White Oleander - Janet Fitch [55]
In the shade in front of the house next door, our elegant neighbor was cutting some lily of the Nile, the same color as the jacaranda bloom. She was barefoot in a simple dress, and her feet and the palms of her hands showed pale pink against her burnt caramel skin. They looked ornamental, as if she came from a place where women dipped hands and feet in pink powder. She didn’t smile. She was wholly absorbed in her shears, clipping a stem of rosemary, a stem of mint, in the dappled light and shade. A fallen jacaranda bloom clung to her dark hair, which was up in a careless French twist. I loved that one stray blossom.
I felt clumsy, ashamed of my limp and my ugly clothes. I hoped she wouldn’t see me, that I could get to the house before she looked up. But when I’d reached our chain link and blacktop, and she still hadn’t glanced in my direction, I was disappointed. I wished she would see me, so I could tell her, I’m not like them. Talk to me. Look up, I thought.
But she didn’t, only stopped and picked a sprig of alyssum to smell the honey. I cut a shred from my heart and dangled it on a homemade hook before her.
“I like your yard,” I called out.
She looked up, startled, as if she knew I was there but didn’t think I’d speak to her. Her eyes were large and almond-shaped, the color of root beer. She wore a thin scar on her left cheek, and a gold watch on her narrow wrist. She pushed a strand of marcel-waved hair from her face and threw me a quick smile, which faded just as quickly. She turned back to her lilies. “You better not be seen talking to me. She’s going to burn a cross on my lawn.”
“You don’t have a lawn,” I said.
She smiled, but she didn’t look at me again.
“My name’s Astrid,” I said.
“You go inside now,” she said. “Astrid.”
11
HER NAME WAS Olivia Johnstone. That was the name on the magazines and catalogs on her doormat. She took Condé Nast Travelerand French Vogue, thick as a phone book. I babysat the kids in the front yard now, not to miss the least glimpse of her leaving the house in her Jackie O sunglasses, returning from shopping, clipping her herbs. Hoping our eyes would meet again. Packages came for her almost daily, the handsome UPS man lingering in her doorway. I wondered if he was in love with her, his legs like tree trunks in his UPS brown shorts.
At night, from the kitchen window, I began to take note of her visitors. Always men. A black man whose white French cuffs lay bright against his dark skin, gold cuff links glimmering. He drove a black BMW, came around seven-thirty, and was always gone by midnight. A young man with Rasta hair and Birkenstocks came in a Porsche. Sometimes he was still there when I got up in the morning. A large balding white man who wore striped shirts and double-breasted suits with big lapels. He drove a monstrous Mercedes, and came every day for a week.
What I noticed especially was the way they hurried from their shining cars, their excitement. I wondered what she must do that put such urgency in their steps. I wondered which she liked best. I thought about what she must know about men, how she must shine for them like a lighthouse.
I refused to think for a second that Marvel might be right about anything, let alone Olivia Johnstone. I lived for the sight of her, taking out her trash or alighting from her car in the dim light of dawn while I was making my breakfast. It was just enough dew on my decks to keep me another day.
I picked sprigs of her rosemary and tucked them in my pockets. I went through her garbage when I knew she was out, thirsty to know more, to touch the things she touched. I found a wide-toothed tortoiseshell comb from Kent of London, good as new except for a single broken tooth, and a soap box, Crabtree and Evelyn’s Elderflower. She drank Myers’s rum, used extra virgin olive oil in a tall bottle. One of her boyfriends smoked cigars. I found an impossibly soft stocking, the garter kind, cloud taupe, laddered, and an empty flagon of Ma Griffe perfume,