Averitt clears his throat and turns his attention to Cooper. “I’m glad you’re okay, son. I spoke to Chief Overman. It was a car wreck; we know that part. And you were driving.” It’s not a question.
“Yes, I was driving, but it wasn’t my fault.” Cooper is fifteen years old, defending his report card.
“Well then, what happened?” Averitt asks.
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” I say.
“Well, surely you know.” Averitt doesn’t even look at me; he jabs his inquiry toward Cooper.
“Dad, it was pouring rain. I was driving Willa home from a singing gig and the car slid. When I tried to right it, she grabbed the wheel in panic and we hit a tree.”
Louise glances around the kitchen. “Where’s Gwen?”
“Upstairs, I think,” I say.
“No.” Cooper holds out his hand to touch my elbow. “She wanted to see Willa. I let her go.”
“Oh…”
Louise smiles, but her lips rise only on one side—a smirk, I’d call it. “You didn’t know Gwen was gone?” she asks.
“No.” I reach back to grab the edge of the counter. “But I’m so glad she’s visiting Willa. I can’t stand to think of my sister there alone.”
The pause is long and quiet. The wind outside whistles around the edges of the house, the edges of our conversation. Louise takes her husband’s hand and leans into him. Cooper takes one step toward me and then stops.
“How is your sister?” Averitt asks.
“She’s not doing so great. It’s a head injury. A bruised brain.”
“Nothing broken or cut?” Louise asks.
“Just her eye. She has a small cut above her eye.” I point to the same location on my eyebrow.
Louise looks to her son as if comparing the damage. She opens her mouth and then places her hand over her lips. A small sigh escapes.
“So,” I say. “Let’s all sit down in the living room. I’ll make us some coffee.”
Averitt looks to me. “I’d like a scotch, please.” He nods his chin at Louise. “And I’m sure she’d like a Chardonnay.”
“Okay. Ya’ll go sit down. I’ll be right there. Cooper shouldn’t be up like this anyway.”
The three Morrisons, the original Morrisons, stare at me blankly before they move toward the living room. Louise holds her hand on the small of Cooper’s back and Averitt walks ahead with long strides. Exhaustion is working its way underneath my skin. “Coffee,” I say out loud to the empty kitchen. “I’m going to need more of that.”
* * *
While Averitt and Louise watch the news with Cooper, I return to the hospital, where my daughter and sister are waiting. I enter Willa’s room, where Gwen sits at the bedside. Willa sleeps, her free hand flung over her chest, open and palm down, as if she is covering her heart; her other hand is flat at her side, with the IV fluid moving with invisible force into her vein.
“Hi, Pea.” I hug my daughter and use her childhood nickname, which she’s asked me to “please stop using because I am not four years old.”
Gwen looks up at me, and there she is: the little girl. “She won’t wake up. Is she going to be okay?” she asks. Leftover mascara clumps around her blue eyes. Her face is clean and unwaveringly beautiful. I am overcome with love, the kind that steps in front of a bullet; the type of love that cracks open a life. It’s the kind of love that drives you crazy. I lean down and kiss my daughter on her forehead. “Willa is going to be okay. After something like this, nothing is ever exactly the same, but she’ll be fine.”
“What is that for?” Gwen asks, pointing to the bag of fluid dripping into Willa’s vein.
“To keep the swelling down.”
“What swelling?’
“Her brain,” I say.
“Her brain is swollen. What the hell? That can’t be good, Mom.”
“No, it’s not good, but it’s not terrible, Gwen. Just sit here with her, okay? When she wakes up, she will be so happy to see you.”
Gwen nods, closing her eyes in the tight-squint motion she’s done since she was aware enough to stay her own crying. “Sure.” Then she opens her eyes. “I’m sorry about sneaking out.”
“I know,” I say. “We can talk about that later. I’m going to run to the cafeteria and get something to drink. You want anything?”
“A Coke.” She answers me, but her gaze is on Willa, her hands on the bed rails, gripping them tightly, as if she can keep Willa from sinking further into oblivion.
When I return, Willa is awake. She smiles when she sees me, points to Gwen. “Your daughter. She’s funny.”
I nod, nearing the bedside just as the IV pump begins to sound. Beep. Beep.
“I had a terrible dream and Gwen turned it around,” Willa says. “Always making something bad into something funny, just like you do.”
“Like mother like—”
“Don’t say it,” Gwen says. “Don’t.”
Beep Beep.
I want to push a button to make that damn pump stop. Or unplug it. Or shatter it. My eyes are raw and dry; my muscles ache with the need for rest.
Willa speaks in an almost-whisper, her voice not fully awake. “I was telling her about this bad dream I just had where a man was running after me. I tried to hide in an old beat-up car, but he ran on top of the car and started jumping up and down on the roof.”
I make a groaning sound and swish my hand across the room. “Go, bad dreams, go.”
“Gwen said it sounded like one of those old ghost stories girls tell one another at slumber parties. You know, ‘The call is coming from inside the house.’”
We all laugh, but it is a weak and watered-down sound. “Who knows what crazy stuff our subconscious digs up,” I say, and try to smile.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“You’re right,” Willa says. “That’s probably where it came from.”
“That or the drugs dripping into your vein,” Gwen says, lifting the plastic tube.
“Or the hit on the head,” Willa says, touching her scalp next to her right ear.
“Or it was just a dream.” I reach for the intercom, needing someone to make the beeping stop.
“It’s never just a dream,” Willa says.
That’s what she believes—that dreams are messages, lyrics to a song she needs to write or memorize.
I push the call button, and when a voice comes over the speaker, I inform the disembodied voice that the machine is beeping.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
I want to slam my hands over my ears.
The nurse comes into the room and enters a complicated sequence of numbers into the machine. She changes the IV fluid bag and pushes gently on Willa’s needle site. “All good,” she says.
“Can I ask something?” I say to the nurse, and she turns to me.
“Not sure I can answer, but I’ll try.”
“I need to get the toxicology reports for both Willa and my husband, Cooper.”
She smiles and I see her name tag: LULA. Seems like a name for a singer or dancer, not a nurse. “I can’t give you those, ma’am. They are confidential, for the patient only.”
“But the doctor—”
“You can ask her, then,” Lula says, and exits the room.
“I’ll get my report,” Willa says, quietly, sinking back onto the pillow. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
“I do believe you; that’s why I want it,” I say.
She nods, an almost imperceptible movement. She closes her eyes as the medicine drips into her vein and she drifts off again, into dreams and lyrics.
six
Two people came by to say hello to Willa: Francie and a man whose name I’ve heard but whom I’ve never met—Benson. He works at the Bohemian and arranges Willa’s open-mike nights.
Their voices are a chorus of overlapping laugher.
“Remember that singer from last month with the dreadlocks?” Bensons asks.
“Carlton or something like that.” Francie looks up in the air, as if the n
ame might be there.
“No,” Willa says. “Charleston. He was named after the city and he was so proud.”
“I wanted to flirt with him,” Francie says. “But I didn’t have on enough mascara.”
Willa’s laughter is loud and raucous. “Dumbest excuse ever.”
“You two are nuts,” Benson says. “His name was Clay and he just got a music deal in Nashville for that song we didn’t even like.”
“The one about his mama?” Francie asks. “Ugh. It was sappy and ridiculous.”
“Well, some music muckety-muck liked it. I’m only telling you so you two don’t give up. Keep at it.”
In their conversation and lyric lingo, I listen for hints of what happened the night of the accident. Finally, I ask Benson. “Were you there that night?”
“Yep,” he says. “I was. But I have no idea what happened. One minute she was practicing in the back room and then she was gone.”
Before I can respond, Gwen calls for me from the hospital hallway. She needs me to convince her dad to let her meet Dylan for dinner. I shake my head. “No way, Gwen. Go home, and I’ll meet you there. We’ll have a family dinner.”
“Family dinner,” she says in a tone that suggests I’ve asked her to eat garbage. “Can’t wait.” She walks down the hall, her long legs swinging out, trying to get ahead of her, as if she can’t get away from me fast enough.
* * *
In the car on the way home, I try to stop thinking about Willa and her swollen temporal lobe, her memory and that night, about Cooper driving into a tree while Willa grabbed the wheel. I turn on the radio, cranking the volume to adolescent level—meaning LOUD. Lucinda Williams sings at a “Kiss Like Your Kiss,” and my mind wanders to the last time Cooper kissed me. Not the kind at the door on his way out, or the respectable sort of kiss he’ll use to acknowledge me in public. I mean the kind of kiss that pulls the body closer, that makes time come undone and the heart slow. When was the last time? I come up blank. I remember our first kiss, but I can’t remember the last.
Before going home, I drive into the parking lot at Cameron’s Print Shop to buy ink. This is how it goes with me: A disturbing thought, a hint of something amiss, and I’m buying ink, wandering through aisles of antique fonts, holding Italian cotton paper up to the light. I know every ink shop, print shop, and stationery store in the city.
The store is low-lit; a seductive barroom. Cameron, the owner, sits on a stool behind the counter, reading a magazine, raising his fingers to turn the pages and humming under his breath. “Hey, Cam,” I say.
He glances up at me. “Hi there, Eve. How’s it flying?”
“Been better flights than today.” I smile. “I need to order some more of that Twinrocker handmade paper and I’m almost out of magenta base color.”
“Got it,” Cam says. “But what’s going on in your world that could be anything but superior?” He rises from his stool.
Cam has never told me his age, but then again, I’ve never asked. I’ve estimated anywhere from sixty to ninety. Today I give him a seventy-five. He moves with ease, but slowly, and his wild gray hair is combed back with pomade. His rimless glasses are perched on his wrinkled nose.
“Not all days can be superior,” I reply.
“Well, all your days should be.” He peers at me directly. “Is Gwen okay?”
“Yes,” I say. “But things aren’t great for my family, Cameron. My sister and husband were in a car wreck.”
“Over on Preston?” he asks.
I nod.
“Heard about that.”
“Really?” I lift my eyebrows, and I’m so tired, even that seems to hurt.
“I live a block away. They okay?”
“Cooper’s face is cut up pretty bad. Willa has something like a concussion.” I’m practicing this sentence, one I know I’ll say over and over again.
“I’m sorry, Eve.”
I’m quiet as I follow Cam through the aisles, as if the flywheels, levers, and pedals deserve a reverential silence. Shelves are filled with boxes of leftover metal fonts. Flywheels like shrunken Ferris wheels sit discarded on a lower shelf. A Vandercook and a Heidelberg lean against each another for support while wishing for an owner to clean them up, make them useful again. After we find what I need, I tell Cam to put the items on the company tab and I leave with a hug.
I make one more stop at the market for dinner. I buy Gwen’s favorite—sea bass—and Cooper’s favorite—sweet potatoes. Family dinner: It was my parents’ cure-all for any ailment. I’m repeating patterns, but something has to be done, and a family dinner seems as good an option as any.
I turn off the radio and roll down the driver’s window, allowing the muggy air to fill my car. I return home and instead of going straight into the garages, I turn on the gravel drive toward the barn. Francie is at the hospital and Max will be long gone, but I want to check on things.
If the printing rollers aren’t cleaned every night, they’ll gum up, rending themselves useless. If that happens (which it has), an entire day of printing is lost. It’s the last thing we do every day before locking the barn doors—insuring that the rollers are clean and stored properly.
I slide the barn doors open and flick on the overhead lights. New customers often walk in and say, “Oh, it smells so good in here. What is that?” And we shrug. “Candles and machine cleaner.”
Through the years, we’ve burned so many fragrant candles, they’ve soaked into the hardwood floors, the cedar pillars reaching to the loft above, and the cobwebs we sometimes remember to clean so high above us.
A single light burns over Max’s desk and I hope to see him bent over a piece of machinery, but his stall is empty. I drop the ink and trip lever he ordered onto his desk and then walk over to the project table. An empty coffee cup, a napkin with the remains of Francie’s afternoon cookie, and papers are scattered across the table. I bend over to see what they worked on while I was gone.
Francie’s sketches are easy to recognize; her pictures tip to the right. When I tell her that her pictures are “tipsy” she says that is what graphic art computer programs are for—“to fix tipsy.” I’m looking at a card’s design that isn’t any different: A drunken dense-limbed tree is perched on the left, reaching toward the corner of the paper. Francie drew a live oak tree, its branches spread wide and high, until the leaves and arms disappear off the deckled edge of paper. At the roots are the number 1 and the words Be Kind. I stare at this rendering of my first commandment, of the first idea. I run my finger across the tree, the number, and the words. This card has sold more units than any we’ve ever made.
Max’s handwriting is on another sheet of paper, a mix of script and block that is his alone. Then on smaller scrap papers there are other sketches: a heart, two hands reaching out, a man and a woman kissing—half-formed ideas discarded in a pile. I look at Max’s handwriting, and I feel the same way I did when I first met him: my stomach upside down, a slow-crawling ache along my ribs, a need without name.
Max and I were so young when we worked together at the print shop in Savannah. He was a student at SCAD, but my parents couldn’t afford the tuition. Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma had offered me a full ride, in deference to my dad, which I’d quickly turned down, and that transformed our house into a battlefield with a months-long war. “It’s an education,” Dad said over and over.
“What I’m doing right now is more of an education than anything I’ll learn there” was my counterattack. This verbal dead zone continued until Willa came home drunk one night and the family drama turned to her. I actually thanked her the next day. And I continued my job and preoccupation with printing presses.
We worked together for a year—Max and I—learning how to dance together with the verbal and visual elements of imagery. It’s a complicated choreography.
Max had a girlfriend then. Amanda was her name. Adorable was her game. They lived together for ten years before she finally decided that she was “living the wrong life.” By the
n, I was married and had a four-year-old daughter. I told myself I wasn’t in love with Max, only with what we did together, what we created.
Typography and letterpress, design and branding take place in a social world, when listening to coworkers, clients, and their narrative. It comes from working together, from storytelling. Once the story is finally told, the typeface is chosen, and this is where I excel. All those years ago, we’d lived, worked, read, talked, and thrived on design in a small ink-stained studio on Bull Street. Francie joined us a month into the job, and through late nights, hangovers and laughter, we’d become close.
“Why do you do this craziness?” Francie asked late one night while lying flat on the hardwood floor of the Soapbox studio.
We then went around the room, the three of us exhausted at the end of a long project, satisfied with our results, and gave our reasons for wanting to pursue the art and craft of design, letterpress, logos, and bookmaking. We talked about our dreams and where this typography life might take us—“this type of life,” Max said.
It was my turn, and I said, “You know that feeling when you go to the mailbox?”
“Which one?” Max asked. “When you know there are bills you can’t pay?”
We laughed. “No,” I said. “That feeling when you go to the mailbox and there’s a letter, and it’s on cotton paper and someone has handwritten a note to you? Someone bought the card, wrote on it, and sent it to you. They didn’t e-mail or call or leave a voice message. That’s good mail. I do this for good mail,” I said.
With that, our company began in utero, yet the Fine Line, Ink wasn’t born until many years later, after I’d married and Gwen was eleven years old. I ran it by myself and then approached Francie and Max for help. They started at one day a week, and the company has grown so rapidly that now it is a full-time job—for all of us. It is Max and Francie who create the success; I know this. Their creative powers forge something new, and I’m mostly along for the ride.
I sit at the project table and gaze at the results of the brainstorming session that went on without me, the one about Good Ideas numbers seven and eight. I feel a wave of intense love for all of it, for all the ideas and the designs so far finished and for the ones yet to be created.
The Stories We Tell Page 5