The Bee Cottage Story

by Frances Schultz

  My brother-in-law Rex Fuqua, sister Duvall, me, and Geoff Conroy at the Garden of Eden Ball that Duvall and I co-chaired for the Atlanta Botanical Garden in 1998. / As an on-air host for Southern Living Presents, I got to do some pretty interesting things, like report from the White House press room. / Having traveled with the Sir John Soane Museum Foundation, I was recruited by board member Chippy Irvine (wife of the late designer Keith Irvine) to be in an 18th-century style maquette for the foundation’s benefit in 2006. Chippy made the costumes from bubble wrap, trash bags, duct tape, pet food lids, and the like. What a hoot! With me is designer Leamond Dean. / Christmas in Newnan, Georgia, with sister Duvall and family circa 1995.

  Partying at the oasis.

  Niece Frances, nephew John Rex, and niece Ruth. / Niece Isabel and our leopard slippers came a few years later.

  The irony is that I am, by nature, an introspective person. I’d just insisted on making self-understanding harder than it was. Where there was clarity, I made a muddle. When the road was smooth, I made bumps. But I’m good at tying bows and make a hell of a lamb stew. I can arrange flowers and furniture in my sleep. I can tell jokes. I’m artistic, and I’m a decent athlete. Some days I can even write. All those things are hints, by the way, to Who I Am, but back in the day I sometimes ignored my instincts and natural inclinations. I ignored my own authenticity, which I see now as a kind of slight to God, or Spirit, or Source, or however you call it. And it leads to nowhere good.

  Windmill and garden folly in the German countryside; downtown Havana; and a restaurant in Normandy.

  One of my favorite things to do while traveling is to sketch and paint.

  Chapter 4

  Nowhere Good

  Something about being in New York and dating New York men seemed to lead me to expect more and accept less. Something about being in New York, where it’s all about what you do and less about who you are, began to erode my self-respect and my self-esteem with it. Everywhere I looked there was someone younger, smarter, wealthier, thinner, funnier, and prettier. I started thinking I wasn’t nearly as fabulous as everyone else around me—especially those strolling along Madison Avenue and swilling martinis at posh parties.

  The ensuing break-up was more damaging than I gave it credit for, but what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.

  It also makes us mad as hell.

  Staying in romantic relationships past their sell-by date was long a pattern of mine. It came with the aforementioned territory and continued in my early New York years. This is a perfectly good and nice man, I would say to myself. If I am really a good person, I will wake up one day and be in love with him like I should be, and be happy. And gosh, there are so few good men! Oh, perhaps. But the truth is that I wasn’t honest enough with myself to admit something or someone wasn’t right for me, let alone didn’t rock my world. What had I done to deserve to have my world rocked? When I finally did end a relationship I felt horrible, debilitating guilt. I was nowhere good.

  Eventually nowhere good led to someplace worse: a relationship in which I felt diminished and objectified. The ensuing break-up was more damaging than I gave it credit for, but what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. It also makes us mad as hell.

  He was the most famous person I ever dated. A highly visible and prolific television producer, he was well known in name if not in person. We met at a Christmas party and talked a while—a lot about his children and the perils of growing up with money, about his pending divorce. He didn’t ask for my number and I didn’t offer it. It never crossed my mind to be interested in him. So I was surprised when he called, and flattered. It’s always flattering when someone calls. I’ll be nice and go out with him, I thought, how bad could it be? He was, after all, smart, interesting, and successful. We’d have a great conversation, at worst. It turned out we had more than that—we had chemistry. Over the months I grew attached to him, more than I wanted to admit.

  We’d been seeing each other for nearly a year.

  He left my bed one morning and my life the next.

  Now I am an independent sort, and not the jealous type–just the opposite, in fact. We saw each other on and off. He had a lot going on and so did I. When he was doing something or going somewhere and not including me, I didn’t ask. Nice little Southern girl, I assumed he was busy and keeping a low profile as he was not yet divorced. What I missed was that he had a girlfriend on the West Coast all along. I ignored the creeping sense that he just wasn’t Doing Right. Note to self: Don’t ignore those creeping senses. They are never wrong. That I could have been so naive unnerves me to this day. And it’s nobody’s fault but mine.

  The break-up was over a small thing, a bit of rudeness in an email. In my email back, I called him on it and a few other things while I was at it . . . about how he had the world on a string, and wonderful me with it, and how he deserved to be happy, etc. etc. I am brilliant at these sorts of tirades. His answer was, via Blackberry, “I need to get to a keyboard.” And that was it.

  We’d been seeing each other for nearly a year. He left my bed one morning and my life the next. I meant nothing to him. Nothing. I’d been ditched before, but not like that.

  It was Thanksgiving. I went to the Ronald McDonald House in my neighborhood to serve Thanksgiving lunch. Being around children with cancer has a way of adjusting your perspective. I flew to London to be with old friends. Everything seemed better. I was sure I’d hear from him, if only to say “Hey, I’m sorry it didn’t work out.” But I didn’t. Ever. Hear from him again.

  When I returned to New York I heard he’d been hit by a truck.

  And you know what I thought?

  He needed to get hit by a fucking truck is what I thought.

  When I returned to New York I heard he’d been hit by a truck while jaywalking. Someone sent me the item from The New York Post. And you know what I thought? He needed to get hit by a fucking truck is what I thought. I wished him no harm (well, maybe a little), but he needed to wake the fuck up. Pardon my French.

  He recovered, by the way. The girlfriend came to nurse him back to health.

  Moody afternoon light under the grape arbor at Bee Cottage.

  Some months later one of the doormen in my building asked me if I ever saw him anymore. Nope, I said. “That guy was an asshole,” he said. It was soooo inappropriate. I burst out laughing. By then, I had bigger things to worry about.

  Who am I to say someone else needs to wake up? When something goes off the rails in your life, the first thing you need to do is wake up yourself and look in the mirror. I’m the one who needed to get hit by a truck.

  And I did.

  Chapter 5

  The Big C

  WHAM.

  Cancer. January, 2004.

  A routine mammogram revealed a tumor. (Get your mammograms, ladies!) Caught early and small, thank God, the little bastard was removed in a lumpectomy and the lymph nodes were clear. I was lucky. But it was an aggressive cancer called HER2/neu that the good folks at Memorial Sloan Kettering believed in treating with big guns.

  “Big guns” is the technical term for The Next Year of Your Life is Going to Be A Huge Pain in the Ass. Oh, and your hair is going to fall out. Oh, and you will slam into menopause. Oh, and between the chemo, radiation, and drugs you’re going to be taking for years, your body is going to change in ways they don’t tell you about ahead of time or you’d be even more pissed off than you already were. Oh, and you’re never having children.

  Oh, and you’d better not let word get out about this or you’re dead in this town. Oh, and you’re alone . . . Who wants to hire a freelance writer who is so frightfully preoccupied? Let alone who would want to date one? So I kept my condition as much to my inner circle as I could. I also didn’t want cancer to be what my life was about. I continued hosting Southern Living Presents for the erstwhile Turner South cable network and writing for Veranda, and I co-authored two books: Signature Weddings with Michelle Rago, and A House in the South, with Savannah College of Art an
d Design founder Paula Wallace.

  Perhaps ironically, in some ways during that time I’ve never felt less alone. Cancer is a great teacher and, if you allow it, a great foil for silver linings. My friends and family were incredibly supportive. They did not hover, but they were there. I am not the type around whom people hover, and I am comfortable with a certain amount of solitude. Somehow, between my friends and my faith, I knew I would be okay. Something will get me one of these days, but it ain’t this cancer, and it ain’t now. I believed it, and I think they did too.

  Do I look sick to you? Sporting my wig with old beau and good friend Jonathan Mermagen from London. We met in Capri to celebrate the end of chemo treatments. I was still bald as an eagle, so I slept in a little white knit cap. Jonathan said it was like sleeping with the pope. / All dolled up for my friend Bill Smith’s 50th birthday, 2004, not quite a year from diagnosis. I’d switched to a shorter wig so the transition wouldn’t seem so drastic when my hair finally started growing back. / It does grow back. Here with my “chemo curls” and friend Alex Hitz in Venice. I had that big silk flower made to cover part of my cleavage. Not because of the surgery but because I am not Jennifer Lopez. / On a painting trip to Provence. I looked like a poodle.

  Four generations of Clarks, ca. 1940. My mother, Ruth Duvall Clark, is sitting on the ground in the middle. / My mother and father on their wedding day, 1955. They were married at mother’s home in Tarboro because it was my father’s second marriage and a church wedding was considered unfitting. Have times changed or what. / Mother with her brother, my Uncle Bill (“Dubba”) Clark, at a Tarboro shindig, ca 1960-something. Tarboro knows how to shindig.

  Chapter 6

  Mama

  The hardest thing about that whole cancer episode was dealing with my mother. We spoke every day, like we always had, she in Tarboro and me wherever I was. She was my best friend. And now my amazing, movie-star-beautiful, steel magnolia of a mama was getting old, and it did not suit her one bit. Health issues cropped up, overlapped, receded, only for others to appear. Not that she would evah tawlk about it to my sister or me, heaven forbid. She was still impeccably turned out, played bridge like a demon, and did the crossword in ink. But we sensed her disengaging, becoming less herself.

  The friend who’d been with her told me Mama put on her lipstick before the ambulance came, and when they asked her age, she lied.

  She and my sister came to New York for my surgery, and I was in and out in a few hours. I got dressed that night and went with my arm in a sling to the Plaza Athenée to meet them for dinner because it seemed easier than coping with Mama going out. What the hell, I was on Percoset. Why lie around the apartment?

  But when she offered to come back to New York to be with me during a treatment, I begged her not to come. “I can’t take care of you,” I said, and I hated myself for it. Apart from the day of the bad mammogram—I knew it was bad that day—it was the only other time I cried that year. Way more than cancer and all its effects, knowing I was losing my mama, my best friend, broke my heart.

  My biggest fear in life was being alone when she died.

  By early winter of ’04 my hair was growing back, in short, dark “chemo curls,” they call it. I looked like a poodle. I’d begun seeing someone, a fellow writer, who had invited me to accompany him to Sri Lanka in December, where he would be researching his next book. It was an interesting trip, and he was a gracious host.

  I returned home in time to spend Christmas with my sister, her family, and Mama, in Atlanta. My gentleman friend left two days after me in time to save his life, flying from Colombo to New York on Christmas Day and missing the tsunami of the century by hours.

  I didn’t know I was about to get a tsunami of my own.

  That Christmas Eve at home we had a big crowd, like we always do. Mama sparkled as brightly as the tree. After dinner she told story after story, maybe even a few we hadn’t heard before (was that possible?), and we roared with laughter. Someone else would tell a story, and that would remind her of another one, and we’d roar again. God it was fun.

  After Mother’s second wedding to yet another military pilot, 1969, a few months before he left for Vietnam. She was still a babe. / At my beautiful sister Duvall’s wedding to Rex Fuqua in Tarboro. As you can tell by our dresses it is 1989. That ginormous (faux!) sapphire and diamond necklace my mother is wearing with her Scaasi gown was on loan from her then-hairstylist, who was a cross-dresser. Some of the fancy people there from Atlanta asked her if it was a family piece. She said, “Sort of.”

  It was her last, best gift to us. The day after Christmas she couldn’t get out of bed. She managed the next day to fly back to North Carolina. On New Year’s Eve she went to the hospital. On New Year’s night, 2005, she died, two months before her 74th birthday. The friend who’d been with her and called the ambulance told me Mama put on her lipstick before the medics arrived. And when they asked her age, she lied. That was Mama.

  It was five or six years before I stopped reaching for my phone to call her every time I get in the car from the airport.

  She never got to see Bee Cottage. I hate that. My love of houses, flowers, and pretty things comes from her.

  Duvall, right, Mama, and me at a birthday party in Atlanta, 1999.

  Chapter 7

  Daddy

  Meanwhile, over in Alabama, near the Fort Rucker Army base where he had worked, Daddy had been diagnosed with lung cancer.

  But for a few of the seven years he was married to my mother and living in Tarboro, he was a career Army helicopter pilot and then a civil servant. My mother met him in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where she taught English between parties at the officers’ club (the real reason she was there). He was in the legendary 82nd Airborne.

  My father was handsome, dashing, decorated, and brave.

  He was also a lifelong smoker.

  His idea of quitting smoking was smoking a pipe.

  The marriage did not last, and because my mother was of independent means, she was not reliant on my father for support. Plus she was mad at him, understandably. So we grew up pretty much without him, without a history together. We saw one another occasionally, but a real bond never developed. The fault was nobody’s and everybody’s; it just worked out that way.

  My father was handsome, dashing, decorated, and brave, having served in Korea and twice in Vietnam. He was also a lifelong smoker. His idea of quitting smoking was smoking a pipe. That’s like a dieter quitting French fries for potato chips. As he neared the end and I visited him at home, he was still smoking that damn pipe.

  The ashtray sat on the coffee table next to the pills and liquid morphine. The room was thick with smoke and awful, but also perhaps a last wisp of pleasure. I sat and mostly listened. He told stories about his hardscrabble childhood in Tennessee, how his father, an engineer for the Tennessee Valley Authority, drank a fifth of whisky a day and sometimes went after my daddy with a chain, or worse. He talked about my family and his time in Tarboro. He was well-liked there. He just wasn’t very well-behaved, which he did not talk about. And he talked about Korea and Vietnam, the two times he was shot down, and how he missed getting the Distinguished Flying Cross because of a bureaucratic snafu. He took the bitter with the sweet and had a grand sense of humor.

  I taped our conversation, hoping to piece together the chronology of a life I had not known. It was the reporter in me covering for the daughter and the raw sadness of a relationship that never was. But he had deteriorated by then, his memory and senses dulled by the blessed, obliterating opiates that eased his suffering. When his bony frame would shift on the sofa, and he’d wince, I’d say “Daddy, why don’t you go ahead and take some more of that stuff?” And he said, “Have to be careful, Shug, that stuff’ll kill you.”

  Two months later, in February of ’06, he was gone.

  The following spring, I met G.

  My first handyman special was nestled on a leafy lot in the village of East Hampton. I don’t think a hammer or paint brush
had been near it in quite some time, but I did love that old cast iron sink.

  Chapter 8

  Buying a House in the Hamptons

  After years of being a houseguest in the Hamptons (thank you again, my dear hosts and friends), it was time to get my own place. An ad in a real estate magazine caught my eye: a small, shingled cottage on an acre-plus, right in the village of East Hampton. I bought it almost on a whim. I was in full-on cancer treatment at the time, so I blame it on the chemo.

  Here, I thought, in the mess and fear of cancer, was something I could control, complete, and make pleasant—a little house. I’ve loved decorating since childhood, and though the process can be fraught, the prospects are a joy and the results a pleasure and comfort. Little did I know what the healing power of the process could be, both physically and emotionally. Surrounding myself with beauty, even in the simple forms of a well-ordered, aesthetically pleasing personal environment, is essential to my sense of well-being. Even when I was a little girl and we built forts in the woods behind our house, the rocks and sticks had to be lined up just so.

  The house was a bit of a wreck. Believed to have been built from a Sears kit around the 1920s, the structure and interiors appeared to have progressed to about 1960 and slumped there. There was a black dial telephone in a niche on the stair landing and one of those huge cast iron sinks in the kitchen, which I actually loved. But the roof and exterior trim were in bad shape and the place suffered from sitting vacant for a year while the family I bought it from reportedly quarreled over estate issues. At the closing, nearly a year after I first signed the contract, several of the family members were in the room, glaring at one another. I kept waiting for somebody to reach across the table and grab somebody. Thankfully no one did (not then anyway), and finally it was mine.