Bulls Island

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  “Whoo-hoo! Betts, I usually don’t drink any booze, but since you’re here, I might need it to fortify myself.”

  “Have a double,” I said, staring at her new haircut, which was something between a topiary and a mullet, “’cause I’m not leaving anytime soon.”

  “All right, girls,” Daddy said.

  “She started it,” I said.

  “How old are you?” Daddy said.

  “Right. Sorry,” I said. “So, um, Joanie? Who cut your hair?” Edward Scissorhands? I managed to beep myself from asking.

  “I went to one of those walk-in places. I don’t think I like it,” she said. “Too chopped up. What do you think?”

  “Weeell? You won’t be able to tell until you wash it and blow it out yourself, but I probably would have taken a little more length from the back.”

  It was nearly impossible to believe that Joanie had actually asked my opinion about anything, but even with zero knowledge of the beauty industry, she knew enough to know her hair didn’t fit the rest of her.

  Daddy handed her a drink and she took a long gulp on the way to the dining room to check herself out in the mirror that hung over the buffet.

  “Looks like complete hell,” she wailed from the other room.

  “No, it does not,” Daddy called back, and then whispered to me, “Who do we know that can rectify the situation?”

  Joanie came back into the kitchen and rummaged around in the junk drawer until she found a rubber band. She scooped her hair up into a ponytail, except that the front layers hung there like so many feathers.

  “I don’t know why I even bother to try,” she said. “What’s the point?”

  I almost laughed, but instead, realizing this hair debacle had most likely occurred in the name of Cam the Vet, I said, “I’ve got a wizard who can turn you into a certifiable Cinderella.”

  “Really? Well, I seriously doubt that ’cause you know you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” She took another extended swallow.

  She was saying this about herself?

  “Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself, sweetheart,” Daddy said. “I’m gonna put the steaks on the grill. You girls check the potatoes, okay?”

  My dad really was a prince. I would’ve already smacked Joanie once and told her to shut up twice.

  “If you want, I’ll see if she can squeeze you in tomorrow.”

  I had recently invested so heavily in the inventory of Stella Nova that the last time I was there, the owner, Ginger Evans, came to the store from her salon to say hello and thank me for my business.

  “Oh, Aunt Fanny’s fanny! Why not? I can’t go around looking like who did it and ran, now can I?”

  I wanted to say “Well, you always have,” but I didn’t. I cleared my throat while rummaging around in my brain for a sensitive response.

  “Look, there comes a time in every woman’s life when she has to make the most of what she has. I say go for it.” Before I could stop my tongue, I added, “If you want, I’ll take you shopping, too.”

  “Really?” She was polishing off her Manhattan like it was a glass of iced tea.

  I stuck a long fork in each of the potatoes in the oven. They were beyond done. “These babies are vulcanized.” Grabbing a towel to substitute for a pot holder, I pulled the baking sheet from the oven and pushed aside the salad to rest it on the counter.

  “Who cares? A potato is a potato. Well, as far as shopping? As you can probably tell, I pretty much dress in whatever can withstand globs of dog slobber.”

  My appetite took a cruise to the Caribbean with that remark.

  “Because you deal with dogs all day. Makes sense to me.” Joanie was making no movement toward putting the salad together, so I popped open the bag and dumped its contents into a bowl. “We have a tomato in this house?”

  “Windowsill,” she said, and pointed to a row of tomatoes sitting up there like the Rockettes, ripening in the filtered light.

  Lord, and this was prayer, she was so insecure, lacking every kind of poise and in urgent need of professional help! I didn’t know if I was up to the task. Or if I possessed the motivation. Then I realized I was judging Joanie by my standards when any improvement at all would probably thrill her.

  “You know how to use a corkscrew?” I asked, putting the bottle and the tool in front of her. Her Manhattan had vanished and she was chewing ice cubes, another most unattractive habit I just daggum deplored. Daggum? My inner southerner seemed to have announced her hoopskirted return.

  “Honey, if you lived my life”—she pointed to Daddy in the backyard—“you’d have one attached to a string around your neck. Watch this.”

  And much as you might envision how the swarmiest female wrestler on the circuit might liberate an enemy’s head from his neck, she yanked the cork with a determined guttural sound.

  “Wow,” I said. “Impressive.” But not in a good way.

  I handed her two goblets and she poured a healthy measure for both of us.

  Daddy came inside with the steaks and put them on our plates. Somehow we made it through dinner without Joanie and me having any kind of showdown, which was miraculous, as I had fully expected them to grill me about my life and all that had gone on over the years. Oddly, I seemed to be the one carrying the conversational ball. I asked Joanie about herself and she babbled on. Daddy had a comment here and there, but mostly Joanie lectured us about the cross she was doomed to carry.

  It was as though I were a stranger interviewing them for an article on modern martyrdom. From their perspective, I was the one who had missed everything and my life was uninteresting to them beyond the politest of queries—where did I live, did I really love living in New York, why had I never married, and indirect inquiries about my salary and position.

  Joanie liked wine and she liked to talk about herself. I matched her gulps with sips and Daddy drank tea.

  We were having a bowl of ice cream with Pepperidge Farm molasses chip cookies crumbled on top when Joanie found it impossible to restrain herself any longer.

  “So. Nice picture of you and J.D. in the paper this morning. I’ll bet his wife laid him out in lavender-and-purple paisley and plaid for the way he was staring down your blouse, huh?” Joanie, poor thing, was wobbling along the shores of Vino Creek.

  I decided it was time to clean up, so I rose from the table and took Daddy’s bowl with mine to the sink.

  “I don’t think he was really staring down my blouse, but I saw the picture. I agree. It appeared, um, a little too familiar for my professional blood. But I couldn’t tell you what Valerie Langley had to say about it. We don’t chat.”

  “Hmmph,” Daddy said with a satisfied grin, delighted by my deadpan delivery. “Why not? She seems like such a nice lady.”

  “She’d probably like to see you dead,” Joanie said.

  “Don’t say that,” Daddy said.

  “She’d have to get in line behind Louisa,” I said, slightly irritated by Joanie’s remark. “Y’all got any soap for the dishwasher?”

  “Just scrape off the food and run everything on the scrub cycle,” Joanie said. “Cascade! That’s one more thing to put on my list for tomorrow! Jeesch!”

  Nasty. How long had my father been eating from dirty dishes?

  “Oh. Okay,” I said, gagging a little.

  “I gotta go walk my babies,” Joanie said, declaring her intention not to help us finish the cleaning-up.

  “No problem!” Daddy said. “We’re almost done here anyway.”

  Daddy and I restored order in the kitchen in the best way we could and neither of us commented on the ruckus outside as Joanie bridled her pack of animals for their evening stroll.

  When the barking of her dogs could no longer be heard, Daddy and I settled ourselves on the porch in the old rockers with glasses of water, the sounds of cicadas and the pleasant hum and intermittent creaks of the rusting overhead fans the only sound track. The weather was warm but not unbearably humid. After a day in the heat of Bulls Islan
d, I’ll admit I was aching for some heavy-duty air-conditioning, like in the confines of my condo rental. But there I was on the porch of my childhood home with my father, wondering why in the world he was living as he was.

  “Daddy? Can I ask you something without offending you?”

  “Well, I can’t answer that until I’ve heard the question, now, can I? But go ahead.”

  “Well, it’s just that…oh, shoot! Listen, Daddy, you’re a very wealthy man. Why don’t you have a housekeeper?”

  “Because your sister can’t get along with anyone. I’ve hired them one after another. They all quit or she fires them. Seriously. It’s ridiculous.”

  “What’s ridiculous is that Joanie is sort of holding you hostage in your own home with her funky dogs, when you should be entertaining ladies, spending your money, and having fun.”

  There was a long pause from the direction of my father’s chair. Then I heard a sigh that seemed to come from a place so deep inside of him, it was as though he had spent the last decade dreading the question I’d just asked. I waited for his response.

  “Betts. Here’s the truth. After your mother died, I never looked at another woman again.”

  “Why? Are you serious? I mean, I understand that mourning is normal and all that, but it’s been so many years.”

  “Yes, it has. But like you, I imagine, the days just turned into months, and then, you know how it is in this town—people stop calling, and well, I don’t mind this life.”

  “Daddy? Don’t you want to travel? You know, go on a safari? See Cambodia? Mexico City? Paris?”

  “Oh, Betts. It’s not that I wouldn’t like a change of pace from time to time. And I realize that Joanie living here isn’t exactly optimal for either one of us. But this is the life I’ve gotten used to. She has as well. I think it’s too late to change things now.”

  “There’s something more to this and I know it. I mean, take Joanie for starters. She’s just a mess!”

  I could see him smiling slightly in the faint light, that knowing look of agreement and acceptance on his face.

  “Well, she is! And you deserve more, Daddy. You really do. You worked so hard for so many years…”

  “Deserve? What do I deserve? I don’t deserve anything.”

  “What do you mean? You deserve anything you want!”

  He became very quiet then and there was a long silence before he spoke again.

  “If I could have anything I wanted, Betts, it would be to have your beautiful mother back. Her death ruined our lives.”

  “Daddy, it was an accident. What are you saying?”

  “Perhaps it was an accident, but it was my fault.”

  I could tell by the insistence in his voice that this was something about which he was absolutely resolute. I hesitated a moment, and in that moment I thought about my own sins.

  Finally, I asked him quietly, “How could it possibly have been your fault?”

  “Because I was the one who insisted on leaving the Langleys’ that night. If we had stayed another ten minutes, just even another five minutes, that truck would have rammed into a tree instead of plowing into us.”

  “There was nothing to be done about that, Daddy. That’s like saying if you could’ve seen the future, you would’ve bought tons of Microsoft on the IPO! The accident was pure fate. Not one bit your fault.”

  “Ah! But if I had not had so much to drink, I would have been driving, not her. That was a choice I made, not fate, and look where it led. Look where it led.”

  “Oh, Daddy.”

  I reached out across the distance between us and put my hand on his. Despite the warm night, his hand was chilled. I had noticed earlier that his hands were spotted with age and that his skin, once tanned and manly looking, was now thin and crinkled like crepe paper.

  “Well, sweetheart, it’s getting late and I need my rest if I’m to live another day and deal with your sister. She really means well, you know.”

  “She’s delusional,” I said.

  To my surprise he actually laughed a little.

  “Aren’t we all?” he said. “Now, you go give those Langleys hell and don’t let the press catch you looking at J.D. like that again, you heah me? It’s not nice.”

  “Yes, sir. Loud and clear.”

  The whole way back out to the beach, I thought about Daddy denying himself the simplest pleasures of life because of his imagined guilt over my mother’s death. Of course, if I had been in his position, I would have questioned myself over and over, too. But as I said to him, he didn’t have a crystal ball. Worse, because I was such a poor excuse for a daughter, I had not been there through the years to encourage him to get back to the business of living. I had work to do on changing Daddy’s mind-set. There was so much for which I needed to atone and I had no idea how to begin. Would anything I said or did make a difference to him?

  I called Adrian, got his voice mail again, and left a message. Then I decided since I was having such poor luck contacting him, I would start an e-mail campaign. Under the veil of e-mail, I could choose my words judiciously. I worried then that if I got him on the phone, he might hear some trace of anxiety in my voice, and because, like Sandi, he could practically read my mind, he would suspect something was dreadfully wrong and then accidentally begin somehow to discover what a colossal liar I was.

  As I undressed for bed, I continued, of course, to worry about Daddy. There was no voice of reason in his house—only the chaos brought about by Joanie’s madness, her insistence on painting herself as a martyr and some sort of rescuer, whether it be of Daddy or those dogs. Or seeing herself as a righter of every wrong in the world by getting involved in protesting development projects she didn’t even understand.

  My feelings about developing Bulls Island were changing. The pragmatic side of me knew that the Langleys were going to build on every available square inch of the island because they were in the business of making money. But the side of me that loved J.D. believed that he would be careful not to destroy the natural beauty of the island. Especially if I kept an eye on him, which would be my greatest pleasure.

  I hate to admit this, but in every private moment, my thoughts were about him. At one turn, I was ashamed of my feelings, and at another, I was exhilarated by them. Was I really such a terrible person?

  It was about ten-thirty and I was turning in early so I wouldn’t have puffy eyes when I saw J.D. the next afternoon. Just as I reached over to turn out the bedside light, my cell phone rang. It was Sela.

  “Hey! You sleeping?”

  “Nope, not yet. Hey, Sela, thanks again for dinner last night. It was so sweet…”

  “No problem. Listen, remember you asked me about a drug with the word cotton in it?”

  “Yeah, why? Did Ed know what it was?”

  “Yeah, I kept forgetting to ask him, and when I did he laughed his head off. He’s not a Val Langley fan. It’s OxyContin.”

  “Well, who is? So what’s OxyContin?”

  “It’s this highly addictive painkiller that people are robbing drugstores and killing pharmacists to get their hands on. It’s like morphine. They call it hillbilly heroin. It’s got street value. I mean, seriously, is Valerie taking this stuff?”

  “That’s what J.D. said. And drinking vodka like water.”

  “Wow. Betts? Valerie is in big trouble.”

  “You think so?”

  “Listen, after Ed told me, I Googled it, and you can’t believe what’s on the Internet about this stuff. You can extract oxycodone from it if you prefer the intravenous mode. It’s totally gross. What’s she doing messing with something like this?”

  “Migraines.”

  “Migraines. Yeah, sure. See? It just goes to show you. You never know who might be a drug addict or an alcoholic.”

  “Gee whiz. Wow. Poor thing.” I actually felt sorry for Valerie.

  “Poor thing, my big fat pink behind! Louisa Langley probably drove her to drugs and booze, but nobody made her keep doing them. I wonder how
much she abuses.”

  “I’ll find out from J.D.”

  “How’s that going?”

  “So far? We’re at the gate of the Garden of Eden and I can see the snake. No apples so far. I’m seeing him tomorrow.”

  “Who? What snake?”

  “Let’s not go to metaphor land tonight. Maybe he’s just a good smoke.”

  “Call me tomorrow.”

  “You know it, sugar.”

  That night I dreamed I was falling from bridges and tall buildings, that I was dead, no one knew, and I was not able to tell anyone, that I was half naked and in public. Finally, when I woke at six, I decided to get up, take a shower, and have breakfast. What did these dreams mean? Falling—I hated the feeling of it. Did that mean I was losing control? Death? Was I going to fail? Or that I worried that no one was listening to me? What about being unclothed in public? Was that about the picture of J.D.?

  After I showered, I read the New York Times from cover to cover, drank endless cups of tea, and was relieved to see that nothing about my work was in the paper that day. There was one letter to the editor from some nut who had lived in a giant sequoia or something for a year in order to protest all developers in the universe, but nothing else.

  The sun was up, rising in the eastern skies as it always did, and I decided to go for a walk on the beach. It would help me focus, cover me in salt spray, and I could shower all over again. Who cared? Half the population of Charleston County was covered to some extent by salt spray. I pulled on a pair of shorts with a T-shirt and flip-flops and walked toward the water’s edge. There was every sign that it was going to be a gorgeous day. The incoming tide was peaceful and rhythmic, washing the shore. I began to relax and let my mind drift.

  I couldn’t wait to see J.D., and the thought passed through my mind that perhaps I would just go out to Bulls Island anyway, instead of waiting for three o’clock to roll around. But that could only send two wrong messages—one, that I was desperate to be in his company, and two, that I didn’t trust him to talk to the South Carolina Electric and Gas guys without me. I had to make myself busy until then. I walked on, unconsciously picked up a sand dollar, and picked away the caked-on mud with my fingernail.