Lula brushed Midge’s hand away. “No, we need to clear the air now. But I think we can do it in a more productive manner than shouting at one another.” She looked directly at Georgia. “I don’t understand why you’re mad at Midge and not me. I’m the one who convinced her to wait until after the party to tell you about Lang’s affair. I’m the selfish one, Georgia. I was too preoccupied with Brooke’s visit and planning the party to be distracted by your marital problems. It’s hard to be mad at a dying woman, especially when you have Midge who is such an easy target. No offense, Midge.” She patted Midge on the knee.
Georgia got up and moved to the railing, turning her back to them. Lula had hit a nerve. She’d been using Midge as target practice when the person she was most angry with was herself. Langdon had played her for a fool, and she’d let him. For years she’d suspected something amiss in their marriage. But she’d been too afraid her husband would leave her, too scared of being alone, to acknowledge it. She was the coward, not Midge.
She felt Lula beside her. “Come sit back down. We love you. We’re here to help.” She let Lula guide her back to the sofa. “Talk to us. Tell us what happened.”
Dabbing her eyes with her fingertips, Georgia told them about the night she discovered Langdon’s affair. “He begged me to give our marriage another chance. I tried, honestly I did. And he did, too. He brought me little treats and took me out for romantic dinners. We connected for the first time in years. But when I saw him fondle Sharon Parker’s ass at your party, I knew our marriage was over. As the saying goes: once a cheater, always a cheater. That night, on the way home from the party, I asked him to move out. But then everything happened with you, Lula, and he insisted on staying in the house to be near you. He’s a good doctor. But a lousy husband.” Suddenly parched, she reached for her tea, gulping down half the glass at once.
“I can’t imagine how hard this must be for you,” Lula said, massaging her back.
How ironic that Lula is consoling me when she is losing so much more than a husband.
“I’m fine with it, honestly. Part of the reason for that is my new job. I’m going to Atlanta tomorrow on my first buying trip. Not only am I managing the store, I’m also helping Heidi work up proposals for her catering events. I don’t know how long I’ll continue to live here on Tradd Street. I feel like I need a fresh start. Every time I turn a corner in the house, I expect to see Langdon.”
And once Lula’s gone, she thought, I’ll have little reason to stay.
“But enough about me.” Georgia settled into the sofa cushions. “Midge, it’s your turn to tell us what’s new with you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Lula
Lula suffered a pang of remorse for using her imminent death to guilt her friends into a reconciliation. But it didn’t last long. She’d always aspired for peace on earth. Considering what little time she had left on the planet, peace among her neighbors would have to suffice.
“If you do decide to sell your house, Georgia, I hope you’ll consider letting me handle the listing,” Midge said, a mischievous smile tugging at her lips. “Bennett and I are going into business together as fifty-fifty partners. We’ve purchased a building on Meeting Street where our offices will be, and we’re having the paperwork for Calhoun Wilkins Properties drawn up as we speak.”
Georgia scooted to the edge of the sofa and peered at Midge around Lula. “Are you crazy? Please tell me you’re not going into business with that rotten rascal?”
Midge lifted her chin. “Not only am I going into business with him, I’m going to marry him.”
Lula noticed the engagement ring was back on Midge’s finger. “I didn’t realize you were back together. I knew you were having some reservations. When did you decide to marry him?”
Placing her hands in her lap, Midge held her head high. “Just now. I haven’t even told Bennett yet. The two of you are the first to know. But he’ll be thrilled. He’s been hounding me for weeks to say yes. And I’ve been listening to all the negative things everyone has to say about him instead of listening to my heart. I love him. And I’m going to marry him. And I would appreciate it, Georgia, if you wouldn’t refer to my fiancé as a rotten rascal. He’s not perfect, and neither am I, but we make a good team.”
“You know Bennett better than anyone else,” Lula said. “I think it’s wonderful, but if you want me to attend the wedding, you’d better set the date soon.”
Midge gave Lula a squeeze. “I would love for you to be there, but we’re taking the easy way out. Bennett wants to fly down to Jamaica for an informal destination wedding, just the two of us.”
Georgia left the sofa and paced around in tight circles. “I can’t believe you’re going to marry him after all you know about him. He’s been married three times already, for Pete’s sake. You’re making a terrible mistake, Midge. I feel it in my gut.”
Midge shot up off the sofa to face Georgia. “It’s not your gut feeling that matters. It’s mine. I’ve seen a whole different side of Bennett in the past few weeks. Deep down he’s a good person. Just very misunderstood. I’m confident we can make a success out of our business and our marriage, but if they fail, I’ll at least have the satisfaction of knowing I tried.
“I’ve made safe choices all my life, and look where those choices have gotten me. I have no husband, no children, and no family other than my brother. I’ve wanted more out of my career for a long time, but I haven’t known how to go about getting it. I’ve always been too scared to try anything new. The time has come for me to stop being a coward. But I know it won’t be easy, and I could really use the support of my friends.”
Georgia surprised Lula by lifting her hand to Midge’s cheek. “You are so right, Midge. Who am I to criticize you? I’ve known for a long time that my marriage was in trouble, but I was too much of a coward to face a future on my own. Let’s make a pledge to each other. From now on, if we can’t be strong alone, we’ll reach out and be strong together.”
Lula’s eyes glistened with unshed tears. “Will wonders never cease? I can go to Heaven now knowing the two of you are friends again and have each other for support in my absence.”
Georgia let her hand drop from Midge’s cheek. “Great goodness, Lula. Do you have to be so morbid?”
“Indeed I do.” Lula swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand and inhaled a deep breath to steady herself. She turned toward Midge. “A very good friend helped me see that, while I can’t control my destiny, I can do something about the legacy I leave behind for my family. And that’s where I need your help.” She patted the cushion on either side of her, signaling Midge and Georgia to sit back down. She waited for them to get settled before she continued. “I’m not happy about dying, but I’ve accepted that it’s going to happen, probably sooner rather than later. I want to use whatever good days I have left to create something special for my girls. I have a lifetime of things I want to show and tell them, but I don’t know how to go about doing it.”
“What kinds of things?” Midge asked.
“Things like making homemade piecrusts. I showed Lizbet this morning, but I’d like to document it for future reference—and for Brooke in case she ever wants to learn. I have words of wisdom I’d like to share with them, things I want to tell them on their wedding days and when they give birth to their first children.” My grandchildren that I’ll never get to meet, Lula thought to herself. “I hope that will happen for Brooke. Gay people are getting married and having children all the time.” She noticed Georgia and Midge exchange a look of utter astonishment. “I know what you’re thinking. Blame it on the cancer. It’s eating away the stubborn and selfish part of my brain that makes me act like a shrew. I may never understand it, or approve of it, but I’m trying to accept that my daughter is gay. I’ve invited her girlfriend, her partner, to visit this weekend. I owe it to Brooke to at least get to know Sawyer. Everyone else in the family adores her.”
“Good for you, Lula!” Georgia held her tea glass up for
a toast. “I’m proud of you.”
Lula clinked her glass. “Baby steps.”
“Whatever it takes,” Georgia said. “Have you thought about creating videos to leave the girls?”
“You mean filming myself?” Lula patted her unkempt hair. “I’d shatter the camera lens into pieces, looking the way I do.”
“Stop! You look beautiful.” Midge leaned into her. “I think creating videos to leave your girls is meaningful and personable. People do it all the time.”
A bewildered expression crossed Lula’s face. “But I wouldn’t know where to begin. You know what a dunce I am when it comes to electronics.”
“I can help you,” Georgia said, and paused for a minute to think. “My Canon shoots video. We can use it for the longer segments and our iPhones for the more informal moments. We can either combine them into one long iMovie or create a library of the short segments earmarked for certain occasions—however you want to structure it.”
Midge clapped her hands. “Count me in! This will be fun. I’m a great project manager. I’ve never used iMovie before, but I’m eager to learn.”
“Hold that thought.” Georgia hopped up and went inside, returning a minute later with a tripod tucked under her arm, a camera strap slung over her shoulder, and a legal pad and pen in hand. “Here.” She handed the pad and pen to Midge. “You start making a list of the videos Lula wants to shoot while I set up the camera.”
“The list is long,” Lula warned Midge.
Midge held up the pen. “Start talking.”
For the next few minutes, Georgia fussed with her camera while Lula reeled off a list of the things she wanted to show her daughters, like how to make boxwood wreaths at Christmas and use Oasis to create flower arrangements, and the things she wanted to tell them on special occasions. Not just when they got married or when their children were born but also for when times got hard and they needed a shoulder to cry on.
Once they had a rough draft of the list, Georgia turned on the camera and returned to the sofa.
“Are you filming us now?” Lula asked.
Georgia nodded, a wide grin across her face. “I think it’s appropriate for us to start the video series with a segment on teatime at Georgia’s. We can each talk a little about what our friendship has meant to us over the years.”
Lula placed an arm around each of her friends. “And how rare true friendship is. And how we sometimes have to work to make our relationships work, just like we do for marriage, but the love we share is undying and can conquer all.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Lizbet
Lizbet had much to do to get her mother’s perennial garden ready for the service the following day. Family, plus Midge and Georgia, were gathering to celebrate Lula’s life and spread her ashes over the garden. Heidi was providing the cheese biscuits, and Georgia insisted on bringing the sweet tea. In some ways the nine months since her mother’s death had flown by. In other ways time had crept by like the slug she spotted creeping along the tender new foliage of the daylilies poking their heads through the earth.
Lizbet donned her garden gloves and slipped her feet into the green Crocs she’d purchased in her mother’s honor. She pulled Lula’s floppy sun hat over her head. Wearing it somehow made her feel less like an amateur. She went out into the garden, stopping to admire the new bronze statue in the corner. Her father had commissioned a local artist to fabricate the statue, a depiction that looked so much like her mother it brought tears to Lizbet’s eyes. The hat, apron, and garden clogs were spot-on, as were the freckles that dotted the statue’s face.
Lizbet dropped to her knees on the grass and began ripping weeds out of the ground. She’d learned a lot from watching her mother’s videos, but she still had a lot to learn. During the reception at the house following Lula’s memorial service, Midge and Georgia had pulled Brooke and Lizbet aside and given each of them a portable hard drive that contained Lula’s Life Lessons—a library of show-and-tell videos their mother had created for them. The gift had not surprised them. For weeks Midge and Georgia had been following Lula around the house with a camera. Even during her last days, they took turns sitting by her hospital bed in case she thought of something else she wanted to say.
Lizbet’s emotions were too raw to view the videos at first, even the ones labeled Coping with My Death and Taking Care of Your Father After I’m Gone. The day after the funeral, Brooke had moved out of the house and into her new apartment with Sawyer, leaving Lizbet and Phillip alone with their ghosts. The house had felt like a cavernous tomb with Brooke and her mother gone. She even missed Gladys Guzman. She’d grown to love the old woman during the weeks she’d nursed her mother. All throughout the fall, numb to the pain, Lizbet had gone through the motions of living. Eating, without allowing herself the pleasure of taste. Sleeping, without ever feeling rested. And working, as much to occupy her mind as to keep her away from the empty house. Heidi had become Charleston’s preferred caterer. Most weeks she was booked six out of the seven nights. And, as promised, when Annie left for culinary school, Heidi had looked to Lizbet to fill her shoes.
Lizbet wore herself out, and on Thanksgiving Eve she came down with the flu. To avoid her germs, Brooke and Sawyer invited their father over to their place for Thanksgiving dinner. It was the weekend that followed, while she was recovering from the flu, when she finally got up the nerve to venture into her mother’s video library.
The hard drive was organized into sections, with each section housing several folders. She started with the section marked Christmas. She spent one whole day watching videos and the next two weeks following her mother’s instructions for creating a Horne Family Christmas. She made boxwood wreaths for the doors, displayed fresh evergreens on the mantels, and arranged Lula’s collection of angels and Christmas trees about the house to her mother’s specifications. She prepared the same dishes, plus a few of her own, for their family dinner on Christmas Eve. Under Heidi’s tutelage, and with the skills she’d learned from the videos, Lizbet was gaining confidence in the kitchen.
Phillip surprised them all on Christmas Eve by announcing he was moving into an apartment and turning the house over to Brooke and Sawyer, just as his mother in-law had done for Lula and him all those years ago. Brooke and Sawyer were thrilled, as their apartment had turned out to be a disaster. The roof leaked, the furnace was always broken, and there was never enough hot water in the tank for more than one shower.
“What about your lease?” Lizbet had asked.
“We’ll threaten to sue if our landlord gives us a hard time,” Brooke answered.
“Considering the number of things that have gone wrong with our apartment, I’m sure we would win,” Sawyer added.
Later that night Brooke had sought Lizbet out in her room. “I hope you don’t mind us moving back in here. If it’s a problem for you, we’ll only stay until we can find something new.”
“Are you kidding me? I’m twenty-two years old and single. I don’t want the responsibility of a house. Besides, I hope I’ll be going to New York next fall. If you’re sure I won’t be in your way, I’d like to stay here until then.”
“Stay as long as you’d like,” Brooke said. “The door is always open, even when you come back from New York.”
“You mean if I come back from New York.” Lizbet had never wanted to leave Charleston when her mother was alive. Now she couldn’t wait to get away. While she loved being near her sister, she was ready for an adventure. Annie’s Snaps and Instagram posts showed just how much fun she was having in the big city.
Sawyer spent most of her time at the hospital, but on the rare occasion the three of them found themselves at home, they cooked elaborate dinners and stayed up late talking and drinking wine on the porch. As much as she enjoyed being with Brooke and Sawyer, Lizbet often felt as though she was in the way, like she was keeping them from being a real couple. She’d already sent her application to culinary school. She expected to hear any day whether she’d been accepted
. The time had come for them all to move on with their lives.
Dr. Trevor Pratt, the plastic surgeon who’d sewn up her mother’s forehead after her fall at the beach, had been a devoted friend to her throughout her mother’s brief illness and in the months since her death. Now he wanted more than friendship, and part of Lizbet wanted that as well. But she was hesitant to make a commitment until she was certain of her future.
Lizbet was so lost in thought as she pulled out the weeds, she didn’t hear Brooke calling her name until she was standing in front of her. Lizbet stood up and shook the numbness from her legs. Placing her hand over her eyes to shield them from the sun, she spotted her new neighbor cutting the grass at Georgia’s old house next door. The landscape had changed on Tradd Street in the nine months since her mother died. Balls and bicycles and skateboards, the toys of middle-school boys, were strewn all over Georgia’s lawn, while strollers and the toys of toddlers dotted Midge’s yard.
At the end of September Georgia had been the first to move from the neighborhood, and Midge had followed her in November. Lizbet saw Georgia most days at work, but she missed Midge’s quiet presence. Her mother’s two best friends had been fixtures in the Horne home during Lula’s final weeks. They fed the family when they were hungry and comforted them when they were sad. Georgia had a new boyfriend—her rebound relationship, she claimed, nothing too serious—while Midge, in a state of marital bliss, was setting the downtown residential market on fire. Most of the “For Sale” signs bore the Calhoun Wilkins logo. Despite their busy lives, Lizbet suspected Midge and Georgia saw the same sadness on their faces that she did when she looked in the mirror.
“Let’s take a break.” Brooke waved a gloved hand at the house. “I don’t know about you, but I’m parched.”
Lizbet brushed the dirt off her knees and followed her sister into the kitchen. Brooke removed two orange Gatorades from the refrigerator and tossed one to Lizbet. “How’s the weeding coming?”
Sweet Tea Tuesdays Page 24