Whispers of the Bayou (28 page)

For now, I closed the cabinet doors, retrieved the box of letters, and left the room. Turning off the light, I moved out into the hallway, disappointed that I hadn’t accomplished my main goal, but glad at least that I had found the cabinet.

I was moving past the back bedroom when I spotted a soft glowing light from inside. Stepping backward, I hesitated at the doorway looking into the darkness, and when the light appeared again I realized that it was coming from outside, that I had seen it through the window.

Curious, I crept across the room in the darkness and made my way to that window, standing in the shadows and peeking out between the curtains. Orienting myself, I realized I was almost directly above the room where Willy had died, facing in the general direction of the bayou.

I thought maybe the light had been from a passing boat on the water, but when it glowed again I was startled to see that it was higher than that, shining from somewhere up in the trees, two flashes and then it was done. I stood there and watched, but after several minutes the light did not come on again.

Finally, I gave up waiting and continued downstairs, trying not to assign some sinister or threatening source to what could have a perfectly logical explanation. I would ask Deena or Lisa about it tomorrow. For now, I had some letters to read.

Down in my tiny bedroom, I sat on the bed and opened the box, hoping this was some sort of personal correspondence and not just a cache of business communications.

As soon as I got a good look at the handwriting on the envelopes, I knew who had written them. Flipping through the box, I realized that every single letter had come from the same person, the same place: Janet Greene in New York City. Though they were addressed to my grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Xavier Fairmont, I assumed they had been my mother’s, communications from her sister in the big city. I pulled one letter from the box at random, feeling guilty for invading their privacy—especially on the same night I had scolded Deena for doing the same to someone else—but the temptation was too great to resist. Opening the letter, I began to read.

It didn’t take long to realize that I had been wrong. This letter wasn’t written from AJ to my mother. It really was written from AJ to my grandparents, several years after my mother had died. It was dated July 1985, and all it contained was a chatty description of a Fourth of July trip AJ and I had taken to the Statue of Liberty. I reached for another letter and pulled it out, skimming to see that it was almost as mundane. Dated January 1987, it discussed my schoolwork and a recent problem I’d had with a classmate—private stuff of monumental importance to an eleven-year-old that I very well remembered having shared with AJ in confidence.

Heart pounding, I took a closer look at the whole box of letters, realizing that they were in chronological order, all from AJ to my grandparents.

Shaking my head, I had to think about this for a minute. AJ’s sister Yasmine had been married to their son Richard. Other than that, the only connection that AJ shared with Xavier and Portia Fairmont was the fact that she had been given custody of their granddaughter: me.

With a dark sense of foreboding, I pulled out the very first letter in the box, dated ten days after my mother’s death, and proceeded to read four pages of description about our traumatic flight home from New Orleans—which apparently I had spent staring out the window for three hours—AJ’s attempts to get me settled into her apartment, and her concerns for my mental health.
She still hasn’t spoken a word,
the letter said,
and spends most of her time huddling, rocking, etc., like she did down there, so I have made an appointment for next week with a good psychiatrist. I’ll enclose his bill with my next letter. I’m not sure what it will cost, but no doubt you understand the necessity and would approve the expense.
I looked up, trying to figure out what I had stumbled upon. AJ had never made any secret of the fact that she received money from my grandparents to help her with the expenses of raising me. Because of them, I had been able to attend the best schools in Manhattan, take private art and music lessons, even go on a graduation cruise with AJ and two of my best friends through the Greek Isles. But I always assumed the exchange of money had been a one-time thing, like a trust set up in my name that AJ administrated for me.

Instead, I realized as I read these letters, the money had come to her in various amounts over the years, apparently depending not just on what our current expenses were, but on how much AJ had written in the previous month’s letter. Each note started the same, with a thank you for the bank deposit. But as I read my way through the years, I saw that whenever there was an extra long missive, quoting cute things I’d said or one that included photos of me or drawings I had done, then the next month’s letter used the words “very generous,” as in “thank you for the very generous bank deposit.” Even when she was furious at them over the discovery of the tattoo on my head and the resulting custody battle threats, she continued
to write each month, reporting the latest news laced with a few jabs about “the hideous mark” that had been inflicted upon me and the “vicious blackmail” they were using to keep her from reporting it.

I might have been able to understand why she had invaded my privacy and sold my soul, for surely a young woman alone in the city with a child needed a lot of money to stay afloat. What I didn’t understand was why she had told me for years that the people down here didn’t care about me, that they weren’t interested in knowing me anymore, and that I should have nothing to do with them. She’d been lying. It was a lie. They
did
care. They
did
want to know. They wanted to know so badly that they were even willing to pay for the information.

I paused in my readings to clear my head. I brushed my teeth and changed into my nightgown, then I got back in the bed, intending to sit there and read every single letter in this box, even if it took all night. As I did, I was astounded at the amount of information and insight they contained, almost like a diary of my life. As angry as I was at AJ, I also couldn’t help feeling that at least she had been a perceptive parent to me, relating thoughts and impressions that were frequently dead-on. She described at length my first real boyfriend, sharing her concerns that we were lingering too long in the stairwell when he brought me home and we said good night. When I was a senior in high school, she talked about my single-minded devotion to a career in the arts, dissecting my potential talents as a painter and sculptor with a fair amount of accuracy. Later, near the end of my freshman year in college, she rejoiced over my announcement that I didn’t want to be an artist after all but an art restorer instead. She was thrilled, the letter said, as that guaranteed me a much more secure financial future.

Don’t you find it interesting,
a later letter said,
that Miranda has chosen to go into a field where she will take beautiful things of old that have been neglected and hurt and will lovingly restore them, setting them right again? I have to wonder if deep in her heart she will always want to go back and make things right in her own life—which of course is not an option.

Several paragraphs down in the same letter, she apologized for being so maudlin, saying that it was the twentieth anniversary of my mother’s death, which was making her feel very reflective.
Yasmine has been gone
twenty years today,
it said,
and I still expect her to call me on the phone any moment. I still miss her so much I can’t sleep sometimes for the ache deep in my chest. Having lost so much yourselves, especially Cassandra, I’m sure you understand.

It wasn’t the first mention of this Cassandra person, whoever she was. All I could gather was that she had died young, and that she had been important to my grandparents. I wondered if maybe she was my aunt, a sister to my father and his brother, despite the fact that no one else had ever mentioned her to me. I had obviously known and loved her myself when I was small, because the earliest mentions of her in these letters were about how I had forgotten everything and everyone from my first five years, even my mother and Cassandra.

It was almost four a.m. by the time I got to the description of my wedding. Through tears, I read about the beautiful ceremony and my gorgeous dress and the way I had gazed at my new husband as we said our vows. After my wedding, the letters grew more infrequent, and I realized that at that point she was no longer writing for money but simply to stay in touch. Her last note was the only one written just to my grandmother, with condolences on the loss of her husband:

As you know, I have been very conflicted about you and your husband’s actions for many years. Now that he has passed, I think perhaps I have judged too harshly, for what parent wouldn’t move heaven and earth to protect their own, regardless of the circumstances? At least I was given the chance to parent Miranda, and for that I will always be grateful to you both, not just for your financial support but for your willingness to come to an arrangement in the first place.

Tears filled my eyes as I continued reading.

Miranda is now pregnant, news that fills us all with great joy as I’m sure it will you too. Despite having made a good life for herself, I don’t think she has ever really let anyone past those walls that were so carefully constructed during the
trauma she suffered as a child. My hope is that when this baby is born, he or she might finally be the one to open up Miranda’s heart and show her that real love needn’t be feared but embraced, even at the risk of great pain.

With that, I began to cry in earnest, for AJ’s hopes had been short lived and sadly misguided. I saw now what she had known all along, that I was incapable of truly loving anyone, even my own child. Holding back my sobs for fear of waking Deena next door, I continued to read that last letter to the end.

I’m sure you are feeling great pain now yourself, with the death of your beloved Xavier. I can only offer the hope that you will survive this, and I pray that eventually the joy of having had him to share your life will outlive the pain of loss. It is my understanding that you are quite ill yourself and maybe can’t even comprehend the words in this letter. I shall leave you at this, then, with one thought, that out of much grief and sorrow also came, in the end, much good. Miranda Fairmont Miller is a lovely young woman, generous of spirit and gentle in nature. If you could know her, you would be so proud. As your only living grandchild, she may not remember her past, but she carries within her womb the future. And in the end, that’s what matters most, that life goes on, that hope gives birth to hope.

With love—and yes, finally, with forgiveness—I remain…

    
Yours,
    
Janet

Is it a foolish dream, an idle vague superstition?
Or has an angel passed, and revealed the truth to my spirit?

Pounding. Someone was pounding on my door.

I opened my eyes to see that it was morning. I had cried myself to sleep amidst the letters, which at some point during the night had spilled out of the box and were now scattered all over the bed.

The pounding wouldn’t stop, and I felt sure it was Deena, rudely waking me up, probably so that she could start complaining about something or gossip more about Lisa, just as she had last night. I threw aside the bedspread and jumped up, not even bothering to dig in my suitcase for my robe. I flung open the door as I demanded “What?”

Deena was not at my door. No one had been knocking.

Instead, several feet away, Aaron West was perched atop an aluminum stepladder, hammering at a place on the wall near the ceiling. He had paused, mid-hammer, the moment I opened the door, and now we stood staring at each other like two idiots.

“I, uh, I’m so sorry,” he said, taking in my rumpled hair and my flimsy nightgown. “I didn’t realize anybody was in there.”

I could feel the heat practically burning through the skin of my face
and neck. Quickly, I jumped behind the door and leaned outward so only my head was visible.