When all the debts were finally settled, she considered it a mercy that she was able to keep the stone house and her Buick. That she had enough each month to pay Gil the yardman was a luxury.
But she had already strayed from her purpose—these weren’t positive thoughts. She couldn’t let herself start going over all of that. It was in the past. With Pamela’s help, she had paid every debt. Except for her monthly mortgage, she owed no one. There, that was a happy thought. Her accounts were clear, with some left over.
There was no way to know how word of her financial difficulty had leaked out, but such news always did. Even though she had been spared the public ignominy of foreclosure or bankruptcy, Julia could still see in people’s eyes that they knew she had fallen to reduced circumstances. She wanted to wear a sign around her neck: Don’t feel sorry for me. I am completely solvent.
She turned the radio up a little. “. . . and though they’ve recently received sharp criticism from animal rights activists, for now the Critter Hutch is still open for lunch and supper six days a week,” the reporter was saying. Well, of course, the whole world could be overrun with squirrels and rabbits, with ten possums lying dead along every country mile, but there would always be some PETA fanatic ready to stage a protest over killing them for food.
Julia turned the radio off and popped an audiocassette into the tape player. Respighi’s Pines of Rome—that would do. She didn’t mind being one of the few people who still had a collection of audiocassettes and still drove a car with a cassette player. It was a perfectly legitimate way to listen to music. It occurred to her that perhaps she could go to Rome someday and see the Coliseum and the Vatican and the catacombs and the Pantheon. And whatever else was there. Aside from the stereotypical things—the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Big Ben in London, the canals in Venice—she knew so little of the world. Surely part of living life fully had to be visiting other countries.
Or she could read about them—that would be free, although inferior to the real thing and certainly not the most aggressive way to combat provinciality. Still, armchair travel could be another way to fill the long hours of the coming year.
• • •
SHE pulled into the entrance at Andalusia before noon and made her way to the broad steps leading up to the house. A short video about Flannery O’Connor ran continuously in one of the back rooms, and this was where she decided to start. Though none of it was new information to her, she never grew tired of it. After that she took her time walking through the house. She stood at the doorway of O’Connor’s bedroom a long time, imagining the author bent over her typewriter every morning.
On the wide screened front porch, she sat in a rocking chair a good while, looking out over the same landscape O’Connor had observed decades earlier. She left the house and strolled among the various outbuildings, then walked down to the pond and along the road for a piece, imagining what it must have been like when O’Connor lived here, when the sweetness of purple wisteria hung in the air and peacocks roosted in the trees at night.
A strange hobby for a single woman to have had—raising noisy, showy peacocks—but O’Connor had owned as many as fifty at a time. Recently the foundation had reinstated a moderate number of the birds at Andalusia, no doubt hoping to attract more tourists. As Julia walked around the property, she observed them closely, musing over the astounding inequity between the plain-looking females and the males dragging their ridiculously magnificent tails behind them. She remembered reading somewhere that a peacock’s nighttime screech sounded like someone crying, “Help!”
She finally left Andalusia and drove through the town of Milledgeville, past the college O’Connor attended, her childhood home, the old Sanford Tea House where she used to dine, the church where she attended daily mass, the cemetery where she was buried.
It was well after three o’clock by the time she started home. The trip had been a good idea. As she had hoped, the old fascination had returned and Andalusia had worked its spell on her.
• • •
FOR the next week it rained off and on every day, with sudden gusts of wind whipping up and clouds letting loose torrential downpours that flooded creeks and basements. Most days it rained two or three times, loud sustained drummings on the roof. Once a storm broke in the middle of the night, after Julia had finally fallen asleep, the lightning so intense and prolonged that she could have read in bed without the lamp. Twice the power went off for several hours. “Someone better build an ark,” a weatherman on television said.
Julia stayed close to home, and when at the end of the week the rain subsided, her spirits lifted, not simply because the sun had at last appeared through the clouds but also because her final week of waiting was up and Carmen had not come. And wasn’t that the way it went? The worries you allowed to consume you usually never came to pass, at least not while you were looking for them. It was the ordinary days you had to watch out for, the insignificant moments you never before considered as threats. Those could turn your world upside down.
It happened two weeks later, on an otherwise unremarkable Saturday, the last day of June. Julia had run to the grocery store for a few things and on her way home turned the radio to NPR just long enough to hear that it was Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers—the call-in program about car trouble. As she wasn’t interested in hearing the brothers crack jokes about slipping clutches, worn axles, and the like, she turned it off almost immediately, but not before she heard a woman caller ask, “What could be causing the horn of my 1999 Ford Explorer to honk at random intervals all by itself?” It was a question the two brothers would get around to answering eventually, but only after a great deal of foolishness.
When she arrived at the stone house, she pulled her Buick around to the back, got out with her two bags of groceries, stepped into the screened porch, and bent her head to fit her key into the back door. A momentary presumption upon a common, everyday act. And just as the key slipped into the lock, a voice spoke from behind her.
“Hey, Aunt Julia. I hope you don’t mind me waiting here on your glider.”
• chapter 6 •
NO USEFUL PLAN
How did one prepare herself to see her brother’s face in a girl’s body? In a story, the moment might be accompanied by a gasp and the dropping of the grocery bags. The same in a movie, with a camera zoom and a slow-motion sequence of the various items scattering across the floor. In real life, it appeared that one simply turned into a statue and stared.
In all her prior imaginings of Carmen’s arrival, Julia had never considered this one: that the girl would be waiting on the back porch for her. Though too late now for scolding herself, she did it anyway. She should have been prepared. She should have known that an uninvited guest wouldn’t hesitate to come around to the back, wouldn’t let an unlocked screen door stand in her way.
Nor had she stopped to think that Carmen would now be close to the same age as Jeremiah was when he left home. The girl could have no way of knowing how much she looked like him. Same build, tall and thin. Even the clothes she was wearing—T-shirt, jeans, black All-Star Cons—could have been his, though he wouldn’t have worn a shirt ripped at the shoulder. Torn clothing wasn’t part of the fashion scene back then.
Carmen stood in front of the glider, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, rubbing her hands up and down the sides of her jeans. The curly blond hair was Jeremiah’s, too, in fact almost the same length he had worn his in the seventies, when their father had railed against the hippie look, which was exactly the look Jeremiah had adopted. Except for the ripped shirt, however, the girl had an innocent, wholesome look, like someone who had grown up on a farm in the Midwest. Nothing of the counterculture in her appearance, nothing to mark her as a teenager with a troubled history—no pink hair, bizarre piercings, skull-and-crossbones tattoos, at least none that could be seen.
Julia wondered if the girl’s mother had felt slighted whenever she looked at her and saw nothing of herself, only Jeremiah. The wide-
set eyes were his also, and the spatter of freckles across the nose and the smile that dimpled at one corner. It appeared to be a forced smile, though, not one related to gladness, and it began to falter as the silence grew longer.
“I guess you got my phone message a while back?” Carmen said, putting a hand to her ear like a phone and wiggling it. “I was going to call again, but . . . well, I couldn’t.” And then, as if there might be some question, “I’m Carmen.” She laughed nervously. “I guess we never officially met. Or unofficially either.”
As it would serve no purpose to pretend she hadn’t gotten the message, Julia said, “Yes, I got it, but it was so long ago now that I thought you must have changed your plans.” The door into the kitchen was unlocked and standing ajar now. She couldn’t remember opening it, but she must have, for her keys were dangling from the doorknob. She removed them and dropped them back into her purse, then stepped away from the door and placed a hand on the back of the wicker rocking chair.
“Well, I was going to come sooner,” the girl said, “but some things happened. Some . . . lamentable things.” She sat down on the glider again, as if understanding that an invitation to come inside wasn’t imminent.
Lamentable—strange that she would say that. It was exactly the kind of formal word Jeremiah would have dropped into an otherwise simple, colorless sentence. Julia set the bags of groceries on the floor. It didn’t matter that it was hot out here on the porch, that there were things in the bags that needed to go in the refrigerator. Something clear and forthright needed to be said, and there wasn’t a minute to waste.
“I talked to your grandmother a month or so ago,” Julia said. “She needed to get in touch with you. She had some things to tell you.” Julia hoped she didn’t sound too eager.
“My grandmother?” The girl’s confusion looked genuine.
“She said her name was Ida.”
Carmen made a scoffing noise. “Oh—Ida. She’s not my grandmother.”
Julia let this pass. “Have you talked with anybody at home recently?” she said.
Carmen frowned. “Home? If you’re talking about Wyoming, no.”
“Well, I’m afraid Ida has some bad news,” Julia said. “I still have her number. I’ll go get it so you can call her.”
Carmen shook her head. “Wait, no, I’m going to have to decline that offer. Just so you know, Ida has a way of taking liberties with the truth. She loves to pass along bad news. Somebody stubs their toe, she’ll say they’re paralyzed from the waist down.” She looked down and studied a thumbnail. “Did she tell you what this bad news was?”
“Yes, she did, and in this case I don’t think she could make it sound worse than it is. It’s about Lulu.”
Carmen looked up. “What about her?”
• • •
JULIA held back a moment. She knew the bearer of such news should speak softly, show compassion. A touch of the hand, a hug—those would be appropriate. But she made no move. She took a breath and said it plainly, gently. “Lulu died. Probably six or seven weeks ago now.”
Carmen stared at her. She swallowed hard but didn’t flinch. She appeared to be processing the information, but reserving belief.
Julia set her purse on the floor beside the bags of groceries and walked over to the glider. She sat down but kept her distance. “How old are you?” she said.
Carmen looked puzzled, as if stumped by the relevance of the question. Your mother died. How old are you?
“I mean, you’re so young to have lost both of your parents,” Julia said.
“I’m twenty,” Carmen said.
Maybe it was true, though she looked considerably younger than that. “Well, I’m very sorry about your mother,” Julia said. “That’s a hard thing.” She reached her hand out and laid it on the glider cushion, close to Carmen but not touching her.
The girl turned her face away. “We weren’t close,” and after a moment, “not for a long time. One thing Lulu knew how to do was hold a grudge.” She sighed. “But she had cause.”
Julia didn’t know what she was expecting, but it wasn’t this dull acceptance. Obviously, a little guidance was needed, a little pressure. “Well, I know you’ll want to go back to Wyoming for a while,” she said. “I think there may be some things of your mother’s they want you to have. I can help you buy a plane ticket and get you on your way. I can let them know you’re coming. They’re waiting for you.”
Carmen turned swiftly. Her words came out in a rush. “Waiting for me? You don’t understand. They don’t have any use for me back there, none of them. It all changed after Daddy died. And I can’t think of one single thing of Lulu’s that . . .” Her eyes suddenly filled with tears, and she looked away again. With the torn sleeve of her shirt, she roughly blotted each eye.
Julia’s mind was racing. She had to remain firm. She spoke again. “Well, this is what’s known as a family emergency, Carmen. When something big like this happens, you sometimes have to do things you don’t want to do. You don’t have to stay out there indefinitely, but you need to go pay your respects to your mother and the rest of the family. It’s the only decent thing to do.” She couldn’t see Carmen’s face to judge the effect of her words. She waited a moment, then added, “If you’re really twenty, you’re an adult. You have to make yourself do the right thing.” She suddenly remembered something else. “Ida said your aunt Effie is very low, too. Maybe she’s already gone.”
Carmen turned back to face her. “If Ida said it, it probably just means Effie has a cold.” She breathed in sharply and said, “Effie almost killed Lulu once. That time was an accident, but another time she went after Daddy with her bare hands. She had a horrible temper. Explosive. Nuclear.” She enunciated the last word carefully.
Julia could hardly take all of this in, but Carmen didn’t stop. “And why did you say if I’m really twenty? Don’t you believe me?” She looked away. “You’re . . . different than I thought you’d be. Daddy used to talk about you like you were some kind of . . .” Either the word eluded her or she decided not to say it. “But I’m probably not exactly what you were expecting either.”
Julia stood to her feet to signify that her mind was made up, that she wasn’t going to be diverted by minor points. “Well, I’ll go inside now and check for airline tickets. You can wait out here.” She picked up her purse and the bags of groceries and was stepping inside the kitchen door when something occurred to her. She turned around and looked back at Carmen, then at the floor around the glider. “Where are your bags?”
Carmen looked up at the ceiling fan. “I don’t have any.”
“What do you mean, you don’t have any?”
Carmen’s eyes were following the slow rotation of the fan blades. “Your fan’s not set right,” she said. “It’s going the wrong direction for summer.”
“Did you fly here?” Julia said. “Did they lose your luggage?”
Carmen shook her head.
“Then where is it?”
There was no response.
Julia set her things down again and came back to sit on the glider. Suddenly the situation seemed more dire. She couldn’t explain why, but it seemed to her that a runaway showing up on your doorstep with a suitcase was one thing, whereas a runaway showing up with only the clothes on her back was another. Though runaway was hardly the right word when the girl had left home years ago. But surely she had belongings of some kind somewhere. You didn’t just wander around for years without anything at all. A backpack, a tote, a paper bag, something.
She tried to calm herself. “All right now, what has happened, Carmen? We can’t go any further until you tell me where your things are.” It was a weak, illogical ultimatum, and they both knew it. If “go any further” meant “make arrangements for you to leave,” Carmen would hardly be interested in cooperating.
The girl closed her eyes and shook her head slowly. Not stubbornly, but wearily.
Julia raised her voice. “How did you get here? Weren’t you in Charleston when
you called? Did somebody give you a ride here?”
Carmen nodded, one quick jerk of her head. She quickly swiped a finger under each eye. Then she looked straight at Julia, lifted her chin, and said, “I hitchhiked.”
Julia spoke the first words that came to her mind, spoke them emphatically. “Girls don’t hitchhike,” though what she really meant was Nice girls don’t hitchhike, girls with any sense at all don’t hitchhike, girls who want to live to see tomorrow don’t hitchhike.
“Well, they do sometimes,” Carmen said. It wasn’t a challenging tone. “Sometimes they start out walking and they walk for a long, long time until they’re just about ready to fall down, and then they finally give in and decide to take their chances.” She paused. “Truck drivers are the most trustworthy—that’s what I’ve found.”
• • •
JULIA’S desperation was mounting with every second. This qualified as a genuine crisis. She took in a deep breath and released it slowly. “So did you leave your things in the car you were riding in?”
“It was a pickup truck,” Carmen said. “The inside of it smelled like rotten eggs.”
“Okay, so you left your things in the truck you were riding in?”
“Not on purpose,” Carmen said. She was flexing her fingers as if trying to work out a stiffness.
Julia tried to sound patient, though it was a mixture of anger and panic she felt. “So you have nothing? Nothing at all? Not even a toothbrush?” She heard the pitch of her voice rising.
Carmen stood up and fished in the pocket of her jeans. She brought out a few wadded dollar bills and dropped them on the glider seat beside Julia. She fished again and brought out two more. She reached into the other pocket and pulled out a small, scuffed New Testament and dropped it on top of the bills. “I had another dollar,” she said, “but I bought a Frosty last night.” She sat back down. “The lady didn’t charge me tax.”
To See the Moon Again Page 7
