On Folly Beach

by Karen White

Being as quiet as she could, Lulu crept over to the chifforobe and pulled out her secret box. With a quick glance over to her sleeping cousin, she reached inside and pulled out the sand-dollar earrings and tortoiseshell barrette before returning the box to its secret location.

  After shoving her treasures into her pockets, she tiptoed silently across the room to the dressing table where Cat’s “secret potions,” as she liked to call them, lay scattered across the lace doily Maggie had made by hand, which was now stained with makeup. She searched for the tube of lipstick she’d seen Cat use and found it in the back corner, the top lying to the side.

  Very carefully, Lulu picked up the tube and its lid before quietly tiptoeing back to the door. As she stuck her fingers in the crack of the door to pull it open, Cat spoke from behind her.

  “What are you doing?”

  Lulu turned around, her hands at her side and her fist closed tightly around the lipstick. Cat was leaning on her elbow, her eye mask pulled up to her forehead. “I was just getting some of my stuff.”

  Lulu began to back toward the door but stopped when Cat spoke again. “What’s in your hand?”

  “Nothing.”

  Cat sat up in bed and slid the mask the rest of the way off. “Show me nothing.”

  Knowing that if she didn’t open up her fist Cat would force her to, Lulu slowly opened her fingers, one by one, to reveal the tube of lipstick.

  “I hope you weren’t planning on playing dress-up with my lipstick. That’s my favorite shade and I can hardly find it anymore.”

  “I wasn’t going to waste it,” said Lulu, feeling insulted. She’d never played dress-up like the other girls, preferring instead to read or draw. “I was getting it for Maggie so she could wear it tonight on her date with Mr. Nowak.” She realized she’d made a mistake before the last word came out of her mouth.

  “You little thief,” Cat said, springing from the bed and marching toward her. “Give it back. Now.” With one hand on her hip, she held the other one toward Lulu, palm up.

  Lulu clenched her fist again. “But Maggie doesn’t have any lipstick to wear.”

  “Well, now, that’s her problem, isn’t it? Give it back.”

  Lulu realized that her hand was shaking as she lifted her arm to allow the tube to drop into Cat’s outstretched palm.

  “If you steal something from me again, I’ll throw you over my knees and take a switch to you—just see if I won’t. You’re not too old to be spanked, no, sirreee.”

  Lulu felt the heat in her cheeks not only at the prospect of somebody like Cat spanking her, but at knowing that she’d let Maggie down. Before she started to cry, she faced the door again and began to pull it, but paused when it was only halfway open. She was breathing heavy, as if she’d been swimming for miles, and she wasn’t really sure what she was going to say until she’d already said it and it was too late to pull it back.

  “You should let me have that back, Cat.” She swallowed, trying to be as brave as Maggie always told her she was. Somehow, thinking of her sister did make her braver. With a stronger voice, Lulu continued. “Or I’ll have to tell Maggie that I saw you at the pavilion kissing that soldier when you were still married to Jim. Or that you told Jim that Maggie didn’t like him anymore and wanted him to stop calling on her. I didn’t figure out that it was a fib until after you were already married and it was too late to tell Maggie, but I bet that if I told her now, she wouldn’t let you live here anymore.”

  It was real quiet for a minute, and all she could hear was her breathing. But she could smell Cat’s perfume, so she knew her cousin was still behind her, and she flinched, waiting. Then she heard Cat’s bare feet padding against the wood floors, followed by the bedsprings squeaking and the unmistakable sound of something small and hard hitting the ground and then rolling for a short distance.

  Slowly, Lulu turned and met Cat’s eyes. They reminded her of an alligator’s as it waited near the banks of a pond pretending to be a log. Cat smiled, but her teeth didn’t show. “You’re a good sister, Lulu. Loyal. That’s a good way to be. And you don’t miss a thing, do you?”

  Lulu darted her gaze to the floor, searching for the tube of lipstick until she found it just under the dressing table by one of the legs. Scrambling on her hands and knees, she stuck her hand under the dresser and pulled it out before running out the door. She’d reached the hallway before she remembered that Cat had asked her a question. She stopped, then slowly returned to the bedroom, where Cat still sat on the edge of the bed, which had once been Lulu’s.

  “Nope,” she said. “I don’t.” Then she put her hand on the doorknob and gently pulled the door shut.

  PETER SHOWED UP PROMPTLY AT seven o’clock. Maggie sent Lulu downstairs to open the door when he knocked since Cat hadn’t left her room. She wanted to go herself, but Lulu reminded her that a lady always kept a gentleman waiting so that the lady didn’t appear overeager. The words were repeated verbatim from one of the many lessons Cat had been attempting to drill into her for years, proving that at least one of the O’Shea sisters had actually been paying attention.

  Maggie did pause to consider why Lulu was being so accommodating about her going out. She’d not put up a single fuss, even when she’d learned that she’d be alone with Cat all evening. It was too early for Lulu to have become accepting of Peter, much less fond of him. But as soon as Cat had shown her disapproval of Maggie having an admirer, it had suddenly made Lulu Maggie’s advocate. While the sisters had never been close because of their ages, their relationship had definitely disintegrated since Cat had come to live with them, and while Maggie never knew the reason, she suspected it might have had something to do with Cat’s taking over Lulu’s room and, in many ways, their lives.

  After staring at her watch for the required five minutes, and only checking herself in the mirror two more times, she walked out into the hallway, pausing for a moment outside Cat’s door. She raised her hand to knock, then let it drop. She wanted Cat’s approval on her appearance, and to thank her for letting her borrow the red lipstick. But she knew, too, that Cat was in one of her moods and was best left alone. When she got all worked up like that, she said hurtful things that Maggie was sure she didn’t mean, but words nevertheless that Maggie didn’t want to hear right before leaving with Peter.

  As Maggie began her descent down the stairs, she looked back at Cat’s closed door. The last time she’d been like this had been right after Jim had died. Maggie had made the mistake of trying to swallow her own grief to comfort her, only to be told to go away. And in an ugly voice that Maggie had never heard Cat use before, Cat told Maggie that she could never understand what Cat was feeling because Maggie was used to being ignored by men but Cat wasn’t and that now that she was a widow, she’d never have the chance to meet anybody else. It had taken the bond of the promise Maggie had made to her mother to keep her from asking Cat to leave then.

  It had turned out not to be true, after all, but the words still stung. Not the words she’d said about Maggie, but what Cat had implied about Jim. So in the weeks that followed, Maggie had said extra prayers for Jim at church, grieving doubly for him since his widow didn’t seem to be able to.

  Maggie continued her descent, swinging her head to feel the sand-dollar earrings jostle beneath her ears, and pictured how pretty the tortoiseshell barrette made her hair look. She found Lulu and Peter in the small front room. Lulu sat on the edge of the love seat while Peter examined their mother’s collection of sand dollars. He held one between two long fingers as he turned to greet Maggie.

  “Margaret, you look beautiful.”

  She blushed, knowing he was just being kind, but still flattered because he sounded so much like he meant it. “Thank you, Peter.” She walked to stand next to him, smelling his cologne and noticing the fine tailoring of his light gray suit. His overcoat and hat had been placed over the arm of the love seat. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  His strange amber eyes tilted at the corners as he smiled. “The antici
pation made it that much more exciting. Plus, I had the added pleasure of Lulu’s company. She was explaining what these are.” He held up the delicate shell, his signet ring reflecting the light from the lamp.

  “Sand dollars,” Maggie said, gently taking it from his lifted hand.

  “Did Lulu tell you the story about them?”

  He shook his head, his eyes never leaving her face.

  Maggie continued. “It’s something our mother told us. The story goes that sand dollars were left here by Christ to spread the faith.”

  Peter raised his brows. “How so?”

  Stepping a little closer, she placed one side of the shell flat in her hand to show him the other. “These five holes show Christ’s wounds on the cross, and this in the middle is a blooming Easter lily surrounding the star of Bethlehem.”

  Maggie lifted her eyes and saw that Peter was staring at her instead of the shell. Quickly she averted her eyes and turned the sand dollar over. “On the other side is the Christmas poinsettia to remind us of Christ’s birth. They say if you break the center five white doves will be released to spread goodwill and peace.”

  “That’s lovely,” Peter said, and when Maggie raised her eyes again, he was still looking at her.

  She turned back toward the window, placing the shell in the basket with the others. Forcing her voice to sound steady, she said, “These were our mother’s. She collected them all on the beach here on Folly.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Even more reason for them to be precious to you.”

  She smiled at him, feeling again that he truly understood her. She liked him for that, regardless of whether he really thought she was beautiful.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  “Yes, let me get my coat and hat.” Maggie moved toward the hallway and the hall closet but Lulu raced past her, returning with Cat’s green cashmere coat and matching hat instead of Maggie’s own dull brown one. The green coat had simply appeared one day, and when questioned about it, Cat had claimed only that it had been a gift from an admirer. She hadn’t explained anything else, and Maggie had been reluctant to ask, not sure she wanted to hear the answer.

  She gave a slight shake of her head, trying to catch Lulu’s eyes but not wanting to make a scene in front of Peter. Instead Lulu held the green coat out to her. “The brown one’s missing a button. I’ll fix it for you tonight if you like.”

  Maggie stared hard at Lulu, trying to figure out why she was lying and why it was so important to her that she wear Cat’s coat. Peter took the coat from Lulu, then held it open for Maggie to slide her arms into. “Maybe I should go ask Cat for permission before borrowing it,” she said, looking pointedly at Lulu.

  Lulu smiled up at her, appearing so innocent that for a moment, Maggie thought that maybe her brown coat really did have a missing button. “I already did and she said it was okay.”

  Maggie narrowed her eyes but Lulu had run back into the hall and was pulling open the front door. Maggie waited as Peter put on his own coat and hat. Then he held out his arm for Maggie before leading her out the door and down the porch steps to his late-model Ford sedan.

  Despite the fact that summer visitors wouldn’t be coming for several more months, Andre’s had a nice crowd mostly due to the influx of servicemen in the area. Maggie greeted the people she knew, introducing Peter each time, before being seated at a booth by a window overlooking the marsh. Peter took time to repeat each name as he was introduced, as if committing it to memory, asking questions and taking a genuine interest in the answers. He was a salesman at heart, she knew, but she couldn’t help but be impressed by how likable he made himself to all of her friends and neighbors.

  From the corner of her eye, she watched Peter take in the wide wooden-plank floor, the colorful murals of shrimp boats and other scenes from the area, and the shrimp nets hanging from the ceiling. She felt a little twinge of nervousness as she saw it all through the eyes of a man whose parents were European and who’d traveled a bit and who was more sophisticated than most of the men she knew in Folly—a man perhaps more suited to a fine Charleston restaurant than to a beach dive with the best fried shrimp anywhere.

  She leaned forward, touching his arm. “If you don’t like it, we can go somewhere else. There’re lots of nice restaurants in town.”

  He placed his hand over hers. “No, this is perfect. I want to get to know the local flavor. And I’ve never had fried shrimp before. Besides, when I’m with a beautiful woman, nothing else really matters, does it? I could eat grass and I doubt I would notice.”

  She smiled at his easy laugh, reassured that she hadn’t made a blunder. Relaxing back into her seat, she studied the menu without really seeing anything as she searched for a wise and witty reply, almost wishing Cat were there to coax the right words from her. Instead she said, “I recommend the fried shrimp, of course, but you need to try the hush puppies and the coleslaw. I get that every time I come here. I should probably try something new, but then I’m afraid I’ll just be disappointed that I didn’t get my shrimp and hush puppies.” She felt herself blushing, embarrassed to be rambling about food so much.

  He closed his menu. “Then I will trust your expert guidance and order exactly what you’re getting, too. I’m going native.”

  He smiled, but still managed to look so worldly and sophisticated that his words made her laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked, feigning a hurt look.

  She was spared from answering by Robin Henderson, an old schoolmate of hers from Rivers High School, who arrived to take their order. She’d married while they were still in high school and had four kids one right after the other. Her husband, Dave, worked at the navy yard and Robin worked part-time at Andre’s waitressing, saving her tip money, which kept her in lipstick and stockings so that Dave didn’t have to know how much she was spending.

  Maggie watched as Robin blushed and played with her blond hair as she spoke to Peter, realizing that he had that effect on most of the women they’d spoken with. Even Cat. But for some reason, he’d picked Maggie out of the crowd on the pier that night. She still thought that if Cat had been sitting with her, Peter wouldn’t even have afforded her a second look. But here she was at a worn booth in Andre’s, sitting across from him as the other women in the room kept stealing glances, and wondering why he had chosen her.

  With a final lingering look at Peter, Robin took their menus and retreated to the kitchen, looking back over her shoulder twice. He didn’t appear to notice.

  When their food arrived, Maggie realized how hungry she was. The anticipation of her date had made her unable to eat much all day, and she had to force herself not to grab a handful of hush puppies and shove them in her mouth.

  Instead, she took her time explaining to Peter what everything was and watched with amusement at his confusion as she explained what the sauces on the table were. He picked up his knife and fork and cut into a deep-fried hush puppy, the aroma of the sweet corn bread making Maggie’s mouth water. He blew on it slightly and put it in his mouth, closing his eyes as he chewed.

  “So, what do you think?”

  He paused as if to give himself time to think. “It’s swell,” he replied as he turned his attention to the fried shrimp and prepared to cut off a bite.

  Maggie laughed, not sure if it was because the word “swell” seemed so incongruous coming from his mouth or because of the way he was preparing to eat his fried shrimp with a knife and fork.

  With utensils suspended over his plate, he looked at her with a bemused expression. “What’s so funny?”

  “Don’t they eat with their fingers in Iowa?”

  A dark look flashed over his face so fast that for a moment, Maggie thought that she’d imagined it. Then, after gently placing his knife and fork back on the table, he smiled at her. “Of course. Corn. We eat a lot of corn on the cob in Iowa, and always with our hands. I just thought the shrimp might be too hot to touch, that’s all.”

  Gingerly, he picked up one of the shrim
p and delicately dipped it into the red sauce as Maggie was doing, before biting into it and chewing heartily. “Delicious,” he said, dabbing at the corners of his mouth with a napkin.

  “Not swell?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Better than swell—that’s why it gets a delicious.”

  She laughed again, reassured that she hadn’t said the wrong thing even without Cat there to guide her. She pictured how she looked right now, with her lips a deep red and a tortoiseshell barrette in her hair, sitting across from Peter and laughing in the way other couples did at a private joke. The same way she and Jim had that one time they’d come here. Maggie eagerly pushed that thought away as she picked up another shrimp, focusing on Peter instead of old memories of a man who’d never really been hers at all.

  It was after nine o’clock by the time they left the restaurant. The moon sat with its pregnant glow over the marsh, coaxing the high tide through the winter-bleached spartina grass. A winged night hunter flittered over the water near their car as Maggie snuggled into the cashmere of Cat’s coat, watching her breath rise in the moonlight. She felt sated and content for the first time in a long while, and unwilling for the evening to end. Even Peter seemed to feel the same way as he drove much slower on the way home than he had earlier. She was about to suggest that he come inside the house for a cup of coffee when he turned to her inside the darkness of the car, the wash of the moon tinting his face a ghostly blue.

  “Come walk with me.”

  It wasn’t a question, and she didn’t bother with an answer as he pulled in front of one of the false-fronted buildings on Center Street and turned off the ignition. He opened the car door for her and placed her gloved hand in the crook of his arm and began to lead the way. Her ears tingled from the cold, and she wished Cat’s hat was more than just decorative. They headed in the direction of the pier, following the pull of the moon like turtle hatchlings, moving mindlessly toward the sound of the sea.

  Maggie was relieved when he turned to the right, away from the pier and from the sound of people, and headed toward Arctic Avenue instead. The street had once been the beachfront thoroughfare, running almost all the way down the west side of the island. But following the storm of 1939, only four houses remained on the west side of Arctic, and two of them, now abandoned, were stranded over water during high tide, their pilings nearly halfway covered with water.