Brad stopped talking as though he hadn’t really finished his thought. He just stood there at the head of the table, glancing in the direction of Alex, who seemed slightly more somber than usual. Speaking about pivotal moments had surely reminded Alex about his mother’s death, and being somewhat selfish, I hoped Loretta wouldn’t become a topic of conversation. Brad spoke again. However forced it was, he grinned from ear to ear while speaking.
“Anyway, I just wanted to encourage you to savor the whole experience. Now I realize you spent the first eighteen years of your life in the New York area, but living in the city is a horse of another color. Join a sorority or some clubs, see all the sights—it’s a very exciting place—try different food and get the recipes for us. . . .”
Everyone chuckled at that and the gray mood floated away. Brad wished Lindsey good luck, gave her a peck on the cheek and a card with a fresh hundred-dollar bill inside.
“Oh! Gosh! Thanks!” Lindsey said. “I didn’t expect this! I didn’t expect anything!”
“It’s WAM,” Brad said, and when it became obvious that no one knew what he meant, he said, “Walking around money. Don’t ever go walking around without a little WAM in your pockets.”
“Brad’s right,” Mimi said, “you don’t want the robbers to go away disappointed!”
Classic Mimi.
Mimi had brought Lindsey a pink wool muffler she had knitted that must have been ten feet long. “It gets mighty cold up there in New York,” she said. When I looked at her like she must’ve thought we were complete ignoramuses regarding real live full-strength winter weather, she added, “Y’all! I watch Willard Scott every day!”
Louise had a gift for Lindsey too—a digital alarm clock like those sold in the drugstores.
“Listen, this way you won’t be late for class, and if you break this, let me know and I’ll send you another one. Remember, you never be flashy because people will judge you by your possessions. It ain’t right, but that’s how it is.”
Lindsey blew Louise a kiss and said, “It’s perfect!”
O’Malley gave her a dictionary and thesaurus, saying, “I know they’ll have these at school, but it’s good to have your own, you know? I wrote something in them too so you won’t forget me or this summer.”
“I’ll be back, O’Malley,” she said and leaned over to hug his neck.
The generous gestures brought a glow to Lindsey’s face that reminded me it had been too long since she had been singled out for recognition. I was very grateful to Brad and to everyone else too.
Duane had baked flounder stuffed with lump meat crab for the table and served it all around with fresh asparagus sautéed in lemon and butter. Then with great flourish, he placed his pièce de résistance in front of Lindsey. It was a tower of shellfish and fish separated by paper-thin wafers that appeared to be made with cracked pepper or maybe sesame seeds. There was a red satin sauce drizzled all over the plate in a looping design and everything was sprinkled with minced parsley and dill. I wished I’d brought my camera.
Louise’s eyeballs had mysteriously tripled in size, bulging in their sockets. “Just what the heck do you call that, Mr. Doo-wayne?”
“Tour de Mer,” he said, with a slight indignant hiss.
“Tour de who?” Louise said, with a grunt.
“La mer, la mer! The sea, the sea!” There was nothing Duane liked better than to torture Louise. “That’s your whole problem, Ms. Louise. No imagination.”
“I don’t need imagination when you got enough for all of us!” she shot right back. But in a moment of curiosity, she stuck her finger in the deep red sauce on Lindsey’s plate and literally purred when she tasted it. “What’s that? Tomato?”
“Coulis of pomegranate,” he said, smiling his most superior smile of food snob victory.
“Well, if that don’t beat all. . . .”
We began to eat amid snickers and chatter about what Lindsey thought NYU would be like, and eventually the talk turned to Alex and Gracie’s experiences in their new school.
“Football practice is rough,” Alex said. “I thought Lovett was tough but these guys are animals.”
“But, it’s good, right?” Brad said.
“Yeah, if you like the taste of your own blood,” Alex said.
“Ew! Disgusting!” Gracie said.
“You’re just pissed because you’re not a cheerleader,” Alex said, “but you can join dance team.”
“Whatever,” Gracie said, “you’re just pissed because you’re still playing JV! Besides, I’m auditioning to take modern dance lessons at Charleston Ballet, and in between I’m working on a river sweep with Mr. Miller.”
“Would someone like to tell me what a river sweep is?” I said.
“Mom, you have no idea what’s going on around here. I mean, did you know that Shem Creek is dead?”
“What are you talking about?” Louise said. “Look down there on the dock. See that big old pelican? What’s he eating on?”
We glanced outside and sure enough, there was an enormous pelican tearing the insides out of a huge fish. Not exactly a lovely sight to behold from the dinner table, but if Shem Creek was dead, where did he get the fish? Simmons Seafood Market? No, not likely.
“That fish came from a fishing boat,” Gracie said, “and it might have come out of these waters but I’ll tell you this. There’s no shrimp and no oysters here anymore.”
“I’d still like to know what a river sweep is,” I said and was completely ignored.
“Where’d they go?” Brad said. “Murrell’s Inlet?”
Naturally, Mimi, Louise, Brad and I thought that was a clever enough remark, but I’ve also learned that what an adult may find amusing a teenager may use to skewer you. I looked at Gracie and saw that she was about to take to the pulpit for a sermon to educate us.
“Look,” Gracie began, “you guys might not think—”
“You guys? If you want them to listen,” Alex said, “don’t talk Yankee.”
“Oh, puh-leeze,” Gracie said. “Look, everyone! Good enough, Alex?”
He shrugged, indicating it was not exactly what he expected, but he didn’t know my Gracie. She would only say y’all on her deathbed pleading to the southern saints for time off in Purgatory.
“Anyway, there’s a whole environmental disaster growing all over South Carolina and if something’s not done about it, it’s gonna be bad.”
“What are you talking about?” Brad said. “I mean, over the last twenty years all these laws have been passed about clean water and recycling. I thought things were getting better. Can somebody pass the tartar sauce?”
“Sure,” Mimi said, handing the squeeze bottle to Louise to pass to Brad. “Brad’s right, Gracie darlin’, I mean everybody recycles now.”
“Well, maybe you do, but there are still plenty of people who dump their garbage in the creek. That’s what the river sweep is about. Picking up garbage,” Gracie said. “Anyway, the bigger problem is about all these new developments. You know that parking lot at the Kmart? The one out on Highway Seventeen?”
“The one as big as Alaska?” Lindsey said.
“Yeah, that’s the one. So, every time there’s a big rainfall—which is about every other day all summer long—there’s nowhere for the water to go, since asphalt doesn’t absorb water?”
“So what?” Alex said.
“So what? So what?” Gracie said, so excited that she was momentarily unconcerned about losing Alex’s favor. “I’ll tell you so what. How about that all that water runs into a little tiny tidal creek along with petroleum, chemicals from cars, garbage people toss like cigarette butts and soda cans and kills all the baby shrimp and fish that used to get hatched there?”
“And, that tidal creek feeds into Shem Creek?” Lindsey said.
“You got it!” Gracie said.
“And you learned all this from Mr. Miller?” I said.
“Yep,” she said. “He’s amazing, Mom. He showed us this film about these guys throwing a ne
t to catch some flounder in Shem Creek at high tide. So they left the net there until low tide and all the fish died. Wanna know why?”
“Actually, yeah,” Brad said. “I’d like to know.”
“Because at low tide there’s not enough oxygen in the water for even flounder.”
“Gross,” Alex said.
“Yeah, gross,” Gracie said. “So anyway, that’s what I learned in my life-altering experience in school today. It’s pretty intense and I don’t think people know about it.”
I was about to say that Jason Miller was a wacko but then I thought better of it. Maybe this was a good thing, even though I suspected that one reason Gracie was aligning herself with Miller was because I had rejected him. But, maybe having Gracie involved in a community project would raise her consciousness above the usual teenage rebellious garbage she brought home to my doorstep like the neighborhood alley cat dragging in a dead something that thrilled the cat but left you disgusted.
“Well, Gracie, maybe all us old dogs can learn a few new tricks from you!” I said.
Gracie sat a little higher in her seat and Alex shook his head in approval.
Lindsey, who was always the least talkative of all of us, cleared her throat.
“What, baby?” I said.
“Well, I was just thinking that it might be interesting to take some courses in marine biology. You know, I was just running it around my head, that’s all. I mean, if South Carolina is really going to be our home from now on . . . maybe someday Gracie and I could figure out how to, I don’t know, educate the public and do something about it too.”
“Ah! The Mighty Breland sisters conquer the world!” Gracie said. “I seriously doubt it.”
Later that night, Lindsey, Gracie, Mimi and I were sitting around the kitchen after packing the last of our clothes in both cars, preparing for the morning’s move to our new home.
“Let’s get ourselves a glass of tea and sit on the porch,” Mimi said. “This is our last night together in the house and—”
“The last one where you don’t have to kick your way through our dirty clothes to find the bed,” Lindsey said.
“I have loved every single kick,” said Mimi, “and I’m going to miss seeing your faces when you get up in the morning. I really am.”
“Wow. That’s pretty masochistic, Aunt Mimi,” Gracie said.
I smiled and in the dim light of the kitchen, I saw Mimi’s smile too. There was recognition. In the same way Gracie had supported Lindsey’s harmless barb, my smile connected with my sister’s heart.
We sat on the dark porch until our eyes became accustomed to the light of night and our ears attuned to the sounds of the woods and nearby marsh and we talked. At first we spoke of the dinner, Alex, Brad and the loss of Loretta and how Alex seemed to be adjusting so well. We moved on to Louise and Duane and the whole hilarity of their friendly fire. Then our minds turned to other things. But not our mouths. That was how we were. Our family preferred not to speak of things that were uneasy to hear. We would hem and haw around them like a patch of green stickers in the grass and we were the barefoot children, unprepared for pain, unwilling to give pain a chance to teach us something.
So, there was small talk about Lindsey leaving. Small talk about our new home. Small talk about how it all felt—these changes in our lives. Little jabs and tidbits about life that should have kept us up until the break of day. But not us. No. We said we had to get up early. We said tomorrow would be very tiring indeed. We said good night.
But we said thank you a thousand times to my sister (who had promised to make us biscuits in the morning) and we told each other we loved each other, and even though an onlooker would have said it was a routine deliverance of a polite requisite, we knew we meant it—meant it that we loved each other. We knew that the hearts of women knew no generation or borders, that love was complete. It was.
TWELVE
MOVING
THE sun rose sooner than I wanted to see it, but there it was, creeping through the venetian blinds of Mimi’s guest room, where I had been holed up since the middle of June. It was a landmark day because up until then we could have told ourselves that we had just been trying this new life on for size. Having decided it fit pretty well, we consented to sink new roots in the Lowcountry. Even Gracie, who said she didn’t understand why, was comfortable here and felt safer than she did in New Jersey. After all, the Lowcountry was the land of my ancestors and one we could claim with no apology. It was not a runaway destination. Rather, it was where we had begun, generations earlier. The Lowcountry belonged to us and us to her.
All that said, moving back to Mount Pleasant was still the single largest defiant act of my adult life. Giving Fred his walking papers was big, but moving us over seven hundred miles away was more impressive, at least in my mind. I think it had shocked everyone so much that no one had really fought me on it, besides Gracie, that is. And, the greater hand of life had been kneading our hearts ever so gently, giving us the courage to rise to the challenges and changes.
Gracie’s stubborn determination to prove she could fit in anywhere on the planet, and in a front seat, thank you, had served her well so far, except for her one drunken incident when we first arrived and her sassy mouth. She was involved in school, flirting with Alex—although she would have vigorously denied it—and her environmental interest was her new cause célèbre.
Lindsey was ready to leave, but in Lindsey’s normal lowkey style, she repressed any expressions of wild enthusiasm. She probably knew that if she reveled in the family headlines, Gracie’s ego would demand that she do something more spectacular and dramatic to secure center stage. We all knew and accepted that Gracie just had to have the spotlight. From the day she was born, she had always been just the kind of kid who clamored for attention. Although no one said it, there was still the worrisome thought that if Gracie became rattled, she would take off for New Jersey and wind up a drug addict, living in the streets of Newark or Paterson. As long as we focused on the positive aspects of our new life in Mount Pleasant, Lindsey’s stellar achievements could quietly glow under the bushel. While that wasn’t quite fair to Lindsey, families did things that weren’t quite fair in the name of peace.
I was fully entrenched in my new job and there were many things I liked about it. The hours were flexible and I knew what had to be done. As long as I did everything, no one seemed to care when I did it. Louise wasn’t quite ready to relinquish control of the staff, which was fine with me, because I could not quite see myself executing orders with the same authority she possessed. We were operating like co-captains and it was working out well. When Louise needed me to fill in, I would act as waiter or bartender but I had yet to trespass into the inner sanctum of the kitchen. O’Malley’s whole personality was a combination of professionalism and pleasure and the drama of Duane’s kitchen kept us all in stitches—except for the occasional outburst of anger, which was unnerving. The restaurant was always busy, which made the days go quickly. Brad was nice to work for, although he rarely said anything that sounded like instructions. When he was there, which was about half the time we were open, he sat at the end of the bar and shot the breeze with customers. From that perch he had the ideal view of Shem Creek, which was music for my eyes at every glance, no matter what the weather.
Overall, life was better than I had dreamed it could be and all over the course of a summer. Basically, I had stepped in it, if you know what I mean.
I stretched under the sheets, wanting to linger for a few more moments, linger to search for a deeper read on our new life, and I decided, while in the midst of a smell fest with the sweet jasmine-scented water my sister used to wash her linens, that I had made the best possible call. It didn’t matter that the call had been made in a moment of panic, brought about by the antics of my youngest. I thought about that old retreat to the familiar and decided that it had nothing to do with us beyond the obvious. We had few alternatives. Given that, we, that is I, had chosen a sensible solution. I mean, w
as I expected to move to Duluth?
I stretched again and even before I wiped away the sleep from my eyes, I allowed myself to be happy, just a little. It was important that my daughters felt I was in charge of our little family and so what if I had enlisted the aid of my sister? It had given my sister purpose, my girls a chance to know her again and the work I was doing had brought them jobs and a sense of usefulness too. No, all these things were good.
My morning adrenaline kicked in and I was getting anxious to get the day moving so I rolled over and looked at the clock. It was only six forty-five. If I got up, surely no one else would be awake, so I laid there for a few more minutes. My first thought was that I would preheat the oven for Mimi’s biscuits. It took a while for her oven to reach four hundred and fifty degrees. I would wash my face, pick up the newspaper from her front walk and dress myself. I was compiling a list of things to do and more came with each thought. I threw back the sheets and said in a whisper, Thank you, God. Thank you for everything. It was not the prayer of a devout anything but only of a woman relaxed and hopeful for the first time in years. Wasn’t it funny, I thought, that sometimes you didn’t know how miserable you had been until you weren’t miserable any longer.
I was brushing my teeth and thinking how sparkling and perfect the basin was. Although I cleaned up after myself and wiped the sink and faucet to a spotless shine each morning and I would always encourage the girls to do the same, I knew that Mimi came behind us with a sponge and a bottle of disinfectant. Soon, that evening in fact, we would begin to encrust our new sinks with little bits of toothpaste and clog our new drains with hair. I laughed to myself, thinking I wouldn’t have a clean house like my sister until the girls were both gone and that then I would no doubt hate the cleanliness.