All the Beautiful Girls: An uplifting story of freedom, love and identity
Elizabeth J Church
Heart Radio x Dreams Bedtime Bookclub April Book of the MonthThe dazzling, powerful story of a gutsy showgirl who tries to conquer her past amongst the glamour of 1960s Las Vegas – finding unexpected fortune, friendship and love.In the summer of 1968, Ruby Wilde is the toast of Las Vegas. Showgirl of the Year, in her feathers and rhinestones, five-inch heels and sky-high headdresses, she mesmerises audiences from the Tropicana to the Stardust. Ratpackers and movie stars, gamblers and astronauts vie for her attention and shower her with gifts.But not so long ago Ruby Wilde was Lily Decker from Kansas: an orphaned girl determined to dance her way out of her troubled past. When she was eight years old, Lily survived the car crash that killed her parents and sister. Raised by an aunt who took too little interest in her and an uncle who took too much, dancing was her solace, and her escape. When a mysterious benefactor pays for her to attend a local dance academy, Lily’s talent becomes her ticket to a new life.Now, as Ruby Wilde, the ultimate Sin City success story, she discovers that the glare of the spotlight cannot banish the shadows that haunt her. As the years pass and Ruby continues to search for freedom, for love and, most importantly, herself, she must learn the difference between what glitters and what is truly gold.
Copyright (#ua23ae627-e042-52ae-96f5-4f4bea66c68a)
4th Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.4thEstate.co.uk (http://www.4thEstate.co.uk)
This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2018
Copyright © 2018 by Elizabeth J. Church
Cover design by Anna Morrison
Cover photograph © Getty Images / The LIFE Picture
Collection / Gordon Parks
Elizabeth J. Church asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins
Source ISBN: 9780008267933
Ebook Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 9780008267957
Version: 2018-02-01
Epigraph (#ua23ae627-e042-52ae-96f5-4f4bea66c68a)
Dance, when you’re broken open.
Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance when you’re perfectly free.
—Rumi
Contents
Cover (#u0b404a02-ed79-5f9c-b63e-8911dc785ae5)
Title Page (#uc7cb445d-238a-5e25-8274-e514d2262798)
Copyright
Epigraph
Lily Decker
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Ruby Wilde
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Lily Decker
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Lily and Sloane
Santa Fe
Author’s Note
About the Author
Also by Elizabeth J. Church
About the Publisher
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1 (#ua23ae627-e042-52ae-96f5-4f4bea66c68a)
The line of Aunt Tate’s jaw was fierce and unyielding, like a hammered steel length of railroad track, but her eyes were soft and puffy from furtive crying. “You can keep what you can carry,” she said and handed eight-year-old Lily a cardboard box. Lily stared into the shadows of the empty box as if it held answers to all of the mounting uncertainties that frightened her.
It was June 1957, and Uncle Miles and Aunt Tate were in Lily’s house in Salina, Kansas, picking through things like crows at the town dump. Lily wanted for them to leave everything the same as it was before, not to move her father’s copy of Andersonville from the nightstand or her big sister Dawn’s toothbrush and pink pajamas with the elephants that danced and wore silly hats. Mama’s dresser scarves should not be folded and packed in a box, and her hat with the white netting should not be wrapped in tissue paper and tucked away for Aunt Tate ’s church bazaar. Lily’s whole life was disappearing—all of her history, everything that fixed her feet to the earth and held her safe.
“C’mon, honey,” Aunt Tate said, trying to prod Lily into action. “The longer we stay here, the more it’s going to hurt. Let’s just get this over and done with, all right?” Aunt Tate clumsily patted Lily’s shoulder and picked up a box she’d packed for Uncle Miles to load onto the back of his pickup. “Get a move on, Lily,” Aunt Tate said, this time firmly, and then headed down the hallway.
There was no place Lily wanted to be, to stay, other than home. This home. Her home. But, standing in the middle of her former life, Lily realized she didn’t have a choice. She looked at her bed with the deep purple bedspread, the curtains Mama had made with the purple fringe running along the hem. Her stuffed animals, still sitting in a row on top of her pillow, just as she’d left them in her Before Life. Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy, the gingerbread man with the nap rubbed into nonexistence by her love. The deliciously soft pink bunny rabbit that had appeared in her Easter basket one year. The desk her father made that was just her size with a cabinet door she could open and close. Her red leather jewelry box with the mirror inside the lid and the ballerina that twirled on one toe while a tinkling, silvery bell played “Frère Jacques.”
When Lily had asked Aunt Tate what would happen to the house and everything in it, Aunt Tate said, “That’s for the adults to decide.” Lily knew better than to push her luck, and so she let it be.
Dangling her legs in her apple-red pedal pushers, Lily sat on the edge of her bed and picked up the pink rabbit, tugging gently on his long satin ears. The things she wanted to put in the box wouldn’t fit. Her family couldn’t fit. The only home she ’d ever known could not be wedged within those four cardboard walls. Her swing set, the toy telephones she and Dawn used to call each other. The familiar view out her bedroom window, the way the leaves on the elm tree turned their silvery backs to the breezes just before a rainstorm. Her parents dancing in the living room while Brook Benton sang “Love Made Me Your Fool,” his voice rumbling smooth and low on the hi-fi; her father’s hands threaded into Mama’s thick gold hair; Mama’s full-skirted pastel dresses. The cool, apricot-colored satin lining of Mama’s best coat, and how it smelled of ripe pears and wisteria. No one was going to call Lily Scallywag—not anymore. And Lily couldn’t fold and pack Dawn’s skinny ankles turning cartwheels or her sister’s voice reciting the endless “Paul Revere’s Ride” until Lily wanted to scream. Nothing fit, including Lily. Lily no longer fit anywhere.
WHILE DADDY HAD brylcreemed his wavy hair and worn a suit and tie to work as manager of the rail yards, Uncle Miles was a diesel mechanic who wore overalls and plaid shirts and rolled his own cigarettes and later stuck his rough, callused fingers inside Lily and whispered with his sour breath, “Our secret.”
As for Mama’s older sister, Aunt Tate was too tall with wide shoulders and so maybe secretly a man, and she moved ponderously, as if someone had hit a slow-motion button on her life and put her at permanent half speed. She wore loose-fitting, pastel cotton housedresses that hung limp and lifeless below her knees, and sensible black lace-up shoes with low heels. The only jewelry Aunt Tate allowed herself was a plain gold wedding band, and she kept her lusterless brown hair short and tightly curled. She was formidable, strict and austere in a way that had always made Lily both shy and wary. “It was the Depression,” Mama once said. “It made your Aunt Tate hard. Deprivation made her think that being rigid was the only way to survive. But there’s a soft center there; she has a heart, I swear.” Still, Lily thought that even Mama had been more than a little cautious when faced with her sister’s perennial judgment.
WITHIN TWO WEEKS of the funeral, Aunt Tate had enrolled Lily in the July session of summer school, “To keep you out of my hair.” Lily’s aunt and uncle lived several blocks from Lily’s old house on Sycamore Street, but to Lily’s relief, she would still be able to attend her familiar elementary school. Before class on the first day, the kids gathered around Lily on the playground. “Did you see their guts?” “They said your sister was all tore up! Ground chuck!” Lily’s best friend, Beverly Ann, hung back from the others, seemingly frozen in place, nervously watching Lily’s reaction.
Lily ran into the breezeway, squeezed herself between a cool concrete pillar and the prickly leaves of a sumac bush, and waited until the bell rang. Mid-morning, Mrs. Tobias had the class put away their books and pencils, and then she conducted a ceremony in which Ray Bellamy carried a cage with a bright red bow and presented Lily with a chubby brown hamster bought and paid for with the sympathetic nickels and dimes of her classmates. Shannon Leary followed Ray, carrying a bag of wonderful-smelling cedar chips and a box of hamster food.
“You’ll have to keep his water bottle filled,” Mrs. Tobias said, her cool, composed hand on the back of Lily’s neck. “And take really good care of him.”
“What’s his name?” Lily asked, looking around the room at her classmates.
“That’s for you to decide, honey.” Mrs. Tobias walked to the blackboard. “But we can list possibilities, if you’d like.” She picked up a piece of chalk and began writing as Lily’s classmates shouted out suggestions.
When all was said and done, Lily chose Pickles. Dawn had loved the vinegary saltiness of their mother’s homemade pickles, and she’d sucked on them until her mouth was funny-looking, smoochy and all scrunched up. Dawn made the best faces, and the sisters would laugh until they got the hiccups. Pickles was a happy name. When Lily pressed her index finger between the bars of the cage, the hamster put his whiskery face up close, sniffed. It made Lily smile. Pickles let her stroke his soft fur, and with his little, rough tongue, he licked her finger.
The moment Lily walked through the kitchen door, Aunt Tate spotted the cage and said, “Not in my house. What were they thinking? Rodents? Your Uncle Miles will have something to say about this.” When Lily started for her room, Aunt Tate added, “Leave the cage here. The food and all, too. You won’t be needing it.”
As soon as Uncle Miles got home, he took the hamster cage to the backyard. Lily knelt on her bed and watched from the window as he cornered Pickles and pulled him from the cage. He twisted the hamster’s neck in a swift motion, and the little animal’s body wilted in his beefy hands—the same way the pullets did when he killed them for Aunt Tate ’s soup pot.
Lily was breathing fast, and she wanted to cry. Her stomach hurt. She sat back on her bed and found a tender spot on the inside of her thigh, just above the cuff of her seersucker shorts. She pinched it as hard as she could, watched the skin turn white, then a deep, purply red. She did it two more times, in different places. But Lily didn’t cry. She’d made herself a promise while sitting beneath the green awning in Gypsum Hill Cemetery where strangers—people who hadn’t lost what she’d lost—cried until their noses ran ugly and red and full of snot. Lily decided, then and there, that crying was weak, an unaffordable loss of control. No crying. Not ever again.
When it was nearly time for supper, Aunt Tate appeared at Lily’s bedroom door, wiped her wet hands on the front of her red-and-white-flowered apron, and looked at Lily wordlessly. Finally, she said, “Child, he only did what had to be done,” and Lily knew it was a sad excuse for an apology but likely the best she’d get. Avoiding her aunt’s gaze, Lily pushed out her lower lip and blew so that her dark cherry curls lifted briefly from her forehead. Aunt Tate continued, “Life is hard. You’ve had it easy, up until now. But—” Aunt Tate stopped talking.
Lily looked up at her aunt, who stood frozen in place like King Midas’ daughter in the aftermath of her father’s royal embrace. She watched her aunt frown briefly, as if she were suppressing tears, and then Lily saw real tears traveling down her aunt’s cheeks.
Aunt Tate cleared her throat. “It’s for your own good. Your mother didn’t do you any favors by coddling you all the time, and if you don’t toughen up, the world will eat you alive.” She sighed and perched on the bed beside Lily. Absentmindedly, Aunt Tate played with a length of Lily’s hair. “Look, honey, I know I seem mean to you, but I’m not. Neither is Uncle Miles. That’s not it, at all.” She let go of Lily’s hair and folded her hands in her lap. “You can’t let what’s happened make you a victim. People will want to see you that way; they’ll say, ‘Oh, that poor little girl. She’s so pathetic. Let’s just let her get away with anything and everything.’ But I don’t want for you to live your life trading on being a victim. I will not let that happen. You have to face life, head on.” Aunt Tate stood and squared her shoulders as if preparing to march. She held out a hand to Lily, who took it. Aunt Tate’s tone was softer now. “Come set the table. It can be your job from now on.”
Lily dutifully laid out four places, just as she’d done at home. Four plates. Four water glasses. Knives on the inside, sharp edge toward the plate, napkins folded neatly.
“Moron girl can’t count,” Uncle Miles said when called to the table for macaroni and cheese topped with a crisp bacon crust. “One. Two. Three,” he said slowly, pointing to Aunt Tate, Lily, and then his own broad chest. “Sister, did you check this one out of the dumb farm?” Uncle Miles asked, pretending it was a joke, only Lily knew better.
2 (#ua23ae627-e042-52ae-96f5-4f4bea66c68a)
Lily lived for The Dinah Shore Show, starting with the NBC peacock, followed by the brass-heavy orchestra and the singer’s wide-toothed rendition of “See the U.S.A. in Your Chevrolet!” … Lily would hum along, “Dadadadadadadadadadah!” Dinah Shore had a tiny waist just like Mama, and Lily thought the television star seemed really happy.
They watched on the black-and-white set with Aunt Tate’s milk-glass collection balanced precariously on top. Lily imagined the colors: Dinah Shore’s long, elegant gloves must be emerald green, her fine net flounces would be sparkly deep blues and greens. Fuchsia silk scarves, silver and gold sequins, beautiful high heels dyed to match Dinah’s gowns. Slit skirts revealing long legs, whirling skirts that flew up to show dancers’ underpants and elicited the occasional “Shameful!” from Aunt Tate.
But, oh, the best part was the dancing! Maracas and mambos and cha-cha-cha, handsome men lifting Dinah in the air and carrying her around the stage, her smile never faltering. The dancers’ hips swaying, feet moving in rococo patterns. It was a world mercifully far removed from the martyred, blood-red edges of Aunt Tate ’s Bible, her thick support hose, and Uncle Miles’ weight on the edge of Lily’s bed, the way he pulled down the covers, a prelude.
LILY FIRST RAN away when she was nine, the summer after third grade. She climbed up on a chair and pulled her suitcase from its shelf high in her bedroom closet. It was made of cheap, pressed cardboard painted in pastel shades, with a lamb that had a yellow bow perched gaily in the curls of each ear. Lily flipped the latches so that the case opened to its pink-and-white-checked interior, and then she looked around to decide what to pack. She put in Black Beauty and two of her Nancy Drew mysteries, followed by the miniature porcelain elephant her father had won at the state fair. She filled the rest of the space with plain white Carter’s panties and undershirts, a nightie decorated with daisies, a comb, and a cylinder of scented talcum powder that had belonged to her mother.
The last thing Lily included was her mother’s big black palmistry book with the line drawings of hands, the mounts of Jupiter, Mercury, Apollo, and Venus. Mama used to run a ruby-red, manicured nail along the lines of Lily’s palm, pointing out the differences between what she’d been born with and what she would do with whatever the Fates sent her way. Lily had loved her mother’s touch, the way she prodded the pads of Lily’s fingers. “You have psychic hands, too, my Valentine’s Day child,” Mama had said, noting Lily’s long, tapered fingers and holding her own hand up for comparison. “Now, your sister Dawn, she’s a Leo—her hands are square, like your daddy’s. Practical, no nonsense. You’re the one, baby girl. The one like me.”
Lily got as far as the Petersons’ house, two streets away, before Uncle Miles happened by on his way to the drugstore for rolling papers and beef jerky.
“Get in,” he said, pulling over and pushing open the passenger door to his pickup truck. Lily hesitated, holding the hard plastic handle of her suitcase with both hands, already weary with the weight of it. She looked around, hoping someone would see her there, marooned in the shimmering summer heat. “Now,” her uncle commanded. Slowly, Lily climbed in, set the suitcase at her feet, and pulled the door shut behind her. “Don’t try that again.” He squeezed her upper arm until she cried out. “It’d be the death of your Aunt Tate.”
As he pulled away from the curb, Lily curled in on herself, trying not to smell Uncle Miles’ body next to hers. She glanced at his hands on the steering wheel, his thumbs like stubby, rounded clubs. When he said, “Stay put or else” and left her sitting in the truck while he went into the drugstore, she pulled out her mother’s book. Uncle Miles had what palmists called a clubbed hand. Such people, the book said, lacked willpower and were prone to criminal behavior.
She closed the volume when she saw her uncle lumbering back across the parking lot. He sat heavily behind the wheel and turned toward her, smiling so that his canines showed long and sharp. “You’re so sexy,” he said, using his husky, nighttime voice. “You make me lose control.” He scanned the parking lot and then crept his hand across the front seat toward her. Lily scooted so that her back was pressed against the passenger door. Surreptitiously, she tried to find the handle. “You’re not going anywhere,” Uncles Miles said as he started the truck. “You hear me?” He looked straight ahead through the windshield splattered with dead insects. When Lily failed to answer him, he slapped the seat between them, making dust rise. “Hear me? I said ‘NOWHERE.’ ”
“Yes,” Lily said, her voice small.
“Sir!”
“Sir,” she squeaked.
“Or else!”
“Or else,” Lily confirmed.
On the way back to the house, Uncle Miles took a detour. “Got something to show you,” he said as if he were giving her a gift. He drove until they reached a neighborhood of homes with big, welcoming front porches and shadowy green lawns. Uncle Miles slowed the truck, looking at house numbers. Finally, he stopped in front of a pale gray, two-story house with elaborate white trim. He let the engine idle and pointed.
“See that one?”
Lily nodded. It had broad flower beds with lilies, roses, and Mama’s favorite—peonies.
“That’s where he lives. The man who killed your family.”
Lily stared at the contrasting charcoal-gray front door with its inset diamond panes of leaded glass. She saw a lush fern hanging from the porch ceiling and two white wicker chairs angled toward each other, as if they were friends. Everything she saw from the window of Uncle Miles’ truck only deepened her curiosity about the man who’d collided with Lily’s family on that June night when dry lightning raked the horizon.
“You listening? I’m telling you that a murderer lives in that fancy house. These air force pilots think they can come to our town and lord it over the rest of us. You just remember,” Uncle Miles said as he took the truck out of neutral and slowly pulled away from the curb, “when you hear those sonic booms it’s probably that aviator, flying over you. The man who killed your family.”
Lily looked back at the Aviator’s house for as long as she could. She wanted for him to come out of the front door, to see her. She wanted to sit on his front steps and ask him things like Why? and How come? She wanted to beg Save me.
SHE HAD FEW memories of the night that broke her life into Before and After. She remembered that her allergies had been so severe that her nose bled, and so Mama made Lily lie down in the backseat, wrapped in a blanket patterned with stars and moons. As Lily drifted off to sleep, she watched Dawn stand, reach over the front seat, and begin to braid their mother’s hair.
Lily remembered waking up on the side of the road, curled into the arms of a stranger and seeing the Aviator standing near his car—the one with taillights set in wildly exaggerated fins that looked like some beast’s red, wicked eyes. She remembered her family’s motionless car, sparks of insects flashing in the headlight beams. Redwing blackbirds rising from fields of summer wheat, panicked by the commotion. The hiss of whitewall tires as they sighed last breaths; a violent whoosh of steam erupting from the radiator.
The Aviator had knelt beside Lily, holding a handkerchief to the top of his head. A thick shock of black hair hid his eyes. Lines of blood painted the contours of his face and ran into his mouth.
“What have you got there?” he had asked Lily—just as if he ’d met her on the street outside Hutchinson’s Ice Cream Store in downtown Salina.
Lily handed him her bouquet of four crayons, the ones she ’d held on to, tight, when the stranger lifted her from the car’s wreckage. “These ones are my favorites,” she said. Periwinkle, Carnation Pink, Cornflower, and Pine Green.
Mostly, Lily remembered that the Aviator hadn’t felt like a bad man. He felt like a sad one.
THERE WERE INTERMITTENT pools of rainwater relief, times when Lily smiled. Those times came when the parcels arrived in the mail, wrapped in brown paper, tied with twine, and addressed in bold black ink to Miss Lily Decker. The first was Gene Stratton-Porter’s Freckles. It was an old book from 1904, with a battered cover and fine engravings of trees, cattails, birds, and clouds. Before beginning the novel, Lily hoisted herself onto the kitchen counter and sneaked exactly ten saltines from Aunt Tate’s larder. Then, she propped herself up on her bed with the book, eating the saltines as slowly as possible. As she sucked the salt from each cracker, she knew she was just like Freckles—crippled and unlovable. Still, she felt a little less lonely.
The mysterious books smelled of time, somehow held the breath of another reader, someone before Lily. The secrecy surrounding the identity of the book-giver made Lily feel special, somehow deserving. The books also let her travel far from the relentless flatlands of her life with Uncle Miles and Aunt Tate.
Pragmatic Aunt Tate didn’t abide mysteries, but if she wondered about the books’ origins, she never said anything to Lily. Aunt Tate dealt with the tangible world, the only exceptions being Jesus, the disciples, and the New Testament miracles. As for Lily, she thought the books might be from her elementary school librarian, who’d often commented on Lily’s avaricious appetite for books about pioneer girls who were held captive by Indians, or the wildly vengeful myths of the Greeks and Romans. In a way, it didn’t matter who sent the books, as long as whoever it was kept sending them.
IT TOOK SOME convincing, but finally Aunt Tate agreed to let Lily sleep over at Beverly Ann’s. The girls had been friends forever. They traded Cherry Ames books, shared after-school snacks of apple slices loaded with peanut butter, and played Chinese jump rope.
“We ’ve missed you, sweetheart,” Beverly Ann’s mother said, kissing Lily good night and promising that they’d have French toast in the morning.
When Mrs. McPherson pulled the door nearly closed so that only a thin pillar of light shone from the hallway, Lily felt a sudden moment of panic. She audibly sucked in her breath as a fleeting image of Uncle Miles’ probing hands crossed her mind. The image was there, he was there, even though she knew that at least for tonight she wouldn’t have to fear the drop of his weight on the bed like a gunnysack of river rocks.
“What’s wrong?” Beverly Ann asked, her voice sleepy.
Lily thought about telling. She could tell Beverly Ann about what happened in her bedroom, when the only noises in the house were crickets and the hum of the refrigerator. Sometimes the furnace clicking off or on. And Uncle Miles’ breath, his huh-huh-huh that got faster and faster.
But she couldn’t tell. It would make her sick to tell. Sicker to tell than not to tell. Beverly Ann would know how disgusting Lily was, and Lily would lose her best friend. And if she did tell, then what would happen? She had nowhere else to go.
“Nothing,” she said, finally, but Beverly Ann had already fallen asleep. Lily listened to her friend’s deep, regular breathing, the breathing of a girl who could trust, even in the dark. Lily felt her own eyes fluttering closed as she nestled in sheets that smelled of a sun-kissed clothesline.
The next morning, Lily came home from Beverly Ann’s begging for a pogo stick, but Aunt Tate said it was “too dear,” and Lily nearly stomped her feet. Beverly Ann got to have everything! Lily’s friend’s life was a constant reminder of all that Lily had lost, and sometimes—like this time—Lily felt her cheeks flame hot with jealousy and anger.
But a few weeks after the sleepover at Beverly Ann’s, Uncle Miles beckoned a hesitant Lily to join him in the backyard beside his workshop. In his hands, he held a pair of homemade stilts.
“I sanded the handles real good so you won’t get splinters,” he said, turning the stilts so that Lily could admire his workmanship. “And I know these aren’t the same as a pogo stick, but you can learn to do tricks on them. Here,” he said, motioning to Lily to come closer. “I’ll help you get up on them. You’ll learn fast cuz you’re real coordinated.”
He was right; it took Lily no time to learn how to walk steadily, and soon enough she could balance on one stilt and even hop on a single wooden pole while holding the other one in the air. She sang songs and made up dances she could do balanced high on the stilts.
“I still think they’re dangerous,” Aunt Tate said after one of Lily’s stunt shows, performed just before dinner.
“Lord, Tate. Let the girl have some fun,” Uncle Miles had said and then winked at Lily, which made her nervous, not a happy co-conspirator. Lily became convinced that Uncle Miles wanted something in exchange, that he was incapable of a simple kindness. Eventually, that persistent knock of fear led Lily to abandon the stilts next to the woodpile, against the back fence where the squirrels lived.
MAYBE UNCLE MILES loved Aunt Tate. Lily didn’t know. He did love his raspberries—all forty-eight bushes, lined up in rows like soldiers on parade. He inspected them for infestations, dusted them with a white powder that poisoned any bugs bold enough to alight on the sharp leaves. He fertilized. He shooed away sparrows who dared to feast on the ripe fruit. When frost was predicted, he used old pillowcases to shroud the bushes so that they stood like an eerie battalion of child-sized ghosts.
They weren’t pretty plants, not like the boldly bright dahlias that had filled Mama’s flower beds. They were thorny creatures that protected themselves by being nondescript, unwelcoming. But when the fruit came—the faceted gemstone berries with their lush lobes, the juice running down Lily’s chin—it was heavenly. Aunt Tate would ladle the berries over vanilla ice cream, and they’d sit out back, watching the soft evening descend. It was a puzzle Lily couldn’t solve—the fact that something delicious came from her uncle’s devotion.
3 (#ua23ae627-e042-52ae-96f5-4f4bea66c68a)
Lily’s fourth-grade school portrait showed a tall, gangly ten-year-old with a long neck and indentations at her temples as if someone had pressed his palms to the sides of her skull and squeezed until the bone succumbed. The generous spread of her cheekbones gave her a clear, open gaze. Her indigo blue eyes were large, her child’s lips surprisingly luscious, and she faced the camera without flinching. If Lily had held a numbered placard in her hands, the school photo almost would have passed for a mug shot.
It had been nearly two years since the accident, and from time to time, she saw the Aviator around town. Lily liked to imagine that he was watching her, a presence like God or Jesus or Zeus or Santa Claus. Someone who knew her secrets but wouldn’t tell. He was a potent mystery—not an enemy, not quite a friend. Just there.
She discovered, finally, that it was the Aviator who was sending her the old books. When How They Carried the Mail arrived, it had the Aviator’s name in it, written elegantly in what Lily’s teacher called copperplate calligraphy. His name was Stirling Sloan, and he had once been a boy living on Magnolia Street in Dormont, Pennsylvania.
Holding the books from the Aviator’s childhood, turning the pages of his memories, Lily sent her mind to the places where his mind had been. She dogged his steps. And although she thought Stirling was a nice name, to Lily he remained always and forever the Aviator.
Mostly, it was curiosity that led her on a warm, late-April day to pedal all the way over to the Aviator’s street, put down her kickstand, and leave her bicycle tilted on the sidewalk that bordered his front lawn. She’d dressed up for him, pulling her hair back on the sides with a pair of pink butterfly barrettes, and she wore her best smocked cotton dress—the yellow one with a big sash she’d tied in back all by herself. Still, she was feeling less bold, now that she was actually at his house. Lily used the rubber toe of her Red Ball Jets tennis shoe to kick at a tuft of crabgrass that grew up through the sidewalk crack like a patch of unruly hair.
If she continued to linger out front, Lily realized, one of his nosy neighbors might come out and ask her questions she didn’t want to answer. Lily took a deep breath, marched up the front steps, and pressed the doorbell.
Nothing happened. She wasn’t sure how long she should wait. Feeling a nervous queasiness begin to slosh about in her stomach, she pushed the buzzer again. Again nothing. She saw the Aviator’s mail stuffed into his mailbox and realized he must still be at work. Maybe he was busy flying one of the jet-propelled B-47 bombers, part of the country’s Strategic Air Command they’d learned about at school.
Slowly, Lily descended the front porch. She hadn’t gotten what she wanted—an audience with the Aviator—and she couldn’t leave. Not yet. Maybe she’d just circle around back. Maybe she could wait there until he came home.
As Lily rounded the house, she could smell something overripe, on the edge of decay. Her tennis shoes slid on rotting apricots that had dropped from the neighbor’s tree. Lily picked up a piece of the fruit, brought it to her nose and grimaced. There were speckles of fruit flies all over the mushy flesh, and she dropped it quickly. She wiped her sticky fingers on some long, wet grass and then dried them on her dress.
Boldly, Lily climbed the Aviator’s back steps and sat on his porch swing. She pushed off with her feet and could hear the groan of the bolts that held it aloft.
He was taking forever to come home, and Lily wished she’d brought along Jane Eyre or A Girl of the Limberlost. She twiddled her thumbs for a while, and then she tried whistling. It came out slender, ineffectual. She wanted to learn to whistle so loudly that hordes of dogs from all over town would come running to her. She wanted to be able to whistle a tune when Dinah Shore came on the television and sang “Shoo-Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy.”
“Lily?”
She hadn’t heard his car. The Aviator pushed open the screen door and came out onto the porch. Lily stood guiltily.
“What are you doing here? Lily, does your aunt know you’re here?”
He’d said her name, twice. He did know her. She was so full of emotion that she was having trouble finding her voice.
“Sit down a minute,” the Aviator said, gently taking her arm and leading her back to the porch swing. “How did you know where to find me?”
“Uncle Miles showed me.”
“That’s your bike out front?”
“Yes.”
“But, Lily—do they know you’re here? They can’t possibly know you’re here.”
Lily shook her head.
“Oh, this is a bad idea,” he said. “You can’t be here. I’m so sorry. You just can’t be here.”
“But I came to ask you,” she said before he could make her leave unsatisfied. “I have to ask you something.” Lily clenched her fists in the way her mother had always said proved just how stubborn you can be, Scallywag. She was determined not to leave without asking him.
The Aviator took a deep breath. He was a handsome man with an omnipresent five-o’clock shadow, a nose so straight it looked as if it had been drawn with a ruler, and bruised-looking blue eyes. He sat with a ramrod-straight back, and he was wearing a military green flight suit that zipped up the front. On one sleeve was an embroidered patch picturing an armored fist that clasped an olive branch and three bright red lightning bolts.
“You may have three questions,” he said at last.
“Like three wishes with a genie?”
“Yes. And then you go home.” She could see he was afraid of her questions, but still he said, “Go ahead. Ask me.”
“My school is having a dance. Fathers bring their daughters.” She opened her hands, wiped her sweaty palms on the skirt of her dress. “I get to dress up and everything. And I wanted for you to take me.”
She’d been so happy when she’d concocted this plan to avoid humiliation. The other girls would be so jealous—even Beverly Ann. Lily would dance with a handsome pilot, handsomer even than the men on The Dinah Shore Show, and the fact that she had no father to take her would be completely overshadowed by the splendor of the Aviator.
The Aviator’s face went from one expression to another in an instant—as if clouds were first blotting out the sun and then letting it shine full force. She saw him pained and surprised and then frustrated. Maybe even angry, which scared her a little.
“I wish I could,” he said at last. “But I can’t.”
“Why not?” Lily stood and faced him.
The Aviator bit his lip, and for a minute Lily thought they both would cry. She felt violent and crazed disappointment thrashing about in her chest.
“Please,” she begged.
The Aviator stood quickly and pulled her into a hug. She pressed her face into the dark solidity of him, felt the zipper of his jumpsuit chafe her cheek.
“They would never let me,” he said, still holding her.
“Because they hate you,” she said, raising her face to look up at him.
“That’s right.”
“But wasn’t it an accident? Like when I spill the milk? Or when I trip and fall?”
He put his hand on the top of her head, as if blessing her. “I wish it were that simple,” he said.
“You didn’t mean to kill them, did you?”
The Aviator released her. “Come sit back down for a minute. Are you thirsty? Do you want a glass of water?”
Lily shook her head. What she wanted was answers.
“Okay. Well …” The Aviator rubbed his jaw with his knuckles. Lily thought she could hear the rasp of his beard’s stubble. “I was driving fast. Too fast. I do that sometimes—go out on the highway and fly along the asphalt, blow off steam. And I didn’t see them—you. There was a dip in the road, and I hit your car. I’d take it all back. I can’t—” His voice broke.
“If you really were a murdering bastard, you’d be in jail. That’s what I think.”
“Bastard?” She saw a fleeting smile cross the Aviator’s face. “Lily.” He shook his head.
She wouldn’t apologize for quoting Uncle Miles. “But you’re not in jail,” she repeated. “So it wasn’t on purpose.”
“I’m not in jail because it was an accident. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not sorry each and every day.”
They sat in silence until the Aviator said, “Lily, I’m so sorry I can’t take you to the dance. I would be honored, really and truly. Nothing would make me happier. But I can’t. It just won’t work, for reasons I can’t explain to your satisfaction.”
“I just wanted. I just wished.”
“I know,” he said, taking her hand in his. “But I will always do what I can. I am your friend, forever. And let me make you a promise, all right?” Lily looked up at him. “I will find a way to make it up to you. For the dance, I mean,” he said and then released her hand. He made an X across his heart with his index finger. “I promise.”
“I love the books you send me,” she said and smiled in a way she hoped would convey how much they meant to her. Then Lily took a deep, resigned breath. “Okay,” she said, grudgingly agreeing to his promise. “But don’t wait too long!”
He smiled and stood. “You’re a pretty good bargainer, you know that? But now you need to get home before it starts to get dark. Promise me you’ll be safe?”
“Umm hmm,” Lily said and instead of using the steps hopped off the side of the porch to show him how agile she was.
“You could come through the house,” he told her, but she’d already started to round the corner. The Aviator followed her out front, and Lily felt him watch her climb on her bicycle and ride away.
Lily pedaled as fast as she could—not to rush back, but just to feel the wind blow her clean. She decided she wouldn’t tell her aunt about the dance. She just wouldn’t go. Lily knew no one would have the nerve to ask why the fatherless girl had chosen not to attend.
And maybe in the Aviator’s promise she had something even better than a stupid old dance with a bunch of stupid old girls and their stupid old clumsy fathers. Lily believed the Aviator would come through for her. It felt glorious once more to believe in someone.
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