Tiger Lillie (8 page)

I climb in the old Triumph beside him.

“TR-3.” He slides a hand over the steering wheel.

“Sure is. She’s a sweet one, too.”

“All we need are scarves, Miss Bauer.”

“Call me Lillie.” I reach into the glove box and pull out my scarf. I hand it to him. “The rules for Boy Scouts and event planners are pretty much the same.”

He winds it around his portly neck, the white cashmere bright and soft against his florid, now stubbled face. Then he throws the car into first, and off we breeze down the roads of western Baltimore County. We speed by the white fences and the oak trees about to exchange their green summer shawl for the shiny maroon slicker of autumn. He talks about his company, about his late wife, whom he never really could stomach but after all, she gave him Patrice so he felt completely indebted to her as Patrice was truly the only joy he had these days. “Ah, Sandy. The old gal. Too bad we couldn’t really make it work.”

I don’t know what to say. So I just look forward and keep a smile on my face. I doubt if he talks like this to many people, but it’s amazing what folks will say to the wedding planner.

Then he asks, “So what does a young single woman like you do for leisure?” And because he asks in a way I know for certain it isn’t some kind of winter/spring come-on, I tell him about the Extreme Delights Sporting and Adventure Club and he laughs, shakes his head, and says, “And my stockbroker says
I’ve
got guts!”

So we motor on up to Carroll County, eat a piece of homemade apple pie at Baugher’s, my treat, and then drive back, the late afternoon sun warming our hair, the pleasant company easing our twin loneliness. Two floating bubbles in the same space of sky.

“Do you have a cell phone?” I ask him.

“One of those dreadful things? No, Lillie. If you can’t relax when it’s time to relax, you can’t do business when it’s time to do business.”

“I just wonder if I’d do more business with one.”

Keeping his eyes on the road, he pats my arm. “Let your work speak for you. It takes time, and you’re still in business after a year. Quite an accomplishment if you ask me.”

When I drop him off I tell him to keep the scarf. “I want you to remember this for a long time, Mr. Winslow.”

“Oh, I will, Lillie. No mistaking that.”

The house stands dark except for one lamp burning in one of the front rooms. I wait until he lets himself in, watch as he turns and waves before shutting the door.

And I drive away.

He needed that.

Tacy

The day the you-know-what hit the fan, as my dad always said, I heard I won second place in the Maryland Arts Committee student contest, and a five-thousand-dollar scholarship. But the victory was short-lived because that night at the supper table the partial truth about Rawlins came out. Before that, they’d had no idea how old he was. I’d let it slip.

Dad wore a sport shirt and jeans and he sat with Mom in the den later. They had no clue I was listening through the heat vent up in my bedroom. “What is it, Kathy? Why in the world would a twenty-three-year-old want to date our precious sixteen-year-old daughter?”

“Well, She is a beautiful girl, Carl, and she’s always been a cut above her age group both intellectually and emotionally.”

“Can’t he get a girl his own age?”

“Now, Carl, that makes Tacy sound like she’s second best.”

“Not at all. I know men, Kathy. You’d better pray that he hasn’t gotten to her already.”

“We’ve raised her better than that.”

His voice lowered, but I heard him say, “I got to you, didn’t I?”

I don’t think I’d ever felt such bitter disappointment in my entire life.

“Just give him a chance. He wants to come over here, to see her properly.”

“I don’t trust him, Kath.”

“Well, frankly, neither do I, but it’s better for them to meet here than to go sneaking around.”

You guys would know about sneaking around, I thought, suddenly free from guilt. I knew Grandma Erzsèbet raised my mom better than that.

I called Rawlins on the mobile phone he gave me for my birthday and asked him to keep picking me up at Barb’s house so we could go make out, but he said it was time to start afresh, to court properly. “Court.” That’s what he said. He was so funny sometimes, so quaint.

I’d miss his body, the feel of his biceps under my lips. If he’d known how much I adored him, it would have been goodbye Tacy. Flowers arrived for my mother and me the next day. Red roses for me, yellow for her. Daddy cocked an eyebrow.

When Rawlins told me we couldn’t kiss anymore, I begged him to change his mind. He gave me all the right reasons and sounded so convincing.

I wanted to cry the next day though. I wanted to wrap my hair around my throat and pull as tightly as I could. I was losing him.

Instead, I slipped a piece of typing paper in Daddy’s old Selectric and started writing, writing, writing. It didn’t matter what I wrote and none of it would make sense to anybody but me. After that, I worked on a scene for a short-story assignment. Mr. Herring, my Gifted and Talented Creative Writing teacher, said I had potential, but I needed to let go on my first drafts and not get so hung-up on technique.

The next little while it seemed like all I did was write. And sometimes, especially those days when I drove to Loch Raven, sat on its banks with my notebook and the words flowed, I felt ready to explode! Like this joy bubble, pink and iridescent, expanded and thinned and became ever more delicate and ethereal and exquisite. And then sometimes, when my words felt like they were not quite mine, that I’d tapped into something way beyond my measly, insignificant self, the bubble popped and I’d actually want to scream in pleasure. Those days, I likened it to a sexual climax, which I hadn’t yet experienced, and now know I never really will. Not in a free-falling, lose-your-breath way.

How fast the thoughts come to me now. It really is just as they say.

5

Lillie

Entering my old row house, glad Patrice Winslow is now, and hopefully always will be, nothing more than a very odd memory, I decide not to ride the exercise bike. I don’t even mix up a fruity shake or call Cristoff. Instead, I boil up a cup of tea and sit beside Grandma Erzsèbet’s Nightmare.

Teddy, Teddy, Teddy.

I call the detective on his case, as I do from time to time. He says, “No news, Lillie. He’s not coming back, hon. One way or the other. You’ve just got to move on.”

He’s right. I know that.

But how can I move on? He was the one. The… One. And no matter how many dates I endure, how many men dance around the corner of my eye, I can’t look another fellow straight on. I can’t think that just maybe this one will measure up.

I hate it when I fall into the ridiculous pastime of feeling sorry for myself. So I think about Grandma’s life before she crossed the border into Austria. Grandma didn’t speak a word of English, but my mother told me all about her job at the winery.

May I never complain again!

We have it so good here.

So on nights after weddings filled with lovey-dovey arms draped around waists and good-byes in cute little suits and foreign cars, or chariots as the case may be, I think about my grandma and all I can say is, “Thank you, God!”

If one was deemed as a Class Enemy after the Soviets took over Hungary, she was pretty much dog doo, and that’s not being too harsh or too sickening. The proud wife of an esteemed university professor had been reduced to the graveyard shift. I’d like to report Erzsèbet enjoyed some pleasant job tasting grapes or even turning bottles. Not so. Erzsèbet worked in a cold concrete shed sorting six nights a week, cleaning wine bottles dumped off in large boxes by dour, sour people who drove trucks. Crates and crates slammed in front of her each day, various bottles, stale, sour wine in the bottom of some, the aroma of which would crawl out of the bottles’ mouths right up into Erzsèbet’s nostrils. Hot in the summertime, freezing in the wintertime, and gloves proved too expensive if the family wanted to eat.

I envision her gray woolen, layered tatters, her braids pinned up under a kerchief. I see cold chapped hands or a sweating brow and never much in between.

And I feel ashamed. And soft. And needy and unthankful. And I remember the sweet little home in which I live, the home that once belonged to Erzsèbet, and think, “How dare I complain?”

But tomorrow will dawn and I’ll start moaning about something. I always do.

Tacy

The day Lillie asked me to help her look good for her old collegemate’s wedding, I felt so important. At the dresser in her room (I can still see that piece of furniture she’d painted orange), I figured out how she could best do her bridesmaid makeup. After that, I simply wound her braid around in a bun at the nape of her neck and it looked perfect with her bone structure. “You can’t ask for better than that, Lil. You look so classy.”

Her smile at me, reflecting in the mirror before us, did something to me. It made me feel needed and necessary and not just an accessory, a role I’d assumed somewhere back when I was little.

“I hardly recognize myself. You’re a miracle worker, Tace. Man, you’re talented! You actually gave me cheek-bones!”

Lillie possesses those gentle kind of features ladies wore in old-time portraits, like those pretty, fresh young English noblewomen or something in the days before skeletal supermodels. She never could see it though, and maybe I should’ve tried harder to build her up, but it’s too late now, and she’s finally got a full life and someone who shines a light on her worth.

People always complimented my looks more than hers, and maybe I was a little more “striking,” but feature for feature, Lillie has always been prettier. I blame all that acne she used to have, not to mention having a father who was blind and couldn’t compliment her one way or the other. Mom tried, but compliments from your mom, while as important as breath, only serve to let you know someone is on your side. They don’t feel like objective truth. A few days later I found some therapeutic makeup for her, and it really went a long way in building up her self-confidence. At least I can go away now knowing I did something for her. When Teddy disappeared, he took all her feminine confidence with him, but it’s finally coming back and she deserves that.

It’s amazing how time really does protract at moments like this. The car tips completely over the guardrail. Aren’t SUVs silly?

The next day we all went down to the airport to see Lillie off to Woodland Hills, California, wherever that was, near L.A., I think. I started off the day with great excitement. Rawlins drove us all in his big, new Explorer. Lillie shone with anticipation and I yearned to let her borrow my eyes so she could finally see herself with accuracy.

Rawlins took my hand as we walked toward the gate, and Daddy, hanging on to Lillie’s arm, was oblivious. Mom just smiled. She liked Rawlins back then. With his money and job and social standing, I think she saw him as my big chance to be a real American, Hungary still haunted her a little too much, and who could blame her? She moved heaven and earth to lose her accent, learning pop songs and memorizing TV commercials, and had totally lost that un-American air we can all spot a mile away. “You be good to him, Tacy,” she whispered as we stepped into the boarding area. “Don’t let this one slip away from you.”

And I wasn’t planning on it anyway.

But something disturbed me. He kept laughing at all the fat people. I told him that “God makes people in all shapes and sizes,” and he said, “God didn’t make them fat, Anastasia. They’ve eaten their way there all on their own.” I told him I thought that he was a little harsh, and he said, “It’s a lack of discipline, pure and simple. And Anastasia, don’t ever tell me what I am or am not.”

I could only hope Lillie didn’t hear him. Not that she was exactly fat, but…

Lillie

I hear a loud crash upstairs. Oh no.

Hollywood always gets it wrong. I’ve yet to see a realistic-looking seizure on television or in the movies. First of all, the actor shakes way too fast, like some human jackhammer shivering a slow path on the restaurant floor, where epileptic scenes almost invariably occur. Second, they never show the fetal position stage, when this eerie heavy breathing occurs and the mouth foams. If the seizure victim has bitten his tongue or mouth, then blood mixes in, and I have to say It’s really quite disconcerting. And third, they usually have the person in the restaurant sit right up afterward and say, “What happened?”

Yeah, right.

So I know
exactly
what has happened and what to expect. I knock over my nightstand fishing for Cristoff’s key. There’s one on my ring, but I keep one in the drawer for nights like this. Then I grab the portable phone, dialing 911 as I hurry out onto the back porch and up the narrow iron staircase leading to his apartment.

“Honey!” I holler as I let myself in. No answer. Rushing forward, I tell the 911 lady everything. Name, address. My best friend is having an epileptic seizure I say as I swerve into the monastically furnished bedroom, and yes, there he lies yes he’s on the floor in a grand mal yes I’m turning him on his side now and the airways are clear so no he hasn’t swallowed his tongue or anything yes I think It’s been going on for about a minute now you’d think I’d be used to this by now, I say.

“The paramedics are on their way, hon. Stay calm.”

I press the off button and throw the phone on his single bed. And I lie down on the floor next to him, curling my body around his like a candy shell. Finally the shaking ceases and he curls up further. My body follows his lines, two Cs close together, and the odd breathing begins. No blood in the foam this time. Good. One time he bit his tongue almost in half.

“I love you, Gilbert.” And I lay my arm on his, tucking his hand in mine, feeling his warmth and wishing this kind of thing would never happen to him again.

Tacy

I had never been that mad at Lillie before. She told me to be careful, that for a reason she couldn’t even put her finger on, she didn’t trust Rawlins. I told her to shut her mouth. And there we’d been, sitting in her car in front of High’s, eating ice-cream cones, everything so nice. She said it was okay I reacted like that, that she figured she would upset me, but sometimes a sister positively has to say something.

When we got home, she walked up to her bedroom, shut the door, and put on her rock-‘n’-roll and worshiped at the Teddy shrine.

I called Rawlins and he told me to not worry about it, but I shouldn’t ever confide in my sister again because she obviously couldn’t be depended upon to see things as they are.

Boy, did I agree.

Boy, was I fooled.

Lillie

Does anyone get over the love of their life when the next best thing comes along? Does anyone forget the person who stood up for them when no one else would? Does anyone simply refuse to be forever numbered among the lonely and plan accordingly? Move purposefully forward, scientifically, without wavering?

I guess that’s what scares me the most about my future. After Teddy, everything else is merely settling for the inevitable. Or at least, that’s what it’s seemed like so far. How many more dates can I stand? And you know, they only ask at first because of my ample chest. That’s humiliating. And the fact that I’m never the prettiest girl in the group, and
never
the slimmest or even just plain slim, they think they’re doing me a favor. But the thought of going through the rest of my life alone frightens me. I see a lone casket and one priest. And before that, days consisting of sandwich meals and reruns of
The Golden Girls.
I see lots of volunteering to be done, only to let myself into Grandma Erszèbet’s house for…a sandwich and, yep, reruns. Maybe I’ll call Tacy’s kids, but they’ll rarely call me, and after a while, perhaps I’ll fear I’m bothering them and their new families. My bones will ache and no eardrum will register my complaints. I’ll shine my furniture for no one but me. Keep the guest bedroom at the ready for no visitors.

Nonsense! Daddy would tell me. You’ll see the world! Chat with interesting people and learn of their lives, and they’ll feel validated because you chose to actually listen, Lillie.

But why? What would that mean in the long run? We are born, we die. In between, the only thing that matters is having loved with a strange and glorious devotion.

This is why Tacy and Rawlins bug me so much. Or really, Tacy. We all could see the handwriting on the wall as clearly as Belshazzar could all those years ago in Babylon. I tried to talk to her about being too young to settle when she was still in high school, but she informed me I was just jealous because I’d never again have a relationship like that.

Rawlins inserted a spite inside her that hadn’t been there before. He just as quickly dispatched of it not long after their marriage, and so even the most cursory observation reveals her as the automaton he’s engineered. Where went her say-so?

Of course, she was sorry after the argument, because I swear this is true: She shed almost as many tears over Teddy as I did. And the night he disappeared, though she was only twelve, she stayed awake with me there on the patio behind the rectory. And when the sun rose, she hadn’t slept a wink either.

I want that Tacy back again.

I’ve tried to move on. If Teddy’s alive, he’s felt no compunction to return to me, so it’s over. If he’s dead, it’s over, over. I’m done holding aloft this romantic flame that says, “I will wait for you forever.”

First of all, I don’t know a real person who’s done that sort of thing.

Second of all, I want to love somebody again.

Third of all, and maybe most important, if Teddy came back and found me in love and happy, he’d be glad. He wouldn’t want me to pine my life away. No way.

It’s amazing the kind of thoughts that whisper about while you’re waiting for paramedics to arrive. Here I am, coiled around a man who just had a seizure and my mind is moving along selfishly as usual as though the universe has my name etched upon each star. Poor Cristoff will be so sore in the morning. Stomach muscles he never uses but here will be burning, and then that overwhelming headache and all.

Well, tomorrow’s Sunday, and after the disastrous date with Leslie, I’m not all that eager to get to church anyway. I feel awkward enough without that sort of help. I’ll probably just walk across the street and hear mass at Sacred Heart. I consider driving out to Daddy’s church. At the first mass, they play guitars and the people who have a very deep relationship with Jesus or at least a very expressive form of worship lift their hands high when they sing songs like, “I Love You, Lord” or “There Is a Redeemer.” Daddy’s fostered that brand of free devotion and fought tooth and nail for a percussion section. He still loves a good beat. My mom bought him earphones a few years ago, declaring her musical tastes had grown up. “Carl, if I ever have to hear another drum solo again, I may just have to leave you!”