Pawleys Island

by Dorothea Benton Frank

“We’ll be all right in a minute,” I said.

  As predicted, we rounded the hedgerow and the breeze from the Waccamaw washed us in cool waves of Japanese honeysuckle and sweet olive. It was going to be a beautiful night.

  I loved coming here and had always thought that Huey’s gardens were one of the best-kept secrets in the world. The terrace floor of ancient rose-colored handmade bricks was laid out in a basket-weave design, held together with a cracking mortar that allowed baby moss to creep through here and there. Around the edges at perfect intervals of twenty feet stood great lead urns planted with decorative grass climbing for heaven and asparagus ferns that dusted the earth. All of it waved in unison to the rhythm of the river’s breeze.

  Huey was standing by Miss Olivia, who was seated in one of eight wrought-iron chairs that surrounded the heavy glass-top dining table. The relentless sun had faded the magenta-striped cushions in the seats and backs of the chairs, but they were still cool and inviting. There was a centerpiece of pink hydrangea blossoms stuffed in a large cut-glass bowl. On either side of it stood oversized hurricanes, tall enough to ensure the glow of its columned candles.

  Off to the side, closer to the house, was another seating area with chairs and glass-topped end tables. Nearby stood the butler’s field table on which was placed a silver Revere bowl of cracked ice and silver tongs. Crystal tumblers and bottles of white wine in an oversized silver ice bucket waited on a round silver tray. There was bourbon in a decanter and Perrier wrapped in a linen napkin. Byron moved in the sidelines in his starched linen mandarin-collared jacket, coming forward to offer a cheese straw or a napkin or to refresh a drink.

  Whatever it was that Miss Olivia was saying, Huey’s face was filled with delight. Their affection for each other was so obviously genuine that anyone would have wanted to be a part of their lives.

  It was the kind of freeze-frame you found in a magazine feature article on old money and how the vastly rich really passed their time. Dressed for the evening and drinks with mother at dusk. The music of water and floral air gently moving the landscape back and forth in a dance of grace. Delicious bits served on silver trays to whet the appetite for the beautiful dinner that was sure to follow.

  Rebecca was excited. Huey spotted us and waved. I couldn’t wait to walk on the Valentine stage and take up my part.

  “This is like a movie,” Rebecca whispered to me as we walked toward them.

  “Yep. It’s Cary Grant and Bette Davis all over again, except that Cary’s a plump old bird.”

  Rebecca giggled and I made a guilty face.

  “Hello, Mr. Valentine! Miss Olivia!” I said. “What a perfect night!”

  “Don’t you look fabulous? As always…” Huey said to me, and then to Rebecca he said, “Miss Rebecca! You shame my rose garden! Look at you! Come join us!”

  Byron had already poured a Perrier for me and offered the goblet from his small cocktail tray. Even the tray had a linen doily with lace edges, starched within an inch of its life.

  “Good evening, Miss Abigail,” he said and arched his eyebrow in familiarity. I was sure he plucked them. They were too perfect.

  “Byron,” I said, nodding my head in greeting. “Thank you.”

  “And what can I get for this lovely young lady?”

  “A glass of white wine would be nice,” Rebecca said.

  “Tonight we’re pouring an extraordinary ninety-six Louis Jadot, Meursault and a three-ninety-nine California char-doe-naay that I wouldn’t serve trailer trash. Does the lady have a preference?” His eyebrows began to undulate as he waited for Rebecca to respond.

  Rebecca didn’t know whether to be horrified or entertained, so I answered for her.

  “I think the Meursault will do the trick. And Byron?”

  “Hmmm? Oh!” He reached in his pocket and handed Rebecca the keys to her car. “Good as new!”

  “Thanks!” Rebecca said.

  “Where on earth did you get the swill?”

  “Miss Olivia bought a case at Sam’s Club the last time she took off and drove herself to Charleston. It would destroy her not to offer it.”

  “Save it for the next opening—we can make sangria,” Rebecca said.

  Before turning, Bryon waved his hand behind his head and then pointed his finger in Rebecca’s direction. “Sangria! Oh, I love it. It’s so eighties! Isn’t she the clever one?”

  “He’s a little—I mean don’t you think he’s…” Rebecca said.

  “Over the top? Of course he is! But he’s hilarious and I’m just used to him, that’s all. His squeal is a little bit addictive.”

  “What do I do about the bill for my car?”

  “Don’t worry. Huey will twist it out of you.”

  Rebecca smiled and shook her head.

  We sat with Miss Olivia. Huey finally took a chair and we began to talk about everything except Rebecca and how she lost her home and children.

  “We had a tourist nearly drop dead today in the big house,” Miss Olivia said. “Screamed bloody murder and passed out. Some woman from Pennsylvania. They said she looked like a giant halibut, just flopped on the floor! EMS came and everything!”

  “Yet another sighting,” Huey said, as droll as Oscar Wilde.

  “Sighting of who?” Rebecca said.

  “Alice,” I said, “the ghost of Alice Flagg. She’s always coming around, or so they say. She used to take music lessons here in the big house from Miss Olivia’s great-grand-something or other. I guess she feels at home here.”

  “Who is Alice Flagg?” Rebecca said.

  “Oh, my dear!” Miss Olivia said, as though Rebecca had spent the most of her life on the moon. “You’ve never heard of Alice Flagg? Why, it’s the most romantic story in the world!”

  “Sentimental sop, if you ask me,” Huey said. “I wish she’d find that ring and get her misery moving to the light.”

  “What in the world are you talking about?” Rebecca was either politely stonewalling us, getting down to the dirt, or she had a fascination with the other side.

  “Well,” said Miss Olivia, moving closer to Rebecca, fully ready to reveal the goods on Alice, “she was a young woman in love with a fellow from the wrong side of the tracks…”

  “He was the son of a merchant—not a rag picker, Mother.”

  “Don’t interrupt me, son, or I’ll go get a switch! Anyway, as I was saying, her family wanted her to marry the son of another plantation owner so they could join the properties.”

  “It’s always about money,” I said and gave Huey a little jab in the ribs.

  “Quite,” he said.

  Miss Olivia cut her eyes at us and continued. “Well, the story goes that she took this young man’s ring, caught a terrible fever and had to be brought home from school to recuperate. She was very ill and her brother spotted the ring around her neck on a chain or a ribbon or some such thing that kept it near her heart. He snatched it away and threw it in the Waccamaw, and Alice has been coming back ever since, looking for her ring. Isn’t that the saddest story in the world?”

  Huey played four violins with his fingers and Miss Olivia reached over and slapped his hand. Huey and I smiled along with Miss Olivia, but Rebecca was somber.

  “What’s wrong, honey?” I said.

  “It’s not the saddest story in the world. Mine’s worse, don’t you think?”

  By this time, Rebecca was working on her third glass of wine, Miss Olivia had knocked back her third sherry and Huey had drained his third bourbon. The tide turned and the elephant was on the table for inspection.

  “How old are your children?” Huey asked.

  “My daughter, Samantha, is almost fifteen and my son, Evan, is almost thirteen.”

  “And they’re in camp in Maine?” I said.

  “Yes. Sami’s at Arcadia and Evan’s at Pinehurst. The camps are very close to each other. They’ve been going for years.”

  Rebecca’s voice became quiet, and she looked at the river like she might like to be in it, drifting along wi
th its current to a better life in a faraway place. Either I was going to speak now or let it go for another night. You know me. I spoke.

  “Who was the judge?” I said.

  “Campbell. Avery Campbell,” Rebecca said. “Look, I really don’t want to sit up here and monopolize the night talking about my problems. There’s nothing to be done about it anyway.”

  “Dear,” Miss Olivia said and reached out to Rebecca and covered her hand with her own, “I just don’t understand. Why in the world would a judge allow this to happen?”

  “Because it was what my children wanted,” Rebecca said. “They wanted to live with their father.”

  “And because he’s a lazy judge who prefers a clean desk over a long hearing. Let me explain it, Rebecca,” I said. “Miss Olivia? I know this is going to sound crazy, but here it is. In this state of ours a child can be heard by the courts at age thirteen.”

  “Thirteen! That’s outrageous!” Huey said. “When I was thirteen I didn’t know what socks to wear!”

  “Well, sometimes the law protects children and sometimes it doesn’t. The closer the child is to eighteen, the more the court will listen to their preference for custodial parent. All Rebecca’s husband would have had to do was to get the children to sign papers saying why they wanted to live with their father and why they didn’t want to live with Rebecca. The stronger their complaint, the more the court listens. Especially if both children express a desire for one parent over the other—well, that’s how it is.”

  “That’s horrible,” Miss Olivia said.

  “And there was a statement from the children’s guidance counselor saying that the children constantly complained to her about their home life. About me, basically.”

  “Oh great. The larger problem is that it should be against the law for one spouse to alienate the children from the other.”

  “There’s a law?” Rebecca said. Her face drained of all color and I thought she might faint.

  “I wish it was, Rebecca. It’s called parental alienation—it’s a syndrome. Didn’t your attorney go over that with you?”

  “No. No, he didn’t.”

  I could see where this was headed, and I decided to just ask a few hard questions, intending then to change the subject so that Rebecca didn’t feel like she was getting raked over the coals.

  “Who did you use?” I asked.

  “Jeff Mahoney,” she said. “He lives down the street from our—I mean—where I used to live. He’s extremely nice. He usually does wills and estates, but he offered to handle this for me and I trusted him, so I said yes. Nat was furious with me and said we were just wasting money. He said I didn’t even need a lawyer.”

  “I’ll bet,” I said and winced. “Who did he use?” I was afraid to ask, knowing he had probably used a pit bull.

  “Harry Albright,” she said. “Do you know him?”

  I could feel bile rising in my throat. Harry Albright should have been disbarred years ago. He was totally unethical and always in the headlines, billed more phony hours than anyone, was on his fourth wife and I had always suspected that he drank. He probably kicked his dog, if he had one.

  “Yeah, I know him,” I said, as nonchalantly as I could master.

  “Dinner is served!” Byron announced in his theatrical voice.

  Huey got up to help Miss Olivia to her feet. Rebecca and I would follow them into the dining room, but I held back for a few moments to ask Rebecca a few other questions.

  “Rebecca? Wait. Listen, what did he have on you? I mean, is there any reason that the courts would have accepted you as unfit?”

  “Nat said I was mentally unstable.”

  “Are you?”

  “I was fine until I found out he wanted my house and children and then you can bet the ranch that I went crazy!”

  “Of course. Who wouldn’t? But did you have an affair or do drugs or drink too much?”

  “Heavens no! I taught Sunday School for goodness sake!”

  “Then what? What did he have on you?”

  “He said I was negligent. That the children had to wait too long for me to pick them up from school. And that I was impossible to please—that I nagged the children and made them depressed.”

  “Is that true?”

  “Sometimes. Look, I’m not perfect, but I was a good mother. A good mother.”

  I believed her. Somehow we got through dinner and got through it without any more conversation about Nat, the children and the divorce. But I was uneasy. I smelled a large male skunk, maybe two.

  FIVE

  THE SANDS OF PAWLEYS

  ALL through the night, the air in my bedroom nearly crackled with my annoyance. It was as though my body was producing its own heat lightning, flashes of warmth and the heavy stillness that followed. The hours passed as I tangled and smoothed out my sheets. The ceiling fan clicked, feeding my mood with each rotation. The pillows radiated under my neck; the hair at the nape of my neck was damp with perspiration, and no matter how I rearranged and replumped the pillows, I couldn’t get comfortable. I was having a rough night.

  If Rebecca’s situation was what I thought it was, my fury was going to torment me into the next century if I couldn’t do something about it. And why? Why did I care? I thought about it for a while. What had I been doing with my life? Becoming more and more useless to anyone, that’s what. Hedonistic. Self-serving. In perpetual denial. Cowardly. What happens to a woman with infinite blessings—good health, plenty of resources, a reasonably sharp mind, decent looks—what happens when she drops off the face of the earth to her entire past and begins again in a tiny magical kingdom like Pawleys with no demands on her time other than the ones she arranges herself? When she has no responsibilities other than to feed herself, dress herself, be witty and pleasant and pretend that her friendship with an aging gay man who owns a gallery is enough to sustain her? When she has no challenges other than improving her handicap?

  I’ll tell you what happens. She gets bitter. Dull. She smolders in her self-inflicted pit of insignificance. Smiles for the outside world and is miserable inside—that’s what she is. A phony. And then one day, along comes another dumb-ass like herself and she sees herself in the dumb-ass’s face. She’s not Narcissus admiring her own reflection in the water. No, the recognition she has fills her with self-loathing, and she is compelled to save the other from drowning.

  Rebecca was unaware of the nearly insurmountable despair that would follow her to the end of her days if she allowed herself to comply with her expulsion from her home and her children’s lives. It was the only thing about which I was certain. Life has a way of wrenching your heart. No one escapes trials. Rebecca didn’t understand the weight of accepting this wretched fate imposed on her and that it could ruin her soul beyond recognition.

  Indeed, these days I hardly recognized myself.

  Rebecca was a nice woman—I was pretty sure about that. Her husband was a philandering, lying, abusive, manipulative, asshole—I was pretty sure about that too. But her timidity and insecurities were going to leave her in extraordinary pain for the rest of her life because nobody, including her, had been brave enough, and certainly not noble enough, to see the truth.

  A man wants a divorce? Big deal. It happened every day of the week. I say, go have your divorce, but for the love of God please try and be a gentleman about it? Please? Don’t manipulate the children like a puppet master and turn them against their own mother. Don’t make them sign papers and scoot them off to camp without the mother even knowing what transpired.

  I called Rebecca the next morning at eight o’clock, which seemed to be the earliest you could call someone when you wanted to chat over mounting an offensive.

  “Hey! You up?”

  “Yeah, I was just getting ready to go walk on the beach.”

  “Want company?”

  Rebecca paused and then said, “Sure. Why not?”

  “I’ll be there in ten.”

  I drove to Litchfield thinking about my own heavy rocks
in my sack. That was the worst feature of getting involved with Rebecca’s mess. Dealing with hers might force me to face mine. I wanted to avoid that in the worst possible way. Whenever I felt a little introspection coming on, I just whacked thousands of tennis balls and golf balls, trying to forget.

  My cell phone rang. It was Huey.

  “Morning! Where are you?”

  “Actually, I’m on the way to Rebecca’s to take a walk on the beach. Want to join us?”

  “Me? Exercise? Do you want me to ruin my reputation? No, but thank you. Listen. Do you have a moment?”

  “Just about one. I’m pulling into Litchfield right now.”

  “Well, Abigail. I’ve been up all night worrying about that child. You know we have to do something, don’t you?”

  “Who?”

  “Well, obviously it’s you.”

  “Huey, I was up most of the night as well. I don’t want to get involved in this, this awful business. I’m retired.”

  “It scares you, doesn’t it?”

  “Hell, no. Nothing could scare me after what I’ve seen in this world.”

  “Humph. You can say whatever you want, but I think her trouble falls under the headline of man’s inhumanity to man.”

  “When a couple wants out of a marriage, they can do terrible things to each other.”

  “When you know someone’s being hoodwinked, you are just as guilty if you don’t say something about it.”

  “We’ll see. I don’t have enough information yet, Huey. And it’s not like she’s asked us for help. If anything, our little questions annoy the daylights out of her.”

  “I suppose. You coming in this morning?”

  I knew what that meant.

  “Want a Coke?”

  “And a sausage biscuit?”

  “I’ll see you around ten.”

  “You’re an angel, Abigail. An absolute angel.”

  I didn’t feel like an angel at all as I pulled into the parking lot of Rebecca’s building and got out. She was sitting on the bottom step, tying her sneakers.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  We crossed the dunes, and as always the spectacular sight of the wide and long stretch of beach made my heartbeat quicken. The blue sky was clear with the tiniest shreds of white clouds stretching out just above the horizon. Flocks of seagulls flew in formation overhead, and scattered pelicans slowly circled and then dive-bombed into the waters, catching sushi. Hundreds of little sandpipers darted to the edge of the shore, digging for periwinkles, and scurried away on the arrival of each foamy wave. The water sparkled under the rising sun and the salt-scented eastern breeze blew our hair away from our faces.