The Gypsy Moth Summer, page 12
She decided to let Spencer save her. Take her far from the woman’s fake moans and the men’s animal grunts. Wasn’t that what she’d wanted, she thought, back on the beach as she watched Gerritt slip the rope bracelet over Bitsy’s wrist? BE MINE.
She followed Spencer up the stairs.
10.
Jules
He searched for Leslie, moving past one circle of chatter after another, catching the same three topics he’d heard all night—the caterpillars, the vandal tagging up the island, and Governor Bill Clinton from Arkansas. Pest. Plague. Parasite. The same language used to describe all three.
He filled his plate with red velvet cake, strawberry-rhubarb pie, and a block of coffee cake that was to die for, according to the wine-flushed lady in line at the dessert table. He found Leslie. She was in a circle of women her age (but who could ever tell, he thought, when it came to these women with their private trainers and plastic surgeons). Leslie nibbled on a solitary pastry—bites so small that when she set her plate down, the food seemed intact. One of the things he’d loved about her first was her appetite. She never apologized for it the way other white women did, like it was a sin to feed your body. She’d sit on a packed subway car, stuffed between a Wall Street suit and a Korean grandma, and eat an apple, core and all, spitting the seeds into her hand and tucking them in her pocket—to add them to her tray of seeds drying in the apartment windowsill. A future garden for their someday dream home. Back when they had only dreams and the Marshalls, the Castle, the island, had no place in their fantasies.
Leslie air-kissed one waifish woman after another—mwah, mwah, like a satirical skit on Saturday Night Live, he thought, wishing Leslie was by his side to get the joke. The women were draped in floor-length strappy silk dresses that seemed more like slips meant to be worn underneath a gown. Sheer silver and gold and soft pastels, they matched the desserts. Vanilla cream puffs, ladyfingers dunked in tiramisu, and mint-green petit fours. Even he was fooled by the look of enthused surprise on Leslie’s face. Oh my God, how long has it been? You look absolutely the same, darling—the same! The women had multisyllabic names like the heroines in his mother’s paperback romances. Jacqueline. Genevra. Names that sounded like a million dollars.
He wondered what that heavenly afternoon fuck in the garden had meant. What was its worth? He’d known, since he was a sixteen-year-old messing around with Tammy Roberts in the bathroom at Dalton, that sex was never just sex. And knowing Leslie, that dew-scented romp may have been a reward for his surrender, for moving to the island. Or had it been a threat? Leave this island, baby, and this beauty—the gardens, the castle, and even the queen—will be lost to you.
He decided he wouldn’t move from his spot next to the table spread with trays of brownies and blondies and éclairs oozing whipped cream. What if he lost Leslie in this room filled with women as indistinguishable as the stalks of lillies in his garden? He saw himself, at midnight, rushing from one woman to the next, peering into each face to find his wife’s.
Leslie spotted him and waved. He motioned toward the front door. She nodded enthusiastically, then held up a finger. He knew what that meant. Stuck for at least another hour. This would be the pattern of their lives now. Looking for Leslie. Waiting for Leslie. Praying for Leslie to end the schmoozing she seemed to crave since they’d moved there—and to what end, he still hadn’t figured out.
He was on his third éclair, his stomach objecting, when he spotted the old guy he’d seen earlier in the poodle-print shirt, now topped by a blazer as bright as the cherry-red roses Jules had cut back that morning. And the woman at the old man’s side—well, it was the elegant old lady he’d met on line. The lawn-jockey expert. Their ancient heads bowed together. They were arguing. Thin, wrinkled lips moving fast. He was sure they were talking about him. Whispering. Staring. The old man shook his head, and the lady snapped back, the tendons in her birdlike neck flexing. The old man reached forward, and Jules watched as the man pinched his companion’s arm. The woman flinched, looked around, and rearranged her white shawl. She saw Jules. He looked away. Busied himself with wiping the chocolaty mess from his fingers on a white cloth napkin.
Should he do something? Get Leslie. Or even better, leave. He had called Social Services back in the city once, to report their neighbors, whom he and Leslie had suspected of neglecting their elderly mother. But these people were strangers.
A spasm blocked his throat and he swallowed hard. Wasn’t this exactly what Leslie had chastised him for after his overreaction (her word) at the fair? She’d explained, in what he called her “Zen voice,” that he was allowing his fears to ruin his—and their children’s—chance of a happy life on the island. It was his choice, she’d said. As the mess of food and drink and heavy cream gurgled in his gut, he heard the advice of his long-dead father (anything but Zen) buzzing at his ear like one of those goddamn no-see-um bugs that had been eating him alive since they’d come to the island.
Better to be afraid than dead, son.
The old woman was making her way toward him, her face transformed into a mask of delight.
“You again!” he said. “And so soon. Unfortunately, I’m on my way out. Have to find my wife. We’ve got a new babysitter waiting at home. You know how it is.”
He bowed his head, hoping it made up for his abrupt departure, but the woman stepped right in his path. She smelled like cigarettes and perfume. White Linen. His mother had worn it. He would’ve guessed a rich lady might pick a fancier perfume. Not one anybody could buy off a drugstore shelf.
“Oh, she’s perfectly happy over at the dessert table. Catching up with old school friends and such. So darling to see our Leslie all grown up.”
“You know Leslie?” The surprise unsettled him. Our Leslie.
“Since she was a wee thing. We’re neighbors. Remember?” An emerald-bedecked finger pointed toward the front doors. “We Pencotts and Marshalls go way, way back.”
“Mrs. Pencott,” he began.
“Call me Veronica, yes?”
She had a habit of turning statements into questions, as if his opinion helped determine true and false.
“But of course,” he said. What did ten more minutes of charades matter?
Although he wouldn’t have been able to explain why, he knew she had more in common with him than with the island aristocracy. Her stiff pronunciation betrayed her—those exaggerated o’s and a’s that vibrated a note too long. It was as if she’d copied the speech patterns and gestures of classic movie stars. Grace Kelly. Vivien Leigh. He’d heard Leslie put on the same contrived accent when she made fun of the mandatory elocution lessons at the women’s college her father insisted she attend before she dropped out and paid her own way through Harvard.
“Do you”—he paused—“watch a lot of PBS specials?”
She laughed, throwing her head back so her silver fillings caught the lamplight.
“I’m not a fan of the television programs. I do read. Which is”—her voice dropped into a whisper—“more than I can say for most of the bored old ladies on this island. Unless you call romance novels and self-help books literature.”
She had a sense of humor, this odd old bird.
“The gossipy Gertrudes at the club,” she said, “tell me you are quite the expert when it comes to floral design.”
He was about to protest, play coy, remembering Orchid Lady at the fair, when the old woman waved a hand toward the lavish floral arrangements, “And what do you think of this, Julius? Is it all right if I call you that? I have no patience for nicknames.”
“Well,” he stuttered, “yes, of course. You can call me anything you like. And the flowers? They’re lovely?”
“Are you asking? Or telling?” She pursed her wrinkled lips. “Just teasing you. I understand how difficult it is for one to be honest about anything on this island. Personally, I’d have taken things down a notch. I was taught less is always more.” She pointed to the entryway, where a spiral staircase gleamed under a crystal chandelier. “However, when it comes to refreshments, one can never be too bold. A Champagne fountain is needed, over there, right in front of the entrance.”
She fluttered her fingers and stared hard at the front door. As if, he thought, she could will the bubbling pyramid of glasses to appear. “When guests enter, it is the first sight they see. A promise of all that awaits inside.”
“I like that,” he said. “A little risky. But what is a party without a decorative gamble?”
She lifted her painted eyebrows and Jules knew she was pleased with his approval.
“And those flowers.” She nodded at the overstuffed arrangements fighting for room among the desserts, then cringed dramatically, her droopy eyelids fluttering.
He had to laugh. She was an actor, this one. Quirky.
“I have to agree with you there, ma’am. I can not get behind the lily. In the garden, she is divine. But in a vase? No way. The poor flower was ruined by the mortuary business. Can’t look at a lily and not see dead bodies.”
“Too true, sir. I will be sure to make a note. No stinking lilies at my funeral.”
She laid a hand on his forearm. Her parchment-thin skin was mottled with liver spots and purple bruises.
“Are you hurt?”
“Beg your pardon?” She looked, he was sure of it, scared.
“Your arm.”
She swung her thick ivory shawl, shielding herself. The fear replaced with leading-lady poise.
“Just an old gal with sensitive skin. Now, I want to hear all about your favorite flowers. One is always in need of an expert.”
“I did talk to a woman at the fair the other night.” He felt like a kid, coming clean about a failed test to his mom. “She was wearing a beautiful orchid. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t even think to ask her name.”
“No bother. She’s of very little consequence actually. Just a dull woman with the unfortunate name of Lorna.”
“Um, I guess you heard.” How to react to this woman whose wit was so sharp he feared he’d be cut.
“On an island with one exit,” she said, “everything is heard.” She sounded tired. Bitter. “Seen is another matter. You could say that Avalon is a magical place. Girls don’t get pregnant. Boys don’t drive drunk. The money what’s-her-name stole from the PTA account is replenished as if it never happened.”
She nodded at the emptied dessert table, where the old man stood on watch, a pastry in one hand, martini glass in the other. “That is my husband. Robert Pencott. Most people around here call him the Colonel.”
The old man glowered. As if, Jules thought, he were the enemy.
She wagged a finger circled by a diamond he guessed was at least three carats.
“Teach me something,” she commanded. “About the art of floral design.”
He didn’t correct her—explain he was a landscape architect. His grad-school professors at Harvard had warned that those in the nonplant world would label them everything from florists to botanists to landscapers. He wondered if she were testing him, if, tomorrow, she’d return to the ladies at the club with juicy bits from their conversation. If so, he better choose something good.
“Here’s something you can tell those Gerties at the club.”
“Oh, do tell. I’d heard you were a charmer, Julius. I’m pleasantly surprised you have not disappointed.”
She laughed, reminding him of Leslie and the music in her voice. He imagined a classroom of white women being taught how to laugh—and there she was, Leslie, staring at him from across the room. She had a look he’d only seen a few times. Like when Brooks broke his arm skateboarding and when Eva choked on a pencil eraser and when Leslie returned home to him that night so many years ago after telling her parents she would marry Jules even if it meant them disowning her.
“My apologies, Veronica,” he said, “I see my wife trying to get my attention. But I’ll leave you with one fun factoid: The art of flower arranging goes way, way back. The Egyptians even placed them in vases just like we do today. Mostly at funerals.” He laughed. “They liked lilies too. Worshipped them even. But a different kind. We know it as the water lily. The only flower that bloomed year-round in Egypt.”
The old woman stared out the long front window into the darkness he knew was the sea, but found it hard to believe—ebbing and flowing, vast—until he spotted the lights of the oil freighters in the distance, like jewels on a necklace. Maybe she’d stopped listening, or drifted off the way old people do.
“They worshipped two kinds,” he continued. “The white lotus—Nymphaea lotus—and that blooms at night. So it was used in lunar ceremonies. And there was also Nymphaea caerulea. The blue lotus. And some have this gorgeous hot-orange center. Which makes sense because it was a symbol for the sun in a ton of Egyptian art.” He knew he was rambling and didn’t care or think to stop. He’d only had Leslie to talk to since they’d moved. Brooks wanted nothing to do with what the boy called plant talk. Jules missed the daily conversations he’d had with the neighborhood folk at Our Garden. Mrs. Kaminsky stopping by with her granny cart full of beer cans to redeem, checking on the pink peonies he’d helped her plant. Sal Buono lugging a stinking bag of manure through the gate for his row of tomatoes. Jules and Leslie had a dozen theories on how the old Italian procured the stuff.
“You see,” he said, “those Egyptians believed the blue lotus was a magical thing. The way it closed up at night and disappeared underwater. Only for the same bloom to rise, miraculously, each morning with the sun. But if you ask a botanist, they’ll tell you the truth—the new buds form underwater. How about that?”
She turned away from the window. Her milky eyes were shining.
“How about that?” There was a gravity in her voice—was it sadness? He was relieved when Leslie hooked her arm in his.
“Leslie!” The old woman transformed. As if she’d been reunited with a long-lost relative.
“Mrs. Pencott,” Leslie said. “So lovely to see you.”
The two women brushed cheeks, left and right, and it amazed him how much they resembled each other. Like two photographs taken of the same woman thirty years apart.
Something was off. That look Leslie had given him. And now, as he watched the women he saw the tension in Leslie’s long neck. The women chattered about how it had been ages, how much the island had or had not changed, Veronica expressing her condolences for Leslie’s mother’s death, Leslie asking after Ginny, who, he guessed, was the old woman’s daughter. His wife’s fingers smoothed her brow and he knew she was itching to tug at a hair. Don’t do it, babe, he rooted for her. He hadn’t seen her this nervous since her mother was alive. On the mornings of her visits to her parents on the island, what she called “payday,” she was her usual sunny self—reading books to Eva, teasing Brooks about the hour he spent in the bathroom styling his hair, swatting Jules’s ass with a dishcloth as she stirred the pot of jambalaya that would feed him and the kids until she returned. By noon, when her father’s driver was due to pick her up, she was plucking one hair after another, so she’d had to dab concealer on the inflamed skin above and below her thinned brows. He’d never told her how, the nights before those visits, he lay awake listening to her jaw click as she ground her teeth.
“What on earth will we do about these caterpillars?” Veronica said. “The visitation of this pestilence.” She stared straight-on at Leslie, who, he saw, stared right back. An unflinching contest. “One might claim it a sign.”
“We should really get going,” he said. “So we can let the sitter go.”
The old woman was smoking. One of those long, thin cigarettes—100s.
“There’s no smoking in here.” Leslie went ice-cold. He knew she was pissed.
“It was so nice meeting you, Veronica.” He tugged Leslie toward the front door.
Veronica laughed loudly, “Oh, that’s right, I wouldn’t want to pollute the environment.”
She took a step forward, bared her teeth, and he saw where her dentures met pink gums.
“Heaven forbid,” she added, “someone call the EPA and file a complaint.”
The old woman hadn’t finished speaking when Leslie walked away, leaving him behind.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I mean, good night.”
He pushed through the mob to catch up with Leslie, his eyes tearing from the sudden haze of cigar and cigarette smoke hanging gray and heavy, like the smoke he’d seen cloud above the factory towers in the west.
11.
Maddie
Spencer’s tongue filled her mouth. They were on Mr. and Mrs. Fox’s bed and the satiny comforter smelled like talcum powder and those air fresheners you plug into the wall.
They slid farther up the bed, his hips grinding into her, the buckle of his belt poking, her head surrounded by plush pillows—so many pillows. Fringed with tassels and tiny gold pom-poms, backed with black velvet and wine-red silk. He’d told her to take her top off as soon as they’d walked into the room. Your bra too, he’d said. Her small breasts jiggled with each thrust and she stopped herself from covering her chest with crossed arms.
Spencer was grunting. How could he be feeling good when it sounded like he was in pain? Then she remembered those nasty dudes in the porno and how hard they’d tugged on their dicks.
She tried to get her head out from under the pillows but he launched into her again, his cold hands sliding up over her breasts, her nipples tingling, his tongue wriggling back into her mouth.
He was sweating. A soapy scent slipped off his skin. She wanted to enjoy that, and the hard knots of his back muscles under her hands. If this were one of those late-night movies, she thought, the camera would pan in on her hands sliding over his back, fingertips gripping.
A tassel fell into her mouth. The wet thread stuck to her lips and she had to spit it out. He was too busy to notice. “Dry humping,” Bitsy had called it—how guys could come just by rubbing up on a girl. She was supposed to lie there and pretend that she liked it. She let out a little moan. He must have thought it an invitation because he yanked down her jeans and she sat up, knees clamped together, one hand pulling up the waistband of her panties. He was on his knees, his erection tenting out the front of his plaid boxers.
She followed Spencer up the stairs.
10.
Jules
He searched for Leslie, moving past one circle of chatter after another, catching the same three topics he’d heard all night—the caterpillars, the vandal tagging up the island, and Governor Bill Clinton from Arkansas. Pest. Plague. Parasite. The same language used to describe all three.
He filled his plate with red velvet cake, strawberry-rhubarb pie, and a block of coffee cake that was to die for, according to the wine-flushed lady in line at the dessert table. He found Leslie. She was in a circle of women her age (but who could ever tell, he thought, when it came to these women with their private trainers and plastic surgeons). Leslie nibbled on a solitary pastry—bites so small that when she set her plate down, the food seemed intact. One of the things he’d loved about her first was her appetite. She never apologized for it the way other white women did, like it was a sin to feed your body. She’d sit on a packed subway car, stuffed between a Wall Street suit and a Korean grandma, and eat an apple, core and all, spitting the seeds into her hand and tucking them in her pocket—to add them to her tray of seeds drying in the apartment windowsill. A future garden for their someday dream home. Back when they had only dreams and the Marshalls, the Castle, the island, had no place in their fantasies.
Leslie air-kissed one waifish woman after another—mwah, mwah, like a satirical skit on Saturday Night Live, he thought, wishing Leslie was by his side to get the joke. The women were draped in floor-length strappy silk dresses that seemed more like slips meant to be worn underneath a gown. Sheer silver and gold and soft pastels, they matched the desserts. Vanilla cream puffs, ladyfingers dunked in tiramisu, and mint-green petit fours. Even he was fooled by the look of enthused surprise on Leslie’s face. Oh my God, how long has it been? You look absolutely the same, darling—the same! The women had multisyllabic names like the heroines in his mother’s paperback romances. Jacqueline. Genevra. Names that sounded like a million dollars.
He wondered what that heavenly afternoon fuck in the garden had meant. What was its worth? He’d known, since he was a sixteen-year-old messing around with Tammy Roberts in the bathroom at Dalton, that sex was never just sex. And knowing Leslie, that dew-scented romp may have been a reward for his surrender, for moving to the island. Or had it been a threat? Leave this island, baby, and this beauty—the gardens, the castle, and even the queen—will be lost to you.
He decided he wouldn’t move from his spot next to the table spread with trays of brownies and blondies and éclairs oozing whipped cream. What if he lost Leslie in this room filled with women as indistinguishable as the stalks of lillies in his garden? He saw himself, at midnight, rushing from one woman to the next, peering into each face to find his wife’s.
Leslie spotted him and waved. He motioned toward the front door. She nodded enthusiastically, then held up a finger. He knew what that meant. Stuck for at least another hour. This would be the pattern of their lives now. Looking for Leslie. Waiting for Leslie. Praying for Leslie to end the schmoozing she seemed to crave since they’d moved there—and to what end, he still hadn’t figured out.
He was on his third éclair, his stomach objecting, when he spotted the old guy he’d seen earlier in the poodle-print shirt, now topped by a blazer as bright as the cherry-red roses Jules had cut back that morning. And the woman at the old man’s side—well, it was the elegant old lady he’d met on line. The lawn-jockey expert. Their ancient heads bowed together. They were arguing. Thin, wrinkled lips moving fast. He was sure they were talking about him. Whispering. Staring. The old man shook his head, and the lady snapped back, the tendons in her birdlike neck flexing. The old man reached forward, and Jules watched as the man pinched his companion’s arm. The woman flinched, looked around, and rearranged her white shawl. She saw Jules. He looked away. Busied himself with wiping the chocolaty mess from his fingers on a white cloth napkin.
Should he do something? Get Leslie. Or even better, leave. He had called Social Services back in the city once, to report their neighbors, whom he and Leslie had suspected of neglecting their elderly mother. But these people were strangers.
A spasm blocked his throat and he swallowed hard. Wasn’t this exactly what Leslie had chastised him for after his overreaction (her word) at the fair? She’d explained, in what he called her “Zen voice,” that he was allowing his fears to ruin his—and their children’s—chance of a happy life on the island. It was his choice, she’d said. As the mess of food and drink and heavy cream gurgled in his gut, he heard the advice of his long-dead father (anything but Zen) buzzing at his ear like one of those goddamn no-see-um bugs that had been eating him alive since they’d come to the island.
Better to be afraid than dead, son.
The old woman was making her way toward him, her face transformed into a mask of delight.
“You again!” he said. “And so soon. Unfortunately, I’m on my way out. Have to find my wife. We’ve got a new babysitter waiting at home. You know how it is.”
He bowed his head, hoping it made up for his abrupt departure, but the woman stepped right in his path. She smelled like cigarettes and perfume. White Linen. His mother had worn it. He would’ve guessed a rich lady might pick a fancier perfume. Not one anybody could buy off a drugstore shelf.
“Oh, she’s perfectly happy over at the dessert table. Catching up with old school friends and such. So darling to see our Leslie all grown up.”
“You know Leslie?” The surprise unsettled him. Our Leslie.
“Since she was a wee thing. We’re neighbors. Remember?” An emerald-bedecked finger pointed toward the front doors. “We Pencotts and Marshalls go way, way back.”
“Mrs. Pencott,” he began.
“Call me Veronica, yes?”
She had a habit of turning statements into questions, as if his opinion helped determine true and false.
“But of course,” he said. What did ten more minutes of charades matter?
Although he wouldn’t have been able to explain why, he knew she had more in common with him than with the island aristocracy. Her stiff pronunciation betrayed her—those exaggerated o’s and a’s that vibrated a note too long. It was as if she’d copied the speech patterns and gestures of classic movie stars. Grace Kelly. Vivien Leigh. He’d heard Leslie put on the same contrived accent when she made fun of the mandatory elocution lessons at the women’s college her father insisted she attend before she dropped out and paid her own way through Harvard.
“Do you”—he paused—“watch a lot of PBS specials?”
She laughed, throwing her head back so her silver fillings caught the lamplight.
“I’m not a fan of the television programs. I do read. Which is”—her voice dropped into a whisper—“more than I can say for most of the bored old ladies on this island. Unless you call romance novels and self-help books literature.”
She had a sense of humor, this odd old bird.
“The gossipy Gertrudes at the club,” she said, “tell me you are quite the expert when it comes to floral design.”
He was about to protest, play coy, remembering Orchid Lady at the fair, when the old woman waved a hand toward the lavish floral arrangements, “And what do you think of this, Julius? Is it all right if I call you that? I have no patience for nicknames.”
“Well,” he stuttered, “yes, of course. You can call me anything you like. And the flowers? They’re lovely?”
“Are you asking? Or telling?” She pursed her wrinkled lips. “Just teasing you. I understand how difficult it is for one to be honest about anything on this island. Personally, I’d have taken things down a notch. I was taught less is always more.” She pointed to the entryway, where a spiral staircase gleamed under a crystal chandelier. “However, when it comes to refreshments, one can never be too bold. A Champagne fountain is needed, over there, right in front of the entrance.”
She fluttered her fingers and stared hard at the front door. As if, he thought, she could will the bubbling pyramid of glasses to appear. “When guests enter, it is the first sight they see. A promise of all that awaits inside.”
“I like that,” he said. “A little risky. But what is a party without a decorative gamble?”
She lifted her painted eyebrows and Jules knew she was pleased with his approval.
“And those flowers.” She nodded at the overstuffed arrangements fighting for room among the desserts, then cringed dramatically, her droopy eyelids fluttering.
He had to laugh. She was an actor, this one. Quirky.
“I have to agree with you there, ma’am. I can not get behind the lily. In the garden, she is divine. But in a vase? No way. The poor flower was ruined by the mortuary business. Can’t look at a lily and not see dead bodies.”
“Too true, sir. I will be sure to make a note. No stinking lilies at my funeral.”
She laid a hand on his forearm. Her parchment-thin skin was mottled with liver spots and purple bruises.
“Are you hurt?”
“Beg your pardon?” She looked, he was sure of it, scared.
“Your arm.”
She swung her thick ivory shawl, shielding herself. The fear replaced with leading-lady poise.
“Just an old gal with sensitive skin. Now, I want to hear all about your favorite flowers. One is always in need of an expert.”
“I did talk to a woman at the fair the other night.” He felt like a kid, coming clean about a failed test to his mom. “She was wearing a beautiful orchid. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t even think to ask her name.”
“No bother. She’s of very little consequence actually. Just a dull woman with the unfortunate name of Lorna.”
“Um, I guess you heard.” How to react to this woman whose wit was so sharp he feared he’d be cut.
“On an island with one exit,” she said, “everything is heard.” She sounded tired. Bitter. “Seen is another matter. You could say that Avalon is a magical place. Girls don’t get pregnant. Boys don’t drive drunk. The money what’s-her-name stole from the PTA account is replenished as if it never happened.”
She nodded at the emptied dessert table, where the old man stood on watch, a pastry in one hand, martini glass in the other. “That is my husband. Robert Pencott. Most people around here call him the Colonel.”
The old man glowered. As if, Jules thought, he were the enemy.
She wagged a finger circled by a diamond he guessed was at least three carats.
“Teach me something,” she commanded. “About the art of floral design.”
He didn’t correct her—explain he was a landscape architect. His grad-school professors at Harvard had warned that those in the nonplant world would label them everything from florists to botanists to landscapers. He wondered if she were testing him, if, tomorrow, she’d return to the ladies at the club with juicy bits from their conversation. If so, he better choose something good.
“Here’s something you can tell those Gerties at the club.”
“Oh, do tell. I’d heard you were a charmer, Julius. I’m pleasantly surprised you have not disappointed.”
She laughed, reminding him of Leslie and the music in her voice. He imagined a classroom of white women being taught how to laugh—and there she was, Leslie, staring at him from across the room. She had a look he’d only seen a few times. Like when Brooks broke his arm skateboarding and when Eva choked on a pencil eraser and when Leslie returned home to him that night so many years ago after telling her parents she would marry Jules even if it meant them disowning her.
“My apologies, Veronica,” he said, “I see my wife trying to get my attention. But I’ll leave you with one fun factoid: The art of flower arranging goes way, way back. The Egyptians even placed them in vases just like we do today. Mostly at funerals.” He laughed. “They liked lilies too. Worshipped them even. But a different kind. We know it as the water lily. The only flower that bloomed year-round in Egypt.”
The old woman stared out the long front window into the darkness he knew was the sea, but found it hard to believe—ebbing and flowing, vast—until he spotted the lights of the oil freighters in the distance, like jewels on a necklace. Maybe she’d stopped listening, or drifted off the way old people do.
“They worshipped two kinds,” he continued. “The white lotus—Nymphaea lotus—and that blooms at night. So it was used in lunar ceremonies. And there was also Nymphaea caerulea. The blue lotus. And some have this gorgeous hot-orange center. Which makes sense because it was a symbol for the sun in a ton of Egyptian art.” He knew he was rambling and didn’t care or think to stop. He’d only had Leslie to talk to since they’d moved. Brooks wanted nothing to do with what the boy called plant talk. Jules missed the daily conversations he’d had with the neighborhood folk at Our Garden. Mrs. Kaminsky stopping by with her granny cart full of beer cans to redeem, checking on the pink peonies he’d helped her plant. Sal Buono lugging a stinking bag of manure through the gate for his row of tomatoes. Jules and Leslie had a dozen theories on how the old Italian procured the stuff.
“You see,” he said, “those Egyptians believed the blue lotus was a magical thing. The way it closed up at night and disappeared underwater. Only for the same bloom to rise, miraculously, each morning with the sun. But if you ask a botanist, they’ll tell you the truth—the new buds form underwater. How about that?”
She turned away from the window. Her milky eyes were shining.
“How about that?” There was a gravity in her voice—was it sadness? He was relieved when Leslie hooked her arm in his.
“Leslie!” The old woman transformed. As if she’d been reunited with a long-lost relative.
“Mrs. Pencott,” Leslie said. “So lovely to see you.”
The two women brushed cheeks, left and right, and it amazed him how much they resembled each other. Like two photographs taken of the same woman thirty years apart.
Something was off. That look Leslie had given him. And now, as he watched the women he saw the tension in Leslie’s long neck. The women chattered about how it had been ages, how much the island had or had not changed, Veronica expressing her condolences for Leslie’s mother’s death, Leslie asking after Ginny, who, he guessed, was the old woman’s daughter. His wife’s fingers smoothed her brow and he knew she was itching to tug at a hair. Don’t do it, babe, he rooted for her. He hadn’t seen her this nervous since her mother was alive. On the mornings of her visits to her parents on the island, what she called “payday,” she was her usual sunny self—reading books to Eva, teasing Brooks about the hour he spent in the bathroom styling his hair, swatting Jules’s ass with a dishcloth as she stirred the pot of jambalaya that would feed him and the kids until she returned. By noon, when her father’s driver was due to pick her up, she was plucking one hair after another, so she’d had to dab concealer on the inflamed skin above and below her thinned brows. He’d never told her how, the nights before those visits, he lay awake listening to her jaw click as she ground her teeth.
“What on earth will we do about these caterpillars?” Veronica said. “The visitation of this pestilence.” She stared straight-on at Leslie, who, he saw, stared right back. An unflinching contest. “One might claim it a sign.”
“We should really get going,” he said. “So we can let the sitter go.”
The old woman was smoking. One of those long, thin cigarettes—100s.
“There’s no smoking in here.” Leslie went ice-cold. He knew she was pissed.
“It was so nice meeting you, Veronica.” He tugged Leslie toward the front door.
Veronica laughed loudly, “Oh, that’s right, I wouldn’t want to pollute the environment.”
She took a step forward, bared her teeth, and he saw where her dentures met pink gums.
“Heaven forbid,” she added, “someone call the EPA and file a complaint.”
The old woman hadn’t finished speaking when Leslie walked away, leaving him behind.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I mean, good night.”
He pushed through the mob to catch up with Leslie, his eyes tearing from the sudden haze of cigar and cigarette smoke hanging gray and heavy, like the smoke he’d seen cloud above the factory towers in the west.
11.
Maddie
Spencer’s tongue filled her mouth. They were on Mr. and Mrs. Fox’s bed and the satiny comforter smelled like talcum powder and those air fresheners you plug into the wall.
They slid farther up the bed, his hips grinding into her, the buckle of his belt poking, her head surrounded by plush pillows—so many pillows. Fringed with tassels and tiny gold pom-poms, backed with black velvet and wine-red silk. He’d told her to take her top off as soon as they’d walked into the room. Your bra too, he’d said. Her small breasts jiggled with each thrust and she stopped herself from covering her chest with crossed arms.
Spencer was grunting. How could he be feeling good when it sounded like he was in pain? Then she remembered those nasty dudes in the porno and how hard they’d tugged on their dicks.
She tried to get her head out from under the pillows but he launched into her again, his cold hands sliding up over her breasts, her nipples tingling, his tongue wriggling back into her mouth.
He was sweating. A soapy scent slipped off his skin. She wanted to enjoy that, and the hard knots of his back muscles under her hands. If this were one of those late-night movies, she thought, the camera would pan in on her hands sliding over his back, fingertips gripping.
A tassel fell into her mouth. The wet thread stuck to her lips and she had to spit it out. He was too busy to notice. “Dry humping,” Bitsy had called it—how guys could come just by rubbing up on a girl. She was supposed to lie there and pretend that she liked it. She let out a little moan. He must have thought it an invitation because he yanked down her jeans and she sat up, knees clamped together, one hand pulling up the waistband of her panties. He was on his knees, his erection tenting out the front of his plaid boxers.
