The real, honest-to-God truth is, Noel has caught me turning the binoculars toward Moonrise a couple of times recently, and it’s caused some problems between us. The first time, he was exasperated but also a bit amused, which he tried to hide from me. The next time he was utterly furious. Noel’s like that. He’s easygoing to a fault, and so laid-back he’s practically in a coma, unless he gets pissed. Then you’d better watch out. Usually I know just how far to push him, but all this stuff with Emmet and his new wife has been a different matter. I can’t quite figure out where Noel’s coming from these days, and it’s bothering me more than I’ve admitted to anyone. Even myself.
The tension between us started in Atlanta, before we came to Highlands for the summer. I know Noel so well, and we’re closer to each other than I was with Rosalyn, or Noel is with Linc and Emmet, but in a different way. So I know I’m not just imagining this. Closing my eyes and hugging my pillow tight, I burrow under my deliciously warm quilt and try to remember when I first knew that something was going on with him.
I guess it was the time he called me to see how the packing was going, a few days before we closed up our respective flats for the summer and headed toward the hills. The packing wasn’t coming along that well because my closet depresses me so badly. I stood inside it—easily since it’s bigger than your average room—trying to decide what to take to Highlands, and I couldn’t make myself continue. Since the day that Kit and I packed up Rosalyn’s things so Annie wouldn’t have to, I haven’t been able to bear my closet, with its color-coordinated hangers and cubbyholes. Whatever made me think I wanted, much less needed, all that stuff ? And what would happen to it after I was gone?
I almost didn’t answer the phone that day because I knew it was Noel. I’d already snapped at him earlier, and wasn’t ready to pick up our fight. After lunch I’d stopped by his office to tell him I was going home to pack. I didn’t remind him that I’d finished the invitation design for the fall Tour of Homes, way ahead of schedule, and was exhausted. After all, a perk of being friends with the boss should be taking off when you want to. “You’re packing for Highlands?” Noel had said, giving me a look of amused irony (which no one does better). “What could you possibly need to take, dear girl? Your part of the cottage already looks like a Goodwill store.”
I told him to bugger off, that his royal ass had never been inside a Goodwill store to know what one looked like. Then I got out of there before he could start in on his favorite topic—me, and my neuroses. I’ll admit, I have quite a few, and I’m rather prone to go on and on. After Rosalyn’s death, all of us got downright morbid. Then Linc had a stroke and almost died, and our mortality became an obsession.
Linc, even as sick as he’s been, has done his best to help me deal with my funk. After he got out of rehab, I drove over to Tuscaloosa and spent several days with him so he wouldn’t be alone. That self-centered wife of his, who pretends to be so devoted to him, had prissed her fanny back to New York to do one of her New Agey poetry workshops. So I had Linc all to myself. I’m well aware of the irony, my calling Myna self-centered when I was there to take care of Linc, yet all I did was cry on his shoulder. Linc ought to be used to it, though. He’s always been my Zen master, the one who will listen to me ad nauseam when I bore the others shitless.
With the calm reassurance that Linc’s known for, he told me I would remain miserable until I accepted death as a natural part of life. Contradictory as it sounds, we only begin to live when we acknowledge that we’re going to die. All the great philosophies teach the basic concept of birth, life, death, and rebirth; nature’s ongoing cycle. On the day I was headed home, Linc had a rather bizarre suggestion. He reminded me that I used to spend a lot of time wandering around Atlanta’s most famous cemetery, Oakland. Although it’s a habit that makes me look even crazier than I am, Linc suggested that I pay another visit to Oakland as soon as I got back to Atlanta. It could very well help me get some perspective.
I thought it was a great idea, but found to my surprise that I couldn’t do it. Instead, every time I drove past Oakland, I’d catch myself averting my eyes. It’s true; I used to enjoy going there, wandering around and reading the old gravestones. I would take flowers to my mama’s grave, then to the Clements plot, where I’d talk to Mr. Clements about whatever Noel and I were doing. Sometimes I’d bring flowers to the much-visited graves, like Margaret Mitchell’s, or to those lonely plots that never had any. My favorite place was the mausoleum. I loved the way sunlight filtered through the wrought-iron entrance, and how appropriate everything seemed—the eerie light, the faint odor of decay, the chill of stone and marble. I’d spend hours sitting on a nearby bench and wondering about the stories of those resting there, how they lived and died. But after Rosalyn’s death, my musing took a different direction. What difference does it make, I thought, the silly little ways each of us fritters away our lives? The graveyard is where all our stories end.
On the day I was supposed to be packing, Noel kept calling until I had to either answer or unplug the phone. I picked it up to tell Mr. Smarty-Britches that he was right, everything I needed was already at Laurel Cottage. Of course, he gloated for a long moment before asking, “So. Have you talked to anyone today?”
“Just Linc,” I told him. “Big surprise. Myna’s not staying.”
“No.” Although Noel said the word flatly, I heard the bitterness in his voice. “God forbid she give up anything for him. Her career has always come first, as we both know. Linc’s the only one who can’t see that.”
“Yeah,” I’d murmured in response. Then I’d reminded him that we were plowing old ground there. And that Linc was the most perceptive and introspective of men except when it came to his own life. Maybe we were all that way.
“Oh, I know,” Noel agreed. “Just wish that . . .” He let his voice trail off, then it brightened up as he added, “Willa has signed on, though. I knew she would. She’ll take good care of him.”
Unusual for me, I kept my thoughts to myself, that one day Willa McFee would have to get a life and stop her selfless caregiving. She’d nursed her mama through Alzheimer’s for years; she lived with a sorry alcoholic man, and now was taking on a stroke victim. Even so, I was overjoyed that she’d agreed to help us with Linc. The end of the summer would be plenty of time for Willa to find herself. To Noel I said, “Oh, yeah, forgot that I talked with Kit briefly. She won’t be around till Memorial Day. How about you? Heard from Emmet or the Bride?”
“Dammit, Tansy, would you stop calling her that?” And just like that, Noel had done it again, gone from being warm and friendly to turning his wrath on me. “Give the poor girl a break, would you? I can only imagine what a formidable bunch we must be, and she’s going to be slammed with all of us at once.”
I responded to that ridiculous statement with the scorn it warranted. “Us formidable? That ‘poor’ girl, as you so gallantly call her, married Emmet Justice, the most formidable man who’s ever drawn a breath. Compared to him, the rest of us are pussycats.”
Noel’s response had been a soft chuckle. “You and Kit might have claws, but no one would call you pussycats. The true softies are me and Linc. It’s you girls that Helen had better watch out for.”
“Oh, please,” I shot back. “I don’t care what you say, I will never understand why Emmet had to up and marry like he did. Whatever happened to a proper period of mourning? And if he was so dead set on marrying again, why couldn’t it have been to one of his own? I don’t like the sound of this woman, Helen. She’s a nitwit on the phone. So eager to please it takes all I can do not to retch into the receiver.”
“Tansy—” Noel’s voice turned to ice, but I cut him off, waving my finger in the air as though he could see me.
“She’s a dietician, Noel. How many dieticians do you know, pray tell?