Up Island (9 page)

“Belle…” my father began.

“It’s a little late to start on the outside of me,” I said to my mother. “What have you got for the inside?”

“It’s never too late,” she said briskly. “This is not the time to be negative. And don’t knock the power of appearance.

I’ve dealt with imagery all my life. It’s the most powerful force on earth sometimes. If you put
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your mind to it you can have that silly man back home before—”

“Mother,” I said, “I’m really looking forward to having dinner with you. You’re right, I’ve been stuck in the house too long. But I’m not going to talk about any bright little campaigns to make me over and win back my wandering husband. If you can’t drop it, I’m not going.”

She gave me one of her patented oblique looks from under the brim of the hat, and then dropped her feathery lashes.

“You’re the boss, darling,” she said, and on that note the Bell family went out to dinner.

I walked behind her up the stairs and into the dining room at the Ritz. She wore a sleeveless black linen sheath of the sort Audrey Hepburn and Givenchy had made popular in the early sixties. She had probably bought it then; she could still wear the clothes she had had as a young woman. Her arms were bare, very white in the dusky light, and even at a distance you could see the ridges of sinew and little wattled laps of flesh that hung from underneath them. But there was not an ounce of fat on them, nor on her legs, which were knotted with muscle below the knee-length skirt, and flexed sleekly as she glided through the room on her high black heels. The black straw hat sat atop her small head like a flower, but beneath it her neck was corded, and ropy, too.

When had she gotten so thin? She was past leanness now, past the dancer’s taut slimness I was used to, thin to chicken bone and sinew, an old woman’s eggshell thinness. But she still held her head high and her spine erect, and walked like a

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woman who knew that every eye in the restaurant was fixed on her. And they were.

I felt the eyes slide off her and on to me, and thought how we must seem to the well-dressed, expense-accounted people at the tables around us: an exotic, somehow ossified Kabuki doll in an outrageous hat and her unwieldy offspring paddling along behind her like a gigantic duckling. Somehow I never doubted that everyone would know instantly that we were mother and daughter. Even strangers always knew that somehow. Something in my mother’s pave-the-way stride, and my follow-along one, announced it. I was not unaware of that; sometimes I tried to outstride her and lead the way.

My long legs should have bested hers every time. But her dancer’s muscles and uncontainable presence always won.

Mother led. The rest of us followed.

When we were seated, there was a solicitous business with menus and water glasses and the precise adjustment of chairs—something else that always ensued when my mother sat down to table, as she liked to say—and when she had rewarded the service with her brilliant smile and the waiters had gone away, she said, “Now. Before we have our drinks I just want to say one thing, and then we won’t talk about it anymore.”

I opened my mouth but she held up her fernlike claw of a hand and said, “No, let your mother have her say. I have a bit of a stake in this, too, you know.”

And I was silent, because, of course, she did. She was as much a part of the corpus of The Family as any of us. I sat and waited.

“I just want to say that of course you aren’t going to give that weak-witted husband of yours a divorce.

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We know that. We back you up a hundred percent on that, and I imagine Charlotte Redwine does, too. It’s unthinkable, having some South Georgia nobody in that old family; Charlotte isn’t going to permit it. The trouble is that she’s permitted Tee too much over the years; nobody ever said no to him. He doesn’t know the meaning of the words ‘responsibility’ and ‘hard choices.’ He’s always gotten just what he wanted, even before he knew he wanted it, because he’s charming and smart and a Redwine. But he’s not the one who controls the Redwine purse strings and he must know it. You just hang on. You’ve invested too many years in that boy, and you stand to lose too much if you let that little tramp have him without a fight. I meant what I said about the hair and the spa and all that, and that’s just the beginning. When we all put our minds to it, you’d be amazed at what we can—”

“Your two minutes are up,” I said, around a cold knot that felt perilously like the tiresome tears. “I hear you, but I’m not going to answer you now. I want a shot of single malt and then maybe another one, and then I want to order. And I’m going to have the most fattening thing on the menu, so you may as well save your breath.”

I smiled to take the sting out of it, and she looked at me with an avian sharpness, but said no more. My mother’s timing is perfect. It was my father who spoke next.

“Okay, here’s your old man’s two cents, and then the booze will flow and that will be the end of it. Molly, you don’t have to stay married to that sorry boy if you don’t want to. Maybe it would be better if you don’t. Your mother’s wrong when she says we all

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think you ought to hang on to him. I, for one, don’t much think you should, though if you really want to, of course I’m behind you one hundred percent. But to my mind it’s Tee Redwine who stands to lose, not you. And your dear mother, of course. She’s gotten right addicted to the Driving Club over the years.”

“Why, Tim Bell,” my mother said tremulously, allowing her great eyes to widen. He smiled at her and covered her frail hand with his.

“I can still offer the Elks,” he said, and she laughed reluctantly. I sat still and looked from one to the other. I had never known him to disagree with her before on matters pertaining to The Family.

“What does Teddy think of all this?” Mother said after a moment. “I’m sorry he didn’t want to come with us.”

“He’s badly hurt, and he’s furious, and he’s way, way too protective of me,” I said, only then really seeing that he had been, ever since he’d found out about his father’s affair.

“He bolted out of the house to go over to Eddie’s the instant you got there. He hasn’t seen any of his friends for days.

He’s been hanging around the house with me. Oh, he stays in his room most of the time, or in the library, but he always knows where I am. I’ve got to insist that he get out more.

He can’t turn into a caretaker for me. He’s got a life to live; he’s got college to get ready for. And you know he and Eddie and Kip Hall were planning to drive Kip’s car west on Route 66 and back again in August, before they start at Tech. Now he’s talking about not wanting to go. I can’t have that.”

“No,” Dad said thoughtfully. “He’s got to go on with his life. I’ll have a talk with him. After all, he
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really isn’t losing his father, though I guess it must seem to him like he is right now.”

“Not losing his father…” I said indignantly. “Of course he is…”

And then I fell silent. Of course he was not. Only I was losing. From the perfect skin of The Family, only I was being ejected. How could that be?

When I got home Teddy was in his room with the stereo booming. It was early, and I went up and knocked. It was a long time before he said, “Ma?”

“Yes.”

“Come on in.”

I went in. The room was in semidarkness; I could barely make out the lump under the sheet on Teddy’s bed that would be Lazarus, who burrowed there habitually, as if returning to a cave. The lump stirred and a scruffy tail appeared, wagging, but Teddy lay still, on his back, staring at the ceiling.

“What’s the matter? Did you-all decide not to go out after all?” I said.

“No, we went to the Hard Rock Cafe.”

“It’s awfully early…”

“I just didn’t feel like hanging around there.”

“What’s the matter, Teddy? I know something is. Is it Dad?”

“They were laughing about it,” he said in a tight, too young voice. “Oh, not at me, but about him and her. Chip Frederick and Tommy Milliken were there; both their dads are with Coke. They’ve both met her at some Christmas thing. Say she’s hot stuff, a real babe. Said she was coming out of her dress at that party, and all the men were panting down it.

Said they’d been

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taking bets on who finally got in her pants, but nobody ever thought it would be Dad. Eddie told Tommy he was going to knock the shit out of him if he opened his mouth one more time, and they left, but they were still laughing. I hate them.

Him, too. I hope they all die.”

His voice was matter-of-fact and too dry, as if the juice of life was gone from him. I would have preferred tears. Pain and anger tore through me. For that instant I wished Tee would die, too. Just die, before he could inflict any more pain on us.

“Your real friends aren’t going to laugh,” I said, walking over to put my hand on his head. But he flinched away from my touch, and I stood still.

“I know it,” he said. “It’s just that maybe I don’t have as many of those as I thought.”

“It will get better,” I said thickly. “It really will. It’s just that it’s all new. People always talk about things when they’re brand new. Give it all some time. I know how hard it must be—”

“I know you’re hurting too, Ma, and I’m sorry, but I don’t think you can possibly know how hard it is. You’re not…you’re not
kin
to him. I’ve got his…blood and his bones and his genes and stuff in me. How can he just walk away from that?”

“He isn’t walking away from you, not really,” I said, but he made a sharp little sound of dismissal.

“Bullshit. Listen, Ma, I just can’t talk about it anymore now. I just can’t. I need to get some sleep. You go on to bed and get some, too.”

“Okay,” I said softly, obscurely hurt, and turned to go.

“Ma?” he said after me.

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

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“Me too you, Speedo,” I said thickly, using for the first time in years the old nickname he had grown to hate. And I went to bed and, predictably, cried for a long time.

The next visit was from Carrie and Charlie Davies. They came by the following night about nine, in summer-dinner-at-the-club clothes: flowered sundress, blue blazer with khakis.

Neither was smiling. Charlie sat in the oversized wing chair in the living room, where he always sat, his big hands dangling between his knees, looking around the room he knew as well as his own as if he had never seen it. Carrie sat next to me on the sofa and cried. She had started to speak when they first came in, and then had shaken her head and burst into tears, and I had sat beside her hugging her ever since. She could not seem to stop.

“Molly, I want you to know that I didn’t know…that day,”

Charlie said heavily. “When you were at the office. I wouldn’t have said anything for the world; I really didn’t know…shit, I can’t believe Tee was…and I didn’t know it. I’d have blistered that old boy if I’d known…”

He fell silent. I noticed that he did not call me Moonbeam.

I doubted somehow that he ever would again.

“I know,” I said. “I know you didn’t. Apparently not many people did, except Coke people. Tee was…they were…very discreet. Don’t feel bad about it, Charlie. Nothing’s settled yet. I think we can still work it out…”

Carrie’s sobs escalated.

“I just can’t believe it,” she wailed. “I just can’t…it’s like it was happening to Charlie and me. It’s like a death, almost.

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can believe he would…Everybody’s just heartbroken, Molly.

We all just…cry when we meet. Oh, nothing is ever going to be the same again…”

I wondered if she had not heard what I’d said about working it out. And I remembered what Livvy Bowen had said, about couples feeling fearful and threatened when friends broke up, as if it were catching.

I hugged her harder and said into her hair, “You’ll see. By Sea Island time, it’ll all be behind us. Please stop crying, Carrie. You’re going to look like a Cabbage Patch doll.”

But the sobs strengthened, and I looked over at Charlie for help and read it in his miserable face.

“He’s taking her to Sea Island, isn’t he?” I whispered through stiff lips. Five of us couples who had been close at school had, for nearly twenty years, gone each summer to the Redwines’ beach house at Sea Island for a four-day weekend. Tee and I, as hosts, had, of course, never missed it. I had only now thought of it.

“Molly,” he mumbled, “there wasn’t anything we could say to him. He called day before yesterday and said it was still on, and he’d rented the Drapers’ house—I don’t think his mama will let him use hers anymore—and he expected us all just the same as usual. Said if we still felt anything for him we’d come; he’s having a bad time, too, you know. Nobody knows quite what to do; none of us want to go when she’s there; it’ll be just shitawful, but…well, this is Tee. He’s my oldest friend, Molly. I can’t just walk away from him. Of course, you know you’ll always be our first love…”

I looked from his face down to Carrie’s bent head.

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“Carrie?” I said. “Are you really going?”

“Molly…I love Tee, too!” she wailed, and buried her head back into my shoulder.

I was still numb when they left, seeming to bolt from the house in sheer relief. I had wanted the comfort of my old friends’ company, but now, I thought, I did not. What could I say to them? I could not again hold a sobbing friend so wrapped in her sorrow that mine could not penetrate. I could not again watch the new truths written in the averted faces of Tee’s boyhood friends. I knew that I would not call any of them. I also thought that Charlie and Carrie’s visit was sort of an official one, that they had served as emissaries for Tee’s and my old crowd, and that I would not be hearing from many of them, either. At least until after the September house party. The thought of her, moving dark and eel-like on our wide, taupe beach, dancing with Tee to our old records, helping to boil the crabs at the traditional last-night beach bonfire—or could she even cook?—going into a cool, dark bedroom with Tee and closing the door at the end of the evening, laughing, a little drunk…I could not bear those images, and so I shut them away and went to bed early. This time I did not cry.