by Karen White
I kissed Grandpa and Birdie good night, but didn’t tell them good-bye. That would have been like admitting defeat, to acknowledge that I’d been there and fled again without anything changing. Birdie was silent, her eyes darting from side to side as if following the thoughts inside her head, but seemed clearer than I’d seen them in years. I knew she could speak; Maisy had told me that she’d heard her whispering to Grandpa. I imagined I saw her lean forward, prepared to say something. I wanted to go to her and force her to talk to me, to explain our lives. To tell me what Grandpa was sorry for.
Sometimes all we need to do to forgive our parents is to understand their own childhoods. James was probably right. But I was an ordinary person, with ordinary reserves of strength and courage. I was pretty sure I didn’t have enough of either to dig through the mountain of Birdie’s past to get to my own.
Grandpa took my hands as I straightened, as if he knew I was saying good-bye. He stared at me solemnly, as if he wanted to tell me something important. I grabbed the pad of paper and pencil that he’d been working with during his PT sessions, then placed the pad in his lap and the pencil between his fingers.
I waited patiently, listening to the scratch of the pencil against paper. Drape hives.
I read the words out loud. “You mean drape them with black? But no beekeeper has died, Grandpa. And you’re getting better. We don’t need to worry about that, okay?”
He shook his head and wrote two more words. Bad luck.
I drew my brows together. “I’m not sure I understand. I know it’s bad luck if the hives aren’t draped after the death of the beekeeper. I won’t forget if that’s what you’re worried about. But that’s a long way away. You just need to focus on getting back your strength.”
He opened his fingers and let the pencil fall to the floor, and Birdie sat up straight, watching him closely. As if they each expected the other to speak.
Maisy tapped on the open door before stepping inside. “That’s an old wives’ tale,” she said dismissively. “It’s time for Grandpa to go to bed.”
“I was just saying good night.”
He’d already begun to raise himself from his chair, resisting Maisy’s offer of help.
“Good night, Maisy,” I said.
Her look told me she knew I was leaving and was doing it the easy way, without saying good-bye. For a brief moment I thought she would ask me to stay, even hoped that she would. But the moment passed, the unsaid words like ghosts floating in the space between us.
If you want things to change, you have to stop waiting for someone else to make the first move. I knew Marlene was probably right, but I saw the hurts between Maisy and me as something impenetrable and insurmountable, rendering us both paralyzed.
“Becky wants you to say good night. She’s out on the back porch getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, so don’t keep her waiting.”
I nodded, but before I left the room, Maisy called me back. “Georgia—wait.”
Our eyes met, but neither one of us said anything, our words trapped behind too much stubbornness and too many years of hurt to count. I turned around and left the room without looking back.
I found Becky rocking in one of the old chairs. The moon was pregnant with light, its fullness mirrored on the rippling surface of the bay.
“Mama said I could look at the moon for a little while longer. It’s so pretty tonight.”
“It is,” I agreed, sitting on the top step in front of her.
“When I was little, Mama told me that the whole world looked up at the same moon each night. She said that’s how I could always stay close to you. I think she does the same thing.”
I spoke past the lump in my throat. “Why do you think that?”
“Because sometimes when we’d come outside to see the full moon, she’d get sad.”
I took a few deep breaths so I could speak. “It’s time for you to go to bed. I wanted to say good night before I left.” I stood and pulled her out of her chair, exaggerating the effort it took to lift her light frame. I hugged her to me, marveling at the sturdy feel of her, the smell of baby shampoo and nail polish. She was smart, and kind, and a great tennis player. And loved by two parents who had created the wonderful person she was. I hoped Maisy never told her the truth about who had given birth to her. That had been the easy part.
I kissed the top of her head. “Don’t let the Madisons of the world ever make you think you’re less than you are. When I first had to give talks in front of a large group of people, my boss gave me great advice. He said to imagine them naked. That way I’d have no reason to feel self-conscious.”
Becky giggled. “I’ll try.” Her face became serious. “I think you should get a cell phone.”
I frowned. “Why would I do that?”
“So I can call you whenever I want to. Or text you. Since you probably can’t text, you can just send me a smiley face so that I know you’re thinking about me.”
“But I think about you all the time without having a cell phone.”
“Except this way, I’d know.”
I sighed. “I’ll think about it.”
“My phone number is the same as the house except it has a one at the end instead of a three.”
“Easy enough to remember,” I agreed.
“Please?” she said, and I knew it wasn’t a casual request. I remembered how much I’d needed my aunt Marlene growing up, somebody who was related but removed enough from the complexities of my family life.
“All right,” I said, not regretting it as much as I thought I would.
We walked into the house and I said good night, not waiting long enough to see her disappear into the hallway upstairs, already feeling like an outsider again as soon as I’d made it to the driveway. The next morning I awakened before the sun, loaded my packed bags into the trunk, and left a note for Marlene, avoiding her look of recrimination that would hurt more than anybody else’s.
It took me a week before I found myself standing outside the brightly lit Apple Store at the Lakeside Shopping Center near New Orleans, looking through the glass trying to find an employee who looked close to my age. I didn’t want to be made to feel inferior to someone half my age explaining how a phone worked.
There appeared to be no one inside over the age of twenty-five. With a deep sigh I entered the store, my eyes blinking under the glowing fluorescent lights that bounced off of silver laptop covers and walls of neon phone accessories. I was so out of my element that I nearly turned around and left. But all I had to do to keep my feet rooted to the floor was remember Becky’s plea.
Three hours later I walked out with a phone as large as my head (so I could see the letters better, according to Tyler, whose sketchy attempt at beard growing just magnified his youthfulness), and with a rudimentary knowledge of what an app was and how to dial a phone number. He’d also helped me store the three phone numbers I knew: the house, Becky’s, and Marlene’s. And then I asked him to add Maisy’s, but only because Becky had given it to me before I left. Just in case, she’d said. Tyler showed me how to add more, but I couldn’t think of who I might call on a regular basis.
When I got back to the office, Mr. Mandeville was waiting for me, a look of excitement on his face. “Caroline Harrison has called for you twice. I’m hoping this means they would like us to appraise and sell some of the larger lots from her grandmother’s estate. I would send you, of course, since you already have a rapport with the client.”
I was unprepared for the surge of excitement that was immediately replaced with panic. How could I see James again? He’d kissed me and I’d run away, because fleeing was the only thing, besides valuing old china and furniture, that I was any good at. James had stirred up emotions that had long lain dormant, and for good reason. I was damaged beyond repair, a padlock without a key. He was healing from a reeling loss, and the last thing he needed was someone with as
many scars as he had.
What’s your price for flight? I could hear him asking me that now. And I had a ready answer: self-preservation in exchange for a life that was more than ordinary.
“You can use the phone in my office,” Mr. Mandeville offered.
“Actually, I’ll call back on my cell phone.” I ignored his look of surprise. “Do you have the number?”
He handed me a small pink message form. “Let her know that we are willing to negotiate our rate if the estate is large enough.”
“I’ll make sure she knows,” I said, hastily retreating to my office and closing the door. I looked down at the paper and painstakingly entered her name into my address book and then her phone number. After I’d saved it, I hit the call button.
“James Graf.” I was unprepared to hear James’s voice on the other end and considered hanging up.
“Hello?” he said, a touch of impatience in his tone.
“James, hi. It’s Georgia. I thought I was returning Caroline’s phone call.”
He was silent, and I imagined him hanging up on me. Not that I would blame him. “Hello, Georgia. This is my cell number, actually. I know Caroline’s been trying to reach you. She must have left my number for you to call back.”
I blushed, realizing why she’d done that, and also embarrassed at the annoyance in his voice.
“Yes, well, if you could tell her I returned her call and to call me back on my cell.”
“Your cell?”
“Yeah. I told Becky I’d get one so she could reach me. She said I could text her, too, but I’m not sure about that.”
“Sounds like Becky.” I heard the smile in his voice.
“Let me give you my number.” I started with the area code, but he cut me off.
“No need. It’s already stored on my phone and I can share it with Caroline. And I know what she wanted to tell you, if you have a minute.”
I stared into my open desk drawer, the one filled with all of the loose keys I’d been collecting. “Sure.”
I listened as he shuffled papers in the background. “She made me take notes so I wouldn’t forget anything. And then told me I was in charge of keeping this and any new information together in one place.”
Despite everything, I found myself smiling. It was something an older sister would do, something I would have done with Maisy when I was still a part of her life.
“I think she mentioned how our other sister Elizabeth is big into genealogy and had already gathered quite a few family documents. Elizabeth and Caroline pulled out all the papers this past weekend, looking for any mention of the china, remembering how our family had brought it with them when they emigrated in 1947 from Switzerland. We think they found something significant.”
I looked at the surface of my desk, covered with facts and figures regarding my estimate of the custom Haviland Limoges pattern, the blank spaces where I needed to insert photos, but I hadn’t yet called Caroline to request them. A chill swept over me all of a sudden as I remembered something Marlene had said to me the first time I’d left Apalachicola. The past is never done with you, no matter how much you think you’re done with it.
“And?” I asked.
“They found the immigration papers from our family’s entry into Ellis Island. Giovanni and Yvette Bosca, arriving with their seven children, including their eldest daughter and her husband—a Swiss national—and another child Yvette claimed was her deceased sister’s seven-year-old daughter, Colette. Colette Mouton.”
Mouton. I said the name out loud, hoping it would help me recall where I’d seen it.
“The name written in the book found in your grandfather’s truck,” James said.
“Oh.” It was the only coherent word I could pull out of a brain that was whirring in circles, trying to settle on a moving target.
“There’s more.” He hesitated. “Caroline was right about our grandmother’s name being the Americanized version. She was always known to us as Ida, but there’s a French version of the name.” He paused, waiting for me.
“And?” I asked impatiently.
“The French version is Adeline.”
I sat back in my chair, staring at a brass carriage clock whose hands had stopped sometime in the last century at two forty-three. If only I could stop time now, or move back the hands to just five minutes before. I wouldn’t have made this phone call. And I wouldn’t know that my grandfather had been lying to all of us.
“Adeline?” I closed my eyes, hearing Birdie call out the name in her sleep, the anguish and grief in her voice.
“Yes.” He hesitated again, aware of the effect his words might have on me. “Georgia, how old is Birdie?”
I shook my head, forgetting that he couldn’t see me. “I told you before, we’re not sure—and we’ve never found her birth certificate. If I had to guess, I’d say she’s about seventy-five.”
“Which would make her about seven years old in 1947.”
“But that’s . . .” I meant to say the word “impossible.” Improbable, maybe, but certainly possible. I pressed the heel of my free hand against my temple, remembering something my grandmother had told me. “Birdie wasn’t born in Apalachicola. Her parents lived with her grandparents in Gainesville when they were first married, and that’s where Birdie was born and spent her early years. They didn’t move here until after the war.” I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to remember the whole story. “The house had belonged to Grandpa’s brother, but he died in the war, and then after my great-grandpa died, Birdie and her family moved to Apalach.” All the air seemed to leave my voice. “Nobody here in Apalach knew Birdie when she was a baby, because she didn’t come to live there until she was older.”
There was a slight pause. “Like when she was seven or eight years old?”
“Yes,” I whispered into the phone. “Where is Colette now?”
“We don’t know yet. Caroline has gone back to Elizabeth with the question, so hopefully we’ll be able to find out something.”
There was a long silence. Finally he said, “You know what this means, don’t you?”
When I didn’t say anything, he answered. “It means that you and I aren’t done yet.”
I knew he wasn’t talking about the china, or Birdie, or last names. Hearing his voice forced me to remember why I hated good-byes. They always reminded me of what I’d left behind, and what I was fleeing—grief and condemnation all rolled into one innocuous word. A life without connections and commitments meant I never had to say it again. I reminded myself of this before I answered.
“Yes, we are. I’ll take the research from here, and include any information I find in the valuation report I send to Caroline.”
I waited for a moment for him to respond, then realized I was listening to dead air. When I pulled the phone away and looked at the screen, I read the words “call ended.” Instead of being relieved, I felt hot and cold, making me wonder whether I’d caught a bug. But this feeling was worse than a fever. I stood abruptly, needing to move so that I didn’t have time to dwell on the sudden emptiness that pressed against my chest wall like an inflated balloon.
I walked quickly to Mr. Mandeville’s office, stopping outside at his secretary’s desk. Jeannie Stokes looked up at me with big blue eyes, and brushed aside a thick lock of blond hair. I held up my iPhone. “Do you know how this thing works?”
Jeannie was probably a decade or so older than me, but managed the perfect eye roll. “Do alligators pee in the swamp?” She held her hand out, with its sensibly short, unpolished nails, and I gave her my phone. “What do you want me to show you?”
“I need to look up a phone number in Apalachicola, Florida. Can it do that?”
She didn’t even bother with an eye roll this time. “Just give me the first and last name.”
“Actually, it’s for the public library. I need to speak with
someone there.”
It took Jeannie less than five minutes to pull up the number. She handed me the phone. “See this hyperlink in blue next to the picture of a telephone? Just click on it and it will dial the library.”
I took the phone and, after a quick thanks, dialed the number. Caty Greene had said she had access to all sorts of databases and research sources. I needed to know about the name Mouton, and the connection to the Beaulieu estate in France. As I waited for someone to answer, I found myself hoping for a dead end.
chapter 34
“The three most difficult things to understand: the mind of a woman, the labor of the bees, and the ebb and flow of the tide.”
Georgian proverb
—NED BLOODWORTH’S BEEKEEPER’S JOURNAL
Maisy
Birdie sat in the turret window of her bedroom as Maisy brushed her hair. Birdie had stopped singing, and hadn’t spoken another word as far as she knew, the silence not as peaceful as Maisy had thought it might be during the years of constant noise. Instead the silence seemed full of anticipation and dread, like waiting for a jack-in-the-box to pop out.
The silence had started the day after Lyle had found Birdie wandering the streets carrying the Limoges soup cup. Or maybe it was the day after, when Georgia left. Maisy still had the cup. Caroline had handed it to her and asked her to give it to Georgia, and she’d forgotten. She’d moved it to her dressing table so she’d see it every day, but it was still waiting for her to pack it up and ship it to New Orleans. Maisy hadn’t decided whether she’d include a note, not that it mattered. No matter how many times she walked past the piece of china, she just kept forgetting to send it.
Maisy pulled the brush through the pale strands, noticing for the first time that it had dulled somewhat, its shine diminished, as if Birdie walked in the shade now instead of the sun. Birdie’s eyes, however, were bright and alert, taking in everything Maisy could see, and a lot that she could not. It was as if all the energy she’d once expended on her physical appearance had been consolidated into a single train of thought. Maisy wasn’t sure how she felt about this change, unsure whether it was better than the old Birdie, who cared about which shade of lipstick, and who didn’t wear her nightgown all day. It scared her a little, not knowing what was going on inside Birdie’s head, what plans she was considering, and what they would look like once they emerged.