So, there was Lucy with her casserole, which in case they find me dead tomorrow, was the most awful thing to ever kick its way down the old gullet. It was chicken—a seemingly naïve enough main ingredient—drowned in cheddar cheese, refried beans, and taco chips. Vile. But Lucy was so proud and Daddy was so smitten, how could I not be gracious? Our first meal in my new home and the Health Department had not been notified to rescue us. Daddy was chomping away, while I picked through the taco chips and Lucy drank (with a gusto I found remarkable) the martinis she had brought.
“Lucy, this was really thoughtful of you,” I said.
“Oh, honey,” she said, “it was nothing at all!”
“Oh, no, Miss Lucy,” Daddy said, “this is a night to remember! Isn’t that so, Anna?”
“Yes, it is,” I said. It definitely was. “We have cake for dessert, if anyone would care for a slice?”
“Cake?” Daddy said. “From where?”
“Miss Mavis next door,” I said.
“Mavis? You’re kidding! She’s still around?” Daddy said.
“Yep,” I said, “didn’t recognize me.”
“Oh, God!” Lucy said. “Oh, God! Y’all better brace yourselves!” No surprise that Lucy had missed the comment that we knew Miss Mavis. I was surprised she could still sit up.
“Why?” I said.
“’Cause, honey, she’s like the Snoop Sisters and Detective Columbo rolled into one! She watches the comings and goings of my life like the FBI! I ain’t lying, y’all! It’s true! Got these nasty cats and this old Gullah woman who does God knows what kind of hexing over there! Oh, listen to me, y’all, just rambling on?” Lucy stood up and stretched, revealing her belly button. “Must be time for Miss Lucy to get to her boudoir, ’eah? Gosh, Anna, I’m so glad to have you as a neighbor!”
“Me too, Lucy. Thanks for all your help.”
“We’ll have such fun,” she said.
Once we sober up, I thought.
All the while she had been talking, Daddy and I had just listened and nodded our heads. Now we had been given the signal that she had to go and it was apparently up to us to make a move.
Daddy stood up. “May I walk you home, Miss Lucy?”
“It would be my greatest pleasure!” Lucy said.
I followed them outside and watched them walk across the lawn and up her steps to her porch, the moonlight all over them like the stadium blanket of a naughty Cupid. When I looked up at my daddy talking to her on her porch, for all the world he looked like a young man falling in love.
I couldn’t watch to see if they kissed. Too gross. Besides, Daddy was entitled to his privacy—privacy was one small part of why I had moved. He would tell me they kissed if he wanted to, but I would not ask.
He returned in the phoniest bad mood I had ever seen, a defense mechanism dredged up at the last moment to avoid the anticipated daughterly Q & A session. He never should have worried about that. I just kissed him on the head and said, “Thanks, Daddy, I never could have done all this today without you.”
“Get some sleep,” he said. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”
I watched him back out from my yard in the rental van. The Isle of Palms was quiet. The Misses Mavis and Angel to my left, the alleged Snoop Sisters, appeared to be gone off to sleep for the evening. Lucy’s house was almost dark. I walked to the edge of my yard and headed for the beach.
That night was all important. With one turn of the tide and one night’s sleep, my biggest dream would be coming true. I walked down the damp path to the ocean. The dark beach was measurably cooler in just the hundred yards from my yard. The breezes were stronger and the sky was a deeper hue. Every aspect of the landscape was amplified and slightly haunted. I began to walk a little toward Sullivan’s Island, thinking about all the mechanics of moving, the list of chores remaining to be done.
Emily was coming home from school soon. For the first time since Jim had left us, I had a home. I couldn’t wait to tell him about moving day and Lucy. Our little house would remind him of the carriage house we had shared when Emily was born. I made a mental note to call him in the morning and bring him up-to-date. I was excited about the possibilities of everything.
Unlike some women who lived through men, I had figured that I didn’t really need a husband. I had dated plenty of great guys, but just never fell in love. That was probably more my fault than anyone’s. I had been too busy working, saving for a house, taking care of Daddy, and raising Emily to focus on much else.
At this point I only needed to prove to myself that I could do what single parents all over the world could do—make a home for Emily and for me. Maybe when I got my life the way I wanted it, maybe then I would allow myself to think about a wild love affair and a possible husband.
I wanted my new life to begin with a white-hot fever. I had just three weeks until Emily would arrive. I directed my attention full force to pulling together something that looked and felt like a home.
I couldn’t help wondering what Momma would have thought to see me now. She would probably have been amazed. And Violet? Thinking about Grandmother Violet caused convulsive laughter. She’d have a freaking cow, no, a whole barnyard, if she could see me moving into my own house on the island, especially given her convictions. If she was still around I could have laid the bulk of my problems at her feet. And the remaining problems? Well, I caused them or allowed them to happen, to be sure. There was a long list of names of women who had given me pain. First it was Momma, then Grandmother Violet, and later on there was Trixie. Trixie is Jim’s mother. If there was a stadium in hell, it would have been named for her.
Six
Light of Day
WHEN the first hint of daylight seeped in, I jumped out of bed. It was five-thirty, a lot earlier than I usually woke up. I stumbled through the boxes and piles into my new kitchen to get the coffee started that I had set up the night before. A trace in the air of the rich ground beans stopped me for a moment. It was my first pot of coffee. My first morning here had arrived.
I pulled on baggy khakis, a white T-shirt, gave my teeth a preliminary brushing, and splashed my face with water. In minutes the asphalt was under my feet.
The island around me still slept, porch lights glowing amber through the morning haze. Maybe they had been left on for someone who never came home or maybe someone who came home simply forgot to turn them off. I liked to muse about the lives of others and what they were thinking when they closed their doors against the night. Take Lucy for example. Did she drink herself to sleep every night? Was she really unhappy or just an actress? Manipulative? Had Daddy gone to sleep thinking about her? I had always thought the unseen comings and goings of others were more interesting than what people showed of themselves to the world. And, I loved the masks people wore. The masks we wore were proof of the strength of southerners. I mean, hadn’t the South resurrected herself with enough frequency to impress the planet? Everybody knew it was near impossible to figure out what we thought by just looking at us. We had smiling poker faces. Lots of teeth. Polite to a fault. It was probably the sin of pride that we assumed the world acknowledged and coveted our excellent dispositions.
True southerners were pickled from birth in our ancestral marinades of charm and grace. Money and possessions had little to do with personal conduct. Southerners of every race and creed held each other to a higher standard of behavior. And we understood the nuances that separated good old boys, bubbas, and rednecks.
Good old boys were the most traditional. They polished their Weejuns, monogrammed their shirts, smelled good, and held your door open. They were more worldly, could mix cocktails, and may have gone to graduate school. Bubbas might have a truck for no particular reason, but they were nice guys who didn’t get a lot of exercise, might get caught drinking beer for breakfast, and never walked away from a manly challenge. Rednecks never ate pork chops or chicken with anything but their hands, trained their Heinz 57 dogs to bite, occasionally hit their wives, used their trucks like a minivan
to haul the kids around to tractor pulls, and provoked the manly challenges.
That’s not to say we didn’t honor all kinds of people. We had more than a few bugs among our Magnolias, like my other neighbor, old Miss Mavis. She was anything but concerned about how the world perceived her. I grinned just thinking about her. What an incredible old fussbudget! It must have been nice to act any way you wanted to and have the world accept it. It certainly had never been my fortune to have that freedom. Maybe when I told her who I really was she would remember the past and congratulate me and be a grandmotherly friend or something.
I walked on. At first, the air was so thick with fog and dew that I could almost grab it. I could barely see ten yards ahead. Then, it was as if someone said, Okay, it’s time for a little sun! The curtains of wet air began to lift and all the sights I had hoped to see were there. Everything was alive and in living color.
In the distance two dogs were chasing seagulls, running back and forth to their owner. He appeared to be cheerful enough, swinging their leashes around and giving an occasional whistle for his dogs to fall back in line with him. And they, two gorgeous Irish setters, would do just that. That is, until they spotted another flock of seagulls at the water’s edge. They were off again, barking and running after the birds, who, at the last possible second of safety, took off across the water, squawking and screeching. It was a pleasant sight and I didn’t mind sharing the beach with the other fellow in the least. I even gave a few seconds of thought to getting a dog of my own. I’d never had one and didn’t know the first thing about them, but a dog might be good company, even though Miss Mavis would most likely complain.
I was in excellent humor and I wondered if I should feel obliged to greet this stranger if he passed by me, but it was a decision I didn’t have to worry about. He crossed the dunes with his dogs and vanished. Once again the beach was mine.
I looked at my watch. Six-thirty. It was still early and my first appointment was booked for ten. Something was going to have to be done about old Harriet’s House of Hair. I had been there since I was barely twenty years old. I didn’t mind the work; in fact I enjoyed it. The money was good and most of the clients were very nice. It was Harriet. Like Lucy’s ex-husband would say, she drove me shit-house crazy.
Walking home, I stopped to knock the sand out of my running shoes and briefly considered taking up running since I already owned the shoes. Had I unconsciously outfitted myself to become athletic? Not a chance. Anything but a jock, I laughed at myself that I had spent years with my hands in the hair of strangers, in a climate-controlled salon, unaware of changing seasons (not that Charleston had them).
I realized how happy I was. Maybe for the first time, certainly for the first time in many years, I was happy.
I reached my little cottage and stopped for a minute to look at it, nestled between the two much more imposing houses on either side. Miss Mavis and Loosey Lucy. The differences between Miss Mavis’s and Lucy’s houses reminded me what Daddy had always said, islands are filled with characters. Maybe with a little luck, I could become one myself.
My yard needs major work. I was continuing my mental list of miracles to accomplish when the phone rang. I assumed it was Daddy, calling to make sure some lunatic hadn’t carried me off in the night. It wasn’t. It was Jim’s mother, Trixie, my ex-mother-in-law.
“Ah just wanted to call and see how it’s going, dear! Ah just spoke to your father. He told me everything. Ah can’t believe you bought a house and moved in and Ah haven’t even seen it!”
“Yes, well . . .”
“You didn’t tell me a thing! But then, isn’t that how you’ve always been?”
As always, her hee-haw accent set me on edge as though I had done something wrong, breached some protocol, by not clearing everything with her. Trixie defined repressed anger. I was trying to be nice anyway.
“Well, you’ll just have to come and visit! I just need a few days to unpack and get organized,” I said. “It’s little, I mean, it’s just two bedrooms.”
“Merciful heavens! Two bedrooms? Well, Ah’m sure that’s all you need.”
God forbid I ever have one helping more than you think I need. “Actually, it’s more like an apartment with a yard,” I said, “but I can see the water, sort of, and that’s kind of special.”
“Well, if you’re satisfied, Ah’m sure Ah will be too. Why don’t Ah bring luuunch over this Sunday?”
Lunch is not supposed to be a three-syllable word, Trixie. “Sure, that would be nice!” I knew her visit was inevitable so I figured get it over with as soon as possible. And, golly gee whiz, I thought, the malcontent in me rising, I hope she’s satisfied!
I could hear her flipping paper. “Oh, dear, no, Sunday’s out. Regatta! Goodness! Ah almost forgot! Can you imagine whut . . .”
“No, that would be terrible if you missed that,” I said, and hoped I hadn’t sounded too disingenuous.
“Well, Ah’ll have to let you know, Anna. And, how is our Emily?”
“Great! Coming home in three weeks! I can’t wait to see her. It’s been almost six months—the longest we have ever been apart!” Our Emily, indeed.
“Isn’t that grand? If you speak to her, give her my looove and tell her Ah want to hug her neck so bad I could just die!”
We hung up and I had a nearly uncontrollable urge to pin her picture up in the bathroom. I’m going to tell you something no one knows and I just hope you won’t go taking this around town. This is the abridged version of why you should never take something from anyone except your own flesh and blood, and even then, beware.
First of all, the person who had the money usually thought they had the power. Worse, money puts price tags on relationships. Sometimes that was so true it tore families apart. In my case, even though I didn’t sign up for the class, my education began with my infamous date rape that resulted in Emily’s birth.
It may be hard to believe that there was such a thing as a date rape drug in 1983, but there was. I bear the dubious distinction of being the only person I know to ever have ingested Rohypnol, the original date rape drug. It was very effective.
My grandmother had fixed me up with a fellow she decided was an appropriate escort for my senior prom. It is important to note that this was my first date, as my grandmother thought that going to the movies with a boy meant you had sex. She also thought that lip gloss led to sex. I did not, just for the record, even do anything about those kinds of pronouncements except snicker. Not that it would have mattered to her what I thought. When I was a junior and senior in high school, I still didn’t date but it was because I didn’t know anybody I wanted to go out with. I was happy with my friends.
Anyway, this major loser date she found for me, who was the next step in the drama of my life, was Everett Fairchild, the son of a minister from Atlanta. I guess old Grandma figured a minister’s son was a safe bet, but she hadn’t mixed the college part into the equation. In the crazy days of the eighties, college students were as renowned as in the sixties for their wild antics. As hostess to many colleges, Charleston society in general turned her head to the bad boy fistfights and the insane alcohol consumption, justifying the students’ rowdy behavior as being a result of too many rules or homesickness or any of a thousand excuses. Well, Everett had a South American roommate who was in the import business—importing medication for recreational purposes.
Everett, prepared with a pocketful of “roofies,” took me to the prom and then to a beach house out on Folly Beach where a lot of my friends were planning to spend the weekend. We had changed into shorts and sandals and the night was going swimmingly well. This all could have happened yesterday, my memory is so clear, but then this would also easily qualify as a memory which would become emblazoned in the mind of a blue-bottomed baboon.
Everett, a platinum blond with perfect teeth, sea foam green eyes, and deep dimples, was a nice enough fellow until he started drinking PJ—which stands for Purple Jesus, a terrible punch of fruit juices and any av
ailable alcohol—and started putting the moves on me. I was so stupid I was flattered by it. I’d never touched a drop of alcohol. My best friends, Jim and Frannie, were there at the party with each other, which was nice since Jim was assumed to be gay and Frannie was too fat at that point in her life to get a date, so Jim took her. But they rolled their eyes every time Everett put his lips on my neck. I just smiled. What a dope I was.
We were all drinking whatever anyone gave us and the next thing I knew, sweet Everett was leading me to a bedroom. I still remember thinking that a nap was a good idea, because I wasn’t in any shape to do anything else at that point. My vision was blurred and I was feeling wobbly in the extreme.
The next thing I remember is that Jim and Frannie were standing over me. Frannie was crying and I was bleeding. Jim had a T-shirt wrapped around his fist. Apparently, he had punched Everett all around his pretty head and abdominal area. Everett stumbled out the door and took off in his car, leaving me stranded. Somehow Jim and Frannie got me into their car and took me to the emergency room at St. Francis Hospital. My nose was broken, gushing blood, and I was feeling pretty green.
“Oh, my God!” Frannie said over and over, “what are we gonna tell your grandmother?”
“Fell down the steps,” I said, through my blur of what I assumed was only alcohol.
“Yeah, that’s good,” Jim said, “that’s what we’ll say.”
“Just drive,” Frannie said and continued fretting over me, “hang on, Anna, we’re almost there.”
It was after one o’clock in the morning by then. Jim and Frannie stayed with me while some poor sleep-deprived resident cleaned me up and gently attempted to set my nose, after icing it, covering it with surgical tape, and handing me a prescription for an antibiotic. He suggested that I see a plastic surgeon in the next few days, which, of course, I never did, hence the bump in the middle of my nose. No one ever thought to check for sexual assault. Including me. I mean, it simply didn’t occur to me.
Jim and Frannie never mentioned my state of dress. When I finally gathered enough nerve to ask them about it, I think they had been so traumatized by the whole scene—Everett drunk on the bed beside me, cursing when they came in the room, and me bloody, moaning and disheveled—that they had only wanted to help me get out of there. That is, after Jim beat the crap out of Everett. Jim might have been gay but he was no sissy stereotype, all right? He loved me to death. We would have done anything for each other.