"I'm sure you could find a better reference," I said. "But I could say how in touch you are with all that is beastly."

"That's good. Say that I have an innate appreciation of animal instincts. I can sense what animals are feeling even if they lack the ability to express their desires." His facile mouth turned up at the corners.

Bad thoughts flitted through my bad brain, and I felt the need to put the conversation on safer ground. "Oswald, you promised that you'd help me in any way you could."

"Mmm?" he said. It was a cautious "mmm."

"My friend is having a bridesmaids' tea. It's in the City." I told him the time and date and said, "You're going to loan me your car."

"I don't think so," Oswald began. "Gabriel's said that CACA is still-"

"Oh, don't even start with me, Oswald Grant. One, I'm going. Two, Gabriel's not going to know. Three, you're going to cover for me."

"Is there a four?" Oswald asked grimly.

"Yes. Four, you promised."

He looked unconvinced. "What if I tell Gabriel and the family?"

"Do you plan to hold me against my will?" I asked, and I immediately regretted my choice of words.

"If you're determined to go, I'll take you. I'll even come up with an excuse for where we're going," he said. "Someone's got to make sure you don't get into trouble."

"Well, that's reassuring," I said sarcastically. "After all, you've never caused me any trouble." I held back my smile of satisfaction that I would be seeing Nancy-pants soon.

We ran into Edna, who was returning from the barn with a basket full of fresh eggs. "Oswald," said Edna, "whatever are you going on about?"

"Good morning, Grandmama. I was just telling Mil that I'd like to go to veterinary school."

"That's the most preposterous thing I've ever heard." Edna waved her hand at him and went into the house.

Oswald leaned toward me and said quietly, "You see, no one supports my intellectual pursuits." His eyes strayed downward to my breasts. Intellectual pursuits, my less-opulent-than-usual ass. "Well, I've got things to do, people to see," he said, and then jogged off toward the cottage, the dogs scampering joyfully around him.

I wrote several pages that day, taking short breaks to imagine ways that I would enact my vengeance upon Sebastian Beckett- Witherspoon. Some French guy said vengeance was a dish best served cold, but when the opportunity arose, I would make my retaliation as hot and painful as a habanero on a raw cut.

Chapter Seventeen

sense and insensibility

When Ernie finished building the fence, Edna and I went shopping for plants. I'd mapped out a route to a few excellent nurseries in the area. I was waiting by the car when she came out of the house wearing a snazzy white eyelet shirt with pale blue slacks and darling white slip-ons. "Edna, I miss my own clothes."

"You don't mention your parents, but you miss your clothes."

"The clothes treated me better."

"I saw some of your clothes and I beg to differ," she said snidely.

Instead of succumbing to an urge to say something snippy, I asked, "Do you think we can do a little clothes shopping after we buy plants?"

All Edna said was, "Come along. Snap to it."

I realized it was one of those "sn" days: everything would be snappy, snippy, snotty, snooty, snazzy, snide, et cetera.

Considering the options before me, I resolved to be snoopy.

We took the big truck. Edna handled it easily over the grades and turns. "Edna, where did you grow up?"

"Are you quizzing me?"

"It's just a generic question for two gals on a road trip."

"Oh, goody. Next you'll propose holding up a gas station and dancing on a bar top."

"No need to be snarky, Edna," I said, although I'd always enjoyed dancing on bar tops. I leaned back against the seat. Really, a girl can never see too much of chartreuse countryside, purple fields of lupine, and hills yellow with wild mustard. We passed large ostentatious vineyard estates, modest ranch houses, and dilapidated shacks.

"Edna, you see those trees with pink blossoms? They're the native western redbud."

"Did your father teach you about gardening?"

I was surprised that she knew about my father until I remembered that they had read my unauthorized bio. "No, he is big on lawns and perfectly trimmed everything. He likes boxwood, junipers, and low-maintenance ground covers."

"Your mother, then?"

My laugh sounded harsh even to my own ears. "My mother Regina would never sully her hands in soil! No, one of the guys on my father's crew used to be a garden designer in Nicaragua." I told her about Cesar, the middle-aged man who had been wild for dramatic foliage. He had shown me how to examine root growth, look for disease, and appreciate both the ordinary and the extraordinary. "I was his protegee," I said. "Have you ever been someone's protegee?"

"Einstein had great hopes for me."

Previous "Albert Einstein!"

"You should see the look on your face," Edna chortled as she parked the car.

I said, "Har, har, har, very hilarious." I yanked my sun hat further down on my head and we got out of the car. I didn't have time to feel foolish because we were at a wonderful family-run nursery that specialized in rose varieties over a hundred years old. The roses growing on the fence were pruned to perfection.

We walked through the aisles and a short, plain woman came out of the store and said, "Can I help you?"

"Whoever is pruning your roses is a master," I said.

"That's me," she said.

We had a fascinating discussion about different pruning techniques while Edna walked around reading plant descriptions scrawled on laminated cards.

Edna liked some of the creamy roses and I said, "White roses are perfect for an evening garden. They almost glow in the dark."

We chose some tea-noisette and hybrid musk roses. My heart soared when I spotted a very healthy Rosa englanteria in a two-gallon pot. "Edna, this is Shakespeare's wild rose! 'I know a bank where the wild thyme blows / With sweet musk roses, and with eglantine.' You've got to have it."

"Fine, I'll take it. Now choose something for yourself."

I looked around carefully. In honor of the vampires, I decided upon sanguinea, a China rose with bloodred flowers.

At the next nursery, the sturdy middle-aged owner talked effusively to Edna about fruit trees. He insisted on giving her a discount on a persimmon and three espaliered pears that would go against the fence. I grabbed some pretty deciduous shrubs.

The owner even volunteered to arrange the plants in the back of our truck to accommodate the young trees. As we watched him I said, "Edna, I have totally lost sense of our original planting scheme."

"Do you want lunch or not?"

It was well past noon and I was hungry. "I want lunch and we've totally lost sense of our original planting scheme."

"Who cares? There's a pretty good little Mexican joint nearby."

"We forgot to get lilacs."

"We can get lilacs next time," she said, and I almost clapped my hands in delight.

She drove to a small diner with a faded sign outside that said JOE'S GRILL. We walked through the screen door into a dark, cool restaurant with six tables covered with bright oilcloth. My mouth watered at the scent of frijoles and carnitas. A calendar from a tortilla factory displayed a brawny Aztec warrior carrying a buxom maiden up a pyramid. I'd be kicking and screaming if any zealot wanted to cut my heart out, no matter how gorgeous he was.

"The chicken with mole is always good," Edna said.

"Sounds fab."

The waitress brought us a basket of warm tortilla chips and Edna ordered mole and Bohemias for us both. I caught her staring at me and said, "Yes?""You're a generally cheerful girl, aren't you?"

I munched on a chip and thought about her question. "My grandmother used to say that I woke up happy."

"You liked her better than your mother?"

I smiled and said in a light tone, "She liked me better than my mother Regina liked me." I was halfway through my beer, so I was more forthcoming than usual on this subject. "My mother Regina tried everything to avoid getting pregnant. And when she did, she starved herself until her doctor had to put her on an IV. She went downhill skiing in her third trimester. She 'forgot' me at the mall when I was three months old."

Maybe it was because Edna had finished most of her beer, but she was fighting to maintain an even expression. Then a chuckle came out. By the time I said "She bought an above-ground pool and let me play in it unsupervised. She told me I was old enough to cross the street by myself when I was three. She fed me meats past their sell-by dates!" we were both howling.

"How horrible!" Edna finally managed to say.

"Well, they don't taste that bad if you use lots of catsup." I told her that my grandmother finally threatened to go to the police if I had any more "accidents."

"My grandmother, my abuelita, pretty much raised me from the time I was an infant until I was almost ten. I went to my parents on weekends."

Our food had arrived and Edna ordered a second round of beer. "What happened then?"

"My grandmother died in a car accident and my mother Regina cut off connections with the rest of the family." I shrugged. It had been a shock to go from my abuelita's cozy, crowded home to my parents' antiseptic, white-on-white, lifeless house.

"Why do you call her that? 'My mother Regina?"

"Because then I can treat her like a character, not a person."

"And your father?"

"Oh, he worships the ground she walks on." When I had cried for my grandmother, my mother Regina would lock me in my room, on the far side of the house, away from her and my father. "My friend Nancy thinks that my mother Regina is a sociopath." I fought against the tears welling in my eyes.

"Young lady, there's no shame in mourning the loss of love," Edna said, and patted my hand.

"Ah, but there is shame in letting our food get cold," I said, determined not to let my mother Regina ruin a good meal.

After lunch we bought perennials, herbs, annuals, seeds, pruners, leather gloves, and sturdy trowels. I would be properly garbed for garden work, but there was the rest of my life to consider. "Edna, I apologize, but I need some new clothes and I don't have any money."

"You don't need new clothes. No one ever sees you and you're certainly dressed better than when you came here."

"I had an absolutely marvelous wardrobe and I do need clothes."

"Why? I thought you wanted to write. What sort of clothes are required for sitting at a typewriter?"

I couldn't tell her that I needed a stylish puce outfit for Nancy's party, so I thought of another approach. "I bet Dena Franklin wore terrifically glamorous ensembles when she wrote. How am I supposed to be inspired when I feel so hideously drab?"Stunningly, Edna conceded. She drove to the prosperous little town on the other side of the mountain. As she searched for a parking space, I peered in the boutique windows. Most had a "sexy is too vulgar for us" aesthetic that I could not begin to embrace. Edna parked, got out of the car, and directed me down the street.

"Here we are," she said, and stopped in front of a shop called Ye Olde Rose and Grape Consignment Charitee Shoppe.

Perhaps she thought I would be interested in a whalebone corset. She saw my disappointment and snapped, "You really try my patience."

To Edna's credit, there were no buskins, bustles, or other historical garments in the shoppe. I had looked up "puce" in the dictionary. The color, brilliant purplish red, was more appealing than the origin of the word, which meant flea-colored. I scanned the racks for puce items, but the only thing I could find was a skimpy dark plum knit dress that was a size too small and showed all the deficiencies of my WWII-era bra. I decided that fitting in with the theme was more important than my vanity, so I took the dress.

I discovered a slinky sleeveless dress in hot pink, a pair of tight capri pants in turquoise silk with a snug-fitting matching shell, a black chiffon skirt that floated nicely around my bottom, and a white cashmere sweater embroidered with beads. I also selected cute beige heeled sandals with tiny seashells on the straps, simple black loafers, and, joy of joys, leopard-print sandals with narrow heels.

After we left, I said, "Thanks, Edna. Now where do we go for underwear?"

"You already have perfectly functional underwear."

"I do not. My bras are all rumply. Look," I said, and thrust out my chest to demonstrate. "It is very humiliating seeing people staring at my chest and thinking that I don't know how to buy a bra that fits." As I said this a teenage boy walked by and snickered. "See what I mean?"

"I'm sure that's not what they're thinking when they look at your chest."

"Edna," I said, and quoted Dena Franklin, "kindly indulge my whim."

She gazed at me with those feline eyes and I thought it was a complete waste that she wasn't off seducing and abandoning elderly ministers of state. "You are a ridiculous girl. Why can't you just say that you want pretty lingerie?"

I pondered various answers and decided on the truth. "It sounds so frivolous."

"Young lady, frivolity has its place. A lady should have nice undergarments to please herself."

"Fine. I'd like some nice undergarments to please myself."

She led me to a small shop filled with bleak natural-fiber garments in the front and exquisite European lingerie in the back. The clerks greeted her so obsequiously that I wondered what Edna's underwear drawer looked like. My patrona handed me a wad of cash and went to the corner cafe to wait for me.

I couldn't decide if a deep and sincere lady would wear demure white lacy undergarments or worldly black or red silk.