Tomorrow River

fell asleep and have sweet dreams. This past New Year’s Day, I caught my father stuffing them all into a cardboard box like he’d made a resolution to do away with them, like his family was a bad habit. Right here next to the window is where Woody and my favorite portrait used to be. The one we’ve got in the fort now. I asked him, “Do you mind? Could we just keep that one?” Papa handed it to me and said, “Salt in the wound,” and went right back to his packing. I thought it would work like a splint on Woody’s and my broken heart, but Papa was right. Whenever I look at the picture of us in the lily field, it burns so bad right below my wishbone.

I run my finger over the frames’ smudged outlines. Shots of Woody and me looking like baby bookends in Mama’s arms once hung here. There was another of us attending the first day of school in matching white blouses and navy skirts. I especially loved the shot of my sister and me wading in the creek with Boppa Joe and Gran Jean. Mama’s mother and father passed away in a boating accident a few years back on the chilly waters of Lake Michigan up in Wisconsin. That’s why she steers clear of boats unless it’s too risky to get where she is going any other way.

Woody and I weren’t allowed and Papa was involved in a trial, so our mother had to travel to her old home and to make the funeral arrangements all by herself. When she returned, my sister and I noticed that she was different. Of course, she was thinner from grief, but what she’d lost in weight, she appeared to have gained in spirit. Mama became so recklessly outspoken after her parents’ deaths. Grampa Gus always says, “Money talks,” and my mother had inherited a bundle in her parents’ will, so maybe that had something to do with her newfound mouthiness, I don’t know.

There never were any pictures hanging on the bedroom wall of Grampa, his arm thrown around the youngest of his sons, the both of them beaming with pride. It’s the job of a camera to capture truth for one second in time, and the truth is-Grampa is not proud of Papa. He got rheumatic fever when he was a child and that’s why he’s stunted and not rough and tough like his father and his brother. Grampa calls him “the runt.” He makes fun of his job at every opportunity. Gus Carmody thinks being a judge comes in handy in certain situations, but that it’s not a very manly way to make a living. “What kind of man wears a robe to work?” he razzes.

There were pictures from Mama and Papa’s wedding day on the wall. Our mother in Gramma’s high-necked gossamer dress holding a white ribboned bouquet. Our father looking natty in a long-tailed tuxedo and top hat. They looked like Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. In the old days, when something with a beat came on the radio, Mama and Papa would jut their hips and move smoothly into one another. Or sometimes watching a movie together late at night, they nuzzled close on the sofa, the light of the television bouncing off their sweetheart faces. And on Saturdays, they’d go into town for a date to have dinner and when they’d come home, I’d hear their bubbly laughter out on the porch.

I’ve given this a lot of thought. Tried to pinpoint when their happy-ever-after story came to The End. I don’t think it was just one thing that made everything start to go bad. It was a thing here and a thing there, and over time, the same explosiveness that’s inside Grampa Gus sprang free from some place deep within Papa to spew all over Mama. Once it was loose, he couldn’t seem to cap it off. I held Mama responsible for him changing. She was the one causing the problems. I begged her to stop being so defiant, shook a finger in her face, and told her, “All you got to do to make things right again is remember your wedding vows. You got to love His Honor and, most importantly, obey him.”

This is her dresser.

Down here in the bottom drawer is where she keeps her scarves. I’ve got to replace the one Papa ripped up last night. My sister needs that chiffon. She balls it up in her fist and holds it up to her nose and sucks her thumb. It makes her night go faster, having that little bit of Mama in hand.

Long as I’m here, I also want to look again for my mother’s white blouse with the red yarn trim and… Lord, what’s wrong with me? I’m not going to find anything of hers in here. Papa donated all her clothes to the secondhand shop because he couldn’t bear having them around to remind him of what he’s lost. I saw Mama’s short-cut emerald jacket at Mass last week and was halfway out of the pew before I realized that it was Beebee Mathison wearing it like it belonged to her. That’s all right. After I bring Mama home, we’ll go buy her some new things in the fancy stores of Richmond or Washington, D.C. Oh, Papa would love that! He insists on picking out all her clothes. Wouldn’t think of letting his wife shop for herself.

Right under this Oriental carpet of blue and gold swirls is where Woody and I helped Mama hollow out a secret spot she called “my stronghold.” We worked all afternoon prying up the boards when Papa was at the courthouse. It seemed so important to her to have a private place. She told me when we were all through, “We must keep this a secret. Your father would be disappointed, you understand, Shen?”

I sort of did. I always pretended that I could make out Centaurus when I couldn’t so I wouldn’t let Papa down.

I’ve had a hundred excuses for not looking for Mama’s diary before now. It’s just that… fine, I’ve been too chicken-hearted to read the pouring-out of her innermost feelings. Too scared to see her lacy handwriting spell out something that I would be better off not knowing. Something that would take away all my hope.

I get down on my knees and fold back the carpet. Lift up that notched board with shaking fingers. I’m trying hard to scold my scared into behaving, but it won’t stop back-talking me.

Do not go looking for trouble, Shen, it’s saying. You already have more than your fair share.

I desperately want to answer, Of course, you’re right. What was I thinking? Then I could run downstairs and make Woody and me some pimento cheese sandwiches and head out to the fort. I could practice my card tricks.

There you go, the voice inside my head is saying. Now you’ve got on your thinking cap.

“Hush!” I say out loud because I can’t listen to it the way I have in the past. I know from vast experience that fear talks a lot louder than courage. I need to listen to that other voice inside me, that faint one that’s struggling to be heard. You were born under the constellation Leo. You need to be brave hearted. A lion.

When I think about how my mama was the last one to touch this place, I go so weak that I almost stop, but I don’t. The light may be dim, but I can see right off that the stronghold is empty. Sam’s note is not here. And neither is Mama’s diary, which really hurts. I feel like I opened a gift that I’ve been waiting a year to receive and there’s nothing inside the box. Where is it? Could Papa have found it? The thought of him… no, I’m being silly. He’d have no reason to go looking for something that he didn’t even know existed. If he had found the diary by accident he would know that his wife had been visiting with Sam and how Woody and I helped them and… no, Papa doesn’t have it. There would have been punishments. My mother must’ve moved it. Hid it somewhere else and didn’t tell me. I bet she told Woody, who is such a Mama’s girl.

I get up off my knees, toe the rug straight. I’m feeling miserable. I bet Sam will, too, when I tell him that I looked in the last best place for his note and found nothing, not even dust. And poor Woody. How will she ever fall asleep without Mama’s scarf?

“What do you think you’re doing?” another voice accuses.

I almost shout out, “I’m just tryin’ to find my mother before my family falls apart worse than it already has. Can’t you just leave me be?”

But I’m not imagining the voice this time. I can smell horse sweat and Maker’s Mark.

I look up to see Papa scowling at me in the mirror above Mama’s dresser. He couldn’t get much realer.

Chapter Ten

“Is that you, Jane Woodrow?” Papa asks, striding through the doorway in his boots and breeches. For such a small man he takes such large steps.

I spin and most especially grin so he can see Woody’s and my only identifiable difference-my gaped teeth. He’s always had a hard time telling us apart. “Golly! You startled me, Your Honor,” I say, tempering it with a chuckle lest he accuse me again of impertinence. “How was your ride this mornin’… I mean morning?” He is very particular about how we speak. No calling ourselves Woody and Shenny in front of him neither. Pet names are not allowed. “Was Pegasus-”