Please Call Me Lily

Please Call Me Lily

R. Helene | A Brownstone Story

The night before, the Brownstone garden had behaved as though it had been waiting all week for music.

Selah had gone outside barefoot with a teacup in one hand. Watson had followed with his own cup and considerably more concern for the china. Gregory had declared himself Master of Ceremonies without consulting anyone, and somewhere between the first turn across the grass and the third attempt at a dance step neither Selah nor Watson properly knew, the garden had joined them.

Birds shifted along the wall. A rabbit appeared near the hedge and stayed. Something fox-shaped watched from a respectful distance. The whole affair became less a dance than an agreement among everyone present not to ask whether any of it was sensible.

Watson had tried to maintain a gentlemanly grip on his saucer while moving to the music.

Selah had laughed so hard she nearly lost her tea.

Gregory, naturally, considered the evening a triumph.

By morning, the garden was perfectly respectable again.

Mostly.

◆

Selah arrived at the Brownstone at a more decent hour than she had been keeping lately and found Mrs. Kline already seated on the bench near the garden path. The brass plaque fixed to the back read: MRS. KLINE'S BIRD BENCH.

A small brown paper bag rested in the older woman's lap.

Selah stopped beside her. "May I join you for a few minutes?"

Mrs. Kline did not answer. She simply moved over and made room.

"Thank you."

Selah sat.

For nearly five minutes neither woman spoke, which was a considerable accomplishment on Selah's part. But the silence did not feel awkward. Mrs. Kline tossed small pieces of bread toward the birds, and Selah watched them hop closer in careful little negotiations.

The bread came from the neighborhood. Several nearby doors regularly produced paper bags of day-old bakery remnants for Mrs. Kline's morning walk. If one did not, she simply continued to the next.

Watson's door was the exception.

If Watson forgot, Mrs. Kline tapped his door with her cane until the matter was corrected.

Selah had witnessed this once and had been delighted for the rest of the day.

At last Mrs. Kline spoke.

"I saw the garden dancing last night."

Selah turned toward her. "You did?"

"Hard not to."

Selah smiled. "Do you dance, Mrs. Kline?"

The older woman looked down at the paper bag in her lap, then back toward the birds.

"Lily," she said. "Please call me Lily. I've been Mrs. Kline most all my life. It was his name, of course."

Selah's smile softened. "Lily. That's a lovely name."

Lily scattered another handful of crumbs.

"He would have wanted me to use it again after he died. My own name. I just couldn't. Yet."

Selah heard the last word and left it alone.

Lily did too.

A sparrow landed close to the toe of Lily's shoe.

After a while Selah asked, "Were you married a long time?"

Lily's mouth changed before she answered - not quite a smile, not quite grief.

"I love him, and he loved me."

Selah looked down at her hands.

Lily had not said loved.

She had said love.

The first tear belonged to Lily. The next one belonged to Selah. Neither woman made a ceremony of them.

Lily reached for Selah's hand.

Selah gave it to her.

The skin of Lily's hand was soft with age, but her grip was sure. She held Selah's hand for a moment, then brought it gently against her own chest.

Her heart beat beneath Selah's palm.

"Little woman, don't ever hold back all of the love you carry," Lily said. "Allow every tear to count. Let every word you can speak bring life. And when love gives you somewhere to stand, stand there."

Selah did not answer immediately.

Lily did not appear to require one.

After a moment she placed Selah's hand back in her lap and returned to the birds.

They sat together until the paper bag was almost empty.

Then Selah stood.

"Thank you, Lily."

Lily nodded once, as though thanks had been received and filed somewhere private.

Selah walked around the Brownstone toward the gardenias.

◆

Watson noticed Selah's arrival because it was unusually quiet.

There had been no urgent knock, no voice from the hall announcing a problem that had somehow become three problems while climbing the stairs, and no Gregory shouting ahead of her about matters that did not concern him.

Watson waited.

No footsteps came up to the Study.

Eventually he went looking.

He found Selah among the gardenias.

She was not doing anything in particular. She stood with her face near one of the white blooms, breathing in its fragrance, her hands loose at her sides.

Watson stopped several paces away because some moments should be approached like a sleeping bird.

A moment later Gregory appeared beside him carrying nothing, which was alarming in itself.

"Is she talking to the gardenias?" he whispered.

"Possibly."

"Do gardenias answer?"

Watson considered Selah, then the bench visible beyond the path.

"Apparently, when Lily sends someone to them."

Gregory looked up. "Lily?"

"Mrs. Kline," Watson said. "Apparently no longer Mrs. Kline, at least not all the time."

Selah turned at the sound of them.

"She asked me to call her Lily."

Watson nodded. He did not make the mistake of asking what else had been said.

Selah looked back toward the bench.

"She saw us dancing last night."

Gregory brightened immediately. "I knew the audience numbers were good."

Watson ignored him. "Did she?"

"All of it. The tea. The animals. Your highly disciplined dancing."

"My dancing was entirely adequate."

"You nearly bowed to a rabbit."

"The rabbit had excellent posture."

Selah laughed, and something in her face eased.

Watson noticed, but he left the noticing where it was.

After a moment Selah said, "She told me about her husband."

Watson's expression softened.

"She said, 'I love him, and he loved me.'"

This time nobody filled the silence.

Even Gregory kept his hat in his hands.

A breeze moved through the gardenias.

Selah leaned toward another bloom and breathed in once more.

"I think I'm going to remember this smell now," she said.

Watson glanced at the white flowers. "There are worse things to remember."

Gregory sniffed deeply. "I also smell bread."

"That is because you are standing downwind of Lily's bag."

"Memory is complicated."

"So is breakfast, apparently."

Selah smiled and started back toward the house.

Watson offered his arm without comment.

She looked at it for half a second, then slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow.

Gregory fell into step beside them.

"I should like it noted that I am available for future garden dances."

"It is noted," Watson said.

"In what capacity?"

"Observer."

"I was hoping for Dance Captain."

"You were not."

"Assistant Dance Captain?"

"No."

They walked back into the Brownstone with Gregory still negotiating his title.

◆

Later, in the Study, Selah stopped just inside the doorway.

The cracked leather couch was where it had always been. Papers waited on the desk. The tea cart stood near the window. Nothing had changed.

And yet she stood there a moment longer.

Gregory climbed onto the couch and sniffed the air.

"Gardenias."

Watson glanced toward the hallway. "There are no gardenias in here."

"I know," Selah said.

Watson looked at her, then at the open doorway behind her.

"Perhaps you brought the garden in with you."

Selah looked around the room again.

A name offered when it was ready.

Bread left outside doors.

A cane tapped against Watson's door when he forgot.

A hand held against a beating heart.

Room made on a bench without being asked twice.

The thought came quietly:

Love lives here.

Selah did not say it aloud.

She did not need to.

Watson crossed to the tea cart and lifted the kettle.

"Tea?"

"Please."

Gregory raised one hand. "And toast?"

Watson looked toward the door, where Lily's cane could become relevant at any moment.

"Yes, Gregory. Toast."

The gnome looked stunned by the victory.

Selah sat on the cracked leather couch while Watson poured the tea.

The faint fragrance of gardenia lingered - perhaps on her clothes, perhaps only in memory.

It did not matter.

Love had always lived there.

That morning, Selah noticed it had a fragrance.