Lake News

by Barbara Delinsky

  In daylight Lily could see the crown of apple trees climbing the hills. Their leaves were a softer green in summer than that of evergreen or hardwood, and they were khaki rather than fiery in fall, but impressive nonetheless. Acre after acre, several hundred in all, flowed in waves over the hillside. They were beautifully kept and smartly worked. Even the ancient cider house, with sun glinting off its tin-paneled roof and history reeking from its hardy stone sides, was a sight to see.

  Maida still talked about the very first time she had viewed her husband’s inheritance. She had been twenty at the time, and as awed by the land as by the man. Up until that meeting she had been a clerk at the local logging company, coming home to her mother’s cramped apartment in a town where even the smallest pleasures were few and far between. A chance meeting when George Blake had come to buy old equipment from her boss had been her ticket to grace. Fifteen years her senior, he was the sole heir to his father’s land. He offered her a home that was not only breathtakingly beautiful but large, spacious, even idyllic. How not to find pleasure in that? Marrying him had been the simplest choice of her life.

  So the story went, as Lily the child had heard it—a fairy tale, and it went beyond the marriage itself. Maida had been in heaven that first year. She loved not working, loved spending fall days sampling cider and baking the best of her husband’s apples into pies that were the very best ones at church sales. That first winter, she had loved reading by the fire or skating on the lake, often with George, who had little to do between the last of the cider making in December and the first of the tree pruning in March. She loved the spring orchards, when apple blossoms were a riot of white and the buzz of pollinating bees filled the air. She loved sitting on the front porch in a welcome sun, looking down over the expanse of lawn open to the lake. Come May, when the ground was warm, she nursed iris and lily, morning glory, hyacinth, and roses, tending them daily, weeding, watering, and pampering them until her garden was the best one in town.

  The best garden, the best apple pie, the best children. Lily had learned at a tender age that those things mattered to Maida. She could still see the smile on her face in describing the bounty of that first year. With the Garden Club her entrée to the world of prosperous women, Maida made friends among the elite. She invited them to the big stone farmhouse to see her flower arrangements, and served them dinner while they were there. She went right down the list of everyone who was anyone in Lake Henry, from the owners of the mill to the town meeting moderator to the local representative at the state legislature. She was in her glory.

  Then the second year began, and something went wrong. What it was, Lily never knew for sure, since Maida always stopped her story at that point. She did know that heavy spring rains took a toll on the apple crop that year, which made for fiscal strain. That was also the year that Maida was pregnant with her.

  So which was it that turned things sour for Maida—money worries, or pregnancy? By the time Lily was old enough to be curious, Maida was short-tempered enough with Lily for her not to risk worse, and by the time Lily had the courage to risk worse, she feared the answer too much.

  She still did, sitting there tucked into the cubby of roots, but now there was something new to fear. John was right. It was only a matter of time before someone else on the lake saw signs of life at Celia’s. Then word would spread that Lily was back, and Maida would know. Lily didn’t want her learning it from someone else. She would be badly hurt—and that wouldn’t help Lily’s cause in the least. Nor would it help Poppy, who was sure to be questioned and take at least some of the heat.

  Fast, before she chickened out, Lily returned to the house, cleaned up, changed clothes, and drove the borrowed wagon out around the lake. It was night now. Moonbeams slanted through the trees from time to time, but her headlights were otherwise alone on the road.

  Her heart began to race when she neared the stone wall that marked the Blake Orchards entrance. Slowing the car, she carefully turned in and started up the gravel road that cut between acres of stubby apple trees. After half a mile, the land opened and the house loomed in the dark. Only one side of the first floor was lit, but Lily knew every inch of the place by heart. Her imagination filled in two stories, a fieldstone front, shingled overhangs, and eaved windows.

  Pulling in under the porte-cochere, she climbed the stone steps, opened the screen door, and slipped into the large front hall. Quiet classical music came from the direction of the library, a sure sign that Maida was there. Taking a steadying breath, Lily raised her eyes up the winding staircase, past oil paintings of flowers, to the mahogany-railed balcony. The stair runner looked more worn than she remembered it being the Easter before, but the elegance of the hall was impressive nonetheless.

  On her left was the large dining room, shadowy with its Chippendale table and chairs. Turning in the opposite direction, she entered the living room. A single lamp was lit there, casting a glow on elegantly upholstered sofas and chairs, mahogany tables, an Oriental carpet. Maida had good taste. Lily couldn’t fault her on that. If some in Lake Henry felt that Maida had decorated the stone farmhouse with more elegance than was appropriate, Lily had to admit she had done it well.

  When her eye fell on the baby grand in the corner, she felt an ache. She missed her piano in Boston, and it had nowhere near the memories of this one. Lily had learned to play here. She had felt strong and competent sitting at those ivory keys on that claw-footed bench. She had discovered her voice here.

  “I thought I heard a car,” Maida said in a quiet voice.

  Lily’s eyes flew to the far end of the room. Her mother was backlit in the library doorway, hands at her sides, shoulders straight. Not knowing what to say, Lily remained mute.

  “I figured you’d be back,” Maida went on. “Poppy was evasive when I asked.”

  “Poppy didn’t know mm-my plans,” Lily said, hating even that small hesitation, but Maida distracted her. Time hadn’t changed that, nor did the current situation help it. But what Lily had feared most was anger, and she didn’t hear it or see it. In further defense of Poppy, she said, “I couldn’t tell her on the phone. I didn’t trust the lines. Someone was tapping into my calls.”

  “Who would do that? Did you report it? Isn’t it illegal to listen in on someone’s line without their knowing? Maybe it was the police who did it. Is there a reason why they would?”

  Lily shook her head. She folded her arms on her chest and tried to think of something to say, but all she could think was that Maida looked remarkably good. At thirty, she had looked her age. At forty she had looked her age. Now, at fifty-seven, after she had lost her husband three years before and taken over the family business, something seemed to be working for her. She actually looked younger. She was slim and stood as tall as her five-five height allowed. Her hair was dark, short, and stylishly cut. She wore jeans and a sweater much like Lily’s.

  Lily hadn’t often seen her in jeans.

  “You look good, Mom.”

  Maida grunted and withdrew into the library. Lily watched her settle into her chair, retrieve her reading glasses, and turn to the computer on the side of the desk. She was shutting Lily out, typical when she couldn’t deal.

  Lily debated leaving. In the past, that had been her only recourse. Then, though, she’d had things to do and places to go. She had neither now. What she did have was a need to talk with her mother.

  Slowly she walked the length of the living room and stood in the doorway that Maida had just left. The library was filled with maple bookshelves, in turn filled with leather-bound classics, nondescript aged volumes, and more contemporary books brightly packaged. It was all part of Maida’s fairy tale. She saw an air of aristocracy in it. The books were taken down and dusted each spring, but Lily knew that few had actually been opened and read. It was a library for show.

  The desk was another matter. Lily remembered her father working there many a night. He was a stocky man, more comfortable wearing overalls and picking apples than shuffling paper
s, but shuffle them he did, determined to keep his family’s business in the black. The computer had come only after his death. Lily was impressed at the time. She hadn’t taken Maida for a computer person. But then, she hadn’t taken her to be heading the business, either, and she wasn’t alone. Everyone had assumed that the good-natured, easygoing, hale and hardy George would live forever.

  Now Maida clicked her mouse, studied the screen, riffled the papers at her right hand until she found what she wanted, typed something in. “Bills,” she murmured, sounding resigned. “I’m getting good at juggling, paying a little here, a little there. I thought things’d be better with the season being good and production up, but greater production puts strain on equipment. The press needs parts, the piping, the refrigeration units—they’re all showing their age at the same time. So there’s that, then there’s the backhoe, bucking and starting, not much different from an old ornery horse.” She sat back and leveled an accusing stare at Lily. “Your father left me with a mess that keeps me busy dawn to dusk, and then there’s the telephone. Calls are pouring in from people wanting to know about you—people from town, people from other towns, people from cities where I’ve never been nor care to be. I don’t need those calls, Lily. Especially not at harvest time.”

  “I’m sorry,” was all Lily could say.

  “Poppy takes most of them, but a few sneak by. Do you know what they ask? Do you know what they know? Where you shop, what you buy—did you tell them all that?” Lily had barely shaken her head when Maida said, “The business about the stutter, the business about that no-good Donald Kipling—do you know how embarrassing this is for me?”

  Lily hugged her middle. She felt a stab of anger, but it was quickly tempered by common sense. If Maida had to vent, it was just as well she do it now and get it done.

  “Do you?” Maida prodded.

  “It’s worse for me.”

  “Welllll,” her mother said with a dry laugh, “that’s what you get when you play with fire. You wanted to be onstage. You wanted to be an entertainer. But scandal comes with that kind of life. People see you onstage, and suddenly you’re a public person. You’re fair game for gossipmongers. I read People magazine. This one’s having an affair, that one’s having an affair. If you’re in that world, people assume that your morals are loose—and you fed right into them, Lily. What was in your mind? Late-night tête-à-têtes with the Cardinal, hugs and kisses—didn’t it occur to you that people might get the wrong idea? At least, I assume it’s the wrong idea.”

  Her voice stopped, but not her eyes. They were direct, demanding an answer.

  Surprised and decidedly pleased to be given the benefit of the doubt, Lily said quickly, “It’s the wrong idea. Nothing happened. Father Fran is a good friend. He has been for years. You know that.”

  “I didn’t know you were running in and out of his residence at will.”

  “Not at will. Never at will.”

  “And why did you say those things? Why did you say you loved him?”

  “Because I do. He’s a close friend. That’s what I told the reporter. He took my words out of context. He did it over and over again. Mom, I didn’t ask for this.”

  “Then why did it happen?”

  “Because some reporter, some newspaper wanted to sell papers,” Lily cried. “The media needed a scandal, one reporter created one, and the others jumped in. If there had been a high-profile mm-murder somewhere else, they wouldn’t have dreamed up this, but things were quiet, and then Fff-ather Fran was named Cardinal, and someone’s imagination went to work.”

  “You set yourself up for it,” Maida declared. “You let it happen.”

  Lily was astonished. “What could I do? I denied every allegation. I demanded a retraction. I talked with a lawyer.”

  “And?”

  “What?”

  “The lawyer. What’s he doing?”

  “I couldn’t hire the lawyer.”

  “Why not?”

  “He wanted a quarter of a million dollars.”

  That silenced Maida. Her eyes went to the computer screen, then to her papers. Her mouth flattened, corners turned down.

  Lily was about to say that she wouldn’t take the money from Maida even if she had it, when she heard a noise behind her. She turned to see Rose’s oldest child, Lily’s ten-year-old niece, Hannah, coming toward her on bare feet. A huge T-shirt hid her chubbiness. Long brown hair, more out of a ponytail than in it, framed a round and serious face.

  Lily didn’t know her nieces well, but Hannah had been the firstborn of them and held a special place in her heart. She broke into a smile. “Hi, Hannah!”

  Hannah stopped just out of arm’s reach. “Hi, Aunt Lily.”

  Lily closed the distance and gave her a hug. The one she got back felt hesitant, but it was better than nothing. “How are you?” she said, keeping an arm around the girl.

  “Fine. When’d you get back?”

  “Late last night. I slept most of today. What’re you doing here so late?”

  “She’s sleeping over,” Maida said in a businesslike voice. “What happened to the movie, Hannah?”

  “It was boring.”

  “I thought we rented two.”

  Lily felt a shrug under her hand. Hannah said, “I heard voices.”

  “Your aunt and I have to talk. Go on back up and watch the other one.”

  Hannah shot Lily a quick look before pulling away.

  “Don’t forget to rewind the first,” Maida called after her.

  Lily watched her until she had disappeared into the hall. Then she turned back to Maida. “Does she sleep over often?”

  “Saturday nights, when Rose and Art want to go out.”

  “Where are Emma and Ruth?” They were Hannah’s younger sisters, ages seven and six respectively, certainly too young to stay alone.

  “A baby-sitter. It’s easier for the sitter if Hannah is here.” In a lower voice, she asked, “Why did the newspaper imply that you were hiring that lawyer?”

  Fearing Hannah could hear what they said, Lily spoke more softly, too. “The lawyer was the one who implied it. But it wasn’t only the money that bothered me. He said a lawsuit would take years, and that they’d pick at my life even more than they already have.”

  Maida sat back and pressed laced fingers to her lips.

  Lily said, “I can’t live through this for three years.”

  Maida dropped her hands. “Is there an alternative?”

  “The story is a lie. Everyone will know it once the Cardinal gets a retraction.”

  “And you’ll get your teaching job back?” Maida asked. “I think not. Smears linger even after the facts come clear. You put yourself in a vulnerable position. A single woman, having a close friendship with the Cardinal?”

  Lily felt accused by the one person whose mistrust hurt the most. She lashed back with more force than she had dared once to show to Maida, but she was an adult now, and Maida was wrong. “It wasn’t that close. I never visited him just for the heck of it. We used to talk at parties, but there were always other people around. Sometimes I stayed, playing the piano after events at the residence, and there were times when he’d call on the phone to see how I was, if a month or two had gone by and we hadn’t bumped into each other. That’s no different from what I did with other friends.”

  “He’s a priest.”

  “He’s a friend.”

  “People don’t touch priests.”

  “Everyone touches Fran Rossetti.”

  “And there—there—such a show of disrespect, calling him by his first name.”

  “All his friends call him Fran. He tells us to. I would never do it in public.”

  Maida took another tack. “If you’d been married this wouldn’t have happened. I’ve been after you to marry for years, and I was right. A husband would give you stability. Same with children. If you’d listened to me and done that, you’d have looked more settled.”

  “And that would have made a difference?”
Lily shot back. “If one story is based on lies, another would be, too. Terry Sullivan wanted a scandal. He’d have made it happen even if I was married; only then they’d have called me an adulteress or an unfit mother.”

  “When did you become so jaded?” Maida had the gall to chide. Poppy had done much the same, but more as an observation. Maida was being critical, and Lily grew livid.

  “When someone else’s lies tore my whole life apart!”

  “You should have been married,” Maida insisted, but the flatness in her voice said she was done with the argument. “I take it you’re staying at Mother’s?”

  Lily didn’t bother to say that the cottage was legally hers. Tired, she simply nodded.

  “For how long?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’ll lead them here, you know.”

  “Not if you don’t let it out. Will Hannah?”

  “No.”

  “She’ll tell Rose,” Lily feared. “Rose will tell Art. Art will tell his mother, and she’ll spread it around the mill.” It wasn’t paranoia on Lily’s part, but reality. Lake Henry just worked that way.

  But Maida insisted, “Hannah won’t tell Rose. She doesn’t tell Rose anything. I’d worry about other people who notice that you’re at Mother’s. Word will spread that way, and the media will come, sure as day. Is that fair to us?”

  “Where else can I go?”

  Maida threw up a hand, upset again. “Well, I don’t know. All I know is that I don’t want them here. You don’t want them looking at you for three years? Why should we have them looking at us for three weeks? They’ll be nosing around even worse than they’ve already done, and that isn’t fair. You aren’t the only one involved here, Lily. Leading them back here—it just goes on and on. Why are you doing this to me? What do you want from me?”

  Lily lost it then. Tears sprang to her eyes. Years of yearning loosened her tongue. “Support,” she cried. “Sympathy. Compassion. Welcome. This is my home, and you’re my mother. Why can’t you give me those things?” She might have stopped there, but after the emotional battering of the last few days, her defenses were down. “What did I do—what did I ever do to offend you so much? People like me, Mom. I’m a nn-nice person. I have friends who like me, colleagues who like me, students who like me, even a Cardinal who likes me and thinks I’m someone ww-worthy of calling his friend. Why can’t you?”