The Myth of Perpetual Summer

by Susan Crandall

  “Hello, Mr. Stokes.” I get out and have to restrain myself to keep from hugging him. “It’s so good to see you. You remember Ross Saenger? You spoke on the phone yesterday.”

  Ross steps forward to shake Mr. Stokes’s hand.

  “I hope you didn’t come to take Gran home,” I say. “I assumed she called to let you know her plans to go straight to New Orleans with us.”

  “Oh, she called. I’m here to see you.”

  Ross touches my arm. “I’ll be over by the doors.”

  Mr. Stokes suddenly swipes his hat off his head, as if he’s just remembered his manners. “About your granny. There’s things sitting heavy on her soul, and I’m afraid it’s caused her sickness.”

  No kidding. And the list just keeps getting longer. “Such as?” Years ago Mr. Stokes admitted he and Gran shared secrets. Maybe I’ll get the answers about my recent finds in her bedroom.

  “First off, I want you to know she took your leavin’ hard.”

  “She’s the one who wouldn’t let me stay.”

  “You gotta know, she had her reasons. All of them good-intentioned. Mostly, she wanted you freed from this place and the things that are draggin’ her down.”

  “Which are?”

  “It’d be wrong for me to say. I made promises. But I can tell she needs free of it. She’s a proud woman and was raised a certain way. That pride is breakin’ her. She’ll try to push you away, but don’t you allow it.”

  “Do any of these things weighing her down have to do with Uncle George?” I realize the man has been a quiet drone in the background my entire life. Every time Gran shifted the subject away from him, when her whole life was about family stories and traditions, the town’s attitude and innuendo, the missing pictures—all of these things hummed in the background like white noise. Things that must never be mentioned.

  His eyes widen just a bit. “These her things to tell. It’s a long time comin’, but you got a chance to help each other.”

  “I don’t need her help now.”

  “That may be, but plenty of times when you did, she was right there. Now you can do the same for her.”

  The rawboned truth of that hurts. “What makes you think she’ll tell me anything?”

  “You just ask her why she keeps paintin’ a storefront that got no goods to sell. No need anymore. The shelves been stripped bare.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” I glance over my shoulder, wishing Ross was closer.

  “She know,” Mr. Stokes says. “You just do as I say. Use those words. Don’t let her close up. It’s eatin’ her from the inside and not helpin’ nobody.”

  “And what if she does as she always does?”

  “Well, you can back down, or you can stand up like the strong, grown woman you are. Reach out a hand, pull her out of the past. You and her got a chance to mend things. And she needs it—even more than you do.” He nods and puts on his hat. “That’s what I come to say. Don’t forget my words. Those are the ones that’ll open her up.”

  “I’ll try. But I don’t imagine I’ll get anywhere.”

  He puts on his hat and gives me a smile. “Have faith in ole Mr. Stokes. He taught you how to talk to bees, didn’t he?”

  “So you’re saying you know Gran’s secret language, too?”

  “A shared lifetime teaches you a few things.” He winks, and I suddenly feel strong, just as he always made me feel when he took the time to answer my bothersome questions. “Now you tell your granny we all prayin’ for Mr. Walden, just like we been prayin’ for you all these years.” He turns and starts toward his truck.

  “Mr. Stokes?”

  He stops and turns his head.

  “Thank you.”

  He gives me a slow nod.

  “Did Margo ever come back?” I need confirmation.

  “Nobody seen your momma since the day she left to take the twins north.”

  I’m torn between concern and anger. I wonder if I’ll ever know where to place my emotions when it comes to my mother.

  “Tell Maisie I said hello and I miss her. She and Marlon move away?”

  He turns the brim of his hat in his hands. “No, miss.”

  I’m disappointed. I wanted her life to be free of this place, too. “I’d love to see her, but we have to get back to New Orleans.”

  “Maisie miss you, too.” He puts on his hat. “You do what I say with your granny.”

  He ambles toward his truck, and I notice he might look the same, but the years have him moving more slowly. He pauses with his hand on the truck’s door handle. “Don’t make a choice you gonna regret. Everybody need family—including Miss Lavada.”

  * * *

  Gran’s hair and makeup are done to perfection, her small train case packed and on the bed beside her. The nurse—not Nurse Busybody today—is there with a wheelchair ready to wheel her out as soon as she gets dressed.

  “Don’t you look like the first day of spring,” Ross says gallantly. Gran actually blushes.

  “You do look much better today, Gran.” I’m relieved. The situation with Walden will be hard enough on her.

  When we get her to the car, Ross opens the front passenger door, but she says, “I prefer sitting in the back, thank you.”

  “All right.” Ross opens the back door and holds her hand as she gets in. I’m glad to see she doesn’t look as if she needs the steadying.

  Once we’re in the car, I say, “Since you’re going to be gone for a couple of days, I locked your house. The key is in your purse.”

  “I hardly think that was necessary—” She seems to catch herself. “Thank you for your thoughtfulness.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  As we pull onto the highway, she says, “Now, Ross, perhaps we should go by the bank before we leave town. I’ll need to make arrangements for your cousin’s fee.”

  “I’m covering the legal bills, Gran. I have a good job.” I cringe a bit at the inflated pride in my voice—sort of a so there.

  Ross says, “Amelia isn’t worried about getting paid at this point. She’ll come by the house after she sees Walden, and we can go from there.”

  Gran sits up straighter. “Well, I’m sure this will be resolved quickly—”

  “I wouldn’t count on it, Gran.” I twist and look at her in the back seat. “I know the gossip in town is hard for you—”

  “I thought I raised you not to listen to gossip,” she snaps.

  “You raised me to pretend it didn’t exist. There’s a difference.”

  Her face settles into that familiar detachment, the one that closes the door. “We can discuss this at a more appropriate time.” She looks pointedly at the back of Ross’s head. Then her face settles into a pleasant countenance. “So, tell me all about California, Tallulah.”

  I do a good job of spinning a golden tale about my job, my life, and her eyes light up. I’m aware that I’m doing just as she always did, glossing over unpleasantness. I justify that it’s for the sake of her health.

  “Doing for others always did suit you, Tallulah.”

  The pride in her voice affects me so strongly, I have to take a moment before I can answer. “Well, the foundation is a paying job, so I can’t call it altruistic.”

  After a moment, she says, “I don’t see a ring, so I assume you’re still a single woman.”

  “And I plan to stay that way.”

  “Why, Tallulah Mae, what about children? Surely you want children.”

  “I do not. I made that decision a long time ago.”

  She and Ross both say, “Really?” at the same time.

  “Why is that so surprising? Considering our family history. The madness stops with me.”

  I feel Ross’s gaze on me. “Madness? Why do you say that?”

  “I don’t mean insanity, per se. I mean I don’t have the proper foundation for raising emotionally healthy children. And what if I turned out to be a mother like Margo?”

  Gran says, “Your mother was . . . exceptionally selfis
h. You are not. She and your father were never good for each other—gasoline and a match, those two. You’ll be smarter. Choose a better partner. You’re too young to be making such unbending decisions. Aren’t I right, Ross? You want children, don’t you?”

  Ross doesn’t look the least put on the spot. “I haven’t really thought about it. I have to find the right woman first, then that’s a decision we’ll make together.”

  “See,” Gran says. “He agrees. You can’t make an iron-clad decision at this point in your life.”

  I shake my head. “Margo might not have been well suited to motherhood, but I, on the other hand, am not well suited to relationships. If I can’t manage that, I certainly cannot raise a child.” I steer the conversation elsewhere, closer to Gran’s doorstep. “We passed the farm on our way in town. It didn’t look like anyone has been there in a long time. Why would someone buy it and just let it fall into ruin?”

  “What makes you think it was sold?”

  “Well, you’re not working it, so I assumed the taxes would have forced the sale if nothing else.”

  “The land still belongs to you, Griffin, Walden, and Dharma, equally. It’s your legacy.”

  I’m a little surprised at the relief that washes over me. “If that’s so, why weren’t you and Walden working it? He loved the orchard.”

  “He loved the orchard because you loved the orchard. His adoration for you has never wavered. Without you here, he didn’t have any interest. And, to be perfectly honest, I think he was a little afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “Failure. He needs his people around him to make him whole. Without them, he has no purpose. Maybe it’s because he’s a twin, never alone, even in the womb.”

  “Did you at least try to get Dharma to come back with him?”

  “Why would I do that? She was happy. Those people made it so she could reach her dreams. If she’d been here . . .” She purses her lips and shakes her head. “If I had my way, none of you would have come back to this place that never forgets and never lets a whiff of scandal die.”

  “If that’s true, why didn’t you just sell the farm?”

  She looks surprised. “Because it isn’t mine to sell.”

  “How did you manage the taxes?”

  “I suppose I owe you an apology for that. I sold the Neely pearls. They should have belonged to you.”

  I don’t know how to respond, so I turn and face the road ahead.

  Ross reaches over and gives my hand a squeeze, but I pull away.

  I don’t deserve any of it, the farm, the pearls, Walden’s adoration, because I left them all behind and never looked back.

  15

  Fall 1963

  Every week or so, I “happen by” the judge’s house at six o’clock, quitting time, just to get a life-sustaining dose of Maisie, who’s been working full-time at Judge Delmore’s for about a year. When I’m early, like today, I wait inside the clematis-covered lattice gazebo in the Delmore’s big yard. It’s easy to slip in through the gate on the alley and not be seen from the house. And, since Maisie comes and goes by the back door and alley, I can’t miss her. While I wait, I’m working on my Wuthering Heights essay. All I want to say is: Shame on Catherine. Shame on Heathcliff. And why are people so stupid? I know from real life that spitefulness is just a fact of human nature. But that would make for a short essay.

  Finally, I hear the back screen snap closed. I fold up my paper, stick it in my book and wait behind the gazebo. I hear Maisie coming like a freight train, huffing and muttering. She’s in a mood, which happens frequently when Mrs. Delmore is finished with her.

  I wait. Listening. Timing.

  As soon as her right arm swings into my sight, I grab it and pull her behind the gazebo with me.

  Instead of a surprised, happy giggle breaking her mood, I get an elbow in the eye and “Get off me!” She flails around as I double over and clutch my eye.

  Suddenly, she stops. “Dang it, Tallulah! What’re you doin’?”

  “What’re you doin’? I think you blacked my eye!”

  “Well, serves you right, sneakin’ up on me like that! For all I know you were that creep Grayson Collie.”

  I straighten and blink to clear my blurry vision. “He been bothering you?”

  “No more than every other female in town. And you oughta know better than to pull a childish trick like that. Lemme see that eye.” There’s nothing at all apologetic in her voice for slugging me. But Maisie is like that, never wanting to back down or admit fault when she’s with me—even when it’s obvious she’s in the wrong.

  She squints and frowns as she studies my face. “Mmmm-hmmm. That gonna shine. Lucky your momma don’t pay attention, or you’d have to come up with a story ’bout how you come by it.”

  “Guess sometimes it pays to be ignored,” I say. Maisie complains her momma watches her like a hawk on a field mouse. She should feel lucky. The list of people ignoring me is growing. Griff has turned into a phantom, and Daddy’s gotten so he doesn’t see anybody but Margo—when she’s not around all he does is pace and fret and talk about her.

  I don’t want to waste our precious minutes together, so I offer an apology of my own. “I shouldn’t have surprised you like that when you sounded all bothered coming down the back walk. What’s the problem today? Silver not shiny enough? Spines of the books not perfectly straight?”

  She starts toward the alley. “I swear that woman has measuring sticks for eyeballs. It’s beyond just bein’ particular. There’s somethin’ wrong with her—she breaks out in a sweat if the furniture isn’t in the exact same spot after a floor cleaning. I don’t know how she can tell, ’cause it always looks the same to me. I checked the floor just to be sure there aren’t any secret marks to tell her. They’re aren’t.” She picks up speed down the alley.

  Maisie’s too smart to spend her days worrying about book spines and not what’s inside those books. Back when talk about her quitting school first came up, I begged Gran to intervene. She made it clear I was no friend to Maisie if I made her feel unhappy with her situation. Gran said Maisie was lucky to have this opportunity for job security with the judge and she’d be working with her momma, which is always a comfort to a girl.

  Maisie is tearing along like there’s fire nipping at her heels. I catch up and loop my arm through hers. We march along that way for a bit, quiet with each other, me thinking on limitations made just by how you happened to be born.

  There was a time, back when Margo began her civil rights work, when I thought she would fight for Maisie to go to college, maybe work on getting her a scholarship, too. Of course, that was before I realized Margo only works for the people she doesn’t know, the ones her “groups” pick out for her. I think it’s quite nice of Maisie not to point that out to me on a regular basis. Margo wouldn’t even take me and Maisie when she went to the March on Washington to hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. talk last month. We had to sneak and watch it on television while Mrs. Delmore was at bridge club.

  Gradually, Maisie slows down. After another half block, she nudges her shoulder against mine, as close to an apology for my black eye as I’m going to get.

  “I’m going to tell you a secret,” I say. “But you have to swear not to tell anyone.”

  She stops dead and looks at me with a frown. “Since when do you need to say that? I never shared a secret of yours.”

  “I know.” I take her hand. “Guess I’m just skittish because I want it so bad.” I take a deep breath. “Griff and I are going to California when I’m finished with school.” This is the first time I’ve said it out loud. I like the way it tastes on my tongue.

  “A trip?”

  “A new life.” I squeeze her hand. “What if you come, too? Things are different out there. Not boxed in by tradition. The three of us can get an apartment—”

  “Stop right there! I doubt it’s different enough that the three of us can live in the same apartment. Besides, I got my own new life coming on, Tal
lulah James. And it’s right here in Lamoyne—at least for now.”

  “Marlon?”

  “Maaayybe.” She’s grinning like a fool, and I know Marlon is the one. My heart gives a little zip. Marlon just might be good enough to deserve her. He’s a senior and has already applied to several colleges. He’s not flashy like her last boyfriend, who Pappy Stokes called a no-account. Marlon is serious, wants to be a doctor. And that will make a good future for Maisie—maybe one away from Mrs. Delmore and her measuring-stick eyeballs.

  Maisie’s grin tells me he’s good for her heart, too, and that’s the most important thing.

  I do admit, I’m a little jealous. The only boys interested in me are either pimply creeps who still pick their noses or hound dogs (thanks to the rumor Grayson Collie started about me being fast). I can’t wait to go to California, where I can be whoever I want and no one will have a say otherwise.

  “You two going to the Muscadine Jubilee?” I ask.

  “Of course. How ’bout you?” Maisie bumps my shoulder again and gives a sly grin. “You gonna ask that boy from down in New Orleans?”

  “Of course not,” I say. “Griff’s practically a stranger thanks to him. I hope when Ross goes to college next year he never comes back to Mississippi.” Then Griff will have time for me. We’ll get back to being biscuits and honey. We’ll spend our time planning our escape, and as soon as I get my diploma . . . goodbye, Lamoyne.

  I steer the conversation in a different direction. “So, did you ask your momma?”

  She gives me a confused look. “Ask what?”

  “Maisie! You said you would!” Then I see the twinkle in her eye. “You did! Tell me. What did you find out?”

  When I was at the library two weeks ago, doing research for a paper on the history of Marion and Pearl River Counties, I was reading about the white families who first settled here. I was surprised that the James name wasn’t listed. Gran said both sides of Daddy’s family settled here when this area was still wild with Choctaw. I did find the Neely name. But not until 1827, when the wildness was on the run and the Choctaw were already being pushed west of the Mississippi River. After digging around, I found that the James family showed up in 1854. Apparently, my first James ancestor in Mississippi was a scoundrel from New Orleans who won Pearl River Plantation from a man named Julien Doucet in a poker game. Hardly the “founding fathers” kind of beginning I’d been led to believe.