Sea Change

by Karen White

  His face relaxed into a smile. “Thank you, Pamela. I shall hope for word of your success.” Bowing, and replacing his hat on his head, he said, “I should leave you to your garden.”

  I looked up into his handsome face, and asked the question I’d wanted to ask since the day of Jamie’s funeral, when he had given Jemma to me. “Why do you and my husband dislike each other so much?”

  He seemed startled by my candor, as most people were. Perhaps it was because I had lacked a mother’s guidance, but I had learned that to get an answer, one needed to first ask.

  His lips turned up in a half smile, but there was no humor there. “Your husband would be better able to answer that. I suggest you ask him.” He tipped his hat, then left.

  I stood where I was for a long time, listening to the laughter of my child and spinning my wedding ring around on my finger before returning to the garden, all the while wondering what Nathaniel had meant, and suddenly unsure that I wanted to know.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Ava

  ST. SIMONS ISLAND, GEORGIA

  MAY 2011

  I sat on the dock and watched the trees swallowing the light as the sun dipped lower in the sky, my empty glass of wine—my second—beside me. My heart fluttered like a dangling leaf as I forced myself to sit so near the water in a form of self-therapy or self-abuse—I wasn’t sure which. Either way, my fear helped to divert my anger as I waited, twisting my wedding ring around and around my finger while I listened for the sound of Matthew’s car. The low hum of a mosquito brushed by my ear, but I didn’t swat at it, knowing it had no interest in me.

  I closed my eyes, listening to the sounds of the marsh, of the thousands of invisible insects chirping, whirring, and buzzing, of the cries of birds I was still learning the names of, and of water whispering beneath me as it navigated through the tall reeds of cordgrass. My pulse skipped and jumped as I imagined what the currents carried below me, where they had come from, and where they were going. I opened my eyes and tried to focus on the solid sky, and recalled a John F. Kennedy quote I’d heard in a history class once, something about how our bodies carry within us the same percentage of salt as the ocean—salt in our blood, sweat, and tears. He thought it was the reason so many of us return to the sea, back to the place from which we started. The thought only made me shiver.

  I heard the sound of car tires on crushed shells, then waited for Matthew to find me, knowing it wouldn’t take him long. I stayed where I was, anticipating his gaze on my back and the sound of his footsteps, which was now as familiar to me as my own. The back door opened and shut, but I didn’t turn around. I stared at my empty wineglass, forcing myself to remember that I was angry so that I wouldn’t betray myself again as soon as he touched me.

  “Ava?” His heavy tread made the dock sway, and I wanted to clutch at something to steady myself, until I realized the one thing I was looking for was Matthew.

  He stopped in front of me and I finally looked up. He wore an expression of concern and carried a large brown box taped shut at the top.

  “This was waiting on the front steps. It’s for you.”

  I barely glanced at the box, needing instead to get my words out before his hands touched me and I would no longer be able to speak. “You went through Adrienne’s studio and cleared it out without me.”

  He placed the box behind him on the bench, then sat down next to me on the dock, his long legs stretched out in front of him. He didn’t move toward me, but I felt his pull just the same, the way the ocean’s tides felt the moon. “I wanted to tell you before you had a chance to see it.”

  I watched his eyes, wondering whether I could hurt him, too. “I didn’t. John McMahon told me.”

  A shadow flickered behind his eyes as he regarded me steadily, but he remained silent.

  “He wanted me to let you know that his parents are glad to have Adrienne’s sketches, but that it doesn’t change anything.” I swallowed, waiting for him to explain to me why, or to ask for an apology, just so I wouldn’t have to continue. Eventually the word slipped past my lips. “Why?”

  He took a deep breath, and for a fleeting moment I wondered whether he was using that brief respite to think of something to say that would explain his actions without telling me the truth.

  “Because I didn’t want you to have to go through all of that, all of those reminders of her.” He filled his chest with air again, then slowly let it out. “And I wanted to say good-bye to her by myself. I’d let her go a long time ago, but I think I was holding on to the studio because I wasn’t ready to let her go completely.” He reached over and took my hand in his, my skin tingling where it met his. “I didn’t do it to hurt you.”

  I didn’t look at him, knowing that if I did, all would be forgiven. “But it still hurts that you’d make that decision after we talked about it.”

  “You’re right. I didn’t consider your feelings and I’m sorry. They were just preliminary sketches—nothing complete. And definitely nothing valuable, and I just wanted them out of there. It’s done, Ava. I made Adrienne’s parents happy, and you’ve got your potting shed. Can we put this behind us now?”

  A strong breeze fanned the marsh grass, bringing with it the smell of the ocean, salty and wild. A tremor shuddered across my shoulders, but I closed my eyes against it and faced instead the darkest part of my mind where my fears lived, tucked away and hidden like a secret. “Did you find anything else? Any clue that might tell you why Adrienne left that night or where she was heading?” I thought of the faceless images of the baby and the words engraved on her tombstone. Mother of unborn children. Even in my anger, I couldn’t bring that up now.

  His hand slid from mine, the absence of his warmth more terrifying than the thick and heavy water that surrounded us. “Did John tell you to ask me that?”

  “No. I’m asking because I want to know.”

  “Why, Ava? Why are you always looking backward when all I want to do is move forward?”

  I stood, too drained to explain to him what he should have already known: that I must have been born looking behind me, searching for what pursued me, for what waited around the corner, for my elusive shadow sister. I’d learned very early on that if you only looked ahead, you might miss what was right there behind you, waiting to be revealed.

  Matthew stood, too, and placed his hands gently on my face. “I’m sorry, Ava. You’re right. And you have every right to ask that question. But don’t you think that if I’d found something I would have told you? Wouldn’t I want to erase any doubt in your mind that I had anything to do with her accident?”

  Anger simmered inside me, charring the edges of my other emotions. “You can’t erase the past, Matthew. If you think you need to just to protect me, then stop. I’m stronger than you seem to think I am.”

  An odd look came into his eyes, and I was reminded of something he’d said to me about Adrienne the night of Tish’s party. She told me once that sometimes when I looked at her it was like I was seeing a ghost instead. Looking at him now, I thought I understood what she meant. Quietly I asked, “What were you hoping to find, Matthew?”

  His hands dropped to his sides. “I love you, Ava. Isn’t that enough?”

  I thought of the time I’d fallen through the ice covering our backyard pool. I’d never gone near it in the summer, but I somehow thought I could conquer my fear if I could walk on top of it. My mother had jumped in wearing her silk dress and pearls to pull me out before I’d had a chance to gulp in a single mouthful of water. She didn’t say a word to me as she dried me off and put me to bed in a warm, dry nightgown and let me eat chicken soup on a bed tray. I hadn’t even understood why she’d bothered to jump in to save me until I’d heard her sobbing outside my door long after she thought I was asleep.

  “No,” I said, realizing how much truth a single word could carry.

  He regarded me silently for a long moment, his thoughts unreadable. “I’m not going to ask why you were with John McMahon, but I hope you’ll tell m
e. He’s not somebody I would want you to cultivate a friendship with.” I saw the anger in his eyes before he turned around and went back to the house, the door slamming shut behind him.

  I swallowed the thick ball of tears that had formed in my throat, and wondered what I was supposed to do next. I’d never argued with my fiancé, Phil, and maybe that was why I hadn’t ever felt like I should marry him, as if neither one of us possessed convictions worth arguing about.

  My gaze settled on the box Matthew had brought out to me, and for the first time I saw the company name stamped on the outside of the box: NADENE COSMETICS. It had to have come from home, since I couldn’t imagine anybody else I knew using a mortuary supply box to ship anything to me.

  Grateful to escape the dock and the murmur of water, I scooped up my empty wineglass, then managed to pick up the box and carry them both inside to the kitchen before depositing them on the kitchen table. I was disappointed to find that the room was empty, remembering the advice imparted by my sisters-in-law about never going to bed angry. But what had transpired between Matthew and me was much deeper than anger. It was more of a rupture at our foundation, releasing questions and doubts that were easily transformed and disguised by love.

  I moved through the silent house to the foyer, feeling the emptiness around me. I looked out the front windows and saw that Matthew’s car was gone. I swallowed again and straightened my shoulders, imagining my mother watching and waiting for me to admit that she was right.

  Walking resolutely back to the kitchen, I grabbed the large flashlight out of the walk-in pantry, then flipped on the back floodlights before heading toward Adrienne’s studio. I’d been too angry to go there after Matthew had cleared it out, but now I felt a strong need to see it myself.

  It was still bright enough outside to observe that the boards had been pulled from both windows, allowing the twilight to seep inside the dusty space as I stepped over the threshold. The canvases and easels were gone, as was the large table. Freestanding shelves holding an assortment of clay pots in all sizes now sat against one wall. Rows of hooks had been added to boards attached to the wall opposite the door, and from them hung spades and trowels, a shovel and a rake, and other gardening implements—some of which even I wasn’t familiar with. Bags of fertilizer and potting soil were lined up like soldiers on a wooden pallet to keep away the moisture and bugs, and the windows had been cleaned of their grime.

  I walked closer to the tools and flipped on the flashlight to see better, and noticed that most of the handles were red, and the trowel was all red except for the wooden part in the middle. It would have taken Matthew a long time to drive from place to place, since red handles were hard to find, and when I pictured him searching for gardening tools in my favorite color, my anger began its slip into guilt.

  The door to the narrow stairs sat open, but I didn’t venture up them. I remembered Matthew telling me how Adrienne was afraid of ghosts, and wondered whether it was this place that had made her think of the presence of the dead. It was all around me here, and I found myself expecting the fall of feet coming down the stairs, or the brush of a hand on my arm.

  “Ava?”

  I jumped, nearly dropping the flashlight. I turned to find Matthew silhouetted in the doorway, and for a brief moment I thought he was somebody else, somebody else whose presence I welcomed.

  He walked slowly into the room, the dim light from the doorway behind him casting his face in darkness.

  “You did all this. For me.”

  I felt him nod. “But I should have waited. It’s just…”

  I didn’t speak, knowing he’d keep his thoughts inside as long as possible, sifting them like flour, until the right ones came out. It was one of the few things I’d had to learn about him.

  “I needed to do something. To keep my thoughts occupied.” He sighed, and I felt the heaviness of his thoughts. “I had a patient suicide yesterday. A sixteen-year-old boy. I needed…”

  I walked toward him and took his hands in mine. “Shhh. I’m so sorry. You have me now, all right? And I won’t break; I promise. You can tell me these things. Maybe it will make it easier for you.”

  I walked into his arms like wind through water, and pressed my face into his chest, his scent again part of me.

  “I’m not used to that. Needing help. I’m supposed to be the doctor with all the answers. The one who doesn’t fail.”

  Pulling back, I pressed my finger against his lips. “You’re human, Matthew. And I’m your wife—here to share the good with the bad. We said vows to that effect, remember? Don’t try to protect me.”

  He nodded as my lips replaced my finger. He drew me toward him, and I allowed myself to be enveloped in his embrace. And in the moment before I closed my eyes, the flashlight caught on the corner of the wall by the stairs, where kudzu vines had begun to work themselves into a crack along the wall, climbing upward like a spider, relentless in its advance, like the doubt that crept around my skull and took root in my chest where my heart beat.

  Gloria

  ANTIOCH, GEORGIA

  MAY 2011

  The morning birds chatted and argued in the branches of the pawpaw tree as I sat in the meager shade of my broad-brimmed hat, humming an old lullaby whose words I still remembered enough to be able to sing to my grandbabies. It made me think of the scarred music box Ava had found after the great tornado that had flattened towns across Alabama and Georgia, but had spared us so we could be a repository for lost things.

  I’d never been one to collect antiques or dead people’s belongings, not able to quite get over the fact that they were somehow tainted. It was like I thought that old age and death were contagious. I’ve since learned that there’s some truth to that, but even back then I couldn’t understand Ava’s fascination with the tune from the old music box, or her ability to sing words to it she’d never heard before.

  But it figures that Mimi would be the one to give the music box to Ava to take with her to St. Simons. The two of them had always been in cahoots, partners in crime. Secretly, I was glad of this, as if their bond—which couldn’t have existed without me—somehow mitigated my inability to be the mother I wanted to be.

  “Damn this heat,” I said, fanning my blouse for the fiftieth time where beads of sweat had begun to trickle down my chest.

  Mimi lay on the chaise longue, her blond hair pulled back by a large pink terry-cloth headband with an oversize bow, making her look like Cindy Lou Who. Her eyes were closed, her People magazine splayed open on her chest like a dead bird. My mother, who was only months shy of her ninety-second birthday, still felt compelled to sun herself for a short while each morning to “get some color.” What she was really doing was getting more wrinkles, but I figured telling her would be a lot like watering a tree long after a fire has come along and burned it to the ground.

  “If you’re going to complain about the heat, you should garden at night.” She hadn’t even opened her eyes to speak.

  I turned back to my plastic bags filled with paper towels soaking in water. The UPS store said they could ship anything, so I was about to find out. Carefully, I laid out my roses and forget-me-nots, hoping they’d make Ava homesick. But it was more than that, too. With each plant, clipping, and seedling I wrapped, I wanted my daughter to think of me and to remember that no matter what words went spoken or unspoken between us, we’d worked shoulder to shoulder in this garden. I needed her to remember that, regardless of how many times she told me that she wanted only a useful garden full of things to eat. Not that she knew how to cook them. I had failed her in that department entirely.

  I knew Mimi sent Ava those albums, but I pretended that I didn’t know. My mother had always liked playing with fire, believing that the heat would meld us into the real people we are inside, like melting gold to make jewelry. When I was old enough to understand this about her, I was a married woman with a baby about to be born, and I told her she was full of manure. I’ve long since learned that she was right, but I would never te
ll her so.

  “Hello?”

  I looked up to see Kathy, David’s wife. She wore what Ava referred to as “mom jeans” with an elasticized waist that highlighted the backside of a woman past her prime. She always wore button-down blouses in various hues and sleeve lengths, but without variation despite her tucking them into skirts or pants or, in this case, mom-jean capris. I almost turned to my side to whisper a comment, as if Ava were still there, but stopped myself just in time.

  “Hi, Kathy.” I sat back on my knees, noting with dismay that she carried her gardening gloves.

  Mimi raised a languorous hand in greeting.

  “June mentioned you were sending clippings from your garden to Ava, and I thought I might be able to help.”

  “That’s sweet of you, Kathy,” Mimi said. “Gloria’s getting too old to be working out in the sun.”

  I sent my mother a withering glance. “I’m fine—it’s just been such a warm spring that it’s like we skipped it entirely and went directly to summer.” I patted the spot next to me. “I was working on the roses. Why don’t you take over and I’ll go get us some sweet tea.”

  I made my way to the kitchen, nearly gasping in the cool air-conditioning. Kathy was a good and dutiful daughter-in-law, but her hands were big like mine, her knowledge of the soil too limited and based on what she’d read instead of what she felt. Despite her good intentions, she was a poor substitute for Ava.

  I washed my hands, then moved to the refrigerator and pulled out a pitcher of tea and a lemon to slice, pausing as I noticed the answering machine on the counter blinking. Closing the refrigerator with my hip, I placed the lemon and pitcher on the counter before retrieving a knife from the drawer.

  Ignoring the incessant blinking, I slowly and methodically cut into the yellow skin, making perfectly equal slices before placing them in the bottoms of three glasses I’d filled with ice. Then, very carefully so as not to drip down the pitcher, I poured each glass near the top, then set them on a tray. I picked up the tray and was almost at the back door before I stopped.