Dreaming August

by Terri-Lynne Defino

  The men laughed together, in the way of old friends making jokes made a hundred times before.

  “I’d put in a work order,” Charlie said, “but by the time the town officials approve it we’ll both be old men.”

  “Or dead. What are you doing Friday?”

  “Fixing the sprinkler system, I suppose.”

  “Funny how that works.” Dan grinned. “I am too. We can divert this damaged area with a garden hose for now. Won’t work in the long term, but it’ll get the lawns watered a couple days.”

  “If we divert here, we don’t have the timers.”

  “Then I suppose one of us is going to have to come and turn them on, and the other’s got to turn them off.”

  “Which do you want?” Charlie asked. “On at seven or off at nine?”

  “I’ll turn them off. I’m closer to town.”

  “You sure you don’t mind coming out again?”

  “What else have I got to do?”

  Charlie only raised an eyebrow.

  “I walked right into that one. I been telling you since she dumped my ass last winter, leave it be, Charlie.”

  “Benny’s worth fighting for.”

  “Of course she is,” Dan grumbled. “But she doesn’t want—”

  “You don’t know that. You’re assuming. She came to the party, didn’t she? Long after it was over. Why do you think she did that?”

  “Not to see me.”

  “You’re an idiot.”

  “Never claimed otherwise.”

  “Daniel.” Charlie shook his wet, shaggy head. “We’ve been friends since before we were born. I never saw you as happy as you were that week with Benny.”

  “So?”

  “So?” Charlie shoved his shoulder. “Don’t you want to be happy?”

  “I been miserable so long, I don’t think I know how to be anything else.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “Wasn’t meant to be.”

  “Dan, come on. Just think, where would I be if I gave up on Johanna?”

  “Not all of us have your stamina. Twenty years is a long time to wait for a woman.”

  “If you give up on Benny, what are you going to be in twenty years besides sixty and lonely?”

  “And if I keep trying, I’ll be sixty, lonely, and a failure.”

  Charlie clapped him on the back, his smile spreading instead of fading. “Giving up is the only failure. You know that better than most. Now help me get the hose hooked up before I give in to my more primitive instincts to whack some sense into your stubborn skull.”

  “Like to see you try,” Dan called after him. Charlie only waved over his shoulder. There was a time Tim would have made good on the threat. Henny would have too. But Charlie? He was no more likely to take a whack at him than Dan would do the same. They were the peacekeepers, the ones who stepped in when hotter tempers flared. Dan even remembered, like water splashed in his face, consoling Benny after an argument with her then-boyfriend, when they were all just kids and she and Henny still had a dozen years to kiss and make up. He had no memory of what the fight had been about, or why he ended up with her in his arms. Dan did remember the feel of her breath on his neck, of her tears seeping into the fabric of his shirt, and how angry he was with Henny for making her cry.

  Dan grimaced. Memory made way for memory. The young woman weeping in his arms became the same woman resting her head to his chest just to listen to the beat of his heart. Benny, who smelled like flowers, whose skin was silk against his rough hands, who vanished in the night like a dream he couldn’t call back no matter how bad he wanted to.

  Chapter 9

  Among The Hollows

  “I told you she would come, Harriet. Didn’t I tell you?”

  “She said she wasn’t.”

  “She can’t stay away from me. I have that effect on women.”

  “Oh, so you remember that now.”

  “I remember more than I used to.”

  “That’s the bad part, August. Remembering things best left to lie.”

  “Stop being a defeatist. Do you remember all I told you?”

  “I’m not the one with the memory problem.”

  “Good. Then be ready. And no making up tales to make me look bad.”

  “I won’t have to, you delinquent. You’re bad enough to start.”

  * * * *

  Benny went straight to Augie’s grave. Before she took off her helmet, the faint whispering not heard by her ears, but someplace inside her head, began. She dropped to the ground, sitting cross-legged, and listened.

  “I know you’re there,” she said. “But I’m having a hard time understanding you.”

  A sensation like fingers tickling up her back straightened her spine from its slouch.

  “Oh! Don’t do that. Okay, I get it. You’re behind me. I won’t look.”

  Those fingers squeezed her shoulder.

  “Is something wrong, Augie? Why can’t you talk to me like always?”

  Nothing happened for a long stretch of moments.

  Benny closed her eyes while she waited, reclined in the grass, arms behind her head. To keep her thoughts from wandering to those places she was trying to avoid, she filled her head with birdsong and breezes, with the occasional swish of a car passing on the road below Bitterly Cemetery, with sunlit warmth on her skin. Benny thought about going to get her sunscreen, but she’d left her purse in Peter’s car.

  “Is this better?”

  Benny smiled. “Yes. But it’s faint, and I can’t hear you so much as feel the words inside my head. You must be in deeper water.”

  Augie laughed, the sound like skittering leaves and not the one that made her want to join in.

  “Deeper, yes. Benedetta?”

  “What is it, Augie? You seem…nervous.”

  “It is because I have a confession to make.”

  “All right. Out with it.”

  “It is time to tell you my true reason for seeking you out, cara mia.”

  “Sounds ominous,” Benny teased. “You’re not going to do some kind of bodysnatching thing on me, are you?”

  “I would make a wicked response but Harriet would not like it, and I am counting on her help.”

  “Harriet is with us?”

  “Harriet is always lurking about. She’s been haunting this place a long time.”

  “How will she help?”

  Augie was silent a moment. “When I am in that deep place, where Harriet waits, I remember things I forget again when I am closer to life. I told Harriet everything I wish to say. She will tell me, and then I will repeat it to you.”

  “Like telephone.”

  “Yes. You and Harriet are the receivers. I am the operator between. All in different depths.”

  “I meant the game…never mind.” Benny sat cross-legged on his grave. Goosebumps prickled. Excited. Nervous. Maybe even scared? She always believed life and death were not so far apart, but Benny had never imagined how close, in fact, they were. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

  * * * *

  “You must remain silent, Benedetta, and do not ask questions no matter how much you might want to. It is a difficult thing I do, like holding open two doors but my arms are only just long enough to reach.

  “I believe I am bound here, barred from moving beyond this place, because I made a promise I did not keep, to my little daughter, Flora.

  “Flora? Are you certain? My daughter’s name was…oh. Yes, I remember her now. You were right, Harriet. Remembering is painful. Ah, Flora was so small when I left Italy for America. She wore her hair in pigtails, tied up with ribbons.

  “Yes, Harriet. I do need you. Sorry, sorry. Go ahead.

  “I left Italy in 1928, a year before the Crash. I came to America to find employment and earn money to send for my wife and child. This was the promise I made, that I would bring her to America and we would be together again. Leaving Flora broke my heart, bu
t I was happier to leave Carmen than I was sad to leave my child. My wife and I, our marriage was arranged. We did not like one another much. She used to wait for me to come home from work, wooden spoon in hand and—

  “No, Harriet. Don’t go. I will save my remembering for another time. I know this is exhausting work and—yes, yes, I will shut my mouth. Please, continue.”

  Benny shifted on her bottom, rubbed at the shivers still making all the hair on her body stand on end.

  “The Stock Market crashed,” Augie said, his voice a little stronger. “There was no work. I had to choose whether to stay in America and hope for better times, or go back to Italy where everything was so much worse. I stayed. I sent money home when I could. Now and then, I would get a letter from my Flora, never from Carmen, my wife. Years passed. Three, I think. But for Christmas greetings and birthdays, the letters had stopped coming. Until I got a letter from my wife saying she married another man. She told our daughter I died. She told everyone, even my mother. My poor mama. It was a terrible thing to do, and worse, I went along with it.

  “Are you certain, Harriet? This is what I told you? Or did you add it in yourself? Yes, I thought so. Very well, you’re right. It was a terrible thing I did. I am paying for it now, no? Continue, please.

  “I was young. I thought my child better off without me, or chose to believe so. I married again and settled here in Bitterly. I had a good life. A happy life. I didn’t forget my first child, but I did keep her secret. My Katherine never knew I had been married, or had a child before any of ours. I wish there had been a deep bond between Flora and me. Alas, she was a girl, and her mother kept her close. Strange, no? I should remember this now?

  “Fine, Harriet. For all your snipping and snapping at me, I would think you’d be happy for the pain of these memories, to know you were right about—okay. Okay. Yes, you are old. You are cranky too. Continue. I promise I will not drift off again.”

  Difficult as it was, Benny managed not to laugh, or ask questions when it seemed to take forever for him to speak again.

  “I lost all connection to Flora. For a long time, I knew nothing of her life, if she grew to be a woman, or even survived the war. I thought about her less and less. I was no longer Augusto, but August. Life before coming to America was erased.

  “Beyond the grave, all my wrongs came back at me. It is a consequence of death, this review of one’s life. I broke my mother’s heart, but sons are ever doing such things. I had three brothers, all who thought me dead. The only one who knew differently kept her secret, for her wrongs were as deep as mine. But my daughter, the child of my own blood, I abandoned her to whatever fate Carmen’s choice gave her. I did not return for her. I let her grieve a daughter’s grief. And this is now my grief, so deep I am stuck here until I can somehow make it right.

  “Harriet believes I am keeping myself bound, as a sort of penance. But I was never so noble a man, and even if, by some chance, I am, the result is the same. I need to find my daughter. I can no longer keep my promise to make us a family. But perhaps I can give her the brothers and sister she should have had. I want her to know I loved her, and I am sorry for the choices I made. Maybe she will not forgive me, and if she can’t I will stay forever bound. But maybe she will, and then I can let go of this world and journey to whatever comes next.”

  * * * *

  “Oh, Augie,” Benny says, eyes still closed. “You abandoned your wife and little girl.”

  “Like I abandoned you.” It is Henny’s voice, not Augie’s. Benny sits up. Where is Augie’s grave? The wood beyond? There is only a headstone with a name too familiar, and pansies, impatiens, and marigolds as far as she can see. Henny is there, a man in his twenties.

  “You didn’t abandon me, love,” Benny tells him. “You died.”

  “Amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it? I’m here. You’re alone. Not so different from your friend.”

  “He made a choice. You didn’t.”

  “Didn’t I?” He picks a flower from the grave-garden she planted for him, smells it and smiles. “I’ve never been here.”

  “Here? Your grave?”

  He nods.

  “How is that so?”

  “I don’t know,” he tells her. “Just never have been. It’s nice.”

  “Henny?” Benny looks behind him, glances over her shoulder. “Is there anyone else here?”

  “Just me and you, baby. This is our place.”

  “But I’m here all the time and I never—”

  “Not the cemetery.” Henny laughs and Benny feels it in the pit of her stomach. “This is your doing, not mine. You brought it with you. I’m talking about this place, Ben, where you and I will always be together.”

  He pushes off the tombstone, holds out a hand for hers. Benny lets him pull her up and Henny holds her gently. No skin-on-skin, but there is contact of a different kind, like Augie’s voice when it is felt, not heard.

  “I will never leave you,” Henny says, tracing the forget-me-not tattooed on her wrist. “I will always be here, when you need me.”

  “Be where?” Benny pulls away. “I don’t under—”

  “You do.” He touches her nose with a kiss that feels like sunshine. “You’ve been finding me here all along.”

  “I don’t want to have to find you. I want you by my side.”

  Henny’s smile fades. He steps back, holds out his hand. “Then walk with me,” he tells her. “Take my hand, and walk with me.”

  Benny reaches. Her fingers tremble. Her hand falls to her side again. Henny smiles the smile she knows so well, the one she alternately wanted to kiss and smack. All-knowing. Cocky. Confident. And gone. He is waving from the cemetery road, from the place she parks her scooter. He legs over, kicks it to roaring life. No hairdryer engine, but more powerful. And now it is not a scooter, but the motorcycle he died on.

  “See you.” He waves, revs the engine, and glides away.

  She watches him go, her hand moving to her belly and the fluttering there. Always fluttering. A little jumping cricket whose song is the whoosh-swoosh of a jump-rope when Benny was a little girl.

  * * * *

  “Benny? Hey, you okay?”

  Blinking, gaining her bearings, Benny came up on her elbows. Charlie McCallan stood over her blocking the sunlight. Her mouth tasted like she’d guzzled sour milk, her muscles were stiff. She sat up. On Augie’s grave.

  “I’m…fine. I guess…I fell asleep.”

  “Guess you did.”

  No Augie. No Henny. Benny spotted her scooter on the narrow cemetery road, Charlie’s truck parked behind it. Further down the road, a sky-blue minivan. Otherwise, not a soul. None that she could actually see, anyway. Or sense. She held out her hands.

  “Give me a hand, will you?”

  Charlie helped her to her feet, holding her steady while her cramped muscles loosened. “What are you doing at this end of the cemetery, anyway?”

  Benny brushed herself off, pretended he hadn’t asked a question and instead asked one of her own. “How’d you get so wet?”

  “Water valve burst.”

  “Sounds like fun.” She laughed. “It’s getting late. I’d better get home.”

  Charlie watched her out of the corner of his eye, but he made no more comment about where she’d been sleeping. Dreaming. Communing with the dead. Whatever it was Benny had been doing, it left her exhausted, and she wondered if it was the same kind of soul-weariness Augie and Harriet experienced. She thanked Charlie, promised she’d come by soon to see renovations he made to the old farmhouse on County Line Road, and started up her scooter thankfully still there and not turned into a motorcycle and gone.

  Chapter 10

  Firefly-seeds

  The habit of always having a change of clothes on hand, a lesson learned as a boy always staining, tearing or otherwise destroying them, never left him. Getting the back of his father’s hand hadn’t been enough to teach him, but his mother’s tears whil
e she scrubbed or mended were.

  The first time Daniel Greene the elder smacked his wife for not raising a more conscientious son, Dan Greene the younger learned to leave a spare set tied up tight in a garbage bag, hidden in the hollow of a tree in the woods behind his house. When he ruined too many pairs of jeans to go unnoticed, he started changing into the already-ruined stuff before going off with his friends. No one said anything about his ragged clothes. Henny. Tim. Charlie. They knew enough not to.

  Dan shoved the wet stuff into his duffle bag, tossed it into the back seat of the minivan. His sister’s car was, in his opinion, the most hideous thing he’d ever seen on four wheels. Sky blue. Rusted out wheel wells. Cracks and tears in the upholstery, and carpeting stinking like unwashed gym socks. She sold her Land Rover after Paul left, and bought the cheapest thing still running. When Mabel cried earlier that morning, mortified for her mother to pick up her friends in the blue beast, Dan had given his sister the keys to his pickup and told her to make sure the kids didn’t eat in it.

  “I just had it detailed,” he’d grumbled. Evelyn had kissed his cheek. Mabel hugged him around the waist. Joss didn’t seem to notice, his eyes being glued to the game he was playing on his mother’s cell phone.

  Dan rolled down all the windows, one at a time, and got into the driver’s seat. It took a couple tries, but the van started up. The car was pointed in the wrong direction to take the quick, if illegal, way out. The cemetery road was a one-way, something Dan always found amusing. It was late. Few ever visited. Still, he followed the rules and drove the whole circuit through.

  Well-spaced trees dotted tranquil, rolling lawns. Weller Woods hugged the whole west end, the oldest part of the cemetery. Most of the earliest settlers were laid to rest in that shaded sanctuary up against the wood. The Bossy family, the Wellers—they had whole sections reserved for them and their descendants, but they were not the oldest residents of Bitterly Cemetery. Many of those had no markers, having been buried on family land before there was a cemetery. Only one was marked, as far as Dan knew, and he did only because his best friend was buried beside her.

  The car rolled to a stop where the sun still shined down on a wide expanse of lawn looking a little parched for the heat and broken sprinkler system. Dan let it idle. A discreet metal marker read: Rolling Green 183. The familiar debate ruffled through his head, to the same outcome. He switched off the ignition. He got out of the car. Three rows back, he found her.