Awakening

by Jacqueline Brown

  I laughed; this was how she always was. Her life was full of excitement … she was the excitement.

  “All right, I’ll go with you,” I said as I rose from the cushioned bench. “And Gigi can make the pie first.”

  She practically tackled me with a hug and I fell into Lisieux.

  “Hey,” Lisieux cried in her grumpy voice.

  She wouldn’t have been scared of Luca, either, I decided as she shoved us off her. She’d have told him to stop it, and he would have. I was the coward in the family. It was only I who ran from fake danger.

  I pulled Avi up with me. “Do you want to come, Lisieux?” I asked, already sure of the answer.

  She was content to read about the adventures of others, rather than have her own. Unlike me, she was not scared of them, simply not interested in having them.

  “No,” she practically shouted, irritated we had fallen on her.

  “Okay, have fun,” Avi said as she pulled me from the gazebo.

  I marveled at how unfazed she was by Lisieux’s harshness.

  Gigi appeared, a colorful scarf tied around her shoulder-length gray hair.

  “Where do you want to go?” Gigi asked, holding out her hand for Avi.

  “Blueberry Trail,” Avi said confidently.

  She even made decisions better than I did. I was unsure of everything. Avi was never unsure. She might be wrong a lot, but she was always sure she wasn’t.

  “It’s awfully late in the season,” Gigi said, cautioning Avi not to get her hopes up.

  “I found a few last week,” Avi responded.

  “Were they rotten?” Gigi questioned.

  “Some of them,” Avi said, holding our grandmother’s hand with both of hers, pulling her toward the chickens and the start of the trail.

  Gigi laughed. “There’s no harm in trying.”

  Jackson rolled onto his belly as we approached.

  “Come on, Jackson,” Avi said, running to the dog. “We’re going for a walk, in search of the last remaining blueberries of the season.” Her voice boomed, as if announcing a mighty quest sure to end in, at least, injury, if not death and destruction.

  Jackson stretched and yawned. Like the rest of us, he was used to her dramatic flair. He stood and trotted after us. The chickens did their fast walk to stay away from him. Blueberry Trail started the same place as the trail to the beach, but split off a little after the trail which led to Jason and Sam’s house. Unlike the other trails that took us directly to the beach or their house, this one wound its way around the bushes and a quarter of the way up the side of the mountain. Beyond that, it became too steep.

  Mom and I used to climb up to the cliff, hunting blueberries or beautiful views, but none of us had been up the cliff since her death. Avi hadn’t climbed it because she was forbidden from trying. And I hadn’t climbed it because I was afraid. The rest of my family wasn’t interested—or maybe the memory of the place was too painful.

  “Avila,” Gigi asked, “do you know who created Blueberry Trail?”

  “Of course,” Avi responded. “Your mom.”

  “Yes, when she was little, she’d spend her summers hunting blueberries. Of course, back then the trail started at the beach.”

  “Then she grew up and moved away, and the birds ate all the blueberries,” Avi said, ending the story the same way Gigi always ended it for her.

  Gigi believed in talking about the dead to keep their memories alive, but just the happy memories. She said there was no point in discussing the unhappy moments in the lives of those who had gone before us, because life had plenty of unhappy moments still to come for each of us. My great-grandmother’s life was no exception. Gigi never discussed with Avi or Lisieux exactly how young her mom was when she left this place. Even with me, she never discussed why she left so young.

  “Have you found any berries yet?” Gigi asked Avi.

  “Not yet,” she said.

  “You might have more luck when we get to the slope,” Gigi said, referring to what we called our side of the mountain. Nature had the other side.

  Gigi winked at me as Avi lost interest in our great-grandmother’s life and focused on her hunt for the elusive late-season blueberries.

  I smiled to myself. My grandmother, the devout, novena-praying Catholic—raised by her bohemian, psychic-visiting mother—was the sanity and balance we so deeply needed in our lives. What Avi didn’t realize was that Gigi’s mother, Dorothy, had run away from home when she was fourteen—the same age Lisieux was now.

  I couldn’t imagine Lisieux setting out on her own. I was three years older and couldn’t imagine myself leaving, either, especially not without my dad’s encouragement and support.

  Maybe that was the difference. My dad was a good man, respected and liked by everyone, especially by us. Gigi’s grandparents, from the little bit I had been told, were not respected or liked by anyone, especially not by their daughter.

  An image of the decrepit inn entered my mind, along with Luca’s strange questions about it and what seemed like fear. I replayed the conversation. Now I understood that Luca had been afraid of the inn. Why, I didn’t know. An awareness came to me. Perhaps he was right to fear it. Dorothy didn’t leave at fourteen because she was running to somewhere; she had nowhere to go. She left because she was running away from somewhere. That somewhere was the inn.

  I knew very little of her story. Dorothy left this place and eventually wound up in New York City. How she got there, I had no idea. She found a job working for a wealthy family, caring for their children. That position lasted for three years, until it became clear Dorothy was pregnant. They threw her out. A young, unmarried, pregnant nanny brought with it scandal, and the family chose not to have that.

  Dorothy couldn’t find work as an unmarried mother-to-be and was quickly going through her miniscule savings. So she created a husband who had died, leaving her expecting their first child. The lie didn’t get her much, yet it did allow her to find a job as a housekeeper at a hotel, along with a small room to live in with her newborn daughter.

  Gigi’s mom never married. She had some acquaintances, but no true friends. Her life was hard, too hard to live for long, and she didn’t.

  Before she died, Dorothy returned to this place with her twelve-year-old daughter. Dorothy hoped her parents would allow her daughter, my Gigi, to live here. Dorothy must have decided her parents were a better option than leaving Gigi alone on the streets of New York. Dorothy died a few weeks after she and Gigi returned to this place.

  When Gigi came to live here, business was booming and her grandparents were clearing the land to build a hotel. The hotel would never actually be a hotel; instead, it became our house.

  A few months after her mother’s death, Gigi found her mother’s journal and learned the truth about her father. He was the wealthy man who had employed a young girl to care for his even younger children. Instead of staying here with her grandparents, Gigi decided to go to the man who got her mother pregnant.

  I never questioned before why she’d do such a thing. Her mother hadn’t viewed him as an option for assistance. She had chosen the parents who she’d run from over asking him for help. Or perhaps she had sought help from him but never received it. Either way, Dorothy didn’t perceive her former employer, the father of her only child, as someone who could help that child. For some reason, Gigi did. I wondered if Gigi might have been running to him instead of running away from this place. She was strong-willed, independent, and lived for adventure; she was a great deal like Avi. Whatever the reason for her leaving this place, she did. She was twelve when she came here and thirteen when she left.

  Many weeks later, when she finally knocked on his door, she learned he was dead and so was his wife. Seeing his children, Gigi said, was like looking in a mirror. She never told them who she was. She simply turned and left the grand house where she had been conceived.

  She was sitting by the gate to the New York estate, feeling lost and hopeless—a feeling she said was wor
se than any other. It was there, in utter hopelessness, that she met my grandfather, or as she called him, the greatest gift God ever gave her.

  His family took her in, allowing her to stay with them until she found a job and a place to live. This was the first true family she had ever known. She and my grandfather became friends—best friends. As the years passed, their friendship blossomed into something even more beautiful.

  They were married when she was seventeen and he was eighteen. She said their life together was a fairytale come true. They loved deeply, laughed often, and together had unending hope.

  He was the one who led her to God and the church. She joked that she followed Grandpa to church and he followed her to Maine.

  “I found some,” Avi yelled from above us.

  I blinked. I hadn’t realized she’d climbed part of the slope.

  “Bleeck,” she said, spitting them out. “They’re rotten.”

  Gigi laughed and so did I.

  “You seemed lost in thought,” Gigi said as we waited for Avi to climb down.

  “I was thinking of you,” I said.

  “Me?” Gigi said with surprise.

  “Of your mom and your life with her,” I said.

  She looped an arm through mine. “It was a life very different from yours, and I’m glad of that.”

  “Glad your life wasn’t so boring,” I said.

  She squeezed my arm. “That’s not what I meant. Your life is far from boring, and it would’ve been good if mine was a little more … predictable.”

  “Then you wouldn’t be you,” Avi said from behind us as she jumped the last few feet onto the trail.

  Gigi released my arm and bent forward to kiss Avi on the forehead. “It’s true I’d be different, but I’m not sure it’s true I wouldn’t be me. The more we do God’s will for us, the more we are who we were created to be. So, perhaps if I had known him earlier in my life, I would be even more me.”

  Avi slipped a hand into Gigi’s as she skipped beside her. “No, I don’t think so,” Avi said. “I think you are who you are supposed to be, wrinkles and all.”

  Gigi always told Avi her wrinkles came from misbehaving as a child. It was her way of trying to convince Avi to behave.

  Gigi pulled Avi to her as we walked. “I am definitely where I’m supposed to be. I couldn’t imagine not being with my three beautiful granddaughters and my mildly irritating son, who is so much like his father it is both wonderful and scary.”

  “Is he a lot like Grandpa?” I asked.

  “Oh my, like his clone!”

  The thought brought me joy. Our grandfather died when Dad was partway through college. Even so, Dad loved him so much and spoke of him so often, it was as if he was still around.

  “What do you think, Avila?” Gigi asked. “Should we go home and use some blueberries from the freezer?”

  Avi sighed, flopping her body like a rag doll from side to side as she walked. “I guess so,” she said in exaggerated defeat.

  Gigi laughed. “And you, my dear, are so much like your great-grandma, it is terrifying!”

  “Am I?” Avi’s mischievous eyes brightened.

  “Another little clone, except a clone whose life is happy,” Gigi said thoughtfully while stroking Avi’s hair.

  “Great-grandma’s life wasn’t happy?” Avi said, sounding sorrowful.

  “Parts of it were,” Gigi answered.

  “I bet those were the parts you were in,” Avi said, wrapping her little arm around our grandmother.

  “I bet she’s right,” I said, wrapping my arm around her from the other side.

  Gigi chuckled, saying, “You two want pie and scones, don’t you?”

  Avi leaned forward and winked at me. “Works every time,” she said in a mock whisper.

  ***

  After dinner and dessert, which consisted of a slice of blueberry pie and a blueberry scone, my father left for a meeting and I went up to my room. I opened the door and quickly shut it to keep the hallway light from entering the room. I went to the window and stood beside it, staring out into the darkness. Up and down the yard, up and down the trees. I focused harder.

  No one was there.

  I pressed my fingertips to the glass. It was cold—colder, even, than the night before. Winter would be here soon. I allowed my gaze to shift far beyond my yard, toward the sea. I imagined the sound of the waves crashing against the cliffs that created our cove … the smell of the salt hanging thick in the air … the swirling wind.

  Even through the stone walls, I heard the wind. It was dark now and the moon wasn’t out yet. All I could see was darkness, except for the lights of Sam and Jason’s house breaking free in random bursts, places where fall leaves were no longer blocking their brightness.

  I pulled the drapes closed and left the room. Grabbing the crumpled sweatshirt that lay on my bed, I put it on as I went downstairs.

  In the family room, my sisters and grandmother were gathered.

  “Where have you been?” Avi asked in an annoyed tone.

  “My room,” I said.

  “You were there for an hour,” she fumed.

  “She was there for fifteen minutes,” Gigi said, calming my sister down. “Want some popcorn? It’s covered in white chocolate,” she said with a devious grin.

  Dad hated it when we ate lots of sugar, but he was out tonight. My father had grown up here. Though he knew the whole town, he didn’t care about socializing. He went out for two reasons: church and business. When he was around others, he did well, not awkward like I was. People enjoyed talking to him, and he told marvelous stories. He and I could be in the same place, experiencing the same thing, and when he told others about it I would think I missed something. He never ever lied; he simply told the truth in such a way that made it exciting. He and Avi shared this trait.

  Looking up from her book, Lisieux said, “Where is Dad, anyway?”

  “A parish council meeting,” Avi answered before Gigi could.

  Avi didn’t miss much. She was only eight, yet she could walk into a room and instantly know what everyone was doing and sometimes thinking. It was unsettling.

  “What are we watching?” I asked, sitting beside Gigi and taking a handful of white chocolate popcorn.

  “Black Beauty,” Gigi answered. “Avila’s choice.”

  She didn’t need to say who’d picked it. Black Beauty was one of Avi’s favorites, which meant we’d seen it at least twenty times. If I hadn’t already promised to watch a movie with them, I’d have happily done anything else.

  “Great,” I said, not bothering to hide the sarcasm.

  Avi stuck out her tongue.

  I picked up the ball of yellow yarn and the knitting needles. I could at least work on the blanket I was making. Mom was the one who taught me how to knit. After she died her knitting basket sat untouched for years, until one day, when I was missing her so much it hurt to breathe, I sat beside the basket and carefully removed the ball of pink yarn covered in dust. After blowing off the dust, I held the yarn and felt peace. I picked up the needles and tried to remember what she’d taught me. After a few hours’ practice, I remembered the movements and began working on a scarf. I wore the scarf I made the entire winter, imagining her arms holding me tight when it was wrapped around me.

  I no longer cried for my mother, but I still knit. It made me feel close to her.

  When the movie started, Lisieux acted as if she didn’t notice. Her eyes were rapidly scanning the pages of whatever book she was reading. She was the fastest reader I’d ever met, and she often read four or five books at a time. She left books in every room she entered and simply picked them up again when she returned to that room.

  Avi snuggled up to Gigi, as I methodically moved the needles and tied the yarn while staring blankly at the screen.

  I thought of the empty spot in the yard, the one Luca had been occupying every evening for at least the last two weeks. I thought, too, of our conversation on the trail, of his fear of the inn. As I added
row after row to the yellow blanket, I couldn’t stop the curiosity.

  “I saw Luca today,” I said casually, hoping someone would take the bait so we could discuss our strange neighbor without my being the one to officially start the conversation.

  “Did you?” Gigi said in a surprised tone.

  “Yeah, when Jackson and I were at the beach, he was there fishing,” I said.

  She nodded and returned her attention to the movie.

  I completed another row of the blanket and then said, “He asked about the inn.”

  “What about it?” Gigi asked.

  “He wondered what it was,” I said.

  Gigi nodded and munched on some popcorn. “I suppose people see an old abandoned building and they become curious.”

  “Yes,” I said, trying not to sound interested in what I was saying. “I told him it was an inn, but he thought there was more to it.”

  Gigi looked puzzled. “More to it? What does that mean?”

  “Shh,” Avi hissed.

  I turned to the screen, my knitting needles moving without my thinking of them. It was incredible how that happened—my hands working on autopilot.

  “He thought something happened there,” I said when the scene had ended.

  “It was an inn for close to fifty years. Many things happened there,” Gigi said.

  “That’s what I told him. He’s a strange boy, though,” I said, trying to sound disinterested.

  “I guess if you lose your mom and you barely know your dad, you’re allowed to see the world differently than others,” Gigi said kindly.

  “Maybe he meant it was haunted,” Lisieux said, her eyes not leaving the page she was reading.

  “Haunted?” Gigi asked.

  “Maybe,” Lisieux said, lowering her book a little.

  Avi turned down the volume of the TV. “The old inn is haunted. I already told you that,” she said, staring at our grandmother.

  “Perhaps,” Gigi said softly. She took the remote control and turned up the TV, ignoring my attempts at eye contact.

  The conversation was over for the moment. Maybe I’d ask again later, maybe not. The inn wasn’t haunted. That was ridiculous. But I could tell from Gigi’s unwillingness to discuss it, Luca was right. There was more than one reason to fear old buildings.