They walked toward us and at least I had the presence of mind to cover myself with the hat. I thought I would die. I wished I would die. I did not die.
Officer Number One said, “Well, we’d ask you two for some identification but we’re assuming you’re not in possession of your wallet at this time?”
“No, uh…”
Officer Two then said, “Have you been drinking any alcohol tonight, sir?”
“Uh, a little tequila.”
Officer One then said, “Tequila? Ralph? I think what we got ourselves here is a theme party.”
Officer Two (Ralph) said, “Is that what this is, sir?”
Manny and I looked at each other. I was no longer drunk enough to not feel complete and total mortification down to the last stringy hair on my sandy wet head.
“Sort of. Yes. I apologize, Officer. You see, I’m in love with this lady, and ever since my wife died…well, this is the first happiness I’ve known in so many years…”
Manny was an impressive liar.
They looked at each other, and Officer One said, “Ah, hell. Here. Take your clothes, get dressed, and get on out of here. No real harm done.”
Officer Two said, “I had to give you a parking ticket, sir. You parked by a fire hydrant.”
“Thank you, Officer,” Manny said. “Thank you.”
The mood in the car on the ride home with Manny was one that would be difficult for a dignified and refined person to understand. The southern lady in me was furious that he would put me in that position in the first place. The hellcat I longed to become on my Mellie days wanted to laugh uproariously that we had gotten off scot-free. And I wondered what else Manny had in his fantasy folder. The mother in me could only imagine what those poor young officers, younger than my own sons, had thought seeing two old codgers in their birthday suits. So on the ride home, we exchanged very few words, just half smiles of chagrin and relief, and simply said good night.
When I sneaked up the stairs, I found Miss Josie and Liz bundled up in blankets in the old wicker rockers on the back porch. They gasped when they saw how completely disheveled I was. I knew I looked like a wreck.
“Well, would you look at what the cat dragged in,” Mother said. “What in the name of great jumping Jehoshaphat’s mother-in-law happened to you?”
“Mother? Liz? I fell off a dock. I’ll see y’all in the morning.”
And I had worried about my mother smoking pot, fretted that she might sully my reputation if she got arrested for it. Can you imagine how my moonlight escapade with Manny Sinkler would have looked plastered all over the newspapers in New York? What would Charles have said? Agnes Willis? To tell you the truth? I laughed myself to sleep. I couldn’t wait to tell Kevin. Or maybe I would just keep this one to myself.
Chapter Fifteen
LIZ’S BIZ
Over the next few days, Liz and Mother were developing a serious bond. Like a mad scientist, Mother was mixing all sorts of creams to hasten the healing of Liz’s scar.
“All right,” Mother said, handing her the first of two small jars. “I want you to apply this every four hours with clean hands. And don’t go out in the sun without this sunscreen over it.”
I loved that Mother told Liz to make sure her hands were clean and that Liz didn’t mind. She simply did as she was told with a huge smile on her face. Miss Josie had been right. Liz needed mothering—and apparently grandmothering, too.
“This smells good enough to eat!” Liz said. “What’s in it?”
“Oh, all sorts of good things like vitamin E and C and a little eye of newt.”
They laughed like white witches in cahoots. Just as you might imagine, Mother’s vegetable juicer was working overtime. The carrot-apple-celery combination was a reward chaser for the consumption of a tall glass of kale, beet, and parsley. You cannot appreciate the full impact of a bout of blastro intestinitis until you’ve gagged on kale juice.
Anyway, Liz and Mother had hybridized into two organic peas in a pod.
Manny surfaced the day after our wild night in an attempt to restore some normalcy to our relationship, or whatever you might call the scandalous thing was that we had. We walked over to Dunleavy’s for a drink and tried to talk about what had happened on the beach. He attempted to apologize and couldn’t keep a straight face. I tried to give him a hard time and couldn’t keep a straight face either. We had nearly been arrested for acting out Manny’s completely juvenile sexual psychodrama, and the only good that came from our conversation about it was that he finally admitted it was juvenile.
I said, “You know? All I want in this life is a reasonable man who’s self-supporting, who’s nice to me, funny, you know, likes straight sex—not role-playing modeled on a kinky Berlin nightclub from pre–World War Two…Shouldn’t be too much to ask for, should it? I mean, you do engage in normal sex from time to time, don’t you?”
“On occasion,” he said, trying again to be serious. “I’ll do better next time. But I must say, you are a good sport.”
“Thanks, you big dope.”
He leaned across the table and whispered, “Ever play naked Twister?”
I leaned toward him and we were nose to nose. “Yeah, every Thursday after my bridge club. What’s the matter with you? I thought you were a banker!”
“Was a banker.”
“Well, since you obviously have too much time on your hands, do you want to be my date for something?”
“Sure. You name it.”
“Okay. I already suspect I’ll have to take an oath to have sex with you on an outside window ledge of the ninety-eighth floor of the Empire State Building, but if I do, will you take me to my son’s wedding?”
“Ninety-eighth?”
“Ninety-ninth?”
“I accept!” We shook hands to seal the deal.
However you chose to describe what Manny and I had going so far, I had to say it was devilishly good fun. But I would like to add that the thought of a serious future with him could provoke an outburst of shingles. And in all sincerity, I was not going to crawl out of a window onto a ledge to get it on with this crazy man.
Although he swore that he had not told Harrison or anyone the sombrero story, something in the pit of my gut told me otherwise. The camaraderie between Manny and Harrison was not quite as harmonious as it had been my last visit home. Harrison was a little cooler toward Manny, and every time Harrison came through the door, he looked at me differently. He wasn’t smirking exactly and he wasn’t criticizing either. Maybe he was storing my suspected secret wild side away for future reference. Go ahead, I thought.
It was late morning on a warm sunny day in the middle of the week. Liz had gone fishing with Mother and Harrison, and I was home alone, lying in the hammock, reading Proust in French. Okay, that was a lie to see if you’re paying attention. I was, as you might guess, struggling with part of the Wednesday crossword puzzle in the New York Times. When, for the ninetieth time I could not remember a four-letter word for a three-toed sloth, I decided to surrender the masochistic exercise in frustration to the garbage can and call Kevin to make sure Harry was still alive and that all was well.
“You busy?” I asked, knowing he was probably at work.
That was one of the many annoyances about cell phones. No matter where you were, you felt obliged to answer them. I could be getting a mammogram or trying on swimsuits and a tiny rush of panic would set in if I couldn’t hop quickly enough to check my caller ID. Kevin was a big boy. If he wanted my call to go to voice mail, it would.
“Well, of course I’m busy, but I have such a juicy bit of fat for you that I’d put Karl Lagerfeld himself on hold to talk to you. Let me just close my door. Hold on.”
I braced myself for something oozing shock.
“Okay? Are you ready?” he said.
“Please! I can’t breathe!”
“Well, Agnes Willis has resigned as chair from the museum’s benefit committee.”
“No! No kidding? Why?”
“Well, the inside skinny I heard through Manuela in alterations who was fitting a gown for one of Agnes’s friends who was running her mouth to her girlfriend—I guess she was shopping with her—was that the chairman of the board of trustees heard what Agnes had said to you during that most unfortunate incident with the coffee urn. They said that he called a meeting with Agnes and said that the museum could not afford to have their volunteers treated with such disrespect and that it was terribly damaging for the museum’s image.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Believe it. So apparently Agnes like went all menopausal on him and stomped out.”
“Well, holy hopping moly, if you live long enough you see everything, don’t you?”
“So that’s vindication numero uno.”
“What? There’s more?”
“Oh, yes, Petal Puss. Then Manuela told Christiana, who also works in alterations, and P.S., brought me a divine coffee cake just this morning, that Truman Willis bought Agnes about a million dollars’ worth of clothes, that they were going on safari and then to India, and that they’ve put their co-op on the market. I guess you ran the old crone out of town. How do you like them apples?”
“Goodness! Wait until I tell Liz!”
“New York will be much safer without them.”
“And nicer. Gosh. I can hardly believe it. Usually my enemies flourish. This is one of the few times I’ve ever seen this happen! Justice, I mean.”
“And here’s the best news of all, sweetheart.”
“What?”
“I found the perfect dress for you to wear to the wedding.”
“Really? You are too much! What’s it like?”
“Navy, silk chiffon. Cap sleeves, off the shoulders, flattering to the upper arms? Fitted waist and a thousand yards of skirt. Tea length. It’s divine. And it’s an Arnold Scassi. On sale, seventy off. It was in the back of a hold rack from the Cruise Collection and I guess they just missed it. I snatched it. With my discount, they’ll have to pay me to take it home!”
“What size?”
“Ten, I think, but it doesn’t matter. We’ll make it fit.”
“I’m a solid twelve.”
“We will make it fit if I have to take it to the Scassi cutting room myself.”
“You realize I’d die without you, don’t you? Kevin, how can I thank you?”
“Lower my rent. I want to go to Paris on vacation and I don’t have enough cash to stay at the Ritz for the week.”
“Couldn’t I just give you a lung instead?”
“I’m just fooling with you. So, you haven’t told me a thing about what’s doing down there. How’s that Manny fellow and your mother and Harrison? And how does the magical isle agree with our Liz?”
“It would take me hours to tell you all that’s going on around here. Mostly Manny and I have been laughing ourselves silly. You know all those discussions we had during the snowstorms about me having more fun? Well, I’m doing just that.”
“Well, praise the Lord!”
“I know. Liz and my mother are joined at the hip. Mom’s on a mission to heal Liz, body and soul. And Liz is devouring all the attention, poor thing. Harrison is well. He’s just this great guy who’s the glue between Miss Josie and the grave. I mean, I don’t think my mother looks well, but Harrison keeps her going. Right now he’s got her and Liz out in a fishing boat catching our dinner. Unless I go out with Manny.”
“So? What’s so hilarious and fun about this Manny?”
“He’s just off-the-wall. I don’t know. I mean, it’s certainly nothing serious.”
“Just good for the ego?”
“I guess.” I was divulging no details. “And how’s my Harry?”
“Well, he must miss you because he keeps saying ‘Pretty Miriam! Pretty Miriam!’”
“Golly. Maybe I’ll call you back tonight and you could put the phone up to his ear?”
“Good-bye, Petal! You’re losing it!”
There was no doubt that it was a possibility.
I decided to go for a walk on the beach and pulled on a jacket, as it was getting chilly. I checked the tidal clock and the tide was going out. The beach would be wet and the sand softer than usual, but that was perfectly fine with me.
I backed the golf cart out of the garage and waved good-bye to Mother’s goat. If I thought it was a sign of politeness to communicate my comings and goings to a goat, I actually might have been losing my mind. But I was so elated by the Agnes news that I would have kissed Cecelia if she had puckered up.
Riding the three short blocks over to the beach path, I realized sloth was my first problem, not goat communiqués. I should always walk whenever possible to zap my metabolism out of its coma. Why was I so lazy? The dress was a ten, which meant it was probably more like an eight, which meant that if I didn’t get twenty pounds off my fat derriere, I was going to look like a muffin with my natural endowments popping over the top of my baking cup.
How would I ever lose that much weight? An ounce at a time, the little comedian in my brain said. Dieting depressed me.
The sun was climbing and felt wonderful on my back as I walked toward the lighthouse. My body didn’t know that my brain hated to exercise, so if I just did it anyway, it would still work. I walked as brisk a pace as I could, wondering how much of this nonsense I needed to do to make a real difference. Probably more than I envisioned.
The wedding. It was going to happen, and as happy as I told myself I was for Charlie and Priscilla, I just simply dreaded facing Charles and Judith. I felt so dumpy and defeated every time I thought about them, laughing, watering their houseplants with Evian, and that even a rag from the back of her closet made her look like a movie star. The last picture I had seen of them in the newspaper was taken at a benefit for the City Opera. Even in the postage-stamp-size photograph—with the help of a magnifying glass—Kevin and I could see that she wore a lavish diamond necklace and diamond cluster earrings.
“Van Cleef,” Kevin said.
“Aren’t they just nauseating?”
They were smiling, her arm linked through his, and she sparkled from the neck up in a way only the holiday tree in Rockefeller Center could. Charles had never given me anything so extravagant. The most painful part of the picture to me was that she was so young and poised, looking not unlike Audrey Hepburn in that fabulous black gown she wore in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and she was on the arm of the man who had sworn to love me forever.
And Kevin, God bless him, knew what I was up against and he wanted me to show them all. He had found the ideal dress, and if he could go out of his way to do something so very thoughtful for me, I would try my best to drop some ballast. Well, to be perfectly honest, I would wait and see if the dress fit. Then I could kill myself or not.
I thought about Mother and Liz then and wondered if there was something going on with Mother’s health that she was keeping to herself. She was a sly fox, but it seemed like the bottles of wheat germ, fish oil, vitamins, and health products I couldn’t identify in the kitchen cabinet were on the rise. And she was considerably thinner. I could tell by the way her clothes hung and her eyes appeared slightly sunken. I wondered when the last time was that she had a complete physical. I made a mental note to talk to her about it.
I stopped to look out over the harbor. Not more than twenty feet from where I stood, a school of porpoises were playing in the surf. They could see me watching them and I thought, conceivably irrationally, that they were all the more active because they had an audience. They swam like girls in an old Esther Williams movie, but wasn’t that how nature was anyway? In a constant battle with itself to stay in sync? Sure. Add chat sessions with porpoises to my animal-kingdom friends and somebody please call a shrink.
I started walking home and eventually reached the spot that I was reasonably sure was the precise location where Manny and I had entertained the Sullivans Island police force. Maybe we should put a small plaque somewhere to commemorate the lunacy. Or not. Lordy, Lord. If I h
ad told Kevin that story, he would have definitely howled.
When I got home, Mother was in the kitchen, emptying the dishwasher. Liz and Harrison had gone to the vegetable stand in Mount Pleasant to buy potatoes.
“I don’t know why I can’t get them to grow over here, but I just can’t,” she said. “How was your walk?”
“Great,” I said. “I feel invigorated! Y’all catch anything?”
“Some blue mackerel. I’ll tell you this. I’m getting so sick and tired of blue mackerel and seafood in general, I’m thinking I might just break my own rules and make some lasagna with sausage! And a Pepperidge Farm frozen garlic bread. Golly, I used to love those.”
“Well then, let’s call them and ask them to go buy it! Really! I mean, even monks break their fast once in a while. But did you have fun fishing at least?”
“Sure. It’s always fun.” She paused for a moment and then slapped the countertop. “You know what? You’re right! Let’s have lasagna.”
She called Harrison’s cell phone and gave him a grocery list. I could hear him laughing through the phone from across the room. He thought it was really hilarious when she asked for a bag of Oreos and a pint of Chunky Monkey.
“Well, we may as well go the whole way to hell, Harrison!”
As she hung up she looked at me and said again, “Did we have fun fishing? Sure. Then Liz and I went for a walk on the beach while Harrison cleaned up the boat. Let me tell you this. There’s a lot about Liz Harper you don’t know.”
“Like what?”
“How about a cup of tea?”
“Sounds good.”
Mother put the kettle on to boil and I brought mugs and spoons to the counter. When Miss Josie suggested tea out of the blue, a considerable block of time might follow the invitation, so I settled on a bar stool and told myself to get comfortable. When the tea was brewed and I had stirred a spoon of clover honey into my mug, Mother began to talk.
“Miss Mellie, this is not something that should be repeated to anyone without Liz’s permission. We were talking about your childhood here and she said something like, boy, I’d give a lot if I could say I grew up like Mellie! Then here came the saga. I have to tell you that I was appalled and heartbroken at the same time. But what’s really peculiar is that Liz told it all to me as though she was describing any old memory. Her tone of voice was devoid of any emotion, as though all these horrible things had all happened to someone else.”