The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender Page 4

  If Fatima Inês, apparition or otherwise, still existed in the house, Emilienne would be the one to know. After all, she was the woman with whom the flowers seemed to converse, whose three deceased siblings mutely followed her around the house instead of fading into the afterlife. But Emilienne knew better than to believe the house was haunted by the young girl’s restless spirit.

  On one particularly frustrating day, when words much worse than witch came floating in through the window and René persisted in trying to talk with her, Emilienne took the antique toys out the front door and smashed them one by one, until the porch was covered in tiny flecks of colored glass, fabric, and porcelain.

  Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

  Emilienne did everything she promised herself she would do as a wife, though she could hardly be confused with any of the other wives in the neighborhood — the sort of women who, before marriage, had spent their high-school years practicing their penmanship by signing their first names with their future husband’s last. Wives who spent their days cleaning and going to the market and collecting interesting tidbits for a dinner tête-à-tête. Wives who met their husbands at the door with freshly painted lips and a conversation as thoughtfully prepared as the meal. Wives who did not begin their married lives as empty vases.

  To her credit, Emilienne kept a clean house and fed her husband nightly meals of pot roasts and red potatoes; she fussed over the creases in his trousers, and she took diligent care of his cane, polishing it nightly so that the mahogany shone with a reddish hue. But neither Emilienne nor Connor ever once stopped to ponder the miracles love might bring into their lives. Connor because he didn’t know such things existed, and Emilienne because she did.

  And then my mother was born.

  She came into the world a screaming, demanding red nymph with a full head of black hair — all stick-straight but for one perfect ringlet at the back of her head — and infant blue eyes that would later darken to a brown so deep they sometimes seemed to have swallowed the iris whole. They named her Viviane.

  When they brought her home, Emilienne carried her through the house and grimaced at her husband as he announced each room with the zest and gusto of a circus ringmaster. And on your left, what is this you ask? This grand stretch of carpeted interior space? Why it’s the second-floor hallway! He introduced Viviane to the kitchen’s cast-iron sink, the built-in cabinets with lead-glass doors that stretched along the dining-room wall and above the stove. He watched Viviane’s face to see if she loved the creak of the wood floors as he did. They took her into their bedroom, where he pointed out the tiny wicker bassinet where she would sleep and the rocking chair in which Emilienne would rock her every night until the floor under it was marked with wear. He showed her the garden, where a solid river rock marked a small burial site, and the parlor, where a harpsichord sat unused yet remarkably in tune. He showed her everything but the third floor, since no one went up there anyway.

  There were times when Emilienne thought it possible to love the crippled baker with his sure hands and unsteady gait. She would feel her heart unclench and stretch its tightly coiled legs, preparing to leap into the path of yet another love. She’d think, This time could be different. This time it could last. Maybe it would be a longer, deeper love: a real and solid entity that lived in the house, used the bathroom, ate their food, mussed up the linens in sleep. A love that pulled her close when she cried, that slept with its chest pressed against her back. But then Emilienne would think of Levi Blythe or Satin Lush, or steal a glance at the ghostly shapes of her siblings in the far-off corner of the room, and she’d bury her heart under handfuls of dirt once again.

  Connor, for his part, did the best he could, considering. Considering he had no past experience to help him make sense of the woman he married. Connor Lavender had been a bachelor in every sense of the word until the day he came across Emilienne Roux. The only naked woman he’d ever seen before his wife had been a picture on a tattered set of trading cards he’d once found tucked behind the counter of his father’s bakery. The picture was of a full-figured brunette — her back arched in a way that was surely uncomfortable. It was the woman’s breasts that Connor remembered most, the areolas the size of small dinner plates, the nipples high and pointed. To his adolescent mind, it looked as if she had small teacups and saucers balanced atop each breast.

  Connor was thinking of just this woman as he closed up the bakery for the night. He wiped down the counters, straightened the wrought-iron tables and chairs, and checked the yeast he’d left to rise for the morning. Just like every other evening. The only difference on this particular evening — on December 22, 1925 — was that while he was locking the bakery door, a sharp twinge shot down his left arm.

  It was felt so briefly, Connor hardly took note. In fact, the time Connor spent considering the pain in his arm added up to approximately three seconds — just enough time to clench and unclench the fingers before his mind moved on to more important matters. His infant daughter, for example — Had she eaten yet? Had Emilienne already put her to bed? — ​and his perpetually unhappy wife. So Connor forgot about his arm (and all its connotations) and rushed to return home, where he bathed the baby and struggled through a stagnant conversation with his wife before going to bed. He slept soundly that night, dreamed a baker’s dreams of flour and egg whites, until the next morning, when his heart stopped beating. And then, in shocked disappointment, and stunned horror, I’m sure, Connor Lavender realized he was dead.

  The morning of December 23, Emilienne woke from the kind of hard, heavy sleep known only to soldiers, drunks, and mothers of newly born children. Thinking at first that she’d been awakened by her child’s cry, her fingers immediately moved to untie the loose knots along the front of her nightgown, and she swung her legs over the side of the bed. But when Emilienne’s feet touched the cold floor, she saw that the baby still lay sleeping in her crib and discovered that what had pulled her from slumber was the sound of her husband’s last breath escaping his body.

  Emilienne called for an ambulance, whispering to the operator, “Though there isn’t any need to hurry.”

  Emilienne pulled her husband’s finest clothes — the very ones he’d worn for their wedding just one year earlier — from the closet and laid them on the bed next to his body. When she saw that the dress shirt was wrinkled, she starched and ironed it. When she saw that the red velvet vest was missing one of its large black buttons, she got down on her hands and knees and searched the floor until she found it. Then she set to dressing him. The pants were particularly difficult. She polished his cane one last time and slicked his hair back with grease from a tin he kept beside the bathroom sink. And only then was she satisfied, for it meant she’d kept the promise she’d made when she married poor Connor Lavender. That she would be a good wife to him. Up to, and even after, the bitter end.

  She put her hand against his cheek. It felt cold and stiff under her touch, as if her husband’s skin had been wrapped around a rock.

  With the efficiency of a woman in denial, she found his key to the bakery and hung it from a leather cord around her neck. At a quarter to five, having been a widow for not yet an hour, Emilienne carefully wrapped her baby daughter in a thick cocoon of blankets and carried her the three and a half blocks to the bakery. Emilienne walked through the shop in the dark, her shoes squeaking against the black-and-white linoleum floor. By this time Viviane was ready to be fed. Emilienne brought the baby to her breast, but both were startled when no milk would come. Suddenly the sole owner of a bakery, Emilienne thought of all the mouths she was now responsible for. If she couldn’t even feed her own child, how could she feed anyone else?

  Emilienne went to the pantry and pulled out a giant bag of sugar. She spooned a tiny amount into a bowl of warm water and dipped in the rubber teat of Viviane’s pacifier before sticking it into the baby’s mouth. Then she lined a cardboard box with her jacket, scarf, and sweater and nestled the infant inside. When she fired up the oven, Emilienne
dismissed any ideas she might have had for pastries or other sweets. What she would make was bread. Hearty sustainable bread, warm from the oven and crisp on the outside, soft on the inside.

  It didn’t take long for the shop to fill with the aroma of rising breads: the thin-crusted pain au levain; dense, hard-crusted pain brié; pain de campagne, chewy and perfect for dipping in soups and thick stews; and pain quotidien for sandwiches and toast in the morning. After displaying the new goods in the window and cleaning the smudges from the glass, my grandmother opened the bakery doors to let the air carry the scent of freshly baked bread into the street. Then she stepped back, patted the white flour smudges on her apron, and, with a dread so fierce and strong it left a taste of nickel on her tongue, realized that no one would ever buy anything from her.

  THE NEWS OF Connor Lavender’s death spread throughout the neighborhood, quickly followed by a thick and tangled web of gossip, tall tales, and lies. Some said he died of a brain aneurysm. Others insisted it was a tumble down a flight of stairs that did him in. Almena Moss, who lived with her sister Odelia in one of the rented rooms above the post office, claimed to have seen Emilienne purchase a rather large bottle of rat poison at the drugstore, which only bred rumors more fantastic than before. But whatever happened to Connor Lavender, there was one thing everyone in the neighborhood agreed on: no one would ever again step foot in that bakery. Not with her in charge.

  So the shop remained empty, and Emilienne learned to live on the leftover loaves of bread that no one came to buy. That is, until an early February windstorm brought Wilhelmina Dovewolf to Pinnacle Lane.

  Exactly where Wilhelmina came from very few people knew. A direct descendant of an infamous Seattle chief, Wilhelmina was a member of the Suquamish tribe — her lineage obvious by her prominent cheekbones, bronzed complexion, and the thick black hair she wore in a long braid down her back. Wilhelmina was twenty-two years old — only five months older than Emilienne. She’d spent her formative years at an Indian boarding school, where she was repeatedly beaten for speaking her own language. As an adult, she carried with her the air of someone forever displaced — not quite part of the white race, yet no longer fitting in with the members of her tribe. In other words, Wilhelmina was a very old soul in a young body. The people of Pinnacle Lane regarded her in much the same way they regarded Emilienne, meaning, of course, that they didn’t regard her at all.

  The scent of Emilienne’s bread coaxed Wilhelmina inside. Emilienne was in the back, her fists deep in a lump of white dough — what would soon be another loaf of unsold bread — when the bells above the door rang through the shop. The sound gave both Emilienne and Viviane such a start that the baby, once content in the cardboard box, began to wail in fright. Emilienne quickly ran her palms together to dust off the flour.

  “I’ll be right there,” she called, making her way to the front of the shop. She caught only a fleeting glimpse of Wilhelmina’s back, her braid a swinging tail behind her, as she ran out the door. A loaf of rye bread had been taken from the front window, and in its place sat a small cedar basket.

  Ignoring the crying baby in the back of the bakery, Emilienne cupped the basket in her still-doughy hands and watched as her first customer disappeared down Pinnacle Lane.

  It took a few weeks for Wilhelmina to return. By then Emilienne had been surviving on bread alone for three months, and Viviane had begun to roll over and to babble in the incoherent way that infants do. When Emilienne heard the bells on the door, she only peered out from the back of the shop and watched as Wilhelmina stealthily took one of the loaves from the display window and left another basket in its place. She scurried from the shop and Emilienne followed her.

  The woman paused in the shelter of the three birch trees in front of the bakery. Keeping her distance, Emilienne watched the woman tear a piece from the loaf of bread, place it in her mouth, and, closing her eyes, thoughtfully chew then swallow before wrapping the rest in her scarf and tucking it under her arm.

  A week later Emilienne was ready. As soon as she spotted the long braid swinging over Wilhelmina’s shoulder as she made her way down Pinnacle Lane, Emilienne wrapped a loaf of freshly baked bread, still warm from the oven, in white paper, tied it with string, and left it on the counter.

  From her hiding place in the back, Emilienne could see Wilhelmina approach the package cautiously and sniff, as if checking the air for the scent of danger. Then, with a scowl, she pulled out a tiny purse and began rummaging around for what Emilienne assumed was a string of beads, which just goes to show how little Emilienne knew about the world.

  “Take it,” Emilienne said, stepping out from the back. “I’m giving it to you.”

  “I don’t take handouts,” Wilhelmina replied gruffly.

  Emilienne’s cheeks burned with embarrassment. “Fine, then.” She drew herself up to her fullest height, making her a few inches taller than the Indian woman. “That’ll be twenty-five cents.” She held out her hand.

  Wilhelmina brushed Emilienne’s hand aside and opened the package of bread. She tore pieces from the loaf and stuffed them into her mouth. “Got something better,” she replied. “I’ll make you a deal.”

  Emilienne folded her arms. “I’m listening.”

  Wilhelmina took another bite of the bread. “Rumor has it you’re the neighborhood witch.”

  Emilienne raised her eyebrows.

  Wilhelmina chuckled. “Now, don’t get me wrong. I ain’t the type to resort to name-calling, plus I tend to make up my own mind about such things. Got my own way of figuring stuff out.”

  Emilienne nodded. So did she. For example, Emilienne could tell that Wilhelmina had been born in October from the opal pendant that hung from the woman’s neck. October, Emilienne mused, a Libra. Balanced. Diplomatic. Even-tempered.

  Wilhelmina cocked her head, eyeing Emilienne thoughtfully. “There is something about you. I can’t quite put my finger on it . . .” Her voice trailed off. “I am sure about one thing, though. You’ve seen a lot of death. I’m right, ain’t I?”

  Death. Emilienne winced. Of that she had seen her fair share.

  “That’s what I thought. It wasn’t just the husband, was it?” Wilhelmina sighed when Emilienne didn’t answer. “Death just seems to follow some of us, don’t it? Death’s been following me for years. It’s easy to spot your own kind. That kind of sorrow you can’t just wash away; it sticks to you. And people, they can tell. They can feel it. And ain’t nobody likes the feel of death — especially in a place where he eats. What you need is a cleansing ritual.”

  Wilhelmina finished the bread and pulled two bundles of dried herbs tied with red cotton string out of her pocket. “Burn them as you walk through the shop. Pay special attention to corners and places behind doors.”

  Emilienne took the smudging sticks of sage and hyssop from the Indian woman. Reluctantly, she rolled the herbs in her hands before dropping them to the counter. “And doing this will accomplish what exactly?”

  “Clean the air. Rid the place of any curses, illnesses, bad spirits. Burn these herbs, and people won’t be thinking about death every time they walk by the shop. Or by you, for that matter.” Wilhelmina paused. “Listen, you seem like a smart woman. Do like I say, and, I promise you, business will change.” She wrapped her scarf tighter around her shoulders and turned to leave. “Then you can give me a job.”

  Emilienne snorted. “You want to work here? I barely have enough money to buy flour. I can’t afford to hire you.”

  Wilhelmina smiled. “Trust me, you’ll be needing the help.”

  Whether it was out of curiosity or sheer desperation, Emilienne burned the bundles of dried herbs per Wilhelmina’s instructions — making sure the spiraling smoke touched every corner, reached behind every door of every room.

  The very next morning, she arrived to a line of customers waiting at the bakery door. The line stretched all the way to the drugstore down the street, some four doors away.

  Most claimed that the scent of rising
yeast and freshly baked bread had drifted into their dreams the previous night. As the years went by, the people of Pinnacle Lane found that a day wasn’t well spent if their meals didn’t include a slice of bread or a roll from Emilienne’s bakery. There were Almena and Odelia Moss, who always dressed the same and came into the bakery for a loaf of cinnamon bread every Monday afternoon. There was Amos Fields, who was partial to the heavy pain brié. There was Ignatius Lux, who would become principal of the local high school many years later. There was Pastor Trace Graves and Marigold Pie, a war widow and a good devoted Lutheran one at that. There were the Flannerys, the Zimmers, the Quakenbushes. And then there was Beatrix Griffith.

  It was Beatrix’s husband, John, who fueled the neighborhood’s initial isolation of the widowed Emilienne Lavender. He considered her strange and, as such, unwanted. It was John who first implied — loud and often — that Emilienne Lavender was a witch. Soon after the Lavenders moved onto Pinnacle Lane, he informed his wife, Beatrix, that they would have nothing to do with her. And John Griffith was not a man who changed his mind.

  Unbeknownst to her formidable husband, Beatrix secretly came into the bakery every week anyway for three loaves of sourdough bread. When the bakery began to thrive under Emilienne’s and Wilhelmina’s talented hands, John Griffith sneered at his neighbors, “Any day now you’ll all be traveling by broom.”

  Not knowing that with each morning breakfast of toast and eggs, he, too, was making his own contribution to Emilienne’s success.

  MOTHERHOOD PROVED bewildering for Emilienne. At only twenty-three years of age, she had already lost her parents, all three siblings, and a husband. She was the sole owner of a now-successful bakery and the sole parent of a little girl whose exhausting exuberance seemed to double with each passing day.

  By the time Viviane turned two, Emilienne realized that she’d given birth to a child unlike herself in every way. Whereas Emilienne was dark like her maman, with long black hair that she kept wrapped in a thick chignon, Viviane was pale like her father, with wispy thin brown hair framing her cherubic face. To Emilienne, seeing a spider spinning a web was a sign of good luck; to Viviane, a spider was a reason to fetch a jar, preferably one with holes hammered into the lid. There was nothing Roux about Viviane, as far as Emilienne could tell.