CHAPTER 7 #2
As Helen stood on the brick walk leading up to the house, she turned her face upward, picturing the double chimneys and graceful portico that had been added to the tabby facade in the last century.
She remembered it as being a lovely house on the outside, but the interior during her childhood there with her parents had been decorated with loneliness and disappointment and even now she avoided it as much as she could.
She didn’t bother to knock using the large lion’s head knocker.
She simply turned the handle and walked inside, then followed Mardi up the staircase to the upper level.
After pausing outside Tucker’s door for a moment, she threw it open.
One of the advantages of being blind, she always thought, was that people forgave a lot of bad behavior.
It also allowed them privacy when they were lying in bed stark naked.
“Damn it, Helen. Why do you do that?” The words were accompanied by the rustling of bedsheets.
She smelled the alcohol in the room and it made her want to gag. As she made her way to the window to pull open the curtains and slide open the sash, she asked, “Are you alone?”
Her question was answered by a pillow being thrown at her back.
“You shouldn’t throw things at blind people. It’s mean.”
Another pillow followed the first, hitting her on the side of the head as she turned to face the bed.
“Go to hell,” Tucker mumbled, sounding as if he were burying his face back into the mattress.
She moved toward the bed and crossed her arms as Mardi leapt onto the mattress. “I could just follow you, couldn’t I? You seem to be well on your way already.”
When he didn’t say anything, she turned away from the bed and felt her way to the bathroom to turn on the shower, then returned to the room to begin opening the rest of the windows. “It stinks like an ashtray that somebody poured bourbon on in here. At least you’re alone.”
The bed creaked as she pictured Tucker sitting up, listening to the bristling sound of his hands running over his face.
“I wouldn’t do that. My girls live here.”
“Yeah, well, not really. They spend more time at the big house than they do here and they weren’t here last night. I thought you could at least show them the courtesy of having breakfast with them this morning. Malily and the girls just sat down, so if you hurry, you could make it.”
With what sounded like a growl, Tucker stood and trudged to the bathroom. She followed him, pausing by the doorway. “Susan died, Tuck. Not you.”
The steady beat of the water against slate tiles agitated the silence between them. “It’s not that, Helen. It’s never been that.”
“Don’t you think I know that? Regardless of what people might think, I see an awful lot. But guilt will only carry you so far. And your girls need you.”
She heard him turn on the faucet and drop the cap to his toothpaste tube in the sink but he didn’t say anything.
“I’ll see you at breakfast, then.”
He answered by shutting the door in her face.
“I love you, too,” she shouted through the closed door before turning and leaving, allowing Mardi to lead the way.
As Helen made her way back down the brick walk, she heard footsteps crunching on gravel approaching her. She stopped and smiled. “Earlene?”
The footsteps stopped. “How did you know?”
“You’re the only person I know of on the property right now who walks with a limp.”
“Oh. Well. That makes sense, I guess.” Earlene’s voice was tight, like a dam had been built to prevent any words from tumbling out.
Helen smiled gently. Earlene Smith was a mystery to her.
Helen usually prided herself on developing images in her head of the people she met just by listening to their voices and the way they moved.
But when she tried to picture Earlene, a blank canvas flickered through her mind.
“I’m sorry if I’ve made you uncomfortable.
Being blind makes me notice things that seeing people deliberately overlook.
” She quickly changed the subject, sensing Earlene’s discomfort.
“You also sound out of breath. Did you walk all the way from the cottage?”
“Yeah, I did. Everything seems a lot closer on the map you gave me.” She rattled the map in her hand. “I was looking for the old family cemetery. It’s supposed to be near this house.”
Helen nodded. “You’re very close. This was the family home for a few years while the big house was being built.
They needed a cemetery pretty soon after they moved in here, unfortunately.
Smallpox epidemic. Took their two youngest children and a visiting cousin.
” She held out her arm. “If you’ll give me your arm so that I don’t trip on any roots or rocks, I’ll take you to it. ”
Cool fingers touched her hand and guided it to Earlene’s elbow.
The skin was warm and smooth, and Helen’s sensitive fingertips felt a long, raised scar on the inner side of the elbow.
“Thank you. And I’m glad I ran into you.
I forgot to ask you yesterday for your deposit check. Do you think I could have it today?”
Earlene was silent for a moment as Helen guided them both back toward the house. “Would it be all right if I gave it to you in cash?”
“Yes, of course. I normally don’t even suggest it because I don’t find many people carrying around so much cash.”
“Yes, well, I’d rather just handle it that way.”
Helen nodded, thinking it odd but somehow fitting in with the mystery of Earlene Smith. “We’re going to cut to the right here and cross the lawn until we reach the live oak with the tire swing leaning on it. My brother made it for his girls last year although he hasn’t hung it yet.”
Helen heard Mardi dash past them, most likely in pursuit of a squirrel. She laughed. “I’m glad I don’t depend on him as a guide dog. I might end up in a tree.”
Earlene laughed, too. “I haven’t had a dog in a long time.” She paused for a moment and then added, “It’s hard to remember what it’s like.”
Helen turned her head toward her companion, hearing the wistfulness in her voice, and something else, too.
A forced aloofness, maybe, and a fragileness, too.
Helen thought of the scar on Earlene’s elbow and the limp and wondered if her internal scars were there, too, and if they were just as permanent.
Earlene brought them to a stop. “We’re at the tree. Where next?”
“To the left. In about ten yards or so, you should see a small dirt path that will lead us into a wooded part. If you stay on the path there’ll be a clearing with an iron fence around it. You should be able to see the tombstones from there.”
Earlene pulled her arm in close. “Be very careful here. There’re lots of rocks and debris in the grass.”
“Thanks. And remember not to come out here at dusk. The no-see-ums are out then and those suckers can bite. Don’t bother with repellent, either. That stuff is like vitamin water to them—makes them bigger and stronger, I think.”
They continued walking, listening to Mardi’s collar clink and his heavy panting as he bounded around them.
The area around the cemetery was Helen’s favorite part of the plantation.
It was the place she remembered colors the most: the blue of the sky, the mossy greens and browns of the trunks of the sweet gum and hickory trees, the buttery yellows of the asphodels that sprouted untended inside the cemetery gates like flaming arrows thrown by the gods.
The memory of faces had faded with time, but the colors remained, bright flashes of light against perpetual darkness.
Helen could tell by the way Earlene relaxed her hold on her arm that they had reached the clearing. Slowly, they progressed around the perimeter of the fence to the gate where Earlene paused. “It’s beautiful here. The light here seems . . . I don’t know. Softer.”
“I know. When I was a little girl, I used to say that it seemed the sun was shining through angels’ wings.” Helen laughed. “I like to come here and paint sometimes when I can find somebody patient enough to bring my easel and paints and guide me in and out.”
“You paint?” Helen could hear Earlene’s struggle between politeness and curiosity.
“I haven’t been blind my whole life—not until a high fever at the age of fourteen. I loved to paint before and found no reason to stop now.” She could sense Earlene looking at her, hesitating. “What is it?”
Earlene took a deep breath. “I’m just . . . curious. Your grandmother’s house—it’s so dark. Being here, with this beautiful light, it just made me wonder . . .”
Helen reached out her hand and touched the cold metal of the wrought-iron fence, then slid her fingers up to the top of the arrows that pointed toward heaven and pressed her thumb down hard. “It’s always been that way, even when Tuck and I were children. What makes you ask?”
She felt Earlene shrug next to her. “My . . . aunt. She was that way, too. After she went away to live in a nursing home, I ran around opening up all the blinds. I’m thinking that maybe as we get older, our eyes must get more sensitive to the light.”
Helen pressed her thumb down harder, feeling a chip in the paint. “Or maybe our memories make us see things with such a bright clarity that we have to shield our eyes.”
Earlene lifted the latch on the gate. “Maybe.” The hinges squealed as she pushed open the gate, then led Helen inside.
There had been a fitful sprinkle of rain earlier that morning, just enough to torment the parched summer grass, and Helen could smell the moist earth and wet leaves that had piled up against the bottom of the fence.
She’d have to remind Tucker that he needed to clean it out although she was pretty sure he’d have somebody else do it.
Even as a child he hadn’t liked to come here and had once told her that it reminded him of a monster’s mouth, the white stones like sharp teeth waiting to catch him.
She supposed that he had even more reason to believe it to be true now that he was grown.