Elin Hilderbrand - The Rumor

Sultan nodded and took a bite of his BLT.

Rachel McMann told her husband, Andy (or Dr. Andy, as he was known to his dental patients), that she had rented Madeline “a room of her own.” Which Dr. Andy-who was a habitual half listener, due to the fact that the people he was most often conversing with had their mouths wide open and at least one metal tool inside and therefore were unintelligible anyway-construed to mean “a place of her own.” He had never read Virginia Woolf.

Rachel also said, “I basically lucked into the rental, right place at the right time, as I keep telling you, sweetheart. I can’t believe Madeline didn’t go with Eddie Pancik.”

Dr. Andy wondered if Madeline and Trevor had split. He didn’t care to surmise. But he accidentally mentioned what Rachel had told him to Janice, his hygienist, the next morning. Janice was married to a title examiner named Alicia, so she frequently lent a different perspective to the dramas that Dr. Andy told her about, all of which he heard from Rachel.

Janice said, “Madeline King moved out? That doesn’t make any sense. Are you sure that’s what Rachel told you?”

Dr. Andy was sure, or pretty sure. He said, “I guess Rachel expected her to go with Eddie Pancik.”

Janice, being a hygienist, was also something of a half listener. She heard this as Rachel expected that Madeline would get together with Eddie Pancik.

“Really?” Janice said. “That doesn’t seem likely, does it? Eddie Pancik? Isn’t she best friends with his wife?”

Dr. Andy said, “I suppose anything is possible, Janice. But we shouldn’t say anything one way or another about Eddie Pancik. He’s our landlord. We could easily find ourselves out on the street.”

Janice said, “I’ve always thought that Madeline King should write a novel about a dentist’s office.”

Dr. Andy agreed that she should, then walked off to scrub up for his nine a.m. root canal, leaving Janice to ask her next patient, Phoenix Hernandez, whom Janice counted as one of her many trusted confidantes, whether she thought Madeline King should get together with Eddie Pancik now that Madeline had her own place in town.

Grace’s perennials were starting to sprout, her spring bulbs were in blossom-narcissus, hyacinths, tulips-and her Japanese cherry trees had thousands of nascent buds. Two more weeks and those trees would be in full-on luscious pink bloom, just like Grace’s heart.

Benton came to the house every day at ten.

The gift Benton brought her from Morocco was an elaborately cast silver pot for brewing mint tea, and two etched crystal glasses. When Benton first showed Grace the teapot, her spirits fell. A teapot was neither sexy nor romantic. He might as well have brought her a tagine pot.

But going through the ritual-harvesting the most robust spearmint leaves from Grace’s indoor herb garden, then boiling water and adding just the right amount of sugar into the curvy silver pot, then pouring the elixir into the etched crystal glasses and sipping-turned out to be a sensual shared experience.

“Do you like it?” Benton asked.

“I’ve never tasted anything so pure,” Grace admitted. “It tastes like the color green.”

Relief and, Grace thought, tenderness mingled on his face.

They brewed mint tea every day and drank it as they discussed their plans for the yard. They decided to put in a long, narrow bed of daylilies off the front of the deck.

Benton said, “I haven’t had much experience with daylilies.”

“Well then,” Grace said, “this is where I will teach you.”

Grace’s grandmother Sabine, a woman Grace had worshipped for her refined tastes, had raised daylilies in her garden, and as a child, Grace had become entranced not so much with the flowers themselves as with their poetic names: ‘Jock Randall,’ ‘Ice Carnival,’ ‘Ginger Creek,’ ‘Maude’s Valentine.’

She and Benton sat side by side at Grace’s kitchen table and pored over the catalog.

“I think we need some masculine varieties,” Benton said. “How about ‘Rocket Booster’? Or ‘Piano Man’? Or ‘Freedom’s Highway’?”

“‘Wolf Eyes,’” Grace said.

“‘Apple Jack,’” Benton said. His fingers grazed hers as he turned the page, and her ears started to buzz.

“I’m partial to sweeter names,” Grace said. “We should get some ‘Baby Darling.’”

“Please,” Benton said. “Please don’t make me plant a flower called ‘Baby Darling.’”

Grace laughed. “What about ‘Butter Cream’?” she said.

“I’ll give you ‘Butter Cream,’” Benton said, “if you give me ‘Broadway Starfish.’”

“Look at this one,” Grace said. “‘Bullfrog Kisses.’” She pointed to the photo in the catalog.

“That is not a particularly attractive flower,” Benton said. “Then again, who would want to be kissed by a bullfrog?”

Grace turned the page. She picked out the best-looking flower on the page and said its name before she thought to stop herself. “‘Blue Desire.’”

“‘Blue Desire,’” he said. “I like it.” He raised his head, and their eyes locked. Grace knew the tips of her ears must be flaming red.

He’s going to kiss me, she thought. He moved in. Their lips were just about to touch. Grace sucked in her breath, and the soft sound this made seemed to send a jolt through Benton. He backed away.

“Whoa,” he said. “I’m so sorry, Grace. I think the names of these flowers are getting me riled up.”

“Don’t be sorry!” she said quickly. She was devastated that he’d stopped. She wanted to go back to where they’d been a moment before, the fun intimacy of selecting flowers, but the magic of that had passed. She closed the catalog and decided to ask him the question she’d been wanting to ask for the past two weeks. “Did McGuvvy go with you to Morocco?”

“She didn’t,” Benton said. “She got a job teaching sailing out in San Diego. We broke up.”

As this news settled over Grace, he drummed his fingers on the table nervously.

She said, “So you’re a free man.”

“I’m free, yes,” Benton said.

“Benton…”

“You’re married, Grace,” he said. “To Eddie, who pays my bills.”

“I…”

“Don’t say it,” Benton said. He let out a long exhale and stared into his tea. “You have a house, you have children, you have a whole life with Eddie.” Benton took a sip of his tea. “I’m your gardener.”

“You’re a lot more than my gardener,” Grace said. “This winter, when I got your postcards…”

“Don’t say it.”

“I realized how much you meant to me,” Grace said. “My… friendship with you. This garden, this yard, what we’re trying to create here, means something to me.”

Benton said, “You have to stop.”

“Stop what?” Grace said. “Stop how I feel? Stop how you feel?”

“You don’t know how I feel,” Benton said.

This clammed her up. She thought, Oh God, it’s one sided. Unrequited. The loneliest word in the English language.

“How do you feel?” Grace asked.

“Confused,” he said.

She sat with that in silence.

“I am not that guy,” Benton said. “I never have been. And it’s not like you’re just some random married woman I met at a bar. You’re my client.”

“I know,” Grace said.

“I am not that guy,” he said. He backed his chair away from the table. “I need to shift my focus.”

“Away from me,” Grace said.

“Away from you.”

“But you do like me,” Grace said.

“Oh, Grace,” he said. “I more than like you.”

The next morning, Benton showed up twenty minutes later than usual, and for those twenty minutes, Grace thought he might not be coming at all. She thought, He’s going to drop me as a client. He’s going to fire me. He “more than liked” her, but because of this, they would have to stop working together.

When Benton’s truck did finally pull into the driveway, Grace felt faint with relief. She hurried out to the backyard, and in order to seem like she hadn’t been standing around, waiting for him to show up, she started pulling nonexistent weeds in the tulip bed.

“Hey, Grace,” Benton said as he rounded the house. He held out a brown box from Petticoat Row Bakery. “I brought you something.”

His tone was light. Normalcy had been restored. Grace was relieved but also crushed. She said, “Should I pick some mint?”

“Hell yes!” he said.

In the kitchen, Benton made the tea while Grace washed her hands and tried to calm her nerves. Then, together, they took their established places at Grace’s kitchen table.

Benton opened the brown pastry box to reveal four pale-green macarons with pale-pink filling.

“I became partial to macarons from a French bakery in Marrakech,” he said. “But I think these are just as good.” He held one out to her.

Grace accepted the cookie and took a bite. She couldn’t help herself; she groaned with pleasure.

He said, “Try it with the tea.”

With a sip of the tea, yes. It was a taste explosion.

He said, “Do you like it?”

“Nirvana,” she said.

He held her eyes and smiled at her, and her heart fell to the bottom of her stomach. He set down his glass of tea. He shook his head at her like she had done something wrong. He said, very softly, “Oh boy.”

And then he cupped her chin, and he kissed her.

Brick didn’t want to go to the Pancik house for dinner.

“Honey,” Madeline said, “why not?”

Brick shrugged. He had come home from baseball practice and collapsed on the sofa; now, his eyes were glued to the TV-ESPN, The Sports Reporters.

Madeline sat down carefully next to him. “Honey?” she said.

“Don’t feel like it.”

This was a first. Brick normally chomped at the bit to get over to the Panciks’ whenever Grace invited them for dinner. It was the only time he was allowed to hang out with Allegra in her bedroom-with the door open, of course.

“Honey, is everything okay with Allegra?” Madeline asked.

He shrugged. “Dunno.”

Madeline stared at her hands. Sixteen years she had raised this child, but she had never quite mastered the art of getting him to confide in her. Trevor was much better at it. She waited, literally biting her tongue until she tasted the metallic tang of blood.

She was rewarded. He said, “I’m not sure what’s going on. She’s been acting weird. I thought maybe it was a bad time of the month for her or whatever, but now I’m thinking she’s probably sick of me.”

Would it be awful of Madeline to say that she wasn’t surprised? Allegra had positive qualities, chief among them her beauty, her composure, her confidence. What sixteen-year-old girl had such confidence? She could also be quite funny; she did a dead-on impression of the kids’ English teacher, Mrs. Kraft. But there had been something about Allegra since she was young, something superior and entitled and not quite nice that she mostly saved for her mother. She brought Grace to tears on a regular basis, and, as Grace’s best friend, Madeline had always been there to listen. Yes, that was a horrifying thing for your daughter to say. Yes, that was a selfish and thoughtless action. But she’s young, she’ll grow out of it.

Allegra made Madeline feel relieved that she’d never had a daughter herself.

“Sick of you, honey?” Madeline said. “How could anyone ever be sick of you?”

Weak smile.

Madeline didn’t let her true opinions of Allegra surface very often, because Allegra was Brick’s girlfriend; he was besotted. At the beginning of the romance, there had been so much kissing and hands everywhere, too, that Madeline had asked them to please stop. She was far from a prude, but all of that newly discovered desire on display was embarrassing. Allegra’s blue eyes had flashed silver with her triumph. She had converted Brick to the Church of Allegra. He worshipped her.

Allegra made Brick happy, and it was more than sex; when he heard her voice, his face lit up.

Madeline and Grace had made a promise when the kids started dating. We won’t get involved. They would let Allegra and Brick work out their differences. Madeline had always wondered what would happen if they broke up. She had hoped it would be a mutual decision made when they both headed off to separate colleges.

“Please,” Madeline said. “Please come to dinner. You and Allegra can talk things over in person.”

“No,” Brick said. “Just tell everyone I don’t feel well.” He swallowed. “It’s not a lie. My heart hurts.”

Madeline smoothed the hair from Brick’s forehead. “Oh, honey.”

“Please, Mom. I would really rather hang here alone. You and Dad go.”

“What about something to eat? I can make you a grilled cheese?”