I couldn’t change that Jack was Caroline and Sloane’s biological father. I couldn’t change that Jack was marrying Mom, that the four of them were going to be this whole family that I wasn’t a part of. And most of all, I couldn’t change that my own dad was gone. He couldn’t be there to walk me down the aisle.
But then it hit me that of the three of us, I was the only one who would have any dad to walk her down the aisle. Sloane and Caroline didn’t get that, but I had this man right next door who, despite not being my blood relative, loved and cared about me and wanted me to be happy. He wanted to give me away because my real dad couldn’t do that. It was a gift, I realized. One that a lot of people didn’t get, one that my own sisters didn’t get.
And I would take it.
Caroline shrugged at me, and I shrugged back. “We should probably get Jack a Father’s Day gift,” she said in mock seriousness.
I nodded, giving her a small smile. “Maybe a nice tie.”
She caught my eye in the mirror and then Sloane’s. And I looked at Mom, her blue eyes locking with my identical ones. “You can’t lie to me,” she used to say. “You have my eyes.” As I looked back at my sisters, something occurred to me for the first time. Their eyes were exactly the same. Brown eyes. Almond eyes. Jack’s eyes.
TWENTY-FIVE
ansley: very clean hair
It’s funny how we change as we get older, how the things that once mattered to us—like appearances and outside opinions—seem to float away. When I had gotten engaged to Carter, I had been so enamored with his life. As a girl from Georgia, Manhattan had always seemed so glamorous when I visited, and the fact that Carter had really made it there, and that we were going to make our life there, seemed like pure magic. I was as swept away by the idea of our big-city life as I had been by Carter’s proposal.
And a reception at the Plaza, in the Grand Ballroom, no less? It was something out of a storybook. I wanted everyone to be there, to see me in my gown. Weddings then weren’t like they are now. They were fun and festive, but they weren’t over the top. People didn’t take out second mortgages on their houses to pay for them. It wasn’t a contest to see who could have the most flowers and the biggest bands and the most famous photographers. It was a simple celebration of love. And our simple celebration of love was going to be at one of the world’s most iconic hotels. Which, looking back now, I had to admit wasn’t simple at all.
Carter and I wanted a black-and-white wedding, a nod to Truman Capote’s fabulous balls that were held in that very same venue. And as Carter and I swayed in time to the orchestra for our first dance, I looked around at the hundreds of people who had gathered, swathed in finery, champagne in hand, to celebrate us. And when I looked up, I could have sworn that I saw Eloise herself hiding out in one of the room’s massive circular lights, like she did in Eloise at the Plaza.
Bathed in lace and held by the man of my dreams, as handsome in his tux as any leading man I had ever seen, I wanted the moment to last forever, wished that the leading man in my life and I could always be so happy. Still, despite my glee, I had to realize that in a lot of ways, nothing about this celebration that I had planned every inch of was actually a reflection of me.
I would be a New York woman now, but in so many more ways, I was still that little girl from Georgia who spent her summers hunting for sand dollars with her toes in the surf.
Now, almost forty years later, I was planning a wedding that I hoped would reflect my daughter and the man of her dreams.
Despite my joy over her upcoming nuptials, my heart couldn’t help but feel heavy. Things with my daughters were better, but they were still very strained. And with only one week until Emerson’s wedding, I knew I had to fix them fast.
A light rap on my door and an urgent “Mom! Mom!” broke me out of my thoughts.
“Come in,” I called, delighted that my sweet Sloane was looking for me. Sloane had mostly been keeping to her house for the past few days.
“Mom,” Sloane said, her face pure white. “We have an emergency.”
My heart sank. I couldn’t handle another emergency. Not now.
I shot up in bed. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s the boys,” she said.
I flung the covers back and had my shoes on before she could even whisper, “They have lice.”
I shook my head. “Sloane, for heaven’s sake. You had me panicked.”
The color was rising up her cheeks now. “Mom, they have lice. And Vivi and Emerson babysat for them all day yesterday.”
Oh, Lord. This was a problem. I sat down on the edge of the bed. “OK. Let’s not panic.”
What did you even do for lice? None of my kids ever had lice. I was horrified, and if I was honest, I wanted Sloane out of my clean, un-liced house. But then again, if Vivi and Emerson had it, we were all goners.
I heard a shriek from down the hall, and I went running. I burst into Vivi’s room, where she was holding her hair out like she had stuck her finger in an electrical socket.
Sloane and I shared a glance.
“Gransley, help me!” she cried.
“It’s OK,” I said. “Calm down. It’s just lice.”
“Just lice?” she asked. And then, her voice louder, “Just lice? Are you kidding me with this? That is the nastiest thing ever!”
“Well, actually,” Sloane chimed in, “lice only infest very clean hair.”
Vivi glared at her. “From now on, I will only babysit while wearing a shower cap.”
Sloane looked sheepish. “I’m so sorry, Viv. If I had known about the outbreak at Mother’s Morning Out, I never would have asked you to babysit.”
“Emerson,” Vivi whispered now, as if she were saying the name of an apparition.
“Just pray,” Sloane said. “It’s our only hope now.”
Vivi nodded.
Emerson was, um, how should I put this nicely? Worked up about her impending wedding. This might put her over the edge.
“Look,” I said. “I’m going downstairs to call Sandra. She told me about this lice service that comes to your house and treats you and makes it safe to come back home.”
Sloane scrunched her nose. “You know, Mom, I read that you really don’t even need to treat the house, that all that is an expensive racket.”
I glared at her. “Sloane, your sister is getting married in one week. One week. Would you like to take the chance that the house is still infested, or would you like to do everything we can to ensure that her entire wedding party isn’t scratching their heads down the aisle?”
At that exact moment, another piercing scream came from down the hall. Vivi, Sloane, and I whispered simultaneously, “Emerson.”
Good luck, I mouthed to Sloane as I beelined downstairs for my phone. I hadn’t been the one to start this, but I knew I’d better fix it—and fast. As I picked up the phone and dialed Sandra, I had a feeling that at least for today, Jack’s role in her life and in our family would be the last thing on Emerson’s mind.
TWENTY-SIX
emerson: prom queen
The wedding was a week away. And the mothers were driving me crazy. Mom was freaking out about every detail. I knew she wanted it to be perfect, but honestly, I just wanted them to handle it and leave me out of it. I needed to look beautiful and relaxed on my wedding day, not stressed and exhausted.
The Duchess had thrown a fit about everything you could imagine—including not being listed on the wedding invitation. Mark had calmly explained, “Mom, you know that the bride’s parents are the ones listed on the wedding invitation because they are the ones who are throwing it. You get to be listed on the rehearsal dinner invitation.”
She’d rolled her eyes, put her sunglasses down to cover them, dramatically thrown her silk scarf around her neck, and said, “I guess being the mother of the groom means nothing to these people. It’s all about the bride, bride, bride.”
Mark had put his arm around me and said, “I’m sorry. My mother has trouble not being the cent
er of attention.”
“You don’t say. Perhaps we should put her picture in the paper instead of my bridal portrait with the wedding announcement.”
“Oh, sweetie, you are so selfless,” Mark said, before noticing my incredulous look. “Right,” he said. “You’re kidding. That would be insane.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “Completely and utterly insane.”
But the bright side of all the family drama was that it had brought Mark and me together as a united front more than I could have imagined. And I had no doubt left in my mind that we were meant to be together. We were as solid as they came. And Mark was the sweetest human on earth.
The night before, he had taken me to the ballroom at the Peachtree Bluff Inn, which was almost always empty except for a few special occasions a year, so we were the only people there. He had pulled out his phone to play a song, resting it on a nearby table before grabbing my hand. As he pulled me to him, Jason Mraz started crooning from the speaker, “So I won’t hesitate no more, no more.”
I had smiled and pulled him closer, kissing him. We had danced to this same song, in this same place, after being crowned prom king and queen.
“It doesn’t seem like it was even that long ago, does it?”
Mark shook his head as he led me around the carpeted room like he had eight years earlier. I remembered thinking then that we would be together forever, that this was the first of a lifetime of dances, that one day people would be crowded around watching us do this at our wedding. And now it was almost here. I hadn’t been wrong.
It couldn’t help but make me think of Grammy. Mom had signed up to chaperone the prom, and I had been horrified. Horrified. Ever the patient mother, she hadn’t wanted to shirk her responsibilities to the school but also didn’t want to add to the long list of potential items I could complain to my theoretical therapist about in my later life. So she had let Grammy chaperone instead. It made me sad to think that Grammy wouldn’t see my first dance at my wedding. But she had gotten to see me dance with Mark that night. So maybe that was almost as good.
We hadn’t talked about what happened with Grammy, not ever. But this seemed like the right time.
“Mark?”
“Hmmmm?”
“I want to thank you for everything with Grammy, for, um, you know, the pills.”
He leaned back and smiled and kissed me. “You know I would do anything for you, Emerson.”
I nodded. “If I didn’t know it before, then that definitely proved it. That was above and beyond, Mark.”
He shrugged. “Well, I would never let someone so special suffer if I could help it. And I could help it, so I did.”
I kissed him, and we kept dancing, silently.
I had gone to sleep that night feeling so content. So it startled me how unsettled I felt waking up. Seven days, I thought. A distinct nausea welled up in me. I tried to push it away, but I couldn’t help but wonder why I felt so anxious—and itchy. I reached up to scratch my head. When I did, I realized that it was itchy all over. And when I pulled my hand away, there was a bug on my finger.
It took me a moment to realize what was going on. I had lice. I HAD LICE. I didn’t know what to do. My heart was racing, my mouth went dry, and I jumped out of my bed like it was what had infected me. I was trying to decide whether I should get into the shower or not when I heard myself screaming at the top of my lungs, “There are bugs in my hair!”
Vivi opened the door and said, very calmly, “It’s OK, Aunt Emmy. It’s just lice. Gransley is calling someone now to come treat us all.”
I peered at her, trying to stay calm. “Did you give me lice?”
A terrified look passed over her face. “No! Of course not!” She glanced from one side to the other and whispered, hand over her mouth, “It was AJ and Taylor.”
Of course it was, those little rats. I mean, I loved them. But this was my wedding. My wedding was a week away, and I was being attacked by parasites.
I noticed some movement in my bed, which was when I remembered that Biscuit had slept with me. That was great. Just great. I was sure the dog had lice now, too.
Vivi’s phone beeped, and she looked at the screen. “The Lice Doctors are going to be here in an hour to get us all fixed up,” she said, “but we have to spend the night at the Peachtree Bluff Inn.”
“Who said that?” I asked.
“Gransley.”
“Why wouldn’t Gransley come up here and tell me herself?” I asked.
“Because Gransley is terrified of you,” Sloane said, walking through the doorway, looking sheepish.
“You’re the one who should be terrified, not her. How could you?” I shouted at Sloane.
She rolled her eyes, which made me even madder.
“How could I what?” she asked, as if she didn’t know.
“How could you give me lice the week before my wedding?”
Sloane put her hands on her hips. “Oh, yeah,” she said. “This is exactly what I wanted. I was dying for there to be a lice outbreak at Mother’s Morning Out so that the boys could get lice and I would have to deal with that on top of my husband’s physical therapy, becoming my family’s breadwinner, and planning your wedding. That was not annoying at all and totally in my life plan.”
Mom walked in. “Girls, let’s calm down. What’s the problem?”
I pointed at Sloane and then crossed my arms as she pointed at me.
“She thinks I gave her lice on purpose,” Sloane said.
I could feel myself getting choked up for no good reason. Even I couldn’t figure out why I was so emotional lately. “You are all trying to sabotage my wedding,” I said, turning and walking downstairs.
“Don’t touch anything!” Mom called. “The Lice Doctors will be here in less than an hour, and we have to go stay at the Peachtree Bluff Inn posttreatment.”
“So I hear,” I said.
I texted Mark: Murphy family lice infestation. Truth time: I have it, so you probably have it, too. Someone has to come fumigate your house. Meet me at PBI in thirty.
He texted back: How am I going to get to the Palm Beach airport in thirty minutes?
Then: Ohhhhh . . . The Peachtree Bluff Inn.
Then: Shit. Is that why my head is so itchy?
Me: You might want to warn Her Royal Highness.
Mark: Maybe it will go to her brain . . .
Me: Wishful thinking . . .
I went out to my classic childhood cooling-off spot—the dock—to try to put things in perspective. There was something about the breeze and the open water that made everything seem right again. When I heard footsteps behind me, I expected to see Mom or maybe Sloane, though I had the feeling she had had it with me.
But it was Caroline who sat down beside me. She tapped my temple. “What’s going on in there?”
I shrugged. “I have lice, and you just touched it.”
“Oh, my God,” she said, jumping up and moving far, far away from me. She leaned way over, so far that I was afraid she would fall in, to cleanse her hand with salt water.
I smiled sweetly at her. “Vivi has it, too. The whole family has to be treated.”
“Special,” she said. “What a great start to the day.”
“A great start to your day? I have bugs crawling around in my head because my sister is trying to sabotage my wedding.”
Caroline cocked her head to the side. “You don’t actually think Sloane tried to give you lice to sabotage your wedding? I mean, what is going on with you lately? You’re a disaster.”
I knew that was true. I knew I hadn’t been myself. There were so many emotions swirling around inside me about all that had happened recently. I had always had a hard time facing my emotions, sorting them out. It seemed to be even more difficult for me lately.
I sighed. “There’s just so much going on. I’m overwhelmed, and I don’t know why.”
Caroline laughed. “You’re overwhelmed because our life right now is overwhelming. It’s crazy. And you’re getting ma
rried. That’s a lot to take in.” She paused. “Em, don’t get mad . . .”
I looked at her expectantly.
“But are you sure you want to go through with this wedding? Are you sure that Mark’s the one?”
I looked out over the horizon. “It’s just hard because when I was in LA, all those guys I dated there made me feel like the me I was moving into, the future Emerson, who was living the life she had always wanted. But then Mark makes me feel like the girl I used to be. He makes me feel young and free and alive and happy.”
Caroline squinted at me. “And that’s how you want to feel?”
“Who wouldn’t want to feel like her younger self?”
A smile played on Caroline’s lips as she said, “And what about Kyle? How does Kyle make you feel?”
I rolled my eyes. My mouth said, “Kyle makes me feel like I enjoy superfood lattes.”
But my heart thought, The men in LA made me feel like my future. Mark makes me feel like my past. But Kyle? Kyle makes me feel like both.
TWENTY-SEVEN
ansley: there she is
I wouldn’t wish a lice epidemic—and the bill that comes with it—on my worst enemy. Still, I think it might have been one of the best things to ever happen to my family. After we had all been heat-treated, combed out, coated with an extra-precautionary dose of antilice cream, our hair all up in shower caps and wrapped in towel turbans, we took our lice-free selves out of our lice-infested houses and camped out at the Peachtree Bluff Inn. I warned Tim and Mary Lou, the owners, because I sure didn’t want them having a lice problem, but they seemed excited about the entire thing, probably because they would be able to tell future guests that Emerson Murphy had stayed there—and Emerson had been asked by Town & Country to take readers on a tour of Peachtree, and she was planning to include the inn in her recommendations. That was probably worth a possible fumigation. Having Emerson back home, and the flurry of street selfies that came along with it, made me realize how well known she was becoming.
The Southern Side of Paradise Page 19