Mt. Moriah's Wake

by Melissa Norton Carro

  “I’m Tiffany. I’m from Milwaukee.”

  “Megan. Also from Milwaukee.”

  College roommates, they had set off together for Chicago for their first great life adventure. Working in the accounts division at Sandalwood & Harris, they aspired to become account executives. Or wives. Whichever came first.

  While we were making awkward small talk in the hallway, I heard gasps and then giggles coming from the room next to me. Tiffany and Megan read the look on my face and beckoned me closer.

  “That’s Lori. She’s from Cleveland, and so far we’ve counted four different boyfriends,” whispered Megan.

  Tiffany, evidently a peacekeeper, chimed in. “But she seems really sweet, just, you know, over-sexed or something.”

  There was an awkward silence and the girls dismissed me to my unpacking. Two hours later they appeared in my doorway. Their faces and hair had made dramatic transformations.

  “We’re going to get dinner and then to Tony’s. Do you want to come?” Megan paused. “We could wait for you to get ready.”

  I looked at my Atlanta Braves shirt and my ratty jeans. I wasn’t even sure where to start “getting ready.”

  My skinny window, opaque with grime, revealed a sliver of the Michigan Avenue Bridge. Below, the trees swayed, and I suddenly wanted to be outside.

  “Thanks. I’ll pass tonight. I think I’ll just hang here.”

  Did I see a shadow of relief pass across their faces? “Okay, then. But tomorrow night you’re coming with us.” Tiffany picked up a framed picture of me and Grace from the night of our high school graduation. I had set it up on my desk near the door. “She’s pretty,” she said, and then they were gone.

  Yes. She was.

  Grace, I thought. Where are you, Grace?

  The view outside my window, however obscured, beckoned me. I waited until I knew Tiffany and Megan would be out of sight, then grabbed a jacket and my purse, and headed out. I wanted to meet Chicago.

  The cleansing wind whipped around my nylon windbreaker as I walked the long blocks to the Michigan Avenue Bridge. The panels were up, and I waited to cross with the hundreds of other people. On the other side was the Chicago Tribune Tower, and I walked around it, running my hands lightly across the limestone. Notre Dame. Great Wall of China. Taj Mahal. Stepping inside, I could only move to the right, because the left side of the great hall was blocked off. Renovations were underway, with inscriptions being added to the walls. The security guard smiled at me. “Afternoon, ma’am. You a tourist?”

  “Sort of. Actually, I just moved to Chicago.” I looked around, wondering what it might be like to have a job such as his, surrounded by architectural magnificence. “Come back in a few weeks and it should be finished,” he said. He motioned with his Coke bottle toward the inscription behind me. “You’ll have to wait on Lincoln to be done, but you’ve got Burnham’s quote there.” He shook his head and smirked. “No idea in hell who Burnham was.”

  I read Daniel Burnham’s quote and made a note to myself to find out who he was.

  “Make no small plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood.”

  Thanks for the advice, I thought.

  Back outside, I let the wind rip through my jacket. Although the air was chilly, the cold was invigorating. It felt good to feel something. I half walked, half jogged the twelve blocks to Lake Michigan. By the time I got there, my heart rate was up and I was perspiring. It was late afternoon, the sun sliding behind the clouds. I stood with Lake Michigan in front of me and breathed in the dampness. I watched lovers and children and carefree college students play on the dirty sand. And there, on that late summer day, I vowed I would never return to Mt. Moriah. Tears came to my eyes, and I looked around to see if anyone noticed. No one did. I was invisible.

  Mercifully so.

  That first night in Room 504, the nightmares that had plagued me all summer found me in Chicago. I saw Grace’s face flash in front of me. I sat up, in a cold sweat, and wondered if I had cried out. I could hear talking and laughter from Lori’s room. I had met the long-legged Cleveland beauty when I returned from my walk. She had a space between her teeth and teased hair that begged to return to its natural color. She was nice, though, greeting me with a warm smile and suggesting we have lunch or dinner. Or drinks. Whatever. She was flexible.

  Indeed she probably was, I thought.

  In those early days in Chicago, I awakened from my dreams, drenched despite the oscillating fan I kept pointed at me. As sun was on the brink of rising, I donned my Reeboks and took off walking, toward Lake Michigan. The wind was my silent partner, propelling me along, erasing my dreams, dulling my thoughts.

  Grace was constantly on my mind. I saw her at coffee shops, walking on the beach, in elevators. Her phone number would run through my head, and I would make a mental note to tell her about the greasy, juicy pizza I had eaten. But I couldn’t. She was not there; she never would be.

  I started seeing a psychologist at Doro’s insistence. “I’ve set up an appointment for you your first week,” she had said. Knowing nothing about Chicago, she was sure his office was close to my hotel. It was not. “You need to talk to someone.”

  Dr. Weisz was balding, and his fifth shirt button strained against his stomach. He was without wit, but not unkind. I told him I was walking. A lot. Running a little. I said I kept imagining I saw Grace. I told him I had nightmares and couldn’t sleep unless all the lights in my room were on. Even then I saw shadows. I told him I didn’t know sometimes whether I wanted to live—but that I was terrified of dying.

  “You’re grieving,” he said, as if revealing something I did not know.

  His stoniness, his “how does that make you feel” interjections did not seem helpful to me. It was movement that brought me relief. My daily walks had picked up pace until I was running. My chest burned until I thought it would explode, and the wind slapped my face until I reached that great majestic body of water. Into Lake Michigan I would squall, the wind carrying my screams away as a mother muffles a small child’s sobs against her breast.

  The wind was my friend.

  In an odd kind of way, Dr. Weisz became my friend too. I continued to see him, every two weeks, paying with checks Doro gave me. Although he seldom offered advice, I found myself looking forward to sitting in the plaid chair and gazing at the family photos displayed behind his desk. Dr. Weisz had the ugliest daughters I had ever seen, but his wife was quite stunning.

  She’s your prize, I thought. I found myself wondering if the daughters were adopted. How could the mother’s beautiful genes have no impact on those four girls? I rattled on about my nightmares while I wondered if the screened-in porch in the picture was as serene as it appeared. I wondered if he and his wife had met at Dartmouth, where his diploma said he received his BS. I wondered why he collected antique model cars. I wondered if those top shelves above his credenza ever got dusted.

  I wondered if his wife had nightmares. And if he held her when she did.

  And then I would leave his office and be back in the wind, back in the Chicago that swelled up around me and lost me in its wake.

  I knew that Dr. Weisz was right: I was grieving. But it was more than that. Beyond sorrow, beyond loneliness, what I felt was guilt. Guilt that Grace had been murdered. We had made plans to be walking at the Point together that day. It could have been me. Should it have been me? Every step I made in my new life in Chicago was a step further without Grace. A step further away.

  In those nightmares, strangers lunged for me, and I was terrified. I was relieved to awaken, to squint through my dusty window and see the river in the distance. To know I was alive. What Dr. Weisz couldn’t understand, didn’t know, was that I was conflicted: between my relief in waking from my nightmares and my guilt at knowing Grace never could.

  And so, walking and running became the means to tamp down the emotions that threatened to explode inside me. Learning Chicago by foot, I rode the antique elevators at Macy’s, watching each floor fall away, th
e green balconies luring me into their departments. Hosiery. Men’s. Bedding. I spent hours trilling my fingertips over the sheets and towels, sitting in the children’s department, staring into the giant wooden giraffe whose body held shelves of plush, loving stuffed animals.

  I sat under the el and waited for the rumble, sipping coffee and watching the pigeons pick at the trash. I lingered on the plaza in front of the Wrigley Building, watching the people, the boats in the Chicago River. Observing life that I wasn’t a part of.

  Lori and Megan and Tiffany were friendly to me. We ordered pizza together and tried out restaurants and watched TV. I was grateful for them, but they were not my friends. My sole friend was the wind—my confidant and companion. Only the vigorous lake air knew my name and the secret guilt pressing on my heart.

  When I wasn’t running against the wind, running with the wind, I was going through the motions of being alive. Eating, showering, flossing my teeth. And working.

  Like the wind, work whipped my grief, my guilt, into a hard knot that I swallowed, that remained hidden through the days. Released only when the nightmares came.

  Thank goodness for Dr. Weisz. For the wind. And for work.

  6

  ELEPHANT EARS

  “LITTLE THING! JO.”

  I searched through the crowd in the Woodbury Parlor for that familiar cadence and the head towering well over six feet. I didn’t have to look long to find the face that matched the voice.

  “Maddy, hi.” I clung to his hunched frame, my head nesting against the knot of his tie. The face, the shiny gray hair, the thick venous hands and lumbering shuffle: my beloved Maddy.

  “You’re a sight for sore eyes, little thing. We were worried your flight might not get here on time.”

  Holding me at arms’ length and running his calloused paw through my bangs, Maddy searched my eyes.

  Maddy’s full name was Madison Blair, and his was the lyrical drawl of a Southern gentleman. His voice was thick with emotions and his azure eyes moist.

  I cleared my throat. “How are my elephant ears, Maddy?” Then I choked on the spot in my throat. I looked up into the second of Maddy’s chins and smelled his old man scent: a combination of garden dirt and expired Old Spice—the clarity of the outdoors sweetened by Southern gentility.

  Maddy gave my shoulders a tight squeeze. His eyes were still damp, but his voice had gained a chuckle.

  “Tall and thriving, no thanks to you.” he laughed.

  In my mind’s photo album, I could see Maddy’s billowy elephant ears, swaying in the breeze, his pride and joy.

  At least until I got to them.

  What became known—and not affectionately—as the “elephant ear incident” took place during the summer after my parents died. It all started early on a Saturday morning, the third week of June 1983, when Doro opened my blinds and blew me out of bed with her billowy voice.

  Dazed with sleep, I was surprised that Doro was awake. The unspoken rule around Doro was no talking until 8:30 a.m., until the last drop from the percolator had entered her ample stomach. On that sticky June morning, the clock read 7:10. Yet Doro was alive with activity, obviously fueled by more than caffeine.

  “Morning, sunshine! Hurry up, we’re going on a road trip, and I want to be there well before lunch.” Doro motioned me to move into the bathroom, tossing last evening’s clothes at me.

  Fifteen minutes later, we were on our way, doughnuts in hand and a thermos of milk for me. I didn’t ask questions—simply turned up Billy Joel on the radio and watched the highway markers slip by. Although I was curious where we were going, in my few months with Doro I had developed a conviction that wherever Doro wanted to take me, that’s where I should go. I was a passenger in my own life.

  Fog rolled across our windshield as we exited at Mt. Moriah, the highest point between Atlanta and Nashville. I had traveled the mountain once before with my parents, on our way to vacation. At that time it had seemed intimidating, unsettling. With Doro, it seemed peaceful, beautiful. I was too taken with the act of climbing to question.

  We turned off the highway, passed through the quaint downtown, and then onto Birkham Lane, turning at crumbling stone pillars. We proceeded down the tree lined driveway almost a quarter of a mile until Doro stopped in front of what appeared to be a haunted house.

  “Where are we, Doro? What is this place?” My questions came rolling out then, tripping over each other in the air between Doro and me.

  “It’s our house, Jo. Our new home.”

  Seeing the dangling gutters, manic ivy, and decades of peeled paint, I waited for a punch line, but I knew Doro was no kidder.

  Instead, I saw the sparkle in her eye. “Come on. Let’s look it over. Watch out for poison ivy.”

  A massive porch spanned the front of the house, with peeling cement steps overcome by moss. Doro accidentally pulled the door off its hinges, set it aside, and whispered with a wink, “We don’t need a key.”

  I must say that the interior made the exterior feel palatial. Thick cobwebs clung to massive crown molding, and brocade wallpaper threatened to ensnare us on its way off the walls. We wandered through the rooms, from dining room to parlor to back kitchen, and then up the winding stairs through an array of bedrooms. A ballroom, fifteen feet by thirty feet, extended across one side of the second floor. Heavy wainscoting and ornate dental molding bespoke a different era. I tiptoed so as not to disturb the ghosts that undoubtedly accompanied me. My writer’s imagination was on full alert.

  After twenty minutes of silence, Doro paused in front of a tall staircase leading into darkness. Her hand dusting the carved ball atop the bannister, she spoke.

  “I’ve been looking for a place like this for some time, Jo. I was about to sign the papers, actually, the week your parents passed away. It needs renovation, of course, but I bought it for a song, and with some sweat equity I intend to make it into a B&B.” Then, seeing the blank look on my face: “Bed and breakfast. A country inn. Did you count the bedrooms? The space is incredible.” Doro spoke rapidly, as if to convince me.

  “We’ll move here, you and me, away from the city,” she continued. “There’s a good school, and the area here is just beautiful. I have enough money saved to live on, and I can fund the renovation from your father’s and my inheritance.” She reached over and pushed a loose bang out of my left eye.

  “Come on. How can you be excited when you haven’t even seen your room yet?”

  She flipped a switch and the brightened stairway revealed a door at the top. We climbed, the heat rising with us. Beyond that door was nothing short of a sanctuary—at least in my young writer’s eyes. The room was small, but with two long slender windows that faced the front lawn. One window looked directly into a gracious willow, and the other down the long winding driveway. The ceiling was sloped, all around, with nooks and crannies that begged for a little girl to sit in them and read and write. And imagine.

  I dropped Doro’s hand and moved to the window. Clearing a patch of dust, I gazed into the willow and then back around the room, which was surprisingly light and airy. Seeing for the first time with Doro’s optimistic eyes, I saw the potential. I envisioned yellow-checked Priscilla curtains, and my dolls lined up on white wicker corner shelves.

  “I like it,” I said.

  “Hello! Anybody there?”

  Doro and I jumped at the voice. We hurried down both sets of hardwood stairs and saw a tall, stooped figure in the doorway, his hand on the knob, one foot in and one foot out. Perhaps he too believed in ghosts.

  “Hi, I’m Dorothea Wilson. Mr. Browder, the realtor, said I could stop by this morning.” Doro proceeded toward the door with her hand outstretched. “I’m buying this lovely old house.”

  She emphasized the word lovely, as if daring the stranger to disagree.

  “Oh really? Rip and I had just about given up hope of anybody taking interest in this old place,” said the man, shadowing the front sunlight.

  Before we could ask who Rip was, up l
oped a lanky hound whose posture and ruddy complexion closely mirrored his master’s. He settled himself against the man’s right leg and, as if staking his territory, emitted an imposing fart.

  “Rip, really, that ain’t polite.” In apology, the man continued. “I caught Rip chewing on a dead squirrel yesterday, and it seemed to mess up his intestines bad.”

  Straightening her spine, Doro was obviously unimpressed. In her world there was no place for dogs, certainly not in her prospective home. Spiders and mice, yes. Flatulent canines, no.

  On the other hand, I was delighted. From my earliest memory I had wanted a pet, preferably a dog, the furrier the better. Releasing Doro’s hand and holding my breath, I knelt down beside the dog. Reciprocating my friendliness, Rip uncurled a three foot tongue and slurped my face.

  “Careful, Jo, the dog may bite.” Doro took hold of my shoulder and urged me to my feet.

  “Oh no ma’am, he’s harmless. Except maybe to squirrels.” He chuckled at his own joke.

  Then, to me: “Pretty little girls, he likes. Your name’s Jo?”

  “JoAnna.” Straightening, I inserted my tiny hand into his large one. I found myself level with his belt buckle. Craning my head upwards, I could tell—even at their altitude—that his eyes were a brilliant blue.

  “I’m Madison Blair. How do you do. Awfully big name so most people just call me Maddy,” he said.

  “Do you live around here, Mr. Blair?” asked Doro.

  “Maddy. No ma’am, I live in town. But Rip and I try to come up here on Saturdays to work on our garden, our elephant ears.”

  Elephant ears? My bewilderment was obvious. Laughing at my surprise, Maddy continued.

  “You haven’t seen the garden, then? Come on, I’ll show you.”

  Now it was Doro’s turn to be surprised. “Garden?”

  Following Maddy’s lead, now immensely curious, Doro and I trampled the ivy around the side of the porch encircling the white clapboard house. Pushing our way through overgrown honeysuckle, we saw boxwoods framing a rusted iron gate and through there we tiptoed, as if approaching Eden itself.