The Uncertain Season

by Ann Howard Creel

  Her story here would be short, but it would be hers and hers alone. Despite all the running and hiding, her life here had included some wonderful things. Big things—a father, mother, and brother. Little things—a perfect sand dollar, a day over the shoals with Harry, a drawing of a fish filled with vibrant colors.

  Wearing only her petticoat and underthings, she reached the boat, unmoored it quickly, and jumped on board. Harry’s body remained where she had left it. He would have wanted a sea burial anyway.

  No longer earthbound, no longer looking back. Life on the island wouldn’t leave her; she would leave it. She sailed away until there was nothing else, only the quiet of an underwater world below her, and there she managed to return Harry to the sea.

  Yes, holy be thy resting place—a line from Brontë. She wept for him and would always remember . . . sweet, kind Harry.

  Gripping the tiller hard, she let her breath out in a tremulous stream. Sweat swam down her spine and moonlight planed into her eyes. She stared into the receding lights of the island. She would never have recovered back there. The island had not protected her family; it couldn’t save her, it couldn’t even heal her. She had only been passing through that place. Fleeing over dunes, marshes, docks, and alleys, along a wall and through to the sea.

  Remaining awake and alert until Galveston was barely visible, she kept watching until it receded into a speck and then drowned. She knew nothing of what awaited her ahead; she had never even imagined owning a boat. The stars sparkled and nudged ever so slightly overhead, and the sea parted before her.

  Harry had saved her life once and had now done it again, this time by allowing her to leave.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  ETTA

  And so came the aftermath. Because of her aunt’s grand sweeping gesture, Etta learned about the tenacity of a mother’s love.

  The morning after Etta had blurted out what she knew, her aunt marched into Etta’s room and stood rooted there, framed by a large beam of light coming through an open window, making her look resplendent and not of this world. She held her hands high and clasped before her, her back was long and straight, and the muscles along her jawline were clenched.

  Etta had never seen her aunt quite so animated. Her thoughts must have been spinning like an eddy, but her eyes showed a dreadful, raw pain.

  She had expected rage. She had expected “How could you? How could you?” screamed at high pitch. But this pain, this solitary pain in her aunt’s eyes, was almost unbearable.

  She had already lain awake during the night, planning her recovery from such a serious error in judgment and admonishing herself for her outrageous loss of control. Regaining acceptance into the circle of friends she had offended would be easy enough given time and a few graciously placed apologies and explanations. Even Grace would forgive her; she had that nature. Already this morning her cousin had gone to see the man who had been hidden from her for years, and Etta had the feeling that her cousin would embrace her father despite his condition.

  But her aunt was another matter. She would be the one most disgraced, most betrayed, and the most vengeful. No matter how many times Etta tried to replay the evening in her mind, no matter how many times she rewrote the story more to her liking, the facts remained, and she had said it.

  “How did you know?” Bernadette asked.

  Etta had decided on honesty. “I followed you.”

  “Why?”

  Etta looked at her aunt with open eyes. “Because I was curious. I wanted to know everything about you.”

  “You followed me? All the way there? Why didn’t you simply ask me?”

  “You were avoiding me. You lied to me about doing business in town.”

  Her aunt’s back caved in. She suddenly seemed weary and sad. “I thought I could keep that one thing private.” Her age was apparent for the first time, the fine lines chiseled into her face made more visible by the white morning sunlight. “But if you had come to me with what you knew . . .”

  “Would you have told me?” asked Etta, working to remain calm. “Even I would never have dreamed what you were hiding. And hiding it from Grace . . .”

  “It’s hidden no longer, thanks to you.”

  “Would you have told me?”

  Bernadette didn’t move a muscle. For once she appeared to be at a loss for words, and Etta sensed her weakening.

  Etta said, “I am truly sorry. I was distraught. The evening wasn’t going as planned, and I lost my temper. I said it before I had realized it.”

  “So you aren’t responsible for the words that came out of your mouth.”

  “Of course I’m responsible. That’s why I’m apologizing.”

  “That apology will never be accepted.”

  Etta began to panic, and then came the blow.

  “You have two days to gather your belongings and say your good-byes.”

  Etta gasped. So this would be her punishment, the thing she most dreaded. Back to normalcy, back to mediocrity, back to Nacogdoches. “You’re sending me away.”

  “Yes,” said her aunt, “back to where you came from.”

  Etta looked down. She had been bettered. Rejection sliced through her as though she were made of grease. All her doing. All her undoing.

  Hot tears formed in her eyes, and bitter regret cut farther inside her. She stole a glance out of the window at turbid, churning clouds that reminded her of curdled milk. A sour truth in her gut, she finally opened herself, her voice a plaintive whisper. “I’ll do anything to remain. I’ll do anything to make it up to you. Please.”

  Bernadette shook her head. “It’s not what you’ve done to me. It’s that you did it to Grace. That is what I cannot abide. The betrayal will always remain. I can’t have you in my house any longer.”

  Later, when Etta remembered back to this morning, she would be appalled by the speed of it. Everything had been destroyed by only a few words. One minute, one deed, one word had the power to tilt the world in another direction. “But Galveston is my home now.”

  “No,” said Bernadette. She had a handkerchief folded in her hand and she dabbed at her neck. “It isn’t and probably never should have been. I agreed to help my sister with you, and this is how I am repaid.”

  “But I’m truly sorry. I’ll make it up to you. If I’m forced to leave, what shall I do?”

  “Do whatever you like. But you must go.”

  Etta’s throat constricted. “I’ll beg.”

  “Oh no,” said Bernadette. “It won’t do you a bit of good.”

  After her aunt left her alone, Etta sat before her dressing table, her face in the mirror a chilled icy-white and lifeless thing, her hair the color of bitter bark, her breath dry and ragged. She picked up a comb and began raking it through her long locks repeatedly, from her scalp all the way down to the coiled ends, as if by doing so she could rid herself of the events of the previous day. Of course Grace would mean more to her aunt than a favored niece. But how huge the punishment for only a few words. Simple words.

  Outside, the gulls screeched for her as if in pain. Sitting in her skin was difficult. She had no alternative but to do what her aunt insisted. She hadn’t planned well enough, and she hadn’t been in Galveston long enough to secure a secondary option. Like Philo, Etta had performed with no safety net below her. Impulsiveness had always been her downfall, and once again it had leveled her and overtaken her carefully contained plans. It had won.

  Two days later, Grace accompanied her to the train. During the carriage ride to Union Station, Etta looked out of her window. What match in marriage, what home filled with fine things, what beautiful children and travels could she have had? In front of her, a ripple passed down the horse’s flank, and the horse’s head lifted in defiance of something, smelling the wind.

  The sun was too bright. The horse whinnied in protest, and Etta wondered if there was something she could say to change her fate, some last plea, but as they drew nearer to the station, the air emptied from her lungs.

>   They arrived early at the station and had to wait for the train to begin boarding passengers. While Seamus delivered her trunks to the station, Grace stood with her in the shade, out of the sun’s sharply fanged rays. Occasionally Grace gazed out at the pulsing sun, as if she’d never seen it quite that shape before. Grace was good at heart. Even the recent turn of events hadn’t ruined her, but of course she hadn’t experienced the same degree of failure that Etta had. And she didn’t possess the wrath her aunt did, either.

  Etta finally turned to Grace and asked, “So, will you marry Jonathan?”

  A small furrow made its way down Grace’s forehead. “I honestly don’t know.”

  “Will you write and let me know?”

  Grace looked down at the ground, as if searching for answers. “I don’t know.”

  “Please.”

  “Well”—Grace hesitated—“I’ll think about it.”

  “You’re right. Perhaps we shouldn’t write.”

  Grace smiled in a way that was both kind and regretful. “Mother says the two of us together were always trouble.”

  Etta nodded. “We’re too different.”

  Grace seemed pensive, and then her voice changed. “Oh, I don’t know about that.”

  Etta watched the air around her quickly fill with dust motes and fragments of flowers and other tiny particles, capturing a quavering light. All floating, drifting, and so haphazard. At the beginning of the summer, their relationship had begun in such a hopeful manner—that unspoken pact made at the sea, when they believed they were more enlightened than their elders.

  Etta said in a whisper, unable to meet her cousin’s eyes, “We didn’t end up any better, did we?”

  “Better than our mothers?” said Grace. “Oh, I don’t know. We still have time.”

  “You’re too kind.”

  “No,” said Grace, “I’m not kind. I’m still reeling, if you want the truth.”

  Etta managed to speak. “I’m sorry. Honestly, Grace . . .”

  Grace looked at Etta with glistening eyes. “You opened my mind. It’s the most confusing mix of emotions. I hate your tactics, but I wouldn’t have known had it not been for you. You came here and changed everything.”

  Etta’s eyes filled with tears that she made no attempt to bat away. Two streams floated down her face, unchecked. “I changed everything except myself.”

  Grace moved closer and took Etta’s hand. “There’s hope for us . . .”

  Then Etta did what she never expected to do. She held her cousin close, felt her body against hers, and embraced her. As the surge of their related blood coursed through them, Etta’s lungs refilled with life-giving oxygen. They stayed there, entwined, even as streams of people rushed past them to board the train.

  If only she could go back in time; if only the future could be destined differently. Then something like love filled her, something like that old family history written within the seams of their skin, but she finally let Grace go. In the end, she hadn’t fared well in the world of her cousin. Would these moments in her life, this fog that was Galveston, eventually blow away, leaving behind only a faint memory?

  “Take care of yourself,” said Grace.

  Etta couldn’t pull her gaze away. She had never been the recipient of such kindness. “I’ve never trusted anyone, you see.”

  “I understand.”

  Etta gulped. “No one at all.”

  “So find a way to trust, and also find happiness,” Grace said.

  “And I will wish it for you, too.”

  As she walked to the station house to purchase her ticket to Nacogdoches, the sense of finality dragged her down with enormous weight, each step pulling her onward into the deep bowels of Texas, the bowels of hell. She had lived in two worlds now. One full of hope, one hopeless. One light, one dark. One full of the future, one full of the past. She had almost successfully made the hop from one to the other. Almost.

  A cloud passed across the sun; then the sunlight returned like a spear in her eyes. Around her, it brightened the world. Her head cleared, and she swallowed the first taste of real freedom.

  Lord Almighty, this was her life, her moment, her decision. There had to be more out there than just these two worlds. She reeled even as she stopped walking, holding completely still. People peered at her curiously as they wove around her, but she went blind to them. Why was she letting others snatch away her free will and send her down a path of their making, not hers? What was she doing taking directions yet again from someone else, when no one could really force her to board that train to Nacogdoches?

  Before, she had thought of herself as a freethinker, even a rebel, but it turned out she had been as disappointing as those old bones and tools found in the Caddo burial mounds. Her moves had been small; now was the moment to take a leap.

  She walked again, her gait changing to rock solid as she finally found footing in her own ideas. She had a lot of learning to take with her. Could brutal sorrow be transformed into fierce determination? Her chest filled with something close to joy. Yes, yes—it was all in her. Etta clenched her fists at her sides so hard her nails dug into the skin of her palms.

  She had been banished from Galveston, a tiny speck in the sea. So what? In years to come, it would be forgotten and meaningless. There had been life before this, and there would be life after. Now she was truly free—not a shamed daughter sent away or a shunned niece sent away again, but a new woman who could become anyone she wanted. With her trunks full of expensive and fashionable clothes and money she had saved from her aunt’s generous allowance, Etta could go anywhere.

  New Orleans! The name embedded itself like a sparkling diamond in her brain. She would go to that fabled city. She could take what she had learned in Galveston and turn it to her advantage.

  She gazed about. Here, she might have been tempted to marry only for money, to settle for something less than what she’d once felt for Philo. But why should she?

  Etta walked onward, the new plan beginning to sing inside her head. She was young and beautiful, there were endless possibilities, and life’s potential was not lost, not yet. She would think of her aunt no longer. After all, Bernadette was a woman of the old order. Her time was over, but Etta’s was just beginning.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  GRACE

  My friends Viola and Larke stood by me throughout those early dark days of scandalous gossip. And Jonathan, too, dear Jonathan.

  Viola spent hours on my porch, in the gardens, in the library, talking everything over. Once she said, “You’ve lost your father all over again. First you lost him to death, now the death of what you thought he was.”

  Yes, it had been difficult to accept that my father was not of sound mind. Had this revelation about my father been made earlier in my life, I might have taken the same course as my mother had and placed it in hiding. Ours was a society that did not accept what it saw as lesser souls.

  I said, “But he lives.”

  Viola shook her head. “And your mother? Will the two of you ever be the same?”

  “I’m not sure I want things to be the same.”

  “But will you ever make amends?”

  “I hope so.”

  “You could put it behind you?”

  “I hope to.”

  Viola considered me.

  I shrugged. “Nothing can change what’s already been done. What good could possibly come from not putting it behind us? I’m thinking about forgiveness.”

  My words could’ve come from Ira’s mouth.

  On the beach three days later, the children dipped, blew, bounced in imaginary boats, and spun like eddies. I walked with Joseph down the strip of packed sand. A church volunteer who was helping me stayed with the children, who were playing in the gentle surf of that day.

  Joseph was now ready to venture all the way to the water’s edge. On the hard sand, he even allowed the lips of low, transparent, sliding waves to reach his toes. Still he was fearful, and I would not let him go. In f
act, I squeezed his hand tighter than he squeezed mine. I would not let him go under. I would not let it happen again, as we had allowed Etta to go under so long ago.

  Later we strolled down to the docks in search of the girl. I had been told that she’d been missing for days, and although I had searched, I’d come up with nothing. I told myself she had simply gone into hiding again. And I tried hard to believe it.

  We headed toward a boat slip where some fishermen had directed us to look, but it was empty. Another fisherman told me that boat had been gone for a few days.

  As I stood before the empty slip looking into the murky water, something shiny drew my eye. It caught on the piling beneath the planks, mostly submerged, but some of it dry and out of the water, hanging on the splintered wood. It reflected the light of the throbbing afternoon sun. Joseph and I located a stick, and I used it to lift the thing from the water.

  My blue dress now lay crumpled on the dock in front of me. I recognized it, although the sun and salt water had bleached its color. My old dress, abandoned there, most of it drenched and stuck on the rough splintery wood planks, the dry part flapping in the wind. It had not floated away; instead, it had remained despite the water and wind, kept here as if by some omnipotent being who knew I needed to see it. That dress lit by the sunlight, no girl in sight. As I stared down, somehow knowing that this abandoned dress contained a message, that it meant something, a hollow pit opened inside me. I could imagine her tearing out of this garment and the reach of those like me, who had perhaps prodded and pried too much.

  I couldn’t look at the dress, not at what this meant. Instead, I gazed out to the bay, an emptiness inside that could’ve contained all that water. I had played a role in this, my dress the confirmation of that fact. But knowing nothing more than that, I stood until the sun sank lower against the blank, cloudless sky, all the while willing that light not to leave me.