Especially a certain kind of impulse. Look where it had gotten my oldest brother, James. Marcia might have been gorgeous in her time, but now that she had three kids, a successful lawyer husband, a big house and a big rock, she didn’t bother with appearances much. Looks had faded, or at least ceased to be artificially enhanced, and her personality had become much more of an issue. In short, she’s a shrew—and probably most of the reason James is a workaholic.
That kind of impulse would explain Nick’s steamy kisses. It didn’t feel nearly as good as I once might have thought it would to have Nick following his pecker back to me, but then, I hadn’t had a lot of sleep last night.
And I wasn’t getting much more. I actually rolled out of bed early, giving it up for lost. I still had a lot of working drawings to fill in for Mrs. H. and figured I might as well get in to the office. I had to go over the plans with Joel today so he could begin scheduling the work for the hard landscaping. The message on my answering machine could wait.
It was probably just Mom, giving me hell for not going to lunch with the eligible Mr. McAllister.
There was a depressing thought. But it was time to get my life back into all its organized little boxes. The most prudent choice would be to just forget that these last thirty hours or so of my life had ever happened. Forget Nick. Forget Lucia. Forget them all and think about a pink accent for that hellebore bed.
As if anything in my life could ever be that simple.
* * *
Well, the day started off badly and got worse.
It turned out that the interlock that Mrs. H. thought would be perfect for the little retaining wall around the garden beds didn’t stack vertically as I had thought. Each layer set back a good three inches, because that’s how the block was designed. Joel explained patiently how that would keep the wall from shifting, but I still had a problem.
If we moved the wall out to allow for this little engineering marvel, there would be a garden path wide enough for cats walking single file. Alternatively, if we started the wall where I had planned, the bed at the top would end up in the neighbor’s yard. I figured that would be a tough sell and sharpened my pencil. There had to be a way to make this work.
This was particularly problematic as Joel and I had an appointment with Mrs. H. at four-thirty to walk through the grand scheme one last time. Joel left to hunt down other possibilities for the stone while I dove in.
Elaine breezed in and out, up to her eyes in a sunroom that was being added on to a kitchen, though I have to admit I only half listened to her woes. The phone rang incessantly, of course, because the entire world sensed that I was trying to concentrate.
And ye olde sap answered every time...hoping. There’s something about optimism that is really tough to shake. They should come up with a vaccination for it.
Speaking of things that are tough to shake, Jeffrey called in the middle of the morning to repeat his invitation. I declined the so-called honor, choosing the tactful course of declaring myself busy.
He called again twenty minutes later, taking the time and trouble to explain to little ol’ me that our lunch was in his best career interests. When I still declined, he implied that I was the most miserable woman alive for not marrying him and bearing his sons on the basis of that credential alone. Further, his tone of voice made it clear that his explanation was provided since I was so stupid that I couldn’t be hoped to work out this facet of his invitation all by myself.
As a tactic intended to charm me to compliance, it was lacking a certain je ne sais quoi.
I told him that I thought arranged marriages had died with Victoria. It was too painful listening to him trying to figure out who or what I was talking about.
“You know,” I said helpfully. “Lie back and think of England.”
A stony silence was my only answer.
“Because she was the Queen of England and she had to produce an heir, but she was marrying a virtual stranger. That was the advice given to her for her wedding night.”
He sniffed. “I hardly think such an anecdote is appropriate under the circumstances, Philippa.”
“My point was only that her marriage is pretty much the last arranged marriage that I know about. My father may be trying to fix us up for the sake of empire, but I’m not going to play. I don’t want to have lunch with you, Jeffrey, though certainly many other, infinitely more suitable women—ones with far better taste in anecdotes—would.”
I paused, then decided what the heck. “What you need is a gorgeous smart woman, like my partner Elaine.”
He sputtered. “Never!”
“Really? I could have sworn you two had some history.”
He made a pretty good recovery. “Well, if you really want to know, I could tell you over lunch.”
I laughed despite myself. “Good try, Jeffrey, but no, thanks.”
Even he had the grace to end the conversation after that.
The phone rang as soon as I hung it up and I rolled my eyes. It was going to be one of those days.
I declined an urgent request from one of Mrs. H.’s neighbors to landscape her garden first. Not only was her attitude was annoying, but I finish jobs in much the order they come in.
Another neighbor called to demand an accounting of what we intended to do with the fence. He made it clear that if the new fence infringed so much as an inch upon his property, he would take great joy in tearing it down during the night.
I assured him that a surveyor had already staked the lot and suggested that this would be the best time to contest the location of any stakes. Since he hadn’t even seen them, I knew they had to be slightly to Mrs. Hathaway’s side of the property line—as I had requested—and obscured by the current fence. It was right on the line.
Keeping everything slightly inside the lot line can solve a lot of issues before they start. I think this neighbor was disappointed that I didn’t panic—maybe he was looking for a fight or hoping to be able to tear down that fence with his bare hands.
The phone rang again, no sign of a relief pitcher in sight.
“Coxwell & Pope.”
“Who do you have to ruin everything?” a woman demanded querulously.
“I beg your pardon?”
“If you have any sense at all, you’ll stay out of my house. You’ve ruined everything!”
The hair started to rise on the back of my neck.
Now, I couldn’t have told you what Lucia Sullivan sounded like, because it had been decades since I had heard her voice. But the caller was a woman, she sounded older and she sounded mad. I thought about that ghost I’d seen in Lucia’s greenhouse and the dots pretty much jumped into a line.
“Who is this, please?”
But she slammed the phone down so hard that I jumped.
I don’t get a lot of calls from dead people, generally speaking. In fact, this would have been a first. But I’d only been into one house uninvited of late. My hand shook a bit when I put the receiver back and I got up to make myself a nice hot cup of tea.
Then I had an idea. I could use one of those nifty phone company codes and obtain the number of the last caller to my line.
But Joel called in first, suggesting that we meet at Mrs. H.’s as he’d gotten tied up.
Grrr. Things had definitely turned against me today.
I couldn’t help thinking about that call. Why had Lucia bothered with the phone? She could have just levitated something, written on my mirror in blood or walked through the wall to deliver her message. Maybe she was an amateur in the spooking arts, being so recently dead and all.
Or maybe she wasn’t dead at all.
Or maybe someone wanted me to think that she wasn’t dead at all.
Aha! Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to clean up the greenhouse, if Nick had seen what he said he had seen. I knew I had seen nothing.
The incident might have fit another piece into the puzzle for Nick, but he was gone into the wide blue yonder. He had told me that it wasn’t my concern any lon
ger, so he’d never get this tidbit.
His loss.
I shook my head, decided that the Coxwells didn’t have exclusivity on family weirdness, and sighed when the phone rang again.
It had taken my mother until two to hunt me down, although we both knew there was only one place I could be. She was already stinko, as evidenced by her slurred speech.
This was going to be a treat.
“Working, Mom. Can I call you back?”
“Like you did last night? I don’t think so, Philippa Elizabeth Coxwell. Don’t think I don’t know that you’re trying to avoid me.” She paused significantly, probably for an invigorating sip. “Or that I don’t know why.”
“Did you call last night?” I feigned innocence, knowing that responding in kind wouldn’t solve anything. I turned the drawing ninety degrees, then did it again, muttering under my breath a little that the solution was so elusive.
And suddenly there it was.
The path was serpentine, but from this angle looked like a voluptuous S. I could straighten the curve slightly and increase the size of the beds without sacrificing the width of the paths. There would be less stone, less curvy walkway, but the illusion of depth we’d been trying to achieve could be kept.
We could plant taller things in the middle beds to ensure that the whole garden couldn’t be seen at once. Mrs. H. wanted a sense of discovery, hence the very curvaceous path, but I was suddenly sure I could achieve the same effect without changing the wall material that she so loved.
I tucked the receiver under my chin and scribbled madly.
“Of course, I called last night, Philippa, but you didn’t call me back.”
“Late night, Mom.”
“You’re working too much.” Her voice chilled. “Or is that really what you’re doing? Jeffrey told your father that there was another man there yesterday, Philippa. What haven’t you told me? Who is this Nick? How serious are you?”
I started to admit the truth, but demons seized my tongue. It was an evil thought, but then again, it beat being gay.
And what harm would it do?
“Oh, Nick, well, I didn’t want to get your hopes up, Mom. We’ve been seeing each other for a while...”
“You should have told me, especially before your father spoke to Jeffrey.”
“Well, no one asked my opinion of that before it was done, and as I recall, no one was interested in much I had to say about it.”
“Which just shows the value of a little honesty with your family. Your father is humiliated, you know, and he’s been impossible to live with since yesterday.” I refrained from observing that he’s pretty much always impossible to live with. “You’ve made him look like a fool, Philippa, and it’s not a role he relishes.”
She had some trouble with that last word.
“Then he shouldn’t have set me up without asking me first.”
“Philippa!”
“It’s true.”
“This is all your fault and I hope you understand that there will be consequences.” My mother sighed a martyr’s sigh. “Not that I can imagine this man is worth the trouble. Philippa, Jeffrey said he looked quite disreputable and was rude on top of it.”
“He’s certainly no Jeffrey McAllister,” I conceded, silently thanking the gods for that.
“Oh, this just goes to show what appalling judgment you have, Philippa. I suppose you’ve slept with him. No, wait, I don’t want to know...”
Her voice trailed off suggestively, because of course, she did want to know.
Sometimes trouble is impossible to resist.
I sighed with apparent rhapsody. “It’s just great, Mom. I could never have believed that it could be so good...”
“Philippa! Bite your tongue!” She inhaled mightily, no doubt taking on a flagon of sherry in the process. “If things are that serious, then there’s nothing for it. You’ll just have to bring him to your father’s birthday dinner on Saturday so we can assess whether you’ve made an acceptable choice or not.”
Okay, I’d forgotten about my father’s birthday bash—in a classic ‘forget about it and it can’t be real’ strategy. But it was the second part of what she said that really made me mad.
“What? It’s not up to you who I date.”
“Oh, Philippa, don’t get foolish with me. Of course, it matters to us and of course we’re going to ensure that you make a suitable decision. It’s well known that you have the worst judgment possible in men and this certainly doesn’t sound like a promising choice. We’re talking about the rest of your life, Philippa, and I am not going to stand by and let you cast it aside on a poor marriage.”
Now, she had my full attention. “Because you made such a good one?”
Jack Frost danced down the telephone line.
“I beg your pardon?”
I sat back and folded my arms across my chest. It was about time I had my say. Enough of passive resistance—I was ready to make my position clear.
“You know, Mom, I’ve never understood why you think marriage is such a great institution when yours is so lousy. Maybe I’ll never get married. Maybe I’ll just take in men like stray dogs and have a couple of dozen kids out of wedlock.”
“Philippa!”
“I’ll certainly never marry a guy like Jeffrey McAllister, who’s more worried about pleasing his boss than who he spends the rest of his life with.” I snapped my fingers. “Maybe I’ll marry one of these unsuitable men I keep finding, maybe I’ll marry Nick just because he looks disreputable.”
“Philippa, you had better bring this young man to dinner...”
“Maybe I will. Come to think of it, Mom, you probably remember Nick Sullivan. You know, the guy who went to jail? I tell you, there really is something to that bad boy charm.”
She sputtered but I tossed the phone back into the cradle and didn’t answer when it rang again.
My hand was shaking so badly that I couldn’t draw worth a poop. It didn’t feel nearly as good as I had thought it would to toss my two cents into the ring. I didn’t feel triumphant or proud of what I’d done.
And the truth was, I’d just made more of a muddle of things. Not only had I told my mother—and by extension the entire gossip network of Rosemount—that Nick was back in town, but I’d practically said I’d drag him in like a prize boar on Saturday night.
I wished that I knew where he was, because this was one time that I would have liked to prove my parents wrong.
But that and a buck would get me a cup of coffee. I knew I’d have to get down on my knees and eat some Coxwell crow before this was over. I wasn’t, however, going to rush in to dish myself up a plateful.
My family could wait for Saturday night.
Meanwhile, I checked the clock and sketched like a maniac, knowing the gods would have to smile for me to make that appointment at four.
* * *
You’re probably thinking that I should have told my mother off a long time ago, but that’s only because you don’t know the whole story.
I told you already that we moved to Rosemount when I was a little squirt, in 1970, and that my mother wasn’t happy about the move. But there was more to it than that, although it was years before I knew about it.
My parents didn’t fight. They ignored each other, so there was never any chance of overhearing anything particularly good. I vaguely remember one huge argument before that move, but after that, nothing. My father worked longer hours once we were in Rosemount, supposedly because of the commute, and my mother, well, she was always distracted. In fact I have no memory of her being anything other way.
My brothers noticed, though, and they whispered about the change in her. I did notice the change in the pretty decanter that I always wanted to touch because it sparkled in the sunshine. It had juice in it once we got to Rosemount. No one would ever let me have any, but I knew with a toddler’s conviction, that someone else was drinking that juice. The amount in the decanter went up and down, up and down. Not fair, by any accountin
g.
I must have been about ten by the time I was sure where that juice was going. And that it wasn’t juice. It was sherry, and my mother wasn’t distracted—she was drunk.
My mother is an ugly drunk. When we were younger, she must have had things under more control, or maybe she hid it better. About the time of my epiphany, she must have decided that we could fend for ourselves. And when she drinks, she’s a lot less worried about hiding her misery. She either weeps and is inconsolable or she rages, hurling insults like deadly weapons.
My father, amazingly, can ignore this. He looks right through her, as though she’s not there or doesn’t deserve to be acknowledged. She could be an unfortunate choice of lampshade for all the notice he takes of her. My brothers quickly picked up this trick. There’s something surreal about sitting at the dinner table while a drunk rants and everyone else eats as though there’s nothing amiss.
I can’t ignore her.
I just can’t do it.
Her pain is so raw, her disappointment so tangible. It seems rude to brush it aside, as though she doesn’t count. I suppose that’s what she’s raging about in the first place.
Well, my father worked longer hours once she lost it and my brothers stayed late at school and friends’ houses. Mom had stopped coming downstairs much and usually got pickled in the little sitting room off her bedroom.
I guess she didn’t want to burden any of us with the sight of her.
Sad, isn’t it? Our own mother drinking alone in her bedroom, not wanting to embarrass her family with what she had become.
As soon as possible, my brothers moved away to university, leaving you-know-who with the dirty work. Maybe it’s assumed in a household primarily of men that the women should stick together, maybe my father finally thought I was good for something.
You don’t think I ended up with this hastily feminized name because they were dying for a daughter, do you?
Appearances had always been so important to my mother. That picture of her debut is still on her dresser, like a talisman of a moment when all things were possible, maybe a reminder that anything could go wrong. And both she and my father were determined that our household appear normal, despite all the nonsense going on inside.
Third Time Lucky: Volume 1 (The Coxwells) Page 17
