The Swan House (30 page)

But as I set down the sketchpad, a completely different, gnawing question pierced through me.
Mama, if you were alive, what advice would
you give me about boys and blacks and church?
It was more than an adolescent's question. It was me trying to figure out how much of what I had lived and believed in these sixteen years was a lie.

Then slowly, almost apprehensively, as if I thought Mama might be watching, I searched through the rest of those shelves, first stacking all thirteen of the sketchpads into a neat pile and then pulling out each unfinished painting and lining them up against the wall. In all, there were five unfinished paintings, including Mama's self-portrait, the one that photographer from
LIFE
had shown to the world. I wondered if it was normal for an artist to leave so many of her paintings unfinished. Maybe Mama had had too many ideas rushing around in her head, just like me. Maybe she hadn't had time to finish one before another scene thrust itself into her mind, begging to be painted.

In two of the bottom shelves on the far left of the wall, she'd had wooden boards nailed across the center and stacked the resulting four shelves with big heavy books on art history and painting. I took one off the shelf and leafed through it, then replaced it and absentmindedly withdrew another. That's when I noticed that those nailed-in, makeshift shelves were made of narrow planks of wood that left a space of about six inches behind them between the books and the back wall. I also noticed that the weight of those books on the narrow planks of wood had caused them to sag. So I took all the books from the top shelf and laid them on the floor. Then I did the same for the next shelf. And when I went back to repeat the action yet again, what I saw left me feeling momentarily like Nancy Drew. Something had been placed behind the now empty shelves in that space between the planks and the wall.

I reached behind, and my hands felt the coil of a wire. I pulled out a sketchpad. Thrilled with the discovery, I stuck my hand back behind the shelf again and found that Mama had stacked a bunch of old sketchbooks back there. I don't know if she had deliberately meant to hide them, but the heavy art books had certainly hidden them from view. There were seven of them, all the twenty-by-thirty-inch kind. Big, heavy, and spiral. Out they came, scattered on the floor on top of the art books. I chose one and opened it. On the inside cover, Mama had written in her flowery cursive:
Resthaven, 1951.

Now I was really intrigued, especially when I saw no portraits or still lifes, nothing of the Swan House or other well-known homes in Buckhead. Only page after page of an old elegant mansion with white columns in front. Some sketches showed the front of the building, some focused on a woman sitting on a bench in a flowering garden with the brick building visible in the background. In one sketch, a black man with callused skin and a great crooked-toothed smile was leaning on a rake, and again that building loomed in the distance. He looked so real that I almost thought I could hear the laughter that was behind his eyes.

Mama had written at the bottom of the page
Henry B., 1951.
I was about to flip to the next page when I stopped, my heart pounding. I told myself it was just my overactive imagination starting up again. After all, how many Henry Bs were there in the world? But somehow, with tingles starting in my scalp and running down my spine, I just knew that Henry B. was Henry Becker, one of the artists of the Raven Dare. A breakthrough! This was definitely what Rachel would call a breakthrough.

It didn't look to me like Henry B. could possibly own the big redbrick mansion, especially since he had that rake in his hand and seemed perfectly comfortable and content with it. Maybe Henry B. worked at the house called Resthaven, for the obviously rich people who inhabited it. I couldn't wait to tell Rachel!

I quickly flipped through the other sketchbooks, and the thing that struck me right away was that Mama had written the same thing on the inside cover of each pad:
Resthaven
and then the year.
1951, 1953,
1954, 1957, 1958, 1960.
The final one was from 1961. Resthaven. All from Resthaven. All filled with sketches, and most held at least one sketch of the stately brick mansion.

I spent the rest of the evening sitting cross-legged on the floor with the seven newly discovered spiral sketchpads and the art books and all the contents of the file Daddy had given me several weeks ago scattered on the floor. I only left the studio once, to make a ham and cheese sandwich and get a glass of milk and bring that upstairs and set it on the floor too. Of course, with all that mess around me, I wasted several hours, completely at a loss of what to do next.

I knew I should have just waited for Rachel's help. She couldn't come over because she was in the middle of reading
Wuthering Heights
, which had to be finished for Honors English by the next Tuesday. I was only on page fifty-eight. Sometimes Rachel was just too practical! Forget Heathcliff and Cathy! I needed her here with me now!

Several things became painfully clear that evening. First, Daddy had been right about his file. I'd seen all of the articles before in the stuff Mrs. MacIlvain had given me. I'd hoped to find a bill of sale with the name of the person who'd bought Mama's painting, or at least some reference to it, but the file contained nothing new.

Second, I
had
to find out what and where Resthaven was. This place had obviously been very important to Mama, so much so that she went there fairly frequently to sketch. I wracked my brains to try to think of any friends Mama and Daddy had who called their home Resthaven. Lots of people in Buckhead named their homes and their property, but I didn't recall any place named Resthaven.

And third, the thing that worried and excited me the most was that it looked as if Mama didn't want anyone else to know anything about the sketchbooks from Resthaven. Surely that was important! Especially since no one else ever ventured into her studio. Not Daddy or Ella Mae or Jimmy or me or anyone. That photographer from
LIFE
was probably the first person to step foot inside the
atelier
in many, many months. The
atelier
was Mama's private refuge. So why would she hide these sketchpads when there was virtually no chance of their being discovered anyway?

About eight-thirty or nine I was suddenly tired of it all and then suddenly petrified that Ella Mae or Daddy might out of the blue walk in there the next day and find this mess. So I placed the Seven Secret Sketchpads, as I dubbed them, back into their hiding place, crammed the shelves with the art books, and stuffed the newspaper articles back into Daddy's manila file before I left the room.

Late that night Jimmy was watching
The Twilight Zone
in the den with the sound up so loud that its creepy music blared down the hall and into Daddy's study. I was curled up on Daddy's couch while he scribbled notes on his big yellow-lined ledger and wrote checks.

In my most casual voice, I asked, “Daddy, have you ever heard of a beautiful mansion called Resthaven?”

Daddy let his fountain pen drop and looked up at me with suspicion and surprise on his face. Then he regained his composure and said, “Resthaven. Hmm. Yes, I've heard of it.”

“Well, where is it?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I was going through some of Mama's things and found a sketchbook she had titled ‘Resthaven.' It was full of sketches of this neat old mansion.”

Daddy looked suddenly uncomfortable and squirmed in his chair. That's the only word for it. “Yes, I know of Resthaven.” He cleared his throat.

“Well, where is it?”

“In the North Georgia mountains.”

“On the way to Highlands?”

“Yes, in that general direction. Closer to Lake Burton, really.”

“Did you and Mama know the people who lived there?”

“Well, yes, we did, Mary Swan. We knew them well. I guess your mother enjoyed sketching the mansion. A beautiful old historic home. You know how Mama loved historic homes.”

It seemed to me that Daddy was being deliberately evasive. So I decided to risk being discovered as the Raven. I traipsed upstairs and brought a sketchpad back down to Daddy.

“Look, Daddy. Look at this sketch. This man. Mama calls him Henry B.”

Daddy was not paying any attention to me as he thumbed through the sketchpad.

“Where did you find this?” he asked, almost accusingly.

“In Mama's studio. You said I could look in there.”

He sighed deeply and closed the pad. “You're right, Swannee, I did. I'm sorry. It's simply that I've never seen this book. It's still quite painful to see your mother's work.”

Gingerly I asked again, “Do you think the man Mama calls Henry B. could be the artist Henry Becker? The one whose painting was to be dedicated along with Mama's?”

Daddy peered at the sketch for a moment. “No. Impossible. The Henry in this picture looks like a yardman.”

“Well, was he the yardman, Daddy? Did you ever see this man when you and Mama went to visit these friends?”

Daddy's brow furrowed as he thought. “Goodness, Swannee. I don't remember. We haven't been there in years. . . .”

Something about the way he said it didn't quite ring true, and I wanted to scream, “But Mama has seven sketchbooks from Resthaven, and the last one is dated 1961!” But I left him alone. Rachel and Carl and I could surely find the Henry B. who lived somewhere in North Georgia and smiled when he held a rake in front of a home called Resthaven. And if all else failed, I could always ask Trixie.

So I went up to bed and started reading
Wuthering Heights
, which turned out to be the best book and the worst I could be reading. Its haunting story fit in perfectly with my new discovery and my thoughts about the Raven Dare. But reading about Heathcliff, tormented Heath-cliff, sent chills up my spine. What had Mrs. Alexander said in class yesterday?
“The literary figure of Heathcliff remains one of the most passionate
and pitiful pictures of mental illness in modern literature.”

Mental illness. Resthaven. Mama. A lunatic.

And then I knew. I remembered. Me in tears running to Trixie's house, begging her to help Mama, who was crying on the floor with baby Jimmy. Me in Ella Mae's lap, and then me watching her carry Mama. Me and Daddy and little Jimmy visiting Mama in the big red mansion. Mama gone for such a long time. Me crying to Ella Mae every day that I missed Mama. And what did Ella Mae always answer? What was it?

“Yore mama be right tired out, Mary Swan. Right tired. But she'll be
back soon 'nuff, honey chile. Don't you worry none.”

And she had come back. She had! And I was absolutely certain that I'd never gone to visit Mama at Resthaven again. I counted backward in my mind. I would have been five in 1951. Resthaven! 1951!

Well, with that revelation, it was completely impossible for me to return to Heathcliff or to fall asleep, so I did what I'd been dying to do all evening. I called Rachel. Never mind that it was past eleven. She had a private line. I prayed that she'd answer and not Jamie.

Two rings later, Rachel's irritated voice said, “Hello?”

“Sorry, Rach, to call you so late.”

“Swan, you idiot. You scared me to death. I hope Mom didn't hear the phone from her room.”

“Listen, I've had the most unbelievable breakthrough in the Raven Dare and I wanted to call you earlier, but I didn't because I knew you were reading
Wuthering Heights
and I didn't want to bother you and I wouldn't have except that then I started thinking about Heathcliff and how he was so tormented and I remembered what Mrs. Alexander said about mental illness yesterday and then I thought about what Herbert had said about Mama being a lunatic and then I remembered, Rach, I remembered going to visit her at this big house when I was five, right after I'd been so scared, and I put it all together and it turns out that where she was and where I visited is the same place in the Seven Secret Sketchpads. It's Resthaven.” I finished, out of breath.

Rachel took a long pause to recover from my babble. “What in the world are you talking about, Swan? Slow down a sec. You lost me way back there with Heathcliff!”

And so I told her, and we must have talked until well past midnight. And the last thing Rachel said before she hung up was “Wow, Swan. You really are on to something. See ya in the morning.”

The first chance that Rachel and I had to talk on Monday was on the way to orchestra practice. Every time we trudged that path to the Band Hut, I couldn't help but think of our mad midnight pursuit of the clue and me sticking my hands under the building and pulling out the old flute case. So it seemed to me perfectly appropriate that I'd be explaining my incredible breakthrough to Rachel on the very same path where the adventure had begun.

Rachel didn't seem to care for the symbolism, but her blue-gray eyes flashed with energy and she said excitedly, “Look, Swannee. You said your dad admitted that Resthaven existed and that it was somewhere in the North Georgia mountains, near North Carolina, right? So a little snooping around and a few carefully asked questions to Trixie should get us the information we need. Then all we have to figure out is how to get to Resthaven.”

“Good point.” Silence. Then I had an idea. “Could Jamie drive us?”

Rachel made a face. “He already threatened to tell Mom and Dad about driving me to Grant Park. And just because I stayed on the phone with you too long the other day. No. Not Jamie.”

“And not Ella Mae. Definitely not. She'd be scared out of her wits to drive outside of Atlanta. But I bet you a million bucks she knows all about Resthaven.”

“Yeah. Too bad you can't pull it out of her.”

“No way. She gave me a piece of her mind on Saturday about you and me going over to Carl's. It won't do to have her suspicious about anything else. Anyway, she might mention it to Daddy, and he'd have a huge conniption fit. I don't think I can talk to him about any of this anymore.”