Beach House Memories (27 page)

Without waiting for their response, Russell took hold of Lovie’s elbow and guided her away from the Blairs.

“Thank you for that,” Lovie said sotto voce. “We could’ve been stuck there all morning.”

“She’s insufferable,” Russell said. “Her innuendos were about as subtle as a sledgehammer.”

Lovie hoped that Ada would be peeking from her window to witness the tow truck. Surely that gave her an excuse for being seen coming out of Russell’s house midday. Mercifully, the tow truck arrived a few minutes later and, after a quick discussion, towed the station wagon off to the garage.

“Okay, hop in. I’ll take you home. But first, I want to show you something,” Russell said, guiding her toward the Jeep.

Lovie looked over her shoulder at Ada’s house. As she suspected, she saw a hand holding back the curtain at the front window. “It won’t take long, will it?” she asked, buckling up.

“Depends,” Russell replied with a wink.

They drove only a few blocks to the town’s shopping strip. Instead of turning in, Russell crossed the street and parked the Jeep beside the big P
ALMS
M
OTEL
sign.

“Here we are.”

“Russell,” she began, and cleared her throat. “What are we doing here?”

“I want to show you something. It’s right over there. Really, how long can it take to look? Come on.”

Lovie puffed out a plume of air and pushed open the door. She walked around the Jeep and spotted a small, gold VW bug with a red store-bought F
OR
S
ALE
sign in the windshield.

“It’s the car we saw in the street,” she exclaimed. “The one with all the flags.”

“Right. I saw it again the other day with the F
OR
S
ALE
sign, so I followed it.”

Up close, she saw with some alarm that the gold paint contained a faint glitter that sparkled in the sun. But the
cream-colored canvas convertible ragtop was adorable. Inside, the car had a matching cream-colored leather and snazzy black trim. It was old but in surprisingly good shape.

“I already checked it out. It’s in amazingly good condition with very low mileage. It’s hard to believe, but it’s actually owned by the proverbial little old lady who only drove it on occasion. She bought it on a whim and had this custom paint job done. She kept it in the garage most of the time.”

“With that glittery paint job, I can see why. How much does she want for it?”

“Take a look at the sign.”

Lovie walked closer and bent over the hood to peer at the price. She raised her head, incredulous. “You’re kidding?”

“I know! It’s a steal. I don’t even need a car and I thought about buying it for Pippi.”

“Oh,” she said, slightly disappointed. “Then
you
should buy it.”

“No, you should. Pippi probably wouldn’t accept a car from me right now. Besides, you desperately need a car and you just said you had in mind something small and sporty. I admit, the paint job is a little, well, over the top, but mechanically it’s sound. One of us should buy it. And soon. She just put it out last night and it’ll go fast at that price.”

Lovie stood back and looked at the car through the eyes of possibility. It might be a tad embarrassing to drive a sparkly gold car, but on the other hand, it had a certain je ne sais quoi that was appealing. It was small, it would be easy to park by the beach access paths, and with the ragtop down she’d be opened to the outdoors. It wasn’t a Jeep, true, but it was decidedly more feminine. Easier to handle. And the price was right.

“Stratton might get angry at me for making an impulsive purchase,” she worried aloud.

“Don’t you have pin money, or mad money, or whatever you call it tucked away somewhere?”

Lovie drew back her shoulders, feeling a prick of pride. “I have my own money.”

“Well, then?” He leaned against the front hood and crossed his arms. “It seems to me it’s your decision, then, isn’t it?”

Lovie swallowed. She realized she’d never considered the money she’d brought to the marriage as
her
money. Stratton had always taken charge of their finances. He was very good with money, and it was the way it had always been done in her family. He’d put her on a budget and went over the bills carefully. In fact, she thought of the money as
his
money. But at the very least, it was
their
money. And he was off to Europe, she thought, feeling the old anger rise up once again. He didn’t consider her opinion when he bought something, like that big black Mercedes he’d brought home from Germany last year.

“Yes,” she replied, “it is my decision.”

“Well, this car has personality. If you take it, you’ll need to give it a unique name.”

“You mean something to make all that glitter pretend to have a purpose?”

“Exactly,” he said with a chuckle. “How about Lucille?”

“As much as I love Chuck Berry, that’s not what I was going for. It’ll come to me.”

“Then you want it?”

She felt a bubble of excitement and nodded. “Yes.”

“Good decision. Let’s call the number and settle the deal right away, before someone scoops it up from under us. And then,” he added, “I think we need a night off. No nest is imminent and we’re both tired.”

She walked around the car, letting her fingertips slide along the golden steel, grinning, feeling a little of its gold sparkle sprinkle on her.

Sea Turtle Journal

July 22, 1974

The 300-plus-pound loggerhead has a powerful shell over 3 feet in length. Although sea turtles cannot withdraw their heads into their shells, the adults are somewhat protected from predators by these great shells.

There is always the worry of gossip, especially in a small community. But the turtles have taught me to develop a hard shell against gossips, naysayers, or those who want me to fail.

Thirteen

L
ovie couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept past six or got to bed before eleven with sand still in her eyes that no shower ever seemed to wash away. There was enough sand at the bottom of her shower stall for a sandbox. Turtle duty for July was round-the-clock; the turtles were kicking butt.

And Lovie couldn’t have been happier.

She and Russell spent so many hours together. They were comrades more than colleagues. He’d seen her sweaty and coated with sand with her arm shoulder-deep in a nest, scratched and bloodied by brush, her hair a tangled mess, even her teeth unbrushed.

She rolled out of her gravel driveway in her sporty new car and drove along Palm Boulevard, enjoying the soft growl of the engine, the breeze in her hair with the top down, and the easy pace of the morning. Her gaze wandered to check the ospreys’ nest on the platform that her pal Clay Cable had set up on Goat Island, just for her. Last year the nest had been marauded by a hungry great horned owl. It destroyed any eggs that were there, and the bereft parents flew off. For Lovie, it was hard to accept that nature was survival of the fittest. Or, as Clay had said,
“Honey, the owl has to eat, too.” Ospreys were site loyal, however, and Lovie was relieved when the lovebirds returned in February to try again. Clay and Lovie were hopeful that the young osprey couple would have better luck this year. The two small heads she’d spied in the spring peeping over the rim of the nest were now as large as their parents’.

Cheered, she started to hum as she made her way down the boulevard. A young man was jogging along the creek, and farther on she passed an elderly couple on bicycles. She reached the beach to see that Russell had already arrived.

“Olivia!” he called out, raising his hand.

She smiled at his usual greeting and waved back. She never tired of him calling her name—Olivia. He was the only one who called her by her full name, and she loved the sound of it on his lips.

It was a textbook case. The tracks led high up to the dune where Lovie quickly found the broken vegetation, the thrown sand, and the push-off ridge the turtle made with her flippers. Russell was making her find the eggs more often now, and she was getting good at it.

“This brings the total nests for the island to sixty-six,” Russell said, wiping his hands on the small towel he carried in his backpack.

Lovie entered the information in the record book, brushing away the ubiquitous sand from the page. “Do you think we’ll make it to eighty?” It was thrilling to think they could really get that many nests this summer. “When I was just doing my end of the island, I think the highest number of nests we ever hit was forty-four.”

“We’ll make it to seventy-five, maybe more. But I hate to burst your bubble,” Russell said with a wry grin. “I won’t even tell you how many turtle nests we get along the Atlantic coast of Florida.”

She closed the journal and put it into her backpack. “Well, I know Florida is the mecca for nesting turtles,” Lovie replied defensively. Then curious, she had to ask, “But how many would you say? Three hundred? Five hundred? A thousand?”

“Thousands,” he replied.

“That many . . .” she said, rising with a sigh. It was almost enough to make her want to move to Florida. Almost.

“But every nest counts,” he reminded her.

She smiled, thinking how typical it was for him to bolster her confidence.

Two days later, tracks were reported at the Point. Lovie parked at Russell’s and they drove together in the rugged Jeep across the rough terrain to the far northern tip of the island. The beach was deserted and the ocean was as smooth as glass.

“It’s anyone’s guess where it is. The volunteer just said it was high up in the north. Let’s walk that way,” he said, pointing. “See what we find.”

Lovie wiped her forehead and regretted that she’d forgotten her thermos in the car. The bucket banged her thigh as she walked alongside him. It was a beastly hot day and it felt like the sun was trying to ignite her brown cotton shirt. Even the sand seemed to burn her toes.

“I call this dedication,” she said.

“Or obsessive-compulsive,” he chided.

“You’re the one who’s making the rules,” she said with a teasing bump of her shoulder against his. Then she felt a sudden worry that the gesture was too forward.

“I know, I know,” he replied, seeming not to notice. “Just remember this is a short-term study. Once I’m gone, you can sigh in relief and not keep doing the northern end. You can go back to covering just your end of the island.”

There it was again, she thought, almost wincing. Talk of his
leaving. She knew the day was coming, understood that he was here for the duration of the study only, and then he would go back to his job, his life, far from here. Far from her. She smiled, determined not to be maudlin.

“You don’t think I’ll stop doing the whole island, do you? After this?” she said in a blustery manner, forcing the cheer in her voice. “Not likely.” She walked a few more steps. “By the way, I
can
continue what you taught me? Moving nests? Inventories?”

“Oh, God,” he mock groaned, “I’ve opened Pandora’s box.”

“Russell!”

“Believe me, Olivia, if ever I trusted anyone to do the job right, it’d be you. I’ll see what I can do to get you a permit. You’ll need some kind of authority.”

“Authority.” She rolled the word on her tongue, liking the sound of it. “At last. Even if I’ll never get paid.”

“Don’t feel too bad. I get paid very little.”

“I wondered about that,” she replied. “How do you afford planes and your family trips to Europe, houses in Maine, Bermuda?”

He smirked. “The old-fashioned way. I inherited it.”

“Ah, yes,” she said. “I thought I caught the whiff of a patrician about you.”

“Oh, really?” he replied. “And what about you, Mrs. Rutledge. I assume of
the
Rutledge family, signers of the Declaration of Independence?”

“My husband’s family . . .”

A brief smile of concession flickered across his face. “I’m fortunate to have my trust fund, I admit it. It allows me to do the work I love and still be able to fund my research.”

“You can be proud of that.”

“A fate of birth.”

“True, but you could be gallivanting, sailing around the world, gambling. A wastrel.”

“Ah, you’ve met my brother?”

She laughed and bumped his shoulder again, enjoying the banter and the sound of his laughter beside her.

They walked at a leisurely pace under the scorching sun. Lovie looked longingly at the ocean. Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink, she thought. The inlet between Dewees Island and Isle of Palms reflected the blue sky and sparkled in the sunlight, luring her. Along the shoreline, shells littered the beach. She spotted several unbroken angel’s wings, pristine whelks, and skate’s purses. Cara would love it here, Lovie thought idly.

“It’s so isolated here,” Russell said, as though reading her mind. “So idyllic. We could be on a deserted island far, far from Isle of Palms.”

Lovie spotted in the distance a particularly attractive cedar. It was ancient and had spent countless years yielding to the relentless storms and wind. Something triggered in her memory. The tree was unique. Its trunk was bent far landward by the wind, like a bonsai. The twisted boughs and greenery were shaped by the hand of God to create an arc of shade over the sand.