by Karen White
I bent down and pulled a film cartridge out of the door track, then straightened to examine it. In a way I’d understood her obsession with other people’s photographs, with staring into strangers’ lives like Alice at the rabbit hole. And because I’d understood it, I’d discouraged it. Yet, as with all things between Ava and me, the more I said no, the more adamant she was to pursue it.
I reached inside the closet and closed my fingers around the necks of a group of hangers clustered in the far corner. The maroon and gold sequins of her majorette costumes still sparkled, the pleats in the skirts still perfectly pressed. I’d made these for Ava, sewn each sequin by hand despite Mimi’s insistence that she be allowed to help. But I had done it all, each pull and tug of the thread and needle proof that I loved my daughter despite her arguments to the contrary.
With quick movements I slid the hangers out of the shoulders, then gently folded each costume and stacked them inside a packing box. I had no intention of mailing them to St. Simons. If Ava wanted them she’d have to come home and haul the boxes up from the basement. My intention today was merely to empty out the room, although I’d yet to make plans for what to replace it with. I simply needed to erase the daily reminder that I had run out of time.
“Don’t forget these.”
I turned to face Mimi, who stood in the doorway with a short stack of old photo albums in her arms.
I straightened, my hand automatically rubbing the small of my back. Frowning, I stared at them. “What are those?”
Mimi moved to the bed with its pink eyelet bedspread and let the stack gently slide onto it, the leg of a quilted pink elephant stopping their progress toward the edge of the bed. “These are the albums I made of Ava when she was a little girl. I thought she might like to have them.”
I felt something pinching behind my eyes, an old hurt with no remembered origin. “I’m not sending anything to Ava—just packing things up. Besides, I’d never send her any photo albums. For the same reason I never made one for her in the first place.”
I glared at my mother, but she was ignoring me as she sat on the edge of the bed and flipped open the album that had been on top. “She was such a beautiful child.”
Unable to stop myself, I moved to stand behind Mimi. She was right. Ava had been a beautiful child, with pale blond hair and thick-lashed brown eyes. She hadn’t left her beauty behind as so many children do, and even now sometimes took my breath away. What added to the whole effect was Ava’s complete unawareness of it.
Her hair had never darkened as we’d all expected it to, and by the time she was approaching middle school, we knew the color was here to stay. It was at about that time that Mimi started coloring her own hair blond, and although she never said it out loud, I knew the reason why. I was grateful in a way only a daughter can be in that moment when she realizes that her mother is an extension of herself, another limb, another heart to bear the pain and shore you up at the same time.
I stood silently behind Mimi as she slowly turned the album’s pages, pointing out Ava’s favorite Halloween costumes—all handmade by me—of Christmas mornings, and our rare vacations to places like Rock City, Tennessee, and Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. We didn’t go to the beach on vacation ever, despite the boys’ pleading. It was easy to use Ava’s fear of the ocean as an excuse, but like all other excuses in life, it merely danced around the real reason why, a ballerina on a darkened stage where you couldn’t see the edge.
“You should send this to Ava.” A long red-lacquered nail pointed at a large photograph taking up an entire album page. It was Ava at around two years of age wearing a pink crocheted dress with a pale blue satin sash. It had been made by Mimi’s grandmother and given to Mimi when she was born. In the back hallway were the framed photographs of Mimi wearing the dress at age two and me wearing the same dress nearly twenty years later. I hadn’t hung Ava’s portrait next to them, even though I’d kept the space vacant. Ava had finally stopped asking me why.
“The photograph?” I asked.
Mimi shook her head without looking at me. “No. The dress. For when she has a little girl of her own.”
I stared at the color photograph of two-year-old Ava, with the chubby cheeks and the pink dress that made her skin glow, remembering the day the photo was taken as if it were only yesterday. I’d taken the dress from the old cedar chest, a wedding gift from Mimi’s grandmother. The dress had been folded between layers of tissue paper, safely stored since it had last been worn by me. If it were possible to travel through time, this scrap of pink knit would be the conduit, recorded by each generation with a photograph.
“It’s too early. I’m sure she and Matthew won’t be planning a family anytime soon.”
Mimi snorted, something I, fortunately, had never learned to do. “She’s almost thirty-five. And I know she wants children.”
“How would you know?” I asked, afraid I already knew the answer.
“When you were hiding in your room before she left, Ava and I had a really long chat. That was one of the things we talked about.”
I pressed my lips together, hating myself for doing so. Stephen said I looked like a prune when I did it, but I couldn’t seem to stop. “What else did you talk about?”
Mimi snapped the cover shut, then twisted around to look at me. “Nothing you wouldn’t want us to be talking about.”
My finger wound its way into the pink eyelet of the bedspread, the same bedspread I’d allowed Ava to select when she was twelve, even though I warned her she’d grow tired of it as soon as she hit fourteen. As she got older, I’d catch her looking through catalogs or pausing at store windows, and I kept waiting for her to admit I was right. But she never did. It was one of the things I admired most about my daughter: She always meant what she said and never went back on her word.
“You should send her the albums.”
I shook my head. “You know I can’t.”
Ignoring me, Mimi pressed on. “You could bring them to her. It would give you an excuse to visit.” She looked steadily at me. “Every woman needs her mother at some point.” I wasn’t sure whether she was still talking about Ava and me.
I turned back to the closet and took out another handful of clothes on hangers. “I can’t.” I kept my back toward Mimi so she couldn’t see the tears that threatened to spill over. How could I explain to her what I couldn’t explain to myself? That I was trying to let go of the one thing I’d always been afraid to lose before I even realized that you can’t lose something you never really had. Or that after years of holding on too loosely, I’d finally lost my grip.
The phone rang and I tensed as I always did, letting it ring until the answering machine picked up. Then I went back to folding my daughter’s clothes into the box, as if by doing so I could somehow erase the biggest mistake of my life.
Ava
ST. SIMONS ISLAND, GEORGIA
MAY 2011
I kept the phone to my ear, counting each ring until the answering machine picked up with my eight-year-old nephew’s voice telling me that Grandma and Grandpa couldn’t come to the phone but that they would call back as soon as they could. I heard the beep, then clicked the off button on my cell before sliding it into my purse. My mother had hated the phone ever since I could remember, although Mimi recalled times when my mother was a teenager and the telephone had seemed like another appendage. It was just one of the many inconsistencies of my childhood, like falling leaves that seemed so small until they covered the entire lawn.
I peered out the front door, looking for Tish’s station wagon. My first meeting of the historical society had been uneventful, as most of the talk had been about the ugly new concrete barriers running the length of the causeway, a new traffic light (a big deal on the island, apparently), and the first chain restaurant midisland. I suppose living in a two-hundred-year-old house had made me jaded, but everything else on St. Simons seemed so new by comparison that I didn’t understand what the problem was. I’d kept judiciously silent, remembering t
hat part of the reason for my being there was to make new friends.
The most productive part of the meeting had been my assignment to a project to document old graves throughout St. Simons, in known cemeteries and in cemeteries that were only rumored to exist on the grounds of the old plantations. Maybe it was my family’s connection to cemeteries, but I was excited enough to volunteer for the project, and Tish was assigned as the team leader.
I glanced at my watch, realizing I still had fifteen minutes, then left the door cracked open so I could hear Tish’s car approaching and meet her outside. I was about to sit down in one of the front hall chairs, but paused halfway as my gaze caught sight of the low chest in the parlor. I hadn’t had time to pull out the pages I’d removed from the back of the framed sketch and examine them, and I hadn’t wanted to ask Matthew about them until I’d had the chance to see what they were.
With quick steps, I crossed to the chest and pulled the drawer open, panicking at first when I didn’t see them before I realized they’d slid into the back of the drawer. There were three of them, all stuck together with four paper clips on each side, and measuring about ten inches by fourteen.
I gingerly slid off each paper clip, careful not to catch one of the straight ends on the paper. Slowly, I placed the first page faceup on top of the chest and smoothed my hand over it.
It was another sketch of the house, this one done from an angle different from the one hanging in a frame. I noticed the way the artist had drawn the light on the side of the house, making me think of the bright mornings I’d experienced in my new home, imagining I could hear the terns and the skimmers by the creek bank. Even if I hadn’t known who the artist was, I knew that whoever had drawn the sketch knew the house intimately, knew the way the buttery light slanted in through the windows at sunset, and how the oaks in the front yard seemed to cling together like siblings, their branches intermingling and graciously granting shade to the house.
I picked it up and held it for a moment, wondering who’d stuck this one and the two others behind the framed sketch. And why.
I flipped over the second drawing and looked at it closely. Blinking, I gripped both edges and lifted it to get a better look. It wasn’t a sketch at all, but what looked like lines of poetry. The words were drawn in black ink, in a calligraphy style or by somebody with beautiful penmanship. Like an artist’s would be. The capital letters at the beginning of each line were larger than the rest of the text, each stanza centered perfectly on the page.
There were no musical notes on the page, or anything else that might indicate the words were lyrics to a song, but as I started to read it was as if music had begun to play in my head, the words on the page fitting perfectly with each note like puzzle pieces settling neatly into their slots.
Oh, hush thee, my baby,
Thy sire be a king’s knave,
Thy mother his true love,
Separated by the deep ocean’s waves….
My eyes jerked up to the small curio cabinet where I’d stored the music box Mimi had placed in my hands when I’d left home—the music box I’d found during the season of tornadoes that had twisted and turned so many lives. As if from afar, I watched myself walk across the room and purposefully flip open the lid of the box, the mechanism inside whirring and twitching like an old cricket until the music stirred to life with a tiny click.
I listened to the tune three times, singing the lyrics on the paper each time until I’d memorized them, stopping in midnote as the mechanism wound down. I knew the song, of course. My mother had sung it to me as a child, and probably as a baby, too. When I’d had the chicken pox and couldn’t sleep, she’d stayed in the room in the rocking chair by my bed and sung it. But not these words. The words she’d sung had to do with a beloved child falling asleep inside the protected walls of a castle, his father a knight, his mother a lady. The lyrics I read were the words of a father separated from his beloved wife and his child across the sea, offering reassurance rather than rest, hope and potential loss instead of comfort and warmth. But they were words I’d somehow known long before I’d slid this paper out from behind the frame.
With frozen fingers, I allowed the paper to drift from my fingers to the top of the chest, then hesitated just for a moment before I picked up the third paper. I was vaguely aware of the sound of a car approaching on the drive, but I couldn’t stop.
This drawing was a full-length pen-and-ink sketch of a young woman. She wore a long dress, maybe from the eighteen hundreds, and she was hatless, the wind buffeting her skirts, and the long ties of a bonnet held in her hands. She stood barefoot in what appeared to be sand, the edge of an unknown body of water creeping up behind her. My breath came in shallow gasps as I brought the sketch closer, only half noticing what appeared to be a tall ship with full sails in the distance behind her. My gaze focused on the woman’s face, the way her dark hair came to a widow’s peak on her forehead, the large almond-shaped eyes and high cheekbones, the delicate nose that was too pert for beauty but worked with the rest of her features to create a face that drew attention. I brought the sketch even closer. There was something in her eyes, something mute but telling at the same time. Something that spoke of love and loss and surrender. But there was more, too, more even than the question she seemed to be about to ask. The scent of ashes burned the back of my throat, choking me. I know you. The words tumbled from some unnamed place in my brain with the same sort of certainty with which one feels hunger or pain.
“Ava?”
I turned to find Tish in the doorway, her face full of concern. The sketch drifted from my hand onto the floor, and I sat quickly on the sofa behind me.
She took a step forward, stopping in front of the sketch and picking it up. “You have absolutely no color in your face, and there are beads of sweat on your forehead. Are you all right? Do you want me to get Matthew?”
I shook my head. “He’s at work. And I’m fine, really. Just…” I indicated the sketch she held, hoping she’d understand by looking at it so that I wouldn’t have to explain something I wasn’t even sure I could.
Tish sat next to me on the sofa and examined the sketch. She looked at it for a moment before sitting back against the cushions. “So you found them. I’d completely forgotten.”
I looked at her in surprise. “You knew about them?”
“Only by accident. I was in Brunswick to get Beth’s wedding veil and dried bouquet framed in a display box. There’s a store down on Newcastle Street that does a great job, reasonably priced. I saw Adrienne there and overheard her instructions to the clerk before she realized I was there. I had no idea why she wanted them sealed behind the sketch she was having framed, and Adrienne made it clear that she wasn’t interested in talking about it.” Tish looked away for a moment, her fingers tapping gently on the paper, as if she didn’t want to say any more. Eventually she faced me again. “She died a week later, and I forgot all about it.”
I nodded, not understanding any of it at all. “I found them when I accidentally tore the backing from the frame.”
She held the sketch of the woman in her lap and regarded it silently for a moment. “This is so different from Adrienne’s usual work, but it’s definitely her style. And her signature.” Tish pointed at the three initials in the bottom right corner.
“She looks familiar to me, but I don’t know why. Do you have any idea who she is?”
Tish shook her head. “No. But she looks familiar to me, too. Like I’ve seen another picture of her somewhere. Maybe in a book?”
I looked away, the tingling feeling of familiarity raising the hairs on the back of my neck. “There’s a drawing of the house, too—done at a different angle from the one hanging—and lyrics to a song. I can’t figure out why any of these needed to be hidden. The words of the song are familiar to me—I think I’ve heard them before, sung to the same tune as the old lullaby my mother used to sing to me, ‘Oh, Hush Thee, My Baby.’”
Tish wrinkled her brow. “I didn’t know there wer
e different lyrics.”
I retrieved the lyrics and handed the sheet to Tish, watching her face as she silently read them, her fingers tapping on her leg as if counting out the measures to the old tune. “They fit; that’s for sure.”
“I know.” I picked up the sketch of the house and showed it to Tish, too. “And here’s the third one.”
She frowned. “Why would she hide these?” Her eyes met mine. “Have you shown them to Matthew?”
I shook my head, forcing myself to hold her gaze. “I didn’t want him to think I’d torn the backing intentionally.”
Very slowly, Tish handed me the papers.
“You really don’t know Matthew at all, do you?”
My chest burned. “What do you mean? He’s my husband. I know him enough to have married him.”
She reached her hand out to me, and when I backed away, she dropped it. “I know—I didn’t mean that. Sometimes people don’t have to know each other very long before they know they’ve found the one. And I know it’s that way with you and Matthew—I see it when you’re together. But I’ve known Matthew since he was a little boy. Around here we call him an ‘old soul.’ It’s like he was born knowing what he wanted, and once he has it he doesn’t easily let go.”
“Like Adrienne?” The words had found themselves on my lips before I could recall them.
Tish stood. “I’m not the person you should be having this conversation with, Ava.”
Avoiding her eyes, I placed the papers back in the drawer, telling myself I’d speak with Matthew about them when he returned.
I dipped my head. “Thank you, Tish. And just in case I haven’t said it enough, thanks for the party, too. I’m just sorry we had to leave early.”
Slipping her purse over her shoulder, Tish headed toward the door. “The only person who should be apologizing is John. I’m sorry he upset you. He’s a good man—just confused and still grieving. I hope you can understand.”