Under the Skin (3 page)

In the stillness of late night, the ticking of the schoolhouse clock in the next room was the only sound I could hear. I sat up straight and read through the letter again.

It was like coming into a theater at the midpoint of a movie.
What
letter of Sam’s was Aunt Dodie talking about? Yes, Aunt Dodie’s late husband, aka the Old Gentleman, and Sam had become unlikely friends and correspondents. The Old Gentleman, a retired admiral, had seemed to enjoy hearing about the Navy from Sam’s considerably more lowly point of view. So it wasn’t impossible that there might have been some letters left in the Old Gentleman’s desk and Dodie had thought … what exactly
had
Dodie thought? The mysterious Hawk …

And for that matter, as I reread the letter a third time,
what
phone message at New Year’s? Surely the last time I’d talked to Aunt Dodie had been in December when I called her a few days before Christmas …

I thought back to New Year’s Eve: Phillip and I had been here alone all evening. We had watched distant fireworks from the front porch at midnight, I had told him I wanted to marry him—had accepted the proposal he’d made long before. We had drunk champagne and gone to bed. If there’d been a phone call …

Was it the first of the year when the answering machine went out? I don’t understand how these things work—I just remember at some point months ago, it didn’t—work, that is—and eventually I switched to voice mail.

And why didn’t I ever get this mysterious letter in the
bright red mailer? Where had
that
gone—down the same rabbit hole as the New Year’s Eve message?

Yawning and shaking my head, I folded the flimsy sheets back into the envelope and tucked it under the calendar on my desk.
Dodie is battier than usual, I’m afraid. I’ll see if it makes any more sense in the morning
.

G
ood morning, Lizzy! Don’t you just love this dewy early morning time? The sky at sunrise, the blaze of color …”

I watched as Gloria paused in the kitchen doorway and waved a vague hand at the window—the
south-
facing window. Yawning luxuriously she headed for the coffeemaker, baby-blue silk mules clicking on the wooden floor. Like our mother before her, my sister has never been one to leap out of bed and dress for the day—she prefers to spend the morning lounging about in some charming negligee before dressing to go out to lunch. Just now she had on a knee-length robe covered with clouds of embroidered pastel hydrangeas, each small petal tinged with delectable melting shades of palest greens and pinks, faintest blues and lavenders. It was heart-breakingly beautiful and set off her fair skin and blond hair to perfection.

A picture of the shabby terry-cloth bathrobe hanging on my closet door popped into my head and I gave the lump of dough I was kneading a final savage thump before I scooped it from the countertop and plopped it into the greased bowl awaiting it.

I glanced at the clock. “It’s 10:53, Gloria. The sun
came up about five hours ago—in the east, as it usually does around here. And don’t call me Lizzy.”

My sister had been at the farm for less than twenty-four hours and already she was getting on my one last nerve.

On Wednesday morning, there had been a second frantic call from Gloria: this time to say that Jerry had just left the house and a friend was coming to take her to the airport.

“I hate leaving my Beemer but it would be too easy for Jerry to trace me—he has contacts everywhere. I’m literally throwing a few things in a bag and walking out … No, I don’t have a ticket yet. I’ll get one at the airport and I’ll call you when I know what time I get in.”

This, of course, had resulted in a day of frantic housecleaning and reorganization—the guest room having become the repository for Phillip’s belongings. Now that he worked full-time for Marshall County’s High Sheriff Mackenzie Blaine, Phillip had finally given up his rented house in Weaverville and moved in with me—and though he had very few possessions, there were some that we hadn’t yet found the right place for and these were, of course, piled on the guest room bed. Actually, we’d been talking about turning this quiet room at the back of the house into a study for him—but now that would have to wait.

So I had spent the day chasing cobwebs, airing pillows, moving the boxes of Phillip’s belongings to the basement, scouring the bathroom—all with an ear out for the phone call that would tell me when I would have to make the hour-plus drive to the airport and pick up Gloria.

A phone call which, I might add, didn’t come till late that night. Gloria was in Atlanta, having decided to do a little shopping before continuing her trip.

“And the
good
news is you won’t have to meet me after all! I was in the taxi heading for the hotel and I suddenly had a
brilliant
idea. I just had the driver take me right to the BMW dealership and I got myself the
perfect
little car for the mountains! I know you’re going to love it, Lizzy.”

“Oh yuck, this coffee’s cold—I’ll just make a fresh pot.”

Before I could stop her, Gloria was pouring the coffee down the drain—coffee that normally I’d have drunk iced at lunchtime—and the grinder was chewing up a fresh batch of beans.

“Where’s that good-looking cop of yours?” she asked, leaving the coffeemaker to fold herself into an elegant leggy pose on the cushioned bench at the end of the kitchen. “I was hoping to talk to him about my situation. We hardly said more than hello last night before he disappeared off to bed.”

I wiped off the countertop and hung the dish towel on the rack. “Phillip had to be at work early this morning. Besides, I expect he thought you and I had some catching up to do and he’d just be in the way of our girlish confidences. Look—do you want some breakfast? There’s eggs, bread for toast, juice, yogurt …”

“Is it Greek yogurt? That’s really the only kind worth eating. I usually have it with fresh figs and—”

“It’s probably made by Greeks in New Jersey,” I said through gritted teeth, as I opened the refrigerator door. “And the fruit of the day is dried cranberries.”

Her nose wrinkled in disgust. “Do you know how much
sugar
dried cranberries have? Never mind, then; I’ll just have coffee. Is there some skim milk?”

I put the yogurt back, noting that it was, in fact,
appellation
New Hampshire—though still not Greek—and reached for the milk.

“That’s two percent milk!” Gloria waved away the carton in something very close to horror. “Don’t you have skim?”

I felt my teeth beginning to grind again. “No, and in my opinion, putting skim milk in coffee is about like adding dishwater. This is what I’ve got … or some dishwater.”

“Oh, but I always add a splash of half-and-half
with
the skim milk—never mind, Lizzy, black will be fine—I don’t want to be any trouble. If you’ll drive me down to my car later, I’ll run out to the grocery and do a little shopping. You know if you’d just have a little work done on that road, I could get my car all the way up here. Then I wouldn’t have to bother you.”

“For someone who’s supposed to be hiding out, my mother isn’t exactly low profile, is she? Are you going to have to ferry her up and down the hill every time she takes a notion to go somewhere?”

Ben and I were watching as Gloria’s bright yellow Mini Cooper maneuvered around a water break and continued down the road with a cheery
toot-toot
of its horn.

“You know, I think that all of this area seems so like the back of beyond to your mom that she can’t imagine that she could run into anyone who knows her. And she’s probably right. Besides, she’s just going up to the grocery on the bypass to get a few things. I’ve got plenty to do in the workshop that will keep me busy till she gets back—it shouldn’t take her much over an hour.”

Ben hefted the flat of lavender starts into the bed of the utility vehicle and I followed him over to the cold frame to get the rest. Out in the bottom Julio and Homero were preparing the new lavender bed, raking it smooth and tossing out the inevitable rocks that had surfaced in the wake of the tractor.
Thank god for these
guys
, I thought.
With any luck, Full Circle Farm will perk along, providing fresh arugula, tarragon, nasturtium petals, and all those other delicacies to Asheville’s ladies who lunch, while I deal with Gloria
.

In the beginning, it had been just Sam and me—with a little haphazard help from my girls. After Sam’s death, things were pretty difficult—the girls were in college and I had been almost at the point of admitting that perhaps I couldn’t manage alone. So when Ben showed up, wanting to learn the business, I’d welcomed him as something between a miracle and a knight in shining armor. With Ben’s help and with the growing number of restaurants in Asheville, the business had doubled and then some. So now we had Julio and Homero—Mexican workers who shared the rental house just above our main growing field.

As so often happened, Ben seemed to be attuned to my thinking. “Listen, Aunt E,” he said, taking the last flat of fragrant little gray-green plants from me. “You really don’t need to worry. The guys and I can handle the work. And Amanda’s willing to help too. You have plenty to do getting ready for the wedding and babysitting Mom.”

“I don’t know,” I said, pinching off a single lavender leaf. I crushed it with my fingers and brought it up to my nose. The pungent smell filled my nostrils—calming and strengthening at once. “Since she’s got a car, I have a feeling she’ll find plenty to do that doesn’t involve me.”

“She’ll find plenty to do, that’s for sure.” Ben laughed and climbed into the driver’s seat of the little vehicle. Over the noisy clatter of the engine, I could just make out the words, “You can always hope it won’t involve you …”

It was a pleasure to be in the cool quiet of my workshop and an even greater pleasure to know I had a
Gloria-free hour ahead of me—a whole hour of not being told a better way to do things. Already she had suggested that I gut my kitchen, get rid of the woodstove, add a dishwasher
—I have two dishwashers
, I had told her, holding up my hands, but she had ignored me, moving on to weigh the merits of granite against soapstone, dismissing my wooden countertops as out of date and hopelessly unhygienic.

Outside I could hear Ben and Julio laughing and joking in an odd combination of poor English (Julio) and worse Spanish (Ben). The distant putter of the tractor let me know that Homero was mowing the lower pasture in the eternal fight against thistles and the vile prickly unnamed weed that had evidently made its way to the farm in hay purchased in Tennessee.

I moved about the big room, taking inventory of wreath-making supplies on hand. Some of the dried material left over from last year was getting pretty ratty looking—most herbs and flowers really need to be dried fresh every year for maximum color and fragrance. I began to cram the pallid leftovers into a feed sack, planning to add them to one of our many compost piles. Soon enough there’d be fresh cuttings hanging in the drying room; there was no need to hold on to this sad stuff.

Other materials, however, keep well for years—as long as they’re protected against dust—and things like lotus pods and the pretty brown and cream seed cases from Siberian iris, branches of curly willow and corkscrew hazelnut, and a variety of pinecones were in good supply. As I lifted the lid on the last bin of pinecones, an unwelcome odor filled the air. Just under the lid, a ragged hole in the pale blue plastic showed where the invaders had gnawed their way in. All the cones were chewed and tiny black mouse droppings were everywhere.

At least there’s no nest of babies, thank goodness
. I hate killing anything—mice, even rats. But left unchecked … I dumped the reeking contents into another feed sack, took the bin outside and hosed it clean, then left it to dry in the sun. More check marks on my list and I moved on.

The bin for lavender held only a handful of battered-looking stems and a scattering of purple buds. These too were faded and their aroma was little more than the ghost of a memory. Still, lavender was too precious just to toss into the compost. I found an empty gallon glass jar and shoved the stems into it, crumbling them into bits. If I goosed up the fragrance a tad with lavender oil, then these little crumbs could be added to potpourri or to lavender sachets.

Lavender … it always made me think of Aunt Dodie … Dodie and her standing order for a new lavender wreath every year … and her signature lavender stationery.

That letter—what did I do with that weird airmail letter from Dodie? I forgot all about it in the upheaval of getting ready for Gloria. I put it somewhere … I’ll have to look for it when I get back to the house
.

I continued on with my inventory:
plenty of wreath forms; order more hoop pins; that’s more florist’s tape than I’ll use in five years—what was I thinking? It must have been on sale; print more tags; need more wreath boxes
—but all the while an undercurrent of troubling questions kept pace with my list making.

What was it Dodie said? She was happy I was still planning to marry my Mr. Hawkins and glad there wasn’t any connection between him and someone called Hawk that Sam was worried about. What was that about?

Sam and Phillip served together in the Navy during the Vietnam era, and only a few years ago I had learned
from Phillip that their tours of duty had not always been the innocuous “waiting-off-the-coast” support role that Sam’s letters had suggested. Indeed, there had been a dark chapter that I learned of only after Sam’s death—
and evidently, there’s still more I don’t know
, I thought.

Inventory completed, I pulled up the chair to my desk and began to page through the calendar for the coming year—Ben handled the part of the business that supplied herbs and edible flowers to restaurants in Asheville and he kept those records; my responsibility was the wreath making and flower arrangements—sometimes fresh flower and herb wreaths or arrangements for weddings or parties, but usually wreaths or arrangements fashioned from dried materials and meant to last at least a year or two.