She looked Kyra in the eye and she knew her own were filled with regret. “We’re all facing challenges and changes that we never imagined,” she said. “But if he’d said something, I might have been able to help, you know?”
Madeline saw the color drain out of Nicole’s face when she walked into Bella Flora later that afternoon and got her first sight of the Frankenstein dummy dangling from the top landing. Madeline had scrawled the name Malcolm Dyer in big black letters across a sheet of paper and pinned it to the oversized chest. Avery had helped her affix it to the upper baluster. Kyra had her video camera out and was getting some shots.
“I knew the minute I saw that monster with a noose around his neck that the time had come to hang Malcolm Dyer in effigy,” Madeline said, still surprised at how compelled she’d felt to drag the dummy home with her.
“It would be a lot more satisfying to see him hanging in the flesh,” Nicole said curtly, but her face still looked pale.
“I know it’s not quite as good as the real thing, but at least we have a visual aid for imagining him getting his just rewards,” Madeline said.
“Did it come with balls?” Avery asked. “Doing a Bobbitt on it might make me feel a little better.”
“Have you always been this bloodthirsty?” Madeline asked as Avery made a scissor snipping motion. “I don’t really have a baseline to work from.”
Kyra smiled behind the camera, the first real smile of the day. Perhaps despite her earlier protestations, she’d like to do a little snipping of some famous balls herself.
“Nicole, this is my daughter, Kyra,” Madeline said. “She’s shooting our ‘before’ video and is going to stay on awhile to help.”
Kyra lifted her face from the camera’s eyepiece to say hello. “Hey, why don’t all three of you go up on the landing and pose with the dummy?”
Nicole looked like she wanted to refuse, but Madeline swept her up the stairs beside her, not giving her the chance. They mugged for the video camera and then for stills, flexing their muscles and aiming gunslinger looks at their Frankensteinian Malcolm Dyer.
“That’s good,” Kyra said. “Move in a little closer. Mom, turn to your left just a bit.”
They did as instructed and when Kyra said she’d gotten enough, they moved apart.
“Welcome to Camp Bella Flora,” Nicole said as they filed back downstairs. “And gruntdom.”
“Ditto,” Avery said. “It’s great to have an extra pair of hands even if it does bring us to four females in one bathroom.”
There was a collective groan.
“Someone needs to have a talk with Robby. I bet Madeline could turn him with a batch of brownies,” Nicole said.
Madeline shook her head. “Chase is not going to let that boy be bought.” She turned to Kyra. “Robby is the plumber. Chase is the contractor.”
“And he’s not likely to let you forget it,” Avery said to Kyra. “I told him your mom would be the best choice to re-glaze the windows.”
“Really?” Kyra’s surprise was evident.
“Yep,” Avery replied. “She’s got the most patience and is the most detail oriented.”
Madeline had to laugh. “I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or you’re calling me anal.”
“Hard to say,” Nicole drawled. “It’s a pretty fine line.”
Kyra smiled. “This should be interesting. I always liked sleepaway camp.”
“The activities are a little different here,” Nicole said. “In fact, we spent the last two weeks cleaning. And the counselors are a little on the demanding side.”
“I’m sure Kyra will survive,” Madeline said, slipping her arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “I’m going to give her the grand tour. Then how about we meet out back in time for the show?”
“The show?” Kyra asked.
“Yes,” Madeline said. “The sunset’s pretty spectacular here.”
Nicole offered to make something tropical in the blender. Avery lobbied for Cheez Doodles and when she was shot down, volunteered to put together a plate of crackers with cheese and salami. Madeline promised to put together a big salad that they could eat out at the concrete picnic table after sunset if the mosquitoes weren’t too bad.
“The cable should be hooked up pretty soon,” Madeline said as she and Kyra prepared to begin their tour.
“Great,” Kyra said. “Where’s the TV?”
Avery, Nicole and Madeline exchanged glances. “Well, we don’t actually have one of those yet,” Madeline admitted.
“No TV?” It was clear the concept was far beyond Kyra’s wildest imaginings.
“But I’m sure we will soon,” Madeline said.
“Right,” said Avery. “We’ll just get your mom to put it on the list.”
Madeline smiled at her partners. “And then we’ll get Nicole to talk someone into giving it to us.”
Chase arrived the next afternoon bearing gifts and children.
His sons, Josh and Jason, were fifteen and thirteen, with their father’s bright blue eyes and dark hair. Already well on their way to matching his six-foot-plus height, they towered over Avery when they were re-introduced. Standing in the midst of the three of them made her feel like a Lilliputian—an irritated Lilliputian.
“Boys, you remember Vanna, don’t you?”
She went on tiptoe to peck them on both cheeks. “I know you’re too intelligent to even think about calling me that. I can tell just from looking at you that you’re way smarter than your father.”
The boys were also more well mannered and far sweeter than their father and seemed glad to be at the beach even if it meant being polite and carting furniture around. She was very glad of their muscle as they unloaded Chase’s truck and put the furniture where she directed.
A Naugahyde sofa and two chairs with ottomans were set up in the salon across from a TV on a stand. A coffee table and a somewhat rickety end table came off the truck next and were followed by a floor and table lamp. The mismatched furniture was dwarfed by and far too informal for the room with its coffered cypress ceiling and its row of arched windows, but at the moment Avery would have been glad for packing boxes to sit on. After weeks of perching on the kitchen chairs or on a beach chair out back, the cast-off furnishings made a small portion of the house habitable and gave at least the illusion of a home.
Four more chairs appeared and were added to the kitchen table and an old wicker sofa and chair were deposited on the loggia. When they were done Chase gave the boys permission to take their football out on the beach until he was ready to leave. They left jostling each other as they went.
“Nice kids,” Avery said. “They must have gotten it from their mother.”
“Yeah.”
She saw the flash of pain in his eyes and realized what she’d said. “I’m sorry, Chase,” she began to apologize. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“Not a problem,” he said and then surprised her by continuing. “They are a lot like Dawn. They’ve got her smile and her laid-back attitude.” He shook his head. “Anyway, sometimes I just kind of forget she’s gone, you know?” He looked away, clearly embarrassed at the admission, and Avery wondered whether she would miss Trent the way Chase missed Dawn if he’d been taken from her rather than simply disappointing her. She realized with some surprise how seldom she actually thought about Trent other than the occasional flash of remembered hurt or anger.
“Look,” she said, “I don’t really understand why we’re always at odds about everything. But I really hope you paid attention when I told you that Madeline should do the re-glazing. She’s—”
“I’ve got it under control.” He cut her off yet again, any softness she thought she’d seen in his face gone. “There’s no need for you to worry your . . .”
“Good God,” Avery said. “Let’s just leave my ‘pretty little head’ out of it, okay?” She drew in a deep and disappointed breath. “I’m not worried, Chase,” she said. “And I have no interest in arguing with you again. But I’ll tell you one thing. If you’re not here Monday morning with a smile on your face prepared to teach Madeline how to re-glaze the windows, I will.”
Sixteen
They used the weekend to remove the last clingy bits of wallpaper and paste and the stray bits and pieces of debris and carted away what Avery promised were the last armfuls of useless “stuff” from the detached garage. By Saturday Madeline could have made the trek to and from the Dumpster with her eyes closed and sometimes did; she imagined their footprints indelibly etched into the brick of the drive. As they hauled and sweated together the formalities began to slip away. Madeline began to respond to “Maddie” and even “Mad” as she did at home. Nicole, who appeared particularly bedraggled, looked less and less like a “Nicole” by the hour. The first time Maddie called her “Nikki” she’d looked up quickly prepared to apologize, but Nicole was busy trying to get a glob of wallpaper paste out of her hair and didn’t seem to notice.
At sunset Kyra sat on a kitchen chair that Avery dragged out for her. Maddie tensed briefly when Nicole offered Kyra one of the frozen margaritas she’d whipped up, but Kyra opted for a glass of iced tea, which she sipped as she watched not just the show but them in much the same way Jane Goodall must have watched her apes.
Madeline noticed that her daughter’s presence altered their group’s dynamic; they all thought a bit more before they spoke, and Maddie sensed a bit of editing taking place. The conversation stalled out completely when Kyra pulled out her video camera and began to shoot not only the red ball of the sun, but Bella Flora and them bathed in its glowing light. It was only when the sun had finally set and the tequila in Nicole’s frozen margaritas kicked all the way in, that their conversation resumed.
Madeline watched her daughter out of the corner of her eye, wishing that for just a moment she could see her as these strangers might, but it was almost impossible to see beyond the child Kyra had been and the troubles she now faced. In the lengthening dusk they raised their glasses in a final sunset toast and searched their weary brains for a good thing to share.
Though she normally went last, Nicole was the first to raise her glass. “Frankly, the only thing that feels really good right now is the buzz from the margaritas.” She stared out over the Gulf, apparently thinking. “Which I guess leads me to how good it is that Maddie bought that blender.”
Madeline laughed. “My pleasure.” She turned to Kyra and found herself looking into the camera lens. Gently, she pushed it away. “We have a sunset tradition of coming up with one good thing that happened during the day. But I’m not sure those things are always suitable for public consumption.”
She returned Kyra’s automatic eye roll with a small shake of her head.
“Your mother invented it,” Avery said, her voice slightly slurred. “And coming up with even one thing can be a real . . . difficult.” She paused and downed the last drop from her glass. “So that’s my good thing tonight, too.” She raised her empty glass and they clinked. “Let’s hear it for the blender.” She thought again. “And a weekend without the organ grinder.”
“That’s Chase,” Maddie whispered to Kyra. “They’re having a little communication problem.”
“Ha!” Avery said, staring down into her empty glass. “That’s a gross understatement.”
They fell quiet for a moment waiting for Maddie to share her good thing so that they could go inside and either make more margaritas or eat something that would blot up the ones they’d already consumed.
Maddie raised her glass with its tiny bit of pale green slush in the bottom and smiled, motioning for Kyra to raise her glass of iced tea along with theirs. “I’m really happy that Kyra was able to join us in our mission to bring Bella Flora back to life. We may have our occasional differences of opinion . . .” She paused to make eye contact with Kyra. “But she’s always been one of the very greatest things in my life.”
Chase showed up Monday morning, walked all four of them over to a ground-floor window that had two broken panes, positioned Madeline next to him, and began to demonstrate the re-glazing process as if he’d intended to do so all along.
“First you scrape off the old paint and the glazing compound,” Chase said as they huddled together, watching him demonstrate how to work the putty knife in the thin opening of the mullion.
Midway through the explanation, Nicole’s eyes began to glaze over, Kyra retreated behind her video camera, and Avery’s faith in her choice of Maddie for the job was confirmed.
Amazingly, he neither rushed nor cajoled as he not only demonstrated each step of the process on the pane next to Maddie but watched carefully as she performed the process on her own.
“Then we take out the broken pane and pull out the points.” He showed Madeline how to use the needle-nosed pliers to remove the paint-caked diamonds of wood that held each corner of the glass in place. “Then when you’ve scraped the rest of the old paint and compound out, you set the glass in place.”
Maddie’s fingers moved awkwardly in the latex gloves and sweat popped out on her brow, but Chase talked in the same kind of tone that a cowboy might use to gentle a horse. If he hadn’t called Avery Vanna the moment he arrived and then ignored her completely, Avery would have thought some kinder, gentler spirit had taken possession of Chase’s body.
For twenty-five more minutes, he demonstrated and led Madeline through the delicate and tedious procedure of affixing the glass with the “points,” which were too small for easy handling in latex-covered fingers and often hit the ground and had to be retrieved. Avery didn’t have the heart to mention how common a problem that was or how frustrating it could be when you were up on a ladder or scaffold.
Maddie grimaced as she pressed a point down at one corner of the new square of glass. They all watched it crack. “Shit!” she said.
Nicole reached for a work towel and lifted a corner to dab at Madeline’s sweat-soaked forehead like a nurse mopping the brow of an operating room surgeon. “You’re doing great, Maddie. I would have been cramming those pieces of glass into position whether they wanted to go or not.”