by Karen White
“Birdie never talked about her childhood. What we do know, we heard from Grandma. I do know that Grandma wanted more children, but they couldn’t have them. I guess that’s why Birdie was so spoiled. Doesn’t really prepare a person for being a mother.”
“No, but she did pass on some really good genes. I know she must be in her seventies, but she doesn’t look a day over forty-five.”
“It’s always been a joke between Maisy and me. Birdie has never told us how old she is. We looked for her birth certificate when we went through all the papers in Grandpa’s desk and in the china cabinet but didn’t find anything. I know she and my daddy were in the same grade in school, which means they must have been about the same age.” I was silent, doing calculations in my head. “He was born in 1940, which means he’d be seventy-five now. If she’s the same age, that would mean she was about thirty-nine when I was born, and forty-four when Maisy was born. Not a popular choice back then, but certainly doable. And probably both accidental pregnancies, knowing her. Can’t see her really planning on being a mother.”
James didn’t say anything for a while, his breathing smooth and even, as if he were waiting for me to speak. Finally he said, “It’s your turn, you know.”
The fists I hadn’t remembered clenching softened, as if I’d been anticipating a confession, a letting go of demons. “Are you referring to the scene this morning in the park?”
He didn’t say anything, but I felt his steady blue gaze on the side of my face.
I took a deep breath, wondering as I did so why I felt compelled to tell him. Fragile minds. The understanding of what they were like was something we shared. Something we both understood. I closed my eyes and began to speak. “Lyle and Maisy had a little girl, Lilyanna Joy. She was named after both grandmothers, but her middle name was because Maisy had already had two miscarriages and they were so thrilled when she carried another baby to full term.” I opened my eyes wide to stare at the stars and the curve of the moon so I wouldn’t see the still face of Lilyanna as Lyle had lifted her from the pool. “She was a sweet little girl, always so happy. And she looked just like Maisy.” I smiled at the memory, hearing my sister call her daughter Mini-Me.
I turned my head away from him, letting the tears slip onto the wood planks. “She drowned in a baby pool at a Fourth of July party. Everybody was watching her, which meant that nobody really was.”
“And Maisy blames you?”
I nodded, glaring at the cold face of the moon that placidly ruled the night despite all the turbulence below. “She says she asked me to watch Lilyanna while she went to the bathroom. I don’t remember that. I’d had too many beers, so maybe she did, but Lilyanna drowned because nobody saw her run over to the little pool.”
“So you were to blame.” He didn’t say it as an accusation, but almost as if he wanted to make me hear it the way somebody else would. To see the fault lines in the reasoning.
I sat up because it made it easier to breathe. “I was the older sister, the one in charge. I was the one who always took responsibility, because that was the role we both understood.” I faced him, his skin blue in the moonlight. “It was how we navigated the world when we were kids.”
“Because Birdie was your mother.”
He made it a statement of fact, not one of condemnation or question.
“You’re very observant,” I said, resting my chin on my knees.
“It’s a newly acquired skill.” Our eyes met. “Is Lilyanna why you left?”
I wrapped my arms tighter around my bent knees, the damp evening breeze cool on my bare arms. “It’s your turn now,” I said.
He sat up, too, but faced me. “All right. But you’ll still have to answer the question.”
I met his eyes, wondered whether I had a choice. “All right.”
Venus glowed even brighter, as if trying to outshine the moon, and I found myself cheering it on.
“Caroline told you about Brian?”
“Yes,” I said. “And what happened afterward. She only told me because she was worried about you.”
He dipped his head. “I know. And I’m glad you know.” Lifting his gaze, he said, “But there’s one thing she doesn’t know, nor ever will.”
I watched the moonlight play against the smooth planes of his face, the forgiving light an artist’s brush smoothing any imperfections. Maybe that was what this was, this mutual confession. To illuminate life’s potholes that couldn’t hide the beauty and strength of the person beneath. Not to compare whose life had been harder, but to confirm that it could be survived.
I didn’t prompt him to continue, knowing it had to be his choice.
“Kate was three months pregnant when she died. She hadn’t told anyone.”
When he didn’t say anything else, I asked, “Was it Brian’s?”
He shook his head. “No.” He paused. “It wasn’t mine, either. I had to go to a lot of trouble to get that information. But I was like a man possessed, desperate to find a way to hurt Brian as much as he’d hurt me.”
I was silent for a moment, letting his words settle into the crevices of my brain. “Have you told anyone?”
“No—not about the pregnancy or the fact that I will never know who the father was. And I never will. She’s dead and there’s no changing that. I won’t do that to her family or her memory.” I heard him exhale deeply, as if exorcising demons. “I loved her. The good parts of her. I imagine I always will.”
I turned to him with a realization. “Is that why you don’t want to speak to Brian? Because you’re afraid you’ll tell him?”
James’s eyes were like black holes in his face. “No. It’s because I’m afraid that I won’t.” He looked away as if to hide something. But in the light of the moon I’d seen the guilt of wanting to own a piece of someone else’s hurt.
I took his hand and squeezed, to let him know I understood how you can hate someone as much as you loved them. But how the love never went away.
The light from the sky had completely gone now, the sun swallowed by the waves of the bay. The words came to my mouth as if I’d always known them. “Entre chien et loup.”
“I thought you didn’t speak French.”
My eyebrows knitted together. “I don’t. I just recall that one thing—something Birdie used to say when Maisy and I were small.”
“What does it mean?”
It took a moment to respond, to remember past all those years to when Birdie and I would sit on the dock watching the sky. “The literal translation is ‘between dog and wolf.’ It’s used to describe when the darkness and light are equal so that you can’t tell the difference between a dog and a wolf.”
“Birdie taught you that?”
I nodded. “It was a long time ago. Before everything changed.”
Something large splashed in the water beneath us, but neither of us flinched. It was almost as if our clasped hands meant we were protected from harm. Like when Maisy and I used to lie in my bed during thunderstorms and hold hands.
“Two thousand and five, right? The year they were going to make a movie here and Birdie was trying to fix up the house.”
I nodded. “Yep. She just collapsed in the attic while looking for something, and she hasn’t spoken a word since.”
“Did they ever make the movie?”
I shook my head. “No. Everything was pretty torn up after the ’05 hurricane season, so they moved on. Didn’t really matter. Birdie was practically catatonic, and Maisy was pregnant again too soon after Lilyanna’s passing. And then I left.”
I felt him watching me, our hands still clasped, and I welcomed the warmth, the closeness. It reminded me again of how much I’d missed being touched, and the reasons for my abstinence.
“It’s my turn now, isn’t it?” I asked, wishing the breeze would steal my words.
He didn’t speak, allowing me to le
t go of his hand and walk away without saying anything if I chose. I’m just a stranger on a plane. Of course he wasn’t, not anymore. I didn’t know what he’d become to me, but I trusted him with my need to find understanding. And maybe even compassion.
I stayed where I was, looking up at the two glowing orbs in the sky, so close but not touching, the entire night sky their domain. “I was pregnant when I left. I was twenty-five years old, living at home and working as a barmaid on the riverfront. I got pregnant as if I were some stupid clueless teenager who didn’t know any better. I know that’s true, because that’s pretty much verbatim what Maisy said when she found out. Well, minus a few other things about my character that I don’t care to repeat. She couldn’t understand why I’d been allowed to get pregnant when she was the one who’d done everything right.”
“I imagine that dealing with Birdie and your unexpected pregnancy was pretty hard for both of you.”
I closed my eyes, tilting my face to the moon. “If only that were the worst of it.”
“There are worse things?”
The day at the Seafood Festival all those years ago came to me with sudden clarity. Seeing Lyle unexpectedly, seeing my newly rounded face and immediately realizing my predicament, and then Maisy, also about four months pregnant, turning the corner to see Lyle consoling me, promising to help make everything all right. “Maisy accused Lyle of being my enabler, of encouraging my choices. Of believing I was much more interesting and exciting than she could ever be—all those things my mother’s inattention had fed her for years. I know it was the hurt over my pregnancy; I do. But she didn’t think to ask if I was okay. Or if I needed help. Lyle did, and that made it worse somehow.”
James didn’t show any surprise. “Were you?” he asked. “Okay, that is.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I was a mess.” I closed my eyes, blocking the shining planet from view. “We always hurt the ones we love the most, don’t we?”
He didn’t answer, and I thought of his wife again, and his best friend, and the kind of hurt a person could drown in.
“What about you? Did you ask Maisy if she was okay?”
“No,” I said quietly. “I knew better than to try, knowing I’d set myself up for more hurt. Maisy has always been very good at pushing people away. Like she doesn’t believe she’s worthy of love. Birdie taught us that, I think. I just took it in a far different direction than Maisy.”
We were both silent for a moment, the dock rocking gently beneath us. “What happened to your baby?”
“I gave her up,” I said quietly, watching as a night heron dipped slowly over the water, the moonlight tinting the top of its black crown with silver.
His hand squeezed mine, a reassuring gesture. “Is Becky your daughter?”
I wanted to tell him that it was none of his business, that part of the reason I agreed to let him come with me was because he said he wouldn’t ask me any questions I didn’t want to answer. But maybe he hadn’t.
“Yes,” I said, the word escaping into the air, no heavier than a single drop of water.
“And her father?”
“A guy named Sam whose last name I never knew.” I looked down at my feet, spreading my bare toes against the pale wood of the dock, remembering Maisy and me as little girls, stealing Birdie’s polish and painting our toenails on the dock. The memory made me want to cry. “I left to go on the road with a band who played at the bar where I worked, because I thought the lead guitarist looked like Jon Bon Jovi and I was looking for a way out of my life. When I told him that I was pregnant he made it clear that he wasn’t interested in fatherhood, so he ditched me after a gig in Louisiana. I’d hitched a ride with another band that was performing at the Seafood Festival, hoping to throw myself on my grandpa’s mercy—at least until the baby was born. I didn’t think much past that.”
“And you ran into Maisy and Lyle.”
“She was pregnant again—due about a month or so after I was—and her doctors told her that had to be her last, whether she carried to full term or not.” I took a deep breath, trying to keep the emotion out of my voice so I wouldn’t fall apart. “Lyle was the only one thinking straight, so he took me to Marlene’s. It was her idea to move me to her friends’ house in New Orleans before anybody even knew I was in town, much less pregnant. I lived there until the baby was born in March. I moved in November—just three months after Katrina. Just to give you an idea of how little thought I gave to the whole plan.
“And then fate sort of intervened. Because Maisy’s was a high-risk pregnancy, she’d been seeing a specialist in Panama City. But after Katrina, he moved temporarily to New Orleans to help out after the storm. She was in New Orleans when Becky was born. And when she miscarried.” I stopped speaking for a moment, trying to find my breath. “It’s funny, but even from the start I never thought of the baby as mine. I loved her, and wanted her to be healthy, but I never felt like more than a surrogate. And when Maisy lost her baby, it was like I’d been given a chance for redemption.”
“Redemption?”
“For Lilyanna. I thought Maisy would forgive me if I could replace the child she lost, and we could go back to the way we’d been before.”
James shook his head slowly. “I can’t see Maisy just going along with it. She just seems so . . . responsible. A rule follower.”
“She didn’t want to. Not at first. She’d actually changed her mind and was getting ready to drive back to Florida without the baby. And then they put Becky in her arms.” I finally looked up and met his eyes. “It’s amazing what people will do for that one thing they want most in life.”
“So you never went back home.”
“Maisy told me not to go back, that she didn’t want to see me again. I agreed only because it was the only way I knew Maisy would be happy—if I were gone. And I had planned to leave anyway, go someplace where nobody knew who I was. I wanted to go back to school, have a real career. Make a life for myself. So I promised I wouldn’t come back. That I would never try to make Becky a part of my life.” I bit my lip, remembering the first time I’d seen her small, crumpled face, and how even then I knew I could never be her mother. “I’ll always be her aunt. If Maisy wants her to know the truth when she’s older, that’s up to her. But there’s never been any doubt in my mind that I made the right decision.”
“Have you ever told her that—that you don’t regret your decision? That you will never change your mind?”
I shook my head. “I shouldn’t have to. She’s my sister.”
He rubbed his thumb over my knuckles. “So that was your price for flight.” He touched my chin, made me look at him. “Was it worth it?”
The price for flight. I’d never thought of it that way, of my decision having any sort of value. But of course it did. Every choice meant giving something up to gain something else.
“I don’t know. I got everything I was looking for. But I no longer have a sister.”
His hand left my face and I found that I missed his touch. “So Maisy knew what she wanted most in life. What about you? What was the one thing you always wanted?”
I gave him a rueful smile, thinking about what a wonderful psychiatrist he could have been. I went through a long mental list of all the occupations I used to write in my elementary school papers—veterinarian, astronaut, Olympic runner—until I settled on the one thing that had shadowed my childhood and Maisy’s. “Not to be ordinary. Birdie once told Maisy and me that we never had to worry about being like her, because she’d never known the sorrow of being ordinary.”
“And now?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I miss my sister.” I pulled our clasped hands apart and stood, suddenly restless. Facing the moon, I asked, “What about you? What do you want?”
I heard him stand, then felt him behind me, close enough that his breath teased my neck. “Is it my turn now?”
I smile
d. “Sure.”
He was silent for a moment, as if he hadn’t considered it before. “I want to know my place in the world again. I want to be happy. But in my life before, Brian and Kate were part of both. I don’t know if I can separate them enough to start again.”
The waves swayed beneath the dock, and I moved with them, feeling as if I were part of the water, a drop easily absorbed by the whole. “Bees will fly for miles in search of pollen to bring back to the hive, but they have such great navigation systems that they never get lost. That’s why folklore has it that bees are the image of the human soul—because of their natural ability to always find their way back home.”
“So, according to bees, we should be able to find our way back, too, no matter how far we’ve traveled.”
I sighed. “Yeah. Something like that. I’d really like to believe it’s true.”
“So you can come back here to live?”
“Not necessarily. Just back to the person I was meant to be.”
He moved to face me, taking both of my hands in his. “Do you want to know what I think?” His hands tightened around mine as if he were afraid I might bolt.
“Not really.”
“I can’t help but think that maybe you and Maisy need to figure out what made Birdie the way she is so that you can understand that whatever happened in your childhood isn’t your fault.”
“Right. Like that’s even possible.”
His expression hinted of an apology even before he spoke. “And if you want Maisy back in your life, maybe you need to take the first step. Ask for her forgiveness. Even if you think you haven’t done anything wrong.”
My breaths came in hot, angry gasps. “Then maybe you should call Brian and tell him that you forgive him.”
He stared at me calmly. “I guess I deserved that. And you’re probably right. But it’s always hard hearing it from someone else, isn’t it?”
Without warning, he leaned forward and kissed me. It was soft and warm and electric, and over before I knew what was happening. He stared at me in the moonlight, waiting for me to say something.