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Monday, October 3, 1994
Garner Creek, Georgia
We need just one more signature here, if you please,” Ben Alexander said, indicating the line below the husband’s name.
The woman took the proffered pen, bent her head, and wrote her name painstakingly on the line. It was so close to the line above it, and her large rounded script looked cramped and confined as she wrote. “How many keys will we get?” Sid asked as Sarah pushed the form back across the desk toward the gray-suited bank manager, who reached out and added it to the pile of papers in front of him.
“Two, of course, since there are two signatories. I’ll bring them to you in just a moment.” Ben gave both new customers a friendly smile as he gathered up the stack of papers and tucked them into a manila folder. As he left the room, he turned back once again to glance at the petite auburn-haired woman who had been watching his receding back.
Once the door closed behind the banker, Sid held out his hand and said, “Hand it over to me. We’re going to put your mother’s ring in the box, and I don’t want you arguing about it anymore.”
“I like having it where I can see it,” his wife objected, “even if it doesn’t fit me very well.”
“You wouldn’t want to lose it. Believe me,” he said, “it’ll be safer in here.” After a moment, Sarah slipped the ring from her forefinger and placed it reluctantly on her husband’s palm.
The banker bustled back into the room, with the folder held firmly under one arm. He sat down at his desk and withdrew two long keys from a small orange envelope that had been tucked into a slot in the folder. He smoothly double-checked to make sure the two keys looked identical, then withdrew a second orange envelope from the top drawer of his desk.
As he inserted one of the keys in the second envelope, he smiled again at the young woman. When he started to hand one of the envelopes to her, he was surprised that the husband reached out and took it from him. The woman held her breath for a few moments, let it out in a barely audible sigh, then bent her head to look at her hands, as if they held the answer to a question she hadn’t quite formulated yet.
Without missing a beat, the banker said, “Yes, well, here’s the other key, Mrs. Borden. Now you’ll each have one,” and held the second envelope out toward Sarah.
Again her husband took the key before his wife even lifted her head. “I’ll keep one on my key ring and we’ll put the other one in a safe place.” Turning to face the bank manager directly, he said, “My wife has an unfortunate tendency to lose things.” The banker thought he saw a movement, almost as if the woman had started to shake her head, but when he glanced over at her, the fringe of auburn hair hung still, shielding her eyes from view.
After a moment, during which no one breathed, Ben suggested that they move into the vault to locate the box and to be sure both keys worked. Number 146 was one of the medium-sized boxes, about four feet off the floor, halfway down the left wall of the small vault. The bank manager inserted a key from a large ring and turned it counterclockwise, then spoke to the husband.
“Now, Mr. Borden, would you put one of your keys in this slot on the right and turn it all the way to the left?” As the husband removed the key from one of the envelopes and stepped forward to slide it in the lock, Ben noticed that the fluorescent lighting in the vault made the man’s sallow skin look greenish. ‘He looks like a loser,’ thought the banker, ‘and he’s a lot older than his wife.’ Aloud he suggested, “Try turning it around. The flat side of your key goes toward the hinge side of the box.”
Sid didn’t seem to appreciate the help, but he turned the key over and twisted it in the lock. “Now,” Ben said, moving to take hold of the little handle, “we’ll slide the box out. As you can see, it’s completely empty. We’ll take it out here,” he said, leading them to a small cubicle and motioning them inside it. “You can take as much time as you need to arrange your special items in your box. When you’re through, just open the door.” Ben backed away from the little room, closing the sliding door as he did so. He walked back to his desk, shaking his head slightly. ‘Such a quiet little woman,’ he thought.
Inside the small chamber, Sid took three or four white envelopes out of his inside jacket pocket and placed them in the box. Reaching into the left pocket of his jacket, he extracted the little ring. There was one small but exquisite diamond, surrounded by a circlet of tiny diamond chips. They caught even the fluorescent lighting and magnified it. The woman looked once at the twinkling light of the ring, then turned her head away. Sid placed the ring under the top envelope, the one marked H.M.
Without looking back, she slid open the door and stepped into the lobby to wait while her husband, accompanied by the bank manager, returned the box to its slot. This time, he used the second key, saw that the box was locked, worked that key onto his key ring, patted his jacket pocket, shook hands with the banker, and left the vault.
As he walked past the cloth-covered table with cups and a coffee maker on it, Sid tossed the empty orange envelope into the trashcan. Sarah glanced up once to meet the banker’s eyes before she turned to follow her husband out the front door of the First Community Bank of Keagan County.
~~~~~
SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 1996
Martinsville, Georgia
“So, why couldn’t he do his own murder investigation?” my sister asked me.
“Because, along with everybody else in town, he was a possible suspect. But he was cleared right away.”
“That’s good. It would have put a damper on your wedding.”
“Anyway,” I said, ignoring the sarcasm and pausing for a moment to take a deep breath and a sip of tea, “that’s how we first met, over a dead body. It’s hard to believe I never told you the story before.”
“It’s not as if I ever bothered to keep in touch, other than birthday cards.” Glaze, my sister, also has a pottery name. She’s five years my junior, but a universe away from me in experiences. Twenty-some-odd years ago, when Sol and I were married, she was in the hospital trying to recover from another suicide attempt. We didn’t even think of postponing the ceremony because she had been so far from us for so many years.
Even since her recovery, she and I hadn’t spent any real time together. Just brief phone calls and periodic letters. Then she called me last month, in late March, asking if she could come early for my second wedding, assuring me that she would be a model guest. As we talked, she finally told me something of her return to full health after having been diagnosed at age thirty-six with bipolar disorder. Manic depression was what I’d known it as, but I simply never realized she had it. I agreed to the visit, quietly breathing a heart-felt “thank you” because this was my answer. I’d been wondering how I was going to get the curtains up before the wedding. Not that it was necessary. I just wanted the house to look its best, and my sister could sew. But that was another story ...
It was a long phone call. She was enthusiastic when I asked for her help and told her about all my plans – café curtains in the kitchen and office, some long, sweepy curtains in the living room, some lacy ones at the front door. I know, it sounds like I’m stuck several decades ago, but I happen to like lace at the front door. I’m not alone. Here, in northeastern Georgia, you can still see a lot of lace when you walk along the lanes in the evening, looking into the lighted front rooms. I’d already measured all the windows and bought all the material, including some extra just in case, but hadn’t found the time yet to do the cutting and sewing.
She was two days late getting here, though. She called on Wednesday to say that her car was dead, don’t worry, she’d get here in a day or two. Apparently she got a good deal on a used Honda, and had driven it down yesterday. Now her green Civic was parked at the front curb, and she was parked at my kitchen table, one week exactly before my wedding day. My second wedding day.
We spent a few moments just looking at each other. When she looked at me, I know she saw a middle-of-the-road, middle-aged, ordinary-looking woman. My long hair has lots of gray in it, but from a distance, you’d say ‘there’s a lady with brown hair’ because the gray is all blended in. I’m a little stockier than she is. She holds her weight well. Maybe it’s her clothes. I wonder how she does it? Sally, my younger daughter, thinks I have the fashion sense of an aardvark. I suppose she’s right. My idea of high fashion is when my socks match my turtleneck in winter, and when my dress is long enough to hide my legs in the summer.
I have vitiligo, a condition that means I have no melanin, no pigment in my skin, so the sun burns me rather than tans me. It took me a long time to come to peace with that. When I was young I used to be a sun worshipper, always with a gorgeous tan from May till October, but when I was pregnant with Sandra, my first child, a little patch of non-tanning area appeared on my forehead. I covered it with my hair swept down low and toward the right. But then it migrated to around my mouth, down my neck, here and there on my arms. I spent a lot of years looking like a map of the Alaskan Archipelago, but gradually I lost so much pigment I began to look like one of those English ladies, as if I always wore a hat in the sun. It doesn’t bother me any more, but I had to grow into the peace of accepting myself the way I am. All except for my dead white legs. I haven’t gotten peaceful about them yet.
Glaze was still gorgeous, in a quiet sort of way; not spectacular, knock-your-socks-off gorgeous. Just the most incredible bone structure, with a nose the Venus de Milo would envy, and those deep-set eyes that looked striking even without makeup. Her short wavy hair had been styled simply to frame her face. It wasn’t salt and pepper like mine. No. She got her silver hair straight from Grandma McKee, our dad’s mother, who’d had white hair at twenty-eight. Glaze was wearing a brilliant yellow crew-necked shirt that fit the energy of her happy smile. My sister’s eyebrows were pretty much perfect. Her ears were small and hugged her head. She had a light quality to her voice. It was pitched fairly low, but had such a nice clarity that she never sounded like one of those over-trained TV voices.
“Are you through looking yet?” she laughed at me.
“No, I feel like I need to make up for lost time. I’m so sorry we were so far apart for ...”
She stopped me with a wave of her graceful hand with its tapered fingernails. “Let’s make a deal right now. The past is the past. What happened, happened. Let’s just move forward.” She stretched her hand out toward me, obviously requesting a handshake. “I agree to forgive you for being a typical big sister, if you’ll forgive me for being a typical little sister. Is it a deal?”
“Done deal,” I breathed gratefully. I hadn’t wanted to dredge up my lack of care for her in the past. When I entered my teens, she was only eight, so I’d pretty much ignored her, other than to be amazed at her astonishing capacity for guzzling milkshakes. Come to think of it, we had enjoyed occasional games of Scrabble played at a kitchen table much like this one.
We never saw it when her quiet withdrawing ways switched into depression. Mom despaired at her hopelessness, and Dad just kept on believing that his little jewel would “see the light someday.” Hardly a prescription for getting the needed help. There weren’t any counselors in our small town, and all the doctors were sorely undereducated about depression in those years. We just thought she was a very difficult person to live with; and since she stopped coming home for visits after she was about nineteen, it was easier to build our lives without her. She and I had spent more than twenty years estranged.
When I married Solomon Brandy in 1971, Glenda Harvey was my Matron of Honor, not Glaze, who had spent that April day crouched in a corner at Mainwaring Regional Hospital on the fifth floor, where they put the suicidal people under lock and key.
Now here she sat, this Saturday morning, across the kitchen table from me, still marveling in a life that didn’t hurt her all the time. Her depression had been controlled for years with medication and counseling, and she seemed so much calmer than I ever recalled. She was interested in everything. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t recognize her. It was more that I didn’t recognize the new kinship I felt for her. I’d never had a sister before. Not really. Now I had one. It felt good.
Yesterday we hadn’t known exactly when she’d be arriving, but Marmalade had scratched at the front door about half past four, warning us that we had company, so I straightened myself up and ran out to meet Glaze before she was even halfway up the walk. As we hugged, I inhaled the most delicious scent. “How can you possibly smell this good after a long car trip? I’m so glad you’re here! Whatever happened to your hand?”
She chuckled. “You’re going to find out my secrets. I keep a bottle of vanilla extract in the glove compartment so I can dab some on whenever I want to. That way I always smell like a cookie! It wasn’t that long a trip today, and I’ll tell you about my finger when I’m sitting down.”
“I’m glad you finally got here.”
“Me, too.”
“Luckily you made it just ahead of the rain.” There had been scattered clouds all day and even some lightning, threatening more showers. One thing about spring in Georgia – when it decides to rain, it generally keeps working on it until everything is soggy. We’d been having a five-year drought so far. Heavy rain just runs off extra-dry soil, so I was voting for slow, gentle rain that would soak in.
Bob, who had stopped by about 4:00 to bring me a lovely bouquet of daisies, walked calmly down the front steps, took the small flowered valise out of Glaze’s left hand, gave her a brief hug and a big smile, inspired no doubt by the cookie smell. As we walked up toward the house, I turned to take a good look at my sister, and was surprised to realize that we were both about the same size. “My gosh, you’ve changed. Whatever happened to my little sister?”
“Oh come on, you’ve seen me since I grew as tall as you.”
“I’m not talking about height. You just always seemed so fragile before. Sort of like a waif.” I groped for words to explain how strong she looked, even with her bandaged finger. “Now, though, you seem more real, if that makes any sense at all.”
“That’s because I feel more real, more like the person I’m supposed to be.”
“Well, we don’t need to stand on the front walk all afternoon. Come on in. Bob’s going to put your case upstairs. Did you pack light, or are there six more suitcases in the trunk?”
“I’m here only for a week. Why would I need more than this? I do have my Maid of Honor dress hanging in the back seat and a suitcase in the trunk, but we can get those out later.”
As we stepped up onto the deep front porch, Glaze turned back, taking a deep breath. If it had been late winter instead of mid-spring, she would have gotten a whiff of the Daphne odora, but April meant she smelled mostly the Viburnum carlesii, better known as the Korean Spice Bush. She breathed out a contented sigh. “It’s so quiet here. I’m glad I came.” There was a huge clap of thunder. “Well, maybe it’s not so quiet,” Glaze said as the rain started in torrents. “Whew! Thank goodness for this porch!”
“If you’re going to stay here, you’ll have to call it a verandah.”
“You must be kidding.”
“Not at all. Mrs. Hoskins, the woman who’s selling me the place, told me that calling it a verandah makes it feel bigger.”
“Well then, verandah it is.” She shivered a bit in the cool wind that had sprung up when the rain started.
“I’ll give you a quick tour of the house and then feed you some hot soup if you’re hungry from the trip.”
“Do you still think soup is the only food worth cooking? If I remember, you ate more soup than anyone I ever met.”
“There’s nothing wrong with soup twice a day.”
As I stepped back to let her precede me, I could see Glaze’s eyes crinkle up as she laughed in response. “There’s nothing wrong with milkshakes three times a day, either. Now point me toward a bathroom before I bust, and then you can feed me soup to your heart’s content.”
We walked inside, and I pointed out the doorway to the right that led to the kitchen, then steered her to the left into the living room. “The powder room’s over here, tucked near the stairs. A big bath with tub and shower is upstairs, but this’ll do for the essentials.” Marmalade had been shadowing us the entire time, so I took a moment to introduce them properly. “Marmy, this is Glaze. Glaze, this is Marmalade.”
“How do you do, you elegant wonder?”
You smell very sweet, and I like your voice. You are very welcome here.
“Come on into the kitchen when you’re through. We’ll do the tour after we eat. I made some vegetable barley soup. I hope you like home-made pumpernickel bread.”
“Yummy!”
“No milkshakes today, but we’ll find one tomorrow, I promise. Give me your car key and I’ll ask Bob to bring your other stuff inside once the rain lets up a little.”
She fumbled in her purse, and handed me a ring of keys. I turned to go, but not before I heard her exclamation of delight as she walked into the little blue and white nook that was my pride and joy.
I’ve been in this house only about a month. When Bob and I decided to get married, we knew my year at Melissa’s bed and breakfast would be ready to expire, so we found this house - it’s a long story - and I moved in with my shredder and reel-type lawn mower and some of the furniture from Braetonburg. My daughters and their spouses came over to help, thank goodness. Bob and I signed a rental agreement with option to buy, but Bob didn’t move in with me. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I wanted a wedding ring first. Anyway, it’s a small town.
Of course, as soon as I moved in, I wanted to tackle everything at once, but knew that I needed to take it one step at a time. In years past my decorating sense had taken a back seat to raising the three kids, and Sol hadn’t cared much about fancy wall finishes and such.
The first faux finish painting I did was four years ago, when I helped
Sandra, my oldest, fix up the nursery before Verity was born. Verity is my oldest grandchild. Sandra and I painted the room a gentle light green, then mixed green with some faux glaze and a little bit of white paint. We read in the folder from the paint store that we could use a crumpled up plastic bag to dab a texture into the glaze coat as we rolled it on over the solid green. It ended up with the feel almost of leather, and gave a soft mottled look to the nursery walls.
Then Sally, my second daughter, who lived in Hastings, wanted help painting her living room. We used a sponge instead of a plastic bag, to get a heavier, blotchier look to the topcoat. Orange, she’d wanted. My gosh, who’d want an orange living room? It did turn out well, though. Probably because it ended up looking more like a soft salmon color.
By the time I got around to doing the little powder room that Glaze was admiring so much, I was willing to try a fake marble finish. It was really just a matter of choosing the paint colors carefully, and then putting them on with a roller in patches over the base coat. I’d chosen a light, light blue as the first coat, then layered on swipes of white and four shades of gray. I finished it with fine silver and gold lines painted with a teeny brush that had only about five bristles.
Feeling a warm sense of accomplishment, I joined Bob in the kitchen, gave him a big hug, and took the jar of vegetable soup out of the fridge. As I did so, the light bulb went pzzzt. Of course, when I opened the junk drawer that I’ve always managed to have in any kitchen I’ve ever cooked in, there was no extra bulb. I shrugged and dumped the soup into the big pot that Grandma Martelson gave me when I married Sol. I added four or five large spoonfuls of cooked barley, then turned to the cutting board. As I was slicing off some of my special pumpernickel, Glaze walked in, took a sniff, and said, “Wow! That smells divine. I didn’t think I was very hungry yet, but now I’m not so sure.”
We all three settled around the big table, Bob with his enormous blue coffee cup. I had my big red mug, with the hearts on it, full of raspberry tea. I’d given Glaze the mug mom made six years ago, the one with the green leaf pattern. Bob asked her, “Did you have any trouble finding the place?”
“No, you gave really great directions.” She paused as if considering whether or not to continue her train of thought. Apparently the answer was yes, because she said, “I suppose you ought to know ... I didn’t want to worry you on Wednesday, so I didn’t tell you the real reason I didn’t get here. A really nice woman named Sarah ran a red light in Garner Creek and plowed her little light blue Escort into the passenger side of my car.”
“Were you hurt?” I asked as I stood up to ladle the soup into big bowls.
“Sort of. She totaled my car and put both of us in the hospital.”
“Hospital?” Bob queried, but I interrupted him.
“Glaze! Why didn’t you tell us? You were so close. We could have driven up to get you.”
“Well, I knew you had enough on your plate with the wedding plans. Anyway, all I had was this broken finger and a bunch of scratches and dents from the airbag. Luckily, all my bruises are in discreet places. Sarah was hurt worse than I was. Her left knee was banged up pretty badly.”
“How can you feel sorry for her if she totaled your car?”
“You sound like a mama bear protecting a cub, Biscuit. I’m okay, and I heal fast. Sarah and I got along just fine once she realized I wasn’t going to sue her pants off. She seemed really frightened at first, but then we just seemed to hit it off. She’s a really good listener.” Glaze paused to lift another spoon loaded with vegetables to her mouth. “Yummy. You do know how to cook!”
“Thank you.”
“We both like to read a lot,” Glaze continued after she swallowed that mouthful, “so we talked about our favorite authors. When her husband got there after he got off work, she was afraid he’d be mad at her for wrecking the car. I could tell he was upset, but that makes sense. It was only a Ford Escort, but that’s still money. He turned out to be a used car salesman, so I bought my green Honda from him after I got out of the hospital.”
“Garner Creek doesn’t have a hospital,” I ventured.
“It wasn’t really a hospital, I suppose, more like a little clinic, but they had about six beds, three of which were empty.”
“You must mean the Montrose Clinic,” Bob interjected. “Good little outfit.”
“When did you get out?” I asked her.
“Yesterday afternoon. Then I went car-looking and dealt with insurance stuff, and I found a little bed and breakfast place to stay in. Early this afternoon I retrieved my dress from my old car and picked up my new car. Luckily it wasn’t damaged, the dress I mean, but I’ll need to do some touch-up ironing.”
“I’ll do the ironing. Your hand looks uncomfortable.”
“It doesn’t feel too bad, but if it’ll get me out of ironing...”
“How,” I asked her, “did you manage to get admitted to the clinic if you weren’t hurt that badly?”
“I guess that’s the advantage of a small-town hospital. They wanted their doctor to check me, but she was out of town for a day. They figured it was easier just to admit me so I’d be there at six-thirty in the morning when she came on duty. If they’d been full up, they probably would have released me right away, but I was hurting a lot right at first. I don’t know if my insurance will cover it, but it was worth it even if I have to shell out some money.”
“Did you have any trouble driving here?” Bob asked. “I noticed it was a stick shift.”
“No, it’s a breeze to drive, even with my right hand banged up. The gears are as smooth as ...”
They talked comparative car models for a while, but I tuned out on that. Since they stopped making ’57 Chevy Bel Aires, I firmly believe the automotive industry has gone totally downhill. That was the best car ever made. We got one when I was ten years old. It was black and white. They called them ‘skunk cars’ that year. I loved those fins. Mom and Dad babied that car, and I learned to drive on it six years later.
Bless my dad. One day when I was seventeen, I was running some errands over in Hastings for Mom, and I got all discombobulated trying to get out of a parallel parking space. There was a pickup truck parked in front of me, and the edge of the road was kind of slanted down toward the curb. I must have connected with the tailpipe. I ended up putting a long scratch in the passenger side door.
I thought I could relate to how Sarah must have felt in the hospital, because I was so scared of telling my dad what I’d done. Dad just took a very long breath, and said, “Well, Bisque honey, I’m glad you weren’t hurt.” The Chevy still had that scratch when I went to college the next year. I think Dad left it there as a lesson. Or maybe he just didn’t think it was all that important.
When we finished eating, I rinsed all the dishes and showed Glaze through the house. The rain had slowed to a minor drizzle, so Bob retrieved her bag and dress. It’s really nice to have a man who likes to do such things. That is not, however, the only reason I love him. He returned her keys, then left after the tour. Glaze and I took two spoons and a pint of vanilla ice cream out onto the front porch, curled up and sat foot to foot on the swing, with Marmalade between us, listening to the slow rain and talking till bedtime.
~~~~~
MY GRATITUDE LIST – Friday Night
Five things for which I am grateful:
1. Having a sister
2. This gentle rain
3. Ice Cream!
4. Marmy
5. And of course! Bob
My Gratitude List:
my two humans
this new one
the bird feeder
rain
the swing