Lilac Avenue Read online

  She could no longer hear the clock in the hall, the refrigerator in the kitchen, or the bird singing, “Bob White.”

  “Help me,” she cried, but there was no response.

  She could discern no color, light or shape. She wept then, afraid, until she was weak and disoriented. Then she slept.

  When she awoke, the first surprise was that she could see very clearly. The second was whom she saw.

  “Leibling, you’re finally here,” her grandmother said. “Nino has been telling me the funniest story.”

  Chapter Two - Tuesday

  Claire Fitzpatrick used a flat brush to paint hair color cream around her hairline at the temples and forehead, where an alarming number of gray hairs had begun to show themselves among their shiny dark neighbors. She used a hand mirror and the medicine cabinet mirror to examine the rest of her scalp for any other signs of encroachment. So far all of the white harbingers of her impending senior status had been monitored and dealt with. She would turn forty in two months. She had to be vigilant.

  She set the egg timer for twenty minutes, and then turned her attention to hair removal. She slathered her legs with drugstore depilatory cream, and then applied a more expensive department store brand, which she was trying to make last, to her upper lip. She sat down on the edge of the tub, and had just applied honey wax to her bikini line when someone banged on the bathroom door.

  "Claire," her father called out. "I need in there."

  "I thought you went to breakfast," she responded.

  "I'm back," he said. "I need in there."

  Claire considered the sticky wax she had just applied to her nether regions. She went ahead and stuck the cotton strips to the sticky surface on each side, wrapped a towel around her naked torso and opened the door.

  "You've got shaving cream on your lip," her father said.

  "It's not shaving cream," Claire said, as she stepped aside so her father could enter the bathroom.

  "Stinks in here," her father said as he shut the door.

  Claire sighed, adjusted her towel so that it was more firmly wrapped around her, and went down the hall to the living room.

  "Hi, Claire," Ed Harrison said.

  Ed, whom Claire had grown up living next to, was the editor of the Rose Hill Sentinel. He was sitting on the couch, holding her Boston terrier, Mackie Pea, and rubbing her little furry belly. He seemed to be suppressing a laugh.

  Claire considered the attractive picture she must make, waved, and hurried into the kitchen, where her mother was making coffee.

  "Lord, look at you," Delia laughed.

  "It would have been nice," Claire said, "if someone had seen fit to tell me that we had company."

  "I'm sorry, honey," Delia said. "I didn't realize you were beautifying in there."

  "Why is everyone here?" she asked. "When I went in the bathroom, he was out to breakfast, and you were still in bed."

  "After breakfast Ian decided he wanted to use his own bathroom, so Ed brought him home, and he forgot his key so I had to let them in," Delia said. "Once I'm up I can't lay back down, so I thought I may as well get my day started. As soon as he's done, Ed will take him to the service station so your Uncle Curtis can watch him. Then you can have the bathroom all to yourself."

  Over the past few years, Claire's father Ian had experienced multiple mini-strokes, which the doctor called TMIs. Every time he had one of these small strokes, sometimes so subtle you couldn't tell they were happening, more brain cells died. As a result of this slow deterioration of his brain, he had developed what was called vascular dementia.

  Although the word dementia conjures pictures of wild, crazy behavior, Ian's had manifested itself more as severe memory problems and confusion. He sometimes thought Claire was still in high school, or that her brother Liam, who had died of leukemia in childhood, was still alive. He liked a routine that didn't vary, so it was surprising that he had come home between breakfast and going to her Uncle Curtis's gas station.

  Claire waited in the kitchen, sipping hot coffee, until her father came down the hall. Then she scurried through the living room and down to the hall to the bathroom.

  "Are we running tomorrow?" Ed called out.

  "Yes," Claire called back. "I'll meet you at your office at the usual time."

  "I don’t know what she's doing in there," she heard her father say to Ed. "But it smells like tear gas."

  Claire cringed and shut the door behind her. She rinsed the depilatory cream off her legs, wiped it off her upper lip, and rinsed her face. She sat back down on the edge of the tub and considered the cotton strips stuck to the tender skin of her nether regions. She had never before left it on this long. She decided it would be better to do both at once lest one hurt so bad she couldn't face the second. She firmly grasped both strips at the top and pulled as hard as she could.

  The pain was so excruciating she cursed loudly, then pressed her legs together and cried.

  "Claire," her mother called through the bathroom door. "Are you all right?"

  "What's wrong?" she heard her father say. "Did she fall in the tub?"

  "I'm fine," Claire called out. "Just fine."

  The kitchen timer sitting on the bathroom counter dinged, letting her know it was time to rinse the color paste off of her hair.

  "I have got to get my own place," Claire said.

  Claire turned on the taps in the bathtub and then stepped into a steamy hot shower that stung her inner thighs like fire. She had just finished rinsing the hair color out of her hair when she felt a cool draft of air. She wiped her eyes and looked toward the edge of the shower curtain, where a tiny boy was regarding her. His tangled golden curls framed a freckled, tawny face with peanut butter and toast crumbs stuck to the skin around his mouth.

  "Hi Sammy," Claire said.

  "You's naked," Sammy said.

  "Hannah!" Claire called out.

  "Sorry, sorry, sorry," her cousin Hannah said as she entered the bathroom and picked up her three-year-old son. “Sammy, do you remember the talk we had about privacy permission? People in bathrooms don’t like other people watching them do their business.”

  "Claire's naked," he said as they left the bathroom.

  “Claire’s taking a shower,” Hannah said.

  "Claire's being driven mad," Claire said.

  "Claire?" her mother said from the doorway, "I'm taking Sammy to school and Ed's taking your father to Curtis's. Do you mind moving the clothes from the washer to the dryer before you leave?"

  "I don't mind at all," Claire said, as the cold air from the open door turned her skin to goose bumps.

  "Love you," her mother said.

  "Love you," Claire said.

  After her shower, Claire dried her hair and slid on her silk satin robe, snagged now in so many places from Mackie Pea's claws that it no longer made the elegant statement she had envisioned when she purchased it in Hong Kong years before. Nowadays it got washed with her father's flannel shirts and blue jeans. She slid on her cashmere-lined slippers, almost worn through the soles after so many years of use, and went down the hall to get more of the coffee her mother had made. Her cousin Hannah was sitting at the table drinking the last cup, her feet propped up on another chair, as she read the paper.

  "Hey, glamour girl," Hannah said. "Sorry about Sammy. You know, I should get that tattooed on my hand, so I could just hold it up seventy times per day instead of wasting my breath. Being Sammy's mother means always being sorry about something."

  "No problem," Claire said.

  She measured out the grounds to make another pot of coffee. Long used to drinking the most complicated cappuccino drinks money could buy, Claire now had to settle for coffee from a blue plastic bucket.

  Hannah had also used the last of the milk. Claire considered her options and finally spritzed canned whipped cream into the bottom of her coffee cup. Inspired now, she also tipped in a little vanilla extract and a half teaspoon of sugar. She’d run it off tomorrow.

  "What's on you
r agenda today?" she asked Hannah.

  "Oh, you know," Hannah said. "Stray dogs, orphaned kittens, treed raccoons, possums being where they have no business possuming."

  "Mom said Sammy's doing great at preschool."

  "When she's there to watch him like a hawk so he can't escape," Hannah said.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Claire said. “I’d like to get my own place somewhere close by.”

  “Hmmm,” Claire said, setting down her paper. “How about the Davis place next door? It’s been on the market since they moved to Florida.”

  “Doesn’t Phyllis live there?”

  “Her parents said she could live there until it was sold,” Hannah said. “Every time Trick puts up a realty sign Phyllis takes it down. He finally got tired of wasting signs and quit putting them up at all.”

  “That would certainly be close,” Claire said.

  She went to the window and looked at the Davis’s backyard, which was separated from her parents’ by a tall, weathered board fence. The Davis’s house was a small three-bedroom-one-bath brick ranch, just like her parents’ home. Phyllis Davis was probably trashing it, she thought. She also wouldn’t take kindly to being made homeless.

  “Is there anything else?” she asked.

  “Scott has to sell his mother’s house,” Hannah said. “Plus if he stays shacked up with Maggie above the store then he may sell his house.”

  “I’ll ask him about it.”

  “Other than that, I can’t think of anyplace,” Hannah said. “There’s the Branduff’s place, but it needs a complete renovation, plus it’s so big. You could always move to Glencora, I guess. They have fancy condos and ski houses up there.”

  “Too far to drive every day,” Claire said. “Especially when the weather’s bad.”

  “I’ll keep my eyes pealed and ear to the ground,” Hannah said. “How’s your dad doing?”

  “He’s getting a little paranoid,” Claire said. “Doc Machalvie says that’s normal.”

  “Everyone’s a little paranoid,” Hannah said. “That’s just cause there’s always some evil bastages out to get ya.”

  Because Hannah had a three-year-old and a penchant for swearing, she had taken to substituting like-sounding words for her usual profane ones. It wasn’t always an improvement.

  After Hannah left, Claire checked the trash folder on her email account where a specially set up filter transferred messages she received from certain people to whom she no longer wished to correspond. There were multiple messages from her former employer, famous actress and demanding diva Sloan Merryweather; the most recent one was from the previous day.

  “Call me,” it said. “I can’t find Umberto’s number.”

  Claire felt a shiver of dread.

  Claire had been ignoring any call from Sloan, so at least she didn’t have to hear that voice, except in her head: the pitiful whine that could quickly turn into a deadly growl, or the baby talk that so often preceded a spine-tingling shriek. She didn’t miss it.

  Her phone rang in her hand, startling her. It was Denise, the woman who owned the Bee Hive Hair Salon that Claire was running while Denise was on maternity leave.

  “Hey, Sweetie,” Denise said. “Have you decided what you’re gonna do?”

  “Not yet,” Claire said. “I thought I had until the end of the month.”

  “The buyer just upped the offer,” Denise said. “But I only have until the end of the week.”

  “Who is this person?” Claire asked. “Are you sure it’s legit?”

  “I just speak with their attorney,” Denise said. “They overnighted me a contract. I had Maggie’s brother look it over and he checked on the lawyer; he’s for real; some hoity toity rich guy in New York.”

  Claire was pretty sure it was her former boss who was putting this pressure on, trying to drive Claire back into her employment. Sloan employed New York attorneys that Claire would not want to be on the wrong side of again.

  “I’ll let you know,” Claire said. “I promise. By Friday.”

  “It would suit me to keep on this way,” Denise said. “But it’s an insane amount they’re offering me.”

  This only confirmed Claire’s suspicions about the origin of the offer. It was just like Sloan to do something so crazy, vindictive, and expensive.

  Claire was looking over the day’s upcoming appointments when she heard someone tapping on the window of the Bee Hive Hair Salon.

  “This day just gets better and better,” she muttered as she unlocked the door to let in her ex-mother-in-law, Frieda Deacon.

  “Hello, Frieda,” Claire said.

  “I was hoping to catch you before you got busy,” Frieda said.

  The older woman had an ingratiating smile on her normally scowling face.

  “What can I do for you, Frieda?” Claire asked her, trying to strike the right note between common courtesy and what she wanted to convey, which was, “I’m not giving you any money.”

  “Can you do something with this mess?”

  Frieda pointed to her hair, an unevenly cut mop she obviously bleached at home with something she bought at the drugstore. The ends were so dry Claire thought that, subjected to a stiff wind, they’d break off and fly away like dandelion fuzz.

  “Sure,” Claire said. “Come on over and I’ll shampoo it for you.”

  Claire felt a little nauseated as she washed Frieda’s hair, which reeked of both cigarette smoke and the heavy layer of perfume she used to cover up that smell. She regarded the woman’s rhinestone-studded jeans, low-cut, sequined top, and the collection of gold rings she wore, one or two on every finger. Frieda always did dress like someone much younger with an active night life, but the contrast between her youthful clothing and her deeply wrinkled face and age-spotted hands now only made her look foolish. Her eyelid skin was so loose and hooded it nearly covered her eyes, and her slapdash makeup application betrayed her failing eyesight. Claire felt her heart soften, despite their contentious history.

  When Claire married Frieda’s son Phillip, known as “Pip,” at the tender age of nineteen, her parents so vocally disapproved that Claire cut off all communications with them. Shortly afterward, when Pip lost the next in a succession of temporary jobs, the newlyweds were forced to move into the ramshackle firetrap that was his mother’s home, up Possum Holler. Feeling abandoned by her parents and mystified by her new husband’s lack of interest in finding work, Claire had turned to Frieda for maternal advice, only to receive scorn and resentment. Claire was seen as an interloper, a threat, and a financial burden.

  Over the years, Frieda had come to regard Claire with what could most accurately be described as a hostile fondness, although any sign of affection could be directly attributed to how much money Frieda thought Claire possessed, and how likely she was to part with it.

  “You heard from Pip lately?” Frieda asked.

  “No,” Claire said, “The last time I heard from your son he was in a Los Angeles jail, looking for bail money, and since I refused to pay it I haven’t heard from him since.”

  “Trish’s folks bailed him out,” Frieda said. “He had to sign divorce papers and give her full custody of all them kids. I’ll probably never see my precious grandkids again.”

  Claire knew better than to fall for the sentimentality of that statement. Unless those kids came wrapped in hundred dollar bills Frieda would have no use for them.

  “What’s he doing now?” Claire asked, not really wanting to know, but thinking she ought to keep track of him, the better to be prepared for him to suddenly appear with his hand out.

  “He’s working for that movie star you used to work for.”

  From her relaxed position, with her head leaned back in the shampoo bowl, Frieda studied Claire to see what effect that piece of information had on her. After working for over twenty years for a vindictive narcissist, Claire had become very good at hiding her feelings, but her heart did skip a beat.

  “Hmm, that’s interesting,” was all she said.
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br />   “Sloan bought one of them big houses up at Glencora and Pip’s renovating it,” Frieda said. “It’ll be a real showplace before he’s through. You know how good he is.”

  Claire also knew how likely it was that, based on his past behavior, Pip would disappear before the job was finished, taking anything of value with him as he slunk out the back door. However, he did owe Sloan Merryweather a huge sum of money, and she did employ scary people who might break off parts of him if he didn’t follow through, so he might actually finish this project.

  Claire hated to think Pip was only thirty minutes away, and would no doubt make an appearance in Rose Hill when she least expected it. She was also surprised to learn Sloan had purchased a house in Glencora. When Sloan wanted publicity shots of herself, cavorting near a ski resort in snug-fitting ski apparel, she preferred Aspen or Gstaad. Glencora was a nice enough, albeit a small ski resort, but there were no stars next to it in the Forbes Travel Guide.

  Claire consoled herself by remembering that in the past Sloan had purchased many pieces of property, had them extensively and expensively renovated, and then sold them for a profit without ever setting foot in them twice. This would be the same, Claire was sure of it. Well, she hoped so, anyway.

  Frieda seemed to be waiting for Claire to react.

  “Really? Well, that’s interesting,” she said.

  Claire wrapped a towel around Frieda’s hair and led her to one of the hydraulic chairs.

  “I don’t know why you came back here,” Frieda said. “Pip said that woman paid you a fortune, took you all over the world. Why in the world would you give up all that to do this?”

  “My dad’s not been well,” Claire said. “I came back to help my mom take care of him.”

  “I heard he’d had a stroke,” Frieda said. “Some folks act crazy after that.”

  “He’s just having memory problems,” Claire said. “Other than that he’s fine.”

  Claire combed out Frieda’s hair, gummy with damage from too much home-bleaching. The roots were still dark but with multiple streaks of gray. She did not offer to color it and she hoped Frieda would not ask. The best thing would be for her to cut it short and start all over.