The Time Between

by Karen White

  After dinner, as the three of us sat swallowing the last of the reheated macaroni casserole and the salted tomatoes Mrs. Crandall had brought from next door, Eleanor put down her fork and straightened the napkin by the side of her plate.

  “Mr. Beaufain has offered me another job. Not to take the place of the one I have, but something extra. Just five or so hours a week to start, and then we can adjust if I need to.” She paused, as if trying to gauge our reactions. “He said he’d pay me twice what he pays me now.”

  Mama was frowning, but I could tell that the mention of the money had piqued her interest. “Doing what?” she asked, and I felt embarrassed for a moment for Eleanor, thinking of that dirty bar where she played the piano. I had never pretended not to know why she would come home late, and I knew this was why she avoided my eyes now.

  “Acting as a sort of companion to his great-aunt. She’s been in the hospital and she’s coming home, but Mr. Beaufain doesn’t want her to be alone with just her nurse. She lives on Edisto.”

  She had our mother’s full attention now. “I don’t remember any Beaufains on the island.”

  Eleanor shook her head. “She’s his grandmother’s sister. Szarka is the last name.”

  I saw recognition in my mother’s eyes. “Helena and Bernadett?”

  “Yes. They lived in the big white house on Steamboat Creek. They always had the best Halloween decorations and candy.”

  I sat back, remembering the two old ladies with their dated clothes, and the reek of mothballs that clung to them in the same way I imagined the memories of their homeland did. My mother was shaking her head as she stood and pulled a newspaper from the stack on the step stool. She flipped through a few pages before pulling out a middle section and placing it on the table in front of Eleanor. Pointing at an article, she said, “This Helena and Bernadett Szarka?”

  Eleanor leaned over to read, the thrumming energy that had been pulsing through her since she returned home diminishing like a dying firefly. “It says only that Bernadett died of natural causes.”

  “And that it’s under investigation,” my mother pointed out.

  “But that’s usual when a person dies in the home, isn’t it?”

  “That might be, but they don’t explain why Helena was almost dead when they found her. That doesn’t sound right.”

  Eleanor was shaking her head, the movement almost frantic. “Mr. Beaufain explained that after Bernadett died, Helena stopped eating, not able to imagine life without her sister. But she’s better now. She’s coming home to Edisto to get better.”

  I heard the desperation in her voice, like the sound of a small animal caught in a trap. Welcome to my world, I thought. The thrumming had returned, making me wonder what it was about this job offer that was causing this reaction.

  Mama continued. “Last weekend I ran into our old neighbor from Edisto, Mrs. Reed. I hadn’t seen her in years, and there we both were at that huge discount fabric store on Sam Rittenberg Boulevard. She told me about poor Miss Bernadett and how people were talking about how strange it was that there was no funeral announcement. There was more gossip, but I don’t see the need to repeat it.” She shook her head. “The fact is, things aren’t all right in that family, and I don’t like the idea of you being all alone in that big house with an old woman. Besides, we need you here. Eve needs you. Especially now.”

  Mama shot a glance at me, and I knew what she was about to say. It had been my secret until that morning, when Mama had caught me throwing up in the garbage can after breakfast, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to tell my sister. Eleanor looked at me, too, with no sign of understanding.

  Turning back to Mama, she said. “My hours would be completely dictated by me, and he’d give me the use of a car so I could get there and back quickly. And they have a grand piano. I would be allowed to play it. . . .” She stopped suddenly, as if just now hearing our mother’s words. “What do you mean, ‘especially now’?”

  Mama’s smile was triumphant. “Eve’s pregnant. She and Glen are going to have a baby.”

  The blood rushed from her face so suddenly that I thought she would pass out. I turned away, unable to look at her pain. Despite our past, which lay like an unweeded garden between us, she was still my sister.

  She managed a smile, the corners of her lips not quite making it. “Congratulations,” she said, leaning over and surprising us both with a kiss on my cheek. But her lips were cool and I thought I felt a tremor go through her before she pulled away.

  Mama spoke again. “She’ll have a lot of doctor’s appointments. With Glen’s long hours, and my arthritis making it difficult for me to drive, you’ll be the one who’ll have to take her to most of them.”

  Eleanor stood and began to gather the dinner plates, including the empty one she’d put on the table for Glen just in case. I knew she’d make him a plate of food and leave it warming in the oven. When we were younger, I’d wished to be just like her: strong and confident. So brave. But that was the old Ellie, the one I’d sent away the day I’d fallen from a tree and awakened to a broken body and an anger directed at the one person I could blame who wouldn’t fight back. I made her understand that she had to work for my forgiveness.

  But forgiveness is an elusive thing, like trying to hold a song in your hand. It was because of this that I didn’t correct my mother by telling her that Glen and I could manage, that we didn’t need Eleanor. Because I held the songbird tightly in my fist and I no longer knew how to let it go.

  Eleanor surprised us by coming out of the kitchen immediately instead of doing the dishes. She stood with her hands gripping the top of Glen’s empty chair. “They have a Mason and Hamlin grand,” she said again, and in those words I heard her defiance overruling my mother’s objections, saw the reckless, wild girl I’d once admired, and averted my eyes.

  Yes, I thought, unable to say the word out loud. Just as I’d always been unable to tell her that I’d seen the Gullah woman that day, too, had heard what she’d whispered into Eleanor’s ear. Nor could I tell her what the words had meant. She’d have to figure that out on her own.

  Without returning to the kitchen, my sister headed outside into the rain, barefoot and without an umbrella, while Mama and I watched her go.

  Eleanor

  I dreamed of the old Gullah woman again that night for the first time in a long while. I’d walked in the rain for more than an hour, unaware of how wet I was, or how rough the pavement beneath my bare feet. I could feel only the startled panic I’d felt at learning of Eve’s pregnancy and recall the flicker in Mr. Beaufain’s eyes when he’d told me how his aunt had died. Maybe my mother was right to be concerned. But at that moment all I could think about was getting away from Eve and Glen and my mother, of having something in my life that had nothing to do with them. Whatever secrets Mr. Beaufain and his aunt kept, they couldn’t touch me; I was already too numb.

  When I lay down to sleep, the rain from my hair seeping into my pillow, I dreamed of Edisto, of the sunset over Russell Creek and the feel of pluff mud beneath my toes. I sat on a pier, the same pier where I’d waited for my father, and I knew I was waiting still; I just wasn’t sure for what. And then she was there again, sitting on the pier next to me with her sweetgrass as she wove each strand in and out, her fingers like words as they told a story of the basket she was making.

  Her dark skin gleamed with sweat, although I didn’t feel hot at all but could feel the cool breeze of the ocean as it kissed my skin, bringing with it the tang of salt and my own sweat. These were the smells of my childhood, the background scent of the music I had created there with my father. A cold dryness swept through me, a desolate wind of grief that wound itself into a ball in my throat, choking me.

  I wanted to cry, but I felt the hard, dark stare of the woman beside me and I reluctantly turned to meet her gaze, afraid I’d miss whatever I’d been searching for on the horizon.

 
Must take care of de root for to heal de tree.

  I wasn’t sure if she’d spoken aloud or if I’d just heard the words in my head. But I knew I wasn’t alone in fighting my demons, and the tight ball in my throat suddenly unfurled, like a thread pulled on a hem until all the stitches were gone.

  I leaned toward her to ask her what she meant, but I was back in my bed again, the pillow still damp from my rain-drenched hair. I sat up, wondering what had awakened me. I blinked in the predawn light, noticing that my door was open.

  “Eleanor?”

  I swung my legs to the floor, feeling dizzy as I sat up. “Glen? What are you doing in here?”

  He closed the door softly behind him but stayed where he was. “I wanted to talk to you—alone. To see . . .” His voice drifted off, but I knew what he’d been going to say. He’d always been very easy to read.

  “Congratulations,” I said, my voice at odds with the word. “You and Eve must be very excited.” We stared at each other through the dimness, the hazy light of early morning like smoke on a battlefield.

  “Eve wants children. . . .” Again he seemed unable to finish his sentence.

  “I know,” I said, wanting to scream at him or cry but remaining silent instead. My heart ached as I watched him, longing to smooth his hair, still damp from his shower—wanted him to want me enough to take a step forward. But he stayed where he was and I nearly sagged with relief.

  He opened his mouth to say something else, but I held up my hand, unable to bear it. “She’s your wife, Glen. You don’t need to justify anything to me.”

  His jaw clenched and he stood ramrod straight, just like the soldier he had once wanted to be. “I hope you can be happy for us.”

  “Of course,” I lied. “I’m going to be an aunt.”

  He winced. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. Not the baby part,” he explained quickly, “but you and I.”

  I remembered his hurried words before I’d headed out to Pete’s Bar and his promise that things would be different. He just hadn’t told me how much. I couldn’t help but laugh, the sound like the dry wind over the desert. “There’s never been a you and I. Besides, I don’t think the universe cares too much about what we want.”

  A slice of sun pierced the crack between my curtains, illuminating his face in time for me to see him flinch. The sound of an alarm from down the hall startled us both.

  “I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” he said, pausing for a moment before opening the door and sliding from my room as stealthily as he’d entered it.

  I listened as the house awoke, listened to the gurgling sound of water running and my mother’s careful steps on the old wooden floorboards, as if nothing had changed. I rose from the bed and headed for the shower, listening to the soft murmur from my mother’s room as she said her morning prayers.

  The cold spray of the water felt good on my warm skin, reminding me of my dream of sitting on the pier and staring at the horizon as I waited for something I could not name, and I wondered how it was possible to mourn what I had never even had.

  CHAPTER 6

  Being born and raised on Edisto meant that I had never wished or hoped to live anywhere else. The island rests along the South Carolina coast halfway between Bluffton and Charleston, guarding St. Helena Sound like an osprey guards her nest. Like most islands in the Lowcountry, it’s been inhabited and fought over for thousands of years, but it always seemed to me that the beauty of my Edisto was in the colors of the sky and the grass and the creeks that changed with the seasons and that made visitors want to stay. And pulled at the hearts of those who had been forced to leave her.

  I smelled the pluff mud as we crossed over the Dawho River Bridge on our way to Edisto, imagining I could hear the teeming insects that lived in the tall marsh grasses of the tidal creeks and estuaries that sprawled like arthritic fingers around us. I focused on the distant horizon, the line where ocean met land, as if expecting to see my father’s shrimp boat. But his boat was long gone, as were all the other shrimpers who had once called Edisto home. It had been a dying industry even when my father plied these waters, and like him, all that was left of the industry were memories and faded photographs and the stories of the old folks who still remembered the glory days before gated communities and golf courses had crept into the Lowcountry like untamed kudzu.

  “How does it drive?” Mr. Beaufain—Finn—asked. I found it easier to call him by his first name when we were away from the office. He was referring to the white Volvo SUV he’d given me to drive. It was normally used by Genevieve’s nanny, who was currently at home in Belgium with her family until the beginning of the school year in the fall.

  “Great,” I said. “Drives like a car instead of a truck. Just don’t make me parallel park it.” I’d never had the regular use of a car, so it felt odd to be sitting behind the wheel of any vehicle, especially one that still smelled like new leather.

  He smiled and I barely recognized him. Gone were the black suit, French cuffs, and tie, replaced with a collared knit golf shirt and khakis. His businesslike demeanor seemed to have been shed with the suit, leaving behind a man who looked a lot more relaxed and knew how to smile but still carried shadows behind his eyes.

  “Don’t think there will be much call for that. There’s plenty of room for parking at Aunt Helena’s house. And I have a carriage house behind the house on Gibbes Street. Just in case you need to stop by to pick up some of my daughter’s things,” he added hastily, realizing at the same time I had that he was assuming I’d come to his house. He continued. “When Aunt Helena is feeling better, I’d like the two of them to spend some time together.”

  I nodded, flicking on my blinker as he indicated a turn onto Steamboat Landing Road. I had rarely driven on Edisto. I knew every road, every beach access point, but mostly from the seat of a bike or johnboat. I had left the island after I’d been issued a driver’s license, but I’d still preferred to get around by boat or bicycle.

  We turned again, down the narrow dirt road that led to the large white house overlooking Steamboat Creek, near the dock where I’d once seen Finn tossing his paper airplanes into the wind. I’d been in the johnboat with Lucy, eagerly paddling in the opposite direction so he wouldn’t see us, afraid the off-island boy would want to come with us. I hadn’t told Finn, unsure if he’d welcome the knowledge that I’d witnessed that, had seen his aloneness as a child.

  The tires crunched over the unpaved drive, past the wax myrtles and a stand of pecan trees, until I reached the white house with the red roof. It had stood near the bend of the creek where it met the North Edisto River for nearly two hundred years, and it was clear from its defiant posture that it was planning on remaining there for at least as many more. A carved wooden sign that seemed to be almost as old as the house had been stuck into the earth right past the pecan orchard, announcing the house’s name: LUNA POINT.

  I pulled up behind a large white Cadillac, a relic of the eighties. Finn caught my gaze and gave a wry grin. “I need to get rid of that, but I don’t want Aunt Helena to feel like I’ve taken away all of her independence, even if she knows she’ll never drive it again.”

  I nodded in agreement. If it weren’t for Lucy and her Buick, I would have felt like a mouse in a maze with no exit. I turned off the ignition and we sat for a moment in silence. His long fingers drummed on his thighs and I realized with some surprise that he was nervous.

  Feeling a tinge of alarm, I asked, “She knows I’m coming, right?”

  He didn’t respond right away, which answered my question. I focused on not sagging against the headrest. “So what happens if she doesn’t want me to stay?”

  He turned cool gray eyes on me. “She’s unable to determine what is in her best interests right now. As her guardian and only surviving adult relation, I have to decide what she needs. And what I need. I can’t be with her all the time, but I know she wants to stay in her hous
e. This is the only way I can make that work for both of us.”

  “All right,” I said, smoothing down my skirt and opening the car door. I glanced across the seat at him. “I just wish you’d explained that to me before . . .” I’d almost added before I set all of my hopes on this.

  He looked at me with understanding, and I wondered how I hadn’t noticed this about him before, hadn’t realized that his gray gaze missed nothing yet at the same time created a barrier to seeing what lay behind them.

  “It’ll work out, Eleanor. It will.”

  I was tempted to believe him if only because he said so.

  The house was much as I remembered it, a raised cottage with a tabby foundation and front and back porches as wide as the house, each with a vista of creek or river. I was surprised to see that it was in good repair, having pictured it as being old and sick like the owner, then remembered that Finn was in charge of its upkeep.

  The white clapboard siding gleamed in the buttery morning sun, the smells and sounds of the island pulling me back for a moment as I remembered my happy childhood spent barefoot on the beach, digging for clams with Lucy and Eve and the summer children. Something like pain pressed at my heart, reminding me of why I never looked back at those days. Remembering made everything so much harder, like the flash of a camera that blinded you and sent you stumbling.

  Empty flowerpots sat on the steps leading up to the porch and on either side of the front door, the soil inside dry and brittle. Six white wicker rocking chairs faced sightlessly out toward the river, swaying like ghosts. Finn didn’t knock on the thick wooden door or press the doorbell before opening the door and motioning for me to enter.

  I found myself blinking in the sudden dimness. Although windows covered most of the house’s façade, it was startlingly dark inside. I stood in a high-ceilinged foyer where a stairway with heavy wood balustrades led the way to the second story.

  Wainscoting encircled the walls in the hallway and alongside the staircase, the steps carpeted with a navy blue oriental runner. All the wood was painted white, saving the interior from being overwhelmingly dismal. As my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, I saw that the draperies were drawn over the windows. And as I allowed my gaze to scan the walls over the wainscoting, I began to understand why.