Once we’re all in the car, she holds Gabion in her lap, standing him up so he can see out the windows. He bounces and points and babbles, excited. He’s never been in a car before.
“My, my, look at those curls.” She slides her fingers along my baby brother’s head, pulling his corn-silk hair upward, so it has peaks on the top like the baby dolls at the county fair.
Gabion points out the window, cheering. “Ohsee! Ohsee!” He’s spotted a little girl having her picture made on a black-and-white pinto pony in front of a big house.
“We just need to wash the stench of the river from you, don’t we? Then you’ll be a fine little boy.” Miss Tann’s nose crinkles up.
I wonder what she means by that. Who’s going to clean us up and why?
Maybe the hospital won’t let us in this way, I tell myself. Maybe we have to wash up first…to see Queenie?
“His name’s Gabion,” I say, so she’ll know what to call him. “Gabby for short.”
Her head turns quick, the way a cat’s does when it’s seen a mouse in the pantry. She looks at me like she forgot I was in the car. “Restrain yourself from answering questions unless you’re asked.”
Her arm snakes out, fleshy and pale, and surrounds Lark, pulling her away.
I look down at the two scared kids huddled together on the floor and then at Camellia. My sister’s eyes tell me that she’s figured out what I already know, even though I don’t want to.
We’re not headed to the hospital to see our mama and daddy.
CHAPTER 7
Avery
The retirement home lies bathed in soft morning sunlight. Even with the newly added parking lot on what was once a sprawling front lawn, Magnolia Manor speaks of a bygone era—of the elegance of afternoon teas, and glittering cotillions, and formal dinners at the long mahogany table that still stands in the dining room. It’s easy to picture Scarlett O’Hara fanning herself beneath the moss-draped live oaks that shade the white-columned veranda.
I remember this place’s former life, if only a tad. My mother brought me to a baby shower here when I was nine or ten. Driving over, she shared the story of attending an important cocktail reception here for a cousin who was running for the South Carolina governorship. A college girl at the time, my mother had anything but politics on her mind. She wasn’t at Magnolia Manor for thirty minutes before she noticed my father across the room. She made it her business to find out who he was. When she learned that he was a Stafford, she set her cap.
The rest is history. A marriage of political dynasties. My mother’s grandfather had been a North Carolina representative before his retirement, and her father was in office at the time of the wedding.
The story makes me smile as I climb the manor’s marble steps and punch the code into the incongruously modern keypad beside the front door. Important people live here still. Not just anyone is allowed to enter. Sadly, not just anyone is allowed to exit either. Behind the manor, the expansive grounds have been carefully fenced in decorative iron too tall to climb over. The gates are locked. The lake and reflecting pool can be looked at but not reached…or fallen into.
Many of the residents must be protected from themselves. That’s the sad truth of it. As they decline, they move from one wing to the next, slowly progressing to higher levels of delicately provided care. There’s no denying that Magnolia Manor is more upscale than the nursing home May Crandall lives in, but both places face the same underlying challenge—how to provide dignity, care, and comfort as life turns difficult corners.
I wind my way to the Memory Care Unit—here, no one would even think of crassly calling it the Alzheimer’s Unit. I let myself through another locked door and into a salon, where the television plays a rerun of Gunsmoke turned up loud.
A woman by the window stares at me blankly as I pass. Beyond the glass, the climbing roses are dewy and fresh, pink and filled with life.
The roses outside Grandma Judy’s window are a cheery yellow. She’s sitting in the wingback chair admiring them when I walk in. I stop one step inside the door and steel myself before drawing her attention from the plants.
I prepare for her to look at me the same way the woman in the lounge did just now—without a hint of recognition.
I hope she won’t. There’s never any telling.
“Hi, Grandma Judy!” The words are bright, and loud, and cheerful. Even so, they take a minute to garner a reaction.
She turns slowly, leafs through the scattered pages in her mind, then in her usual sweet way says, “Hello, darling. How are you this afternoon?”
It’s morning, of course. As I’d predicted, the DAR meeting ran late last night, and try as I might, I couldn’t get away from the wedding interrogation. I was like a hapless grasshopper dropped into a henhouse. My head is now full of suggestions, dates I shouldn’t plan on because someone important will be out of town, and offers to loan china, silver, crystal, and linens.
“Wonderful, thank you,” I tell Grandma Judy, and cross the room to hug her, hoping the moment of closeness will draw a memory from her.
For an instant, it seems to. She looks deep into my eyes, then finally sighs and says, “You are so very pretty. What lovely hair you have.” Touching it, she smiles.
Sadness expands in my chest. I came here hoping for answers about May Crandall and the old photograph on her nightstand. That doesn’t look very likely now.
“There was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead.” My grandmother smiles up at me. Cool fingers with paper-thin skin stroke my cheek.
“And when she was good, she was very, very good,” I add. Grandma Judy always greeted me with this poem when I visited her house on Lagniappe Street as a child.
“And when she was bad, she was horrid,” she finishes, and grins and winks, and we laugh together. It’s just like old times.
I sit in the chair across the little round table. “I always loved it when you teased me with that rhyme.” In Honeybee’s home, little girls were expected to be anything but horrid, but Grandma Judy had always been known for having a spunky streak that bordered on impropriety. She’d spoken out on issues like civil rights and education for women long before it was acceptable for a female to have an opinion.
She asks if I’ve seen Welly-boy, her pet name for my father, Wells.
I fill her in on yesterday’s press op and the town hall forum, then the long, long, long DAR meeting at Drayden Hill. I skip over the wedding chatter, of course.
Grandma Judy nods with approval as I talk, narrowing an eye and offering shrewd comments about the town hall meeting. “Wells mustn’t let those people run riot over him. They’d love to catch a Stafford meddling in the dirt, but they won’t.”
“Of course not. He handled it beautifully, just like he always does.” I don’t mention how tired he looked or his seeming mental lapse under questioning.
“That’s my boy. He’s a very good boy. I don’t know how he could’ve given rise to a girl who can be horrid.”
“Pppfff! Grandma!” I slap a hand over hers and squeeze. She’s actually cracking jokes and drawing connections between us. It is a good day. “I think it skipped a generation.”
I’m expecting a quick-witted retort. Instead, she says blandly, “Oh, many things do.” She sinks back in her chair, her hand pulling away from mine. I sense the moment fading.
“Grandma Judy, I wanted to ask you something.”
“Oh?”