Bulls Island (4 page)

“Hi, Valerie,” Sela said. “It’s been a long time.”

“Yes, it has,” Valerie said, in a singsong voice. “Nothing’s changed here! Can I get a double Grey Goose on the rocks with a twist?”

“Sure.” Sela turned away to fix her drink.

Now, in Valerie’s defense, I don’t think she really meant to speak to Sela like she was the help or to imply that the joint was a dump. It just came out that way.

“Here you go,” Sela said, and placed the drink on the bar. “Hey, J.D.? Did you hear?”

“What?”

“Hurricane’s coming down the coast.”

Ed and Sela looked at me to gauge my reaction.

“Really?” I said. “Well, that piddling Anastasia was a sorry excuse for a storm. Is this a big one? We’re probably due for one.”

“I watched the Weather Channel all day long and didn’t see a
thing
about a hurricane,” Valerie said, and pounded back her cocktail like it was a mere glass of water. “God in heaven, I am so parched! Can somebody please freshen up my drink?”

Sela cocked her eyebrow in disapproval and took Valerie’s glass. “Yep, it’s a big one,” she said over her shoulder.

Coming
down
the coast. The next one would be a
B
. Could it be? “Hurricane Betts” was what Sela meant. Good. I was ready.

No. I was not ready.

S
ela might have been right about how things were with my family back in Charleston, but she certainly had a short memory. How horrible it felt to relive a single minute of the past! Jacob Marley’s chains were a lovely charm bracelet in comparison to what I remembered. And as to her insistence about my undying love for J.D.? It was not even remotely acceptable.

I was at home, back in my comfortable apartment. It was late at night. Adrian, my high school senior, was in his room fast asleep. The emotional part of me wanted to yank him from his bed and tell him the whole truth about everything. Just get it over with, I would tell myself in weak moments. The other part, the careful, pragmatic, and intelligent part of me, would never just blurt out the truth. But some nagging little voice inside of me knew that the time would come when I would have to tell him. When I did, his world would unravel and our relationship would be sorely tested. How would he ever trust me again? I was sure he would hate me. And life as I knew
it, loved it, and for the most part controlled it, would be over. I did everything I could to avoid thinking about this.

I had a stack of magazines and newspapers at my side and my intention had been to flip through them, tear out the articles and essays I thought I should read, and discard the rest. But it was impossible to concentrate on reading material when my mind was fixated on Charleston. I was reliving the night that had ruined so many lives and changed all of us forever.

It was 1989 and J.D. and I were at his parents’ home for dinner, waiting for my mother and father to arrive. This was to be the dinner to attempt to mend the divide between our families. I thought we were going to discuss the future…you know, that
someday
J.D. and I would get married.
Someday
we would all be in-laws, so
now
would be a good time to make that first step toward friendship. J.D. and I had planned the get-together. With some hesitation, both sides had agreed.

It would be a gross understatement to say there was no love lost between our families. The ill will our families held toward each other dated back to so many generations of turbulence that I didn’t think either family knew who started the quarrels.

Pecking order. There was no denying that the Langleys had landed in a very young America and therefore considered themselves to be aristocrats of a sort. Their property was a direct land grant from King Charles II during the seventeenth century. Slothful things that
we
were, we got here late, making landfall right before the American Revolution. First, our French forebears and later our Irish. God save us from our money-handling selves; we were merchants. Maybe you would have to be a Charlestonian to understand the subtle difference, but landowners were gentry. They considered merchants—even successful ones—common ruffians.

Their attitude and all the looking down their long noses they did, sniffing at my family, was ridiculous, of course, but each family
claimed to have legitimate reasons to dislike and mistrust the other. Frankly, they were legitimate. My ancestors had given money to their slaves to escape to the North and we were deeply involved in supporting the Underground Railroad. J.D.’s ancestors raised the cost of land to astronomical levels in order to discourage its sale to French/Irish businessmen, and at one point they opened competing businesses. Nonetheless, their slaves departed and my great-great-great-grandparents’ chain of small groceries, bakeries, and apothecaries prevailed over theirs and became wildly successful. But the alleged royalty in J.D.’s family still despised the alleged commoner in us.

Just to make it more interesting, in the eight years J.D. and I had been together, the fact that my mother’s DNA contained some thin strand of Italian nuclei provoked many absurd references to the Mafia. It was all so stupid. That’s just how it was. Except that J.D. and I, young and optimistic, were deeply in love and hoped to somehow bring our families together.

That evening late in July, J.D. and I were on the terrace, waiting for my parents to arrive, when he shocked me with an engagement ring. We were just out of college and twenty-one years old. The whole expanse of the Langley terrace was blooming with a profusion of pink and white roses, in beds bordered with thick deep green Mondo grass. Roses climbed the walls along with ivy and the entire area smelled divine. It was almost seven, and there was still plenty of daylight, humidity, and mosquitoes. Needless to say, despite the hour, the heat was still unrelenting.

We were drinking a pitcher of strong lemonade, made with fresh lemons and lots of sugar, exactly the way we loved it. J.D. was wearing khaki trousers and a pale blue oxford-cloth shirt, which was pretty much what he wore all the time. I was wearing a white eyelet sundress and my shoulder-length hair was pulled back with a tortoiseshell clamp. We were sitting in the shade of the awning that
covered the glider, moving back and forth to keep the air circulating around us.

“I want you to be my wife,” J.D. said. He said it in such a serious voice that it startled me and actually made me laugh a little.

“I know, J.D., and I want you to be my husband.” I smiled at him and squeezed his hand. “Who else would I marry? And who else would marry you?”

“But, Betts, I mean now. Soon. This year.”

“What?”

That’s when he stood up, reached in his pocket, and pulled out the ring. My jaw dropped and he did as well—to one knee, that is.

“Well? Will you?” J.D. was smiling and he looked so handsome. And fervent. My heart lurched with all the love I felt for him and I choked up.

“Of course I will!” Up until that moment, no single event in my life had ever been more powerfully emotional or profound. We could hardly see through our tears of excitement, wiping our eyes with the backs of our hands, as he slipped the ring on my finger, sort of bumbling around, getting it over my knuckle. I threw my arms around him. He picked me up off the ground and swung me around.

“Oh my God! I’m going to be Mrs. James David Langley the Fifth!”

“Well, dahlin’? Ah ’magine you are.” These words came from his mother’s lips. I had not known she was watching us.

J.D. plopped my feet on the terrace and I looked up to the unenthusiastic face of my future mother-in-law, Louisa. She was standing in the doorway, leaning against its side, and did not move a step toward us. J.D. ran to tell her what she already knew, but her chilly pronouncement told me all I would ever
need
to know. What would it be like to be a Langley? A living hell, no doubt, when she was around, I thought, then quickly scolded myself for being so cynical,
reminding myself that I was marrying J.D., not his mother. But when our eyes met, I knew differently.

She would always resent me. Her only son was marrying into the enemy camp, but I also saw that it wasn’t just me she resented. In Louisa’s mind, no one would ever be good enough for J.D. or worthy of becoming a Langley by marriage.

“Would you like to see the ring?” I said.

My question just burst forth, motivated by my heightened sense of insecurity. But wouldn’t the ring show her that our intentions were real, that our decision was
ours
to make and not hers? She could join in and celebrate our joy from this moment on, couldn’t she? Was I giving her an invitation to be a part of this occasion, or was I, in fact, drawing a line in the sand and staking my claim?

It was a line in the sand. That’s just the truth.

Despite my insecurity, I held my hand out for her to see the beautiful round solitaire diamond that flashed and sparkled. It was the most gorgeous ring in the world.

“Well, it’s lovely, dear. Simple. Perfect for you.”

Was that a barb? “It was such a surprise!” I said. “I mean, I had no idea…”

“Of course you didn’t, or you would have had a manicure,” she said. “Come now and give me a hug. I imagine we will have to figure out how you will address me from now on, won’t we?”

Why don’t I just call you Huge Bitch? I thought, and hugged her from the greatest distance possible. She patted my back twice, in little pats that wouldn’t plump a pillow. Then she stood back, raising her chin to me.

“What if I call you Miss Louisa?” I was not about to call her “Mother” or “Mother Langley,” and she certainly was not a mom, momma, or mommy type. She gave me the shivers.

“Lovely,” she said, with a sigh of resignation. “That would be lovely. Just fine. Ah ’magine we should have some champagne to celebrate? Y’all want a glass of champagne?”

“Should we wait for my parents to get here?” I said.

“They have arrived, dear. Let’s go inside…”

I thought I heard a distant thunderclap, and sure enough, over the next few minutes a vicious summer storm descended without warning. Torrential rain began pouring from every direction, so thick and so heavy you could barely make out the silhouettes of the trees across the yard. But as frightening as all the sound effects of a huge storm could be, the smell of its approach was an aphrodisiac.

Freshly mowed grass mixed with black dirt. Air infused with the life found in the Wappoo and all around it. Marsh grass. Twenty species of fish. The mud banks. The ripe smells of decomposing branches and leaves. Birds and fish bones. Maybe this sounds unappealing or unappetizing, but once this smell finds its way to your senses, you’re hooked on its crazy opiate effect. These elements were spun with roses into a wave of fragrance so strong it would make you forget every trouble in the world. And that’s exactly what I allowed myself to do. Taking a deep breath, I remembered J.D.’s love for me, pushed aside his mother’s poor manners, and ran to my own mother’s arms. My left hand was extended and waving; splashes of light from the facets of my ring splashed the walls.

“Momma! Look! Look!”

“What? What’s this? Let’s see!” she said. My beautiful mother stared at my hand and then my face. “Oh, my dear child! Are you surprised, Betts? Happy?”

“Surprised like anything and happier than I’ve ever been in my whole life,” I said.

“Then so am I! So am I!” We hugged each other with all our might and I could feel her begin to cry. “Tears of joy! What did you tell him?”

“I told him yes! I said, oh, yes!”

“Oh! My darling daughter! I am so thrilled for you!”

My mother just blubbered like a woman whose baby had slipped from her hands into dark waters, lost forever.

“Come on, Momma! It’s all right!”

She quickly composed herself and smiled. “It’s silly of me, I know, but I guess…oh, there’s a part of me that will always see you as my little girl, running to me for a Band-Aid or with a report card, or missing teeth…you’ll see someday, Betts. There are just some moments that…well, you
should
sort of lose it!”

“I am still that little girl, Momma, inside somewhere, but J.D.? Eight years together? It’s time, don’t you think?”

She nodded. “I didn’t tell you, but J.D. came to us yesterday. We met for lunch and he asked both of us for our permission to marry you. Oh, he’s a wonderful young man, Betts. He really is.”

Just then I noticed that J.D. and his father, Big Jim, were shaking hands with my father, Vaughn.

“I’m gaining a daughter!” Big Jim said enthusiastically. “A beautiful one! A smart one!”

“And our family will finally have a son! I couldn’t be more pleased,” my father said.

My mother sighed, as she knew full well what chop my future waters held. Exhibit A: she nudged me and nodded toward Louisa, who was listing back and forth, doing a little wibble-wobble, as she silently poured champagne into the flutes. What in the world? Where were her congratulations? Were those few words on the terrace the best she had to offer? Wait! Had Louisa been drinking before my parents arrived? Young and inexperienced with alcohol as I was, I would not have doubted it at all. She had probably watched J.D. propose to me and gone running for the bottle. In fact, during our brief and antiseptic embrace, I noticed her breath did carry a whiff of gin, a smell I had always associated with something foul. I knew she favored martinis, and maybe because she was always so disagreeable, it was a cocktail I would not have consumed at gunpoint. Did she so despise the idea of me marrying J.D. that she had to drink in order to deal with it? Would I be driven to drink in order
to deal with her? Perhaps. I knew with certainty that having her for a mother-in-law was going to be a serious challenge.

By God’s grace, we got through the toasting and made it to the dinner table, where someone unleashed the hounds of hell between the cucumber soup and the pork loin with mashed potatoes. If the pork was swimming in gravy, my head was swimming with anxiety.

“Ah ’magine we’ll want to have our wedding he-ah,” Louisa said, with a slight slur, as though the prospect of this was a burden as well a blessing. “Ah mean, Ah have always dree-ummed of my son’s wedding taking place he-ah.”

“That is awfully kind of you, Louisa, but
I
have always dreamed of our daughter’s wedding taking place at St. Mary’s downtown.” My mother’s voice was polite but resolute.

“Oh, Adrianna, a
Catholic
ceremony. I should have known. Well, there’s nothing to be done about being a papist, is there?” Louisa cracked a smile of obvious disappointment and sighed. There was no response from around the table to her rudeness. “De-ah me. Well then, we’ll have our re
cep
shun here, won’t we, Elizabeth?”