Sand in My Eyes (19 page)

I wasn’t ready for that, and didn’t want to contemplate it now. I grasped the back of one of the wobbling iron chairs, steadying it as she sat down, hoping it would hold her weight. Then I looked around. The yard, with all its weeds, looked more like a field, and the birdbath, overflowing with yellowish-green water and soggy leaves, had to be harboring disease. The table Fedelina set her pie on was full of rust. But if the children were here, they would not care about the weeds or the dirty water or the rust. They’d only see the candles Mrs. Aurelio was sticking in my pie.

“There’s only thirty-four to a box. Mind if I’m short by three?” she asked.

“Stop,” I said, pacing. “One candle is enough for me.”

But she kept going, one after the next until most had a place. “Why don’t you sit down?” she finally said. “You’re making me nervous.”

“I’m not in a hurry for my babies to grow up,” I started. “I want things easier, that’s all. I want more time for the basics—baking pies, like you.”

“It’s store-bought, dear,” she said. “They do a fine job nowadays.”

I sat down with my elbows on the table, my face resting on my fist.

“Then I wish I had time for other things, for beautiful things, like gluing seashells to my mailbox as I saw you do, or planting all those flowers, but I don’t. I can hardly get a load of laundry in without interruption. Look at me,” I said. “Would you believe I used to be a neat freak? Not anymore. All I am now is a mess, an unhygienic mess of a woman.”

She stopped putting candles on the pie, which was too small to fit all the years of my life, and then she tossed the box with the remaining candles into her bag.

“There’s absolutely nothing easy about being a mother, Anna,” she said, shaking her head. “If someone claims it’s a cinch then they’re either lying or they’re not doing it right, that’s for certain.”

“You had seven,” I stated suspiciously, “and I’ve heard all about your generation of ladies, how you had homemade suppers on the table three hundred and sixty-five days a year, and kept your homes immaculate. Tell me the truth, how?”

“We never slept,” she started. “I stayed up until the wee hours. Nothing was easy. There’s no secret to making it all easy. You have to say ‘no’ to certain things, say ‘yes’ to others, recognize the beautiful moments when they’re in front of you and take hold, which gives me an idea.”

“What?”

“Why don’t you go pick flowers for our table?”

“Pick flowers? From where?”

“Your yard,” she said.

“There are no flowers in my yard; only weeds.”

“Anna,” she said. “You’re talking to a woman with poor eyesight. I see dark spots, flashing lights, rings around the lights—all thanks to high blood sugar—but I can still see those daisies in your yard. They’re over
there,” she said, pointing.

I stood up, my eyes squinting. “Daisies?” I asked.

“Yes, go pick a few.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I WALKED OVER TO
where the daisies were growing and, with the long grass making my ankles itch, I squatted down and started to pick. But then I heard a car door slam out front, and, seconds later, a familiar and friendly but loud voice from back north briskly rounded the corner into my yard.

“You’re kidding me, oh no,” I said, my hands over my mouth. I had forgotten that she had called and told me she was coming to Florida, that we had made plans to meet for coffee, today.

“Anna Hott,” said Gwendolyn Sprigs-Burton, an editor I used to work with. “Tell me you didn’t forget. We talked a few days ago, remember? I said I was in Southwest Florida with my husband and that I’d stop by for a cup of coffee the morning of your birthday. Then you gave me directions.” She put her black-rimmed glasses on, the ones that were hanging from a chain around her neck, and looked at me down in the grass. “You forgot.”

“My mind,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“Anna,” she said again, giving Fedelina a quick nod of her nose. “They’re talking about you at work.”

“There are so many better things to talk about, don’t you think?”

“I told them,” she started. “I said Anna turned four books into bestsellers last year alone, and I think she felt she was doing all this significant work for very little pay and that’s why she quit—she’s got three kids and
needs more money.”

“That’s not why I quit,” I said, feeling the same frustration that I did every time I heard Gwendolyn talk to me and about me in story form, as if I were a third person. “I wish you didn’t tell them that—that I quit because of money.”

I made a mental note that if there was anything I wanted to teach my daughter, pass on to her as my own Cora-like wisdom, it would be to look for and don’t become one of those big-mouthed hawks flying through the sky with other people’s words twisting like fish, falling from their mouths. “Never feed women like this a morsel of personal information,” I would tell Marjorie when the time came for her to know.

But Gwendolyn had come to this island and it was a long way for her to travel, to be standing in my very own yard telling me untrue things about me. So, instead of getting irate and telling her off, I gave her my “I feel sorry for you” look because I knew that being the expert on everyone else’s business was her confidence.

I thought she would then switch to talking about the weather. A normal woman would do that, would read the look on my face and talk about the humidity instead.

“Then if it wasn’t money, what was it?” she asked with bulging eyes. “What had you booking out of work that day? I’ve never seen anyone run so fast through a parking lot.”

“N.O.Y.B.,” I told her.

“N.O.Y.B.?” she asked. “What on Earth does N.O.Y.B. mean?” She gave me her look of utter confusion, the one she gives when she reads a manuscript that doesn’t make sense.

I didn’t want to shatter her to pieces by telling her it meant “none of your business” and was an acronym I used in jest with my sons whenever I was talking on the phone and they would follow me from room to room, asking me what I was talking about.

“Gwen, I’d like you to meet my neighbor, Fedelina,” I said. “Fedelina Aurelio.”

Gwendolyn walked over to the table where Fedelina was sitting. “The pleasure is mine,” she said, giving her an elegant handshake, but then
quickly turned her attention to the pie. “They spelled your name wrong, Anna. Did you notice?” she said, looking as if she was going to pull out a red pen. “… spelled it with one ‘n.’ There’s two ‘n’s in Anna, am I right?”

“Yes, but it’s a pie, not a book, and it’s only going to be eaten, not reviewed,” I said from where I was in the grass.

She walked back over to me. “So what do you think of Florida? Are you glad you left New York?” she asked, giving me her deciphering look, the one she gives to prospective authors when she doesn’t understand the objectives of their books. “And what’s with all the books on the ground out front? It’s odd. You’ve gone from being the best damn publicist I’ve worked with, to … I don’t know … stay-at-home mother playing in the dirt. Where are your children?” And before I could answer she bent down to be at eye level with me. “It wasn’t the big ‘M’ that made you go awry, was it?” she whispered.

“I already told you it wasn’t. It had nothing to do with money.”

“I mean the other ‘m,’ the big ‘M,’ because if it was, I should give you a pen so you can write it all down. Others might relate. I’ve been playing with the idea of doing a book on the big ‘M,’ but I need to find an author. I’ve been roaming all the corners of the Earth for one.”

“It’s already been done,” I said, not knowing what she was referring to—motherhood, midlife crisis, menopause, misery, or momentary mental malfunction. They all started with the letter “M” as did money, madness, misery, Mrs. Aurelio, and mingling with the daisies. “Go to the book- store and see,” I told her. “There are countless books on the big ‘M’, and besides, it’s not what you think.”

“From publicist extraordinaire to Victorian maid living in a birdhouse, picking daisies out back? You didn’t burn all your bras, I hope. C’mon, Anna Hott, what else is it?”

I looked her in the eyes, and then glanced over at the black cast-iron table with Fedelina and my pie. Marriage—if only she knew it all had to do with marriage, the other word starting with the letter “M.” When that “M” goes bad, it’s a hard one to admit at first, especially to a woman like Gwen, who takes my words and flies off with them for everyone to see, like fish, dangling from her beak.

“My fellow editors in the acquisition department, Anna, we all miss you. And your authors do, too. It’s baffling. When I tell them you’re living amidst swamps and with gators on a sanctuary island—isn’t that what they call this? And now, what are they going to say when I tell them I found you out playing in the dirt? Sand is one thing, but dirt?”

“Mud therapy,” I corrected.

“Oh, Anna, that isn’t funny,” she said, scanning me with editorial eyes. “Maybe work will take you back. What do I tell them? They know I’m here. They know we’re having coffee.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Tell them we had pie instead,” I said.
And when the pie was open, the birds began to sing
. “Tell them it’s hard to articulate, but Anna said she needed a break from her mundane routine, that’s all.”

She walked back over to the table and sighed heavily. “I brought you this bottle of Australian wine. Promise me you’ll curl up in bed with a cozy blanket and read its label.”

“I prefer reading books.”

“Funny you should say that. I’m contacting the family, to see if they want to write a book, a true rags-to-riches story,” she said, looking at her watch. “For which, by the way, I’ve got to get going. I’m calling Ben this morning about the idea.”

“Would you like a piece of pie before you go?” Fedelina asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Can I go inside and use your phone, Anna?”

“It’s a mess in there.” I cringed.

“Like I care,” Gwendolyn said. “I recently acquired a book on messy homes, and you know what they say about keeping a house clean with children?”

“No, what?” I asked.

“You teach your kids—early on—to pick up after themselves, and whatever they leave around, you bag it up temporarily.”

From the corner of my eye I saw Fedelina’s head turn quickly toward me, and I looked at her, and the two of us cracked up. “I hope they only devote one chapter to that concept,” I told Gwendolyn.

“Oh, come on,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “How hard can it be?”

“Harder than it looks,” I told her from where I was, still squatting in the dirt. “Way harder!”

“You’re staying for a piece of pie?” Fedelina asked her again.

“Why not,” she said, looking over at me as if she were determining how she might incorporate me, if not as author of the book, at least as an example of a woman in the midst of the big letter “M,” whichever “M” it was. Once she had a book idea in mind, there was no thinking beyond it.

“The act of picking daisies,” I heard Fedelina say to her. “Once you start, it’s hard to stop.”

“I suppose, if you’re a daisy sort of a person,” Gwendolyn said. “My husband sent me a vigorous bouquet of Dutch tulips and ranunculus with lime hyacinths for our anniversary. I’ve always preferred a more sophisticated flower, an amaryllis over a daisy anytime, or faux dogwood blooms are exquisite.”

“I’m not trying to belittle the daisy,” she went on, and I rolled my eyes at Fedelina, wanting to tell her about Gwendolyn’s bullish side and how she loves a debate. “In all fairness, it has played a role in history—embraced by different generations as the symbol of freedom, power, and life. But daisies are … oh, I don’t know. They’re weeds, aren’t they?”

“Asteraceae,” Fedelina corrected. “… wildflowers belonging to the Asteraceae family—a family at least fifty million years old in its full formation.”

“I guess it doesn’t matter what family they belong to,” Gwendolyn said, “unless you’re writing a book, a book on flowers. You’re not writing a book, are you?”

“Is everything a book to you?” I called out to her.

“Yes—potentially. Why?” she asked, arching in her chair to better see me.

“What more can one write about flowers that hasn’t already been written?” I asked, keeping secret the story I had started to write about flowers, and about motherhood, marriage, messy homes, and Mrs. Aurelio. “Looks like I picked more than I had to,” I said when I joined them at the table, giving the daisies a good shake.

“One can never pick enough daisies,” Fedelina said. “We never had
money when I was little, and there were times when my parents couldn’t afford to buy me presents for my birthday. My mother would say, ‘Fedelina, go pick daisies!’ I’d do as I was told, and when I returned, she told me the most beautiful gifts in life are the simplest, the things that don’t cost money.”

“Profound,” Gwendolyn said, and then added, “however, my Porsche is beautiful and it cost a fortune.”

I sat down at the table and said to my neighbor, “I didn’t know I had daisies in my yard. I never saw them before, until you pointed them out.”

“It’s always children who spot them first,” said Fedelina. “Adults get sidetracked, setting their eyes on more expensive, complicated forms of beauty.”