by Lynne Gentry
Mom got so worried she called LaVera. Nana’s pudgy neighbor came over with a whole bag of Avon samples, but none of her creams or lipsticks could snap Nana out of her funk. Nana’s red lips are the first positive sign I’ve seen since the day she and Mom had their big fight about who was going to be in charge. I don’t look for either of them to say they’re sorry. Forgiveness isn’t a Slocum strong suit.
I lift my hands from the piano keys. “I’d like to see you do better.”
“Slide over, kiddo.” Nana wiggles onto the bench. “Juilliard’s audition committee will expect a high level of technical ability as well as your own unique artistry. Watch and learn.”
Nana pumps her gnarled fingers a few times and then lightly sets them upon the keys. In an instant, they’re flying, pounding out notes that melt into a beautiful song, a song I recognize from the night my mother and I took the train to New York and saw Les Misérables on Broadway. Nana’s technique is flawless. Her artistic ability amazing. But it’s her performance of this difficult piece of music from memory that has me staring slack-jawed. Nana’s a rock star. The score of this French musical is way beyond my level. How can this woman remember every note of “One Day More” and forget where she put her teeth?
Crazy. Huh?
Though I’m hungry to scoot close, to channel her talent by letting our shoulders rub, I give her space to work the entire keyboard. I’m mesmerized by her fingers. Long and slender like mine. But unlike mine, Nana’s fingers float above the keys delicate and light. She tackles the melody with the same expression I’d heard from the masters Mom had taken me to see in DC. Her pianissimos caress each note as if they’re as fragile as one of her roses. She attacks the crescendos with the same force she gives the flyswatter hanging on the pantry door. For the length of her performance, the old piano is no longer tired and sour. And neither is Nana. Her face is serene, her eyes closed, and her head swaying as if the music has carried her away.
When she finishes, I can’t help but clap. “Teach me to do that.”
Her smile connects our hearts. “I taught your mother, I can teach you.”
I point at the silent keys. “Mom can do this?”
“Better than anyone I’ve ever seen.” Nana squeezes my knee. “Now, back to those scales and your fingering, young lady.”
Chapter 5
CHARLOTTE
Aria’s at the piano again. With a smile, I shoulder the broom and grab hold of the ladder that’s leaning against the three-story turret. On my way past the bay windows, I peek in on my daughter toiling away. I hear a distinctive difference in her technique, a connection to the music she’s never had before. I suspect the change occurred the day I took a painting break and found Aria and Momma sitting at the piano with their heads pressed together, the metronome ticking, and Momma pointing at the music with a ruler. The sight of my mother doing for my daughter what she’d once done for me floods me with a mixture of gratitude and envy.
“I don’t know why you need a broom to paint,” Momma’s questioning from her position at the ladder’s base snaps me back from the land of dreams that could have been, if only...
To avoid a confrontation, I change the subject, “Are you holding the ladder steady?”
“I said I would.”
I shimmy up the last few rungs, press my body into the ladder as best I can, then raise the broom and swing for the nest under the second-story eaves.
Barn swallows dive bomb my head in protest. “Your free rent days are over.” I wave a broom at the angry pair of birds. They scatter. One bird circles back and swoops close to my ladder. While I’m distracted by his too-close-for-comfort maneuver, the other bird darts in and pecks me on the forehead.
“Ouch.” My hand flies to the pain and the broom clatters to the ground. “This means war,” I yell, bloody fist raised at the squadron of swallows circling and screeching above.
“I didn’t know you were going to wreck the homes of my birds.” Momma holds the broom I dropped with one hand and the base of the ladder with the other. “Leave them alone.”
From the angry tone of her voice, she’s forgotten the real reason she’s mad at me—sending her friends away—but she’s not forgotten that she’s mad. So, everything I do just makes her madder. Which has really been the pattern of our lives. Maybe if I’d been more like Caroline...
“If I don’t get a coat of paint on this house before winter, none of us will have a home.” I drop my paint brush into the empty paint bucket, unhook it from the ladder, and start inching my way down. Keeping an eye out for angry birds, I notice a cloud of dust coming up the lane. “You expecting company, Momma?”
“Do I have it written down?” Her rare admission of her increasing need to leave notes all over the house surprises me.
“I haven’t seen it posted anywhere.”
“Then you must be mistaken.”
I shake my head then nod toward the lane. “Better put on your lipstick because someone’s kicking up the caliche.”
“Probably just Bo bringing LaVera by to deliver my Avon order. She and Aria are the only ones who give a hoot about me since you wouldn’t let me keep my other friends.”
Obviously, I was a bit hasty to believe my mother had forgotten why she was mad at me. I’m beginning to think Momma suffers from selective-memory rather than dementia. She can remember what she wants to remember. The first thing on my to-do list is to make an appointment with her primary care doctor for some definitive testing. She’s not going to hand over the reins of her health care management easily, so I’ve yet to tell her that I intend to call Benjamin Ellis soon.
“It’s not Bo’s tow truck.” I tent the paintbrush over my eyes. “Who do you know who drives a gold Cadillac?” I back down another rung as I wait for my snarly ladder-holder to answer. But she doesn’t. “Momma?” I duck my chin and search the ground. She’s nowhere to be seen. “So much for keeping me from breaking my neck!” Which is exactly why she’d protested my climb up the rickety old thing in the first place. “Momma!”
As my foot searches for the next rung, images of Bo Tucker flit through my head. Thank goodness it’s not my old boyfriend pulling up to the house. I didn’t make the best impression when I met him while trying to put my mother in rehab. It wouldn’t lift my esteem in his eyes to be caught wearing a paint-splattered t-shirt and one of Momma’s old straw hats. Yep, I’ve avoided Bo Tucker, his gas station, and his mother’s house when I looked good, no way am I going to let him see me now.
Get ahold of yourself, Charlotte.
I have no business thinking about how my life might have turned out had I married my high school sweetheart. Especially, since James McCandless is still a dagger stuck in my heart and a chain around my leg.
My foot sweeps air as it searches for the next rung. The ladder wobbles. “Momma!” I grab hold of the side rails with both hands. “Momma! Put your foot on the bottom rung, please.” She doesn’t answer. “Momma?”
The sound of the Cadillac rolling to a cautious halt is followed by the immediate and distinctive cock of a shot gun.
My gaze whips from the man climbing out of his car back to the ground ten feet below me. “Momma! What are you doing?”
My mother ignores me. She plasters her raised gun against her left cheek and marches past the ladder with both barrels aimed at the dark-haired driver poking his head over the top of a hard-shell convertible. “Get off my land before I fill you and that Caddy full of holes, young man.”
The man’s hands fly into the air. “Don’t shoot, Mrs. Slocum.”
“Momma!” I drop the paint bucket, shimmy down the ladder, and rush to her side. “What on earth are you thinking?”
“I told this sidewinder that if he ever stepped foot on my land again, I’d do more than shoot out his tires.” Momma advances a couple of steps, unbent and clearly focused. “Young man, if you don’t think I’ll pull this trigger just dial my former yard man. Raymond Leck ended up in the hospital because he didn’t think I’d
do what I said I’d do.”
Aria bursts through the screen door, her cat in her arms. “What’s going on?”
“I’m shootin’ a no-good, lying trespasser,” Momma says without lowering her gun.
“Nana’s not shooting anybody, Ari,” I counter.
“You’re not the boss of me, Charlotte Ann.” Momma aims a sideways warning at me. “Just because you think you can push me and a couple of old people around a little bit, you don’t run the world. This boy nearly cost me my last friend on this earth. If LaVera didn’t have such a forgiving spirit, I’d be left with no one.” Momma advances with her gun, Dearfoam slippers, and ninety-six pounds of steely grit. “I’ll give you to the count of three, and then I better see the red glow of your taillights.”
“Mrs. Slocum, I was invited here.”
“By whom?” Momma barks at the man no longer cowering behind his car.
The man takes another bold step toward the hood of his Caddy and nods his head in my direction. “By her.”
Now I’m mad. “Me?” I reach for Momma’s gun with the intent to shoot over the head of the lying trespasser myself, but she swerves out of reach. “I don’t know you.” I point a finger at him. “Why would I invite a stranger to Fossil Ridge?”
A cocky smile slices his tanned face. “I’m Sam Sparks.”
My hand drops. “Sparks? Of Sparks Development?” I’d been so busy, I’d forgotten all about the papers he’d sent me to look over while Mother was rehabbing, and I’d totally forgotten the promises I made to convince Momma to sign the acquisition deal of the Fossil Ridge he was offering.
From Mr. Sparks’ brazen steps forward, he obviously had not. “The one and only.”
“Go back in the house, Ari.” I say.
Aria wraps an arm around a porch pillar. “No way. This is the most excitement we’ve had around here since the old people’s bus hauled off Ira and Teeny.”
“Now, Aria!” My order sends her stomping across the porch.
“What’s going on, Charlotte Ann?” The weight of the gun is making Momma’s arms quiver but her resolve is as steady as I ever seen it.
Sam withdraws a folded piece of paper from his pocket and points it at me. “Unfinished business.”
“What business could you possibly have with my daughter?” Momma asks.
“Finalizing the sale of your property.”
All of the sudden, I’m the one staring down the double barrel of Momma’s shotgun.
Chapter 6
SARA
I push a piece of toast around on my plate.
“Momma, quit dawdling. Eat.” Charlotte leans against the sink, shoveling lumpy oatmeal into her mouth when she should be eating crow.
I slowly lick the jelly from my spoon. “What’s the hurry?”
“We’re going to be late to your doctor’s appointment.”
“You’re the one who swallowed that nasty boy’s snake oil, Charlotte Ann.” I plunge my spoon into a cooling cup of tea. “I don’t see why I’m the one who has to submit to a mental evaluation.” I wink at my granddaughter who, in an effort to support me, is taking forever to eat a bowl of sugary cereal.
Fatal error.
Charlotte is like a duck on a June bug the second she realizes the two of us are in cahoots to sabotage today’s itinerary. “Sam Sparks is not a boy, Momma. He’s a very powerful man in this county and you held him hostage...at gun point.”
“And a trespasser.”
“What?”
“You forgot to add that Sammy is also a trespassing fool.”
Charlotte scrapes more than half of her lumpy oatmeal into the cat’s bowl. Since my daughter’s arrival, I’ve been keeping tabs on her habits. When she sleeps. When she plays. When she eats. Charlotte would probably argue that it’s vain foolishness to try and fill in the gaps caused by our twenty-five-year separation. And maybe she’s right. Twenty-five years is more than a gap. It’s a blooming crater. But I can’t shake the hope that if I acquire enough tidbits, eventually I’ll have a bridge that can link all of my other disjointed thoughts.
That’s why when I hear Charlotte pacing her old room late at night, I know she’s not sleeping. She doesn’t have to tell me all the reasons behind her insomnia, but knowing she’s struggling stirs compassion I thought long dead. When she refuses to take Aria to play in the river, I see in her eyes the same guilt that stares me down. Neither of us will find it easy to ever play again. But what worries me most is this: I haven’t seen her eat a full helping of anything. Either my cooking has gone south, or fear has tied her stomach in knots. If I thought another little necklace could give her appetite back, I’d cash in my entire retirement account to get her one. Maybe something with a cross.
No, her fear is bigger than performance anxiety. This fear is shaping who she’s becoming. No wonder her body is thin as a walking stick and her tongue as sharp as knife blade.
“You’d be sitting in jail if that shot you fired hadn’t missed Sam by a mile.” Charlotte drops her bowl in the sink. “What were you thinking, Mother?”
What was I thinking? When? Then or now?
The question is a wagon wheel falling into the ruts in my head. Maybe I’m fooling myself to think I can gather enough intel on Charlotte to fill in these holes. Sorting my thoughts into columns that add up sensibly is becoming more and more difficult. If we’re talking about fears, my greatest fear of losing my mind before I lose my life is a freight train speeding right toward me and I’m tied to the tracks.
I’ve wasted so many years trying to keep grief and anger from dulling my mind. But instead of peace, I keep circling back to the same grief and anger. I don’t know how much time I have left on this earth. I want this living new arrangement to work out. I want my daughter and granddaughter to become the family I’ve done without for far too long, and yet I’ve gone and endangered everything by pulling a gun. My inability to control these illogical impulses might have just given Charlotte the nail she needs to have me declared crazy and then locked away.
I raise my tea cup in defiance. “I could have lowered that boy’s ears a notch or two if I’d wanted to hurt him.” Sloshing liquid forces me to set the cup down with a noticeable tremor. “I scared him good, and that’s what matters.”
“You scared me and your granddaughter.”
“I wasn’t scared.” Aria looks up from her cereal bowl. “Can you teach me to shoot, Nana?”
Charlotte cuts off my reply with a resounding, “No, she can’t.”
“Why not?” Aria asks. “Nana taught you how to shoot.”
“Who told you that?”
“Nana.”
“When?”
Aria wipes the milk dribble from her chin with the back of her hand and an apologetic look my way. “While you were locking up the gun.”
Charlotte releases a slow, frustrated exhale. “There’ll be no more shooting of anything or at anyone from either of you. Is that understood?”
Aria’s face sours. “Not even target practice?”
“No.”
“Nana says you used to be able to nail a pork n’ bean can from fifty yards. Do you think she can still do it, Nana?”
I wrap both of my unsteady hands around the warmth of my tea cup. My eyes search the kitchen for something to deflect the conversation away from my foggy mind. My gaze lights on the empty swing in Polygon’s cage. Life was so much easier when I only had a bird to argue with, but it was also much lonelier.
My thoughts are a bird swinging back and forth on a tiny trapeze. “There’s lots of things I suspect your mother can still do.”
“Like play the piano?” Aria asks.
My granddaughter’s impatient touch to the back of my hand is a clarifying poke at the oily film floating in my mind. “Play the piano. Sing like bird. And execute a perfect double backflip dive off the bluff.”
“A back flip? Really, Mom?” Instant respect glows in Aria’s eyes. “I thought you couldn’t swim. At least, that’s what you say whenever I t
ry to get you near the water. Can you take me to the river this afternoon and teach me how to dive?”
“No.”
“Charlotte doesn’t go to the river anymore.”
“Mother,” Charlotte’s cross warning cuts deep. “Enough.”
My tongue recoils like a skittish river salamander.
I shouldn’t have done it...stomped out Aria’s budding admiration of her mother, but in the space of a heartbeat, that wave of anger erupted from this growing fissure inside of me and swept away my good sense. These sudden pivots in emotions are becoming more and more frequent and rapidly increasing in intensity. I’m not mad at Charlotte for sending Ira and Teeny away. She’s got plenty on her plate. Besides, Ira calls every day, and while he’s hinted that he would rather be with me, he’s trying to make peace with his lot in life.
No, this roiling inside me is a red-hot anger, the likes of which I haven’t felt since Martin died. Unjustified and uncontrollable.
“Why can’t we go to the river?” Aria demands of her mother. “There’s nothing else to do here. It’s so stinking hot, I don’t understand why we can’t swim.”
Charlotte’s frustration cuts through the silence that hangs in the kitchen. “River’s too low this time of year.”
“You’ll have to tell her the truth someday, Charlotte Ann.” My hand flies to my mouth but it’s too little, too late.
“Tell me what truth?” Aria demands.
Why had I implied Caroline’s death was Charlotte’s fault when I’d told her the truth? I had told her the truth, right? I wanted to tell Charlotte that her father had been drunk that day. Had I? I can’t remember.
Whether I’ve offered Charlotte absolution or not, I know better than to bring up subjects best left buried, especially in the presence of my impressionable grandchild, a child I wouldn’t want to bear the weight of these ancient secrets.
Not trusting my mouth, I pick up my spoon and stir my tea as if concentrating on something I did every single day can slow these uncontrollable urges to hurt somebody.