Sea Change

by Karen White

  A sound came from the direction of the path that led to the creek, a place I had not yet visited because of the sheer number of mosquitoes I knew were lying in wait for me. I looked up to see Ava and Matthew, both soaking wet, walking toward me. I knew immediately that something was wrong by the simple fact that they weren’t touching each other. They were like a magnet and metal, and to see Ava walking a good ten feet in front of Matthew alarmed me; seeing her pale face and numb expression simply scared me.

  I placed my glass on the ground and rushed toward them. “Is everything all right?”

  Matthew started to speak. “Ava fell in the water. She and the baby are fine, but Ava’s still pretty upset.”

  The air around me seemed to lose its oxygen as I watched them walk toward me, almost as if they were moving in slow motion. I thought of all the years I’d spent on the periphery of Ava’s life, never understanding her fear of water or her doggedness on a soccer field. I’d been the ambulance carrier on a battlefield, nursing the physical wounds without considering how they got there. Now, looking at Ava’s lost expression, I knew how very wrong I’d been, regardless of my reasons, just as I knew that a seed planted in the most fertile soil would never bloom without sunlight.

  I turned to Matthew. “What was she doing so near the water? Didn’t you know that she’s terrified of it?” From the corner of my eye I watched Mimi leave the potting shed, where she’d been tidying up, and felt relief sweep through me. I was on uncertain ground, but Mimi had always navigated Ava’s emotional life with the precision of a surgeon.

  “Of course I knew. She…” Matthew stopped, as if realizing that nothing he could say would excuse his actions to an unsympathetic audience.

  I waited for Ava to notice Mimi’s approach, but she didn’t even turn her head. “Mama.”

  As if I’d been doing it all of my life, I held out my arms and Ava fell into them, and she was my baby again and I was there for her, and for a brief moment I thought that I was being given a chance to start all over, as if do-overs were possible.

  Matthew stopped behind us. “Ava, please…”

  She trembled in my arms, holding her breath as she had when she was a little girl, preferring to pass out than to allow others to see her cry. She didn’t step away as she faced Matthew.

  “I need you to go. Now. To the apartment in Savannah for a few days. I need to sort things out in my head, and I can’t do that when you’re near me. Please?”

  “No, Ava. We need to talk this out face-to-face. And we can’t do that if I’m in Savannah.”

  “I can’t.” She drew in a shuddering breath. “I can’t. Not now.” She shook her head. “I need to sort things out. Alone.”

  He reached up a hand to touch Ava’s hair but dropped it. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let you out on the water—it was too soon.”

  Ava shook her head again. “You know why I’m upset. And if you don’t, then we have nothing to talk about right now.”

  It looked like he was about to argue, but I already knew it was pointless once Ava had made up her mind, and he must have known it, too. He set his jaw and nodded. “All right, but just for a few days. We need to work this out.”

  He walked up the steps and pulled open the door. Ava stepped away from me and stood on the bottom step. “Matthew.”

  When he turned around I had to look away, the pain in his eyes so much like what I’d seen in the eyes of mourners at funerals.

  “You didn’t deny it,” she said, her voice soft but full of hope.

  He didn’t say anything for a long moment and Ava seemed to shrink, as if his silence diminished her. Finally, he said, “I didn’t hurt her.”

  “Then tell me how her briefcase ended up in the water.”

  I could tell she was close to tears, but she was very adept at holding them in. She’d had a lifetime of experience.

  Matthew’s grip on the door handle tightened. “It’s not that easy, Ava. Nothing ever is.”

  She squared her shoulders, her hands resting on the soft swell of her baby. “Love is.”

  He looked as if he’d been struck. “We’ll talk about this later.” He opened the door.

  Ava took another step toward him and spoke, her voice raw. “It’s like she’s trying to pull us apart. Don’t you see? Adrienne saw what I’ve been seeing, didn’t she? What else did she see, Matthew, when you put her under hypnosis that you don’t want me to know? What else did she discover that would make you toss all of her notes into the creek?”

  His face hardened, and for a moment he no longer resembled the Matthew I’d come to know. I thought he would argue with her, but instead all he said was, “I love you, Ava. That should be enough.” Then he turned and went through the door, shutting it softly behind him.

  She stared at the closed door for a long time. Eventually, she turned to me, her face fragile like a flower after a heavy downpour. “What should I do, Mama?”

  I think that might have been the first time she’d ever asked me that question, and it took me a moment to think, to find an answer that Mimi would have given. “Is this about Adrienne?” She’d told me very little about Matthew’s first wife; Tish had been more than willing to fill in the rest.

  Ava nodded.

  “Do you love him?”

  “Yes.”

  I took a deep breath, searching for words I’d long thought but never had reason to speak out loud. “Sometimes you have to make a huge leap of faith between love and trust, even when there doesn’t seem to be a bridge between them. Do you think he had anything to do with Adrienne’s death?”

  She didn’t hesitate before answering. “No. But he’s hiding something, and he won’t talk about it.”

  “Well, then you will fight to make this all work out. You’re a fighter, Ava, in more ways than you will ever know.”

  She looked closely into my gray eyes, my mother’s eyes, and I wondered whether she was seeing a truth too many. And in her eyes I searched for any blame for a lifetime of looking back to avoid seeing what was right in front of her.

  “So what do I do?” she asked again, her eyes still searching mine, something I’d never seen before. I realized how very lost she was and how unprepared I was to help her find her way. It was as if Matthew had taken a part of her when he left, leaving behind an Ava I hardly recognized.

  I glanced back to see whether Mimi was there to tell us the answer, but she was staring at the unfinished garden. I followed her gaze to the turned soil and stakes, to the one place where I’d always known all the answers, and remembered another garden from long ago. Remembered, too, another mother telling me that her children were her garden of souls.

  I pushed a strand of wavy blond hair off of Ava’s forehead, tucking it behind her ear. “I’m not going to tell you to find the truth at all costs. You have to figure out that part on your own. What you need to decide is whether or not you’re strong enough to face whatever truth you find.”

  “Do you think I’m strong enough?”

  Ava squinted up at me, looking so much like the strong-willed toddler I remembered that I almost laughed. The image quickly faded, and, perhaps for the first time, I saw her as she really was—a grown woman about to become a mother herself, and I realized I knew the answer to her question, that I’d always known it. That all those years of trying to protect her, I’d only been trying to protect myself.

  “Yes,” I said, swallowing hard. But am I? “But you have to believe it yourself.”

  Mimi came to stand next to me as Ava took a deep, shuddering breath. I waited for Mimi to explain to both Ava and me what should happen next, but she remained silent, as if she were retiring from her position as the person who knew all the answers, and had appointed me as her heir.

  I took a step toward Ava, leading everyone into the house, feeling more confident now that my practical side could begin with the physical acts of setting things right. “Go take a shower and change. You’ll be able to think more clearly then.”

  Ava nodd
ed and moved slowly through the kitchen and up the stairs, her feet heavy. Mimi gave me a withering glance, as if I’d just failed in the first task of my new position.

  “I’ll make more sweet tea,” I said, moving toward the refrigerator.

  “And then what?”

  I thought for a moment, staring into the refrigerator, welcoming the cold air on my face, trying to push all my practical thoughts aside. “I guess we’ll go hang all three portraits of the pink dress in the nursery.”

  I turned to look at my mother as she sat heavily in a kitchen chair and looked back at me with the same expression of hope that Ava had given me. “Finally,” was all she said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Ava

  ST. SIMONS ISLAND

  AUGUST 2011

  The waves rolled quietly over the rocks, their foamy edges reaching between each stone, leaving nothing untouched. I sat on a bench in the shadow of the lighthouse, watching joggers and casual walkers on the boardwalk in front of me. At the edge of the pier, a young boy and an old man perched with fishing rods, while another man wearing dark socks and sandals stood nearby shouting into his cell phone.

  On the beach sunbathers baked in the heat of the morning. We were in high summer now, where even the mornings gave no cool-air respite. Mimi called them the dog days of summer, when even dogs didn’t venture past the shade made by cars and trees. Two young girls, wearing matching bathing suits, sat under a broad yellow-striped beach umbrella and constructed a sand castle with pink plastic pails. Their mother lounged nearby under a wide-brimmed sun hat, reading a ladies’ magazine, while an elderly man walked a large black dog close to the rocks. It was past nine thirty—when all dogs were supposed to be off the beach—but the man had probably been walking a dog on this beach long before there were leash laws.

  Behind the beach lay the St. Simons Sound, the round curve of Jekyll Island in the distance. And beyond that the great Atlantic Ocean, rising and falling in its ancient rhythm. Two black skimmers flew over the water, arcing and diving in their perpetual survival dance, and I waited for the fear to come, for the aching in my chest to begin. But all I could feel was anticipation, as if I’d been walking down a long hall with a blindfold on for all of my life and I was about to have it lifted from my eyes. I even imagined a presence beside me, holding me close the way a person does before saying good-bye.

  I was checking my watch for the third time when I heard my name being called. John McMahon took a seat next to me and slid off his sunglasses, treating me to his aqua eyes and warm smile.

  “I’m glad you called,” he said. “I didn’t think you would after the last time I saw you.”

  “I know. I didn’t think I would either, but things change. Thanks for coming.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He handed me an envelope. “Sorry. I can’t seem to help myself. Everywhere I go now, I’m looking for cameras. It’s amazing how many are discarded with undeveloped pictures inside them.”

  I had to laugh as I took the envelope. “No need to apologize. I haven’t had the chance to go garage-sale hunting in a while. Anything good?” I held up the envelope.

  He shrugged. “See for yourself.”

  There were only three photographs, all taken of the same people but in different poses. It showed three women of three generations. They all had the same elfin chins and wide almond-shaped eyes that marked them as being related. They stood in front of a Christmas tree surrounded by brightly wrapped presents, and each wore identical matching knit Christmas vests. From the expressions on their faces, I could guess that the vests were some kind of an inside joke.

  It was the youngest woman, in her late twenties or early thirties, who caught my attention. Her vest was unbuttoned from the breastbone down, her red turtleneck covering her pregnant belly as it protruded over her pants. In each of the three photographs she held up a sonogram picture, as if the photographs had four subjects instead of just three.

  “It’s not sisters,” John said, “but I thought you’d like them anyway. It’s a shame we don’t know who it belongs to, because these are fun pictures I’d imagine they’d want to keep.”

  I nodded as I slipped the photographs back into the envelope. “I agree. But thanks—they’re perfect.”

  He waited to speak until I’d carefully tucked the envelope into my purse so I could keep them awhile before discarding them with the rest.

  “So what did you want to talk about?”

  A gray-haired couple with matching caps of tight curls strolled by holding hands, and I stared wistfully after them. “I wanted to talk to you about Adrienne.”

  He waited for me to continue.

  “Did your sister ever talk to you about undergoing hypnosis therapy?”

  He looked surprised. “Yes, actually. She did. At least twice—that’s all she told me about. She was a smoker—had smoked since high school, I think. I’d been trying to get her to quit for years, and so had Matthew, but she wasn’t interested. And then one day, like, all of a sudden she decided it was time to quit, and she wanted it done yesterday. She wasn’t interested in any medication or low-nicotine cigarettes. Nothing that would take any time. She wanted to go cold turkey, and she told me she’d read about using hypnosis. That it was one of the quickest ways.”

  “Why was it so important that she do it right away?”

  Half of his mouth turned up. “I’m not sure—she never said. But that was Adrienne. Sort of impulsive. All it took was a mention about midwifing from Matthew to get her to want to become a midwife. I figured she was just being Adrienne.”

  “And Matthew did the hypnosis.”

  “Yeah. He did. I think it worked, too, because I didn’t see her smoking after that. Not that I had the chance to see much of her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He looked out over the sound, and I imagined he was picturing his lost sister out on a sailboat, the wind tugging at her hair. “It was about four or five months before she died.” He blew out a short laugh. “If I’d known, I would have told her to just enjoy her cigarettes.”

  “Did she say anything to you? About the hypnosis itself?”

  “Not really. But…” He stopped.

  I put my hand on his arm and his eyes met mine. “But what, John?”

  “She seemed…changed. At the time I thought it was because of nicotine withdrawal. But there seemed to be more. She was definitely different.”

  “That was when she gave you her wedding ring, wasn’t it? When she told you it didn’t belong to her.”

  “Yeah. Exactly. Ava, what’s this all about?”

  I sat back against the bench, grateful for the hard wooden slats to keep me grounded. “I’m not sure.” I considered my next words for a moment. “I found Adrienne’s briefcase.”

  His head jerked toward me.

  “Actually, Jimmy Scott found it. In Dunbar Creek.”

  “And…?”

  I shook my head. “Everything inside was ruined, so he threw it out.”

  “How did it get there?”

  I studied my hand with the gold wedding ring, afraid of this question as much as I was afraid of the answer. “I don’t know.”

  “Have you asked Matthew?”

  “He didn’t deny it, and unless there’s proof I’m not going to jump to conclusions, and I don’t think you should, either. He told me he didn’t hurt Adrienne, and I believe him.”

  John’s eyes narrowed. “What about her daily planner?”

  “Jimmy said that he only found papers.”

  He took my hands in his. “Don’t be blind. He won’t deny tossing away the briefcase because then he can always say he didn’t lie to you. I have no idea what might have been in there that he would have wanted to destroy, but there’s nobody else who could have had it in their possession other than Matthew.”

  I wished now that I hadn’t told him about the briefcase, that I could call back the words the way the ocean’s tides call back the waves. But I thought of my mother�
�s words, of how she thought I was strong, and knew I had moved beyond the place where I could avoid looking back to see what pursued me.

  “I hardly know what to think anymore. But I do know that I love my husband, and whatever the truth is won’t change that.”

  He shook his head, his gaze focused on our clasped hands as he slowly disengaged his fingers from mine. “So what do you need me to do?”

  “Nothing—for now. But I don’t want you to tell your parents yet about the briefcase until I know more. I’d like you to do that for me. For Matthew. For the friendship you once shared.”

  He looked out over the water, his eyes reflecting the sky. “I’ll do it. For you.”

  I leaned over and surprised him by kissing his cheek. “Thank you. You’re a good friend.”

  Glancing at his watch, he stood, his hands in his pockets. “There’s something I haven’t told you.”

  I stood, too, listening to the shrieks of the two little girls as they chased the waves.

  “Matthew came to me once, that last summer. He said he thought Adrienne was having an affair. With a doctor in her practice. A mutual friend spotted them at a restaurant once, and in a park, having pretty intense conversations.”

  Whatever I’d been expecting him to say, it hadn’t been that. “Did you ask Adrienne?”

  “Yeah. She just laughed. And then said that if either she or Matthew could be accused of being in love with somebody else, it wouldn’t be her.”

  It was hard to get my jaw to move. “Why are you telling me this now?”

  “Because it all has to do with motive. And why Matthew wouldn’t want anybody to see her notes.”

  I turned my head toward the shore and watched the endless roll of the waves, recognizing something familiar and comforting in their repetition. A distant memory tugged at the corner of my consciousness, but all I could hear was Mimi’s voice. Some endings are really beginnings.