A Little Romance: Stories for Hopeful Hearts Page 10

  Maybe her grandmother had built the garden around them to either disguise them from clear view, or distract from their sad and pathetic existence. Still, the old woman never had the heart to give up on the roses either.

  Lyda asked her once, “Why don’t you just tell Mother that the roses don’t like it there, and that things grow better with love than with hate.”

  Her grandmother frowned, but more like in a contemplative way than displeasure. Finally, she said, “What an interesting take, my girl. You are clever, Lyda, remember that always. Looks leave, people too, but cleverness—that’s a greater gift than all the rest.”

  Lyda was old enough then to know that people said that about girls who weren’t very pretty:

  She has a good personality.

  She is very clever . . . or witty . . . or sweet.

  She’s a good girl, very helpful and sympathetic.

  Lyda stopped looking in the mirror at the age of thirteen, but the last thing she saw was braces, limp brown hair that reach to her waist, baby fat in all the wrong places and pimples. At high school, she had always fit right in with a group of girls who looked just like her—she assumed.

  They thought of themselves as shapeless blobs, ready to be molded by the world—the world after high school, of course, and in some other place than this terrible place. (It wasn’t really terrible, though everybody then thought so.)

  They thought a lot about it because they had all been on the honor rolls, and none of them had even one date all through—well, proms, but those were with cousins or the male equivalent of themselves, and often their mothers made them go.

  College was the same way for Lyda—she wasn’t noticed, nor did she care. She studied botany because it interested her, and electronics because she wanted to find a good job anywhere.

  It wasn’t until close to graduation that she started paying attention again—because others started paying attention for her first, and she wanted to know why.

  It’s like she had bloomed overnight, though it had been a few years, she had to admit. She took her time looking too, but always in secret with no one near: The girl in the mirror—the young woman in the mirror—was lovely.

  She looked like one of those paintings of her grandmother. The roses in her cheeks were natural, and the warm green eyes more like sun shining through a mass of overhead leaves.

  When she went back home from college that spring, it was the second time she saw her grandmother cry. She didn’t want to think about that other time, but she did . . .

  ~~~

  After the annulment from Uncle Bill, her mother not only avoided the garden, but avoided coming home some nights altogether. Lyda figured her mother was avoiding her grandmother’s scorn as much as anything else.

  Her grandmother would say: “If you’d have just stayed married the first time, then you’d be a widow by now anyway, and at least would have gotten some life insurance and kept your self-respect.”

  Her mother didn’t have much to say to that. She was smoking by then, though never had before. Lyda suspected that her mother was drinking too. She was old enough to know that her mother, like her grandmother, was a beauty—or would be if she didn’t wear so much makeup, and smell like a cigarette or a brewery.

  No hint of the scent of roses now . . .

  Finally, her grandmother got fed up. She said, “In the old days, we’d ship you off to Europe. That’s just what they said when they meant to a nursing convent or a sanitarium for the cure. Rest and isolation so you get yourself right, my girl.”

  Lyda expected her mother to argue, but instead, she broke down crying. Lyda had never seen her mother cry before, not even at her father’s funeral. Occasionally the pollen would make her mother’s eyes go red and watery when she was digging in the garden, planting those rose bushes, but that had been a few years ago now, and she’d never given in to it and just wept.

  It was the summer before Lyda was ready to start college school when her mother kissed her at the airport. She was flying to Switzerland and had told all her friends it was for an extended holiday, and she’d be gone for a few months.

  Her mother said, “I’ll bring you back a snow-globe. Would you like that?”

  Lyda figured she would. At least her mother knew she no longer played with dolls; now if she could only convince her grandmother of that.

  That holiday lasted even longer than expected . . . months turned to a year . . . then a year and a half . . . then two. Her mother met a man; she phoned to tell them that. She sent a picture too—he was a handsome man with a European title who looked a few years younger than her.

  That title meant nothing in America so she said she’d be staying a while longer over there, as she liked the respect that automatically came with nobility in the air.

  Within a month, her mother called again: “We’re going to get married. I’ll fly you both over here, as Victor has plenty of money, and I can’t wait for him to meet you. He saw the picture of Lyda in my wallet and thought my daughter was charming. I told her she was intelligent, and he knows what that means.”

  Her mother then laughed . . . too much and a little uncontrolled. Had she been drinking? Drunk on happiness perhaps, or maybe it was the altitude making her dizzy.

  Lyda sighed.

  Lyda’s grandmother refused.

  She said, “Women get married at the bride’s home, though you should keep these things low-key. I don’t know why you are getting married so soon, you never think these things through.”

  “That’s old fashioned, Mother, and you know that’s only for new brides. I know what they think in that town; you’re thinking it too, I can tell. But Mother, I swear, this time it’s the real thing, and he’s so kind to me. It will be wonderful for Lyda to see more of this world, and how long had it been since you traveled too?”

  “You know very well how long, and that was right after the war. It was for humanitarian purposes, not a vacation there. But now I’m too old.”

  “Nonsense, you’re too stubborn to get old.”

  Her grandmother sighed, but was smiling when she said, “I’ll think about it.”

  “Oh, Mother, thank you. I’m so happy. Is Lyda there?”

  Lyda had been on the other phone extension all along, and managed a greeting before she didn’t get in another word other than hello, congratulations or the occasional syllable: yes or no.

  “Oh honey, it’s lovely here. His family used to own a castle. We can visit it still, it’s in a sort of national trust now, but it’s just like in those storybooks. And honey, Victor wants to take care of you too. He’s so old-fashioned; I know you’ve never had a real father, but Victor wants to make up for that. He has no children of his own—his older brothers are dead, but he has three sisters—they are all older too, as he’s from a second marriage, but still the heir as he brothers died young and never married by the time— Well, there are plenty of nieces and nephews, but he wants to show you off.”

  Lyda would have preferred a snow globe, but she was glad her mother seemed happy. She said, “I love you, Mom.”

  But the phone had already been hung up.

  It’s the last she heard from her mother; a few days later, they got a telegram saying her mother had married and was a countess now. At the very moment Lyda was reading the telegram for herself, the phone rang. She went to pick up, as her grandmother had to sit down at the news of yet another son-in-law.

  On the phone were the authorities in Germany. The man spoke with an accent that was difficult to comprehend. She had to ask him to repeat it over and over again.

  Finally, her grandmother took the phone. Turns out the old woman spoke German like a Reichminister—who knew? Did it have something to do with that travel after the war—her grandmother had done work for the lawyers at Nuremberg.

  Lyda waited, telegram in hand, happy for her mother, and for all of them, because maybe things could settle down again. But when her grandmother reached out as if grasping for something to hold onto—Ly
da was quickly there.

  She grabbed the phone again as her grandmother said, “Oh, child . . .”

  Lyda helped her to a chair and yelled into the phone, “What’s going on? What is it? What’s happened? Who is this?”

  The next voice she heard was clearer: “I am sorry, Fraulein, I am the estate executor for the von Stromholdt family.”

  “Well, what do you want, you’ve upset my grandmother terribly.”

  “I have disturbing news about your mother, and her husband. Their car veered off the road to miss some tourists who were riding on a biking tour. That’s what the authorities have reported. I am so sorry, Fraulein, but both are dead. They died instantly in the crash, and given the state of their bodies, that was a blessing.”

  Lyda had to sit down too.

  He continued, “The family jewels, houses, household property and artwork belong to the title and will remain in the family, of course, but the personal holdings of Victor von Stromholdt and his new wife revert to the only legal heir they had named in their wills, which they made out when they got married—by your mother’s insistence, I’m told.”

  Insistence? Inheritance?

  It didn’t sound like her mother to be so concerned about the future.

  However, the man sounded suspicious.

  How dare he!

  She ordered, “Send her home.”

  She meant the remains, of course.

  He sniffed and said tersely, “I’m sorry, the family already had them buried. It was in the same casket. The car caught on fire and . . . well, Fraulein, there wasn’t much left. The family was given to believe that this is what they would have wanted.”

  Probably true, but he could have stopped at ‘already had them buried.’

  Lyda dove for the wastebasket and threw up. When she came back up, she saw that her grandmother had slumped and was no longer in need of comfort of any sort.

  She hung up the phone.

  Lyda was now alone in this world.

  Everything her grandmother had owned came to Lyda too. After all the years of work on the house and grounds, there wasn’t much capital left, but the money she got from her latest stepfather helped out quite a bit—and would for some time.

  It took her months to function again, and when she finally finished college, she found a job in the city near her hometown without difficulty. Other than the part about having no family, everything else was going well in her life. She had to drive into the city everyday for her work, but it was worth it to stay in the old place.

  She worked long hours and sometimes worked six or seven days a week too, but that still left long hours of loneliness in between. The friends she had made at college were long gone, and she’d lost touch with those she’d known in high school. She assumed they had families of their own by now—she envied that too much to actually check.

  Lyda decided to keep busy by working in the garden. Most of the servants had all been let go when her mother was killed. Even so, after Lyda left for college, her grandmother kept a maid who also cooked, a nurse who also cleaned, and one gardener who was part time. The place was mostly shut up and dust covers put over much of the furnishings, and they only used a few rooms.

  When she came back, she left it like that.

  ~~~

  By now, it had been a couple of years since she’d come back here to live. With all the estates settled and thoroughly probated (with great legal fees being paid out), she could still afford a few servants, but didn’t need them anyway. Lyda did pay a cleaning service every few months to rid the whole place of the dust.

  The house was much like her grandmother had left it, but the garden was looking wilder than what the woman would have ever allowed. Lyda found that she preferred that, and so started to encourage the randomness of new growth and planted a few things of her own.

  Now in between her job and sleep, she worked in the garden—and that’s all she did with her life. She traded in her sports car and bought a pickup instead. She could haul more things with it, and the constant labor was better than any gym workout or aerobics class.

  All the paving stones were gone, replaced by pebbles or low-growing moss.

  The cement benches were replaced with sitting stones and wood blocks that looked like something the woodsman from Little Red Riding Hood might have sat upon.

  The water features had been repaired, and you could hear the sound of running water everywhere in the garden, even from the balcony.

  The plants here were not native varieties like you’d find in the woods, but she was thinking of putting in some of those things. The plants growing now mostly had domestic purpose, but they were set out in a way that looked like the randomness of the forest—she assumed. She had always been a town girl, so maybe she was thinking of the forests in those fairy tales she used to love.

  Minus Prince Charming or the noble and kind woodsman or the wolves, she mused, or a Count of von Whatever like her last stepfather.

  Lyda sighed.

  He had been her mother’s storybook hero, or close enough, but their story was missing the princess in the tower and the wicked queen too. Her mother and grandmother were none of those, but she realized how isolated they had become here in their own little world.

  Lyda couldn’t blame them, because she was well on the way to becoming just as reclusive as her grandmother had been. Not on purpose . . . she just didn’t know how else to live.

  Given the roses still reminded Lyda of her mother, she wanted to do whatever it took to make them last and blend in. Over those first couple of years, Lyda tried moving some of the bushes to different locations around the yard—both out front and in back. She managed to trim down the large trees without damaging them too much. That way the roses would get the right amount of sun—but still no luck.

  It was the soil, a specialist told her. She could use special treatments, including replacing the topsoil completely—all expensive, he mentioned too.

  Then he said, “But I see you have a more immediate problem.”

  He pointed them out with a kind of glee like he had found a sort of hidden treasure: aphids, bane to any garden.

  She hadn’t really noticed them before. Those nasty creatures had taken up in her garden like it was a fast food restaurant. Her grandmother hated them too—she had called them plant lice, and the woman had no trouble with using every chemical known to man.

  These were the kind that preferred a particular variety of plant too: It was the roses they wanted.

  Lyda didn’t ever like chemicals much, nor did she have the patience to pick them all off and squish them like some organic books had suggested. The birds around here didn’t seem to like them either, and besides, when she attracted birds, they were more likely to end up getting distracted by the berries.

  The only other option she could manage was to bring in outside contractors: Lyda had ordered a good quantity of ladybugs from the large garden store over in the next county because she was now avoiding Chester, the nephew, in the plant nursery nearby.

  It would take a good chunk out of the day to go pick them up, and she found the concept annoying. Still that was her fault for not confronting Chester and just being honest: You’re nice enough, Chester, but I don’t want to spend more time with you.

  And it would have to come to that too. Lyda could tell the nephew was working up the nerve to ask her out. He would say it jokingly, at first, so any rejection might be just brushed off. But Lyda knew what was looming, as she’d been through that before.

  That had happened a lot in college—lab partners mostly, but a couple of times it had been professors. She figured then it was because there weren’t many girls in her field, and when you are the only one there, you’re always the best looking female around.

  At work, it was usually some orderly or ambulance driver or even an intern or two. Occasionally, some other technical geek from her employment firm would assume she was looking to spend more time in his company. Lyda considered herself amongst their gee
ky number, but the arrogance they displayed always astounded her—she just did not understand where it came from.

  They usually didn’t shower every day, they smelled of clothes they had just picked up off the floor, and their cubicles at work had piles of fast food bags and pizza boxes that made them look like mini-landfills.

  They thought it made them look dedicated and intelligent, she knew—like all that trash was a prize won on some computer game of quests. But really it just made them smell, and she sent a note to the janitorial department, begging them to clean them out.

  And given the geek-haircuts had either been left for months or shaved by their own unskilled hands, they looked a bit messy as well. She was no neat-freak, but Lyda prided herself on being able to blend into a crowd of everyone else—she didn’t stand out . . . or smell out, and of that, she was proud.

  She wasn’t quite correct in her assessment, people noticed her, but that was a bug of another color.

  When the geeks asked her out, she had the same answer always, given out politely: “Hey, thanks for asking, I’m flattered, really, but I don’t want to get involved with someone just now, nor someone at work ever.”

  She knew they called her the Ivory Tower in the men’s room and cafeteria too, and her code name was Rapunzel in emails. That just justified her conviction to never go out with any of them—not that she’d ever even seen anyone at work that she found interesting in that way.

  Truth was, she’d never been involved with anyone before—not really and not ever. She’d gone to proms and dances in high school, but like her high school girlfriends, those dates had just been with her friends’ brother or cousin who didn’t even kiss her after—they didn’t dare.

  In college, she went to bars and danced with guys—everyone did. And as usual, everyone there got better looking towards closing time just like everywhere else. But she always went home alone. Lyda never dated any particular guy more than a couple of times in college either—it just didn’t feel . . . right.