The Beach Trees

by Karen White

  I looked at her to see if she realized she was babbling, then turned to Dr. King with my hand extended. He shook it in a firm grasp. “Nice to meet you, Doctor. I’m Julie Holt.”

  “Likewise, Julie. And please call me Walker.” His manner was relaxed, and his straightforward smile made him easy to like. “I know you two ladies have business to attend to, so I’ll leave you to it. A rain check, Carol Sue?”

  “Sure,” she said, a deep dimple showing in her cheek, and for the first time since I’d met her, the shadows seemed to have been lifted from her eyes.

  With a smile and a wave, he left the office. Carol Sue picked up a stack of papers from her desk. “Follow me to the conference room and we’ll get everything in order. I can collect a cashier’s check from you for the deposit later this week. You’ll have until the first of the month, so you have plenty of time.”

  I nodded and followed her into the conference room, oddly feeling as if I’d been betrayed and having no idea why.

  After storing Monica’s box in the back of Carol Sue’s SUV, we settled into the front seat and buckled our seat belts. She sat with the key in the ignition for a long moment; then, staring out the windshield and not looking at me, she said, “It’s been five years, Julie. That’s a long time.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You didn’t have to.” She started the ignition. “Charles will always be my first love, and the father of my child. And if I’d been given a choice, I’d be married to him for the rest of my life, and we’d be raising a bunch of kids together. But I wasn’t, so here I am.”

  She put the car into drive and made her way out of the parking lot. We were silent as she drove the short distance down Beach Boulevard. I could see the water, as calm and placid as the eye of a child, instilling in me a false serenity. A lone shrimp boat moved out into the sound, and I wondered if it, too, felt the silent pull of the water, like a lullaby urging sleep, despite the always-lurking threat of a storm.

  “Do you take Charlie to the beach?” I asked, unable to look away from the water.

  “I didn’t for a long time, but she kept asking, and I eventually gave in. I’d loved the water and the beach my whole life. There’s something about it, like a cocoon, almost, in the way it reminds me of home. Besides, it’s hard to hate something for so long. I had to let it go or the hate would have taken over and stolen all of my good memories.” She gave me a hard stare. “You’re not familiar with water, are you?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve never lived near water and went to the beach only once when I was growing up.”

  She smiled softly. “You need to have Trey take you to Deer Island. It’s one of the islands between the Mississippi Sound and the Gulf. It’s his favorite place on earth—and Monica’s, too. It’s the real Gulf Coast, not the cheap tourist shops or the casinos, or even the beach. It’s the real deal. You’ll understand when you see it.”

  Carol Sue stopped the car near the park and we got out. “We’re a little early, but I’m sure my parents could use a break by now.”

  We walked slowly to the bench, where Carol Sue’s mother, Mrs. Wimberly, sat reading a book, the bench next to her piled with the children’s coats and sweaters that they’d started the cooler morning with.

  “Hi, Mama.” Carol Sue bent to give her mother a kiss on the cheek. “Glad to see the children haven’t tied you up and built a bonfire.”

  Mrs. Wimberly smiled. “Hello, girls. And the children have been lovely. They do play so nicely together, and they’ve made a few new friends, too.”

  I cupped my hand on my forehead to block out the bright sunlight, staring at the vividly colored slides and the red play fire engine, looking for Beau’s shock of sandy blond hair. “Where are they?” I asked, beginning to walk slowly toward the swings.

  Mrs. Wimberly looked up, staring across the playground. “They were with my husband just a second ago.” Her voice trailed away as we all spotted Mr. Wimberly by himself, leaning against the fence and talking to a young father. Charlie stood by his side, her hand tucked into his. But Beau was nowhere to be seen.

  The sun suddenly seemed brighter, the laughter of children louder, and my own voice, unfamiliar to me, began shrieking Beau’s name. I heard my name being called, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. I turned my head past the sliding pole, the loop ladder and balance beam, and an entire wall of steering wheels. All the things children loved. All the things that made them vulnerable.

  I could tell that a lot of faces were turned toward me now, the swings stilling, the parents gathering their children to their sides. I heard my name called again and it was Carol Sue standing by a giant orange play web where children had begun to dismount. But one child remained where he was at the top, oblivious to everything as he hung upside down by his knees, swinging back and forth and laughing with his blond hair catching the sun.

  I stumbled, the rush of relief flooding through me nearly making me nauseous. I made it to Carol Sue, and she put her arm around me as I collapsed on a bench, sagging into her. “He’s okay, Julie. No need to worry; he’s fine.” She patted me on the back as a mother would a child, hugging me tightly, and all I could do was breathe. “Let it go,” she whispered in my ear.

  I hugged her back, knowing how much she understood, yet knowing I could never be that brave. “I can’t,” I said softly.

  She hugged me tighter. “Let it go,” she said again, as if I hadn’t spoken at all.

  It was dark when we returned to New Orleans. I carried a sleeping Beau up to his room and put him to bed, then retrieved Monica’s box from the back of the van before returning to the house. I assumed Aimee was at yet another Christmas tour-of-homes meeting, and I’d long since given up trying to keep track of Trey’s comings and goings.

  Thinking of the large table Trey had set up in his study for the house plans, I went there and set the box on it, then began to unpack everything. I laid out the frames and ribbons, the stuffed animals, baby doll, and Rubik’s Cube. I pulled out a vinyl photo album with what appeared to be water damage on the corners, the pages all glued together. I left it alone, afraid to ruin any of the pictures inside. The corsages were too brittle, so I left them where they were. But in the corner of the box in the bottom, beneath a hand-knitted scarf with the needles still sticking in it, was a dark red leather-bound journal. In the top right in thick black ink and in fancy calligraphy, someone had inscribed the initials MMG. Monica Mercier Guidry.

  I lifted it out carefully and stood holding it for a full minute before I could talk myself into opening the front cover. Inside, in her unmistakably girlish handwriting, Monica had written, The Life and Times of Monica Guidry, 1992. I let out a held breath, all of my expectations slowly dissipating. Monica had been ten years old in 1992, and I couldn’t imagine her having anything monumental to write about besides prepubescent crushes and the never-ending quest for a true best friend.

  I flipped to the first page, dated January 1, 1992, and read the two-line entry. Trey gave this journal to me for Christmas, so I guess I should write in it. But I think I want to draw in it instead. Below the writing was a pencil sketch of a young Trey. It just showed him from his neck up, but it was unmistakably him. But as I looked closer, I realized that there was something I didn’t recognize in the eyes of the Trey I knew, something innocent and mischievous, as if he were in the middle of devising a prank when the ten-year-old Monica decided to capture him in lead and paper. Where did that boy go? I was left wondering if he’d fled in the aftermath of Katrina, as if his innocence had been one more loss, or if he’d gone when Monica had left ten years ago.

  I turned the pages slowly, drawn in by the sketches of New Orleans landmarks—Saint Louis Cathedral, close-ups of wrought-iron fences, street vendors, and Café Du Monde. Interspersed with these were sketches of River Song and its environs, of Trey fishing on a pier and in a kayak with another boy, of multiple pairs of feet and flip-flops in the sand, and many sketches of Aimee with an older man sittin
g in beach chairs on a dock, walking hand in hand in the sand, working side by side in the garden as if it were Gary or Wes. There was none of her parents, and I remembered what Trey and Aimee had told me, about how Monica and Trey had been mostly raised by Aimee, and it made me think of how unforgiving Monica must have been to cut her parents out of her life so completely. And what they must have done to make her that way.

  My favorite was a self-portrait of Monica in a hammock on the porch at River Song, with only her face and bare feet visible above the netting. I made a mental note to make sure we had a hammock ready to hang as soon as the house was completed.

  “I remember giving that to Monica for Christmas.”

  I turned around to see Trey standing behind me, holding his suit jacket with one hand and a briefcase in his other. His tie hung loose around his neck, his cuffs were rolled up, and he had dark smudges under his eyes—eyes that no longer resembled those of the boy in Monica’s sketches.

  He placed his jacket and briefcase on the desk and I handed the journal to him. “She was really talented, wasn’t she?” I said, watching as he opened the front cover and his lawyer face softened.

  “Yes, she was,” he said, leaning back against the desk and beginning to thumb through the sketches.

  I turned back to the box. “I got this from Carol Sue today. She wanted me to tell you that she still has two of your boxes refugeeing in the storeroom at her office. Her boss has been hinting that it’s time to remove them.”

  He nodded without looking at me. “Yeah, she’s probably right. Now that we have the roof fixed here, there should be room in the attic.”

  I continued lifting out Monica’s childhood memorabilia from the box and placing them on the table much like I imagined an archaeologist would lay out ancient bones. I was surprised at how little there was, considering it all represented the first eighteen years of her life, and then remembered that some of her things had been destroyed in the attic during Katrina. I would make sure that I preserved what remained for Beau, along with the few belongings she’d had in New York, for much the same reason I still had Chelsea’s hairbrush, packed up and brought along with me whenever I moved.

  Smoothing back the hair of the baby doll, I said, “I had a phone call from Steve Kenney today regarding the roof straps for River Song. He’s found a new supplier—better product for a little more money. I told him that he needed to speak with you. I’m happy to consult on the aesthetics, but I’m going to let you handle the technical details, since you have some experience in that department. I hope that’s all right.”

  When he didn’t respond, I turned to face him. He was still holding Monica’s journal in one hand, but in the other was a folded sheet of paper that looked as if it had been stuck somewhere in the middle of the journal pages. His eyes met mine and something in them made me feel a cold flash of fear. “What’s wrong?”

  As if I hadn’t spoken, he asked, “Was your mother’s maiden name Sarah Pearson?”

  An icy cold hand seemed to settle around my neck. “Yes, why?”

  “And your father’s name William Holt?”

  “Yes,” I said as I stepped closer to him, the word coming out like a hiss. “How did you know that?”

  Without answering, he handed me the sheet of paper. I recognized Monica’s handwriting, neat and concise, similar to that in the journal but more mature and more like I’d known it. At the top in black marker she’d written in block letters, ABE HOLT’S FAMILY TREE.

  It started with his generation, with the names of his two wives branching beneath them, the first wife childless, the second wife with three boxes under her name showing her two surviving sons and one daughter who died in infancy. My eyes scanned to the next line, where the eldest son, Jeremiah Holt—my grandfather—had two sons, William and John. I closed my eyes for a second and took a breath, then looked again to the next line. William married Sarah Pearson in 1975 and had three children, William Lloyd Holt Jr., Julie Grace, and Chelsea Marie.

  My hand trembled as I held the paper, then raised my eyes to meet Trey’s. “What does this mean?” I asked, afraid that I might already know the answer.

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “But I think it’s pretty clear that Monica already knew who you were long before she met you in New York.”

  I shook my head, wanting to believe that Monica’s surprise in finding out who I was when we met at the art show was genuine. But then my gaze slid back to the paper and to my name in bold, black letters, and I finally understood how very wrong I was.

  CHAPTER 16

  And ye, who have met with Adversity’s blast,

  And been bow’d to the earth by its fury;

  To whom the Twelve Months, that have recently pass’d,

  Were as harsh as a prejudiced jury,—

  Still, fill to the Future! and join in our chime,

  The regrets of remembrance to cozen,

  And having obtained a New Trial of Time,

  Shout in hopes of a kindlier dozen!

  —THOMAS HOOD

  Aimee

  1956

  As we stood outside in the brisk evening air, the sounds of Mardi Gras in the city echoed into the Garden District, making me shiver with excitement. The Zulu and Rex parades had already come and gone in the morning, and the culmination of the entire Mardi Gras festivities would end tonight with the torch-led Comus parade, followed by the Comus and Rex balls at the enormous Municipal Auditorium on the edge of the French Quarter.

  Rex, lord of misrule, would pay homage to Comus, god of mirth and revelry, as tableaux, dancing, and merrymaking would take us to midnight, when the city’s church bells rang in the forty days of Lent: forty days of penitence and sacrifice. Looking around at the Guidrys as we waited, I couldn’t help but wonder what sins they would seek atonement for, and what they were willing to give up.

  The theme for this year’s Comus Ball was “Our Early Contemporaries,” but I was distracted from my attempts to translate what that meant by Mrs. Guidry. She seemed nervous and distracted, her fingers fluttering like uncertain moths as she hovered around me, avoiding her husband’s steely gaze, and stealing sips from the small silver flask in her purse.

  Mr. Guidry had hired a car and driver for the evening, large enough to hold only Mr. and Mrs. Guidry, Lacy, and me. Wes and Gary followed in Wes’s Corvette. Because Mardi Gras fell on Valentine’s Day, Mr. Guidry had surprised us all and given his wife a bouquet of two dozen roses. She’d smiled at him, her eyes distant, then taken one and placed it in her elegant updo, its radiance vivid against the darkness of her hair, making her appear even more exotic than usual. His smile was frosty as he regarded his wife, no doubt wondering what the other ballgoers would think.

  I stared out the car window, taking in the sights of a city at play. Earlier that day Gary had taken me for a streetcar ride and a walk through New Orleans to get my first taste of the city during Carnival, as the natives referred to it. The city hummed with excitement, the streets and many of its citizens decked out in green, yellow, and purple. People thronged the avenues in the French Quarter, the thrumming of the crowds melding with the brassy sounds of jazz. The city itself was on display in an odd juxtaposition of elegance and decadence. Street vendors selling voodoo powder and cheap trinkets fronted old buildings with lacy wrought-iron balconies. The spicy aromas of jambalaya and gumbo from restaurant kitchens mingled with the smells of sweat and stale alcohol. I was at once attracted and repelled by it all, reminding me of having to kiss the scar-pocked cheek of an old and favorite uncle.

  The glitter of dresses caught my eye as I was helped from the car by Mr. Guidry. I felt something slip around my neck, and I turned to see Wes grinning at me. Looking down, I saw a strand of Mardi Gras beads in iridescent pink glowing against the green fabric of my gown. I clutched it as he leaned to speak in my ear so as to be heard above the din of the crowd. “For your first Mardi Gras, Aimee. May it be everything you expect it to be—and more.” I could smell a faint scent of cologne a
nd felt the smoothness of his skin as his jaw brushed my face. He kissed my cheek, then straightened. I felt a tug on my arm as Gary turned me to face him. His hands were crammed with strands of long white beads and he shoved them over my head before I could say anything. I looked down at the mass of beads on my chest and caught sight of the single pink one, shimmering against all the plain white.

  Wes and Gary waved and nodded to friends and acquaintances, and introductions were made as we moved through the crowd to the Guidrys’ table. I looked up where balconies of well-dressed people sat, pointing and making great shows of admiration at the crowds below. When I asked Gary who they were, he explained that they were spectators, invited to the ball not to dance but just to look. I thought it an odd custom, but relegated it to my mental list of things found only in New Orleans.

  Lacy and I were invited to the “call-out” room, where girls who had been selected for dances by members of the Krewe of Comus congregated before being claimed for their dances. I felt like Cinderella dancing with my masked and costumed prince, his identity unknown to me. Nobody seemed to notice or care that I was still a few months underage, as elegantly dressed waitstaff kept wineglasses in front of me. I don’t remember whether I ever completely finished a single one, but by midnight I was certainly feeling the flush of intoxication.

  Gary and Wes took turns dancing with their mother, Lacy, and me. Gary led me effortlessly in a two-step, his feet never missing a beat, his natural sense of rhythm carrying us through the song. He seemed more out of breath than usual, and I insisted he sit and rest for the next few songs. Surprisingly, he didn’t protest—even when Wes appeared for the next waltz.

  His hand dropped to my waist as our fingers entwined, my free hand resting on his shoulder. “I’m glad you came, Aimee.”

  “Me, too,” I murmured, lost in the smell of him, a distant part of me wishing that I could recall Gary’s scent.