He picked it up and said hello. His face went still and he lay propped on one elbow for a long time, listening. I turned over and looked at him curiously. He looked back at me and then said, “All right. Thank you. We’ll be ready.”
He hung up the phone slowly, but he did not speak. Sudden anxiety knifed me.
“Aengus…”
He shook his head. Tears filmed his eyes.
“Aengus…”
“Thayer, your grandmother died. She died very suddenly, early this morning. She hadn’t even gotten up yet. Juanita took her breakfast up and found her. They think maybe a stroke. Your mother is sending a car for us; it’s picking us up at two. We should be home by eight or nine tonight—”
“No, Aengus!” I cried. “She was okay yesterday! You remember how we laughed when she said she didn’t think Detritus had ever driven twenty miles without her before…. You remember, don’t you?”
“Baby—”
“I don’t believe you!” I shrieked. “Mother’s just being mean! You know she’s been trying to spoil this wedding—”
“Thayer!” he said, shaking me a little with both hands. “We don’t have time for this right now. We have to get up and get going. The car’s going to be here in less than an hour.”
I sat staring at his face. It was sleep creased and had paled; the sun had moved off the balcony and didn’t fall over us now. The peach-striped wallpaper was dull and ordinary looking; it might have adorned the walls of any chain motel. The satiny sheets looked gray. Our clothes lay in a pile in the middle of the Mexican tiled floor; they did not look film-noir erotic but simply careless and sloppy. I began to cry.
“I want Grand,” I sobbed into my hands. “I want my grandmother.”
“They need us at home, darling,” he said, getting out of bed and pulling me gently behind him. “Your mother wants us to be in on the planning, whatever that means. You know your grandmother would want you to do that. Lily and what’s-his-name are already there.”
“I do not want Goose… in the same house with my grandmother’s…”
I could not say “body” and cried harder, but I got up and stumbled after Aengus into the bathroom and stood in the shower while he adjusted it to spray warm, sulfurous water over me. The soap he handed me smelled of Vetiver, Grand’s scent, and I could not lift my hand holding it. It was he who soaped me gently all over and lifted the spray to rinse me off and then folded a huge, soft terry towel around me.
“I’ll bring you some underclothes and put out some things for you,” he said. “And I’ll put the bags outside on the veranda. I’ll call when we’re under way, so they’ll know. I know how much you loved her, baby. So let’s do this for her, okay?”
I do not remember a longer ride in my life. The car, a big Chrysler driven by a taciturn woman named Mrs. Moore, had tinted gray windows and air-conditioning turned to subarctic. I shivered, but when she turned it off I ran sweat, so we went back to frigid. The flat South Georgia landscape, mainly peach orchards and peanuts and soybean fields, fled by all of a dun color. By Valdosta I had stopped crying, and I fell asleep on Aengus’s shoulder somewhere near Macon and did not wake until the car slowed and stopped and I looked up to see the front of River House blazing with light. I felt a smile start and then remembered who was not in it anymore.
“I can’t go in there,” I said, beginning to cry again, but then the front door opened and my mother and sister came out onto the portico, and I could see that there were other people in the house behind them.
“Do it for Grand,” Aengus whispered, and I got out of the car and stumbled up the walk and portico steps and let them sweep me into their arms. My mother’s face was blanched and swollen and Lily was sobbing outright, but I did not cry any more that night, and I don’t remember that I ever cried again for Grand.
I broke free from my mother and sister and dodged through the crowd, not responding to their murmurs of condolence. I did not know them. I noticed as I went by that the dining room table was laden with platters and trays and the big silver candelabras that Grand had given Mother held white, lit candles. What was my mother thinking? A party, when Grand had died this very morning in this house? I jerked open the door to Grand’s room, thinking only that I had to, must, see her, that to do so would somehow mean that none of this dreadfulness was true. Surely she would put down her book and smile and say, “Hi, darling,” as she so often did and hold out her arms. Surely her touch, and her fragrant, after-bath smell, would cancel out the terrible day and we could laugh about it. Surely no one would remember it afterwards. Surely. Surely….
She was not in her room. Her four-poster rice bed, the one she had brought from Charleston, was made up with her ivory damask linens and shell-pale satin comforter, and only one small lamp burned. Her beautiful old mahogany bedroom furniture shone faintly in the dim room. There was a huge vase of white calla lilies on her desk. I was opening the door to her bathroom when my mother came in. I spun around.
“Where is she?” I cried. “Where is Grand?”
My mother came and put her arms around me again. Aengus stood behind her. He had tear tracks on his dark face.
“Darling, she’s at Magnusen’s. She… wanted cremation. I’m sure you knew that. We’ll keep her urn in the beautiful little room they have for that at St. Philip’s. She most emphatically did not want a funeral, so I thought we’d just have some of her close Atlanta friends tonight. I’m glad so many of them could come; it was such short notice—”
“I’m sure Grand wouldn’t have wanted to inconvenience you,” I said. “Maybe she’ll apologize. Puff ashes all over you.”
“Thayer—”
“I’ll stay with her for a little while, Mrs. Wentworth,” Aengus said, moving in to slide me from my mother’s arms. “It was an awful shock for her, especially today—”
“Oh, that’s right,” Mother said. “It’s your honeymoon, isn’t it? And you were at Grand’s house. That’s really too bad, but Thayer must come down and speak to her grandmother’s friends. Lily is already there. Everyone will wonder—”
“I don’t give a happy rat’s ass what they wonder!” I shouted. “I’m not going down there and moo around about what a wonderful woman she was, and how much I’ll miss her. If they don’t know that by now they don’t need me to tell them—”
“Thayer!”
“Please, Mrs. Wentworth. Mom,” Aengus said. “Just give us a few minutes. We’ll be down soon.”
“Fine,” Mother said in her clipped angry-in-public voice. “If Thayer can manage it, of course.”
She left, closing the door with a little bang, and Aengus put his chin on my head and said, “What a bi—witch she can be,” into my hair. “You think you can go down?”
I shook my head no into his shoulder.
“I’m going to stay here,” I said. “I’m going to sleep here. I hope you’ll stay with me, but if you don’t want to—”
“Don’t be an ass, baby,” he said. “Wherever you are, I am. You need to eat something, though. I’ll go get you a plate and say a few words around for both of us. I won’t be long.”
I don’t think he was, but by the time he returned with one of Grand’s Haviland plates full of party sandwiches and cheese straws I was sunk into Grand’s bed, fast asleep in a cloud of Vetiver. He slid into bed beside me and I turned into his arms, but I did not wake. We both slept, that night, with Grand’s arms around us.
My mother sent Juanita to wake us early.
“Miss Crystal got some stuff she want to go over with you,” she said. “She and your sister and Goose are on the porch. There’s coffee out there.”
Alternately yawning and sniffling, I went down the stairs and out to the screened porch. Aengus stayed behind to shave, said Goose would probably kill him with a hoe handle if he saw the state of his stubble. By the time he joined us, his cheeks fresh shining, we were finishing our second cups of coffee. For the last few moments no one had spoken.
When Aengus had set
tled beside me into the long porch sofa, my mother said, “Well. This won’t take long. I know you two want to get back to your honeymoon, and it’s all so simple I believe we can just talk it out. Your grandmother”—and she looked around at Lily and me—”has some specific bequests to you that I thought I would tell you about. You can verify them against her will, of course, but I don’t think there’ll be a reading until a bit later.”
She waited, looking at us, and we both nodded. I did not want anything from Grand. I only wanted Grand. But apparently this doling out was going to happen anyway.
“Lily, Grand left you and Goose”—did anyone else notice the slight flaring of my mother’s nostrils at the name?—”a trust fund for each child you might have and five hundred thousand dollars.”
Lily gasped with what looked to be surprised pleasure; Goose looked taciturnly displeased, but since his brows met over his nose anyway it was hard to tell.
“The rest of her estate, except for bequests to her charities, comes to me. You girls will inherit it one day, of course. She has left Detritus the Mercedes and a good sum. He will continue to drive for me.” (This never happened; Detritus and the Mercedes took off the next day and did not return to Lytton. I learned much later that he had a car service with a nice small fleet and was prospering like the green bay tree.)
My mother swept her eyes toward me.
“Thayer, your grandmother has left you a house.”
She did not go on, and finally I said, “What house? I didn’t know Grand had another house.”
“Neither did anyone else, apparently,” my mother said repressively. “But she did, and it is now yours. And Aengus’s, of course.”
He nodded affably at her.
I did not say anything else and she went on.
“It is a stone house on Bell’s Ferry Road, out near the Chattahoochee. It has three bedrooms and three baths, and is furnished with pieces from your grandmother’s Buckhead house. It is quite a nice house. The neighborhood is considered very good. All the houses were vacation homes once, I believe, because of the nearness to the river. She has apparently had it cleaned once a month since she moved to Lytton, and all you would need to do is move in. If you should want the house, of course. I know your plans were to remain in Sewanee. In that case I would be delighted to take it off your hands for a very generous sum. There is a letter she left for you, too.”
She fell silent. I could think of nothing to say. Aengus said, “Did she tell you about the house, Mrs. Wentworth? You seem to know a lot about it.”
“No,” she said levelly, studying, not him or me, but the sweating iced-tea pitcher. “I went up yesterday afternoon and looked at it.”
He and I were both silent, simply looking at her.
“I wanted to make sure that your inheritance was commensurate with the others, of course, Thayer,” she said. “I was prepared to augment it a bit if it wasn’t. A house, you know, is not quite the same thing as… financial inheritance.”
“And was it?” Aengus asked interestedly. “Commensurate?”
“I believe so. It isn’t exactly grand, but it’s really quite lovely… for what it is, of course.”
“Of course,” he said. And suddenly it occurred to me that Grand’s mystery house must be a really wonderful house in a faultless location, for it was obvious that my mother was furious to the core of her being that the house had come to me and not to her. A house in northside Atlanta… wasn’t it what she had yearned for since the beginning of her marriage?
“You said there was a letter….”
She picked the envelope up from the coffee table and handed it to me. She did not move from her chair. No one else stirred, either. Obviously, I was meant to share the letter.
I got up.
“I think I’ll read it on the way,” I said to Aengus, and he got up and followed me off the porch.
“On the way where?” my mother called back after me. Her voice was edged like broken glass.
“To see my new house!” I called back.
No one spoke until after we had gotten into Aengus’s car and turned out of the driveway toward Atlanta. If they had I would have heard them.
On the outskirts of Atlanta I finally opened Grand’s letter. At the sight of her graceful Palmer handwriting I felt my throat and eyes flood again with tears, but I was determined not to smudge Grand’s words, so I shook my head hard and read aloud to Aengus:
My dear Thayer,
I hope it will be some years before you read this, because I hope I will be allowed a good long time with you yet. But if not, know that you were born in my heart and have stayed there all this time.
I am leaving to you a house that I have always loved dearly, although for one reason or another we never used it much, especially after your dad was born. Big Finch always loved the old colony on Burnt Mountain, and I came to love the house at Sea Island. But this one would have been the vacation home of my dearest dreams.
All the oldest houses on the river were initially vacation places for Buckheaders, although now that the city has spread out so, it encompasses all of the land on both sides of the river, almost to the western edge of Cobb County. Now your house is just one more house on a street of city houses, but I think it is still special and always will be.
I used to visit at least once a month. I don’t think your parents ever knew that. I don’t even think your dad knew about the house. He was always a Burnt Mountain boy. The home owners on Bell’s Ferry at the river have always had the good sense to leave the river forest largely intact, so it is rather like living in an enchanted forest beside what might be, if you catch it on a good day without shrieking rafters or floating garbage, an enchanted river. I think the river there is at its most beautiful; it is not navigable there or anywhere below because of the rapids, and the white water is spectacular. I have always loved the old iron bridge, though by the time you get there they may well have replaced it with something square and modern and spiky. When we were children, the bravest of us used to dive from that bridge. I do not recommend it.
You have always been my Ondine, because you loved the river behind your parents’ house so much. I always wanted a water sprite to live in this one. I know you will have already made plans for your future, you and Aengus, but pamper your old granny and give the house a try. It’s the sort of house you can build your life around, not merely a house to accommodate a life. Will you do that?
I’ve loved you best of all, dearest Thayer. You should know that someone did.
Love always, Grand
I rode the rest of the way into the city, to where we turned off in the middle of Buckhead on Bell’s Ferry Road, with my face buried in my hands. I did not cry. I merely let my internal movie of Grand run: the times when I was very small and she would take my hand and let me toddle down to the water behind our house and sometimes splash with me in the shallows; curling into her warm lap on a cooling summer night on the porch glider, listening sleepily to her and my grandfather Big Finch talking with my parents and breathing deeply of her perfume; showing her my first long dress and hearing her delighted words that made me feel I was truly beautiful, at least on that night; her arms hard around me after the searing pain of the baby and defection of Nick; her words on meeting Aengus: “Don’t let him go too far into the Irish thing. Don’t let him take you there with him.”
I lifted my head and looked at him. I still did not know what she meant.
“Almost there.” Aengus smiled at me. “Almost home.”
“How do you know it will be?”
“I don’t know. I just do.”
I had been down Bell’s Ferry Road before, I think, but I did not remember much about it except for the great river forest that was cloven in two by the Chattahoochee River. I remembered no houses. But now here they were, tucked back into glades hewn out of towering hardwoods and pine. Most were older, with mature shrubbery and gardens. Sunlight slanted in through the treetops, picking out a gabled roof here, a summerhouse the
re. There was considerable traffic, but this end of Bell’s Ferry seemed to generate a green silence. When we slowed at a mailbox to read the numbers, I could hear the deep laughter of the river.
“Here we are,” Aengus said, turning into a driveway. “Holy Saints!”
He stopped and I looked up at the house and began to cry.
“Oh, Aengus,” I sobbed. “Oh, Aengus!”
It was not that my grandmother’s house was grand or even elegant; it was just that there was not an inch of it that did not look like something out of a child’s fairy tale… Hans Christian Andersen, not Grimm’s. It rose out of the center of a circular glade, sunlight falling on it as if trained like a spotlight. The grass in the glade was almost pure emerald, and the trees around and above it were lacy with new green, leaning close as lovers. The house itself was three stories of river stone, with bayed casement windows on each floor and a wide carved door set into a portico. The roof was old slates, warm grand fawn and green where moss clung to them. All the trim and the shutters and doors were painted French blue.
“It’s a Normandy house,” I said when I could get my breath. “Normandy in a forest on the river. It’s pure magic!”
“So does it look like home?” Aengus laughed. I could see the house reflected in his blue eyes. On that day, Aengus’s eyes were full of home.
I ran up the flagstone walkway and put the old key into the bronze lock and the big blue door swung open. Even before it closed behind us, I believed in my heart that I was then and forever home.
CHAPTER 11
From the Bell’s Ferry house we went, not back to Lytton, but on to the Mountain and the Domain. There seemed to me nothing to go back to Lytton to. Lily and Goose had not yet gone back to their home in a small town south of Lytton but would soon. It was a dreary little house with no trees around it, in a sun-smitten suburb called Summer Garden. There was not a flower in it, nor a garden.
“A nice little starter house,” my mother said of it. I feared secretly that Lily would both start and finish there. Goose had worked up to manager of the local supermarket; his one marketable skill had been football, for which there was little call in the small-town South after high school.
Burnt Mountain Page 14
