Tiger Lillie (12 page)

8

Lillie

When I was little these guys used to travel around and give presentations on creation versus evolution. They’d project films at the fundamentalist churches, hand out booklets, and talk about the fossil record and “the canopy.” Everyone would go downstairs afterward to the fellowship hall, eat some cake, drink some punch, and believe the exact same way they did before they even pulled into the parking lot. A friend of mine from school took me to her church for one of those meetings. Most of us knew in our hearts God created the world, we just didn’t know the scientific ins and outs. Some of us remembered the scientific evidence they proposed, and some of us, like me, just kept our beliefs simple. God created the world because I know it in my heart. If you don’t like it, lump it. I suspect most of them forgot the fodder they received for conversations they would have with all those militant evolutionists out there waiting for discourse.

God created the world because, well, to believe in the other would require a different kind of faith, a faith in man’s ideas, which, as we all know, can’t be trusted. Can you imagine looking at the veins of a maple leaf, the paws of a baby lion, the eye of a bee, the way a cat lands like a pool of fur; can you imagine biting into a peach, feeling the winter sun on your face, or hearing anything Beethoven ever wrote, or Elton John for that matter, and thinking nothing but time and chance brought all of this about?

Time I can deal with. Who knows how long it took Him? I couldn’t care less whether it’s a literal six sunrise-sunset days. But chance? No way.

Personally, I like to imagine the Godhead dancing to a rhythm and tempo of its own, something even grander than a waltz, touching, tasting, smelling, seeing, and hearing, creating wonder after wonder after wonder, and when it’s finished, looking upon the handiwork and saying, “This is
great!”

I love God so much. I love the wonder of God and the mystery of His workings. To trade that for some boring, “Eighty bazillion years ago there was a bang out in space, blah, blah, blah-bitty blah,” is simply unacceptable to someone like me, someone with a corny “Footprints” poster on the back of her bedroom door.

Unless, of course, that bang was God’s voice.

Let’s face it. If a person wasn’t
there
at the beginning of it all, and none of us were, it’s all about faith no matter what you believe. I’d rather believe God’s still alive and well and interested in us. Because if there was, perchance, a random Big Bang, couldn’t, perchance, a random Big Suck happen just as easily?

Hah!

I’m not very intellectual. And any physicist would scorn me, but I choose to think of them as those lab-coated nerds in
The Far Side.
I rarely discuss these matters considering I’d be deemed a fool. Perhaps I am. Or perhaps I’m wise enough to know what one can and cannot say for certain.

But earlier today when I held my niece Hannah Grace in my arms for the first time, evolution didn’t enter my mind. All I could think was, “This is a miracle from heaven.”

The birth in the tub occurred without mishap, despite my doubts. Rawlins refuses to go into any great detail because he doesn’t believe in talking about Tacy’s private parts to anyone other than Tacy. And I don’t even know if he talks about them to her. Fine by me either way.

By the time I arrived, Hannah Grace, age three hours, slept in her mother’s arms. Tacy never looked more beautiful. Her long blond braid looped over her shoulder, and at the bottom a pale blue satin ribbon glowed. “This is the happiest day of my life, Lillie,” she whispered when Rawlins left the room to get me some freshly squeezed orange juice (from organic oranges, naturally).

“Even better than your wedding day?”

“Easily. But don’t tell Rawlins I said so! Just look at her.” She handed my niece to me. Hannah felt just like Tacy did when our own mother handed my little sister to me for the first time. I was only six then, but some feelings you never forget.

The warm little curve of the child’s behind felt just the same as Tacy’s did, and I patted it, hearing the rustle of the plastic pants. No disposable diapers for this baby, Rawlins declared when they first found out they were expecting.

I was in love.

And now we sit together on the deck, the sun setting on her first day of life, and I talk to her, staring into those dark button eyes I know right well aren’t focusing, but she sees me anyway, right? She knows I love her and will do anything for her. I tell her exactly that. I don’t make a vow, due to Cristoff’s advice, but I whisper, “You’ve got me for good, baby girl. You can always rely on Aunt Lillie to take care of you.”

Tacy

When the cottage was almost finished, Mom and I walked through, hand in hand, both wearing cotton skirts and breezy tops, I felt so like her and yet so different, so custodial in a way. She did a beautiful job with the kitchen. Soft-yellow cabinets and even that Corian stuff. I picked out real mahogany cabinetry and green marble countertops for our place. “Only the best for you, Anastasia,” Rawlins said. “Only what you want.”

Even now, I have to admit it was beautiful. The kitchen designer said I had a real knack for that kind of thing. That made, me feel good in a time when I wondered if I’d slipped away completely.

Mom and I stood in the master bedroom, freshly painted a dusty plum.

“I asked Rawlins if I could go work for the ad agency, Mom.”

“I already know his answer, Do you think you could paint some murals here for us? It will be a while before we move in—until your father retires, which might be years from now.”

“Rawlins said the ad world is too competitive. He doesn’t want me to become jaded.”

“I was thinking maybe a garden scene in the kitchen.”

“Maybe I could sell my paintings.”

“Or do trompe l’oeil. Here would be a good place to start.”

“I really want to go to college.”

Mom looked around. “Of course, the master bath has lots of potential too.”

That night the Lord visited me again. It had been so long, but I had cried out to Him several times that day, in my loneliness, my despair, from the recesses of my trap. I felt myself at the bottom of a hole, no rope or ladder to ensure my release.

In the morning I came down to Dad, almost completely recovered from his heart surgery, working on a manuscript. A devotional booklet. Well, they still twinkled, his lively blue eyes as he invited me to sit down and have some toast. I watched the way he patted my mother’s hand when she laid a plate in front of him and said, “Thank you, Kathy darlin’.” Any pressure she exerted on me regarding my marriage to Rawlins was only out of love for my father.

My wedding day. So lovely a June day, I can breathe that air in even now. Lillie’s friend Pleasance decorated the church and made, my gown. I remember it now so clearly, more clearly than I ever did before. For it was just a blur, but now, in this moment wrapped in between the planes of time, I see the altar, I hear the voices, smell the roses, breathe the air.

When Rawlins took me completely, I felt so old. I was only eighteen? “Oh, God, deliver me. Come, to me, commune with me. Draw me, and I will run after You to the fragrance of Your perfume.” I prayed that prayer. Over and over and over.

Lillie

I can barely concentrate on the wedding at hand. Hannah Grace completely occupies my mind. That little cylindrical body, sparse hair that moves as softly with my breath as sea kelp waves in a gentle current. Much the same as infatuation.

But the event, Space Age Nuptials, rocketed to stellar success. Hah!

When some people want extreme, they do mean extreme. The actual ceremony, a bit off-theme, finds me standing in a piercing parlor. It’s weird to think that this couple, both public defense lawyers, are having their wedding rings inserted.

I say when wedding rings need be
inserted
something is just a little too wacky. And that’s being nice. The ring ceremony occurs behind a screen.

“With this ring”—click!—“I thee wed,” by golly. And the poor judge! Well, he seemed a little off kilter too, though I couldn’t help conjuring up visions of him marching in some protest or other during the heyday of his angry youth.

I can’t imagine their wedding night will be at all exciting now. Did they stop to consider that?

Sometimes I feel I am making a mockery of God’s holy ordinance. But hey, at least they’re getting married at all! Those bra-burners who declare marriage is obsolete and will eventually go the way of the percolator possess no insight into the human psyche, the basic need we all have to simply belong.

Afterward, we descended into some bomb shelter erected back in the fifties. For my part, not easy to locate. But after a dozen and a half phone calls that began with an elderly member of the John Birch Society, I found one farther out Route 40, only ten minutes from the piercing joint.

Poor Gert and Peach didn’t even sleep last night, fashioning the oddest hors d’oeuvres I’ve ever seen. Somehow they figured out how to make everything look metallic. All I know is, they wouldn’t touch them themselves. So neither did I. At least our clients, Margaret Phelps and Tib Wheckle, sure knew what they wanted. That makes our job a lot easier.

“What does a bomb shelter have to do with piercings?” Pleasance asked after our first consultation with the couple. “And why in the world does she want them all to wear throwaway clothes?”

I shrugged. “I guess they feel that’s the wave of the future.”

“Well, at least you won’t have to worry about sewing them,” Cristoff had said. “Me, I have to make bouquets out of tinfoil and Tupperware. How am I going to make flowers out of that stuff?”

Peach stepped in at that point, saying softly, “Get some heavy-duty foil, or disposable roasting pans. And as far as Tupperware goes, the lids are more flexible than the containers.” He scratched his belly looking awfully pleased with himself as Cristoff made notes.

The bouquets turned out to be the prettiest things I’d ever seen. They sparkled and shimmered and each glittery petal moved with the delicacy of a butterfly. I asked Cristoff to arrange me a bouquet for Grandma Erzsèbet’s Formica kitchen table.

The gowns, tailored from trash bags and cellophane, had us laughing for weeks as Pleasance tried new designs. Even Peach was allowed no escape, the maid of honor being a plus-sized, plus-sized beauty. But we managed perfectly. The couple drove away in a Pacer to their honeymoon in some geodesic dome in the Arizona desert with broad, Space Age smiles on their faces.

“Thank the Lord for that colored GLAD wrap!” Pleasance says after the event as we drive toward the city, tired and pleased with the result, however madcap.

“If we could pull off something like this and make it work, we can pull off some aging British rockers do!” says Cristoff, who is driving the rented U-Haul van. “Has he called yet, Lillie?”

“Would you be the first to know?”

Cristoff pays the dollar toll for the Fort McHenry Tunnel. “I hope Peach appreciates your offer.”

“Hey, nobody twisted your arm, honey. You volunteered to help me unload the stuff.”

“Yeah. I’m a dufus.”

“Well, I’m not,” Pleasance says. “I’m going right home to my babies.”

Ten minutes later, after dropping Pleasance off at her apartment, Cristoff pulls into the alley and backs the truck up to the rear entrance of our building.

I open my door. “Let me go check my messages real quick.” I run up the steps.

The message light flashes and I punch the button.

That warm voice lightens the twilight gloom of my office.

My scream sends Cristoff directly to me in a few seconds flat. He hears the final, “…to make an appointment soon, sweetheart.”

“It’s Gordon Remington.”

He spins a gangly 360 degrees in the air. “Well, if this doesn’t deserve a celebration, I don’t know what does. What shall we do?”

“How about unloading that stuff?”

He gives me a stiff squeeze of a hug. “It’s going to happen, baby doll. I just feel it in my bones.”

“You really think we’ll get this contract?”

Cristoff crosses his arms over his chest. “It’s what we’ve been praying for.”

“And see, having a cell phone didn’t matter one iota.”

You know, Teddy would have been thrilled for me. For all of us. I’ll go home to an empty old row house and whiz up a shake, feeling a solid hope for the first time since Extremely Odd opened its doors. Mom will think it’s a good thing, but more out of relief than anything. Daddy will be delighted though. He’ll wink and say, “I told you so.” Which is true. “Let’s celebrate.”

After unloading the truck I decide I’m not going home just yet. I think I’ll drive out to Bel Air and tell him myself.

He’s listening to the radio when I walk in through the never-locked door. The
Prairie Home Companion
show. And why does Garrison Keillor have to sing? It’s really not all that delightful, kind of like that uncle or aunt who always insists on starting everybody off for “Happy Birthday to You.”