A Sinner in Paradise Page 3

  Yet, despite her senses’ delight with her new life, Geneva’s soul soon became parched and uneasy in the blinking lights. Too often she felt the clash between cultures when she recognized that her new life existed at a solitary extreme from her upbringing, and her heart was too often fragmented with the business of trying to reconcile her past with her future. Always attuned to the rhythm of the Appalachian tongue, the safety of old custom, the comfort of rugged politeness, she became acutely aware that those ways were different, substandard, and laughable according to the values of her new world.

  She did her best to conform, to strip away the wilderness that marked her upbringing, but each time she tried, she hurt as if she were stripping away her own skin—the flesh, and the sinews holding her bones together. So instead of changing on the inside, she manufactured a gleaming façade, which she layered over the surface of her vulnerable core. She changed her speech and shifted such nonessentials as her politics to mirror those of her contemporaries. The sophisticated artists, merchants, and political hangers-on in Washington, DC found her perfectly correct.

  But whenever she came back to the mountains, the comfortable, downy rags of her past rushed to clothe and bind her, and she realized anew that she was irrevocably connected to the aged roots lying beneath her feet. The tears stung her eyes when she realized how long it had been since she had seen Mam-ma Turner.

  “Oh, I see you brought the cats,” Rachel was saying. “Good grief. How many are there? Oh, and kittens!” She reached into the car to catch up each of the kittens, now cute and rambunctious as only kittens can be. Geneva watched her fondle them, not trying to hide her pride in them. “Well,” Rachel sighed as she set the last one down, “I guess the barn will hold them all.” She laughed, “I just hope we can keep them in mice and cat food.”

  Alarm flashed in Geneva at the idea of her cats sleeping in the barn. They had been used to sleeping on pillows all of their lives. Not that Geneva had encouraged them—they always just moved into the most comfortable places without feeling the need for an invitation, but Geneva worried that since she had gotten used to hearing them purr (and nine of them going at once could take some getting used to) the silence might be maddening. Then she remembered that Wayne was allergic to cats, so she smiled and said brightly,

  “Oh, great. I couldn’t stand all these cats around me in my apartment. I tried to get rid of them before I came home.”

  Rachel insisted that Geneva have something to eat, then she put the children down for a nap, and the two sisters wandered through the garden bedecked with flowers and small, yellow squash, then around the rambling farmhouse. At last they ambled onto the porch, settling into the swing after Rachel had brought out a nearly-empty bottle of wine.

  “I’ll join you in a glass of this if you promise not to tell Wayne. He thinks I shouldn’t drink at all, but right now I think I need it—or rather these two do,” she said, patting her rounding belly. “Every once in a while, they get into a soccer game with my spleen as the ball. Maybe this will calm them down. Put the little beggars to sleep.” She poured the wine.

  Geneva giggled as she picked up her glass. “These look just like the glasses I threw at Howard the night he left.”

  “Did you hit him?” Rachel asked mildly.

  “Nah. Just scared the hell out of him. You should have seen him ducking! His eyes got as big as mill wheels, and he kept hollering, ‘Geneva! Control yourself!’ And I said, ‘I am controlled! If I really wanted to hit you, your nose would be paté!’”

  “Guess he didn’t know you had the best fastball in the entire eighth grade.”

  “If he had, he’d have gotten out a lot faster.”

  They settled into the porch swing, laughing, sipping the honeyed warmth and admiring the angle of the sun, the abundant wildflowers, and the thin, sweet mountain air. They talked together as only sisters can, of common memories, and with the acceptance born of years of shared confessions. Geneva’s brooding dissipated into the flawless, living sky, and she began to forget about the last two years in DC, to nestle down into the old sense of family and place. For long moments she even forgot that she had been jilted, and when the talk turned to Howard, she found only a hollow ache where the shattering pain had once been.

  “I never did know what you saw in him, anyway,” complained Rachel after listening to Geneva’s grievances concerning her ex-fiancée. “I couldn’t stand him from the beginning.”

  “Oh, Rachel,” sighed her sister. “Who knows why anybody loves anybody? But I do—did—love him. He really was sweet—and romantic. He’d read poetry out loud to me, and once we read all of Romeo and Juliet together. He treated me like a goddess or something.”

  “Yeah, ‘something’ is right. Old worship ‘em and leave ‘em Howard. I liked that guy—Pete—the guy you dated your senior year a lot better. Wasn’t he going to be a dentist?”

  Geneva groaned. “Not my type. Do you know what he gave me for my birthday? A case of Colgate and a lifetime supply of dental floss that he got free from a vendor at a dental convention. Howard sent two dozen roses, one for every year for my last birthday.”

  “Well, you still have something worthwhile to remember Pete by.”

  “Six miles of waxed string.”

  “What about the cute guy from Norway? With the sailboat? You seemed pretty taken with him for a while,” said Rachel. “And he seemed to like you, too.”

  “Oh, he was all right,” sighed Geneva. “But he wore these really stupid clothes—you know, white pants and black socks with sandals. Once we went to a nice restaurant, and he wore a tie with a knit shirt. I was embarrassed to be seen with him. And he was too short.”

  “Well, Howard was no giant,” reminded Rachel.

  “Yeah.” Geneva thought about his. If she wore heels, they stood at exactly the same height, so she generally had stuck to flats around him. This had always irritated her—her legs never looked quite right in flats. “But he was special to me,” said Geneva, her eyes filling with tears. Yet, even as she let the ache take hold of her, spinning her around and making her head swim, she looked slyly at Rachel and asked, “How come you didn’t like him?”

  Despite Geneva’s apparent fussiness about the men she chose to let into her life, she was really only an apprentice in her ability to detect flaws in a body. Rachel had always been the master, and although Geneva had never before fully appreciated her skill since it had often been turned upon her own person, she now was glad to see how Rachel could ply her tongue to avenge her baby sister. In a few moments, she had reduced Howard to the butt of a number of vulgar and hilarious jokes.

  “His lisp drove me nuts!” Rachel said.

  “No! He doesn’t have a lisp!”

  “Oh, yes he does. Last time we were there, he kept telling me how ‘thweet’ he thought you were. ‘Oh, you are tho thweet! Tho thpethal!’ Lord, I was glad your name wasn’t Susan. Can you imagine him calling you his ‘thweet Thuthan? Come on, Thweet, Thpecial Thuthan! Thtep down here below me on the thtair tho I won’t look tho thort!’”

  “You’re kidding. I never noticed it.”

  “Your brain was on hold. Fried, no doubt, from the toxic waste they call air there in the city. And didn’t you ever notice his fat rear end?”

  “Well, yes, I did notice that it was a little, er—plump,” admitted Geneva. She had meant to encourage him to take up jogging or something since her master plan had always included a man with an athletic body. “I guess that’s from all that sitting around doing his Wall Street thing.”

  “That’s Wall Thtreet, thweetie,” said Rachel, languidly reclining against the arm of the swing.” Thoth big invethtorth do have a tendenthy to get big atheth, don’t they? And his nose holes were big, too!”

  “Nose holes!” You mean nostrils?”

  “Nothtrilth, noth holth, who cares? I felt like I was looking up a horse’s nose.”

  Catching Rachel’s malice, Geneva corrected, “Horth’th noth.”

  “Horth’t
h ath,” countered Rachel.

  “Biiiig horth’th ath,” said Geneva, imitating Sylvester the Cat and spraying Rachel with saliva.

  “Thupendouth horth’th ath,” slobbered Rachel. “Jutht a minute. I’m going to get uth thome more wine.”

  Rachel went into the house and returned with a new bottle of cold wine and six more wineglasses. “I hope you’re in the mood to do some sweeping,” she announced, “because I am going to make a toast.” She splashed a small amount in each of the eight glasses, and very solemnly, she stood and held up the first one.

  “Here’s to Howard’s lithp.” She drained the glass and threw it against the side of the house, where it splintered. Then she ceremoniously handed Geneva one of the remaining glasses. She rose and lifted it. “Here’s to Howard’s fat ath,” she intoned, then drank and heaved the glass with her whole, angry self. It crashed resoundingly.

  Rachel picked up two more. “Here’s to Howard’s noth holth. Both of them.” Not bothering to drink, she turned and tossed a glass over each shoulder, splashing wine against the wall and littered floor.

  “Here’s to Howard’s lack of integrity.” Crash.

  “Here’s to Howard’s inability to recognize a good thing when he sees it.” Crash.

  “Here’s to Howard getting my cat pregnant.” Crash.

  “What?”

  “Never mind. You’re up.”

  Rachel cleared her throat, and lifting the final glass, declaimed with dignified authority, “Here’s to the total, utter, unredeemable collapse of the stock market!” She drank and drop kicked the glass into the side of the house. They both fell into the swing, hooting and screaming until Rachel grabbed her stomach and begged to stop.

  Cleaning the mess took considerably longer than it had taken to create it, but Geneva derived sublime satisfaction as she swept and dumped glass shards. She smiled broadly as she searched for missed splinters. She’d be damned before she let Howard cause her nieces to suffer cut feet.

  The following morning, Geneva and Rachel took the children out to gather the eggs and feed the livestock. They watched the horses canter into the pasture, their chestnut flanks and high-bred legs flashing in the sun. Geneva longed to be astride one of them and asked Rachel about riding.

  “I can’t ride,” said Rachel, “since I’ve gotten so pregnant. For the past few months, our new neighbor, a veterinarian, has been coming over to ride with Wayne a couple of times a week. But I haven’t seen him for a while. Maybe he’s been too busy. Why don’t you and Wayne go out this evening?”

  So Geneva began riding every day. With the daily chores, which she found to be considerable, and the exhilarating rides and the summer splendor, she forgot about her wan, pale beauty and began looking vibrant and healthy, though she halfheartedly bemoaned the two extra pounds that had come from nowhere. She hadn’t been aware that fresh vegetables could be so fattening. But halfway into the second week, when Rachel and Geneva went to visit Mam-ma Turner, Geneva was pleased when her grandmother, after the appropriate exclamations and hugs, commented on how thin she looked. She did not mention that Geneva was pale, however, so Geneva decided to give up on wan and try for a more wholesome effect.

  She put aside the black outfits she had bought in her pique and delved into Rachel’s closet for the sunny yellows and poppy reds. Looking in the mirror, she decided that she really did look better than she had three weeks ago, and she hummed to herself as she thought that if Howard could see her now, he would surely fall on his knees and sob into her skirt. He would suffer for her yet, she determined.

  Yes. She felt her strength returning, returning as surely as the spring thaw fills the banks of the brook.

  Two

  Geneva settled into Rachel’s family as gently and easily as a leaf settling onto a peaceful stream. Once she became acclimated to the business of caring for Rachel’s family, she quickly melded into its harmony and rhythms, although she was surprised at the amount and the kind of work Rachel did. Together, the two women stripped the garden of ripened vegetables and spent day after day canning and freezing. Wayne, an earnest, cheerful bear of a man took pains to make Geneva feel welcomed and appreciated, and the girls let their Aunt Geneva know how much they loved having her with them. Every day Rachel’s serenity and her joy over the upcoming birth of her babies reminded Geneva of the importance of fundamental life. Geneva was content, but sometimes she found herself thinking about the night Howard proposed to her, and then she would sit by the window, gaze out at the hazy mountains, and sigh.

  Three weeks into her visit, just when Geneva was beginning to feel that life had become one long lullaby, Dr. Zhivago came to her looking droopy and coughing badly. As she picked him up, wondering if she should find a veterinarian for him, Esmeralda limped around the corner of the barn on three paws. Blood oozed from her torn left ear. Horrified, Geneva whirled and ran into the house.

  “I need a vet,” she said breathlessly to Rachel. “Dr. Zhivago sounds like he has pneumonia, and something has attacked Esmeralda and has torn her all to pieces. I knew they shouldn’t have slept in that barn, and now I don’t even know where the others are. I just hope something hasn’t carried them off. Poor babies.”

  Rachel glanced out at Esmeralda and smiled, remembering how frequently Geneva forgot that she hated her cats. “Let’s see,” she said unhurriedly. “Today is Friday. John should be in. He’s just next door—that is, on the other side of the pasture. He keeps a practice in Tucker, but on Fridays he stays home and opens a clinic at his house. He’s a wonderful vet, and I daresay he’ll fix them up just fine. You may want to take the kittens, too, for a once-over. Get them wormed and vaccinated.” She paused a moment, then added mysteriously, “I think it’s time you met him anyway. He’s very eligible, and I think you’ll find him interesting.”

  Geneva decidedly was not in the mood to meet any eligible men, interesting or not. All she wanted was to get her poor cats attended to. Certainly she was not in the mood to listen to any treatise on the virtues of the bachelors in the neighborhood. Hillbilly bachelors especially did not interest her. She gave Rachel a withering look, but she merely beamed her big-sister smile again and looking somehow deceitfully benign, calmly explained that while the clinic was within walking distance, it would be easier to carry two critically ill cats and five frisky ones in the car.

  It took half an hour of everyone’s time to round up the kittens, but after several escape attempts, all the cats were bundled into the Mazda. At last, Geneva roared off, shouting directions to Rachel to find the other cats to make sure they were all right.

  The drive lasted perhaps two minutes, but during that time, Geneva managed to invoke a surprising number of possible scenarios that placed her cats in grave danger. Her heart’s penchant for drama encouraged her to imagine tragedy, but in her practical mind, she knew they were not really as bad off as she wished they might be. Not that she really wanted them to be sick, but the novelty of returning home was beginning to wear off, and she found herself wanting something… well… kind of exciting to happen. Drifting around the farm with Rachel and the sweet children was certainly charming, and riding the Morgans each evening held its own exhilaration but that was always short-lived. Besides, her energies and artistic temperament demanded more than cooking and canning and waiting for Rachel’s babies to arrive. She needed to throw herself into something that would require all of her passionate soul and concentrated energy. So she tried very hard to imagine how grief-stricken she would be if one, or both, of her two beautiful cats died, and then she remembered that two others could be missing as well. Perhaps even now their poor carcasses had already been gnawed to bits by mountain lions. A little shiver danced up her spine as she wondered how sympathetic this “wonderful, interesting vet” would be.

  The sign on the entry drive said, “John Smith, DVM.”

  Whoa, thought Geneva. Prosaic name. He’ll have to be exceptional to overcome that!

  She saw him as soon as she pulled into the drive
so had the advantage of a good scrutiny well before she got out of the car. He was certainly good looking—tall, clean-limbed, and well muscled, with (unlike Howard) a cute rear end. She had noticed this part of his anatomy first, not because she necessarily looked, of course, but because he happened to be bending over petting some sort of an animal when she first turned into his driveway. The second thing she noticed about him (aside from the broad shoulders, the perfect chin, and the curly, honey-colored hair) was that he was wearing a cast on his right leg from foot to thigh. By the time she stopped her car, she found him interesting enough after all, so that she momentarily forgot her cats, which were at this moment contentedly licking each other’s faces.

  “Hello,” he said, turning and standing to his full height.

  Gosh, he looks kind of like the guy in the paper towel commercial, but with a friendlier mouth, Geneva thought. His eyes, Geneva noticed, were beautiful—green, as alive as fire. She stared at him for a long moment before she realized that he was waiting for her to speak. Flustered, she turned to haul out her cats.

  “What’s the matter with them?” he began, then noticed Esmeralda’s ear. “Oh, I see, a torn ear. Poor girl, we’ll get you fixed up in just a minute. Let’s go into the surgery and have a look at you.” He tucked Esmeralda under his arm and strolled to the door of the house, scratching her under her chin. Geneva caught Dr. Zhivago up into her arms as the good doctor called over his (decidedly broad, Geneva thought) shoulder for her to follow.