The Swan House (63 page)

“Mighty proud o' ya, Mary Swan. Mighty glad I got ta see ya there tonight.” Her breathing was labored. “It's gonna be all right now, Mary Swan,” she whispered. “Don't ya worry none, my girl. It's gonna be all right now.” Her eyes fluttered and closed.

“No!” I spat out through the searing in my chest. “No, Ella Mae!” Again her fingers pressed against mine, the warmth of her life still there. “You can't die, Ella Mae! God wouldn't take both you and Mama in one year.”

“I'm ready, and so are you. Go on, honey.”

I let out another soft wail and bent down and kissed her softly on the cheek.

Miss Abigail took me gently by the shoulders and said, “It's time to let her family say their good-byes.” And as I left the room, Roy and a beautiful young woman whom I recognized as Loretta and the young man who must have been her husband came back into the room. Pastor James must have just arrived, because he came into the room with them.

I squeezed Roy's hand and then caught him in a hug, and he patted me on the back and said, “Now, now.”

Loretta went straight into the arms of Miss Abigail, and I figured she must have been there many times before, and then they all gathered around Ella Mae's bed and Pastor James started praying. I wanted to stay there with them. I hesitated, knew it wasn't my place, and left the room. About ten minutes later Miss Abigail came out into the hall and nodded slightly in the way that let us know it was all over.

When the rest of them came back into the hall, no one said a word. It struck me as bittersweet and ironic that Ella Mae's two families had been brought together for the first time simply by her death. Daddy put his arm around poor Roy, who was crying his heart out. Loretta's husband was holding her around the waist, and her head was buried in her hands. Pastor James came up to Jimmy and me. “Mighty sorry, chil'un, about this.”

We must have stayed there like that, Daddy, Trixie, Jimmy, Roy, Loretta and her husband, Miss Abigail and Pastor James for an hour. At one point, Loretta came over to me and said, “Hello, Mary Swan. I don't think you remember me, but I'm Loretta.”

I looked deep into her eyes, remembering only the face I'd seen ten days ago in Ella Mae's photo album. She spoke in a soft, melodic way. “When you were tiny, just a baby, I used ta come over to your house with Mama. I watched you sometimes while Mama was cooking and such. I was about ten at the time. Mama thought it'd help me, seein' as how I'd lost my big sister.”

“Gina, right?”

“Yeah. Gina died right around the time Mama started working at your house.”

“I'm so sorry, Loretta. Sorry I don't even remember you.”

“Not your fault. I stopped going over there soon after Jimmy was born. I was old enough ta stay home by myself.” She took the young man by the hand and said, “This here's my husband, Reggie.”

“Nice to meet you, Reggie.”

He nodded somberly and said, “Sorry to meet under these circumstances.”

I just nodded. “Do you live around here?”

“Reggie's training to be a doctor. He's in his last year of residency. We live in Monroe.”

“Loretta's a nurse,” Reggie added proudly.

“And you've got a baby. Roy showed me a picture of her. An adorable little girl.”

Loretta smiled for the first time. “Mattie Mae. She's nineteen months old. Named her after both of our mothers.”

“Your mother was a wonderful woman,” I sniffed. “We're all gonna miss her so much.” I teared up again.

“I know it's been hard on you, since the plane crash. I'm awfully sorry.”

It was time to go, so we just awkwardly said good-bye.

“I'll talk to you tomorrow, Roy, about the funeral,” Daddy said.

When I hugged Miss Abigail good-bye, I whispered, “I can't bear to think she's gone. Not with Mama gone too.”

She held on to me tightly for a moment and then took me by the shoulders, looking me straight in the eyes. “Let Jesus carry you now, honey. As only He can. Just be sad, and let Him carry you and your father and your brother. He'll do it. He's promised that He will.”

So I did stay awake all night, but not for the reasons I'd expected. When we got home, I laid my satin gown and cape on my bed and pulled on old jeans and a sweatshirt and tiptoed down one flight of stairs. I listened for a sound from Jimmy's room, but there was none. I let myself into the
atelier
. The canvas I had started a month ago, the one I called
The Swan House in Snow
, sat on an easel, bright and hopeful. But I couldn't bear to touch it with a paintbrush while the sorrow was so very heavy in my heart.

Instead, I took the first canvas I'd ever painted, the one I'd started in anger after Trixie had confirmed to me that Mama had spent a lot of time at Resthaven. It was the one that Rachel had glimpsed and had then commented that I had talent like Mama's. It was the painting I had hidden from Carl the day that he'd ventured into the
atelier
with me.

I plopped it on the easel in front of those wide windows and stared out into the dark. For a while I didn't turn on a light, but just watched the background of the star-flecked sky that rose from above the tree line of our yard. Finally flipping on the light switch, I took a paintbrush and palette and began the only exercise I had found to calm the running emotions of my heart. I painted.

It was a painting of a cemetery, and I had almost finished it. The old tombstones in Oakland had inspired me, tombstones from the nineteenth century, everything from simple stone markers to ornate mausoleums and tall obelisks with intricately carved sculptures.

In the foreground of my canvas I had painted a large stone angel, almost life-size, reminiscent of a marker I'd seen in Oakland. God's emissary was holding a book in one hand and pointing heavenward with the other as a confirmation of life after death. Beside this dramatic tombstone a young woman knelt, her head bowed in prayer, a bouquet of flowers draped across her lap. Her face was hidden by her long hair.

Far to the right were white dots representing the plain stone markers for the Confederate soldiers, and even farther in the distance spread a green field, Potter's Field, with the tiny figure of a black man kneeling, hat off, head bent, a lone rose lying on the ground beside him. I had taken artistic liberty and painted Mt. Carmel Church behind Potter's Field, its red-brick exterior reaching, like the angel in the foreground, to the sky. The rest of the canvas was dotted with mausoleums and obelisks and other tombstones that I had found particularly poignant.

Now I knew that one more thing needed to be added, and I worked almost feverishly to get it right. It must have taken me almost half the night. When I set down my palette and brush and studied my work, I shuddered. Behind the angel tombstone as the cemetery gradually descended in slope, between the white girl kneeling in the foreground and the black man in the background, I'd painted a young black woman, also kneeling beside a much smaller tombstone. Her head was also bent, and she too held a bouquet of flowers in her hand.

My eyes were almost as heavy as my heart by the time I put the paintbrush in a jar of turpentine and turned off the light. The climb up the stairs to my room seemed to take an eternity. I flopped onto my bed, beyond exhaustion.

Miss Abigail had said, “Let Jesus carry you now.” And somehow, as I lay on my bed, drifting off to sleep, the heaviness lifted and something else replaced it. A lightness. Yes, a sensation of being surrounded by a presence or by an abstract quality. Freedom.

Saturday dawned gray and drizzly, and the three of us hovered in our fresh grief around the breakfast room table. Daddy was trying to read the
Atlanta Constitution,
and Jimmy was making paper airplanes out of the want-ad section, and I just leaned onto the table, closing my eyes and resting my head on my arms. Around ten, Trixie brought over freshly baked cinnamon rolls, but none of us felt like eating. I wondered to myself how in the world this big old house, which had seemed so empty after Mama's death, could seem like anything but a downright hollow shell with Ella Mae gone too. The only sound in the house was the clinking of our knives and forks as we cut the piping hot cinnamon rolls and brought the bites slowly to our mouths.

Later we moved into the living room, where Daddy lit a fire in the fireplace.

“Can I let Muffin inside, Daddy?” Jimmy asked.

“Yes, of course,” Daddy answered, sounding almost relieved.

Muffin bounded in the back door, dashing through the kitchen, into the entrance hall, and around through the living room, with Jimmy in hot pursuit. Muffin's tail was wagging so hard that it almost knocked over a small porcelain object on the coffee table, but Daddy didn't even seem to notice. Normally not allowed inside, Muffin brought life and energy to us that morning. He effortlessly entertained us, and I even saw Daddy smile in approval when Jimmy got on the floor and began wrestling with his mutt.

“Mary Swan, would you like me to take you to Mt. Carmel?” Daddy volunteered a little later in the morning.

“I don't know. I don't know if I could bear it today.” Then I cuddled up beside him on the sofa, stretching my feet onto the ottoman and resting my head on his shoulder. “But thanks for offering. Thanks a lot.”

Then Daddy and I had the exact same thought. We'd bring the three paintings into the living room, set them on easels, and just watch them by firelight.

“Do you mind if I go outside to play with Muffin?” It was Jimmy's way of dealing with grief. We both knew that by now.

“By all means, go ahead, son. I'll be out in a little while to throw the baseball.”

“So you were chosen to be the Raven and received the Raven Dare right before the crash.” Daddy was standing in front of the paintings, his back to me. “And you never breathed a word. And that's why you asked all those questions about the exhibition and the disappearance of the paintings and Resthaven.”

“I kept finding out more and more things about Mama. Bad things. And since you wouldn't say a word, well, I asked Trixie. She hated telling me anything, but she saw how torn up I was. And I couldn't tell you that all my questions were for a good cause. I'd be disqualified!”

“I'm sure, under the circumstances, Mrs. Alexander would have understood. She called me last week, wanting to be sure I was planning on attending Mardi Gras. She suggested I bring your grandparents too.”

“She told you I was the Raven?” I asked incredulously.

“No, no. She was very discreet. I really didn't have any idea. She just strongly suggested that I would want to be there since you were the author and narrator of the junior skit. Of course, I was already planning to come.”

Mrs. Alexander. She certainly was emerging from this whole affair as a friend. Then I announced bluntly, “I've seen the paintings at Rest-haven, Daddy.”

“Yes, Dr. Clark mentioned your visit.”

“He did?”

“We've been talking quite a bit off and on since the crash. I, too, have been to Resthaven and seen the paintings.”

“Yes, he told me. But why didn't you say anything to me?”

“Sweetheart, I don't think you can understand. It is still very hard to talk about Mama, to think about the past. It was very painful—very painful. Every time she left for Resthaven, it was like a death. The death of our family.”

The same grayish expression that he'd had when he returned from Paris outlined his face. I felt, maybe for the first time, some of Daddy's misery across the years. I wanted to console him, but there was nothing to say.

Daddy cleared his throat. “I've decided what to do with the money for your mother's memorial fund. Your mother had already created a room at Resthaven for art therapy—an
atelier.”

“Yes, I saw it!”

“And so, what would you think about transforming the room where her paintings were stored into a small gallery for different artists' works from Resthaven to be hung? And then maybe offer a scholarship there for aspiring painters.”

“Oh, Daddy, that's a great idea!”

“I hope Dr. Clark will be pleased with it. I also plan to talk to the High Museum about an eventual exhibition—with the three paintings you found at Ella Mae's and then a loan from Resthaven for the others.”

“Would that work, Daddy? Would people want to come to an exhibition of just Mama's paintings?”

“That is for the museum to decide.” He nodded to the paintings before us. “What should we do with these three?”

“Don't they belong to the museum?”

“Technically, but no one will claim them now that the truth is out. They'll respect the wishes of the family.”

“Don't you think Roy should be able to choose, Daddy? After all, Mama gave them to Ella Mae.”

“Roy?” He shrugged, then caught himself and said, “Yes. Yes, that's a good idea. I'll talk to him.” He got that preoccupied look on his face and said, “Better get outside with Jimmy.”

But as he was walking out the back door, he turned and said, “There's been a lot going on for you, Swan, so you may not remember, but last week two paintings arrived from Paris, on loan to Atlanta from the Louvre. A gesture from France in commemoration of the crash. A way to show their sorrow over our tragedy.”

“Which paintings?”

“
Whistler's Mother
and
Penitent St. Mary Magdalene.
The Art Association organized a big welcome party for the ambassador from France and his wife. I've heard they made a representation of the Eiffel Tower out of flowers and put it in their suite! Anyway, I thought maybe you and I could go down to the High sometime next week, if you'd like.”

“That's a good idea, Daddy. Something to look forward to after . . .” My voice cracked.

“Something to look forward to, sweetheart.” And he went outside.

Ella Mae's funeral was on Monday afternoon at Mt. Carmel. The sanctuary, which had been empty when I bowed before the altar a month ago, was now crammed with people. Loretta found me as we were walking down the aisle looking for a place to sit and said, “If you and your family would like to sit up front with us, we thought that would be just how Mama would have liked it.”