The Sea Keeper's Daughters

by Lisa Wingate

  “Sure. We talked about it last night. Don’t you remember? Fisherman’s Wharf? The docks? You said you’d never been down to Wanchese.”

  “Ohhhh.” I did vaguely recall that part of the conversation, but we hadn’t made firm plans for tonight … had we? “I’m really sorry. Today got crazy and I had to drive down to Hatteras.”

  His reaction told me nothing. It was merely pleasant. “Shopping?” He motioned to the Sandy’s Seashell Shop cup in my hand.

  “A little. Sandy’s makes a good chai latte.”

  “Love the place. Great little store. Great people.” Why was I not surprised he knew of it? “Gave one of their stained-glass prayer boxes to my mom last year for Mother’s Day. Now I’m a hero around our church. Never would’ve thought of the idea if it hadn’t been for Sandy and her crew.”

  Hmmm … So, Casey shopped for his mama and spent time around a church? Nothing I’d learned about him fit the depraved image Mark had tried to convey. “It sounds like you’re a good son.”

  “If mama ain’t happy, nobody’s happy,” he joked, then paused to cast a narrow glance at a group of tweenaged townies zipping by on bicycles. “At least my mother didn’t let me wander all over the place unsupervised.” He turned back to me, smiling again. “So … anyway, here you are and here I am.” A blondish-brown eyebrow lifted hopefully. “Dinner? There’s still time to drive down to Wanchese.”

  I thought about ham rolls, Mark’s party, Clyde and the dog. And condo buildings.

  Then I thought about my desperate, awkward, silent pleas throughout the day. Maybe Casey showing up just when I was about to go over to Mark’s party was an answer. Could Casey’s interest in the Excelsior, and his ability to provide a retirement housing solution for Clyde, have been the answer all along?

  Clyde would be so much better off in a place where he could get the help he needed and have some interaction with other people. “Is there a rule about pets at the Shores?” I blurted, and then realized I was talking from the conversation in my head, not answering Casey’s question about dinner. “Sorry. I was thinking maybe we could drive over and see the retirement village after dinner—if you’ve got time, I mean. It just crossed my mind that if Clyde thought he could keep the dog, he might be more likely to consider the Shores as an option. Ruby is such a sweetheart and surprisingly devoted to Clyde. She deserves a good home. At her age she probably wouldn’t have much luck getting adopted from an animal shelter.”

  Casey smiled approvingly. “Sounds like you’ve been thinking it through. I’m glad.” A sympathetic look followed, and for the first time I felt like someone understood—really understood—the struggle here. Designing and operating senior communities, Casey had probably seen generational push-pull in all its gritty forms, especially in this new age of fractured families. “Pets are no problem in the assisted-living apartments. Residents can even book pet services as à la carte items on their monthly plan. We’ve thought of everything.” His eye traveled the exterior of the Excelsior, the look both expert and calculating, as if he were measuring the square footage of the footprint, just by giving it a quick scan.

  Or picturing something else in its place.

  Which bothered me in a way I couldn’t quantify.

  Stop, I told myself. Stop looking a gift horse in the mouth. This could fix everything, even the issue with the dog.

  “And don’t worry about Ruby.” Casey was still taking in the Excelsior, his head tipped back. “We’ll find a place for her, I promise.”

  His kindness poured over me like warm water. I felt myself falling into it, falling into him. Not many guys on his level would devote time to worrying about what happened to sea turtles and stray dogs.

  “Thanks.” A thin, choked sound hampered the word and I cleared my throat to hide it. This day had wrung me inside out and suddenly I was feeling it.

  “So … yes to dinner … if you’re not in a rush, that is.” No matter where I was going this evening, I needed to change clothes and take care of things upstairs. “And a restaurant on the water sounds nice, but I have to get the dog out for a quick walk and make sure Clyde has something to eat for supper. Otherwise he just sits in his chair and broods.”

  A dark, heavy feeling fell over me, as welcome as a lead cloak on a summer day. It was the same feeling I always had when I entered the residence upstairs. The combination of Clyde, my mother’s belongings, and the pileup of unanswered questions was like a gut punch.

  Casey craned away. “Whitney, there’s no one home up there. I just knocked. Nobody answered and all the lights were off.”

  “The door at the top of the stairwell was unlocked too?” It couldn’t possibly be … unless Clyde had gone through it. Even the shopkeepers didn’t have keys to the upstairs doors, and I’d locked both when I left. “The dog didn’t bark?” Ruby always barked … even when I came to the front door, she barked.

  “Not a sound.”

  I turned, looked toward the park, then up and down the street. Where would Clyde go? Had someone come to pick him up? Maybe he’d had another episode and called 911? Would the first responders have left the doors unlocked? Could they have taken the dog because no one was there to look after her?

  Surely Clyde would’ve given them my number … if he were able to talk.

  Maybe he fell and hit his head … but then where’s the dog?

  Clyde wouldn’t have … done something to himself … would he?

  I turned and ran for the stairs, vaguely conscious of Casey calling, “Whitney? Whitney, what’s wrong?” I’d made it up the first flight before I heard Casey pounding along behind me, climbing the steps two at a time. He overtook me at the front door as I fumbled through keys, trying to sort out the right one.

  “Here.” He took them from my hand. “Which key is it?”

  “The gold one … with the … cutouts in the top.”

  He unlocked the dead bolt, pushed the door open, and I hurried past him, flipping on the lights, chasing away the shadows of the evening. I checked bedrooms, bathrooms, and even the larger closets as Casey waited in the living room. No sign of Clyde or Ruby. Where could they have gone? I reached for my cell, stood staring at it for a moment. Who could I call? Maybe Joel and his social-worker girlfriend? Would she know if Clyde was back in the hospital?

  I dialed Joel’s number, caught him at someplace chaotic and loud. A party maybe.

  “Whitney? Hey, I’m in … minute …”

  The background noise quieted, but Joel seemed only partially tuned in as I rushed through the explanation. His answer came in slow motion. “Dude … whoa … that’s totally off the chain. I dunno … I could, like … help you … help you look or somethin’… .”

  Casey touched my shoulder, drawing my attention to the table between Clyde’s recliner and my mother’s. The light on the answering machine was blinking.

  “Hey, Joel? Joel?” The background noise had intensified again. “Joel, listen. I’m going to check the answering machine here, and I’ll call you back if I need help looking.”

  Casey was already taking charge, pressing the button before I could get there. A woman’s voice came on, the message sharp with a Jersey accent. “Hi. I hope I’m calling the right place. I don’t want to cause any issues, but there’s an old guy here sitting on the bench near our boat, and he seems a little … out of it. He’s been there a couple hours, and when he gets up, he’s not too steady. I’m afraid he’ll end up in the water. We asked if he needed anything or if we could call somebody, but he wasn’t interested. I think he should have some help. I checked at the restaurant on the corner, and they gave me this number. You might want to come get him. Even the dog looks worried. She keeps getting between him and the water.”

  A similar message followed a couple hours later. The woman had again asked Clyde if she could provide help, food, or a glass of water. He’d told her to leave him alone; it was public property.

  I snatched one of his jackets from the hall tree. “What in the world is h
e doing out there? What’s he trying to prove?” Was this Clyde’s newest weapon in the war? His latest way of making things so unpleasant, I’d finally leave?

  Casey grabbed my arm, not hard but just enough to stop me. “Whitney, calm down a second. Listen to me. I’m going to give you a little advice, and it might not be something you want to hear, but it could be important.”

  “In a minute, okay? I’d better go get him before someone calls the police.” The last thing I needed was a public scene between Clyde and me. Word would get around.

  “It might be best if someone did call the police; that’s my point.” Casey’s voice was calm, gentle, but matter-of-fact. “Someone other than you.”

  “What?” I gaped, confused. “Why would I want someone to drag the police into this?”

  “A conservatorship.” The word sank in slowly. He allowed it to marinate a moment. “It’d be easier to seek a conservatorship of your stepfather if his sons were willing to participate, but even if they won’t, you could still begin the process. To do that, you’ll need proof that he’s incompetent—a danger to himself or to others.” Casey pointed to the phone. “Save those answering machine messages; they could be useful later. Let me call the police to come and do a welfare check down at the dock. If Clyde won’t cooperate with returning home or he decides to get violent, they may go ahead and remove him to the hospital immediately and institute a temporary psychiatric hold.”

  The suggestion hit me with mind-numbing force. How would my mother, tenderhearted teacher and rescuer of lost cats, the woman who’d worn Clyde’s necklace her entire life, feel about that? I knew before even asking myself the question. “Casey, I can’t.”

  His grip held me where I was. “You may end up very sorry you missed this opportunity.”

  “I just can’t. It’s … I can’t do that.”

  “I’m not saying you necessarily have to make the decision right now, either.” His hand shifted to rest reassuringly on my shoulder as he leaned over the answering machine to save the messages. “Just that, even if you’re not sure yet, you’d be wise to begin preserving the evidence. Whitney, you have to remember, if you go the conservatorship route, you’re doing what is in his best interest. If he were thinking straight, he wouldn’t be tottering around by the water, in danger of falling in. People can be too stubborn for their own good.”

  “He is that.” I looked at the recliners side by side, my mother’s pink slippers and one of her sewing baskets still resting between them.

  Still, I couldn’t fathom doing what Casey suggested. Obviously, he’d seen this kind of situation before and knew the ins and outs of it—but I didn’t want to force Clyde or become his legal guardian. I wanted him to come to his senses and realize that he needed to leave.

  “Let’s just go get him off the dock. I’ll think about the rest of it later. Thanks for saving the messages.” I turned and started toward the door, Casey following behind. A breath hissed through his teeth, indicating that he thought I’d end up regretting this.

  … and happy to say that, due to our delay of two additional days at Merry Walker’s home (caused by the weather), I was able to complete my first field report and send the packet by mail to the FWP office. After a rocky start on The Project, I am far ahead of my quota. In the packet were several interviews conducted on Nurse Walker’s back porch, including Bass Carter’s recollection of living as a slave. Also in the envelope were several stories from the midwives, along with Mrs. Walker’s own account of her work in the Blue Ridge. She detailed so eloquently the delicate balance that must be practiced when challenging age-old mountain superstitions with modern scientific knowledge and current medical practice. I wish you could have heard her!

  To say that my submission packet was filled would be a grave understatement. We had, indeed, stuffed it to the gills, requiring almost none of the newspaper filler Mrs. Walker provided us. She receives the Charlotte Observer by mail, so as to keep abreast of happenings in the old homeplace. I inquired of her, as we sat watching the last of the sun disappearing over the mountains, if she was not lonely for the daily routines and friendships she knew back home.

  Her response was a bit of well-spoken advice that I cannot help but share with you, Ruby. “The most important skill in life is to learn the acceptance of that which you have not planned for yourself. Discontent, if watered even the slightest bit, spreads like choke weed. It will smother the garden if you let it,” advised Mrs. Merry Walker. “We must always continue to grow beautiful and useful things. My father named me Merry, I do believe in the hope that I would be a happy person. He often quoted these lines to us from a poem he loved: ‘Whenever the way be filled with doubt, look up and up, and out and out… .’”

  The rest of the letter was water-spotted, rippled, and missing some of its pieces. The ink ran in streams and splotches, the mutilated pages stuck to each other, so that only some of the text was readable. I pried the scraps apart, trying to piece together more of Alice’s journey.

  … concern over our plan to seek out the Melungeons and attempt to gain their favor, so as to document their stories.

  “I don’t mind telling you that the nurses have had no luck with those people,” Mrs. Walker warned. “They’ve long tended to marry among themselves and keep to themselves … unless they’ve chosen to move off somewhere and try to ‘pass,’ which many of their young people do if they’re pale-skinned enough to get by with it.”

  “Oh, I see” was all I could dream to say. Certainly “passing” is no small thing, as we are all aware of the laws against it, both written and unwritten. Mrs. Walker cited a push in Virginia to qualify all persons as either colored or white, the “white” designation being only for those with no proven native, Negro, Mediterranean, Oriental, or mixed blood of any sort. The Melungeons and many others are quite concerned about this, of course. Mrs. Walker’s opinion of such a thing was as difficult to discern as, quite frankly, my own. In the past, I most certainly would have said, “Well, of course, people should obey the law,” without a second thought of it, but what if the law is …

  Alice’s handwriting faded into a smear. I carefully peeled away fragments of the next page, slid the pieces together, found more of the story.

  … troubled by members of the Ku Klux Klan, which according to Mrs. Walker has dealt harassment and violence upon them, driving the Melungeons from one county to another over the years. Nurse Walker herself has been given some harassment by men associated with Klan groups, which locally are gaining strength of late, as in so many states.

  The Klansmen and their sympathizers do resent, in general, the district nurse’s propensity for offering equal priority to the whites, the Negroes, the Cherokee, and on occasion, the Melungeons. “I suppose,” she said, “they believe that if a baby or a child is to die, and one is white and the other colored or Cherokee, it should be the white baby who is saved. If the third of the group were to be Melungeon, well, they’d not shed a tear over letting it perish.”

  So, Ruby, you can see why the Melungeons do not trust outsiders. They find no welcome from any group. The pastors here preach against Melungeons as being witchy and devil-fired, so no God-fearing people are likely to stand in defense of them either. Of late, Mrs. Walker has found threatening notes pinned to her door several mornings in a row. There are those who do not want Able in the house, and should she have the baby here, they have vowed to …

  I held the scrap of paper to the light, trying to make out the next words, but they were hopelessly lost. The only option was to move past the smeared ink and find what I could. Alice’s story had grabbed me by the throat.

  … Thomas and I sat long on the porch last night as Emmaline and Able chased fireflies and tucked them into pharmacy jars. We discussed at length Mrs. Walker’s request. Neither of us is reckless enough to believe that it would not amount to a risk… .

  Nothing more was left but the faint shape of Alice’s signature trailing from the bottom. I sat staring at the water-spotted sc
raps. What had been written there? What had been lost? What words? What experiences? There was no one left to answer the questions. Alice, this great-aunt I’d never met, had been stolen by water and time.

  How was it possible to feel so deep a connection to her? I couldn’t say, but for some reason—maybe the unmoored feeling I’d had since losing my mother, or perhaps the similarities between Alice’s life and mine—I wanted this part of my family’s history. I wanted to understand it. I felt the need to remedy the wrong my grandmother had done. The effort Alice had put into these letters had been wasted. Rather than sharing her sister’s life, Grandmother Ziltha had rendered it insignificant. Had she simply done it out of anger, or could the bouts of depression that had troubled my father have also plagued my grandmother? Was discarding the letters a vindictive act … or a hint of madness?

  Or maybe she really was just … trying to hold on when the world seemed to be sliding out of control.

  Maybe that’s what Clyde is doing.

  The last thought surprised me, but it didn’t come out of nowhere. When we’d finally dragged him home from the docks last night—which had only happened after I’d warned him that people would call the police if he didn’t come with Casey and me—Clyde had let something slip. Yesterday had been his and my mother’s special day—both the anniversary of their marriage and the anniversary of the day they first met, when she was a seventeen-year-old high school girl. My mother and Clyde would’ve been married nine years as of yesterday.

  He’d gone to the bench by the water because that was one of their places, the spot where they’d often sat and watched the boats and the waterbirds.

  He’d stayed there for hours, trying to be close to her.

  In reality, Clyde and I wanted the same thing. We wanted my mother back.

  Neither of us could have what we wanted.

  I turned to another letter and began arranging the pieces atop the intricately appliquéd quilt in her craft room. After being unable to sleep, I’d braved the trip downstairs despite creaking rafters, mice scampering through the walls, and nagging questions about whether squirrels were nocturnal. I’d gathered Alice’s letters and brought them upstairs, so as to spend the sleepless hours piecing more stories together, while also keeping one eye on the hallway in case Clyde tried to leave again.