The Summer's End

by Mary Alice Monroe

  They packed away Lucille’s personal items, took down the curtains, rolled up the carpet. Then they tackled the most intimate items—her clothing.

  Carson opened the closet door and felt her knees go weak as she caught the familiar scent that lingered on the clothes and saw the line of shirtwaist dresses in multiple colors. Carson pulled one out, in a soft blue, and brought it to her face. “It still smells like Lucille,” she said, her voice muffled by the fabric.

  “Vanilla,” Dora said.

  “When I think of Lucille, I always see her in one of those dresses,” added Harper. “Even when I was little, it was always the same style.”

  “It was her uniform,” Dora said.

  “Don’t call it a uniform,” Carson warned. “Mamaw never liked that word. She didn’t want Lucille to feel she had to wear one, but you know Lucille. She chose the shirtwaist because she liked it and wore it every day.”

  Carson set the dress gently down on the bed. “This is going to be harder than I thought.” Her voice choked. “I’m feeling emotional these days.”

  They packed the dresses, shoes, and coats of all colors neatly into boxes to give to charity. Along the top shelf of the closet, in a neat line, was a row of hatboxes. Inside each was a magnificent hat, one showier than the next.

  “Oh, Lord, these bring back memories.” Dora held up a large-brimmed straw hat with bright coral-colored trim and enormous flowers. She hurried to the mirror and placed it on her head. “How do I look?”

  Carson plucked the hat off Dora’s had. “We should be respectful. Lucille took such pride in her hats. Wore them to church every Sunday.”

  “I’m not laughing at Lucille. She could carry it off. I’m laughing at how I look in it.”

  “You’d look funny in any hat. You’re not a hat kind of girl.”

  “What’s a hat kind of girl? I’ll have you know I love hats. Every woman looks good in a hat if it’s the right hat.”

  Carson guffawed in exasperation. “I’ve never seen you wear a hat.”

  “I wear hats all the time.”

  Harper ignored the banter and instead opened another hatbox and gingerly pushed back the tissue. Slowly, reverently, she removed the magnificent hat—royal purple with a wide, sloping rim and a profusion of ribbons and feathers.

  Harper remembered one Sunday in particular when she’d seen Lucille emerge from her cottage wearing a purple coat and this purple hat. Harper had been no older than ten. She’d stopped what she’d been doing to stare at the hat, completely agog. In England, showy hats and fascinators were common. Yet Harper had never seen such a hat in New York, and certainly not in the lowcountry. She’d walked over to the cottage porch to get a closer look. Lucille closed her pocketbook and, seeing the girl staring at her, tilted her head and eyed the child with suspicion.

  “What you starin’ at, child?”

  “Your hat,” Harper replied in her quiet voice.

  “What about my hat?” Lucille’s hands went to it. “Is it crooked?”

  “It’s so beautiful. Like a queen’s crown.”

  Lucille smiled and preened a moment, adjusting the hat on her head. “Why, thank you, Harper. I do love this hat. Purple is my favorite color.”

  “Lucille, why do you wear such fancy hats to church?”

  Lucille studied Harper’s face a moment, then came down the steps, closer to Harper. “That question deserves a proper answer.” Lucille reached out and cupped Harper’s cheek in her hand and looked deeply into her eyes.

  Harper could still feel how dry Lucille’s skin was, and how strong her hand.

  “I’m not surprised the question came from you. You might be a quiet little thing, but you never miss a trick, do you, girl? Well”—Lucille shifted her weight—“it goes way, way back. During the time of slavery, and after, many black women worked as maids and servants. We had to wear uniforms during the week. But on Sunday”—she lifted her hands for emphasis—“we broke from our uniforms and showed our individual flair with our hats.”

  She laughed then, her unique cackle that always made Harper laugh hearing it. “No matter what material the hat was made from, it was always done up proud with ribbons and feathers and flowers. I reckon over the years the church hats have gotten bigger and bolder.” She smirked. “Like the women who wear them.” She reached up to lightly touch the hat on her head. “We consider our hat to be our crowning glory.”

  Harper remembered listening to Lucille and thinking she had never looked more like a queen than she did that day.

  Eyes bright with unshed tears, Harper gently returned the elaborate purple hat to the box. “I’d like to keep this hat,” she said to her sisters. “Would that be all right?”

  “Mamaw said we could take mementos if we wanted,” Dora replied. “Of course, if there’s anything truly valuable, like her jewelry, we should give it to Mamaw to decide what to do,” she clarified with typical authority.

  “No, I don’t want anything else. Just the hat.”

  “She left us each a painting, too, don’t forget.” Carson raised her hand. “Dibs on the Jonathan Green.”

  As the day wore on and they emptied the bureaus, drawers, closets, and bookshelves, each of the three women found some small personal item to keep that carried special memories. For Harper it was the hat. For Dora, an old fox stole, complete with eyes and a tail, which had been one of Lucille’s prized possessions.

  Carson kept the collection of Golden children’s books that Lucille had read to her back when she was young and had lived with Mamaw. She let her hand trace the titles: The Poky Little Puppy, The Saggy Baggy Elephant, Hansel and Gretel. “My favorite was The Happy Family,” she told her sisters. “I remember reading this book over and over. See how worn the pages are? I loved the illustrations most. I used to pore over these drawings of the daddy, mommy, brother, and sister. They were all doing normal, everyday things together . . . working in the garden, saying prayers, eating dinner. I used to stare at the pictures and try to imagine what a normal life like that was like. I hardly had the stereotypical happy family.”

  “Neither did I,” said Harper.

  “No,” Carson snorted with a roll of her eyes. “You only had to deal with which house you were going to live in.” She held her finger up to tap her chin in mock display. “Let’s see, where shall we go this week? The Hamptons? The Central Park apartment? Or the estate in England?”

  “Shut up,” Harper fired back, annoyed. This was far from the first time Carson had made a dig about Harper’s family’s money, and whereas before she had let the comments roll off her back, something about these past few weeks made her suddenly resentful of her older sister’s critique. She’d had enough. “You always do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Bring my family’s money into it, like it’s the only thing that matters.”

  “It helps, that’s for sure. You could’ve been stuck in my cheap apartment in a lousy section of LA, not knowing if your father was going to make rent or if you’d have to move again.”

  “I’m sorry you went through that. But you don’t think being schlepped from one house to the next by a nanny was just as bad?”

  Carson scoffed as she gathered scarves from the closet. “No.”

  Yanking the scarves from Carson’s hands, Harper threw them onto the bed. “Well, it was!” she cried, eyes flashing.

  Carson went still, shocked at Harper’s anger. It was so unlike her to explode.

  “Hey, time-out,” Dora called out.

  “No,” Harper snapped, her hands in fists as she turned on Carson. “You’ve been needling me about my money all summer. All my life! Let’s deal with it right now. What have you got against me?”

  Carson appeared hunted, if not remorseful. “I don’t have anything against you.”

  “Yes, you do. You’re pissed that I have money.”

  “I’m not pissed that you have money. I’m pissed that I don’t have any!”

  “But why do you blame me for it?
”

  Carson ran her hands through her hair. “I don’t.”

  “You do. All the time. Even when we were little and hunting for pirate’s gold, you used to say that if we found any, you’d get to keep it all because I didn’t need any more.”

  “I was just teasing.”

  “It wasn’t funny. And it still isn’t.”

  “I guess I was jealous,” Carson admitted.

  “Jealous of my money?”

  “Yes! I was jealous of your money,” Carson shouted back. “You have so much! I was raised by a man who couldn’t hold down a job. I never knew where the next dollar was coming from. Never knew from one month to the next if we’d be evicted or if the electricity would be cut off.”

  But Harper was past the point of feeling pity for Carson’s upbringing. Who was to say that Harper had it any better just because the adults in her life had more money to throw around? “First, that man you’re talking about was my father, too. I didn’t know him. Dora barely knew him, either. I was raised by a sixty-two-year-old nanny who farted excessively and sucked peppermints to disguise the liquor on her breath. Want to talk about moving? I was shipped off to boarding schools since the age of six, to my grandparents’ houses for holidays, and Mamaw’s in the summer. Hardly the model family.”

  “At least you have money. There’s a fear connected with not knowing if you have enough to eat that you don’t have a clue about. And the worst of it is, no matter what I do, I always seem to end up back in that same place. How do you think I felt when you whipped out your checkbook and paid for the kitchen remodeling?”

  “I was trying to make Mamaw feel better!”

  “But you also made me feel like shit. Like I was a moocher. Which I am.”

  Dora said, “If you are, so am I.”

  Harper shook her head. “I can’t win for losing. I try to be generous and you throw it in my face. Would you rather I didn’t help Mamaw? Or you?”

  The last point stung and Carson hung her head. “No. Of course not,” she said in a lower tone. “I appreciate all the help you’ve given me. You know that.”

  Harper’s voice cracked. “No, I don’t.” She felt her lips quiver and fought the hurt. “I don’t want you to thank me,” she said with despair. “I wanted to help you because I love you.”

  Carson’s face contorted and she moved to put her arms around Harper. “I know. I’m sorry, Harpo. I never should have said those things. I didn’t mean them. I can be such a bitch.”

  Harper hugged her sister back. “Yes, you did mean them, but I’m glad we cleared the air. I just want you to understand that I don’t live a charmed life. What it’s like to have a mother like mine who always makes me feel bad about myself. Sometimes I wish I didn’t have a mother. That she’d have just given me to Daddy. Like your mother did. We could’ve been raised together. At least we’d have had each other.”

  Carson choked out a laugh and wiped her eyes. “Yeah. But I kinda wish my dad gave me to your mother. It’d have been easier. Trust me. Together we could’ve dealt with Georgiana.”

  Harper laughed at the idea of the two of them trashing her mother’s elegantly appointed apartment. “I’d put you up against Georgiana any day.”

  “Bring it.”

  Dora wiped her hands with a towel and took a look around the cottage. “Before you begin the gladiator exhibit, let’s finish up here. Other than the jewelry box, I don’t think there’s anything else that needs to be saved.” She sighed. “I think we’re done.”

  Harper looked around the small cottage readied for painting. The pine floors were covered with boxes each filled with items to be donated. The bookshelves were empty, the curtains taken down, the rugs rolled up to be cleaned or given away. The paintings were stacked neatly against the wall.

  “A whole lifetime packed into these boxes,” Dora said. “Seems so little.”

  “Does it?” asked Carson. “If I packed up everything I owned, I wouldn’t have half this much.”

  “Seeing all these boxes makes me realize how unimportant all this stuff is,” Dora said. “I felt this same way walking around my house in Summerville when I was there last. All my possessions were packed up, my furniture covered with tarp. You know, there was a time I’d have been frantic about leaving it all there, terrified someone would steal something. When I saw it all last week, it all kind of made me ill. I couldn’t wait to get out. That house and all that stuff is an albatross around my neck. A battleground for the lawyers. They’re dividing everything, even my furniture. I was upset about that at first, but now . . .” She shrugged. “Let Cal sell it. I can’t take it to the cottage with me, and I don’t want to spend money to store it. All this”—she spread out her arms—“it’s all just stuff.”

  Carson opened the cottage door and strolled out to the porch. “It’s going to be a good sunset,” she called to her sisters. “Come join me.”

  Harper and Dora followed Carson to the porch. Carson moved a rocker to face the setting sun and slid into it. Dora took the second rocker, while Harper fetched a chair from the house. They sat together on the front porch in a collective silence as the western sky deepened to magenta.

  “I was thinking,” Harper said at length. “We packed up all Lucille’s things and they won’t be missed. What we’ll miss is Lucille. The cottage feels so empty without her.”

  “What matters is what we remember,” said Carson. “Our memories.”

  Dora smiled wistfully and her eyes took on the sparkle of memory. “When I remember Lucille, I won’t think about her wearing the ol’ fox stole or hat. I’ll remember Lucille wearing her shirtwaist dress and standing in front of the stove, shaking her wooden spoon at me.”

  Carson smiled at the image. “She used that spoon on my behind more than once.” They all laughed at the shared memory. “When I think of Lucille, I’ll remember her sitting out on the porch with Mamaw, playing cards.”

  Harper and Dora murmured their agreement.

  “How many times did we see them there?” asked Harper.

  “I could kick myself for not once thinking of taking a picture of those two old hens together,” added Carson.

  “You have the picture.” Dora tapped her forehead. “In your memory. We all do. That’s what we’re doing here now. This summer. Remembering the past. But we’re also creating new memories that will keep us close in the years to come. After Sea Breeze is sold.”

  Dora reached out to take Carson’s hand on her left and Harper’s hand on her right. “We can’t fade from each other’s lives again. Not ever. We need to keep creating memories together.”

  Chapter Twelve

  As a girl, Harper had often journeyed south with Mamaw and her sisters across the Grace Bridge to Charleston for shopping or an event. Only once in a blue moon, after much begging by the girls, did Mamaw head north to Myrtle Beach for the popular amusement-park rides, restaurants, and the occasional live show. But never had Harper been to McClellanville, the fabled shrimp-boat community, one of the few remaining on the southeastern coast.

  Until now.

  Taylor had reminded her of a promise he’d made when they’d first met to show her a shrimp boat.

  Harper sat in Taylor’s black truck and stared out the window at miles of passing pine trees of the magnificent Francis Marion National Forest and the Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge. This was God’s country, she thought, much of it the same today as it had been back in the eighteenth century when old rice plantations thrived. History breathed along the old King’s Highway. Dotting the four-lane highway were the tilting wooden stands of the local women who filled the shelves with their hand-sewn sweetgrass baskets.

  Harper cast a surreptitious glance at Taylor beside her, relieved to find his eyes steadfastly on the road ahead. She loved his strong profile, his thick brows, straight nose, and full lips. She idly wondered what he’d look like with his shorn hair grown out. He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel in time to the country music playing on the radio. The
two hadn’t done much chatting throughout the drive, oftentimes falling into a comfortable silence as Harper watched the magnificent scenery go by. She’d learned Taylor was the strong and silent type. Not shy but reserved. Even wary. She sensed she still had much more to learn about him. Then again, she thought with a self-deprecating chuckle, she had never been the chatty type.

  Harper sat up and took notice when Taylor flicked on his signal. A blinking traffic light was the only marker for the turnoff.

  “Not far now,” Taylor said as he turned off the seemingly endless stretch of Highway 17 and headed eastward toward the sea. Pinckney Street meandered through a dense tunnel of oaks, pines, palmettos, and scrubby shrubs that offered welcome shade from the blistering August sun. Harper stared out the passenger window of Taylor’s truck at the Eden-like wilderness and sparse houses they passed.

  Before long Pinckney Street entered the heart of the small, picturesque fishing village—a few blocks of quaint, gingerbread-trimmed historic houses and shops nestled between majestic live oaks. Harper felt as if she’d stepped back in time. Children played on the green lawns, dogs slept on the porches, and adults strolled the narrow sidewalks that lined both sides of the narrow street. Her sharp eyes also took in the sobering effects of seaside living, evident in peeling paint, the wild growth of vines along clapboard houses, the streaks of rust. Empty storefronts where businesses had closed and FOR SALE signs on empty houses hinted at the hard times Taylor had spoken of. Still, the village had an ageless charm that brought her hand to the window glass with a sense of nameless yearning.

  Taylor drove at a snail’s pace through the historic district, allowing Harper time to gawk with a small, knowing smile playing at her lips. Pinckney Street came to an end at the glassy water of Jeremy Creek. He turned around and drove back up Pinckney Street, turning onto Oak Street, a smaller street that ran parallel to the water. This shaded street was bordered by an eclectic mix of larger, two-story Victorian houses and modest historic cottages. At the end of the winding road she spied the tips of shrimp boats.