The Wedding Tree (6 page)

As the sound receded into the distance, Hope handed me a tissue and sat down in the chair beside me. “You okay?”

I hadn't even realized a tear was snaking down my cheek. I quickly wiped it away. “Just fine, dear. Looking forward to spending time with you.”

“Me, too.”

“I have so much I want to tell you. I . . .” A sound from the kitchen made me jump. “Who's that?”

“The home health aide.”

Oh bother! I didn't want a third party hanging around while I spilled the secrets of my soul.

“I don't need a nursemaid,” I grumbled. “Can you get rid of her?”

“Not entirely,” Hope said. “Eddie absolutely insisted you have help here around the clock.”

“But I want to talk to you privately.”

“Well, then, I can send her on an errand.”

The suggestion brightened my mood.“Why don't you do that, dear, then put on some tea. You and I are due for a nice long chat.”

hope

I
was a little nervous about being alone with Gran. It was kind of like the time I'd babysat my friend's toddler—the child had no knowledge of her own limitations, I had no confidence she would heed my warnings, and I worried she was going to fall and hurt herself. What if I didn't watch her closely enough and something happened? I reached for Gran's arm to help her stand up, then realized my efforts were only thwarting her own.

“I can do it, child,” Gran muttered, pushing out of her chair. “Stop hovering over me.”

“I promise to quit hovering if you promise to use your walker.”

“Fiddlesticks. That thing's more likely to trip me than help me.” To my relief, though, she reached for the walker all the same and shuffled through the dining room into the kitchen.

She stopped in the doorway and eyed the array of cakes, pies, and cookies lined up on the counter. “Good Lord! Looks like we're having a bake sale.”

“You should see the refrigerator,” I said. “Half the town sent over a casserole.”

A grin spread across her face. “That's the way things work around here. Someone has a hard time, and everyone tries to feed them better.” Scooting her walker in front of her, she shambled to the kitchen table and sat down.

“Do you want iced tea or hot tea?” I asked.

“Hot, please. And are those Mabel Tharp's brownies?”

A parade of people had brought food over the past few days. I scanned my memory for the brownie bearer. “Is she a thin, elderly lady with rosy cheeks?”

“Yep, she always looks like she fell into the rouge pot. But she's not elderly. Why, she's only seventy-eight.”

Practically a spring chicken.
“I stand corrected.” I carried the plate of brownies to the table, then filled the teakettle and put it on the stove. I had just gathered up a couple of napkins and dessert plates when the doorbell rang.

“Sit tight,” I told Gran. “I'll get it.”

A couple who looked to be their early sixties stood on the porch. The man was tall and broad-shouldered, and reminded me of Ronald Reagan. His arm was looped around the waist of a round-faced blonde with lively blue eyes and pale, dewy skin that looked like it had never seen the sun. She held a large covered bowl. “I'm Peggy Armand, and this is my husband, Griff. We live across the street.” She shifted the bowl to her left arm and held out her other hand. “We brought over a salad. Figured you'd need something green to balance out all the casseroles.”

“How nice!” I introduced myself and shook their hands. The screen door creaked as I opened it wider. “Come on in. Gran's in the kitchen.”

Peggy stepped inside. “How is she?”

“Better, thanks.”

“We visited her in the hospital, but I don't think she knew us.”

“She still has those moments,” I warned them. I didn't want to say too much, for fear of Gran overhearing.

“Well, that's perfectly understandable.” Peggy peered into the dining room. “So you're the artist who painted that beautiful mural.”

I nodded. Gran had been repainting the interior of her home the summer before my junior year in high school. She'd intended to
wallpaper the dining room, but she couldn't find any paper she liked. “I know!” Gran had exclaimed. “You can paint a mural!”

“Of what?” I'd asked.

“What about the backyard?”

So I had. I'd covered the wall with an acrylic painting of the lawn and garden, complete with the shed and a couple of trees that had since blown down in Hurricane Katrina. Using one of Gran's photos, I'd created an early springtime scene much like the view out the kitchen window now, complete with azaleas and a bed of tulips.

Working on that mural had been one of my all-time favorite projects. Every time I'd lifted my paintbrush, I'd gone into a state of flow—instinctively mixing colors and riffing on my sketch, losing myself in the joy of creating.

“I've always admired that so much,” Peggy said, stepping into the dining room and gazing at it. “Do you still do murals?”

“That's the only one I've ever attempted.”

“Look at this, Griff.” Peggy edged around a stack of boxes to step closer to the wall. “It's almost like looking out a window.”

“Fine work.” He nodded. “Mighty fine.”

Peggy touched the trunk of a painted tree. “It's absolutely exquisite.” She turned and followed me into the kitchen, where she spotted Gran trying to push out of her chair. “No, no, Miss Addie—don't you dare get up on our account!” Setting the salad on the counter, she hurried over to the table, leaned down, and kissed Gran's cheek.

“So nice to see you,” Gran said. I wondered if she had a clue who these people were.

Griff went over and kissed her cheek, too.

“Oh, my, you smell so good,” Gran said. “I love a man who wears shaving lotion!”

“So does Peggy,” he said. “She keeps me around as air freshener.”

“Peggy.” From the way Gran repeated the name, I could tell she'd just placed the woman. “I take it you've met my granddaughter, Hope?”

“We just met. But I'm afraid Sophie made her acquaintance a few days ago.”

Gran looked puzzled.

“The little girl next door,” I explained. “She crawled through Snowball's doggie door.”

Gran's face lit up. “Oh yes! I just love that child to death.”

“I was horrified to learn she'd been sneaking into your house,” Peggy said.

“She's welcome anytime. Her visits always brighten my day.”

“Well, she's not supposed to leave the backyard. It caused quite a stir when Matt and Jillian discovered she was gone. Jillian said they were frantic.”

The pieces fell into place. So these were Jillian's parents—and Sophie's grandparents. The parents of Matt's late wife.

“Jillian said she and Matt found her here in the kitchen with Hope,” Peggy said.

My face flushed. If Jillian had mentioned that we'd met, it was a sure bet that she'd mentioned what I was wearing. I didn't think Gran would be offended I'd been trying on her clothes, but the fact I was doing it while she was lying in the hospital seemed, well . . . inappropriate. Insensitive, even.

The teakettle whistled. I hurried over to deal with it, relieved at the opportunity to change the topic. “Can I get you some tea?” I looked at Peggy, then Griff. “Or a beer? Eddie left some Abita in the fridge.”

“I'll take one of those,” Griff said.

“I'll have tea, dear, if you're sure it isn't any trouble.”

They settled at the table. I set out plates, napkins, and spoons, along with a selection of baked goods. “Oh, are those Mabel's brownies?” Peggy asked.

“Yes, indeed,” Gran said. “Help yourself.”

I poured tea and brought Griff a beer, then sat down with them, a cup of Earl Grey in my hand.

“I was telling Hope how much I admired the mural in your dining room,” Peggy said.

Gran beamed. “Hope has a lot of artistic talent.”

I smiled self-consciously and bit into a brownie. Rich chocolate flavor flooded my mouth. Mabel's reputation was well deserved.

“My granddaughters want their room painted like a castle,” Peggy said. “I've been looking for someone to do it.”

“Hope could paint it,” Gran volunteered.

I froze in mid-chocolate ecstasy.

“It'll give her something to do in the evenings,” Gran continued. “After a day of helping me sort and pack, she's going to need to get out of the house.”

I tried to swallow my mouthful of brownie, but it stuck in my throat. I hadn't picked up a brush since my divorce. Actually, since well before it.

“I'll pay you, of course,” Peggy continued. “It's my gift to the girls. I'd arranged to hire an artist from New Orleans and pay him six thousand dollars plus travel expenses, but he decided he didn't want to make the drive.”

Six thousand dollars? I have to say, the prospect of earning some money during my time in Wedding Tree had a certain appeal. So did the idea of painting a mural. My ex would have scoffed at the idea, calling it lowbrow and common.

Which, come to think of it, was a great reason for me to go ahead and do it. “Sounds interesting,” I said. “But I haven't painted in a long time.”

“Oh, it'll come right back to you.” Peggy looked at Gran. “Miss Addie, are you sure you can spare her?”

Gran flapped a wrist dismissively. “Eddie's hired round-the-clock aides to stay with me. I'll be just fine.”

“Wonderful!” Peggy clapped her hands together. “I'll talk to Matt and see when would be a good time for you to meet with him and the girls and discuss it.”

The conversation drifted to other topics. The aide, a wide-
hipped, pleasant-faced woman named Nadine, came back from the store and announced it was time for Gran to take some medicine.

Griff and Peggy rose to take their leave. “I'll be calling you,” Peggy said as I saw them out the door.

When I returned to the kitchen, Gran's face looked drawn and pale, and Nadine was helping Gran out of her chair.

“Are you okay?” I asked, alarmed.

“My head hurts. And I'm afraid my get-up-and-go got up and went.” Gran leaned hard on the walker. “Let's have our chat tomorrow.”

“Sure thing, Gran.”

Between chats, visitors, naps, tea, nursing aides, and lining up a potential painting project next door for me, I'd begun to wonder if sorting through her belongings was even on Gran's radar.

While she'd been in the hospital, Eddie had arranged for a contractor to repair and paint the exterior of the house, and I'd gone through her refrigerator and pantry, throwing out everything past its expiration date. That had been easy enough, so I'd thought I'd tackle her linen closet. I quickly found myself in over my head. What did she want to take to California? What did she want to give to Eddie?

Shifting gears, I'd started researching the worth of Gran's furnishings, but dollars seemed a totally inadequate way to value a chair Gran's great-great-grandmother had sat on before the Civil War. It was a dilemma, because I had no place to put it, and Eddie's aesthetic was modern minimalism.

The prospect of dismantling a household filled with family treasures and lifelong memories was going to be at least as tough emotionally as it was physically, I realized—and if I found it daunting, I could only imagine how hard it was going to be for Gran.

adelaide

I
woke to find the sun shining through the sheer curtains of my east window, which meant it was at least nine o'clock. Three kind-faced women wearing blue shrubs—no, that wasn't the word; what the heck was it?—loomed in the doorway. They morphed into two.

“Good morning, Miss Addie,” one said.

Wait. There was only one woman—my eyes were playing tricks on me—and I didn't know who she was. My expression must have told her as much, because she smiled. “I'm Nadine, your daytime health aide. You had a fall and you're recovering in your own home, and your granddaughter is here, too.”

I was grateful for the information, even though the fact she was providing it told me she thought I was a nitwit. She helped me to my walker and to the bathroom, where something tall with handles had been added to my toilet. When I came out, Becky—no, Hope; I had to keep that straight!—was standing by my bedroom door.

“Ready for breakfast?” she asked. “I just scrambled some eggs and made a fresh pot of coffee.”

“Sounds wonderful.”

I let the aide help me dress, then used that confounded walker contraption to get to the kitchen. Hope brought me coffee, scrambled eggs, and oatmeal topped with blueberries and walnuts. The aide—Nay-nay? Narnia? Naysayer? Her name started with an
N
,
I was sure of it—gave me a handful of pills to take. The coffee and food—or maybe the pills—perked me up and helped my addled thoughts coalesce into something of a memory: Hope was here to help me go through my things. I needed to tell her about Joe.

I looked at the aide as she cleared the table. “Would you be so kind as to go the store for me?”

“I just went yesterday afternoon.”

“Well, I'm sure we need some groceries.”

Her heavy eyebrows knitted together. “The house is practically bursting with food.”

“I have a hankering for some fresh peppermint. Do we have any of that?”

The aide's forehead creased. “I—I don't think so.”

“Then I'd like for you to go find me some. Hope, let's get started in the dining room.”

The aide helped me get settled at the head of the dining room table, then left, muttering under her breath.

Hope laughed. “She knows you were trying to get rid of her.”

“That's okay. Eddie's paying her the same whether she's meddling in my business here or running off on a fool's errand.”

Hope brought me a glass of water and set it down on a felt-backed silver coaster. A wave of nostalgia swept over me. How many times had I sat here with family? Too many to count. It had been my mother's formal dining table—and my grandmother's before that. Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, dinner parties. My goodness. The table held a lot of memories.

But then, so did the boxes and trunks from the attic. I pointed to a slender black trunk. “Let's begin with that one.”

Hope lifted it and set it on the table in front of me. She—or maybe it was Eddie; bless his heart, he was the tidiest man I'd ever known—had dusted it off, but it still smelled stale.

Hope fiddled with the latch. “It's locked.”

“The key is in the top drawer of the cupboard.”

Hope located the big skeleton key and put it in my hand. My
fingers trembled as I fitted the key in the hole. It was funny—I felt like I was looking at my grandmother's hands on the ends of my arms. I don't think I'll ever get used to having these veiny, spotted hands with such big knuckles—just like I don't think I'll ever get used to seeing that old woman's face staring back at me in the mirror. It's not how I see myself at all, although Lord knows I should.

I heard a little click, and felt the give on the lock. “I bought this trunk when I was in high school. Saved up all my money from babysitting and working at the drugstore and bought this my junior year. I had a yen to travel.” I'd collected photos of places I wanted to go—Paris, London, Rome, Athens. I hoarded travel magazines under my bed like men hid girlie mags. “Now, turn it up tall.”

Hope picked up the trunk and set it down vertically, then undid the latch. Her eyes widened. “Oh wow! It's like a little closet.”

“Yep.” On the left side was a clothes rod, with several hanging garments. The right side held four drawers.

Hope ran her hand over it. “This is too cool! Did you take this lots of places?”

I shook my head. “Only to New Orleans.”

“But you took all those photos of France and Greece and Egypt!”

“Oh, I traveled the world—but not until the kids were grown and Charlie had died. I never went further than Alabama until I was fifty-six. Then I made up for lost time.”

The funny thing was, by then I'd realized that the big deals in life weren't necessarily big at all. A newborn's finger, a drop of dew on a blade of grass, an ant carrying a grain of sugar . . . enormously powerful wonders were all around, enough wonders to fill a lifetime, right in your own backyard, maybe under your very feet. It's not where you are; it's how you see it.

“By the time I started traveling, this trunk was obsolete. It was too large for air travel.”

Hope ran her hand over it. “It's in beautiful condition.”

“Unlike the green dress in it. Take it out, would you, honey?” The silk rustled as Hope carefully lifted the padded hanger.
Originally the dress had been pale jade, but age had yellowed it to a soft moss green. The fabric-covered belt was slightly stained where the buckle had rusted. “I fell in love in this dress.”

“Oh, I can see why.” Hope held it up against herself, then carefully placed it on the table. “It's absolutely gorgeous.”

She was missing my meaning. I fingered the hem. “I don't mean I fell in love
with
the dress, honey. I mean I was wearing this dress
when
I fell in love.”

Hope's eyebrows pulled together. “With Granddad? I thought you two were childhood sweethearts.”

“Oh, we knew each other all our lives. We lived just down the street, two houses away, and our parents were best friends. My mother and his mother were tight as sisters. Charlie's older brother had died when he was two, so Charlie was an only child, and I might as well have been—my brother was twelve years older than me and away at college by the time I started school. But the sweetheart part . . .”

“That came later?”

I hesitated. Here was where I had to turn off the road paved with illusions and steer onto the bumpy dirt path of truth. “The fact of the matter is, the sweetheart part was always pretty much one-sided.”

Hope's eyebrows rose in surprise.

“Charlie always liked me a lot more than I liked him. In a romantic way, I mean.”

Funny, the way you remember things. Memories don't lie down flat like stripes on a road or photos in an album. They pop up and flap around, like those Mexican jumping beans Uncle Ronnie brought me that time he went to Tijuana.

I wanted to tell Hope about meeting Joe, but instead, all of a sudden—
poof!
I'm viewing a mental film of the night of my first high school dance.

My mother is at the front door, wearing a ruby shirtwaist dress with her grandmother's pearls, and she's opening it for Charlie. Charlie is dressed in his father's best suit, his hair slicked back,
and he's holding a white orchid corsage. I'm excited about the dance for lots of reasons. For one, I'm wearing a new dress—it's baby blue chiffon, with a full skirt, cap sleeves, and a lace sweetheart neckline that I'd had the dickens of a time sewing just right—and I can't wait to show it off. Secondly, I'm eager to see everyone's reaction to the “heavenly night” decorations I'd helped hang in the gym; and thirdly, I've never danced to a live band before, and Billy Bob and the Crooners are supposed to play.

But then I see Charlie in the living room, and he's looking at me in a way I'd never noticed before, and it hits me: he's thinking about the dance in entirely different terms than I am. He doesn't think I'm going with him just because he has his daddy's car and my mother doesn't like me out at night by myself and he always gives me a lift to group events and we're lifelong buddies; in his mind, this is a date—a real, honest-to-goodness, boy-and-girl date. My stomach does a cold, funny flip, like a fish trying to get free from a hook. The thought of being romantic with Charlie just, well . . . it makes me kind of squirm inside my skin. I don't think of him that way. Maybe I'm not ready for it. Maybe I just don't want to change the easygoing way we get along.

And then—
poof!
again.

I'm seven or eight years old, and Charlie and I are playing tag with a group of other kids on the school playground. When Charlie is “it,” he always, always chases me. It annoys the dickens out of me, because I don't like being caught.

“You never chase me back,” he complains.

“I used to, but you just turn around and make me ‘it' again. And the other kids get mad because we're leaving them out and it's like only the two of us are playing.”

“I like it that way,” Charlie says.

And then—another
poof!

•   •   •

We're four or five, and playing doctor. Charlie wants to listen to my heart. I unbutton my shirt, and he puts his ear on my chest. Even back then, when our chests look just the same, he's fascinated with mine. He wants to see under my skirt, and I might have let him, but my mother walks in, and . . . oh mercy, does she get into a dither!

I have to confess, I never felt any curiosity at all about Charlie's private parts. Junk, they call it now. Junk—what a hilariously terrible name for something they're all so proud of.

•   •   •

“Are you okay, Gran?”

I realized I'd closed my eyes. I opened them and saw a lovely, worried, young face. It took me a moment to remember: I was in the dining room with my granddaughter. “Yes, dear. I just got caught up in some memories.” I smiled at her. “Where were we?”

“You were telling me about you and Granddad. I thought you two dated all through high school.”

“Oh, we did. Although at first, I didn't even realize we were dating. By the time it dawned on me that everyone thought we were a couple, well, we'd been together so long that no other boy even thought I was available.”

“Did you like someone else?”

“No. This was a very small town, honey, and as the saying went, the pickin's were slim and none, and Slim had left town. The senior class at our school had only thirty-five students, and Charlie was the best of the bunch.” I toyed with a silk-covered button on my old dress. “I tried to break up with him after graduation, but he wouldn't take no for an answer.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the war was on. Like most boys in my class, Charlie enlisted right after graduation. Before he went off to basic training, I told him we should see other people.”

“And?”

And nothing. “He didn't want to hear it.” He'd cried, in fact. I'd never felt so bad about anything in my life.

The whole thing flickered in my mind's eye like a Technicolor movie, but I kept talking as the mental movie played.

We'd been sitting in his father's car—a 1939 Ford, red as a firecracker, with a gray interior—parked out at the lake. We ended every date that way, talking and necking at a place called Lover's Point.

Charlie's breath had been hot on my neck. His fingers moved from my back to my breast, but I shooed his hand away.

“It's okay, Addie,” he'd murmured against my skin. “When I come back from the war, we'll get married.” He reached for my breast again.

I pushed him away and pulled myself against the door. “I've told you over and over, Charlie. I don't want to get married.” What I really meant was, I don't want to marry you. I don't know why he couldn't take the hint.

“You want to be an old maid?” he'd demanded.

How many times had we covered this same ground? “I want to be a photographer. I want to travel the world and make my mark on it.”

“So work as a photographer while I'm gone. Then when I get back, we'll get married.”

“No, Charlie. I've got other plans.”

“Plans that don't include me?”

I didn't want to hurt him, but sometimes he was thick as a brick. I pulled at a loose thread on my sweater. “I just don't feel about you the way you deserve to have a girl feel.”

“That's only because you're such a good Christian. Once we're married and you know that everything is blessed by God, your conscience won't bother you, and you'll enjoy the kissing and touching and all.”

I was pretty sure that a church ceremony and a ring on my finger wouldn't suddenly make me feel all quivery and excited to kiss him, the way other girls talked about kissing their boyfriends—or make me want to grope him the way he wanted to grope me. “Neither of us has ever dated anyone else. I think it's a good idea for us both to see other people.”