Porch Lights

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  I knew Charlie thought of this trip as a summer vacation because that was how I had framed it to him. But it was no vacation for me. I was exhausted. From life. From death. I wanted to collapse on the ground and weep, but I would do no such thing. I had made a vow to myself that once I arrived here there would be no more tears. Crying wouldn’t bring Jimmy McMullen back to us. Crying wouldn’t fix the problems of any of the women and children in Afghanistan. No, I could cry buckets of tears and they wouldn’t change a single thing.

  We stepped into the house, and I could smell my childhood—the good parts. My mother had been cooking.

  “Okra soup?” I asked.

  “Yep,” she said. “And rice and corn bread. I made brownies for dessert. Y’all hungry?”

  “I’m starving!” Charlie said.

  “Boys are always starving,” I said, happy that he had an appetite. “Go wash your hands, sweetie.” I gave him a love swat on his backside, and he hurried from the room. “Can I do anything to help, Mom?”

  “No, honey. Everything is ready. Come, let’s sit.”

  “Do you have anything he can drink besides tea? Caffeine? Not good.”

  “Diet Coke?”

  “I’ll just give him iced water.”

  “Humph. You grew up drinking iced tea. So did I.”

  “Yeah, well, all the pediatricians say it’s bad for kids.”

  “Whatever you say!”

  Thank you, I thought. I washed my hands in the kitchen sink and dried them with a paper towel. I took my old seat at the table, the one where I’d sat for years, daydreaming about adventure while my mother complained about the most trivial details of her life and my father listened with the patience of a saint.

  Daddy? How do you stand it? She’s never happy.

  Don’t criticize your mother, Jackie. Remember the Fourth Commandment? Besides, she cooks like an angel.

  Charlie returned, we said grace, and in minutes we were eating like starving animals. It was delicious. Call me a pain in the neck to mention this, but the corn bread had been baked in a pan that shaped the bread into ears of corn. For some reason it irritated me. Why in the world did she waste money on silly baking pans like that? Maybe I was wrung out from the long drive, but all I could think about was Afghani women trying to prepare a meal in an old dented pot on a piece of sheet metal over an open fire. It probably wasn’t fair to draw the comparison, but I couldn’t help it. Maybe my hard drive was overloaded.

  “Can I have more?” Charlie asked.

  “You can have as much as you’d like!” she said and got up to refill his bowl.

  “Sit, Mom. He can help himself, right, Son?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “So how was your trip?” she asked. “Y’all must be ready to fall over!”

  “Pretty much. It was long, but you know it’s a straight shot down 95, so it’s more of an endurance contest than anything else. And I’ve got a GPS, so I couldn’t get lost if I wanted to,” I said, hoping I sounded congenial and not like I felt.

  “What’s a GPS?” she asked.

  “Global positioning system,” Charlie said. “All you do is punch in the address where you want to go and it tells you how to get there. Would you pass the corn bread, please?”

  “Just like that?” Mom remarked, smiling at Charlie’s manners and passing the basket to him.

  “Yep.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, correcting him.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Just like that. I can show you if you want to see.”

  “Absolutely!”

  “Charlie’s my copilot,” I explained.

  “My word,” Mom said. “You’re growing up so fast!”

  “You can even switch it to a man’s voice if you want to,” Charlie said and stuffed his third ear of corn bread into his mouth.

  “You mean to tell me that this global thing talks to you?” She looked at me for verification.

  “Well, it wouldn’t be safe to use it if it didn’t. I mean, the earlier versions would just make a bing sound when it was time to turn right or left. But basically reading the screen is just as dangerous as texting while driving.”

  “Texting?” she asked.

  Charlie and I looked at each other and laughed. “Oh, Glam-ma! We’ve got to bring you into the twenty-first century!”

  It did me so much good to hear Charlie laugh again. Maybe coming here wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

  “I guess I don’t get off this island often enough,” she said, looking wistful.

  “I’m not sure all this technology is so wonderful.” I reached over and patted the back of her hand. “Lunch was wonderful, Mom. It was just what we needed.”

  “Well, good. I’m glad y’all enjoyed it. Now, who wants a brownie?”

  “I guess I could eat a brownie,” Charlie said with so much seriousness that we all laughed again.

  “And then you’ll help me unload the car?” I said.

  “Better make that two brownies,” he said. “I need to build up my strength.”

  Mom washed dishes while Charlie and I pushed and pulled our suitcases up the back steps and into the house.

  “Same rooms as last year!” she called out to us as we passed by her.

  “Okay!” we called back.

  I dropped my things right inside my door and went to Charlie’s room to help him get unpacked. Naturally, Mom had accessorized our rooms to a fare-thee-well, Charlie’s especially. It was like a visit from Santa on a smaller scale. She had promised not to spoil him. Didn’t she remember that?

  “Look at this comforter,” he said in a whisper. “Does she think I’m still, like, five or something?”

  “She means well, Son,” I said. “You know she went to a great deal of trouble.”

  “Yeah, I know. Look at this whole stack of books and all this other stuff. And this bathing suit? Wow. Is this how guys dress down here?”

  “I guess.”

  He opened the yo-yo and let it unroll. “What’s this thing supposed to do?”

  “I’ll show you later.”

  “I should’ve brought my skateboard. I forget how flat the island is.”

  I perked up at that. Maybe he was coming around a little if he wanted his skateboard.

  “Well, I could call Aunt Maureen and ask her to send it. But it would probably cost the same to put it in a box and ship it as it would to buy a new one. I don’t know. We’ll see.”

  “I could do the research on my laptop.”

  I took that as a good sign too, and a tiny smile crept across my face as I put a stack of T-shirts into a drawer.

  “Okay. Get the facts and then we’ll make a decision.” Jimmy always said any problem you could solve with money wasn’t really a problem. That was true, but only if you had endless resources.

  “Okay,” he answered.

  I turned to see him lying on the bed in the kennel of idiotic, grinning puppies, flipping through the pages of a comic book.

  “Wait,” I said, “let’s see if I’ve got this right.”

  “What?”

  “Please. Don’t say ‘What?,’ say ‘Yes, ma’am?’ ”

  “Yes, ma’am? What?”

  “You’re going to lie there reading a comic book about pirates while I do all the unpacking?”

  “Guess not, huh?”

  “You got it. Come on, young man. Gimme a hand here.”

  We finished up in short order, creating some rhyme and reason to where we put his clothes and rechargers and gadgets. I went to my room to unpack my things and called back to him over my shoulder, “Don’t forget to thank your grandmother for all the loot.”

  “No worries,” he called back.

  I pulled up the Venetian blinds and let the full force of the breeze rush in. My old room, like my mother’s room, faced the ocean. I stood there for a moment to take in the view. It was simply astounding to have the entire Atlantic Ocean right in front of my face not five hundred yards away. It was so vast. The only thing t
hat separated us from the water was a front lawn, choking under the proliferation of dollar weeds, and a string of sand dunes. All across the white mounds of sand, honey-colored tall grasses grew in clumps, sprouting here and there. They moved like hula skirts swaying in the air. Beyond that, seagulls squawked their crazy birdsong, swooping down across the rippling water that glistened in the sun like broken glass. And in the far distance, a container ship riding low in the water under the weight of its goods slowly made its way across the horizon toward Charleston harbor. Enormous clouds that looked like thick cotton candy rolled by. It was a magnificent scene, and it reinforced the reasons why my mother had always lived here. Anyone would be hard pressed to find a place more beautiful. Or peaceful. This could be very good for me and for my boy. Yes. Very good indeed.

  I lifted my heavy suitcase and was about to swing it around and throw it up on the bed when I saw the quilt. I staggered a little, not quite believing my eyes. It was on my bed. That old quilt was one of my mother’s greatest treasures, besides some dishes and a couple pieces of Waterford crystal. When I was a kid if I touched it without permission I got screamed at so loudly that I was sure the whole island heard. And now it was on my bed? What did that mean? And her antique lace pillowcases were on the bed too. Was she giving them to me? Or was she just trying to make me feel better? Then I saw the books and the water bottle and tote bag with the visor and all the other things she’d put in the room for me. I stopped and thought about her generosity. I wouldn’t be caught dead in a pink visor and I wasn’t particularly a fan of her choice of reading material, but she couldn’t have known that. She was just trying to protect my eyes from the glare of the blasting sun and give me something to occupy my time. It was nice of her, as were all the things she had bought for Charlie. But it was also a little overwhelming. I didn’t want to be in her debt. I didn’t want to be in anyone’s debt. And a lifetime of experience in dealing with her had taught me how she operated.

  If I seemed gloomy, she would say, “Well, what else on this blessed earth can I do to make you happy? What do you expect from me?” And then I would seem like the Ungrateful Child and probably say, “Well, what do you want from me?” Then she would tell me that I had to snap out of it for Charlie’s sake and I would say I was doing my best but I missed my husband. Then she would stare at me wondering why I had married a fireman in the first place, and I would be infuriated. You see, there’s a big part of my mother’s lofty opinion of her social position that I think she stole from Lady Astor. She had no reason to think she was some highfalutin socialite, but she did. And I had no apologies to make about living a middle-class life without pretension. We were polar opposites when it came to those things, and that’s all there was to that.

  I turned around to see Charlie standing in my doorway. “What’s up, baby?”

  “My stomach hurts,” he said.

  “Ate too much?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I hate okra.”

  “I used to, but now I can eat anything. You should see some of the stuff I had to eat in Tikrit. It looked like dog food. Or maybe it was dog.”

  Charlie gagged. “Gross. Maybe I’ll just go lie down for a little while.”

  “Good idea. Try and get a nap.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Okay.”

  I thought, Great, now my son is an emotional eater. He stuffed himself at lunch just to please my mother. She was an awfully good cook; I mean, she was a much better cook than I’d ever be.

  I put the quilt on the chair and began to unpack. I didn’t need to be a great cook. It seemed to me that people who cooked like mad just made work for themselves.

  I looked at the sorry clothes I had thrown into my suitcase. Mostly I had brought shorts and T-shirts, bathing suits, and a couple of things I could wear to church or out to dinner if we felt like going somewhere else to eat. I figured that if we didn’t have something we really needed we could buy it. It wasn’t like Sullivans Island was deep in the jungle or something. Downtown Charleston was only minutes away, and Mount Pleasant was loaded with stores.

  I could hear Charlie groaning from his room, so I stuck my head in his door. “You feeling a little green around the gills?” I asked. “Want me to see if Glam-ma has something to settle your stomach?”

  He sat straight up, and his face was filled with panic.

  “No! Don’t say anything!”

  “Why not?”

  He whispered to me, “Because I don’t want her to think her soup made me sick.”

  “Oh, honey. I don’t think it was the soup. I think it might have been the quantity.”

  “Whatever! Just don’t say anything, okay? I’m fine!”

  “Okay. I won’t say anything. Why don’t you relax for a bit, and then we can take a walk on the beach? How’s that? Say, half hour?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Sounds like a plan.”

  The half hour came and went, and when I went back to his room he was fast asleep. Poor thing. He was worried about my mother’s feelings. He would do without something to ease his distress rather than risk bruising her ego. Even at ten years old he already knew not to upset her nerves. It just wasn’t worth it. I’d pick up something for him at the drugstore when I went out. It wasn’t a bad idea to have our own first-aid kit anyway. Then if I needed a Band-Aid I’d know where to find it without having to explain every nick and splinter.

  I took off my jeans and pulled on a pair of shorts. I didn’t want to go to the beach without Charlie, but I wanted to feel the sun on my legs. I picked up a magazine from the stack in my room and wandered out to the front porch. Mom was sitting there deeply engrossed in one of the many romance novels she loved. I knew it had to be a hot one because it had a calico print cover over it, like something she might have picked up at a craft fair to disguise the erotic promise of the cover’s art.

  “Whatcha reading? Are things bulging and bursting?”

  I startled her.

  “What? What did you—? Bulging?” She took her reading glasses off and narrowed her eyes at me. “You listen to me, young lady. You know I only read these books for the history!”

  “Oh, I see.” I giggled, and so did she. “And where is this historic saga placed?”

  “Tenth-century Scotland! The ladies of the Castle MacDougall are in hiding because the lord of the manor has gone insane from a terrible fever. He’s running amok with a hammer, threatening to bludgeon anyone whose shadow crosses his. Pretty exciting stuff. Come sit with me.”

  “Does he have black flashing eyes?” I sat in the rocker next to hers and flipped the pages of my magazine. Who cared about all those stupid movie stars anyway? They were all twenty years old with fake boobs and fake long hair and too many real tattoos. You could swap one for another and never know the difference. “And a thick mane of hair to match?”

  “Of course! And his shirt has come free of his kilt and—”

  “What’s he wearing under that kilt anyway?”

  “You know I cover my eyes when I get to that part.”

  “Of course you do. I know that. I would too.”

  Mom laughed, and I thought at that moment she was the most benign creature in the world.

  “I’m so happy you’re here,” she said.

  “Me too.”

  “Where’s Charlie?”

  “Snoozing. He’s completely fried.”

  “I imagine so. That’s a long trip for a kid. And with everything else . . .”

  “Yeah, I’m thinking just let him find his schedule, let his body get the rest he needs for his brain and his bones. Have you heard from Dad?”

  She bristled. “Certainly not!”

  “No, I mean, he told Charlie he’d come down and see him, show him how to make ice cream.”

  “In what? That old churn under the house?”

  “Yep, that’s the one. You know where it is?”

  “Of course I do! Glory be! That nasty old thing is probably filled with bugs and snakes!”

  “You think I’m afraid of bugs
and snakes?”

  “No, dear.” She shot me an anti–GI Jane look of dubious support and continued. “But better to go over to Haddrell’s and buy a new one. You don’t have to churn anymore. Now you just flip a switch. Electric. On my momma’s soul, there’s a new gizmo every five minutes. But I have such sweet memories of turning that old crank with my momma . . . and with you when you were a little girl.”

  “I think I like the old-fashioned way better,” I said, “maybe because it’s a sweet memory for me too.”

  With those simple but heartfelt words, we found our first moment of solidarity. I suddenly realized that I wanted Charlie to have the memory of churning ice cream the old-fashioned way. Solidarity was sure to come and go over the coming weeks, but we were united in one purpose. Charlie.

  Don’t ask me what else we talked about, because I think we talked about everything in the world that afternoon, everything that wasn’t too heavy, that is. We took turns checking on Charlie, who was sleeping soundly, which pleased both of us to no end. We probably drank a gallon of tea while the sun moved from east to west and finally began to set. She told me about Deb and her Zumba classes and she told me about the hot doc next door, saying I should meet him in case I wanted to fill some time at the VA hospital or at the medical university downtown. She didn’t want me to get bored, and she was more than happy to see about Charlie.

  On an odd note, she became animated but very circumspect when she talked about this Steve Plofker fellow. Her voice went up an octave, which led me to consider that perhaps she had a crush on him. The thought of that sort of rocked my brain, but I tried very hard to maintain a poker face because it was one of the rare occasions when I felt like she was talking to me as a girlfriend. Besides, the truth would reveal itself in its own good time. I wondered if Daddy suspected any competition. Probably not. I wondered if he would care. Of course he would. His ego would get up on its hind legs and start bellowing like Tarzan. Funny. I’d never thought about my mother’s needs in the romance arena. Probably because I have never had a single thought about my mother being in the romance arena.