Sweet Caroline

by Rachel Hauck

  Mitch fiddles with the root beer can, looking as if he can’t formulate an answer. Finally, “Frank Sinatra’s wrong. ‘My way’ isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  “From where I sit, your way has worked well.”

  “Let’s just say I’m a long way from the preacher’s kid who walked an aisle and begged Jesus to live in his heart—whatever that meant. I just knew He was real.”

  “Isn’t this what you wanted? Escape from the life of a small-town preacher’s kid?”

  He taps his finger over his heart. “Yes, but nine years later, it’s left me pretty empty.”

  The emotion in his voice moves me. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.

  Hungry, we decide to cruise down Highway 21 to the Shrimp Shack for a shrimp burger. And, Mitch wants to drive Matilda. “It’s been a while.”

  The Shrimp Shack is busy, and when Mitch steps out of the car, he creates a stir. Customers dining at the picnic tables, and those waiting to pick up, buzz, “Is that Mitch O’Neal?”

  Beaufort County has changed so much, the newcomers are not used to seeing one of our favorite sons.

  Mitch graciously signs a few autographs—he doesn’t seem to mind this part of his reality—before we take our food to an outside picnic table and sit in the shade of a tall palm tree.

  “All right, what’s new with you?” My friend regards me with his sandwich between his teeth.

  I pinch off the tip of a french fry. “Jones left the Café to me. You heard he died, right?”

  He stops twisting open his water bottle. “Read about it online. Then mom called the day of his funeral. So, you weren’t expecting to inherit the Café?”

  “Are you kidding? I had absolutely no idea.”

  Mitch is always easy to talk to so I tell him the story of the Café and Hazel’s Barcelona offer. He listens without interrupting, munching on his food like it’s the best thing he’s eaten in a while. The wind blows his hair away from his face. His cheeks appear leaner than the last time I saw him.

  When my story is done, he asks, “Do you want to move to Barcelona and work for Carlos Longoria?”

  His simple, upfront question requires a deep, philosophical answer. “I don’t know.”

  “You feel responsible for the Café, don’t you? I can see it in your eyes. You always did carry the weight of the world on your shoulders.”

  “Well, aren’t you free with the grand sweeping generalities?”

  “Am I wrong?”

  “No.” Smart aleck. He knows me too well. Even though our romance soured, our friendship remains. It was one aspect of our relationship I thought would keep us forever in love. “You try not feeling responsible when your mother abandons the family.”

  He wipes his hands with his napkin. “I’m not accusing you.”

  “I know.” Absently, I dip a fry in a puddle of ketchup as my shrimp burger gets cold.

  “What are you going to do?” He shoves his food basket to the cen-ter of the picnic table.

  “I have until next Tuesday to decide.”

  “Translation, you have no idea.”

  Holding up my hand, I curl my fingers into an O. “Zippo.”

  “Barcelona . . . what a great city. But owning a lowcountry café can’t be all that bad.”

  “The Frogmore needs a lot of tender loving care, Mitch. Money I don’t have.”

  “I’d love to help you out, but—”

  “No, no, no, I’m not asking.”

  “My label and I parted ways. And I just dumped a ton of cash to pay the bills and wipe out the mortgage on the Fripp Island house. I’m living light until I sign a new deal.”

  “Is that the reality God hit you with? Your label dropping you? After, what, five years?”

  “One of the realities. Sales aren’t what they were for my first two albums.”

  “So?”

  “So . . .” His wry laugh is not airy, nor easy. “Record companies are in the business of making money. Not stringing along a party-too-hard artist whose album is tanking, while he barks about getting back to his roots.”

  Mitch, not electrifying the music charts? Unbelievable. “I’m sorry.”

  He stares off toward the road. “I brought in a bunch of songs they hated, including ‘Yellow Line,’ hoping to record like I used to before ‘commercial appeal’ took over my music.”

  “Their loss.” I take a big bite of my shrimp burger. Even cold, it’s fab. “What are you going to do?”

  “Same as you.”

  “Decide next Tuesday?”

  DAILY SPECIAL

  Friday, June 8

  Frogmore Stew

  Green Salad

  Bubba’s Buttery Biscuits

  Scoop of Choc/Straw/Vanilla Ice Cream

  Tea, Soda, Coffee

  $7.99

  9

  Caroline, phone for you.” Andy jiggles the kitchen’s old wall receiver in the air.

  It’s Friday afternoon. Business is steady, but the Café feels old and tired to me. I feel old and tired. The Café dilemma is brutal. Do I fight to keep it open or call it a good half century and close down?

  “Caroline, this is Melba Pelot over at the Gazette. How are you?”

  The press. “I’m fine, Melba. What can I do for you?”

  “Confirm a rumor.” Her tone is airy, like this is no big deal, but I can tell when I’m being fished.

  “What rumor?” I fall against the kitchen wall and stare out the back door toward the carriage house. It would be nice to live there, in town, close to all the downtown action.

  “Did you inherit the Frogmore Café from Jones McDermott?”

  “Yes, I did. How’d you—” Ahh. As Mercy Bea comes around the kitchen corner, humming, I know. Wonder who all she’s told?

  “What are your plans?” Over the line comes the click, click of Melba’s keyboard.

  Am I supposed to be honest with the press? I know Melba from around town, a comeya from Pennsylvania. “I’m still making my decision, Melba. There are conditions and terms to be considered.”

  “Really? Like . . .”

  “Well—” Ignoring the big fat nooo in my gut, my mouth rattles on. “If I don’t keep the Café for a certain amount of time, it will be shut down, sold, and the proceeds donated to charity.”

  “Really?” Clickity, clickity, clickity.

  Instant regret fills my chest. Why did I tell her? “Melba, listen, this is between you and me. Off the record.”

  “Umm-hmm. Well, good luck with your decision.”

  “Melba, what are you—”

  The dial tone speaks to me. That comeya has hung up on me.

  Saturday I sleep in, tired from a long and somewhat emotional week. Andy and Mercy Bea are opening the Café today while Russell and I take closing.

  Saturday business is schizophrenic—mind-numbingly boring to hectic. We’ve been managing to keep all the balls in the air without Jones, but we miss his extra set of hands in the kitchen. If I keep the Café, I’m going to have to hire help.

  In a half-dreamy state, I hear Dad banging down the hall with his suitcase. Oh, it’s wedding-trip day. I kick off the covers and swing open my bedroom door.

  “Ready to go, Dad?” My shaggy hair slips over my eyes.

  Dad looks back from the second stair down. “Sorry to wake you, Caroline.”

  “Off to get Posey?”

  “Yeah, and I’m late.”

  I wrap my arms around my waist and lean against the banister, peering into the great room below. “Have a lovely wedding and a wonderful honeymoon.”

  Dad grins sheepishly “I’m planning on it.” I do believe I’m blushing. “The hotel name and number is on the refrigerator door. Call if you need anything.” He starts down the stairs, then pauses. “If the Mustang breaks down, drive the truck. Keys are on the kitchen hook.”

  I prop my chin in my hand. “Do you get tired of taking care of me?”

  “Suppose I could ask the same of you.” He stares off and away, clea
ring his throat. “I can’t count the number of times you kept me this side of sane after your mama left. Those nights you watched TV with your old man instead of going out with friends . . .” Laughter gurgles from his chest. “Know what came to mind the other day? The summer you hired the lawn service. ‘The dang grass is cutting my calves.’”

  The memory is a soft favorite. “It became apparent no one in the Sweeney household could fire up the mower.”

  “Caroline, you all right? You don’t seem yourself lately. I heard Mitch is back in town . . .”

  Daddy knows me well. Watched me ride the Mitch roller coaster a few times. “No, it’s not Mitch, Dad. Actually, I’m sort of dating J. D. Rand.”

  “J. D.? Didn’t he have a crush on you in junior high?”

  My sleepy eyes pop wide. “Where’d you hear that?”

  “Careful around him, Caroline. I hear he’s a ladies’ man. He’s—”

  “Treating me very nice, Daddy. Don’t worry. Go get married. I’m fine.”

  Why tell him about the Café and Barcelona? It’ll only add to his load. And on his honeymoon. I can’t be responsible for that.

  “Well, guess you’re grown. I’ll leave you to your business.” He takes the last of the stairs down, bumping his old suitcase the entire way. “See you in a week.”

  Once he leaves, I decide to take advantage of the morning and ponder my options from high up in my live-oak sanctuary. It’s a lovely but warm June day, fragrant with the scent rising from the dewed ground.

  Between the ages of eight and nine, I begged Daddy to take us to church. All the kids in my class went.

  Daddy refused. “Caroline,” he’d say, pointing me to the front yard, “if you want to talk to some supreme being, climb the old tree. You’ve got more chance of communing with the Almighty out there than in some stuffy sanctuary.”

  It was the beginning of the Mama Years. When she started slipping away from us.

  So I climbed the tree. Especially when Mama went missing or acted out—screaming with Daddy about her horrendous life—and I didn’t want her to see me cry. The tree became my refuge. When I was fifteen Mama left us for good. I probably logged more hours in the tree than in school.

  Now I sit here pondering how one man died and, in a way, changed my life.

  If I refuse Jones’s inheritance, I’ll be the one responsible for the demise of the Frogmore Café. Reminiscing old-timers will shake their heads and click their tongues. “Remember the Frogmore Café? That Sweeney girl shut her down.”

  Okay, so they might not remember me as the one. But I will.

  If I keep the Café and give up Barcelona. I’ll forever be the one who passed up an incredible, amazing opportunity with Carlos Longoria. The envy of Hah-vard grads. Years from now, Carlos won’t remember.

  But I will.

  “I need an answer.”

  Closing my eyes, I rest against the trunk and form a picture of the God Mitch claims slapped him with some reality. Oh, this Deity is frowning. I refuse to talk to someone who frowns.

  I force the image in my head to smile—like Granddad Sweeney used to do when he’d tell me stories about growing up in the lowcountry, hunting quail on St. Helena Island. There, that’s better.

  Now, where’s the peace I felt the other night when I decided to go for Barcelona? Maybe it’s because the sun is out instead of the stars.

  God, if You’re real and can hear me, tell me what to do.

  “We’re busy?” I rush past Mercy Bea into the dining room, tying on my apron. Every stool at the counter is occupied and almost a third of the booths and tables.

  “You got eyes. What do you see?” The ice she’s frantically scooping clatters into four iced tea jars. “Russell came in early for a bite to eat and ended up clocking in. Did you see the paper?” She tips her head to the bottom counter shelf.

  “No.” I take over behind the counter. “Hey, Mr. Feinberg, I haven’t seen you in a while. More coffee?”

  Mr. Feinberg taps his cup with his fork. “Sure, Caroline, freshen her up.”

  I fill Mr. Feinberg’s cup, then tend to the rich-looking, retired couple’s iced teas and clear away a plate of half-eaten fries shared by three teen girls. When the lull comes, I sneak around the wall with the newspaper and stand inside the kitchen door.

  Front page. Below the fold. A story on the Café with a then-and-now picture. The headline makes my heart jump: “Saying Good-bye to the Frogmore Café.”

  Answer to my early question? I should not be honest with the press. Small blurb in the Living Section, my eye, Melba Pelot.

  I skim the article. Stuff about Jones, the history of the Café, and the old doctor’s home. Then:

  Sweeney, twenty-eight, who inherited the café from McDermott, is undecided about its future.

  Town Councilman Davis Williams: “I’d hate for Beaufort to lose the Frogmore Café. It’s true lowcountry, part of our rich heritage. And where else can hungry folks find Bubba’s Buttery Biscuits?”

  In the early ’60s, McDermott defied Jim Crow laws by removing the separate eating sections for blacks and whites.

  “It caused quite a stir,” Williams said. “But if I heard Jones once, I heard him a hundred times. ‘If I can share a foxhole in Korea with a colored, I can certainly share a meal in public. Jim Crow laws be damned.’”

  I crinkle the paper to my chest. “Oh, Melba, why’d you do this to me?” It’s one thing to shut down a beat-up old diner no one remembers. It’s another thing to shut down a man’s legacy.

  Mercy Bea zips around the corner with her arms loaded with dirty dishes, almost crashing into me. “There you are. Mr. Feinberg is calling for you.” She nods toward the paper. “Well, you done it now.”

  “I suppose.”

  “If you haven’t made up your mind, there you go. Folks aren’t going to want the Café to go away, Caroline.” She drops her load on the counter for Russell to wash later.

  “Yeah, well, then folks are going to have to find their way here to eat once in a while. Sentiment doesn’t pay the bills.”

  I sound brave, but inside, I’m terrified.

  Sunday I have the whole day off. After sleeping in late, doing a load of laundry, and surfing cable channels, I call J. D. to see if he wants to go fishing or down to the beach. I don’t want to sit home all day, thinking, fretting.

  “I’m working, babe,” he says, “filling in for Lem Becket.”

  Babe ? The intimate reference makes me feel googly. “Guess I’ll talk to you later, then.”

  “I’m glad you called.”

  After a twittery good-bye, I absently dial Mitch’s cell, but hang up before the first ring. Do I want to risk my securely closed heart doors by hanging out with his easy, familiar manner? Being good friends is what caused me to trip and fall in love in the first place. It was all Mitch and nothing but Mitch for far too long.

  I smile at the memory. Hard to believe my friend and first love was voted by People magazine “The Man You Want to Be Stranded with on a Desert Island.”

  Oh, how wrong they are. If Mitch can’t shower at least once a day, he considers it barbarian living.

  No, if I’m stranded in the middle of the ocean on some two-by-four island, it best not be with Mitch. Not if I want to survive, anyway.

  Heart: We should give him a call.

  Head: No, we’re moving on. Just like he’s done.

  Heart: But it’s Mitch—best friends and all that.

  Head: But it’s Mitch—left us high and dry without so much as a “how do.” Let the past be the past.

  Heart: You . . . are no fun.

  Head: Yeah, and when you get hurt and bruised, who has to relive it over and over? Me.

  I dial Elle. “You up for a movie or something?”

  “Meet me at my place. I’ll drive. Last time I road-tripped with you, I was picking bugs out of my hair until the next morning. Really, you should get Matilda’s top fixed, C.”

  “I’ll get right on it.” Picking bugs.
She’s crazy.

  We choose a Drew Barrymore romantic comedy playing at the Plaza. During the drive over and in between buying tickets, popcorn, and large sodas, Elle rattles on about ways to find a good, decent, marriageable man, and when she pauses to breathe, I fill her in on Jones’s will and the opportunity with Carlos Longoria.

  She’s appropriately stunned—“No, I didn’t see Melba’s article in the Gazette”—and gawks at me with wide, round eyes while nabbing a kernel of popcorn from the top of her ginormous bag. “Carlos Longoria. He’s on the cover of Forbes, like, every other month. Look at me; I’m green with envy.”

  She whips her arm in front of my face. In the dim light of the movie theater, I can’t make out the color of her skin, but I’m pretty sure it’s not green. Elle is doing what she loves: photography and art. Owning an art gallery is her passion. A week—no, a day—as any businessman’s apprentice and she’d pull out her hair. His too.

  “Elle, O wise one, I’d love your thoughts on this.” The theater lights fade to black and advertisements roll across the big screen.

  “No-brainer. Barcelona.”

  “Really?” Why can’t I have her confidence?

  She turns slightly toward me. “It’s your true Tarzan vine.”

  I snort-laugh. “Oh, brother, Elle, my Tarzan vine broke and dropped me face-first in the dirt.”

  Elle covers her laugh with the back of her arm, popcorn pinched be-tween her fingers. “But you believed. You climbed that live oak, grabbed a handful of Spanish moss, and with a rebel yell, leaped.”

  “And hit the ground like a sack of dumb dirt.”

  “I’ve been waiting twenty years for you to believe in yourself like that again.”

  “Death would’ve been sweet relief that day.” I slide down in the chair, propping my foot on the row in front of me.

  The Tarzan experiment was a defining moment in my life. The entire third-grade class watched me plummet twenty feet to the ground, finding it all too hilarious that I believed and preached Spanish moss to be as strong as Tarzan’s vine. When I went home to Mama for sympa-thy and Band-Aids, she said, “Good grief, Caroline, don’t you have a lick of horse sense?”