Vexed, she picked up the ancient tome of the unpublished history of the Tolivers she’d brought out to pass the time. Odd that Aunt Mary had never mentioned the history or shown it to her… perhaps because it contained nothing she didn’t already know of Toliver lore. To the sound of the church bells dying away and the buzz of the last of Indian summer’s bees in the queen’s crown, she opened the aged cover and began to read.
PERCY LISTENED TO THE OVERHEAD toll calling the congregation to the First Methodist Church of Howbutker, where he’d presented himself a willing worshipper nearly every Sunday of his life, except for the interruptions of his war service and business trips. He’d lost track of the names and faces who had filled the pulpit. Most stayed as long as the bishop allowed, for the church coffers were full, the needs of the flock few, and life in Howbutker simple and undemanding. Not one of them had said much of anything to inspire or instruct him for many years. He came for the peace, the music, and a kind of solace he received nowhere else.
This morning, he was in special need of solace. All week, he’d heard arguments debating his case. He’d sat in a smoke of them for five days, listening to Amos and the crackerjack team of lawyers called in, and once everything was considered—even the strong possibility that Rachel could wind up with nothing but lost time and lawyers’ bills—the consensus was that he should return Somerset. As a matter of fact, the out-of-towners could hardly refrain from scratching their heads over what the delay was all about. Why would Percy even remotely consider any other decision but giving back the plantation to spare his company the expense and disruption of a lawsuit and himself the stench of scandal?
And still he could not say the words they wanted to hear, including Matt. Matt was in Atlanta now, springing a surprise visit on Lucy. He’d informed his grandfather Friday after the conclave broke up for the weekend that he would take the plane to see his grandmother and not be back until Sunday afternoon. Percy had nodded in understanding. Matt saw Lucy in a different light now and needed to make up for the years of his misassumptions. Percy had been sorry to see him go at such a time, but he was happy for Lucy. They’d become closer now, and that was good. When he was gone, Lucy would be all Matt had left.
He closed his eyes. That would be soon, he believed. Mornings now he was surprised to find himself awakening. He was tired, weary of living. A man out of dreams was out of life, and his were spent. Not one had come true, not the important ones, anyhow—those of a happy marriage, a loving family, a house filled with children and grandchildren. Ironic how—even in death—his Mary had robbed him of the last dream he really hadn’t known he’d nurtured—Matt and Rachel falling in love, marrying, uniting their empires, living happily ever after under one roof, the war of the roses over at last. But Mary had killed that dream when she left him Somerset.
The organ prelude began, quieting the murmurs among the congregants. Never came this moment of a Sunday morning but that he did not look across the aisle up two rows and remember Ollie and Matthew and Wyatt. There were Sundays when he could all but see them sitting there in spit-and-polish order, Ollie’s pate gleaming and the boys’ hair still damp and showing the coercive rake of comb and brush. The backs of their heads, their profiles, were indelibly imprinted upon his memory. Sometimes he closed his eyes as if in prayer, as he was doing now, and he could see them lined along the pew, Ollie’s plump shoulders trimmed by the masterful cut of his suit, Wyatt’s hunched typically forward, Matthew’s squared against the seat. How he missed them.
The service began. As he rose with the congregation to sing the first hymn, he sensed Amos’s pointed concern and frustration from six rows back. Percy sympathized. There was no one more maddening than an old fart who couldn’t decide what direction to take, though his way was as clear as a West Texas highway. He knew what he must do, but still he was here today in his own Gethsemane, asking that this cup pass from him… that he be spared the anguish he must face tomorrow. Perhaps somewhere in the sermon was a nugget of divine wisdom that would direct him to another path.
The reading of the Word commenced. Percy’s mind wandered, waiting for the message. He thought of Mary. He couldn’t remember when his prayers had finally been answered and the sexual fires for her had died—the fire, but not the flame. It had been such a blessing, the final banking of the embers. What a relief to feel simply love and nothing else. Right now, it was as if she were inside his head pacing back and forth… back and forth… with those long strides of hers, slender hands wringing. Percy, Percy, what are we going to do?
Damned if I know! he answered, and looked about him to see if he’d spoken aloud. No one was paying any attention to him, but the minister had him locked in his gaze. He had raised a forefinger, not in admonition, but as if in emphasis of some point directed solely at Percy. His ears pricked. Here it comes! he thought.
“Hearken to me, you who pursue deliverance, you who seek the Lord…” The minister was quoting from the Old Testament, but Percy had missed the book, chapter, and verse. “Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug.”
The minister’s eye roved on, and Percy grappled to understand the application of the words. Now what in hell am I to do with that? No answer for him there. He’d never put much stock in the rock from which he’d been hewn or the quarry from which he was dug. That was Mary’s pitch, the song and dance that had caused all their woe.
The service came to an end with “Rock of Ages” sung as the closing hymn. Percy rose to his feet slowly, thoughtfully, hymnal in hand. The sermon had been about rock. You who pursue deliverance, look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug….
Percy gripped the back of the seat, the hymnal nearly falling from his hand. Joy lit his face like sunlight breaking through clouds. Of course! Look to the rock! That’s it! he exulted. By damn, he had his answer.
LUCY SAT IN THE LATE morning sunlight of her parlor, the room mellow with the Sunday peal of the carillon from the church tower on the corner. Its golden cadence struck terror in her heart. The sound was a pitiless reminder that time was running out for Percy and Matt—even for that little chip off the old block waiting by her phone in Dallas, though she didn’t know it. By this time tomorrow, Percy would have answered her ultimatum, and another generation of lives would be skewed off course by one Toliver’s bulldogged obsession with Somerset.
It was as she’d guessed. Mary had detached her great-niece from that cursed body of land to protect her from the consequences she’d suffered at its hands. And holy Mother of God, what consequences!
She was still numb from hearing Percy’s replay of them on the tape Matt had spun for her Friday night. He’d arrived unannounced, and at first when Betty told her he was in the living room, she’d thought he’d come to report that his grandfather had died. She’d popped up from her chair in such a fright that the blood had whooshed from her head, and she’d had to grab hold of her dressing table to keep from hitting the floor. Matt had found her there, swaying, and rushed to catch her before she fell.
“Gabby! It’s not what you think. Granddad’s all right!” he’d cried, and snatched her to him as if she were a child he’d saved from certain death. She’d begun to cry—from relief, regret, or the surprise and intensity of Matt’s feeling, only the saints knew.
“Then what brings you here?” she’d asked, looking up through her flooded eyes from the massive environs of his chest and shoulders.
“I’ve brought something you need to hear. You have a tape recorder?”
They’d gone outside in the growing dusk to hear the tape while the moon rose and highlighted her lunar garden. Neither said anything during the playing. She’d listened, still as the stone on which she sat, now and then reaching for another tissue from the box Betty had thoughtfully provided. When the tape was over and the recorder clicked off, she’d snatched another Kleenex and plugged it to her raw nose.
“Now we know,” she’d said.
He’d nodded. “Now we know.”
“Lots of blame to go around.”
“And to forgive, Gabby.”
“And to forgive.” Percy’s voice was inside her, touching all the still raw places, making her ashamed of her nastiness, though taking its cause upon himself, never blaming her… not once in his story. She had wiped her puffy eyes and added the tissue to the wadded pile at her feet. “I hope you’ll believe that I never would have revealed that Matthew was Percy and Mary’s son. That was an idle threat and base of me, but I never would have told even if your grandfather had filed for divorce. I hope you’ll believe me.”
“Of course I do. And Granddad does, too. It wasn’t your threat that kept him from divorcing you.”
“Why, then?”
“Because he knows you still love him.” His voice had come to her gruffly in the moonlight, reminding her of Wyatt’s.
She’d reddened and hoped that in the darkness he couldn’t see. “Still… I held the threat over him until the day of Mary’s death—a shameful thing to do. I… just couldn’t bear to let him go. But now… you tell him to go ahead and file for divorce. I won’t stand in his way.”
He’d reached for her hand. “Granddad’s not going to divorce you, Gabby.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he told me so.”
She’d given in to a spell of crying again and, when she was down to sniffles, had said, “Your father did a wonderful thing sending him that painting. I’m glad he forgave him. Of course, I never knew about the red rose Percy slipped into the book he took to Korea. Imagine Wyatt familiar with the legend of the roses…. So what now? What do you think Rachel will do?”
It had broken her heart to see the grief in his eyes. “Repeat her great-aunt’s mistake.”
Damn the little witch, Lucy had thought.
And now Matt was gone, and here she sat, helpless to save the men she loved. Twenty minutes ago, as he was leaving, he’d asked, “Will you be all right, Gabby?” the blue eyes he’d inherited from her saying she had only to utter the word and he wouldn’t go. Another unprecedented first.
“I’ll be all right, Matt. Go see to your grandfather.”
He’d left the tape, one of several copies, he’d said. It sat on the coffee table, a five-by-seven cassette holding the misdirected journeys of two lifetimes. What a tragedy that Rachel would never hear it. It could save the day and all the tomorrows to come.
“Mopin’s not going to help,” Betty said from the doorway. “Maybe you shouldn’t have canceled your bridge party today.”
“I couldn’t have concentrated. What’s that?”
Betty held out a slip of paper. “I don’t know if Mister Matt intended to throw this away or not. I found it on the floor next to the trash basket in his room.”
Lucy examined it. It was a sheet of notepaper bearing the name of a motel in Marshall, Texas. Scribbled across it was a telephone number preceded by a Dallas area code. A light popped on in Lucy’s head. Matt had said he’d tracked Rachel to a motel in Marshall where they’d had their last confab. She was staying with a friend in Dallas, the daughter of her lawyer. This must be a contact number where Matt could reach her. An idea started to form.
“Bring me the phone, Betty,” she said.
“Uh-oh. I know that look. What are you up to now?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
She dialed directory assistance, and an operator gave her the name and address of the number on the notepaper. Carrie Sutherland. Lucy then dialed the number of a wealthy friend who’d long shared her companionship. “Of course,” he said when he heard her request. “You’ll find my plane and pilot waiting for you, and I’ll arrange for a car and driver to meet you at your destination. Have a good flight.”
Lucy rang for Betty. “I’m going on a mission out of town,” she announced. “A very important one. I’ll need a taxi to take me to the airport.”
“How long you goin’ to be gone?”
“As long as it takes. I should be back tonight, but pack my overnight case anyway. Now scoot, dear girl. Time’s of the essence.”
Lucy picked up the tape on her way out of the room. A stroke of luck had opened her cage door, and she was ready to fly.
Chapter Seventy-four
Rachel looked up from the final page of the family history and took her dumbstruck gaze to the pink explosion of queen’s crown, busy with pollination, draped along the wrought-iron fence. Fertilization in action, she thought numbly, an accomplishment that seemed to have eluded the Somerset Tolivers. The buzz mocked the facts she’d never known or realized. None who had possessed the plantation had been prolific sires or bearers of children, and only one child in each generation had lived to inherit. Thomas and Vernon had been the sole heirs in theirs, and Aunt Mary’s only child had died in hers, leaving, with her father’s death, only Rachel as the remaining Toliver. She stared at the antiquated volume. Did she hold here the explanation of the Toliver curse?
It wasn’t possible. There was no such thing as a curse. But her great-grandfather had believed in it, and so had Aunt Mary. She’d told Amos that she had saved her from it. Dear God… had Aunt Mary feared that by leaving her Somerset, she was sentencing her to the barren state she’d known? She recalled the picture of Matthew DuMont displayed on Aunt Mary’s dressing room table, the heartache in the words written on the back. Her father had described him as a wonderful fellow—kind and patient, teaching him English and allowing him to participate in the big-boy games he and Wyatt Warwick had played on their front lawns. Aunt Mary and Uncle Ollie had been devastated when he died, he’d said. They had gone on with their lives, but life was gone. There had been no other children….
Had Aunt Mary hoped to spare her the tragedy she’d suffered?
The kitchen phone shrilled, sending the bees into a frenzy. She jumped. A flash of intuition told her the name of the caller. She laid the book on the patio table through a second ring, then got up with robotic stiffness to slide back the door and enter the all-white kitchen. She removed the white receiver from the wall. “Hello.”
“Good afternoon, Rachel. This is Percy Warwick.”
She listened emotionless as he briefly informed her of his decision, wished her well, and hung up. Slowly, she returned to the patio and sat an hour in the sun, reflecting to the hum of bees in the queen’s crown. Afterward, her own decision made, she dialed Taylor Sutherland.
A half hour later, the doorbell rang. Rachel surmised that Carrie had forgotten her house keys again or Taylor had come around to hold her hand. A squint through the peephole proved both guesses wrong. A mound of snow white hair as fluffy as cotton candy met her eye. She moved her gaze downward to encounter a pair of oddly familiar blue eyes fixed unflinchingly on the glass eye in the door. She opened it inquiringly. The woman had arrived in a black limousine, its liveried driver propped against the hood, snapping a lighter to a cigarette. Her visitor—short and round, in her mid-eighties, and wearing a suit the color of her eyes—reminded Rachel of a cupcake. “May I help you?” she said.
The woman blinked. “Hannah was right,” she said. “You’re the mirror image of Mary, only less…” She peered at Rachel more closely. “Intense.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m Matt’s grandmother,” the woman announced. “Lucy Warwick. May I come in?”
THE TIME WAS SIX O’CLOCK. The thermostat had been adjusted, and the town house was at a comfortable temperature. To hell with Carrie’s posted monition. The telephone had rung twice and gone unanswered. Rachel had not moved from her chair once Matt’s grandmother clicked on the tape recorder. Through the living room window, at some level of awareness, she registered the driver pacing by the limousine, cigarette smoke streaming like dragon fire from his nostrils. The man was probably hot and thirsty and needed to use the facilities, but she could not have stirred from her chair to offer water and a bathroom if her life had depended on it.
There had been no exchange of pleasa
ntries, no time to offer coffee or tea. Wielding her cane, Lucy Warwick had thumped straight into the living room, sat down, and unsnapped her purse. “You’re going to listen to this, girl, whether you want to or not,” she’d said, extracting a tape recorder and plunking it on the table. “There are things you don’t know about you Tolivers and a hell of a lot you don’t know about the man you seem bent on sending to an early death. So sit down and listen and then I’ll be gone, and you can do what you have to do.”
So she had listened, her pity for Percy and Aunt Mary starting as a trickle and then building to a full stream as the tape unreeled the hidden years of their tragic lives. Overlaying it, she recognized her own short history, like the superimposed reflection of her face over the young Mary Toliver’s in the glass of the photographer’s portrait hanging in the library. She’d often thought, standing before it, that if a picture of her in the same pose hung beside it, their faces would line up feature for feature, plane for plane… as her life so far had repeated Aunt Mary’s.
“There now, that’s done,” Lucy said, whisking the tape back into her purse. She snapped it shut and planted the cane to rise. “I hope that tomorrow you’ll take into account what you’ve heard here today.”
“You came too late, Mrs. Warwick,” Rachel said. “Percy called earlier to tell me his decision, and I’ve contacted my lawyer with mine. By now he’s informed Amos Hines.”
Lucy’s plump face whitened, then fell. “Oh, I see….”
“No, I don’t think you do. Please don’t go, and I’ll explain.”
Roses Page 53
