The Last Original Wife

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Can you manage all that?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes. I’m fine, thanks.”

  So chivalry wasn’t completely dead. I smiled and went ahead of him, thinking that was a nice thing for him to do. More men should offer help.

  As I took my first step onto the Jetway, there was a powerful change in the air. The humidity mixed with the perfume of salt and the foul traces of fuel was profound. Immediately, I could feel dampness on the back of my neck and each one of my hairs began to rise and expand. The first order of business would be to find a salon and a stylist who could tame my hair back into submission.

  I passed the security lines on my left and turned the corner to see Harlan there with Miss Jo. At first I was smiling and then I became overcome with emotion. I dropped my bag and threw my free arm around his neck, planted a big smooch on his cheek, and then I promptly burst into tears.

  “My little runaway! A run, run, run, run, runaway!” Harlan sang to me, and I began to laugh.

  “Oh, Harlan!”

  “What? I don’t sound like Del Shannon? Come on, little sister. Dry your eyes.” He handed me a tissue. “Let’s get your bags. Miss Jo has been stuffing olives with blue cheese all morning!”

  I looked down to his charming dog, and don’t you know she was wearing a cotton sundress with olives and martini glasses printed all over it. I laughed again and told Miss Jo she was beautiful.

  “She thinks you are too,” Harlan said. “I’m so happy you’re here.”

  We walked arm in arm to the carousel, and as I pointed out my bags, Harlan whipped them into the air as though they were empty and lined them up on the floor.

  “Been spending a lot of time at the gym?”

  “Honeychile, it’s beach season, you know,” he said, pulling another bag off the carousel. “I bought a new Speedo. It’s a Pucci print.”

  “Oh, right! I can just see you wearing a Speedo!”

  “Oh, fine. Maybe not. What the heck is in your bags? Rocks?”

  “Housecoats.”

  “Jeepers. Housecoats? Who are you? Ethel Mertz? We can’t have that! Truly, I’m working out for my cholesterol. I’m down fifty points! And without eating oatmeal.”

  “God spare us oatmeal. Ethel Mertz?”

  “Yes.”

  “The housecoats are a metaphor for my misery.”

  “Got it.”

  Harlan piled my bags in the trunk of his fully restored 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air. It was blue and white with white leather interior and one gorgeous trip down memory lane.

  “You’re still driving this land yacht?” I asked.

  “Excuse me! This is one of the great American classics!”

  “With an AM radio and manual locks?”

  “I prefer the past,” Harlan said, smiling.

  “Know what? Maybe I do too!”

  We drove to downtown Charleston listening to the hum of the engine on I-26 and the sounds of the city on the peninsula where we were born and where we grew up. I wondered how I would tell the story to my brother. It was pretty obvious from the amount of luggage I had that I was staying for longer than a weekend. He didn’t seem to mind. In fact, I knew he loved company. I thought about Harlan and what his life was like in Charleston. He had so many friends and things he was involved in—everything that had to do with the arts in any way, shape, or form had a place in his princely heart. And he was a marvelous cook, entertaining all the time. He was a great storyteller too. People adored him and loved to come to his house. Harlan was gregarious and so filled with historic facts that we used to laugh and say we were going to put him on a quiz show. Surely he would have made millions of dollars, not that he needed money. Leonard had left him tons, in addition to the house they shared.

  We turned off I-26 and began to make our way downtown. Traffic thickened and we slowed to a crawl. By the time we reached the corner of Meeting and Market Streets, throngs of tourists were everywhere, taking pictures and peering through windows of local businesses. It was high season for tourism. Spoleto Festival and its many amazing events brought hundreds of thousands of culture lovers to the Holy City every year as it had for decades. In fact, tourism was one of the more important engines that powered Charleston’s economy.

  Professional guides dressed as Civil War soldiers driving horse-drawn carriages regaled tourists with stories of the bygone glories of the Confederate South and what it was like to be a true Charlestonian. Harlan and I always laughed as we listened to them because they could embellish a story like no other tour guides the Holy City had to offer. To my way of thinking, the tourists were getting a great bargain, and I suspected that mostly they knew when they were being offered a fish story with a side order of truth. When you looked at their faces, everyone was always smiling, a sure sign of customer satisfaction.

  There would be plenty of time for Harlan and me to talk. Plenty of time. As much as Wes’s secrets frightened me, I had to tell someone the truth. Harlan was the person I trusted most.

  We pulled off the street, rolled through the beautiful wrought-iron gates at 36 Chalmers Street, and came to a stop. In their curls and swirls I noticed for the very first time that the left gate had a J worked into the design and the right gate had a P for, of course, Josephine Pinckney.

  “I never saw that before!” I said. “The J and the P, I mean.”

  “What? Oh! That’s because it was overgrown with roses and Lord knows what else! Philip Simmons made those gates.”

  “Really?”

  Philip Simmons had been Charleston’s premier wrought-iron worker.

  “Yeah, I thought you knew that.”

  “I probably did. Harlan, I swear, I can hardly remember my own name these days.”

  “My poor sweet sister! Why don’t you take yourself inside and I’ll get your bags.”

  “Thanks. Come on, cutie.” I turned to Miss Jo, who perked up and yipped as though she meant to say, We’re home! We went inside Harlan’s beautifully restored ancient town house. I stepped into the small foyer. There stood a small demilune over which hung a portrait of Josephine Pinckney in an elaborate gold gilded plaster frame. On the table sat a small arrangement of fresh flowers, a picture of Leonard in a silver frame, and an Imari bowl where I suspected Harlan dropped his keys. To my right was a small living room, and to my left was the dining room. Beyond the dining room was the kitchen, and farther back was a comfortable den with French doors that led to the garden.

  Ahead of me was a gracious flight of steps, each one inlaid with geometrical border insets of blond walnut and deep red mahogany. Each landing had gorgeous inlays of fruit and flowers that must have taken years to construct by hand. I had always thought that Harlan’s house had the prettiest interior stairs in town. There were stairs that seemed to hang in midair and others worthy of a Scarlett O’Hara descent but none prettier than Harlan’s.

  Charleston was chock-full of architectural wonders, to be sure, and every unique detail of her homes was carefully preserved and pointed out when the opportunity arose, but only discreetly and among dear friends, of course. The only thing more important to Charleston than her glorious history was the refined manners of her citizens. Charleston was not a city of braggarts.

  Harlan was right behind me with my bags.

  “Let’s give you the whole third floor. How does that suit you?” He was already up the stairs with two bags, and I followed him with my duffel.

  “Fine! That will be great.”

  I climbed the first flight of stairs and stopped, feeling winded. My heart was pounding. I was awfully out of shape and I knew it. These steps would be good for me. But my initial thought that the third floor would be wonderful to have to myself could have been wrong—it might be dangerous. What if I had a stroke on top of everything else?

  “Come on, chickee! Let’s shake it up! It’s cocktail time!”

  “Harlan, it’s only three thirty!” I called up the stairs.

  “Honey? It’s Sunday, and an
y time after church is cocktail time!”

  I giggled, thinking that all over Charleston, gentlemen in linen suits and ladies in Lilly were imbibing mimosas and Bloodys, feeling virtuous for having attended services and a little naughty at the same time.

  At last I reached the third floor.

  “Moses! Harlan? I sure do wish you had an elevator. Lord!”

  “There’s no way to attach one to the house without compromising its integrity.”

  “Still! Mercy!”

  I dumped my duffel bag on the floor and huffed and puffed my way over to the window. The room had a beautiful view of Washington Park across the street. Mothers were there with their children, who played among the live oaks, azaleas, and boxwoods. Tourists and natives occupied the benches, enjoying cool drinks and sandwiches. Everyone seemed to be smiling. It was a beautiful, peaceful sight.

  “Don’t go all feeble on me, Sister! We have company arriving at six.”

  “What? Who?”

  “Oh, just a few friends I wanted to see before I left. So why don’t you unpack and I’ll meet you in the kitchen? I’ve been making super cubes all week. Gotta refill my trays.” He lifted up my largest bag and put it on the bed.

  “Okay, Dr. Cool One, what’s a super cube?”

  “A two-inch-square ice cube that’s hard as a rock so it doesn’t dilute your drink.”

  “Well, that’s a piece of genius.”

  “I’ll say it is. Wish I’d thought of it. I’d have zillions!”

  “Like Pet Rocks and Chia Pets.”

  “Exactly. So how long can you stay anyway?”

  Harlan eyeballed my luggage and then looked at me with a semianxious expression that said, Just when are you going to tell me what’s going on here?

  “I’m not sure. Why don’t we discuss that over a cold glass of something?”

  “Perfect! I’ll see you in a few. Maybe you’ll stay here while I’m in Italy?”

  “Maybe I will!”

  And he was gone, the quick and sure-footed sounds of his shoes on the steps fading until they disappeared.

  I opened my first bag and then the closet door. Fortunately, there were plenty of empty hangers, and soon I had emptied the first bag and then the other. All that was left to do was move my toiletries into the bathroom. Harlan had put out beautiful thick white towels for me, and a plush matching robe hung on the hook behind the door. On the little table next to the sink was a cut glass tumbler and pretty containers of cotton swabs, cotton balls, and dental floss picks. The bathtub was wide and deep, and the thought of climbing in for a good long soak seemed like a dream. I picked up the bar of bath soap and inhaled. Verbena. My favorite. Every woman should have such a thoughtful brother, especially one you could run to in times of trouble.

  I ran my brush through my hair and then I wound it up into a twist. Although Harlan’s house was air-conditioned, heat rises and the third floor felt warm to me. I pulled the chain on the ceiling fan in my room and then in the sitting room next door. There was a sofa and a huge chintz club chair, a desk, and a flat-screen television. There was no reason to go downstairs except for food and human company.

  I changed into a pair of pants, a cotton shirt, and flat sandals, ones that hopefully wouldn’t slip on the steps, and went to find Harlan. He was, as promised, in the kitchen making a mountain of tomato sandwiches with Duke’s mayonnaise and ham biscuits with Mrs. Sassard’s Jerusalem Artichoke Relish.

  “Wow! Don’t you look cool and comfortable!” he said.

  “Sweet thing,” I said. “What can I do to help?”

  “There’s tea in the fridge or I can make coffee if you want but I think it’s too hot for coffee.”

  “I’ll pour tea. It’s gotta be a thousand degrees outside.” I took two glasses from the cabinet and filled them with ice and tea. “Lemon?”

  “In the hydrator drawer,” he said. “There are bunches of slices in a baggie. It just feels like a thousand. You’ll adjust to the humidity.”

  I squeezed two slices into our glasses, added two spoons of sugar, and stirred it all around.

  “I know. Come sit with me,” I said, sitting down at his kitchen table.

  “Okay,” he said and covered his platter of food with a clean damp linen towel. “Tell me what’s going on, Sister Sue. Tell your big bubba everything.” He sat down across from me and raised his glass. “Our momma would die all over again if she saw you so distressed.”

  “God rest her soul,” I said. “At least she had the good sense not to marry Willie. And she was right. I never should’ve married Wes.”

  “You had a bun in the oven. It was almost thirty years ago. There weren’t that many options and I told her so. Like a million times.”

  “God, life is so complicated, isn’t it?”

  “How do you mean, sugar puss?”

  “Well, look at Momma, now that you brought her up.” We rarely spoke of her because Harlan was a great fan of Momma and I wasn’t. “There we were, growing up on Logan Street, South of Broad by a hair.”

  “Well, after Daddy died, she wasn’t going to live anywhere else. It gave her emotional security. You probably don’t remember the big house on King Street.”

  “No, I was too little. But the point is that we couldn’t afford Logan Street. She should’ve moved us out to west of the Ashley or east of the Cooper.”

  “Are you kidding? She would’ve rather died than live in the burbs! You know that!”

  “Excuse me, so she worked as a cocktail waitress in a dive bar on Rivers Avenue outside the gate to the naval base so we could pay the rent and say we had bragging rights on a South of Broad address? Do you see a conflict here?”

  “Honey, what she saw was two hundred dollars a night in cash and your Ashley Hall tuition paid in full. It was honest work. You want more tea?”

  “No, thanks. If Ashley Hall had known what Momma was doing, they would’ve thrown me out the front door.”

  “She was the Merry Widow, hon.”

  “Carrying on with Willie who owned the bar for how long? And she never married Willie because?”

  “He had too many tattoos. I know, I know. It’s confusing. But he let her work there until the day she died. He was a good man. Most bars wouldn’t have women over forty selling drinks. There’s terrible age discrimination, even today.”

  “You’re telling me? That’s part of what brings me to your door, Harlan.”

  “Come on, Leslie, let’s bury Momma for the moment and let me have the big story.”

  “Oh, Harlan, I don’t even know where to begin.”

  But I did begin and over the next hour or so all my worries were laid on the table to be considered, and at last I got to the horrible money business.

  “Back up the bus, baby. What did you just say? Did you say twenty-two million dollars?”

  “Yes. Harlan, I’m just worried sick about it. You and I both know that Wes has never earned that kind of money. He’s got to be involved in something very bad. I don’t care what kind of bonuses he makes or how well the company is doing. It just doesn’t make any sense to me.”

  “Look, who knows?”

  “I shouldn’t have done it, but I took his bank statement from the house. I have it upstairs. Should I go get it?”

  Harlan was incredulous.

  “Not now. We don’t have time. God knows, but he’s a cheap son of a b. He probably invested his First Communion money in IBM. I’ll have to give this some thought. There’s never been a great love between us, but I don’t think he’s a crook, Les. I just don’t see it.” He sat back in his chair and exhaled long and slow. “Do you remember if there were any specific stocks listed?”

  “Wes owns a single share of Coca-Cola his great-grandfather bought for his father in something like 1920. Right when the company went into business. And he’s got some Apple and Microsoft. Maybe some others. I know he has some money in funds.”

  “Well, look, if he still has that Coke stock, it has to have split like a thousand time
s. I’ll look it up on the Internet in the morning. I promise, first thing tomorrow. Come on, let’s set up the bar and the dining room table. Marge will be here soon.”

  “Who’s Marge?”

  “Local talent. She helps me with parties.”

  “Oh, well, that’s good!” I was chewing on my lip, something I’d done since childhood when I was worried. “What do you think Wes will think when I’m not there with his supper?”

  “Don’t worry so much. You’ll get wrinkles. But you should tell Wes you’re here.”

  “I can’t deal with him. I just can’t. And I don’t want to.”

  “Okay. I understand that, but he’s going to be very angry, you know.”

  “How about I don’t care?”

  “Okay. Do you want me to handle him? I can call him if you like.”

  “Do whatever you want. I just don’t want to talk to him right now.”

  “All right, in the meanwhile, let’s get rid of that ugly old hospital supply sling—I have a big silk Hermès scarf that will look ever so much more Hepburn!”

  I giggled. “Which one? Audrey or Katharine?”

  “Does it matter?”

  It did not.

  “And I meant what I said about you staying here. It’s only a month.”

  “I’ll really think about it, Harlan. Thanks.”

  When I went upstairs to change, there was my sundress on the bed. I didn’t remember putting it there. Nonetheless, I slipped into it, Harlan changed my sling, a definite upgrade, and with a little makeup I looked so much better. I still hadn’t turned on my cell phone because I didn’t want to hear from Wes. And I wondered if Harlan called him.

  The doorbell began to ring, and soon, from the garden to the living room, Harlan’s friends were milling about, telling stories, gobbling up sandwiches, and drinking all kinds of cocktails, the most popular being Dark and Stormys—a mixture of rum and ginger beer—and Manhattans made with rye, vermouth, and cherries. Funny. In Atlanta we mostly drank wine. It looked like Charleston still liked her cocktails. Anyway, our mother always had, and this crowd sure did. There was something very comforting about traditions being honored. And I remembered then that Dark and Stormys were Leonard’s favorite drink.