Mt. Moriah's Wake

by Melissa Norton Carro

  So Doro and I continued alone. To say it was a frustrating, futile exercise for me would be no exaggeration. As a lover of literature, I was matched by someone who literally chose books by their cover.

  “I couldn’t stand that cover. What did it mean?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not an artist. What do you care about the cover, Doro?”

  One Sunday evening of each month was designated as our phone club “meeting.” At our June meeting, Doro lamented the next book I had chosen.

  “I thought you’d like Eudora Welty. She’s a Southern woman like you, Doro.”

  “What kind of name is Eudora? Like Samantha’s mother on Bewitched.”

  “That’s Endora.” I couldn’t help but smile, imagining the frown on Doro’s wrinkled brow.

  “Well maybe there’s something else we could read. I’m not too optimistic about The Optimist’s Daughter.”

  “Give it a try. It’s great literature.” I paused, listening to the pots and pans doing a dance in Doro’s kitchen. “Jesus Christ, Doro, you’re killing my ears.”

  “Language, please.” Something like cymbals clashing, and then silence. “I’m sorry, but I can’t find my quiche plate, and I’ve got a boat coming for the first time in a long while.”

  Thirteen days ago, on our Sunday book club meeting, Doro seemed in a hurry to get off.

  “I’m just tired, doll, I guess I’ve done too much. I did finally finish that book though.”

  “Doesn’t sound like you liked it.”

  “Well it was pretty good. I made some notes when I read—like you suggested.” Doro paused. “Hold on. The doorbell’s ringing. I think it’s Jean Henry here to borrow a platter. Can we talk later in the week?”

  “Sure, Doro. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  Yet I would not talk to her soon or ever again. But for some reason I didn’t know, before I hung up, I said the words I had said so rarely in the four years I had been gone.

  “Love you, Doro.”

  “Jo, I know today will be hard for you, losing a mother.”

  “I’m not Doro’s daughter, Maddy.”

  “Not true from where I sit. Seems to me you were lucky enough to have two mothers on earth.”

  Maddy’s face was grim, and I knew I had insulted him. I climbed out of the car and followed him up the side stairs into First Methodist. Genia Collins was already there, straightening the pew hymnals and spritzing the flowers on the altar. As if that made any difference to Doro.

  “Bright and early as always,” I whispered to Maddy, pointing my eyes in Genia’s direction. “Where’d she park her broomstick?”

  Maddy gave me the harshest of glares. “Apologize. That’s just a wicked thing to say.”

  The truth was that I saw little good in Genia Collins. Although they had been best friends for years, the differences between Doro and Genia were stark. I was raised by Doro who saw life as an adventure, and Grace was raised by Genia who viewed life as a burden. It was Genia who guilted Grace into going to the nearby college so she could come home frequently. It was Genia who frowned at Grace’s aspirations of being a singer—silly girlish fancies, Genia called them. “Be an accountant and make a good living. You can’t count on a man; you need to be able to support yourself.”

  “I’m sorry, Maddy, but Genia did nothing but be over-bearing and over-protective of Grace, and now she’s gone! And what good did that do?” I felt my face flush and felt the tears rise. “Why couldn’t she have been the mother Grace needed while she was alive?”

  Maddy was quiet for a minute, then took my chin in his hand.

  “Just do one thing for me, Jo. Watch ol’ Genia Collins during the service.”

  One hour later, First Methodist was filled beyond capacity. Jim Norwalk worked up a sweat setting up folding chairs in the aisles. Beyond the congregation, there were the regular visitors to the Inn, the summer guests, an eclectic crowd of people from all walks of life—all who had had the good fortune to be touched by Dorothea Wilson. I sat in the front row, watching Maddy in the chancel. His hand trembled slightly as he unfolded and refolded the yellow paper where he had jotted his notes. I looked around at the sea of faces—Sunday School teachers, first crushes, the town mayor, old and young, the winds of time having washed over us all.

  In the second pew, stage left, sat a woman Doro’s age. Her face looked vaguely familiar, but it was the granddaughter at her side I focused on. She was sitting in the pew Grace and I had occupied for many years, watched over by Doro in the choir. Tapping her Mary Janes against the tile floor, the little girl caught my eye and smiled: a wide toothless smile.

  I was instantly transported to the week Grace and I met.

  On the first day of school, the day that Maddy gave me his cross, I went home with a long list of things to tell Doro. Most of them included Grace. Doro said she would call Grace’s mother and ask Grace to come play the next weekend. I counted the days and hours until Saturday morning, when Grace would arrive. We had said little to each other all week, but wherever I sat, she came and sat next to me, and where she went on the playground, I went also. When it was time for reading, we both chose “Little House” books. We’d peek over the tops of the books and smile at each other.

  On Saturday morning I was up early and into my orange pedal pushers. I sat, feet dangling, on the edge of the side porch, kicking the heels of my Keds against the stone foundation. Finally I saw a car coming up the driveway.

  “Is she here?” Doro came out of the kitchen, wiping the last bits of paint residue off her hands. She was finishing up stencils on the long wall of the butler’s pantry. When Grace and her mother Genia reached the front porch, Doro smiled and extended her hand to the prim woman who was obviously unaccustomed to shaking hands, much less with women who painted.

  “I’m Genia Collins. A pleasure to meet you.” It was difficult to tell whether Mrs. Collins’ face was naturally pursed, or pinched because the hair was pulled back too tightly in a severe bun. Genia bore no resemblance to her daughter, whose freckles bounced off her cheeks and strawberry braids swayed in the breeze.

  Grace and I took our cue to leave. Grace blew a perfunctory kiss in her mother’s direction and we were off into the house, Grace stopping to explore each room. When she reached the side porch, one of my favorite haunts, she squealed.

  “This is the perfect place to play, JoAnna! Look what I brought.”

  She pulled from her denim purse two frilly bonnets, one pink, one yellow.

  “I’ll be Laura and you be Mary.” Biting her lip, she paused. “Well, unless you really want to be Laura, but it’s just that—well, she’s my favorite.”

  “That’s good because I like Mary. I wouldn’t want to be called Half-Pint.” We were birds of a feather, I could already tell.

  “Oh, and I would love to be called Half-Pint. I always wanted a daddy to call me that.”

  “Why don’t you ask your daddy to?”

  A shadow moved across Grace’s face.

  “He’s not here. My parents divorced, and Daddy moved away. I haven’t seen him in a long time.” She leaned in close and whispered, “Better not mention him to my mother.”

  I surprised myself with what I said next.

  “I don’t have a daddy either. He died. So did my mom.” Was that the first time I had said that out loud? “It’s just me and my Aunt Doro.”

  Another shadow, this time of sympathy, crossed the freckles. Grace’s rich brown eyes spoke more than her words ever could—those eyes sucked the sadness out of you.

  “I think we’re alike, don’t you? Maybe we’re really twins separated at birth. It could be, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t think so. I was born in Atlanta.”

  “Hmmm. Well, it doesn’t matter. We can be twins if we want to be. Do you want to be? Or sisters, like Laura and Mary.”

  “Okay, Laura.”

  A delicious grin. “Okay, Mary.”

  Grace pulled the yellow bonnet over her head, until all that wa
s visible were those two big puppy dog eyes and the wet paint drop freckles. Then she smiled, a toothless smile that told me I had made a friend for life.

  It was that smile I saw when I looked at the little girl in the second pew at Doro’s funeral.

  17

  THE SAND BAR

  AT TEN O’CLOCK, Lucie Leffler hoisted her bountiful bottom onto the organ bench. The notes of “Great is Thy Faithfulness” bounced off the wooden beams, and sunlight seeped like water through the stained glass windowpanes. Genia Collins was seated next to me, her hand palm up on the seat beside me. I knew she wanted to hold mine. And I also knew that her shyness, her lack of confidence, would prevent her from reaching out. So we sat, shoulder to shoulder, as the organ and the sunlight teased my memories.

  Grace and I were fourteen, had just finished up our waitressing shift at the Inn, and were doing dishes. At the guests’ dinner had been a newlywed couple eager to get through the meal and to the June room. The young woman, Margot, had indulged Grace with tales of the wedding, from the ceremony music to the cake. Grace could talk of nothing else.

  “My mother said weddings should be by candlelight. And she has this ridiculous idea that brides should wear a veil over their faces.”

  “That’s called a blusher. It is very traditional. I kind of prefer to see the bride’s face, though,” Doro chatted as she moved through the kitchen, stacking the cups and plates that I had dried. Our dishwasher was on the fritz. “I can get by,” Doro had smiled to Maddy. “I have two pretty young dishwashers right here!”

  “Well I’m sure my mother will make me wear her veil and probably her dress too.”

  “You should have the wedding you want, Grace,” I said. “The wedding’s not for your mom.”

  “Yeah, Jo, you’re right.” But I knew, not for the first time, that what Grace felt and what she would do were wildly different.

  “Well, as long as you’re married in front of God, it will be beautiful, my girls,” Doro said.

  Years later, Tom Rivers told me he wanted to get married in a Catholic church.

  “I want to be married in front of God.”

  I hesitated, my silence speaking for me.

  “Do you not believe in God?” he asked.

  “Yes, I do. I guess.” No, I don’t, I thought.

  “Your religion is something you’ve never talked about,” I told Tom.

  “No, it’s not something I talk about. But it’s part of me—my beliefs are part of me.”

  And so we married on the courtyard outside a University chapel. When Maddy called upon us to pray, I bowed my head and closed my eyes and imagined the words leaping off the stained-glass windows, taunting us. Tossed back to us from the Nothingness to which they were sent.

  Perhaps Tom married in front of God. I married in front of Nothing.

  Maddy stood at the pulpit. Had I been so caught up in myself that I hadn’t noticed his pallor, his frailty? I couldn’t imagine what he was about to say, much less how he would get through it. Although I had not yet seen him shed a tear, the red rims around his eyes said otherwise.

  But Maddy had a gift of storytelling and soon had the congregation gently chuckling and smiling over the life of Dorothea Wilson, a woman beyond compare. After five minutes, he paused.

  “I want to close with one more story. I think we all can name things that Doro did for us.” Clearing his voice, Maddy focused those penetrating blue eyes directly on me. “But lest anyone think Doro had no children, let me tell you this one last story. And you tell me whether she was a mother or not.”

  Still holding me in his gaze: “This story takes place at a beach—a sandbar, actually.”

  I tilted my chin up to catch a path of sunlight. I was ten years old and back at that beach, on that sandbar.

  Doro and Maddy married two summers after we moved to Mt. Moriah. Although neither of them was typically at a loss for words, telling people about their relationship brought out a stifling shyness. When Maddy announced his proposal to Doro at a church dinner, the Russell brothers and their friends let out a whoop! and immediately started exchanging tens and twenties.

  “Why, Rev, we’ve been betting on when that was going to happen for almost a year now!”

  “Yes, thank the Lord that’s finally out,” said Emmagene Wilder, irritable from her latest case of gout.

  Doro blushed—the only sign of embarrassment I ever saw—and simply leaned up and kissed Maddy on the cheek.

  They were married three months later on the grounds of First Methodist. Doro insisted on cooking all the reception food herself, stopping a mere two hours before the ceremony to change into a simple white silk sheath.

  “I’m dressed, girls. Make me beautiful!” She picked at the beginnings of a run on her panty hose until in frustration she ripped the hose off and prodded sweaty feet into her pumps. Flapping a fan at her cheeks, Doro sat on a wingback chair and handed Grace and me a small box of powder, mascara, and hair pins. Although flattered to be asked, we ten-year-old ingénues knew even less than Doro about makeup. Doro, who never could stand to be still for very long, finally sighed and grabbed the brush from our hands. “Do me some eye shadow, and I’ll do my own hair.”

  She brushed and teased her hair up into a bun, fastened with mother-of-pearl combs. With a bit too much green shadow on her left eye (Grace’s), and a bit too little on the right (mine), Doro powdered her freckled face and nose, smothered her plump lips with fire engine red lipstick, and announced she was ready.

  The next morning, Doro, Maddy, and I arose early to head out on the couple’s honeymoon.

  “Well of course you’re going, doll. We’re family now!”

  “It’s a celebration, little thing,” Maddy added.

  The honeymoon destination was the beach. Neither Doro nor I had been, and that fact was beyond comprehension for Maddy. It might have seemed a logical choice except for the fact that, while I could swim reasonably well, Doro was terrified of the water.

  I could not contain my excitement. When I was little, I had a book about mermaids. Every night I begged my father at bedtime to tell me stories of the beach. Supposedly we had vacationed in Daytona when I was a little baby and then again at age three, but I didn’t remember it. Still, though, in the deep recesses of my mind I had what I thought was an early memory—a sensation of the bouncing rhythm of waves against me.

  In the days of “our” honeymoon, Gulf Shores, Alabama, was not littered with high-rise condominiums. There were few swimming pools; like the cottage we rented, little wood siding houses with big porches faced the beach. We dined on fish Maddy caught, and in the evenings walked the half mile to the pier where barnacles as thick as chocolate sauce hung on the support beams.

  Between Doro’s obligations to the Inn and Maddy’s commitment to the church, we only had five days to be there, and it rained the first four. We spent time playing cards and charades. In the evenings, I took my book out on to the balcony or wrote stories in my pad. I knew enough to give the middle-aged couple their privacy.

  On the fifth day, our last full day at the beach, the sun rose high in the sky, and the water was clear, still, and warm.

  “Want to come in for a dip, my darling?” Maddy and I had built a two story sand castle, and he used the bucket to dribble sand and water on Doro’s burning calves.

  “I’m just fine right here, thank you very much.” Doro tilted the wide wicker hat that shielded her freckles from multiplying. She brushed off her sandy calves with a motion that told Maddy and me she was a bit sorry the rain had to end.

  “Okay, then, little thing, it’s you and me I guess.”

  “Not too far, Maddy,” Doro cautioned. “I’m not sure how good a swimmer Jo is.”

  Maddy leaned over and placed a kiss on the hand that wasn’t holding a Reader’s Digest. “But I am, my dear!”

  Off Maddy and I went into the water, flinging spray over each other until the ground sunk and we had to tread water.

  “You see that light p
atch out there, Jo? That’s the sandbar. Let’s head for that.”

  Together we swam, turning now and then to look at Doro, dozing under her magazine.

  To this day I can think of no better feeling than the openness of the sky and the waves bumping against me. Even when I could feel no ground beneath me, I felt Maddy beside me, his arm reaching out to hoist me up against a crushing wave, his hand always nearby to steady me.

  “Here comes a big one, little thing. I’ll hold you up.” Maddy reached out for me.

  But I pulled away from him. “I can ride it, Maddy!”

  Moments later it felt as if I had swallowed a gallon of water. I coughed and sputtered into Maddy’s shoulder while he gave me firm pats on the back. I looked up, prepared to smile to assuage Doro’s fear, but she was still dozing.

  “Just a little ways longer, little thing. We’re almost at the sandbar.”

  Before long, my knees bumped the ocean floor, and I was able to stand up. It felt like utter freedom—standing in the middle of the ocean, with miles and miles of water on either side of me.

  I laughed out loud. Maddy and I stretched out there on the sandbar, sitting down and sinking our bottoms into the sand. Maddy told me stories about his father and grandfather who took him deep sea fishing. He told me about camping on the sand and sleeping under a million stars.

  “I don’t think Doro would do that, do you, Maddy?”

  He chuckled. “Why, I’d have a better chance getting her to tightrope walk.”

  The blazing rays beat down on our shoulders, and I submerged myself further on the sandbar, knowing I had not reapplied sunscreen as Doro instructed. After a few minutes, Maddy dove off the side of the sandbar, trying to catch little fish. It was when he was underwater that Doro awoke. At the moment we couldn’t quite understand what was going through her head, but in the days to come, Doro explained how my lying on the sandbar looked exactly like I was sinking alone in the deepest part of the ocean, about to drown.

  “My child!” she screamed, over and over again.

  I heard the screams, saw the wicker hat go flying off, and saw Doro half waddle, half fall, into the ocean of which she was so frightened. Her hefty bosom was partially out of her shirt. Maddy came up for air then, in time to see Doro plunge butt first into a wave that washed on the shore. Not a dexterous person, much less a graceful body, Doro flipped end over end as one wave, then another crashed into her. With each one she would stand and scream.