A Place to Call Home

by Deborah Smith

  He had always called me “girlie.”

  “Girlie,” he said, “you wrote for me all through high school. And I couldn’t be prouder of what you’ve accomplished since then.”

  “Mr. C, I look at you and think maybe there’s still something to be proud of.”

  “Of course there is! Why do you even say something like that, girlie?”

  “I started believing my own credentials. I guess I wanted to be famous.”

  “Foo! You got caught up in a story that nearly killed you. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  I pointed at the television set across from my bed. “I’ve been watching the news. They just segued from a story about a double murder to a fluff feature on the new baby gorilla at Zoo Atlanta. They didn’t even have the decency to stick a commercial in between. Nothing’s sacred, shocking, or significant. It’s all just entertainment. I started thinking in those terms, too.”

  “Sure you did,” he said sarcastically. “You know we need more exploitation and cruelty in folks’ lives.”

  “We need more shame and guilt,” I said seriously. “Reporters stick cameras in the faces of people who’ve just survived some horrible tragedy and we show ’em sobbing for the rest of the world to peer at, and we tell our audience it’s important news. But it’s not. It’s voyeurism.”

  He squinted at me angrily. “You ever see a picture like that in the Shamrock?”

  “Of course not. But you know what I—”

  “I know there’re problems around here that need somebody younger than me to keep a hard, close eye on ’em. Greedy old-timers and greedy new-timers prowling around, the old farmland gettin’ carved up into little pieces, zoning voodoo. There’re important issues coming up this fall, girlie—your brother’s campaign for lieutenant governor, for one. For another, the church folk are planning an attack on the school board. There’s gonna be more arguing over teaching evolutionism and creationism than you can shake a monkey at. I could use you at the paper.”

  “I’m not leaving town. But I’m not making any plans to go back to work in journalism either.”

  He got up to leave and said softly, “Looks to me as if you’re not making plans to do anything but sit on your behind and feel sorry for yourself.”

  Claire,

  Your Grandpa Joe said there are two types of people in the world. The ones so damned stupid they don’t know enough to worry about anything, and the ones so smart they know there’s nothing worth worrying about.

  I try to stay busy and not worry about you. You could say I arranged to get access to your medical records. I bought them from people who specialize in information. Sorry, but I need to know how you’re doing.

  My information says you’re not doing well. Could I make you feel worse by showing up now? Probably.

  When you’re better, I’ll be there to help you. I’ll take you anywhere you want to go, get you set up with your old job again or any kind of media job you want. Hell, I’ll buy you a little newspaper to run if that’s what you want. I won’t let you sit there at the farm and forget everything you accomplished. If you’re blaming yourself for what happened and giving up on yourself, I’ll change your mind. I swear to you.

  I know we’ll have to get reacquainted before all this big talk of mine makes sense, but I’m working on that.

  Don’t give up. You never have before.

  Six months, the surgeons predicted. In six months I’d be walking without crutches. I was lucky; my leg showed every sign of a fast recovery. The reattached muscles twitched energetically. Beneath the cast the surgical scars tingled with healthy blood flow. Rejuvenated nerve endings radiated needle-sharp pains. I took a lot of pain pills and could barely get out of bed.

  This misery was the definition of a good recovery.

  I began to let the yellow blooms of April daffodils hypnotize me; the smell of jasmine creeping over the veranda lattices was almost too beautiful to bear. Dunshinnog rose in a natural cathedral of white dogwoods against a dark blue sky.

  It belonged to me now. Grandpa had left me the mountain in his will. He’d walked up to the top last spring to see the foxgloves in bloom. When he hadn’t returned, Daddy had gone after him. He’d found Grandpa sitting with his back against a tree, endlessly gazing across the valley where he’d been born, and lived, and died. I missed Grandpa so much, and marveled at the way Grandma Dottie stayed busy with her grandchildren and her great-grandchildren, her stock-market investments and the tennis matches she watched on television. She slept in Grandpa’s flannel shirts and wore his wristwatch.

  I remembered as a teenager asking Grandpa why Grandmother Elizabeth and Great-Gran Alice spent so much of their time by their bedroom windows, looking up toward the mountain. “They’d sit up there if they could,” he told me. “They’re busy with their memories. The old gals like to see as far as they can.”

  I suppose, like him, they finally saw far enough. When I was about fourteen both of the Old Grannies died in our house, in their beds, on the same night. After all the years they spent feuding over who would outlast the other, neither had had the last word.

  I found Grandmother Elizabeth when I went to wake her for breakfast. She was perfectly organized, lying on her back as if still asleep, but her eyes were half open, and her face looked, in the relaxed state of death, so much younger. I knew what was wrong the moment I saw her.

  I touched her cold face, sat down on the floor, and went into something I recognized later, when I was older, as a trance of quiet shock. It wasn’t until Mama ran into the room—having just discovered Great-Gran Alice dead in the bedroom down the hall—that I jumped up. “Don’t look,” I said, but Mama sat down beside her mother’s small body and clasped one of her hands. “Oh, Mawmaw,” she whispered. “You just couldn’t best Granny Alice, could you?” She began to cry, and when I stood beside her, crying, too, she took my hand, so we formed a chain, grandmother to mother to daughter, until Daddy burst in and said, “Oh, my lord, hon, I’m sorry,” and wrapped Mama in his arms.

  Grandpa sat with his mother, Great-Gran Alice, that morning, son and mother, him patting her shoulder; she was curled on her side, looking younger, like Grandmother Elizabeth, and for the first time in my life I saw Grandpa cry, with Grandma Dottie bent over him, hugging his bald head and crooning as if he were a child. There was learning and comfort in seeing the lines dissolve between me and other generations; it made me realize I was part of a journey, the next step. I thought of that now.

  It was peaceful at the farm, and I looked out the windows at a spring palette of greens. Shaggy llamas dotted the fields. I hurt constantly, ate badly, slept as much as possible, cried often when I was alone, and obsessed about how I’d failed Terri Caulfield.

  Most depressing of all, I spent many furtive hours in my bedroom using my cellular phone to call Florida. I questioned nurses, doctors, orderlies, and security guards who’d been on duty the night after my surgery. None of them recalled seeing a man who fit the description I gave of Roan.

  Some parts of me weren’t healing at all.

  My niece Amanda, redheaded, freckled, tomboyish and naturally charming, brought me fresh-baked cookies; she carried new puppies—descendants of General Patton—into my bedroom. She asked my opinion on little-girl subjects; she drew stars and flowers on my cast and stuck unicorn stickers on it.

  She was desperately lonely, motherless, idly neglected by Josh; she sucked in every breath of attention from her doting grandparents, her cousins, uncles, aunts, and me. And I loved her immediately because she needed me.

  I didn’t know what I needed yet. I used sensation for consolation. “What are you doing out there?” Mama called from the back porch one night. And my voice came back, disembodied and methodical. “Digging in the kitchen herb garden.”

  “Digging for what?” Mama asked reasonably. “I’m planting a row of lemon mint.”

  “It’s dark.”

  “I don’t need to see. I need to plant.”

  One afternoon
I fell down trying to sit on the commode in my bathroom. Renfrew hurried in to help me. Renfrew’s hair had gone gray under her black hairnet. She’d given up smoking some years ago but had taken up chewing. She spit tobacco juice in a small Spam can she carried in her apron. She had been known to spit at my nieces and nephews when they provoked her. She hadn’t spit at me yet.

  “Get me a teacup, Miz Mac,” I said sarcastically. “I believe I’ll sit here on the floor and piss in it.”

  “You watch your mouth.” She hurled the words back at me, flicking the air with her stringy hands. “I ain’t kowtowing to you like the rest of this bunch. I always told your mama you’d be all right if we could just get you home. But you cain’t mope around like this. Act like a lady.”

  “I was never a lady, Miz Mac. And this is a helluva way for me to come home.”

  “You better straighten up and fly right!”

  “I can’t straighten up,” I yelled, “and I can’t fly.”

  “Then you just pee on the floor,” she said, and left.

  After the cast was removed, I staggered around on crutches. My right leg was strange—just there, swollen but pliable, as if it had been attached to me without my consent, as if part of me had come home after a long visit to another person’s body. I knew I was healing, that recovery was just a matter of time and exercise, but I felt uninvolved.

  Sweet, pleasant Violet, an athletic little auburn-capped woman, was a physical therapist. She wore pink jogging suits and smiled cheerfully. She took charge of my daily rehab sessions in the garden room Mama and Daddy had added to the back of the house. I flexed the leg, practiced my balance, even began lifting weights.

  But Violet said one time too many “Oh, you’ll be as good as new,” and one day when she turned her back I picked up a needlepoint throw pillow from a wicker sofa and hit her as hard as I could.

  She sprang around and stared at me. “Claire?”

  “A woman’s dead because I couldn’t do enough to help her, but everyone around here expects me to forget about all that. I’m supposed to pretend it never happened and recuperate merrily. Chirp at me again and I’ll knock you down. My leg might be as good as new, but the rest of me is totally screwed.”

  This quirky assault on the sweetest of souls provoked a family conference. “I understand you, sis,” Josh said patiently. “I know where you’re coming from. Ideals don’t mean a damn thing, do they? You made a mistake. All right. Get on with it.”

  Brady hunched in a chair with a briefcase on his lap. “Your story’s worth money,” he said. “There could be book deals, Claire. Four production companies want to buy the rights for a TV movie. And talk shows … Look, I have an agent’s contract right here. Uncle Ralph and I went over it. It’s solid. You ought to sign it. Strike while the iron’s hot.”

  I looked at Mama and Daddy, who seemed sour on Josh and Brady. They’d never say so, but we had wisdom in common now, my parents and I. Good intentions don’t always do the job.

  “That damned lousy husband would probably have killed the young lady no matter what you did,” Daddy noted. “You did all you could for her.”

  “I used her, Daddy. That’s what it comes down to. I sold out. I sold her.”

  “The point is,” Mama announced angrily, “that you nearly got killed trying to help the poor soul and now a bunch of vultures want to make money off her—and off you. And one of them”—she glared at Brady—“is your own brother.”

  “Oh, this is all philosophical,” Brady said with urgent control, not understanding a thing. “Sis has a right to benefit from the publicity—sell her story …”

  “I don’t have any right to make money off Terri Caulfield’s life.” I struggled upright in bed. “Let’s resurrect her and give her the good news. How everybody plans to make money off her. How much I can make if I want to. She’ll be happy. Dead, but happy.”

  Brady gaped at me. Josh chewed his lower lip and watched me with narrow-eyed contemplation. Aunt Dockey, who had become a Unitarian minister, was called in. “You did the right thing and it wasn’t enough. That’s not your fault. Time to get on with life, Claire Karleen. You’re a grown woman. A good-looking and smart woman. What do you intend to do—devote yourself to eccentricity?”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do. But I don’t want to hear how lucky I am.”

  “Are you much for praying?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “Well, how about a hobby?”

  “No.”

  “How about a good swift kick?”

  I laughed. She didn’t.

  Mama unpacked my journalism awards. “Why don’t I hang these on the wall across from your bed?” she asked.

  “That’s not my life anymore,” I told her. “Put them all back in the box.”

  My mother, who is a strong, straight-backed woman, a woman who was invited to England to study glazes at a seminar sponsored by Wedgwood, looked at me as if I had turned her into fragile greenware. “When do you win the right to be happy?” she asked. “When will there be time for someone to love? For a home, a husband, and children?”

  “I don’t need what you need, Mama.”

  “Liar. You’ve dated some fine men. Violet and Rebecca used to tell me about each one you’d introduce to them when they visited you.”

  “Dating a man and marrying him are two different things.”

  “Nobody’s ever measured up to Roanie Sullivan. That’s it. Admit it.”

  “Mama, I was ten years old when he left. I didn’t even know what to measure then. So, no, that’s not the reason—”

  “If Roan Sullivan came back, if he walked in and said ‘Marry me and go away with me,’ you’d go.”

  “He’d have come back years ago if he cared that much. Either he doesn’t care or he’s dead. Either way, I’m not interested in marrying anybody else.”

  “See? Anybody else.”

  “Anybody. Marrying anybody, I meant.”

  “I don’t want you to stay here because you haven’t got the heart to make a life for yourself.”

  I looked away and said nothing.

  Once, when Aunt Jane was clucking over me as she helped me take a bath, I muttered fiercely, “I feel like the centerpiece of a Mongolian cluster fuck.”

  Aunt Jane leaned back and gaped at me. “What did she say?” Aunt Irene asked from outside the bathroom, where she was changing my bed. I had no privacy left.

  “She said she was … was ‘as flustered as a duck,’ ” Aunt Jane lied.

  Daddy and I sat on the tailgate of one of the farm trucks out in a back pasture, with velvet-lipped llamas crowded around us, nibbling kernels of corn from our hands. He’d driven me out there to name one of his new babies. She stood on spindly legs beside her shaggy mother, her tiny head perched on the periscope of her neck regarding me with solemn dark eyes.

  “Dolly,” I said. “She’s the Dolly Llama.”

  Daddy rubbed his fringe of gray hair and laughed. The hot spring sun beat down on us, gleaming on his scalp, and the scent of lush, growing grass rose up like perfume. His laughter faded. We sat in silence for a while, llamas touching their mobile mouths to specks of corn dust on my jeans.

  “You givin’ up on writer’s work completely?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, Daddy. I really can’t think.”

  “Mr. Cicero wants to retire from the Shamrock. He says he’d make you a fine offer if you wanted to take his place as the editor and publisher.”

  “I can’t imagine it right now.”

  “Things have changed around town. More tourists, more neighbors. People moving in from Atlanta. From all over. We talk about it at the county commission meetings. Another few years and the regional planning honchos are going to list the county as exurban. I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “It’s just a ten-dollar term for suburban with fresher air and less traffic.”

  “Mr. C. already has to compete with a couple of little weekly papers published by newcomers. He says th
ey’re just advertising circulars, but I’ve seen ’em. They publish articles along with ads, like real newspapers.”

  “I doubt I’m the right person to save the Shamrock from competition.”

  “You could make a down payment on it with the money your grandpa willed you. Your mama and I’d invest. So would your brothers. And not just because we want you to stay around here. Because we’d be proud to do it.”

  I squeezed his hand. “I’ll think about it. You know what? I love you. You and Mama. Everybody.”

  I studied the relief on his face, and my misery sank down deeper inside me. He squinted up at Dunshinnog. “When you get married someday, you and your husband can build a fine house up there.”

  I doubted I’d ever get married. I was beginning to doubt I’d ever leave home again.

  I had a promotion and a raise waiting for me at the Herald-Courier. In late May I told my editor I wasn’t coming back.

  So you quit your job. I have sources for this kind of information, so I heard. I’m trying to analyze you, Claire. Are you running scared? That’s not like you. I’ll be back there soon—everything’s almost taken care of—and I hope you’ll explain it to me.

  Watch the mountain at night. God, I’m telling you as if you’re reading this. I’ll have a hard time talking to you face-to-face at first.

  It’s all I can think about. Seeing you again.

  I heard loud voices in the living room. I struggled into my robe, hobbled in there on a pair of crutches, and found Mama and Daddy embroiled in a shocked conference with Hop and Evan.

  “Wilma’s daughter put Ten Jumps up for sale,” Evan repeated for my sake. “And it looks like she’s got a buyer. We don’t know who, but we heard she’s sold the property.”

  Wilma was the Minnesota relative who had inherited Ten Jumps. Her daughter had inherited it from her.