I glanced uncertainly at Aunt Jule, but she smiled as if everything were fine. “That would be lovely of you, Holly. I’ll handle things down here.”
Holly and I picked up my baggage in the hall and climbed the steps, which rose to the garden side of the house, then turned in the direction of the river side. Arriving in the upper hall, I felt as if I were ten again, breathing in the sweet cedar scent of the closets and the smell of the river.
A door to the upper porch was straight ahead. Aunt Jule’s room was to the right, her bedroom facing the water, her private sitting room facing the garden. The hall to the left of the stairs led to four bedrooms.
“You’re in the same room as always. Is that okay?” Holly asked.
“Sure,” I replied, not so sure.
We passed Holly’s room to the right, facing the water, and Nora’s, which was directly across from her sister’s, looking out on the garden. The next door to the right was mine.
I entered the bedroom and turned away from the door-length view of the river, focusing on the furniture. The oak chest, dresser, and plain oak bed with a blue-and-white quilt looked just as I had left them. The varnished wood floor had the same braid rug coiled in a circle. A small fireplace, which had been walled up as long as I could remember, still had a collection of old paperbacks on its narrow shelf. We set my suitcases on the bed.
“Thanks, Holly. Thanks for making me welcome, fixing the tea and all.”
“Are you kidding? I’m glad you’re here,” she replied, sitting on a straight-back chair, then quickly standing up again. Its cane seat was worn through. “I’m just sorry the house is such a disaster. You know my mother. Not exactly the queen of mommies and housewives.”
I laughed. “That’s why I loved it here. It always felt so free and easy. But I guess her way of living is not as much fun now, not if you’re the one who has to handle everything.”
Holly tilted her head to one side, as if surprised. “I didn’t think you’d understand that. Not you.”
She had always said I was spoiled. My parents had certainly given me enough to be, and it didn’t help when Aunt Jule would treat me like a little princess. My last visit to Wisteria had been particularly hard on Holly and Nora, with both Aunt Jule and my mother fussing and fighting over me. Worse, my mother, who could be quite snobby about the children with whom I played, had constantly criticized Nora and Holly.
“I guess you know money is tight around here,” Holly said. “Mom should sell the place, but she won’t. Frank’s been making good offers. He’s been doing a lot of real estate development, and, of course, he’d love to have property next to his own, but she won’t speak to him. Meanwhile we have old bills to pay—gas and electric, phone, taxes. Our credit cards are maxed.” She shook her head. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to dump on you. Let’s get you unpacked.”
I opened my suitcase. “I can help you out with the bills.”
“Oh, no!” she protested.
“Holly, you know my father—he gives checks, not hugs. I have a large bank account from him, and when I’m eighteen, I inherit all of my mother’s estate. I didn’t earn any of the money. It’s just there—there to be used. How much do you need?”
I could see her trying to decide what to say. “Do you have access to the family account?” I asked. “Do you have a checkbook?”
She nodded slowly. “I’m the one who writes the checks now, when there’s money.”
“So figure out what you need and let me know. I’ll transfer the funds tomorrow when the bank opens. Really, it makes sense,” I argued. “You want to keep your credit good.”
“My mother would kill me if she knew I—”
“So don’t tell her,” I said. “She probably doesn’t even look at your bank statements.”
Holly burst out laughing. “You’ve got that right.” She plopped down on the bed and stretched back against the pillow. It seemed easier to be with her now that we were older.
“Holly, what’s going on with Nora?”
She turned on her side and picked through my open bag the way she used to go through my Barbie carry-case. “I’m really worried,” she said at last. “I’m sure you can tell she’s gotten worse. I guess Mom told you she didn’t finish high school.”
I shook my head no. “Your mother can be very silent about some things.”
“Nora barely made it to her sixteenth birthday. I think the teachers passed her each year because they wanted to get rid of her.”
“But she’s not dumb,” I said.
“No,” Holly replied, “just crazy. Do you remember when you were here how she had started to fear water?”
“Yeah. The last summer I came, she would go out on the dock, but was afraid to dangle her feet over it, afraid to be splashed.”
“Well, she’s totally phobic now—about water, about all kinds of things. She never leaves the property.”
I frowned. “Not at all?”
“No. She needs a psychiatrist—badly—but Mom won’t do anything about it. It seems like Nora is getting weirder every day. It’s scary.” Holly sat up. “I mean, I’m sure she’s not dangerous. She wouldn’t hurt anyone. But she doesn’t reason like a normal person. She gets angry when there’s nothing to be angry at, and she imagines people are after her.”
Like my mother, I thought. It was as if something in this house—I banished the idea, reminding myself that my mother’s problems started before we came to Wisteria.
“She’s always had an active imagination,” I recalled.
Holly let out a sharp laugh. “You sound like my mother. Nora’s just imaginative. Nora’s just sensitive. Nora’s just going through adolescence. Remember how’d she say that the summer your mother was here?”
I nodded, recalling Nora’s sudden outbursts of anger and tears and Aunt Jule’s quiet explanations. I used to hear Nora on the porch outside my bedroom, talking to herself, answering questions that no one asked.
“Well,” said Holly, “it’s been a very long adolescence.”
I tugged opened a drawer and dropped in my T-shirts. “You said she’s totally phobic. Is there anyone she trusts—anyone she can talk to?”
“Myself, Mom, and Nick. Remember Nick Hurley, Frank’s nephew?”
“Yes. I—”
“You might want to steer clear of Nora except when I’m around,” Holly suggested, rising, then walking to the hall door. “I know her better than anyone, and it’s hard even for me to guess what will set her off.”
I saw the shadow on the hallway wall, cast by someone leaning forward to hear our words.
“Just till she gets used to you being here, of course.”
The shadow pulled back, as if sensing that Holly was about to leave.
“Do you remember where the towels are? Is there anything else I can get you?” Holly asked.
“I’m fine, thanks.”
She left me to finish unpacking and to puzzle over the situation I had walked into. Maybe Holly did know Nora better than anyone, but she didn’t know everything. Nora left the property sometimes; it was she who had shadowed me at the festival.
four
Seven years ago I awakened from what I thought was a horrible nightmare. I rushed to my mother’s room, wanting her to tell me it hadn’t happened, but she wasn’t there. I ran to Aunt Jule’s. She, too, was gone.
I raced downstairs, out of the house, and down to the water. It was barely dawn, with just a hint of pink in the pearl gray sky. Aunt Jule was standing at the end of the dock, staring at a piling, one of the weathered posts that supported the long walkway. When she heard my footsteps on the wooden planks, she spun around.
In her hands were a bucket and scrub brush. As I got closer to her, I smelled bleach. Aunt Jule opened her mouth as if to tell me to go back, but it was too late. I saw that the piling was stained—dark-colored, reddish. It was blood, my mother’s blood. I threw up.
I haven’t been back to the dock since that morning, though I’d spent three more weeks at Au
nt Jule’s, until my father could arrange for a baby-sitter in Washington. Now I needed to see the place where my mother had fallen, to walk out on the dock and touch the piling that had been scoured clean by Aunt Jule and years of rain. Still, the thought of it made my stomach cramp.
I stood on the porch outside my bedroom, gazing at the peaceful river, looking well past the dock, farther out to the misty line between bay and sky. It was that view that Aunt Jule loved and that made her property so valuable.
The Chesapeake Bay washes northward through the widest part of Maryland, and the Sycamore River branches off the bay in a northeasterly direction. Surrounded on three sides by water—the Sycamore and two big creeks—the town of Wisteria sits on a piece of land that appears to jut into the river. Because the town is close to the wide river mouth, you can see the bay from one side of it. Aunt Jule’s house is on that side at the very end of Bayview Avenue, built on land that extends beyond the corner of Bayview and Water Street.
According to my mother, the Ingram family once had a ton of money. They had owned several houses and sent their children to exclusive schools like Birch Hill, which is where my mother and godmother became friends. But generation after generation had mismanaged the wealth. Now all Aunt Jule had was the house and the land, which is all she wanted, if you ask me. She had been married briefly to Holly and Nora’s father, but he had wanted to see the world and she didn’t want to leave her home. Several years after he left Wisteria, he died.
I had no idea how she paid her bills. Abandoned craft projects were strewn through the house. She was very talented, but didn’t have the discipline to earn a living that way. Still, I had never seen her worry about money. Somehow, whatever she needed materialized.
I reentered the house and headed downstairs. When I reached the bottom of the steps, I heard voices in the dining room.
“It’s just common sense, Mother,” Holly said. “You know you’ve never been able to handle a camera. Remember the pictures you took before the Christmas dance? None of us had feet.”
“I don’t find feet all that interesting,” Aunt Jule replied.
“They are when Jackie and I each spend big bucks on shoes,” Holly countered. “I told you that at the time.” Seeing me at the doorway, she gave a little wave. Aunt Jule glanced up from her quilting.
“Anyway, like it or not,” Holly continued, “Frank’s coming over and taking pictures before the prom. Nick’s parents are going to want photos, too, and—”
“Nick?” I repeated, entering the room.
“Nick Hurley,” she replied, smiling.
“Mr. Frank’s nephew?”
“Yes. We’re dating.”
I looked at her, surprised. Two’s the limit, I almost said, but maybe that was just a line he had given me.
“We’ve been friends forever, of course,” she went on. “Now Nick has finally seen the light. And if he hasn’t, he will,” she added, laughing.
I laughed with her and squelched my disappointment.
“Wait till you see him,” Holly said. “He’s not that round-faced kid anymore.”
“I know. I ran into him at the festival on my way here. I dunked him twice at your school booth.”
“You were at the festival?” The smile disappeared from Holly’s face. “At my school’s dunking booth?”
“I was walking through town and happened to pass it,” I replied. I didn’t tell her that Nick had asked me to stop by, for I had just gotten the same chilly feeling I used to get around Holly, as if I were invading her territory.
But then she smiled. “He’s coming around later. It’ll be like old times.”
“I guess you visited Sondra’s grave,” Aunt Jule said to me.
“I didn’t, but I will tomorrow. I need to do things one at a time,” I explained. “It—it’s kind of hard coming back here. For me Wisteria is not all happy memories.”
“We’re well beyond those unhappy times,” Aunt Jule observed. “Seven years beyond.”
“Still, when I came back today, it seemed like yesterday.”
“That’s why you shouldn’t have waited so long,” she replied.
Her cool tone surprised me. “My mother died here,” I said defensively. “You can’t expect me to think of it as a great vacation spot.”
“It’s where you were born,” Aunt Jule answered firmly. “It’s where you had your happiest times.”
“Yes, but—”
“It’s time you got over Sondra’s death, Lauren. She wasn’t exactly Mother of the Year.”
That stung. “I know, but she was my mother. Excuse me, I’m going for a walk.”
I turned abruptly and exited through the dining room door to the porch. I had thought Aunt Jule would be more understanding, but a trace of that summer’s bitterness had remained with her. It seemed to me that Aunt Jule, herself, hadn’t completely left that time behind.
I took the three steps down to the grass, paused to look at the dock, then walked the long slope down to it. The river’s edge was a spongy mix of mud, sand, and clay, tufted with long bay grass. Aunt Jule’s property was probably the only shoreline in Wisteria unprotected by a sea wall. The dock no longer met the riverbank, the land having eroded from beneath it.
Planting my hands on the dock, I swung my feet up onto it, as if climbing onto a three-foot wall. I stood up slowly, my eyes traveling the length of the T-shaped walkway, then shifting to the far left side, to the piling where my mother had struck her head.
She may have been drinking. It was easy to trip on the uneven planks. The tide was high that night, the water just over her head. It took so little for a person to die. Aunt Jule had told me over and over that it was nobody’s fault.
And yet, I felt responsible. My mother had refused to let me visit Aunt Jule that last summer. But the more clingy she had become, the more desperate I’d been to get away from her. I had thrown fierce tantrums until she gave in-gave in with the condition that she would accompany me. If I hadn’t argued, if we hadn’t come, would she still be alive?
I couldn’t walk to the end of the dock, not yet. I jumped down and climbed the hill to the house.
My mother had become even worse in Wisteria, still clinging, not wanting me to play with Nora and Holly. She would blame them for things. She’d tell me I was too good for them, and say it in front of them. Poor Holly had been caught between snubbing me entirely and acting like my best and dearest friend—just to get my mother riled.
Both Holly and Nora had fought back with words, showing the anger that I myself felt but tried to hide. Then Mommy drowned. What do you do with your anger when the person you’re mad at goes off and dies? Bury it? Bury it inside you?
I circled the house to see the gardens, hoping they could still give me the peace I had felt there as a child. I passed my favorite tree, a huge old oak with a swing. Someone had lassoed the high branch with a new rope. The gardens, too, had been cared for and looked better than they had seven years ago. My heart lightened.
A greenhouse stood not far from the garden, a long rectangular structure with a gambrel roof, built in the 1930s on the brick base of an earlier one. The roof vents were up and the door open.
When I peeked in I found Nora tending plants halfway down the main aisle, on one of the short cross aisles. Focused on her work, her fingers moving deftly among the shiny leaves, she didn’t notice me. I stepped inside the door and she looked up. Her eyes darted fearfully around the greenhouse. I thought that she had heard me enter, but her gaze passed over me as if I were invisible. I, too, looked around, wondering what she sensed.
She started to tremble and shook her head with quick, jerky motions. It was as if she had something frightening inside it that she was trying to shake out. I remembered as a child how she hated getting water in her ears and would become frantic to get rid of it. I watched silently, afraid to speak and upset her more.
The shaking finally stopped, the fear in her easing into a quiet wariness. She tended her plants, neatly removing
yellow leaves. I surveyed the greenhouse again. There was nothing there—nothing that I could see—triggering her emotions; whatever Nora was reacting to was deep inside her.
“Hi, Nora.”
This time when she looked up, she saw me. “I don’t want you here.”
I walked toward her. “Here in the greenhouse or here at your mother’s?”
She didn’t answer.
“Why don’t you want me around?” I asked.
She moved on to another bench of plants and began to snip off their tops.
“Nora, why don’t you like me anymore?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Please try to.”
She pressed her lips together and nervously fingered dark strings of hair. I wished Aunt Jule would make her wash it.
“I’m busy,” she said, “I have to cut off their little heads. It hurts them. They hate it, but they will be better for it.”
“You mean you’re pinching back the plants so they’ll grow bushier?” I asked.
“Do you want to see my vines?” she replied.
I wasn’t sure if she was too mentally scattered to answer my questions or simply unwilling. “Sure.”
She led me outside and showed me several trellises standing against the southern wall.
“It gets too hot in the summer, so I use the climbers to shade the plants inside. These are morning glories,” she said, pointing to the heart-shaped leaves. “And over there is Lauren.”
“Laurel?” I asked, misunderstanding her. “It looks like a climbing rose.”
“It is. I named her Lauren.”
“Oh.” I wondered if it was a coincidence that she had given the plant my name. “Then we’re called the same thing,” I remarked cheerfully.
But Nora was frowning now, the vertical crease between her eyes deepening, the troubled world inside her more real to her than the one outside.
“Will you get me some fishing line?” she asked. “I use it to tie up Lauren. Morning glories will twine themselves. But roses have to be tied or else their arms will fall and strike you, and their thorns will make you bleed.”