The Sound of Glass (33 page)

Merritt moved her hands from the top, letting them hover above the front and side latches like an indecisive bee.

“Ready?” Gibbes asked.

She nodded and together they lifted the lid.

Loralee coughed and held her hand over her face. The smell of rot was strong, reminding her of the cellar of the house she and her mama had lived in during their brief stay in Tuscaloosa. The discarded lives of previous tenants had littered the space that flooded each spring and fall, the forgotten boxes and piles of clothing slowly turning to mush.

When she looked back at the suitcase, neither Gibbes nor Merritt had made a move to touch anything. A coating of green and black goo covered the top layer of what had once been clothing, a mosslike growth crawling upward across the sides and top like tiny fingers looking for an escape.

“I’ll go get the dishwashing gloves,” Loralee said as she made an attempt to stand without using any of her abdominal muscles.

Merritt leaped up. “You stay there—I’ll go get them.” She ran into the kitchen, then returned with the pair of yellow rubber gloves. “I only have one pair, and they’re small, so I guess I’m going to have to do the honors.”

Gibbes shifted backward to give her more light. “Try to remove the top layer—there might be less damage farther down.”

She nodded and, with her lips pressed together, began lifting out limp and soggy button-down shirts, still folded as if waiting to be worn. “My mom used to pack my dad’s suitcase this way—with the folded shirts on top and all the small items tucked beneath, so that if it ever opened up he wouldn’t be chasing rolled-up socks.” She leaned back on her haunches, tilting her head to the side. “But his toiletries kit was always tucked right in the front, so that if he ever
needed anything out of it, he could grab it without having to open the suitcase the whole way.”

After the ruined garments had been placed on the ground, the rest of the items could be seen better. The undershirts and slacks were still folded, but the creases were crusted with mud and mold, the elastic of the boxer-style underwear bleeding streaks of red and brown.

Gibbes reached inside a pair of black wingtips and pulled out a tie that had been neatly rolled into a ball. The silk was stained with moisture and spots of mildew, but the navy background with light blue diagonal stripes was still visible.

Loralee leaned forward and reached out her hand. “I’ve seen that tie before.”

“It’s a pretty common one, I think,” Gibbes said. “I probably have one in my closet.”

“Yes, it’s called the Eton tie, I’m pretty sure,” Loralee said, feeling a surge of nausea wash over her that had nothing to do with her being sick. “And I could be wrong, but . . .”

“But what?” Gibbes prompted.

Loralee swallowed. “One of the passengers in the model plane up in the attic is wearing the same tie. He’s the one with the dopp kit glued to his lap.”

A tic had started in Gibbes’s jaw, the sound of the garden’s insects somehow quieter, as if somebody had lowered the volume button so the three of them could think. “I’ll check that out as soon as we’re done here.”

Wanting to know where the red staining the underwear was coming from, Loralee moved closer and lifted a corner of the small stack of undershirts, revealing two wilted and yellowed linen handkerchiefs, with a bold red monogram in the corner of each. She pulled them out and turned them over. “Definitely done with a machine.”

“What is?” Merritt turned away from her search of the side
pockets and stopped suddenly, as if she’d just put a Popsicle in her mouth and was suffering a brain freeze.

“The handkerchiefs,” Loralee said, holding one up. “They were done with a machine—that’s why all the stitches are so perfect.”

“What’s wrong, Merritt?” Gibbes asked, noticing that her face no longer seemed to have any blood in it.

Merritt reached over and took one of the handkerchiefs from Loralee and held the monogram close to her face, stretching the fabric taut, staring at it as if she were waiting for it to change.

When she looked up, her eyes were dark. “I’ve seen one of these before.” She slowly dropped her hands into her lap and turned to Loralee. “I told you about it—when you gave me the sewing machine. I told you how my grandmother and I loved to make things together.” She stopped, her chest rising and falling as if her lungs were too busy struggling for air to let her have enough to speak.

Loralee continued for her. “Until that package arrived for your grandmother. There was a letter in it and a handkerchief.”

Merritt pushed the handkerchief off her lap as if it were a large insect. “After she read the letter, she stuffed it back in the package, along with the handkerchief, and threw it in the garbage. Then she packed up the sewing machine and put it away. I never saw it again.” She slid off the rubber gloves and let them fall to the ground as she stood.

Her hands were shaking as she looked at Gibbes. “How? How is this here?”

He stood and tried to take her hands, but she was too jittery, walking around the suitcase without looking at it. “My guess is that it fell from the plane and my grandmother found it.”

Merritt rubbed her hands against the sides of her skirt, trying to erase years of dirt that clung to the suitcase. “That’s the only part that makes sense. Then she opened the suitcase before it was buried. That’s how she knew about the tie that she put on a passenger in that awful plane model up in the attic. And that’s how she knew about
the handkerchief. Because she got the address from the luggage tag and then mailed a handkerchief to my grandmother in Maine with a note—a note that said something that made my grandmother crawl into herself and stay there for the rest of her life.”

Merritt clutched her head with both hands, as if she were afraid it might explode if she didn’t hold it together. “How is this possible? That my grandfather’s suitcase—assuming it’s the same Henry P. Holden—is buried in the backyard of the house where my husband grew up one thousand miles away from where I met him? There’s a connection here that I’m not sure I want to know. This suitcase was buried, hidden because somebody never wanted it to be found.” She shook her head, as if it were a snow globe with all the words and thoughts swirling around in random patterns.

“We can figure this out together,” Gibbes said, but Merritt backed up toward the rear porch, out of his reach.

“I need to be alone right now. I need to figure things out on my own.” She ran up the steps and through the kitchen door, letting it bang shut behind her.

Gibbes stared at the closed door before shifting his gaze to Loralee. “What just happened here?”

Loralee struggled to keep standing, leaning heavily on the back of the bench. “She’s not used to sharing her emotions, and when they all demand to come out at once it’s confusing. Just give her some time to sort things out, and to realize that she’s not alone.”

“Let me help you upstairs, Loralee; you look exhausted.”

She wasn’t going to argue with him. “Thank you,” she said, her eyes resting on the open suitcase, remembering something she wanted to put in her journal.
Secrets, like chickens, always come home to roost.

She took a step toward Gibbes and her knees went wobbly as a pain she’d not yet experienced seemed to split her in two, the insides of her eyelids illuminated with white-hot heat.

She was aware of Gibbes’s arms around her, gently lowering her
to the bench, and then heard his soothing voice. “I’m calling an ambulance.”

Loralee shook her head, trying to find the strength to push at his chest. “No—Merritt can’t know. . . .”

But Merritt was already running back down the steps toward her, Loralee’s name on her lips, as her eyes flew back in her head and another pain slashed through her. Her last remembered vision before the pain consumed her was that of a worried Gibbes and Merritt staring down at her as a plane flew overhead in the blue sky behind them, long white streaks trailing behind it.

MERRITT

F
ires in buildings are dark, not bright. The black smoke quickly blocks any light from the flames themselves, and a person trapped in a burning building may become disoriented because he or she cannot actually see to evacuate.

I opened my eyes in the visitors’ lounge at Beaufort Memorial, gasping not from thick, dark smoke but from imagining my lungs filling with icy water too black to allow any light from above. I stood and began pacing around the perimeter of the room, Loralee’s sandals gently tapping the flecked white linoleum. I almost laughed as I realized my thoughts had moved to the waiting room decor, another sign that Loralee’s presence in my life had affected me in more ways than one.

Stopping, I looked down at my feet in her sandals, almost expecting to see her pretty toes and the dark pink polish she wore on her toenails. My bare nails seemed so inadequate, so . . . hopeless. A
middle-aged woman, the only other occupant of the waiting room, snored softly as her knitting slowly slid from her ample lap into a blue and green puddle like a dying sweater.

Gibbes had been called to the pediatrics floor soon after we’d arrived at the hospital. He’d wanted to stay but I’d told him to go. I wanted to be alone. I wasn’t sure why, except that since I was a little girl, being alone had always been my defense mechanism. My father had once called me an opossum, hiding from the world. It had been years before I understood the rest of what he’d meant: how closing my eyes didn’t mean the world couldn’t see me. That it still revolved despite my best intentions. But understanding and accepting were two different things.

Gibbes had driven us behind the ambulance, the car heavy with silence fueled by guilt.
He’d known.
Before the ambulance came, Gibbes had sent me upstairs to get one of Loralee’s medicine bottles—a bottle half-full of five-milligram tablets of morphine.
Morphine.
Half an hour before, I had thought Loralee simply had a delicate stomach.

Maybe, deep down, I’d known she was much sicker than she’d let on. The evidence had been right in front of me for weeks. But I was so good at hiding from any truth I couldn’t face that I’d gone along with her charade, ignoring all the obvious signs so we could both pretend that everything was all right.

I had asked Gibbes a dozen questions, each one answered with the same pat response:
She’s very sick. She needs you to be strong right now.
In the part of my brain that could still reason, I knew Gibbes couldn’t have shared her condition with me, couldn’t tell me what I needed to be strong
for
. But his words were like heavy storm clouds on the horizon, promising a rain for which I was not prepared.

Loralee was the only one who could have told me, but I couldn’t be angry with her. Because every time I thought about how sick she must be, I thought about Owen and that everything she’d done was for him. And I remembered how much I’d wanted her to go away
when she first appeared on my doorstep. I wished she were with me right then to tell me something insightful that her mama used to say about regrets and looking backward. But all I could hear were the snoring of the woman in the waiting room lounge chair and the distant sound of a man’s voice on the PA system reminding me where I was.

“Mrs. Heyward?”

I looked up to where a petite black woman in khaki pants and a bright pink and yellow floral shirt stood on the threshold, a clipboard in her hands and a photo ID around her neck.

“Yes, I’m Merritt Heyward.”

Her tight smile was more efficient than warm, but I imagined working in a hospital had taught her how to do that. “I’m Carmen Tanner, with social services. The nurses here have made Mrs. Connors comfortable and she’s ready to see you. I just have a few questions for you first. Why don’t we sit down?”

I sat in the nearest seat and Ms. Tanner sat next to me. “You’re Mrs. Connors’s next of kin?”

I looked at her, startled, ready to tell her my rote response that I had no relatives. “She’s my stepmother—my father is deceased. She has a son.” I paused. “He’s only ten.”

She nodded. “You’re his legal guardian?”

“No. I mean, I don’t know. He’s my half brother.”

She jotted something down on the clipboard. “Mrs. Connors has given me permission to discuss her care with you.”

“Oh. Sure. Of course.” I was too embarrassed to tell her that all I knew for sure was that an oncologist had been called in to see Loralee and that she’d been taking a five-milligram morphine pill every four hours that had been prescribed to her before she’d even left Georgia. Before she’d shown up on my doorstep.

The social worker continued. “I’m recommending hospice care for Mrs. Connors. Before you leave today, I’ll have a folder of information for you to go through with the patient so you can make the best decision. . . .”

“Hospice? But that’s for . . .” I couldn’t force myself to say the words.

“End-stage care,” she finished for me. “To help manage the pain.”

I stared at her dumbly, waiting for my brain to process her words. “Wait,” I said, holding up my hand, as if it were big enough and strong enough to stop the oncoming clouds. “All I know is that she has cancer. I don’t even know what kind.”

“She has stage-four ovarian cancer. Unfortunately it has spread to other organs.” Ms. Tanner’s eyes were kind, but couldn’t hide the fact that she’d seen this before, had said these words before. I wanted Loralee to have been the first, the only one. As if her being singular would bring her to the attention of those who could save her.

“But why hospice? What about chemo and radiation and all those other things they do for cancer?” My calm, no-nonsense New England demeanor had packed its bags and left me with only images of ancient oak trees that wore their grief in the gnarled bend of their limbs.

She must have sensed my rising hysteria, and placed a hand on mine. “Mrs. Heyward, I’m sorry. This is a very aggressive cancer. Unfortunately Mrs. Connors discovered it only after it had spread.” Ms. Tanner flipped up a page on her clipboard. “She pursued other treatment options in Georgia, but she and her doctors agreed that although she might prolong her life slightly, it wouldn’t increase her quality of life. I believe that protecting her son from an extended illness was a strong motivator for her.” She paused a moment, waiting for the wave of grief to pass through me, to carry with it the sediment of guilt and remorse before settling in the pit of my stomach. Her voice was gentle when she continued. “Once the cancer has spread, there is nothing that can be done except to make the patient comfortable.”

I bit my lip hard, trying to keep it from trembling. “How long does she have?”

Her expression was sympathetic. “You’ll need to speak with Dr. Ward, but I will say that once a patient reaches end-stage, it won’t be long. Maybe a month, maybe a little longer.”

I jumped up, unable to sit one second longer. “May I see her now?”

“Of course. She’s in a private room, and there’s a lounge chair in there that can be converted to a bed if you’d like to stay the night.”

“Thank you, but I should be with her son. Somebody needs to tell him, and he shouldn’t be alone.”

She regarded me with kind eyes, as if she knew long before I did whom that somebody needed to be. “I’ll have the information for you at the nurses’ station when you leave, along with my card and cell number. Call me if you have any questions—any questions at all. You’ll need to let me know what you and Mrs. Connors decide concerning her care.”

“Thank you,” I said, then followed her from the room and down the brightly lit corridor of patients’ rooms, passing a janitor wearing headphones mindlessly polishing the linoleum floors, the sound oddly ordinary. I had the strongest compulsion to whip the headphones from his ears and shout at him to pay attention, to stop taking for granted even the most mundane tasks.

Carmen Tanner pushed open a door and stepped back, allowing me to enter. She put a gentle hand on my arm, then left the room, closing the door behind her.

I noticed very little about the room except for the single bed with a person lying on it, an IV drip in the back of her hand. I almost didn’t recognize Loralee. She seemed to have shrunk, her life diminished under the fluorescent lighting. I wanted to throw open the window, allow in the sunshine and fresh air, to immerse her in a garden of pretty and fragrant flowers where fireflies danced at night. Her breath came in little gasps, as if her lungs were filling with fluid, and I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it before.

Her hands rested on top of the bedclothes, her wrists and elbows
looking swollen compared to the size of her arms. Her skin was yellow against the bright white of the pillow, her blond hair flat and dull. I wanted to deny that this person in the bed was Loralee, but then her head turned and she smiled that big, beautiful smile that I had once hated.

“Thanks for coming. Is Owen all right?”

“He’s with Maris. Her mother, Tracy, said he can stay as long as we need him to. I told him that I would bring him to see you as soon as I could.” I looked up at the white ceiling, willing my eyes not to betray me with tears. I was an expert at hiding my tears. Seven years of being married to Cal had been a good teacher.

“Thank you,” she said.

I had to take a few deep breaths before I could look at her. “You’re pretty damned good at hiding things. Even in plain sight.”

Her smile faltered. “I guess my secret’s out. I’m so sorry, Merritt.”

I sat down in a chair and pulled it up by the side of the bed. “Don’t you apologize to me or I’ll feel even worse.” I placed my purse on my lap, ready to go as soon as somebody let us know this was a huge mistake, and we could go home. “I’m thinking you’re not really broke, and you just used that as an excuse to move in with me.” I almost laughed. “Why didn’t you just tell me? In the beginning, when you first came here. I wouldn’t have turned you away.”

“I know that, Merritt. But I couldn’t. You would have taken us in because it was what you thought should be done. Or what you thought your father would have wanted. But I wanted you to do it because you believed in your heart that you
could
.”

“Could do what?” I asked, too distraught to be embarrassed about the sob in my throat. “Watch you die?” I hadn’t meant to use that word, but it propelled itself from me like a dart seeking its target.

She smiled softly. “So that you could help Owen through this. Take care of him after I’m gone. Be a mother to him.”

I shot up from my chair, my purse falling with a thud to the
floor. “I’m not a mother. Mothers make the right decisions; they know what’s best for their children. They’re strong.” I stared at her, the next words unspoken but understood.
Like my mother. Like you.

Her eyes sparkled, as if all the light that had seeped from her body had settled there. “You’re strong at the broken places.”

I looked at her, surprised she knew Hemingway. Then again, there was very little about Loralee Purvis Connors that didn’t surprise me. I returned to my seat, somehow depleted. “You’re wrong. I don’t have a clue how to be strong.” I paused, trying to control my breathing and to find the right words. “But I can promise you that I will take care of Owen the best way I know how. I don’t want you to worry for one second about that.”

She opened her hand on the mattress, and I put my own hand into hers, her fingers sending me a feeble squeeze. “Thank you.” She closed her eyes and I waited for her to fall asleep, but after a moment she began speaking. “You are capable of so much love, and you are worthy of it, too. I think I know who is responsible for making you forget that, and I’d like to open up a can of whoop-ass on him.”

A laugh that sounded like something between a bark and a sob escaped from my mouth. “Please don’t make me laugh. Not now. Not . . . here.”

A smile teased her lips. “My mama used to always say that laughter is the best medicine. I’d like to add chocolate to that, though. Not that I think I could stomach any right now.”

“How can you joke at a time like this?”

“Because I’m not sad about dying. I’ve had the most wonderful life. You know how some people come back from a vacation and they’re sad because it’s over? I just smile because it happened.”

“Did Hemingway say that, too?”

She shook her head. “Dr. Seuss, I think. You need to brush up on your Dr. Seuss. Owen will grill you on it.”

This time I didn’t even try to hide my sob. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I don’t know much about this dying thing, either, but I’ve learned that if you just keep moving forward, even if you’re stumbling or being dragged, you’ll eventually get to the other side.”

I squeezed her hand and watched as her eyelids fluttered shut. “You can do this,” she whispered.

“I’m not that strong,” I argued. “Broken places or not. But I will do my best for Owen.” After a moment, I added, “For both of you.”

Loralee had already fallen asleep, and my words slid unheard to the linoleum floor, then rolled into the empty corners of the room.

*   *   *

I stopped walking, struggling for breath, and quickly searched my brain for an innocuous fire fact.
Smoking is the primary cause of death by fire in the U.S. The second-most-common cause of fire deaths is heating equipment.

I sucked in a deep gulp of air saturated with the scent of the marsh. I looked around and realized I’d somehow managed to walk from the marina down to Waterfront Park. I’d been dropped off at the house to pick up my car before getting Owen, but had been stopped on the porch by the sound of the wind chimes. I remembered the first time Loralee had seen them and had called them mermaid’s tears. I ran back down the steps and just started walking. I was surprised that I’d walked this far by myself so near the water, surprised that I found comfort in the sound and smell of it.

I remembered sitting at the kitchen table while Loralee worked with Owen on his math, and her telling him that our bodies were made of more than fifty percent water. Maybe that was what brought us back to the water, even if it was the one thing we feared the most. Or maybe it was the simple fact that we’d floated for nine months before birth that made us seek that memory of water and the one time in our lives when we were truly content.