Seen It All and Done the Rest (30 page)

SIXTY-EIGHT

P
eachy had to go back to Tybee early in the morning, and Louie was going with him. Abbie said we’d wait until he came back to add the dirt he’d brought from New Orleans to the peace garden. That made sense to me. He’d probably want to say something. Or
cook
something.

Later that day, Abbie transferred the dirt from the container to a lovely ceramic bowl that she set on the mantelpiece in the dining room, which had become the house’s common space. She lit a few candles and even laid a yellow silk flower nearby like an offering. I had been working outside and when I came in, I smelled the candles first.
Patchouli.

Abbie was an inveterate altar maker. Any available space would, if left unattended, begin to sprout candles, incense, seashells, small photographs, and silk flowers. She was a firm believer in the power of positive spirits to guard the perimeters and after a while, I got used to it. Between the altars and the good-luck handprints on the front door, I told Abbie we were probably as protected as we could be, considering.

“Considering what?” Abbie said, coming up to stand beside me as I contemplated her latest handiwork.

“Considering the random nature of bad luck and the presence of true evil in the universe.”

She looked at me. “I withdraw the question.”

I laughed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound so gloomy. All I really meant was I’m glad Louie’s back.”

She nodded. “Much better. See how easy that was?”

“Easy as pie.” And it was.

Two days later, the duplex burned to the ground.

SIXTY-NINE

I
had already cried at the heap of rubble where all our hard work had been, comforted Victor who had been visiting his mother when he saw the flames and burned his arms badly trying to put them out himself, apologized to my mother’s spirit for whatever I had done to bring this on, and worried myself into a forty-eight-hour headache from hell when the fire investigator showed up. In real life, the people who come to call when something really awful happens to your property are as matter-of-fact as the doctors who bring you the bad news about your body. They don’t weep for your misfortunes. They list your options and dismiss your theories, not necessarily in that order. The weary-looking man from the fire department came by to tell me that their initial investigation pointed toward faulty wiring and looked surprised to hear me say that I thought Greer Woodruff might be involved.

“Ms. Evans,” he said, “I understand your frustration, but you have no proof of arson, much less anything that points to Ms. Woodruff.”

“She has been pressuring people around here to sell their houses.”

“She’s in the real estate business.”

“When they won’t sell, there are burglaries or trash dumping or vandalism. This is not the first fire, either. There have been others.”

He flipped through his folder, reviewing the facts. “As I understand it, those fires were set by squatters on the property. Reports were always filed while you were away.” He looked up. “You were absent from this property for quite a while, is that correct?”

He said it like I had left a puppy in the middle of the road. “It was a rental property. Ms. Woodruff’s company was responsible for the management.”

“I see,” he said.

“The point is,” I said, “I would like to accuse Greer Woodruff of arson.”

It sounded like a reasonable request, but he stood up and handed me my copy of his report.

“Ms. Evans, this is America. It’s not illegal to do business. This form will clear you for any insurance claim. If you want to accuse people of crimes, call the police department, but everything I found points to faulty wiring.”

There was nothing else to say, so Zora walked him to the door and came back.

“So,” she said, sitting down across the kitchen table from me, sipping her cold coffee. “What do you want to do?”

I looked at her and there was no option but the plain, unvarnished truth. “I think, Munchkin, that it might be time to throw in the towel and let these people have their corner,” I said. “The insurance and whatever Greer’s still offering for the land will pay for your school or take you to Europe if that’s what you want.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I got run out of Amsterdam for being an American at war and now I’m being run off this corner for being an American at peace.”

“It’s still a war,” she said.

That statement was no comfort to a woman whose only tangible asset had just burned to the ground.

“You’re right,” I said. “So what is the free woman’s role in wartime?”

“Well, what if something happened so we didn’t have to sell the house at all?”

“There is no house, remember?”

“I remember, but couldn’t we build another one?”

She wasn’t making any sense. “Listen, darlin’, this whole thing was about
selling
a house, not building one. This story is over. We’re going somewhere we can be the women we were born to be.”

“Where’s that, Mafeenie?” Her voice was very quiet.

I looked at her, unsure of what she was trying to say. “What’s wrong, darlin’? What’s the matter?”

She stood up and walked over to the window. “When we first started working on the house, I couldn’t wait to get everything done so we could sell it and get on up out of here. I hated Atlanta, hated that so many people knew me, or thought they did. Every time I went out, I was worried somebody was going to take my picture and sell it to
Dig It!
or put it on YouTube. My life felt like one big pile of shit and I didn’t have a clue what to do about it.”

Watching her talking about those days, I realized how far she’d come in just a couple of months. Her face had filled out with the weight she’d gained back, her skin was glowing, and her eyes had their old sparkle again. She turned back to me.

“But I don’t really think that much about leaving anymore. It all feels different. Like maybe there’s a bigger reason why we’re doing this.” She stopped trying to find the right words.

“I’m listening,” I said. “Go on.”

She smiled and took my hand, holding it lightly. “It’s just that, when people see me now, they don’t care about all that stuff that happened last year. They want to ask me about the house, or if they can start a garden at their church, or do we need somebody to help with the painting, and I want them to help. I want them to feel like if we can do it, they can do it, too. It’s not even about selling it to the highest bidder anymore. It’s more about all of us working together, about seeing the house go from what it was, to what it could be, to see those sunflowers Abbie planted coming up in Great-gram’s garden.”

She squeezed my hand a little tighter. “I guess what I’m trying to say is, I don’t even care if we go to Amsterdam anymore. Just doing what we did, refusing to leave just because somebody told us to…we’re already free.” She grinned at me and I grinned back. “Isn’t that really what you came all this way to tell me? That I’m already free?”

“Yes,” I said, claiming the advice as my own immediately. “Exactly.”

When I hugged her, it felt so good, we just stood there for a minute, holding on to each other for dear life.

“And I think Miss Abbie’s right about the gardens, too,” Zora said when I finally released her. “Every time somebody plants one, they’ll feel more peaceful just for doing it, and if we have enough of them, it will change people’s lives and that can change the energy on the planet, and…” She stopped, suddenly hearing her mother’s voice in her mouth as clearly as I did.

“Attack of the sixties,” she said, laughing. “So sue me. You and Mom are to blame for this insane optimism.”

“It looks good on you,” I said, remembering how sad and strange she’d been when I first got here, loving how strong and happy she was now.

“It looks good on you, too.”

“So, it’s your inheritance,” I said. “What do you want to do?”

“You said it doesn’t count as free if you let them run you off.”

“That’s right.”

She grinned at me again. “Then let’s build a house.”

SEVENTY

T
here wasn’t much we could do on the site until we finished the basic demolition of the burned house. Our crew of amateurs couldn’t handle that, so Aretha got some guys from West End to tackle it. It would take about a week. In the meantime, Zora had been responding to all the attention we’d been getting, and Abbie had been trying to talk me into a tour. The day she first suggested it, I thought I had been invited over for tea and sympathy.

“I’m sorry about the garden,” I said, wandering around her kitchen while she adjusted the flame under the kettle. Whoever had burned the place had taken a few minutes to run through the garden and kick up all the things that were growing.

She shrugged and turned on the flame under that bright blue kettle. “It’ll grow back. That’s why gardens make such wonderful symbols. They have all the great lessons present in every cycle. If they grow up beautiful, bug free, and bountiful, you can tell folks that nature is a generous host and to count their blessings. If there’s drought or blight, you can tell them the universe is a cruel and arbitrary place and they better get right with God.”

Abbie was very pragmatic for a visionary.

“What will you tell them this time?”

She handed me the honey. “That when we replant, we’ll probably put some Roma tomatoes in there with the Sweet One Hundreds. That some of the sunflowers survived and they’ll be back in no time. Louie’s putting in some herbs this afternoon.”

Her calm willingness to get on with it was typical of her. She often said there were only two questions worth considering: what is and what is next. I smiled as she got out our cups. “You don’t have to be so wise all the time.”

“Yes, I do. That’s my job, remember? It’s the trade-off for not being twenty-five anymore.”

“Do you remember twenty-five?” I said. “It seems like another lifetime.”

“It was,” she said, dropping a mint tea bag in each of our cups.

“You got that right,” I said. “It’s the life we used to have before we realized that in every setting, we’re the oldest women in the room.”

She nodded. “The problem is, people have really weird ideas about that old woman. About what she needs and thinks and feels, but the truth is, they don’t know any more about any of it than we do, because it’s all new again, just like when our breasts came out and our periods started.”

“Seems like we got here faster than I thought we would.”

“And not a moment too soon,” she said, laughing in a way that made her look about fourteen years old. “This is when it really starts to get interesting.”

Abbie had one of those faces that has spent a lot of time laughing, even if sometimes it was just to keep from crying.

“I’m glad you and Zora decided to hold on to the house,” she said, pouring the hot water into our cups and replacing the kettle on the stove. There’s something about the whole ritual of making tea, even just cups of tea, that is soothing. Abbie had it down, and I felt myself relax into the warmth of her kitchen and her spirit.

“Me, too, although I have no idea where we’re going to get the money to rebuild anything.”

Abbie sat down across from me. Behind her head the big map of the United States on the wall was a fitting backdrop for what was coming next, even though I didn’t know it yet.

“When you first came back,” she said, “I knew we had some work to do together. The house and the garden were just the way to get it started.”

“What kind of work are you talking about?”

She grinned at me. “The same kind we’ve been doing for forty years. Trying to survive our own adventures so we can talk about them later.”

“Nice work if you can get it,” I said, laughing at her description of our lives. “We’ve seen it all and done the rest.”

She laughed, too. “That’s where you’re wrong.”

“And why is that, my visionary friend?” I said, sipping my tea.

“Because you’ve never been to Amarillo.”

“Amarillo, Texas?”

“Don’t say it like that,” she said. “It’s not the end of the world. See?” She turned to the map behind her, pointed to a spot in the middle of the Texas panhandle, and smiled affectionately like you might if you were talking about your hometown. But Abbie is from D.C., which is a long way, in every way, from the Lone Star State.

“It’s close enough,” I said.

“You can say what you want,” she said. “But it’s the place where I finally got it.”

“Got what?”

“The secret of life.”

Even from Abbie, this was a lot to swallow. “In Amarillo?”

She laughed again. “Deep in the heart of Texas.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just thought people usually had spiritual awakenings in places with names like Kathmandu and Machu Picchu.”

“There is no specific place, Jo. That’s part of the mystery of it. You just have to keep moving around until you feel it.”

We were deep in the Abbie zone now, but I was determined to figure out what the hell she was talking about.

“Until I feel what?”

“Connected.”

The idea of my patchouli-smelling friend finding a cosmic connection in the middle of cowboy country was so far-fetched I thought she might be kidding, but she was dead serious sitting there, smiling serenely with Amarillo hovering behind her head like a sign.

“Listen, Jo, I know it sounds crazy, but I think you need to do a tour. You wanted to see America. Well, now it wants to see you, too.”

This was getting weirder and weirder, even for Abbie. A tour? I leaned back in my chair and took another sip of my tea. “Okay, but only if you and Zora will go along as backup dancers.”

“Very funny,” she said, “but I’m asking you to tell the story, not sing it.”

“What story would that be? The story of the house that burned down before we could even get it fixed up pretty? Not very inspirational.”

“You’re looking at it all wrong,” she said, sounding more urgent than annoyed. “The story is about the fact that you and Zora didn’t give up. You’re going to rebuild. You didn’t let the bad guys win.”

Why was it that most discussions of honor and courage ended up sounding like the plots of Hollywood westerns? Maybe we should have bracelets made that said:
What would John Wayne do?

“They’ve been watching you live it on all their little computers, in all their little individual rooms, now they want to come together to hear you tell it. They want to be part of the story, not just observers,” Abbie said. “Zora said we’ve got invitations for you to come and speak from all over the place. She put some pictures up two days ago, right after the fire, and people want to help you rebuild. They want to give you money for supplies. They want to send me clippings for the garden. They want to buy T-shirts!”

“T-shirts?”

“Zora said people have been trying to buy them for months. It’s a classic story. People love it!”

“So what does this have to do with a tour?” I said, speaking hypothetically. “A tour means New York, Chicago, San Francisco, L.A., Atlanta.”

Abbie blew on her tea and set the cup down. “Do you know why Peachy and I really took that trip in the first place?”

“I thought you set off in search of America.”

“That’s part of it,” she said. “But not everything. When we first started, I was feeling so sad, I could hardly get up in the morning.”

“Sad about what happened in D.C.?”

“About that and about what was happening to people in New Orleans. About the war. About kids like the ones who broke in on me. Everything seemed to be falling apart at the same time and everything I thought I could do about it seemed too little, too late. Once I went to Tybee, I got so I didn’t want to leave the island at all. I was too afraid of what I’d find out there, roaming around waiting for me. I told Peachy I was afraid I’d lost something important and he said maybe we ought to take a trip and see if we could find it.”

Of course she wanted to marry him.

“So we just hit the road, like I told you. No destination. No agenda. No timetables. We were just riding through America. One night, it was about seven o’clock and we’d been traveling all day. I was tired so Peachy pulled off at this tiny motel right outside of Amarillo. We took our suitcases in and found a little Mexican restaurant a block away full of big families and first dates and friendly waiters who spoke English to us and Spanish to each other. We ordered two margaritas and laughed and talked our way through some of the best fajitas I ever had in my life. Nobody was arguing or fussing about politics or minding anybody else’s business. It was just people, out in the middle of Texas, being people.
Together.

“It was sunset when we left the place, and as we walked back to the motel, the sky was turning the most amazing shade of purple. I still had the sound of those happy people in my head, so I took Peachy’s hand and we just stood there at the edge of the parking lot and watched the sun go down. That’s when I felt the connection. Not just to Peachy, but to something bigger than just him and me. Something about the idea of what a country like this could be if people could figure out a way to just be people.”

She took a deep breath.

“Go on,” I said, wondering if that was what it felt like to be a real American. “I’m with you.”

“I think that connection was what I was looking for,” she said. “And the weird thing is, that great big feeling brought me back to something much, much smaller. It brought me to Tybee and West End and now to your garden because I realized that you can only be a good citizen one step at a time. That’s all I have to do. Tending my little corner of America is all there is to it. If I want to stop the war, the first thing I have to do is make sure nobody’s fighting at my house. And you have to make sure nobody’s fighting at your house and on and on and on…”

She sounded like Zora, optimistic and determined. A hard combination to beat, even if you want to, which I didn’t. I couldn’t argue with the idea of cleaning up your own backyard, but there was one problem. In the movies, once the idealist states his case, John Wayne rides in with a great big gun to make it stick. Could it work without that?

“The other thing about the bad guys,” Abbie said, “is that they’re always outnumbered by the good guys. No western worth its salt omits the scene where the people, energized by the one who stepped forward to protect them in the first place, rise up and stand together to save their town.”

“You think that’s going to happen this time?”

“It happens every time,” she said.

“Well, what am I supposed to do until they get themselves together?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, grinning at me across the table. “Put on a strapless dress. Sing something.”