The Secret to Southern Charm

by Kristy Woodson Harvey

  He shook his head. “I know what I said, but if it’s you and me and the baby, I think it could be kind of great.” He paused and looked at me again. “Stay, Ansley.”

  Another chill ran through me, a dread that this was not what we had agreed to, a horror that I had made a colossal mistake. But, in that, I realized: I was thinking about it. And that was what scared me most of all.

  It took only a few minutes of considering leaving Carter, bringing this baby back to Peachtree Bluff, and living with Jack for me to realize that if I was meant to be with Jack, I would have been. But I wasn’t. I was meant to be with Carter.

  And now I felt like I was where I was meant to be once again. The girls were home. I was going to decorate Jack’s house. I wasn’t even nervous about leaving everyone for Mom’s doctor’s appointment. She had fought me tooth and nail on this for weeks. But after the episode a couple of days ago, that feeling in my gut that this was more than just normal, old-age forgetfulness kept nagging me. We were going to a neurologist in Athens late that afternoon, and I wouldn’t hear another word about it.

  “Hey, Mom,” I said nonchalantly, walking into her room. She was making her bed. I had hated it when she arrived in Peachtree Bluff in that cast and was so reliant on us. Her independent streak was one of my favorite things about her, and even at eighty-three, she was going strong. That same independent streak was, of course, the thing that had driven this deep, seemingly impenetrable wedge between us. But so many of the things in our lives are a bit of a double-edged sword. The mere thought of her losing her mind was too much for me to take.

  “Let’s go out to lunch,” I said.

  She looked at me suspiciously. “Your three daughters just got home from six days at sea and you want to take me out to lunch?”

  I shrugged. “Yeah.” Then I winked at her. “If I’m gone I don’t have to help with the laundry.” I paused. “Plus, we’ve had practically no quality time together since you got here.”

  She perched herself at the end of her freshly made bed and said, “Speaking of, I wanted to talk to you about that. I’m as good as new, and I think it’s time for me to go home.”

  I could feel the shock on my face, though I wasn’t sure why. Of course my mom was going to want to go back to Florida, to her friends and her life. But as my brother Scott and I had discussed many times, her age was starting to show, and she needed to be here where I could keep an eye on her. Scott’s travel reporting kept him on the road or in the sky all the time, and it wasn’t like my brother John even spoke to any of us. This was the only option. Only, none of us had had the nerve to break it to Mom yet. And, quite frankly, if I was going to play caregiver for the rest of her days, I didn’t feel like it was my responsibility to break that news to her.

  I gave Mom my most pitiful look. “Couldn’t you stay a couple more weeks? Until I get Sloane back on her feet? There’s so much going on here, and I could really use your help.”

  Mom took the two steps to her walker, patted my shoulder, and said, “Sure, sweetheart. Whatever you need.”

  I couldn’t believe that worked.

  I helped Mom into the car, and she said, “Why don’t we go to one of those divine waterfront restaurants? My treat.”

  Eighty-three-year-olds and three-year-olds are essentially the same. Slow. Stubborn. Extremely opinionated. But eighty-three-year-olds generally have better table manners, so, overall, they’re better lunch companions.

  Verbena was our favorite waterfront restaurant, but I hadn’t been there in a while. White tablecloths and two-hour lunches weren’t exactly my speed these days. Mom and I both ordered tea service instead of lunch. There was nothing better than those little sandwiches with the crusts removed and tiny brownies, lemon squares, and macarons.

  “So how long do you think it will be?” Mom asked.

  I knew without clarification that she meant until we heard about Adam. “I hope soon,” I said. “The waiting is the worst part.”

  She nodded. “You know all about that.”

  The waiting when Carter died had nearly killed me. And I was never one of the lucky ones who knew. I never had remains or a DNA sample; I had no wallet, no shoes. Nothing. I never had any real closure. Of course, I had known the entire time that he was gone. But there’s always that voice in the back of your head that tells you to keep hoping, keep searching, keep believing.

  Mom smiled at the waitress as she served us. “Thank you.”

  I placed my green tea bag in the white porcelain pot. Mom selected Earl Grey, as usual. She was kind of a tea purist, except when it came to Kyle. If Kyle fixed her anything at all, she would bat her eyelashes at him and tell him it was divine.

  She took a bite of brownie first. I laughed.

  “What? At my age, I’m not taking any chances.”

  I took a bite of mine too. Why not? The desserts at Verbena were decadent, rich, delicious, award winning. But I would rather have had a Hershey’s bar, if I’m honest about the whole thing.

  My mother and I always had a deep bond, which is why it had shocked me that she wouldn’t let the girls and me come home when I discovered Carter had left me not penniless, but in a cataclysmic hole of debt. I had tried so hard to move past it, but I think this period in my life now only served to intensify the wound because I knew for certain I would never leave my girls out in the cold when they needed me most.

  In the quiet, in the dark, in my most private thoughts, the ones I would never say out loud to anyone, I resented the fact that, though she hadn’t lifted a finger to help me when my life exploded, I would be the one taking my mother to doctors’ appointments, feeding her dinner, bathing her, taking care of her every need until the day she died. But, mostly, I felt lucky I could do it.

  We’d never been best friends like some of my girlfriends had been with their mothers, and I was OK with that. I only hoped that, maybe, during this time in our lives, we could repair what was broken between us.

  “Darling,” she said, taking a tiny sip of her tea, “I meant what I said the other day. Why do you push that divine man away? He’s totally in love with you. I’m totally in love with you, but even still, I recognize you are not perfect. He, on the other hand, does not.”

  I laughed. Mom had always loved him. When I first started dating Carter, she kept asking what had ever happened to that darling Jack.

  “Mom,” I said. “Carter was the one. If Jack had been the one, I would have married him. But he wasn’t.”

  “I did love Carter. But you didn’t marry Jack because he didn’t want children. I assume you don’t want any more?” She raised her eyebrows.

  We both laughed. I wiped my mouth and took a sip of cool water. “It’s not that simple, Mom. I loved him all those years ago, but we’re different people now.”

  She looked at me like I was dense. “That’s why you give the man a chance. That’s why you try to get to know each other now.”

  She made it sound so simple, but perhaps that’s because she didn’t understand the entire picture. When Jack came back to Peachtree Bluff, I was panicked that the girls would find out our secret, would find out that Jack was Caroline and Sloane’s father. Now I knew Jack would never let that happen. But, even still, how could I lie to my children like that? How could I be with Jack without telling them the truth? I wasn’t sure I could.

  But that was all beside the point. Today, my mission was to get this woman to the doctor. I decided to level with her.

  “Mom,” I said, taking a bite of egg salad for courage. “I’m taking you to the doctor today.”

  She waved her hand. “Darling, my ankle is fine.”

  “Not for your ankle,” I said. This was when it was going to get dicey. “For your brain.”

  I expected her to freak out, but she barely reacted, still as a cat stalking its prey. That’s when I began to worry.

  She took a sip of tea and cleared her throat. “There’s no need.”

  I cut her off. “I know you’re going to say you’r
e fine, but you’re not fine, Mom. There’s something going on, and if we can catch it early, maybe get some treatment, it won’t progress.”

  She took a deep breath and reached for my hand across the table.

  I knew that she was going to argue with me, so I said, “Mom, you were out of your mind when Jack was there the other night. You didn’t recognize anything, didn’t know who he was . . .”

  “Darling,” she said calmly. And that’s when I knew something was wrong. Something big. I knew that whatever she said next was going to change my life in ways I wasn’t ready for. “I don’t know how to tell you this, really,” she said. She paused and looked into my eyes as if she were memorizing them. “But, you’re right. I’m not fine.” She put her hands back in her lap, smoothing her napkin slowly. She took another sip of tea, cleared her throat, and looked up at me. “I have cancer, darling. I’ve had it for quite some time. It’s in my brain.”

  I felt numb, frozen in my chair. She was so calm, so steady. I wanted to cry, but instead, I sprang into action. “We have to get you to a specialist. Are they going to operate, do chemo, radiation?”

  She put her hand up to stop me, and I knew we were about to have the biggest fight of our lives. “We are not going to do any of that. I’m going to live out my days as I please. I will eat my dessert first and watch Mickey Mouse with my great-grandchildren. And when my time is through, it will be through.”

  She was so stoic when she said it. I usually thought of this decision, of this state of mind in the face of death, as resigned. But Mom wasn’t resigned. She was almost joyous. And it hit me. My mother was dying. My mother was going to die. Soon. I felt tears well up and dabbed them away with my napkin.

  “Sweetheart, let’s not make a scene, OK? I’m fine. I’m better than fine. I’m not losing my hair and vomiting. I’m not spending a year in the hospital to potentially buy me two more when I’ll never really be right. I’ve thought about this. I assure you this is the right decision.”

  “For whom, Mother? Because it doesn’t feel like the right decision for me.”

  She smiled at me sadly. “I will not have you spending your life caring for me and shuffling me back and forth to doctors’ appointments. I’m ready to be with your father, anyhow.” It wasn’t until she said, “You are all terribly boring,” that I finally saw emotion breaking through her placid expression.

  “You will not go back to Florida. That’s it, and that’s final.”

  She opened her mouth to argue, but I think she knew I needed this, in the way that mothers always do. She took a sip of tea and said, “I do so love that beautiful Emerson with that darling Mark. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if she married him, moved back to Peachtree, and gave up all that acting nonsense?”

  Just like that, we were finished talking about dying. We were, instead, talking about life. While I wasn’t sure I agreed with her decision to forgo treatment, I did know one thing for sure: in the entire time I had known her, all my life, except for once, I had never known her to make the wrong decision. And that thought would carry me through until the very end.

  SEVENTEEN

  war zone

  sloane

  January 20, 2016

  Dear Sloane,

  I lost one of my men today. His world is over. I’m still here. How can that be? All there’s left to do is keep fighting. All I can do is make sure he didn’t die in vain.

  I love you,

  Adam

  SIX MONTHS INTO OUR marriage, Adam and I had slowed the fast, crazy pace of our relationship and begun getting into a routine. He was home, so I wasn’t worried. I was painting and working at a gift shop near our post. We would cook dinner together at night. It was a simple life, the kind of life I’d never known I wanted but, now that I had it, felt absolutely perfect.

  Perfect, that is, until the night we were lying in bed and I was drifting off, when Adam said, “When do you want to start trying to have a baby?”

  I had jolted up. “A baby?” I asked, panic surging through me. “No one ever said anything about a baby.”

  It was true. No one had. In all those months of talking and writing letters, Adam and I had never talked about having children. Obviously, this was not a good idea. Having kids is one of the most life-altering things that can happen in a family, and I knew we should have talked about it a million times. It was always on the tip of my tongue, especially because I knew I seemed like someone who wanted that traditional life, that role as mother and caregiver.

  Only, I didn’t. Being with Adam had, ironically, soothed that fear that had embedded itself into me like a tick in flesh after my father died. Whereas before, I felt terrified of getting too close to anyone, scared of loving or letting anyone in, paralyzed by the mere thought that I might receive another phone call that someone I had loved more than life was gone in an instant, now, with Adam, I felt safer.

  It was strange since he had a job where he could be taken from me at any moment. But I knew that. In his line of work, people died. People were killed. It’s not that I expected he would be killed in the line of duty by any stretch of the imagination, but it was always a possibility. It was always something that was in the back of my mind.

  While I realize this doesn’t sound totally rational—tragedy will do that to a mind, I think—I liked that the element of surprise was gone. If Adam were to be killed, it would rip my heart out of my body. It would break me in ways I couldn’t even imagine. But it wouldn’t be a total shock. And so, in that way, I felt prepared. But I wasn’t prepared for this.

  “We’ve only been married six months,” I said. The reality was not that I didn’t want to have kids because Adam and I hadn’t been married long enough. I knew without hesitation that Adam and I would be together, happily, in love, until our dying breaths. The reality was that I didn’t want to have kids at all. And if I was honest with myself, I had never brought it up before because I was selfish. I had never brought it up because I knew it might be a deal breaker for Adam—and I wanted him more than I wanted anything else on the planet. If I was with Adam, everything else would work out. Or so I thought.

  He laughed and kissed me on the cheek. “I know, babe,” he said. “But I’ll be deployed again soon, and wouldn’t it be great to be pregnant before I go?”

  I looked into his earnest face. He was so happy, so enthusiastic, so charming. Who wouldn’t want to pass along those genes?

  Well, I mean, I wouldn’t. I could never handle the level of fear and anxiety that would hide out inside me every minute if I had children out there walking around.

  Were they safe? Were they sick? Would they get cancer? Break their leg? Get an infection that went into their bloodstream? Would they get hit by a car crossing the street? I could play “what if” all day, every day, all night, every night. And I didn’t even have them yet. There was no way. But Adam was so happy and he looked so expectant. I wanted to please him. I wanted to make him smile.

  But I didn’t want children. I should have told him. I considered telling him. But I couldn’t bear to send him away, into a war zone, with this huge burden weighing on him. I couldn’t send him away distracted. I needed him focused on his security, his safety. I needed to give him a reason to come back home. I could have suggested we wait until then, but I looked into his eyes and I remembered what he had given me, what he had sacrificed for me. I couldn’t bear to break his heart.

  So I said, “That sounds great, honey.”

  Adam didn’t know I had an IUD. And what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

  EIGHTEEN

  well-behaved women

  ansley

  Mom called the boys to tell them about her cancer. Scott was reporting on a crisis in Venezuela, and despite the major flooding there, he promised he would be on the first flight back to the US. John was at work just an hour and a half away. He didn’t promise to come, didn’t even mention it, in fact.

  Carter was a terrific judge of character, and it used to bother me that he didn’
t like John. He never said as much, of course, but I could tell. He was usually so warm and open, but around John, he closed up. I’m not saying John is a bad person, necessarily, but I see now that Carter’s assessment of my brother was correct.

  John and I have been distant for a long time. I always believed we would evolve past that, but when Grandmother left me the Peachtree Bluff house, I realized John and I would never have what Scott and I had. Because, at our core, we are fundamentally different people. Who would abandon his own sister and practically never speak to her again over a house?

  All of that came rushing back to me when I got a text from him that morning: Let me know when Mom gets really bad off so I can come.

  I texted back: She’s dying of cancer, John. I’d say time is of the essence.

  I could feel the chill through the phone. His lack of response didn’t surprise me, but it would have been nice to be able to tell my mother that her son was coming.

  Just like that, she appeared in her robe, fresh from a shower. I was sitting at the dining room table, sipping my first cup of coffee of the morning and sketching a room—something I hadn’t done in quite some time. Over the past several years, I had created mood boards for my clients so they could see exactly what furniture, fixtures, and fabric I was contemplating for their rooms. But I knew already that Jack would let me have free rein, and sketching the rooms I was designing was how I best dreamed them. I liked to think I was drawing them into life. Plus, the sketches were beautiful and would make a terrific thanks-for-letting-me-decorate-your-house gift.

  Mom’s cane was tapping rhythmically on the floor as she walked into the kitchen. “Don’t you need to get to your store, darling?”

  I needed to go to my store very, very much, but I had seemed unable to pry myself away from my mother’s side since she told me the news. The store would still be there when she was gone.

  “I can work on these sketches right here,” I said, standing up. “Let me get your breakfast. I made bacon and eggs for the kids, so I kept some warm for you.”