That afternoon, when Russell followed her to the kitchen, Anne smiled as she set the pink, hand-painted teacups and plates into the sink. “I saved you some sandwiches and tea cakes,” she said, wiping her hands on her jeans and reaching under the butcher block to produce a plate covered with a white cloth napkin. “Otherwise, Andrew eats all the leftovers.” She removed the napkin with the flourish of a skilled magician’s assistant. There were several triangles of crustless sandwiches and a few small scones and petit fours on the plate. Anne was, if nothing else, fairly competent in the kitchen.
“Thank you, Anne,” he said as he took the plate, giving her a slight bow, like it was a gift of some great importance.
She liked that. “Come with me,” she said, opening the kitchen door, which had lace curtains on it. She led him outside and around the house, away from the windows, to a small corner alcove formed by the heat pump and a nearby rose trellis. There were two cheap plastic picnic chairs there. “Until the sun goes down, it’s still warm enough to find some peace outside. Andrew never finds me here.”
Russell sat down. Anne took the other chair, obviously a new addition to her hidey-hole. She apparently didn’t invite many people back here. Russell supposed he should feel honored. But one would need a heart for that.
“I heard you asking about the Waverleys,” Anne said as she took a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from under an overturned flowerpot.
“Yes,” Russell said simply.
“Andrew doesn’t like to talk about them. He thinks their house gets too much attention. And Claire Waverley is sort of a local celebrity, especially since she got featured in a magazine. Andrew has been trying to do that for years. He’s always saying about them, ‘You can’t compete with strange. Strange always wins,’” Anne said, lighting a cigarette. “But I’ll tell you anything you want to know about them.” She paused to exhale a plume of smoke. “But first, tell me another one of your stories.”
Russell sat back and popped a petit four into his mouth.
It was a small price to pay.
“I once saved an entire town from bankruptcy when I was twelve. It was in Nero, Nebraska, and I was walking along the carnival midway, minding my own business, when I saw the cops chasing a man carrying a huge bag of money. He’d just stolen it from the town bank, and it was all the money they had. Bills were flying out as he ran. Most people at the carnival darted around, trying to catch the money. But not me. I was eating cotton candy, but I dropped it in the dirt and ran to the shoot-the-bottle-booth. I grabbed the rifle. I knew the sight had been tampered with to keep people from winning the game, so I aimed high and shot the robber in the knee, sending him down. The town threw a parade in my honor, and the carnival owner made sure I had cotton candy every day for an entire year.”
“That’s good,” Anne said with a smile, taking another puff of her cigarette. “I almost think you believe it.”
“You wound me. Would I lie?”
Anne snorted, and he smiled back at her.
The real story was that one day Sir Walter Trott had chased one of his employees out of his trailer with a riding crop, after discovering he’d been stealing from him. The employee ran wild, pushing people out of the way and knocking things over as he fled. Russell had taken advantage of the distraction to steal dozens of funnels of cotton candy from one of the vendors. He’d sat behind the shoot-the-bottle-booth and ate them all. It had made him sick, but, to this day, he still considered it one of the best days of his childhood.
He didn’t know why he didn’t just tell Anne the truth. There would have been no real harm to it.
But, somehow, it’s the real stories that are hardest to tell.
*
Claire, Tyler, Sydney and Henry were the last to leave the campus gallery. The showing that night had been for the same art student who had won the honor of designing that year’s sculpture on the downtown green in Bascom, the one of the founder of Orion College’s half-buried head. All the student’s sculptures on display that night had the same theme: Horace J. Orion’s face hidden in a bouquet of flowers; Horace J. Orion’s hand emerging from a book; Horace J. Orion seemingly tangled in a long sweep of a lady’s hair—that one presumably referencing the fact that Orion had been a school for women when it had been founded.
Horace J. Orion had been a man ahead of his time. He’d been an effeminate creature with a high voice and a close shave, and he’d moved to Bascom at the turn of the twentieth century with a mysterious man-friend he called, simply, “My love.” A champion of women’s rights, he’d used most of his family money to start a college for women in this small North Carolina town in the middle of nowhere, a sanctuary for women around the world who wanted to learn. Years later, upon his death, it was discovered by an understandably startled undertaker that Horace J. Orion had actually been a woman, a one Ethel Cora Humphreys. Her family had been cruel, dyed-in-the-wool misogynists. She’d been determined that her family line would end with her, but first she would do all the good she could for her fellow women. And, as many student term papers would posit over the years, living as a man was the only way she could do it.
After the lights in the campus gallery were turned out and poor Horace could finally get some rest, Claire, Tyler, Sydney and Henry walked across the old college campus with its brick towers and wall murals. It wasn’t a sports college, so students spent Friday nights at Orion on the quad with picnic baskets full of culinary students’ latest efforts, or mapping the stars with their college-issued telescopes.
As the sisters walked ahead, Tyler and Henry lagged behind. The tall, lanky art professor and the shorter, muscular dairy farmer didn’t have much in common except their wives, but that was enough. Sometimes one big common bond is stronger than a dozen tiny ones. They frequently got together on their own, Henry meeting Tyler at the college for lunch, or Tyler stopping by the dairy after work. When Claire asked what they talked about, Tyler always said, “Man stuff.” She wanted to believe that meant electric shavers, athlete’s foot and maybe golf. But she was pretty sure “man stuff” meant “you and Sydney.”
“Thanks for letting Bay stay over at your house tonight,” Sydney said, looping her arm through Claire’s as they walked.
Sydney was sparkling tonight in a beaded navy dress that looked like something a tiny, pampered housewife would wear to a cocktail party in the 1960s. Her hair was in a French twist, and her blue wrap fell off one elbow and fluttered behind her. Claire’s hair was in a sleek bob, and she was wearing a red floral dress, one of Sydney’s, but it was a little too short and tight on her tall frame. Claire had long ago accepted that she would never have the fine bones and blue eyes most Waverley women had. She was tall and dark-eyed and curvy, genes probably donated by the father she would never know.
“You know it’s no problem. I appreciate her baby-sitting Mariah tonight,” Claire said. It had been a much-needed night out, with wine and laughter, and yet Claire’s mind kept going back to the business she needed to take care of at home, the extraneous things that had nothing to do with making the hard candy itself: email to check, labels to print, boxes to unfold, orders to track.
“I’m looking forward to spending some time alone with Henry,” Sydney said with a wink.
Claire looked over her shoulder at their husbands following them. She wondered if Henry knew what Sydney had in store for him. Probably not. Sydney had been secretive lately.
“Maybe tonight we’ll finally…” Sydney let the words trail off. Claire knew what she was going to say. It came and went in cycles, but never fully went away, Sydney’s desire to have more children. It had taken a while, probably five years of living back in Bascom, married to Henry, life going well, for Sydney finally to trust it, to realize she was back for good. And with that realization came the desire to make it more, more stable, more settled, more to keep her here, as if she were really afraid she might leave again and never come back this time, just like their mother had done.
“Maybe tonight,” Claire agreed. “Love your red hair, by the way.”
“Thank you. I can’t seem to help myself. I just look at it lately and it gets more red.”
“You’re going to have to tell Henry what you’re doing,” Claire said in a low voice. “He’s going to figure out what the red hair and all these nights you’re spending alone together mean. And he’s going to be hurt that you didn’t come to him.” Secrets were in the nature of the Waverleys. The men they chose never expected to be totally enlightened. Claire’s husband Tyler’s way of dealing with this was to be unfailingly patient, in addition to his good-natured disbelief of anything odd. Henry was different, though. He’d been born in Bascom. And he was a Hopkins. All Hopkins men were born with old souls. It was his nature to be depended on.
“I know. I will,” Sydney whispered back. Once they reached the parking lot, she changed the subject and said, “You’re not going to let Bay work for you tomorrow, are you? Saturdays should be spent doing something fun at her age.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll shoo her out of the kitchen,” Claire assured her, though she’d never understood why Sydney never wanted Bay to spend too much time at the Waverley house. But she didn’t question her. Motherhood is hard enough without judgment from others who don’t know the whole story. And the way the sisters mothered was as different as they were. Their own mother had abandoned them here, the names of their fathers long forgotten, to be taken care of by their agoraphobic grandmother, Mary. Claire and Sydney were, the both of them, forging new ground with their own children, having no firsthand knowledge of how to do it right. Just the fact that Sydney wanted to do it again made her seem so brave to Claire.
“And the backyard,” Sydney added.
“And the backyard.”
Sydney shook her head. “I’ll bet you a million dollars she’s out there right now, with that tree.”
“You’d win that bet.”
“She’s doing okay, isn’t she?” Sydney asked.
“I think she’s doing fine. Bay knows herself. She likes herself. She doesn’t care what other people think.”
“But I want her to have a good time in high school.”
“You want her to be popular,” Claire said. “She doesn’t want to be popular. She just wants to be herself.”
“She doesn’t date, or go out with friends, or anything. Has she talked to you about anyone she likes?”
Claire hesitated. She didn’t want to keep this from her sister, but it was Bay’s secret to tell, not hers. “She’s mentioned a boy once or twice. You’ll have to ask her about that.”
“You’re never going to have this problem with Mariah when she turns fifteen,” Sydney said. “She’s so social. That child is your husband made over.”
“I know.”