affair.

I smiled and said, “Coffee sounds wonderful.”

Once inside, I sat where I had when Jack came in the door that morning last week. I suddenly remembered the vase.

“Henry,” I said. “I have a confession. Your white vase, I . . .”

He winked at me. “I know,” he said, pointing to the now intact vase, which was presently resting on the mantel with a single daffodil inside. “As good as new,” he continued. “Jack brought it by this morning.”

I grinned before hesitating. “This morning?”

Henry looked puzzled. “Yes.” He paused for a second. “Is there something wrong?”

“No, no,” I said. “It’s nothing. I just thought he was in Seattle. He said he was spending a few days there.”

Didn’t Jack say he’ d be away for a few days? Did he change his plans?
The discrepancy in the details gnawed at me.

Henry went to pour the coffee, and while I sat down, Bee cased the room like a detective, examining every object slowly and cautiously.

“He’s not much of housekeeper, is he?” she said.

“I guess it’s the curse of being a bachelor,” I replied. But then I remembered Jack’s home, perfectly organized and clean—surprisingly clean.

She nodded and sat down in a chair by the window.

“Did he ever marry?” I asked in a whisper, remembering the woman in the photo on the mantel.

Bee shook her head as though the very idea of Henry marrying anyone was, well, crazy. “No,” she said.

I looked around the little living room with its wainscot paneling and old plank floors until my eyes stopped at the mantel. I searched the display of beach rocks and frames. The photo was gone.

“Wait,” I said, confused. “Last week there was a photo of a woman, an old girlfriend, maybe,” I said, conspiratorially. “Do you know the photo I’m talking about?”

“No,” she said in a distant voice. “I haven’t been here in a very long time.”

“You’d know her if you saw her,” I said. “She was blond and beautiful, standing right in front of Henry’s house, where the photo was taken.”

Bee looked out the window at the sound, pausing the way she does when she’s lost in thought. “It’s been so long,” she said. “I don’t recall.”

Henry was back with coffee a few minutes later, but Bee seemed uncomfortable and agitated as she sipped hers. I wondered what was bothering her.

I made conversation for the both of us, coaxing Henry into a monologue about his garden. Bee never made eye contact with him, not once. Then, just after she took the last sip of her coffee, she abruptly set the cup down on the saucer and stood up. “Emily, I’m afraid I have a headache,” she said. “I think it’s time for me to head home.”

Henry held up his hand in protest. “Not yet,” he said. “Not until the two of you see the garden. There’s something I want to show you.”

Bee agreed reluctantly, and the three of us walked through the kitchen to the back door that led to the yard behind the house. We’d hardly stepped three feet outside when Bee gasped, pointing to the garden to our right.

“Henry!” she exclaimed, surveying hundreds of delicate light green leaves that had pushed up from the soil in grand formation, showcasing a carpet of tiny lavender-colored flowers, with dark purple centers.

Bee looked astonished. “How did they . . . where did they come from?”

Henry shook his head. “I noticed them two weeks ago. They just
appeared
.”

Bee turned to me, and upon seeing my confused face, she offered an explanation. “They’re wood violets,” she said. “I haven’t seen them on the island since . . .”

“They’re very rare,” Henry said, filling the void that Bee had left when her voice trailed off. “You can’t plant them, for they won’t grow. They have to
choose
you.”

Bee’s eyes met Henry’s, and she smiled, a gentle, forgiving smile. It warmed me to see it. “Evelyn has a theory about these flowers,” she said, pausing as if to pull a dusty memory off a shelf in her mind, handling it with great care. “Yes,” she said, the memory in plain view. “She used to say they grow where they are needed, that they signal healing, and hope.”

“It’s ridiculous, isn’t it, Henry, to think that violets can
know
,” Bee continued.

Henry nodded. “Harebrained,” he said in agreement.

Bee shook her head in disbelief. “And to see them in bloom, in March of all months . . .”

Henry nodded. “I know.”

Neither took their eyes off the petals before them, so fragile, yet in great numbers stalwart and determined. I stepped back, watching the two of them standing side by side, sharing a moment of reflection that I could not understand. I knew it then: I was in the presence of something much bigger than just flowers.

Bee and I walked in silence back to the house, she with her secrets and I with mine. And as she napped, I opened my laptop and told myself I couldn’t look away until I had another two paragraphs written, but all I could do was stare at the clock at the top of my screen. After eight minutes had passed with no inspiration, I called Annabelle.

“Hi,” she said a little limply.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she replied.

I knew her too well to believe that. “Tell me,” I said. “I know your voice. Something’s wrong.”

She sighed. “I told myself I wasn’t going to tell you this.”

“Tell me what?”

There was silence.

“Annie?”

“All right,” she said. “I saw Joel.”

My heart started beating faster. “Where?”

“At a café on Fifth.”

“And?”

“He asked about you.”

I was practically breathless. “What did he say?”

“I told you I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Well, you did, and now you have to finish the story.”

“He asked me how you were.”

“Did you tell him I was here?”

“Of course I didn’t. But I did tell him you were dating someone.”

“Annie, you did not!”

“I did. Hey, if he can play house with another woman, he deserves to know that you’re moving on.”

“What was his reaction?”

“Well, if you want me to tell you that he started bawling right there, he didn’t. But he didn’t look thrilled, either. His face said it all.”

“What did his face say, Annie?”

“That it hurt to hear of you with someone else, dummy.”

My heart throbbed deep inside. I sat down—I
had
to sit down. I felt weak, and a little sick.

“Em, are you there?”

“Yeah.”

“See? I shouldn’t have told you. Look what it’s going to do to your healing process. Remember, Joel left you. In such a betraying way, I might add.”

It was as certain as the freckles on my nose, but somehow hearing Annabelle say it again—well, it stung.

“I know,” I said. “You’re right.” I sat up straighter. “I’m going to be fine. Just fine.”

“How many times can we say ‘fine’?”

I grinned. “Fine. Do you have any other bombs to drop?”

“Nope,” she said. “But there is a tragedy happening in this apartment.”

“What?”

“You’re out of ice cream.”

I remembered my late-night affair with Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia before I left for the island. “A tragedy, indeed.”

“Bye, sweetie,” she said.

As I set my cell phone on the table, Bee’s phone began ringing. After four rings, I picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Emily, is that you?”

“Mom?”

“Hi, honey,” she said. “So, did you hear the wonderful news?”

“What news?”

“Danielle,” she said in a high-pitched voice, “is pregnant!”

I should have said, “That’s so exciting!” or “Oh, the miracle of life!” but I just shrugged and said, “Again?” This was Danielle’s third child. But as far as I was concerned, it might as well have been her thirteenth.

“Yes, she’s due in November!” Mom cried. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

That’s what she said, but what I heard was: “Why can’t you be more like your sister?” I sensed a Danielle lovefest beginning and quickly changed the subject. “So,” I said, “Bee said you called. Was this what you wanted to tell me?”

“Well, yes, but dear, I heard about Joel. I’m worried about you. How are you doing?”

I ignored her question. “How did you
hear
about it?”

“Oh, honey,” she said, “that’s not important.”

“It’s important, Mom.”

“Well,” she said, pausing for a moment. “Your sister told me, dear.”

“How did Danielle know? I haven’t talked to her in months.”

“Well, I think she read that you weren’t married anymore on the World Wide Web,” she said. My mother was the only person, I think on earth, who referred to the Internet that way, yet it was endearing somehow. She also called Google “Goggle.”

I remembered my Facebook page. Yes, I had adjusted my relationship status in my profile shortly after Joel had done the same—but there was something wrong, on so many levels, about your own mother hearing about your divorce via Facebook. “I didn’t know that Danielle even used Facebook,” I said, still a little stunned.

“Hmm,” she said. “Well maybe she
Goggled
it.”

I sighed. “The point is, Danielle knows. You know. Everybody knows. I was going to tell you, Mom, eventually. But I guess I just wasn’t ready to face my family yet. I didn’t want to worry you and Dad.”

“Oh, honey,” she said, “I’m so sorry that you’re going through this. Are you holding up OK?”

“I’m doing all right.”

“Good,” she said. “Honey, was there another woman involved?” This is what everyone wanted to know when they learned of my marriage’s demise, so I didn’t fault my mother for her curiosity.

“No,” I said. “I mean yes, but no, I don’t want to talk about it.”

I looked down at the phone cord, which I’d somehow wrapped so tightly around my finger that it was cutting off the circulation. I didn’t know if I was angry about my mother’s obvious prying or angry at Joel for precipitating the reason for the prying. But mostly my finger hurt, so I focused on that, as Mom chattered on. I could see her there, standing in the kitchen in front of that horrible old electric stove—avocado green with the oven mitts hanging from the handle, knitted in rainbow-colored yarn.

“I worry about you all alone, dear. You don’t want to end up like your aunt.”

“Mom,” I said a little more sternly than I had anticipated. “I don’t want to talk about this now.”

“OK, honey,” she said, sounding a bit wounded. “I’m just trying to help.” And I suppose in her own way she was.

“I know,” I replied. “So, how did you know I was here?”

“I called your apartment. Annabelle said you were staying with your aunt.”

Mom never called Bee by her first name. She always referred to her as “your aunt.”

“Yeah,” I said. “She invited me to stay for the month. I’ll be here through the end of March.”

“A
whole month
?” She sounded annoyed, or vaguely jealous. I knew she wanted to be here too, but she was too prideful to admit it. She hadn’t been to the island since Danielle and I left for college, which is when our summer visits ceased.

“Oh, Mom?” I said. “I wanted to ask you about something.”

“What?”

“Well, it’s something Bee and I were talking about,” I said, pausing.

“What is it, honey?”

I took a deep breath, unsure of the emotional land mines that might lie ahead. “She told me that there was a time, many years ago, when you were working on some sort of project—one that changed your relationship with her.”

There was silence on the other end of the line, so I continued. “She said she told you the truth about Grandma. I wish I knew what she meant by that.”

I could no longer hear her fiddling around with her spatula and kitchen pans in the background. There was only silence.

“Mom? Are you still there?”

“Emily,” she finally said, “what has your aunt told you?”

“Nothing,” I replied. “She wouldn’t tell me anything, just that you decided not to be a part of the family anymore. She said it changed things between the two of you.” I looked over my shoulder to be sure Bee wasn’t hovering. She wasn’t. “She said you stopped coming to visit. Why, Mom? What happened?”

“Well,” she said, “I’m afraid I can’t recall the details. And if Bee tries to tell you anything, I wouldn’t believe it. She’s getting up there in age and her memory is fleeting.”

“Mom, it’s just that—”

“Emily, I’m sorry, I don’t want to discuss this.”

“Mom, I deserve to know the story.”

“You don’t,” she said simply.

I frowned.

“Honey, don’t be angry,” she said, detecting my mood as only mothers can do.

“I’m not angry.”

“It’s in the past, dear,” she continued. “Some things are better left that way.”

I could tell by the tone of her voice that the door was closed. Bee, Evelyn, and now my mother had made it very clear that these secrets were not for the taking. If I wanted to know their stories, I would have to work for them.

Later, after Bee’s nap, she mixed a gin and tonic for herself, and offered me one. “Sure,” I said, leaning back on the couch and enjoying the punch of the first sip, which always tastes like pine needles.

“Did you ever call your mother back?” Bee asked.

“She called here again about an hour ago,” I said. “She wanted to tell me that Danielle is having another baby.”

“Another one?”

I loved that Bee’s response was similar to mine. Perhaps it was just that we were childless, but I think we both agreed that anyone who willingly has more than two children is clinically insane.

I took another sip of my drink and buried my head deeper into the blue velvet couch cushion. “Bee, do you think Joel left me because I never cooked for him?”

“Nonsense, dear,” she said, setting her crossword puzzle down.