Where the River Runs

by Patti Callahan Henry

  We were all left staring at each other.

  Mr. Cragg coughed. “Anybody have anything else they’d like to say?”

  Voices overlapped.

  “What can I do to help?”

  “How many booths can we accommodate?”

  “Can I be on the acquisitions committee?”

  Mr. Cragg hollered, “Whoa, everyone, sit down. All we are here to do is divide up the committees. Mrs. Manning has spent hours figuring out how many people we need on each one. And we need you to rope in some of your friends. Can we let her speak now?”

  Silence finally filled the room as Mrs. Manning stood with ten packets in her hand. “Okay, we’re only in the very beginning stages, but I see how we can make it work.”

  I looked at Mother, mouthed, “Thank you.”

  “No need,” she whispered back.

  Oh, yes, I thought, there was plenty of need.

  Cucumber sandwiches lay next to cheese straws on silver trays. On Mother’s back porch, Bee and Chris Garrett sat next to Tim on the wicker couch plumped with overstuffed floral pillows. Squished between them, Tim looked like an overgrown boy. The Garretts laughed at some story Tim had just recounted about Danny beaching a Boston Whaler.

  Sissy sat in a chair with a glass of iced tea—slightly spiked with a splash of Bushmills—surveying the crowd from behind her sunglasses, which hid her tear-swollen eyes. Her linen skirt was pressed in straight folds like a schoolgirl’s uniform, and her white blouse looked like it had just been taken off the rack at the store. Her hair was pulled back in a severe ponytail.

  I sat on the opposite couch across from Tim and the Garretts; Mother scurried around bringing more trays of food and drink.

  “Mother,” I called out to her. “Come.” I patted the pillow next to my seat. “Sit.”

  She brushed back one piece of hair that had come loose from her bun.

  “Relax—everyone’s fine,” I said, swished my hand toward the Garretts, Tim and Sissy.

  Bee Garrett lifted her iced tea. “Here’s to Meridy Dresden for the awesome arts festival idea.”

  “Aye, aye.” Everyone lifted his or her glass.

  “Absolutely not,” I said. “This is not about me!”

  “It’s all about you,” Sissy said, threw her head back and laughed. “It’s always about you.”

  “Very funny.” I lifted my glass.

  Tim lifted his glass. “Oh, yeah—Sissy, I heard about your midnight swim. Here’s to you too.” He winked at her.

  Sissy dropped her head. “Oh. My. God.” Then she eyed me. “I’m going to kill you.”

  I held up my hands. “Wasn’t me, big sis. Wasn’t me.”

  Tim went over to Sissy and patted her shoulder. “Nope, my nosy neighbor told me. I don’t think I’m the only one she told.”

  Sissy took a long swallow of her spiked tea. “Okay, I lost my mind for a moment or two. You know hanging out with Meridy will do that to you.”

  I laughed. “Go ahead, blame me.”

  Sissy leaned forward, shook her head. “This is the oddest gathering I’ve seen on Mom’s back porch in years.”

  Bee Garrett reached for her cardigan. “We really should get going. We didn’t mean to intrude.”

  “Sissy McFadden.” Mother used her maiden name and it seemed appropriate. “That was rude.”

  “Oh, oh,” Sissy said. “I didn’t mean it rude. This is great fun. . . . I mean it. So much more interesting than trying to figure out what fabric to cover the couch in or what flowers to cut for the garden party. . . . This is like—I don’t know—like real life.”

  I let out a holler and swooped across the porch to my sister; I grabbed her in a hug. “There you go . . . real life.”

  Sissy laid her head on my shoulder and stifled a cry. “Oh, God, I’m making a fool of myself. Forgive me. I’ve had a terrible few days and I haven’t slept and Mom put a tad too much Bushmills in here and I’m going back to bed now.” She stood, curtsied and turned toward the screen door.

  “Stay,” Tim said.

  Sissy glanced over her shoulder. “Me?”

  “Definitely you—you liven up the crowd.”

  Mother groaned. “Just what I need—two daughters livening up the crowd.” She turned to Bee Garrett. “Please stay. I’ve ordered Puggy’s Ribs for lunch and they’re delivering them any minute.”

  Ah, Mother had used the hook of food. If the Garretts left now, it would be not only rude, but insulting. Food—the great Southern gathering force.

  I seconded Mother’s invitation. “It is so good to see you in this house, to hear your voices. I remember when you taught me how to divide the roots of the daylilies to give them room to bloom. And remember when you gave me that pot of peonies to plant in the side yard?”

  “Yes.” Bee nodded.

  “I remember so much now.” I looked at Chris. “Remember when Danny was at basketball camp in North Carolina? You said I looked so lonesome sitting there on my front porch that you took me fishing.”

  “We caught a bluefish and you reeled it in by yourself,” Chris said, grinning.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know why I thought that forgetting was such a good thing. Too much good in there.”

  “Yes,” Bee said, “too much good.”

  I glanced over at Mother; she sat back on the couch and I actually believed there was the hint of a smile on her lips. Then the doorbell rang with our delivered ribs and I’d never know for sure.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Every back is fitted to the burden.”

  —GULLAH PROVERB

  Mother was waiting for me in the downstairs hallway. In my bedroom the scraps of paper from the dolphin box skipped across my pink hand-painted dresser. I dropped my hand on the notes to keep them from falling to the floor. I had separated Danny’s dreams from my own, but the wind mixed them again. I gathered the notes and placed them in the box with the two pictures. I felt I had to do something significant with these dreams—something besides stuff them back where they had started—but I didn’t know what.

  A bizarre tumult of emotions overwhelmed me. Through the years I had become accustomed to feeling one emotion at a time—frustration, fatigue, excitement. They came individually wrapped. But now joy and longing combined with loss and emptiness.

  I returned to the closet, trying to decide what to wear to Tulu’s funeral. I grabbed a pale green skirt and short-sleeved cotton top. It was at least 102 degrees outside. I scooped my hair up into a ponytail and glanced in the mirror. I had broken all my own rules about sunblock these past weeks, and my face and cheeks were brown and freckled; the face of the twelve-year-old child who’d once lived in this room stared back at me from underneath the years. I winked at her and walked out of the bedroom. I reached the top steps and for one moment I believed, again, that I could fly down them.

  Mother squinted up at me. “That’s what you’re wearing today? This is a funeral, Meridy. . . . At least put on some lipstick.”

  “Mother, I couldn’t care less.”

  Mother rolled her eyes. “Sissy,” Mother called up the stairs, “you coming?”

  Sissy appeared at the top landing, the twins coming up behind her. “Yes, we’re coming, we’re coming.” She glanced at me. “Oh, look at you—you look like you’re fifteen years old: no makeup, ponytail and cute outfit. I could get ready for hours and never look that cute. Go away.”

  “Me?” I said. “You look like you should be on the cover of a Lilly Pulitzer catalog.”

  “Please, let’s go,” Mother said.

  And there we were: the McFadden women without their men, walking out the door together. I grasped both Sissy’s and Mother’s arms. I don’t know if there had ever, in our entire lives, been a time when the three of us were together without either a husband or father to define us.

  The naked sun pressed down on the beige tent over Tulu’s grave site in the old Gullah graveyard she’d taken me to only a few days ago. I swallowed rising tears. Mother, Sissy a
nd I paused near the rows of chairs lined up in front of the raw wound of earth that would take Tulu’s casket. I touched Mother’s shoulder, ran my hand across the top of Anyika’s gravestone. “Did you know Tulu had a daughter who died when she was a few days old?”

  Mother nodded. “Yes, it was terrible. You were a baby yourself, and I could barely imagine how horrible it must’ve been for her.”

  Sissy touched the stone, looked at Mother. “How come you never told us?”

  “No need for young—”

  “Children to know such things.” I finished the sentence for my mother.

  “Exactly,” Mother said, and marched to a chair in the back row.

  Sissy and I sat next to her and waited for the processional to arrive. Siss’y daughters, Annie and Amanda, loitered in the back, uncomfortable. A hearse pulled up to the decaying fence. Men, women and children lined up on either side of the car, rocking it back and forth, singing spirituals and crying out in many voices that combined as one in the small graveyard.

  “What are they doing?” Sissy asked, her eyes wide.

  Mother leaned toward her, whispered, “They are releasing Tulu’s spirit.”

  Sissy raised her eyebrows. “Okay . . .”

  “Wait till you see what they do with the youngest baby,” Mother said.

  I leaned in. “Yeah, Mom, I heard about Tulu’s husband’s funeral.”

  “Well, someone should have warned me. I’m prepared this time.”

  I realized I had just called her Mom instead of Mother. A smile spread across my face.

  Someone took the seat next to me and I turned to Tim. “Hey,” I whispered under the songs and voices.

  “You doing all right?” he asked.

  “Hanging in there. You?”

  “Just great.” He nodded toward the incoming crowd. “I haven’t been in this graveyard since we used to dare each other to touch the graves at night.”

  “Tulu brought me out here a few days ago.”

  He nodded, and then leaned over to nod hello to Mother and Sissy.

  Weatherly and Mitchell pulled up in their BMW on the far side of the graveyard. I smiled as Weatherly tried to pick her way across the soft ground in her three-inch heels. A sudden image of Betsy’s, Penni’s and Alexis’s faces if they saw this funeral or this graveyard passed through my mind. No mints here, for God’s sake.

  “What’re you smiling about?” Tim whispered in my ear. “It’s a funeral—no need for that.”

  I turned to him, but he was smiling back at me. “I was picturing my friends from Atlanta coming here, seeing this.”

  Then the preacher stood at the front of the tent and began the service. Everyone mourned Tulu in their own way—with weeping, prayers and song. Men and women stood and regaled us with stories of the woman I had known in a limited way. Their speeches allowed me to see her from many angles, to discover aspects of her I would’ve never known even if I had visited her every day. There were family stories from her children, tales of how she delivered babies, cared for the sick and carried on the Gullah traditions even when others were ashamed.

  When they passed the baby over the open grave, Tim leaned in. “What in the . . . ?”

  “That’s Tulu’s youngest grandbaby. They do this to keep her spirit from coming back and bothering the child,” I whispered.

  Tim raised his eyebrows at me.

  When the funeral was over, a tall dark man stood on a chair. “We will be celebrating my mama’s life this evening on the Seaboro public beach—all are invited.”

  I glanced out to the river; the sun was sinking behind the marsh in a glow of yellow and fuchsia. Deep in my heart I believed it was a show of nature from Tulu—a gift.

  Seaboro’s public beach was hushed, as if it too was mourning Tulu’s death. As Tulu’s friends and family arrived, Sissy appeared at my side. “You okay?” she asked.

  “I’ve never been better.” I rolled my eyes.

  “You upset about Beau?” She tilted her head.

  I nodded. “Yes. But I’ve done and said everything I can. I don’t know what else to do. . . . . I’ll figure it out tomorrow.” I shrugged.

  She laughed. “Who are you, Scarlett?”

  “No, I just need to get through this before I can face that.”

  “You were always so much stronger than me.”

  “No, Sissy. That is not true.”

  Tim’s voice hailed us from behind, and we turned. “Hello, McFadden girls. Looks like trouble over here.”

  “No trouble here,” Sissy said.

  Something that didn’t belong flashed in the corner of my eye: a man in khakis and a pressed golf shirt.

  Penn.

  His back was to me and his head swiveled around. I leaned toward Sissy, whispered, “Penn.”

  “Damn,” she said.

  “Come with me,” Tim said, pulled her hand.

  “No,” Sissy said, straightening her shoulders, tossed her hair. The twins stood by her side, chewing on their forefinger nails in identical motions. She turned to me. “How do you think he found us?”

  I shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  “Amanda, Annie, I’ll be right back. Stay here with Aunt Meridy. Please.” She grimaced.

  The girls nodded. Tim and I stood still, as if a hurricane were headed toward the beach and there was nothing we could do about it but watch.

  Penn stalked toward Sissy and the twins. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” he said, his lips barely moving over his clenched teeth.

  Sissy’s chin lifted. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her so strong, so determined. “Penn, lower your voice—this is part of a funeral.” She turnd to her girls, hugged them. “Why don’t y’all go find Grandma while I talk to your dad. She’s over there—under the tent.”

  As the girls ran off, Penn reached Sissy’s side, grabbed her arm. “You cannot go into the bank accounts and empty them. Where the hell is our money? Where did you put it?”

  “Hmmm,” Sissy said, “I forget. I know I didn’t buy a condo or a catalog’s worth of lingerie. I’m not sure what I did with that money.”

  He pulled her toward him. “That is not funny.”

  “Get your hand off me.” She yanked at his arm.

  “No, not until you tell me where our money is.”

  Tim stepped up beside them. “I believe the lady asked you to take your hand off her arm.” A dent in Sissy’s arm was turning reddish purple where Penn’s fingers dug into her flesh.

  “Who the hell are you?” Penn said, but released Sissy’s arm.

  I stepped between Sissy and Penn. “Penn, this gathering is being held in Tulu’s honor. Can you come spit your venom some other time, please?” I used my most syrup-sweet voice and batted my eyelashes at him.

  “Do you know what your psycho sister did? She emptied the mutual bank accounts and canceled all the credit cards.”

  “Oh,” Sissy said, “I didn’t realize that reporting all our credit cards as stolen would cancel them. I’m so . . . sorry.”

  His eyes narrowed; his tongue curled out to settle in the corner of his mouth. “You will not get away with this. You will not. You want to make this into a war, you can.”

  “I’m not making anything into a war, Penn. I’m protecting myself and my girls. Now, why don’t you go back to your little condo and let us mourn an old friend? By the way, how did you find us?”

  “This town is about as big as a damn postage stamp. Half the cars in the town are parked on the road, and there’s your Jaguar—the car I bought you—parked in the sand. I don’t know why you’ve been whining about moving back here since the day we got married. Now you’ve got your wish—you can stay.” He turned on his heels and stomped through the sand, leaving us in silence.

  Tim spoke first. “Wow. Seems like a nice enough guy. Sorry things aren’t working out.”

  Sissy and I started to laugh, subdued giggles at first but growing until the joy rolled out in raucous laughter, tears rol
ling down our faces. Sissy punched the side of Tim’s arm. Mother came up beside us with the twins. “What is going on here? What’d I miss?”

  “Not much.” I glanced at the twins and my heart ached for them. “Let’s go get something to eat. It looks like the most awesome spread of food over there I’ve ever seen.”

  We were all walking toward the tent and tables when Tim grabbed my arm. “Who is that?” His head slanted toward the right.

  I turned to find B.J. standing at the edge of the sand and grass waving his arms.

  I ran toward him and swept him into a hug. How good it felt to feel his skin next to mine, smell his hair as it brushed up against my face. I held him for a moment longer than he held me. I stepped back and looked at him. “This is such a nice surprise . . . so nice. How did you get here? How did you know . . . ?”

  “I came home yesterday to surprise you and Dad for the weekend. Coach gave us Thursday and Friday off—an unheard-of four-day weekend—and Dad told me how a very dear friend of yours had died and . . . well, anyway we needed an excuse to go to the beach and . . .” He spread his hands wide. “Here we are.”

  “We?” I looked behind B.J., twisting in search of Beau, my heart lifting.

  But B.J. motioned to a small blond girl coming up behind him. “This is Heather . . . my, well, my girlfriend, Heather.”

  Heather pinched the side of his arm. “Was that all that hard to say?” Her gold eyes narrowed and she pouted her lips out at him, then nodded at me. “Hi,” she said, held out her hand. “I’m Heather Cook.”

  I shook her hand, nodded. “I’m Meridy, Beau’s mom. Nice to meet you, Heather. I’m so glad y’all came.”

  “Oh,” Heather said, elbowed B.J. “He just needed a driver because he lost his license.”

  “Thanks, appreciate that.” B.J. wrapped his arm around her, squeezed.

  “How did you find us?”

  “Well, I went to Grandma’s house and it was empty. There was a gardener out front trimming the bushes. He wouldn’t let me in the house, even when I told him who I was—but he did tell me where I could find you.”