Mamaw’s hands fluttered in her lap. It unnerved Carson to see her nervous and she tensed, sensing another hurt coming.
“Is it true?” Carson asked. “Did my mother kill herself?”
“It’s not a yes-or-no answer,” Mamaw began hesitatingly.
“She either did commit suicide or she didn’t.”
Mamaw looked at her. “No, she didn’t.”
Carson reconciled this in her mind. “Then why did Dora say she did?”
“She was wrong. That’s just malicious gossip.”
“Gossip . . .”
“Listen to what I have to tell you, Carson. It’s the truth.”
Carson clenched her hands tightly on the arms of the chair.
Mamaw sighed, then began in a slow cadence. “It was all such a long time ago, but I’m still haunted by it. Carson, your mother’s death was a terrible, terrible accident. Sophie had been drinking. She had a problem with alcohol, you see. Like Parker. She was in her bedroom, in bed, watching television or reading, I don’t know. But she was smoking. She smoked quite a lot.” She stopped and took a little breath. “A lot of us did back then. The fire department concluded that the fire started in her bedroom. The likely explanation was that Sophie passed out while smoking—that’s what the coroner determined. Your mother never meant to die in that terrible fire.” Mamaw paused. “I pray to God she died quickly.”
“But . . . but I always thought . . . you always told me that the fire started from a lightning strike,” Carson said.
Mamaw put her hands together in her lap. “Yes. That’s what I told you. There was a storm that night, true enough, with a lot of lightning. Edward and I talked about it and together we decided that you didn’t need to know the unsavory details. You were only four years old, after all. Your mother had just passed away. That was enough for you to deal with.”
Carson listened, pressing her fingers to her eyes, trying to make sense of it. “But later, when I was older. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What good would it have done? I don’t know, maybe I should have. It just never seemed the right time.”
“My mother was a drunk, too?” Carson asked, stunned by the enormity of that fact. That really stacks the deck against me, doesn’t it? When I came to you and told you I was worried I had a problem, that would’ve been the time to tell me about my mother. Don’t you think?“
Mamaw sighed and nodded her head.
“But how did Dora know?”
Mamaw’s eyes flashed. “She should never have said what she did to you. It was wrong of her. Wrong that she even knew. Her mother must have told her. That horrible gossip. Never forget that in life there is gossip and there are family secrets. We can tolerate the prattle, but to break the bonds of family is unforgivable.”
“Don’t defend the secrets!” Carson cried.
“I’m not,” Mamaw told her. “If we’ve learned nothing else this summer, haven’t we learned that secrets in a family are like a disease? One lie on top of another. The truth always comes out in the end.”
“I’m sick to death of secrets in this family. Why don’t we try honesty for a change?”
Mamaw’s eyes filled with tears. “I was with Nate when he put out the hooks.”
“What?” Carson stilled.
“Last night,” Mamaw said, holding back tears. “I caught him sneaking out to the dock with the fishing rods. So I went with him. I helped him set the bait and put out the line. We both left the rods there. I didn’t see the harm in it. He wanted to catch fish for Delphine, you see. He was trying to do something for you.”
Carson stared at Mamaw. “Why did you let me yell at Nate if you were the one who let him put the rods out in the first place?”
“I . . . I don’t know, I didn’t fully understand what the commotion was about until it was too late . . . I . . . I feel so terrible,” Mamaw said. “And when I saw that poor dolphin . . . I know the boy must feel terrible, too. He cares so deeply for the dolphin, and for you, Carson. You need to know that.”
Carson let out a guttural groan and rose from the chair. “I don’t know what to say. My head and my heart ache,” she cried. “They really, physically hurt.” She stopped and glared at Mamaw, her mind reeling from the string of revelations. It was all too much to take. It felt like the room was closing in on her, and she stumbled running from it.
By the time Carson got to Dunleavy’s the ovens were lit, the fryers jump-started, and the coffee made, and Ashley was covering both of their tables. After punching in, she almost tripped over the liquor shipment that had come earlier that morning. The top box nearly tipped but she grabbed it just in time.
“What happened to you?” Ashley asked when she burst into the kitchen to deliver the order.
Carson was tying her apron around her waist. “Don’t ask,” she said. She grabbed a stack of menus and headed out to face the lunchtime rush. She needed to keep busy or she’d go crazy with worry over Delphine.
Brian gave her several of his punishing looks during the shift but Carson felt too numb to care. She went through the motions like an automaton, not laughing at the cornball jokes the patrons made, answering the monotonous questions that she’d heard a thousand times with a dull voice. Ashley sensed something was wrong and gave her a wide berth during the shift.
When the last customer finally left, Brian waved them over to the bar. He was drying a glass with a towel.
“Ashley, you can go home early,” he told her. “You covered the shift. Carson, you close up. Any complaints?”
“I don’t mind helping close,” Ashley said, but her hesitancy was polite more than altruistic.
“Go on,” Carson told Ashley. “Thanks for covering for me.”
Carson began stacking dirty glasses on a tray.
“What happened to you today?” Brian asked her when Ashley walked off.
Carson shrugged. “I got held up. Family problems,” she replied.
Brian studied her face, then let the matter drop. “Okay, then,” he said, and went back to drying his glasses. “Don’t make a habit of it.”
Carson ran the cocktail trays through the dishwasher and put away clean glasses so hot she had to pull them out with a towel. After that she got the restaurant ready for the evening shift. Brian had left the bar and gone to pick up something from the grocery store. Carson was alone in the pub. She stocked the waitress station with ice and wiped each table, making sure the condiments were filled.
The last task was cleaning the bar. She walked behind it, polishing the lacquered wood clean. Wiping the liquor bottles was next. Her hands ran along the bottles one by one as a sudden thirst felt like it was burning in her throat. Her hands shook on the bottles, the urge suddenly so strong. Looking around, she saw that she was alone. Quietly, she reached under the bar for a shot glass and grabbed a bottle of tequila from the shelf. She filled the shot glass, her hand shaking so hard she spilled some. She took a deep breath and paused, staring at the glass.
Her mind railed at her not to drink it, to fight the temptation to fall off the wagon. Yet even as she heard the voice in her head, she knew she would do it. She didn’t care anymore about sobriety. What did it matter? Her mother was a drunk. Her father was a drunk. So was she.
Ducking low, she drank the tequila down in a gulp. Carson winced at the jolt of what felt like needles flowing down to her stomach. Brian would fire her if he caught her. But Carson was far from caring at this point. Without thinking further, she poured a second shot and, closing her eyes, sent it down the hatch. Licking her lips, she screwed the top back on the bottle, rinsed the shot glass and wiped it with a towel, then neatly put all back in order. Reaching for a lemon slice, she popped it into her mouth to mask the scent of tequila.
The clock over the bar was neon with a beer logo surrounding the casing. Brian had told her that the distributors coaxed him to put it up there with season tickets to the Citadel games. Glancing at it, Carson saw it was time to go home. She went to the back room to get he
r bag and lock up.
Home. Where the hell is that? she wondered bitterly, putting her fingers to her forehead and pressing hard. The one place she’d always felt was her home—Sea Breeze—was the last place she wanted to go to now. She felt adrift without an anchor. Desperately sad and lonely. She just wanted to forget this horrible day. Forget Delphine and Nate and Mamaw. Forget Blake.
And her mother. A horrid image of her mother burning in her bed flashed in her mind.
Oh God, she needed another drink. A real drink.
She spied the shipment of alcohol waiting to be shelved. The top box was open and partially emptied. In a rush, Carson pulled out a bottle of Southern Comfort and quickly wrapped it in one of the dirty towels. Looking over her shoulder, she stuck it in her purse, locked the back door, and walked directly to the golf cart. She opened up the small metal trunk in the back. Carefully she set the bottle next to her beach bag. When she turned back toward the restaurant, her heart leaped in her chest. Brian was a few yards away, walking back to the pub. He was carrying the mail and shuffling through the envelopes.
Carson didn’t wave or shout out a hello. She slipped into the cart and fired the engine, her heart racing. She’d never stolen anything before in her life. Not even when she was a kid and her friends shoplifted for fun. Carson had never been able to do it, because she knew it was wrong.
As she drove down the street, farther from Dunleavy’s, she was surprised how, after a morning of ragged emotions, she now felt absolutely nothing.
The floating dock was rickety, bobbing in the small waves. Carson stepped carefully on the creaking wood. She’d been drinking all afternoon, knew she’d had too much and it was not a good idea to be on a floating piece of wood when you’d had a few too many.
She sat in a gloomy funk and let her legs dangle in the water. She heard a fish jump and swung her head around, instinctively searching for Delphine. The black water of the cove was bleak and empty.
“Delphine!” she cried out.
Tired, woozy, she laid her head on her arms, awash in loneliness. She longed to hear Delphine’s nasal whistle, to see her sweet face. Carson turned her head and stared out at the water with longing. How was she? What was she doing now? When was Blake going to call and tell her the status?
Carson dragged herself back to sitting position, cradling the bottle of Southern Comfort in her arms. She brought the bottle to her lips and drank. She had no idea what time it was. It had to be at least nine o’clock, because the sun had set and the sky was turning that deep purplish gray that heralded night. The current was running with the tide, churning the mud and water into a brackish brew. In the far distance she could make out the small, twinkling lights on the bridge that joined Mt. Pleasant to Charleston. Carson wished she were a kid again, swimming with her sisters, innocent and full of hope for the future, rather than sitting on a dock with a bottle of Southern Comfort, a bitter old woman at only thirty-four, trying to make sense of how it all went wrong. She took another sip of SoCo. Could she ever forgive Dora for flinging those hateful words at her like stones—husband-stealing drunken suicide.
She lay on her back and stared up at the stars, as yet faint in the periwinkle sky but still pulsing. She’d known that her mother had died in the horrible fire that destroyed the small house they’d rented on Sullivan’s Island. She’d accepted the fact that her mother died in a fire the same as if she’d died of cancer or a car accident. The salient point to a child was that her mother was gone, not how she left. Tonight, however, she was haunted less by Dora’s words and more by Mamaw’s. They floated in her mind, creating macabre images. I pray to God she died quickly.
Carson closed her eyes and brought her arm up over them, shuddering. Death by fire had to be one of the worst possible ways to die. She felt physically sick as she thought about the unspeakable terror of being burned alive. Carson shivered in the night, feeling a fine sweat break out on her skin. She closed her eyes and somewhere in that blackness a memory hovered close. She could almost grasp it, like a hand in the thick smoke. She was groping for it like a frightened child. It was so close. If she could only reach it.
“Dad!” she cried aloud.
The smells were bad. And there was a hissing sound and loud noises that woke her. Carson was only four years old. She didn’t know what the noises came from, but even with her head under the sheet, the bad smells made her cough. They made her afraid. She pushed off the sheet from her face.
“Mama!” she cried. “Daddy!”
When no one answered her, Carson climbed from her bed to go to their room. Everything felt hot, the floors, the air, the door handle. It burned her hand when she touched it. A mean gray smoke was sneaking in from under the door and it frightened her. It was not supposed to be there. She ran back to her bed and pulled her blanket over her head. She heard glass breaking, like her mama might have been in a bad mood and breaking something.
“Carson!” It was her father’s voice.
“Daddy!” she cried, and her heart leaped with joy in her chest. “Daddy!” She pulled off the blanket again and hurried to the door. This time she opened it, burning her hand as she turned the knob. But she had to get to her daddy.
Smoke poured into the room. It was thick and black and it burned when she breathed and made her eyes burn. She coughed and rubbed her eyes but that only made them worse. Crying now, she knew she had to get to her parents’ room, where it was safe. She groped her way down the hall, her palms flat against the wall. Even the walls felt hot to the touch.
Then she saw him, standing in front of his bedroom. He wasn’t moving. She wanted to cry that she was so glad to see him, knowing soon she’d be safe in his arms.
“Daddy!” she cried, her voice cracking in the dry heat. She stumbled toward him. He turned but she could barely see him through the smoke. She reached out to him.
Instead of grabbing her hand, he turned in the opposite direction and fled. Carson’s last vision of him was his back disappearing in the smoke as he ran down the stairs.
She dropped to her knees, crying and coughing. She couldn’t call his name; her throat was too raw. All she could think to do was to follow him. She crawled to the stairs. Sparks were flying everywhere. It hurt so bad when they burned her skin, like sharp teeth biting her. She crawled as fast as she could to the stairs. At last she saw that the front door was open. A man in a big hat was standing there.
“Daddy,” she cried, but it came out more as a cough. But the man in the big hat heard her and ran up the stairs and scooped her up in his arms. She buried her face against his rubbery coat as he carried her outdoors.
Suddenly the air was cooler and didn’t burn her skin, though it still hurt to breathe. She coughed again and blinked open her eyes. A lady took her from the big man’s arms and was carrying her to a red truck. She smiled at her, but Carson was afraid and cried for her father.
“He’s all right,” the nice lady told her. “He’s right over there. See him?”
Carson looked to where the woman pointed. She saw him kneeling on the grass. He was all dirty and his body was bent, with his face in his hands like he was praying. Only he wasn’t praying. He was crying.
She reached for him. Here I am, Daddy, she wanted to tell him. Don’t worry about me, I’m here. But her throat hurt too badly to talk and the nurse was carrying her farther away from him into the little red truck. The nice lady laid her on a cot with clean white paper on it and she was saying things like how everything was going to be all right.
“I want my mommy,” Carson croaked.
The nurse’s face stilled and she had that uh-oh look in her eyes that told Carson something bad had happened. Then she put a plastic cup over Carson’s mouth and told her it would help her to breathe.
“You just rest, sweetheart,” the woman told her. “I’m going to take good care of you. Don’t you worry. Everything’s going to be all right.”
But Carson didn’t feel like everything was going to be all right. She felt a terror
engulfing her, squeezing her heart, that was worse than the evil smoke in the house. And she was afraid.
Carson coughed and gasped for air, opening her eyes and staring wildly into the night while her heart beat hard in her chest. For a frightening moment she didn’t know where she was. Then, as her heart rate settled, she heard the lapping of the water and felt the rocking of the dock and remembered she was outdoors, at Sea Breeze, on the floating dock.
She struggled to sit up, her head reeling, and wiped her face with her palms. She felt hot and afraid, like she was still trapped in the blinding smoke. She’d remembered that terrible night of the fire—remembered it like it was yesterday. It was so vivid, she could almost feel the burning of the heat and sparks on her skin. Had she tucked it far into some dark corner so she’d never have to face it again? Why had she blocked out that memory?
Then, with a sudden chill, she knew why. She closed her eyes and saw again her father’s back running down the stairs. He’d left her there, in the fire. He abandoned his child to die, just so he could make it out of the house faster, saving himself. What kind of father did that? What kind of a man? Carson felt a fierce stab of betrayal. Throughout her childhood she’d stuck by his side. Every day, he’d told her that he loved her.
It was all just lies. How could he have loved her if he’d abandoned her to burn to death? Then, with a bitter twist of the knife, she realized that abandonment was what he’d practiced all his life.
Carson struggled to her feet. Her whole body felt hot, as though she were back in the fire. She picked at her sweaty clothes. They were soaked and sticky. She needed to cool down. The lights appeared a little more blurry, and the dock seemed to rock a bit more strongly. She slipped off her T-shirt and unzipped her shorts and kicked them off beside her flip-flops. Teetering at the edge of the dock, she stared into the water. The blackness called to her. With a push, she dove in.
The water was blessedly cold. She kicked her legs and pulled her sopping hair back. She felt oddly weak, so she did the breaststroke, flexing her legs like a frog. She trusted her swimming, always strong and sure, and started off toward the next closest dock. There weren’t boats cruising by this late at night, and it felt safe to stretch her arms and swim farther out.
The Summer Girls Page 26
