She smoothed the sides of her hair, tucked it behind her ears. “I don’t know what to say. I hadn’t exactly planned this. I got in the car, put your address in my GPS, and here I am.”
He nodded. “Well, are you hungry? We could go to town. Or I have some steaks and salad. Wine.”
“Okay. Let’s eat here. Sure. Dinner. We’ll start with dinner.” She looked down, biting her lip. He could tell she was fighting not to cry. He wanted to lean over and pat her shoulder, comfort her, but he dared not touch her for fear she would bolt.
He climbed the porch instead and opened the unlocked door. “Come on in,” he said.
She followed him inside. He showed her his bedroom and studio, the small kitchen, the tiny bathroom, the cubby where he had his desk, where he wrote to her each morning.
“It’s not much,” he said.
She sat down at his desk and looked out the window, her back to him. “It’s just how you described it. Exactly.”
“Is it? I’m glad.”
Outside the window, the light had turned hazy, soft with a tinge of pink.
“The sun’s setting,” she said.
Down the hill, the memorial would be starting. “Yes,” he said.
“I’m not ready to talk about it,” she said. “I’m still very angry. I still don’t know how to forgive either of you. I don’t know how to tell you things. I have things to tell you.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’m still glad you’re here.”
She folded her hands on his desk. She shook her head, her short hair swinging. “Where do we even start?”
He got a chair from the kitchen and pulled it up to the desk. He sat next to her. He set down the pencil he forgot he was holding.
“Here,” he said, pointing out the window, at the best light of the day. “Tell me what you see.”
* * *
The cars kept streaming in after the service began, even though it had started a little late. They scrambled to set out extra chairs to fit people in, but there weren’t enough for everyone. People leaned along the far rail of the deck. They squeezed in the doorway of the living room. They spilled out onto the lawn. And still the cars came, their headlights cutting across the dimming sky. They parked far down the driveway and on Quail Run, their tires tilted in the drainage ditch. In the waning sunlight, they walked toward the orchard, toward the twinkle lights that beckoned from the deck, toward the trees that sighed in the breeze.
Father Tom said, “We come here today to remember Jess Winters. We come to say good-bye to one of our own. We come to comfort her family in this time of sorrow. Let us pray.”
Maud bowed her head but didn’t close her eyes. She wasn’t Catholic, or even religious, but Father Tom had assured her there wouldn’t be a mass. Just a gathering, he’d said. A few words.
She watched the cars and the people with their eyes closed. All those old familiar faces. Literally old now, some of them. There were her parents, sitting next to her, her mother more shrunken, her father hollow in the cheek. On her other side was her ex-husband Stuart—alone, his wife and now-college-age daughter in California—his jowly chin shaved clean though she’d never seen him without a beard before. There were Esther and Beto Navarro and Luz Navarro, there were Angie Juarez and Rose Prentiss and their girl Hazel, there were Iris and Paul and little Sean, Rachel and Hugh. There was Laura Drennan, the young professor. There was Gil Alvarez, who caught her eye and nodded with a small smile. There was the woman on Bottlebrush with the metal sculpture in her yard, the butcher at Bashas’, the woman who ran the snack shack at the ball field. People she hadn’t seen in years, people she’d forgotten, people she knew by heart.
Maud looked at her hands folded in her lap. This was for them, too. Jess Winters was her daughter, but she was theirs, too. She was bigger than herself by then, more than a girl who Maud had once cradled in her arms. Jess Winters was their story, as much a part of Sycamore as the land itself, as the land that had swallowed her whole. Jess Winters was their worst fear come true (look what can happen, in an instant). Jess Winters was their ghost. Jess Winters was their metaphor: loss, secrets, guilt, failure, embedded in one shining, curly-haired girl.
But she was Maud’s daughter, and hers alone to bury.
And she would. But not here.
After the service, Maud stood at the railing next to Stuart and shook people’s hands. Good night. Thank you for coming. I appreciate it. Retiring, yes, I can hardly believe it myself. I’m not sure yet what I’m going to do. You’re right, a vacation would be nice. Thank you. It was good to see you, too. Good night. She was on autopilot now. The hard part was almost done. The hardest part was next. Of course, it would never really be over. Not exactly, in the way that sometimes she dreamed she could hear out of her left ear, that she still had all her senses. When she woke, she had to start all over again. You cannot hear, old girl.
You cannot see her anymore.
But the service was over, and she was home, with four stacks of Tupperware trays and a freezer packed with casserole dishes, and a mailbox and desk full of sympathy cards. Her mailbox overflowed these days. So many letters and cards and padded envelopes, her box stuffed because some days she forgot to check. She had no reason to check anymore.
The doorbell rang, and she thought about not answering, but then she saw the police cruiser out front. Gil Alvarez.
She opened the door. “Gil. Is everything okay? Come in.”
“No, that’s all right. I don’t want to bother you.”
“Did you need something?”
“Nope, no. Don’t want to keep you. Just wanted to stop by and check on you.” He gave a wry smile. “Old habits, I suppose.”
“Thanks.” She shook her head. “Thank you for all you did. For trying to find her. I’m not sure I’ve ever really thanked you.”
He sighed. “I’m sorry, Maud. You know I am.” He raked his hair with his fingers, the way he always did.
She flapped her hand at the living room. “Do you want to come in? Really.”
“Not tonight. But maybe another time.”
“Sure. That’d be nice.”
“If you need anything.” He held his hand out.
She shook his hand. As she did, he reached out with his other hand and covered hers. A warm, reassuring pressure. He let go, nodded, and then walked down her driveway. She stood in the doorway, staring at the street after he’d driven off.
She picked up the phone and called Esther. “Can you come over?” Her voice came out low and shaky.
“Oh, Maud. I’m on my way.”
Maud hung up and sat down hard on the sofa. She retired to the sofa, she thought with a laugh. Retirement. She had two months left at the post office, and it was true, she really didn’t know what she was going to do now. She needed a plan. This—eating too much, staring out the window—could not be her plan. She owned this house outright and had a good pension. Her parents wanted her to move home. Come home, they said, hugging her. Stay with us awhile till you get on your feet. But that was not home. This was home now, whether she’d planned it or not.
And she hadn’t planned it. She’d been flying high on anger at Stuart and grief and a sudden gaping freedom that seemed to have cut out a vital organ—her brain, maybe, because she sure hadn’t been thinking straight. She’d accepted the transfer to the Sycamore post office, packed up her house, packed up her only daughter, and fled. To the safe haven of a small town in northern Arizona. A safe place, she’d thought, for now. She’d thought, This is temporary. I’ll figure it out. This is just for now.
The endless now.
Here she was, facing her future, whether she wanted to or not.
The next day, Maud headed to Mexico with Jess’s ashes in a little red balsa-wood box on the passenger seat. She’d told Stuart, I’m doing this my way, and he had not argued. It had been a long time since they’d argued, anyway. Nothing to argue about anymore. In Calexico, she stopped for gas. She watched the sun glare off the hoods of the cars i
n line for the border. Exhaust fumes wavered off the asphalt. The gas station was too far from the ocean for her to smell it, but she thought she did, a tangy, humid brine.
Two hours later, Maud pulled the truck into a tiny beach inlet off the rutted track to their secluded spot near San Felipe, Mexico. She hadn’t seen another car on the road in over an hour. Nothing for miles but ocean on one side, desert on the other. Sparse cardón cactus and ocotillo dotted the bone earth, too spindly to offer shade. Sweat soaked her tank top and the waistband of her cotton shorts. She could feel it pooling under her breasts, soaking the bathing suit she wore underneath. She wiped her damp forehead, patted her curls, put her hand on the red box. The vise grip in her chest loosened as she stared at the expanse of the blue-gray Sea of Cortez. She murmured, “We’re here, J-bird.”
At the water’s edge, Maud stripped off her shorts and tank top and kicked off her flip-flops, down to the one-piece she’d dug out of a drawer as she packed, the elastic shot at the straps and legs. She cradled the little red box. She couldn’t see anything but land, sky, and sea. The water, warm in the shallow part around her ankles, grew colder as she waded deeper. She stumbled into the waves with a gasp as the water hit her overheated skin and stiff muscles. She turned onto her back, the box propped on her chest, and started kicking toward the horizon.
She stopped and floated, closing her eyes against the trumpet-bright glare. The salt water held her up, took her weight. After days of little sleep, and after the long, dusty drive, she breathed deeply.
I wish I could write you a poem, J-bird. To really tell you how I feel. How hard this is. How hard it is to let go.
All right, Starshine. All right, my blue-winged girl. It’s time for you to go now.
Maud sat up, treading water, holding the box above the surface. Then she set the box on the water and gave it a little push. The balsa wood floated away, a sad and listing ship. Eventually, it took on water, the gritty ashes inside growing heavier, and it went down. It sank out of view, the quick flutter of a fish, the strange flash of a firefly.
Maud climbed to the beach in a worn swimsuit that gapped around the thighs. She returned to the hotel. She stripped off her suit, showered, and then went outside onto the balcony, wrapped in her towel. Here she was, in her safe place. She thought of her nice counselor, trying to get her through it. What do you see for yourself, Maud?
She saw herself standing on a hotel balcony in Mexico. Not the balcony she’d stood on during her honeymoon, when she was young and slender and wide-eyed, reaching for the sky. No, she saw herself now, an hour or so after she had let the little red box sink.
She dropped the towel and stood naked, facing the water. There she stood, sagging at the breasts and belly, gray up top and down below and wrinkled and with a fat varicose vein blooming on the back of her thigh. She lifted her arms, the skin beneath drooping—flying squirrel wings, Rachel called them, flappity-flap. She saw a glint, a flicker of light in the distance. And what do you know. There was the whole wide world. It was still there, waiting.
Acknowledgments
I am indebted to the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and the University of Montevallo for financial support during the writing of this book. Enormous thanks also to Poets & Writers and Maureen Egen for the Writers Exchange Award and the Jentel Artist Residency, where I completed the first draft.
Different versions of two chapters first appeared as stories in literary journals: “The New Girl” in The Fourth River and “Say You See the World” (as “In My Former Life”) in Cutbank. I remain grateful for those first publications and for lit journals everywhere.
To my agent, Henry Dunow: Thank you for your belief, encouragement, patience, sharp eye, advice, and good humor. To everyone at Harper who shepherded this manuscript, especially my editor, Emily Griffin, a brilliant reader with a wicked eye and a gigantic heart: Thank you for your love of books and for putting mine into the world.
Thanks to the members of the Faculty Workgroup at the University of Montevallo, who plowed through the first messy pages and helped me find my way. Timothy Winkler and Elizabeth Wetmore, whom I trust with my life as well as my words, read from top to bottom repeatedly and saved me from myself. All flaws are mine, not theirs.
My writing path has been forged through invaluable mentorships and friendships. At Vanderbilt, I thank my lucky stars for Lorraine López, Tony Earley, Nancy Reisman, Peter Guralnick, Kate Daniels, Mark Jarman, Rick Hilles, Mark Schoenfield, Dana Nelson, Teresa Goddu, and Margaret Quigley; big love to my MFA classmates for their talent, humor, and kindness, especially Meredith K. Gray and Alex Moody. I owe so much to the remarkable teachings of Ron Carlson, Maxine Clair, Pam Houston, Jill McCorkle, Richard Bausch, Bret Lott, and Ann Cummins. Boundless thanks to the wondrous Tayari Jones, Joy Castro, Kevin Wilson, Toni Jensen, Matthew Pitt, Mike Croley, and Mare Biddle. Side Hugs Forever to Marjorie Sa’adah, Justin Quarry, Nickole Brown, Jessica Jacobs, Nina McConigley, Derek Palacio, Jennine Cápo Crucet, Alejandro Nodarse, Stephanie Pruitt, Lee Conell, BG Cross, David Roby, Amy Arthur, and Robie Jackson. I send bouquets of thanks to my superb students, colleagues, and friends from UNC-Charlotte and the University of Montevallo, with extra love to Stephanie Batkie, Matt Irvin, Betsy Inglesby, Jen Rickel, Glenda Conway, and Steve Forrester.
To the old-school crews: Nikki, Missy, Gigi, Brando, Beth, Jorge, Tiffy Sue, Rick, Case, Dr. JJ, and all the kiddos in between: Look at all these years, friends. Miss and love you always.
To all my families, born and made: the Chancellors, Winklers, Cowans, Dozemans, and Skaggses. I always feel you with me. To my mom, Cathy: You’re my shining beacon. My late father, Alan, is always in my heart.
Again, and always, to Timothy Winkler: You make this whole wide world go ’round.
About the Author
Bryn Chancellor’s story collection When Are You Coming Home? (University of Nebraska Press) won the 2014 Prairie Schooner Book Prize, and her short fiction has appeared in Gulf Coast, Blackbird, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Phoebe, and elsewhere. Other honors include the 2014 Poets & Writers Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award in fiction, and literary fellowships from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the Arizona Commission on the Arts. She has an MFA in fiction from Vanderbilt University and teaches at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
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Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
sycamore. Copyright © 2017 by Bryn Chancellor. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
first edition
Cover photographs: © Ryan McVay / Getty Images (tree); © Jose Antonio Sanchez Reyes / Getty Images (woman)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Chancellor, Bryn, author.
Title: Sycamore : a novel / Bryn Chancellor.
Description: First edition. | New York : Harper, [2017]
Identifiers: LCCN 2016042150| ISBN 9780062661098 (hardback) | ISBN 9780062661111 (ebook)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Psychological. | FICTION / Coming of Age.
Classification: LCC PS3603.H35595 S93 2017 | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016042150
&n
bsp; Digital Edition May 2017 ISBN: 9780062661111
Print ISBN: 978-0-062661098
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