Isle of Palms

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  I hugged her so hard I gave myself a chiropractic adjustment. “Is he single, I hope?”

  “No, but getting separated. . . .”

  I looked at her with disapproval and she gathered up one side of her mouth.

  “Well, this one is actually seriously in the process. . . . You know, in Washington, they’re all a bunch of liars. It’s not so easy at our age. You just hope for the best and tell yourself it’s their mortal sin and not yours, right?”

  “I don’t know, Frannie. Dating stinks. Let’s get you a drink and go find Jim.”

  “Is that Frannie?” Daddy said, coming through the crowd with Lucy’s arm intertwined around his. “Well! What a nice surprise!”

  “Yes, sir, Dr. Lutz. Great to see you again!”

  They shook hands and by the look on Frannie’s face, it was clear she was amused by Daddy’s proximity to Lucy. It didn’t take long for Lucy to clarify.

  “Hey, I’m Lucy, Frannie,” she said, “I live next door and Dougle Darlin’ is my sweetie-pie.”

  “Well! That’s great! Really!” Frannie said and, turning to me, mouthed Whoa! “About that drink?”

  Jim was at the cooler, pulling out a beer.

  “Hey, ugly,” she said, tapping his shoulder. “What’s this I hear about you abandoning the East?”

  “Oh, ho! Look who’s here! And, who you calling ugly, ugly? Give me a meaningful hug!”

  “Look at you with all this nasty gel in your hair! Go take a bath!”

  “What? Look at all your hair! Ain’t you never heard of a beauty parlor?”

  “Bump you!”

  “Yeah? Well, bump you!”

  This continued as I knew it would until they decided to really talk to each other. They were teasing and laughing like they were ten years old again. Same old tune, new lyrics. I was so excited to have a night with them and suddenly wished everyone else would leave. However, I had to feed the crowd.

  I needn’t have worried about moving things along because as soon as they saw the platter of ribs, everyone fixed themselves a plate. Some people sat at the table and others stood by the buffet, laughing and talking. Trixie was thoroughly entertained by Daddy and Lucy, and of course, Jim spent some time with her. Soothing Trixie and her cat fits were requiring more effort than I thought she was worth. If Jim wanted to suck up to his mother, I understood because after all, she was his mother. But I, perched on my high moral ground, would have no part of it. Anyone who abused my child was dead in my heart.

  And then I thought about Daddy. Soothing his cat fits would probably have looked like more effort than he was worth to Jim. Funny how we excused our own relatives everything and our in-laws had to twist any sort of forgiveness out of us like they were asking for a kidney. But maybe it was because they set the tone for vengeance the first moment they laid eyes on us and continued for years to be suspicious over whether we were good enough for their children? Ring a bell? Yeah, like freaking Big Ben.

  I looked around to see where Emily was. David was in the hammock and she was pushing it. They were talking and laughing—probably about what a bunch of old geezers we were—but they seemed to be having a good time. He was a nice young man and I thought a pretty good influence.

  Finally, around eleven, everyone went home until it was just Jim and Frannie in the kitchen, taking over the clean-up mission, and Lucy and I in the yard. Daddy had left first to follow Trixie over the Cooper River Bridge. She announced that she would feel safer driving by the drunken scum who convened nightly at the foot of the bridge on the Charleston side if she had a charming escort. Emily and David had disappeared. If I had to guess I would say that they had stolen a six-pack and had run to the beach as fast as they could. Just a guess, you understand. Brigitte, Bettina, and Bobby all left together, but not before they gave Jim a gift.

  “Open it!” they said.

  Bobby rolled his eyes and said, “I ain’t had nothing to do with this. Nothing.”

  It was a T-shirt with our logo on the back and on the front, on the breast pocket, was printed in one-inch pink letters: BIG JIM, HEAD BANANA.

  “Do you realize what this will do for my social life in San Francisco?” he said good-naturedly.

  “Oh, ma Gaaad!” Bettina said. “I didn’t think of that! I sware ta Gaaad, you guys!”

  “You’re just a scandal, Jim,” Brigitte said. “Come on. We all gotta work tomorrow.”

  “Y’all, thanks for coming,” I said to them out front by their cars, “I think this meant a lot to Jim.”

  We all stood there in the moonlight feeling pretty good about ourselves. More than that, we had established ourselves as our own little tribe. We belonged to each other and we belonged together. Even Lucy. Emily. Jim. Anna’s Cabana had bonded some unlikely characters. If I had known that independence could cause this kind of adrenaline rush, I probably would’ve tried to strike out long ago.

  An hour later, Lucy was still hanging around, drinking wine with us. I thought that maybe she didn’t see that I wanted my old friends to myself and so at first, I was a little annoyed that she didn’t leave when everyone else did. I helped myself to a beer from the refrigerator, my first of the night, and went out to the backyard where she was with Jim and Frannie. It was so nice to see them around my new table, relaxed and talking, but they seemed serious. Too serious.

  “What’s going on? Did somebody die or what?” I said.

  “No,” Frannie said, “but you might when you hear what Lucy just told us.”

  “What? Emily?”

  “Emily’s fine. Sit,” Jim said, “I don’t feel like picking you up off the ground.”

  I looked from face to face. The news was obviously horrible—too horrible for Jim or Frannie to tell me.

  “What happened, Lucy?”

  “Anna? You ain’t gonna believe this.”

  “Okay, what?”

  “On my life, Anna, I never meant to interfere in your business.”

  “Get to the point, okay?”

  “Well, remember how I told you that I used the Internet to search for my parents?”

  “You found them? Why that’s wonder . . .”

  “No, I didn’t find my momma and daddy. I found Everett Fairchild.”

  “WHAT?”

  “All I did was go to Google and type in his name. He’s a Sea Pro dealer in Clearwater, Florida.”

  It was a good thing I was sitting down. I could barely breathe.

  “Guess what else?” Lucy said.

  “You’re not gonna like this,” Jim said.

  “No kidding,” Frannie said.

  I waited.

  “He’s the regional sales manager and he’s coming here in August for a sales meeting at Wild Dunes. It’s all on his website.”

  “You will both be back in August?” I said to Frannie and Jim.

  “Nah. Too hot here in August,” Jim said.

  “He’s screwing with you, Anna. Of course we’ll be back. But we need to talk this through and then we need a plan.” She was the same Frannie—capable and in charge.

  “Holy Mother. What were the odds on this?” I took a long drink of the beer. “I’ve got some serious thinking to do. Lucy, did you tell Daddy?”

  “Hell no!” She rolled her eyes all over her head. “I’ve been sweating all night debating how to tell you this anyway! I wouldn’t tell him!”

  “Good. Please don’t. For the moment, I think it’s best if we just keep this to ourselves. This is my issue and I have to think it through. I knew this would happen one day.”

  “That’s not all,” Lucy said. “I found the card that came with the plant. It must’ve fallen out and slipped under my desk.”

  “Well?” I said, waiting for what couldn’t be any more unnerving that what she had just told me.

  “Well, it was weird to me. It was from some guy named Jack Taylor. It said, ‘I loved meeting you, Sheena. Let’s be friends. Jack Taylor.’ Who the hell is Jack Taylor?”

  “He’s the boyfriend of one of my
clients. Good grief. What’s that about?”

  Twenty-nine

  Plan for the Mother Lode

  WHEN Lucy finally wandered back through the yard to call it a night, it was after eleven. Jim, Frannie, and I—the Unholy Triumvirate—were left at the outdoor table to assess the night, the bomb Lucy had dropped, and to generally try and make some sense of life. Jim poured himself a glass of Chablis, draining the bottle he had kept for himself on the side. Frannie pulled out a pack of Parliaments from the folds of her linen pants and lit one with a Bic lighter.

  “She’s a trip,” Jim said, referring to Lucy. “Anybody want anything?”

  We shook our heads. I was too stunned to even know if I could swallow another drop of anything.

  “I’ll say she’s a trip,” Frannie said, sending a little cloud into the night air. “On top of that, she’s a regular private investigator.”

  Frannie’s cigarette smelled wonderful, but I gave her a little hell anyway. “When are you gonna quit smoking?” I said. “That shit kills, you know.”

  “If you lived my life, you’d smoke too. I have my laptop inside,” Frannie said, taking a deep drag of her cigarette. We watched her smoke spiral above us and then, like a tiny fog in a dream, it slowly rolled away on the breeze. “Wanna go see the dirtbag’s website?”

  “Definitely,” Jim said, and stood, “let’s go.”

  I shivered all over, from just the slightest thought of actually seeing the face of the man who in one evening had altered my future, Jim’s future, and brought my only daughter into this world. Still, I followed them inside.

  “I don’t know,” I said, the screen door closing behind me. “Maybe I don’t want to know anything about him.”

  Everyone was quiet for a minute. This was déjà vu of my worst nightmare. I wasn’t so sure I wanted to revisit the past. Not so sure at all.

  I had always thought of Emily minus Everett. The only justice I had was that Everett had been denied acting as her father. He didn’t even know Emily existed and had probably forgotten about me as well. He didn’t know he had a gorgeous daughter with his spooky green eyes and his platinum hair. And, suppose we dug him up? What would that do to Jim? I’d been planning Emily’s wedding since the day she was born and Jim was the only man I could envision walking Emily down the aisle. Everett would ruin the pictures, to say the least. What possible good could come from Everett Fairchild at this point in our lives?

  What would it do to Emily? She had voiced some suspicion about Jim but she had no clue that her birth was the result of a rape. Resurrecting Everett would make the truth necessary.

  “Well, you don’t have to look,” Jim said. “I will.”

  “You’re afraid, aren’t you?” Frannie said.

  “Hell yes, I’m afraid. Wouldn’t you be?”

  “Yes. Yes, I would be afraid. But that wouldn’t keep me from looking. I guess that’s how I am.”

  “Yeah, balls, up there under that skirt somewhere. You’ve got ’em. I don’t. Look, y’all,” I said, “I wrote this criminal out of my life years ago, and with your help, I’d like to add. Why in the world would I want to know how well he was doing? Personally, I hope he’s living in a hell of his own.”

  “Well, he might be,” Jim said, “you never know.”

  “On the other hand,” Frannie said, her jaw squared off like it used to when we were children and she was ready for battle, “you have the power to make his life a living hell.”

  “Now, that’s worth looking into!” Jim wrung his hands and shifted his eyes around the room, impersonating the evil landlord.

  “You’re right.” I took a deep breath. “I guess it’s now or later, and later I’d be forced to go through this with Lucy. I guess this is the lesser of two evils.”

  “Oh, thanks a lot,” Frannie said. Standing by my dining table, she plugged her laptop into my phone jack and booted it up. “Come on, thing! God, I hate waiting!”

  “I’ll go get the chairs,” Jim said. “Laptops take forever.”

  I went with him to help. The night was cool and quiet. I could hear the tide rolling in and the air smelled like it always did—pine, jasmine, salt. How could the world be so normal when my insides were turning flips?

  “I don’t know about this, Jim,” I said.

  “When the future is uncertain, it’s best to face it. Since when are you a coward?”

  “Since always.”

  “Yeah, like Eleanor Roosevelt.”

  We each carried two chairs and struggled a little by the door, finally getting them inside.

  “What if Emily walks in?” I said, getting more nervous by the second.

  “I’ll switch the screen to MSN or something. Come on. Don’t hyperventilate. All we’re gonna do is look at his site.”

  First, she typed in SEA PRO, the brand of boat he sold, and arrived at the official website for the company. Then she clicked on “Dealers,” “Florida,” and “Clearwater.” There it was. Just like that.

  There was Everett Fairchild, older but suntanned and smiling, wearing Ray-Bans and a knit shirt, standing by a row of boats on trailers. I would have known him anywhere. There was his phone number, address, directions to his dealership, testimonials from satisfied customers, and links to see all the models he carried. It had taken mere minutes to discover the whereabouts of the worst person ever foisted on me by fate. And he was going to be on the Isle of Palms the second week of August. What in the name of heaven was I going to do?

  “Oh, my God,” I said, “it’s him.” My voice had no emotion.

  “He still looks like an asshole,” Frannie said.

  “I’ll bet he still is one too,” Jim said. “Come on, Anna, what do you think?”

  “I think I have to go to bed,” I said. “I feel sick.”

  “Me too,” said Frannie, and she began closing screens. “Jim, you get the couch tonight. Sorry.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m packed.”

  “Good night, y’all, love you!”

  It wasn’t thirty minutes before Emily tumbled into bed next to me, smelling like the contents of a brewery.

  “You know what?” I whispered to her.

  “What?” she said.

  “When you take your momma’s beer and you’re underage, you’re supposed to brush your teeth so she won’t smell your raunchy breath.”

  “Saaa-wee, Mommy.”

  “Bad girl. Bad, bad girl.” I’d lecture her tomorrow, I thought. “How’s David?”

  “Fabuloso. He is soooo amazing.”

  I imagined that meant all was well. “Good, honey. Let’s get some sleep.”

  I thought it would be hours before sleep would come, that I was going to be tortured all night by thoughts of Everett Fairchild. I decided to say my prayers. I wasn’t someone who drove the good Lord crazy with endless petitions; I really didn’t. I saved my begging for rare and desperate occasions and this certainly qualified as one. Maybe if I asked for some guidance, it would come. Fortunately, guidance was the last thing I remembered thinking about and I rolled over to hit the snooze button on my alarm. It was morning. I had slept so hard it surprised me. Maybe God figured I needed beauty rest more than advice.

  Breakfast was our last meal together for Frannie, Jim, and me. Emily was sleeping until the last possible minute she could. Teenagers could sleep like nothing I’d ever seen. Anyway, breakfast wasn’t anything glamorous, just cereal and toast, but the coffee was as rich and strong as the conversation. And, I didn’t feel as badly as I would have about them leaving because Jim and Frannie talked loud and long about their plans to come back in August.

  “You know,” Frannie said, “August is dead in my business. All the pols are in the Hamptons or on a boat somewhere, enjoying a weekend with major party donors, under the guise of campaign strategic planning.”

  “I hate politics and politicians,” I said. “I don’t know how you put up with all those powermongering egomaniacs. Jeesch. Too much bull for me.”

  “Easy. I ge
t paid enough to overlook the fact that I’m like Ralph Kramden’s buddy, working the sewers. It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta do it. That is, somebody’s gonna do it and get paid, so it may as well be me. It’s a living, not a calling.”

  “Well, I can identify with that, except what the heck does that say about us? I enjoy making people look better. I really do. But it doesn’t exactly feed my soul.”

  “I don’t think very many people have the luxury of a career that pays the bills and feeds the soul,” Frannie said. “Maybe artists, movie stars, Broadway stars, rock stars, journalists . . .”

  Then Jim piped in, “People who cure terrible diseases, opera singers, museum curators, art dealers on Madison Avenue, international fashion photographers, great chefs, architects, some teachers—probably at the university level—anthropologists . . .”

  “Everybody but us,” I said.

  “Basically,” Frannie said.

  Jim jumped in. “What about the great vintners of Europe, Napa, and Sonoma? Great wine feeds the soul, the senses and pays the bills, doesn’t it? And what about decorators? Lots of them make fortunes and love what they do! And antique dealers?”

  “Yeah,” Frannie said, “it sucks to have to do something every day that doesn’t really fire you up inside. I mean, I help these suits protect their agendas and get what they want. I justify it by thinking of myself as a missionary or a guide, you know? I lead the innocents through the fires of hell without them getting burned.”

  “You should’ve been a litigator, Frannie,” Jim said, “you could argue anything and make the world believe it.”

  “Yeah, the world needs another lawyer.”

  “I don’t know what I’d do if I could plan my life over,” I said. “Maybe I’d be a landscape architect or something.”

  “I think I’d run away from the world. Maybe I’d have a resort on a remote island like Fiji or someplace like that,” Frannie said. “Jim? You could run the restaurant and Anna could rearrange palm trees and flower beds until her last breath. Then we could push each other in rockers and read all the great books.”

  “Sounds awfully boring—truly dreadful,” I said. “I’ll stay here and run my little salon and make smoothies for all the tourists. Y’all send me a postcard.”