Death of a Domestic Diva (5 page)

We rocked awhile, whittled awhile, then I asked, “Can we see the pumpkin starts in the greenhouse, Guy?”

More rocking and whittling. Me, waiting for Guy to answer, although I wasn't really waiting. I was just going along with the rhythm we'd fallen into, Guy's rhythm. Poor Owen, though, still wasn't used to the long waits before Guy replied to comments or questions, and he was practically turning purple with anticipation, looking like he was trying hard not to sneeze.

Then, all at once, Guy was up and standing before me again—it's always been his habit to make sure he's facing anyone he's talking to—hollering, “After! Dinner!”

Then he went back to the rocking and the whittling.

Suddenly, the quiet on the back deck was broken by the sounds of screaming and someone running. There was a blur of red as someone ran toward us—and I felt my heart start to race and pound, seeing it. Guy gets really upset at the color red—which is why I hadn't worn my Tyra Grimes T-shirt.

No one knows why red upsets him so. He's never been badly cut. Or seen anyone else bleed a lot. Or had any other encounters with red that were horrible—but there it is. Guy hates red. One red tulip poking up among, say, a hundred yellow ones might be okay, but a whole mass would set him off—and the more red, the worse it is. The saying “seeing red” could have been made for him.

Now here was not only someone wearing red, but running and screaming, too. Guy dropped his whittling, jumped up, put his hands over his ears, and started yelling, “No! No! No!”

Guy doesn't put his hands over his ears when he doesn't want to hear something. He does it whenever he sees a lot of red. Maybe, at some level, he can hear red, and to him it's a nasty sound.

Owen jumped up, bewildered.

And the person in red came to a stop in front of us, because the person chasing her grabbed her and began to hug her close.

The person in the red shirt was Verbenia Denlinger, who'd been here a lot longer than Guy and was one of his best friends. The person who'd grabbed her was her twin sister, Vivian Denlinger. They're not identical twins and Vivian doesn't have autism. They're forty and don't look a thing alike—Vivian is squat and plain and brown-haired, and Verbenia is tall and lovely and blond.

Now it was my turn to be confused, because Verbenia is always quiet. So I jumped up, and over Guy's hollering of “No, no, no,” I said, “What's wrong?”

“It's this shirt,” Vivian said. “I want to get it from her.” Usually Vivian was really quiet too, almost too docile, and now she looked really mad. I couldn't see why she'd want to take a simple shirt away from her sister, especially if it was all that important to Verbenia. That's one thing families learned at Stillwater—don't fight battles just because you can't understand why it's important to the person with autism to do something, as long as whatever that something is won't hurt the person with autism or anyone else. If, say, the person with autism wants to take a toy bunny everywhere, let him. Taking a live bunny everywhere might be a problem—but there are other ways to deal with that. Vivian knew this as well as anyone.

By now, Guy was slapping his own ears, a sign he was truly distressed, and so I started to turn to him, to try to get him back inside the house, but then Vivian angrily pulled Verbenia around so she faced me.

And I saw the front of Verbenia's red shirt.

It was a Tyra Grimes T-shirt, just like the ones Billy'd gotten for him and me. And now Verbenia had one on and apparently was partial to it, because she was clinging to the hem of it, grabbing it with both hands, pulling it down tight over her hips, as if this would guarantee it wasn't taken off her.

Vivian's pale, chubby face quivered and she wailed, over Guy's screaming, “Where did she get this?
Where?
”

“I—I don't know,” I said, feeling suddenly guilty. Somehow, these T-shirts kept popping up—which couldn't have anything to do with my failed plan to bring Tyra Grimes to Paradise—but still, I felt guilty. Looking back, I think it was just plain old-fashioned intuition that soon things were going to go wrong—very, very wrong.

Vivian went on, “I don't know where Verbenia got it, or why she wants it, but I'm getting it from her and burning it! It's evil, a sign, a terrible, terrible sign!”

She sounded, I thought, just like Lewis Rothchild had when he'd gotten upset about me trying to get Tyra Grimes to come to Paradise. Which was pretty strange. Vivian and Lewis didn't know each other. And I didn't think word would have spread all the way on up to Columbus—which is where Vivian lived—about my plan. Even if it had, why should Vivian care?

Then Vivian did something I'd never seen her do. She started crying. That startled Verbenia so much that she stopped whimpering, and turned back to her sister, and hugged her and started patting her on the back as if somehow, deep inside—although all the experts would say it wasn't possible for someone so deeply affected by autism—she understood Vivian's pain. As if, for a moment, their roles had been swapped.

We had dinner with Guy, stayed awhile longer, and left late. We had a good time, but Owen and I didn't talk much on our way home. I tried to tell myself it was because it was late and we were tired—but I knew it was because of the scene with Guy, Verbenia, and Vivian. Owen does not like scenes.

And once Owen got me to my laundromat and walked me up the metal stairs to my door, he just gave me a brief brush of a kiss—not even trying to wheedle his way in for some heavier necking, like he usually does. Truth be told, I usually let him in—but tonight, even if he'd tried to wheedle, I would have sent him on home.

I could understand that the whole scene with Guy and the Denlinger sisters had shaken up Owen. It had shaken me up, too. But the fact was that Guy was a permanent part of my life, and such scenes can't always be avoided. Guy couldn't discuss his feelings, or even identify them, like Owen could. And Owen would have to come to terms with that if he wanted to be part of my life, too.

I went on in—I always leave the exterior door unlocked—and stood in the tiny hallway that fronts the two apartments. Maybe, I thought, I could talk with Billy. I went to his door and knocked. No answer. Billy was out somewhere—probably wouldn't be back until the wee hours of the morning.

I went to my own apartment door and started to put my key in, but the door gave way. As I stepped into my apartment, I shook my head at myself—I have a bad habit of forgetting to lock my door. In a town like Paradise, it usually doesn't matter.

As it turned out, this time it did.

For there, perched on the edge of my couch, with my quilt spread over her knees, was Tyra Grimes herself.

3

For just a minute, I thought this was someone's idea of a joke . . . maybe Cherry, or Lewis, or even Billy . . . maybe one of them had found a life-sized cardboard cutout of Tyra and stuck it in my apartment. You see those cutouts every now and then, of Presidents and stars that folks like to get their pictures taken with. That's how still Tyra was.

Suddenly, she gave a start, followed by a snort/snore combo, and I realized that Tyra had just fallen asleep. My entrance had probably awakened her. But she didn't seem to notice me, because next she peered down at my quilt and began doing something to it with her hands. It took me a second to realize that she was picking it apart.

Now, my quilt is the one and only heirloom from my great-grandmother Maybelline Toadfern. (Actually, it's my one and only heirloom of any sort.) She made one for each of her grandchildren (18) and great-grandchildren (52)—for a grand total of 70. Mine's got flowers with yellow centers and purple petals and a green background, all made out of hexagons.

And now, Tyra Grimes was picking it apart.

So the first thing I said to Tyra Grimes—this very famous woman that I had so hoped would come to Paradise, that I had given up on ever coming to Paradise, that seconds before I would have begged to come to Paradise—the first thing I said—well, shouted—was, “What the hell do you think you are you doing? Stop!”

Tyra looked up at me. She seemed smaller in real life. She had beautiful aqua eyes, which didn't show to advantage on TV, and now she gave me a patient smile as if I were simply a child who needed instruction to understand her wiser ways. She kept working while she looked at me, expertly using a needle to unpick the orange thread that my great-grandmother Toadfern had used to sew my quilt. Tyra had undone almost an entire flower, so there was a long curly strand of orange thread. I had the feeling Tyra was one of these people who end up with one long, even strand of thin skin when they peel a potato.

“What,” I said again, a little calmer, “are you doing to my great-grandmother's quilt?”

“I'm picking it apart,” she said. Her voice, in person, was warmer than on TV. “You see, dear, how the orange thread clashes most unfortunately with the lovely fabrics used in the quilt? White thread would be much better. It would enhance the value of the quilt. There's no tradition for orange thread in quilting. Although, in some regions, blue thread was used when . . .”

She was off on a lecture about appropriate thread colors for quilts while her fingers still worked over my quilt. The purple petal hung forlornly on, by just a few stitches. If I didn't do something fast, it would meet the same fate as its friends, and other little petals would soon fall too.

So I did the only thing I could. I grabbed the quilt right out of Tyra's hands. While hugging my maimed quilt with my left arm, I reached out with my right hand and snagged the three dequilted purple petals from the end table.

Tyra looked stunned for a moment, then shrugged. “I suppose you're right, dear. It is getting on in the evening. I can finish resewing your quilt in the morning.” She said this as if I was worried that she might not continue deflowering my quilt.

“I didn't say that I wanted . . .” I started. “I just . . .” I started again. Then, finally, I got out a complete question. “What—what are you doing here?”

“Well, your door was unlocked, and given the rather desperate tone of your letter—and I did just so love the marbleized stationery, by the way—you'll just have to tell me how you went about creating it—it was homemade, wasn't it?”

I just stared at her.

“Anyway,” she went on, “I guessed from your letter that you wouldn't mind me staying here, and of course your doors were unlocked. A charming custom that just isn't done in the big city, I must say.” Tyra laughed merrily.

I gulped and took a step back.

“We stopped at the Red Horse Motel on the edge of town, but the place was, I'm sorry to say, just overwhelming with the smell of mold, and if I stayed there with my allergies, the consequences would just be, well . . .” She stopped, shuddered, and fanned herself with her hands, as if the consequences were just too horrible to think about. “Anyway, unless there's a Hyatt in the environs that we somehow missed, we decided it was best that Paige Morrissey—she's my assistant . . . you'll meet her tomorrow . . . would stay at the Red Horse and make arrangements for our film crew, and that I would stay . . .” she paused, looked around, taking in my tiny living room and kitchenette with a single glance, and I could practically see her judgment imprinted in block letters in the air:
CLEAN AND NEAT BUT DULL, DULL, DULL
.

“Well,” she finished, “here.” She smiled, gesturing to a tiny, tiny black suitcase by the end of the couch. I hadn't noticed it before. It looked big enough to hold just a hanky, undies, and a toothbrush, at least, if
I
was packing. “Of course, we were hoping you'd be here, and Paige waited with me until I sent her on her way—she tires easily—so here I'd like to stay. Unless there
is
a Hyatt?” she added hopefully.

“N-no Hyatt,” I said, taking another step back.

“A deli?”

“Uh, no. The A&P over in Masonville sells salami, but it's closed now. I have some garlic bologna, though and—” I stopped, shook my head again. This person couldn't really be Tyra Grimes, could she? Maybe this was a severely deranged Tyra Grimes wanna-be, escaped from some institution, who'd somehow heard about the letter I'd sent and managed to find her way here . . .

Tyra laughed. “Oh, don't be so nervous, dear! I'm just a regular person, really. Although,” she added thoughtfully, “I have been given an incredible gift for design, far beyond the reach of most people . . . anyway.” Her voice snapped back to what seemed to be its default tone—merriment. “Just relax and we'll get along fine. The crew for my show will be here in a few days and will be staying at the Red Horse. We'll have plenty of time to get to know each other over the next few days—I always like to really get to know my guests before I interview them, and I think your stain expertise will be just perfect for my show.”

She stood up and flicked her delicate fingers through her short auburn curls. I took another step back. “You don't mind,” she said, “if I make myself at home, do you?”

“Uh, no, not at all, feel free,” I blithered as I walked backward to the door to my bedroom, still clutching the quilt.

Tyra Grimes gave me one of her famous, dazzling smiles—and said, “Simply wonderful!”