by Barbara Hall
I liked this girl (my own mother, actually) who knew and cared about her history. It made me want to know and care about mine. But I was afraid to look.
I was hoping when I finally got to the point, her crime would be something really slight, not horrible at all, something that had just grown horrible in her imagination, like the time I was in second grade and was convinced I was going to jail for losing a library book. It took me ages to confess it. My mother found me sobbing in my room one morning and finally coaxed the transgression out of me, and when I blurted it out she started laughing. I remember her hugging me and all that guilt and weight just melted and I felt she had magical powers.
That person could not have done anything really bad.
I thought for a moment about skipping ahead, but I knew I couldn’t. I had to read it exactly the way this Noah guy had read it. He probably didn’t have to put it down periodically, because it wasn’t his mother—just some stranger to him.
I put the letter back under the bed and went for my cell phone to call Jen. Then I looked outside and saw that it had gotten gray and windy. The surf was too big and I didn’t actually want to hurt myself.
Another activity came to mind. There was only one place that could make me feel as calm and as connected and as churned up and alive as the ocean.
• 3 •
I never told anyone how much I enjoyed the cemetery. No one even knew I went there. Except Jen, and I let her believe it was a rare event. But it was a routine.
I would take the bus into Westwood at least once a week. I would stop and get flowers and a Snapple and some Twizzlers. (My mom loved Twizzlers.) Then I would walk to the cemetery and sit near her grave and start talking to her as if she were actually present. Nobody paid attention. No one was around in the middle of the day. And I felt everything inside of me calming down. She was very real for me there. I was convinced she could hear me.
I knew it didn’t make any sense. If she was in heaven, if such a place existed, then she could hear me wherever I was. The ground and the grave and the ornate marker didn’t make her more available. But it worked for me. I let myself be irrational about it.
My father would bring me here on the anniversary of her death, but we didn’t talk to her. We just stood and stared at the ground and at the flowers and the sky. Then we left. I wondered if he made his own secret visits. But I didn’t ask him. I was too busy trying to take care of his emotions. I was afraid to see him cry.
Enough time had passed now that I felt really young when my mother died. For years it seemed like yesterday, then last week, then last month. Now it felt like a different time. When I was little. I didn’t feel little anymore.
In the early days, I’d pray for her to come back, and that was painful. Because I was just old enough to know she couldn’t, but young enough to believe in all kinds of magic, like Santa Claus and God.
Then I dropped Santa Claus and got mad at God.
Then I stopped believing in God.
Then I got mad at my father.
Then the guy who hit my mother, the bad drunk driver who was in jail.
Then I stopped being mad at everybody and felt very sorry for myself.
Then I dropped all that and just had a quiet sadness deep down, like the one I remembered my mother having.
Now I could stand there at her grave and not blame anybody. I could just know that life happened that way and some people got unlucky and I was one of them. And she was one of them.
I said to the grave, “Hey, Mom, thanks for the letter. It’s really tripping me out.”
I pictured her smiling.
I wondered what she would look like if she had lived this long. I remembered her with perfect skin, flipped-under brown hair and laughing green eyes, freckles on her nose, hands on her hips. She never wore sweats, like the other mothers. She always put on real clothes, even if they were jeans. She used to say, “Lynnie, the end of civilization is when people stop wearing clothes with buttons and zippers.” Then she’d laugh. She understood what that meant. I was just embarrassed because the other mothers wore workout clothes everywhere.
Now I realized she had been trying harder. If she had lived, she would have been one of those cool Hillsboro mothers who dressed well and did just enough work around the school but didn’t wear out her welcome or become a nuisance.
“You’re just trying to keep your mother perfect,” Jen had said to me. She said it as if it were a character flaw, and maybe it was.
“So look,” I said, “I’m reading it because Daddy said I should and I trust him. I feel like I’m eavesdropping, since I don’t know this guy Noah, and I haven’t gotten to the part where you explain…” I paused and lowered my voice to a whisper, “why you’re a criminal. I guess I’m hoping that part is not really true. And I’m here to tell you that whatever you say, I’m not going to change my mind about you. Okay, maybe I’ll change my mind, but I’m not going to stop, you know, loving you.”
I paused and wondered if that were true. I had never stopped loving anyone. I wasn’t sure it was possible. I had stopped having crushes on people before, but that was different. Love felt like a thing you couldn’t change.
“It’s already weird,” I said, “reading your thoughts when you were my age. Well, just a little bit younger. You weren’t old enough to drive a car yet. I am old enough but as it turns out, I don’t have one. I’m sure you’d disagree with Dad on this point. You guys would have one of your whispery fights that you always tried to hide from me. I didn’t mind them. I could tell they weren’t very serious.”
I took a breath and glanced up at the trees, which were bowing and dancing under the low gray skies, so untypical of L.A. this time of year. But it always felt more fitting to be in the graveyard when the weather was gloomy. I was about to start my next speech when I noticed someone nearby, staring at me. At first glance he seemed like a nerdy tourist. He was sitting next to a tombstone with a sketchbook in his lap. He had boxes of charcoal pencils surrounding him, but he wasn’t drawing. He was just staring at me. I stared back at him.
He lifted a hand to me in a casual wave, and I remembered him from yesterday. He was sitting in that exact spot, doing that exact thing when Jen and I came by.
I stared at him unapologetically, trying to decide if he was a graveyard freak, a stalker, or just someone with a dead relative, like me.
He was about my age, though it was hard to tell by the way he was dressed. He wore jeans and the same fatigue jacket (thrift shop, it seemed to me, instead of Abercrombie, intentionally distressed) and some ratty denim shirt and Converse sneakers beaten up and written on. His hair was dark blond, somewhere between too long and not long enough, and from this distance it looked as if he actually had a reason to shave. His eyes were a scary, unfinished blue and they were staring right at me.
I walked toward him, close enough to be heard.
“Am I bothering you?” I asked.
“Not yet,” he said.
“When will you know?”
He shrugged. “When you bother me.”
I turned away from him, as if I thought I could ignore him. But when I tried to talk to my mother again, I realized that all I could see was his face. I turned back around and he was drawing in the sketchbook.
“I saw you yesterday,” I said.
“Yeah. I saw you, too. And the surfer chick.”
“How’d you know she was a surfer chick?”
“You always know with them.”
“I happen to surf, too,” I said. One day and one good ride counted.
“Whatever clangs your bell,” he said, and smiled. I had to admit, it was an amazing smile.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Drawing,” he said.
“In a place like this?”
He shrugged again. “Sure.”
“Doesn’t it occur to you that people come here to talk to their dead relatives?”
“That’s okay with me.”
“Why
do you like to draw here?”
“It’s usually quiet. I like quiet.”
“Have you been listening to me?”
“Not really.”
“I suppose you think it’s weird, somebody talking to a grave.”
“Not really. It happens a lot.”
He put his sketchbook aside and looked up at me. He had kind of an angelic face and I wondered for a brief, insane moment if he might actually be an angel. Such strange ideas occurred to me when I was in the graveyard. But I figured angels didn’t need to shave.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Mick.”
“Oh,” I said. “As in Jagger.”
“Yeah, I was named after him.”
My eyebrows went up. “Your parents knew him or something?”
He laughed. “My father probably thought he did when he was high. My old man died of an overdose when I was too little to know him. I live with my mom. She doesn’t talk about him much.”
I didn’t say anything. He got to his feet and walked in my direction. He was taller than me.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Lynne. Where do you go to school?”
“Uni High,” he said, nodding roughly in the direction of the high school a few streets away. A public high school. There were rumors about it. All the kids were wild. But that was the rumor about all the kids who didn’t go to private school.
“How about you?” he asked.
“Hillsboro.”
“Oh, okay,” he said, passing judgment.
I wanted to tell him I was a scholarship kid, just to ease the tension. But it didn’t seem right to lie, standing on my mother’s grave.
He said, “So your parents are what, rich showbiz types?”
“My father’s a lawyer. My mother’s right here,” I said, pointing to the ground.
“I see. That’s who you’re talking to.”
“Yeah.”
He was close to me now. We stared at each other. A weird kind of calm came over me as I looked at his face.
“What do you have against Hillsboro girls?” I asked.
“It’s what they have against me,” he said. “Not the other way around.”
“What were you drawing?” I asked, not knowing what else to do.
“I’ll show you if you want to see.”
I followed him to where he had been sitting. He picked up the sketchbook, flipped through a few pages, and showed it to me. It was a pretty good abstract drawing of a graveyard. The tombstones looked like teeth, all crooked and carnivorous. The limbs of the trees reached down like magical wires.
“I like to look at death,” he said, “and take all the mystery out of it. My goal is to make a drawing of a graveyard and it doesn’t look any more interesting than, I don’t know, mannequins in a store.”
“You’re not there yet,” I said.
He turned the sketchbook toward himself and laughed.
“No, I guess not.”
I laughed, too. It was the first time I could remember actually laughing, standing so close to my mother.
I looked at my watch.
“I have to go,” I said. “I have to catch the bus. I don’t have a car.”
He smiled. “That’s unusual for a Hillsboro girl.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Okay,” he said. “Maybe I’ll see you here again.”
“Unlikely,” I said.
He shrugged. “Meeting you was unlikely. I figure we’re past the hurdle.”
• 4 •
By the time I got home my dinner was cold and my father was glaring.
“I was about to call the police,” he said.
“No, you weren’t.”
“Yes, Lynnie, I was. I called Jen’s parents and they said she wasn’t surfing. So I knew you weren’t either. Because surely you wouldn’t do anything that stupid.”
“Am I branded as a troubled kid now? I skipped one day of school.”
“It worries me to see you acting this way.”
“Hey, the big letter was your idea.”
He stood very still and said, “This is about the letter?”
“Maybe.”
“How much have you read?”
“Not much.”
He shook his head and said, “Maybe it was a mistake.”
“Too late now.”
“Lynnie, I only have my own judgment. I don’t have a partner to run it by.”
“I went to see Mom. In the cemetery.”
This gave him the slightest pause. He knew he couldn’t argue, but he had to say something.
“You should have left a note.”
“I was in a hurry.”
“Hurry? What hurry?”
“I had to catch the bus. As in I don’t have a car. Remember?”
“My God, is this about the car?”
“No, actually, it’s about the letter. Did you think it was going to be easy for me?”
“No,” he said.
A minute passed of us staring at each other. He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. “Maybe it’s for when you’re older. I should take it back.”
“You can’t.”
“You’re right,” he said. “It’s done.”
“I’m going to bed,” I told him.
“You have to eat.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Let’s not throw anorexia into the mix, all right?”
“Stop reading magazines. You can lose your appetite without having an eating disorder.”
“Lynnie…”
“Dad. Stop. It’s okay.”
He looked at me and I smiled at him and I saw his shoulders relax. I felt for him. I wouldn’t want to be raising me alone.
I got ready for bed and got the letter out again.
Before I started reading I paused to think of Mick standing in the graveyard, smiling at me. I wondered if he was really cute or I was just desperate. We weren’t around boys much at Hillsboro. Sometimes they threw us together with the Loyola boys at a lame dance, where we all stood on opposite sides of the room. Two or three couples would venture to dance right before it was all over. The more sophisticated girls would actually get phone numbers or e-mails. The rest of us sat near the refreshments and gossiped or mocked.
The point is, I was boy-experience impaired. And I might have been giving Mick some qualities he didn’t possess. But then I remembered his smile and I knew I wasn’t entirely making it up.
The memory of him made me feel strong. So I took a yoga breath and read.
September 27
Dear Noah,
English class was boring today. We had a quiz and spent the rest of the class reading silently. I admit that I stole looks at you but you never noticed. It’s just as well.
Sometimes when I look at you, I imagine us getting acquainted and even going on dates. I’d love it, but it’s not going to happen. And that’s why I keep writing. My whole life I’ve been watching the happy children, accepting that I can’t be one of them.
And, then, knowing what I know about you.
So back to where I left off. Well, I left off in several places. I left off at the history of me and my father, as well as the history of Union Grade right after Reconstruction. I suppose history of the place should come first.
Imagine the shape this town was in right after Reconstruction. That brings us up to the late eighteen hundreds. The South was defeated, in spirit and economy, but Reconstruction was over and Union Grade was trying to establish itself again. The industries were trying to find foot, the slaves were freed and trying to figure out how to live, the battle-worn families were trying to reclaim their dignity, defeated and terrified and suddenly poor.
Now let’s travel a bit down the road to Hadley Creek, an area that fared a bit better in Reconstruction. Somehow, the farmers held on to their land—rumor had it they made deals with the devil or worse, with the carpetbaggers.
Let’s start with Mom’s side. The rich side
.
The Brodies of Hadley Creek.
Meet my mother’s father, my maternal grandfather, Grandpa Will Brodie, of remote Scottish descent. He was born to a wealthy landowner, a gentleman farmer, John Brodie. Will was the youngest of several sons and was impatient to have his portion of the land handed down. He somehow earned the money and bought his share of the farm as well as a brother’s share.
This was a deal with the devil, by all accounts. The money probably came from bootlegging, and he took advantage of his family’s debts during a period of drought. So he got the money but was disowned by the family. All shrouded in a mystery we don’t need to solve right now. That brings us up to the turn of the century. Grandpa Brodie was in possession of a small farm and was looking to have his own family. He was inventive, wealthy, and a bit of a rapscallion.
Now the rumors really run wild. Some say he married a distant relative, the beautiful olive-skinned Nancy Jukes, heir to a distant North Carolina fortune. Other stories say that he met Nancy in a bar in North Carolina, where she was earning a living as a lounge singer. Nobody really knows anything except that my grandmother, Granny Nancy, was exotically lovely, darker than any self-respecting white girl should be. A no-nonsense girl who was happy to marry “up,” which is Southern for improving her circumstances. She took easily to being a wealthy farmer’s wife.
They quickly had three children—my mother, Fern, first. She was black-haired and black-eyed, gorgeous and petulant and wild. My aunt Rose second—blond and fair-skinned and fair-natured, no trouble at all. And then my uncle Joseph, dark like my mother and nothing else to recommend him except that he was a boy.
Grandpa Will didn’t care for the girls. He only wanted a boy, and as soon as he got one he forgot all about the sisters. Mama Nancy did her best with the wild girl and the shy one, but as soon as they were free to marry she let them. Fern got married first, before she even left high school, to the handsomest boy in town, named Gerard Wyatt.