Sullivans Island-Lowcountry 1 (12 page)

devil, I’d call her and we’d have a good hen session.

“There’s no book of instructions on how to raise a teenager,

and darned little to recommend the job anyway,” Maggie told

me this morning. “You think my boys don’t give me a run for

my money? Remember Bucky and his friends watching that X-

rated movie in my den last year?
The Moans of Marilyn!
I still

don’t know where they got it!”

“Yeah, God. I love her so much, but sometimes I’d like to

just start screaming, you know what I’m talking about?”

“Susan, you probably
should
scream once in a while, and you

probably love her too much.”

The elder sage had spoken through the prophets, and I

ignored her as I had whenever possible for the last four and one-

half decades.

“Well, at least you have Grant to help you with the boys.”

“Oh, some big help he’s ever been.The only time in twenty

years he’s ever stepped in is when Bucky and Mickey had that

party when we were out of town. If the police hadn’t been

called, and if they hadn’t drunk all his Wild Turkey and wrecked

the Jeep, he wouldn’t have said a blessed word. Never marry a

cardiologist.They are incapable of focus on anything but blood

work, patients and an occasional football game.”

S u l l i v a n ’ s I s l a n d

69

“Men.Tom has time for his midlife crisis and I gave birth to

mine.”

“You’re right.There’s no justice.Wanna have dinner this Fri-

day? I’m having some people over for Beaufort Boil.”

“Sure.Talk to Beth, will you? Give her a little religion.”

“With pleasure.Tell her that her auntie on the Island wants to

have a little ‘come to Jesus’ meeting with her. Momma always said

God would get even with us and send us children like we were.”

“Revenge from the grave. She’s probably up there in the big

cocktail lounge in the sky drinking a Diet 7-Up and bourbon,

laughing her brains out.”

“No doubt. Cheer up, okay?”

“Oh, I’m fine, really. It’s just this teenage transition stuff. I

adore Beth. I’d marry Tom all over again just to have her.”

“If you tried to marry Tom Hayes all over again, I’d drag you

up the side of a mountain in Tibet and leave your sorry behind

there for the birds.”

But there was no trip planned for Tibet, just this nice walk

home, as I prepared to meet my daughter head-on. Maggie was

probably right about me loving Beth too much. It’s pretty clas-

sic stuff that the wronged woman goes overboard to provide the

perfect nurturing environment for her helpless child. I was deal-

ing with her separation from her father and her transition into

young womanhood with all the patience, understanding and

humor that I had.

On the bright side, and there was one, there were many

things that Beth and I did that brought us closer together.

Naturally, we shopped, we had lunch, we did homework and

we cleaned closets together. But beyond those mundane

amusements—and this was a particular pleasure for Charlesto-

nians alone—we exhumed our ancestors. Not literally, of

course, but we loved to indulge ourselves with a short walk

through St. Mary’s Cemetery, where we would offer a prayer of

thanks that our forefathers had the good sense to make

Charleston their home, and in turn, ours. I’d tell the stories to

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D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k

Beth as my father told them to me and his father before him.

Being part of this continuum was as rich a legacy as a treasure

chest filled with jewels.

Charleston had given us the gift of knowing who we were,

what we stood for and where we belonged in this complicated

world.That pride and confidence was our birthright. Even Tom

Hayes, with all his legal expertise, couldn’t make this community

property. Charleston was ours. Tom Hayes was from Greenville,

which in my estimation was just about as pitiful as being a

Yankee.

The warmth of the South Carolina afternoon sun was giv-

ing me my second wind. I turned the handle on my wrought-

iron gate and began the walk up my short brick path to my little

girl who was waiting for me. My Beth.

Four

Beth

}

1999

HE booming sound of the front door closing behind me

thundered down the hall to the kitchen. Beth’s young

T voice rebounded, punctuated by exuberant shrieks of

delight and excitement. I riffled through the pile of catalogs and

bills that waited on the hall table.

“Ohmagod! Ohmagod! Did you see the way he
looked
at

me? He’s so freaking fine!” Short pause.“I don’t know! Do you

think so?” Shriek. And then, in a guttural voice, “
Oh! My! God!

I’ll
die
if he does!”

I sighed with some relief that Beth was discussing a member

of the opposite sex.The nonsense I’d been dealing with lately, it

could have been anything. Wait! What? Opposite sex? She was

hardly old enough for Midol! Calm down, I said to myself.

Breathe. Visualize the beach. Breathe. It was okay then, I was

fine. I announced my arrival.

“I’m home! Hello?”

“Gotta go, the parental unit is back.”

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D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k

“Oh! You’re on the phone?”

Parental unit? Was that who I was? In any case, my rhetori-

cal question prompted her to hang up. As I stepped into our

kitchen there was evidence of major league terrorist activity.

The contents of her backpack were strewn across the counter

along with an opened carton of milk, an abandoned bag of

Doritos and an open container of salsa.The breakfast dishes she

promised to wash were growing moss in the sink. The dish-

washer hadn’t been emptied from last night. It was typical.

“Mom! I met this guy!”

“Good, honey, what about this mess?”

“Mom! You’re not listening! I met this totally, devastatingly

fabulous guy!”

This was a test. If I made too much of the disaster area, I was

a shrew. If I gave the politically correct amount of interest to the

possibility that she had met the love of her life, I was cool. If I

didn’t stop hyperventilating over the filthy sewer that used to be

my kitchen, she might never tell me anything again. That was

potentially more damaging than anything else I could think of

at the moment.

I dropped the mail on the kitchen counter in the only clean

spot there was.

“Tell me every word,” I said, kissing her on the head, closing

up the various containers.“How can you drink milk with salsa?

Ugh!” I smiled obliquely.“So, tell me, who’s the lucky devil?”

She made her famous sucking noise and crammed her

books into her backpack.

“Jonathan. Jonathan something.” Beth stopped and put her

hand across her chest.“Oh, God, Mom, he’s so fatally gorgeous!”

“Is he a freshman? Please don’t say God.” I narrowed my

brows into a unibrow and put an armload of food back in the

refrigerator, bringing out the half-defrosted chicken to prepare

for dinner.

“Sor
ry
.” She was insincere at best.“No, I don’t think so. He just

transferred from Porter Gaud. Me and Lucy were walking . . .”

S u l l i v a n ’ s I s l a n d

73

“Lucy
and I.
” A minuscule correction, I thought, as I placed

the boneless, skinless breasts in the Pyrex dish.

“. . . by the tennis courts and we saw him hitting serves?

Jesus, the ball must’ve been going like a hundred miles an hour!”

“Please don’t say Jesus. Did he talk to you or what?”

“Sor-
ry!
Gosh, Momma, it’s hard to talk to you if you keep

yelling at me!”

Her hands were on her hips and I motioned for her to con-

tinue as I cleaned up.

“I’m sorry, Beth, you’re right, but technically I’m not yelling.

So tell me, did this Jonathan faint from your dazzling beauty

when he saw you? Hand me the sponge, will you, please?”

She tossed it to me and I began scooping up the truckload

of crumbs on the sticky counters as she leaned against the sink,

eyes aglow and young heart palpitating in the sunrise of her

newfound love.

Look at her, I thought. One hundred and ten pounds, five

feet and six inches of pure, youthful, romantic fantasy. I had felt

that way about Simon at exactly her age.

“I wish, but he did stop and look at me and smile this smile

that, oh, my God, made my hands like totally start sweating and

my throat got like all tight. I mean, if he had said anything to me

I think I would’ve died.This is the real thing, isn’t it, Mom?”

“Like, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God!” Hell, I’m not

such a prude!

“Mom!”

I couldn’t help laughing. Bad timing. She took my delight

to mean that I was laughing at her, which I wasn’t.

“Sorry, sweetie. Look, it might be the real thing. Who

knows? Let’s put the dishes away, shall we?”

I opened the door to the dishwasher and Beth began build-

ing a temper tantrum that could be heard across town.

“We? You mean, me! Fine! I don’t care.We should be plan-

ning my trousseau, but I have to do the dishes first.”

“Look, Beth, I’m delighted you met a guy who makes you

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D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k

feel all gooey inside. When I was your age, I never even saw a

member of the opposite sex except from across a ballfield.”

“That’s because you were imprisoned in an all-girls school

run by a bunch of Nazi nuns.”

“That’s right. But even if I had gone to a school like yours,

when I was fourteen I was so ugly, I would’ve had to grovel and

pay big bucks for somebody to defile my virtue. I was too proud

to beg.” I paused to do a shag step.“In addition, I lived in a per-

petual state of negative cash flow, sort of like now, so I never

even thought about boys.”

“You always say you were ugly. You weren’t. I’ve seen the

pictures.”

“Right.The one of me in my plaid jumper and knee socks?”

“Yeah, the uniform was dorky and you looked like a refrig-

erator in it . . .”

“A refrigerator?”

“Well, sorry, but you did, all sort of square . . . but your face

was cute! It was!”

“
Was
is the pity.” I opened a can of Diet Pepsi and lit a cig-

arette. “But thanks, I think. So, tell me again, what does this

paragon of maleness look like?”

“Paragon? What kind of nerd-word is that? Don’t blow

smoke in my direction. It’s gross. Secondhand smoke, Mom!”

“Remind me to remind you of that when I find the ashtray

in your bathroom.”

“I thought we were having a conversation about Jonathan,

the whatever of maleness.”

“Ah! Yes. Paragon, defined in the dictionary as a model of

perfection.You know, somebody who’s got it all.”

“Gosh, you’re like the four-one-one of English!”

“Thank you.”

I took a slight bow.We smiled at each other and continued

the work of restoring order. She rambled on as she unloaded the

dishwasher and my mind floated away. I was a tad fanatical about

the kitchen. I knew that. It flashed through my head that the

S u l l i v a n ’ s I s l a n d

75

whole room needed a fresh coat of paint and a change of wall-

paper. The kitchen looked awful when it was dirty and pretty

darn bad when it was clean. Or maybe it was that the wallpaper

was one that had been here since Tom and I got married. We’d

hung it together. Now I’d like to hang him. Maybe I was har-

boring this secret desire to wipe every room clean of every trace

of him so that I could get on with my life. And what did it say

about my life when I had two master’s degrees and couldn’t

afford to change the wallpaper without taking a second job?

Pretty pathetic, that was what.

“Mom! Are you listening to me?”

“Sorry, honey, my brain just took a side trip to the wallpaper

store.Wouldn’t it be nice to do this room over in yellow and blue

with lots of white? You know, cabinets with glass doors and fresh

curtains?” She looked at me as though I’d just returned to con-

sciousness from massive electric shock treatment. “You’re right.

Now, you were saying about the boy wonder? He transferred

from Porter Gaud, plays tennis, has a great smile and looks like

a god?”

“Yeah, he’s about five-ten and has huge blue eyes, thick

blond hair and more teeth than Antonio Banderas. Not skinny,

just fit, you know?”

I began to choke on my Pepsi. She had just described her

father without realizing it. Christ on the couch of life, Freud

breathes and Oedipus did the CPR. She was going to get her

little heart broken—I knew it. I struggled to maintain my com-

posure, steadfast at the wheel, as we sailed into the treacherous,

uncharted waters of romance.

“He sounds adorable,” I answered calmly, still coughing a lit-

tle,“if you’ll drain the sink and give it some clean suds, I’ll wash

the dishes.”

“He is. He makes me feel so weird.” The last of the old water

sucked its way down the drain with the sound of disappearing

little girlhood swirling away right behind it. “I think I need a