Isle of Palms

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  I got up and walked to the water’s edge knowing I was looking at my best offer and my only offer. If I didn’t take it, my baby would be illegitimate. I thought about that and knew this baby didn’t ask to come into the world this way. I had three choices. Adoption. I knew I couldn’t do that. Two, I could raise an illegitimate baby with Daddy, or three, a legitimate baby with Jim.

  “Look, Jim, let’s be blunt here. You’re gay. Right?”

  Silence. He just stared at me as though I had slapped him. But I had some difficult things to say and it wasn’t easy to hear or say them.

  “You’re my best friend, Jim, and I’m gonna love you for this until the day I die. But I don’t want to throw away whatever chances I have for a marriage to a man I fall in love with because I’m married to my best friend who is also gay. And, I don’t want you to be stuck! You know what I mean, don’t you?”

  “Anna, I know what you mean. But that could happen when? Ten years from now? Look, here’s what I propose. Marry me and we’ll live together and give this baby a name. I will be discreet. You be discreet. You don’t embarrass me and I won’t embarrass you.”

  “You mean what? That if we want to fool around with someone it’s okay as long as we don’t announce it?”

  “Yeah, I mean, I know that sounds kind of crummy, but yeah.”

  “How much money is your father supposed to leave you?”

  “Buckets,” he said and smiled.

  “Jeesch! Okay, okay. I’ll marry you but only if your family approves.”

  “Are you kidding? If we’re crazy enough to do something like this, we’re not asking their permission. We’re going to Georgetown this weekend and that’s it!”

  “Can we take Frannie?”

  “Come here!” Jim put his arms around me and hugged me good and tight. “Anna, I want you to not worry, okay? I’m about to become a family man, God help me!”

  That was the beginning of Jim’s mother, good old moneybags Trixie, wedging herself into my life.

  Seven

  How’s Trix?

  OKAY, you’re shocked. I married a gay man. Well, let me tell you this: being married to Jim wasn’t bad at all. In fact, he was a sweetheart pussycat every single day during the four years we were together. As for sex? Listen, I wasn’t ready for one-half of what was happening to me, much less sex.

  Just imagine this. You are barely eighteen years old. Your rock-hard abdomen is growing with the speed of light. There’s talk that there’s a baby in there who is going to fight his or her way out. Then, your husband comes in from school, fixes you a cold drink, rubs your feet, and makes you laugh your head off with endless crazy shenanigans. He tells you that you’re beautiful, is thrilled to place his hand on your tummy and feel the baby kick, and brings home stuffed animals and little outfits every time he can find some extra cash. He is entranced by your metamorphosis. He can’t wait to start Lamaze classes. He, honey chile, is the perfect man. To this day, I kiss the ground he walks on.

  Now, about Trixie. Okay, I know she meant well and I truly believe she did. From the minute we announced our marriage, his mother was delighted. His befuddled father, who had suspected something all along about Jim’s sexuality, went into a dither. He was joined by Daddy, who we didn’t tell where we went on that Saturday. The three of them scrambled like wildcats until Trixie emerged as victor.

  She announced she would take charge, find an apartment for us, and take care of everything. She did—she found a perfectly adorable carriage house, tucked away in a private alley right off of South Battery. It was owned by a widow, Mrs. Augustine Bennett, who declared she was pleased to have a young married couple on her property. Miss August, as she liked to be called because it implied she was a centerfold, was a darling octogenarian who rarely left her house.

  Trixie negotiated the lease, since we were too young to sign one anyway, and insisted on paying for it, saying that she didn’t want Jim or me to work. It was a small thing to ensure that Jim had ample study time, and she said that I should rest. Besides the fact that I couldn’t think of anyone who would hire a pregnant person, I couldn’t work because I didn’t feel very well. I intended to start classes and work as soon as the baby came and I could arrange for day care.

  Filled with determination to create marital bliss, Trixie proceeded to decorate for us. Although the two-bedroom cottage was furnished, she had everything moved into storage while every square inch was scoured and repainted. Trixie then refurnished it as she thought it should be done, mostly with cast-off Depression relics from her attic. Jim’s childhood furniture—a single bed, bookcase, chest of drawers and a bedside table—was repainted with white enamel for the baby’s room. Our bedroom had a queen-size mattress and box spring on a frame, pushed against the wall and covered to look like a daybed with every pillow in Christendom. We had two end tables and a sofa in the living room and a rectangular table for our dining area, which quickly became Jim’s study space. The kitchen had a two-burner stove and a tiny refrigerator. Trixie wanted to change them but Jim and I insisted they were fine. I figured we’d live on what I knew how to make, as neither one of us had learned to seriously cook.

  Once Trixie had covered the windows with remade curtains from some dead relative and once the bathroom was hung with new towels, she finally began to slow down. Somewhat. Her last gift was a copy of The Joy of Cooking.

  “Ah just want to be sure you feed mah boy properly.”

  Nice shot to the head, I thought. “Thanks.”

  “Ah hope you don’t think Ah’m intruuuding?” she would say.

  Nothing to be done about her accent. “No, ma’am,” I’d answer, “I don’t know what we’d do without you!”

  Now, in all fairness to everyone, I was a motherless, grandmother-less, pregnant teenager who did not possess one clue of what was normal in the arena of maternal parental involvement. But I can tell you this without a degree in psychology: Trixie was a well-meaning but overbearing mother who probably knew in her heart that this baby was no more her son’s child than the man in the moon’s. Still, she drove me up the wall.

  Meanwhile, she made all attempts possible to take me into her family and supported the charade with all the heart she had. I think she always knew that Jim was gay. Maybe she thought if she loved me really hard that Jim would become straight. Maybe she thought if she tried to micromanage our marriage, it would last. Poor thing. She even tried to turn me into Julia Child, that is, when they could get me to rise from the couch.

  I spent the next six months inspecting the bathroom and the ceilings of our apartment.

  “Ah’ve never seen someone so nauseated from pregnancy in all mah days!” she would say. “Why don’t you eat some saltine crackers, dear?”

  The mere mention of saltines sent me waddling at my top speed for the relief of release and then back to the couch to recover. Jim was always standing by with a cold cloth for my head and a Coke with the bubbles stirred out.

  “Don’t talk to her about f-o-o-d, Mother,” Jim would say and turn on I Love Lucy reruns to divert me. “The doctor says she’s fine and the baby’s fine. This just happens sometimes.”

  “Well, you’re a regular Terry Brazelton,” she said over and over. “Ah never got sick like this! Ah blossomed with mah boys!”

  So, go blossom in hell, I would think but never say. She tried. She really did. I had a lousy sense of humor then.

  And, Jim began to take an interest in our home, doing lots of things to make it ours. He brought in plants and rearranged the furniture. It was clear he had an eye for interior design, because with a natural ease and almost no money, he made our carriage house something worthy of a layout in a magazine. He was a marvel.

  But show house or no show house, when Emily was born with platinum blond hair and the spooky green eyes of Everett Fairchild, Trixie never said a word. Maybe because I was blond. But those eyes of Emily’s had obviously come from somewhere else. It was at that point that we both realized a lot was going unsaid but
we let the silence be what it was and went on with living.

  From the time Emily was six weeks old, I would roll her up and down South Battery in her enormous English pram, another gift from Trixie. There I was, dressed in old Gap jeans and a faded T-shirt, pushing a thousand-dollar carriage. It was absurd.

  Money was tight even though Jim had an allowance from his parents. Jim gave me what he could but I didn’t have much gumption when it came to asking for anything for myself. I started to cut his hair to save money and did a pretty good job at it too. This grew to a part-time thing of me cutting the hair of other students for five or ten dollars. Word spread that I was pretty good with scissors.

  Daddy would sometimes slip me twenty or fifty dollars when I saw him, but he had taken the position that if I was married, I should pay my own bills. I hardly ever disagreed with Daddy, though it seemed the circumstances I was in should have made a difference. It didn’t. As much as I loved my father, I knew it was futile to ask him for help. Violet’s legacy was a strange one. Daddy had become cheaper than ever and as petulant as a child. Or so it seemed to me. Besides, he was occupied with all the spaghetti dinners and pound cakes being delivered by various widows since the news of my departure had traveled the circles of Mount Pleasant society. That, I thought, was probably a good thing. Nonetheless, there was a growing uncomfortable distance between us.

  I racked my brains trying to figure out how he could justify his stingy behavior with me. Maybe he just wanted me to grow up. Maybe he was jealous of Trixie’s support because he had suffered so much deprivation when he was a kid.

  I was living dangerously in a depressed lull. Instead of enjoying my motherhood, I worried and sulked. I hated that I wasn’t qualified to do anything. I didn’t have money for school. Daddy wasn’t willing to lend it to me. I was afraid to take a loan. How would I pay it back? Ask Trixie? No way! I ticked days from the calendar with growing impatience. Was this my life? Changing diapers and waiting for Jim to graduate and leave me with a child? I needed to figure my way out of my dark hole, dug by everyone around me and by my own complacency.

  Walking Emily up and down the streets of Charleston fast became a screaming bore. I decided I needed a hobby and turned to my first attempt at gardening. I remembered watching my mother work in the yard when I was little. I had always enjoyed helping her dig little holes with my own spade and refilling the watering can, especially on hot days. Maybe I would enjoy it now too.

  Our little carriage house had a garden plot on either side of the front door and a long narrow plot that ran down the side of the house facing east. The other side faced a brick wall and had no sunlight. I decided to start with the front door area.

  With Emily napping in her carriage, I began to weed and then to dig the tiny courtyard, sifting out old roots, bulbs, and stones. On my meager budget I was only able to afford to plant a few flats of flowers and herbs. Once they were in the ground, I thought it cheered the front of our cottage up tremendously. And me too.

  Not long after my petunias began spreading and blooming, I was outside deadheading the flowers to encourage new blooms and Miss August surprised me by appearing right behind me it seemed from nowhere.

  “Your flowers look very nice, Anna,” she said.

  I jumped at the sound of her voice. “Thanks. I thought they would add something, you know, and give me something to do.”

  “Yes, well, when I was your age, this entire garden was filled with blooms of one sort or another all year long. But now I can’t worry about all of that. Arthritis, you know. Kills the knees and you have to have obliging knees to garden.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, unsure of what to say.

  “I used to be an officer of the Charleston Garden Club,” she said. “I knew Mrs. Whaley.”

  “Wow. Well, that must have been fun,” I said, deciding she was probably just a little lonely and anyway, old people loved to reminisce.

  “Your garden is only as good as your dirt, you know,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am, I’ve heard that said.”

  “Every three feet is a new garden, you know,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said and giggled. She was absolutely working herself into a lecturing lather saying you know with every statement, as though I knew anything, which I didn’t.

  “I assume you like to garden?” she said.

  “Well, I guess it’s something about me that I never knew,” I said. “Turns out that I like it a lot.”

  “Hands in the dirt and a new baby in a carriage. What could make you closer to God than that?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  Long after she was gone I was still thinking about what she had said. I had neglected my religious duties since marrying Jim. Emily had yet to be baptized. Maybe it was because Catholicism had belonged to my grandmother and had been shoved down my throat. I had not taken the time to think about it. Everything had been too confusing and I was still angry that I was in this situation anyway—married and a mother instead of being in college like Frannie. Frannie had gone off to Georgetown University and was studying political science. She would probably become a professional rabble-rouser. There was no question that I felt cheated, but I decided that I needed to stop complaining for a while. I was even getting sick of my own thoughts.

  But, my life wasn’t a complete bummer. Every time I looked at Emily—her perfect fingernails, her innocent expressions—I felt blessed and grateful. Yes, grateful to God to have a healthy child and ashamed of my dissatisfaction over not getting exactly what I wanted. I told myself what the nuns had drilled into my hard head—that God had a plan for me. I wondered when the last time was He had reviewed it and, thinking He might have taken His eye off the ball, I began again to worry about a plan for myself. I began reading the want ads in the paper, hoping I would find something where I could work from home. Even something part-time.

  The following week, Miss August knocked on my door.

  “You busy?” she said. There was bounce in her question.

  “No, not at all,” I said, wondering what in the world she wanted with me.

  I stepped out to the curb to see a truck with twenty yards of topsoil and huge bags of manure and vermiculite. They dumped the soil on a tarp in the driveway and two huge men stood by waiting for instructions.

  “It’s a little gift from me to you to me,” Miss August announced, pleased with her cleverness.

  “Well, then, let’s have us a garden!” I said.

  She produced a pitcher of iced tea from her kitchen and then supervised the men while they removed her shrubs and mixed the dirt into her beds and the ones in front and on the side of my cottage. I had carefully removed my plants from the ground to the side and would replant them later.

  We were just sitting on her porch like two old friends, sipping sweet tea and watching the men dig and mix the ground.

  “I’ve instructed the manager of Abide-A-While Nursery over in Mount Pleasant that you are coming to choose planting materials for us. Get anything you want. Does that suit you?”

  “Oh! Yes, ma’am!”

  Well, I was as happy as a wannabe gardener could be. Besides, it was the first time in my whole life that anyone had said, Get anything you want! I was so excited at the possibilities of it all. I was still nursing Miss Emily With the Voracious Appetite and this would be the perfect pastime to occupy me. Then Miss August surprised me by adding, “I thought I might be able to offer you a little stipend if you’d weed my part of the yard too. You know, just keep it tidy? How is seventy-five dollars a week? I mean, I think every girl should have her own pin money, don’t you?”

  I didn’t know what to say so I just sat there in her wicker rocker trying to think of some way to say thank you. Jim didn’t have that many friends with hair for me to cut!

  “All right, we’ll make it one hundred fifty dollars a week, but if you tell your husband, the deal’s off! And your mother-in-law! Busybodies! This is between us; is that clear?”

&n
bsp; “Miss August! This is wonderful! Thanks, and believe me, I’m not telling a soul!”

  “Fine! You can’t do any worse than that last fool I had working this yard. Irish drunkard he was! Had a black thumb and a hollow leg, I tell you!”

  “Well, Miss August, I’ll do my best.”

  And I did. The new gardens took root and grew into a kaleidoscope of color and fragrance. Trixie thought it was astounding, that Miss August had found a magician. She had no idea her magician was me until she caught me working in the yard.

  “Ah didn’t know you liked to garden, Anna!”

  She made the statement the same way you’d say, I didn’t know you could read, dear!

  “Yeah,” I said, “I love it.”

  “Well, if you can do this for Augustine, maybe you would do it for me?”

  “Sure, well, we’ll see.”

  I thought that was noncommittal enough, but the message was clear that since she paid all our bills, I owed her something. But that wasn’t how I felt. Maybe Jim owed his mother something, but I didn’t think that her paying our rent entitled her to my manual labor. Motherhood and marriage without the conjugal fulfillment had made me slightly bitter.

  I told Jim that Trixie wanted me to take care of her yard and he said to ignore her and she would forget she had ever said it. I should have known better.

  The gardens continued to grow—great mounds of Blue Danube asters, hollyhocks and picta ribbon grass sprang up against the spillage of blue, white and pink flowers of Lamium and the gray-blue velvet texture of lamb’s ears. I had adopted the determination of my advisor from Abide-A-While to plant the entire yard without impatiens or begonias. Her name was Libby Hawkins. Libby had this hard-core philosophy that impatiens and begonias made your yard look the same as a gas station. I didn’t quite agree with that, but I decided to give her advice a shot and see how it looked. She was right about one thing. The absence of impatiens certainly gave the garden distinction.

  It seemed that all I had to do was put something in the ground and it took off heading for the sun. I found a stack of old trellises in Miss August’s shed and cleaned and set them up, then planted small mandevillas, with Confederate jasmine sprigs at their bases. In no time at all, they crawled all over the trees and everywhere they could travel. I bought a book on pruning and went to work on her ancient boxwoods. In four weeks they were filled with fresh sprigs and looked as vital as new shrubs.