“Who’s May May?” Booker asked, reaching for the cookie tin.
Regan shrugged. “Some housekeeper who used to work for them a long time ago.”
“Maybe our mothers went to school together.”
She laughed out loud. “I don’t get it, Booker. Why do you care so much how they know each other?”
“Because my mom has a thing against white people. No offense, Regan, I’m sure she’d love you.”
Regan’s face grew warm. That surprised her about his mom since Booker was the most unprejudiced person she knew. Now her curiosity was piqued. “Surely your mom has white patients at the hospital.”
“Of course. She’s fine with them in a professional capacity. But all of her nurse friends are black.”
“You know, come to think of it, my mother doesn’t have any black friends that I can think of either.” She heard footsteps on the stairs. “Why don’t we just ask them how they know each other?”
Regan had often wondered about Booker’s parents, the successful anesthesiologist and his nurse wife, but Mrs. Grady was nothing like what she’d expected. While Booker’s pointy features matched his abrasive personality, his mother’s face was soft and beautiful with unusual golden eyes.
Introductions were made around the room. “Whoa,” Booker said when Regan’s mother introduced herself as Lady Bellemore. “I’ve never met royalty before.”
Nell nudged him with her elbow. “Lady is a nickname. Her given name is Adelaide.”
Regan raised a brow at Booker. That was not something a casual acquaintance would know about Lady. Addie and Dell were the more popular nicknames for Adelaide.
Booker turned to his mother. “How is it the two of you know each other?”
Regan studied her mother’s face as she waited for Mrs. Grady to respond. Lady wore her ever-present mask of cheerfulness to hide her sadness, but an unidentified emotion was etched in her frown lines and pinched lips. Was it discontent? Did she disapprove of Booker’s mother for some reason?
“We knew each other when we were young, a lifetime ago. What time is it?” Mrs. Grady’s golden eyes sought out the wall clock that was partially hidden by a rack of copper pots.
How is it she knows right where to find the clock? wondered Regan.
Mrs. Grady tugged on her son’s elbow. “We should go. It’s almost four o’clock.”
Booker’s body tensed. “We need to hurry.” He drained the last of his lemonade and handed the glass to Regan. “Sorry to drink and run. We have a five o’clock appointment in West Ashley.”
Whatever or whoever awaited Booker’s attention in West Ashley was suddenly more important than their mothers’ curious relationship. Regan and Lady walked their visitors to the door.
“See you tomorrow, Booker,” Regan said.
He saluted her. “Sure thing. Thanks for the lemonade and cheese biscuits.”
“Mom’s counting on you for Saturday,” Lady said to Nell. “She’ll be disappointed if you don’t come.”
“I’ll be here,” Nell said in a cheerful voice.
“Why’s she coming back on Saturday?” Regan asked as they watched Booker and his mother walk arm in arm to their car.
Lady closed the storm door. “She promised to visit Willa again.”
“I don’t understand any of this, Mom. Who is she to you?”
“Nell already explained that. We knew each other when we were young.”
“I know what she said. Does that mean you were friends?”
Lady hesitated. “In a manner of speaking. Ironic, isn’t it?”
“Hard to believe is more like it. You grew up in the seventies and eighties. At the risk of sounding like a racist, I can’t see you being friends with too many—”
“Not all my friends came from privileged white families, Regan.” Lady started off toward the kitchen. Over her shoulder, she said, “Your grandmother had a difficult day. Go up and check on her while I start dinner.”
“Fine! Maybe she’ll tell me what I wanna know,” she mumbled to herself as she hustled up the stairs.
The stench of vomit burned Regan’s nose when she entered her grandmother’s room. “How’re you feeling, Willa? Can I get you anything?”
Willa offered her a weak smile. “No, sweetheart. I’m okay for now. But you can sit and talk to me a spell.”
“Do you mind if I open the doors?” Regan asked, one hand already on the doorknob. “It’s stuffy in here.”
“That’d be lovely, dear.”
Regan threw open the french doors onto the piazza, letting in the cool salt-infused spring air.
Willa folded her arms on top of her comforter. “Now, tell me about your day.”
She plopped down in the rocker beside her grandmother’s bed. “So . . . you know my friend Booker, right? That guy in my class I’m always talking about who gets the same grades as me? Well, it turns out his mom and mine were friends growing up. But I’m guessing you already knew this. Seems like everyone knew it except Booker and me.”
“Don’t get sassy on me now, missy,” Willa said, her face suddenly serious. “No one realized the connection between you and Booker until today. We haven’t seen Nell in many years.”
Regan fell back in her seat. “Why, though? That’s what I’m asking. If Mom and Mrs. Grady were such good friends, why has it been so long since you’ve seen her? What’s the big mystery?”
“Is that what they told you, that they were good friends?” Willa asked, picking a piece of lint off her blanket.
“Mrs. Grady said they knew each other when they were growing up, but she knew about Mom’s nickname and exactly where to find the wall clock like she’s been in this house many times before.”
“Nell is a very private person, Regan. Our relationship with her is . . . well, it’s difficult to explain. I’m not sure how much she’s told Booker about us.”
“He knows as much as I do. Nothing.”
Her grandmother rolled her head away from Regan and stared out the window at the palmetto fronds rustling in the breeze. Several moments of silence passed before she spoke. “Nell’s mother, Mavis, was our housekeeper. She had a stroke and died in my kitchen when Nell and Lady were only fourteen years old.”
“Wait, what?” Regan sat straight up in her seat. “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”
A faraway look settled on Willa’s face. “I still remember the day. I was horrified when I arrived home from a garden club meeting to find paramedics loading poor Mavis into an ambulance in my driveway. Nell and I followed the ambulance to the hospital. Mavis was gone by the time we arrived. We were all heartbroken—Nell, Lady, me. Nell and Lady are the same age, only four months apart. Mavis and I raised our girls together like they were sisters.” She let out a little laugh. “Although, truth be told, Mavis did most of the raising. She had more patience than me, a much better mother than I ever was. Not only was she my housekeeper, she was your mother’s nanny and my best friend.”
Willa set her blue eyes on Regan. “Nell had no other family—no father or grandparents or siblings—and no place to go. Lady begged for Nell to live with us. I was skeptical at first, but it didn’t take long for me to realize it was the right thing to do. It’s what Mavis would’ve done. The adoption was my idea. I wanted Nell to know how much I loved her and how committed I was to her.”
“Hold on a minute.” Regan leaned in close to Willa. “Are you saying you adopted Nell? Like she’s part of our family?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. Nell refused to change her name, though, and I went along with her on that. I understood she needed to retain some sort of connection to her mother. She seemed content with the arrangement. At least for a time.”
Regan shook her head to clear it. “I’m so confused. If she’s your adopted daughter, how come I never knew about her? Why doesn’t she spend Thanksgiving or Christmas with us? Isn’t that what families do?”
“Because something changed in Nell during the years following
her mother’s death. By the time she graduated from college, she wanted to move on with her life without us.”
Regan furrowed her brow. “What changed?”
“That’s the question I’ve been asking your mother for thirty-some-odd years. And I’ve yet to get a straight answer from her.”
Regan jumped to her feet. “I’m gonna find out.”
Willa’s arm shot out, and she grabbed hold of Regan’s hand with surprising strength. “No, Regan, stop! You’ll only make things worse if you start poking around in their business. Nell came to see me today, and she promised to come back on Saturday. After all this time, we’re finally talking again. If we bring up the past, we’ll scare her off. Please, I beg you. This means so much to me.”
Her grandmother’s expression was one of desperation when only a minute ago, when she’d been speaking of Nell, her blue eyes had been alive and her face soft with love. Regan sank back down in her seat. She wouldn’t be the one to take that away from her.
“You can’t mention any of this to Booker,” Willa said. “Let his mother tell him what she wants him to know.”
Regan knew Booker would pester his mother until he got his answers, and Booker, in turn, would be all too eager to share his findings with Regan. She tried to put herself in Nell’s shoes. She couldn’t imagine being an orphan at the vulnerable age of fourteen. Even though she and her mother weren’t that close, Regan would be crushed if something happened to Lady.
“All right, Willa. I’ll let Booker figure this out on his own.” She rose slowly. “I’m going to help Mom with dinner. Can I get you anything before I go?”
“No, thanks. But be a dear and close the door.” Willa snuggled deeper beneath the covers. “It’s chilly in here.”
She closed the french doors, tucked the duvet cover around her grandmother, and kissed her forehead. “I’ll bring your dinner on a tray when it’s ready.”
Regan found her mother in the kitchen with her hands in a bowl of ground beef, a half-full martini glass and an empty metal shaker on the counter beside her.
“Meatloaf?” Regan removed a paring knife from the knife block and began dicing an onion.
“Mm-hmm. How much did Willa tell you?”
“Enough.” She wiped onion tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. “I can’t imagine how hard it was for you when Mavis died.”
“It was awful. I’d lost my father two years beforehand, but I wasn’t that close to him. Losing Mavis was so much worse. Poor Nell was never the same. Even though we didn’t part on the best of terms, seeing her here again in this house after all these years has brought back a lot of memories. I’ve never had another friend like Nell. I didn’t realize just how much I’d missed her.”
Tears that had nothing to do with onions glistened in her mother’s eyes. Whatever happened between Nell and Lady was so painful it had kept the family apart for all those years despite their obvious love for one another. And they did love one another. She’d witnessed it on all three of their faces that afternoon.
CHAPTER TEN
LADY
Lady sat in the swing on the piazza after dinner, a copy of Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides open beside her and a glass of wine in her hand. She could smell the low tide and hear the waves crashing against the seawall. The visit with Nell that afternoon had brought back bittersweet memories from a time in Lady’s life when her bond with Nell had been the strongest. Before Mavis died. Before Daniel.
Draining the last of her wine, she set her glass down on the porch railing, rested her head against the back of the swing, and allowed her mind to drift back to another lifetime.
Lady’s father died on an Indian summer day in early October of 1977. Lady was twelve years old at the time. His death had little impact on the everyday running of the household. He was a generous provider and wonderful entertainer when he chose to bestow his attention upon his wife and daughter. He was a man’s man living in a man’s world. He worked long hours as an investment banker and spent what little spare time he had playing golf and sailing his boat. Nevertheless, his absence created a void in their lives. With Thanksgiving and Christmas on the horizon, Lady and Willa had been brainstorming ways to change their holiday traditions and routines to lessen the impact of that absence. Willa had proposed a last-minute trip to New York, but all the hotels were booked, and she wasn’t willing to fork over the money for the exorbitant airline tickets. Lady had suggested eating Thanksgiving dinner at one of the restaurants in town, but her mother insisted they have a home-cooked meal.
“I have the perfect solution,” Willa announced at supper one night during the second week of November. “We won’t be able to avoid the unavoidable. We’re going to miss Patrick no matter where we eat. We’ll have Thanksgiving here as usual, but this year, I’d like for you”—she locked eyes with Mavis—“and Nell to join us in the dining room.”
Mavis shook her head with vehemence. “Oh no, Miss Willa. That ain’t proper.”
“I don’t see why not. We eat supper together at this table every night. Anyway, since when do I care about being proper?”
Because her father had routinely left the house before dawn and rarely made it home in time for supper, Lady and Nell, from the time they were small children, had taken their meals with their mamas at the kitchen table.
“But Thanksgiving is different,” Mavis countered. “Thanksgiving is family time.”
“That’s exactly my point. You and Nell are family.” Willa turned her attention to Lady and Nell. “What do you girls think of the idea?”
“I like it,” Nell said with a smile.
“I think you’re right,” Lady said. “It is the perfect solution. Having Nell and Mavis eat with us will help soften the blow of not having Daddy here.” Thanksgiving and Christmas had been two of the few times she counted on her father being home. No matter what city they were in or who they dined with, she would still miss her father.
Willa grabbed Mavis’s hand. “Please say yes, May May. It’ll be fun. We’ll make it a group effort. We’ll spend the morning cooking in the kitchen, and when everything’s ready, we’ll enjoy our meal in the dining room. We’ll dress casual. And no football allowed.”
A reluctant smile spread across Mavis’s face. “As long as you promise no football.”
As Willa suggested, the foursome spent Thanksgiving morning in the kitchen with the small, grainy television tuned to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. They basted the turkey, mashed sweet potatoes, and baked two different kinds of pies—pecan and pumpkin. Just before two that afternoon, they gathered around a dining room table set with linens, crystal, and silver. Willa had just finished saying the blessing when the doorbell rang. Lady left the table and opened the door to their next-door neighbor, Mrs. Buckley. Lady had nicknamed her Bucktooth Betty because of her large and protruding front teeth.
“Lady, dear, may I borrow two eggs? I need them for the stuffing. Without thinking, I used all mine in the breakfast casserole this morning.”
“Sure! I’ll go get them for you.”
Bucktooth Betty moved to follow Lady into the kitchen but stopped dead in her tracks when she saw Nell and Mavis seated at the dining room table with Willa.
“Oh my. I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she said, fidgeting with the string of pearls around her neck. “About those eggs—I just remembered I have another dozen in the basement refrigerator.” She backed out of the room and fled the house as though its inhabitants were contagious with the Ebola virus.
“What a ridiculous woman,” Willa said. “Sit back down, Lady. Your dinner’s getting cold.”
No one mentioned Bucktooth Betty’s visit for the rest of the day, but the next afternoon, Lady and Nell were coming down from listening to music in Lady’s room when they heard voices coming from the drawing room. Recognizing the visitor’s voice as Bucktooth Betty’s, they crouched out of sight at the top of the stairs and eavesdropped.
“I’m here to tell you, Willa, it’s downright
shameful the way you treat your help like they are members of your family. If you’re not careful, you’ll lose your friends. You’ll never be invited to another party in this town again.”
“For your information, Betty, my help is my family, not that it’s any of your business. As for my social status, I have more friends in this town than you have weeds in your garden. And, honey, I’m here to tell you that you have a whole shit pot of weeds growing in your garden.”
“Well . . . I never,” Bucktooth Betty said and left the house in a huff.
Willa appeared at the bottom of the stairs. “The nerve of some people.”
The girls giggled. Willa had known they were there the whole time.
Nell and Lady raced down the stairs, out the front door, and all the way to the seawall at the end of the street. They huddled together against the cool salty breeze.
“I hate for Miss Willa to lose her friends because of Mama and me,” Nell said, her breath warm near Lady’s ear. “You heard what Bucktooth Betty said. Miss Willa’s never gonna get invited to another party again.”
Lady looped her arm through Nell’s. “Don’t worry, Nell. That’s not gonna happen. Mom’s family has been part of Charleston society since before the Civil War. I know, because she’s told me at least a thousand times. Bucktooth Betty doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She’s from Minnesota or some such place where it’s as cold as her heart.”
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we got to pick our families like we pick our friends?”
Lady paused, considering the idea. “If we live our lives according to Willa’s rules, we can.”
Nell stared out across the harbor, a faraway look in her eyes. “When I was little, I thought our mamas were sisters and you and I were cousins. Your daddy . . . well, I wasn’t sure who he was. Their brother, I guess.”
Nell and Lady: A Novel Page 7