Sea Change

by Karen White

  Something flickered in his eyes, like a distant cloud sliding over the moon. “It wasn’t a past-life regression, Ava. There’s no firm evidence to prove that such a thing even exists. Usually what people are calling a past-life regression is just a matter of the subject having been unknowingly exposed to certain things that make them believe it actually happened to them in a previous life.” He squeezed my hands, his eyes still foreign to me. “You’ve been talking a lot with Tish and Beth about the history of St. Simons. That could certainly be feeding your subconscious.” Quietly, he added, “And remember. Those bone breaks occurred in this life.”

  I heard the clinical reasoning in his words, but I couldn’t so easily dismiss what I’d been feeling and seeing. Mimi believed in the cycle of life and death, something my mother had taught me meant going to heaven when we died. But even as a young child, I’d known that wasn’t the same thing. “Mimi’s always saying that she tries not to be too good in this life, because she wants another chance to come back as a movie star.” I tried to smile, but my lips got stuck halfway. “Pamela is too real for me to have made it all up.”

  “Our subconscious is a lot stronger than we can even imagine. It’s our great protector, guarding our minds from seeing something we’re not yet ready to face.”

  I shook my head, trying to erase his doubt. “Whatever it is, I can face it now. You make me strong. Don’t you see that? I want to try the hypnosis again. I need to go back to that place.” I tried to stand, but he held on to my hands so that I remained seated.

  “No, Ava. No. You were supposed to go to your childhood, but I couldn’t control what happened. I don’t feel safe doing that again.”

  His hands tightened on mine, and I looked at him with a growing understanding. “You did that with Adrienne, didn’t you? You did a past-life regression with her.”

  He lowered his head, but not before I’d seen his eyes and knew I’d spoken the truth. “Adrienne is dead. Can’t we leave her buried?”

  “We can’t, Matthew. Not as long as you keep her alive with your secrets.” I leaned forward, my head suddenly clear. “What did she tell you?”

  I waited until he spoke. “We only did it twice. The first time was because she wanted help with a bad habit. And then the second time, she wanted to know more about her birth parents. She was adopted as a toddler, and she wanted to know more. Her birth parents were deceased, and she figured this would be the only way to really know. So I did. I probably shouldn’t have. I didn’t have a lot of experience, and I had no idea what I was doing. But she swore she was happy to play guinea pig for me.”

  “What did she see?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me. She saw something that frightened her, but she kept it from me. She described what her parents looked like, and their house, but she deliberately looked away from the thing that scared her and would not tell me.”

  “Did she go back farther? Before that childhood?”

  Our eyes met and I saw him struggle with telling me the truth or burying the past. “Into another life? She claims she did, but again, with all of her research I assumed she was playing the part of somebody she’d read about. That makes a whole lot more sense than believing your soul has been reincarnated.”

  I thought back to the conversations I’d had with Mimi about the subject, having no idea that one day I’d have reason to recall them. Holding Matthew’s gaze steadily, I said, “Even General Patton said that he’d lived a past life as a Roman general, and Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison believed in reincarnation. I’m not saying that makes it real or not. It’s like believing in ghosts—whether or not you experience them, there are too many people out there who have said that they have. Too much evidence to say that the universe doesn’t always work the way we think it should or the way that we’re taught that it should.”

  His face closed like a solid door, his hands pulling away, and the old fear of being alone swallowed me like a fog. “Don’t,” I said, hearing the desperation in my own voice, seeing in his face his own doubt. I clung to it, searching for its source. “What did Adrienne see?” I asked again. “Are you afraid that I’ll see the same thing?”

  Matthew looked down at his hands, his elbows resting on his knees, his fingers steepled in front of him. “I don’t know. I really don’t. She wouldn’t tell me.” His eyes were cold when they lifted to meet mine. “But it changed her. She wasn’t the same after that. It ruined her in some way, made her separate herself from the life we’d lived together.” I watched him swallow, the sound audible in the stillness of the attic. “She died six months later.”

  We sat in silence for several moments, listening to the creaks and moans of an old house at night, and I recalled something Matthew had said to me once about Adrienne. She told me once that sometimes when I looked at her it was like I was seeing a ghost instead. I thought I finally understood what she’d meant. I spoke, my voice a knife to the quiet. “I’m not Adrienne. I wish you’d look at me just once and see me instead of a ghost.”

  He stood and turned so he faced the rocking horse, his long fingers touching the mane that was so precise I imagined I could feel the breeze that blew it back over the horse’s face.

  “I feel it, too,” he said. “The past. It seems to live here, in this house, parallel to the present.” His hands smoothed the wooden flanks of the horse, then traced the edges of the saddle where the seat had been well-worn by nameless Frazier children. I felt a strong sense of déjà vu, as if I’d seen him there before, touching the horse, speaking to me.

  Matthew continued. “I think that’s why we all feel this connection to the past—because it’s here in the furniture, the floors, the walls. They must carry inside them a sort of memory of those who’ve lived here before. That makes a lot more scientific sense than believing we’ve lived previous lives.”

  “Then prove me wrong,” I said as I stood, gripping the back of the chair for balance. “Hypnotize me again and take me back. Let me tell you what I see.” I took a step closer to him. “It was your idea to do it the first time, even though I had fears of discovering things I might not want to know. Now it’s your turn to take that leap of faith.”

  He didn’t answer, but kept his face focused on the rocking horse, his thoughts elsewhere. I walked up to him and placed my cheek against his back, my arms embracing him from behind, our child between us. “I would not pull away from you, regardless of what happens. And you’re more experienced now; you’ll be a better guide for me.” I paused for a moment. “I’m not Adrienne.”

  “I know,” he said, his hands covering mine. “Will you let me think about it?”

  I nodded, knowing that was all he could give me for now, but knowing, too, that he had no choice. He had been the one who pushed me to face my past, and now we were both too far down that path to turn back.

  He turned to face me, taking my hands in his. I stared down at our entwined hands and at the birthmark on the base of my thumb. “All right,” I said. I stepped into his arms, part sanctuary and part drug, then allowed him to lead me down the stairs. I concentrated on each step I took while I tried to erase the memory of the look on his face when he’d seen the attic key in my hand, and the sound of a child’s laughter that seemed to echo in the attic behind us.

  Gloria

  ST. SIMONS ISLAND, GEORGIA

  JULY 2011

  I parked the car in the dirt lot across the street from Christ Church, then sat where I was for a long time after I’d turned off the engine. Finally, Mimi nudged me with her bony elbow.

  “I don’t think that waiting much longer will bring the cemetery to us. I’m guessing we’re going to have to get out of the car and walk.”

  With a sidelong glare, I hauled myself out of the car, then helped Mimi out on her side before scooping up the bright yellow gladiolus I’d bought at Tish’s Eternal Carnation. Leaning heavily on each other and praying that a fast car wasn’t headed our way on Frederica Road, we crossed the street.
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  Since both Henry and I were transplants to St. Simons, we had no family members buried in the cemetery. Still, we’d attended our fair share of funerals here of friends and acquaintances, so I was familiar with the serene setting and the small church that sat in the middle of the grounds like a mother keeping watch over her children. It had been years since I’d last come down these paths, but like learning how to walk, finding my way through the meandering maze was a skill I hadn’t forgotten.

  I recognized the Frazier enclosure from Ava’s description, and we paused at Adrienne’s gravestone in the front, our arms linked. “‘Mother of unborn children,’” I read out loud, an icy grip seizing my heart. “She was only twenty-six when she died.”

  Mimi was very still beside me, her gaze focused on the older tombstones in the back. “Did Ava tell you that Adrienne was a midwife, too?”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t recall.”

  “I think that’s odd. And not just because Matthew married two women with the same profession, but that he encouraged the first to become one.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Mimi shrugged, but her gaze remained focused on the three stones lined up in the rear. “Ava told me that he was the one who encouraged Adrienne to go to school and train to become one. Like he felt preordained to marry a midwife.”

  The chill that had surrounded my heart now spread throughout my body, making me shiver in the heat of the July morning. “That’s not possible,” I said, in the same tone of voice I’d used with my children when they were growing up and they told me they’d forgotten their homework or had run over the newspaper at the end of the driveway instead of bringing it into the house. This had always prompted them to fix the error, to go back in time to make things right. But in real life, there was no such thing as do-overs.

  “Isn’t it?” my mother asked, and I was a child again, asking where souls go when the body dies.

  I took Mimi’s arm and led her away. I felt her falter and held tight. “Don’t worry; it’s close by. If we pass a bench you can sit and rest a bit.”

  Mimi snorted. “You mean you need a bench. I could run a marathon.” She shuffled forward as if to prove her theory.

  “Sure. If the other competitors are snails and turtles, you might even have a chance of winning.” Taking her arm again, I led her to the place where I’d been only once, but remembered as if it were yesterday. One doesn’t forget the graves of four family members, whether you knew them well or not.

  We followed the weaving path for a short distance until we found ourselves at another clearing with four simple white headstones. A man wearing a UGA baseball cap stood between two of the stones holding a large green plastic watering can, a red wagon behind him carrying two more cans identical to the one in his hand.

  He looked up at us and smiled. I was struck dumb for a moment, his face immediately familiar to me but his identity evading me like a moth around a candle.

  “Good morning, ma’am. Ma’am.” He tipped his hat at both Mimi and me while I just stood there gaping.

  “Good morning to you, young man,” Mimi offered. “Are you…”

  “You’re Jimmy. Jimmy Scott. Aren’t you?” I asked, wishing I had some of the water in the can to pour down my suddenly parched throat.

  “Yes, ma’am. That’s me.” He continued to smile at us, but his eyes were wide as he waited for an introduction.

  “I’m Gloria Whalen.” I waited for a moment to see any recognition, but his eyes continued to regard me steadily. “And this is my mother, Charlene Zinn. You went to school with my son Joshua. A long time ago. We moved the summer after ninth grade. And you’ve met my daughter, Ava Frazier.”

  He took his hat off and swiped his sleeve over his forehead. “I remember Joshua. He was real nice to me. And Ava’s real nice, too. She wants me to help her make an herb garden with little brick paths. She can’t do any real lifting with the baby, so she’s hiring me.”

  I smiled back. “She says you’re the best landscaper around. I bet you get that from your mother.”

  His smile dimmed somewhat. “You knew my mama?”

  I lifted the gladiolus I held in my hand. “Not well. We met when Joshua broke his arm and she was the nurse on duty. She was really good with him, said she had lots of experience with kids and broken bones, so it was a good thing we came in when she was there. That’s how we learned that our boys were both in Mr. Morton’s ninth-grade homeroom.” I glanced down at the headstones and the proliferation of flowers on all four of them. “She showed me her garden once. I’d never seen anything like it.”

  “I remember that,” Jimmy said. “But I didn’t remember it was you.”

  I smiled as I recalled the petite woman with the quiet voice and warm brown eyes. “I bumped into her one day when I was picking up the boys at school and mentioned to her that I was having trouble getting my wisteria to creep, and she invited me to come have a look at hers.”

  “Daddy didn’t like Mama to have visitors.” He spoke without accusation or enmity, as if the words had tumbled about in his head for a long time until they’d settled into a place that seemed to fit.

  I only nodded in response, not wanting to talk about the screaming tirade I’d received for the mere infraction of admiring his wife’s garden. I held up the gladiolus. “I brought this for her.” For strength, I thought. I swallowed, trying to collect my thoughts. “I always felt bad that I didn’t do more. That I didn’t pursue a friendship with her, even though I thought she could probably have used a friend.”

  I smiled, feeling close to tears, and felt Mimi’s hand on my arm. “She told me something that has stuck with me all these years.” I closed my eyes, felt wetness on my cheeks. “She told me that being a mother is like being a gardener of souls. You tend your children, make sure the light always touches them; you nourish them. You sow your seeds, and reap what you sow. She called her children her flowers.” I clutched the gladiolus stems tighter and walked closer to Mary Anne’s grave. “I wanted to thank her for that, because those words have helped me get through the times when being a mother was a lot harder than I’d anticipated.”

  I placed the clipping on the grave, then removed two stems from the bundle and laid them on the graves of the two little girls, leaving the father’s grave unadorned. I looked up at Jimmy, almost expecting to see recrimination, but saw only thanks.

  “Mama liked gladiolus,” he said. “And I know my sisters would, too.” He grinned broadly, looking just like his mother, and my heart broke a little.

  Mimi pulled on my arm and spoke to Jimmy, as if knowing that my words had crowded my throat, making it impossible to speak. “We’ll let you get back to work. I guess we’ll be seeing you at Ava’s house. We promise to keep you well fed and watered with lemonade and sweet tea.”

  “Thank you, ladies. It was a pleasure seeing you.” He settled his hat back on his head and returned to his watering, taking care not to splash the gladiolus.

  We turned our backs to him and began our slow progress out from under the shadows of the oaks and into the bright sunlight. I wasn’t sure we had accomplished anything, but at least it was a place to start.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Ava

  ST. SIMONS ISLAND, GEORGIA

  JULY 2011

  Tish and Beth were already walking down the front path of Tish’s house when I pulled into the drive. Beth lived only a block away and had coffee with her mother just about every morning, so I had to make only the one stop. I unlocked the doors and waited for them to approach, rotating my ankle. My boot had come off the day before and I was still reveling in the lightness and freedom of being bare-legged again.

  Beth opened the passenger door for her mother and stepped back. “Age before beauty,” she said with a sweeping hand gesture.

  Tish frowned. “But your legs are longer and it’s harder for you to get in and out of the backseat because of your belly. Really, you should sit up front.”

  When it looked like
Beth would argue, I intervened. “Look, why don’t you take turns? Tish can sit up front on the drive to Savannah and Beth can sit up front on the way back.”

  They both looked at me with surprise before sliding into their respective seats. Tish patted my leg. “See? I knew you’d be a good mother. Already playing fair.” She looked in the backseat as if noticing for the first time that the other half was empty. “Where’re your mother and Mimi?”

  “I invited them to come—Forsyth Park is adjacent to the archives, and it’s a beautiful morning for strolling through it. But they insisted on getting started on setting up the baby’s room. I’m not due until February, but they said it’s never too early. Matthew and I have painted the nursery a pale green, and he brought down a rocking horse from the attic, but other than that we’ve just stacked a few purchases into a corner of the room. That’s not good enough for either of them.” I rolled my eyes despite being pleasantly surprised. “I mean, my mother already has so many grandchildren it’s hard to believe that another one would be noticed, much less celebrated.”

  Tish glanced into the backseat before patting my arm. “It’s because you’re the only girl. There’s something special about your daughter having a baby. It’s like you have a chance to do it all over again.”

  “And fix the mistakes you made the first time,” Beth added, leaning into the front seat.

  “Right. Because look how horrible you turned out.” Tish shook her head, but she was smiling.

  I focused on backing out of the driveway, disconcerted by the easy banter between mother and daughter and trying to imagine doing that with my own mother. Gloria and Mimi were like that, I supposed, but I’d always felt as if I’d been left out of the loop.

  “What’s this?” Beth asked.

  I glanced in the rearview mirror and spotted the Concise History book I’d thrown in the car before I’d left. “It’s the book your mom and I found at a garage sale. I’ve only had time to skim through it, but it looks like there’s some pretty good information in it. I thought if either one of you could read without getting carsick, we might be able to pick out a few names to guide our research. I already made a list of names from the photographs I took at the cemetery to add to the one we compiled when we were there. Unfortunately, the ones I took at the Frazier plot are too blurry to read.”