The Hurricane Sisters (14 page)

“That would be great. Thanks.”

On another night I would’ve encouraged her to sit down and talk about herself but my doorbell was ringing again. Maybe I’d call her and take her out to lunch. Yes, I would do that.

When Annie and David Malcolm arrived, I took an immediate shine to Annie. Minutes later we were gathered in my little courtyard, and they were all sipping a glass of wine. Mary Beth was passing steamed shrimp with a cocktail sauce.

“Stay right here, young lady,” David Malcolm said to Mary Beth. He popped one into his mouth, then another and another. “God, I love these things.”

Yes! I thought. I was so relieved that I wasn’t dealing with a Mr. Fancy Pants. This would make the pitch go much easier.

I took a moment to check the temperature of our party’s waters. The chatter was going nicely. Fortunately, the mosquitoes weren’t biting or the no-see-ums, because my landscaper had sprayed for us earlier in the afternoon. Maybe it was the fact that I used a landscaper that made Maisie think that I wasn’t a real gardener. Well, I could think about that another time. There was an intermittent breeze, laced with some sweet, Lowcountry perfume and another day began to fade away. Please, Lord, make them sympathetic to the cause. Amen.

“So how long did y’all live in Seattle?” I asked Annie.

“Twenty years. We raised our children there and we had wonderful friends. Seattle is a very special place.”

“Rains a bit?”

She laughed and said, “It’s really not all that much rain. It’s more like gray skies and the drizzles for months on end and then we have gorgeous summers.”

“Yeah, that’s actually what I’ve heard. So are you enjoying Charleston? Did you find a house?”

“We did! We bought a nice place on Daniel Island. You’ll have to come see it! It’s a great location for David’s commute. And I am absolutely loving Charleston. Every chance I get, I go to a plantation or a house museum. There’s so much history here!”

“Well, it’s not ancient Rome or Athens but for American history? You could spend a lifetime learning all there is to know. Anyway, I’m so glad we could finally get together.”

“So are we,” Annie said, and somehow I knew she meant it.

I looked up to see Mary Beth showing Steve and Michelle Karol out to where we were. There were hellos all around. Mary Beth left to get them some refreshments and more Pellegrino for me. For the moment, Tom seemed to have them all enthralled. He was his most charming in any kind of social situation. I was a bundle of nerves.

When Mary Beth came back, she whispered to me, “Are you all right, Mizz Waters?”

“Of course! Why?”

“You just seem so serious. I just thought, you know, maybe something was wrong.”

I looked at her.

“Mary Beth? Let me tell you what’s going on around here. In 2010, there were almost fifty thousand victims of domestic abuse in South Carolina. Tell me what could be more serious?”

“Plague?” she said and made an odd face.

“This
is
a plague, sweetie,” I said. “It’s a bona fide plague. Is the roast out of the oven?”

“Yes, we should be able to sit in about ten minutes,” she said and hurried back into the house.

“Sorry, honey,” I muttered to myself as soon as she was out of earshot.

I hated myself when I fact-bombed people but I was so nervous, trying to hold my anxiety in check. I also realized then that Mary Beth was probably a long way away from coming to terms with the secret she was holding. But why in the world this subject wasn’t on the tip of every woman’s tongue, not just here but all over the country, I simply didn’t understand. Annie and Michelle caught my attention.

Michelle said, “Tom just told us you’re beginning a capital campaign for a new safe house. Is that true? How do you go about doing something like that?”

“Girls like us put the squeeze on our husbands and the money somehow materializes!” Annie said, laughing. “Am I right?”

“I think we’re going to be best friends,” I said. “I wish it was always that easy.”

“I was on the board of a battered women’s shelter in Seattle,” Annie said. “I’ve got the drill.”

“Oh my dear long-lost friend! Would you like to be on ours?” I said.

“Wait a minute!” Michelle said. “What about me?”

I hugged them both, all of us knowing that after the nominating committee heard about and interviewed them for two seconds, they would certainly be given the most serious consideration for board positions. We were always in need of good trustees, especially ones of means and experience.

The French doors to my dining room opened wide and Mary Beth sang out, “Dinner is ready anytime y’all are.”

Well, Mary Beth was as cute as a bug in her white shirt and black skirt, but she shouldn’t have been clanging the proverbial triangle like we were back on the Ponderosa climbing off a dusty mule train. This was Church Street in Charleston! I’d have a word with her later.

I turned to Tom and whispered, “Well, shall we knock the mud from our boots and go get us some grub?”

“Oh, don’t be so prissy, Emily Post,” Tom said and smiled again and held the door for our guests to go in ahead of us.

“You’re right. I’m just nervous.”

This was why he was the executive director and I wasn’t. He was unbothered by almost anything except our mission, which bothered both of us deeply and in the most profound way.

We were seated at the table, wine was poured, and a toast was offered by Tom.

“Thank you all for being here with us tonight and a special thank-you to Liz, our development director, for this lovely dinner in her beautiful home! Cheers!”

“Cheers!” we all said and began to eat our salads.

“It’s my pleasure!” I said and then, “Michelle asked me earlier about how exactly do we go about a capital campaign and I didn’t have the time to answer her. The truth is there are as many ways to launch a campaign as you might imagine.”

“But basically the mission is to raise money, I imagine. Right?” David Malcolm said.

“Yes,” I said, “but it’s just as important to raise awareness. And my gorgeous state of South Carolina bears the shame of being the state where more women are killed by men than any other state in America. It’s based on a per capita number but still it’s just horrible.”

“Good grief!” Michelle said. “Number
one
?”

“Yes. We are always in the top ten,” I said.

“It has to stop,” Tom said. “It’s hard to understand how Charleston can be the number one tourist destination in the country and the state still has this unspeakable problem.”

“I did a huge Google on y’all last week but I can’t remember everything I read. How many people died from domestic violence in South Carolina last year? Like thirty?” Steve asked. “And it’s not just women, is it?”

“Right at forty,” Tom said. “And you’re right. Men are victims as well, and children, but the national average shows that eighty-five percent are women. And then there are all the unreported cases.”

“As a rule women are peace-loving creatures, but when it comes to this kind of crime, you have to take mental illness into account as well,” I said.

“Dear Lord!” Annie said. “How terrible! Why do you think South Carolina . . . or just how did this happen? Number one is really bad.”

“Well,” Tom said, “there’s not just one answer. It’s racism, sexism, homophobia, unemployment . . . the fact that the world is still so patriarchal . . . it’s a combination of circumstance, drug and alcohol abuse, economics, environmental conditioning . . .”

“Environmental conditioning! Good grief. Tom! Could you be any more antiseptic?” I had to laugh even though it wasn’t funny at all. “Look, what Tom means by environmental conditioning is, and this is another terrible truth, a boy who is a witness to domestic violence is ten times more likely to become an abuser as an adult.”

“It’s true,” Annie said. “That statistic is true everywhere.”

“Um, maybe this is a dumb question, but why don’t people who are being abused just leave?” Michelle asked. “I mean, I’d just get in my car!”

“It’s not a dumb question at all,” Tom said. “In fact, it’s the first one most people ask. What we ought to be asking is, Why are all these men behaving this way? And the answer is complicated. Domestic abuse crosses every socioeconomic line. Some of the nicest people you’ve ever known terrorize their families.”

“Tom’s right. Of course, you have to know how abusers operate,” I said. “They’re superpossessive; they monitor their spouse’s every move. And somehow, over time they manage to put up a wall to isolate her from the rest of her family. Friends too.”

“Meanwhile,” Tom said, “the guy you think is Cary Grant on the golf course is, at home, yelling his head off at her, berating her until she believes that she’s worthless. The next thing you know, he pushes her, then there’s a slap with the next argument, and next is a punch with a closed fist. The woman can’t understand why this is happening. The harder she tries, the shorter his fuse becomes. But he cools off, apologizes profusely, begs her to stay, and swears it will never happen again.”

“Until it does,” I said. “It’s this slow process of drawing in the victim until she’s trapped and ashamed because he’s manipulated her into believing she’s the cause of his anger. So she becomes meek and withdrawn and can’t find the courage to leave.”

“It’s true,” Annie said. “We saw it all the time in Seattle. It’s classic. Then he says he will kill her if she leaves. Nice, right?”

“Yes. And sometimes women die,” I said and then added, “and sometimes their children are killed too. Look, imagine this. Your husband loses his job, can’t find another one, and the bills start to pile up. He’s drinking more than he ever did, and suddenly he has a trigger temper. What do you do? The dog barks or the baby cries or he hates having to be home by seven for dinner so he loses it. You get very quiet and let him rant and rave, hoping it will blow over. Does this sound plausible?”

“Sure, unfortunately . . . ,” Michelle said and the others nodded their heads.

“So tension builds and stress builds and then really awful things begin to happen. The king is no longer in charge of the castle. He is completely demoralized.”

“Well, this is terrible!” Michelle said. “We have to do something about this!”

“We’re trying to,” Tom said.

“Well, building just another safe house can’t begin to solve a problem like this,” Steve said.

The table got very quiet then. Steve Karol was absolutely right. It was going to take an awful lot more than one new safe house to change the entire culture of abuse. Had dinner gone wrong?

“Let me say something here,” Steve said. “First of all, I’m a peace-loving man. I love my new home on Spring Island for that very reason. It’s peaceful. I can ride my horses, catch a nice fat fish, watch birds, and think my thoughts.”

“Me too. But sometimes it’s a little too peaceful, which is why we’re thinking we need a little getaway spot in Charleston,” Michelle said.

“That’s right, sweetheart,” he said. “I mean, I have to give this a lot of thought but I’m thinking you need a much larger campaign. If you really want to change things dramatically, that is.”

“We want dramatic change more than anything in this entire world,” I said and realized I was becoming more emotional than I would have wanted them to see.

“Tell us what you’re thinking,” Tom said.

“Well, you need housing. That’s not a big problem, right, Malcolm?”

David Malcolm, who had been pretty quiet, perked up.

“The cost of a house? You’re right, Steve. Not a big deal. But I’m thinking that house has to change all the time. I mean, what happens when the angry spouse finds the hiding spouse?”

“Mayhem,” I said. “You’re right. Keeping the location of the safe house a secret is a very serious concern for everyone.”

“Okay, so what if a recently retired real estate developer joined forces and resources with a major manufacturer of airplanes that they’ve been building housing for like mad . . . what if they built and donated a house to you and as soon as it was say, a year old, you gave it back and we gave you another one in a completely different location.” Steve Karol was grinning from ear to ear.

“And what if the manufacturer donated counseling for these battered women and their families and also underwrote a PSA campaign to educate the public? You know, give the victims the courage they need to leave?” David Malcolm said. “And wouldn’t it be great if that airplane manufacturer provided you with some lobbying services that already cost them a fortune anyway?”

I was almost blown off my chair. Did these people fall from heaven?

“I don’t know what to say,” I said.

“Something tells me, Liz,” Tom said, smiling so wide I could see his bridge, “that Mr. Karol and Mr. Malcolm have already met.”

Steve Karol and David Malcolm reached across the table and shook hands with each other.

“Nice to see you again, Steve,” David said.

“Same here, David,” Steve said. “Every time I turn around there are the Malcolms! And just so you know, Tom and Liz, we’d never come to a dinner like this unless the answer was already yes.”

“Amen! Listen, All Air is all about the skies being the limit. We’ve just taken up residence in your beautiful state. We’d like to be good neighbors. A leadership presence in a campaign like yours will give all our employees a tremendous sense of pride,” David said and sat back in his chair. “We should start with a board challenge, don’t you think, Steve?”

“Great idea! What do you say to a ceiling?”

“How’s fifty thousand?”

Basically, this would be a challenge to our board to raise fifty thousand dollars and they, the Karols and All Air, would match it.

“Perfect. Michelle and I need a cause. This is probably the most important problem we’ve ever worked on. We’re going to make South Carolina number fifty and we won’t rest until it is. Of course, we have a lot of work ahead of us but that will be good for us.”

“We can’t live in this gorgeous place and stand by doing nothing,” Michelle said and smiled like an angel.

I couldn’t help it. I started to cry.

The kitchen door opened. “Are y’all ready for some gorgeous roast beef?” Mary Beth said. “Oh, and Mizz Waters? Karen Jones called and is stuck in traffic on the bridge. I guess there’s a wreck or something.”