The Lavender Hour

by Anne Leclaire

  “Jim was under the impression you had arranged for a respite nurse for the night,” Faye said.

  “I don't know, that seemed kind of silly when there was no reason for me not to stay. I wasn't doing anything.”

  “Still,” Faye said, “you should have called. You know volunteers aren't supposed to spend the night. We would have called one of the staff nurses.”

  “It seems a silly rule,” I said. “I didn't have anything else to do. It made sense to stay. I didn't see any harm in it.”

  “You know, Jess,” Faye said, “hospice patients and their families come to us at the worst possible time in their lives. They're tremendously vulnerable.”

  “I know,” I said, dismayed that I couldn't keep the emotion out of my voice.

  “And…”

  “And?” I echoed.

  “And it's pretty easy to get overinvolved.”

  “Am I in trouble for staying there?” I dug my fingernails into my palms, afraid Faye was going to take me off Luke's case. I turned away, but not before Faye saw my tears. Of course she misunderstood them.

  She put her arm around me, pulled me close. “You meant well, Jess. I know that.” Her voice was steady, comforting. “But in the future, let's stick to the guidelines. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, so relieved I would have promised anything. The breeze intensified, lifting my hair.

  Faye shivered and drew her jacket tighter, then put a hand on my shoulder and used it to brace herself as she stood, reminding me that, like Lily, Faye was no longer young. “Shall we walk back together?”

  “I'm going to stay here a bit longer,” I said.

  “Maybe dinner, then? Later?”

  “I'd like that.”

  I watched Faye walk back down the jetty, stepping from boulder to boulder in slow but sure-footed progress. As I often was, I was struck by her grace despite her size and her age. When Faye reached the sand, she cupped her hands to her mouth and called back to me. “Don't forget to phone Lily.”

  “I won't,” I hollered back.

  I PHONED Ashley first. I needed to know what my sister had already told Lily so I would know what I was dealing with.

  “Have you changed your mind?” Ashley asked as soon as she heard my voice. “Are you coming down?”

  “I'm thinking about it,” I said.

  “Jesus be, Jesse. Don't think about it. Just get yourself back here.”

  She sounded so exasperated, I had to smile. I could picture my sister clearly. One hand on her hip, a full eye-roll. Ashley, the queen of eye-rolls.

  “So I heard Mama was trying to reach me last night,” I said.

  “I know. When I told her I'd been trying to talk you into coming for a weekend, she said she was going to add her voice to the choir. Naturally I didn't tell her about Bill and the dinner party idea or she'd take right over, and the next thing we'd be in for a formal dinner for sixteen. You can thank me for that later.”

  I laughed.

  “So when are you coming?”

  “My exact plans are up in the air right now, Ash. I'll try to work it out.”

  “What's to work out? Get yourself on a plane and get here. Do you want me to take care of the reservation, or shall I give you my card number so you can do it? What's easiest for you?”

  “Like I said, things are a little unsettled right now. Nona is in the hospital, and so Luke's alone.”

  A sigh traveled down the wire. “They're not your problem, Jess.”

  “I know, but I don't want to abandon them.”

  “Jeez, Jess, exactly when did you turn into Mama? God, do you remember all those Thanksgiving afternoons when our friends were watching football games and we were standing in some food kitchen ladling out sweet potatoes? Is that how you want to end up? You need to get away. Get some perspective.”

  “It's not that simple.”

  “Snap out of it, Jess. What you need to do is head for the nearest place where there's a man—an eligible and healthy man—and create-a-date.”

  Create-a-date. Our name for our ability to walk into a bar or a party and, within five minutes, walk out with a man and a plan. Had we ever been so confident, so detached?

  “Listen to me, Jess. How long has it been since you've gone to bed with a guy?”

  “You mean sex?” I remembered lying next to Luke on the narrow mechanical bed.

  “Of course I mean sex. How long has it been?”

  “I don't know. I don't exactly keep a calendar of these things.”

  “Ballpark.”

  “Last fall, I guess.”

  Ashley did the calculation. “Nine months? Nine months. Sweet Jesus, no wonder you've got yourself all messed up. You need to get laid, honey pie. Give those hormones a healthy workout.”

  “It's more complicated than that, Ash.”

  “Jess, trust me. It's not complicated. Come home.”

  “So did you tell Lily?”

  “About what?”

  “About Luke,” I said.

  “You mean about your infatuation with a man who's on his last legs? No way, José. I didn't think that was something she needed to hear. All it would do is upset her.”

  “It's nothing that is that upsetting,” I said, although I was relieved Ashley had not told Lily.

  “Jessie, sweetheart, the very fact that you can say that the situation you've gotten yourself into is 'not upsetting' is pure proof that you've lost your mind.”

  “You don't understand,” I said.

  “Promise me, Jessie. Promise me you'll come home.”

  “I promise,” I lied, too worn to argue further. I'd straighten it out later.

  LILY ANSWERED on the first ring, as if she had been sitting by the phone and waiting.

  “Hi, Mama,” I said. “Sorry I wasn't home when you called last night. I hope you weren't worried.”

  “I gave that up a long time ago, sweetie.”

  “Good,” I said. “How are you?”

  “I'm fine. Fit as a fiddle, as your grandpa Earl used to say, although what is particularly fit about a fiddle, I have no idea. How are you? When I talked to Faye last night, she told me how much she's enjoyed your company this year.”

  “I'm enjoying hers, too.”

  “I must say, I can't picture spending the winter up there. I imagine it must be terribly dreary.”

  “Not really.”

  “Ashley tells me she asked you to come for a visit, even offered to pay for your ticket, but you declined.”

  “Right now isn't a good time, Mama.”

  “She misses you, Jessie Lynn. We all miss you.”

  “I miss you, too, Mama.”

  “Your sister's really disappointed. I am too, honey. It's not like you have a job or family there or any reason you couldn't come back for a weekend.”

  I felt pressured, manipulated. “You know why Ashley's so fixed on me coming back? Bill Miller is back in town, and Ashley has some idea that because we dated in high school, I should come running back now that he's turned up again, divorced and eligible.”

  “Bill's back? I had no idea.”

  “Well, he's ancient history. And I'm not interested. End of subject.”

  “I was hoping you'd come back for more selfish reasons.”

  “Like what?”

  “Jan and I have upped the departure date. We're leaving in two weeks. I'd like to see you before we go.”

  “Before you go? You mean the trip? You're still set on that?”

  “More than ever.”

  “I'm against this, Mama. You know that. I think it's crazy.”

  Lily sailed right on, as if I hadn't spoken. “Friends are throwing us a bon voyage party this Saturday night at the club. It would mean the world to me if you'd come. I so want you to meet Jan.”

  “I'm against this, Mama,” I said again. “It's insane, and I won't come and celebrate it. For God's sake, Mama, you're sixty-five.”

  “I am constantly aware of that.”

  “All I'm saying i
s a transatlantic voyage is the kind of thing suited for younger people.”

  “I'm not in the ground yet—”

  “And who is this Jan, anyway? What do you know about him?”

  “All I need to. And if you'd come back down here and meet him, you wouldn't have all these questions.”

  “Have you thought that he might be after Daddy's money?”

  Lily gave the girlish laugh she had discovered this spring. “Money is the last thing Jan has to be worried about, Jessie. And if you'd just come home and meet him, you would know who he is.”

  “Oh, Mama, I don't want to fight.”

  “Nor do I, Jessie Lynn. But I mean to do this thing—this wonderful and wild thing—and I would like to see you before we leave.”

  Why can't you come up here? I wanted to cry. Why do I have to go there? “Okay, Mama,” I surprised myself by saying. “I'll come.”

  fifteen

  AFTER DINNER THAT night, Faye and I curled up in the wicker rockers on her porch. She brought out woolen shawls and brandy to warm us, and we watched the magenta-tinged afterglow of the sunset turn to night. We sat in companionable quiet. Nona said I was calm, but Faye was more comfortable in silence than anyone I'd ever known. Finally I spoke.

  “I called Lily,” I said.

  “What did she have to say? It was so late when she phoned that we didn't chat long.”

  “She wants me to come back this weekend. Friends are giving a bon voyage party for her.”

  “Well, that's terrific. Are you going?”

  “I don't think I have a choice. She and Ashley are guilting me into it.”

  “Ashley, too?”

  “Don't get me started. She's determined to match me up with an old boyfriend who's back in town. She and Mama are resolved to get me back there.”

  Faye searched my face. “Do you want to go?”

  I shrugged. “I guess.”

  “Yes. I can see that. Your unrestrained enthusiasm was my first clue.”

  I laughed.

  “So why don't you want to?” she said.

  “Oh, I guess I keep hoping Mama will change her mind about this trip, that if I keep acting as if it isn't happening, maybe she'll call it off. What do you call that?”

  “Militant denial,” Faye said flatly. A car pulled up outside where the street ended and bleached wood steps led down to the beach.

  “Are you expecting company?” I said.

  Faye shook her head. “Someone took a wrong turn. Happens all summer long.”

  I felt a flash of regret that the tourist season would be under way shortly, robbing us of the privacy we'd enjoyed all winter. The locals didn't take wrong turns. We watched the car back around and head out, its beams cutting through the dusk. Faye offered me a dish of shelled walnuts, took a fistful for herself, and then sat back and propped up her legs. Her feet were misshapen, her toes deformed from dancing.

  “When does Lily set sail?” she asked.

  “They've upped the departure date. In two weeks, she said, but she didn't tell me the precise day.”

  “Well, here's to her.” Faye raised her wine high. “Salut.”

  Reluctantly I leaned in and clicked my glass against Faye's.

  “I'll send along a gift with you. Although I haven't the foggiest idea what one gives a woman who is setting sail across the Atlantic with her lover.”

  The word made me cringe.

  Faye chatted on. “I suppose something small and sensible— there's scarcely room for you to sneeze on board a boat—but I was thinking more along the lines of an utterly impractical gift.”

  Was I the only one who thought the venture not only dangerous but completely insane? “I'll only be in Richmond for two days,” I said. “Just the weekend.”

  Faye leaned over and held my knee. “It will be good for you. You haven't had much fun this spring.”

  “Do you think anything will happen while I'm gone?” I asked. “With Luke, I mean.”

  “Are you asking me if I think he is going to die?” she said.

  I nodded.

  “He's in process, but I don't sense he's near the end yet,” Faye said.

  “I don't think I could leave if he was.” I caught my lip between my teeth, afraid I had revealed too much.

  “Well, there are no guarantees,” Faye said. “For that matter, your plane could go down.”

  “Well, Jesus, Faye, thank you for that cheery thought.”

  Faye laughed and flexed her damaged toes. Shortly after that, I finished the wine and, pleading exhaustion, slipped home.

  THE WIND had died down, and it was warm, the air soft on my skin as I walked back to the cottage. The moon was midway across the night sky, laying a narrow silver swath across the sound. It looked like the illustration in a picture book I had had as a child, a story about a girl who rode to the stars on a spotted rocking horse. What had Lily done with all the books we'd had as children? Given them to Ashley for her boys? Time marches on, my daddy used to say. The thought did not bring comfort.

  In spite of what I'd told Faye, I wasn't ready for sleep. At grad school, we used to call my condition -wired and tired. I headed upstairs to my workroom. I was seriously behind on orders—all the time I was spending with Luke—and hadn't even chosen a pattern to braid for the locket my client from Sonoma had ordered.

  Earlier that afternoon, I'd brought the paper towel with Luke's hair up to my worktable. Now I unfolded it and fingered the raven locks, still intact and curled, like the tips of spring ferns. I thought of the woman with the son in the navy and the clippings from his first haircut that she'd kept wrapped in tissue all those years. I understood that, understood the metaphysical power a lock of hair possessed. No wonder the one biblical story almost everyone can recall is the story of Delilah cutting Samson's hair. But I hadn't wanted to rob Luke of the little strength he possessed, only to possess something of him. I hadn't taken enough to fashion into a ring or even the smallest charm. Just the two curls, something that artist in Chicago might have chopped finely and used with paint or that I might seal under glass in a locket. Or eat. A bizarre thought, I realized, even as it came to mind. I found an envelope and wrote his name on the front. Luke. It gave me pleasure to write it out like that in cursive. I slipped the hair inside and tucked it away in the top drawer of the desk. Determined to get some work accomplished, I sat down at the worktable—a stand actually, as round and cylindrical as a hatbox—and flipped through a book of patterns, searching for the perfect one for the woman from Sonoma, but my attention kept straying, and after a while, I gave up and went downstairs.

  I wandered restlessly from room to room. Twice I picked up the phone to call Luke but each time set it down before dialing, caught in a push-pull of desire and despair. The third time I lifted the receiver, I dialed the airline and made a reservation for a round-trip flight between Boston and Richmond. The price was exorbitant because it was last-minute, but I charged it on my card, too proud to use Ashley's. Committed to the trip home, I grew even more wired. There were dust-coated bottles of liquor in the back of a kitchen cabinet—remnants of summers past. I pulled out the Tan-queray and found a bottle of Schweppes. When I opened the gin, the piney sharp smell of it rose up in a wave, overwhelming me with memories: late summer afternoons on the porch, the skin on my shoulders tight with sunburn and salt, sipping a lemon Coke while my mama and daddy drank gin and tonics and played games, the slap and click of dominoes on tabletop, in the background the sound of Ashley's boom box—a cut from a Queen album or the latest from the Cure—and the shuffling of my sister's feet as she danced, oblivious to us, me feeling simultaneously safe and slightly bored. That summer had been the last of such contentment. The next year, our daddy was dead and Lily had switched from G and Ts to white wine coolers. Ashley had a part-time job at the Clam Bar, and I began to live on the edge of reckless adventure, sneaking beers and losing my virginity on a sand-gritty blanket to a Connecticut boy who lived two houses down and whose name I'd long since forgott
en. I twisted the cap back on the gin, as if doing so could stop memory, could stop pain.

  sixteen

  NONA CALLED EARLY the next morning. She was back at Luke's and asked if I would come over. When I arrived, I recognized Rich's pickup in the drive. Nona was in the kitchen, washing the breakfast dishes. Luke's door was closed.

  “How are you?” I asked, hugging her tight. I think she had grown to enjoy getting these embraces as much as I enjoyed giving them.

  “Me? I'm fine. It was all a bunch of foolishness.”

  “You had us worried,” I said.

  “Foolishness,” Nona repeated. “They said it was anxiety. Well, the way those doctors carry on, making such a big deal of it, a person would develop a case of nerves just listening to them.”

  “I'm so glad you're okay.” I picked up a dish towel and started wiping dishes.

  “Of course they've got me on some kind of pill. Valium. Supposed to calm me down, although it's scarcely big enough to see. Hard to figure how a pill that tiny can do any good, but that doesn't stop them from charging you all outdoors for it.”

  “This has been tough on you,” I said, drying a mug.

  Nona turned to me, hope written all over her face. “But you know,” she said, “I think Luke's better. I really do.”

  I tightened my grip on the towel. “He is? Has the doctor been in? Is that what he says?”

  “No, but I can tell.”

  “Oh.”

  Nona's look of hope turned nearly defiant. “There's been a change, Jessie. One for the good.”

  I glanced over at the closed door and steeled myself against Nona's optimism—optimism I both longed for and feared. “Really?”

  “He had one of your smoothie things for dinner last night,” Nona said.

  “He did?” A sprout of hope rose in my chest.

  “And he's seeing people again,” Nona said.

  “He is?” I remembered then how, the day before, he'd talked to the neighbor.