Isle of Palms

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  “What have we got?”

  “We’re friends.”

  “Right. Friends. Good.”

  Well, don’t you know old Arthur gets up and pulls me to my feet and started moving on me. I’ll tell you, I was snickering inside so hard I couldn’t believe I didn’t burst out laughing. Instead I let him kiss me all he wanted. Yes, I did. He had a handful of my left breast and I loved that too. But then I decided either I was going to jump in bed again or I was going to give him something to think about. So, in the tradition of the classic southern tease, I let his temperature rise to the appropriate level and stood back from him.

  “Arthur? You are so hot you make me feel like all I want to do is crawl all over you, but I gotta go.”

  “GO?”

  “Baby-boy, you are the sexiest man I have ever met in this world and absolutely hell to resist, but I have a teenage daughter who’s probably drinking all the booze in my house and I gotta get up early tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday, sweetie.”

  “That’s right. I have to be in church by nine-thirty. Night, daarlin’. Let’s try to see each other this week, okay?”

  “You working Monday? I need a haircut.”

  “Yes, you do!” Right after I braid your short hairs. “Come by! No problem!”

  I don’t know what he thought but all the way home I thought about him trying to sleep and I couldn’t stop congratulating myself. The first battle had taken place and the hard-hearted Yankee had been bested by the belle. Shoot! He didn’t know who he was messing with. There hasn’t been a southern woman born worth her salt who couldn’t bring a man around to her thinking by merely withholding her favors.

  Thirty-one

  Waxing Eloquent

  ARTHUR, with renewed desire, became more attentive and I saw him twice that week, beginning with the Monday he came in for me to cut his hair. Bettina bubbled all over him, saying, I’m from New York too, ya know—every other sentence, not understanding that Arthur still considered himself to be from Connecticut and therefore slightly more important. Now, that almost went completely over my head because Arthur didn’t realize that if you were from the Lowcountry, anyone north of Columbia was suspect. But he kept saying, Actually, I’m from Connecticut, and Bettina would say, Yeah, well, same thing, to which Arthur would reply, Actually it’s quite its own place, until I finally realized that Connecticut wasn’t the melting pot that Brooklyn was. I never thought about New York, Brooklyn, or Connecticut. Why would I? But Arthur wanted the rest of us to know that he was of another, more rarefied social stratum than Bettina. I thought it made him look stupid to think he had to point that out in the first place and I worried that he might insult Bettina. To her credit, Bettina was actually baiting him, trying to decide if he was worth my energy.

  When he left she came over to me and said, “Connecticut. Big hairy deal.”

  “Well, I guess that about sums up how you feel about him.”

  “You got it.”

  Lucy and I patched things up because I knew we had to and she was grossly unhappy that she had caused me so much anxiety. Daddy was calling her less and less and I knew she thought that her betrayal had caused it. For my part, being mad with Lucy was a little like staying upset at your dog for peeing indoors when it was pouring rain outside. The dog couldn’t help it and regretted it. What were you supposed to do? I told her I’d duct tape her jaw if I found it flapping around again. She took an oath.

  “Cross my heart,” she said, almost breathless. “I’d rather die.”

  “Okay. Don’t make me hold you to it.”

  And Jim finally called about a week after he had left.

  “Hey, you! I thought you’d never call! How was Ohio? Are you back in San Francisco?”

  “Yeah, I’m home and it seems awfully empty. In a word, Ohio was horrible. Gary’s parents are completely destroyed by the reality that they’re going to live to bury their son. They were pretty nice to me—I imagine that Gary had told them that this illness was of his doing, not mine. When they saw that I really cared about him, they were more hospitable. But this is complicated by so many issues, you know?”

  “Yeah. I can only imagine.”

  “I called Hospice for them.”

  “Is he that close?”

  “You know what? I can’t tell, but he seems to be at peace about his death and I just figured that, from what I’ve read, that’s when things start shutting down. His parents aren’t handling it well at all. His mother is crying all the time and his father barely speaks. Hospice does all sorts of counseling and I really called them for his parents. Plus, I think Gary would benefit from the comfort of professionals.”

  “Jim, I am so sorry about Gary.”

  “I know that. I mean, I know he caused you some misery years ago. . . .”

  “That misery was my fault, not his.”

  Jim was quiet for a few minutes and I wondered what he was thinking. “You’re good to say that, Anna, in many ways.”

  “I’m always here for you, Jim.”

  “I know that and it’s helping me get through this. You know, I travel so much that my world has grown small and, outside of Gary, I have always been so grateful to have you and Emily and Frannie too. There’s just nothing like shared history.”

  “You’re right. We’re another definition of family, I guess. Unlikely souls struggling together, separately.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ll call you soon.”

  Time moved on through July, measured by the flood of tourists and the incessant heat. The Isle of Palms sun boiled, scorching everyone and everything. The late afternoons brought dark skies, sudden downpours, and then the light would reappear until the sun set around eight-thirty.

  David and Emily had their share of flaring tempers and then reconciliation, but for whatever reason, they were well matched as friends and as young lovers too. I had come to a place where I let her almost come and go as she pleased. It was wrong and I knew it, but each time I would say, You have to use your own judgment, she seemed to grow up a little more. That was the goal—to have her grow up as much as possible before Everett Fairchild came to town. I still hadn’t decided if I was going to do anything about it, when fate stepped in.

  I hadn’t seen or heard from Arthur in awhile and I thought, Oh, great, we’re playing games again. It was the beginning of August, late one night, and I went over to his house. I knocked on the door and the dogs started barking. After a few minutes, a man in pajama bottoms and a T-shirt came to the door, scratching his head, obviously roused from his sleep.

  “Can I help you?” he said, squinting to see if he knew me.

  “Oh! I’m sorry! Is Arthur here?”

  “No, he’s gone back to New York. Is there something I can do?”

  I stood there for what seemed an eternity, lost for words. Finally I said, “No, that’s okay. I’m sorry I woke you.” I started down the steps and he called out.

  “If he calls do you want me to tell him anything?”

  “Yeah, tell him Anna’s not surprised.”

  Now, given my state of mind, I thought I was pretty cool about Arthur just pulling up stakes and heading north. The weasel. He hadn’t even called. Well, maybe something had happened with his son and eventually he would turn up. Maybe not. I didn’t care. It’s a very telling thing about me—this art of quick recovery. But by the time you’re in your thirties, having traveled a sidewalk pockmarked with personal disappointment, you learn that life goes on. I knew there was a lid for every pot. Unfortunately, every lid I had found was a little warped or maybe I wasn’t the right pot. It didn’t matter because he was gone and a prolonged examination of his exit was a waste of my time. After all, he was living up to his promise of not getting involved. Besides, in his defense, I didn’t have enough information to make a judgment.

  Without Arthur around to distract me—and this was after I had the good cry I will admit I had over being dumped—I began to focus my vengeance toward Everett Fairchild. The following
week, Brigitte and I were working late, finishing with our clients around nine. Everyone else was gone and we were closing up the shop.

  “Hey, you wanna grab a bite to eat?” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not starving, but I could go for something small. Wings?”

  “Dunleavy’s?”

  “I’ll follow you,” I said.

  With that, we got in our cars and followed each other to the tiny pub at the corner of Station Twenty-two and Middle Street on Sullivan’s Island. Parking was a problem but we finally found spots and met up at the front door and eased our way through the crowd. We were greeted by Vicki, the waitress.

  Now, you have to know her to fully appreciate the experience. Vicki, a vivacious buxom redhead with the map of Ireland all over her face, should have been working on the Daily Show. She was probably the funniest woman on the island and everyone loved her. And Dunleavy’s could be crowded, with lots of people standing between the tables watching any of the four televisions suspended from the ceiling, while yellow Labs and small children wandered in between them. Sometimes there was music but there was always fun to be had and where there was fun, Vicki was in the middle, directing traffic and taking orders at the same time.

  We found a small table and parked ourselves, knowing that when she showed up we’d have to shout our order to be heard.

  “What’ll it be, ladies?”

  “I’ll have a Harp and a dozen wings—medium hot,” I said.

  “I’ll have the Peel ’n’ Eat Shrimp and a glass of Chardonnay,” Brigitte said.

  She took notes and said, “See that guy over there?”

  We followed her gesturing and noticed a precious fellow a few years younger than all of us.

  “In the blue shirt?” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said, “if he’s still here at eleven, I might—just maybe—give him the thrill of his life.”

  “So would I,” Brigitte said, squinting in his direction. “He must be a tourist. Too starched.”

  “Who cares?” I said. “He’s adorable.”

  “Get on line, girls,” Vicki said. “I’ll have your drinks out in a second.”

  How funny that there was a place in this most conservative society that women could talk about men like they had been talking about us for eons. We were kidding, of course. Not really.

  Brigitte and I went through the wings, the shrimp, and a pile of Wet-Naps and finally the crowd thinned out so that we could talk and hear each other.

  “So, Brigitte, I gotta ask you something.”

  “Shoot,” she said.

  “You know this whole deal about Everett Fairchild and him coming to the Isle of Palms in two weeks?”

  “I’m glad you brought it up instead of me. What are you gonna do?”

  “What do you think I should do?”

  “Well, as I’m not obliged to produce a pot roast every night, I’ve had the time to ruminate.”

  “Ruminate. Good word.”

  “Thanks. My father was an English professor.”

  “Ah.”

  “Well, here’s the problem. If you were a vicious person, this would be easy. You could deliver fifty pictures of Emily to his condo and attach a note that says, Does this child look familiar? Call this number. But you’re not like that. And you don’t know enough about his life and who he is, you know what I mean? I mean he could be a superb man, though I doubt it. Or he could have a fabulous wife, although I doubt that too. But if I were in your shoes, I couldn’t live without knowing how he had turned out. I’d want to see the creep.”

  “You’re right,” I said, “I don’t want to wreck anybody’s life. I wouldn’t get any pleasure out of that. But I would like to know what he’s like now.”

  “So, if we went to the special events manager at Wild Dunes and offered them a full day of beauty for a raffle prize or drawing or something—haircut, color, manicure, pedicure—the works for the lucky wife or meaningful other, you could get a long look at his wife. Better yet, you could have her before-and-after pictures taken with Emily and send them home with her.”

  “Oh, my God,” I said, and my heart started to race. “Well, one thing’s for sure, if we got her in the salon, Bettina could get the goods on his marriage.”

  “No kidding,” Brigitte said, “you’d know what he ate for breakfast by the time she was done with her.”

  “What if he doesn’t have a wife?”

  “What if he does?”

  “What if she doesn’t win?”

  “Anna. Calm down. We fix the drawing.”

  “Right. I knew that. I just wanted to see what you were thinking.”

  “Sure.”

  Vicki came over for refills. “Y’all want another drink?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I think I’d like a Cosmopolitan. Just one.”

  “They’re dangerous,” Brigitte said.

  “We’re dangerous,” I said.

  “Well? I got a man waiting for me, honey.”

  “I’ll have one too,” Brigitte said.

  “That’s the spirit,” Vicki said, and walked away sticking her pencil behind her ear.

  Brigitte was one smart cookie. Over our drinks—which I sipped very slowly—we planned the details of our scheme. The brilliance of the plan lay in its simplicity. It would give me that window of time that his wife was in our salon to decide whether or not I wanted to take the next step, which would be to let Everett know that Emily was on the planet. Maybe this was stupid, but I knew that I would arrive at that decision based on what kind of wife he had. If she was smart and nice, I mean really nice, I would probably be more inclined to let Everett’s wife have the truth. A smart wife, a savvy wife, would understand and take it better than some gal who wasn’t secure in herself and her marriage. Brigitte agreed with me on that point.

  “You’re right,” she said. “If his wife isn’t the right kind of woman, telling Everett about Emily would bring all kinds of trouble into Emily’s life and there’s no reason to make her unhappy. Life’s complicated enough as it is.”

  “Boy, you can say that again,” I said. “The last thing Emily needs is to have a woman pitching fits. She has a grandmother for that. Jim’s mother loves to make Emily feel badly about herself.”

  “Great. I had an aunt like that.” Brigitte rolled her eyes, remembering. “Okay, so, let’s say the wife is a decent person, seems to be well balanced, and we like her. Then what? I mean, you can’t just tell her, can you? How are we going to get the information from her to Everett?”

  “Good question. Unfortunately, I think—and please tell me if you have a better idea—I think I’m going to have to pick up the phone and tell him. The only other way would be that she recognizes Everett’s eyes in Emily’s head, and I think that’s asking a lot.”

  “Well, how do you feel about calling him?”

  “What are you? My shrink? I’d be scared out of my mind! What did you expect?”

  “I ain’t your shrink, honey. I told you I’ve thought about this. A lot. And if I were you I’d be terrified too. But when I thought it through I came to another conclusion. He’s the one who should be scared. Not you. You could prosecute, you know.”

  “What if he says he doesn’t remember me?”

  “There is such a thing as a paternity test. Simple enough to get a court to order one. Although if what you tell me about his eyes and Emily’s is that obvious, all he’s going to have to do is look at her.”

  “Well, if I decide I’m too chicken to call him, I could slip a bunch of pictures of Emily in his wife’s goody bag, right?”

  “I think you should do that anyway. Let her get home and ask him why she was given the pictures. She’d stew over that for a while and eventually confront him. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Hell, yes,” I said, “I mean, she has to know he went to school here and it wouldn’t be beyond any wife’s imagination that her husband might have left a little bundle behind while sowing his youthful oats.”

&n
bsp; “And you know what else we could do?”

  “We could give a free haircut and massage to a man. . . .”

  “And that man would be Everett? But I’m not sure I have the nerve for that one.”

  “Me either. The vodka has spoken. We’d better go home before we decide it’s a good idea to send him pizzas at three in the morning.”

  “That’s actually not such a bad idea,” Brigitte said, obviously done in by her cocktail.

  “Time for the check.”

  I knew the plan would work. If I were to describe the state of my nervous system from that moment on until the day his wife walked in our salon I could only say that there wasn’t any combination of medicine on the planet strong enough to give me emotional equilibrium.

  Naturally, I had discussed it with Jim and Frannie. Jim was going back to Ohio and couldn’t come to Charleston until the last minute. Gary was almost at the end and was asking for him, but still hanging on. But, as usual, despite the rest of his life, Jim had a great idea.

  “Get a photograph taken of the whole staff and frame it. Make them group head shots—in color. Put that in her goody bag. It would seem more normal, you know? Write out a card that says something like, So you won’t forget your friends at Anna’s Cabana. Place Emily in the middle of the lineup and tell whoever takes the picture that you want them to really come in close on Emily’s face.”

  “Brilliant. I’ll get the girls in the deli to do it with Lucy’s digital camera. You’re right. I mean, we were just gonna drop in some pictures in an envelope.”

  “That’s why you never do anything major without consulting me first to help fine-tune the play.”

  I called Frannie, who was filled with advice and her customary abundance of mirth and excitement over the adventure.

  “Jaysus! Me granny is spinning in her grave! I need a smoke! Hang on!” I could hear her rumble around and then she picked up the phone again. “Okay. Give me the plan again.”

  I told her that Lucy had called Wild Dunes and spoken to the head of guest relations. She told them that we would like to be their premier salon for tourists. For the month of August, we would have a drawing and give away a free makeover, sun exposure treatments, and a manicure and pedicure—the works—to one of their guests once a week and ten percent off to all their other guests.