The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender Page 5
Occasionally, Wilhelmina Dovewolf stepped in to take care of my mother — typically when she was sick. It was Wilhelmina’s long braids Viviane reached for in comfort when struck with a case of the stomach flu or a bout of bronchitis. Viviane would later come to connect Wilhelmina’s woodsy scent of dry leaves and incense with a feeling of safety and security.
In the end, Viviane all but raised herself — meals were yesterday’s pastries; baths and bedtimes were rarely enforced. Her childhood was spent amid the scents and sounds of the bakery. It was her sticky fingers that topped the Belgian buns with glazed cherries, her hands that warmed the pie dough. As a toddler, she could easily whip up a batch of profiteroles, standing on a chair and calmly filling each choux pastry with cream. With barely a sniff of the air, Viviane Lavender could detect the slightest variation in any recipe — a talent that she would perfect in later years. Yes, Viviane spent many hours in the bakery. Her mother barely acknowledged she was there.
The summer before her seventh birthday, Viviane found an old white dress in one of the many forgotten closets in the house at the end of Pinnacle Lane. The dress resembled a child-size wedding gown. Emilienne assumed correctly that the dress once belonged to the young Portuguese girl for whom the house had been built. The First Communion dress was by then yellowed with age and had an inexplicable burn mark down the front. Through the course of the summer, Viviane refused to wear much else. It was subjected to many stains and tears — a blotch of raspberry jam on the collar, a rip along the seam.
It was while wearing this dress that Viviane met her best friend, Jack.
The day they met, Viviane climbed into the branches of a large birch tree in front of the bakery to watch a boy dig a hole in the wild overgrown patch that was his father’s lawn. It was a hole the boy believed would eventually lead him to the remains of King Tut. Burdened by shovels and buckets, the boy woke early each morning to take on what he considered a serious project, one full of routines and hours of dedication and more than anything else, of belief. His day began with a survey of the previous day’s work, a solemn walk around the site, a measuring of the depth of the hole. Buckets went to the left, shovels to the right. Rocks were separated from the dirt; worms and other insects were spared and collected tenderly into one of the buckets reserved solely for such sensitive things. At the end of the day, upon the collapse of the sun, the boy transported each insect from the bucket and placed it gently into the churned ground of his mother’s compost pile.
Of that summer, Jack best remembered the feel of the cool dirt beneath his fingernails and the weight of potential discovery brought on by each bucket of dirt. Viviane remembered how her muscles ached from spending so many hours perched in the tree’s branches. She remembered the smudges of the darkest brown dirt across Jack’s cheekbones and his grimace as he lifted large rocks from the deepest part of his excavated hole. She remembered his hair, slick with sweat, wet against his forehead. And she remembered, more than anything else, the twinge in her stomach that compelled her to leap down from that tree, ripping the hemline of the pint-size wedding dress as she did, and walk to the edge of that large hole.
The boy standing at the bottom of the hole peered up at Viviane, his eyes squinting in the sunlight. “Want to know what I’m doing?”
“Yes,” Viviane said, trying not to knock more dirt into the hole.
“Okay. But you have to wait. Until I’m done, that is. Then you’ll be able to see it for yourself.” He picked something out of the dirt, cupped it lightly in one of his hands before placing it in one of the buckets near his feet. “You don’t mind waiting?”
Viviane shook her head. No, she didn’t mind.
He smiled then, bringing back that twinge in her stomach, something that she only later recognized as the pangs of desire.
I often wish I knew my mother as she was then — wild and unruly and running, always running with her hair trailing behind her and her mouth open in a gleeful scream. And I wonder what her life might have been had she never met Jack Griffith, the son of Beatrix and John Griffith. Would she have developed a talent for baking, as my grandmother had?
I’ve been told things happen as they should: My grandmother fell in love three times before her nineteenth birthday. My mother found love with the neighbor boy when she was six. And I, I was born with wings, a misfit who didn’t dare to expect something as grandiose as love. It’s our fate, our destiny, that determines such things, isn’t it?
Perhaps that was just something I told myself. Because what else was there for me — an aberration, an untouchable, an outsider? What could I say when I was alone at night and the shadows came? How else could I calm the thud of my beating heart but with the words: This is my fate. What else was there to do but blindly follow its path?
Viviane and Jack were inseparable throughout the rest of the summer and well into the school year. The neighborhood boys teased Jack mercilessly until learning that Viviane Lavender could outrun and outspit any one of them. She also came up with the best games to play — it was my mother’s ingenious idea, for example, to wage a school-yard battle against the kids who were bused down from Phinney Ridge. It was a rivalry that would last for seven years — until America entered the Second Great War. The teams were then briefly recast as American soldiers versus the Japs, but that was deemed little fun since the grown-ups were playing their own version of that game.
The neighborhood girls barely acknowledged the friendship between Jack and Viviane Lavender. Viviane was hardly the type other girls sought for a friend. She never seemed to do any of the things other girls did. She had never thrown an imaginary tea party, would not, in fact, have known what to do at a tea party where there wasn’t any actual tea. Their interest in Jack grew with time. By that point, they hardly wanted him as their friend, and each figured she could easily pull him away from Viviane Lavender — if it came down to that.
IN REGARD TO Emilienne Lavender, John Griffith had made up his mind long ago. And John Griffith was not the kind of man who changed his mind. If anyone had paid closer attention, they would have guessed that John Griffith’s feelings toward Emilienne Lavender maybe stemmed from something much more potent than hatred.
It was the way he watched her. At the post office, in her yard, through the window of the bakery with her hands deep in dough, a smudge of flour on each cheek and her hair tied into a thick chignon at the nape of her neck. For seventeen years, John Griffith’s lust for Emilienne Lavender pumped through his veins, bled from his gums. It was the red that polluted the whites of his eyes, the pink that flushed his cheeks. It was the jealousy that burned the back of his throat whenever he saw his son with Emilienne’s daughter, Viviane.
John Griffith was an angry, prideful man who believed he deserved much more than life had given him. He worked as a delivery-truck driver for a small laundry in Pioneer Square. Most of his meager wages were spent in the opium-filled dens of Seattle’s Chinatown. So, since 1925, the year the Lavenders moved onto Pinnacle Lane, his wife, Beatrix, cleaned houses on First Hill much grander than her own. His son’s lengthy newspaper route took three hours to complete. It was only through Beatrix’s and Jack’s combined hard work that the Griffith house was kept from the edge of squalor.
“You’re a disappointment, Jack,” John Griffith once told his son. “You always were.” At the time, John and Jack were sitting at opposite ends of the kitchen table. Jack was watching his father finish off another bite of chocolate cake.
Beatrix would often think back on this moment, but neither her son nor her husband would even remember that she had been there, too. Only a few months earlier, more than two thousand American sailors had launched the United States into the Second World War. Going to war meant many things, but for Beatrix Griffith, whose son was only seventeen and, thankfully, too young to be drafted, it meant only one: food rations. It was hard enough trying to keep peace at the dinner table, what with a husband who insisted on meals of choice-cut steak when the Griffiths could barely
afford the vegetables Beatrix grew in her own garden. With the looming disappearance of eggs, sugar, and butter, finding ways to appease John Griffith at mealtimes was going to be harder than ever. She’d have to hide food stamps from him in order to make sure she and Jack had enough to eat. It was perhaps because of this guilt that Beatrix had given in to her husband that particular night: he’d demanded his favorite dessert, and she’d used the last four eggs to make it.
John Griffith rarely let anyone watch him eat, said it gave other people the impression he was weak. (Or human, Beatrix had thought at the time. Not that she’d said so. Not that she would ever dare to say such a thing to John Griffith.) But tonight was an exception. Tonight John Griffith’s wife and son would be granted the honor of watching him enjoy every delicious bite.
John Griffith pointed his fork at Jack. “Amos Fields’s boy is captain of the football team,” he said. “Roy Zimmer’s will be taking over the family business when he gets back from the war.”
“I have a job —” Jack started.
John jumped up from his chair and flew across the table, knocking the plate of chocolate cake to the floor. He froze with his fork poised at the Adam’s apple in Jack’s throat.
“You want a medal?” he asked, his voice like ice. “Think you’re some kinda hero for having a paper route?”
Jack winced in spite of himself, causing a cold smirk to appear on his father’s frosting-covered lips. John stabbed at another piece of cake while his wife wiped the other mess off the floor. “Then there’s John Griffith’s son, my son,” he said between clenched teeth, “who will only ever be remembered for fucking the daughter of the neighborhood witch.” John snorted. “That will end, Jack. It’s about time you start being useful around here.”
He glared at his son until Jack was forced to look away, embarrassed by his wretched need to blink. John gave a quick wave with his large hand, dismissing Jack from the table. As he rose to leave, Jack was crushed by the realization that while his father considered himself to be a great man, in his father’s eyes the best Jack could ever hope to be was useful.
In January 1942, a new theater opened in West Seattle. The gala opening of the Admiral Theater was a grand affair and was attended by most everyone in the area. In a photograph printed in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a large crowd of movie patrons gathered below the brightly lit marquee and the words Seattle’s Finest Theater glowing in iridescent script. At one edge of the crowd stood a girl and a boy of about the same height, the boy’s hand resting affectionately on the square of the girl’s back.
Viviane stood on her tiptoes to get a better look at the people around her. It looked to her like almost everyone from the neighborhood had decided to come: there was Ignatius Lux, one of Viviane’s and Jack’s favorite teachers at the high school, and Mr. Lux’s bride-to-be, Estelle Margolis. There were the old Moss sisters. There were Constance Quakenbush and Delilah Zimmer, whose brother Wallace — as well as Mart Flannery and Dinky Fields — had dropped out of school and joined the navy the moment they turned eighteen. It seemed the war was under everyone’s skin. Viviane reached over and laced her fingers through Jack’s, happy that it hadn’t yet reached them.
When the doors to the theater finally opened, Viviane and Jack quickly made their way inside — marveling at the walls splashed with oceanic scenes and the usherettes and doormen dressed in nautical uniforms. Jack examined the innovative push-back seats, throwing Viviane an occasional Can you believe these? look, to which Viviane smiled back. Jack had an eye for things new and shiny. Viviane took off her coat and shoved it into the seat behind her. The theater smelled like fresh paint and new carpeting, like expectation and hope. Viviane leaned her head back and breathed deeply, taking in all at once the wet, salty smell of the theater popcorn, the heavy musk of perfume, the sharp spice of cologne. And the light scent of soap and Turtle Wax — Jack.
To say Viviane had a keen sense of smell was an understatement. She could detect what people had eaten for dinner from a mere whiff of their breath. Not even the strongest toothpaste could hide the sharp tang left by onions and garlic, the buttery aroma of chicken noodle soup. The smell of unwashed hair was unbearable to Viviane, as were infected wounds and cooked meat. But her strange talent went even further. She could tell when a woman was pregnant — even before the woman herself might know — just from the way she smelled: a combination of brown sugar and Stargazer lilies. Happiness had a pungent scent, like the sourest lime or lemon. Broken hearts smelled surprisingly sweet. Sadness filled the air with a salty, sea-like redolence; death smelled like sadness. People carried their own distinct personal fragrances. Which was how she could tell when Jack was near, and how she knew that the two conspiring heads in front of her belonged to best friends Constance Quakenbush and Delilah Zimmer. They were classmates of Viviane’s and Jack’s. As if on cue, the two girls tossed a synchronized glance at Viviane, then went back to another round of furtive whispering.
Viviane shifted in her seat, trying not to overhear what they must be saying. Why would she even want to, for that matter? It was obvious to everyone that Constance had her eye on Jack and wasn’t about to let anything get in her way. Even, or perhaps especially, Viviane. For the most part, Viviane wasn’t concerned — after all, beneath the fumes of her excessive perfume, Constance smelled like sour milk and cat urine — but she wouldn’t be concerned at all if Constance wasn’t so goddamn pretty.
At seventeen and a half, Jack was a good-looking young man with an angular jawline, thick, unruly eyebrows, and a lock of wavy dark hair that fell in his eyes due to a favorably situated cowlick.
Viviane, for her part, was attractive. The particular components of her face were nothing special — just a pair of brown eyes, a nose, a set of lips — but Jack thought her beautiful, and that was enough, for Viviane and most everyone else. Most were content to leave the two of them alone, free to follow the blissful path fate seemed to have set before them. Everyone, that is, except for Jack’s father and Constance Quakenbush.
Constance turned around again, bouncing a little as she did, her long blond hair swinging prettily across her shoulders. She threw Jack a bright smile. “Hi, Jack,” she said.
Jack looked up, distracted. He blinked twice before offering an awkward “Oh, hi, Constance.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t say hello earlier,” Constance said. “I didn’t know you were there.”
Viviane rolled her eyes.
“Delilah dear and I were just trying to decide which Hollywood starlet I look like the most,” Constance continued, “Veronica Lake or Rita Hayworth.”
“A blond Rita Hayworth,” Delilah interrupted, turning around and giving Viviane a smug look. Delilah wasn’t nearly as pretty as Constance, but her drab looks and constant need for approval helped her play the part of Constance’s sycophant perfectly.
“Naturally, when I realized you were sitting behind us, I thought, well, surely Jack will know. You always have the answer to everything,” Constance purred. “Delilah thinks Rita Hayworth, but I’m not so sure.” Constance leaned toward Jack. “Did you know Veronica Lake’s real name is Constance? Isn’t that spooky?”
Jack stood and brushed off his knees before sitting back down. “Not really,” he said. “I am pretty sure there was a Sicilian queen named Constance sometime in the twelfth century.”
Constance and Delilah shared a delicious glance. “Really?”
“I bet she was beautiful,” Delilah gushed.
Jack shrugged. “Actually, Constance of Sicily wasn’t married until she was thirty. Some say that the reason was because she was so ugly. No one wanted her for a wife.”
Constance’s face fell, and a glorious shade of red bloomed from her chin to her hairline. She turned around after muttering something about the movie starting. Delilah shot Viviane a dark look. “It’s a lie,” they heard her whisper. “I bet her name wasn’t Constance. Bet it was Viviane.”
Jack draped his arm across Viviane’s shoulders.
“What’s that?”
“You certainly do have the answer to everything.”
Jack gave Viviane a sideways glance, a playful smirk on his lips. “Are you calling me a know-it-all?”
“Who me? Never.”
The film was Week-End in Havana and starred not Veronica Lake or Rita Hayworth, but the exotic Carmen Miranda. After the movie Jack drove Viviane to their favorite spot: the town reservoir.
The reservoir was located on the highest point of the neighborhood — the hill at the end of Pinnacle Lane came in a close second — and was hidden by a grove of maple trees. The caretaker and his wife lived in a little white house near the reservoir’s edge and spent autumn days scooping five-pointed leaves of orange, gold, and red from its still waters. At night when young lovers came to park at the water’s edge, they smiled at one another, turned the radio up, and closed the curtains against the darkness. Jack and Viviane had discovered the place in daylight years ago — they’d even built a secret fort in the trees. They’d only recently started coming at night and were amazed by how different everything looked when bathed in the silvery light of the moon.
Jack parked and turned the engine off. “Did you like the movie?”
Viviane nodded, thinking of the colorful costumes and the lively dance numbers. “I wish I could dance,” she mused.
“I can teach you,” Jack said.
Viviane looked at him. “You don’t know how to dance.”