Thyme of Death (2 page)

I wasn’t the only person in the
shop. Violett was tending to a pair of well-dressed female tourists, themselves
doll-like, one with improbable blue hair and the other with equally improbable
red, both heavily made up and pants-suited. While I waited, I looked around. My
other reason for coming was to find a gift for Jo Gilbert. Today was her
fifty-ninth birthday, and she needed some cheering up. Jo had breast cancer.

I glanced over Violett’s dolls and
stuffed animals. Jo is too firm and no-nonsense to go for something frilly. But
I happened on a red calico goose wearing a defiant look in her black eye. That
rebellious eye reminded me of Jo. Jo is an organizer. She
organized
Pecan Springs’ small chapter of NOW under the upturned noses of
the Junior League. Then, in the teeth of widespread community apathy, she organized
the drive   to   hack   Pecan   Springs   Park  
out
of a willow thicket.
Most recently, she had organized the Anti-Airport Coalition, which opposes the
regional airport that the cities of Austin and San Antonio are considering

building on a site seven miles
outside of Pecan Springs, on the other side of the proposed high-speed rail
line. I grinned at the stuffed goose. The only thing it needed to make it
perfect for Jo was a sign saying FUCK THE AIRPORT!

I tucked the goose under my arm and
turned around to see the blue-haired tourist lean over the counter and pick up
a plump-faced pink bear wearing a strawberry-print apron and a pink straw hat
with a wreath of strawberries around the brim. “Look, Maxine,” she cried. “It’s
StrawBerry Bear! Isn’t she simply precious?”

“StrawBerry Bear!” Maxine cried,
clapping her hands. “My little granddaughter’s been asking for her!”

Never having been a mother myself
(never having even
wanted
to be a mother), I know next to nothing about
what turns kids on these days. But even
I
know that StrawBerry Bear is
enormously popular with the four-to-eight crowd, almost as big as Big Bird
himself. I know this because StrawBerry Bear just happens to be the brainchild
of Jo’s friend, Rosalind Kotner.

Roz’s life has to be your all-time
Cinderella story. Until she hit the big time with StrawBerry and the spin-off books,
clothes, and toys that came when the StrawBerry Bear Kids’ Klub ratings topped
the chart, Roz lived here in town in Jo Gilbert’s spare room, pretty much
hand-to-mouth, like any other would-be actress stuck in a small Texas town. But
that was back then, five, six years ago. Now she lives in New York, where she
tapes her weekly TV show in front of an audience of adoring kids, and
masterminds her sprawling empire of StrawBerry Bear spin-offs. And poses for
magazine covers, like the latest
People
magazine, where she was perched
on a pyramid of pink stuffed bears, with greenbacks spilling everywhere. The
cover story was all about how many millions of StrawBerries had been sold and
how many millions of dollars Roz stood to rake in over the next few years. It’s
an impressive achievement for a woman who came out of the Texas boonies with
only a stuffed bear and what turned out to be a blockbuster idea.

But Maxine’s granddaughter was not destined
to receive this particular bear. “I’m sorry,” Violett said matter-of-factly. “It’s
a ... it’s not for sale.” She
took
the bear out of Maxine’s
hands and stowed it under the counter.

Maxine pouted. “That’s really too
bad,” she said. “Everybody’s out of them. Even Toys ‘R’ Us has had to back
order, I can’t persuade you to—?”

Violett smiled. “Let me show you
Missy Prissy. She’s a sweet little lady with a pink ruffled apron and pink
booties. Maybe she’ll do instead.”

Apparently Missy Prissy did, for in
a few moments Violett had rung up a sale and Maxine and her blue-haired friend
were on their way out.

I put my goose on the counter. “I
thought Jo Gilbert might like this for her birthday,” I said. “And I’ve brought
the tinctures you wanted.” I gave her the package and began to count out the
money for the goose.

“How is Jo?” Violett asked.

I gave an evasive shrug. Actually,
Jo had seemed depressed lately, maybe because the Anti-Airport Coalition
was running
into a full-scale flak attack from the local paper, the E
nterprise,
which
seems dead set on turning Pecan Springs into an airport suburb. Or maybe
because of her birthday. I get depressed on birthdays too, even though I’ve
only gotten as far as forty-two. But at least I’m still counting. I’d probably
be a lot more depressed if I got to number fifty-nine and my doctor told me it
might be the last. After a mastectomy and chemotherapy, Jo’s cancer was
spreading.

“I understand her daughter’s staying
with her,” Violett said. She put the herbs in her purse and counted seven
dollars and forty-two cents out of the register.

“That’s right,” I replied. Jo’s
daughter Meredith is a CPA from Dallas. She had come down for a few weeks’
visit.

Violett gave a long, expressive
sigh. “I hope she isn’t thinking of giving up her career to nurse her mother.
That would be a terrible sacrifice.”

“I think it’s only temporary,” I
said, and then wished I hadn’t. If Jo’s doctor was right, it might be
very
temporary.

When I left, Violett was putting a
new doll on the shelf to replace Missy Prissy.

I couldn’t help smiling as I went
back down the grand staircase and out the front door of the Emporium, thinking
fondly of Violett and her dolls, and Gretel and her candles, and Peter and his
Depression dishes.

Ordinary people, doing ordinary
things. The beginning of a slow week in a small town.

As I said, Monday morning fooled me.

That afternoon I went out to the
herb garden to plant a row of garlic bulbs along the fence. The old two-story building
I live and work in was originally built by a German stonemason who knew his
business so well that every piece of square-cut limestone still fits snug and
true. It sits back about ten yards from the street on a deep, narrow lot that
goes all the way to the alley. I’ve planted herb gardens front and back, more
to attract customers than to grow a substantial crop, and I spend a couple of
hours a week messing around there, digging, planting, composting, and trying to
improve the rock-hard caliche soil.

A lot of people ask me why I got out
of law and into herbs. I have a stock answer; plants don’t argue. They also don’t
lie, cheat, connive or
hit below
the
belt. That’s
true, of course, but the real answer is more complicated. The first part of it
is that I left law because

I stopped believing in the
partnership between justice and the legal system. I also left because the
practice of law was changing me into somebody I didn’t like very much, somebody
more arrogant, more competitive, more cutthroat than I knew myself to be. If I
stayed in much longer, I knew what I’d become
-
a carbon
copy of the senior partners in our firm, four men who lived for their work,
whose lives were empty of anything else.

I got into herbs (this is the second
part of the answer) because when I was a kid I was crazy about growing things.
It was a trait I inherited from my father’s mother, who had what was probably
the finest herb garden in New Orleans parish. I inherited Gram’s name, too.
China Bayles. I’ve also developed a stock answer to “What a weird name.” which
I hear a lot. I tell people I was named after my grandmother, who was conceived
in Shanghai during the Boxer Rebellion. That’s a lie. I have no idea where Gran
was conceived. When I was practicing law, I used my initials to obscure the
fact that I was a woman. Now that I’m growing herbs, I’ve gone back to China.
It feels right.

People also ask me why I went into
law in the first place. The truth is that as a child I wanted to become a
botanist. But my father, failing to beget a son, expected his only child to
wear his boots, as they say in Houston, where I grew up. And that was fine with
me. I was impressed by his power, and I wanted to be as much like him as
possible. I certainly
didn’t
want to be like my mother, passive and
purposeless. So I went to U.T. law school, stiff-armed my way into a tough
field, and set about the serious business of showing my stuff and making a lot
of money in the process. Did that please my father? I doubt it. He didn’t
invite me into
his
firm. But it was the only way I knew to get his
attention.

Still, I was somewhat schizoid.
While part of me wanted to be the wealthiest and most successful woman lawyer
in Houston, another part still wanted to be a botanist. So while I was doing
law, I was also growing herbs, as many as I could fit into the custom-built
window greenhouse in my condo. When things got to the point where I knew I had
to quit the firm, I didn’t have a burning ambition to do something else. But
plants were what I knew and enjoyed, and I thought the herb shop would allow me
to make a kinder, gentler living. I pay my dues to the Bar Association because
it’s not a bad idea to have a backup in case the business goes bust. But even
though I can take a few cases if I need to, it hasn’t been necessary. The
business is in the black, although barely.

I was finishing the row of garlic
bulbs and was about to divide a thick clump of silver-gray, velvety lamb’s ears
when Ruby Wilcox came around the house. Behind her was Meredith Gilbert, Jo’s
daughter.

I straightened up. The front of my
stone building is divided into two shop spaces. Thyme and Seasons takes up one
space. Ruby Wilcox rents the other for The Crystal Cave, Pecan Springs’ only
New Age shop. She’s tall, over six feet in the spiky heels she sometimes wears.
Her orangy-red hair is an Orphan Annie frizz, and her wide, spontaneous grin
and the gingery dusting of freckles across her nose take ten years off her
forty-three. She was wearing black ankle-length stretch pants, black three-inch
heels, and a green cotton tunic that matched her contacts. (Her eyes are
naturally hazel, but she says that the tint was only twenty-five dollars extra
and what the hell?) Our working arrangement is exceptionally handy, not only because
The Crystal Cave’s rent shores up the mortgage payments, but because Ruby and I
often cover for one another, so that neither of us is irrevocably tied to her
shop. Even if you love what you’re doing, some days a one-person business feels
like a one-ton albatross.

Ruby plopped down on the
white-painted iron bench at the edge of the spearmint bed and dropped her
shopping bag. Meredith, in a black boat-necked tee and trim-cut khakis that
gave her an athletic look, sat down beside her. Like Jo, Meredith has clear
gray eyes, a strong jaw, and dark, wiry hair cut short and brushed straight
back. The firmness of her facial structure is

matched by a no-nonsense posture and
challenging directness that borders on the brusque and quick tempered. With
Meredith, as with Jo, what you see is what you get.

The fact that Meredith is a lot like
her mother probably explains why I like her. When I moved to Pecan Springs, Jo
became a kind of surrogate mother for me. She fed me, she introduced me to the
right people, she offered straight talk when I needed it. My connection to my
own mother is strained, to put it mildly, and Jo filled an empty place in my
life. The fact that Meredith and Jo are alike also probably explains why they
don’t get along all that well. They both have a certain wariness about
connections and a fierce sense of privacy, characteristics that don’t allow
them to open themselves to real intimacy. And neither suffers fools gladly. But
that didn’t keep me from loving Jo and liking Meredith a great deal.

“What’re you planting?” Ruby asked.
She kicked off her heels, stretched out her long legs and rotated her feet at
the ankles, first one way and then another. Ruby is very flexible. She does
yoga.

“Garlic,” I said. I grow as much as
I’ve got room for and buy lots from a nearby grower. Customers like garlic
braids, and the dried flower heads make great wreath material. “I have a
birthday present for your mother,” I told Meredith. “How is she?”

“Birthdays have never been Mother’s
thing,” Meredith said matter-of-factly. “She’s been a little down lately,
thinking about... well, you know. And money could get to be a problem. She
doesn’t have very good insurance coverage, and if things get bad—” She
shrugged. “But her new hobby is cheering her up some.

“New hobby?” I asked.

“Bird watching,” Ruby put in.

Meredith nodded. “No matter how
rotten she feels, she tramps out every morning with her bird book and a pair of
binoculars. You’ve got to admire her spirit.”

“That’s because she’s on the Path,”
Ruby said cheerfully, rotating her feet in the opposite direction, Ruby is a
believer in New Age alternative therapies, in which she is also something of an
expert. She helped Jo put together a “wellness program” that includes a
sugar-free, fat-free diet, weekly visualizations, daily meditations, and hourly
affirmations, all designed to help Jo’s ailing immune system triumph over the
invading cancer cells. The Healing Path is what Ruby calls it, the Way to
Wellness. “Mystical claptrap” is what my friend Mike McQuaid calls it. The AMA
probably has several other names for it. I didn’t care. I just hoped that
whatever Ruby and Jo were doing, it would at least give Jo some sense of
control over what was happening to her body, and some release. I cared for Jo
too much to hope that her days would be extended at the cost of pain.