Burnt Mountain

by Anne Rivers Siddons

  It was to Burnt Mountain that Finch Wentworth brought his bride, still in her car-spilling souffle of seed-pearled white satin, for their honeymoon. They were headed for a small colony of old cottages in an enclave called Burnt Cove that rode the ridge of Burnt Mountain down to an icy little blue inlet of War Woman Lake. Burnt Cove had been the wilderness retreat for a small number of Atlanta families for many generations. There had always been Wentworths in the Cove, Finch said.

  “Is it private?” Crystal asked when he told her about it, envisioning gates mounted with carved eagles and a discreet log sentry house. Beyond it, bridle paths and a low stone clubhouse.

  “Jesus, no… or I don’t think so, anyway,” Finch said. “It’s just kind of always been the same bunch of people. I don’t guess all that many new people would appreciate the Cove now. It’s seen better days. But I’ve always loved it. I used to come here with Dad a lot when I was a kid. You know I told you it’s not fancy, honey, but it’s all I have time for in the rest of Christmas break. Later on, in the summer, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. Mexico, the Caribbean… anywhere.”

  “The Piedmont Driving Club?”

  “Food’s awful and the nearest wildlife are the mosquitoes on the tennis court.”

  He laughed, liking it that his new wife was relaxing enough to joke about the lares and penates of his privileged life.

  She wasn’t.

  A gravel road dipped down into the hollow that sheltered the approach to Burnt Cove. The road wound around a kudzu-garlanded shack—”caretaker’s place,” Finch said—and past a small, canted white board church. Its bare, swept yard had a hand-lettered sign that read: Holiness Church of the Pentecostal Fire.

  “Isn’t that great?” Finch said, looking over at Crystal. Her face was blank.

  “Is that where y’all go to church?” she said finally.

  “Well, no,” he said, looking closer to see if she was still making jokes. It was impossible to tell.

  “It’s just an old mountain Pentecostal church; I’m not sure who goes to it. I’m sure of this, though: Whoever they are, they holler. It’s been there as long as I’ve been coming up here. I just kind of like it.”

  “We could have gotten married there,” Crystal said, and this time she was smiling.

  He laughed aloud with relief. “Oh, right. That wedding would have blown the roof right off old Holiness.”

  “It was pretty, wasn’t it?” Crystal said dreamily.

  “It was spectacular,” he said.

  The little gray stone Methodist church in Lytton sat on the corner across from the post office. It was as old as the town, well over a century. Crystal had fretted when her mother insisted on having the wedding there.

  “It won’t hold half of Finch’s friends and family,” Crystal said. “And everything inside is all dull and…old. And Reverend Lively snorts when he inhales.”

  “It won’t look dull and old when I’m through with it,” Leona said. “And Reverend Lively won’t have enough to say to snort. Besides, a woman is always married in her own church. Where were you thinking of having it, the Piedmont Driving Club?”

  “Well, the Wentworths go to St. Philip’s Cathedral in Buckhead….”

  “You would be laughed out of Atlanta,” Leona said, and that was that.

  True to her word, the Methodist church looked neither dull nor particularly old on the day of the winter solstice, when Crystal Thayer married Finch Wentworth. It looked, as Caroline Wentworth said privately to her friend Ginny Hughes, “like a Christmas sale at Rich’s. A good one, of course.” The old wooden pews were garlanded in pink poinsettias and the altar was forested with them. Ruby the florist had almost lost her mind rounding up enough pink poinsettias to satisfy Leona Thayer.

  “They all go to Sears and Kmart,” Ruby said aggrievedly. Leona persisted, and the church billowed in a froth of pink, accented with fragrant evergreen boughs and garlands of smilax. Before the altar great crystal vases held huge, blooming magnolia boughs, their green leaves shining in the light of hundreds of flickering white tapers. (“And if you think it’s easy to find blooming magnolias in December…,” Ruby huffed.)

  As a nod to the festivity of the season, Leona had tucked sprays of holly here and there in the greenery and woven tiny twinkling white lights through the altar magnolias.

  “Where’s the goddamn Santa Claus?” Big Finch groused in Caroline’s ear, none too softly.

  But the church glowed in the winter dimness and smelled of candle smoke and cedar, a really lovely smell, and Gladys Abbott on the ancient organ did not produce a single wheeze or squeal. When Crystal swept into the sanctuary on her father’s arm in many yards of pearl-seeded white satin, carrying calla lilies with a few chaste holly berry stems, a great sigh rose to the eaves and hung there like a cloud. She looked, Finch thought, truly angelic, a vision of Raphael or Fra Angelico. Crystal had been born for this moment. In her chaste bridal glory she had moved even herself to tears, before the full-length mirror in the dressing room. They floated down the aisle on white rose petals strewn by her sister’s youngest child, finger in nose, and ten bridesmaids—fellow cheerleaders and her two married sisters, one vastly pregnant—turned incandescent faces to her. Their holly-green velvet gowns drifted just so. Beside and behind Finch, his best man and groomsmen, most of them prep school friends, looked black and white and elegant, and stunned. The tiny tuxedoed ring bearer, looking like a grotesque munchkin, dropped the ring and wailed, but it was retrieved in one neat swipe by the best man and slipped onto Crystal’s finger as if fitted for her, which of course it was. The Reverend Lively did not snort when he pronounced them man and wife, and when Gladys Abbott boomed out Mendelssohn the church bells pealed as if to salute a new millennium.

  And so they were married.

  There was no reception.

  “Let us give you one when you get back,” Caroline Wentworth said. “You’re both worn out and you really don’t have much honeymoon time. I promise we’ll pull out all the stops.”

  “Where?” Crystal asked, envisioning once more the Piedmont Driving Club, with flowers and candles, all eyes on her.

  “Surprise,” Caroline said, smiling.

  So it was that when they drove over the small, rattling bridge that spanned the inlet and into Burnt Cove, Crystal was still in satin and Finch in his tuxedo. In their bags, in the trunk of Finch’s father’s Mercedes, there were only jeans and slacks and sweaters and boots, because, Finch said, Burnt Cove gave new luster to the word “casual” and it would be cold. Crystal, however, had tucked in some velvet pants and a long wool skirt, for the club. Just in case.

  But there was no club. In fact, there was no sign of life in any of the rambling old houses that crowned the ridge nestled next to the long meadow that ran down to War Woman Lake. They were faded board and batten or age-scummed stone, and the trees leaning close in around them lifted straggling bare fingers to the steely sky. No chimney spouted sweet wood smoke. There were no cars.

  Crystal looked over at her husband. Husband…? He was grinning with pleasure. She composed her face into a smile of anticipation.

  “Is it just us?” she said.

  “Probably. Nobody much comes for Christmas. But there’ll be some people up afterwards, over New Year’s. There’s always a holiday hunt. Are you sure you really don’t want to spend this Christmas with your folks? I know what we said, but…”

  “Oh no,” she said, squeezing his arm. “I want this Christmas to be just Mr. and Mrs. Finch Harrison Wentworth the Third.”

  She got her wish. The Wentworth house sat near the top of the ridge, looking far down on other houses and the muddy road and the frigid gray lake. It was large and sprawling, painted a weathered green almost indistinguishable from the moss that clung to its roof. Dead vines that would be luxuriant in the summer snaked up its small entrance porch and onto the steeply sloped roof. Behind the house the crest of Burnt Mountain beetled darkly against the wide, empty sky. A cluster of small build
ings and sheds were scattered among the saplings behind the house. For one horrified moment Crystal thought one of them might be an outhouse. But then she saw that the windows were cheerfully lit and smoke curled from the stone chimney, and reason prevailed.

  “This looks cozy,” she said.

  Finch got out of the car and came around and helped her out, and swept her up, satin and all, and carried her up the steps. Sharp spits of sleet hit their faces.

  “Poor baby.” He smiled into her hair. “It looks like six miles of hard road in winter. All the Cove does. But it is cozy. You’ll see.”

  There was a swag of fresh cedar on the back door, tied with a bright red satin ribbon. And the kitchen, when he carried her in and set her down on her high satin heels, shimmered with warmth and smelled like heaven. A battered copper kettle on the equally battered stove simmered and sang. Crystal breathed in cloves and cinnamon and other spices, things that spoke of the mysterious East, and smiled in spite of herself.

  “Russian tea,” Finch said. “I don’t really know what’s in it, but Corella makes it every Christmas. She and Mother were up several times this week, and she came back up today to fix us some supper. Oh, she’s not here now; she and Osgood have gone to Macon to see their kids. But I’ll bet there’s plenty of food in the fridge. Come see the rest.”

  Shadows leaped on the high living room walls, cast by the roaring fire in the great blackened stone fireplace and the lit candles set around the room. They were great, leaping things that seemed alive; the light didn’t extend to the corners or the ceiling. There was a threadbare but once good Oriental rug on the floor, worn through to the boards in places, and sofas and chairs slumped around the room, none of the fabrics discernible in the dim light. Big islands of tables and trunks and benches and—Was that a piano?—loomed, and the walls were hung with what seemed to Crystal to be many kinds of violins and fiddles, plus a moth-eaten deer’s head, forested with antlers, over the fireplace.

  Crystal winced. Finch followed her gaze.

  “Don’t worry about ol’ Buckhead. He didn’t die at Wentworth hands. My father couldn’t hit the side of a barn, so he bought him in a gun place somewhere in Alabama. We never said it wasn’t his, of course.”

  “I’ll remember,” Crystal said faintly, looking around. There were wreaths and garlands of fresh greenery all about, and urns of holly bright with berries, and on the table behind the spavined couch stood a small fresh cedar tree trimmed in pinecones and strings of cranberries and popcorn, with apples and oranges for color, and white lichens for snowflakes. There were no lights, but on top rode a great, misshapen tin star, with shear marks still on some of its points.

  “I made the whole thing, including the star, for the first time when I was about ten,” Finch said, grinning. “We always said it was our Cove tree.”

  Under the tree were piles of wrapped packages. A couple of large ones sat by the fireplace. On the coffee table, which looked very much like a great barrel top, was a platter of cookies in the shapes of stars and bells and angels, all frosted with glittering white icing.

  “Corella again,” said Finch. “She always makes them, whether or not anybody wants them. Let’s take a look in the kitchen.”

  The tiny, pine-paneled kitchen was darkened with the smoke of a hundred fires, and on one side many-paned glass doors looked out into blackness. The other walls were hung with an astonishing array of pots, pans, knives, cleavers, spoons, strainers, brushes, brooms, flypaper, and other things that Crystal could put no name to. A bulletin board held elderly messages, stained recipes, yellowing photos of adults and children on the hills and by the lake, accompanied by numerous dogs of no particular breeds. In all of them it was summer. In all of them everyone was laughing. Crystal wondered if she would ever know who any of them were.

  The pine counters were stacked with bowls and toasters and brown paper bags and foil-wrapped bundles. When Finch opened the door of the chugging antique refrigerator she saw that it was overflowing with food: ham, roast beef, several pies, eggs, milk, bacon, butter, casseroles of every description, many bottles of wine, and one of champagne, with a red ribbon around it. A tag on the ribbon said: TONIGHT! On the middle shelf, alone, sat a small, beautiful wedding cake on a crystal plate, frosted and shining and embellished with flowers and tiny Christmas candies. On its top were a miniature bride and groom of spun sugar. Around the cake, more vivid holly rimmed the bowl. A note in Caroline Wentworth’s distinguished back-slant hand said: “You’ll have a much grander one at your reception, but you must go to sleep on your wedding night with a slice of wedding cake under your pillow.” From the oven came the smell of something rich and winey and buttery.

  “Isn’t Ma something?” Finch said happily, and put his arms around Crystal and pulled her close to him. She put her arms around his neck, tipped her face up to be kissed, and then stopped. All of a sudden something—everything—the smells, the food, the leaping, lurching shadows, the utter blackness and stillness outside… all congealed at the base of her throat and she retched.

  “Oh, Finch, I’m going to be sick!” she wailed, pulling away. “Where—”

  “Here,” he said swiftly, and jerked a door open. She stumbled into a small bathroom, with only a toilet and a washbasin in it. She just had time to see that the room was papered with New Yorker covers, most of them yellowing, before she jerked up the toilet lid and began to vomit.

  She vomited for a long time. It felt as if she would never stop, that there was nothing inside her that would not be heaved from her stomach into this toilet on Burnt Mountain. But finally she did. She leaned weakly against the wall and finally gathered the strength to look at herself in the speckled mirror. Then she began to cry.

  Her beautiful coiled blond hair hung in her face in wet, lank strands. He face was swollen and blotched. As much of her chest and shoulders as she could see was splotched with vomit, and the white pearled satin bodice had come unfastened and hung, splattered and stained, off one shoulder. She closed her eyes again, and cried and cried.

  Finch hammered at the door.

  “Baby! Let me in! God, Crystal, you sound like you—”

  “No! Don’t come in! Don’t you dare!”

  “Then come out—”

  “I am not ever coming out!” she wailed, and he wrenched the door open and stared at her.

  “Oh, my God, darling, what’s the matter? Come here and let me see you!”

  “No! I smell!”

  He leaned her back against the wall and stared at her. Then murmuring and crooning, he held her close, rocking her as if she were a child.

  “Finch, you’ll get it all over you! Please just let me…”

  He let her go and picked up fresh towels, wrung them out in hot water, and mopped her face and neck. With a damp washcloth he cleaned her hair and hands. He turned her around, carefully unbuttoned the tiny round satin buttons of her bodice and caught it when it fell to the floor, and put the whole satin bundle into the dirty-clothes hamper. Crystal stood, shivering and crying, her hands over her eyes.

  “Step out of your shoes,” he said, and she did, and then he unhooked the satin bra and slid the silk and lace panties down her legs and off and tossed them after the dress into the hamper. With warm, wet towels he continued to clean her beautiful naked body until it was polished, and had her wash her mouth out with a glass of icy springwater, and when she finally turned to him, white and shaking and unable to speak, he reached into the closet and pulled out an enormous terry robe, its fluff worn away but smelling of bleach and sweet soap, and wrapped her in it. And then he picked her up and carried her into the living room and lay down with her on the sofa before the fire.

  For a while he simply held her. Then when the shaking began to subside and she began to whisper horrified apologies, he pushed himself up on one arm and looked down at her.

  “Do you feel better?”

  “Yes, but… I must look just so terrible.…”

  “You are the most beautiful thing
in the world to me,” he said, and kissed her face all over, and her neck.

  “But I looked so pretty….”

  “Well, you look just like you did, only you’re naked. Do you think you weren’t going to be naked on your wedding night?”

  “Not like this! And you’ve still got all your wedding clothes on….”

  He got up, stripped off the clothes and tossed them behind the sofa, and stood for a moment looking down at her in the fire- and candlelight.

  “One way’s as good as another,” he said.

  She stared up at him, this tall, lean man who shone in the light like a young pagan god, who looked to her just as she had imagined he would in the long nights in her bed in Lytton, when she could not sleep. Deep in her stomach, something old and slow turned over, curled, stretched. It was warm, almost hot. She opened her arms to him and, without even knowing she did, raised her hips on the prickly old sofa cushion, and moved them slowly.

  “Yes, it is,” she whispered.

  It was.

  I gave my mother her honeymoon. I gave it to her, backward from the future, not long after my own. By that time so much had been corrupted by her discontent, scalded by her bile, that it occurred to me, shamefully for the first time, that of all of us, her pain must be the worst. She lived so long with it, could not, as others could, walk away from it.

  “My God,” I said to the man who was my refuge, “she must be scarred on the inside from her brain to her stomach. Why didn’t I know that about her? All this time and I didn’t even know….”

  “I don’t imagine you were much in the way of being healed yourself until recently,” he said. “Couldn’t look till then. Now that you can, do you think you might begin to see her a bit differently? I don’t think it would help her much, but it might do you a mite of good.”

  “I just honest to God don’t know. I don’t even know if I want to. It’s not like there’s ever going to be some great, tearstained reconciliation scene. We can’t be anything else to each other than what we are. Can’t you see that?”