Chapter 18 Tilley - A Test
TILLEY A Test
At any rate, Tilley and Robert passed each other in the hallway, and something extraordinary happened: he didn’t even look at her.
She almost laughed. All those songs about the best thing about a beautiful girl is that she doesn’t know she’s beautiful?
Please. She knows she’s beautiful. Tilley knew she was, and she got plenty of attention for it.
And Robert had the gall to simply walk by as if his day had not been made by the mere sight of Tilley.
As luck would have it, they had chemistry together.
The class, not the chemical attraction of love.
But Tilley was going to make sure they had both.
She couldn’t act interested in him. That would have been terribly improper for a sweet Southern girl raised with good manners no matter the decade.
She hung back, saying hello to a girlfriend until he took his seat.
Then, not looking at him this time, Tilley casually slid into the desk beside Robert.
She didn’t listen to a single thing the teacher said.
Although, that wasn’t so unusual. Tilley wasn’t ever much of a student. But now, she had a plan to formulate.
Without ever looking at Robert, about halfway through class, Tilley “dropped” her pencil.
It was a test. If he didn’t even try to get it, he obviously wasn’t the one for her.
But, as the pencil clinked to the ground, they both leaned for it at the same time, their fingers touching.
Still crouched over, she looked up and smiled at him.
He smiled at her. And, well, that’s when Tilley knew: Their chemistry was as real as the table of periodic elements hanging to the right of the blackboard.
“I wonder if I ever told Robert that story,” Tilley said, as Amelia unearthed swimsuits from her dresser drawer. Tilley was perched on the end of Amelia’s bed, vetting her niece’s choices as she prepared for four nights in the British Virgin Islands with her love.
“I don’t know,” Amelia said, holding up a cream-colored one-piece with a big ruffle over the shoulder.
“Oh, yes. Take that,” Tilley said. “That one is darling.”
“Or should I only take bikinis?” Amelia asked. “Isn’t there some rule that you have to stop wearing bikinis at forty or something?”
Tilley raised her eyebrow. “Well, there’s no rule. But perhaps it’s the better part of wisdom.”
They both laughed. As Amelia folded the swimsuit and put it in her suitcase, she said, “I don’t know if you told Robert that story, Aunt Tilley, but I think he knows how it ended, right?”
Tilley smiled. She almost let herself go back to those days when they were together, when he was there, when they were happy. She loved living in that place. But no. She needed to stay here. She wanted Amelia to have a great trip, and Amelia needed Tilley’s packing help. Obviously.
“Don’t worry about a thing while you’re gone,” Tilley said. “I will take care of Greer and George, of course.”
Tilley was self-aware enough to know that no one would trust her to take care of their children, but she wanted to say it anyway. It was a ruse they kept up that made their whole all-under-one-roof situation work.
“I feel very comforted that you will be here,” Amelia said.
“Yes. Because how well do we even know this Daisy character?” Tilley asked. She wasn’t incensed that Amelia hadn’t asked her to babysit, but she was maybe a little bit irritated on behalf of her sister and her best friend. As soon as she said that, though, she wished she hadn’t.
“Well, Mason sure seems to like her,” Amelia said. “Did you see them at the game last night?”
“Yes. And I cooked them dinner afterward.”
Amelia studied her, and Tilley laughed. “I did, Amelia! He was too famous in the restaurant and kept getting interrupted, so I made them grilled cheese and tomato soup and pie.”
“Well, that was very kind of you.”
“Seeing them made me feel so nostalgic for Robert,” Tilley said.
Amelia nodded, examining a dress, then putting it back down. “Aunt Tilley,” she said, “do you think you would ever consider dating again?”
Tilley scoffed. Just as the beautiful girl Tilley had been knew that she was beautiful, the somewhat batty woman she now was knew that not every man wants a woman who is here half the time and someone else the other.
The town accommodated her Victorian outfits and multiple personalities.
But she would never expect a man to do such a thing.
So she said, very truly, “Darling, I think that is sweet, but who in the world even knows how I would behave? I certainly can’t predict it.
” Then again, wasn’t there someone for everyone? Tilley wondered…
Amelia nodded. “Maybe not. But you are such a romantic, and I wonder if having a new love to take the place of Robert could help keep you in the here and now.”
Tilley shook her head. “He was my only one, Amelia. That’s what made it so hard.”
Amelia bit her lip. “I’m just playing devil’s advocate…”
Tilley held up a silk pareo and handed it to Amelia, gesturing for her to pack it. It would be perfect with the ruffle swimsuit.
“Okay, so play it.”
“What if I had said that Thad was the only man for me, and I never moved forward? I wouldn’t have Parker now.”
“Yes, but Thad is gay.” Tilley smiled at Amelia pertly.
She laughed. “Yes. True. But his being gay didn’t change my being in love with him, so I could have just held on to that love forever.” She paused. “Same with Parker.”
“Yes, darling, but you moved on to that doll Parker Thaysden, and Parker Thaysden moved on to my peerless, perfect niece. It is not the same, in my estimation.”
Amelia held up a pair of jean shorts, and Tilley groaned. “So that’s a no on the shorts,” Amelia said. “But what if you found your Parker or Amelia? What about then?”
Tilley sighed, but inside, something, a little flicker, welled up. Had it truly been thirty-nine years since Robert died? She knew it had. She had never really considered that she could move on now. But maybe Amelia was right.
“All right. If I find my Parker or my Amelia, then I will go on a date. Does that satisfy you?”
“Yes. Very much,” Amelia said. “And why do you hate my jean shorts so much?”
Tilley made a sour-milk face. “They are not elegant or refined or lovely, and you are.”
Amelia kissed Tilley on the cheek. “All right, then. That’s good enough for me.”
Then she said, “Oh, did I tell you Big George might be coming for Easter?”
Big George was Parker’s deceased wife’s father. He had no family after she died except an estranged daughter, and so, when Parker and Amelia married, he became family.
Tilley clapped her hands together. She adored Big George.
Everyone did. He was imposing and powerful, but he was also funny and had this sadness inside him from losing his wife and his daughter—the two loves of his life—from the same hideous illness: ovarian cancer.
It made him vulnerable in a way that powerful men often aren’t.
At any rate, Tilley enjoyed him thoroughly.
“If he comes, I will make lemon meringue pie.”
Amelia gasped. “Aunt Tilley! You only make pecan pie for Easter.”
She was right. It was a rule. “Sure. But George loves lemon meringue best, and it is quite Eastery, isn’t it?”
“The Lord is risen, so it’s time for tart fruit?”
They both laughed.
Tilley was about to ask her more about George’s potential visit when there was a knock at the door. Amelia peeked her head through the open bedroom window and called, “Come on up! We’re in my room!”
She turned back to Tilley. “It’s Daisy. I’m going to get her all ready for the kids.” She scooted out the door, and Tilley heard her footsteps on the stairs.
Tilley folded two more sundresses in lovely shades of lemon and lime and put them in the suitcase. She had beautiful things, Amelia. And she deserved them. She’d worked so hard taking over the magazine that had always been her favorite. She wasn’t even gone yet, and Tilley already missed her.
It would be easy to make her stay, the other voice, the other Tilley, said.
“Oh, stop it,” Tilley said out loud. There had been times when Tilley would have made her stay. Tilley would like to think it wasn’t on purpose, but was it? Was it something she could control? It seemed, after all these years, she was more aware of slipping into this other self. That was progress.
I will be normal and happy and kind, and I will let Amelia go out and live her life, Tilley thought.
Plus, were Tilley to fall ill, Elizabeth would likely be the one to care for her anyway, not Amelia.
But, again, it would make Amelia feel guilty as she left, which Tilley did not want.
Plus, what she had told Mason was true: Tilley very much wanted to get to know this Daisy better.
“Daisy, you are a godsend,” Tilley heard Amelia say as they walked up the steps.
“Well, hi, Aunt Tilley!” Daisy said. It was a chipper voice but not a patronizing one, not the one that Tilley could imagine her using on her patients, she was happy to report. She hated being infantilized. “I’m so glad you’re going to be here to help me with the twins.”
Tilley studied Daisy’s face. And do you know what? She believed her.