Pawleys Island

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  “What’s wrong?” I said when I saw the look on his face.

  “Abigail? I think I just saw a goddamn ghost!”

  “Male?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wearing gray?”

  “Yes! How did you know?”

  “Did he look at you? Or the house?”

  “Both.”

  “Okay. It’s safe to go to Huey’s. Honey? You just saw the Gray Man and the house is going to be fine. Screw Gaston. Let’s pack.”

  “Nonsense…it was probably just some damn fool…maybe not.”

  “When we get to Huey’s, I’ll tell you all about it.”

  “Don’t you want to batten the hatches first?”

  “What’s to batten? The only thing here that I couldn’t live without is you!”

  But that wasn’t entirely true. I wanted my pictures of Ashley and John and my mother’s Bible. I had a box of things—my passport, car title, insurance papers, etc.—all put together in case of evacuation.

  We drove slowly, leaving the island. The drive across the causeway was frightening as the marsh water was already sloshing over the road. Businesses were closed, windows were boarded over and the Lowcountry was hunkered down for its fifth major storm of the season. There was a huge live oak fallen over Highway 17, and what little traffic there was had to drive around it. The gas station on our left had lost its canopy. It had collapsed on the pumps. Branches were down everywhere and the wind tested the endurance of everything around us, blowing from every direction at once. Lights were out, and I knew that if we lost power in one place, we were likely to lose it all over.

  “Gaston is not the French ambassador,” Julian said.

  “You can say that again,” I said. “Here’s our turn.”

  “Once again, I’m sure glad you’re with me, because I’d sure never find it in this weather.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m glad I’m with you too.”

  We drove cautiously down the road and the avenue of oaks. Fallen branches and deep puddles were everywhere. There wasn’t a dog or a bird in sight, and most of the houses were dark. Thankfully, there was light at the end of the road. Huey, only by the hand of Providence, still had electricity.

  Huey met us at the door. We were soaked to the skin, just from the trip from the car. He had spread beach towels in the foyer for us to step on.

  “Good gracious! Give me your shoes and whatever else you can shed with any decorum.”

  We took off our yellow slickers and sneakers. I was wearing black slacks and a black cotton sweater with a white golf shirt. I could have rung out my slacks over a sink and provided enough irrigation for all his houseplants. Julian and I stood there in our own little pools of water.

  “It’s raining,” Julian said, deadpan.

  “Yeah. We got wet.”

  “Heavens! I told you two not to play in the puddles! Now, there are terrycloth robes in the guest room closet. Go get them on before you catch a cold.”

  Miss Olivia was seated in her chair by the fireplace, telling Evan and Rebecca a story. She spotted us and said, “Mercy me! You both look like something from Davy Jones’s locker!”

  “Hey, Miss Olivia! I know it! How are y’all doing today with all this crazy weather?”

  “Fine! Fine! Hurry along, dear! I want you to help me tell these lovely children about the Hot and Hot Fish Club!”

  “What’s the Hot and Hot Fish Club?” Julian said, peeling off his wet khakis.

  “Ah! It was a venerable institution founded here a couple of hundred years ago, started by men, run by men and enjoyed by men. Exclusively.” I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. My wet hair hung in a hopeless mass of ringlets.

  “And the purpose was?”

  “The usual—hunt, fish, eat, drink, swap stories and have fun.”

  “Sounds civilized.”

  “I think it’s a good idea for men to have their own clubs, as long as they are strictly social, that is.” I pulled dry clothes from our duffle bags and shook them out. “Do you think lipstick would help?”

  “Um, sure. Or not.”

  That wasn’t exactly the reply I was hoping for. You look perfect! You don’t need it! It sure would be nice to get sick of platitudes, I thought. Julian was his own man, though. He didn’t have much use for insecurities and false vanity or women who went fishing for a compliment. And although I was guilty on all counts, usually I fought hard to keep my flaws hidden.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s join the others.”

  We were all in the living room, telling stories of hurricanes we remembered. When Julian told the story of his Gray Man sighting, he directed his attention to Miss Olivia and Rebecca, which naturally brought on lots of questions from the children. Miss Olivia told the children more about the Gray Man and Alice Flagg than even I had ever heard. Their mouths dropped.

  “Bull,” Evan said.

  “No way,” Sami said.

  “I don’t know,” Julian said. “I believe only what I see with my own eyes, and I would take an oath that I saw the Gray Man today. There wasn’t much to it, really. It was just a man walking the beach. But there he was.”

  The smells coming from the kitchen were mouthwatering. But outside the wind howled like a freight train, rattling the windows. You could hear branches crack and fall, and then it would be quiet for a few minutes until the wind picked up again.

  “Did you hear that, Mom?” Sami said to Rebecca.

  “It’s just the storm, baby.”

  And that’s when the lights went out.

  “Mercy!” Miss Olivia said. “I can’t even see my glass!”

  I was ready to take odds that it was empty.

  “Everyone! Don’t move!” Huey said. “Let me light candles.”

  “I’ll help you,” I said.

  Within minutes, we were in candlelight. If there was one thing Huey had, it was candles. On the floor of his hall closet was a case of fat columns and votives that could burn for hours.

  “I went a little overboard with after-Christmas sales last year,” he said. “But I don’t mind smelling cranberry in August, do you?”

  “Nope, or bayberry. Gosh, I wonder how Byron is doing?”

  “He’s got Daphne in there helping him so he’s okay. Besides, he can finish the stew on the cooktop. It’s propane.”

  “A blessing, to be sure.”

  “Smells like Christmas,” Miss Olivia said as we gathered around the table and Julian held her chair. “Thank you, Julian.”

  Huey put six large candles on a platter in the center of the table and little votives in front of each plate. The light was very low but sufficient to see the plates. Byron appeared with Daphne. Byron carried the large tureen of stew, and Daphne had another one of rice. They began to serve. It wasn’t lost on me that we were having an eighteenth-century moment—on a plantation, dining in candlelight, being served by African Americans. And although Daphne was only working to save money for graduate school, did Byron intend to be Huey’s manservant for the rest of his life? Probably not, but I decided to discuss it with Huey later on.

  “Shall we offer thanks?” Miss Olivia said.

  Now, this was not a particularly religious household, so saying grace was unusual. But since Mother Nature was threatening to take us all to the Pearly Gates at any moment, petitioning the Lord seemed like an excellent idea.

  “Let’s bow our heads. Dear Father, thank you for this wonderful meal and this truly excellent company. Please protect us from Hurricane Gaston, and should you have occasion to speak to Chalmers—that’s my husband, y’all—would you please tell him I love him?”

  The children giggled and elbowed each other. Miss Olivia continued.

  “And Lord? Please bless and keep Rebecca, Sami and Evan safe from harm and fill their lives with the joys of love. Amen. Shall we begin?” Miss Olivia picked up her fork and the rest of us followed.

  I looked over and saw one tiny tear slip from the corner of Sami’s eye. She sniffed and began to eat
, choking up and bursting into tears.

  “Sweetheart! What ever can be the matter?” Rebecca said.

  “Samantha! Dear girl!” Huey said.

  “I’m sorry!” she said in a wail.

  “Excuse us, y’all,” Rebecca said. “We’ll be right back.”

  She took Sami to the powder room, and without the noise of the exhaust fan we could hear every word they said. In a nutshell, it was this.

  “Mom! Did you hear what she said? She prayed for us! To fill our lives with joy and love? To keep us safe? Mom, when’s the last time someone ever did something so nice for us?”

  “I know, baby. It’s true. Come on now, our dinner will be cold.”

  They rejoined us at the table, and for the duration of the meal, Sami campaigned to move to Pawleys or Litchfield, or that even Georgetown would be better than downtown Charleston. It might have seemed incredible to some people that the small-town living of that area was preferable to the vast opportunities of Charleston, but to Sami it was. She was looking for a place to be a child again, to restore some peace of mind, one last blast of childhood before she had to face the rigors of college. She was starved for affection and approval, and here was a place where both seemed to flow like the river.

  When asked what he thought, Evan shrugged his shoulders and said it didn’t matter much what he thought, but he would like to see the Gray Man for himself and catch a fish in the Waccamaw.

  “I can take you fishing anytime you want to go,” Huey said, smiling.

  “You can? Really?”

  “Of course! I was quite the sportsman not too many years ago. And I used to fish with my father all the time! Maybe we can build a club house on one of the little islands and start our own Hot and Hot Fish Club!”

  I pictured Huey and Evan, fishing from opposite ends of a little boat, coming home at the end of a long afternoon of drinking Cokes in bottles, Evan’s ears frayed around the edges from hours of listening to Huey’s stories about the glories of his family’s history and with a string of fish to feed us all.

  I looked around the table. Julian had Rebecca’s attention, telling her stories about family court and the crazy things people do to each other. Miss Olivia was listening intently to Sami as she talked about teenage girls and how mean they are. Miss Olivia, of course, was nodding her head in agreement. Evan would interrupt Sami every other minute and Miss Olivia would pat his hand saying, Just a minute, Evan. Let’s hear what your sister has to say, and then I can listen to you!

  Sami wanted to move into this world of rivers and wildlife and generations living all together? Well, why not? This was the place I had come to put my life back together, and so had Rebecca. It had worked out beautifully for us. Sometimes people needed a change of venue to sharpen their focus.

  Dinner was over, and we were debating what to do next. I thought we should all go to bed because in the morning the storm would surely be gone. The wind continued to wail and shake the house. Somewhere outside a shutter was flapping furiously.

  “I’ll go see about it,” Huey said.

  “Need a hand?” Julian said.

  Evan stood up to go with them.

  Rebecca said, “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “This is man’s work, Mom.”

  Rebecca looked to me and then Huey.

  “Be careful,” she said.

  Just those words and Evan grew a foot taller.

  There wasn’t anything so unusually fantastic about the night, with the exception of the storm. But if I had to push a pin in the map of our lives to mark the point of a small leap forward, it would have been that night.

  The young hearts of Evan and Sami were on the mend. Rebecca entrusted Evan to Huey and Julian, letting Evan know she had faith in his ability to maneuver the weather. You wouldn’t have taken a millions dollars to miss the expression of masculine pride on Evan’s face when she let him go out in the night with the men. Be careful.

  Miss Olivia was enthralled with every speck of them, but Samantha most especially. Maybe she viewed them as surrogate grandchildren. Rebecca, the daughter she never had. I didn’t know. But in the years I had known Miss Olivia, I had never seen her so satisfied. I heard her say that in the spring she would take them to see the hundreds of egrets and great blue herons that made their nests on the property, that one day she would show Sami the diaries of her Revolutionary War ancestors and that if she was very good, she’d teach her how to make her string bean salad.

  I wondered what Rebecca would decide. Would she sell her house and move to Litchfield? Would she fall in love with Jeff Mahoney? Would she grow a respectable reputation as an artist? I couldn’t say with any certainty, but I had a strong feeling that we would be neighbors very soon.

  And, Julian and me? Well, we were in step with each other and a little bit in love. Okay, maybe more. I just wanted time to pass and see where events took us. If our love was meant to be forever, then it would be. There was no need to rush to anything.

  Later, when everyone was tucked in for the night, I listened to Julian’s gentle snoring and waited for sleep to come. The wind and rain seemed to be lessening.

  What a night! Another hurricane! Huey had done everything he could to see about our safety, our comfort and our well-being. I loved that he cared enough about us to want us all under his roof. We were important to him and he was very important to me. I loved him better than any brother I could have known. And his mother too. I wished Miss Olivia would live forever, but death was already creeping in her shadows.

  I was a lucky woman. Tragedy upon tragedy, and now I found myself but a few years later counting my blessings for all the love I felt and all the love I felt I had to give. But in the end, didn’t the most important and precious things we gave each other come from our hearts? So far, all hearts were open for business and doing fine. Yes, we were doing just fine.

  EPILOGUE

  IT was late October and the damp chill of fall was all around us. Rebecca had not sold her house in Charleston; she had merely closed it up.

  “The gossip at school is killing the kids, Abigail. They come home every day crying.”

  “Kids can be so cruel.”

  “Claudia said that I could use her condo, even buy it if I wanted to, because she never gets here as much as she would like to. She said, Just pay the utilities and it’s yours. What do you think?”

  “I think, pay the utilities and put the kids in school here. They can go to Waccamaw.”

  “Can you help me arrange it?”

  “Are you kidding? In a snap! I can’t wait to tell Huey! He’ll be thrilled!”

  At the first mention of Rebecca’s return, Huey immediately started shopping for a boat with the intention of teaching Evan to fish. Thank God Julian stepped in, was available and willing, because Huey finally admitted to me that the closest thing he had done related to fishing or water sports of any kind in over twenty years was to order Dover sole in a restaurant. So Julian brought his Boston Whaler up to Pawleys and parked it in my yard.

  “Very attractive,” I said.

  “What? I think it looks good!”

  I put my hand on my hip and looked at him.

  “Be glad I didn’t bring my big boat!”

  I put my hand on my other hip and said, “Julian?”

  “Okay! Okay! I’ll find a dock for it.”

  “Oh, shoot, I don’t care. Anyway, the important thing is to get young Evan out on the water and teach him to fish.”

  “Abigail? Right from the very beginning, I never said anything when Huey was going on and on about his fishing expertise. I could tell he didn’t know bait from tackle. I’ll get them both out in the boat this weekend and make fishermen out of them. Don’t you worry.”

  “You, sir, are my hero!” I gave him a noisy smooch on his cheek.

  Rebecca had transferred her children to the Waccamaw school system and moved back into Claudia’s. Thankfully, the children loved the new school and found the move to be easier than they ha
d thought it would be. The plan was to finish out the school year and then decide whether or not to make it a permanent move. It made good sense to me.

  Tisdale made frequent visits, and of course we took him for dinner at Huey’s and introduced him to Miss Olivia. I had believed Tisdale’s age to be somewhere in the zone of seventy. Apparently, he was older. But the fact that he was younger than Miss Olivia didn’t matter to her at all, as she batted her eyes at him like a young debutante. He was delighted by it. They remembered many of the same songs and movies or restaurants that had been out of business for years. All that reminiscing gave them hours and hours of happy conversations. And for as much as Tisdale enjoyed Miss Olivia’s company, they doted on Rebecca’s children together. Sami and Evan reveled in all the attention. Any onlooker would have assumed that they were the grandparents.

  It was a gorgeous Saturday afternoon. The marsh grass was turning from bright green to its winter colors of russet and gold and the sunsets were richer shades of crimson and amethyst. That time of year was powerful as my attention drifted from outdoor activities to planning for other things, like which books I would read over the winter. I thought about walking the beach with Julian, bundled up against the icy breezes and damp weather. We would build fires together and talk about life. And about us.

  For the first time in so many years, I could plan for holidays with someone I loved. Our little gang spoke of an elegant Thanksgiving dinner at Huey’s, and the next night Julian and I would host a casual oyster roast on the beach at my house. Claudia was coming for Thanksgiving too, and along with Rebecca, Sami and Evan they were all determined to feed us on Saturday night.

  “We’ll have a barbecue!” Rebecca had said last week, and everyone agreed.

  But that Saturday, in mid-October, the boys were out on the boat and Rebecca and Sami were at my house on Pawleys to have lunch and stroll the shore. After a finger-licking feast of salami sandwiches with baked potato chips and diet sodas—hold the pickles, please; the girls don’t want the salt—we were putting the dishes in the dishwasher and talking about the absurdities of life.

  During the last month, offers flowed in from all over the country for Rebecca to endorse various health-related products and programs. She declined them all, saying it was ridiculous to capitalize on her divorce by singing the praises of fried eel chips that were supposed to be rich in essential oils, make you lose weight, take ten years off your face and prevent every disease on the planet. Inner makeup, indeed.