Her family laughed indulgently at her scribbles.
Yet she loved them and they her.
Sometimes she reminded herself of the ungainly baby swan in the story of the ugly duckling. No matter how hard she tried to be like the others—and she had tried, over the years—she just couldn’t do it. Finally she had learned just to simply pretend she was like them. It made life easier, and it wasn’t difficult. All she had to do was keep to herself about eighty percent of what she thought and felt.
Pulling in between the large stone pillars that marked the entrance to the 250-acre farm called Walnut Grove, which had been home to the Grant family for generations, Rachel felt the worst of the tension begin to seep from her body. The pounding in her temples eased, for which she was thankful. Coming home always had a soothing effect on her. She loved the rambling century-old house in which she’d grown up. She loved the long driveway, only paved within the last ten years, that meandered through towering
oaks and maples. She loved the flowering dogwood and redbud trees that made the place a wonderland of beauty in the spring, the peach trees that grew out back and provided fruit, and the walnut trees that littered the driveway and yard with hard green balls in the autumn and gave nuts for munching in the winter. She loved the sight of the few horses they kept nowadays cropping grass in the wood-fenced fields beyond the house. She loved the barn that her granddaddy and his father-in-law had built, and every one of the three ponds, and the woods that took most of the back field. She loved the old-fashioned porte cochere that extended from the side of the house, beneath which she customarily parked her car. She loved the soft white paint that had chipped here and there to show the rose-pink of the bricks of which the house was built, and the red color of the tin roof that formed peaks and gables three and a half stories above the ground. She loved the wide veranda with its fat white columns that graced the front of the house, and the stone path and terrace that led to the rear. She followed that path with her arms full of groceries, allowing the sights and smells and sounds of the place to soothe her jangled nerves. As always, it was good to be home.
“Did you get the pork chops? You know your daddy said he wanted pork chops.” Elisabeth Grant, Rachel’s mother, met her at the kitchen door, her voice fretful as it often was nowadays. Barely five feet tall and weighing maybe ninety pounds, Elisabeth’s physical legacy to her daughter was her build. Other than that, there was little outward resemblance. Elisabeth’s hair, which was short and curly, had once been naturally black, and now was artificially so. Her skin was paper-thin, olive in tone and wrinkled from years of lying in the sun, but her makeup was exquisitely applied and compensated for a good deal. Even when she had no plans other than to remain at home, Elisabeth was always perfectly groomed. Today’s attire was an emerald-green linen shirtwaist dress with tasteful gold jewelry and
matching pumps. Elisabeth had once been a beauty, and traces of it still showed. No beauty herself, Rachel had always felt she had disappointed her mother in that regard. Her coloring and features more closely resembled her father’s.
“Yes, Mother, I did.” Rachel surrendered the groceries to Tilda, who sidestepped Elisabeth to receive them. Tilda, comfortably plump in the stretch pants and trendy oversize T-shirt she wore in defiance of her fifty-two years, had been the Grants’ housekeeper for as long as Rachel could remember. She and her husband J.D., who did general work about the place, were almost family, though they did return to their small frame house in Perrytown each night.
“I would have gone to the store, Mrs. Grant, if you’d told me you needed something.” Tilda’s voice was slightly reproachful as she carried her double burden over to the long counter beside the sink. Rachel was her baby, or rather one of her babies as she had six of her own, and she didn’t like her babies being imposed upon, as she would have put it, by anybody. Not even by Rachel’s own mother.
“You know I needed you here today to help J.D. with Stan, Tilda. The way he is now, I’m just not strong enough to do anything with him.”
“He must be having a good day if he asked for pork chops.” Rachel filched a banana from the bag Tilda was emptying and peeled back the skin. Stan was her beloved father, past seventy now though it was hard to believe. He suffered from Alzheimer’s, which had, over the course of the last eight years, robbed him of both mobility and, to a large degree, reason. Only occasionally now would he emerge from the fog of incoherence in which he dwelled to recognize one of them, or even to talk at all.
“He is. Why, he knew me this morning. He even asked where Becky had been hiding herself. Of course, he’s completely forgotten that she’s married and has the girls.”
Elisabeth bent to extract the big iron skillet from the cabinet beside the stove.
Becky was Rachel’s younger sister, who lived in Louisville with her husband, Michael Hennessey, and their three small daughters. She was their mother’s spitting image, physically and in personality, too. And that, Rachel imagined, was why she was also their mother’s favorite. Elisabeth understood Becky clear down to her toes. Becky had been first a cheerleader, then prom queen, then homecoming queen, and she and Elisabeth shared a keen interest in clothes and men. Rachel, on the other hand, always had her nose in a book and her head in the clouds. A dreamer, Elisabeth had termed her, and the description was not necessarily a compliment. Elisabeth’s partiality no longer bothered Rachel, though it had been a secret and carefully hidden hurt while she and her sister were growing up. But as the pair of them had grown older, Rachel took on the role of Daddy’s girl, joining Stan on jaunts about town and on his favorite fishing trips and exerting herself to learn all she could about the hardware business to please him.
He
didn’t care if she wasn’t a beauty, or get upset if she occasionally got so caught up in a book that she forgot to watch the stove and let supper burn. That special relationship with her father became very precious to her over time, and as it did, Becky’s closeness to their mother had ceased to wound Rachel.
“Did that Harris boy come?” Elisabeth’s voice was full of disapproval as she opened the package of pork chops that Tilda had placed on the counter. Rachel, who now handled nearly everything to do with the store, had not consulted with her mother before offering Johnny Harris a job. Indeed, she had told her mother what she had done only the day before, when she could avoid it no longer. As Rachel had expected, Elisabeth had been horrified at the mere idea of Johnny Harris returning to Tylerville. As for employing him, why, she would sooner hire the devil himself, she said. She was coldly furious with her daughter
over it. Rachel knew that in punishment she would suffer subtle jabs, such as the one about her father asking for Becky rather than herself, for days.
“Yes, Mother, he did.” Rachel took a large bite out of the banana, found she no longer fancied it, and threw it, half eaten, away. “He’s very grateful to us for offering him the job.” And that was a fib if ever she’d told one.
Her mother sniffed. “
We
didn’t offer him a job.
I
never would have done any such thing. It’s all your doing, missy, and it’s you alone who will bear the consequences. He’ll attack some girl, mark my words, or do something else dreadful. He always was that type.”
“I think he’ll do just fine, Mother. Tilda, where’s Daddy?”
“He’s up in the ballroom. J.D.’s got him one of those Elvis tapes he likes, and they’re up there listening to it.”
“Thanks, Tilda. I think I’ll run up and see him. Call me if you need any help, Mother.”
“You know I don’t need any help cooking.” Elisabeth’s cooking ability was her pride and joy. Rachel’s offer had been more in the nature of riposte for her mother’s earlier jab than anything else.
“I know, Mother.” Rachel’s voice gentled, and she smiled at her mother before she left the kitchen and turned left, climbing the narrow backstairs. Her relationship with Elisabeth had always been as much prickles as hugs, but still she loved her. It was hard on her mother, the fate that had befallen Stan. More even than she loved Becky, Elisabeth loved her husband.
Well before she reached the third floor, Rachel could hear the rollicking strains of “Hound Dog.” The ballroom, which was a grand name for what was in essence a large glassed-in sleeping porch that took up about half of the top of the house, was devoid of furnishings and had a hardwood floor without the noise-deadening oriental carpets that warmed the rooms below. Sound was amplified by the room’s bareness. Despite herself—she had never
been a big Elvis fan—Rachel found herself bopping to the beat as she walked along the upstairs hall. The song was infectious. Stan had always loved Elvis and had mourned as if at losing a family member when he died.
The door to the elevator, which they had had installed for Stan and his wheelchair, stood open as she passed it. Later it would take Stan and J.D. down to the first floor, where he would eat and be wheeled outside for his daily walk. Still later, it would bring him back to the second floor to be bathed, given his sleeping prescription, and put to bed. Such was the unremitting routine of his days. Whenever she thought of her vigorous father being reduced to such never-ending monotony, Rachel wanted to weep. So she tried not to think about it.
Just as she had expected as she turned the corner to enter the ballroom, Rachel found that her father was seated in his wheelchair, eyes closed, nodding his head in time to the music. Listening to Elvis’s songs was one of the few pleasures that remained to him. They managed to reach him when nothing else could.
J.D. sat cross-legged on the floor beside Stan, his belly protruding hugely over the waistband of his gray work pants, his lighter gray shirt unbuttoned to reveal the white undershirt beneath. Darker skinned than his wife, he was also more ebullient, with a ready smile for anyone who passed his way. He hummed along with the music, his gnarled fingers drumming a beat on the polished floor. Rachel must have made some sound, because he looked up, grinning when he saw her. Rachel waved at him. Any attempt at speech was almost certainly doomed given the volume of the music.
She crossed to her father and touched his hand.
“Hello, Daddy.”
He didn’t open his eyes, didn’t even seem aware of her presence or of her fingers resting on his. Rachel kept them there for a minute, then removed them, sighing. Not that she had expected any other response. These days it was
enough for her to see him, to know that he was comfortable and well cared for.
Attending to his physical needs was all she or anyone else could do. At least they’d managed to keep him at home. Without J.D., who alone could handle him when he became unruly, and without Tilda to help, they would have had to put him in a nursing home.
Rachel cringed at the mere idea, although Dr. Johnson, Stan’s physician, had warned that institutionalization might yet become necessary as the disease progressed through its last stages. Elisabeth could not even consider the prospect without hysterical tears. They had been married forty-one years.
Stan had once been a big man, over six feet two and about two hundred twenty pounds. He was still physically large, but his illness seemed to be shrinking him. Or perhaps, now that he depended on her instead of the other way around, it was Rachel’s perception of his size that had changed. In any case, she felt a fierce, protective love as she looked down at the few silvery strands of hair that made a poor job of covering his scalp. Aging was never a pleasant prospect, but this disease that took the soul before the body was a hideous thing.
“I’ll be here as long as you need me, Daddy,” Rachel promised silently, and her hand tightened over his.
“Hound Dog” changed to “Love Me Tender,” and at the sweet, sad notes Rachel felt tears threaten. Ridiculous. The only thing crying would do was give her a stuffy nose. Blinking the moisture back, she patted her father’s hand one last time, waved at J.D. again, and turned away. She would change clothes before going downstairs. If her mother was making her famous southern-fried pork chops, a time-consuming process, Rachel had plenty of time to get her thoughts in order before they sat down to eat.
Rachel could faintly hear strains of “Heartbreak Hotel” as she slid into a pair of blue and green plaid shorts and a bright green polo shirt. A pair of white socks and sneakers
completed her outfit. Running a brush through her hair and then fluffing it out with her hand, Rachel surveyed herself in the mirror. For the first time in a long time, she realized, she was really seeing herself instead of just spot-checking her hair and makeup. Then she realized why. Unable to avoid the specter of Johnny Harris any longer, she was subconsciously trying to view herself through his eyes.
“I had a major case of the hots for you in high school. I still do.”
Unbidden, Johnny’s words popped to the forefront of her mind. Rachel’s hand clenched around the brush she still held. Surely he had not meant it. He was just trying to make her uncomfortable for some reason she couldn’t fathom. Certainly she was not the kind of woman who ordinarily filled men with lust. That was one reason she had been so dazzled by Michael. Handsome, brilliant Michael—in love with her. Even at the time, she’d had trouble believing it.
A pang of remembered pain made Rachel grimace. It had been so long ago since he had given her up with a kiss on the cheek and a line about how they were not really suited after all, were they? Her heart had broken, but he hadn’t seemed to realize, or care. She hardly ever thought of Michael anymore. Not, at least, in connection with herself. He was no longer hers to think about. He was Becky’s now. Becky’s husband.
Her thoughts slid away, to a subject that was more immediately troublesome. The notion that she might have inspired a case of the “hots” in a teenage Johnny Harris, who’d been quite a stud, to borrow from her students’ idiom again—well, it was quite simply laughable.
She simply wasn’t the type.
She was thirty-four, almost thirty-five years old, though she supposed she didn’t look it. A lifelong aversion to the sun because she always burned instead of tanned had left her unwrinkled except for a few lines around her eyes. Her figure was slender, but that was the only point in its
favor. Most thirteen-year-old girls had curves she might envy. Her best-kept secret was that she could, and often did, buy her clothes in the preadolescent boys’ department of Grumer’s, the local department store. Her hair was plain medium brown, cut chin length and turned under at the ends to frame a face that was passably pretty, with its delicate even features and oval shape, but rather colorless. Certainly it fell far short of beauty. Her eyes were large and well shaped, with a thick sweep of dark brown lashes, but they were of an ordinary shade of hazel that would mesmerize no man. “Cute” was how she had most often heard herself described. Even Rob, the man she’d been desultorily dating for the better part of the past two years, had called her that.