The Past Is Never

by Tiffany Quay Tyson

  It was early afternoon when I pulled back into shore. Sunshine pushed the clouds apart and burned off any coolness left from the rain. The Osprey was tethered to the dock, which meant Willet and Audie were off the water. I hoped Willet would be at the apartment. He rarely spent a night there anymore, but some days he stopped by to shower and nap while Cheryl worked. I worried about his reaction to my discovery. What if Willet didn’t see what I saw in the photo? I stood in the parking lot and pulled the article from the plastic. The face in the photo was Daddy’s face, familiar beneath the beard. He would see it as I saw it. I’d make him see the truth.

  But when I went inside, Willet was sitting on the sofa with Cheryl. He was always with Cheryl and I was sick of it. She’d changed Willet in ways I didn’t like. And now, when I had something important to tell my brother, she was there, taking up his attention and crying like a fool.

  “Hi, Bert,” she said, her voice thick. “I’m an idiot.”

  “Why aren’t you at work?” I asked.

  “You’re not an idiot,” Willet said to Cheryl. “Give us a minute,” he said to me.

  “But, Willet …” I held the paper out to him.

  “Not now.”

  I should have listened to the tone of his voice. I should have waited and talked to him when I could get him alone, but I wasn’t thinking about what I should do. I was only thinking about what I’d learned and how it changed everything. We’d come to this place searching for information about our father. I had real information. How could anything Cheryl said be more important? I pushed the paper between Willet and Cheryl.

  “Just look,” I said.

  Willet slapped my hand away, leaving a tear across the image of Daddy’s face. “Goddammit, Bert!”

  I pulled the paper to my chest, protecting it from further injury. I kept my voice level, though it was a struggle. “This is important.” If he would look at me, I knew he would understand, but he kept right on staring at Cheryl.

  “Not now,” he said.

  I knew then that Willet was no better than anyone else in our family. He was afraid of the truth. I was on my own, all alone in my search for answers. I shut myself in my bedroom and examined the rip in the paper. It wasn’t too bad. When I pushed the edges together, I could barely see the tear. All I needed was some tape. But I wouldn’t be able to tape over the rift with Willet.

  I tried to remember the last time he’d mentioned Daddy or Pansy. He’d given up on them. He’d given up on me. The newspaper rattled in my hands. My whole body shook and I felt cold, the sort of bone-deep cold that settles in on a damp winter’s day. My arms ached from paddling the kayak through choppy waters. My clothes were damp and salt-stained. I pushed my fingers through my grimy, knotted hair, and shuddered. I was alone. Willet cared more about Cheryl than he cared about me. I stripped off my damp clothes. My teeth chattered and my legs cramped. The room was warm, but I couldn’t shake off the chill. I curled up under a pile of blankets and closed my eyes.

  Through the thin walls of the apartment, I listened to my brother and Cheryl murmuring. I heard Cheryl’s sobs and her garbled, tear-choked voice. The conversation on the other side of the wall was mostly impossible to make out, but one word came through: pregnant. Cheryl was pregnant. She was pregnant and mystified like all the girls who came to see Granny Clem. And I knew what it meant. Cheryl would take my brother from me completely. I’d already lost him.

  They talked for more than an hour. Cheryl’s sobbing dried up. Their voices became softer and harder to make out. The cold in my body evaporated and gave way to a seething fury. This grocery clerk at the edge of the world had trapped my brother and would destroy his life. It was all so unnecessary. Willet knew it. I knew it. We’d grown up in the shadow of Granny Clem’s business. No one needed to have a baby she didn’t want. I waited until I heard them leave the apartment, then I pulled myself out of bed and took a long shower. They would be at Cheryl’s house, I guessed, or at the bar. Willet would be full of guilt. I could picture him waiting on her, bringing her tissues and toast. I thought about how good he was with Mama when Pansy disappeared, how he remembered to keep the coffee going and how he offered mugs of it to anyone who came through the door. Offering up coffee and good manners was the only thing he could do when Pansy went missing, but now he had other options.

  I called Granny Clem. The phone rang a half dozen times and I wondered if she was delivering a baby or working outside. When she finally picked up, her voice sounded thin and weak.

  “Oh, hello, Bert. It’s you.” She sounded disappointed.

  “Are you busy?”

  “No more than usual.” She sneezed, then coughed.

  Granny Clem was never ill. She ate well and took her own medicinal teas as a preventative measure during the flu season.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I turned over a few of those raised beds and brought in some fresh soil. It’s a lot of work. I overdid it.”

  A few years earlier I’d helped her turn the garden beds and rotate the plants. It was hard and filthy work. My shoulders and back had ached for days and I thought my fingernails would never come clean. Granny Clem was seventy years old and I couldn’t imagine many seventy-year-old women who would take on such a task, but Granny Clem wasn’t like other women.

  “You should get Chester to help you with that kind of thing,” I said.

  “Easier to do it myself.”

  She coughed again. It sounded painful.

  “Maybe you should see a doctor,” I said.

  “What do you want?” She sounded impatient.

  “It’s Willet,” I said. “He’s got his girlfriend pregnant and I need you to send us the herbs.”

  “How far along is the girl?” Granny Clem asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Not far.”

  “You know it won’t work if she’s too far along. Why don’t you let me talk to her?”

  “She’s not here.”

  “Let me talk to Willet, then.”

  “He’s not here either.” She went quiet. I thought the phone might have gone dead.

  “Did they ask you to call me?”

  I admitted they hadn’t, but said I knew Willet wasn’t ready to be a father. Granny Clem emitted a noise that might have been a suppressed sneeze or might have been a snort of disgust.

  “If Willet wants my help, you tell him to call me,” she said. “Or tell him to drive his girlfriend to me and I’ll do whatever I can to help them both. But you know better than this.”

  “But—”

  I heard a loud clatter. Our apartment smelled of burnt toast and mildew, but for a moment I smelled lemons, strong and warm and sweet. “Granny Clem?”

  She didn’t answer.

  I had a vision of her sprawled on the kitchen floor, a trickle of blood running from the corner of her mouth. She was wearing her leather work boots and one of her long, faded skirts. Her hair was loose and it flowed across the white tile like water. I was so used to people dying or leaving. It was easy to imagine her gone.

  “Granny Clem?” I said again.

  “I dropped the cake.”

  I was relieved to hear her speak.

  “I was pulling a cake from the oven and I lost my grasp.”

  Was it possible to smell a cake across a phone line or had I heard the sounds of her baking so often it triggered some sort of sense memory? Or was I losing my mind?

  “I found a picture of Daddy,” I told her.

  “Which one?”

  I could hear her scraping the mess off the floor. She breathed hard and wheezed with the exertion of sweeping or stooping. She sounded worn out.

  “In the newspaper,” I said. “He had a beard. He called himself Grandin Bell.”

  I heard a thump and pictured her sitting at the kitchen table. I sat at our own table and imagined I was looking across at Granny Clem. I wished I had a mug of tea. I wished I had a slice of the ruined cake.

  “Grandin Bell?”

  “That�
�s right.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I read the article aloud to her and described the photo as best I could. “It’s him,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”

  Granny Clem coughed and I listened while she blew her nose.

  “I don’t think we buried Daddy in White Forest,” I told her. “I think Daddy is still alive.” I waited for her to tell me I was being ridiculous.

  “If your father is alive,” she said, “he’s gone to a good bit of trouble to hide that fact. You ought to be careful.”

  She believed me.

  “Daddy wouldn’t hurt me,” I said.

  “A desperate man will do most anything to protect himself.”

  How much did she know? I asked her and I tried to keep my voice from sounding like I was accusing her of anything. I didn’t want her to get defensive. I didn’t want to fight with her. She coughed again and I waited for her to finish. I heard the sound of running water. She was filling a kettle or soaking a sponge to clean up the mess of cake. Granny Clem never could sit still during a phone call.

  “Bert, did you get my letter?”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “The last time we talked was more than three months ago. And now you call as if no time has passed, begging favors you’ve got no right to beg.”

  “But—”

  “You were spitting mad at me for giving babies away.”

  “No,” I said. “I was mad at you for lying about it. I think those babies have the right to know the truth.”

  “The truth about how their mothers didn’t want them?”

  “The truth about who they really are. The truth about their families.”

  “But what good comes of that knowledge? What if you were to discover that we didn’t share a drop of true family blood; how would you feel?”

  It was inconceivable. Granny Clem and I were alike in so many ways. If we weren’t family, what would I owe her and what would she owe me? Granny Clem had brought me into the world with her own two hands and she’d come for me when I needed saving. Why would she go to so much trouble if we weren’t a true family? I said as much and she laughed.

  “But that’s my point. We are family. No matter what. Sometimes people are born to the wrong mother. I’m not lying to those children. I’m making them a family. I made a family for your father and for you and your brother and your sister. It isn’t about blood or a particular name, none of that matters. You are my family. You belong to me and I belong to you. You can throw a fit and not speak to me for a year or two years or for the rest of your life, but it won’t change a thing. You’re mine. Do you understand?”

  I didn’t understand, not then. I thought she was speaking in hypotheticals. I thought she was trying to avoid talking about Daddy. I thought she was working to distract me from the news of Cheryl’s pregnancy.

  “I’m tired,” she said. “I’m glad to talk to you, but I need some rest. If Willet and that girl want my help, you tell them to give me a call. And if you go searching after your father, be careful. Don’t spook him.” She hung up before I could ask anything else.

  Willet didn’t come home that night or the next. I called Cheryl’s house and asked to speak with him. “He’s out with Audie,” Cheryl said. “But we have some news. We were going to call you. Will you meet us at the Crab House for dinner?”

  I didn’t want to have dinner with Cheryl and Audie. I already knew Cheryl’s news. I wanted to talk to Willet, but I agreed to meet them. I figured I could get Willet alone and show him the photo of Daddy.

  When I got to the Crab House, the three of them were already there. They sat in the dining room instead of the bar and there was a pitcher of sweet tea on the table instead of a pitcher of beer. Cheryl grinned and stood to hug me. She was full of some sort of manic energy and I didn’t like it.

  “Willet,” I said. “I need to talk to you. Alone.”

  “Sit down,” he said.

  “But, Willet …”

  “We want to tell you something. Please.”

  I didn’t sit. I already knew about Cheryl’s pregnancy and I wasn’t going to pretend to be surprised. “I know she’s pregnant.” I didn’t look at Cheryl or Audie. I kept my focus on Willet. “Granny Clem said you should call her and she’ll help you handle it, but I have something to show you. It’s important.”

  Willet stood so quickly the table shook. He grabbed my arm and steered me out the front door. It was a warm night and the smell of fried fish wafted from the restaurant. I heard rock music playing in the bar.

  “What the hell is the matter with you?”

  “What’s the matter with you?” I said. “You know you don’t have to do this.”

  “I love Cheryl.”

  “You hardly know her and you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.” I told him about the nights I’d sat up with the newborns, all the nights I listened to them cry. Willet didn’t have any idea how difficult babies could be.

  “I’m not letting Granny Clem kill my child.”

  “It’s not a child. It’s tissue,” I said. “It’s smaller than a squash seed, and anyhow we didn’t come here so you could knock some girl up and ruin your life. We came here for Daddy and Pansy. Why can’t you remember that?”

  A man pulled open the door of the restaurant and we were hit by a blast from the air-conditioning.

  “My life isn’t ruined,” Willet said. “I’m sick of living in the past. I can’t keep doing it. I can’t keep reliving the same goddamned story every day of my life. Our father left us. Our sister disappeared. It’s a crying shame, but I can’t do a goddamned thing about it. Neither can you. We’ve got to move on. Can’t you see that?”

  “No,” I told him. “And you’ve got no business having a child. Pansy didn’t disappear. We left her. You left her. You were the oldest. You were supposed to take care of us. If you can’t keep track of your little sister, how can you possibly be responsible for a baby?”

  He looked at me like I was a stranger, like I was someone he didn’t recognize. “Go home,” he said. “Go to the apartment or go home to Granny Clem, but I don’t want you here tonight.”

  “You can’t make me leave.”

  “I asked Cheryl to marry me. She said yes. We’re happy. That was the news.”

  I left him standing outside the restaurant and pushed my way past a large family in the parking lot. There must have been a dozen of them, three generations at least, and I walked right through them. I hated them without knowing who they were. I hated them for seeming whole and complete and happy. Back at the apartment, I ate canned tuna on crackers and drank a lukewarm beer. I hoped Willet would call to apologize, but the phone didn’t ring. I knew what I needed to do. I would have to do it alone.

  EARL WAS FISHING WHEN he saw something odd moving through the trees on a nearby island, something large and dark. For more than three years he’d been living like a ghost. He didn’t use the name Earl anymore, even with Fern. For the most part, he used no name at all. He didn’t speak to anyone unless it was absolutely necessary. Sometimes he crashed at Fern’s house, but mostly he slept on the boat he’d bought in Chokoloskee or camped on one of the islands. He’d stashed his counterfeit bills among the mangroves. Every few months he made a trip to Naples or to Miami where he could spend the cash in anonymity and then return the items for real money. Most of the cash went to Fern and to Pansy, though Pansy wasn’t Pansy anymore. Fern called her Hope. She’d been right about the child’s memory. As time passed, she seemed to remember less and less about the time before he’d taken her from the quarry. During the first year she sometimes asked about her mother and her brother and sister, but not anymore. The girl was nine years old and smarter than any child he’d ever known. Fern homeschooled her for the first two years, not wanting to let the girl out of her sight, but in third grade she enrolled her in the public school. Fern couldn’t keep the girl hidden forever.

  Isolation suited Earl, but sometimes nightmares rolled in swift
as the Gulf Stream and then he wished for the distraction of people. When the night terrors left him sweat soaked, panicked, and sleepless, he poured the dark stories from his mind into the notebook he carried with him everywhere. Somehow it helped to write things down and he was always surprised by the details that came to him—bits of conversation, the chill in the air from a hundred years ago, the ache of an ancient wound. Sometimes he felt sorrow for what he’d done, for taking a child from her mother, for running away, for abandoning his family back in White Forest, but he was not a man who dwelled on regret. He’d lost his own mother at a young age and his own father had abandoned him. It brought him to Clementine and Ora and Chester. What would his life be like if he’d never met them? Life unfolded in strange and wonderful and tragic ways. His youngest daughter would be fine.

  When Earl spotted the odd thing in the trees, he rowed his boat to the island to investigate. He didn’t use his trolling motor, afraid the noise might spook the creature. There were tales of a Southern Bigfoot, a Skunk Monkey, a Swamp Ape. Every community had its legends. What Earl saw, though, was no fabled creature; it was a man in a costume. Earl knew it by the way the creature moved, too upright to be an ape of any kind. In the past years Earl had dyed his hair, grown a beard, put on weight, and gone into hiding. He knew there were all sorts of reasons a man might put on a disguise.

  On that November day in 1979, Earl tried to talk to the man in the ape suit, but the man disappeared into a small shelter and Earl knew better than to push his way into anyone’s home uninvited. Still, he was curious and the man in the costume gave him an idea. He missed working, even if the only work he’d ever known was counterfeiting bills and laundering money. There was an art to deception and Earl was naturally gifted. Seeing the man in the ape suit got him thinking about a new scheme. The fake cash wouldn’t hold out forever. Eventually he’d have to find a way to earn new money. And he needed to try out his new identity, to make sure it would hold up in the world. He couldn’t live like a ghost forever. Over the next few weeks, Earl brought bottles of rum and fresh propane and cartons of cigarettes and left them near the man’s shelter. After a few trips, the man emerged to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing. The man’s voice sounded scratchy and raw, like he didn’t use it too often. He told Earl he didn’t need any do-gooders trying to save him. Earl assured the man he was no do-gooder.