Reunion Beach

by Elin Hilderbrand

  Love ya, Pat

  * * *

  Pat put down his pen. He tore the final postcard he had written to Dottie on earth in two, and then into little bits and pieces. He threw the confetti into the air. The tiny bits of paper dissipated like a vapor.

  “Pat Conroy!” Dorothea Benton Frank stood in the entrance of the bar. “There you are!”

  “Dottie?” Pat got off the bar stool and turned to face his friend. “Dottie, is that you?”

  “Hell, yes. I’ve not entirely evaporated. Can you see my pearls through the ectoplasm?”

  Pat squints. “Just barely, but, yes. What are you doing here? I saw you in a hospital.”

  “Well, I wasn’t there for a facelift, you old coot. I got sick. I got worse and then I got a feeling that I should leave the hospital and find you.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “I don’t know. I just did it. I was compelled. You know I don’t make long-range plans. Takes the starch out of life.”

  “So, you knew you’d end up here?’

  “Of course not. I had no plan to die. I’m one of those lovers of life. Couldn’t get enough of it. I had so much going on. The kids. Peter. My grandson Teddy. Another grandbaby on the way. Don’t make me talk about it. Well, maybe I should. I’m not sad when I talk about it. Why is that?”

  Pat nods.

  “You’ll have to do better than that, old friend. You can’t just nod like one of those bobbleheads.”

  “I’m acknowledging that you’ve arrived, that you were there and now you are here. You can do a lot of good for them from this side. When you’re at peace, you see everything differently.”

  “Isn’t it true? I feel great. What a year. And work, too. You won’t believe it. Queen Bee went to number two.”

  “Get out.”

  “No, I mean it. Number two. Two as in second place, also known as the booby prize at the white elephant sale. Two as in the second, you know, the second twin, less pretty but still in the family and allowed to join the rest of the good lookers at the dinner table despite her homely self. I’m glad to leave all that behind. Number two, Pat. Second place. I’m like friggin’ Avis, always trying harder.” Dottie laughed, and soon Pat laughed with her. “Do you want to know who’s Hertz?”

  “Not really.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m happy for everybody and for everything wonderful that happens to the everybodies of that weary world because whatever little taste of sugar they get, they need it. And yet, I’m a bit mystified, in light of my own death, that I still have a wee bit of that old hungry feeling. You know the feeling. The almosts. You almost grabbed that brass ring, but for whatever reason, it was just out of reach. I left the earth without knowing what number one felt like.”

  “I’m sorry, Dot. That’s a damn shame.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “In a little bit, it won’t matter anymore. You’ll see. Is it important to you now?”

  “Not so much.” Dottie sat on the bar stool next to Pat. “Huh. You’re right. All that tumult, really, truly is for nothing. I did all right. Right? Could not matter less. I just had to tell you, because I know you’d see the irony.”

  “I see it.”

  “I had to get out of there before the funeral. I waited until the dog days of summer to make my exit. You know I can’t take the swampy heat.”

  “You lived on the beach.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I sweat regardless. Kept the air-conditioning on 65 degrees right up until Christmas Eve. I left a carbon footprint the size of Wrigley Field behind because I used so much electricity. I was hot all the time. It was so awful I would’ve paid somebody to follow me around with an electric fan in full glacial air-conditioning if I could. I’m hot no matter what! It was hot at your funeral.”

  “How?”

  “Global warming.”

  “It was March.”

  “Pat. Yes, you died in March, but it was hotter than a ski mask on a camel in Beaufort. If you would have died on New Year’s Eve it would’ve been hot in Beaufort. Beaufort’s an oven. An oven with peach pies baking inside, but an oven nonetheless. But I forgive you for leaving and for dying. All is well. The slate is clean.”

  “I remember slates,” Pat chuckled.

  “You bet. Blackboards and chalk and that filthy dirty eraser! How could they let children handle that dirty thing?”

  “You’re so demure.”

  “I know! But in the heat, we’re all the same. A pack of blobs that melt. How’s the weather here?”

  “Nice.”

  Dottie leaned forward and looked closely at her old friend. “You’re so serene, Pat.”

  “You’re getting there.”

  “I am, aren’t I? Is there any ruckus here at all?”

  “Not that I’ve seen.”

  “Just peaceful?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Even when you meet relatives?”

  “Even when you meet them.”

  “How could that be true?”

  “You’ve got nothing to prove here. You can’t disappoint anyone. You can’t please them either because everything is lovely.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “I promise you. You’ll see for yourself. And then we’ll talk about it.”

  “I miss my things. Is that normal?”

  “It’s part of the transition. You don’t need all that stuff here. Let it go, Dot. I know it’s hard. But you enjoyed your things and now you don’t need them. You lived life to the hilt. Parties and overnights and guests and brunches. Your home looked like Architectural Digest.”

  “Didn’t it? The ‘Best Of’ issue.”

  “You like beautiful things for sure.”

  “Well, I tried to create an ambience. I didn’t want my home to look like Scully & Scully was having a going-out-of-business sale, but you know, it might’ve from time to time because I like the look of proper English furniture, a high-polished walnut finish, but I also like Chinoiserie and jabots, and silk damask. But things have to make sense. You can’t have just one cachepot over the bookshelves when you have two bookshelves. You need that extra cachepot. So that’s how the accumulation of stuff in pairs led to Peter almost having a nervous breakdown over a pair of foo dogs I found on eBay. Poor Peter. The day those turquoise blue foo dogs arrived you would’ve thought we had to feed them for all the carrying on he did. My long-suffering husband. Full head of hair. And a great lover. Thank goodness he liked my taste, appreciated it. I had seven full sets of china. Herend, Limoge, and Lenox even.”

  “Seven sets of china? They didn’t have that much dinnerware on the Queen Mary.”

  “You never know who will drop in.” She shrugged. “But all that stuff? They’re just things.”

  “Yep.”

  “I don’t need them anymore.”

  “You don’t.”

  “I think I might like not needing anything. Anything you have to dust turns to dust someday, so what’s the point?”

  “There isn’t one.”

  “After all that and there’s no point. Huh.”

  “You’re already in the groove here.”

  “Am I?”

  “Yep. You already seem calmer.”

  “Than what? Than what I was on earth? If you were sucked through the solar system in a hospital gown and not your best pearls and Chanel mules, you’d have to find a way to accept it. To be polite about a quick exit and why it happened so fast. To understand that you were never in control. At a certain point, you just let go and ride the ride. When I let go, my pearls returned.” Dottie pats her pearls. “But not for long.”

  “Nope, not for long. You did just fine, Dot.”

  “Did I? I’m not so sure. I tried to create my version of order on earth. You know I was a long-term planner. Had my datebooks picked out through 2026. Had the blueprints on the beach house done and expanded the back porch so I could see more of the water. I surrounded myself with pretty things, good friends, and wore the clothes that pleased me
with a purse to match. I wanted very much to teach my children about the good things. I wanted them to recognize them, but how silly. Really. My son, like all boys since the dawn of time, are raised to be clueless to the age of forty by their mothers, though my boy was sharp as a tack, despite my control. My daughter was raised in my image, and hers was such an improvement over mine, it’s not even funny. She lives so much more to the point. She is funny and wise and such a good mother. Does it really matter if she knows the exact origins of pebble leather?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Tuscany to be exact. Pebble leather doesn’t matter now. I hope the important truths got through.”

  “I am certain that they did.”

  “I tried to be steady. Of course, I had my husband for that. I could always count on him. To love me or push me, either/or. I wonder if I came across as someone who could be counted on, because, Lord knows, I counted on him.”

  “You could be counted on. After all, love pulls all the threads together, and evidently always will. I’m sure your daughter believed she could count on you.”

  “She did. And there were times she thought I was nuts.”

  “Nah.”

  “Here and there. Not every day. But here and there I could go a little crazy. I loved the word ‘ballistic,’ because it was how it felt inside to be me, firing on all pistons. Whatever a piston is.”

  “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “No, it doesn’t. I hope my children go ballistic once in a while. After all, it’s in the family.”

  “Nothing wrong with that.”

  Dottie picks up a tumbler of vodka on the rocks. “Is this mine?”

  “Yep.”

  Dottie sips. “It’s delish. I had to give up Dewar’s, it made me puffy. Vodka is a streamliner. Thank you.”

  “I’ve been thinking, Dot.” Pat studied his tumbler of whiskey as though it were a chalice. “There’s no comparison. Skillet cornbread is preferable to pan.”

  “I am not going to pick up this argument on this side of heaven. Listen to me. Once and for all. Pan cornbread.”

  “Skillet.”

  “Pat, use your head. Pan is cake-like whereas the skillet cornbread is dense. Skillet style gets hard like quick-dry cement if you don’t eat it right away.”

  “You’re supposed to eat it hot, that’s the point.”

  “But you can’t always eat it hot. I’ll give you this: I do like the crust on skillet baked. But that’s all I like. You get crust with the pan, too, but it’s thinner, like the top of a pancake.”

  “Not the same. Skillet baked gives you a thicker kind of carpet-like finish.”

  “Carpet? What are you talking about? Aubusson? Wall to wall? What? I hate comparisons of objects to food. Food is food. Besides, it’s the lard that makes a golden crust.”

  “I’ve had yours.”

  “And?” Dottie asked and waited.

  “It’s pretty spectacular.”

  “So why argue with me?”

  “What else have we got to do for all eternity?” Pat laughs. Soon, Dottie is laughing with him until she isn’t.

  “Pat, follow my logic. If you studied cornbread south of the Mason-Dixon Line, the baking style is a matter of geography and genealogy. Our recipes define our regions. Would you agree? We’re South Carolinians. Okay, we make cornbread in a skillet or a pan. But traditional Tennessee skillet cornbread does not go down the same way that Georgia skillet cornbread might. You’ve got the Alabama version. And the Virginia style. Hell, we could go all night with the variations, but the truth is, in my opinion and experience, the pan is the key to the best cornbread.”

  “Dottie, I respectfully disagree. You need a seasoned skillet. One that is used for the sole purpose of making cornbread.”

  “But if we’re going to have this discussion for the millionth time, you will just have to trust that I know best because I make the best cornbread.”

  “Trust mine. Skillet. Skillet style cornbread is popular in every region of the South,” Pat insisted.

  “Popular does not mean better.”

  “It can.”

  “Not always,” Dottie countered. “We could argue that every region has a pan and skillet recipe. It’s cornmeal based, Pat. And think about it. The variations. You have the Italians with the polenta. That’s just moist cornbread stirred wet for hours until your arm almost falls off into the bowl, and instead of reattaching it, you just throw some tomato sauce on it and call it a day. Did you know I’m one eighth Italian?”

  “You remind me every chance you get.”

  “Well I am. So that’ll tell you that the Italian and South Carolinian, the Lowcountry South Carolinian in me, knows her way around a bowl of cornmeal.”

  “No doubt. But there’s always something new to learn.”

  “You said my cornbread was excellent.”

  “It is. But I don’t know how we choose the best cornbread if we don’t include the variations. Think about it. There’s the bayou. Louisiana, the Mississippi Delta. You’ve got coastal, inland, and New Orleans proper, which is actually its own country as far as I’m concerned. They do a crumble version of the old skillet standard.”

  “You can’t count them. Cajun is a separate palate.”

  “Completely. But I would argue that Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina are similar—at least when it comes to cornbread. And they make it like me, Lowcountry style. It involves a can of creamed corn. Keep the secret.”

  “What about firecracker cornbread?” Pat asked.

  “Never heard of it. I think you made it up.”

  “I most certainly did not. Hot chilis and niblets stirred in. Fresh niblets right off the cob. Boil them until soft and into the batter.”

  “A fad for sure. I don’t think I ever had it.”

  “You wouldn’t. You never went to a dive bar.”

  “Only when there was no alternative. I can think of a couple of book tours in Florida when I could barely find my way out of the everglades. I think I stopped at a dive bar somewhere in there. With Nita Leftwich. Do you know her?”

  “I never had the pleasure. The best food is in dives, Dottie. They use lard. Butter. Fat. You know, the essentials in your kitchen.”

  “They were. It’s so funny to me now. I worried my whole life about calories. Now I wish I’d just had the butter every time instead of those margarines with the dumb names. You know, like that landfill-friendly I Can’t Believe It Ain’t Butter. Why don’t they just call it whipped car wax because you can’t digest it. Take it off the market. I’d call my butter I Can Believe It’s Butter because it is authentic butter from the cream of a cow and it actually tastes like real butter because it is what it says it is in the first place.”

  “No false advertising.”

  “Nope.”

  “You worried about your figure?”

  “Until the end. Old habits die hard, Pat. Remember, I once won a can of paint at the Charleston Jamboree when I was twelve years old and guessed the weight of a flatbed truck. It’s my superpower. I can tell what things weigh from fifty feet.”

  “You’d better get a new superpower. We are weightless here.”

  “Isn’t that wonderful? How exciting. Well, then I will not try to slim down my cornbread recipe.”

  “There’s only one way to settle this.”

  “We can settle it?”

  “You bake. I bake. Then we round up some judges.” Pat looks around. “I’m not asking Kurt Vonnegut to judge our cornbread.”

  “He wouldn’t anyway. Looks like he’s still annoyed from this angle.”

  “He’s actually a lot of fun.”

  “How about Tennessee Williams? I’ve been dying to talk New Orleans with him.”

  “But you’re from Charleston.”

  “I can talk New Orleans when forced. And I can force him to talk Charleston.” Dottie waves at Tennessee Williams. “Cajun this and that. I’m good at it.”

  “I can talk New Orleans, too.”


  “So go over and ask him to judge.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “I get nervous around souls I admire.”

  “You’re never nervous around me.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Don’t test me, Pat. What about Ada Boni? The famous cook—Italian chef—she wrote The Talisman.”

  “I know who she is. She’s been dead so long it would take us an eternity to find her. Did you use her cookbook?”

  “Only an eighth of it.”

  “You’re not your genetics any longer.”

  “But I just found out that I’m part Italian.”

  “Doesn’t matter. We’re air and sky now.”

  “And memory.” Dottie turned to Pat. “Which is why we must bake.”

  “Bliss needs no sustenance.”

  “I don’t know about that. There’s more to baking cornbread than eating it.”

  “Is there?”

  “There’s the whisking, and the greasing of the pan . . .”

  “The skillet.”

  “Your skillet. There’s the pleasure of pouring the batter. The scent of the house when it’s baking. It’s that clean scent of a summer field right before harvest. We bake to remember.”

  “Dot,” Pat said impatiently.

  “All right, all right. I bake to win. I’m new here. I flew in on the wings of Number Two. Okay? I promise to let go of my life when I’m ready to let go. I mean it. Truly.”

  “We need a chef to judge.”

  “Who’s the cat who ran Cordon Bleu?”

  “There are thousands of those high-end chefs. And none of them are interested in cornbread.”

  “We need someone who knows cornbread.”

  “Not many of those here.”

  “Oh, come on. Southern writers are a genre. Like ripped from the headlines movies on Lifetime—too many to count and not enough years to watch them all. I bet if we name the writers, they’ll show up. The Southern chefs! Mama Dips! Miss Peacock from Decatur! What about the fiction types?”

  “Who? Do you mean William Faulkner, Katherine Anne Porter, Reynolds Price, and Eudora Welty? Haven’t seen any of them around.”