The Southern Side of Paradise

by Kristy Woodson Harvey

  “I’ll help you,” Caroline whispered, putting the earring in my ear.

  “Did you feel like this?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Honestly, no, but look where that got me. I don’t think nerves are a bad thing.”

  “It’s like it’s real now, you know? We’re going out there in front of all our family and friends, and there’s no turning back. This is actually happening.”

  Caroline smiled. “Hon, I’ve spent the past two months doing nothing but work on this wedding. There’s no turning back now, for more reasons than one.”

  “Speaking of,” I said, “were you able to get that flower crown that Vivi wanted?”

  Caroline zipped my dress. “Em, it’s all under control.” She raised her eyebrow. “Also, I don’t know where she ever got the idea that smoking would keep her from getting boobs and drinking would make her hair fall out, but I totally love it.”

  I smiled, feeling calmer now. “Aunt extraordinaire and Grade-A liar.”

  “Thanks for doing that for me,” she said. “I owe you.”

  My eyes widened in surprise as I applied my pink lip gloss.

  “Wow. You owe me? That’s pretty major.”

  She laughed. “OK, how about you owe me a little less for all the years I paid for you to live in LA?”

  “Ah,” I said. “That’s more like it.”

  Caroline held her hand out, and I gave her the lip gloss. As she applied it, she cut her eyes at me in the mirror. “Could you please do one more thing for me?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Cut Mom some slack. She’s doing the best she can.”

  “Is she?”

  Later that night, a display from another mother would lend me an entirely new respect for mine.

  * * *

  IT WAS THE PERFECT night for an engagement party at the Yacht House. The humidity had broken, the storm the night before had cooled things off a few degrees, and the sun was making its radiant descent. The huge barn doors were open to reveal an unobstructed view of the creek and Starlite Island across the waterway. As if they had been hired out for the party, the new foals on the island were frolicking merrily.

  The exterior of the Yacht House was white clapboard like many of the houses around town, with a steeply pitched roof. The interior of the space was made completely of raw wood and exposed beams—a little bit rustic and austerely beautiful. Mom’s friends had had three huge chandeliers brought in to hang from the ceilings, and tall cocktail tables were adorned with arrangements of the largest pink and white peonies I’d ever seen. Light from the votive candles around them flickered in the reflection of the vases. The glamour juxtaposed with the rustic vibe was stunning. And though I was intent on holding a grudge, I had to realize that my mom had done this. It had her mark all over it. And I realized that Caroline was right. She had done her best. I felt myself soften toward her.

  The band was set up off to the side, so as not to obstruct the view of the space, and as we smiled and laughed and said our thank-yous, Mark didn’t let go of my hand even once. He must have sensed how nervous I was.

  We snuck out onto the deck for a moment to steal a kiss and a sip of a cocktail. “Do you think they’d let us dance?” he asked.

  I laughed. “It’s our party, and we’ll dance if we want to.” I smiled at him, and for the first time in a while, I really saw him. No, Mark might not have totally understood me or the life I wanted. And I might not have totally understood why he couldn’t give in and give that life to me. But he loved me. And I loved him. It had always been so. And after next week, it would continue to be so forever.

  The band abruptly stopped in the middle of a song, and as I heard a slurred “Excuse me, excuse me,” I could feel Mark’s body tense beside mine.

  “Oh, God,” he said. “We have got to get her off that stage.”

  As I walked back through the door, I felt my stomach sink. There was the Duchess, in all her glory, in a form-fitting white gown. She looked amazing, if not terribly overdressed and like she was trying to take focus away from the bride—which, let’s face it, she was. At least that was one fewer white gown she could potentially wear to the wedding. When she and Mom had been coordinating outfits for the ceremony, she told her she was wearing pale pink.

  “So pale pink that it’s actually white?” I had asked.

  Mom had laughed. “We should be prepared for that.”

  Now the Duchess was swaying in time to, I guessed, the music in her head, saying, “I am so happy for my little Mark that he has finally managed to capture his one true love, the girl who dropped him like a bad habit and ran off to LA all those years ago.” Then she put her hand up around her mouth and fake-whispered into the microphone, “Let’s just hope history doesn’t repeat itself, right?”

  That did it. Mark made his way to the stage and grabbed his mother by the top of the arm, like my mom used to do when we were toddlers.

  “What?” she said, still into the mic. “It was a joke. It was funny.”

  Mark glared at her.

  “No, no,” the Duchess said. “I’m done. I’m done.”

  Mark looked at me helplessly, and I honestly didn’t know what to do. I shrugged and motioned for him to come back to me, because he couldn’t very well just drag her off the stage like an old vaudeville act.

  I put my arms around his waist and rested my head on his chest. “You can’t stop the train wreck, babe. You have to let the collision happen.”

  He rested his ear on my head. “If you can love me through this, then you really love me.”

  “I really love you,” I repeated. And I did.

  That feeling intensified when the Duchess said, “My only regret is that I won’t get to be here to see these two walk down the aisle. As many of you know, I have been betrothed to a Saudi prince, and he insists that I come with him on business to the Greek isles immediately.”

  “What?” Mark said.

  “That can’t be true. She came back here for this.”

  She raised her martini glass. “To my great love, my Mark. I hope this marriage is everything you’ve dreamed of for all these years and that you do it a little better than your dear old mum.”

  Mum? Really? The woman was born and raised in south Georgia. She was no one’s “Mum.”

  Mark shook his head and rolled his eyes. He was trying to act nonchalant, but I could tell he was rattled.

  His mother walked out the door, and I followed her. “Connie!” I shouted.

  She was drunk enough that she actually turned, even though “Duchess” was all she responded to these days.

  “You have one son. You cannot leave him the week before his wedding.”

  I felt Mark’s hand on my back. I knew he was trying to calm me, but I was way past calm.

  “Oh, you don’t understand. It’s a monthlong cruise of the Greek isles on a two-hundred-fifty-foot yacht with its own helicopter pad. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

  “No!” I shouted at her. “No, it isn’t. Seeing your only son get married is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. A cruise to the Greek isles is something you can do anytime. This is abandoning your child.”

  She glared at me, teetering on her heels. “Don’t you talk to me about abandoning my son. It seems like that’s something you know plenty about.” She turned haughtily toward home. It would have felt more like the stomping out she wanted it to be if she hadn’t been so wobbly. Then she turned and shot back, “Plus, I’d be willing to bet that this isn’t his only wedding.”

  Mark sat down on the sidewalk, head in his hands. I sat down beside him and rubbed his back, feeling like the world’s worst person. I was marrying Mark, yes, but I wasn’t giving him what he wanted. In some ways, in the back of my mind, I had been incensed this whole time that he wouldn’t drop everything and do what I wanted. But that wasn’t fair. He had a whole life that he had worked really hard for, just like I did. He had totally reinvented a company—a family company, at that—for a new millennium and h
ad become massively successful in his own right, all from the comfort of the one-stoplight town where he wanted to live. He took care of his mother despite her clear lunacy, and he took care of me. He made me feel beautiful and wanted and safe and adored. And all I ever did was keep him at arm’s length.

  “I don’t know why I did this to myself,” he said, “why I let myself get so far along in this fantasy.”

  I took his hand in mine and kissed it. “What do you mean, sweetheart?”

  “This,” he said, pointing to me and then to himself. “She’s a crazy drunk, but my mother isn’t wrong. I’m here again, trying to tether you to me and to this town, and you don’t want any of it, not really.”

  There was so much hurt in his eyes. I wanted to argue with him. I wanted to tell him I would stay, I would do anything. I felt so desperate in that moment.

  “Why can’t I be enough?” he asked. He put his head in his hands. “Why can’t I be enough for someone to stay?”

  I picked his head up and looked him straight in the eye. “Don’t ever say that again, Mark Becker. You are enough. You are more than enough. Your mother leaving isn’t about you, it’s about her.” God, I hated to put myself in the same category with that horrid, horrid woman. But I guess I was, when you got right down to it. “And Mark, I’m not leaving you, sweetheart. I’m not. I’m here. I’m yours. I’m going to go off and work, and sometimes you’ll come with me, and sometimes you won’t. But that’s not me leaving you. I swear it isn’t.”

  He looked so pitiful and so forlorn that I wanted to tell him that I would stay forever, that I would give it all up. I felt in my heart that even though he hadn’t said it, he was offering me an ultimatum. And I wanted to pick him. I wanted more than anything to tell him that I would give it up, that I would be all his. But it wasn’t my truth. And I knew that. So I tried to level with him.

  “I just don’t know if I can give it up, Mark. I love becoming absorbed by a totally different world of playing someone else . . .”

  I trailed off. His eyes were so sad. I hated that I was hurting him, but I knew now that giving yourself up to please another person never works. You spend your entire life unhappy and resentful. I didn’t want to do that.

  Mark sighed, and when he looked back up at me, he said, “So what’s so wrong with being here and being you?”

  I took Mark’s hand, and instead of getting angry that he couldn’t understand me, I became drenched in an unmistakable sadness, drowning in his hurt. Because I knew, although I was the one sitting in front of him now, that was a question he actually wanted to ask his mother.

  THIRTY-ONE

  ansley: what mothers do

  “Well,” Sloane was saying, as we sat around in our PJs. “That was a dramatic ending to an engagement party.”

  “It has been a dramatic all-around day,” Caroline said. “I still can’t believe Jack gave Vivi that boat.”

  He had even had it named T/T Starlite Sisters (Tender To Starlite Sisters). It was so sweet. My heart surged with love for him, and even though I was enjoying this moment, I was ready for them to get out of here so I could get back to him.

  “I don’t want to tell Emerson until after her wedding,” I said, looking around to make sure she was out of earshot. “She is so upset with me that I don’t want to add fuel to the fire. But Jack and I have set our wedding date.”

  Caroline said, “Well, Mom, it’s now or never,” as Emerson walked up to the front gate, her hair disheveled, shoes in her hands.

  I nodded and decided then and there that I knew she was mad, and I knew things were tough, but Jack was right. I had to choose him every now and then. I was going to marry him. No tantrum from my youngest daughter was going to change that.

  So I said, as she reached the top step of the porch, “I want you all to know that Jack and I are getting married September 22. It’s the harvest moon, and it’s going to be simple and small and nothing to speak of. I want you there, but I understand if it’s too hard.”

  “Did you even love Daddy?” Emerson asked me, her voice already high and worked up.

  “Emerson!” Sloane scolded.

  God, it cut me when she said that. Carter and I had had an imperfect marriage. We had both made some pretty big mistakes, and I had gotten some tough surprises in the wake of his death. But I had loved him through it all, and I hadn’t so much as looked at or thought about another man for sixteen years after he passed away.

  I stood up and crossed my arms. I had been nice, and I had acquiesced to the four hundred fits she’d had up till now. I had soothed, and I had coddled. But she had crossed the line. I was done.

  “How about Thank you, Mom, for planning my dream wedding? Or maybe Thanks, Mom, for paying for every ridiculous thing I wanted to try to make this day perfect for me? Or maybe even Thanks for always putting us first, Mom?” I threw my hands up in the air. “I loved your father. Don’t you ever, ever doubt that. But you have no idea what it was like for me. To lose my husband, to lose my money and my life and everything I had worked for and have to drag all of you back here because it was all we had left. To never tell you. To go back to work and keep this family together and raise you all alone. It wasn’t easy, Emerson. It wasn’t. I’m sorry if you don’t approve of my decisions. I’m sorry if you don’t want me to marry Jack. But I sacrificed everything for all of you for my entire life. It’s my turn now.”

  She crossed her arms, too. “You can’t even remember if you told him you loved him on September 11. I always hear you say that. Maybe you wanted this to happen the whole time so that you could be with Jack.”

  I nodded. I was so over this. I had to consider that maybe she would always carry this grudge. “Fine,” I said. “That’s fine.”

  And I walked off the porch, down the steps, and down the sidewalk to Jack’s house. I didn’t want to unload all of this onto him. I honestly didn’t. But I couldn’t help myself. I was fuming and pacing, and the whole story came tumbling out.

  “All I know is that you will work it out, Ans. The Murphy girls are a package deal. You can’t have one without the other three. That’s how it has always been. It’s how it will always be.”

  I nodded. That was true. Or at least, it had been, I realized sadly.

  Jack got up and pulled me to him and whispered in my ear, “You looked so beautiful tonight. All I could think about was getting you back home.” As he led me up the stairs, I honestly forgot all about my fight with Emerson, the guilt I felt over Carter, the pain that had risen so sharply to the surface I could have reached out and held it in my hand.

  It was just Jack and me in our bedroom, in our house, the one he had bought for us, in this life that we had made together.

  As we lay there, bathing in the moonlight, I whispered something to him that I’d never thought I would ever utter. “Maybe we should move.”

  It was a stupid thing to say. I knew even then that I didn’t mean it, but I felt so ripped open that night. I thought back to the conversation I’d had with Sloane earlier about fresh starts. Maybe that was what Jack and I needed.

  He shot up in bed. “I’m sorry. What?”

  I shrugged. “We don’t have to. It’s just a thought. A clean slate. All that. But if you don’t want to—”

  He kissed me, cutting me off. “Ansley, I came to Peachtree Bluff for you. I’d follow you anywhere.”

  I smiled. I felt exactly the same way.

  There was a light rap at the back door. Jack and I shared a glance. I got up and put my robe on, knowing it was probably Emerson and that, really, I was too tired and too old to fight it out tonight.

  “I should go down and make sure it isn’t a serial killer,” Jack said. “I need to protect you.” He flexed his muscles as he said it, making me laugh.

  I nodded seriously as I tied my robe and followed him down the stairs. As I had suspected, it was Emerson. When Jack opened the door, she practically fell into me, sobbing.

  “He called it off. Mark and I aren’t getting ma
rried.”

  Just like that, I forgave her. Because that’s what mothers do.

  THIRTY-TWO

  emerson: too much for the man

  I kept it hidden between the pages of my contract for the Edie Fitzgerald movie. No one wanted to see that thing ever again, least of all me. But I knew I would want to see the letter, that I would want to have it despite the fact that it could incriminate me in a big way. And I had to admit that Grammy’s words were the ones I thought of as I talked to Mark that night. Hers were the words that suddenly made everything seem so clear.

  Dear Emerson,

  Thank you, my love. I wouldn’t be here now without you, and I thank you for setting me free, for allowing me back to a place where I could be with my husband again, where I could be out of pain and at peace. Do not spend one single day thinking about this, worrying about it, fretting over it. It was my choice and my decision. The only part of this that is on you is my eternal gratitude.

  I have studied you since you were a child, Emerson, seen the way your struggle is so visible to the outside world, the way you wear your heart on your sleeve. As you have gotten older, I have seen you withdraw into yourself more, and while I don’t think that’s a bad thing, I want to tell you that it’s OK to show people how you feel. Being vulnerable is how we grow and change; it’s how we let others see us. Sometimes it’s how we come to understand ourselves.

  Darling girl, if I had to guess, you are going to have a lot of big decisions to make this year. How I wish I could be here to witness them, to guide you in a way that only someone with more than eighty years of life experience can. A lot of grandmothers would tell you to follow your heart, but I have to think that advice is a bit simplistic. My advice would be to find out what it is that you really, truly want. And then don’t let anything get in the way of that. Life is too short to settle, my girl. Or, actually, maybe it’s too long to settle. It certainly must seem that way to those who choose an inauthentic path.