Isle of Palms

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  I had hardly slept last night, I was so excited. For good reason. All I had to do was look outside. The afternoon sky was filled with so much blue it made me feel like flying. Great pillows and sheer tears of clouds invited the hide-and-seek of angelic creatures. Gorgeous!

  I had opened every window in the house and the stuffiness of the rooms was immediately sucked out by the pull of the ocean. The air was as warm and tasty as any I could recollect—a fat-free gumbo of heavy saline, wrapped in the sounds of frond rustle and bird song. It was a perfect summer day. You know it had to be if I was talking frond rustle.

  “Come tell me if this is the way you want it!” Daddy called out. There was defeat in his voice. I hated the mood he was in, but I wasn’t going to let him ruin mine.

  “Coming!” I said.

  “Hey!” someone called out from above. “Y’all moving in?”

  The greeting and raspy voice, unmistakably feminine, came from the house next door. I looked up to see a very blond woman, somewhere in the zone of my age, maybe older, leaning over her porch railing.

  “Hey! Yeah,” I said, calling back to her, “just moving in!”

  “Good! This neighborhood could use some life! I’m Lucy. What’s your name?”

  I smiled up to her and called out, “Anna! Anna Abbot!”

  Okay. Maybe it’s impolite to bring this up, but she wasn’t wearing any underwear under her gauze sundress. I am not kidding. Normally, I do not care what people wear or don’t wear under their sundress. I thought for a moment that she probably didn’t realize the afternoon sun made her smart little frock all but transparent and so I pretended not to notice. Or maybe she had just taken a shower and was in the process of getting dressed or something.

  “Be back in a moment,” I said. The box I was holding wasn’t getting any lighter and then I couldn’t resist the tap of the Devil himself. “Daddy?” I said, all innocence waltzing through my new front door. “Would you mind bringing in the box in the back of the van next to the wardrobe box? It’s too heavy for me.”

  He adored helpless females. He came to my aid immediately, grumbling a little. I witnessed a complete mood swing as he stepped out into the front yard and got an eyeful of my neighbor, who was a living mood elevator—a double dose. I was right behind him.

  “Hi!” Lucy said, waving and parading full feathers up and down her upstairs porch in the breeze. “Are you Mr. Anna Abbot?”

  Daddy looked up. His gasp could have inhaled the entire square footage of Lowe’s in the Towne Centre in Mount Pleasant, including part of the parking lot.

  “I’m Dougle Lutz,” he said. “Douglas, I mean, but my friends call me Doc. I’m Anna’s father, Miss . . . ?”

  “Ah!” She took a long pause. “I see! I’m Lucy, Dougle,” she said and giggled. “Gimme ten minutes to organize something and I’ll be rat over!”

  She turned and went inside her house, the screen door slamming behind her. Poor Daddy. He was just blithering spittle every which way and I had to bite the insides of my mouth not to fall over with laughter.

  “Great God,” Daddy said under his breath. His face was a parfait of horror, piqued testosterone, and questions of decency. “Did you see that she had no . . . what was her name?”

  “Lucy,” I said, groping for an explanation, at the same time asking myself why I thought it was my responsibility to make sense of this cockeyed world for him. “Well? What can I say, Dad? At least the natives seem friendly.”

  “Very,” he said.

  I slapped him lightly on the shoulder to bring him back to earth. His eyes burned a hole in the space where she had stood moments before. It had probably been quite some time since old Douglas, now and forever Dougle in my mind, had witnessed something so provocative in broad daylight—or the dead of night for that matter. The same held true for me, but I wasn’t about to admit it to him or anyone else.

  We returned to the piles of boxes all over my house and Daddy was still muttering about her.

  “Who was that woman? Where do you want the stereo?”

  “I don’t know. Delilah?” Poor Daddy. “I guess the stereo should go here in the living room?”

  I had one of those reasonably priced mini stereo units from Wal-Mart that could be tucked neatly into bookshelves. The only major splurge for decorating my new home was a Scandinavian blond wood wall unit for my living room. I had bought it from Katie at Danco in Mount Pleasant. It was beautiful—light but sturdy, clean lines and modern. After years of boards and bricks I decided my books deserved a more dignified resting place. Not a soul on this earth would ever have called me materialistic, but I sure did have an overgrown bed of gardening books, a ton of cookbooks, and a small collection of leather-bound classics that were precious to me. Now I had this wonderful piece of furniture to hold them and I was thrilled by it. Collecting books and preserving them for another generation was a worthy pursuit. If there was one thing Charlestonians understood, it was saving things they loved.

  I was so deep in my thoughts that I didn’t hear my new neighbor rapping on the screen door. Daddy must have, because I looked up to see him talking to Lucy, who held a blender filled with something to drink. She had changed into another outfit—very short overalls and a tight T-shirt. Daddy stood there with his hands deep in his pockets, completely agog, staring at her from head to toe while she drew circles around him with her sweet words of welcome.

  “So I said to myself, Lucy?—you need to go on over there and help your new neighbors! Can I pour y’all a drink? I even brought us some paper cups!”

  “Sure, thanks a lot,” Daddy said. “This was very thoughtful of you.”

  “Hey! Thanks, Lucy,” I said.

  She leaned over to pour out the drinks on top of a low box. What appeared to be a frozen fruit drink flowed into the cups. If she leaned over another inch Daddy and I would have more facts about her than we needed to know. I must admit, however, with certain authority, that the moment soon passed when we inadvertently learned that her sofa did not match her curtains, not that I thought they would.

  She handed us a cup, lifted hers, and said, “Well, honey? Welcome to the neighborhood and if you ever need a play date, you know where to find me. Cheers!” As she spoke, the sun coming through my living room window bounced around her thick lip gloss to such an extent that her large and expressive mouth became a moving light show. In all my years, I had never encountered someone quite like Lucy. Flamboyant didn’t begin to cover it.

  I took a big gulp and struggled to swallow. “What is this?” I said, coughing.

  “Oh, it’s a sort of frozen Planter’s Punch,” she said, “but it’s my secret recipe! Good, huh?”

  “It’s delicious,” Daddy said. “May I fill your cup, Miss Lucy?”

  “Honey, you can fill my cup anytime!” she said and burst out laughing with the silliest laugh I had ever heard.

  In fact, her remark, followed by that laugh, was so outrageous that I decided she was only kidding. She must have been.

  Daddy blushed a deep red. He was beside himself, staring at her shoes, which for the record were espadrilles with three-inch platforms and black strings tied all around her ankles. The overall effect of this getup was a kind of construction worker—gladiator—centerfold. Maybe she didn’t have a full-length mirror?

  She turned to my new wall unit, ran her hand over its smooth wood and said, “Golly, this is so pretty. Is it new?”

  Okay. What can I say? She had an appreciation for the wall unit of my dreams so she wasn’t without some merit. Besides, even as my mind ran through the faces of all the most conspicuous clients I had ever had, she was most definitely a mutant species, far too interesting to shut out.

  “Yes,” I said, “it is and I have to admit that I’m insane over the thing. Isn’t that ridiculous?”

  “Not one little bit! Since when is it a sin to appreciate something beautiful?”

  That’s when I decided that I liked her, slut or no slut.

  Daddy handed her
drink to her and said, “Miss Lucy?”

  She smiled at him and said as bold as can be, “Thanks, Dougle, darlin’!”

  Dougle. We cracked up—all of us—partners in a growing haze of unaccustomed alcohol. Well, for us anyway. Daddy and I never touched a drop of alcohol in the daytime! I don’t think, however, that we could have said the same for Miss Lucy.

  Daddy’s reserve dissolved sip by sip. The ice was officially broken, no, melting and it was clear Lucy wasn’t going home anytime soon. I was happy to have her company because Daddy was completely entertained. I guess it was impossible for him to be crabby when this odd little sexpot flirted shamelessly with him. I was having the time of my life watching it. Best of all, I was getting unpacked. Lucy decided to take over the linen closet while we asked her a million questions about herself.

  We learned by our second pitcher of this tropical concoction of hers that she was divorced from her husband, who was an extremely successful residential contractor.

  “Hugo was the best thing that ever happened to old Danny,” she said, remarking on the horrible hurricane of 1989 that nearly blew Charleston and all its barrier islands off the map. “He made a killing.”

  “So where is he now?” I said, unprepared for what was to follow.

  Her eyes filled with tears and she said, “He left me and went off to Key West to fish. He was the love of my life! One day, out of nowhere, he was gone! Kazam! I came home from aerobics and there was a bag of Zoloft samples, an empty bottle of Absolut Citron, his favorite, and a note on the kitchen counter.” She stopped, cleared her throat and read an imaginary paper in her hand. “ ‘Dear Lucy, I cannot stand you for another minute. You drive me shit-house crazy. I took the boat and fifty thousand dollars out of the savings account and you can have everything else. Good-bye. Don’t try to find me. I quit.’ Is that the most insulting thing you have ever heard?” Bulbous tears rolled down her augmented cheekbones to her augmented breasts and Daddy all but pounced to her side with his handkerchief. Like his mother, Daddy used handkerchiefs, not tissues.

  “Jeesch!” I said. “That’s awful!”

  “He was the love of my life,” she said, repeating herself.

  “He was a damn fool, Miss Lucy,” Daddy said, in all sincerity, “a damn fool.”

  “I did everything he wanted. I mean everything!”

  Daddy cleared his throat and God only knew what he was thinking about that statement, but Lucy continued.

  “I made his favorite casserole, his momma’s recipe, every Wednesday and, oh, hellfire! Why do I always cry when I start talking about him? Y’all must think I’m as crazy as a bedbug!”

  “We think no such thing, do we, Anna?”

  “No, absolutely not,” I said. Yes, absolutely yes, I thought. If my husband had left me a note like that, I’d have followed him to the bottom floor of Hades and stuffed it in his ears with a pencil.

  “I ironed his shirts and folded his stupid underwear . . .”

  She began to wail and all I could do was wonder why underwear was so problematic for her.

  Daddy put his arm around her shoulder and she turned into his chest and boo-hooed for all she was worth. Turned out that what she was worth was a lot. Danny the house builder turned fisherman had bought Microsoft and America Online stocks in the eighties and they had split about a bazillion times. He also never spent a dime of what he had earned in the boom years. Danny left Lucy in Fat City. Lucy had turned her portfolio into cash early last year.

  “I wasn’t comfortable having my whole future in the stock market,” she said. “Turns out I made a lucky guess.”

  To say the least. The injustice of her windfall versus my unending battle with bills wasn’t lost on me, but this was not my first brush with an unfair world. By the time she had calmed herself down, she and Daddy went next door for a few minutes to get a casserole from her freezer for our dinner.

  I was busy organizing cassette tapes and CDs and I had the feeling someone was watching me, you know, that creepy feeling when the hair on the back of your neck bristles? I looked up to see a little old lady at my door.

  “Anybody home?” she said, knowing perfectly well that I was there, since she had been spying for who knew how long.

  I went to the door and stood inside the screen, sizing up my visitor, a tiny woman of perhaps eighty. Was it Miss Mavis?

  “Hi,” I said, knowing I reeked of booze and not giving a damn either. Bottom line, don’t stare in my door. Second bottom line, I was cruising the River Rum.

  “I live next door and I brought you a cake!” she said. “Aren’t you going to invite me to come in?”

  She was so cantankerous that it gave me a start.

  “Oh! Of course, where are my manners? Thank you,” I said, holding the screen wide for her to pass. “Welcome to my mess!”

  She stood in the middle of the living room and looked all around her at the stacks of boxes and wads of packing paper and then gave her unsolicited opinion.

  “Well, it’s gonna be a million years before you get this disaster straight! Do you have a dog?”

  “No, ma’am, just me and my daughter—that is, when she’s home from school.”

  “Who? What?”

  She was obviously losing her hearing, so I raised my voice a little. “No, ma’am. Just me and my daughter, who’s in college.”

  “Well, that’s good. I have two cats and I don’t want some dog bothering them. Are you a party person? Here, take this from me, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Thank you,” I said and put the cake on the one bare spot on my dining table. “If you want to know if I make much noise, the answer is no, I don’t make noise.”

  “Good. I need my sleep and I like to leave my windows open when there’s a nice breeze.”

  “So do I, Miss . . . ? I’m sorry, I don’t think we ever told each other our names! I’m Anna.”

  “Well, I’m Miss Mavis. I’ve been living on the Isle of Palms all my life and my mother and daddy before me. Used to come here for summers.” She looked me up and down with her hands on her boxy hips. “There’s not a grain of sand on this island I haven’t seen and a story about this place that I don’t know. Ask Mavis!—that’s what they say.”

  “Well, it’s awfully nice meeting you and I surely do appreciate the cake, Miss Mavis.”

  She obviously didn’t remember me and I really didn’t know what to do with her at that point. I couldn’t invite her to sit and have a cup of coffee. I hadn’t unpacked the coffee machine yet, I hadn’t bought tea or any groceries at all, and every seat held a box or a pile. Besides, I was a little looped and that wasn’t the best time for reacquainting myself with her or anybody.

  She smiled then for the first time and I saw the face that I remembered from years ago, the one that had been so kind to me the day my momma died. Yes, I remembered her. I wasn’t ready to revisit my past quite yet. But, how wonderful! Wonderful to find her alive and the same, really. She still liked being called Miss Mavis. She had remained an old-fashioned island girl all these years—sassy, opinionated. I would be smart to treat her with the same deference. Her years and history had earned it. I’d tell her who I was some other day.

  “Well, it’s Angel’s cake, really. I just came over to have a look and say hello.”

  “That’s fine. I appreciate it. I love angel cake.” Rolling down the river . . .

  “How’s that? No, girl, Angel’s cake! Angel made it!”

  “Well, please tell her I said thanks so much.” So! Angel was still around too!

  “I’ll do that. Now. Where’s the man?”

  “What man?”

  “I distinctly saw a man helping you. Are you one of those fast women living in sin?”

  I burst out laughing. “Are you kidding? That was my father!”

  “Well? Where is he? Isn’t he going to come out and say hello?”

  “Oh! I’m sorry! No, he’s next door getting a casserole.”

  “What? Lucy’s already been here? Alr
eady sunk her claws into your daddy?”

  “No, ma’am, I don’t think she . . .”

  “Humph! You mark my word, young lady, that woman is . . . she’s . . . well, you just watch out, ’eah?”

  Miss Mavis was more aggravated than I thought she should have been that Daddy wasn’t there to greet her, but I let it pass. Besides, I didn’t need her to tell me what Lucy was.

  She started to the door, taking a deep breath to compose herself. “The world has changed around me, Anna, but I’m too old now to change myself. If you need anything just come on over.”

  I watched her walk across the yard back to her house. There was more spit and vinegar in her than I’d seen in anybody in a long time. She was still just a little old Carolina blue crab and I knew I was going to like, no, adore living next door to her. She could tell me stories about what I had missed over the years on the Isle of Palms. I’d be a grateful listener. She could help me patch up the wounded part of me. If she wanted to.

  I started to wonder what had happened to Daddy and Lucy but I kept working, unpacking the kitchen boxes, and putting things away, plugging in the Mr. Coffee.

  When they returned an hour later, Lucy had changed clothes again and Daddy couldn’t look at me in the eye.

  This behavior was very unlike him. I decided it was probably best not to mention that the back of his hair stood up like Alfalfa’s cowlick. Old one-spike Dougle. I mean, Daddy surely realized that women like Lucy were emotional train wrecks—self-serving, self-promoting, opportunistic . . . Whoa!

  What was the matter with me? So my daddy scored a little hands-on in her kitchen? Was that a big deal? God! I mean, when was the last time Daddy did anything to be embarrassed about? Hell, it might improve his mood and his health! Please understand. I also never thought about my father having a sexual urge in my entire life. Ever since Momma died, Daddy had all but given up on women who put out. But here he was, caught like an unsuspecting flounder on the lampoon of a pro. He probably didn’t even put up a fight, and good for him. God knows, if there was one thing my daddy and I needed, it was, well, you know . . .