Sweet Tea Tuesdays

by Ashley Farley

  “I’m originally from Atlanta,” Sawyer added. “While we like the West Coast, we’re both ready to come back East to be closer to our families.”

  “Sawyer’s parents are more accepting of our relationship,” Brooke explained.

  Lizbet wondered why, if that was the case, they hadn’t chosen Atlanta to relocate. But she didn’t ask. “How long have the two of you been together?”

  “Two years,” Brooke said. “We didn’t know each other at Stanford, even though we were in the same class. We met through some mutual friends a year after graduation. We’ve been together since then.”

  Brooke and Sawyer exchanged a look that left little doubt in Lizbet’s mind how much they meant to each other. Her sister was in love with a young woman any parents would be proud to have as their daughter-in-law. This was all uncharted territory for Lizbet. Did parents call the women their gay daughters married daughters-in-law? Sawyer seemed to have it all—looks and brains and compassion. She wondered if they were planning to get married and have children but decided not to ask. She approved of Sawyer and didn’t want to scare her away by prying.

  “You know Mom and Dad better than I do, Lizzy. Do you think they’ll ever come around?”

  Lizbet sipped her beer. “Mom and Dad haven’t changed. You’re the one who’s changed. Surely you didn’t think they would welcome Sawyer with open arms. No offense,” she said to Sawyer, who responded, “None taken.”

  “Mom is the issue, though, not Dad,” Lizbet continued. “I see this thing playing out one of two ways. If you move here, which I would love by the way, Mom will be forced to accept your relationship. You and I both know you’re her favorite. She’s not going to kick you out of her life. If you stay out in California or move somewhere else, you’ll be out of her sight and therefore out of her mind. She’ll pretend none of this happened, go back to fantasizing about you marrying a man, and you’ll never be able to come home for a visit again. At least not with Sawyer.”

  Brooke cut her eyes at Lizbet. “When did you get so smart, little sister?”

  “Ha. There’s a lot about me you don’t know.” Brooke’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline, and Lizbet burst out laughing. “I’m not gay if that’s what you’re thinking. Although I might consider it if I don’t find a boyfriend soon. You and I don’t know each other very well, Brooke, but I would like for that to change.”

  Brooke yanked on her sister’s ponytail. “There’s nothing I want more.” They sat for a moment in silence. “You should know that Sawyer and I are leaving first thing in the morning. I refuse to stay where we’re not wanted.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “We’ve booked a hotel room in Charleston. I haven’t spent much of my adult life here. We want to explore downtown, to get to know the area and figure out the best places to live. We’ll be around for a few more days in case . . .” Brooke inhaled an unsteady breath. “On the off chance Mom decides she wants to see me.”

  #

  Lizbet fell into bed fully clothed and exhausted shortly after midnight, but the events of the day zooming around her head like race cars on a speedway prevented her from falling asleep. She asked herself if she approved of her sister’s chosen lifestyle and was surprised her answer was yes. Lizbet had never met a couple more in sync. They communicated with a glance, a nod, a gentle squeeze of the hand. Instead of being furious at Brooke for bringing her here under false pretenses, Sawyer had taken it all in stride, supporting her partner even if she didn’t totally understand her. Lizbet worried about the challenges they would face but felt comforted by their obvious love for each other. A warm feeling settled over her at the idea of Brooke and Sawyer moving to Charleston. She would be gaining not one but two sisters. She envisioned the three of them going out to dinner, shopping together, and taking long walks along the Battery on weekends in the spring. For the first time since forever, she didn’t feel so alone.

  Her concern now was their mother’s mind-set. If her behavior at the party was any indication, Lula’s acceptance of Brooke’s lifestyle would be a long time coming. Ignoring her guests while they were in her own home was not their mother’s style. “We must keep up appearances at all times” was Lula’s motto. “Chin up, shoulders back. Always paint on a bright face no matter how much you’re hurting inside.” Sawyer was the type of person her mother would’ve handpicked to marry her daughter, if only that person was of the male persuasion.

  Lizbet managed a few hours’ sleep but woke up at dawn to the sound of the screen door banging shut. Was Brooke leaving the house at daybreak to avoid a confrontation with her mother? She’d been too tired, and a little too drunk after three beers, to get her overnight bag out of her car. But she needed to brush the cotton off her teeth before she could think clearly. She rolled out of bed and emerged from her room. Her sister’s bedroom door was closed, as was her parents’, but the back door stood wide open. Her bare feet padded across the room and out onto the porch. As she started down the steps to the driveway, she saw her mother, still dressed in her seersucker housecoat, lying facedown on the sidewalk, her neck turned at an awkward angle with a puddle of blood pooling beneath her left cheek. Pooh sat whimpering beside her, licking her hand and sniffing her neck every now and then.

  Lizbet rushed to her mother’s side. “Oh my God, Mom! Are you all right?” She shook her gently, but her mother didn’t stir. She raced back up the steps and through the back door. “Dad! Brooke! Come quick! Mom fell down the stairs, and she won’t get up. Hurry!” Lizbet returned to her mother, trying once again to rouse her without success.

  Her father—dressed in a T-shirt and boxers, with a full day’s growth on his face and what little hair remained on his head sticking straight up in the back—was the first to arrive on the scene. Brooke was right behind him followed by Sawyer. Sawyer knelt down next to Lula, searching her wrist and her neck for a pulse.

  “She’s a doctor,” Lizbet said to her father when she noticed him watching Sawyer with his brow furrowed and eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  “I’m in medical school, actually,” Sawyer said, looking up at Phillip. “Are you comfortable with me checking her vitals?”

  “By all means.” He waved his hand at his wife’s motionless body on the ground. “Do whatever you need to do.”

  Sawyer accessed the flashlight app on her iPhone and pried open Lula’s right eyelid. “Has anyone called nine-one-one?”

  “Not yet.” Lizbet patted her pockets. “My phone’s inside.”

  Brooke took Sawyer’s phone from her. “I’m on it.”

  “Do you have a first aid kit?” Sawyer asked.

  Her father thought for a minute. “There might be one under the kitchen sink. I’ll go check,” he said.

  When the dispatcher came on the line, Brooke recited their address and requested an ambulance, explaining that her mother had fallen down a flight of brick steps, hit her head on the sidewalk, and was unconscious. She then repeated their mother’s pulse and respiration rates as Sawyer called them out to her.

  “Tell them her pupils are dilated, and ask them to hurry,” Sawyer added.

  Her father returned with the first aid kit, and Sawyer held a gauze pad as close as she could get to the wound.

  Much to everyone’s surprise, despite their remote location, the rescue squad arrived within a few minutes and the ambulance shortly after that. One of the rescue workers, the crew chief, as he introduced himself to them, asked a series of questions. “Has she been ill?” and “Has she been drinking alcohol or taking prescription medication?” and “When was the last time she had anything to eat?”

  Her father answered, “No. No. And I’m not sure.”

  “Has she been under any stress?” the crew chief asked.

  Lizbet saw Brooke and Sawyer exchange a look. Before they could confess to being the source of the drama, Lizbet said, “The normal stress that goes along with planning a Fourth of July party for ninety people.”

  After immobilizing her neck, the
rescue crew transferred Lula’s body to a stretcher, loaded her into the ambulance, and zoomed out of the driveway, sirens blasting, to MUSC in downtown Charleston as per her father’s instructions.

  “I need to get to the hospital.” Her father’s eyes shifted from his car to the house, but he remained planted in the same spot on the sidewalk.

  “Mr. Horne.” Sawyer placed her hand on his shoulder. “You’ll need your insurance card at the hospital, and your wife will want her purse. I’m hopeful this is nothing more serious than a cut on the head and a mild concussion, in which case she’ll want a change of clothes to wear home when she’s released.” She squeezed his shoulder and nudged him toward the house.

  At the top of the porch steps, he turned back to Sawyer. “Thank you for your kindness, young lady. I’m glad you were here. And please, call me Phillip.”

  Lizbet smiled at Sawyer and Brooke. “That’s encouraging. He’s never asked any of our friends to call him Phillip before.”

  “Nothing short of a minor miracle,” Brooke muttered under her breath as they went back inside.

  Phillip came out of the bedroom, still wearing his T-shirt and boxers, with his wife’s purse and a tote bag stuffed with clothes. “I’m ready to go. I just need to find my keys.”

  “Your keys are over here, Dad.” Lizbet pointed at the ceramic dish on the table beside the back door where they always kept their keys. “But I think you’d better get dressed first. I’m not sure the staff at the hospital would appreciate seeing you in your boxer shorts.”

  He glanced down at his scantily clad body. “Oops.” He set his things on the kitchen counter and returned to his room.

  “He’s spaced out,” Lizbet said. “I should probably drive him to the hospital. Are the two of you coming?”

  “I’m not sure Mom will want us at the hospital,” Brooke said.

  Lizbet’s face fell. “You’re gonna dump them on me. Dad’s so distraught he forgot to put on his clothes. What if it’s something serious?”

  Brooke brushed a lock of hair off Lizbet’s cheek. “Then you call us. We’re not abandoning you, Lizzy. We’re gonna pack up here and head to Charleston. We’ll drop Pooh by the house and check into the hotel. If you need us, we’ll be right there. But the last thing I want to do right now is add to Mom’s stress.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Lula

  When Lula regained consciousness, she understood right away that she was riding in an ambulance, although she had no idea how she’d gotten there.

  “Welcome back.” The EMT’s kind smile and soft voice made up for his otherwise unattractive appearance. He reminded Lula of a gnome, with his pointed bald head and his short gray beard covering only his cheeks and chin. “How do you feel?”

  “Like a herd of elephants is tromping on my head.”

  He reached behind him for his clipboard. “That’s understandable. You hit your head pretty hard. Do you remember falling?”

  Despite the pain, she forced herself to think back. She had no recollection of falling. The last thing she remembered was meeting Brooke’s girlfriend. We’ve been together for two years now. “What day is it?”

  “Wednesday, the fifth of July,” the EMT answered.

  The fifth of July? She remembered nothing about the party. Had she suffered some sort of stroke that was affecting her memory? “Where did I fall?”

  “Down the porch steps at your beach house. You cracked your forehead open on the sidewalk.” He removed a bloody wad of gauze from her forehead and replaced it with a fresh bandage, securing it with first aid tape. “Have you experienced any recent changes in health?”

  Her thoughts were all jumbled, as if someone had cracked open her head, dumped her brains into a bowl, and scrambled them with a whisk. Who would that someone have been? Heidi the caterer or Brooke the troublemaker? Did he want to know about the crazy thoughts that kept popping into her head and the strange things that flew out of her mouth unfiltered? She decided not to tell him.

  “I’ve been tired lately, and a bit on edge, but I only have myself to blame. For some crazy reason, I decided to throw a last-minute Fourth of July party for ninety people. Oh . . . and I fainted a few weeks back. But that’s because I got overheated. My air conditioning was out, and I was cooking in the kitchen with the oven on high.”

  His pen flew across the clipboard as he jotted down notes. “What happened when you fainted? Were you out for very long?”

  Lula thought back to that day, nearly a month ago. “I was sitting at the kitchen table. I’d just gotten off the phone with my daughter, who’d called to say she was coming home for a visit. I was excited. I haven’t seen her in a long time. I stood up from the table too quickly, and my knees went weak. I’m not sure how long I was out. My neighbors came to my rescue.”

  His beady eyes narrowed as he continued to write. “Sounds like you’ve had a lot of excitement and stress in your life recently.”

  “I found out yesterday my daughter is gay. Twenty-six years old and she comes out of the closet by introducing me to her girlfriend of two years.” Tears burned the back of Lula’s throat. Why was she telling a total stranger about her family drama? “Needless to say, the news came as a bit of a shock.”

  He looked up from his clipboard. “I can understand how it would. It’s not uncommon for our bodies to react to that kind of stress.”

  “Did I have a stroke?” Lula bit down on her lip to make it stop quivering.

  He closed his clipboard and rested his hand on her arm. “We can’t rule it out. The doctors will know more after they run some tests at the hospital. For now close your eyes and try to rest.”

  Lula dozed off or passed out again, she wasn’t sure which. But the next thing she knew, the rescue workers were wheeling her into the emergency room. A team of nurses began working on her at once—starting IVs, withdrawing blood, monitoring her vitals. They called her dear and sweetheart in honeyed voices as if speaking to a child. Or the elderly. Had she aged that much in a day? She certainly felt like it.

  “Where’s my family?” Lula asked the nurse who was inserting the IV.

  “As far as I know, they haven’t arrived yet. We’ll send them back as soon as they do.”

  The doctor entered the cubicle and introduced himself as Dr. Hanson. His appearance—long face, dark mustache, and tall and lanky body—brought to mind Abraham Lincoln. He rolled a swivel stool to the side of her bed. “What’s going on? Sounds like you took a little tumble.”

  “Toddlers tumble, Doctor. I fell down my porch steps and landed on the cobblestone sidewalk. I can’t endure the pain in my head much longer. Will you get your prescription pad out and order up some relief?” She tugged at the brace around her neck. “And get this damn thing off my neck.”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t take it off. Not until after we do the CT scan.”

  “I didn’t land on my neck, Doctor. I landed on my face, as evidence by this gash in my forehead.” Lifting her fingers to her forehead, she felt the thick wad of gauze.

  He ignored her and consulted his clipboard. “According to the report, you had a similar fall several weeks ago.”

  “That wasn’t a fall. My air conditioner went out, and I got overheated. I fainted. It happens every day in the summertime in the South. I take it you’re a Yankee.”

  “Born and raised in Valdosta, Georgia.” His eyes returned to the report. “But you can’t deny you’ve been under stress lately.”

  “You’re damn right I’m under stress,” Lula said, her voice growing loud. “Didn’t the gnome tell you? It should be on your clipboard. I just found out my daughter is a lesbian. My baby girl is a homosexual.”

  “Please, Mrs. Horne, keep your voice down. We have gay people on our staff, both doctors and nurses.”

  Lula pulled the blanket up over her chest. “That’s your problem. But whatever you do, keep them away from me.”

  The doctor snapped his clipboard shut and signaled to the nurse. “Get this woman over to ra
diology.”

  #

  The trip to radiology took thirty minutes, but by the time she returned to her cubicle, Phillip and Lizbet were waiting for her. Her husband hadn’t bothered to shave or brush his hair, and her daughter was still wearing her server clothes. Must have been some party, Lula thought. Too bad I can’t remember it.

  Lizbet approached the side of the bed and took hold of her hand. “You scared us to death, Mom. Are you okay?”

  “Obviously not, Lizbet. I’m in the hospital.” Lula pried her hand free from her daughter’s death grip. “I must have gotten a touch of amnesia. I don’t remember much about the party.”

  “That’s because you stayed in your room the whole time.”

  Her green eyes, scared and confused, sought out her husband’s. “I don’t understand. Why did I stay in my room the whole time when we were hosting a party?”

  Phillip moved to the side of the bed. “Because you were too upset to socialize.” He paused. “Do you remember meeting Sawyer?”

  “Sawyer is the reason I’m in the hospital. She made my daughter gay.” Lula ignored Lizbet’s eye roll. “How did you explain my absence to our guests?”

  “That you weren’t feeling well,” Phillip said. “Everyone understood.”

  “I’m sure they didn’t blame me, either, with Brooke flaunting her lesbian lover all over the place. Where is Brooke anyway? I hope she’s boarding a plane back to California where she belongs. She’s no longer welcome in my home.”

  Phillip cringed. He was already softening toward Brooke and her girlfriend. “Let’s not concern ourselves with Brooke’s situation right now,” he said. “We can sort that all out later. The most important thing is to get you patched up so we can go home.”

  “And I’m just the man to do it.” A doctor with a baby face and a full head of wavy yellow hair entered the cubicle. “I’m Trevor Pratt. I’m the plastic surgeon who will be taking care of your laceration.”

  He was just a boy, not much older than Lizbet. She felt old and tired. Time for her to step aside and let the youngsters take over the world. Theirs was not a world she understood, anyway.