Through an open window, p.7
Through an Open Window, page 7
Lawrence hadn’t liked the idea, Emlynn remembered now. He’d said he was certain the dollhouse would never fit in the window, and when Margaret assured him it would, then he’d said it might fall apart in their hands. Though he’d tried his dead level best to dissuade her, Margaret had remained adamant. “It’ll be the perfect place for it,” she’d said. “Sitting there in that window, on display for everyone in town to admire but not touch. Just what Aunt Edith would want.”
Emlynn and Lawrie had followed his parents back to the big blue house on Albemarle Way and sat with Margaret at the long kitchen table, listening to Lawrence’s footfalls in the attic above them. It had taken him ages to bring the thing down. “He’s right, it is old,” Margaret had said, a hint of a smile on her lips. “Like I said, Aunt Edith never let me touch it. Her brother made it for her when he was a teenager, and I have to say, it’s a real work of art. I would have been fine letting the kids play with it, but Lawrence wouldn’t ever hear of it. ‘A family heirloom,’ he said. It sat upstairs in his office for years, just gathering dust. I finally talked him into moving it to the attic when we put in more bookcases, and it’s been sitting up there ever since. Seems a shame not to let people enjoy it.”
The old Gothic dollhouse was so large Lawrence had to bend his head around it to see where he was going when he brought it into the kitchen. It wasn’t open on the back but solid, like a real house, and with its tall, square turret; its gables, scrollwork, and wraparound porch, it was the house from Practical Magic in miniature. Emlynn had squealed like a girl and thrown her arms around Margaret in delight.
The dollhouse filled the window of Verbena Apothecary as though custom-made for the spot, and every three months Emlynn decorated it for the appropriate season: daffodils and a miniature maypole in springtime, tiny Christmas lights and cotton-ball snowmen in winter. For summer, she filled thimbles with moss and hung them along the front porch like Lilliputian baskets of ferns. But the October window was special. Baby Boo pumpkins lined the front stairs and a little black cauldron full of silver-wrapped chocolate Kisses sat on the porch. She always kept the shop open late on Halloween night, serving hot cider to shoppers and cookies to their children, thus making Verbena Apothecary one of the most popular places in town.
Turning back inside, Emlynn locked the door and set her tea on the counter. Amy Winehouse’s well-seasoned voice swirled around the dimly lit shop as she climbed into the front window, pulling the white curtains shut. She didn’t want anyone to see her work until it was done.
Squatting down, she removed all the accoutrements of the past summer and placed them off to one side. Then she began to clean last season’s dust off the dollhouse, using a fluffy beige artist’s brush, humming while she worked, and sneezing when tiny feathers of dust tickled her nose. She had just made her way around the square turret when she noticed the front stairs appeared loose. I’ll need to glue those, she thought, but when she touched the little stairs, they pulled away from the house, just enough to reveal a small opening under the porch. Emlynn rocked back on her heels, staring.
Bending her head down and peering inside, she could just see the edge of a yellowed piece of old paper that looked like it had been folded over a good many times. Instinctively, she took hold of the paper and gently rocked it back and forth until, coaxed from its hiding place, it slipped out of the gap and fell to the floor of the window. Emlynn turned her head and sneezed again.
What she’d thought was just paper she now saw was a long yellow envelope that had been folded over four times. Freed from the restriction of its hiding place, it began to slowly open by itself, just like the wings of a bird. Gingerly, Emlynn picked the envelope up, holding it lightly in her hands. She could see it was sealed, and on the front, in looping, old-fashioned script, was written: For Margaret.
With her curiosity flaming, Emlynn’s first instinct was to rip the thing open, but her hand was stalled at the sight of Lawrie’s mother’s name. She’d need to take this to Margaret, she knew, and she could hardly do so if it had been so obviously opened. Emlynn loved Margaret Elliot; Margaret was, for all practical purposes, her mother-in-law, and not only that, she considered Margaret a friend. Invading her privacy was out of the question.
She turned the envelope over and over and held it up to the light. But the yellow paper was too thick to reveal any secrets. Frustrated, Emlynn wriggled out of the window and took the envelope into the back room, where she carefully placed it inside her large canvas tote bag. She’d give it to Margaret at dinner tonight. A little surprise for her birthday.
The sound Emlynn heard next was high-pitched and thin. It might have been laughter, or it might have just been the wind, whistling around the eaves of Verbena Apothecary, on its way down the street.
6
Margaret
Tall and thickly planted, an old holly hedge pushes against the pristine white fencing that separates Jessamine Country Club from the plebeian traffic that travels Highway 4 every day. Cars pass by so quickly, most drivers never even notice the modest bronze sign that swings in the wind by the gap in that hedge, and even if they do, the narrow driveway that opens up at that point curves immediately out of sight, almost as if by design. Hidden away from the public, the long drive bends up and over the greenest of hills, past sunny tennis courts and shady stables, under oak trees and pines, till it reaches an ivy-covered brick mansion known to most people in Wesleyan by reputation alone.
Nobody asks to join Jessamine, no matter how badly they crave admittance. A person must wait to be invited, and for decades, the criteria for those invitations were hardly a mystery to anyone with a few brains and a conscience. Aunt Edith had called it the Blue Vein Club when Margaret was little—meaning that no one got onto the rolls unless their skin was so white you could see the blood in their veins—and the red-hot glare of media attention that had finally managed to change things in the late seventies was still resented by more than a few. When Louis Goldberg was voted in as president in 2002, the membership dropped by fifteen.
The club had always bestowed honorary privileges on those it deemed worthy, however. They had to admit at least two a year on merit alone; it was written down in the bylaws. Wesleyan’s mayors were included for life, as were a few prominent judges, a couple of noncontroversial clergymen, and Lawrence Elliot himself. His invitation had been hand-delivered one cold December morning a month after his third book was published, two days after his first interview on the national news, and just a week before Christmas. The timing of the invitation had been almost comical. The year was nearly over, and a quota, obviously, had to be filled.
Tonight, Margaret had been seated in the Yamacraw Room, the club restaurant, named, unironically, she assumed, for the original owners of the land on which Jessamine Country Club sat. Six Venetian chandeliers floated celestially above tables draped in starched white linen, and portraits of past club presidents lined the peach-colored walls, their subjects suited, stern, and exclusively male, for some barriers had yet to be broken. At the Steinway in the corner, a florid-faced man in a Masters-green blazer sat softly playing Ray Charles’s “Born to Lose” at such a slow tempo it was doubtful anyone in the room recognized how incongruous the song was for the setting.
Unlike the more modern restaurants in Wesleyan, whose hard surfaces, metal chairs, and naked windows bounced even the quietest conversations from table to table at deafening decibels, causing everyone to speak louder and louder just to be heard, here the double-lined curtains and plush patterned carpets devoured all spoken sound. The place was as hushed as a funeral home. People whispered. You could hear the tinkling of ice in the glasses. It had been years since Margaret had been in this place, and she wished like the dickens she hadn’t been seated right in the center of the room.
She was always early, and her kids were always a few minutes late. Never enough to be rude, but never exactly on time. Margaret took a sip of cold water and felt its iciness fall through her body. The sleeves of her red silk blouse were cold; she shivered whenever they touched her bare skin, and she thought longingly of her old wool cardigan hanging on its peg in the hallway back home.
With a sixth sense she’d always possessed when it came to her family, Margaret knew Mouse and Lawrie had entered the restaurant seconds before she saw them. That old familiar quickening in the air, a recognition of blood to blood, which to Margaret, was louder than Gabriel’s trumpet. Certain now of who she would see, Margaret turned her head and smiled at the two of them as they wove their way through the tables toward her.
“Look at you,” said Lawrie, bending down to give Margaret a one-armed hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Don’t you look pretty in red!” He’d worn a suit, which for some inexplicable reason, made Margaret feel proud. “It’s my fault we’re late,” he said. Mouse, makeup-free in a black sleeveless dress, had sat down on the other side of the table. “Today was our monthly staff meeting,” Lawrie continued, “and time just got away from me.” He smiled at the two of them apologetically.
Mouse shook her head. “It’s just hard to believe my baby brother is somebody’s boss.”
“Hey,” said Lawrie, feigning shock. “I’ll have you know, I’m the boss of quite a lot these days. And I run a very tight ship. Just ask Rosie.”
“I like Rosie,” said Mouse, unfolding her large damask napkin. “She’s sweet. And somehow, I think she just might be the one at the helm of that ship you’re running.”
“Everybody likes Rosie. She’s a gem.” Lawrie turned to Margaret and grinned. “Happy Birthday, Mama.” He pulled a small wrapped present from his suit pocket and placed it on the table beside her plate. “I guess you can tell by the size of this box that Emlynn talked me out of what I really wanted to give you.”
“What was that?” asked Margaret, picking up the little box and shaking it.
“A dog, of course,” said Lawrie. “You need another one, Mama. You know you do.”
Mouse snorted and looked to her mother for a similar reaction, only to be surprised not to find it.
“I do need another dog,” Margaret said, her shoulders dropping. “Harriet told me the very same thing at lunch not six hours ago.” She sighed. “I just don’t think I could ever go to the shelter and get one. Your dad always did that for us. I’d never have been able to come home with just one. I would’ve adopted them all. I still would.”
“Well, heck,” said Lawrie. “I can do that for you if that’s all it is. I’ll pick out a good one. After all, don’t forget, I’m an expert.” He nudged the package closer to Margaret’s water glass. “Emlynn picked this out for you when she was on that buying trip to Paris in June. I think you’ll like it. Wait till she gets here to open it, though.” He looked down at his watch. “Should be any minute. She had to stay late and do the shop window.”
“I love her Halloween window,” said Mouse, reaching into her large black handbag and retrieving a present of her own. “I guess I love everything about that shop of hers.” She pushed the lavishly wrapped gift toward Margaret, and Margaret recognized Emlynn’s shop logo on the ribbon’s tag. “And Happy Birthday from us, too, Mother. Nick’s sorry he couldn’t be here. He had to take Bogey Crawford’s calls this weekend. His daughter’s in a cheerleading competition in Charlotte and Ellen swore up and down she’d hang him out to dry if he missed another one.”
“Well, I hate it he’s not with us, but I’m tickled to see you two,” said Margaret. “I told Harriet today, I can’t remember the last time I had all my kids around the same table.”
“Where is our Tommy Boy, anyway?” asked Lawrie, eyes circling the room with poorly disguised amusement. “This place has his fingerprints all over it. I’d’a thought he’d be the first one here.”
“Please don’t start off by teasing Tom,” said Mouse, and Margaret heard a weary tone in her voice.
“Oh, come on, Mouse,” said Lawrie, dropping his voice to a playful whisper. “You think Mama would’ve chosen this place? Give me a break.” He looked over at Margaret and raised his eyebrows theatrically. “Tell the truth now,” he said, a mischievous look on his face. “This was all Tommy’s idea. Am I right?”
“Well, he was just trying to do something nice for my birthday,” said Margaret, trying to stifle a grin. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Oh, please,” said Lawrie, both validated and amused. “He wants to act the big shot, just like always. And what better place?” He raised his arms, palms up. “I’ll bet you a plug nickel he tries to pick up the check.”
“And I will be happy to let him,” said Mouse, her menu open, perusing the specials. “But, Lawrie, I’m serious…don’t needle him. Please. You know he can’t take it. And frankly, tonight, neither can I.”
Margaret was about to underline her daughter’s instruction when, as though someone tapped her on the shoulder, she turned and saw Tom, pushing past the teenage hostess and heading toward their table, the expression on his face antithetical to a festive occasion. Margaret could see her reflection in his mirrored Ray-Bans as he bent down to kiss the air two inches away from her cheek.
“Hello all,” he said, without smiling, and pulled out the chair next to Mouse. “I can’t believe I actually thought I could drive down here and back in one day. Traffic around Macon just gets worse all the time. You’d think they could work on those damn roads at night, at the very least. Not right in the middle of the day when everybody’s trying to get somewhere.”
“And a Happy Birthday to you, too,” said Lawrie, raising his glass to Tom. “Ow!” He reached down to rub his shin and glared over at Mouse, who serenely kept her eyes on her menu.
“I told you, honey,” said Margaret. “You should just stay over tonight. Your room is always ready. You could drive back tomorrow after breakfast.”
“And I told you, I can’t,” said Tom. “I’ve got tons of work to do this weekend, and I so rarely get the house to myself. Need to take advantage of Meghan being away. I’ll be fine. A good dinner’s all I need.” He opened his menu, oblivious to the three pairs of eyes that watched him, two with disapproval, one with concern. The man at the piano, who’d obviously come prepared with a Ray Charles songbook, began to play “Busted.”
Lawrie was about to say something provoking to Tom—Margaret could feel it—but as she watched, his eyes softened, crinkling up at the corners, and she followed his gaze across the room, where, just as she’d hoped, Emlynn was coming toward them, a fast-moving blur of color and warmth.
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” she said, throwing her arms around Margaret and squeezing her tight. “Oh, you have to drive by tomorrow and see the window, Margaret. It’s spectacular, if I do say so myself. Little white fairy lights everywhere, and I found these orange ones, really tiny, so I put them all along the porch of the dollhouse this year. Took me forever, I had to use a toothpick to help thread them through all that gingerbread stuff…Hi, honey,” she said as she sat down beside Lawrie—who still wore the smile that had taken over his face at the first sight of her—and put her large canvas tote under the table. “But it was totally worth it. And do you know? When I finished and pulled back the curtains, there were at least a dozen people waiting on the sidewalk to see. I couldn’t believe it. Have y’all ordered yet?”
Emlynn’s guileless effusiveness had silenced the table. Grinning, she looked from each of the Elliots to the next, expecting an answer. “No, we haven’t,” said Mouse. “Here, take my menu.”
Emlynn was another creature who defied explanation. Despite what Margaret knew of her peripatetic childhood, being blown around the country like dandelion fluff by parents who could never seem to find enough peace or stability to share with their only child, Emlynn appeared to be one of the most well-adjusted women Margaret had ever met, bright, funny, and caring. If Margaret had been given the power to choose a partner for Lawrie, Emlynn would have been it.
“Oooh, I haven’t had risotto in ages!” she exclaimed, handing the menu back across the table to Mouse. Swiveling around in her chair to take in the décor, she looked straight back at Tom. “You must have suggested this place, Tom. I guess I’ve been passing by for years and didn’t even know it was here.”
Lawrie laughed, and Mouse kicked him under the table again.
Wine was poured—sparkling water for Tom—and dinners were ordered. Starting perfunctorily with work and the weather, the conversation lurched along, often so guarded that Margaret thought it was probably bad for digestion. Emlynn and Mouse frequently guided it past topics most poised for contention, as women are wont to do, and all the while, Margaret watched her three kids like a hawk. Mouse had lost weight. She looked paler than usual, and there were dark circles under her eyes. Tommy seemed prickly and peevish as usual. Only Lawrie, reliably, seemed truly happy to be here.
“By the way,” said Tom, spearing his T-bone with focus and nodding his head in Margaret’s direction. “I see somebody’s finally decided to sell all that land out where you grew up. On the way here, I tried to bypass some traffic and took the shortcut onto Boundary Road. Big, fancy For Sale sign out there. Possible subdivision, it says. Gotta be worth a fortune. There’s some pretty high-end stuff being built on some of those old farms out near Seabrook.”
Margaret’s muscles reacted with a mind of their own, and she gripped the stem of her wineglass. She never took that shortcut to the highway. Protective of her memories, she hadn’t driven past Aunt Edith’s house in years. Now, the prospect of a gray web of streets crisscrossing the ground where the pecan grove had once stood, the land scraped bare to make room for new houses, no matter how fancy, made her feel slightly sick. If that happened, she’d never travel Boundary Road again. The sight would stick in her brain like a sandspur.
