All About Evie Read online

  There have been a number of long-term boyfriends for Aunt Camellia. “I like romance, and there is nothing wrong with bringing a new spiritual romantic partner into your life, regularly, every three years or so for a new physical and mental awakening. Tra la la.”

  Aunt Iris is a botanist. She traveled the world for decades, studying plants and flowers through her job as a university professor. Her husband of forty years, Arvid, was with her when he died in Kenya of a heart attack, and she’s missed him every day since. Her love of photographing flowers came from Lucy. She photographs them from under the stem, or with half the flower in the frame, or drooping. They’re lovely, but people always stop and stare and try to figure the photo out. Somehow the flowers look emotional, sad or alone or joyous, or as if they’re going to straighten up and talk to you.

  Even their business reflects Grandma Lucy. The inside of Flowers, Lotions, and Potions is painted pink, the ceiling a lighter pink. They play country music, rock, or classical depending on their mood. In the center is a round antique table where a huge bouquet is always flourishing.

  They’ll hang tiny people dressed in ethnic clothing from branches stuck in the middle of a bouquet of sunflowers. A sign will read, “Let’s make our world welcoming.” Or they’ll hang red Valentine hearts from the ceiling in front of a wildflower display, with photos of their Hollywood boyfriends attached: Jimmy Smits. The Rock. Keanu Reeves. Robert Redford. Denzel Washington. Morgan Freeman. “Who Is Your Hollywood Boyfriend?” a sign says, and people are invited to write down names on hearts.

  They might have a pink tulip display, but then they’ll have birth control packets attached to bamboo shoots. They’ll make a sign that says, “This Is Birth Control Awareness Month. Remember That Health Insurance Pays for Viagra, So It Should Pay for Your Birth Control! Call Your Senators and Representatives Today!”

  They’ll make “political statement bouquets” before an election. Two years ago they hand-painted a lovely sign with red letters next to a calla lily bouquet. It said, “Don’t Vote for a Dick.” The person running was named Richard. He lost.

  A minister protested about one of their flower displays because it was titled “The Glories of Being a Feminist.”

  “Feminism is a threat to marriage,” he intoned, so piously.

  “A man who wants to dominate and control his wife is a threat to marriage,” my mother snapped at him, his quiet, cowed wife standing beside him. “Pretty soon the wife won’t take it anymore and she’ll leave her balding, paunchy, middle-aged husband for someone smarter and handsome.” She eyed the middle-aged minister’s bald head and bulging stomach. “It does get tiresome in bed to sleep with a man who has a medieval attitude about women.”

  The quiet, cowed wife then laughed to her sanctimonious husband’s surprise.

  My mother and aunts say they’ll always be together, “unless,” as Aunt Camellia says, “I find another lover. Then you two are going to have to leave, or at least move to the barn when he spends the night so I don’t have to worry about you listening in. I should make a lotion called Sexy Lotion. Or Nighttime Naughtiness. Or, simply, Lust.”

  “It would sell,” Aunt Iris said. “Sounds like it’ll appeal to a carnal audience, particularly to people like us in our horny years.”

  “You could make a lot of money,” my mother said. “Maybe I’ll find a lover, too. Sorry, dear.” She glanced at me.

  “It’s okay, Mom.” My dad had been gone a long time. She deserved a lover.

  “I think I’m up for a lover,” Aunt Iris said. “It’s unlikely I’ll get pregnant, no matter how exuberant I get with my new man. But if I did get pregnant, I would know it was an act of God and I would know that the second coming of Jesus Christ was in my uterus. I would then act accordingly and stop drinking wine and scotch and I would stop smoking an occasional cigar and I’d quit eating pie for dinner and eat more carrots. God,” she groaned, “that sounds awful.”

  “I’d love to see you knocked up.” My mother laughed. “White hair and a huge stomach.”

  This started a conversation on getting pregnant at seventy and how a body would hold up.

  They’re hilarious.

  They are their mother’s daughters, and Lucy’s love for them burns brightly, still shining from every inch of her magnificent island garden.

  * * *

  Every year I fill a number of pots on my front porch with white geraniums right when summer is starting. I like white, and the white geraniums look sharp next to two white roses I have on either side of my porch.

  I couldn’t find my trowel, so I headed over to the greenhouse. I knew I could find one in there. My aunts and mother were keeping lights on in the greenhouse because they were growing more seedlings, as usual. And orchids. They love orchids. They love exotic flowers, too, the ones you’d find in Africa or Hawaii or Thailand, so they needed warmth and lights.

  I opened the door. Inside the greenhouse, right in the middle, there’s a circular table with a mosaic top. My mother and aunts made the mosaic together. It’s the three of them, three sisters, only they’ve turned themselves into fairies, wearing silver and gold wings and flowered hats, sitting at a table drinking tea and eating pink cake. They are quite artistic.

  There are four black iron chairs with red pillows around the table. They also have a shelf filled with books, poetry, mugs, and art supplies.

  There were seedlings, pink plumeria, birds-of-paradise, yellow hibiscus, and orchids. I stopped to admire the orchids, the lavender, pink, pure white, purple, coral, scarlet, and butter yellow colors that blended right in the middle to make flower miracles.

  I headed toward the back where I knew they had a bucket of tools. Then I stopped. Right by the lights.

  Whoa.

  Oh, whoa.

  I said some bad words. I could not believe this. I put my hands to my head.

  It’s like dealing with rebellious teenagers sometimes, it really is.

  * * *

  “I want to give you this book.” I held out a heavy coffee table book on Italy to the couple in front of me. She looked to be about seventy, her husband about seventy-five.

  “I beg your pardon?” the husband asked.

  “I want to give this to you. I overheard you talking about wanting to see Italy one day, and I think you should have this book. It’s on me. I’m the owner here, and I want you to have it. No charge.”

  They glanced at each other in confusion. Was she serious? Should we do it? Is it wrong to take it? Should we pay her?

  Take the book, I thought. Take it. Book the trip you’ve always wanted to go on.

  I turned the pages of the book and showed them Italy. Venice. Rome. Florence. I showed them photos of mountains and streams, charming villages and ancient cities, pizza and wine. “Please. Take it.”

  “Oh, we couldn’t,” the husband said, his voice gravelly, his smile gentle. “We’ll pay for it, if you think we should have it that much.”

  “I insist.” Take the book. “Maybe you should plan that trip to Italy.” I smiled. Encouragingly. Hopefully.

  The wife smiled. “Herman. Maybe we should.”

  Herman’s eyes lit up. “Maybe you’re right, honey.”

  “We’ve always wanted to go. We’ve talked about it for fifty years. The kids even say we should go.”

  “We like pasta,” Herman said. “And we like wine and bread, Rubina.”

  “It’s our time, honey,” Rubina said softly. “Our time. Six kids. Decades of work. We should go.”

  They smiled at each other. Herman raised his eyebrows at her. She nodded her head back. They walked out with a mystery for Herman, a biography on Abe Lincoln for her, and my free Italian book.

  They came back in the store three days later and bought two travel books on Italy. They were so excited. “We’re going,” the wife gushed. “We called a travel agent and we’re leaving in one week.”

  The husband rocked back on his heels. “We’re old, but we’re not too old.”


  “We’re young enough to have an Italian romance, right, Herman?”

  He laughed.

  “Thank you,” they both said to me.

  “You pushed us to jump on the dream,” Herman said.

  “And now we’re going to Italy!” Rubina raised her fists in victory. “For one month!”

  I bagged their purchases as we chatted. They looked at each other with such love. How many people get that?

  Herman would be dead soon. I saw his body in my premonition, wracked with disease in the hospital. He would die during the Christmas holidays. I saw a tree in the background, the stockings, and how he had collapsed.

  Rubina would have the memory of their Italian trip forever. That meant something.

  * * *

  That night I had dinner with my mother and aunts. We sat on their back patio, pink, white, and red roses soon to be in full bloom like a wave of glory on the trellis above. I could not bear to bring up the dreaded, ridiculous subject. I was confounded that I had to bring it up at all. It had been a long day at the bookstore, then I’d come home and taken Shakespeare and Jane Austen on a ride. I was not up to it. I sighed.

  Aunt Iris told me, “When we were younger I took off my bra and swung it around my head and launched my belief in feminism. Equal rights, that’s all feminism means. Equal rights for women.”

  “That was a wild time,” my mother said. “Protests. Marches. Demonstrations.”

  “What?” I put down my fork.

  “We danced and took off our shirts and drank too much and sat and talked with other people and learned from them,” Aunt Camellia said, flipping her white curls back. “We launched our feminine enlightenment. We grasped our own freedom, our power, our voices.”

  “You never told her about all this?” Aunt Iris said.

  “Not in graphic detail. I am her mother,” my mother said. “The sixties were an uncontrolled, changing, revolutionary time.”

  “And amidst all that,” Aunt Camellia said, “we had to dance. We had to celebrate. And we had to get angry at what was going on.” She raised her fist and shook it.

  “We had to sing,” my mother said. “And find ourselves. Find ourselves within a society that had repressed women. We had to find our place and our role and what we wanted, not what we were told to want.”

  “We had to grow and learn and change and think,” Aunt Iris said. “We had to break barriers. We had to deal with men who wanted to keep us down, to keep us in traditional roles that would smother us, keep us from becoming who we wanted to become.”

  “I never knew this,” I said, as they chatted on about Vietnam. Marches they participated in. Civil rights. Social issues.

  “We learned about our sexuality during that time,” Aunt Iris said. “We finally talked about that taboo subject. Who controlled our bodies? Us, or a man who had control over us? We learned we weren’t bad girls for liking sex. So many of us had been raised in a puritanical era that said if you had sex before marriage you were a slut. It was very damaging, misogynistic, and cruel.”

  “It led to women feeling horrible about themselves,” Aunt Camellia said. “Me included, when I was younger.”

  “So I shed my fear of sex,” Aunt Iris said. “And I walked away from the ‘good girl rules’ of sex, which were written by patronizing, paternalistic men who lived by a double standard. Being a ‘good girl’ was so dreary, so dull. By the way, I’m not going to tell you which band leader I slept with during a three-day concert even if you beg.”

  “Who was it? I’ll beg!” I said. “Totally willing to beg.”

  “Why should I tell you?”

  “Because I’m curious. I shouldn’t be. But I am. I want to know.”

  She raised her eyebrows at me, then she tilted her head and looked proud of herself. She told me whom she’d slept with.

  “You’re kidding.” I leaned forward. He was famous.

  “No. I did. It was fun. He wanted to see me again.”

  “Did you?”

  “No. Because the next night there was another band, and I slept with another man in that band.”

  “Who?” My gosh. What was going on here?

  “Why should I tell you?” Aunt Iris asked, one eyebrow lifting.

  “Same reason. I’m curious.”

  She told me.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. Why do you keep asking me if I’m kidding? Do you think I’m lying, young woman?” She tsked. Then she grinned, then tried not to grin, then grinned again.

  “Romantic memories,” Aunt Camellia gushed.

  “I think it was lustful memories,” my mother said.

  “Romance. Lust. Whatever.” Aunt Iris moved a hand back and forth. “I’m glad I have them.”

  “Those memories are delicious,” Aunt Camellia said. “I still get a kick out of my love affairs here and there.”

  “They make you smile when you go to sleep at night,” my mother said.

  “This has been a surprising and entertaining conversation, and I’ve learned a lot about you three,” I said. There is so much that we don’t know about our own mothers and aunts. They were younger, they were us, and yet . . . we know only what they’ve chosen to share with us, to talk about.

  “No one is who you think they are,” Aunt Camellia said. “We all have different sides to us, and some sides we hide from everyone. We’re different people at different times in our lives, too. Plus”—she winked—“there are the secrets.”

  “All women have secrets,” Aunt Iris said. “Some juicier than others.”

  “Let’s talk about . . .” I named the rocker she slept with. “Was he . . .”

  “Oh yes.” She rolled her eyes. “He was heavenly. Totally worth it. I still have his records. You know that song ‘Iris on the Wind’?”

  I nodded.

  She raised her eyebrows at me.

  Oh, my goodness.

  * * *

  Torrance needed more books, his surgery keeping him housebound, so I had to go by the house with all the memories again. On my way to Torrance’s, I turned my head away so I wouldn’t have to see that abandoned, falling-down home, but on the way back to town, it was as if I couldn’t not look. I felt my eyes fill with tears, and I stopped across the street.

  The yellow was faded, the white trim dirty, the green door tilted. I wasn’t surprised that no one new had bought the home. What happened there couldn’t be erased, it was part of our island’s history. More tears spilled out as if they’d been waiting for me, waiting for a weak moment so the grief could sneak out. Because that’s what grief does. It sneaks out on you when you’re having a weak moment.

  So much laughter in that house, so much fear, so much violence.

  So much blood.

  My fault.

  * * *

  Early Wednesday evening, after a busy day at the bookstore, the summer sun headed on down amidst soft pink and orange streaks, I checked on all my furry family members. I was in a light blue summer dress that stopped mid-thigh with eyelet trim and blue earrings made from silver hammered metal. I had matching silver hammered metal bracelets on. I like to dress nice in case I run into Marco in town or at my bookstore, oh, be still, my foolish beating heart.

  I slipped off my sandals and pulled on my red boots to take care of the animals.

  Jane Austen and Shakespeare hurried right on up to the fence for their apples, but the goats, Mr. Bob and Trixie Goat, were outside of their pretty goat home, staring at me, wagging their tails. They were between two rows of black-eyed Susans and sunflowers. They grinned, the bells on their collars ringing.

  “How did you get out, Houdinis?” They are insufferable. I have no idea how they escape their pen and leap the fence. None. They wanted to be petted, and I gave them some alfalfa, then I tried to get them to go back into their home. They refused. I chased them. They outran me, then turned to taunt me. I grabbed the alfalfa and a handful of hay, threw it in their yard, and they scampered in and I locked the gate. They’re not that b
right, just bright enough to escape.

  The cats wound themselves around my feet, popping in from all over the property as if they were transmitting through cat radar that I was home. I went over to the lambs’ homes, and they all clipped on over, right in line: Padre, Momma, Jay Rae, Raptor, and The TMan. I pet their heads and said hello.

  Butch and Cassidy bounded out of the house through their dog door, tongues wagging. “Hi, guys,” I said. “Where’s Sundance?”

  As if they knew what I was asking, they started barking and running toward the house, then back to me, then running toward the house. I ran behind them, past the wild flowers and the verbena and Jupiter’s-beard, knowing something was wrong. This had nothing to do with a premonition, but you know to follow a dog who is barking and turning around to make sure that you’re following.

  And there was Sundance. Groaning, on his side, panting, on my porch. He obviously had been trying to make it down the steps, probably to say hello to me.

  “Sundance,” I said, getting on all fours, feeling my eyes fill with tears. “Sundance, honey.”

  He panted, then grunted, and his eyes rolled back. “Oh no. Oh no.” This was bad. I picked him up and ran toward my truck, tripping at his weight. Sundance is a big, heavy, furry dog, and I love him, but he’s built like a dog tank.

  I had to put him down on the ground to open the passenger door. Butch and Cassidy both licked him, the cats about ten feet behind. They obviously did not do well with emergencies.

  I gently put Sundance in the front seat, then ran around and jumped in the driver’s seat. “It’s okay, Sundance,” I said, my voice breaking, petting his golden furry head, his stomach heaving up and down, his eyes wide with fear. “It’s okay.”

  I drove down our long driveway to Robbins Drive, then down the winding street through the main part of town, past the blue bay and my yellow bookstore on the left and into the hills, then back out toward the ocean. I turned at Marco’s driveway, the sun headed down when I pulled in front of the clinic. “Hang in there, Sundance, it’s okay.”