CHAPTER 2 #2
I knew that I should visit her, but her presence at my grandfather’s funeral had been exhausting as I fielded her repetitive questions and reintroduced her to relatives and friends she’d known for fifty years.
She’d been utterly lost, and after a while I stopped reminding her whose funeral we were attending.
To her, Granddaddy would always be alive, and it gave me some comfort to know that she would never be truly alone.
But I needed to go visit her. I would do it soon, if only to ask her why she would have thought to caution me about patience, strength, and pain.
I placed my grocery bags in the backseat of the old Buick, trying not to see my grandfather in his worn straw hat at the wheel, signaling his turns with his left hand because the fuse for his blinkers had blown out and he hadn’t wanted to part with the cash to replace it.
As I drove around our square toward East Taylor, the moss-draped oaks teased me with intermittent sun and shadow, the old houses staring stoically at the square and at me as I passed, defying time and climate simply by remaining.
In front of my house I paused, the antique beauty of the Savannah gray brick town house and delicate wrought-iron railings never lost on me.
I think it was because the first time I’d seen it, it had been a place a refuge following the death of my parents.
Even afterward, when I’d begun to think of my grandmother’s house as a place of sadness and shadows, it was still the place I called home.
If it held any secrets, I was kept blissfully unaware of them.
I pulled into a spot on the curb, belatedly remembering that I had given my front-door key to the funeral director so he could unload the funeral flowers and place them inside for the wake while I wasn’t home.
I sighed heavily, eyeing the three bags in the backseat and deciding whether I could balance all three while I cut through the side garden and made my way to the backyard.
I had set down one of the bags in an empty flower bed in the backyard to readjust the load when I heard the front doorbell ring. Leaving the bag on the ground, I unlocked the back door and ran inside, dropping the two bags on the kitchen counter before rushing through the house to the front door.
George Baker, an associate in Mr. Morton’s law firm in addition to being Mr. Morton’s grandson, stood on the front steps with an appropriate look of condolence on his face and a blue-and-white seersucker suit on his thin-framed body.
He wasn’t a bad-looking man, but his relentless pursuit of me since I had returned to Savannah six years before had made me wary and I avoided any contact with him with the same amount of effort I applied to avoiding any reminders of my past. He was also the only person of my acquaintance who insisted on calling me by my given name instead of the nickname my grandfather had given me the first time I’d sat on a horse.
“Hello, Earlene. I’m glad I found you at home.” He held up a foil-wrapped casserole dish. “Mama thought you might get hungry, so she sent her tomato-okra casserole for you. There’s a lot of food there, so if you don’t think you can eat it all, I’d be happy to stay for dinner and help you out.”
I took the casserole and forced a smile on my face. “Thanks, George. That was real sweet of your mother to think of me.”
He stood facing me, obviously waiting for an invitation to come inside.
I indicated the space behind me. “I left a bag of groceries in the back garden and two more in the kitchen and I need to go put them away before they spoil.”
“You know you’re not supposed to be carrying anything too heavy. Let me help you.”
Resigned to submitting myself to his company, I moved back to allow him in. “Let me put this casserole in the fridge if you wouldn’t mind getting the bag I left outside.”
He followed at my heels like a lost puppy as I made my way to the kitchen and he went out the back door.
I added the casserole to the collection in the refrigerator and started unloading the bags.
When George returned he began organizing the groceries on the counter by the section of the kitchen where they would be stored.
It annoyed me and I pretended not to notice his system when I put the can of peeled tomatoes in the pile with frozen peas and ice cream.
“You gave a beautiful eulogy at the funeral, Earlene. You’re a very strong woman, saying those words and not crying at all. I said that to my grandpa Paul and he said that you would have made your grandfather proud.”
“Thank you,” I said stiffly as I stuffed a plastic bag inside another. How could I explain to him that it wasn’t at all because I was strong? To be strong I’d have to feel something.
He stacked the two boxes of Froot Loops on the counter. “Do you really eat this for breakfast?”
A sarcastic comment came to my lips but I bit it back. I simply didn’t have the energy to apologize later. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.”
He pursed his lips. “I think your doctor would agree that a diet filled with fresh fruits and vegetables as well as whole grains would contribute to your healing process a lot quicker than all these processed foods.”
I gritted my teeth and began folding the plastic bags, knowing what was coming next.
“You know, your accident was close to six years ago. You should be walking with a lot less pain by now. Maybe you need to go back to your physical therapist to go over some exercises. . . .”
“Thanks for your concern, George. I appreciate it. Really. But I can take care of myself.”
His perusal of the kitchen countertops with crumpled fast-food bags made me a liar but I chose to ignore him as I bent under the kitchen sink to throw in the pile of plastic bags.
“Have you thought much about what you’re going to do now?”
I rose slowly, looking out the window over the sink into the bare garden, its beds as abandoned and neglected as a childhood dream.
His grandfather had asked the same thing and I think I hated them both a little bit for it.
For so long I’d existed with a wall between my present and my future and I had neither the will nor the strength to tear it down. It was so much easier to simply be.
I turned to face him. “It’s really none of your concern, George.”
“You know that I’d like it to be.”
I closed my eyes for a long moment and took a deep breath.
“There’s another reason I stopped by today.”
My eyes fluttered open with dread, half expecting a small ring box.
He reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out a small manila envelope.
“My grandfather meant to bring these to you when he stopped by yesterday. For some reason they were kept separately from the envelope he already gave you. I think it’s because these were given to my grandfather for safekeeping last year, when your grandfather first knew he was ill.
” He shoved the envelope at me and distracted himself with storing the frozen food in the freezer, stacking the peas and broccoli with military precision.
“I don’t think he meant for you to find them before he died.
Which is why he instructed us to give them to you after his death. ”
I stared down at the envelope with the law firm’s preprinted return address in the upper-left corner.
Only my last name, Mills, was written in an unfamiliar handwriting on the front.
I flipped it over and pulled out two letter-sized envelopes followed by a heavy silver key that slipped out of the envelope and clattered to the floor.
I stared at it for a moment before picking it up.
It was an old-fashioned key, like all the other keys that protruded from locks throughout the old house.
None of the doors were missing keys, and as I turned it over in my hand, I wondered what it could go to.
I then turned my attention to the two envelopes, both of them sealed and both of them addressed to a Miss Lillian Harrington at Asphodel Meadows Plantation, Savannah.
I recognized my grandmother’s handwriting, but not that of the person who had scratched through Lillian’s name and address and written, “return to sender.” I didn’t know who Lillian was, but I knew of Asphodel Meadows.
A former rice plantation built in the early eighteen hundreds on the Savannah River about thirty miles south of the city, it was now, and had been since around nineteen twenty, a horse farm.
I’d never been there, although it hadn’t been for lack of interest on my part.
Considering my past history with horses, I thought it odd now that my grandfather had never taken me there, or that our paths hadn’t crossed in the nearly incestuous equestrian community of Savannah.
I glanced up at George, who looked back at me with undisguised curiosity.
I shoved the key in my jeans pocket and put the letters back inside the larger envelope before tucking it under my arm.
Smiling brightly at George, I began to lead him back to the front door.
“Thanks so much for the casserole and for helping me with my groceries. I really do appreciate it.” I yanked open the door.
“I’ll be sure to call you if I need anything. I promise.”
His mouth jerked open and closed like a goldfish who’d sought sanctuary outside of his bowl as he tried to come up with something that would get me to invite him back inside. I put my hand on his arm and gently guided him through the doorway.
He put a hand on the doorframe, overly confident that I wouldn’t shut the door with his hand in the way. “You have my cell number, right? Call me anytime. Day or night. You hear? If you need anything, please call me first.”
I nodded. “I will, George. Promise.” I began to close the door and was grateful when I saw him yank his hand away.
I carried the envelope into the study and emptied the contents onto the mahogany desk and sat down. With my grandfather’s ivory-handled letter opener, I sliced open the smaller envelope. Carefully unfolding the heavy stationery, I read:
September 30, 1939
My Dearest Lillian,
My words are so inadequate, but I have no other means to reach you.
I know that circumstances dictate that we not have any contact with each other, but my conscience dictates that I at least attempt to reach you using whatever means I have to ask your forgiveness.
I don’t know if I can live the rest of my life without it, so I must at least try.
What happened was an accident.You were there and you know the desperate situation we were in, but the end result was the same.And for that, I cannot forgive myself but must rely on your clemency to release me from this guilt that claws at me every day without mercy.
Forgive me, Lillian. Forgive me for loving too much and for trusting too much. With God’s mercy and your forgiveness I might have hope again. Dum vita est, spes est, remember?
Please let me know that you have received this.You can send a message through Paul at the law offices. I see him often and I know that he can be trusted.
Remember how happy we once were? How much is changed, Lillian.
I don’t know if I can ever feel happy again after all that has happened.
But with your forgiveness I know that I can try.
Josie always told us that the more we loved, the more we lost of ourselves.
I think she’s right. I’ve lost so much that I don’t think I can ever find myself again.
Your friend forever, Annabelle
I read the letter three times, trying to hear my grandmother’s voice, the one I remembered from my childhood, but couldn’t.
Who was this Lillian? And Josie? And what had my grandmother done that was so horrible that she was begging for forgiveness?
If I hadn’t recognized her handwriting, I would have denied it was written by her.
This young woman in the letter was passionate and forceful. The grandmother I knew was neither.
Slowly, I slid the opener into the second envelope and pulled out the letter and began to read.
December 15, 1939
My dearest friend,
My first three letters to you have been returned to me unopened. I don’t blame you, for I deserve no better.
But I have loved you like a sister, as I loved Freddie and Josie, and my loss of all of you has killed something inside of me.
I only hope that one day you will find it in your heart to forgive me and we can be as sisters again.
Until then, I will not rest, nor weep, nor smile, nor love; I cannot, for a heart is required to do all those things.
Do you remember when we were not much younger and we talked about the men we would marry and the daughters we would have, and the stories we would tell them when they were old enough to hear?
I pray that you will have a daughter one day, and that I shall, too.Then we can share our stories with them so that what has happened will never be forgotten and we aren’t so all alone in our sorrow.That is my wish for both of us.
Good-bye, sweet friend,
Annabelle
My eyes stung with tears I couldn’t shed for a woman I thought I had known.
I caught sight of the little blue sweater I had left folded on top of the desk.
I lifted it up to my face, smelling nothing but dust and old secrets, and for the first time in my life I realized that my sad, quiet grandmother might have a story to tell me after all.