Orchids and Stone (2 page)

At her father’s graveside service, Daphne swayed between confusion and anger. A black wrought iron fence separated them from the consecrated ground where people who died without mortal sins on their souls were buried.

Reginald Mayfield’s coffin was plain. Suzanne’s coffin had been more ornate, the centerpiece in a well-attended church service that twisted into a spectacle and struck then-eleven-year-old Daphne to her core. The boy Suzanne loved had pushed forward, caressing the coffin’s carved wooden edges, weeping in a singsong voice about touching her perfect body and Jesus being broken. The congregants’ collective gasps as that funeral morphed into something darker—as men in suits came forward and pulled the boy from the altar and police were summoned to quell the disturbance—all left young Daphne bewildered and helpless next to her parents’ anguish.

Her mother wept alone now, promising flowers every year. Daphne made no promises. She felt the threads between her and her mother fray. The family had survived ten years since Suzanne’s death, survived the murder case being suspended. Why had her father found a limit to the pain he could endure? Why hadn’t her mother known his sorrow had driven him so deep? Or had she known?

The next week, with her new tools, Daphne learned rudimentary framing. She accepted a new rectangular carpenter’s pencil from Bob and learned where to mark the bottom and top plates. She crowned boards, pulling them lengthwise to see where the lumber was bowed. Phrases like “sixteen inch centers” rolled off her tongue while sweat rolled off her face. She ate four fat sandwiches a day, in addition to a huge breakfast and a heaping dinner. Following time on the framing crew, a different guy took her on. He said he ran the drywalling crew.

She was pleased to discover that drywallers also had to load a house before they could work, carrying in the drywall to be hung on the interior. The special thing about loading drywall was: the loaders ran.

Instead of walking through the house with one person on each end of a sheet or multiple panels, these workers jogged the material through the building. The physical labor of carrying dozens of heavy, hard-edged slabs of man-made rock wasn’t difficult enough. They improved the exertion factor by adding speed to the equation.

Because of the running, loading drywall was as hard as carrying tar paper or shingles up a ladder. When she asked why drywallers ran while loading, everyone said they ran to save time. But roofers didn’t run bundles up ladders to roofs.

She learned to hang drywall then, gasping for breath, dripping with sweat, turning hard-bodied.

The following week, Bob had her join the siding crew. Siders didn’t run siding from the truck to the framed buildings’ exteriors.

She could see subcontractors working in the more finished six-plexes and noticed floor men didn’t run rolls of carpeting and linoleum inside. She’d seen electricians and the furnace guys wire and duct the buildings. They didn’t run. No, drywallers just made things hard, creating wonderful, cleansing work.

One day Bob asked what job she liked best, and she understood they’d had her try all a laborer could do at the construction site. The journeymen plumbers and electricians were above them. The subcontracted carpet layers and painters were below them. Bob and his crews had seen her work and she’d made the grade.

“Roofing,” Daphne said. “I like being up there.”

He nodded and assigned her to the roofing crew, his pencil hesitating when she added, “But I like loading drywall, too. Happy to help whenever they need someone.”

Learning roofing meant mastering how to use bond breaker between layers, how to hot mop, how to puncture screws through sheet metal, what to conceal and what to reveal as she fit hip roofs, parapets, butterflies, gambrels, gables, façades, and mansards. She got roof legs, feeling secure on the rake of a steep slope, even on bare rafters or trusses, harnessing only when the foreman demanded they rope up.

Her body morphed, dropping sizes in jeans while needing larger shirts. And she had no idea why people bought expensive memberships to gyms when paying work—it paid so handsomely she banked half her checks and started a retirement fund—provided incredible muscles.

When Thea called, having found a job and an apartment and needing a roommate, Daphne left her mother, left the house of memories she’d silenced through days of toil. She cleaned out her half of the bedroom closet and liberated the big box of her sister’s private papers from the top shelf.

Thea howled when Daphne related what she did all day. Her mother adopted an enormous gray cat from the animal shelter but took months to stop staring at Daphne and asking, “What about finishing your last semester of college? What about graduating and getting a good job?”

“I’ve got a good job.”

Daphne joined the roofers’ union but never went to meetings or voted. She paid her dues, roofed, and jumped in with the drywallers when they loaded. She got a lot of strange looks.

No one understood Daphne’s choice.

She’d done it without thinking. But in the succeeding decade—living now
with her boyfriend of four years and (sometimes) his kids—owning a pickup truck, her hands calloused and her body built, Daphne understood her choice.

For her sister.

For her father.

For not knowing, Daphne had sentenced herself to a life of hard labor.

CHAPTER 2

Trapped in Vic’s front seat as he backed out of the driveway, Daphne suffered glares from his kids and pretended not to know. For a Wednesday, she’d have ranked this a decent afternoon, but it fell before the darkest weekend of the year. Everything was relative. While Jed and Josie argued about who would have gotten to sit up front if she weren’t beside their father and Vic burned about returning the kids to his ex early, Daphne debated calling her mother or waiting for the dreaded annual request to keep their unspoken double vigil.

Everybody had a grievance, felt pain, found something hard in a world of rare possibility. She couldn’t fix things for anyone. Saturday’s ten-year anniversary of her father’s death called up more sorrow and confusion and unanswered questions than she wished to bear again.

She rolled her shoulders, relishing the ache of sore muscles. Yesterday, she’d re-shingled a small garage on her own. Roofing—putting the lids on, as the guys at work called it—remained where she made peace and money, where she found pleasure out of pain. Instead of a sad visit with her mother Tuesday afternoon, she’d earned a thousand dollars.

“I forgot my history book,” Josie said, her knees pushing into Daphne’s backrest.

“Hmm?” Vic twisted, alternating his gaze between the road and his daughter. He had just shifted to drive and the car lurched forward.

Then a robin startled from the neighbor’s yew, bounced off the Honda’s plastic grille and flopped twice in the street before falling still. The dead bird’s body stayed in the traffic lane, feathers fluffed as though awaiting a final execution from the next car. Daphne sat wordless, sure she was the only one who noticed the death.

At the front door, with the book retrieved and the kids headed down the brick steps, Daphne cast a long look at Grazie, their decrepit Springer-Golden mix panting on the kitchen floor. Turning her back on her boyfriend’s dog felt like punishment and Daphne trailed the family of three back to the car.

There, she asked Vic, “Mind if I stay?”

She knew he’d like her to come along, but he gave a sympathetic smile and glanced back at the house. “You begging off?”

“Yes.”

“No, I don’t mind.” He kissed her, held the car door open for his son and daughter, then backed over the dead bird as he brought the sedan onto the street.

Daphne knew Vic thought she wanted to ponder the Grazie Decision. She was willing to let him believe this because his assumption made her appear like a better person than someone who wanted to think about the perils of being thirty-one while being with a man whose kids were torn. And she warned herself that expecting the worst weekend of the year to hit her in the face in a few days placed her in a dangerous position to make a life decision.

Forever, that’s how long the battle would go on. She thought of Vic’s habit of thinking problems through by articulating the best- and worst-case scenarios, and she felt no better about her prospects, or the dog’s.

Grazie thumped her tail and slumped back to the floor when Daphne jiggled the leash on its hook by the refrigerator. The dog passed on many walk offers these days, and watching her gait fail when she did agree to an outing was painful. Daphne smoothed Grazie’s fur and went solo, crossing the street to let the Peace Park swallow her.

Being so close to the park was the best thing about Vic’s house. Daphne cut across the outer path and greenbelt, walking the distance to the center fountain, the one that caught any available sun.

Climbing the fountain steps would offer glimpses of green and white ferries churning the Sound, but Daphne didn’t want to catch the city’s sights. She wanted to pretend she wasn’t in a city, wasn’t suspended in sorrow, wasn’t in a worthwhile relationship with a nice man whose divorce from a wicked ex stood to negatively impact Daphne forever.

The park’s center was a good place to pretend. No one else was visible save an elderly woman hurrying across the far path.

If that woman hadn’t ducked behind the near end of a long rosebush, a dose of tranquility might have come easier. The number of street crazies in Seattle seemed to go up every year. Daphne doubled over on the bench, folding her arms against her legs. The stretch to her back tugged as a painful reminder of the masochistic pleasure she took in overwork.

“They’re trying to take me. Goodness sakes.” The old lady’s cry was faint, and Daphne shut her eyes to force the stranger’s craziness away, reconsidering the craziness of her world.

Vic’s kids. Their venomous mother’s self-appointed mission of tormenting Daphne and twisting the kids had no end. And Jed and Josie? They treated Daphne at turns with hostility and their uncommon, heartbreaking, vulnerable goodness. This would be something Daphne lived with at home every Wednesday afternoon and every other weekend, plus any of the kids’ activities Vic and Daphne attended beyond Vic’s allotted times with his children.

“Help. Help me, please! They’re trying to kidnap me. They’re trying to steal all my money.” The cries came straight for Daphne.

She looked up, elbows on her knees. The elderly woman’s hair, thin and bluish-white, stuck out sideways in stiff curls, the top flat. She wore a tan raincoat over a lavender polyester pantsuit, blue loafers, and white bobby socks.

The woman rushed forward to clutch Daphne’s arm. “Please help me.”

Daphne rose from the bench, casting about as the old lady jostled her. “Um . . .” She studied the bony hand on her arm, the liver spots and blue veins.

“They’re trying to rob me. Please, don’t let them.”

“There’s no one else here.”

“They want to steal all my money.”

“Ma’am, I don’t . . .”

“Don’t let them take me,” the older woman begged.

“Them?” With no
them
present, Daphne felt walls build in her mind, the coming decision to separate from other people’s lives.

A black-haired woman in dark clothes appeared beyond dormant rosebushes.

Daphne pressed her lips tight. “Do you live around here?”

The old lady’s hair flapped as she nodded and pointed beyond the distant woman.

“I live right there.” She indicated the dense bank of trees on the east side of the park. “They want to steal my house, too.”

Daphne closed her eyes for a split second of solitude, begging with her silence,
Can’t you see I want to be alone?

The lady peered without flinching. “Do you live nearby?”

“On the other side.” Daphne pointed at thick trees, thinking of Vic’s blue saltbox house on Westpark.

“They’re trying to steal my house.” The old woman cried. “They’re trying to rob me.”

The other woman, in a luxurious black wool coat that would weigh a ton when the rain came, shot a hand up and started hustling toward them but not fast enough to save Daphne from more demented beseeching.

“My name is Minerva Watts. I’m Mrs. John Watts, but my husband’s passed. It’s been fourteen years. What’s your name, dear?”

“Um, Daphne.”

“Mother!” The woman in black charged, her coat opening like a cape.

“I’m not her mother. I don’t know her, Daphne. They’re robbing me.”

Daphne wished someone else were there, wished she were anywhere else. The skies were going to open up and it would blow. Wind on wet skin. The thought made her shiver and zip her lined, fleece jacket.

Shouldn’t the elderly woman have more than a thin raincoat? The skin on the backs of her hands, translucent as onion paper, begged for protection. And she was skinny, Old Lady Skinny. The kind who couldn’t be hugged too hard, lest they break.
Would it be all right
, Daphne wondered,
to give the little old lady a quick hug before they went their separate ways?

The old lady started to say something to Daphne but was drowned under the louder voice of the younger woman. “Mother, stop this.”

The old lady pulled her raincoat tight, huddling her shoulders as though protecting an invisible purse. “I don’t know her. I’m not her mother. She’s robbing me. Please, Daphne, you have to help me.”

“It’s so hard when she’s like this,” the woman in black wool whispered to Daphne in a strained voice, then touched one finger to her temple. “Are your parents . . . healthy?”

Daphne felt her face tighten. Strangers should not accost each other, exchange names, or inquire about one another’s families. That’s how it is, especially in big cities. A stranger should not inquire about her parents, making her think about her father’s death, which made her think of her beautiful, wild sister who would have been forty on Sunday. The woman in black shouldn’t be making a demeaning gesture about her crazy, old mother. And Daphne shouldn’t be bothered by an Alzheimer’s patient wandering in the Peace Park. She shouldn’t be in their world at all, and they shouldn’t be in hers.

“I’m not her mother,” the old woman snapped at Daphne. “She’s trying to steal all my money. Please help me.”

The Northwest’s bipolar weather, offering holes of sunshine minutes earlier, darkened and allowed a few drops of rain. The old woman grabbed at Daphne’s arm. The younger woman blocked the effort and began marching the old lady away with forced cheer in her voice. “It’s time to go now. You have to come with me.”

Daphne sank back to the bench. She couldn’t force Jed and Josie to be more pleasant, to not make snide remarks when Vic wasn’t close enough to hear. To appreciate a dinner Daphne prepared. To enjoy a movie Daphne picked out. To say thank you when Daphne remembered where Josie left her history book.

The old woman shouted over her shoulder to Daphne. “Please help me! Really, I don’t know her.”

What if the old lady were telling the truth? If Daphne had her phone, she could call someone. But who? Who should she call over a sad, crazy-sounding old lady pushing her day further off-kilter? Was this a 911-type call? She’d left her phone charging by the stove, right where Josie had left her schoolbook with the history assignment that was due tomorrow. And if Josie hadn’t forgotten the book, Daphne and Vic might now be through dropping the kids off at Vic’s ex, might have weathered it well. Might be laughing and kissing their way home or pulling up at some corner bakery, ready to share a cappuccino. They might talk. Or they might put off the talking they sorely needed to do.

One robin would be alive.

Daphne looked back across the park toward the house, thinking of Grazie and the Old Dog Decision. Voices carried from beyond the curve on the path to Eastpark.

“Come on, Mother.”

“Someone, help me!”

Daphne wished for a graceful exit.
Come on, Mother.
She’d be saying the same words by the end of the week. She took a few half-hearted steps after them but looked over her shoulder toward the direction she wanted to go. At home, she could take a hot shower alone. Or maybe Vic would be back. He’d said he didn’t mind her not going. He’d be in a good mood. She could see them having a good rest-of-the-day, alone together.

Perhaps five minutes ago, she’d come into the park for peace. No more than ten minutes. A quarter of an hour ago, she’d been in the car with Vic and the kids. The difference a bit of time makes, it floored Daphne. How things change. Her father had said a few minutes was all it took. A bit of effort and everything could change, if only people would make the effort.

“Look, wait a minute,” she called, but not loud enough to make a difference. She half-walked, half-jogged for the last place she’d seen the two women, then continued down the path.

“I’m being kidnapped! They’re going to rob me!” The cries came from the edge of the park. Daphne ran until she could see them again.

They were almost to Eastpark Avenue. A silver boat of a car waited there, a big, late-year American model. The vehicle purred. A stocky man waited in the driver’s seat. Words passed between them, but Daphne couldn’t make them out.

Two teenage boys in Seahawks coats loitered at the curb, not far from the car. The old lady called out to them, making a high-pitched plea Daphne couldn’t hear but could imagine.

“Almost there,” came the high, tense voice of the younger woman.

The old lady begged the boys, on the verge of tears. “Help me, please.”

“Mother, stop it. Just cooperate.” The woman in black kept the old lady moving to the car. The teens paid them no attention. Daphne ran headlong toward the two women as they reached the car.

“I’m not your mother. Leave me alone.” The old lady’s wail was pitiful.

“Look,” Daphne called, “is everything okay here?”

The driver, a man in jeans and a black leather jacket, swung from the driver’s seat, ran around, and opened the car’s right rear door. The old lady balked at the gaping doorway, but the other woman overcame her feeble resistance and both women disappeared into the backseat. The man shut the door, ran around to the driver’s seat, and lurched the transmission as Daphne reached one hand up in a silent request for them to wait, her other palm slipping off the car’s trunk as they pulled away.

If only the old lady hadn’t turned to stare at Daphne through the back window. If only Daphne hadn’t been there to absorb the wistful gaze, as sad as any that old Grazie gave when she sighed and kept her head on the floor instead of rising for her dinner or a walk.

“Do you have a phone?” Daphne asked the kids.

One glared and the other looked away, unfocused eyes keeping him apart from civility. Daphne decided they were the sort of scowlers people crossed the street to avoid. The sort who breathed up more of the city’s wet air than they deserved. They wore ear buds, the wires mingling with stringy hair before disappearing into their long dark coats.

It was penance, Daphne decided. All of this.

For a nonreligious person, she was a big believer in penance. Working through time and debts owed, not quitting—this was an idea that crystallized for her in youngest adulthood.

She should have gone with Vic to take his kids back to their mother.

He said he didn’t mind, so he got points for that. She thought she’d get points because she had been in the car to go with them at first. She just didn’t see it all the way through, didn’t finish doing the uncomfortable part.