The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender (8 page)

Constance and Delilah shared a delicious glance. “Really?”

“I bet she was beautiful,” Delilah gushed.

Jack shrugged. “Actually, Constance of Sicily wasn’t married until she was thirty. Some say that the reason was because she was so ugly. No one wanted her for a wife.”

Constance’s face fell, and a glorious shade of red bloomed from her chin to her hairline. She turned around after muttering something about the movie starting. Delilah shot Viviane a dark look. “It’s a lie,” they heard her whisper. “I bet her name wasn’t Constance. Bet it was Viviane.”

Jack draped his arm across Viviane’s shoulders.

“Well, Constance is right about one thing,” Viviane said, leaning into him.

“What’s that?”

“You certainly do have the answer to everything.”

Jack gave Viviane a sideways glance, a playful smirk on his lips. “Are you calling me a know-it-all?”

“Who me? Never.”

The film was
Week-End in Havana
and starred not Veronica Lake or Rita Hayworth, but the exotic Carmen Miranda. After the movie Jack drove Viviane to their favorite spot: the town reservoir.

The reservoir was located on the highest point of the neighborhood — the hill at the end of Pinnacle Lane came in a close second — and was hidden by a grove of maple trees. The caretaker and his wife lived in a little white house near the reservoir’s edge and spent autumn days scooping five-pointed leaves of orange, gold, and red from its still waters. At night when young lovers came to park at the water’s edge, they smiled at one another, turned the radio up, and closed the curtains against the darkness. Jack and Viviane had discovered the place in daylight years ago — they’d even built a secret fort in the trees. They’d only recently started coming at night and were amazed by how different everything looked when bathed in the silvery light of the moon.

Jack parked and turned the engine off. “Did you like the movie?”

Viviane nodded, thinking of the colorful costumes and the lively dance numbers. “I wish I could dance,” she mused.

“I can teach you,” Jack said.

Viviane looked at him. “You don’t know how to dance.”

Jack smiled. “I do. I know how to waltz; I can do the fox-trot. I even know how to tango.”

Viviane’s eyes grew wide. “Where did you learn that?”

“Must have read how somewhere.” Jack opened his door. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

As she stepped from the car, a cold draft of January air ran up Viviane’s bare legs. She wrapped her coat tighter around her.

Jack grabbed Viviane around the waist and pulled her close, so close that she could feel his breath on her face as he spoke. “It’s believed,” he said, “that the tango was born in the brothels of Buenos Aires.” He moved his right hand to the middle of her back. “I think it stems from the Latin word
tangere
, which, of course, means ‘to touch.’”

“Of course.”

Jack took her left hand and placed it on his shoulder, then took her right hand with his left. In spite of the cold, their palms were slick with sweat. Jack cleared his throat. “Okay, I’m going to take two slow steps forward. Just follow my lead.”

So they danced as Jack counted out the beat — T-A-N-G-O! — ​until Viviane could move in his arms as naturally as an Argentinean
prostituta.
It was hardly a fast dance, but perhaps because it came from the Latin word for “to touch,” both Viviane and Jack were soon breathless. They broke away and collapsed onto the grass, watching their breath make clouds above their lips.

Jack turned to Viviane. “Are you cold?”

“Freezing,” she lied, and turned to wrap her hands around his neck. She pulled his face to hers, and he met her smiling mouth with his.

Their kisses grew deeper. Jack moved on top of her, propping himself up with his elbows, his body hovering a few inches above hers. That was where they usually stopped. Then Jack would take Viviane home, her cheeks flushed, her eyes only able to make out a hazy outline of Jack’s face, regardless of what else might be in front of her — a hot stove, a dinner plate, a mother asking,
What’s wrong with you?

But on this night, before Jack could move away, Viviane reached up and let her fingers trip along the buttons of his shirt. With fast fingers, she unbuttoned the top two, then left him to finish the rest while she moved on to her own, watching his face as she revealed the lace hidden under her clothes.

Jack leaned down and kissed her bare neck. When his mouth passed across her collarbone, she shuddered. Lightly, his fingertips circled her exposed navel. He reached for her waist —

“Stop!” Viviane yelped, grabbing at his hands.

Jack sat up, breathless. “Viviane, you’re being silly,” he said. “I’ve known you since you were six. I was there when you were sick. Come to think of it, you threw up on my shoe.”

When Viviane was nine, she suffered what she remembered as the worst stomachache she’d ever had. She did throw up several times, actually, and once on Jack’s shoe. She was diagnosed with appendicitis and rushed to the operating table, where she received quite a scar. Not just any scar, but a deep crevice about the width of Jack’s ring finger that ran the length of Viviane’s right side. When she was younger, she loved that scar — it was hideous and grotesque and perfect for pretending to be a battle-scarred soldier. But now, at sixteen, Viviane hated it — it was hideous and grotesque.

Viviane brought her hands to her face. “It’s ugly,” she moaned.

“It’s not,” Jack said, “but if you want to see something ugly, take a look at this.” Jack held out a hand to display a jagged white line between his thumb and forefinger. “Can opener,” he said.

Viviane took a closer look at Jack’s tiny scar and smiled. “That’s nothing,” she said, sitting up and pulling off one of her shoes. “I dropped a hot skillet on my foot.” She showed him the mark. “And . . .” Viviane held up her elbow, pointing out a thick pucker of scar tissue. “I was six. Learning to ride a bike and I crashed. I had to pick the rocks out of my skin. I think I missed one, though. Here, feel it.”

Jack laughed. “I don’t need to feel it. I believe you.”

“Jack, I need you to feel it,” Viviane said in mock seriousness. “It’s very important that you do.”

He pressed his fingers gingerly against Viviane’s skin. “Yeah, okay. I think there’s something in there. Or it might just be your bony elbow.”

Viviane made a face. “Ha-ha.”

Jack then revealed the place where he’d cut his ankle on the runner of a sled one winter, the circular scar from a childhood vaccination, and the pockmark along his nostril left over from the time everyone in second grade came down with the chicken pox. “So, see? I’m much more scarred than you’ll ever be. Probably always will be.”

There were other scars — from wounds that leave the skin unmarred. Of those, Jack certainly had many more than Viviane. Each pondered this in their own silent way as they lay side by side, the air around them growing colder still and the moon moving higher in the sky.

“Sometimes I think my dad must hate me,” Jack said after a moment.

“He doesn’t hate you,” Viviane whispered, too quickly to be convincing. She didn’t actually believe that John Griffith had the capacity to care about anyone other than himself. Even if he tried. Even if he wanted to. Viviane could count on one hand the number of times she’d heard her own mother say
I love you
, and she’d still have a few fingers left over. But that didn’t mean Emilienne wasn’t capable of love. It just meant, for a reason Viviane had yet to understand, she preferred to hide it.

“Sometimes,” Jack started, “I think he wouldn’t hate me as much if only —”

“If only what?”

Jack turned and gave her a sad smile. “If only you and I weren’t together.”

Viviane closed her eyes and pushed down the small ball of panic growing in her stomach. She groaned and gave Jack a nervous, playful jab. “You breaking up with me, Griffith?”

Jack paused just long enough for the ball of panic to bounce back up into Viviane’s throat. “No,” he finally answered. “That’s something I could never do.”

He stared into the dark shadows around them. “He thinks I’m useless,” he murmured.

Viviane pulled him to her. “Shush,” she said. With a sigh of defeat, Jack let his head drop against the lace exposed by her open shirt. His breath grew deep and heavy while Viviane tried to draw comfort from the rhythmic beat of his heart against her pelvic bone.

JACK AND VIVIANE
sat parked on the dirt road at the bottom of the hill on Pinnacle Lane in John Griffith’s 1932 Ford Coupe. It was September and Viviane had just turned seventeen, making her one year and two months younger than Jack.

Jack tapped his foot in rhythm to a song playing in his head. The cuff of his pants had inched up his leg, exposing his sock and a section of his calf. His socks were navy blue; the hairs on his leg were unusually pale and silky. Viviane couldn’t see them, but she knew what they looked like. The hairs on her own legs stuck out like sharp pins. She didn’t know whether to be self-conscious about this or not — it wasn’t her fault there was a shortage of razor blades — so she pulled her feet away from the humming floor and tucked her legs under the skirt of her dress, just in case. The sole of her left shoe grazed Jack’s thigh.

Jack got up early every Saturday to wash and wax his father’s Coupe after those Friday nights when he took Viviane out for a movie at the Admiral Theater or for a five-cent bottle of Coca-Cola at the drugstore. Jack’s father watched for his son not on Friday nights but on Saturday mornings, to be sure the car was thoroughly taken care of. Jack never missed a washing. Neither knew what would happen if he did.

Just like everyone else in the world, Jack and Viviane were both thinking about the war, but each for different reasons. Unbeknownst to Viviane, Jack had been eagerly counting down the days until he turned eighteen. As soon as he did, he went to enlist but was rejected due to his flat feet and poor eyesight.

When Jack told his father that he’d failed the physical exam for military combat, Jack knew John Griffith would let him know exactly what he thought. And he was right.

John had laughed — a hollow and empty bark — and jeered at Jack. “You never cease to amaze me, Jack. Just when I think you couldn’t disappoint me more, you always seem to find a way.”

“It’s not my fault,” Jack said.

“What about the Lavender whore? You’re still screwin’ around with the witch’s daughter, aren’t ya?” John released the laugh again. “Probably cast some spell on you — wouldn’t be hard, weak-minded son of a bitch that you are.”

“Dad —” Jack started.

John dismissed him with a wave of his meaty hand. “Whatever you got to say ain’t worth hearing.”

“Do ya know what kind of fellas go to college these days?” Jack asked Viviane suddenly, hitting the Coupe’s steering wheel with his open palm. “The quacks. The ones with deformities or syphilis. No girl would be caught dead with an F-er.”

Jack was right. Most girls wouldn’t be caught with a boy deemed unfit for combat. Lucky for Jack, though, Viviane wasn’t most girls. The idea of Jack fighting in the war had always terrified her — she’d barely slept the week before his birthday. She’d never tell him, but she thanked God every morning for blessing Jack with lovely flat feet. Instead of going to war, the next morning Jack would be leaving to attend Whitman College in Walla Walla. Even if it was two hundred seventy miles away, at least it wasn’t across a whole ocean.

Viviane grabbed Jack’s hand and pressed it to her lips. “You looking to meet some girls in between your studies, college man? Because if that’s the case, you won’t find me waiting here for you to come back.”

“Oh yeah?” Jack smiled, revealing the slight gap beside one of his incisors. “What’re you gonna do instead?”

“I’ll follow you,” Viviane answered simply.

For a very long time, Viviane and Jack lived in that world people inhabit
before
love. Some people called that place friendship; others called it confusing. Viviane found it a pleasant place with an altitude that only occasionally made her nauseous.

The light from the windows of the Lavender house cast a soft glow across the front seat of the Coupe. Jack brushed his thumb along the hollowed dimple in Viviane’s left cheek. “You don’t have anything to worry about,” he said. “I love you, you know.”

Viviane let the words hang in the air between them for a moment, like a sweet pink cloud. Then she inhaled the words in whole, turned them over in her mouth, relished their solidity on her tongue.

Viviane raced up the hill to her house. Before she went inside, she turned back toward Jack and the idling Coupe and yelled, “We’re in love! We’re in love! We’re in love!” Even her neighbor, the sourly Marigold Pie, awakened by Viviane’s declaration, had to smile at that.