Twillyweed

by Mary Anne Kelly

  I took the steep footpath, stopping to catch my breath, and at the very top, edging over the side, a stab of red wobbling color caught my eye. A For Sale sign, meant to be seen from the beach, had come loose and was wriggling and about to fly off its hook. I leaned out and hitched the sign back up and looked at the tiny house. It was pale blue, no, gray, a pale gray but with a hue of blue and it had peeling white painted sills. An old-fashioned porch stole the show. The house wasn’t in the least bit fancy or beautiful. Except for the porch, it was plain. Tiny. Solid. It had to be, clinging to the edge of the cliff like that. A small bird landed on the front gutter with a gathering of weed in its beak. Just beneath the porch light was a battered plaque, the way some houses announce and portray themselves. It was spelled in an antiquated hand: the great white. I smiled—someone had a sense of humor—and hoisted myself over the steps to the walkway and then something in me turned me back around and I thought what the heck. … I scribbled down the number.

  A gray-haired woman next door on the inland side was hanging a rug over the hedge. She peered at me suspiciously.

  “Just taking down the number,” I called.

  She tipped her head in understanding and proceeded to swat her rug with an antiquated beater.

  I ventured a little closer. “I don’t suppose you know what they’re asking?”

  “Better not be much,” she said in a heavy Italian accent. “She was a clutter bug. Place is a mess.” She gave me the once-over, sizing me up. “Needs new gutters, too. And the boiler’s all the time on the blink.” We both listened to the chirp of the nesting bird.

  How cold could it get? I asked myself. After all, spring was here. Why, it would soon be summer. I asked the woman if she thought they might rent. “I’d love to get a look inside.”

  Swatting abated, she squared her stance and scrunched her face up. “Might have missed your chance. I think the son’s fed up. Said he’s looking to sell. Told me he gave the house to a realtor just the other day.”

  “Oh.” Acquiring a house on the water, even a paltry one, would be way above my budget. Feeling oddly let down, I thanked her and started to walk away.

  “Of course, if you want to go talk to him, he’ll be down the marina. … Still might be there.”

  I hesitated. My better judgment warned me, Don’t you go starting all over again with one of your harebrained schemes.

  “Hey!” The woman put one hand up to shade her eyes and another heavily on my shoulder and she gasped, “Look there! It’s a blue heron!”

  Just above our heads an impossibly heavy, prehistoric-looking bird flew low above us in a slow-motion, long-stroked way. It looked right at us. “Wow!” I said.

  “Madonna mia,” the woman said as she grabbed hold of me. “You don’t think it’s a spirit of someone?”

  “I’ve never heard that. I’ve never even seen one!” I cried. “And so close!”

  “Did you see? She looked right at us!”

  We stood watching the empty sky long after it had passed, both of us enthralled. I looked back at the little house. This whole place would be transformed by summer to a tourist town. Suppose I could think up some sort of business. … Well, what? Stranger things have happened. Let’s face it—nothing wonderful was waiting for me back in Queens. I dug into my purse for a pen. “What’s the man’s name?”

  “The man?” She was still frightened by what seemed to her a mythological apparition.

  “Who owns the cottage?” I prompted.

  “Oh. Donovan,” she said, returning to the real world. “Noola’s son, Morgan Donovan. You ask anyone for Noola’s son’s—Morgan’s—boat. He owns the house now. But I got to warn you. Noola’s ghost”—she thought she’d help me out by adding—“she’s come and go with the fog. Late at night, I hear …” She leaned in, close and garlicky. “… something bad!”

  The first happy aspect of being on my own took shape. No sensible man to put an end to my dream just because of something so provincial as a ghost. After all, I harrumphed to myself, knowing more at that time than I realized, it’s not of the dead we must fear, but the living.

  In no time at all I sat in the Once Upon a Moose and waited for Jenny Rose. You’ve never seen a place like the Moose. There are antiques and white lattices and climbing ivy, glittering curiosities and collectibles, and ladies’ old-fashioned hats along the walls. This afternoon it was practically empty; one elegant couple sat at a wrought-iron table at the other side of the room. The man, I noted, was prosperous looking, gleamingly Rolexed, a certain sort of handsome. Norwegian looking. A scant portly. I couldn’t see his companion as she had her back to me, but she wore a green loden mantle and hat, the sort of thing you’d see in Germany. Very attractive, I thought idly, and then was amused to see him glance furtively to the side and pass her a short stack of bills. She took it without hesitation. At once I turned away discreetly. The young woman in the loden mantle stood, slipped out the door, and hurried up the street. I’d chosen the cozy bay-window seat at the far end that looked out at the town square, had ordered tea, and was thinking Jenny Rose was going to take one look at me and her face would fall. That’s basically what happened.

  The glass door sprung open, jingling with a rope of bells, and in she walked. Her eyes took several seconds to adjust to the dark, then swept the room and she caught sight of me. Her face didn’t change, but her hazel eyes went sort of dead. She looked so young. Well, she is so young. I stood up, tripped over my own two feet, and made it across the room to give her a hug. She hugged me back all right. But on her way to my shoulder she let her guard down and I caught a clear glimpse of her disappointment. It didn’t take her long to adjust her face into a pleasant expression. We sat down. I took my time explaining, giving her a chance to get herself together. Jenny Rose chewed her lip and listened as I rambled on. Finally she shrugged. “I didn’t really expect her, you know.”

  You knew the kid was lying and her nonchalance was put on. “Well, she didn’t know,” I defended Carmela.

  “Yeah, I just thought I’d take a chance.” She lit a cigarette and the owner—an interesting-looking lady with Veronica Lake hair and red lipstick—clicked her tongue and frowned pointedly.

  “You can’t smoke in restaurants,” I hissed.

  “You’re joking. How do you eat?”

  I patted my hefty tummy. “We manage.”

  Jenny Rose stomped out her cigarette and, still pulling herself together, stared out the window. I tried not to focus on the henna bracelet and the chipped blue nail polish, the black eyeliner and mascara. Actually, I was relieved there were no piercings other than the three in each earlobe. “I see you got a new tattoo.” I sighed, regarding the colorful rock star on her arm.

  “Actually I painted it on, with makeup. Looks real, right?”

  “Yes, it does,” I marveled. “Listen, Jenny Rose, Carmela’s expected back in a couple of weeks,” I said hopefully. “My sister Zinnie got married to a fancy Italian, I must say. Carmela was having a difficult time finishing a book, and Zinnie invited her there to work on it. Do her good. You know.”

  “Uh-huh.” She whittled away at a last strand of blue nail polish with her teeth.

  Together our heads turned to the empty piazza across the way. We watched the flags and window-box petunias ripple in the high wind. “Doesn’t feel much like spring yet, but Memorial Day’s coming up,” I encouraged. “Everything changes.”

  We both moved unfamiliarly in our chairs. Outside, the cold sun glared on the empty road. Here in the Moose it was dark and cozy and smelled of butternut soup. A young man brought the tea in a sweet pot with roses. The cups were delicate, thin lipped and roomy.

  “Oh, at last.” Jenny Rose smiled gratefully. She drank it down scalding hot.

  I sipped my tea. I’d had enough of polite discomfort. “Jenny Rose, I’m not glad this happened, that Carmela wasn’t here, but I’m so incr
edibly pleased to see you. My children are both away at school and—well, your coming happens at a perfect time for me—”

  Suddenly she took out her pad, knocking half the contents of her bag onto the floor in the process then scrambling to throw them back in untidily, and I thought she was going to write down my number, but instead she began sketching the interior of the restaurant. She did this with one foot up on the rung of a chair but otherwise inconspicuously and with an almost furious intent, reminding me of myself when I was just starting out, always photographing everything, no matter where I went. At last she said, “Wait until you see Twillyweed—the house where I’m working. There are onion-heads on turrets! It’s a trip.”

  “May I come? Are you settled in?”

  “Not really. They’ve stuck me in the basement. Well. It’s not as bad as it sounds. It’s just—”

  “My sister said that you’ve taken a job as an au pair.” I realized I’d said my sister instead of your mother, but no need to start things off on the wrong foot.

  “Yeah. They hustled the little boy off to bed before we could have much of a gab.” She scratched her cheek. “Cute as a button. They have him in school all day, can you believe it? At four! Well, almost five. He’s adopted. No sign of the mother. And no one about but the help. Where do people get off having kids if they’re not going to stick around and bother with them?”

  We both thought of Carmela, who’d done neither.

  She frowned. “And it’s kind of creepy. Like there’s a secret up there or something.” She shrugged dismissively then glanced at her watch.

  I cleared my throat. “Do you have to get back right away?”

  “I must stop in and show my face to a Mrs. Lassiter at the rectory, Deirdre’s old kick from back home. I ought to bring her flowers or a bottle of perfume, what do you think?”

  “Oh, flowers are always nice.”

  “Yeah, right. And I thought I’d look around for some drop cloths and turpentine and rags.”

  “I passed a hardware store coming into town,” I said.

  “That’ll do for a start.”

  The good thing about somebody else’s troubles is that you quickly forget about your own. Watching her swift movements with the pencil, I mentioned, “When I met you, you were just a teenager, but even then you showed the promise of becoming a really talented artist.”

  “Yeah. Real talented. Couldn’t even pay the rent it turns out.”

  “Jenny Rose! I can still remember that painting of three fish you did! So full of imagination and color and depth! Please don’t tell me you’re not painting all the time!”

  She shrugged. “I’m painting. I’ve just lost my cocksureness, I guess.” She grinned, looking me dead in the eye. “That would be a good thing, you’ll be telling me.”

  “No. You need to be brash in this world of hope dousers.”

  “Yeah.” Her voice was bitter. “There’ll be plenty a them.”

  Together our heads turned to the empty piazza across the way. Funny, I thought, she doesn’t have Carmela’s knockout beauty, but she’s captivating. She has charm. She’s not burdened with self-consciousness but has that sporty, boyish way about her—not masculine, though she is graceful as a young boy is graceful. She just didn’t have girlish airs, probably because of the ways of those two Irish lesbians from the countryside who had raised her. There was something about her. It made me furious to think she’d been hurt. I knew Jenny Rose was quick to answer back. She had a sassy edge and a fresh mouth that was sure to get her into trouble, but she was a good-hearted kid. You could never say she wasn’t.

  I thought of something else. I ventured, “There was a guy, I seem to remember?”

  Jenny Rose shook her head. “Ach. There was him and there was me and there was the girl I was painting. This all was in the south of France, mind. Him speaking French and me not.” She gave a false laugh of bravado, then her eyes clouded, childlike and vulnerable. “Aw, I might as well tell you. I’d been having a terrible time of it, got turned down by a gallery in Cannes, the one gallery I really wanted. Like I had this dream my stuff would hang there in the window, you know? The gallery owner held my paintings up and ridiculed them.” Her eyes glazed over in misery at the memory. “And then I came home, really down, see, only to come in and find them not talking. You know what I mean … that loud silence that says something’s been going on before you walked in. Then there’s the bed made that’s never been made before.” She shrugged. “And the smell of it. It was there in the room like a thing. Ach. I just knew.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I beat her up.”

  We looked at each other for a long moment and then I burst out laughing. I love the Irish part of my family with all my heart. I really do. I wiped my eyes. “So where is he now?”

  “Oh, wait. Here’s the best part. He was so worried about the poor dear—Chantal, that’s her name—when I knocked her about, he drove her to the hospital. And there’s me standing there watching him drive her away.”

  “Well … er … how badly was she hurt?”

  “Sure, it was nothing. A couple of teeth. It was my hand he should have been worrying about, my selling my pictures was what kept us in baguettes and Brie if the truth be told.” She looked at her fist. “I was dead certain I’d busted it.”

  “But it’s all right?”

  “Yeah.” She turned it around admiringly. “No harm done. It was his ring knocked her teeth out, not me poor knuckles. I left the fuckin’ thing in one of his shoes and the both of them to it. Took my painting stuff and hitchhiked around the Mediterranean, got a job as an au pair down there with a lovely Turkish family, on the southern coast near Ephesus. Side, the town was. I thought he was out of my system by Christmas and I went home. Don’t you know he was there in Skibbereen with her! They’d opened a pub. A pub!” She snorted with disdain. Then she muttered, “His mother had set them up. She never did like me, the mother. Never thought me good enough, me coming from a house of raging lesbians and no money to speak of. And him with all his talk of becoming a great chef! I couldn’t bear to walk past their bloody love nest. And there’s everyone boasting about how grand it was. Even my own adoptive mum, Deirdre. ‘Ooh, you’ll get the tastiest salmon in three ports at the White Tree!’ She’d rave about the place! That’s what they called it: the White Tree. After his mother’s family.” She paused and added, “Protestants,” and I hoped she wasn’t going to spit. But she only gave a morose shrug and said, “That’s when I got to thinking it was time I looked up my blood mother.” She put her tongue in her cheek and winked. “She might be bad and all, but I can’t imagine her eating at the White Tree. I had this feeling it would stick in her throat.”

  I said a silent prayer that when Jenny Rose did meet Carmela, she wouldn’t be too disappointed. Carmela had a way of making you think you were going to be best friends and then you might not see her for months. I suppose it would have been the perfect moment to confide what had happened to me with Enoch. But I didn’t. I’m not sure why. Still very raw, it was, I guess. And—you know me—a part of me feeling guilty, maybe, like I was involved in a conspiracy. I kept it in.

  Jenny Rose busied herself with her pencil. “And here I am. So.”

  “Well, how did you come upon Sea Cliff anyway?” I changed the subject.

  “That was because my adoptive mother, Deirdre, is pen pals with the rectory lady here, and Mr. Cupsand—that’s my boss—needed someone because the wife took off with another man!”

  “The old story,” I interjected bitterly.

  “Yeah.” She lowered her voice. “And on top she made off with the family jewels!”

  I gave a low appreciative whistle. “Want something to eat?”

  “Nah.” She made a face.

  I leaned across to the neighboring table for some more of the tasty honey. But with the gesture I caught sight of what
Jenny Rose was doing. She’d dashed off the whole other side of the restaurant in deft strokes, capturing all the curious paraphernalia in perfect detail.

  “Your turn,” she was saying. “Did you make your comeback as a photographer like you planned?”

  “Well, no. I guess you heard about my divorce and my catastrophe of a bed-and-breakfast?”

  “No.” She looked up, frankly interested. “Not a bit of it.”

  “Nothing’s turned out exactly as I’d planned, either. The truth is, I’m unemployed. I have no idea what I’m going to do with the rest of my life and I just found out my fiancé is gay.”