Harvest

DEVON VIOLETS

There's nothing like a funeral for resurrecting memories best interred with the corpse. On the way to my sister's wake, my mother said, "Jane, do you remember how lovely she was as a baby?"
        How could I forget? Tamara had gurgled, smiled and charmed her way through babyhood. Growing up, she became more beautiful every year. The trouble was, she knew it.
        "I put violets on her casket," my mother said. "She loved them so. Remember the Devon Violets perfume you gave her, Jane? I'd like to have it as a memento. Do you mind?"
        "Not at all. You deserve it, Mom."
        "Such a sweet, loving little girl." My mother blotted tears with a lace-edged hanky. "And she never changed."
        "People always said it was hard to believe you and Tammy were sisters," said my uncle Harry from the back seat.
        I knew my parents had been as disappointed in me as they were delighted with Tamara. She never cried; I had colic and howled endlessly my first year. I made up for it in the years that followed by keeping my emotions hidden, no matter how painful.
        "We used to call you Plain Jane," Harry added.
        "Did you? I'd forgotten."
        A lie. I could still hear Tamara chanting, "Plain Jane! Plain Jane!" when we were alone. But I learned to love books and delight in stretching my mental muscles. It never crossed my mind that Tamara might catch up to me.
        "Tamara always got what she wanted," Harry said. "She was real sweet about it, though. Used to give me big smooches when I let her take change out of my pocket." He sighed. "A real tragedy, her dying so young. None of us ever guessed she had a weak heart."
        When my parents said they couldn't afford to send me to university my dreams died. For a few weeks I mourned, then resurrected them with a job and night school. At twenty-six I had a biochemistry degree and a job in the university.
        On her eighteenth birthday Tamara said, "Guess what Mom and Dad are giving me for my big present?" In our family, 'big' presents are for special birthdays like the eighteenth. "They're sending me to university!" She smiled. "Too bad you had to work so hard for it."
        I forgot my bitterness about Tamara when I fell in love with James, a handsome, clever history professor. Our first shy kiss astonished me with the discovery that my body was as eager for excitement as my mind.
        James proposed and I took him home to meet my family. They welcomed him with their usual charm and he was touched to be accepted so readily. Tamara, achieving top grades, seemed fascinated by James's discourses on ancient history.
        Two months later my mother found the note and handed it to me wordlessly. James and Tamara had eloped, were honeymooning in California, and would return in three weeks.
        At work, I tried to ignore the whispers and probing questions. At home, I smiled and said that if James and Tamara were happy nothing else mattered. My mother patted my arm and told me I was a rock.
        When they returned, Tamara wept in my arms, begging me to forgive her. What else could I do? She was my baby sister. But she wore James like the laurel crown of a conquering Roman general.
        She gave James three winsome children and acted the part of dedicated mother and faculty wife. I won my doctorate, tenure as a professor and more time for research. Life was full, but not in the way I had hoped.
        At the wake James, graying and dignified, stood beside us to greet the mourners. "Jane, you're the only one who understands how I feel," he said. "I'll never forget her."
        Nor would I forget my fiftieth birthday, three months past, another 'special' day in our family. My mother, for the first time, gave me something luxurious and impractical, a bottle of expensive perfume called Devon Violets. I don't know why; I never use makeup or perfume.
        The white porcelain vial, hand-painted with purple violets and green leaves, was small and dainty. The slender neck, decorated with a mauve ribbon bow, curved outward, then inward again to the base, almost a perfect sphere. The perfume had a gentle, elusive scent.
        Tamara was very taken with my gift. "What an exquisite bottle!" She dabbed perfume on her wrist and smelled the fragrance. "It's enchanting. I hope you'll use it." She knew I wouldn't. I knew she wanted to.
        At lunch a month later, my mother said, "I tried to get you some Devon Violets, Tammy, but they're not making it any more. Jane's was the last bottle available."
        I thought about the elegant vial gracing my dresser. It was nice to have something no one else had.
        A few weeks later I successfully completed a lab experiment I'd been working on and was indulging in quiet elation and a glass of Glenfiddich scotch when my mother called.
        "Tammy's feeling blue, dear. Why don't you drop around and see her? And I know it would cheer her up if you gave her your Devon Violets."
        Why not? Tamara had taken everything else I'd wanted. She might as well have the little bottle of perfume to complete her collection.
        She immediately put some on her wrists, in the hollow of her throat and behind her ears. She held her wrist up to my face. "It really suits me, doesn't it?" The scent of violets was as delicate as the touch of summer rain drops on fragile petals.
        During the following weeks, whenever we met, Tamara moved in the soft aura of Devon Violets. The perfume was being absorbed through her skin into her bloodstream like rain nourishing the roots of a plant.
        Only I knew about the odorless, undetectable poison being carried with it.