by Lois Battle
The sun was going down over the marshes, washing the sky with a glorious palette of gold, pink, and coral. They took off their sandals and walked to the shore. Invigorated by the cool water lapping their feet and a refreshing breeze, they walked, barely speaking, Dozier looking out to sea, Josie watching a family pack up scorched and cranky children, a lifeguard taking down a volleyball net, a grimly determined jogger, a young couple buttoning one another’s shirts. They had walked perhaps a mile when their conversation turned, as it often did, to Edna. “I was always trying to get her to come out to the beach, but it didn’t have much appeal for her,” Dozier said. “She didn’t like feeling sandy and getting her hair mussed.”
“I love being outdoors, just walking along like this, but when Bear wanted to go camping it always seemed more chore than adventure to me. Having to cook out made me feel like a cave-woman. I guess I should’ve been more flexible.”
“I think you were more than flexible when it came to accommodating Bear.” His tone implied a wealth of knowledge. “I’m the one who should’ve tried harder. You know, Edna and I got along fine all the time I was working, but once I retired . . . I guess I believed all that Golden Years’ crap. I’d been in harness so long I just wanted to stay close to home. I didn’t understand—didn’t really try to understand—her restlessness. I didn’t give her much support when she opened the gift shop.”
“You financed it.”
“Sure. But I didn’t understand why she needed to earn her own money, and I didn’t praise her when she made a success of it. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it hurt my—I s’pose you’d say male ego. I thought she didn’t need me, and I resented her being gone so much.”
“I guess,” Josie said after a pause, “whenever someone we love dies, even if we’ve treated them well, we still feel guilt. The other day I was thinking about how annoyed I’d get when Edna fussed at us about cholesterol and all. If I’d known she had stomach troubles . . . And I used to think she was so cold when she wouldn’t go visit Mawmaw. I’d forgotten what a time she’d had—well, you’d both had—helping Mawmaw nurse Daddy while Bear and I were off in the Philippines.”
“I was busy with work, so it mostly fell to Edna. And you know Mawmaw never even thanked her.”
“Well, she wouldn’t, would she? Mawmaw didn’t think you had to thank a family member for doing what was expected of them. And God knows,” she added ruefully, “Mawmaw expected a lot.” They shared a laugh. “If I’d known how much being around sick people frightened Edna ...” Josie went on, “But we never talked about things like that. Never really talked about anything important.”
They stopped walking. The beach was virtually deserted, palms silhouetted against an almost navy blue sky, the ocean silvery in the light of a rising moon. “Carolina moon,” Dozier said, looking up at it. “Most beautiful moon in the whole wide world.” He put his arm around her. “Talking about things is good. You’ve made me realize that. But there’s a limit to it. You can never talk about the deepest things. Only poets can do that. And that’s not conversation.”
She tucked her head close to his chest and turned up her face. He pulled her closer, looking down at her. “Do you know what you are? You are”—he stroked her windblown hair back from her forehead—“a marvelous woman, and ...” She thought he’d kiss her, but he moved away, holding her at arms’ length. “. . . the best friend I’ve ever had.”
She wrapped her arms around her chest, turned away from him. and mumbled, “Don’t you think we should be getting back?” He fell in next to her. She was glad it was dark because the darkness hid the humiliation she knew must show on her face. How could she have shown herself like that—wide open, anticipating—like a moonstruck teenager asking to be kissed! They walked without speaking until she saw the palmetto that had been knocked over in the last hurricane. “This is the turnoff to the car,” she told him. He said he thought it was further on, closer to the lighthouse. “If you say so,” she said, her tone unintentionally pesky. He was right.
He started the motor immediately. They rolled down the windows, letting the night air rush in. If her life had depended on it, she couldn’t have made conversation. They had almost reached the highway when a deer, starting out of the wood, was caught in the headlights. She clutched his legs, he slammed on the brakes, the deer froze, wheeled, then crashed back into the underbrush. The tension between them was dissipated by the thrill of having seen the animal, rigid with fear, but quivering with life, close up. “Did I tell you about the pet raccoon when I was a kid?” he asked her. She shook her head. “I knew about your hunting dog, and that turtle you brought home that you used to hide in the icehouse, but you never told me about a raccoon.”
“Mean little varmint. Chewed its way right through the floor in my bedroom, and my mother . . .”
They were back on track, easy with one another again. Friendship, she’d once read or heard someone say, was love without wings. At this stage of her life, she’d best content herself with flights of imagination. Because he too was the dearest friend she’d ever had.
Her hand was already on the door handle when he pulled into his driveway. “Thanks. That was a lovely walk. I’m all relaxed, and it’s cool enough to sleep now,” she told him, planting a sisterly kiss on his cheek. “See you for breakfast in the morning.” She closed her kitchen door, threw the bolt and leaned against it, kicking off her sandals, reaching for a dishtowel to wipe the grit from between her toes. Though it was almost eleven, she decided to take a bath. She went up to her bedroom, flicked on the bedside lamp, then went into the bathroom without turning on the light. She turned the faucets to full, poured in lavender salts, opened the window, and stripped off her clothes so slowly that the tub was almost full when she lowered herself into it. She lay back, filling and squeezing the sponge, sudsing it and stroking her outstretched arm. Firm-muscled from gardening, it looked quite lovely in the shadowy light. Everyone, she thought, remembers their first real kiss, but no one ever talks about the last kiss, because they can’t know which kiss will be the last.
After soaking for a long time, she got out of the tub and walked, without drying off, to her chest of drawers. As she’d told her granddaughter last Christmas, in the privacy of her bedroom she could be whatever age she chose to be. The rose-colored gown Cam had given her was there, still wrapped in tissue paper. The fabric had a magic weight and feel, rich as satin, but gossamer light, and as she put it on, it seemed to take on a life of its own, slithering over her, clinging to her damp arms and breasts, but swirling as she did a half-turn. She put up her arms to an imaginary partner, closed her eyes and swayed, humming, “Sometimes I wonder why I spend the lonely night, dreaming of a star, The melody haunts my reverie, and I am once again with you ...”
She stopped and listened. Perhaps imagination was taking her to a place she didn’t want to go. She listened again. The knock was real. And insistent.
When she opened the back door he stepped in, taking her in his arms and gently kicking the door shut with one motion. “You know . . .” he began.
“Yes, I know,” she amazed herself by saying.
“You feel like ...”
“I know . . .” she said again. And then she was truly amazed.
Eighteen
“OH, THANK YOU, hear heart,” Peatsy said as Josie placed the vodka tonic next to her elbow and set a plate of rum balls and Pomona in the center of the table. “Now will you sit down?”
“Yes, Josie, do sit,” Mary echoed. “I’ve talked Mort into having a Christmas tree this year”—Esther looked none to pleased with this—“and we’ve got to get it this afternoon because the best ones are already picked over. Then I’ve got to do a major grocery shop. I swear, it’s been rush, rush, rush. It’s like Evie wrote in her last column: Christmas is nothing but stress. It’s consternation, not celebration.”
“Consternation, not celebration? For God’s sake, Mary,” Peatsy drawled, “you sound like Jesse Jackson.”
&n
bsp; “I’m really going to miss Evie’s columns,” Mary went on. “I was a big fan of hers and I’m sorry she quit her job at the paper.”
“Well,” Josie said, “newspaper work is notoriously underpaid. She’s looking around and I’m sure she’ll find something else soon.” Josie’s newfound frankness had its limits. In fact, Evie had not quit her job but had been asked to leave because she’d taken too much time off, mainly to go on trips with Jasper. At first Evie had been coy about her travels, saying she’d had a surprise offer to go to Las Vegas, a sudden chance to see Hawaii, an unexpected invitation to Dallas. She never explained how these happy opportunities came about or gave Josie any particulars, she just asked, in a rhetorical whine, “How can I possibly pass this up?” Initially she’d claimed that her trips were working vacations and she’d incorporated her travels into her column; initially her editor had put up with it. But after Evie had missed several deadlines, the editor had pointed out that Evie hadn’t been hired as a travel writer and that her articles, confined as they invariably were to descriptions of expensive hotels and restaurants, were not of great interest to the readership. Complaining to Josie about this lack of editorial sensitivity, Evie had slipped, or seemed to slip—one could never be sure with Evie—and announced that Jasper was going back to Dallas on business and wanted her to go with him, and since they were treating her “so mean” at the newspaper, she was going to go even if it meant losing her job. Which it had. In her final column, which had appeared last week, she’d advised her readers to break with tradition, escape the traumas of family, and make Christmas vacation a real vacation by leaving town.
“Well, give Evie my regards,” Mary said. “She’s coming to your place for Christmas, isn’t she?”
“Actually, no. She had an opportunity to go to the islands—St. Kitts, I think it is—with friends.” Lila and Orrie had never used the vacation package that Jasper had given them last Christmas, and Jasper was determined not to let it go to waste.
“Yes,” Peatsy said, “Gloria Seymour told me she ran into them at the airport a couple of days ago when they were leaving town.” She gave a subtle emphasis to “them,” letting Josie know that Jasper and Evie’s affair was no longer a secret.
Josie said, “Sorry, I’m not paying attention,” and picked up her cards. Not only did she disapprove of Evie’s affair, she thought it was downright disgusting. To imagine any woman—let alone her baby daughter—going to bed with Jasper Gadsden made her flesh crawl. Evie had never outright admitted the affair, but her references to Jasper, though casual, were increasingly frequent and she had new clothes, luggage, and jewelry she could never have afforded herself. The last time Evie’d come to visit, she’d switched on some afternoon soap about a tycoon and his young mistress; when Josie’d expressed disapproval, Evie had said blithely, “Better to be an old man’s sweetheart than a young man’s slave.” The cynicism of the remark had knocked Josie back. On the other hand, for once, maybe Evie wasn’t going to let herself be taken advantage of. And even Josie had to admit that Evie seemed happier than she’d ever been. “I’m just glad Bear wasn’t alive to see his daughter become a kept woman,” she’d complained to Dozier, the only one in whom she confided, “because he would have knocked her from here to next Sunday and taken a horsewhip to Jasper. I just can’t understand it. You know how I raised my girls, but you’d think Zsa Zsa Gabor had brought them up.” Dozier had reminded her that since her “girls” were all over forty, her opportunity for moral instruction was long gone. The smartest thing she could do was to recite that Alcoholics Anonymous prayer and ask God to give her the serenity to accept things she could not change.
“Josie, are you with us?” Peatsy demanded.
“Sorry,” Josie apologized, realizing that they’d lost the hand.
“How about one more round?” Mary asked. “We want to give you girls a chance to catch up.”
Peatsy rose to the challenge. “Go on and deal.”
“All right,” Josie acquiesced. “But it has to be the last because Lila’s dropping by on her way home from Columbia and we’re going to do some last-minute shopping.”
“Saw Lila being interviewed on TV the other night,” Mary said, shuffling the cards. “She was talking about wetlands preservation. I liked her new hairdo.”
“Josie, are you with me?” Peatsy prodded. “Please pay attention.”
Josie tried to put her mind to the game, bidding and slapping down cards, making the expected grunts and sighs and maneuvers. But her mind was not on bridge. She was wondering if Lila would live up to her promise and come by. There had been a bizarre and totally unexpected reversal in her relationships with her two eldest daughters: now it was Cam who stayed in touch, calling her a couple of times a week, while Lila kept the emotional distance that had separated them since last year’s awful fight. For weeks after that sorry event, Lila hadn’t even returned her phone calls, but after Orrie had insisted that Josie come up to Columbia for his swearing-in, they’d all made nice and smiled for the photo ops. She and Lila had resumed their round of phone calls, lunches, and shopping but there was an indefinable distance between them. The only time Josie had dared broach the subject of what had happened last Christmas Eve, Lila had stonewalled, saying, “I’d just like to put it behind me and get on with the rest of my life.” That was, Josie realized, the line guilty celebrities, criminals, and politicians used when being interviewed, as though their personal actions had nothing to do with events, as though any unpleasantness was no more than a cruel and inexplicable act of nature—like a hurricane they could not have predicted but were happy to have survived.
Josie’s intuition still told her Lila had been involved with a man that night, but she was relatively certain that whatever had happened had been an aberration—a one-time thing brought about by marital boredom, maternal frustration, and sibling rivalry that Lila was either unaware of or couldn’t admit. But things seemed to have resolved themselves. At last Lila and Orrie seemed to be flourishing, so ... let sleeping dogs lie. She had enough to think about, knowing, as she did, that she was going to make an announcement that would cause another furor.
“Looks like we’ve won again,” Mary told Esther, scooping the pile of quarters to her edge of the table.
“It was all your chompin’ and chewin’ on that drug gum that distracted us,” Peatsy said, pulling her pearls from the neck of her magenta twin set. “Shall we play one last winner-take-all?”
Esther was confused. “But I thought you were anxious to leave.”
“I am, but I just can’t stand to lose,” Peatsy admitted.
Mary checked her watch, snapped her purse shut, and got up. “I’d love to, but we’ve really got to be going. Esther?” They said their good-byes and Merry Christmases to Peatsy, Esther eyeing the last rum ball before following Mary and Josie to the kitchen. “Oh, before I go.” Mary reached up to the shelf above the China cabinet. “Would you mind terribly if I copied out your recipe for cornbread stuffing?” Josie handed her a pen and a sheet of note paper. Mary scribbled the recipe as Josie wrapped up some Pomona for them to take home. “This is such a great cookbook,” Mary said as she recapped the pen. “You know, Esther, you really must buy a copy to take back to Cleveland with you next week.” Having killed two birds with one stone (by praising Josie’s book, which she was never going to buy herself, and reminding her sister-in-law that she’d visited long enough), Mary kissed the air near Josie’s cheek and, after another round of good-byes, they went out the back door.
Josie picked up a tray and returned to the sun porch where Peatsy sat, fingering her pearls and staring out at the garden. “Can I get you anything else?” Josie asked, already stacking cups and plates on the tray.
“I guess not. I should be going, but, truth to tell, I’m not up to dealing with guests. I’ve lived alone so long now that I’m not fit company. If anyone—even Waring—stays more’n a day, I feel like I’ve been invaded. Thank heaven Cuba’s been available to help,’cause I’
m not about to be foolin’ and fixin’ for houseguests.”
“I know Cuba appreciates the work,” Josie said, though Cuba had told her that, despite the fact that Peatsy’s home had appeared in Southern Living, her cupboards and closets were a fearful mess, and her refrigerator hadn’t been defrosted for so long that cleaning it was like hacking her way to the North Pole.
“Come, sit for a spell.”
Believing that life should never be so rushed that you couldn’t find time for a friend, Josie sat, but cautioned, “Just for a few minutes.”
“I was wondering how Cam’s doing, living with a man after all those years of freedom. I don’t mean a man, I mean a husband.”
“A husband’s not a man?”
“I’ve always thought they were different.”
“You never really loved Gibbs, did you?”
Peatsy snorted. “I don’t think anyone but his aide ever cared for Gibbs, and that was only because he had to suck up to him for promotions. What a little dog-robber he was! Always snooping around, checking up on me so he could report back to Gibbs.”
“Why did you marry him?”
“Oh, Josie, don’t be naive. I married him because I was s’posed to, because he was considered a catch. At twenty-one, how could I be expected to know that the only power and personality the man had, he put on and took off with his uniform. But I was asking you about Cam.”
“She seems happy. More’n happy, she seems content. And that’s not a word I’ve ever associated with Cam. Her husband’s a prize. Can’t think of any man I’d rather have for a son-in-law, but it makes me sad to think that Bear didn’t live long enough to see her settled. He never told her, but he worried about her so. And I know Bear would have liked Sam. Sam’s his kind of man.”
“Then he might be my kind of man.” Peatsy fished the lime out of her drink and sucked on it. “I’d like to meet him.”