CHAPTER TEN
--
That night, in a hot bath, a robust cabernet on the side of the tub, she scrubbed hard at the emotional injuries and drank tear-diluted wine. Afterward, dressed in a silk robe, she gave up on the Rodney Strong and reached for the Blue Sapphire.
The next morning, the Broadcast News Network – BNN – had the story.
Poblo Quitano's serious face filled the screen. He stood alongside the logo of The Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum. That he stood outside told her that the museum wasn't exactly thrilled with his initiative; otherwise he'd be inside showing off its exhibits.
“It is an amazing story,” Poblo told the reporter while mugging for the camera. “For many decades investigators and researchers have combed the archives for more information on what happened to the Carroll A. Deering, the five-masted schooner that wrecked on the way home from her maiden voyage. Today, we have new information on what happened.”
The reporter said, “But this information, it comes from the other world, isn't that what you're saying?”
“That is what Miss Ann Gavrion is saying. She claims to be an eyewitness.”
“That's pretty amazing, if true. We haven't heard from Miss Gavrion.”
“I am surprised,” Poblo said, raising his shoulders and spreading his hands. “She did not keep it a secret from me. She is very sure of herself.”
“For our viewers, Ann Gavrion is the senior editor with Southern Monthly magazine. It's safe to say that if Miss Gavrion were not so highly regarded, the story might be dismissed as just another ghost story from the Outer Banks, wouldn't you agree, Mr. Quitano?”
“Certainly.”
“Is Miss Gavrion still on Hatteras Island?”
“I have heard that she has left. She would not speak with reporters.”
“Miss Gavrion hasn't brought the story to the attention of the press, so why did you?”
“Why not? It is news.”
“I understand that the story began with a piece of scrimshaw that Miss Gavrion found, and that it was circulated between a few friends at a bar.”
“She first showed it to me on the beach and said that it came from a sailor on the Deering.”
“I see. But what's your point in bringing up the matter before it's investigated more thoroughly.”
“That is just the point – to get it investigated more thoroughly.”
“What is it to you?”
“I am an historian. It is a great mystery in which five government agencies tried to learn the truth. This is a major happening in this community, in the seafaring world.”
“If it's true.”
“Yes, of course, but with Miss Gavrion's help, we could find the solid proof that we need to get the truth of her account. We in the history world like to have corroborating evidence.”
“And public's money, right?”
“There is that, yes. We need donations.”
Ann flicked the television clicker and stormed across the brick floor. Splashing coffee into the half-filled cup, she looked out the tenth-story Palladian windows at the multi-tiered Atlanta skyline. The cityscape sparkled in the bright fall sun. She opened the balcony and stepped barefoot onto the tiles. At the balustrade, she looked down at the people going into the Arts Center MARTA station.
How many of those people had seen the reports? How many had laughed and called her crazy? How many were waiting for her to come on Oprah or The Today Show to fill their minds with a tale of romance on the high seas? She went back inside, slammed the French doors, and said aloud, “Well, it ain't gonna happen.”
The phone rang again. The screen told her that the caller was not Spence or Rod. The caller was BaLenda Jackson, the acquisitions editor at Southern Monthly and her good friend. “Hello, Ba.” She hoped her voice sounded upbeat enough.
“Annie, are you watching the television?”
“Not right this minute.”
“Okay, were you watching television earlier this morning?”
“Yes.”
“What the hell's going on down there?”
“It's up there. North Carolina is north of here.”
“Well, what the hell's going on up there?”
“Oh Ba, I don't know. It's too odious to go into.”
“Who's that unctuous dork, talking about you went back in time?”
“Some kind of assistant with the museum.”
“When are you going to put those a-holes in their places. Jeez, I've never heard such crap.” Ann didn't say anything. “Ann, are you there?”
“I am.”
“You need to set their asses straight.”
“Hmmmm.”
“What?”
“I don't want to discuss it.”
“You can't let them get away with making up that nonsense.”
“So far it's Poblo Quitano's story. I intend it to stay that way.”
“Just issue a statement …”
“What's left unsaid is best.”
BaLenda hadn't listened carefully. “You must tell them it's not true.”
“I can't.”
“Why?”
“I can't.”
Silence from the garrulous BaLenda. Then she asked apprehensively, “Why not, Ann?”
“Because – just because.”
“Are you saying that what that sleaze says is true? You went back in time?”
“I can't …”
“Shit.”
“It was a nice time.”
“Glad to hear it, but you ain't going to convince many people that you actually went back in time.”
“Would you like to hear the story?”
“Can't wait,” BaLenda said.
“In time, but right now we've got national news to deal with.”
“No one at Southern will say a word. Richter's already e-mailed – kindly requesting that no one speak on the subject. Already Missi's called me wanting to know where you are now.”
“She's a newspaper woman underneath that gossip columnist fluff.”
“In that regard, she's an a-hole, too.”
BaLenda had never liked Missi McNamara, Ann's other good friend. She chuckled to herself wondering who was more abrasive, BaLenda or Missi? And then she considered that even she could be abrasive when it mattered, although nothing had mattered much lately. Her character had changed. Maybe it started when Boyd died, but she knew she was different than she was five years ago. She was still dedicated to whatever she pursued, but she lacked the fire that ran the red line up her pleasure meter.
C'est la vie.
Back to BaLenda and Missi, though – both could be counted on and that was a small comfort. So, too could Arnold, but she wasn't looking forward to facing him.
--
The next call was anticipated, and dreaded.
Her mama, Anabel, as Deep South as a belle can get.
“Sugah! I heard the news!” her mama cried. “What in the world is going on with you?”
“I told you I was going to Cape Hatteras, Mama.”
“You didn't tell me you were going on a deep sea voyage.”
“I didn't know it at the time.”
“I can't understand what happened to you, sugah. They say you went back in time. Did you?”
“It seemed like I did.”
“Your daddy is about to have a stroke.”
Her daddy was Claude Gavrion, who'd inherited a bunch of money and the temperament of a Victorian swooner who kept smelling salts up his sleeve. Sorry, but true, that the last of the Gavrion male line had petered to a nervous string. Hadn't always been that way. Back when Jean Paul Gavrion met Benjamin Franklin in Paris, the robust son of an alchemist had been a booster for the revolution that was going on in America. He traveled to America with Franklin and hung out in Philadelphia and New York and everywhere else the inventor and statesman went. After Franklin's death, Jean Paul was despondent and moved back to Paris. Disenchantment drove him back to America where he settled in Washington until he
died. He had four sons. They scattered West and South. Her ancestral line settled in Georgia. That son had inherited the alchemist genes and opened a pharmacy – which led to the first chain of drug stores in America. His patented elixir was still famous today, but the Gavrion family no longer owned the berry-quinine drink. Her great-grandfather sold it at the end of the nineteenth century to a bottler, but the family kept the pharmacies until her father's nerves would no longer allow him to think about such mundane things as business.
Her mother said, “Ann, you haven't answered me. I said your father is about to have a stroke.”
“He always manages to survive.”
“He's packing his things now. We are coming up there right this very minute.”
“No, Mama, I'd prefer you not.”
“Why, sugah, you know we in this family come to the aid of our own.”
“Look, stay there. I'll come to Columbus if things get too out of hand here.”
“You come down here right now. Your daddy's psychiatrist is very good at tackling delusions.”
Claude had been seeing him for twenty years. So much for being good at tackling delusions.
“I'm not having delusions, Mama.”
“Going on a voyage with a ghost! Ann Flanery Gavrion, how can you say you're not having delusions. Nothing wrong in having delusions, sugah, as long as you know they're delusions. You're your father's child after all, and we MacClellands have always had vivid imaginations.”
MacClelland. She's forgotten that her mother's maiden name was the same, but spelled differently, than the Deering's hated first mate. McLellan.
Oh what a web I'm in.
While her mind strayed, her mama carried on, “I wish you wouldn't talk to those reporters who like to sensationalize every little thing that happens in the world.”
“I haven't talk to reporters, Mama. I don't intend to talk to reporters.”
“Thank you Jesus! I don't know what I'll say to the Junior League. We have our Fall Jubilee next month.”
“By then it will be forgotten.”
“No, sugar, it'll be the talk until something more wonderful tops it.”
“Well, that's bound to happen. In the meantime, tell Daddy to stop packing.”
--
By noon, the reporters had staked out her high rise and neither Spence nor Rod had called. She fixed a bloody Mary and stared at the televisions. She'd brought the three together and had them tuned to the news networks.
BaLenda called every hour to update her on the e-mails and phone calls.
When Ann finished her sixth bloody, it was time to switch to gin and tonic, and after a couple of those, to straight gin. By eight, she no longer cared enough to worry what tomorrow would bring. She slept with the phone on the pillow next to her, but she didn't hear it ring several times before midnight.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
--
Ann fiddled with the spoon in her coffee cup and looked at Missi McNamara sitting across from her at the mission table. Missi was saying that she’d had to weave and bob through the ring of reporters to get to the elevator. Missi’s large-eyed outrage could rival the planet for phony. “So pushy. I had to run the gauntlet.”
“In heels, how horrid,” Ann said.
Missi’s eyes slid to her four-inchers and she waved a crossed foot. “Although, I have to say I love a mystery. Especially at sea.”
Ann rubbed her temples, more because of the hangover than anything Missi could say. After all, she knew Missi very well.
“Didn't come out right, did it, sugah?” Missi said by way of apology.
Missi was a few years older than Ann, but she kept her exact age to herself. She had put on some weight since her Miss Mississippi beauty queen days, but she still had that hour-glass figure they call statuesque. Her hair was a mass of bleached curls, her eyes were circled with black eye-liner and she covered her mildly-pocked complexion with heavy pancake.
“Oh look,” Missi cried, pointing to a television mounted under a white kitchen cabinet. “It's comin' on again.”
Another cycle of the Deering story began. The segment had Poblo on. He'd been suspended from the museum, but he remained undaunted. The story ran a short biography of Ann Gavrion and Rodrick Curator, and then cut to a sea shot where a cameraman caught Rod on the shore, his hair blowing, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses, looking down at the two birds run-walking in front of him.
Ann jerked straighter. This was new stuff. “Rod's piping plovers,” she said.
“Cute little guys,” Missi said. “The man's not bad, either.'
A reporter with the cameraman approached Rod, and called, “Mr. Curator?”
Rod flung around, saw the camera and scowled.
Missi interrupted, “I think he just mouthed 'What the fuck is this?'“
“I never heard him swear,” Ann said, “and he had plenty of reasons to.”
Back on the screen, Rod stopped and held up a hand against the cameraman and the reporter. He ordered, “You two – stay right where you are.”
The reporter called into the wind, “It's time we talked.”
“It's time for you to get your ass off this beach. It's closed except to NOAA personnel and the Park Service.”
“Just a few questions, Mr. Curator. What do you think of Ann Gavrion's account of her voyage with your great-grandfather?”
“Rot. Now get off this beach.”
Rot. He called her story rot. She wished Missi wasn't here so she could bury her head in her arms.
On screen, Rod turned and walked swiftly away, but the cameraman stayed with him until he got to the heavy grass and jumped in his Jeep.
Ann crumpled in the chair, her torso weighing heavily on her buttocks. She said shakily, “I've caused that man more pain than he deserves.”
“I like his guts,” Missi said. “He doesn't seem to care how he's portrayed on television. Most people preen. He scowls.” She sipped coffee after taking an enormous bite from a sticky cinnamon bun that Ann had baked.
Baking was a way of getting her mind off things. It started when she was in the first grade when her Mama and Daddy began quarrelling before they even got out of their bedroom in the morning.
Missi was saying, “What's with him and the birdies?”
“Didn't you listen? He's a biologist with NOAA.”
“Missed it. He married?”
“He lost his wife in a boating accident last summer.”
“No wonder he scowls.”
“I have a feeling …”
Missi's journalistic genes perked. “Don't stop now, sugah. What's this feeling?”
“Nothing.”
“What was his great-grandfather like?”
“I don't talk about him.”
“Come on. It's me. Missi.”
“Sorry, Missi. It's a promise.”
“This story of you going back in time – it's amazing. But do you still believe that it happened to you? I mean, maybe it was just a dream.”
“I wasn't sleeping.”
“A daydream.”
“I've thought of that. That's why I went searching for answers.”
“And you went to the museum where this sneaky Poblo jerk helped you in your search.”
“Can you believe I was so naïve?”
“Yeah, I can,” Missi said, stirring her coffee. “You're one of those romantics. I always admired that about you Annie. Not many left in this world. But …”
Ann finished Missi’s thought. “You didn't think I'd go overboard. No pun intended.”
“Look, we got to do something to get this prick off your back. For days now, he's been challenging you to come forward with the story. Don't you think …”
“No, Missy, I'm not speaking about the matter. Period.”
Spence had told the truth. His telephone number was in the directory, but apparently he didn't spend much time at home. Or, as she suspected, he was avoiding her calls. For the fourth time, she left a message:
“Spence,
it's me, Ann. Please call me. We need to talk.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
--
Sunday's Atlanta Courier had a big spread on the Carroll A. Deering. The reporter had done a good job. Ann knew him, he was the Carolina stringer and a regular contributor to Southern Monthly. He'd left several messages to contact him for an interview, which were relayed to Ann by BaLenda.
“You need to talk to Chris,” BaLenda said. “He's a friend. He'll be fair.”
Ann adored Chris, but she was mindful of his talent. He had a soft Southern way of getting folks to open up. He was a natural storyteller, and he'd get you into the rhythm of the story by telling you a parallel story and before you knew it, you were saying, “Yeah, just like the time I….” And there you were blabbing the story you swore you'd never tell. That's why she would avoid Chris like he had bubonic plague.
She said, “Ba, fair isn't what I want.”
“I know what you want. But this ain't going away any time soon. You got to admit it, Annie-girl, this is one helluva imagination-grabber, especially coming from Chris's pen.”
In his piece, Chris had quoted liberally from the puffed up Poblo Quitano, now with a story so overblown that Ann had to laugh – through the mother of pulsating headaches. Spence had kept to his word and avoided Chris and other media types, but Young Park told of Ann's “escape” on Pamlico Sound. “No,” Young Park said, “she did not confide her experience to me. She was very angry at Poblo, though.”
The MacGregors' remained loyal, although Mrs. MacGregor couldn’t help being gregarious. “Ann is a very nice, level-headed woman. She was at the sea very much, that's true, but they come here for the sea.” And, “If you stay all day at the beach, you look like you've stayed all day at the beach.” And, “Mr. Quitano is a very nice man. No, I don't believe that he would outright lie, you know, but he is a little excitable as people from his part of the world are. Me, I believe he has a language problem.”
Doris Finch fastened on Rod. Poor Rod. So distraught. His great-grandfather's reputation sullied, his eternal rest ruined. She said it with a wistful, I-wish-he'd-just-let-me-make-him-feel-better. She suggested that Ann's motive was to get Rod's attention. “She went to his house that night, didn't she? Him, just widowered this summer.”
THE GHOST SHIP Page 15
