Where Lilacs Still Bloom (19 page)

March roared in with heavy rain and spits of snow and hail, the latter threatening to shred the rhododendron leaves on the more than a dozen bushes I’d planted in strategic places throughout the garden. With the rain and cold pelleting the sun-porch windows, I drew a garden plot plan, deciding where I’d move what plants, where I’d transplant the seed
starts from my sun-porch nursery. This was a hopeful time, knowing I’d soon have hands in dirt, and blossoms would brighten the garden and my world. I liked having Lizzie back home. She seemed happy. She liked talking with Ruth and Nelia in the evening; she and Martha baked together, and I often heard laughter from the room next-door when Frank and I prepared for bed. I didn’t like Fritz living in the tack room, but it was all fixed up nice for a young man, and he had books on steamboats that Lizzie had given him from Fred’s collection. Fritz said he liked the privacy without hearing all the “giggling girls.” Frank said he had pictures of girls up on his wall. I didn’t ask for details of how he’d gotten them or of what they might look like. I never went in there.

My chicks were all settled on an afternoon, with Lizzie stitching, Martha teaching, and the girls and Fritz in school. Delia had looked healthy when we’d moved Lizzie back home. When we saw them at church on Sunday—well, just Delia came because Nell Irving had been moved to a sanitarium. She said how glad she was that her morning sickness had moved on to another poor pregnant soul. But I could tell she was worried about Nell Irving.

“A sanitarium?” Fritz said.

“Nell Irving is doing better, I think.” Delia didn’t use the dreaded word
phthisis
and covered her worry by saying, “It’s a better place for him to get well. I hate it that I can’t see him now. They’re worried about me getting ill or the baby, so it’ll
be a bit before we can speak face to face. But by the time the baby’s due in July, he’ll be back. I’m sure of it.”

I didn’t tell her that the Presbyterian church had discontinued communion with a common cup after Nell Irving became ill. I hoped he hadn’t contracted the disease there, but so far no one else had become ill with tuberculosis.

As a family, we walked with her to the buggy she’d driven to town. “How’s Edmond doing with the milking?” Fritz asked. “I could come do that for you, if you want.”

“Fine. Edmond used to help Bertha and Carl, you know.” Delia shrugged. “He’s good conversation over coffee before he leaves for his work and someone to cook a light supper for when he finishes the evening chores.”

“Just so you know,” Fritz told her. “I’d help.”

She hugged her younger brother and brushed at his hair. “Don’t you have a girl to court to keep you occupied?”

He blushed, looked sideways at me. “Mama frowns on me courting much until I’m old enough to vote, I guess.”

I thought of our Sunday afternoon conversation as I worked on my garden plan. I surely hoped Delia was right about her husband’s health. I’d heard of lots of people coming back from sanitariums, and I prayed Nell Irving would be yet another. I’d plant a flowering crab-apple tree near the gate in honor of his homecoming. I’d written to cheer him. It was a small thing I could do. With the Lemoine-bred lilacs looking good, perhaps I’d name a new variety for him. I planned to
name my new varieties for special friends and family, when the time came. But right now, a flowering crab would give an array of color year-round but begin each spring with those vibrant pink blossoms that always spoke of good health to me: a blend of beauty, robustness, and sweet fragrance, all in one!

That’s what I was doing when the phone rang, drawing a circle on my plot plan to mark that tree. The brazen sounds of two long rings and two short ones still caused me to jump a foot.

“I’ll get it,” Lizzie said.

I heard her cheery voice say, “Hi, Delia.” A pause then, “Are you crying? What’s wrong?” followed by silence, then, “No, no. Oh, Delia, no.”

“What is it?” I rose from the sun porch and stepped up into the dining room. “Is it the baby? What’s happened?” I was beginning to dislike that phone machine always bringing bad news.

Lizzie gripped the mouthpiece of the contraption. “We’ll come right now. Oh, Delia, what can I say?” A pause and then, “We’ll be there soon.”

Lizzie’s face was white when she hung the receiver up on its holder. She still gripped the mouthpiece as though if she released it, she’d collapse.

“What? Is it the baby?”

Lizzie shook her head, tears already tracking down her
pale cheeks. “It’s Nell Irving, Mama. He’s … he just died. Of tuberculosis.”

My breath escaped. I sank to the chair, my eye drawn to the calendar hanging on the wall. It was from the Domestic Sewing Machine Company. A mother oversees a daughter’s work on the newest machine, offering guidance and protection to the child. Protection. I looked at the date. March 8, 1906. Not even a year since our family moved as one to grieve with Lizzie so exposed and unprotected from a terrible loss. Hurt came without protection from any earthly source, no matter how much we loved.

“I … I can’t believe that Delia … and you … widows … Both my girls …” I couldn’t seem to finish a thought. “Come.” I opened my arms. Lizzie fell into them, the call from her sister renewing the wounds from the loss of her Fred.

“Oh, Mama. Delia’s going to hurt so much!”

“I know, I know.” I patted her back. No words formed. A sister’s ache was different than a mother’s, but no less painful; no less deep a hole to fill.

“Call your father,” I said after a time. “He’s at the creamery talking to Mr. Reed about the latest report. Tell him we’ll harness the buggy and pick up Fritz from school on the way to Delia’s. We’ll let Martha know at her classroom.”

Lizzie nodded, wiped at her face with a lace-edged handkerchief. She turned to the phone, and I stepped outside. People needed tasks in grief, and I was good at giving them
but less wise at finding distracting work for myself. Tears swelled in my throat. The air felt clear and fresh with scuddy clouds chased away by spinning winds. Cranes chattered toward the Columbia while I longed for a breeze to blow away Delia’s loss, our loss, the absolute helplessness I felt. I was old, so old, and yet none the wiser for how to give my daughter and her baby the strength they’d need in the months ahead.

The horse was gentle and took well to the harness. Lizzie came out to help me finish, and then I scanned the yard. It was too early for my tree peonies with their flashy blooms. Tulips weren’t up yet. A few lavender crocuses stood at attention. We’d planted them on Fred Wilke’s grave. I didn’t want them to be a reminder for Delia. I snipped three daffodils with their yellow heads, not yet in full array, but at least they offered bright color. A sweet aroma as I passed the shady side of the house caught my nose. I planned to leave my apron and don my hat, but instead I marched to the bush that had begun blooming on Valentine’s Day, pulled the clipper from my apron again and snipped some of the pink-throated, alabaster blooms. I pushed my nose into the flowers and inhaled. Once long ago Frank had brought me a corsage of daphnes, when first he came to court me. I was so young, so uncertain. But Frank made me laugh, and he promised he would be there with me always. If I lost him, what would I do?

My throat opened with the aroma of daphnes, and the tears found their way to escape. I thought of Nell Irving and
Delia’s baby. That poor child who would never know his father. I inhaled again and breathed out a silent prayer.
Have I done enough to protect my children? Have I covered them like I would a plant threatened by a late-season frost? Two of my daughters, widows. Are You trying to tell me something? Have I not listened?
I hadn’t brought a handkerchief, so I wiped my face with my apron, then cradled the blue and yellow blooms in my arm.

“Let’s go, Mama,” Lizzie said.

I went inside, put the flowers in a Ball jar with water, removed my apron, settled the hat onto my head, and grabbed my coat. The mist was familiar as air and nothing requiring an umbrella.

I handed the jar of flowers to Lizzie. I inhaled once more.

“The flowers will have to be the cheer today. And many a day ahead as well,” Lizzie said.

A
t first, Shelly looked forward to the horticulture meetings merely as respite from her mother-in-law’s dominance. Soon, the camaraderie of the women and their enthusiasm for all things horticultural won Shelly over. Oh, Bill had enjoyed making her his student in the greenhouse, but at these meetings, she found a different kind of eagerness and perhaps competition for creating the most fragrant garden or choosing plants that attracted the most butterflies or hummingbirds. Shelly had her own ideas about a certain kind of garden plot, and she’d even picked out the section of the green lawn on their estate that would house the first one. But the occasion that would begin her garden campaign had not arisen. She still had not conceived. She was saddened by that and discouraged, deeply, an emotion she could not share with Bill as it was too revealing of the loss within her life.

At a meeting in May of 1906, the entire club had been invited to tour the gardens on the Hampton estate and view the exotic plants heiress Eliza Ridgely had brought back from her world travels. It was to be a two-day event, with the women riding in an autobus and spending the night at an inn in Towson, Maryland, just north of Baltimore where the estate lauded over the surrounding countryside. Shelly had never ridden in an autobus. Anticipation mixed with anxiety framed her morning.

As they waited for the vehicle to arrive, Shelly considered her mother-in-law and her pervasive influence over Bill. The woman couldn’t see that her son liked spending his weeks away in Annapolis just to avoid his mother. At least that was Shelly’s belief. His mother didn’t even call him Bill, his preferred name. He was always “William” to her, with an uplift at the end as though his name was just the beginning of a request, which it usually was. “William? Would you please bring me that lap robe? You know how cool it is in the evening” or “William? Don’t forget to take the documents to the attorney, you do remember I asked you to do that today.” And on it went.

The horticulture meetings were one of the few places Shelly was able to attend without her mother-in-law beside her—or often between her and Bill. At fine restaurants, Bill sat beside his mother to assist her, of course. The woman was a tactician who could plant a twelve-foot tree by herself but
had Bill convinced she might need help lifting her silver spoon to her mouth at supper.
Egad, egad!
Shelly thought but would never say in front of Bill or his mother. She sipped her soup quietly and dreamed of someday having a child whom she’d raise differently than Bill had been raised.

Thank goodness the two-day trip had kept her mother-in-law behind. Shelly made certain of that by emphasizing the difficulties they might face, not being certain of the roads, having to stay at an unknown inn, and the possibility of bedbugs.

Shelly’s plan to leave her mother-in-law at home had caused a bit of friction with Bill. “She lived alone in that house before I married you,” Shelly said.

“But she was younger then. Now she’s frail.”

“Perhaps we should all move to Annapolis, then, where you can come home to us each evening. Every evening.”

“And leave the gardens here? The thing she loves?”

Of course not
, Shelly thought but didn’t say. She didn’t say a lot she wanted to.

Shelly waited to hear the growling of the autobus. Instead, only the soft voices of the other women interrupted the birdsong. Her friends wore big hats with feathers that drooped like yesterday’s wash on the line. In the threesome that included Shelly near the corner of the library, conversation bubbled up as the younger women conversed about the “Hill of Difficulty” article Margaret Sangster had written in
the latest issue of
Woman’s Home Companion
. “To climb such a hill of living,” the columnist wrote, “we cannot shirk the duty of standing on our own two feet while lending a hand to our neighbors and lifting a little ourselves, if we are to occupy the place God means us to, and do our part in service to the age in which we live.” Shelly liked the article very much and was surprised the
Companion
had printed it, as they were generally a traditional magazine not entertaining ideas that might offend the men of a household.

On the other hand, “standing on your own two feet” could be considered quite radical, and to a number of women in the Maryland Horticulture Society, Baltimore chapter, it was. Shelly awaited the Letters section next month, as she was sure there’d be wisdom falling like timbers on the editors. Mothers, Shelly decided, were vigilant; at the very least Maryland mothers were.

“We’re a smaller group than usual,” Mavis noted that May morning as she looked around. Often twenty-five or thirty joined in the monthly gathering, many more when they had exhibits hoping to attract new members. Mavis was a matron with a wart on her chin that was difficult to ignore until one spent time with her and appreciated her intellect and goodwill enough to distract from the facial flaw.