“I haven’t been the epitome of communication either, Meridy. No need for apologies.” He pulled at my hand and motioned to start walking.
“Okay, where do I start?” Tim asked. “When was the last time we saw each other?” Tim asked.
“I think I saw you at the Christmas tree lighting two or three years ago on the square. . . .”
He laughed. “Okay, when was the last time we talked?”
I stopped, put my hand over my face to say it. “That night.”
“No . . . that can’t be right.” He stopped, turned.
“Yes, it is right. I know it is.”
He walked, flip-flops flapping against the sand. “Usually I see you go within a day or two of when you arrive. . . . Each time I see a Fulton County license plate at your mother’s house, I think you might have come for a real visit.”
“I’m sorry . . . Tim.”
“No sorrys. How long are you staying this time?”
I turned to the thin stretch of aqua horizon melting between sea and sky. “I don’t know. . . .”
Tim turned toward the sand dunes and a boardwalk. “Remember this?” He pointed at a wild area of sea oats, maritime shrubs, palmettos, and pines.
“No.” I rubbed my forehead. I’d walked farther up the beach than I had since before I’d moved away.
“This is where we used to hide when your mother was hollerin’ for you to come home, ringing that damn dinner bell off the back veranda, remember?”
Blood rushed from my fingers in a prickle of recognition. “Our forest, our hideout . . . Mrs. Foster’s land.”
“Yep.” Tim stopped at the boardwalk. “Now it belongs to the city—it’s a preserve and bird sanctuary. Our path—the one we cut with the clippers we stole from your gardener—is now marked with little signs and posts telling what plant you’re looking at: Here’s a loblolly pine, a live oak.”
“Borrowed, we borrowed the clippers—not stole them.”
“Come on.” He headed up the boardwalk.
I paused, ran my fingers along the basket rim. My throat constricted in one motion. I hadn’t entered these woods in twenty-six years—these wilder places of youth and nature.
Tim stopped to wait for me. “I’ll show you what they’ve done, catch you up on the gossip of Seaboro proper. . . .” He squinted his eyes, moved toward me. “What’s wrong, Meridy?”
“I don’t know. . . . I really don’t know. I’ve become a poor excuse for a Lowcountry girl. . . .”
“Not true . . . come on.”
Maybe because he expected me to follow him, I did. My breath caught in the small places below my throat and fluttered. I stopped at the edge of the boardwalk.
Tim smiled at me. “I come here every day to check on an osprey nest. It’s in a dead oak tree I’m afraid won’t stand much longer—and there are three babies. . . . It’s only a little bit ahead. Tell me all about you first. How are you, really?”
“Good, I’m really good. We live in Atlanta. My husband is a lawyer; his name is Beau. . . . So is my son’s.” I laughed. “It’s a good life.”
“Good, then.” Tim slowed. “Real good.”
I wanted to laugh with him at my own absurdity, but the laughter caught on the back of my tongue.
“I know it must be hard for you to come here, Meridy . . . but I have missed you.”
“You too, Tim.”
“So what’s brought you here?”
I told him of how I had volunteered to write the curriculum. “And, Tim . . . Mother told me what the historical society is doing to you.”
“Oh . . .”
“I want to help.”
He pressed his lips together. “I absolutely do not need any help.”
“I know you don’t. But I want to—really I want to. I have a couple ideas I ran by Mother. They can’t just come after you and demand money twenty-six years later. I know how people talk around here and—”
Tim laughed. “And when have you known me to care what other people say? Now, my family is another matter. My parents are sick about it. But you don’t need to go worrying about it.”
“Ah, don’t worry my pretty little head?”
“I didn’t say you had a pretty head.” He dodged me as I pulled my hand back to punch his shoulder. He laughed so loud a flock of sparrows flew from the oak branches above us, the sound echoing across the thick brush, as well as my heart.
“I want to help,” I said.
“Why?”
“Maybe to make up for something, for Danny, for you.” I struggled with words to explain. “To try and be . . . as good as I can.” The minute the words left my mouth they sounded ridiculous.
“Good?” This time he did laugh. “Since when have you tried to be good?”
“Not funny, Timothy Oliver.”
“You know I wouldn’t say anything to hurt you. . . . I’m just a tad too crass sometimes. It just doesn’t sound like something Meridy McFadden would’ve said.”
A love of childlike proportion—the largest kind of love there is—washed over me. “I’ve become everything we hated, haven’t I? I’ve turned into Mrs. Foster in her pearls at breakfast complaining about the noise of the young ones who have no manners.” I looked at Tim. “I’m everything we hated. . . .”
“God, I hope not.” He laughed. “There is no way you’re everything we hated.”
“Okay, then maybe I’m just losing it.”
“Great . . . I haven’t seen you in twenty-six years and I finally get to talk to you and you’re officially losing it. Just my luck.”
Laughter rose up from a place low and vibrating. I threw my head back and let it come. “God, I’m so melodramatic. Leave me here in the forest and forget you ever saw me. I’ll stop by in a couple days and you can meet the real Meridy, who, by the way, wants to help you out of this mess.”
“Oh, this is the real Meridy. And I don’t need help. It’s not that big a deal. I can handle it. Come on, I’ll talk about me.”
“Can we go back out to the beach?”
“This path winds back around to the beach. I have to check on the osprey babies. You don’t like it back here anymore?”
I looked left and right. “I feel . . . stuck in here. I don’t know why.” I touched a net of moss, pulled a strand loose. “Where was our hideout?”
“About a hundred yards back . . . nearer to the property line.”
“So what’s happened to you? You’ve stayed all these years . . . here?”
“Why would I leave?” He waved his hand in the air. “In a nut-shell, I married a girl I met who was here on vacation and we built a house on a side portion of Dad’s land. Then he had a heart attack years ago—now he’s disabled. It wiped out all the family money . . . what there was of it. So I stayed to help. Then I got divorced and now I build houses. . . .”
“Oh, Tim, I’m so sorry. Mother did tell me about your divorce.”
“Ah, she hated it here, and I wouldn’t leave. I think what finally happened is that the way she felt about this place turned into the way she felt about me: stifling, hot, bug-filled and slow. She just hated everything here—the marsh, the smell of the shrimp boats coming into harbor, the extreme tides, the unreliable weather, you know . . . and there’s no way I could leave this place even if Mom and Dad didn’t need me.”
I lifted my hand to my mouth. “That’s it.”
“What?”
“I’ve let how I feel about Danny dying—scared—change the way I feel about this place.”
Tim touched my arm, pressed his lips together and whispered, “You miss him.”
“I don’t know . . . I really don’t think that much about it.” I stared up at the moss-outlined sky. I needed to change the subject. “Can I ask you why y’all never had kids?”
“She kept saying she wanted to think about it and then it just never happened. I think she knew she’d eventually leave me. I’ve heard she has a couple kids in Chicago—married her high school boyfriend who she’d broken up wi
th to run off with me. Sordid, I know.”
“It’s not sordid. It’s sad.”
“Not anymore. It always works out for the best. But I do love kids . . . maybe because I am one.”
I laughed. “Good point.”
He raised his eyebrows at me. “You could’ve argued the point.”
I smiled and the eddy of uneasiness about being in the forest subsided as I strolled through the woods with an old friend, checking on an osprey nest and talking.
As we rounded the curve of pine straw and emerged back onto the beach, I hugged Tim. “It was so good to see you.”
“There’s something I’d love to show you if you’re staying a little while.”
“I am. What is it?”
“A surprise.”
“Okay . . .” I glanced off at the ocean; the sun had slid farther up into the sky. The morning had passed into afternoon and I felt more content than . . . I had in a long time. “When?”
“Today’s Saturday. How’s Monday morning? I’ll meet you at the public dock on the river at about . . . let’s say ten a.m.?”
“I’d love that, thanks.” He walked with me until I rounded the curve of beach and spotted the pillars of my family’s back porch. I kissed his cheek good-bye.
As I meandered back down the beach toward home, my contentment faded like watercolors. Guilt rose in the back of my throat. When was the last time I’d laughed and talked with Beau like I just had? The betraying thought slithered across my mind before I could grab its slimy tail and yank it away. I stopped, dug my toes in the sand. When? whispered the thought.
Ah. I kicked the sand. I can answer that. When he surprised me by taking me to Mexico for our fifteenth anniversary.
Beau had pretended to forget the entire event. I’d hinted, prodded, asked if we had plans for the weekend, but he’d changed the subject, walked out of the room. My feelings had been bruised. But all along he’d planned a trip. Cate had come over and packed my suitcase with all my favorite things and picked up B.J. to stay with her and Harland.
When I returned from a meeting there was a limousine waiting in the driveway. Beau stood in the front yard waiting and wearing the most raucous palm tree shirt and bathing suit. He held cold margaritas in his hands—one for me, one for him. I’d laughed until tears rolled down my face. We’d climbed into the limo—he hadn’t even allowed me to go into the house and make a single arrangement, as he’d taken care of everything.
We’d flown on a private chartered jet, something he often did for work, but I’d never done. When we landed in Mexico I followed Beau, content that he had arranged every detail. A car met us at the airport and drove us along the Mexican roads as dust flew in circles and children ran after the car trying to sell us trinkets, jewelry and Mexican dolls. We pulled up to a long, thin metal building that looked more like trailers backed one up to the other than the Motel Cabana it claimed to be on its flashing sign missing the letter E.
Beau leaned up to the driver. “This is not our hotel. We’re staying at the Cabana Resort.”
The driver turned around. “No hablo inglés.” Then he opened the driver’s-side door and walked back to his trunk, yanked our luggage out, dropped all of it on the parched grass.
Beau jumped out of the car, attempted to communicate in sign language of large arm swaying and exaggerated body movements. I climbed out of the car to watch this scene in a blur of margarita and pounding Mexican sun. When I began to giggle, then laugh, Beau’s absurd attempts to tell our driver where we wanted to go increased.
The car drove off, leaving a trail of dust as Beau attempted to use a dead cell phone. Then we stood in the parking lot of the Motel Cabana with our Louis Vuitton luggage, our beach bags and riotous laughter between us that sent us both to sitting on the ground next to our paraphernalia, holding each other and wiping away tears of frustration and hilarity.
This memory, on the beach in Seaboro, brought a smile, then a laugh. Warmth spread over the memory, over my mind. I sat on the same wicker chairs I had with Mother the night before, and the screen behind me creaked in a song of childhood.
“Your husband called. . . .” Mother’s voice came from behind me.
I craned about in the chair. “Hello, Mother. I’ll call him back.”
“Are you going to tell him you spent the morning with that wild Tim Oliver?”
“Please, Mother.” I closed my eyes. She must’ve seen me round the corner with him.
She shut the door behind her, but I heard her through the screen: “There’s lemonade and cucumber sandwiches in the kitchen if you’d like some.”
Like some? I’d love some. Then I’d call Beau, try and find a way to tell him how I felt. The warmth and the love I carried for him still existed, but I wondered if he still felt any of it for me. And how would he feel about the Meridy who’d once lived here, run wild in these woods, rivers and sea? The Meridy I wasn’t sure I’d ever shown him.
CHAPTER SIX
“Bad children may not be thrown into the fire.”
—GULLAH PROVERB
The floor-length silk curtains moved in a slow dance across the heart-of-pine boards in my bedroom. The soft hush of the tide outside my window whispered into the predawn light. I’d opened the window before bed last night and must have fallen asleep before remembering to close it.
I’d ended up spending the afternoon and evening of the previous day wandering the house, opening drawers, trying to unearth something, I wasn’t sure what. I’d tried to call Beau, but no one had answered the home phone.
Eventually I’d fallen asleep to the frogs’ lullaby and the sweet wind outside my window while flipping through my seventh-grade diary. I read that I’d once wanted new waders for fishing, I’d hated my reading teacher, and I’d wished popular Weatherly Jones would invite me to her thirteenth birthday party at the country club. The smaller pieces of my childhood rose like stray filaments to the magnet of my adult self.
I rose from the bed, stretched, walked over to the desk and yanked the file folder labeled “Gullah Curriculum” from my canvas bag. I flipped through the questions I intended to ask Tulu today—what was most important to teach the children about the culture?
The file folder tucked under my arm, I attempted to sneak down to the kitchen without waking Mother; I stepped on the right side of the third tread where the left side creaked, moved to the left on the seventh tread and smiled as I reached the foyer landing. I could still do the entire set of stairs without a single groan. I moved toward the kitchen; the aroma of coffee met me at the door.
Mother sat at the kitchen table, staring off into the distance.
“Mother? What are you doing up so early?”
She startled; her white hair fell to her shoulders for the first time I’d seen in years. “Sorry . . . did I wake you?” she asked.
“No, not at all. I left the window open and the dawn woke me. So much better than a screaming alarm clock. You okay?”
“Yes . . . just like my coffee early.”
As if the blood we shared now flowed together, I sensed the emptiness that filled this house with Daddy gone. I reached for Mother and hugged her; although she didn’t hug me back, I felt a softening. “It must get lonely here, Mother.”
“No, I’m just fine. I’m used to it.”
I didn’t know why I’d never thought about her being alone in this huge house without Daddy. Maybe it was because of all her friends and activities. I’d never applied the word lonely to her. Involved, cantankerous, nosy . . .
I grabbed a coffee mug from the kitchen cabinet. “Have you ever thought about moving into a smaller place?”
“Never. This house has been in the McFadden family for five generations. I would never give it up. I’m sure Sissy will take care of it after I’m gone. Are you implying I can’t take care of the house?”
I laughed. “No, Mother. I am just thinking of you. . . .”
“Hmph.” She lifted her coffee cup. “I’m going to get ready for the day. I
have a garden-club meeting and a luncheon at the club with the Ladies of Seaboro Society. Would you like to stop by and say hello?”
The Ladies of Seaboro Society was an invitation-only organization and represented Seaboro’s embodiment of acceptance. Mother held her membership as proof of pedigree.
“I’m going to visit Tulu today . . . but thanks for the invitation.”
“Did you know her husband passed last year?”
“No . . . you never told me.”
“Well, I guess I forgot.” Mother stood and started to walk out of the kitchen. “Have you called your husband?”
“Are you implying I can’t take care of my family?” I said, although I smiled.
She walked out of the kitchen and the sound of the slammed bedroom door upstairs was my signal that I’d crossed some “appropriate” line drawn years ago.
Tulu’s shack appeared to be composed of earth and dirt as it slanted to the left, winking at me. The front porch hung loose from the right corner and a dog barked from under the wooden front steps. The corner of Seaboro where Tulu lived was only ten minutes away from my house, but a world away in style and prosperity—if one defined prosperity by money. The rich marsh and river running behind the homes on her street were the same as those behind my home. I looked at the mailbox—212—it was the right house. In all my childhood I’d never visited Tulu, loving her only on the safe ground of McFadden land.
The doorbell sounded strangled, as if someone had put a hand over its mouth before it finished. The door opened and Tulu stood before me: the same and yet completely different—as if she’d grown older at twice the rate I had. Her gray-splashed hair sprang out in a hundred directions in braids woven of such intricate patterns her head looked like a sweetgrass basket unraveling.
Tulu threw her arms open. “Oh, lil’ one. You’ve finally come to my door.”
I reached for, then hugged, Tulu. Because she was tall and large boned, it shocked me that she felt as fragile as butterfly wings under my arms. I realized I had never had any idea how old she was. “I hope it’s okay to come see you—I’m at Mother’s and—”
Where the River Runs Page 7