Pawleys Island

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  “But, Daphne! I’m not opening a law office here!”

  “By and by, we gone see what we see. Meanwhile, either you are a professional woman or you ain’t. Now, go do something to fix yourself up and then git! I got a lot of work to do! What color you want this room to be?”

  “Color? Shoot! I don’t know. Paint it beige. My mother always said, When in doubt, do something neutral.”

  She rolled her eyes at me for the first of what I knew would be a million rolls.

  There had been no discussion, really. She had simply arrived and decided that my life was a sham waiting to be discovered. There was a lot of truth to be said about appearances. I had been arrogantly shabby long enough. That was fine for the house, but not for an office. Feeling something between dread of what she would do and the eager anticipation of a child promised a birthday party, I called Rebecca.

  “Listen,” I said, “I’m going down to Charleston to deliver a ton of subpoenas and to shop for furniture. Wanna come? We can have lunch at Rue de Jean or something. And we can go over all the stuff that’s coming back from my first round of subpoenas. Not to mention all the ugly evidence I found on Nat’s computer.” I had uncovered lots of evidence there and in the bank statements—some of it expected but one particular item had my attention. I wasn’t sure how to tell Rebecca what I suspected.

  “Sure, fine. That sounds good. Hey, guess what? You know my friend Claudia? She’s coming to Litchfield this week to see me. I can’t wait for you to meet her.”

  “Well, and I can’t wait to meet her either!”

  On the road to Charleston, Rebecca and I chatted like only two gals off for a day of shopping can do: incessantly. And, thankfully, not too much about Nat beyond the contents of his hard drive, which was disgusting. But, disgusting was eclipsed by need to discuss, which I decided was healthy for Rebecca, particularly in this case. Anything I could do to strengthen her resolve to take back her children was positive.

  “He really said that?” she said.

  “Yep! He was talking to some teenage girl from Austin, Texas, and told her she was awesome and he would love to see what she looked like in a bathing suit.”

  “Nasty!”

  “He must have used the word awesome a hundred times. And cool.”

  “What’s the definition of cool anyway?”

  I started to laugh. “Interesting question! Tell me, oh, sage! What is the meaning of cool? Well, I used to think I was and then I was sure I wasn’t and now I think it’s stupid to want to be it.”

  “You can say that again! But how do you explain your overcoordinated style of dress? Isn’t that an attempt at cool?”

  “Ah! She’s thinks she’s got me! Look, Yul Brynner once said he wore black all the time because he never had to worry about things matching. I’m cool with Yul.”

  “Who in the world is Yul Brynner?”

  “Never mind.”

  So, we stayed on course by talking about what a sleaze Nat was, the size of her possible settlement and old movie stars that were decades away from her frame of reference. Which, of course, only reinforced that fact that I was not cool.

  We talked about everything except our Saturday night crying jag. I was glad she didn’t ask me for any more details of Ashley’s death. I was still raw, and Saturday night had made me so miserable that all I did was wind up reliving the whole experience. What possible good did that do? No, feelings were not for me anymore. The few times in my life I had indulged my feelings, disaster struck. So it was a relief to talk about shopping.

  Where to start the retail blitz? We decided to go to Morris Sokol in the city and GDC in Mount Pleasant. Both had furniture and accessories for immediate delivery. GDC was our first stop.

  “This used to be a grocery store,” I said. “I think it was called the Colonial? And Krispy Kreme had a shop down on the end there.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Rebecca said. “It’s been GDC since I can remember.”

  “I should get ancient and decrepit tattooed across my forehead.”

  “Honey, if I look half as good as you do when I’m as old as you are, I’ll throw a party!”

  “Right. Thanks.”

  I got out of the car and my momentary thought of an emergency call to Dr. Kevorkian was overwritten by the window displays. I wondered when the last time was that I had actually bought something for my house on Pawleys or my house in Columbia. Ages. I had no intention of changing the porch, the living area or my bedroom and even though I knew that crazy little Daphne was right, changing even one room made me very nervous. But I decided to set up the back bedroom with my parent’s belongings and give away the old relics that had furnished it since the Roosevelt era. If I could make it look close to how it had when they occupied it, maybe it would assuage my discomfort.

  It took Rebecca and me exactly thirty minutes to choose a partner’s desk and a leather wing chair on wheels, two upholstered club chairs and a small sofa, a coffee table, two end tables and a large rug to anchor the whole room. They agreed to deliver it all the very next day. I was thrilled, not by what I had bought but by the efficency of the venture. I still needed bookcases and some kind of a file drawer. I just wanted to get the job done. And I was ravenous.

  Rue de Jean was able to give us a table because we had the good fortune to arrive before the lunch crowd crush.

  “I love this place,” Rebecca said as we looked over the menus. “Nat would never bring me here.”

  “Too chic for his blood?”

  “Yeah. If they didn’t have a television monitor hanging from the ceiling with ball games blasting, he wouldn’t go.”

  “Lovely. Well, you won’t miss that part of your former life. By the way, do you know someone at Nat’s office who could confirm Charlene’s cell phone number?”

  “Sure. I can call one of the girls. Why?”

  “Well, I’ve got statements from SunCom for Nat’s bills since last February, and there are approximately forty calls every day—incoming and outgoing—from the same number. I’m pretty sure it’s Charlene, but this helps us further establish his infidelity.”

  “It’s not like we need all that much help in that department, but I’ll make the phone call anyway. Why in the world would they call each other that many times a day? They work together!”

  “Yeah, I know. Seems idiotic, but it fits a pattern of compulsive behavior. Most of the phone calls are under a minute during the day, but the ones at night get quite lengthy. And I have MasterCard statements that show almost daily visits to a motel on Highway 17 for a period of almost eighteen months, and the occasional shopping spree at an adult novelty store.”

  “That is unbelievable.” She paused for a moment. “God, he is such a pig.”

  “No argument there. Anyway, when we have gathered all the information we need I can tell you the chief administrative judge is going to ask us to go to mediation. They hate these things going to court because court is so expensive.”

  “Do we have a judge for our hearing yet?”

  “Nope. I should hear this week. There are four of them. One’s a reasonable woman, one stinks—that’s Campbell—the other one’s okay, I hear, and then there’s a new guy. But as soon as I know, you’ll know. Getting the right judge is critical.”

  “Getting fed is more critical right now. I’m having the French onion soup and the croque monsieur.”

  “Yum! I think I want the roasted chicken.”

  We ordered and ate and at the end of lunch I gave her the real discovery I had found.

  “Okay, I have one more thing to tell you, and this is just a curiosity at the moment. If we can confirm this, there could be criminal action taken against Nat and Charlene.”

  Rebecca’s face shot up from her plate and she leaned in toward me.

  “What did you say?”

  “Well, according to Nat’s tax returns, he earned one hundred and eighty thousand dollars last year.”

  “Yeah, and he also owns twenty-five percent of the busin
ess.”

  “Which we will have audited. But he spent two hundred and seventy thousand dollars last year.”

  “What?” Rebecca shook her head for a moment trying to make sense of what I had said. “Two hundred seventy thousand? And on what? Where’d he get the extra money? That’s a difference of what?”

  “Ninety thousand.”

  “Holy crow! Where’d he get it?”

  “That’s the question, Watson. Maybe he took out a loan we don’t know about, but I don’t think so because there’s nothing in his canceled checks to show repayment. I think he’s skimming Daddy’s business with the help of Charlene. Maybe.”

  “Oh, my God! His daddy will kick his behind from here to China!”

  I smiled like a cat. “Acquiring money in this unseemly manner and spending undeclared income is a felony, and if it’s true that this is what they were doing, the IRS will be very interested in having a chat with old Nat and Charlene.”

  “You don’t know Tisdale Simms! By the time he’s done with Nat there won’t be any Nat left for the IRS! How do you think they did it?”

  “Do you want dessert?”

  “God, yes.”

  “I think that when people would want to secure a car deal they might have given Nat a check for five hundred dollars or a thousand dollars. The business is called Simms Autoworld, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So, Nat gets a buying customer, they make the deposit check out to Simms without the corporate title and he gives the check to Charlene. Only Charlene deposits it in a special account that pays for hotel rooms, vacations, plastic surgery, et cetera.”

  Rebecca’s eyes sparkled with surprise. “Maybe I’ll have pie.”

  The rest of the meal was littered with comments like, Do you really think Nat’s a crook? And, Just what do you think they were doing in an adult novelty store? And, most important, Rebecca said over and over, I can’t wait to see the look on Nat’s face when he sees that everyone knows he’s a pathological, narcissistic liar and an abusive son of a bitch. To that I would reply, Don’t be surprised if he thinks the whole world is wrong.

  At almost five o’clock, after finding lamps and bookcases at Morris Sokol and delivering the subpoenas, we drove back to Pawleys. I dropped Rebecca off at her condo and went home to see what havoc Daphne had created. Byron’s car and Huey’s car were in my driveway. Had Huey come to play the conductor in Operation Gentrify?

  The first thing I noticed was the smell of paint and the sounds of sixties music from Motown. As soon as I came in the back door I felt the tiniest of all urges to dance. I say tiny because, let’s be honest, it had been a while since anyone would have called me a rocking kind of gal.

  All the doors and windows were open and even from the kitchen I could see furniture piled up the whole way to the front porch. They were having a party without me.

  “I’m home!” I sang out, hoping for an answer and navigating my way through the maze.

  No answer, just two off-key male voices singing “Under the Boardwalk” with great gusto. I peeked in the bedroom, the former shrine to my parents, and burst out laughing from the sight before me. There were Huey and Byron wearing white painter’s jumpsuits and white painter’s caps, their faces splattered all over with drips and dabs of paint. Huey was using a roller to paint the walls and Byron was on a ladder painting the ceiling. Daphne was wearing a large shirt over her clothes and on her hands and knees painting trim. Painter’s tape edged every angle of the room, and the floor was covered in drop cloths.

  “Good grief!” I said. “I wish I had a camera!”

  “Thank heavens you decided to take this up on a Monday! Great God! I feel like Tom Sawyer!” Huey said and came to kiss my cheek. I backed up, not wanting to get paint in my hair.

  “You’re some mess, Huey Valentine. You’ve got cream-colored measles all over you!”

  “I do? Heavens! Byron? Give me a little cloth with some turpentine on it, please. By the way, it’s Rich Cream, Benjamin Moore.”

  “Of course it is,” I said and shook my head.

  “Byron?” Huey said.

  Byron looked down from his ladder and said, “You want me to come all the way down this ladder to get a wet cloth for you? You must be kidding. I’m a little busy? Hmm?” He went back to his painting, ignoring Huey.

  Byron was right, Huey was acting spoiled. I loved it when Byron called Huey on his nonsense.

  “I’ll get it, precious,” I said and looked around the room for something to do the job.

  “It’s water-based,” Daphne said, getting up to stretch and take a break. “Just wash it off!” she said to Huey and turned to me saying, “So what do you think?”

  Huey pursed his lips. “Wash your face! Wash your face! Next you’ll tell me to brush my teeth!”

  “Oh, Huey!” I said and wiped his face. Then I looked all around the room, which had taken on a completely new personality. It was reborn and fresh. It was clean as a whistle and optimistic. The walls, ceiling and trim were creamy and warm. Even with the absence of furniture, the room was already very pleasing.

  “It’s going to be beautiful!” I said. “How can I thank y’all?”

  Their smiles were wide and satisfied.

  “You can feed us,” Huey said. “I, for one, am starving!”

  I agreed to call Louis’s for takeout and changed my clothes to help them. Everyone wanted to finish that night, and although I couldn’t see how we would, I didn’t argue. By ten o’clock, after a picnic of sorts that included fish and chips, lots of coleslaw and lemon meringue pie, we sat back with steaming mugs of coffee to assess our work.

  “Tomorrow we will pull the tape and remove the drop cloths. Then we can touch up after the furniture’s in place,” Huey said, tapping the tip of his finger here and there, testing for dryness. “I haven’t worked this hard in a thousand years.”

  “Ever?” Byron said and opened his eyes wide in a bold glare.

  Huey bristled and made guffing sounds.

  “Hush up, you!” Daphne said and rolled hers. “Don’t pay him any mind, Mr. V.”

  I smiled and Huey sighed.

  Later, as I tried to sleep, knowing the mountain of disorder that waited for me on the other side of my bedroom door in the morning, I thought about generosity. The day had been a turning point in a lot of ways. The advent of Daphne had brought change, and while I avoided change whenever possible, her determination to make things right and presentable to the outside world had opened up my mind. Maybe that old bedroom would be a home office for one date with the courts or maybe it would find another purpose. It didn’t matter at that moment. What counted was that it was the generous spirits of Daphne, Byron and Huey, which had tilted the axis of my world ever so slightly, and that slight tilt was enough to change the way I felt about a lot of things.

  FIFTEEN

  SHOW AND TELL

  DAPHNE had my credit card and was gone to shopping for curtains. She said, and she was right as usual, that the room looked too institutional.

  “Let me just get something light to hang up there until you decide what you really want.”

  “Fine,” I said. Like I had a choice in the matter?

  I was home alone realizing how much happier it made me to be organized. In a mere two days, Daphne had lightened the entire complexion of Miss Salt Air by two shades.

  I was in excellent spirits for other reasons as well. There were few things more gratifying to a matrimonial attorney that had a client in the right and a defendant who was as dumb as a post. Nat Simms was as dumb as a post.

  My nationwide search for bank accounts in Charlene’s name or in Nat’s name had turned up just what I thought. Or hoped. Turned out that our Bonnie and Clyde had an account in Beaufort, South Carolina. That account sent its statements to a mailbox in Charlene’s name in Charleston and that sweet little account had seen deposits and withdrawals in excess of two hundred thousand dollars over the last year. Well, what do y’all know? Imagine my surpri
se.

  All these thoughts were swimming around and all this damning evidence was laid out before me in my beautiful, okay, lovely new office, organized that very morning. I had purchased a most useful oversized month-at-a-glance calendar from Staples and notated every phone call, hotel visit, motel visit, vacation, deposit, withdrawal and expenditure Nat had made for as long as the records showed. It was highlighted in other colors to show Rebecca’s birthday, Mother’s Day, their anniversary, class plays, parent teacher conferences and so on. Without fail Nat had an afternoon of sweaty ooh la la with Charlene and a blizzard of phone calls on all dates corresponding to anything of remote importance to Rebecca.

  Just to demonstrate the real depth of the callous depravity of Nat and Charlene, on Rebecca’s wedding anniversary Nat had Charlene tucked away in the Ritz-Carlton in Jacksonville, Florida, in the honeymoon suite no less, while she recovered from a trip to Dr. Nip O’Tuck. She had ordered lobster and champagne that night from room service. Rebecca and Nat dined at an Outback Steakhouse, where Nat was interrupted on three occasions by cell phone calls from Charlene. Nice. Very nice going, Nat.

  As the information flooded in, I could’ve told you almost anything you wanted to know about Nat, Charlene and all their personal habits. No wonder Rebecca had been so fooled by Nat. There were so many transgressions of his marriage vows that I’d been forced to lay it out on a calendar grid like a scorecard just to see who was where when.

  But the details were well worth the gathering. Just like a good general knows the time to strike the enemy is when victory is a foregone conclusion, I looked at my telephone and imagined the invisible line between it and Harry Albright’s office as a lit fuse that would dissolve its way to Nat and Harry, leaving nothing but ashes in its trail. I was almost giddy as I dialed Albright’s number and thoroughly deflated when I learned he was out of the office for the remainder of the day. I left a message with his cantankerous mother that I was waiting for the overdue interrogatory from Nat, and hanging up, I decided to make some phone calls. First I called the family court in Charleston to see if we had been assigned a judge.