by Karen White
I blew on my tea, then took another swallow. “So Matthew’s family has been on St. Simons for two centuries?”
“Oh, yes. They weren’t one of the large landowners, like the Coupers of Cannon’s Point or the Butlers of Hampton, but they were respectable farmers. Even had a few acres of cotton for a time. At least until the early eighteen hundreds.”
Curious, I leaned toward her. “So what’s the legend?”
Tish’s eyes widened, and I recognized a kindred spirit who found the comings and goings of those long since dead sometimes preferable to the present. “Matthew’s great-great-something-grandmother was purported to be a traitor to her country during the British occupation of the island during the War of 1812. She supposedly fell in love with one of the Royal Marines. They say when the British evacuated, she went with them, leaving behind her husband and young son.”
“That’s terrible,” I said, my tea suddenly bitter, the oddest compulsion to cry heavy in the back of my throat. “Are these just rumors, or is any of it based on fact?”
“A little of both.” She smiled. “Maybe this can be your first project with the historical society. Although…” Tish shook her head dismissively before standing to rinse her cup in the sink.
“Although what?”
She kept her back to me while she placed her mug in the dishwasher. “Adrienne was obsessed with the story. They say the woman’s husband died of a broken heart, and that his ghost can still be seen on the beach after storms calling for his unfaithful wife. Adrienne thought it romantic; Matthew just thought it was sad and didn’t see the need to be reminded of such a tragic story.” Tish faced me again and shrugged. “You seem to be an independent-minded woman, so you can decide. But, as I mentioned before, it might be an interesting way to start learning about your new home and the family you’ve married into.”
I nodded, trying to keep a relaxed smile on my face and push away the heavy pall of sadness that seemed to have settled on me like a shawl.
Tish picked up her purse that she’d slung over a chair. “I’ve got to get back to the shop. We’ve got a wedding Saturday, and the bride keeps changing her mind about the bridesmaids’ bouquets.” She rolled her eyes. “I’ll be here at six thirty next Thursday to pick you up for the meeting. I’m usually running late, so I’ll just honk the horn outside.”
I didn’t remember telling her I’d be going, but I guessed Tish had already made up her mind. I thought briefly of my brother Stephen’s current wife, the shy and reserved Mary Jane, and imagined I knew why Tish and Stephen’s marriage had been so abbreviated.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll be ready.”
I walked her to the door and said good-bye, distracted by the thought of a heartbroken man calling out for his wife long after she’d gone. The image of him standing in a stormy surf sent a tremor through me, as if I could feel the cool spray of the water, and I quickly looked around for a distraction before my gaze settled on my cell phone on the front hall table.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I picked it up and hit the memory button. It rang four times before my mother answered. If she had a cell phone or caller ID on the house phone, I might have accused her of screening my call. But my mother had always had an aversion to the phone, as if she expected it to bring only bad news.
“Hello?”
“Mama—it’s Ava.”
A brief pause. “I figured you might be calling.”
When she didn’t say anything else, I said, “We got here safely yesterday. Matthew’s house is beautiful. It’s very old, and made from tabby—”
“Yes, I know,” she said, cutting me off. “We lived on St. Simons before you were born, remember?”
Before I could give her the chance to grill me again about why I’d chosen to move across the state, I began to ramble, searching for something to say, something that would keep her on the phone long enough for me to memorize the sound of her voice. “Did you ever hear the legend about the ghost of Matthew’s ancestor calling for his wife on the beach?”
It took her a while to answer. “I don’t recall.”
My gaze strayed to the front parlor, where it latched onto the framed charcoal sketch of Matthew’s house. “Do you believe in ghosts?” I asked quietly.
Her voice sounded strained. “Come home, Ava. I don’t like thinking about you so near the water.”
I turned my back on the sketch. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve been petrified of water since you were a baby. It was almost impossible to give you a bath in the tub. I had to get Mimi to help me just sponge-bathe you in the kitchen sink. I thought you had outgrown your fear, but I worry about it now. Now that you’re living so near the ocean.”
I thought for a moment about telling her of my experience as we’d crossed the causeway to the island, of the recurrence of my old nightmare, but I didn’t.
“I think I’ll be happy here, Mama.”
Her reply was quick this time. “I don’t see how. You don’t like the water.”
“Matthew is here. My home is with him.”
“Well, then. That’s your decision, and you’ll have to live with it.” Her voice shook, and I thought she might be crying, but the image didn’t mesh well with the mother I knew.
“You lived here, Mama. Four of your children were born here. Don’t you remember how beautiful it is?”
Her pause was so long that for a moment I thought she’d hung up. Finally, she said, “All I remember are the storms, and how the ocean moves up on the beach like it’s going to swallow it up. That’s why we left. Because we didn’t want to live in a place that could take away everything we loved.”
My old restlessness returned, mingled with impatience. “I need to go, Mama. I’ve still got a lot of unpacking to do.” I paused, feeling an intense longing for a childhood I’d never had, for things that could have been but weren’t meant for me. Gripping the phone tightly, I whispered, “I love you, Mama.” I closed my eyes, waiting for her to speak.
After a short pause, she said, “I know, Ava.” I listened to her breathe for a moment before she said, “I have to go now, too.”
“All right. Tell Mimi and everybody I said hello.”
“I will. Good-bye, Ava,” came from the other end of the phone before I heard the small click.
I held the phone in my hand for a long time, feeling as if I were waiting for more than those three little words, and wondering why she hadn’t answered my question about believing in ghosts.
CHAPTER FOUR
Gloria
ANTIOCH, GEORGIA
APRIL 2011
A good mother loves all of her children equally. As each baby was placed in my arms, I found it almost impossible to believe that my heart was big enough to make room for one more. But it was. After four boys, my heart was full nearly to bursting. Despite my love for my sons, there was still a void in my home, a feeling of missing something I’d never even had. It was as if I knew my daughter long before we met, in reverse order, like displaying a frame without a photograph.
The first time I held Ava in my arms, my heart sighed. Like it knew I was finally complete. I loved my boys, but there’s something special about a daughter. It’s as if that tiny bundle of pink blanket and ruffles is a mother’s chance to start over with her own life. That’s what my own mother told me, although from what I can see so far, neither attempt has turned out as we planned.
I clipped the columbine and added it to the basket under my arm, its riotous red soothed by the soft lavender of the crested iris. These would look perfect in Henry’s consultation office, offering simultaneous beauty and condolence. There was some sort of absurdity about displaying dying flowers in a place that was all about remembering life.
“Who was that on the phone?”
Mimi—I can’t remember how long it had been since I’d called her Mother—sat in the shade of a thick wax myrtle, her long blond hair rolled up in curlers and tucked under a red-and-white polka-dot head scarf. I kept
my own hair clipped short and in its own natural color—white—so I wouldn’t look as foolish as a woman just past ninety who wanted to be thirty again. It was useless trying to tell her that that horse had left the barn long ago.
I stopped clipping and straightened, my hand on my lower back, knowing already that I’d be popping my pain pills and taking a long nap in the near future. How much longer could I go on maintaining this garden? Mimi’s arthritis had relegated her to the sidelines years before, but that hadn’t stopped her from barking orders to me as if it were her garden. And in my own house, too! But a promise to someone made long ago propelled me to nurture this garden, and I wasn’t about to go back on my word this late in the game.
Maybe soon I’d be the one in the chair in the shade, but I was afraid I’d have nobody to boss. My daughters-in-law were good sorts, but not one of them understood a garden. They liked flowers and the pretty smells, but none of them felt the need to coax seeds from the rich earth, or comprehended how the changing foliage was a better indicator of the weather than that stupid channel they had on cable these days. And they certainly didn’t appreciate the heirloom roses, descendants of those that had once been in Mimi’s grandmother’s yard more than one hundred years before and now claimed their spot along the trellises that surrounded the garden. They were the arms of the garden, like a mother holding in her children as if it were possible to fence time.
“It was Ava,” I answered. “I guess she felt the need to let me know she arrived safely.”
I felt her accusing stare on my back. “You should have said good-bye. And then you should have called her first so you could say you’re sorry. You did apologize, right?”
I tugged on a weed so hard that I ended up raining clumps of dirt over my Oconee bells. As I bent to brush it off the leaves and delicate white flowers, I said, “I can’t apologize when I know I’m right. She married a stranger and she’s moving practically across the world.”
I cringed even before Mimi snorted in outrage. “St. Simons is hardly across the world, Gloria. It’s barely across the state, and you can make the drive in under seven hours. And Matthew Frazier isn’t a complete stranger, as you well know.”
I stiffened. “We were acquaintances of his parents; that’s all. I know nothing about Matthew. He was a little boy when we left, and I don’t think I laid eyes on him until yesterday.”
Straggly weeds rose from the dark earth like hair on a balding man, and the forget-me-nots badly needed pruning. Ava would have known to do these things, and would sometimes head to the garden first when she visited. But my daughters-in-law knew only what they were told. They wore spotless gardening gloves, afraid to have their hands in the dirt. Ava and I had always known that sticking our fingers in the dirt was a lot like holding the past and the present in your hands, understanding that decaying plants nourished the soil for new seedlings. It was hard for me to fathom that all four of my sons had married women so different from me. Ava and I were different, too, but our love of fertile soil smothered a lot of our other differences in the same way new topsoil covers the weeds. I’d always believed that Ava’s preference for useful plants over showy blooms was her way of separating herself from me. Not that it mattered; Ava could grow grass from a rock.
“You should go visit. Help Ava settle into her new house,” my mother persisted.
Mimi was like a dog with a bone, refusing to let go of a subject until she got what she wanted. “You know I can’t do that. Henry needs me here, and I’ve got the house and David’s children to watch, and all of my committees. If she wanted me to help her get settled, she should have stayed in Antioch.”
“You should tell her, you know.”
She’d gone too far this time. I dropped my basket and stalked toward her. “You know I can’t do that. It’s been too long.” There were so many other reasons, but how can a person put into words a blinding fear and the tenuous hold of a mother’s arms?
The polka-dotted head scarf flapped in the wind, looking ridiculous next to the serious expression on Mimi’s face. “I meant you should tell her that you love her.”
I stared into my own mother’s eyes, unable to count the number of times she’d told me she loved me. “She knows,” I said, before walking back to my overturned basket and the flowers that had fallen onto the green grass like spilled paint.
Ava
ST. SIMONS ISLAND, GEORGIA
APRIL 2011
I stood in the parlor staring at the framed drawing hung between the two front windows. Despite the overhang of the front porch, the late-afternoon sun slanted through the plantation shutters and illuminated the dust motes that floated in the shafts of light like spirits.
The scent of a three-cheese lasagna cooking in the oven permeated the house. Tish had given me the recipe, after ensuring that I already had all the necessary ingredients, telling me it was foolproof and one of Matthew’s favorites. Despite my misgivings, I’d managed to assemble all the ingredients and place them into the baking dish, following Tish’s instructions exactly. I’d taken the liberty of adding more cheese than the recipe called for, wanting to make the recipe my own. I hadn’t been exactly sure what that meant, but it was one of the pieces of advice my sisters-in-law had imparted to me as they’d handed me a recipe box with their favorites inside.
The air conditioner flicked on, sending cool air from the parlor floor vent. Living in Georgia all of my life, I’d grown up with central air, yet somehow, in this old house with the same floors Matthew’s ancestors had walked on for more than two centuries, it seemed wrong.
Peering closely at the artwork, I could make out the three initials in the bottom right corner. AMF. I didn’t know what the “M” stood for, but I was fairly certain the “A” and “F” were for Adrienne Frazier. I examined the sketch of the house, studying the fine lines and delicate shading. The bark of the trees was as detailed as a photograph, each curl of the Spanish moss replicated in exact shades of light and shadow. Even I had to admit that Adrienne had been an extraordinary artist. I stepped back, my unsettled feeling having nothing to do with the talents of the first Mrs. Frazier. It was something about the house in the sketch, something that seemed odd, but I had no idea what it was. It was like looking into a mirror and finding that your hair wasn’t the same color you remembered.
I lifted the frame off the wall, then hurried out to the front yard, determined to discover what it was that was different. I counted the porch supports and the steps leading up to the house. I even counted the windows and the panes in each, and studied the slope of the porch roof. But the sketch was an exact replica.
I returned inside and attempted to lift the heavy frame back onto the two small hooks. Pressing the side of my face against the wall, I peered at the back of the print and tried again and again to catch the wire hanger on the hooks but without success. In a moment of exasperation and impatience, I shoved the picture hard against the wall, freezing at the sound of paper tearing.
Feeling like I might be sick, I flipped the frame over and was nearly giddy with relief when I saw I’d ripped only the brown paper that covered the back of the frame and not the actual sketch. Despite the deep gash, nobody would notice, as the rip would be against the wall. Determined now to rehang the frame, I picked it up again, pausing as I caught sight of something loose sliding beneath the brown paper.
Placing the frame facedown on the floor, I gingerly lifted the torn paper to peer inside. From what I could tell from the small opening, there were three sheets of drawing paper, kept together with a paper clip. Curious, I stuck two fingers inside and plucked them out. They were clipped together on all four sides, and face-to-face, so I couldn’t see what was on the fronts. I was about to slip off the first paper clip when I heard the sound of crunching tires outside. Matthew was home. My horrified gaze went directly to the now slightly larger gash in the back of Adrienne’s artwork. I knew I was being irrational, but I didn’t want my new husband to think I’d vindictively vandalized the drawing.
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Standing quickly, I tried for one last time to hang the frame, the wire catching on both hooks the first time. I began walking to the front door when I spotted the drawing papers on the floor. Without thinking, I yanked open a drawer on an antique mahogany chest and closed it just as the front door opened.
I stayed where I was, unsure why I was feeling like a child with her fingers in the cookie jar. Matthew set down his briefcase and came toward me. As always when I saw him again after even a brief separation, my chest seemed to constrict, and my breathing grew more shallow. I wondered whether I’d ever stop feeling this way, but couldn’t imagine there would be enough years left in the universe.
There were no words spoken as he embraced me in greeting, then kissed me slowly. I had to gently push him away as we both became hungry for more. “There will be room for dessert later,” I said. “I don’t want my first attempts at cooking to be spoiled.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I thought you didn’t know how to cook.”
I tugged his tie loose. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.” I said it teasingly, but his eyes sobered as we both considered the truth of my words. “I figured it couldn’t be too hard to read a recipe.”
He leaned in to give me a chaste kiss on the tip of my nose, but didn’t say anything as his gaze moved to the low, square table that sat between the sofa and two chairs opposite. “What’s this?”
For a moment I thought I’d left the drawing papers in plain sight. Relieved, I remembered the clear storage bags I’d left on the table filled with old cameras and film canisters. I’d thrown them into my suitcase as an afterthought when I’d packed up my apartment, not completely sure why I’d thought them important enough to bring with me. I shrugged, a little embarrassed. “It’s just a little hobby of mine that I’ve had since I was a kid.” I sat down on the sofa while Matthew sat next to me.
