Somewhere Safe With Somebody Good (3 page)

‘Her housekeeper goes back to Florida around the first of September, she said, and Irene goes back late October.’

‘I have an idea—why don’t we head to the Local and forget Chester’s tux? I’ll rent one from Charlotte, they could put it on the plane to Hickory.’

She wasn’t listening. ‘I’m going inside and look for her, I feel creepy about this.’

He glanced farther along Bishop’s Lane. Only one neighboring house in view, perhaps half a block away.

‘Go in with me,’ she said. ‘Remember what happened to Norma.’

‘Okay. I’ll wait downstairs and make feeble excuses when she comes home.’

But she didn’t come home. While Cynthia called Irene’s name upstairs and down, he ambled about the living room off the foyer, peering at a series of five large oil paintings of what appeared to be the same young girl, signed Irene McGraw. He saw in the faces an
interesting detail so small that he surprised himself by noticing it at all. The eyes of each subject contained a subtle, but compelling, reflection: the nearly minuscule image of the subject. He adjusted his glasses and leaned close. It was as if the large subject were looking at herself dressed in different clothing—a yellow dress. The painted pupil was a miniature gem—to render such a feat required inordinate skill and, perhaps, the merest hair of a sable.

He looked at his watch, heard Cynthia calling Irene’s name.

On the grand piano, family photographs in silver frames. A lot of grandchildren, a perfect flock of them. He had missed having grandchildren, but Puny’s two sets of twins had stood in the gap very well.

He thought of his brother, Henry, so recently known to him after all these years, and of what they’d gone through together in Memphis and Holly Springs, and wondered what his Kavanagh family portrait would look like now, with Henry among them.

In a large photograph of the McGraws in this very room, the couple was surrounded by roughly two dozen good-looking progeny dressed to the nines. A life had been lived here—all those grandchildren tumbling and laughing, someone shouting, Don’t run in the hall, someone playing the piano, cousins kicking around a football. Like a lot of people who also live in tropical places, they probably spent Christmas and Thanksgiving here, hoping for snow. Now one was missing from this glad company. As for Irene, she would go on and things would be good again—but different, very different.

He’d always thought Irene an unusually attractive woman, but with a subtle air of sorrow or distraction, as if she were actually living elsewhere and had beamed in a likeness for a fund-raiser. He remembered that she played tennis and wore what his mother had called ‘good’ pearls.

He was turning away from the photograph when he realized that Chester—ha!—was sporting the much-talked-about tuxedo.

He moved into the hall as his wife came downstairs.

‘She’s not here.’

‘I think we should go,’ he said. ‘You could call later.’

‘This doesn’t feel right, Timothy. You should see her bedroom. Things thrown all over the place. Not like her. Come and look.’

Clothes tossed on an unmade bed, drawers pulled out, closet doors standing open, clothing on the floor, an exercise mat with an open bottle of water beside it.

‘What do you think?’ she said.

He shrugged. ‘This is the way a lot of people’s bedrooms look.’ Dooley’s room in the early days of living at the rectory, for instance.

‘It doesn’t feel like Irene, she’s fastidious. Always cleans her brushes and palette and puts them away in her carryall.’

‘She’s plenty gifted,’ he said. ‘The paintings . . .’

‘Yes, and she’s never shown or sold anything. I was thrilled when she said she’d consider the Children’s Hospital benefit.’

‘Who’s her best friend?’ he asked. ‘We could call somebody.’

‘Everyone likes her, but I don’t know about best friends.’

He looked around again, paying attention. Message light blinking on a phone by the bed, windows raised a few inches, empty hangers on a closet door pull. They walked into the bathroom. Windows open a couple of inches. Drops of moisture on the glass door of the shower. A towel on the floor.

He stooped and felt the towel—damp—then looked out to the rear lawn. That would be the studio, surrounded by a fairly ambitious garden with an open potting shed. Beyond, a dense thicket of rhododendron and oaks.

‘What do you think?’ asked his wife.

‘I think she’s in town or maybe she drove to Wesley; we need to get out of here.’

‘I pray she’s all right. Should we close the front door?’

‘Best to leave things as we found them. I’m sure she’s fine.’

How did they manage to everlastingly insinuate themselves into other people’s business, Ireland being a prime example?

She sighed; he declined to mention it.

‘Maybe we should do our shopping at the Local,’ she said, ‘and come by again before we go home?’

‘Good. Let’s do it, let’s go.’

‘I’d really like to check out her closet to see if Chester’s tux is in there.’

‘Good Lord, woman, leave off.’

He took her hand and led her to the top of the stairs, and down they went. Cherry
Garcia.

I
f not for her, he would eat the entire pint at one sitting. But she would seize it at the halfway point, preach him a homily, and stick it in the freezer behind lamb chops wrapped in butcher’s paper. A week might pass until she deemed it timely to let him finish it, straight from the carton.

He hated this monitoring business, for her and for him, but where would he be without surveillance? Lost, he supposed, in some diabetic coma, as twice before. Lord knows, he hoped Wilson would be up to it if anything dire ever happened again. With Hoppy in South Sudan, he could be as
morte
as Chester McGraw with a mere slip of the fork.

She waited for a northbound van to pass, and turned right on Main. ‘Remember you have an appointment with Dr. Wilson on Monday.’

‘Got it,’ he said.

He hiked his pant leg and surveyed his right ankle. No swelling. Same with the left. What a life, when a man had to check his ankles and shoot himself with a needle and leave half a pint moldering behind the chops.

‘I meant to tell you,’ she said. ‘Olivia called. Lace will be home for fall break on October eighteenth.’

‘And Dooley comes in on the twenty-sixth and out on the twenty-ninth.’ He mused on the unfortunate juxtaposition of dates. Being in separate schools with different holiday schedules was tough on romantic, not to mention sleep-deprived, relationships. On the occasional long weekend, the round-trip drive time between UVA, where Lace was a sophomore, and UGA, where Dooley was a junior, was fifteen or sixteen hours.

‘We’ll have him all to ourselves for two days and three nights,’ she said. ‘And he seems happy about it.’

‘No mention of going out to Meadowgate?’

‘Not a peep. I think he misses us.’

He couldn’t remember when they’d had Dooley’s company for two days running—given the boy’s fondness for disappearing out to Meadowgate Farm and honing his veterinarian skills.

‘What do you think about two dinners?’ she said. ‘One for Dooley and the young siblings, and Buck and Pauline, of course. I think it would be good for Dooley to spend more time with Jessie and Pooh. We know Sammy and Kenny won’t see their mother, so we could have Sammy and Kenny the following night.’

‘There’s Harley,’ he said.

‘He could come both nights.’

‘And what about Hélène the first night? She’s a terrific landlady, he says.’

‘Fun. How many is that?’

She nosed the Mazda into a parking spot across from the Local, a pretty good grab.

‘Dinner One, nine. Dinner Two, six.’

‘Dinner One, burgers, coleslaw, and baked beans, two pots,’ she said. ‘Dinner Two, your special ham, Puny’s potato salad, and we’ll have the second pot of beans.’

‘I’ll get Esther to make the OMC,’ he said. ‘It’ll serve both nights.’ He loved doing this stuff. ‘I’ll just take my low-fat yogurt and enjoy it in the garage.’

He could see the whole thing—the gathering in the study around a long folding table laid with Nanny Howard’s tablecloth, the view to Baxter Park, sunlight slanting through the window on Esther Bolick’s unbeatable orange marmalade cake . . . and Dooley, there was Dooley wolfing his food and glad to be home but never letting on, and laughing, Dooley laughing, and later they would shoot pool in the dining room, and on the night of Dinner Two, Sammy would hammer the lot of them. Which reminded him . . .

‘Which reminds me,’ he said. ‘I promised Sammy I’d learn to shoot pool.’

‘Sammy being your instructor?’

‘May as well learn from the best.’

‘When Lace comes home, we’ll have her over,’ she said. ‘Lunch, I think. We’ll get to see the ring.’

Ah, the ring. Lace’s ring from Tiffany was being resized when they traveled up the mountain the other night from the airport. Not exactly a friendship ring, Dooley had said, but not exactly an engagement ring, either.

‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Yes.’ He needed to talk with the bright and beautiful girl whom he first met at Fernbank. She had worn a battered felt hat and carried a mattock and sack; he’d surprised her in the act of stealing Miss Sadie’s ferns. Now she was the adopted daughter of the town doctor and his wife, an honor student at the University of Virginia, and Dooley’s ‘intended,’ as they used to say in Mississippi. Things seemed to be coming up roses, albeit with a fair amount of thorns.

Cynthia took the key from the ignition. ‘Remind me to get treats for Violet.’

Heaven knows, his wife’s white cat was the biggest breadwinner
in the family. In addition to being the star of the long-famous
Violet
books for young readers, Violet was a winsome and agreeable creature whom he’d come to like very much.

There had been, so far, a total of four white Violets to pose for and inspire the work of the author/illustrator, all but the current Violet now deceased. In their fictional incarnations, one or the other had gone to Paris, visited the Queen, attended school, vacationed in the country, played the piano, lived in a bookstore, you name it. Out rolled the
Violet
books and in rolled the dough.

‘Will do,’ he said. ‘Let’s keep Violet happy.’

•   •   •

I
MPRESSED
BY
THEIR
RECENT
international travel, the proprietor of the Local checked them out personally.

‘Buy one, get one free,’ said Avis, bagging the two pink grapefruit.

‘Great. Thanks.’ He pulled out his wallet. ‘You should do coupons in the
Muse
.’

‘Too expensive,’ said Avis. ‘A Magic Marker, a sheet of butcher’s paper, and a little tape to stick it on the window—that does it for me. How about today’s special?’

‘Missed that.’

‘Medley of Root Vegetables. Beets, turnips, parsnips, carrots—already washed an’ in a reusable bag—four bucks. A little olive oil, a little thyme, rosemary, and sea salt; roast on four twenty-five for twenty minutes.’ Avis kissed his fingertips in the Italian fashion.

‘We’ll take a bag. But four bucks?’

‘Fresh and full of flavor, not wilted and half dead like in some stores I could name.’

‘Can we get fingerlings instead of parsnips?’

‘No substitutions,’ said Avis, punching around on the register screen.

‘How about a ham?’ he asked Avis. ‘Bone in. Third week of October.’

‘How about a valley ham you can cut with a fork—old-fashioned flavor, low on sodium, and exclusive to the Local? Free-range hogs, meat succulent and sweet. Bottom line, the best ham between here and Smithfield . . .’

Avis leaned into the clincher.
‘. . .
bar
none.’

‘Book it,’ he said. ‘Ten to twelve pounds. Do you have a spoon, by any chance?’

•   •   •

‘I
F
WE
GO
BY
I
RENE
’
S
, the ice cream will melt,’ he said, piteous.

She gunned the engine. ‘We spent an eon in there. We hadn’t really stocked up since we got home.’

‘I have a spoon,’ he said, taking it out of his jacket pocket. He held it forth, awaiting her pronouncement. He had made sure that the bag with the pint was within easy reach on the floor of the backseat.

She eyed the spoon, sighed. He would let this one pass, too, but one more and she could never again call herself a Yankee.

She pulled out into early afternoon traffic. ‘You want to eat it now, in the car?’

‘I do,’ he said.

‘And let the rest melt?’

‘No, I want to eat half in the car and go home and put the rest in the freezer, and call and see if Irene answers, and if she doesn’t, I’ll ride up with you.’

‘That’s very sweet,’ she said. ‘Really it is.’

The cruise along Main Street was the best thing since his first milkshake in the backseat of his Grandpa Yancey’s touring car in Holly Springs. He thought he hadn’t recently been happier—and then he thought again of his doctor.

Hoppy Harper was heading for South Sudan to do good in this broken world, and here he was with nothing better on his agenda than going after a block of Cherry Garcia with a plastic spoon. He realized he’d been greatly pestered by the idea of Hoppy’s bold future, for it made him despair of his own. He had a future, God willing, but bold?

He wished Irene McGraw would get herself home ASAP and shut her blasted dadgum door.

•   •   •

H
OPE
W
INCHESTER
M
URPHY
stood at the window of Happy Endings Bookstore and watched the Mazda go by with Father Tim in the passenger seat. He was eating something, maybe with a spoon, and looked happy.

She had walked past Lord’s Chapel the other day on her way home and for the first time in ages, popped into the rose garden.

She wouldn’t say a word to Father Tim, for it would disappoint him to know that the rose garden he’d planted behind Lord’s Chapel had gone to ruin. Aphids, Japanese beetles, you name it, they had all enjoyed communion and left the leaves in shreds.

The Malmaisons, the thorny Gertrude Jekylls, the Pink Dawn that had shot so joyously up the side of the old Sunday school building—maybe they would make it, and maybe not. She had looked around for a hose and found one buried in weeds and attached it to the spigot and watered the beds, which made her feel somehow victorious over death and destruction.

Soon after his Ireland trip, Father Tim had dropped in to shop her annual S for September Sale, which gave fifteen percent off all titles beginning with
S
.

She had looked up from Pat Conroy’s memoir of his reading life, and there he was, smiling in that boyish way that had caused her to
have such a crush on him before she met Scott Murphy and went head over heels for the first time in her life.

‘No fair buying by author name, as I recall.’

‘No, Father, sorry. Just titles.’ She knew he knew that, and was only teasing. ‘What author?’

‘Strindberg.’

‘Strindberg! I can’t imagine you reading Strindberg.’

He laughed. ‘Just thought I’d see if you were paying attention. I believe it was Strindberg who wrote, “No matter how far we travel, the memories will follow in the baggage car.” Not bad, you must admit.’

‘And there’s what he said,’ she countered, ‘about people who keep dogs. He called them cowards who don’t have the guts to bite people themselves.’

How good it was to laugh with him. He was the only customer she knew who could quote Strindberg, who had read Steinbeck’s complete works, and was an expert on Wordsworth, Cowper, and even the poor deranged plowboy poet, John Clare.

With all his fondness for the old and familiar, he was also willing to take a chance on authors he’d never read—not often willing, of course, but she had introduced him to Gabriel García Márquez and he had thanked her, and gone on to Jorge Luis Borges. She remembered him standing by the shelf with the Borges volumes and copying something in a little notebook he carried. He had shown it to her when he checked out.

All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art. JL Borges

‘Biblical,’ he had said, smiling.

She couldn’t imagine that he’d known misfortune or
embarrassment or humiliation, but her notion of clerics was at that time unrealistic at best. She was blinded by the pomp of the office, and could scarcely comprehend the humanity of those ordained to it until she came to know Father Tim. It had been oddly inconvenient to see, if only so far as literary tastes allow, into the day-to-day life of a religious—more inconvenient than she had then cared to undertake, for as Mr. Emerson had pointed out, changing one’s mind was nothing if not vexing. Though she was once content to view the cleric as a blurred figure in the background of a photo, knowing Father Tim had brought such imagery into sharp and agreeable focus.

It was he who had hired Scott as chaplain of Hope House, and he who had performed their wedding ceremony at a lovely old mountain church with the smell of beeswax and apples, and a view to Tennessee. He had even baked a ham for their reception.

Above all, he and Cynthia had been two of her biggest supporters when, scared out of her wits and not knowing how she could possibly make it, she bought the bookstore and moved upstairs and hung curtains at the windows and came to believe in God.

Margaret Ann leaped onto the bench at the window and settled into a patch of sunlight.

She reached to stroke her yellow cat, and there it was—the warmth of her blood trickling down as if from a tap. It had been like this for days. She had missed two appointments with Dr. Wilson because a fill-in for the store was hard to find and the money for a fill-in harder still. For some reason she couldn’t comprehend, she had declined to talk about the baby with anyone except Scott and Louise and Dr. Wilson—it seemed natural to keep such news private and close until it was made obvious. Hoping to please, Scott had agreed. If her sister still lived in Mitford, she would tell her about the bleeding, but Louise was in Charleston, in a stressful job, and she wouldn’t wish to alarm her.

And why hadn’t she told Scott about the bleeding, or called the
doctor’s office to make an appointment? She was nearly four months, and surely this was not the time for secrets. What was she waiting for?

She pressed her forehead against the cool pane of the window. She was waiting to grow out of the terrible fear of too much happiness, or too much sorrow.

•   •   •

T
HEY
HAD
PUT
AWAY
four bags of provender, made a hasty lunch, and checked on Barnabas, then lay on the study sofa—his head to the south, hers to the north.

They woke at three, disbelieving.

‘You see,’ he said, ‘jet lag doesn’t disappear overnight.’

‘Let’s call Irene,’ she said.

Irene Schmirene, who, he’d bet anything, had come home from her own shopping expedition and was putting away her own provender, or possibly waking up from a nap . . .

No answer at the McGraws’.

‘What does her phone message say?’ he asked.

‘The usual. You’ve reached the McGraw residence, no one can come to the phone right now, please leave a message.’