Where the River Runs

by Patti Callahan Henry

  “Meridy . . . hello . . . you there?” Penni poked my shoulder. Martini drops landed on her Chanel jacket.

  “Aren’t you . . . sick of all this?” I was stunned by my voice.

  “Sick of what? Oh, that the ladies’ locker room is never as nice as the men’s? Ah, nah. I’ve gotten used to it. The men—they rule it all. We’re just along for the ride.” She laughed.

  “Really?” I said.

  “Yep. At least it’s a fun ride. You know? What’s the alternative, darling? Working at the Publix cash register, being an administrative assistant to some bald boss trying to feel you up? Please . . .” Penni shook her head. “Dare you to try.” She giggled with her hand over her mouth.

  Now you know—Meridy will always takes the dare.

  Betsy and Alexis walked in, laughing. Penni shot up from the couch. “What’s so funny? What’d I miss?”

  “Nothing, nothing.” Betsy pushed her hair off her forehead. She claimed she had to wear bangs until her husband approved of Botox—permission must be granted.

  “Nothing?” Alexis walked over to the mirror and pulled out her bright red lip liner. “Ms. Betsy received a nice pass from the landscape architect working on her new house.”

  “What do you mean?” Penni downed the last of her martini.

  “Well,” Betsy said, “I’ve been working with him for months now on our new house plans and last night—right in the middle of planning the front rock garden—he tells me that he can’t sleep or eat because all he does is think about me. He’s been dragging out this job just to be around me. . . .” Betsy stood taller, as if her designer’s declarations were something to be immensely proud of.

  “Oh, how sweet.” Penni gazed up at the ceiling. “It’s so nice when someone notices that we’re more than someone’s mom or wife or housekeeper.”

  “Sweet?” I stood up. “I think it’s creepy. Did you tell Mike?”

  “No way.” Betsy crinkled her eyes. “He’d freak out, fire him.”

  “Well, shouldn’t he?” I said.

  Alexis finished her lip application and turned back to the conversation. “Please, Mare, don’t be so perfect all the time. Nothing’s going on with them. . . .”

  “Perfect?” I felt the floor shift below me. I’m faking it; I’ve always faked it. The reasons for my unsteady emotions began to take shape, form and definition.

  “Oh, you know we’re always jealous of you,” Alexis said. She came over and dropped her arm around my shoulder. I resisted the urge to push her away. “You do freaking everything right. Your jacket matches your shoes; your purse is one of a kind; your son has a scholarship to Vanderbilt for baseball; your husband is adorable.”

  I shook my head.

  Betsy took a step forward. “And you’re the most beautiful woman I know. What’s not to be jealous of?” She kissed my cheek.

  I stared at the women. Jealous? They didn’t know I hadn’t picked up the dry cleaning today, that I’d forgotten my mother’s birthday last week, or that I was an impostor.

  “Come on, girls.” Betsy tossed her hair over her shoulder. “They’ll come in after us if we don’t go back out there.”

  “They probably don’t even know we’re gone,” I said, and walked out the door.

  I sat down at the table and the other women followed, all glancing at each other with that aren’t-we-so-worried look. How could they include Alexis in that look, as if by marrying Harland she now belonged? I patted Beau’s knee and smiled.

  The plans-for-the-summer conversation was still going on. “Well,” Mike said, “Bets and I are headed to our house in Wild Palms. She’ll stay with the kids all summer and I’ll come and go.”

  “More go than come,” Betsy murmured.

  “Someone’s gotta feed the family.” Mike laughed, head back.

  “We haven’t decided about our summer yet.” Penni looked at Harvey. “Have we?”

  “Well, I was thinking we’d take it easy,” Harvey said. “Maybe a couple trips to the mountain house. The kids only want to hang out with their friends now. They hate family vacations—like totally.”

  Harland leaned back in his chair, making the tapered legs groan. “I’m taking my baby on a cruise in the French Riviera. Anyone wanna come? That’s why I brought the subject up—I organized it today and wanted to see how many of y’all would be up for it.”

  Alexis leaned into Harland. “Doesn’t it sound divine?”

  “Just divine,” Betsy said, and looked up at Mike. He looked away from her and Betsy’s pained, drawn look made me cringe. Maybe Mike had someone else he’d prefer to spend the summer with.

  We were all saved by the appearance of the waiter. The evening progressed as hundreds of evenings had before, with talk of kids and school and, of course, work. Near the end, Harland raised a wineglass. “To my birthday, happy, happy birthday to me.”

  Everyone laughed a bit too loudly, and lifted their glasses. I took a very, very long swallow of Merlot.

  After the good-byes, after everyone had told Harland to e-mail them the specifics about the French cruise, hugs and kisses were offered all around.

  When only Alexis and I remained on the front stoop of the club-house waiting for Beau and Harland to return from the men’s locker room, where they went to get some things from their lockers, Alexis placed her hand on my arm. “Meridy, I’d really love it if you and Beau came on the cruise with us. I just adore being around y’all.” She winked. “And I bet Beau is adorable in his swim trunks.”

  Beau came up behind me, touched the small of my back. “You ready?” I nodded, climbed into the car without answering Alexis. I began to smell smoke—like the burned char of a leftover log from a campfire—surround me.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “No matter how you try to cover up smoke, it must come out.”

  —GULLAH PROVERB

  The night arrived with blurred, scattered images flying across my consciousness, like birds whose wings I’d hear, but as soon as I turned to see them, they were gone. I awoke relieved at the sight of the sunrise behind my home. Today was a new day and I’d shake the unsteady feelings of yesterday. But the emotions lingered like the residual ache of the flu.

  I stood in the kitchen, leaned against the back-door jamb and stared at the lush summer backyard. Atlanta was thick and moist, overgrown emerald and yellow in the heat of the season. Earth bore the deep hum of nature, and sometimes I imagined I heard the plants growing in a thick buzz. The landscape was not at all similar to where I grew up in Seaboro, where the hints of nature came from deeper places of the sea. There, in the Lowcountry, I heard the dolphins’ squeal, the crunch of shell and sand, the whisper of unseen, primal life in the marsh.

  Seaboro. Maybe it was time to go visit Mother this summer. B.J. was away at Vanderbilt. Beau was so preoccupied with this case, I couldn’t reach him with words or touch. Daddy was gone now—he’d died of a stroke five years ago while fishing off the dock behind our house, just the way I imagined he would’ve chosen to leave us.

  It was Daddy who tied us to Seaboro, to the community and all it defined for the McFadden family. Daddy had possessed a combination of gentleness and strength I could attribute only to his firm grounding in knowing who he was, who he was meant to be, and living that way. The family house stood on the foundation of the family name more than on concrete and pilings. As expected, on their wedding day Mother and Daddy had received the McFadden family home, which overlooked the wide, undulating river. It was the house where Daddy was reared, where he was expected to raise his family—and he had. The family name was carved in plaques, signs and monuments all over Seaboro.

  Mother wasn’t from Seaboro, and my entire life I’d watched her efforts to prove she was worthy of its various clubs, luncheons, dinner parties and teas. Mother had come from “lesser means”—I’d heard it whispered in the quieter moments of the debutante balls—and acceptance in Seaboro was her heart’s desire. The desperate craving for this belonging had never been transferred t
o me. I had somehow evaded the grasping need I had seen in my mother and older sister for the approval and cheek-kissing enclosure of Seaboro society. In childhood and high school I had longed only for the other attributes of the Sea Islands: the sea, the river, the wild call of the denser pieces of land—the sacred mystery of the thirty-five or so Sea Islands running like jewels on an unhooked necklace down the coast of South Carolina and Georgia.

  The reasons I had left all of those revered places behind were too obscure and painful for me to have ever discussed them with Beau, beyond the normal need to get out from under childhood constraints and have one’s own life.

  Beau entered the kitchen, touched the back of my hair. I inhaled, closed my eyes.

  “You’re up early,” he said.

  I turned to him. “I didn’t sleep well, thought I’d get the day started.”

  He dropped his briefcase on the counter. “What do you have on today?” He poured coffee into his mug—the green one with THE MASTERS etched on the side.

  I pushed my hair out of my eyes. “I have a board meeting for Williams Prep.”

  “When are we done with that?”

  “I think I have two more meetings, then freedom.” I tried to smile.

  “Well, have a good day, honey. I have a late meeting with Harland tonight—don’t worry about dinner.”

  I nodded, picturing whom he’d be spending his day with—Harland, Alexis and, of course, Ashley. “Beau?”

  He turned and looked at me, but in the off-glance way I’d noticed lately when he wasn’t really paying attention. “Yes?” he said; then his gaze fell on the counter, on a pile of papers he’d forgotten to stuff in his briefcase. He picked up the stack Ashley had dropped by the night before.

  I stepped toward him, touched his arm covered in a starched white shirt. “Are you okay? Are we okay?”

  He dropped the papers into his briefcase, then squinted at me. “What? Of course.” He kissed the top of my head. “See you tonight, honey.”

  The disconnection with Beau left me lost, wavering. I was once able to see how Beau really felt—see the softer places of him. But now I saw only a glaze of disinterest and preoccupation. I was lost, falling farther and farther into the dreams of smoke and an ancient fire.

  By the time I got to the Williams Prep board meeting, I had used willpower to talk myself back to reality—I had experienced only a few melancholy moments. I wanted to blame the unsteady emotions on my conversation with Cate.

  I pulled my aqua leather satchel with the initials MMD up to my chest as if I needed to protect myself from whatever emotion threatened the edges of my consciousness. I glanced at my Rolex: five minutes late. Ten people sat at the long mahogany table; taupe-on-beige striped wallpaper set the backdrop for the blank faces that stared at me as I rushed in. An air conditioner hummed in the background, and the wilted fern in the middle of the table dropped brown, curled leaves on the scratched top. Everything looked dead and pale.

  “Sorry.” I sat in the only vacant chair, dropped my satchel on the floor.

  “As I was saying,” the headmaster, Greg Henderson, said, “we will be covering a different culture each year. Part of this decision stems from complaints from our Lower School parents that there isn’t enough diversity in our school or our curriculum, but I also think it’s a great idea. By the time our children leave Lower School, they will have had an in-depth exposure to five different cultures. The first year will be the Gullah culture.”

  I sat up straight. “What?”

  Deidre Anderson turned to me. Her hair didn’t move at all—how many aerosol cans had been sacrificed for her head? “If you’d been on time . . .”

  Greg held up his hand. “We’re talking about adding Culture Week in the Lower School—one week a year, one hour a day, a different culture each year.”

  “And,” Deidre said, “we’ll start with the Gullah culture. Doesn’t that sound like fun? I’ve seen that kids’ show—what’s it called?” She glanced around the table.

  “Gullah, Gullah Island?” I answered.

  “Yes,” Deidre said, bobbed her head.

  Her Aqua Net odor washed over me, and irritation bubbled to the surface. She acted like Gullah was a cute little cartoon that elementary school kids would enjoy with Scooby-Doo and SpongeBob. But I knew of the Gullah culture through our old housekeeper in Seaboro, Tulu.

  “Deidre.” My voice was tight, an octave lower than usual. “Gullah is both a culture and a language. These are real people, not characters in a children’s book. They’ve been in the Lowcountry, the Sea Islands, for over a hundred years.” I stood up, my hands moving against my words. I watched myself in amazement—detached and aware. Why was I standing up, lecturing Deidre about the Sea Island culture? “Gullah is the longest-lasting African culture in the country—”

  “Aren’t we all worked up?” Deidre said. “If you know so much about it . . .”

  “Why don’t I write the curriculum?” I turned to Greg Henderson with a surety I hadn’t felt in a long, long time. The sting of pluff mud filled my nose; the briny taste of marsh water ran against my lips. Maybe I hadn’t woken up from my dream about Danny after all.

  “Well . . .” Greg glanced around the table. “We weren’t quite there yet, but . . .”

  “What qualifications do you have?” asked Mr. Chamberlain, who was older than the city of Atlanta.

  “I was born in the Lowcountry, raised there. . . . I had a Gullah housekeeper. Mother still lives there . . . at home. I have a business degree.” My ears rang with a vibrating hum; I spoke against my will in a desperate attempt to accomplish something I didn’t understand.

  Deidre slapped her hand on the table. “Great idea for you, Meridy. With B.J. gone and an empty house, you’ll have plenty of time.”

  Greg leaned forward. “Perfect. You can go home and get all the information. Well, that worked out just great. . . .”

  Home.

  Greg flipped a page of his notebook. “Then the next year will be the Celtic culture.”

  All faces turned and looked at me.

  I sat down in my chair. “What?” I held up my hands.

  “Just wanted to see if you had anything to say about Ireland,” Greg said.

  The entire group at the table laughed. Blood rushed to my face; my hand flew to my throat. I smoothed my linen pants and cleared my throat.

  Greg winked at me to let me know he was joking, then continued to tell us about the other Culture Weeks that would follow in the ensuing years. He discussed admissions, fund-raising and all the subjects that normally constituted our board meetings and often interested me. The meeting seemed to last longer than usual, but Greg closed the meeting with, “Well, we’ve gotten out early today—we won’t meet again until three weeks before school gets back in session. If I don’t see all of you, have a beautiful summer.”

  A beautiful summer—the words echoed as some sort of warning.

  I wiped a damp rag across my desk in the kitchen where a round coffee stain had settled from that morning—before I’d volunteered to write a curriculum, something I’d never done before. Why did I think I could do it?

  I could get much of the information from the Internet or from history books. But the best source would be our old housekeeper, Tulu. I lifted the phone and dialed 411, received her number in Seaboro, South Carolina, and dialed before I gave any more thought to the ramifications of opening a door I’d locked long ago.

  Tulu’s cracked voice came over the lines just as I was about to give up on the incessantly ringing phone without an answering machine.

  “Tulu?”

  “Yes?”

  I closed my eyes, tried to envision her carved mahogany face, her braids running down her back, her gentle eyes that had often found the softer places of my own heart when she looked directly at me.

  “Hi . . . ,” I said. “This is Meridy Dresden . . . McFadden.”

  “Oh, oh. My lil’ one. I’ve done prayed all these years that someday I’d be h
earing from you.” A small sound came over the line that sounded like a stifled cry. “Where are you, child? Are you okay?”

  “Yes, yes. I’m fine. I think a lot about you too, Tulu. I’m calling because, well . . .”

  “Because you’re coming home.”

  I laughed. “Yes, but the reason I’m coming home is to write a curriculum for our private school about the Gullah culture, and I was hoping you’d be able to . . . help me. Give me some information and such. I just wanted to make sure you were . . .”

  A long laugh poured through the phone line. “Alive? You wanted to make sure I was still alive?”

  “No . . . Mother tells me she sees you. No . . . not that. But that you’d be around for an interview. I’d really like to see you.”

  “Little one, I’ll always be here for you. Always have been. You just forgot.”

  “Forgot?”

  “Now you’ll remember.”

  “Remember?” Tulu was still alive, but maybe she’d, as they said, gone off her rocker.

  “Everything, little one. Maybe now you’ll remember everything.”

  “About Gullah?”

  “About you, Meridy. About you.”

  I coughed, and realized I’d had my eyes shut for the entire conversation. I opened them to see a framed photo of B.J. in his baseball uniform. Beau and B.J.—that was all I really needed to know about myself. “I just need some information on Gullah. . . . I’m probably coming at the end of the week. Can I call you when I get there?”

  “Of course you can. But, most of all, you can just come on over. I rarely answer the phone, but this time I felt the whispers of a voice on my arms and I knew I must answer this call. But there’s a thunder-storm comin’ and you remember—we must be perfectly quiet during those storms—God is doing his work. I’ll hang up now.”

  “Okay . . .” I remembered sitting on the front steps of my house, Danny and I huddled together until a storm passed because Tulu had warned us that God was doing his work.