Sweet Water

  As I paid for my gas I asked the woman behind the register how far it was to Sweetwater.

  “How far?” she said, ringing up the receipt. “Honey, you’re in it.”

  “But is there a Main Street somewhere? A downtown?”

  “Kinda,” she said. She cocked her head. “You looking for somebody in particular?”

  I asked her if she knew the Clyde family, and she looked at me with dawning recognition. “You must be the granddaughter!” she said, throwing up her hands. “I should’ve known! Yankee plates—we don’t get those every day. Well, I’ll be. Welcome, hon. I’m Lois.” She extended a soft, plump hand for me to shake. “Mariflo, come over and meet Clyde’s granddaughter. Come down here all the way from up north to live in that old house out past the Ridge Road.”

  Mariflo stepped out from the other register. “You don’t say.” She smiled at me. “Well, isn’t she pretty.”

  “Looks like her grandmother.”

  “Oh, she’s got more of Amory’s coloring. Remember how he used to be so blond? And kind of wavy, like hers.” Mariflo made wave motions down her own gray head. “She’s more like Amory than any of his kids.”

  “May he rest in peace,” Lois added.

  “Amen,” said Mariflo. “Say.” She turned to me. “You ever been down here before? I don’t recall your face.”

  Lois nudged her. “Ellen died in ‘67, remember? It’s Ellen’s girl.”

  “Gosh,” said Mariflo. “It still makes me sad to think about it. Your mama was a character.”

  “You knew her?” I asked.

  Lois nodded. “My children are the same ages as her and your uncle Horace. They all grew up together.” She sighed. “Your mama was the lively one. Kept everybody guessing.”

  “It was a tragedy, it really was,” Mariflo said.

  The two women stood silent and a little hunched for a moment at the register. A line was beginning to form behind me. I waited to see if they’d tell me anything else, but they didn’t.

  “Well,” I said.

  Lois looked up and seemed to focus again. Mariflo gave me a sympathetic smile and squeezed my hand before going back to her post. Lois gave me directions to my grandmother’s house and pressed a peppermint swirl into my hand. As I left, I thanked her and she patted me on the shoulder. She seemed to have something more to say, but then she shook her head with a brisk motion and waved me away.

  I got back into the wagon, which now smelled of rotting apples, and pulled off the slope of the station onto 622 East, down a long, twisting road into farmland, past herds of cattle and red-washed barns. It was early afternoon, and sunlight stained the fields with a diffuse yellow light. Wild daisies and Queen Anne’s lace lined the roadside in unruly clumps. I zigzagged around hills and ponds, past abandoned, rotting cars, weather-beaten bones of old houses and rusted silos, farm implements left temporarily mid-field.

  Eventually the road became littered with the makings of a town. Tony’s Pizza sat in one bend, Harry’s Used Cars in the next. The American Legion hung their plaque on a white clapboard one-room building off by itself on a stretch of road, with a small American flag on a spindly flagpole out front. A little farther down, I could see white-haired ladies with stiff handbags and old men with slicked-back hair and spit-leather black shoes standing around outside the Gospel Baptist Church and North Sweetwater Baptist Church.

  I turned left on Guffey Road, up a steep, winding hill. At the top I bore right onto Fork Creek Lane, which splayed into a network of tributary streets that all looked the same. At the corner of Guffey and Fork Creek, a sign carved in wood rose from a bed of geraniums to announce in large script:

  Ridge View Homes

  “Welcome to Our Community”

  H. W. CLYDE AND SON, DEVELOPERS

  The houses were one-and two-story structures with aluminum siding and two-door garages, washed in complementary neutrals. Beige, sandstone, white, gray, shell pink. As I drove down Fork Creek I was amazed at the AstroTurf-like lawns, all the same, house after house, and the almost eerily clean configuration of the development. Marigolds and zinnias, bursts of color, clustered under mailboxes, led up to front doors, closed ranks around streetlamps. Sprinklers, like small geysers, sprouted in military formation across the grass.

  Driving slowly down the wide streets, I began to notice the features that made each house minutely individual. A low, broad-slatted white picket fence separated one home from its neighbors on each side; another home sported a gravel walkway lined with gnomish sculptures; at a third, stained glass embellished with hearts and bells had replaced the usual clear glass in the front door. Young trees had been planted along the streets, and tall firs lined the edge of the property behind the houses, but there was barely a rustle. In fact, though I could see people clipping their hedges and washing their cars and walking around the neighborhood in sweatsuits and sneakers, the place was unnervingly quiet.

  Following Lois’s directions, I turned left onto Cherry Road,descended a sharp hill, and turned right at the bottom onto Webb. The second right was Red Pond Road. I slowed almost to a stop, looking for number 29.

  Third from the end on the right, it was powder blue, with large black numbers on the door and daisies and marigolds planted around low bushes on either side of the entrance—almost exactly as I had imagined. When I pulled into the driveway my hands were trembling. I glimpsed a woman with short white hair in the front window, and my breath caught in my throat. Suddenly I couldn’t imagine what kind of insanity had led me here, and I sat, paralyzed, gripping the steering wheel. I did not want to get out.

  For a long, timeless moment I clung to the car, a no-man’s-land between two sandwiching worlds, and contemplated the enormity of what I was doing. Without thinking too much about it, or even understanding why, I had uprooted myself from everything familiar, everything I cared about, exchanging the comfort of a life lived in the present for the fractured uncertainty of a forward journey into the past. I didn’t even know what I was searching for.

  The front door opened and the woman emerged. She pulled the door shut with one hand and smoothed her hair with the other. I could make out soft folds of skin, glasses with clear plastic frames, pink lipstick, hair like spun tufts of cotton. She was dressed in a polyester outfit, apple-green slacks and a green-and-white floral blouse belted loosely with a ribbon of the same material. On her feet she wore white sneakers and suntan hose, which I could see as she came down the three steps to the path. She moved slowly but without hesitation. Her step was sure and light.

  Sitting up straight, I combed through my hair with my hands, brushed off my T-shirt, and ran my tongue over my teeth. By the time I’d grasped the handle and pushed the door open with my elbow, the old woman had already padded down to the end of the drive. She stood five feet from the car, her tiny hands at her sides, craning her neck to see in.

  She was smaller than I had imagined and neater, like a package.She kept a respectable distance and waved. Her eyes were large and wondering behind bifocal lenses. Her smile wasn’t sure.

  “Welcome,” she said. “Well, well, well.”

  I got out of the car stiff-legged and wary. My body didn’t move the way I wanted it to. I thought of New York and its blessing of anonymity; I wanted to sink from this scrutiny, back into the car, back onto the road going north, into the cloak of night. The air smelled of trees and tar.

  “Well, well, well,” she said. “Cassandra. You take after your father.”

  I went up to hug her, and it was like hugging a fluffy, small-boned bird.

  part

  two

  She’s tall like Amory, with long narrow bones and those gray-blue eyes and fine, wavy hair the color of straw. Her nose is freckled and her lips are like a new bruise. Long thin fingers and soft baby nails. She wears baggy shorts that don’t show her shape and sleeveless T-shirts layered on top of each other, and she walks like a boy. Until she drove up in that old station wagon with books all piled in the back seat, I didn’t q
uite believe she ever would.

  I watched out the kitchen window with a dust rag in my hand. The license plate said “New Jersey, The Garden State.” After a minute she looked in here and I ducked behind the curtain. I didn’t want her to think I’d been standing there watching and hadn’t come out to say hello.

  She called from Roanoke last night to tell me she was on her way. This morning I put on some nice clothes and even perfume, and dusted, and made a pound cake and green beans, but it didn’t seem possible she’d really come until I saw her with my own eyes, sitting in that beat-up old embarrassment of a car on the road in front of my house.

  After getting a couple of bags out of the back I locked the wagon.

  “Nobody’s going to rob you here,” my grandmother said. She sniffed and peered into the car. “It doesn’t look like you’ve got a whole lot anybody’d want, anyway.” She turned back toward the house, motioning for me to follow. She made her way to the front door slowly, with her head down, like a cat stepping through clover.

  The little entrance hall was bright and sunny and smelled of lemon polish. A brass coatrack next to the door and a small table displaying a vase of daisies were the only furniture. Over the table hung an elaborate gilt mirror.

  “Where should I put my bags, Grandmother?”

  “You might as well call me Clyde,” she said, closing the door behind us. “Everybody else does. Come on in here.”

  I set the bags in the front hall and followed her into the kitchen. It was spacious and modern. Everything gleamed. The linoleum was spotless; shiny plastic fruit sat in a bowl on the polished pine table. Large silk ferns in copper planters hung in the windows over the sink and counters, facing the street. On the refrigerator, magnets shaped like daisies pinioned coupons, photos, the corner of the letter I had sent detailing my plans.

  “What a nice sunny room,” I said. I sounded as falsely cheerful as a hospital volunteer.

  “It is. Used to be my favorite place.”

  “Oh?”

  She didn’t elaborate. I stood there, awkward, like the new kid in school.

  “You must be thirsty,” she said after what seemed like hours.

  “Well, I—”

  She opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of soda. Diet Coke. She took a glass from the cupboard. “All you young people drink this stuff. Alice is addicted to it.” She opened the bottle and poured, then handed me the glass. “I can’t stand it, myself.”

  “Thank you. Now, Alice is Elaine’s daughter?”

  She nodded. “She’s about your age. How about some pound cake? I made one fresh this morning.”

  “Oh, gosh, no thank you,” I said. “My stomach feels a little funny from the ride.” For some reason I didn’t understand, I found myself unable to talk like a normal adult.

  All of a sudden a cuckoo clock in the next room exploded into noise. Both of us jumped.

  Clyde peered at her watch, as if for confirmation. “Four o’clock,” she said. “You’ve been on the road. You must be tired.”

  “A little,” I admitted.

  “Well, come on, I’ll show you where you’re staying.” She led me through the darkened living room, which looked as if it had never been used, like a furniture showroom. The carpet showed vacuum cleaner tracks striped in alternating directions, like a freshly mown lawn. “I’ve got to do some errands. Everybody’s coming over to dinner tonight about seven to meet you.” She glanced back at me. “You might want to put on a dress.”

  I retrieved my bags from the foyer and followed her down a wide hallway. “Is there anything I can do to help?” I asked, tripping behind her into the guest room.

  “Oh, no. I’ve got that pound cake and some green beans, and Elaine’s bringing just about everything else.”

  “Thank you.” I paused. “I—I wasn’t expecting a party.”

  “They all want to meet you. They’re curious.” She turned to leave, then hesitated, standing in the doorway. “We all are.”

  “I guess I am too,” I said.

  She looked down, studying the doorknob, and then looked up at me, into my blank face. “What I can’t figure out is why in the world you’d even want that old house.”

  Her directness caught me off guard. “Why I’d want it?”

  “It’s beyond me,” she said. “Why you’d come down here all by yourself to live in a place where you don’t know a soul, in a house that’s falling apart, in a town that nobody I ever met chose to live in just because they felt like it—it doesn’t make any sense.” She stood very still, with her head cocked to the side. “What’d you think you were going to find down here?”

  Any possible answers had flown out of my head. I wanted to creep away and escape through the window. “I’m not really sure.”

  “Well.” She started out the door. “I just wondered.”

  “Wait—don’t leave,” I said, touching her arm. I took a deep breath. “Part of it is that I wanted to get out of the city. I’ve always lived in cities. I think I came down here looking for something—something I’ve been missing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like …” I shrugged. “Trees, green grass. All the stuff you probably take for granted. And I’ve always lived in apartments. The idea of having a whole house to yourself is incredible to me.”

  She didn’t say anything, so I forged ahead.

  “And I think part of it is that it just seemed strange not to know you, not to know—my mother, and everything. It was so weird to find out my grandfather had died and I didn’t even know what he was like.”

  “Well, if that’s it,” she said, her voice tart, “I could have told you all you need to know on the phone. He was crotchety and foolish.”

  Again I was taken aback.

  “That surprises you? Why—because I was married to him for so long? You marry somebody, you vow to stay together, and you do it because that’s a sacred vow. Till death do you part. Not until you get sick of each other.” She rubbed an imaginary speck of dust off the bureau by the door. “You probably wouldn’t have liked each other much. He had a hard time with girls who did what they felt like.” She looked at me. “You know, don’t you, that everybody’s wondering what you want from them.”

  “What?”

  “They think they’re going to have to take care of you. You’ll get nervous out there in that old house and expect them to help.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  She shifted her feet and seemed to settle into herself. Her gaze was blank and direct. “Well, I wondered.”

  After Clyde left I sat on the bed, bouncing up and down on it a little. I ran my fingers over the quilt and lay down, my legs hanging over the edge, my hands over my face. The more I thought about it, the more I thought Clyde was right: I really had no business being there. I wondered if I should just turn around and leave, with all my belongings still in the car. If I left now I could be out of the state by dark.

  As I lay on the bed I drifted into a troubled sleep. I was driving in the dark on a road between a tall brick wall and a cliff. If I veered even slightly to the left, the car scraped the wall; to the right, the wheels wobbled over the edge. There was too much traffic behind me to stop. The steering wheel was slippery in my sweaty hands. My teeth were clenched tight.

  I woke to a soft, insistent tapping on the door and sat up in a daze, trying to concentrate. The room was still bright with sunlight. “It’s six-thirty,” Clyde was saying. “Anything you want ironed?”

  I couldn’t think. “No, thanks.” Her footsteps faded back down the hall and I sat forward, rubbing my eyes.

  Rummaging through my bag, I found a purple floral cotton sundress with tiny buttons up the front and realized that it did, in fact, need ironing. Damn. I went out to the kitchen, which was thick with the smells of baking. Clyde was setting the table and listening to the radio. “I can do this,” I said, holding up the dress. “I just need to know where the iron is.”

  “Give it to me,” she sai
d. “You need to get ready.”

  “You’ve got things to do.”

  “They’ll get done. Give me the dress.”

  I went back to my room and stripped out of my clothes. Taking a washcloth from the pile of towels Clyde had left on the bureau, I went into the adjoining bathroom. As I thought about the plans for the evening, a ball of dread formed in my stomach. I flipped on the light, put my hair into a short ponytail, and began to wash my face.

  Alice and the baby were the first to arrive. She carried him on one hip and pushed the doorbell with her elbow. The buzz, long and insistent, brought Clyde and me from different sides of the house to answer it.

  Alice appeared to be in her late twenties. Her blond hair was cut stylishly short, her freckled nose was long and straight, and she had small white teeth and high cheekbones. She was pretty. She wore berry-colored lipstick, jeans, sandals that revealed berry-colored toenails, and a pink T-shirt. In her free hand she was carrying a foil-covered casserole dish.

  “Hello, Clyde,” she sang through the screen. She couldn’t see me standing in the background. She lifted the casserole and patted the kid’s diaper. “Sorry to make you come running. I got my hands full.” She moved aside for Clyde to let her in. Once in the foyer, she bent down and kissed Clyde’s cheek, tipping the baby forward.

  “Mama,” he said, pushing his stubby finger into Clyde’s chest.

  “She’s your great-grandmama, you know that,” Alice scolded. “I’m your mama.” She straightened up.

  “Alice, this is Cassandra,” Clyde said.

  “Well, hello. Did you just get here? You must be beat.”

  “She’s been sleeping all afternoon,” said Clyde, taking the casse-role from Alice and disappearing into the kitchen. Alice adjusted the kid to her other hip. He was playing with a strand of her hair and talking to himself.

  “What’s your name?” I asked, holding out a finger. He reached for it tentatively and squeezed it, then let go and hid his face in his mother’s hair.

  “He’s not usually shy,” Alice said. “Eric Amory Sommers, be polite and say hello.” She jiggled him a little, but his face stayed buried. “Turned three in June.” She glanced toward the kitchen and lowered her voice. “And just so it doesn’t come up later and embarrass anybody, his daddy and I split up about a year ago. Oh, and Chester too—Horace and Kathy’s oldest? He’s been divorced twice. Clyde’s kind of sensitive about it.”