Folly Beach

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  Oh, sure, breakfast was easy enough to put together—a few fresh eggs from Romeo, the island egg man, a slice of toast, a glass of juice. Or cereal! What an absolutely brilliant invention were cornflakes? With sliced banana? Even I could handle that. And our midday dinner wasn’t completely beyond my capabilities either. I just always kept it simple because of our budget. Besides, DuBose and I kept a strict regime, being ever-vigilant of our health. On Sunday, if we weren’t invited to dinner with friends or his mother, I might bake some chicken or pork chops with steamed rice and maybe I’d boil up a head of broccoli. No cream or sauces. Nothing spicy. Our digestive systems would have rebelled. We were not accustomed to much more than a little butter or the smallest sprinkle of salt.

  When the day was at an end and I had to produce yet another meal I always wished we could just forget it. And sometimes I was just so tired. Another meal? Didn’t I have a full-time job, a young daughter whose care was almost solely mine, and a house to run as well? Sometimes, when I was on the verge of exhaustion, I wondered why women found managing a household so attractive and that’s when I would think about Jo Pinckney and just how smart she really was to never marry. Honestly, some days it was all just too much, especially when my head was deep in the process of creating a new story.

  But on most days I took my domestic duties in stride. DuBose wasn’t fussy about the state of the house or his meals. Often, I made sandwiches or plates of sliced leftovers from the previous day. If there were any to be had, that is. If I did not plan for leftovers, which I never seemed to calculate quite right, there would have just been more cornflakes! It seemed to me that I should’ve been able to come up with a more satisfying plan, so sometimes I served a dinner meal for supper and just quick sandwiches for our midday meal, especially if my writing was going well. To stop writing around noon to cook a hot meal usually meant my workday would come to an end, because it was hard to change gears and cook and then change them again to return to my writing table. This is sounding confusing, even to me, but the point is that I felt that the more time I spent out of the kitchen the better it was for our health, our finances, and our careers.

  Oh, those were the days! Such sweet days! DuBose and I were married for seven years before we were finally blessed with a child we brought home at first to our farm, Dawn Hill in Hendersonville, North Carolina, and then to our little cottage surrounded by pines and live oaks on Folly Island. The days we spent with Jenifer on Folly are still the happiest ones I can remember. She was such a sensitive child, prone to inexplicable forgetfulness and episodes of vagueness, well, we hoped the salt air would be good for her.

  Maybe it was the latter part of March, 1934? Well, it was the time we were waiting, almost pacing the floors really, to hear if and when Mr. Gershwin would grace us all with his royal presence. At my urging, DuBose had been writing to him all the time, enticing him with stories about the exotic and primitive practices of the Gullahs. He told him that he had a Negro church he desperately wanted him to come and visit. The members of this congregation danced something called the “double clap” when they were moved by the spirit. I had seen it and it was indeed powerful, in fact, I had seen people faint from the frenzy of it. DuBose was certain the dance and the music had survived intact from their African roots, because there was nothing like it in the whole canon of American liturgical music.

  And there was another, more sensual kind of dance he discovered as well. He felt very strongly that it would be the perfect number for the scene of passion between Crown and Bess. Surely old George wouldn’t be able to resist it, especially when DuBose described the mood of the dance to him as “phallic.” The term made me slightly uncomfortable but DuBose seemed convinced that everything about the Gullahs was sexier and more exciting. The way they dressed, the way they walked . . . he really believed when they played their gospel music, the Holy Ghost came down to them for a visit. And when they played the blues, they hoochie-coochied, and the next thing you know, they were . . . well, I could never put it in writing, I mean I can’t say it!

  Ah well, between us, sometimes I wished it was contagious. DuBose longed for a whopping dose of the virility he witnessed in the Negro men he knew from his time working on the docks as a young man. He deeply envied their masculinity. I guess you’ll think me wicked for saying all this but DuBose frequently said it himself. He blamed his ancestors for not having had that quality to pass on to him. Too much reticence and not enough electricity! They could sign the Declaration of Independence but did the whole lot of the Heywards ever have any fun? Did they ever just let it all go?

  Fade to Darkness

  Chapter Eight

  Road Trip

  There had been many phone calls back and forth to Aunt Daisy on Folly Beach. My dear sweet aunt immediately warmed to the idea of a visit, possibly an extended visit, and if I would just move back for good, she would have been tickled pink. No one loved a project like Daisy McInerny and apparently, in her mind, I had become her next one. “You come home to me!” she said. “I’ll make your bed myself! And I’ll plump your pillows! Oh, how I’ve missed my girl. That dirty rotten son of a bitch!”

  I didn’t know whether to fall to my knees in gratitude for her generous affection or to laugh my head off at her naughtiness. Aunt Daisy would never let a trifling thing like demure behavior get in the way of speaking her mind.

  “I thought maybe I might try to stay for a week or two just until I can get the bats out of my belfry and figure out what I’m going to do with myself,” I said.

  “What? Honey baby, you just get yourself down to Folly as fast as you can and you don’t worry about another single thing, do you hear me?”

  “Oh, Aunt Daisy! You are the greatest woman who ever lived on this earth.”

  “That’s probably true, if you don’t count people like Mother Teresa.” I could hear her giggle and I thought, wow, this is what a generous heart is all about. I hoped it would rub off on me. “And, heavenly days, Cate. You’ve had nothing but one terrible shock after another. You need some peace! I’m going to tell Ella to bake you a pecan pie!”

  A pecan pie was the cure for anything. For some families it was chicken soup but for mine it was a gooey rich filling of Karo syrup, butter, sugar, and pecans all nestled into a gel against a crust made with lard. If I was really on a bummer I could eat a whole one. Okay, not in one sitting but a homemade pecan pie would see me through just about any seventy-two-hour dilemma.

  Sara thought it was a great idea for me to retreat to Folly Beach, too.

  “Mom, seriously. You need to get the heck out of New Jersey. Your whole entire world besides me, Russ, Aunt Patti, and Uncle Mark just Apocalypsed! Take a break! You know? Maybe I can find some cheap tickets and come down for a few days. I’ll make you one of my special cocktails and we can stay up all night . . .”

  “Yeah, great! So how’s that bartending thing working out?”

  “Mom! I’m a mixologist!”

  “Right, right. Sorry.”

  “I’m making some serious dough.”

  “Well, praise the Lord for that.”

  And I spoke to Russ, who was perfectly sanguine as most men are about a parent coming to town. In fact, he could see no reason why a basket of fried seafood wasn’t the perfect solution to anything that ailed me.

  “We’ll go to Bowens Island! It’ll be like old times.”

  Wasn’t that the typical male response? The stomach speaks. I had to smile at my boy.

  “Absolutely,” I said and sure enough my traitorous mouth began to salivate.

  Bowen’s Island was the most diminutive of all the islands in the land, so small that in the old days the island itself was said to practically disappear when the tide came in. There, in a tiny, very undistinguished house passing for a restaurant, one that had escaped the attention of the health department for decades and any touches of gentrification from a decorator since its very inception, you could eat your fill of delicious shrimp so fresh, fish so exquisitely mois
t, and hush puppies as big as your fist, for a pittance. I mean, a plate of fabulous fish and grits for ten dollars? Even in my newly impoverished state, I could pick up that check.

  So, with those conversations, observations, and conclusions, my immediate future had been more or less decided but the deal was clinched when I took an unfortunate but necessary short ride to Forty-seventh Street, the diamond district in New York City. Any woman would hate to part with her diamonds and my heart was heavy, but it was abundantly clear to me that I had to sell my ring and studs. After all, they were just things that could be replaced if my financial situation changed.

  There in the kiosk of a well-respected diamond dealer, I. Friedman, leaning against a glass showcase crammed with estate pieces from another era, standing there with my sister Patti by my side, I learned from Corey Friedman that my diamonds were fake. Yes. Fake.

  At first, I was stunned. Patti gasped and, to give you some idea of the gravity of the moment, she did not say one word. A terrible silence filled the air. There we were, two well-dressed middle-aged women, and I was obviously the victim of some kind of disgusting, horrible scam. I could feel my blood pounding in my ears. Here it was again. More treachery. More deception. One more betrayal from Addison, The F-ing Scoundrel, formerly known as The Deceased.

  Then I remembered the night I gave them back to him. It was like watching the rerun of a movie in my head. Over dinner not too many years ago, he took my original diamond engagement ring and my smallish diamond studs into his hands and stood. With a glass of an ’83 Haut Brion in one hand and my treasures in the other, he delivered an announcement that to honor our twentieth anniversary he wanted me to have something spectacular. Absolutely spectacular, he said, worthy of a queen, something worthy of The Queen of HIS World. This was done with so much theatrical flourish that you could almost hear the New York Philharmonic playing in the background. I had believed him and I even wept, hoping against the odds that this was my old Addison, trying to make amends for all the many other outrages with a grand gesture meant for me.

  FAKE!

  Unbelievable. Struggling to steady myself, I fought hard not to burst into tears for about one minute and then my heart abruptly changed. How very desperate had my husband been to do such a thing to me? It was absolutely just beyond pitiful.

  Suddenly, I felt awful for the poor jeweler who had to deliver the news. His face was deep red and there were tiny beads of perspiration across his forehead. He had probably seen this kind of thing before. Maybe a lot. He took a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his face. Talk about an awkward moment?

  “I could give you a few hundred for the mountings,” he said. “I’m terribly sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay. Not your fault. Let me think about it. Thank you,” I said, “thanks for your time.”

  Patti, my Mortification, and I stepped out into the street. The cracked sidewalks were frozen to a dull gray, bumpy and uneven from the remnants of ice, salt, and sand. The wind whipping down the canyons of Manhattan nipped our cheeks, chapping our lips. I was so upset I could barely make eye contact with my sister.

  Patti said, “Maybe we should check with someone else. I mean, he might be wrong. He was pretty nervous.”

  “He’s not wrong. I mean, sure let’s check, but he’s not wrong. I just know it.”

  “Addison. That son of a bitch,” she said.

  “No. Well, yeah, he was a son of a bitch but the poor thing. How low! He must have felt so low when he did this.”

  “Humph. That depends on what he needed the money for. I mean, if he was buying cocaine or something, it wouldn’t have bothered him one bit. Or if he was paying that woman’s mortgage . . .”

  “Oh, hell. You’re right. Probably safe to say that by the time he pulled this trick his moral compass had dissolved into a puddle of very smelly crap.”

  “That’s for sure. Want to go get a cup of coffee? Get out of the cold for a few minutes? Then we can go check with someone else?”

  “No. I think I’d just like to go home, or back to your house, eat and drink neurotically and go to bed early. In the fetal position.” I sighed so hard that my frosty breath looked like a mushroom cloud and then I sighed the same way again and again.

  Patti looked at me then, worried that I might hyperventilate and aware I was headed to the abyss of despair. She gave me a stern look that said we’ll have none of that and looped her arm inside the crook of my elbow and we leaned into the bitter wind together, pushing against its strength, heading back to the garage where her car waited and then back to New Jersey.

  “Here’s the good thing,” I said to her in the car as we reached the other side of the George Washington Bridge.

  “Let’s hear,” she said.

  “There’s nothing else to take or sell. This is the bottom.”

  “Life can be so unfair.”

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  It took about a week to make all the arrangements but I was finally ready to go. Mark had helped me buy a used Subaru for eight thousand dollars with only fifty thousand miles on it. In his estimation that was practically a new car. It was in good enough shape for a prudent widow or a starving artist, and if I could drive it to South Carolina without wrecking it, it would be all I needed to toot around Folly and Charleston for at least a year or two. I had taken almost all my designer clothes and handbags to a consignment shop called Second Acts, and if they were able to sell some or all of it that would give me another few thousand dollars, I hoped. Besides, what was I going to do with Valentino wool suits and Armani heavy sweaters in the humidity of the Lowcountry? I didn’t need cashmere-lined gloves, cashmere wraps, and lined wool trousers, either. I’d perspire to death. I kept a sensible St. John black dress and jacket in case I had to go to another funeral or in case a prince materialized and invited me to a black-tie dinner. And I packed a few other accoutrements to remind myself I was a dignified woman. It was strange to let so many of my possessions just go in such a short period of time but it was also kind of liberating, like being born again, naked and free.

  The morning I was to leave, I was up before the sun. My plan was to start early and drive straight through what we estimated would be about a thirteen-hour drive, depending on the traffic on I-95. My new old car was already packed. Mark had strategically loaded and reloaded my gear in such a way that I wouldn’t have any blind spots. He had checked my window-washing fluid, the oil, the tires, and everything he could think of, including updating the emergency roadside kit with new flares. And he gave me a AAA card for national roadside assistance. This was why I loved Mark. He cared how you fared in the world and when I watched him repacking the car for the fourth time I thought again what a wonderful father he would have made. But then I reminded myself that if you didn’t have children you might have thought they were a liability, because to be honest even I had friends whose children gave me nightmares. But that was rare. They could also be your greatest asset.

  I dressed quickly, rolled up my pajamas, and dropped my cosmetics in an old canvas tote bag Patti gave me, a souvenir from a contribution she made to PBS. Even though I knew I was facing the endurance contest of the year to make that kind of drive alone, I was psyched. Sort of.

  The truth was that part of me longed to get as far away from anything that had to do with Addison. I was sick in my heart over it all and I did not think I could bear another piece of bad news. The other part of me was looking forward to getting away from the terrible winter weather. My skin was so dry that it would drink whatever moisturizer I fed it only to feel taut again in just a few hours and then it flaked. Oh brother. My legs flaked like that character Pig-Pen in Charlie Brown, throwing off a cloud of dust in the air when I pulled off a pair of tights. Gross. My hair had static electricity no matter what I did to it. I was tired of numb fingers and toes, wheezing allergy attacks from wood smoke and wet leaf mold, but my number one, all-time feature of winter that I would not miss was the stinging shock to my hand when I walke
d across carpet and touched a metal doorknob. I hated it when the electricity ran from my fingers up to my elbow. It made me cuss every single time.

  So the idea of leaving those aspects of Yankee living in the dust for a while and swapping stories with Aunt Daisy and Ella over a pile of roasted oysters or a bowl of stew was appealing, especially to a wounded soul like me.

  I’d take long walks on the beach, warmed by the gentle winter sun and command my body and soul to soak up every salty benefit it had to offer. I’d think my future through and try to plan the next chapter with a lot more care. My life was my own now and what it would be would be what I would make it. But the other part of me knew that that very idea of finding happiness and contentment was wildly optimistic considering I had almost no resources to draw on except the wisdom of an aging old-maid aunt, her companion, and what I could muster on my own. Sure, I’d gladly help Aunt Daisy until her foot healed. I’d help her until she closed her eyes on her last day on earth if she wanted me to, but staying there and managing real estate for a living was about the last thing I wanted to do with myself. So, with mounting trepidation and enough nervous energy to light the city of Chicago, I was resolved to at least take this sabbatical and see what I would find on Folly Beach.

  I smelled bacon frying—a powerful aphrodisiac if ever there was one—and hurried down to Patti and Mark’s kitchen to have some breakfast.

  “You think I was gonna let you leave without filling you up with pancakes and bacon?” Patti said.

  “I’m really glad you didn’t.” I gave her a smooch on the cheek and poured myself a cup of coffee.

  “I MapQuested your trip,” Mark said, “and if you want, I’m happy to give you my portable GPS. It’s no big deal.”

  “You are a dear, Mark, but I’m just heading straight down I-95 until I reach Aunt Daisy’s and I know the way like the back of my hand.”

  “Right. I know. And you could always ask for directions if you need to,” Mark said.