Lessons of a Lowcountry Summer

by Rochelle Alers

  The two women hugged again, then rose to join the other family members.

  Part Two

  REBECCA LEIGHTON-OWENS

  Our love has been dying for years.

  —Anna Swir

  Five

  This is hard to say simply, because the words have grown so old together.

  —David Wagoner

  Rebecca Leighton-Owens sat at the table in the breakfast nook of a spacious kitchen in a Charleston suburb sipping her second cup of coffee. The remains of one cigarette smoldered in a ceramic ashtray, while an unlit one lay close at hand. She allowed herself two cups of coffee and two cigarettes each day. It was a ritual she had established last year, and although her husband and children did not approve of her smoking, it was something she refused to give up. Cigarettes had become her only vice and overt act of rebellion.

  “Mama?”

  Rebecca closed her eyes. “What do you want?”

  “Look at me, Mama. Please.”

  Rebecca opened her eyes and came to her feet. It wasn’t her daughter’s tears that bothered her, because it seemed as if the teenage girl cried more than she smiled, but the angry abrasion on her chin.

  “What happened to you?” Her protective maternal instincts had surfaced.

  “Kyle found my diary,” Ashlee wailed in a trembling voice.

  “I’m not talking about your diary. What happened to your chin?”

  “I fell down the stairs.” She backed up at the same time her mother extended a hand. “Please don’t touch me, Mama. You stink of cigarettes.”

  Rebecca’s hand fell limply to her side. Her child had injured herself, yet she did not want her to touch her. She stared at her hand as if it were an offending object that did not belong to her. What, she asked herself, and not for the first time, was she doing to herself and her family?

  “I’ll wash my hands.”

  Ashlee nodded, watching her mother as she disappeared into the bathroom off the kitchen. Walking to the table, she picked up the unlit cigarette and dropped it into the cup of coffee.

  Rebecca returned to the kitchen with a bottle of peroxide, cotton swabs, and a tube of antibiotic salve. Easing Ashlee down to a chair, she tended the abrasion. The eyes staring up at her were filled with the trusting innocence of a young child instead of those of an adolescent.

  Leaning forward, she kissed her forehead. “I’ll talk to Kyle about bothering your things.”

  Ashlee rolled her eyes. “You said that before.”

  Rebecca nodded. “I know I did. But this time I mean it.” She planned to talk to Kyle, Ashlee, and her husband about something that was certain to change everyone. “You’d better get dressed, or you’re going to be late for the school bus.”

  “Don’t forget I’m spending the weekend with Sonia.”

  Rebecca smiled for the first time that morning. “Have fun.”

  Her daughter planned to spend the weekend with her best friend, Kyle had left Charleston for a weekend class trip to Washington, D.C., and earlier that morning her husband had informed her that he wanted her to help him host a dinner party for a new client and his wife that night.

  Rebecca slipped into bed and turned off the lamp on her nightstand. She had fulfilled her role as hostess, and now all she wanted to do was sleep. Closing her eyes, she feigned sleep as Lee walked into the bedroom. She held her breath as he got into bed beside her. He moved closer and gathered the fabric of her nightgown, pulling it up over her hips.

  “No, Lee.”

  His fingers stilled. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing’s the matter. I just don’t want you to touch me.”

  Lee withdrew his hand. “You didn’t want me to touch you last night, or the night before. What’s going on, Becky?”

  She stared at the shadows on the doors of the wall-to-wall walk-in closet. He was too close. He was smothering her, like everything else in her life. “I want a separation.”

  Lee fell back to the mound of pillows and stared up at the ceiling.

  “I’ve been faithful to you these past two years.”

  “I know that, Lee.” Her voice was soft, calm.

  “You’ve met someone.” His question came out like a statement.

  “No. I haven’t met someone.” Her tone was flat.

  “If not a who, then what?”

  The words Rebecca had kept locked inside of her screamed for escape. The frustration, anger, disappointment, and despair merged. Pushing up into a sitting position, she turned the switch on the lamp nearest her.

  She stared down at her husband. She had thought herself blessed when she had caught the eye of Charleston’s most eligible bachelor. Lee Baxter Owens, a descendant of one of South Carolina’s leading black families, had it all: good looks, breeding and wealth. But none of it mattered to Rebecca, because she was trapped.

  “I need a break.”

  “What kind of a break, Becky?”

  She gritted her teeth. Lee knew how much she hated for him to call her that, yet he insisted on shortening her name. “A vacation.”

  He released her hand and pulled her closer until her head rested on his shoulder. “The kids will be out of school in a couple of weeks. We’ll all go away together for a week or two.”

  Shaking her head, Rebecca pulled out of his embrace. “No, Lee. Not with you. And not with Ashlee and Kyle.”

  His dark eyes widened before they narrowed, and Lee stared at her as if she weren’t his wife but a stranger. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Don’t, Lee.” Her voice was soft, pleading.

  “Don’t ‘Lee’ me, Becky.”

  She bit down on her lower lip to stop it from trembling. She had permitted her husband to program her life right down to her day-to-day existence. It had begun the day she had become Mrs. Lee Owens. She’d never had to make a decision because he had been the one to do that. Unknowingly, she had surrendered her will, life, and her future to a man she had come to love more than herself.

  “I want to take a vacation—alone.” Rebecca was hard-pressed not to smile. She had said it!

  “Alone,” Lee repeated, as if testing the word.

  “Yes, alone.”

  He peered closely at her. “Is there something you’re not telling me? Are you sick? Did you find out something from your last exam you don’t want me to know?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not sick. I’m just tired, tired of the same day in, day out routine.” The words and emotions she had buried for years came rushing out. “I feel unappreciated. I’ve become your hostess and your maid. And I’m nothing more than a cook, chauffeur, nurse and laundress to Ashlee and Kyle. I can’t remember the last time any of you said thank you, or I love you.”

  Lee trailed his fingertips over her sculpted cheek. “I do love you, Becky.”

  Her golden-brown eyes shimmered with moisture. “You love what I give you, Lee. I take care of our home, nurture our children, and when you want a warm body I’m available for you. You love me because whenever you entertain you don’t have to hold your breath, because I know what to wear and say. You parade me before your clients like a trophy you’ve won in a competition. I am not a trophy, nor do I like being eye candy. The only time you tell me you love me is when I spread my legs for you. And at that moment I could be any woman.”

  Easing back, he folded his arms under his head and closed his eyes. “You’re wrong, Rebecca. It’s nothing like that.”

  “Then how is it, Lee? I have a degree in history and teaching credentials, yet I haven’t taught in fourteen years. Why? Because you want me home.”

  “The children need you at home.”

  Leaning on an elbow, she leaned closer to him. “Wrong! You want me home.”

  He opened his eyes, glaring at her. “That’s not true!”

  Rebecca held his gaze. There would have been a time when she would have retreated, but it was too late for that now. She had opened Pandora’s box, and repressed anger and pain had escaped out and i
nto the universe. Lee had lost his sway over her. His matinee idol looks and his pedigree meant nothing, because if she did not fight to empower herself, then she would cease to survive.

  She decided to press her attack. “If that’s the case, then I’m going to apply for a teaching position at one of the high schools.”

  Lee closed his eyes for several seconds. He could not believe what he was hearing and wondered to whom Rebecca had been talking. It couldn’t be any of the wives in their social circle, because those women did not work, nor did they want to work outside their homes. Hosting fund-raisers took up most of their free time.

  One thing he did know: He was losing his wife. That he refused to accept. And he had almost lost her before, when she’d discovered that he had been sleeping with a business client. He’d sworn an oath that it would never happen again— and it hadn’t. No woman would ever lure him into her bed again.

  “Why don’t you join some of the clubs you used to belong to?” “And do what, Lee?”

  “Whatever it is you women do and talk about.”

  “We talk about everything and nothing. I don’t need to sit around all day with a group of bored, sexually frustrated women who’d rather sleep with pool boys or the young men who come to landscape their property than their husbands. These are the same women who turn their noses up at women who choose to have babies out of wedlock, yet they have the morals of an alley cat in heat. No, thank you.”

  Lee smiled at Rebecca. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow, Becky.”

  She shook her head. “No, we won’t. And stop calling me Becky.”

  “But… your father calls you that.”

  “He’s my Daddy, and you’re not!”

  Lee did not know the woman in bed with him. Something or someone had set her off, and he intended to identify who or what it was. “What do you want me to do, Rebecca? If you’re asking my permission to let you go off somewhere by yourself, then my answer is no.”

  “I don’t need your permission, Lee. I’m merely informing you that I intend to take the summer off. As soon as the kids are out of school, I’m going away. I’ve given you the past sixteen years of my life, and now all I’m asking for is two months for myself.”

  “What about Kyle and Ashlee?”

  “What about them?” she said, answering his question with one of her own. “You’re an intelligent man, Lee. If you’re savvy enough to run a bank, then you should know what to do to take care of your children. However, if you have a problem balancing your career and fatherhood, then I’ll call my parents and ask them to come down to look after their grandchildren in my absence.”

  Turning away from him, Rebecca switched off her lamp, then lay with her back to her husband and closed her eyes.

  Six

  If only I knew the truth, I swear I would act on it.

  —Paul Goodman

  Rebecca woke up to find the space next to her empty.

  It was Saturday morning, and Lee had gotten up early to play golf. Her children were away, and she had the house to herself, at least until late afternoon when Lee returned from the country club.

  Turning over on her belly, she buried her face in the pillow, smothering the laughter bubbling up in her throat. She’d done it! She had freed herself from the invisible shackles that made her a prisoner. Now, all she had to do was decide where she was going to spend the summer. She thought about the pile of brochures she had hidden away under a stack of papers in a desk drawer.

  She took a leisurely shower, singing loudly at the top of her lungs. After going through the ritual of moisturizing her body, she pulled a pair of cotton shorts and a tank top over her underwear. Returning to the bedroom, she slipped her bare feet into a pair of leather sandals she should have discarded last summer, then went into the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee.

  After her second cup of coffee and cigarette, Rebecca went into her parlor to call her mother to inform her about her plans for the summer. A stack of brochures and pamphlets advertising Sea Islands vacation properties littered the surface of an antique mahogany desk. She had just ended the call when the doorbell rang.

  Nothing in her expression revealed her surprise at seeing her mother-in-law standing on her doorstep. “Good afternoon, Mother Owens.”

  She barely tolerated Lee’s mother. Rebecca knew Georgina had never forgiven Lee for marrying her; not only did she not have the requisite pedigree to marry an Owens but also she was not a Southerner.

  “May I come in?” Georgina Owens’s smile seemed forced.

  Rebecca opened the door wider. “Of course.” She waited until the older woman stepped into the spacious entryway, then closed the door to keep out the sultry late spring heat and humidity. The two women moved into a room off the expansive living room Rebecca had set up as her parlor. It was here that she always received and entertained her mother-in-law. The other rooms in the five-bedroom, six-bathroom house were off limits to Georgina except when everyone got together for formal family gatherings.

  Georgina sat on a tapestry-covered floral straight-back chair, crossing her legs at the ankles, while Rebecca took a matching chair opposite her.

  “Mother Owens, may I get you something cool to drink?”

  “I did not come to socialize, Rebecca.” Georgina made no attempt to disguise her annoyance as she lifted an arched eyebrow. “I need to know why you’ve decided to abandon your husband and children like some drug-addicted welfare tramp who is only concerned with her own selfish needs.”

  Rebecca stared at the tall, thin woman dressed in ice blue silk. The slim skirt and matching blouse had not come off a department store rack. Georgina Owens had used the services of the same seamstress for more than twenty-five years. A wide-brimmed straw hat with a white grosgrain ribbon shaded her unlined nut-brown face from the hot sun.

  “You come to my home unannounced, then you have the audacity to insult me to my face.”

  Georgina sat up straighter. “It is not my intent to insult you.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “I’m here because my son called me this afternoon with some very disturbing news.”

  “Your son or my husband?”

  Georgina Owens placed a manicured hand over her breasts. “Are you on your menses, Rebecca?”

  Heat stung Rebecca’s cheeks as she registered Georgina’s query. “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me.”

  Rebecca stood up. “You have just worn out your welcome.”

  Georgina also rose to her feet. “If you do anything to disgrace my family, I’ll—”

  “Disgrace,” Rebecca spat out, cutting her off. “Lee managed to do that all by himself when he screwed his business client, got her pregnant, then paid for her abortion.”

  She felt a perverse sense of satisfaction when Georgina’s mouth closed with an audible snap. “I’m going away for the summer not only to save myself but also to save my marriage. And you don’t have to worry about my children, because my mother and father have agreed to come down and take care of them while I’m away.”

  The fight seemed to go out of Georgina with this disclosure. “I’d planned to take them to Williamsburg, Virginia, for a few days before we spend a month at the lake house.”

  “You should’ve checked with me before you made those plans.”

  “But I’ve never had to check with you before. Kyle and Ashlee have always stayed with Mitchell and I for the month of July.”

  “That was the past. Ashlee and Kyle are my children, therefore I say who they will stay with and where they will go. You’ve had your grandchildren every summer since Ashlee was six years old, but now it’s time for my mother and father to have their grandchildren. They will be coming down next week to stay here. I will draw up the necessary documents giving them joint guardianship with Lee in my absence. Whatever you and Mitchell have planned for my children will have to be approved by my parents.”

  “What about Lee? He is their father.”

  “Lee will go along wit
h whatever I say.” There was a threatening edge to the softly spoken statement.

  “I thought you had worked through your propensity for revenge during your marriage counseling sessions. Lee still harbors enough guilt about his indiscretion without you bringing up the past.”

  Rebecca shook her head slowly. “I’ve forgiven Lee. He’s the one who hasn’t forgiven himself.”

  “That’s because he knows you’ll use his mistake to get your way.”

  “Good afternoon, Georgina.” It was the first time she’d called her mother-in-law by her given name. “I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t see you to the door.”

  Rebecca walked out of the parlor, leaving Georgina staring at her back. She still had to determine where she planned to summer. She had narrowed her search to three Lowcountry Sea Islands: Edisto, Hilton Head, and McKinnon. The latter was the more remote and lesser known, which meant it would be less populated.

  McKinnon Island. She hoped it would be as mysterious and laid-back as the printed material in the brochure depicted it to be. Located south of Hilton Head Island, and southeast of Daufuskie Island, McKinnon Island had yet to garner the attention of developers who had forced out many of the longtime descendants of African slaves and ex-slaves to put up hotels, golf courses, and private residential communities.

  She walked down a wide hallway to the rear of the house and into the climate-controlled patio, where she sank down to a chintz-covered chaise. Kicking off her sandals, she closed her eyes and rehearsed what she wanted to tell her children about the plans she had made for their summer.

  Lee returned within minutes of his mother’s departure. Rebecca stared at him as he stood at the entrance to the patio. He had come back earlier than she had anticipated.

  He walked in and sat down on the side of the chaise. Leaning over, he pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Good afternoon.”

  Rebecca gave him a narrowed look. “Your mother came to see me—unannounced.” She related her conversation with Georgina without dropping her gaze. It was apparent that Lee was as shocked as she had been at Georgina’s reference to her acting like a drug-addicted welfare tramp.