Mt. Moriah's Wake

by Melissa Norton Carro

  “My child! I’m coming, JoAnna!”

  “Good lord in heaven, what is that woman doing?” cried Maddy. “Stay here, Jo.”

  Off he set, using broad, strong strokes to cover the distance between the flailing Doro and himself.

  Once he reached her, he put one arm under Doro’s skinned knees and one arm behind her head. “Breathe, Doro, dear. I’ve got you.”

  She was a mess of snot. “The child, Madison. Jo. She’s drowning.”

  “My God, woman, the only one who’s drowning is you.” The laughter came then, shaking Maddy’s mighty shoulders. Still perched on the sandbar, I couldn’t help but grin.

  Pushing soggy hair out of her eyes, Doro pointed to me. “Look at her! She’s drowning, she is!” She strained to wriggle out of Maddy’s firm grasp.

  “She’s on the sandbar, Doro,” Maddy swung Doro around in the water, holding her up every time a wave threatened.

  Doro looked as incredulous as if told I was boarding a space ship.

  “I’ve never heard of a sandbar. I …” Her voice quietened then. “Why didn’t you tell me there was a sandbar, Maddy. I was so scared.

  “I thought she was drowning,” whimpered the Doro who never whimpers.

  Maddy held her close then, her body beginning to shake in silent sobs.

  “I know you did, Doro, but I got you. I got you both.” He kissed her forehead. “And you know what else?”

  “What?” She sniffed.

  “How the tarnation did you manage to hold on to that?”

  In a death grip, Doro’s left hand still clinched the now soggy June 1985 Reader’s Digest.

  “It was a mother’s love, pure and simple,” Maddy told the congregation, who were laughing tears at Maddy’s depiction of Doro’s graceless pirouettes in the water. “Biologically she was an aunt, but the reality was that Doro was a mother. She was a mother to JoAnna, and she was a mother to many.”

  The last night of the honeymoon we went to a seafood restaurant. A waiter brought me a Shirley Temple cocktail and noticed my Polaroid camera on the edge of the table. He asked if I wanted him to take a picture of me and my parents. I didn’t correct him. That picture, although badly faded, remains on Doro’s refrigerator.

  From my pew, I dabbed my eyes and smiled back at Maddy. Smiling, he lifted one bushy eyebrow toward the tiny figure on my right. Turning, I saw not the pinched, sour face of a woman embittered by life. I saw the gently sobbing grief of a mother. Perhaps Genia didn’t know how to love her daughter in the way she wanted to be loved and supported. But there was no denying her love for her daughter. And perhaps I was not to judge.

  I put my palm on top of Genia Collins’ tiny hand and held it tight.

  “It wasn’t just today, Jo. There’s nary a church service that Genia doesn’t cry her way through.”

  I sighed. I had disliked Genia Collins for so long that it was hard to dredge up any sympathy.

  Maddy and I were picking up plates and cups from the Inn. Just as Doro had opened her house many times to grieving families wanting a place to gather after the service, we opened her house for people to come pay their respects.

  It was after 7:00 p.m., and the light outside was starting to fade.

  “What are you so angry about, little thing?” Maddy held the trash bag for me to toss the Solo cups into.

  “I’m not angry, Maddy. I just can’t help thinking that if Genia had let Grace go away to school, she wouldn’t have …”

  “Wouldn’t have been on that mountain? Who’s to say that, little thing?”

  “But maybe not!” I dropped the last plate into the black bag and threw myself down on the sofa. “Of course, I guess you’d say that’s God’s plan, right, Maddy?”

  “For Grace to die? For Doro to die? For any of us to die?” Maddy sat down beside me, bringing my head to rest on his chest. “Naw, I reckon the Good Lord wants us to live. I reckon He was as sad about Grace as any of us.

  “But I still don’t think that’s what you’re angry about.”

  What was I angry about? The drunk driver who hit my parents? The friend I had lost? Genia Collins for keeping Grace from going away and pursuing her passion? Doro for sending me away to pursue my passion?

  “That’s about enough thinking for today, little thing. Let’s get some sleep,” said Maddy, yawning widely. “I’m worn out.”

  I was tired, too, and my stomach had been flip flopping all day. Too much reception food. I kissed Maddy goodnight and headed to my room.

  In the hall bathroom, I opened the cabinet, looking for a bottle of Tums. From the corner of my eye, I saw its tail.

  The cat. It had moved from the window near my bed to the window sill above the commode. Its eyes glared at and through me.

  “Jesus Christ, I hate cats,” I muttered, knocking my hand against the window. “Scram!”

  But it stayed where it was, a statue watching over me, the eyes following me. By the time I crawled under the covers, it had moved to the bedroom sill. Then started the low, guttural mewing.

  Pillow over my head, I fought back nausea and finally fell off to sleep to fitful nightmares.

  The following morning I ran to the bathroom to vomit.

  The cat was nowhere to be seen.

  18

  REX AND SYLVIA

  I WAS UP EARLY THE FOLLOWING MORNING. Was it Wednesday? Thursday? The days had run together. I peeked in on Maddy. His bed looked like a fight had taken place, but he was sound asleep and I knew I should let him sleep in. Just as I was gingerly pulling the door to, the phone rang. I leaped across the kitchen to grab it before Maddy awakened.

  “Jo?”

  Had it only been a few days since I left Chicago? Since I had heard Tom’s voice? Yet there it was, the sound of worlds colliding in my ear.

  “Hi, Tom.”

  He cleared his throat. “The funeral was yesterday, right? How was … everything?”

  “It was nice. It was, well, it was what Doro would have wanted.”

  “And Maddy? How’s he?”

  “Okay. Sleeping late, although I think I hear him up now.”

  The silence was palpable. Ours were the voices of familiar strangers.

  “Jo, I would have come with you.”

  Silence from me. I didn’t know how to do this. Didn’t know how to be here and there, how to be Doro’s daughter and Tom’s wife. Didn’t know where I wanted to be.

  “I know we both said some things.” He paused. “I know what I said.”

  “I … I can’t talk right now, Tom. Thank you for calling, though.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s what?”

  “Exactly. You’re going to run and hide?”

  My face flushed. I was hardly hiding. Coming back to Mt. Moriah, to my childhood, to the place where Grace died, was one of the toughest things I had ever done. Hiding? I was brave.

  “I’m sorry you see it that way, Tom.” I knew my voice sounded harsh. And, just as surely as I knew he was running his hands through the thick grey tendrils above his ears, I knew he was hurting. And that I was doing the hurting.

  I also knew I loved him.

  “I’ve got to go, Tom. Can we talk later?”

  Silence.

  “Sure, Jo. Always later.”

  The line went dead.

  I hung the phone up and turned to face Maddy in his rumpled bathrobe.

  “Was that Tom?”

  “Yes. He asked about you.” I donned Doro’s apron and began pulling breakfast items out of the refrigerator—bagels, eggs, milk.

  “Sounds like he was asking about more than me.” Maddy put weathered palms on each side of my face. “Something going on with you two?”

  “It’s nothing, Maddy. Just a lover’s quarrel I suppose.” I wriggled free of his hands and lighted the gas stove, catching a glimpse of the refrigerator magnet holding a picture of Doro and Maddy on their wedding day, Grace and me on either side.

  Oh, Doro, how did you make it all look so easy
? And where are you now?

  Maddy and I spent the day at home, both of us quiet and contemplative. There was so much to do—Doro’s clothes to collect and donate, casseroles to freeze, but instead we lingered, looking through pictures, sitting on the porch swing.

  The next morning I was up early again, preparing breakfast. Maddy broke the silence.

  “How long do I get to have you here, little thing?”

  “I don’t know, Maddy,” and I didn’t. Oddly enough, I was not in a hurry to return, not sure where I stood with my job. I was still copy editing and proofreading, my dreams of writing becoming smaller and smaller. And then there was the morning queasiness, like a nagging worry at the back of my mind.

  “We do need to go to John Barkham’s this afternoon to go over Doro’s will,” Maddy said. “You know, she left the Inn to you.”

  Nothing could have shocked me more, and my face must have said so.

  “What? Why? That makes no sense! Maddy, this was your family’s house to begin with. What the hell am I going to do with it?”

  Maddy frowned, signaling his contempt at how easily I threw around curse words.

  “Doro and I talked about it a few years back,” he said. “I can retire comfortably when the time comes. Not sure when that will be, but she wanted—we both want—you to have something here in Mt. Moriah.”

  “Well, she should have thought about what I might want. I can tell you it’s not Mt. Moriah. I want nothing of this place.”

  I got up then and, sticking my feet into my sneakers, headed for the back door. I felt as if I was drowning, thrashing and gnawing in my own skin.

  Pulling open the door, I startled at the figure with his hand poised near the doorbell.

  “Jo, I’m so sorry I missed the funeral. I was out of town.” The voice belonged to Christian Tuck, the best friend Grace and I ever had.

  “Tuck.”

  Tuck opened his arms, and I leaned into them. They smelled like high school basketball games. Halloween costumes. Dances. And youth. It was the hug of a friendship long ago paused.

  “I missed you Jo.”

  Oh, I had missed him too. Had not thought of him in years, yet missed him every day. Missed his arms and his smile. Missed everything about this handsome man—the man Grace was dating when she was murdered.

  In the summers Grace and I would spend many of our days in the culvert beneath the train tracks, the same ones where Billy McGuiness played Evel Knievel. It was cool there and pungent with the tall honeysuckle border. Although the highway was within our line of vision, we were hidden from the world. Eventually we read all of the graffiti inscribed there. Some of it was quite enlightening to two girls on the verge of puberty. Some of the graffiti—albeit much tamer—we put there ourselves.

  We would take our portable Sony discmans and thermoses of Doro’s tea, so sweet it’s a wonder we didn’t sink into immediate diabetic comas. Nested against the cool cement, we taunted each other with the secrets we knew about each other.

  “Brian Rayburn likes you.”

  “Gross. He spits when he talks.”

  “I don’t know. He’s kinda cute. He’s very smart.”

  Grace rolled her eyes. “Smart? Who cares about smart? What about handsome?”

  On and on—a continuous line of conversation to fill the humid afternoons, as the dragonflies buzzed around us and the sun first rose, then sank.

  We had been working all summer on a soap opera. It had no title but featured Rex and Sylvia—two of the sexiest names we could dream up. I would write, and Grace would act out my words. Always Sylvia would end up in harm’s way—needing an intricate brain, liver, and double-kidney transplant—and Rex would find a way to save her. REM was singing on the radio, the sky was cloudless, Rex and Sylvia were locked in a tight embrace, and all was right with the world.

  When we were twelve we decided it was absolutely crucial that we have a secret code language so we could write about people without being discovered. Years later, as I was helping Grace clean out her closet, I found one of our old notes, barely visible for all its crinkles.

  The methodology behind the Gra-Jo language, as we called it, was simple. One line stood for each letter, so that ZZ would actually represent F. Obviously, it took a long time for us to decipher each note, but that didn’t matter: We had all the time in the world.

  One Saturday morning in April 1987, we were unable to go to Club Culvert, as we called it. It had rained for a solid week, and even though the day had dawned with an unusually hot spring sun, the culvert wouldn’t dry out for several days.

  We did not do mud.

  We tried to write about Rex and Sylvia in my room, but even their lust had grown boring to us, so instead we wandered the grounds of the Inn, debating how I could write Grace’s English paper for her without the teacher knowing it was me.

  “You could spell badly,” Grace suggested.

  “I wouldn’t even know how to spell something wrong. You just see the word, and you know how it’s spelled.”

  Grace wrinkled her freckled nose in mock disgust. “Not all of us do. In fact, I doubt anyone but you sees words. Do you still do that thing where you try to describe something in your mind?”

  “Yep. Like right now you don’t just have smelly feet—they’re aromatic.”

  Grace stuck out her tongue and lifted one smelly foot up toward my face. Teasing each other constantly, we seldom actually got mad. The night before, Grace had burnt my forehead with the flat iron. I had been trying to straighten my bangs. But, unaccustomed as I was to the iron, I kept dropping it.

  “You’re a klutz!” Grace had said. Impatient with my attempts, she grabbed it from my hand and did the job herself. Only the wand got too close, and I bore a burn scar.

  “I’m sorry, Jo. I’m sorry.” Grace was the one crying, not me. “Can you forgive me?”

  I was not one to waste an opportunity.

  “Yes, but only if you’re my slave for tomorrow.”

  She sighed. “Deal.”

  And so on this April Saturday it was up to me to decide what to do. I couldn’t think of anything, for Rex, Sylvia, or us. I was actually thinking of the book I was reading and wishing it was time for Grace to go home so I could climb into Maddy’s hammock and read until the light was gone.

  We were sitting near the front gates of the Inn, watching cars go by on the main road. Suddenly we heard a popping noise and then an explosion of orange onto the windshield of a Chevy that was passing. And then, full-throated laughter.

  A boy crouched on the other side of the road, with a bucket of oranges that had been dropped by an Osage orange tree. He threw them at the unsuspecting traffic.

  “He shouldn’t be doing that,” I whispered to Grace.

  She giggled. “It’s kinda funny. Did you see the look on the driver’s face?” A pause and then, “Let’s freak him out.”

  “No, Grace.” But she had already yelled across the gates. “Hey, we saw that!” Crouched down behind two large boxwoods, we were invisible to him, but we could clearly see the surprise on his face.

  “Who said that?” He pivoted 360 degrees, looking for us.

  “He’s cute, Jo Jo.”

  “He’s okay. I prefer dark hair.”

  “He has good skin.”

  “How can you tell from this distance?”

  “Wanna bet me? Let’s go see.”

  “No, I don’t want to go meet him.”

  But Grace had already stood up, revealing herself above the shrubbery. She waved, and he waved back.

  “Ooh, he has straight teeth too. Let’s go meet him.”

  “Let’s don’t and say we did.” The bright smile was obvious, as were the clear cheeks. Definitely cute. But I was definitely shy.

  “Oh come on. Don’t be a dud.”

  And she started across the road.

  “Grace. No. Remember, slave for a day?”

  She turned back, blonde hair whipping across her face. “You’re healed. Deal’s off!”
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  And that was how we met Christian Tuck. Rex and Sylvia were no more.

  Christian Tuck moved to Mt. Moriah from Michigan. His father was the new high school football coach at Woodbury Regional High School, his mom a nurse. He had a beautiful older sister and the ability to tie a cherry stem with his tongue in less than thirty seconds.

  Grace and I thought he was perfect. He grew to be our best friend, and we became an inseparable threesome.

  And now at the door Tuck was standing before me, a stretched-out, tanner version of the boy with the mock oranges.

  “Tuck!” Maddy cried, coming from the kitchen where he had taken over breakfast preparation. His bathrobe was hanging open, revealing more than should be. “So good to see you, boy!”

  “Hey, Rev.” Tuck and Maddy exchanged hugs, and Tuck whispered in Maddy’s ear.

  “Check the little soldier, sir.”

  We were sixteen years old and all going to the school Halloween party. Tuck, having just gotten his license, came to pick up Grace and me.

  “I don’t like the idea of a sixteen year old driving,” said Genia, hands on her hips.

  “Truth be told, me neither,” agreed Doro.

  The looks on their faces told Grace and me there was a battle to be had.

  “Let them go, you old worry warts,” Maddy said.

  When Tuck arrived, he received every word of caution that Genia and Doro could muster. He was literally backed into a corner, until Maddy saved the day.

  “Okay, enough of that.” Maddy took Tuck’s arm and led him to the door, motioning for me and Grace to follow. At the door, Maddy extended his hand to shake Tuck’s.

  “But let me just issue you one word of caution, son. Keep the little soldier in check.”

  Reddening, Maddy adjusted himself and retied his bathrobe.

  “We were just about to have breakfast. Stay and have some with us. Excuse me and I’ll go get presentable. Just excuse me.”