by Nelle Davy
Like the silver dollar my father used to have when I was a child, which he would roll over the back of his fingers for my delight.
Cal Jr. stood before me, smiling.
“Say it and I’ll bring the moon down for you.”
We faced each other. I couldn’t see her but I knew she was there somewhere listening. I wanted to be brave but I am not. I never was.
So I said it.
And he plucked down the moon and I saw that it was only ever just a silver dollar.
I am sitting in Cathy’s, a little restaurant with checkered cloths on dark wooden tables and candles that throw up shadows that melt against the oaks of the restaurant’s décor. I am in Ohio, specifically, Raynsville, Ohio, which is a little to the south of the state. It’s been a long drive—just over two days and I am tired. I am sitting at a table to the back of the place behind a gauze of tapestry in blue. Nothing matches here, but the wait staff leave you alone and they refill your coffee without preamble or questions.
I’ve been here about half an hour. I scour the menu listlessly, but I don’t want to eat. The table next to me has a couple who are picking at their salad. They have barely spoken to each other since they sat down and I think to myself, why do they do it? Why would they come outside among people like me, who watch their movements and lack of touch or communication and know how unhappy they are with each other? Why don’t they hide it? Or do they just not care anymore? Do they want someone to see, someone to notice and tell them, yes, we know it, too, you’re not making it up? Is that what they seek—acknowledgment because they cannot even get a hello from each other?
The woman stops eating and looks me in the eye. She’s caught me staring. I shift my gaze.
Camel-colored coat, dark jeans, the tail of a white shirt.
“Do you mind that I’m going to NYU?” I said as we packed.
“No, I don’t mind,” she lied as she folded my sweaters.
“Ava, it’s summer, it’s like a hundred degrees out there,” I said, snatching the blue sweater out of her hands.
“Yeah, and it’ll be minus a hundred in the winter.”
I shot her a look.
“I’ll be home before then, Ava, to get some more clothes.”
“I don’t think you will,” she said and her ponytail flopped over her shoulder as she leaned down over the suitcase.
“Of course I will,” I said, hurt.
She opened her mouth to reply and then stopped.
“Nothing will change.” I put my hand on her shoulder. “This is still my home.”
“Then why do you want to go so far away?”
I couldn’t answer. She shook her head and resumed folding.
“Don’t you want to go away?” I ventured.
“All the time.”
“Then why don’t you?”
She stopped and stared ahead and for a second there I remembered that she was the elder one.
“Meredith, you can’t always get what you want.”
I shook my head, I was pissed.
“Then maybe you just don’t want it enough.”
I stand up when I see her, but she sits down without even looking at me and takes her bag off and slings it on the back of her chair. Her hair is in a loose bun and she hasn’t taken off her hospital ID badge. She gives me a quick glance and then motions to the waitress and asks for some coffee with cream.
A cup and small jug are set down before her quickly.
“Would you like a menu?” the waitress asks.
She catches my eye and I drag mine away from her face.
“Not right now,” I answer for her.
She cradles the cup in her hands. I look around the room before clearing my throat. She brings the cup to her lips and I see the flash of her wedding band. I swallow. I hadn’t been at her wedding.
“So,” she says, finally looking at me.
It had been Ava who had insisted on organizing a goodbye party even though there was only the five of us there. She had cooked and baked all evening, filling the kitchen with the smells of freshly baked cakes and meat. It had been Ava who had hung up the streamers around the house and decorated the table with candles and set out the fine china.
“Ava, I don’t want all of this,” I’d said, gazing at the ribbons of yellow and pink around the porch.
“Shut up and help, would you?”
I knew she was overcompensating; it was her way of burying her pain, but it only made it more acute for me. I could see her impending loneliness and I wanted to tell her that I didn’t need to go, that I was happy to stay with her. But I wasn’t. I felt like if I didn’t go now, I never would.
“How was it?” she asks, staring at her cup.
“It was, um…” I clear my throat again. “It was hard.”
“Different?”
“Yeah…” My voice comes out in a strangled gasp. I cough. “Um, Uncle Ethan’s house is gone. He demolished it.”
“But Mom’s was okay?” she says, suddenly urgent. I’m surprised that she cares. It must show because her face hardens.
“Yeah, it was fine. We, uh, we found everything that you boxed away. Thanks.”
There is a silence.
“Yeah, it was pretty impressive how I put everything we owned away, alone, after our mother’s funeral while you and Claudia were busy…busy doing what exactly?” She shrugs, holding my eye. “Important things I’m sure.”
“Yeah, well where were you this time around?” I hiss at her. “Where were you?” And then I glance around. I see the woman with her salad look at us quickly before turning back to her husband and breaking into conversation at the hostility of my gaze. I turn back to the table. Her face is impassive.
“It’s gone,” I say softly. “It’s finally gone. We’ll never see it again.”
She arches an eyebrow and looks at her cup.
“I see it all the time.”
I feel my eyes widen.
“I used to, feel—feel like I was still there,” she says softly. “For years I would dream about it. I would turn corners on the street and see Dad or Charles. Once I even thought I—” She breaks and I think, I’ll tell her that the same thing happens to me, about my dreams, my visions. I’m not mad, I’m not alone.
Mom had raised her glass as a toast to me, the five of us sitting around the table. Everyone had lifted their glass except Grandma, who was staring at the lick of flame on the candle.
“To my beautiful, talented, youngest child who is leaving us to go back to the place where I met your father and married him. I hope that you get everything you seek and are fulfilled and happy and that you go there knowing that you are coveted and loved.” She paused. “And missed. To Meredith.”
“To Meredith,” Cal Jr. and Ava echoed.
Mom gave me a knowing look. “Time to grow up, Merey.”
“I don’t really get why you called me,” she says suddenly. “I mean why drive all the way up here to give me a bunch of stuff you know I don’t want or need? Force my hand like this by threatening to come to my home if I don’t see you? Is that how this is going to work from now on for you?”
“I wasn’t threaten—”
“Because that isn’t how it’s going to work with me, Meredith. If you think you can just…turn up whenev—”
“I don’t— I—I wasn’t trying to—”
“I will not have you demanding anything from me, or making demands on my time—not you, you don’t have that right anymore....”
“I’m sorry—” I suddenly break down “—I’m so sorry. I didn’t…”
“Well, you know what, Meredith, that isn’t really—”
“I didn’t know that night, I didn’t know. I heard you and I thought, I thought…” Her mouth drops and a wave of comprehension floods her features but I cannot stop.
“I thought that you wanted to. That you meant it because how you were around each other and I mean, I think, the two of you were always…and I know, I know, I know now that that wasn’t b
ut I didn’t know it then. I mean you never told any of us, you never said…”
She straightens in her chair and sets her cup down. “I don’t want to talk about this here.”
“Well, I have to. I have to talk about it.”
“This isn’t appropriate.”
I look at her incredulous, desperate. “I don’t care.”
She meets my eyes and her mouth thins.
“Going back there, seeing what he had done to the place, I always thought the best thing for us would be to get away from there, but we’ll never get away. It’s in our blood. There’s no escape. I’ve tried to pretend, I’ve tried to forget, but I can’t.”
“Forget what?” she asks coldly. “Forget who? You seem to be confused about what it is you’re talking about.”
“The night in the rose garden…”
She raises a hand. “I told you I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Please…?”
“You need me to help you through it? You want me to hold your hand and tell you it’s all okay? I don’t think so. You went back there—you chose to go back—and whatever issues that raised for you is on you. You’re not my problem. I’ve had more than my fair share of the place.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there when Mom died.”
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, you said before.”
“I just couldn’t stand to see you. I couldn’t stand being there, back there with you after…” My teeth chatter against my lip. “I didn’t want to believe you and it was easier because the alternative meant that what I did, what I didn’t do was…that it made me—and I couldn’t face that, I just couldn’t, I couldn’t.”
She stands up. “I’m leaving.”
I grab for her hand but she is already going.
“No,” she says and shrugs my hand away. “I told you to stop.”
“Hey,” I hear a waitress shout as we both stalk out of the restaurant. “Hey, where do you think you’re going?”
“This looks like shit.”
Mom put down her glass and stared at my grandmother.
“Shit,” she said in a croak. “You’re all eating shit.”
“Lavinia, you’re tired, you should go to bed.”
My grandmother arched her neck and called out to the hall, “Cal, get in here and take this shit away.”
I looked at my cousin but he leaned back in his chair and snapped his napkin onto his plate.
“Here she goes again.”
“Cal, where the hell are you?” my grandmother shouted, looking at the door. Mom rose up and went to stand next to her.
“God, he’s always with that slut of a daughter of his. I’m so sick of it. If only he knew what a whore she was. Simpering after her like some dumb mule. I wish to God she’d died in that stupid car wreck.”
We sat there for a minute in horrified silence and then suddenly she burst into tears.
“No one ever pays any attention to me. No one!” she screamed. “Lou, are you deaf? I said to clear this mess up.” She swiped a plate with her hand so that it went crashing to the floor. Mom was next to her in an instant, helping and cajoling her from her seat while Ava and I circled her.
“No, no,” Mom said, batting us away. “She’s had too much excitement and you’ll only crowd her. Merey, help me—Ava, you clean up here, okay?”
There was the harsh scrape of the chair. Cal Jr. got up, left the room and slammed the front door as he went out into the night.
“Here, here,” I say, taking out a handful of money and shoving it at the waitress as I hurry out after my sister. She is walking in long purposeful steps, but I catch up.
“I know you hate me, I know I deserve to be hated, but I swear if I could undo it, if I could go back and make it different I would.” She swings around and for a second I think she’ll hit me but then she just carries on walking.
“I would because I didn’t know and ever since I found out, ever since I realized I’ve been—it’s been…listen to me!” I scream suddenly, grabbing her arm which she shrugs off before squaring up to me.
“What? What’s it been doing, Meredith? Hurting, have you been hurting, pining, regretting?” Her voice comes out in a contemptuous parody of a whine. “Does it keep you awake at night? Does it? Are you racked with guilt? Because even if you are, so what? So what? You think this is about that night? It’s not. It’s about after.” I shrink back and she wipes her hand over her mouth before dropping it to her side.
“You want me to take you in my arms and tell you it’s all okay? You want me to sit there and grieve with you about Mom and the farm. Let me tell you something, Meredith. Everything you are going through, you’re supposed to go through because that’s a consequence of what you did.”
“I didn’t know,” I splutter. “How was I supposed to know?”
“Because I told you,” she screams. She takes me by the arm and drags me into a side street and shoves me against the wall. “I told you, I wrote to you and I explained and you never returned my calls. You wouldn’t help when Mom was dying—you left me there and you didn’t give a damn what happened or what would happen. You left me in hell and didn’t give it a second thought!”
“That’s not true, that’s not true.”
She holds my face up by her hand and forces me to meet her eyes.
“You ran as far and as fast as you could and you did not care who or what you left behind. You left me there knowing what he did to me.”
I shake my head, tears of rage coursing down my cheeks.
“No…” I hold on to her wrist. “I’d just heard that kind of story before.”
“From who?”
“From Claudia, and that turned out to be a pack of lies.”
I throw her hand away and release myself, standing up to her.
“You said it to him, you said it.” I am panting now.
She shakes her head in disbelief. “Then you never knew me.”
I’d helped Ava with the cleaning up while Mom dealt with our grandmother upstairs. It was much later when she finally came back down.
“I’m so sorry, Merey,” she said, holding out her arms for me.
“No, Mom, it’s fine. Don’t worry.”
“God, and those things she said in front of Cal, about his mother…” Her eyes skimmed the top of my head. “Is he very upset?” She looked from me to Ava.
“Cal Jr. hasn’t come back,” Ava said.
“Oh, God. Ava, will you go find him? You’ve always been good with him.”
We stand there in silence, staring at anything but each other. I can barely stand so I hunch against the wall.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I hold up my hands and then drop them again. I am exhausted. I grip my knees with my hands. She pauses with me.
“Why did you never come back?” she asks. “Because you were ashamed? Because you were embarrassed by what you’d seen or because coming back would mean that you’d have had to stay at home and face up to the truth? Why choose the hard thing when it’s so much easier to be in New York and pretend that I was the bad guy?”
I am speechless.
“You know, I had to nurse both Grandmother and our mother until they died and I had no one but him. Do you have any idea what that did to me?”
I look at her in horror.
“You don’t get to come here and say you’re sorry.” Her eyes are bright as she speaks. “It isn’t good enough. It will never be good enough.”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out, not a sound, and then from somewhere, I begin to howl. I hold my hands up to stifle it but it bleeds through my fingers, a wounded-animal thing that seeps through the cracks and bursts like a flood, sweeping away all dams of control in a torrent of recrimination and despair unleashed.
I was calling for her. It was I who had offered to find her.
They had been gone too long, the two of them, and Mom had started to worry.
Throwing the flashlight among the darkness, it punctured the thick purple haze of
the evening with circles of white. I remember how the air was full of the smell of azaleas and the sound of crickets mingled with the brush of the wind through the sycamores.
Swinging my free hand lazily, waving the flashlight around the path I knew so well, I began to think of how much I would miss my home, and for a moment I allowed myself to feel how truly scared I was of leaving the farm—of a life outside of Aurelia—and I was stricken with both the fear of the unknown and my desire for it. Though the summer winds were a welcome respite from the onslaught of heat that had been thrust on us all afternoon, I gave up a shudder.
And then I heard it.
It was the sharp snap of twigs being twisted into the earth. I swung around and moved off the path down to the rose garden. I heard them before I saw them. His voice was low, half in a whisper, but in the stillness of the night, it carried.
“Say it,” he urged and then more forcefully, repeated, “Say it!”
And then another noise. At first I didn’t even know it was her. It was a sound I had never heard from her before.
“Say it, say it, Ava.”
There was no other noise but a slow rhythmic rustle of earth and movement. I crept around slowly and saw their legs lying on the ground, hers spread against his.
I turned off the flashlight.
“Say it!” And then I saw his legs move up and hers stretch out and she stifled a cry.
The bracken snapped further up by their heads. I could hear him grunt in exertion. Her legs were scrambling on the ground as his own grew more energetic. They looked like they were running.
And then I heard her, I heard her say it, half caught in a cry and a sob and when she said it she started to cry, soft but consistent sounds that ran from her mouth as her legs fell down and were still.
I looked through the garden then and saw the angle of her neck turned from him, her whole body utterly still as he started to gain momentum. She looked like she was playing dead, her wrists held down by his, her dress up against her waist. But she wasn’t, because she looked up and saw me.
