Heart of the Country

by Rene Gutteridge

  “That’s how I remember you. All three of ya.” Essie sat down on the piano bench, grabbing its arm for guidance. “Your momma gave me this picture one Mother’s Day. I love it. But you know, I’ve always wondered, what on earth made y’all crack up like that?”

  I held the picture closer to me, studying every detail. “Daddy. He took the picture. We all posed so perfectly and had nice smiles on our faces, and Daddy said we looked way too stuffy, like mannequins at Walmart.” I grinned as the memory ran through my head. He’d started singing—at the top of his lungs like usual—“I Feel Pretty” from West Side Story. It did the trick. Liv and I almost died from embarrassment. And that instant was captured perfectly with one click of the camera.

  “Good to know,” Essie Mae said.

  “What?”

  “That you can still smile after all.”

  I hadn’t even realized I was smiling. “Come on. I’m not that bad.”

  Essie Mae’s face lit up. “And there is that accent! I knew you still had it.”

  I glanced over the pictures and then noticed a postcard, propped up next to one of the frames. I picked it up. It was the New York City skyline. I didn’t even remember sending it, but there on the back was my signature and lots of exclamation points proclaiming how much fun I was having. The exclamation points had been replaced by commas now. Ellipses maybe. Long pauses with no conclusion.

  I set it down. “I better get back to Dad.”

  “He’s fine.”

  “I know. He is. Thanks to Olivia.”

  Essie Mae stood, her knobby fingers slipping between mine. “I want you to sing in the choir Sunday.”

  “But—”

  “Your butt can come too, but it doesn’t sing nearly as well. And bring your father. He was banned a couple of years ago because he’s awful and awfully loud, but he does love to sing and maybe some of your talent will rub off on him.” She patted my cheek. “Okay, honey? And there’s a fair coming up—they like singers to enter. Your momma sang in that, back in nineteen . . . eighty-four, was it?”

  “Okay, Miss Essie.”

  We walked to the door, said our good-byes, and I got in my car. Her screen door shut, then her wooden door. I stayed in my car a long time, gazing forward.

  Olivia was wrong. Life did freeze here. I was in the time capsule. Just like then, everyone wanted me to pick up where Momma left off. Just like then, I still couldn’t fill her shoes. She had that thing about her, that light in her eyes that made you feel like you were the only one in her life who mattered. I couldn’t even stay in Juilliard, a place Momma dreamed of going. I’d barely gotten out of the gate and I’d failed.

  I gripped the steering wheel. What did these people want from me?

  25

  OLIVIA

  IT COST ALMOST FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS to bury Momma. I was old enough to know what a strain that put on Daddy, so I gave him some of the money I was saving for college. I’d only been out on my own for a year. I’d decided I’d start at a community college and then go to nursing school. At the time, I was just starting to date Hardy, too.

  Lots of reasons nursing school didn’t pan out for me. I regretted it. But I guess I got my share of caretaking in.

  The day of Momma’s wreck, I got the phone call from Daddy, who was sobbing and telling me to get to the hospital. Hardy drove me and I found Dad and Faith in the waiting room. The doctor was just coming through enormous automatic doors, pulling his face mask off, drenched in sweat.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “She has died.”

  It is the anguished cry of my father that I still can’t get over. He fell to his knees and screamed. It sounded primitive, and I knew I’d witnessed the bloody mess of his soul. My father was tall, and to see him crumpled against the ground, screaming like he was on fire, was more than I will ever be able to bear in this lifetime. Daddy never showed much emotion. Mom had enough for the both of them. I’d never seen him cry. Or raise his voice.

  I’d looked across at Faith, who was shaking so much I could hear her bracelets rattling. I stumbled to her and she fell into my arms and sobbed. Hardy excused himself because he didn’t know us well enough at the time.

  There I was, and there was not a single person to hold me up, so I stood with one hand on Dad’s shoulder and my other arm wrapped around Faith. I knew I was going to have to take care of them. I could hear Mom’s voice telling me that.

  I don’t know how much time passed. It could have been hours or minutes. But someone from the hospital, who didn’t look like a doctor, came into the private room we were allowed and said that we needed to identify the body. I stood up with Dad, but he waved me away and followed the man through those large doors, disappearing as they swooshed closed.

  Hardy found us. He brought us each a cup of water. I stared at Faith. She was pale, her eyes watery, and she looked more terrified than I could possibly describe. Like she’d been left alone in this world. Totally alone. Like she was left to die.

  The slight wind stirred the trees of the graveyard. It sat on a hill and was shadowed by large trees, so it was always cold, even in the summer. “Hi, Momma.” I bent down and put a white rose on her grave. Daddy always got her red roses for the church memorial, but Mom told me once that she liked white roses. I had to special order it through the local florist.

  I liked this time alone with Mom. Dad never wanted me to come along when he’d come on her birthday or the anniversary of her death, so I just learned to come out here by myself.

  “Faith’s back in town.” I shrugged, then sat cross-legged on the grave. Crisp, freshly fallen leaves blew around the headstones, dancing over the dying grass. “Guess she and Luke had some sort of falling-out.” I went on to tell her how Victoria and Nell were doing. I updated her on Dad. But as I knew I would, I got back around to Faith.

  “She’s unpredictable, and I don’t know what to do with her. Dad’s all glad she’s back, but at the first sign of trouble, I’m sure she’ll run again.” I picked at the prickly blades beneath my legs. “It must’ve been something awful to bring her back here. I mean, we all said if we could get out of here we would. I just didn’t think any of us meant it.” I sighed, my gaze hovering over her headstone. “Not that there’s anything wrong with here, Momma. I know that was your choice to stay. Mine too. But it doesn’t stop me from wondering what it might’ve been like. What the rest of the world is like. I guess it’s not that great, is it? Maybe that’s what Faith found out.”

  I let the wind talk for a while. Sometimes I ran out of things to say. And sometimes I felt stupid talking to a headstone. But sometimes I just needed my mom. “I’m thinking about changing my hairstyle. Nothing crazy like you see in the magazines, but maybe some bangs. Or a few highlights—”

  I heard the crunching of leaves against the small gravel road that led from the church to the cemetery. I didn’t have to look. I would’ve recognized the sound of those fancy shoes anywhere. I got to my feet, dusted my pants off and took a deep breath.

  “I was just leaving.”

  I expected her to speak, but she just had her arms wrapped around herself, as if the wind were colder than it was. She was looking at the grave, a few feet behind me.

  “You’ve never been out here.” I realized it just then. She hadn’t come since the funeral. The last time she saw it, it was a gaping hole in the ground. She wouldn’t know it took four months for the dirt to settle. She wouldn’t know the headstone cracked and we had to have it redone. She didn’t know these things because she wasn’t here.

  “So we’re going to do this. Here.” Faith stepped past me and walked up to the grave.

  I stood there, wanting to shove her like I did when we were kids and I’d get aggravated with her. But instead, I walked up next to her, stood beside her as we both looked at the grave.

  “Which conversation do you want to have, Olivia? The one where you ‘told me so,’ that I shouldn’t have married the man that I did? Or the one where you lay on all the guilt becau
se I left you and Daddy after Momma died?” She glared at me. “Or how about the one where I’ve forgotten my roots and I don’t belong here anymore?”

  “Take your pick. You left, not me.”

  “You are unbelievable. When did you turn so mean?”

  I laughed a little, studying the pair of our feet at the edge of Mom’s grave. “Do you remember the night that she died? We were at the hospital. Hardy took you home.”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “I had him take you home because Dad had to go identify the body.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “I had to be there for him when he came out. And I’ve been there for him every day since.”

  She glanced at me. “I know that. And he’s better for it, Liv. Truly. I left Dad a heartbroken wreck. I just couldn’t lose Mom and watch Dad. I’m not strong like you.”

  “Don’t patronize me, Faith. This isn’t about me. Or Dad. It’s about you. It’s always been about you, and it always will be. And you know what really irritates me? You travel all the way to New York, and then you go and quit on your dream. I mean, if you’re going to run, at least make something out of your indulged self.” I caught my breath. I hadn’t meant to say that.

  Faith started crying.

  “I see how he looks at you,” I said.

  “Who?”

  The words stuck in my throat. I was being nasty and mean and I knew it. But it didn’t stop me. “You know, I fill Daddy’s kitchen with groceries so he’ll eat something other than a TV dinner every night. Hardy drives Dad’s trash to the dump. The girls and I clean his house every week, and then on Sunday he always brings them a flower for their good work. I drive him to Whiteville for his doctor appointments because he doesn’t like to get on the highway. I know what his favorite ice cream is and how he likes his coffee. But no matter what I do, he never looks at me the way he looks at you.”

  Faith’s eyes snapped to me. “What are you talking about?”

  “To answer your question, about when I got so mean, I think it was the day that Lady died and one more piece of Dad did too. Or maybe it was the day that I realized no matter what I did for Dad, I was never going to be enough for him.”

  Faith held her hands against her cheeks, brushing off tears, staring at me wide-eyed like I’d just made some sacrilegious comment. “Daddy loves you, Olivia.”

  “Maybe he does. But I had to work for it, and you get it for free.” I left her there, standing over the grave, her long, shiny hair blown sideways by a wind that had suddenly picked up.

  26

  CATHERINE

  IT FEELS STRANGE to imagine your world without you in it. I don’t know if we do it often or not. Maybe we do, when we’re feeling underappreciated. Or overwhelmed. But we don’t dare imagine it with any real consideration.

  I dared.

  When the waves of pain would cease, I found myself flipping through the images of my life as if it were a photo album. It was, I guess. Most of what I saw were snapshots of what I held most dear to me. Olivia twirling on the tire swing. Faith singing “Over the Rainbow.” Calvin feeding the horses.

  There are some who resign themselves to dying. But my guess is that hardly any of them are mothers. I thought of my girls, how they loved to wrap their arms around my waist, still to this day. How Faith always put on too much lotion and Olivia liked bright headbands. I’d raised them into fine young women, but now life really started for them. Now mistakes could cost them a whole life’s happiness. How could I leave them so vulnerable, for the world to teach them all the lessons I was supposed to?

  I tried to find comfort. I didn’t think I could pray because I didn’t want to ask God what His will was. When the pain came, there were glimpses of heaven so vivid that I wondered if I was there. But when it washed away and the voices around me withered against the noises of my mind, I thought of my girls without me.

  They’ll be all right, I whispered in my head. They’re the best of friends. They’ve always been there for each other.

  But Calvin. Calvin could not be all right. We were soul mates. We were one. He was a strong man, but what every beloved wife knows is that much of that strength comes from her. He could be strong because I was strong.

  I wondered if I would get a chance to say good-bye. If I was going to die, then that was what I wanted, a chance to say my final words. To bless each of their heads and wish them a happy life. To tell them that all of my life’s happiness was wrapped up in them. That my happy life was because of them.

  “Allow me that,” I said to God. “And then You can have Your way.”

  27

  FAITH

  I’D PARKED IN the church parking lot so I could walk the long path to the cemetery. It had its own lot on the other side, but I liked the walk. It was a pebble path. I’d walked it before. But never all the way. I could never get myself to go stand over her grave.

  It was different this time, though. The walk was easier. Maybe because I’d seen more of the world, realized all of its stumbling blocks. Maybe I knew where it was my mother rested, and it wasn’t a hilly gravesite underneath an oak tree.

  I’d not planned on seeing Olivia there. I thought when I saw her that it might be our moment to reconcile, but I was wrong. As usual.

  Still, after she left, I was able to try to make some peace for myself. Talk to Mom out loud instead of just in my heart.

  The wind got colder, so I walked back to my car. But I wasn’t quite ready to go home. I was kind of fragile, and I wasn’t sure at what moment I might burst into tears. So I sat on the curb and took the moment that I needed.

  “If it makes you feel any better, it does get easier.”

  I turned to find Lee behind me, wearing gym shorts and holding a basketball.

  “What?”

  “Being back here.” He set his basketball between his legs as he sat down next to me on the curb.

  “What’s with the basketball?”

  “New activity center,” he said, pitching his thumb toward the black building on the other side of the church. “Not quite the competition I got on the courts at 114th and Broadway, but it’ll work.”

  “You lived in New York?”

  “When I was in med school at Columbia.”

  “You went to Columbia medical school and came back to be an ER doctor here?”

  He twirled the ball underneath his hands. “Summer after my second year they sent us down to Peru to assist some doctors giving aid there. Before that, I thought I was at least partly in this for the money. Doctors are rich guys, right? But down there . . . it was real medicine. And it was about helping the people who needed it the most.” He nodded toward an old farmhouse across the field. “There’s a lot of need here.”

  “New York’s a different kind of world.”

  “Yeah.” He wiped his forehead on his sleeve. Reminded me of a little boy. “You here long?”

  “I don’t really know.”

  He looked at his watch. “Well, duty calls.” He stood, bouncing the ball a couple of times. “One thing you have to remember is that time stands still around here. A year in New York is like a day here, you know? Things that happened five, ten years ago seem prehistoric to you, but they’re yesterday to these people.”

  I nodded, but I wasn’t sure I was comprehending all that he was trying to say to me. Olivia had reminded me that time didn’t stand still.

  “And,” he said as he walked off, “you know it’s going to be all right, don’t you?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer, and frankly, I didn’t have one for him.

  I drove back home and found Dad in the barn, doing the chores. Through the big doors I saw Silver, all alone in the pasture.

  “I’m thinking of getting another horse,” Dad said, putting the old blue feeding bucket back in the corner. He dusted his hands off and joined me in the doorway. “I can’t replace Lady, but Silver hasn’t been himself since we put her down.” He glanced sideways at me and with a wry smile added, �
��And no, this isn’t my way of saying I’m getting remarried.”

  I smiled. I might’ve wondered, except around here, people were used to speaking their mind, just like in New York.

  “How’s Miss Essie?”

  “Sweet as ever. She wants me to sing with the choir.”

  “She wants to see you happy again. It’s what we all want.” He stepped in front of me, gazed at the pasture with his hands on his hips. “Even Olivia.”

  “Olivia would rather I be happy far, far away from here.”

  “Believe it or not, Faith, people don’t hate you for leaving.”

  “No. Just for coming back no better than I started.”

  He turned toward me, his hands still on his hips. “Okay, stop it. Stop this poor-me thing and understand that you are loved. You’re here now. Might as well be part of this place again.” He glanced away, stared at the window over the barn. “I’m not going to tell you what to do. Stay here. Go back. But you can’t find your way unless you take a step.” As he walked past me, he patted me on the shoulder with those big hands.

  “I can’t go back because I have nowhere to go back to, Daddy. And I can’t stay here because . . .” I tried not to cry, but around Dad it was hard. He made me feel comfortable enough to.

  He turned and wrapped me in his arms. “Don’t you say that. You can stay here as long as you want.” He stroked my hair. “You hear me?”

  “He lied to me.”

  Dad listened, didn’t pressure me to say what I wasn’t ready for. But with my head on his chest, staring out at the pasture, I knew I could.

  “And because of it, I have nothing left. Not even him.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about him?”

  The question surprised me, and I lifted my head to look at him.

  “What? He’s still your husband, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’d like to know about him.”

  “‘Someone to Watch Over Me’ was our song.”