Sweetgrass

by Monroe, Mary Alice

  This was a sad, pitiful time, he thought. He couldn’t stand seeing his father like this. It shook him to his core. Even when Morgan was a young buck, his father could still kick him in the butt to get him out of bed and do his chores. Now the tables had turned. His father was helpless and weak. No one really knew what was going to happen to him.

  He pulled the door slowly, the cone of light narrowing.

  His father slipped back into darkness, and with a soft click, the door between them was again closed.

  Morgan left the confines of the house and started walking.

  He didn’t care where he was headed, he just had to move and put some space between himself and the people in the house.

  Out on the porch, Blackjack was dreaming the dreams of wolves in the open night air. Yet at the sound of Morgan’s footfall he raised his head, then dragged himself to a stand, his rear legs shaking with the effort. His black tail wagged in welcome, and without a word needing to be spoken, the old dog followed Morgan down the stairs to pace at his side.

  The gravel crunched beneath his feet as he walked, and he felt a slow unwinding of the coil of tension in his chest. Lifting his nose to the wind, he breathed deeply. The breeze often picked up late in the evening, carrying with it the sweet-scented moist air that was, to his mind, a signature of islands. He loved his ranch in Montana. He enjoyed falling asleep in the crisp chill of the mountains and closing his eyes while outside his window he heard the serenade of owls, the eerie cries of a mountain lion and the skittering of unknowns in the dark.

  Yet he couldn’t deny that the balmy breezes off the ocean that tasted of salt softened his bones and brought him to his knees.

  It was why he’d had to stay away. It was too hard to come home. Sweetgrass ran in his blood along with the genes of all the generations that had gone before him. Hate it as he might, he loved this place.

  And his father would shake his head and say it was typical that Morgan would only realize this when he was about to lose it.

  Morgan felt dog weary and empty of spirit. He was a war-torn soldier who faced his losing battle. On this night before the surrender, he felt for the first time a connection with his long-dead ancestors who had once fought and died for a lost cause. His father had always told him that there was nobility to failure. That fighting for something one believed in, even if the battle was ultimately lost, was heroic.

  Morgan wished to God he could feel one small shred of heroism. Where was the sense of self-worth and confidence of character that his father had declared shone in the brave knight’s heart? Where was the unshakable belief in one’s righteous purpose that gave the samurai the courage to plunge the knife?

  His greatest agony was not that he’d been unable to hold on to this land. To have achieved that would have been pure magic and luck. The history and pageantry of the once-proud plantation known as Sweetgrass would persevere, even if in another’s care. The dead would take care of themselves.

  No, he saw his failure reflected in the eyes of the living who clung to the promise that the land would always, somehow, hold them together. That this great old house and avenue of ancient oaks and cragged bluff over water and waving sweetgrass by winding creeks were, intrinsically, vitally, essentially who they were. When they looked at him, they believed that he could save the place, and thus, save them.

  Well, he couldn’t. He was no one’s savior. He couldn’t even save himself.

  He walked the avenue, thinking how he’d spent the better part of his life seeking isolation. Yet tonight, under a sliver of moon along this singular, narrow road, with an old dog at his heels, he’d never felt the oppression of his loneliness more.

  “Go on back to sleep,” he told Blackjack when they returned to the house.

  Blackjack looked up at him with indecision in his dark eyes, sensing that something was not right.

  “Go on, old friend,” he said, patting the dog’s broad head. “I’ll be all right.”

  Blackjack shuffled off, climbing the stairs in his slow, arthritic gait.

  Morgan turned to walk a short distance farther, measuring each step, ending up at the small, white brick house with a Charleston green door. Raising his hand, he knocked.

  After a few moments a light turned on, shining through the windows to pierce the darkness. The door swung open.

  Kristina stood before him with one hand on the door frame, wearing what looked to him like boxer shorts and a camisole. He’d remember later that it was stretchy and lavender-colored, with tiny pink flowers along the neckline. At that moment, however, all he saw was her incredible hair, an aurora borealis framing a sleep-worn face, and large, expressive eyes that seemed to understand the depths of everything he felt without a word being spoken.

  She opened her arms to him. And bowing his head, he entered.

  The hour was late. Mama June had just finished her evening Bible reading when her bedroom door swung open and Nan rushed in, her eyes wide. She clutched her long, white cotton nightgown in fists and the fabric rustled the air as she ran to her mother’s bed.

  “What! Are you all right?” Mama June asked, taking off her glasses and setting them aside with her Bible.

  Nan climbed up on the bed, tucking her toes under her nightgown and leaning against her mother. Her face was pale but her blue eyes were bright.

  “You’re shivering. Here, put this throw over your shoulders. What on earth happened?”

  Nan blinked hard, as if she was trying to make sense of it all. “I…I just saw a ghost!”

  Mama June fell back against her plump pillows. “No!”

  “I did!” Nan said breathlessly. “I can’t believe it!”

  “I can. Tell me what happened.”

  “I…I was crying in bed, boo-hooing like a baby, when I got this weird sort of feeling, like I wasn’t alone.” She spoke quickly with excitement. “I looked over and there at the foot of my bed I saw this… I don’t know how to explain it. It was kind of like a blurry white figure.”

  “Wearing an old-fashioned dress?”

  “Yes!” she exclaimed, surprised that her mother would know this. “And a cap. Mama, do you think it was Beatrice?”

  “I do. Darlin’, you just saw your great-great-something grandmother.”

  Nan stared back at her in disbelief. “I can’t believe it,” she murmured.

  “You wouldn’t be the first one.”

  “I know. I’ve heard the stories all my life. But I never believed them.” She cracked a smile. “I sure do now!”

  Mama June chuckled, wondering what Beatrice was up to, appearing to both her and Nan. “I’m a believer, too. I saw her myself. Not too long ago.”

  “You did?” Nan asked, sounding a little betrayed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t want you to think your dear old mother was losing her marbles.”

  “Well, what did she look like when you saw her?”

  “Just as you described her. Only she wasn’t standing by my bed. She was right over there,” she said, pointing toward the window. “Just standing there looking at me.”

  Nan looked over her shoulder at the window, eyes speculative. “It’s kind of spooky, isn’t it? Seeing a ghost, I mean. Were you scared?”

  “Scared? Heavens, no. Unnerved, maybe, especially those first few nights afterward. I confess it was hard to turn off the light. But I haven’t seen her since. Beatrice has been in this house for three hundred years. Seems to me if she meant us any harm, she would have done it by now. No,” she said, her gaze wandering the room. “I think she watches over us somehow. Maybe she’s trying to tell us something.”

  Nan’s brow furrowed and she wrapped the coverlet closer around her shoulders.

  “You know Nona won’t spend the night under this roof,” Mama June told her. “She’s seen Beatrice a couple of times. And so did her mother.”

  Nan looked up, her eyes sparking with tease. “But did they get gifts?”

  Mama June tilted her head. “Gifts?”
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br />   Nan nodded and spread open her hand on the mattress. In her palm lay an antique brooch. The rich red-gold of the pin shone coppery against her skin.

  “Where did you find this?”

  “At the foot of my bed. When I turned on the light the ghost was gone. But I found this right where she was standing. I swear, Mama, it wasn’t there before.”

  Mama June gingerly picked up the pin and examined both sides carefully. It was as delightful as it could be, clearly a fine piece of nineteenth-century craftsmanship. The pin was centered with a glass-encased miniature of painted ivory depicting the house of Sweetgrass in a rural countryside scene. On the back, the initials BB were delicately etched into the gold.

  “I’ve never seen this piece of jewelry before, never even heard it spoken of. And I would have.” She gave it back to Nan, somewhat awed by it all. “It’s very special. She must have meant for you to have it.”

  Nan’s face grew thoughtful and she brought her hand close to her chest to study the pin. “Why me?” she asked softly.

  Mama June wondered the same thing. “That’s a question you’ll have to ask Beatrice. But I should think it was because she felt you deserved it. Or perhaps that you need it. Why do you think?”

  Nan closed her hands over the pin and brought it to her chin. She shook her head with such fervency that Mama June’s focus sharpened.

  “Mama, I feel lost,” she said in a despairing voice.

  “Nan!”

  “I’m almost forty years old and I don’t know who I am. I don’t think I have for a long time.” Nan’s face crumpled.

  “What’s the matter, precious?” she asked, leaning forward to rest a consoling hand on her knee.

  Nan wiped her eyes with the sheet and leaned farther back against the pillows, her knees bent. “I’ve been so busy being Hank’s wife and the boys’ mother, driving and cooking and cleaning and arranging this or that for them, I’ve never stopped to consider what I needed. Now I’m just…so empty.”

  “That’s normal at this point in your life,” Mama June replied, trying to be consoling. “Your children are grown and they’re not so dependent on you any longer. They want to branch out on their own. It’s a transition phase.”

  “It’s not just the boys… I don’t know if I can explain.”

  “Try. I’ll listen.”

  Nan took a bolstering breath. “You see, when Daddy got sick, it was a wake-up call. For the past few months, coming home to help with Daddy, I’ve remembered who I used to be, back when I lived in this house. How it used to be between us. Part of it was just being here at home again. We’ve gotten closer as a family. That’s important to me. And I saw you with Daddy, how every day you come to sit with him and talk with him. After all these years, you still share something special and I…I don’t share that with Hank.”

  “But you always seemed to have such a good marriage. A picture-perfect home.”

  “I know it seemed like that, because that’s all I’ve worked for. I had this vision of what our family life was like before Hamlin’s death. In my memories, everything was perfect. You were perfect. But after Ham died, all that died with him. Everything just fell apart. I missed our life. I missed our family. So I thought—I tried—to bring that perfection back in my own family with Hank. I wanted to be the perfect mother and wife. Not just for me, but for you.”

  “Oh, Nan…”

  “But I couldn’t,” she blurted out. “I’ve failed in everything.”

  “Nan, you couldn’t have succeeded because perfection doesn’t exist! There’s no such thing in real life. We weren’t perfect, not by any stretch of the imagination. Least of all me. Oh, Nan, there’s so much you don’t know. We were just a happy family in a normal, everyday way. Then we were devastated. When we looked back on the good days, they became golden in our memories. I know, I did it myself. They shone brighter than they really were. Maybe we needed them to shine, to help us through the dark times. But, Nan, you can’t live my life for me. You have to live your own.”

  Nan swiped the tear from her cheek and sat straighter, intent on telling her mother what she meant. “But that’s part of it, too. Being home again, I remember how I used to be, before I was married. I was popular. I was a leader. I was involved in everything at school. I had such dreams. I believed I could be anything I wanted to be. Mama, I don’t know what happened to that girl. Did she just disappear as I grew up? Is that what happens to that dreamer inside of us when we get older? Or does she just get pushed further down? When I’m here, I catch glimpses of her again and I wonder—did I leave that girl here at home?”

  Mama June remembered that ambitious, joyful girl, too. She looked into Nan’s eyes, shining bright with intent. “I believe she’s still inside of you.”

  “I think so, too,” Nan replied, hope entering her voice. “I like that girl. And I mean to get in touch with her again.”

  Mama June’s lips eased into a smile as she took the pin from Nan’s hand. “Lift your chin,” she told her daughter, then pinned the brooch on Nan’s nightgown.

  “It suits you,” she said, admiring it. “It belonged to a strong, pioneering woman. And now it belongs to you.”

  Nan’s eyes glistened.

  “Nan, it’s wonderful that you’re exploring who you are, but why must you leave Hank to do this?”

  “Because I can’t do it with him. He’s not there to support me, Mama. He only wants me to support him. It’s like he considers it my job description. As long as I ran a nice home, raised his children and was a willing partner in bed, all was right with the world. We set up a pattern early in our marriage where I gave in to him on everything that mattered. He got stronger and I got weaker. It didn’t just happen, Mama. I let it happen, helped it happen, because I somehow got it into my head that that’s what a woman did if she wanted to be a good wife and have a good marriage.”

  “Helping your husband is good,” Mama June said. “You want a strong husband.”

  “Being a doormat is not good,” Nan countered. “Morgan was right when he told me to get some backbone!”

  “But, precious, can’t you have a backbone in your marriage?”

  “Of course I could, if I’d started earlier. But for me, it’s too late to change. The pattern is too fundamental in our marriage. And after what he did tonight—” She shook her head. “I don’t want to go back to him. I’ve made up my mind.” She paused. “I’m leaving him.”

  Mama June did not move a muscle. She couldn’t quite believe she’d heard correctly. “You’re leaving Hank for good?”

  Nan nodded. “I was going to ask you after dinner, but then all hell broke loose. I was hoping… Mama, can I come back home?”

  “Of course,” she instantly replied, but regretted them the moment the words slipped out. She didn’t want to be instrumental in a rash action that might destroy a marriage. “But, Nan, are you sure? Let’s think about this a minute. This is an awfully big step. You should go to counseling or talk to a priest first. You don’t want to act rashly.” She hesitated, thinking the worst. “He didn’t hit you or anything…?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. And it isn’t so rash, really. It’s been more a long, slow slide.”

  “I didn’t see it,” said Mama June, deeply concerned now.

  “You weren’t meant to.” Nan lifted her slim shoulders. “So here I am.”

  Mama June looked at this daughter who was so very much like her. And it occurred to her that perhaps this was the first time she’d really seen her daughter since she’d been married.

  “So here you are,” Mama June said. She wrapped her arms around her daughter and they leaned back against the pile of pillows. “And here you’ll stay until you and Hank work this through, one way or the other.”

  “You and Daddy have been married for such a long time. I suppose you’re disappointed in me.”

  “No,” she replied gently. “Oh, dear child, you can’t ever know what goes on between a husband and a wife, not even when they a
re your own parents. Don’t compare your marriage to mine. Each marriage is as different as the people in them.”

  Nan took comfort in her mother’s words and cuddled next to her. “Can I sleep in here tonight? With you?”

  Mama June chuckled, thinking it had been a very long time since one of her children had crawled into bed with her. “Of course,” she said, and moved over on the mattress, tossing down the covers for her.

  Nan crawled under the covers and fluffed up the pillows, feeling very much like she was eight years old again and coming to her mama’s bed after a bad dream.

  Mama June reached over to turn off her bedside lamp. Immediately the room plunged into darkness, but soon after their eyes grew accustomed to the dim light.

  “If you’re hiding out from ghosts,” said Mama June wryly, “this room is Beatrice’s favorite haunt.”

  “Oh, I’m not afraid of her,” Nan said.

  “Oh, no?”

  “Really, I’m not. She spooked me. I’ll be honest about that. But—promise not to laugh—I got the feeling she was smiling at me. As if she was proud of me. Maybe even was glad I’m here. Does that sound crazy?”

  Mama June smiled to herself and glanced over at the window. A slant of moonlight filtered through the panes. “No, precious, it doesn’t sound crazy to me in the least.”

  17

  “Basket styles tend to follow familial bloodlines just like a dimpled smile or a special talent for singing. Still, each one is as different as a fingerprint or helix of DNA.”

  —J. Michael McLaughlin

  THE NEXT MORNING the sun was mockingly bright. Morgan rose early to sneak from Kristina’s house up to his room like a randy teenager afraid of getting caught. She’d kissed him soundly before he left and, looking clearly into his eyes, gave him not a single word of advice.