If I wore a khaki safari jacket, jeans, and a cotton shirt with a Kaminski straw hat, I would look like Clem Kadiddlehopper, who definitely did not know diddly. A dress was out of the question. Or was it?
Digging through my closet, I found a black cotton-jersey wrap dress that I would wear with black-and-pink-print low-heeled Pucciesque pumps. I had a thin pink cotton sweater that I could wrap around my shoulders to ward off the sun or use to swat bugs. I remembered I had packed a great-looking triple-strand necklace of baroque pearls, earrings, and large black sunglasses. These details would send a serious message. It probably wasn’t perfect for the terrain, but it would photograph well. A girl had to keep her priorities straight.
Sandi and I were to meet everyone at the Awendaw dock at three in the afternoon. We spent the morning at the office rehashing the prior night, straightening my hair again, and running around to Stella Nova for my own cache of mineral makeup and other products that suited the climate. And sunscreen. Oh, and bug repellent. I bought a wildly expensive black patent-leather quilted tote bag to hold everything. I thought I was looking fashionably in-the-know. I hoped.
At the office, Sandi chattered away, probably because hearing more about J.D. and my father was too much to process.
“My brother Cam’s house is a wreck. Boy, does he need a woman or what? I spent last night looking around to see what I could beg, borrow, or steal and he’s got nothing but big wads of dog hair all over the house. His yard looks like a hillbilly lives there. He needs a maid, a landscaper, and I don’t know what all. Plus, he’s miserable.”
“He sounds perfect for my miserable sister, Joanie. She’s the queen of animal rescue in Charleston. And morbidly single.”
“Seriously? Maybe we should introduce them. How old is she?”
“Thirty-four—no, thirty-five. How important are looks to him?”
“Well, the age is right, but he’s as shallow as, I don’t know…he thinks he’s gorgeous or something.”
“Yeah. They all do. Maybe they should both clean their mirrors and then take a good look.”
“Truly. We’d better get a move on if we want to be there on time. Traffic, you know. Seventeen is brutal.”
“You’re telling me? It appears that the town fathers need some guidance in their infrastructure planning. It took me almost forty-five minutes to get here today.”
“Crazy, right? Let’s go.”
“Sandi?”
“Yeah?”
“Lose the gum.”
“Sorry,” she said, and used a tissue to discard it. We both laughed.
We took Sela’s car and drove along the highway without the benefit of the radio. My mind, which I thought was a million miles away, was apparently wired into Sandi’s.
“Is his wife coming?” she asked.
“Whose wife? J.D.’s?”
“Uh, yes. Who else? What’s her name?”
“Valerie.”
“Well, too bad for her.”
“Yeah, why?”
“Because you ain’t never looked this good as long as I’ve known you.”
“That would be a mere two years?”
“Two years at ARC is a looooong time!”
I made the right turn at Seewee’s Restaurant to travel down the long road toward the government dock at Garris Landing.
“It’s a lifetime. Who’s catering this shindig?”
“Tidewater Foods. Fabulous. Cam took the day off to help them set up. Best barbecue, I don’t care what anyone says.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep. You’ll see.”
“Why did I even ask? Of course this entire soiree is managed down to the embossed napkins, am I right?” I said.
“I wanted to surprise you!”
“You never cease to amaze me.”
I pulled into a parking spot and saw the noisy crowd, milling around on the huge dock. The farther we walked toward them, the farther away they seemed. It had to be a dock constructed to hide battleships in case of a national emergency, but as far as I knew, it only ran the Coastal Expeditions’ ferryboat back and forth between Mount Pleasant and Bulls Island.
When I got close enough, I saw that there were almost a hundred protesters with signs. They were chanting something about saving the red wolves and migratory birds. Then I spotted Joanie among them, but she didn’t see me. She was dressed like a slob in baggy khakis and a T-shirt with a German shepherd on it, blinged out with press-on fake stones.
“That’s my sister,” I said to Sandi, pointing as discreetly as possible.
“You’re kidding, right?” Sandi lowered her sunglasses and squinted.
“I only wish,” I said. “Will the mortification never end?”
I had two choices. I could greet her, give her a hug, and be a lady about finding her in this most unfortunate circumstance. Or I could ignore her, get on the ferry, hide behind a pole, and hope she hadn’t seen me. I opted for decency and bravery. Knowing that Louisa Langley was on the island, waiting to sink her teeth into my neck, made saying “Hello, Joanie” seem pretty minor.
I worked my way through the crowd to her side. She did not recognize me as I approached. I took off my sunglasses and tapped her on her shoulder.
“Is this my little sister?”
“Betts?” She lowered her sign and her jaw in the same moment.
I smiled and threw open my arms to give her a hug.
“What? What are you doing here?” She gave me the most impotent of all hugs in return.
“I called you and told you I was coming, Joanie.”
“I never got a message from you,” she said with a straight face.
“It’s not nice to lie to your family, Joanie,” I whispered.
Silence.
“I had dinner with Daddy last night.”
More silence.
I looked around and put my sunglasses back on. Although it was deep in the afternoon, the ground where I stood still radiated heat.
“So, I see you’re politically involved. That’s good! It’s good to have a cause.”
I didn’t think I sounded patronizing, but she apparently thought otherwise because she tilted her head to one side and gave me a look that would melt the remains of the polar ice cap.
“Well! I’m not surprised to see that you’re on the wrong side of the cause,” she said, and actually snarled. “As usual.”
This was very stupid and we were not going to get anywhere as a family if she was going to paint a line down the middle of the road when the mood struck.
“Joanie, Joanie. I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you come over to the island with me, as my guest? Put aside your doubts for the moment and just listen to the plan. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what you might learn. Come on. What do you say? We’re having a big barbecue and it will be fun.”
“Is that all you think about? Making money? Ruining the environment? Having fun?”
“No. You know what? You’re being gratuitously nasty, Joanie. I am extending a perfectly civil invitation to you that your activist cohorts here won’t enjoy, and you just stand there and hurl insults at me. Not nice. I haven’t seen you in nineteen years. Don’t you think you might give me a chance?”
She looked at the ground and then she ran her hands through her hair.
“Okay.” She handed her sign to someone next to her and said to a very unattractive woman, “I’m going over to Bulls with my sister. She’s a partner in this morass of bull.”
“Oh!” her friend said, and stepped back as though I were spreading Ebola.
I appraised her friend, this specimen of the Ugly Stick phylum, thinking even the most inexpensive moisturizer would do her a world of good. I turned to Sandi, who was just completely bewildered that my sister was as she was in appearance and attitude.
“Sandi. This is my sister, Joanie.”
“Hi! It’s nice to meet you.” Sandi was cool and reserved, as though she were meeting a top account executive and could she get them a capp
uccino.
“Is she your partner?”
“No, Sandi works for me in New York and she’s here to help me get this job done right.”
“Meaning?”
Who knows what Joanie was thinking? I decided to disarm her with nonstop charm from that moment forward.
“Well, today you’ll see a lot of what Sandi does. I’ll bet you leave here thinking you’ve just met the most organized woman on the planet! Let’s go.”
The ride over on the ferry was very pleasant. A nice breeze was coming up and the temperature seemed to be cooling off somewhat. There were twenty or so people on board and Joanie kept her distance, staring out at the spartina grass so that she didn’t have to engage in conversation. That was all right. We would have been too easily overheard, possibly by someone from the press, and there would be plenty of time to talk about the past and the future. I knew that reestablishing some kind of family bond with Joanie was going to be a slow and arduous process.
We disembarked and wandered toward the tent that had been set up for the event. I had the fleeting thought, Oh Lord, why did I make Joanie come? I have enough to deal with without another layer of hostility added to the mix.
But Sandi, who was still shell-shocked by Joanie’s overall demeanor, read the panic on my face and came to the rescue.
“Joanie, why don’t you come with me? I’d like to introduce you to my brother, Cameron. He’s a veterinarian and Betts said that you have done a lot of rescue work, haven’t you?”
“Why, uh, yes…I have. Okay.”
Sandi led Joanie off to the cooks’ tent and I breathed a sigh of temporary relief. I looked around. The main tent was set up with picnic tables and benches, buffet stations on both sides, and two bars, one in the back and one in the front of the tent. There was a riser with a podium and flip charts to unveil the plans and a small table of brochures and press releases. Everything seemed in order.
Then I spotted Louisa, J.D., a young man I didn’t know, Big Jim, and a woman I assumed was Valerie as they simultaneously lasered in on me. I swallowed hard.
Louisa was the first to worm her way through the throng to my side, worm being the operative word.
“So, well, well. Goodness me. Look who’s back in town,” she said.
“Yes, I’m back.”
“Well, that’s nice. Ahem. I know you think you have some authority here, but I think it would be important for you and all y’all from up north to know that this is a Langley Development project.”
I sighed. Did the woman not have one stitch of charm?
“I’m afraid you have your facts wrong, Mrs. Langley. Langley Development has an equal partnership with Triangle Equity. That would be a fifty-fifty split in all decision making, profits, and losses.”
“Do you mean to say that you all think you can call the shots?”
“No. Only half of them. But I’m sure J.D. and I will find a way to settle any differences of opinion.”
“J.D.? J.D.? You listen to me, Betts McGee, this is my project. J.D. wouldn’t even have a hand in this if it weren’t for me. He’s my son, after all!”
Lawsa, as we are fond of saying in the South, she certainly was one feisty little Chihuahua, wasn’t she? I just stared at her, and after what I thought was a meaningful length of silence, I smiled and said, “I’m certain of that. It’s nice to see you, too.”
I walked away toward J.D., leaving Louisa Langley marinating in her outrageous and insufferable hubris.
As my endless good luck raged on, more outrageous and insufferable hubris approached. Valerie Langley.
“So. You’re the notorious Betts McGee?”
My immediate thought was that notorious was a pretty complicated word to be used by someone whose reputation and appearance spelled total ignoramus.
“I am indeed. I assume you are J.D.’s wife?”
“I am.”
She stared me up and down and I matched her, designer detail for designer detail. Sunglasses. Shoes. Handbag. Diamond studs. However, I wore pearls and subdued makeup and was dressed in casual business attire. In my opinion, she had on too much of everything—gold jewelry, lip gloss, mascara, and cleavage, and her mane of blond highlighted and low-lighted hair was overprocessed within an inch of its life. It was a showdown of sorts and could not have been more ludicrous. My outfit should have been the least of her concerns. She blustered and huffed and I held back a giggle.
Clearly something about me ruffled her cool. What did she think? That she was the only one with the wherewithal to spend too much money on her clothes? The difference was I earned mine, and earned it by being able to think on my feet. She’d married hers, and didn’t have to think about much except lying on her back.
Oh, pull in your claws, I told myself. To be fair, I had made a career and a whole life around being unflappable. Valerie had Louisa Langley for a mother-in-law, a barren womb, and no profession to buoy her up should her marriage hit the skids, except some kind of financial settlement that, given her situation and the formidable panel of greed meisters with whom she would have to contend, would never cover the expenses of her elderly years. All these conflicting and admittedly unkind thoughts ran through my mind and finally I remembered my manners.
“Well, it’s nice to finally meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Yes. And I have heard all about you as well,” she said, and walked away.
I noticed something funny about her eyes—her pupils were pinpoints, and I wondered if the cause of that was sunlight or something else, like a medication.
“So, I see you’ve met up with Valerie and my mother,” J.D. said.
“Yeah. Charming.”
“Well, my dad wants to say hello to you and I want you to meet Mickey.”
“Sure. Who’s Mickey?”
“Housekeeper’s kid. Over there. He’s like my long-lost son.”
My heart skipped a beat and my left eye twitched.
“Oh! Really? Oh! Jeez, J.D., he sure looks like you…what are you saying?”
“What? Oh Lord! Oh! That’s rich! No way! His mom’s a nice gal but definitely not my type!”
“Right. Whatever you say. So, are we ready for this pack of hellhounds?”
“I think so. Come say hello to Dad. He always loved you, you know.”
“Yeah. I loved him, too.”
I said hello to Big Jim, asked him how he was. He took both of my hands in his and told me how wonderful it was to lay eyes on me. I thought I would break down and cry. But I didn’t. Too many years had passed and I was only too acutely aware that J.D. was no longer mine to have.
The barbecue was laid out and people began filling plates and tables, talking among themselves. Joanie was helping Cam, who was helping the caterer fill chafing dishes over Sterno. She was actually smiling. And Cam, who was the total antithesis of Sandi, seemed quite entertained by Joanie—well, as charmed as a well-fed grizzly bear could be when enticed by a hungry lioness. His fat ego, though, still seemed to have room for a sandwich.
Cameras flashed all over from the time we disembarked until the last person had been satisfied with lunch and it was time to make our presentation. Surprisingly, Louisa and Big Jim decided to let J.D. do all the talking for Langley Development. Why, I thought, would Louisa make that choice?
Could she have wanted us to appear in the papers together? Or perhaps, despite her bravado, she and Big Jim were less involved in the project than she made out. Or maybe she wanted Valerie to think she had some competition. Who knew what devilment was stirring the pot in her muddled brain.
J.D. took the microphone, thanked everyone for coming, introduced his parents and Valerie, and made his remarks about how sensitive Langley Development was about preserving Bulls Island and that the only thing they intended to change was to move the alligators and other predators safely over to Capers Island. He talked about how they intended to use only natural pesticides and how fertilizer would be so carefully applied and how all around the borders of the ponds
there would be swales and vegetation to absorb any nitrogen that might come off the golf course. He told the crowd that they had hired a marine biologist from Greenville, a fellow he introduced who was recently retired from the Department of Health and Environmental Control, to be our conscience in all areas but most especially to protect the impoundments and habitats that attracted so many migrating birds and their beautiful songs. You would have thought J.D. was some kind of evangelist. All my alarms began to go off. Then he introduced me.
I simply agreed with all that J.D. had said and of course acknowledged the great pride of Triangle to have the privilege to be involved in such an important undertaking, adding that there would still be a public dock, that schoolchildren engaged in environmental studies would still be welcome, and that Triangle’s commitment to the sensitive nature of this endeavor certainly matched Langley Development’s.
I could barely get these words out of my mouth as I stood by J.D.’s side. J.D. and I seemed like natural partners, standing there together. The cynical members of the press were actually smiling at us and taking more pictures. And then there was the groundbreaking itself.
Big Jim, Louisa, J.D., and I put on hard hats, took gold-plated shovels, and lifted a shovel of dirt at the same time, symbolically beginning the official construction. Cameras flashed again.
When it was over a member of the press stopped me, asking if this didn’t upset me in some way, to see Bulls Island become just another beach resort.
“You know, when I was a girl and I wanted to know what heaven might look like, my daddy would bring me here.”
“So then you understand why Charleston is so up in arms about it?” he said.
“We intend to give the preservation of the natural beauty of this island every consideration,” I said.
“So you’re saying that negative changes are inevitable?” he said, taunting me.
“I can’t comment on that,” I said, thinking he must have been a moron to try to entrap me.
Then J.D. appeared from nowhere and took my elbow, which sent shock waves through me and, I am embarrassed to admit, made me actually weak in my knees. He whispered in my ear, unknowingly evoking a powerful tidal wave in my southern climes.
Bulls Island Page 18