Isle of Palms (25 page)

“Good grief! Do you have a problem with that sort of thing?”

“I got trouble you can’t imagine, girl. What’s your name again?”

That was the end of her personal interest in me and the beginning of my career as a stylist in Harriet’s Kremlin. Tough interview.

I got trouble you can’t imagine, girl.
Seventeen years later, those words were still ringing in my ears. Everything had all happened so fast.

Freaking Lucy. There I was with this wild woman Lucy planning my new life. We stayed there until eight that night, drawing and redrawing the space until we were happy with it. She went home to call Daddy and I went home, unplugged my phone, and slept like the dead.

The next morning, I decided to call Emily, Jim, Frannie, and of course Daddy and tell them what I had done. First, I dialed Emily’s dorm room. She was there and sound asleep. It was only six-thirty in the morning. I was so excited I had forgotten to check!

“Emily? Baby? It’s Momma.”

“Whaddayawant? Whatimeisit?”

My darling child didn’t sleep, she went unconscious. Rousing her wouldn’t be easy, but since I had her on the phone, I decided to go through with the conversation.

“I’m sorry, baby. I know it’s early, but I’m so excited I had to call you!”

“’Kay. ’Sup?” (Translation: Okay, what’s up?)

“I just signed a lease on my own salon! Can you believe it?”

“Ma! You’re losing it! You can’t!”

Ma?
When did I become
Ma?

“I certainly can and I did!”

“’Ja rob a bank or sumpin’?”

Something had undermined her ability to enunciate.

“Yeah, I won the lottery. I can’t wait for you to see it! What’s the date you’re coming home?”

“Oh, fuck!” There was a moment’s delay and then she said, “Okay, I’m back. I dropped the phone.”

“What did you say?” I couldn’t believe my ears. She had never used that sort of language.

“What? I said,
Okay, I’m back.
I dropped the phone, okay? No big deal, Mom. God!”

Well, at least she said
Mom.

Over the last two weeks, when I couldn’t sleep, I would roam Emily’s tiny new room as though it were a wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, huge and endless, touching her new white wicker headboard, the tiny flowered pillowcases and quilt I had chosen for her, the mountain of choices I had made.

What if she didn’t recognize it as a new beginning? What if she didn’t care at all? And down deep inside I worried, in a dark place I kept behind a locked door, that it was too late. Not by much, but too late nonetheless. Too late for her and for me together.

Tangled Liberation

IM and Frannie cheered when I told them the news about the salon and cracked jokes about the robbery. “You are some big operator, Anna Abbot, I am so proud of you!” Jim said. “What can I do to help?”

“I’m good right now, thanks.”

“Too bad the guy didn’t shoot Harriet in the tongue,” Frannie said.

“No kidding! Know what she did? Listen to this . . .”

I told them how she had called me back and how she went crazy when I told her what I was doing. I could see them shaking their heads.

“God bless the child that’s got his own,” Jim said.

“Sing it to me, Jimmy!” Frannie said and started singing in our ears.

“I’ll call y’all later!” I said and we hung up.

Then I called Daddy and told him about everything. You would think that signing a lease on a salon would’ve been the main thrust of our conversation, but it was that I had done it without his consent that seriously irked him.

First, we talked about the robbery at Harriet’s. As he listened to the details, he was blowing air like Old Man Winter. You see, Daddy didn’t sigh. He blustered, puffed up his cheeks, and blew a northeast wind. As we talked, Channel 5 was probably issuing emergency small-craft warnings.

“Merciful God,” he said, “you’re lucky you didn’t get killed! What’s become of this world?”

“You’re right,” I said. “The guy was probably looking for money for drugs. I mean, it wasn’t a very smartly planned robbery. Just a lone villain.”

“I mean, what kind of a man wanders into a women’s salon, pulls a gun, and scares the daylights out of everyone?”

“A creep who knows how much cash goes over the counter on any given day. Daddy, we had over a thousand dollars in the drawer. We always do. Harriet does business like crazy. Hell, a bottle of shampoo alone could cost twenty dollars.”

“Gee-nimminy,” he said and let out another gust. “I don’t think I have spent twenty dollars on all my shampoo in five years! And, I expect you’ll be selling this kind of thing as well?”

“Actually, what lines I can sell remains to be seen. There are all sorts of rules about how many salons a vendor can sell in the same area and I won’t be the only salon on the Isle of Palms.”

“So much the pity. Well, I’ll see you around dinnertime—Lucy’s invited me over.”

“Okay, good, maybe y’all can help me figure some of this out.”

“Sounds like you don’t need my advice.”

“Don’t say that.”

Great, I thought, here comes a mood.

“By the way, did you take the money Lucy offered?”

“Daddy, I’m not sure what to do about this. She wrote a check to the broker for two months’ rent for the salon without me even realizing or thinking about what she was doing. Does this make her my partner or what?”

“If you really want my opinion . . .”

“I do!”

“Yes, but you had no problem signing a lease without even running it by me. . . .”

“Daddy? I’ll admit it was unusual. . . .”

“Yes, and a terrible gamble that could backfire in your face. . . .”

“Look. I don’t want to sound disrespectful to you, but since I’ve been in this business for my entire adult life, maybe I know something about it that you don’t. I mean, I need support here, not criticism.”

“You know it all, don’t you? You don’t need my advice. Go find yourself a lawyer.”

“Come on, Daddy. Talk to me.”

He was such a child.

Dead silence.

“Come on.”

“All right, if it was me, I’d set up a separate account for your business. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah. I do.”

“Then you should probably incorporate your business and use Lucy’s money as a loan to the business, not a personal loan. Keep it simple, legal and clean.”

“Right. Then if there’s a problem the business is liable, not me personally.”

“Well, any half-witted lawyer on Broad Street would sue the dickens out of you too, but it helps to keep your personal life and the business separate in case of an audit. The IRS loves to find stuff like that.”

“Right.”

We hung up and I thought about what he had said. My stomach had been very uneasy for the past forty-eight hours. Between the shock of the robbery, Harriet’s fury, and most of all the lease, I didn’t know what to do first or next. I had a terrible amount of work in front of me and it seemed I took one brave step forward and then one whimpering step backward.

Finding out what kind of merchandise I could manage to sell was only one detail of a thousand. My immediate future would mean hauling around a very irritating long list. And I did need a lawyer.

I scratched my head and looked around my living room. I still had a few moving boxes to unpack, but most things had been put away in a somewhat organized fashion, which is to say that at least I knew where everything was. In a small house there were only so many places to hide.

I decided to walk over to Lucy’s house and see what she was doing. Maybe she would invite me to dinner too and I could help her cook or something. I wasn’t interested in cooking alone and I was more than a little overwhelmed.

I saw her working at her computer on the kitchen counter so I rapped on her screen door.

“Stick ’em up, doll, and nobody gets hurt,” I called out in a manly voice.

“Lord! I didn’t even hear you coming up the steps! Come on in! Look at this!”

I imagine that what I expected to see was a website for used salon fixtures but what she showed me was something quite different. She was online at a site called [email protected]. I had heard about these places on the Internet where you could advertise for a boyfriend or a long-lasting relationship, but I had never seen any of them. There it was. A guy named Antonio, in his bathing suit, leaning on a Harley, wearing sunglasses, smiling wide, trying to look casually irresistible. He was so pumped up macho you could almost smell the coconut in his suntan oil.

“Look at his bio!”

“Sorry,” I said, “I was staring at his biceps.”

“ ‘Likes dogs, opera, walking in the rain . . . ’ ”
she said, clutching her bosom and letting loose a breath of carnal longing.

“If he doesn’t have the sense to come in out of the rain, why would you . . . ?” Suddenly I was a little annoyed with her. Wasn’t she seeing my father?

“He’s just trying to show how sensitive he is! God, Anna! When’s the last time you dated anybody?”

She had me there. “I had a date last year, I think.” I knew my voice had a trace of defensiveness.

“Well, honey, this is how you meet people in this techno age. Nobody goes to singles bars anymore. That’s so sleazy! This gives you a chance to email back and forth and see what you think about someone at a safe distance. Email tells you a lot about someone, you know.”

There was a dish of celery sticks on the counter and I helped myself to one. I’d still take a singles bar any day of the week.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Seems like a good way to meet a whack with a chain saw.”

“Oh, Anna,” she said with another sigh, this one a sigh of despair for the state of my non-affairs. She brightened and said, “Here, I’ll show you my ad!”

“You have an ad on this thing?” I hoped my eyes weren’t bulging.

“Yeah,” she said, “look!”

Click. Click. Exhibit A—there was Lucy, in a hat and sunglasses, leaning on a Porsche (she did not own a Porsche), wearing a tell-all tank top, grinning like a hyena, right there on the Internet, for all the world to see. The description below her picture read:
Everybody Loves Lucy! Single, tall, with curves in all the right places, loves to cook, slow dance, and laugh. Thirty-ish, M.S. in social work, never married. No more jerks, please. If you are a mature, professional, successful male, interested in a long-term relationship and maybe someday marriage, then I’d love to hear from you!

I gaped at the monitor. “Lucy! Good Lord!” I said a silent prayer that my eyeballs wouldn’t fall out of their sockets onto her granite counter.

“What?”

“You’re
divorced . . .
”

“So what?” This remark was followed by a silent scream toward the ceiling.

“You have an
M.S. in social work?”

“Hell no!” More eye-rolling and snicking sounds followed.

“Then why in the world . . . I mean, why do this in the first place, I mean, I don’t know, it just seems so, I don’t know . . .”

“Anna. Girlfriend. Calm down, okay? Sure, it ain’t exactly accurate, but I guarantee you that all the others are filled with some bodacious bull too! This is mostly a place to flirt, you know, see what’s out there. It’s about fantasy.” I was about to witness Lucy’s version of self-righteous indignation. “I’ve met some very nice men in chat rooms, I’ll have you know.”

I didn’t want to offend her social sensibilities but I thought the whole idea was a kind of gross exhibitionism. Let’s face it: putting a suggestive picture of yourself on the Internet with a bunch of lies to describe yourself, with the end goal of finding a decent man who would respect you, was, to say the very least, problematic.

But in the spirit of nonjudgmentalism I said, “I’m sure you’re right.” To show how open-minded I could be, I threw out, “Hell, it’s probably fun?”

“Yeah, that’s all it is, really. I mean, most of the guys who email me are most likely old married coots. I don’t usually follow up unless I’m pretty sure the guy’s okay and, even then, I would only meet them in a public place. You should try it! Hell, honey, what are you saving it for? It could dry rot!”

This was a small indicator of the possible trouble I could have with Lucy as a partner. Relationships were not a joke. Lying was just not okay with me. I was glad I’d had even a brief but cranky discussion about the loan/partnership with Daddy. What would Daddy think if he knew Lucy was strutting her stuff on the Internet like a blooming mail-order playmate? Not good.

“I’m not saving anything. I guess I just don’t think about it too much.”

I opened her refrigerator door and looked inside like I was in my own house. I needed to change the topic. The whole business made me uncomfortable.

“You want something to drink? God! I should’ve bought champagne! We have some big time celebrating to do!”

Champagne? Celebrating was the furthest thing from my mind. But, once again, the screwball was right.

“I’ll go get it,” I said, “that is, whatever they have at the Red and White that looks drinkable. Should I get some munchy stuff?”

“Sure! Dougle Darlin’ is coming for dinner and I defrosted some pork chops. Why don’t you eat with us and we can decide what to do tomorrow?”

“Perfect,” I said, and smiled, relaxing a little for the first time.

All the way to the store, I talked to myself.
Okay, she has a website. Maybe she advertises for sex. Who knows? But it doesn’t seem like it. It seems more like a lonely woman trying to amuse herself. Still. It is weird. Maybe not. What the hell do I know? I’m not exactly the man-expert of the western world, am I? What kind of champagne will I find on this island? But! She wants to celebrate! See? Lucy’s an optimist and maybe I’m just a pessimist. Could be. But, damn, if Daddy knew she was doing something so downright scuzzy, what would he say? Should I tell him? Hell, no! Stay out of it, Anna!