At the Scent of Water

by Linda Nichols

  “I’ll stay home this morning, too,” she had said. “We can all spend the day together. I can go in on Monday and do the interview.” She had just taken the job at the Asheville Tribune, and to tell the truth, she had definite mixed emotions even though it was part-time and allowed her to do most of her work from home.

  “Go on and do your interview,” he had said. “I’ll still be here when you get back. Besides, it’ll give me some daddy time.”

  So she had agreed. She had gone off to Ebbot’s Cove to interview a man who was raising emus. She had been taking pictures of those strange ostrich-like birds and asking inane questions, her cell phone left in the front seat of her car. She had not known about the call that had come as soon as she left. There was a surgery that needed to be done. Now. A little child named Kelly Bright, but of course that is not what they called her. They called her an emergency aortic dissection repair, and of course Sam had gone, calling his mother to take care of his child. Annie had never pressed him for details, not after her anguished accusation. But she could imagine it in her mind. Sam calling gentle Mary. Mama, will you sit for Margaret? Of course, Mary would have said. Of course. Bring her on. And by the time Annie had arrived at the hospital, tracked down in person by her editor, it had all been over. So breathtakingly quickly, and she supposed that is what had made it all so hard to believe. It was as if her entire life had hung on the correct answer to a question, one question out of a lifetime of study. And she had gotten it wrong. They had all gotten it wrong. Every one of them. Herself. Sam. Mary. They had all answered wrong, and the verdict against them had been dispatched with ruthless speed and efficiency. In the morning they had been mother, father, grandmother. By afternoon they were not.

  It had been days before she had found out about Kelly Bright. It was Ricky who had finally told her. She still remembered his hesitation, his grief-filled eyes, his sober quietness, so unlike his usual demeanor. It had hit him hard, the loss of his niece. It had blown through the family, through the community, like a devastating wind, and she thought again of Job. Of the whirlwind that had leveled his life.

  “Annie, the day Margaret died . . . the surgery Sam did . . .”

  She had looked at him, not comprehending, not able to understand why he would bring that up to her. Why he would trouble her with someone else’s child’s sad tale on this day that she buried her daughter?

  “There was a problem.”

  “I’m sorry,” she had said simply. For these things happened, did they not? And it occurred to her now how callous that had been, how selfish. Let evil and death touch your child, and it was regrettable, but a fact of existence. Let it touch my child, and it became tragedy beyond words. “Did the child die?” she had finally had the grace to ask.

  “No,” said Ricky. “She’s in a coma.”

  “I’m sorry,” she had repeated but still hadn’t grasped the import. For these things did happen. Not often, but they did. These children were sick to begin with.

  “It was Sam’s fault, Annie. He made a mistake. A disastrous mistake. It shouldn’t have happened. I thought you should know.”

  Poor Sam, she had thought in her ignorance. Poor Sam, to make a mistake and then to find out his daughter had died, and her heart had reached toward him in grief and love.

  “How? What happened?” she had asked Ricky.

  “I’m not sure,” he answered. “All Izzy said was that they had tried to dissuade him from doing the surgery after the news about Margaret came, but he had insisted. It must have been shock,” he added, but that was all Annie had heard before the cold, hard bitterness had arisen. One word had allowed it to take root. After. After he had heard the news about Margaret, he had decided to operate on someone else’s child. After he knew his mother and his wife were alone with the unnamable catastrophe that had befallen them, he had decided to stay and help someone else. That was when she had known he had lost his love for her. If he had ever felt it to begin with. She felt the deep sadness again as she thought of that child and how it had all turned out.

  She found her purse now and went out to her car. She scribbled a note to Diane and left it on the spinning wheel. She followed the road, her hands and feet remembering the way without the aid of her brain. And soon she was there. She made the turn, followed the long driveway, and then parked. Behind the house where no one would see her. Where her presence would invite no company or comment.

  The old house was still standing. She stepped out of the car, walked all around it once. It had taken years to fix it up and considerably less time to bring it to ruin again. Still, it was familiar and dear, and she brushed her hand across the weathered wood as she climbed the porch steps, the shirring of the tree frogs the familiar accompaniment to the journey. She pulled open the screen door, and it twanged as it opened.

  She rummaged in her purse and produced the key, still there, but unused after all these years. She put it in the lock, and the door opened, groaning with protest. She stood for a moment, her eyes getting used to the dimness, and the first thing she remembered was the smell. An old friend, it got up and came to greet her. It was the same smell that had wafted out every time she entered an antique store, the aroma of the old things she had brought here and saved because they reminded her of people she loved, of places and things that were no more. She didn’t move, just stood rooted to the spot by the door, looking around her. It was all here, just as she’d left it. Somehow she’d expected that Sam would have shifted things a little, that he had lived here after she had left. But he had not. He must have left when she had, for everything was exactly the way it had been the day she’d left.

  There was that old brown bumpy couch of Mary’s that she’d sworn she was too mortified to have Sam and Annie use. It was still covered with newspapers and unopened mail. She walked close and saw yellowed ads and flyers. The huge old overstuffed chair and the lovely antique table Mary had insisted that she take were positioned as she’d left them. They’d been Grandma Truelove’s. The pictures were still hanging above the mantel. She and Sam in their wedding finery. She looked a little scared. He was looking at her, his eyes and face glowing, full of love and confidence. There was one of the three of them beside it. Margaret snuggled in Sam’s lap. Oh, she had loved her daddy, and Annie didn’t realize she was weeping until she felt the tears on her cheeks. She wiped them away with her palm.

  She walked slowly, her eyes sweeping across the whole room at once, taking everything in like the sweep shot at the beginning of a movie. The scuffed oak dining table, a few envelopes scattered beside a wadded up napkin. She’d used it that morning to wipe her eyes, she remembered, and she reached for it now again. The curved-front china cupboard was still filled with her mother’s china. The old lithographs were still on the wall, the nosegay-and-lace wallpaper she’d been hanging the day before Margaret had died. Half of the wall done, half bare, two rolls on the rug. The living room looking just as she’d left it. One wall covered with books, mahogany tables with the porcelain lamps they’d found in the garage sale in Valdosta, the Persian rug from the antique store in Savannah, the Maxfield Parrish print, the rocking chair.

  It was empty now, but oh, so full of memories. They peeked around the corners, smiled back at her from the pictures on the walls. They were tucked into each corner and nook. There was the table where laughter had rung. The yard where they’d chased and played. There was the picture of Margaret in the pasteboard box under the apple trees taken by Sam, Annie’s own leg in the background as she picked the fruit.

  She went to the window and looked outside. The huge garden she’d tended each year was choked with tall grass and weeds, the ground dry and cracked around them. The sheep pasture was empty, but she knew now what Sam had done with her small flock. The yard was a mess, the grass choked with weeds and wild flowers. Only the balm of Gilead tree stood untouched, obliviously green and thriving. It gave her pause for a moment, thinking about that simple fact. That year after year, as Sam had been off doing whatever Sam
did, as she had been in Seattle, hiding, it had been here, rooted, planted, growing. Papa had given it to them on their wedding day, a cutting from his own. That silly tree. It still bloomed and blossomed, too foolish to know it should die.

  She looked out toward the barn, and for a minute she could almost see Sam there, hammering boards into place. This old house had been his labor of love for her. He had bought it for her, then spent every precious spare moment fixing it up. She could almost see his dark head, the back of his sun-browned arms.

  She went into the master bedroom, and there were all of her clothes still hanging in the closet. The hated black dress she had worn to the funeral was slumped lifelessly on the floor of the closet, the black pumps fallen beside it. The bed was made, as she had left it, but rumpled, as if someone had lain down on top of the spread. She opened the closet to Sam’s side. His suits were gone. Everything else was still there. His casual clothes. Jeans, pants, work shirts, and boots. She closed the door. She did not open the door to the other bedroom. She remembered closing it the day of Margaret’s death. She had not opened it since. She went into the kitchen.

  Nothing was different here except the rust stains in the sink from a leaky washer that was still dripping. She wondered how many gallons of water it had wasted in this dry, parched place, and it tapped as she did so, a slow metronome to her thoughts. The gingham curtains looked dusty. She gave one a shake, and thousands of little dust particles swirled into a fury. She turned away. The door was ajar on the refrigerator, the old turtle-shaped one of Mary’s they’d inherited. She peered inside. It was empty, and she wondered who had cleaned it out. She pictured Laurie or Mary or Diane emptying it, and suddenly she felt a stab of guilt. Her leaving had affected others, she realized, that one small realization taking hold for the first time.

  She ran her hand over the smooth enamel of the stove, the dinosaur stove, as Sam had called it. She looked down and there was the rag rug Sam’s Aunt Valda had made and given her for a shower gift. She remembered that shower. Over at the church. They’d had ham and potato salad, and the men hadn’t been allowed to come. What had those women thought about her leaving? What had they been told? Had they missed her? Had they been hurt that she had left without a word? And for the first time she remembered their names and faces.

  She looked at the mug rack over the sink, the old chipped blue cup Sam favored still hanging there. The can of coffee just where she’d left it that morning. She had always made him coffee and breakfast before he left for work, until those last days when he was never home. She had been alone here with the shadows and grief.

  It was fitting, she supposed, that he would find her here. She heard a slight sound and turned, and there he was.

  She stared, ran her eyes over him, not quite believing it was true. It was, though. It was Sam. He stood, hands in his pockets. His face was sober. His hair was still thick and combed back from his face. His expression was dark with something familiar to both of them. All what she had expected except when she looked at his eyes. They were not hard and distant as she’d thought they might be, but soft and full of pain. “Hello, Annie Ruth,” he said. “Somehow I knew we’d meet again.”

  “Hello, Sam,” she answered back, and suddenly it seemed as if no time had passed at all.

  ****

  Somehow he had imagined that she had changed. Cut her hair, perhaps. Become someone he would not know. Perhaps he had even hoped she had. Then he would not have felt this raw sense of two broken edges grating against each other in his chest. She was wearing jeans and a blue cotton shirt. Her beautiful hair spilled down around her shoulders. Her eyes were huge saucers, and her cheeks flushed pink, blending together the spatter of golden freckles on her cheeks.

  Neither one of them spoke for a moment, but his mind was whirring. Racing. Had she changed her mind? Had she come back to tell him? Hope rose up for a moment, then crashed back down in a spectacular heap when she spoke.

  “I came to clean out the house,” she said, and her face flushed even pinker.

  “Oh.”

  “Did someone tell you I was here?” she asked. “Is that why you came?”

  He shook his head. “I came to do the same as you. Get my things out and put the place up for sale.”

  “Oh.” Was there disappointment there or only indifference?

  “When did you get in?” he asked after a moment.

  “Yesterday afternoon. What about you?”

  “The same.” They glanced away from each other, and there was an awkward silence for a moment.

  “Sam,” she finally said.

  He turned toward her, and it was foolish, but even then he hoped she might take it all back. Say, “Never mind those papers. I was angry. Now that I’m here, of course, I can see it was all a mistake.” What would he do? he asked himself. Would he take her in his arms and kiss her? Would that make things right? Suddenly he saw how foolish he was being. There was too much between them, and suddenly it seemed insurmountable. He had no idea how to span it.

  “Sam, I’m sorry about Kelly Bright,” she said softly, finding the words she’d been searching for. So she had not been about to take it all back.

  “So am I,” he returned. Perhaps a little more curtly than he’d meant to. But what more was there to say? He felt that familiar hopeless exhaustion grip him by the throat.

  She crossed her arms and looked away from him, and when she spoke he could hear that the tenderness had left her voice. “Do you want to save anything here?” she asked bluntly.

  He felt a flush of anger then. Those words hit him like battering rams, and he saw himself waiting alone every year at that silly restaurant, looking and acting such a fool that even old women felt sorry for him. He looked at her standing there. He had not thought he would ever see her again. Not since her terse note. Her legal papers. And he realized how foolish he had been to think there might be any hope. After all, they weren’t Sam and Annie anymore, they were Petitioner and Respondent. He felt angry that she had come. Could not her father have taken care of this last funeral? Could she not have paid someone to come and clean away the debris of their life? Why had she come? To torment him? To see him in his agony?

  “What are you doing here, Annie?” It was his own voice, though it almost surprised him to hear it. He had not thought about speaking these thoughts. The words just appeared, surprising him when they landed back in his ear. They did not sound particularly angry, in fact they sounded dull, monotonous, as if he would be barely interested in her answer.

  Her face grew hard then. “I have every right to be here.”

  “Did your lawyer tell you that?” he threw back, and somehow disinterest had become mockery.

  Her face flushed bright red down to the roots of her hair. She didn’t answer. Her mouth became a tight line.

  “Did you come to rub salt in the wound?” he asked, an edge to the mockery now. “Maybe you wanted to be here to see your ex-husband take his fall. Welcome!” He spread his arms wide and made a sweeping gesture. “Take a seat. The show is just beginning.”

  “I didn’t come to see you take a fall.”

  “Why, then?”

  Her defiant expression wavered for a moment. “I read in the paper . . .”

  “So you came to help me out?” He should stop. He knew he should, but the anger and hurt spilled out of his mouth.

  Her face became angry again. “I should have known better.”

  “Oh, come on, Annie. If you’d cared, you would have come some other time in the last five years. Maybe you would have come when you promised.”

  “How dare you talk to me about promises.” Her voice became hard and sharp. “You were the one who broke your promise. You promised we’d have a life together. You were the one who left me here alone because you wanted to be a big name. You wanted to be famous. Do you know how many nights I spent waiting for you?”

  He shook his head in disgust. How many times had they had this conversation? It’s the nature of the work, Annie,
he had said more times than he could count. There is no moderation possible. You’re there or not. Hot or cold. On or off. In or out.

  “Your work was always the most important thing,” she continued bitterly.

  “So you’re still beating that dead horse,” he said, and that made her even angrier.

  She said nothing, but her face grew darkly bitter, and he felt as attacked as if she had shouted accusations at him.

  “Go ahead,” he said bitterly. “Why don’t you say what you really hate me for? You’re angry that I went to work that day, and you think it’s my fault Margaret died. I know. You can lie, but I know you blame me.”

  She said nothing. She did not admit it, but neither did she deny it. Her silence stabbed him as deeply as words would have.

  “It was an accident, Annie. It was no one’s fault. It could have happened to you. Blame God if you want, but I didn’t kill our daughter. I loved Margaret, and I loved you.”

  “You didn’t love me,” she hurled back when he had barely finished speaking. “If you had loved me, you would have stayed with me afterward. You would have talked to me. Do you know how many nights I looked into that stony mask—that one right there, still on your face—and waited for you to speak? To say something? Anything? But you never did. You left me here in silence, and you left me here alone, and finally I left you, but I was only making real what you had already done.”

  “Oh. I see. So, is that what you’re doing now, Annie?” he demanded. “Making things real? Making things honest?”

  “You’ve made choices, Sam. Don’t blame me for this.”

  “I’ve made choices. Oh. I see. You probably think I deserve everything I’m getting now,” he finally suggested quietly. “Maybe God’s paying me back. Maybe I’m reaping what I’ve sown.”

  She shook her head but did not answer. She walked past him, out the door. He stood there, not turning, until long after he had heard her start her car and drive away.