Ashes to Asheville

by Sarah Dooley

  Mama Shannon is quiet for several seconds. “I’ll call the police as soon as we can find a phone, let them know you’re safe,” she says. I see Zany pat her pocket and I think of Adam’s phone, but I don’t say anything. “Then we can take care of the truck you borrowed and go straight home.” I see her glance at the urn in the rearview mirror. “All of us.”

  So after all this, we’ve failed.

  I wait for happiness to come. I wait to feel pleased that Zany’s plan to scatter Mama Lacy in Asheville has fallen through. Like Mama Shannon and Mrs. Madison, I never wanted to let go of Mama Lacy in the first place.

  But then I think: If you want to do something, just decide to. And Mama Lacy decided to make it back to Asheville by the time she turned forty, and instead, she never made it to forty. And Zany decided to help her, and all I’ve done is hold her back.

  I look to Zany for guidance and to see how she’s doing with the idea of not finishing what we started. She has been so strong and brave through all of this, and so certain that what she was doing was right. Her eyes are red and she’s twirling her hair between her fingers. She won’t meet my gaze.

  Mrs. Madison keeps looking in the mirror and over her shoulder at Zany. Finally, she says, “You’re wrong.”

  “About what?” Zany asks.

  “When you said I only cared about the poodle. You were wrong. I don’t always know how to say what I mean,” Mrs. Madison admits, which I think is the closest she’s ever come to actually saying what she means.

  “I get it,” I pipe up, because, suddenly, I do. “I didn’t know how to say that I didn’t want to live only with you. That I missed the rest of my family. Mama Shannon and Zany. I didn’t know how to tell you that.”

  She dusts the dashboard with the back of her hand, straightens the edges of the quilt she’s sitting on, unbuckles and buckles her seat belt.

  “Is that why you hide out in your room and won’t talk to me? Because you don’t know what to say? Or because I’m not the one you want to say it to?”

  “I’m not trying to hide from you!” I whisper. “I’m just—I’m sad!” Saying the word sad is like uncorking a bottle and tears start rushing out. Now Zany and I are both crying, beyond worn out. Zany tries to wipe up her own tears when she notices mine, but she can’t get them stopped, and I know how she feels.

  Mrs. Madison twists around in her seat and studies me for what seems like a very long time. Then she says, in a voice with no more anger in it, “I know you are, love.” Her words are so matter-of-fact, so calm that I’m strongly reminded of Mama Lacy, the way she hardly ever got ruffled. She was the calm in the stormy seas of the Madison-Culvert family. For the first time, I see Mama Lacy in Mrs. Madison.

  Then Mrs. Madison shifts back to being a regular old grandma. She digs around in her purse, and a moment later she produces two ancient Tootsie Rolls. She hands one each to me and Zany, patting both our hands with a smile. “There we go.”

  Mama Shannon makes eye contact with me in the rearview mirror, then looks back at the road. A minute later she does it again and I remember to thank Mrs. Madison for the candy.

  Zany does, too, but quieter. She and Mrs. Madison keep sneaking glances at each other.

  “Zoey Grace,” Mrs. Madison says after a while, “I do care a lot about something besides the poodle. And not just Fella, either.” Miles keep slipping by outside while she stares at us. “I greatly admire the people Lacy loved. I just don’t feel entitled to—to show how much I care for Zoey Grace and . . . and others. Since we’re not all kin.”

  “But we are kin,” I say. “She’s my kin and you’re my kin, so you two are kin. Mama Shannon, too. And family takes care of family. That’s what Mama Lacy said in her letter. She said to take care of her family. She told me that.”

  We roll on a little while.

  “I’d like to see her letter again,” Mrs. Madison says softly. I remember with guilt that there is a section for Mrs. Madison, too.

  “So would I,” Mama Shannon says. This is the first time she’s spoken for miles. Her hands are tight on the wheel, while Mrs. Madison’s pet and pet at Haberdashery, who wiggles to get away. Even though she tries to hold him, he squirms free and crawls into my lap. His company gives me the courage to speak.

  “I . . . have it.”

  Zany twists away to get a better look at me.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I . . . needed something.”

  Mama Shannon lets out a long, shaky breath. “We all needed something.” She doesn’t sound mad anymore, just sad. There are too many mixed-up feelings in the car. Anger and confusion and heartache. I feel like we’re at sea and any second a wave is going to wash us all away.

  Mrs. Madison purses her lips and looks among the three of us. Then she cradles Haberdashery tighter as she turns to stare out the windshield. Once or twice I see her shoulders jump. I’m terrified that my grandmother is crying by herself up front.

  “I wish you’d told me, Ophelia,” Mrs. Madison says to the dashboard, “how strongly you felt about all this. I know you were hesitant to come live with me in the beginning, but I just wanted to keep you safe and cared for. Nobody tells me anything. They expect me simply to know.”

  I know how Mrs. Madison feels. People are all the time expecting me to understand things I can’t get my brain around. Like how to be brave, or how to find the right words to say what’s on my mind. Like how to accept that somebody could die and be gone when I wasn’t finished loving them yet.

  We’ve reached the exit. I lean past Zany to get a better look. She’s pressed to the window, which is down, letting the February air in, because Zany is trying to capture enough water to wash the tears off her face. I’m amazed Mrs. Madison hasn’t insisted that she roll up the window yet.

  We’re almost on top of the sign before I make out what it says:

  ASHEVILLE

  I look for the little white number to tell me how far we fell short of our goal. Or how close we came. Instead, as we flash past the sign, all I see is a crooked arrow pointing toward our exit, and my heart starts to pound.

  This is Asheville.

  We’ve arrived hours later than we expected, in a different car than we left in, and with more people than we’d planned on. We’ve arrived cold, wet, tired, muddy, and drained. We’ve arrived—or at least I have—uncertain of what is the best thing to do for Mama Lacy.

  I know Mama Shannon only intends to turn around. But this is Asheville! This is home!

  Turning around or not—angry mother at the wheel or not—I feel a rush of relief that we’ve arrived. I feel like maybe we can do other hard things, too, if only we do them together.

  chapter

  24

  I think the city skyline will be unfamiliar after all these years, but right away I recognize the softness of it, how it doesn’t tower like some cities, all serious and important. It only raises its arms above its head a bit, like a little kid playing in the rain. The buildings are just tall enough so that you know you’ve arrived.

  One highway gives way to another, so it takes Mama Shannon a few tries to find a suitable place to turn around. She drives up a ramp onto a smaller road and pulls into the first parking lot she finds.

  Zany’s still sniffling, and I nudge her. “Zany!” Trying to get her to sit up and look. But she won’t even glance at me and her fingers have uncurled from the urn. I take it from her.

  Mama Shannon sighs as she swings us in a slow circle and puts on her turn signal, back the other way. I crane my neck to gaze at the city skyline, and all at once I have this memory of being lifted. Of Mama Lacy showing me out the window of our apartment above the warehouse, “That’s our city, Fella Sweets. That’s where I want to live always.” I remember thinking that if Mama Lacy wanted to live there always, so did I. With buildings so pretty and my family beside me, there would never be any reason to leave.

 
And now we’re about to leave Asheville without ever setting foot outside the car, without doing what we came here to do. Mama Lacy will go back on the mantel and I’ll go back to bed in my big, empty room at Mrs. Madison’s. Mama Lacy’s birthday will pass and her dying wish, which is the closest thing she’ll ever have to another birthday wish, won’t come true. And if anybody bothers to bake a cake, which nobody will, we will have to put thirty-nine candles on it because Mama Lacy will always be thirty-nine, even someday when I’m thirty-nine, and she’ll never need another candle, ever.

  Zany is hiccupping and Mama Shannon’s hands on the wheel are shaking and Mrs. Madison, Mrs. Madison is going to keep me, not because she’s mean and evil like Zany thinks and not because she’s lonely and desperate like I’ve been telling myself. But because I never told her she shouldn’t. I never made it clear what I wanted.

  I know, right this second, what I want. But first I’ve got to take care of what Mama Lacy wanted. If you want to do something, just decide to.

  I want to do something.

  I push on Zany, but she won’t budge. So I do the only thing I can think of. I roll my window down like Zany. Then, as Mama Shannon waits for a chance to pull out onto the road, I lift Haberdashery to the window and I set him gently out on the hillside.

  “Oh no!” I shout. “Haberdashery jumped out the window!” And I kick my door open to go after him, carrying Mama Lacy along with me.

  chapter

  25

  It’s been a long time since I’ve been alone. I mean alone alone, not the kind of alone I usually feel at Mrs. Madison’s. Actually, come to think of it, I’m not sure I’ve ever been this alone. Out in the bright morning, in a city I haven’t seen in five years, alone except for a dognapped poodle and a shiny brass urn.

  The front of my mind—the part that nags at Zany to drive slower and drink less Mountain Dew—is screaming, “I’m not so sure this is a good idea,” and “You’re crazy, Fella, turn around before it’s too late,” and “Something bad might happen if you do this. Go back. Go back!”

  I don’t go back.

  The quickest way to get out of sight of my family is to get off the road, so I cut through parking lots. I duck behind cars. I slip down alleys, feeling every bit like a criminal, cradling the urn in the crook of my arm. If the cops see me now, they would definitely arrest me, because clearly I’m doing something wrong. I think everybody in a five-mile radius must be able to hear my heart.

  Because in the back of my mind, this feeling is welling up that I like. It makes my feet fly so fast, they barely touch the ground as I run. I think if the feeling rushing through me were a sound, it would be Mama Lacy singing: The sound of people saying, I love you . . .

  I can’t see the skyline anymore, now that I’ve run down between the buildings. I’d forgotten how steep the hills are, how all the streets and alleys and the sides of buildings lean down into valleys and swoop back up onto mountains. How much your legs can ache and your lungs can burn when you travel this city on foot. Haberdashery’s getting so heavy in my grip that I have to set him on his paws and let him trot alongside me. He bravely jogs on his three good legs and I make a mental note to give him a whole jar of peanut butter later.

  I’m so dizzy with freedom, and so worn out with running, that it takes me all the way to the top of the hill to realize I have no idea where I’m going. I was seven last time I was here, and I didn’t pay attention to street signs. I don’t see any warehouses, or anything that looks especially familiar.

  Half running through the city, panting for breath but afraid to slow down, I’m able to name the major landmarks, of course: the courthouse, and then a few blocks on, the Vance Monument stretching up toward the sky. Down one hill and up another, I find myself on a brick street I recognize, with its giant iron sculpture and its little bookstore, though some of the stores are different and others are empty. A block over, I pass a park, and I remember playing there with somebody’s spotted puppy. The streets are getting more familiar now. I know I walked this way when I was small. But I can’t remember how I got here, or which direction I was coming from.

  I jog another block, then two. The buildings start getting smaller again and there is less pavement and more grass, first a few blades, then a little patch or two, and then the houses have actual lawns and I know I’m heading down into the residential area.

  But we didn’t live in that area, did we? We lived where there were stores and businesses, because we lived above a warehouse. This can’t be right.

  “Mama Lacy,” I say in a voice hardly big enough to reach all the way out of me, let alone make it up to wherever she may be. “I need you to show me where to go, okay?”

  I’m thinking this is stupid and probably even the poodle would do a better job than me at getting un-lost, and then I turn a corner and I’m looking at a purple door. A purple door that I know will lead to a room with an orange floor.

  I try the door, but it’s locked like most stores at this hour on a Sunday morning. I ought to keep moving. Keep running so I won’t get caught.

  Except I know this purple door. I remember bursting through this door a hundred times, but I don’t remember where I was coming from and I’m afraid to walk away and lose this landmark.

  Now that I’m no longer running, I’m starting to feel strange, anyway. Sluggish. I have to keep blinking my eyes, scrubbing at them with my knuckles. It’s partly the weariness from a long night of travel and almost no sleep, and partly the chill I’m sure I’m catching from running around half-dressed in the cold for so long.

  I sit down on the sidewalk and lean back against the purple door, cradling Haberdashery on my lap. When I close my eyes, I right away start having those dreams a person gets when you’re very tired, the kind where you’re tripping and falling and it wakes you up. Except instead of tripping and falling, I’m dropping Mama Lacy’s urn, over and over. Each time I try to catch it, but it’s too late, and Mama Shannon is mad.

  Even when I force my eyes open and face the world awake, I know Mama Shannon is mad. Her words are circling in my head: “Do you not understand how you can’t do that to a person?”

  “I ran out here,” I tell Haberdashery, “because I didn’t want to go home and put Mama Lacy back on the mantel. I can’t do that to her. But what about Mama Shannon? I was going to scatter the ashes, and I can’t do that to her. What does that leave? Who should I listen to?”

  Haberdashery wags his nub tail when I put him down. He walks circles around my feet at the end of his duct-tape leash. He doesn’t answer. I gaze at the sky, which is bright blue, dripping with sunlight. There are clouds, the sketchy kind that my fifth-grade teacher calls stratus but Mama Lacy called painter’s clouds because they look like they were painted on with the very tip of an artist’s brush.

  I think about how I asked Mama Lacy to show me where to go, and maybe she heard me because this familiar purple door popped up right away.

  And if she heard me then, maybe she can hear me all the time, like Zany says.

  I don’t know if I believe it, but just in case, I whisper, “Mama Lacy, please help me figure out what I’m supposed to do with you.” And I hug the brass urn tight.

  For a minute I think Mama Lacy’s about to answer me because somebody clears their throat, but it’s a man’s throat clearing and so I think maybe it’s God or the police and maybe I’m in trouble. I’m too tired to be properly startled, but when I look up, there’s this guy wearing a trench coat and a stripey hat like the Cat in the Hat would wear, and his eyes are nothing but smiles.

  “’Sakes,” he says. “Not warm enough for that getup, girl. Best get in here where there’s hot cocoa.” Then he puts the key in the purple door and opens up Mack and Morello’s.

  chapter

  26

  Mack and Morello’s isn’t called Mack and Morello’s anymore. It’s called the Happy Thought Coffee Shop, and there’s a
picture above the door of Peter Pan flying through the air, holding a cup of coffee. The inside smells like coffee beans and chocolate muffins, and you can barely see the orange-painted concrete under patches of different-colored tile. But the same old bell rings to announce our entrance.

  “Your dog has to stay near the door,” the guy in the hat says. “Dogs aren’t really allowed, but I let them in as far as the bookcase. Dogs are people, too.”

  “Not this one. This one’s a devil.” I can’t imagine which bookcase he means, since there are at least ten of them around the coffee shop, but I drop Haberdashery’s leash near the entrance and he settles down in a circle and goes to sleep right away, looking, to be honest, not at all like a devil. Poor dog, I think he’s as tired as I am. He looks like he could use a happy thought. I can’t stop myself from bending down and scratching between his ears.

  Past the rug Haberdashery chose as a bed, I don’t see a whole lot that’s familiar. The tables, the chairs, the giant, fluffy old sofas with throw pillows so dusty Mrs. Madison would have them sent out with the trash—I don’t think any of this furniture was here the last time I was.

  Still, something stirs deep in my memory. Something about the shape of the room. I think I taste Heath bar ice cream for a second. I remember that the menu had a cartoon picture of a wiener dog.

  “My name’s Luther,” the guy in the Dr. Seuss hat says. I’m not sure whether I expected him to be Mack or Morello, but I’m pretty sure we never knew anybody named Luther. I guess it makes sense, since the store’s changed names. It must have changed owners, too. “Do you want a brownie for breakfast, or cake?”

  He’s trying to be nice, but the mention of cake makes me sad. The cake he’s offering is straight from the freezer and still has ice crystals on the frosting. I’m thinking of thirty-nine candles, but even one would crack this frosting in a thousand places and it would never fit together right again.