“Hi, darlin’.” Her mother answered the phone with great zeal. Julia knew she was excited about getting the family back together for an evening at her house.
“Mama, I’ve got a situation here.” She cleared her throat and could almost see her mother’s wrinkled brow. She swallowed so hard her ears popped. “Glenda and Skeeter are sick, and I’ve got nowhere to take Marney’s children.”
Her mother paused for a long moment at the other end of the line. Julia suddenly realized this was probably asking way too much of her. Had she ever even met these children? Would seeing them break her heart? Julia cleared her throat. “Maybe I can meet you for lunch day after tomorrow—”
“Yes, of course you can bring them tonight.” Her mother’s voice was warbly but intent. “I have plenty of food. I’ll just put all of the kids in the backyard anyway. I pulled out the old croquet set from the shed for Meg’s kids. It will be fun.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” her mother said, and Julia could feel the sincerity and the yearning in her voice. “It will be all right, sweetheart.”
“Okay,” Julia said. “We’re on our way, then. We’ll be there in a half hour or so.”
Next Julia checked the messages. There was one from Jed. “Hey, Julia . . . Something’s come up. I had this commitment I had completely forgotten about, and I don’t think I can get out of it. I’m incredibly bummed. Really, I am. It’s just something I can’t miss. Please tell your mother I’m sorry. If something changes, I’ll come by . . . I was really looking forward to it.”
Julia exhaled. Some other commitment definitely translated into some other woman, some date or event or preexisting relationship. Of course. How ridiculous she had been. Like a teenager. Still, she had really wanted to see Jed one more time before she left and stepped back into her real life. Now she looked down at her ring and tapped her head with the heel of her hand. “It’s for the best,” she said to herself. “Definitely for the best.”
IT HAD BEEN EIGHT MONTHS SINCE SHE’D SEEN HER mother. It had been almost two years since she’d seen Meg and her nephews and niece. This would be awkward, terribly awkward because of the children, but she had no other options at this point. And she was sure they would understand that.
She got back into the car where the children were listening to the oldies station. “Shama Lama Ding Dong” from Animal House was playing. The kids seemed to know the words, though Etta only sang with her eyes. Julia turned up the volume and sang along with them as they headed up Highway 17 toward the Charleston Peninsula.
She remembered how much her daddy liked to play this song on the old record player, and how he would do a merry dance called the shag with her mother, step-two-three-ing, rocking back and twirling her around and around in his arms. They moved beautifully and dream-like together, her mother’s sundress swaying, her father’s arms gently leading. Julia could see the college kids still in them—the twenty-year-olds who met at Folly Beach at a summer dance and fell in love as they danced beneath the moonlight, the soft sand between their toes.
Sometimes he would put on the Beach Boys or the Catalinas or the Embers and teach her and Meg to dance. Up-two-three, back-two-three, rock back. They would take turns dancing with Daddy on the piazza on Savage Street and out on the dock at Edisto. And her mother would laugh and clap, and her father’s eyes would twinkle beneath the stars—looking back at his wife—as he spun his daughters around. And Julia—when it was her turn to count the steps, taking her father’s hands, sliding her summer-tough bare feet across the wooden slats—was certain that she belonged to the happiest family under the sun.
TWO MORE DAYS, SHE THOUGHT AS SHE DROVE THE children up the well-worn highway that traced the coast. Forty-eight more hours until I’m on that plane and out of this strange Southern gothic dream. A dream that had somehow become a part of her personal history. She had almost made it through the week without too much emotional damage, without a panic attack, and best of all without having to see Marney. And for all of these reasons, she thought as she looked in the rearview mirror to the backseat while they all sang, “You are my shooby-dooby-doo . . . YEAH,” she was abundantly thankful.
CHAPTER 19
Mary Ellen
Mary Ellen scraped a little tomato seed off of her monogrammed apron. It was the pale green toile one that Meg and her family had given her last Christmas along with matching monogrammed hot mitts. She’d had yet to cook for them since then, and she wanted to be sure they saw her using their gift. It was nice to have something fresh to cook with.
She had been working for the last forty-eight hours preparing for this feast. She’d cooked a ham with a honey pineapple glaze and several tomato pies with fresh basil and Johns Island heirlooms. She’d fried three cut-up chickens from Mr. Burbage’s with her special flat beer batter. She’d made red rice with sausage, deviled eggs, creamed corn, and a leafy spinach salad with strawberries and blueberries and goat cheese. She’d baked a fresh peach cobbler, which was Meg’s favorite, plus a pecan pie and a batch of double fudge brownies. Also, she’d marinated some creek shrimp in olive oil and vinegar with sweet Vidalia onions to have for an appetizer because that was Julia’s favorite.
Julia. Mary Ellen couldn’t wait to see her. The children? Well, she would steel her nerves against whatever kind of emotional upheaval laying eyes on them might wreak. She had seen them before. Well, not the littlest one, but she had seen the others at Charles’s funeral. They were just children like any other children, unaware of the past and certainly not answerable to it.
She couldn’t wait to see Jed Young too. How she had loved his parents, whom she had heard through Jane Anne Thornton—a distant cousin of theirs—had both passed away in Texas over the last several years. Both from cancer after a life of working to find a cure. That didn’t seem fair somehow.
They were such lovely folks, Evelyn and James. They had spent several summers on Edisto and she and Charles had looked forward to their annual visits. Evelyn couldn’t cook at all, but she would bring the most wonderful Moravian sugar cakes and key lime pies that she’d buy in Aiken on her way to the coast. And she always brought several big baskets of peaches from Georgia, which Charles used to make peach ice cream in the old churn. Evelyn was strikingly stylish in a way that was a perfect blend of new fashion and old-world elegance. She was an interior decorator and always on the hunt for antiques. Mary Ellen used to love to go to Savannah with her on Sunday afternoons to the auctions. She had bought one of her favorite pieces there, a rolltop desk she still had in the foyer. Evelyn had insisted she buy it and she had never regretted it. It was the perfect size and shape for that little nook where the stairwell turned from one angle to the other in the foyer, and she loved to set a crystal bowl of hydrangeas or camellias there whenever she was entertaining.
Mary Ellen and Evelyn had kept in touch marginally through the years, a few Christmas cards here and there, a few letters, but they eventually lost touch, like so many others after the divorce. Once she had run into Evelyn at a silver vendor’s market on a buying trip to Atlanta with Gene and Jeanne. They’d had coffee at a Starbucks down the street and caught one another up on their lives and their children’s lives. Evelyn had shaken her head and readjusted her Chanel scarf. “I’d heard about it, but I just can’t believe it, Mary Ellen.” She’d put her gold-bangled hand gently on Mary Ellen’s forearm in a gesture of genuine grief. “I’m so, so sorry. Y’all were one of the most loving couples and one of the most delightful families I’d ever known.” She’d taken a sip of her latte and leaned back and breathed deeply. “I don’t understand life sometimes.” She looked out of the window onto the busy Buckhead sidewalk as if peering into her own personal view of sadness.
It was the last time Mary Ellen had seen her. And she regretted not accepting the invitation she had sent a few weeks later inviting her to join her at St. Simon’s Island for a little vacation and shopping trip. Evelyn’s treat.
“I’m so sorry,” she had said. “I
can’t take off the time from work.” She could have, probably, but somehow the thought of getting in the car and driving several hours unnerved her. It was one of those low points when all she could do was get up and get out of bed in the morning. She never heard from Evelyn again. And then, just a few years ago, Jane Anne brought over the clipped obituary from the Houston Dispatch her cousin had mailed her. “You knew her, didn’t you?” Jane Anne had asked. “Brain cancer,” she had said. “And now her husband has it in the pancreas.”
NOW MARY ELLEN LOOKED OVER THE DINING ROOM table. Nate had helped her add the extra leaf in the center, and she and Jane Anne had set the table with her favorite silver and her more casual Blue Canton china. After that she’d pressed her linen napkins and wiped the more casual crystal glasses and set them out. Then she’d polished the silver candlesticks and the silver salt and pepper shakers and the silver bowl in the center in which she had a nice bouquet of periwinkle hydrangeas. (She’d had to buy them at the florist since the pale green ones in her garden were well past their peak.)
She stepped out onto the back piazza where she’d set a table for the kids, complete with sturdy paper plates, bowls of Goldfish, grapes, strawberries, and their own little bouquet of hydrangeas.
She’d quickly added three additional spots for the second Bennett clan, and she’d run over to Jane Anne’s and borrowed a few folding chairs to add to the porch.
“Mary Ellen,” Jane Anne had said. “You aren’t going to have those children in your house, are you?”
“What other choice do I have?” she had said as she took the folding chairs from Jane Anne’s shed. “If I want to see my daughter, I have to have them.”
Jane Anne cocked her hip and planted her right fist firmly on it. “You’re a better woman than me.” She scoffed at the air. “Well, call me when it’s all over and I’ll help you clean up.”
“I will,” Mary Ellen called back over her shoulder.
MARY ELLEN HEARD CAR DOORS OPENING AND CLOSING in her driveway. It was Meg and Preston and the three children, Preston, Cooper, and Katherine. No one disliked Marney more than Meg, so Mary Ellen had to think how to break the news to her.
“La La!” Katherine called out as Preston and Cooper banged on the door so hard the panes rattled.
“Coming!” she said, shocked by the emotional delight in her voice. “La La’s coming!” And she opened the door to find her three adorable grandchildren standing before her, looking exceedingly clean and darling. The boys were in bright yellow and blue Izod shirts tucked into pressed khaki shorts and wearing navy blue belts with the South Carolina flag stitched across them. Katherine was in a yellow and blue gingham sundress that crisscrossed in the back and was trimmed with bright blue rickrack along the edges.
Preston Sr. was dressed just like the boys, and Meg wore a pair of pedal pushers that was made of the same material as Katherine’s dress along with a white linen tunic and some bright yellow espadrilles.
Preston presented a serene smile, the same one he used when he was concealing an emotion or ignoring a question he didn’t feel like answering. And Meg, while lovely in a fresh and freckled, well-kept way, could hardly veil her restlessness as her shoulders tensed and her eyes darted quickly here and there. Mary Ellen used to think this unsettled look was because it was hard for Meg to return to her old home after her parents split, but she had noticed over the last few years after Charles’s passing that Meg seemed to carry this restlessness everywhere: a basketball game, a holiday party, one of the children’s productions, and even at church on those rare occasions when Meg invited Mary Ellen to join them. Jane Anne thought the look had to do with Meg’s eyes, which she was sure had already had some work done.
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Mary Ellen had said. “She’s only thirty-six.”
Jane Anne, whose nephew was a plastic surgeon in town, said, “Please join us in the twenty-first century, Mary Ellen. They start early, honey. Very early. That way it’s not so noticeable as the years go by.”
Mary Ellen hugged them all as tight as she could. “Come in! Come in!” she said. Then she smiled at Meg. “I’m so glad y’all are here.”
“Thanks for having us,” Preston said as he leaned down to peck her cheek.
Meg handed her a bottle of chardonnay. It was nice and cold. “Glad you like the apron, Mother,” she said. “It looks adorable on you.”
Mary Ellen stepped back so her daughter could get a better look. “Oh, I do, darling. I needed something fresh to cook in.”
Cooper came out of the kitchen brandishing a brownie. “Where are your manners?” Meg came over and snatched it out of his hand. He was the chunky one in the family, the middle one, and he’d had trouble for the first few years of elementary school until they realized he needed reading glasses. He had a sparkle in his eyes that Mary Ellen loved.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Julia’s running a little late. They can have a bite of something before she arrives. It’s fine by me.”
Cooper looked to his mother and nodded triumphantly, then he slid it out of her manicured hand and took a hearty bite.
“Mama, please don’t undermine my authority,” she said. “We’re trying to follow a certain model here. And we need you to support us.”
Mary Ellen exhaled. Meg and Preston were very serious about their role as parents, and they went to many a parenting class and conference on the subject.
“Of course, Meg.” Mary Ellen took the bottle of wine from her daughter’s little hands. “I’m sorry, honey. I’m just so glad y’all are here.”
Meg looked at Preston and rolled her eyes. “So how long until Julia will be here?”
Mary Ellen winced as she took the bottle to the butler’s pantry and retrieved the corkscrew for Preston. As he went to work opening the bottle, Mary Ellen lowered her voice and said, “Well, Meg, she’ll be here in about fifteen minutes, and she had a child care snag.”
Meg’s eyes widened and Mary Ellen could almost see her daughter’s pupils expanding. Her back went as rigid as a mannequin’s. “What does that mean?”
Preston seemed to be holding his breath, and Mary Ellen turned to him and then back to Meg and then over to the kids, who had already opened the toy drawer in the living room and were trying out the light-up yo-yos from the Dollar Store as well as an old electronic Simon game.
“It means the children are coming with her, Meg.”
Meg batted her eyes. “It’s Margaret, Mother. Margaret.”
Mary Ellen could feel the burn beneath her arms and she gladly accepted the glass of wine Preston handed her.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart.” And she was sorry, sorry for everything.
Meg set her chiseled jaw and turned to Preston, who was smiling that same smile again. “It’ll be fine, honey,” he said. “It’ll be good to see Julia, and the kids can play together out in the backyard, all right?”
“You think I want our children mingling with those kids?”
The buzzer for the tomato pies buzzed and Mary Ellen gladly excused herself. She took her fresh toile mitts and pulled the pies out one by one and set them on a hand towel on the counter to cool.
She was half-angry and half-sad, but more than any of those things, she was excited to have her family together for a few hours, feasting on one of her well-prepared meals. And she prayed Meg would see it that way and make the best of it.
“Hey there.” She could hear Preston calling from the foyer to the piazza. Julia had arrived! Preston opened the front door wide just as Mary Ellen made her way back to the front of the house. When she rounded the corner of the living room to the foyer, she stopped. There, standing on the threshold, was a sight that stole her breath. Julia, radiant in a pale yellow sundress with her hair up, two girls—one tall with a thick, dark mane and the other thin as a reed with blond hair and serious hazel eyes—and then a little golden, curly-haired boy with full cheeks and a little birthmark near his chin and luminous brown eyes that were her husband’s, precisely. The b
oy looked at her and blinked, and it was as if she were staring at the old portrait of her husband at age three, though it had come to life and was wearing a smudged dinosaur T-shirt and camouflage shorts. The whole room seemed to hold its breath, even Meg’s kids in the living room came and stood in the foyer to behold these strangers, bathed in the afternoon light.
“Welcome,” Mary Ellen said as she stepped forward and reached out her hand to introduce herself to each of them. And then she embraced Julia, who was watching her, smiling. “Oh, I’ve missed you,” she said as she took her in her arms and rocked her back and forth. Her grown daughter. In the flesh. Looking more alive and more youthful than she had in years.
“Me too, Mama.” Julia returned her embrace heartily. “Me too.”
CHAPTER 20
Margaret
Meg (who would always feel like Meg in this house) could feel the bile rising in her throat as she watched her mother embrace Julia. She took another sip of her wine and narrowed her eyes, watching the three mismatched vagabonds in the doorway. The pitiful little ones who were daily devouring up what was rightfully hers.
And Julia, the traitor. None of the shame and loss Meg had experienced for decades now would have ever happened if it weren’t for Julia bringing her slutty friend home to mooch off of her parents summer after summer.
Not unlike their father, Julia had a penchant as a child for collecting strays—stray animals, friends with oddities, any living being that was awkward or weak or ill-fitting. One spring she brought home a half-dead puppy from the Sergeant Jasper Dumpster, thin and whimpering, who defecated worms on the piazza. Her father took the pup to the vet and spent hundreds of dollars trying to get the animal well. The creature died before the end of the week, and Meg and Julia had to go without new dresses for Easter because of the unexpected expense of their futile attempts to save his miserable, withering life.
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