My father is thinking the woman looks familiar, but he can’t place her. Maybe she lived in Cambria or one of the nearby towns, but he’s unsure. He notices a ribbon hanging from the back of her hat, shaking as the train rattles. The train enters another tunnel, and somehow he can still see the ribbon shaking in the darkness. Or maybe he can just feel it. For now, he is on his way to the coast, to be discharged, but he will be back. He will ride into the town again, and again my grandparents will meet him. The next time he will be better prepared for the changes in my grandfather. The worst part, the shock, will be over, and he will not embarrass himself or his parents. They will go back to the house, but there will be something missing from what his home had been before, and the unspoken worry about my grandfather will hang over them. My grandmother will ask a neighbor to come over, to take a picture in the yard, of the three of them together. In the dark, staring at the ribbon, my father sees these events happening. He knows, too, as I know, that their time in Cambria is slipping away. It’s almost gone.
My father is certain he has seen this woman somewhere before. Perhaps it was in Cambria, going in or coming out of the Virginia Inn or waiting in line at the movie theater. She was probably a client of my grandfather or someone my grandmother has known in the PTA. She may or may not know my grandfather has been ill or share the belief that with time, he will recover, and all will go back to the way it’s been before. For now, my father will disregard the visions he has seen of my grandfather’s death, of their moving away from Cambria. He will consider them phantoms of a future that does not have to be. He will try to remember where he’s seen the woman from the train, and he will look for her when he returns to Cambria, the place he knows better than any other, while it’s left for me to know that we will never see her again.
MAY PRESCOTT
Aunt May was twenty-five the summer I stayed with her. Her brown hair was long and fine, and her skin was dark from her long days in the sun. She had high cheekbones and brown eyes. She was my mother’s only sister, and she lived alone in the farmhouse that had belonged to my grandparents in Garden Valley, sixty miles southwest of Roanoke, Virginia. My grandparents were dead, and the remote location of the farm—the nearest village was Bangs, fifteen miles away—had given May a quiet independence that would prove dangerous in the years to come.
I was twelve. My mother had died of cancer that spring and was buried in northern Virginia where we were living at the time. May sent a card, but did not attend the funeral. When I asked my father why, he told me she had a lot to do at the farm and she did not travel well. I accepted this answer. I did not know much about May, except that she lived on the farm that was half hers and half mine. When I was little and my grandparents were still living, we visited sometimes in the summer, but May had been shy and standoffish around us, barely a presence.
My father was a lieutenant colonel in the air force, and after my mother died he requested a transfer to Korea. I remained in the military school I had been attending. That summer I was to stay with my father’s parents, which I wasn’t looking forward to. Most of the men in my father’s family had been in the military. My grandfather had been an officer in the years between the world wars. Whenever I visited, he marched me around the yard and made me stand at attention while he barked out orders from his lawn chair where he sipped drinks with tiny umbrellas in them. I decided I wanted to spend the summer with May at the farm and wrote to my father, asking if I could go. He refused, insisting that the farm was in the middle of nowhere, I would hate it there, but I begged and begged until he gave in.
When classes ended, I took a bus to Roanoke where May met me. She was wearing a flannel shirt and jeans. She looked thin and ill at ease in the crowded terminal as I came forward, pulling my trunk. We didn’t hug. When I saw her coming toward me whispering my name, I didn’t even recognize her.
“Why don’t you let me help you with that?” May said, leaning toward me tentatively, touching my sleeve.
“No, thank you, ma’am,” I said. “I’ll be all right.”
“Suit yourself,” May said. She stood back, withdrew her hand, and crossed her arms.
She led me out of the terminal. When we got out to her pickup truck, I could barely lift my trunk from the dolly. For as long as I could remember, that trunk had been my enemy. I was sweating, feeling like something inside me was going to pop, when May took one side, helping me. Together we heaved it up onto the tailgate. Out of breath, we leaned there together.
It was early afternoon, and the crowd that had left the terminal with us was dispersing. May looked at the trunk and shrugged.
“Is that full of rocks or what?” she said. Her hair was uncombed and tangled. It shone in the sun. She looked like what my father would have called a hippie.
“Just clothes,” I said. “Some books.”
“Everything you own’s in there, isn’t it?” she said, smiling for the first time.
“Yes ma’am,” I said. “Everything.”
“Look,” she said, “Don’t call me ma’am, okay. You’re not in the army yet.”
I nodded, and she ruffled my hair with her fingers.
“Let’s get a pop for the drive back,” she said. I stood by the truck, guarding it, while she went to a machine and bought soft drinks.
The road to the farm was surrounded by forests and pastureland grazed by horses and cows. The land was separated by split-rail fences. There were farmhouses sitting on knolls at the ends of long dirt or gravel driveways, and little houses up by the road. Aunt May asked me if I’d ever ridden a horse or if I liked to swim. She reminded me that there was a river bordering our land. She said that we could swim there as much as we liked.
The two-story brick farmhouse, which had been built by my great-grandfather in 1884, stood on a rise. All of our pastures were rented out to neighboring farmers whose cattle and horses could be seen grazing in groups or alone. The grasses of the pastures had been nibbled down by the grazing animals, giving the earth—although it was bright green—a hard, barren look. There were dead trees with short broken branches, and jagged, white rocks jutting from the ground. The land reminded me of pictures I had seen of Greece. I marveled at the country, so foreign looking and yet the only place I could honestly call my home.
I thought the house looked weird and a little spooky. Much of the furniture was covered by sheets and made large, gray shadows against the white walls. May gave me a room in the basement, explaining that she thought I’d like it better down there, then apologizing because the rest of the house had electricity. I would have to use a kerosene lantern to read after dark, but wouldn’t that be fun, part of the adventure? I said kerosene lanterns sounded cool, but I was really tired. I unpacked and took a short nap. I hadn’t slept much the night before and I’d left northern Virginia before five o’clock, so I fell asleep quickly and slept deeply, but only for twenty minutes or so. I woke up hearing voices left over from my dreams, speaking and singing, but a second later they were gone. May was sitting in the room with me, in a chair in the corner, watching me.
“I hope I didn’t scare you,” May said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you. I just wanted to look at you.”
I blinked away the sleep and nodded. May seemed to want to talk now, and her voice, which never rose very far above a whisper, was deep and halting. She stood and walked around the room. “This used to be your great-grandfather’s room,” she said. “It was his favorite room in the house. He liked it because it was cool in the summer.”
I propped my head on my elbow. “Did you know my great-grandfather?”
“When he was old. You favor him, I must say, especially around the eyes. And the nose. I have a picture of him when he was your age. It’s in my room, and I’ll show it to you sometime. But we don’t have to do that now. Well, I’m keeping you awake talking. I’ll go now. You take your nap. We can talk later.” May left the room, but I wasn’t sleepy anymore. I got up and went upstairs.
“Where’s the
TV?” I said. May was sitting in the living room, in one of the chairs that wasn’t covered with a sheet, reading. She was beside the window. The bright afternoon light made the room look dark. The house was completely quiet.
May looked up at me and laughed. “I don’t—,” she said, and laughed again. She waved her hand in front of her face and shook her head. “I’ve got a radio but no TV.” I nodded. “Listen,” she said, “why don’t we take a walk or something? I’ll show you around, then we’ll eat.”
That night we ate tomato casserole and pecan pie. Afterwards, we listened to the radio. May carried a big roll of paper down from the attic, and I lay on the floor and drew pictures. After dark, she went to a place she said was top secret, and came back with a lit candle and a cracked Ouija board with letters so faint I could barely read them.
“Do you know what this is?”
I shook my head, and she explained that we could use the Ouija board to talk to the spirits of the house. She set the board on the kitchen table and put out all the lights except for the candle. She turned a clear juice glass upside down on the board and touched the bottom with her fingertips. She told me to touch it too.
“Spirits,” May said, “can you hear me?”
The glass began to move, dragging at first, as if the spirits were only beginning to remember how to speak. The glass moved over the word yes, and May said, “Spirits, do you have a message for anyone among us?” The glass continued, stopping on letters until it spelled my name.
I looked up at May and took my fingers from the glass. Her long straight hair was parted in the middle and dangled down her cheeks. Her eyes were sleepy, and her lips made a sly smile for me.
“Mom?” I said.
May took her hands off the glass. She reached across the board and touched my shoulders. She squeezed them.
“No,” she said, “I don’t think it is.”
“What if it is?” I said.
“It can’t be.” May bit her lip. “It can’t be her because she hasn’t been gone long enough.” She was still squeezing my shoulders, looking into my eyes so deeply, so sincerely I couldn’t look away. “You can only talk to people who have been gone a long time. That’s why I think it might be your great-grandfather. Why don’t we find out?”
The Ouija board became one of our rituals. May brought it out almost every night.
“These are the spirits of this house,” she would announce. “These are the spirits of these walls. Don’t you hear their voices?”
I nodded and said I did. My great-grandfather and other spirits told us stories about the house, and my great-great-grandfather told us stories about the Civil War. In the evenings, we listened to the radio or took turns reading each other our favorite stories from the crinkling yellowed pages of old books.
May grew a vegetable garden. She baked her own bread, made everything we ate—casseroles, cakes, and pies—from scratch. Her cooking was nothing like the quick meals my mother had prepared in the prefabricated houses on the bases where I spent my early life.
Our farm had one cow for milk. Once May had taught me, it was my job to milk it. We had two mares, which we rode to the river to picnic at least every other day, and there was a hen house. We called it the hen hotel because there were so many vacancies.
The farmers who used our land cared for their own animals. Occasionally we saw our neighbors when we were hiking or riding along some ridge, or stopped, eating sandwiches beside a rock. Except for these glimpses and for an occasional drive to the store in Bangs, the summer was completely ours, and we didn’t have to share it with anyone.
After morning chores were completed, May made sandwiches—tomato and mayonnaise or ham and sweet pickles with a dab of mustard—and we rode the mile path to the river. The path was narrow. Around it, as the ground became steep, there were more rocks and willows, some of which were very tall with long, sweeping branches that creaked if the breeze blew. But mostly the days were hot. We wore shorts and T-shirts. At the bottom of the hill, a line of willows ran the length of the river and leaned out over the water. Beneath the trees were rocks, and there was no beach, only a five-foot drop to the river. We would let the horses graze. We ate our lunch on the rocks, and then dove into the river in our clothes.
On the other side of the river was more pastureland, which belonged to a neighbor. There were always sheep coming up to the edge of the river and bleating to us. Sometimes we threw bits of bread to them. We swam and played, splashing each other, and then we lay beyond the treeline in the sun until our clothes dried.
One afternoon I was swimming against the current, upstream to a wide spot where the water ran faster. We were playing water tag. May was swimming after me, calling my name between gulps and laughter. Rounding a bend, I realized she was so far behind me that she wouldn’t come into view for two or three minutes. I moved to the side, clawed at the dirt bank until I could reach a branch, and pulled myself out of the water. I scrambled up over the bank and lay with just my head leaning out far enough to see her. May rounded the bend and swam past me. I pulled my knees up underneath me, knelt, and sprang into the water behind her. I landed in a hole, six or seven feet deep in the river bottom. The water was brown, and I couldn’t see anything. When I bobbed up, my breath had been knocked out of me. The current, which seemed stronger, pulled me into another hole. There was water in my mouth and lungs. I was coughing. I’d been washed about twenty or twenty-five feet when I felt the water’s heaviness drinking me down until May’s arm was around me, under my arms. I felt her legs kicking behind me, under me, between my legs as she lifted me. She dragged me to the side, out of the current, pressed her back against the steep muddy bank, and held me there. I was still coughing, but she was already squeezing me from behind, forcing the water out of me. I could feel her breasts moving against my back, her breath against my neck.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my words broken by coughs.
“Thank God,” she said, and I felt her wet lips against the back of my neck. “Thank God.”
By the time we got out of the water, it had started to rain. The sky had been clear blue all morning, and a strong downpour arose suddenly. We ran home, and it wasn’t until we reached the house that I realized I had lost my watch. It was one my father had given me for Christmas two years before. After I’d calmed down, I could remember the current pulling it over my hand.
“That watch is gone,” May said. We were sitting on the wide wooden porch that ran across the front of the house, watching the rain. We were still wet, catching our breath, sitting side by side. May put her arm around my shoulder and held me to her. She rubbed my hair and kissed my cheek. “There’s no use looking for it,” she said. “You’ll never find it again.”
The next day I finished my chores early and walked down to the river. I believed that the rain might have washed the mud out of the river, that I might be able to see my watch on the bottom. I walked the length of our land on the rocks, looking down into the water, which was still a murky brown. I didn’t see anything except a dead lamb floating. The lamb was newly-born. I stared at its short, white hair, at the pink of its lips and its eyelids, which were pinched shut. The lamb washed against a rock and was caught there. I looked across the river, thinking that its mother might be watching from the other side, but that day I saw no other sheep. I heard May calling me. She was walking down from the house. I looked back at the lamb, saw it had washed free from the rock, and ran to May.
In the night I awoke with a fever from a summer cold I had caught the day we ran through the rain. My fever lasted for two days, and May moved me to one of the upstairs rooms where she brought me soup and sandwiches. She read to me. At night, when I awoke, sweating from bad dreams, May was already in the room with me, asleep or reading in a chair. She gave me alcohol rubs. Afterwards, she sat on the corner of my bed, massaged my face and my hair. She spoke to me to calm me, until I fell asleep. One night after the fever broke, I awoke alone. I was spoiled by May’s doting on me. I climbed ou
t of bed and walked down the hall to her room. The hall was dark and the house was hot. I closed my hand into a fist and was about to knock when her door sprang open. May stood before me, her robe pulled around her. The lamp beside the bed was on, and it lit her face. I could see sweat on her cheeks and brow. I didn’t say anything, only stood there looking at her. Slowly, she smiled at me.
“You were lonely, too,” she said.
I nodded.
May bit her lip and smiled at me. She took my hand and led me to bed. I climbed in, pulled the sheet up to my chin and watched May. Without taking off her robe she climbed under the sheet with me where she held me against her.
After that we slept together in her bed, which she made every morning, folding the white bedspread around the corners of the pillows. May slept in the white cotton robe, and after she had fallen asleep I would turn and watch the curves of her body beneath the sheet that covered us.
In the middle of June, we made our first trip into Bangs to get some groceries. At the base of a mountain, Bangs consisted of two stoplights, a few stores, a boarded-up train station, and a post office. May had been talking about the trip for over a week, but she had put it off until it was absolutely necessary.
May parked her pick-up truck on the street. Walking along the cracked and broken sidewalk with May, I saw two little boys sitting on a bench between the post office and the store. They looked to be five or six, both dirty from play, their hair long and wild. One of them yelled at me, and when I stopped and turned, May kept going. If anything, she sped up so I had to run to keep up with her. We went into the store, and an older man behind the counter said, “Miss Prescott, it’s good to see you out and about.”
May grunted at him and nodded. She forced a painful half-smile like she disliked this man. From the way he talked, he seemed to like her. He looked me over and asked me how I was doing. He called me Sonny. I said I was doing okay. He said to May, “You need any help out your way? Fred Durbin has been looking to do some work, and he said he might come to see you about some fencing.”
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