Sunflower Street

  Sunflower Street

  by Pamela Grandstaff

  For Terry

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. No part of this may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Copyright © 2015 Pamela Grandstaff. All rights reserved.

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Gigi O’Hare slammed the back door behind the catering crew and took a deep breath, trying to compose herself. How dare those rude girls come into her house without her permission? She didn’t care if they were just doing their jobs. She would call their supervisor and report them, just as soon as she calmed down.

  Bunny and Chicken, her white Teacup Pomeranians, danced around her feet, begging for attention.

  “Oh, hush,” she told them, but then immediately apologized and stroked their little heads.

  She walked through the kitchen and dining room to the front foyer and opened the front door. She stood on the front porch, surveying the lawn. Her brother had cut the grass, but she noticed he had not edged along the walkways. Such a lazy, good for nothing lay-about. She’d be damned if she’d pay him a nickel for doing the work. She dead-headed a few petunias while she was out there.

  Well, that would have to do.

  She thought she heard a door slam in the house. Surely, Eugene Junior hadn’t disobeyed her. She went back inside and called his name, but he didn’t answer. She called down the basement stairs, but, other than the panting of her tiny dogs, the house was quiet. For once, it seemed, he had listened to her and did what he was told. She didn’t want him anywhere near the ladies who were coming to lunch. All that boring talk about rocks, and they’d be polite about it, but she could just imagine what they’d be thinking.

  She loved her son, but he was her cross to bear, and no one could deny that.

  She went through the kitchen to the mudroom and checked the back door. It was closed but unlocked so she locked it. When she slammed it earlier it must have popped back open. It had been known to do that. A window was probably open somewhere in the house and the wind had banged it shut. That must have been what she’d heard.

  Her stomach growled and she realized she hadn’t eaten anything all morning. She opened the refrigerator, where she found a bowl of cold chicken salad. It looked delicious. She took a spoon from a drawer, ate several bites right out of the bowl, and then several more. It really was good. She ate until she felt full, then put a spoon full on a china saucer, and carried it upstairs.

  “Come with Mama,” she said to the dogs. “Mama’s got a treat for her precious little babies.”

  The tiny dogs hopped up the stairs and followed her down the hall to her bedroom, where she put the saucer down and watched them gobble up the chicken.

  “Now, that will have to hold you until after lunch,” she said. “Mama has important ladies coming, so you’ll have to stay in the bedroom.”

  Gigi looked in the mirror. Her hair looked good, thanks to Claire Fitzpatrick. She might have to consider making a permanent change of hairdressers, and if Claire was willing to make house calls, all the better.

  She sniffed her wrist, but couldn’t smell the perfume she’d put on just that morning. As expensive as it was, it should last longer than that. She reached for the bottle and for a moment, couldn’t believe her eyes.

  It was gone.

  She knew she had put it back on her dressing table after she put some on this morning, when Claire was there. Surely Claire would not … but who else? Gigi didn’t want to believe it. She looked down on the floor around the dressing table, and then went to her en suite bathroom.

  There it was, on the vanity counter. She could not remember putting it there.

  “Mama’s losing it,” she said to Bunny and Chicken, who were now cuddled up in the middle of her bed.

  She took the stopper out and tipped the bottle. She was more liberal in her application of the perfume this time, and put a generous amount behind each ear, on each wrist, behind each knee, and down in her cleavage. Was it too much? Oh well, it would have faded a bit by the time the ladies arrived.

  She tried to focus on what to do next.

  The check, of course.

  She sat down at her vanity and took her checkbook out of the top drawer. She wrote the date, the committee name, and signed it. She was trying to decide how much to make it out for when she began to feel ill.

  She felt dizzy, and her heart was racing. Her skin began to itch, like it was covered with a million mosquito bites. She looked at her wrist and was surprised to see a welt there. She slid up her jacket sleeve and found a hive. An inspection of her other arm revealed the same.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she thought. ‘What have I got into?’

  She went to the bathroom and searched the drawer where she kept her epi pen. It wasn’t there. She looked in the mirror and was frightened to see her lips and eyes were swelling, and a mottled rash was coming up on her neck.

  Panicked now, she searched her walk-in closet, went through all her handbags, but couldn’t find the damn epi pen.

  It had to be here somewhere!

  Her chest felt tight, and she began to have trouble breathing. It had never got this bad this fast before. It had been so long since she’d had an attack that she’d gotten lazy about carrying one with her.

  Where was it?

  She felt light-headed, and her breathing turned to gasping. She looked across the room at the telephone on her night stand. She’d call her son, and he would help her, bring his epi pen, and then call the ambulance only if absolutely necessary. It would be so embarrassing, and on the day of her luncheon, too.

  She got as far as the end of the bed when the lights faded and everything went black.

  Gigi was having the weirdest dream.

  She was a child again, sitting on the front porch of the dilapidated house where she grew up. It was a holler house, as the cruel children at school often reminded her. There was nothing cozy, pretty, or warm about it. It sheltered them from the worst of the weather, although the roof leaked when it rained, and the cold winter wind seeped in around the cracked window frames.

  She was sitting on the rickety front porch steps, holding her Raggedy Ann, which her mother had purchased from their church’s annual tag sale. She held it tightly, and rubbed its worn, mitten-shaped, muslin-covered hand against her upper lip, just like she used to.

  She had never had a more vivid dream.

  She could feel the hot sun shining on her dirty bare feet. She could smell the manure from the cows that lived at the farm up at the end of the road. There was a wood smoke smell from the still her father had hidden in the corn crib behind their house.

  A robin was sitting on the sagging fence, chirping and twitching its tail feathers. There was a light breeze blowing through the green leaves of the twisted apple trees, full of bright green little apples she knew would be sour to taste but made wonderful pies when they could afford the sugar.

  The soft, worn cotton of her pinafore felt good against her tanned, freckled skin. Her mother had sewn red rik rak ribbon trim on the top of each pocket, and it had come loose on one side, where it was hanging by a thread.

  She had a scrape on her knee, so she picked at the sca
b a little. Her hair was pulled back in pigtails so tight they pulled at the small hairs on the back of her neck, fell down over her shoulders in dark golden braids.

  It didn’t feel like a dream. The other life, where she was a grown-up, now felt like the dream.

  “Gertie!” she heard her mother call. “Gertrude, where are you?”

  It had been years since anyone had used her real name; not even her husband had dared.

  Her mama.

  Her mama, who had died of pneumonia the winter she was seven, leaving her and her brother at the mercy of her short-tempered, perpetually tired father.

  “Gertie, my girl,” her mother called again, as she came around the side of the house. “There you are. I’ve been looking all over for you.”

  Her mama, still young enough to turn a stranger’s head and not yet so careworn that she looked older than her years. Her golden hair was pulled back in a sensible knot at the back of her head, with tendrils escaping to frame her pretty face, her soft brown eyes.

  Her mama, dressed in a cotton housedress and apron that were worn when she bought them, at the same tag sale where she’d purchased the doll.

  Gigi got up, ran down the steps, leaped into her mother’s arms, and breathed in the smells of her, the feel of her, all of which she thought she’d forgotten.

  “Oh, my Gertie,” her mother said. “I love you so.”

  “I love you, Mama,” Gigi said.

  “Come and see the new kittens up at the farm,” Mama said. “Papa says you can pick out one to keep.”

  “Is this a dream?” Gigi asked her, through her tears of happiness.

  Her mother laughed, set her down, took her hand, led her up the path to the dirt road, and then on toward the farm at the end of the holler.

  Chapter Two

  “I’m afraid for my son,” Gigi O’Hare said.

  “I’m sorry,” Claire said, as she switched off the blow dryer. “I couldn’t hear you; what did you say?”

  “I’m worried about Eugene,” Gigi said. “Who’s going to take care of him when I’m gone?”

  Claire hesitated, because what could she say?

  Rich widow Gigi O’Hare had called Claire in a panic just an hour before. She was having an important luncheon that day and her regular hairdresser had canceled her appointment.

  “Kidney stones,” Gigi had said. “Probably from all those supplements she takes; that woman is a walking health food store.”

  Claire, who recently had taken to sleeping late in the morning, since she was currently unemployed, had reluctantly agreed to come up the hill to the O’Hare’s stone mansion on Morning Glory Avenue to do Gigi’s hair.

  When she arrived, Gigi had been in the dining room with her attorney and his assistant, going over some papers. Gigi had asked Claire to wait in the front parlor. Claire was still admiring the paintings and vases on display in that room when Gigi came to fetch her.

  “I’m signing some papers and I need a witness for my signature,” Gigi said. “Would you mind signing as my witness?”

  “I don’t mind at all,” Claire said.

  In the dining room, the attorney and his assistant were still seated at the table. The attorney, a gray-haired man with glasses, was impeccably dressed in a three-piece suit and an expensive watch, the kind certain men collect like others collect sports cars. He stood up when Claire entered the room. His assistant was a pale, mousy-looking older woman who spoke so softly Claire could not hear what she said, so she just smiled and nodded.

  Gigi introduced the attorney to Claire as Walter Graham, and ignored the assistant. Walter introduced the assistant, Claire instantly forgot her name, and everyone shook hands.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Walter said. “We’ve heard so much about you.”

  Claire was a little surprised to hear this, but she smiled to cover her confusion with congeniality, which was a talent she’d developed working in show business.

  They asked to copy her IDs, so she fished out her driver’s license and social security card, and the assistant ran them through a small portable scanner before returning them.

  The assistant pushed a document across the table toward Gigi, who signed on one line, and pointed to another line next to it.

  “You sign there, Claire,” Gigi said.

  “You do understand what you’re being asked to do?” the attorney said to Claire.

  “Sure,” she said. “I don’t mind.”

  Claire signed on the line Gigi indicated, and then the assistant wrote on the document beneath their signatures, signed it, and used a self-inking stamp next to her signature.

  This process was repeated two more times, with Claire following Gigi’s signature with her own, followed by the assistant notarizing the document beneath their signatures. When they were done, Gigi patted Claire’s shoulder.

  “Thank you, Claire, you’re a godsend,” Gigi said. “Go on upstairs to my room and I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Claire went up to the second floor and opened the door to the sumptuous master suite, which was decorated in tones of ivory and peach. Gigi’s two little dogs ran to greet her, and she ruffled their fur. They looked like small white puffs with bright brown eyes and tiny pink tongues.

  “You’re too cute,” she told them.

  Gigi had joined her before too long, and shortly afterward offered her son’s hand in marriage.

  Claire had known Gigi’s son, Eugene Junior, since she was a little girl, and she was fond of him, much like she was fond of her neighbor’s ugly, ancient, three-legged dog, which suffered from seizures and constant flatulence. That is to say, from a safe distance and seen infrequently.

  And Eugene was an unfortunate fellow, indeed. He suffered from a severe stammer, a lisp, various odd allergies, and a tendency to throw up and faint when stressed. Any one of these, alone, would be considered a challenge; put together in one person they seemed like a curse.

  In grade school, Claire’s male cousins had taken him up as a sort of a pet and protected him from being bullied. She could still recall him trailing along behind them as they got up to their typical mischief, which Eugene would watch with awe while he giggled from behind his hand. Behind his hand because, oh yes, she had forgotten, Eugene’s teeth had come in darkened due to a medication his mother had taken while pregnant with him. Nothing could ever be done about them because of his allergy to Novocain.

  Claire pitied poor Eugene as well as the mother who raised him.

  “What will he do when I’m gone?” Gigi asked Claire.

  “Sometimes when people have to do for themselves they can,” Claire said, as she wrapped a section of Gigi’s fine, apricot-colored hair around a hot curling iron. “Eugene may do just fine.”

  “If he isn’t reminded to eat, he won’t,” Gigi said. “He has to take so many medications, and on such an exact schedule. He has at least one doctor appointment per week, and he can’t drive himself because he might have a seizure.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “What he needs is someone to manage him, someone to take care of him,” Gigi said. “He’s going to be a very rich man after I pass away …”

  “There are other family members,” Claire said.

  “There are,” Gigi said. “But I’ve recently discovered something rather unpleasant about them, and I’ve decided not to put Eugene’s fate in their hands. That’s why the lawyer was here this morning.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Claire said. “That must worry you.”

  “If you married Eugene, I know you’d take good care of him. I’ve never forgotten how kind your family has been to him over the years, and he is so fond of you. If I knew I had you to watch out for him, I could die in peace.”

  Gigi had made this offer to Claire before. Claire wondered how many other single women in Rose Hill had also been on the receiving end of this pitch. She suspected it was all of them.

  “You know I’m seeing Ed,” Claire said.

  “Ed H
arrison is a fine, upstanding young man, but his future earning potential is very limited,” Gigi said.

  “It’s true the newspaper doesn’t pay much, but he’s also teaching journalism at the college.”

  “That’s a perfectly acceptable vocation, and Eldridge is a fine school, but they don’t pay much, either.”

  “Money isn’t everything,” Claire said.

  Gigi ignored that statement.

  “I know there aren’t many single men in your age group left in Rose Hill,” Gigi said, “but a girl as pretty as you could have her pick, surely.”

  Claire, who was about to turn forty, didn’t mind Gigi calling her a girl, but she did mind the implied criticism of Ed. In the interest of continued friendly relations, she decided to ignore it.

  “Maybe Eugene will meet someone he likes,” Claire said.

  “If he’d ever leave the basement,” Gigi said. “Which reminds me … excuse me a minute.”

  Claire withdrew the curling iron as Gigi stood up. This immediately excited her two small, fluffy dogs, who had to be bribed with treats to return to their napping spot on the bed. Once they were settled again, Gigi went to an old-fashioned-looking intercom attached to the wall next to the door to her bedroom. It squawked and gave some feedback when she pressed a button.

  “Eugene!” she barked. “Can you hear me?”

  Claire was so startled by the vehemence in the woman’s voice that she flinched.

  “Eugene,” she barked, again. “What are you doing down there? Answer me this minute.”

  “Yeth, M, M, Mother,” eventually came a meek, barely discernable reply.

  “Come up to my room,” she said. “Claire’s here and she wants to see you. Bring the clean laundry up with you as you come; it will save Gail a trip.”

  Gigi turned and smiled brightly at Claire.

  “He’ll be right up, and then you two can chat while I get dressed.”

  Claire dreaded this at a level right up there with spider removal and dental work, but she smiled in return and said, “That’ll be nice.”