Where the River Runs

by Patti Callahan Henry

  Timmy’s smile falls. “You okay?”

  “Mother is going to kill me.” I glance over at Danny; he is standing next to his bike, his mouth open. He looks so helpless and adorable, my heart opens wide.

  “Timmy . . . that’s Danny.” I point at him. “He just moved in the old Carmichael house . . . today.” I brush what dirt I can off my skirt.

  Danny walks toward us, reaches his hand out and touches my temple. “You’re bleeding. Should I go get your mama?”

  “No, no, don’t do that.” I grab Danny’s arm. “If I need something, I go see Timmy’s mama. . . . This is Timmy.”

  Danny looks over at Timmy. “Hey.”

  “You just moved in?” Timmy motions with his hand toward the end of the road.

  “Yep,” Danny says.

  They circle each other like dogs until Danny’s face breaks open into the most stomach-butterfly-inducing grin I’ve ever seen. “You live on this street too?” he asks Timmy.

  “I do. Welcome.” Timmy nods.

  I push my skirts to the side. “Hey, I found him first.”

  Timmy and Danny look at each other, double over in laughter, slap each other on the shoulders as if they’ve known each other for years.

  “He’s not a puppy, Meridy.” Timmy picks up my bike.

  I lift my chin. “Bet I can beat both of you to the dock.”

  “Since I don’t know where the dock is, you probably can.” Danny winks and my heart loses a beat.

  “Let me grab ole Silver.” Timmy disappears behind his house and emerges pedaling toward the dock at the far end of the road, playing cards flapping in his tires.

  “No head starts,” I scream after him, and stand hard on my pedals, suddenly hating my pink seat and pink pom-pom tassels. My older sister, Sissy, probably picked out the bike to humiliate me. I tuck my skirt up under the seat and lean forward over the handlebars. Danny is right behind me and I hope my hair is flying like a bird’s wings and not a mass of tangles.

  We all reach the dock’s edge simultaneously and drop our bikes, each declaring ourself the winner.

  I glance at both boys and then run to the start of the dock, screaming, “Only way to break the tie . . .”

  “No way, Mare.” Timmy runs up behind me, grabs my arm. “You can’t jump in the river in that dress. You’ll be double dead.”

  “No one can be double dead, dimwit. You just don’t want to lose.”

  “Lose?” Danny steps between us. “Never.” And he takes off running down the length of the dock.

  I holler and run after him, but he reaches the end of the dock ten steps ahead of me—the fastest twelve-year-old boy I’ve ever seen. I catch up, stare at him.

  Timmy comes up behind us. “My God, where’d you learn to run like that? I never seen anything like it.”

  “Nobody’s won yet,” I say, spread my arms, place my toes over the edge of the dock.

  “Oh, I dare you,” Danny says.

  I close my eyes and jump out from the dock, arms splayed to the side as I imagine my party dress floating like the fairy wings Danny’s father saw.

  Both boys holler my name as the water envelops me. I stay under, like I always do for a moment or two, with the sweet caress of the sea wrapped around my body. The sea and I have a special relationship—it waits for me, hugs me, loves me. I speak to the water under the wave-filled top. I found him. His name is Danny Garrett and he came here for me. I always imagine the water reads my thoughts . . . knows what I want and need.

  Betraying me, my lungs burn. I burst through the water and stare up at the boys looking down at me, my dress now a tulle bubble floating around me. “I won,” I say.

  Danny crinkles those blue eyes, turns his head toward Timmy. “She’s crazy, ain’t she?”

  “We don’t say ain’t here in South Carolina.” I wiggle my legs beneath me to stay afloat. “And I won.”

  The boys wink at each other and jump in after me. We wrestle in the water, the boys in their shorts and T-shirts and I in my party dress, and we bounce off the moss-covered floor of the river and laugh.

  Danny grabs my arm and points. A few feet away a dolphin rises from the water, flips his tail and splashes us. A hush, the full quiet that comes of nature, falls over the three of us in the presence of the smooth animal. I reach out my hand and run it along the back side of the dolphin. Danny gasps and reaches out, and his hand comes next to mine on the mammal’s back. The dolphin lifts his rounded nose and nods at us, dives back under the water and swims away. He has left a blessing.

  When we pedal home, I know that whatever punishment Mother doles out won’t touch my heart. My family stands on the porch when I ride up on my bike. Mother runs out, grabs me. “Oh, oh, my dear God, what happened to you, Meridy?”

  “Nothing, Mother. Don’t have one of your fits.”

  Danny and Timmy stand at the end of the driveway, glancing at each other, then up the driveway alternately. I wave at them to go on. Mother glances up, points her shaking finger at me. “You’ve been running around with those boys while I was so worried about you. Oh, I almost called the police.”

  Daddy steps up, wraps his arms around me. “You okay, precious?” He winks at me.

  “I’m fine, Daddy.”

  Mother shrieks in that voice I dread—a high-pitched wail that means she’ll be in bed for three days afterward and Doc will have to come visit and it will be all my fault.

  “What are we going to do with her, Dewey? What? We just can’t have a daughter . . .” Mother’s words trail off; she slumps on the porch step and the tears start. It’ll be days before they stop.

  Danny appears at my side. “Sir.” He looks up at Daddy. “It’s all my fault. I’m new to town—moved down the street—and I asked your daughter to show me around and—”

  “It’s not his fault—” I interrupt.

  “And I dared her to jump in the water, sir—not knowing she’d really do it.”

  “You’ve ruined your dress,” Mother chokes through her tears. “You’ve ruined the dress from Mawmaw.”

  Sissy leans back in the wicker rocker on the front porch, a smirk on her face. “You are so, so embarrassing,” she says, tosses her curls behind her shoulder. I stick my tongue out at her.

  “Mommy, did you see that? Meridy stuck her tongue out at me. She is just so . . . gross.” Sissy stands and walks back into the house, slams the screen door for emphasis.

  Daddy wraps his arms around me and looks at Danny. “And who are you, son?”

  “I’m Danny Garrett.” He blushes, shuffles his feet in the stone walkway leading to the house.

  “Well, Danny Garrett. Now you know—Meridy will always take the dare. And it’s not your fault.”

  Mother wails again. I pick up my dripping skirt and look up at Daddy. “It’s really not his fault, Daddy, and I hated the dress anyway.”

  “Meridy, that is disrespectful.” Daddy squeezes my shoulders.

  “Please, sir, don’t punish her,” Danny says.

  And right there on my twelfth birthday with my mother wailing like a dying animal, as I drip in my party dress from Mawmaw with my daddy’s arms wrapped around me, Danny enters my heart without even asking.

  I turn back to Danny and Timmy. Timmy is gone and I’m confused, turning left and right looking for him. Then Danny walks backward, becoming a smudged outline of a boy with wisps of trailing smoke at his edges. I reach for him; I am older now but not sure how much. Danny dissipates into the Lowcountry sage green edges of grass and marsh. I turn back to my family—scream, beg for help to get Timmy and Danny to return. But Mother and Daddy are gone too. I am alone. Utterly alone. I crumble in upon myself and know I deserve it.

  I grabbed at the bedspread, awoke and curled into myself. The longing of youth returned with this dream, as it always had. It had been so long since I’d dreamed about Danny, and I waited for the feeling to pass, buried my head in the pillow for the few seconds before fully awakening and attempted to pin down the emotion still at
tached to the leftover impression of the dream. Outside the window the trees were still in the shapes of the night. The alarm clock blinked: three a.m.

  I wasn’t alone, although I felt it as surely as though the bed were empty. My husband, Beau, lay next to me, breathing the even, open-mouthed sleep I’d watched for twenty years now. He was adorable even in sleep.

  I stood, careful not to disturb Beau so early since he’d been working late—into the hours I defined as morning. I stretched and tiptoed out of the bedroom. At the end of the hall, I stopped in front of my son’s closed door. For the first time in years, I could open the door without knocking—B.J. wasn’t there. The emptiness the dream brought to me widened, then deepened. I’d often thought that I wouldn’t be like other mothers when I faced the proverbial empty nest, that I wouldn’t go through the engulfing change and sorrow I’d observed in others.

  B.J.’s door creaked as I opened it—a sound of intrusion. The room was shrouded in the predawn light falling through the open blinds. He’d been gone for only three weeks to Vanderbilt’s baseball camp, and his room appeared as though he were still there. Except for the smooth plaid bed linens and the absence of uniforms, cleats, and baseball hats scattered across the floor, I could fool myself into believing he was home.

  I shut the door and leaned my forehead against the doorframe; exhaustion beyond the lack of sleep covered me, as if my motor had been running on high speed for the years I had raised, cared for and loved my son, and now that I wanted to stop, the momentum carried me forward.

  The spiral staircase lay in shadow; I clicked on the foyer light and descended to the kitchen. I filled the coffeepot and grabbed the grinder. My elbow knocked Beau’s briefcase; papers fell to the floor in an emblematic flurry of how busy his job had become in his quest for partnership in the law firm. I leaned down to pick up the files. Flowery, scribbled notes from the firm’s new junior partner, who had been assigned to help with the overwhelming negligence case, filled the margins—her handwriting was as feminine as her clothes, her walk, her thin muscular legs carried on incessantly high heels. I shook my head. I ought to be thankful for her help—at least it freed Beau from some of the grueling tasks of the case.

  So the dream had accomplished the goal it always had: to remind me to live my life responsibly or I would lose as much as I had lost back then, back when I took the dare, back when I thought all of life waited just for me.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “The heart doesn’t mean everything the mouth says.”

  —GULLAH PROVERB

  I could blame the remainder of the disintegrating day on my dearest friend, Cate. And sometimes I do. I’m not sure if her words and hints set off something that was already in motion or if she started the forward drive. Whichever is true, uneasiness settled over me like syrup—sweet, sticky and annoying.

  She sat at a round table in the corner of Sylvia’s Tea Room, a restaurant in the heart of the shopping district in Buckhead—perfect for eating, then making it to Neiman Marcus before any time was lost. I spotted Cate’s brown curls as she read the menu I knew she’d memorized years ago.

  I walked toward her, knocked on the edge of the table. “Cate.”

  She looked up at me and a smile spread across her face, but didn’t light up her features in the manner I was accustomed to in previous years. Her blue eyes appeared faded, tired. “Hey, girlfriend, I didn’t see you come in,” she said, stood and hugged me.

  We sat and I lifted the menu. “And you need to read this? Like you don’t have it memorized?”

  She laughed, tucked a curl behind her left ear in a familiar motion that tugged at my memories of better times—before her divorce, before all the changes in our lives. She’d been married to Beau’s boss, Harland, and what was once the most convenient and perfect friendship had now become complicated and distant. I had almost forgotten the intensity with which I missed her until she said or did something I’d watched or known for the past twenty years—it was like looking at a photo of a forgotten vacation and allowing the nostalgia to wash over the memory.

  She reached across the table, touched my arm. “How are you, Meridy?”

  “I’m good—more importantly, how are you?”

  She pressed her lips together so only a thin line of her classic red lipstick showed. “It’s getting better, slowly,” she said.

  “I wish I could do something . . . more.”

  Cate shrugged. “Not much you can do unless you can snap Harland out of the insanity he’s obviously come into. But then again—I wouldn’t even want you to do that. I don’t want him back now.”

  “You don’t?” I pushed the menu away.

  Cate looked sideways, nodded at the waiter walking toward us. After we’d ordered the gorgonzola and pecan salad—as usual—Cate asked for two glasses of white wine.

  I held up my hand. “No way. I’ll have to take a nap in an hour if I have a glass of wine in the middle of the day.”

  Cate looked up at the waiter. “Today she’ll have a glass of white wine.” And she turned back to me. “Today you will.”

  I held up my palms in surrender. “Okay, okay, but don’t blame me if my head falls into the salad.”

  The waiter walked away and I looked at Cate. “You didn’t answer my question. You don’t want him back? Because I really think he’ll wake up, realize he’s lost his mind.”

  “It’d be a dollar short, day late. I just want to pull myself together now.”

  I nodded. “I miss you here so much. Any chance you’d come back to town when the . . . dust settles?”

  Cate sighed, tucked her hair again. “Meridy, I don’t think so. I have to . . . move on. Luckily I have the house in Wild Palms. I can’t come back here and see him and his paralegal . . . of course I do mean his wife, running around town, living in my house. It’s all too . . . lurid and I’ll never be able to get on with my life while hanging on to . . .”—she spread her hands and made a sweeping gesture—“this life.”

  “Wow.” I took a long sip of water.

  “I have friends there. I’m painting again. The settlement is final.”

  I nodded. “Okay, so I’m selfish to want you back here.”

  Cate smiled. “Not selfish. You still live in the middle of all this chaos, all this fake . . . stuff. You just aren’t able to see it from the other side.”

  I leaned back in my chair. The familiarity and comfort of our friendship shifted, wavered before me: miragelike. “Why do I feel like that was a vague insult?”

  Cate’s eyes filled. “Oh, oh. I didn’t mean it that way. Ever since the divorce I find myself saying things I wouldn’t have said before. I didn’t mean to insult you. You’re my dearest friend. I adore you. It’s just that I’ve been where you are.”

  The waiter appeared, placed our plates and wine before us. “You ladies need anything else?” We shook our heads.

  “What do you mean, where I am?” I asked.

  “It’s all noise and chaos and busyness, and we forget to take the time to notice anything or talk about anything and the next thing you know your husband has a new Porsche and a new wife.”

  “Cate,” I spoke softly, “that’s not Beau.”

  She nodded. “It wasn’t Harland either.”

  And I had nothing to say because she was right. If I’d had to bet on ten men in the law firm who’d have an affair and leave their wives, Harland would’ve been number nine. I took a deep breath. “So, tell me. How are Chandler and Becca?”

  Cate smiled, and this time it did spread across her face. “Good. They have both decided to live with me, instead of Harland, for the summer before their sophomore and junior years at Georgia. I’d like to think it’s all about me, but of course it’s all about the beach.”

  Something familiar flashed in the corner of my eyesight. I glanced, winced. “Cate—you know how you don’t want to live here so you won’t bump into Harland?”

  She followed my line of sight, groaned. “God, Meridy, just when I think I’ve
come to a better place in myself, I fall into this damn hole. Please don’t let him see us.”

  I glanced over my shoulder, trying not to turn my head. Harland strode up to the hostess stand. Alexis held on to his arm and kept stride with him in quick, small steps in her pencil skirt and too-tall heels.

  I rounded my shoulders. “Just keep talking about something else and they’ll ignore us. . . .”

  “What the hell are they doing here? Harland hates this place—says it’s a women’s lunching place.”

  I shrugged, then heard my name being called. My head snapped around at the familiar sound of my husband’s voice. He waved, moved through the tables.

  “Beau?” I stood.

  He came to me. “Hey, darling, what a great surprise.” He kissed me. “Nothing like running into you to make my day.”

  He reached down and hugged Cate. “So good to see you, Cate.”

  She nodded, turned her fork in her hand. “You too, Beau.”

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  He waved his hand toward the front of the restaurant, where Harland, Alexis and the new junior partner, Ashley, stood. “We’ve been working nonstop on this case and we had a breakthrough today, so we let the ladies pick where to eat lunch. Obviously a mistake. I voted for Chops. I lost.” He held up his briefcase. “But we’ll work through lunch.”

  “Oh . . .” I stared at the three of them at the front; Harland waved his hand in a “Hurry up” motion. Beau put his finger up, mouthed, “One minute.”

  “So,” he said. “What kind of trouble are you two up to today?”

  I glanced at Cate. “Eating, shopping . . .”

  “I’m making her go with me to all the stores I miss the most,” Cate said. “Then I’m going back to get the last few boxes of my family heirlooms from the house.”

  Beau glanced at me. “Oh . . . okay. Well, you have a great day.” Then he swooped me into his arms, leaned me backward and kissed me. The patrons at the table next to us laughed. Two women clapped. He grinned.

  I punched him in the shoulder. “Go back to work.”