Enchanting Lily

by Anjali Banerjee

  A perky female voice came on the line. “Fairport Realty, Paige speaking. How may I help you?”

  “Paige Williams? Your name is on the sign in front of this house on Harborside Road. The one for sale?”

  “Oh, you mean the candy cottage!”

  “I don’t know—it is yellow. I’m Lily Byrne. I was passing through town, and I’d like to—”

  “Are you there right now? If you’re there, I’ll swing on by. I’m only a block away. Everything is within walking distance in our little town.”

  A Paul Simon song popped into her head. In my little town…and after it rains there’s a rainbow and all of the colors are black.

  “Um, yes, I’m here right now. I’ll wait.”

  “I’ll be there in a few.”

  Lily hung up and paced, suddenly noticing tiny flaws in the house—a bit of peeling plaster here, a bare spot there, a hairline crack in the foundation. And no garage. She would have to buy a tarp or carport, as Josh had treasured his truck. He would not want his precious baby exposed to the elements. In the city, they’d shared a parking garage with other condominium owners.

  But even without the garage, the cottage felt right—and almost palatial compared to the condo. In San Francisco, who but the ultra-rich could afford a big house? She and Josh hadn’t minded the lack of space. They’d loved being practically on top of each other. Their honeymoon period had lasted through their entire marriage. They were perpetually like two giddy newlyweds gazing into each other’s eyes. Joshua’s eyes—green flecked with hazel, alive and intelligent.

  I wish I could show you this cottage, the view, the sun trapped in pools of light on the waves. He would’ve loved this small town, woven into the fabric of the forest and sitting right next to the ocean. Already she was thinking as if she lived here, and she hadn’t even been inside the house.

  Sometimes you just know, Josh had once said when he’d bought an expensive coat on impulse. You do it and don’t think too much.

  But buying a cottage was not the same as buying a coat. Or was it? She traipsed around to the back again, this time noticing new features in the yard—an empty wooden squirrel house nailed to the old shed, a broken ceramic birdbath lying in what had once been a raised flower bed. Faded nursery tags lay here and there, a few still attached to plants. One tag on a bush with bright red flowers read “Salvia Hot Lips, sustainably grown.” On the back of the tag were the words “Salvia microphylla. Stunning red and white flowers bloom all summer.” The plant had defied the odds and still bloomed in autumn.

  “Are you Lily?” a perky voice said behind her.

  Lily turned to find a fresh-faced woman striding toward her in a brown sweater and boots, floral frock and leggings, bouncy blonde curls and a blinding sunshine smile. “Yes, I’m Lily. You startled me. You must be Paige.”

  “Sorry. I tend to sneak up on people.”

  “Thanks for coming out on short notice.”

  “It was such a long trek from around the corner. The owner has been trying to lease this place for a while now. Maybe I shouldn’t say that. But what the heck. It’s the economy. Who can resist such a cute little cottage?” Her dangling gold earrings glinted in the light. But her eyes—dazzling blue—suggested some hidden layer of pain.

  “It’s beautiful,” Lily said, nodding. “I can see the possibilities. Something drew me to it.”

  “Must be our mystical island.” Paige reached out to shake Lily’s hand, her fingers firm and bejeweled. But no wedding ring. Was she divorced, engaged, or unmarried?

  “So I hear. The barista at the Java Hut gave me a magic coffee bean,” Lily said, and laughed.

  “Oh yeah, those coffee beans will make you bold.”

  “I guess this one did!” Was Paige serious? Did everyone in this town believe in the mystical island of magic coffee beans?

  “Come on in,” Paige said, heading up the front steps. She pulled a ring of keys from her purse and opened the front door. Her fingers trembled a little. Inside, the cottage was unusually warm and smelled of furniture polish and paint. The wood floor creaked beneath her feet. A house that made noises. A house that lived.

  As they walked through the rooms, Paige kept talking in a nervous chatter. “So a retired couple decided to open a candy store in here for a while, which is why I called it the candy cottage. Before that it was a soap depot. You know, all kinds of expensive toiletries and fragrances, spritzers and lotions and stuff—but I’m sorry to say neither business survived.”

  “Maybe the cottage was waiting for the perfect buyer.”

  “You’re probably right.” Paige played with the strap of her oversized shoulder bag. “Someone who appreciates the town’s historic qualities, right? Speaking of which, I’m on the board of the Renewal Society. We’re dedicated to putting our unique heritage to work for economic growth. Oops, I sound like a commercial. But each of us wears more than one hat around here. It’s tough. Sometimes I think I’ll pack it all in and move, but I love the island so I stay.”

  “I don’t blame you.” Lily peeked into the downstairs half bathroom, which had also been remodeled. “This place is charming.”

  “I think it was built around 1904. We’ve got many houses on the list of historic landmarks. The Fairport Art Gallery used to be the first mill site during the Klondike Gold Rush, and Le Pichet belonged to an undertaker. When he moved here, he found everyone was so healthy, they didn’t need his services. Like nobody ever died, right? He ended up opening a furniture store instead, and then the building went through a bunch of changes and eventually became a restaurant.”

  Lily nodded politely, picturing herself ensconced here in peace and quiet. No chatter, no city sounds, no intrusions, no reminders. Just a little house. She touched the freshly painted trim on the arched doorway from the front room to the dining area. Both rooms could hold a few racks of clothing. The room to the right of the entryway could be for shoes, ties, and hats.

  “Do you want to see the upper level?” Paige said, but Lily was already heading to the staircase. Paige hurried to follow her.

  The two bedrooms were prettier than Lily had imagined—luminescent, with slanted ceilings, big windows, and fresh white paint with blue trim. A bright bathroom sat between them, a new claw-foot tub in the center. A tub! She could take endless bubble baths in peace.

  “This is perfect,” she said. “Exactly what I’ve been looking for.” What was she saying? What if the pipes leaked? What if the attic was full of mold?

  As if reading her mind, Paige said, “I’m sure the owner could answer any questions you might have or address any concerns—”

  “That would be great.” Lily sat on the single bed. Firm mattress, unyielding, but fine for now. Otherwise she could unroll her sleeping bag on the floor. She would avoid the double bed in the other room. Too much empty space. “Is the owner nearby? I’d like to talk to him.”

  “Her.” Paige smiled. “We could go over there. You would live here with your whole family then?”

  “I don’t have a family. I’m it.”

  A pause. “I see. Okay, that’s fine. Probably good—”

  “Can we go right now? Is the owner around?” What was she getting herself into? She was already imagining a bedspread to match the walls; a plant in the window. Lavender soap on the bathroom sink. Maybe the magic coffee bean was working after all.

  Chapter Two

  Lily

  “I should warn you about the owner,” Paige said on the walk through town. Lily was happy to stretch her legs, to breathe in the clean, salty island air.

  “Oh?” she replied. “Is she eccentric?”

  “Not her, exactly, but her bookstore. You think the magic coffee bean thing is weird? Jasmine’s Bookstore is a bit unusual. Not like your typical bookstore.”

  “So the owner runs a bookstore. How funny.” Lily couldn’t imagine what a “typical” bookstore looked like. In her experience, each one had a different personality—quaint and packed with rare tomes, or spaci
ous and corporate, or musty and dark.

  “Jasmine’s got this weird sixth sense about books,” Paige said, keeping to the redbrick sidewalk, nodding here and there to an occasional passerby, people she obviously knew. “She handed me a paperback about the history of the island once. Got me interested in restoration, so I joined the Renewal Society, and that’s how I found out my husband was cheating on me.”

  “Oh no! Because of the book?”

  “Without it, I never would’ve joined the Society, and I wouldn’t have found out.”

  A bit of a stretch, Lily thought, but possible. “Did you catch him in the act?”

  “Not exactly, but close enough. John told me he was singing on Tuesday nights. The Sailor Singers meet in the building right next to the museum, where the Renewal Society meets. He’d started going on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I thought, that’s a lot of singing. But when I stopped in, he wasn’t there. He hadn’t been there in a while. I pestered one of the guys and he finally spilled the beans. Oops, there I go, mentioning beans again.”

  “I’m so sorry that happened to you. How long were you married?”

  “Seven years. The divorce wasn’t all his fault. I have some…regrets. Oh, look, there it is.” She pointed at the burnt umber and white Victorian perched on a hillside overlooking the water.

  Lily felt like the house watched her, but not unkindly. Large bay windows reflected silvery light, and the words “Jasmine’s Bookstore” glittered on a garden sign in bright gold lettering. “It does look enchanted,” she said.

  “See what I mean?” Paige headed up the walkway to the door. “Mystical, huh?”

  “Like it stepped out of another era.”

  Paige opened the door and ushered Lily into the foyer. “This used to be the back servants’ entrance during the height of the timber industry. The front entrance faces the waterfront. At one time, all the important guests arrived by sea.”

  “Hard to imagine a world without cars.” Lily pictured wooden sailboats gliding into the harbor, horse-drawn carriages rattling down cobblestone streets.

  “Must’ve been a better time, if you ask me.”

  “Maybe.” Inside the bookstore, soft lights from Tiffany lamps spilled out across Persian carpets, and here and there, portraits of famous authors adorned the walls—Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, Mark Twain, and others. Muffled voices drifted from nearby rooms, and the smells of old house—of dust and oak and paper—rose and mixed with a fresh citrus scent of potpourri. To the left stood a three-foot-tall brass statue of the Hindu elephant-headed god, Ganesh. Lily had seen various versions of him inside Indian restaurants and shops in San Francisco. His smiling face, rotund belly, and large feet were an anomaly in this old Victorian mansion—the flavor of India in the Pacific Northwest. But then, her shop would be an anomaly, too. Who would imagine theater costumes and the best of haute couture fashion for sale in a sleepy island town?

  “You have to touch his feet!” Paige whispered. “You have to honor the god of new beginnings.”

  Lily bent to touch the statue’s pudgy brass feet. “Am I supposed to pray or something?”

  “Whatever you want. But don’t tell me or you’ll jinx it.”

  Lily closed her eyes and asked the elephant god to help her find a way forward. She didn’t dare ask for Josh, although she longed for him. But she’d read a story about a woman who asked for her husband back, and he returned all mangled, in the form in which he had died. There were consequences when you wished for the impossible. So she swallowed her yearning, just as an ethereal-looking woman emerged from the parlor, a vision of beauty in blue jeans and a cherry sweater, wavy black hair falling past her shoulders. Her cheeks glowed with happiness. An engraved gold wedding band glinted on her ring finger, and Lily felt an unwelcome stab of envy. She couldn’t remember when she’d felt so happy. Well, she remembered when, but it had been a lifetime ago.

  “That was a fast walk over here,” the woman said, reaching out to shake Lily’s hand. “Paige called and told me you were coming.”

  Lily nodded, unable to speak.

  “I’m Jasmine. Come into the parlor.” She ushered Paige and Lily into a large drawing room lined with bookshelves from floor to ceiling and a large bay window.

  “Lily is interested in the candy cottage,” Paige said, sitting on a plush antique couch. She crossed her legs and swung one booted foot back and forth.

  Jasmine gestured toward an ornate Louis XV armchair. “Why don’t you have a seat over there?”

  Lily had been eyeing that chair. When she sat down, the cushion felt softer than she’d expected. “I should’ve checked the furnace and electrical system, but my husband was always the one—”

  “I understand, don’t worry,” Jasmine said. “We just rewired the house, if that eases your mind.”

  It did, a little. “What price are you asking?”

  Jasmine named a number that seemed reasonable, but it would still stretch Lily’s finances, and she would still need to take out a loan or two for the business.

  “I see.” She clasped her hands together in her lap, aware of her bare ring finger, her nails worn to the quick. Since when had she become a nail-biter? “Let me give it some thought.”

  Jasmine nodded. “I’ll just get us some tea and the papers. Maybe you’d like to take another look at the place.”

  “Thanks, I would.” Lily mentally calculated her anticipated expenses and the amount of money she had left. She would need to stay in a hotel for a while, too.

  Jasmine left the room, gliding almost as if her feet didn’t touch the ground.

  “The house used to belong to her aunt,” Paige said, lowering her voice. “But the aunt got married and moved back to India.”

  “Where did Jasmine come from?”

  “She had some corporate job in L.A., but the island cast its spell on her, just like it’s casting a spell on you.”

  “The town is certainly charming,” Lily said politely. She could hear customers murmuring in other rooms, the sound of pages turning, footsteps. A man sauntered in—solid and broad-shouldered, good-looking in a rugged, roughed-up way. When he noticed Lily and Paige leaning in toward each other, he said, “Oh, sorry,” and slipped out into the hall again.

  A moment later, Jasmine stepped in with a silver tray of tea and biscuits. She put a manila file folder on the coffee table.

  Paige munched and sipped, and Lily took a cup of tea that tasted of peach and lemon. As she settled back in her chair, a rather round, fluffy gray cat waddled into the room and let out a horrendous, grating meow.

  “Oh, Mary, I can see you’re starving to death,” Jasmine said, placing crumbled bits of biscuit on a plate on the floor. “Where’s Monet?”

  “How many cats do you have?” Lily asked.

  “Only two. Monet is about half her size.” Jasmine picked up Mary and arranged the gigantic creature in her lap. “She likes to eat, and he likes to wander.”

  “Ha!” Paige said. “Story of my life.”

  “I thought I saw a white cat at the cottage,” Lily said.

  Paige and Jasmine looked at her blankly and shook their heads. Had she actually even seen the cat?

  Mary meowed again, jumped off Jasmine’s lap, and trotted out of the room.

  Jasmine got up, glided to a bookshelf, and extracted a thin hardcover. She handed the book to Lily. “Here’s a little welcoming gift. Or a bribe, whatever you want to call it.”

  “All Buttoned Up,” Lily read. “Poems About Clothing.”

  “The title popped out at me.”

  Paige gave Lily a knowing look.

  “Thanks,” Lily said. “Very generous of you. I’ll pay for it—”

  “Not at all!” Jasmine waved her hand.

  Lily reached for the manila folder. “Can I borrow this for a while?”

  “Of course—take your time.”

  But even before Lily hired a Realtor and moved into a hotel temporarily, even before the title search on the cottage began; even
before she took out a business loan and obtained the correct licenses; even before all that, she knew she would be staying, at least for a while.

  Chapter Three

  Lily

  What was she doing here in her sleeping bag on this single bed in a creaky cottage in the middle of nowhere? No traffic sounds or voices or wind. She couldn’t even hear the hum of the refrigerator. Outside, a nearly full moon illuminated the maple tree in the backyard. The branches cast a mottled pattern of shadows and light on the bedroom walls. She felt absurdly like a vagrant squatting in someone else’s house, waiting for the true owners to come home and find her asleep in the wrong bed, like Goldilocks.

  At least she had electricity, although the telephone was not yet connected. Her cell phone reception faded in and out, but mostly out. She’d stocked the kitchen cabinets and fridge with basics from Island Organic Grocery, where the checkout clerk had given her a friendly but curious smile. Then she’d wandered through the cottage, opening cabinets and closets and exploring again. She kept repeating to herself that the cottage belonged to her now. The realization both exhilarated and frightened her. She could paint the ceiling any color. She could knock out walls, as long as the roof didn’t cave in. What if it did? What would she do? What if the water heater broke or the taps spit out rusty liquid? What if the place was haunted? If it was, she could make friends with the ghosts. She could have tea with them. She could wallpaper the living room with pictures of ghosts. The extent of her freedom gave her a calm, expansive feeling—and yet, there was the nagging loneliness again.

  So she’d taken another walk from the downtown area up through sleepy residential streets lined with old Victorians, mainly to become visible to the world again. Occasionally, she’d passed someone working in a garden, and they’d waved at each other. She felt relieved. Someone had seen her. She still had substance. But nobody bothered her, and she preferred to remain at a distance. She’d come back to the cottage pleasantly tired and had spent the last half hour reading through the poems. Until now, she hadn’t opened the book.