Sea Change

by Karen White

  Tish handed me one of the notepads and took a pencil from the box. “Here, take these. I figure if you get started on this side, and I get started on the opposite side, we’ll meet in the middle just in time for lunch. And mark where you find any that are too faded to read. We’ll come back for those with paper and flat crayons to see if we can lift off the words that way.”

  I looked around at the meandering paths, and the way they circled, then straightened, then seemed to disappear amid the canopies of trees and bushes.

  As if reading my mind, Tish said, “You have my cell number if you get lost. Just call—or shout. I won’t be far.”

  “Sure,” I said, watching as an older man wearing sandals and socks, a large camera around his neck, walked through the main gate with a woman wearing lime green cropped pants and a pair of sparkling white Keds. I knew they were together by their matching wraparound sunglasses. They began walking slowly in my direction, and I felt an odd relief to know that I wouldn’t be alone among the dead. I didn’t believe in ghosts, but there was something hovering in the heavily scented air, something that made me feel that if I turned my head quickly enough, I’d see what it was.

  With a brief wave, Tish walked away. Pulling out a pencil, I wrote, Page 1, at the top of the yellow pad and underlined it three times before I leaned over the first cluster of tombstones and began to read. My back grew stiff and my fingers grimy as I wiped at mold and lichens that gathered on the small stones close to the ground in shady areas. I knew my face matched my hands as I found myself wiping tears for the number of young children laid to rest in the sleeping ground, and the young men whose graves were decorated with small Confederate flags who’d been born on the island, yet died far away on the battlefields of Pennsylvania and Virginia. Some were barely older than sixteen.

  I wrote the same family names over and over: Couper, King, Butler, Hamilton, Demere, Wylly—used as either a surname or middle name and sometimes as a first name. The island had once been dominated by these families, and it made sense that they would have intermarried. As I jotted down their names and dates, I was able to form a sketch of their family trees in my brain, imagining the trunks with long branches that entwined and threaded themselves with neighboring trees until it was hard to distinguish where one started and the other ended.

  Sweat dripped in my eyes as I straightened to stretch my back, pinching my shoulder blades together with a reassuring pop. My sandals and feet were nearly brown. Despite the bright green grass in front of the church, most of the cemetery was covered in sandy dirt and dead oak leaves.

  I straightened, realizing as I did so that I was completely alone. A family of four had wandered into the cemetery shortly after I’d started, but even they seemed to have disappeared. A cold sweat enveloped me, the skin on the back of my neck tightening. I moved down the path, trying to orient myself, but felt hopelessly lost. I remembered a story one of my brothers had told me, about two American tourists at Versailles who during a tour of the gardens had found themselves somehow transported back in time to the era of Marie Antoinette and her court.

  A sense of urgency pressed against the spot between my shoulder blades, prodding me to walk quickly. I stepped off the path when I thought I recognized a tall, circular grave marker, hoping it would lead me back to the front of the church. Hurrying forward, I nearly tripped over a low iron fence, my feet managing to stop in time. I stopped, my breathing coming in small, short gasps, the air suddenly thin.

  Pressing my hands against my chest like that would somehow help my lungs gather air, I studied the area inside the fence, where about fifteen graves sprouted from the sparse grass like a garden of stone. Most appeared very old, with cracked and faded markers, with a few whiter and newer ones near the front. My gaze seemed drawn to three graves at the very back, one larger on the end next to two tiny ones.

  As if the others didn’t exist, I stepped over the low fence and moved to the back of the plot. I pressed my eyelids closed and tried to catch my breath, wondering why the placement of the other graves in the front and the larger one set with the two small ones seemed so wrong, like they weren’t supposed to be there.

  Slowly, I knelt before the larger stone, forcing myself to look as my right hand lifted to touch the words carved into the marble nearly two hundred years before.

  GEOFFREY GRANT FRAZIER

  Beloved Father and Friend

  B. 1781 D. 1815

  Life is a span, a fleeting hour

  How soon the vapor flies

  Man is a tender transient flower

  That in the Blooming dies

  The taste of grief, of dry hollowness and bitter breaths, filled my mouth. I sat back on my heels, nearly reeling from the force of it, incomprehension flooding me as if I’d gone to sleep and awakened in a foreign place with no understanding of where the roads led or what language I was expected to speak.

  Reluctantly, I lowered my hand, my fingertips brushing the letters and numbers on their descent before turning to the next two stones. They were tiny, only about one-third the size of the first one, and only a few short lines were scratched into the creamy white surface.

  JAMIE HAMILTON FRAZIER

  B. 1805 D. 1805

  and

  MICHAEL MACGREGOR FRAZIER

  BORN AND DIED THE FIFTH OF FEBRUARY, 1806

  I shot to a stand, then stumbled backward toward the front of the small plot, unable to move my gaze, yet also unable to stay too close. I didn’t understand any of it, this sudden vertigo that left me feeling as if I were flying and falling all at the same time. I focused on the trees and the ground and the metal chain of the fence, all things recognizable and familiar, things whose purpose and presence I understood.

  Pausing just inside the fence, I realized I’d dropped my notepad and pencil. Being careful not to allow my head to dip beneath my heart and make myself more light-headed, I slowly crouched to retrieve both items and found myself face-to-face with the newest grave in the plot.

  It stood alone, set aside the way a child puts away a favorite toy to preserve it, the pink granite glowing in the muted sunshine allowed in by the oaks. Dead roses, wilted and brown, slumped against the headstone, a wreath with a faded yellow ribbon with the word “Daughter” leaned against the other side in defeat. Slowly, I read the words chiseled on its bright face.

  ADRIENNE MCMAHON FRAZIER

  Beloved wife of Matthew

  Mother of unborn children

  BORN MAY 29, 1981

  DIED AUGUST 27, 2007

  “She was a really nice lady.”

  The man’s voice so close behind me shot me to my feet, my notepad and pencil flying. I turned around, hoping to find a living, breathing person.

  “Did I scare you?” His words were thick and rounded, as if they came from a mouth filled with marbles.

  The man standing just on the other side of the fence had the smooth, untroubled skin of a child, but his brown eyes seemed to carry the witness of years like a much older person. His face was round with ruddy cheeks, a soft blond stubble on a patch of his chin where he had apparently missed with his razor. His hair was thinning, but prematurely, I thought, as he didn’t seem to be much older than mid-forties or so. His most arresting feature, however, was his nose. It zigged and zagged at odd angles instead of a straight line, as if it had been broken many times and never set. He was a big man, and I wondered whether he’d been a boxer or some sort of fighter to have earned a nose like that.

  He wore a plaid long-sleeved shirt buttoned up to the neck, and jeans worn a little too high for current fashion. His knees were covered with pads tied behind his legs, just like my mother wore when we worked in her garden, and he carried a trowel.

  “Just startled me, that’s all,” I said, wondering whether I should be scared after all. Despite his smile and expression of concern, there was something different about him, something that set him apart from most people, yet I couldn’t name exactly what it was.

  “You dropped your p
aper,” he said, then leaned down to retrieve the yellow notepad.

  “Thanks,” I said, reaching out and trying not to wince as I saw the skin on his wrists and hands. Long and purple keloid scars climbed from his fingertips and beyond his wrists, twisting and thick like the roots of an old oak tree. They were old scars, but the skin still appeared pink and raw. I lifted my eyes and met his gaze, but he didn’t seem to notice that I’d been staring.

  “I’m Ava Frazier,” I said, introducing myself but not offering my hand, then waited for him to do the same.

  Instead, he looked back at the gravestone and repeated, “She was a really nice lady.”

  “There you are!” Tish came marching down the path, her feet stirring stones. She stopped in front of us and smiled at the man. “Hello, Jimmy. It’s good to see you.”

  The man beamed as Tish embraced him, his hands dangling by his sides as if he were unsure what to do with them. Tish turned to me. “So, y’all met?”

  “Sort of. I’m Ava Frazier,” I said again, hoping to prompt him.

  “I’m Jimmy,” he said, smiling warmly. Despite his oddities, there was something engaging about his open face and dark eyes that made me smile back as if we were old friends.

  “Jimmy Scott,” Tish added. “The best landscape architect on the island, if not in the entire state; isn’t that right, Jimmy?”

  Jimmy’s cheeks flushed a bright pink that mimicked the color of his hands. “No, ma’am. But I do like flowers.”

  “He’s being modest,” Tish said, and I noticed for the first time the red wagon filled with containers of greens and blooming flowers, the overabundance spilling over the sides like children dressed for a party. “You going to tend to your family?”

  “Yes, ma’am. It’s time. Thought I’d plant roses on Adrienne’s grave first. Not too much sun here, so they won’t last, but her mama asked me to.”

  I felt relief at his words, not bothering to wonder why.

  Tish patted his arm. “You’re a good man, Jimmy. And I’ll be calling you later this week to talk about my side yard. It’s gone wild, and I need a good plan for it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He dipped his head toward me. “Nice to meet you, Ava Frazier.”

  “You, too,” I said, then turned to follow Tish out of the maze of paths and gravestones. When we were out of hearing, I asked, “Who is he, exactly?”

  Tish looked over her shoulder to make sure we were out of earshot of the large man. “He really is the best landscaper; everybody uses him on the island. He’s lived here his whole life and is sort of a fixture in the community.”

  “Is he…?” I wasn’t sure how to finish the question.

  Tish brushed her hand through the air. “It’s not what you’re thinking. He’s extremely intelligent in things that matter to him. I had him as a student and he’s brilliant with numbers, but couldn’t memorize a poem or write a coherent sentence if his life depended on it. He studied horticulture at the University of Georgia and did real well—although I will admit that I and some of his other teachers at the high school tutored him quite a bit for his English and writing classes, helped him with his papers, that kind of thing. Didn’t need any help whatsoever in the math and science classes, though. He does have a few issues with his speech, which makes him socially awkward at times, which sets him apart, but other than that he’s completely normal—if there’s really such a thing.”

  I thought for a moment as we headed toward a main path, relieved to see the church in the near distance. “Was he born that way?”

  “Yes.” Tish trudged on, her footsteps suddenly heavier, and I saw sweat drip down her cheeks. Tish paused and faced me. “Although if he’d been given speech therapy when he was younger, it might not be as pronounced. That’s just one of the forms of abuse that poor boy had to put up with.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She stopped, her face troubled. “When Jimmy was only five years old his father tried to drown him in the bathtub. That’s not what the police report said, but, well, people talk. Luckily his mother was able to intervene in time, not that she didn’t pay for it.” She shook her head. “Mary Anne—his mother—was a nurse, so I’m sure she took care of a lot of things that never saw the light of day. God only knows what that woman and her children suffered. Floyd Scott was a brutal animal, and I know it’s not right to speak ill of the dead, but it was a good day when he died.”

  “What about his hands? Did his father do that, too?”

  We were in the middle of the path between the front door of the church and the main gate. Tish glanced toward the church as if to make sure God wasn’t listening. “In a way, yes. Jimmy’s dad was on one of his drunken binges and set the house on fire with everybody in it. Jimmy tried to save his mother and two little sisters—and him being only fifteen. That’s how he got those awful burns on his hands and arms—but they all died. It was a tragedy, for sure, but good came of it, too. Jimmy survived and was taken in by another family on the island. And that mean son of a bitch was dead.”

  We started to walk toward the gate again when I recalled how I’d first seen Jimmy at Adrienne’s grave. “It was the McMahons, wasn’t it? Who took Jimmy in after the fire.”

  Tish nodded. “They didn’t know the Scotts, but they’d been foster parents for years. That’s actually how they came to adopt Adrienne and John—they were foster children first. Anyway, Jimmy needed a home, so they opened up theirs.” She sighed. “I know the McMahons were real good to him, but Jimmy still grieves for his real mama like he does his two little sisters. He sometimes pretends that they’re still alive and he’s waiting for them to come home. I think it makes it easier for him to accept why they’re not here.”

  We walked the rest of the way to the car in silence, the heat oppressive now, the atmosphere of the cemetery too crowded with stories of those who’d lived and died. I climbed into the car and closed my eyes for a moment, trying to block out the image of scarred hands and a crushed nose.

  Forever. I heard the word as if it had been spoken inside my head. I glanced back once as we drove out of the parking lot, catching a glimpse of the three tombstones in the rear of the enclosure, and remembering the inscription, Beloved Father and Friend. It wasn’t until we were driving away, the Gothic steeple of the church sliding by my window, that I realized what thought had been pecking at my brain, trying to get my attention. Where was the wife and mother? And why was there no mention of her on Geoffrey Frazier’s tombstone?

  I faced forward, staring ahead at the road but still seeing the three lone gravestones, the absence of the fourth as real as granite and as palpable as a heartbreak.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Ava

  ST. SIMONS ISLAND, GEORGIA

  MAY 2011

  W hat is the taste of fear? Is it the acrid taste of adrenaline that coats the mouth? Or is it the salty tang of ocean water as it fills every cavity, pushing out the air needed to breathe? I lay in my bed inside the shadowed world between sleep and waking where foreign thoughts clouded my brain, and I felt the edges of the old nightmare rumble past me, stirring my subconscious with a stiff breeze.

  But Matthew’s naked body pressed against my own, anchoring me to this place, and the terror subsided, calming me as the salty taste dissipated like early-morning mist over water. Yet as sleep eluded me I realized that what I feared most was no longer the actual dream; it was not knowing where the words had come from.

  I slipped quietly from the bed, knowing that sleep wouldn’t find me despite it being only dawn, and threw on a T-shirt before padding barefoot downstairs to the kitchen. I made a pot of coffee and, while waiting for it to brew, pulled out a notepad I’d discovered previously in one of the drawers, and began to make a list. Salt and pepper shakers. Dishes. Toaster. This last was starred. The gourmet toaster oven that dominated a large portion of the countertop seemed to do everything but actually toast bread, and all I wanted was the basic model with four slits in the top. I might not cook, but I did know how
to make toast if I had the proper equipment. T-shirt for Mimi. Seeds for Mama.

  I tapped the pen against the last entry several times before finally striking through it. And then rewriting it. She’d lived on St. Simons but grew none of the plants so abundant here in her Antioch garden. Some plants might not do as well away from the coast, but I thought she would at least like to experiment. It was one of the things I loved best about my mother: her inability to accept no as an answer. I’d once asked her whether that was the reason she kept trying for a girl after having so many boys. She’d placed her hand on the crown of my head as if I were a delicate orchid and had been about to say something when she stopped suddenly, removed her hand, and told me to go do my homework. I’d thought many times about asking her again, but I never seemed to be able to find the courage.

  I pulled two cups from the cabinet and poured coffee into one with my left hand while I added coffee cups to the bottom of my list. Adrienne was everywhere in this kitchen, and by replacing the small things first, I hoped to slowly exorcise her until I no longer felt her every time I stepped into the room.

  Slipping on a pair of flip-flops that I’d started keeping by the back door—next to Matthew’s much larger ones—I headed outside. Full summer was less than a month away, yet the air already seemed drenched with water, the marshes painted in shades of green. The birds were more abundant now, too, and their barks and calls had become so familiar to me that they no longer awakened me in the morning. I’d begun to wonder whether I could ever sleep anywhere else, as if their absence would awaken me instead.

  I sipped my coffee as I stared at the old garden plot and remembered Tish telling me that Adrienne had loved her flowers. I recalled, too, how she’d said midwifery wasn’t Adrienne’s passion, but that she’d been competent. I wondered whether Tish had merely meant to make me feel better, or if her words meant something else entirely.