Isle of Palms (51 page)

“You know this whole deal about Everett Fairchild and him coming to the Isle of Palms in two weeks?”

“I’m glad you brought it up instead of me. What are you gonna do?”

“What do
you
think I should do?”

“Well, as I’m not obliged to produce a pot roast every night, I’ve had the time to ruminate.”

“Ruminate. Good word.”

“Thanks. My father was an English professor.”

“Ah.”

“Well, here’s the problem. If you were a vicious person, this would be easy. You could deliver fifty pictures of Emily to his condo and attach a note that says,
Does this child look familiar? Call this number.
But you’re not like that. And you don’t know enough about his life and who he is, you know what I mean? I mean he could be a superb man, though I doubt it. Or he could have a fabulous wife, although I doubt that too. But if I were in your shoes, I couldn’t live without knowing how he had turned out. I’d want to see the creep.”

“You’re right,” I said, “I don’t want to wreck anybody’s life. I wouldn’t get any pleasure out of that. But I would like to know what he’s like now.”

“So, if we went to the special events manager at Wild Dunes and offered them a full day of beauty for a raffle prize or drawing or something—haircut, color, manicure, pedicure—the works for the lucky wife or meaningful other, you could get a long look at his wife. Better yet, you could have her before-and-after pictures taken with Emily and send them home with her.”

“Oh, my God,” I said, and my heart started to race. “Well, one thing’s for sure, if we got her in the salon, Bettina could get the goods on his marriage.”

“No kidding,” Brigitte said, “you’d know what he ate for breakfast by the time she was done with her.”

“What if he doesn’t have a wife?”

“What if he does?”

“What if she doesn’t win?”

“Anna. Calm down. We
fix
the drawing.”

“Right. I knew that. I just wanted to see what
you
were thinking.”

“Sure.”

Vicki came over for refills. “Y’all want another drink?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I think I’d like a Cosmopolitan. Just one.”

“They’re
dangerous,”
Brigitte said.

“
We’re
dangerous,” I said.

“Well? I got a man waiting for me, honey.”

“I’ll have one too,” Brigitte said.

“That’s the spirit,” Vicki said, and walked away sticking her pencil behind her ear.

Brigitte was one smart cookie. Over our drinks—which I sipped
very slowly
—we planned the details of our scheme. The brilliance of the plan lay in its simplicity. It would give me that window of time that his wife was in our salon to decide whether or not I wanted to take the next step, which would be to let Everett know that Emily was on the planet. Maybe this was stupid, but I knew that I would arrive at that decision based on what kind of wife he had. If she was smart and nice, I mean really nice, I would probably be more inclined to let Everett’s wife have the truth. A smart wife, a savvy wife, would understand and take it better than some gal who wasn’t secure in herself and her marriage. Brigitte agreed with me on that point.

“You’re right,” she said. “If his wife isn’t the right kind of woman, telling Everett about Emily would bring all kinds of trouble into Emily’s life and there’s no reason to make her unhappy. Life’s complicated enough as it is.”

“Boy, you can say that again,” I said. “The last thing Emily needs is to have a woman pitching fits. She has a grandmother for that. Jim’s mother loves to make Emily feel badly about herself.”

“Great. I had an aunt like that.” Brigitte rolled her eyes, remembering. “Okay, so, let’s say the wife is a decent person, seems to be well balanced, and we like her. Then what? I mean, you can’t just tell her, can you? How are we going to get the information from her to Everett?”

“Good question. Unfortunately, I think—and please tell me if you have a better idea—I think I’m going to have to pick up the phone and tell him. The only other way would be that she recognizes Everett’s eyes in Emily’s head, and I think that’s asking a lot.”

“Well, how do you feel about calling him?”

“What are you? My shrink? I’d be scared out of my mind! What did you expect?”

“I ain’t your shrink, honey. I told you I’ve thought about this. A lot. And if I were you I’d be terrified too. But when I thought it through I came to another conclusion. He’s the one who should be scared. Not you. You could prosecute, you know.”

“What if he says he doesn’t remember me?”

“There is such a thing as a paternity test. Simple enough to get a court to order one. Although if what you tell me about his eyes and Emily’s is that obvious, all he’s going to have to do is look at her.”

“Well, if I decide I’m too chicken to call him, I could slip a bunch of pictures of Emily in his wife’s goody bag, right?”

“I think you should do that anyway. Let her get home and ask him why she was given the pictures. She’d stew over that for a while and eventually confront him. Wouldn’t you?”

“Hell, yes,” I said, “I mean, she has to know he went to school here and it wouldn’t be beyond any wife’s imagination that her husband might have left a little bundle behind while sowing his youthful oats.”

“And you know what else we could do?”

“We could give a free haircut and massage to a man. . . .”

“And that man would be Everett? But I’m not sure I have the nerve for that one.”

“Me either. The vodka has spoken. We’d better go home before we decide it’s a good idea to send him pizzas at three in the morning.”

“That’s actually not such a bad idea,” Brigitte said, obviously done in by her cocktail.

“Time for the check.”

I knew the plan would work. If I were to describe the state of my nervous system from that moment on until the day his wife walked in our salon I could only say that there wasn’t any combination of medicine on the planet strong enough to give me emotional equilibrium.

Naturally, I had discussed it with Jim and Frannie. Jim was going back to Ohio and couldn’t come to Charleston until the last minute. Gary was almost at the end and was asking for him, but still hanging on. But, as usual, despite the rest of his life, Jim had a great idea.

“Get a photograph taken of the whole staff and frame it. Make them group head shots—in color. Put that in her goody bag. It would seem more normal, you know? Write out a card that says something like,
So you won’t forget your friends at Anna’s Cabana.
Place Emily in the middle of the lineup and tell whoever takes the picture that you want them to really come in close on Emily’s face.”

“Brilliant. I’ll get the girls in the deli to do it with Lucy’s digital camera. You’re right. I mean, we were just gonna drop in some pictures in an envelope.”

“That’s why you never do anything major without consulting me first to help fine-tune the play.”

I called Frannie, who was filled with advice and her customary abundance of mirth and excitement over the adventure.

“Jaysus! Me granny is spinning in her grave! I need a smoke! Hang on!” I could hear her rumble around and then she picked up the phone again. “Okay. Give me the plan again.”

I told her that Lucy had called Wild Dunes and spoken to the head of guest relations. She told them that we would like to be their premier salon for tourists. For the month of August, we would have a drawing and give away a free makeover, sun exposure treatments, and a manicure and pedicure—the works—to one of their guests once a week and ten percent off to all their other guests.

“They went nuts! They thought it was wonderful!”

“You and those gals are so funny,” she said. “Okay, are you going to throw in lunch?”

“Good idea.”

“What about a limo to pick them up? Champagne in the backseat and all?”

“Open container law in South Carolina.”

“Then just give her a split with a note attached to it that indemnifies the salon against any problem if it’s opened.”

“Too complicated.”

“Then give her a note that says,
Drink me!
Two glasses will loosen her tongue enough so that when she arrives, you can go to work. What questions are y’all gonna ask her?”

“Gee, God, I hadn’t even thought about that. What do you think?”

“Well, for Pete’s sake, the first thing you need to know is if they have children! I mean, don’t you want to know if Emily has half brothers or sisters?”

“Come on, Frannie, I’m not a total idiot! Of course that’s the most important thing!” I had never considered it. She was right. “But besides that, what should I ask her?”

“Well, as long as we’re channeling the devil, why don’t you get Bettina to somehow start a chat to find out what their sex life is like. And while Bettina is warming her up, check out her jewelry, shoes, handbag—see if she and old Everett have any dough to speak of.”

“Heaven help me, Frannie, their sex life is the
last
thing I want to know about.”

“No, it isn’t; because if they’re not happy then you might not want Emily to get entangled with them. I mean, Anna, this woman could be a total, screaming, nagging bitch. Or a lunatic. Or overpossessive of Everett. Or who knows? Maybe she’s such a tightwad that she wouldn’t let Everett give Emily ten cents for college.”

“God, Frannie! The thought of money never even entered my mind!”

“Then, hang on, lassie, I’ll call Rome on me other line and have you put on the short list for sainthood.”

“You’re so funny,” I said and giggled.

“Look, here’s the point. The more you can get her to talk, the more you can make a better guess on what kind of man he turned out to be. And whether or not you want Emily to find out about him now or later.”

“What do you mean now or later?”

“Look, Anna. Let’s say his wife is the salt of the earth and you love her to death. Okay, then you might want to take Emily aside with Jim and tell her that you have found her birth father and ask her what she wants to do about it.”

“Well, that’s about how I had figured it, which is why it’s so important for Jim to come. If that happens, I don’t think I should spring this on Emily without him.”

“Absolutely. It wouldn’t be fair. And if she’s a bitch from hell, you don’t have to tell Emily right away. Do you? Is she suspicious about anything?”

“She thinks I’m just nervous because we’ve been so busy, and upset because King Arthur went back to New York.”

“He what?”

“Yeah. Skipped town and took Excalibur with him.”

“Excalibur? Is that what he calls his . . .”

“No. It’s what I called it.”

“Excalibur? Whew! Really? Whoa!”

She was killing herself laughing and I was turning every shade of lipstick in my makeup bag, including the free samples.

“Don’t bust a gut up there in Yankee territory, girl! Wait till you get here and I’ll tell you all about him, if I have the courage. I’m going to hell, right?”

“Who gives a shit? Just pray he’s there! Anna?”

“Yeah?”

“Excalibur?”

“Yes. Get over it, okay?”

The trap was ready. Now all we needed was a victim. We had our trial run on the first Saturday in August with a precious older lady from Birmingham. The concierge gathered the names of all the guests who had a Saturday night stay at Wild Dunes that week. All we had to do was stop by and pick them up. We took the names back to the salon, pulled a slip of paper from the fishbowl, and we had a winner. We then called the concierge back to arrange the appointment, giving him three different times. Wild Dunes was happy because they had a little bonus to offer their guests. We were pleased because Mrs. Dan Gaby of Birmingham bought three of Angel’s baskets, for almost five hundred dollars, and a twenty-five-dollar bottle of aloe for her husband’s sunburn. There were benefits to this that I hadn’t even calculated. Besides, I knew she would come back to our salon if she came to the Isle of Palms again. It was always interesting to meet new clients—especially if they liked to talk. Women don’t go to the beauty parlor expecting to keep their business to themselves.

“Dan liked to burn himself half to death out there, deep-sea fishing with all those silly men,” she said.

“Did he catch anything?” I said, while I was painting color on her roots. She was easily on the other side of seventy-five.

She started to chuckle. “Catch anything? Well, nothing much besides sun poisoning and a hangover. He’s up to the condo right now, lying on the couch watching the Golf Channel. Is that the most boring thing in the world? The Golf Channel? Why, I’d rather clean closets than waste my time watching golf on the television.”

“Sometimes I think fishing is just an excuse to drink beer,” I said. “And, I wouldn’t watch golf on television or in person. Puts me to sleep!”

“Me too!”

She was pleased as punch with her hair and her purchases and we were one week away from facing Mrs. Everett Fairchild.

La Bomb-ba

T was early Saturday morning, the second week of August, and I couldn’t shake my dreams out of my head. I was a teenager, riding in a pale yellow convertible with some friends, heading from Breach Inlet toward Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island. My mother was in the back of a van in front of me. She was wearing a lavender dress and jacket and she waved at me, smiling. I was aware that she was dead and I kept saying in the dream,
There’s my mother! See her? She looks so great!

Most dreams I had seemed to be a clearinghouse for whatever was on my mind during the day. Even though I had been born in the Lowcountry and had grown up in the Gullah culture, combined with my peculiar brand of Catholicism—which was highly driven by saints and novenas—I wasn’t completely convinced that all dreams of my mother were spiritual visitations. I only hoped they were. I may have had a garden growing out of control, but my imagination was in check. Still, I’d had enough of these dreams to know something was about to happen and if it was indeed her, that she wanted me to know that she was around, pulling for me.