What had I looked forward to this time last year when Mom and I had been shopping for back-to-school things? If the patch of black ice had been somewhere else instead of under of her tires what would we be doing right now? We would probably still be in our upstairs apartment in Mrs. Wicked’s house on Smoke Vine Road. I would be pudge-wonk going into eighth grade, looking forward to my new books and lessons and building up my defenses against peer assaults. Mom would have two or more jobs to offset our loss of income from the death of Mrs. Harm and still be gamely assuring me that our life was going to get better. If all went as planned, we could be going to college together in five more years.
Aunt Charlotte received parcels from the art store in Charleston. She asked me to slit them open with the serrated kitchen knife. I had made the mistake of pulling out the contents of an early parcel, some packs of paper labeled with oriental writing. “Ah, my Japan paper,” she had said breezily, snatching it from my hands. After that she stood guard as I opened the parcels so I couldn’t peek inside, then hopped off to her studio clasping them to her chest. She gave me the task of answering the messages on her website. “Just the ones that seem serious. When in doubt, ask me.” I was relieved to find some promising inquiries, mostly for paintings of Grief Cottage. One lady asked if the artist would be willing to paint a boy into the foreground if she were to provide photographs of her grandson.
“Send a brief reply that the artist doesn’t paint people,” said Aunt Charlotte.
“How should I sign it?”
“ ‘Marcus Harshaw, Assistant to Charlotte Lee.’ Next someone will be asking for me to paint that Confederate ghost into the foreground.”
The art store deliveries, the inquiries on her website, the fact that she spent all day, except for speedy bathroom hops, shut away in her studio with the Japan paper and whatever else had arrived in the parcels: these I took as very positive signs she was getting on with her secret project and preparing for resumption of business as usual with her right hand.
Two days before the trip to the surgeon in Charleston, Aunt Charlotte asked me to trim her hair and then wash it. I was halfway around her head, “grabbing small clumps” and snipping, when she said, not for the first time, how handsome I looked with the new haircut. She went on to relate how I had impressed Lachicotte on my back-to-school shopping trip. “He expected you to spend twice that amount.”
“Mom and I had to make every dollar count, so I guess I was trained well.”
“So much needless want and suffering. All to escape a monster. If she had stayed at home and finished high school and kept inside the lines of Brenda’s bourgeois groove … but I should be careful about wishing in retrospect. If she hadn’t run away, you wouldn’t exist.”
I followed her line of thinking, though I shied away from contemplating my nonexistence. The line led back to her devil incarnate father who was my mom’s grandfather, who had caused them both to run away. I longed to know more, but how much more would be more than I needed to know? It was like in my dream when I asked the sunburned man what was in the trash barrel in front of Grief Cottage and he laughed and said, “I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you.”
“Well, Marcus, you’ve made me svelte for our trip to Charleston,” she said after I had cut, shampooed, and blow-dried her hair. Coasting on the good feeling between us and remembering her anguish on my behalf about missing the turtle boil, I said I was really looking forward to it.
“You’re not going, Marcus. It’s just for a meeting with the surgeon. There won’t be time for fun and shopping with Lachicotte.”
“But I thought—”
“You thought what?”
“You’ve always said our trip to Charleston. Even Lachicotte—”
“Well, ‘our’ in this case meant Lachicotte and me. It’s not a family outing.”
Did I pick up a disparaging twist on the word “family”?
“All you’d be doing would be sitting in the waiting room with Lachicotte.”
“Yeah, I’d probably be in the way.”
“I’ll level with you. If it’s unpleasant news I don’t want to have to put on a cheerful face. I’d rather be driven home in silence and feel as bad as I like.”
“But I wouldn’t—”
“Enough, Marcus. This is the way I want it.”
My daily list was no longer full. No more turtle eggs to watch over and keep me company while I ran my reality check at the end of the day and concluded I was still sane. No more boxes to unpack. No afternoon visits with Coral Upchurch, who was getting down to her real grieving. Someone had taken over the sunburned man’s route. Had he gone back to college (if he went to college), or had he done something to cost him his job? I still had my housework and grocery shopping. I biked faithfully to an empty Grief Cottage every morning and some afternoons. I was like those characters in movies who are determined to keep faith with the old schedule while the loved one is away or off fighting in a war.
After Aunt Charlotte had set me straight on who was going to Charleston, I looked for things that needed doing so she wouldn’t think I was “moping.” I cut the tags off my school clothes and ran them through the wash several times so they wouldn’t shout “I’m new!” when I was coming down the halls. I missed having the boxes to unpack, but at least I could clean the garage where they had been stacked. Then I worried that Aunt Charlotte might interpret this as a ploy to make her change her mind about the trip. But she was pleased when she saw it and said it had never looked that neat. Then she repeated that thing about me being too good to be true and that I was restoring her faith in humans. It occurred to me that it would take some pressure off if she could accept that I was not as good or as strong as all that.
Since she hadn’t asked to see my Grief Cottage photos, I hid them away in the same place where (at her request) I had hidden her container of painkillers. Either she had more important things on her mind or she was superstitious about seeing the photos before she was certain she would be painting from them again soon.
XXXVI.
“Marcus, where did we store that walker I brought home from the hospital?”
“It’s in my closet.”
“Would you get it? I don’t want to lean on Lachicotte more than I have to.”
The day of the surgeon had arrived. I helped Lachicotte guide Aunt Charlotte and her walker down the front steps and get her settled in the passenger seat of her own car. “Why does it smell so good?” she asked.
“I had it detailed for you,” Lachicotte said.
“Detailed?”
“A place just opened, it’s their specialty. You leave it all day and they recondition it inside and out. Steam-clean the carpeting, wax the leather, the whole enchilada.”
“How nice to be reconditioned inside and out. How much do I owe you?”
“It’s a thank-you for letting me drive it.”
“You already thanked me with four new tires.”
“Then think of it as another thank-you,” said Lachicotte.