Perennials

by Julie Cantrell

  “Bitsy says he’s nearly engaged, Mother.”

  She adds ink to the white-spaced word cubes. “There’s no reason to fight it, dear. Whatever it is you and Fisher have together, it’s got a life of its own.” She says this with exaggeration, enjoying the tease. “Time to let love bloom.”

  “Wow, you’re coming up with some winning lines there, Mother. What kind of crossword puzzle is that? Soap Opera Catchphrases? Bored Housewives?”

  She laughs. “Say what you want. I’ve been around long enough to know a good thing when I see it. You and Fisher . . . well, that’s a good thing.”

  I shuffle my feet, half hoping she’s right. “What about Blaire?”

  “What about her? She runs around behind his back, from what I hear. And I guess you already know she left Ron Howington at the altar a few years back.”

  “Are you kidding?” Heaven knows Fisher suffered enough when I returned his engagement ring. The last thing he needs is another rejection.

  Mother shakes her head. “You know I’m not one to gossip. Blaire may be a good person for all I know, but for Fisher, she’s a heartbreak waiting to happen. And I care about Fisher. We all do. I don’t want to see him end up with someone who doesn’t appreciate him. Just like I don’t want you to end up with someone like Reed ever again.”

  The mention of Reed snaps my spirit. Every fiber severs, sending pieces of me far and away.

  July 2013

  “Eva. This is Meghan. Reed’s wife.” She announces her name before I can crawl to a safe space. It’s been almost two months since Reed confessed his double life to me. Somehow I found the strength to drive away from the Tortolita Mountains that night, and I’ve spent the last fifty-two days striving to regain some sense of dignity. I certainly never expected this call. Especially in the middle of a workday, trapped by the confines of Apogee.

  “I have questions, Eva. You owe me that, at least.”

  “Of course.” I bite my lip. “Give me a minute?”

  Mere feet from the phone, Brynn is watching another TED Talk. Across the cubicle, coworkers shield themselves behind earbuds and computer screens. I muster all the courage I can find and move to a conference room.

  “I’ve been married to Reed for nearly twenty years. My family is everything to me, you understand?” She weeps, and I can’t bear to hear the pain she carries. “I found a text on his phone today. Several, in fact. He’s met you in Arizona? Told you he loves you?”

  It’s clear she expects answers, but I stay silent. I’m angry. Not with this poor woman, whose hurt must be far worse than my own, but with Reed, for deceiving not one trusting partner but two. As her story unfolds, it becomes clear that Reed is still playing us both. Four full years in a relationship with me, and his wife is only finding out today? He’s too good a con for this to be a coincidence. I want to warn her. Tell her he preys on trusting people like us. That this is some sick part of his game. Instead, I listen, wishing I could erase the past, save her from this suffering.

  “Is any of this true? Please, Eva. I need to know.”

  There’s no right way to do this, so I follow my heart and start by offering an apology. “I’m so very, very sorry, Meghan. I know you have no reason to believe me, but I never knew he was married. I would never choose to be with a married man. Never.”

  She catches her breath. I’ve been there, shattered by the one person you trust most in the world. The one you love and the one you believe loves you in return.

  “He says nothing happened between you.” I can hear the hope in her, wanting, needing me to say her children are safe, that her family is not about to be destroyed.

  “Reed says a lot of things.”

  The rest comes in pieces, as she demands the whole story. I struggle through the truth, not sure she believes a word I say. How we haven’t talked for a couple of months. That when I found out he was married, I ended it immediately. “Part of me wanted to reach out to you. But I didn’t want to cause any more hurt. I figured, well . . . I guess I hoped your marriage might survive all this.”

  “I still don’t understand. How exactly do you know my husband?” Meghan struggles to process the details, asking me to explain it all again, as if the words will suddenly fall into place and make sense of this. No logic could ever validate Reed’s choices. I know. I’ve tried.

  “He’s not well, Meghan.”

  “You don’t know him.”

  “You’re right. I only thought I knew him.”

  She doesn’t respond, so I try to break through. “Truth is, Reed is a con. I was nothing but a pawn.”

  “Keep talking,” she says, as if things are beginning to come clear.

  “I loved him, Meghan, like you. Trusted him completely. I never imagined he had a family. Never once crossed my mind.”

  The syllables slash across the phone, but I know how it feels to want the truth, so I answer every question and give her the shameful details, explain that yes, Reed said he loved me, and yes, he supposedly planned to marry me, and yes, he promised we would live happily ever after in our dream home by a lake. I confess to the international vacations and romantic getaways. I describe the way he broke the news of his marriage the very night I expected him to propose.

  She sobs, and I fight my own tears, tears I have no right to cry. And when her grief takes the shape of anger, I absorb that too, as I should. She’s right to say I owe this to her, and so I do my best to deliver, focusing only on her pain, trying hard to ignore my own.

  As my coworkers call it a night outside the conference room, Reed’s voice comes through the phone. He is arriving home from work, edgy and tense. I hear him yell for Meghan, slam a door. “Dinner isn’t ready?” His voice comes closer, and I shiver as he demands to know who’s on the phone.

  “It’s Eva,” she says without emotion. Such strength.

  “Eva who?” His volume lifts. “What are you doing, Meghan?”

  My bones begin to shake in response. I’ve never heard anyone treat someone this way, but she seems to accept it without much shock. Despite the games Reed played with my life, I never saw his temper. Never once. This is yet another mask he wears, and I get the sense he’s set this whole thing up just to watch us squirm.

  He yells louder. “I told you. She’s a friend. Nothing more.” The names he calls her are brutal. She is in real danger now.

  “You hear this?” she questions me, confronting his lie with a sideways move. “He claims you’re just a friend.”

  The pain in this is unbearable. Not just accepting that Reed doesn’t love me anymore, but facing the reality that he never did.

  Something crashes in the background, and the verbal assault escalates. I have never met Meghan, but to hear her treated this way, to understand the level of cruelty Reed delivers . . . “Meghan? You need to get out of there.”

  The phone disconnects. I’m left with nothing but dead air.

  I dial her number. It goes immediately to voice mail. I try again. Nothing. I call Reed. No answer.

  I am pacing again, unsure of how to help this woman. I call the San Antonio police. My hands shake as I report my concerns. They seem unconcerned, so I press for a safety visit, insist I remain anonymous. Only when they agree to visit the home do I finally hang up the phone, fully aware that if anything happens to Meghan, it’s my fault.

  SEVENTEEN

  “Go easy on that door,” Bitsy teases Trip, who comes bounding into the kitchen with a big hug for Mother. And for me! Standing at least six feet high, he’s a half foot taller than I am now.

  “Trip, my goodness. You’re a man!” I can’t get over it. “Since when does fifteen look like this?”

  When I ask how he keeps the girls away, he laughs with teenage smugness. “I don’t.” Then he opens the fridge, helping himself to leftover peach pie.

  Mary Evelyn comes trailing in behind Bitsy, and Trip offers a slice to each of us. It’s not yet breakfast, so we all decline. At twelve years old, my niece stays back and takes in the sce
ne before allowing me to hug her. An introverted personality trait I can relate to, but still, it hurts my heart.

  “I hope this means you’re going with us today.” I pour Trip a glass of milk.

  “Yep,” he says between bites.

  Chief stretches the suspense, refusing to tell us where we’re headed. Bitsy drops a box of muffins on the table from the local bakery, and the rest of us circle. I dole out the plates Mother has been using for fifty years, and she steps in beside me, passing napkins and glasses before saying, “Every man for himself.” We indulge.

  “Trip has practice at five.” Bitsy eyes her phone, scans her calendar. “And Mary Evelyn has a lunch party at noon. Ballet at three. Riding lessons at six.”

  “So we’d better get a move on then.” Chief jiggles his keys in his pocket to encourage a quick bite. We all talk over one another as we devour the muffins, and everyone eats but Mother, who sips coffee in silence while watching the chaos around her. Within fifteen minutes Trip snatches the last of the banana-nut muffins, smiling as he taunts his sister with the final bite.

  “Head ’em up, move ’em out.” Chief sings the classic Rawhide verse, reminding me of lazy rainy afternoons spent watching Westerns with my father.

  The kids and I wrap up the jingle with an enthusiastic, “Rawhide!” Then the six of us pile into the family tank and Chief drives us just a few miles up the road to Rowan Oak, home of the late William Faulkner.

  The historic estate can barely be seen from the residential street, where Chief parks roadside. Together we stroll the long gravel path through the property, letting the neighborhood noise fade into the trees. As we near the iconic row of eastern red cedars, I remember how Chief would scare the dickens out of us with tales of Judith Sheegog, a spirit who supposedly haunts these grounds. I question my niece about the famous folktale, pointing out the massive magnolia where Judith’s grave reportedly rests.

  She sighs. “I’m kinda too old for that, Aunt Lovey.”

  The sound of those two words, Aunt Lovey! Never has there been anything sweeter. It’s all I can do not to sweep her up into my arms, but I figure if she’s too old for ghost stories, then she’s way too old for public affection. I try my best not to blow this, giving both kids time to let me back into their lives.

  Mary Evelyn must feel bad about her response because she draws close to me now. “You are coming to my birthday tea, aren’t you?”

  I smile and wrap my arm through hers, our elbows holding the hinge. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world. Still can’t believe you’re going to be a teenager!”

  Bitsy stays quiet, walking ahead as if she doesn’t hear, so I steer to the safe side. “Either of you know why this house is called Rowan Oak?”

  Trip answers, confident in his knack for spouting random facts, a habit that’s earned him the moniker Trivia Trip. “Named after a tree.” He speaks in an overconfident voice and rubs his chin, acting the part of a learned scholar.

  “Two trees actually,” Mother says. “The live oak and the rowan tree. Ironically, neither are on this property.”

  “Faulkner probably did that on purpose, don’t you think?” I can picture him now, all smug as he imagined future tourists flocking in search of the rowan oak. Not only would they fail to find the mythical tree, they’d also come up short in search of both the rowan and the live oak.

  “He did seem to have a peculiar sense of humor,” Mother admits with a smile. “The rowan is actually a symbol of protection.”

  “From evil spirits.” Trip teases Mary Evelyn with a spooky voice. He looks back toward the circle garden where the magnolia roots have long been at war with the brick paths.

  “More like tax men and nosy reporters,” Mother says. “I think Faulkner was searching for his own little corner of the world, a safe and peaceful place to call home.”

  “Might have helped if he had put down the bottle,” Bitsy snips, ever the critic of other people’s lives. No one mentions the fact that she’s been nursing many a wineglass in the days since I’ve been home. Typical of her to project her own sins onto someone else.

  Chief grunts in response but keeps us moving between the cedars. They loom over us like giant sentinels, holding their position in two linear rows, insisting we embrace Faulkner’s Mississippi—a place that was at once both magical and maddening. Some say the cedars were planted to cleanse the air after the yellow fever epidemic, a legend that adds to the mysterious dance of light and shadow taking place beneath the aromatic boughs.

  Despite the morning hour several quilts dot the lawn where students have gathered around the black locust. With guitars and ukuleles this carefree group strums, while a middle-aged couple whispers against the courtyard wall, ivy weaving its way between them like a jealous lover.

  I text notes on my phone, jotting the names of plants as we walk. Were we to venture inside the Greek Revival home, we could see Faulkner’s outline for A Fable. This novel won both the Pulitzer and the National Book Award, but I’ve long been more impressed by the fact that the plot points were written by Faulkner’s own hand across the walls of the study, including a secret section he tucked behind the door to prove we never know what tomorrow might bring. But today, we skip the house with its stately white columns and head past the scuppernong arbor.

  “Well, shoot,” Chief says, disappointment clear as he reaches a tangled mass of wisteria. “I thought they’d still be in bloom.”

  The wisteria vines have nearly devoured an iron pole that struggles to support their weight. Having already finished their first spring cycle, their purple petals cloak the grass now, holding dew beneath the morning light.

  Bitsy and Trip shade their eyes from the sun, and I move closer to examine the thick web of vines. Trip takes a seat even though the iron bench seems too small and ancient for his sturdy frame. Off-balance and faded, the bench arcs to connect with others just like it, looping the pole to form the center of the English knot garden whose geometric privet hedge circles us all.

  Mother lets her hand fall softly across the shoulders of Mary Evelyn, who already stands nearly as tall, while Chief grasps one of the woodsy stems for closer inspection. “Y’all know how kudzu and English ivy tend to take over? Won’t stop growing ’til nearly everything else is dead?”

  “Yes, sir,” Trip says politely, and all I can think is how happy I am to be here, to share this time with my niece and nephew.

  “Well, wisteria is nearly as bad.” Chief tugs the vines. They interweave beyond the pole, reaching high into tree branches to overhang the garden. “Been known to take the roof off a house, swallow a car, even pull down a barn or two.”

  Mary Evelyn’s eyes grow wide. They are green like mine and anchored by a full-flowing swath of strawberry-blonde waves, same color as my own before the gray started setting in—a nod to our Scots-Irish ancestry. She looks more like me than she does her mother, and also like me, she adores Chief. He pulls a few spent blooms from the ground and dew shakes loose, sprinkling my shirt and drawing a laugh from Mary Evelyn, who leans in to inspect. “You can probably imagine how pretty these are when they’re still purple and new.”

  When she nods, Chief adds, “Well, don’t be fooled, young lady. I’m gonna tell you something I don’t talk about much.”

  No stranger to their grandfather’s spur-of-the-moment sermons, both kids tune in, knowing there’s a lesson to be learned. The rest of us do too.

  “A long time ago, there was a woman who looked about as pretty to me as these flowers when they bloom.”

  “You’d better be talking about Mother,” Bitsy teases.

  “Actually, no.” Chief shakes his head with regret. “Someone else. I came home and, well, Laurel was waiting at the door. Word had already gotten back to her.”

  “Can’t get away with much in a small town,” Bitsy says to her children, a tone of warning.

  “True,” Mother agrees, unnerved, as if nothing Chief could say would make her love him less.

  “That’s a good th
ing too.” He speaks to the kids, emphasizing his point. “Because your grandmother here made it clear that I’d better toe the line. And you know what? She was right.”

  “Always is.” I smile, impressed as ever by Mother’s graceful composure.

  “Absolutely,” Chief says. “Truth is, I had put my own family at risk. So that afternoon, Laurel took me to the woods and showed me some wisteria, just like this here. It had covered an entire tractor and half a hay barn on the neighbor’s property. Plus a tree or two.” Chief turns to Mother. “You remember what you said?”

  “I do.” She gives him the look. Same one she gave me when she thought I had smoked a cigarette or cheated on an exam. “I told you, some things need to be kept at a distance, or else they destroy every good thing within their reach.”

  “Yep. That’s what she said.” Chief nods meekly before he turns back toward the kids. “And to this day, we still don’t let wisteria grow on our property, no matter how pretty it is.”

  I move my hands to my pockets, feeling a surge of guilt for touching the risqué plant. Trip grins in response, as if he knows what I’m thinking.

  “So here’s the thing,” Chief preaches on. “Y’all know how Laurel and I tend to think life is like a garden. It’s important to plant ourselves near the right people.”

  Trip plays along, speaking in his professor voice again. “Beware the vines!”

  “You got it.” Chief nods. “In a healthy family, there’s a balance. Every life can flourish. But if there’s no equal balance, everybody suffers. Few survive.”

  Mother smiles Chief’s way, with a fondness reserved for soul mates of the truest kind. “You need to know two things in life, just like when you weed a garden: When to say yes. And when to say no.”

  Bitsy shifts uncomfortably, as if she can’t imagine any other outcome for our family. I, too, feel sickened at the thought of my parents ever suffering any form of infidelity, even the threat of it. But looking at them here, together, I realize no marriage is safe from such dangers. The important part of the story is that Chief easily could have tended the wrong plant, devoured our mother’s spirit, destroyed the rest of us who shared space beside him. But he didn’t. And that one choice has made all the difference, not only in our lives, but in the lives of every generation that will follow.