Elaine Hussey - The Oleander Sisters

“Oh, boy. When I fly to the moon, I can see my daddy up there in the stars.”

If Sis were in her sister’s shoes, she’d never have painted Mark Jones as a hero. In her book, there was nothing heroic about leaving a pregnant girlfriend to face the fallout in a Bible Belt society. But what did she know about love and children? She’d never had either.

“Do you think I’ll see my daddy, Aunt Sis?”

“Maybe.”

Andy got that little boy skeptical look that said I know you’re going to break my heart with the truth but I love you enough to stand here and smile while you do it.

“If you look with your heart, and maybe wear a special pair of glasses.”

“What kinda glasses?”

“The kind I’ve got back home in my dresser drawer.” It was an old pair of sunglasses, red with white polka dots and cat-eye frames. “Every astronaut ought to have a pair. I’ll give them to you.”

Andy clambered out of the box, then raced to the base of a live oak and dug a while in the dirt. When he came back, he handed Sis a white rock the size of a hen egg, along with a good-size chunk of soil.

“You the bestest, Aunt Sis. This is for you.”

“Thank you, Andy.”

“It’s a magic rock.”

“What does it do?”

“Wish real hard and rub it. See? Like this.” He put his grubby little hand on the rock and rubbed with all his might. “Then your wish’ll come true.”

Sis kissed the top of his head, which smelled like sunshine and salty sea air and optimism.

“I’ve got to get back inside, but you keep up the good work, Andy.”

Grinning, he made a fist and bumped it against hers.

“Later, ’gator,” he said.

“After a while, crocodile.”

Before she got to the back door, she rubbed the rock in her pocket. Just in case it might still contain a little boy’s belief in magic.

* * *

That afternoon Sis left the café early, and if you looked close enough you’d see a cloud of anxiety over her head as dark as a flock of blackbirds. You’d see a woman who has lost her moral compass, one who stopped seeing in black-and-white the minute she dug under the rosebushes.

Driving by the seawall as familiar as the peaches in Sweet Mama’s Amen cobbler, Sis glanced at the beach, hoping for distraction, longing to see a little boy in a baseball cap hitting a fly ball into a blue surf pounding the white sand. But all she saw were shades of gray. No color. No right. No wrong. Just a vast shadowy land where the truth was hidden under a rosebush and anything at all was possible.

Finally, the Victorian house came into view, but it no longer put Sis in mind of a tall glass of sweet tea on the front porch swing. She parked and hurried straight to the kitchen, but there was no sign of Beulah or Jim.

Perhaps it was movement in the backyard that caught her eye, or it could have been instinct, sharpened by years of trouble and perfected to art by constant vigilance.

Beulah wore a red hat with a brim wide enough to shade two people, and in her hand was a shovel.

Sis barreled through the back door and took the steps two at a time.

“Beulah! What on earth are you doing?”

“What does it look like, Sis? I’m planting roses.”

There they were, new rosebushes all in a row, standing like sentinels over the bones. Even the bush that had sheltered the foot had vanished, and in its place was a Don Juan climber, its petals dripping to the ground red as blood. Closer inspection revealed that these end-of-summer bushes were hardly better than the disease-ravaged ones they’d replaced. Instead of rich, green branches full of life, the new bushes were mere skeletons, their limbs holding a puny offering of sparse leaves and small blossoms.

“Good Lord. Where did you find these?”

“Closeout sale at the corner market.”

“They won’t live in this heat.”

“Yes, they will. I aim to water ’em every day.” Beulah stripped off her gloves and handed Sis the shovel, as matter-of-factly as if she’d just planted prizewinning roses in a spring garden. “Stow this, will you, Sis? I’m gonna get some sweet tea before I melt.”

Sis held on to the shovel and stared at the Don Juan, paralyzed. Were the bones still under there? Or had Beulah moved them?

Sis had an insane urge to ram the sharp edge of the shovel under the bush and see for herself, but it was broad daylight and there was no telling who might be looking out a window or passing along the street. What would they see? Would they see a decisive woman who never even blinked when she chose family over college, who ate the same thing every morning without once wondering if corn flakes would be better for her than biscuits and bacon, who got out of bed every day at the same time and did her job in precisely the same way without ever stopping to cry over what she might be missing? Or would they see a divided woman split by the need to protect her family at all costs and the urge to discover the truth behind the awful secret in her garden?

It seemed to Sis that the bones under her feet were calling out to her, trying to tell her of something she’d missed, some little clue from her past that might reveal why they were there.

She thought back over the years. Once there had been a mimosa tree where the rose hedge stood. Its twin was still on the other side of the yard, its branches sturdy enough to hold a tree swing for Andy. She tried to remember when the first mimosa tree had come down, but the red petals drifting over her shoes from the newly planted Don Juan brought her mind back from the past and into the awful present.

The back door popped open and Beulah called, “Everything all right out here, Sis?”

“Everything’s fine.”

As she hurried off to the garage to stow the shovel, she tasted the bitterness of her lie. Everything she’d held true about herself and her history was suddenly in question.

She heard the sound of Sweet Mama’s powerful old Buick engine, followed by the slamming of a car door and Emily’s voice. “Andy, be careful and don’t drop the pie.”

She’d followed Sweet Mama to make sure she got home all right, just as she’d promised Sis she would. The pie would be the coconut cream she’d made at the café especially for Jim. Soon Emily would be driving to her own house where she would stand in her little blue-and-white kitchen making cookies for Andy and dreaming of having a family complete with a husband.

Sis tried not to even think about that, about dreams that turned out wrong and dreams that got left in the dust.

“Watch your step, Sweet Mama!” Emily’s voice echoed through the stillness of a clear afternoon. She’d be taking Sweet Mama’s elbow now as they climbed the front porch steps, something neither sister would have imagined the need for five years earlier.

The front screen door popped, and Beulah called out, “Ya’ll set that pie in the kitchen, then come back here on the porch under the ceiling fan. I got sweet tea made.”

Their voices receded and Sis stood in the doorway of the garage, half in shadow, half in sun, which seemed to her a metaphor for her life. Soon she would join her family, smiling while she sipped iced tea and discussed her sister’s wedding. Looking at her, nobody would know she was the keeper of a nightmare, one so dark that if she made a false move her world would crumble. And with it the family she loved.

Four

SWEET MAMA’S KITCHEN SMELLED of fried chicken and field peas cooked with fatback, sweet corn seasoned with butter and sweet potato casserole cooked with chunks of pineapple, each scent as distinctive to Emily as if she’d personally stood at Beulah’s elbow watching her cook for Jim. While Andy began a reconnaissance of the area that included looking in every cabinet and peering out the window, Emily set the coconut cream pie on the table beside a platter piled high with Beulah’s biscuits.