The Swan House: A Novel

Musser has written an inspiring coming of age novel set in the segregated South of the early 1960’s. Chock-full of suspense, the novel’s heroine has an intelligent innocence that searches for truth in the most unyielding of places, the human heart.

Mary Rose Taylor, Executive Director

The Margaret Mitchell House, Atlanta

The deep wounding of Atlanta by a plane crash in Paris in 1962 and the consequential insight of a questing motherless daughter—a fact and faith-based novel of assuring conciliation and comfort.

Doris Lockerman

Columnist

Books by Elizabeth Musser

FROM BETHANY HOUSE PUBLISHERS

The Swan House

The Dwelling Place

Searching for Eternity

Words Unspoken

OTHER BOOKS

Two Crosses

Two Testaments

Two Destinies

ELIZABETH

MUSSER

The Swan House

Copyright © 2001

Elizabeth Musser

Cover design by Lookout Design, Inc.

Cover photo courtesy of the Atlanta History Center

Unless otherwise identified, Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Published by Bethany House Publishers

11400 Hampshire Avenue South

Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

Bethany House Publishers is a division of

Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 978-0-7642-2508-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Musser, Elizabeth.

The Swan House / by Elizabeth Musser.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-7642-2508-1

1. Children of the rich—Fiction. 2. Mothers—Death—Fiction. 3. Social classes—Fiction. 4. Young women—Fiction. 5. Socialites—Fiction. 6. Poor—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3563.U839 S9  2001

813'.54—dc21

2001002281

Dedication

This story is dedicated to my wonderful father, Jere Wickliffe Goldsmith IV, who loves Atlanta as much as anyone I know and who has spent his life supporting many of the organizations and endeavors that have made this city great.

Your generosity of heart and resources have been an example to me throughout my life. You have been not only a great, loving father, but also a confidant and friend; some of the most precious moments in my life are on our many walks together where we discuss life’s joys and disappointments. We have walked in many different places around this globe, but my favorite by far is when I come back home and we walk around the block in that spot of Atlanta known as Buckhead.

I love you.

Contents

About the Author

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Epilogue

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

About the Author

ELIZABETH GOLDSMITH MUSSER, a native of Atlanta, Georgia, attended The Westminster Schools and then received her B.A. in English and French from Vanderbilt University, where she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and graduated magna cum laude.

Though passionate about writing since childhood, Elizabeth’s first book was not published until 1996. Two Crosses was the first of a trilogy set during both the Algerian War for independence from France (1957–1962) and the present day civil war in Algeria. Her work has since been translated into Dutch, French, and German.

Since 1989, Elizabeth and her husband, Paul, have lived in Montpellier, France, where Paul serves on the pastoral team of a small Protestant church. The Mussers have two sons, Andrew and Christopher.

Prologue

Atlanta, Georgia

Spring 2000

Abbie moved down to Grant Park today, and of course I helped her. Who would have imagined that my twenty-six-year-old daughter and her computer-whiz husband would be moving into the Grant Park district of Atlanta, Georgia?

Their little house is yellow with white trim, and there’s an ovalcut etched glass in the front door. The yard is neat with green grass and a few pansies. Abbie and Bill have a hundred plans for what they want to do to the house. They’ve already spent a bundle having the outside repainted and the wood floors redone. And now they are moving in.

I smile and ooh and ahh as she shows me the rooms, but Abbie sees right through it. After all, she is my child, and she does know some of the stories, a few of them at least. I’m fifty-four now and learning to do everything by computer and glad for e-mail. Bill and Abbie gave me a scanner for Christmas to ring in the new millennium with pictures, and I haven’t quite figured that out yet.

Abbie comes up and puts her arms around me. She’s always been my most affectionate child. Can you believe it, Mom? Our own home, and right here where it all began for you.

I breathe deeply, the way I learned in therapy, because I really do not want to cry today. But the deeper I breathe and the harder I blink to keep the tears back, the more I find it is useless. Abbie has not seen me cry in quite a while.

We are covered in sweat. My hair is pulled back in a bandana, and my jeans have a lot of yellow and white paint stains on them, besides the other colors that have been there for goodness knows how long. Abbie kisses me on the cheek. Sit down, Mom, and I’ll get you some tea. She knows I can’t stand the coffee she makes or even the latte that comes from the new contraption that Bill gave her for her birthday.

So I sit there on the couch, which is covered in old sheets splattered with paint, and while she is out of the room, I start crying. And I don’t want to do that because I’m afraid I may never stop. So I hop up and call to Abbie in the cheeriest voice possible, Honey, I’m just going to take a quick walk down to the church, and I’ll be right back.

Sure, Mom, she calls from the kitchen.

So that’s why I’m walking down Grant Street and admiring all the houses that have been recently redone and thinking how this is turning into a young, yuppie neighborhood. I am also thinking, with that crushing feeling in my chest, about how in 1962, Carl Matthews and I used to walk down this street, right past a house that is now a strange shade of purple, and how back then it was just white with peeling paint in what was a neighborhood of blacks and whites and Mexicans. And poor. So poor.

Then I get to the red-brick church with the sparse grass, and I smile, as always, when I see those stained-glass windows from the outside. The stained glass has gone through a whole lot. So I let myself think about Miss Abigail and Carl Matthews and Ella Mae and spaghetti meals for the poor and what I learned so very long ago.

I walk into the sanctuary because the church is unlocked on Saturday mornings, and there is a group of teenagers working downstairs. But I go into the sanctuary with the pretty stained glass, and I walk up to the altar. It isn’t a big church; it only holds about 300 people when it’s jam-packed. But today it’s empty. I get on my knees before the altar, and I cry. I am swept back almost forty years when, as a teenager, I found myself in the same position in this sanctuary. Then I think of another moment in this church, and I can almost hear the voices singing and see the women wiping their eyes as they look at the painting.

Abbie has begged me a hundred times in the past six months to write down the story, or at least to tell it again so that she can record it. She’s pregnant and suddenly becoming very family-oriented and wanting our history to be preserved. But, of course, I haven’t written a thing down. I don’t write anymore. But Abbie is right. The story bears telling and saving. For a hundred different reasons.

I guess I’m praying and crying together. A lot of times my prayers are like that. Of course, that’s when I see the painting. It’s been hanging there by the alcove of the church ever since the spring of 1963. Just seeing the painting there and thinking about the other one downstairs always makes everything come flooding back.

So I decide right there, in between wiping my eyes and staring at the stained glass and the oil painting, that I will go back and dictate the whole story to Abbie, even if it takes a month or two or even three. I’ll stay with her in that house as she has begged me to do, while Bill is off at the convention next week, and we’ll sip the hot tea and latte and she can hold the recorder and change the tapes and I’ll talk and she can type it up later on the computer. . . .

So here I am, three days later, comfortably installed on Abbie’s black leather couch, which has been mercifully spared from yellow and white paint. Bill is gone, and Abbie with her round belly is sitting across from me in this great old rocking chair that she and Bill found at a garage sale, and the tape player is on the floor.

I’ll try to tell it the way it felt, Abbie. As if I were sixteen again.

Perfect, Mom. Things are always perfect with Abbie.

I may cry a bit, but don’t worry about it, okay?

Promise. No problem.

I have to start with the Dare. It’ll take me a while to get to Grant Park. I’ll start with the Dare and then talk about the plane crash and Mama and then Ella Mae and the church. . . .

Abbie rolls her eyes and smiles a half-patronizing, half-sympathetic smile. Just start, Mom. Just tell it. Then I think she realizes that this is not a simple thing she has asked—for her mother to go back almost forty years to something very painful—so she gets up with difficulty and comes over to me and gives me a warm hug and kisses my cheek and whispers, It really matters to me. After all, I wouldn’t be here without your story. This is important.

I close my eyes and try to put myself back into a schoolgirl’s body. So much is still the same and so much is completely different, but when I think about Rachel, I know I can start talking. And so, sipping my tea, I begin. . . .

Atlanta, Georgia

June 1, 1962

It wasn’t that I went looking for trouble on a regular basis, but adventures seemed to follow me around like a frisky kitten, waiting to pounce whenever I stopped to contemplate my next steps. But my most famous mishap started out innocuously enough. I was in tenth grade at Wellington Preparatory School for Girls, sitting in Mrs. Wilson’s Latin class, transfixed by the way this now-defunct language fit together like pieces of a puzzle. Several girls yawned; others fidgeted. It was our last day of classes. Exams started on Monday.

Sum levis, et mecum levis est mea cura, Cupido, I answered enthusiastically to the teacher’s challenge to recite a line from a poem by Ovid. No sooner had the words been spoken than a small piece of folded paper was slipped onto my desk. I hastily stashed it under my spiral notebook and tried to concentrate as Mrs. Wilson turned away from the blackboard and addressed another question to me. I stammered my reply, mortified at the thought that she might have seen the note being slipped to me. Perhaps she did, for she kept interrogating me for the last few minutes of class until I was sure that wad of paper was burning a hole in my notebook just as it was doing in my mind.

When the bell rang, the seventeen other girls sprang for the door, and I never had a chance to verify who had written that note. I read it as I walked down the hall to Honors English, and I’ll swear I’m not making this part up. Scrawled in black pen across that small wadded paper were the three words that a sophomore girl at Wellington Prep School desired most to see in that year of 1962: Quoth the Raven.

When I saw those three words, the hairs on my arms stood straight up, even though it was as hot as the oil in a frying pan that June afternoon. I almost didn’t go to Honors English because that note made me feel as if I might just wet my pants right there in the hall. But it wasn’t like me to skip class, so I went into Mrs. Alexander’s class and sat rigidly with my legs crossed twice (only girls with long skinny legs can do that), holding that note in my hands until it grew soggy like the cornflakes in the bottom of my cereal bowl.

It didn’t help that for the past two weeks we’d been studying Edgar Allen Poe in class and that yesterday we’d watched a movie called The Telltale Heart based on Poe’s short story by the same name. I could almost hear that heart beating under the floor of the classroom as it had beat under the floorboards of the house in the movie.

And now I had been chosen to be the Raven.

Looking back, I almost laugh to think that I was selected for this most elusive of honors at Wellington. The ritual of the Raven dated back to the school’s inception in 1927 when a spunky junior had challenged the senior valedictorian to a battle of wits and won. That contest had something to do with Poe’s poem, The Raven, and since then, at the end of each school year, a Raven was chosen. She was always an end-of-the-year sophomore, someone considered different and daring enough to meet the new challenge thought up by the rising senior-class officers.

I was flat-chested with braces and straight brown hair, as plain as a girl can get, but the one good thing about me was that I had a big imagination. Sometimes before Mrs. Alexander came to English class, I’d start reciting the poem she’d had us memorize that week, only I’d change the words as I went along, to the great amusement of the other girls. The rhymes came to my mind as quickly and as simply as those chants we used to sing while jumping rope at recess in grade school, so that Mr. Tennyson and Mr. Keats and a whole bunch of other poets were probably turning over in their graves, their hearts beating as loudly and angrily as the one in Mr. Poe’s story.

A few weeks earlier, I’d cast my spell on James Whitcomb Riley’s Little Orphant Annie and twisted the words to be about dear Mrs. Alexander. So instead of reciting the first verse of the poem as it should be:

Little Orphant Annie’s come to our house to stay

An’ wash the cups an’ saucers up, an’ brush the crumbs away

An’ shoo the chickens off the porch, an’ dust the hearth, an’ sweep

An’ make the fire, an’ bake the bread, an’ earn her board-an’-keep . . .

I simply said,

"Mrs. Alexander’s come to English class to stay

And force the sophomores to throw up at all she has to say

And shoo the seniors off the porch and pick her nose and beep

And quiz the girls and pull their curls to earn her board and keep."

The class had dissolved into hysterical laughter when Mrs. Alexander entered the room, and I, gangly and giggling in spite of myself, was too terrified to move. I’m sure that story, among many others, had spread around school throughout the year, and that’s how I got elected to be the Raven. Tradition held that the Raven’s task would be revealed at midnight on the last official day of school, before exams began. The first challenge of being chosen to be the Raven was to find the paper that explained the Dare, hidden somewhere on the school grounds. I glanced at my watch. It was two in the afternoon. I had ten long hours to wait, but with an imagination like mine, there was plenty to keep me busy.

At precisely midnight on June first, my best friend, Rachel Abrams, and I shimmied over the large wrought-iron gate that separated Wellington from the rest of the world. As I sat perched atop the gate in my cotton shirt and pedal pushers, hands clammy, I whispered down to Rachel, who was already safely inside the campus, How in the heck do I get down?

Rachel laughed in her practical way and said, "You jump, stupid.

Just jump!"

And so I did, all nine feet down. I landed with one foot twisted under me, and I was sure it was broken, but Rachel grabbed my hand and yanked me up. Come on, you silly, scatterbrained girl! We’ve only got an hour before they come looking. You are so clumsy. That was part of the deal too. You had to get onto the school grounds at midnight, and you only had an hour to find the clue. At 1:00 A.M. the rising senior officers supposedly invaded the campus and took back an unretrieved clue.

I winced with pain and scowled at Rachel when she turned her back, but I obediently followed her. I limped along the paved road surrounded by flowering magnolia trees that led to the shadow of a large brick building way in front of us.

Slow down, will you, Rach? I whispered.

Shh. Hurry up! was her unsympathetic reply.

From somewhere behind the high shrubs near the security hut to the right of the main building, a dog barked. Rachel should be the Raven, I muttered to myself. She was loving this. How do you know where the clue is hidden? I called after her.

Idiot! Didn’t you even study the map on the back of the paper? Rachel held the wadded ball of paper that I’d received in Latin class in her hands. She stopped abruptly, pulled out a pocket flashlight, and held it to the paper. Sure enough, a map of the Wellington school grounds was sketched on the back.

See. It’s right here. She pointed to a spot on the map marked with an X. They aren’t very imaginative this year, Swannee. Using the old statue again. Same as five years ago.

How in the world do you know that?

Julie Jacobs told me. Her sister helped find the Dare that year. It was stuffed in the mouth of Mr. Augustus Parks himself.

We were jogging now, I with great difficulty, and had reached the administration building of Wellington. It housed all the offices on the main floor, as well as the assembly hall, with the art classrooms and the drama rooms upstairs. Normally stately looking, with its red brick and thick white columns, the building struck me as spooky at midnight. Or maybe it was just a combination of Mr. Poe’s influence and my overactive imagination that made the fluted columns look like strange, sturdy ghosts, ready for some ghoulish battle. Behind the administration building was a large open terrace, with immaculate gardens surrounding a bronze statue of the founder of the school, Mr. Augustus Parks Emerson Wellington. We called him APE for short.

There’s the ape-man, Rachel giggled. You look in his mouth. I’ll check his hands.

The APE had been sculpted by one of Atlanta’s finest sculptors, and everyone who had known Mr. Wellington said it looked just like him—he was long since dead. The girls at Wellington found great merriment in the way his mouth was open and you could literally put your hand, well, at least three fingers, inside. Which is precisely what I did. But there was nothing there.

No luck? Rachel inquired, pulling herself off the ground where she’d been inspecting the pedestal with her flashlight.

Nothing. I suppressed a giggle.

What’s so funny?

Your tights are black with dirt!

Rachel stuck out her tongue and, unperturbed, began to search the rest of the monument.

I don’t see why they’d choose the statue again if it was the hiding place five years ago. Maybe it’s a trick, I reasoned.

Rachel ignored me and continued her frantic search, groaning, Swan, hurry, we’ve only got forty-one more minutes! Do you want to be the first nincompoop in twenty years who couldn’t even locate the Dare?

I certainly didn’t, and I was grateful Rachel was with me, but I didn’t have a clue what to do next. I sat down beside Old Ape-Face and tried to think. Rachel was chattering away. Be quiet, will you, Rach? Give me a chance to concentrate. I’ll come up with something.

I put my hands on my forehead, resting my elbows on my knees, and closed my eyes. I could still hear the dog barking off to my right and the sound of a car screeching somewhere in the distance outside the Wellington campus. Then I looked up. Straight in front of me were the woods, and dangling from one thin branch of a pine tree was something white.

Hey, Rach, look! I pointed to the tree.

Rachel jumped up from the ground, went to the branch, yanked the paper loose, and read:

"Just in case you need a hint

Behind the ape beneath the trees

A spot where many hours are spent.

No escape, get on your knees."

We reread the clue several times with the help of the flashlight. Suddenly I grabbed the paper and exclaimed, I know where it is! It’s at the Band Hut!

The Band Hut? she said, incredulous. Then she whistled low. Hey, Swannee, I bet you’re right.

We took off through the woods on the path we knew so well. We trudged it nearly every day. Stopping before the white clapboard building, I tried the door. Locked, of course.

Swannee, don’t try the door—it says to get on your knees!

I fell to my knees and stuck my arms under the Band Hut, which sat (rather precariously, it seemed to me at that moment) on piles of cinder blocks about a foot off the ground. I felt around, sticking my hand in spider webs and moist leaves and who knows what else. Give me the light, Rachel.

And there it was. An old beat-up flute case, the one that usually sat opened on the front table as we entered the Band Hut. If anyone was late to orchestra practice, she had to place a penny in the case. I grabbed its handle from under a pile of leaves and backed out from under the hut. Ta-da! I said triumphantly, holding up the flute case for Rachel to inspect. I bet it’s in here.

Rachel frowned.

"Don’t you get it, Rach? ‘Just in case you need a hint.’ In case. In the case. That’s where the Dare is." To prove my point, I opened it.

A folded piece of paper with a big R printed on the outside sat neatly on the velvet blue lining of the flute case. My mouth went dry, and as I licked my lips, I slowly unfolded the paper and read the typewritten words.

You, Mary Swan Middleton, Raven of Wellington for the school year of 1962 and 63, have been chosen to locate three missing works of art before the end of the annual Mardi Gras Festival on Friday, February 8, 1963. These paintings were given to the Atlanta High Museum of Art by an anonymous donor and were due to be delivered on April 29 of the past year, 1961. But the paintings never arrived. There was rumor of theft, but the donor never complained to the authorities. In fact, there was never another word received from the donor, and no one knows who this mysterious person is. Locate the paintings and become one of the few successful Ravens in Wellington’s history.

Below were written the names of the three paintings and their artists. It didn’t surprise me a bit to see that one of the artists was Mama.

Spring Bouquet—Henry Becker, 1958

Child at Rest—Sheila Middleton, 1952

Joie de Vivre—Leslie Leschamps, 1956

My mind was spinning as Rachel grabbed the paper from my hand. It was a commonly known story among Atlanta’s art patrons, and especially our family, that three paintings which had been acquired for the summer of ’61 collection had disappeared the night before they were to be displayed at the opening of a new exhibition at the museum. The riddle of the donor had never been solved. Mama and Daddy had tried to help the museum locate this mysterious person with no luck.

I immediately loved the challenge. The Raven had all summer and all fall and winter of her junior year to come up with an answer to the Dare. But, as every girl at Wellington knew, the Raven’s identity had to remain a secret. If at any point during the course of the nine months she revealed herself, the Dare became moot and void. Fortunately, the Raven was allowed to choose two people to help her solve the mystery. I figured that I’d be just fine with Rachel. She had more brains than the rest of my class put together, at least in my humble opinion.

Of course, the Wellington girls spent nine months trying to figure out who had been named as the Raven. Sometimes someone guessed correctly, but since the Raven could not outright admit her identity, an aura of mystery surrounded the ritual right up to the time when the Raven was announced on the night of the Mardi Gras Festival, along with the fact of whether or not she had been successful in her quest. And, of course, the senior girls who had chosen the Raven had to keep their mouths shut.

It was the best of the school’s rituals, and the motivation behind the Dare and the Mardi Gras Festival was not just class pride, but also philanthropy. Several of the major Atlanta companies pledged money to the charity of the junior class’s choice if the Dare were met. Likewise, wealthy individuals also participated in the event. Daddy had offered a large amount of stock last year.

Wellington Prep School was a private Christian school for girls, starting with sixth grade and going through high school. It was considered one of the finest schools in the Southeast, and many wealthy Atlantans supported it. Graduating from Wellington almost always meant that the girl continued on to college, and if she was smart she had her pick of the top universities before her. Such was the reputation of Wellington.

Only once in the past ten years had a junior solved the Raven Dare. Rebecca Dewberry was the girl chosen to be the Raven in 1956. She was one of those really brainy types with drab dresses and pointed glasses. But as the story goes, when she solved the mystery, she was transformed into the school heroine. Her wardrobe was completely refurbished to the latest style, and she did away with those atrocious red cat-eye glasses. She applied for the Morehouse Scholarship to UNC and got it, but turned it down to go to Radcliffe and became a lawyer in the time before women did things like that.

I couldn’t remember what her task had been, but I had heard that her grandmother, who had been one of the founders of Wellington back in the 1920s, had helped Rebecca, along with the drama teacher. Apparently, Rebecca had wisely chosen her two faithful assistants and had brought glory to her class.

But I was no Rebecca Dewberry. My grades were Bs at best. I just didn’t have the time to study. I much preferred sketching in the woods or making up silly poems or riding my horse. But at least I had Rachel Abrams for a friend. We’d been practically inseparable since our first year at Wellington as sixth graders. Rachel was what I called book smart. Her dad was some brilliant physicist at Georgia Institute of Technology. Where I lacked confidence, Rachel had enough for the whole school. And whereas I tended toward the melodramatic, Rachel was blunt. She liked to call a spade a spade, as my granddaddy would say. And for as plain as I was, Rachel was a real knockout. Long, thick blond hair and crystal clear blue-gray eyes. She’d started puberty by age eleven. I was sixteen, and for me puberty had just begun three months ago. But we were best friends.

Why she had picked me out to befriend, I’m not sure, except that we both played the flute in the school orchestra—she much better than I. We also both loved horses and had mares of our own, which we kept at the barn behind Rachel’s house. So just about every afternoon we’d be together riding or practicing flute or cleaning out stalls or something.

And Rachel made me think. She was always coming up with bizarre questions about the meaning of life. But thank goodness, on this particular night, with the prize of the Raven Dare safe in my hands, she chose simply to chat happily as we headed back to the gate, me limping and she skipping.

Good going, Swannee. Good job. This is going to be a piece of cake.

I wasn’t so sure about that. My ankle was throbbing, and my hands were filthy with dirt and leaves. But I was excited. I had been chosen to be the Raven, and I had found the Dare!

If that task had been all I had to do in and of itself, then my story would not bear telling. But it seems to me now that the hand of God reached down in the midst of a harmless dare to alter my destiny and that of every other person I cared most about for so many years to come. It makes me shiver to consider it, but as I see it, the history of my family, and by and large of the city of Atlanta, is forever tied up in a schoolgirl’s prank.

Chapter 1

Orly Airfield, Paris, France

June 3, 1962

In my mind, the nine months from the first of June 1962 until the end of February of the following year were what I afterward called the year of death. I suppose it was the worst year of my life in many ways, certainly the most painful. And yet, as I have so often seen since, it was a year of discovery and change, and ultimately of hope. And there were wonderful parts too—the first time I fell in love, the first time I learned to really see someone else, the first time I dared to venture outside myself. And most importantly, it was the year that I discovered the truth, and truth always sets us free. So maybe I should call it not the year of death, but the year of freedom.

This is how it happened, as best I can piece those first days together from what I’ve been told and from what I lived.

John Jason Middleton, my forty-year-old father, lifted his arm and waved happily to his wife and my mother, Sheila, as she headed to the large aircraft. Then, on an impulse, he ran out of the glass doors and caught her in a tight embrace, kissed her on the lips, and pressed his hand against her fine silken hair. She laughed at him, her jade eyes twinkling and her wide, delicious mouth painted bright pink. See you tomorrow, sweetheart.

He watched as his wife and many of their friends boarded the Boeing 707 bound from Paris to Atlanta. The three-week trip with over a hundred other Atlantans had been perfect in every way. A dozen different scenes flashed through his mind. Dancing with Sheila. Sheila on the Champs-Elyse ées. Sheila, arms piled high with packages from Galéries Lafayette. And of course Sheila weeping in front of a Rembrandt . . . a da Vinci . . . a Raphael.

Ah, Sheila! At thirty-eight, she was already called one of Atlanta’s premier artists, and the contacts she’d made in Paris could almost assure a noteworthy exhibition there next spring. He squinted to get another look at his wife as she disappeared into the huge jet. The other members of the tour were tucked safely inside the plane as it taxied for takeoff.

But he and Mama had agreed two nights before to fly home on separate planes. Daddy, ever the cautious one, had preferred not to be on the same flight going home—for me and my brother Jimmy’s sake. The others on the trip thought him silly, but I’m sure he must have had a premonition of what was to come. And several business options had presented themselves on Friday, so he had a good excuse to stay another day.

Of course, Jason darling! It’s a marvelous idea. Mama had sung the words in her slow, smooth Southern accent. Then she had pouted. But what a bore to be on the plane all those hours without you!

To which he had guffawed and playfully pinched her. Yes, you’ll be bored stiff, I’ll bet. Nothing to do but chat with Rosalind Williams and Anne Berry and Elizabeth Bull.

But you, dear Jason? she said in mock sadness. I’m thinking of you.

He laughed again hearing her words, both of them knowing how he relished the thought of a few hours alone to catch up on business before he got back to Atlanta.

The jet sped down the runway of Orly Airfield with the bright Paris sky at midday shining down on it, sending gleaming reflections from its sleek metal exterior. Daddy felt the familiar jump in his stomach as the plane accelerated, then an immediate sense of relief to see it poised, ready to pierce the sky, nose pointing confidently upward.

Then, as he was about to turn away, he saw the silver bird hurtle forward without leaving the ground, heavy streams of white smoke trailing behind it. The plane screeched to the left, wobbling horribly for what seemed an eternity as the white smoke turned black. Daddy watched, horrified, screaming out loud as the nose of the plane struck the runway with the force of an earthquake, splitting the pavement apart. There was the sound of an explosion and then the airplane burst into fierce, lapping orange and blue flames.

He ran toward the glass doors with a dozen other dumbstruck eyewitnesses, tripping over himself, and made it onto the field before a man in an Air France uniform stopped him, warning, You can’t go out there!

My wife’s on that plane, Daddy cried hysterically.

I’m sorry, the Air France official told him. My brother’s on it too.

Daddy stood there in shock, imagining the excruciating heat, hearing somewhere on a distant runway the scream of sirens. Hearing his own anguished voice, weeping and calling out, Sheila, Sheila . . .

Atlanta, Georgia

June 3, 1962

The way I always heard it afterward was that Ella Mae was sitting in church on the morning of June third, fanning herself the way she always did, her big straw hat covering the coarse black hair that was beginning to be laced with gray. She was a large woman, strong, sturdy, and jovial. When she would smile and show her white teeth amidst her ebony face, ah, to me, it was such a simple and profound picture of contrast. Dark and light that blended into one of the most beautiful faces that my young eyes had ever seen. Ella Mae was my family’s maid in the year 1962. I lived on the northwest side of Atlanta in a big house. I had no idea where Ella Mae lived when she wasn’t at my house. She was as much a part of my family as my mother and father and my thirteen-year-old brother, Jimmy. I loved Ella Mae, and even though the tides of racial change were sweeping through our country, and her skin was black and mine was white, I had never seen the difference between us in all of my sixteen years.

It was, in fact, the events of the next nine months that forced me out of my cocoon. But I am getting ahead of myself.

At nine in the morning on June third at the Mount Carmel Church in southeast Atlanta, the pews were filled, the singing loud and joyous. The black bodies were swaying to and fro, as Ella Mae loved to describe it, and a young soloist in the choir stepped forward to belt out the last verse of Oh, Happy Day. It was a modest church of red brick and white woodwork that needed painting, and the pews had worn gray cushions. But it had ten breathtakingly beautiful stained-glass windows, and the piano was in tune, and the choir, my, could they sing! So caught up were they all in singing and praising the Lord that no one seemed to notice that Pastor James was awfully late getting to his place. When he finally did step into the sanctuary and up to the pulpit, the singing stopped abruptly with one look at his stricken face.

My brotha’s and sista’s in Je-, in Jesus, he said, stumbling over his words, something Ella Mae said he had never done before. His eyes were glistening as though he was trying to blink back tears. Our hope is in the Lawd. The usual amens were suppressed. Every member of the congregation waited, hearts beating hard.

I have jus’ received the tragic news of a plane crash in Paris. A charter plane carryin’ some of Atlanta’s citizens crashed early this mornin’ in Paris. There was a gasp throughout the congregation. That plane carried on it many of Atlanta’s most prominent citizens. The pain I feel for these people . . .

But Ella Mae never heard the rest of Pastor James’s eulogy or his sermon. She let out a loud wail of Lawd Jesus! and abruptly got to her feet. I gotta git to Mary Swan and Jimmy, she cried out loud, but really talking to herself, and she left the church in a blur, barely noticing the others who reached out to her or asked, Ella Mae. . . ?

They figured it out later, and it made perfect sense that Ella Mae would be thinking about us, her chil’un, as she liked to say. Thinking about me asleep in that big house, oblivious to the fact that my whole life had just come to a screeching halt.

When I came downstairs that morning, the house was uncommonly quiet. My little brother, Jimmy, was still asleep, and I was still dreaming about the great Raven adventure and nursing my tender ankle. It was Sunday, and Grandmom and Granddad Middleton, Daddy’s parents who were staying with us while Mama and Daddy were away, had already left for church. If Mama and Daddy had been home, we would’ve been at church too. But Grandmom had told us the night before that we could slee-eep eyan, as she pronounced it in her dignified Southern way, and we had not argued. Later in the afternoon, Grandmom and Granddad would take Jimmy and me to the airport to pick up our parents. I could hardly wait. They’d been gone for three long weeks, and I was anxious to hear about their travels.

Ella Mae, the maid who had worked for us for as long as I’d been alive, was always there on weekdays. I could imagine the sound of her vacuum in one of the bedrooms and the smell of her fried chicken permeating the air and whetting my appetite. Sometimes, when I got home from school, I’d sneak into the kitchen and steal a chicken leg, devour it, and toss the bone into the trash can before Ella Mae could discover it. She knew, of course, and fried several extra pieces for my brother and me to enjoy after school.

But today there was no smell of chicken or soft, distant zooming of the vacuum. Today was Sunday, the third of June, and Mama and Daddy were already on the plane en route to Atlanta from Paris. I glanced at the grandfather clock in the entranceway as I came down the long, winding marble staircase. Nine thirty-two. Only six more hours.

My mother was a well-known painter in Atlanta and the South, often absent traveling to what I considered exotic places for art exhibitions. I’d grown up in the ample lap of Ella Mae, loving the smell of her soft black skin against mine as she read to me from Uncle Remus or sang songs about Jesus loving me, this I know. She was like a second mother to me.

Ella Mae’s black hair was short at the time, but I remember when I was little I used to run my fingers through it and love the coarse feel and the way she let me twist it around my fingers and braid it. She never put on makeup that I could tell. Her eyes weren’t that big, but she would lift her eyebrows and somehow show the whites of the eyes when she was mad. Her nose was straight and wide, which I thought was absolutely perfect because mine was so little and turned-uppish, and I always wanted to sketch her face. It was the most real face I had ever seen.

We called Ella Mae sturdy or round, but Mama, who loved to sneak up with a phrase from her French mother, would say, "She is not fat, just un petit peu enveloppée." I poorly translated that to mean she was well padded, but it sounded much more sophisticated in French.

I found Ella Mae that morning of June third in the den, listening through the static on the radio and rocking herself back and forth, back and forth, moaning, Lawd Jesus, have mercy on us. Have mercy.

I don’t think she heard me come into the room, because she let out a scream and then a Lawd, chile, you done scared me ta daeth, and when she looked at me, that beautiful round face was shining with tears.

I’d never seen Ella Mae cry until that day. She was not supposed to cry. She was there to wipe my tears and listen to my stories and laugh at my pranks, but I felt a funny little quiver inside to see her face all wet with crying, and a cool shiver ran through my body.

Ella Mae, what’s the matter? Why are you here today? Why aren’t you at your church?

My, my, chile. My, my, she said, shaking her head and pulling me toward her and holding me in her strong black arms, snuggling me in her big bosom the way she used to when I was a little girl.

Ain’t got no good news today, we ain’t.

What do you mean, Ella Mae? It was then that I had my first premonition that whatever was making her cry would do the same to me when I found out. If it was bad news, I didn’t mind hearing it from Ella Mae. I only wanted to get it over with before Mama and Daddy came home from the airport. Three weeks of touring museums around Europe with one hundred of the city’s most generous art patrons had kept my parents away. I wanted everything to be perfect for their return.

They’s been a crash. A terribul crash, sugah. A plane in Paris, takin’ off early this mornin.’

The words froze me in place, and I narrowed my eyes, making them hard and angry, as if I were daring Ella Mae to tell me something too horrible to be true. What plane crashed? I mumbled after a moment.

The doorbell rang before she could answer, and we both jerked ourselves up. I left the den, ran through the entrance hall, and pulled the front door open, hearing my heart hammering in my chest. Our neighbor and Mama’s best friend, Trixie Hamilton, was standing there looking stricken. Trixie was in her late thirties, petite and blond and loads of fun, but she had nothing happy on her face at that moment.

Mary Swan, she whispered and pulled me close. Oh, Mary Swan. I came right when I heard the news. I was on my way to church. I wanted to be here before you got up. Ella Mae’s eyes met Trixie’s, and she shook her head slowly. Trixie must have understood something, because she led me through the big hall to the kitchen, which was decorated in bright red, yellow, and blue—what we called Mama’s artistic touch. Adjoining the kitchen was the breakfast room with a sturdy round oak table around which our family ate all our informal meals. We each took a chair, and Trixie held my hands.

There’s been a crash. A tragic accident. The plane . . . She cleared her throat and started again. The plane your parents were on that left Paris this morning has crashed. They don’t think there are any survivors.

If I had been six, I would have melted into Trixie’s arms or Ella Mae’s bosom and sobbed for hours. But I was sixteen, at that awkward, proud age when even those closest to me seemed at times distant. I sat there rigid as a board and numb, and Trixie just sat there too, her arms wrapped loosely around me as though she was afraid to squeeze me because I might break.

It was Ella Mae who, crying quietly, fixed a glass of orange juice for me and one for Trixie, and then she took my hands as she had done so often in my life and began to hum very low and reverently, Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen. Nobody knows but Jesus.

It was when she was humming the part about nobody knowing but Jesus that I began to cry. And then I wept and I heaved, and the most excruciating pain I had ever known wracked my body. Not physical. A pain so deep down in my soul that it felt like a type of death itself. We sat there, me crying and Trixie biting her lip and Ella Mae humming, for a long time.

We went back into the den and listened to the radio, sitting there numblike, as the persuasive voice of some man selling sedatives ended, and the neutral voice of the newscaster came on the air, announcing the most awful tragedy in the most impersonal way. Then it would switch to singing commercials, and the hard-sell adman would come back on again, while we listened in agony, waiting. Waiting. Waiting to hear a list of names, waiting for a phone call to confirm our worst fears, waiting for time to start ticking again and assure us that there was a future out there. That morning, the morning without fried chicken or the sound of the vacuum cleaner, was a day when I, on the brink of womanhood, became again just a skinny flat-chested girl who wanted more than anything else to curl up in her maid’s lap and be rocked to sleep.

It was Trixie who got up the courage to call the Air France office on Forsyth Street. The line was busy for so long that we gave up and just sat again, Trixie smoking one cigarette after another. The phone must have rung around ten-thirty, its shrill clanging bringing us out of our stupor. And not one of us wanted to answer it. But Ella Mae picked it up and said in a voice much changed from her usual robust greeting, Middleton residence.

She listened intently for a moment, then screwed her face up in a perplexing expression and began to yell. Hello. Hello! Who is this? Whatcha sayin’? Is you tryin’ to trick us, Mista? Hurt us more than we already be hurtin’?

Then she paused, leaned in even closer to the phone as if she were trying to peer through the lines to check out the caller. Finally she let out a "Lawd be praised, it is you, Mr. Middleton!" which caused me to jump up and grab the phone from her hand.

Daddy! Daddy! Is it you? Is it really you? Ella Mae heard at church about a plane crash, and we thought it was yours. . . .

But Daddy’s voice was filled with anguish and punctuated by sobs as he said through a crackling phone line, Mary Swan, sweetheart. Mama was on the plane. Mama . . . Mama died in the crash.

No! I screamed because the horror had been replaced by a moment of hope, and now the horror struck again. I let the phone drop and sank to the floor as Jimmy came into the room, his face holding a thousand questions. Trixie took the phone and Ella Mae held on to Jimmy, and somehow we got through the agony of that hour. I do not know how. All I remembered later was the delicious sound of Daddy’s voice and then the sound of it breaking and then the realization that Mama was gone. Daddy was stuck thousands of miles away from us, alone in his grief, and we were in shock. I did not know anything except a shattering pain in my chest and a desire to run, run backward in time to when life was the way it had always been.

After Daddy’s phone call, after so many tears, I fell back onto the couch in the study, completely exhausted. Grandmom and Granddad arrived soon afterward. They had been in church when they heard the news. As soon as they walked in the front door, I could tell they’d been crying, something I had never seen them do before. But Grandmom tried not to show it as she wrapped her tiny arms around me. She wasn’t even as tall as Trixie, and her hair was a beautiful snow-white, and she wore a bright lavender suit that almost matched her eyes. I always thought of Grandmom as really classy