A Sound Among the Trees

by Susan Meissner

  “What has that to do with your unfounded accusations?” Nathaniel said politely.

  The men both looked at me, and the same one said, “These Yankees were seen before you arrived, Lt. Page. And your wife, we know, is very fond of her aunt.”

  I felt the blood drain from my face. “What … are you suggesting?” I stammered. I sounded appalled, which, lucky for me, is very much like sounding terrified.

  Nathaniel did not give them time to answer. “You will respect my wife in her home and in my presence,” he said evenly.

  “We mean no disrespect, sir, but—”

  Again Nathaniel cut him off. “I find it highly disrespectful that you do not take my wife at her word—or mine. I swear to you before God there are no Yankees in this house.”

  They stood there a moment longer, running their fingers along the brims of their hats. Finally, the one who had been doing all the talking bowed to me. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Page.”

  I said nothing. I tipped my chin in silence.

  They bade my grandmother and Nathaniel good-bye. Grandmother rewarded them with stony silence. Nathaniel maintained his polite but firm tone and asked Tessie to kindly show them out.

  When the front door closed behind them, Grandmother rose from the chair she’d been sitting in, smoothed her skirt, and then began to walk regally out of the room.

  “I do not wish to know anything about this, Susannah,” she said. But her back was to me, indicating she wanted no response from me, not even confirmation that I had heard her.

  I looked to Nathaniel, and he just patted my arm and nodded once. It was over. This situation with Will and John was over.

  Nathaniel left within the hour. I asked if he could tell me where he was headed, and he said all eyes are on Pennsylvania, including the regiment Will and John are hoping to reconnect with. Nathaniel told me his supply wagons were numerous. Gen. Lee was amassing a huge army to march north into Union territory.

  He kissed me good-bye and then placed his hand over my abdomen. “If it is a boy, would you consider naming him Albert?” he asked. “That was my grandfather’s name. He was a great man. You would’ve liked him, Susannah.”

  I had not given any thought to the notion that I would deliver this child at Holly Oak alone, without Nathaniel pacing an adjoining room. “Of course,” I whispered, though I could hardly imagine the moment of the child being real and outside of me and needing a name.

  He took me in his arms for one last embrace. “I love you, Susannah,” he said.

  It took only a moment for me to say, “And I, you.”

  There are many shapes to love, Eleanor.

  I watched him ride away, alone this time and into the streets of Fredericksburg, not the woods behind the house. It was a different sound this time.

  As soon as he was gone, I stepped back into the house. Holly Oak seemed tomblike again as it had when I first returned. An air of foreboding seemed to seep through its walls. Like it knew something that we did not yet know.

  15 June 1863

  Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

  Dear Eleanor,

  The summer heat is ovenlike, pressing in on us like a punishing hand. I spend as much time as I can out of doors among the remaining peach trees that the Union Army did not cut down for firewood last winter; it is unbearable inside the house. Mama and Samuel often sit with me under the shady boughs.

  Tessie’s garden enjoys the jungle warmth and is green with happy, living things. We are all of us looking forward to eating something besides fish from the river and cornmeal cakes. The only good thing about the heat is it strips us of appetite most of the time.

  There is no wind, Eleanor. The air is still and wet and heavy. Like a hammer ready to fall.

  Susannah

  5 July 1863

  Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

  Dearest Eleanor,

  There has been a terrible battle in a place in Pennsylvania called Gettysburg. We have been told there have been thousands of Confederate casualties. Thousands. We’ve had no word from Nathaniel and certainly nothing from Will or John. All we can do is wait for the list of names to be posted.

  And still the unrelenting heat rails on.

  I long for a blinding white blizzard to sweep us all under its icy coat, to cover our horrors, bury our cannons and trenches and, yes, even our dead. I want it to freeze us into statues that cannot pull triggers or thrust bayonets or even walk to the post office to see who has died and who has not.

  I am almost out of paper and ink, Eleanor, none of which are available anymore. That is why I am writing as small a script as I can, pressing my letters together to the point of bare legibility.

  Perhaps it is well that I shall soon be unable to pacify myself with writing sentences you will never see and I, no doubt, should not be writing.

  Susannah

  23 September 1863

  Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

  Dearest Eleanor,

  This shall be my last letter to you. I have no more paper beyond these last two pages, and there is no more ink in Fredericksburg.

  It is fitting that when this letter is complete, I shall bind all these letters together and hide them away somewhere inside Holly Oak, perhaps forever. You will never know I wrote them, and perhaps one day I will forget that I did.

  Nathaniel was one of the thousands of men catastrophically wounded at Gettysburg. The sharpshooter’s bullet that sliced through his neck did not kill him, but he lost a terrible amount of blood. He was expected to die.

  Perhaps it would have been a kindness if he had. But I do not deserve such kindness, and he is not aware that he does.

  Nathaniel returned to me from a field hospital on the nineteenth of July, whole but broken. He can barely speak or walk, and he does not quite remember me. He doesn’t remember that he loves me.

  This, Eleanor, is my recompense for marrying a man I did not love and loving a man I did not marry. Nathaniel’s devotion to me, his ardent affection, and even his physical presence was what I fed upon since I was denied what I truly desired. And now I am a stranger to him.

  He sits in a chair all day long, unable to read a book or strike a match or even run his hands through my hair. When he first came home, it took Tessie and my mother both to get him out of bed in the morning. Tessie would not allow me to help. She was afraid the baby might come early.

  Tessie told me it would be up to us to teach Nathaniel how to walk and talk again. How to live again. This thought terrified me to my core, that I was now burdened with restoring to Nathaniel all that the war had stolen from him. I told her it was too much, I could not do it. And she said, “You owe him at least that much.”

  Tessie has always known more than we gave her recognition for.

  And she is right, of course. I owe Nathaniel that much. He would do as much for me and not have thought twice about it. This is how I will learn to love him, Eleanor. It shall do no good to ask who will teach me how to live again. My mother is proof enough that sometimes you either teach yourself to live again or you sentence yourself to slowly disappear.

  Eliza came home on the tenth of August, released along with four hundred other wayward Southerners and Confederates. She only stayed a week, though I begged her not to leave. Even Grandmother cried when she told us she was leaving for Ohio; she had made friends with Southern abolitionists while in Castle Thunder, and that’s where they were headed. She told us it would be unbearable for us if she stayed, far more so than if she left. There are probably only five hundred people left in Fredericksburg, but they all despise her. Eliza wasn’t found guilty, but apparently eight months in prison as a suspected traitor and Union sympathizer is the same as a conviction.

  Nathaniel mumbled good-bye to her, though I do not think he remembers her. She had procured a pass to travel; how she got it, I do not know. She asked Tessie to accompany her to the train station. The rest of us were to remain at home. She told us when the war is over she will write. She did
not say when the war is over she will return.

  And she did not say she had any plans to travel to Maine when the war is over. I wonder, Eleanor, if Eliza knows of my feelings for Will, these feelings that I am slowly learning to pound out of myself. She said she didn’t read my letters to you, but I know she had to have seen the words. She wrote her secret messages above my words. How could she not have seen them? And so I wonder if perhaps she does not entertain the thought of responding to Will’s advances because of me. I think she knows what I sacrificed to secure Will and John’s escape from Libby Prison. And if she allowed herself to fall in love with Will and to marry him—think of it, Eleanor! He would be my uncle! Always a part of my family, my world, my heart, and in the most awkward and torturous of ways. Out of her love for me, she will not do this.

  You see? Love has many shapes.

  And dearest cousin, the baby did come early after all, by three weeks. On September 6, I delivered a small but healthy baby girl. I named her Annabel Grace. And do you know what, Eleanor? Nathaniel, who struggles to say her name, loves to hold her. He loves it. I do not know if he understands she is his daughter, but I am optimistic that someday he will.

  Nathaniel does not know his father was mortally wounded at Gettysburg. I have written to his mother in Savannah and offered my condolences. I told her Nathaniel’s recovery will be long and that perhaps when the war is over, he and I and Annabel will take a train to visit her. But I can’t envision that day yet. I can only see the day that I am living at the moment. And I do not see myself ever leaving Holly Oak for good.

  This page is filling with the last of the ink, sweet cousin. You have been the dearest of companions these last three years. Someday I hope to share with you how you saw me through my darkest moments. And how writing to you has given me hope for the days ahead, which are still clouded in mist.

  I am indeed living out the harvest of my choices here at Holly Oak. But I think it will be the very thing that will save me in the end. This is why God did not take Nathaniel on the battlefield when He so easily could have. He brought Nathaniel, an empty vessel, back to Holly Oak, where I, too, have become an empty vessel.

  This place shall be my redemption. And what redeems us, saves us, does it not?

  Yours always, my dear cousin,

  Susannah Page

  Part Five

  HOLLY OAK

  delaide awoke with a start and a scorching pain in her arm. The morning sun was brilliant through her half-closed curtains.

  She had overslept.

  She rose slowly out of bed, swung her legs to the side, and waited as the room settled. The pain medication that helped her sleep at night made her feel like a daft idiot in the morning. And thirsty as a refugee in the desert. She needed water, with ice.

  Adelaide fumbled one-handed with a pair of elastic-waist pants and a pullover top and made her way barefooted down the stairs, holding carefully to the rail with her right hand. “Leave me alone, Susannah,” she whispered, only half in jest as she rounded the landing and continued down. “I need a glass of water, for pity’s sake.”

  There was no sound in the house. She stood in the entryway and listened, but she could not detect any signs of human life. She poked her head in the drawing room. The long table was still there. The boxes of uniforms sat ready to be mailed on Monday morning. But the room was empty. She shuffled to the kitchen and filled a glass of water, drinking it down in one long swallow. She set the cup in the sink and poked her head in Marielle’s little office. Empty as well.

  Marielle and Caroline must already be working on the studio, she thought, and she grabbed a sweater off a hook by the kitchen door, slipped on her garden clogs, and stepped outside. A blast of warm air met her, so she tossed the sweater back onto a kitchen chair. The day was already on its way to becoming blistering. As she walked across the patio, she wondered if Carson was truly ready for the studio to be emptied of the last of its treasures. He said he was, but she had watched him prepare to leave for his weekend trip to Houston. She had watched him linger over saying good-bye to Marielle, his head turned toward the garden and what lay at the edge of it. It was as if he were saying good-bye to other things than just Marielle. It was probably best. There was nothing beautiful left in the studio. All the pretty things were long gone.

  The knoll down to the studio beckoned, but her aching body was protesting. She would probably need a cane to get down the hill. She had one in the hall closet, and she frowned at the thought of going back inside to get it.

  Then Caroline appeared at the entrance to the studio. Her daughter looked up from the trash cans that were stationed at the studio entrance like bodyguards.

  “Mother, what is it?” she called up to her.

  “I just got a little lonely inside. Too quiet.”

  “Stay there. I’ll come for you.”

  A moment later Caroline was helping her negotiate the slope of the grass. At the entrance to the studio, Adelaide peeked inside the trash cans.

  “None of it is worth saving, Mother. You’ll have to trust me,” Caroline said.

  Adelaide turned to look inside the studio. Already it looked foreign to her. The shelves and tables were empty. “Where’s Marielle?”

  “She graciously allowed me the opportunity to do this alone.”

  “I wish you could’ve seen the studio when Sara worked in it,” Adelaide said thoughtfully. “It was so colorful inside. So full of … beauty. It’s such a shame what time has done to it.”

  “I did see it once.”

  Adelaide turned to her. “Oh yes. I guess you did. Before Brette was born. You were on your way to … Where was it?”

  Caroline wiped at a cobweb on her collar. “Doesn’t matter now.”

  “Somewhere in Canada, wasn’t it?”

  Caroline shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t remember.”

  A torn canvas poked out of a trash can, and Adelaide stroked its rough edge. Half of a giraffe had been drawn on it. Sara hadn’t added any spots yet. It looked like an alien creature. “I wish things had turned out differently. It doesn’t seem right that you never got to know her. I wish …”

  “ ‘If wishes were horses, beggars—’ ”

  “ ‘—would ride,’ yes. You remember me saying that?”

  Caroline smiled. “You said it a lot.”

  “You had a lot of wishes.”

  “I suppose I did.”

  Adelaide turned again to the studio, to the last fragments of Sara’s strange creativity. A pull at her heart made her grasp at her shirt. “I tried to do right by her, honestly, I did. When she was little, she would ask about you, you know. Often. She would ask about her father too. She wanted to know who he was and where he was. I had to make up stories. I didn’t know how to tell her the truth.”

  “She figured it out, Mother. When I came to visit the summer she turned twelve. She had figured it out. She knew I didn’t know who her father was, and she knew I wasn’t well. The stories made you feel better, and that was important to her. So she let you keep telling them.”

  Adelaide turned back around and leaned against the exterior wall, closing her eyes to the image of Sara pretending she believed the excuses Adelaide made up and remembering how she wished she could also believe them. “We were always trying to make restitution for each other, weren’t we?” she said a moment later.

  Caroline picked up a broken piece of pottery and chucked it into the trash can. “Most of the time it’s best to clean up your own messes. Who are you really helping when you try to fix something you didn’t break?”

  Adelaide looked at her daughter, unsure what Caroline was intimating. It sounded like an accusation of some kind. Against her. “What are you saying, Caroline?”

  “I think you know.”

  An old wound slowly reopened, and Adelaide tasted anger on her tongue. How could Caroline even hint that she had butted into Caroline’s messes, unwanted? “You brought your infant daughter to me and asked me to raise her and love h
er and care for her. To fix your mistake. And that’s exactly what I did. It wasn’t like you gave me much of a choice! And now you lecture me on cleaning up your own messes?”

  “I wasn’t lecturing. Just stating the obvious. I should’ve cleaned up my own messes. I missed out on everything. I missed out on loving my daughter, and I’m going to have to live with that. Me. Just me. You don’t have to carry that weight. No one does but me.”

  Adelaide raised her good arm and pointed a finger at Caroline. “You’re wrong. I have always had to shoulder your burdens. Always!”

  “Yes, I know you did, but you chose to. You’ve chosen to bear the weight of everything and everyone who has ever lived here.”

  Anger rippled through Adelaide, so intense it made her cough. “That’s what mothers do! But how would you know anything about that?” The words flew out her mouth like an arrow; they stung her lips and she clasped a hand to her mouth. For several moments there was silence between them. Adelaide waited for Caroline to spin on her heel and storm back into the house to gather her things and leave. She was already picturing the last of her years stretching into the mist with no word from Caroline ever again when her daughter spoke.

  “You’re right,” Caroline said. “I don’t know much about being someone’s mother. But I’m not talking about holding on to your children’s burdens; I’m talking about letting go of things that do not belong to you.”

  Her daughter’s calm voice frightened her. Caroline stood with dusty hands and smudges on her face and webs clinging to the silvery brown braid down her back as if they were at a garden party making small talk.

  “What is it you want to say, Caroline?”

  Caroline looked up toward the house and then back again. “I want you to tell them to go.”

  “I beg your pardon? Tell who to go?”

  “Carson and Marielle and the kids. You need to tell them to go.”

  She could not believe what she was hearing. “I could never do that. This is their home!”