Winter at the White Oaks Lodge

by Abbie Williams

  “Thank you,” I murmured to Grandma, tears collecting in my lashes, and she hugged me, patting my back.

  “Rest a bit,” she insisted, and I didn’t need to be told twice; with great care, as though settling near a bomb that would discharge at the slightest movement, I curled beside my tiny daughter. Grandma went back to her own room, neglecting to click out the hall light, but I was too exhausted to get up and turn it out myself. Instead I let my gaze touch the photograph of M. Carter, just visible in the dim glow.

  Who are you? What were you hoping for? What’s your full name?

  My thoughts were disjointed, hazy, almost the same experience as being high, which I had been exactly one time in my life, back home in Chicago sophomore year. I drifted for a time, half-dreaming, though still vaguely aware of my surroundings. Sometime later I felt a small stirring, low in my belly, as the man in the photograph seemed to smile for me. I was somehow walking towards him, suddenly bathed in the warm slanted beams of that long-ago sunset. I felt it along my arms and over my cheekbones like caressing fingers and I delighted in the summer evening, the dusty-gold quality of the light that made my throat ache with need. The need for something I could not begin to explain; him, maybe. Need for him. The ground was scented from a recent rain, sharp and immediately recognizable.

  “You’re here,” I said softly, and heard his horse make a whickering noise.

  He said my name then, not Camille, but somehow I knew he meant me, his voice low and warm, familiar somehow, and I felt joy that rushed over my limbs and centered in my heart.

  On the bed, eyes closed back in my chilly wintertime room, I twitched and both palms skimmed over my belly and then lower, where I pressed gently. Something built within me, spiraling outwards; it was a sensation that Noah, while inside of me, had caused to happen just once, and only for seconds, but my body understood fully and responded to my own touch.

  “Tell me your name,” I begged him, and heard the bass grumble of thunder in the distance, echoing the pulsing between my legs.

  I felt prickling drops of rain and before he could answer I shuddered hard against my hands. The moisture on my face in the dream became tears that trickled over my temples as I woke and he was gone.

  ***

  “Milla, can I hold her more?” Ruthie begged, bending down to trace her finger over Millie’s satin cheek. It was a late-March Saturday night and basketball was on the tiny television behind the bar. Aunt Jilly and Mom were busy taking care of the crowd, Aunt Ellen behind the bar while Blythe and his step-grandpa Rich manned the kitchen. Grandma was at the till near the front door and outside the snow had melted at least six inches. Within a few weeks we might even be able to see the porch boards.

  “Here, be careful,” I ordered, passing Millie Jo to her, and she sat back down in the booth.

  Ruthann grinned big enough to showcase nearly all of her teeth and cuddled the baby close. Tish, beside Ruthie, both of them across from me, leaned over and poked her index finger at Millie Jo’s nose.

  “God, Tish, don’t,” I bitched at her. “What are you doing?”

  “Hi pretty girl,” Ruthie murmured. She looked up at me and declared, “She’s going to have your eye color, I can tell.”

  “You think?” I had been speculating the same thing lately. So far she didn’t look much like either me or Noah. Her hair, what was visible of it anyway, was a crow-wing black and thankfully her skin had mellowed from a bright red to a softer pink. She’d gained weight in the past month and was adorable, at least when she wasn’t screeching.

  “Have you heard from Noah at all?” Tish asked.

  I rolled my eyes and asked, “Has the answer ever been different? You asked me last week too.”

  “But his parents have come to see her, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Does he give you money?” Tish persisted.

  “His parents are going to take care of it until he’s done with college,” I said, still stung deeply into my soul at the shame of this. “I told them I didn’t want their stupid money…well, not exactly like that…but they insisted.”

  “Aren’t they embarrassed that their kid is such a deadbeat?” Ruthie asked, her eyes on Millie Jo, bouncing her gently.

  “I would hope they are,” I said with only a little bitterness in my tone. “They’ve apologized for him about a hundred times. Apparently his program at college is stressful and that’s why he hasn’t called me.”

  My sisters heard the venom in my voice and both looked at me with varying degrees of caution. Outside, the sky was the gray of an old tin washtub; inside Shore Leave it was cozy and warm, full of the bustle of a Saturday night crowd, smelling like fried fish and fried potatoes and coffee. I sighed and ran a hand through my uncombed hair; I’d tied it back in a ponytail, but the band had broken and I didn’t have the energy to dig through the junk drawer behind the counter for another one.

  “Well, you’ve got us,” Ruthie said, the peacemaker.

  I managed a smile for them and then saw Jake coming through the front door. He caught sight of us and zeroed in like a homing pigeon, grinning. He was wearing a red parka and a battered Twins cap, and moved to sit down with no invitation whatsoever. I held back another sigh but scooted over obligingly.

  “I just got my acceptance letter to the U of M,” he said jubilantly, referring to the university in Minneapolis.

  I tried to be happy for him. Instead I felt only double swellings of jealousy and resentment; I should have been receiving such things in the mail at this point in my life. Immediately my eyes fluttered to Millie Jo, guilt assaulting me for the countless time.

  I love you, baby, I told her silently. I really do. It’s not your fault my life is hard right now.

  “Good for you,” Tish said to Jake, leaning over the table on her elbows. She was wearing an old sweater of mine, striped green and cream; I saw that it now bore a tiny hole in the right shoulder. Oh well; it wasn’t as though I would be wearing any of my old clothes in the near future. Tugging as unobtrusively as possible at the thick strap of my heavy-duty nursing bra, I felt destined to be this dumpy for the rest of my life.

  Jake said, “I’m really excited. I can’t wait to live in the city.” He really was fairly clueless, as he turned to me and asked with enthusiasm, “Where would be your top choice, under other circumstances?”

  Instead of snapping at him, as my instinct was dictating, I answered honestly, “I always wanted to go to Northwestern, in Chicago. It’s where my dad went.”

  “And now you’re stuck here,” he observed, clearly intending to empathize. He said gently, “In a few years, maybe?”

  I shrugged noncommittally.

  “How’s Millie Jo?” he asked, peering at her in Ruthie’s arms.

  “She’s getting bigger every day,” I said.

  “She’s just beautiful,” he said and nudged his left shoulder against my right, adding, “Just like her mom.”

  I felt the twin beams of Tish and Ruthie’s smiles at this pronouncement; they adored Jake and had pestered me about dating him since last fall.

  I forced myself to reply, “Thanks, Jake. That’s nice of you to say.”

  He smiled too, sweetly, and I supposed I should say something complimentary in return. I studied him for a moment, his familiar face under the navy-blue brim of his cap. Like all of us, he was the pasty-white of the northern Minnesota winter months, which made his eyes appear all the more chocolate-brown. He had very long eyelashes but his lips were always chapped. Half the time I found myself secretly imagining passing him some lip balm.

  “Milla, the Carter girls just came in for a drink,” Mom said, approaching our table. Her golden hair was twisted high off her neck, her cheeks were flushed and she looked about a thousand times better and younger than me, at least in my cynical, washed-out and bitchy opinion. But her words activated my heart.

  Tina, Glenna and Elaine were the grown, married daughters of Bull Carter, of the White Oaks Lodge, my connection to the ph
otograph. I had not yet managed to venture around Flickertail Lake to pay Bull a visit; that his girls were stopping out to Shore Leave seemed like a sign and I felt my spirits lift from down around my ankles to somewhere more mid-level.

  “Ruthie, you watch Millie Jo for a sec, all right?” I asked, then nudged back against Jake’s shoulder. I said, “I gotta talk to them quick.”

  But first I darted through the snowy, slushy yard under the lowering, early-evening sky. I was much more agile than I had been a month and a half ago, though nowhere near my old self. My body, when viewed naked in the ancient bathroom mirror, resembled a stranger’s, in no way connected to the girl I used to know. My breasts were so heavy that they were painful on my chest, and leaked milk occasionally, to boot. My formerly pink nipples were now the color of cabernet. I couldn’t even begin to discuss my belly, soft without its pregnant girth, my stomach that I had last summer bared with such naïve pride, flaunting its smooth, tan surface in my string bikini.

  Quit it, I reprimanded, dashing out of breath up the steps to my room. I grabbed the picture, kissing his face as I had been doing rather ritualistically lately, and then slipped back into my boots for the return jog across the yard. Once inside Shore Leave, enveloped within its cheerful noise and hustle, I scanned the crowd for the Carter girls, which everyone still called them, despite the fact that they all had married names these days. I spied Glenna, the middle sister, just claiming a barstool, her sisters removing their coats and fluffing their hair before taking seats. I weaseled through the crowd and elbowed up beside Glenna; I knew all of them fairly well, as they came often in the summer and autumn months for dinner, usually bringing their husbands and kids.

  “Girls’ night out?” I asked.

  “Camille! Hi, sweetie!” Glenna said, giving me a hug. “Congratulations on your little girl! Mom said you called her Millie. That’s so darling! How are you doing?”

  “Thank you. I’m great,” I said. “She’s over with Ruthie and Tish right now. How are you guys?”

  “Drinking away the winter blues!” Tina informed me, wiggling her eyebrows up and down. The girls all resembled their mother, Diana, who was petite and red-headed. On the three of them, the color translated into varying shades of ruby and russet; it was like a visual of the word ‘red’ in a thesaurus. Tina added, “Hon, you don’t have to pretend for us. Those first months of motherhood are hellacious. No sleep, no sex, no sanity. You look great, considering!”

  Tina, who was a couple of years younger than Aunt Jilly, was just as blunt as my auntie and I laughed a little, saying, “Thanks, I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  Elaine added, “It’s not easy. But you’ll love that little peanut more than anything else in the world.”

  “I actually have a question for all of you,” I said. All three regarded me with undiluted excitement in their eyes and my heart beat faster. I went on in a rush, “Grandma found this trunk in the attic, and it had a letter and a photograph in it that I’m hoping you guys can tell me about.”

  “Ooh, let’s see it, is it a dirty picture?” Tina teased, reaching, and I relinquished it to her hands.

  “Oh wow, it’s really old,” Glenna said, crowding behind her sister. Elaine leaned the other way to catch a glimpse of the back.

  “1875,” she said. “And ‘Carter’? That’s interesting. You know who would know is Dad.”

  “Let me call him,” Glenna said, fishing out her cell phone.

  “He’s adorable,” Tina said, giving me a sassy smile over her shoulder. “He must be a relative!”

  “He makes me miss Matty,” Elaine said.

  “Our baby brother,” Tina explained, looking back at the picture. “He moved to Minneapolis to go to college and all of us are afraid the big city is going to steal him away for good, aren’t we, girls?”

  “He has more sense,” Elaine said, though there was a note of doubt in her voice.

  Glenna was talking to Bull on her phone.

  “Oh look, and his horse was named Aces. I love it. What a great find. I hope Dad knows something about it,” Tina said.

  Glenna hung up and told us, “Dad says that it might be from the original Carters here in Minnesota. They got here in the late 1860s and a couple of them built the original lodge. And you know, their original homestead cabin is about a half-mile from there, still standing.”

  “That’s so cool,” I said. “What a great piece of history.”

  “Remember how Matty used to sleep out in that old cabin when he was a kid?” Elaine asked her sisters.

  “Come out and see it when it starts to thaw,” Tina told me. “I’ll give you the grand tour.”

  “Dad says to bring the picture when you get a chance,” Glenna said. “He would love to see it and he has a bunch of old things from our ancestors. Shit, he’ll talk your ear off, I’m just warning you.”

  “No, I love history,” I told them. “I always thought I might be a history teacher one day.”

  Tina’s eyes flickered over my shoulder and she said, “I think your fella is headed this way with the baby.”

  My heart absolutely punched my ribcage at these words; I thought she meant Noah Utley. But it was just Jake, carrying Millie, who was fussing. My nipples prickled with milk at just the sound.

  “Oh, let’s see her,” Glenna said. “Can I hold her a minute, Camille?”

  Jake reached us and smiled apologetically. He said, “Millie misses you.”

  I collected her and kissed her forehead, settling her over my right shoulder. I asked Glenna, “Do you mind if she’s crying?”

  Glenna rolled her eyes, though she smiled as she said, “I have three daughters, all of whom were colicky as hell. So, no, it’s fine.”

  All of the Carter girls took a turn cuddling Millie; Aunt Ellen was busy behind the bar, and so I darted back there to grab drinks for them.

  “What would you like?” I asked.

  “A pitcher of Honeyweiss will do nicely,” Tina told me, lining her forearms on the edge of the bar. She said, “Camille, seriously, you have the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen.”

  Her words were heartfelt and I replied, “Well it’s nice of you to say so.”

  “You really do,” Jake seconded, from behind Tina’s shoulder, and she faced away from him to wriggle her eyebrows at me, suggestively this time. I felt ribbons of heat flare in my cheeks and I turned away to fill up their pitcher of beer.

  June 2004

  “Noah is home from college,” Mom told me as we rolled silverware. School had let out a day earlier, and the atmosphere at Shore Leave since had been one of pure chaos, undiluted joy at the prospect of three months of freedom. The weather, by contrast, had been a complete downer, as it had rained intermittently for the past three days; currently it was drizzling, the most passive-aggressive kind of weather possible, according to Aunt Jilly. She and I were sharing shifts these days as their baby girl had been born in early April. I was already envisioning Rae as Millie Jo’s future best friend.

  “Good for him,” I finally said, avoiding Mom’s gaze. Lunch rush was over for Saturday, the café empty of all but us and Rich, who was running a load of dishes.

  “I just thought you ought to know,” Mom told me quietly. Her hands were motionless above the stack of silverware and napkins.

  I swallowed and looked out the window, where Flickertail was pockmarked with droplets. The whole gray color scheme out there perfectly reflected my mood upon discovering this information. I lifted my right hand almost instinctively to my mouth to chew at my nail.

  “I thought you grew out of that habit,” Mom said.

  I withdrew my hand with a sigh and met her eyes at last. She was worried and trying not to let it flicker too overtly over her face. I said, “It’s all right, Mom, I don’t care.” My tone indicated that I might be lying just a little.

  Mom let that slide, to my relief. She said instead, “So, I heard from Grandma that Bull Carter gave you the full historical tour of White Oaks last week.”r />
  “It was really incredible,” I said, a small, candle-sized flame brightening my heart as I recalled. “When I showed him the picture back in March, he told me he would do a little research and that I should come back when the weather was nicer for the tour.”

  “That’s what you said,” Mom replied, again rolling silverware with her fingers flying. “I remember being out there for parties now and again in high school. Tina was pretty wild back when. White Oaks is such a beautiful old building. How many rooms do they rent these days?”

  “Only five,” I said. “Bull told me that the main room, where the check-in desk is, was built just after the Civil War. His great-something grandpa, Boyd Carter, and his wife built it originally and raised their kids there. And that possibly the picture is of a little brother. Malcolm is what Bull thought his name was.” At least, that’s what I had called him ever since. His picture was still propped on my nightstand and surely I was compromising the integrity of the old paper with my constant touching of its surface, but I couldn’t help myself. I continued, hearing actual enthusiasm in my voice, “But Bull didn’t know what had become of him. I would love to find out, Mom, maybe do a little research.” I didn’t mention that I was practically obsessed with discovering. I went on, “And then he showed me the old homestead cabin down the road from White Oaks. It’s in pretty decent shape, considering how old it is, and so pretty. It’s surrounded by pines and has this adorable little porch. Really peaceful. I just love putting my hands on something that was built so long ago. I like to think about all of the people in the meantime whose hands have touched the same things.”

  Mom studied me intently for a moment and then said, “It’s so good to hear you excited about something. I’ve been worried about you, Camilla-billa.”

  Rather than being irritated at her words, I said softly, “I know. I’ve been pretty low.”