“OK,” said Maria, watching this. “Now I get it. You got your own mother-in-law thing, right?”
Sugar looked away, Theo bit his lip and Maria shook her head.
“Those bitches,” she said. “Mine comes from Hoboken so I’ll take the honey that comes from nowhere near there and I’ll tell you this for nothing: she’s not going to get a drop of it.”
Sugar was unusually quiet for the rest of the day and not particularly interested in Theo’s duck pancakes that night. She wanted to go to bed early, citing a headache.
“A penny for your thoughts?” Theo asked, tucking her in. He could not bear to see her sad.
But Sugar could not put her thoughts—let alone her feelings—into words. She loved Theo more than she had ever loved anyone or anything and that was just getting better and better as the days flew by. But inasmuch as he had awakened the sweetest parts of her, he had stirred up a fair share of sludge as well.
Theo, rightly, felt Maria’s spiel at the greenmarket had further agitated this particular swamp. “Well, if you want to know what I’ve been thinking,” he said, tracing the outline of her jaw with his fingers, “it’s that I would like to meet your family.”
Sugar sat up in the bed.
“Trust me, Theo. You most certainly would not.”
“It doesn’t have to mean anything, Sugar, in the strict formal sense of meeting a potential mother-in-law, because I know your feelings on that. But they’re your last missing piece.”
That was all he said—that they were Sugar’s last missing piece—and she knew instantly that he was right.
“Oh, but it’s been so long and I would be so . . .”
“Scared?”
To her dismay, Sugar started to cry.
“You can’t let them haunt you, sweetheart,” Theo said, pulling her into him, holding her, rocking her.
“They don’t haunt me, exactly,” Sugar said as she wept. But that was exactly what they did do.
“Let’s go this weekend, to Charleston,” Theo said. “Let’s get this over and get on with our lives. Don’t worry, Sugar. Everything will be all right. I promise you.”
One of Ruby’s bridal couples from the Times had married, Sugar recalled, on just such a promise. Theo had no way of knowing it was going to be all right, but he believed it anyway. “Do you really truly think so?” she asked, getting a clean handkerchief from under her pillow.
“I really truly do,” he answered. “I’m not scared of them and there’s nothing they can do to hurt me so I can help you. We can do this together. Trust me, Sugar.”
It felt so good to be in his arms, as though anything truly were possible, and she really did like having someone to trust. “All right then,” she said. “Oh, my goodness gracious me. All right.”
“You have no idea how happy you make me,” Theo said, leaning in to kiss her.
“Hang on to that feeling,” Sugar said. “You’re going to need it once you meet my mama.”
41ST
The moment the taxi crossed Broad Street and slowed down enough for her to open the window, Sugar took her first deep breath of Charleston air in fifteen years.
Oh, but it tasted good.
Her native city had lost none of its sparkle while she’d been away. It dazzled, like diamonds on velvet in God’s highest-end jewelry store.
The vast Cooper River shimmered to their left, the sky an impossibly Venetian blue above it, Fort Sumter’s island battalions a hazy silhouette in the distance. To their right, the pastel-painted Rainbow Row colonials winked behind the palmetto trees before East Bay Street opened out to reveal Charleston’s grandest mansions standing four stories tall and proud as punch, their lush gardens and musical fountains hidden behind filigreed fences and ornate gates as intricate as iron cobwebs.
“There really is no other place like it.” Sugar sighed, turning to Theo. “I swear I’d forgotten.”
“It’s sort of like a low-slung Paris,” Theo agreed. “Only with better weather and more horses.”
“And the jasmine,” Sugar said. “The Confederate jasmine. Can you smell it?”
Theo took a dramatic sniff. “Can I what. Leaves that Yankee jasmine for dead.”
He squeezed her hand. She’d hardly spoken on the flight down and, although she didn’t look quite so sick now they were in Charleston, she was still as pale as the jasmine that indeed bloomed flirtatiously over nearly every gate, railing, doorway and streetlamp in sight.
The driver slowed to turn into a cobbled street heading away from the river.
“Excuse me, sir,” Sugar said, “but would you mind taking us down to Battery Park first? My friend here has never had the pleasure of seeing the tip of our peninsula where the Cooper meets the Ashley and I’d like to show him on the way.”
“That’s where the American Civil War started, right over there,” the driver said, slowing down and pointing at Fort Sumter. “Things never been quite the same since.”
“The city sure is looking fine though,” Sugar told him. “Y’all have done a good job of looking after the place.”
“You been gone awhile, ma’am?” he asked, checking her out in the rearview mirror.
“A long while.” She smiled.
“No matter,” he said. “Once a Charlestonian, always a Charlestonian.”
Theo elbowed her and grinned.
“Nobody ever feels wishy-washy about Charleston,” Sugar said, but they were getting close to her parents’ house and she was feeling sick with nerves.
“Number fifteen Legare Street, ma’am, that’s what you said?” the taxi driver asked. “This one here? The white one?”
“Yes, sir, thank you,” Sugar said. “This is it.”
“The Wallace place?”
“Yes, sir.”
“This your folks’ house?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, you must be the Buzz-off Bride!”
“I’m sorry?”
“Shee-yoot, it’s good to meet you, Ms. Wallace. They still talk about you, you know.”
“I’m sorry, what did you just call me?”
“Here, let me take those bags,” Theo said, paying the fare and overtipping the driver to shut him up.
“Welcome home,” he said, before climbing back in his car as he counted his cash.
“Did he just call me the Buzz-off Bride?” Sugar asked as they stood on the sidewalk.
“What a lovely home. You grew up here?”
“Theo, I just can’t believe that all the while I’ve been gone they’ve been calling me the Buzz-off Bride. It’s beyond embarrassing.”
“Ah, come on. It shows a certain sense of humor, don’t you think? It’s better than being called the Heartbreaking Honey or the Wife-to-Flee.”
“It is?”
“Um. Look at those lovely balconies!” They were looking up at a three-story white wooden mansion that ran sideways to the street with long porches spanning the length of each floor.
“They’re called piazzas round here,” Sugar said, peering into the expertly manicured garden only just visible through the fancy ironwork fence.
“It looks like a very neat cake,” Theo said.
“A wedding cake,” Sugar added drily. She looked nervously at her watch. “You know, on second thought I think maybe we should go and check in to the hotel first, before just crashing on in here. I always liked the Vendue Inn. It’s cute. Not too flashy. And it used to have a rooftop bar.”
“What do you mean ‘crashing on in’?” Theo asked, stepping into the shade to escape the searing heat. “They’re expecting us, aren’t they?”
“About that,” said Sugar. “I never actually did quite get around to telling them we were coming.”
Theo pulled her into the billowing jasmine. “They don’t know we’re here?”
“I tried, Theo! I really tried. But every time I picked up the phone to call the number just flew right out of my head or I felt like upchucking or I saw myself packing my bags and running away to
Peru and in the end I just thought better to come here and let the cards fall where they may even though it is the height of bad manners to turn up unannounced and you know how I feel about bad manners.”
Theo looked at her sternly. “I always wanted to go to Peru,” he said, and Sugar loved him so much right then that she forgot to be scared and just kissed him. How her grandfather would have approved of this man.
This was the moment her mother chose to return from the hairdresser. She honked the horn to get the riffraff away from the front of her house as she drove through the automatic gates, glancing disdainfully as she passed, then disappearing into the property.
Theo and Sugar stayed where they were.
“Was that her?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Did she see you?” Theo asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Would she recognize you?”
“Don’t mothers normally know their daughters?”
“Can she get into the house from the garage?”
“I don’t know, the garage is new,” Sugar said. “But she never did like to get her hair mussed up so I’m thinking yes she can. Theo, I have a bad feeling. I think we should go back to New York. Forget about this. If she didn’t recognize me she’ll be none the wiser. If she did recognize me then I guess she doesn’t want to see me.”
“Sugar, you promised to do this and, more important, you promised me grits for breakfast! I don’t even know what that is but I’m not going back home without it. Listen to me; she is not my mother and I’m not scared of her. You want scary, you should come to Barlanark and meet my aunties. They will terrify the pants off you, and not in a good way. We’re just being polite, apart from the whole not mentioning that we were dropping by thing.”
At that, a big shining chestnut horse pulling a blissful-looking young couple in a white carriage trotted past them, its hooves beating out sharp cracks on the cobbles of Legare Street.
“Afternoon,” said the carriage driver. “Sure is a beauty. Hope y’all enjoy it.” He doffed his cap and the couple waved at them.
Sugar waved back. “Thank you and the same to you,” she called. Polite, she could do.
“Come on,” said Theo. “We’re going in,” and he strode to the front door and knocked robustly. “Just remember, we’re adults,” he said. “We’ve done nothing wrong. Well, me especially. Not that your mother knows about anyway.”
Sugar heard the clicking of her mother’s heels across the parquet floor on the other side of the door, then she felt the breath squeeze out of her as the door opened and there she was, looking exactly as she had that dreadful day fifteen years before, only this time wearing primrose, which she always favored because it did great things for her skin and her eyes.
“Cherie-Lynn,” she said without a hint of a smile, looking Theo up and down. “And friend.”
Theo was wearing a plaid shirt and shorts, quite restrained for him, but Sugar knew her mama would not look kindly on such attire.
“To what could I possibly owe this pleasure?” Etta asked.
“Sorry, Mama. Sorry not to call first.”
“You’re sorry for that?”
Sugar got her beauty from her mama, was Theo’s first impression, but this woman did not strike him as having a heart of gold. She looked rich and mean, the opposite of his own mother, and he felt proud that Sugar had turned out the way she had despite that.
“This is Theo Fitzgerald,” Sugar said.
“Delighted to meet you, Mr. Fitzgerald,” Etta said, sounding anything but. “But really there’s no need to stand outside like encyclopedia salespeople. Although for all I know you are encyclopedia salespeople. Please, come in.”
They stepped into the house and followed her to the formal living room.
Etta had aged superbly: there was no question about that. Her long blond hair was swept back into a style that had never gone out of date, her makeup was perfect, her pale yellow suit the same size she had always worn and her heels, if possible, an inch higher.
She looked stunning. And if she had wrinkles, the room was either lit to downplay them or she had dealt with them surgically. She could have passed for Sugar’s older, colder sister.
“Please, Mr. Fitzgerald, Cherie-Lynn, take a seat. Iced tea for you both? I’ll see to it right away. Excuse me.”
“Ouch,” whispered Theo, after she left the room. “She’s not going to make this easy.”
“I didn’t think for a moment that she would,” Sugar said, getting off the sofa where she had been uncomfortably perched and going over to the grand piano, a new feature in the room since she’d last been there, covered with silver-framed photos.
She wasn’t in a single one. There were separate ones of her mother and father together throughout the years, and of her two brothers as they sprouted from preppy little boys to preppy young men to preppy husbands and fathers.
“Oh, this is Troy’s first wife, Marianna,” she said, picking up a wedding photo of her brother and a beautiful blonde in a strapless gown. “We went to high school together but she was tricky,” she said. “And this must be his new wife, Lucy—she’s pretty, don’t you think? Oh, and these will be their daughters, Emma and Sophia. What beautiful girls. And here’s my other brother, Ben.” She held up a photo of a handsome man with another blond woman and two more little girls. “That’s his wife, Jeanne, and their girls, Charlotte and Rebecca. Aren’t they precious? Grampa’s lawyer writes me once a year to keep me up to date but to see them all here . . .”
Theo took the photo from her hands and put it gently back on the piano, then wiped the tear Sugar hardly knew she’d shed from her cheek with his thumb, and kissed the spot where it had been. “If they came to your apartment, Sugar, they wouldn’t find their photos either.”
“That’s because it hurts,” she said.
“My point exactly” came his reply. They both turned as the click-clack of Etta’s heels heralded her return to the room.
“Tea,” she said, placing a tray on the table, then pouring them a glass each from a crystal pitcher. “I’m sorry I can’t stay,” she said. “I have a prior engagement. Had I known you were coming . . . Anyway, I’ve spoken to your father and he suggests we have dinner tonight—at the Yacht Club. Cherie-Lynn, I hope that isn’t uncomfortable for you? He is going to see if your brothers can make it but at such short notice . . . Well, I assume that as you have arrived here without warning you have arranged accommodation elsewhere? Don’t rush your drinks; Neesie, the housekeeper, will let you out; she’s just finishing in the laundry. Eight tonight, Cherie-Lynn. Good to meet you, Mr. Fitzgerald. Please accept my apologies but I have a busy schedule and anyway, yes . . . I will see you later. Goodbye now.”
She swept out of the room, leaving it feeling two degrees colder than when she came in.
“Well, that didn’t go so badly,” Theo said as Sugar sank back into the sofa cushions, closed her eyes and wished herself back on her Manhattan rooftop.
42ND
They arrived at the Yacht Club early, Sugar unable to relax in the tasteful chintz of the Vendue Inn.
Even walking down Rainbow Row, hand in hand with Theo, the evening breeze fresh on her cheeks from the river she’d grown up beside, she barely noticed the colorful window boxes choked with spiky cordylines, trailing bacopa and the myriad brilliant hues of verbena, begonias, impatiens and petunias adding to the candy-store effect of the pretty street in the fading light.
As they sat in the bar, twiddling their drinking straws, Sugar told Theo that the last time she had been at the Yacht Club, she had been checking the table settings for her wedding reception.
“Your mother chose to bring you tonight to the place where you never had your wedding reception?”
“To be entirely fair, wedding aside, it used to be the finest dining in town,” Sugar said. “And my daddy is particular about his steaks, so I don’t think upsetting me would be the only reason.”
Etta and Blake arrived together on t
he dot of eight.
“My baby girl,” Blake said, walking toward her and she felt a wretched thunk in her stomach at the sight of him. His face had stayed frozen in time in her mind but in the flesh he’d aged much more than her mother had. He looked old, his hair almost white, his face lined and the beginnings of a paunch straining the buttons of his blazer.
She fought back tears as he embraced her, but he didn’t hold her for long, standing back and shooting a quick look at her mother, who was looking stonily out through the deep Yacht Club windows at the whitecaps of the choppy Cooper.
“Daddy, this is Theo Fitzgerald.”
“Pleased to meet you, sir,” Theo said, shaking hands. He was wearing a dark expensive suit from his old work collection and looked devastatingly handsome.
“Likewise. Fitzgerald. So, you’re Irish?”
“Scottish, actually, but I’ll take what I can get,” Theo answered, and her dad laughed. His laugh at least had stayed the same.
“Shall we?” Etta said, lifting a gloved hand to the restaurant captain and moving like an elegant giraffe through a herd of lesser beings toward their table.
“The boys aren’t coming?” Sugar asked, when she saw the table was set for just four.
“I didn’t think you’d want the fuss,” Etta said, as the waiter spread the napkin in her lap. She was a beautiful woman and so clever at being rude it was hard to call her on it, but still, Theo wanted to slap her.
“Troy had a meeting,” Blake said, not meeting Sugar’s eye, “and Ben spends half his life running those girls of his around to ballet and violin and pony riding and whatnot. Jeanne certainly keeps him on his toes.”
“They’re a delightful family,” Etta said, taking a sip from her glass of wine. “Jeanne is chairwoman of the garden club now. She’s a golfer too. A lovely woman.”
“Yeah, but she’s one terrible cook,” Blake said, making Theo splutter in his water glass. “Etta here had to give her our old housekeeper for fear of Ben and the girls dying of starvation. They were getting thinner and thinner every time we saw them. She was feeding them no-fat milk—even little Becca when she was just a baby. Poor thing was nothing but a shadow.”