The Lavender Hour (31 page)

“Mama?” I said.

“Yes, Jess.”

“I'm glad you married Jan.”

She turned to me, surprised. “You are?”

“I am,” I said. “Totally.” And I was. It had been foolish to feel shame about something as incidental as the difference in their ages, to fear that Jan was using her. I understood now that, like everyone else, they only wanted love. I understood that love was a gift, whenever and however it came.

“Thank you, Jessie. You don't know how happy it makes me to
hear you say that.” She was poking at the sand with the walking stick, flicking aside shells and small pieces of driftwood. Then she nudged a gelatinous mass—a small jellyfish, I thought. It adhered to the end of the stick, and we both realized at the same time that she had hooked a condom.

“Gross,” I said, embarrassed for her.

She surprised me by laughing and deftly dislodged it with the toe of her shoe. “We saw those on the beach all the time in the Azores. The place is awash with them. I think the national pastime is fucking.”

I had never heard her use that word.

“Tell me what he was like,” she said suddenly.

“Who?”

“Luke. Tell me about him.”

Something shifted in my chest, the scrape of bone on bone.

“You would have liked him.” Five words. All I could manage.

“Did you love him?”

I thought about Paige's testimony. Obsessed. Was that what she was thinking?

“Yes.” Sorrow pressed inside. I made a small noise. It circled, orbiting my grief.

She turned and opened her arms, held me. “I'm so sorry, Jess.”

“I can't talk about it.” The words were muffled against her shoulder.

“It's all right, baby. It's all right.”

F
INALLY
I slipped from the embrace, but when we resumed walking, I slid my hand back into hers. “Thank you, Mama. For coming, I mean. I'm glad you're here.”

“Me, too.”

“I'm sorry I didn't call you and tell you. I should have.”

“Shhh, baby. It's all right.”

A sandpiper skittered along in front of us, and we watched him for a minute.

“After Daddy died,” I said, “how did you go on?” This was as close as I could come to talking about Luke.

She sighed. “Oh, Jess, that was such a long time ago.”

“Please, Mama. I need to know.”

“Well, I was pretty busy. Taking care of the house and you and Ashley was about all I could manage.”

“Did you miss him?”

“Terribly. At first, I didn't think I would be able to stand it. The nights—alone in the bed—were bad. Sometimes I had to sleep on the couch.”

I remembered the mornings when Ashley and I would wake to find her on the living room sofa. We'd think she'd fallen asleep watching television. It never occurred to us it had anything to do with a bed grown too big for one.

“And evenings when you girls were out or asleep, the loneliness was like an illness. There was no one to talk to. Those days felt like a long, endless tunnel,” she continued. “And just when I'd think I was going to reach the end, something would take me by surprise. A letter would arrive addressed to him, and just the sight of his name on the envelope would level me. Or I'd see something—a rainbow, the first bulbs in spring, it could be anything—and I'd think, Oh, I must tell Lowell. Then, of course, I'd remember, and the pain would be as raw as in the beginning. It was a long, long time before I could bring myself to the task of tending to his clothes. I kept thinking he would need them when he came back.”

“Why didn't you ever tell us?”

“It was mine to deal with. Not your burden.”

But it was my burden, I wanted to say. It weighted down my days, left a hole no one could fill. “We never talked about the important things.”

“No. I guess we didn't.”

“I won't be able to forget him, Mama.” I meant Luke.

“Oh, you will. The mind protects us. We would drown in memories if it didn't.”

I pictured Luke, remembered lying next to him, his last kiss. My belly softened and I felt desire, as swift and sharp as it was unexpected. I remembered, too, my daddy, slumped over the steering wheel, the picture as clear as if I'd seen it yesterday. “Some things you don't forget,” I said.

“I'm not sure that's true,” she said. “You know, the memory of pain is one of the first things we let go of.”

I had heard this before. “I don't believe it,” I said.

“It's true. Our brains are wired to release painful memories. Life would be intolerable if it didn't. Take childbirth. You'd be surprised how quickly you forget the pain of giving birth.” Lily gave a quick laugh. “And it's a good thing, too. If that memory didn't recede, most women wouldn't have more than one child. I think that eventually, when we try to recall suffering, pain is the word we use for the experience, not the memory itself.”

And then she said something that I wasn't to understand until much later. “People think memories are all we have, Jessie, but what we forget is just as important as what we remember.”

“I—”

“Oh, Jess, look,” she said.

The sun was near the horizon, painting it with bands of rose beneath the darkening sky and scattered banks of clouds. We both stopped.

“It's because of the clouds, you know, the color,” she said.

I did know, but I let her continue.

“The colors of the sunset are beautiful because the clouds give the sun's rays something to reflect off of. We saw some of the most spectacular sunsets when we were at sea. Like nothing I'd ever seen before. Oh, I wish you could have been with us.”

“He makes you happy,” I said.

“More than happy,” she said. “He makes me want to live.”

The sun was sinking into the horizon. “We should probably turn back,” I said, but we stayed, staring.

“The lavender hour,” she said.

“What?”

“That's what your grandma used to call this time of evening.”

“It does look sort of violet,” I said. “And rose.”

“She didn't mean the color,” Lily said. “She meant because the day is dying. Your grandma said most people think black is the color of death, but its true color is lavender.”

I thought instantly of Luke's house, the lavender door.

“You know, when your father died, I thought I was in the lavender hour, that my life had ended, too. Then I learned that grief and loss are just one note in the song of life.”

“You're turning into a romantic,” I said, surprised at the edge in my voice.

“I always was,” she said.

I was suddenly annoyed; the connection with Lily—tentative after all—was severed. My mama was still the old pre-Jan Lily, putting a pretty face on the facts, as she had tried to teach her daughters to do, romanticizing things, transforming even death into a Technicolor movie.

“We'd better get back,” I said abruptly. We returned to the house in silence, just as we had started out.

I
N THE MORNING,
Nelson called more witnesses. Luke's doctor; Ginny Reiser, the hospice nurse. Jim Robbins. All reinforced the picture of Luke as a man who was dying, but who had said nothing about intending to end his life. They gave a picture of a man still hungry to live fully in the time he had left. On cross, Gage got the doctor to say that the dosage for Luke's medication had recently been increased, that his pain had intensified, that body functions had begun to break down, that the quality of his life had diminished dramatically. Paige, sitting next to Nona, wept during the testimonies. This is a disaster, I thought. “Smile,” Gage whispered to me. “Don't look so glum.” I did my best.

Faye was the last witness Nelson called to testify. She approached the stand with grace, met my eye across the courtroom, and smiled.

“Please tell the jury your name,” Nelson began.

“Faye Wilson, Wilson.”

“And where do you reside?”

“In Harwich Port.”

“What is your occupation?”

“I am the hospice volunteer coordinator for the Bayberry Hospice of Cape Cod.” She spoke distinctly. Inspiring trust is her gift, I thought.

“What does your job entail?”

“I select candidates to work as volunteers. I oversee their training. I work with them when they are on a case.”

“Please tell the jury about the training.”

Faye turned toward the jurors, told them about the weeks during which the volunteers met, the many aspects of the training.

“And during their training, are the volunteers given set rules that they must follow?” Nelson asked.

“Not rules,” Faye said, smiling slightly. “Guidelines.”

“Please tell the jury what these guidelines are.”

“Mostly common sense,” Faye said. Again she faced the jury. “Volunteers are there primarily to help the client and the family. What they do varies depending on the individual situations. Sometimes they play cards or read books, run errands. Sometimes they simply provide a listening ear.”

“Mrs. Wilson, are volunteers allowed to give medications?”

“They are not supposed to.”

“So during their training, they are specifically told not to administer drugs to the clients? Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“And they understand this.”

“I would think so. Yes.”

“Is it usual for volunteers to spend the nights with their patients?”

“Not usual, no.”

“Really? In fact, they are specifically told not to, isn't that right?”

“There's no rule forbidding it.”

“But you discourage it.”

“We don't encourage it.”

“Were you aware that the defendant stayed overnight with Luke Ryder?”

“Yes.”

“In fact, didn't the defendant spend the night there on several occasions?”

“I believe she stayed with Luke twice. Once when there was a family emergency. His mother had been taken to the hospital. Jessie stayed there so Luke wouldn't be alone.”

I silently thanked Faye for calling me by name, for refusing the term the defendant.

“Did she notify you to tell you she was staying there?” Nelson said.

“No.”

“If she had, what would you have said?”

Gage stood. “Calls for speculation.”

Before Savage could rule, Nelson changed the phrasing. “In your position as hospice coordinator, if a volunteer phoned to tell you that she was staying overnight at a patient's home because of an emergency, what would you tell that volunteer?”

Faye paused. “I would suggest that she call a hospice nurse to come in.”

“To the best of your knowledge, did the defendant even attempt to call a nurse to stay with Luke when his mother went to the hospital?”

“Not to my knowledge, no.”

“Now, Mrs. Wilson, in your role as coordinator, do you frequently have conversations with the volunteers about their patients?”

“Yes. We have meetings with the team during which we discuss the case.”

“And during these meetings, did the defendant ever express concern about Luke Ryder's state of mind or convey to you that he was becoming suicidal or that he had mentioned any intention of ending his own life?”

Faye hesitated, looked over at me.

“Mrs. Ryder?”

“No, she did not.”

“She never once mentioned this to you?”

“No.”

“Would it be reasonable to assume that if a patient had expressed such thoughts, a volunteer, out of concern, would share those thoughts with you?”

Faye looked straight at Nelson. “Over the years, I have learned never to assume anything.”

Nelson changed direction. “And were you aware that, during these weeks, the defendant was becoming overly attached to the deceased?”

Faye smiled. “All our volunteers become attached to their clients, Mr. Nelson. In fact, it is nearly inevitable. Their capacity for compassion is what draws them to this work and makes them so well suited for it.”

Bless you, I thought. I dared a look at the jury. Several members nodded as Faye spoke. I could see that they liked her.

“Wasn't it clear to you that she had come to care about Luke Ryder?”

“Yes,” Faye said. “That is what made her so valuable. You know, the founder of hospice said that hospice workers were 'missing an outer layer of skin,' meaning that they were especially compassionate. Jessie was unusually compassionate.”

“Let me rephrase,” Nelson said. “During those weeks prior to his death, did you have any indication that the defendant was becoming obsessed with Luke Ryder?”

Even before Gage got to his feet, Nelson withdrew the question.

“Thank you. No further questions at this time.”

“M
RS.
W
ILSON,
” Gage began, “what kind of volunteer would you say Jessie was?”

Faye smiled. “She was conscientious. Dependable. Thoughtful.”

“In what way?”

“I know she brought flowers to Nona Ryder. Gave up extra time when Nona called and asked her to come over.”

“Did you at any time worry about her being overly involved?”

“No. There was no sign of that.”

“Not even when she bent a guideline and stayed overnight at her patient's home?”

Faye turned to me, smiled. “I'm sure Jessie's only intention was to provide help and relief for the family during an emergency.”

“Mrs. Wilson, how long have you served in your present job?”

“I have been the volunteer coordinator for fifteen years.”

“In that time, how many volunteers have you assigned?”

“I'm not certain.”

“More than a hundred?”

“Yes, I would say so.”

“So it is fair to say you have extensive experience working with volunteers?”

“Yes.”

“Has there ever been an occasion when you have had to remove a volunteer from a case?”

“Yes.”

“Please tell the jury why.”

“In one particular incident, a volunteer asked to be relieved because the client was a chain-smoker and she couldn't stand the smoke. And another time, it became apparent that the work had become too heavy a burden for the volunteer, who had developed his own health problems.”

“Did you ever have any concerns that Jessie was anything but a dedicated volunteer?”

“No.”

“At any time did you think it might be in her best interests or those of Luke Ryder or his family to remove her from the case?”