Sea Change

by Karen White

  Robbie stirred and then opened his eyes, his face splitting into a wide smile when he saw me. His was a happy nature, and his smile each morning placed the sun in my sky even on cloudy days. He reached for the pickling jar that had become his constant companion, a gift from his aunt Georgina. Geoffrey had fashioned a strip of leather with holes punched into the top and held in place by twine to allow the imprisoned caterpillar air to breathe.

  Georgina had found the caterpillar on her passionflower vine and had brought it to Robbie with a clipping, seeing as we had nothing to attract caterpillars or butterflies to our own garden.

  At six years old, Robbie was smart and inquisitive, and studying his caterpillar had become a near obsession ever since Georgina told him it would change into a butterfly. The caterpillar had grown fat and shed its skin several times, and Georgina had been bringing fresh stems and leaves to Robbie on a nearly daily basis to satisfy its appetite. I did not question her presence, as Robbie’s joy overcame any misgivings.

  I stood and began gathering the contents of the picnic basket while Geoffrey pulled on his boots.

  “Mama?”

  I turned to Robbie. “Yes?”

  “My caterpillar is sick.”

  Placing the dishes that had been rinsed by the ocean into the basket, I took the jar from Robbie and peered through the glass. The bright orange caterpillar with black spikes from top to bottom was perched upside down on a single leaf, preparing for its transformation.

  I shook my head. “No, it is just getting ready to become a butterfly.”

  His eyes widened with excitement. “Right now?”

  “No,” Geoffrey said as he gently took the jar from me. “It will take some time, but soon.”

  A frown worried Robbie’s brow. “Is it dead?”

  “No,” I said. “Just getting ready for its new life—that is all.”

  Still frowning, he looked between his father and me. “Is that what Leda is doing, too?”

  Leda had died in the spring, her passing a terrible blow to us all, especially to Robbie. He had seen her wrapped in her brown blanket before burial, and I suspected that was where the source of his thoughts began.

  “Leda is in heaven, sweetheart. With God.”

  He stared back into his jar, his forehead smoothing into the softness of childhood again. “I think she will be back. As a butterfly. Because she told me she would not leave me.”

  I swallowed a thick lump in my throat. I had not the heart to tell him otherwise. That was the hardest part about being a mother: the part when you realized that you did not know all the answers. I threaded my fingers through his dark curls. “You may be right, Robbie. But surely not a butterfly. I think Leda would be better suited as a queen if she came back. She always loved shiny things, did she not?”

  He nodded vigorously, his smile returning. I watched as he stood, clutching his jar, wishing with all my heart that what I had told him was true, that we had the chance to become more than what we had been, to be given another opportunity to fix what had been broken, to forgive where forgiveness had once appeared unobtainable.

  We walked down the beach as far as we could before heading up over the dunes, our footprints in the sand marking our progress, the ocean swallowing them after we passed as if we had never been there at all.

  Gloria

  ANTIOCH, GEORGIA

  JULY 2011

  I walked past Mimi’s room, then did a double take and immediately retraced my steps. She stood next to her bed, which was covered in the same Indian quilt she’d had on it through nearly sixty years of marriage to my father. She’d once told me that I’d been conceived under that same quilt, which guaranteed that I’d never use it myself. That was something, as my teenage grandchildren liked to say, that was too much information.

  “What are you doing?” I asked as I stared at the large hard-shell suitcase spread open on the bed like a butterfly under glass. She had disorganized heaps of clothing scattered over the pillows and the part of the bed that wasn’t covered by the quilt. Inside the suitcase were similar heaps. I stepped close, stopping when I recognized what lay nestled between the clothes, the matching brass frames glinting under the overhead light fixture.

  “I’m going to go see our girl, Gloria. Somebody has to, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be you.”

  I stayed where I was, transfixed by my photographed childhood face staring up from the bottom of the suitcase. “Why are you doing this? Why now?”

  Mimi’s magnified eyes stared at me through her bifocals. “Did you not hear Ava on the phone? That’s how I know.”

  “She’s confused. She was carrying on about somebody named Pamela who had dark hair and wore long dresses. How can we help her if we don’t even understand what she’s upset about?”

  Her gaze continued to hold my own, and I knew we were both remembering another time, when the moon sat full and bright in the sky and the scent of evening primrose hung heavy in the air like a cloak of possibilities.

  She stepped between the suitcase and me and threw a stack of her multicolored velour sweats on top of the frames. “You have spent a lifetime living only half of your life, Gloria. You can only see how much you could lose. And Ava and I are asking you to look very hard now and see what you could gain.”

  Her hands gripped the side of the suitcase, and I noticed anew the blue veins that threaded the tops like road maps, and the small bones that seemed suddenly so delicate. Mimi was a diminutive woman whose personality had blinded me to seeing it all of my life. Until now.

  Her voice was so soft I had to lean closer to hear her. “Have I taught you nothing? Why would God have made you my daughter if I couldn’t teach you anything?”

  My ninety-one-year-old mother was crying, and the shame cut at me. Very quietly, I said, “There is no death, only a change of worlds. You taught me that, remember? When Daddy died. It made me not afraid anymore.” I choked on my own words. “It gave me the courage to do what I had to do.”

  She was silent for a moment before she spoke. “So are you coming with me?”

  I took a deep, shuddering breath. I hated to be wrong, hated even more to be told I was wrong by my mother. “I suppose I’ll have to. You’re blind as a bat, and I’d be forced to call the Highway Patrol as a matter of public safety if you insist on heading out on your own. But I’ll need at least a day or two to make sure Henry has meals in the freezer, and the ladies’ bridge club has somebody to fill in for me….”

  Mimi slammed the lid of the suitcase closed. “I’m leaving in half an hour, with or without you. I’m sure your bridge club can make do, and Henry’s a grown man, Gloria. Surely he won’t starve without your supervision.”

  She was right, of course, but I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of telling her so. Instead, we both stared at the large suitcase on top of the bedspread as if it were a stain we weren’t sure how to treat.

  “I suppose I should call one of the boys to come get that and take it to the car,” I said. “I hope Matthew won’t mind bringing it into the house when we get there.” I frowned at the circa-1968 mustard yellow American Tourister and wondered how somebody so old could still manage to pack so much stuff.

  “Oh, we’re not staying with Matthew and Ava. They’re newlyweds, after all. June’s sister has a vacation home on St. Simons, so we’re renting it for a week with the option of continuing our stay if we need to. It’s got two bedrooms, since I knew I couldn’t sleep in the same room with you and your snoring.”

  I sighed, wondering how long she’d been waiting there in the open door by her suitcase for me to walk by and have this conversation. “Fine,” I said, turning on my heel to go to my room and throw a few things into a much smaller bag. “But I’ll need an hour to get ready. While I’m packing you can call Stephen on your cell phone and ask him to come load the car.”

  She grunted to let me know she’d heard me and wasn’t happy, but as I left the room, she had the final word. “You might as well pack for a few
weeks. We could be there for a while.”

  My steps slowed as I neared my own bedroom, my thoughts turning to the towering oaks of St. Simons and the resurrection ferns that hid in the trunks, and the road between here and there that no longer seemed so long. And as I pulled my suitcase from the back of my closet, I thought of Ava and whether my efforts to protect my daughter might mean losing her forever.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Ava

  ST. SIMONS ISLAND, GEORGIA

  JULY 2011

  Beth Hermes lay on the table in the examining room wearing a blue cotton gown while I did my best not to spoil with the clomping of my boot the calming atmosphere that we tried to attain in the practice. I rubbed my hands together to warm them and then, making sure to protect her privacy by keeping the lower sheet strategically placed below the slightly swollen belly, lifted her gown to begin the external examination.

  “So, how did your hypnosis session go?” she asked.

  I hadn’t yet come to terms with or even gotten any understanding of what had happened, and I wasn’t prepared to discuss it with Beth. So I pretended I hadn’t heard her and began her examination.

  “Let me know if anything hurts or if my hands are too cold,” I said as I gently palpated her abdomen, feeling for the uterus, and imagining the already perfectly formed, three-inch-long baby floating in its liquid world. I found what I was looking for exactly two fingerbreadths above the pubic bone.

  “Good news,” I said. “The baby’s finally big enough that we might be able to hear the heartbeat today.”

  Her expression of disappointment surprised me until she spoke. “I thought this was just a routine appointment, so I didn’t ask Ken or my mom to come. I know they’d like to hear it, too.”

  I smiled. “I understand, and we can schedule another appointment for you this week so Ken or your mother can be here. But they’ll have plenty of opportunities later. Maybe you’ll want this first time to be just between you and your baby.”

  I rubbed my own slightly protruding belly, still too early to hear the heartbeat, and waited for Beth to decide. Although rarely found on the “What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?” lists for little girls, I had never wanted to be anything other than a nurse-midwife. Maybe, as I’d told John, it had to do with my mother’s miscarriage and the helplessness I’d felt. But deep down I’d always known it was a calling, something I’d been born to do. I was good at it, and whatever Beth decided I’d make it work.

  Beth thought for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, just me this time, but next time I’ll bring both Ken and my mother.”

  I retrieved the handheld fetal Doppler ultrasound machine, then lubricated the transducer before sliding it where I expected the baby’s heartbeat to be. Neither one of us breathed as we heard the muffled thud-thud of the tiny heart coming from the speaker on the Doppler, the sound so distant that it seemed to be coming from another time and place.

  “Wow,” said Beth, tears in her eyes. “It makes it so…real somehow.”

  I counted the small thuds, still not immune to the enormity of what we were hearing, or how strange it seemed that it was even a possibility.

  When I was finished, I wiped off the skin, then pulled the cotton gown back down over Beth’s slightly rounded belly. “Everything looks great, and you seem to be right on schedule for thirteen weeks,” I said, writing my notes in her chart. “Your nausea’s all gone now? And you’re taking your prenatal vitamins?”

  She sat up on the examining table. “Yes—to all of the above.” She opened her mouth to ask another question, but, anticipating where she was trying to move the conversation, I interrupted her.

  “Your blood pressure’s a little high. Are you having any swelling in your ankles or feet?”

  “A little, maybe. But it’s summer and I just figured it was the heat.”

  “Could be,” I said, looking at her chart although not really seeing it. I seemed to have a sixth sense when it came to other women’s pregnancies, anticipating when a baby would automatically turn from a breech position without intervention and when it wouldn’t. I could smell gestational diabetes before it was confirmed in a urine test, and predict preeclampsia before symptoms became severe. It was almost as if I’d had a lifetime of experience delivering babies instead of only a decade.

  “I want you to keep an eye on your sodium intake. Continue to drink lots of water, and call me immediately if you develop any headaches that won’t go away with Tylenol and rest, especially if you also have any blurring of vision. And before you leave, I’d like to draw some labs to get a baseline of your kidney function.”

  “I thought you said everything was fine,” Beth said.

  “It is. I’m just trying to make sure it stays that way.” I jotted down a few more notes, then glanced up at the clock. I was running only ten minutes behind, a small miracle, considering how long it took me to clomp from one examining room to the next.

  “So how did the hypnosis session go?”

  I bit back a sigh as I recalled my hysterical phone call to Mimi and my inability to comprehend anything Matthew had tried to tell me. “We’re not really sure,” I said, glancing up at the clock so I’d have another reason to cut our conversation short. “Matthew says that what we gain from hypnosis is not necessarily what happens during the session, but what happens afterward—what our subconscious begins to reveal little by little, either in our dreams or in flashbacks while we’re awake.”

  “And have you had any?” She swung her legs against the side of the table like a little girl. “Dreams or flashbacks?”

  “I…” I started, then stopped, recalling the vivid images that had dogged me every single night since. I’ve had dreams about the ocean my entire life, I’d wanted to say, but couldn’t. Because they were no longer like dreams to me, but a part of me, and I couldn’t explain that to Matthew any more than I could explain it to Beth. “Not yet,” I said. “Matthew says to give it time.”

  I smiled my official smile. “Well, I guess I’ll see you Saturday for our trip downtown to the historical archives. I’ll pick you and your mom up at ten, then my treat for lunch afterward. We’ll celebrate getting this boot off my ankle.” I waited as she slid off the examining table. “I’ll leave your refill prescription for your vitamins at the checkout desk.”

  My hand was on the doorknob when she spoke again.

  “I went to the archives once with Adrienne, too. She was also looking for information about Matthew’s family. It’s a shame you can’t find all of her notes—it could save you a lot of time and trouble.”

  “Yeah, I know. But neither Matthew nor her family knows where all of her research went. Or her date book. I’ll keep looking. And are you sure you want to go back and look for the same information?”

  Beth laughed. “Are you kidding? I love that stuff—and I always find something new. Maybe I’ll find something that’s field-trip-worthy for my ninth graders. The last time I was there, I discovered an old letter from around the time of the Civil War that referenced a slave cemetery that’s since been swallowed by the ocean. We used the documentation from what we knew with that in the letter to figure out where it had been. Nothing like having history under your fingertips to get kids interested.”

  She turned around to the chair where she’d left her clothes and then stopped. “Speaking of uncovering stuff, Adrienne told me that she’d found a hiding place in a wall while she was looking for something else. It was probably put into the wall when the house was built, since at the time you could be raided by the Indians or the Spanish. She said she hadn’t found anything valuable in it, but I figure if she wanted to hide something small, that would be the place for it.”

  My mouth tasted of paper. “Did she mention where it was?”

  Beth shook her head. “Not really—just that the space wasn’t that big. Sorry I can’t remember more.”

  “Thanks, Beth. I’ll ask Matthew—he should know, seeing as how he’s lived in the house his entire life.” />
  We said good-bye and I shut the door behind me before shuffling to my next appointment, thinking of date books and hiding spaces, of the ocean and an attic door with a missing key. And of a husband whom I didn’t seem to know at all.

  I returned home before Matthew. After changing clothes and chopping salad fixings, I filled a large pot of water for my standby of spaghetti and sauce in a jar and turned on the fire beneath it to heat. Then I returned to the parlor, my hands on my hips, and spun around looking for any sign that would indicate a hidden panel in any of the walls.

  I walked slowly through the parlor and the dining room, knocking on walls and finding nothing. I moved across the foyer and paused in the threshold of Matthew’s study. I knew this was my home, and with the exception of the potting shed, he’d never made me feel as if any part of the house was off-limits to me. Still, this was his masculine domain, with the large antique partners desk and the rich mahogany paneling on the walls. I supposed that if I wanted to keep valuables somewhere in the house, this would be the most logical place. Which was also one of the reasons it would be the last place in the house I imagined Matthew’s ancestors would keep a hidden panel.

  I stood by the desk, examining the walls. All of Matthew’s diplomas were hung in his office in Savannah, but I would have expected something to hang on these walls. I stepped closer, the empty walls at odds with what I knew of my husband, and saw small nail holes at eye level going across the wall opposite the door. They were at the perfect height for framed artwork, and it made me wonder when Matthew had removed them. I could see in my mind’s eye the delicate strokes of pen and paper, the depictions of the view from the dock at sunset, or even of Matthew sitting here in this study. They had been Adrienne’s artwork, removed because Matthew had decided it was time to move on. Or maybe because it was too hard to hide from the past with reminders of Adrienne staring down from the walls like knowing eyes.

  Restless, I moved farther into the room, close enough to the wall that I could spread my hands flat against the smooth wood, could see the tiny whitened hole from where a nail had once protruded. I lifted my hand to knock, but stopped as the sudden aroma of pipe smoke seemed to drift through the air. I turned around, surprised to find the room empty.