Galveston (72 page)

“It was the last time I talked to her. Within a few days, she'd given birth to you and died. We went to a little graveside service for her with the Weavers.”

“Was it you, by chance, who kept flowers on her grave?”

“Yeah. Nick tell you about that? And I was the one who persuaded Edwynna to adopt you after we lost Sarah. In 1910 I went back to that cemetery in Ohio and had Serena's body moved to the City Cemetery in Galveston. It seemed to me she ought to be there, instead of in Ohio, and it was ten years before I had the money to do it. It was an under-the-table deal, I'll admit, and I never told anybody—certainly not Edwynna. It was just something I wanted to do for you and for her.”

“So she's been here all this time, practically under my nose? Why didn't you ever tell me?”

“I couldn't risk Edwynna finding out. She wouldn't have understood.”

“Tell me, how did Mother feel about the idea of adopting me?”

“Well, of course she was broken up pretty bad over losin' Sarah. She didn't cotton to the idea at first, but I persuaded her, and of course it didn't take long after we got you before she felt just like you were really hers, until—”

“Until I started being a troublemaker.”

“Yeah, but that doesn't mean she never loved you, even if you did cause her concern. She just has trouble showing her love.”

“Didn't she blame me, too, for the accident?”

“Absolutely not. She was as glad as I was that you were young enough to forget it.”

“You know, it's funny, but I always wondered why you two adopted me. Mother didn't seem to care about me, and you spent all your time working away from home.”

“I didn't work to get away from you, Willa. But a man has got to get ahead. You can understand that, surely. And I wanted you to have everything Serena couldn't give you. If she could have known for sure that we'd eventually get you, she would have expected me to provide well for you.”

“Yes, I think you're right about that.”

“Willa, what's bothered me from the beginning of this thing is how you could take a gown and a pair of shoes and come up with this much information.”

“I had a little more help than that,” I told him, smiling, “but it's too late to go into it right now. Later I'll tell you all about it, but it's too long a story to begin when I'm this exhausted.”

“Yeah, I bet you are. If it weren't so late, I'd take you to the cemetery tonight, though. I know you're anxious to see your mother's grave.”

“I'll stay overnight if you'll loan me some money, and go tomorrow. I want to visit her alone.”

“Willa, I'm your father. You don't have to borrow from me. Whatever I have is yours; you're the major reason I worked as hard as I did for it.”

“No, it isn't fair. I'm on my own from now on.”

“All right, if that's the way you feel. But you will come back, then?”

“Probably so. Dad, have you heard anything from Rodney?”

“Not a word. But I just know if you wanted him back, he'd be reasonable about it. He's a fine boy.”

“I don't know. I have a fondness for him that I've never felt for anyone else, but the past few days have left my brain muddled about everything to do with the present. I've got to think. I thought once, earlier today, that I might go back, try to explain to him. Now—”

“What?”

“Well, if you want the truth, the idea of marriage kind of sickens me.”

“Why?”

“Because it involves so many lies. What came about for the past forty years was caused by a woman named Claire, who lied from the beginning about the real meaning of marriage, and that lie has done nothing but snowball all along, never getting straightened out. And now, I find that even marriage between you and Mother is something of a lie. Somewhere, the lying has to stop.”

“Look. I won't dispute that statement. But remember that turning from Rodney if you really do love him is just as much a lie as marrying for less than love. If you don't make it up with him just because you want to make a point about marriage in general, you'll only be cheating yourself.

“Whatever you decide, be sure it really is an honest decision, either way.”

“It's what my mother wanted for me, isn't it?”

“Yes, it is, and what I want for you, too.”

“Dad, thank you for what you did, for caring about Serena, my mother.”

“I'm glad I did it, especially now. Maybe it'll convince you once and for all that you were always loved, from the beginning.”

I didn't sleep a lot last night because I had some reading and a lot of thinking to do.

My mother's diary is the epistle of a quiet, reserved, and serious-minded young woman transformed almost overnight into a starry-eyed, hopeful girl in love with a tall, mysterious stranger.

She is not terribly graphic in her diary as to the details of her love affair with Roman Cruz, and I had to read it several times to pick up the subtleties that related her true feelings for him.

What came through to me finally was her ability to let herself trust him enough to love him completely, without timidity or shame for what they did together, and, in return, his ability to make her feel not like an instrument to satisfy his desires, but a person with whom to share something beautiful and satisfying to them both.

It occurred to me after I closed the diary finally and put out the light, that Rodney Younger has given me so many more reasons for that kind of trust than Roman Cruz must have given my mother, yet I've been afraid to let myself believe in him even a fraction as much as she believed in my father.

I knew then that I'd loved Rodney Younger for a long time, yet never so much as now.…

There is a small brass vase at the center of the monument to my mother, and this morning I placed the small bouquet of white mums there that I'd picked up at a florist down the street from the City Cemetery.

They look nice there—a spot of gaiety in an otherwise gloomy place made even more so by the bleakness of the sky above. The monument is in simple taste—apparently purchased before my father's affinity for gaudiness came about. The epitaph begins simply enough, too: “Here lies Serena Garret, born 1880, died 1900.”

But then there is something added beneath that I read over several times, unable to believe my own father had ordered it put there:

Behold her, single in the field
,

Yon solitary Highland Lass!

Reaping and singing by herself;

Stop here, or gently pass!

As I knelt down beside the grave, I wondered how my father came to choose these lines from Wordsworth. Had he learned them in school years before, perhaps charged with memorizing them, and then never quite forgot them? Or did he pore for hours over books of poetry in a library somewhere, trying to find the suitable words for describing my mother as he had known her?

Whatever the reason for his choice, I like it.

It isn't a happy poem, but then my mother wasn't happy when she died, and she was very much alone.

I stayed by her grave for a long time this morning, thinking about the cruelties of her fate. Here she lay, in the middle of the island she tried most desperately to get away from, after spending the final months of her life in the home of a family she would not have chosen to be with, her greatest joy probably brought by the pleasant visits of a man she hardly knew and the children who'd call to her from the yard below. Like Janet Garret, she was something of an invalid in the end: her spirit beleaguered; her once lithe body swollen and shapeless, confined to a small upstairs room with a view of the world outlined by the frame of a window.

I had felt somehow, before I reached her grave, that we'd carry on a kind of visit together, she and I. I thought if I brought the picture of her along, concentrated on it hard enough, I could bring her to life at least enough to imagine what she might be saying to me.

Yet the stone was cold from the winter day. Nothing moved inside me as I expected it would. If we met, it was as two strangers exchanging brief glances as they pass each other along the sidewalk.

A peculiar thought crossed my mind as I rose to leave: I went to visit my mother today, but my mother was not at home.

There was someone behind me, an old man sitting a few feet distant on a bench, his bony hands poised over the top of a cane. “Oh, miss,” he said, “I notice you been here quite a while. I guess you lost someone pretty special to you.”

“Yes, that's right,” I told him.

“It's nice to remember the dead, honey. Now, take me, for instance … I hang around here because most of my friends are buried here and I like being close to them. But you're young, got your whole life ahead of you. Don't tarry here long. Life is for the living.”

I nodded at him, then turned and looked down at Mother's grave. Perhaps she was speaking to me, after all.

Here lies Willa Katherine Frazier [always remained a Frazier], a cold bitch who died as she lived: alone.

I have arrived now, at 1204 Heights Boulevard.

As I feared, the For Sale sign is posted in the center of the yard, near the front walk. Yet the porch light is beaming and there are lights aglow in the downstairs windows. No need to give up hope.

I send the cabdriver away, and pause at the edge of the walk. The house has taken on a different look, somehow, and I gaze on it for some moments before going ahead, wondering what changes have taken place. Then I realize there have been no changes made to the house except in the way I see it: it looks friendly and inviting in a way it never did before.

I move slowly toward the house, thinking surely the journey from here to there has never been so long. I believe now I understand a little of what Rodney felt upon his father's death, and the old song comes back to me again:

“Hello, my baby, hello, my honey, hello, my ragtime gal.” (Am I already crying, or is the cold drizzle settling on my face?)

When Rodney opens the door, all calmness leaves me.

I am talking high and fast, saying things I never meant to say until later, getting all mixed up, telling him my mother was a dancer and I have her shoes, can even wear them, and my father was a musician, and they both loved me, and I'm sorry, so sorry, and would he please talk about it and try to forgive me, and as I ramble on I realize that Rodney Younger had something to say:

“It was better, I think, that you chose to leave.”

The words are like stones thrown against a wall.

“Oh, I see. Yes, if that's the way you feel, I guess … guess I'll go. Did I say how sorry? I did want you to know at least that much. Yes, I'll be going now. Close the door before you catch your death …”

I am walking away then through a blur of tears, weaving from one side of the walk to the other and thinking how utterly stupid to have sent the cab away, that I'll have to catch a trolley somewhere, but where, which way?

“Willa!”

The voice is strong, commanding. I stop.

“You didn't let me finish. Lord, will you never learn a little patience? Come inside a minute.”

I turn around to see his figure on the porch, and I love the way he looks, standing there, the porch light playing on his face. I want to obey him, yet my legs are like two wooden stakes buried deep in the ground.

“All right, stay there if you'd rather. I only meant that your leaving made me realize just how little we really knew about each other, and what a big mistake we were making. It was as much my fault as yours.”

“You don't think that now, we could start over, try again, take it slowly? Remember what you said long ago about life being like a stubborn automobile—”

“I don't know. It wouldn't be the same.”

“No, Rodney, because I'm not the same person anymore.”

“If you had only come to me that night, instead of running off by yourself. I'd have helped you all I could.”

“Yes, I think now you would, but then I couldn't let myself trust you.”

“And now?”

“I'm not sure, but I think I could. I've learned an awful lot about trusting this past week.”

His silence at my remark speaks louder than any words, and the chill of this night has never seemed so penetrating as now.

“Well, I won't take any more of your time then …”

“Willa, I'd like to hear all about it if you want to tell me. I thought before that if I loved you enough, eventually you'd love me back and everything would work out. But I realized after you ran away how wrong I was … that I expected too much from both of us.”

“Then I never really fooled you, did I?”

“No, but I did love you, even as you were then.”

“Oh, but Rodney, I know who I am now and I'm not afraid any more. That's what really counts, isn't it?”

“Well, I guess it's the first step at least,” he says, and the warmth of his smile melts the icy drizzle between us and calls me home.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Originally published by Doubleday, NY.

Copyright © 1976, 2000 by Suzanne Morris

ISBN: 978-1-5040-2901-8

Distributed in 2016 by Open Road Distribution

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