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“Gotcha. You want to be yourself, is that right? An individual with your own mind? Your own taste in things?”

“Exactly.”

“So what do you think it’s like to have an identical twin?”

“Weird, but I’m just guessing.”

“Weird like you can’t imagine. We even have freckles in the same spots.”

“Really?”

“Really. So you want to know what I did? I got a tattoo. Even Allison doesn’t know. So if you tell, I’ll have to kill you.”

“How cool are you? Let me see it!”

Sophie stood up and pulled down the waistband of her skirt. There, in the darkness of the porch, Beth could make out a tattoo of a butterfly on her left hip.

“Branded! When did you do this?”

“Like ten years ago. I was pretty sick of being exactly—and I mean
exactly
—like someone else.”

“Wow.”

“Yep. There you have it. I feel your pain. So, is the other reason for your unhappiness that you’re not headed to graduate school?”

“Yeah. I’m itching to try and write a novel.”

“About what?”

“I don’t really know yet. I mean, I’ve got some ideas.”

“Well, honey, I love you more than anyone except your momma so I’m gonna give you a tip.”

“Shoot.”

“There’s plenty of plot right here, so start taking notes.”

“Maybe.”

“And get a job to keep yourself busy.”

“You’re right about that. Otherwise I’m going to lose my mind.”

“Well, whatever you do, don’t complain about your awful lot in life. You won’t get a lot of sympathy from anyone that you have an all-expenses-paid vacation on this island for a year. Besides, this family has enough malcontents.”

“Boy, is that ever the truth!”

“Listen, Beth. If I had a daughter, I’d want her to be just like you. If you ever need anything, not just this year, but ever, you come to me. Come on, let’s close up the house. It’s late.”

Beth thought she would sleep like a stone that night and start taking notes tomorrow. Maybe look for a job when they all left. They went inside, closing and locking the door behind them. Next, they went to the kitchen to make sure everything was put away. There was Teensy wearing a silk nightshirt of all things, sitting at the table, pressing a cold cloth on the back of her neck.

“It’s too hot and humid to sleep,” she said, “I don’t know why this house doesn’t have central air-conditioning. It’s miserable up there! You could die for a breath of air!”

“Oh, let me get you a glass of ice water, Teensy,” Sophie said, checking the knobs on the stove to assure herself they were all in the off position. “It’s only two nights, for heaven’s sake,” she mumbled.

“I’m at a delicate stage of life,” she said with a pout.

Sophie and Beth rolled their eyes at each other.

Beth said, “I’ll bet it’s hot in our room too.”

“Yes, but there are bugs in my room,” Teensy said. “Big disgusting cockroaches. Henry has already killed two. Heaven knows how many more are lurking about.”

“My hero,” Sophie said in a cartoon voice. “They’re palmetto bugs.”

“They’re the state bird,” Beth said, checking the lock on the back door and then the stove. Again. “Or maybe that’s the mosquito?”

Even Teensy had to smile, but she still went on like a whiny sissy.

“You all are used to this. I’m not,” she said in a last attempt to defend her case.

“Used to this? Come on, Teensy, let’s call it a night,” Sophie said. “In less than forty-eight hours you can go back to Atlanta, where apparently they don’t have summer. Or bugs.”

Teensy got up, smoothed out her nightshirt, which in her defense did have a streak of perspiration down the back, but Beth thought, Who wears silk in the summer? Morons, that’s who. She poured them all a glass of water. They went upstairs together and said good night to one another.

Sophie was in the bathroom. Beth checked on Lola and crawled into bed. She could hear her aunt humming as she brushed her teeth. She thought about Aunt Teensy and how pampered and spoiled she was to complain so much. It wasn’t all that hot. And then her thoughts drifted to her Aunt Allison, her temper and her wild ambition—greed really—and she vowed never to become like either one of them. But at least I wasn’t the only one being used for target practice, she thought, and that was a small consolation.

Her Aunt Sophie was so wonderful. She understood everything. And the more she thought about meeting Cecily, the better she felt.

They would be friends and that was nice to think about. But this was no vacation. She was determined to make the year mean something.

The tide had turned and there was a gorgeous breeze in the room. The next thing Beth knew she was dreaming that Confederate jasmine covered the entire house and she was laughing, chasing Lola down the empty beach right before dawn.

3

Family Jewels

W
ITH THE EXCEPTION
of Allison, who blew out of town so hard she initiated small-craft warnings, everyone else seemed to be relaxed and having a good time reminiscing about the past and big-timing one another about the present. But Allison had served her purpose. It always heightened the family’s mood when there was one relative to throw in the fire along with some mesquite chips. The general consensus was that success had gone to her head and perhaps she really was slightly insane.

It was Saturday night, many pigs had sacrificed their ribs for the occasion, and a classic southern barbecue was in full swing—pork, burgers, coleslaw, potato salad, cornbread, and, of course, plenty of cold beer and sweet tea. Despite the fact that the adults were all counting carbohydrates, watching their cholesterol, blood pressure, and just generally trying to stick to one diet or another, the mountainous platters of food would disappear all the same. People would give themselves special dispensations for the occasion or they would be goaded into tasting,
Just a little, it’s so good
…

The porch was overflowing with relatives and many of Susan’s lifelong friends and colleagues who had come to wish her well. Timmy was tending the grill, where he and Henry were bickering like twelve-year-old brothers over whether it was better to turn the baby back ribs over and over, basting them each time, or to turn them only once or twice and baste them at the end when they were fully cooked.

“It depends on who’s cleaning the grill,” Beth heard her mother say. “That gooey sauce sticks to the grilling rack like plaque in your arteries.”

“Ew,” Beth said, walking over to them with a platter of pigs in blankets and a dish of mustard. “Anybody want some of America’s favorite hors d’oeuvres? Watch out, they’re really hot.”

“And only marginally fattening,” Susan said with a wink. “Where’s Maggie?”

Beth smiled to herself because her mother wouldn’t fully enjoy bingeing on a handful of carbs and fat in front of her skinny older sister; that much was for sure. In addition, having Sophie there with her hard body gave them all another reason to suck in their abs and correct their posture.

“Don’t worry. Eat all you want. She’s in the kitchen with Cecily cutting ribbons from lemon and lime skins and tying them into bows to garnish a big platter of shrimp.”

Beth said this with a straight face because as absurd as it was, it was the truth. Beth’s Aunt Maggie was a fool for her paring knife and the kit of garnishing tools she bought on the Home Shopping Network. Susan arched her eyebrow at Beth, that famous arch Beth had practiced in the bathroom mirror and had nearly perfected, and jammed a pig in a blanket in her mouth as fast as possible.

“Really,” she said, implying that she agreed with Beth on Maggie’s compulsive nature. “Well, there are worse afflictions than a little OCD in the cooking department. Can I have another one of those?”

“Sure. Uncle Henry? Y’all want one?”

Each of her uncles put four on a napkin, slathered them with mustard, and let them rest on the side of the grill. They said
Thanks, kid
and went back to their argument.

Timmy said, “Tell you what, bubba. I’ll cook a rack on this side of the grill my way and you smother and suffocate yours over there, destroying their natural integrity—”

“What’s integrity got to do with pork? You’re as crazy as a low-flying loon.”

Susan put her hand on Beth’s elbow to lead her away.

“Numskulls,” she whispered. “Let’s go see what your cousins are doing.”

They spotted Mike, the cousin formerly known as Mickey, over by the bar with some adults and he waved to them. Beth stuck the platter into their circle and the pigs in blankets disappeared as though they had been devoured by a school of piranhas.

“So, Mike? What’s up with you?”

“I’ll go get some more,” Susan said, taking the empty serving dish from Beth. “Be right back.”

“Aunt Susan?” Mike said. “See if they’ve got any of those sausage balls left too? I love those things.”

“You know it! I’ll be back in a flash.”

Susan smiled at all of them and Beth wondered if she would ever look at anyone like her mother did. Susan’s eyes were brimming with maternal affection and it occurred to Beth that those kinds of looks were as natural to her mother as taking a breath. Beth was miles away from that stage of life. She could not even imagine seeing the world through eyes glazed over with happiness, much less happiness born from serving others.

They watched Susan disappear into the crowd and reappear as she climbed the steps to the front porch. Beth and her clan had made hundreds of trips up and down those steps all day long, bringing out tables, chairs, candles, hurricanes, and Eiffel Towers to serve as centerpieces so the tablecloths wouldn’t blow away if the breezes turned to wind. She had helped to string Christmas lights between the palmettos to light the yard and jammed tiki torches filled with citronella oil into the soft ground near the dunes to ward off bugs. It had been like a cardio workout all that day and Beth was already hoping for a short night.

“Your mom is the best,” Mike said.

“Yeah, she is. Thanks. I’m real proud of her.”

“Yeah, so you graduated. Congratulations.”

“Thanks. Now I get to spend a year here losing my mind, going completely insane, doing nothing, withering in total obscurity.”

“Obscurity? That’s a pretty big word for someone your age, isn’t it?”

“You must’ve missed the memo. I graduated from college? And where’s my gift, you cheapskate?”

Mike was waving his three-year advantage over Beth’s just to irritate her. Boys were all the same, she thought. Everything was a big, fat, stupid competition.

“Right. Sorry. Well, a year in obscurity sounds good to me. I’m still Uncle Henry’s personal slave in Atlanta working hundred-hour weeks. I could come and hang out, you know, so you don’t go nuts or something.”

She gave that a moment’s consideration and then brightened up.

“Yeah, that would be really, really good actually. No doubt I will want some company. Plus, we can go downtown, check out the bars, you know, have some fun?”

Beth was thinking that sooner rather than later she was going to need to go over the causeway, and get some kind of a life going. She had not had the time or the desire to dig up her old friends from high school and see what they were doing. Half of them were probably married because in the South it seemed that people married young, as though a marital partner would make the transition into adulthood easier emotionally and financially.

“Oh? You have a fake ID?”

“Hello? I’m twenty-three, hello.”

“You look like you’re sixteen.”

“Yeah, right. You need an eye doctor. And why are you still gelling your hair? It’s like so nineties.”

Beth snickered and Mike looked up at the sky.

“It’s wet, moron. I just took a shower.”

“And the world is a better place for it, Mr. Hamilton.”

“Let’s get a beer and go torture Bucky.”

“Sounds good.”

Bucky and especially Mike were Beth’s favorite cousins because they had practically grown up together. Her Uncle Henry came home to Sullivans Island with his family once a year and her Uncle Timmy came only for important occasions. Timmy’s daughters, who were decked out in pink and green sundresses with pink pedicures and white headbands and whom she had not seen in ages, were avoiding her. Beth sucked her teeth when she saw them, feeling a thousand years older than them, and realized her Aunt Maggie was exaggerating to say they were dying to see her. They could not have cared less.

In addition, Timmy’s sons, the biblically named Mark and Luke, were friendlier with the other boys, especially when it came to family outings that usually excluded the fair sex like dove hunting in the woods and gigging for flounder at midnight. Those other cousins, Phillip and Blake, even though they had reached the ages of twenty and eighteen, were just as annoying as they had been since the day they were born. Still, Beth marveled at the way they all came together, her aunts and uncles and their herd of offspring.

The desire to remain close and in touch with one another was propelled by the lone but stalwart efforts of Maggie. Beth wondered who among her generation would emerge as the matriarch or patriarch and work to keep their traditions alive? Or would they all drift apart and never see one another except for weddings and funerals when their parents went to that great house party in the sky? Would it be worth the energy when the family now lived in four different states? Beth did not know the answer to any of these questions and shrugged them off thinking that in time they would see.

Mike reached into the cooler and pulled out two bottles of beer, twisted off the caps, and handed one to her. He gave his cousin an assessment from head to toe and decided to contain his opinions, remembering she was his cousin. There were remarkable changes in Beth. Maybe it would be fun to come back to the island and hang out with her, go to the bars and see how she handled men.

“There’s Bucky by the grill,” he said. “Hey, Bucky! You want a beer?”

“Yeah, thanks!” he called back.

Grabbing one more, Mike and Beth moved across the yard to where he stood. Bucky, who was twenty-four, was in constant competition with his older brother. When Mike announced he was going to business school, Bucky decided he was going to medical school. When Mike got into Carolina, Bucky began the application process to attend Duke. It was plain old sibling rivalry and one-upmanship that had been going on since Bucky came home from the hospital on day three of his life and they looked each other in the eye. Beth, as an only child, thought their jealousy was ridiculous. She would have done anything to have had a sister or a brother.

“So,” Beth said, “what’s going on?”

“Well,” Bucky said, “I was thinking about taking the golf cart out for a spin. Want to come?”

“Dude, there’s the sundown law for golf carts. And a huge fine.” Mike said.

“If we get caught. Which we won’t.”

“Right,” Mike said.

“Come on, what’s the big deal? If the cops stop us, we just tell them we’re from out of town and we didn’t know. I’m taking Blake and Phillip. They’re like catatonic from boredom.”

“Yeah, and Uncle Grant will kick your ass if you get caught,” Beth said.

“Nice mouth, Red. Just stay on the backstreets, okay?” Mike said.

“Whatever,” Bucky said, and walked away to find his cousins.

Beth and Mike watched him go and thought Bucky was taking a dumb risk for something that wasn’t worth it. Couldn’t they just go play Frisbee or Halo? And sure enough, barely an hour later on the edge of night, here came Sullivans Island’s finest.

Henry and Grant heard the squad car pulling into the yard and went around the house to see what was going on. There were Bucky, Blake, and Phillip sitting in the backseat looking extremely uncomfortable, staring at their feet.

“Evening,” Henry said, and recognized the police officer as someone he had known slightly in high school. “Wait, don’t I know you? Did you go to Bishop England? Maybe, Wando?”

His name tag read
Dan Howard, Chief of Police.

“Yeah, Bishop England, Class of ’79,” Chief Howard said. “Wait a second, I know you. Henry Hamilton! Didn’t you grow up here in this house? Is that your boy I picked up?”

“Yeah, that’s me. Two of them are mine. The other one is my nephew. What did they do?”

“Well, we’ve got a golf cart curfew violation that carries a hefty fine, and the more serious charge for all of them is open container and that the two younger boys are underage.”

“Great,” Grant said.

As Mike and Beth came around the corner, they could tell that Uncle Grant was furious just by his posture. His feet were spread and dug in, his arms were crossed across his chest, and his jaw was tight. Their Uncle Henry, on the other hand, was standing there smiling with his hands in his pockets. Henry was a cool customer under duress.

“Holy moly,” Beth said under her breath. “Right?”

“What happened, Uncle Henry?” Mike said, nodding to Beth, using his most manly voice.

Henry did not respond to Mike, who did not press the issue, knowing the facts would emerge quickly enough. Beth had the good sense to remain silent for once in her brief but opinionated life, making mental notes to be used later.

Chief Howard was writing up tickets, tearing them off the pad, and handing them one by one to Grant, who looked at each one and passed them to Henry.

“Sorry, Henry, but I have to do this. We got regulations to follow like every other town.”

“Understood. But there is still plenty of light. Perhaps the golf cart violation could get some consideration?”

Chief Howard looked up at the sky. Henry was right. It was almost nine o’clock and the sky was still light although the sun had set. Howard decided that they were both right. He took the golf cart ticket back from Henry and tore it in two. Thus Henry and Grant saved themselves five hundred dollars that they would have taken out of the boys’ hides.

“In memory of Father Kelly and for old times’ sake. I assume I can release these young men into your custody?”

“Thank you. Father Kelly was a saint. Yeah, I’ll take these marauding hoodlums off your hands.”

“The underage consumption of alcohol will have to be dealt with in Family Court downtown. Our court meets on Tuesday night.”

“Great,” Grant said. “We go back to California tomorrow morning.”

Henry said, “And we’re going back to Atlanta. Can we just plead guilty and pay the fine?”

“Probably, but I’d call Judge Steinert. He can tell you what to do.”

“Kids,” Grant said. “Steinert?”

“You’re telling me?” Chief Howard said. “I’ve got four with two more on the way. Can you imagine? Anyway, Steve Steinert is a really good guy.” Chief Howard opened the back door of his car to release the boys. “All right, gentlemen. Let’s go.”

When they were out, Chief Howard slammed the door and went around to the driver’s side of the car.