I bristled. “Genia, she didn’t know that was an option!” I immediately regretted the words. I was here to make peace, not argue.
“What in the world, JoAnna? What makes you say that?”
I was past the point of no return.
“I know you loved Grace, Genia. But she knew you wanted her to be an accountant—to have a dependable career.” My voice quieted almost to a whisper. “And you didn’t want her to leave home.”
Genia cast her eyes down to her folded hands in her lap. I detected a slight tremble. She was so still, so quiet that I wondered if she had fallen asleep. Or was just terribly hurt.
But when she looked up at me, there was a fire in those tiny eyeballs that I hadn’t seen in a long time.
“Is that what Grace said?” Her voice shook. “Is that what you think?”
I wanted out. I imagined myself rising and walking out that screen door—away from Genia, away from Mt. Moriah. But I came with a purpose. Courage, I told myself. “You’re the strongest person I know,” Tuck had said.
“I didn’t mean to upset you. Perhaps that’s just what Grace thought.”
Genia smoothed her apron, picking at a piece of red rick rack that had escaped its seam. Sighing loudly, she sat up straight, and I was reminded of her tapping Grace and me lightly on the back with a broom handle. Posture, girls!
“JoAnna, I would have been so proud for her to pursue her music. I know you were her best friend. I know you were encouraging her to go on and do something with her music … to go away like you did.” Her voice rose, but it had not the timbre of anger, but rather of a voice finally being heard.
“And yes I encouraged the accounting field, but you have to know where I was, at that point in my life, JoAnna.” Genia stood and paced in front of me. “I was left with nothing when Grace’s father left me. I just wanted Grace to be able to take care of herself.”
The little gasping sobs began, and I started to move toward Genia—across the history that lay wide open between us.
“And you need to know, JoAnna, that Grace wasn’t you. She was scared to go. She wanted to stay close to home. That’s what she couldn’t tell you.” She sat next to me on the sofa and tucked my hair behind my ears. “She wanted you to be proud of her.”
“Aren’t you scared to go away to school, Jo Jo?”
“Scared? Nervous maybe but excited.” We were on my twin beds, and I was making my tenth list of what I was packing. University of Georgia brochures and paraphernalia had overtaken my room. “You need to see if you can still take that scholarship and come with me. We could be roommates!”
Grace was quiet. “No, I just don’t think singing is for me.”
“Because your mom said it wasn’t?”
She was defensive. “It’s so hard to make a living as a singer, Jo. You know that. I’m okay but not that good.” She swallowed hard. “And I, well, I can’t imagine what Mom would do.”
“You can’t live your life for your mother, Gracie.”
“I’m not, Jo. That’s not it. I just, well I just can’t go.”
Years later, that conversation rolled around in my head like pearls.
I can’t go. Did she mean she didn’t have it in her? Was she trying to say I won’t go? Had I blamed Genia Collins for a fear that was her daughter’s alone?
“I just didn’t know she didn’t want that,” I said quietly. Had I imagined Grace’s excitement over each new piece of mail from Georgia? Was she just being who she thought I wanted her to be?
“I thought maybe Tuck would give her the push she needed—or the confidence, you might say.” Genia sat, leaning back against the tufted cushion, sighing her fatigue. “She had done such a good job in college, working part-time at the accounting firm, and she was saving money. It seemed, well, it seemed that …”
Her voice cracked. “It seemed she had her whole life ahead of her.”
I cleared my throat. It was time.
“Genia, I want to tell you something about the day that Grace died. Something I need you to know.” A pause. “I think it might be hard to hear. It’s about, it’s about Grace and me that day.”
Genia put sandpaper fingers to my lips. “Hush, JoAnna, don’t say it. Doro told me everything.”
Phlegm rose in my throat, and the fluttering in my stomach quickened.
“She told you?” My voice was barely a whisper. “Everything?”
“Everything. And JoAnna, it’s not your fault—what happened to Grace. I can’t imagine how you’ve been suffering.”
“I’ve, I’ve felt—”
“Guilty? JoAnna, I was worried you would feel guilty when Doro told me what happened.” She clasped my hands in hers. “But JoAnna, darling, it’s not your fault. You couldn’t have prevented it.”
She drew my head to her shoulder.
“Maddy and I have said many times that we’re so glad you weren’t able to go on the walk with Grace that day. You might have been hurt too.”
The room began to spin then, and little black dots danced in front of my eyes, and before I could catch myself, I was on the floor.
Genia was kneeling over me, mopping my face with a wet dishcloth.
“Poor girl,” she said calmly. “How far along again?”
I sat up, leaning back against the sofa, rubbing my tailbone.
“You know, I suspected this when I first saw you a few weeks ago. A mother knows the signs. I guess you could say we have wise wombs.” She smiled gently. She tucked a pillow behind my back and then went to the kitchen, returning with a bag of Lay’s.
“I’m not sure why, but grease works wonders on nausea.”
I smiled weakly and began to chew. My mind was racing with what Genia had said. So Doro had not told her anything. Genia and Maddy—and the rest of the town—still thought I had cancelled my walk with Grace. It was Doro trying to erase the past by keeping it a secret between us. Even from her husband she had spared the horror.
And I saw, finally, that Doro did it not out of pride, control, or fear. She did it out of love—misguided, flawed, imperfect love. For me. And I saw, also, that I had to extend that same love to Genia. I had come to tell her my story, but I knew it would cause only more pain.
It was to stay my story, my secret. Mine and that of the dead.
I stayed at Genia’s for another hour, telling her my plans to convert the side porch to a bakery—her bakery.
“And what of the Inn, dear? Are you going to reopen the Inn to guests?”
I told her I didn’t know. And I didn’t. We didn’t. There were three of us to consider now. There was still a nagging fear that Tom had left me forever, that my words would not bring him back. But then I fantasized about Tom taking to mountain life—just as surely as I had discovered that mountain life was in me. I knew that I wanted to raise my child—our child—on Mt. Moriah. To wake to the snowy pear trees and the hummingbirds, to climb the oaks and spend hours gazing into the sky.
Tom. Had he read my email? Would he come? Would he take me back?
After I had eaten a pimento cheese sandwich and forced down a glass of milk, I drove back to the Inn. My mind was awhirl with the voices of Tuck and Genia. Of what I had learned. Of the secrets I now possessed.
Making the final turn up the driveway, I saw the figure sitting there, on the concrete steps of the front porch. When he saw the car, he arose. I slammed the car into park and darted across the lawn. My legs were quick. Strong. Powerful. I was no less.
The September sun silhouetted him so I could not see his face or his eyes. But I felt Tom’s arms as they closed around me. When he released me, holding me at arms’ length, he surveyed my blossoming belly before searching my eyes.
“Maddy?”
“He’s going to be ok. The surgery went well.”
“And you?”
“I think I’m going to be okay too.”
“Don’t leave me again.”
“Don’t you leave me again.”
“Never.” Tom pulled me
to him and whispered into my hair. “I got you, Jo. We got this.”
I began to cry then, tears of raw happiness. Tears that bespoke how overwhelmed I felt. And with each grateful sob I leaned farther into the arms of the man who was my future: the man with whom I would spend the rest of my days. Thankful and alive.
“Welcome to Mt. Moriah,” I murmured.
“Close your eyes,” Tom said, moving his mouth close to mine.
And I did.
35
STILL HERE
THE NEXT TUESDAY, two days after we brought Maddy home from the hospital, on a perfect autumn morning, Maddy, Tom, and I watched the television in horror as the Twin Towers fell. Members of the congregation organized an impromptu late afternoon service at the church, and we wheeled Maddy in the side door. Although too weak to preach a sermon, he delivered a beautiful prayer from the first row—one of redemption and forgiveness and loss. Even as daylight faded from the stained glass windows, we sat still, the community of Mt. Moriah, singing hymns and crying together. Tom shook hands and exchanged hugs as if he had known these people all his life. And in a way, he had. For the faces of Mt. Moriah were part of me, and me of them. And for all the time I had refused to believe it, my husband knew me well.
Knew my very soul.
Two weeks later, Tom and I made a final trip back to Chicago—to the house on Hudson Street. As we packed our things in boxes, we worked in silence. We would find each other pausing now and then, as we found a stray Christmas tag or movie ticket stub, or simply to watch the morning light gleaming on the hardwood floors. The day after we put a For Sale by Owner sign in the yard, we received two offers. “That’s a good omen,” said Tom. “Maddy would say God’s hand is in this.” I smiled. The weeks he had spent with Maddy had forged a special friendship between the two.
We packed a special bag that we referred to as Renovation Duds. Upon our return to Mt. Moriah, we set about immediately redecorating the upstairs rooms. Down came the tulips, the tartan plaid. Hormones raging, I alternately laughed and cried as my memories flooded each room.
We left the August room alone. White would be the perfect blank slate for our baby.
One morning, I awoke with a distinct feeling, a memory. I padded in Doro’s thick pink slippers—she called them her marshmallows—to the June room. That bedroom was the only one with an unusually large walk-in closet tucked under the eaves of the house. Grace and I used it as a clubhouse when guests were not there. We would lug a basket of toys and papers into the clubhouse, only to be told the next day, “Girls, clean out that closet! Room’s rented!”
I tugged open the door of the closet. Beneath a piece of torn wallpaper at the back corner—original wallpaper that Doro had never seen fit to replace—I found what I was looking for. With hearts dotting the I’s were the words “Grace loves Will Simmons.” A catch in my throat, I closed my eyes and could feel the pen passing from Grace’s hand to mine. I could recall the momentary discomfort of not knowing what to write, Grace’s impatient foot tapping. Opening my eyes, I saw the flowery script of a novice writer. “JoAnna Wilson was here,” the words read.
I’m still here, I whispered to the ghost of that little girl.
Many evenings, as I sat on the floor in the den, sorting through Doro’s sideboard and trying to discern trash from treasure, I heard sounds below me and knew Tom was in the basement. For reasons I couldn’t understand, he was thrilled with the idea of a basement. “It’s a guy thing,” Tom explained. So he spent evenings tinkering around down there, planning for the darkroom he was going to build. Often I tiptoed down the basement stairs, holding carefully to the railing to protect my off-balanced body. Halfway down, I paused, watching Tom move, the way he twisted his head from side to side to pop his neck, run his fingers through his hair first one way, then another. The soft, off-pitch humming that accompanied his pacing.
I knew not to intrude. I knew he was finding his way—trying to discern how to take the world of Mt. Moriah and make it his own. How to reconcile my past and build our future. How to be a husband, a father.
I’m not sure why it became my nightly ritual to spy on Tom. I guess part of me wanted to make sure he was still there—always there. After a few minutes of watching him, I would retreat to the bedroom and soon enough Tom joined me, patting me lightly on the shoulder as he passed and leaning down to coo at my bulging stomach. His smiles had changed since those early days of our relationship. They now held the burden of the world’s evils—knowledge I had forced upon him in that email the day of Maddy’s heart attack. Tom had joined in my resignation to the reality of fear. In doing this, he took some of my own fear away.
But Tom’s smiles voiced something else. They said he was happy, content with our plans, satisfied to be on the mountain, with all that entailed. In the early mornings I awoke to find him already out on the lawn, seeing through his lens the majesty of the land. Once I found him on the branch below Grace’s and my oak treehouse, teetering on unsteady feet. He settled himself, wedged in between two strong limbs. He took his camera out, focused, set and reset the aperture several times, clicked and then gave a satisfied smile.
I never asked to see that photograph. I knew from my heart, from my memories, what it showed: Now Tom saw through my lens.
While we did the renovations, Maddy was a daily inspector. He gave advice freely, and Tom took to calling him Reverend Contractor.
“Jesus was a carpenter, wasn’t he, Reverend Contractor?” Tom would jest.
“You betcha, buddy. Darn sight better than you, too,” Maddy would chuckle.
Standing back, I watched them together, these two men who were worlds apart, and yet not. They redeemed my faith in the gentleness of mankind. I bathed in their love and care that enveloped me and enjoyed their doting attention.
Upwards. Ever upwards toward light.
Maddy never fully got his strength back. He was frail and would tire easily. His bright blue eyes still sparkled, but his deep voice was softer, and frequently we would find him napping on the porch, wrapped in Doro’s favorite afghan.
Although we never said it out loud, we both knew we would lose him. A few years perhaps, or a few months. Still, armed with that knowledge, I was strangely serene. For this time my grief would not be born alone.
As I moved through the rooms of the Inn, as I cooked in her kitchen and trimmed her rose bushes, Doro’s spirit moved with me. I played Bach every afternoon, as the sun was sinking over the hillside. Sometimes I roused Tom out of bed with Vivaldi. I lingered at Doro’s bookshelf and sorted through and organized her photo albums. Gradually I realized that I had forgiven her. What was there, after all, to resent? The crime of deep, selfless love? The sin of knowing me better than I knew myself?
One day, after carting away some old linens from the August room, I caught a glimpse of myself in the floor length mirror attached to the door. The image startled me. How long had it been since I had seen myself in a mirror? Since I had looked? I leaned in closely and examined my close-set eyes, my wild hair cascading around my face. My broad lips and hips and the protruding belly. I spent countless minutes this way, just staring.
And gradually it happened.
The image changed. I saw for the first time what I imagined Tom saw when he looked at me: eyes not close-set but deep and piercing, hair not wild but thick and luscious. And my body: not wide but warm. Welcoming. For the first time in so many, many years I felt pretty. Every day I lingered in front of the mirror and whispered to the alien love inside me.
“Pretty inside makes pretty outside,” I said, reciting something Doro told me when I was an awkward eleven year old. I knew she was right. And I knew the baby would be born knowing that beauty. Knowing the prettiness that came from strength that I did not know myself.
She alone would know me from the inside out.
Through all of these months, the baby kicked wildly inside me. I knew she was a girl even before Dr. Overby told us, and I knew her name. We bought a maple rocker for
the August room, and I sat there, looking out upon the driveway, rocking back and forth. Hours would pass like that, with a spirit of calm and happiness descending on me like a benediction.
Tom and I joked about the baby—how beautiful, smart and kind she would be. Perfect in every way with, of course, an acute affinity for Cheerios. But I knew there was only one thing I really wanted her to be: happy. To create happiness. I wanted her to be the kind of person who could find the blessing in every loss, the laughter hiding at the edge of every tear. I wanted her to be like Tom. Like Doro.
Like Grace.
And, yes, like me. For although I could never protect my child from darkness and loss, I knew I could lead her toward light, toward happiness. I could love her in ways she could never imagine and would often resent. I could teach her to cling to laughter.
The week after we finished stripping all the wallpaper and did all the painting, I began to write again. “Find your voice,” Doro had said once, and at last I did. I knew finally the story I was to tell. It was not the voice of Jillsandra, not the tale of a stranger. It was my story, and so the words flowed and the pages filled easily. Each word was cleansing, redeeming. Perhaps one day my daughter would read the story. Perhaps no one would ever read it. But I wasn’t writing for readers.
I was writing for myself.
Each day that I set out to write, I picked up page one and reread it, reminding myself of how it started, of how far I had gone the day before. All the days before.
The story’s beginning was simple:
For every person there is a place.
EPILOGUE
A YEAR LATER, I took baby Grace for a walk through the neighborhood. It was that quintessential autumn day for which watercolors were made. The sky had played its annual trick, turning into a deep, soulful indigo that we had forgotten in the hazy summer heat. And the leaves: scarlet, golden, umber.
A lone mosquito, misplaced after the summer vacations, had bitten my left calf and, turning to scratch, I almost missed the next moment. A few more calculated gouges by my nails, and my head would not have turned in time to catch the moment, to preserve it in the annals of my brain. And my heart.
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