Summer in the South

by Cathy Holton

  The result, she knew, would be tragic but inevitable.

  The Progress of Love

  The incident of the strange hand stayed with Ava, hovering always at the edge of her consciousness as she went about her daily routine, dazed and stuporous. It had obviously been a hallucination brought on by the sleep disorder, yet it had seemed so real, the texture of the skin, the slight pressure of the fingers, that even now, thinking about it, Ava shivered.

  The lack of sleep was beginning to affect her in odd ways. She was always catching shadows out of the corners of her eyes, hearing strange sounds in the house even during daylight hours: whispers, plaintive snatches of jazz, footsteps on the stairs. Twice, when she was alone in the house, she heard knocking and went to the front door only to find that no one was there. And yet she was afraid to see a doctor for a prescription, afraid the medication would increase the hallucinations or, worse, dampen her creative urge, slow the torrent of work that seemed to occur every night now like automatic writing. At the rate she was working, the novel would be finished by the end of August. She couldn’t let anything interfere with its progress. She often had the feeling she was rushing toward something, some amorphous conclusion that kept her working relentlessly, regardless of its effect on her health.

  And yet when Fraser invited her to go shopping with him and Alice in Nashville, Ava gratefully accepted. She was exhausted, and needed an excuse to get out of the house and away from her desk, away from the increasingly silent Will and his vague air of disappointment and regret.

  They picked her up early one Thursday morning in Alice’s antique Chevrolet. Ava sat in the backseat and listened absently as mother and son kept up a steady stream of banter like an old vaudeville act. They shopped for a while at the Galleria, where Fraser helped Ava pick out a new purse (“You look like a bag lady with that horrible thing you carry”) and his mother a new dress and matching pumps (“Seriously, Mother, get out of the Keds and tennis suits!”).

  “I don’t know what I ever did without you to tell me how to dress,” Alice said in a deadpan voice.

  “Suffered unfashionably, I suppose.”

  They stopped for lunch at a small tearoom in Brentwood. It was on a block of antique shops and clothing boutiques crowded with well-dressed shoppers.

  “Hard to believe all this used to be farmland,” Alice said with a heavy sigh, gazing around the room with an expression of dismay. “Nothing but rolling hills as far as the eye could see. Two of my great-great-grandfather’s plantations, The Grove and Nott Hill, were not far from here.”

  “Back in the good old days,” Fraser said to Ava, rolling his eyes.

  “Well, they were the good old days,” Alice said sharply, then chuckled softly. “At least they were for some of us.”

  “Yes, yes, Ava knows all about the long-vanquished Southern aristocracy. I’ve told her about the Captain and his lovely ways.”

  Alice gave him a stern look. “Fraser, you really shouldn’t speak badly of the family.”

  “You see,” he said to Ava. “We southern WASPs are not overly religious people but we do practice ancestor worship as devotionally as any Shinto practitioner.”

  “Oh, Fraser, really,” Alice said. The waitress came and took their orders and brought them tall, frosty glasses of sweet tea.

  “Did you talk to Will about making nice with Jake?” Fraser asked, helping himself to a basket of scones. Ava shot him a warning glance but he laughed and said, “Oh, don’t worry, I told Alice about our conversation. I tell Alice everything.”

  “I’ll have to remember that,” Ava said mildly.

  Alice looked uncomfortable. She took the basket from Fraser with a little shake of her head. “Where are your manners?” she said, passing the scones to Ava. “Would you like one, honey?”

  “No, thank you,” Ava said. Her appetite had diminished over the past few weeks.

  Alice set the scones down. “I hope you don’t mind Fraser confiding in me,” she said. “We are almost family, after all. At least I feel we almost are.” She colored, then went on blithely. “There are no secrets between family.”

  “Really?” Ava said. “In that case, tell me what happened to Charlie Woodburn.”

  Fraser laughed loudly. Bright spots of color appeared on either side of Alice’s nose. “What happened to him?” she repeated vaguely.

  “How did he die?”

  “Rather suddenly,” Alice said valiantly. “He was so sick, throwing up blood and hallucinating. He kept seeing his dead mother everywhere. He wouldn’t let anyone call a doctor, of course; he didn’t believe in doctors. Stubborn and pigheaded up until the very end.”

  “I thought he drowned,” Ava said.

  “Who told you that?” Alice asked sharply.

  “Will.”

  Fraser put his chin on his hand and gave his mother a slight, mocking smile.

  “Well, yes,” she said quickly. “He was found in the water, that’s true. Out in the Harpeth River on the way to Longford. You know the Harpeth, it flows through town. There’s a bridge at the end of the street where we live that actually crosses it.” Fraser continued to smile at her, one eyebrow raised. Ava said nothing, waiting patiently for her to continue.

  “Anyway, he was found in the river but there was an empty bottle in his pocket and he reeked of whiskey. Even after being in the water, he reeked. There was some conjecture at the time that he might have stumbled out of Woodburn Hall and, intoxicated, lost his way in the dark and fallen into the river. In those days there were no streetlamps at the end of the road, only a one-lane bridge, and he may have become disoriented and fallen in. That would explain him being found downriver near Longford.”

  “You say he was hallucinating the week prior to his death?”

  “Yes, he was very sick. I saw him. It was truly dreadful. The hallucinations could have been brought on by fever. Or by delirium tremens, I suppose.”

  “Had he had these episodes before?” Ava asked.

  “I really don’t know. Understand, at the time, his elopement with Fanny was considered scandalous. His living under the same roof as Fanny and Josephine was even worse. My mother wouldn’t allow me near that house. I had to sneak over to see them. And Josephine, well, poor Josephine suffered terribly, because how could she expect to make a good marriage after all that scandal? They were so isolated, the two of them, shut up in the house alone with Charlie. No friends, no family, no visitors. Just the riffraff Charlie associated with. And he was a violent man. He carried a pearl-handled derringer like the riverboat gamblers used to carry. I was terrified of him.”

  This was not the Charlie Woodburn of Ava’s novel. He had been misunderstood and mistreated by life, forced into a role he was untrained for in a society that constantly devalued him. Ava had imagined him as a lonely, Christlike figure, yet she knew that truth was subjective, that it was only natural that Alice, Maitland’s sister, would see Charlie differently. She remembered Will’s assertion that Charlie had beaten Fanny. But that could have been something constructed later by the family to explain his murder. To justify it. Somewhere between the man Alice remembered, the man Will had been told about, and the man Ava had imagined lay the real Charlie Woodburn.

  Ava said, “Celia had gone to live with a cousin after her father’s death, but why didn’t the cousins keep an eye on Fanny and Josephine, too? Why did the family turn their collective backs on them?”

  “Because Charlie wouldn’t allow them to set foot in the house! He was Fanny’s husband, and in those days that meant something. He could do with her as he pleased, and no one could lift a finger because they were legally married. He would have thrown Josephine out, too, if she’d been less determined, but she would never have agreed to leave Fanny.”

  “What about Clara? She was in the house with them, too, wasn’t she?”

  “She lived in the cottage out back with her parents, Martha and John. But Martha was sick by then. She couldn’t come up to the house and work, and John wouldn’t all
ow Clara in the house. Charlie seemed to take particular pleasure in tormenting her. He would curse her and threaten to take a horsewhip to her father, who was a proud man, a prominent member of the African-American community.”

  “You said Charlie was a violent man. Did you ever hear of him physically abusing Fanny?”

  “Good Lord,” Alice said, gazing at her with an expression of alarm. “Of course not. Josephine would never have allowed that. Maitland would never have allowed it.” She took a long drink of iced tea, set her glass down again with a slight frown. She dabbed her mouth with her napkin. “Of course, such things did happen in those days but mainly among the—” She paused. “Mainly among other families, but not those along River Road.”

  The waitress brought their food and they ate for a while in silence.

  Fraser touched his mouth with his napkin and smiled at Ava. “You did a very nice job of changing the subject but you still haven’t told us how your talk with Will went.”

  “I don’t really want to talk about it.”

  “That well?”

  “Fraser, be quiet,” Alice said.

  Fraser waved his hand at the waitress and ordered a round of gin and tonics.

  “It won’t work,” Ava said. “I don’t like gin.”

  “Well, Missy, we’re going to sit here until you tell us, so you might as well spill it.” Ava stared at him obstinately until he said, “Okay. I’ll start. What did Will say about your secret visit to Jake Woodburn’s wood shop?”

  Ava was dismayed to feel her face flushing. “I’ve already told you. He wasn’t happy about it. And it wasn’t a secret visit.”

  Alice chuckled.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” Fraser said.

  “He doesn’t much like Jake, for obvious reasons, and he doesn’t want me hanging out with him.”

  “The obvious reasons, I suppose, have to do with Hadley Marsh. What does he say about her?”

  “Not much. He admits that she’s dead.”

  Fraser giggled. “That’s a start,” he said.

  “But other than that, he’d prefer not to talk about her.”

  “Well, of course he does,” Alice said. “It was so tragic.” She waved one hand vaguely and picked up her iced tea. “All of that.”

  “Tragic because they both fell in love with Hadley or tragic because she died?” Fraser asked.

  “Both,” Alice said, regarding him evenly over the rim of her glass.

  “What’s Jake’s story?” Ava said, folding and refolding her napkin in her lap. “Has he ever been married? Girlfriend?”

  “He keeps to himself, which makes him all the more desirable,” Fraser said. “I think he turns down invitations and refuses to socialize because it makes him more mysterious.”

  “But could he socialize? Would he be accepted?”

  “Of course,” Fraser said. “He went to the right schools, he has the right pedigree. No one cares anymore that his branch of the family crawled out of the woodpile.”

  Alice sniffed. “Well, some care,” she said.

  “Most don’t care,” Fraser said. “Those old social customs that kept his grandfather down don’t apply anymore, thank God. I think Jake’s criticized more for the fact that he doesn’t seem to give a damn about dinner parties and joining the country club than for his obscure beginnings. By holding out he makes society feel bad about itself. How great can those things be if someone like Jake doesn’t want to join? And he’s a great-looking guy, you’ve seen that for yourself,” he said, slanting his eyes at Ava. “But he has a tendency to love the ladies and then leave them, which, of course, makes everyone nervous. No husband wants a guy as good-looking as Jake Woodburn on the loose.”

  “So he has dated women in town?”

  “He’s not gay, if that’s what you’re asking. Unfortunately.”

  “Fraser, please,” Alice said, looking around at the other tables with an air of apology.

  The waitress brought their gin and tonics.

  Ava thought of the photo she had found in Will’s room. “Hadley must have been some girl to have both Will and Jake fall for her.”

  “Well, she was gorgeous.”

  “Of course she was.”

  Fraser laughed. “Don’t say it like that,” he said. “You don’t need to feel intimidated by Hadley Marsh. She didn’t have your depth, your strength of character, your loyalty. Did she, Mother?”

  “Oh, heavens no,” Alice said. “There’s no comparison at all.”

  Ava made a wry mouth and Fraser laughed again. “Loyalty” was not a word they would use to describe her in the future. Not if her novel was ever published.

  “You two are polar opposites,” Fraser said, continuing his comparison of Ava to Hadley.

  “Apples and oranges,” Alice agreed, happy now that the waitress had brought their drinks.

  Working late at night in the dark, sleeping house, Ava was vigilant now, listening for the creak of footsteps, quiet sighs, vague knockings behind the walls. She no longer switched on the lamp. She had not touched it since that evening when it felt like someone, or something, took her hand. She was accustomed to the occasional late-night hallucination but the horror of that moment had imprinted itself upon her mind in ghastly detail. She would not risk it again.

  She wrote now by the light of her computer screen, crawling wearily into bed in a room illuminated by its dull, glowing light. The writing continued unabated; nothing seemed to interfere with that. She was quickly approaching the climax, and she knew now with a fair degree of certainty who had killed Charlie. It had come to her in the days following her trip to Nashville with Fraser and Alice. Some offhand comment made by Alice had brought the murderer’s motive suddenly and clearly into focus. From that point on, everything fell into place. It was all so clear now. She was astounded that she had not seen it before.

  Toward the end of August, she got a call from Jake.

  “I have something for you,” he said. His voice sounded curt, distant.

  “Oh?”

  “A photo.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “My mother found it in some old things she had.” And when Ava didn’t respond, he said more soberly, “A photo of Charlie Woodburn.”

  Ava was quiet, bracing herself. In light of her novel’s ending, she wasn’t sure she wanted to see it. But how could she refuse? “I’d like to see it,” she said.

  “Come by the shop tomorrow afternoon,” he said, and hung up before she could say anything else.

  The Traveling Wilburys were playing “End of the Line” on the CD player when Ava stepped into Jake’s workshop. Light slanted through the tall windows set at regular intervals along the brick walls. There was a pleasant scent of pine and cedar in the air. Jake was standing at his worktable in the center of the room, hand-sanding the legs of a delicate-looking chair. He glanced up at Ava as she came through the door.

  “So you made it,” he said. His hair was darker, longer than she remembered.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want something to drink?”

  “No. Thanks.”

  “Let me finish this and we’ll go upstairs.” He went back to work, covered, as usual, by a light dusting of wood shavings. Ava wandered around the shop admiring his work, stopping to examine ornate fragments of fretwork and scrap.

  Jake seemed absorbed in what he was doing, yet she had the feeling he was very much aware of her, following her progress with guarded eyes.

  “I’ll be done in a minute,” he said. His hands moved along the chair legs as gently as a lover’s caress.

  This thought made her stir; she roused herself and said, “I don’t want to keep you. Do you have the photo?”

  He stood and wiped his brow with his wrist. “Are you in a hurry?”

  She raised one hand, vaguely indicating the door behind her. “I have work to do,” she said.

  He tossed the sandpaper down and strode toward her, walking in such a purposeful and determined way that she
stepped back instinctively, striking the edge of a table with her hip.

  He put his hand out to steady her. “Careful,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she said politely, formally.

  He looked her in the face. “I had thought, after our last meeting, that I might see you again,” he said.

  “I had the impression, after our last meeting, that you did not want to see me.”

  “It seems we’ve misread each other.”

  “It would seem that way.”

  He let her go, and walked ahead of her toward the narrow iron stairway in the corner of the room. She could still feel the warm pressure of his fingers on her arm.

  “Where are you going?” she said.

  He turned and looked at her. Their eyes locked. “The photo’s up here. In my apartment.” She hesitated and, seeing that, he grinned suddenly and put his hand on his chest.

  “I’ll be on my best behavior,” he said. “I promise.”

  She followed him up the circular stairs to a small, neat apartment above the shop. The room was filled with his whimsical furniture. A low sofa stood along a brick wall, opposite a galley kitchen. On another wall hung a pop-art print of a beautiful woman’s face. Hadley.

  “Very nice,” Ava said stiffly.

  “Do you like it? I did it years ago.” She swiveled her head and looked at him but his expression was bland, noncommittal. He went into the kitchen and took two bottled waters from the refrigerator.

  Ava stood carefully examining Hadley. She seemed to be staring at Ava with a sly, mocking expression as if she found her presence here highly entertaining. Looking into her eyes, Ava felt as if she was intruding on something intensely personal, as if she was the brunt of some private joke.

  Jake tapped her lightly on the shoulder and she startled, taking a bottle from him.

  “I can’t stay long,” she said in a wooden voice.

  “Oh. Well, then, I won’t keep you.” His manner changed abruptly and he set his water down on the coffee table and went into the bedroom to get the photo.

  Whatever ease she had felt between them had disappeared under Hadley’s sly, knowing gaze. Why, despite everything that had happened, had he kept this reminder of her? Was it an act of defiance or one of tenderness? She turned and walked over to the window, staring down at the leafy street.