The Hurricane Sisters

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  Annie said, “So David is having lunch with Tom and Steve today.”

  “Yeah, I know. I thought it would be fun if we got together too. Tom said Michelle wasn’t in town or I would’ve called her too.”

  “Yes, she’s in Boston. She’s a doll, isn’t she? We see them all the time. So tell me about yourself.”

  “Ask away,” I said, wondering when the last time was that anyone wanted to know about me.

  “Well, do you have children?”

  “I do indeed. My daughter, Ashley, is in her early twenties. Wait, I can show you a picture.” I pulled out my phone and scrolled through my photographs until I found one that was very flattering. “Here she is.”

  “Oh my, Liz! She’s a screaming beauty! I can’t believe she’s still single!”

  “They don’t get married so young these days, you know? They wait until they can afford to be married and, besides, she’s an artist. She paints and she also works in the Turner Gallery on Broad Street. And I think she’s dating one of our state senators. Children get to a certain age and then they clam up about what’s going on in their social lives.”

  “Boy, that sure takes the romance out of things, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes. I think so. But as you know, things have changed since you and I were out there. Women are so much more independent. Ashley has always said she doesn’t want to have children until she’s thirty,” I said.

  “Women are having children later and later these days.”

  “Well, in a way it makes sense, but if you wait too long there are risks.”

  “Yeah, that you’ll be too tired to raise them! So you only have one daughter?”

  “No, no. I have a son who we call Ivy—long story. He’s older and lives in San Francisco. He and his partner own a men’s retail store. He’s very hip, I guess is the word.”

  “I have a gay daughter. I know what you mean.”

  Hip was the new gay?

  “Oh!” I said. “Well, I love my son just as much as I love my daughter. His lifestyle just took some getting used to for us, I guess. I mean, for my husband and me. He’s our only son and I think my husband wanted an heir to his dynasty, you know? But what are you going to do; it just is what it is, right?”

  “Liz, I’m sure he’s a wonderful man with a beautiful heart.”

  “He is.” I showed her a picture of him. “He’s really wonderful.”

  “Very handsome! What more can we ask of our children? My daughter is a Rockefeller Scholar and the chief of neuro-oncology at Columbia Presbyterian in New York. She saves lives every single day. She’s my hero!”

  “Wonderful! Look, I don’t want to sound like I’m whining. Just today Ivy offered to fly home to help me. What a day this has been. I didn’t even tell you this but my mother’s boyfriend had a stroke this morning and someone has to drive her back and forth to the hospital. Ivy would fly across the whole country just to help drive his grandmother where she needs to go. Ashley would help too, but Ivy’s time is more flexible. But really? I think he just wants to be the savior. That’s how good he is.”

  “Good grief! A stroke? Was it serious?”

  “Well, in the scheme of things I think no. But they’re all serious. And he’s young enough to recover if he’s lucky.”

  “How old? Gosh! I’m so nosy!”

  “No, it’s okay. He’s sixty-five. We hired him to be my mother’s driver because she loses the car and can’t see where she’s going but one thing led to another and now they’re living together. And did I mention? He owns a llama farm.”

  “Llamas? And your mother’s how old?”

  “Just turned eighty. We call her Maisie. She drinks martinis and Skipper drinks Manhattans and she’s never been happier. Him either.”

  I thought she was going to spit her tea across the table. We were both grinning from ear to ear. It really did sound so odd to tell it.

  Annie slapped the table. “Oh, my Lord! I love them! Don’t you love their spunk? Maisie, huh? Even her name is great!”

  “Yeah, well, sometimes her spunk and preciousness can drive you right out of your skull but basically? She’s a rare bird and I’m glad she’s mine.”

  “Hang on to her. My mother died twenty years ago. I’d give every piece of jewelry I own to see her again for just one hour.”

  “Oh, Lord, Annie. I’m sorry. She must’ve been awfully young.”

  “She was. Dad was away on business and she was home alone. She choked to death on a glucosamine chondroitin supplement. How stupid is that?”

  “Sweet mother! How terrible!”

  Debra put our food in front of us. We looked down at our plates and then across the table at each other.

  “This is a mortal sin of the first order and I’m going to eat every last crumb,” she said.

  “Save room for the bread pudding,” I said. “It is so good.”

  We took bites of the fried chicken and moaned. It was that delicious. Then we started to giggle. Annie was the girlfriend I needed. We were going to be the best of friends.

  “Well, if I can stop stuffing my face for long enough,” she said, “we need to talk about My Sister’s House.”

  I sat back, wiped my mouth with my napkin, and thought about it calmly.

  “What is there to say? You know? I just want domestic violence to stop. Right now. I want adults to get it together and act like civilized people. I want men to know it’s a felony to terrorize and do physical harm to their wives and children, and that pounding someone with your fists is not how you show someone you love them. I just want it to stop.” I thought about all the women who are turned away from shelters because there are no beds, and I thought about the women who were so terrified of their husbands that they feared for their lives and the lives of their children. And I always thought about the women who were too afraid to call the authorities. “It just seems like this problem is almost impossible to solve.”

  She nodded her head.

  “I’m gonna help you, Liz. We’re gonna make some noise.”

  I believed her.

  CHAPTER 13

  Ashley—Too Much

  “The red-eye is killing me. Do you have any Visine?”

  I turned around to see my brother standing right there in the Turner Gallery with his hands on his sassy hips. I was so surprised I gasped and then I squealed with delight to see him. He squealed too.

  “Ivy!” We threw our arms around each other and hugged tight. “What are you doing here? You look fabulous!”

  He was wearing supertight longish pants, a schoolboy blazer with a skinny necktie, and roundish tortoiseshell glasses. He looked adorable.

  “I came to help Maisie and to see for myself how Skipper is doing. Can you go out for lunch?”

  “Let me just ask!” I started to go find one of the Turners and stopped. “This is the best surprise I’ve had in years!”

  “She said as though she was a world-weary thousand years old . . . ,” he said.

  Okay, he rolled his eyes but let me tell you, he was plenty glad to know how happy I was to see him. Who wouldn’t want someone to be totally excited to see them walk in a room?

  Judy was squirreled away in her office, paying bills online. She looked up at me with a tired scowl.

  “Sorry to interrupt, Ms. Turner. I can’t believe this but my brother just showed up!”

  “From California?” She took off her reading glasses and smiled such a pretty smile. “How nice!”

  “Yes! He wants to take me to lunch. Is that okay?”

  “Of course it is. Go! Have fun!”

  “Thanks! I’ll be back in an hour.”

  “Honey? Take the day. It’s not like you see him that often,” she said. “Life’s short.”

  “Really? Thank you! I’ll see y’all tomorrow.”

  “Fine, fine. It�
�s a gorgeous day. By the way, how’s your grandmother’s friend doing?”

  “Skipper? I saw him last night. He’s talking and walking—not exactly like before but they say he’s making huge progress.”

  “Well, that’s fine. Now shoo! Don’t keep your brother waiting!”

  “Okay! Thanks!”

  Ivy and I walked down Broad Street in the sizzling heat, talking about Skipper and his recovery.

  “When I first heard the news, I figured he was a goner,” I said. “But apparently this aspirin drip they gave him worked a total miracle.”

  “They have made all sorts of incredible strides in medicine. Especially the human genome thing.”

  “And what is that in English, please?”

  “Well, as I understand it, they do a map of your whole DNA or something and then they can tell you what you are likely to catch—you know, like cancer or heart disease. Then they can design meds to suit the individual. It’s pretty expensive to do all this but if you had a lot of Alzheimer’s or something really horrible ran in your family, it might be worth it, you know?”

  “I’m twenty-three. I’ve never done anything to defile my temple except to drink some very cheap white wine. I can’t fathom mapping my anything.”

  “Right. Me either. It was just something I read in the science section of the San Francisco Chronicle on the way here. I’m hoping that by the time I get something, they’ll know how to cure it.”

  “Me too.”

  We were headed to the Blind Tiger to have lunch and we were shown to a table in the courtyard.

  “I love this place,” he said. “I haven’t been here in years. Did you know it used to be a speakeasy?”

  “No kidding?”

  “Yup. True story. Do they still have fried pickles?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Right there in the appetizer section. I’ll share if you want.”

  “Perfect.”

  Despite the heat, it was very comfortable in the shade of the garden. Maybe I was just used to it.

  “Are you gonna stay with me this time?”

  “No, precious. I’m staying at Maisie’s for obvious reasons. But I will see you every minute I can. I just figured our mother needed some pressure taken off. And besides, I need to talk to you about something.”

  “Rats. Okay. S’up?”

  “Well, let’s order and then I’ll give you the skinny.”

  So we ordered fried pickles and corn fritters, chicken salad and crab cakes, and, of course, two huge glasses of sweet tea. Ivy hemmed and hawed around, not stuttering exactly but obviously not getting to the point of what he wanted to tell me.

  “Is everything okay? I mean, with you and James?”

  “Oh, heavens yes! We’re like two old men, set in our ways, saving up our strength for better things than work, although sometimes it seems like all we do is work.”

  “Then what are you not telling me that you wanted to tell me?”

  “Oh, my dear. I don’t know where to begin.”

  “Okay, process of elimination . . . if this isn’t about you or James, is it about Mom or Dad?”

  “Yes. It’s about Dad.”

  “Is he sick?”

  “No. Well, no more so than most men. In the head, I mean.”

  I thought for a moment. It was about Ivy’s last trip to New York with James. He found something out.

  “You never actually came down with that cold, did you?”

  “Cold? What cold?”

  “Ivy? You’re the worst liar on the planet!”

  “I never was much good at it. That is true.”

  “Remember when you went to New York and then we talked later and I asked you what you were hiding from me and you said . . .”

  “I think I’m getting a cold?”

  “Yes. So Dad’s up to no good in New York?”

  “I’ll say.”

  “Oh, no.” I felt my heart sink and slouched in my seat. I hated to know this. “Poor Mom. Does she know?”

  “I don’t think so. But I think she’s suspicious.”

  “Because you made her suspicious?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Oh, Ivy. Now what? Give me the details!”

  “It all happened so fast. James and I were in the apartment getting ready to go out to meet some friends for cocktails and the doorbell rang. We opened the door and there stood this gorgeous amazon of a woman with hair for days, wearing a trench coat, but under it? Honey? She was just as jaybird naked as the day she was born into this world.”

  “Oh, no! Did you like faint?”

  “Almost. But you know my James. He whispered, Glass? Take a movie. So Glass starts filming and boom, we’ve got a short film we could submit at Sundance. This woman says, Oh sorry, wrong apartment, which was pretty fast thinking on her part. I said, Maybe. James said quietly, Maybe not. Anyway, we have the file. And she was not selling Girl Scout cookies, okay?”

  “Holy crap. I’m sure she wasn’t. What did you do with the film?” I said.

  “Well, I have it on my phone. I was debating showing it to Mom and then I thought about showing it to Dad. Then Skipper had his stroke, which gave me an excuse to come home and I thought, you know what? I’m not telling Mom about this. I’m just going to encourage her, in the strongest possible terms, to pay Dad an unannounced visit. I’d like you to back me up on that.”

  “No problem. Ivy? Don’t let Mom see the film. It would just hurt her.”

  “I agree. But I feel like e-mailing it to Dad, you know, anonymously. What’s the matter with him?”

  “I don’t know. It’s pretty terrible to run around, and especially for him to do this to Mom. I really don’t like this. I mean, she annoys me to death sometimes, but she’s faithful to Dad, even if they do bicker. Are you absolutely positive this woman was there to see Dad?”

  “Yes. Look, I know Mom annoys you. She annoys me too. So does Dad. They can be pretty thoughtless and rude. That’s why we call them the Impossibles!”

  “And they are. It’s the bickering I hate the most. But on a brighter note? Guess what? I’m in love!”

  “What? You are? With who? Gosh, I love these stupid little things.”

  At that point we were making fast work of the fried pickles and the fritters.

  “Porter Galloway. He’s a state senator and cute as a bug.”

  “What? Wait. I think I know that guy. I think. Or maybe not. How old is he?”

  “He’s thirty-one so he’s not so old as all that.”

  “I think I remember him . . . he was a little badass, if memory serves.”

  “Well, he’s not a badass anymore. We’re having dinner tonight.”

  “Yeah but, thirty-one? That’s an eight-year difference!”

  “And how old is James? Hmm?”

  The waiter took away our appetizer plates, on which there was not one single crumb left, and put my chicken salad and Ivy’s crab cakes in front of us.

  “Thanks,” he said to the waiter. “Okay, okay. I see your point. How long have you been seeing him?”

  “Off and on for a while. He picks me up, we go out to dinner, he brings me home, and that’s about it.”

  “That’s it? Is he gay?”

  “Ivy Waters! You can’t ask me . . . of course not!”

  “Ashley River? Listen to your big bubba. If he’s not trying to throw you down, there’s something tragically askew in his southern clime.”

  “Well, let’s just say we’re traveling on the road, but we’re not there yet.”

  “Fine. Holy Mother McCree, the idea of my baby sister having a love affair is just too weird. Change of subject. How was your last soiree?”

  “It was great. I mean, this idea is like the smartest thing ever! No one gets hurt, everyone has a good time, and we make money!”

&nbs
p; “How many people showed up?”

  “Like fifty. Totally manageable. This chicken salad is delicious.”

  “The crab cakes are awesome too. So how many more times are you planning to do this? I worry about you.”

  “Well, I was ready to keep doing it until I had like ten thousand in the bank, but Porter thinks we should stop now.”

  “Well, he probably doesn’t want to see you get into trouble.”

  “Yes, and it wouldn’t be good for him either. In fact, he sort of threw a fit about it.”

  “Well, he’s not wrong, Ash. You are serving alcohol without a license.”

  “Oh, please. It’s not like we were selling drugs or running a whorehouse or something terrible like that.”

  “I know, I know. Well, it looks like this Porter fellow grew up and turned out all right. At least he’s well behaved.”

  “Oh gosh, yes! Ivy, I know what, why don’t you join us for dinner tonight? Then you can see for yourself!”

  And maybe I would be able to avoid the bedroom for at least one more date if my big brother was there.

  “No, you go have your date. I’m a little anxious to go see what’s going on with Maisie and Skipper. Let’s pass on dessert and get over to the hospital.”

  “Okay. Wait, I know! Come meet us for a drink at Cypress! Six thirty? Just one little dwinkie? Please?”

  Ivy looked at me, shook his head, and smiled.

  “Does anybody ever tell you no and stick to it?” He pushed his plate a few inches away. “If I eat another bite, I’m going to explode. Let’s get the check.”

  We paid the bill and decided to drive my car over to MUSC.

  “I’ll take you back to your car later,” I said, clicking the locks open on my SUV, wondering why I locked it.

  We climbed in and it was as hot as the nails in the planks on the bottom floor of Dante’s hell.

  “Lord! Crank the AC, will you? I do not miss this heat and humidity!”

  “I’m sure you don’t. It’s a beast.”

  I blasted the air-conditioning as high as I could, not that it made a difference until we were well down the street.

  “How many miles do you have on this thing?”

  “Half a billion,” I said. “But it’s a Subaru, therefore I can leave it to my children.”