The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree

She disposed of the sock and the cigarette butts, then collected her Ladies’ Home Journal and put it back with the others in the rack on the end table by the sofa. The children’s cat—an orange tabby named Rudy Vallée (because he was a vagabond lover)—came into the room and meowed plaintively. Ophelia followed him into the kitchen, where she opened the icebox and took out a pitcher of fresh milk and poured some into a saucer. Purring, Rudy lapped it hungrily.

She put the milk away, frowning. Ralph’s place. Last year, Jed’s cousin had married himself a new wife, Lucy—a little thing, pretty, with all that flaming red hair, but not very sensible. Ralph and Lucy and Ralph’s two boys didn’t live too far from the Jericho State Prison Farm. Occasionally there was trouble out that way, but why trouble at the prison farm should involve her husband, or why Roy Burns would call and ask Jed to drive out there, Ophelia couldn’t fathom. It made her feel vaguely uneasy, as if a dark cloud were hanging over the horizon out in that direction, which of course it wasn’t.

In fact, the sun was shining the same way it always did at this hour, the evening light slanting in through the window over the kitchen sink and turning Rudy Vallée’s fur into bright gold. Ophelia looked around at the pleasant room, with its yellow wallpaper, starched white curtains, white-painted cabinets with red-painted knobs, and yellow linoleum on the countertop and the floor, which was as clean as Florabelle could make it. There was a pot of ivy on the windowsill and a red geranium in a yellow ceramic pot on the table. Red and yellow, her favorite colors, in a sunny, cheerful kitchen. Red and yellow made her smile.

Well. Jed was gone to Ralph’s, the children were at Momma Ruth’s, and the house felt empty. Ophelia went for her knitting bag, which held the socks she was working on. She’d just walk down the street and see if Sis knew anything about trouble out at the prison farm. They could sit on the porch and visit and watch the children playing hide-and-seek in the yard. She could knit and Sis could brag about how many quarts of green beans she’d already put up in that new National pressure cooker she bought last year—Ophelia wanted one, but couldn’t justify buying it when her canning kettle worked just fine. After a little bit, Momma Ruth would put out the leftovers from Sunday dinner, fried chicken and new-potato salad and sliced tomatoes sprinkled with dill, and green beans and okra cooked up with onions and bacon. They would all help themselves, and then take their plates to the porch and eat, where it was cool.

Ophelia smiled happily to herself. She loved these late-spring Sunday evenings, before the brassy heat of summer settled in, the twilight falling softly across the familiar street, the shouts of happy kids, the contented squeaking of the porch swing, the sleepy melodies of evening birds and cicadas and frogs in the ditch behind the house. For her, this was the best time of the day and the week, the best time of the year, the best place to be.

Milton Cross and Frank Parker and the A&P Gypsies could keep New York.

She would rather be right here in Darling.





THREE





Verna


The Snows lived at Rosemont and Larkspur. Verna Tidwell’s house was at the other end of Larkspur, just a block from Ophelia’s, at the corner of Larkspur and Robert E. Lee. As she went up the steps to her front porch, she caught the scent of roses and took a deep, appreciative breath. The climber at the end of the porch, a Zepherine Drouhin, was covered with lovely pink blossoms, and the Louise Odier beside the steps filled the evening air with its rich, heady fragrance. Nothing like the scent of a rose, she thought to herself, to wash away your troubles, if you had any.

For the most part, Verna didn’t, although she was always just as glad to borrow somebody else’s. That was her nature, always had been, always would be, and it had driven her husband, Walter—now deceased—almost crazy. Walter had taught history and civics at the Darling Academy and always seemed to be living (or so Verna thought) in another time and place. He never paid enough attention to the real world or the minutiae of real life (except for his camellias, upon which he lavished hours every week). And he never was bothered by much of anything or anybody but Verna.

“Why are you so suspicious?” he would ask helplessly, when she raised a little question about this or that. “You’re always poking around, looking for problems where they don’t exist. Why can’t you just accept things at face value? Trouble will go away, if you give it half a chance. Look at the Romans. And Hannibal. And the French and Indian War. All over now. All gone away.”