“Daddy played poker?” I asked incredulously. I couldn't imagine it.
“Lots of men did back then,” she said. “You want to hear this or not?”
“Sorry.”
“My father was winning, but your dad was giving him a game, and it came down to the two of them. I was watching from a corner, and on the last hand, Sebastian pushed all of his chips in and said, âI want to marry June.' I nearly fainted. Daddy looked at me and laid his cards down. He'd won, and he took Sebastian's money. And then he said, âIf you marry her tomorrow, I'll stand up with you and give you back the pot.'
“And we were married in the morning. Daddy told me to never tell your father where we came from, and I never did. Daddy left the next day, and I was a wife.”
I leaned back in my chair. Shock left me speechless for a moment, but the thrill of discovering this whole other life, this life of Southern poverty and motherless traveling, this life of deceit, made the questions come quickly and thoughtlessly to my lips.
“How could he do that? It's like you were a horse to be traded or something! A poker chip to be won.”
“My father?” she asked, shooting me a look of surprise.
“Yes, your father!”
“Were you listening to anything I just told you, Connie? He wasn't trying to get rid of me, he was giving me the gift of a life. What do you think would have happened to me? I was seventeen, with a fifth-grade education and a father who was always on the road. He gave me to him out of love, Connie. Parents do all kinds of things that might seem heartless, to their children. But they are done out of love.”
“But you were only seventeen, Mother. You could'veâ”
“What? Gone to college?”
“Iâno, I guess not. But what about Daddy's family? God, they must have had a fit.”
She laughed, nodding. “Oh, they did, they did. He wrote long letters to his father, and got little telegrams in return. He was already in trouble, traveling around, spending their money. I think his mother finally pointed out that if he was married he might finally settle down. I don't know what all went on, but a few months later he got a telegram telling him to come home, and to bring his wife. And they were good to me, in their own way.”
“Did you ever see your father again?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “He was still traveling, but I sent him money out of my allowance whenever I could, and we met in Atlanta and then later New York.”
“I wish I'd known him,” I said.
“He died when you were just two.”
“Oh. I'm sorry, Mom. Did you ever tell Daddy? About April and May?”
“I wanted to tell him, but my father wouldn't let me. He knew the kind of family Sebastian was from. It was bad enough that he'd sprung a seventeen-year-old unknown on them. They would never have accepted me if they'd known about my life on Salt, about my family. He didn't want to ruin the life he'd given me. It was the right decision, Connie. Your father would never have understood, and I got by. I learned to read better, learned a lot of things just by watching you girls grow up. Did you know I used to sneak in your room and borrow your school-books?”
I shook my head in amazement. “No, I never knew,” I said. And I really hadn't. I'd never suspected anything about my own mother's past. But then children grow up believing what their parents tell them. It simply receded into background that I didn't care about as I got older.
And I was as guilty as my mother. I'd never told my own children about my childhood. I never told them about the library full of books, or the music room full of memories, the loss of my sister, or my father. But at least Mother's father had given her a better life. She still knew he loved her.
“I wish I'd known sooner,” I said to her, and this time it wasn't an accusation, but sympathy for the history she'd carried by herself for so long. When I placed my hand upon her arm again she didn't twitch it off.
“Go get my hatbox,” she said, still gazing out at the Gulf. “The one with the blue stripes. It's under my bed.”
I didn't question her. The hatbox was large and round; I dragged it from under the bed by its short ribbon handle. It was light, and I contemplated a quick peek, but Mother called me and I hurried out to her, placing the box on her lap. Her hands fluttered over it like butterflies before settling on the edges of the lid and lifting it off. I stood beside her, looking alternately at her drawn face and the box while she peeled back layers of brittle ivory paper.
Her hands obscured the contents, and they shook as they hovered in the tissue, then stilled as she laid them atop whatever lay within the box. When she finally withdrew her hands, my breath escaped the astonished O of my lips, as though my lungs had been punctured along with my heart. Pinched between my mother's thumbs and fingers were two tiny stained and creased pairs of shoes.
She thrust them toward me, and as soon as I held my hands out she placed the shoes in them, scraped her chair back, and left me there on the porch, the brilliant sun illuminating the ghosts of my aunts in heartbreaking detail. I didn't follow my mother. I couldn't do anything but stare at those little once-white Mary Janes, their warped and gritty soles resting as lightly on my palms as memories. The little metal buckles bled rust across the sides, and I bent toward them and inhaled. They smelled like time and water. I felt the tears on my cheeks, but I couldn't put the shoes down to wipe them away.
When Mother returned she didn't say anything, and I held my hands up like an offering to her pale, drawn face, where I saw the evidence of her own tears. She took the shoes and nestled them in the box, carefully replacing the tissue around them and snugging the lid down firmly.
“Well,” she said, shaking her head as if to ward the memories off, but clutching the hatbox on her lap to keep them safe at the same time. “None of that was supposed to be the point of this conversation. The topic was divorce.”
Incredibly, during her story I'd forgotten about Luke.
“Yes, Sebastian cheated on me. And yes, I was often angry and jealous enough to consider divorce, but I knew he loved me in his way. And I had you girls and a nice life, a life I certainly never believed I'd have. I probably would have gone on like that until he died, but then we had to move.”
I suddenly understood. “The island,” I said. “You didn't want to live on the island.”
“No, I did not. I couldn't imagine living on a tiny, stinking island again. All I could see were April and May, stuck naked in those roots, still holding on to each other. And I almost told your father then, I almost told him everything.”
“Why didn't you?”
“Because of you.”
“Me?” It thrilled me to think that I might have had some influence on my family, after believing Estella had held all the power. But my thrill was short-lived.
“You and Estella. I had nothing to give you. All I had was my wits, and your father's estate, which his father had been foolish with, and which was being pulled right out from under us. We would have had nothing left if it weren't for me threatening to divorce your father, Connie. I went to Bob McNarey.”
“Bob! You knew him back then?”
“That's when I met him. I was lucky. He was just out of law school and knew all kinds of things I didn't. I made your father put as much as he could in my name, I made him set up the trusts for you girls, and I made him sign the deed to the house and land on Big Dune over to me. And I let him believe it was all because of his affairs, but it was really so that I could stand living on an island again, for you and Estella, for your futures, Connie.
“And I didn't live on that damn island for fifteen years for you to get taken in a divorce because your husband can't keep it in his pants.”
She glanced at me, angry now, and I saw the iron gray of a storm-buffeted Gulf in her eyes. “Do you know what people are saying about Luke, Connie? Do you know that he's lost a lot of clients a lot of money?”
“What? What are you talking about?” I sat up straight in my chair, all warm sympathetic feelings for my mother forgotten, ingrained defense of my husband surging to the fore.
“I'm just telling you what I've heard.”
“From who?” I demanded. Luke was a lousy husband, but his work was his life and he took pride in it.
I
still took pride in itâit was the last bit of pride I had in him. “Bob McNarey? He just doesn't want you to take your money out of his control. I can't believe you'd even listen to that kind ofâof nasty gossip.”
“First of all,
I
am in control of my money, not Bob, and I'll remain in control of it until the day I leave this world. Bob is not the only one to mention this to me; for your information, most of the people who have mentioned it have done so out of concern for you, not to gossip. He's losing clients left and right, Constance.”
“I don't believe that for a second.”
I stood and pushed the sliding glass door back with a protesting rumble. I grabbed the box of paperwork on my way to the door, ignoring my mother's footsteps behind me.
“Connie, stop. Just stop and let's discuss this.”
I turned around with the box still clutched in my hands, my heart beating erratically. “It's just mean-spirited gossip. I can't believe you've been talking about us like this.”
“Calm down. Put the box down. I wasn't sure before, and I didn't want to hurt you with rumors. But since your last visit I've spoken with several people who've recently fired him. You have to protect yourself and the boys, Connie. You could wind up with nothing.”
I hesitated. I couldn't help myself. After all, I was the one who'd said I was ready to leave Luke, I was the one who told Bob McNarey that my husband was unfaithful, I was the one who'd aired my dirty laundry. Who was I to turn tail and run when some of it was shoved back at me? Mother took the box from my arms and set it on the hall table before she took my hand and led me back to the living room. She'd left the sliders open, and the Gulf filled the condo with its incessant whisper of waves.
“Would you rather I hadn't told you?”
“Yes,” I said softly, but of course it wasn't true. Everythingâmy marriage, the person I thought my husband was, Gib, even what I thought I knew about my motherâwas all crumbling around me, and I had no way to keep it together.
When I left my mother's condo almost an hour later, I left the box, with her promise that she would drop it at Bob's that very afternoon.
It took fewer than twenty-four hours for the first of the bad news to come in.
Estella
Fewer than twenty-four hours have passed since I left the photo on my nightstand, and Paul has already framed it in beautiful mapleâwhich perfectly matches Connie's hair, I can't help but noticeâand placed it on the shelf in the dining room. I haven't said anything about it, but it looks inevitable there. There is no denying what is happening.
My mother and Connie will arrive in four days. Lisa, the quantitative sciences major, has generously agreed to move in with Chelsea, a statistics whiz who rents the room across the hall. On Friday I will blitz Lisa's room so that Mother and Connie will have someplace comfortable to spend the night. They'll have to share a bed, but unless one of them wants to sleep on the downstairs sofa, there's no other choice.
The college students have been helping to clean the house, taking the broom from me as I sweep the tile, shooing me to the living room when they see me drop to my knees to clean the oven, which I've never done. Ever.
They leave me the smaller tasks, or talk me out of the impossible ones. Two days ago I decided that I should plant the flower garden I've been putting off for eight years and began drawing up a list of supplies.
When Paul suggested that it might be a bit late for it and stuffed the list in his pocket, I drew up another list with ingredients for beef Wellington and baked Alaska, which I've always wanted to learn how to make but never actually have. This list was also confiscated and spaghetti gently suggested.
And now it is four days away.
I have packed three times.
Fours and threes.
The easy answer is seven, of course.
Facts about seven:
Seven is the smallest integer that is not the difference of two primes.
Seven is the only prime that can be the digital root of a perfect square.
There are seven deadly sins: pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, avarice, and sloth.
I force myself to stop before I fall off the edge. I quiet my mind, limit myself to just the three facts.
And now, with all the nervous energy that I am not allowed to expend writhing inside of me, I sit at the front window looking for a distraction. The college students are out for the night and the young ones I tutor have eaten their dinners and retreated to whatever broken homes they come from. The house is quiet but for the steady, gritty sound of Paul sanding the curve of a new bowl, the door to his workroom propped open in case I need him.
The sound is the same
swish, slow, swish
of the Gulf of Mexico, and I close my eyes and imagine that I am already there.
The sanding stops, and soon I hear his steps in the kitchen and the vacuum of the swinging door as he pokes his head in to find me. I don't turn around, and I hear the swinging door settle back in place.
Music, Van Morrison, streams through the living room. I cannot help but smile. Paul takes my hand from my lap and I allow him to pull me up and into him, easily lifting me and placing my bare feet on his boots. He sways in place, and then we move together, and we hit every inch of the floor, because I do not need to look down, because Paul has me, and he will not let my feet touch the ground.