Tomorrow River

  “I . . .”

  “Did you know that your mother was planning on runnin’ away from my Walter? She gave me a note. I was supposed to give it to you and Janie, but I’d never pass that garbage on.”

  Mama loved Gramma. Trusted her. Would have wanted to say good-bye to her.

  That night.

  Woody woke me, babbling, “Mama . . . mama . . . gone.” I tried ignoring her, and when she wouldn’t let me, I groused, “What’re ya doin’ up? Did ya eat too many Red Hots? You’re having a bad dream. Lie back down and go to sleep.” I rolled away from her, but she came after me. “Papa . . . Papa,” she moaned, and that’s when I heard him, too. Thrashing about in the woods, bellowing, “No . . . no. Mother . . . how could you?” At the time, I thought he meant our mother. That in his drunken state he was referring to her in an outraged way. Somebody else was back there with him, but I couldn’t make out who and by the time I found my binoculars, I heard our father’s grunting, cursing effort to get his feet situated on the fort steps and Woody could, too, and she grabbed on to my neck when he hollered up the trunk, “She’s . . . she’s . . . gone. Get down here.”

  That somebody else I saw darting around in the trees was Gramma Ruth Love. She killed my mother and Clive took a picture of her doing it, so she killed him, too.

  “Evie was a wicked woman, yes, she was,” Gramma says. “She was carryin’ on with Sam Moody, too. Did ya know that he’s Gus’s illegitimate? Back when we were young, Elizabeth Moody tempted my Gus with her young flesh. Running around the house half-clothed. How could the man resist?”

  Blind Beezy is out in the Jackson’s cottage, grieving for the loss of her son, who is about to be prosecuted for a crime he didn’t commit. Grampa knows what his wife has done. Blackie and Papa, too. They’re trying to frame Sam. Blame him for Gramma’s badness.

  “Elizabeth Bell, she’s the next one the Lord wants me to take care of. Isn’t that right?” she politely asks the Jesus statue on the dressing table.

  “Mama,” I whisper over and over. “Mama.”

  “I got the note from her somewhere right back here, if you want to see it.” She is ripping through some papers and cards that’re in an envelope that’s taped to the back cover of the album. “I’m sure finding this out comes as somewhat of a shock to you, dear, but once you read it, you’ll know you’re better off without her.” Gramma slips a piece of folded yellow paper out of the envelope. Brings her glasses that she keeps on a gold chain around her neck up to her eyes. “Yes, this is it. Read it, please,” she says, passing it to me. “Out loud.”

  Mama’s writing, her delicate hand. I choke out:

  Sweet peas,

  By the time you receive this letter from your grandmother, I’ll be gone. I know how much you love your father, so I can only hope that you will understand why I must leave. I can bear the slap, a shove, but you, my darlings, I’m afraid the anger he feels towards me may soon spread to you. Leaving is the only thing I can think of to stop him. We will start anew. Please, please try to understand. I’m not abandoning you. I’ll be close by. Sam will bring you to me when you’re ready. I’ll be waiting. I love you.

  Forever, Mama

  I bring the note up to my nose, breathe in her hope.

  “That’s real sad,” Gramma says, dabbing at her eyes with the edge of her creamy nightie. “You know, despite all her failings, I miss Evie sometimes. She could be real—”

  “How dare you!” I haul back my hand and slap her across the mouth before she can take my mother’s name in vain one more time. She tips sideways, catches her head on the sharp edge of the bedside table, and collapses onto the floor. She’s bleeding from the head, the same way Mama is in the picture that Clive took of her in the clearing that night. She’s not moving, her chest barely rising.

  I bend down to her and cry, “Jesus also said, ‘Life for life, eye for eye.’” I cannot help myself. My temper. I reach for my pillow off the bed and place it over her face, press and press until my knuckles whiten. Being the fine Southern lady that she is, my grandmother does not struggle.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  I thought my grandfather was holding me in his arms until my cheek brushed up against the cool badge on his chest and Andy Nash commanded, “You’re comin’ with me, Miss Shen.”

  The sheriff isn’t carting me off because I killed Gramma Ruth Love. I wanted to, almost did, but my twin was all I could think of as I was pressing down on that pillow with all my might. Woody could not get by if I got sent away for committing murder. I had to stop, for her sake, not because I didn’t want Gramma dead. I wanted to take her life the same way she took our mother’s.

  After I let up on the pillow, I crawled over to the window. I’ve got to get to Woody. That’s all I was thinking. Gramma came awake when I was sliding over the sill. “You’re just like your mother. Go . . . go on . . . run away the same way she tried to,” she raved, waving at me with her lipsticked palms. “You won’t get any further than she did.”

  The blood from where she cut herself on the bedside table was scalloping her forehead like a crown of thorns. The overwhelming horror of it all came over me and I lost my grip on the trellis and went tumbling down to the ground and landed hard on the grass below. I’m not sure how long I lay there before I felt the sheriff pick me up. I didn’t even bother putting up a fight.

  What was the use? While I was blacked out, Gramma must’ve hollered downstairs and told Grampa that I escaped. He must’ve called the sheriff, who came rushing right over. That’s why I’m sitting in his county car now.

  My father’s oldest friend and Kappa Alpha fraternity brother, Doc Keller, is along for the ride. Him and his black bag are slouched next to Sheriff Nash in the front seat. It’s after midnight. The doctor has been roused out of his bed. That’s why his breath smelled like an old shoe when he patched up my arm that Grampa hurt. “It’s not broken, just sprained,” he told me as he wrapped the bandage from my wrist up to my elbow and back down again. “You’ll be fine in a few days.”

  I’m in the backseat. The windows down. The doors locked. The mountain air blowing my bangs. My grandmother’s dried blood is caked on my hands, under my nails. I didn’t tell the sheriff what she confessed to me about killing Mama and Clive. I’m sure he already knows. He’s on my father’s payroll.

  “Where are ya takin’ me?” I ask the back of the sheriff’s head again.

  He says, “We’ll be there before you know it.” His eyes are studying me in his rearview mirror. “Why don’t you just sit back and relax? This will all be over soon. Isn’t that right, Chester?”

  Doc Keller doesn’t acknowledge the question. He’s staring out the window. We’re near the peak of the mountain. Behind us, the lights of the Founders Weekend carnival are illuminating the sky, and in front of me, the lights of Lynchburg stretch out. I know where the sheriff is taking me now. That’s why Doc is coming along. He needs to add his signature to the commitment papers, which have probably already been signed by my father. He must’ve told them to take me to the Colony because I’m not his beautiful daughter of the stars anymore. I’m the daughter who knows that his mother killed my mother. And that my family is framing Sam Moody for that crime. What will Papa tell people? That I ran away? Yes. He will spread the word that I have always been a handful. Everyone in town will believe him. He’s Walter T. Carmody, the most superior court judge in all of Rockbridge County.

  That’s all right. I’m getting exactly what I deserve. The search I undertook for my mother is what’s caused all this. It was pride that convinced me that when I found our mama and brought her home, our lives would be restored to their previous shiny glory. If only I’d humbly accepted Mama’s missing right off the bat, none of this awfulness would’ve happened. Sam wouldn’t be in jail waiting for his trial that I will not be allowed to testify at. Beezy wouldn’t be over at Mr. Cole’s place crying her blind eyes out for her son. Woody would be snuggled safe up in our fort instead of hopefully hiding under the cove
rs over at the Tittle place. And I would not be on the way to The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded.

  I understand why he’s got to do it. Knowing what I know, my papa has no choice but to hide me away. He cannot let his mother go to jail for murdering Mama and Clive Minnow. Grampa Gus would never allow the Carmody name to be besmirched and Papa cannot go against him. No matter how His Honor has struggled over the years to be his own man, in the end, he has become the spitting image of his father.

  It’s not like he didn’t warn me. Papa told me that night in the woods when he held me close and thought I was Woody, “If you could talk . . . tell what you saw, it would be the ruination of everything. Do you understand, sweetheart?”

  I do now.

  The hospital is looming at the end of the long hedge-lined driveway. A wrought-iron fence with pointy tops surrounds the property.

  When we pass through the gate, the sheriff orders Doc Keller to “get out the papers.”

  The loud crack his opening bag makes is painful.

  When the car comes to a halt in the circular drive, I look out the window at my new home. The three stories of ivy climbing the redbrick walls. The two turrets. From the outside, the hospital looks like a fairy-tale castle, but on the inside, I know it’s more like a dungeon that smells of people who have got no way out.

  The sheriff opens his door and the yellow light goes on inside the car. I can see the back of Doc Keller’s bristling neck coming out of his rumpled shirt collar. “Please keep lookin’ after my sister, won’t you?” I lean forward and ask him. What will become of my dear, confused twin? I will not be able to braid her hair and rub almond cream on her back when she can’t sleep. Who will sing musical tunes to her?

  Sheriff Andy Nash offers to help me out of the car like a real gentleman. I do not take his hand. How can he sleep at night? Bought and paid for by my father and grandfather to do their bidding. When he tries to put his arm around my shoulders, I shake him off and say, “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  He smiles slightly and points to the ornate front entrance. “This way.”

  I look up to the starry sky one more time. It’s fitting that I can see Cassiopeia so clearly this evening. She is chained to her throne for her haughtiness.

  The hospital reception area is beige and well furnished. Magazines are stacked neatly on the tables. A strong, flowery spray to hide the hospital smell is lingering in the air. Nothing has changed since Papa made us come here to visit Gramma Ruth Love when she was confined for her treatments.

  At the front desk, we’re greeted warmly by a lady named Cindy, who has her hair in a French twist and bright pink lipstick feathering around her mouth. She’s the same woman who signed us in every Saturday afternoon before we went up to Gramma’s room. I recognize the watch she’s got pinned to her blouse. Cindy winks at me and says, “Nice to see you again, sugar,” when the doctor passes her the papers.

  “Come with me, Shenny.” The sheriff points to the elevator. He’s got a job-well-done look on his face. He must be as relieved as my family is to get rid of me. I can’t really blame him. I never have been nice to him. When the elevator arrives, Andy Nash says to me, “You go on up. There’ll be a nurse. She’ll take you where you need to be. The doc and I have some unfinished business to attend to.” I step into the back of the car and he reaches his brown uniform arm in and presses number three, the top floor on the panel. Has the gall to say, “Good luck,” as the door slides closed.

  Somebody has drawn a heart on the dull elevator wall. There’s a phone number, too. And a Roses-are-red-Violets-are-blue poem written in ballpoint, the last two lines smeared like somebody changed what little of their mind they had left. When the doors slide open, a girl who doesn’t look all that much older than me is standing erect and waiting. She’s got on a crisp white uniform, her haircut is in a pageboy and she’s on the bony side. Her name tag says—Alice.

  “Hello, Shenandoah,” she says, taking me firmly by the arm down the long corridor. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  The hospital floor is speckled browns. The bare walls are green, nearly the same color as Woody’s eyes. Above the sound of Alice’s squishy shoes, I can hear pitiful crying, and some laughing, a desperate kind.

  “Here we are.” Alice halts abruptly in front of one of the room doors. She will strip my clothes and put me into a gown that’s as coarse as a sack. I remember how it was with my grandmother. Medicine dripping into her purple veins a drop at a time. Her begging us to untie her. Not looking at me, Alice says, “The nurses wanted me to tell you that we’re all very sorry. We had no way—”

  I think of the sheriff downstairs looking so pleased with himself. “You’re just doin’ what you’re told. Same as everybody else.” I know what my room will look like. A metal bed and table. One wooden chair. A nicked-up chest of drawers. No books. No mirror, so I can’t break it and cut my wrists. No Woody to snuggle with at night, her heart beating steady between my shoulder blades.

  Alice twists the knob and I wait until the door swings fully open before I look at my dismal future. The nurse has made a mistake. She’s brought me to a room that’s already occupied. “There’s somebody in here,” I tell her. In the dim light I can see the end of a bed and the shape of legs and feet beneath the sheets. I try to turn away, feeling like we’ve intruded upon the saddest of times, but Alice says, real emotional, “Go on in.”

  “I don’t want to . . . ,” I try saying, but I’m feeling too spiritless to put up a fight.

  I peek my head around the room corner and can see the rest of the woman lying on the bed. Her honey hair is fanned out on a pillow. Her thin arms outstretched in welcome. The smell of peonies perfumes the air.

  “Hello there, pea,” she says softly. “I understand you’ve been looking for me.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Mama?

  I must have inherited Gramma Ruth Love’s insanity. I am having a delusion the same way she does. The hospital doctors are going to electrocute my brain the same way they did hers. Thinking of those treatments makes me want to run and run, but Nurse Alice stops me with a small, but firm hand.

  I step closer.

  It’s not just Mama in this delusion. Sam is in it, too. My messed-up brain has him not sitting down in the jail after being arrested by the sheriff. His long legs are stretching out from the wooden chair next to the bed. His baseball cap is on his head and a leather book open in his lap. We could be at the Triple S, except it’s Ivory, not Wrigley, sitting at his feet.

  Woody is not at E. J.’s the way she’s supposed to be either. She is by our mother’s side, smiling like she hasn’t for months and months. Big and bold and joyous.

  I ask my twin delusion, “I . . . is it . . . Mama?”

  Woody nods.

  “I . . . I . . .” I want to throw up.

  Sam asks, “What are you waiting for?”

  “Come here, honey,” Mama says. “Don’t be scared.”

  I don’t care if she isn’t real. I go to her side, take her hand in mine, kiss her arm that is jutting out of the hospital gown like an early spring branch. I bury my face in her hair. It smells like a garden, deeply earthy and luscious. She feels awfully warm for a dead person.

  “I . . . you’re . . . your life isn’t over?” I ask, repeating what Papa told me. “You’ve not passed away?” I am still not sure. “Have you?” I might’ve died and gone to Heaven.

  Mama pats the bed and I lie carefully down next to her. It is her, but not her. Not how I remember her anyway. She is as delicate looking as a piece of blown glass. She strokes my cheek, and says, “You have been so brave. So independent.”

  The nurse who is still standing at the door, says, “Do you need any help getting ready, Laurie . . . I mean, Mrs. Carmody?” but then she throws her hand to her mouth and runs off. I can hear her shoes for a long time.

  Sam stands and says to all of us, “I’m going downstairs to tie up a few loose ends. Take it easy on her, S
hen.”

  “But . . . ,” I say, still unsure, shaky and like I’m seeing all this through a kaleidoscope.

  “I’ll answer your questions soon enough. Help your mother get her things together, please. I brought some clothes.” Sam points behind the door where they’re hanging. It’s a pale yellow blouse and pleated tan slacks, exactly the kind that Mama would like. Simple and to the point—not frilly. “I’ll meet you downstairs.”

  A million questions are rolling around in my brain, too many to settle on just one. At the same time, I don’t really care how Mama has miraculously come back to us, risen from the dead like Lazarus. I’m stroking her forehead, rubbing her velvety earlobes between my fingers, running my finger down her satiny cheek, making sure she’s not an optical illusion. I even pinch myself. Satisfied, I look over Mama’s shoulder and say to my sister, “This has got to be the best boomba of all times, right?” and then, I don’t know why, I start bawling like a baby.

  After time spent cuddling and using up a whole box of tissues to dry my eyes, which is exactly what my twin must’ve done before I got here, Woody and I help Mama out of the bed and get her dressed the way Sam told us to. She is as wiry as a coat hanger. Her new clothes just drape off her. We take turns brushing her hair, which has split ends and is not as shiny as it used to be. I butterfly kiss the nape of her neck and then Woody does, too. We spruce her up the best we can and then I say, “I have so much to tell you . . . I’m sure you’ve figured it out already, but the reason Woody is not tellin’ you how beautiful you look like she usually would is because she can’t talk anymore. She stopped after you . . . and she does some real peculiar things now, but don’t worry. It’s still Woody. I did my best to take care of her while you were gone, but sometimes I didn’t do such a good job and I’m sorry.”