I did not see my mother again until late May. For three days, Victoria lay in the bedroom at the top of the stairs unable to attend the funeral. The day after the funeral, I was told that I must go to school. When I wasn’t crying, or being given a pill to keep me from crying, I did as I was told.
The morning after my father’s death, when I awakened at 10:00, I was told to shower. Someone else laid out my clothes, packed my suitcase, and took me to my grandfather’s house. It must have been Aunt Elizabeth, but I couldn’t be sure. The first thought that I could later confirm as my own occurred at noon on the first day back in school after the previous evening’s tranquilizer had worn off. ‘I must go home and see my mother,’ I said to myself as I left the academy and walked toward Vine Street. On the sidewalk as I approached the house, Estelle Simmons, the elderly widow who lived next door, stopped me. “Holly, they took your mother away in an ambulance this morning. I thought you should know.”
I remembered standing a long time staring at the house until it began to rain. Mrs. Simmons returned to ask if I would like to come inside her house until the weather cleared. Looking blankly at the woman, I shook my head and walked the eight blocks to my grandfather’s house without a dry thread on me, as southerners like to say. Aunt Elizabeth packed my clothes and Queen Esther brought them to the Hall. I lived there through May.
In the summer Aunt Elizabeth accompanied me to Charlottesville, organized my dorm room, and enrolled me in basic English and other writing courses that involved little effort on my part. In one course I kept a journal which freed me to express my feelings of anger and confusion at the bitter turn my life had taken. Through my journal revelations, I unintentionally formed a friendship with my English professor, a woman in her forties without children. I traveled with the teacher and her architect husband to Richmond to the symphony and to New York to the theater. By the fall semester, I had moved into their house where I stayed the first two years. Avoiding friendships with other students and the social activities of sororities and fraternities, I regressed to a childlike need for comfort and love, while at the same time assuming instant adulthood by absorbing the tastes of the couple who became my surrogate parents. Reading and writing autobiographical essays and short stories provided an outlet for my psychic pain. Once a week I wrote impersonal letters to Victoria discussing novels I was reading and the intellectual activities available in Charlottesville. I did not know this mother, the woman who never answered – Victoria. During that time, it felt as if God himself could not be bothered enough to address my anguish.
I wrote newsy letters finally out of habit, expecting no response. In one I described meeting the writer Peter Taylor, a member of the University of Virginia English faculty. In the letter, I told Victoria how animated the great writer had been to discover that I was from eastern Arkansas, and that they had a friend in common. “Mother, do you remember Sarah Stuck Young, a lovely lady from Delta Ridge who was always so charming to the children when she visited Ham and grandmother at the Hall? Mr. Taylor asked me if I knew her. He referred to her as Sarah Stuck. I told him that a Delta Ridge architect by that name had designed our house. We talked more, and he remembered her married name. I told him that I had met her years ago. That she was a widow who visited my grandparents in Delta Ridge. He said that Sarah Young had been a schoolmate of his sister Sally. He described her as a lovely dark haired, dark eyed girl with a keen sense of humor. He didn’t know of her death. I felt so at ease with him and so delighted that he shared that memory with me. It made me homesick for Delta Ridge. I hope you will soon be well again, and that we will soon be together. I love you, Mother.”
So it continued. Each week for two years I wrote my mother a letter, and each week I received no response. In those two years, I did not see her. Returning to Delta Ridge to spend a week in the summer at the Hall, I then returned to Charlottesville for summer school. Thanksgiving and Christmas I spent with my new family attending theater in New York.
“COULDN’T YOU SLEEP, Holly?” Elizabeth was standing at the top of the stairs. I arose from the straight Hepplewhite chair in the entrance hall, picked up my empty wine glass from the mahogany library table, and watched my aunt descend the stairs. “I had a nightmare.”
“Why don’t we go in the library and make a fire? It’s drafty out here in the hall,” Elizabeth responded. “Are you all right, Holly?” Elizabeth poured herself a glass of sherry. “Would you like some?”
By then I was curled up on the sofa with one of Victoria’s woven wool afghans over my legs. “Yes, please. It was a dream I’ve had from time to time about my father,” I continued. “I expected to have it again after I moved home, but tonight was the first time.” Elizabeth listened intently as I recalled the dream.
For the first time, I felt like one of her patients. “What do you remember about the night of your father’s death, Holly?” Elizabeth’s voice was gentle.
“It’s been so long ago. I thought tonight by coming downstairs and confronting the place where it happened, that I might lay some old ghosts to rest.”
“Did you?”
“Of course not.”
“The dream, Holly, the part where you’re looking for your father, perhaps to help him, to save him, is that because you might feel some guilt that you haven’t dealt with?”
Involuntarily, I started to cry.
“It might help, Holly, if you could tell me what you remember. That night Ham called and asked me to go to the house to be with you and Victoria. Other than the official version given to the police, Ham never discussed what happened. And, of course, your mother was in no condition to know much for two years. After that, I think she was concerned with holding her own life together. Do you remember how I tried to talk to you when you were living at the Hall, but you were so far inside yourself that I never thought you heard me?”
“I didn’t. I’ll try to tell you what I remember, what I haven’t perhaps unconsciously repressed. As you know, it was my last year in high school. I had a date that night. His name was Walter Gulley, not Warren Guppie as Felicia teases me.” I smiled at Elizabeth, doing the Carter family instant mood switch. “We had been to a movie and then stopped for pizza. We sat in his car, smooching, I believe they called it in your day. Anyway, we sat in the car about thirty minutes. The lights were on in the house and Daddy’s car was in the driveway. It must have been 11:30 when we walked up to the front door, then Walter kissed me goodnight, and left. I remember having difficulty with my key, so I rang the doorbell but no one came. Finally, I managed to open the door. That’s when I found Daddy lying face down in the entry hall inside the doorway at the bottom of the stair. He was wearing the blue blazer Mother and I had given him for Christmas. There was a puddle of blood by his arm. I started screaming ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ I touched his shoulder, but he didn’t move. Then I began screaming ‘Mother! Mother!’ I heard a groan at the top of the stairs, so I climbed over Daddy’s body and ran up the stairs. Mother was lying there in her dressing gown face down. At first I thought she had been shot, but she moved her arm. I held her face in my hands. She opened her eyes for a moment and said, ‘Call Ham’ and passed out again. I immediately called Ham from her bedroom phone. The bed was unmade, I remember.
“He said, ‘Don’t do anything. I’ll be right there.’ I sat on the stair half way between them afraid to touch either of them. I must have been in shock. Ham arrived probably in less than ten minutes. The door was open. He came in, leaned down, touched Daddy’s head, walked over him, took my arm, and said ‘Where’s your mother?’ I motioned to the landing. He walked past me, leaned down, looked at mother, felt her head, and then said ‘Help me get her into bed.’ I obeyed. We carried, actually he carried, Mother to her bed, told me to sit with her, picked up the phone, and called an ambulance. Then he called you.”
“Yes, when I arrived, Tom’s body was being removed on a stretcher. Ham told me to stay with you and your mother. He went to the hospital with the ambulance. Within thirty minute
s, he called from the hospital to say Tom was dead. The police came and bagged the gun which was near the body. Ham told me later that Tom had shot himself, either accidentally or intentionally, and that Victoria had had the flu for several days and was running a high fever. She had taken a sedative earlier that evening to help her sleep and did not hear the gunshot.”
“Is that what Mother said?” I asked.
‘‘Holly, she never said anything to me. The doctor kept her knocked out for three days, and then she was taken to a hospital in Nashville. None of us saw her again until Ham brought her home for your May graduation. I don’t know why. She was in no condition to attend.”
“I remember trying to talk to her then. Her eyes were so vacant, like everything inside her had moved out,” I said.
“Now I think she was probably overmedicated. At the time, I thought she had had a total breakdown,” Elizabeth explained. “Ham was so protective of her. Did you know that I never went to see her in two years? He told me the doctors didn’t think she should have visitors. You were gone. Felicia was becoming a teenager. My marriage was falling apart. I was working on my master’s degree at Memphis State. Then I remarried, too quickly, I guess. I was accepted in the Ph.D. program. That marriage ended after a year. I finished the Ph.D., came back to Delta Ridge, married and divorced one more time and here we are. Holly, it doesn’t seem like it’s been twelve years, but I guess it has.”
“And you never talked to Mother about what happened that night?” I’m sure that my expression was uncomprehending.
“No, nor to Ham either, did you?” Elizabeth looked at me.
“No. Something came to me tonight. All these years in the recurring dream, I saw Daddy in his white dress shirt, no tie, and yet, when he died, he was wearing the blue blazer.”
“Why do you think you saw him in white? Did you think that he was he appearing as a ghostly apparition?” Elizabeth asked.
“You mean haunting me for not coming home sooner, for not summoning help sooner, for not calling an ambulance immediately? Yes. That’s what I thought, in my guilt. That had I not been so selfish, I would have saved him, kept him from bleeding to death. That my father was my hound from heaven, my personal fury. I saw a therapist for three years in Little Rock.”
“Wait a minute, Holly. You said you thought Tom bled to death?” Elizabeth interrupted.
“Yes, that’s what I thought, but my therapist....”
“Holly,” Elizabeth interrupted again. “I’m sure that’s not true. Ham said that he saw the medical report, that Tom died instantly, that the shot hit his heart. He was pronounced DOA at the hospital, but he had been dead for at least an hour.”
“Are you sure that’s what happened or what Ham said happened?” I didn’t believe this story.
“I don’t know. I never saw the report,” Elizabeth conceded.
“I’d like to know the truth. But something else came to me tonight. The reason I continued to see Daddy in that white shirt. When he came home after work, he always went upstairs to their bedroom, hung up his coat and took off his tie, and then came downstairs for dinner. Daddy was from the frontier, from Texas. He hated to wear a tie and jacket at home, and he never did. Ham did. You could go to the Hall at 9:00 o’clock at night and see him wearing his suit. That Old South tradition. Of course he was from a different generation.”
“Holly, you know what that means? Tom had just come home. Where had he been?” Elizabeth was puzzled. “Wait, I think I remember now. When I got to the house, Tom was on the stretcher face up with a sheet over him, but not over his face. 1 tried not to look, but I think I remember the blue jacket and a red tie.”
We looked at each other.
“Let’s go to the farm.” Elizabeth continued to look at me, waiting for my reaction.
“What? I have to work today. So do you. What are you saying?” I looked at my aunt, disbelieving.
“I just remembered that today is President’s Day. It’s a holiday. I only have three patients. I’ll call the office and have them rescheduled. The banks are closed. Ham’s at the farm. It’s six AM. If we leave now, we can be there for breakfast.” Elizabeth rose from her chair.
“I don’t know. I have so much work to do,” I hesitated.
“Do you have any appointments scheduled?” Elizabeth asked.
“No, but....”
“Then you can call Marie from the farm. Tell her you’re off today and will be back in the office tomorrow. I’ll tell Felicia we’re going.”
“Do you want to go to the farm, Jigger?” I asked the dog who had awakened from his spot beside my bed, followed me to the library, and gone to sleep again.
IT WAS ALMOST 7:30 and a bright Monday morning when the black Mercedes pulled up beside Ham’s silver Lincoln. A light was on in the farm house kitchen. I zipped my down jacket and stepped out of the car into the cold morning air. The fog we had encountered when we crossed the Black River was lifting, but no sun was visible through the mist.
“What have we here?” Ham asked as he responded to the knock on the front door. “Is anything wrong at home?”
“No, it’s Presidents Day, and we thought you might like some company,” Elizabeth replied.
“I’m not believing you, Lizbeth. It’s only 7:30 in the morning. What time did you leave Delta Ridge? Mama, put on two more plates for breakfast; we got company from the Ridge.”
Charlotte turned from the kitchen stove; Victoria, seated at the kitchen table, looked up from her coffee cup. “What are you two doing here?” she asked. I hugged my mother, who, if she didn’t want to see me, had no opportunity to escape.
“I think it’s time we had a heart to heart, a little family conflab.” Elizabeth’s voice was stern.
“What in the world?” Charlotte looked at the group and then brought coffee cups to Elizabeth and me after we had seated ourselves at the kitchen table beside the open fire.
“We need to have a little group therapy, family therapy, if you will,” Elizabeth continued in her positive, clinical voice.
“Yes Ma’am, Dr. Carter,” Ham tried to lighten her mood.
“I think after twelve years, it’s time to talk. I’m going to be blunt. Nothing said here needs to leave this room, but Vicky, your daughter needs to come to terms with her father’s death. Ham, she can’t do that unless she knows the truth.” Elizabeth looked at her father.
“What truth?” Ham said seriously.
“The real unvarnished truth, the one that probably no two people in this room know.” Elizabeth responded. “Will one of you tell the story or shall I?”
“If you know it, Lizbeth, why didn’t you just tell Holly and save yourselves a drive.” Ham was becoming defensive.
“Let me put it a different way,” Elizabeth was in charge. “Victoria, what I’m about to say I say with love. Obviously this is not a family that shares its secrets, even with each other, until it’s too late to matter. As example I cite my brother Garland’s life—and death. And Ham’s protection which kept us from even totally knowing Garland or from helping him to survive,” Elizabeth hesitated.
The rest of the family continued to stare at Elizabeth as if she might be the next one to have a major breakdown.
“Victoria, for twelve years, Holly has carried guilt over Tom’s death. That guilt can’t end until she knows the truth.” Elizabeth’s voice was firm.
“Why does Holly feel guilty?” My mother’s voice was curious, but detached. “She wasn’t even there.”
“That’s why she feels guilty, Victoria. How do you know she wasn’t there?”
Victoria looked at Elizabeth and then at Ham.
“Victoria was passed out sick with a virus, Lizbeth. She doesn’t remember anything about that night,” Ham interjected quickly.
“How do you know what she remembers?” Elizabeth looked at her father as the prosecutor became the defendant.
“Lizbeth, none of this raking over old bones is going to do anybody any good,” Ham continued.
> “Maybe it’s time my father’s bones got a permanent rest,” I stared at Ham and then at my mother.
“Holly Honey, don’t you be going crazy on us too,” Ham responded.
“Folie a deux,” I said. “Two fools. That may be true, but I’m not one of them, and neither is Aunt Elizabeth. I want the truth from you two. And if I don’t hear it, I promise you, I’ll leave here today, and neither one of you will ever see me again. Nothing can be as bad as what I already suspect.”
“What do you suspect, Holly?” Ham asked, relinquishing nothing.
I stared at my grandfather. “I suspect that my mother shot my father, and that my grandfather let him die while he was concealing evidence. That’s what I suspect.”
Victoria gasped.
Ham continued to talk, “Holly, your father was one of the finest fellows I ever knew. Your mother loved your father with her whole heart.”
“Cut the crap!” I shot Ham the most hostile look I could muster.
“I’m serious, honey, that’s the truth,” Ham said, reaching for my arm.
I stepped back out of his reach and hesitated, but the silence was not filled.
“Okay, By God! I’m gone,” I turned toward the door.
“No, Holly. Wait.” Victoria’s voice was dispassionate. She was the only one not standing. Charlotte held the coffee pot motionless in her hand.
“Holly, I love you. I never meant to hurt you. I guess I never knew how much I did because I hurt so badly myself. My pain was so great I couldn’t allow you to share it. Sit down, Baby. I’ll tell you everything I know.”
I obeyed my mother.
“Holly, in those days, I had a drinking problem, a bad one. Not that any are good. Your father tried to keep you from knowing. I was an undiagnosed manic depressive who self-medicated with gin, but I didn’t recognize my problems until years later. What I knew was that I had personal demons who liked to drink so I served them g&t’s in the summer and martinis in the winter to make them feel better. But of course, I got a whole lot worse. Depressed when I drank, I was disoriented when I drank too much. Then I needed pills to make me sleep. But back to the story. Your father used to get calls from a woman he said was a client. I thought he was having an affair. I don’t pretend that I had a logical reason to believe that. Only that I felt so bad about myself. And I was in such a stupor half the time. My emotions were raw and extreme. Mother and Ham went through a divorce.” She looked at her parents. “I’m not blaming; I’m long past blame. I’m stating fact. I felt I had no one. Mother had moved to the farm. Daddy was drinking, and he and I got in these God-awful fights. You were too young. Elizabeth had marital problems. Tom didn’t understand anything about me. Anyway, I drank.
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