'It's like she's playing a game of chess with me,' she told him. 'She keeps me at a distance, she won't tell me what I need to know. But today I could swear she was close to telling me something. What? Why didn't she?'
Mike didn't answer.
'No, it's not like chess. This is a game where I don't know the rules. I don't know the objective!'
She had stopped at a light, and the driver in the next car over seemed to be looking at her strangely. Below the level of the window, she gave him the finger.
'Is she steering me toward something, or away from something? Or is she just really ambivalent, changing her mind? What?' Mike didn't answer. She looked quickly over at the empty passenger seat as if she might catch him there if she were fast enough. Of course, it was empty but for her purse. In the rearview mirror she caught a glimpse of her own desperate eyes: madwoman.
'Let's put 'em in a big vat and trample 'em with our bare feet,' Mike said. 'Stain our legs purple to the knees. A New England bacchanal.' They had collected about two handfuls of grapes, and he held them up to the sun and gazed at them. 'Naked among the mashed grapes. An ecstatic, drunken frenzy – '
'All that with a half pint of grapes?'
'Right. The hell with the grapes. Who needs grapes?' He gave her a lusty, wild-eyed look.
They had laughed and pitched grapes at each other. Laughed until his eyes changed, suddenly got very serious with a penetrating realization that she intuited instantly: fesus, I really love this woman. She really loves me. It took her breath away.
Cree slammed on the brakes barely in time to avoid hitting the car in front of her. Mike's face vanished, leaving an aching void. This was dangerous, she decided. You couldn't get sidetracked like that.
Stick to the plan, she reminded herself. She stopped at a hardware store to pick up some gardening gloves. When she returned to the car, she turned on the radio, a country and western station, too loud, and got lucky: not a soupy ballad but a clever, upbeat ditty about lovin' your pickup truck.
After a big rain, New Orleans started up with a sputter and a catch before it regained its momentum. The winds had spread leaves and trash on the pavement, and boughs lay on the residential streets. Where storm drains had clogged, puddles made moats at the curbs. The weather reports announced that the front had swerved farther east then originally expected, and the sky was expected to continue clearing. Still, people paused often to gaze upward, as if skeptical that the weather had passed.
As she'd expected, the Warrens' yard looked battered, its shrubs stooped and blossoms blown. Leaves and twigs littered the front yard, and scatters of petals dotted the grass and stuck, rain plastered, to the pillars.
Again the house was full of the muted din of the remodelers. When Lila led her into the dining room, Cree showed her the gardening gloves she'd bought. 'Let's skip the photos and stuff today – I don't think either of us is up for that. Your yard is a mess. We should go outside and try to spruce things up, don't you think?'
Lila was dressed in a pretty, prim housedress and pumps, and at first she looked dumbfounded by the suggestion. But after a moment she nodded.
'I have to change my clothes,' she said.
Lila led Cree out to the garage, and they brought rakes, pruning shears, a little kneeling bench, and a two- wheeled garden cart out into the lawn. Though the sky was clearing rapidly, the grass was still wet and a pattering of drops fell from the leaves of the live oaks. Lila had put on jeans and canvas tennis shoes and gloves, but now she stood in her own backyard and looked around as if she were dazed.
'I feel like a stranger here,' she said. 'A stranger to my own life.'
'I know the feeling.' Cree took one of the wire rakes and began sweeping the grass.
'This is deliberate, isn't it? Getting me out here? You're thinking this might have some therapeutic value.'
'Yeah. But not just for you, believe me. I am in serious need of some grounding myself.'
Lila nodded. She picked up one of the pruning shears and studied it as she opened and closed it a few times. 'You probably want to know what happened yesterday, at the hospital.'
'Of course.'
'They did all kinds of tests – 1 felt like a lab rat. They don't have all the results yet, but the brain scans were normal. There's still some blood work to come in, but they don't expect anything from it.'
'Are you relieved or disappointed?'
'A little of both.' A wry flicker of a smile moved at the corners of her mouth. 'I think Dr. Fitzpatrick felt the same. He said you'd told him to expect it, though.'
Cree resisted the urge to ask about Paul. Instead, she disengaged a fallen branch from one of the shrubs and put it into the cart, then began sweeping some more leaves together.
After a tentative start, Lila began to work more confidently. Her hands moved deftly among the bent leaves and ragged blossoms, testing, snipping. When given a task to do, Cree thought, they were competent hands whose skillful movements seemed at odds with Lila's habitual uncertainty.
'I had an interesting meeting with your mother this morning,' Cree said after a while.
'Oh?'
'A remarkable woman. Also a hard nut to crack.'
'Yes. She's always been a… forceful personality. But she got more that way after Daddy died. Harder, I mean. Distant. That's how she coped with it.'
Cree nodded. 'Sounds like they loved each other a lot.'
'Oh, for sure. It was something of a famous courtship. Two old families, all that. Very romantic.' Lila smiled at the memory, but then her hands hesitated among the leaves and the smile eroded.
'What was that thought?'
'Oh. Just that it's sad – the year before he died, they were having some problems. I remember her starting to sleep in the other bedroom, and wondering about it. Finally I realized it was because when Uncle Brad died, she was so close to him, she needed to be alone more to deal with her grief. But then when Daddy died, I knew she felt guilty about having been so distant. About letting something come between them during his last days and all.'
'That's pretty perceptive for a girl of, what – fourteen?'
Lila's hands went back to work. 'Once upon a time,' she said, both bitter and wistful. 'But I suppose everybody looks back at some golden era of their lives and wonders where it went.'
Cree stopped raking, startled. 'I used those same words just last night! Talking about my own 'golden era.''
'To Paul?' Lila glanced sideways, caught Cree's expression, and again her smile flickered weakly. 'Don't be surprised. You two – it makes sense you'd be attracted to each other. You… seem to have a lot in common. And he is easy to confide in.' She worked for another moment with determination, then stopped and gave Cree a direct look. 'Are you going to tell me your story?'
'If you'd like me to.'
Lila thought about that briefly, and her confidence faded abruptly'Does it have a happy ending?'
For a moment, Cree thought of contriving what Lila must have needed very badly, a compassionate lie: Sure, I dealt with what happened to me and came through it just fine and so will you. But it wasn't true. It wasn't that easy, couldn't be.
'I don't know what kind of ending it has,' Cree admitted.
They kept working, removing damaged branches and exploded blossoms, raking leaves, picking up twigs. The sun came through more strongly now, drying the foliage and drawing forth the muggy humidity. An occasional jogger went by on the levee path. Cree told her about Mike's death and reappearance, and the way it had changed her. If she couldn't promise a happy ending, she thought, there might at least be some affirmation in hearing someone else's ghost story.
She had hoped it would be easier the second time, but it wasn't. Again she felt things breaking inside, jarring and grinding and rearranging.
They finished up the large, central flower bed and then went to the east side of the lawn to attend to the beds along the fence. Lila didn't say anything for several minutes after Cree finished telling her saga. She was working in a dense azalea, kneeling on her little padded bench with her head bent forward like a penitent.
'Thank you,' Lila said quietly. 'I know it can't be easy. To tell all that.'
'It fucking kills me. Sorry for my language. But I keep thinking it's important. To talk about it. It was you who
