Shem Creek (2 page)

To Debbie Zammit of New York, whom I found after an absence of decades, without you, this book could never have come to pass. I am thrilled to have you back in my life and I thank you with my whole heart.

To the following folks whose names appear as characters: Robert and Susan Rosen, Louise Waring, Patti Elliott, Gretchen and Sandy Prater, Louie and Cherry Provost, Bill Thompson, Mimi Bagnal, Mike “the Zone Man” Evans, Barbara and Lowell Epstein, and Philip Ragone, M.D., many thanks and I hope y’all get a kick out of seeing your names in this crazy story. If your
namesakes
do something you would never do, which I think almost all of them do, remember, they could not help themselves, I could not stop them, and it’s all meant in good humor anyway, just to make this more fun for you to read.

The Honorable Joseph P. Riley Jr., Mayor of the City of Charleston, is one of my heroes in many areas, not the least of which is his advocacy and leadership in all areas aimed at preserving and maintaining the great beauty and quality of the landscape, water, and wildlife of the Lowcountry. The reference in this text to the ease with which someone can secure his company at their dinner table is meant to be humorous.

To Scott Bagnal (husband of Mimi, who in real life
is
the queen of pound cake in addition to a thousand other things), the Birdman of Edisto Beach, and my brother-in-law for almost all my life, who is a prince, I thank him for his wisdom and good humor, neither of which is ever in short supply.

To my brother and his wife, Michael and Jennifer Benton of Irving, Texas; Vicki Oliver of Savannah, Georgia; to Dr. and Mrs. Michael Hay of Orangeburg, South Carolina; Tom Houck and Patsy Thomas of Atlanta, Georgia; Margot Sage-El; Val Fisher of Montclair, New Jersey; Mary Jo McInerny of Greenville, South Carolina; and most especially to Robert and Susan Rosen of Charleston, who collectively feted over one thousand people in the name of celebrating the publication of my last book, during the hottest and most humid weather of our lives, and did so in grand style, I love y’all forever and thank you over and over.

Huge bowing and scraping starts with Norman Lidofsky and the whole sales team at Berkley, especially Ernie Petrillo, Sharon Gamboa, Don Rieck, Patrick Nolan, Trish Weyenberg, Don Redpath, Rich Adamonis, Joe Crockford and Ken Kaye—I love y’all forever. To Rick Pascocello and the whole promotion team who dream up all the wonderful ideas that add the sparkle to sales, huge thanks for your generous support. As always, thanks to Joni Friedman and Rich Hasselberger for their extraordinary vision and efforts for my covers. And huge love to the publicity wizards, Liz Perl and Heather Connor. Wow! I don’t know how you do all you do and you know, I am going nowhere without y’all. Ever!

Obviously, I am still kissing the footprints of Leslie Gelbman, who is still my magnificent and fearless publisher. Leslie, what can I say? I get this big lump in my throat when I think about your faith in my work and how generous and wonderful you have been to me. Seriously, I send you endless thanks and love. And right behind Leslie is my editor, Gail Fortune, who knows I hold her judgment in the highest esteem and that I treasure her friendship and always will. Someday, we are all going to the Lowcountry and I am going to show you what the magic is all about.

To my agent, Amy Berkower, what can I say? You’ll make a woman of me yet! Thanks for all your great advice, your friendship and for being my best advocate. And even though we are just warming up, many thanks in advance to Sandy Mendelson for your warmth, excellent humor and expertise.

Okay, Buzzy, you’re next. Insiders know that the wondrous Buzzy Porter left South Carolina to work for B&N in New York and Southern writers are weeping. Don’t weep. Patty Morrison is still holding the fort, the fort will endure, and who knows? Maybe our New York numbers will rise? Love you, Patty and Buzzy, and thanks for everything! Especially for the plantation gig . . . people who give poor directions should be shot.

Special thanks to Kevin Sherry for going over all the recipes with us and making sure they were usable. To booksellers everywhere, I curtsy deeply to you and thank you profoundly for each time you have recommended me to a new reader. I mean that with all my heart. I loved being in your stores last summer and thank you again for your gracious hospitality and generous support.

And, last but most assuredly not least, to Peter, Victoria and William. My, oh my! I love you all so much and with all I’ve got. Thank you for your patience, your love and faith and your endless understanding. My door might be closed half the time but my heart is always open wide for you. At the end of the day, it’s just us.

CAN I just tell you why I am so deliriously happy to drive all through the night from New Jersey to South Carolina? Here we are, boxed in between this wall of eighteen-wheelers on our left and right, in front and behind, in this little pocket of flying road, racing down I-95 at seventy-six miles an hour. My daughters are asleep beside me and in the backseat. I don’t care that it’s pouring rain. I don’t care that it’s dark. On another night, I would be terrified out of my skin by the blasting of horns. But not tonight. Let me tell you something. These trucks are like huge guardian angels rushing us to safety and the rain is washing us clean. Life has been a little rough around the edges and it was time to break out. Yeah. A
little rough
would be one way of understating it.

Oh, eventually you’ll hear the whole story, because this is a long ride and there ain’t much to do besides tell secrets and think about life. Thinking about life is what I had been doing for one
very
long time. I finally decided to quit the thinking nonsense and
do
something. I mean, I was even driving
myself
crazy from my own whining. Then I came to this conclusion. You don’t like your life? Go get another one and shut the heck up already, right?

Look, I know I’m not the only single parent in the world. And I know I’m not the only one who’s tight for money all the time, okay? And, I might not be the biggest gambler you ever met, but I know when it’s time to change the scenery and if you don’t do it when you feel the urge, you might be blowing off the last life raft that ever floats your way. It’s probably worth noting that I waited to change the scenery until I went digging for my mascara in Gracie’s makeup bag (my fifteen-year-old daughter, thank you), and I found birth control pills, some other unidentifiable pills and a baggie of pot. Then, I hemmed and hawed around until I found Lindsey weeping over her weight—she’s five feet five inches tall and weighs one hundred and twenty pounds, the same as Gracie. She doesn’t even have a freckle. Her date for the prom told her he couldn’t go with her, that she was too fat. She was standing naked in front of the full-length mirror, sobbing and reading Sylvia Plath aloud—remember her? She’s the poet who stuck her head in the oven and killed herself. The final straw was the romantic dinner I had with Louie Provost at Epernay when his wife, Cherry, showed up to introduce herself. Um, didn’t know there was a wife? Thanks, Louie. Can’t have dinner there anymore.

I said to myself, Linda? You can definitely do better than this. All of a sudden it was clear to me that I had a stupid job and we had a very stupid life. So I called my sister and she said,
Honey chile? You put yourself and your girls in your car and come on down to me!

So, that’s what I’m doing out here in the middle of the night in Virginia, traveling under the wing of all these trucks. But can you keep a secret? I quit my job. We’re
moving
to Mount Pleasant and no one knows it except you and me. I know it seems slightly sneaky and a little impetuous but you know what? It’s not. Look, if New Jersey had wanted us, it would have given us a reason to stay. It didn’t.

I told the girls it was a vacation. I told the girls I told my employer I would be back in four weeks. They knew I had vacation time piled up like laundry. Maybe they know, maybe they don’t.

I have to find a job. And that, my friend, should be the easiest part. I could get hired as a grave digger and make myself believe that I was working at Mardi Gras. But hey, brighter days and better days are coming. I can feel it in my bones! I really can. I am absolutely going to make this work.

JUNE 2003

 

 

MY mother always used to say that if a man could count his real friends on just one hand that he was a wealthy man indeed. My mother was right. I’m going to tell you a story about heaven and hell and how I got out of one and found the other—both with the help of a true-blue friend.
Hell
was being married to Loretta and working for her father.
Heaven
is our restaurant on Shem Creek, which we would never have had, except for the generosity and ingenuity of my best friend and partner, Robert. We call it Jackson Hole because my last name is Jackson and I guess you could say it is a hole in the wall. Yeah, it’s definitely a hole in the wall. And, Robert likes to ski
guess where
. I know. It’s a less than nimble play on words, but let’s get this on the record right now—when the whole world conspires against you, a healthy sense of humor can be a very valuable tool. And, up until eight months ago, the world conspired. Worse, I was thrashing around in my quagmire of self-deception watching it happen and didn’t do a thing about it.

I used to come down here all the time, in between deals, and I guess I’ve been fishing the waters around Charleston for fifteen years. There isn’t a creek in this whole area that hasn’t seen the bottom of my boat, but that said, every time I dropped a hook in the salty creeks and rivers, it always seemed like the first time. The landscape and the light—well, it was always a little different. Quiet but vibrant. You could have made yourself believe that the good Lord Himself was somewhere in the thicket, waiting patiently for you to remember that He was still there. It finally got to the point where I just left my boat in South Carolina. And my heart? Well, looking back, it seems now that the only time I ever thought about it was when I was floating on the Lowcountry waters.

We should discuss this heaven and hell thing, which all begins with my newly-acquired-at-great-personal-loss philosophy. Here it is in a nutshell. When you choose the wrong partner at the dance (whether it’s marriage or profession), you will surely bust your ass.

Women seem to know this by instinct. Men don’t. Men are conditioned from birth to be providers and basically, our success is measured by how well we do that job. This somehow neatly translates to how much we earn and how many trophies we can accumulate over a lifetime. Cars, second houses, antiques, jewelry for the wife . . . the list goes on and on. We have to graduate from the right schools, become a partner in the right firm, marry the right girl, be invited to join the right club and develop a decent game of golf and tennis.

Right? Wrong! That entire unholy plan, my friends, is a truckload of manure.

Isn’t it? I swear, I laugh now when I think about the years I spent chasing the almighty buck. Money, money, money. And, chasing the almighty buck with my wife, Loretta, who always was and continues to be a misery. Well, I can laugh now, but a few months ago, it was not funny at all.

Overall, daughters are so much luckier than sons. Their mothers tell them to follow their hearts, right? They say,
Darlin’? If you want to go study history, you go right ahead. Honey? If you want to be a chemist, go right ahead!
Sure enough, women will graduate and can usually earn a decent living with their degree, doing something they love. Of course, women get screwed right and left because they don’t earn the same money that their male colleagues do for performing the same jobs and for a whole variety of other reasons, but for the most part, I think women are happier in their professional lives. And yes, I guess you could say that I am kind of a male feminist.

But, sons are another matter entirely. When I look at the number of kids coming out of graduate school with business degrees, I am absolutely astonished. I mean, where are they all going to find the fortunes that they think are waiting for them? The ones they think they are entitled to? And law school? Don’t get me started! Do we really need more lawyers?