Lowcountry Summer

  I told Eric that after yesterday’s breakfast and today’s dinner, I imagined that staying with Rusty suddenly held more appeal for the girls than enduring an endless history lecture from me. He did not disagree.

  “You went on for like an hour, Mom.”

  “I did? Yeah, I suppose I did. But you know the details of our past are very important. It’s essential for those girls to understand who they are and where they come from. Otherwise, how can they plan some kind of a future for themselves, you know, give themselves something to aim for? I’m just trying to expand their horizons.”

  “Right. Actually, Mom, Linnie and Belle are thinking of majoring in political science and then joining the diplomatic corps when they graduate. Belle thinks she wants to be an ambassador to somewhere in South America; Peru, I think. I heard them talking about it.”

  “Heavens! I hope you’re kidding!”

  “I am.”

  “Well, that’s a relief.”

  I heard him chuckle.

  “Very funny,” I said, smiling to myself.

  “Can you imagine those two running embassies?”

  “No. I cannot fathom.”

  “Man, I used to think that I had a lot of growing up to do, but those two?”

  “Baby, my mother used to always say that every flower blooms in its own time.”

  “Weird.”

  I smiled and glanced at Eric’s grinning profile and thought about how close he was to adulthood. The outside world was beginning to close ranks around him bit by bit. It wouldn’t be too many years before I would need him more than he would need me, but I was very determined never to be a burden to him or anyone. That much was certain. Was it his youth that made me think about my own advancing years? I wasn’t that old. I wasn’t washed up yet. I was still in the game. Wasn’t I? And who was his girlfriend?

  Amelia was coming to pick up Eric soon. He’d be back in his dormitory at Carolina that night and I wouldn’t see him again for a week or so, which at that moment seemed like an unforgivable amount of time. How often during his life had I wished I could just freeze-frame us just as we were? How the years raced by like a thief, stealing my son’s youth. The first thing to go were his little-boy freckles. They had all but vanished, erased by the sun’s bronze patina on his cheeks and nose. The next thing I knew, he sounded like a man. “Mom?” became “Mom,” that one syllable resonating with a base thud. Then I turned around one day and saw that he had grown peach fuzz above his lip and on the sides of his face. On and on it went until he towered over me and melted my heart every time I heard his man voice say, “I love you, Mom.”

  “I just hate for you to leave, Eric.” I couldn’t help pouting.

  “Yeah, me, too. But you know I’ll be back as soon as I run out of clean socks.”

  “All over the world, mothers depend on that.”

  He could not read my mind or know the exact thoughts I had at the moment, but Eric knew my heart better than anyone ever had. He didn’t even have to look at me to know that I hated his leaving. Intellectually, I knew he had to go back to school. Of course I knew that. But every time he left, I suffered a kind of emptiness that I could physically feel from the back of my throat to the middle of my chest. His leaving made me feel a trace of panic for no discernible or sensible reason. Maternal pangs, I guess. And not to be a big old worrywart, but I wouldn’t stop praying for his safety until I heard his voice telling me he was back, safe in his dorm. Then I could flip that mental switch and start stressing over things like his being mugged walking to the library at night or that some little conniving trollop was going to break his heart and I would have to kill her with my reasonably new German knives, hacking her apart, limb by limb, and gouging her eyes out. I considered my paranoia to be well within the range of normal.

  “So? Are you going to tell me about her?”

  “Who?” he said.

  “Your new girlfriend, Eric! What’s her name?”

  “Oh, great. Who told you?”

  “I just knew, that’s all. Look! If you don’t want to tell me, that’s okay. I mean, I thought we could talk about anything . . .”

  “Oh, okay. But it’s nothing, really. I just go over to her place for dinner, that’s all.”

  Oh. My. God. He was having sex. My son was having sex!

  “Oh? Is she a good cook?” She had better not be a good cook.

  “Yeah, not as good as you or Millie. But she’s a pretty good cook.”

  “What does she make?” I hated her.

  “You know, the usual stuff. Meat loaf. Mashed potatoes. Chicken fingers, stuffing, carrots.”

  “That’s kid food.” My alarms started ringing all over my brain. “Eric? Does this young lady have a child?” Was that possible?

  “She’s not that young, really.”

  “Really? How old is she?”

  “I think she’s like twenty-seven or maybe she’s twenty-eight? Anyway, she’s got this really cute kid named Larry. He’s two. What?”

  I must have looked faint and then I realized I was gripping the counter. If my son married this damn fool, I’d be a grandmother! Well, a grandmother-in-law.

  “Nothing, sweetheart. What’s her name?” Fainting was a real possibility.

  “Erica. Erica Swink.”

  “Oh? Eric and Erica?” Maybe it would be a step-grandmother? I was feeling very nauseated. I reached in the cabinet for a box of Club crackers and started eating them to soak up the bile I could feel rising in my throat.

  “Yeah! Isn’t that weird?”

  “Yeah. Weird. Well, look, Eric. I trust you to do the right thing, you know that right? I’m sure she’s a lovely girl.”

  “Yeah. If this thing lasts, and I sure hope it will, I’ll bring her home to meet you soon. You’ll like her.”

  “I’m sure I will, darlin’! And is she a student?” I was dying inside. Dying!

  “Oh, no. She works at the campus bookstore.”

  “Oh! Well, that’s good. She has a job and all.” Minimum wage.

  We looked out the kitchen window to see Amelia walking toward the door.

  “I’ll go get my stuff,” Eric said, and I nodded.

  In the past, Amelia simply would have pulled up in the yard and leaned on her horn. Had the transformation begun? Was dignity making a comeback? Had we ceased to blare our horns like bad-boy bubbas at a tractor pull? It was another small beginning, infinitesimal really, but I would take it. Take it, relish it, and add to it. And I would say nothing about Erica Swink to a living soul. No one!

  I opened the door for Amelia.

  “Amelia, sweetheart!” I gave her a breezy hug with a pat on her back. “I’m just packing a cooler for Eric. Can I give you anything to take back to school? I have at least ten pounds of ham here, and Lord knows, Millie made enough cookies and brownies to last until Christmas . . .” The Academy was going to swing down to the Lowcountry, arriving any minute now to give me my Oscar for Best Actress.

  “Sure!” she said. “Contributions of any kind of food are always welcome. My roommates hate to cook but we all love to eat!”

  “Hand me the Ziplocs, okay?” I took the box from her and began to fill a bag with ham slices. “Well, let them have the sweets, darling! We want you to look good in that dress in December, don’t we?”

  “I guess so. Gosh,” she said.

  For someone poised on the threshold of a world of great beauty, holding a passport to elegance, she looked mighty glum.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Nothing! I mean, well, I’m a little worried, that’s all.”

  Poor thing. She should only know how my insides were convulsing at the thought of some wretched girl with a baby touching mine. That was something to really worry about!

  “What’s bothering you, Amelia? Tell your auntie so I can help you feel better.”

  “I don’t know, Aunt Caroline. I mean, I can’t dance. I’m a total klutz and everyone knows it. I haven’t worn a pair of high heels since I don’t
know when, and who’s going to come to this thing anyway? I mean, it’s not like I have a ton of friends who would even get it or any relatives besides my dad and you and Eric who know how to behave. My stupid sisters will probably suck up everyone’s cocktails and who knows with them? They’re totally trouble. And it’s just that—”

  “Darling child. Hush now! You’re just nervous. Now, take this food, go call Eric, and tell him it’s time to hustle his buns! You go back to school, make all A’s, and let me worry about all that other stuff!”

  “And you know Belle’s graduation is like in a few weeks. Shouldn’t we be doing something for that?”

  Like what? I thought. Send her to a convent in Patagonia run by German nuns who use corporal punishment to motivate good behavior? Like bamboo under the fingernails? The old-fashioned rack?

  “You’re right! What did you have in mind?” I said as sweetly as I could.

  “I’m clueless. Maybe we should ask her?”

  “I’ll call Belle tonight. Is Trip taking the girls back to Walterboro?”

  “Yeah. As far as I know.”

  “There’s been no word from your mother, I guess?”

  “Nada. Zilch. Silent like the tomb. But she’s not allowed to contact us.”

  “Right. I had forgotten that. Well, let’s assume no news is good news.”

  “Jeez, I sure hope so.”

  “We all hope so,” I said, and wondered if I really meant it.

  When Amelia and Eric were gone, I sank into a chair at the kitchen table. I was putting Erica Swink out of my mind and not thinking about her again that night. I had bigger, smellier fish to fry. Erica would probably fade into the sunset before Memorial Day. I hoped.

  Amelia was right. How had I continued to ignore the fact that our social world of acceptable guests was truly so minuscule? In all the time I had been back in the Lowcountry, I still had not connected with the downtown Charleston crowd, the hunt-club crowd, the golfing crowd, the arts crowd, the political crowd, or any crowd for that matter. Not even a book club! Well, surely Trip had an address book filled with satisfied clients. And I would simply have to prevail on Miss Sweetie and Miss Nancy to funnel a guest list in our direction and I knew they would. I didn’t want Amelia to be embarrassed by a thin turnout. It seemed to me that any crowd under one hundred people would leave us all with a red face. I would pull off a grand occasion if it was the last thing I did.

  And what about Belle’s graduation? I know this probably sounds a little harsh, but did that miserable unrepentant tramp really think she was entitled to a party in her honor? In my book, she still deserved a good slap across her insolent face. She and Linnie had behaved abominably all weekend, right up to dinner earlier today, when they finally began to simmer down after Trip corrected them about a dozen times.

  Wait! Let me backtrack for a minute. For dinner today, Millie had baked a fruited ham and made red rice, deviled eggs, green-bean salad, a zillion biscuits, and brownies that were so rich and chocolaty they made you literally drool for another cold glass of milk. They ate like horses and then they calmed down. They became pretty reasonable by the end of dinner. What kind of nutritional habits did they have? They probably drank triple espressos for breakfast and caffeine sodas all day long. Maybe that was how they stayed so skinny and why their behavior was so frenetic. That was it! They were overcaffeinated and overstimulated! I was a regular Sherlock Holmes, by golly.

  I dialed Trip’s cell phone.

  “Hey, where are you?”

  “In the car driving the girls back. Why?”

  “Well, I just had a thought and I wanted you to look into it.”

  “Sure. What?”

  I could hear the girls talking to each other.

  “Am I on speakerphone? You know I can’t bear that.” Modern technology made me grind my teeth and the girls didn’t need to hear what I was going to say, did they?

  “Well, I’ve got my hands kind of full here. Why don’t I just call you when I get to the house.”

  “Fine. That’s fine. Fine.”

  My thoughts were drifting to the next logical step, which would be for me to go to the Walterboro house. I could see myself pulling a garbage can up to the refrigerator and throwing out all the junk. Then I would go through all the cabinets and do the same thing. Lastly, I would go to that Piggly Wiggly out on Bells Highway and restock the house with healthy food—whole-grain everything—and maybe I would even bake my little miseries a chicken.

  I called Rusty.

  “You okay?” I asked. “You have to be wiped out.”

  “I’m totally and completely exhausted.”

  “I’m sure! Listen, I have a new theory . . .”

  I gave her the gist of my bad-nutrition idea and she agreed with me.

  “You are one hundred percent right, Caroline. Of course what you eat affects your moods. Food affects everything!”

  “Why didn’t I think of this before?”

  “Who knows? Why didn’t I? Listen, when I was working with all those LD kids, the minute I could get their families to get the kids off refined sugar and caffeinated drinks, there was an immediate, I mean, immediate improvement in their ability to focus on whatever we were studying.”

  “Big surprise, now that I think about it.”

  “And you think there’s no relationship between sugar and ADHD?”

  “Obviously there is! And I think the same thing goes for carbs, right?”

  “Yeah, no doubt about it. They metabolize as sugar and store as fat. Bad news. So let me ask you something, Dr. Atkins.”

  We both giggled.

  “What?”

  “Exactly how do you plan to rectify this?”

  There was only one choice, one clear path of action.

  “I’m getting in my car and driving over there right now.”

  “You are? Well, good luck!”

  “Vaya con Dios, right?”

  “Sí! Caroline? Call me if you need reinforcements.”

  “And you’d come?”

  “What? Heck no! I’ve seen enough of them today! I’d send Millie!”

  “Wish me double good luck.”

  What to wear to a search-and-destroy mission? I decided to go just as I was. It was not a Miss Lavinia caftan event.

  If Trip tried to call me while I was driving there, I didn’t know it. That stretch of highway was a dead zone for cell-phone reception. I rolled into Walterboro right around six and pulled into their yard on Lynnwood Drive minutes later. There was a moment of doubt while I debated ringing the front doorbell or to go in the back like a family member, deciding the back porch was a better choice. Strangers and company used the front door. After all, Auntie Caroline didn’t want anyone to be suspicious. They were all in the breakfast room finishing up supper.

  Trip stood when he saw me coming and opened the door for me.

  “Hey!” he said, wiping his mouth with a paper towel. “What a surprise! What’s up? Bears on the loose again?”

  “Just this momma bear. Can I have a word with you?”

  “Sure. You hungry? There’s plenty of . . .”

  We looked at the table, where my nieces were winding up their feast of canned soup and grilled rubber cheese sandwiches. Uneaten burned crusts were tossed on a central plate and splattered broth made little puddles on the table. An open pickle jar stood by Trip’s plate with a large fork sticking out of it. It could have been Neptune’s trident. A bomb-shelter-size bag of potato chips was open, waiting for the next greasy hand to find its way inside. Seldom had a meal been so easy to resist.

  “Nah, I’m fine. Thanks. Ate before I left.”

  “Doesn’t look so great, does it?”

  “Actually, that’s why I’m here.”

  We walked into the den, out of earshot. I started telling Trip that I had come to the conclusion that Linnie and Belle were caffeine slash sugar junkies, which was why they were so rude and jittery all the time, and that all the sodium wasn’t doing Chloe any good either.
Just as I was about to wind it up, and it should be noted that in typical man fashion he was rolling his eyes and shifting his weight from foot to foot with complete disinterest, his cell phone rang. He took the call and walked away from me toward the living room. I followed him and stood there by the entrance waiting for him.

  “Who? Yeah, hey. What can I do you for?” Pause. “What’s the charge? Aw, Gawd, Bubba! Did they give you a pair of pants at least? Jeesch! What’s bail?”

  Some Bubba who needed pants was in trouble. Man with no pants? My curiosity was on high alert. Who was he talking to? There were at least twenty-two gazillion Bubbas in the Carolina Lowcountry and they were not necessarily of the Crimson Collar tribe. It could have been anyone. And why do southerners call some perfectly manly and refined men Bubba? Well, Bubba is usually a term of endearment, easily pronounced, and slapped on little tykes in their early years by their mothers so that the younger siblings can call their Big Bubba by a squishy nonthreatening name. Mommas also call their sons Bubba because they’re frequently named for their fathers to honor them. In Trip’s case, he was named for his father and grandfather, so he was a third, and the nickname is short for the triple III at the end of his name on his birth certificate. Fascinating, right? Probably not. Anyway, he sure was taking a long time on the phone.

  I looked at him in concern, silently mouthing what? He gave me the two-minute signal with his fingers, indicating he would be off the phone momentarily. I nodded and kept quiet.

  “Okay, okay. No, don’t worry. You can pay me back. I’ll be right there.” He closed his phone and looked at me. “What a world. Good thing I keep some cash in the house.”

  “What happened?”

  “That was Bubba Poole who just called. He was over at his girlfriend’s house when her husband came home and he had to jump out of the bedroom window in his altogether. He ran home through the woods with it swinging in the breeze and somehow, by the grace of God, no one saw him. But when he got to his house, his wife, Nancy, was standing on the back porch without her sense of humor. A disagreement ensued and then there was some altercation including some threats that were made against his manhood with a very scary large pair of garden shears, during which time he took flight once again and got picked up by Walterboro’s finest.”