“Clair!” he hollered as an entire row of plants howled by on their way out of the garden. “Clair! Clair, please stop!”
Eerily, Clair appeared to be having no problems at all withstanding the maelstrom. Only her hair was embroiled, careening in every direction, the velvet bow long gone. But her eyes were still locked on David’s, and within seconds, the pandemonium had diminished.
The largest section of the fountain capsized once more, landing with a hollow thump on its rim. A dog could be heard barking frantically, and David knew that it was Johnson, undoubtedly trying to launch himself out the bedroom window, if he could have leapt so high.
“Do you know, David?” Clair asked, her voice querulous yet calm. “Does anybody?”
But David couldn’t answer. Aside from his shock at the utter devastation of his favorite garden in Shady Grove, he knew that no one who owned a conscience could truly answer that question with outright confidence.
The gate that led to Bill’s cottage was pulled abruptly open. David didn’t have to turn around to be able to see the look on Bill’s face. “Ho. Lee. Shit,” he heard muttered in astonishment from behind him.
Seconds later, the gate that led to the common area was unlatched as well, and Mrs. Rushen stepped into the courtyard. Her bearing was staid, her face was blank. She was clad in yet another of her shapeless outfits that made it so difficult to determine where the woman ended and the costume began.
Clair’s eyes hadn’t left David’s. She looked sad again, and David thought he could discern the tears welling up once more.
“It’s time to go now,” Mrs. Rushen said.
And that was when Clair blinked, and David saw that she was crying. He had to admit that he felt a bit like bawling himself.
She took four steps, until she was less than a foot away from him. Once again, she reached forward. Once again, she took his hand.
“You’ll know when,” she said in a whisper as the heat from within her traveled through David’s entire being. “You’ll want to. Just go in.”
And then she was moving away from him, slowly, unwillingly. She took hold of Mrs. Rushen’s hand, but turned for a few last seconds to gaze at him. One more melancholy smile emerged. One more tear rolled down each cheek.
Mrs. Rushen nodded discreetly at David. And then the pair departed the courtyard of the Rainbow Arms. Never to return, never to return.
Chapter Thirty
A week passed. And while this standard period of seven days elapses at pretty much the same pace no matter where one is in the world, it seemed an interminable seven days to several of the residents of Shady Grove.
Bill Lopes began the laborious process of cleaning up the courtyard. The fountain was salvageable, although in an ironic twist, the one component that had shattered beyond all repair was the stone piece that had been used on Heck Vance’s head. Only three small trees and a hardy pair of rosebushes had survived the freakish windstorm; the wooden benches had turned into kindling, and the remainder of the garden had emerged a wasteland. Only a few residents regularly visited the courtyard, Janice among them, but Bill informed anyone who asked that the building’s owners had authorized an automatic sprinkler system to be installed, which at least somewhat explained why he’d needed to clear out most of the established vegetation.
Janice had bought this reasoning without question. She had only enjoyed coming to the courtyard to talk with David, and after their strange encounter at Gâteaupia the week before, she’d had an inkling that those amiable chats were nearing an end. She hadn’t ended up going out for drinks with Lydia and her crew over the weekend, but had promised to do so the following Saturday night.
No replacement for Heck was on the horizon. Janice thought that she might see how long she could last before welcoming another man into her life.
Lydia missed David. A lot. She waited five long days before she finally texted him: “Creamed spinach dulce de leche surprise with a pine nut studded sugar drizzle. Want u back! Your counter girl L. xoxoxo.”
David had smiled, smiled, and smiled. “You win w/out a contest,” he’d replied. “Want to be back, let u know. But if u hear that the door has slammed for good, marry me?”
Lydia had smiled, smiled, and smiled as well.
Lydia’s employer, on the other hand, had discovered that running her business, usually the activity that most thrilled and energized her, had become a drudgery. By Saturday afternoon, Genevieve was exhausted. By Sunday night, she was ready to close the bakery for a month. The website that David had architected for Gâteaupia had brought in a surfeit of extra business, but with her thoughts not centered solidly on the store, Genevieve had found work becoming… well, work. Like Lydia, she missed David. But she wasn’t ready to decide what she wanted.
Genevieve didn’t actually know what she wanted.
At Shady Grove Elementary School, Carol Jenkins had had a premonition of her own: by the time Clair’s third unexcused absence in a row had been marked off and sent down the hall to the principal’s office, she knew that the odd little girl who had offered her such comfort with her words was never going to set foot in her classroom again. Carol was saddened by this loss, and yet at the same time felt at peace. Clair had given her a hug goodbye after school ended on Monday, and a surprised Carol had held her close for a long minute. After her emotional meeting with David Wilcott during the lunch break, she had found her eyes drifting over and over again to Clair, who had met her gaze frankly. Clair had obviously been saying goodbye to her that afternoon, and Carol was glad that she had done so. It added closure to an episode in which Clair had provided her with a different sort of closure. Mrs. Jenkins knew without a doubt that their interactions had altered the course of her life. She was content now. And even though she understood that she could never have her daughter back again, she was ready to live for herself once more.
Living, though, was something that Grandpa Wilcott was not of a mind to do. David’s visit with him on Saturday had been brief, and a disappointment for both men. After two complaint-laden rounds of Gin rummy, David had put down his cards, stood, and left. He wasn’t in the mood for his grumpy Grandpa. He wasn’t in the mood to be around people who had given up.
David himself had spent the seven days painstakingly attempting to make decisions. He knew that he wanted to stay in Shady Grove. He knew that he needed to live somewhere other than the Rainbow Arms. He knew that he wanted to be with Genevieve. And yet he wasn’t prepared to contact her until both of them were entirely ready to give their relationship everything they had.
If they were in a relationship anymore, that is.
David and Johnson had taken many long walks, and David had gradually come to acknowledge that he truly liked who he had become in Shady Grove. He wasn’t important, he wasn’t a critical cog in any machine. But he was accepted, and comfortable, and fulfilled. He could wish for more, but why? He had had more once, and it had brought him none of the happiness that he had experienced in this bucolic town.
On Friday night, exactly a week after their previous conversation, he had called Jess. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that all of this is my fault,” was how she’d answered the phone. Nervous before he dialed, David had found himself perfectly at ease with her within seconds. They had chatted for over an hour, as though they’d been friends for years. David had declared that he couldn’t wait to meet her in July. Laughing, Jess had replied that she expected him to treat her to Longworth House, whether or not Genevieve was in the mood to join the two of them for dinner.
Both had promised to keep their conversation to themselves this time. Both intended to keep that promise.
The Shady Grove Courier had experienced a plummet in sales, beginning on the Wednesday following the press conference that had featured Detective Ormsby. Deke and Thickman’s whereabouts had remained a mystery. And while the newspaper’s editors had done their utmost to stoke the public’s curiosity and keep it stoked, the conundrum of where a small-time drug dealer’s
alleged killers had fled was not one to occupy the public’s attention for long. A half-page write-up on the upcoming ‘Lez Hang Out’ LGBT meeting in June had been the most interesting article of the Saturday edition.
Detective Ormsby had heard from Todd, though. Saturday afternoon, half an hour before the start of the game that both of them had planned to watch. One of them ended up calling the other every commercial break – to bitch about the errors the teams were making, to discuss who should play quarterback for the Shady Grove Eagles next season, to knock around which brewski went best with the TV dinner each of them would be enjoying for supper that evening.
Harvey Ormsby went to bed a happy man.
A long seven days. But not for everyone, clearly.
The weather in Shady Grove cooled down a touch, for which Bill Lopes, for one, was grateful. Digging, hoeing and planting were harder chores than they had been forty years before, when he’d first begun caring for the courtyard garden of the Rainbow Arms. On Friday, he actually did contact the owners of the building to ask about installing some automatic sprinklers, and they’d agreed. A lie come true, but Bill was grateful in a way for all the work that remained to be done. It kept him occupied. It kept his thoughts occupied.
Bill and David drank some beers together late Sunday afternoon, after David helped to trench the garden for the sprinkler pipes. Unfazed by the carnage, Johnson had accompanied them, chasing after insects and then furiously lapping up his water as though he’d been working his tail off alongside the men.
Neither Bill nor David brought up the subject of what had happened on Tuesday. Neither one of them uttered the name, ‘Clair.’
Her presence was felt, though. Apartment 2B had been vacated, but the former occupants of that unit were still very much in residence to the two men.
Their friendship was solid. Their camaraderie was easy. David knew that Bill would remain a part of his life, no matter where he ended up. He was pleased about this. And he hoped that Bill would be pleased as well.
Chapter Thirty-One
Tuesday afternoon, and it had been drizzling steadily since before seven a.m. The streets of Shady Grove were slick with wetness, but it wasn’t a dank wetness. It was a jot over seventy degrees, and the minor storm system whose edges were brushing over the town was only supposed to drop enough moisture to freshen the greenery and cleanse the sidewalks.
David Wilcott sat alone on the covered stage of the amphitheater in the public square. His legs were extended before him, with his hands propping him up from behind. He had just finished the sandwich and banana he had picked up after his morning stint at Culpepper Mills. Johnson had come with him on Monday, but this afternoon David had a meeting scheduled with yet another Shady Grove business that desired a more dynamic online presence. David was happy to oblige, and he was more than happy to leave Johnson at home for another day. This was his vocation now, and he knew that handling things correctly from the start was a good way to keep it his vocation.
Websites, however, were not what was on David’s mind at the moment. He was thinking about Aishani, the girl who had once broken his heart. She had been his first crush, and then his first love. And he was wondering, as he had every so often over the past couple of years, if the path that his life had followed might have been different if things had not gone so wrong in that long-ago, bittersweet semblance of a romance.
Like David, Aishani had been a mid-year addition to the eighth grade class at Lincoln Heights Middle School. David’s family had slunk into town in late September; Aishani’s father had been transferred to the area in August, and two months later, he had brought his wife and four children to Lincoln Heights as well.
She was beautiful. Though with glasses, no makeup, and her lustrous hair always tied back simply, she attracted no friends or admirers during her first few weeks at school.
But David had noticed her. At fourteen he had hit puberty, but while the gears of growth were whirring, nothing in his physicality was responding yet. And for a small, lonely boy who was already getting picked on by some of the bullies at the school, a girl who was smart, different, and outside the established social sets was an automatic draw.
Their families had ended up living only a few blocks apart from each other.
“Hi,” David had called out, jogging to catch up with her as she headed briskly for home after school one day. “I’m David. I’m new here, too.”
She shot him a shy smile, but clutched the books she was carrying more tightly to her chest. “Nice to meet you,” she said in a voice that he had only heard a few times, a voice that held an undercurrent of mystery, an alluring hint of foreignness.
“I know how your name is spelled,” he remarked, “but I’m afraid I’ll turn it into something horrible if I try to pronounce it. Would you mind saying it for me once?”
His pleasantry had earned him a genuine smile. “Eye-shah-nee,” she replied softly. “And thank you. Most people don’t ask at all. They just butcher it.”
David nodded; he’d had little experience talking to girls his own age, and was glad to find that he hadn’t fumbled the first pass. “You live off of Waverly, right?” he asked. And as she glanced over at him with concern, he plowed on: “I do, too. On Peach. You’re always ahead of me when I walk home. I never know where you turn, though. I go left there, and we live about six houses down. On the right.”
His barrage of unrelated facts had at least relayed to her that he wasn’t a stalker. “We live on Portland,” she stated. “Second house in, north side. I’ve never seen you behind me.”
“You never look behind you!” he grinned.
So she turned to look behind her right then. Several groups of students were bobbing along the sidewalks, and beyond them were a few solo stragglers. “I guess I’ve never seen anybody on my way back,” she admitted. “Perhaps I’m in too much of a hurry to get home.”
“Oh, but the kids here are so nice!” David returned. “You should stay, hang out with them.”
She made a face. “Maybe not. So you’re new here, too?”
And thus had begun a friendship, out of which had sprung a fledgling relationship. Aishani was the oldest of four girls, and her parents were understandably protective of their daughters, especially in regards to local boys. David had eventually been invited to her house for dinner; he had played Monopoly with Aishani and her sisters, and had charmed their parents. Gradually, gradually, the two had been allowed to spend time together without the constant onus of parental supervision.
By Thanksgiving, Aishani was wearing light mascara and earrings. She and David had each experienced their first kiss, and they held hands, though never at school.
By Christmas, Aishani had begun to use contacts, and was taking more care with her hair. Other boys had started to notice her, and didn’t appreciate David being constantly at her side.
By January, Aishani was developing a figure, as well as receiving invitations to parties. David was pointedly not invited anywhere, and the bullies had stepped up their ministrations toward him.
They had their first fight as the date of the school’s winter dance approached.
“Why do you always have to do everything with me?” she’d challenged him at lunch, as he yet again set his tray down next to hers. Several girls, newer friends of hers, giggled to each other, food forgotten; the opportunity to watch Aishani strut her stuff had finally arrived.
“I always eat with you!” had been David’s impulsive, not overly perceptive reply.
“Exactly my point!” she’d flung back. “Let me eat with my friends today. We’ll talk after school.”
Stung, David had remained inert for a long minute, unsure of whether he should do as she’d asked, or try to hold his position.
“Go, go!” she’d then impatiently shrieked, flicking her fingers at him as though he were a mosquito or a pesky gnat.
He had eaten his lunch alone on the field, frightened by her casually uttered let me eat with my friends rejoinder, unable
to figure out what he had said or done wrong.
He waited for over twenty minutes after school ended before she finally strode out of the gates. She barely acknowledged him. Her head was locked in a forward position, and her pace was so swift that David found himself having to trot to keep up with her.
“Aishani,” he pleaded, “what did I do?”
She rolled her eyes. “You just don’t get it, do you?”
He stumbled over his own feet, and then scurried to catch up again. “Get what?” he asked. “Did I say something to make you mad? Is it something I did? Tell me!”
An explosion of exasperation discharged from between those lips that David loved to explore, loved to kiss, loved to dream about.
“Please, Aishani! This isn’t fair!”
And at that, she swung around to face him. Her head pivoted quickly left and right, and he understood with dismay that she was making sure that they had no audience for what was about to occur.
“I got asked to the dance by Jack Foley,” she declared brusquely.
“But… but you’re going to the dance with me!” David protested, the stern countenance before him blurring as he unwittingly began to cry.
“Not any more. He asked me at Cassie’s party on Saturday night.”
“But I wasn’t even there! She didn’t invite me!”
Another eye roll. “Did you think I wasn’t aware of that?” And then she caught sight of his tears and softened, but just a bit. “David, it isn’t working between us. It hasn’t been, for a while now.”
He couldn’t think of a single way to reply to that. It was news to him; what had happened at lunch today had been his first clue that anything was wrong.
“I welcomed you into my life,” she continued. “I included you, my family included you. But you’ve never included me in anything. How many times have you been to my house in the last two months?”
David had a bad feeling that he knew where this was heading, but he attempted to calculate anyway. “A lot. Twenty, thirty times. Maybe more.”
A Shiver of Wonder Page 17
