10
The next morning they rose early and, after breakfast in the hotel’s cheerful café, headed out for a day of touring. It was a glorious spring morning, fresh-washed from showers overnight but now bright and clear and warming into the seventies. Both women felt the flush of youth and freedom at this unlikely situation—alone together for the first time in over thirty years, no commitments except to enjoy each other’s company and explore this strange and strangely inviting city. They acted more like sisters than aunt and niece in there trusting and playful interaction, and more like children than grown adults in their occasional skipping down bright lit and empty walks, in the daffodil Jodie plucked from the hotel’s driveway border and slid into Leah’s blond hair mixed with a dusting of gray, in the jaunty sun bonnet Leah bought for Jodie from a street kiosk and carefully adjusted atop her niece’s dark brown hair with its gentle wave.
They walked the half-mile from the hotel to the state capitol building through streets nearly empty of pedestrians this early on a weekday morning and only thinly travelled by mainly delivery and maintenance traffic. Though the capital building sat bright white and inviting atop its grassy hill, they were turned away from the front entrance by a large sign reading No Admittance and directed around back to an elaborate and no doubt enormously expensive post-9/11 tunnel entrance bored into the beautiful hillside.
This detour briefly darkened their spirits as they passed through metal detectors and had to open their handbag (Leah) and canvas tote (Jodie) and Jodie was even asked to remove her bonnet, to which she muttered “Darn, that’s where I always hide my bombs.”
The short-haired and heavyset female security guard eyed her sternly, as if contemplating whether or not to slap the handcuffs on this troublemaker, until Leah laughed nonchalantly and said, “Bon-bons! That’s where she hides her bon-bons! You’re such a devil, Darling!” and thus freed the guard to excuse Jodie’s threat to national security.
As they climbed the stairs from the underground tunnel to the original capital building, Leah whispered, “Let’s not end up with you in jail today,” following the admonition with an attempt at a light-hearted chuckle.
To which Jodie replied, “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Leah said, “First time with me.”
And Jodie said, “I’ll be on my best behavior here on out,” just as they reached the landing with its sudden flush of natural light pouring in through the lofty rotunda.
They recovered most of their former high spirits as they toured the public areas of the ornate building that housed memories and mementoes from the colonial, antebellum, reconstruction, and twentieth century periods as well as functioning as the current seat of the Virginia State Government. This last somewhat explained the elaborate security procedures—the governor’s office was open today and the legislature would be in session next week—and the women were forced to acknowledge they were part of living history as well as observers of a bygone eras. They kept their childish shenanigans under wraps as they were the only tourists amidst the numerous security guards eyeing them suspiciously—or was it flirtatiously, as most of the guards were males of ages that might be riveted by one or the other or both attractive women.
At the end of their tour they sat on a wooden bench in a hall off the south portico, trying hard but failing to imagine Thomas Jefferson or Henry Lee walking past or leading a debate as their attention was resolutely tugged toward the tall windows and the sunny portico beyond the locked doors. A young family—husband, wife, three kids under age ten—had climbed the long steps to that patio and were gazing into the room through the windows with their hands shading their eyes. Jodie ran over and squatted down and made a funny face through the glass at the youngest child, a girl of maybe four. The girl jumped back and ran to her mother in tears.
Jodie mouthed, “I’m sorry” through the glass but to no avail. The family headed back down the countless limestone steps to the inviting green lawn below.
Leah said, “Let’s get back outdoors.”
They both looked longingly at the glass doors that would have led directly to that outdoors except for the sign that said Emergency Exit Only—Alarm Will Sound.
Leah said, “Don’t even think about it.”
And Jodie said, “You’re no fun” but had already turned to retrace her steps past the restored Old Hall and to the stairs leading to the tunnel entrance and exit far below.
Leah followed in short order.
By then it was noon and, after sitting a few minutes on a bench soaking up the spring sun, Jodie commissioned an Uber car via her phone. The car driven by a middle-aged Pakistani took them over the interstate to Church Hill and dropped them off at The Hill Café, a small but highly regarded restaurant recommended by the hotel’s concierge. After a delicious lunch they walked the few blocks to St. John’s Church (the building giving Church Hill its name), a parish dating to the early eighteenth century and where Patrick Henry proclaimed his oft-quoted “give me liberty or give me death” incitement to rebellion. They took a quick circuit of the grounds but, having just missed the last tour, opted to skip the history lesson and tour of the interior of the church and instead found a bench in the shade of a just-past-peak ornamental cherry tree at the edge of the church’s cemetery.
Looking at the blank back of a worn and tilting gray tombstone, Jodie said, “I wonder who she was?”
“How do you know it was a she?”
“I don’t.”
Either could’ve risen to discover the name and sex of the person buried beneath their feet but neither did. “It’s hard to think of death on a day like today.”
Leah nodded. “All of this past only makes me feel more in the present.”
“Tell me about Mom’s youth,” Jodie said suddenly.
Leah flushed, startled that she’d not thought about Brooke once since dropping Penni off and a bit resentful that she was forced to think about her now. “Which part?” she said finally.
“Any part. It’s a total black hole to me.”
“She never talked about it?”
“No. She’d sometimes make passing allusion to ‘my wild youth’ but then would drop the subject. No amount of prodding would get her to give up her secrets.”
Leah laughed. “She was a lot like you—strong-willed, single-minded, contrarian.”
“Contrarian?”
“Always going opposite the crowd. She made a virtue of being an outsider.”
“Could have fooled me, with her Miss Civic Duty routine.”
“That’s all since marrying Dave. Before that, she always broke the rules. How do you think you came into being?”
“I figured that was a one-time mistake.”
“No, that was the culmination of a lifetime of rebellion to that point.”
“What did she do?”
“What didn’t she do is more like it. She smoked and drank.”
“Everyone tries that.”
“In grade school?”
Jodie’s eyes betrayed surprise the rest of her body attempted to hide.
“She was always attracted to bad boys from the wrong side of town, guys far outside our social circle.”
“Like Dad.”
“Yes, or even farther out than that.”
“What else did she do?”
“Snuck out at night, skipped school, shacked up with boys.”
“When?”
“Whenever she could. One night she left me alone at the State Fair and ran off to who knows where with a farmer boy named Danny. I had to drive myself home, and this was before I had a license.”
“What else?”
“She smoked dope. She got so stoned at her debutante ball I had to figure out a way to get her home without Momma and Father finding out.”
“Did you?”
“Somehow, yes.”
“Why didn’t Grandma or Grandpa stop her?”
“They tried, and had about as much success as Brooke and Dave had with you.”
“I hid
my mess.”
“I helped Brooke hide hers.”
“So you enabled her.”
Leah flinched. This succinct summary of a complex adolescent relationship struck to the heart of a deeply buried sense of guilt—that she had somehow caused or at least facilitated Brooke’s life-upheaval on Shawnituck, an upheaval that produced Jodie, Brooke’s first marriage, her subsequent divorce, and all manner of family distress and embarrassment. This upheaval also marked the break between their childhood closeness and their remoteness since. It was painful even now to recall how severely Brooke’s self-indulgent actions had shaken every part of their family, and how deeply it had shamed Momma and Father. “I was only protecting Brooke,” Leah whispered in a half-hearted defense, gazing toward the old clapboard church.
“Your life’s calling,” Jodie said. She turned to face Leah with a full smile.
“Protecting Brooke?”
“Protecting—first Mom, then me.”
Leah nodded slowly. Jodie was right—first Brooke then her first-born daughter. A shadow passed over her face. “I fear I’ve failed in both instances.”
Jodie leaned over and hugged her aunt. “Don’t say that,” she whispered into Leah’s left ear, close to the microphone there. “Mom’s done just fine,” she added when she sat up straight again. “And so have I, thanks to you.”
Leah nodded slowly, trying hard to believe her niece’s generous assessment but unable at just that moment to shake the image of the moldering bones beneath their feet, marked by a blank and leaning headstone.