Tiger Lillie (18 page)

“No, we met looking over the pulsing artery of a city night.”

See what I mean?

“So what are you saying exactly, Gordon?”

“I’m saying I think this cup of tea is nice, but I’d like to take you to dinner. On a date. Right now.”

Well. “Where to?” I stand right to my feet before he can change his mind.

“How about Mick O’Shea’s? Reminds me of Ireland.”

“And you’ll tell me more about this Mildred LaRue?”

“I sure will. In fact, she’ll be up for Stan’s wedding. She’s the soloist. And she and her band will play for the reception.”

I make a mental note. One less thing to plan for. Good.

I think maybe he’ll take my hand as we cross Charles Street. But he doesn’t. He only looks me in the eyes as we talk, really looks at me, and he doesn’t glance away even when I begin speaking about something as insignificant and boring as what it was like to grow up the daughter of a priest and a woman armed and dangerous with a four-pack of Sharpies.

Hardly sex, drugs, and rock-‘n’-roll.

He asks me if I am a virgin, just comes right out and asks, and I tell him I am but ask why he needs to know.

“I don’t deserve this, but you’re the one,” he says.

“I am?” I’m not sure what he means.

“Yes. Mildred LaRue told me not long ago something special might happen.”

“How did she know?”

“She dreams.”

“How does she know which dreams mean something?”

“She doesn’t. She just tells me what they are, and sometimes they come back to me, like right now.”

“You barely know me.”

“Oh, that’s only what you think, love. I’m an artist. I see more than you could ever believe.”

“But how do you know I’m the one?”

“She said she saw me pluck a white lily and hold it to my breast.”

I should be creeped out, really freaking here, but I’m not. I’m ready for this. So ready. I feel at peace when I’m with him.

Teddy’s dead, isn’t he? And if he’s not, he’s dead to me. He has to be.

Cristoff calls me on my cell phone around ten p.m. Yes, I have succumbed to technological peer pressure. “Well?”

“I’m on my way home. Don’t worry.”

“Well, of course I’m worried. I expected you home hours ago.”

I ride past the Inner Harbor, thinking how few people from Baltimore really go there without someone from out of town in tow. “Yes. Well, he wanted to talk some more.”

“Any ideas?”

“Well, he already has a soloist and music. A jazz band called The Star Spangled Jammers.”

“Oooh, girlfriend. A jazz band on the barge. How WWII. Hey, maybe that could be the overall theme. In fact, there’s that submarine docked down there, the…the…”

“The Torsk.”

“Yepper, that’s it. Maybe we can do hors d’oeuvres on the top deck before we go around to the pier.”

“Definitely photographs there. I’ll talk with Gordon. Maybe he’ll like that theme.”

“We could hire some old fighter pilots to fly planes overhead. Oh! Maybe even skywrite their names and a heart…with an arrow going through!”

Oh, Cristoff, you lovable thing you.

“There’s something I need to tell you when I get home, honey. It’s important.”

“Sounds serious. Am I in trouble?”

“No. You know how much I love you. Too much for you to be in trouble.”

“That’s what I thought, baby doll.”

We ring off. I chew on a fingernail as I head down Eastern Avenue through Little Italy. I have to tell him I’m different. I’m changed. That he was right. This couldn’t last forever.

The overly bright smile on Cristoff’s face forces my gaze somewhere else. Onto Grandma Erzsèbet’s Nightmare to be exact, blooms long gone. “Sweetie, that’s wonderful news! I could tell there was chemistry between the two of you.”

His face breaks down, crumbling like an avalanche, and I hold him as he cries. A few minutes later he says, “I have a confession. I’ve prayed for years that I would change, that I could feel like that for you. Ever since I met you I’ve been praying that prayer.” He pulls away and takes my hands.

“We love each other with a perfect kind of love, Gilbert. You’ll always be my best friend.”

Later as we make milk shakes in my kitchen, Cristoff says, “I’m sorry to lose you.”

“You haven’t lost me, honey.”

He hefts himself onto the counter. “Oh, I have.” He puffs one of those very gay sighs. “Even though I’ve never loved you
that way
, I’ve always needed you. I’ve always known you loved me more than anyone else in the world loves me.”

“That won’t change, I promise.”

He brightens a moment. “Yeah, well, it’s not like you haven’t gone on dates before, right? I mean, who knows, we may still be here on Foster Avenue next year!”

I turn back to the blender and drop in a cut-up banana and a handful of raspberries. He and I both know, somehow, because we love each other, that this isn’t like all those other times. This is different, vastly different.

14

Lillie

I still love paprika. You’d think I’d be sick of it by now, but I’m not. Daddy says it’s a genetic thing. He must be right.

I rip off a hunk of Mom’s homemade bread and stroke it through the paprikash gravy. Sometimes you’re just happy to be alive.

Tacy sits across from us, smiling as usual, Hannah Grace sleeping in her arms, the tiny thing. So frail and sweet. I just want to eat that baby up.

I swallow the last bite of bread. “Well, you’ve sure lost your baby weight, Tace.”

She didn’t eat a thing. Apparently Rawlins has something against pork now, and she said she ate before she came over. “Yeah. It’s nursing. Takes the weight right off, thank heavens.”

“Still, you look thinner than ever.”

Tacy says nothing. Man, I wish I could put my finger on her these days. She’s lost to us, somehow having turned into a breeze. That’s as much as I can say.

Hannah coughs again. “What is with that cough, Tace?”

Mom nods as she clears the dirty plates. “I was wondering about that myself. She’s so young to have that deep of a cough.” Her brows knit. I can feel mine do the same.

Tacy shifts in her seat. “She’s fine. Really.”

Daddy asks, “Have you taken her to the doctor?”

“Oh no! We don’t believe in doctors!”

“Since when?” I ask.

“Since she was born at home so successfully. Rawlins is convinced God will provide all of our health needs, that it may simply be a lack of faith that causes physical ailments.”

Daddy folds his hands across his stomach. “Your church change to Christian Scientist?”

“Oh, Dad, you know we don’t believe in denominationalism.”

Denominationalism.

“Tace—”

“Don’t say anything, Lillie. We’re all just fine. See, look at her now. See how well she sleeps? That’s what she really needs.”

“I still don’t like the sound of it.” Why am I pushing so hard?

Mom butts in. “Let’s go into the family room and watch
Match Game
reruns. Remember how we all loved to watch that show when you were little?”

Oh, Mother.

Tacy shoots to her feet like an exploding firework. “I love that Brett Somers!” she practically screams. “She’s just so funny!”

I catch Mom’s expression and am relieved it is the mirror image of my own.

Tacy leaves as soon as the game show is over. In fact, she takes one look at her watch and flies out the door with Hannah in her arms with nothing more than a “Bye!” yelled over her shoulder.

Tacy

The day Rawlins found out I had dinner at Mom and Dad’s without asking him, he told me I must never leave the house without him. So a man named Buck began walking the grounds, watching every move I made. He was stoic. A walking cardboard person whose jacket flapped in the wind like a bird’s wings. He was my raven who never left the ledge above my chamber door.

I found refuge in the Psalms, unable to write a word myself anymore. So, in the library, behind the couch, the moonlight ribboned across my page. Rawlins slept so lightly, I could only pray that he wouldn’t find me. The turning of the onion skin pages sounded like thunder. But, oh dear Jesus, I would pray, do not take this from me. Hide me here between the pages. Hide me in Your love. Send Your Spirit to me and make me whole again. Let our love unite us in grace and truth. Let the fire of Your mercy rain down upon me. Purify me. Burn me to nothing, so that in You I will find all.

Lillie

We sit in a row in the front pew. Mom, me, Gordon, Cristoff, Peach, and Gert. We didn’t mention Tacy’s absence. In the pew behind us, Pleasance and her two boys sing my father’s favorite hymn, “Of the Father’s Love Begotten.” How she knows that hymn is beyond me. I doubt many A.M.E. churches sing that song with its odd meter, its Gregorian feel. But her voice rings out in the tiny chapel where I busted open my knee for the first time, where I learned to sing a husky alto in the choir, where I fell asleep during the sermon every Sunday until I was eight, head in my mothers lap.

I can hardly believe it’s Daddy’s last sermon here at Saint Stephen’s. Or should I say Father Carl, the boy who everyone thought “should have” died all those years ago.

He approaches the pulpit, led by no one. No need. If there’s a path my father can see without his eyes, it’s this approach. He prays silently. I know this because I asked years ago. He asks God to make his words God’s own. God assures him that even if only one heart is touched, if only one mind is set on a more glorious course, it is worth all those hours of preparation.

My father has always believed the best of humankind. He enjoys such hope for all, such potential. And he realized years ago that God desires a better path for all men. That He wants to help us, to pick up our slithering, floundering souls and guide them back to the time and place when we were hatched, surely not perfect, but innocent enough to trust again.

The sanctuary is packed, current parishioners and members from years gone by gathered to hear my dad one last time.

Cristoff leans forward, around Gordon. “It’s okay to cry, sweetie.”

I nod. But I don’t feel like crying. I feel like rejoicing. I feel like standing up, rotating my fist, and doing the “Woof-woof!” Yes, this was a calling well done.
Well done.
My father lived for his flock and was content to minister to a few, knowing that if He was faithful to God in the small things, those few would venture out and do the hard work of the kingdom.

He was right.

I look around at many of my own compadres of the church playground. Boys and girls who sat about Mrs. Reisenwebber’s Sunday-school table and heard stories of David and Goliath and the burning bush. Joey’s a pediatrician. Linda’s an advocate for children. Connie goes to Africa every summer with a group of optometrists to give people glasses. Becka homeschools her four kids and sits in Mrs. Reisenwebber’s chair now.

Thanks to God and His servant, Daddy.

He preaches and all I hear are these words: Love God, for He loves you. Be merciful, as God has been merciful to you. Extend grace to all, as God extended grace to you when His Son died on the cross. Rise above it all, as Christ arose on the third day, leaving death behind forever. Live. Obey. Love. Love deeply and forever.

Now I am crying.

Tomorrow we will begin packing their things.

They offer Daddy a chair, but he refuses to sit down as the flock files slowly by. We all recognize an era in our lives has ended and we are sad, yet expectant, knowing that old adage is true: When one door closes another opens. That’s what Dad’s been saying for the past few days.

“I’ll have time to write, Lillie. In fact, I might start writing a novel.”

“Wow, Dad. Something literary?”

“No. Crime.”

Well, there you go.

“I need to start pulling in a little money, Lil. My devotionals don’t bring in nearly enough. Your mother and I won’t want to rely on your good graces forever. We’ll need long-term care insurance, which is quite expensive, and I’d hate for her to go back to work without wanting to. Yes, I believe crime novels sell well. Or suspense. I just read Dean Koontz for the first time, you know. Terrific.”

But there he stands now, knowing people by their scent, their feel, their sounds. Mrs. Halsey and her cellophane-covered Bible crackling away. Bill Goins’s arthritis cream. The short, pillowy form of Betsy Freitag and her L’Air du Temps. He gives them his trademark, life-giving hugs, and a thought comes to me: I won’t have to share him anymore.

Well, now.

This is good news.

15

Lillie

I’m about to see Gordon’s home for the first time. We’ve dated awhile now, lots of dinners at Mick O’Sheas, slow walks wherever, and movies and plays. It’s fun dating an artsy guy because something of interest is always going on. And while I, as has been thoroughly established, am not artsy, I love the scene and appreciate the minds from which such life springs, thanks to Daddy, really, and my love of literature. I’m leading the life I always thought Tacy would.

So here we ride up the long, cobblestone drive of his 1920s estate. I can’t imagine what he paid for this property. This area here on the water in Anne Arundel County is some of the priciest in Maryland. If I’d known he had this property, I’d have never invited him in for milk shakes at Grandma Erzsèbet’s row house last week.

So far, the landscaping is overgrown, but it is almost December and spring will yield improvement, he quickly states, apologizing.

Oh yes, dahling, I’m thoroughly offended.

“Like you even need to apologize for this. My gosh, it’s lovely and I haven’t even seen the house.”

“I’m going to try and keep a lot of the greenery that’s already here. You know, when people tear down everything and start from scratch, you lose that settled feel. You lose the anchorage.”

Well, yeah. Like I would have even thought of that.

“Lots of azaleas and forsythia,” I say. At least I recognize
those
bushes. “Will be a pretty spring here.”

“Beautiful. And look at all the fruit trees over to your left. There’s even an apple orchard just beyond that rise. And a grape arbor. Concord grapes, they say.”

I love Concord grapes, the way you pinch them between finger and thumb and pop the innards into your mouth. “So, do you eat the seeds, too? Or separate them out with your tongue?”

“I eat the seeds,” he says.

Oh well. We can’t be exactly the same.

He tells me he’s on twenty acres, at least ten wooded, and has plans to place a few cabins back there for friends needing to retreat, to restore their creative juices.

“I want this place to thrive with life, Lillie.”

No doubt it will.

We round a bend and there it stands, a magnificent brick home, with wings of Palladian windows on either side of the entry. A sturdy slate roof hovers atop the home. It all rather reminds me of the homes you see in movies that take place in the Hollywood of yore, the stately home of the producer or the studio head. I picture Robert Redford in
The Way We Were
, playing tennis with the pretty dark-haired girl and Barbra Streisand at a house much like this one. I remember thinking it was only a matter of time before Barbra’s character and her communism were out the door and Robert would end up in the arms of the pretty, Gentile woman.

I turn to him. “There’s got to be a classical-looking pool out back.”

“Naturally. And it overlooks the water. But it needs a lot of work. Been neglected for years. Luckily for me, it’s something I can hire out. I can’t do it myself.”

This has mystified me. “Why do you insist on doing so much of the work yourself, Gordon? You can surely afford to hire workmen to carry out your vision, can’t you?”

“Oh yeah, naturally. But, well, I’ve never owned my own home before. I’ve always lived in apartments.”

“Always? Even when you were little?”

“We lived over the pub, remember?”

I nod.

“So it’s important for me that this be mine, really mine.” He brakes to a stop. “Let’s go in the front door so you can get the full impact. Such that it is at present.”

I wait as he circles around the car and lets me out. Oh, wow! The first time I let myself out of his car he was thoroughly insulted, which was thoroughly cool. “That’s my job, Lillie,” he said. “Not because you can’t, but because you shouldn’t have to.”

The slate path leading to the double doorway is bunched up like a pleated skirt. Errant threads of yellow grass poke up between the slabs.

“Mind the path, sweetheart. I almost killed myself the day the agent showed me this place.”

“Did you trip?”

“Ha! Went down face first. I’d forgotten how embarrassed a guy can feel!”

Another reason to love him even more. Gosh, I’m a sentimental fool over this man.

He opens the door. “Ready?”

“Show me the way.”

“All right then. Here we go.” And he swings the door in a sweeping arc. “My lady…”

I step inside. Oh, my goodness! A double staircase curlicues symmetrically up to the gallery of the second floor. “Oh, Gordon!”

“Magnificent, isn’t it?”

“More than that.”

“Now it still needs a lot of work, but I’m trusting you to visualize things as we go.”

I’ll give it my best shot. “Tell me your plans.”

“I will.”

Room upon room upon room. Eleven bedrooms in all. Servants’ quarters. And all sorts of “specialty rooms.” Music room, day room, sunroom, receiving room, den, and what promises to be a fabulous kitchen.

“The woodwork is wonderful, Gordon. I can’t believe the craftsmanship here.”

“Oh yeah. I don’t think I could settle down in anything else. There’s something so noble about people creating such beauty with their hands.”

“Like you,” I say.

He smiles but continues on. “I’ve only just started, as you can see. But what you can’t see has already been finished. New wiring and plumbing, central air, all those hidden, modern conveniences. They did that work before I moved in.”

“I love it.”

“I thought you might.”

“How about Stan? Where did he fall?”

He points to the wall surrounding the front doors. “Right there. We were painting the foyer. By the way, do you like the color? Stan thought it might be a bit much, but Ursula loved it.”

It’s caramel. Like the dress Pleasance made for me. “I love it too.”

“The front rooms here will be neutral but vibrant, golds and warm greens, but wait until the back rooms of the house are complete. I’m going to exhaust every color of the rainbow in this place.”

“Like in your artwork.”

He smiles broadly. “You got it, love.”

“What about your studio? Where is that?”

“Up in the attic.”

I shouldn’t ask this, but I do. I should respect his privacy, but I can’t. “Can I see it?” It’s a mess.

“Probably why it’s in the attic, right?”

He points toward the steps. “Right. Lets go up then,”

Daddy always says that women are judged by who they are and men are judged by what they do. But with Gordon, I’d say both apply.

The attic is unfinished and his easel rests near a large window on the side of the house. Dormers provide a great deal more illumination, and track lighting tacked to the rafters supply the rest. It’s bright and nourishing. One portion of floor supports an extremely large canvas, much too big for the easel. It is blank. “What’s that going to be, Gordon?”

“Don’t know yet. Have to live with the white space for a while before I know what happens next.”

“What do you mean ‘what happens’?”

He walks around the canvas. “Each space cries out for its own purpose, Lillie. I let it be, as is, for a while, and let it speak its mind.”

“You don’t decide?”

“Oh, definitely not. I’m just here to serve the work.”

Is he the coolest guy in the world or what?

A crew of workmen found a skeleton buried beneath a condemned home in Canton. They’re clearing half that block for new condominiums, only a few blocks from my home in Highlandtown.

It’s all over the news. I think of Teddy and wonder, “Could he have really been taken all the way down to the city and disposed of?”

Nah. It isn’t him. Is it? It couldn’t be.

“Right over there, Gordon, take that little lane.”

He turns his ancient International to the left and I see Grandma’s polished tombstone. I loved that woman though we rarely shared words. But I felt her touch and knew she loved me, much more than words could have said. Nobody coddled a stubbed toe better than Grandma. And for a child with perpetually skinned knees, “Grandma” meant soothing love and tender compassion. You’d think, after all she endured, the small hurts would mean little. I don’t think about it all much because it aches still, after these five or so years. But for the first time desolation stands at bay, just over Gordon’s left shoulder.

A light snow fell last night, frosting up the Christmas lights, icing the shrubbery. I am in love and have been for two entire months. Better than lights and tinsel. Tomorrow I’m flying with Gordon to England to meet the rest of the Remington boys and Gordon’s drunk (but cheerful, he assures me) mother, Roberta. His dad skipped out on Roberta halfway during her pregnancy with Gordon. He grew up in their pub, The Rowdy Boar, suckling Guinness and when old enough, wiping down the bar, polishing the glasses. Before Hale rescued him.

Hale.

The grass pokes through the powder, and once again no one bothered to weed-whack around the headstone before mowing season ended. “That makes me mad,” I say.

He stops the car and turns off the engine. “I know.”

“Do you even know what I’m talking about?”

“The grass, right?”

“Yeah.”

“No respect for the dead.”

“Exactly.”

It’s a sad little cemetery.

“Do you want me to wait here?”

“Do you mind?”

“Of course not.”

So Gordon opens my door and I walk through the light snow and look down at the tombstone. All that bravery and here she lies. How inappropriate. If I thought for a minute her spirit was dead, that she wasn’t living on in the way God planned, I think I’d hop in the coffin with her.

I hate death. I mean that. When people die we always act like it’s so natural. “It happens to us all.”

But it wasn’t supposed to. We were supposed to inhabit a beautiful garden and walk with God in the cool of the evening. We were supposed to know no death. To live forever. Death seems wrong because it is wrong.

Yet when a life is well-lived, like Grandma Erzsèbet’s, a life of home-cooked meals, close hugs, cleaning out ears with a bobby pin, rolling up shiny, slick young hair in foam curlers, birthday cards with ten spots tucked inside, and games of Candyland, well, how can you end up doing anything but rejoicing?

For minutes I stand in the cold and I trace the crisp letters with my index finger, but soon my mind fills with daily moss. I lose my focus.

I turn away, but I don’t return to the truck. I simply walk down the cemetery lane, one woman amid the company of the dead.

I love the wind. The cold. The song of the winter birds. The way the late-morning sun melts the snow on the trees, small clods tumbling to the ground.

Live. Obey. Love deeply and forever.

Grandma knew how to do that. And I am her seed.

A small bench rests beneath the skeleton of a large maple tree, and I sit and I pray and my heart is large, pulsing with thankfulness. I close my eyes and commune and rejoice and remember from whence I came.

When I open them, I stand to my feet and head back toward Gordon and his big old truck. He is on his knees by Grandma’s tombstone, his shoulders shifting, arms shoving.

“What are you doing?” I cry out.

But he doesn’t hear me. And when he stands to his feet I notice a pair of rusty old grass clippers hanging in his hand.

So this is what it’s like when deep meets forever.

He walks toward me, smiling a little sheepishly. “I hope you don’t mind, but I took the liberty to take care of things a bit. I keep my gardening things in the truck. Makes it easier to care for my grounds.”

God, You know I love this man.