Willa approaches us now and gazes at Mary Jo. They stare at each other and then Mary Jo turns quickly on her kitten heels and walks out, speaking over her shoulder. “See you in a couple weeks.”
When the door closes and then tires crunch on the gravel outside, Francie says, “What a bitch.”
“I know her,” Willa says quietly. “But I don’t know how.”
“I think she knew you, too,” I say.
Willa shakes her head. It’s as if she’s trying to loosen memories, to shake them to consciousness. Quick tears come to her eyes. “This is terrible. It’s like looking into the dark, like finding your way through a room without lights or windows. There’s everything there, but I can’t see anything at all. I’m bumping into furniture and walls.”
“It’ll get better, right?” Francie says. “We’ll help you. What do they say helps?” She is desperate for an answer and trips over her need to help Willa.
“Reorienting over and over,” I say. “But the problem is that we don’t know what only you can know.…” I pause. “One of the things I learned is that our brain, your brain,” I say to Willa, “holds memories with a little tag of place and time. I mean, I know it’s all mixed up now, but somewhere the image is tied to place.”
Willa sits on a chair next to Francie. “Nothing is tied to anything. I dig around inside my stomach…” She pauses, seeming to know she’s used the wrong word, the wrong body part, but still searching. “My head,” she finally says. “I dig around in my head and try to find one scrap of something from that night. And what do I find? Nada. I know Cooper’s story, but I can’t remember it. What scares me the most is that someone can tell me exactly what happened and I have to believe it because I don’t know anything at all.” She talks so quickly, manically, with her voice rising at the end in a crescendo of frustration.
No one speaks; not one of us knows how to combat or fix this blackout in her memory.
Willa claps her hands together once, a signal, a resounding end. “Here. I know how to explain it. It’s like this,” she says. “When we were kids, Eve, we heard the creation story, right? Adam and Eve. The garden. The snake.”
I nod.
“And part of us knew it couldn’t be all the way true, right? It was true that God made the world and a man and then a woman, but the other stuff seemed as real as Narnia, right? Or the myths you loved in high school about Zeus and Hades and that goddess you loved—what was her name?”
“Persephone.”
Willa continues. “Then when we were in high school we took that field trip to Atlanta to the museum. Fieldstone…” Her voice fades.
“Fernbank,” I say, filling in her gaps, writing over the blank spots as if our conversations are fill-in-the-blank tests.
“Yes.” She shakes her head again. “Anyway … we learned about other theories and the big bang and the dreaded word evolution and we discovered that there were other stories about the same event.” She is quiet for a while, shuffling the blank memory cards as if we are about to play poker. “That’s how this is with the accident. I know I’ve been told a story I’m supposed to believe. Mostly, I do, I think. But there’s another story out there, and I don’t think I’m going to find it at Fernbank this time.”
We laugh, but it’s a weak sound, a sad resonance.
Humiliation, a filling and nauseous feeling, overcomes me. We aren’t talking about some version of that night told by a stranger. This was my husband’s rendition of the accident, which might or might not be true: a creation story of his own mythology?
“How can we help?” Max asks.
“You can’t.…” Willa stands, waves her hand, and smiles. “Go back to work.”
We are silent, all of us.
“I do need to finish this print run,” I say, and then we break free. Tears sting the back of my throat like bees released from a hive under my ribs.
I lift the printer’s top, checking the magenta ink level, burying again and again the rising sadness that I just can’t fix. I focus on work, on my search for the right shade of green, for the poster for O’Leary’s pub. I flip through the Pantone color chart, which is a book of color recipes—an indispensable tool in the printing universe. Our chart is ink-stained and well loved, worn at the edges. Max startles me when he touches my elbow. “Hey, you okay?”
“Looking for that perfect Irish green.” I hold up the Pantone chart and then look at him, his eyes, at the circle of blue and then the brown. I close my eyes. “What color are my eyes?” I ask.
He laughs; I feel it as a low rumble under my ribs. “Mostly brown, but lately they’ve been greener and not so brown anymore.”
My lids pop open. “You noticed.”
“About a year ago.”
“It’s weird, right? Why would my eyes change color?”
“I was going to ask you, but…”
“But what?”
He looks away. “Eve, I don’t know. It seemed personal. And we stay away from those kinds of conversations.…”
“We do?”
His gaze wanders back to me, slowly, languid and swimming. “Of course we do.”
“Oh, I didn’t realize.…”
“Here.” He takes the Pantone chart from me. “Let’s do this later. Francie really wants you to see her new sketch.”
“Wait,” I say, a fluttering feeling moving under my skin. “Why do we do that?”
“Do what?” He touches the Pantone chart. “Use this?”
“No, of course I know why we use that.” I smile. “Why do we stay away from those kinds of conversations? I’d have liked to know that you noticed my eyes, just like I know that you have a blue ring around your brown eyes. Did we somehow agree never to talk about these kinds of things and I don’t remember agreeing?”
“Eve.” He takes a deep breath. “You’ve always kept your private thoughts private. You keep your life outside this studio and inside this studio very separate.”
My eyes well with tears, but not enough to spill out.
“I’m an ass.” He picks up a clean white cloth and hands it to me like an old-fashioned handkerchief. “I wasn’t saying it was good or bad. You asked.”
“I know.” I hold up my hand. “I don’t want it that way, though. I didn’t realize I was doing that. I want to know how you and Francie feel about things outside these walls. I want to know what you do and think and notice. I do.”
He stares at me for a bit, pushes back a strand of hair from his forehead, but doesn’t speak.
“Tell me something,” I say. “Something that has nothing to do with this life inside these walls. Tell me something, anything about you.”
He smiles. “Okay.”
I wait and he falters, reaching for something.
“My brother is visiting this week. Yesterday, we kayaked from Savannah to Daufuskie Island and spent the afternoon drinking warm beer on Bloody Point Beach.”
“Beau?” I ask.
He nods.
“Sounds amazing.” I close my eyes, imagining kayaking across the green-gray water to an island with Max. Just as quickly, feeling danger, I stop the vision in mid-vision, opening my eyes to reality.
Francie and Willa walk toward us and they laugh about something we don’t hear. Before they reach us, Max whispers, “I like the green.”
I’m fairly sure he isn’t talking about the Pantone chart.
twelve
The car-repair shop is the kind of place that remains unnoticed until needed. Broken-down and smashed cars litter the parking lot out front, while men in grease-stained overalls mill around as if they’re only looking at the cars, not actually doing anything with them. But in the back of Brando’s Car Repair there’s a larger lot, unseen and busy as a hive. It’s there that I find the owner.
I call out his name. “Brando.”
He approaches me, and the smell of burned tires comes with him. His dark black hair is a slick, shining helmet. He smiles and his two gold-capped teeth flirt from the left side of his grin. “Hello, Mrs. Mo
rrison. Nice to see you today. The Beemer is all ready for you to take home to its comfy garage.”
“Thanks. You made these repairs so quickly. I appreciate it,” I say as Willa comes to my side.
He shrugs. “Your hubby said you needed it for a trip tomorrow and so we needed to put a rush on it. Guys were up all night working on it, like it was the president’s limo or something.” He laughs and this sends him into a spasm of coughs. Bent over, he finishes coughing and then stands up, wiping at the edge of his mouth with a stained towel. “But it’s ready for sure.”
There is no trip tomorrow, but I don’t say this.
Willa stands to the left of me and winds and unwinds her fingers in a nervous gesture I haven’t seen since childhood. Her eyes twitch and her gaze moves across the lot and then to the right. Cooper’s BMW is parked in the side lot and a bright cloak of sunshine falls on the silver paint. Brando is right: The car is perfect, as if it had never been in an accident at all.
“I wish I could be fixed that easily,” she says, quiet and not seeming to know that she’d spoken out loud.
Brando looks to her. “You were in that car, too?”
“Yes.”
“You’re lucky Mr. Morrison is such a good driver and that Beemers are so safe with the side and front air bags and all; otherwise, you’da been wrapped around that tree yourself.”
Willa stares at Brando without moving: an unnerving stillness. “I’m lucky?” she asks.
Brando blushes, diffuse red patches covering his cheeks. “Didn’t mean nothing by it. I just heard the story, that’s all.…”
“What story?” I ask.
“About the wreck and all,” he says.
“And?” Willa asks.
I look around for Max but don’t see him. It was good of him to drive us here … but where did he go?
“Well I don’t have no details or anything,” Brando says. “All I know is that it must’ve been one helluva rotten tree, because whatever broke off and smashed into the hood did the most damage.”
“Thanks for all your help,” I say. “Are the keys in the car?”
“Sure are,” he says. “Wanna take her for a spin to make sure it’s okay for your trip tomorrow?”
Cooper’s tiny lie quivers. It’s so easy to tell the small lies—the ones that get the car fixed quickly or get you out of a dinner party. But where do you draw the line? Cooper told Brando I needed the car for a trip; he told me that Willa was drunk and grabbed the wheel. He’s not alone. I do it, too—tell people that a job is almost done when I’ve just started; that I’m fine when I’m not.
Cooper wanted his car back quickly. Big deal.
I smile at Brando. “I’m not going on a trip, but we do so appreciate the rush with the car. Thanks so much.”
Willa and I approach the car, and as she reaches the passenger side, she stops. Large sunglasses cover her eyes, and I can’t tell where she’s looking, but she’s bent over, her face to the passenger-side window. “I thought this might help, you know.”
“Seeing the car?”
“Yeah. Seeing where I sat.” She stands up, and above the sunglasses her eyebrows draw downward. “I thought it might make me remember.” She slams her hand on top of the roof. “This is so unbearably frustrating.”
“I know.”
She removes her sunglasses and rubs under her eyes. “I wish I’d seen the car all banged up. Maybe that would’ve helped.”
“Should we ask if Brando has pictures?”
“Yes,” she says, a jump behind her voice. “Can we?” She waves her hand toward the front of the building. “And where’d Max go?”
“Probably back to work.”
“I know I’ve told you before, but you are so lucky to work with him.”
“I know.” This isn’t a convenient lie; it’s the truth.
We walk around the half-mangled and partially fixed cars—those that had been in serious accidents and those in fender benders all together. We reach the office and Brando looks up from a pile of papers and credit card receipts, which he stares at as if they are written in another language. “Something wrong?” he asks.
“I’m wondering if you have any photos of the car before you fixed it.” I smile the best I can, but fake grinning is not one of my talents.
“Yeah, I got some for the insurance company.”
Willa steps forward, touching his hairy forearm. “I need to see them.”
Brando looks up at Willa. Even bruised and ragged, she is a presence. Men notice her. I’ve seen the way they treat her, as if she’s fragile. They feel an irresistible need to take care of her. I know what Brando will say, and then he does.
“Sure thing. Be right back.”
We wait in the office, which is black with soot and grease that can only be removed by fire. Talk radio drones on somewhere in the rear of the garage and then Max’s voice startles us. “Girls, everything okay?”
I turn. “I thought you left.”
“Not yet.”
“It’s all fine,” Willa says. “Car is ready, but we just wanted to see the pictures—you know, before and after.”
Brando appears with a file folder and slides it across a counter of cracked yellow linoleum. “Here you go.”
Willa picks up a pile of Polaroids. She holds them like a fan of tarot cards, gently, carefully, spreading them out in a pattern as if to read our future or a hidden truth.
“As you can see right here”—Brando points to the hood shot—“most of the damage is on the right side, where you sat. Must’ve hit that tree sideways.” Then he points to the top of the hood. “This is what damn near could’ve killed you if it had gone through the windshield.”
Willa stares at the photo, running her finger along the hood. “If what had gone through the windshield?”
“Musta been a branch.” He points to a different photo, the one where the car’s front right side was mashed up like thin rice paper folded into ugly origami. “This is where you hit the tree, but this is where something fell off the damn tree.” He uses his other hand to cover the hood photo, tying the two together in a car-wreck scenario.
Willa nods. “I don’t remember any of it.”
“Do you have any photos from the wreck site?” Max asks from behind us, moving closer to look over my shoulder.
“Nope,” Brando says, gathering the photos in a proprietary move, shielding Max’s gaze from the pictures. “I got the car off the tow truck. I wasn’t at the wreck site.”
“Brando,” I say. “Thanks for everything. Especially the quick fix.”
“No problem. Hope everything’s okay, since your trip got canceled and all.”
“Thanks again.”
Max walks out the front door, telling us he’ll meet us at the studio, and Willa follows him. “Where you going?” I ask.
“I’ll ride with him.” She stops at the door, her hand on the knob. “I don’t think I want to get in that car.”
“It might help?”
“No,” she says. “It won’t. I’m not sure anything ever will.”
Then they’re gone: Max and Willa. They walk to his truck, where he opens the passenger side door for her before walking to the driver’s side and starting the engine. I’m still standing in the dank office when they drive away.
“If you ask me, she’s damn lucky,” Brando says, judgment as sure in his voice as a god looking down on the stupid.
“Yes,” I reply. “She damn sure is.”
And I know we aren’t talking about the same thing.
thirteen
Best friend isn’t really a term you use when you’re an adult. It feels a little demeaning, as if you’re placing all other friends on a lower scale. Dear friends are dear and there isn’t a best. I can say all of that with certitude and yet in the same breath tell anyone this: “Willa is my best friend.”
She knows everything there is to know about me and she can detect any falseness on my part, like one of those airport security buzzers that screams
when you forget to take off your belt. So this new Willa, the confused, disoriented, and weepy Willa, is a great loss. There are moments she seems present and others when she is as gone as if another has inhabited her bruised brain.
When I stop by her cottage on my way to the studio, I can almost see the cogs in her head trying to churn out my very name, which had once been her first word. Mother was completely inconsolable when Willa’s first word was Eve. This morning, Willa called me Gwen.
The past three weeks have stretched out interminably, unrolling with moments of healing and then backsliding. The swelling has subsided, and yet often Willa’s eyes still appear flat, like matte ink on dull paper. She comes to the studio every day and helps with layouts and fonts and design. We work on the card line and laugh a lot, which is when she seems to be the most Willa-like. There are days when her quick wit shines, and others when she barely speaks a word, smiling at our jokes but with a look, a faraway look, shadowing her eyes. I imagine her inside her mind, searching under and around the broken synapses for a recognizable moment. She’ll recall a memory—a night out with Francie; a walk in the woods with me; our day sailing with Gwen—and then ask, “Or did I dream that?”
Benson comes by and they hang out on the cottage porch. I can hear their laughter falling into the air when I walk past. Just yesterday, she found herself lost in lyrics and chords, and wrote five songs in a blur of creativity. But today, she stares at the guitar as if she doesn’t know what it is or how to touch it.
Francie, Max, and Willa have started going out together in the evenings so that Willa can hear Francie sing at open-mike nights. Willa still isn’t cleared to drive. And she won’t be until her doctor does more tests.
As for me, I stay home. I cook dinner, avoid fund-raisers and dinner parties because Cooper wants to “lie low.” The bandages are gone now, but he still acts as if the angry slash is a humiliation.
Cooper and Willa avoid being in the same place at the same time and they haven’t crossed paths since the dinner party debacle. I only once asked Cooper to go down to the cottage to talk to her, but he refused.
Gwen is grounded and is giving me the silent treatment, unless, of course, she’s being sarcastic. Take your pick—sarcasm or silence. I don’t like either of them. I want her back; I want my daughter to come home.
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