The Scent of Lilacs

by Ann H. Gabhart

  “Are you sure it’s not her birthday?” Tabitha said as Jocie ran down the stairs.

  “It’s more blessed to give than to receive,” her father answered.

  “And obviously more fun,” Tabitha said. “Can’t I pretend to be sick or something and let Jocie carry my cake in here to me?”

  Her father laughed and tightened his arm around her shoulder as he guided her toward the stairs. “It won’t be so bad. Just Zella—you remember Zella.”

  “Is she still as quirky as she used to be?”

  “Quirkier. And Wes.”

  “I always thought he was from Mars.”

  “Close. And Leigh Jacobson, who I’m told helped bake you a cake.”

  “Who the heck is she? Am I supposed to know her?”

  “No. She’s a friend of Zella’s.”

  Jocie came out of the kitchen carrying two pitchers. “But she wants to be Dad’s friend. Real bad.”

  Tabitha looked back at the staircase with longing. “DeeDee was right about birthdays. This is getting too crazy.”

  Seeing the cake with candles made Tabitha feel like the kid who used to run out to the end of the lane to wait for Mama Mae to show up with her birthday cake and presents wrapped in white tissue paper. Mama Mae always made her a new dress and gave her a book or a puzzle and a bag of chocolate peanut clusters with cream in the middle. She wished her father had remembered about the peanut clusters, even if chocolate did set off the morning sickness.

  But there weren’t any peanut clusters. She got a brush and comb and bright red nail polish from Jocie; stationery decorated with violets from Zella, who kept sneaking peeks at the rose on Tabitha’s cheek; a book of poems from Wes, who looked exactly the same; a card with a ten-dollar bill tucked inside from her father; and hair ribbons from Leigh, who’d either had too much sun that morning or had a permanent blush.

  The biggest surprise had been Aunt Love’s present, a wire pin twisted into the profile of a woman wearing a wide-brimmed hat. Tabitha could have worn it in California. If she’d thought about it, which she hadn’t, she’d have expected Aunt Love to give her a Bible. Aunt Love had been reading the Bible to her. Some psalms. Some of the old Sunday school stories. None of the “thou shalt not” parts.

  They’d made Tabitha sit in the middle of the rest of the chairs where she could be the main focus of everyone’s eyes. Tabitha folded pleats in her skirt to keep her hands occupied and away from her tummy. She sipped the sugary lemonade and told herself over and over, I won’t get sick till everybody’s gone. I won’t get sick till everybody’s gone. Then just to get her mind off having to run behind the house to lose the chocolate cake she would have to eat if they ever got the candles lit, she let another silent thought run through her mind. I won’t laugh out loud till everybody’s gone. I won’t laugh out loud till everybody’s gone.

  DeeDee would have laughed. Out loud whenever she wanted to. But she wasn’t DeeDee. That’s why she was here with her secret growing inside her. A secret she’d shared, or at least part of the secret. She’d been hoping, even praying at night before she went to sleep, that she might not have to tell the rest of the secret ever in Hollyhill. After all, the baby had just as much chance of looking like her as like Jerome.

  Secrets. Everybody had secrets they never told. DeeDee said so. And to prove it she’d told some of them to Tabitha. Some Tabitha wished DeeDee had kept secret. Tabitha looked at Jocie. She was practically spinning she was having such fun.

  Tabitha was still having a hard time connecting this Jocie to the little kid who had tagged after her with a book under her arm in case she might decide to read to her. Jocie had never cried even if she fell down and scraped her knees, and when she disappeared for any length of time, Tabitha usually could find her under the porch taking a nap with Stumpy. That was then. A little shadow of a girl with big eyes.

  Now she was completely different. She still had the big eyes watching the world, but she was far from a shadow. She practically sparked with energy. She made Tabitha think of a girl she’d known in Chicago, or maybe it was in Kansas City. Tabitha couldn’t keep the places straight, but it must have been Kansas City, because it had been summer and hot. Courtney had yanked her hair back out of her eyes into a ponytail with a plain rubber band. She’d carried a notebook and pencil with her everywhere and hadn’t been a bit embarrassed when her tennis shoes had holes in the toes. One day she’d be cross-legged on the ground counting ants marching into an anthill and the next she’d be planting her rubber snake on the sidewalk to see how many people screamed. Tabitha had always been good for at least one shriek even though she knew the stupid thing was fake. Tabitha used to look Courtney up just to see what weird idea she would come up with next. The weirdest thing was that Courtney never knew she was weird.

  Not that Jocie was weird exactly. But she did bounce from idea to idea like somebody riding one of those bumper cars at the fair. Had she bumped into any of the secrets? Tabitha probably would have never bumped into them if she’d stayed with her father in Hollyhill. Some things it was better not to bump into when you were a kid, or maybe ever. Tabitha’s hands crept up to her midsection for a quick touch. She’d have secrets to keep from her baby for sure. No child ever needed to know her father wanted to scrape her out of existence before she had a chance to be born.

  Tabitha’s eyes went to her father, who had moved up behind the cake to make a windbreak to help the candles stay lit. The Leigh woman’s face was flaming so red that she looked as if she could just lean over and light the whole mess of candles without a match. Tabitha couldn’t remember the last time she’d blushed like that. Maybe before she left Hollyhill. Maybe never.

  It was hard to keep secrets when your face gave you away like that. Her father wasn’t blushing. He looked calm and in control. That’s one of the things that had always driven DeeDee crazy—how he could stay so calm. She used to say he’d never come up out of his submarine after the war and still kept the tons of water between him and the world. Tabitha remembered their fights—DeeDee screaming or laughing according to the mood she was in and her father watching without the first clue of what to do to make DeeDee stop. He’d looked like a man who didn’t know any secrets then, but now Tabitha wasn’t so sure.

  Maybe he knew the secrets but hid them deep inside so no one would ever guess he knew them. After all, he knew her secret, but there was no sign on his face that anything was any different today than it had been yesterday or the day before. And maybe he had secrets none of them knew anything about.

  DeeDee had always said that no woman in her right mind could live with a man so deep down good that it took a war to make him mad. She hadn’t had to worry about that after leaving Hollyhill. Some of the men she’d brought home had been nice enough. There was Bobby, who had taught Tabitha to play hearts and three kinds of solitaire, and Rick, who had helped her plant tulips in a window box. That was the year after she’d gotten the letter that Mama Mae had died, and Tabitha had cried every time a tulip bloomed until finally DeeDee had thrown the whole thing in the dumpster.

  Tabitha had climbed into the dumpster after it, but all the tulip bulbs had been out of the dirt and the blooms had been broken. Rick had yelled at DeeDee when he found out about the tulips, and DeeDee had thrown his stuff out of the apartment. Tabitha missed Rick more than most of the men her mother brought home, but she was used to them coming and going. Eddie was the only one her mother let stay in spite of anything he did.

  Finally the candles were mostly lit, and the whole bunch of them were yelling at her to make a wish. She felt twelve again, and it wasn’t a bad feeling. Of course, she only had one wish, but she was almost afraid to wish it for fear she might jinx the wish if she left a candle burning.

  The cake was blazing, and she took such a deep breath she felt dizzy. Please let my baby look like me, she whispered in her mind and blew, moving her head in a circle to get the most candles. Every candle went out, and everybody clapped, even Aunt Love, who surely believed
wishing on candles was against Bible teaching. “Better prayers than wishes,” she’d told Tabitha just last week. But a wish was sometimes like a prayer, and maybe there were birthday angels floating around the cake. Mama Mae used to talk about birthday angels. One of them could carry her wish up to heaven and turn it into a prayer.

  The trouble with a weekly paper was that anything exciting seemed to always happen on the day the paper was printed, and then by the next week’s issue, it was old news. So of course, the Fourth fell on Tuesday when they had to run the paper for distribution on Wednesday. Monday Jocie’s father called them all together around Zella’s desk to see if they could find a way to push back the deadline for printing. Wes said they could set up the inside pages and run them that day and leave the front and back pages for stories and pictures of the parade to run on Tuesday after the parade was over.

  Zella looked up from filing her fingernails. “I’m not staying around here till midnight.”

  She and her over-forty Sunday school class had spent every night for two weeks stuffing red, white, and blue tissue paper into a flag-shaped chicken-wire frame Chester Hagan had built on his farm wagon. Zella said it even had a wind ripple in the middle, but chicken wire was murder on fingernails. She’d worn out two emery boards in a week.

  “I might get a good shot of the First Baptist float,” Jocie’s father said.

  Zella inspected her fingernails and didn’t look at him. “Front page, top fold.”

  “Church kids riding on it?” Jocie’s father asked.

  “Ten last head count.”

  “Then agreed. Front page, top fold.”

  They left Zella to her nail filing and went back to the pressroom to block out the inside pages and ads before Jocie’s father left to interview Myron Haskins, a veteran of World War I who was always more than ready to share every detail of every battle and all the times between. Her father invited Jocie to ride along, but she’d heard Mr. Haskins talk before. On and on and on. She told her father she’d wait for the condensed version in the Banner.

  Besides, she wanted to hear what Wes thought about the party. And about Tabitha. And about Leigh and her father. Her father had actually sat by Leigh and told her what he was preaching on the next day. Her father never told people what his sermon was going to be about. Said he was never sure the Lord might not change the subject at the last minute. Even more amazing, Leigh had almost stopped blushing while they talked about Peter stepping out of the boat to walk on the water toward Jesus. Nobody had mentioned Elvis.

  Jocie told Wes she tried to think about how the birthday cake had practically melted in her mouth and not worry about stepmothers who did the twist and knew every word of “Love Me Tender.”

  Wes laughed. “That ain’t your worry, Jo. Your daddy is the one who’ll have to worry about that one.”

  Wes and Jocie were just settling in to work when Zella came back to the pressroom waving a couple of letters.

  Wes said, “We must have gotten a letter from the president to get Zella back here.”

  “I heard that,” Zella said. “The fact is, I just came across a couple more letters in the mail that will go good this week.”

  “Happy letters?” Jocie asked.

  “One is. From little Donnie Mason.”

  “He lives next door to you, doesn’t he?” Jocie said.

  “That doesn’t mean he can’t write a letter to the paper. He’s made his list of the best things about the Fourth.”

  “Oh, cute,” Jocie said.

  “Don’t be snitty.” Zella pulled the letter up and started reading. “Red, white, and blue cupcakes. Fireworks. Loud booms. The flag. Cotton candy.”

  “Cotton candy? What does that have to do with the Fourth?” Jocie asked.

  “I don’t know. Something, I’m sure.” Zella slapped the letter down on the desk and looked at the other one in her hand. “This one is from Betty Marshall complaining about the twin calf picture on the front page of the Banner a few weeks back. She says that just proves what a one-horse town we live in, or in this case a one-cow town.”

  “A cow with twins. That puts us up to a three-cow town at least.” Wes took the letter from Zella and scanned it quickly. “Not bad. But she doesn’t mention goats. I think Wilbur French has some new spotted goats out at his place. He wants to start making goat cheese to sell. New business venture. Cute goats. Sounds like a front page story to me.”

  Zella rolled her eyes. “Deliver us.”

  “Tell me where, and I’ll do my best,” Wes said.

  Jocie twisted her mouth to keep from giggling. She expected Zella to storm back to her desk, but instead she said, “Ha. Ha. Very funny, I’m sure.” Then she looked at Jocie. “Your party was very nice, Jocelyn. Thank you for inviting me. I’m sure Tabitha appreciated it even if it may have been a bit tame after what she was used to in California.”

  “Yeah, thanks for coming. And for bringing the mints,” Jocie said.

  “My pleasure.” Zella took a couple of steps back toward the front office, then stopped. “Tabitha isn’t the sweet little child who left here, is she? But I suppose that was to be expected. Heaven knows what the poor child has gone through with that mother of hers.”

  “She seems okay to me,” Jocie said.

  “Well, of course. I didn’t mean to imply that she wasn’t okay. She’s just changed, you know,” Zella said. “That rose. It is just painted on, isn’t it? I mean, it surely isn’t a tattoo.”

  “What’s wrong with tattoos?” Wes said. “I almost got one once.”

  “Well, we expect that kind of thing from you, Wesley,” Zella said. “But certainly not from a young girl like Tabitha. What do the people at Mt. Pleasant think?”

  “I don’t know,” Jocie said. “She hasn’t gone to church with us yet.”

  “She hasn’t gone to church?” Zella looked ready to faint.

  “Not yet. The trip home wore her out, and Dad’s giving her time to rest up.”

  “Time for the tattoo to disappear, more likely,” Zella said.

  “Tattoos don’t disappear, do they?” Jocie asked Wes.

  “Nope, not even on Jupiter,” Wes agreed.

  “You two. I don’t know why I even bother trying to talk to you.”

  “Because you like us so much?” Wes said.

  “Hmph.” Zella headed toward the door but then stopped again. “Leigh called a bit ago. Said David had called her to thank her for helping you with the cake, Jocelyn. That’s surely a good sign, don’t you think?”

  “I hope it’s a sign that she might make us another cake,” Jocie said. “We ate the last of it last night after we got home from church. Even Aunt Love said it was the best chocolate cake she’d ever eaten.”

  “You should try to get your Aunt Love to invite Leigh for supper sometime.”

  “I thought it was Dad you wanted to invite Leigh somewhere.”

  “Well, we can’t depend on David. Leave it up to him and he’d never get past go with any girl,” Zella said. “And this may be his only opportunity to get a really nice girl.”

  “Who can cook,” Wes chimed in.

  “And do the twist,” Jocie said. “And sing along with Elvis.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with being young,” Zella said.

  “That’s not what you usually tell me,” Jocie said.

  “Young and nice is different than young and smart-alecky, Jocelyn Brooke,” Zella said as she went back out into the front office. The pressroom door slammed shut behind her.

  “Uh-oh. Now she’ll tell Dad, and I’ll have to listen to the ‘be respectful to my elders’ lecture,” Jocie said. “And I’ve been trying really hard to stay out of trouble.”

  “Nah, Zell won’t be telling on you this week. She wants you to help her with her matchmaking plans with Leigh.”

  “I liked Leigh. She talked to me like you do, not like I’m some stupid kid who doesn’t know straight up about anything. But I just can’t imagine Daddy listening to Elvis or doing the
twist.”

  “Folks will surprise you sometimes. Even daddies.” Wes put his hand on Jocie’s shoulder. “But we’ve done our part. We brought it to your father’s attention that Leigh is female and has recognized that he is male. Now we have to let him do his part, whether it’s listening to Elvis or just ignoring the whole thing and letting Leigh move on to some other feller.”

  “Leigh says there aren’t any other single men in Hollyhill besides you, and she’s too afraid of your motorcycle to make eyes at you.”

  “Plus, I could be her father. Maybe her grandfather.”

  “You’re not that old. Of course, it could be she just doesn’t want to intrude on Zella’s territory.”

  Wes laughed. “That’s a good one. I’d have more chance with your Aunt Love than old Zell out there. She has a positive aversion to anything Jupiterian.”

  The next day dawned clear and hot. By the time the parade started forming in the high school parking lot at noon, heat was rising off the sidewalks and people were crowding in under the scarce midday shade of storefront awnings. They tried to wave back the heat with the “Service with Dignity” Hazelton Funeral Home fans Junior and Rita Hazelton were passing out for their father. Hazelton’s was the only funeral home in Hollyhill, but Gordon Hazelton didn’t want folks to think he took their dying and coming to him for their funerals for granted.

  Nobody could remember Hollyhill ever having a Fourth of July parade before, and plenty of folks had come out to see what there was to see. The stores along Main Street all had “Sale” signs in the windows to entice people inside. Fans swished around the hot air in the older stores, while the newer ones cranked up their air conditioners to fight against the swinging doors as customers streamed in and out more in search of cool air than bargains.

  The Banner offices didn’t have air-conditioning, but fans were roaring. Aunt Love and Tabitha had come to watch the parade from the big front window. Zella was out at the high school, ready with extra tissue paper if a hole was spotted in the First Baptist float. Jocie loaded her camera, stuck an extra roll of film in her pocket, and went out hunting some paper-selling shots. Her father told her to zero in on kids watching the parade or kids on the floats. He would take pictures of the floats and the politicians.