“Where did she come from anyway and who is she?”
“She used to be Brad’s secretary in Atlanta and she has this crazy obsession with him. She’s been stalking him ever since she got here a few weeks ago. Louise and I can’t stand her. So every time she showed up at the restaurant, we gave her some lip. And she was calling Brad all day and night and he wasn’t returning her calls, so she was plenty pissed, pardon the term. But no one ever expected her to go crazy as a result of it.”
“You know what? Grown-ups are just as screwed up as teenagers.”
“You’re right.”
“And, if I ever get the chance, I’m gonna go all Jersey on her. Like stomp her foot or something.”
“You will do no such thing. She’ll get hers. Karmic rule number one.”
“Yeah, sure. So far all my enemies are living long and prospering. But I actually did learn something today.”
“About what?”
“Endangered fish. Turns out there are like forty varieties of sharks that are disappearing along with Chilean sea bass and orange roughy. We don’t serve any of those, do we?”
“Sometimes.”
“Well, we had better take them off the menu or Jason Miller and his environmental goons might come back.”
“I’ll tell Louise. Speaking of goons, how are the girls in school behaving themselves?”
“I don’t talk to them and they don’t talk to me. I’m just doing my time and getting out. I hang with Alex. By the way, I dropped out of his club, Mom.”
“Miller’s?”
“Yeah. Too militant. Besides, that whole scene he pulled that day weirded me out.” Gracie took the channel changer and started surfing the stations, stopping on the Style Channel. “That’s what we need, Mom. We need makeovers.”
“We need more than makeovers. Well, I do anyway. Why don’t you join the debate club?”
“It’s all nerds. Besides, I start modern dance lessons with the Charleston Ballet this Friday. Don’t stress. Mimi said she would drive me back and forth. You know what? As soon as you get the splints out, let’s go to Saks and get our makeup done.”
“That is an excellent idea! Actually, it might have to wait until we close on the house in Montclair, but let’s put that on our list, okay?”
“We don’t have to wait that long, do we? I mean, you don’t have to buy anything. They just do your makeup and you can just say, Well, thanks! Bye!”
“Honey, those ladies make their living on commission and it’s not nice to ask them to do your makeup for free.”
“Whatever. I got homework. What are we doing for dinner?”
“Pizza? Call Domino’s?”
“I can handle it. And, hey, Mom? I can get my driver’s license by Thanksgiving!”
“Excellent! Know what? I was thinking of trading my car, but I thought I’d save it for you. What do you think?”
“The Blue Buzzard? The one with a billion miles on it? Ah, Mom, come on. It’s too good for me.”
“Well, you can always buy your own.”
“Did I tell you how much I love the Blue Buzzard? How sentimental I am about it?”
“Ingrate. But I’m glad you’re starting dance again.”
“I’ll call Domino’s.”
That night and for the rest of the week, we ate pizza, Chinese food and whatever anyone brought us. I wasn’t going anywhere, even in sunglasses. Mimi was in and out of our house with her war chest of cosmetics, trying to figure out how to help me hide the black eyes. There just wasn’t much that could be done.
The splints came out, and a few days later so did the stitches, and I was left with some bruising and a bright red scar between my eyebrows, which I covered with a small Band-Aid. I was feeling much better by the following Tuesday and wanting to return to work. At least by then I felt like my face wouldn’t traumatize small children. And, let’s be honest—I was bored silly.
Tuesday afternoon, Brad brought Gracie home from school with Alex. It was a good thing I was dressed because they all just walked in the door. I was sitting on the terrace, reading the newspaper, enjoying the mild weather.
“Hi, Mom!”
“Hey! How was school?”
“Life-changing! How are you doing? Hey, Alex! You want popcorn?”
“Sure,” Alex said.
I came inside to greet them and Brad was positioned by the door.
“Well! You look much better!”
“Thanks! I feel much better. It’s just these freaking black eyes that are driving me crazy. Have you heard from Amy?”
“They’re not so bad. Yeah, Amy went back to Atlanta.”
“Hopefully forever.”
“Yeah. She’s not right in the head.”
“Yeah, you think?”
“Yeah. I think. Hey, want to go look at the garage? I was thinking about it. If you’re bringing furniture back from New Jersey, you’re gonna have to put it somewhere and maybe we could get it emptied out before then? Come on, let’s have a look.”
I didn’t feel like moving my bones anywhere but I did it anyway. Staying home for a week had made me very lazy. Brad was right. I might need the space sooner than later, so I said, “Okay. Let’s go.”
I opened the side door and he opened the large doors. Light came flooding in and the massive collection of junk looked worse than I remembered.
“Good grief!” he said. “This is some gold mine you’ve got down here!”
“Disgusting, right?”
“Yep. Hey, I have a friend who’s gutting a house and he’s got a Dumpster leased. I’ll bet you for fifty bucks we can get a couple of his guys to come over here and liberate all this junk from the snakes and spiders. What do you think?”
“I say definitely, yes! You can have all the wildlife. That’s a roger, good buddy.”
Brad snickered. “Roger, good buddy? Are you a closet CB kind of gal?”
“Yeah, that’s me. My handle is Black Eyed Babe. You know, it attracts the more manly man.”
“You’re a little twisted. Anyone ever tell you that?”
“Those rough-and-tumble sorts who appreciate a girl like me . . .”
“What did Fred do for a living?”
“Fred? My Fred? I mean, my ex-Fred?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“Who wants to know and why?”
“I was just thinking about what kind of guy you were married to, that’s all. What did he do?”
“Oh, well, Fred was and still is a certified public accountant.”
“Ah! A certified public accountant? Wow. That’s exciting.”
“Yeah. Mr. Excitement. That’s him.”
“A real risk taker, a devil-may-care type—probably wild in the sheets, no?”
I stopped and stared at him. “Know what? You’re pretty nosy. Did anyone ever tell you that? You’re not supposed to ask me about my sex life! It’s very inappropriate.”
“Oh, come on! I’ll tell you about Loretta if you tell me about Fred.”
He picked up a rusty bicycle and pulled it outside. He was laughing at his own boldness and I was a little confused. I mean, was this some kind of flirting tactic?
“Okay, tell me about Loretta.”
He stopped, put his hands on his hips and looked up at the trees for a minute. Then he said, “Okay. Here we go. Making love to Loretta was roughly the equivalent of taking my best friend and sticking him in the freezer, okay? How’s that for romantic? How about Fred?”
Can I just take a moment here to discuss how I felt about that remark? I was having serious problems. I felt like a teenager, all silly and dying to hear every repulsive detail of what Loretta did and did not do in bed. However, sex with Fred? Who remembered? So, I made something up.
“Fred never brushed his teeth,” I said, “so we didn’t have sex a lot and when we did it was mercifully short.”
“That’s enticing—a short hitter with bad breath?”
“Pretty much. Let’s just say I don’t miss it.”
/>
“His bad breath or sex in general?”
“His bad breath.” There was no reason in the world why I was engaging in this kind of talk except flirtation, which made me a nervous wreck. It was one thing for me to daydream about Brad, it was another to become so personal in real life. “Sex can wait.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know. When the issue presents itself, I’ll figure it out. Now, back to my junk heap.”
“Well, here’s a piece of good news.”
“What?”
“It appears to be watertight, which means you could use it as a room. Or you can use it as a garage, obviously. But you could build a big closet to hold clothes.”
“I don’t have any; haven’t you noticed?”
“Okay. Well, you could make it into a den, or a big bedroom and bathroom for yourself. You’d just have to sheetrock it and extend the plumbing, drop a staircase—you could do a little spiral job—run the wiring, seal off the garage doors . . .”
“Oh, that’s all? Well, then, let’s go to Lowe’s. Right now.”
“Women. No vision.”
“Bump you, bubba. You wouldn’t believe the things that fly across my radar screen.”
“I’ll bet. You keep your cards pretty close, don’t you? I always wonder what’s on your mind.”
All I do is think about you.
“I think it’s best that we operate on a need-to-know basis. Now can we please call your friend with the Dumpster?”
“Okay. You win.”
Wednesday, I went back to work, and when I walked into my office, it was clear that someone had cleaned it all up. Probably Louise. There was a stack of mail on my desk and enough catalogs to wallpaper the inside of an airplane hangar. I went looking for Louise and of course, she was in the kitchen disagreeing with Duane. Big surprise.
“Fennel stuffed in fish? Doo-wayne? There ain’t nothing better in this world than fresh, plain red snapper just pan roasted with lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper. Welcome back, Linda! What’s the matter with the fish? Ain’t fresh enough?” Louise came to my side and gave me a hug. “You okay?”
“The fish is perfection!” Duane said. “Linda! You look faaa-bulous! Come see this.”
“Thanks,” I said and tossed my hair around, which went completely unnoticed, except by Miguel, the new dishwasher, who spoke approximately two words of English and to my surprise winked at me.
Duane opened the door of the mammoth oven, removed a copper pan and immediately the fragrance of fennel filled the air. Personally, I detest fennel, so I could not imagine that it would taste good with anything.
Duane put a fork into the fish, lifted up a steaming bit and came toward me.
“I’ll pass,” I said.
“Oh, all right. I’ll taste the daggum fish,” Louise said, in her most disgruntled voice. She worked it around her mouth for a minute and then burst out laughing. “Doo-wayne? Gimme that fish!” She looked at me and said, “Dee-licious!”
Those two were some pair.
“By the way, Louise, thanks for cleaning up my office, the soup and all.”
“What are you talking about? I went with you to the hospital, remember? Must’ve been O’Malley.”
I worked my way through the mail and decided to help O’Malley at the bar during happy hour.
“So, you feeling okay?”
“Better than ever. Hey, thanks again for the bartender’s guide. Now I can make Side Cars and Pink Squirrels. Nothing like a little education, right?”
“Right.”
“So, what’s new around here? What did I miss?”
“Not a thing. You going up to New Jersey on Friday?”
“If Friday ever gets here! By the way, thanks for clearing away the debris from the war zone in my office.”
“What are you talking about? I didn’t do it. Must have been one of Duane’s guys.”
I asked Duane and he said no. In fact, every single person in the restaurant said they had not even been in my office. Sometimes, the bizarre just happened.
By Friday, I was so excited you would have thought I was going to Paris. I had packed very little so that I could carry everything on the plane. Mimi and Gracie drove me to the airport. On the way there we discussed all sorts of things, the way desperate people do when they think they may not see each other again. Maybe it was just because it was another separation and leaving Gracie made me worry, although she was in perfectly safe hands with my sister. We talked and talked, filled with some kind of urgency to bring each other up to date on everything.
We talked about the garage and tried to decide what to do with it, coming to the conclusion that for the moment it would be used for storage. We decided to buy bicycles, now that we had a place to store them safely. They were relatively inexpensive and a great way to get exercise. Mimi and Gracie said they would pick them out the next morning. We listened to Gracie as she told us about her first dance lesson in ages.
“I am so completely out of shape! I haven’t danced in months but oh, God! It felt so good to stretch. And, I felt so good when it was over!”
“She was dripping wet!” Mimi said.
“Well, if you aren’t covered in perspiration, it means you didn’t work hard enough.”
We even talked about Mimi’s half-baked relationship with Jack Taylor, and half-baked would be the operative term because all she ever did was cook for him.
“No nooky again?”
“Mom! Ew!”
“Nope! Did you ever think about how much of our lives revolve around food? I mean, it is the craziest thing! All we do is talk about it, buy it, cook it, serve it, clean it up and then stress over how much we ate and how much we weigh. It’s a little stupid, isn’t it? And on top of it all, you work in a restaurant and I bake for them!”
“It’s what women do,” I said, and we all agreed that it was true.
We were on Route 526, passing over long stretches of marsh and water for as far as you could see. The water was so glassy and still that it mirrored the docks and mossy live oak trees that hung over its edges. I wished we had time to stop and just stare at it.
The marsh grass showed the beginnings of fall, as its bright green shards faded into tan and the tide left deep brown watermarks all around its base. Snowy egrets, maybe a dozen or so, were scooting across the shallow water, chasing their dinner, which I assumed were little schools of minnows or shrimp. I spotted a peregrine falcon, circling for a kill.
“Look, y’all! It’s a peregrine falcon!”
“I’m driving. You want me to go off the road?”
Gracie started complaining when I lowered my window to watch it spiral.
“What is the big deal about a dumb bird?”
“Well, missy, they almost got wiped out from DDT! See! You’re not the only one who knows this stuff! There’s a lot to learn around here. We should go up to Bull’s Island on one of those eco-tours. You’ll see birds so gorgeous it will stop your heart.”
“Well, then let’s do it when you get back.”
“Deal.”
“I want to come too,” Mimi said, with a little whine.
“Absolutely! We’ll see plenty of osprey and oyster catchers and . . .” The memories of all the birds of my childhood came back with their names and habits—I thought I had forgotten all of it, but I had not. It was something I could pass on to Gracie as my father had given the knowledge to me. When I was little, very small, he would point out a kingfisher, great blue herons or the white ibis, whose legs turned red during their breeding season. Sometimes on a walk on the beach of the Isle of Palms, he would point out boat-tailed grackles, raiding waste bins. They had a prissy strut that amused us. He thinks he’s a big shot, but he’s having dinner in a garbage can, he would say and we would laugh. “Yes, as soon as I get back, we’re all going to Bull’s Island.”
It was well past seven o’clock, the time when the sun and moon often occupied the sky together. I was thinking about how grateful I had bec
ome to the Lowcountry and all its landscape. It seemed like I had been here forever and that all the years in New Jersey had happened to someone else. It would be strange to be in my old house, but at least I would be with Lindsey and I couldn’t wait to see her.
We arrived at the terminal and all of us got out of the car.
“Y’all don’t have to come in,” I said. “I’m fine. Really.”
“Are you sure?” Mimi said.
“Absolutely,” I said. “If you get out of here now, you can still have something of a night left. Go to the movies!”
“Excellent idea! A chick flick!” Gracie said. “Make sure to hug Lindsey for me. Tell her to call me!”
At the last minute, Mimi pulled her cell phone out of her bag. “Take this,” she said, “you need to have a phone and the battery is good and strong.”
“Thanks. It’s probably a good idea.”
We said good-bye and hugged and kissed and I told Gracie to behave herself, even though, for the first time in her life, it seemed unnecessary.
My flight was delayed because of thunderstorms in the D.C. area. The ground crew made announcements as they received updates. First, it was going to be a thirty-minute wait. Then it was an hour. I bought a magazine from the kiosk, made myself comfortable and started reading.
At last, we boarded the plane and actually took off. I was on my way to say good-bye to my house and the town of Montclair for what I thought would be forever.
Lindsey was taking the bus out to Montclair after classes and opening up the house. How wonderful it was to have a daughter who could actually do a few things to make your life more pleasant! Many people had said that after your daughters reach college age they became your greatest blessings. It certainly seemed to be true in my case.
Even Gracie. She was becoming a lovely young woman. Oh, she could still be sassy and I knew that her hijinks were not entirely over, but in the past weeks she had shown great promise. She had become more considerate and kind, doing many small things for me. Aside from her trouble with the girls at school, she seemed to be doing well in her classes, which she took more seriously than ever before. She took her work schedule to heart and she earned every penny she received.