The Oleander Sisters

She’d been wearing blue on the four worst days of her life—the day in 1920 that jackass came home drunk and all hell broke loose, the day horrible Ethel Williams sank her claws into Sweet Mama’s son Steve and dragged him to the altar, the Christmas her son Bill and his wife, Margaret, had died in a car crash and the day one year later when she’d stood in the doorway of her café and faced down the KKK with her double-barreled shotgun.

She was standing now in the café on a hot July day in 1969, waving cheerfully at her two departing granddaughters and her great-grandson, but she had the eerie sense of standing smack-dab in the middle of a brisk winter day in the forties with the double barrels of her shotgun pointed at a ragtag group of cowards. She could almost hear their voices, almost see the white hoods.

Through the echo of time, she heard the bell over the café door ringing. Sweet Mama came back to herself in time to see her granddaughters departing. Now, what was it they’d told her to do?

She sifted through a mind that felt like a sieve. Her memories were leaking through the holes so fast sometimes Sweet Mama felt as if she’d wake up one morning and see her past scattered around her on the floor.

Something kept nagging at her, something she ought to remember. Suddenly, it came to her, and she hurried to the kitchen to get the notepad she kept in her voluminous purse.

Sinking into a cane-bottomed chair that Beulah used when she was peeling potatoes, Sweet Mama thumbed through the pages. One was titled “Customers.” Tom and James Wilson were there along with Opal Clemson, the music teacher and Burt Larson, the mailman—every one of them described right down to the roots of their hair.

Sweet Mama found herself shaking again, an old woman with a rapidly fading memory depending on a notebook to keep her straight and wondering how much longer she’d be able to hang on to her secret and fool her granddaughters.

Beulah was another story. Nobody could fool her. When Sweet Mama had first started forgetting things she’d said, Beulah, my mind’s going and you’ve got to help me.

Beulah didn’t ask any questions. That was her way. She just folded Sweet Mama in one of her wide hugs and whispered, I ain’t about to let Mr. Steve and that uppity Miss Ethel put you in a nursing home.

That’s when the Remembering Book had been born. The only trouble was, she often couldn’t get to it in time to bail herself out of public embarrassments. More and more, she had to throw up smoke screens or pretend she was just kidding.

The clock in the café chimed three, and Sweet Mama knew she was already an hour late leaving. If she didn’t get a move on, she wouldn’t make it home before Sis and Emily got back from their shopping trip. Emily would worry and Sis was liable to call for a search party.

She scanned through her book till she found a page titled “Locking Up.” It told how to turn the open sign to Closed, how to find the key to the café on a peg in the pantry, and how to put it in the top zippered pocket of her purse after she’d gone out and locked the front door behind her.

Sweet Mama read the entry twice before she got up enough courage to execute it. Then she gathered her hat and her purse and stood awhile, trying to think if she was forgetting something.

Finally, she ended up at the front door where the key seemed to have outgrown the lock. It took her five minutes to discover she was holding it upside down.

By the time she got to her Buick, she had sweat patches under her arms and a bead of perspiration lining her upper lip. Thank God the key she put in the ignition caused the car to roar to life. Sweet Mama drove out of the parking lot as smooth as if it were 1921 and she was driving her Tin Lizzie, heading to her brand-new bakery with Beulah at her side.

With the windows down, the Gulf breeze got under the brim of her black straw hat, making her feel twenty-seven again and ready to show the Jazz Age that a young divorcée with two little boys could start a business the same as a man, only ten times better if it’s a bakery.

She started to sing, but was shocked at the thin, reedy voice she heard. She and Beulah used to ride along in that Tin Lizzie, singing in harmony as good as the Boswell Sisters, Sweet Mama belting out the alto and Beulah adding her soaring soprano.

Determined not to be depressed on such a beautiful day, Sweet Mama glanced toward the beach. Terns called from sandy knolls and seagulls wheeled over the Gulf and everything was exactly where it ought to be. Sweet Mama didn’t know why Sis worried so much about her driving. She’d lived in Biloxi all her life and knew it from one side to the other.

The usual souvenir shops lined the highway, eventually giving way to a row of waterfront houses. Her own pink Victorian house would be coming up any minute now.

The bridge loomed in front of her, and she eased off the accelerator. Sweet Mama didn’t believe in crossing bridges at full speed. It was a sure way to cause an accident. As much as she enjoyed looking out over the water, she kept her eyes straight ahead till she was over the bridge and cruising down the highway where long-legged storks lifted toward the tops of cypress trees sprouting out of the shallows.

Always a lover of nature, she admired the sight while the Buick hummed along the highway.

Was that the sun already sinking over the water? Where was her street? Where was her house?

Panicked, Sweet Mama eased her Buick into a side road that looked like it didn’t lead anywhere, let alone her house where Beulah would be waiting with a glass of sweet tea. She stumbled out of her car and held on to her hat, searching her surroundings.

It seemed to her the sun was sinking in the east.

Then it occurred to her that she’d been driving along in exactly the opposite and wrong direction.

Frantically, she grabbed her purse out of the car and dug out the Remembering Book. But it was already too dark to read driving directions from the café to her house, and there was nothing written about a bridge to the unknown.

She was lost. And no matter how hard she searched the little notebook in her hand, it wouldn’t tell her how to find the way home.

Seven

DRIVING TO THE BRIDAL SHOP Sis felt as if she were in two places at once, behind the wheel of the car where she was borne along in a rushing torrent of Emily’s chatter and on the beach with the crowd of little boys playing a game of baseball.

“There’s no use counting on flowers from that new rose hedge,” Emily said.

Sis refused to think about the rose hedge till after the wedding. Even when she was in the garden, she skirted around the roses.

“Nothing’s surviving the heat except the oleander and the day lilies,” Emily added. “White oleander will be fine, but maybe I can use some baskets of pink roses to camouflage all that orange.”

His baseball cap was orange, that little boy on the beach who lobbed the ball toward center field and then spewed up a fine storm of sand as he slid into first base. He looked about ten, the age Sis’s son might be...if she had one. If she had a house and a husband and a dog in the backyard. She’d have a large breed, a golden retriever, maybe, or even a Border collie. Her son would call him Boy and play fetch with him in the backyard using a small baseball mitt to match the one she’d used when she was a child.

Her fantasy became part of Emily’s enthusiastic monologue.

“I thought for the music, we’d just move Sweet Mama’s turntable to the back porch and put on a record.”

The little boy in the orange cap was stealing into home. If she’d had a son, he would have done exactly that. He might even have grown up to be a professional baseball player.

“Sis, are you listening to me?”

“I’m listening.”

“I was going to use Judy Garland singing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow,’ but Larry doesn’t like that song.”

Just the mention of that fool’s name had Sis tightening her grip on the wheel.

“Emily, if you want to use that song, use it.”

“After what happened to her, I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”

“Good grief!”

Judy Garland had died last month of a drug overdose. The famous singer’s death had made no impact at all on Sis. Music was just something to fill the days that seemed to go on forever. When had she realized she’d never marry, never have children of her own? When had the door slammed shut to a future that included a man with dark eyes and gentle hands who would hold her close and whisper her real name?

She could almost hear his voice. Beth, Beth, Beth.

“Sis!” Emily grabbed ahold of the dashboard. “Slow down.”

“Why? I’m not five miles over the speed limit.”

“You’re going to whiz right past the bridal shop.”

If Sis had her way, she’d fly past. She’d sprout wings so strong they would carry her and her sister far above the shop with pink-striped awnings where fairy tales were wrapped in pearls and lace and sold to gullible women who expected life to be one big happily ever after.

Wondering if she was being cantankerous or practical or just plain jealous, she parked under the spreading branches of an ancient magnolia tree so huge it shaded three spaces. The only good thing she could say about this shopping trip was that she didn’t have to lock the car. Thank God Biloxi was still that kind of town.

Sis followed her sister into a shop that smelled like ripe pears. Little sachets of the potpourri were piled high in crystal bowls along the glass countertop.

A set of full-length mirrors along the east wall showed her sister, multiplied, surrounded by wedding dresses in an endless sea of white.

When the heart breaks it makes a sound so small there is nothing to show for it except a hand clutched over the chest and a sudden smothering sensation. Was it breaking for Emily or herself, a homely woman who would never catch a husband, let alone have a little boy stealing into home plate?

Feeling guilty and remorseful for her unbecoming jealousy of a sister she loved more than all the would-be suitors in Biloxi, Sis followed Emily into an area of curtained dressing rooms where her sister insisted she try on a bridesmaid’s dress. Pink, for God’s sake. Even worse, it had ruffles.

The mirror confirmed that Sis looked as bad as she’d imagined.

“I look like a linebacker dipped in Pepto-Bismol.”

“Hush up. It brings out some color in your face.” Emily walked around her, admiring the awful dress from every angle. “With some pearls and a touch of lipstick, you’ll be sensational.”

Sis had never been sensational in her life. She didn’t know how she was going to start now, with or without lipstick. She didn’t ask what color. She didn’t even want to know.

“Fine.” She couldn’t get out of the dress fast enough. What did it matter how she looked as long as her sister was finally going to get the wedding of her dreams? “You’re the one who ought to be trying on dresses.”

Emily rifled through the rack and held up a floor-length satin dress.

“I like this one. It’s the perfect dress for the perfect wedding.”

Sis wished she could believe that. But since she’d gotten a glimpse of Larry’s true nature, she felt like they were all in the middle of one of the hurricanes that sometimes swept through the Gulf Coast, blowing away everything in its path.

“The dress is lovely, Em. I’ll help get you zipped in.”

“No, no. I can do it by myself.”

Emily clutched the dress to her chest, and for an instant, she wouldn’t even look at Sis. Emily had ocean eyes, a blue so deep it could hold the endless moods of the sea, every one of them reflected in a glance. What was she trying to hide?

“I’m fine, Sis. You wait out here.”

She sank into an overstuffed chair covered in hideous-looking pink chintz wondering what that skunk had said or done to her sister now. Since that awful dinner, Emily hadn’t brought him back to Sweet Mama’s, and he certainly hadn’t shown his slick face in the café. Even worse, Emily, who told her everything, had told her nothing of any importance since that night.

By the time her sister reappeared, Sis was biting her nails down to the quick.

“What do you think, Sis?”

“It’s beautiful.”

“I think it has too many sequins on the bodice.” Emily twisted this way and that in front of the mirror, viewing the dress from all angles.

“Okay. I’ll help you get out of it and you can try on another one.”

“No. You wait here. I want to surprise you.”

Emily selected three more dresses off the racks and disappeared once more into the dressing room while Sis sat there wondering what was taking so long and what in the world was wrong with sequins.

“What about this one?” Emily was in a getup with long, satin sleeves and a tight bodice.

“Can you breathe in that thing?”

“You think it’s too tight?”

“No, I just think you ought to be comfortable at your own wedding.” Emily’s face fell. Had Sis hit a nerve? “But what do I know?”

“I have two more I want to try.”

If the dresses had those silly little buttons in the back like the one she was wearing they’d be there till Judgment Day. And maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea, considering who would be waiting for her sister at the altar.

“Hey, Em,” she called. “Before the wedding, why don’t I take you and Andy somewhere?” Maybe if Emily had some time away from Larry, she’d come to her senses. “Maybe up the Peabody in Memphis so Andy can see the ducks?”

“We’re going camping in the backyard tonight. That’s enough.”

Sis sighed. It was bad enough to keep fighting a battle she couldn’t win. Sitting still for so long in a shop filled with things as breakable as her sister made the situation even worse.

“Need any help in there, Em?”

“No. I’m not even going to zip this one. It’s too pink.”

“I thought you wanted pink.”

“Not this pink. I just don’t want white, that’s all. It doesn’t seem appropriate.”

Emily’s sensitivity to her so-called scarlet past made Sis want to smack somebody. Just about anybody would do.

In a whisper of blush-colored silk that looked like the underside of a camellia, Emily emerged from the dressing room and stood in front of Sis with her yellow hair glowing under the lights and her mouth turned into a shy smile.

“How do I look?”

Beautiful and breathtaking—even happy—were the words that would come to mind if you didn’t know Emily. But Sis had seen how Emily beamed every time she glanced in the direction of her son. There was something amiss here, something as subtle as an undertow in the Gulf you wouldn’t notice until it had swept you out to sea.

Sis looked beyond the swirling skirts, beyond the bodice beaded with seed pearls, beyond the tiny, long-sleeved lace bolero that covered Emily’s arms and shoulders. And that’s when she saw it, the darkening skin of her upper arm.

She leaped up and grabbed her sister’s arm, leaned close for a better look. It was definitely a bruise. Sis had the sensation of looking into a chasm, one so deep and wide it would swallow them all.

“Em, what is this?”

“It’s nothing.” Emily pulled her arm away, but Sis pushed her sister’s sleeve back until she had uncovered the mottled discoloration of a fading bruise.

“How’d you get this?”

When Emily didn’t want to answer a hard question, she got so still you could pass right by and hardly notice her standing there.

“You know I won’t stop till I find out, Em.”

“It was an accident, Sis. Really. For Pete’s sake.” Emily pulled away and pushed her sleeve over the bruise. “I was going down the stairs too fast and fell against the banister. You know how easily I bruise.”

Emily was lying. Sis could tell by the way her sister wouldn’t look into her eyes.

If rage were a country, Sis would be China. This was her baby sister, the one Sis had loved and fought for, even to the point of cornering the Bible school teacher at Biloxi Baptist Church and threatening to beat the snot out of her if she didn’t put a star on Emily’s chart.

Looking at her now, Sis wished she’d taught Emily to cuss and fight and stick up for herself. She wished she’d never let her baby sister believe the world was a wonderful place where there would always be a big sister to make somebody give her a star.

“Let’s get out of here, Emily.” Sis jerked her car keys out of her purse, still so upset they clattered to the hardwood floor.

“I’ve got to pay for the dresses, and we haven’t even found anything for Sweet Mama and Beulah.”

“You can’t marry this man, Emily. Don’t you see that?”

“I’m going to, Sis, and you’re wasting your breath if you try to stop me.”

Emily swept past her and began going through a rack of dresses underneath a sign that said Mother of the Bride. While Sis was marshaling her next argument, a salesgirl in a designer dress and pearl earrings approached Emily.

“May I help you?”

“Yes. I’d like something for my grandmother in rose.”

Feeling helpless, Sis sat back in the ridiculously frilly chair and watched as her sister continued to barrel toward disaster. Even worse, she felt like an outsider looking in as Emily selected dresses for Beulah and Sweet Mama without even turning to ask Sis’s opinion.

At what point should a big sister let go of the little sister she’s cared for all her life?

* * *

Emily glanced at Sis waiting in that lovely pink chintz chair with her brow furrowed and her face stormy. Suddenly, she had the strangest sensation that she was standing in the bridal shop alone. The salesgirl faded until she was nothing more than a shadow, the rack of dresses vanished and even the chair Sis was sitting on disappeared behind a cloud of panic that descended over Emily.

Still clutching the dress she’d picked out for Beulah, she replayed that scene with Larry. It had been awful and unexpected, the kind of shock you’d get if you walked into your bank to withdraw money for a vacation and found yourself facing a robber with a gun.

If Emily were more like Sis, smart and savvy, she’d have seen the argument coming. She’d have taken notice that Larry’s silence in the car coming home from the dinner at Sweet Mama’s was a signal of a tumultuous inner landscape.

But, no, she marched into her house and straight up the stairs to put Andy to bed. Happy because her fiancé was waiting patiently in the new recliner he’d bought for them. She was even singing, for goodness’ sake, totally unaware of the tornado brewing in her own family room.

Andy had wanted a bedtime story, and she read from The House at Pooh Corner, a tale about Heffalumps and Woozles and Jagulars that satisfied her son’s craving for adventures of every sort. She smiled as she read, thinking that soon Andy would have a new daddy to read these stories with him.

After the story, Andy said his prayers, blessing everybody he could think of, including the astronaut he called Nell Arms Strong and the teddy bear he called Henry, whose fur was almost completely loved off. As always, she gave her full attention to Andy’s bedtime ritual. The great thing about Larry was that he understood she would always put Andy’s needs before her own, that she would never shirk being a mother just because she was getting married.

She tucked Andy in, snapped off the light and went back down the stairs. Larry was waiting for her, standing beside the fireplace, holding a silver-framed picture in his hand.

“What is this?” he asked.

It was a picture of Mark in his high school football uniform, his smile so like Andy’s her heart broke a little.

“Goodness, you’ve seen that before. It’s just Mark.”

“I know who it is. What I don’t know is why it’s on your mantel.”

“Because of Andy.”

After she got engaged, she’d tried moving all the pictures to his room, but Andy got so upset over the change, she put them all back.

“You keep pictures of the coward who wouldn’t even marry you and give his son a name?”

“That was my fault. Not Andy’s.” Her face flamed and her voice got squeaky the way it always did when she felt ambushed. Emily hated that about herself. Why couldn’t she be more like Sis? She reminded Emily of those sturdy, indestructible tugboats that could plow through all kind of water to guide ships safely into port. “I want my son to know his daddy.”

“Worship, you mean.” Larry banged the picture down so hard it rattled the brass candlestick on the mantel. “Just look at all this. Your whole house looks like a damned shrine.”

He stalked around the room, snatching her treasures off end tables and shelves, the snapshot of Mark and Emily on the beach that night she’d finally lost her virginity to him, the one they’d taken in Sweet Mama’s backyard in front of the rose hedge before he found out he was going to be a father and Emily found out he’d rather join the army than marry her.

Had it been because he was young and scared? Or had it been because she was a girl who couldn’t hang on to her morals because the moon was full and the temptation too great?

“Larry, stop it!”

She tried to take her pictures and he grabbed her arm.

She’d never meant for Sis to see the bruise, never meant to be the cause of the little vertical lines that now made a deep groove in her forehead. If her sister weren’t careful, that line would become permanent, and then all the Pond’s cold cream in the world wouldn’t be enough to remove it.

Emily hated that most of all, that she was the cause of Sis’s distress. There was no need for her to fret. Larry had been so sincere in his regret, so humble and sweet that Emily had kissed him on top of the head the way she did Andy. Besides, he had a point. What man would want to sit down in his den and stare at pictures of the man who had so easily taken what Emily ought to have saved for her marriage bed? What man in his right mind would want reminders that his wife was tarnished?

She’d move the pictures to Andy’s room. That was all. Problem solved. Andy would pout for a while, but he’d get over it.

How could she get Sis to see that everything was going to be all right? It really was. As soon as she was Mrs. Larry Chastain, her son would have a father and she could hold her head high. And this fall, when Andy started school, nobody would dare call him names. Not that they had, at least not in her hearing. But she’d rather be swallowed up by the Gulf than be the cause of somebody calling her son illegitimate.

Emily gathered up the skirt of the wedding dress she still wore and headed toward the dressing room. The gown was buttery soft, the blushed color of the sky just as the sun peeks over the horizon. Emily had always loved that time of morning, a new day where birds sang in the gardens, the air smelled fresh and anything at all might happen, something so wonderful you’d find yourself stopped in your tracks, no matter what you were doing, just standing there smiling because it felt so good to be alive.

Her optimism restored, Emily got back into her clothes and paid for her purchases. Sis was still sitting in that pink chair, morose as ever.

“Are you coming, Sis?”

When she didn’t reply, Emily marched to the car, her arms full of purchases and her back stiff. She had her pride.

By the time she’d stowed her packages in the trunk, Sis had come out of the shop and climbed behind the wheel. Through the rear window, Emily watched her reach into the car pocket for a cinnamon candy. Sis always did that when she was upset.

Wishing she could think of something to lift her sister’s mood, Emily crawled into the passenger seat. The sun was setting, turning everything in its path a rosy hue. Still, the dead quiet as Sis drove along stole Emily’s satisfaction with the view. When she and Sis were together, talk flowed continuously between them, as effortless as waves lapping against the shore.

Finally, her sister sighed, and an overwhelming tenderness rose in Emily.

“Emily, do you love him?”

“Oh, Sis...” Emily turned to face the Gulf. How could she explain to her sister that sometimes you don’t get what you want; you learn to want what you can have?

“You don’t have to marry him, you know.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Just because the dresses are in the trunk doesn’t mean you can’t back out.”

The sun dipped lower, shading the inside of the car purple, but even the shadows couldn’t hide Emily’s determination as she turned back to face her sister.

“Larry’s willing to overlook my past, Sis.”

“But you’ve survived all that, Em. The worst part is over.”

It was true that the whispers and a reputation in tatters no longer clung to her as thick as pollen from the mimosa tree near Sweet Mama’s rose hedge, but what of Emily’s dream? As long as she could remember, she’d always wanted a home where the family room rang with children’s laughter, and the kitchen smelled so fragrant with yeast-rising bread her husband would nuzzle her neck.

“Sis, I won’t have Andy go through what I did.”

“Things are different now. Besides, that’s no reason to marry the first man who comes along.”

“Larry’s not perfect, but neither am I.”

“You’re as close as they get.”

“Good grief, Sis. You know I’m not. I’m just a woman who is lucky enough to have found somebody to marry me.”

“There are plenty of really wonderful men out there who would worship the ground you walk on.”

“Then why haven’t you found one?”

Sis set her mouth in a straight, hard line, a sure sign she wasn’t going to get into a discussion about her future.

Emily remembered the first boy her sister had ever dated, a pimply faced redhead named Glen Woods. Watching her sister dress for the date, Emily’s six-year-old heart longed to be all grown-up so she could wear stockings and high heels and paint her lips pink. She remembered Sis’s prom date, too, a boy so tall he almost had to stoop to get through the doorway. Sis had worn a green taffeta dress that made her look like a movie star. Emily used to sneak into her sister’s room and sit on the floor of her closet just so she could feel the cool taffeta between her fingers.

One day Sis caught her, but she hadn’t been mad.

“What are you doing in my closet, sweet pea?” she asked.

“It smells like you.”

Emily still loved to be near her sister. It was not the scent of green taffeta that drew her now, but something more potent, more substantial. If courage and loyalty had a name, it would be Sis.

Watching her sister drive along tight-lipped, Emily couldn’t remember the last time Sis had dated, let alone worn a pretty dress. Thank goodness her wedding would remedy that. For one day, at least, Sis would be feminine and frilly. And maybe, just maybe, that might set her to thinking about making a few changes in her life. Why, Emily would bet if Sis started wearing pretty clothes and letting her true heart shine through, she’d attract a really nice man like Larry.

Emily’s question still hung in the air between her and her sister.

“See! You can’t even answer that,” Emily said. “Now that Jim’s home and I’m getting married, you can start taking care of yourself for a change.”

“Good God, Emily. Is that why you’re getting married? So I’ll be free?”

“I just want to be happy, that’s all.” Emily reached over and squeezed her hand. “Be happy, Sis. For all of us.”

The list of things that bothered Sis was so long, Emily wondered if her sister had been born with a defective gene, one that would forever cause her to look on the gloomy side of life. She could hardly wait until the wedding. That was going to change everything.

She settled back into her seat, and watched for the first glimpse of the pink house. She couldn’t wait to show Sweet Mama and Beulah their dresses. Beyond the avenue of stately live oak trees, the house suddenly came into view.

Beulah was waiting for them on the front porch. Picturing a welcoming smile and a cool pitcher of sweet tea, Emily leaned forward as Sis parked. But it was not a smiling Beulah that lumbered down the steps toward them.

Both sisters barreled out of the car.

“Lord God. I’m glad y’all are here! Jim’s done disappeared and Lucy never made it home.”