Chapter 13 Audrey
Audrey
After the accident
Two months after my mother died, despite my tears and pleading, I was packed off to Savannah.
I’d begged Dad to let me take a year off or transfer to the University of Vermont, where I could be closer to home.
But Dad, in shock and staggering through his own horrible new reality, deferred to my mother’s parents.
They were tough old Vermonters, and their credo was Things happen.
Keep working. Gran especially was iron in her grief: “You need to carry on, Audrey. Your life didn’t end. Your mother would want this.”
The concept of the Core Four died as well that horrible night, when I realized my mother was dead, when I screamed in grief and rage and blame.
Jasmine had been going too fast. Micah was supposed to have been our driver.
Beck had been too rowdy. Later, when I learned Beck was still in the hospital, I sent her a card.
Never heard back. If I could blame the others for the accident, Beck could certainly blame me, too.
But really, it was the enormity of my mother’s absence.
We could not be friends when my mother had died in the accident we had caused.
We’d killed not just my mother, but Dr. Kate, everyone’s favorite person. I would never forgive them. Or myself.
And so, friendless save for Stephen, my grief hanging from me like shredded, bleeding skin, I left at the end of August and started at SCAD numb and listless. The orientation counselors thought I was just homesick, but it was more than that. I was soul-sick.
Savannah was beautiful, if hot and muggy.
My college was unique, a series of buildings woven through the city, featuring programs that weren’t just the typical liberal arts fare.
It was why I’d chosen it. Now I hated it.
The heat, the accents, the distance from home.
I was like a dead tree in the forest, surrounded by life and new growth, my dry branches useless and silent.
I didn’t have my mother. I didn’t live on Bitter Creek Farm with my wonderful brother.
I wasn’t one of the Core Four. I was as insubstantial as mist in this beautiful, humid city full of smiling, chatty strangers and ghosts.
Stephen and I talked every day, and I came home for every possible break, which was torture. I expected to see Mom in every room, thought I heard her voice, would wake up and, for a few blissful seconds, forget she was dead.
By Easter, ten months after Mom died, my father was dating someone, which broke my heart all over again. Stephen started at Columbia in August, having graduated high school a year early, and Dad married Portia a year and a half after Mom died. She would be first in a robust line of stepmothers.
So I slogged away in Savannah, always unsure of the code of Southerners.
Did they like me? Did they hate me? Would I ever be able to tell the difference?
What was this fixation on Coke and sweet tea?
Was it normal for every person I met to ask if I’d found my church home?
What was a church home? Why was a third of my class engaged before we could legally drink?
In the end, I graduated with a major in interior design and a minor in architecture.
I landed a job with Beaufort Construction & Preservation, a Savannah-based, family-owned firm that meticulously restored and renovated historic homes.
Mr. Beaufort joked about me being a diversity hire, since I was a Yankee.
He liked to kill time by leaning in my doorway to tell me about his family history, since I was that rare person who didn’t already know it.
“So my great-great-grandfather married his brother’s widow, then left her for her sister, Dottie Ann, and together, they burned through the family’s cotton fortune.
A whole lotta money in those days, whoo-whee!
Those Beaufort boys, they were trouble, let me tell you.
Wasn’t a week that passed that one of ’em didn’t land in jail, breakin’ their mama’s heart. ”
He was a nice man, well liked by his employees and subcontractors.
The work was aesthetically pleasing and kept me busy five days a week.
My coworkers were pleasant, smiling and full of backhanded compliments, the gift of the South.
“You sure have nice phone manners for a Yankee,” or “That house you did on Lafayette Square has real Southern charm. You’d never know you were an outsider.
” I’d try not to roll my eyes, squelching the urge to whip out photos of Bitter Creek Farm and prove that New England style could teach Southern charm quite a bit.
To do so would be to reignite the Civil War, however, so I just smiled and said thanks.
I revamped entryways, discussed usage flow, natural light, spatial concepts and workstations. I found period-appropriate architectural features and ensured Beaufort didn’t violate any rules from the Historic Preservation District, which would be akin to murder in this town.
Occasionally, I went out with two other single women about my age.
Skylar lived on my block and had a beautiful golden retriever (is there any other kind?).
We met when I stopped to pet him, my eyes filling with tears since Rusty, our Irish setter, had just died of old age.
The other woman, Paisley, was Mr. Beaufort’s assistant.
But they were a drop of water in the desert of my loneliness.
My apartment on Gordon Street was charming and full of light, and I’d remind myself occasionally that my mom had been so excited for me to live in a different part of the country.
She’d be so proud of me! (Would she? She’d been a doctor.
I helped rich people renovate their expensive homes.) By my bed was the single framed photo in my apartment—Mom, Dad, Stephen and me on Mom’s last Mother’s Day, all of us beaming, so happy, so normal, so extraordinary.
Stephen graduated from Columbia and started med school in Michigan and was very busy.
I tried not to let him know how lost I was.
I joined a volunteer group that picked up trash on Sunday afternoons.
I read a lot, catching up on the classics I’d avoided in college.
Romance novels, something I’d once loved, now made me sad—every protagonist had a best friend, a cute dog and found love with the perfect person.
I didn’t have to worry about that kind of thing in Moby-Dick or, say, The Plague.
Five years after Mom died, Gran and Pop-Pop told Dad to find other accommodations.
“This will always be Audrey and Stephen’s home, Burt, but Bitter Creek Farm is for Chevaliers,” Gran told him.
“We’re moving back in.” He and Wife Number 3 moved to a luxurious condo in a former mill.
When Stephen and I went home for Christmas and stayed with Dad, we felt like guests at an Airbnb, our hosts amiable and charming—Dad’s wives were always nice.
Meanwhile, going to the farm was an agony of memories and a heaven of the same.
I floated through my twenties slightly apart from the real world, a water bug skittering along the surface of this new chapter. I wondered when my real life would start, if I’d ever belong to someone again, fall in love, have a baby. Become the person I was supposed to have been.
Then, one perfect, clear evening in May, I wandered through the carefully laid out squares of Savannah.
Soon, the oppressive, mosquito-ridden air would make such strolls a chore.
I bought a peach ice cream cone from Leopold’s and ate it as I strolled through Reynolds Square, pausing to look at the statue of John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church.
He must be hot in those robes, I thought before drifting on.
I imagined I looked like a stock photo—young woman enjoying ice cream on sunny day—and felt about as real.
Then, suddenly, a little girl came tearing down the steps of a gracious brick building and ran straight for the street.
She didn’t even pause at the edge of the sidewalk.
I heard the roar of an overly loud engine, the type favored by men with inferior penises, and in a nanosecond, I knew I was about to watch the child die.
Then I was lunging for her, hyperaware of every detail.
Her white dress, a smear of dirt on the hem.
Curly, snarled hair. My hand on the warm skin of her arm, her firm little bicep.
Her legs flew up as I yanked her backward, away from the street.
A red Ford pickup with tinted black windows and huge, child-eating wheels was right there.
I heaved the girl toward me, her little blue Keds missing the front fender by centimeters.
The hot breath of the truck hit me like a fist, and someone screamed from the sidewalk.
I smelled the tang of tobacco smoke and noticed the pink barrette just about to fall out of the girl’s hair.
We fell backward toward the sidewalk, me cushioning her fall, my head bouncing on the curb. She was already wriggling to get free, but I cinched my arms tight around her.
There was a roar of noise from behind us, voices and shouts, but I barely heard over the sound of my gasping breath.
The little girl had almost been hit by that truck.
She would have been hit without me. She would have died.
I’d saved this girl’s life. I had literally just saved a child.
Adrenaline made my hands and feet tingle.
This little girl would’ve been a bloody smear on the street if I hadn’t flung myself after her.
Said little girl kicked and twisted and tried to bite my hand, snapping like a feral dog. “Lemme go! Let go! You’re hurtin’ me!” She had a thick Georgia accent, skinny elbows, sharp knees and angry brown eyes. There was a smear of dried ketchup on her face.