Lillian’s Garden Reprint Edition

By Carrie Jane Knowles

John Hunt Publishing Ltd.

Copyright © 2012 Carrie Jane Knowles
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78099-830-5

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Linda’s mother walked by the library and tapped on the window.

“Your crazy mother wants you,” one of the students yelled.

Linda pretended she didn’t hear the student and didn’t seeher mother. Her mother tapped again.

All of the students sitting around her laughed.

Linda picked up her books and moved. Her mother walkedaway.

“I tapped on the window, didn’t you see me?” her mother askedthat evening when they were cleaning up after supper.

“Sorry,” Linda said. “I didn’t recognize you.”

Linda’s comment nagged at Helen all night long. She couldn’tsleep. At 2 a.m. she got up, careful not to wake her husband,Richard, and walked from one room in the house to another,looking for some clue as to why her daughter didn’t recognizeher. She felt lost. Perhaps there was a door ajar she had nevernoticed before, or a window she had carelessly left openedwhere her true spirit might have accidentally tumbled out.

Not finding anything, Helen carefully tiptoed down thehallway to Linda’s room and opened the door to see if herdaughter was safe in bed and sleeping. Helen also checked to seeif Tommy had come home. She was not surprised to discover hehadn’t. She went downstairs.

Except for the soft shuffle of her bare feet against the coldwooden floors, the house was quiet. Dead quiet. She had an urgeto run outside and smoke a cigarette, as though holdingsomething dangerous like a cigarette in her hand, lighting it, anddrawing the sharp smoke into her lungs would magicallyoverpower Linda’s niggling comment. Why didn’t her daughterrecognize her? What had happened to her children? What hadhappened to her life?

She had found a pack of cigarettes in Tommy’s jacket pocketweeks ago, but never said anything to either Tommy or toRichard about finding them. Perhaps if Tommy were home, thetwo of them could go outside to share a cigarette and look at thestars together and talk. It had been a long time since she andTommy had really talked to each other.

Lacking a cigarette, she went into the kitchen and lit matches,one after another, striking them against the box. Once lit, shethrew the matches into the sink to watch them burn for a briefmoment before going out. Each time she struck a new match, shemarveled at how quickly the hot flare of sulfur filled the roomthen just as quickly faded as though the fire and the match hadnever found each other at all.

Helen fiddled with the spent matches in the sink, straighteningthem into a neat row like a garden fence. After she’d liteleven matches she slid the cover off the “Strike Anywhere” boxand counted how many were left. There were easily a hundred ormore. Enough matches to stand there all night long, watchingthem burn. Fire and brimstone, sulfur and smoke: this is thesmell of everything feeling so wrong and crazy your owndaughter doesn’t even recognize you when you tap on a window.This is hell.

She pulled a twelfth match from the box and struck it. Just asthe fire ignited, she heard Tommy’s car creep up the graveldriveway. She tossed the lit match into the sink and turned on thewater. Scooping up the spent wet matches she threw them intothe trash, pushing them to the bottom of the can. Scurrying upthe stairs as quietly and quickly as she could, she disappearedinto her room and closed the door. She took a slow deep breathtrying to calm the pounding of her heart.

She heard Tommy open the refrigerator looking for somethingto eat. A minute later she heard him walk up the stairs to thebathroom, go to his room and shut the door. When he was in thebathroom she heard the toilet flush but didn’t hear him wash hishands or brush his teeth.

She sat on the edge of their bed for a long time listening,waiting to be sure Tommy had fallen asleep before she allowedherself to slip her cold feet under the covers and close her eyes.Luckily, Tommy’s clumsy drunken steps up the stairs hadn’tawoken either Linda or Richard.

Helen lay in bed a long time before she finally fell back tosleep. The next morning she waited until Richard got out of bedand dressed before she stirred. After she heard Richard godownstairs for breakfast and Linda finish showering in thebathroom, she slipped out of bed and walked down the hall.

Once safely inside the bathroom, she closed and locked thedoor. She opened the top drawer of the vanity and rummagedthrough the hair rollers, bobby pins and lipstick tubes until shefound the pearl-handled straight razor that had once been herfather-in-law’s and now belonged to Tommy.

Pulling the long sharp razor from its leather case, she openedit and held the blade in her right hand between her thumb andfirst finger the way her father-in-law had taught her to do whenhe could no longer shave himself and she had to shave him. Theweight of the pearl handle of the blade balanced comfortablyagainst her little finger and felt good. She put the razor down,ran water into the sink, and wet her hair. For the first time in along time she felt sure of herself and what she now wanted to do.

Helen picked up a long lock of her shoulder-length auburnhair and twirled it in her fingers until it was pulled like a tightpiece of rope anchored to her head. She picked up the razor.Laying the sharp blade against it, about one inch from her scalp,she pushed firmly until the blade cut through the twisted hair inone clean movement.

Once the first clean cut was made she proceeded with herhandiwork, twisting, pulling and cutting as she moved from thefront of her hair to the back. She worked quickly across the topof her head and down around her face by her right ear movingblindly over and around the nape of her neck to her left ear.

Her chest tightened. To keep herself from panicking, shestarted to hum that stupid song about God having the wholeworld in His hands. Tears streamed down her face. She couldn’tremember the last time Richard held her.

She was tired of waiting for God to make her life better.

She wiped her face with the back of her hand and leaned closeto the mirror. She turned her head from side to side to look at herprofile and her new short hair. She brushed her opened handalong the short curls around her face. When she found a longpiece of hair by her left ear she twisted it in her fingers and cut it.Once she was satisfied she had found every stray bit of hair, shewiped the damp blade on a hand towel, flipped the razor closed,slipped it into its case and put it back into the drawer.

Pulling a length of toilet paper from the roll, she wet it inorder to wipe up the pieces of hair that had fallen into the sink.She pushed the tissue and all the hair she’d cut into the bottom ofthe trashcan in an attempt to hide what she had done.

“You look good,” she said to her reflection. “It’s not your faultTommy came home drunk again. You are a good mother … youhave always been a good mother … you are not like your mother.

You never left them.”

Taking a fresh towel from the stack under the bathroom sinkshe rubbed her hair until it was dry. She shook her head and ranher fingers through her short curls.

For the moment, her fresh short hair erased her feelings ofanxiety about Tommy and Linda. For the moment, none of thatmattered. She felt good about herself, and she thought she lookedgood.

She reached into the drawer for a tube of lipstick and quicklydrew a streak of color on her lips. Calypso Crush: a pinkish coralbordering on bold. Smoothing the color by pressing her lipstogether, she took another piece of toilet paper, blotted, threw thetissue into the trash and applied a second coat, careful to bringthe color all the way to the edges of her mouth. Pressing her lipstogether to blend the lipstick, she picked up the blood red garnetearrings she had taken off last night before she went to bed andslipped them back into her ears. She forced a smile.

Richard had brought the earrings to her from Italy when hecame home from The War. She loved them and wore themeveryday as though they were the only part of her soul she waswilling to share with the world.

Her wedding ring, a thin gold band set with five tinydiamonds, was in a box in the top drawer of her dresser. It wastoo big. It had always been too big and would slip off her fingerwhenever she washed dishes or worked in the garden. It madeRichard angry that she didn’t wear her wedding ring.

Helen heard Richard’s heavy footsteps coming up the stairs.She looked at her watch. It was getting late. She could hear Lindagetting dressed in her room. Helen hadn’t heard a peep fromTommy.

“Linda,” she called out, taking one more look in the mirror ather handiwork before she opened the door. “Would you wakeTommy? We need to get going.”

Richard hit the top stair just as Helen opened the bathroomdoor.

“You cut your hair,” Richard said.

“Didn’t have time to go into town last week to get it done.”

“Guess it wouldn’t do any good to say I liked it long.”

“Let’s not be late for church,” Helen said, turning to go intothe bedroom to finish getting dressed.

Linda could hear her parents talking in the hallway. She knew bythe tone of the conversation it was going to be a quiet ride tochurch this morning and she had better light a fire under Tommyso the situation wouldn’t escalate.

She knocked once, then swung the door of Tommy’s roomwide open and flipped on the bright ceiling light. Tommy’s longlanky body rolled lazily to one side of the bed. He dragged thecovers over his head as he did. The room was sour with the smellof sweaty clothes and liquor. Linda pulled the door shut behindher and stepped closer.

“Tommy,” she said, shaking his shoulder. “Get up.”

“You should ‘a come with us last night,” he smiled, turning hisnow uncovered head in her direction. He smelled of cigarettesmoke. His pale blue eyes were ever so slightly bloodshot fromdrinking. His breath was stale and warm with sleep.

“Good idea, glad I didn’t, now get up before someone findsout.”

“Finds out what?”

“That you’ve been drinking.”

“What time?”

“Time.”

“What a time we had last night.”

“If I were you, I’d shower twice, just to be sure to get the smellout.”

“That bad?”

“That bad.”

“Larry and the guys, we were baaaad,” he said, laughing. “Ifcoach ever caught us that drunk there’d be no high schoolbaseball team.”

“I bet,” Linda said, snatching the covers off him. “Now get upbefore there’s a fight about being late for church. The two of themare already at each other.”

Tommy took his good old sweet time in the shower. When heat last got into the car, Richard started lecturing. He let it beknown in no uncertain terms he hated being late and he wasn’tgoing to tolerate it anymore.

Helen’s response to Richard’s rant about being late for churchwas to sit bolt upright, perfectly still and silent, with her headturned to the window, staring off into nothing.

Tommy rested his head against the side window. His legswere sprawled out across the hump on the floor into Linda’sspace on the other side of the car. Linda, who had the same longlegs as Tommy, sat stiffly with her knees pressed together andher hands folded in her lap in order not to take too much spaceor to push against her brother. Rather than look out the windowlike her mother, she kept her head down so her long straightbrown hair covered her face and eyes. No one spoke.

“The plant is on overtime again,” Richard said, breaking thesilence. “Been thinking I’d work an extra shift. I want to ask fortime off Friday so I can see your game.”

“That’d be great,” Tommy said, stretching his neck a bit fromside to side trying to work out a kink.

“You starting?”

“Yeah, me and Larry for sure.”

“Got in late last night?”

“Yeah,” he laughed, “you could say that.”

Linda rolled the back window down a notch in order to letsome fresh air into the car. She didn’t want either her mother orher father to smell the alcohol on Tommy’s breath and skin. Hehad showered and put on a good amount of deodorant and aftershavelike she’d told him, but Linda was quite sure anyonewithin ten feet of him could still tell he’d had a heavy dose ofdrinking the night before.

“You cut your hair,” Linda said to her mother.

“Didn’t have time to go into town last week,” Helen replied,not bothering to turn her head when she spoke to her daughter.

“Looks good short,” Tommy chimed in. He was happy to beavoiding a scene.

“Thanks.”

Richard drove on in silence.

Rebecca Johnson, who was the head of the Women’s Circle, andEdna Wilson, the deacon’s wife, were standing in the aisle of thechurch when Helen and Richard walked in. As Helen passed, thetwo women stopped whatever it was they were talking about andnodded their heads in greeting.

“Morning,” Rebecca Johnson chimed.

Helen nodded in return.

“Blessed day to you,” Edna Wilson added.

Helen kept walking. Rebecca raised an eyebrow as if to say,”Well isn’t that just like her.” Edna snorted a little and the two ofthem took note of Helen’s fresh boyish short hair and the rathergarish lipstick pink smeared across Helen’s lips. Satisfied theyhad once again been witness to Helen’s general haughtiness andcrazy notions, they turned to each other and smiled. Nothingmore needed to be said.

Without flinching, Helen walked up to the front of the churchand sat down in the second pew on the right, sliding over to thecenter in order to make room for her husband. Tommy and Lindatook seats toward the back with the other teenagers.

Reverend Jacobs signaled for Deacon Wilson to ring thechurch bell so all the latecomers and gossipers hanging aroundoutside could hurry in to find their places. He seemed anxious toget the morning started. As soon as people settled down, hethumped his right knee with his Bible then began his walk up thecenter aisle of the church to the red-carpeted altar and the pulpit.Another man, a stranger, walked behind him. Once ReverendJacobs was firmly situated behind the wooden lectern, the manwho had walked down the aisle with him took a seat behind him.Jacobs put down his Bible, lifted his chin, closed his eyes tightlyas though the tighter he squeezed them, the closer he could fly toGod, and prayed silently to himself. He ended his prayer with aloud and sudden, Amen.

“We are not like our Methodist neighbors,” he said, leaningout over the lectern, “who believe salvation is an easy one-wayticket to heaven that’s good for a lifetime. Or, like our Episcopalbrethren who would like to believe heaven is some kind ofbirthright given to them with their two car garages.”

The same ladies, who had just passed judgment on Helen,now turned to each other and nodded their heads in approval.Their husbands laughed.

“We’re not even like those deep-dunking Baptists up thestreet who believe any good stream of water can wash away thesins of a Saturday night.” Pausing for a moment in order to letthe laughter grow, Reverend Jacobs smiled while he waited forthem to catch on and quiet down. Gripping the two sides of thepulpit, he leaned forward and took a long steady look at hisaudience as if he had the power to see down through their verysouls.

“We’re special Baptists. Freewill Baptists, free to askforgiveness and free to sin with the hope we’ll live long enoughto ask forgiveness again.” Heads nodded and bobbed, womenfanned themselves with their Bibles, and everyone seemedsatisfied they indeed were righteous to believe so.

“So when my cousin, Joe Nathan from Kentucky, called me uplast week to tell me he’d lost his job, I had to laugh.” With this,Reverend Jacobs turned to the gangly, black-suited Joe Nathansitting behind him and gave him a broad wink. “You didn’t loseyour job, I told him. God took it from you because He wants youhere. Here, where you can serve Him better. I believe God doeseverything for a reason, and the reason he snatched Joe Nathan’sjob away from him was because we need him. I have heard himpreach. He is a powerful man of God. I believe he will be able toshow us the wrong of our ways.

“God has given us a gift in Joe Nathan. I believe he has beensent here to stir up a revival of our spirits and a recommitmentto God and to each other. Joe Nathan has come so we can onceagain seek salvation for our sins and our stubborn free wills aswell as our Baptist, backsliding ways.”

Nodding his head in agreement, a long lock of Joe Nathan’sslick black hair broke free of its heavy coat of pomade anddangled in front of his eyes. Joe Nathan swiftly lifted his chin,bearing his turkey-like white neck wobbling loosely in his ill-fittingdress shirt, and tossed his hair back out of his eyes. Henodded again, this time, brushing his hair back into place withhis long boney fingers.

“But,” Reverend Jacobs shouted, his voice growing stern andparent-like, “Before I introduce you to this holy man who hascome to help us find redemption, I need to talk to you about ourchildren.”

Bowing his head for a moment as though he needed to prayagain in order to have the strength to go on, Reverend Jacobslooked up, leaned out over the pulpit, and leveled his eyes atTommy.
(Continues…)Excerpted from Lillian’s Garden Reprint Edition by Carrie Jane Knowles. Copyright © 2012 by Carrie Jane Knowles. Excerpted by permission of John Hunt Publishing Ltd..
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