Through the Darkness

CHAPTER 2

When I padded out of the sauna half an hour later, flushed from head to toe, my hair curling damply against my cheeks, and sipping the fresh strawberry smoothie that Alison, one of the guides, had whipped up for me, I immediately ran into Dante. Still as tall and rail thin as he had been when he married my daughter almost eight years ago, my son-in-law was directing the retrieval of a lounge chair from the deep end of the swimming pool. Ben Geyer, the pool boy, had stripped down to his khaki Bermuda shorts and was poking ineffectually at the submerged piece of furniture with a long aluminum pole. He’d already shed his shoes. Next to the shoes, a sodden green and white striped cushion silently drained onto the tiles.

“I think you’re going to have to get in,” Dante told the young man.

Ben scowled. Clearly, retrieving furniture from swimming pools hadn’t been mentioned in his job description, but he stripped off his belt, draped it over his shoes, shrugged, and jumped into the pool.

Ben had his work cut out for him. The redwood lounge chair, heavy under normal circumstances, would be completely waterlogged. Barring the eleventh-hour arrival of a Navy scuba team, I predicted a swim in Dante’s future.

With a smile and a wave, I left the guys to it and headed off to help Emily.

I found her in the former club room, which was rapidly being transformed into Puddle Ducks. Surrounded by boxes, Emily was unpacking a pint-sized table and chair set painted in bright primary colors. Three wooden puzzles were already arranged on an identical table set up near a picture window that comprised one entire wall.

Behind Emily, my sister-in-law, Connie, stood on a step ladder, dabbing blue paint onto Jemima Puddle Duck’s paisley shawl. Jemima, in her sky-blue poke bonnet, curled her webbed feet over the chair rail and seemed to be speaking with Kip the collie dog about her lost eggs. Still wrapped in my spa robe, I stood still sipping my smoothie, admiring Connie’s handiwork. “That’s really cute, Con!”

Connie turned and sent a thousand-watt smile in my direction. With her copper curls, checked gingham shirt, and a dab of blue paint on her nose, she looked like Raggedy Ann all grown up. “It is, isn’t it?” Connie gestured with her paintbrush. “What do you think about that one?”

I turned to consider the mural on the wall behind me: Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter were picking blackberries in Mr. McGregor’s garden.

“Peter didn’t get any blackberries,” I corrected. “‘First he ate some lettuces and some French beans; and then he ate some radishes; and then, feeling rather sick, he went to look for some parsley,’” I quoted, the story still fresh in my mind from the number of times I’d read it to Chloe. “Peter got a dose of chamomile tea, if I’m not mistaken. ‘One table spoonful to be taken at bedtime.’”

Connie waved a brush. “Poetic license. I’m an artist, not a novelist.”

I was still admiring the botanical accuracy of the mural when I noticed Ruth chugging down the hallway, both hands jammed into the pockets of the lightweight blue cotton sweater she usually reserved for working in the garden. She’d gathered her abundant silver hair into an untidy bundle on the top of her head, and secured it there with a pencil. “I told him and told him, but did he listen? No,” Ruth muttered before her foot had even crossed the threshold.

Emily looked blankly at her aunt and shrugged. “Told who what?”

“Dante! It’s poor planning, Emily. The day care center should be on the east side of the building, not the north. The Palace of Beijing put the little princes in the east. North is so dark, and negative.” Ruth lowered her voice. “It’s evil and calamity, too. Can’t you do something about it, Hannah?”

“Shut up, Ruth,” I hissed. That last remark was going too far, even for someone as militantly new age as Ruth.

Emily wasn’t having any of it, either. “That is such bullshit, Aunt Ruth.”

“Two thousand years of Chinese civilization can’t be wrong,” Ruth said.

“But in feng shui,” I pointed out, “there’s always a remedy, right?” I’d been around my older sister long enough to pick up on the lingo.

“Well, yes.” Ruth favored me with a smile, as if I were a prized pupil. The awkward moment passed. “And that fabulous mural’s certainly a good place to start.”

I sensed a but coming, and Connie must have sensed it, too, because she pasted on her brightest, most disingenuous smile and waited.

“Your children will be playing here, Emily, don’t forget,” Ruth said, as if ours were the only children who mattered.

My granddaughter Chloe, at six, was in first grade. Jake, just turned three, attended nursery school, but would be joining his baby brother, Tim, at Puddle Ducks each afternoon once the spa opened for good. At the moment, Tim, the baby brother in question, was the center of attention, occupying a gleaming white playpen that had been set up near the French doors leading out to the patio and the Japanese garden beyond. Adorably dressed in a blue and white striped Petit Bateau coverall I’d splurged on at Madeleine’s Boutique on Maryland Avenue, he didn’t seem the least concerned about the elements of feng shui, or Jemima Puddleduck’s lost eggs, or anything else for that matter. He sat contentedly in his playpen, gnawing on a wooden block.

“I’m running the day care center, Aunt Ruth,” Emily said. I half expected her to add and not you, but I’d brought my daughter up with better manners. “And I’m certainly willing to listen to anything you have to say, but you have to realize that it’s too late to change it now!”

“You’re right, of course,” Ruth admitted. “But it’s just so frustrating! If Dante had listened to me in the first place, Puddle Ducks would have been built where the gift shop is now.”

I was about to put in my two cents about conversion plans as recommended by highly paid D.C. architects who were not disciples of the Compass school of feng shui-naturally, they’d given the east side of the building, with its expansive view of the Chesapeake Bay, to the spa’s dining room-but thankfully, Ruth had already moved on.

“We can add a light fixture over there…” She gestured toward the west wall. With a wink at me, she added, “Phyllis can certainly afford it!” Without drawing a breath, she forged on. “And maybe a mobile. Something light and a bit whimsical. I think I know where to get one.”

“Okay, Aunt Ruth.”

Hands on hips, Ruth turned, scrutinizing the room. “You should put the stereo equipment on the northeast wall,” she said, waving her hand in a vague, northerly direction, “and it’d be better if you moved the tables and chairs closer to the east wall,” she said. “Wisdom and education go there.”

“Okay.” Emily, again, being diplomatic.

“And put that Little Red Hen bulletin board on the south wall!” she finished triumphantly.

“Of course,” Emily managed from between clenched teeth.

“I’ll ask Dante about the mobile.” Ruth wandered over to the windows and adjusted the curtains to admit the early afternoon sun in all its glory. My sister had finally run out of steam.

“I wish you luck getting his ear,” Emily said, squinting into the glare, ignoring her aunt’s instructions, at least for the moment. “The ad for the accountant came out in Sunday’s Baltimore Sun. The phone’s been ringing off the hook. Dante’s got interviews scheduled back-to-back until almost eight o’clock tonight.”

“Last time I saw him, Dante was helping Ben fish a chair out of the swimming pool,” I offered helpfully.

Connie’s paintbrush hovered over a bright green radish top. “What? How’d that happen?”

With a sideways glance at Emily, whose bland expression gave no hint of what I suspected was major responsibility for the “accident” to the chair, I said, “Who knows? When one enters Garnelle’s massage therapy room, all brain functions cease.”

Ruth grinned. “Thanks, I’ll check the swimming pool first, then.” She turned on her sensible black heels and started out the door. “A green dragon, Connie,” she called back over her shoulder.

“What?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly.

“A green dragon on that east wall.” She pointed.

Back on her stepladder, Connie rolled her eyes.

“And a white tiger over there. Those children need some guardians.” And then she was gone.

Once Ruth was out of earshot, Connie said, “A tiger? What do you think Beatrix Potter would say if I painted a tiger stalking among the cabbages in Mr. McGregor’s very proper British garden?”

“It never bothered Rousseau,” I commented dryly, dredging up a factoid from an Art History course I’d taken at Oberlin. “Remember his jungle paintings? Rousseau let on that he had firsthand knowledge of the jungle from time spent in the army, but I’m quite sure he never left Paris. He once painted a Native American, headdress and all, fighting off a gorilla. And I remember a painting of monkeys with back-scratchers and a milk bottle.”

While Connie and I nattered on about art, working our way through the decades to Jackson Pollock and Willem DeKooning and wondering how anybody in their right mind could call those splattered canvases works of genius, Tim had tossed the block aside and pulled himself to his feet. He clung to the playpen railing with both hands, making cheerful grunting sounds while his untrained legs wobbled unsteadily beneath him.

I saw the problem at once. Lamby, his well-loved plush toy, lay spread-eagle on the carpet. I retrieved Lamby, handed it back to him. My grandson promptly plopped to his well-padded bottom and began chewing on Lamby’s tail.

Having exhausted the topic of modern art, I concentrated on helping my daughter fold, crush, and stuff boxes and packing material into an oversized trash can. Still worrying about the argument I’d almost overheard, I asked if everything was all right between her and Dante.

“Of course!” she insisted, dismissing my concerns.

“Emily?” I prodded.

She laid a reassuring hand on my arm. “Everything is fine, Mom. We’re just under a lot of pressure right now. Besides, we’re always snapping at each other. It’s just our way.”

If Emily and Dante’s recipe for successful marriage had always included lighthearted bickering, I wouldn’t have known. This was the first time since they’d left college in Pennsylvania that our daughter and her family had lived close enough for Paul and me to play a significant role in their lives. Frankly, bickering or no bickering, I was relishing it.

After a bit, I said, “Thanks for being patient with your aunt. I love Ruth, but sometimes she can be a royal pain in the ass.”

“You noticed? I half expected her to whip out a deck of tarot cards and offer to tell our fortunes.”

I chuckled. “Do you think marrying Hutch will settle her down any?” After three years, Ruth and her live-in boyfriend, a prominent Annapolis attorney, had set a date for the following November.

“I don’t know, Mom, but taking on a moniker like Mrs. Maurice Gaylord Hutchinson the Third would certainly slow me down!”

“Speaking of husbands,” Connie said as she stepped down from her stepladder, wiping her paintbrush with a dry cloth, “I promised Dennis I’d meet him for a late lunch.”

“Call the New York Times!” I said.

Connie finished cleaning her brushes, slipped them into a wooden box, and began closing up her paints. “They’ve made an arrest in the Bailey homicide, Hannah. Finally the good lieutenant will get an afternoon off.”

“Until the next case comes along.”

“Let’s pray for a crime-free weekend, then,” Connie said, shutting the lid on her paint box. “There are a lot of things that need doing on the farm.”

“As soon as we get the spa on its feet, I’ll come help,” I promised, feeling a genuine pang of guilt for neglecting Connie, who was more than a sister-in-law; she was my best friend.

“How are you at roofing barns?” Connie teased.

“I let my fingers do the walking through the yellow pages, just like everyone else,” I said.

I was hugging Connie good-bye when Dante stomped into the room wearing a fresh blue oxford cloth shirt, his ponytail dripping.

“Can you give me a hand, Emily?”

I prayed it wasn’t with the lounge chair, but from the sodden looks of him, Dante had that situation well under control.

Emily glanced from her husband to the playpen where Tim had picked up the block and was pummeling Lamby with it. “What’s wrong?”

“Don’t worry about the baby,” I cut in. “I’ll be happy to watch him.”

“On that note, I’m outahere!” Connie blew everyone a kiss and disappeared.

Emily checked her watch. “Tim will be wanting to eat in a few minutes.”

I knew better than to volunteer for that. Emily was breast-feeding.

Dante still looked dark, angry. “Hauling that chair out of the pool put a deep scratch into it, right across the logo.”

Emily winced.

Those chairs had cost a pretty penny. Paradiso hadn’t opened yet, and already the snake had entered the garden. “Throw a Paradiso towel over it the night of the opening,” I suggested. “No one will ever notice.”

Dante threw me a half grateful smile. “That’ll have to do. Come on,” he said to Emily. “You need to sign something. It’ll only take a minute.”

“Go ahead,” I told my daughter. “Tim’s not going to starve to death in the time it takes you to sign a few papers.”

To tell the truth, ever since I entered the room, I’d been longing to pick up and cuddle my grandson, but since he had been happily entertaining himself, I knew Emily wouldn’t have seen the point of it.

Once Emily and Dante were gone, though, I leaned over and lifted Tim from the playpen, adjusted his legs until he was comfortably straddling my hip, and carried him over to the French doors. A squirrel, looking thoroughly out of place in the Japanese-style garden, dropped from the branch of a fir tree and scampered across the flagstones.

“That’s a squirrel,” I told my grandson as I opened the doors and carried him outside into the spring sunshine. “Can Tim-Tim say ‘squirrel’?”

Tim’s tiny brow furrowed. Who is this person and why is she talking so goofy? But when he caught sight of the squirrel, Tim stretched out his arms and squealed in sheer delight. His smile lit up my heart.

What is so special about grandchildren? I wondered. I loved my daughter, of course, but I was absolutely crazy about my grandkids. Was it because I felt a sense of failure in raising Emily? Emily had been a sullen and willful child, leaving home after college for a life on the road, incommunicado, learning everything the hard way-from her mistakes, and there had been quite a number of them. Maybe with this child, Tim-or with her older ones, Chloe and Jake-I’d have a second chance.

Tim wrapped his chubby hand around my finger and latched on tightly. He had bright green eyes and a fuzz of fine, peach-colored hair, inherited, I’m proud to say, from my side of the family. Our baby sister, Georgina, had been blessed with hair like that: it was the color of buttered sweet potatoes. I kissed the top of his head thinking, And just as sweet-smelling, too.

A Welsh poet once said that perfect love sometimes does not come until the first grandchild. As Tim and I stood in the doorway watching that squirrel scatter a family of sparrows into a clump of ancient boxwood, flapping and cheeping, I knew exactly what that poet meant.