Sea Change

by Karen White

  With a heavy sigh, I placed the tray on the counter, then moved to the answering machine, my finger hesitating only briefly before pressing the “play” button.

  “Mama? It’s me. Ava. Can you pick up?”

  Music from a radio played in the background, one of those new songs with the heavy beat that gave me headaches.

  “I’d like to talk with you. I have some questions. If you’re there, could you please pick up?”

  The music continued, but faded slightly, and I imagined Ava walking with the phone as she always did. Since she was a toddler she’d been in perpetual motion, a restlessness dogging her as if she were making up for something lost. Then I heard the sound of a door opening and closing, and I knew she was standing outside. If I took a deep breath, I would probably smell the evening primrose of the summer marsh.

  “I just wanted to know if you knew the McMahons.” I felt her breathe in the small space before finding the next words. “Adrienne McMahon was Matthew’s first wife. John is her brother. I haven’t met the parents yet. But they took in a boy, Jimmy Scott, when his family was killed in a fire. I met him last week, at the cemetery at Christ Church….”

  There was a long pause and I thought she’d hung up. But then she spoke again. “Anyway, I was just wondering if you knew them, because…I don’t know. I guess I just wanted to talk to you and I thought that would be a good place to start.” There was only a brief silence this time and then just the simple words, “Call me.”

  When I hit the “delete” button my hand was shaking. I placed my hand on the phone and even lifted it and dialed the first number of the area code. But then reason took over and I slid it back into the cradle. What could I say to her that I hadn’t already said? How could I make her understand that sometimes loving too much can be worse than not loving enough?

  I opened the back door leading from the kitchen to the back patio, then lifted the tray, trying to still my hands so they wouldn’t rattle the glasses too much. I set the tray on the table near Mimi, adjusting the umbrella so that it covered the iced tea but didn’t cast a shadow on her upturned face, then returned to my garden, where the soil felt solid beneath my fingers, and the order of things was dictated by the sun and moon and not by the will of a human heart.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Ava

  ST. SIMONS ISLAND

  JUNE 2011

  I sat at the kitchen table in the milky white light from the large window. An early-morning mist hovered close to the earth, creating apparitions of the trees and brush, an optical illusion of branches growing in air and reaching toward the empty sky like a child’s arms. I smoothed my shirt over my stomach, thinking of Adrienne and her unborn children, of the sketches of the faceless child, and turned my head from the window.

  After nearly a month of little rain, we’d been saturated with almost two days straight of downpours and incessant drizzle. The absence of the sound of dripping water had awakened me, and I’d arisen to make coffee and wait to see whether the sun would come up and dry everything out enough for Matthew and me to take a leisurely bike ride around the island.

  The steam from my coffee cup curled around my face as I took a long sip and eyed the stack of envelopes I’d retrieved from the drugstore with my developed photographs inside. I felt a little guilty, since I hadn’t yet bothered to take the albums out of the box Mimi had sent me. I’d sliced open the top, but once I’d seen what lay inside I had immediately lost interest. I knew what was in those albums, knew that whatever it was I hoped to find wouldn’t be found within the pastel-bound albums of my own childhood.

  Moving aside the stainless-steel napkin holder and salt and pepper shakers—all new replacements—I moved the envelopes closer and selected the first one off of the stack. These photos were taken at what appeared to be a high school football game, with a poor-quality camera that left the images grainy and dark. I slid the garbage can closer to me and dumped the envelope inside before picking up the second one.

  These were also easily thumbed through—random pictures of fields and fences, photographs a surveyor might have taken, perhaps, or maybe a person taking stock of a recent inheritance. I dumped those in the trash, too, without further thought. I didn’t like to make up stories to attach to the pictures. Once I’d seen them, I lost interest. I was like a person sorting through a box after a move, searching for a half-remembered item, certain only that what she was looking for had not yet been found.

  The anticipation I felt in opening every envelope slowly dissipated with each one, until I finally slid the remaining ones to the side before standing to get another cup of coffee. I heard Matthew coming down the steps, the creaks and groans of the wood as familiar to me now as the voice of a loved one.

  I poured another cup and waited for him in the kitchen. He appeared, wearing bike shorts and a T-shirt, his tanned, muscular legs bare, his feet encased in socks and biking shoes. His mouth tasted of toothpaste as he bent to kiss me, accepting the coffee cup at the same time.

  “Good morning,” he said, his face still pressed against mine, our noses touching.

  “Good morning,” I replied, nibbling his lower lip gently between my teeth.

  He leaned back to take a sip of coffee, his eyes dark and brooding, reminding me of our arguments about Adrienne’s studio. And the making up that had lasted most of a night, but that hadn’t completely eradicated the dark shadow of doubt.

  “Ready for our bike ride? We should go now, before it decides to start raining again, and definitely before it gets too hot.”

  “Sure,” I said, taking a sip of coffee and dumping the rest in the sink. “Give me a couple of minutes and I’ll be right back.” I ran upstairs to quickly change, then returned to find Matthew already outside, our bicycles side by side.

  As Matthew and I settled on our bikes, he said, “I thought we’d go to Fort Frederica first, then head north on Lawrence Road until it ends. How does that sound?”

  I nodded, eager to spend a relaxing day with my new husband, away from the house and the tabby structure in the back and all the secrets it wouldn’t relinquish. I’d hung curtains inside, and brought in a large potting table that I’d painted a bright red. But I still couldn’t seem to get Adrienne to leave, her presence like a midday shadow that stayed behind me no matter where I turned.

  I’d finally gone upstairs to the windowless room, devoid of even a single stick of furniture. Matthew said that before the house was a studio, the upper portion had been used for storage. But whatever had been in there had long since been cleaned out, leaving only dust and cobwebs. The only light filtered up from the stairway, enough to illuminate the far wall, where the chimney from the fireplace below traveled up to the roof. It was made of large stones, creating an almost mosaic look to the tabby wall. A rustling noise had scurried around the perimeter of the room, and I quickly backed down the stairs and shut the door behind me, relieved to have an excuse to leave the oppressive silence and the feeling of unseen eyes on me.

  Matthew and I headed down our drive, then through narrow streets as we made our way toward Frederica Road. The streets were deserted, allowing me to take in the scenery and the sides of the road covered with the coarse black needle rush. Matthew explained that the needle rush was an indicator plant for lower salt concentration, as if all water weren’t just water; as if the level of the salt made it less dangerous.

  I was so busy examining the foliage that I was surprised when I looked up to find ourselves on a tree-lined street with small shops on either side. Matthew stopped his bike and got off of it, and I did the same.

  He reached for my hand, then pulled me to a live oak tree, and I understood why we’d made this detour. “It’s a tree spirit,” he said.

  I nodded, unable to look away, the same sick feeling in my stomach that I’d felt the time I’d seen the first one at Murphy’s Tavern. “Yes,” I said. “It’s beautiful.”

  It was, I had to admit. This one looked like an old sailor, with a long beard and must
ache. But it was his eyes that arrested my attention. They were mere slits, as if in the midst of drowning he was closing his eyes for the last time. I shifted my gaze, studying the ridges and lines of the trunk instead, wondering how long the tree had stood there growing while the world changed above its widespread roots, and people lived and died while the tree remained.

  Feeling unnerved, I turned my back. “Come on,” I said, remounting my bike. “I want to see the fort.”

  We veered left at a Y in the road, staying on Frederica Road, passing Christ Church and the cemetery and eventually reaching the old fort about one-quarter mile past it.

  We parked our bikes and, at Matthew’s suggestion, skipped the visitors’ center and followed our own walking tour of the old village and fort. He claimed that as a native he knew as much about the fort and the surrounding ruins of the village as any park service employee. After half an hour, I had to agree.

  We followed a sandy path pocked with puddles and identified by markers as Broad Street that led from the interpretive center to the fort facing the Frederica River. We held hands, meandering over a boardwalk that crossed over a giant muscadine grapevine that Matthew said was thought to be more than two hundred years old. We stopped at the ruin of Captain James McKay’s house, my attention captured by an enormous live oak tree behind it. A long line of lighter wood from a lightning strike bisected the trunk from top to bottom, calling to mind storms and frothy waves and a sky the color of slate. I shivered and Matthew put his arm around me.

  “Somebody walking over your grave?” he asked, his tone light.

  Mimi had once said the same thing to me, but I’d never before thought the words could be true. Needing to change the subject, I pointed up to the green ferns clinging to the trunk of the tree. “What’s that? I haven’t noticed them before.”

  “That’s because when there’s no rain, they turn brown and curl up and sort of hibernate until the next rain so you don’t really see them. Then they green up and unfurl, drinking in the moisture they find on their host trunk. They can actually live for one hundred years without water. I’m sure there’s a scientific name for them, but I’ve never heard them called anything else besides resurrection ferns.”

  “Resurrection ferns,” I repeated slowly, liking the name and the way they cheated death, returning to start over.

  Woodpeckers were everywhere, attracted by the thousands of insects that lived inside all of the ancient trees that now covered the old fort and village. The birds had probably always been there, nesting, feeding, mating, without noticing the gradual emptying of the village, the footprint of time pressing down on the town below them. And the resurrection ferns dying and being reborn, their beginnings and endings interchangeable.

  We made our way past the abandoned ruins of the tabby barracks and out toward the edge of the water, where the cannons still stood lined up, ready to shoot at approaching enemy ships. I kept my distance from the water’s edge, and Matthew stayed with me.

  “It’s beautiful here,” I said, taking in the river and the encroaching marsh, the ancient trees with their shawls of moss, the ghosts of old buildings that sat unseeing under the blue sky, their roofs long since relegated to the wind. It was beautiful, but in an uncanny and familiar way that I couldn’t explain.

  “I thought you’d like it. I’m glad.” He squeezed my hand, then kissed me lightly on the lips, lingering there for a moment before pulling back.

  I faced the water, allowing a stiff breeze to lift the hair from my temples. Resting my head against his shoulder, I said, “I’m two weeks late.”

  Lifting my gaze to his, I studied his eyes. We hadn’t been trying to get pregnant, but we hadn’t been not trying, either. Still, I felt relief when his eyes smiled. “That’s good news. Have you taken a pregnancy test yet?”

  I shook my head. “Not yet, but we can pick up a test on our way home.”

  He let out an uncharacteristic whoop, then lifted me in his arms, twirling me in a circle. “I’m trying not to be too excited until we know for sure, but I’m thrilled.”

  “Me, too.” I smiled up into his face, too caught off guard by my happiness to censor my words. For a few brief moments my restlessness had faded, my reasons for marrying somehow suddenly vindicated. But one looming specter refused to diminish, and I wanted it to go away with the rest of it and leave Matthew and me alone.

  Pulling back slightly, I looked up into Matthew’s eyes. His own smile started to fade before I’d even uttered a single word, as if we already knew each other well enough for him to be able to tell what I was about to say.

  “I saw Adrienne’s grave.”

  He didn’t move or flinch.

  “Were you the one who ordered the headstone?”

  He nodded slowly, his eyes wary. “Yes, I did. Her parents didn’t even want to discuss her funeral, much less her headstone.”

  Drawing in a deep breath, I asked, “What did you mean by ‘mother of unborn children’?”

  His hands tightened on my upper arms for a brief moment before he suddenly let me go. He shrugged, but there was nothing casual or unplanned about the gesture. “We’d always talked about having children. We both wanted them, but planned to wait until we’d been married for a while first. Actually, I was the one who decided that. She would have been happy to start a family right after we were married.”

  “And then she died.”

  There was a brief pause. “Yes. Then she died.”

  I heard what he didn’t say, how he blamed himself for denying Adrienne that one thing she wanted, and how he’d attempted to record her wish for all eternity on her granite headstone. If it were possible, I think it made me love him even more.

  I took his hand in mine and led him away from the river and to the path. We walked back hand in hand, but I felt his distance, as if Adrienne and her unborn children walked between us.

  He stopped once to kiss me, his hand on the flat of my stomach, and I smiled up at him. Then the clouds returned to cover the sun, the rain emitting a soft and persistent drizzle that drenched without cooling, creating shadows where none had been before.

  Pamela

  ST. SIMONS ISLAND

  OCTOBER 1810

  Our man Zeus rowed Jemma and me in the small dugout through the creeks and estuaries around St. Simons. We’d been to Sapelo Island for nearly two days helping deliver a set of twins for Amy St. Claire. It had been a difficult birth, the infant boy’s shoulder blocking the birth canal and preventing his sister from being born. Jemma had massaged the woman’s belly, rearranging the girl so that she wasn’t pressing on her brother, then reached in to gently pop the boy’s shoulder to allow him to slide out like a cork from a jug, resetting the shoulder as easily as plucking feathers from a chicken. I hoped the twins’ relationship would not be as adversarial in the future as it had started out. I thought of my relationship with Georgina, and fate’s finger that had chosen her to be my sister.

  The change of season had come again to St. Simons, stealing the colors from the earth, replaced by shades of yellow and straw as the cordgrass went to seed, the wind dusting golden powder out over the marsh. The days were shorter, and as Zeus’s oars slapped the water I looked up to see the night sky greeting the day sky, bright pinpoints of stars already spreading their canopy over us.

  My father had read the night sky as a blind person would touch the face of a loved one, and I delighted in our time spent together poring over the stars as they appeared one by one. As a descendant of mariners, he knew about navigating by stars, about how the ancient Greeks and Romans had once steered their ships by the same constellations we could see today. It fascinated me to know the sky remained the same, gazing down at our changing world, at the endless ebb and flow of the oceans’ tides, of lives beginning and ending. It made me feel insignificant yet at the same time part of the universe, feeling connected to one not yet born who might one day gaze up at these same stars.

  A cool hand grasped my arm, and I straightened, realizing I
had been half-asleep and liable to fall into the water. I sent Jemma a grateful smile, then looked past Zeus to see how close we were to our landing. I knew these waterways as if they were roads, knew the colors of each season as if they were dresses from my own wardrobe. There was something about this place that became part of you, and I sometimes wondered whether the salt water around me was what flowed inside me in my sweat and tears, marking me as a part of it. This comforted me when I thought of my own barren womb and the stillborn and buried children I had witnessed in my few short years on earth. Maybe there was no end, but merely a winding ribbon of water that brings us from this life to the next.

  A hand waved in the murky distance and my heart leaped. “Geoffrey,” I shouted, waving back, glad to have a physical movement to fully awaken me. The day had been warm, but the night was cool. My dress had clung to me with clammy sweat, but now I found myself shivering. I had been in such a rush to reach the laboring Mrs. St. Claire that I had brought only my summer shawl. “Please hurry, Zeus. It is so cold I am afraid I might catch my death.”

  He nodded, the whites of his eyes bright against the growing dark around us. The dugout rode lower in the water now than it had at the start of our journey as cedar absorbed water, making it harder to row. But all I could think about was my need to reunite with my husband.

  As we neared the dock, I saw the slight cloaked figure standing behind Geoffrey, the brightness of her hair in stark contrast to her hood. My heart sank with disappointment; I hated having to curtail my joy in seeing Geoffrey, knowing I could not kiss him as I would like in Georgina’s presence.

  The scent of damp leaves and moist earth permeated the air like a newly dug grave. We had had a brief shower while crossing open water, but the dock here was stained a dark brown, and the tall grasses hung low with plump, glistening drops of rain. I knew the resurrection ferns would be almost near to bursting, verdant and full of moisture. I loved pointing them out to Jemma, who never tired of the tiny miracle taking place on the trunks of the trees around her.