Summer in the South

by Cathy Holton

  Ava felt a wincing pain under her ribs. Amazing how grief could settle on you when you least expected it, cold and heavy. “When was the last time you heard from Clotilde? From Meg, I mean. With news about me.”

  “Oh, well, she was real good for a while there about writing. I sent money. Every penny I could spare. But then I got remarried, and me and Sharon started having kids and I guess Meg just figured it was better if she butted out. I guess she didn’t want to cause any problems with my new family. Not that I ever asked her to,” he added quickly. “I was always glad to hear from you two.”

  “So from the time I was ten or so?”

  “Younger than that. There was a long time when I didn’t hear anything. And then I guess it was when you started college that she called. I had to fill out some forms for your financial aid.”

  “Frank, I want you to know that I didn’t know anything about you. If I had, I’d have gotten in touch.”

  “Oh, listen, I understand. You don’t need to worry about that.”

  “No, really. It’s important to me that you know that. Clotilde, Meg, was a good mother but there are some things she did wrong. She made some big mistakes. Like telling me you were dead on my tenth birthday.”

  “Dead? How’d she say I died?”

  “In an ice-fishing accident on the Detroit River.”

  He laughed. “Sounds like her,” he said. And then, as if noting her silence, he said, “You’re right. She shouldn’t have told you that.”

  “I still have nightmares.”

  “Sometimes adults think they’re doing the right thing even when they’re not.”

  “Yes.”

  “I want you to know you’re welcome in my home anytime. I’ve told Sharon. I’ve told the kids and they’re dying to meet you.”

  She swallowed hard, blinking. “Thank you, Frank.”

  “Don’t you live in Chicago?”

  “I’m spending the summer in the south. In Tennessee.”

  “Maybe when you get through down there you can come up here and visit.”

  “I’d like that.” Outside the window, the late-afternoon sky was gray and rainy. Clouds of mist rose in the distance. “Frank. You said in your last letter that you might know who my real father is.”

  “Well, yes, I did but I’ve been thinking about that, Ava, and after everything you’ve been through, I’m not sure I should say. Because the truth is, I don’t really know. I’m just guessing.”

  “That’s okay, Frank. I understand. And I appreciate you trying to protect me just the way Clotilde did but the thing is, Frank, you reach a point where you don’t want to be protected anymore. You want to hear the truth. Do you know what I mean?”

  He sighed loudly. “Yeah,” he said. “I do.” He was quiet for a moment and Ava could feel his hesitation.

  “Frank?” she said.

  “Okay. I’m going to tell you this but you have to understand, I don’t know whether it’s true or not.”

  “It’s all right,” Ava said. “Just tell me what you know. I’ll sort out the truth later on.”

  “Meg always wanted children. She used to say she wanted a house full, and that was one of the things she and I used to dream about while we were roaming around the country with the Sunshine People. We used to dream about settling down and having a house full of kids. We’d live in the country and she would bake her own bread and home-school the kids and I’d be some kind of organic farmer. Which is kind of funny when you think about it because I don’t know shit about farming! But we were just kids ourselves, and we were dreamers, which makes what happened later with your parents so sad.”

  Ava said, “Parents?”

  “See, I traveled around with Meg and the Sunshine People for about six months, and just before we broke up, Meg told me she couldn’t have children. She had that disease where the tissue grows inside your stomach.”

  “Endometriosis,” Ava said woodenly.

  “Yeah, that’s it. Anyway, we parted, and two months later Meg shows up on my doorstep with a four-month-old baby she claims was hers and says we have to get married. She had an affidavit signed by two hippies stating that they’d seen Meg deliver the baby, and we hired an attorney to get your birth certificate issued. I knew she was lying, but I was crazy about her and I was willing to do anything she said as long as she’d marry me.”

  “Oh, my God,” Ava said. There was a viselike tightness in her chest. A ringing in her ears.

  “My guess, it was the two in the affidavit. I don’t remember them, but there were people coming in and out of the group all the time, and they all took those crazy names. It was probably just some young kids who joined the Sunshine People and then realized they were too young to care for a kid of their own. You know how that happens sometimes.”

  “Of course,” Ava said. She could feel needle pricks at the back of her throat.

  “In a case like that, Meg would have been the first one to step forward.”

  “Frank, do you mind if I call you back later?”

  “Oh, sure, that’s fine. It was really good talking to you. I mean it, Ava. This means a lot to me.”

  “To me, too, Frank. I’ll call you later.” She hung up.

  The news was so shocking she could not fully comprehend it. And yet somewhere inside her head the calm, still voice protested that she had always known.

  Clotilde was not her mother.

  There were no tears this time, just an overwhelming feeling of despair and confusion. She lay in bed listening to the rain.

  What had Clotilde been thinking? What had she been looking for all those years they spent on the run? Or better still, what had she been running from? Why would a woman who cared so little about living a conventional life take and try to raise a child who wasn’t her own?

  A bright flash of lightning lit the sky, briefly illuminating the garden.

  All her life Ava had told herself, for better or worse, I am my mother’s daughter. Her whole life had been a lie. A prettily fabricated story. The tiny scrap of self-awareness she had clung to so desperately was gone.

  There were no words to describe how bereft she felt, how alone.

  A distant rumble of thunder rattled the glass. Gradually she became aware of the knocks and scratchings of the old house. She could feel it breathing around her, the rhythmic rush of the cooling system like a thudding heartbeat.

  Eventually she fell into a restless sleep. She awoke several hours later to the sound of voices in the hall. The rain had stopped, and moonlight flooded the room. Outside the window a vague line of silvery clouds sailed above the trees. The voices in the hall were loud, angry. A man and a woman.

  She had been dreaming of another time. She was a child, barefoot and dressed in a white pinafore, running along a dusty road. The red serpent was in this dream, too, only this time it didn’t bite her. Instead it bit its own tail so that it made a perfect circle, a hoop, and she ran beside it unafraid, laughing and rolling it along the dusty road.

  The photo of Charlie Woodburn faced her on the nightstand. She stared into his dark, unfathomable eyes.

  It was on a night such as this that he had died.

  It took her a moment to come fully awake and realize that the man’s voice was Jake’s. Ava got out of bed and went to the door, opening it a crack. He and Josephine faced each other in the dimly lit hallway.

  “Why have you come?” Josephine said.

  “To see Ava.” He stood just inside the front door.

  “You shouldn’t be here. You made your choice.”

  “It’s not always black or white, Josephine. Sometimes there are shades of gray.”

  “Why do you always want what he wants?”

  “You can’t choose who you love. You, of all people, should know that.”

  “Don’t speak of things you know nothing about!”

  He turned, pulling the door open on its well-oiled hinges. “Tell Ava I’ll wait for her outside,” he said, going out.

  Josephine stood
, a tall, dark shadow at the end of the hall. She leaned, slowly and deliberately, and switched off the porch light. Then she turned, walking like a sleepwalker down the dim hallway to the staircase.

  Ava slipped on her sandals, then went to the mantel and picked up the vase containing Clotilde’s ashes. She opened her door and stood listening to the faint overhead sounds of Josephine preparing for bed.

  Jake was not on the porch when she went out. She called to him and a moment later he appeared around the corner of the house, moving swiftly across the lawn.

  “Where have you been?” she called softly.

  “Throwing gravel at your window. I knew when she turned off the porch light that she had no intention of telling you I was here.” He came up the steps, his pale shirt glimmering in the moonlight. “What’ve you got there?” he said.

  “Someone I used to know.”

  They walked together down the darkened street toward the river. There was no light except for the moon and the occasional flickering of a gas lamp in front of one of the grand houses. If he was curious about the vase, he didn’t say anything besides offering to carry it for her, which she refused.

  “You have a bad habit of not answering your phone,” he said, breaking a long, moody silence. His exchange with Josephine had obviously upset him.

  “I didn’t want to talk to you until I had a chance to square things with Will. I felt I owed him an explanation at least.”

  “Listen, the other day. It wasn’t about you.”

  “I know. You don’t need to explain.”

  “Unfinished business,” he said, looking at her.

  They walked on. She shifted the vase in her arms and said, “These are ashes. I used to think they were my mother’s.”

  Something in her tone warned him. He stopped, and she stopped, too, facing him. A lone streetlamp cast a spindly glow. At the end of the street they could hear the rushing river, swollen with the rain. She hugged the vase to her chest and told him everything.

  When she was finished he whistled softly and said, “Wow. Now there’s a novel.”

  She smiled faintly. “Yes. I suppose it is.”

  “So you have no idea who your parents are?”

  “I suspect, knowing Clotilde, that they might be the two listed in the affidavit as having witnessed my birth. She’s not the type to have snatched a baby from a Kmart parking lot. She would never have wanted to cause anyone pain.”

  “I’d start with the two on the affidavit. Will you try to find them?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe later. It doesn’t matter right now. All I want to do is grieve Clotilde’s passing.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  “Because for all intents and purposes, she was my mother.”

  “Of course she was.”

  “And I did love her.”

  “And she loved you.”

  “Yes,” she said, and began to cry.

  Afterward they walked to the bridge. He held her hand, the gentle roar of the river growing louder. A deafening chorus of frogs sang in the thickets lining the banks. The moon hung over the water like a lantern.

  “So what are you going to do?” he asked.

  “About?”

  “Everything. Your novel. Your life.”

  “I’m not really sure. I’m opening myself to possibility.”

  He grinned, his teeth glimmering in the darkness. “I like the sound of that.”

  They reached the narrow wooden bridge and walked out into the middle, leaning against the wire railing. Dark water rushed underneath, thick and oily in the moonlight.

  “Will you go back to Chicago?”

  “No. That life’s over.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “Me, too.”

  He leaned on his elbows, looking down at the rushing river. Pale boulders rose out of the darkness, dimpling the surface. “I read your manuscript. That’s why I’ve been trying to call you. That’s why I came over tonight to see you. It’s incredible. I couldn’t stop reading. I would never have seen Josephine and Clara like that, yet the way you described it happening makes perfect sense.”

  “Well, it’s my story. It’s my version of the truth.”

  “Will isn’t going to like it, though.”

  “I sent it to him, too, but I haven’t heard from him.”

  “You will.” He put one arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, nuzzling her hair. “So what will you do now?”

  “I don’t know. Look for a day job, I guess. But nothing that involves writing. That was the mistake I made before, choosing a job where I had to be creative so that by the time I got home, I was too tired to write. Maybe I should look for work as a forest ranger or a lighthouse keeper. Something physically demanding that still leaves time for solitary creative endeavors.”

  He laughed. “The forest ranger thing is a possibility but there aren’t too many lighthouses here in the mountains.”

  “True,” she said. She grinned, looking up at him.

  He kissed her nose. “My mother’s looking for a stable hand. It’s part-time but I bet you could talk her into letting you stay in her old trailer. It’s about a mile from the house, and last time I was out there, it was in pretty good shape.”

  “Wow, I’ve never really thought about living in a trailer.”

  “Stick with me, kid. The sky’s the limit.”

  “I may have to rethink the whole marriage to Will Fraser thing.”

  “There’s a lot to be said for never having to worry about money.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “But then again, money doesn’t buy happiness.”

  “Who says?”

  He shrugged and looked at the sky. “Someone who obviously didn’t have any.”

  “That’s assuming I ever do marry. She looked down at the dark oily water. “Which given my temperament and demanding career will probably never happen.”

  “Probably not.”

  “Still, you never know. The right man might come along.”

  “If you’re lucky.”

  “I haven’t been too lucky up to now.”

  “That could change.”

  “And then there’s your reputation.”

  He took the vase from her gently and set it down on the bridge. “My reputation?” he said.

  “Ladies’ man. Heartbreaker.”

  He grinned and pulled her roughly against him. “You can’t believe everything you hear,” he said, and kissed her soundly.

  When she was ready, she took the lid off the vase and scattered the ashes in the river. A faint earthy smell of decay and roses filled the air.

  She said, “Goodbye, mother.” She thought, I am an orphan.

  But that wasn’t true, really. She had parents out there in the world just waiting for her to find them. If she wanted to. If she decided later that it was necessary.

  “From what you’ve told me about her, she would have loved this place,” Jake said.

  “Yes,” she said. She climbed off the bridge and, filling the vase with wildflowers, nestled it among the rocks at the edge of the river. Moonlight flooded the clearing. “This is where I’ll come when I want to visit her.”

  She climbed up the bank and walked out onto the bridge where Jake waited for her. Despite the sadness of the occasion, she was filled with an odd feeling of hope and optimism. She looked up at the moon floating over the water. She thought, I am my mother’s daughter. I am my father’s daughter. I am neither.

  I am.

  She laughed. “I’ve always wondered, what is the meaning of life? But now it dawns on me that I’ve been asking the wrong question.”

  “What’s the right question?”

  “What is the meaning of my life?”

  “Ah,” he said.

  That night, she slept the sleep of the dead. When she awoke the following morning, sunshine flooded the room and the sky was blue. Josephine and Fanny were gone but they had left a note on the kitchen counter, with instructions on where to f
ind breakfast. Ava had the feeling they were avoiding her, which only strengthened her resolve to move out. She would get a hotel room, if she had to, until she talked to Jake’s mother about the trailer or made some other arrangements. She had no job, very little money left in her bank account, and she had, quite possibly, burned her bridges with the Woodburns but she wasn’t worried. She wasn’t fearful. All that was in the past.

  It seemed to Ava that her whole life had been ruled by fear. Fear that her mother would leave her, that they would starve or be homeless, that no matter how hard she worked she could never escape the wolves at her door, their ravenous howling.

  Her search for her father had been a distraction, she saw that now, a way of staving off the wolves. She had been looking for a protector, a savior, first with her mythical father, and later with her lovers. But there were no saviors, there was only herself. Maybe that was what Clotilde had been trying to teach her with her stories. To be unafraid and strong.

  To do whatever was necessary.

  She showered and went into her room to finish packing. Around ten-thirty there was a knock on the door and Ava, startled, said, “Yes?”

  Will stood in the doorway holding two coffees in a takeaway tray. He looked tired and unkempt; there were dark crescents beneath his eyes. “I brought breakfast,” he said. “Or at least coffee.”

  She stood at the desk, stacking the box that held her manuscript on top of her laptop. “How nice,” she said, making room for him.

  He set the tray down carefully on the desk and passed her a cup. She took it, smiling.

  “It looks like you’re packing.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “But not back to Chicago?”

  “No.”

  They sipped their coffee companionably, gazing out the opened shutters at the wide blue sky. The house was quiet. Neither one wanted to begin.

  “You read the manuscript?” Ava asked finally.

  He sighed. “Yes.”