“I know. I appreciate it, but I’m not going to keep imposing on you. I need my own car, and I also need to help Mom. Business has been slow … the bills are piling up.”
Tina drove me to an upscale outdoor mall where I handed in applications at Sephora and Banana Republic and eight other stores before catching up with her at the bridal shop where we’d planned to meet. She was leaning against its front window and twirling her hair.
“Maybe I should apply here,” I said, peeking in the window. Tina was covering part of it, and all I could see was half of a mannequin dressed in a white organza gown.
She shook her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
I kept trying to look into the store, but she blocked me. “Why isn’t it a good idea? And what are you doing?” I asked impatiently. “Get out of the way.”
She folded her arms over her low-cut blouse and didn’t move. “Forget this place, Savannah. It’s filled with snobby women like Crystal. You don’t want to work here.” She draped an arm around my shoulders, shoved my head down so I was staring at cement, and led me away.
The smell of her mango perfume was suffocating in the heat, and I wasn’t in the mood for whatever game she was playing. I disconnected myself from her and headed back to the store.
She tried to stop me, but it was too late. I stared through the bridal shop’s window at a pretty redhead admiring her reflection in a full-length mirror. She wore a flowing wedding dress, and her mother and a saleslady beamed at her. She looked like a princess. Cinderella. Somebody’s dream.
I swallowed. This was why Tina had tried to keep me away.
She was beside me. “It doesn’t matter. It isn’t what you wanted.”
That’s what I’d thought two years ago, when Jamie bought a diamond ring and asked me to marry him. He was in law school at the University of South Carolina then. He’d wanted to tie the knot when he graduated, buy us a house in a fancy area nearby called Mount Pleasant—where Tina lived—and have babies together, in his own words, ASAP.
Only that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to go places, see things, and write award-winning novels that would fly off bookstore shelves. I’d thought that none of those things would happen if I became what he expected: a stay-at-home mom who ate lunch with attorneys’ wives and spent her free time getting massages and manicures.
It had been so hard to end it. But he just wouldn’t wait, and I couldn’t blame him. I knew how it felt to want things. The problem was that lately I’d been thinking that everything I wanted was never going to happen. I’d been wondering if I’d made a terrible mistake.
“I didn’t know they were getting married so soon,” I said, my voice raw and tight. But I should have known. Jamie had graduated recently. Maybe I’d been blocking it out.
I’d heard about the engagement a while back. The bride was a girl from my high school class who’d been on the cheerleading squad with me and Tina, but Jamie was a year ahead of us and had barely known her then. Now she worked as a paralegal at a law office downtown and the rumor was that they’d hooked up when he clerked there.
“Yeah,” Tina said. “I heard about it last week.”
I turned away from the window. “Thanks for not telling me.”
She smiled. The bells on the bridal’s shop door jangled, the door swung open, and there was the redhead with the saleslady calling after her, nervously warning against stepping outside because the sidewalk would dirty her hem.
The bride went by two first names. She’d been one of those pageant contestants with a pushy mother who’d dressed her up in high heels and a thick layer of makeup like a six-year-old prostitute. She’d also been my nemesis from eighth through eleventh grade. Now she gave me a phony smile and spoke in a sugary voice as she lingered in the doorway.
“Savannah, are you stalking me?” she asked.
“Don’t flatter yourself, Eva Lee,” I said.
“Seriously,” Tina added. “Savannah has better things to do.”
Sure, I thought. I have better things to do, like resume my desperate search for a minimum-wage job while this empty-headed debutante gets ready to marry the only guy I’ve ever loved.
“Of course she does,” Eva Lee said in her saccharine tone, moving her steel-blue eyes from the run in my panty hose to my smeared mascara. She’d always been so calm and cool and polite, like a shady version of Melanie Hamilton Wilkes from Gone with the Wind. And it killed me to think that she and Jamie were going to make the most beautiful children.
It had been bad enough imagining them together at the law firm. She’d probably batted her false eyelashes in his direction and pretended to drop pens so she could bend over in tight skirts to pick them up. Maybe she’d offered to help out when he was working late for the sole purpose of tempting him to nail her on a desk covered with pleadings and contracts.
“Are you still working at the library?” she asked.
“No,” Tina answered for me. “Savannah’s pursuing better opportunities.”
Eva Lee touched the string of pearls around her graceful neck. “Like what?”
My mouth opened, but nothing came out. I just stared at the cute spattering of freckles across her delicate nose and her bee-stung lips. I couldn’t even hate her, because this was my fault. She hadn’t stolen Jamie from me. I’d let him go.
Tina hiked up her blouse to stop her satin bra from sticking out. “None of your business, Cinderslutta. You can put on that well-bred, Miss Priss act all you want, but we’ve known you long enough to see what’s behind it. So spare us the phony conversation.”
Eva Lee cocked an eyebrow. She was still touching her pearls, and the massive, marquise-cut diamond on her left hand glinted beneath the sun and practically singed my retinas. It wasn’t the ring that I hadn’t taken from Jamie. This one was an upgrade. Maybe he thought she was, too.
“I’ve known you for a long time, too, Tina,” said Eva Lee, completely unmoved. “Do you still sneak out of your daddy’s house after dark like an oversexed alley cat?”
All the color drained from Tina’s bronzed skin. She didn’t talk about her late-night doings with anybody except me, yet it hadn’t kept word from trickling out. But even when we were whispering, she always held back. She tried to turn things romantic when I knew they weren’t. Her stories always ended before they got too personal, like when a couple kisses in a movie and the screen goes dark just as they open a bedroom door. But when Tina had a few drinks in her, the stark truth flowed from her mouth.
Eva Lee shifted her eyes from Tina to me and widened her fake smile. “I’m sure I’ll see you around, Savannah.”
I was sure she would. I was sure we’d run into each other for the rest of our lives.
When she was gone, I sighed and my shoulders slumped, and Tina put her arm around me as we headed toward the BMW.
“Jeez,” she said. “What a snotty B.”
“There won’t be any hellfire and damnation if you swear, Tina. And I know Eva Lee’s a bitch. She’s been that way since junior high. But she’s smart … unlike me.”
Tina stopped walking and looked into my face. “You’re very smart. You’ve got a college degree in English literature. And the stories you write are some of the best I’ve ever read.”
Tina had been my unofficial editor since we were kids. She was the only person I trusted not to snicker and criticize first drafts straight off the printer. For years, I’d been pacing nervously in the hallway outside her bedroom while she curled up on her window seat with my work and her Sharpie, writing things like Beautiful imagery and I’m not clear about why the aunt doesn’t get along with the sister. I just wished she’d used her smarts at Davidson.
She looked at me more closely. “If you’re thinking about Jamie, it’s only because the right guy hasn’t come along yet. You just have to get back out there and meet someone else. I mean … Jamie’s the only guy you’ve ever slept with.”
I rolled my eyes. “Say it a little louder, Tina. Somebody across the
street didn’t hear.”
She covered her mouth to smother her husky laugh. “You have a lot to offer,” she said, bending her elbow around mine. “Don’t forget it.”
I’d forgotten it a while ago. But I was lucky that I had her to remind me.
Two
“Want to come over?” Tina asked as we drove away. “Daddy has a business dinner at The Wentworth Mansion tonight, and Stepzilla is eating at Magnolias with some of her friends. I’m sure they’ll guzzle chardonnay for hours and she won’t be back until late.”
Magnolias was a restaurant on East Bay Street, and Stepzilla was Tina’s name for Crystal, who was only nine years older than we were and had become the second Mrs. Brandt at the age of twenty, just eight months after Tina’s mother was buried inside a pink casket under a dogwood tree.
I nodded, and soon we were in Tina’s curving driveway that led to a two-story brick home with black shutters and towering white columns that framed the front door. It overlooked Charleston Harbor, where Mr. Brandt kept his boat docked at the marina.
Then we were inside the five-bedroom, six-bathroom house that had been gutted and redecorated after Crystal returned from her European honeymoon. The colors were warm, the furniture was elegant, and the living room was filled with welcoming wing chairs. But there wasn’t a trace of the first Mrs. Brandt except a faded photo that Tina kept in her bedroom.
We looked up from where we stood in the foyer to see Raylene—Tina’s ten-year-old sister—rushing down a palatial staircase in a white dress embroidered with cherry blossoms. Her blond tresses bounced around her face as her dour babysitter lady trailed behind. Raylene hit the last step and jumped onto the shellacked wood floor.
“Raylene,” said the babysitter, “well-bred young ladies don’t jump in the house.”
“Sometimes they do,” Tina said, reaching into her purse for a few crisp bills. “Thank you for your time. It’s a lovely evening … you’re free to enjoy it.”
The babysitter took the money and left, and I closed the door behind her as Raylene wrapped her arms around Tina’s narrow waist. I’d always thought it would be sweet to have a sister who’d do that sort of thing.
Tina sifted Raylene’s hair through her fingers. “What do you want for dinner?”
She flashed a gap-toothed smile. “Fried chicken and cheese spread on Ritz crackers.”
Tina’s upbringing of debutante balls had done nothing to reduce her affection for down-home cooking and junk-food appetizers, which she’d been devouring at my house for years with no effect on her curvaceously trim figure. She was good at making those things herself, and she’d also won lots of blue ribbons for her cupcakes and cookies at church bake-offs.
“Make the spread with pimento cheese and chopped pecans like you always do,” I said as we went into the spacious, airy kitchen that had French doors with a view of the pool in the yard and the palm trees that surrounded the harbor. Tina was organizing ingredients when we heard the front door open, keys jangle, and high heels tap against the wood floor.
Crystal stood in the doorway. She had big blond hair and breast implants, and she’d once won a Faith Hill look-alike contest. She always pretended not to notice when much younger guys ogled her on the street and whispered that she was the hottest MILF in Mount Pleasant.
“What happened to your dinner at Magnolias?” Tina asked.
“It’s been rescheduled,” Crystal said, parting her lips into a bleached, toothy smile as she walked toward us and then closed a button on Tina’s blouse. “You must’ve gotten dressed in the dark this morning, sugar. You don’t want to give your half sister a bad example, do you?”
Sugar. That’s what Crystal called Tina when she was putting her down. Crystal also loved to point out that Raylene was Tina’s half sister, even though neither of them saw it that way.
“Tina isn’t a bad example, Crystal,” I said, eyeing the saline-filled balloons on her chest.
She turned toward me. “Your mama raised you better than to stick your nose into family business. And when will you learn to call me Mrs. Brandt?”
I shrugged. “We’re so close in age that I just don’t think it’s proper.”
She ignored me and looked at the cheese and the crackers and the raw chicken legs spread out on the countertop. “Tina, I’ve told you to stop buying that redneck food.”
Tina put her hand on her hip. “I’d think it would make you feel like you’re right back at home in North Charleston. And I’ll buy whatever I want with my own money.”
Crystal laughed. “You don’t have your own money. Every cent in your wallet comes straight from your daddy’s pocket, and don’t you forget it. Now throw that trash in the wastebasket where it belongs. I don’t want it stinking up my house.”
“It’s my house, too,” Tina said. “It was mine when you were living in a double-wide.”
I kept quiet, stuck somewhere between smiling and wincing at Tina’s reference to the trailer in which Crystal had grown up and which she hadn’t escaped until she met Mr. Brandt.
“As you constantly remind me,” Crystal said while we heard the front door open and close and footsteps in the foyer. “But this house isn’t yours, sugar. It belongs to me and your daddy. Since you ruined the chance he gave you to get an education, the only way you’ll ever have your own home is if you find a husband who’ll buy you one. You’re certainly past due to walk down the aisle.”
“If this was 1955,” I said. “I think the female species has evolved since then.”
“You go on justifying if it makes you feel good about yourself,” Crystal said with the same patronizing smile I’d gotten from my neighbors when they found out that Jamie had proposed to Eva Lee. “When I was your age, I was celebrating my fourth wedding anniversary and Raylene was a year old. But I’m sure everything will happen soon enough for both of you. Tell me, Tina … how’s that nice boy you’ve been seeing?”
Tina’s lips tightened. Then Mr. Sawyer Brandt, CPA, was in the kitchen, dressed in an expensive suit. He was a handsome man in his fifties with chestnut hair who looked as if the watercooler at his office had a direct line to the fountain of youth.
“My meeting was canceled,” he said in his thick Charleston accent as Raylene sprang into his arms. He laughed and hugged her while Tina watched like she missed being ten.
“I’ll be in my room,” she said, storming out of the kitchen.
Mr. Brandt moved his eyes between me and Crystal while Tina’s feet pounded against the stairs. “What happened?” he asked.
Crystal shook her head. “Same old thing. You know how your daughter is.”
I gave her a dirty look and went upstairs, where I opened Tina’s bedroom door. She was on her window seat with her knees pulled to her chest and a Marlboro Light in her mouth, blowing smoke from her nose and through the open window.
She turned toward me. “Don’t say anything. I need this.”
I supposed I might pick up a nervous habit, too, if I’d been forced to live with Crystal for the past thirteen years. I probably would’ve been convicted of murder by now, some form of slow poisoning like antifreeze in her chardonnay. So I just shut the door and walked into the room, which had vanilla walls, a king-size bed with a brass frame, a desk, and two oak dressers. The walk-in closet was crammed with the dresses Tina had worn to country-club parties and black-tie galas, including her own debutante ball at the Island House—a grand southern mansion set against the Stono River. Her room was a beautiful prison cell kept clean by a maid who visited every Wednesday morning like a magical fairy for sloppy girls.
“Your mother was so pretty,” I said, admiring her photo on the dresser. “She passed her looks on to you.”
Tina crushed her cigarette in an ashtray adorned with a painted-on sunset and Love from Myrtle Beach. She’d picked it up when we drove there for Labor Day weekend last year. “I only wish she could come back and pass Crystal right out into the street.”
“I know. But you don’t have to put up
with Crystal. You can leave whenever you want, Tina.”
She snorted. “And go where? I hate to admit it, but she’s right about a few things. I don’t make enough money for my own place, she’d never let Daddy buy me one or pay my rent, and one disastrous year in college won’t help me find a better job. The only way out is to get married … and the chances of that are bleak.”
I plopped down across from her. “That isn’t the only way. You can take care of yourself.”
She laughed. “What a nice idea. But that’s all it is.”
I sighed. Tina was smarter than people thought. She was smarter than she thought, too. She loved to read—and not just the celebrity gossip blogs that had become a second addiction. She was always checking novels out of the library, and she recognized good literature when she saw it. And before her mother died, Tina had gotten high grades and won spelling bees and illustrated stories that I wrote on construction paper and bound with yarn. Two of them were on a shelf above her desk. I sprang up and slipped them out from between fashion magazines, then sat opposite her again and smiled as I flipped through the pages.
“Remember this?” I asked, holding up a picture.
“Yeah,” she said wistfully as she touched a flower she’d drawn in yellow crayon.
“Remember the time in ninth grade when Eva Lee stole one of my stories out of my knapsack and posted it online?” I said, cringing as I remembered that my classmates had written the cruelest comments and laughed so loudly about it in the cafeteria that I locked myself in a bathroom stall and cried. “You stood up for me. You told them off. You said it didn’t make sense for them to criticize my story when it was just as good as the soap operas all the girls watched.”
“It was better than any soap opera,” Tina said.
I smiled, remembering her going ballistic on those kids. “You always defended me … you were my friend even though I didn’t live in Mount Pleasant and I didn’t have designer clothes and a big house like most everyone else.”
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