Page 25 of The Lost Hours
I looked down at her, wide crystal blue eyes turned up at me. Her forehead was creased with worry, her lower lip quivering. As much as I knew it would hurt, I squatted in front of her so that I would be at eye level. “It’s an old boo-boo and it’s all better now.” I wondered how much I should tell her, knowing that because she was a young girl being raised around horses, I should leave out the part about how a large horse had caused my injury. Instead, I asked, “Have you seenThe Wizard of Oz?”
Sara nodded emphatically.
“So you know the Tin Man. Well, the doctors put a piece of metal in my knee so that it would work better.” I tapped on it. “See? Right as rain.”
She continued to frown. “It must be rusted because you walk funny. Maybe you need some oil.”
“That’s enough, Sara,” Tucker said as he approached and lifted Sara into his arms.
I stood, my knee stiff, and caught Tucker’s gaze. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “Children . . .”
“It’s all right. She was just curious.” I looked at Sara, who’d gone back to playing with her bracelet, and noticed how awkwardly her father held her, as if he didn’t do it very often. He saw me looking and quickly set her down, her dress twisted and creased in the wrong way. Without thinking, I bent down to straighten it. As my fingers sifted through the tulle and cotton, I had a flash of memory of my grandmother braiding my hair before a big event, her worn hands pressing down my jacket and brushing off any lint.
I stood, feeling dizzy, the memory fresh, the guilt heavy. I’d never remembered her at my events, but she must have been there. Who else would there have been to make sure my riding costume was beyond reproach?
“Are you all right?” Tucker’s eyes had narrowed with concern.
I was spared from answering by Odella’s appearance at the door. “Supper’s waiting on the table. You’d best get at it before it gets cold.”
Tucker moved to assist his grandmother out of her chair and lead her from the room as Helen called for Sara to come take her hand. That left the older girl, Lucy, and me. To my surprise, Lucy walked somberly over to me and slipped her hand into mine.
She spoke quietly, each word pronounced with care as if she were used to being misunderstood. “You can lean on me, if you need to. I don’t mind. I think your knee must still hurt you and that’s why you limp. Aunt Helen’s blind and Mama was . . .” She stopped, and I willed her to continue. “What I meant to say is that we’re used to people with handicaps.”
I stared down at this young girl, amazed at her astuteness and my own ignorance. Since the accident I’d never once thought of myself as handicapped—wounded and victim, sure, but never handicapped. For the first time I saw myself as others must, and the portrait made me cringe.
The dining room with its crimson walls and ornate ceiling was dimly lit, the candles on the table throwing shadows like draped lace. The blinds were closed on the four floor-to-ceiling windows, the enormous crystal chandelier and matching wall sconces that lined the walls losing the battle to encroach upon the darkness.
Tucker sat Lillian at one end of the table and then held the chairs one by one for the rest of us before taking his place at the other end. Odella had already set all of the serving pieces and utensils on the table and we began by serving ourselves before passing the food in a clockwise motion. Tucker was to my left and Lucy on my right. I’d thought she’d need some help with some of the heavier dishes, but she seemed determined to do it all herself without any assistance.
I watched as Tucker placed the food on Helen’s plate and then Sara’s, cutting into small bitefuls everything on both plates before standing to pass the platters on to Lillian’s end of the table.
I studied him surreptitiously from the corner of my eye, watching his serious expression as he sawed a knife into meat, saw his face relax as he addressed Helen, saw the slightly bewildered looks he gave to his daughters. It made me think of the dead Susan, and where she would have fit at the table, realizing with a start that I was most likely sitting in her seat. Maybe that was why he seemed to be avoiding looking at me altogether.
Helen turned to her grandmother. “Malily, it occurred to me while I was talking with Earlene the other day that you might be able to help with some of her research.” She chewed thoughtfully on a forkful of ham. “She’s working on a project for a friend, researching all the families in the area. Anyway, we were in the cemetery looking at Grandpa Charlie’s obelisk and I realized that I really know nothing of your life here at Asphodel before you were married. Maybe if you could share some of that with her, maybe give her some of the names of people that were here at that time, that would probably be a big help.”
Helen’s sightless eyes rested on me for a moment, and although I knew she was blind, I could almost believe that not only could she see me, but she could see inside me, too. And I wondered if she realized how much she and Lucy were alike.
Lillian was on her second glass of wine and her eyes had taken on a faraway look. I figured that Helen had probably realized this and that was why she’d planned her first foray into her grandmother’s past at the dining table.
Lillian’s words were softly slurred, the ending consonants dropping off slightly as if they’d fallen down a short incline. “I was born here at Asphodel. Right up there in the bed I sleep in every night. I was probably conceived in that bed, too, but that wasn’t ever a subject a properly brought-up young lady would ever ask her parents.” A slight twitch lifted one side of her face in a gruesome smile.
She took another sip of her wine. “That was in nineteen nineteen, just a year before women won the right to vote and blacks couldn’t despite the fifteenth amendment that said they should, and well-bred women were expected to have no bigger aspirations than to get married and have children.” She paused, sifting through years of memories. “I was an only child, although it wasn’t for lack of trying. There are four graves in that cemetery of the brothers who didn’t make it past their first year. I never knew my mother. She died when I was eight and before that she was too busy crying over her dead babies.” She stared into her wine. “I suppose that’s why I have no patience for people who can’t move on.”
Lillian stopped abruptly, her gaze flickering over Tucker, who’d gone very still. She drained her glass. “Doctors weren’t sure whether it was the hard births or the grief that finally took her, but I always thought that she was relieved to go.”
Lillian sat back in her chair, holding her empty glass close, and a dreamy look settled on her face as if she’d moved on to a different place, leaving us all behind. She closed her eyes. “It was a lovely time to be alive, to be young. It was just me and Father, and all of my lovely, lovely horses. I rode every day. Even in the rain or when it was too cold or too hot to do much of anything. All of those lovely horses,” she said again, her words slurring.
“What about Grandpa Charlie? You’ve never told us how you met.”
Lucy and Sara were dutifully eating a bit of everything from their plates, including their vegetables, although it looked like most of Sara’s peas were rolling off her plate and onto the starched white linen tablecloth. Although she was sitting on several phone books, her chin was barely over the edge of the table, but still she persevered. She wore a look of determination and I wondered if she’d gotten that from Tucker or Susan.
Lillian picked up a piece of ham on her fork and considered it briefly before returning it to her plate. “My father introduced us. Charlie was an up-and-comer at the bank and Father thought we would be suitable for each other.”
“And you fell in love?” Helen asked.
I glanced over at Helen to see if she’d meant it to sound so hopeful.
“Charles was the most beautiful dancer. He could do all the old dances and the new dances equally well. He’d take me to parties and we’d dance all night until I’d worn a hole in my dancing shoes.”
