One Last Thing

by Rebecca St. James

  And then I hugged my daddy’s neck the way any self-respecting Savannah daughter would do.

  When Valentine’s Day dawned, I tried not to notice. I had Wendy and Lexi arriving at noon and a meeting with Ike at one to discuss my future. That was enough to keep me from thinking about the last several February fourteenths with Seth. Year before last, showing up at Duke unannounced with a dozen roses and a pound of Ghirardelli chocolate, which we shared by moonlight in the Sarah Duke Gardens. Last year taking me to St. Augustine for the weekend and proposing to me again on a carriage ride along the waterfront. I managed to keep it all at bay until I answered the front door to a delivery guy from the florist who brought an almost embarrassing number of long-stemmed American Beauty roses for Mama.

  A thirty-five-year marriage that still brought flowers to the door. It was hard not to wonder if I would ever have that.

  “Let me get you some cash for a tip,” I said to the guy, who looked barely old enough to drive.

  “It’s been taken care of,” he said. “I got another thing in the van for ya.”

  I took Mama’s arrangement to the formal dining room, because it was the only place big enough for it, and came back to find the kid with a pot of geraniums. The card said Tara.

  I read the rest when he was gone.

  I thought you could enjoy this in your NEW home. But remember, THIS home is always here for you.

  Love,

  Daddy

  The realness of it trumped a box of chocolates and a carriage ride anytime.

  As I set it on the windowsill in the breakfast nook for safe-keeping, I thought two things. One, I hoped it wouldn’t die within the hour of coming into our apartment; I’d never tried to grow anything. And two, all the bitterness among no-boyfriend girls notwithstanding, Valentine’s was supposed to be a day to show love. And it was time for me to show some.

  I didn’t call first. I just showed up at the Grissoms’ front door and waited while Randi peered through the glass for fifteen seconds before she deigned to open it. She wore workout clothes that fit her like they were painted on her and she was strapping some kind of device around her arm, the Randi signal for I hope this isn’t going to take long because I have things to do.

  The first, apparently, was to get right into my face as soon as she closed the door.

  “I see you haven’t wasted any time finding a new man,” she said.

  What was she even talking about?

  “I’m actually glad you’ve moved on, but I don’t understand why you’re here.”

  “What new man?” I said.

  “Please. The one you were kissing at your front door the other night. Or should I say morning.”

  Not that it was any of her business, but really. Poor Randi. I could throw her a bone.

  “You mean the friend who kissed me on the cheek?” I said. “That guy?”

  “He was clearly charmed by you.” Randi pulled her hair into the thinnest of all ponytails and slipped the hair tie on it she’d been wearing on her wrist. “Like I said, I really am glad you’ve moved on, Tara. I am.”

  I bit back the sarcastic retort that was just begging me to let it out. This was Randi Grissom. She wasn’t going to say she forgave me for whatever wrong she thought I’d done. She wasn’t going to treat me like a daughter anymore. But this was Randi for I’ll let it go if you will.

  “Thank you,” I said. “But I haven’t moved on, at least not that way. It’ll be a long time before I get into a relationship again.”

  Randi planted her hands where most people have hips. “Then, again, I don’t understand why you’re here. If you don’t want a relationship with Seth anymore, why come here and torture him?”

  “Mom.”

  We both turned toward the stairs that curved into the hallway. Seth was on his way down, and even in the dim light I could see that he had shed the nearly homeless look since the day he came to the Piebald. His hair and beard had been trimmed, and although he was in light sweats, they fit and gave him a put-together look. He still seemed small, for Seth, and as he came nearer to us I felt a faint wisp of pain at the worry-weary expression that remained on his face.

  He did, however, give me a smile. The almost-dimples almost appeared.

  “You here to torture me, Tar?” he said.

  “Uh, no,” I said. “I’m here to talk to you.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “Seth, we need to get to the gym,” Randi said. “I have to be back by twelve—”

  “Go on ahead, then.”

  Seth waited. Randi gave me a warning look and stalked off toward the kitchen. He waited some more, until the door to the garage slammed.

  “I think she’s going without you,” I said.

  “Thank the Lord.” Seth pushed up the sleeves of his sweat jacket. “I know she’s just trying to help, but she’s driving me a little nuts. Dad too.”

  “I’m not here to drive you further,” I said. “I just need to tell you one thing. Can we . . .?”

  I nodded toward the doorway to the family room but he shook his head.

  “That’s the interrogation room,” he said. “Let’s sit outside.”

  He let us out through the front door, but he didn’t sit. He leaned against the porch railing, and I decided one of the wicker chairs was best for me. Give him the upper hand, as it were. This wasn’t about me shutting him down anymore.

  “You know I love you, right?” I said. “And I always will.”

  Seth closed his eyes. “You’ve already said ‘I love you but’ enough times, Tar. You love me but you can’t marry me. I’m not dense. I get it.”

  “That isn’t—”

  “And ‘I can’t marry you yet’ doesn’t make it any better. It would never be the same and we both know it. I’m accepting that.”

  “I know,” I said. “That’s not what I came to talk about.”

  “Oh.” He bounced a fist lightly on the rail. “What else is there to talk about?”

  “I want to help you,” I said. “I want to be there while you go through this.” I moved to the edge of the chair. “Maybe this doesn’t sound realistic. You know, maybe it’s too much to ask of you, but I want to be your friend. I want to help you see that this stuff doesn’t define you. And I want to do it without anything romantic between us. No wondering if maybe we’ll get back together. You just said it—it’ll never be the same. But it can be something different. Maybe something better.”

  I sat back and closed my eyes. I didn’t want to watch whatever was going to pass over his face. I wanted him to let it all be true.

  Beyond the porch, kid-laughter wafted up from Forsyth Park. Adult voices called to each other: “Are you watching him?” “Did you see that? He rode six feet!” Tennis balls thudded into rackets. Lives were being lived there. Maybe a girl even sat on a bench twisting her hair and pretending to read Jane Eyre while she dreamed of a wedding cake like the Parisian fountain.

  “I can’t,” Seth said.

  I opened my eyes to a face fallen into sadness. My heart, my whole self, sank.

  “I can’t make a decision right now,” he said. “I have to think about it. New concept for me, y’know, but I’m learning.”

  “You will, though? You’ll think about it?”

  I was trying not to beg, but it was all over my voice. Seth just nodded.

  “Okay,” I said. “Well, I’ll leave you to it.”

  I stood up and headed for the steps.

  “Tar?” he said. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

  I was near tears as I hurried back over to Gaston Street, so I wasn’t in the mood for Evelyn, but she was suddenly there as if she’d been lurking in the bushes. I stopped at the corner and faced her.

  She was in the usual hipster slash hippie habit, but rather than steeped in her just-as-usual ennui, she seemed genuinely tired. There was something else going on there, too, but I couldn’t get it to come into focus. It was enough to make me push my impatience aside.

  “What’
s up, Evvy?” I said.

  “I just wanted to say good-bye.”

  My chin dropped. “You’re leaving? Like, leaving Savannah?”

  “I never loved it the way you do,” she said. “I’m going to Oregon.”

  “Whoa.”

  “I’ve saved up enough money, and I want to get as far away from them as possible.” A trace of the caustic Evelyn crept in, but there was still that something else in those olive eyes.

  “I want to see something different, do something different.” She looked just past me, as if she didn’t want to say the next thing to my face. “Mostly I just want to get away from the hate. The more I’m around Seth the more I hate him, and now I’m starting to hate myself because I don’t know why.”

  “I think I do,” I said.

  She darted her gaze back to me.

  I put my hands on her shoulders and felt the vulnerable bones. “Go to Seth and ask him what happened that you saw when you were tiny.”

  She pulled away from me, gaze darkening.

  “I know you think Seth didn’t protect you from seeing it, but he’s not the one who didn’t protect you. It was someone else. Tell him that. If you can get him to talk about it, I know it’ll make a difference.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Through a lot of different things that have happened. But this is between you and Seth.” I took a step toward her so we were close again. “No more secrets, Evvy. And no more shame.”

  She didn’t say anything, but I saw what it was in her eyes that I had never seen there before.

  It was the faint gleam of olive-green hope.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Friday, February twentieth, Wendy, Lexi, and I moved into our two-bedrooms-and-a-loft apartment on Drayton Street. Ms. Helen’s Carl, a man of the dying breed, the Southern gentleman, found that perfect place for us, and Mama talked the landlord down on the rent and insisted he put in a new refrigerator and paint the bathroom.

  “You can’t live with that dark green, girls,” she said. “You just can’t.”

  We didn’t argue with her. It was the exact shade of the haunted woods hallway in Lexi’s old building.

  So the apartment smelled of fresh color and new appliances when we—with the help of Kellen and some buddy of his who couldn’t take his eyes off Lexi—carried in Lexi’s futon couch and director chairs and Wendy’s coffeepot and my geranium, as well as enough furniture from my parents’ attic to fill the two bedrooms, the loft I was using as a bedroom, the dining area, the living room, and the patio in the back. The three small desks, one for each of our rooms, were a gift from Mama and Daddy.

  “It’s a housewarming present,” Daddy said to Wendy when she started to get her hackles up. “So get over it.”

  Each one of the six days Wendy and Lexi had stayed at the house on Gaston Street, Daddy had breakfast with them while I went to church. Of course he renewed his love for Lexi. As for Wendy, he sized her up in about fifteen minutes and was treating her like a feisty daughter in a half hour. He even told her she had a good head for business. I informed her later that was like being given the Pulitzer Prize.

  And speaking of housewarming gifts, the Watch could not stop buying us towels, sheets, bedspreads. We called a limit to it after Ms. Helen showed up with full sets of dishes, flatware, and pots and pans she was supposedly going to get rid of anyway. The two things I didn’t let anyone give us were a teakettle and a jar full of wooden spoons. I was finally going to get to use them.

  With five women besides the three of us in there hanging curtains and unpacking mugs and stuffing the linen closet with enough towels for us to open a small hotel, the basics were done by six. Especially with GrandMary as the organizer.

  She surprised me by showing up Thursday, the day before the move, looking somewhat worn from the radiation, but showing no other signs that she had just had a bout with cancer.

  She did feel brittle to me when I hugged her and held on, but there was nothing fragile about her spirit. She sat me down in the sunroom that day—I didn’t know where she dismissed Mama to—and served the tea from the same china set we’d used that Sunday morning in her bedroom upstairs. She looked into me with her clear eyes.

  “I’m not going to ask you how you are,” she said, “because it’s obvious you’re almost happy. Am I right about that?”

  “I’m getting there,” I said. “This feels like the next right thing to do—moving in with my friends, working, hopefully starting school. It’s not what I thought was going to happen, but I think it’s good.”

  “Well,” GrandMary said. She poured herself a second cup, thin, blue-threaded hands aristocratic as they moved. “There’s having a plan, and there’s just dreaming. I’m seeing a plan here.”

  “As far ahead as I can see, yes.”

  GrandMary’s face looked . . . how else to describe it . . . pleased.

  “I like the way you’re talking, baby girl. This is new, this one-step-at-a-time vocabulary.”

  “I did what you told me to,” I said, although until that moment I hadn’t quite put it together.

  “And what was that?”

  “I found someone to talk to, someone outside the family. Actually, four somebodies.”

  “They’ve obviously guided you well.”

  “They have.” I set my cup and saucer on the table. “Do you want me to tell you what it was that split Seth and me up?”

  “I know enough. There is talking things out so you can see what you know, and then there’s rehashing until you can make nothing of it at all. You seem thoroughly talked out.”

  “How do you do that?” I said.

  GrandMary blinked. “How do I do what?”

  “See everything exactly the way it is and put it so it’s just so clear.”

  “Do I?” She folded her hands under her chin. “Well, if I do, it’s all God. All of it. I pray and I stay close and I guess it just comes to me.” She smiled, almost to herself. “Sometimes it comes out of my mouth before I know I’ve thought it, and that’s when I know it’s God.”

  Oh.

  Oh. My.

  If my grandmother noticed that I was having an epiphany, she didn’t say.

  “I suppose under the circumstances you aren’t attending the Reverend Paul’s church right now.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Are you worshiping anywhere? I don’t mean to sound like the Sunday school monitor, but I think it’s important if you want to hear God.”

  “I’ve been going to St. John’s.”

  Her eyebrows lifted.

  “It’s liturgical,” I said. “But . . . it’s like things got so dark I couldn’t even pray, and having the prayers already written . . . that kept me going. And the sacredness of it, when it seemed like nothing was sacred anymore. And the communion, which . . . I don’t know, I just couldn’t seem to get enough of hearing and tasting Jesus.”

  “You don’t have to sell it to me,” GrandMary said. “I can see it means a great deal to you.”

  “And then there’s this wonderful priest,” I said. But I stopped there. I didn’t want to try to put Ned into words. I knew, in that moment, that relationship was sacred too.

  So GrandMary was there Friday when the apartment was put together except for Lexi’s art and the other touches we wanted to put on it ourselves.

  “This makes me want to get a couple of girlfriends to move in with me,” Gray said. She looked around the room at us in our various states of moving day exhaustion. “But anybody I’d want to share a place with is right here.”

  “I’m just so happy for you girls,” Ms. Helen said. “But, now, do you have enough food? That pantry doesn’t look very full to me.”

  I loved that woman. I loved them all. I loved Betsy, who was still fussing with the curtains, and Mama, who had wiped the counters to within an inch of their Corian lives. Wendy with her bristly way and Lexi with her sweet one. And GrandMary who oversaw it all like the matriarch she was.

  “I feel
so rich right now,” I told Wendy and Lexi when the women had finally left—probably to continue the party at the Piebald, from what I could gather.

  “Now that’s bizarre,” Wendy said. “You just moved out of a five-bedroom house into a thousand-square-foot apartment and now you feel rich.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I do.”

  “I’m too tired to feel anything,” Lexi said. “I think I’ll sleep right here on this couch tonight. I can’t move.”

  “Not me,” Wendy said. “I can’t wait to sleep in my own room.” She crossed her arms to their opposite shoulders, in as much of a hug as Wendy was going to give herself. “It’s the first one I’ve ever had to myself.”

  Lexi lifted her head. “Your whole life?”

  “My whole life. Good night, roomies.”

  Lexi’s breathing became sleep-deep even before Wendy’s door closed. I could go anywhere I wanted in our home and start to get to know it. Except that my phone rang.

  It was Seth.

  His first words when I answered were: “Is this a bad time?” His voice was thin. Not frightened or panicked. Just worn down.

  “No,” I said. “Are you okay?”

  “Tar . . . I want to take you up on your offer. Will you help me?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Oh my gosh, Seth, I’m so glad.”

  “Can you help me right now?”

  “Okay. Do you want to meet somewhere?”

  “Can I pick you up? There’s somewhere I need to go, and I need you to go with me.”

  “Okay,” I said again. “But, Seth, where?”

  “To Jesup,” he said.

  We didn’t call Fritzie to tell her we were coming. We had no idea if she would even be home, but on the way down I-95, with Savannah slipping away behind us, we decided if she wasn’t we would hang out on her doorstep until she showed up.

  “The key’s under the mat,” I said. “We could just go in.”

  I felt more than saw Seth flinch.

  “Or not,” I said. “Have you thought through what you want to say to her?”

  “Some of it. Mostly the legal issues.”

  “What legal issues?”

  In the fleeting light of a convenience store sign I did see Seth almost dimple. “I finally found a way to get Mom off my back.”