When Venus Fell (41 page)

When Gib ushered the rest of the family into their seats at the auditorium Bo Burton arrived, too. He showed Min the bouquet of pink roses he’d bought for Kelly. Just as I’d suggested in a private consultation, Bo plucked one rose from their midst then presented it to Min. “And a rose for the most beautiful mother a pageant contestant could have.”

Min flushed. “I’m too old to be silly about a flower.” She thrust the rose at a startled Isabel then excused herself and went backstage.

“What did I say wrong this time?” Bo asked me wearily. I pretended not to hear him. My matchmaking was supposed to be our little secret. I felt Gib watching me.

“You’re accusing Minnie of having womanly vanity,” Bea said loudly. “She’s no’ used to being flirted with, man!” Bea slapped him on the back. “You must take matters into bold consideration, or she’ll never get your wee meanin’!”

“My meaning is getting more
wee
by the day,” Bo said.

Gib guided me to a quiet corner in the lobby. We stood, casually hidden, around the corner from a case of football trophies. “I should have known,” he said. “Bo’s as subtle as a tank. So are you.”

“I’m only trying to help.”

“How’s Kelly?”

“Pretending not to be nervous. She’s so scared her fake eyelashes quiver.”

“Poor kid.”

“But if you want to know the truth, Ruth is more nervous than Kelly is. Min is very calm about everything.”

“Ruth takes competition seriously. If you think she’s intense, you should see Jasper. He’s outside pacing the sidewalk.
I don’t think males should be allowed to come to these things. This is a female event.”

“Listen, Pop used to throw up before my piano competitions. He tried to hide his problem but I found out as I got older. Now
that’s
pressure.”

“Too much pressure on you to meet his expectations,” Gib corrected with a troubled tone.

“No. I loved it. I had nerves of steel.”

“No, you’d just never admit it when you were afraid.”

I changed the subject. “Kelly’s a trouper. I’ve armed her with every tactic I know—concentration, delivery, mental attitude, you name it.”

“Now wave a magic wand over her and turn her into a Barbie like the other girls in the pageant.” Gib sighed. “I don’t want to see her get flattened.”

“Go walk the pavement with Jasper. You’re as antsy as any daddy.”

“Kelly’s been asking me to teach her the basics of tae kwon do. I think she should switch to that. Martial arts. Forget the eyelashes.”

“Nonsense. I’ve got to go backstage again. Ruth’s idea of preshow encouragement is to tell Kelly they can sue the pageant organizers if anything goes wrong.”

“Hey, you two!” Ella glided up to us. She looked lovely and plush in a pleated blue jacket and skirt. Her hair had grown out enough to lie flat, courtesy of Ebb and Flo’s high-test styling mousse. It gleamed like onyx. Mine was still a bristle. I’d wrapped a black silk scarf around my head that night, to match the suit I wore.

Ella smiled and touched Gib’s coat sleeve. “You’ve been gone so long Carter thought you went to buy a bottle of bourbon.”

“I should.”

“Would you mind getting Aunt Olivia a Coke at the concessions stand? I told her I’d get it, but I have to make a quick run to the rest room.”

“I’ll get the Coke. Go ahead.”

I strode over to her. “Are you feeling all right?” I touched her face. “You’re a little pale. What’s Carter done? Did you two have a fight?”

“Oh, Vee. Stop obsessing.” She smiled, then disappeared into a nearby women’s room.

“Yeah, quit obsessing,” Gib echoed somberly. “Go worry about Kelly.”

“Okay. Do me a favor. Buy the Coke but then wait outside the bathroom and walk Ella back to her seat.”

“Sure,” he agreed darkly. “I like to hang around women’s rest rooms.”

“If anyone stares at you just say you need a date.”

“Scram,” he growled. “And stop worrying about Ella.”

“See you from the wings. Tell the whole clan to applaud like crazy every time Kelly sets foot onstage.” I darted away, frowning.

Kelly was in the middle of “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina,” belting out the melodramatic lyrics to a somewhat flabbergasted audience of several hundred people. They had just finished clapping enthusiastically for a pie-eyed redhead who tap-danced and twirled a baton to the love song from
Aladdin
. The redhead was more their type.

But Kelly was selling Eva Perón, really selling the piece, accompanied by a tape of my customized arrangement of the song, which played with fairly decent quality over the auditorium’s sound system.

“The truth is, I neeeever left you,” Kelly sang, spreading her arms wide. “All through my wild—”

The electricity went off. Not an uncommon occurrence on windy mountain nights. The music stopped, the microphone went dead, the lights faded, and small emergency lights snapped on, offering just enough illumination to prove
Kelly stood in the center of a glitter-draped stage with her mouth frozen open in horror.

“I’ll have somebody’s ass in a trap over this,” Ruth snarled, standing beside me in the wings. I ran to an old upright piano that had been rolled just offstage during rehearsals. I gave it a shove and it careered out of the wings. I pushed the bench out to it, sat down, and played the opening to Kelly’s song. She looked at me desperately.
Sing
, I mouthed to her.

And she did. I thought her lungs might burst. She arched her back and bellowed the song with great melodramatic flourishes, striding back and forth on the dim stage in her tailored faux-glam padded-shoulder pin-striped suit, and then she teetered on her stacked-heeled pumps down a short set of stairs at the center of the stage and worked the audience, extending her arms as she walked a few yards up the center aisle, turning to either side, making eye contact, then backing slowly toward the stage and climbing the stairs as she sang the last few bars.

As she finished she nodded regally, just as I’d taught her to do. I didn’t care if she won or not, if there was applause or not—I was so proud of her, and remembered so many times when Pop’s firmly ingrained bravado helped me through tough moments in public. I suddenly realized that I’d taught her the discipline and confidence I’d carried straight from him, and from Mom, and before them from Grandpop Paolo and Grandmother Akiko, and even my grandmother Big Jane Kirkelson, who must have been a confident woman if she played guitar in truck stops.

The audience went wild with applause. They gave Kelly a standing ovation. She nodded again, outwardly composed, though she transmitted a visible body tremor that made the back of her skirt shimmy. I ducked down behind the piano’s high back and quickly wiped tears from my eyes.

Thank you
, I whispered to the knowing ghosts around me.

Kelly waited until the applause began to fade and then pivoted and walked slowly off. I followed. The instant she was out of public view Ruth grabbed her in a bear hug. “I did it,” Kelly said, hiccuping with relief. Min stepped out of the shadows. “I’m so proud of you,” she said.

Kelly raced to her. They hugged tearfully. “Do you think Daddy would be proud, too?”

“Oh, yes.”

Ruth clapped her on the shoulder. “Sweetie hon, you may not win the pageant but everybody in Knoxville is going to hear about your performance.”

“I did everything the way Aunt Vee said.”

Aunt Vee
. Tears burned my eyes. I covered desperately by straightening my ludicrous turban.

Ruth glared at me. “Well, doesn’t that just take the cake?” she drawled. “Madame Swami has won a convert.”

Propelled by the pageant, we were all cheerful for the holidays. Bo Burton barnstormed us on Christmas Eve. The man terrorized the livestock, the dogs, the cats, and any nearby wildlife when he arrived without warning in a forestry-service helicopter, dropping languidly into the front pasture like Santa Claus with rotary-blade reindeer.

“I brought Maine lobsters!” he bellowed as he and the chopper pilot lugged a huge ice chest up through the front shrubs. All of us gathered on the front courtyard to watch him.

“Did they sprout wings?” Min asked dryly.

“Minnie, these lobsters are too heavy to fly on their own! These lobsters are so big they’ll even scare FeeMolly!”

“Not unless they know how to use spray paint or a meat cleaver,” I muttered. Beside me, Gib gestured to Carter and Jasper. To me he said, “Watch this. He loves it.” Then he called to Bo, “You have anything else to carry? Need some help?”

Bo stopped melodramatically, his brindled hair stirring like the mane of some mad professor, his long cloth coat
winging back from broad candy-striped suspenders and a Frosty the Snowman tie. He spread one hand over his heart. “More? More? Of course there’s more. There’s an ice chest full of champagne and caviar.”

“He’s brought food like this every Christmas for years,” Gib told me. “When his wife was alive she’d get out of the helicopter with her arms full of tins of homemade cookies and cheesecake. And every year Simon made the same joke about the Burton Christmas gifts. He’d walk out to meet them all hunched over, swearing they’d broken his back the year before. They loved that routine of his.” Gib hesitated, frowning. “I don’t know how to clown around with Bo. Suggest something funny I can do, Nellie. Quick. Somebody needs to keep up the tradition.”

“It’s already taken care of.”

Jasper darted from around a corner of the house, pushing a large wheelbarrow. He zigzagged across the lawn, grinning determinedly. “Daddy told me to never help you carry packages,” he called to Bo, “unless I brought a wheelbarrow or a truck!”

Bo laughed heartily. Gib blew out a breath and seemed to feel relieved. I touched his arm briefly, and when he looked at me I hid my sympathy behind a jaunty expression. “See? You don’t have to keep up all of Simon’s traditions by yourself. But if it makes you feel any better, in my eyes you’ll always be a
natural
clown.”

His mouth turned up at the corner. “Thank you so much.”

Kelly loped to Bo and threw her arms around his neck. She pecked him on the cheek. He kissed her forehead. She turned and grinned at Min. “Come on, Mama, your turn.” Apparently, this was another tradition.

But Min fled toward the Hall’s front doors. “I think I hear the phone,” she said.

Bo’s jovial smile faded as he watched her run.

•   •   •

Christmas morning. I was expected at the Hall by eight
A.M
. for an elaborate family breakfast, to be followed by champagne mimosas and the gathering Bea called “the wee sharing of the gifts” around the Christmas tree in the music room.

It was a crisp, blue-sky day, with a heavy frost glinting like silver. I dressed in red leggings, a long white sweater, a shimmering gold scarf, and a gaudy Santa cap. I gave Allegra a Christmas stocking, which I’d stuffed with a six-pack of albacore tuna, two cat toys, and a fresh bag of catnip. Then I tucked her in my knapsack, which was bulging with tapes of new music I’d written. I took my walking stick and stepped outdoors.

A small brass historical marker had been planted neatly beside the path to my front door. A red bow was tied around the post.

I must have read it a dozen times. I wondered if it had been Gib’s idea and decided it had to be. I touched the raised brass letters. I laughed at it, and myself. I struggled not to cry like a sentimental fool, because I already looked silly enough. Finally, I took the bow off the post and tied it around my wrist like a Christmas corsage.

Allegra and I hiked to the Hall.

The family’s mood was bittersweet that Christmas morning. Amid so much splendor, they remembered the past year’s holiday, when the Hall was dark and all anyone could think of
was the accident, and Simon. They were aware of their contrasts just as Ella and I were aware of ours; Christmases past had been depressing, small, and lonely but Christmas present glittered like warm wine and diamonds.

“I like my historical marker,” I said to everyone, most pointedly to Gib. He nodded. “Whose idea was it?”

“Santa’s,” he said dryly.

“Okay, but who snuck over in the middle of last night and set it in the ground?”

“Santa’s elves.”

“They left large shoe prints with ribbed treads.”
Just like your farm boots
.

“Mountain elves on steroids. Getting bigger every year.” He paused. “Why, you’re learning to track elves. Pretty soon you’ll be able to find your way back home when you go hiking.”

“If I could speak to the elves personally I’d say, ‘Don’t be smart-assed when someone is trying to say thank you.’ ”

“I’m sure the elves would point out that you’re giving elf-hood a bad name with that pointy-tailed hat you’re wearing.”

“Well, I have a surprise.”

I glanced around the room. Bea, Olivia, Jasper, Kelly, Min, Isabel, Ella and Carter, and Bo Burton watched me expectantly. Even Ruth and her taciturn husband looked curious. Finally I met Gib’s shrewd eyes. I pulled the hat and scarf off and ruffled my black hair, which was now a sleek but decorous inch long. “Here she is,” I announced. “The boring woman with no braids.”

There were broad smiles. “You look like Audrey Hepburn,” Min said. “Really.”

I darted a look at Gib. The unguarded gleam of appreciation on his face flooded me with warmth. “Pshaw,” I said.

Ella smiled at me. “You do look like Audrey Hepburn a little.”

“I’ve always thought of you as a
Katharine
Hepburn type,” Gib offered, regaining his neutral expression.

“What? Smart and vivacious?”

“Cranky and domineering,” Ruth interjected.