The Uncertain Season

by Ann Howard Creel

  Joseph did nothing to snap me back into composure. The sweet, uncanny wisdom of the very young kept him nearby, playing quietly, while my mind ran through all the possibilities. Why had she gone? Where had she gone? Would she survive?

  Then it was sunset, and the bay turned to sheets of liquid silver sprinkled with gold. Joseph took my hand. The sky was a burnished red, the water beneath our feet an iridescent burnt pink. This was the color I used to try to capture on canvas, this burned and brilliant sunlight at the end of day that made everything, even the rawest, ugliest thing, look soft like a baby’s velvety cheek.

  Where was she?

  I didn’t know, and the others who knew her didn’t either. So I suppose no story is complete without its tragedies. I had failed her.

  From time to time, accounts of Miss Girl appeared in the newspapers, and she became the talk of the town once again. Apparently there were impersonators on the seawall. Everyone in Galveston believed she was very much alive and well, and that she ran the wall for unknown reasons and at unexpected times, mysteriously preferring to remain anonymous, her story untold. I liked to think that she might be back, having simply played a frivolous trick on those of us who cared, that she had hidden herself better this time, and then ran the wall just to tease us. I liked wishing it. And when that hope faded, I imagined her along another shore or on another island much sweeter than Galveston had been to her.

  Over breakfast one morning, when the servants were out of the room, my mother said, “I wish I could’ve been different for you, Grace. You have a right to be angry at me for the rest of my life.”

  My mother’s hair had turned completely silver by then. Overnight the youthful dark streaks had bleached themselves away. Her eyes were more delicately set, her gaze diffused, and she rarely wore rouge anymore. Her face had taken on a softened, muted quality.

  This was her way of asking for my forgiveness, a step forward in her view. At the beginning of our newfound relationship, even her gaze had been like porcupine quills. Her presence darkened a room. How sharp was the edge, the ragged break between love and hate. But I didn’t want to hate her or hurt her any longer. Nothing was as desperate as a bitter woman, and I would not become one.

  I said, “I hope not to hold on to grudges and bad feelings forever.”

  “But your father . . .” she said, her voice trailing away.

  True, my father’s existence was one that others would find of little value, but for lack of other options, I would take it. I also knew by then that people came into one’s life, and sometimes they stayed, but staying couldn’t be taken for granted. Other times they slipped away. All one could do was hold on to what was learned and try to paint with the purest and truest colors.

  There were times when I would venture that my father knew me. Sometimes I saw a soft U-shaped smile or a changed light in his eyes when I walked into the room. Other times he would lift his eyebrows and put his lips together, as if he were going to say something important, something revealing, and always a surge of hope then rose in my chest, but just as quickly he looked lost again. Sometimes he spoke of old memories: his mother, an old family dog, yellow flowers in a garden, a blue jay he once tried to catch. Sometimes I saw my own face in his expressions. Other times I saw my fingers in his hands.

  I had already consulted an alienist from England, a doctor who specialized in the treatment of people such as my father, but he came up with no new recommendations. He gave me hope, however, by describing some possible treatments under review, including an experimental electric shock therapy that we might try in the future. I’d even considered bringing my father to Galveston until I was told how difficult it was for people like him to leave a familiar place. The nurses at the home told me that often a change of location brought on hallucinations, rages, and crying. I couldn’t have borne it.

  My mother had said, “Bring him here? Are you trying to punish me in front of everyone?”

  But the idea of bringing him closer was not in any way an attempt at punishment. I had never considered it that way. That was her world, not mine.

  Jonathan dined with us the last evening before leaving to return to Yale. He arrived dressed in more casual attire than usual, no jacket, and he needed to see the barber. He had aged, too. The summer had not turned out to be anything like we had expected.

  He hadn’t abandoned a sinking ship, so to speak, even though I was poor company in those days. Jonathan had never asked for any details about my father’s condition and had not asked to join me on a visit to see him. Gossip had made its rounds, and everyone now knew that I had chosen Ira to accompany me the first time. I had tried to imagine taking Jonathan along. I tried to imagine him sitting quietly in the room while my father gazed out of the window or picked at the buttons on his shirt.

  Would Jonathan understand my urge to be near him?

  We had canceled the gala to celebrate our engagement, and the new pink silk gown hung in my wardrobe, a glistening arrogant reminder, awaiting our decision.

  When we ate dinner with my mother, it was difficult for me to make light conversation. Those days were over. Tension hung in the room as heavy as the humidity in the air. But he and my mother were better than me at such things. They managed to make small talk despite it all. Jonathan sat with me throughout long tepid meals with my mother.

  One night after dinner, on the portico he said, “I lost myself for a while, Grace.”

  I nodded.

  “I-I . . .” He paused. “I’m talking about Etta. Even though I despise her now.”

  I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her, someone who had defeated herself. “It was never about Etta.”

  “What was it about then?”

  We had both turned to another, but there was no reason to hurt Jonathan any further by reminding him. “It’s about whether or not we’re a good match.”

  He looked at me in the way I’d always loved—full of adoration and tenderness.

  “We endured physical separation for three school years, and then during our most important summer together a distance emerged.”

  “Distances are meant to be crossed. We can find each other again, Grace. I know it. I still love you.”

  I meant it when I said, “And I love you.” I loved Jonathan, but not in the way I should’ve.

  “Isn’t that enough?” he asked pleadingly.

  “I used to think so.”

  He took my hands. “Look, our love has been tested. Brutally tested, in fact. But many wise people would say that tests can strengthen a couple. It can become, in fact, an advantage.”

  I appreciated his effort, but now I was in love, really in love for the first time in my life.

  He said softly while still holding my hands, “Your life has changed in so many ways. I believe you should let things settle for a while. Let’s wait the year out before making any decision. We have that much time, at least.”

  His sweet blue gaze reminded me of the boy I’d known, but the tension along his jawline made it obvious that our youth was over and both of us had to face adult truths. I answered chokingly, “In truth, Jonathan . . . I feel we should break our engagement now.” I made myself face his pleading eyes. “Things happened this summer that should not have happened had we been right for each other.”

  He looked saddened but not crushed. “Are you sure, Grace? I mean, the scandal of a broken engagement . . .”

  I smiled wryly. “In view of recent scandals, this one will pale in comparison.”

  He almost laughed, and I was filled with warmth for Jonathan. We had started as friends, and friends we would remain.

  In the end, he agreed.

  After Jonathan left for school, I continued to work with the man who had opened my heart and mind. With all the complications surrounding me at the time, I thought that perhaps he might want to back away graciously from a woman whom he thought was still promised to another.

  But I was wrong. Standing close to the same spot where only months before I had met
him for the first time, he took my hand in his and spoke in his familiar soft voice. His eyes were imploring and shiny. “You could end your engagement. We could make our partnership both professional and marital. It wouldn’t be an easy life, and I probably shouldn’t even ask . . .”

  I wanted to touch the fine hairs that drifted onto his collar. We had never even found the time to have that talk about Darwin.

  He went on: “You don’t have to answer right away. Think about it, and let me know your answer when you’re ready.” He swallowed. “Should your answer be yes, I would be the happiest man . . .”

  “I have already broken my engagement, but I must ask: Why do you believe in me?”

  He stepped forward and put his hands on either side of my waist, and that tender weight had the effect of lifting me to the vast blue sky with a wind composed of both fear and desire.

  He whispered, “Because you don’t yet. But you will.”

  When I think of that time with Ira and Etta, when the memories are so strong they bore into me like beetles, I always return to this special moment, when I wished for order and sensibility and shape in the world, even though I knew it wasn’t possible; when I knew that our path would not be easy, but should we take it, we would walk together side by side as equals.

  But my life had begun on this island, and it would end here, too. I looked away and breathed in. Viewed from afar, as if by a creator, Galveston Island must have seemed the most unlikely place to settle, given all the solid land where we might have laid claim and grown surer and more solid roots.

  I focused on his face again and said, “Your life requires moving from place to place, following the greatest need. And my life must remain here, now more than ever. Someday my mother will be gone, and perhaps my father will outlive her. I must remain here, Ira, to look after both of them. I couldn’t go with you when you leave. I simply couldn’t.”

  “I would never leave you . . .”

  “But your work . . . the needs down on the border?”

  He said in a whisper, “Please don’t assume that I can’t find happiness in one place. I have and I will.”

  “But the needs on the border?”

  “I’ll find someone else to go.”

  My eyes stung, but I did not blink. His face was sunburned again. Soon I would be the one to take care of that. I would rub cream into the burn and insist that he wear a hat in the sun. Ira, the wealthiest man I’d ever known in terms of humanity, was too considerate to press me for a decision on that day.

  Looking back later, I found it curious that I didn’t accept his proposal then and there. Perhaps the conventions of the day still affected me more than they should have, and I lacked the courage to slip quickly from one engagement to another and therefore slap society so alarmingly in its face.

  “Grace,” he told me one day as I was leaving.

  I spun around.

  “Hold your head high. Always hold your head high.”

  I smiled a good-bye and turned to leave again. Then I did as he said. I walked straight and tall, in the posture that I imagined had once been my father’s, to wait for this man who said he would also wait for me.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  THE GIRL

  At dawn, she woke up out at sea, having let the wind take her where it wanted. She rubbed her eyes awake and donned an old shirt and some pants of Harry’s. Miraculously she had sailed through the pass from the bay into open ocean, and in the broad circle of water surrounding her, there was nothing but sea and sky, no land in sight. All around her she faced her special place along the horizon. She sat taller and peered closer, a sudden excitement building. She had found it, that place she’d always sought—that glistening meeting of the water and the heavens, no land to be seen, not even an island.

  All along she had been drawn here; all along it had been calling her to leave, to abandon the island that had not been able to protect her family’s lives, nor in the end hers, either. Back there, her plight had been but one small droplet in the deluge of a great human tragedy, a massive drama of loss and suffering and searching, her plight only one among thousands. And now she was here, crossing empty sea to be born again, she hoped, to land in a new life.

  Would this be a new beginning, or would she meet an untimely death? Would she meet other kind souls like Reena and Madu? Or would she be hunted again? Would she hit a sandbar and capsize, sail into starvation, or would she slide upon a seaside town that welcomed her? Away from Galveston, that place of death, would she someday recover her voice? There was no way to know and nothing to do except sail onward. A clear directive sped through her brain like a whip of cool air. Sail west. Put the morning sun on your back.

  She plowed into the unknown, the sea below her and the open sky above.

  My life will begin again.

  It tasted sweet; it tasted true.

  Epilogue

  GRACE

  I started painting again, at first in a futile attempt to recapture that end-of-day light, and when I still couldn’t get it right, I started to paint the girl as I remembered her on the seawall, wearing my old yellow dress, silhouetted against the island sky, the sea below her. I preferred to remember her in this way, above the rest of us.

  Galveston continued to believe in Miss Girl simply for the joy of it, and more for the absence of a breathing, heart-beating, imperfect person than if she had been discovered and found to be all too humanly flawed. She became more colorful than an average person, not unlike the way I remembered my father, deeply tucked into a past that I could never quite reclaim.

  I didn’t talk about her again. My declaration to have known Miss Girl was quickly forgotten in the aftermath of that fateful evening. Better anyway to let the invented stories supplant the real girl, who belonged to no one.

  At first, I didn’t know what colors to use. I began with gray seawall and brown sea and painted her dress a pale, bleached yellow, the sky barely lavender. But as I worked longer, I devised a gust of cerulean sky, a swath of emerald-green wave, a tendril of red hair trailing from beneath the edge of her bonnet, a flame that still burned.

  Her dress changed to sunny yellow, and her arms became the color of ripe peaches. Her cheeks were soon flushed into a different shade of warm pink. I finished one painting and then another, and it gave me comfort to put her form on canvas, to keep her image alive in a changing beauty, to in some way mark her presence and remember her. One day I could finally stand back and smile at her image without crying.

  My mother disapproved, but I sold those paintings in a gallery and then donated the proceeds to my causes in the alleys. Over the years to come, she became my most popular subject, and my paintings of the girl appeared everywhere, in homes and restaurants and hotel lobbies, but never far from the water.

  Each small stroke I blended with care, bright colors and deep ones, a combination of light and dark equally necessary for contrast and fullness. I brushed the strokes into small dense patterns, into joy and despair and all shades in between, into life before my eyes. Perhaps I would paint her for weeks, perhaps for months, maybe for years, but most likely for decades, until I could no longer pick up a brush.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Much appreciation to my fabulous agent, Lisa Erbach Vance, who believes in me and is always helpful and honest about my work. And to Amara Holstein, Jodi Warshaw, and the team at Lake Union: this book would not be if it weren’t for your wisdom, guidance, and support. A special thanks to Jami Durham of the Galveston Historical Foundation for her reading and historical critique of the manuscript, as well as finding the original source of the “Miss Girl” story.

  I utilized many fine resources while researching this book, among them Galveston: A History by David McComb; The Alleys and Back Buildings of Galveston: An Architectural and Social History by Ellen Beasley; Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History by Erik Larson; and Daughter of Fortune: The Bettie Brown Story by Sherrie S. McLeRoy.

  And finally, I want to
thank the special people of Kentucky, who have taken me in as their own. Being here has been an unexpected and ongoing blessing.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © 2015 Whitney Raines Photography

  Ann Howard Creel was born in Austin, Texas, and worked as a registered nurse before becoming a full-time writer. She is the author of seven books for children and young adults, as well as four adult novels, including The Whiskey Sea and While You Were Mine. Her children’s books have won several awards, and her novel The Magic of Ordinary Days was made into a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie for CBS. Creel currently lives and writes in Paris, Kentucky, where she is renovating a vintage house. Follow her at www.annhowardcreel.com.