The Guests on South Battery

by Karen White

  He didn’t seem to notice my presence until I was beside him, as he was apparently absorbed in the folder of papers from Yvonne that were spread over the desktop along with a yellow lined pad on which I could see the scrawl of his writing punctuated with bullet points.

  I saw that he must have been propping his head up with his hand, because he had an adorable cowlick in the middle of his forehead. He blinked for a moment as if trying to register who I was and where we were and what time of day it was. Having apparently figured it out, he smiled. “Did you have a good walk?”

  I nodded. “Yes—the weather’s perfect. Not too hot, and not too cold, and very little humidity. I’m going to try to enjoy it while I can.” I pointed to my hair, still smooth despite that morning’s exertions. “Look,” I said. “No Brillo pad frizz.”

  “Good for you,” he said. “Although I kind of like your bed-head look.” He raised a suggestive eyebrow, then lifted his arms the way JJ did when he wanted to be held. “Come sit,” he said.

  “But I’m all sweaty,” I protested.

  “Maybe I like you that way. Or are you suggesting we go upstairs and shower?” Without waiting for my response, he pulled me into his lap. “Mmm,” he said, burying his nose into my neck and winding his fingers through my hair. “Just what I needed right now.”

  I smiled and relaxed into his embrace.

  “Speaking of frizz,” he said, his voice mumbled as he pressed his lips against my neck, “Jayne’s trying a new shampoo that she swears by to keep the frizz down when the humidity rises. You might want to ask her about it if you’re really worried. Of course, I’d like you bald.”

  I stiffened, the thought of why Jack and Jayne would be having a conversation about her hair doing its best to block all my nerve endings. He pulled back, a look of concern on his face. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s nothing. But I did want to have a conversation about something that’s been bothering me.”

  He surprised me by grinning. “Is this the new and improved Mellie you keep warning me about?”

  I swatted him on the shoulder. “It’s hard enough without you pointing it out when I’m doing it.”

  He quickly schooled his features to look more serious. “Got it. So, what did you want to talk about?”

  I took a deep breath. “Would you be upset if Sarah had inherited, um, certain abilities from my side of the family?”

  He tilted his head, just like General Lee when I told him it wasn’t time for a treat. “As in an ability to communicate with the dead?”

  “Yes. I see her staring into corners and other places where there’s nothing going on but she seems to think there is. Even when I can’t see anything—which is happening a lot lately. And then yesterday, in the garden with my dad, she grabbed hold of a necklace that may be a clue to an old murder and it made her scream.”

  “Like what happens to your mother when she holds an object.”

  I squeezed my eyes closed and nodded.

  He didn’t say anything for a long moment and I began to worry. Eventually, I opened my eyes to find him smiling broadly.

  “Why are you smiling?” I asked.

  “Because you’re funny.”

  “You think this is funny?” I asked, starting to get annoyed.

  “Not at all. The subject of our daughter needs to be discussed with serious consideration. What’s funny is that you think that something so fundamentally you would be a negative thing for our daughter to inherit. I love you, Mellie. I love everything about you—some things more than others. If our Sarah has inherited your psychic abilities, then good for her. We should embrace it and celebrate it. And when the time comes, we can teach her how to manage and deal with it. Maybe it might even help you not to be so uptight about your own skills. I sometimes think that if your father had been more accepting, you wouldn’t be this way.”

  “Uptight? I’m not sure I understand—”

  He put his lips on mine and I quickly forgot exactly what I’d been upset about. When he finally pulled away, leaving me limp and boneless and my chin feeling raw from his unshaven bristles, he smiled. “Now, doesn’t that feel better?”

  I wasn’t sure if he was referring to the kiss or the conversation, but either way I was feeling better than when I’d entered the room. I wasn’t yet able to formulate words, so I simply nodded.

  “Good. I’m glad we’re on the same page, and I’m glad you came in here to discuss it with me. Is there anything else you want to get out in the open?”

  I had a brief image of Jayne in her running outfit, jogging behind my two children in the stroller, but quickly dismissed it. If I were trying to be a more mature person, I had to take it slowly. I’d save that discussion for another time.

  “No,” I said, then turned to look at the papers scattered on his desk. “Did you find anything new?”

  “I’m not sure yet—I’ve been going through my notes all morning trying to see if anything jumps out at me, but nothing so far. There is one thing,” he said, tapping his finger on the yellow notepad. “The little girl—Hasell. As the only child from that generation, she would have inherited the house when Button died instead of Jayne. Just for interest, I thought I’d look into Hasell’s short life. And that’s where it gets interesting.”

  “Why?” I asked, feeling an odd sense of foreboding. “Interesting” to Jack usually meant murder and mayhem. And dead people. That was why he was a writer. To me it only meant more dead people who needed me to solve their problems, since they were no longer here to do it themselves.

  “I found her death certificate in the archives. She was almost twelve when she died but weighed only seventy pounds.”

  “Poor thing,” I said. “She must have been really ill. Was it cancer?”

  He shook his head. “No. And that’s just it—the cause of death on the certificate was simply marked as ‘unknown.’”

  “Unknown? In this day and age they couldn’t figure out what she died from?”

  “It’s strange, isn’t it? I’m going to have to view her medical files.”

  I frowned. “But those aren’t generally open to the public, are they? I mean, unless you’re a member of the family.”

  “I might be able to work around them. I have ways.”

  I leaned against the desk. “Don’t you need to know who her doctor was?”

  He slid a photocopy of a newspaper obituary over to me. “That was easy. She died on January third, 1983, attended by Dr. Augustus Gray, family friend, and survived by her aunt Caroline—Button—her father, and her mother. No other relatives were listed.”

  “So, what next?” I asked.

  “I track down Dr. Gray, or his descendants, and find out if he kept records of his own outside the hospital records. With all the new regulations, there’s no way I could have access to them through the hospital. But back then, it’s completely feasible that her doctor might have kept his own.”

  “And if he left behind a lonely widow . . .”

  Jack grabbed me around my waist and placed me in his lap again. “Mellie, if there is, she’s probably rather elderly now. Besides, there will never be another woman for me. You’re it. Even if she were young and gorgeous, I wouldn’t notice.”

  I rested my head on his shoulder. “I know, and I’m sorry. It’s just that old habits . . .”

  “Are hard to break,” he finished. “Speaking of which, what on earth is this?” He reached over and pulled out his desk drawer, where ten night-lights of varying designs and colors were lined up inside, all facing the same way, like soldiers. On the other side of the drawer were pieces of paper that had once been strewn all over and had now been organized and stacked. And labeled.

  “It’s a bunch of night-lights I bought for Jayne in case she keeps breaking them. I’m out of room upstairs, but you had all this wasted space in here. . . .”

 
“It wasn’t wasted, Mellie. I was using it to store my notes, and now I can’t find anything.”

  “But, see, I made it easier. Did you not find that index card on top of the pile that showed you how it was all organized?”

  He was smiling, but the look somehow didn’t seem genuine. Like the one Sophie had given me when I offered to take her to my hairstylist for her birthday gift. “You are free to organize your own things, and even the children’s until they can fight back. But you promised to leave my things alone.”

  “I know, but when I opened the drawer and saw the mess—”

  His lips touched mine, and by the time his tongue had parted my lips, I’d already completely forgotten what we’d been talking about.

  My mother picked up what looked like a piece of thread connected to two round pieces of lace from one of the displays at Victoria’s Secret on King Street. She held it up as if considering it until I reached over and snatched it out of her hand. “Mother!” I protested.

  “Not for me, Mellie. For you. I thought if we were going to be buying you new bras, you should get new underwear, too. Men notice those things, you know.”

  “Mother,” I said in a low voice, looking around to see if anybody had heard, Jayne in particular. I’d been a little embarrassed to run into her at a lingerie store, even though she’d quickly explained that she was looking for new jogging bras. It was her day off, so it would make sense that she’d be running errands. I just wished she’d been running them elsewhere.

  “That’s not underwear,” I whispered loudly. “That’s a medieval torture instrument. And it’s not going anywhere near my body.”

  Jayne stuck her head around a rack of athletic bras and panties. “I have to agree with her there. I once heard a story about a woman having to have her thong underwear surgically removed. Apparently, she’d gone to an amusement park and there was some mishap on the log flume.”

  I made a mental note to have a discussion with Jayne later about what would and would not be appropriate topics of conversation while out on a date.

  Ginette, surprisingly, was grinning. “How awful,” she said. “But imagine the stories she could tell her grandchildren.”

  Both she and Jayne dissolved into adolescent giggles, leaving me to stare at them and wonder what I’d missed.

  Turning away from them, I said, “I’m going to go look for a bra for Nola. She refuses to come try on anything, so I have to be her personal shopper. I’ll just guess on her size, and hopefully it will look good with her dress for the Citadel dance.”

  “Thirty-two-B,” Jayne and my mother said together before looking at each other and laughing again.

  “Whatever,” I muttered, walking away from them.

  “Not yet,” my mother said, calling me back. “None of your new clothes are fitting you properly because you’re wearing your old bras. You need something with more lift—maybe even a push-up or two. Sweetheart, don’t take this the wrong way, but your breasts are sagging.”

  Jayne had the decency not to look smug, but instead looked genuinely concerned. “It’s normal after childbirth and breast-feeding. It comes with age, too.” She and Ginette nodded in unison, like a couple of dashboard bobble-heads.

  “Thank you, Jayne. I wasn’t aware that my body had changed since giving birth to twins at the advanced age of forty.”

  Her face flushed. “I’m sorry, Melanie. I didn’t mean—”

  My mother put a gloved hand on her arm. “She knows. She’s just sensitive about that subject. She’ll be thinking differently once we get her into a few ‘wow’ bras.”

  “Oooh, I want one of those,” came a voice from behind a hanging rack of silk nightgowns.

  I cringed, recognizing Rebecca’s voice a split second before she appeared in front of us. She wore Pucci in her little front carrier, and they both had matching pink bows in their hair. I saw my mother eye the dog and pouch.

  “She’s a certified emotional support dog,” I explained, watching with amusement as Ginette rolled her eyes.

  “Hello, everyone. What a nice surprise.” Rebecca’s hands were full of little hangers with various bras dangling from them. “I’m just having the devil of a time finding the right bra for my dress for the big launch party. There’s going to be a lot of press, so I have to look just right.” She eyed me carefully. “I’m hoping you’ve already started looking for a dress. I imagine it will be hard to find something now that you’re, well, between sizes.”

  For the first time in my life, I found myself sucking in my stomach. “Actually, I haven’t given it much thought. When is the party again? Jack called to RSVP and he might have neglected to put it on my calendar. I hope he thought to check to make sure I was free.”

  Rebecca’s lips formed a straight line. “On the twenty-seventh. You RSVP’d, so you have to come.”

  “Do you think I could wear these together?” Jayne appeared from behind my mother, holding up a bright floral athletic top with striped running pants.

  “Only if you’re planning on running away with the circus,” Rebecca said before noticing to whom she was speaking. “Oh, it’s Jayne, isn’t it? We met at the park—you were with Jack and the children having lunch, I believe. Although I’ve run into you since then, haven’t I?” She pretended to think for a moment, a pink-painted nail tapping against her chin. “Oh, right—running around Colonial Lake. You were with Jack again and the twins were in that adorable jogging stroller. You looked like the perfect Charleston family. Actually, I’ve been meaning to ask you what type of jog bra you were wearing—you’re pretty chesty, but I noticed it was holding you high and firm.”

  Jayne turned beet red as she opened her mouth to say something, but her lips kept on moving as if unable to find the correct words and failing.

  “We’re so happy to have Jayne as a member of our household,” my mother said, her tone reminiscent of the opera diva she’d once been. “I hope you were there for some exercise, too.” She let her gaze slowly roam up and down Rebecca. With a frosty smile, she said, “It’s been lovely seeing you, Rebecca. Please give my best to your mother. Tell her that it’s been too long and we must have lunch together soon.”

  “I’ll do that. Actually, I might want to come, too. I’ve been following my friend and former colleague Suzy Dorf’s column on the history of some of these wonderful houses we have here in Charleston—kind of obsessed, really, which makes sense, since the story of Melanie’s house will be making my husband famous—so of course I’m fascinated with Jayne’s story of how she acquired the Pinckney house. My mother swears that she thought you and Sumter Pinckney were a serious item, but Melanie says I was mistaken. Just imagine—that it could have been yours if that were true. It’s just such a fun coincidence that Melanie’s nanny now owns that same house!”

  She smiled and I was happy to see a smudge of pink lipstick on her front teeth. None of us mentioned it.

  “Anyway, Mama said she could be mistaken—that she was probably just thinking about when you moved up to New York to start singing and then Sumter moved there a couple of years later. She said my daddy—who knew Sumter from their days at Porter-Gaud—ran into you together when he was up there on business.”

  Only the flare of my mother’s nostrils showed any indication of how annoyed she was. “Of course I saw Sumter when I was in New York. He was my best friend’s older brother and he was kind enough to take me to dinner a few times so I wouldn’t feel lonely. We might even have seen a play or two until my career took over my life. They were a lovely family. Now, if you will excuse me . . .” She turned her back on Rebecca and walked to the back of the store, where bins of underwear were sorted by color, none of which was white.

  “Yes,” I said. “We have a lot of shopping to do before the twins wake from their nap. . . .”

  Jayne, having finally found her composure, looked at Rebecca. “You have lipstick on your teeth. But y
ou might want to leave it there so people will have something else to look at besides that silly contraption on your chest. And whether you know it or not, you’re giving a bad name to people who really need a support animal. Think about that the next time you strap your little marshmallow dog into a baby carrier.”

  Realizing there really wasn’t anything else to say, I gave Rebecca a small smile and wave, then followed Jayne to the back of the store to join my mother. When I was sure we were out of Rebecca’s sight, I gave Jayne a high five, and not just because she’d put Rebecca in her place, but also because I was gratified to know that she could, in fact, speak in coherent and well-thought-out sentences.

  I was in a better mood as we continued the search for padded bras that also lifted and smoothed, but there was something Rebecca had said that kept pecking at my brain like a moth around a lightbulb. Something about coincidence, and how Jack was a firm believer that there was no such thing.

  CHAPTER 16

  Ilaced up my sneakers and slid on my sunglasses just in case anybody recognized me during my first attempt at running. Sophie had volunteered to come with me, but I’d declined, saying I was a big girl and could do it myself. The truth was that I was going to do something I’d seen on the Internet—interval training, a mixture between running and walking. Or what I liked to call survival. I’d skimmed over most of the article with its boring mentions of how many minutes should be spent doing each, deciding I would just stop when I got tired and walk until I felt like running again.

  As a last thought, I grabbed General Lee’s leash, rationalizing that if I gave out from pure exhaustion, I could blame him and stagger home. I thought about bringing Porgy and Bess instead because they would have more energy, but quickly dismissed that idea because walking them was an exercise in gymnastics and frustration, since they appeared to be allergic to walking in a straight line and also seemed hell-bent on either crippling or killing me by constantly crossing their leashes and running in opposite directions.