Ella in Bloom

by Shelby Hearon

  Surprised at her interest, that she even wondered what had happened with us, I tried to answer her as best I could. Seeing him standing, rocking back on his heels the way he always did, whether in boots or boat shoes, a big guy, blond as she was now, so good-looking it made your teeth hurt. And reliable in inverse proportion to his looks. “He called me from time to time,” I recounted, gliding over my feelings about being dumped with only a marginal way to pay the rent, but more than that, being dumped when I thought we’d lit the sky with lights every time we got into bed. “To see what I was up to, if there was somebody else. He’d ask about her, ‘How’s the birdie?’ And then I’d have to make that into a big deal for her. I guess that’s the relief, that she can’t feel she has a daddy anymore who doesn’t want to see her. Do I miss him? Honestly, Ter, I don’t know. I used to miss that guy I ran away with like crazy—and want to cut his heart out when I saw him again.”

  “You’re lucky, you know it?” Terrell had said then, eating the last crumb of her pastry. “You got out. No matter how mad it made Mom, you got out.”

  And that’s what turned my head. The idea that she envied me running away, or at least had some mixed feelings on that score. I assumed that her thinking about Buddy being dead, thinking about him and me way back, had got her to missing those days. Maybe missing the way Red used to wait for her on that sunporch, the way he’d kept coming around, his staying power letting her know he was crazy about her. I wondered if maybe, in getting the elegant house and the collection of statewide friends, the prosperous husband, that she’d started missing those lovestruck, disorderly student days. Had started missing herself.

  But I hadn’t asked. I hadn’t asked her, What was the confession you were going to make, Ter? I hadn’t asked her, What’s on your mind? Why did you want to talk to me today? I hadn’t asked, sitting out there in the courtyard of that fancy epicurean store that was trying to air-condition the entire outdoors, Are you happy in this swank life? I hadn’t wondered. Being amazed that she, my big sister Terrell, considered me lucky. Lucky to have got away.

  Old Metairie

  11

  I spent the first week back trying to recover from the trip home. I couldn’t write my mother, not one line, one word. The thick notepaper from Belle Vue lay untouched. Every time I thought of a letter, I would see my unappreciated roses left to dry, to die, attar of roses, in Mother’s side yard. It was as if the rose garden of my mind had been turned to dust by the Texas heat and then battered to compost by our constant coastal rains. I said over and over, like a litany, the names of all the fine old roses Henry had selected for me to take, the roses which I had, all spring and summer, in my letters, planted, fed, watered, mulched, cut, and with which I had, in my letters as in my mind, filled vases.

  The shell-pink Natchitoches Noisette with its scent of myrrh; the blush-pink cabbage rose, Fantin-Latour, “rose of painters”; the long-budded Jean Bach Sisley, delicate salmon veined in carmine; the soft yellow Céline Forestier with its odor of spice; the Souvenir de la Malmaison, once grown in the imperial gardens of St. Petersburg; the apricot Mlle. Franziska Krüger; the saucer-size Sombreuil; the Boule de Neige; Le Vésuve.

  Since I’d only been gone for two days, and since, naturally, my clients were off in cooler, drier climates, I didn’t feel the need to mention my absence as I set about to tend the three house gardens I’d been working on when Daddy called to invite us to the birthday weekend. The jobs were finishing, anyway; everybody homed back to Old Metairie like swallows to Capistrano when the schools opened, private schools following the public schools’ schedule. I more than likely wouldn’t see any of these homes again until the holidays. Or until ski season.

  The wonderful courtyard with the dwarf orange and lemon trees, the white Formosa lilies and drowsy moonflowers, I might never get to water again, since the owner’s decorator had a friend who tended houseplants. But the great backbreaking tubs of Ming Aralias and King Segos in the stark modern house, I’d certainly not heft again for love, though I probably would for money, given the chance.

  At the Georgian home of my first and best client, I got rid of the last of the unpleasant remnants of my trip to Austin. As always, I punched in my code and set inside the six cobalt-blue jugs of purified water, let the chlorine settle out of the tap water I used on thirsty roots, pinched off fading blooms, checked the soil and light, removed here and there a yellow leaf, and said my good-byes for now to the fragrant pink and porcelain hybrids.

  Then, with the baggy birthday dress over my shaky arm, I headed for the stairs. It was as if the residue of the painful visit back home, the unpleasant scene with my mother, still clung to the used green dress with the faded streak across the too-wide shoulders. I could not bear the thought of ever wearing it again, or even of having it hang, mute, a reminder, in my closet. Of course it was dumb, deciding to cast off a dress I’d spent such a great amount of time and such a modest amount of cash procuring. And worn only once. But such was my reaction to the very sight, the very presence of the oversized thrift-shop bargain.

  I climbed the wide grand stairway, crossed the dark polished-oak hall, entered the bedroom with its thick white rug bordered with white cabbage roses. Taking shallow breaths (as if in the first stages of labor), I moved past the high bed with its antique-white spread on which the two rare gray Chartreux cats opened and closed their yellow eyes at me.

  Trembling, I began to move the padded hangers, having this crazy notion that somehow this offending dress should be left here, in partial payment, interest due, for the coveted black dress. Color by color, I moved the linens, silks, French cottons, chiffons, until, at the back of the rack, next to the floor-to-ceiling cases for shoes, I found a bottle-green suit with a skirt clearly the wrong length for today’s styles—too long to be short, too short to be long—of a stiff brocade. The perfect concealment. Slipping mine beneath it on the hanger, an undergarment for the finer garment, I quickly buttoned the thick frog fasteners across the lifeless linen chest. As I finished, still shaky, I fancied that perhaps my discarded dress had once come from this very closet and so had made its way, like a pilgrim, back where it began.

  By the weekend, I had put all that, the visit, behind me. Things in the real world had returned to normal. On Saturday, I sat at the kitchen table, under the ceiling fan, trying to go over my accounts (jobs done, jobs possible) and waiting for the plumber. While we’d been in Austin, the tailend of the tropical storm had petered out up the coast in some cotton farmer’s acreage, but not before leaving us with a pond-size pool in the backyard, a squishy marsh in the front, and a backed-up commode and sink in the rental half of my duplex, with my tenant, the teacher, due to return next week.

  I’d called my main drain man, a youngish guy I’d persuaded a couple of years ago to drop by on the weekend after a torrential rain and bail me out. “I get overtime on weekends,” he’d said. “Think of me as a job you wouldn’t otherwise have,” I’d countered. “Take your wife to Paris on me.” “Ha, ha,” he’d replied, but it had been my experience that all plumbers shared a pride in being paid like neurosurgeons for less fatal results. Now he dropped by after he tended to emergencies, when things were slow.

  Karl had called midweek, in the late afternoon, getting Birdie on the phone. She had practiced doubly since we got back because of having had to miss one String Project rehearsal for the birthday brunch, but to listen to her talk to Karl about it, her trip to Texas had been major. She’d managed to bring back with her three CDs featuring cellos, which she played at top volume on our boom box in the front room whenever possible, morning, noon, and night, before our housemate returned to object.

  Daddy had also, as we went out the front door of the yellow frame house, pressed cash into my hands to cover both taxi rides. I’d have eaten fishing worms for a month before I’d have asked him, but I didn’t refuse. (Having gone into debt taking them out for the Mexican meal.) “Your mother,” he’d said, making excuses for her absence when we left, “wore h
erself out. She’s gone down for a nap. Come again, Ella. Don’t wait such a spell. We’re getting too long in the tooth to stretch out these reunions.” And I’d promised, crossing my fingers behind my back, that we would. Except that Birdie looked so pleased, and gave him such a squeeze, and thanked him for the fortieth time, that she made me ashamed, and I uncrossed them. “Sure,” I told him. “We need to see you, too.”

  “Auf Wiedersehen,” he said, looking sad.

  “Au revoir,” I responded.

  “Bye.” Birdie had stood on tiptoe and mashed her face into his beard. “Bye. Bye.”

  When I’d got on the phone with Karl, he asked, “How’d the trip go? Sounds like the Bird had a ball.”

  “The hanky letter was the highlight,” I lied. “Thanks.” Then I added a bit of truth. “I missed my sister.”

  “I think that’s what shook my dad’s apples loose from his tree, losing his brother—a younger brother at that.”

  Karl was an only child like Birdie, and maybe that’s what made his not having kids more painful. You needed somebody to share a childhood with. “How’s he doing?” I asked, to let him know I knew all families had problems. “Your dad.”

  “He hardly moves out of his chair anymore. I try to tell Mom it’s clinical, but she says he’s just mule lazy.” He sounded sorrowful: a German without a father. “You want to see a movie? There’s this new one about some guy whose whole life appears on TV.”

  “Sunday maybe?”

  “It’s a sleeper.”

  “I’ll buy the popcorn.”

  Now, hearing Birdie’s voice outside, I turned on the window AC unit and unlocked the door, sticky, barefoot, not one hair of my just-washed head in place. I hadn’t bothered about how I looked all week; it was as if, be it ever so humble and the rest, it was a relief, a reprieve, to be home, in my own space, nobody passing judgment. Not having to be anyone I was not.

  “Mom, we’re here—,” my daughter said, pushing through the door, motioning behind her to Felice and Felice’s mother, Mayfair.

  “Sorry to barge in—,” the woman said.

  “Please. You were so good to have Birdie overnight.” I slipped on my sandals and held out my hand, wishing I’d at least combed my hair. “Iced coffee?” I gestured to the other wooden kitchen chair.

  “Definitely. The air conditioner in my van has run out of whatever they put in there. Freon? Or is that the Greek king?” She pressed the icy glass against her milk-chocolate cheek.

  “I hope you’re not asking me,” I said.

  “My dad’s a preacher. He gets off to that Greek business.”

  “My daddy likes Old Testament names. His is Judah.”

  “It must be that generation. We’ve got a couple of tribes as well, Issachar and Zebulun. My poor uncles.”

  I didn’t know Felice’s mother well, but when the girls got into the String Project and became inseparable, we became phone friends. She was near my age, with reddish-brown plaits, a trim figure. I knew that she made ball gowns and festival costumes and that to wear a dress stitched by Mayfair Roberdeau meant something. And that she, too, had no man in residence.

  “How’d you get the name Mayfair?” I asked her.

  She smiled and shrugged. “It was an elementary school my mama couldn’t go to.”

  Birdie asked politely, “Would you like a peanut butter sandwich, Ms. Roberdeau?”

  “Honey, no. We’re out the door in one instant. Felice”—she shook a finger at her tall, skinny, pretty daughter—“do not think about putting one bite in your mouth, we are headed for the service station. Ella and I are just going to have a small chat.”

  I wished I had at least a fresh peach or bite of cake to offer. Instead, I nodded to show I was listening, while the girls poured orange juice and disappeared into Birdie’s room.

  “I surmised,” Mayfair said, “it might be useful to you, in your watering business over there in the wide-avenue, deep-lot section of town, to hear about what I saw at the Old Metairie Country Club.” She looked proud to have this news.

  “You went there?” This question and my surprise had nothing to do with her being what was generally called black these days, but only with her being a part of a group called us: people who didn’t get invited to such places.

  “This very morning, hon. How it happened, which you can figure out without my telling you, was these young ladies whom I am dressing, or rather whom my staff and I are dressing, were having a luncheon party at the club and somebody got the great idea that there they were, going to be all in one place, and if we brought over their gowns—these are all in shades of pink for this particular party—they could have a fitting right there in the dressing room.”

  “I’ve driven by it.” I could picture the large pink Moorish country club at the end of the wide divided live-oak-shaded street, with its four tennis courts complete with judging stand, a golf course stretching green and rolling along the bayou, a sloping lawn suggesting croquet and egg hunts. In fascination, I attended to every detail as Mayfair spoke, my mind thinking Dear Mother, Dear Mother, for I still had been unable to put pen to paper since my return.

  … Some of the garden clubs arranged a luncheon in the Petit Wedgwood Room of the Old Metairie Country Club, quite a beautiful space. They’d just celebrated their seventy-fifth year, and gave us a little tour, showing off the antique thirty-six-foot French pewter bar and inlaid pewter wall panels, the refurbished men’s grill, and the new wide gallery porch looking toward the bayou, with ceiling fans and everywhere the scent of potted ginger …

  “I thought,” Mayfair continued, “that the next time one of your plant women in her big house gets to talking about the Club—you get what I’m saying, Ella, the way they definitely must do, talk on and on about whatever place or event they are excluding us from—you could happen to mention you have some familiarity with the place yourself.”

  “Thanks,” I told her. “That was a treat to hear all that, since I never expect to set foot inside the door.”

  “You’d know all the plants on that big porch.”

  “I’d like to see them—”

  She rose, calling out to her daughter, “Felice, child, we have to move along.”

  “Come again,” I said.

  Sitting alone at the table, I repeated aloud, “… and everywhere the scent of potted ginger.” But I could not pick up the pen, could not reach out for the heavy notepaper from Belle Vue. Instead, I slipped out of my sandals and waited while Birdie, changed into her baggy shorts, set out the paper plates for our lunch. Thinking I should do something with my wet hair.

  When someone banged on the back door, I assumed it was the plumber. Naturally, arriving when I’d given up on him.

  “Hi, Uncle Rufus,” I heard Birdie say, peering out through the screen.

  “Hi, yourself.”

  “You’re supposed to say ‘Guten Tag,’ ” she explained, letting him into where I sat paralyzed in my chair. “Would you like a peanut butter sandwich?”

  12

  Thanks, I would,” Red said, taking off a gray seersucker jacket and hanging it on the doorknob. Seeing there were only two chairs at the small round table, he leaned against the counter, as if he were comfortable, as if his good shoes weren’t filled with water from wading through our yard.

  “With banana slices or bean sprouts?” Birdie asked him, into her role of luncheon hostess, seemingly not the least bit nonplussed to have this kinsman in our house.

  “Banana would be great,” he said, smiling at me.

  For a moment I couldn’t move, could hardly breathe. Of all the people in the world (save one), he was the person I least wanted to have show up at my back door. I’d painted myself—at those careful Texas birthday-party reunions—as someone I was not, living in a gracious world which did not exist. I felt my face turn red with shame. The shame of having been found out.

  Deciding I’d never looked more a mess in my life, I went into the front room and brought him a straight chair. We o
nly used the small living room to listen to music, or, sometimes in the evening, by myself, I’d sit in there in the dark when it was cool and listen for the train to come by at eleven, and think about how things had worked out.

  “Here,” I said to Red, “sit.” I put out flatware and a paper plate, and handed him a glass of iced coffee, finishing off the jar I kept in the fridge. I also handed him a towel to dry his feet.

  “I’m sorry, Ella,” he said. “I intended to call first, but I had a map from Hertz and I could see it was going to be easier to find the street than to locate a pay phone.”

  “You caught us in.” I shrugged. What difference would it have made, anyway, if he had called ahead? I’d have told him we had strep throat or weekend plans, that he had the wrong number. No way would I have let him come here, if I’d had a say. Good thing Birdie (trusting, friendly Birdie), who now served us our sandwiches, had gone to the door.

  “Ella—” He seemed about to make some sort of explanation.

  Ever so slightly, I shook my head.

  “Uncle Rufus—” Birdie made table conversation with our guest. “I’m going to meet my friend Felice at the Pink Mall this afternoon. That’s not far and Mom lets me walk.”

  “I want to take your mom out to dinner. Is that going to be a problem?”

  “She’s probably going to the movies with Karl,” she said, her eyes cutting to me. “That’s what my mom sometimes does on Saturday night.”

  I smiled her a thank-you. “We’ll work it out. I’ll see if Felice can come back here with you later. You two are big enough to stay here by yourselves, if you keep the door locked.”

  As could have been predicted, the plumber took that minute to rap on the door, and I had to take him around the front to the rental half of my duplex, leaving Red alone with my child. “Why don’t you take your uncle into the living room?” I suggested to her. “I won’t be long.” We had a decent two-person sofa in our crowded front room, two stuffed chairs, all covered in the now-faded Picasso blue that once was my favorite color, and a small woven rug of mixed blues, made in the low country of Louisiana. No plants, though. I didn’t want to have to look after them at home as well. Instead, I read my stack of catalogues: antique roses, Southern gardens, Old Metairie garden tours.