Summer in the South

by Cathy Holton

  He came back a few minutes later carrying a faded black-and-white photograph. She sat down on the sofa and he sat down beside her. He passed her the photo. She stared down at it, feeling a catch in her throat. The photo showed a tall, earnest-looking young man with dark swept-back hair. His face was startling in its resemblance to Randal Woodburn, the patriarch. All but the eyes, which were dark and filled with an intensity bordering on mania. He was dressed in evening clothes and there was an air of studied elegance in his pose, something compelling and yet false, too.

  “Handsome devil, wasn’t he?” He was so close she could feel his breath on her cheek, warm and sweet.

  “Where did you find this?”

  “My mother found it in my father’s things.”

  “I don’t suppose I can have a copy.”

  “Take this one,” he said. “I don’t need it.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His T-shirt stretched across his wide shoulders, exposing his back, and she could see the faint line of downy hair at the base of his spine.

  “What did you mean?” he asked.

  “Sorry?”

  “Downstairs.” He turned his head and looked at her. “When you said you thought I didn’t want to see you again.”

  She was quiet for a moment, thinking how best to begin. “I don’t know. You seemed to change when Will called. As if you were suddenly sorry I was here.”

  “Baggage,” he said. “Not knowing if I was stepping in between Will and someone he cared about. Again.”

  “I told you we were just friends.”

  He smiled, nodding his head. “So you did,” he said.

  “I had the impression you wanted me to leave.”

  “You were wrong.”

  The windows of the room had no shutters or blinds, and the sun fell through unimpeded, the crowns of the tall trees outside making lacy patterns on the glass. Books spilled out of the bookcases and were stacked in piles on the glossy wood floor. There were no rugs. The room was clean and neat but spare. A bachelor space. Ava stared at the photo, aware of the faint traffic sounds on the street and the dense silence that drifted between them. It was shocking, looking into a face she had seen so often in her imagination.

  “Have you told Will yet that you’re writing a novel about his family?” He leaned back cautiously, his shoulder nearly touching hers.

  “It’s not about his family. Not really. I mean, there are some similarities.”

  “Have you told him?”

  “No.”

  There was a hole in his jeans just above one knee and he poked his fingers in and began to pull threads through the opening. “Because if you’re hoping to build something with Will, if you’re planning—” He stopped and continued to shove his fingers into the frayed hole, pulling loose threads free.

  “I’m not planning anything with Will,” she said. “We’re friends. That’s all.”

  “They’ll consider a novel about Charlie Woodburn a betrayal,” he said calmly, as if he hadn’t heard her. “It doesn’t matter how you write it or how it ends. They’ll blame you for bringing up the buried past.”

  “I know that.”

  “No matter how pretty and charming you are.” There was a faint cleft in his chin, visible through the stubble of beard. “No matter how fetchingly you blush.”

  “I’m not blushing.”

  He grinned slowly.

  “Besides, isn’t it hypocritical of you to warn me about betraying the Woodburns, given your past history?”

  “Do as I say, not as I did.” He leaned over and drank from his bottle, then set it down again on the coffee table.

  Neither one moved, sitting companionably in a silence that seemed less awkward now. Outside the window the sun slid behind a ridge of clouds, causing a swift succession of shadows to fall across the floor. On the wall to their left, Hadley stared benignly, smirking.

  “She was very pretty,” Ava said.

  “I suppose so.”

  Jake put his arm across the back of the sofa. She could feel the warmth of his hand, just inches from her skin. “Does Will ever mention Hadley?”

  “He doesn’t like to talk about her.”

  He smiled, his eyes fierce and black. “No, he wouldn’t. He’s not much of a talker.”

  Ava felt disloyal talking about Will. “I don’t think he’s particularly happy about your—estrangement, as Josephine calls it.”

  “Well, he hasn’t exactly tried to do anything about it.”

  “Have you?”

  “Yes. At first. I tried for years.”

  She was quiet for a moment, looking down at the photo of Charlie. “I think he feels guilty, not only over the trouble between you and him, but also over Hadley’s death.”

  “That wasn’t his fault. That wasn’t anyone’s fault but Hadley’s.”

  She slid the photo into her purse. “Did you love her?”

  He sighed and shook his head. “I suppose I did,” he said.

  “So you weren’t just going after her because she was Will’s girlfriend?”

  He met her gaze, giving her a long, searching look. “If you believe that you must not think very highly of me.”

  She could feel the heat of his arm like a phantom limb, an extension of herself. “Sorry,” she said, looking down. “I know you wouldn’t do that.” The sun was back, glittering along the floor. In the street a truck passed, rattling the windows. “What was she like?”

  “Hadley? Well, there was the person she wanted you to see and then there was the other one.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “No. You wouldn’t,” he said fondly, and he touched her now, lightly squeezing her shoulder. The shock of his touch was palpable, arousing. “She was from Birmingham, the youngest of six. Her father was a housepainter.”

  “A housepainter?” She gave a half-laugh, an expression of surprise. “She went to boarding school. I would have thought she was part of the ruling elite.”

  “She was a scholarship kid. Like me. There were a lot of us, and we tried desperately to fit in but in the long run, of course, we didn’t. I was lucky. I could bring friends home to Woodburn Hall. Will and I told everyone we were orphaned cousins being raised by our great-aunts, and of course that was true except for the fact that my mother was still alive. I saw her when I was home, but I never took friends from school home with me. You know how you care about things like that when you’re fifteen. I was lucky Will and Fanny and Josephine let me pretend to be one of them.”

  “You are one of them.”

  He laughed. “You haven’t been here long enough to understand that I’m not. I’m an impostor. A cuckoo in a magpie’s nest.”

  “Fanny and Josephine are genuinely fond of you.”

  “And I so wanted to be one of them.”

  “Did they like Hadley?”

  “Of course, everybody liked Hadley. She made herself very—agreeable. It was a knack she had. And she was impressed by the Woodburns, too, the family, the history, the money.”

  “So what happened between you two?”

  He put his head back against the sofa and looked at the ceiling. His profile in the slash of sunlight was strong, austere. “Have you ever been in love?”

  “Yes.” She hesitated. “Twice.”

  “In the beginning we were just friends. When she first came up to Sewanee that’s all it was. But over time, things changed. There was an attraction that we both tried to ignore. Things had always been rocky between her and Will. From the very beginning. So when she came to me and told me they had broken up, I believed her.”

  “And you started dating her then? Thinking she and Will were broken up?”

  “Yes.”

  “You can’t be blamed for that.”

  “I never asked Will. I never saw fit to question what Hadley was telling me. I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t want to know.” He lowered his chin, gazing out the window. “That night at the Christmas party at Longford when they announced their en
gagement, I was shocked. She hadn’t told me anything, she hadn’t warned me. We’d never dated openly at school. She’d been very careful about that. She knew I wouldn’t tell Will. She was very matter-of-fact about the whole thing. It was the money, of course. She’d grown up poor, and the money meant a lot to her. And the funny thing is”—here he stopped and looked at her with bitterness—“the funny thing is, I didn’t blame her. I could understand the lure of power and wealth. I felt complicit in the whole thing, and it made me sick with shame. That’s why I couldn’t stay around. I dropped out and headed to California.”

  “But if you kept your relationship secret, then who told Will?”

  They exchanged a long look. “I did,” he said. “After six months out in California I began to see her differently. I realized she wasn’t the girl I had thought she was. The girl Will thought she was, and I knew he deserved better. So I called him.”

  “You did the right thing.”

  He shook his head. “Will didn’t see it that way,” he said. “He probably thought I still had feelings for Hadley and was hoping to get something out of it. The truth was, the only thing I felt for Hadley, and myself, was disgust. Will was too proud to ever forgive her. She begged him not to, but he broke it off with her, and then six months later she was killed and he couldn’t hold on to all that rage and hurt he felt for her. So he put it on me.” He stared at the print of Hadley. A muscle moved in his cheek. “I guess I don’t blame him,” he said.

  A hummingbird hung suspended outside the window, its delicate beak tapping the glass.

  “So why do you keep her face on your wall?”

  “To remind me of my fucking mistake.”

  He put his hand on her shoulder and she let it nestle there, warm and comforting.

  After that, there wasn’t much left to say. She could see him so clearly as he must have been as a boy, young and hopeful and believing for the first time in a future brighter than any he had ever imagined for himself. Imagining a life with a girl like Hadley.

  He leaned back against the sofa, studying her. “Will you go back to Chicago?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” And it wasn’t until she said it that she realized she wouldn’t be going back. A new life here in this place, a thought that three months ago would have seemed inconceivable, seemed now to carry a certain weight, an incontrovertible authority. She could imagine herself holed up in a little cabin like his mother’s, overlooking a wide sweep of rolling hills, churning out novels about people who understood the joys of living in a place where nothing much ever happened. If you didn’t count murder, tragedy, undying love, and familial revenge.

  “It grows on you,” he said. “It seeps into your blood when you least expect it, and before you know it you’re hooked. I went out to California, which for all intents and purposes is paradise, and after a while all I could think about was kudzu and sweet tea. I missed going out to the drive-in on Friday nights. I missed people smiling and saying ‘Good morning’ and telling me their life stories in the grocery store line.”

  She laughed. “That’s a pretty good description.” She was aware of his hand on her shoulder, the weight of it, the gentle pressure of his fingers.

  “So I take it wedding bells are not imminent?” he said.

  She looked into his eyes. She felt breathless. Light-headed. “What are you talking about?”

  “Between you and Will.”

  “I don’t know why everyone is so eager to marry me off to Will.”

  “I’m not.”

  Looking at him she felt a familiar stirring deep in her chest. “I should go,” she said. He said nothing but as she tried to rise, he put his hand on her arm and kissed her. It was as natural as falling, that kiss. A sensation of letting go, drifting.

  “I’ve wanted to kiss you from the first day I saw you,” he said.

  Later, they heard the front door slam. They rearranged their clothes and Jake stood up. “Damn,” he said. “I forgot to lock it.” He went to the stairway and called, “I’ll be right down.”

  Ava stood up, running her hands through her hair. “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Her face was pink, and when he saw her, he laughed and pulled her into his arms. The door slamming again was like a pistol shot.

  They went downstairs.

  Whoever it was had gone. The sky had darkened and, looking up through the skylight, Ava could see swiftly moving gray clouds.

  “Whoever it was doesn’t appear to have stolen anything,” Jake said, looking around the shop. He wrapped Ava in his arms, resting his chin on top of her head. “You don’t have to go,” he said, nuzzling her ear.

  “I do have to go,” she said, pulling away reluctantly. “I’ll call you.”

  “We’ll have a date,” he said. “Dinner. Maybe a movie. Hell, I might even take you dancing at the Cimarron Ballroom.”

  They were almost to the front door when it swung open violently and Will stood there, outlined against a bone-white sky.

  Behind her Jake said jovially, “Look out!”

  Ava had enough sense to step aside as Will rushed past.

  It took two burly welders Ava hailed from the building next door to break up the fight. Both Will and Jake were bleeding from the mouth and breathing hard, their shirts torn in front.

  “I should have done that a long time ago,” Will shouted, as he was being pushed toward the door by one of the men.

  “You should have!” Jake began to laugh, so the other man let him go. He wiped his face with his sleeve and called to Will, “What took you so long?”

  “You always wanted what you couldn’t have.”

  “And you always had too much.”

  “Asshole.”

  “Fucker.”

  “I’ll see you then.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Bye.”

  “Bye,” Jake said.

  It was then that Ava realized it wasn’t about her at all.

  Will didn’t say anything to her on the long drive home. She had agreed to let him drive her because it seemed the only fair thing to do.

  “Look, Will,” she said, but he stared fixedly through the windshield and she saw that she would get nowhere with him.

  The rain had begun, falling in windy gusts, splattering the glass. He let her out and drove away without a word. Ava tried to call him several times over the next two days but he didn’t answer his phone. Josephine stopped her in the hall one night and with a quiet, resigned air told her that Will had gone to Chattanooga to visit some friends and wouldn’t be home for a few days.

  “Oh,” Ava said.

  “How’s the work going?” In the dim light, Josephine looked much younger, and it was not hard to imagine her as she must have been in the time of Charlie Woodburn. A tall, handsome woman.

  “It’s going well.”

  “Is there anything I can get you?” Her expression was studied, polite, cold.

  “No. Thank you,” Ava said.

  Jake called several times but Ava didn’t answer her phone. She felt that she couldn’t talk to him again until she’d talked to Will. She owed Will that much at least. And there had been something in Josephine’s expression that night in the hall, an indication that her hospitality was almost at an end, that drove Ava to immerse herself in her work.

  She finished the novel. One night, it just ended. The relief she felt was indescribable. She had expected emotional fireworks and soaring sensations of accomplishment, but not this quiet feeling of relief. She printed out the manuscript in its entirety. She arranged it neatly in a box on her desk. It wasn’t finished, of course. There were months of rewriting that would have to be done before she could begin her search for an agent. But it was enough for now. It was farther than she had ever gotten before.

  She began to pack her belongings. She had no doubt that Will was steeling himself, strengthening his resolve to come home and send her packing. She didn’t blame him. And because she didn’t blame him, and bec
ause she felt that she owed him that much, she emailed him a copy of her manuscript.

  She emailed a copy to Jake, too. But with him, her intentions were different. With Jake it was more a desire to impress him, to show him what she was capable of, that drove her.

  Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You

  “Frank? It’s Ava.”

  “Ava? Oh. Ava.” There was a moment of silence, followed by the sound of a hand placed over the receiver, and then a breathless, “Let me get someplace where we can talk.”

  Ava imagined him trying to hide from his wife. She thought of the sharp-eyed woman she had seen standing on his stoop the day she had driven to Garden City. She heard the sound of a door closing and then Frank said, “How are you? I’m so glad you called. I was afraid I’d never hear from you, and I didn’t have your number so I couldn’t call you.” His voice shook slightly. With nervousness, she supposed, or perhaps fear. There was no telling what she might say to him.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call earlier. I’ve been working this summer and I haven’t had a lot of time to myself.” It sounded so false and insincere that she trembled, saying it. She had rehearsed this conversation for weeks but now that it was finally here she felt tongue-tied, awkward.

  “That’s okay. What do you do, Ava?” he asked politely.

  “I’m a writer.”

  “A writer? You mean like books and shit?”

  “Yes. Novels.”

  “Wow. Cool. I guess I’m not surprised. You were always a smart baby. I remember that. And like I said, Meg could tell a good story. She always had her nose in some book. She had you reading before you were four.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Oh, well, you were just a baby when we broke up, but for a few years after that I’d get letters from wherever you and she had landed. We parted on good terms; there was never any bad blood between us. I just wanted a wife and she didn’t like being one. Settling down seemed to drive her crazy. Anyway, sometimes she’d send photos of you and she’d tell me how you were doing. You were always smart, and she was so proud of that. She called you an old soul in a young body. You know how she was.”