Same Beach, Next Year

  They were glued to an animated movie on television and they nodded like bobbleheads.

  “Good idea, Luke!” I said. “You kids know when it’s hot like this it’s important to drink a lot of fluids, right? I’ll get them for you.”

  “Luke calling the shots is a good thing,” Adam said to me, popping the top from a bottle of beer. “I never liked Luke being a follower all the time.”

  “I agree,” I said. “No reason why they both can’t be leaders.” I looked at my watch. “A beer before noon?”

  “Just hydrating,” Adam said. He blew me a kiss on his way out of the kitchen. “Besides, I suffered another humiliating defeat this morning on the golf course.”

  “Comfort drinking cannot be a good thing, sweetie.” Well, he’s on vacation, I thought. Just then I had another thought. We excused each other’s weaknesses, and that forgiveness is probably, no, definitely, an important key to the success of any long-term relationship. So is an occasional blind eye.

  You can’t make a second career out of pointing out someone’s flaws and expect them to love you, I said to myself. That seemed to be Cookie’s job.

  On another note, it was not lost on us or anyone else that Cookie was flirting with Ted every chance she had. Clarabeth pretended not to notice. She was confident that Ted loved living on her plantation and that he would never be as happy living downtown in some stuffy old house museum, which was how I envisioned Cookie’s house. And Clarabeth was secure enough about Ted’s affection for her, even if it may have been somewhat powered by the lifestyle she provided for him. But still, Cookie gave Clarabeth, Eve, and me plenty of cause to titter. One night when we were all together, Clarabeth left the dinner table to get a glass of water. Cookie made her move.

  “Ted, I sure am going to be awfully lonely without you and Clarabeth this winter.”

  “Well, then we’ll have to get together!” Ted said.

  “Let me know if she goes out of town,” Cookie said.

  “Mother!” Eve said.

  “Oh, please! You’re such a priss!” Cookie said and smiled at Ted.

  Adam and I just shook our heads.

  And finally, as our time at Wild Dunes came to a close for that year, I took one last walk on the beach with Adam. We walked along the water’s edge and the cool salt water washed over our bare feet. We held hands, something we had always done.

  “So, there’s something we need to talk about,” I said.

  Adam, who I knew could detect when there was a growing storm within me, tried to steer the conversation into something we had to be happy about.

  “What’s that? I think Max is almost himself again. What do you think?”

  “Maybe. Look, we’ve always been honest with each other, haven’t we?”

  “What do you mean? Of course!”

  “You’ve never told me a lie?”

  “Not unless I had to,” he said.

  It was the worst possible response. I had planned to discuss the matter calmly, but now, suddenly, I wanted to go for his jugular.

  “Oh, really? You mean like when you acted all surprised to see Eve and Carl here the first day?”

  I dropped his hand and turned to face him.

  “Calm down, sweetheart,” he said, which was also an ill-chosen remark.

  I felt my blood pressure spike.

  “Calm down? Really? ‘What a coincidence!’ That’s what you said! You’re a liar! You knew they were coming! Would you like to tell me what is going on?”

  We stood there growing roots into the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. Adam was staring at the sand dunes and I was staring at him. He was quiet.

  “Adam? Talk to me!”

  “Well, honestly, I meant to tell you, and I was going to tell you, but the right moment never presented itself and . . .”

  “The right moment? There has to be a right moment to tell me the truth? I’m your wife, Adam. I expect the truth from you even when it’s inconvenient.”

  “Okay. Here it is. Eve thinks that Carl is having an affair with someone. She called me a month ago. She was all upset.”

  “Oh? Now she calls you? For consolation? Why? To let you know she might be coming back on the market? To do what? Test the waters?”

  “Oh, come on, Eliza. She knows I only love you! She just wanted me to keep an eye on Carl and see if I could detect anything funny or different about his behavior. That’s all. We were gonna come back here this year anyway. So were they. So we chose the same two weeks. Big deal. Anyway, she asked me to be discreet.”

  “Are you kidding me? Discreet? Doesn’t she know it’s not nice to ask you to keep secrets from your spouse?”

  “Eliza, you’re right, of course,” Adam said. “But what would we have done if they hadn’t been here? Think about what might have happened to Max.”

  He had me with that remark. It was true. Carl was the hero of the year. I began to calm down.

  “I know. It is further proof that there’s no such thing as coincidence. But if I catch you lying to me again, I’m gonna skin you alive.”

  “I love it when you get mad. Your eyes flash lightning. And when you scrunch up your mouth like that? Your dimples show. Have I ever told you how much I love your dimples?”

  “I mean it, Adam.”

  Adam pulled me into his chest and held me close. Then he kissed me on the top of my head.

  “I love you, my fiery Greek beauty! I wish I had God’s money so I could shower you in diamonds.”

  “Oh, you.”

  “You know,” Adam said in a cagey voice, “remember last summer when we were here with them?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, you’re the one, missy, who told me you thought Carl screwed around.”

  “So what?” I said remembering that awkward moment in the bathroom with Carl. I could feel my neck getting hot.

  “So do you think he does? I mean, did you see anything weird or out of line with him?”

  I considered what I knew in light of what Adam would do if he knew. If I relayed the bathroom episode to him, it would only provoke further phone calls to and from Eve and maybe all kinds of other nonsense. Carl had apologized. There was no real reason to throw him under a bus. Besides all that, I really liked Carl. I greatly admired a lot of things about him.

  “No. I didn’t. I think he just made an odd first impression. Look, I think he’s a little conceited some of the time. And he likes to flirt. But the way he flirts is so overt that it’s almost silly. I don’t think it means anything.”

  Now I had a secret too. I could’ve told Adam everything, but I knew it would have a negative impact on his friendship with Carl. And in retrospect I felt certain that Carl’s move on me had just been some cheap grapes talking. Nonetheless, I kept the facts to myself.

  Hmmm, I thought. I’ve just committed the same sin!

  Somehow, it didn’t bother my conscience one iota.

  We all rationalize our behaviors, I thought.

  “So, do you want to see them next summer?” Adam asked.

  We began to walk again. He took my hand and held it tightly. I paused for a moment, taking in the spectacular colors of the western sky. I was so profoundly grateful to Carl. The children got along beautifully. Eve was becoming better company, even though she clearly drank too much. And I was amused by Cookie’s lewd-lite pronouncements. There was no reason not to see them again because, despite Max’s accident, it was the most fun I’d had all year.

  “After what he did for Max? I’d go on vacation with them anywhere they want to go. I mean, Adam, even though I know Eve is still sweet on you, I like her. And Carl too. Plus, he’s good for your golf game.”

  “Please. He killed me again this year. Well, that’s what I was thinking too. I mean, we owe them. Especially him. Forever. But next year I’m gonna get him out on the tennis court and destroy him.”

  After that summer, time began to feel as though it was truly flying. As we knew it would come to pass, that fall Old Rufus went to dog heaven.
He was just shy of his nineteenth birthday, riddled with arthritis and every ailment dogs can suffer in their old age. One day we let him outside and he didn’t come when we called him. Luke and Max were yelling his name for so long that, having a premonition and a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, I finally went outside in the yard to see what was going on. My worst fears were confirmed. When we found Rufus at the edge of the woods, the boys were very sad and so was Adam, but I cried like a baby. He had probably been trying to chase something, like a squirrel or a skunk, and his heart just gave out. Mr. Proctor dug a grave and we buried him overlooking the river with prayers and flowers.

  “He was my best friend,” I said to Adam through my tears.

  “He was an awfully good dog,” Adam said, giving me a hug.

  “We can get another dog,” Max said.

  “We’ll see,” I said.

  Now, a few months later when Crank the cat gave up the ghost, there was no crying and no ceremony. In fact, Crank was merely assumed dead because she disappeared from our property and our lives.

  “You think she was catnapped?” Max said.

  “Catnapped! That ain’t even a word!” Luke said and laughed.

  “Don’t say ‘ain’t,’” I said.

  “Nobody in their right mind would steal that cat,” Adam said.

  Despite my most fervent wishes that time would slow down, it did not. My boys were growing up too fast, I began to find white hairs on my head, and my hands and feet ached at the end of a long day in the kitchen. Even Adam was getting gray around the temples. And, as he thought he might, he bought us a three-bedroom condominium at Wild Dunes, blocking out two weeks for ourselves each year. Not to be outdone, Carl and Eve bought an almost identical one two doors away from ours.

  I marked the passing of each year by vacations and holidays and photographs. Christmases, Easters, Thanksgivings, pictures taken around the Christmas tree, the table spread with food, or all of us gathered in my garden, holding tomatoes or corn. Pictures of the boys holding pumpkins they had grown, grinning widely, front teeth gone missing. Then there were my boys of summer, shirtless and freckled, tanned to a beautiful shade of café au lait, holding up watermelons so big they could take a prize at a county fair.

  There were pictures of Luke and Max on their first bicycles and then later sitting up tall in the saddle on their horses. There were dozens of fish they caught spread out on the dock. Panoramic pictures of Luke and Max casting nets across the Carolina sky, standing in their johnboat out in the middle of the Stono. When they were about twelve, against my wishes, Adam bought shotguns and taught the boys how to hunt birds. There were pictures of ducks and pheasants they shot spread across the tailgate of Adam’s pickup, which kicked up great clouds of dust on dirt roads when they went hunting with their dad and their Pointers.

  Adam had taken most of the pictures, but I was the one who edited them, carefully cropping and color-correcting each one. After deliberation over the worthiness of each photo, I printed and framed the ones that represented those moments in the most appealing and memorable way. Indeed, the walls of our den and the halls of our house were a chronicle of our lives. And interspersed between them all were favorite memories from all our summers at Wild Dunes with Eve, Carl, Daphne, and Cookie. Of course, Ted and Clarabeth continued to join us each year.

  Whenever Eve paid a solo visit to her mother in Charleston, Ted and Clarabeth met them for dinner. They had become quite good friends. Clarabeth would confide to me that yes, she had seen Cookie and Eve, and naturally she would make a remark about Cookie’s very high opinion of herself and that perhaps she understood why Eve held such an affection for alcohol.

  “I can’t imagine having Cookie for a mother,” Clarabeth said after the night she and Ted met them for dinner at Grill 225 to celebrate their recent marriage. They finally tied the knot! Clarabeth wanted no fuss about a wedding, so they went off to New Orleans, said nothing to anyone, and came back married. “I’m sure she never did a thing to boost that poor child’s self-esteem.”

  “Cookie can be a bit of a stinker,” I agreed.

  “Well, she has other redeeming qualities.”

  “Such as?”

  “She can be very entertaining. You know, most people think white wine is harmless, but it isn’t,” Clarabeth said.

  “Do you think Eve has a problem?”

  I had noticed the last time we were together at Wild Dunes that Eve seemed to be guzzling a whole lot more wine than usual, even for someone on vacation.

  “Well, she drank an entire bottle herself.”

  “Good grief!”

  I didn’t like to think of Eve as an alcoholic, and I wasn’t proud that I was sort of secretly glad to have someone remark that Eve wasn’t perfect.

  But all around, life was a whole lot better than merely satisfactory. Adam’s construction business continued to grow and I finally amassed enough photographs and tested enough recipes to piece together a draft of my cookbook. Sadly, all of it remained in a big box in the bottom of the guest room’s closet, because my growing boys and their very busy schedules devoured nearly every waking hour of my time. And I asked myself over and over, did the world really need another cookbook?

  Once a year, while on a road trip to Florida, my brother, JJ, and his wife, Tasha, stopped by to spend the night. It always proved to be the predicted painful endurance contest for Adam, and by the time they left in the morning Adam was wrung out. After dinner the night before, when I’d grilled gorgeous rib-eye prime steaks, they said they really didn’t like to eat so much red meat. And, well, they were right, of course. I knew red meat was bad for you, but in my mind, it was a special treat. The next morning, I made them all breakfast—eggs, grits, and sausage with scratch biscuits so light they nearly floated across the room from the oven to the plates. JJ and Tasha pushed their food around their plates and ate like birds.

  “Eliza, your biscuits are the best I’ve ever eaten, but I’ve never understood why people eat grits and say they actually like them,” JJ said.

  “They’re gritty,” Tasha said.

  “That’s why they call ’em grits!” Max said.

  “Hmmm,” Adam said for the maybe hundredth time in the last twelve hours, checking his watch.

  “It’s hard to find common ground,” I said, waving good-bye to them as they pulled away in their car with bottles of my homemade jams bubble-wrapped and tucked into a canvas tote. “I’ll bet they’re saying the same thing.”

  “One can only hope,” Adam said.

  “I did my best,” I said wistfully. “He’s my only brother, you know? I love him.”

  “Pearls before swine,” Luke whispered to Max, who nodded his head.

  “What did you say?” I asked.

  “I said, why does Aunt Tasha laugh like that?” Luke asked. Luke had become a gifted liar.

  “Because her mother was a hyena,” Max said. “It’s inherited.”

  Luke and Max went on to imitate Tasha’s unfortunate shrill and gulping laugh, which sounded like some godforsaken animal screeching from deep in the bush of the Serengeti.

  Both boys doubled over with laughter. Adam and I looked at each other and grinned. What could we say? It was true. My brother was married to a hyena.

  The months and years continued to fly. By the time 2007 rolled around, the boys were teenage jocks with driver’s licenses and testosterone oozing from every pore of their perfectly toned bodies. They were going to college in the fall, thinking about girls and probably about getting laid.

  That last prospect was pretty slim for the moment, as our whole tribe was on its way to Wild Dunes once again.

  Of course, on the day we arrived, the heat was treacherous. We unloaded our cars and carried endless bags and so forth inside. The difference was that this year the boys had their own cars—Max a VW Jetta and Luke a Ford Eddie Bauer Explorer. They were used cars because Adam had wisely decided that new cars were an unnecessary luxury. He helped the boys buy them by splitting t
he cost and the insurance, which meant the boys had to work. And over their summers they had worked alongside Adam’s construction crews. Luke had taken a shine to the family business, but Max, no doubt as a result of Carl’s influence, was interested in medical school.

  “If you graduate from college with honors, I’ll buy you both any car you want, within reason,” Adam said.

  “Lamborghini!” Luke said.

  “Maserati!” Max said.

  “When pigs fly,” Adam said and slapped them on the shoulder. “Keep dreaming!”

  Eve wandered in around five and invited us all over for dinner.

  “It’s just so good to see y’all again! I missed all of you!” Eve said. “Come eat with us.”

  “Oh, sweetie!” I said after giving her a big hug. “Me too! I’ve already got lasagna in the oven!” I had another casserole in the freezer but I could throw that in the oven as well.

  “Then I’ll bring my hot dogs and chili over here?”

  “Of course!” I hoped the hot dogs had no nitrates in them and wondered if that kind of dinner pleased Carl and her mother.

  “By the way, Daphne brought a friend with her.” Eve rolled her eyes. “It was the only way I could get her to come.”

  “Teenagers,” I said.

  “We’re going swimming, Mom,” Max said, passing through the kitchen with Luke. “Hey, Miss Eve. Daphne here?”

  “Don’t go in the ocean!” I said. “They had a shark attack last week. Some poor man nearly lost his leg.”

  “Really? Yikes,” Eve said. “Yeah. She’s next door with her new best friend, Kelly. Kelly Engelbert. Kelly Engelbert who is reputed to have a tattoo of her astrological sign on her backside.”

  Luke and Max looked at each other and grinned.

  “Boys, stop it!” I said. “I can read your minds!”

  “And it’s not Virgo,” Eve said.

  “Sweet,” Max said and looked to Luke, who was struggling not to laugh.

  “Yep, shark attack,” I said, trying to change the subject. “There was a big article in the Post and Courier.”

  “How terrible!” Eve said.

  “Don’t worry, Mom. We ain’t afraid of no shark,” Max said, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge. He tossed a second one to Luke.