At Home in Mossy Creek Read online

  Mayor Ida nodded from the guest to me. “Louise, this is Wang Zhen. Zhen, meet Louise.”

  Oh, lord. “Nihau,” I said. The only word I know in Chinese is hello.

  She laughed. “Actually, I answer to Lisa Wang. So kind of you to open your beautiful house to me for the weekend.” She sounded like an English duchess.

  “Oh—“

  “I was born in Hong Kong,” Lisa said and took my hand. “English was my first language. My family lives in Vancouver.” Her hand felt like a chicken’s foot. Tiny, but rough and muscular. She picked up a duffel bag almost as large as she from the tiny back seat of Ida’s vintage Corvette. Ida and I traded an arched look. Mossy Creek’s mayor was a young fifty, gorgeous, lean and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, yet Lisa clearly impressed her. Even in the chill of a wintry mountain evening Lisa wore a sleeveless athletic shirt and jeans, and her muscles bulged.

  A gymnast, then? I hadn’t seen the circus, but I’d heard their acrobats and gymnasts were made entirely of elastic.

  Then she pulled out a bundle of what looked like six-foot-long ivory sticks. She apparently intended to carry both them and the bag, but I took the duffel. I would undoubtedly bash the porch steps if I tried to carry the sticks.

  She saw me looking at the sticks. “I’m a spinner as well as a gymnast,” she said.

  “Oh.” What on earth was a spinner? Whatever it was, the equipment in the duffel weighed a ton. I managed to make it as far as the front hall, but I didn’t attempt the stairs to the guestroom.

  “May I leave my poles here?” Lisa asked. She leaned them carefully against the wall beside the door.

  “Sure.”

  She picked up the duffel and looked at me expectantly. I led her upstairs.

  “Oh, my, what a beautiful room!”

  It was, actually. Charlie and I had redone my aunt’s old Victorian cottage from top to bottom, nearly killing ourselves in the process. I told you Charlie wasn’t lazy.

  Our new master bedroom bath, kitchen, and den were downstairs. What had been the master bedroom upstairs had a brand new bath next door to it. I had furnished it in Victorian antiques, including a gigantic Lincoln bed.

  From the foot of the stairs, Ida called, “Louise, I’ll leave you and Lisa to get acquainted. Thanks again.”

  “Thank you so much, Mayor Walker,” called Lisa from the doorway of her room.

  I heard the front door close. Now it was just me and this tiny little woman with black hair that hung below her waist. Said waist being about the circumference of my forearm. She moved as though she hadn’t a bone in that teensy body, but I’d seen her muscles. Spinners must apparently be strong enough to kick butt.

  “You must be hungry,” I said. “I admit I have no idea what to feed you, or what your schedule is, or even what you do. Does that sound too awful?”

  “Not at all. Tonight I must rehearse if I can find someplace big enough. As to food, I eat anything.”

  “Even pimento cheese sandwiches?”

  “I have no idea what pimento cheese is, but as I said, I am an omnivore. Like bears.”

  She was going to be the kind of houseguest I prefer. She moved into my kitchen as though she were coming home to her family from college. I pointed out the silverware drawer and the glass cupboard, and made the sandwiches. I made her two. She probably ate like the proverbial horse. Most athletes do.

  “Please tell me what a spinner does,” I asked after she had devoured one sandwich and started on the second. I was ready to start making her a third.

  “This sandwich is wonderful,” she said. “Your South has many wonderful dishes. Your barbecue is different from ours, and I could eat my weight in fried chicken.”

  “In your case, that would be half a chicken.”

  “I weigh more than I look. It is all muscle, you see.”

  “I’d barely noticed,” I said, looking down at my ever-increasing stomach. And boobs. Two of them. Big ones. Was I soon to lose one? I had the crazy thought that if I were on chemo and radiation, I’d probably lose weight.

  “A spinner puts up poles,” Lisa explained, “then spins plates on top of them.”

  Ahah. “Oh, I’ve seen that. You keep running from plate to plate to keep them all going.”

  “We are a bit more complicated. I spin my poles on the soles of my feet and my chin and my forehead and my arms and my belly while I lie on my back. And I spin other objects, not simply plates. We wind it all into a story. The theme of our current show is life. La Vie, in French.”

  “Amazing. I could never even keep a single top going when I was a child.”

  She laughed. “I have been spinning and doing gymnastics since I was three-years old. I have practice.”

  “Three? In Hong Kong?”

  “At first, then in Shanghai when I was five.”

  “Forgive me, but your parents moved from the Crown Colony to Shanghai on purpose?”

  “Not exactly. I moved. They remained. They acquired British passports, you see. We had been planning to move to Vancouver when the Communists took over Hong Kong.”

  “But meanwhile, you went to school in Shanghai? At five? Left your parents?” I’m sure I sounded as appalled as I felt.

  She lowered her head. “I do not say it was not difficult. I saw my parents one week a year, but they wrote me often. They wanted me to succeed, you see, and they knew I had talent.”

  I thought of letting my daughter, Sarah, go off for fifty-one weeks a year at five. I would have slashed my wrists. Lisa sounded casual. “Didn’t you miss them?”

  She sighed and ate another quarter sandwich, then washed it down with iced tea. “Of course. I cried a great deal. It was extremely difficult. I was terribly lonely the first years, but young bones must be made flexible before they solidify or they will not be able to do this.”

  She put down her sandwich, and right there in my kitchen she bent over backwards until her head was between her legs. “The spine, you see. Sooner or later I will grow too old to do that. I am only twenty-seven.”

  I had figured she was maybe twenty. “I couldn’t put my head face-backwards between my knees when I was a fetus.”

  “Ah, Louise, one of my teachers was nearly eighty. She could still do that, but someone had to help her up afterwards.”

  “I can’t even touch my toes.”

  She laughed. Lisa and I seemed to have made an immediate connection. We sat at the kitchen counter while she wolfed down another couple of sandwiches and we split at least a gallon of iced tea.

  She saw the pictures of my family on the wall, so we talked about family.

  She was divorced from one of the backstage crew at the circus. No children. “I would like children before I am too old,” she said. “Every Chinese woman wants at least one son to look after her in her old age.”

  “In this culture it’s the daughters who look after the old folks,” I said. Then I burst into tears.

  “Louise, what have I said?” She slid off her stool and came to me. “You do not feel well?”

  Sometimes it’s easier to talk to a complete stranger. So I told her. Not just about the mammogram, but about my worries about Charlie.

  “But you say he loves you. Surely he would not desert you.”

  “He won’t want to, but he’s totally helpless when it comes to dealing with the scutwork of life. He could never discipline our daughter, either. He throws up at the sight of blood. Everybody told us when we put in the new master bathroom downstairs we needed two sinks. Charlie said we didn’t need but one because we don’t even brush our teeth together. Last year when he got stuck in the toilet—that’s a whole other story—he nearly died from embarrassment even to have me try to get him out. I didn’t think he’d survive having half the fire department dislodge him.”

&n
bsp; Lisa’s eyes grew wider with my every word. I could tell she was dying to ask about Charlie’s getting stuck, but was too polite. “What did he say when you told him about the mammogram?”

  “Good grief! I haven’t told him, and I don’t intend to.”

  “Louise, if you go into hospital, you will have to tell him.”

  “I know that. But not until then.”

  “So you bear this burden alone? How will you continue to be cheerful?”

  “Don’t you say ‘the show must go on?’”

  She continued to shake her head. “He will be very angry that you did not tell him.”

  “Only if I have to tell him.”

  “He will be very angry that you do not trust him. And even more angry that you are sick. I think you have allowed him to believe you are indestructible. He will not like to think you could die.”

  “So this is my fault?”

  “You have spoiled him. Now if worst comes to worst, you must teach him to be alone.”

  “What about teaching myself how to die? How come I even have to train Charlie when I’m about to kick off?”

  “You are not. But do you not see that this is a wake-up call? If you love him, then trust him.”

  I just sighed and fixed her another sandwich.

  Peggy

  HIS NAME WAS Marcel Desjardins, and he was possibly the most beautiful male creature of any genus and species that I had ever seen. He wasn’t tall, but if the Michelangelo David and the Apollo Belvedere were combined and made flesh, they wouldn’t hold a candle to Marcel. His hair was long and waved well below his shoulders, and his eyes were a strange, dark chestnut flecked with gold. I supposed he must shave his body for his act, because so far as I could tell, he had no hair on his arms, not even down. That’s all I saw of him, or expected to see.

  When we were introduced, he bent over and kissed my hand.

  “Madame, you are so kind to take me in,” he said. No French accent, despite the French name. That surprised me. The French generally pride themselves on maintaining their accents even after forty years in the United States. I figured he was probably Canadian, since the accent was nothing like Cajun.

  I simpered. I know I did. I could feel my face turning puce.

  Dashiell, my evil cat, and his three adopted cat children eddied around Marcel’s ankles purring like lawnmowers. They usually hid under the sink with strangers. I explained to Marcel that they are indoor cats. Too many things outside can make mincemeat of them. I also told him about my daughter and granddaughter.

  “Such a beautiful house,” he said. “And the garden! I do miss my garden.”

  The house is an old mock Tudor with dark woodwork and too many bookshelves that hold too many books. It’s shabby, but comfortable.

  “I wouldn’t think you’d be able to have a garden, the way you travel,” I said. I had offered him iced tea or a beer.

  “Tea, please. I don’t drink, except the occasional glass of wine.” He thumped his six-pack abs. “I must keep in good shape. My wife would be extremely annoyed if I fell from the rope and broke my neck before I could get home to her.”

  “Where is home?”

  “Could we sit on your deck? It is not too cold here for the middle of February. You have crocuses blooming. We still have snow.”

  I grabbed my jacket and followed him outside. He sat on the glider, leaned back and seemed to savor the air. “My home is in Montreal.”

  “Your wife doesn’t travel with you?”

  “Usually she does, but we are expecting our first baby in a couple of months. She thought it better not to travel so much.”

  “My dear man, your wife is seven months pregnant and you’re not there?”

  He shrugged. A very Gallic shrug. “One must make a living. I am very good at what I do. Jeanne works in the circus office. She is a chartered accountant. A C.P.A. That’s where we met. She’s on a leave of absence until after the baby comes. Next season, we won’t be separated.”

  “The baby will travel with you?”

  “It is always like that in circus families. Most everyone who is with it is second, third, some even fourth or fifth generation. For us there is no other possible life. By the time I am too old, perhaps I shall have child to take over for me and I can become a coach.”

  “But you have a house?”

  “For the off season. Then I am a gardener. I grow orchids and sweat.”

  “Orchids? I am impressed. I have problems growing zinnias.”

  He slipped off his loafers, then glanced up at me for belated permission. He was wearing heavy socks.

  I nodded. “Although you may get frostbite.”

  “This is practically summertime.”

  “I grew up wearing shoes only during the school year,” I said. “The soles of my feet were tough as leather when I was a child.”

  “Mine, too. I am like a dancer in the air. My feet are always miserable. I remove my shoes every chance I get.” He leaned his beautiful head back and closed his eyes. “Orchids aren’t much more difficult to grow than zinnias, actually, and the blooms last much longer.”

  Having absorbed all my lore about orchids from Nero Wolfe mysteries, I didn’t believe him for a minute.

  “I do have lilac bushes as tall as your house,” he said.

  “Too balmy in Mossy Creek for lilacs, I’m afraid. Our summers are very southern.”

  “But you have a beautiful lawn, and azaleas. I should like to see them in bloom.”

  “Not for at least another month, maybe longer.”

  “Would you mind showing me your yard? Where the flowers will be?”

  I was delighted, if a bit overwhelmed. He, for his part, seemed to be genuinely enchanted by my little walled secret garden, once the site of my poison plants, now seeded with wildflowers that my granddaughter planted in place of the deadly nightshade and death-angel mushrooms.

  He wandered over the yard. “Our garden is very small. This is nearly a farm.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “We do not have such trees as these,” Marcel said, as he patted one of my giant water oaks.

  “I thought Quebec was covered with trees.”

  “Oh, it is, but not these monsters. A great many pines. And no magnolias at all. Nor hollies.”

  Suddenly he took hold of the trunk of the tree and walked up it like a Tongan warrior up a palm tree to sit on a fat branch above my head. I gaped up at him.

  “I loved climbing trees when I was a boy,” he said with a laugh. “Not that much different from climbing a tent pole. A bit rougher, perhaps, and not as straight.” He straddled the branch. “Lovely view, Madame. You should build a tree house for your granddaughter.”

  Now it was my turn to laugh. “I’ve been trying to get a swing hung up for her for nearly a year. My son-in-law never seems to have time to hang the chains, and Lord knows I don’t dare do it. I don’t climb ladders.”

  He casually swung from the branch and dropped at my feet. “Then let that be my housekeeping present to you, Madame. I will be delighted to hang your swing.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t ask you . . .”

  “Please, it would be my pleasure.”

  Actually, I had all the fixings for the swing in my garage. I’d had them for months—heavy chains, the already drilled and painted wooden seat, the eye bolts and such. Since I seldom used the tools my husband left me, the electric drill was always charged, so that was no problem.

  “In a small circus, everyone helps maintain the tents and equipment,” he told me as he hunted up the long bit that would drill through the limb of the tree. “Each performer checks his own rigging. That way, if I fall, the responsibility is mine and no one else’s. We have no performing animals to tend, but we have an enormous quantity of rigging. A
h, this should do it.” He came up with the perfect bit. “A big branch will have to be drilled from both top and bottom.” He hefted the chains. “And this should hold a small elephant. How old is your granddaughter, Madame?”

  “Four-and-a-half.”

  “Then I will find a branch strong enough so that she can swing safely until she leaves for college.”

  “I certainly don’t want anything to break.”

  “We will test it afterwards.”

  “Huh. You can test it. Not me.”

  “Of course you will test it.”

  “Young man, I haven’t been on a swing since I was twelve years old.”

  He shrugged. Another very Gallic shrug. It showed his French background more than his syntax did. “As you wish.”

  I helped carry the tools down my yard toward my largest water oak.

  He pointed. “There. That branch should be perfect.”

  “Lord, no,” I said. “It’s higher than the Empire State Building.”

  Again that shrug. “But the chains you have are more than adequate. The branch is straight and very strong. It will not bend or break.”

  “She’s four-and-a-half, Marcel,” I said. “I was thinking a nice, dinky little swing that barely clears the ground.”

  This time I didn’t get a shrug, I got a frown. “Nonsense. She will grow. She will want to fly . . .”

  “She will fall off and break her four-and-a-half-year-old neck, young man. She’s my only grandchild.”

  “I promise you she will not fly too high. Let me try, Madame. Then if you don’t like it, we’ll pick a lower branch.” He glowered up at the tree as though challenging it to dispute him. “But that is the only truly perfect branch for the balance.”

  I threw up my hands.

  He climbed the tree with the same casual ease he’d used before. Once he’d straddled the branch, he dropped a rope down. I attached the drill and up it went. In a moment he began to drill.

  It was the middle of winter, the sunlight was fading, and I had a barefoot Adonis up in my tree.