A Place We Knew Well (30 page)

“I didn't. I just went out to make sure he was okay.”

Avery nodded. It made sense. If only Sarah had let her explain…

“He was telling me about his sister and crying, and I was holding him and crying, too. Then, next thing we knew, there's Mom screaming her head off.”

“I'm sorry, kiddo. If I'd been there, I could have…”

“What did she mean, Dad…when she said that…what she said…about me?”

Truth be told. There was no sidestepping it, was there? Cat—and Kitty—finally out of the bag. Avery took a ragged breath. “Your mother had a sister. Older, for sure. Prettier, she thought, but I'd beg to differ.”

“Kitty.” Charlotte nodded. Her eyes stayed on his face.

“How'd you know that?”

“The summer I was thirteen, Grandma Do took me to downtown Tuscaloosa. A lady at the hat store said something about me being the spitting image of Kitty. Grandma told me Kitty was my aunt who died, and not to bring her up to you or Mom. Later on, I heard her and Mom whispering in the kitchen. ‘That little laugh of hers?' Grandma said. ‘The way she bats her eyes at Wes, has him wrapped around her little finger?' ‘I know…' Mom said. ‘It's Kitty all over again.' ”

Her mimicry of both Dolores and Sarah was spot-on. “I never heard that.”

“I never told you. The only time Mom ever mentioned Kitty was the other night, when she told me Kitty was Homecoming Queen and something bad happened afterward. I figured that was why she was so dead set against Emilio. So…?”

Avery, who'd been content to let her talk, realized she'd circled back to her original question: What did Sarah's outraged and outrageous statement—
I will not raise another whore's child!
—mean? He swallowed hard.

“It was back during The War. Kitty left college to join the WAACs—the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps—and became a nurse. She was stationed in Rome and fell in love, I guess, with an Italian soldier named Carlo. They got engaged. But before she could tell him she was pregnant, he was killed. Charlotte.” He leaned over and gently took her hand. “It was you Kitty was pregnant with.”

She sat there, liquid eyes absorbing the news; her only reaction a single, slow blink. But Avery saw the sea change in her: One moment she was his only daughter asking him for information. The next, she was the stunned offspring of somebody else entirely, her mother's sister and a foreign father called Carlo.

“
Kitty
is my mother?”

Avery nodded.

“And my father never knew…about me?”

“No, honey, he didn't.”

She withdrew her hand from his.

“So she came home to Tuscaloosa and…” He could see her piecing it together, rearranging everything she thought she knew about her life into something else entirely. “…had me…”

“On our wedding day. Her plan was to give you up, to an adoption agency. But your Mom and I…we took one look at you and everything changed. You were ours. Kitty agreed. And the three of us—you, your mom, and me—left for Florida the next day.”

Somehow, he'd expected anger.
I'd be mad if it was me.
But a single tear rolled down her cheek and hung—a small shivering bead—off her jaw. He reached out, intending to collect it and to comfort her; but she leaned away from him, not wanting to be touched.

“Grandma Do must have had a cow.”

“A whole herd, I'd say.”

“And…how'd you talk her into it?”

“Who?”

“Mom…,” she said brokenly, then added, “I mean Sarah.”

Her correction grieved him. Who else would “Mom” be? And if Sarah wasn't clearly Mom, then he…

“I never had to,” he lied on Sarah's behalf. “All it took was one look….You were just the tiniest, most perfect thing in the world, no bigger than this,” he told her, indicating the space between his fingertips and the inside of his elbow.

Her eyes drifted from his hands to his face with an expression he found unreadable, which was—for him—unbearable.

“Your mom was out of her head today. You have to know that, Ki…Charlotte.”

She stared out the window. It was twilight, and an evening breeze was raising small phosphorous whitecaps on the lake. On the opposite shore, other families in other homes were turning on their lakefront lights; sitting down to supper, he imagined, or settling in on sofas in front of televisions for an ordinary evening.

She closed her eyes against the view.

“But why did Grandma Do say she was dead? And Mom, too? And what was she doing here?”

“I can't begin to guess why your grandmother lied about that—to both of us—which is why it was such a shock to have her suddenly show up.”

“But how did Kitty know…?” She asked it in a small, flat voice. “Why was she at the dance last night?”

“You saw her?”

“No. But Emilio said you introduced them.”

“She just showed up at the station on…Wednesday, I think it was…said she wanted to see you. With everything going on, she was afraid she might not get another chance.”

“That's it? She just came to
look
at me?”

“Well, yes. But then, after she saw you in the parade, she wanted to meet you, too. But I…well, I wouldn't let her. Not last night. I didn't want to spoil—”

“That why she came here this morning?” she interrupted.

“I don't know. But then your mother…Sarah…” God, now
he
was correcting himself.

Charlotte bit her lip. “Think Kitty's coming back?”

“I have no idea. But…” A wave of nausea churned inside his stomach. “She lives in Tampa. I have her number if you'd—”

“I don't know what hurts worse,” she cut in quietly, “the truth or the lie.” Her eyes were clouded with anguish.

“I am so sorry….”

“It's okay,” she said automatically. “Well, not really, but it
will
be, I guess…eventually. I'd be lying if I said it doesn't change things; it can't help but change things. But…for now, Dad…let's just leave it at that.”

Avery nodded his acceptance and his gratitude, though the words
for now
—implying, as they did, some sort of future reckoning and the peril of potential loss—were devastating.

How stupid he'd been to think that all his proper “taking care” would protect her, or Sarah, from pain and disappointment—including their separate disappointments in
him.

And yet…
yet
…she'd called him “Dad,” hadn't she? He clung to that small gift—an unconscious kindness on her part—like a drowning man thrown a life ring.

Q
uestion of the week: How do you grieve a dream?

Sarah's headshrinker was big on “the question of the week.” Avery had noticed the guy used it every time to signal the end of their session—“Well, that's the question of the week, isn't it?”—as a more polite version of “Time's up; see you next week.” And whatever the question was, the guy always wrote it down in your ever-fattening file and expected you to think about it and come back prepared to discuss your answer.

And the next time you showed up, he opened the file that you never got to see, peered into it through the wire-rimmed reading glasses that were always there (either on his nose or pushed up onto his forehead like a second set of silver eyebrows). He used his stubby index finger to scan the last page of his notes, muttering, “Now, let's see…the question of the week was…?”

After six weeks—no, seven; this week made it seven—Sarah's headshrinker was technically Avery's headshrinker also, but she'd had him so much longer—almost a year now—Avery was resistant to laying claim.

But today, Dr. Flanagan was in for a surprise. This week, Avery had given serious thought to the question and written down his answers front and back on a piece of
ORANGE TOWN TEXACO
stationery that he intended to hand over, so he could be certain what was on at least one of those pages in the file marked:
AVERY, WESLEY L
.

Fact was…he'd sat up most of the past six nights thinking it out, and he'd organized his thoughts carefully under the heading,
HOW TO GRIEVE A DREAM: EIGHT SIMPLE RULES.
Then he'd drawn a line down the middle of the sheet, front and back. Each of the four rules in the left column began with the word ALWAYS in capital letters.

Rule number one was

ALWAYS
shut windows and doors. Especially after the 247th well-meaning person tells you, “This was God's will,” and you find yourself standing in the middle of your kitchen at 3 A.M. in the morning screaming your head off that “GOD HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS!!!,” frightening one poor parakeet half to death.

Number two was

ALWAYS
respect a true friend. If you're lucky enough to have a best friend who's been through some tough stuff himself and has the guts to tell you straight-out that you could use some help, have the good sense not to bite his head off. Realize that, in some ways, he knows you better than you know yourself and he can see when you're about to go 'round the bend in the bitterness department.

Then,

ALWAYS
put something in your stomach. Even when you don't feel like it, when the thought of food makes you want to retch, find something—some one thing—to eat. Otherwise, you might waste away into such a bony old scarecrow that you won't even recognize the guy in the morning mirror whose black, sinkhole eyes want to know, “Who the hell are you?” You can live on TV dinners if you have to, especially when your wife's away and your only daughter's gone off to college—where, no matter how much she's “worried about you,” she
belongs
—257 miles away. Or, at the very least, you can haul yourself out of the house to the drive-in for a chocolate shake. It goes down easier than a Swanson's Salisbury Steak, and you won't have to talk to anyone but the girl on skates, and she's not about to ask you questions that you have no earthly idea how to answer.

ALWAYS
get out of bed. Sometimes it's the only thing you
can
do. Sit up, put one foot in front of the other, and feed the damn bird. That little parakeet may starve otherwise. And it's not his fault that you feel like Humpty Dumpty fallen off the wall, and there are no king's horses or king's men to put you together again—as if they could, or you'd want them to—because the person that you thought you were, the life you thought you had no longer exists.

The remaining four rules in the right column each began with the word NEVER
.

NEVER
give up, until you have no other choice. Take every book off your shelf and look for answers, search your bank accounts, sort through your wife's hope chest, read through your long-ago letters to her from your younger self. Try to figure out where you came up with the idea that you could dream, plan, buy, or will into existence a life without suffering. Go ahead. You'll suffer anyway. And at some point—perhaps at 3
A.M.
some other night—you'll realize the truth about your own false self, the one that's been hiding out for years inside the carefully constructed shell of a supposedly successful life.

NEVER
take any unnecessary chances. If that was your philosophy, it may also be your problem: Stick to the slow lane. Better yet, live your entire life by the side of the road. Preach safety and practice careful control. Work harder than your employees. Be kind to, yet appallingly judgmental of, your friends, neighbors, and customers. Prize and protect your daughter's innocence. And, while you're at it, ignore your wife's obvious suffering. In the end, it won't protect a damn thing. You and your wife and your daughter will suffer anyway.

NEVER
see the forest for the trees. Not until you find yourself so desperately deep in the woods that you sit down in darkness, certain you'll never see the light again. And it somehow makes sense to unearth your wife's left-behind sleeping pills and you think: Wouldn't it be easier to say sayonara to the whole thing? And it probably would. But then you ask yourself: What about the damn bird? And it hits you like a crowbar over the head: It's not about you. It's about the bird. You can make the choice at any time, to feed the worms—Sayonara, suckers!—or to feed the bird. So you follow the sound of its hungry chattering back into the kitchen, you fill up the little cups, and you see this fragile little thing chirp gratefully, flutter fearlessly, and eat like there's no tomorrow. And on some soul-deep level that defies your ability to explain it, that bird feeds you.

The eighth and shortest rule was

NEVER
say, “Never again.” Take another lesson from your best friend, a two-time loser who just invited you to be his best man
again
. With a new wife and a practically adopted Cuban son attending the local JC, he's got the family he always claimed he never wanted. And you're the one living like an old bachelor. The old saying “Be careful what you wish for” ought to be revised; it ought to say instead: “Be very careful what you take for granted.”

Bottom line:
How do you grieve a dream? In any way you must. For as long as it takes. Until you're able, or ready, to think about some
thing
or some
one
other than yourself.

W
ES
A
VERY WHEELED PAST
the Florida San guard shack and waved at Ray, the Sunday guard, who smiled and raised the red-and-white gate without the usual visitor rigmarole.

As he drove past the crowded front parking lot toward the lesser-known lot in the back, an ambulance arrived at the side entrance followed by a pale Chevy Impala full of family members, eyes panicked, faces ashen with fear and concern.

He felt a flood of sympathy for the patient and the family and for all that lay ahead of them: the painful early weeks of lockdown with no contact allowed; the initial family visits weighed down by so much expectation and emotion that they were bound to be a disappointment for everyone; the various treatments (medicines, therapies, and, most frightening of all, electroshocks) tried and failed and tried again; the eventual transfers to lesser and lesser security floors; and, in Sarah's case, to one of the independent living cottages on the back grounds.

It would be easier, Avery decided, if they gave you a guide early on so you knew what to expect. Then again, as the doctors told Charlotte and him often: Treatment, like life, is not an exact science. You learn to take things as they come—or go (which, apparently, was the case with Kitty, who'd disappeared without a word, a peep, since last October).

Tentatively, he and Charlotte had learned their way around, like the fact that they kept the comas and the catatonics on the top floor, above the ward for schizophrenics. “Be thankful she doesn't hear voices,” one nurse told them early on, “or see things that aren't really there.” But the hard-core psychotics got transferred to Whitfield, over near Jackson.

He parked the truck near the outbuilding that housed Dr. Flanagan's office and made his way into the small, sparse waiting room—more of a vestibule, really, with two chairs and one small table—which was empty, as usual. He removed the station envelope with his answers to the question of the week from his shirt pocket and slipped it under the headshrinker's inner office door.

He returned to the truck, opened the tailgate, pulled out the wheelbarrow, a few tools, a bag of soil, two flats of bright flowers, and wheeled them all onto the sidewalk, around the outbuildings, to the back grounds and the small cottage, third on the left.

She sat on the bench on the cottage's narrow front porch—eyes closed, face tipped to the sun, relaxed in the khaki slacks and denim shirt that identified her as an “independent” resident. He called to her and she roused slowly, a soft smile spreading across her face, short chestnut hair grown back curly since the treatments, with a pale off-center streak of gray.

She stepped off the porch to see what he'd brought her and ran her fingers lightly over the petals of her favorites: pink dianthus, purple snapdragons, some yellow chrysanthemums, and the bright purple-and-yellow faces of cool-weather Johnny-jump-ups. She watched him spread and turn the soil beside the steps. Then he watched her set out the plants the way she wanted them. Wearing the gloves he'd brought from home, they worked side by side; she placing the plants in the holes he'd dug, patting the soil around tender roots. When they were done, she sat back on her heels, eyes lit with delight.

“Beautiful,” she decreed. “Thank you.”

“You're most welcome,” he told her.

He filled the watering can from a groundskeeper's spigot and stood on the sidewalk, dribbling rain onto each plant in the small garden they'd made. She returned to the bench up on the porch of the cottage he'd yet to set foot in. (She'll let you know when she's ready for that, the shrink had promised.)

He looked up at her, smiling. “Anything else, Sarah?” he asked gently.

She patted the empty space beside her on the bench.

He set down the watering can, took off his gloves, and, heart thudding, hope billowing like a sail before him, Avery stepped up. Together they sat in the warm slant of afternoon sunlight, watching the rain-heads pile up in preparation for a dazzling sunset.

“Red sky at night?” she asked him.

“Sailors' delight,” he said. It was one of Old Pa's maxims. His letters to her from Tinian had been full of them.

“Never quite understood that.”

“It's a warning and a promise, y'see,” he told her. “Storm tonight; clear skies and steady winds tomorrow.”

Years ago, he'd written her: “We'll go sailing, Sarah. Florida has more lakes than you can imagine and I can't wait to sail them with you.” But an unexpected newborn and a fledgling business, and everything else since then, had gotten in the way. Sailing was one of his lost dreams. Just as music, he'd realized, was one of hers.

“I was thinking…if you'd like, Sarah…maybe next time I could bring you a record player and some of your records? We could listen to some music?”

She cocked her head.

He wondered if she'd understood him. Anything beyond the here and now is a still an abstract, the shrink had explained.

“Music?”

“Yes. Any kind you'd like.”