Belle City

by Penny Mickelbury

  One of the women—dare she think of them as receptionists?—rose and met her at the elevator door. "Good day, Miss Nelson. Mr. Cummings is expecting you. Will you follow me, please?"

  Sissy followed her across the expanse of crimson, through the double doors, and into a bright hallway of offices that resembled every big-dollar law firm she'd ever seen. They turned right and stopped at an open door. Willie Cummings jumped up from his desk and bounded across the room to greet her, looking even more like a leprechaun than she remembered from their first meeting at the reading of Grandma's will.

  "Mr. Cummings," she said, extending her hand.

  "Miss Nelson. It is good to see you again." He took her hand in both of his, held it for a moment, then released it and took her elbow as he led her away from the desk and toward a cozy grouping of leather club chairs in front of a fireplace. "We'll have a cup of tea, shall we? It's something exotic—what's it called, Mrs. Pfeiffer?"

  This is definitely not New York, Sissy thought: He calls his secretary 'Mrs.'

  "It's called Yogi tea, and it really is quite good. It's the cardamom that does it."

  "It sounds delicious. Thank you," Sissy said, and Mrs. Pfeiffer left them, leaving the door open, which Sissy was thinking was a bit odd until a figure immediately filled the doorway.

  "Jay. Come on in," Cummings said, waving his arm. "You two haven't met."

  Sissy stood. So this was Jonas Thatcher the Third, the man who had expected to inherit his grandfather's house in Carrie's Crossing. Sissy watched him enter and cross the room, watched him assessing her with each step he took. He was tall and trim—obviously an athlete of some sort, or at least he was regularly physically active. His thick dark hair had a few strands of silver that perfectly complimented the pearl gray suit he wore, and his black shoes gleamed. They could have been twins, so similarly were they dressed. Sissy's mother-of-pearl earrings and necklace and the absence of any silver in her hair, due to her mother's insistence that she get her hair done, was the primary difference. That and his white maleness as opposed to her Black femaleness.

  "I'm very pleased to meet you, Mr. Thatcher, though I do regret the circumstances that probably mean you're not terribly pleased to meet me."

  Jonas couldn't help the near smile, the raised left corner of his mouth. "I'm very sorry for your loss, Miss Nelson. And for mine," he said as he shook her hand.

  "I do regret that the circumstance causes you additional pain, Mr. Thatcher. The loss of your grandfather is more than enough to bear, I imagine," Sissy said.

  "I must honestly admit that his not being here has hit me harder than I thought it would," Jonas said. He dipped his head in Willie Cummings's direction. "You were right. I did experience a kind of delayed reaction. I keep picking up the phone to call to check on him then I remember that he's gone." He gave a rueful half-grin that was more grimace and shook his head. "Part of you tries for the logical approach: He was a hundred years old. It was time for him to die, you tell yourself. Why are you surprised? But another part of yourself has come to believe that since he's lived for so long, he'll just keep on living. Why stop now?"

  Willie Cummings started to say something but Sissy beat him to it, surprising herself with her outburst. "That's it. That expresses exactly what I've been thinking and feeling but hadn't found the words for. I'd been with Grandma for two weeks. I knew she was dying. She told me she was dying. Yet, when it happened, I was still surprised."

  Mrs. Pfeiffer arrived with the tea, saving them from having to think of a clever something to say. She put the tray on the table, and Sissy was surprised and pleased to see that there were big, thick mugs, not delicate little cups, along with a pot of honey and one of steamed milk. Then the scent wafted up—cardamom, for sure, and cinnamon and some other spices that earned the tea the right to call itself yogi.

  "This is good stuff," Cummings said. "You're going to like it."

  "If it tastes half as good as it smells, I already do," Sissy said, bringing her cup to her face to inhale the aroma.

  "Couldn't get your grandpa to even taste it," Cummings said.

  "If you'd disguised it as Red Rock Cola you could have," Jay said dryly, and the little old lawyer giggled like a school boy. "You ever heard of Red Rock Cola?" Jay asked Sissy.

  "Grandma loved it," she said. "There's still half a case left in her pantry. I had to drive way out to...I don't even remember where I had to go to get the stuff."

  "Stevensville," Willie Cummings, Jay Far and Mrs. Pfeiffer said in unison, and they all laughed, the four of them, Sissy working hard to keep the tears at bay. If the others noticed, they were too polite to let on. Ah, Southern manners. No, she wasn't in New York.

  "If you'd like, Miss Nelson, I'd be happy to take you out to Grandpa's...ah...to..."

  "Thank you, Mr. Thatcher, but I have a car here. And given what I've seen of the traffic, I wouldn't ask my best friend or worst enemy to make an unnecessary trip in it."

  "I hear that New York City's traffic is pretty bad too," Cummings said, succeeding in not sounding too defensive.

  "It's awful," Sissy conceded, "but if you're in the backseat of a taxi, it's somebody else's problem. You can read over a brief or dictate notes or check your messages—do anything but count the number of traffic lights you've sat through."

  "You don't get home very often, then?" Jonas asked, ulterior motive barely veiled.

  Sissy drained the last of her tea and wiped her mouth on a napkin. "Two or three times a year and usually for no more than four or five days at a time, and I usually stick pretty close to home—to my parents' or to Grandma's. I never come to this part of town, so I'm really anxious to see more of the area, and especially to see—why don't we keep calling it your grandfather's house since I'm not sure I'm ready to call it my house?"

  JayFar thought his lifting spirits must be visible to everybody in the room, so relieved did he feel. Surely her words conveyed at least the thought, if not the actual intention, that perhaps she'd relinquish her claim to the Carrie's Crossing land. "How's this, then," Jay said: "I'll lead the way. I know some pretty good shortcuts through the traffic."

  "With appreciation," Sissy said, getting to her feet. "Mr. Cummings, is there anything else I need to know? Anything I need to do?"

  Cummings swallowed the last of his tea and jumped to his feet. He hurried over to his desk and grabbed an envelope that he held to his chest a moment before extending it to Sissy. "The keys to the house," he said. "And the deed." There were tears in his eyes.

  "You were his lawyer for a long time," Sissy said.

  "More than fifty years. I inherited the account from my father."

  "Then I'd be pleased and honored, Mr. Cummings, if Jag and I can call on you to assist in any matters that might pertain to this property. You know Jag, of course."

  He was overcome with emotion. He grabbed her hands. "Of course I know Jag. We're good friends. And I thank you, Miss Nelson, for that kindness. It means a lot to me. More than a client, Jonas was my friend, and I spent many a happy time at that house."

  Sissy took the envelope Cummings gave her, gathered up her briefcase and her purse, and turned to Jonas Thatcher, and she knew that she would spend a lot of her time trying to decipher the expression on his face. She'd seen the barely disguised hopeful look when she said she wasn't ready to call the house her own, and the relief when she accepted his offer to lead her to the house. But what the hell was the expression she'd just witnessed?

  She couldn't think about it now. Willie Cummings was saying something, and Jonas was shifting into a different gear, one that felt like he was taking charge. It made her wish she hadn't said she'd follow him to...dammit. She had to call it something. She wouldn't call it his grandfather's house and she couldn't call it her house. It was Carrie's house. And Uncle Will's. And Grandma's. Carrie's house: That sounded right, felt right. "Shall we go?" she said. "To Carrie's house."

  Once back out in the dense traffic, Sissy was glad she'd agreed to follow Ja
yFar because she doubted that she'd have been able to find the place on her own, even with Willie Cummings's written directions or the car's computerized navigator leading her. All of a sudden, right in the middle of an active pocket of sprawl on the edge of Carrie's Crossing with sleek high rises and even sleeker shopping malls sprouting on both sides of the road, the scenery turned pastoral, bucolic. The growth and sprawl gave way to grass and trees, and a two-lane blacktop road without sidewalks replaced the four lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic that had led them for several miles deep into the heart of Carrie's Crossing. Sissy felt something inside of her shift.

  JayFar's left turn signal blinked, and Sissy followed his car into what was little more than a lane. But it must be more than that because it widened and then it split so that there was a grassy median strip and a road on either side. They kept to the right and the road seemed to rise a bit, then level off. The next view was of a construction site. Two of them, actually, one on either side of the road, which continued for another quarter mile, when it ended at a circular gravel drive. And there was Carrie's house. Sissy wasn't certain what she had expected, but it wasn't this. It was beautiful, yes, but it wasn't grand or impressive—those of her mother and her two oldest brothers were larger, grander than this. This was a two-story structure on a foundation of stones with a porch that wrapped around three sides. It had four chimneys, two at either end of the house. It was painted a pale, pale yellow. There was a swing on the south end of the front porch and big planters full of multicolored flowers on either side of the front door. Sissy closed her eyes and tried to imagine what the house had looked like when Grandma had lived in it.

  She jumped at the tap on the window and opened her eyes to see Jonas Farley Thatcher standing there. Jonas Farley Thatcher the Third who thought the house was his grandfather's. Sissy opened the car door and got out, then leaned back in to get the envelope with the keys.

  "That's your construction project down the road?" Sissy said.

  He nodded and turned to look down the road, as if to make sure it was still there. Then he looked back at the house. "It's all neat and clean inside. My aunts were here for the reading of the will, and they stayed here. They love this place. They used to come here when they were young, and they've got these memories. They didn't know...we didn't know..."

  "Of course you didn't; nobody did. And it's good that somebody who loved it was in it, taking care of it in your grandfather's absence. That's why I'm living at Grandma's. Houses that were homes shouldn't be empty." Sissy walked around the side of the house, touching it as she walked, touching the stones of the foundation and the boards of the house. "I think I can feel them," she said, more to herself than to JayFar.

  "Feel who?" he asked.

  "My grandma. My great-grandma. Uncle Will."

  He looked confused, and he looked at her as if she were confused. "Why would you think you could feel them here?"

  "Why wouldn't I? After all, it was their house. They built it. My grandma was born in this house and my great uncle died in this house." Well…in the burning barn behind the house."

  "What?"

  "You didn't know that?" Anger rose in Sissy, strongly and quickly. "How could you not know? I don't believe you."

  "I didn't. I swear to God I didn't. I thought Grandpa had always lived here."

  "Did he say that? Did he tell you that?" Sissy demanded.

  "I don't know that he ever said those words, said he'd always lived here. I just assumed—"

  "Well don't," Sissy snapped. "This is Carrie's house. The Carrie of Carrie's Creek. The Carrie of Carrie's Crossing. She and William, her brother, built this house. They carried these huge rocks from the creek, and they cut down the trees for the wood."

  "When?" JayFar asked. "When?"

  "After they were freed," Sissy answered.

  "Freed?" he asked, confused again.

  "They were slaves on Carney Thatcher's farm." Sissy turned in circles trying to get her bearings, tried to remember all the things Grandma had told her about growing up here, about the woods and trails through the woods leading to Jonas's house and to the creek and to the other farms. "That way," Sissy pointed toward the construction site. "Down that way is where Carney Thatcher's farm was, where your grandfather was born and grew up."

  "My grandfather's father was named Zeb. Who's Carney Thatcher?"

  "Zeb's father," Sissy said, "and Carrie and William's father." She turned away from JayFar and walked up the stone steps to the front porch. She had the key in her hand and it trembled slightly when she put it in the lock. It turned smoothly, the door opened and Sissy stepped inside.

  JayFar's hand trembled, too, as he put the car key into the ignition, but he didn't turn it. He sat in the car looking at the house that he'd known all his life—the house that he'd thought of as his family home, as his ancestral home. That he'd never revered things familial or ancestral didn't mean that he couldn't think of his grandfather's house in those terms, but it certainly could explain why he hadn't known that the house hadn't always been in his family: Nobody had told him because everybody had known that he didn't care, wouldn't care now if the house and the land it occupied weren't part of his plan for developing the land.

  At that moment, several thoughts bombarded JayFar at once: Grandfather had known that Jay would level the house if it became his, which is why he left it to the one person most likely to preserve it, and if old Ruthie Thatcher wasn't likely to destroy the house, neither would her granddaughter be inclined to do so, all of which meant that JayFar's brilliant and lucrative development plan was, for all intents and purposes, dead in the water. He closed his eyes and watched his dreams die behind his eyelids. Then he opened them and looked again at the house and wondered whether the letter that was part of his grandfather's will had explained why he hadn't left the house to his grandson.

  The letter that JayFar had, in his anger and disappointment, crumpled into a ball and thrown across the room without bothering to read. Where was it now? Where had he been at the time? He could see Richard and Willie Cummings...yes. It was in Willie's office and, knowing the two of them, that letter would have been smoothed out and saved because that's the kind of thing that Richard and Willie did. Because that's the kind of thing they cared about: How Jonas Farley Thatcher's house had been built and owned by freed slaves, slaves once owned by Jonas's great-grandfather, a man he'd never heard of until just a few moments ago: Carney Thatcher, his own grandfather's grandfather. And something else Sissy Nelson said—that Carney was the father of Carrie and William, the two slaves who'd built the house.

  JayFar steadied his hands, punched a button on his cell phone, then started the car. Jonas Thatcher's journals, he asked Richard: Where were they?

  Sissy watched from an upstairs window as JayFar drove slowly away. She had marveled at his lack of knowledge. How could he know so little of his own history? If it weren't so stupid she'd have felt sorry for him. But it was stupid not to know one's past, especially when not only written records existed but the people who could remember were still alive. Sissy didn't know much about Jonas's living family, but she did know that Willie Cummings knew things and that, she thought, is what she'd seen on Jonas's face back at the office: He hadn't known that the lawyer and his grandpa had been friends. "You should be ashamed of yourself," she said, as JayFar reached the end of the drive. She was surprised that he turned right, heading deeper into Carrie's Crossing, rather than left and back to Belle City, but she'd have been even more surprised to hear his thoughts at that moment, which so perfectly matched her own.

  Sissy resumed her exploration of Carrie and William's house. This second floor hadn't existed in 1922 when the Black Thatchers made their midnight run from the Klan, only a dormer space where the brothers slept. Jonas, then, had added this second floor. Like the first floor, it had a long, wide center hallway with rooms left and right. There were two bathrooms and, at the back of the house, upstairs and down, there were sunrooms: Glass on three sides that provi
ded a view of what would have been the stables and the land that still was farmed and, Sissy realized, the little building that once had been Mack McGinnis's one room school house. She tried—as she had so many, many times in her life—to put herself in her grandmother's time and place, but could not.

  Sissy knew the truth of the history that Ruthie Thatcher and her parents and siblings had lived—right here in this very spot—but she could not imagine it as her own, and for that she was grateful. How horrible an existence that had been. At least it seemed so to her, and yet, until she was on her deathbed and recording her memories, Sissy had never heard her grandmother speak of the pain and horror of that time. Perhaps it was better to, if not forget it, at least move forward without speaking of it? "No," Sissy spoke out loud. "The truth is better told, out loud and in full; otherwise, it creates space for lies to take hold and grow."

  Downstairs, she thought again, what a beautiful house it was. Beautiful in the same way her grandmother's house was beautiful: In its elegant simplicity. Both homes were beautifully furnished; money clearly had been spent. But there was no hint of ostentation, not even in the Persian and Turkish rugs that graced the highly polished, gleaming, wide-planked wood floors. In fact, the only difference that Sissy could see between the two homes, her Grandmother's and Jonas Thatcher's, was the evidence of regular and frequent visitors to Ruthie McGinnis's home and the absence of the same here. She could tell where Jonas Thatcher sat and read, where he ate and where he slept, but there was no evidence that he entertained. If Willie Cummings or anyone else visited, they left behind no trace. Or Jonas had removed all such traces.