by Anne Lovett
Mr. Linley died after a long period of not knowing where he was. Mimi went into black and vowed she would wear it forever.
My scar faded to a thin pale line. I told people I met that I’d suffered it learning to fence. There were those who thought I’d run into a fence, but I let it pass.
I got a letter from Starrett Conable, at Georgia Tech studying aeronautical engineering. He told me once again he was sorry for what he did, that he had been a real jerk to tell me about what had happened with Ava and Jack. At first, I touched my cheek and crumpled the letter up. And then I got to thinking—it would have come out sometime. And the same thing might have happened. We were all scarred, every one of us.
I saved the letter. And then one morning I decided to really forgive him. One morning, when I’d seen the sun rising over the fields and birds taking flight, I thought of what Duke had told me from Mr. Shen, the Chinese grandfather, about living in peace. I let my anger go, let it rise and fly away like the wheeling swallows, and I felt the lightness of the pale blue sky.
I wrote Starrett and told him that I forgave him everything.
He wrote me back and told me how much it meant to him. He told me about his engineering studies and asked me what I was going to do when I graduated. I told him I was going to be a teacher, like Momma had been, and maybe share my love of poetry with high school students. And we kept writing each other. I hadn’t expected that he, of all people, would be my link to my childhood, when we were all together, Momma and Chap and his folks, with the card games in the lamplight.
I was expecting a letter from him that November day three years after Ava had left. I walked to the mailbox, swishing my shoes through drifts of pecan leaves, nuts crunching underfoot.
The envelope from Elzuma was there. I took a handful of mail to Mimi, where she was paying bills and filling out government forms for the farm. That kind of work was becoming hard for her, but she wouldn’t hear of my doing it. I carried the brown envelope to the yellow-painted desk in my room, stenciled with blue flowers like the bed, chest, and nightstands.
White dotted-Swiss curtains hung at the window; a stairstep calico quilt covered the bed. The flower pictures on the walls had been torn from Christmas seed store calendars and framed. A picture of me on the front porch at Sweetbay, framed by its live oaks and moss, was taped to my mirror, and I had arranged pictures of Momma and Daddy, Ava and Duke, on my mantel.
I sat at my desk and looked out on the fields behind the farmhouse. The sun was streaming in. How many letters would I have this week? I carefully opened the packet and shook it.
Only one letter tumbled out. Only one?
I tore it open so fast I ripped the envelope, and winced as though it had been my own skin. I unfolded the standard lined tablet paper.
My Ava,
Looks like your old soldier is coming home pretty soon. Pop got up here and talked to the docs and they said I could go back to the farm. I sure am looking forward to being back there with my girls. How is Mae Lee? You never talk about her, looks like she’d be missing the horses. Thanks for the news about Dandy’s colt. He might be a fine horse for the girl when he gets bigger. I guess she has gone off to college by now. Time sure flies when you’re having fun. Gosh, I’m so happy. Maybe next month they said.
God how I want to hold you.
Your loving husband,
Dulany Radford
Why hadn’t the Radfords called me and told me? Just possibly they had forgotten all about me, about the letters, and that Ava would not be there when he got home. Numbness filled me. What had I been thinking? That he would stay in the mental hospital forever? He’d be coming home and somebody would have a hell of a lot of explaining to do. My letters had done their job too well. He’d recovered faster than anyone predicted.
Just then, the phone rang, and it was Norma Radford. She apologized, saying the release had caught her by surprise too. Can we have Ava meet with a sudden accident? She wanted to know. No, I pleaded. What if she turns up? Can we hire a detective?
Can I hire one, you mean. She laughed. I think it would be better if we just faced the fact she’s gone. Let her be dead. That’s what I’m going to tell Duke. A car accident. He can take it now. She won’t come back.
It might cause a relapse, I said. Let me try to find her.
You? A girl of nineteen?
A woman of nineteen, I said. I’ve been through a lot. She ought to be there to welcome Duke when he comes home.
I want him to have peace, she said.
He’ll have no peace without Ava.
I could hear a long, long sigh. All right. I’ll permit you to go ahead. But think of this, Mae Lee. What if she’s dead? Or what if she refuses to come back?
Then we can go with the car accident. But I have to know, Mis’ Norma. Maybe for myself.
All right. Good luck.
I’d need it. I couldn’t go to the sheriff again and have them start asking questions I didn’t want to answer. All I knew was that she had flown off with Jack, and no telling where he was by now. South America, he’d told me once. You have to move around and find crops to dust.
On the third day after I’d received the letter from Duke, I sat down and took up the purple-inked pen and wrote back with the misspellings she always used.
I’m just wild that your coming back, I have missed you every nite and every day that you have been gone, my arms ache for you, I long for your kiss. When you come back, we’ll go dancing the way we used to do, long before you ever went away.
Hurry, hurry
Out of ink. I dipped my pen and filled it. This was going to be a hard letter.
I called information in Atlanta, Savannah, Birmingham, Mobile, New Orleans, Miami, all the cities I’d ever heard her mention, all the cities where she might have gone, and asked for a listing under Ava Radford. There wasn’t one, nor was there an Ava Willis, nor A.W. Radford, no A. Radford, nor A. Willis.Jack or John Austin? A few of those. I called all around the state.
I was scattering buckshot. Through Lindy’s father, I got a list of farmers who might have employed Jack for crop dusting and called them all. None had seen him since the time he’d been in Sawyer staying with us. One hearty lady laughed and said, I ’spect you aren’t the first girl who’s been calling here looking for Mister Austin. She gave me an address and a phone number he’d given her once.
The person at the number had never heard of him. I wrote to the address in Memphis, Tennessee, and the letter came back Addressee Unknown—Return to Sender with a huge purple finger pointing back at me.
I called the old lady, by this time almost deaf, who ran the boarding house. JACK AUSTIN, I hollered into the phone. THREE YEARS AGO. A CROP DUSTER PILOT. She said she would look. Maybe she had kept those past guest books, maybe not. I called three more farmers on the list and got nowhere.
At one farm that Lindy’s father told me to try, I never could get an answer. I drove out to the place. The farmer was outside, repairing a tractor. Wife died a couple of years back, kids all gone, who’s gonna take over the farm? he asked me rhetorically. He leaned against his tractor, spat a wad of tobacco juice, and said to me, I remember that feller. Yellow plane. Cocky sort of guy. In the army, weren’t he? If I was you I’d try the army. They keep records.
I tried. You have to be kin.
The time had come to pay a visit to Sweetbay and see if I could turn up any clues there.
The branches of the live oaks still swept the ground, trailing moss; a carpet of crackly brown leaves shone underneath. The drive was well-swept and the yard was mowed; the porch and front columns shone with fresh paint.
My heart seemed to fill my chest, and I swallowed, thinking of that day I left the house for good three years ago, crunching across the oak leaves, leaving behind those columns and the pines that had towered under the moon.
I walked slowly to the front door, looking around for ghosts, but there was only the swaying moss.
Iris, Elzuma’s granddaughter, opened th
e door. She looked up at me shyly. Cyrus and I got married, she told me. It’s good to see you, Mis’ Mae Lee.
Just call me Mae Lee, I said. I need to go in Mr. Duke’s office. I’m looking for something important.
Mis’ Norma say it’s okay?
She did, I said.
Come in, then, Iris said. We’re keeping it for him so it’ll be just like when he left.
The office was cleaner than it had ever been when I lived there. I slid open the drawer, drew out the key chain, and unlocked the rusty lock of the footlocker in the closet. Iris left me and went back to her chores.
I didn’t see the bayonet at first. Someone—Elzuma, probably—had buried it beneath the papers, photos, old magazines, books, and uniforms. The diary was still there. He’d never burned it. I leafed through it, and then laid it carefully back in the trunk and examined the letters. None from Jack. They had apparently never written each other.
I shrugged and looked through the photo albums. Nothing there. I winced as I saw once again the old man, Mr. Shen, and the girl Li-wei.
I searched the desk, the yellowing papers in the old farm files. Nothing.
I called for Iris and found her on the back porch, sweeping it clear of leaves. Three bushels of pecans waited to be shelled and picked. Is this all? I asked. Have you seen any more papers anywhere else? In the bedroom?
No, ma’am, she said, and I winced at the ma’am, but I knew she would not call me Mae Lee, not as long as she worked here.
I glanced out at the paddock, at the horses grazing, at the old blue truck. Funny it was still around. I thought of the night Jack and I had listened to Frank Sinatra, down by the river in the soft blue night.
Has anyone cleaned out that blue truck?
She shrugged. I don’t reckon, she said. No need.
I remembered that Jack had cleaned it. For me.
Is it unlocked?
She grinned. Yes, Lordy. Nobody’d want to steal that thing.
I walked outside, went over to the truck, and climbed in. The rubbery, musty smell made me shiver. I opened the glove compartment: Jack had not bothered to clean that out. There were gasoline receipts in Duke’s name, a screwdriver, some dried-up cheese crackers, half a ball of twine, a church key, greasy machine parts, and scraps of paper. I searched through them all, and found a matchbook folded inside a cash receipt. Written on the matchbook was a number and the name of a girl, or somebody. Viv.
Cyrus said the matchbook sho’ wa’nt his. I had never heard Duke mention a Viv, or a Vivian. And there wasn’t an area code. The number was not from our town.
I pocketed the matchbook. It wasn’t much. It could have been Duke’s from long before. But it could have equally been Jack’s. The cash receipt was dated from the time that he’d visited us.
I thought I’d come to a dead end. All I had was that matchbook. I pondered the problem all the way back to Mimi’s and didn’t come up with a solution. That number might give me a clue to Jack, but it could be anywhere in the United States.
Driving home, I remembered something Starrett Conable had written me. They were going to get a big computer installed at Tech, one that could be used to solve the most complex problems. What I had was a complex problem. When I got back to Mimi’s, I called Starrett.
He was happy to hear from me until I told him I was trying to find Ava, and why. When I mentioned Jack, he became quiet. I told him about the matchbook and Viv. I was afraid he’d tell me to hell with it. I held my breath.
I’ll ask around, he told me.
He called me back a day later. There are only X number of telephone exchanges per area, he said. He’d come up with three cities where that number might be likely. One was Miami, one was San Francisco, and one was a small town in Iowa. I could breathe again.
I called the Miami number first. No answer. The Iowa number said they’d never heard of a Viv or Vivian. The San Francisco number had been disconnected.
In the meantime I got a call back from the old lady in the boarding house. She’d remembered that boy Jack. He had registered in her book from an address in Memphis, Tennessee.
Oh. I already knew that one was no good, but I thanked her for taking the trouble. I was about to tell her goodbye when she said I remember him now, a good-looking young man, flirtatious-like. That boy could charm the spots off a snake. I knew it was all a lot of hogwash, you know, but he got to me anyhow. Once he brought me oranges. He loved oranges. Said he had worked the groves.
A Miami number. It made sense.
I called the number again. Still no answer.
It was a long shot, I knew, but I felt if I could just get to Miami, I could find this Viv, and she would know what had happened to Jack, and hence to Ava.
Like any student, my bank account was miserably low. I went to Mimi and asked to borrow money for a bus ticket and motel room. Mr. Linley had left her fairly well off, even though after she died the farm would go to his two sons from his former marriage. She was renting out her acres now.
Mae Lee, she said, it’s out of the question. Going to Miami alone? I won’t hear of it. You’re only nineteen. The town is full of gambling, prostitutes, drugs. Just like Havana. Crime, she said.
I won’t get mixed up with any criminals, I told her. I’m just going to look for Ava. A lot of perfectly nice tourists go to Miami and come back alive. It can’t be all bad.
You don’t even know she’s there, said Mimi.
I know. And I want to go anyhow. Mimi, I’ve never been out of the state of Georgia. It’s about time I had that kind of education. I don’t want to live on a farm all my life.
It was good enough for me, she said. She grumbled for half a day before she got on the phone to some of the friends she’d known when she lived in Florida with my grandpa. She found a reasonable mom-and-pop place in Miami she trusted, waited while I made a reservation, and the next day, took me to the bus station.
When I arrived in downtown Miami and disembarked, I walked out of the reek of diesel fumes right into a fragrant balmy breeze. I could see why Ava might like it. During the taxi ride to my motel, we passed pretty pastel buildings and palm trees, everything new and strange, and somehow I knew it was the kind of place my sister would find agreeable.
The motel was a small motor court in Coconut Grove, and the man and woman who ran it were salt-of-the earth retired Yankees, friends of friends of my grandmother. The room was small and mint green with white curtains and pictures of parrots and macaws on the wall. The bedspreads were the corded kind you find in college dorms, tropical blue.
I sat on the bed and dialed Viv’s number. No answer. Outside, the sun was going down, splashing the sky with neon orange and pink behind the weedy, sandy vacant lot across the street. I cranked open my jalousie window to take in the balmy, salt-and coco-scented air, with hints of plaster and grass and heat and asphalt. Just for a moment I felt like a tiny rowboat in a big ocean, and then I remembered that I had to put my hand to the oar.
My motel was too small to have a restaurant or a cocktail lounge, but it did offer a rack of brochures and maps. I took a handful of them and wandered down the street until I found a fish shack and bought a grouper sandwich, slaw, and fries. I washed it down with a big glass of sweet tea and read the brochures. One offered a bus tour of the city.
When I got back, I called Viv again. Still no answer. I kept trying. Right around ten, a woman answered. Viv? I asked. Vivian?
Who wants to know?
You don’t know me, I began, and she hung up and let it ring when I tried to call back.
The next morning, with nothing else to do, I signed up for the bus tour. We went out to Miami Beach and the grand old pastel-colored hotels and toured the streets where the mansions rose, the older ones neglected and crumbling, the newer ones swank and grand.
That was the kind of life Ava had wanted: the life behind those gates and bougainvillea. Not likely to find it with Jack, I thought, unless he had turned to some sort of crime.
We passed t
he public library, and something clicked. I asked to get off.
You sure? asked the tour bus conductor. I nodded. It’s real important, I said.
He stopped the bus half a block beyond.
I asked the librarian for a city directory. She fetched it for me: a big book, with names and addresses of all the people in the city and their occupations. But there was something else, I knew. In the back, in green pages, were lists of telephone numbers and the names of people who owned them.
Cross-referencing, I found that the number belonged to a Vivian Fox. Vivian Fox!
I looked her up. Profession: entertainer. All right. I copied her address down, ending with Number 115. Apartment house?
I looked up the street on the big city map in the library. The librarian, seeing me puzzling over the streets, asked if she could help. I told her where I wanted to go. You sure? she asked. I’m sure, I said. It’s very important. I’m looking for my sister.
She had tanned skin and black cat-eye glasses and black hair in a bun. Be careful, honey, she said. You don’t want to go to that neighborhood after dark. It’s dangerous.
I won’t, I said. Just tell me how to get there. I’ll go tomorrow.
She found a bus schedule and copied the information down, and I took a bus back to the motel, watching the flamboyant sunset splash across the sky.
The motel owners were called the Pacellis, and they invited me to eat spaghetti with them that night, but I told them I had already eaten. The truth was that I didn’t want them asking too many questions. I ate peanuts and a Coke that night, and the next day ate a big breakfast at a cafe down the street, waiting until late morning. I had a hunch Viv slept late. With the bus information in hand, I traveled to the street where Viv lived.
In late-morning haze the bus dropped me across from a brooding, mauve, five-story building called The Alhambra. I gazed up at the flaking plaster and rusty wrought-iron balconies. Men loitered on the sidewalk, cigarettes between their lips; women in full skirts walked with bags of groceries from corner stores. A few children, faces thin, chased each other.