The Lavender Hour

by Anne Leclaire

  “Do you recognize this painting?” he said.

  “Yes,” Nona said, her voice suddenly firm.

  “Would you identify it for the jury?”

  “That's Luke's.”

  “Are you positive?”

  “Absolutely,” Nona said. “That is Luke's painting. His college roommate painted it.”

  Next Nelson picked up the green plaid shirt. “And do you recognize this?”

  Nona reached for the shirt, scrunched the fabric between her fingers, pressed it against her abdomen, whispered, “Yes, this is my son's.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Yes.”

  “Forgive me for asking this, Mrs. Ryder, but how can you be absolutely certain that this shirt belonged to Luke?”

  Nona stroked the shirt, her eyes closed.

  “Mrs. Ryder?”

  Slowly Nona opened her eyes. She turned the shirt inside out, held it up for Nelson to see. “Here,” she said. “You see here where the stitches are red along this seam? It's where I mended it for him. I had run out of green thread.”

  NONA STAYED on the stand for more than an hour while Nelson led her through the months of Luke's illness up to the last day of his life, all of it captured by the news camera and the reporters. She told the jurors how she had gone to take a nap, leaving him in my care, how when she'd woken up, I had told her he was sleeping, how later when she'd gone in, he seemed to be asleep and she hadn't wanted to disturb him since he'd had a bad night, and how, finally, later in the evening when the health aide arrived, they had gone in together and found that Luke had passed.

  “And to the best of your knowledge, who was the last person to see him alive?”

  Nona finally looked at me. “She was,” she said. “Jessie.”

  “Mrs. Ryder, during these last months of his life,” Nelson said, “was your son alone?”

  “Alone? I'm not sure what you mean.”

  “Was he isolated?”

  “Oh, he was never alone. We made sure of that.”

  “Who was with him?”

  “Well, I was always there. And Rocker. His dog. Until Luke got very sick and felt Rocker would get better care if his friend Rich looked after him. And Paige stopped by when she could. And of course the hospice people.”

  “Who were the hospice people?”

  “There was Ginny, his nurse.”

  Nelson checked his notes. “That would be Virginia Reiser?”

  “Yes. She came about twice a week to check on him, monitor his medications. And Jim came three times a week, more toward the end.”

  “By Jim, you mean Jim Robbins, the home health aide?”

  “Yes. He would help with Luke's personal care. Washing him, things like that.”

  Nelson looked back at his notes.

  Without waiting for his next question, Nona continued. “I was always glad when he came. Luke was, too. Jim always made him laugh.” A hint of a smile crossed her face.

  “He made him laugh?” Nelson turned to the jury as he repeated her words.

  “Yes.”

  “Can you tell us more about that?”

  “Well, Jim would tell these jokes. Silly, really, but they'd make us all laugh. Luke always seemed better after he left.”

  Nelson paused, making sure the jury digested this last bit. The dying man laughed. “And the defendant, Jessica Long, she also came to the house.”

  “Yes.”

  “As a volunteer?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what was her role in his care?”

  I thought that Nona would look at me then, would remember the cups of coffee we had shared, the hours we had spent together, remember, too, how I'd cared for Luke, how she had told me I was good for him.

  “She was supposed to help us out,” Nona said, staring straight ahead.

  “How was she supposed to help?”

  “She was supposed to stay with Luke if I had to go to the store or to the dentist. Things like that. So Luke wouldn't be alone.”

  “How long would you be away?”

  “Not long. No more than an hour. I didn't like to be away from him for long.”

  “And during the times that the defendant was there, did she ever encourage you to stay away for longer periods of time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please tell the jury what she said.”

  “Well, once she said I should go back to my home overnight. She said she would stay with Luke until I got back.”

  “Did she say why you should go home?”

  “She said I should get my hair done.”

  One of the jurors made a noise, not quite a gasp. It wasn't like that, I wanted to tell them. Not like what it sounds like. Nona had been exhausted and had wanted to go home, had missed her house. How easily things could be taken out of context, twisted. I started to say something to Gage, but he motioned for me to be quiet.

  Judge Savage asked Nona if she would like to take a short break, but she said she would continue. The bailiff offered her water. Even from the defense table, I could see Nona's hand shake when she reached for the glass.

  Nelson flipped through his notes. When he resumed, he asked Nona to describe for the jurors what a typical day had been for Luke, how he had occupied himself.

  “He watched TV,” she said. “And did the crossword. And he liked to sit by the window and listen to the birds.”

  I could see all too clearly the portrait of Luke the jurors must have had in their minds. A man loved and cared for, sitting in his room—perhaps as they themselves had, when recovering from a cold or the flu—watching television, reading the paper, laughing at jokes. Listening to birds. There was no place in this vision for vomiting; cruel, unending pain; despair.

  “Mrs. Ryder,” Nelson said, “did your son ever speak to you about ending his life?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Could you repeat that, please? I'm not sure the jurors could hear.”

  “No,” Nona said, her voice stronger, sure. “No, he did not. Not once.”

  Nelson turned to Gage. “Your witness.”

  Gage kept his cross to a minimum, basically trying to counter the DA's picture of Luke with one of a very sick and dying man, drawing a reluctant admission from Nona that, during the time she had been napping, it was possible Luke had another visitor on the afternoon of his death, but the damage had been done.

  Nona's testimony hadn't been as dramatic as Paige's. She hadn't cried or shouted accusations or displayed contempt for me. She just broke the jurors' hearts.

  And that ended the fifth day of the trial.

  twenty-seven

  CEECEE INSISTED ON staying with me at the commuter parking lot while I waited for Lily, who had driven over to Hyannis with Irene to pick up a rental car. Earlier, we had made plans hurriedly in the courthouse corridor, agreeing to meet at the Barnstable lot, and then Lily would follow me home.

  I had started to explain that I was no longer at our cottage, but of course Lily knew that.

  “Ashley probably told you,” I said.

  “No, Faye did,” Lily said, her voice strangely flat. She had already rejected the thought of staying at the Harwich Port cottage, put off by the idea of reporters tracking her there, and had mentioned getting a room at a B and B, but I insisted she stay with me. Of course that was what she wanted all along, and so did I.

  We made a brief detour by a market so Lily could run in for some groceries. She suggested we go out to dinner, but I couldn't face the possibility of being recognized, and the end result was that we agreed to eat in but Lily would cook. I told her I had some soup and other leftovers—she was exhausted by the flight and the day at court—but she insisted on cooking. While she shopped, I waited in the car, growing edgy, suddenly feeling defensive about the evening ahead. When we finally arrived at the house, Lily proclaimed it “charming,” sounding for a moment like her old pre-Jan self. I cleared the worktable and supplies from the second bedroom and suggested she take a nap before d
inner, but she said no and went off to the kitchen. I changed out of my suit and took a quick shower, a vain attempt to wash the courtroom from my body. I heard her on the phone to Jan despite the time difference, which would make it later in the night for him. When I came downstairs, the house was filled with the scent of onions and some spice I couldn't identify. Coriander? Cumin? Lily was in the living room, kneeling in front of the fieldstone fireplace, breaking kindling and laying logs. I saw a thin circle of pink on the crown of her head where her hair was beginning to thin.

  “Shall we take a walk before dinner?” she asked.

  “If you want,” I said.

  We donned sweaters and Windbreakers and walked down the cliff to the beach, heading west, into the setting sun. As if by a mutual pact, we did not speak for a long time. Lily was the first to break the silence.

  “Are you sure about this lawyer of yours?”

  I knew what she must think of Gage, with his baggy suits and those ridiculous lizard elevated shoes. “I trust him,” I said. “He's savvy.” I told her about the day of the jury selection and how Gage had information on each juror and challenged the woman who had seemed friendly to me but had donated to a Christian Right cause.

  “I'm not criticizing, Jessie. Just concerned.”

  “I don't want to talk about any of it right now. Okay?”

  “Okay, then, whenever you're ready.”

  We walked along, the silence heavy. Again Lily was the first one to break it. “Tell me what this year has been like for you.”

  I thought she was curious about my plans for the future: Had I gotten a job, gotten myself straightened out, made good use of her largesse, the sabbatical?

  “I don't have a job yet.” Again I felt like the fuckup of the century. “So the year hasn't done what it was supposed to, if that's what you want to know,” I said, hearing and hating the defensive sound of my voice. I waited for Lily's lecture.

  She turned and looked at me. “Oh, I think it has,” she said.

  I didn't have the first clue what she meant by that but felt we could easily edge into an argument, slip into an old pattern. I switched the conversation away from myself. “Tell me about the trip.”

  “Well, you know how long those overseas flights are. But it wasn't bad, considering. Jan insisted I fly business class.”

  “Not the flight over. Last summer's trip. The transatlantic sail.”

  Lily smiled. She looked pretty, then, less tired. “Oh, Jess, it was fantastic,” she said. “Didn't you read the e-mails Jan sent?”

  “Yes.” I didn't have a computer, but Ashley had printed out the messages Jan had written each day and mailed them to me. I recalled some of the details: storms, life at sea, how Lily had found the hardest thing was boiling water for pasta.

  “It's something I'll never, ever forget. I wish you could have been there. The things we saw. Dolphins and whales. A loggerhead turtle. And birds. When there was nothing else, there was always seabirds. Once we saw a Dole pineapple cargo ship heading to Europe. Some nights, the skies were clear and motionless. And there were phosphorescent bubbles in the wake of the boat. They looked like fireflies in tall grass.”

  I remembered reading something in one of the letters about storms and recalled my own terror at the thought of Lily in the middle of the ocean, unprotected. I'd had to stop reading.

  “Were you ever afraid?” I asked.

  “Oh yes. But Jan would remind me that the boat was built to handle all kinds of deep-ocean weather.”

  “Did you get seasick?”

  “More than once. And bored. And tired. But I never once regretted it.”

  “But why did you go? I never understood that.”

  “Lots of reasons.”

  “So give me one.”

  “Sometimes you have to take a journey to find yourself.”

  “I didn't know you were lost,” I said, a lame joke.

  Lily slowed her steps—she'd set the pace when we started out, and we had covered a lot of ground—and then continued as if I hadn't spoken.

  “I wanted my life to get bigger,” she said.

  “I don't understand.”

  “I looked at my friends and saw their lives gradually shrinking. I thought about my mama and daddy and how, before they died, the territory of their days grew smaller and smaller. Your granddaddy Earl used to hike the Blue Ridge, and in the end, he was afraid to take a trip to the store without your grandma Rose. Neither of them would even go into the city. I didn't want that to happen to me.”

  “It wouldn't have,” I said automatically.

  She shook her head. “It happens so subtly, Jessie. You get a little uncomfortable driving at night, so you stop. You no longer like going to the movies or out to dinner alone, so it gets easier to stay home. In increments, so tiny you don't even notice, you give your life away. I wanted my life to get bigger, not smaller.”

  I felt a surge of jealousy. And then, unexpectedly, pride. I slid my hand into Lily's, suddenly feeling close to her in a way I seldom had growing up. Then we mostly fought. And even when I was in my twenties, we never really shared. Ashley was the one Lily usually traded confidences with. This conversation was deeper than most we'd had. Had crossing the ocean caused this change in Lily? Or had Jan? Or was I the one who had changed?

  “Mama?” I said.

  “Yes, Jess.”

  “I'm glad you married Jan.”

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

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

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

  “Gross,” I said, embarrassed for her.

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

  I had never heard her use that word.

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

  “Who?”

  “Luke. Tell me about him.”

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

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

  “Did you love him?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Me, too.”

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

  “Shhh, baby. It's all right.”

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

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

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

  “Please, Mama. I need to know.”

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

  “Did you miss him?”

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

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

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

  “Why didn't you ever tell us?”

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

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

  “No. I guess we didn't.”

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

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

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

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

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

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