The Beach Trees

by Karen White

  The rough rope of the hammock rubbed my legs and the metal hooks creaked as Chelsea and I rocked back and forth, keeping rhythm with the sound of the surf.

  “Look,” she said, pointing at Deer Island covered in brown, dead trees. I closed my eyes, not wanting to see, and then I heard Trey’s voice telling me to open them again. And then I was lying on my back on the sand with Chelsea next to me, the trees green again, rippling in the warm breeze. The sound and smell of the sea were stronger now, the sky a sweep of crystal blue dotted with clouds as we stared upward.

  “Look,” Chelsea said again, and I searched the sky to see what she saw.

  I smiled when I spotted her cloud, the long nose and dorsal fin identifying the dolphin as it floated in perpetual grace, poised to splash through the water’s surface.

  “I see it,” I said, laughing at how obvious it was and wondering why I’d never recognized Chelsea’s clouds before. “I see it,” I said again to Chelsea’s retreating back as she stood and walked to the edge of the shore. With one last look toward me, she waved, then dove into the unseen depths of the dark water, disappearing from sight.

  I called her name, but my voice wasn’t frantic, as if my dream self knew Chelsea was near even though I couldn’t see her. But I felt the heavy weight of my own loneliness, its cause more than just her absence, my awareness of it just beyond my reach.

  Something splashed nearby, loud and crashing, and I jerked up in bed to find Beau with his face very close, his mother’s eyes staring into mine. He carried the red hat, but he wasn’t sucking his thumb. I suddenly realized that it had been a while since I’d actually seen him doing that.

  “Who’s Chelsea?”

  I sat up and flipped on the bedside lamp, then looked at the clock glowing on the nightstand. “It’s four o’clock in the morning, Beau. What are you doing out of bed?”

  “You were talking to somebody named Chelsea.”

  I pushed my hair out of my face, imagining I could still hear the sea and smell the salt air. “Chelsea was my sister.”

  “She’s not your sister anymore?”

  I blinked slowly, not understanding at first. “Yes, of course. She’s just . . . not around anymore.”

  “Like Mommy.”

  I smoothed his hair back from his forehead, noticing how long it had gotten, and how much lighter it was from all the time he now spent outdoors with Charlie and Trey. I imagined that Monica’s hair had looked that way, too, until she’d moved to the city and her airless apartment, feeding herself on the memories of bright sun and moving waves. What happened, Monica? What happened to take you away? “Yes, Beau. Like your mom will always be your mom.”

  “And Chelsea will always be your sister.” He balled his hand into a small fist and pressed it against my chest over my heart, as I’d done to him on the day we’d buried his mother. “She’ll always be right here, even if you can’t see her.”

  I stared at him for a long time, wondering when he’d grown so smart. Then I leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead.

  Beau grinned up at me. “Are you thinking I’m wonderful again?”

  I laughed, then tousled his hair. “Yeah. And pretty smart, too. I think you’re going to be ready to start kindergarten in the fall.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I can already read. I don’t see why I have to go to school, since I’m already so smart.”

  It was very hard not to laugh. We were distracted by the sound of something being dragged on the lawn beneath the window. I climbed out of bed and followed Beau to look outside.

  Xavier had set up a floodlight to illuminate one side of the shed, and he was in the process of moving the contents of the shed that had been stacked against the outside out of the way so he could paint. A sprained hand and then bad weather had postponed Xavier’s painting the shed and it appeared that he had decided the job had waited long enough. Paint cans, one opened, stood in the grass, a wide brush resting on top of one of the closed cans. A shovel lay facedown several feet away, and I wondered if the sound of it falling and hitting a can were what had awakened me.

  “Isn’t it easier to paint in the daytime, when you can see better?”

  I looked down at Beau. “Forget kindergarten. I think you’re ready for high school.” I peered out the window again. “I’ll go ask him. But I want you to go back to bed first. Charlie and her mother want to be at Dr. King’s office as early as possible before the Mardi Gras parade, and I don’t want you to be Mr. Grumpy, because you’re sleepy. Miss Aimee’s coming with us, and she’ll probably be in the car at eight o’clock, blowing the horn for us to hurry.”

  He smiled at the image, but his eyes were solemn. “Okay. I’ll try. But I think I’m too excited to sleep.” He gave me a quick hug, then ran back to his room through the connecting bathroom. After he’d gone I turned back to the bed and realized that he’d left the red hat. I picked it up and started walking toward his room to return it, but instead placed it on my bedside table, where it would be if he came back for it.

  Using the light from the night-lights placed strategically in the hallway, I found my way to the kitchen. After disarming the alarm, I stepped out into the garden; the smell of freshly turned earth and paint entwined with the odd, decaying, sweet scent of New Orleans at night hit me like a wall.

  I found Xavier perched on a ladder, methodically swiping strokes of white paint on the shed’s siding. He froze when I called his name softly, the brush held aloft in midstroke.

  “You should be in bed sleeping, like normal people,” he said gruffly.

  Crossing my arms over my chest, I said, “I could say the same about you.”

  He carefully placed the brush across the can and stepped down off the ladder. “Can’t sleep. I figure I might as well get something done instead of wasting time in front of the television.”

  “But painting? Isn’t that a little hard to do at night?”

  He shrugged. “I could paint blindfolded, pretty much. This way it’ll be dry enough in the morning that I can start moving everything back inside.”

  I nodded, surveying all the heavy boxes and equipment that sat stacked outside. “How old are you, Xavier? Seventy-five, seventy-six?”

  “Around there.”

  “I’m impressed. I don’t think I’d have been able to do all this work by myself.”

  “Did you need to ask me something, Miss Julie? Because I’ve got work to do.”

  I hesitated only for a moment, not knowing whether I’d have the opportunity or the courage to ask Xavier again. “The night Mrs. Guidry disappeared, you disappeared, too. I understand that Wes Guidry thought you might have helped her leave with my great-grandfather. The rumor was that they ran off together, but we haven’t been able to find any evidence to support that. I thought that maybe you would know something, and I’m wondering if Monica might have asked you about it, too.”

  Xavier didn’t move, but his eye glittered in the light from the spotlight. “What is the good in dragging up all of this old history? It didn’t help Miss Monica, did it?”

  I paused, knowing he expected me to back away, that raising the specter of Monica would get me to stop asking. But I’d had too much experience searching for answers that eluded me. “So she did ask?”

  He didn’t answer right away, and we stood silently facing each other as something dark and small darted out from the eaves of the old house, its wings fluttering like a breath. Finally, he said, “She did. She stood just where you are now and asked the same question as you are right now.”

  He turned his back to me and began climbing the ladder. “I told her to go ask her grandfather. That if there was anybody who could answer her questions, it was him.”

  I watched as he slowly dipped his paintbrush back into the can, then began to swipe it back and forth over the boards of the shed.

  “And did she? Did she go ask him?”

  The smell of paint overtook the scent of freshly turned earth, an incongruous smell in a garden at night. The wet p
aint shone in the floodlight, the center of brightness in the middle of so much dark, like being in a dream where stepping outside the circle meant waking up.

  He stopped moving his arm for a moment. “I don’t know. Next thing I heard was that Monica had gone and then Mr. Wes had his stroke.”

  I stared at his back, going over his words, and wondered what I was missing. “He had his stroke the same day?”

  Xavier nodded. “I guess. I didn’t see Miss Monica leave. All I know is that my mama came out of the house yelling for me that Mr. Wes had fallen over in his room and she needed my help to move him to the couch while we waited for the ambulance.”

  “So you were with him—right after he had his stroke? Did he say anything to you, anything about Monica and why she would have left so suddenly?”

  Xavier turned his head slowly, his single eye bright against the darkness of his face. “He didn’t say anything to me.” He waited a moment, as if he had something else to add, then turned back to his painting. “It’s late, Miss Julie. You need to go back inside and get some sleep.”

  Realizing that he wasn’t going to tell me anything else, I said good night and turned back to the kitchen door. I hesitated at the threshold, noticing that the door was cracked open and all the kitchen lights were on. Slowly I pushed the door open and heard the beep of the microwave before I saw Aimee placing a teaspoon each of cocoa powder into two mugs. She turned and smiled as I entered the kitchen, then popped open the microwave door and pulled out a steaming pitcher of milk.

  “I couldn’t sleep, so I made myself some cocoa and, when I heard you talking outside with Xavier, thought you might like some, too.”

  I slid into a chair at the table. “Thank you. I’d love some.”

  She held up a clear plastic bag. “Marshmallow?”

  “Yes, please.”

  She dropped two large marshmallows into each mug before pouring the steaming milk on top. She stuck spoons into the mugs and placed them on the table. “I’m guessing Xavier woke you up, too.”

  I stirred slowly, waiting for the marshmallows to melt. “Yes. Beau, too, but I’m hoping he went back to sleep. He’s got a big day ahead of him.”

  Aimee nodded. “He sure does. Monica would make such a big deal of Mardi Gras. She’d decorate River Song with streamers and wreaths and anything she could find in Carnival colors. She was always hoping that one day she’d be Queen Ixolib.”

  “Who?” I blew on my mug, watching the steam rise.

  “It’s Biloxi spelled backward, and she’s the queen of the Biloxi Mardi Gras.” Aimee took a small sip from her mug. “Just imagine—by next Mardi Gras we’ll be able to decorate River Song again.”

  I thought of the newly sided house with the bare yard and shutterless windows, trying to imagine what would happen once it was completed, but couldn’t. It was nearly finished, its new elevation giving a panoramic view of the sound from the front porch, still without rockers or hammocks. Yet when I pictured the house in my mind, I saw only the empty lot and the scarred oak tree standing like a sentinel on the front lawn.

  Aimee’s eyes were soft as she regarded me through the rising steam. “You haven’t thought that far ahead, have you?”

  I shook my head. “No. Although I have started looking into schools for Beau in the Biloxi area. He’ll have to start school in the fall regardless of where he or I end up.” It was the first time I’d acknowledged, even to myself, that Beau and I could end up in two completely separate places. I took a quick sip of my hot cocoa, burning my tongue and hardly feeling it.

  She raised both eyebrows, and I continued speaking to prevent her from saying more. “I actually looked at St. Martin’s in Ocean Springs. It’s still a boarding school, but they have day students, too. Isn’t that where Xavier went?”

  “Yes, it was. It used to be a private blacks-only school during segregation. Even back then it was highly regarded. One of the few black college preparatory schools.”

  I frowned into my cocoa, staring at the reflection of the overhead lights in the flat surface. “I was surprised by how high the tuition is. Has it always been so expensive?”

  “I really don’t know, although I imagine so because of its reputation. Why do you ask?”

  “Well, I just wondered how Ray Von could afford to send him there. Do you know how long he attended?”

  She was silent for a moment. “Not exactly, but I do know he was sent there right after my mother died. I remember that only from what Gary told me when I used to grill him about what he remembered about my mother’s murder. Xavier was about nine, and from what I’ve been told, he thought my mother was an angel because she was kind to him. Maybe that’s why they sent him away to school after she died—I don’t know. Regardless, I think Xavier might have graduated high school there sometime in the early fifties, and then came back to New Orleans to live with Ray Von, and would do odd jobs for Mr. Guidry.”

  “Until the Comus Ball, when Mrs. Guidry disappeared and then he dropped out of sight, too.”

  She shook her head, her hand cupping the mug between them. “Not completely. He thought I needed protection, although he’s never told me from whom. Even today if I ask him, he’ll just tell me that he’s keeping me safe because my mother isn’t here to do it for me. I think it stems from his devotion to her.”

  “And then he reappeared after Camille and has been working for the Guidrys ever since.”

  Aimee nodded, then placed her spoon inside her empty mug. “Wes hired him. Wes was injured during Camille; have I told you that? And Xavier saved him. Anyway, Wes said he needed help around the house and hired Xavier. Ray Von retired and we bought her the house in Biloxi. And it’s been that way ever since.”

  I stood and picked up her mug. “Want some more?”

  She nodded and I poured more milk in the pitcher to heat it. “You haven’t told me about what happened during Hurricane Camille or how you ended up with Wes.”

  We both turned at the sound of the ladder being moved. Aimee continued looking at the kitchen door leading out to the garden as she spoke. “No, I haven’t. But I think it’s time I told more of my story. I think we’re getting close.”

  “Close?”

  “To finding out what it was that Monica knew that we can’t seem to see. I told you when you first got here that if we put our stories together we could figure it out.”

  I opened the microwave door. “But we seem to have more questions now than we did when we started.”

  “Life is like that, Julie. But having questions doesn’t necessarily mean that you don’t already know some of the answers.” Her blue eyes regarded me steadily as I realized she wasn’t talking about Monica anymore.

  I poured the steaming milk over cocoa and marshmallows in each mug and placed them on the kitchen table. Then I sat down across from Aimee and prepared to listen.

  CHAPTER 25

  However long the night, the dawn will break.

  —AFRICAN PROVERB

  Aimee

  1962

  The hot spring erupted into a scorching summer, the humidity heavy and intrusive, its thick fingers reaching through window blinds, under doors, and through the light cotton of the suits I wore to work at the art gallery. The pungent odor of the Mississippi wrapped itself around the city like a big snake, a redolent ribbon of muddy water.

  Gary had finished his first year of medical school with high marks, but the grind for him hadn’t ended. He was working in a research lab at the medical center for the summer, his hours just as long and arduous as they were when he was in school. He came home in the evenings exhausted, having little more energy than what it took to eat his dinner and watch our favorite shows on television. Most nights he fell asleep on the sofa, and I left him there, covered by a blanket, while I slept in our bed alone.

  Gary’s birthday fell at the end of July, and I asked my supervisor for the entire weekend off to surprise Gary with a trip to River Song. I slipped into the lingerie department at Maison Blanche duri
ng my lunch break, looking for something to keep Gary awake and to bring back memories of our honeymoon.

  I also had an idea for part of his gift. I remembered the portrait painted of Mrs. Guidry wearing her Comus Ball gown, the one Mr. Guidry had relegated to the attic. I’d never asked why, and could assume only that it was too painful for him to look at. But Gary had been close to his mother, and if he wanted to hang it on the wall in our apartment, I was sure I could convince his father to let Gary have it.

  I used my key this time without ringing the bell, knowing Wednesday was the day off for the help. Poking my head through the door, I called, “Hello! It’s Aimee. Anybody home?” I didn’t really expect an answer. The men would be at work and Lacy was rarely home.

  Dust motes rose in the shaft of light from the open door. I waved a hand through them, watching them tumble against one another, then closed the door behind me. “Hello!” I called again, and no one answered.

  I climbed to the top of the stairs and faced the attic door. The phone rang, and by instinct I raced to a nearby bedroom to answer it, only to get a dial tone when I picked up the receiver. I hung it back in the cradle, and looked around me, realizing I must be in Wes and Lacy’s bedroom. A large four-poster bed commanded my attention in the middle of the room, its bedspread covered with wildflowers and vines. I caught myself wrinkling my nose at the femininity of it, wondering how Wes could stand it. A man’s undershirt and socks lay in a heap on the floor by the bed. In that regard, the two brothers were very much alike.

  I turned my head and spotted a desk and chair. As I lifted the chair to bring it back to the hall with me, I noticed the top of the desk, covered with photos of Lacy and Wes. There were a few professional photographs of Johnny, but the others were candid shots of his parents at various functions. The two made a handsome couple, but I couldn’t help noticing how Lacy always appeared to be clinging to Wes, red fingernails gripping his coat jacket as if she were trying to prevent him from running away. His smiles in all the portraits were the same, thin and small, his eyes flat—with only one exception. In the picture of Wes holding his newborn son I could feel the joy displayed on his face. I touched the frame, feeling only the cold glass under my fingers.