Autumn's Child

by Kathleen Gilles Seidel

  She and Will each put out a hand, then remembering that they were first cousins, exchanged a quick, awkward embrace. She passed along the limited news about their grandmother as she began to take food out of the refrigerator.

  The quinoa-chickpea salad was clearly a Leilah creation, but Leilah had not made the sandwiches. They were majestic, all-American guy sandwiches, a luxuriously thick layer of ham, two slices of cheese, lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise, mustard, and a big pickle on the side.

  Colleen seemed to be having trouble making conversation with her cousin. That wasn’t like her; he thought she could talk to anyone. She must be really tired. He finished his sandwich quickly and started to push his chair back, ready to suggest that they turn in. A quick tap on his leg stopped him. He looked up inquiringly.

  Don’t go, her eyes said. Stay.

  Why?

  Just stay.

  He took another serving of the salad. He wished that Leilah didn’t use so much cilantro.

  He suddenly realized that her car hadn’t been in its usual place by the kitchen door. Was she at the hospital with Mrs. Ridge? He couldn’t imagine that either she or Mrs. Ridge would be comfortable with hospital-room intimacies. Colleen, having little sense of privacy and almost no boundaries, could provide personal care with matter-of-fact ease.

  Will had been eating slowly, probably because he was tired too. Finally he was finished. Colleen stood up. “You are on the second floor,” she told him. “Ben will carry your bag up for you.”

  “I can do it,” Will answered. He had only one small carry-on.

  But Colleen must have a reason for treating him like the second footman, so Ben grabbed Will’s bag and obediently followed her up the back stairs, the ones that led directly off the kitchen. Colleen showed Will to the one remaining room on the second floor, the roadside room that Ben had slept in—or rather returned to—during spring break.

  He listened as she told her cousin about the light switches, the bathroom, and the plans for Sunday. Back when he wasn’t returning her calls, he had persuaded himself to think of her as a butterfly, flitting lightly through her life. But that had been wrong. The comparison needed to be more…what?…vegetative. That was a lousy word, but she was like a beautifully blossoming plant that had deep roots in the warm earth.

  But Leilah was what he deserved: a cool, unchanging marble statue.

  Colleen said good night to her cousin. She stepped into the hall, closing the bedroom’s dark oak door.

  “Well?” he said softly. Her father, aunt, and uncle were sleeping in the other rooms.

  “Let’s go downstairs.”

  They went down the back stairs again and sat at the kitchen table. What on earth couldn’t wait until morning?

  “I hate to have to tell you this, but—”

  He froze. His parents…one of the grandkids? No, no, it couldn’t be any of them. He had spoken to Ryan a couple of hours ago. And if it had been something with his family, Colleen would have told him right away.

  “It’s Leilah. My aunt and uncle were horrible to her, and she has left.”

  “Left? What do you mean?”

  “They were accusing her, not of dishonesty, but of spending too much money. So she packed her things and left. She says that she didn’t have a contract with Grannor.”

  “She’s not at the hospital?”

  “No, Ben.” Colleen’s voice was gentle. “She didn’t want to work for people who doubted her. You can’t blame her. They were awful.”

  “She quit?”

  “She packed up her things and moved out. It all happened so fast. She’s gone. For good.”

  Leilah was gone? Just like that? He was suddenly aware of the tabletop against his hands. He looked down. The tips of his fingers were white; he was pressing down that hard.

  That would be wrong up in the air. You couldn’t grip a board that tightly, and you didn’t reach your hand down to grab it; you used your legs to bring the board up to you.

  “I’m so sorry, Ben.” Colleen’s voice was almost a whisper.

  “Did she say where she was going? No, no, she wouldn’t have.”

  Snowboarding…he knew so much about the sport. But two days into his relationship with Leilah, he had become aware of how little he knew about her. Two weeks into it, he had had to accept that he would never learn any more.

  “I’m sure she’ll get in touch with you,” Colleen was saying. “She’ll let you know where she is.”

  He shook his head again. “No. That’s what you would do. It doesn’t mean that’s what she would do.”

  * * * *

  His clothes were in the boathouse’s closet, his toothbrush was on the vanity; the charge cords for his phone and camera were neatly coiled on the bookshelf. Everything that was Leilah’s was gone.

  He had been amazed at how few belongings she had had. “Do you have stuff with family or friends?” he had asked her early on. “Or a storage unit?”

  “I travel light.”

  “But your high school yearbook, your college diploma, your third grade class picture, haven’t you saved any of that?”

  “Why would I?”

  From the beginning, the sex had always been about pleasing him. She would push him back against the pillows, and she would do everything, controlling the rhythm. She would bring him close, then pull back, until he exploded in near-desperate fireworks.

  But each session was the same—thrilling at first, then increasingly empty. There was no shared journey, there was nothing mutual. It seemed more about her power over him than any pleasure. They left the lights on and never played music. There was no magic and, despite how unfathomable Leilah was, no mystery.

  A few days ago, the night before Mrs. Ridge had collapsed, when Leilah moved to straddle him, he closed his hands over her forearms and, with a man’s strength, stopped her.

  She froze. Her face went blank, her pupils dilated; the muscles in her arms tensed, and her skin beneath his palms was suddenly clammy. She was having a panic attack.

  He instantly pulled back, lifting his hands as if to show that he wasn’t armed.

  But clearly he was. He was a man. Men were the enemy.

  “Leilah, were you—” abused? He stopped himself in time.

  If Leilah had been abused, she might be compensating for how powerless she had felt as a child. A history of abuse would also explain why she was so guarded. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  “You didn’t frighten me.” She wasn’t going to admit to anything. “What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing.”

  But she was plenty smart. She knew that he had seen more than she wanted him to. Colleen’s aunt and uncle criticizing her may have given her the excuse she needed to flee from him. But it was only an excuse.

  He moved to the corner of the boathouse where the cell phone signal was the best. He sent her a text. He said nothing about her leaving, nothing about the lack of farewell. Please let me know if you ever need anything. I will always be there for you.

  He knew that she wouldn’t answer and that the next time he sent her a message, she would have changed her number. She needed a man she could control, and he hadn’t been it.

  * * * *

  Sunday morning Colleen left for the hospital before anyone else was up. Her grandmother’s bridge partner said that Grannor had had a fairly easy night. “She woke up several times and was very concerned about some pearls needing to be restrung. I asked what strand she was talking about or where it was, but I couldn’t get anything more out of her.”

  “I assume it’s the one her great-grandfather bought for her great-grandmother while they were honeymooning in Paris.”

  “Her great-grandfather bought them? Not yours? They must be very old.”

  “The 1880s, I think. It did take the family a while to recover from the
Civil War.”

  Mrs. Johnson shook her head, having trouble connecting with that kind of family history. “None of my family was over here during the Civil War.”

  “My mother’s side wasn’t either,” Colleen agreed.

  Her brothers and Will arrived next. When Grannor woke up, Colleen spoke to each of them, using their names in case Grannor didn’t recognize Will or had trouble telling Sean and Finn apart. Grannor didn’t say much; she still had restringing the pearls on her mind.

  The rest of the family and some of Grannor’s friends were in and out all day. Among the family, the primary topic of conversation was whether or not to move Grannor to the teaching hospital in Charlottesville. It was bigger and more research-oriented, but the neurologists and cardiologists here were board-certified clinicians, experienced at monitoring people in Grannor’s condition.

  Norton was the one most strongly advocating not only the transfer, but also rescinding the DNR order. He played on his mother’s snobbishness. Did she really want to trust a life-and-death decision to such a small-town place? Norton managed to make everyone in Staunton sound like such yokels that Grannor at least consented to revoking the order. The final decision about moving was postponed until Monday.

  But, as it turned out, there was no Monday for Eleanor Ridge.

  Colleen was helping the nurse rearrange the pillows when it happened. Colleen was supporting her grandmother, an arm behind her shoulders, when Grannor’s face suddenly went empty, a blankness far beyond sleep.

  “Mrs. Ridge…Mrs. Ridge…” The nurse, her fingers already searching Grannor’s neck, tried to get her to respond. “I’m not getting a pulse.” Waving Colleen aside, she swung herself onto the bed to begin chest compressions. In a moment, the room was full of people and equipment. Someone touched Colleen’s arm, motioning for her to leave the room.

  More people in blue scrubs were running up the corridor, hurrying to help. Behind them were her father and brothers, their steps quickening as they saw Colleen.

  Finn reached her first. “What happened?”

  “She crashed. She just went blank.”

  They could hear the sounds from the room, someone calling “clear” just as they did on television medical dramas. More equipment was brought in. They heard sharp clangs of metal on metal. Colleen knew that her grandmother would loathe the idea of being manhandled.

  Because there was no DNR order, the ordeal went on and on. People would leave the room, red-faced and sweating. None of them would make eye contact with the family, and Colleen could imagine what they were thinking. Why are you putting her through this? She’s eighty-six.

  A silver-haired man in a long coat, seemingly a doctor of authority and experience, entered the room. A minute or so later, the sounds from the room stopped. The doctor reappeared and put out a comforting hand to Colleen’s father. “We did all that we could.”

  Chapter 7

  Colleen drove back to the lake with her father.

  “That wasn’t a tragedy,” he said as they pulled out of the hospital lot.

  But it was still a loss. Exacting, ruthless, and competitive, Grannor had loved being alive.

  “The funeral will be back home,” her father continued. “I suppose I need to go, and Genevieve has said that she will come, but you kids shouldn’t feel obligated to.”

  “I think that we will want to.” We’re still a family. We haven’t figured it out, but we’re still a family.

  “Suit yourself.” Then, a minute later, he added that he would pay for their plane tickets. “And for Patty and Liz, if they want to come.”

  “They will.” Her sisters-in-law would be startled by this conversation. If they had been here, they would have looked at each other, communicating in silence. How could anyone ever consider not going to a funeral?

  I think I understand, Dad. You couldn’t respect her, you couldn’t approve of her, you resented the lack of nurturing, but she was still your mother.

  Although Colleen had half a tank of gas, her father said that they should stop in the village “just in case.” Clearly he was delaying going back to the house. While he pumped the gas, Colleen took out her phone to look at her messages. There were too many. Amanda, Cara, and a few others knew that her grandmother had been in the hospital. None of them knew she was dead. Colleen tried to compose an email to Amanda, but a call interrupted her.

  It was her aunt Eileen, her mother’s oldest sister, calling from St. Paul. Patty, Sean’s wife, had already told her about Grannor dying. “How is your father?” Eileen asked.

  Colleen looked through the car window to be sure that her father couldn’t overhear her. “I think he’s numb. He doesn’t know how he is supposed to feel.”

  “That’s not surprising. I suppose there will be a reception after the funeral, but what about a wake?”

  “I don’t know,” Colleen answered. Did Episcopalians have wakes? She remembered a few gatherings before and after her grandfather’s funeral, but she had been too young to pay much attention to what they were.

  “I’ll come if you need me, but your father has a sister, doesn’t he? She’ll take care of everything.”

  Her mother’s sisters and friends had taken care of all the arrangements after Mary Pat had died. But Aunt Laura going to that much effort didn’t seem likely. Back at the lake, Colleen found that Aunt Laura hadn’t even washed the breakfast dishes. The kitchen was a mess. The sink was full of cereal bowls and coffee cups. The uneaten remains of the lunch sandwiches were drying up on the kitchen table. The lunch meats and cheeses had been put back into the refrigerator uncovered.

  At least cleaning the kitchen gave her something to do. Her brothers were packing. They had managed to get seats on the next flight out; they would come down to Georgia for the funeral. Her uncle was on the phone in the sitting room talking to the funeral home. Her aunt, unwilling to take her cell phone to the end of the dock, was fussing because Norton was tying up the one landline. Colleen didn’t know where Ben was. Had he left? Had he gone after Leilah? No, his car was still out front. She went into the sitting room and asked where he was.

  “He said he could use his phone out in the boathouse,” her aunt said. “So we gave him a list of people who had to be notified, mostly your grandmother’s longtime friends at home.”

  Having to tell an old lady that once again another of her friends had died…what a crappy chore. Even when there was no actual grief, each call would be full of tedious platitudes.

  “Aunt Laura, what should we do about a reception after the funeral?”

  “We always did things like that at the club.”

  “But the club has closed. Is there a fellowship hall at the church?”

  “Yes, but it isn’t very nice. It’s in the basement, and they haven’t kept it up. We can’t do it there.” Laura picked up a magazine. “You’ll have to think of something else, dear.”

  Me? Why me?

  Colleen hadn’t been to her father’s hometown in several years. When she had been growing up, her family had always spent their spring vacations there. During its declining years, the town had had no dentist, so for that week each year her father had rented a mobile dental unit and set up a free clinic for the residents who couldn’t afford to drive into the city. For many of his clients, it was the only time they ever saw a dentist. But once the chicken plant had opened, bringing so many people to town, the demand for dental care had increased. By then Mary Pat was sick, and Ned didn’t want to leave her. At her suggestion, he had scrounged around for equipment and funding and had managed to get a clinic opened and staffed three days a week. Since then Colleen had only seen her grandmother at the lake.

  Mrs. Sisson—Genevieve—would be happy to help Colleen plan the funeral, and she had worked hard after Mary Pat had died, but she knew even less about the town than Colleen did. They needed to talk to someone who knew the place. Sarah,
her grandmother’s longtime maid, had passed away, and Colleen didn’t know the last name of her married daughter. Who was she going to call? This was strange. She always knew someone to call. She was the Queen of Knowing-Who-to-Call. People called her when they needed to know who to call.

  But she did know. Of course, she did. Ben’s mother, Marianne Healy. She was the person to call. Colleen got her phone and started for the boathouse.

  Halfway there she stopped. The Healys, of course. It had been the Healys who had found her. It seemed so obvious when she thought about it. Her mother and Mrs. Healy had been good friends. Who else would have gotten in touch with a priest, especially an Irish one? They must have been the ones who had called the parishes, looking for a baby for her parents. The Healys would have been the ones who had gotten her to her true home, to the family she was destined to have.

  The boathouse steps ran up the outside of the building, ending at a deck that continued parallel to the lake, extending over the water. Ben was standing at the railing, his phone at his ear. He nodded to her and shrugged, indicating that he couldn’t move for fear of losing his connection.

  Your family found me. God worked through them. All her memories of playing in the lake with Sean and Finn, of having her father read her bedtime stories, and of going with her mother to buy her prom dresses…all those she owed to Ben’s family. So why didn’t you want me? Isn’t this a sign that we should be together?

  “Yes, ma’am,” he was saying, “the funeral home will know the exact time…I’m sure that the family would appreciate that…Yes, ma’am, Marianne and Tim are my parents, but Ryan’s my older brother…Yes, that was me…Thank you for asking…”

  Each conversation would have been like this. The simple, sad message required a twenty-minute review of family trees and hospital stays. That was what would matter to Grannor’s friends.

  How weary he must be. Leilah had left not even twenty-four hours ago. Colleen wished that she could comfort him. She wished that he could comfort her. Why can’t we be friends? We should be friends.

  At last he was able to end the call, shaking his head as he touched the screen of his phone. “At least that one didn’t want to talk about the azaleas.”