Backwater (17 page)

Octavia held the photo to the light and whispered, “Five hours is nothing, Ivy.”

Dad and I visited Josephine the day she was going to check out of the hospital. Dad was all worried because for the rest of her recuperation, she was going to stay with a friend of hers who lived outside of town. Dad felt she should come home with us for as long as she liked, and she looked at him and said that was the sweetest thing he’d ever said to her, but both he and she knew it would never work.

“It could …” Dad began. “I’d rather not have to worry.”

“Then don’t.” Jo looked straight at his stiff chin. “Don’t worry about me, Dan, I’m fine.”

“You were near dead a few weeks ago.”

“That was then. This is now.”

“I do not understand the lure of that cabin, Jo.”

“Would you like to understand?” she asked.

He took in a stream of air and said nothing. What neither of them realized was that I had just come from the cafeteria and was at the hospital room door, listening.

“Let me try to explain it to you. And this time, Dan, just listen.”

“I’m listening.”

“Do you remember when we were kids and I used to hide
when company came and Mom sent you to find me up in the attic?”

“I remember.”

“Do you know why that was?”

“I assumed you were just trying to get attention.”

“I was trying to avoid it. I don’t like loud, boisterous shouting. I don’t feel like myself when I’m in a room with lots of people. I didn’t make myself this way; it isn’t some freak of nature that forgot to wire certain things together. I’m not like you, Dan.”

“I never expected you to be like me,” he said with irritation.

“You didn’t mean to, but you did.”

Jo sat on her hospital bed and looked out the window. “Dan, there are so many personalities in this world. So many people have different ways of being. I think you haven’t meant to do it, no one has, but except for Tib, no one allowed me to be different from the family. I don’t know if my personality scared people, or angered them, but it was clear that the measure of a Breedlove was how much they were like other Breedloves and could play the game. I didn’t qualify on either of those fronts, and without meaning to, people cut me off. The family did to me what Dad used to do to you.”

“That’s not fair!”

“Yes, it is. When you had so much trouble in school, Dad never gave you a break because you focused differently than Archie. He pushed you, Dan; he forced you to be tough, he insisted you be the kind of student that Archie was, and when you weren’t, he cut you off.”

I stepped back. Dad had a focus problem?

“He did it for my own good!” Dad shouted.

“Did he? I remember you up till three in the morning studying because it took you longer to do it. I remember Dad not even talking to you at dinner when you got average grades. Things didn’t come easily to you like they did to Archie, but Dad always saw that as some moral failing instead of the fact that you were just different. You needed a different approach. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

I stepped back, shocked.

“Dan, I watched your personality get harder and harder trying to catch Archie. Was it worth it?”

Dad lifted his arms in surrender and sat on the beige vinyl hospital chair. I closed my eyes, trying not to cry.

“Do you know what my cabin means to me, Dan? It’s the most authentic thing I’ve ever created. But it isn’t the building of it that means the most, it’s what it represents. And now it’s gone, but I don’t need things like I used to. I do need great periods of time to be alone. Please understand, I’m not asking you to change. You have great strength; you pull that from the law and being with other people. Your personality is chiseled by force. I respect that in you more than I can say. But you have to let me be genuine. I cannot be in a situation that tries to tear that from me repeatedly. And my sense is that Ivy can’t either.”

I leaned against the door. I had never heard truer words spoken. I wanted to walk in and say she was right, but all I could do was stay there and feel.

Dad said, “I have never meant to take anything from you, Josephine.”

“I know you haven’t,” she said. “Believe me.”

“I am so sorry.”

I wasn’t sure if I’d ever heard my father apologize.

I was stunned.

I stood in the doorway now, tears in my eyes, looking at my father slumped in the chair.

“I forgive you, Dan. I forgave you long ago.”

And now I cleared my throat and they looked up at me. Dad’s face was etched in pain. Jo’s face shone.

“Dad, I need to tell you—I’m not trying to gang up on you here—but I’ve felt the same way.”

“I wish,” he said, “someone had told me sooner.”

At first I was angry at that. It was plain impossible to tell him anything he didn’t want to hear. Dad climbed into a tank and rolled over people. But Jo was looking at me in a way that made what had gone on before not matter.

“She’s telling you now, Dan.”

I had not realized how quickly a lawyer could change gears, even though I’d seen my father do it plenty of times when he was debating against Archie. He looked up, but there was a softness about him now, like the carving of him as a little boy, gone off to find a fish.

He reached for my hand. “Tell me now, Ivy, what do we need to do?”

I hadn’t expected this part.

“Well …” I said, unsure.

“Tell me what to do.” Dad leaned forward, ready. He was a man of action.

I could have said any number of things.

I want you to see me for who I really am, Dad.

I want you to stop pushing at me so hard.

But at this moment, I decided to say, “I want to be able to talk to you about Mom.”

He took an enormous breath.

“And I want you to accept the fact that I don’t want to go to law school. I know you want me to. I know Grandpa wanted me to. But I promise you, I would make the worst lawyer in the history of the profession and bring utter disgrace on the family name.”

Dad stiffened, nodded. The truth pushed upward from his ears to his cranium.

“I suppose,” he said finally, “there are worse things than not becoming …” he struggled briefly, “… a lawyer.”

Embracing my new wilderness maturity, I decided not to ask him what those things were.

*    *    *

When I settled back in school, it was clear I was a different person and I wrestled with the frustration only known to the profoundly mature who are forced to live among the childish.

I tried mentioning this to Egan, who said that other than my severe case of chapped lips, I looked exactly the same.

I briefly ran it by Octavia, who had scratched out a list of her most significant life moments that she could use in her college entrance essay and was not feeling gracious. “
You
, Ivy, have a life-changing adventure to write about. All I have are paltry, unrelated incidents. If I begin with the time that rock-and-roll band helped me change a tire on the Interstate, there is no reasonable transition to when Snooks, my hamster, died.”

G. Preston Roblick had buried the story of Thickman
Memorial Stadium deep in the recesses of administrative deception. But when a person has brushed against death, saved another human being, befriended a carnivore, and made lasting peace with a lawyer, a little thing like a dark prep school secret isn’t going to stop her.

I stood before G. Preston Roblick in his paneled office and read passionately from my closing paragraph of the one-hundred-year history of the school.

“So we can learn greatly from this part of our history because the spirit of history must always be rooted in the reporting of truth. We all, as human beings, have parts in our lives that are not right, parts that we would like to hide from public view. Perhaps the greatest lesson to be learned from Thickman Memorial Stadium is that when grave mistakes in life are made, we must use all of our resources to face them and right them. The building of an auditorium cannot bring back a football championship, but it is a shining memorial to forgiveness, accountability, and the power of redemption. It is in accepting all our history that we move forward with pride and acceptance to embark upon Long Wharf Academy’s next hundred years.”

To my surprise, I found that reading it out loud was only a tenth as difficult as trusting a wolf to lead me across thin ice.

“That’s how I had to write it, sir. If you can’t see fit to use the whole story, then I think I have to withdraw as historian.”

G. Preston Roblick looked down and spoke, it seemed, from deep within his oxford shirt.

“Against my better judgement, we will let history be the judge.”

“I think that’s right, sir. There will be a few snickers and giggles as kids get used to the idea—more than a few, probably—but I think that eventually—”

“This is not helping your cause, Ms. Breedlove.”

“Right. I’ll shut up.”

It was March 2nd. I was standing in the old family cemetery holding the one-hundred-and-eighty page Breedlove family history, complete with genealogical charts, copies of the gravestone rubbings, important artifacts, and scores of ancestral photos down through the ages. I ran my hand over the fake blue-leather cover that was embossed with a raised gold B, which added a distinctive, ageless flair.

I had seventy-five copies made, and when they were delivered, the man in the truck left them on the doorstep in twelve boxes. I carried them inside carefully, feeling like a mother who had just given birth, although Aunt Cassandra, who had recently been in labor for eighteen hours giving birth to twin boys, said there was
absolutely
no comparison.

I opened the book to the plastic pull-out section in the back that was about my mother. Even though she wasn’t a blood Breedlove, she was a part of us and she had given me her love for history. It had a photograph of her holding me as a baby as Dad looked on smiling. Across the photograph, I’d put blue stick-on letters that read “
GONE, BUT NOT FORGOTTEN.
” I’d
listed her accomplishments (where she went to school—University of Michigan; where she worked—from 31 Flavors to the Department of Social Services) and the things I knew she liked (rain storms, jazz, milkshakes, and helping people). I had a copy of her gravestone rubbing on a separate page. I’d found a picture in a magazine of a beautiful soaring white dove, cut it out carefully, and pasted it in the corner. Last night I left the book open to her section by my bedroom window and when I woke up this morning, I knew she had seen it.

Aunt Tib’s party was about to start.

It was strange to be through with this project. I’d worked so hard to get it right. I didn’t know if I was ready to let go.

My inner critic was working overtime.

Had I written it well enough?

Would people read it?

Did I go overboard?

I looked at the mountains and realized those questions didn’t matter anymore.

Josephine was in the house for the first time in twelve years. She spent most of her time outside near where her cave had been, feeding the birds, coaxing them into her hand, clomping across the lawn with her big cast and crutches, cultivating what peace she could find.

“It bothers me that I always know where to find you.”

It was Egan, looking particularly miserable in a suit and tie. He pulled at his white collar.

“Fiona’s got a big screen set up, and speakers around the room, but don’t let it throw you, Ivy. Everybody really wants to read yours. We’re getting started now.”

As a runner, Egan didn’t understand that the race was over. He held his hand out to help me up and we walked past the gravestones and up the front porch to the party.

Balloons were everywhere, even though Tib couldn’t see them. She could feel them and that was enough.

When we walked into the living room, Tib sensed the winds of history blowing and shouted, “Ivy Breedlove, I cannot wait another second. Bring it here to me.”

A trumpet fanfare would have been appropriate.

I was as proud as a person could be.

I held the book out like it was made of diamonds. It was, too—the treasures of understanding a part of why my relatives lived their lives the way they did. I’d seen family traits like aggressiveness and courage played out throughout the generations. I’d learned the supreme value of lawyers—how they thought, why they needed to argue, and the unquenchable courage that comes to those who have been raised by them. I’d seen history repeated—generations of widowers who never remarried, hermit-like characteristics in several Breedlove women—from Vesta on the Mayflower to Josephine. I saw family patterns broken, defended, and new healthy ones established. I learned that I am not an exact replica of anyone and I don’t need to be. I learned that understanding comes from acceptance.

I walked past Fiona, who smiled from her heart, past Dad who patted me on the shoulder and said with great effort, “Your mother would be exceedingly proud of you. I am proud for both of us.”

I gulped, nodded, kept walking. Tib shouted, “And, Josephine, you come on up here with her.”

Jo hobbled to my side. We were both laughing a little.

“Put the book in my hand,” Tib ordered.

I did. She felt the cover, felt the embossed B, nodded her head.

“It’s good and heavy,” she said approvingly.

“One hundred and eighty pages,” I said proudly.

“You start reading it to me after dinner.”

“I will.”

Tib took my hand and took Josephine’s, too.

I desperately wanted to say, “I probably got some stuff wrong,” but I didn’t say it. Like any piece of written history, this was my cut at truth and discovery.

Tib said a cycle in history had been completed and it was one of the happiest days of her life.

The assembled Breedloves broke into rafter-shaking clapping. Josephine looked like she wanted to bolt, but she stood right there smiling.

Historians and hermits aren’t used to applause.

It’s funny how things are connected.

I went off in search of my aunt, and when I found her, I discovered a missing piece of myself in the process.