“Too true, sir. I will be sure to make a note. No stinking lilies at my funeral.”
She laid a hand on his forearm. Her parchment-thin skin was mottled with liver spots and purple bruises.
“Are you hurt?”
“Beg your pardon?” She looked, he was sure of it, scared.
“Your arm.”
She swung her thick ivory shawl, shielding herself. The fear replaced with leading-lady poise.
“Just an old gal with sensitive skin. Now, I want to hear all about your favorite flowers. One is always in need of an expert.”
“I did talk to a woman at the fair the other night.” He felt like a kid, coming clean about a failed test to his mom. “She was wearing a beautiful orchid. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t even think to ask her name.”
“No bother. She’s of very little consequence actually. Just a dull woman with the unfortunate name of Lorna.”
“Um, I guess you heard.” How to react to this woman whose wit was so sharp he feared he’d be cut.
“On an island with one exit,” she said, “everything is heard.” She sounded tired. Bitter. “Seen is another matter. You could say that Avalon is a magical place. Girls don’t get pregnant. Boys don’t drive drunk. The money what’s-her-name stole from the PTA account is replenished as if it never happened.”
She nodded at the emptied dessert table, where the old man stood on watch, a pastry in one hand, martini glass in the other. “That is my husband. Robert Pencott. Most people around here call him the Colonel.”
The old man glowered. As if, Jules thought, he were the enemy.
She wagged a finger circled by a diamond he guessed was at least three carats.
“Teach me something,” she commanded. “About the art of floral design.”
He didn’t correct her—explain he was a landscape architect. His grad-school professors at Harvard had warned that those in the nonplant world would label them everything from florists to botanists to landscapers. He wondered if she were testing him, if, tomorrow, she’d return to the ladies at the club with juicy bits from their conversation. If so, he better choose something good.
“Here’s something you can tell those Gerties at the club.”
“Oh, do tell. I’d heard you were a charmer, Julius. I’m pleasantly surprised you have not disappointed.”
She laughed, reminding him of Leslie and the music in her voice. He imagined a classroom of white women being taught how to laugh—and there she was, Leslie, staring at him from across the room. She had a look he’d only seen a few times. Like when Brooks broke his arm skateboarding and when Eva choked on a pencil eraser and when Leslie returned home to him that night so many years ago after telling her parents she would marry Jules even if it meant them disowning her.
“My apologies, Veronica,” he said, “I see my wife trying to get my attention. But I’ll leave you with one fun factoid: The art of flower arranging goes way, way back. The Egyptians even placed them in vases just like we do today. Mostly at funerals.” He laughed. “They liked lilies too. Worshipped them even. But a different kind. We know it as the water lily. The only flower that bloomed year-round in Egypt.”
The old woman stared out the long front window into the darkness he knew was the sea, but found it hard to believe—ebbing and flowing, vast—until he spotted the lights of the oil freighters in the distance, like jewels on a necklace. Maybe she’d stopped listening, or drifted off the way old people do.
“They worshipped two kinds,” he continued. “The white lotus—Nymphaea lotus—and that blooms at night. So it was used in lunar ceremonies. And there was also Nymphaea caerulea. The blue lotus. And some have this gorgeous hot-orange center. Which makes sense because it was a symbol for the sun in a ton of Egyptian art.” He knew he was rambling and didn’t care or think to stop. He’d only had Leslie to talk to since they’d moved. Brooks wanted nothing to do with what the boy called plant talk. Jules missed the daily conversations he’d had with the neighborhood folk at Our Garden. Mrs. Kaminsky stopping by with her granny cart full of beer cans to redeem, checking on the pink peonies he’d helped her plant. Sal Buono lugging a stinking bag of manure through the gate for his row of tomatoes. Jules and Leslie had a dozen theories on how the old Italian procured the stuff.
“You see,” he said, “those Egyptians believed the blue lotus was a magical thing. The way it closed up at night and disappeared underwater. Only for the same bloom to rise, miraculously, each morning with the sun. But if you ask a botanist, they’ll tell you the truth—the new buds form underwater. How about that?”
She turned away from the window. Her milky eyes were shining.
“How about that?” There was a gravity in her voice—was it sadness? He was relieved when Leslie hooked her arm in his.
“Leslie!” The old woman transformed. As if she’d been reunited with a long-lost relative.
“Mrs. Pencott,” Leslie said. “So lovely to see you.”
The two women brushed cheeks, left and right, and it amazed him how much they resembled each other. Like two photographs taken of the same woman thirty years apart.
Something was off. That look Leslie had given him. And now, as he watched the women he saw the tension in Leslie’s long neck. The women chattered about how it had been ages, how much the island had or had not changed, Veronica expressing her condolences for Leslie’s mother’s death, Leslie asking after Ginny, who, he guessed, was the old woman’s daughter. His wife’s fingers smoothed her brow and he knew she was itching to tug at a hair. Don’t do it, babe, he rooted for her. He hadn’t seen her this nervous since her mother was alive. On the mornings of her visits to her parents on the island, what she called “payday,” she was her usual sunny self—reading books to Eva, teasing Brooks about the hour he spent in the bathroom styling his hair, swatting Jules’s ass with a dishcloth as she stirred the pot of jambalaya that would feed him and the kids until she returned. By noon, when her father’s driver was due to pick her up, she was plucking one hair after another, so she’d had to dab concealer on the inflamed skin above and below her thinned brows. He’d never told her how, the nights before those visits, he lay awake listening to her jaw click as she ground her teeth.
“What on earth will we do about these caterpillars?” Veronica said. “The visitation of this pestilence.” She stared straight-on at Leslie, who, he saw, stared right back. An unflinching contest. “One might claim it a sign.”
“We should really get going,” he said. “So we can let the sitter go.”
The old woman was smoking. One of those long, thin cigarettes—100s.
“There’s no smoking in here.” Leslie went ice-cold. He knew she was pissed.
“It was so nice meeting you, Veronica.” He tugged Leslie toward the front door.
Veronica laughed loudly, “Oh, that’s right, I wouldn’t want to pollute the environment.”
She took a step forward, bared her teeth, and he saw where her dentures met pink gums.