Through an open window, p.8
Through an Open Window, page 8
“Daddy grew up there, too, Tommy,” said Mouse, tersely. “On the other side of that old pecan orchard.”
“I know that, Mouse,” said Tom, irritated by the diminutive version of his name, which nobody except his family used. “But he’s not here right now, so I was addressing Margaret.”
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of that place without thinking about Daddy,” said Mouse, turning to her mother. “Y’all got married under those trees in the grove, right where you first met. He used to tell me all about that, how you’d been best friends since you were both little. He said he remembered you standing at the fence that separated his house from yours, watching him play with his brother and sister. I loved those stories so much.”
Margaret smiled at Mouse. “It was your aunt Prudie who first saw me standing there under the trees,” she said. “I was barely out of diapers, but I thought she was the most beautiful girl in the world, and I guess I still do, present company excepted, of course.” She raised her wineglass to Emlynn and Mouse.
Margaret paused; the rest of the table was silent before her. “Her hair was as dark as the wings of a crow, Prudie,” she continued, softly. “Like yours, Mouse. And it stayed that way till the day she died. I remember I went all shy the first time I saw her looking at me. Hid behind a tree trunk. But Prudie just waved and called out to me, and before I knew what was happening, the three of them had come down to the fence. They put an old chair over on my side so I could step up, and Lawrence helped me climb over.” She shook her head slowly, lost in the memory. “I was basically the Elliots’ little sister from then on. Pretty soon, I could climb that back fence by myself. I’d run through all those pecan trees to their house the minute I finished my breakfast, wouldn’t come home until dark. Lawrence’s daddy managed the farm, you know. They were all so protective of me. The Elliots were like family all through my childhood, long before your father and I up and made it official.”
“Didn’t your aunt Edith worry about you, gone all day?” asked Emlynn, gazing at Margaret, chin on her hand, her risotto growing cold.
“Aunt Edith?” Margaret laughed. “No, she didn’t worry about me. It wasn’t like it is now. Kids went out to play in the morning and didn’t come home until dark. I’m pretty sure she was just happy I had some friends my own age to play with. She was pretty far up in her sixties by the time I came to live with her, you know. Still said words like ‘fiddlesticks.’ Wore white gloves in the daytime and called her earrings ‘earbobs.’ ”
“I’d’ve liked an aunt Edith,” said Emlynn, her voice wistful.
The prisms that hung from the large chandeliers caught the sharp dying rays of a sun sliding rapidly down the tall windows, splitting the light into lines of bright color that danced atop the white tablecloths. The room seemed to get quieter as the light dimmed. And suddenly, there was Aunt Edith again. Margaret saw her first as one sees a shadow, in a corner, across the quiet room. Her navy-blue dress. That string of old pearls, the color of ivory. The same thing she’d worn just last night.
“You know,” Margaret said, almost as though to herself, “you can usually see the child in an older person. I notice this more and more these days. Something in the way they laugh, or how they look when they think no one is watching. It’s easy to see who they once were. I used to catch Lawrence reading outside on the porch. The way he turned the pages, it was the same way he’d done it when he was little—always picking the right one up from the bottom instead of the top, then purposefully laying it down on the left side of the book. Like he was worried the wind might take it. One of the wonderful things about marrying someone you knew as a child—I could always see the boy in him, still there like the first day we met. But it was never that way with Aunt Edith. To me, she was just always old.” Margaret closed her eyes briefly, to banish her aunt, but when she opened them, she found the hint of Aunt Edith still there, a tiny half smile on her face, her head cocked, almost as though she were listening. Margaret held her chimerical gaze, unafraid, memories like movies bright in her mind.
“She read to me every night, let me sleep in her bed when it stormed,” she said softly, remembering. “And she always wore dresses. I don’t think the woman owned a pair of pants. She cut the grass in a dress. Baked a pound cake every Friday night in case people dropped by on the weekend. That’s where Mouse gets it, I suppose.” Margaret looked at her daughter and smiled. “Her best friend, Ida Mae, lived with us, you know, and the two of them always seemed to be in the kitchen. All those men who used to come harvest the pecans every fall? Ida Mae and Aunt Edith fed everyone. I remember that long dining room table just loaded with food. The polished silver, the tall vases of sunflowers and mums lined up down the center. I think Aunt Edith always longed for a big family. She only had the one brother, Maynard, but he disappeared soon after the war. He made the dollhouse, Emlynn. Remember? Anyway, Aunt Edith would’ve loved all of you. She…she gave me a wonderful childhood.” Margaret heard the catch in her voice and coughed a bit to disguise it.
The melancholy notes of “Georgia on My Mind” filled the restaurant, and at the table nearest the door a group of men on the cusp of inebriation began singing along, effectively shattering Margaret’s reflection, as well as the decorous calm of the room. Withering stares from the tables around them soon silenced the singers, and Margaret looked back to see all three of her children staring at her, discomfort written all over their faces. Her eyes darted to the other side of the room, but Aunt Edith was no longer there.
Blinking, Emlynn said, “Oh! I’m such an idiot. I completely forgot.” She reached under the table and pulled her tote bag up onto her lap. “I found something in that dollhouse today. An old envelope. I thought it might be the building plans or something. Now where did I put it?”
As Emlynn dug through her bag, muttering to herself, Mouse cleared her throat and said, “Well, I think it’ll be a crime if they tear that big old house down. And all those beautiful trees.”
“And what are the current owners supposed to do with it all?” asked Tom. Margaret could tell by the tone of his voice he was grateful to be back on the firm ground of a topic he knew. “Just let the place sit there empty till it falls down? That’s valuable land. And people have the right to develop it as they see fit, make as much money as they can. Besides, Mouse, our parents were the first ones to sell.”
“We had to sell,” Margaret interjected. “Aunt Edith had died, and we needed to pay for Dad’s college. Your father’s parents had already passed; his brother, Forrest, had no intention of ever moving back to Wesleyan; and Prudie was married and living up in Chattanooga. What were we all supposed to do? The people who bought it offered us what seemed like a fortune. That money kept our heads above water for years.”
“You can’t possibly blame Mama for what might happen to the place now, Tom,” said Lawrie. “It’s been sold so many times over the years. The people who own it now are the ones courting developers.”
“You say that word like it’s profanity,” said Tom. “Did you forget that’s how I make my money?”
“Oh, noooo,” said Lawrie. “Nobody ever forgets about your money, Tommy. You won’t let us.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it. I’m just saying, when people get ready to sell their houses and move, it’s up to them and them alone. It’s nobody else’s business what they do.”
Clearly unused to this tone in Lawrie’s voice, Emlynn had frozen with her hand in her bag, and Margaret, anxious to circumvent the argument that was rapidly getting out of control, spoke up. “It’s funny you should say that, Tom,” she said. “Because I recently found this place online. One night when…well…when I couldn’t sleep. This lovely house on the beach. It reminded me of that summer we all went to Fripp Island. You remember? Sometimes I wonder what it might be like to move somewhere like that myself. You know, the house here really is big. Maybe too big for one person? And sometimes I get a bit tired of…”
“Tired?” Tom pounced before she’d even begun to explain what she meant by the word. “Who isn’t tired? I just drove all the way down here from Atlanta, and I’m turning right around to drive back. I’m tired.” His laugh was out of place and came perilously close to a sneer. “I’m sure you miss Dad, but running away won’t change that, Margaret.”
Emlynn had located what she’d been looking for in her tote and was holding something out toward Margaret, but Margaret ignored her, still facing Tom. “You didn’t let me finish, Son,” she said, sharply stressing that last word. “If I ever decided to move, I certainly wouldn’t be running away, as you put it. I’d just be starting something new. Now that your father is gone.”
“Here, I’ve found it,” began Emlynn, clearly hoping to steer the subject into friendlier waters, but Mouse, who’d been glaring at Tom, quickly turned back to her mother. “We all miss Daddy,” she said, her voice wavering so slightly nobody noticed but Margaret. “Of course we do. And if the house is too much for you, well, we could get somebody in. You know, to clean, and do the ironing. Maybe even cook a few nights a week.”
It was due to the soft lighting that Mouse failed to notice how Margaret’s spine had suddenly stiffened, and she continued moving toward the edge of her mother’s patience without pause. “I don’t think it would be a good idea to move, Mother. Certainly not to someplace like Fripp. You’re too…I mean…you’re not…well, that far away? All by yourself? I don’t think that would be safe. Not…not now, anyway.”
Out of the corner of her eye Margaret saw Emlynn shake her head slowly as she looked at Mouse with wide eyes.
“First off,” Margaret said, now feeling compelled to argue for something she knew she didn’t even really want. “I do not need a maid, or a cook. For God’s sake, Mouse. If you’re trying to say that I’m too old to move, let me remind you that I’m only sixty-four, and barely that. You can ask Sam Peters whatever you want to ask him concerning my health. I had a checkup with him less than two months ago, and he’ll tell you I’m in as good a shape as any of you. And if you remember, you couldn’t even get onto Fripp Island without a pass. I’m sure it is every bit as safe as Wesleyan.”
“Then I can’t believe you’d even consider someplace like that,” Tom said, then snorted. “It just sounds like one of those gated communities you all hate so much.”
“You mean like yours?” Lawrie stared at Tom, instantly indignant on his mother’s behalf. Emlynn put her hand on his arm.
“If you ever manage to get married to this girlfriend of yours, maybe one day you might even have children, and if you do, you just see if places like mine don’t become more attractive to you,” snapped Tom. “Life’s not like it was when we were kids, Lawrie. Even in a bite-size little town like this one. You don’t just let kids play outside all day by themselves like Margaret used to do. Like we used to do, for that matter. Not anymore. They’ll end up on the six o’clock news. Kidnapped, shot, or worse. Mouse is right. You’ll see. You just might want to live someplace safe one day, too.”
Emlynn slipped what she’d been holding atop Margaret’s small stack of presents, then wrapped her arms around her big purse and held it tight to her chest.
“My girlfriend has a name, you know,” said Lawrie, his voice rising. Margaret saw Emlynn wince, a bright blush creeping up her neck and settling onto her cheeks. “And you don’t even have any kids. See, that’s your problem, Tommy. You watch too much so-called news. It’s destroying your pleasant personality. Gotta keep everyone safe. Just what are you so scared of, huh? From what I can tell, you spend way too much time checking your bank account and not enough time considering that one day you just might trip and fall into that new saltwater swimming pool you paid so much money for. Just how safe are you, really?”
“Lawrie!” Margaret and Mouse erupted in unison, and Emlynn looked down at her hands.
“Oh, let him talk,” said Tom, pouring more San Pellegrino into his half-empty glass. “He’d think it was a great idea if Margaret wanted to move to the moon. Anything she wanted to do would be just fine with him.”
“Excuse me,” said Emlynn, quietly. “Powder room.” Pushing her chair back, she rose and slipped out of the room. Only Margaret and Mouse watched her go.
“She’s your mother, too, Tom, even if you never call her by that name. And at least I manage to see her more than once a year. I’m surprised you even remember how to get to Wesleyan anymore now that you’re in that big house that’s…oh, remind me…where is it again? Just a half mile from the governor’s mansion?”
“Oops, now my brother’s jealousy is showing,” said Tom, acidly. “Guess spending your days separating hound dogs from their balls ain’t as lucrative as you thought it might be when you were toiling away in vet school, huh? Sad. Well, at least it’s fulfilling.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Tommy,” hissed Mouse. “Keep your voice down. When did you get to be such an unmitigated jackass?”
“Now, you listen to me…” Tom pointed his finger at his sister, clearly geared up for a fight.
“Don’t you dare start on Mouse,” warned Lawrie, leaning across the table toward his brother.
“Stop it!” All of you. Stop it right now!” Margaret had spoken so loudly it surprised even her. The patriciate of the Yamacraw Room turned to stare at her family just as a dark-suited waiter came through the door to the sound of “Hit the Road, Jack,” his smile illuminated by the tiny candles rising out of a three-tiered cake on which Happy Birthday, Mother, was written in icing as red as Margaret Elliot’s face.
She didn’t acknowledge the waiter but kept her eyes on the table. And that’s when she saw it. The envelope Emlynn had pulled from her tote bag. The yellow envelope. Aunt Edith’s yellow envelope. It was lying there on top of her birthday presents; Margaret recognized it at once. Her own name was written on the deeply creased paper, the handwriting faded, but profoundly familiar. And it felt like someone had reached into her chest and taken hold of her heart.
Without another word to her children, Margaret grabbed the envelope and stood up. As the three of them sat there, speechless and staring, she pushed past the waiter and headed hard for the door, the room spinning around her like leaves in the wind.
7
Margaret
The first time Lawrence proposed to her, they’d both been eleven years old. It hadn’t been a real proposal, of course. More like an abiding assumption spoken out loud. They’d been leaning against the hood of his brother’s new tomato-red Thunderbird, waiting for Forrest to come out of the house and give them the ride that he’d promised. Bobby Darin was singing “Beyond the Sea” on the little transistor radio in Margaret’s hand when Lawrence had said, “When we grow up and get married, we’ll get us a convertible, too.”
“When we get married?” She’d giggled, pushing him hard on the shoulder. Lawrence had blushed, and that told her more than his words had just done. “Well, yeah,” he’d said. “I mean, sure.”
The letters had started coming not long after that. Lawrence would write them at night. Margaret could lie in bed and see the warm glow from his lamp seeping through the pecan trees on its way to her window. If that light stayed on till past midnight, she knew there’d be a letter waiting for her in the crook of the oak tree that sat in the side yard, the one nearest the house, the one draped with curtains of moss. She’d head straight there in the morning.
These weren’t love letters at first—those would come later—just the knots of life he was trying, even then, to work loose by turning them all into a story. Things got clearer when he wrote them on paper, he told her. And she was always a safe place for his thoughts. That strange war starting up in those faraway jungles, the murder of the new president, and finally, his own father’s death…everything he couldn’t understand pushed Lawrence down into all he could know about why.
She’d kept these letters, stuck them in books, drawers, and boxes, and through the years they would laugh at his boyish wonderings whenever they came across the earliest ones, full as they were of those nascent thoughts and opinions that he’d not yet lived long enough to succinctly refine but that would, over time, coalesce into something like wisdom.
When Emlynn laid the yellow envelope on the table beside Margaret at dinner, she’d done so as though it were an ordinary thing, never realizing that it had been sent straight to her by Aunt Edith. Margaret was sure about this. Hadn’t she seen it often enough in the old lady’s hands as Aunt Edith had stood by her bed in the dark? But it had been the handwriting on the front of that envelope that had seemed to audibly speak Margaret’s name. It was that same looping script of those early letters. Lawrence’s hand as a teenager. She would have recognized it anywhere, anytime.
Still unopened, the envelope now lay on Margaret’s bed. She could see it from where she stood on her little balcony, her arms wrapped around her shoulders in a solitary hug as she waited for her heart to slow down. She’d been standing out here for a good fifteen minutes, wanting to know what the envelope contained but afraid to find out all the same. Just touching it had felt like reaching into icy water.
The wind had risen since she returned home. It traveled from far out in the marshes, salted and chill, a portent of colder nights to come. Margaret could hear the wind chimes singing from the porches downstairs; their euphonic tones seemed to drift farther and farther away until they joined the susurrus of fern-shaped leaves on the pecan trees at Aunt Edith’s old house. She could no longer tell the difference between them. With leaden feet, Margaret left the balcony and went back into the bedroom.
Her heart pounding loud enough to hear, she sat down on the side of her bed and picked up the long yellow envelope. Hesitating briefly, she took a deep breath and opened it, cutting her index finger on the paper’s edge, a dotted line of red blood appearing instantly. Sticking her finger into her mouth for a second, Margaret thought, even hoped, the envelope was empty. Then she opened it wider, turned it upside down, and shook it like a saltshaker. An old piece of newsprint floated and fell in slow motion, followed in the next breath by a small black-and-white photo, both landing faceup on the bed.
“I know that, Mouse,” said Tom, irritated by the diminutive version of his name, which nobody except his family used. “But he’s not here right now, so I was addressing Margaret.”
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of that place without thinking about Daddy,” said Mouse, turning to her mother. “Y’all got married under those trees in the grove, right where you first met. He used to tell me all about that, how you’d been best friends since you were both little. He said he remembered you standing at the fence that separated his house from yours, watching him play with his brother and sister. I loved those stories so much.”
Margaret smiled at Mouse. “It was your aunt Prudie who first saw me standing there under the trees,” she said. “I was barely out of diapers, but I thought she was the most beautiful girl in the world, and I guess I still do, present company excepted, of course.” She raised her wineglass to Emlynn and Mouse.
Margaret paused; the rest of the table was silent before her. “Her hair was as dark as the wings of a crow, Prudie,” she continued, softly. “Like yours, Mouse. And it stayed that way till the day she died. I remember I went all shy the first time I saw her looking at me. Hid behind a tree trunk. But Prudie just waved and called out to me, and before I knew what was happening, the three of them had come down to the fence. They put an old chair over on my side so I could step up, and Lawrence helped me climb over.” She shook her head slowly, lost in the memory. “I was basically the Elliots’ little sister from then on. Pretty soon, I could climb that back fence by myself. I’d run through all those pecan trees to their house the minute I finished my breakfast, wouldn’t come home until dark. Lawrence’s daddy managed the farm, you know. They were all so protective of me. The Elliots were like family all through my childhood, long before your father and I up and made it official.”
“Didn’t your aunt Edith worry about you, gone all day?” asked Emlynn, gazing at Margaret, chin on her hand, her risotto growing cold.
“Aunt Edith?” Margaret laughed. “No, she didn’t worry about me. It wasn’t like it is now. Kids went out to play in the morning and didn’t come home until dark. I’m pretty sure she was just happy I had some friends my own age to play with. She was pretty far up in her sixties by the time I came to live with her, you know. Still said words like ‘fiddlesticks.’ Wore white gloves in the daytime and called her earrings ‘earbobs.’ ”
“I’d’ve liked an aunt Edith,” said Emlynn, her voice wistful.
The prisms that hung from the large chandeliers caught the sharp dying rays of a sun sliding rapidly down the tall windows, splitting the light into lines of bright color that danced atop the white tablecloths. The room seemed to get quieter as the light dimmed. And suddenly, there was Aunt Edith again. Margaret saw her first as one sees a shadow, in a corner, across the quiet room. Her navy-blue dress. That string of old pearls, the color of ivory. The same thing she’d worn just last night.
“You know,” Margaret said, almost as though to herself, “you can usually see the child in an older person. I notice this more and more these days. Something in the way they laugh, or how they look when they think no one is watching. It’s easy to see who they once were. I used to catch Lawrence reading outside on the porch. The way he turned the pages, it was the same way he’d done it when he was little—always picking the right one up from the bottom instead of the top, then purposefully laying it down on the left side of the book. Like he was worried the wind might take it. One of the wonderful things about marrying someone you knew as a child—I could always see the boy in him, still there like the first day we met. But it was never that way with Aunt Edith. To me, she was just always old.” Margaret closed her eyes briefly, to banish her aunt, but when she opened them, she found the hint of Aunt Edith still there, a tiny half smile on her face, her head cocked, almost as though she were listening. Margaret held her chimerical gaze, unafraid, memories like movies bright in her mind.
“She read to me every night, let me sleep in her bed when it stormed,” she said softly, remembering. “And she always wore dresses. I don’t think the woman owned a pair of pants. She cut the grass in a dress. Baked a pound cake every Friday night in case people dropped by on the weekend. That’s where Mouse gets it, I suppose.” Margaret looked at her daughter and smiled. “Her best friend, Ida Mae, lived with us, you know, and the two of them always seemed to be in the kitchen. All those men who used to come harvest the pecans every fall? Ida Mae and Aunt Edith fed everyone. I remember that long dining room table just loaded with food. The polished silver, the tall vases of sunflowers and mums lined up down the center. I think Aunt Edith always longed for a big family. She only had the one brother, Maynard, but he disappeared soon after the war. He made the dollhouse, Emlynn. Remember? Anyway, Aunt Edith would’ve loved all of you. She…she gave me a wonderful childhood.” Margaret heard the catch in her voice and coughed a bit to disguise it.
The melancholy notes of “Georgia on My Mind” filled the restaurant, and at the table nearest the door a group of men on the cusp of inebriation began singing along, effectively shattering Margaret’s reflection, as well as the decorous calm of the room. Withering stares from the tables around them soon silenced the singers, and Margaret looked back to see all three of her children staring at her, discomfort written all over their faces. Her eyes darted to the other side of the room, but Aunt Edith was no longer there.
Blinking, Emlynn said, “Oh! I’m such an idiot. I completely forgot.” She reached under the table and pulled her tote bag up onto her lap. “I found something in that dollhouse today. An old envelope. I thought it might be the building plans or something. Now where did I put it?”
As Emlynn dug through her bag, muttering to herself, Mouse cleared her throat and said, “Well, I think it’ll be a crime if they tear that big old house down. And all those beautiful trees.”
“And what are the current owners supposed to do with it all?” asked Tom. Margaret could tell by the tone of his voice he was grateful to be back on the firm ground of a topic he knew. “Just let the place sit there empty till it falls down? That’s valuable land. And people have the right to develop it as they see fit, make as much money as they can. Besides, Mouse, our parents were the first ones to sell.”
“We had to sell,” Margaret interjected. “Aunt Edith had died, and we needed to pay for Dad’s college. Your father’s parents had already passed; his brother, Forrest, had no intention of ever moving back to Wesleyan; and Prudie was married and living up in Chattanooga. What were we all supposed to do? The people who bought it offered us what seemed like a fortune. That money kept our heads above water for years.”
“You can’t possibly blame Mama for what might happen to the place now, Tom,” said Lawrie. “It’s been sold so many times over the years. The people who own it now are the ones courting developers.”
“You say that word like it’s profanity,” said Tom. “Did you forget that’s how I make my money?”
“Oh, noooo,” said Lawrie. “Nobody ever forgets about your money, Tommy. You won’t let us.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it. I’m just saying, when people get ready to sell their houses and move, it’s up to them and them alone. It’s nobody else’s business what they do.”
Clearly unused to this tone in Lawrie’s voice, Emlynn had frozen with her hand in her bag, and Margaret, anxious to circumvent the argument that was rapidly getting out of control, spoke up. “It’s funny you should say that, Tom,” she said. “Because I recently found this place online. One night when…well…when I couldn’t sleep. This lovely house on the beach. It reminded me of that summer we all went to Fripp Island. You remember? Sometimes I wonder what it might be like to move somewhere like that myself. You know, the house here really is big. Maybe too big for one person? And sometimes I get a bit tired of…”
“Tired?” Tom pounced before she’d even begun to explain what she meant by the word. “Who isn’t tired? I just drove all the way down here from Atlanta, and I’m turning right around to drive back. I’m tired.” His laugh was out of place and came perilously close to a sneer. “I’m sure you miss Dad, but running away won’t change that, Margaret.”
Emlynn had located what she’d been looking for in her tote and was holding something out toward Margaret, but Margaret ignored her, still facing Tom. “You didn’t let me finish, Son,” she said, sharply stressing that last word. “If I ever decided to move, I certainly wouldn’t be running away, as you put it. I’d just be starting something new. Now that your father is gone.”
“Here, I’ve found it,” began Emlynn, clearly hoping to steer the subject into friendlier waters, but Mouse, who’d been glaring at Tom, quickly turned back to her mother. “We all miss Daddy,” she said, her voice wavering so slightly nobody noticed but Margaret. “Of course we do. And if the house is too much for you, well, we could get somebody in. You know, to clean, and do the ironing. Maybe even cook a few nights a week.”
It was due to the soft lighting that Mouse failed to notice how Margaret’s spine had suddenly stiffened, and she continued moving toward the edge of her mother’s patience without pause. “I don’t think it would be a good idea to move, Mother. Certainly not to someplace like Fripp. You’re too…I mean…you’re not…well, that far away? All by yourself? I don’t think that would be safe. Not…not now, anyway.”
Out of the corner of her eye Margaret saw Emlynn shake her head slowly as she looked at Mouse with wide eyes.
“First off,” Margaret said, now feeling compelled to argue for something she knew she didn’t even really want. “I do not need a maid, or a cook. For God’s sake, Mouse. If you’re trying to say that I’m too old to move, let me remind you that I’m only sixty-four, and barely that. You can ask Sam Peters whatever you want to ask him concerning my health. I had a checkup with him less than two months ago, and he’ll tell you I’m in as good a shape as any of you. And if you remember, you couldn’t even get onto Fripp Island without a pass. I’m sure it is every bit as safe as Wesleyan.”
“Then I can’t believe you’d even consider someplace like that,” Tom said, then snorted. “It just sounds like one of those gated communities you all hate so much.”
“You mean like yours?” Lawrie stared at Tom, instantly indignant on his mother’s behalf. Emlynn put her hand on his arm.
“If you ever manage to get married to this girlfriend of yours, maybe one day you might even have children, and if you do, you just see if places like mine don’t become more attractive to you,” snapped Tom. “Life’s not like it was when we were kids, Lawrie. Even in a bite-size little town like this one. You don’t just let kids play outside all day by themselves like Margaret used to do. Like we used to do, for that matter. Not anymore. They’ll end up on the six o’clock news. Kidnapped, shot, or worse. Mouse is right. You’ll see. You just might want to live someplace safe one day, too.”
Emlynn slipped what she’d been holding atop Margaret’s small stack of presents, then wrapped her arms around her big purse and held it tight to her chest.
“My girlfriend has a name, you know,” said Lawrie, his voice rising. Margaret saw Emlynn wince, a bright blush creeping up her neck and settling onto her cheeks. “And you don’t even have any kids. See, that’s your problem, Tommy. You watch too much so-called news. It’s destroying your pleasant personality. Gotta keep everyone safe. Just what are you so scared of, huh? From what I can tell, you spend way too much time checking your bank account and not enough time considering that one day you just might trip and fall into that new saltwater swimming pool you paid so much money for. Just how safe are you, really?”
“Lawrie!” Margaret and Mouse erupted in unison, and Emlynn looked down at her hands.
“Oh, let him talk,” said Tom, pouring more San Pellegrino into his half-empty glass. “He’d think it was a great idea if Margaret wanted to move to the moon. Anything she wanted to do would be just fine with him.”
“Excuse me,” said Emlynn, quietly. “Powder room.” Pushing her chair back, she rose and slipped out of the room. Only Margaret and Mouse watched her go.
“She’s your mother, too, Tom, even if you never call her by that name. And at least I manage to see her more than once a year. I’m surprised you even remember how to get to Wesleyan anymore now that you’re in that big house that’s…oh, remind me…where is it again? Just a half mile from the governor’s mansion?”
“Oops, now my brother’s jealousy is showing,” said Tom, acidly. “Guess spending your days separating hound dogs from their balls ain’t as lucrative as you thought it might be when you were toiling away in vet school, huh? Sad. Well, at least it’s fulfilling.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Tommy,” hissed Mouse. “Keep your voice down. When did you get to be such an unmitigated jackass?”
“Now, you listen to me…” Tom pointed his finger at his sister, clearly geared up for a fight.
“Don’t you dare start on Mouse,” warned Lawrie, leaning across the table toward his brother.
“Stop it!” All of you. Stop it right now!” Margaret had spoken so loudly it surprised even her. The patriciate of the Yamacraw Room turned to stare at her family just as a dark-suited waiter came through the door to the sound of “Hit the Road, Jack,” his smile illuminated by the tiny candles rising out of a three-tiered cake on which Happy Birthday, Mother, was written in icing as red as Margaret Elliot’s face.
She didn’t acknowledge the waiter but kept her eyes on the table. And that’s when she saw it. The envelope Emlynn had pulled from her tote bag. The yellow envelope. Aunt Edith’s yellow envelope. It was lying there on top of her birthday presents; Margaret recognized it at once. Her own name was written on the deeply creased paper, the handwriting faded, but profoundly familiar. And it felt like someone had reached into her chest and taken hold of her heart.
Without another word to her children, Margaret grabbed the envelope and stood up. As the three of them sat there, speechless and staring, she pushed past the waiter and headed hard for the door, the room spinning around her like leaves in the wind.
7
Margaret
The first time Lawrence proposed to her, they’d both been eleven years old. It hadn’t been a real proposal, of course. More like an abiding assumption spoken out loud. They’d been leaning against the hood of his brother’s new tomato-red Thunderbird, waiting for Forrest to come out of the house and give them the ride that he’d promised. Bobby Darin was singing “Beyond the Sea” on the little transistor radio in Margaret’s hand when Lawrence had said, “When we grow up and get married, we’ll get us a convertible, too.”
“When we get married?” She’d giggled, pushing him hard on the shoulder. Lawrence had blushed, and that told her more than his words had just done. “Well, yeah,” he’d said. “I mean, sure.”
The letters had started coming not long after that. Lawrence would write them at night. Margaret could lie in bed and see the warm glow from his lamp seeping through the pecan trees on its way to her window. If that light stayed on till past midnight, she knew there’d be a letter waiting for her in the crook of the oak tree that sat in the side yard, the one nearest the house, the one draped with curtains of moss. She’d head straight there in the morning.
These weren’t love letters at first—those would come later—just the knots of life he was trying, even then, to work loose by turning them all into a story. Things got clearer when he wrote them on paper, he told her. And she was always a safe place for his thoughts. That strange war starting up in those faraway jungles, the murder of the new president, and finally, his own father’s death…everything he couldn’t understand pushed Lawrence down into all he could know about why.
She’d kept these letters, stuck them in books, drawers, and boxes, and through the years they would laugh at his boyish wonderings whenever they came across the earliest ones, full as they were of those nascent thoughts and opinions that he’d not yet lived long enough to succinctly refine but that would, over time, coalesce into something like wisdom.
When Emlynn laid the yellow envelope on the table beside Margaret at dinner, she’d done so as though it were an ordinary thing, never realizing that it had been sent straight to her by Aunt Edith. Margaret was sure about this. Hadn’t she seen it often enough in the old lady’s hands as Aunt Edith had stood by her bed in the dark? But it had been the handwriting on the front of that envelope that had seemed to audibly speak Margaret’s name. It was that same looping script of those early letters. Lawrence’s hand as a teenager. She would have recognized it anywhere, anytime.
Still unopened, the envelope now lay on Margaret’s bed. She could see it from where she stood on her little balcony, her arms wrapped around her shoulders in a solitary hug as she waited for her heart to slow down. She’d been standing out here for a good fifteen minutes, wanting to know what the envelope contained but afraid to find out all the same. Just touching it had felt like reaching into icy water.
The wind had risen since she returned home. It traveled from far out in the marshes, salted and chill, a portent of colder nights to come. Margaret could hear the wind chimes singing from the porches downstairs; their euphonic tones seemed to drift farther and farther away until they joined the susurrus of fern-shaped leaves on the pecan trees at Aunt Edith’s old house. She could no longer tell the difference between them. With leaden feet, Margaret left the balcony and went back into the bedroom.
Her heart pounding loud enough to hear, she sat down on the side of her bed and picked up the long yellow envelope. Hesitating briefly, she took a deep breath and opened it, cutting her index finger on the paper’s edge, a dotted line of red blood appearing instantly. Sticking her finger into her mouth for a second, Margaret thought, even hoped, the envelope was empty. Then she opened it wider, turned it upside down, and shook it like a saltshaker. An old piece of newsprint floated and fell in slow motion, followed in the next breath by a small black-and-white photo, both landing faceup on the bed.
