The Hummingbird House

by Donna Ball

  “Our?” Paul eyebrows shot high. “Our?”

  “Round envelopes,” Derrick worried. “They’ll take forever to design and print.”

  “Leave it to me,” Harmony assured him airily, finishing off her wine. “I can find anything. This is going to be the most memorable event in the history of Virginia. Virginia!” She gasped again, touching her throat. “We must have a tribute to Thomas Jefferson. Or the Mayflower!”

  “The Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock,” Derrick said, confused.

  “We’re not having a tribute to Thomas Jefferson,” Paul said firmly, picking up his own glass.

  “You must excuse me, gentlemen,” Harmony said, fluttering to her feet. “I must go meditate on this while the spirits are with me. And take notes. Don’t you worry, I’ll make plenty of notes. “

  “Or clocks!” Paul called after her. “We’re not having clocks!”

  She did not appear to hear.

  Derrick got to his feet, his lips set in a thin line, and began to clear the table.

  “What?” Paul insisted. He picked up his own plate and followed him into the kitchen.

  “That,” said Derrick, stacking the dishes neatly in the sink, “was rude.”

  “It was not rude, it was self-defense. You can’t possibly seriously be considering clocks and Neanderthals.”

  “You never make a guest in your home feel uncomfortable,” Derrick replied shortly, “no matter how stupid her ideas. It’s rude. Anyone who was raised in the South learned that at his mother’s knee.”

  Paul, who had been born in New Jersey, had nothing to reply to that. Derrick returned to the table for the remainder of the dishes and Paul began to rinse the ones in the sink before transferring them to the dishwasher.

  “I suppose,” Paul conceded by way of apology when Derrick returned, “with all things considered, we certainly could have done worse for our first guest.”

  “She didn’t even blink at the room rate,” agreed Derrick.

  “And she’s very entertaining.”

  “Hardly ever in the way.”

  “Well …” Paul hesitated over that. “Not according to Purline.”

  Their one guest persisted on annoying their only staff member by sleeping until ten, meditating in her room until two, and then requesting tea in the garden while she worked on her watercolors which, according to Purline, were nothing more than wet splotches of color on paper.

  “Of course, it’s nice to have the company,” Paul added carefully, “particularly at mealtime.”

  Derrick took over the loading of the dishwasher while Paul rinsed. “But she does drink a bit much.”

  “Like a fish. And,” added Paul flatly, “there is no Duchess of Extonbury.”

  Derrick sighed. “I know. And let’s not even talk about that former life on the Titanic.”

  “Queen Mary,” corrected Paul. He met Derrick’s gaze with a raised eyebrow. “Certifiable?”

  “One hundred percent,” agreed Derrick without hesitation.

  “So no Cro-Magnon men at our grand opening.”

  “Of course not. By tomorrow she will have completely forgotten the evolutionary theme and have moved on to something else.” Derrick added thoughtfully, “I do have to wonder what a Cro-Magnon era delicacy would taste like, though.”

  “Frozen wooly mammoth?” suggested Paul.

  “Prehistoric shark sushi?” offered Derrick, unable to hold back a grin.

  “Oh, boys, I almost forgot.”

  They quickly smothered their amusement and put on studiously pleasant faces as Harmony came through the swinging door to the kitchen, waving a piece of paper. “Just a few names for your guest list.”

  Derrick dried his hands and took the paper from her, scanning it politely. He caught his breath with an audible sound. “This is not Keith Richards’s home address.” His eyes bulged as he looked at her.

  She waved her hand. “Of course not. Which home would you send it to? That’s his business manager, but he’ll see Keith gets it. Of course, he probably won’t come, but wouldn’t it be lovely if he did?”

  Paul grabbed a dishtowel and read over Derrick’s shoulder. “Lindsay Lohan, Ryan Seacrest … Nancy Reagan?”

  Harmony pointed with a long purple fingernail at the address. “Of course, she doesn’t get around much these days, but we’ve known the Reagans for years, and I know she’ll come if she’s able. I’ll write a note.”

  Paul said, a little hoarsely, “That would be …” he cleared his throat. “That will be lovely. Thank you.”

  “Which reminds me,” she went on, “all of your invitations should be handwritten. You’ll have a printed cover card, of course, but the enclosure should be a personal, requests-the-pleasure-of-your-company sort of thing. It adds to the atmosphere of elegance and exclusivity.”

  “Yes,” said Derrick, clutching the list. “We’d planned to.”

  “I’ve already ordered the vellum,” Paul put in quickly. “It’s being overnighted.”

  “Perfect.” She favored them with the brilliance of her smile. “Now I must be off and see what else the spirits have to say to me. Good night, my darlings.”

  “Good night,” they echoed in unison.

  Paul lifted a hand weakly and called after her, “Mention my name.”

  She turned and blew them a kiss, leaving the door swinging in her wake.

  “Well,” said Derrick.

  “Well,” said Paul.

  Derrick looked at the paper in his hand. He cleared his throat. “You know, there was that scandal during the Reagan administration about the first lady consulting a spiritualist.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t the same one,” Paul said.

  Derrick said, “I’m sure it wasn’t.”

  “She could be making the entire thing up.”

  Derrick looked at him. “What if she’s not?”

  Paul blew out a slow, thoughtful breath. “I think,” he said, tossing aside the dishtowel, “I will go research the proper protocol for entertaining a former First Lady of the United States.”

  ~*~

  It was strange, the phases one went through when the foundation of one’s life began to crumble. At first she had been addicted to Nick’s voice messages. Megan, we can’t leave it like this. Megan, call me back. Megan, I know I was wrong but you were too. I was hurt, and angry. I should have listened to you. We need to talk. Megan, I don’t know how I can understand what’s going on with you if you won’t talk to me. And finally, Meg, I’m starting to wonder if there’s anything left to save. She never returned his calls. She always wanted to. She would sit staring at her phone, finger poised over his number, for endless agonizing moments, but in the end, at the last moment, she would always lose her courage. She didn’t know what to say. And eventually the messages stopped coming.

  For a while she had been addicted to listening to the saved messages, sometimes just to hear the sound of his voice, sometimes fantasizing that it was not, after all, too late to call him back, to come up with the magic words that would make everything all right, to erase from her memory the look of hurt and disappointment in her husband’s eyes and to erase from his what she had done to put it there. But there were no words.

  Now she was addicted to not listening to the messages, to scrolling through her missed calls, to fighting back tears when the number she was looking for was never among them. Today there were three missed calls and two voice mails from her mother. There was nothing from Nick.

  She heard her grandmother’s step in the hallway and tucked the phone back into the pocket of her purse, rubbed both palms over her face just in case a stray tear lingered, and went to check the coffee cake in the oven. She always baked when she was stressed, and it was nice to have someone besides the squirrels to share her bounty with.

  “Raspberry cream coffee cake,” declared Annabelle from the doorway. “Now there’s a reason to get out of bed in the morning if I ever smelled one.”

  “With streusel topping,” ad
ded Megan, wrapping her hands in a kitchen towel to remove the pan from the oven. “We’re going to be very naughty and have cake for breakfast. I figured you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Being naughty is my favorite way to start the day.”

  Megan brought the cake to the breakfast table, which was already set with a bright yellow tablecloth, two glasses of orange juice, and two mugs of coffee. Annabelle, dressed in a lime green track suit and silver high-tops, lowered herself to her chair and snapped open her napkin.

  “I could boil some eggs,” volunteered Megan, feeling a little guilty for not being more conscientious about her grandmother’s nutrition. “Or make oatmeal.”

  “I’m quite sure you could, my dear,” replied Annabelle, “but you’re a pastry chef, not a short order cook. Always go with your strength, I say.”

  Megan smiled, but it was a tired thing, like an old party dress that had been forced into service one too many times. “I’m not a pastry chef,” she reminded her grandmother. “I’m a bookkeeper.”

  “In your heart, you’re a pastry chef. What you do for a living is immaterial. Is there any butter?”

  Megan brought the butter dish to the table along with the serving knife and two breakfast plates. She knew exactly what her grandmother would say if she reminded her of the doctor’s advice about watching her cholesterol—I didn’t get to be this old by listening to that fool—so she tried another approach. “A real chef would be insulted by that.”

  “There’s no such thing as too much salt or too much butter,” replied her grandmother, stirring cream into her coffee complacently. “And you and I have been trying to improve on each other’s recipes since you were five years old.”

  Megan sat down across from her grandmother and sliced into the cake, releasing a waft of sweet-smelling steam and a gooey ooze of the rich raspberry sauce in the middle. “This is one of yours, you know—or it’s based on it, anyway. Remember that apple-cinnamon lava cake you used to make?”

  “Well, don’t forget my royalties when you open your bakery.” She sipped her coffee, watching Megan slide a perfect wedge of cake onto the plate and let the bright red sauce that was left on the knife drizzle artfully over the top. “I can’t imagine how that restaurant of yours will manage while you’re gone. The entire business structure is likely to come tumbling down, and it will be all my fault for taking you away.”

  “It’s not my restaurant. I just keep the books.”

  “Indeed? I always thought it was a good deal more than that.”

  Megan cut another, smaller slice for herself and unfolded her napkin. “You always saw me as so much more than I am,” she told her softly. “You know that, don’t you? Cooking is only one of the things I learned to do because you told me I could. That was a beautiful gift.”

  “For all the good it did.” Annabelle sliced into the cake with the edge of her fork. “I always wanted you to be a jet pilot. Besides, you know perfectly well you learned to cook in self-defense. Your mother, God bless her, has many wonderful qualities, but cooking is not one of them.” She tasted the cake, made an appreciative sound in the back of her throat, and added casually, “Indulge a nosy old woman, my dear, but why was it you never went to cooking school? I remember a time when that was all you wanted to do.”

  Megan smashed together a few crumbs of coffee cake on her plate, absorbed in the pattern the raspberry filling made on the white surface. “Oh, I don’t know. There never seemed to be enough time, or money …”

  “Or ambition?”

  Megan didn’t even bother to challenge that, and as much as she knew her lack of spirit would disappoint her grandmother, she couldn’t help it. She lifted a shoulder, not looking up. “Probably. You get into a routine, you know. After a while it seemed like everything depended on me just doing my job and, well, it didn’t seem fair.”

  Her grandmother’s eyes were, it seemed, unusually piercing. “Was that what Nick said?”

  Megan immediately protested, “No, of course not! Nick would have supported whatever I wanted to do. I just …” She dropped her eyes again. “I guess I was afraid. After all, we had one star in the family already.” Her smile was strained. “Why rock the boat, right?”

  Her grandmother’s gaze was thoughtful and a little too perceptive, making Megan wonder suddenly whether the innocent questions had been designed to uncover more than they suggested, and whether she had not, in fact, revealed more than she had intended. But Annabelle merely took another bite of cake and said mildly, “Couldn’t agree with you more, my dear. People who rock the boat generally end up standing on shore, soaking wet in their underwear while everyone else parties on.”

  An unexpected and completely unpreventable laugh bubbled up in Megan’s throat. “You’re in rare form today, Gram. What put you in such a good mood?”

  “Besides this marvelous cake?” She tasted it, and made a circle with her thumb and forefinger in approval. Then she dabbed her lips with her napkin, sipped her coffee, and leaned back in her chair, smiling. “Today,” she said, “we begin our big adventure. My bag is all packed, and first thing after breakfast we’ll gas up the car and head out. By my calculation, we can make a hundred miles before lunch.”

  Megan paused with a forkful of cake halfway to her mouth. “Wait,” she said. “Are you serious? Are we really going to do this?”

  Annabelle looked surprised and mildly offended. “Well, that was the whole point of my coming back from the dead, wasn’t it?”

  Megan returned the forkful of cake to her plate untasted. “You did not come back from the dead, you—” But she stopped herself from the distraction of a tangent with an impatient shake of her head. “Anyway, where will we go? We can’t just drive around at random looking for … what are we looking for, anyway?”

  “The mountains,” replied Annabelle promptly. She reached into the pocket of her velour jacket and brought out the photograph of the two women and the child standing in front of the sign. “The Blue Ridge Mountains,” she specified, pointing to the hazy undulation of mountains in the background of the photo. “We’re heading east, my girl. Back to the beginning.”

  Megan regarded her grandmother with a mixture of patience and suspicion. “I just came from the east,” she pointed out.

  “What a coincidence.”

  “Six hours on a plane. Now the plan is to turn around and drive back? Gram, you know I love you, but …” She looked at her grandmother narrowly. “This wouldn’t by chance be your way of getting me back home to Nick, would it? Because …”

  Annabelle interrupted her with a regal, dismissive wave of her hand. “My dear girl, I’m dying. I have much more immediate things to worry about than your marriage. As much as I like the fellow, you’ll get on just fine without him, if it comes to that. You may not think so now, but you will. I, on the other hand, have a limited amount of time to accomplish my mission, so let’s focus on what’s important, shall we?”

  Megan released an exasperated half-laugh. “Fine. But would you at least tell me what this mission of yours is?”

  “Of course, my dear. But first, get your bag packed and help me load the car.”

  “I’ll load the car,” Megan assured her quickly, having no doubt that her grandmother would be dragging suitcases to the garage if she decided the preparations were moving too slowly. She stood and began clearing the table. “My bag is still packed from the trip out here. It’ll only take me a minute. You just sit and enjoy your coffee.”

  The way Annabelle smiled and settled back assured Megan that had been her intention all along. She picked up her fork again. “Don’t forget to cancel the newspaper, and call Mr. Harmond next door and ask him to keep an eye on the place.” She took a bite of cake and savored it. “And wrap up some of this lovely cake for the trip, won’t you?” She smiled sweetly at Megan. “Who knows how long we’ll be gone, and it would be a shame to waste it.”

  ~*~

  “How about September 6?” suggested Paul.

  Derrick shook
his head. “Labor Day weekend. Everyone is closing up their summer houses.”

  “September 14?”

  “That’s Lindsay’s wedding weekend.”

  “Oh no, she changed it to the twenty-first.”

  At Derrick’s questioning look, Paul returned a “Don’t ask” roll of his eyes. So far the date had been changed six times, and she had only been engaged three weeks.

  The two men were comfortably settled across from one another at the big partners’ desk in their newly refurbished office off the main reception area. Deep indigo walls were accented by warm mahogany bookshelves lined with books in colorful dust jackets, and a primitive oak dry sink served as a display area for a vase of wildflowers and a copper tube and funnel that had come from an old moonshine still. There was a small, ancient fireplace faced with time-worn pebbles over which Derrick had hung a large boldly colored folk art painting of a bonneted woman hanging laundry while stick-figure children played nearby. Derrick’s chair was a high-backed, old world tapestry pattern while Paul’s was worn tufted leather. The carpet that covered the ancient pine floor was an exquisitely faded, hand-knotted, red-and-blue Persian. And it all came together beautifully, of course.

  Each partner had his own computer, and on this bright summer morning each had an identical calendar program open on his screen. In the background, the hum of the vacuum cleaner blessedly drowned out Purline’s off-key singing of “Rock of Ages.” The house smelled of lemon polish and baking bread, and for that and other reasons Paul and Derrick had decided to tolerate the singing.

  Paul scrolled down his calendar. “How about the twenty-sixth then?”

  Derrick shook his head. “Rosh Hashanah.” And when Paul stared at him he added, “Do you know how many people on our A-list are Jewish?”

  Paul considered this for a moment and agreed. He tapped a key. “We’re into October then.”

  “Look no further, gentlemen, I have it!”

  Harmony Haven exploded into the room like a rainbow cloudburst, a swirl of yellow and blue and pink and electric with confidence. Paul had to remove his glasses and blink several times to clear his vision before he could look at her.