Mt. Moriah's Wake

by Melissa Norton Carro

  “I hope I factor into that equation, Jo.”

  I looked up and the cat had left its post.

  “I’ve got to go, Tom. It’s late here.”

  “It’s late here too.” A smile was in his voice.

  “Maddy needs me right now. I need to stay at least another week, maybe two.”

  “Okay.”

  “So that’s it?”

  “What else do you want me to say, Jo? You don’t trust me enough to tell me what’s going on with you,” said Tom.

  It was true, but I couldn’t explain why. How could I make him understand the effect Grace’s murder had on me. How could I tell him all he didn’t know?

  And then, before he hung up, “You know, Maddy’s not the only one who needs you. I need you too.”

  26

  ALONE

  THE NEXT MORNING, Maddy was already outside weeding the vincas when I got up.

  “Geez, Maddy, it’s not even nine o’clock!”

  “Gotta get on it before it gets too hot, little thing.” Maddy’s color was better, and he seemed to have recaptured his old energy level.

  Sinking down beside him, I started to pull weeds. Doro was fastidious about alternating colors when she planted flowers—white, pink, purple, then back to white. A scene flashed into my mind: Doro and me retrieving discarded tulip bulbs from the Woodbury Golf Club when they expanded the course; the devastation on her face when we arrived home, and she realized we had forgotten to separate the colors. The next year—and every year after—the tulips were an abstraction of colors. Every spring, while others commented on the beauty of the tulip-lined pathway, Doro muttered in exasperation at what could have been.

  Maddy leaned back, bottom on his heels, and wiped his forehead. “How ya feeling, little thing?”

  “I’m okay, Maddy.” There was no blood in my panties this morning, and my stomach was temporarily at peace. “Did you get a good night’s sleep?”

  Maddy sighed. “It’s different, sleeping alone. I had slept alone for so long, and then Doro was there.” Maddy wiped his forehead and rubbed his chest.

  Side by side, we worked in silence for a while until Maddy spoke.

  “You been to a doctor, Jo?”

  “I have a doctor in Chicago. I haven’t been to him yet.” I stabbed the earth. There was a subtle rage behind my stabs—at Tom? At Doro? At Mt. Moriah?

  “Shouldn’t you go in, you know, your situation?”

  I smiled at both his kindness and his obvious desire to stay away from the topic. “I’m okay, Maddy. I’m going back to Chicago soon, and I’ll make an appointment.”

  Maddy frowned and sat back on his heels. “I know you need to get back, little thing. And you just go on whenever you need to.” He paused, his heart in his voice. “I just want you to know how much I enjoy having you here.

  “It feels like home when you’re here, Jo.”

  I leaned over and kissed his sweaty cheek. It does feel like home, I thought. This. Right here with Maddy. We weeded for another hour until the humidity forced us inside for iced tea so sweet it coated my teeth.

  “I’m going to head over to church for a little bit, then I need to go visit Ernie Dale in the hospital,” said Maddy. “What are you going to do?”

  “I think I’ll just hang around here, Maddy. Is there anything you need me to do?”

  I followed Maddy into his bedroom where a clean shirt and pants were laid out on his bed.

  “I wouldn’t mind at all if you picked up the groceries we need.” He dug a wadded up envelope out of his pocket where an almost illegible list was scribbled. Then he reached for his wallet.

  I pushed his wallet back toward him. “I got it, Maddy. I think I can even decipher your writing.”

  Smiling, Maddy took my face in his two oversized hands and kissed my forehead.

  “You know what I think, little thing? I think you can do anything.”

  That week I worked like someone possessed. I cleaned out closets, creating piles to donate. Tuck stopped by every afternoon and together we took walks, made trips to Goodwill with boxes and bags. As we spent time together, I realized that no one in my life had ever made me laugh like Tuck. He had an almost pristine memory—of people and events that I hadn’t thought of in years. Debra never came with Tuck, and soon it began to seem like neither she nor Tom existed: It was just Tuck and me, and I craved more time with him.

  He set up an appointment for me to talk to a realtor about selling the Inn and offered to go with me. When I invited Maddy to come, he turned his mouth down. “I can’t be part of that, Jo.”

  I sighed, climbing into Tuck’s car. “Maddy doesn’t want me to sell the Inn.”

  Tuck shifted into reverse and then reached over and squeezed my knee. “No one wants you to sell the Inn, Jo.”

  “What? You too? Then why did you set up a meeting with this realtor—what’s his name?”

  “George Mellsum.” Tuck reached over and stuck in a Bon Jovi CD. “And I did it because my friend asked for help.”

  “What am I supposed to do with an Inn, Tuck? I have a life in Chicago.”

  “Hmmm, I guess.”

  “And that means?”

  He tapped a drum beat on the steering wheel. “It means, Jo Jo, that there is not much evidence of that life here. You don’t ever talk about Tom. We haven’t seen him here.”

  “He’s working,” I said quietly.

  “And the other day when we were eating lunch and he called and you asked Maddy to tell him you’d call him back?”

  I reached over and stopped his incessant drumming. “What is this, the inquisition?”

  “Not at all. This is your friend who knows you well enough to know something’s going on. Something you somehow think you can’t confide in me about.”

  I changed the CD to REO Speedwagon and looked out at the passing houses, the familiar landscape, thinking not for the first time that we do not travel on streets as much as they travel within us. I knew from instinct which house was coming up next. I saw the Hortense barn before we reached it. I knew the Lawrence’s fish-shaped mailbox was on the left immediately after the dogleg on the highway. I knew the Johnsons’ flower beds across the front of their house would be immaculate, and I knew that the Simpsons’ yard next door would be anything but.

  As we neared the downtown district, a low billboard advertised the annual tomato festival.

  I pointed to the sign. “Reminds me of Doro. She went every year.”

  “Yeah, Debra was asking me about it. She wants to go, for some strange reason. It starts next Monday the thirteenth.”

  All at once the thought I had been suppressing, hiding in boxes of sheets and towels and knick knacks, throbbed in my head like a heartbeat.

  August 13: the date of no return.

  And my secret came tumbling out—like a slinky down a flight of stairs.

  “August 13 is an important date,” I said, the words hovering in the air like a word cloud.

  Tuck looked at me. “Oh? Why’s that? You into this tomato thing too?”

  “August 13 is the day I’ll be twelve weeks pregnant.”

  Fortunately, we were at a traffic light so Tuck’s surprise didn’t affect his driving.

  “What the crap, Jo? You’re pregnant?”

  “Yes. I’m pregnant.” Somehow naming it made it real.

  The light changed, but it took a honk to get Tuck moving. “You blow me away, girl. Why didn’t you say something? How do you feel? Are you excited?”

  Somehow I knew I could be honest with Tuck.

  “Scared to death. Curious. Anxious. Name the adjective and that’s how I feel.”

  “But this is a good thing—for you and Tom? What does he say?”

  “He’s very happy. He wants the baby.” I looked at Tuck to gauge his expression. No sign of judgement. Could I really be brutally honest with him? “Actually, the baby is something we fought over—right before I came here in fact.”

  “Let me guess: you like the n
ame Mary and he likes Maude.” Seeing my expression, Tuck shrugged. “Sorry, you know I make bad jokes when someone is telling me something important.”

  “I made an appointment at Planned Parenthood to, you know, understand all my options. Tom got angry, very angry, and walked out.”

  “Oh.” Tuck was uncharacteristically quiet.

  “You see his side?”

  “Oh, Jo Jo, there’s no side. The only side I’m on is the side of being happy, and I can tell you from experience that babies create a lot of happiness.”

  We drove in silence for the next few minutes.

  “Are you seriously considering ending the pregnancy?”

  And I was honest with Tuck, as I had not been to myself. I didn’t want an abortion; perhaps I had known that all along. The thought of a child in my arms: I could not turn away from that. Deep down inside, what I wanted was a choice. What I wanted was to be able to control something in a world of tragedy. What I feared was my ability to bring a child into that world—to protect it.

  Tuck slid into a parallel space near the realty office and turned off the engine. “It’s not like you’ll have to do it alone. You have Tom.”

  “Do I?” I undid my seatbelt and felt the familiar flipflop in my gut. “He walked out,” I said quietly.

  “People walk out. People get mad. But usually if they don’t intend to stick around, they don’t call.” Tuck reached over and gingerly lifted the hem of my shirt. “There’s something there, Jo Jo. Andy will have a friend!”

  Again I tried to picture a baby: my baby, Tom’s baby. It just didn’t seem real. I said as much.

  “It will, soon enough,” said Tuck, nodding at the car seat in the back seat. “Come on, we’re about five minutes late for George.”

  George Mellsum had probably looked fifty years old since he was in high school. His hair had been receding since the day it came in, strategic comb overs his form of denial.

  “Ms. Wilson, is it?” He took my hand in his thick clammy one and pressed another, even more moist, on top, squeezing.

  “Nice to meet you.”

  Tuck reached out his hand. “Hi, George. It’s Mrs. Rivers, by the way. Wilson was a maiden name.” His direct look at me spoke volumes.

  “Oh, yes, sure. I apologize. Let’s step into my office, shall we?”

  This office looks like somewhere people go to die, I thought. It was a phrase Tom used, nodding at the hallway of offices so small, so nondescript, that their occupants must have to memorize the office number to find themselves. “Imagine a whole lifetime growing old in a crummy little office,” he had said. A smile crossed my lips at the thought of Tom, and then that familiar feeling of dread.

  You left me, Tom.

  George Mellsum’s office was stacked with folders and Alabama football paraphernalia. On the credenza were pictures of little boys in baseball uniforms, waiting at the pitcher’s mound for their hair to recede.

  He smiled. “I understand you want to put the Inn on the market.”

  Nodding, “Yes.”

  I opened the file with the blueprints I had recovered in Doro’s filing cabinet. I set them on the edge of the desk and flattened them with my hands. My fingers ran over the little lines and boxes and numbers—impersonal representations of the Inn.

  “I brought these floor plans. Just so you could get an idea of the square footage.” George continued to smile directly at me without looking at the plans. Unnerved, I continued, “I understand you’d have to do a formal appraisal.”

  Smiling, the realtor pulled the plans toward him, giving the stack a ten-second perusal.

  “Well, you don’t see old plans like these anymore.” He looked up at me and then to Tuck and smiled. “These are very interesting.” He pushed them back across the table to me and turned to his computer, starting a two-finger typing sequence. “Do you have an idea of what you want to get from the property?”

  I looked at Tuck whose face registered nothing. “Well, that’s partially why I brought the plans. I’m not sure what the house is worth—I figured that would be based on square footage.”

  George squinted at the computer screen, distractedly grabbing some dark rimmed readers from his desk drawer. “I’ve pulled up the county records with a plot of the land. That’s what’s important here.” Staring at the monitor, he jotted down some numbers on a legal pad before turning back to me. “You understand that the value of this property is in the land.”

  I glanced over at Tuck whose gaze remained straight ahead. “Well I know it’s a beautiful piece of land, but the house—I know it needs some repairs—my aunt has let a few things go the last few years or so, but it’s a beautiful house. Someone—”

  George’s phone buzzed, and he held one hand up to pause me.

  “Hold my calls please, Maureen.” Lowering his hand, he spoke.

  “Pardon me. It’s a lovely old home, yes, but the parcel of land is what will interest a buyer. There are several developers who have been looking for property in this area.”

  “Developers? To build homes?” I pulled the blueprints back toward me, feeling as if they were suddenly vulnerable children. “You mean tear down the house?”

  “Yes.” George spoke slowly, obviously surprised at my surprise. “We are talking about $400,000 and up homes. One developer envisions a gated community—entering from the highway.” He pivoted to his credenza and opened a file, extracting a subdivision drawing. In the rendering, I saw Birkham Road and could tell it was Doro’s land.

  I grabbed the paper from his hand, creasing the corner in the process. “This is already drawn up?” I looked from George to Tuck and then back. “Who did this?”

  “It’s just a diagram, Mrs. Rivers. Developers have been hungry to get their hands on that beautiful land for years.” George paused before continuing. “The zoning board is ready to approve its development. Several people have approached your aunt in the past few years, but she was not ready to sell. Given that you now are, we may even see a bidding war.”

  He smiled, sure that I would be happy to hear that news. But I could only hear Doro’s ancient ice cream grinder and see the porch swing where two little girls licked strawberry cones.

  We remained in George Mellsum’s office for another thirty minutes, Tuck and I, leaving with a paper estimate and a contract to sign Mellsum as listing agent. I saw that there were seven digits on the estimated sales price, but all I could really see was that swing.

  Stepping out into the summer humidity, I felt temporarily weak in the knees, grabbing hold of Tuck’s elbow to steady myself.

  “Whoa, you okay?” He grabbed my hand and we began to walk.

  “Tuck, you didn’t say anything in there.”

  “What did you want me to say? It’s not my land to sell. Not my deal.”

  Tuck didn’t start the car. “Want to go get something to eat? Maybe you need to eat.”

  I shook my head. “No, I want to go …”

  “Home?”

  I let out a dramatic sigh. “Yes, home. To my gated estate.”

  We drove in silence for a moment, before Tuck spoke again.

  “Lot of money George was talking about there.”

  “Yes.”

  “I take it you were surprised the land would be parceled off? Developed?”

  Anger tickled the back of my throat. “Surprised puts it mildly. Why would someone not want to buy that beautiful old house? Run it as an inn? Live there with a bunch of kids? It’s a great place to—”

  “Raise a child?”

  I was quiet, feeling tired and a bit embarrassed. Had I been so naïve as to think I could sell the Inn and it would continue as it had always been? I said as much to Tuck.

  “No, I don’t think you’re naïve, Jo.” He put his arm around the back of my shoulders and rubbed my neck. “I just think you’ve moved on, and you don’t realize that not everyone loves the Inn like you and me—”

  “And many other people! Many people loved the Inn.” People loved Doro, I t
hought. And then, What were you thinking, Doro?

  “Yes, lots of people. But there was only one Doro. I don’t think you realize that.”

  “I don’t realize how special my own aunt was?”

  He stopped rubbing and took his hand down. “Yes, but I also think that you think you can have things both ways—sell the Inn and live your life in Chicago, but anytime you want to visit, it’ll still be here waiting, just the same.

  “Things change, Jo.”

  Change. Not until he said the word did I realize how much I hated it.

  “What do I do, Tuck?”

  “As your lawyer,” he leaned over and smiled that impish smile. “I would advise you to consider your two options. Sell the land and buy a kick-ass dwelling in downtown Chicago. Or move back here and live in the Inn.” His eyes moved to my stomach. “Raise a family as you were raised.”

  He pulled up in front of the Inn and put the gear into Park.

  “You want to come in?”

  “No, my books and my wife await me. Besides, I think you need some time to think.”

  “Thanks for going with me.”

  That smile again. “I’m happy about your news, Jo. And this real estate thing, it’s a good problem to have. You wanted to get rid of Mt. Moriah. This is your ticket.” He paused. “Or you could do what Doro thought you might do.”

  I leaned in the car window to hear.

  “And what is that?”

  “Write the Great American Novel from that porch swing.”

  That night I called Tom.

  “I’m glad you called. I’ve been worried.”

  I told Tom about the visit to the realtor, about the amount that the Inn would fetch.

  He whistled. “That’s a lot of cannoli.”

  “I want the baby, Tom.”

  I could sense a smile in his voice. “I do too, Jo.”

  “But I don’t know where I want to raise it.”

  Tom was quiet for a moment, and I sensed his smile had evaporated.

  “I hear too many Is in your sentences and no we’s. Where’s the we, Jo?”

  I was sitting on the swing, listening to the crickets, and watching June bugs slither across the porch. Maddy had gone to bed early, and Tuck was at his parents’ house. For the first time in many weeks, months perhaps, Earth seemed to have righted itself.