A Long Time Gone, Page 5

  Chapter 6

  Vivien Walker Moise

  INDIAN MOUND, MISSISSIPPI

  APRIL 2013

  I awoke to the smell of chicken frying, and for a moment I thought I’d been transported back in time, with Mathilda and Bootsie in the kitchen and Emmett in the fields, Tommy in his bedroom taking apart old clocks, and my mother somewhere far away. I opened my eyes, registering my suitcase and the bottle of pills on the table next to me, and I knew with a sinking feeling that I could never go back to that place.

  When the bedside clock came into focus, I realized that I’d slept for most of the afternoon and that it was almost suppertime. I quickly washed my face and hands, then made my way slowly down to the kitchen. I studied the family pictures that filled the upstairs hall and stairway, their order and placement as random as the architecture of the house. The painted portraits of the first Walkers were hung in the living and dining rooms, filling all the wall space so that by the time the camera was invented, those family photographs were framed and hung in the hallways and stairwell. Sepia and black-and-white photos of people whose names I could never remember stared vaguely at me from wallpapered walls that had not changed since the fifties. I paused at one of the first color photographs, hung in a place of honor over the demilune table in the foyer—my mother’s high school yearbook photo from 1963. She looked so normal to me, even with her bubble hairdo and thick eyeliner. Not at all like the kind of teenager who would “turn on, tune in, and drop out” and end up in a commune in California with two children whose fathers were either unknown to her or simply forgotten.

  My senior year in high school I’d pulled out my mother’s yearbook in the downstairs library, just to see, and read her senior quote. There is a time for departure even when there is no certain place to go. It was the same Tennessee Williams quote I’d already turned in for my own senior page. Tripp was on the yearbook committee and had switched it out with another quote I no longer even remembered.

  I paused by the entranceway into the dining room, with its tall, corniced walls and mullioned windows—the windows an addition to the house by an ancestor who favored the Gothic style. My mother, wearing the same vintage dress I’d seen earlier, but with worn house slippers instead of heels, flitted around the table, setting it with the family china, crystal, and silver, just like in the days when Bootsie entertained.

  She didn’t see me and I quickly slipped away to the kitchen, unwilling to be drawn into my mother’s drama. I’d already spent a lifetime avoiding it, and I wasn’t ready to be sucked in right now when my own life had enough drama of its own.

  A trim black woman with just a hint of gray at her temples stood at the circa-1970s avocado green stove wearing an apron over crisp khakis and a navy blue knit top. She had smooth, almost unwrinkled skin, making her look like she might be in her thirties or forties, but I figured if she was Mathilda’s granddaughter she must be in her mid-sixties. She turned to me with a wide smile.

  “You must be Vivien. I’m Cora Smith. I’d shake your hand, but they’re covered in flour.” She moved her elbows in greeting, both of her hands fully immersed in a bowl of flour and seasonings as she coated chicken parts.

  “It’s nice to meet you,” I said, staring at a serving platter full of fried chicken as my stomach grumbled. I’d not tasted anything fried in a long time. Mark had originally been charmed by my Southern cooking, until he’d gained a couple of pounds and forbidden everything with taste from our table and hired a microbiotic chef.

  When nobody was looking, I’d break the rules for Chloe in a misguided attempt to make her happy, having never encountered a more miserable child in my whole life, except for me on those days when my mother announced yet another departure. I think that’s why I was drawn to her, as if my own abandonment would give me the secret to making her happy. I’d been stupid to think I could. But that hadn’t stopped me from trying.

  “There’ve been a few phone calls from the local press, wanting to know about what’s going on outside in your yard. I took down their information on the pad by the phone in the front hall and told them that they’d have to wait to speak with you or Tommy.” She glanced up at me. “Tommy called to tell me you’d be here, but he had to go before I could ask him about the tree and the yellow tape. I was hoping you could shed some light on the subject so I’d have something to tell your mama. She keeps looking out the window and seeing the tree and asking me what happened.”

  I recalled the image of my mother standing on the edge of the gaping hole. My mouth went dry, and I fumbled with the cabinets until I found the one with glasses—right next to where they’d once been kept. I took a moment filling my glass from the tap and drank some of it before I could speak.

  “Lightning hit the old cypress tree, exposing the roots. It uncovered some bones that look like they’ve been there awhile.”

  Cora stopped her dipping and rolling. “Bones? As in human bones?”

  I nodded. “The coroner has been here and he’s working on removing the remains, but they’ll probably be digging around the tree for a while longer to see if they can find any clues as to the woman’s identity.”

  “They know it’s a female?”

  I stared at her for a moment, wondering why I’d said that. I quickly shook my head. “No. I was just thinking about what Carol Lynne said to me earlier today. Something about ‘her’ not coming back because she never left.”

  A small smile of understanding crossed Cora’s face before she returned to her task. “I’m sorry about your mama. It’s a hard thing to watch the person you knew become a stranger.”

  My hand gripped my glass tightly. “Well, then, I guess it should be easier, because she’s always been a stranger to me.” I set down my glass by the sink. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

  After an appraising look, Cora indicated the refrigerator with her chin. “I have a salad and some homemade buttermilk dressing in there, and over there on the counter I’ve got a couple of tomatoes from my garden. If you could chop them up and then mix everything in the salad that would be great.”

  Memories rumbled in the back of my brain, a sort of switch on my autopilot as I set about the familiar movements of preparing a meal. There was something comforting in the familiarity of it, like becoming reacquainted with a favorite doll you’d long forgotten.

  “Have you been working here long?” I asked as I opened a drawer in search of a serrated knife. Sometime over the last nine years, somebody had rearranged the entire kitchen.

  “Just since Miss Bootsie passed. Tommy needed some help with your mama, and I’d recently retired from teaching—I was an English teacher at the high school for over thirty years. My children are both in Jackson and I don’t have any grandbabies yet, so I figured why not. I couldn’t see myself hanging around my empty house all day. I’d rather be useful.”

  “I’m thinking we probably met, but I’m sorry if I don’t remember,” I said, keeping the refrigerator door open with my knee while I balanced a jar of dressing and the large salad bowl.

  She continued to coat the chicken without looking up at me. “It’s been a while, so I didn’t expect you to recognize me. I was busy raising my own kids when you lived here, but I sometimes helped my grandmother Mathilda. She didn’t retire until right after you left. She was ninety-five, although she sure acted like she was twenty years younger. It was her eyesight in the end. Could hardly see her hand in front of her face, even though her glasses were like the bottom of Coke bottles. She broke the antique soup tureen that used to sit in the middle of the dining room table. Even though Bootsie said it was all right and just an accident, we decided it was time. Just about broke both those women’s hearts. They were close. Hard for them to be separated.”

  She began to place the chicken in the skillet, and we were silent for a moment as the grease splattered and popped. After she replaced the lid on the pan, she said, “Grandma used to
tell me stories about how sweet you were. How you used to help with the polishing and dusting when her arthritis was acting up. And she loved the little stories you would write and then read to her. She said you were pretty good. She always thought you’d be a big writer someday. Or a movie star. You had that ‘sparkle’ is what she called it.”

  I kept my back to her as I sliced through a tomato, the juice bleeding onto the orange laminate countertop. I was glad she couldn’t see my face and recognize my embarrassment, or my need for another pill. The cushion from the last one was wearing thin—thin enough that Cora’s words had struck like arrows to a target. My throat thickened as I waited for Cora to remind me that I’d left Mathilda behind, too. Like Bootsie, Mathilda had been one of the best parts of my childhood, a reminder that even without a mother I was worthy of love.

  Clearing my throat, I said, “Are we expecting company? I saw that Carol Lynne is setting the dining room table.”

  Cora’s eyebrows shot up as she lowered the heat on the skillet. “She does that sometimes, even when it’s just Tommy and her and me. Bootsie loved using the dining room and the good china and silver, and since she passed, your mama will do that sometimes. Like she’s a teenager again and Bootsie has asked her to set the table.” She was silent for a moment. “Losing Bootsie was hard on all of us, but especially her. I don’t care how old you get: Losing your mama is the worst kind of thing. It’s like burying your childhood.”

  I wanted to tell her that she was wrong. That if I’d returned home and found out that Carol Lynne was already dead, I don’t think I would have missed her at all.

  I focused on tossing the salad, the red of the tomato blurring into the green lettuce, the edge of the salad tongs fading into the side of the bowl. I blinked, surprised to find my eyes wet. I was about to ask her where she’d like me to put the salad, when the doorbell chimed at the same time the phone began to ring.

  Cora was already washing her hands in the sink. “I’ll grab the phone if you’ll see who’s at the door.”

  I nodded and made my way to the front foyer, pausing momentarily at the dining room, where my mother stood in front of the fireplace. She was staring at a photograph on the mantel, a crystal glass in each hand, as if she’d been in the middle of placing them on the table and then forgotten what she was doing.

  She didn’t turn around as I walked past the doorway to the massive front door that somebody in the past one hundred and fifty years had had shipped over from Ireland. It had once graced a now-demolished castle, and looked as out of place on the house as the mullioned windows in the dining room and the Tiffany glass fan window over the door. But I always thought that it also gave the house an “I don’t care what you think” kind of attitude. Much like the people who’d inhabited the house, for better or worse.

  I unlocked the front door and pulled it open, the hinges squeaking loudly as if the front door hadn’t been used in a long while.

  “Looks like you could use some WD-40,” Tripp said. He’d removed the tie he’d worn earlier, and his hands were jammed into his pockets, reminding me so much of the little boy I’d grown up with—minus the frogs and worms inside the pockets, I hoped—that I had to smile.

  “Bootsie always kept a can under the sink. I’ll go check later.” I stepped back to allow him into the foyer. “It’s kind of late for official business, isn’t it? I’m assuming that’s why you’re here, since you’re using the front door.”

  “Tommy called me and asked me for supper. Thought it would be good to talk about a few things. Seems the sheriff already interviewed him, but when he came to the house your mother told him that you were at school and sent him away. He told me to let you know that he’ll be back tomorrow morning at nine o’clock to ask you some questions.” He jiggled loose change in his pocket. “And I’m using the front door because you’re here. You’ve been living in California so long that I figure you’d forgotten that friends and family pop in through the kitchen door without knocking.”

  I closed the door behind me, my hand clutching the knob. “How did you know I was in California?”

  “Your postcard. The one you mailed from Los Angeles to let me know you’d arrived safely, and you asked me to let Bootsie, Emmett, and Tommy know.”

  “Oh,” I said, pushing myself away from the door. I’d forgotten about that postcard until now. I couldn’t remember the picture on the front, only the feeling of surprise that I was so far from home. And the weight of the memory of my mother’s face as I’d left, an unexpected mixture of grief and disappointment. “Nobody else is expecting you for supper?”

  A corner of his mouth lifted. “No wife or a girlfriend waiting for me with supper on the table, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “I wasn’t.” I closed my eyes, sinking into the warm, fuzzy cocoon that had become my brain, and walked past him without looking up. “I was in the kitchen helping Cora. Supper’s almost ready.”

  My mother stood outside the dining room, still holding the two glasses by their stems. She didn’t seem surprised to see Tripp or me, as if we’d both just stepped out of the house for a moment and returned.

  “Are we having a party tonight?” she asked.

  Tripp peered into the dining room, where all the silverware and linen napkins had been placed in their appropriate spots. “Looks like it. Let me help you with those.” He took the glasses from her and put them on the table.

  She turned to watch him, her gaze straying to the window, where the tree and yellow tape were visible. “The tree fell.”

  “Yes, ma’am. It was hit by lightning in the storm last night.”

  “The storm?” Her brow wrinkled.

  “You probably slept right through it,” Tripp said, moving to stand next to her. “We found something that had been buried near the roots a long time ago. Do you know anything about that?”

  Her green eyes, the exact shade as mine, went wide. “I’m not supposed to go there.”

  Tripp tilted his head, his eyes narrowing slightly. “Who told you that?”

  Her attention drifted back to the table. “Are we having a party tonight?”

  I stared at my mother, a cold breeze blowing through my insides. “No,” I said. “We’re just having a family supper.”

  “Will you eat with us?”

  My breath was coming in small gasps and I had to remind myself to breathe. I had not sat at the table with my mother after she’d returned for good, eating my suppers in the kitchen with Mathilda. Bootsie and Tommy had given up asking me to join them, but my mother never had. She had somehow remembered that.

  I swallowed. “Yes. I think I will tonight.”

  Her face brightened as she smiled the smile I remembered from the pictures in Bootsie’s old magnetic photo albums, the Polaroid photographs probably now fading alongside the woman captured inside them.

  I turned around and headed down the back hall toward the kitchen, almost colliding with Cora. She held the old touch-tone phone in her hand, its long, springy cord stretched to its fullest length. She had her palm pressed over the mouthpiece. “She’s called twice. I hung up the first time because I thought it was a prank call. But she called back and sounded so desperate that I told her I’d go see if you were home.”

  “Who is it?” My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth as I thought of how few people cared where I was. Discounting Tommy and the people in the house with me now, that left only one other person.

  “She said her name is Chloe McDermott.”

  I stared at the phone in Cora’s hand for a long moment before taking it, wishing for once that I could think clearly. I met Tripp’s eyes, his appraising look suddenly conjuring my brave eighteen-year-old self. “Hello?”

  Cora took my mother’s elbow and led her into the kitchen, distracting me for a moment.

  “Don’t you ever pick up your cell phone?”

  It was definitel
y Chloe. I pressed the phone closer to my ear as if to keep her close. I thought hard for a moment, trying to remember where my cell phone was. “I’m sorry. The battery died somewhere in Oklahoma and I threw it in the bottom of my purse.” I paused, chewing on my bottom lip. “I didn’t really think I had a reason to charge it again.”

  A heavy sigh tripped its way from the end of the line, a sigh full of all the angst of a twelve-year-old. “You told me to call you if I ever needed you. That’s why you should keep it charged.”

  I closed my eyes, trying to remember things that I’d pushed away so I wouldn’t have to think about them. “I stayed in an apartment in LA for six months, Chloe, just in case you called.” I felt something soft on my arm and looked up to see Tripp handing me a soft linen handkerchief to wipe the tears I hadn’t been aware I was shedding. “You needed me?”

  “Yeah. And I had to hack into my dad’s computer to get your phone number in Hogswallow, Mississippi, or whatever backwoods hellhole you came from.”

  I pressed the handkerchief to my eyes, too relieved to hear her voice to tell her not to swear. “It’s Indian Mound, Mississippi.”

  “Whatevs. Same thing. But I figured even the middle of freaking nowhere was better than home.”

  I leaned against the wall, not sure my knees could continue to make me stand. “What’s happened, Chloe?”

  Another sigh. “Dad got remarried to some stripper bimbo and they’re on some lame monthlong cruise around South America for their honeymoon. Dad hired some lady who doesn’t speak English to babysit me. I figured Pigs Butt, Mississippi, had to be better than this.”

  Hearing that Mark had remarried didn’t affect me at all. But I felt in the basement of my memories all the hurt of a twelve-year-old girl abandoned once again. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”

  There was a pause on the line and I became faintly aware of sounds behind her, people talking and a PA system making an announcement with the word “Atlanta” in it. “Where are you calling from?”