A Long Time Gone

by Karen White

  The smell of cedar and dust came out first, followed by what I was sure was the scent of dried oranges and cinnamon, reminders of the garlands and wreaths I’d helped Bootsie store after my last Christmas.

  I stared into the dark staircase for a long moment, then reached inside to the light switch and flipped it on. The bare bulb at the top of the stairs illuminated the wooden risers and ceiling rafters, and the shadows of trunks and boxes on the periphery looking down at me like spectators at a boxing ring.

  I sniffed again, wondering how those old scents could still be contained within the four walls of the attic, and thinking that maybe they just existed inside my own memories. I took a step up, trying to make out the shape of something hanging from one of the rafters. It was draped in an old Hamlin’s dress bag, the bottom half unzipped, and when I squinted to where the contents spilled out of the opened bottom, I recognized Bootsie’s fox-fur coat.

  Before I even realized what I was doing, I was running up the stairs, as if somehow feeling the fur against my skin would bring a part of her back to me, would give me a little of her wisdom that would tell me what I needed to do.

  The two-way zipper on the cover was stuck, and I worked frantically to pull it up so I could open it and take out the coat. I sat down on a nearby trunk and pressed the fur collar into my face, remembering how I’d loved being hugged by Bootsie as a child. The coat was musty and carried with it the scent of cedar, but when I breathed deeply I could still detect the Youth Dew perfume she’d worn when she dressed up for church or a garden club meeting. Just touching the fur seemed to slow my heart, forced me to breathe again. Took away the frantic desire for a pill without completely eradicating the need.

  The dog stayed at the bottom of the steps, like a guard, while I sat with my grandmother’s fur coat pressed against me until I heard the clock strike and I realized I’d been up there for two hours. The dog hadn’t left his position and I started feeling guilty, wondering if he was hungry or thirsty.

  I stood, my desperation still there but only clinging to the edges now. I carefully rehung the coat, making a mental note to get a longer bag so it would all fit inside, zipping it halfway. Almost to the top step, I looked over at a box to the side of the staircase with its four flaps open. With a quick glance I saw a stack of old magazines, an ancient issue of Vogue on top, an image of a green-turbaned Audrey Hepburn on the cover. Not wanting them to get ruined by accumulating dust, I went over to close up the box, but stopped when I recognized several of my mother’s old headbands shoved between the books, along with a fringed leather vest that probably should have been thrown away or used as a Halloween costume.

  Of all the times I’d been up to the attic with Bootsie and Tommy to retrieve and then return holiday decorations, we’d never stopped to look in the boxes. I’d always been too eager to decorate the tree, and then after Christmas, I’d been too eager to get the boring job of dismantling the holidays over with.

  But I remembered the year I was sixteen and my mother had come home for good, and how she’d packed up her things in her bedroom and brought a box to the attic as if she could pack up her past and store it away like it had never happened. I’d heard her struggling up the stairs with the box and hadn’t offered to help. And never once, in all of these years, had I thought of it or what it might contain.

  I stepped out of the light from the overhead bulb and there, sitting in a corner on top of what looked to be a Greyhound bus schedule, was a red bound journal with the word “Diary” in cracked embossed gold on the front. I wasn’t sure how long I stared at it, torn between closing the box and picking it up. But eventually I leaned in and took it, then sat down on a trunk with the diary in my hand.

  I recalled my disappointment upon my return in April, when I’d discovered that my mother’s memory was gone, that she would never know enough to remember why she needed to tell me she was sorry, that I would never hear her story that would explain what was missing in me that made her want to leave.

  As Bootsie used to say, all things happened for a reason. Maybe that was why I’d stumbled into the attic and seen her coat. And found my mother’s diary. It was almost as if Bootsie were there beside me, prompting me to read it.

  With a deep breath, I opened the cover, pausing at my mother’s signature on the first page, and it hit me with a pang of nostalgia that I’d never seen her handwriting before. Would have no idea whether this was hers except for the name scrawled on that first page. Carol Lynne Walker Moise, Indian Mound, Mississippi, August 5, 1962. Her seventeenth birthday. I hadn’t remembered that her birthday was on the fifth of August. And I’d never asked.

  I slid down onto the floor of the attic and rested my back against the trunk. Then, with my mother’s story in my hands, I bent my head and began to read.

  It was the dog’s bark that eventually drew me back to the present. I wasn’t aware of how long I’d read or how long I’d been sitting on the attic floor with the book on my lap as my mind worked its way in and out of my mother’s story—where it intersected with mine, and how my own past had suddenly been rewritten.

  I still felt empty, and Chloe remained gone from me, but I imagined I could see a sliver of light, as a window was slowly being eased open.

  Carefully, I made my way down the steps with the diary still clutched in my hand, holding tightly to the railing because of my light-headedness. The dog was gone, and I wondered if he’d been barking to tell me that we both needed to be fed. My stomach growled as I realized I hadn’t eaten all day.

  I paused halfway down the front stairs. Carol Lynne, wearing her old jeans and blouse, sat on the bottom step, two suitcases waiting by the door. She looked like she might still be waiting for Jimmy Hinkle to come pick her up and take her away from here, like a ghost doomed to repeat the same action over and over.

  “Mama?” I’d called her that when I was a little girl. I’d forgotten that I had, and was glad she’d written it in her diary so that I’d remember.

  She looked up at me and smiled. “Yes, baby?”

  “Where are you going?”

  Her eyes moved to the door, and then to her suitcases, then back to me. “I don’t know.”

  “Why don’t you stay here awhile? I think I’ll stay with you, if that’s okay.”

  “That’ll be nice.”

  I put my arm around her, and she rested her head on my shoulder. I thought of all that I’d just read. We’d faced the same demons, yet had somehow found a way to fight them again and again, had found the grace we sought in the walls of this old yellow house, and the people and memories who lived under its roof. Like migrating birds we’d come back, eternal optimists who believed this house held all the second chances we’d ever need. Or maybe we were both just too stupid to ever admit defeat.

  The hollowness still echoed inside my chest as I thought of Chloe, and how here I was, back where I’d started, with nothing to show for the journey and no idea where to go next. We watched as shadows moved across the walls, and I wondered if those same shadows walked inside her head.

  “We’ve been a long time gone, Vivi.”

  Tears pricked at the back of my eyes. “Yes, Mama. We have.”

  There was still so much pain between us, too much to be completely erased by the words in a diary, but they were a start. And we were here. We’d both come back. Maybe that would be enough for both of us for now.

  I breathed in deeply, smelling the lemony scent of her skin, and I was eight years old again and we were lying on top of the Indian mound, counting stars.

  The door opened and Tommy walked in, taking in our mother and me sitting on the stairs together, her suitcases by the door.

  “It’s all right, Tommy,” I said, standing. “Mama and I were just deciding that she’s going to stay a little while longer.”

  “That’s good to hear.” He looked at me, his expression somewhere between confusion and excitemen
t. “I’m sorry I missed Chloe this morning. Tripp said it was hard.”

  I grimaced. “That’s one way to put it.”

  “I got your watch working.” He held it out to me, and I placed it on my wrist.

  I compared the time to the face on the grandfather clock in the hall. “It’s dead-on.”

  “Thank you.”

  I looked at his face, trying to read it, but couldn’t. “What is it?” I asked.

  He stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out a tiny slip of paper, no longer than an inch and less than a quarter of an inch wide. “This is why it wasn’t working. This was shoved into the back.”

  I took it and then, squinting to read the tiny handwriting in black ink, read the two words: Forgive me.

  “Do you know what that means?” he asked.

  Droplets of ice slipped their way down my spine. “No.” I scrubbed my hands over my face, weariness pulling at my bones and settling behind my eyes. “But I think I know who might. I just need to go lie down for a little bit so I can think straight.” I handed him our mother’s diary. “I think you should read this. It will explain a lot of things.”

  He studied the cover, then looked at me closely. “Are you all right?”

  I shook my head. “No. Not yet. But for the first time in a long while, I’m beginning to think I could be.”

  “Anything I can do?”

  “I don’t think so, but I’ll let you know.”

  Our mother was attempting to drag her suitcases up the stairs, and Tommy stopped her, lifted the bags, then followed her upstairs.

  I heard Cora in the kitchen talking to the dog as I slowly went up the stairs to my room. I was nearly swaying on my feet with exhaustion, but I dug into my purse and found the remaining pill. I quickly dropped it into the toilet and flushed it before I could think twice.

  Then I dragged my suitcase out from under the bed and began dumping all of my trophies and awards and high school photos inside. Like my mother before me, it had taken me a long time to realize it was time to grow up. To stop looking toward the vanishing point where horizon met sky, and instead look around where I stood, and finally see all that I’d been given.

  I left the remaining books on the shelves, thinking that if Chloe ever came back she might want to read them, then zipped my suitcase closed. Panting from the exertion, I lay down on my bed and closed my eyes; the last thing I remembered before sleep claimed me was the tiny note pulled from the watch. Forgive me.

  “Forgive me,” I repeated, the word whispered to my mother and Bootsie; to Tommy, Chloe, and even Tripp. To all of those I hadn’t had the courage to say good-bye to.

  Chapter 46

  Vivien Walker Moise

  INDIAN MOUND, MISSISSIPPI

  JUNE 2013

  I slept for fourteen hours straight, my head feeling clear for the first time in months. I’d kept my phone held close while I’d slept, in case Chloe called, but wasn’t surprised when I saw that I hadn’t missed any calls. I hit speed dial and her phone went straight to voice mail. I hung up and tried again, but this time I left a message—telling her my side of the story until I was cut off, then calling her again to tell her the rest until I was finished. She might delete them all without listening. But she might not. I had licked clean the pot of fresh ideas, and could only hope and pray that Chloe would listen, and not hate me for the rest of her life.

  I had breakfast with my mother, half expecting her to ask about JoEllen, but she didn’t. When I left I kissed her on the cheek and told Cora I’d be back around lunch, and then I called Mathilda to let her know I was coming. Even if she pretended she was sleeping or feeling poorly, I would sit in her old recliner and wait.

  She was sitting up in her chair when I entered, an afghan spread over her birdlike legs, the television tuned to Kathie Lee and Hoda, the volume set almost as high as it would go. Her hands were cupped together in her lap and she smiled as I entered.

  “It’s Vivien,” I said.

  She lifted her cheek for me. “Hello, sweet girl.”

  I kissed her papery cheek. “Hello, Mathilda. It’s good to see you again. I hope I’m not interrupting your show.”

  She waved her hand. “Oh, no. I jus’ like to hear Kathie Lee laugh. I think it scares the roaches away. Just go ahead and turn it off, if you don’ mind.”

  I hunted for the remote and flipped off the TV, then pulled up a chair next to her.

  “You brung me somethin’ good to eat?”

  Despite myself, I smiled. “I’m sorry—I forgot. I promise I will next time.”

  “I blind, but I ain’t deaf, and I can hear a world of sadness in your breathin’, Vivi.”

  Her sightless eyes settled on me, and I wished I remembered what they’d looked like before, how my mother and Bootsie and Adelaide had seen them.

  “I found my mother’s diary and read it. It started when she was seventeen and ended when she came back that last time.” I stood, hoping to ease the unbearable ache around my heart that had begun the night in the garden with Chloe. As if changing my position could possibly help. I stopped at one of the plants in the window, noticed it needed water. “She mentioned you a lot.”

  Mathilda nodded, her hands remaining cupped in her lap. “I ’spect so. I knows her since she was just a tiny baby. She like my own.”

  I looked at her sharply, recalling that I’d had more than one mother, too. “She wrote that you were real good at keeping secrets.” I walked slowly back to the bedside chair, trying to think of what I needed to ask. “It was your room she went snooping in when she was a little girl, wasn’t it? She took something, and when you found out you asked her to give it back.”

  She lifted a hand and held it out to me, and before she dropped the little ring onto my palm, I knew what it was. I stared at it, then tried to put it on my own pinkie finger, but it was too small.

  “You’ve had it all this time.”

  “For such a little thing, it be a heavy burden.”

  I stared at it while I spoke. “I asked you before if you knew what happened to it.”

  “You asked just to know the answer. I didn’t want to tell you till you askin’ for the right reason.”

  I didn’t understand, but knew she’d wait until I’d figured it out. I ran the ring between my fingers, a symbol of a mother’s love for her child, and I had to force the next words from my mouth. “How did you come by it?”

  She began to pluck at her blankets in agitation. “Can I have some water, please? All this talkin’s makin’ me thirsty.”

  If I hadn’t been so agitated myself, I would have laughed, seeing as how she’d only spoken a handful of words. I picked up a water pitcher by her bed and filled a plastic tumbler and stuck in a straw like I’d seen Cora do.

  She took a sip. “I found it.”

  “Where?”

  “In William’s room—though Adelaide and them calls him Willie. I went lookin’ for it right after Mr. Berlini got kilt.”

  I frowned, remembering the name from the newspaper article Chloe had pulled from the archives. I’d read it thoroughly, taking notes, thinking it would be an interesting story for one of the pieces I was supposed to write. “The man who was found in the pond at the Ellis plantation with supposed mob connections?”

  She nodded, her eyes focused on me in a disconcerting way and I had to remind myself that she couldn’t see.

  “I don’t understand. Why would Adelaide’s cousin have the ring—and why would Mr. Berlini’s death have anything to do with it?”

  “Why you wants to know? So you can bury that sweet girl with a clear conscience? Or because you think you might find the answers to you own problems? Because ain’t nobody can do that for you but yo’self.”

  I remembered the sliver of light I’d imagined when I’d read my mother’s diary, and I couldn’t stop myself from clinging to the ho
pe that if I heard Adelaide’s story it might throw the window wide-open, illuminate the path in front of me that I couldn’t see no matter how hard I looked.

  “Please, Mathilda. I need to know. I do want to bury her and honor her life. But I think her story might help me in some way, too. Is that too much to hope for?”

  “No, Vivi. I just don’ want you disappointed you don’ get the answer you want.”

  “I’m ready. Really, I am.”

  She nodded and took a sip of her water, then began to talk.

  Her story began when she first met Adelaide when Mathilda came to help her mother at the Heathmans’. She told the story of a New Year’s Eve party when Adelaide had saved her, and a night when she and Adelaide had brought in a drunken Sarah Beth and put her to bed.

  I walked around the room while she spoke, watering her plants, trimming them and loosening the soil. My fingers gravitated to the care of all growing things, and I found it helped me focus on what Mathilda was telling me, as if by nurturing something I could buffer the bad parts in her story.

  She told me of Adelaide meeting John, and their wedding, and all their lost babies until Bootsie was born, and how she was the shining light in both their lives.

  She paused to take a drink, and I was afraid that she’d stop, so I pressed on. “Even though he was involved in bootlegging, that didn’t affect their relationship?”

  “It did, and the man he work for, Mr. Berlini, he don’ want Mr. John to quit even though both him and Miss Adelaide wants him to. I don’ know why for sure, but he kept workin’ for Mr. Berlini, and Miss Adelaide, she put up with it. She love him that much.”

  “So where does Willie come into all this?”