by Karen White
Only Lyle was allowed to be corny with her anymore. The corner of Becky’s mouth tilted up. “After a while, crocodile.”
“Now we’re talkin’,” he said as they shared a fist bump. He said good-bye to the rest of them and headed back to his patrol car, Maisy missing his kiss on her own forehead more than she’d ever admit.
“Thank you.” Georgia’s voice was close to Maisy’s ear.
“For what?”
“For what you said in there.”
Maisy shrugged, uncomfortable. “I learned from the best. And I should be thanking you for sticking up for Becky.” The words were stiff, but needed to be said. She only wanted to add, I should have done it. You’ve just always been faster.
“Can I ride back in Aunt Georgia’s car?” Becky asked.
Maisy ignored the feeling of swallowed splinters in her throat. “Sure, sweetie. I’ll see you back at the house.”
“I’ll come with you, if that’s all right,” Caroline said. “As long as I’m allowed to drink this in your car.”
“Of course.” Maisy smiled.
They’d gone only a few feet down the sidewalk when Caroline’s phone beeped. They paused a moment for her to look at the screen before her head popped up, an excited expression on her face. “Georgia? Come look at this. I just got a text from my sister Elizabeth. She said one of the missing pieces is a soup cup. She sent a picture, too. Is this the one you saw in your house?”
Georgia moved next to Caroline, a full head shorter even with two-inch wedge sandals, and peered at the phone. “Oh,” she said, stepping back, her lips pale.
“Is it the same?” Caroline asked.
Georgia nodded, then lifted her eyes to meet Maisy’s.
“What does this mean?” Maisy asked.
Her voice seemed to lack the air needed to force the words out. “It could be that it wasn’t a custom set, and Grandma found a few pieces at a yard sale somewhere.”
“Or,” James said, “they’re both from the same set, and at least a piece of it somehow ended up in Apalachicola.”
Georgia continued to look at Maisy, as if the answer lay somewhere between them, somewhere in the knowledge that Georgia had once seen the piece of china in their mother’s room and Birdie had told her to keep it a secret.
Maisy sucked in a breath of air, trying to eradicate the feeling that she was drowning, latching onto Georgia’s smile like a life preserver.
“Without knowing more about the pattern, I can’t explain it,” Georgia said, her voice sounding unnatural. “All we need to do is find that piece if it’s still in the house, and hope it’s a different pattern.”
“Why would we hope it’s different?” Caroline asked.
“Because if it’s from the same pattern, then we’ll have to figure out how it got here. And I . . .” She swallowed, her eyes meeting Maisy’s. “I don’t have a clue where to even start.” She paused. “Or what it could mean.”
chapter 24
Once the space for eggs becomes limited, the queen bee starts to lay drone eggs followed by young queen bee candidates. After laying eggs for the next generation, the old queen leaves her beehive with half of her children. The new queen bee then goes out for a mating flight and returns to the beehive to lay eggs, which is the most important function of her entire life.
—NED BLOODWORTH’S BEEKEEPER’S JOURNAL
Birdie
Skid. Scut. Drag. I tried to focus on my crayon dragging color against a black-and-white page, if only to erase the sounds from the attic above. Each movement seemed to flash a light, illuminating a corner too briefly for it to register. I pressed the crayon down harder, wondering when I could stop. When I could stand to turn on the light myself and begin to speak.
My knees cramped from being stuck beneath the small child’s table in Becky’s room for too long. We were coloring even though we were both too old for coloring books. One of the dozens of therapists I’d seen had suggested to Maisy that it might be a good artistic outlet for me, and she’d bought me a stack of what she called “adult coloring books” and a boxed set of one hundred and fifty-two crayons in more colors than I knew existed.
In many ways she was right: It kept me from pulling out my hair or shredding my clothes with scissors. Or staring into a murky past that seemed to have no beginning or end. Becky seemed to enjoy it, too. It calmed her, helped her smooth her words as she talked to me.
I tried to adjust my legs under the pink table, a piece of furniture that was more suited to a three-year-old than a nine-year-old. Maisy and Becky must have noticed, too, but neither had done anything about it. It was almost as if they were trying to hold on to Becky’s childhood with both hands, afraid to let go and have her spin off into an uncertain future. I wondered sometimes whether I had passed this on to both of them, the fear of the unnamed and unknown. A fear of not remembering your own past.
The sliding and scuffing noise returned above our heads. Maisy and Georgia were up in the attic now, carefully examining everything. When they’d returned to the house, Georgia had been excited about a picture on a phone, and they’d rushed upstairs to the attic, Maisy complaining the whole time that she’d already looked there. But first Georgia had shown the picture to me, and I could almost hear the sound of the projector starting in my head, a bright beam of light showing me a piece of china hidden in the back of my closet. It wasn’t there anymore. I knew that much. It was somewhere else, and I was glad I didn’t remember where. I’d stared at the phone screen and had kept my expression blank.
“Birdie?”
I looked at Becky when I realized she’d said my name several times.
“You’re coloring out of the lines.”
The page I’d been working on was an intricate drawing of an anonymous field in summer, with various insects and birds filling the air, and a row of cypress trees on the edge of the page. I had chosen a purple crayon, Vivid Violet, because it reminded me of something pleasant, but I’d been busy scribbling over the field without thought to the individual plants or leaves or feather or wing. It was as if wiry purple tumbleweeds had rolled onto the field, collecting everything in their tangled mess.
Scratch. The noise of something large being slid across the attic floor sat me up straight, turning my insides to melted wax. I smelled the wax, felt the heat go out from a lit candle, felt myself immersed in darkness again. I heard a small snap and I latched onto the sound, opening my palm to see I’d broken the crayon.
They won’t find it. The thought wafted through my fractured mind like smoke, teasing me with a gossamer memory. What? What won’t they find? My mind darted away from the question, unwilling to hear the answer. Something important. Something that could break a heart.
I remembered back to the summer the movie people came to Apalach, how the scouts had visited the house three times, saying it would be perfect for the director or even one of the main stars to stay in during the duration of the filmmaking. Except it would need updating, with new furniture and curtains. They liked my grandmother’s paintings, and said they could stay, but we’d probably need to move the beehives for the duration. Daddy hadn’t been happy about it, but he’d never been able to tell me no. Maybe he should have, just that once.
Scratch. The sound came again from another corner of the attic. They’ll find it. My thoughts skittered away again before I could ask, Find what?
A tap sounded on the partly opened door, and I let the broken crayon drop to the floor.
“May I come in?” my sister-in-law, with her leathery skin and rough voice, called from the doorway.
“Hi, Aunt Marlene,” Becky said with her beautiful smile. “We’re just coloring.”
“Hello, sweetie.” Marlene entered the room, the smells of dog and motorcycle gas preceding her.
“Hello to you, too, Birdie.” She stood over the table and looked down at the books. “Nice job, B
ecky. Not sure about yours, Birdie. I think you’re supposed to stay within the lines.”
I responded by turning my face and pretending I hadn’t heard.
“She knows,” Becky said. “I told her.”
Marlene edged backward and sat on the edge of the bed. “Where is everybody? Nobody answered the door, but I saw Georgia’s car.”
“They’re up in the attic looking for s-something.” Becky’s stutter meant she’d sensed my apprehension, her awareness like that of a bee’s antennae in charge of all movement and behavior.
Marlene smoothed her sun-spotted hands on the soft pink bedspread. “What are they looking for?”
The light began to fade in my mind, the flickering projector grinding to a stop. But I forced my eyes to see myself ten years ago, rushing up the attic stairs to see what antiques the designer might think could add an air of sophistication to the house, to make my house fit for a Hollywood actor.
I remembered passing Maisy on the stairs and shouting at her to go put on some lipstick and do something with her hair, and she’d started to cry. I didn’t have time to tell her that I thought she was beautiful the way she was, but that Hollywood had different standards. She was pregnant again, too soon after losing Lilyanna. It was her fourth pregnancy, her first since Lilyanna, but I could tell already by how her face seemed hollowed out, her eyes sunken in their sockets, that this one wouldn’t last, either. But I pretended I didn’t see her pain, too afraid that if it got too close to me, I’d be lost again. I wished I could go back to that day and make myself stop on those stairs with Maisy, to tell her what I really saw when I looked at her. To stop myself from going up to the attic. But I can’t. Life cannot be lived in reverse, no matter how much we wish it could.
And then I remembered Georgia stopping me in the hallway outside her room, angry at me for making Maisy cry, and I was near tears for disappointing Georgia once again. Mama, I’m in trouble. I shook my head at her, told her that I didn’t have time. I was too busy with my new distraction, anything to avoid remembering a past that got farther and farther away with each new project and halfhearted dream of being more than ordinary.
The wave of heat that hit me as soon as I opened the attic door almost made me retreat. The single dormer window shot sporadic beams of light through the dust-encrusted shutters, guiding me across the attic floor. Holding my breath, I threw open the shutters and after several attempts was able to lift the window sash, allowing in warm, fresh air. I gulped it in, then fanned my hands, hoping to clear out the mustiness of the unused attic.
I’d been creating a pile of useful things by the top of the steps, including some of my mama’s estate-sale finds of miscellaneous china vases and silver pillboxes, when I spotted what looked like an old cedar chest against the wall. It had once been at the foot of my parents’ bed, but had been moved up here after Mama died. Hoping it contained some of her artwork, I carefully raised the lid and peered inside. For a moment it seemed as if I were staring into a time tunnel, colors and faces and places swirling in front of me, peering around the dark curtain into my past.
Blood rushed through my head, the bright white pain sending me stumbling backward, as everything I’d forgotten filled every fold in my brain, the knowledge a sharpened blade cutting deep. The only way I knew to make it stop was to close my eyes and make myself forget again, make myself forget the very words that could be used to share a story that should never be told.
“I actually came by to ask Birdie something.”
Marlene’s voice pulled me back to the pink table and the coloring book and the mackerel skies outside Becky’s window. They showed a storm was coming and there would be no shelter from it.
Marlene came and sat down next to me on the floor, her skinny dark legs crisscrossed like a child’s. She looked up at me with George’s eyes and I wondered if she did that on purpose, if she knew that every time I looked into her eyes my heart broke a little more.
“Ever since they found your daddy’s truck in the swamp, something’s been bugging me.”
The silver-skinned clouds with their pink and orange tint slid by in the sky outside. Mackerel sky, mackerel sky, never long wet, never long dry. The song came to me from deep in my memory, a memory of standing on the dock looking out across the bay toward the rippling sky that looked so much like the side of a fish, my hand tucked inside my father’s.
“Something my brother, George, said to me before he shipped off to Vietnam.”
The projector in my head flared to life, illuminating everything, leaving nothing in the dark corners. I closed my eyes, wanting to shield them from the truth, but the light came from inside my head so that nothing was hidden.
“He said that you knew who’d stolen your daddy’s truck. And if they ever found it, they should ask you about it.”
I stared at her, but it was George’s face I saw, his angry eyes as I told him I didn’t know if I could wait for him to come back from Vietnam. He was twenty-five—too old, I told him—having a bad feeling about him leaving. As if I knew that we shouldn’t be separated. That being left alone with a secret we shared would be like digging a moat without a bridge to cross it. But he left anyway, saying he had to. That maybe a bullet to the head would fix what was broken in him. I understood what he meant more than he probably thought I would. I’ve never been able to make those I love stay with me.
I tried to find a song that would drown out the memories, to sing it loudly so Marlene would back away, would stop asking her questions. But I could only sit and look at her and see her brother, remember his leaving me and me pretending that I could be strong one more time.
chapter 25
“The busy bee has no time for sorrow.”
William Blake
—NED BLOODWORTH’S BEEKEEPER’S JOURNAL
Georgia
I sat on Marlene’s front steps and tilted back my beer bottle, letting the cold liquid slip down my throat. Marlene sat beside me, surrounded by her panting dogs, and in my own exhaustion I couldn’t help but wonder why they were so tired.
The night air lay heavy and still, the sweat that coated my skin unable to evaporate. As soon as we’d finished searching every last nook and cranny in my grandfather’s attic, I’d volunteered to look through Marlene’s, just in case the soup cup had ended up there. After my grandmother had died, Grandpa in his grief had decided it would be easier to get over his sadness if he packed up everything that reminded him of her. I had saved some of Grandma’s garage-sale finds before they could be hauled away and carted them over to Marlene’s attic, where they still languished.
Among the few things that had escaped exile were a few of Grandma’s paintings, because, he’d said, neither Birdie, Maisy, nor I was a skilled enough artist to make replacements. Only the fact that he was right took the sting from his words.
“You looked in all the drawers in the house?” Marlene asked.
“Almost. I mean, there’s the bedroom furniture we haven’t gone through, but it wouldn’t make sense for it to be there. And Maisy said she and Grandpa already looked. I’ll look just because you mentioned it, but I’m not holding out any hopes.”
I drained the beer and had just set it on the step beside me when Marlene handed me another. “You deserve it, and you’re not driving anywhere. You must be plum tuckered out, not to mention disappointed.”
I took the bottle without argument and popped off the cap. “Why am I even here? I should have known that finding that soup cup after all these years would be impossible. It’s been too long. It was probably a flea-market find, and Birdie kept it as a memento of her mother. I always assumed she wanted me to keep it a secret to hide it from Grandpa. He throws away everything.”
“You’re probably right,” Marlene said, taking a swig from her own beer.
“It’s just . . .” I slapped at a mosquito on my exposed abdomen. I’d changed into cutoff jeans shorts and
a vintage patchwork halter top when I’d headed up to Marlene’s un-air-conditioned attic. It was nothing I’d ever wear in public, but I felt safe donning it for attic scouring. I continued. “It’s just that when James first showed me his teacup and saucer, I was pretty sure it was the same pattern. I just need to see it. I pride myself on being very accurate in my estimates, and I don’t want to be wrong if the answer is this close,” I said, holding up my thumb and index finger less than an inch apart.
I stretched my legs out in front of me, leaning my elbows on the step behind me. “Otherwise, why am I here?”
“Do you want me to answer that?”
I took a sip from my bottle. “Not really.”
“Well, whether or not you find this piece of china, or if they find out who the man in your granddaddy’s truck is, you can’t leave until you’ve taken care of some unfinished business.”
“Sure I can.”
“But you won’t. You’re like your daddy with that streak of stubbornness as wide as the river. You’ve been looking for a reason to come down here where it didn’t look like you were standing with your hat in your hand. And now you’re here. What are you going to do next?”
I pulled up my knees and rested my chin on their rounded tops, searching for words, the beer making it difficult to catch my thoughts before they floated away. I looked up at the dusk sky and the pale outlines of clouds, but could only see fragments of broken china. “Nothing has changed. Not between Maisy and me, or with Birdie. I’ve tried; I really have. But I can’t make people change. And I miss my job, and my house. My antique things.”
“You’re right about one thing, darlin’. You can’t make other people change.” She sent me a knowing glance, but I returned my gaze to the sky above again, and the moving bits of china that seemed to be searching for a place to fit like some giant jigsaw.