Death on the Family Tree (2 page)

What was she going to do without him?

“I’m jist tellin’ you what Mr. Billingslea said.” Leona sounded miffed. “Miz Diamond down the hall says she’ll take that piece if you’re not wantin’ the trouble of moving it.”

“I’ll have somebody come and get it. Don’t you all give it away.”

Katharine hung up and picked up her mug. The tea was stone cold, as was the English muffin. She put them in the microwave and moved to the window to figure out how to deal with this new crisis. Instead, she found herself wondering:
What do women with husbands around to make some of the decisions do with all that free time?

It was astonishing how many things she had learned to do in the past twenty-four years: put in doorknobs, replace the inner workings of toilets, spackle holes in walls, re-grout tile, even re-glaze a window after Jon and a friend got over-exuberant with a baseball. She could afford to pay a handyman, but could seldom wait for one to work his way down to such trivia.

She wondered how one learned to install a telephone. Perhaps the music room could become the telephone room, as well.

A butterfly distracted her, calling her attention to how spectacular the view was from her breakfast table that lovely June morning. Beneath the window, bright Oriental and Asiatic lilies, blue veronica, red impatiens, and Shasta daisies looked well against a deep purple butterfly bush. She was so glad she had decided to put a butterfly and hummingbird garden beneath the bay in that patch of sun. Beyond the flowers, the walk down to the pool was cool and inviting, shaded by tall trees and planted with white astilbe, Japanese painted fern, and wide hostas in many shades of green. The grounds were a living testimony to the faithful work of Anthony, who came every week to mow, weed, plant, and transplant. He often told Tom, “The missus never thinks a plant can grow ’less it’s been moved twice,” but he came reliably and worked without complaint. That was all she ever asked of him.

Except—

Anthony had a truck.

She abandoned the view and headed to the phone.

Anthony’s wife, who took calls for his business, assured Katharine he could and would be glad to move a piece of furniture that evening. She offered the ser vices of their son, Stanley, a junior at Georgia Tech, to help Anthony, and suggested using the lawn ser vice trailer so they wouldn’t have to lift the piece so high. She even had some old quilts they could wrap the piece up in, and cord to secure it. “They’ll fetch it for you by eight, Miz Murray. You just be home around eight-thirty to show them where to put it.”

Sending up a prayer of thanks for faithful friends, Katharine called Autumn Village to tell them to expect him. Another crisis averted, she took her lukewarm tea and rock-hard muffin back to the table.

As she sat down, she wondered,
If I could rub a magic lamp and be granted three birthday wishes, what would they be?

Would she wish Tom had an ordinary job where he went to work each morning after a tête-à-tête breakfast and returned home every evening for dinner, instead of leaving early on Monday morning and coming back late on Friday night? Not any more. She had loved having him home before the children came and while they were small, but he had been doing this weekly commute for so long now that she was comfortable with the pattern. She looked forward to weekends and marvelous trips together, but during normal weeks she enjoyed eating what and when she liked, watching her own television shows with sole possession of the remote, and having time for clubs, volunteer activities, occasional trips, and spontaneous outings with friends. When he was unexpectedly home for a week, she seemed to spend inordinate amounts of time cooking and stocking the fridge, and she never knew whether to stay home from meetings or go as she had planned.

Would she wish for the children to be small again? No. As fleeting as those years now seemed, at the time they had felt like an interminable round of car pools, sports practice, dancing and piano lessons, parties, and orthodontist visits. Katharine loved having grown-up children with whom she could have intelligent conversations and eat sushi instead of noodle soup.

Would she wish for her mother, Aunt Sara Claire, or Aunt Lucy to still be alive? Not unless they could be healthy and vibrant. She had hated watching their health deteriorate, still flinched at the memory of her mother’s final pain. And for the past four years she had devoted many hours to making their phone calls, running their errands, doing their shopping, handling their paperwork, and driving them to and from doctor and hairdresser appointments, bridge parties, luncheons, and what Aunt Lucy called “our little outings.” Taking on parts of their lives had required giving up equal parts of her own.

Still, now that she had her own life back, what was she going to do with it?

She did not know. That, she felt, was her tragedy.

Since one of Aunt Lucy’s boxes sat on the table, she thought she might as well open it and see what it contained. Her paring knife made short work of the tape. Peering inside, she discovered that Mr. Billingslea’s packers had swept things off shelves helter-shelter and willy-nilly.

Nice words, those
, she thought, helter-shelter and
willy-nilly
. Exactly how Aunt Lucy collected her artifacts. She lifted out a lamp made from an ox horn, its shade painted with a Highland scene, then an African letter opener with an ibex inexpertly carved for the handle. She grimaced at a long string of beads made from what looked like mildewed peach pits, and tossed several worn, obsolete maps into the trash. The bottom was filled with out-of-date coffee table books. Would the drama department at Lucy’s old school like any of her things to use as props? Katharine crossed to the refrigerator message board and made herself a note to call them. Then she scooped the things back into the box and carried it to the music room. As she set it down, her toe nudged that small, old box. What could it contain? It looked like Lucy herself had fastened it years ago and never opened it since. All the packers had done, apparently, was retape it.

She knelt beside it and puzzled again over that one word written on one side in Aunt Lucy’s neat script:
CARTER
. Then she fumbled in the open box for the ibex letter opener and carefully slit the tape.

Before she could lift the fragile flaps, the phone rang again. Hoping it was Tom, she tucked the small box under one arm and dashed back to the kitchen. With a surge of anticipation, she lifted the phone from its charger.

“Hey, Doll Baby. I wanted to call and wish my favorite little girl a happy birthday.”

Katharine concealed her disappointment with extra enthusiasm. “Uncle Dutch! How sweet of you to call.” Dutch Landrum had been her daddy’s best friend. His wife was gone, like both her parents, and Chapman, his only child, lived up in Schenectady, New York, and seldom bothered to come home to see his dad. A couple of months earlier Dutch had sold his big house and moved into Autumn Village, just down from Aunt Lucy, and the two old friends had enjoyed each other in the brief time they’d shared a hall.

“I figured you might be a little lonely today, with Lucy gone and all.” Dutch’s voice was wistful.

“I was just going through some of her things,” Katharine told him. “Mr. Billingslea sent me boxes and boxes this morning. I thought for a minute I’d gotten heaps of birthday presents.”

He laughed with her, a sound that was mostly wheeze made up of age, whiskey, and too many cigars. “Lucy would have gotten a kick out of that. She was a great old gal.” They shared reminiscences for a minute or two, until Dutch said with obvious regret, “Well, I’d better go. They’re fixing to take us on another outing. Some lecture, I think, with lunch to follow. I was never so busy in my life until I moved here. I think they try to kill us with activities so they can resell our units.”

“Any luck getting them to call you ‘Dutch’?”

“That’s what they finally
call
me,” he emphasized the verb, “but every blessed piece of paper I get from the administration comes to Lionel Landrum. Remember, Shug, I’m countin’ on you and Tom to make sure they put ‘Dutch Landrum’ on my cemetery marker. I don’t want Chap carving ‘Lionel Deutsch Landrum’ in stone.”

“We’ve got you covered,” she assured him. “If necessary, I can always knock him down.” That earned her another wheezy chuckle. When she and Chap were little, Katharine had frequently been punished for knocking him down. Only Dutch had admitted he needed it.

“You’re still keeping my cartons safe?” he asked with a trace of anxiety.

“Absolutely. They have a place of honor in my attic.” Dutch had brought over three boxes of things he hadn’t had room for in his new home but wasn’t ready to discard.

“That’s good. Nothin’ in them except some old college yearbooks and a few mementoes, but I might want to look through them again sometime. Well, I better go. Still have to put on my tie. Happy birthday.”

Katharine smiled. Dutch hated wearing ties as much as any six-year-old but kept one hanging on his doorknob for when he went out. She pictured him tying it and stepping into the hall looking so natty that half the widows in the building would be after him.

Not until a minute later did Katharine realize he might remember a Carter connected with Aunt Lucy. Dutch had known Lucy since they were children. But before she could dial his number, the phone shrilled with another caller.

The voice that flowed over the line this time was thick as honey and almost as sweet. “Oh, Katharine, I am so glad I caught you. I was afraid you’d already gone out to some old meeting, and I am at my wits’ end. I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”

“What’s the matter?” Katharine didn’t know why she bothered to ask. Posey Buiton, Tom’s older sister, had been pouring her problems into Katharine’s telephone for twenty years, and they all began with the same word.

“Holly, of course—or Hollis, as she now insists on being called. Neither of my other girls ever changed their names.” Posey’s voice dripped with indignation.

Katharine set the old box on the kitchen table and headed to the cabinet for a tall glass. She tucked the phone between her ear and her shoulder, fumbled in the freezer for ice cubes and silently slid them into the glass, filled the glass with sweet tea, squeezed in a slice of lemon, and stirred with one forefinger—remembering too late that she had carried those boxes and hadn’t washed her hands. With a shrug to dismiss the germs, she carried the tea over to the breakfast table and settled in for the duration. All that time, Posey had burbled on about the ingratitude of children who change the names their parents bestow upon them.

Katharine raised her glass in a silent toast to Hollis for having the gumption to stand up for her name. Who but Posey would give three daughters sensible names like Laura, Mary, and Hollis, then call them Lolly, Molly, and Holly? After Holly’s birth, Posey had even considered changing her own name to Polly until Wrens, her easygoing husband, said with a wave, “Go ahead, Sugah. Do whatever you like. But Polly sounds like a damned parrot to me.” Tom claimed that Wrens Buiton was the only man in the world who could live with Posey for thirty years and still adore her.

Katharine had always had a soft spot for Hollis. The child was dark, thin, and intense, unlike her sisters. They had been cheerful blond children who enthusiastically played soccer and tennis, won ribbons on swim teams, and served as secretary or treasurer of every ser vice organization at Westminster School. They had grown into robust young women who efficiently organized their own households around their children’s sports practices and their own aerobics classes, tennis matches, and Junior League events.

Holly had not arrived until Molly was six and Lolly eight. When taken to join a soccer team, she had gone onto the field, plopped down to the ground, and spent the next hour drawing designs in the dirt. When taken to the pool, she floated on her back watching clouds and refused to race. While her sisters were improving their tennis at the Cherokee Town Club, Holly was badgering the maid to teach her to sew. While her classmates were showing off the latest styles from Saks, Nordstrom, and Neiman Marcus, Holly was stitching up outlandish concoctions from scraps of silk, feathers, and beads. When other girls were getting blond highlights, Holly was streaking her dark hair purple, green, and blue. When her peers applied to Agnes Scott, Vassar, Sewanee, and the University of Georgia, Holly announced that if she couldn’t go to the Savannah Campus of the Savannah College of Art and Design, she wouldn’t go to college at all.

“I swan,” Posey had wailed more than once, “if I hadn’t been awake for that child’s birth, with Wrens right there beside me, I’d swear they switched her at the hospital.”

Back when Holly and Jon were both in seventh grade, he had summed up the struggles between his cousin and her mother in succinct terms: “Holly hates exercise and good works.” Katharine had thought that perceptive for a thirteen-year-old.

She also identified with Holly, for even after twenty-five years, she still felt out of step in Buckhead. It was not because she had not been born and raised there. Unlike most Southern cities, where leadership and wealth are passed from one generation to the next and lifetime friendships are forged in the cradle, Atlanta has always been cosmopolitan. Buckhead, its most prestigious community, probably contains as many newcomers as longtime residents. However, Katharine had observed that women who moved to Buckhead, no matter where they were born, tended to quickly take on the persona of Southern aristocrat and to settle into a natural habitat of tennis matches, aerobics classes, elegant luncheons, gala balls, and the events and board meetings of civic and charitable organizations.

Katharine had grown up in Miami, where her mother taught fifth grade in an inner city school and her daddy was a professor at the University of Miami School of Law, and her parents were strong believers in the biblical injunctions to do justice and care for widows, orphans, the outcast, and strangers. Her father had helped draft civil rights legislation for the state and had worked in numerous ways to help the stream of immigrants that poured into Miami after the Cuban revolution. Her mother had taken Katharine from the time she was tiny to help in soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and tutoring programs. Their home was a gathering place for those who wanted to discuss books and politics, but it was not lavish. Neither parent valued a big house, new cars, or expensive clothes, preferring to channel their money to organizations that helped the poor. So Katharine had arrived in Buckhead a bookish woman who hated exercise for the sake of exercise and preferred hands-on work like tutoring, mentoring, and an occasional day with Habitat for Humanity to buying expensive tickets for fund-raising galas. She often thought it a miracle that she and Posey were as fond of each other as they were, and she loved Hollis for daring to be different.

Hollis had recently graduated from SCAD and come home—which brought Posey’s lament up to the present. “I don’t mind her getting a job with that dinky little theater sewing costumes, although lord knows she won’t get paid enough to live on, but last night she asked Wrens if she can move into that filthy old apartment over our garage—the one the folks who built the house put in for their chauffeur. Her sisters lived in nice apartments with college friends until they got married. Why doesn’t Hollis find a couple of friends to live with?”

Katharine sipped tea and didn’t bother to reply. Posey was sure to answer her own question. Sure enough—“Although if they had purple hair and wore nothing but black, I wouldn’t want her to live with them. But she wants to work up there as well as live there. Says she’ll turn the extra bedroom into a workroom. What are folks going to think? Our daughter working at home and living in our servants’ quarters! Besides, the place is poky and hot—not even air-conditioned—and we haven’t used it for anything since the kids used to play up there. I doubt if the plumbing still works.”

That indignant outburst was simply a precursor to Posey’s real complaint. All over Buckhead, carriage house apartments were being rented out to singles and newlyweds, and the Buiton apartment couldn’t be too small, built over a four-car garage. Paying somebody to clear it out, fix the plumbing, and install air-conditioning wouldn’t strain their bank account, either, since Wrens had inherited a thriving business from his father and at least doubled his fortune.

“What does Wrens say?”

Katharine spoke automatically, because she could wait no longer to see what was in that old box. While Posey answered, she lifted the flap and peered inside. All she saw were a small book and something wrapped in what looked like a piece of old white sheet.

Posey gave a huff of disgust. “You know Wrens. Nothing ever fazes him. He told her, ‘Do whatever you want to with the place, Shug. Fix it up however you like and put it on my card. Just make it pretty, so your mama and I can rent it out after you get married, to support ourselves in our old age.’ I told him, ‘Don’t encourage her,’ but—”

“He’s got a point.” Katharine lifted out the book and began to turn its pages. “Carriage house apartments are going for high rents these days.”

“I know, but—” Posey started off again down the trail of why she didn’t think Holly ought to be living alone instead of with other people.

Katharine let her rattle on without listening. She was turning the pages of what appeared to be a journal, its leather cover faded to a soft caramel and its pages covered with spidery German in black ink. German? She had taken two years of German at Agnes Scott, two grueling years that convinced her she would never be a linguist. Still, she ought to be able to read some of this. Where had she shelved her old German/English dictionary?

“Are you listening?” Posey demanded.

“Of course.” Katharine grabbed the phone before it fell off her shoulder. “I was wondering what your real problem is with Hollis living in your carriage house.”

Something fell from the journal and fluttered to the floor. She bent and retrieved a newspaper clipping, also in German, with a small inset of a man’s picture. She was gratified to find she could translate part of the headline: [
C
HEMIKER
] D
IES IN
A
CCIDENT.
The man, identified as Ludwig Ramsauer, had a lean face and an attractive mouth bordered by a thick mustache and a pointed beard. In one margin of the article, someone had scrawled “November 1950?????”

Katharine stared at those five question marks while Posey insisted, “It’s not that I mind her living in the carriage house, at least for a while. But do you know what happened this morning? At breakfast, trying to be nice, I offered to give up my whole day to go look at wallpaper and floorings. I knew she was going to be out most of the day at some birthday party, but I figured I could get some ideas for what might look pretty up there, you know? But guess what Holly said.” Posey’s voice trembled and Katharine knew her blue eyes were wide with indignation under her tousled blond curls.

She slid the clipping back into the book. She would try to read it when she found her dictionary. Right then it was a distraction she didn’t need. Posey was reaching the climax of her latest Holly crisis.

“Hollis, not Holly,” Katharine reminded her.

“Holly—Hollis—whatever. She said she already knows what she wants to do with it. You
know
what she’s like, Katharine. If she’s allowed to do anything she wants, we could get purple walls with orange carpet. I can’t stand to have her ruin that charming little apartment!”

They had finally reached the place where the pecan met the brittle.

Katharine didn’t mention the carriage house’s rapid metamorphosis from a poky old place to a charming little apartment. It was time to take Hollis’s side. Part of why Posey called was to be persuaded Hollis wasn’t really odd or stark raving mad.

“Hollis has had four years of training since high school,” Katharine pointed out, “and she won an award for that wallpaper she designed. Besides, she’s now got a degree in—”

Like a bull seeing red, Posey charged in that direction. “Fabric! A perfectly useless degree. What does one do with a major in fabric?”

“It was fibers,” Katharine corrected her. How did Posey think her other two daughters were using their degrees? Did she picture Lolly reading French novels to her seven-year-old twins, or Molly discussing economics with her five-year-old son and two-year-old daughter?