How far back did her “all this” cover? As far back as before her fall in the kitchen? Or as far back as before I arrived?
All was silent in her studio/bedroom by the time they delivered the bike, a vintage 1954 beach cruiser, suitable for riding on sand. In addition to the helmet, Lachicotte had purchased a large rear basket, which could be attached to the fender when I went to the island grocery store, and a saddle pack for small items that fitted beneath the seat.
I would have liked to inaugurate my bike on the beach, but high tide was rolling in. So I set off north on Seashore Road, which ran parallel to the beach. This was the road Aunt Charlotte used when she carried too much painting equipment for walking to Grief Cottage, even if she had to climb over the prickly dunes at the end. It was the same road on which Mr. Art Honeywell in his truck, fleeing Hurricane Hazel, met up with the nameless parents “on foot,” desperately searching for their nameless boy.
There had been an awful moment on the track behind the bike shop when Lachicotte and the shop owner stood by dotingly to watch me “test drive” the beach cruiser I had chosen. But what if I had somehow forgotten how to ride and fell off? Lachicotte would be so embarrassed. Every boy in the world could ride a bike, though it had taken me a while to learn on Wheezer’s older brother’s bike. “Your trouble, Marcus, is you’re thinking about falling off,” Wheezer said. “Stop thinking and just ride.”
I wished Wheezer could see me on this beauty. How odd that he felt like the dead one, though he was still living in Forsterville, doing his old things—whereas the nameless dead boy in Grief Cottage was so alive.
When Lachicotte and I had been doing some emergency grocery shopping, leaving Aunt Charlotte in the car, he had given me his business card with work and cell phone numbers. “Call me if you need me, doesn’t matter what time of day or night,” he said. “It may get depressing for her. She won’t be able to paint for a while and she hates being beholden to anyone. We’ve got to try and keep her from festering.”
When Mom had the flu really bad once, I did everything for her. I made sure there were always liquids beside the bed and that she took her medications when she was supposed to. I changed her sheets and pillowcases sometimes twice a day and made simple things for her to get down (Jell-O, chicken noodle soup from a packet) when she didn’t want to eat. I slept on the sofa and cleaned house and did the laundry and still kept up with my homework. Aunt Charlotte wasn’t actually sick. She was, as she said, “symmetrically challenged” and couldn’t paint for a while, and our job was to keep her from festering, though I wasn’t entirely sure what Lachicotte had meant by that.
But one thing I did know: until I turned eighteen, she was all that stood between me and foster care.
My bike tires made an exciting thrum on the paved road. On my left side was what they called “the creek,” where people fished and crabbed, but it looked wide enough to be a river. Whatever they called it, it needed a causeway over it between the island and the mainland. On my right side were high dunes, which allowed passing glimpses of the ocean from the driveways cut into the dunes. The driveways led to the beach houses, a few spiffy ones with sprinklers going on lawns and bright shrubs in bloom, others varying from needful maintenance to shabbiness. Most of the houses had names carved on lintels or displayed on boards. Rossignol House, No Saints, Pryor’s Folly. Had my aunt chosen not to name her house, or simply not bothered to? The house to the left of Aunt Charlotte’s, facing the ocean, belonged to an old lady named Mrs. Upchurch. Its name, Seacastle, was carved deeply into a driftwood signpost. Though it stayed empty most of the year, except when the old lady came with her caregiver from July through October, the house was faithfully maintained by a local service. There was also, Aunt Charlotte said, a middle-aged son who lived in Washington and visited for short periods. The house on Aunt Charlotte’s right, facing the ocean, was one of the shabbier rentals with no name, hardly visible behind its dunes and tall grasses, from which we often caught bursts of rock music between the roar of the waves. It was some renters in that house who had forgotten to smooth down the sand after their badminton games and caused the mother turtle to mistake the humps for a dune.
After she told me about old Mrs. Upchurch, I imagined a very old Aunt Charlotte with a caregiver and myself as a middle-aged man coming to visit. But it didn’t feel like something that would ever happen. What I could imagine quite well was a very old Aunt Charlotte, wheeled out on the porch and telling someone, “My great-nephew lived with me for a while. He was a thoughtful boy and I liked having him around. He was so helpful that time when I hurt myself and was laid up. I often sit here listening to the waves and wonder what he would have been like as an adult.”
The bike’s momentum gave me a sense of power. With my own speed I was creating a breeze. A fishy smell rose up from the creek. The sky had wisps of clouds with strokes of purple. Aunt Charlotte and her skies. How was she going to get through the days without her paints? The Steckworths had happened only yesterday! I had seen the boy in the doorway only yesterday. Then later came the moon shining on the hammock and the thud and the smash of the bottle, followed by the ambulance men and then the new bike today and seeing the middle school where it would all start up again.
Was Aunt Charlotte still sleeping? She ordered her wines in cases from a discount store in Myrtle Beach and had them delivered to the island. (“They have a much better selection than locally, and nobody around here needs to know my business.”)
“I can show you how to take care of your bike,” Lachicotte had offered rather shyly. Wheezer had been right, why not just ride and stop thinking? But that was easier said than done. “You are a deep thinker,” Mom would say. “You get it from his side. I’ll tell you all about it when you’re a little older. All you need to know for now is that we loved each other, and he would have loved you if he had lived. When you’re old enough to understand, I’ll try and answer all your questions.”
Did he even know you were going to have me before he died?
I had told Wheezer he was dead and showed him the picture I was not supposed to show, the man she kept in a tin box in the bottom drawer. It was a small posed black-and-white photo, just the frowning face.
“This was before I met him,” Mom said. “He was younger then. But it was the only picture he had to give. When that picture was taken he wasn’t in a place he wanted to be. When he did choose to smile, he could light up your world.”
XIV.