Shem Creek (19 page)

“We could always invite more people,” Lucy said.

Doc just grinned at that, patted her arm and said, “We’ll call you tomorrow.”

We shook hands and they left with menus under their arms. I could see them smiling even though their backs were facing me. Their happiness radiated with each step in the same way the haze of morning mist rose from the water. It was impossible to grab the mist or their happiness, but all the same you knew it was there. They had something so hopeful and beautiful and I wanted them to have whatever kind of dinner would make them happy. Italian? Why not?

Kitten? Ah, well. I wasn’t and never had been anyone’s kitten.

But, maybe the day was not turning out so bad after all. One date should not have turned me sour on the idea of a relationship. If there was hope for a dingbat like her, there was definitely hope for a slightly aged Jersey magnolia like me. At some point.

I found Brad with Gracie and Alex in the kitchen.

“Guess what?” Brad said.

“They found out who was buried in Grant’s tomb?” I said.

“Oh, that’s pathetic, Mother.”

“Okay, I give up. What?”

“I just hired Alex and Gracie to work in the kitchen after school. They’re gonna prep vegetables for Duane. Minimum wage, three hours, three days a week. Unless of course Alex plays football and Gracie becomes a cheerleader, that is.”

“I’d rather take a needle straight through my eye than put on a short skirt and act like an ass,” Gracie said, waiting for a reaction.

“I don’t know,” Alex said. “Some cheerleaders are hot.”

“Do you play football?”

“Yeah, for two years. Quarterback.”

“Gosh.”

Brad and I exchanged the nod of parental recognition that pom-poms and splits were in Gracie’s future and ball games were in ours.

“Let’s go, you two.” I said, “Time’s money.”

We took Brad’s car for the short drive to Wando High School. The entire back of my Blazer was still crammed with boxes from New Jersey. What was the point of unloading when I’d be moving soon? I was conserving energy.

The front office directed us to the guidance counselors assigned to our children and we agreed to meet in the lobby when we were finished.

“Well, this all looks in order,” Mrs. Hagerty said, going over Gracie’s transcript. “Here’s your schedule. You’re signed up for driver’s ed, in case you’re curious.”

“Sweet,” Gracie said.

“In fact, some of your new teachers are still in their classrooms today ’cause summer school’s in session. Why don’t you have a walk around and introduce yourself?”

“I can’t believe we have to go to school in
August!
I mean, in New Jersey we never went to school until after Labor Day!”

“Well, sugar, you’re not in New Jersey anymore,” said Mrs. Hagerty. “Now, go on and move yourself!”

Gracie shot me a look of insecurity.

“Do you want me to go with you?” I said.

“Gracie! How old are you?” Mrs. Hagerty said, taking off her reading glasses.

“I’ll be sixteen in two months.”

“Well, honey, if you’re going to be driving around the countryside in a few weeks, you ought to be able to find your way around a building now.”

“I can go with you if you’d like. . . .”

“Mom! I can handle this!” Gracie leapt to the door, turned back and spat, “She thinks I’m a baby.”

“I do not,” I said, and then regretted even answering her.

“Do too!” came the voice from a distance.

When there was silence in the hall, Mrs. Hagerty said, “Why should your teenager be any different than the rest of them?”

We swapped horror stories for a while—tales of drugs, safe sex, sex at all, college planning, clubs and sports—and when Gracie still had not returned, I decided to go and find her myself. I had lingered long enough in Barbara Hagerty’s office, not that she was fidgeting over it.

“Listen, thanks a lot for all your help,” I said. “I would like to be an involved parent, so if you ever need anything . . .”

“I’ll let you know,” she said, adding, “Don’t worry about Gracie. I’ll keep an eye on her.”

“Thanks.” I meant it.

I wandered down the halls, passing open classrooms, remembering being a high school student and all the anxiety of starting a new school year. What would the girls be like? Would I find a boyfriend? How hard would my classes be? Would I like any of my teachers? And, that had been decades ago. The stresses facing Gracie here and Lindsey at NYU were monumental compared to how the world had turned on its axis in my day. Gracie had her picture taken for an ID badge that she was required to wear at all times on school grounds—for security reasons, Mrs. Hagerty had said, but I suspected it was to deter drug dealers and weed out troublemakers.

I stopped to read a poster on a bulletin board in the hall.

 

 

 

 

Mr. Miller? I thought, no way, it couldn’t be Jason Miller, could it? I moved myself as fast as possible to Room 318 and sure enough, Jason Miller was behind his desk, folding paper. He looked up and saw me.

“Hi!” I said, not knowing exactly what to do. “Remember me?”

“Of course. Come in.”

“Oh, no, that’s okay. I was just looking for Gracie.”

“That’s your daughter? I just met her. She’s a very bright girl.”

“Thanks.”

“She’s in my marine bio class. I think she’ll do very well.”

“Good. Well . . . nice to see you again.” I was hemming and hawing all over the place.

“I think she took a left out of my door. . . .”

“A left?”

He pointed and I pointed and after some consternation I figured out which way left was. I gave him a little wave and escaped, thinking about what a creep he was.

I found Brad, Alex and Gracie in the lobby as planned. All the way back to the restaurant, the kids talked nonstop about their teachers and schedules, bragging to each other about what a piece of cake the year was going to be, compared to the horrible burdens they had borne at their prior schools. Even though I knew better, I was relieved to see the enthusiasm in both of them, and when I would glance at Brad I could see that he was too.

Everything was fine until I went to Gracie’s room late in the evening to say good night.

“Love you, baby,” I said.

“Me too.” She said, “Mom?”

“Yeah?”

“Didn’t you have a date with Mr. Miller?”

“For about twenty minutes,” I said, “he’s not my type.”

“Too bad,” she said, turning out her light. “He’s a genius.”

“Hey, Gracie? You okay about going to Wando?”

“Do I have a choice?”

I was standing there beside her bed in the darkened room, feeling very insecure. I wanted her to like it here so badly and I was worried. Worried that she would rebel and not study and ruin her future. Worried she would run away. Worried that it would be over before it began.

“Well,” I said, “let’s give it a try, okay, baby? For all of our sakes.”

“Oh, Mom, don’t be so dramatic. It’s not the end of the world, for God’s sake.”

“Thanks, honey,” I said and leaned over her, giving the top of her head a kiss. “It means a lot to me.”

She didn’t answer me, but I could almost read her mind. On one hand, she was stuck in what she viewed as Confederate mud. On the other, maybe it wasn’t as terrible to be here as she had thought it would be. I hoped that over the next few weeks, she would come around. After all, she wasn’t the only urban expatriate—now there was Alex.

OVER the next four weeks, we had established a routine and Mount Pleasant was starting to feel like home. The Epsteins had promised the boathouse to some friends for two weeks but after that they promised to give it a fresh coat of paint and get it ready for us. Moving day was scheduled for August twenty-third. I thought we would all have pushed Mimi to the edge of her sanity by then, but she insisted that she loved having us around.

Lindsey had been helping around the kitchen at the restaurant, along with Alex and Gracie, peeling mountains of onions, potatoes and shrimp in the final weeks leading up to her departure, which was a good thing as the work gave her spending money for school.

On their time off, the three of them went to the beach on Sullivan’s Island and saw every movie released during July and August. They were the most tan I had ever seen them, in spite of the fact that I was always warning them to use sunscreen. When the same full tube I had bought them in July appeared on the floor of my car in August, it was obvious they were not using it. But they were happy and earning money and I thought it was probably the best summer of their lives.

Speaking of annoyances, my next job of the day was to call good old Fred and make sure that he would pick up Lindsey at Newark Airport on Friday night of the following week. If I wanted Fred to do anything, he wanted plenty of notice. I decided to do it early in the day to get it over with. I dialed his cell and he answered.

“Fred Breland.”

I loved that. Not
hello
or anything remotely friendly. Just
Fred Breland.

“Hey, Fred, it’s me.”

“Oh. Hello, Linda.”

“The reason I’m calling you is about Lindsey? Remember she’s arriving a week from Friday?”

“Airline? Flight number?”

I gave him the information and hung up. Talking to Fred was like inhaling a big bottle of ammonia. Every time I had to speak to him, I always wondered how I had ever managed to get excited about sleeping with him. Only the good Lord knew what Patti saw in him.

Fred had not made a single remark to inquire if Lindsey was excited or nervous. He had not said,
Is there anything else I can do?
Hell, no. For Fred, that would have been tantamount to giving blood.

On the other side of the spectrum, Brad decided we should do something nice for Lindsey before she went off to school, and naturally a big dinner was his choice. It had to be early, because we all had to work the dinner hour, but that didn’t bother anyone.

It was Friday the twenty-second. Brad and Louise set up a table for us by the windows. Helium-filled foil balloons were attached to the backs of the chairs. They had messages on them.
Bon Voyage! Congratulations! Good Luck!
I guess he couldn’t find ones that said
Ciao!

Anyway, it looked very festive, considering how rustic the restaurant was. Can we just pause for a moment to say that the term
rustic
was probably generous? I had never said anything to Brad about it because I would not have wanted to hurt his feelings. I mean, he thought it was fabulous! Can I tell you something? No one but
no one
would ever have accused his decorator of setting his budget on fire.

In New Jersey, this place would have been under the watchdog eye of the state health department. But in South Carolina, a ramshackle old dump was where you would find the very freshest of fresh seafood. Weird but true. Martha Stewart would have taken one look at this place and hyperventilated herself into oblivion.

The dining room walls were constructed of salvaged woods probably found in construction Dumpsters and the same could be said of the floors, except for the stretches of mismatched linoleum hammered in place and secured by duct tape along the edges. Old tin signs advertising everything from eggs to gasoline covered the walls, interspersed with football jerseys hung on dowels from all the colleges in South Carolina. Across the ceiling and around the perimeter of the room were ropes and ropes of every variety of retired buoy you can name—small ones from crab traps, big fat ones from lobster traps—all of them with chipped paint scars, remnants of old fishing dreams.

Even the doors to the kitchen were appropriately humble—heavy red plastic sewn to metal rods that swung open, dancing with the bustle of passing waiters or swaying in a strong breeze. Everything was alive and breathing, right down to the growing collage of business cards stuck to the bulletin board by the front door and the pictures of customers from the opening party that were affixed to the bar under layers and layers of clear polyurethane.