Lowcountry Summer eBoxed Set

by Mary Alice Monroe

  Nate shook his head.

  “Then I’ll show you. Your mama tells me you like dolphins.”

  Nate glanced at the man, nodded abruptly, then turned to Dora. “Can I go inside now? I’m cold.”

  “I’ll take him in,” Harper said. “Hi, Devlin,” she added in passing.

  “See you, Dev,” said Carson with a short wave, following Harper. “You’d better hurry. The sky looks ready to rip.”

  Mamaw offered her hand. “I’ll be looking forward to your report,” she said, and without further word turned and hurried up the stairs.

  Dora waited until the others went indoors. Lightning flashed across the sky and by the time the front door was closed, a ripping crack of thunder rent the air. Dora stepped closer to Devlin and he wrapped his arms around her, tugging her against him. Looking up with a coy smile, she surprised him with a long, slow kiss.

  “What did I do to deserve that?” he asked lazily, not ready to stop.

  “You were kind to my son. And I missed you.”

  “I’m here,” Devlin said. Then, locking her gaze in his, he said, “Every day and every night. And I’m not going anywhere.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  That evening, as predicted by the forecasters, Tropical Storm Lucy whistled and rattled the windows. Rain pounded the roof. But inside Sea Breeze, the lamps were glowing cheerfully. The women decided to mock the storm by having an indoor picnic. They moved the living room furniture, laid out blankets on the floor, and pulled out food from the refrigerator.

  Mamaw sat back in her chair and listened to her granddaughters chatting like magpies as they stretched out on the blankets. When they got together, it was almost as if she were invisible. It was a revelation to hear their stories of their worst dates, fad diets they’d tried, fashions they adored, and favorite memories of their days as children at Sea Breeze. As the evening drew on, the stories became more serious. Occasionally she’d spy Harper jotting down notes on her ever-present computer.

  While they talked they feasted on cold chicken and shrimp, savory crackers and assorted cheeses, pickles and olives, ripe avocados, and as much ice cream as they could eat. Mamaw feared the electricity would go out and it would all melt.

  At nine o’clock the storm ratcheted up a notch. The wind started screaming like a banshee and rain hit the windows horizontally. Suddenly the lights flickered, then everything went black. Mamaw clutched Lucille’s hand beside her, heard the girls suck in a collective breath and Nate’s shriek.

  Carson reached for the flashlight she had at her side. With a flick, the long beam of light immediately restored calm to the room. “No need to worry,” she called out. “There are candles and matches on the table.”

  Soon the room was alive with dancing light on the walls and ceiling.

  “It’s like camping.” Dora turned to Nate. He was sitting rigid, knees close to his cheeks and eyes wide. She smiled encouragingly. “Isn’t it?”

  He didn’t reply but scooted closer to her.

  “The storm’s getting pretty strong,” Harper said. She looked at the windows with a worried frown. “Are you sure it’s not a hurricane?”

  “No, child, that ain’t no hurricane,” Lucille said with a light, cackling laugh. “If it were, you’d know it. This whole house would be rattling, not just the windows. And we wouldn’t be sitting here. We’d be off this island waitin’ it out somewhere north. After Hugo, I won’t stay on the island for no hurricane. Uh-uh,” she said with a shake of her head. “So don’t you worry none. This be just a good summer storm.”

  Suddenly the lights were back on.

  There was a gasp of surprised delight.

  “See?” Lucille said with a smug smile. “What’d I tell you? Just the summer wind.”

  Mamaw had an idea that she hoped might distract everyone from the worsening weather. She went to the stereo and searched her CD collection. Her fingers ran along the cases until she found Frank Sinatra. Pulling the CD out, she put it in the stereo and pushed play. There was a click and whirr, then the velvet voice of Frank Sinatra sang out.

  The summer wind came blowin’ in from across the sea.

  “Edward and I used to dance to this during storms,” Mamaw said, remembering with wistfulness to her tone.

  “I remember,” Carson said, rising to her feet. “At the big house on East Bay. Once, I hid on the stairs and watched you.” She held out her arms. “Mamaw, dance with me.”

  Mamaw took Carson’s outstretched hand. “I’d love to,” she said, then laughed lightly as Carson led her in the dance. They were both tall and glided gracefully across the floor.

  Dora stood and held out her hands to Nate. “Come on, Nate. You’re the man of the house. You have to dance with the ladies.”

  To everyone’s surprise, Nate stood up. They all cheered him on as he took his mother’s hands and began to dance a clumsy two-step.

  “I don’t think she’ll ever forget this dance,” Carson whispered to Mamaw.

  “Nor shall I.”

  “I love you, Mamaw.”

  “I know you do. I love you, too. My love is unconditional. You know that, don’t you?”

  Tears sprang to Carson’s eyes and she nodded, tightening her lips.

  Harper sprang to her feet. “Come on, Lucille. We can’t be left out!”

  Harper helped Lucille to her feet and as she took her hands, they began to dance, slow and easy.

  Mamaw felt aglow as she looked around the candlelit room to see everyone dancing. No one was running out the door, catching a plane, or sulking in her room. Here they all were, her summer girls, together as she’d always hoped they would be. She said a prayer of thanks for this midsummer storm that had brought them all together for this special night.

  They played the song again and switched partners, dancing once more to the heavy beat. Nate wouldn’t dance with anyone except Dora, so this time Carson danced with Harper. Mamaw took Lucille’s hand and led her in a gentle weaving back and forth, humming the tune.

  Suddenly Lucille gasped and bent over in pain.

  Everyone froze.

  Mamaw clutched Lucille’s arms and held on tight as she fired off orders. “Carson! Help me get her to the sofa. Dora, her pills are in my bathroom. Run and get them. Harper, fetch a glass of water.”

  The girls sprang to action. Within minutes, Lucille was resting on the sofa with Mamaw’s arm still around her shoulder. Carson, Dora, and Harper clustered around them, unsure and anxious. Nate sat quietly on the blanket.

  “This isn’t the flu.” Carson looked to Mamaw for confirmation.

  Mamaw shook her head. “It’s not for me to say.” She looked to Lucille.

  There was a silence in the room, save for the howling wind outside the windows. Lucille slowly brought her eyes up to look at Carson. Then she turned to look at Harper and Dora. The pain had subsided some, and though she still gripped her abdomen, her face appeared serene.

  “Now don’t look so worried,” Lucille said, her voice weak. “What’s happening is as natural as the wind blowing outside those windows. I’m sick, is all.”

  “What kind of sick?” Dora asked.

  Lucille sighed with resignation. “Cancer.”

  There was a shocked silence, then Carson went to her knees and laid her head on Lucille’s lap. “Oh, Lucille.”

  “What kind of cancer?” Harper wanted to know.

  The girls all jumped in after that, with an outpouring of follow-up questions, suggestions, and recommendations of the top medical centers Lucille could go to for treatment.

  “Stop all this jabbering,” Lucille said, putting her hands up. “I’ve gone through all this with your grandmother and I don’t have the energy to go through it again. I made up my mind, hear?” she said firmly, silencing them all. “I lived my life with dignity. I intend to die with dignity.”

  “I know how hard it is to accept,” Mamaw told the girls. “But Lucille’s made her decision. It’s up to us now to make sure she’s as comfortabl
e as possible.”

  “Now I hate to break up the party,” Lucille said, “but I’m tired and need to go to bed. Gimme your hand, girl,” she said to Carson. “Help an old woman up.”

  Mamaw and Carson each took an arm and helped Lucille slowly to her feet. She grunted softly and grimaced, the pain obvious. Dora and Harper grasped each other’s hand for support.

  “Take her to my room,” Mamaw said.

  “What? No, no. I want to lie in my own bed,” Lucille said.

  “Later, when the storm subsides. For now, just rest awhile in my bed.”

  Despite Lucille’s complaints, she settled in Mamaw’s big four-poster bed. Dora and Harper fluffed up pillows behind her.

  “Go on back to your party.” Lucille waved her hand dismissively. “This ain’t no death watch. I’m just tired. Go on with you.” She added, “My precious girls.”

  Carson, Harper, and Dora took turns kissing Lucille good night, reluctantly leaving the room. Mamaw ushered them out the door. “She’ll be all right. She needs her rest. I’m going to bed, too. We’ll see you in the morning. Mind you blow out the candles before you retire.”

  She closed the bedroom door with a sigh of relief. What a night it had been. She felt exhausted by the whole of it. She quickly changed into her nightgown and brushed her teeth, listening to the storm still pounding the rooftop like a drum. Turning off the light, she entered her bedroom, lit only by the eerie blue light of her night-light.

  “I can go to my own bed now,” Lucille said, flipping off the blanket.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” Mamaw said, hurrying to Lucille’s side and smoothing the blanket back over her chest. “It’s gale winds out there, as bad as we’ve had in a long spell. I don’t want you alone out there in that cottage. You just settle in, my friend, because you’re sleeping in this house till it’s over.”

  “But there’s no extra bed!”

  “That’s why you’re going to sleep here.”

  “Where will you sleep?”

  “Right next to you.”

  “I can’t . . .”

  “Don’t fuss at me. I’m too tired to argue. I doubt either of us will get much sleep anyway, with that wind howling like that and the rain beating against the roof.”

  Lucille looked to the window. “It’s raining like the Lord’s flood.”

  “I hope Harper’s poor little plants survive. She worked so hard . . .” Mamaw sighed as she climbed into the bed beside Lucille. She tried to move slowly so as not to jiggle the mattress. Lucille had told her the pain was worsening and it weighed heavily on Mamaw’s mind. Mamaw knew it was only a short while before she’d have to call hospice.

  Mamaw lay on her back and brought the blanket up to her chin. Glancing over, she saw Lucille beside her, propped up by pillows, lying absolutely still as though afraid to move.

  “This is a first,” Mamaw said with a giggle.

  Lucille chuckled softly. “One for the books.”

  Mamaw giggled. She certainly couldn’t imagine lying in the same bed with her maid fifty years ago. “We’ve lived a lot of years, my friend. Gone through many changes.”

  “Maybe not as many as just this summer.”

  Mamaw laughed a tired laugh.

  Lucille smacked her lips.

  “Want a glass of water?” Mamaw asked.

  “No. This medicine makes my mouth dry, is all.”

  “Some ice, then? You could chew it.”

  “I’m fine.”

  They lay in silence, listening to the storm.

  “I’m glad you told them. They needed to know. To prepare.”

  “I expect so.”

  “They love you very much.”

  “I know that.” Lucille turned her head toward her. “It’s a comfort.”

  “I’m going to miss you,” Mamaw said in a broken voice.

  “I know that, too,” Lucille said. “But I’ll be watching over you, same as always.”

  “It won’t be the same. Who will give me what-for after you’re gone? You’re the only one who keeps me in line.”

  Lucille laughed lightly in the dark. “Oh, I ’spect them girls will carry on.”

  Mamaw sighed. “I expect you’re right.”

  Mamaw and Lucille could hear the sounds of the three women talking in the living room.

  “I worry about them,” Mamaw said softly.

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Harper seems so alone. She carries such a burden of expectations from her family. Her mother . . . How will she ever find what she wants to do? Or find a husband who can measure up to the James standards?”

  “You worry about Harper?” Lucille huffed. “Why, she’s the one I’m least worried about.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “First off, she’s the youngest. Only twenty-eight. What cause have you to worry if she finds herself a fella or not? She’s got plenty of time.”

  “In my time, most young women were married by twenty-eight,” Mamaw said primly.

  “Well, that time is long, long gone. Second, she’s rich as Croesus. Or her mama is. That child don’t need to find no husband or no job to live. And live proud.” She jerked her chin, emphasizing that point. “I never got married on account I never wanted no man to tell me what to do. I like living on my own. Who’s to say Harper don’t feel the same way?” A grin eased across Lucille’s face. “If I had money like Harper. Lord . . .” She rolled her eyes and grinned.

  “What would you do?” Mamaw said, curious.

  “What wouldn’t I do?”

  The women laughed together in the manner of old friends, comfortable in the bond of their decades-long friendship.

  “You don’t need to worry about our Dora, neither,” Lucille added.

  “Don’t I? She still has so many decisions to make. The divorce isn’t final . . . if there’s even going to be a divorce.”

  “Oh, there’ll be a divorce.”

  “What do you know?” Mamaw asked.

  “Can’t say. Just that it ain’t Calhoun Tupper she’s dreaming of no more.”

  Mamaw half smiled, having come to the same conclusion.

  “It’s that other one I lose sleep over.” Lucille wagged her head.

  “Carson . . .”

  “What we gonna do with that girl?”

  “I don’t know,” Mamaw confessed. She was very afraid for Carson.

  “I thought we got her on the road to mend. Now this baby. What’s become of her young man? I ain’t seen him come by in a while.”

  “Blake? I heard she’s broken it off.”

  “Lord have mercy. She runnin’ from another one?”

  Mamaw sighed. “She needs us now more than ever.”

  “She needs you,” Lucille amended. “I’m not going to be here.”

  “Don’t say that! Of course you will.”

  Lucille didn’t reply.

  “Thank heavens she stopped drinking,” Mamaw mused. “To think if she’d been drinking when she conceived that baby. It’s a small miracle. Poor girl has her father’s curse and I’m proud of how hard she’s trying. But she can’t drink a drop while she’s carrying.”

  “Is she even gonna have the baby?” Lucille asked.

  “Of course she’ll have it.”

  “Best to just wait and see what happens.” She gave Mamaw a long look. “No meddlin’.”

  “I have a right to worry.”

  “Worry, yes. Meddle, no.”

  “Stop giving me the eye, you old banty hen.”

  Lucille just cackled a laugh in response.

  “We raise our girls to grow up to be strong and independent women,” Mamaw said in a more serious tone. “And they are. But Lord, I’m embarrassed to admit I still think of them as my little girls. I want to see them all settled. Married. Am I too old-fashioned? The girls think I am . . .”

  “You and me, we’re from another era. Things are different now. These girls want more, expect more, even demand more. Who’s to say being married is the answer? L
ook at Dora! She done everything right. Got married at a tender age to a respectable man in that fancy wedding you and Mr. Edward paid for. She moved into a big house, had a child. Marched to the tune y’all been singing since she was born. And now what?”

  Mamaw was silent.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Lucille said. “Our girl Dora’s pickin’ herself off the floor, straightenin’ her shoulders, and startin’ anew. She’s settin’ a good example for her younger sisters. I’m so proud of her my buttons are poppin’ off my chest.”

  Mamaw reached out and grasped Lucille’s hand. “Thank you, Lucille. I needed to hear that. See? That’s what I mean,” she said with a sniff. “You’re my best friend. What am I going to do without you?”

  “You gonna get older and wiser. That’s the way of things.” She paused. “We had fun tonight, didn’t we?”

  “We did,” Mamaw said with a whisper of a smile.

  “That summer wind was blowin’ but we danced. You needs to remember tonight, Marietta. When the hard times come, just dance.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Dora sat cross-legged beside Harper on the four-poster brass bed. The storm and the late hour had brought a chill and dampness, and they were wrapped in blankets. She let her gaze wander over the changes in her bedroom—the petal-pink-and-white wallpaper, the brass-and-mirrored vanity, the Aubusson rug. The physical changes of the room reflected Dora’s taste and were an outward sign of the changes that had taken place within herself this summer.

  And for her sisters, as well. Harper’s room was more serene and classic. Carson’s was lowcountry, more shabby chic. In giving them rooms of their own, Mamaw had offered each granddaughter a safe haven at Sea Breeze from the storms they each faced.

  Dora looked up to see Carson standing at the window, her arms crossed like a shield in front of her, looking out at the fronds of the palm trees shaking in the wind. The relentless roar of the surf echoed, and Dora wondered at the changes she’d see on the beach in the morning.