The Summer Girls (10 page)

The only meeting Harper had had with her father had been at Dora’s wedding. He might still have been handsome if he hadn’t been so thin, his face marred by an alcoholic sheen. She shuddered and clutched the armrests, a last vestige of her childhood fear of flying. One gentle bump, and the plane landed smoothly on the runway. Immediately she grabbed her phone and tapped her foot as it powered up. The two-hour plane ride was an eternity to be unplugged.

Before leaving the airport she slipped into the ladies’ room to take stock of her appearance in the mirror. She wanted to make a strong impression on Mamaw and her half sisters, showing them that though she was the youngest of the group, she was no longer the baby. She was an adult: successful and worldly.

Her hair hung like a sheath of tangerine silk, grazing her shoulders. Her large blue eyes stared back at her like a cat’s, with slick black eyeliner and thick, dark lashes. She’d had
her pale ones dyed. Before she left, she powdered her skin, covering the faint freckles that peppered her cheeks and nose.

Harper brushed away lint from the tailored black cotton jacket and gave the hem a firm tug to smooth it where it just met her slender hips. She had to look perfect when she arrived, mature and confident. She wore tight black jeans and sexy, black, strappy high heels. They killed her feet, but they looked great. At five feet two inches, she didn’t want to be dwarfed by her sisters and Mamaw.

Harper would be like her mother, she decided. She needed to make an entrance.

She slipped her black designer bag over her shoulder and, with a final satisfied smile at her appearance, she muttered, “Nobody puts baby in the corner.” Then she gripped her roller bag and began walking toward the taxicabs in mincing steps.

When Carson pulled into the driveway, she was surprised to see her usual spot in front of the garage taken by a Lexus SUV. Squeezing out of the car, she pulled her gear from the passenger seat, then let her gaze linger on the SUV. Unlike her dented and rusting blue Volvo, the silver Lexus with the South Carolina plates didn’t have a scratch; even the black leather interior was pristine. A children’s puzzle book was in the backseat, along with a red sweatshirt. It could only mean that her half sister Dora had arrived from Summerville.

Carson sighed, annoyed. Why was she here today? Dora wasn’t expected until the weekend. It wasn’t that she wasn’t glad to see Dora, but she wasn’t feeling very social. And maybe it was selfish, but she wanted a few more days with Mamaw all to herself.

She lugged her paddleboard from the rooftop and stored it in the garage. The scent of moss and mildew made her nose tingle. Carson followed the stone path around the thick hydrangeas to the back porch, where an outdoor shower was hidden behind an enormous, blooming gardenia. Opening the door, she sidestepped the spiderwebs in the corner and the weeds poking up through the stones and turned on the faucet. The shower only offered cold water, but on the island in the summer, the water was always lukewarm. She slipped from her beach cover-up and showered in her suit, inhaling the sweet scents of lavender soap and gardenias as she felt the tension slide from her body. After she dried off, Carson loosely braided her dripping long hair, grabbed her towel and her patchwork bag, then made her way up across the porch to the back door.

There was a time when she would have dashed across the yard and burst through the door to greet her sisters. There would’ve been squeals and giggles and a rapid sharing of all news of the preceding year. They would speak so fast it was more a rattling off of headlines, details to be filled in later.

So it was rather a sad state of affairs that today, instead of rushing, she slowed her steps, delaying the inevitable. When Dora had turned seventeen she’d stopped coming to Mamaw’s house for long stays and instead only visited on
the occasional summer weekend with a friend in tow. Even after all these years Carson still remembered the hurt and pain of being the odd man out as the older girls whispered and giggled together.

She remembered Dora’s wedding to Calhoun Tupper. For her half sister she’d worn an embarrassingly froufrou petal-pink bridesmaid gown with matching dyed shoes. It was an elaborate, high-society affair, the wedding Dora had always dreamed of. It would have been Carson’s nightmare. But Dora
was
a beautiful bride in a froth of white. Even if Carson cringed to think of poor Dora going home with that bore of a husband.

She kicked a pebble, wondering how the distance between them had grown so great. At best, they had little left to say to one another. At worst, each looked askance at the other’s life.

Carson pushed open the back door and stepped into the kitchen. Even with the air-conditioning, the room was steamy. Mamaw used to think air-conditioning an island house was not only ridiculous but an appalling waste of money. Carson and the girls would open the windows wide and sleep on the porch under mosquito nets. When Mamaw reached menopause, however, the hot, humid weather became so unbearable she caved under pressure and installed central air-conditioning during the renovations. Still, Mamaw couldn’t abide a cold house and kept it only cool enough not to perspire. When Lucille cooked in the summer, the system couldn’t keep up.

Lucille stood at the stove, one hand on her hip and the other stirring a large bubbling pot. Her back had grown as
crooked as a politician. Another woman with a substantial girth stood beside the wooden kitchen table, and it took a moment for Carson to realize that it was Dora. She was so much heavier than when Carson had last seen her, and so washed out. Her thin blond hair, once always so neatly coiffed, was slipping sloppily from a black elastic. Drops of perspiration formed on her neck and forehead.
And who picked out that navy polka-dot dress?
Carson wondered. It made her look older than Mamaw, who’d never have been caught in a garment like that.

Dora was fanning herself with a napkin and speaking with intensity to Lucille. She glanced up when Carson entered; her fanning stopped and her eyes widened slightly with recognition.

“Carson!”

“Hey, Dora,” she called back with forced cheer, closing the door behind her to salvage whatever air-conditioning competed with the steam. “You’re here!” She moved toward her sister and leaned far forward to deliver a kiss. Dora’s cheek was moist from sweat. “It’s great to see you again.”

“It’s been too long.” Then Dora’s smile froze as her gaze swept Carson in her bikini. “Well, don’t you look cool.”

Carson felt the abrupt chill stiffen her spine. She suddenly felt like she was buck naked. “I went to the ocean. You should take a dip tomorrow. It’s going to be a hot one.”

Dora heaved a dramatically heavy sigh. “Maybe . . . I’m a mother. I don’t have the free time you do. I guess you’re accustomed to swimming and going to the beach whenever you want to.” She smirked. “The lifestyle of the rich and famous, right?”

Carson looked at her askance. “I’m neither rich nor famous, but I do like to swim.”

Dora smoothed a hair off her face. “Why, aren’t you the early bird, already here in time for a swim. When did you arrive?”

“A while ago,” Carson answered evasively, leaning over to set her bag and towel on the floor. She stepped close to Lucille, who was stirring gumbo on the enormous Viking stove, to kiss her cheek. “Smells good.”

Lucille smiled broadly with pleasure.

“Oh?” Dora asked. “When?”

Carson turned to face her. “At the beginning of the month.”

“You’ve been here for three weeks already?” Dora said, surprise mingling with a hint of disapproval. “Why didn’t you call?”

“I had a lot to do when I landed and you know how fast time flies once you get here. Besides, I knew you were coming for the party and that I’d see you then. And here you are!” She looked squarely into her sister’s eyes and smiled even brighter, determined to be upbeat and ignore Dora’s increasingly rapid fanning.

Carson prowled the kitchen table, checking out the hot sauce, the spices, the bits of sausage and shrimp. She spied a plate of cut okra and reached for it.

“You leave my okra alone,” Lucille called out from the stove.

Carson withdrew her hand guiltily. “I swear, you’ve got eyes in the back of your head.”

“I need that okra for my gumbo. If you’re hungry, take some of the crackers and cheese I laid out for you.” She
jerked a shoulder toward the sideboard. “Lawd, child, I can’t make a meal without you raiding my supplies. It’s always been like that.” She stopped and turned abruptly, frowning and shaking her spoon at Carson. “I opened the pantry today expecting to find a nice fig cookie to eat with my coffee and all that was left was a bunch of crumbs!”

“I was so hungry last night . . .” Carson replied, embarrassed.

“You ate the whole bag!”

Carson laughed sheepishly. “I know. I’m sorry. I’ll replace it.”

“Don’t bother,” Lucille replied, mollified, as she returned to the stove. “Just next time, mind there are other people in this house who might want some.” Lucille shook her head, mumbling. “I can’t understand how you can eat like a man and still look like that.” She pointed her spoon toward Carson’s body.

Carson just laughed but glancing over, she saw Dora’s eyes narrow as she looked at Carson’s taut, flat stomach, so flagrantly displayed in the kitchen. Carson sighed inwardly. She often received jealous looks like this, from thin and heavy women alike, especially when they watched her eating hamburgers or indulging in sweets. Envy burned in their eyes, as though they were cursing God that she could eat like that when they dieted every day and still couldn’t lose weight. Carson couldn’t stop and tell each one of them that it might have been the only food she’d eaten that day, or that she’d just run six miles or surfed in chilly ocean water for the past two hours.

She moved to the sideboard, where Lucille had left a
plate of Brie and crackers, and helped herself to a thick chunk of cheese. “Want one?” she asked Dora.

Dora looked pained as she stared at the cheese, but with seeming restraint, she shook her head no. “I’ll wait for dinner. Maybe a drink. It’s almost five, isn’t it? Is there wine in the fridge?” she asked, but didn’t wait for a reply. She opened the fridge and found it stocked to the brim with groceries Lucille had been laying in for the party weekend. An open bottle of white wine was waiting in the door. She stood a moment in front of the fridge, enjoying the coolness, then reluctantly closed the door. She took out three wineglasses from the shelf and filled one for herself, then, looking up with a questioning glance, got a shake of the head from Lucille and an enthusiastic nod from Carson.

“What made you decide to come so early?” Dora asked, handing Carson a glass.

Carson took a long drink of her wine. She needed it to soothe Dora’s cool greeting.

“Lots of reasons. It’s been forever since I’ve visited Mamaw and time just opened up.” She bit into the Brie, not willing to divulge the details. The days of blurting secrets between them were over. “Plus, I don’t know,” she added, her tone changing as she spoke from the heart. “Dora, I was surprised to see how
old
Mamaw is.”

“She’s turning eighty, after all.”

“I know. That’s my point. She’s always been old to me. I mean, when I was ten, she was . . .” Carson paused to do the math. “Fifty-six, which isn’t old, really.”

Lucille huffed from the stove. “I should say not!”

Carson smiled as she continued. “But it seemed old to me. So did sixty, seventy. But she was always so alive, so vibrant, in my mind. Ageless.”

“She’s not Santa Claus,” Dora said.

Carson was taken aback by the derision. “No, of course not,” she replied, crossing her arms across her chest. “It’s just that Mamaw was always the same in my mind. Immortal. But when I came home and saw her, she not only looks older, more frail—but I swear she’s shrinking.” She swirled the wine in her glass. “I suppose for the first time it hit me that Mamaw isn’t always going to be here, waiting. I shouldn’t take for granted that she’ll always be here for us. Each year, each day, is a gift.”

“I don’t take her for granted,” Dora said. “I come out to see Mamaw every chance I get.”

“You’re lucky you live so close.”

“Not close, exactly,” Dora clarified. “With good traffic it’s still some forty-five minutes away. I still have to plan. I mean, she’s not across the street. But I make the effort.”

Carson was silenced by the implied criticism that she had not made the effort in several years. But she couldn’t defend herself.

Lucille turned and said, “You know, I can’t recall the last time you came out to see Miz Marietta.”

“Why, Lucille, you know we come every summer,” replied Dora.

“Uh-huh,” Lucille said, turning again to the pot. “When it’s nice enough to visit the beach.”

“You know Mamaw joins us every Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving. For every special occasion.”

There followed an awkward pause during which Dora’s cheeks flamed and Carson turned to help herself to another piece of cheese. She knew that Lucille wanted to level the playing field for her by eliminating false claims, and for this she was grateful.