The Summer Girls

by Mary Alice Monroe

  “That’s true,” Mamaw said thoughtfully. She picked up Lucille’s card and re-sorted her hand. “I know!” she said, discarding a ten of diamonds. She looked back at Carson with eyes bright. “You can use the golf cart! It probably needs a new battery. And a good scrubbing. It’s been sitting in the garage unused for years, but it should still be good.”

  Carson frowned and remained silent.

  “Carson,” Mamaw said, sitting back in her chair, looking at her now with her complete attention. “I love you more than anyone or thing in the world. You know that, don’t you? As I loved your dad. But I made mistakes with him. I see that now. I made life too easy for him. I was always there to smooth his path. I should’ve made him ride a bike to work. Mercy, I should have made him get a job!”

  “Amen,” muttered Lucille.

  Mamaw reached out and cupped her palm around Carson’s cheek. Her eyes pulsed with devotion that couldn’t be denied. “My darling girl, I won’t make that same mistake with you.”

  “Aw, go ahead,” Carson said, then lowered her eyes with a laugh of embarrassment. At the moment, she wasn’t joking. She’d worry about her soul later. Right now she was broke and needed a ride.

  Mamaw patted Carson’s cheek in a gesture of summation, drew back, and picked up and sorted her cards with quick, snapping sounds. “That golf cart has a nice roof on top. It’s absolutely precious. Go on out now and give it a look-see.”

  Carson’s sigh was mingled with a moan as she rose to go. She was arrested by Lucille’s hand on her arm. Carson wanted to jerk her arm away, she was so annoyed with both of the women. She glanced down into Lucille’s dark eyes, not sure if the woman was being kind or was about to deliver another zinger.

  Lucille patted her arm with compassion. “I know this might seem like a strikeout now,” Lucille told her. “But, darlin’, you just scored a home run.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The following few days there was a flurry of activity at Sea Breeze. Harper waited until her mother left for the Hamptons, then she flew to New York to pack up clothes and conclude her affairs with human resources at the publishing house. Harper didn’t think she would be gone for more than two weeks, and Carson believed her. Meanwhile, Dora drove home alone to Summerville to see to the many details of preparing the house for sale and to face the odious task of meeting with lawyers for her divorce. Despite her reservations, she’d agreed to let the women at Sea Breeze care for Nate until she returned.

  The house seemed quiet with her sisters gone. Carson loved them, of course, but they were as yet hardly close. She lay on the iron bed, her arms folded under her head, and her thoughts turned back to those summers the girls had shared at Sea Breeze. Back when Mamaw had called them her Summer Girls.

  The many summers had been a hodgepodge of visits that continued from the time each of them was very young until they’d become teens. Initially, only she and Dora had spent summers together. Carson had lived with Mamaw in Charleston, and Dora, three years older than Carson, was invited to spend the summers with them from her home in Charlotte, North Carolina. Those early years were the best for the two eldest girls, long lazy summers of playing mermaids and painting on the veranda with Mamaw. Later, those years’ difference signified a lifetime when Carson was ten and Dora was thirteen. Then, Dora found her half sister annoying; she invited friends to Sea Breeze and Carson was excluded from their games.

  It was a turnaround when Harper began coming to Sea Breeze at six years of age. She was so small and delicate, dressed like one of the Madame Alexander dolls she coveted.

  The girls had spent only three full summers together, during which time there was an eight-year spread between Dora and Harper. Carson had been the link between the eldest and the youngest, the go-between, the popular one, the peacemaker. After Dora turned seventeen she stopped spending her summers at Sea Breeze. Carson and Harper spent another two summers together alone, which forged their bond. Where Dora loved playing dress-up and feminine make-believe games, Carson and Harper let loose their inner Huck Finns. They’d explored every inch of Sullivan’s Island and Isle of Palms, searching for the pirate treasure every child on the island knew was buried somewhere.

  Like the Lost Boys, however, eventually they grew up. When Carson turned seventeen she got a summer job in Los Angeles and Harper’s mother purchased a house in the Hamptons. This marked the end of the Summer Girls at Sea Breeze.

  A few years later, the girls came together again when Dora married Calhoun Tupper in a grand Charleston event. On the heels of the wedding came two funerals. Their father died young, at forty-seven, and soon after, their grandfather Edward Muir passed away. His funeral in 2000 was the last time all three girls were together. Now, all these years later, Carson wondered if Mamaw’s dream of reuniting her Summer Girls was just a romantic notion.

  Carson’s gaze shifted to the elaborate portrait of an early Muir ancestor that hung on the opposite wall. Her great-great-great-great-grandmother Claire Muir wore an elaborate navy velvet dress trimmed with thick layers of white lace of the quality Carson saw in history books of queens and great ladies. Her thick, raven hair was swept up and adorned with rows of pearls. More pearls, long, incandescent strands of them, fell down past her generous breasts. When Carson stared at the face, the woman’s brilliant blue eyes seemed to be staring right back at her.

  It had always felt like this, ever since Mamaw had moved the portrait from the main house in Charleston to Carson’s room. Carson looked into the eyes of the great lady in the portrait, remembering that day.

  Carson had been in that awkward transition period between childhood and adolescence and fully aware of the awkwardness of her tall, gangly body, her big feet, and her dark, thick hair. Not at all like her sister, Dora, with her soft golden hair and fair skin and breasts beginning to bud from her slender body.

  Mamaw had knocked softly on her bedroom door and, hearing her crying, stepped inside the room. Carson had tried to control her sobs, but couldn’t.

  “Whatever is the matter?”

  “I’m so ugly!” Carson had cried, and began another crying jag.

  Mamaw came to sit on the bed beside Carson. “Who says you’re ugly, child?”

  “Tommy Bremmer,” she mumbled, and buried her face in her arms. “He said my hair was a rat’s nest.”

  Her grandmother sniffed imperiously and said, “Well, if he’s a Bremmer, then he ought to know a rat when he sees one. But he doesn’t know one thing about girls. Neither did his grandfather. Now, stop sniveling, child. It doesn’t suit you.”

  While Carson tried to settle her sobs, Mamaw went into the bathroom and returned with a damp washcloth. Carson closed her eyes and relished the feel of the coolness as Mamaw gently wiped the hot tears and snot from her face. When she opened them again she could breathe easier because her chest wasn’t so filled with hate.

  “Muirs never cower,” Mamaw told her, sitting beside her on the mattress. She began tugging a comb through Carson’s long, knotted hair. “You’re becoming a young lady, you know.”

  “Ow, stop,” Carson whined, wiggling away from the comb.

  Mamaw persisted. “Beauty is our duty and sometimes it hurts. We must be stoic. Now, let me have a hand at this magnificent head of hair you have.”

  Carson closed her eyes while her grandmother combed her hair. After the first painful detangling of knots, her grandmother was able to run the comb smoothly all the way from her scalp past her shoulders.

  “You have your mother’s hair,” Mamaw told her. “So thick and dark.”

  “I don’t remember her.”

  “It’s no wonder. You were so young when she died. Dear Sophie . . .”

  “I don’t even have a picture of her. Everything was lost in the fire.”

  “Yes,” Mamaw replied softly.

  “What was she like?”

  Mamaw paused her hand and sighed. “She was very beautiful. Dark, evocative.” She shrugged. “So French. And rather shy, or perhaps she just did
n’t speak English all that well, I don’t know. You are an interesting combination of both of your parents.”

  “I wish I got Daddy’s blond hair, like Dora. Not this rat’s nest.” She tugged angrily at her hair, hating the dark color and thickness of it, hating the way the girls sometimes called her a gypsy.

  “Someday, when you’re as old as I am, you’ll thank the Lord for this thick head of hair when all your friends’ hair is thinning. When you’re a young woman your hair will be one of your best features,” Mamaw told her knowingly. Then she reached up to grasp Carson’s chin and peruse her face in shrewd study. “And your eyes, of course.”

  Carson looked at Mamaw with her face pinched in doubt. “No, Mamaw,” she replied, trying to be stoic. “I know I won’t be beautiful when I grow up. Not like Dora.”

  Mamaw huffed, releasing her chin. “Yes, it’s true our Dora is beautiful. A Southern belle kind of beauty. Yours is a different beauty. One you’ll have to grow into.”

  “Like my mother?”

  “Yes,” Mamaw replied. “But did you know, my dear, that you also get your dark looks from our side of the family?”

  Carson’s eyes widened. “But everyone’s hair is yellow.”

  “Not everyone’s. There is a line of dark Irish in our blood.”

  Carson didn’t believe that fact would help her become a beauty, but she loved Mamaw all the more for trying to cheer her up.

  The next day Mamaw dressed in a summer silk dress, coiffed her hair, and got into the blue Cadillac for a trip across the bridge to her house in Charleston. When she returned a few hours later, she carried with her a large package wrapped in brown paper. Dora and Carson were hot on her heels as she and Lucille carried the mystery package into the house. Eyes twinkling, they carried it directly into Carson’s room. Carson and Dora exchanged looks of wide-eyed wonder.

  Mamaw ignored the girls’ questions and kept an enigmatic smile on her face as she removed the sheets of brown paper to reveal a large portrait in an ornate gold frame.

  Carson gasped, unable to tear her gaze from the proud, beautiful woman depicted. Mamaw and Lucille hoisted the big portrait and hung it with great effort. When they were done, Mamaw slapped dust from her hands, placed them on her hips, and stood back to admire it.

  “Carson,” she said in a tone that made Carson stand straighter, “this is your great-great-great-great-grandmother Claire. She was considered the city’s greatest beauty in her time. Quite legendary. Look at her eyes. The blue—that’s the Muir blue color that’s been carried down for generations. Claire was the wife of the great sea captain who founded our fortune.” She lifted her hand and said in a staged whisper, “The pirate! The story goes that once he’d set eyes on Claire he gave up the life of a pirate and settled down in Charleston to win her heart. She went against her family’s wishes to marry him. The rest, as they say, is history. The love of a good woman can change a man, you know,” Mamaw admonished.

  “But Mamaw, why did you bring the painting here from the big house?” Carson wanted to know.

  Mamaw reached out to lift Carson’s chin with the tip of her finger. “I saw the resemblance you share with Claire. I want you to see it, too. Every day, when you wake up, look into this portrait and see how beautiful you are. And courageous.”

  “Dear, wise Mamaw,” Carson murmured, remembering that day. Because there was no one to share with her stories of her mother, of whom there was not so much as a photograph, this ancestor had, in her child’s mind, taken on the role of her mother. At night before she fell asleep, Carson had looked into Claire’s beautiful eyes and shared her secrets and believed she was heard.

  Of all the treasures in this house, Carson knew that this portrait would be the single item she would request.

  Carson had always seen the spark of a challenge in Claire’s expression, the look of a woman who never surrendered. Looking at the portrait now, she felt herself rally. Carson took a deep breath and dragged herself from her bed. She went downstairs to gather a bucket, strong cleaning fluid, and an armful of rags, then escaped Nate’s current temper tantrum to go to the garage to dig out from the ruins the promised golf cart. It was either that or the rusty bike.

  Inside the garage it was as dark and ancient as an old barn. Spiderwebs graced every nook and sand filled all the crannies. The single four-paned window was so dirty, rays of light barely penetrated the grime. Carson found the golf cart parked in the far corner behind a dead lawn mower, two rusted bicycles, and a worm-eaten wood table covered with dusty brown boxes filled with assorted rusted tools that Mamaw felt had life left in them. Carson thought her time would be better spent renting a trash bin and tossing everything into it.

  The scent of vinegar and accumulated dust made her sneeze and her eyes water, but she gritted her teeth and pressed on, sweeping and scrubbing the dirt, cobwebs, and mouse droppings from the white golf cart. It was a two-seater cart with a bench in back. Once she washed and rinsed it with the hose and dried it with old towels Lucille had provided, she was surprised to discover that the little cart and vinyl seats were in pretty good shape. Like the Cadillac, it was probably only taken out once in a blue moon. Carson took heart. A new battery, maybe a few other incidentals, and this golf cart might really work.

  A few days later, she was rumbling in her cart along the narrow roads shaded by scores of palm trees and the graceful low boughs of ancient live oaks. She felt the breeze against her cheek, heard the crunch of gravel beneath the wheels, and likened the feeling to being on a boat in the water, closer to the world around her and not trapped behind steel doors and glass.

  “Darn Mamaw for always being right,” she muttered to herself, having to admit she loved it. Carson liked to name her vehicles, so she christened the cart “Bouncing Matilda.” While Matilda wasn’t the Blue Bomber by any stretch of the imagination, it had a certain charm all its own and did the job of getting her from point A to point B on the small streets of Sullivan’s Island—at least in the daylight. As she drove along the road at a slow speed, she chuckled, remembering those two old hens sitting on the porch playing gin rummy and how they’d completely bamboozled her.

  That night Carson found Nate lying on his bed already in his favorite pajamas with the spaceships-and-stars pattern. He was reading a book. He looked at her as she approached, his body stiffening in wariness. She felt immensely sad to see it. She wanted him to like her and to feel at home here. He was such a skittish little guy with his dark eyes staring up. Suddenly she thought of Delphine and, in that moment, knew exactly how to behave around Nate. They really were alike in many ways, she thought.

  She walked slowly to the bed, not getting too close, not making any sudden moves. “Here,” Carson said, holding out two books. “I bought these for you. I thought you’d like them.”

  “What are they?” he asked in a small voice.

  “Well, take them and see.”

  Nate pulled himself up into a seated position and cautiously took the books. As he saw that they were both about dolphins, his face lit up.

  “They’re not baby books,” she told him, getting closer but mindful of keeping her distance. “This one describes some of the research on the intelligence of dolphins. I really enjoyed it. Like, did you know dolphins look at themselves in the mirror? I mean, they know it’s themselves they’re looking at. That’s called being self-aware.”

  “I read about that already,” Nate said, matter-of-factly. “Mamaw gave me a book about dolphins.”

  “Oh. Well, there’s a lot of other interesting information in it. And this other one is sort of a picture guide to all marine life. There are other animals out in the sea you might like to read about. Like orcas and porpoises and whales.”

  Nate began flipping through the pictures hungrily. He paused to look up and ask, “Can dolphins really be glad to see people?”

  “Yes,” Carson replied honestly. “I think they can.”

  “I’ve been reading a lot about dolphins,” Nate said seriously. “Di
d you know that male dolphins are bigger than females? Large dolphins in the Pacific Ocean can weigh up to one thousand pounds. I’ve been thinking. Delphine is a bottlenose dolphin in the Atlantic Ocean, and she is a female. I don’t know her age, though. Do you?”

  “No.”

  Nate considered this. “She might weigh about five hundred pounds.”

  Carson smiled in appreciation of the boy’s cleverness. “That sounds right.”

  Nate accepted her approval. He looked at his book a moment, then lifted his head. This time, his eyes, though they did not meet hers, were filled with worry. “Is my mother alone with my father?”

  Carson appreciated the gravity of his question and responded seriously, “No, I don’t believe so.”

  “He won’t take care of her.”

  “Nate, your mother is fine and she can take care of herself. She’s only meeting your father, packing up some things for you, and then she’ll be back.”

  He thought about that answer. “Can you put it on the calendar when she will come?”

  Carson scratched her head. She knew she had to be honest and clear with Nate. He wouldn’t accept the hypothetical.

  “I don’t know exactly when she’ll be back. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I will call your mother tomorrow and ask her. If she gives me a date, I will put it on the calendar for you. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  He looked so small and sad and alone, Carson wished there was some way for her to reach him.

  “Let’s get to sleep early tonight,” she told him. “We need our rest. Because tomorrow, we’re going to swim.”

  Nate’s eyes rounded in terror. “No. I won’t.”

  “You’ll love it. You’ll see.”

  “I won’t.”

  Carson crossed her arms and pulled out her trump card. “Delphine will be there.”

  “Okay,” he said grumpily, but he scrambled under his blanket.

  “Good night, Nate,” she said, yearning to kiss him but refraining. Instead, she tucked his blanket higher along his chin. “Sleep tight. Dream about dolphins.”