CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
T here were azaleas blooming at the end of the garden path. Azaleas in February, but only because the new gardener had mistakenly planted them on the south side of Aurore’s garden. Now the crimson blossoms lifted their glorious faces to the New Orleans winter sun, like bathing beauties on the French Riviera, but by August the shrubs would have shriveled and died.
The warm afternoon had drawn Aurore outside to spend an hour on a stone bench beside her goldfish pond. She had brought a book to read, but instead she had stared at the fish and the fat brown toad who drowsed in the cool shadow of a rock and dreamed of mosquitoes.
She heard Phillip’s footsteps before she saw him. When she looked up, he was standing several yards away, his arms folded across his chest.
He had left town several weeks ago, the day after he learned the truth about who she was. She knew he had been to New York and California chasing stories. There was little that went on in New Orleans that was a secret, and little Aurore couldn’t find out if she asked the right people. She hadn’t been surprised. She had expected Phillip to go away. She had also expected him to return.
“What made you come back?” she asked. “A journalist’s curiosity? A duty to your mother?” She didn’t add her final guess out loud. Had he been influenced by a young woman named Belinda Beauclaire, who was simply too perfect to leave behind?
“You won. Just like you knew you would.”
She patted the bench beside her. He moved forward and sat reluctantly. “At my age, and in my condition, I’m allowed a fault or two. Forgive me for being smug.”
“Are you really dying? Or was that a way to assure my presence here?”
Aurore didn’t answer directly. She pointed to the azaleas with the tip of her cane. “I really should have those moved. They need protection in summer, but I wanted so badly to see them flower.”
“You said you probably had six months.”
“I would like to live until summer,” she said.
“Most people would prefer to die rather than face the heat and humidity here.”
“I’ll miss breathing steam.” She smiled. “I suppose I’ll miss breathing in general.”
“Are you in pain?”
“Blessedly, very little. But I can feel death settle over me. I sleep less, eat less. When I move, I feel the way I did as a little girl when I walked out into the Gulf and the water sucked at every step.”
“None of that means that death is just around the corner.”
“When I do sleep, I’m visited by those who’ve already died. I dream of them, and when I wake up, they’re still with me.”
“Your husband?”
She shook her head. “Never Henry.”
“From what you’ve told me, I suppose you’re grateful.”
She smiled again, this time sadly. “Perhaps Henry went to a place with no visiting hours.”
“The marriage never got better?”
“You’re beginning to sound like a journalist again, Phillip. Does this mean you’ll hear me out?”
“When I write up your memoirs, I’ll say that you were an old woman who always got what she wanted, no matter who she had to manipulate, no matter what she had to do.”
She was silent for a moment, considering his words and somehow liking the sound of them. “And will you also say that I was an old woman who did what I thought was best, even when it might have been easier to spend my last days watching goldfish and toads?”
“I don’t know.”
She used her cane to stand. She was increasingly unsteady on her feet, and more disgusted daily that her body could fail her so completely. “Walk with me, Phillip.”
He had already gotten to his feet. “I don’t have my tape recorder with me now.”
“Oh, I think you’ll remember what I tell you.”
“I already know there’s no happy ending to look forward to.”
“Perhaps not for me, not in the way you mean. But there are compensations for almost everything that happens in life.”
“Are there?”
She held out her hand. “May I lean on you?”
He hesitated. She could see him struggle; then he shrugged. He moved closer. She rested her hand on his arm.
As she thought about how to begin, she stared at the azaleas at the end of the garden path. They were blooming now, but in a month, when their blossoms had faded, she would have the gardener dig them up and plant them in the proper spot. Perhaps she would not be alive next spring to see them bloom again, but she would know that they bloomed for those who came after her.
“Let me tell you about my garden,” she said. “And about the ways my life changed in the years when this garden first began to grow.”