She turned on her side and picked through my open bag the way she used to go through my Barbie carry-case. “I’m really worried,” she said at last. “I’m sure you can tell she’s gotten worse. I guess Mom told you she didn’t finish high school.”
I shook my head no. “Your mother can be very silent about some things.”
“Nora barely made it to her sixteenth birthday. I think the teachers passed her each year because they wanted to get rid of her.”
“But she’s not dumb,” I said.
“No,” Holly replied, “just crazy. Do you remember when you were here how she had started to fear water?”
“Yeah. The last summer I came, she would go out on the dock, but was afraid to dangle her feet over it, afraid to be splashed.”
“Well, she’s totally phobic now — about water, about all kinds of things. She never leaves the property.”
I frowned. “Not at all?”
“No. She needs a psychiatrist — badly — but Mom won’t do anything about it. It seems like Nora is getting weirder every day. It’s scary.” Holly sat up. “I mean, I’m sure she’s not dangerous. She wouldn’t hurt anyone. But she doesn’t reason like a normal person. She gets angry when there’s nothing to be angry at, and she imagines people are after her.”
Like my mother, I thought. It was as if something in this house — I banished the idea, reminding myself that my mother’s problems started before we came to Wisteria.
“She’s always had an active imagination,” I recalled.
Holly let out a sharp laugh. “You sound like my mother.
Nora’s just imaginative. Nora’s just sensitive. Nora’s just going through adolescence. Remember how’d she say that the summer your mother was here?”
I nodded, recalling Nora’s sudden outbursts of anger and tears and Aunt Jule’s quiet explanations. I used to hear Nora on the porch outside my bedroom, talking to herself, answering questions that no one asked.
“Well,” said Holly, “it’s been a very long adolescence.”
I tugged opened a drawer and dropped in my T-shirts.
“You said she’s totally phobic. Is there anyone she trustsanyone she can talk to?”
“Myself, Mom, and Nick. Remember Nick Hurley, Frank’s nephew?”
“Yes. I—”
“You might want to steer clear of Nora except when I’m around,” Holly suggested, rising, then walking to the hall door. “I know her better than anyone, and it’s hard even for me to guess what will set her off.”
I saw the shadow on the hallway wall, cast by someone leaning forward to hear our words.
“Just till she gets used to you being here, of course.”
The shadow pulled back, as if sensing that Holly was about to leave.
“Do you remember where the towels are? Is there anything else I can get you?” Holly asked.
“I’m fine, thanks.”
She left me to finish unpacking and to puzzle over the situation I had walked into. Maybe Holly did know Nora better than anyone, but she didn’t know everything. Nora left the property sometimes; it was she who had shadowed me at the festival.
Seven years ago I awakened from what I thought was a horrible nightmare. I rushed to my mother’s room, wanting her to tell me it hadn’t happened, but she wasn’t there. I ran to Aunt Jule’s. She, too, was gone.
I raced downstairs, out of the house, and down to the water. It was barely dawn, with just a hint of pink in the pearl gray sky. Aunt Jule was standing at the end of the dock, staring at a piling, one of the weathered posts that supported the long walkway. When she heard my footsteps on the wooden planks, she spun around.
In her hands were a bucket and scrub brush. As I got closer to her, I smelled bleach. Aunt Jule opened her mouth as if to tell me to go back, but it was too late. I saw that the piling was stained — dark-colored, reddish. It was blood, my mother’s blood. I threw up.
I haven’t been back to the dock since that morning, though I’d spent three more weeks at Aunt Jule’s, until my father could arrange for a baby-sitter in Washington. Now I needed to see the place where my mother had fallen, to walk out on the dock and touch the piling that had been scoured clean by Aunt Jule and years of rain. Still, the thought of it made my stomach cramp.
I stood on the porch outside my bedroom, gazing at the peaceful river, looking well past the dock, farther out to the misty line between bay and sky. It was that view that Aunt Jule loved and that made her property so valuable.
The Chesapeake Bay washes northward through the widest part of Maryland, and the Sycamore River branches off the bay in a northeasterly direction. Surrounded on three sides by water — the Sycamore and two big creeks — the town of Wisteria sits on a piece of land that appears to jut into the river. Because the town is close to the wide river mouth, you can see the bay from one side of it. Aunt Jule’s house is on that side at the very end of Bayview Avenue, built on land that extends beyond the corner of Bayview and Water Street.
According to my mother, the Ingram family once had a ton of money. They had owned several houses and sent their children to exclusive schools like Birch Hill, which is where my mother and godmother became friends. But generation after generation had mismanaged the wealth. Now all Aunt Jule had was the house and the land, which is all she wanted, if you ask me. She had been married briefly to Holly and Nora’s father, but he had wanted to see the world and she didn’t want to leave her home. Several years after he left Wisteria, he died.
I had no idea how she paid her bills. Abandoned craft projects were strewn through the house. She was very talented, but didn’t have the discipline to earn a living that way. Still, I had never seen her worry about money.
Somehow, whatever she needed materialized.
I reentered the house and headed downstairs. When I reached the bottom of the steps, I heard voices in the dining room.
“It’s just common sense, Mother,” Holly said. “You know you’ve never been able to handle a camera. Remember the pictures you took before the Christmas dance? None of us had feet.”
“I don’t find feet all that interesting,” Aunt Jule replied.
“They are when Jackie and I each spend big bucks on shoes,” Holly countered. “I told you that at the time.” Seeing me at the doorway, she gave a little wave. Aunt Jule glanced up from her quilting.
“Anyway, like it or not,” Holly continued, “Frank’s coming over and taking pictures before the prom. Nick’s parents are going to want photos, too, and—”
“Nick?” I repeated, entering the room.
“Nick Hurley,” she replied, smiling.
“Mr. Frank’s nephew?”
“Yes. We’re dating.”
I looked at her, surprised. Two’s the limit, I almost said, but maybe that was just a line he had given me.
“We’ve been friends forever, of course,” she went on.
“Now Nick has finally seen the light. And if he hasn’t, he will,” she added, laughing.
I laughed with her and squelched my disappointment.
“Wait till you see him,” Holly said. “He’s not that roundfaced kid anymore.”