The Hurricane Sisters: A Novel

by Dorothea Benton Frank

These are two truly excellent reasons why I have always felt the island was so haunted. Sometimes, when I am alone on the porch looking out over the water of Charleston Harbor I can feel a heavy sadness in the air. And sometimes at night I think I hear the muffled voices of people quietly crying, struggling with some inexplicable grief. At first, Mary Beth thought I was really crazy but after a while she began to feel it and hear them too. I mean, just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Right? Isn’t it a little bit like believing in angels?

  But when we aren’t feeling the mythology of the house, mostly it is just what it is: another wooden clapboard house with warped heart pine floors, perched on towers of cement blocks, with an ancient tin roof that only leaks in the laundry room when it is a superheavy rain and screened porches all around that hold millions of secrets. Upstairs there are four bedrooms with beaded board walls and ceilings and one creaking bathroom in the hall. Downstairs there is a giant open living space with a dining table and a fireplace that hasn’t worked in all my life. We have an old grand piano in the corner of the living room that was given to my father from some long-dead aunt. It is so out of tune it’s ridiculous. In fact, I can’t remember it ever being in tune. During the holidays when we were kids, Ivy would try and bang out some Christmas carols and we’d wind up laughing our brains out from the rusty noise the poor thing made.

  But the house isn’t without merit. The best feature of the house is the big portico on the ocean side. There is almost always a breeze and every ship that goes into or sails out of Charleston Harbor passes right by. It is where I make the world go away, just like the dumb song that Maisie says Skipper sings when it’s cocktail time.

  So after the mental workout from the Impossibles (a.k.a. my parents) last night, I just wanted to hang at home and get over them. Ivy and James were supposed to come by for a glass of vino after dinner but I wasn’t counting on it. Ivy had so many friends downtown that I knew by the time he said hello to everyone and ate something here and there it would be too late. I’d text him and meet him tomorrow for coffee before he and James left for New York.

  I heard a car door slam in the yard, the familiar clunk of Mary Beth’s old reliable Camry. Her car had over a hundred and fifty thousand miles on it. My Subaru had a mere hundred and twenty-seven thousand. In one minute, she would be in the kitchen staring inside the refrigerator like it spoke English and was going to tell her what to eat that would (a) satisfy her and (b) not have any calories. Good luck with that. Ever since we’d met on the first day of classes at the College of Charleston, she’d been on a diet. Not that she needed one. Well, maybe a little bit.

  “Hey! What’s up?” she said, dropping her bag on the table and, like I said, opening the refrigerator. “What are you making over there, chopping away like some nut on Top Chef?”

  “Enough pasta primavera to feed this whole island. And my day totally sucked, but thanks for asking.”

  “Oh? Carb alert. That’s not good.”

  “Jammed with touristas. And, just to make sure my head explodes, we’re hosting a reception for Senator Galloway next week.”

  “I know. We’re doing the job. He’s like the Prince Harry of South Carolina. Everyone says he’s going to be the president someday.”

  “I’m going to die when I meet him.”

  “You and every other woman in the room.”

  Mary Beth worked for a very cool catering company downtown. She had a degree in elementary education but there were no teaching jobs to be had in the entire Charleston area except in schools that looked like meth labs. So, like me and everyone else we knew, except those who went to law school or medical school, she made ten dollars an hour passing hors d’oeuvres. She was also a closet chef. And Porter Galloway was the youngest person ever elected to the state senate, not that that has anything to do with anything. I just thought you should know he’s practically age appropriate and that I had a mad crush on him but alas, only from afar.

  “And I’m a wreck. What am I going to wear to make him fall in love with me?”

  “Wear what you wore last night.”

  “Are you serious? That dress almost got me thrown out of the will. Here, taste this. How is it?”

  She picked out a piece of pasta and popped it in her mouth, wincing.

  “Too blah. Let me fix it. It needs salt and lemon zest. And garlic powder. This isn’t primavera. It’s pasta salad, but not primavera. Usually, primavera has roasted squash and peppers.” She went back to the refrigerator and took out a lemon. “Where’s the Microplane?”

  “All of a sudden you’re Giada de Laurentiis with a Microplane?”

  We watched the Food Network like some people watched Game of Thrones.

  “Food is my religion,” she said, with such a serious face that I started laughing.

  “Religion. Well, at least you believe in something,” I said and giggled. “I’ll find it. Want a glass of wine?”

  I dug through the utensil drawer that always sticks because it’s jammed with stuff from the 1960s and finally found it wedged in the side.

  “Sure,” she said. “How cheap is it?”

  “Very. It comes with an ice pack for your eyes. Here,” I said and handed her the grater. “There’s too much junk in this drawer. One of these days I’m gonna start pitching stuff.”

  I banged it back and forth and finally forced it shut. Then I opened the refrigerator and took out the bottle of white wine with the screw cap and the flip-flops on the label. It stood up very well to ice.

  “Thanks. So how was Charleston Grill? I’m starving. What’s this? Who puts avocado in pasta?”

  “I do. Everything is better with avocado. And bacon. My parents are completely crazy. The food, however, was beyond.”

  I told her what we all ordered while Mary Beth seasoned and stirred the pasta around in the big ceramic bowl that had been a part of the kitchen all my life. Funny how something that seemed so insignificant, just an old bowl with faded glazed stripes, could trigger so many memories. When I was really young, we used it for cookie dough, cake batters, boiled peanuts, potato salad, and now apparently, not for pasta primavera, but for pasta salad. But when I was little and my mother pulled out that big bowl, it meant company and it meant that for a few hours at least my family would do its best to look and act normal. Ah, the good old days.

  “One of these days I’m going to rob a bank and go to all the great restaurants in Charleston and order whatever I want,” Mary Beth said.

  “I’m going to rob a bank and get the heck out of here,” I said. “Or I’m going to marry Porter Galloway and live happily ever after with him in the White House. Maybe.”

  We clinked the sides of our glasses toasting our very uncertain futures, took a sip, and sighed.

  “Either way, we have a plan.” Mary Beth was always the optimist.

  “Some plan,” I said with a grunt.

  “Want to eat outside?” she said.

  “Why not? We can watch the harbor.”

  So we piled pasta on our plates and filled our glasses with ice and swill and made our way out to the porch juggling silverware and linens. We may have been young and broke but we had style. And standards. Frat boys ate without place mats and napkins. Not us.

  The heat of the day had broken and the horizon was beginning to turn red. There was nothing more beautiful in all the world than sunset on Sullivans Island. But considering I hadn’t really been anywhere outside of Charleston since I was like fifteen when I didn’t care about things like sunsets, I could’ve been wrong. But it sure seemed beautiful to me. And romantic.

  We set up our places and sat at the old glass-top table, taking the first bites. It was delicious.

  “Wow, this is so good,” I said. “Maybe you really ought to be a chef. You know? I mean, really!”

  “Yeah, and old Larson would kick my butt! This is good.”
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  Larson Smythe, her father, the Pentecostal preacher in the hills of Tennessee, didn’t really believe in college educations for women. Her mother, Agnes the Weirdly Timid, played the pump organ in his church on Sundays while the congregation got moved by the spirit and spoke in tongues. Small congregation. Large snake box. Scary. He owned and ran the local hardware store in their town and Agnes, well, Agnes was a wonderful homemaker and cook but never had any prospects of a career, beyond handling the books for Smythe’s Hardware. Larson would not have heard of it and Agnes wouldn’t have asked. They lived quietly. (Boring.) It’s not like their town was crawling with opportunity anyway.

  “Probably. But your momma’s a great cook. You must get it from her.”

  When we were in college, I used to go home with Mary Beth on long weekends so I knew this to be a fact. There was always a cake on the table, soup on the stove, and biscuits in the oven.

  “Humph. I think the only thing I got from them was far, far away.”

  “What were you supposed to do? Work at the Dairy Queen for the rest of your life and marry some no-chin boy named Skeeter? You’d have had total brain rot if you’d gone home after college.”

  “Truly. At least I do some subbing once in a while. That keeps Larson’s nerves in check,” she said. “Makes him think the tuition was worth it. So what happened last night? Did you get career counseling again?”

  “In a major way. In front of the world. While my butt was allegedly hanging out of that dress, according to my mother. Also in front of the world. They ragged on my job and my salary. So embarrassing. I mean, Mary Beth? How am I going to become a famous artist from here? This island has never produced a famous anything. I mean, we had Edgar Allan Poe here for like one year. Big whoop. He wasn’t even born here.”

  “You could be the first,” she said.

  “Right. You know, Dad goes to New York on business every week. He used to always promise that he’d take me along so I could go to all the museums and galleries. But he never has.”

  “Keep asking. It’s a legit request.”

  I was quiet for a few minutes and thought about that.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I think he just likes getting away and I know he likes being by himself. Mom doesn’t seem really happy. But then, I don’t really know what she looks like when she is.”

  “It’s the same with my mother. Maybe they’re just out of estrogen or something.”

  “I’m sure my mother takes a pill for that. But seriously. Even though she’s always ragging on me, I feel bad for her. She needs more fun in her life. Or something. I know she means well.”

  “I’d be happy if I was just married to somebody with a lot of money. I get so tired of worrying about college loans and car repairs and every other thing. I mean, I can’t even afford to get my hair cut!”

  I looked at her crazy red curly hair blowing in the damp breeze that was drowning the whole porch and wondered if a haircut would make a lot of difference one way or the other.

  “What?” she said.

  “Nothing! I’m just looking at your hair flying around and mine is too. We look like total crap! But nobody’s watching us anyway so who cares?”

  “Amen. I guess you can’t have good hair at the beach. And what good is it to be young and gorgeous if we’re broke? Nobody even knows we’re here. Life is very depressing.”

  I scraped the plate with the side of my fork, picking up the last bits of pasta.

  “Yeah. Bummer. We may as well eat ourselves into oblivion.”

  Just then a huge container ship on its way to somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic came into view. It inched along and because the channel was so close to our property, it seemed as if the ship was going to crash through our yard and kill us. But it wouldn’t. It would veer out to sea and away from view in minutes. It always startled people when they saw this for the first time.

  “You could make money with this view,” she said.

  “How?” I said. “Sell the house? That might be tough to do since I don’t own it.”

  I looked at Mary Beth and she had the same look on her face as she did every time she was about to tell me something really devious.

  “What are you thinking, girl? Tell me right now.”

  “Well, you know how we’ve always said this was a great place for a party?”

  “Yeah. For a party that goes with my funeral. You want Liz and Clay to kill me?”

  “Wait a minute. I’m not talking about a party like with our friends and kegs and drunk boys, puking and peeing and passed out in the yard!”

  “What other kind is there?”

  “The kind you have at the gallery! Like what if . . .”

  “Stop! No way!”

  “Wait. Let’s do the math. What if you rented the first floor to some organization that was coming to Charleston for a conference? Or just a pop-up party? And what if they wanted to see a sunset that would blow their mind? I can get our company to cater for twenty dollars a person; we limit it to fifty people who pay fifty dollars a person. It’s a two-hour deal period. You got a pencil handy?”

  “I already figured it out,” I said.

  “We make fifteen hundred dollars in two hours!”

  “And my parents will find out and I’ll be homeless. So will you.”

  We watched the container ship adjust its course and it floated away with Mary Beth’s excellent but dangerous idea.

  “You’re probably right,” she said and sighed hard enough to blow the ship to Cape Hatteras or Greenland or someplace like that. “Paris will have to wait.”

  “Maisie always says I should remember that I can marry more money in five minutes than I can earn in a lifetime.”

  “She’s right,” Mary Beth said.

  “Maybe, but I don’t see any of the guys we know scraping their knees off proposing, do you?”

  “You’ve still got Tommy Milano drooling over you.”

  “The guy who’s named for a cookie. Great,” I said. “Not in a bazillion years. He’s asked me out how many times? Not happening.”

  “Yeah, no future. But he’s so sweet and he’s supercute.”

  “Maybe. Besides, I don’t think it makes any sense to get married until you’re ready to have children, do you?”

  “It makes economic sense.”

  “True. Maybe. But who wants children anyway?”

  “You don’t? Wow. I love children! I want like five or maybe four.”

  “Maybe I wouldn’t mind one if he looked like Porter Galloway,” I said.

  “Porter Galloway. Girl? He’s totally gorgeous,” Mary Beth said, “but messing with that man is gonna land you in a world of hurt. He’s a ladies’ man and you know it.”

  Senator Galloway did have sort of a reputation with the ladies. Allegedly, there were a lot of them in his past. To be honest, the number was practically biblical. Every time his picture was in the paper, there was a different woman on his arm.

  “Maisie knows his momma, you know. He grew up on James Island. All her friends think he’s like the second coming of JFK or something.”

  “Then you should ask her what she thinks about him. I love Maisie.”

  “Who doesn’t love Maisie? Problem is, if I ask her, she’ll tell Mom. I haven’t even met him yet. I really don’t want my mother all over my personal life. It’s bad enough as it is.”

  “Okay, enough pussyfooting around. What did they say to you last night?”

  I thought about it for a minute. It wasn’t what they said so much as it was how they made me feel.

  “They didn’t say anything new. It’s just that they make me feel like a loser. You know, I’m just a dreamer. That trying to be an artist is stupid and a waste of time. Maybe they’re right.”

  “You think my parents are any better?”

  “Probably not. But wh
y are we supposed to spend our whole lives respecting them when they don’t show any respect for us?”

  “That’s why you have to believe in yourself and never give up. Me? I just want to marry a doctor or something and have a pile of kids. But you want more, Ash. You always did. Don’t let them ruin it for you.”

  Was money really that important to Mary Beth?

  “You know, I gave Maisie that little painting for her birthday? I think she really loved it. But all Mom could do was roll her eyes because her dead sister, Juliet, was very artistic. Which was one more excuse for Maisie to bring her up.”

  “That’s not so nice. But families are crazy.”

  “Truly. Just as Mom was about to sink her teeth in my neck, Ivy showed up with his partner—and I mean that in the business and the romantic way—and they suddenly had something else to focus on besides me. He’s Asian. James is his name. Old Liz nearly fainted.”

  “Because he’s Asian? You’ve got to be kidding me!”

  “Nope. And he’s awesome. He’s from Hong Kong and he was wearing Glass.”

  “Glass? Google Glass? Wow. That is awesome. It’s not even out yet! God, I’d love to go to Hong Kong.”

  “I’d love to go anywhere! Actually, Glass is sort of creepy but it’s sort of cool too.”

  “Yeah. Makes you look like Data on Star Trek or something. I heard it’s like fifteen hundred dollars.”

  “It is. I read all about it online. It’s probably going to be amazing. But let’s be honest. If I had fifteen hundred dollars . . .”

  “I know; you’d go to Paris.”

  “True story,” I said. “Or New York.”

  It was getting darker by the minute. In the distance we could see the night lights of the Ravenel Bridge come alive, and the waterfront of the city began to twinkle. Somewhere over there my mother was pouring herself her third vodka and my dad was pulling the second cork of the day. Between the Battery and the Morris Island Lighthouse, Maisie was probably curled up next to Skipper on a sofa watching reruns of The Love Boat. And Ivy, my sweet brother, was no doubt in his glory tonight, showing off lovely tech-savvy James and telling stories about their glamorous lives.