Mayhem in Myrtle Beach

by T. Lynn Ocean

  “On a bus. Then in a rental car.” Neither of them moved for seemingly endless seconds.

  “I mean, well, come in. Oh, you’re already in... sit down, sit down. Why didn’t you call?”

  Disappointed that he didn’t grab and hug her, Gretta replied bitterly. “I did. But she answered. So I hung up.”

  “Mother, she is my wife. And she has a name. It’s Sheila.”

  “Well, it looks like she’s done well for herself. You have a beautiful home, and her cosmetic surgeon must be one of the best, don’t you know.”

  “Gretta!” Mabel scolded.

  “Look, why did you bother to come?” Tommy said with anger. “You suddenly appear in my life after all these years to chastise my wife? You did enough of that years ago, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “Hey, hey, you two,” Mabel said. “When you are trying to talk and someone gets defensive, communication comes to a screeching halt.” Her accent turned ‘screeching’ into a three syllable word and ‘halt’ into two. “Now, try to be grown-ups! Tommy, obviously your mama came here because she wanted to see you. She’s standing here in the middle of your living room, isn’t she?”

  The dog’s head cocked sideways and its short floppy ears perked up as it looked at Tommy, seemingly awaiting an answer.

  Mabel cocked out a hip and put a hand on it. “And surely you love her, but unfortunately, you inherited the Rafferty stubbornness gene and you have been an absolutely crummy son for the past ten years. Although I could say the same about Gretta. She’s been a crummy mama for the past ten years.”

  “Who are you?” he said.

  “I am your mother’s best friend and roommate.”

  Sensing that the conversation might be a while, Doorbell sighed and lay down on his stomach, stretching all fours in every direction as far as they’d go.

  Sheila, acting as though she hadn’t overheard the exchange, appeared with a tray. She served tea in silence and the group arranged themselves uncomfortably around a glass-topped coffee table. Tension settled thickly in the room, like an early morning fog hanging dangerously low over the highway. Doorbell rolled over on his back to see if anyone would scratch his belly, then after a few seconds, yawned and rolled back onto his stomach.

  “It’s nice to see you again, Mrs. Rafferty,” Sheila lied. “Do you care for lemon in your tea?”

  “No, thank you uh… Sheila. You look well. Marriage to my Tommy must agree with you.”

  “Your Tommy? Mother, you haven’t spoken to me in years. Your Tommy?”

  “You will always be my son, no matter what.” Long seconds passed during which no one spoke. Inexplicably, Gretta thought of Willie. She wondered what his body looked like when Sherwood found him and if he would have been embarrassed for someone to find his body like it was. Would he have put on a bathrobe if he’d known he was about to die? Did he have on clean underwear? Would he have taken care of any last-minute business, such as calling anyone to tell them that he loved them? She wondered if he’d ever taken notice of her and Mabel walking around the nature trail at Great Wings, and if so, would he have liked to join them? Had he ever wanted to walk up to them and start a conversation, just chat about the weather? Or complain about arthritic knees? What would Willie do in my situation with Tommy, knowing that he wouldn’t be in this world much longer?

  If she died, Gretta figured that Tommy would handle things gracefully. She envisioned him attending her funeral out of obligation because it was the right thing to do. He’d be quite handsome in a dark suit with his glamorous wife standing supportively by his side while holding her grandson’s small hand. A grandson she’d never met.

  She wondered where her grandson was. She didn’t know what to say to her son, but she was sure that she could carry on a conversation with a young child.

  As if reading her mind Sheila asked, “Would you like to meet your grandson, Mrs. Rafferty?”

  “Hum, yes.” What would he think of her? Would he be wearing one of the T-shirts she’d sent—one that a salesman assured her were hip? “Tommy mailed me pictures in the Christmas cards, but it’s hard to imagine him in real life, don’t you know.”

  “I mailed you the pictures,” Sheila said quietly.

  To this, Gretta had no reply. Sheila reached for the cordless telephone to make a phone call. She instructed Jeremy to come home from his friend’s house.

  “Yes, there is company here,” she told him. “Someone that wants to meet you. Okay, Honey. See you in a little while.”

  Sheila hung up and smiled into the volatile room. “Jeremy will be here in about five minutes.” Thomas looked at his wife. He admired her composure and appreciated the way that she had taken charge of the situation when she realized that he’d become flustered in the presence of his long-lost mother.

  It was in this instant, when Gretta observed her son looking at his wife, that she understood their love for each other. Her son was not only grateful for Sheila’s intervention, but clearly happy. Gretta reminisced that when she was younger, nothing, absolutely nothing could have deterred her from loving her husband. Nobody could have told her what to do, or changed her mind about marrying him. She cherished Tommy’s father, and believed that nobody else could ever have experienced the bliss that was hers.

  Suddenly nervous, she wished she could immerse herself into CNN Headline News or a Bloomberg stock market update. Fidgeting with a tissue in her purse, she contemplated retrieving the iPhone from their rental car. She wanted to escape. She was a junkie and the constant streaming news updates were her drug of choice.

  “No.” Mabel shook head. “Your iPhone stays where it is.”

  “Yeah, yeah, sure.” Gretta answered without looking up. “Okay.”

  After another awkward silence, Sheila offered to show her guests the house. Doorbell stood and shook himself, knowing the humans were about to do something. He led the three women from room to well-decorated room while Sheila mentioned the home’s unique features.

  ***

  Smells of cooking garlic and tomatoes filled the house as everyone situated themselves around the dining table. The menu was lasagna, fresh spinach salads with a hot honey and bacon dressing, and homemade garlic rolls. Halfway into the dinner, Gretta grudgingly admitted to herself that her daughter-in-law was a fabulous cook. Jeremy, who couldn’t stop talking, was the only one not eating the mouth-watering food. Doorbell hid beneath the table at Jeremy’s swinging feet and was rewarded with an occasional piece of still-warm bread. Nobody seemed to notice the sounds of Doorbell’s collar tags jingling as he chewed the tasty morsels.

  “This is so cool! Wait till Zack hears that my grandmother is here. I knew I’d meet you some day. You look just like me when I was little. The pictures of you, I mean, in the family photo album. Like, the picture of you when you were a little girl? I thought that maybe I had a sister I didn’t know about when I first saw the picture. Only it was black and white, so I knew it had to be really old, you know?” He paused for a drink of iced tea. The boy was clean cut and handsome, like his father. Innocent enthusiasm seeped through his pores as he studied the stranger across from him. Gretta wondered what they had told the boy about her—or rather about the absence of her. She thought of all the Christmases during which she’d shut them out of her mind. Jeremy’s birthdays, during which she’d mailed gifts. His soccer games, the track & field awards, the slumber parties and pillow fights… At this point, it really didn’t matter. They were together now. And her grandson was a beautiful, intelligent child. What a stubborn fool she’d been.

  “So,” Jeremy continued, oblivious to the fact that the adults weren’t talking, “does this mean that I can take a summer trip and come visit you in Virginia? Because I’ve still got fourteen states to go before I’ve been to every single one in the United States. Like, I’ve still got Nebraska and Utah. And Virginia. See, I’ve got this map that you put the stickers for each state on after you go there. Zack cheats on his, he says you can put a sticker on if you’ve flown
over a state, but I don’t do that. You have to actually spend at least one night there, in that state, before you can put the sticker on it.”

  “Of course you can come visit, Jeremy” Mabel answered. “Your grandmother would love to have you visit. We have a spare room with your name on it.”

  Jeremy looked to his grandmother for confirmation.

  Gretta managed a smile and nodded before pushing up her bifocals to hide teary eyes. The boy was so much like Tommy had been as a child. His voice, his hair color, his unbridled enthusiasm, even his mannerisms. Absorbing the enormity of the mistake she’d made, she bounced between regret and hope, landing on hope. She was sitting across from her grandson who, thankfully, had not been poisoned with the details of her past actions. She excused herself and made her way to the bathroom to blow her nose. Sheila sent Jeremy to the kitchen for more bread.

  “Your mama is a stubborn old woman, Tommy,” Mabel said. “But she’s here now. And I am missing a fabulous show at the Palace Theater in Myrtle Beach to be here with her. So give her a chance, will you? And pour me some wine.”

  “The decision to cut us out of her life was hers,” he said quickly in a near whisper. “She refused to accept my family.”

  “Baby, she made the decision,” Sheila said in a low voice. “But you confirmed it by your lack of effort.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” he sighed.

  Jeremy returned to the table with a basket of bread, chatting away. Minutes later, Gretta returned. Smiling. She scratched the spot behind Doorbell’s ears and he curled around her feet when she sat down. “I’m very happy to be here, Tommy. And I’m sorry about everything.”

  “What are you sorry about, Grandma? What happened?”

  Thomas answered for her. “Son, your grandmother and I had a disagreement when your mom and I first got married. Then we both made the mistake of being stubborn and staying mad at each other.”

  “Until now,” Mabel reminded Tommy that it was, in fact, his mother that had made the decision to reunite.

  “Yes, until now,” he agreed.

  “So, like, what did you fight about? I mean, Zack and me, well we fight sometimes. Once, I didn’t even talk to him for a whole week. I even got my walkie-talkie back, I was so mad. But you can’t use two walkie-talkies all by yourself. And, anyway he’s my best friend, you know? What could be so bad that you’d go for, like, years without talking to someone?” Jeremy looked around the table waiting for an answer.

  Sheila decided to be honest. “Jeremy, your grandmother didn’t like me very much. You know how that boy, Brian, moved into the neighborhood last year and you and Zack didn’t like him at all? But now you do?”

  Jeremy nodded.

  “Well, it was kind of like that. We didn’t give each other a chance. Your grandmother thought that I wasn’t the right choice for your dad to pick as his wife.”

  “But you’re the coolest mom in the world!”

  “Yes, well, let’s convince your grandmother of that fact, hmm?”

  ***

  Comfortably stuffed, the family settled in the living room. Doorbell remained by Gretta’s feet and she absentmindedly stroked the top of his head. Sheila pulled a box of home videos from the depths of a hall closet and rifled through them until she found the one of Jeremy as a baby. She figured that the videos might partially make up for the lost time, and since her mother-in-law was finally being civil, she wanted to react in kind.

  “Do you want to see the birth?” Sheila asked.

  “The birth of what?” Gretta said. She pushed the bifocals up on her nose, thinking only briefly of her iPhone. It was in the car. Her empty hands fidgeted with the lining of her pockets, but found only the small Bluetooth device.

  “Jeremy, of course.”

  “You mean in the nursery at the hospital?”

  Sheila laughed. “No, I meant the delivery. Thomas was in the birthing room with me. And my best friend was there too. She took the video for us.”

  “My God!” Mabel said, astonished. ‘God’ was turned into two syllables. “They were all in there with you during the delivery? The actual labor? And you have it on videotape? Like a movie?” She turned ‘movie’ into three disbelieving syllables.

  “Well, yes. But maybe we should save that video for another time. Oh, here’s one of Jeremy’s first birthday. He was so adorable when he started stuffing the vanilla icing up his nose.”

  “Mom! I did not put it up my nose!”

  “Yes, you did, honey. Then you sneezed it right back out. And kept sneezing for half an hour.”

  “I was only a year old, you know?” he said to his grandmother in explanation.

  Gretta nodded, visibly relieved at not having to watch the birth. She shifted in her seat. Doorbell licked her sweaty palm when she reached down to pet his head.

  The television flicked on and a sexy woman clad in a skimpy black leather bathing suit appeared. She was talking on a mobile phone as she relaxed in a chaste lounge beside a swimming pool. A muscular man walked into the scene to serve a frozen drink with a little paper umbrella in it. He began slowing massaging her neck while she continued to talk animatedly into the phone, then leaned over to kiss an exposed ear.

  Gretta momentarily forgot all else. “Uvanda! That witch! This is ‘Preston Place’! I usually stick with the news and financial shows, but this is the one TV show I watch.”

  “Whoops! Sorry, wrong DVD,” Sheila said sheepishly.

  Incredulous, Mabel asked, “You watch Preston Place?”

  Sensing that the mood in the room was brightening, Doorbell started moving his tail in a lazy wag, like a wiper blade back and forth across the hardwood floor.

  “Shamelessly addicted. Our DVR went out last week, so Thomas recorded it to DVD for me.”

  Mabel sat back and relaxed when Gretta asked her daughter-in-law if Uvanda had won the lawsuit she’d filed against her physician. It was the first time that Gretta had addressed Sheila directly.

  Amazed, she and Tommy watched as his wife and his mother launched into a ten-minute rundown of their favorite episodes of Preston’s Place. Ten years’ worth of animosity vanished in an instant.

  ***

  Cinnamon coffee was served, videotapes of past Christmases and birthdays were viewed, and Jeremy fell asleep on the sofa resting snugly against his grandmother. Doorbell snoozed on the sofa as well, pressed against Gretta’s other side.

  Although Gretta did not consider herself a religious person, she took a moment to thank God for both her pushy roommate and her beautiful family. And she silently thanked Willie for reminding her that tomorrow was not promised to anyone. For the first time since she could remember, she was content not to be watching a news or sports show on her iPhone. She had her own life to immerse herself into. She had a real family. She could reach out and touch them. And, she did. Jeremy only stirred in his sleep when she pushed the blond hair off his forehead, then rubbed his back.

  Twenty-four

  Willie

  By the time he neared fifty, Willie was one of the wealthiest individual real estate developers on the east coast. His wife had become his best friend and conspirator. They were contentedly childless and she was indispensable to him. They were business partners. They were lovers. They were soul mates. And, they were still devoted to each other and very much in love when she was killed at one of Willie’s construction sites.

  Jenna Louise had been running an errand for her husband, delivering some blueprints to the project supervisor of a small oceanfront hotel. It never was determined what had caused the second floor of the hotel to collapse but everyone knew that Willie’s life had come crashing down along with the rebar and concrete.

  He contemplated suicide but instead threw himself into his investment portfolio and intensified his work ethic. The pain from his wife’s death was slow in fading and Willie worked harder and harder so as to exhaust himself. It was the only way he could sleep at nights.

  As if to reward his efforts, buyers kept comin
g. The coast was a paradise, beckoning to throngs of visitors with its lullaby of crashing waves and its flat sandy landscape that was so suitable for building. Willie’s portfolio grew into a living, breathing power ball that wouldn’t quit rolling. Ironically, by the time he’d achieved this status, he no longer cared about the money. He would have traded everything in an instant if doing so would bring Jenna Louise back to him.

  To ease the guilt he harbored over her death, he began giving the money away in her name. At first it was strictly nationally well-known charities, but then she came to him in a dream and, laughing, suggested that he have fun while helping others. Do something more creative if you’re doing it in my name, Baby. He was unsure what the vision meant until a few days later when ideas began flowing in.

  He purchased a four-point-two million dollar art collection and donated it to the Florida State Penitentiary system figuring that some beauty in the prisoners’ otherwise drab lives may help to reform those who desired a second chance. He bought a thirty-acre farm in South Carolina and donated it to home for disturbed boys, a type of halfway house for young misfits and vandals. The donation came with two full time farm managers and the stipulation that the ranch continue operating, with the resident boys working assigned jobs for pay. He donated funding to civic organizations whose purpose was to beautify their community with landscaping, environmental planning, and anti-litter programs.

  He sought the donation opportunities as tirelessly as he had worked to make the money that he was now giving away. The years passed, the money continued to multiply, he continued to give it away, and eventually he found himself no longer challenged.

  Twenty-five

  On the beach, Myrtle Beach

  Sunday evening

  Sherwood and Freddy walked side by side, their stride in sync, toes pushing off cool sand with each step. It had been a full day, even though their group had scattered and the motorcoach had been less than half full for dinner. Willie’s death had created an instant impact on everyone and the changes in attitudes were tangible. For Freddy, the week had taken on a surrealistic aura. What started out as an ordinary driving job to fill in for one of his father’s injured employees had turned into an adventure that was of the magnitude to alter the future course of his life. Sherwood’s week had become just as implausible. From the suddenness of a potential job offer, to what she thought was going to be a vacation at the beach, to unexpectedly running into Freddy, to dealing with the seniors who didn’t like her, and then a shocking death – Sherwood’s head was spinning. The course of events had put her into a self-reflective, contemplative mood.