She went about her morning ritual of showering and dressing for the day. When she again looked out her window, Brad had finished mowing. It seemed a good time to get the “whole story” as he had called it: the truth about that summer of 1996. Had Brad not promised it to her when she was ready to listen? With that one goal in mind, she rushed downstairs and called out to him as he prepared to leave. He looked surprised and then climbed down from his tractor, wiping his hands with a bandanna from his back pocket.
“Brad, I was wondering if you remember the day you pulled my car out of the ditch? You said you would tell me everything about Ethan and that summer I was gone. I may hate you for it, but I have to know.”
Brad squinted down at her through the late morning sunlight and took a moment before speaking: “I said I would tell you when the time is right. I don't think you can handle it yet, Emma. Besides, I dread being the one to shatter that fine illusion of eternal young love that has sustained you all these years. Truth is highly overrated, you know.”
“And I always heard that the truth sets you free. So...are you saying you've changed your mind about telling me?”
“I'm saying you aren’t yet ready for the telling.”
“It's that painful?”
“I figure it will be, when the time comes...and yes, you will hate me for it...and you'll not believe it.”
“There's much more to it, isn't there?”
“Much more. I didn't tell you half of it.”
“Are you going to tell me Ethan didn’t love me?”
Brad studied Emma as if analyzing an abstract work of art. She could see his mouth clinch and his eyes catch fire:
“I would bet Ethan was crazy about you... right up until he took his last breath.” Then his eyes held hers for one reckless moment too long. “In fact...I can't imagine that he wouldn't have loved you with every fiber of his being.”
Emma averted her eyes and then turned away. “I don't really know what to believe any more,” she murmured. “Ethan didn't exactly stick around to tell me. I need you to tell me. If what you told me about this “other girl” was true...then why didn't you tell me who it was. There were several in our group that would have given their eye teeth to have him.”
“We were the Invincibles, remember? All foolish kids back then. But we stuck together. I really shouldn't have told you anything. I was trying to protect someone else as well, while forewarning you. Now is not the time to talk, when we are as distant with each other as we are. You and I need to find common ground again, so you can regain your trust. I need to get past a few things myself.”
Brad strode back to the tractor, and without looking back, drove down the hill and disappeared into the dust. Emma watched him leave, and though perplexed to distraction, she could not help noticing a magnetic masculinity about the man. It was a dangerously seductive quality that she dared not indulge. Besides, she didn't know exactly who Brad was any more, nor did she know herself for that matter.
I fear someone who was once my best friend...and right now, I even fear myself.
Boston seemed, at the moment, safe and reliable, uncomplicated. Predictable Benjamin didn't say things that confused her and left her feeling vulnerable and weak as Brad had just done. Soon she would need to make a decision about the direction of her life, because living in limbo was no life at all. If she was to ever have a child, she would need to do so soon. Yet the thought of it not being Ethan's child left her feeling disloyal to his memory.
Suddenly, there on Moon Lake, an image flashed before her at the pier: an empty boat and a dog looking down into the water. It seemed to her the dog looked up toward the bank at her. Catching her breath, she began to run to the water's edge. The image faded and disappeared before she was half way there.It shimmered away like a mirage on a hot road in summer. She stood on the pier long enough to allow the awful truth to sink in: what she had seen was a mere illusion. Had it been her mind playing tricks or something outside herself? She held her arms out toward the water, as if doing so could conjure another appearance of the scene she had witnessed.
What are you trying to tell me Ethan? Help me understand. Help me recall that day. Tell me what you need to tell me, and then let me go. I can not come with you!
From the open barn door, Lucas watched his daughter staring out at the water and then, with head down trudging back up from the lake. He wanted to run to her and hold her and make everything go away; but part of him knew that only she could do that for herself.
Lucas' greatest regret was that he could not go back in time to that September day. He had relived one day a thousand times. It was the day they had returned from summer vacation. Emma had spotted Ethan's boat as they drove down Lakeside. He had let her out of the car, and he and Grace have gone on to the house. She had told him she had to make something right with Ethan. Grace had sighed and Lucas shook his head and dropped her off there at the edge of Moon Lake. He should have been with her. The regret was like a stone in his gut.
That day long ago, when Emma had not come home for dinner, Lucas had gone to find her. What he found brought him to his knees: Emma had managed, somehow, to pull Ethan's lifeless body from the shallow water and was holding him and murmuring over and over: “I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it.”
Lucas would never forget that look as long as he lived. He had pried her arms from the boy's body, just before she collapsed.
If only he could have protected her and helped her face her fears in the way he had helped her down from the tree when she was a little girl. But Emma was a grown woman, and it was too late for him to save her. He had only one recourse left to him: to let go and let her save herself.
Being the man that he was, Lucas set about his business with renewed vigor, setting straight what he could and letting go of what he could not. It was apparent that his daughter was floundering far beyond his reach.Yet there was still one thing that he needed an answer to: who closed the flue that made the room fill with the deadly invisible gas that almost took his daughter's life? The suspects were very few in number. At the top of the list was Emma herself. Had not her doctor warned him?
5: Mysteries: Art as in Life
Emma felt an overpowering need to restore the painting she called “Two by Moon Lake.” She knew Georgia Abernathy had returned it to her as a reminder of a tragedy that Emma's reckless words had brought. Ethan's poor mother no doubt wanted Emma to feel as much pain as she herself felt; unless the picture came to be destroyed, it would be a constant reminder of what might have been far more eloquent than words. Emma could not destroy the painting, and Mrs. Abernathy had surely known it.
The piece of art had been created when life had the sweetness of late summer without the bitterness that was all that was left. Emma could not remember destroying the faces of herself and Ethan, the night she had gone through her box of memories. Whatever had happened, came then, before her father found her semi conscious, lungs filling with invisible gas. She forced herself to try to remember what she had done; but that night was a blur she could not bring into focus.
I could never take my own life. How could anyone think it.
Yet she knew why and how they could think it. She felt an overwhelming urge to take control what she could beginning with the painting. She felt a need to undo the damage and to recapture, on canvass, Ethan's face, to wipe away any trace of hatred or disrespect.
It was agonizing to think, that in her stupor, she may have defaced her own creation. Could it be that in some dark corner of her mind, there lurked someone she did not know, someone strong and demented? Otherwise, she would have had to believe there was someone else who had access to the locked house. That someone would be set on destroying her mind and if it came to it, even taking her life. That someone wanted her to give up her mission of recollection, her quest for closure. But who would it be out of the people around her?
She would make one thing right again, just as it was when she first set brush to canvass. She set up her easel be fore the large sun-filled
windows in her room, turning it until she had just the right slant of the sun. She searched the closet until she found her paints and brushes and began mixing the pink and white and brown colors, to restore faces lost in the wild spattering of gray. She could not overlay the wispy water colors she had used before. So she chose the strength of the oils to cover the damage and bring life back.
The soft, flesh-like hues came to life beneath her palette knife, and she began. She steadied and controlled her brush with her extended little finger, and with each delicate brush line, she filled in the facial structure. It was difficult to recapture the look of love that once shone through the eyes and softened the mouth. Yet, after an hour's work, she had given rebirth to an imitation of life—or her idyllic version of it.
Slowly the past crept back like ground fog settling into mist: She could almost hear the laughter of those golden days when the two of them needed nothing outside of their devotion to each other. They had begrudgingly allowed their closest friends to join them on Moon Lake: Amy and Tommy and Brad, who would sometimes bring a date but seldom the same one twice. Brad had always seemed to relish the role he had played all of Emma's life: closest friend and confidant and someone of whom Ethan was more than a little resentful. Yet Emma had assured Ethan there was no need for jealousy, that never could she love anyone other than him.
They had called their tight-knit group the “Invincibles,” and here and there they added others from Cobblers Cove High. Every Saturday in Spring, they would gather to fish and ski—all the way to the beginning of June when the St. Claires would leave on extended vacation. The Invincibles had led a charmed and careless life. How could they have guessed it would end so brutally? They were sure to live forever, and there would always be another September when Emma would return. Life would always go back to “happily ever after.” They were iron clad and immortal and clueless. Now, in her thirty-fourth year, only in her art could she recreate Paradise Lost.
Finally, she stood back from her easel to gain perspective: Something is missing, she decided. As if controlled by a force outside herself, she painted in Ethan's boat and his dog Mutt, who stood watching and waiting by the water forever. She had, without thought, painted in a piece of the puzzle from the past.
She began to recall that day still so vivid in her mind: before the return from vacation, the day she had called Ethan from a telephone booth at the foothills of the Rockies. She had asked him about the other girl. Had Brad not told her of Ethan's betrayal? She refused to believe, but wanted the truth from Ethan himself. Even still, Ethan would not comment, except to say “ See you in September.”
And the last words she had said to him were “I never want to see you again.”
Tears flooded her eyes to drown her in remorse.
If I could only go back in time and take back those words!
Suddenly, she realized the old radio on the nightstand had somehow switched on, and she did not recall doing it. As if on cue, that song the one she knew would play filled the room:
See you in September.
See you when the summer's through.
Here we are, saying goodbye at the station.
Summer vacation is taking you away.
A cold wind blew through to curl icy fingers around her heart, at the exact moment the waters of Moon Lake churned and darkened. She was stunned to realize the morning was gone. Time was spinning away from her, and that precious past went with it. The thought was unbearable, for she could not let go.
September has almost ended, Ethan. I am here, but where are you?
6: An Unlikely Gathering
Just as Emma put away her paints and brushes, her cell rang and announced “call from Grace St. Claire.”
“Sorry, Mother. I've been meaning to call you.”
“Of course, you have,” said Grace in that clipped New England accent. “I’ve talked to your father about my flying down there this coming week-end...you know...just to stay for a few days. Lucas and I need to go over some legal matters before the house is sold...and it will give me a chance to try to talk some sense into that head of yours. I want you to come back to Boston with me, Emma. Sitting up in your old room and brooding about the past can't be healthy.”
“I'm okay ...really. I promise I'll be back up there soon.”
Emma could hear a faint sigh on the other end, so she jumped ahead to the next topic: “I would love for you to visit. I'm sure Dad would like to see you too.”
“Perhaps. At any rate, tell him I'll let him know my expected arrival time, if he'll pick me up at the airport. Hold on, Emma. Benjamin's here having dinner. He wants to say a few words.”
“I don't know. I'm really tired.”
“Emma,” her mother hissed. “Be nice.”
Then Ben was on the phone telling her he missed her, and before she knew it, he was inviting himself for the week-end as well. She needed time to sort out her feelings about him, but how could she refuse his visit?
Ready or not, here they come.
In anticipation of their arrival, Lucas decided to throw a barbeque and dance the afternoon of his Grace and Ben's arrival. He decided it would be a good opportunity for Amy's realtor husband Thomas “Tommy” Walker Jr. to go over the sellers' contract with Grace while they were together. It was also an excuse to involve his daughter in her old group of friends. He hoped to bring her out of that cocoon she had spun for herself; but he knew her emergence into the real world was up to her.
On Thursday, Emma and he had cleaned the barn and moved the bales of hay to the walls to make room and hung brightly colored Japanese lanterns from the rafters. “Just like the old days,” he had told her.
No where near, thought Emma.
By late morning on Saturday, the brisket was in the smoker and Ruby had arrived early with side dishes she had brought from the diner. She had her red hair teased into an eighties style and was in her usual jeans with lipstick redder than her hair. She sought Emma out to explain that she would not be staying for the party: “Your mama might pull a wall-eyed fit if I hung around,” she explained.
“I don't think she has any idea about you...and everyone knows she and Dad have been separated for many years.”
“Oh, she knows, Sugar. Your daddy may not broadcast it to others, but he told your mama...even though they haven't lived as man and wife...or even in the same state, since not long after you left home.”
“Maybe low profile is best,” Emma agreed. “You never know about my mother. I'd hate to see you lose that big red hair.”
The two of them snickered at the thought of her blue blood mother getting down and dirty. At that moment, Emma decided she liked the woman some called “trailer trash.”
One man's trash is another man's treasure, she thought. Even though Ruby dressed differently and had grown up on the poor side of town, Emma figured it didn't mean the woman was a floozy. And just because Emma saw things no one else saw, it didn't mean she was “crazy” by that same standard. She had learned long ago about the very human need to stereotype and the conflict it could bring.
By noon, most of the people from high school days, including their old group had arrived and had greeted her, with some skirting cautiously around her whether because they had heard of her “delicate mental state” or because Georgia Abernathy had swayed them against her.
Amy Walker was cordial, although she was still a bit cool after their lunch date when Emma had rushed off in the middle of lunch. Amy had her four kids in tow, and the prosperous husband she still called “Tommy”. He nodded curtly at Emma and headed straight for the keg Brad had just delivered. He was still a dark-eyed, brooding hulk, much as he was when he was on Cobblers High football team. He just appeared older, stockier and even more intense.
An hour later, Grace Donovan St. Claire made her grand entrance straight from the air port. Emma saw her first and gave her hand a squeeze and brought her over to see how many of her old friends she remembered. Even in the humidity of the Texas woodlands, she though
t her mother looked coolly elegant in white slacks and a breezy top. Emma could clearly see that, in every way, her mother was different from Ruby. Emma wondered if that difference had been Ruby's drawing power for Lucas.
The other guest expected to arrive from the airport would be Benjamin Winfield. Emma felt some relief that she would have time to enjoy herself, before Ben swooped in and pressed her for a commitment.
Lucas pulled the brisket off the smoker, and everyone sat at picnic tables for lunch and then hiked to the barn. The women pushed for a dance amid manly protests, so someone suggested Emma and Brad start things off as the music began.
“Don’t just sit there, Brad! Ask her to dance,” someone called out.
Panicked, Emma shook her head “No... I don't think...”
Before she could finish her sentence, Brad had pulled her to her feet and onto the barn floor. The crowd cheered. “Peer pressure's still alive and well,” he whispered. “Pretend we like each other, okay? Just follow my lead and endure one dance, so I won't look like a fool. Repeat after me...” he grinned. “It's only a dance...not a romance.”
Emma rolled her eyes. “Okay...but don't hold me too close.”
“Ha!...no worries there,” he huffed. “Trust me...I don't like this any better than you do. By the way, wasn't this the song you taught me to dance to?”
The measured, soulful, voice of Otis Redding caught them by surprise:
These arms of mine...
they are lonely, lonely and feeling blue.
These arms of mine...
“I thought you said not too close,” murmured Brad.
“That's exactly what I said.”
“Then why is it you have both arms around my neck?”
“I didn’t realize. I guess it was the way...”
“...the way that you and Ethan danced...an old habit you just couldn't kick?”
She pulled away from him and missed a step. “Brad, please. I can't think about Ethan right now.”
September Song Page 4