by Lyn Cote
“You need anything?” Rose asked, a hand on her hip.
Carly leaned over and kissed Rose’s milk chocolate cheek. “Whatever you’re cooking sure smells good.”
“You better believe it. Now hurry up. Your Aunt Kitty wants to see you.”
Obediently Carly ran upstairs to her room and put her things in the armoire and dresser. Everything was just as she left it, but she was different. Each memento from childhood tugged at her, many reminding her of Chloe and Kitty and the fun they’d had together. Carly stroked the sterling silver brush and comb set that had belonged to her great-grandmother Chloe’s mother. It had been Carly’s graduation present when she’d finished eighth grade.
For the first time in months, Carly slipped out of uniform and pulled on comfortable worn jeans and, for Kitty, a New York Mets T-shirt. Aunty was a Mets fan. Carly felt a catch in her throat. How could she meet Kitty with the crushing fear that it might be the last time?
Stalling for time, for wisdom, Carly turned her back to the freestanding mirror and gazed around at the room. This room had been Great-Grandma Chloe’s, then Grandma Bette’s, Leigh’s, and now hers. It was a room of priceless antiques that could easily have been moved to the county museum. But Chloe insisted they were family pieces and they would be happier being used by the family that had chosen and cherished them over the centuries than gathering dust in a museum.
All the women of Ivy Manor that had gone before, even the ones Carly knew only from family portraits, crowded around her. Here she was never alone. Here, away from New York City where she’d been kidnapped, was the only place she had ever felt truly wanted and truly safe. But she couldn’t hide in her room for the next four days. She had to break through her reluctance to face the fact that she might lose Kitty.
Disheartened, she went to the door, and there, paused again. She pressed her hand against the solid plastered wall beside the doorjamb as if drawing strength from the centuries of women who’d passed through this same door.
When Aunt Kitty and Great-Grandma Chloe were girls, Kitty slept in the trundle bed in this room. Grandma Bette and Aunt Gretel shared this room. Her mother, Leigh, and Aunt Dory had, too. Would she be a mother someday, and would her daughter love this room as she did? Carly drew up her strength, the strength that came from that house. I am a woman of Ivy Manor.
Taking a deep breath, she willed herself down the steps to the den. She pushed open the pocket doors and faced the maple-paneled room, now dominated by an incongruous hospital bed. At first, Carly didn’t look directly at the occupant of that bed. Instead, she scanned the others in the room. On one side, Bette, in gray slacks and a lighter gray blouse, was reading aloud with Minnie, Lorelle’s great-grandmother, near her. Wearing a pale green dress, Chloe sat on the other side, holding Kitty’s hand. Where was her mother?
“Carly,” Chloe said, her eyes widening. “Carly.” She rose and opened her arms.
Carly hurried into them. She hugged Chloe, feeling the fragility of her age. It frightened her. In contrast, her great-grandmother’s arms tightened around her. “We’ve missed you so.” Then she released Carly to Bette’s arms.
Carly let herself rest her head on her grandmother’s reassuringly firm shoulder. “We’re so glad you could get leave,” Bette murmured, kissing Carly’s forehead. Minnie, dressed fashionably as always, patted her shoulder.
Finally, Bette released Carly, and she turned to go to Kitty’s outstretched arms. Carly tried to hide her shock. But Kitty looked too frail to still be breathing. Her cheeks were sunken, and her skin was sickly sallow.
“I look like the wreck of the Hesperus, don’t I?” Kitty teased in a thread of a voice. “No, don’t answer that, please.”
Carly leaned over and kissed the lined cheek and let Kitty kiss her back and then stroke her face.
“Seeing you is good medicine,” Kitty murmured. “I’m terribly sorry I missed your graduation from boot camp. I was so proud of you—distinguished honor graduate. I still have the photos right here beside me.”
Carly sat down on the bed, thigh-to-thigh with her great-great-aunt. “You were missed, too, but I understood why you couldn’t come.”
Kitty nodded and then stroked Carly’s face again. “They cut your hair.”
“I was lucky. I got a barber who liked long hair.” Carly turned her head and touched the tight braid at the back of her neck. Her aunt’s body looked like bones in a sack under the thin cover. It shook Carly. “I like it like this. It’s off my neck and easy to care for.” Then she burst into tears.
“Oh, my sweet, my precious girl,” Kitty crooned. And then Carly was alone with her aunt. Bette, Minnie, and Chloe left quietly, closing the door behind them.
“I’m sorry,” Carly said, taking a tissue from the bedside table crowded with medicine bottles and other sickroom paraphernalia. “I didn’t mean to cry.”
“I’ve cried a few times myself over the past few weeks. It’s hard to die. It’s hard to let go.”
Kitty’s calm words iced Carly’s insides. “Can’t they do anything for you?”
“Well, they could start replacing all my body parts or hook me up and electrify me like Frankenstein’s monster. I’m ninety-three, Carly, and it’s a miracle that I’m still alive. I nearly killed myself with bad liquor in the twenties.”
Carly looked at her.
“Yes, you’re a grown-up now, and I don’t have to act as if I’ve lived a perfect life. I was pretty wild when I was young. I didn’t have your common sense and steady temperament. I nearly destroyed my liver when I drank some doctored wood alcohol during Prohibition. And you know that I was never married to Thompson’s father. I haven’t lived the life of a saint.”
“You’ve been good to me.”
“That was easy. I loved you the moment I knew you were on the way. I probably wouldn’t have lived as long as I have if Leigh hadn’t given me my second chance to be a true aunt and almost your second grandmother. Helping raise you has been the joy of my life.” Kitty folded one of Carly’s hands in her thin, age-spotted hand.
The frailty of the hand made Carly speak. “I love you, Aunty.”
“I know, dearest. And now I’m going to ask you to do something for me.” Kitty raised her hand to stop Carly from speaking. “This request is going to be very hard for you, the hardest thing you may be asked to do in this life.”
Carly stared at her aunt, fearing she would ask something Carly couldn’t do. “What is it, Aunty?”
“I want you to start forgiving your mother for not telling you who your father is and keeping the two of you apart.”
Flushed, Carly looked away. “No fair.”
“It may seem that way,” Kitty conceded. “But I’m going to give your mother the same treatment.”
“Where is she?” Carly faced Kitty again. “I thought she would be here by now.”
“I think my dying is frightening your mother even more than you, more than she can face. You see, I know about her first love. Or should I say second love? The year before you were born, your mother suffered three terrible losses.”
Carly didn’t know what Kitty meant and didn’t want to ask for more to complicate everything now. “Is Mother coming, and Nate?”
“Yes. But Leigh does not want to face me. She does not want me to press her once again to tell you the truth. She knows that it is very hard to refuse a dying request.”
Carly shook her head. Don’t talk about dying, Aunty.
Kitty touched her arm. “But the truth needs to come out, and if I have to die in order to make it happen, fine.”
“No,” Carly objected and gently gripped both of Kitty’s hands, now fragile as parchment.
“Yes, my death should have something good come of it.”
Carly bent her head to Kitty’s hands and wept.
Leigh and Nate arrived just before dawn. When she saw that Ivy Manor was lit up like morning already, Leigh knew she’d waited too long. She hurried inside the back door, calling for her mother
and grandmother. She found Minnie, Bette, Chloe, and Carly in the den on the first floor. And Kitty was asleep, but they were all sitting around her. Then she realized that it only looked as if Kitty were sleeping. She was not breathing. Leigh felt a moan trying to work its way up in her throat. She clamped her lips together tightly and forced the moan back down.
“You delayed long enough, Mother,” Carly accused. “She left us about an hour ago. She’d been waiting for you.”
“Yes,” Minnie added, “she told us to tell you she couldn’t wait any longer.”
The words blasted inside Leigh. She sank to her knees beside the hospital bed, closing her hand over Kitty’s cool one. “I’m so sorry, so sorry,” she whimpered.
Two days later, venerable St. John’s Episcopal Church was filled and overflowing as most of the county folk, dressed in their best, gathered to say farewell to Kitty McCaslin. At the front of the packed church, Rose and her daughter were singing a duet of the hymn Kitty had requested. “Thy strength indeed is small. Child of weakness, watch and pray; find in Me thine all in all.”
In her dress uniform, Carly sat between her parents with little Michael on her lap, listening. She wrestled with grief and anger as her fretful little brother squirmed. She was incensed at her mother for not coming in time. Had her mother really delayed because she didn’t want to face Kitty’s dying plea?
“Sin had left a crimson stain,” Rose and her daughter harmonized, “He washed it white as snow.” They walked down the steps and back to their seats.
The priest stepped to the high pulpit and began reading from Scripture. Beside Carly, Leigh gave a gasp or a sob. She’d not stopped crying since she had collapsed next to Kitty’s bed upon arrival.
Carly tried to hold in her anger. She knew that Kitty wouldn’t want her to argue with her mother, especially in public at her funeral. But her mother’s hypocritical tears made that difficult. She could have gotten there earlier. She should have. How could tears change facts?
The funeral was over before Carly knew it. Everyone made the solemn trek to the family plot in the church cemetery. Thompson, with his wife, stood at his mother’s graveside weeping without a sound. Massive two-hundred-year-old oaks and maples shaded the mourners. The stubborn bronzed oak leaves, still clinging to branches, whispered condolences on the wind. As the pallbearers lowered Kitty’s casket into the grave, Carly closed her gritty eyes. She hadn’t slept for nights now. Fear and nightmares kept her awake.
Her father tugged her along as they walked to the car and then drove back to Ivy Manor. There, all the rooms on the first floor were open and ready for the funeral luncheon. The ladies of the nearby Baptist church had insisted upon preparing and serving the buffet in the dining room. Mourners milled in the den and the parlor, overflowing into the front hall out onto the front porch, even out into the backyard and into the gazebo. Fortunately, the day was bright and temperate.
Carly encouraged her little brother to go outside and play with the other children who lived nearby. And then she tried as well as she could to avoid her mother.
In the crush of people, Nate watched Minnie’s grandson in his dress uniform working his way through the crowd to reach him. “Frank,” Nate said, offering his hand, “glad you could come.”
Frank shook his hand. “It’s really hard to see someone like Kitty McCaslin pass.”
“Did you know her well?” Nate asked, wondering why Frank had approached him alone. Their wives were close, but he and Frank had only a nodding acquaintance. He’d assumed that Frank and Cherise had come because Minnie had come. But was there something more?
“No, but Kitty McCaslin is an important symbol to me. She was one of the first women lawyers in New York City and one of the first to represent black actors and actresses. She was a trailblazer in her own way.”
“She was quite a woman,” Nate agreed. “I’m glad Carly was able to get leave to be here with her . . . at the end.”
“Yes, the timing was right. I’m pretty sure that with what’s going on over in Saudi Arabia, the brass won’t be giving many more leaves.”
Nate caught the change in Frank’s tone. This wasn’t just idle conversation.
“You’ve heard that the president is going to double the U.S. troop strength to over four hundred thousand in Saudi?” Frank asked, looking into Nate’s eyes. “You know what that means, right?”
On the other side of the room, Cherise appeared beside Carly and touched her shoulder. She said a brief prayer for wisdom. “Lorelle wished that she could have gotten away for the funeral,” Cherise said, “but Kitty was a friend of the family, not close family.”
Carly nodded. “I talked to Lorelle. She seems to be enjoying her MOS.”
Carly’s attempt to sound normal touched Cherise. “Yes, my daughter the cop,” she replied wryly.
Cherise watched Leigh stand very close to her great-grandmother Chloe just feet away. “Losing your Aunt Kitty is going to be very hard on your mom.”
“Yeah.” Carly’s tone was flat, unforgiving.
Cherise looked into Carly’s troubled, very beautiful gray eyes. Why tiptoe around? “We’ve all urged your mother to tell you about your birth father, especially now that you’re an adult.”
Carly look surprised.
“I was really glad that you and Lorelle got to know each other as kids and that you were close to each other during basic training. Your mother and I coordinated your vacations when you were kids, so you two would be close to each other. I have never had a friend more honest, more faithful, more loving than your mother.”
“Then why didn’t she get here in time before Aunt Kitty died?” Carly snapped.
Nate didn’t mistake Frank’s meaning. “Surely that wouldn’t affect our girls.”
“The president has called up the reserves for the first time since Vietnam. In the first time in U.S. history, a president has called nearly five hundred people out of retirement. Iraq has assembled another seventy thousand troops into Kuwait on the Saudi border.”
“But we have allies joining us,” Nate objected.
Cherise decided to do what she could to help Carly understand Leigh. “Carly, have you ever heard about your mother’s engagement?”
“What engagement?”
“She was engaged to be married to a good friend of your Grandfather Ted in March of 1972. His name was Dane. He was killed in the same explosion that killed your grandfather.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Carly’s lower lip drew down.
“Because you are mourning the loss of a very dear aunt. How would you feel if you were mourning the loss of Grandma Bette, Nate, and the man you were to marry in a week’s time?”
Carly’s eyes widened. “Are you telling me that that was why my mother . . . ?”
“I’m trying to show you that it isn’t just about you and the man who is your birth father. There is so much grief wrapped around the year 1972 in your mother’s heart that she has trouble looking back.”
“Well, it’s been taken out of her hands.” Carly’s tone had stiffened. “My father has written to me and I’m sure I will meet him soon, with or without my mother’s permission.”
“We have allies, yes, thirty-two to be exact,” Frank replied. “But America is now the world’s leader, the only superpower left. And our president wants to make sure that we win this war.”
“But war hasn’t been declared yet.”
“It’s just a matter of time. And I’m almost positive that both our girls will be heading to the Middle East soon.”
Nate stared at Frank, then looked across the room and met Carly’s eyes, a deep uncertainty growling to life inside him.
CHAPTER NINE
November 29, 1990
Carly stood with her platoon gathered in silence around the radio in the garage. The announcer was summarizing that day’s UN ultimatum to Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi dictator had been ordered to withdraw before January 15, 1991, or face retaliation. Chilled inside, Carly listened ston
e-faced as the male members of her platoon jeered Hussein.
“It won’t be long till we show him what’s what!” whooped Mr. Smarty Sparkplug, who was really Joe from Indianapolis.
“We leave in six days,” Sergeant Haskell announced unexpectedly, looking the happiest Carly had ever seen him.
There was a stunned silence, and then all the males broke into large grins. Carly wondered if her own very different state, one of numbness, was just plain fear or if it was the result of sleepless nights and her loss of Aunt Kitty just weeks before. Was their contrasting eagerness for battle just a male thing?
She forced a slight smile, trying to act as if she shared her male counterparts’ enthusiasm for deployment. So we’ve got our orders. We’re going to Saudi. The words filled her with nauseating dread.
“You guys, get back to work, get all your assignments done, and start cleaning up. We need our vehicles in top shape to leave the training area ready for another platoon.”
Hiding her true feelings, Carly followed Bowie back to the engine they were just about finished overhauling. Though she still had much to master, she was amazed at how much she’d learned in just four months of training. By now she could drive every vehicle they’d worked on and had been thoroughly trained in the basics of auto maintenance. Much of her success was due to Bowie’s knowledge and help.
“Hey,” Sam, an African-American from Kansas City called, “Carly, can you help us a minute?”
She nodded to Bowie and then jogged over to Sam. “What do you need?”
“Can you reconnect this to the wires and secure it in the dash?” Sam handed her a shortwave radio.
“Sure.” Carly climbed up into the mammoth boxy truck, an HEMMT, and crawled up under the dash. On her back, she pulled out the dash wires and connected them to the radio’s. Then, with a screwdriver from her pocket, she secured the radio and its metal harness back into place. She slid out of the vehicle. “Done.”