48. Ansley Peachtree Bluff
ansley: peachtree bluff
LEE WAS BAPTIZED ON THE first day of spring.
Well, not the official first day of spring, but the first day of spring as any true Peachtree Bluff resident would have understood it.
The air had shifted to a perfect clarity with just enough humidity to give your skin a nice glow but not so much as to require a handkerchief.
She made the most contented little peep as the water hit her forehead as she was—in my favorite of all the lines in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer—marked as Christ’s own forever.
She was the sweetest baby, the quietest. She was what I had always heard a third baby would be.
My third baby had been an anomaly, apparently.
And I wondered, as I held Lee now, back home in my foyer, what Caroline’s third baby would be like.
Vivi was a little Caroline. Full of fire and wildly opinionated.
And I thought my heart might burst that I’d get to see her more often when she came to Georgia to visit.
I knew she would be visiting Tyler, not me. But it still made me happy.
Preston was sweet and pliable, so much like Sloane. But he turned just as wide open as his Peachtree cousins AJ and Taylor as soon as they were together again. It was perfect. It was how it should be, I thought, as they ran past me and out the door.
As I walked out the front door holding my baby granddaughter, watching the boys run into Sloane’s house, I could smell the way the air had changed, how, overnight, it had become thick with jasmine and a hint of magnolia.
I cradled Lee just so, as not to wrinkle the beautiful lace christening gown that I had worn, that all three of my girls had worn, that every Murphy grandchild had worn too.
It was perfectly ironed by me to make sure that the fragile lace didn’t tear.
I had the feeling that my gentle Lee, my namesake, needed a break from the chaos, as did I.
Inside, Emerson and Caroline were arguing over who I was going to stay with after their babies were born.
Which seemed like a fruitless endeavor considering that they didn’t actually know when the babies would arrive.
Sure, they were due three days apart, but who knew what would actually happen?
Jack and I planned to head to New York two weeks before Emerson’s due date and stay until the last-arriving baby was two weeks old.
We were going to rent a place, but, in a startling turn of events, James had invited us to stay with him.
I have four bedrooms, and all this space.
No sense in you renting somewhere, he had said.
Bless the man’s heart, he was handling all this very, very well.
It couldn’t have been an easy task to see your ex-wife so deliriously happy with another man—and pregnant with his baby.
Sloane was attempting to moderate their fight.
Always the peacemaker between them, forever.
I smiled thinking of what was to come. Two more little girls.
The last of this Murphy generation? Who knew?
But wouldn’t it seem sweet and fitting? My three perfect girls having three perfect girls within months of one another, tying a bow on a beautiful chapter.
Despite the arguing, it was almost too much happiness to bear.
I walked out toward the guesthouse, thinking of the moment when, in some ways, so much of this had begun, this new chapter, this new way forward: a fight over the guesthouse.
Then, Emerson was single and fledgling, having just lost a job, Caroline had just learned of James’s affair, and Adam was off fighting for our country.
Jack burst back into my life for the first time in decades.
It seemed so long ago and, then again, not so long at all.
I smiled and, as Lee yawned, continued walking around my yard, down the driveway of the house that had been in my family for generations, shared with the one purchased by my now husband.
I walked around to the back of the house, savoring the silence, the blue eyes of the baby on me. I gasped as I reached the gate. “The first tea roses,” I said to Lee, reaching her tiny fingers up to touch the buds, soft and smooth as the vintage silk on the collar of her dress.
I held Lee and watched as my three girls, two of them ripe with the next generation of our family, walked out the back door.
I was washed over with a feeling of pride, nostalgia, sadness, and perhaps something a little like grief.
I had always been there for them, would always be there for them.
But they didn’t need me, not really. They had one another.
And I knew now why Emerson had been so dead set on more children.
They got to have this bond, this sisterhood, forever, always. No one could take it away from them.
“Hey, Mom!” Caroline called, turning to me, surprisingly coolly for her. But, then again, Chase tended to cool her. “We agreed on a schedule!”
I was delighted. “You did? It’s a miracle!” I looked down at Lee. “They agreed! Can you imagine?”
“Whoever has their baby first gets the first week with you,” Emerson said.
What a wildly sensible plan. And much better than my switching back and forth every night.
Chase walked out, resting his chin on Caroline’s shoulder, his arms around her, hands on her belly. “Give your mom a break. You’ll have me.”
Emerson filled in for her. “It doesn’t matter. You need your mom when you have a baby.”
Sloane gestured toward me holding Lee as if to say, Case in point.
They all chattered on as they walked back into the house. I felt my eyes fill with tears. Something inside me couldn’t bear to watch them leave, even if it was only temporary.
I heard Chase say, “Babe, you should just have the baby here. Let’s spend the whole summer in Peachtree. Or, maybe, you know, our whole lives?”
Caroline laughed and said, “And you can act at the Peachtree Playhouse?”
I didn’t hear the end of the conversation, but, oh, how happy that made me, for all of them to be here, with me, at home.
I walked out onto the front porch and laid Lee on my lap.
“You’re going to have two new cousins,” I cooed.
“Little girls to play with and argue with and spend your summers with right here.” I whispered, “I think you’ll be best friends, just like your mommy and her sisters. ”
I looked out over the water, out toward Starlite Island, where, as if on cue, a mother horse ran with her two foals.
For an instant, I was five again, sitting on this same porch on my own grandmother’s lap as she regaled me with tales of the fairy stones buried on that island, of the horses and their young.
My grandmother, who was now a part of that island, just as my parents were. Just as I would one day be. The thought of ever being away from this family that I loved so very much hurt. But then I looked down into my granddaughter’s face. “The new Ansley,” I said.
This house had sat in this spot for more than 275 years, Starlite Island for hundreds of years before that, and this stretch of ocean for millennia more.
Yes, there was a new Ansley Murphy now. I hoped that one day she would sit on this porch with her own grandchildren, but, of course, there is so much unknown.
Houses are impermanent. Towns. Even islands.
But if this life had taught me anything, it was this: Family is forever. The one you give birth to and raise and send on its way and the one that, like this town, worms its way into your heart and never lets go. These girls were my family. So was this place.
Peachtree Bluff.