The final leg runs from the bridge at Highway 17, past the town of St. Marys to the Cumberland Sound where she empties into the Atlantic. Here she might reach a mile wide, maybe wider, and some forty feet deep—deep enough for the submarines at King’s Bay. Her brackish water has turned cloudy brown, stinging with salt and running with dolphins, sharks, redfish and trout. Her pluff mud banks crawl with fiddler crabs, razor-edged oysters and sporadic piles of English cobblestone once used as ballast. Here, her pace quickens, swirling undertows—water tornadoes that spin beneath the surface—can pull ducks below the surface, and while she winds and meanders, don’t let her crooked self fool you—her speed is deceiving.
While her landscape changes with every mile, so does her rhythm. Her cadence. And she will not let you get in a hurry. At first she slows you, allowing little more than a crawl. Once she has nursed you, she opens, allowing you to stand and walk. When she finds you willing, she grants you open water and lets you stretch your legs. Finally, if you’re worthy, and because you’ve lasted through the worst she could throw at you, she opens her arms, takes you into her bosom and mothers you. But she is a jealous mother. If you hesitate, if you doubt her, if you blink and take your eye off her, she will spit you out of her mouth, cast you out to sea and bury you in the deep.
Once the water hits the ocean, the sun lifts it to the clouds, only to spill it once again across the continent. In that cycle, certain molecules of water have made this journey from swamp to river to ocean thousands of times.
DOWNED TREES, stumps and beaver dams made the first five hours mostly miserable as paddling goes. The harness began cutting into my shoulders because I spent as much time out of the canoe pulling and portaging as I did inside and paddling. Abbie lay there and laughed. A little after noon, the rain let up, then stopped altogether and the sun poked a hole in the clouds. Steam burned off the water, which had begun moving slightly faster, and the heat jumped into the upper seventies. The change in barometer did strange things to animals—including snakes. They’d be looking for higher ground, which meant they’d be out of their holes and moving.
The river made a hard right turn, leaving a sandbar, so I took advantage of both the topography and the sun, beached the canoe and carried Abbie to a spot where she could soak in the sun and sink her toes in the river. She was feeling pretty good, so she sat up when I set her down.
One of the gadgets I’d bought from Gus was a little gizmo called a Jetboil, developed by high-altitude climbers. It was a self-contained, self-lighting propane unit, about the size of coffee can, that could boil two cups of water in less than ninety seconds. I clicked it on, started peeling a hardboiled egg and then poured the tea while Abbie licked the chocolate off a Snickers bar and fed the rest to the minnows nibbling on her toes.
She scanned the underside of the canopy, her skin white against the sun and her veins blue against the surface. “I think I remember it here.”
I nodded. “This canopy runs a few more miles and then the river widens, spreads the trees and lets in the sun, warming the water.”
She sniffed the air and pointed with half a Snickers. “And somewhere along here, a pasture runs down to the water’s edge. Seems like I remember something about some cows.”
“You do.” I thumbed a fleck of eggshell off my thigh. “There’s a chicken farm not too much further. Depending on the wind, we’ll either get the cows or the chicken. Sort of a hit-or-miss thing.”
She chewed slowly. “How long before you’ll remarry?”
Abbie was far more comfortable with her not being here than I was. “What kind of a question is that?”
“Come on, this is not a news flash. You’ve had four years to get used to the idea.”
“That doesn’t mean I am.”
“So?”
“So what?”
“Have you?”
“Have I what?”
“Gotten used to the idea.”
“Yeah, honey. Just peachy.”
“Seriously. You could live another fifty or sixty years.”
“And?”
“What’re you gonna do?”
“To begin with, I figured I’d start smoking and drinking like a fish to cut the time in half.”
She saw she wasn’t getting anywhere. A minute passed. “You should, you know.” It was a statement, not a question.
I handed her a mug. “Next time, you can make your own dang tea.”
She hovered above the steam. “Seriously. We need to talk about this. Now”—she batted her eyes—“here are the names of five people I think you should consider.”
“I’m not talking about this with you.”
“Mary Provencal. Pretty, smart, probably keep you out of trouble. But you’d have to learn how to make a better martini.”
“I’m not believing this.”
“Karen Whistman.”
“Honey, she’s married.”
“Yeah, but she won’t be for long. She’s tall, outdoorsy, knows a thing or two about art and has more money than God.”
“Would you stop it?”
“Three. Stacy Portis. A little short but always the life of the party and from what I hear, great in bed. Which”—she laughed—“she’ll need to be after you’ve been married to me.”
“You’re killing me.”
“Fourth. A stretch, but…Grace McKiver.”
“Have you lost your mind?”
She pitched the remains of her Snickers in the river. “Probably, along with most everything else. Now, Grace might seem cold at first, but once you get to know her she’s sincere, loyal to a fault and, thanks to a very good plastic surgeon, a goddess with her clothes off.”
I watched the Snickers float like a short turd in the water. “That answers a lot.”
“Lastly, Jeanne Alexander.”
“I’m not listening.”
“She’s is probably the most like me, so you’d have to unlearn very few of your bad habits.”
“What bad habits?”
“Well, since you brought it up.”
“I didn’t. You did.”
“You leave your underwear on the bathroom floor. Toilet seat too often up. You squeeze the toothpaste in the middle. Never make the bed. Hate yard work. Haven’t cleaned your studio in ten years.”
“That’s ’cause I haven’t been in there in nearly three.”
She stopped and tilted her head, a practiced move. “Which brings me to my point.”
“This is your father coming out in you.”
“You should marry. I mean, not right away. Play the mourning widower and give it a year. Maybe eighteen months. Besides, it’ll get them competing.”
“Abigail.”
She didn’t look at me, but stared off into the trees. “You should. I hate the thought of you living alone.” She licked the chocolate off her front teeth. “But more than that. You must promise me that you will sit at your easel—”
“Abbie.”
“I’m serious. Promise.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because…”
She tapped me in the chest. “I know you. You can’t keep it all bottled up in there. Sooner or later, you’ll have to let it out.”
“You sound like Mom.”
“You’re trying to change the subject.”
I packed up the canoe and then scooped my arms beneath her, lifting her. She wrapped her arms around my neck. “Promise?”
I looked her in the eyes, fingers crossed. “I promise.”
“Uncross those fingers and say it.”
“I promise…I will always remember the way you burnt your first pot roast to a crisp.”
“Are you finished?”
“Okay…I promise I’ll always wish I could make the art you’ve always thought that I could.”
She nodded. “Fair enough.”
I looped the harness around me and began my snow-dog pull. She lay in the boat, staring at me. “You can, you know. It’s in you.”
She pointed her 800 mcg lollipop at me. “Don’t start that crap with me.”
I didn’t have to turn around to see her windshield-wiper finger cutting the air. “Honey…” I stopped pulling, letting the lines fall slack. “Face the music. I fish better than I paint. I even helped your dad catch fish and he sucks. But in terms of art, other than a portrait here and there—which I’ll admit, I do seem to have some talent for—I’m a hack for hire. Just look at our house. Garage to attic, it’s full of stuff we can’t sell.”
“You’re not a reject to me.”
“Well, you’d be alone on that one.”
The Actiq often did this. Made her chatty and defiant. Not that she needed help on the defiance part.
“Band-Aid.”
A deep breath. Her adopted nickname for me. “Yes.”
“Come here.”
I untangled myself and sloshed backward, kneeling beside the gunnel. She rested her head on her palm. “I’ve seen art in Rome, London, New York…even Asia.” She touched my nose. “No one moves me the way you do.”
Despite my dashed hopes and her continued embarrassment, that right there is the singular reason I’ve not burned everything I’ve ever painted and continued to keep my studio. Because she believed long after I’d quit.
“I love you Abigail Coleman Michaels.”
“Good. Glad we settled that. Now, mush! It’s hot in here with no breeze.” I turned, lifted the straps across my shoulders and began pulling. As the tension pulled back, she said, “You know you might also consider Wendy Maxwell, her family’s got that place—”
“Would you shut up and go to sleep?”
She paused and her tone changed. “Not until you set my feet on Cedar Point.”
Her voice echoed with a sense of finality. I leaned into the harness, dug my feet into the sand, and the ropes cut into my shoulders.
9
The driver of the car was wearing a black hat and white gloves. I walked out wearing faded jeans—a hole in the right knee—a black T-shirt and my only sport coat—which was blue and missing a button on the right sleeve. “You think she’ll notice?” I asked. The driver stared at my sleeve and shook his head but said nothing. “Great,” I said, stepping into the backseat, “’cause I’d hate to overdress.”
Pushing the door closed he said, “I doubt that will be a problem.”
He drove me down King Street to South Battery and stopped before an imposing three-story crowded with people. Classic Charleston. All the women wore pumps and pearls while all the men were wearing the same brand of four-eye, lace-up leather shoes, the same shade of khakis, same style of blue button-down and slightly varied versions of striped ties.
I stepped out of the car and nearly choked on my own tongue. To my left, the sidewalk looked dark, desolate and inviting. I stared up at the porch, which held up the four huge columns in front of the house. She stood at the banner, engaged in conversation, looking at me.
I straightened my coat and the driver whispered behind me, “Don’t worry, sir. Most of them are just compensating. If the story about you, and what you did for Miss Coleman, is true, you’ll be fine.”
“And if it’s not?”
He studied the scabbing cut across my right middle knuckle and the purple under and around my left eye. “I imagine it is.”
“Thanks.”
I climbed the stairs into the aroma of designer perfumes married to Bermuda aftershaves. I’d never seen more diamonds in my life. Ears, neck, fingers. If these people were compensating, they had spent some money doing it. Mink, cashmere, camel hair and starched oxford broadcloth created the texture where high-pitched laughter echoed above the low hum of conversation.
She slid through the crowd like water. “Thanks for coming.”
“You know all these people?”
“Most.” She looped her arm in mine. “Come on, I want to introduce you.”
We walked through the front door, into a grand entry where five layers of trim accented the fourteen-foot ceilings and the crystal chandelier looked to weigh a ton. Along one wall a tall man in a white coat dipped a ladle into a silver punch bowl and filled china teacups with something that smelled of apple cider, cinnamon, clove and citrus. He offered me a cup, “Suh?”
“No thanks.”
Abbie took the cup from him and said, “Thanks, George.” She offered it to me. “It’s wassail. I made it.”
I sipped it. “Interesting, but…but good.”
She set the cup down, turned right and walked into a den where the firelight was glowing off flush faces and dark mahogany. A white-haired, distinguished, handsome man in a striped suit stood surrounded by forty or fifty people. Some swirled brandy, others sipped Chardonnay, all held a glass. He was the epicenter of attention and conversation. When the crowd parted to make way for her, which meant us, I recognized him. He was broader than I had anticipated and sounded taller on TV.
She led me forward, looping her other arm through his. Looking back, that was the moment I joined the tug-of-war. And he sensed it. “Daddy, I’d like you to meet Doss Michaels.”
I extended my hand. “Senator, sir.”
His handshake was firm, practiced and cold, and his cuff link was sharp and pointy. He had sized me up before our hands touched. “So, I have you to thank for saving my daughter.”
“No, sir. Given a few more minutes, I think she could have taken him.”
He smiled. “Well spoken. Well spoken.” The crowd laughed and then quieted. He addressed them. “Everyone, may I introduce Doss Michaels to you? A man I have just met and yet to whom I am forever indebted following the events of last week.” They clapped and made me wish I could jump through a trap door. She looped her left hand back through mine, interlocking our fingers, and spoke to all the women who’d gathered about—waving her right index finger like a windshield wiper through the air. “Not yet, ladies. He’s mine, you can just wait your turn.”
I had never seen one person more comfortable with and more in command of her surroundings. She had a gift. She led me outside to the porch and around another table where a lady was serving okra soup. Below us, near the center of the yard, two men stood over an open fire and roasted oysters. The backyard was well lit and looked like an English garden. The perimeter was an eight-foot-tall hedge that had been trimmed at perfect ninety-degree angles. She poured me a lemonade and said, “Here, drink this. It’ll take the edge off.” I sipped while she reached high and rubbed her fingers on a plant hanging above her. She sniffed them and then held them below my nose. It reminded me of roses.
“That’s a funny-looking rose.”
She laughed. “That’s ’cause it’s not. It’s a rose-scented geranium.”
“Are you one of those people who really knows plants? Green thumb and all that?”
She pointed across the backyard. “Would you like to see my garden?”
“If it’ll get me away from all these people, I’ll help you dig in it.”
We walked through the maze that was her garden while she pointed, named and explained. “That’s pittosporum…that’s my rose garden…twenty-seven different kinds…this is my citrus. Eighteen different trees from Dancy tangerines to Satsumas to Duncan grapefruit.” We turned another corner. “That’s a loquat tree.”
“A what-quat?”
Her laugh melted me. “Loquat.”
It was an odd-looking little fruit—round and maybe half the size of an egg. I picked one off a limb and smelled it. “It reminds me of those little things we used to throw at cars when I was a kid.”
“You sure those weren’t cumquats?”
“Well…it was some sort of quat.”
She rolled it in her palm. “They’re also called Japanese plums. You can’t buy them in a store ’cause they have no shelf life, but they’re sweet. You had one when you came in.”
“When?”
“Loquat liqueur. It’s in the wassail.”
“Where
do you get it?”
“You don’t. You make it.”
My suspicion was growing. “You’re one of those people, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know,” she said smiling. “What kind of person is that?”
“Martha Stewart meets Julia Child. You probably sleep two hours a night and make your own wrapping paper at Christmas.”
She turned away, smirking. “What’s wrong with making your own paper?”
I looked back toward the house and the growing crowd of people. “You’re good at this.”
She snapped a dark red rose off a bush and slid the end of it into my coat pocket. “I’ve had a lot of practice.” She waved to an elegant older woman across the yard. “Born into it. Then adopted by it.” She smoothed my jacket collar and stepped closer, into my personal space. “By the way…it’s Abbie. But”—she waved her hand across the crowd—“most of these folks call me Abbie Eliot.”
I sipped and swallowed, letting the lemonade warm my throat. “I spent some time at the library this week. You…” She’d been written about in every magazine and paper you could mention.
“Don’t believe everything you read.”
“Which parts do I believe?”
She smiled, pulled on my hand and led me back across the grass. “You’ll have to ask me that.”
I followed. Her in one hand, the lemonade in the other. “Okay.”
I spent the evening walking in her wake, growing addicted to the smell of her perfume and the gentle pull of her touch. Whether by the smell of her or the taste of that lemonade, I grew more intoxicated by the minute.
After she’d introduced me to twenty-five people who’s names I couldn’t and wouldn’t remember, she led me across to the other, grassier side of the yard where tents were set up and people were nibbling on appetizers. She eyed the buffet. “You feel like grazing?”
I lifted a near-empty glass. “Yeah, my lips are feeling fat. I need something to soak up the lemonade.”
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