Page 23 of That Last Carolina Summer

“Australian brush turkeys emerge from their eggs entombed by their nesting mound and spend up to two days on their backs clawing their way out. With no guidance or protection by their parents, it’s not surprising that the survival rate of the brush turkey chicks in the first week is less than three percent.

Yet somehow, the breed survives—and even flourishes—most likely because only the toughest chicks survive then pass along their genetic will of steel to their own offspring. ”

Excerpt from the blog The Thing with Feathers

Phoebe

I AWOKE BATHED in sweat as the remnants of a dream nudged me fully awake.

It was a new dream, and it took me a moment to recall the details and the person at the center of it.

A woman was riding her bike down what seemed to be a neighborhood street, black asphalt and no painted lines.

I wasn’t the cyclist, but my leg muscles felt the strain of pedaling, my face and hair slapped by the wind.

I felt all of this, but my vantage point was that of a spectator on the side of the road, watching the bike approach while also aware of a gaping pothole in her path.

I began shouting for her to watch out, my throat growing raw from the effort, but she didn’t hear me as she barreled toward the deep dip in the road.

My teeth felt the jarring motion as her front wheel fell into the hole and she was catapulted over the handlebars, her bare arms and legs sliding over loose gravel until coming to a stop, the bicycle landing on top of her.

I watched in mute horror as she lay still, my muscles softening with relief when she moved and began to extricate herself from the mangled bike.

I could feel the bleeding scratch on her right cheek and the raw patch on her chin that still had small stones embedded in it.

She lifted her head so I could see her face.

I knew this woman. Although I couldn’t think of how I did or what her name was.

I lay in the silence listening to Ophelia’s breathing, trying to place who the woman was.

In the past, my premonitions had always involved someone with whom I’d had recent contact, which is why Addie had started inviting me out with her friends.

I hadn’t been lying when I’d told Addie and Celeste that I didn’t have them anymore.

Other than the one of the car going over a bridge, this latest was the only one I’d had in a long time, not since I’d moved across the country.

I squirmed, my back aching from sleeping on the hard floor of my old bedroom, erroneously believing it might be cooler there than in the bed with Ophelia’s body pressed against mine and her hot breath on my back.

I lay there wallowing in my misery as my anger at Addie grew.

The electricity had been shut off, and we were stuck with the heat of a South Carolina summer until the electric company’s office reopened on Monday.

We just needed to suffer through the weekend, assuming I didn’t murder my sister and end up in prison where at least I’d have air-conditioning.

The windows had been opened upstairs allowing in an ineffectual breeze from the water. A buzzing insect, whose size could only be determined by the loud thwapping sound it made against the window in its desperate throes to free itself, had found its way through a hole in the screen.

My main concern was for my mother, whose heat intolerance was as well-known as it was surprising for a South Carolina native.

She’d insisted on sleeping in her bed and wearing her long-sleeved nightgown.

At least she had windows that allowed a cross breeze, but every time I opened one, she shut it and then asked me to turn on her fans.

Thankfully full dark had descended so that after she fell asleep I opened her windows and pulled down her covers.

I carefully extricated myself from the heap of blankets we’d used as a makeshift mattress and went into the hallway.

Addie’s bedroom door was open, and I used my phone to turn on the flashlight to see if she might be sleeping on the floor.

I kicked at the piles of clothing on the floor, not caring if my foot made contact with my sister’s sleeping body. It didn’t.

I made my way into my mother’s room. It was much cooler in here, a soft breeze riffling her hair as she slept curled onto her side in the fetal position.

She seemed so frail and helpless, two adjectives I would have never used to describe her and which would have undoubtedly made her angry.

As I watched her sleep, I wondered at the irony that would have put me in the position of her caretaker.

She had never tried to hide the fact that I wasn’t her favorite child or that I was the source of her biggest disappointment.

With hindsight and distance, it had occurred to me that my mother had probably loved me in her own way if only because I was her daughter.

I’d accepted her terms and stopped trying so hard to win her approval.

I had always hoped that at some point we might find a way to meet in the middle, to find the thing in each other that completed us and made us whole.

As I listened to her breathe, a darkness consumed me, swallowing my heart and tightening my stomach.

That one day I’d always dreamed of would never happen.

Because time passed and people got older and the hope of one day that we’d relied on fell by the wayside.

I wanted to kneel by her bedside and shake her awake and tell her I was sorry for all the ways I’d fallen short.

To finally have the conversation I’d been planning to have and that was more than a decade overdue.

But like so many of the things we put off in life, it was too late.

I gently pulled up the sheet and let it fall softly on her shoulders.

Outside, the choking squawk of a night heron disturbed the night, the hollow echo in tandem with my thoughts.

I had the sudden and irrational need to talk with Addie.

She was the only person in the world with whom I shared a mother.

It was our only connection, but it might be the bridge we needed to find our way back to the hushed middle-of-the-night conversations and confidences we’d shared before the burdens of growing up had separated us into two seemingly opposing camps.

A bead of sweat dripped down my back between my shoulder blades, a reminder of our current predicament and how the entire situation was Addie’s fault.

If she’d paid attention to the Past Due messages stamped on the envelopes before she’d shoved them into piles in our father’s library, I’d be sound asleep in my air-conditioned bedroom instead of wandering the darkened house in the middle of the night.

I turned to leave, but the hulking shadow of my mother’s desk and ancient laptop computer made me pause. I recalled what the receptionist at Liam Fitch’s office had said about setting up an account to access my mother’s medical records.

After slowly easing myself into the desk chair, I opened the lid and hit the power button. I doubted my mother had used the laptop in a while, but she always kept it plugged in, which meant that the battery should be fully charged even if the vintage processor chugged along at a snail’s pace.

When the screen lit up, I glanced behind me to make sure she was still sleeping.

Aunt Sassy used to say that Mother could sleep through a hurricane, which was one of the reasons Addie never got caught sneaking out at night.

Daddy was deaf in one ear due to a rifle mishap during a hunting trip, and he always slept with his good ear down.

The only thing that had pre vented Addie from throwing a full-scale party after our parents had gone to bed had been me and my growing role as the rain on Addie’s parade.

I set the laptop’s Wi-Fi to my phone’s hot spot and recalled the website I’d seen on the doctor’s business card, typing it into the struggling browser, trying to be patient while the page opened.

I set up a username and password for my mother and then assigned myself and Addie to be our mother’s personal representatives.

Once I figured out the power of attorney, I’d upload those forms, but this was enough for now.

I was about to shut down the computer when it occurred to me that I could probably set up online accounts for all the utilities and schedule automatic payments, too.

I felt a surge of hope as I searched for the electric company’s website to pay the bill, my hope deflating at the message alerting me that the website was down until Monday morning for maintenance.

My mother sighed in her sleep, and I froze, feeling as if I’d been caught committing grand larceny.

A half laugh emerged from my mouth as I considered the legality of what I was doing.

But my priority was making sure my mother was taken care of and could live in her house with running water and electricity.

I shut down the laptop and closed the lid. In the morning, I’d find a coffee shop where I could plug in my phone and the computer so I could sit down with the stack of bills and pay the overdue accounts and set them up for automatic payments. Assuming there was money in the checking account.

I had always believed that my father had left my mother with enough funds to pay her bills and live comfortably for the rest of her life.

I wasn’t sure if he’d also planned on paying for Ophelia’s education and room and board for both Addie and her daughter.

I had the horrifying thought that he hadn’t and that the money my mother had been living off was slowly trickling down the drain.