Beach House Memories

by Mary Alice Monroe

  Dee Dee didn’t reply right away. She appeared to be too stunned to speak.

  Lovie rushed on. “I can’t keep on in this marriage.” Tears flooded her eyes. “Mama, he hit me.”

  “He hit you?”

  Lovie looked at her, incredulous. “You didn’t really think I fell down the stairs?”

  Dee Dee appeared confused. “Why, yes. I did. That’s what you told me.”

  Lovie’s short laugh was laced with disbelief. Maybe her reputation was safe in Charleston, after all, she thought. It was all a matter of how closely one cared to look.

  “Well, I didn’t,” Lovie told her. “The bruises on my face, my broken bones, they’re from him.”

  Dee Dee’s hand flew to her mouth and her fingers trembled. “No. He did that to you?”

  Lovie nodded, reaching for another tissue. “A few weeks ago I came home from the beach and Stratton was there,” she began, dabbing at her eyes. “I didn’t even know he’d returned from Europe. He didn’t call, wire . . .” She lifted her shoulders. “He’d been drinking.” She looked at the cast on her wrist, and her lips began shaking. “He beat me, Mama. He beat me badly.”

  “Oh, my dear,” Dee Dee cried, genuinely distressed. She opened her arms. Lovie leaned into them, resting her head on Dee Dee’s shoulder as her mother wrapped her arms around her. Lovie couldn’t remember the last time her mother had comforted her in this way. In the crook of her arm she smelled her mother’s Chanel perfume and the faint sweet fragrance of her face powder. Scent held memories, and she knew why she’d come here directly from the lawyer. She cried for a while, comforted by these tears in her mother’s arms.

  When she felt more in control, she sat up and reached for another tissue. She wiped her face and blew her nose, feeling like she could talk now about the problem that brought her here for her mother’s advice.

  “Mama, Bobby Lee told me I could lose custody of the children.”

  “But that’s preposterous,” Dee Dee replied. “Everyone knows the mother gets the children.”

  “That’s what I thought. But, there may be a problem because . . .” She hesitated. She loved her mother, but their relationship always had ups and downs, usually correlating with her mother’s moods. Dee Dee was always there to advise her on manners, fashion, flowers, and the arts. But she had never been Lovie’s confidante. Her father was the one she couldn’t keep a secret from, and she missed him terribly now.

  Lovie realized in that moment that she couldn’t, wouldn’t, tell her mother about her relationship with Russell. Sadly, she knew Dee Dee couldn’t be trusted with that secret. Bobby Lee’s question flashed in her mind: Does Stratton have proof of your infidelity? Dee Dee was a social bee who buzzed about dipping into the nectar of gossip and moving on from flower to flower with it. Lovie could imagine her mother at a tête-à-tête with her friends, rolling her eyes in dramatic sympathy as she bravely told the sad tale of her daughter’s grande passion, her liaison amoureuse.

  “Because of what, dear?” Dee Dee asked again.

  “Well,” Lovie replied, scrambling in her mind for a suitable response. Fortunately, she found one in the truth. “Because of Stratton’s influence in this town.”

  “Really?” Dee Dee sat straighter and her lip curled barely perceptibly. “It may be true the Rutledge name holds weight. But the Simmonses are a proud family, too.” She plucked at the cuff of her sleeve. “Though we are in Charleston now. We’re not in Aiken anymore. If Bobby Lee says so, I’d trust him. Oh, this is all so disturbing! Surely you can’t mean to go through with this nonsense of a divorce. When I think of the scandal . . .”

  “Mama!” Lovie exclaimed, pulling back. The two women were sitting knee to knee on the sofa. “You can’t possibly think I should stay with him after he beat me?”

  “Don’t get all upset. Let’s talk this through,” she replied in a conciliatory tone. She bent over the table and gracefully lifted her sherry glass and took a dainty sip. “Is he sorry?”

  “He says he is. But what difference does that make?”

  “Never underestimate the power of an apology. Especially from a gentleman.”

  “How can I be sure he won’t hit me again?”

  “Oh, I can’t imagine that he would.”

  No, you couldn’t, Lovie thought. You’ve never had to face a problem like this. Daddy would never have laid a hand on you. Or me.

  Dee Dee put her glass back on the table. “Darling, whatever did you do to provoke him like that?”

  “You think it’s my fault?”

  “I didn’t say that. But it seems so out of character for Stratton, that’s all. He’s a good husband and father. He has a bit of a temper, we all know that. But he’s never laid a hand on you before. And never the children.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Stratton is a strict disciplinarian, especially with Palmer. That boy’s received the belt plenty of times.” She shuddered just to think of the sting of leather against skin. “But he never will again,” she ground out.

  “Boys need a firmer hand,” Dee Dee said in a cajoling tone as she rose to walk across the room. She took a cigarette from a porcelain box on the side table and offered Lovie one.

  Lovie shook her head, wondering how her mother didn’t know she’d never smoked a cigarette in her life.

  Dee Dee lit it and waved the match in the air, extinguishing the flame. She walked to the chair across from Lovie, exhaling a long plume of smoke. Lovie wondered how many times she’d watched that display. She waved her hand in front of her face, trying to get rid of the annoying trail of smoke.

  “This conversation is so upsetting.” Dee Dee went to one of the large windows and widened the opening. She returned to settle in her chair near Lovie, sighing heavily as though she was bearing the weight of the world on her shoulders. She leaned over to the ashtray in an agitated manner to tap the ash from her cigarette with a coral-tipped nail.

  “Naturally I can’t condone his hitting you. What mother could?” Dee Dee looked at her cigarette. “But I do believe that Stratton is a good man, deep down. Lovie, is there such a thing as a perfect man? Your father had his faults, bless his heart. If Stratton promises never to hit you again, and the two of you go get some help, talk to your minister or some therapist, I truly do believe you can work this whole”—she shook her hands like she was trying to get rid of something nasty that was sticking to them—“mess out.” She glanced up, gauging Lovie’s reaction.

  Lovie kept her face still while inside, her heart was sinking. Taking her quiet as a positive sign, her mother continued. “Stratton travels a great deal, honey. Weeks at a time! And Lord knows he spends more on guns and fishing rods than any man I know, but those hobbies do keep a man out of the house a spell. And you go to the beach house in the summer. And,” she added, brightening as a new thought entered her head, “don’t you have separate bedrooms on account of your injuries? You could maintain those. Decorate yours all frilly, like you never could in a room you had to share with a man. Be extravagant, darling. Lots of fringe. He can afford it and you deserve it. Why, I know several friends whose marriages have lasted for decades under such arrangements. You wouldn’t be the first. Or the last.” She sat back again, confident she’d made her point.

  Lovie let her face remain as smooth as glass as she studied her mother’s face. Though it was artfully made up, the thick foundation meant to hide defects in fact revealed all the more clearly the deep lines of her mother’s advancing age. The dewiness of youth that she’d had as a young bride in the thirties and forties had faded. Her parents’ marriage had survived World War II and unspeakable tragedy. And yet, when her father had returned home, he’d found a world and social code not unlike that which had been firmly in place when he’d left. Michael Simmons had returned home. In the sixties, if her brother had lived, he might have been sent to Vietnam. Twenty years later, he, too, would have returned home to an unchanged world in Charleston. Lovie was brought up in this world; it was wha
t she knew—and loved. It made up, she recognized, who she was.

  Yet to hear her mother make light of what happened to her, to hear her mother send her back to a place that was a danger, to hear her mother making her terrible marriage sound like a slumber party—decorating with fringe—she could feel the sparks of anger licking at the glass. Inside, she felt ready to shatter.

  “The other night,” Lovie said in a low, shaky voice, “when I told him I wanted a divorce, he had that look in his eyes again. Like he wanted to hit me again. Mama, I . . . I’m afraid of him.”

  “You told him you wanted a divorce?” Dee Dee was appalled.

  Lovie was flustered by the question. “Yes. Of course. That’s why I went to see Bobby Lee.”

  “Oh, Lovie . . .” her mother moaned in distress.

  “Stratton was horrible, Mama! He can be so mean and vindictive. You don’t know that part of him. He called me terrible names and screamed at me that he’d take the children from me. They had to have heard him! I don’t love him anymore. I just want to end this marriage. I’m only thirty-eight years old. I can start my life over again.”

  Dee Dee sat tensely with a straight back and gave her daughter a no-fooling come-to-Jesus glare. “Olivia Simmons Rutledge, you are no longer a child. You can’t come running to your mama, boohooing and asking her to help you clean up the mess you made. You’re an adult. A married woman with two children to take care of. You have to get hold of yourself and face your responsibilities. Do you think your father and I had nothing but roses and kisses all during our marriage? There were hard times. Times I wanted to pack my bag and go back to my mother. But I stayed and we made it work. Together. That’s what married people do. They stick together and find a way to preserve the family. You put up with what you have to to make family work!”

  She bent over the cocktail table to set her cigarette on the crystal ashtray, and when she sat back she raised her chin, obviously ready to make a pronouncement.

  “Darling, I raised you better than this. Whether you’re from Charleston or Aiken, or anywhere else south of the Mason Dixon Line, you hold inside of you the strength of Southern womanhood, handed down to you from me, your grandmothers, and beyond. You carry it in your genes. Listen to your mama, now. We women are the heart and soul of the family. The husband may be the trunk and our children the branches, but we are the sap that keeps it alive. Our family roots run deep. We do not rip them out. We cannot.”

  Then she reached over to take hold of Lovie’s right hand. “I don’t want to know any more of what’s happened between you and Stratton. That’s none of my business. But as your mother I’m advising you to run home and make peace with your husband. Do whatever you need to do to fix your marriage.”

  “Mama, I . . .” Lovie squeezed her mother’s hand. “I came here for your help. Stratton has all my money. I’ve nowhere to go. Can I stay here? Please? Just until I figure things out?”

  Dee Dee released Lovie’s hand and turned to retrieve her cigarette. After she took a puff, she tilted her head and exhaled a plume of smoke.

  “Absolutely not. I’m sorry, Olivia. I’ve said all I’m going to say on the matter. You made your bed, darling. Now you must lie in it.”

  Twenty-two

  Lovie left her mother’s house feeling worse than when she’d arrived. She was more confused than ever and needed the long walk to Tradd Street to clear her head. She wasn’t completely sure whether it was her mother’s words or the smoke from her cigarette that upset her stomach so much.

  She often thought that parts of this golden peninsula where she lived, known as South of Broad, were like a painting come to life in pastel shades. Everywhere she looked there was history; she couldn’t escape it. Charleston was a city out of a time long ago when wealthy rice planters built homes of grandeur along the Battery and so many churches with spiraling steeples that pierced the heavens that it became known as the Holy City. For three hundred years, this city was a model for all Southern women: she was beautiful, graceful—and a survivor. She withstood plagues, hurricanes, wars, poverty, fires, earthquakes, all with grace and a dignity born of never forgetting her proud heritage.

  Lovie felt the heat of her tears as she walked along the cobbled streets. Each turn of her ankle in the crooked pavement brought a sharp pain, like the lash of punishment. She’d forgotten who she was and where she was from. This was her home. There was no escaping, nowhere else for her to go. Even if she could leave, how would she support her children? She had no skills, no work experience. Bobby Lee and her mother had made her situation perfectly, painfully clear.

  She felt unspeakable relief when she reached the white stucco walls surrounding her property. It was an impressive house, secure and strong, with a large black wooden gate at the entrance. She pushed open the heavy door and entered the cool of her garden. It was late; her children would already be home. God help her, she hoped her husband was not. She felt utterly spent.

  “Miss Lovie, what’s happened to you?” Vivian called out at seeing Lovie enter the kitchen door. She was standing at the sink, scrubbing potatoes. “You look like you’re being chased by the devil.”

  Lovie almost smiled at how close to the truth that was. She set her purse on a chair and leaned against the back for support. “I went to see my mother.”

  Vivian frowned, silently expressing her opinion of Dee Dee Simmons. “I was getting worried at the hour. Ready to call out the guard!”

  “I should have called,” Lovie replied, wiping the perspiration from her brow. “I’m sorry you worried.” She looked up at the wall clock. “You’ll want to be going soon. I wanted to talk to you.”

  Vivian dried her hands on her apron and came closer, her eyes searching Lovie’s face with concern. “You look ready to drop. Do you want some coffee?”

  Lovie shook her head. “Vivian, I need to get away,” she said. “Just for the night. It’s terribly short notice, but can you possibly stay?”

  “Yes’m, I can stay. But sit and let me get you some water before you faint.”

  Lovie didn’t want to sit, yet she was exhausted from more exercise than she’d had in weeks. She slumped into the wood chair. Vivian handed her a glass and, sipping, Lovie felt the cool water flow along her arid throat. She’d been holding her cry in for so long her throat felt raw.

  “Are you all right?” Vivian asked, standing watch over her. Her tone was doubtful.

  “Yes . . . no. I just need time to think. If you’ll stay for the night, I’ll pack a bag and leave right away. I won’t be far. I just need a little time alone. I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”

  Vivian eyed her suspiciously. “Where you going?”

  “I’m going to the beach house.”

  A low voice thundered from the hall. “You’re going where?”

  Lovie and Vivian both swung their heads to the doorway to see Stratton standing there in his dark gray suit, his tie loosened at the neck. He still carried his briefcase.

  Lovie set down the glass and swallowed the lump of fear that was rising in her throat.

  Stratton stepped into the kitchen. “Did I hear you say you’re going to the beach house?”

  She swallowed again and almost coughed, her mouth was so dry. “Yes. I thought I’d go for the night. I need to get away. To think.”

  His eyes darkened. “Who is going with you?”

  She knew what he was asking and she looked directly into his eyes. “No one. I swear on my children, I am going alone.” When he didn’t reply, she added, “There is no one else there, except of course Miranda. Everyone else has left.”

  She knew they were talking in code and that he understood she was telling him she was not going to meet her lover.

  “Maybe I’ll go with you,” he said.

  “You can,” she replied evenly. “But I wish you wouldn’t. I went to see Bobby Lee today.” She saw his eyes widen slightly, enough to know that news had surprised him. “I also went to see my mother. I need time to think.”

  S
tratton knew the truth when he heard it, and his shoulders lowered. She saw again a range of emotions flicker across his face, and she realized with a stab of regret that he was suffering, too.

  Cara burst into the room. Her eyes were suspicious, leaving no doubt that she’d heard the tense words between her parents. She came to stand by her mother and leaned slightly against her chair.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, her eyes on her father.

  “It’s none of your business,” Stratton told her.

  “I thought I heard Mama say she was going to the beach house,” she said.

  “I might be, Cara,” Lovie replied.

  “Then I’m going, too,” she exclaimed.

  “Cara . . .” Lovie began to tell her she could not, but Stratton beat her to it.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” he told her sharply. “And neither is your mother!”

  Cara was lightning fast as she stepped in front of her father and boldly shouted, “She can go if she wants to. You’re not the boss of her!”

  It all happened in split-second timing. Stratton’s face colored, and he raised his hand in the air. Cara took a step back, turning her shoulder in an instinctive protective move.

  “Stratton!” Lovie shouted, jumping to her feet, knocking over her chair.

  Stratton stilled his hand midair.

  Vivian grabbed Cara’s shoulders and pushed her along out of the room. Stratton dropped his hand to his side with an anguished sigh.

  There was a long, pained silence between Stratton and Lovie as they struggled with what had almost happened.

  Stratton spoke first. “I wouldn’t have struck her. I swear it.”

  Lovie couldn’t reply. She didn’t believe him. That was the cold truth of it.

  “What’s happening to this family?” Stratton said with a cry in his voice. His face creased with anguish as he ran his shaky hand through his hair. “We need to fix this mess between us, Lovie. It’s starting to affect our kids. My heart is breaking. I’m at the end of my tether. I raised my hand to my own daughter! Don’t you know that’s killing me? That’s how far you’re pushing me. But I didn’t strike her. Thank the Lord, He held my hand back. I’m not an evil man, Lovie.”