Return to Sullivans Island (11 page)

“I’ll call you. Don’t worry. See you then!”

“I’ll slip by tomorrow too, to water the baskets and the pots.”

“I can do that, if you want.”

“What? Those babies are my children. I raised them from seeds! See you tomorrow.”

Beth waved goodbye to Cecily and took the steps two at a time. She unlocked the door, went straight to Lola’s crate, hooked up her leash, and took her out in the front yard. Lola sniffed around and when her mission was accomplished she stood on her hind legs, leaning against Beth’s shin.

“Oh, Lola! You’re such a good girl!”

“Ark!” Lola said, which Beth took to mean, Pick me up!

Lola taunted Beth with lots of little jumps and chasing around in circles, and when Beth finally picked her up, she covered her face with kisses. Beth giggled with delight and her heart swelled with affection for her little dog.

It was three o’clock. She looked out over the dunes and decided it was still too hot to walk the beach. The tide was very high and would continue to rise all week until the moon went on the wane. Maybe the moon was somewhat to blame for her moodiness since her arrival on the island. It was certainly possible.

“Should we go back inside and finish my CV now that I don’t need it?”

Lola burrowed into Beth’s neck with another lick to her chin.

“Did I tell you that I got a job? Come on; let’s go wrap that baby up so I have a fresh résumé on file.”

Beth unhooked Lola’s leash, raced her back into the house, slamming the screen door behind them, and together they rushed to the kitchen, where she had left her laptop. She flipped on the ceiling fan, filled Lola’s dish with cool fresh water, put it on the floor, and sat down to work.

After she added in her new address, updated her work experiences and a paragraph about her personal goals, she hit the save button. She decided to let it rest for a while, reread it, and spell-check it again before printing it. Beth knew that if there was ever one place you didn’t want to have typos, it was in your résumé. She picked up the newspaper that Cecily had left behind, scanned the police blotter for a laugh, and turned to the want ads.

“Well, what do you know, Lola. This very same newspaper is looking for a freelance journalist to write feature articles! Would that be me? What do you think? Should we call them tomorrow?”

Tiny Lola had somehow pulled a huge pink bath towel from the laundry basket and had curled it around and around into a bed in the corner behind Beth. The effort and the heat had worn her out because Lola was fast asleep. Beth looked at her, remembered the beach towels on the porch and the mountain of sheets remaining to be washed, dried, folded, and put away, and her enthusiasm sank.

“I’m gonna be doing laundry for the rest of my life,” she said.

But sometime past dark, as the moon began its glorious rise, the last pillowcase was matched up with its sheets and she was able to close the door on the linen closet. She tossed the leftovers and the contents of all the bathroom wastebaskets in the garbage cans outside and pulled the spreads up on all the beds. The last traces of the weekend were erased and the house was finally hers.

She was lying in the old Pawleys Island hammock on the front porch, sharing a piece of toast and peanut butter with Lola, when she heard slamming noises coming from inside the house. Beth sat straight up, swung her feet to the floor, and held Lola tight.

“What in the hell was that?”

Then, just as suddenly as the noises had started, they stopped. She waited a few heart-pounding minutes. Slowly and quietly, Beth made her way back into the house and stopped in front of the mirror in the darkened living room. Nothing. She put Lola on the floor and Lola raced upstairs, presumably to Beth’s bed. Beth passed through the dining room and then the kitchen. Nothing. She went to her deceased grandmother’s bedroom and the door was locked. How could that be? She tried the knob again several more times, and eerily, the door opened easily the last time. As quickly as she opened the door she felt the wall for the switch and flipped it, flooding the room with light from the ceiling fixture. The bed was a shambles, all the dresser drawers were pulled open, and the room was freezing cold. Beth’s heart was racing and she could feel her pulse in her ears. She was terrified, furious, and realized she was screaming as loud as she could.

“What is this? You call this scary? Let me tell you something, whoever you are! You get out of this house! You don’t scare me one damn bit, but I’m not spending the next year cleaning up after you! So, get out! Get out right now!”

She slammed the door behind her but left the ceiling light on, thinking that maybe the bright light might somehow deter further activity for the night. And, she decided to leave things as they were until she saw Cecily again. Perhaps Cecily would have some Gullah wisdom on what to do.

“This is some major bullshit,” Beth said to the thin air. “Lola? Where are you, baby? It’s okay now.”

Lola was indeed in the bed, huddled under a pillow.

“Come here, sweetheart. Looks like we have some company. Don’t worry; it’s just your dead great-grandmother. Probably. I think. Maybe. Let’s go downstairs and lock up the house for the night.”

Beth poured herself a glass of milk, wondering if she should sleep downstairs or upstairs, but in the end she decided that no ghost was going to dictate her life. She secured all the locks, checked the stove twice, and went to bed with Lola snuggled next to her in the same room where she had been sleeping all along. She pulled her laptop into her bed to check her email and there was something from her mother.

Arrived Paris safely. Trip was great except for the businessman in the seat next to me who got drunk, fell asleep, and snored the whole way across the Atlantic. Typical. Faculty housing isn’t exactly the Ritz but then I never lived at the Ritz anyway! How are you, baby? Hope everything is all right. Love you!

Beth wondered if she should tell her mother about the haunting and then decided against it. What could she do when she was an ocean away? Nothing, she decided. She wrote back:

Take lots of pictures and email them to me! Everything is cool! Love you too! Stop worrying! xxx

She woke in the morning amazed that she had not tossed and turned all night. In fact, she had slept more soundly than she could remember having slept in months. She hated to get up and face the day. Even Lola was feeling lazy, stretching with her tiny fanny up in the air and yawning so wide it made Beth smile. Looking over at the alarm clock, she was surprised to see that it was almost nine.

“Come on, girl, you’re a loaded bomb. Let’s get you outside.”

Beth quickly brushed her teeth and Lola followed her down the steps, out the front door, and into the yard. It was the beginning of another gorgeous day. It would be hot, there was no doubt of that, but Beth was getting used to the heat and pacing her day around it.

“Okay,” Beth said to Lola, “let’s go see if I can make a little bank as a journalist. What do you say?”

After a fast shower, a granola bar, and a short ride down the island, Beth was in for a shock. Middle Street was blocked to traffic. She stopped the car a half block away and got out to look at what was going on. A wrecking ball and a crane were taking down the building that had once housed Bert’s. A crowd of old islanders were there, taking pictures and remarking to one another that this was the end of an era, the end of every good thing that had kept Sullivans Island what it had always been—unspoiled by the outside world.

“Next thing you know we’ll have traffic lights at all the intersections,” an old man said.

“Yeah, and superstores,” another man said. “Big parking lots…I just hate seeing this happen. My beautiful momma must be spinning in her grave. Thank the Lord she didn’t live to see this pitiful day.”

“You said it, bubba.”

It wasn’t that Bert’s had any real architectural merit. No, the élan of the building lay in its history. Once, it had been a drugstore where a grandmother stopped in to buy her grandchild their very first ice cream cone. In those days, you could buy the latest Archie and Jughead comics or fill a prescription there. Teenagers shared banana splits spinning on the barstools and bought copious amounts of Clearasil and chewing gum. Decades went by, and when the pharmacist who owned it finally retired, it became a local haunt for a great burger and a game of pool. Friends met there. People fell in love there, slow dancing to bluegrass music on hot summer nights. Every island native had sweet memories of Bert’s for one reason or another, and knocking it down was like witnessing a sort of death.

“Excuse me,” Beth said politely, “do y’all know what they plan to do with the land?”

The two old codgers, their faces lined from years of sun exposure and hard work, turned to face Beth. Their rheumy eyes were brimming with suspicions that perhaps they had outlived their usefulness, just like Bert’s.

“Yeah, they just posted some drawings over there. They say it’s gonna be a multipurpose retail establishment, whatever that means.”

“It means whatever they’re selling, I guaran-darn-tee you, I don’t need,” the other man said.

“Me either. Too highfalutin for my blood. Come on, Lloyd. Let’s go over to Dunleavy’s and get us a beer. They’re open.”

Beth watched the two men walk away. They moved slowly and the shuffle of their gait was unsettling to her. She was touched by their sorrow and she knew just how they felt. Just how modern and shiny was this new place going to be, and how would it fit in the landscape that was the business district of the island? Would it make the rest of the establishments look shabby?

The population of the island didn’t just go around knocking down things. They recycled. Hadn’t Dunleavy’s Pub once been a liquor store? Didn’t Off the Hook begin its existence as a Red & White grocery store? Wasn’t the old barbershop where Bill the barber would give you a flattop for twenty-five cents now a dentist’s office? Even Sullivan’s Restaurant had been Burmester’s Drug Store. Beth knew these things. Her mother might say, Would you look at Dunleavy’s? When I was a kid that was the liquor store and it smelled like booze too! Or her Aunt Maggie would reminisce that they always got their bait for crabbing at the Red & White at no charge. No, razing Bert’s was extremely dubious, and Beth knew the islanders were holding their breath.

Beth looked up at the offices around Station 22 Restaurant and saw the sign for the
Island Eye News
. She walked across the street and up the stairs, feeling confident enough for a walk-in interview. It wasn’t like she was interviewing with the
New York Times,
she thought.

“Hi!” she said, opening the door and facing the receptionist.

“Hi, can I help you?”

The receptionist, who was maybe a year or two older than Beth, was sizing her up from head to toe, testing the limits of her Juicy Fruit chewing gum, which Beth could smell. Suddenly Beth’s confidence faded, replaced with a creeping dread. What was she doing there?

“Yeah, I was wondering if I could talk to someone about the opening you have for a freelance journalist to write feature articles? I saw the ad? In your paper?”

A female voice thundered from the other room and Beth jumped.

“Katie? Send her in here!”

“That’s Barbara Farlie,” Katie, the receptionist said, rolling her eyes. “She owns the paper. Go ahead in.”

“Thanks. I think.”

Résumé in hand, Beth took a breath and went to the next office to meet the publisher and editor in chief of the
Island Eye News.

Barbara Farlie, who was one of those women of an undeterminable age, stood to her full height, which Beth reckoned was in the zone of nearly six feet. She had gorgeous thick honey blonde hair, cut in layers and blown back, away from her face. Beth thought the maintenance of it must cost her five hundred dollars a week. Barbara was wearing a T-shirt with the paper’s logo across the front tucked into a pair of black linen trousers. Everything about Ms. Farlie’s attire said she was casual on first glance but underneath she was all business, as Beth was about to discover.

“Hi, I’m Beth Hayes,” Beth said, and offered her résumé.

“I’m Barbara Farlie. So, what makes you think you’re a journalist? How old are you anyway?” She sat down in her chair and stared at Beth.

“Twenty-three. I’m not a journalist, actually. I just got out of college. Boston. See? It’s right there.” She pointed to the place on her résumé where her educational background was printed. Beth was still standing, feeling very awkward, and wondering if this was all a big mistake.

“Sit down,” Barbara said. “You’re making me nervous standing there like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.”

“Oh! Sorry!”

Beth dropped in the chair opposite her as fast as she could sit. She didn’t know whether to put her purse on the floor next to her or if she should hold it in her lap. She decided to hold on to it as it gave her some comfort to have something to anchor her to her spot.

“You want coffee? Put your purse down. Nobody’s gonna steal it.”

Beth immediately put her purse on the floor and said, “No thanks. Water might be good, though.”

“Katie?” she called out loud enough to rattle the walls. “Bring Beth a bottle of water, okay?”

Barbara leaned back in her chair and scanned Beth’s résumé. Katie appeared and handed Beth a small bottle of Evian.

“Thanks,” Beth said, and made eye contact with Katie, who gave her a reassuring smile.

Who would have thought that an interview with the publisher of a small newspaper could be so stressful? Beth’s hands shook as she tried to remove the cap from the bottle. At last she broke the seal and she began to drink like she was just crawling in after a month of being lost in the desert.