Temple Secrets: Southern Humorous Fiction: (New for 2015) For Lovers of Southern Authors and Southern Novels (11 page)

I’ve done what every little rich white girl has done,
she thinks. She’s taken Old Sally’s care for granted. Never giving a thought to the fact that she was a woman with a family of her own that she went home to every evening. A woman with needs and sorrows, as well as joys. If she were going to be there for more than a couple of days, she would make the effort to get to know her better.

After climbing the dozen or so steps to the house, Rose pauses at the top. Every window of the house is open to let in the sea breezes. Three large windows reveal a living space filled with things brought in from the outside: driftwood, large shells, roots left drying on the ample window sills, as well as the eclectic collection of objects on the window seat that have grown in number since the last time Rose was here. Objects she studied with fascination as a girl. Rose recognizes the small sandcastle sculpture she gave Old Sally before she left for college.

Queenie walks over first and hugs her mother. Although keeping an eye on Rose, Old Sally exhales a laugh, as though seeing Queenie gives her immense pleasure.

“Oh, child, I do love them hugs,” Old Sally says to Queenie. Old Sally then turns her gaze to Queenie alone and holds her face between her hands while looking deep into her eyes. “How you be, child?” she whispers. “In your heart of hearts.”

“I’m well, Mama,” Queenie says, and then gives Rose a wink.

Old Sally looks into her eyes again, as if to confirm what Queenie says. “I guess you be telling the truth,” the old woman says. She kisses her daughter on both cheeks before returning her attention to Rose.

“I’ve missed you, girl,” Old Sally says and laughs like her happiness can’t be contained.

Rose’s face grows hot as they embrace and she receives a gift she’s not so sure she deserves. At the same time, Old Sally’s strength surprises her. She is thinner than Rose remembers, like her body has shed some weight intentionally to make it easier to carry.

As she did with Queenie, Old Sally holds Rose’s face in between her wrinkled hands that are soft and cool, despite the heat of the day. Rose looks away as Old Sally looks deep into her eyes. Although this loving attention is probably what Rose longs for the most, to receive it in such abundance causes her awkwardness to come out in a brief laugh. Not even Max looks at Rose with this level of intensity. He still notices when she makes an effort to look nice for him, and he seems appreciative of her body, but he has never looked into her eyes for any length of time. Nor, to be honest, has she looked into his.

“Oh my, child. You not be doing too well,” Old Sally says to Rose. “It be your mama, I think, haunting you again.” Then she whispers to Rose, “You be all right pretty soon, though. Just wait and see.”

Old Sally kisses Rose lightly on each cheek, as she did with Queenie. Rose can’t remember the last time she was kissed on the cheek. Perhaps it was the last time she saw Old Sally, when she was leaving Savannah to move to Wyoming. Old Sally’s lips are as cool and soft as her touch. Her gesture brings tears to Rose’s eyes. Returning to the Georgia coast has brought unexpected moisture into her life again.

“Good girl,” Old Sally says when she sees Rose’s tears. “Now don’t be brushing those away. I need to capture them.”

Old Sally reaches for a dark brown bottle sitting on a small wooden table bleached white by the wind and sand. She unscrews the top and uses the eye dropper to suck up the tears on Rose’s cheek and put them into the bottle. Having lived with Old Sally the first two decades of her life, Rose doesn’t question any of it. Back then, Old Sally was always gathering roots or collecting tears or strands of Rose’s hair to be used for one of her spells. Looking satisfied, Old Sally screws the cap back on the bottle and puts it in her pocket.

“Sit down, you two. Let me look at you,” Old Sally says.

Queenie and Rose, though mature women, do as they are told. From the other end of the porch they pull up two rocking chairs that have seasoned to the color of the dunes. Meanwhile Old Sally sits and takes in every nuance of them, nodding as if taking an inventory of their every movement and emotion. It’s almost as if Old Sally is about to paint their portrait.

“Yes, there’s still work to do,” Old Sally says, more to herself than to them. “But it’s nothing I can’t handle.” She smiles and rocks in her chair. “Would you girls like some lemonade and pound cake?” she asks.

“We’ll get it, Mama,” Queenie says.

Rose follows Queenie inside, noting how little the living room has changed with its one worn sofa and two side chairs. On the way to the kitchen, they walk down a hallway that contains a wall of family photos. As a girl, Rose stared at these photographs for huge stretches of time, as if the brown faces and bright smiles might reveal the secret of happiness to her. The pictures at her mother’s house weren’t photographs, but portraits of long-dead people with serious looks on their faces, as though interrupted from counting their money. She knows much less about Old Sally’s family.

“I’d forgotten how powerful she is,” Rose says, once they are in the kitchen. “But in a good way,” she adds. Rose touches her check remembering Old Sally’s kiss.

Queenie laughs. “Yes, Mama is a force to be reckoned with, that’s for sure,” she says.

Old Sally’s attention is the opposite of anything Rose’s mother would have offered, even if she weren’t in a vegetative state. No judgment resides in Old Sally’s gaze, only love and concern. The mystery to Rose is how this love so freely given can feel, in some ways, more threatening than criticism.

Old Sally’s kitchen is a celebration of primary colors, and is painted the color of lemonade. Ample windows overlook the dunes and coastal grasses. Treasures rest on the window sills: shells of all sizes, small pieces of driftwood that look like earthen sculptures, a variety of stones, as well as fossils of the most intricate creatures, their spirals imprinted in history. Her mother would never dream of bringing the outdoors inside, except for expensive flower arrangements. However, Rose wonders if her own desire to collect stones, fossils and bones at the ranch is Old Sally’s influence.

Queenie uncovers the old cake tin that has been in Old Sally’s kitchen since Rose was a girl. She cuts three pieces of pound cake while Rose pours the lemonade. Slices of lemon twirl inside the glasses as she stirs the sugar in the bottom.

“Homemade lemonade is a lost art,” Queenie says.

“Old Sally is a lost art, too,” Rose says. “I don’t know anybody else like her.”

Queenie agrees.

When they return to the porch, Old Sally rocks her chair slowly, as if keeping time to the waves. Evening is coming on and a hint of coolness floats on the breeze. The three women eat cake, drink lemonade and watch the ocean like it might reveal its secrets at any moment. The water’s grayness extends to meet the evening sky. The sea churns up memories for Rose that she can almost taste. Old Sally always had a snack ready whenever she came home from school: oatmeal cookies, chocolate pudding, cheese and crackers. No matter where Rose returned from, the kitchen was always the first place she went. It never occurred to her to find her mother.

Back then, Old Sally, Queenie and Violet were Rose’s life preservers in the choppy Temple seas. They were safe. They listened when she spoke and responded. They laughed, told stories and included her. Those moments in the kitchen taught Rose everything she knows about love and relationships.

In contrast, Rose’s parents were Savannah society. Dressed in formal attire, they attended dinner parties and events full of people parading like show dogs to display their breeding. Ultimately, Rose decided that they were the poor ones, with their insincere friends and emotionally bankrupt marriages. Their children were commodities, possessions. Their value measured by their return on investment.

Rose shudders with the awareness that her mother will never know who Rose really is. To her credit, she walked away from that world twenty-five years ago and hasn’t looked back. But what she also walked away from was Old Sally, Queenie and Violet. Now she realizes how big a loss that was.

As night falls, Old Sally lights two large candles protected by hurricane globes. The quality of the light is intimate and warm. The floorboards of the porch creak with three melodies as the three women rock into the evening. Rose breathes deeply, filling her lungs for the first time in years. Her shoulders relax.

“That be good, child, that be good,” Old Sally says. “This pain be over soon,” she adds. “Your mother be about to make her transition.” The reflection of candlelight dances across her face.

Rose sighs. Her mother’s approaching death elicits only a vague sense of regret. After being sober for nearly two decades and having had what feels like a lifetime of psychotherapy, she has reached a point where she has made peace with her life. Nobody escapes unscathed. Some people have easier lives, some have harder. Rose takes life one day at a time, as the AA motto goes. The women sitting on the porch next to her played a profound role in her early life and for this she feels thankful.

Waves surge and crash in the distance. Rose relaxes into her tiredness, embraced by sea breezes and the moonlit night. Candles flicker yet hold their light. Rose, Queenie and Old Sally don’t speak. It is as though their conversation is just below the surface, dipping and diving with the carefree motion of the dolphins often seen offshore.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Violet

At least the phone calls have stopped
, Violet thinks as she dusts the phone in the sunroom. For the last few hours, Violet was answering calls every ten minutes. At first she answered in the proper way with
Temple Residence,
and then later she started with:
Just say what you need to say.
Unfortunately, most of the calls involved people cussing her. All the calls were anonymous. Cowards all. Miss Temple would hate what people are saying about her. Who knew a bunch of old secrets could cause such a mess? And how in the world did someone get their hands on a book locked in a bank vault?

After Violet returns to the kitchen she prepares a fresh cup of coffee and a bowl of strawberry shortcake for Lynette, the nurse upstairs. She cooks whenever she doesn’t know what else to do and with Miss Temple so gravely ill she is definitely at a loss. What will her job entail after Miss Temple dies? Will she even have a job?

Violet hums, as she often does when the house is quiet. A tune comes to her from a long time ago. It has a melancholy tone, somehow linked to the past.

Violet’s mother was a nurse, and something about the uniform always causes Violet to entertain the
what if’s
of life.
What if
her mother hadn’t died when her tire blew out on the island and she crashed into a three hundred year old live oak tree?
What if
she had grown up knowing her mother, instead of only seeing pictures of her? How might her life have been different? Unfortunately, she will never know. And the one ghost she would hope to see is totally absent.

When Violet returns upstairs with shortcake, Lynette lifts a fork and takes a bite. “Oh my, this is wonderful.” She moans and takes two more bites. “The Temples are very lucky to have you,” she adds.

At least for now,
Violet thinks. Both turn to Miss Temple like she might have something to add to the conversation. But there is no movement, only the sound of the ventilator pushing air into her lungs.

Earlier that evening, Queenie asked Violet to stay later than usual so she and Rose could pick up Old Sally and bring her back to the Temple house. Tonight is the night Jack teaches a class and the girls have basketball practice, so she can be flexible. Although it is nice to see Rose again, Violet wishes it were a happier reason for her to visit.

Every family has broken places, but the Temples seem to have more than most.

Violet has never known Miss Temple to be content, and because of this, Violet has sometimes felt more fortunate. She pauses to assess the different vibrations in the room and thinks how interesting it is that someone unconscious can still radiate such a chaotic buzz.

Miss Temple’s force is like static from a radio station not quite tuned in. It reminds her of that Peanuts character, Pigpen, who has a cloud of dirt that follows him everywhere he goes. Miss Temple is similar, except her cloud is chaos.

Lynette finishes her shortcake and pats her vast stomach, complimenting Violet again. She walks over to the window, as though the view might aid her digestion.

“Why are those people gathered in front of the house?” she asks Violet. “Two groups have come by in the last two hours.”

Violet joins her at the window. “We’re on Savannah’s ghost tour,” she says. “The Temple house is the main event.”

“Ghost tour?” Lynette says. “Oh my. I had no idea.” She glances around the room like she’s searching for evidence.

Violet doesn’t mention that the secrets in the newspaper have caused the groups of tourists and gawkers to swell to three or four times their usual numbers. While Miss Temple has always craved attention, she would not be pleased with this level of scrutiny.

“Every night around dusk, tour guides show up with their groups to watch the house for signs of the ghostly Temples,” Violet says.

In Violet’s experience, this is exactly when apparitions go away. Ghosts never show themselves when people want them to.

Lynette’s eyes widen. “You really have ghosts?” she asks.

“We have our fair share,” Violet says, though in truth the Temple house probably has more than their fair share.

“How do you know?” Lynette asks, looking uneasy.

“Footsteps on stairways,” Violet begins. “Things moved an inch or two from their original positions. Blasts of cold air sending shivers up your spine when entering certain rooms. Things that can just as easily be attributed to an overactive imagination, if not for the sensations that accompany them.”

Lynette’s eyes have changed from full moons to crescents, as if squinting might reveal the hidden entities in the room.

“Miss Temple’s dead husband, Oscar, likes to rattle bottles at the bar in his study,” Violet begins again. “Her mother always brings a camphor smell when she’s around and often lingers in the upstairs bedroom that was hers. Miss Temple’s father prefers to communicate by heavy footsteps on the stairway, like he’s just home from one of his business trips. Or he’ll come into the kitchen to look for my grandmother who used to work here.”