You'll Always Have Tara

by Leah Marie Brown

  “You know Mandy. She asked Emma Lee if it was a growth industry and whether Em thought she had the initiative and discipline to run an entrepreneurial business.”

  Callie laughs. “That sounds like Manderley.”

  “Then she lectured Emma Lee on the need to be fiscally responsible, now more than ever, and rattled off a checklist of things Emma Lee needed to do, like find health insurance, call Clemson’s professional development center to speak to a counselor about grad school, make a budget . . .”

  “Poor Emma Lee,” Truman says, shaking his head.

  “Poor Emma Lee? You mean poor Tara!” I exhale at the memory of the days following Manderley’s practical response, Emma Lee’s tantrums, and the flurry of emails that flew back and forth between them. “Do you know what Mahatma Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Václav Havel have in common?”

  “No, what?” Truman says.

  “Who is Vatzel Hovel?” Tavish asks.

  “Seriously?” I roll my eyes. “Writer, philosopher, first president of Czechoslovakia.”

  “Czechoslovakia? Petra Némcová,” Tavish fires back. “Czechoslovakian model.”

  “Yes, brother,” Truman says, raising his fist for Tavish to bump. “Sports Illustrated, 2003.”

  “Fun in the Sun!” Tavish says. “Hottest Models—”

  “Coolest Places—” Truman chimes in.

  “Around the World,” they say in unison.

  Callie rolls her eyes. “Go on, Tara. What were you saying about Eleanor Roosevelt and Václav Havel?”

  “I was going to say they dedicated their lives to bring peace, love, and harmony to the world, but they were never awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”

  “Robbed,” Truman cries in mock outrage.

  “I know their pain,” I say, sniffing. “Lawd, how I know their pain! I’ve spent most of my life brokering truces between my sisters. People laud Gandhi for his efforts to promote nonviolence, but that’s only because they’ve never watched me trying to negotiate peace between Manderley and Emma Lee!”

  “You’re a saint, Tara,” Callie says.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “That’s one of the reasons Grayson loves you so much,” Callie says. “Do you think tonight is the night? Is that why you pulled out the Erdem?”

  Truman and Tavish exchange confused glances.

  “Grayson asked me to meet him at our spot after the Turn Up. He said he has something important he needs to say to me.” Our spot is a rickety old dock on Horlbeck Creek, halfway between his parents’ home and the home where I grew up. We used to sneak out at night and sit on the end of the dock, dangling our feet over the water, talking about nonsense while the breeze rustled the swamp grasses. “I am pretty sure he is finally going to ask me to marry him.”

  “You know I love you”—Truman grabs my hand—“despite your freakishly large bottom lip, and Lord knows I would give up my entire collection of bow ties if you would promise to run away with me, but Grayson Calhoun is not going to ask you to marry him.”

  “Nope.” Tavish shakes his head. “Never gonna happen.”

  “Hush, Tavish,” Callie hisses.

  “I’m just sayin’—”

  “I’m just sayin’,” Callie mimics. “You don’t know what you are saying, so just hush.”

  Truman is still holding my hand. I look up at his face and my stomach does an anxious little flip. Even in the dim glow of the fairy lights I recognize the smudge of pity in his eyes.

  “How do you know Grayson isn’t going to ask me to marry him? Did he say something? Is he seeing someone else?”

  “I don’t know if Grayson is seeing another girl. I just know he isn’t going to ask you to marry him. Not tonight.” He squeezes my hand gently before letting it go. “Not ever.”

  “Why not?”

  The air between us is heavy with humidity and thoughts Truman does not wish to express, thoughts my friends and neighbors have only shared in low whispers after I left the room.

  “Don’t make me say it, dahlin’.”

  “I’ll say it,” Tavish says. “Grayson isn’t going to marry you because your daddy owed so much money to the government they seized your family home and all of his assets. He won’t want to attach himself to your family’s scandal.”

  “Scandal?” I cry. “I hardly call my daddy’s minor financial difficulties a scandal. Besides, what politician hasn’t been involved in some scandal or other? Thomas Ravenel, Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, Teddy Kennedy, and what about Anthony Weiner, the congressman from New York who resigned after being involved in several sexting scandals?”

  “Yes, but those scandals happened after the Weiner was elected, not before. South Carolina is the seventh most conservative state in the country. Grayson knows if he marries you, he won’t even be elected to the Charleston County Mosquito Control Board.” Tavish smiles sadly. “No offense.”

  “I hate it when people say that.”

  “Say what?”

  “No offense.” Heat flushes my cheeks. “It’s the verbal equivalent to stabbing someone and then slapping a Band-Aid over the wound.”

  “I wasn’t trying to—”

  I wave my hand. “I think you’re wrong about Grayson. He isn’t the sort of man who would let his heart be ruled by public opinion.”

  Tavish and Truman give each other the twin look and I want to reach over and knock their identical chestnut heads together. I don’t know why I am letting them get under my skin. What South Carolina’s most sophomoric bachelors don’t know about love could fill the Charleston Harbor. Truman is more committed to his prodigious bow tie collection than he has ever been to a woman and Tavish is too busy high fiving himself over his latest one-night stand to think about settling down.

  “I am hardly about to let two prep school dropouts educate me on matters of love.”

  “You don’t need to graduate magnum cum laude to know a man as obsessed with his image as Grayson Calhoun isn’t going to marry the daughter of a tax evader.” Tavish makes the sign of the cross. “God rest your daddy’s soul.”

  If common sense was measured in dollars, the Barton Boys would be hard-pressed to scrounge up fifty cents worth. They could look under the seats in their matching Porsche 911 Carrera Cabriolets and through the cushions on their sofa, and between them, they might make it to fifty-two cents. Might.

  “You don’t know Grayson the way I do,” I say, tossing my hair over my shoulder. “And it is magna cum laude, not magnum. You would know that if you had spent more time in classes and less time playing beer pong in your frat house.”

  “Ouch,” Tavish says.

  “That was unnecessarily harsh, dahlin’,” Truman sniffs. “Even for you.”

  There’s a short silence between us all and I consider apologizing to the twins, when Callie suddenly turns to me and says, “Do you even want Grayson to ask you to marry him?”

  “Of course I do! Why would you ask that?”

  Callie shrugs.

  I expect the Barton Boys to question my desire to walk down the aisle with Grayson, but not Callie. Callie is a head in the clouds, hopeless romantic. She’s had a subscription to Martha Stewart Weddings since she was twelve. Her favorite movie is Father of the Bride. I want to shrug off Callie’s question as easily as she just shrugged off mine, but I am not very good at shrugging things off.

  “Callie?” A little voice inside of me is whispering: Let it go, Tara. “Why did you ask me if I wanted Grayson to ask me to marry him?”

  “Do you see yourself marrying Grayson and settling down to have a plantation full of little Calhouns? Why Tara, why do you want to get married now?”

  I stare at Callie, a breeze lifting a lock of hair from my forehead, and swallow back the words, what a ridiculous question. Callie has been my best friend forever. When Grayson pulled my hair in Miss Treva’s class, it was Callie who came up with the idea of putting crushed up chalk in his milk to get even. She’s been with us through every break-up and make-up.

 
; “Grayson just graduated from law school and is taking the summer off to study for the bar exam. I have a good job and am financially independent-ish. Now is the time.”

  “That’s why you want to marry him? Because now is the time. What about love?”

  “Love?”

  “Yes, love.”

  “Of course I love Grayson!”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” I roll my eyes. “What a ridiculous question.”

  “Is it?” She narrows her eyes in that all-knowing, all-seeing best friend way that says: you can pretend you really like that rocket-and-pine-nut salad but I know you really want a cheeseburger with extra chipotle aioli and truffle fries. “If it is such a ridiculous question, why are you hesitating to answer?”

  “I am not hesitating! Why do I love Grayson Calhoun?” I search the crowd gathered around the barn until I find Grayson, the gingham J. Crew shirt I gave him for Christmas tucked neatly into his khaki pants, his thick brown hair combed to the side. I shift my gaze back to Callie. “Because he is intelligent, affable, ambitious, steady, reliable, conservative, and . . . well, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love him.”

  “I love my granddaddy’s Boykin spaniel—that old bitch has been around since I was still in short pants and she can still track a wild turkey around the Wateree River Swamp—but I don’t want to marry her,” Tavish says. “Just because you’ve grown accustomed to someone doesn’t mean you should spend the rest of your life with them.”

  There’s quiet, except for the distant hum of laughter and the clinking of champagne glasses. The sky is a beautiful shade of bruised blue and the fairy lights are twinkling on the branches over our heads like hundreds of tiny stars, but I feel a twinge of sadness. It’s the same sort of twinge I feel after church each Sunday, when I suddenly realize I won’t be spending the evening eating roast chicken dinner at my daddy’s house. Strange that I should be feeling the Sunday sadness now, on a Friday night, surrounded by friends.

  It’s funny. I never felt like I fit in with my family. Growing up, I couldn’t wait to leave home and find my place in the world, that one spot in the puzzle where I belonged, where my unique, jagged edges fit. I thought maybe Austin, Texas would be that spot, but it wasn’t. I felt as out of place in Austin as I always have in Charleston.

  It frightens me, this pervasive feeling of not belonging. When I close my eyes, I imagine myself as a stray dog, lost and disoriented, plagued by a sense that I belong somewhere, but baffled as to how to get there. Maybe I can build my forever home with Grayson. Maybe all I need to belong is someone who wants me to belong to them.

  Chapter Two

  “What do you mean you asked Maribelle Cravath to marry you?”

  Grayson thrusts his hands in his pockets and leans back on his heels, his lips turned down in a sheepish expression. We are standing on the rickety old dock on Horlbeck Creek. The full moon is barely hidden behind gossamer-thin clouds and a blanket of mist hangs over the black, still creek. The air is heavy with the sweet scent of magnolia blossoms. I am wearing my beautiful (size six) Erdem gown and the toe-pinching stiletto heels I couldn’t afford. It’s the perfect setting for a Carolina boy to ask his childhood sweetheart to marry him.

  I close my eyes and dozens of memories flicker to life in my brain, forming a sappy-sweet, romantic film montage. Ten-year-old Grayson sitting at the end of the dock, his baseball cap on backward, his jeans rolled up to his knees, holding my fishing pole while I skewered a worm on the end of my hook. Slow dancing in the moonlight with Grayson after freshman year homecoming dance. Lying side-by-side, our arms behind our heads, staring up at a cloudless summer sky, listening to each other’s dreams. Kissing each other goodbye and swearing we would still love each other no matter what just before we went off to college. The next picture should be Grayson getting down on one knee and asking me to be his wife, a diamond engagement ring in his hand.

  I open my eyes, half-expecting to find Grayson holding a ring box with a big old gotcha grin on his face, but he’s still standing there, looking like a kid who got caught stealing coins from the Sunday school offering plate.

  “Maribelle Cravath? You’re serious?”

  Grayson nods his head. “Completely.”

  “Why?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Why on God’s glorious green earth are you marrying boring old Maribelle Crawdad Cravath? She’s one of a million Lilly Pulitzer–wearing, flat-ironed blonde lemmings scampering around the South.

  “Why?” I take a deep breath to steady the wobble in my voice. “Why are you marrying Maribelle?”

  “Maribelle comes from one of the oldest, most respected families in the United States. She’s smart, socially-adept, well-connected, and philanthropic.”

  “Sounds like the perfect running mate.”

  He grins. “She does look great on paper.”

  I see his mouth moving, but it’s as if I am watching a video with out-of-sync audio. Something in my brain is malfunctioning and it takes me a few seconds to assign meaning to the words I see his mouth forming.

  Grayson.

  Crawdad.

  Engaged.

  “You’re really engaged?”

  “Yes.”

  “To Maribelle Cravath?”

  “That’s right.”

  “When?”

  “When?” He frowns.

  “When did you ask her?”

  “Tonight, just before coming here.”

  A thick, bitter lump coagulates in the back of my throat. I listen to the tree frogs chirping and the katydids buzzing. The trilling night critters seem to be mocking me. Eh-eh-eh. Eh-eh-eh.

  “I-I thought when you asked me to meet you here you were going to . . .”

  “To what?”

  He dips his head and stares at me through his wide puppy-dog brown eyes and for a second I almost forget that we’re not two teenagers sneaking out to steal kisses in the moonlight.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters to me,” he says, reaching for my hand. “You will always matter to me, Tara.”

  I want to snatch my hand away. I want to snatch Maribelle Cravath bald! Instead, I smile real pretty as the love of my life absentmindedly strokes the back of my hand with his thumb and tells me how much he hopes I will attend his wedding to my oldest frenemy.

  . . . a spring wedding, when the azaleas are in bloom. Maribelle wants her bridesmaids to wear azalea pink gowns. Five hundred or so . . . in the gardens . . . plantation. . . oyster roast . . .

  A spring wedding. Pink bridesmaid’s gowns. Traditional low-country fare. So cliché. So Maribelle Cravath! Twenty bucks says she will serve spiked blueberry mint lemonade in mason jars and ask her bridesmaids to release live butterflies during her father-daughter dance.

  I look down at my overpriced designer gown and my heart begins to ache something fierce. I splurged on the Erdem because it is a swoon-worthy, fairytale dress, the kind of dress that looks fabulous in photographs ten, twenty, thirty years after they are taken. I imagined myself with silver hair, lifting the lid of a heavy cardboard box, removing layers of scented tissue paper, and showing the neatly folded Erdem to my granddaughter. This is the dress I wore the night your grandad asked me to marry him. My dream is dissolving like tissue paper blown into a swimming pool.

  Maribelle Crawdad Cravath has jacked my Prince Charming and my fairytale granddaughter bonding moment. When the lid of the heavy cardboard box is lifted, future generations of Calhouns will gasp and sigh over a perfectly precious (and uninspired) begonia pink Lilly Pulitzer sundress.

  I want to grab Grayson’s shoulders and shake him until the nonsense falls from his brain like acorns from a tree. He can’t want to marry Maribelle Cravath. He just can’t. He must be joking.

  That’s it! Grayson is teasing me. The Barton Boys must have told him I was expecting him to propose and my perpetual frat boy decided to have a little fun.

  Bubbles of laughter stream up from my belly, bursting o
ut of my mouth. Grayson stops talking and frowns at me.

  “Tara?”

  Like the endless stream of bubbles in a glass of champagne, the laughter keeps bubbling and bursting, bubbling and bursting. The more I think about it, the more I laugh. Maribelle and Grayson. Engaged.

  “Tara? What is it? What’s so funny?”

  I try to speak, but imagine Grayson on bended knee, presenting one of those enameled flower rings with the stretchy bands sold at the Lilly Pulitzer store to Maribelle Cravath and a new stream of laughter erupts from my lips. By the time I am finally able to catch my breath, I have laugh-cried away most of my mascara and splotchy grayish-black teardrops stain the front of my gown.

  “You . . . you almost got me, Grayson Everett Calhoun! You almost had me believing you asked old bug-eyed Crawdad Cravath to marry you. Good joke.”

  He frowns. “I am not joking, Tara. I asked Maribelle to marry me.”

  “Yeah, right,” I laugh, wiping the mascara from beneath my eyes. “And you’re going to have a Gone with the Wind–themed wedding at your family’s plantation and eat barbecue beneath the magnolias, and dance waltzes, and—”

  “Stop it, Tara,” he says, grabbing my hand and squeezing it hard. “Don’t be like that.”

  “Be like what?”

  “Petty and biting.”

  Petty? And biting?

  I pull my hand away and take a step back, the residual bubbles of laughter floating in my belly turning leaden, creating a sickeningly metallic taste in the back of my throat.

  “You think I am petty and biting?”

  “Not usually, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “You’ve changed.”

  “Changed? How? When?”

  He shrugs.

  “I haven’t changed, Grayson. I am the same old Tara Maxwell who likes to go fishing and eat Goo Goo Clusters.”

  “Be serious, dahlin’,” he says, sighing. “When’s the last time you ate a Goo Goo Cluster?”

  I shake my head. What is he saying? He’s not going to marry me because I don’t eat Goo Goo Clusters like an overweight, insecure pre-teen?

  “You want me to eat a Goo Goo Cluster? I will eat a carton of Goo Goo Clusters. Just tell me you aren’t going to marry Maribelle Cravath.”