Return to Sullivans Island (28 page)

She continued to muse over the problems of the island lurching into the twenty-first century until Cecily came by the house to perform her weekly chores. She recognized the sound of Cecily’s car as she pulled into the yard with its hum and then the solid thud of her car’s door when she slammed it shut. There was something comforting about recognizing a familiar sound. Beth stood, began saving her work and closing down her computer.

Minutes later Cecily’s voice called out.

“Anybody home?”

“No! We’ve all gone to hell in a handbasket!”

“Very funny! Hey! Want to hear some juicy, juicy stuff?”

“Who me? I’ll be right there!”

Beth hurried down the stairs.

“Hey! I feel like I haven’t seen you in a year or something!” She gave Cecily a light hug and a short triple pat on her shoulder blade.

“It’s true!” Cecily returned the hug and the pats on Beth’s back. “What are you up to? Although I’m almost afraid to ask.”

“You should be! But wait! You were gonna give me a little dirt?”

“Oh, goodness! Yes! Okay, so last night I took myself to Rue de Jean downtown to meet this friend of mine who was late, late, late! And while I was waiting at the bar, this gorgeous man caught my eye. Next thing I know he says hello, my friend calls and cancels, I start talking to this guy and he starts trying to buy my love with sweet talk and champagne and—”

“Well, did he?”

“Now, what kind of a question is that?”

“I think he did!”

“Mmmm? You know it! His name is Niles, and lawsamercy, I think I might have to marry this one!”

“Cupid’s in this Lowcountry air,” Beth said with conviction. “I swear.”

Over the next hour, they talked and laughed like old friends until Cecily pushed herself away from the table and reluctantly excused herself to do her work. It was not beyond their notice, although it was never mentioned between them, that Beth’s grandmother and Cecily’s grandmother could never have exchanged such a friendly hug in public or private, much less a conversation so personal in nature. They would have suffered a withering lecture from their peers and elders on the importance of knowing one’s place in the world. If, heaven forbid, word of a friendship got around, they would have been branded as social pariahs. Liberals. Sympathizers of the wrong cause. Déclassé. Worse, and even more mysterious to Beth, was that their elders never would have understood why on earth they would
want
to be friends with each other. What was the point? They came from different worlds, after all, and their reference points for everything had nothing in common, did they? What possible useful intellectual exchange could there be? No, their different worlds were better kept separate, in the opinions of all those around them. Daily life was tidier that way, better and more reliably defined for everyone.

But this was not the case for Beth’s mother. Susan was barely a teenager in 1963, coming of age herself, when the lines of demarcation started to blur. Generations of white supremacy, deep hatreds, morbid suspicions, and barriers of every kind began to dissolve. As all mothers do, Susan had told Beth countless stories of how it was when she was a child on the island, but her memories were vastly different from mothers who came from elsewhere in that many of them contained powerful images of segregation and the horrors of the civil rights movement which was happening all around them. And perhaps most important her grandmother’s conflict over Susan’s relationship with Livvie was never understood, much less valued as it should have been, or resolved.

No matter how many times Susan repeated the same stories, Beth could never quite grasp the conundrum that was her grandmother. M.C. turned her children over to Livvie’s loving care like a litter of unwanted puppies and then tried to undermine the affection her children felt for Livvie through guilt and snide remarks. M.C. always wanted to know, how could her own flesh and blood love a housekeeper more than their own mother?

Perhaps it was her grandmother’s own inability to cope with life that hindered her as a parent and the yet unchanged times opened the door for her to rationalize her resentments toward Livvie. M.C. was constantly startled by Livvie’s innate intelligence as her parents had always said African Americans were not supposed to be so smart. She was intimidated by Livvie’s straightforward manner. From where did a black woman gather the courage to be so outspoken? M.C.’s world, the shameful quagmire of her parents’ manipulations and Big Hank’s fury, was built of contradictions, insecurities, and ineptitude. Livvie’s world was one of plain old-fashioned right and wrong.

Beth knew, as did her mother and all her aunts and uncles, that without the steadfastness of Livvie Singleton, they would never have become who they were. While Susan’s mother was always scheming for a ploy to keep Susan home, Livvie was there to encourage Susan to reach for more, to hold her to a higher standard, to make her want to become all she could be. And Livvie did the same for every Hamilton child as though they were her own. Even today, as Beth thought about the haints that appeared to inhabit the Island Gamble from time to time, Livvie was still watching over them from the mirror, while her grandmother’s alleged frustrations raged on, although that particular one had been reduced to a single episode of whispering in Phoebe’s ear.

On her bad days, Beth would muse that perhaps that was exactly the sin her mother was committing by insisting Beth give up a year to house-sit. Perhaps those kinds of demands were genetic. Maybe her mother thought that Beth’s wings were hers to clip. On better, happier days, Beth would tell herself that she was there not only to discover herself but also to discover the core meaning of the rest of the family and who they truly were. What did it mean to be a Hamilton?

Sometimes being a Hamilton meant keeping secrets, because Beth deliberately did not tell Cecily that Woody was coming for another visit or that she planned to find the money Max needed and lay it at his feet. Cecily would have broken out in a cold sweat and then collapsed to the floor in a coma.

On Cecily’s departure, she called her Aunt Sophie and this time Aunt Sophie was raring to chat. She was driving from Coral Gables to Miami and moving slowly on the turnpike.

“Talk to me, sweetheart! I’m so stuck in traffic it’s ridiculous.”

“Well, first of all, did you get my message?”

“The one about you nearly dropping dead from doing my DVD workout? I laughed so hard! You think Al and I are a couple of old goats, don’t you?”

“No, but whew! I could feel it the next day!”

“Well, that’s how it’s supposed to be, right?”

“Don’t ask me. I haven’t done that kind of exercise in ages! I guess I do wonder how you do it, though, to be honest.”

“We can do it because we do it all the time. If I don’t work out every day, it takes me maybe a week to get my stamina back. So how are you? How’s that crazy island living going? And how’s that man? What’s his name?”

“Max. Max is good.”

“Really? Great! So then, I gather things are going well?”

“Uh, yeah. We’re becoming better friends every day.”

Beth could hear her Aunt Sophie’s sigh of relief and Beth’s inner alarm pinged. For some reason that Beth could not explain, she knew that her aunt disapproved of Max. Sophie had never laid eyes on him or even heard his voice and she disapproved of him all the same. It was probably the age difference, which was understandable. Beth was very glad she’d had the presence of mind to refer to him as a friend and not the love of her life because it would have made the rest of her conversation all but impossible to have without becoming defensive.

“Well, that’s good to hear. So there’s no romance?”

“Good grief, Aunt Sophie!”

“I thought you were crazy about him. What happened?”

“Nothing. Nothing happened. What’s a romance anyway?”

“I couldn’t tell you, honey. My love life is a wasteland. Dry and dead like the Sahara. A nonexistent—”

“Oh, please. That’s because you live on an airplane.”

“Yeah, maybe that’s why. So what’s going on?”

“I just wanted to run something by you, that’s all.”

“Tell your auntie who loves you so! Tell me every little detail.”

“Well, this same guy Max is the one who’s putting up a new building where Bert’s was? And he…”

She explained Max’s project and the investment plan that Woody came up with to her aunt as calmly and maturely as she possibly could, even offering Sophie the chance to get in on the deal if she wanted to. Sophie listened carefully and asked a lot of questions and finally declined to invest, saying that her money was all tied up in the expansion of her own business.

In the end she said, “Look, sweetheart, I’m not going to tell you what to do. You’re your own woman and one helluva lot smarter than I was at your age. But I will tell you this. First, I don’t think you have enough facts. I’m glad you invited this Woody fellow down for the weekend because this is what he does for a living and he’ll know where to look for problems. Second, I would strongly urge you to discuss this with your mother. She’s the trustee, isn’t she?”

“Yeah.”

“So you can’t do this without her anyway, right?”

“Well, no, but I wouldn’t. Mom and I talk about everything. I mean, Aunt Sophie, come on! I am an adult for Pete’s sake!”

“Well, okay then…”

Beth hung up the phone and stood there for a moment just looking at it. She had begun to weave her tangled web. She had lied to her aunt about the level of intimacy in her relationship and she was going to borrow money against her trust one way or another if it was the last thing she ever did. But, she told herself, her intimate life was no one’s business. She realized that telling Aunt Sophie what the actual situation was would make her aunt remind her that sleeping with the investment is a monumental conflict of interest. So, she had merely withheld a detail and what was the matter with that? Nothing. And, as to her intention to rob a bank if necessary? She was going to rely on Woody and take things one step at a time. So far, she had done nothing more than explore the possibilities.

Max was coming to dinner at seven. Beth was going to cook something divine for him. She was going to tell him that Woody was coming back to Sullivans Island for the express purpose of looking further into his deal. She was going to seduce Max like nobody’s business and he was going to be hers forever. It seemed like a doable plan.

Her menu was simple as her culinary skills had yet to take seed much less blossom. Shrimp cocktail, grilled steaks, baked potatoes, salad. She was capable of that much and knew what she had to do. Simmons Seafood was her first stop. She drove up to the Isle of Palms, winding around the island until she reached the shopping center of Simmons’s new location. In that same small strip mall was a salon and for a brief moment she wondered if she should stop in and see if someone had time to blow out her hair. If there was one thing that women of the Lowcountry knew, it was that if you had thick hair prone to a frizzfest, a professional blowout was your savior. Your hair would look and feel like hair, not a wad of steel wool or a handful of feathers.

“I’m going for it,” she said to no one, parked the car, and marched herself up to the door of Anna’s Cabana like she went there every day.

Then she stopped. This was the place where Beth, her mother, and her Aunt Maggie came to have their hair done the day her mother married Simon. She wondered if the owner, Anna, was there and would remember her. That entire event began to rerun in her head as though it had just happened a week ago. What a day that had been! Some guy…what was his name? Eugene! Yes, Eugene had done her hair while Maggie and her mother had their hair and nails done by Anna and some hilariously funny woman from Brooklyn. She remembered drinking smoothies and cappuccinos and that they had laughed and laughed until they were giddy. Her mother had been distracted and nervous but who wouldn’t be? Getting married was very serious business.

Somehow they got from the salon back to the house, which Maggie had decorated with more tulle and flowers than Beth had ever seen. And then they dressed for her mother’s wedding. She wondered, how many girls could say they remembered getting dressed for their mother’s wedding? Probably a great deal more than wanted to remember.

Susan had worn a very simple long gown and a small pillbox hat with an attached veil. In the golden light of that afternoon she looked more like Jackie Kennedy than Jackie Kennedy. Maggie wore a black dress and a triple strand of a very good quality of fake pearls, and if asked, she would tell you that if you squinted, she looked just like Grace Kelly. Didn’t she? Beth was resigned to the fact that her mother was in love. But in her heart she was miserable because this act marked the end of any possibility that her mother and father would reunite. She wanted her mother to be happy and she didn’t care if she had the wildest affair of the century with Simon. But marriage? How, then, could her father ever return? But she kept her feelings to herself and smiled, playing the role of the perfect daughter, because they were all each other had. Until then. Now everything would change. Now there would be another man. Simon. Beth only wished there was a quiet place where she could go and weep.

They had asked her what she would like to wear and she remembered that she had said that honestly it didn’t matter. Aunt Maggie, who of course was in charge of every detail of the day and night, wanted her to wear something that would photograph well but was practical. They settled on a very plain dark green velvet gown that was shortened later to cocktail length. She had worn that dress so many times it had a shine where the nap had worn away. Maggie had been right as she usually was.

Beth had walked up the aisle with a smile plastered across her face. And her mother had married Simon with an even larger smile plastered across hers. And her father was never coming back. Beth thought she would never be able to find peace about it. But after her father passed away, his funeral an event she could barely recall for some strange reason, Beth was glad her mother was no longer alone. After all, Beth told herself, her mother was entitled to her choices, and one day, Beth was going to go live her life. Eventually.