Элизабет Чандлер: Don't Tell

CLUTCHING THE STEEL HANDLE OF THE BUCKET, I WALKED QUICKLY TOWARD THE GREENHOUSE SINK, WANTING TO GET THE WATER AND GET OUT OF THERE. .

But when I reached for the faucet, I stopped. On the shelf above the sink sat a jade plant, its fleshy almond-shaped leaves glimmering in the moonlight. It moved. I took a step back, staring at it, knowing it was impossible, but certain I had seen it. The branches had moved, as if invisible fingers had riffled them.

I was going crazy. I was seeing what my mother had seen before she died, things knotting, things moving. “There’s no hand touching them, baby. They move by themselves.”

Maybe Aunt Jule was right: I was obsessed with my mother, so much so that I was imagining her experiences.

I fought the panic rising in me and reached for the faucet again, turning the handle hard. When the bucket was half full, I shut off the stream.

I thought I felt a trickle on my neck-spray from the faucet or my own sweat. Reaching up to wipe it, I touched dry skin and my necklace. It wasn’t water, but the chain creeping along my neck. I looked down at the silver heart, rising like a slow tide, moving closer and closer to my throat. I dropped the bucket and spun around, as if to catch someone pulling the necklace, but no one was there. I clawed at the chain, grabbing it before it could choke me…

Seven Years Earlier

The screen door creaked open. I shut my eyes, hoping Mommy would think I was asleep and go away. I wanted to burrow under my bedsheets, but I lay as still as I could, hardly breathing.

“I can’t sleep, Lauren.”

I sat up. “Nora! Next time, say it’s you.”

She stood by my bed, looking like a skinny ghost in her pale cotton nightie.

“Someone keeps whispering. And Bunny is missing. I can’t sleep,” she said.

Bunny was a stuffed animal with fur worn flat as Aunt Jule’s washcloths. Though Nora was twelve, two years older than I, she still took Bunny everywhere.

“I think he’s on the dock. Want me to get him?”

Nora was afraid of water, this summer even more than last.

“No, I can go as far as the dock,” she replied, then left my bedroom the way she had come, through the door to the upper porch.

I lay down, soothed by the sound of a sailboat line clanging against a mast. I came here every summer and loved Aunt Jule’s big wooden house with its long double porches, the old boathouse on the river, and the overgrown gardens. Every year, as far back as I could remember, I came to play with my godmother’s children, Nora and Holly, and their friend Nick.

Nick and Holly, a year older than I, had taught me all kinds of stuff Mommy didn’t like. Aunt Jule never minded. She took care of us the way she took care of her house and gardentrusting somehow that we’d all survive. Being a kid was easy here in Wisteria.

But not this summer. Mommy had come, and she and Aunt Jule were fighting. It got worse at night, especially if Mommy drank wine. Afterward I would hear her walking the porches up and down, up and down. Sometimes she’d come into my room to talk to me.

“Someone has been in my room, baby,” she’d say.

“Someone has tied knots in all my scarves and necklaces.

Someone hates me.”

It scared me when she talked like that. When we were back in Washington, she often feared that people were following us. It was just reporters and photographers who wanted a picture of the famous senator’s wife and daughter.

I got used to it, but Mommy got more and more frightened by them. I thought it would be better at Aunt Jule’s, but it wasn’t.

She’d tell me things were moving in her room. “There’s no hand touching them, baby. They move by themselves.”

After a while she’d fall asleep, curled up on my bed. I’d lie awake for a long time, and when I finally closed my eyes, I’d dream of things moving with no hand touching them. In my dreams people chased us and tried to choke us with scarves and necklaces.

But Mommy hadn’t come tonight, not yet. Maybe I’d fall asleep and feel safe and happy the way I used to at Aunt Jule’s. The mist on the river was thick tonight, like a big soft comforter laid over the water, the edge of it lapping the house. I sank down in its friendly darkness, closed my eyes, and dreamed of playing treasure hunt with Nick.

In my dream the clank of a line against a sailboat mast became louder until it sounded like a bell being rung. The ringing wouldn’t stop. I sat up suddenly. It was the dock bell — the big bell we were supposed to ring if there was trouble on the river.

“Nora!” I cried, then jumped out of bed and ran to the porch outside my room.

Holly, whose bedroom was next to mine, hurried out at the same time.

“Nora went down to the dock,” I told her, panicky.

A light went on downstairs, cutting a path of white through the mist. Aunt Jule ran across the lawn toward the water, her bathrobe billowing behind her like a cape. Holly and I rushed to the end of the long porch and raced down the outside stairs.

The heavy mist blotted out the river and the dock. We paused for a moment at the top of the hill, straining to see, then ran down the grassy slope. I stepped on something sharp. Holly heard my cry and turned around. “It’s okay.

Okay,” I told her, waving her on.

Close to the river edge she stopped and bent over. As I got nearer, I saw that Nora was safe, huddled on the ground.

“Where’s Mother?” Holly asked her sister when I had caught up.

Nora pointed toward the water, her hand shaking.

Aunt Jule’s voice sounded strange in the heavy mist, as if it were separate from her. “Holly, call 911.”

Holly turned to me. “Lauren, go call.”

“You run faster,” I argued. “And you’re wearing shoes.”

“Go, Holly!” her mother shouted. She was wading in from the dark river, carrying something. I watched the way she swayed from side to side, as if the burden were heavy. I started into the water.

“Stay there, Lauren. Get back on shore.”

I backed up onto the dry land, but away from the whimpering Nora, my stomach in a knot. I could tell from Aunt Jule’s voice that something was wrong. The bundle she was carrying was long and limp. Even before I could see her clearly, I knew it was my mother. When Aunt Jule reached me, she laid her down in the grass. My mother’s dark eyes stared up at me.

“Mommy?” I said softly. “Mommy? Mommy!” I cried. I picked up her hand and shook it.

Aunt Jule caught my wrist “She — she can“ t hear you, love,” she said, then closed my mother’s eyes.

The grief counselor had said I would go back to Wisteria when I was ready. It took me seven years.

Sunday afternoon, as I stood at the top of High Street in one of the prettiest river towns on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, I wondered why I had stayed away so long. Wisteria was not only the home of the godmother I loved, but the place where I was born. It was the summertime kingdom in which I had been allowed to run safe and free.

I walked down the sidewalk, enjoying the familiar feel of bumpy brick, hot beneath my sandals. Pots of red geraniums sat on broad steps. Impatiens tumbled over baskets hanging from painted wood porches. The Colonial Days Festival, held every June, was in full swing, and people crowded into shops like Urschpruk’s Books. In front of Faye’s Gallery wind chimes hung as they always had in one of the sycamores lining the main street.

Then the wind shifted. I smelled the river. Everything went cold inside me. Despite the sunlight, I started to shiver. For a moment I thought of returning to my car and driving straight back to Birch Hill Academy. This was why I hadn’t come back here. This was why boarding with teachers and vacationing with my father and his political staff had seemed the better way to spend a summer.