Low Country

by Anne Rivers Siddons

  “Four or five visits…she goes over there often then,” I said. Somehow I simply could not see it, remote, elegant Sophia Bridges spending her days in the hardscrabble clutter and the warm, smoky funk of Dayclear.

  “She’s come almost every day,” Luis said. “She’s taking her assignment from Mengele very seriously, whatever it is. She says only that she’s studying the culture under his auspices and with his blessings. I don’t ask her anymore what she aims to do with her newfound knowledge, or what he does. You’ll notice I’m not asking you, either.”

  “I really don’t know,” I said, feeling the walls of the bubble quiver perilously. “And I’m not going to ask Clay. You know what I told you, about them coming up with a better plan…for everything. I’m sure Sophia’s research is part of that, but beyond that I just—”

  “—don’t know,” he finished for me. “Ah, yes. Well. Come and have a cup of coffee with me and tell me what you do know. I promise not to ask you anything else about the island except why you haven’t been over there lately. We’ve been looking for you almost every day. Lita is driving me crazy about the ponies, but I’m not going to take her to see them without you along, and besides, I haven’t seen them or their calling cards for a while.”

  I hesitated, but then I went with him to the chic little coffee shop on the traffic circle nearby. We took our cups to a corner table and he pulled the hood off his big head and was the Luis Cassells I knew again, half mythic creature and half lowland gorilla. His hours in the winter sun had kept him walnut brown, and his teeth flashed piratically in the dimness of the little shop. I saw a face I knew at a table across the room and sighed. Shawna would be in Clay’s office within the hour, smiling archly and twittering about seeing me having a little coffee date with the hired help. I did not care if Clay knew, but I hated the smirk on Shawna’s proprietary face and hoped devoutly that Hayes was not around when she told Clay.

  “So why haven’t we seen you?” he said matter-of-factly. “What’s the matter?”

  “Why does something have to be the matter?” I said, annoyed. “I’ve just been busy. Christmas is always a zoo down here, and then we went to Key West over Christmas Eve and Day, and there have been a bunch of parties in Charleston.…”

  “Ah, I forgot. Miz Mengele is a social lioness. Of course. The Charleston parties.”

  His grin widened evilly. I could not remember if I had told him how I hated parties or not, but I knew that he knew somehow that I did.

  “It’s the only time of the year I go to them,” I said defensively, and then laughed aloud. “Though why I’m explaining myself to you I do not know.”

  “Why, indeed?” he said, and then his smile faded. “What is wrong, Caro?” he said, and the softness in his voice startled me so that I told him.

  “And you’re afraid you’ll hear your daughter in the night? Or see her?” he said, when I fell silent.

  “I’m more afraid that I won’t, I think,” I said helplessly, at a loss as to how to make him understand and wishing I had not spoken of it. “Or that I will, and that she’ll just…fade away then. That would be worse than not seeing her, but either of them just seem like more than…I could bear right now. I know it’s stupid. I know I need to get myself over this.”

  “It’s not stupid. But you do need to get yourself over it. Not only does it hurt you in more ways than I think you know, it dishonors your child. She should not be the agent of your fear. She would not want to drive you from the place you and she loved so.”

  “I know,” I whispered, feeling tears but knowing dully that they would not, could not, fall.

  “I feel responsible,” he said presently. “It was Lita, after all, when she came that night after the ponies. I know that you thought…”

  “I did, for a minute, and finding that I was wrong was one of the worst moments that I have ever had in my life,” I said. “But that was scarcely your fault, or Lita’s. And it’s not that I’m afraid of my child. Oh God, of course not. If I thought she could truly come to me there I would go and never leave. I guess I’m afraid…of the long nights alone. I’m afraid of being afraid. Franklin Roosevelt would not be proud of me.”

  “Perhaps you should go and spend a night there and see that it does not happen,” he said soberly. I was grateful to him beyond words that he did not laugh at me, or try to tell me that I was really being silly and hysterical. I knew that I was.

  “I would be glad to stay with you,” he said. “I would not even speak if you didn’t want me to. I’d just be there. Do you think that would help? Or maybe your husband…”

  “No,” I said. I did not tell him that I would rather die than tell Clay I was afraid that our daughter would come to me in the night on the island and even more afraid that she would not. It would be a knife in his heart. Worse.

  He nodded as though he knew.

  “I think…that I’ll have to do it by myself,” I said. “And I will. Maybe in the spring, when it’s light longer and everything’s green again…I don’t know. The thing is, Luis, I think that I can’t stay there all night awake, waiting…and not drink. And somehow to drink over there is abhorrent to me. I hated it that time I did it. It feels as if it might finish me off somehow, just kill me. And…I don’t know. Poison the island somehow.”

  I took a deep breath and looked up at him. I had never even admitted that to myself, and there it lay, out on the little marble-topped table between us, pulsing like a beating heart.

  “It’s a first step, Caro,” he said, and covered my hand briefly with his own. It was enormous, and so callused that it felt like a leather glove that had dried in the sun. It was very warm.

  “If you’re going to start that twelve-step business with me, I’m going home,” I said, annoyed that I had told him and near panic that I had actually named the beast. And not to Clay, but to Luis Cassells.

  “No. It’s not time for that. It may never be,” he said. “I agree with you. The island house is no place for you to drink. And I also think you’re probably right about doing it by yourself. Let me think on it.”

  “It’s not your problem, Luis,” I said, gathering up my purse and keys. “I didn’t mean to burden you with it.”

  “You are no burden, Caro,” he said, and he was not smiling. “I have burdens, but you are not one of them. I have an idea, though; why don’t you come and spend a whole day there, and I’ll bring Lita and perhaps we’ll find the ponies, and maybe Ezra would come and bring Sophia and Mark, and we could just sort of…have a day at your place. Live a day in Caro’s world. You’ve had one at ours, after all. It would be wonderful fun for the children, and who knows? It might start to give you back your island.…”

  “Maybe,” I said slowly, thinking of it. The sun on the greening marsh, and the quiet lap of the water against the dock, and the ponies, and the lazy banter and laughing, and maybe a picnic lunch…

  The shadows that had lain thick over the house and the island in my mind lifted a bit.

  “Maybe I will.”

  “Name a day.”

  “Well…after the holidays. Maybe a little later, when the marsh starts to green up?”

  “You don’t want to let it go too long,” Luis said.

  And as it turned out, I did not.

  Two days before New Year’s Eve Clay came home to dinner and said, “How would you like to spend New Year’s in Old San Juan?”

  I looked up from ladling the Portuguese kale soup that he loves on winter nights.

  “Puerto Rico?” I said.

  He read my face.

  “It’s a long way from Calista. And it’s beautiful. A lot like Key West, in the oldest parts. Or vice versa, I guess. I thought you like Key West so much…”

  “Oh, Clay…”

  I did not know how to tell him that, for me, the very earth of Puerto Rico would always be stained now with Jeremy Fowler’s blood.

  I did not have to. He sighed.

  “I know. I don’t want to go, either. I swore I never w
ould again. But Carter has a buyer, I think, and he won’t talk to anybody but me. It’s not going to do the company much good; the payments are spread out too far. But it’ll get the investors off us for a while, and it’s the only offer we’re apt to get. The main man is spending the holidays in San Juan on his yacht, doncha know, and he insists that we do this right now or not at all. I think it’s another case of jerk-the-CEO, but right now I’m not in any position to argue. I thought you just might want to come. You’re apt to be lonesome here by yourself. I mean, you’re not painting much anymore, are you? I didn’t think you’d been over to…the other house for a while.”

  “No, I…well, maybe I will start again,” I said, not wanting to get into my reasons for avoiding the island. “The weather’s wonderful. And I need to give the house a good cleaning.…”

  “Take Estelle for that, for God’s sake,” he said, lapsing into his pre-Christmas abstracted irritablility. “You don’t need to be humping out houses yourself.”

  “I think it might be just what I do need,” I said stubbornly. There was no reason on earth to quarrel with Clay about who cleaned the island house. I could simply do it myself and not tell him, if I wanted to. The fact was that I felt the walls of the bubble beginning to erode badly, and it frightened and angered me. Had it been so much to ask, this period of giddy peace?

  “Suit yourself,” Clay said coolly, and went upstairs to his office. Thus it was that when he left for Puerto Rico two days later, the kisses we gave each other were cheek kisses only, and glancing ones at that. I hated it but did not know how to get the past three weeks’ intimacy back, and he gave no sign that he wanted to.

  When he was gone, I sat down in my shining, empty house and suddenly could not bear it. I dug out my battered Day-Timer and consulted it, and then dialed the number I had written down for the little nameless store in Dayclear.

  Janie answered.

  “Sto’.”

  “Janie, it’s Caro Venable. Could you get a message to Mr. Cassells for me, do you think?”

  “Reckon so. They outside playin’ football right now.”

  When he came to the phone, I said, “Don’t you ever work?”

  “Ah, if only I could,” he said lugubriously. “But instead I must hang around this store waiting for you to call. I’m weeks behind. Mengele will gas me. Or connect my ear to my fat Cubano butt.”

  I laughed; I could not help it. The fragile sorcery of Christmas came drifting back.

  “Do you think you could take your fat Cubano butt over to my house today? I’m going to be around, and we’re not apt to get a better day to show Lita the ponies. If I can find them.”

  “My butt is yours,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I think the ponies are around your place somewhere. Ezra was out on the creek yesterday and saw them hanging around under your porch.”

  “Lord, I hope they’re not chewing on the supports again,” I said. “They aren’t pressure treated, and I’ve found enough teeth marks on them so that one day they’re going to gnaw through them like beavers. Granddaddy said it was the salt that soaked into the wood that they like.”

  “I think it’s more apt to be the six tons of windfall apples I’ve been lugging over there every week, at Lady Lita’s direction,” he said.

  “You’ve built a pony trap under my porch,” I said, grinning into the telephone.

  “Sí, senora,” he said in a dreadful Latino whine.

  “I’ll be over directly,” I said. “I’ll bring a picnic lunch. You bring whatever you want to drink for the two of you.”

  When I got out of the Cherokee there was no one in sight, and I stopped still and looked up at the weathered gray house on its stilts, dreaming in its shroud of silvery moss and the mild sun. It was a warm, sweet morning, so much like the spring that was still six weeks away, that I could almost hear the little liquid sucking sound that the wet earth sometimes makes in spring, as the dormant roots come alive again and drink in the standing rain. Out on the creek the water danced and sparkled, and the sky over it was the pale washed blue that March brings. The sun was already warm on my forearms and the top of my head, and I took off the hat that I had worn. I waited. Nothing happened, nothing broke the silence except the distant cacophony of the returning ducks and waterbirds in the big freshwater pond across the river and the tiny rustlings of small things that should, by right, still be sleeping in the mud. Well, I thought, what did you expect to hear? But I knew.

  Anxiety crawled out of the pit of my stomach and closed around my heart. I shook my head and walked briskly up the steps to the house. I would not have this. Not on this most beneficent of days. Not here. Not now.

  There were baskets and grocery bags piled at the door, and a small sack of the tiny, gnarled Yates apples that lay everywhere in the long grass of the island, the last spawn of centuries-old orchards. I knew they would be as sweet as smoke and honey, but that you were quite apt to meet half a worm if you bit into one. Pony bait, I was sure. So Luis and Lita were already here. But where? I saw no vehicle, and there was no sign at all of the herd.

  And then there was. The familiar, half-spectral sound of their hoofbeats in soft, wet earth came bursting down the road that led into the hummock. My breath stopped. Then the herd itself swept into view, still looking like clumsily made toys. They were not galloping, as they sometimes did, but trotting phlegmatically along in a messy knot. At the rear, I saw the awkward sprite’s shape of Nissy’s colt, capering on longer legs, and then Nissy herself. Lita was on her back, sturdy little legs clamped around Nissy’s fat, shaggy stomach, hands intertwined in the scabrous mane. Beside them, Luis Cassells trotted, breathing hard but keeping up. I put my hands to my mouth, my heart pounding. I had seen this before, in another, distant lifetime. I did not know if I could handle it again.

  Nissy set her splayed hooves in an abrupt, skidding stop and Lita slid off her back, crowing with joy. She ran straight to me and threw her arms around me and buried her head in my stomach.

  “Ay, Caro! The jaca, she let me montar…”

  “English, Lita,” Luis said, puffing and laughing. “Ingles, por favor.”

  Lita threw her head back and looked up at me.

  “Nissy let me ride her! It’s the first time! Abuelo…Grandfather said I could surprise you. Are you surprised, Caro?”

  I reached down slowly, almost reluctantly, and touched the damp curls on top of her head. It was all right. They were springy and a bit wiry, not like Kylie’s at all. I ruffled them.

  “I am surprised,” I said. “You must be a witch. I didn’t think the old lady would let anybody near her.”

  Not again, my heart said.

  Luis pulled sugar cubes out of the pockets of his blue jeans and offered one to the nervously pawing Nissy. She looked at him, the whites of her eyes showing so that she looked wall-eyed and stupid, and then took it delicately. The colt came skittering up and nosed at Luis’s hand, and gobbled his sugar so fast that he choked a bit, and coughed, and tossed his big goblin’s head. We all laughed. He would grow up to be an ordinary, homely little marsh tacky like the rest of his herd, but right now he was an enchanting mixture of grace and caricature.

  “He really does need a name,” I said.

  “He has one,” Lita said shyly. “That is, if you like it. I call him Yambi. It means ‘yam’ in the Vai language. Ezra told me. He eats all the yams we bring him. Auntie Tuesday lets Abuelo take the leftover ones and put them under your porch, and they’re always gone when he comes back. I know it’s him that eats them. Abuelo found one that had little tiny teeth bites in it.”

  “Yambi it is then,” I said. “Hello, Yambi. Are you an honorary Gullah like Lita?”

  The colt cocked his head at us, saw that no more sugar was forthcoming, wheeled, and fled away on his still-delicate hooves. In a moment the entire herd had one of its feigned panic attacks and went thundering back down the road toward the line of the woods.

  Lita’s small face screwed up with dismay, and Luis said,
“They’ll be back after a while. You wait and see. They’ll come back for lunch. There’s not a marsh tacky alive that can resist the smell of…what, Caro?”

  “Ham sandwiches. Egg salad. Tuna fish on hoagy rolls. Potato salad I made myself. Estelle’s fruitcake. Chocolate chip cookies. Oh, and taco chips.”

  “Taco chips,” Luis said triumphantly. “Marsh tackies never get enough taco chips. They’ll be back begging and pleading.”

  We stowed the groceries and my picnic basket and Auntie Tuesday’s big plastic jug of lemonade, and went back out into the sun. As if by previous agreement, though there had been none, we drifted across the wet grass to the edge of the marsh and stood looking across it toward the creek. The grasses waved in the soft, fish-smelling breeze like the sea that lay beyond, and I saw for the first time the faintest tinge of gold-green, just at the tips, so that they looked as if they were haloed. That suffusion of new green meant the coming of the spring in the Lowcountry.

  Please, no, something inside me whispered. It is not time for the spring yet. It’s much too early for the green-up. It’s merely an aberration. We have weeks of winter yet.

  And we did; I knew that. This haze of green was an aberration; it happened sometimes on the marshes, when there had been a lot of rain and almost no cold. I was still safe there in the bubble of winter.

  The weight of the sun on us was palpable, and the smell of salt and clean mud and the billions of things growing and dying deep in the black silt was mesmerizing. Small white clouds that looked like washing hung out, sailed across the tender blue sky. Songbirds set up their choruses in the small knots of myrtles and scrub trees on the little hummocks that dotted the sea of grass. We stepped onto the creaking wooden boardwalk over the marsh and strolled out toward the water that glittered in the noon sun like crumpled foil. No one spoke. Sun and sleepiness lay heavy on my eyelids.