The Tidewater Sisters: Postlude to The Prayer Box (4 page)

The house’s shadow stretches long across the grass as I turn into the driveway again. I look down the road briefly, wondering if I should go tell Laura that I’m here. I don’t want to scare anyone, and I doubt she would argue with my right to look through what remains and claim mementos before they end up in some sort of court-mandated sale.

But at the same time, there’s that tiny bit of fear. What will I do if she tells me I shouldn’t go back inside?

The decision is made before I exit the car. There’s a black kitten lounging on the porch railing as I cross the exposed joists. Its wary amber eyes are the only ones to offer concern as I grip the handle, open the door, and disappear into the past.

At least, I reason, if I get arrested for this, Laura can honestly say she had nothing to do with it.

The search I begin this time is systematic. It seems more clinical that way, less like a potential criminal act. But in truth, the criminal act has already been committed here. Everything else of obvious value has been stripped from the place. I gather a small pile of keepsakes from the kitchen—things I remember Meemaw cooking with, the little salt and pepper shakers she and Pap-pap bought on their honeymoon to the Grand Canyon, a platter with the invitation to their fiftieth wedding anniversary decoupaged on.

A wedding photo of the two of them has been shellacked to the back of the platter. Even through the crazed, yellowed coating, I marvel at how young they are, how happy they look, how beautiful my grandmother is in her satin, 1940s-era wedding gown. The fabric hugs her body and cascades around her feet.
Always and forever,
a small brass plaque reads,
Daisy and Othoe.
A little silver pitcher lies tipped over on the shelf where the platter was. A mouse runs out as I reach for it, but I grab it anyway. This bit of treasure has escaped the looting, and it’s going home with me.

The haul is similar in the other rooms downstairs. Mostly I find sentimental items. An afghan I remember, a doll with crocheted clothing my grandmother made, a jewelry box with a crystal necklace inside. Mice scamper. The sun drifts from east windows to west windows. I make small piles in each room, deciding that in the long run I should see if the back porch is still intact. I could pull my SUV around there to load things. There’s a bedside lamp and table and a stack of old framed pictures I’m determined to take.

The breeze rattles the front door and distant thunder rumbles as I go upstairs. It’s then that I remember the old tobacco tin in the sewing room. The one I wanted to open earlier. The one my grandmother always indicated would be mine someday.

I go in search of a chair to stand on so I can reach the shelf and I discover one in the bedroom at the end of the hall. The furniture is all still there, although the dresser drawers have been left askew. Strings of hand-tatted lace hang from the corners like chains of Spanish moss.

I stand staring momentarily, remembering two things. A vision of my grandmother’s hands deftly moving the tatting shuttle in swirls and circles, winding thread into artful tangles, competes with a memory of my father in this room, tying yet another noose around our lives. Duffel bags, trash sacks, and cardboard boxes litter the bed, and he’s throwing everything we have into them. My mother is downstairs screaming at my grandmother, who’s begging her to leave Gina and me here until there’s proof that Daddy’s new oil-field job in Texas is even real.

Let us keep the girls until you’re settled. Tandi Jo’s havin’ such a hard time a’ready,
Meemaw pleads, and when that doesn’t work, she begs Mama to at least wait until my grandfather gets back from visiting the Townley family at the hospital.
He’d gone to share in prayers and offer help with the harvest and give what little comfort neighbors can when a beautiful young daughter lies irreparably damaged and a handsome teenage son will never again open his eyes to this world.

You think I don’t know you’re tryin’ to steal my kids?
Mama shrieks, the sound so loud it travels up the stairs, cutting through my numbness, my pain, the wave of agony that has carried me since news of the Townley kids’
accident traveled in whispers down Mulberry Run Road.

You stay too,
Meemaw offers desperately, even though every time we land here, my mother’s presence hits this house like an electric mixer on high.
Land’s sake, think of what just happened to the Townley kids. That could just as soon be you and the girls. Is Wade drinkin’ again? Is that why he’s in a yank to leave all of a sudden?

Turning from my grandmother’s tatting, I sweep the memory away like so much clutter. There’s no point in revisiting the drama of our last day in this house.

On the way past the dresser, I snatch a piece of her handmade lace and tuck it in my back pocket. She made yards and yards more than she ever used, her hands never idle, as she sat watching
Hee Haw
and
Family Ties
in the evenings. Maybe I’ll go through the drawers, salvage some more, and look for her tatting shuttles, if there’s time after I’ve checked all the rooms. A display of those things would be nice in the Benoit House Museum, along with a bit about how the women of North Carolina’s coastal areas passed their time during icy winter downpours and howling nor’easters.

My mind settles on the satisfying thought, finding peace there. Meemaw and her tatting preserved in the museum sounds like a fitting tribute. Perhaps I can even find a photo of her at work in her chair or her sewing room. I need a week in this house, not just a few hours. I need time to comb out the treasures that should be preserved, that have slipped through my sister’s carelessly raking, greedy fingers.

But for now, it’s the tobacco tin I want. I carry the chair to her sewing shelves, ignore the wiggling and groaning as I climb on top, and bring down both the tin and the box that’s with it. A label scotch-taped on the tin reads,
For Tandi Jo
.

The cardboard box is labeled too.
For Gina Marie.
Acid boils into my throat, and I’m instantly furious again. Meemaw would be so heartbroken by what has happened in this house.

Leaning against the shelves, I set the tobacco tin in my lap, take a breath and exhale, and try to expel Gina from the room. This moment is just for my grandmother and me, as if she were handing me the mysterious treasure herself. I imagine that, from heaven, she’s watching the opening of the lid. I can feel her all around me, smiling, her hands clasped over her baker’s apron, her bright-blue eyes twinkling against her ruddy skin.

Inside I find what looks like a necklace of carved ivory beads, along with a rounded pendant, a piece of lace so old it’s almost caramel in color, a filigreed gold ring with some sort of crest on top, and a note in Meemaw’s handwriting.

I take out the note first and set it aside. A small gold locket hides beneath, the chain almost lost in the lace. I think I remember it from the trinkets I always admired in Meemaw’s little heart-shaped jewelry box. She told me stories about the various keepsakes there. I think Pap-pap bought the locket for her. . . .

The other things in the tobacco tin I’ve never seen before, nor have I ever seen anything quite like them. The beads remind me a bit of the scrimshaw carvings we’ll be exhibiting in the Benoit House Museum soon. There was a collection of them found in the attic, carved on walrus tusks and whalebone by sailors. Perhaps they were given to the Benoit family by various captains within their shipping empire, or possibly collected by the Benoits themselves on their seafaring travels. But the work on these beads is much more detailed and fine. They’ve been carefully shaped into land and sea creatures. A hummingbird, a sea turtle, a fish. Two oval beads bear the indented carvings of dolphins and boat oars.

The central pendant is teardrop shaped, with what looks like an ornate bottle stopper at the top where it’s attached to the necklace. I would suspect that it’s a snuff jar—I’ve seen some fancy ones while looking through potential donations for the museum—but there’s a Maltese cross beautifully etched on the front. I doubt this was ever meant to hold snuff, but it was intended to hold
something
. I study it until I discern the location of a hinge. A tiny brass nail at the other end has been modified and notched to serve as a clasp. It opens with surprising ease, considering its apparent age.

The container is empty, but I sit and marvel at a lovely carving of a compass rose. Again, I try to imagine the carver, whoever he might have been. Did he create this work while lying in his bunk far out at sea, the ship rocking and groaning as it crossed from the old world to the new? Did he bring it home to a wife, or a son or daughter, who waited for his return? Or did he sell it in some foreign port to earn a few extra coins? I’ve always been a lover of old things, but these last months of working to reclaim Benoit House and open the museum have given me a new passion for their history.

Laying the piece carefully back in the tin, I pick up Meemaw’s letter again. Where in the world would she have come by this odd collection? Did she know its origins?

The letter tells me immediately that finding out won’t be so easy. Meemaw doesn’t provide any answers. Just more questions.

You always been the one to ask me about the old things around the farm, so you’re the one to have these. They been in my family long as anyone can remember, handed down among the womenfolk. My grandma give them to me when I married and left the Blue Ridge, but she couldn’t tell me their story for sure. She thought they come over on the boat from the old country, which would mean they’re pretty old. My granny always said she could’ve been in the historical society with the hoity-toities, if she wanted it.

I never tried to go back and find out. Seemed like there was always something better to do. Guess I’ve been more the practical sort all my life. I do know that the veil is called a mantilla, and that it’s for the day you find the right man who’ll love you all your life, and marry him. My granny wore it on the day she married, and I carried it on the day I married, and my granny told me that it had been wore by all the brides in the family before that.

I always hoped I’d give you this on your wedding day. But prayers sometimes aren’t answered to our choosing. I can’t really say why we always had so much trouble with your mama. I want you to know we tried our best for her. She was a good girl up until she got to running with the wrong kids and met up with your daddy. Seems like nothing we could do would fix things after that.

Be smart when you pick a man to settle down with, sweetness. Make sure he’s a good one like your Pap-pap. Don’t settle for one bit less.

Pap-pap and I always loved you girls to the end of the ocean and back.

There’s no date on the letter, no way of knowing whether she wrote it shortly after my parents took us back to Texas or a few years later when my grandfather had the stroke that forced their move to the nursing home.

It doesn’t matter, I suppose. What matters is that they never stopped thinking of us or hoping for us. After having largely messed up the first fifteen years of my adulthood, I’m finally living a life they would be proud of.

In some ways, I’m glad I didn’t discover this letter before now. I wouldn’t have been ready for it. But in less than two weeks, I will be walking down the aisle with a man who loves me in ways I never understood were possible. Now I’ll be carrying a piece of my history, ties to my ancestors, a blessing from my grandparents.

This feels like an incredible gift.

I look at the box that has been left with Gina’s name on it, and the usual anger bursts forth. Before I have time to rethink, I’m lifting the lid, taking care not to let the dust fall inside. The contents are wrapped in faded blue tissue paper, and what I find only fans the burn. A wedding picture of my grandparents, and my grandmother’s dress. The satin has aged to a warm eggshell color, and the light touch of beading around the draped
neckline is a deep toffee shade. But the gown is in remarkable shape, a simple, sleek style with no petticoats and frills. There is also a pearl necklace, a folded note for Gina, and one of Pap-pap’s harmonicas. Gina was always the musical one, the one with Pap-pap’s beautiful singing voice. She talked about how she’d become a star and buy a big house for all of us.

I don’t open her letter, but I can’t resist taking out the gown. It unfurls as I stand, and I’m careful to hold it off the dusty floor. Unfortunately, I’m probably staining it green with envy. I’ve picked a simple dress to wear at my upcoming wedding, but I wish my grandmother had given me this special keepsake. It even seems to be about the right size.

I remember now that my grandmother sewed the dress herself. She told me the story of picking out the fabric and salvaging lace and pearls from a damaged ball gown given to her by a woman she worked for.

Without thinking, I hurry down the hallway to the pink room, where Gina and I stayed as children. The tall, oval mirror still stands in the corner there. In fact, the place is largely undisturbed. Maybe my sister didn’t think there would be anything of value here. Maybe some spaces are sacred, even to her.

I hold my grandmother’s gown over myself like a little girl playing dress-up, draping the shoulders against my body, leaning back slightly, hugging the waist with one arm, turning side to side and watching the satin swish.

I imagine what it would be like to surprise Paul, Sandy, and even the kids by walking over the dunes on my wedding day, not in the sundress with the tulle skirt, but in this amazing vintage creation, this garment that has in its very fibers the belief in a lifelong love.

Gina would’ve dropped this thing at a Goodwill by now if she had it,
I tell myself.
She doesn’t want it. It means nothing to her. Besides, she’s already taken more than her fair share here.
. . .

I know I’m rationalizing. Guilt creeps in. My grandmother left this for Gina. It doesn’t belong to me.