All the Single Ladies: A Novel (6 page)

“Oh my!” she said.

“What?” Carrie said.

“She didn’t even have five hundred dollars to her name!” Suzanne said.

“Really?” Carrie said. “That’s worse than my situation!”

“Maybe she had other accounts?” I said, thinking how does a woman get along in the world with only five hundred dollars to her name? Not that I had much more, that was for sure.

“I’m digging,” Suzanne said. A few minutes later she added, “Well, if there are other accounts they’re not in this box. All I’ve got here are six years of statements from Wells Fargo. Thank goodness she had good medical insurance.”

“Who can afford insurance these days?” Carrie said. “It’s so expensive.”

“You didn’t sign up for Obamacare?” Suzanne said.

“Are you serious? Have you been to that crazy website? Forget that! Wait! Oh, gosh! I can’t believe I forgot to tell y’all!”

“What?” Suzanne and I said together.

“Guess who was standing on Savannah Highway with a big old sign protesting Krispy Kreme using palm oil that comes from cutting down rain forests?”

Suzanne looked at me and arched an eyebrow as if to say,
How should I know?
I giggled because I didn’t know anyone who protested anything. Ever.

“Boy, I have some dull life,” I said. “I don’t know
anybody
who would do that.”

“Me either,” Suzanne said.

“Yes, y’all do! It was Paul! That guy Kathy used to date! The organist from the church!”

“Holy Mother!” Suzanne said.

“Did you talk to him?” I asked.

“Come on, you know me. Do you think I could pass that up? I went over to him and said, So, Paul? What’s going on? He gets all worked up and says in this very deep man voice, Well, I have a problem with child labor, destroying orangutan habitats, and driving Sumatran tigers to extinction. I was like, You’ve got to be joking! Sumatran tigers? Oh Lord! But I said, Oh! Of course! Me too!”

Carrie started laughing so hard and Suzanne laughed politely, but something about the way Carrie had been speaking didn’t sit right with me.

“What in the world are you talking about?” I asked nicely even though I was irked.

“Remember I told you that guy was a tree hugger?” Suzanne said. “I mean, not that there’s anything the matter with saving the planet.”

“It’s just that he’s so adamant. I don’t know. It’s just a little undignified for a man his age to be out there raising hell at a Krispy Kreme. Aren’t college students supposed to do that?” Carrie said. “It’s weird.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but at least he’s got some convictions. Every man I’ve dated in the last ten years, and I mean both of them? Their only convictions are that they don’t want a committed relationship, and don’t worry, you’re not going to emasculate them by paying half the bill. Then they want to screw.”

“Then give them half a screw,” Carrie said, and her face turned scarlet.

Then we laughed, really laughed. It felt good.

Chapter 4

In the Dark

The late-­afternoon horizon was dissolving into the jewel-­toned colors of sunset. The temperature was finally dropping too, but the air was still warm and nearly wet. It would be as sultry an evening as any I’d ever known. We were gathered on Suzanne’s porch sipping wine, picking at a wedge of Gruyère, nibbling apple slices and thin slices of a smoked sausage, and talking. Pickle was curled up at my feet. I was looking forward to meeting Miss Trudie. Suzanne and Carrie assured me she always appeared around the cocktail hour. And besides the much anticipated arrival of Miss Trudie, it was the most exciting hour of the day. The colors of the sky all around the horizon went completely berserk, sending out flashes of rose and purple and shades I could not name because there were no words for them. Even for the most hardened old salt, sunset was too spectacular to ignore.

“Miss Trudie likes to have a small glass of sherry with me,” Suzanne said. “And then she goes in the kitchen and makes herself a martini in an iced-­tea glass and she thinks I don’t know. She eats the olives on the side. By the handful.”

“Whenever you see her eating olives,” Carrie said, “you can be about one hundred percent positive that there’s gin in her glass.”

“What happens when the gin runs low?” I asked. “And the vermouth and olives?”

“Well, I go to the liquor store, of course!” Suzanne said. “We just don’t discuss it.”

“No! Of course not!” I said.

Weren’t they merely doing their part to live up to our hard-­earned reputation as eccentric southerners?

And of course, the more wine we consumed, the more we revealed about ourselves. Going through Kathryn’s clothes, papers, and books had once again been profoundly unnerving. We were all just wrung out.

“You know what was really strange?” Carrie said.

“What?” Suzanne said.

“Seeing what she read,” Carrie said. “I’d bet you a tooth that I’ve read all the same fiction authors that she did. Ann Patchett, Anne Tyler, Anne Rivers Siddons, Anna Quindlen—­all the Anns. But we never talked about books. Not even once.”

“Well, she played her cards close,” Suzanne said. “But she read lots of ­people. She always had a book with her.”

“Didn’t you think her clothes were like ultratailored? Almost to the point of being utilitarian?” I said. “So much khaki and so many little cardigans.”

“Yes, she was pretty conservative,” Carrie said. “Did you have a chance to get a good look at her china? Her dishes were ancient. Probably from some relative. Her teacups were actually thin around the lip. I mean they were worn down!”

Suzanne said, “That’s because she believed that drinking green tea would help push her cancer into remission.”

“The poor thing. I read somewhere that you’d have to drink five hundred cups a day for green tea to make a difference,” I said. “But what is
truly
interesting is that the Japanese get a lot less cancer.”

“That’s weird. I wonder why?” Carrie said.

“The only difference I could ever find in our diet and theirs was that they eat shiitake mushrooms like mad, a lot more fish, and way less gluten.”

“And they drink green tea all the time,” Suzanne added.

“Listen,” I said, “we’re all gonna go someday from something.”

“True enough,” Carrie said. “Nobody gets out of here alive. At least no one that I know of.”

We smiled at that. Carrie was amusing even when she didn’t know she was.

“Well, I’m not going to be happy until I can figure out why Wendy was wearing the bracelets you gave Kathy and what is up with her furniture.”

And I liked Suzanne because she was so pragmatic.

“I say that the answer is somewhere in Kathy’s boxes,” I said.

“I sure hope you’re right,” Carrie said. “I really don’t like that woman.”

“She’d be hard to like,” Suzanne said.

We rocked back and forth for a few moments, sort of mesmerized by the day’s end.

“This is such an amazing place,” I said. “How long have you been living here, Suzanne?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe fifteen years?”

“Really? Wow!” In my mind all I could do was quickly calculate and then wonder why Suzanne, who would’ve been about thirty-­six at the time, would want to come and live with her grandmother, who would’ve been right at eighty-­five. So I asked the question in the most diplomatic way I could. “Have you always lived in Charleston?”

Suzanne and Carrie exchanged looks.

Carrie said, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Suzanne. Tell her! It’s not like you’re protecting a matter of national security!”

Suzanne took a deep breath and refilled our glasses.

“Okay,” she said, “did you ever make a bad judgment and totally screw up your life? And no matter what everyone told you, you just kept making one bad call after another?”

“You mean, like when I married Mark, who left me with an infant to go live in the deep woods in the Northwest to become a doomsday prepper and live in an underground bunker?”

Suzanne looked at Carrie and they burst out laughing. I joined in because what else could I do? It was just so ridiculous.

“That’s a good one!” Carrie said.

“Yeah,” Suzanne agreed. “
That
kind of bad call.”

“And he never sent any child support except for twenty dollars and a lottery ticket at Christmas?” I said.

“Oh God,” Suzanne said. “That’s terrible.”

“Awful!” Carrie said.

“And your own mother never fails to remind you that she told you so and that you’re still an idiot?” I tossed a crouton into the salad just to emphasize how incredibly unlucky and naive I had been, and that in addition to the price I’d paid, I was, now and forever, the family dartboard.

Suzanne couldn’t wipe the grin from her face. Her right hand was covering her mouth, and I could tell that the laughter she was holding back was in the tsunami range. She held her left hand in the air like a woman about to testify at a revival, took several gulps from the wineglass in her other hand, clunked it down on the table, and then she stood.

“Okay,” she said, then whispered, “Before Miss Trudie shows up for her one ounce of sherry and her half pint of gin, I’ll give you the short version.”

“We’re ready,” Carrie said, and winked at me.

“So, after I got my MBA from Columbia—­”

“You mean Carolina?” I asked.

“No, I mean Columbia University in New York,” Suzanne stated.

What was I thinking? Of course she went to Columbia University in New York. She probably had an IQ of two hundred and fifty. I completed my nursing and nutrition courses almost right in my backyard and never went anywhere. And almost all of the ­people I grew up with went to a college in South Carolina. I wondered at what age I would stop being insecure about not graduating from Harvard, which I would never have had the courage to attend even if it was free and they were begging me to come. Which they weren’t. Begging, that is, or offering me a free ride.

“Oh!” I said. “I thought so but I wasn’t sure.”

It was the tiniest of fibs.

“Anyway, I went to work for FTD in Chicago.”

“You mean the flower delivery company?”

“Yep, that very one. Even then I was in love with flowers. I don’t know why I thought Chicago winters would be fun, but I did.”

“Because if you’re from here you know what it’s like to live and die in hell,” Carrie said. “Freezing to death is an attractive alternative.”

“Oh Lord!” I said, and giggled.

“Anyway, I worked like a beast, climbed the ladder very quickly, and caught the attention of all the managers and officers.”

“And
one
in particular!” Carrie said.

Suzanne squinted at Carrie and put her hands on her hips. “Do you want to tell this story or am I telling this story?”

“Sorry,” Carrie said, and made sort of an apologetic face.

“Naturally, he was married but he said he was going to leave his wife. It was textbook classic. I believed him. I was such a fool for that man it was pitiful. This went on for nearly ten years. He would leave her, she’d threaten suicide, he’d go back to her. It got to the point that it was just stupid. I was so worn out from his lies and the disappointing truth of it all that I quit my job, came home to Charleston, and had a little meltdown.”

“That is so terrible!” I said.

“And opened my business. Well, it was especially terrible because by the time I untangled myself from him and got over it, I was almost too old to hope to safely bring babies into the world.”

“He was a world-­class shit,” Carrie said. “That’s what he was.”

“Boy, I’ll say!” I said.

“Look, there are worse ways my life could’ve played out than this,” Suzanne said. “He didn’t hold a gun to my head, you know. I have a pretty sweet business. I have the pleasure of my grandmother’s company and I get the benefit of her wisdom every day. I’m healthy. I live in a magical place. I’m solvent and hell will freeze before I let another man in my bed. Maybe.”

“That’s right, sugar. Keep your options open!” Carrie said.

“With any luck,” I said, with a smile as big as I could manage, “someday you might inherit this magical place!”

I never would’ve guessed that someone as brilliant as Suzanne would get caught in one of those messy affairs. Not in a million years.

“Are you kidding? I have two sisters, Alicia and Clio, both of them very wealthy with long marriages and tons of kids who are just waiting for Miss Trudie to go to that big cocktail party in the sky so they can get their share.”

“I have a brother like that,” I said. “Alan Jr., also known as Bubba, and his very annoying wife, Janet, have something to say about every dime my parents spend. You know, it affects their inheritance if my father buys a tire for his car or if my mother buys a new sofa.”

“Don’t you just love families?” Carrie asked.

And then we heard what had to be Miss Trudie’s approach from a distance. Shuffle,
thunk
. Shuffle,
thunk
. The sound grew louder as she neared us. Suddenly the screen door swung open, hit the wall with a thwack, and there stood Miss Trudie, relying heavily on her tripod cane to propel her forward. Her thin white hair was swept back into a braid that began at the nape of her neck and extended down almost to her waist. She wore a gauze, embroidered Mexican wedding dress and slip-­on canvas shoes with a Mary Jane strap. Her arms were bony and marked with the bruises and ravages of time but she had decorated herself with Native American bracelets and necklaces of beautiful turquoise and hammered silver.

“Not that I was listening, but families are the bedrock upon which this country was built. If it were not for women, this whole darn society of ours would have fallen apart ages ago!” She turned to me, ignored me, then turned to Pickle and grinned. “Darling baby!”

Pickle, of course, hopped up, scampered to her side, and sat obediently.

“Lisa? Meet my grandmother, Miss Trudie. Let me help you to your chair.”

“How am I to sit in my chair if someone else has parked themselves in it?”

She glared at me but I knew she was teasing. Nonetheless, I got up promptly. She shuffled over and eased herself down into it with a rather dramatic flourish, exclaiming “Oomph!” as she sat.

“It is nice to meet you, Lisa. It is even nicer to meet your Pickle!” She laughed.

“Thanks! It’s great to meet you too! And, I love your turquoise,” I said. “Is it Zuni?”

“How should I know? I have had these baubles since before Woodstock!”

“Oh! Did you go to Woodstock?” I asked without doing the mental math.

“Do I look like a hippie to you?”

“No, ma’am!” I said, but thought, Yes, ma’am, you sure as hell do.

“Maybe I could have been a mother to a hippie, but my Gertie was a stick in the mud, God rest her soul.”

Suzanne had yet to reveal what happened to her mother, but since Miss Trudie spoke of her in the past tense and prayed her soul to rest well, it was safe to assume she was among the dearly departed with all of Carrie’s husbands.

“Oh!” I said, and sat in a Kennedy rocker across from them.

“Yes, sirree, Bob. It’s still a mystery to me how she ever got a husband and where those three girls of hers came from. She never even went on a date, as far as I knew.”

“Oh, Miss Trudie,” Suzanne said. “You know that’s not the truth. Momma dated all kinds of boys. She was a homecoming queen, for heaven’s sake.”

“She was? Now, you would think I would remember something like that,” Miss Trudie said, and then she smiled at me. She looked back to Suzanne. “Well, if I am confused about the facts, it is probably because
somebody
has not given me my glass of sherry!”

“Oh, Miss Trudie! So sorry!” Suzanne said, and got up. She kissed her grandmother on the cheek before disappearing back inside the house.

“I have to keep her on her toes,” Miss Trudie said to Carrie and me. “Otherwise our whole routine gets sloppy and goes out the window! Now tell me about yourself, Lisa. Who are your ­people?”

“Well, my parents are retired and living in Hilton Head. They’re Carol and Alan St. Clair.”

“St. Clair. St. Clair? Hmm. Did they own an antiques business on lower King Street?”

“They surely did. They finally sold it when those chain stores came to town. Big chains added to what you can buy on the Internet put a serious cramp in their sales.”

“Well, darlin’, the whole world is heading straight to hell in a handbasket, if you ask me,” Miss Trudie declared. “And, how do they like living in Hilton Head?”

“They adore it,” I said.

“Well, I’ll be. I cannot stand the place. Every building looks the same. No landmarks. I’d get lost going to the grocery store. Anyway, you are awfully lucky to have parents considering how old you are. If my darling Suzanne’s parents did not drive off a cliff in Italy they would be gone by now anyway. Or maybe not. But they would be almost my age!”

“Goodness!” I said because it was clear she was waiting for a response.

Then she started to fidget. “I am completely famished. I had tomatoes for lunch, so I think I am going to make myself a cream-­cheese-­and-­olive sandwich.”