The Summer Girls (24 page)

Carson closed her eyes while her grandmother combed her hair. After the first painful detangling of knots, her grandmother was able to run the comb smoothly all the way from her scalp past her shoulders.

“You have your mother’s hair,” Mamaw told her. “So thick and dark.”

“I don’t remember her.”

“It’s no wonder. You were so young when she died. Dear Sophie . . .”

“I don’t even have a picture of her. Everything was lost in the fire.”

“Yes,” Mamaw replied softly.

“What was she like?”

Mamaw paused her hand and sighed. “She was very beautiful. Dark, evocative.” She shrugged. “So French. And rather shy, or perhaps she just didn’t speak English all that well, I don’t know. You are an interesting combination of both of your parents.”

“I wish I got Daddy’s blond hair, like Dora. Not this rat’s nest.” She tugged angrily at her hair, hating the dark color and thickness of it, hating the way the girls sometimes called her a gypsy.

“Someday, when you’re as old as I am, you’ll thank the Lord for this thick head of hair when all your friends’ hair is thinning. When you’re a young woman your hair will be one of your best features,” Mamaw told her knowingly. Then she reached up to grasp Carson’s chin and peruse her face in shrewd study. “And your eyes, of course.”

Carson looked at Mamaw with her face pinched in doubt. “No, Mamaw,” she replied, trying to be stoic. “I know I won’t be beautiful when I grow up. Not like Dora.”

Mamaw huffed, releasing her chin. “Yes, it’s true our Dora is beautiful. A Southern belle kind of beauty. Yours is a different beauty. One you’ll have to grow into.”

“Like my mother?”

“Yes,” Mamaw replied. “But did you know, my dear, that you also get your dark looks from our side of the family?”

Carson’s eyes widened. “But everyone’s hair is yellow.”

“Not everyone’s. There is a line of dark Irish in our blood.”

Carson didn’t believe that fact would help her become a beauty, but she loved Mamaw all the more for trying to cheer her up.

The next day Mamaw dressed in a summer silk dress, coiffed her hair, and got into the blue Cadillac for a trip across the bridge to her house in Charleston. When she returned a few hours later, she carried with her a large package wrapped in brown paper. Dora and Carson were hot on her heels as she and Lucille carried the mystery package into the house. Eyes twinkling, they carried it directly into Carson’s room. Carson and Dora exchanged looks of wide-eyed wonder.

Mamaw ignored the girls’ questions and kept an enigmatic smile on her face as she removed the sheets of brown paper to reveal a large portrait in an ornate gold frame.

Carson gasped, unable to tear her gaze from the proud, beautiful woman depicted. Mamaw and Lucille hoisted the big portrait and hung it with great effort. When they were
done, Mamaw slapped dust from her hands, placed them on her hips, and stood back to admire it.

“Carson,” she said in a tone that made Carson stand straighter, “this is your great-great-great-great-grandmother Claire. She was considered the city’s greatest beauty in her time. Quite legendary. Look at her eyes. The blue—that’s the Muir blue color that’s been carried down for generations. Claire was the wife of the great sea captain who founded our fortune.” She lifted her hand and said in a staged whisper, “The pirate! The story goes that once he’d set eyes on Claire he gave up the life of a pirate and settled down in Charleston to win her heart. She went against her family’s wishes to marry him. The rest, as they say, is history. The love of a good woman can change a man, you know,” Mamaw admonished.

“But Mamaw, why did you bring the painting here from the big house?” Carson wanted to know.

Mamaw reached out to lift Carson’s chin with the tip of her finger. “I saw the resemblance you share with Claire. I want you to see it, too. Every day, when you wake up, look into this portrait and see how beautiful you are. And courageous.”

“Dear, wise Mamaw,” Carson murmured, remembering that day. Because there was no one to share with her stories of her mother, of whom there was not so much as a photograph, this ancestor had, in her child’s mind, taken on the role of her mother. At night before she fell asleep, Carson had looked into Claire’s beautiful eyes and shared her secrets and believed she was heard.

Of all the treasures in this house, Carson knew that this portrait would be the single item she would request.

Carson had always seen the spark of a challenge in Claire’s expression, the look of a woman who never surrendered. Looking at the portrait now, she felt herself rally. Carson took a deep breath and dragged herself from her bed. She went downstairs to gather a bucket, strong cleaning fluid, and an armful of rags, then escaped Nate’s current temper tantrum to go to the garage to dig out from the ruins the promised golf cart. It was either that or the rusty bike.

Inside the garage it was as dark and ancient as an old barn. Spiderwebs graced every nook and sand filled all the crannies. The single four-paned window was so dirty, rays of light barely penetrated the grime. Carson found the golf cart parked in the far corner behind a dead lawn mower, two rusted bicycles, and a worm-eaten wood table covered with dusty brown boxes filled with assorted rusted tools that Mamaw felt had life left in them. Carson thought her time would be better spent renting a trash bin and tossing everything into it.

The scent of vinegar and accumulated dust made her sneeze and her eyes water, but she gritted her teeth and pressed on, sweeping and scrubbing the dirt, cobwebs, and mouse droppings from the white golf cart. It was a two-seater cart with a bench in back. Once she washed and rinsed it with the hose and dried it with old towels Lucille had provided, she was surprised to discover that the little cart and vinyl seats were in pretty good shape. Like the Cadillac, it was probably only taken out once in a blue moon. Carson took heart. A new battery, maybe a few other incidentals, and this golf cart might really work.

A few days later, she was rumbling in her cart along the narrow roads shaded by scores of palm trees and the graceful low boughs of ancient live oaks. She felt the breeze against her cheek, heard the crunch of gravel beneath the wheels, and likened the feeling to being on a boat in the water, closer to the world around her and not trapped behind steel doors and glass.

“Darn Mamaw for always being right,” she muttered to herself, having to admit she loved it. Carson liked to name her vehicles, so she christened the cart “Bouncing Matilda.” While Matilda wasn’t the Blue Bomber by any stretch of the imagination, it had a certain charm all its own and did the job of getting her from point A to point B on the small streets of Sullivan’s Island—at least in the daylight. As she drove along the road at a slow speed, she chuckled, remembering those two old hens sitting on the porch playing gin rummy and how they’d completely bamboozled her.

That night Carson found Nate lying on his bed already in his favorite pajamas with the spaceships-and-stars pattern. He was reading a book. He looked at her as she approached, his body stiffening in wariness. She felt immensely sad to see it. She wanted him to like her and to feel at home here. He was such a skittish little guy with his dark eyes staring up. Suddenly she thought of Delphine and, in that moment, knew
exactly how to behave around Nate. They really were alike in many ways, she thought.

She walked slowly to the bed, not getting too close, not making any sudden moves. “Here,” Carson said, holding out two books. “I bought these for you. I thought you’d like them.”

“What are they?” he asked in a small voice.

“Well, take them and see.”

Nate pulled himself up into a seated position and cautiously took the books. As he saw that they were both about dolphins, his face lit up.

“They’re not baby books,” she told him, getting closer but mindful of keeping her distance. “This one describes some of the research on the intelligence of dolphins. I really enjoyed it. Like, did you know dolphins look at themselves in the mirror? I mean, they know it’s themselves they’re looking at. That’s called being self-aware.”

“I read about that already,” Nate said, matter-of-factly. “Mamaw gave me a book about dolphins.”

“Oh. Well, there’s a lot of other interesting information in it. And this other one is sort of a picture guide to all marine life. There are other animals out in the sea you might like to read about. Like orcas and porpoises and whales.”

Nate began flipping through the pictures hungrily. He paused to look up and ask, “Can dolphins really be glad to see people?”

“Yes,” Carson replied honestly. “I think they can.”

“I’ve been reading a lot about dolphins,” Nate said seriously. “Did you know that male dolphins are bigger than females? Large dolphins in the Pacific Ocean can weigh
up to one thousand pounds. I’ve been thinking. Delphine is a bottlenose dolphin in the Atlantic Ocean, and she is a female. I don’t know her age, though. Do you?”

“No.”

Nate considered this. “She might weigh about five hundred pounds.”

Carson smiled in appreciation of the boy’s cleverness. “That sounds right.”

Nate accepted her approval. He looked at his book a moment, then lifted his head. This time, his eyes, though they did not meet hers, were filled with worry. “Is my mother alone with my father?”

Carson appreciated the gravity of his question and responded seriously, “No, I don’t believe so.”

“He won’t take care of her.”

“Nate, your mother is fine and she can take care of herself. She’s only meeting your father, packing up some things for you, and then she’ll be back.”

He thought about that answer. “Can you put it on the calendar when she will come?”

Carson scratched her head. She knew she had to be honest and clear with Nate. He wouldn’t accept the hypothetical.

“I don’t know exactly when she’ll be back. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I will call your mother tomorrow and ask her. If she gives me a date, I will put it on the calendar for you. Okay?”

“Okay.”

He looked so small and sad and alone, Carson wished there was some way for her to reach him.

“Let’s get to sleep early tonight,” she told him. “We need our rest. Because tomorrow, we’re going to swim.”

Nate’s eyes rounded in terror. “No. I won’t.”

“You’ll love it. You’ll see.”

“I won’t.”

Carson crossed her arms and pulled out her trump card. “Delphine will be there.”

“Okay,” he said grumpily, but he scrambled under his blanket.

“Good night, Nate,” she said, yearning to kiss him but refraining. Instead, she tucked his blanket higher along his chin. “Sleep tight. Dream about dolphins.”

“That’s stupid. You can’t make yourself dream about anything,” Nate said, closing his eyes and yawning.

Carson watched his small body curl up and her heart pinged as she thought how hard it must be to live only seeing a world filled with rules and concrete facts, without the joy of spontaneity and imagination.

Another plus in favor of the golf cart—easy to find a parking spot!

Carson was in a cheery mood and buoyed with energy as she began her lunch shift. The schools were out and the lunch tables were packed, with a line at the door. By the final hour of her shift, however, Carson was dragging. Worse, she felt like she wanted something alcoholic to drink. The notion made her jittery and she told herself it was just a blood-sugar drop.