Heart's Desire (24 page)

Chapter Forty-eight

AFTER EVERYONE AGREES ON THE PLANS FOR THE NEW POND, Craig and I head out to the yard so he can get a better idea of the space he has to work with. There’s not a star to be seen, but the blackness above us is velvety and soft. Alongside the stone pathway azaleas bloom with undimmed ferocity, their bright red and orange flowers practically glowing in the darkness. And though we can’t see the roses in Olivia’s garden, they manage to exhale their sweet perfume.

“It’s really great to see you,” says Craig. “You look terrific.”

Despite the fact that it’s dark out, I’m suddenly self-conscious about my appearance and try to fix all the wispy strands spiraling out of my ponytail. “Oh gosh, Bernard had me helping in the kitchen until the last minute and there wasn’t time to change or even brush my hair.”

He lifts his hand as if he’s going to take my arm but instead shoves it deep into his pocket. “So how do you like college life? Gonna stick it out for three more years?”

“Yeah, if I can afford to. It’s a lot better than high school, don’t you think?”

“I guess so,” he says in a manner that isn’t overly convincing. “I had more fun in high school.”

“Are
you
going to stick with it?” I ask.

“My parents would kill me if I quit. When you’re an only child there’s no room for a black sheep. You’re lucky.”

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?”

“All of your parents’ expectations aren’t dumped solely onto the shoulders of one child. My mom sent me that story about Eric in the local newspaper—how he started his first football game and has a full scholarship. And even if you and Eric do mess up, they still have Louise and Teddy and so on down the line.”

“If the next one of us written up in the newspaper is Louise, it might not be such a great story,” I say. “Rather than Most Likely to Succeed, she’s currently distinguishing herself as Most Likely to Repeat Tenth Grade.” I don’t add that I’m currently vying for “Most Likely to Die Alone.”

But Craig doesn’t ask what’s going on with Louise and instead catches me off guard with, “So, do you have a boyfriend?”

Good question. And how differently I might have answered a week ago. But now I don’t know. Is Ray to be considered a boyfriend? He’s phoned exactly once since bagging his visit. And yet if he is still in the boyfriend category, for some reason I’m not sure I want to tell Craig. Likewise, as much as I’d like to know if
he
has a girlfriend, I’m not really interested in picturing him kissing some girl.

The wind suddenly picks up and dime-sized raindrops splatter against our skin. A clap of thunder like the rattle of sheet metal comes from beyond the orchard and lightning appears in great zigzags across the heavens, making everything stand out and appear close to us for a moment.

We dash to the safety of the nearby gazebo. However, when an entire curtain of water starts attacking sideways and forks of lightning move in on us following every crash of thunder, Craig says we’d better make a run for the house. He grabs my hand and we race around the garage to the front door.

Bernard is standing in the vestibule with big fluffy towels. “I saw you both running to the gazebo and thought of Leisl and Rolf singing ‘I Am Sixteen Going On Seventeen’ in
The Sound of Music.
”

Obviously Bernard is not going to stop trying to get us back together anytime soon.

“Well, I’m seventeen going on eighteen,” I inform him, “And Craig is nineteen going on twenty.”

“That’s true. But don’t you think I’m perfect to play the Baroness Von Schrader?” He quotes his favorite line after she’s sent Julie Andrews packing: “Good-bye, Maria. I’m sure you’ll make a very fine nun.”

Craig accepts an umbrella from Bernard and then gives me a chaste kiss good night, the kind you confer upon a geeky cousin at a wedding. And then with a wave to Bernard he heads out into the night.

Bernard is leaning against the balustrade as if he no longer has the energy needed to stand unsupported, and it’s apparent from the dullness in his normally bright blue eyes that the adoption rejection is more of a disappointment than he’s been willing to acknowledge.

“I’m off to bed,” says Bernard. “All alone, just like Garbo.”

“Me too,” I say. “I mean, it’s doubtful I’ll ever get married. You know, we could just live here and . . . and . . .”

“That’s very sweet.” He gives me a chaste kiss on the other cheek.

This seems to be my evening for chaste kisses. Saturday nights at the bingo parlor is probably just around the corner.

“And I appreciate the consideration,” says Bernard as he starts up the stairs. “But perhaps it’s better if I live in your heart, where the world can’t see me,” he quotes Greta Garbo just before she dies in
Camille.

Oh great. Here we go again.

Chapter Forty-nine

I STOP IN THE KITCHEN TO GRAB A CHOCOLATE YOO-HOO WHILE debating whether or not to wake Olivia and tell her that we may be back on suicide watch, and Bernard might be upstairs this very minute drafting a note. Until this past month it was simply a source of amusement that Bernard has memorized the last words of so many famous artists, such as the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova’s “Get my swan costume ready and play the last measure softly.”

“Hallie,” a delicate whisper comes from Olivia’s den, which is dark except for the flame of a single candle.

“Olivia?” It isn’t surprising for her to be up late working on a poem or a letter to the editor of the local newspaper. Or else on a pornographic story for
Milky Way
magazine. As she’s fond of reminding us, “erotic narratives” earn considerably more money than poems and provide readers a harmless outlet for their fantasies. The latter she claims helps to cut down on domestic violence and sex abuse.

“Why are you working in the dark?” I ask.

Olivia leans against the wall in front of the open window, wearing a burgundy silk negligee with a kimono-style robe draped over her shoulders while smoking a cigarette and gazing up at the night sky. “The horns of Isis,” she says, and nods toward the vast darkness.

I search the sky for a constellation but it’s drizzling outside and no stars are visible, just a crescent moon with its points turned upward.

“The cow was sacred to her, and so when the tips of the moon face heavenward it evokes Isis, the great Egyptian Mother Goddess. Lucius of Patrae, the Greek author of a lost
Metamorphoses,
addressed Isis in a hymn, saying, ‘Thou dispellest the storms of life and stretchest forth thy right hand of salvation, by which Thou unravellest even the inextricably tangled web of Fate.’ ”

I assume that Olivia is attempting to summon ideas for solving Bernard’s adoption problem, in her own poetic way. “It’s kind of you to want to help, but I get the feeling he won’t appreciate us interfering in this one,” I gently suggest to her.

The dampness from the rain enters the room as she attempts to fan the smoke out through the open window with a cardboard folder.

“Oh Hallie, I’m afraid that the adoption trouble is all
my
fault!” Olivia’s mouth tightens as if it pains her just to think about it. “A few months ago I wrote an editorial exposing the fact that Valueland was breaking the labor laws. They hire people to bag groceries and help customers to their cars, then reduce compensation based on the estimated amounts of tips received by employees. And in the editorial I included his name.”

“Who? Edwin the Turd?”

Olivia looks at me quizzically as she crushes out her cigarette.

“I mean, Ed Kunckle, Mr. Church Deacon and Town Spirit.”

“Yes, he’s the owner or the majority shareholder or something like that,” she says with an anxious inflection in her normally warm and delicate voice. “It was difficult to find the exact details on how the ownership is structured based on the papers filed down at the courthouse.”

“So Kunckle is doing this to get back at you?” I’m stunned that anyone could be so ruthless in their cruelty.

“Exactly!”

“I thought that maybe it was because I beat him in poker.” There’s relief in my voice.

“I’m afraid he’s settling a much bigger score than that,” says Olivia.

“My gosh, that guy would stab a person in the back and then have him arrested for possession of an illegal weapon!” I say this in my best crime-show-detective voice.

“Well, I won’t allow it!” insists Olivia. “This is too important to Bernard. And he’d make a wonderful father. So that’s why I’ve decided to work from
inside
the system! Though just this once.”

“Shouldn’t we ask Bernard about your plan?”

“Absolutely not!” Olivia dismisses the very suggestion with a wave of her hand. “Bernard abhors the idea of becoming embroiled in gay rights issues. He claims that doing so in such a small town objectifies him. Only I disagree. I think he simply refuses to acknowledge the fact that discrimination is much more prevalent than people would like to believe.”

“But what can you do?” I ask. The situation appears to be a prime example of what Cappy describes as “The Golden Rule”—he who has the gold rules.

“Hallie, you didn’t know my husband back when he was an influential barrister in this town. I still have a few connections with people in high places, and tomorrow I’m going to start making some calls.”

“Let me know if I can help,” I offer.

Olivia closes the window, and ties up her robe as if she’s suddenly become chilled. “You just keep an eye on Bernard so as to make sure we don’t have any more late-night
dramas.
”

Chapter Fifty

CRAIG COMES OVER ON SUNDAY MORNING SO WE CAN DRIVE TO the town of Warren, where there’s a building supply center that sells most of what he needs to make the pond. Olivia and Ottavio are coming along because the store also stocks a large selection of lawn statuary and Olivia has decided that we need some Roman gods and goddesses to honor Ottavio’s homeland, and maybe a miniature Coliseum or the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

“Sorry I’m late,” Craig calls out as he does a loose-limbed jog over to the front porch, where we’re all standing around waiting. “My parents made me go to church.” He rolls his eyes as if he only went along with it to make them happy.

“I worshipped privately this morning,” says Olivia. “Fortunately attendance isn’t mandatory in my religion.”

“Your
religion
?” scoffs Bernard, as if to suggest that being Unitarian is more akin to being a supporter of the Cleveland Zoo. “First off, your church doesn’t have services in the summer, because everyone is too busy organic gardening. And second, had you been born two hundred years earlier, it’s most certain that you’d have been burned at the stake by now.”

“That may be so,” trills Olivia, “but I have faith. Faith is to be found in the head and the heart, not a sanctuary or a temple. Furthermore, I’ll take this opportunity to remind you that Unitarianism
is
a recognized religion.”

“Tax-exempt social club is more like it,” retorts Bernard.

“Well at least I
have
a religious home,” says Olivia. “Remember the month you were a Buddhist and used the word
mums
as your mantra?”

Craig and I giggle as we imagine Bernard in the lotus position, chanting the name of his favorite flower.

“I suppose I’m a sinner nowadays,” jokes Bernard, and for a moment I think he’s referring to the thwarted adoption and glance toward Olivia to gauge her reaction.

But she only offers us her placid
each to his own
smile.

“Hallie taught me some tricks to improve my odds at blackjack this morning,” continues Bernard.

“That counts as religion,” I say. “There are twenty-one epistles in the Bible and that makes blackjack. Only these days I’m more spiritual than religious. For instance, this fall there’s a good chance I’ll be having an out-of-money experience.”

“Funny, you seem too large to be a medium,” quips Bernard as he hustles us all into the car.

After last night’s rainstorm it’s turned out to be a shiny July morning with a clear arc of blue painted in the east, over the farms, and buttery sunlight filtering down through the treetops. With Craig at the wheel of the big cherry-red Buick we get a chance to test the new tires and brake pads that I had installed for Olivia last week. I tend to think that for once Bernard might not be exaggerating in that Ottavio really is racing around at ninety miles an hour in order to go through tires and brakes so quickly.

It’s probably a good thing Craig is driving, because neither Bernard nor I could sleep last night. He was distraught about the adoption being canceled and I was worried about him having another late-night party for one where he’s the designated drinker. I suggested that he call Melik to commiserate, but Bernard insisted he didn’t want to be a downer so close to the start of a new relationship. And so we were up until five in the morning playing cards and watching Tallulah Bankhead in
Die! Die! My Darling.

In fact, Bernard is still speaking in Tallulah’s whisky-and-cigarette voice when he tells us the story of how she was once in a restroom in New York and knocked on the wall of the next stall to ask for toilet paper. Supposedly the woman on the other side immediately recognized the distinctive smoke-cured voice and said, “I’m sorry, Ms. Bankhead, but there’s no toilet paper in here, either.” After which a husky Tallulah replied, “Then, dahling, do you have two fives for a ten?”

I haven’t the slightest idea of where Bernard gets these stories and I don’t know if they’re the least bit true, but they sure are hilarious, at least the way he tells them.

On the way home Bernard makes us stop at not one, but
three
yard sales. Olivia is happy to find some inexpensive and fairly large porcelain statuettes of The Muses and also a Cupid, since her search for Roman gods and goddesses at the garden center had been a failure. Their inventory was more along the lines of gnomes and grazing animals rather than Venus and the wonders of the Middle Ages.

By this time we’re starving, so Bernard instructs Craig to drive us over to The Garden of Eatin’ for lunch. Whenever life gets Bernard down, he loves to order blueberry blintzes with sour cream and play Barry Manilow’s “Mandy” on the wall-mounted jukebox.

When we finally arrive back at the house it’s apparent from the minute we pull into the driveway that something is amiss. The front door is ajar and the curtain rod on the picture window is hanging down by about three feet on one side.

“Uh-oh!” Craig says ominously. “It looks like you’ve been robbed.”