Autumn Spring

by Shelley Thrasher

  As Lou Anne handed out pieces of cake and Troy refilled his guests’ teacups, Bree pondered why Linda seemed to be so close to Joe. Then it hit her. He probably reminded her of her own father because of his down-home simplicity, though his varied life experiences lent him a sophistication Linda’s dad had lacked. How would Linda’s biological father, Patrick, with his European life and lesbian mothers, have measured up?

  Just then, the tall, good-looking woman who’d arrived late to the women’s dinner breezed in. “Sorry I’m running behind, everybody,” she announced. “Just got out of court and thought I’d stop by for a few minutes.” She placed a container of decadent-looking chocolate cookies on the coffee table.

  Then she claimed an empty chair next to Linda and began whispering to her, though the rest of the group didn’t seem to mind. Tonda, that was her name. Bree had asked Linda about her after the dinner but never heard anything about her. Were she and Linda involved?

  The group discussion didn’t stay entirely serious. Every time the conversation threatened to bog down, Troy and Don jumped in with a quip or a jibe or a joke, no matter how silly, and made them all laugh and move to a new topic.

  Before Bree knew it, the grandfather clock behind Tom struck four, and everyone immediately jumped up and began to gather their cups and plates, as well as whatever remained of the food they’d brought to share. What an enchanting afternoon.

  “Thank you so much,” she told Tom and Troy and the others as she hugged them good-bye. “I enjoyed meeting you.”

  “Be sure to come back next week,” they called as she and Linda closed the front door behind them.

  *

  “So Tom and Troy started the Tyler Area Gays organization?” Bree asked on the drive back.

  She glanced over and noticed Linda’s straight nose and how her chin rounded in a pleasant way. Nice.

  “Yes. They organized it six or seven years ago and led it for several years.”

  “Has Troy always lived here?”

  “No. He grew up in Kansas, I think, and after the air force, he ran a bar in North Carolina before he got sick and came home. He met Tom and Lou Anne and Kay at a local PFLAG meeting, and they eventually decided to establish TAG.”

  “So Tea at Troy’s has been going on quite some time.”

  “Once a week since then, with a few month-long breaks when Tom and Troy travel to Scotland to visit Tom’s friends and colleagues there. He’s a rather prominent scholar in his field. Wrote the definitive book on some famous eighteenth-century British author.”

  “You’d never know it if you saw him in the grocery store, would you?” Bree glanced out the window at the long line of five o’clock traffic stopped in front of them as they drove back up Broadway.

  Linda shook her head. “No, especially in the summer when he’s wearing shorts and sandals.”

  “And Troy? What’s the story there?”

  “It’s long and sad.” Linda sighed. “In fact, he’s published a book detailing his situation. He contracted HIV after sleeping with some man he barely knew, and when he developed AIDS, he lost his career in the military. His stepfather and brother drove to North Carolina and brought him home, almost dead.”

  “That’s so sad. Is that why he likes to joke around so much?”

  “I suppose so. In fact, in his book, he stresses how much he values humor.”

  “Well, their eclectic collection of art objects completely impressed and fascinated me.”

  Linda glanced over at her and grinned. “Wow. What a mouthful. You sound exactly like what I’d expect of a big-city museum curator.”

  Bree laughed at herself. “It took me a long time and a lot of hard work to lose my politically incorrect Texas accent and vocabulary. Did you ever get kidded for saying fixing to?”

  “Can’t say that I have.” Linda kept her eyes on the road.

  “You didn’t run in the same circles I did. Academics can be terrible snobs, which I learned years ago, the first time I attended a major scholarly convention out of state. Everything seemed okay until I opened my mouth.” Bree frowned. “When the highly educated people I mingled with heard my Texas drawl, they turned into piranhas. I, in turn, felt like a pariah and immediately signed up for a speech course to correct my accent, which apparently identified me as an undereducated Southern bigot.”

  Linda glanced at her in spite of the heavy traffic. “Wow. I’m glad I worked in the nursing field and stayed here in East Texas most of my life, at least professionally. Though I did run into that reaction a few times when I lived in the DC area.” She smiled sympathetically, then shrugged. “Luckily my husband had a lot of money and a rather powerful position as a lobbyist, which somehow made my Southern accent sound quaint and charming.”

  Bree chuckled. “I’d almost have married a man to have that kind of immunity. But I did it the hard way, and it’s not that easy to slide back into my native way of expressing myself.”

  “I bet. But it’s probably like the proverbial bicycle. Hang around this part of the world long enough, and pretty soon you’ll be saying y’all and fixin’ to like you’d never left home.”

  Bree and Linda laughed and chatted idly the rest of the way back. Finding another potential circle of like-minded companions delighted Bree. She just might stick around here longer than she’d intended.

  Chapter Eighteen

  As they neared home, Bree’s cell phone rang. Who in the world? She jerked it from her pants pocket. “Hello.”

  “Bree Principal?” The voice sounded strained, worried, rushed. Bree thought she recognized it.

  “Yes?”

  “This is the administrator at Silverado. I’ve just called an ambulance to pick up your mother. We believe she’s had a stroke, and we’re taking her to the local hospital. Can you meet us there?”

  “Of course. We can be there in”—she glanced at Linda, who’d already sped up—“twenty minutes. Thanks for calling.”

  “It’s Sarah.” Bree clicked off her phone and stared at it. When she looked at Linda, everything seemed to move in slow motion. “Can you drive me to the hospital in town? She’s had a stroke. Please hurry.”

  Linda took her right hand off the wheel and let it rest on Bree’s leg. “Of course. I’ll get you there as fast as I can.”

  Bree stared out the window as the world flew by. The tears crowding her eyes blurred the kaleidoscope of falling leaves deserting every tree they passed. They lay in large drifts along the road, piled under the foliage arching over the road, blowing in the wind that seemed to pick up speed and grow colder as the sun hid behind the dark-gray rain clouds gathered ahead of them.

  “…everything will be okay, Bree.” Had Linda been talking all this time?

  Bree forced herself to focus on the warmth of Linda’s hand on her leg, the slight pressure making her realize she hadn’t actually turned to stone. She could still feel. Her own heart still beat; her own brain functioned normally, unlike her mother’s.

  She turned to Linda. “What exactly is a stroke?”

  As Linda explained in a calm, even tone, the leaves seemed to quit whirling quite so fast, and the sun peeked out again.

  Finally, they reached the hospital, and Bree pushed open the car door as soon as Linda pulled up to the entrance. “You go on in, and I’ll park. Wait for me in the lobby.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate it.” Bree rushed into the hospital, not sure where to go, but Linda would know. She slowed, relieved not to have to face the situation alone.

  *

  “Your mother’s going to be fine,” Linda said as she sat beside Bree in the hospital cafeteria. She rested her hand on Bree’s for a final minute, then picked up her fork.

  Being unlinked from Bree made Linda feel nude. She’d held Bree’s hand practically all evening while the flurry of hospital staff had rushed around them, tending to Sarah. She and Bree had even held hands after they finally left the hospital room and walked here to the cafeteria.

  “Are you sure?”

>   “Of course. She’ll probably outlive us all.”

  Bree seemed so lost, so ill at ease, as if she were in the jungles of New Guinea instead of a hospital. No, she would probably have felt more at home in New Guinea or some equally exotic place. “I hope so. How old was your mother when she died?” Bree looked as if she’d never even considered the possibility that her own mother wouldn’t live forever.

  “Only seventy-two. We buried her ten years ago in March.”

  Bree toyed with her green salad. “I’m sorry. Are you okay talking about it?”

  “Sure. I still miss her, a lot, but I can always talk about Mom.” Linda’s throat tightened, and she took a drink of water.

  “She was really special, wasn’t she? And what a great cook. I don’t know how she did it. Feeding a husband and four kids every day, plus assorted overnight visitors like me, must have taken a lot of time.”

  “Yes.” Linda stared at the piece of fried chicken she’d just forked and shuddered. How could something nearly burned still ooze blood? She thought about her mom’s golden, crispy chicken, fresh from the skillet and served with cream gravy. “She could do just about anything we needed around the house.” She finally took a bite of the meat and almost spit it out. “Yuck.”

  Bree pushed a piece of wilted lettuce aside. “But she didn’t stay at home all the time, did she?”

  “Oh no. She had all kinds of hobbies, especially gardening. But most of all, she loved to dance. In fact, after I left home and got married, she persuaded my dad to join a square-dance club with her. She ended up teaching dance classes all over East Texas, and he always helped her.”

  “I had no idea. What did she die of?” Bree picked up a chunk of tomato from her salad, then dropped it and tried a square of red Jell-O.

  “Alzheimer’s.” She still hurt when she said the word.

  “How horrible.” Bree lowered her fork, gray eyes full of compassion, and touched Linda’s arm.

  “Yes. The disease robbed us of her before it took her body. Seeing someone so vivacious disappear a little at a time like she did…” Linda felt as lifeless as the soggy green beans she tried and then shoved aside.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  Linda’s throat ached now. “Her death devastated Dad. They’d been married fifty-five years, and after she got sick, he spent practically all his time with her.”

  Bree kept her hand on Linda’s arm and lightly squeezed.

  “Just a few hours before she died, he crawled up into bed with her and kissed her at least ten times with these big, sloppy kisses. I love you, Helen, he said, over and over. I’ll always love you.” Linda swallowed her sadness and tried her mashed potatoes, lumpy yet tolerable.

  “How romantic,” Bree said.

  “Yes. Mom hadn’t spoken in weeks, but when Dad said that, she made sounds deep in her throat that sounded like she was trying to say I love you too.”

  A tear rolled down Bree’s cheek, and Linda fought hard to keep talking. “We’d all known she didn’t have much longer, but Dad couldn’t grieve. After that, though, he went home and cried for hours, he said later. She died during the night, and when we went to tell him the next morning, he didn’t seem surprised. He passed away a month after she did.”

  “Fifty-five years together,” Bree murmured. “I can’t imagine.”

  “Neither can I.” The knot in Linda’s throat loosened as she gazed at Bree and wiped her eyes dry with a scratchy paper napkin. “Neither can I.”

  *

  Bree heard the telephone ringing as she unlocked her back door, waved good-bye to Linda, and then turned off the porch light. She didn’t run to pick up the phone. If whoever was calling wanted to talk to her bad enough, they’d try again.

  She hung her keys on a hook near the door, then pulled her wallet and cell phone from her pocket and deposited them in a drawer. But what if the hospital had been the ones calling? The house phone rang again, and she rushed over to pick it up.

  “Hello.”

  “Where the hell have you been? I thought we had a date tonight, and it’s ten o’clock.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Ann. Who’d you think?”

  “The hospital.” Bree walked over to the refrigerator and poured herself a glass of milk. Her empty stomach burned.

  “The hospital? Why on earth—”

  “I’ve been there all evening, and I’m beat.” She flopped down in an easy chair and took a sip from her glass. If only Ann’s voice could soothe her like the milk did.

  “What’s wrong? Did you hurt yourself?”

  “No. I’m fine. It’s Sarah, my mother. She had a stroke.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “Yes. I think she’s more scared than anything. She’s not used to having anything wrong with her, and now all of a sudden—”

  “That’s good. But why didn’t you answer your cell? I’ve been trying to locate you since six.”

  Bree blew out a long breath. “The battery died right after the hospital phoned me about Sarah. I probably need a new one.”

  “Poor baby.” Ann’s voice lost its shrill edge and turned seductive. “This hasn’t been your day, has it? Should I come take care of you?”

  “No.” Bree stood and began to unbutton her blouse. “Linda was with me when I got the news and—”

  “Linda! I might have known. Is she there now?”

  Bree kicked off her shoes. “No. She just dropped me off.”

  “What kind of woman would leave you to spend the night alone after going through something like that?”

  One that realizes I’m dog-tired and not interested in anything but getting some sleep, Bree wanted to say. But she didn’t. She didn’t want to wind Ann up any tighter. “An exhausted one probably. Like me.”

  “Oh, baby. I’m sure you’re wiped out.”

  There it was again, that sultry, sexy voice Bree could never resist. But just then she looked down at her hand and recalled how safe she’d felt when Linda held it earlier.

  “Thanks for calling, Ann,” she said in the firm yet dismissive tone she’d perfected when dealing with difficult employees and patrons at the museum. “Maybe we can get together after Sarah’s settled back at Silverado. Keep in touch.” She hung up, finished undressing, and fell into bed.

  *

  As soon as Linda got home she phoned Bree to check on her but got a busy signal. Curious, she called Ann, who usually stayed up late watching television. Her phone beeped busy too. Damn.

  Linda lit a parsley-scented candle in her bathroom, and as its fresh, crisp scent began to soothe her, she undressed and stepped into the shower. She hadn’t realized how tired she was until she stood there unmoving, the hot water beating down on her back. She rolled her tight neck and let the pounding water engulf her.

  Had Bree called Ann, or had Ann started pursuing Bree? And whatever happened between them—was it any of her business? She was Bree’s friend, but Bree and Ann had obviously had strong feelings for each other in the past. Did feelings like those ever change or die? Ann usually got what she wanted, and Bree had once tried to give it to her, until apparently Ann had made it clear she didn’t think Bree could provide it.

  Linda wet her washrag, then squeezed on some new rosemary bodywash she’d recently concocted. The warm water enhanced its tangy lemon aroma.

  Had Ann finally realized she preferred women to men, like Linda had? Or was Ann merely jealous that Linda seemed to be getting some of the attention Bree had always lavished on her? If so, she’d try to regain control of Bree.

  Linda slid her washcloth over her arms carefully, slowly, paying special attention to her hands. She felt like a teenager, reluctant to bathe away any lingering residue of Bree.

  Relaxing into the aroma of rosemary and parsley that mingled together, she picked up a bottle of shampoo scented with thyme. Her mother had taught her how to add herbs to nonscented bath and beauty products, and Linda enjoyed playing with these skills.

  She wet her hair, then
squirted a dollop of shampoo into her palm. Its strong herbaceous, woody smell assaulted her for a minute, then blended with the odors of rosemary and parsley she’d already released. As she soaped and rinsed her hair, she felt stronger.

  Ann had had so many chances with Bree and had blown each one of them because she apparently didn’t think Bree would ever measure up to what a man could offer her. Linda stepped out of the shower. It was her turn now, and she wouldn’t back away.

  She toweled her body and her hair vigorously, then sat in front of her bathroom mirror applying lotion to her feet and calves and humming the old Simon and Garfunkel song that had kept running through her mind since Bree had mentioned it. The earthy, natural smell of the sage in her lotion grounded her as she thought about her mother teaching her the meaning of the various herbs mentioned in the song.

  Parsley is for comfort, her mother had said, taking Linda’s hand and holding it. It can also purify and protect you and those you love.

  Linda glanced at the light-green candle still burning near her bathroom sink and inhaled deeply, thinking of how comfortable she’d felt holding Bree’s hand.

  As she rubbed sage-scented lotion on her thighs, she could almost hear her mother say, Sage is for strength, also protection, wisdom, and health. Use your strength wisely, and cherish your health and that of others.

  Linda gazed at herself in the mirror and at a photo of her mother that sat nearby. “I promise I won’t harm Ann in any way, but I’ll keep on caring for Bree and her mother as long as they need me,” she whispered, then blew a kiss toward the picture.

  Rosemary is for love. It was almost as if the photo were speaking to her now. She could feel her mother near and thought she heard her say, It keeps negativity away and brings health, protection, and blessing.

  The faint tangy aroma of the rosemary from Linda’s bodywash still lingered on her arms. “I won’t think bad thoughts about Ann,” she murmured to her mother. “I’ll try to protect and bless her as much as I do Bree and her mother.”