After our parents died, Patti and I would sit on this very same beach, usually on an old palmetto log that had washed up from another island. Those were terrible days. We’d damn our lives, and try to find a dream for our futures. Dreams eluded us. Blinded by salty tears and wiping runny noses on our sleeves, we would tell each other that there had to be more to life than grief. We would argue with each other, swearing that if there was a god somewhere who actually loved us, then surely he wanted us to be happy, at least some of the time. Where was this god anyway? Strangely absent. So we came to the beach to hide from the world and cry our hearts out or sometimes just to kick the sand or to run like maniacs until we were gasping for breath and our sides ached so badly we doubled over in pain. You might say it was our adolescent version of primal scream therapy. It worked, somewhat, but now I think whatever relief we found, we found only because we had each other to which our fractured hearts could cling. Sometimes we would sit there until it was dark. And Aunt Daisy and Ella would coax us with the sweetest words they knew to please come back inside the house for supper. On occasion, and especially in the early days when our wounds were still fresh, we’d be greeted by the parish priest, sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and having a piece of Ella’s pie. He’d try his best through diplomacy and guilt to talk us into becoming more active in the church, to join CYO—the Catholic Youth Organization—or the Regina Mundi Club. Aunt Daisy would stand behind him, rolling her eyes, and at some point she would say that, well, it all sounded fine but for now seeing us on Sunday was probably all he should expect, but he was welcome to stop by any time he was in the neighborhood. We were so grateful for her understanding that we couldn’t stand one more thing.
I know that all sounds depressing but getting through those first birthdays and Christmases or holidays of any kind without our mom and dad was unbelievably painful. We couldn’t show them our Halloween costumes or share our candy with them. Ever again. We couldn’t make them cards on their birthdays or bring them school projects to admire or pick black-eyed Susans for them in the summer. Ever. We didn’t know how to live without them. We belonged to them. And try as we may have tried to transfer all that longing and need to Aunt Daisy and even Ella, who was around more and more, we were inclined to hide our feelings from them and to make them think we were getting along all right. We’re just fine! After all, Aunt Daisy took us in. And we loved her for it.
Besides, Folly Beach wasn’t exactly crawling with therapists who specialized in the treatment of children in those days. Even if it had been, we weren’t the kind of people who paid other people our hard-earned money to listen to our problems and help us understand tragedies that could not be reversed. We were far too pragmatic for that sort of self-indulgence, having been cut from suck-it-up cloth. We learned that you never got used to losing your parents. You just got used to the pain.
I was six and Patti was twelve when our mother died from breast cancer. She was robbed of her life when she was only forty years old. Lila. Beautiful Lila. She always put off going to the doctor for check-ups and so forth, saying she felt perfectly fine. She played tennis all the time and even belonged to a waltz society, which caused Patti and me endless giggling to see her twirling in the wacky dresses she wore. Skirt, skirt, and more skirt! But other than that one embarrassing deviation from our ironclad definition of what normal mothers were supposed to do for a hobby, she was tanned, toned, and fit from head to toe, defying her actual age from every angle. By the time her cancer was discovered it had metastasized to her lymph nodes, liver, and brain.
Patti said our mother’s illness lasted only eight weeks. I don’t remember the timeline. I just know that right after she died, I began to dance, saying I was dancing for her. Dance became the prism through which I looked at my world and the only way I could find it bearable.
It made Patti cry every time I said I was dancing for Momma, but Aunt Daisy and Ella said it was good for me and they wished Patti would dance, too. But Patti preferred to bake. It all started with the Easy-Bake Oven, moved to Toll House cookies, and led to zillion-dollar mega wedding cakes. No one who knew our family in those days would have laid a nickel on the table to bet that how we coped with the deaths of our parents would shape our careers.
When Momma was diagnosed, we began spending more and more time with Aunt Daisy, because Dad had to work.
Our father traveled for a living, so we spent more and more time at Aunt Daisy’s house. He was a pilot for Pan American World Airways and flew all over the world. One night, just two years after we lost our mother, our father died in his sleep of a heart attack. He was in Singapore. I still remember the hullabaloo it was to have his body returned to us and how hysterical Aunt Daisy was with the American embassy and the airlines. They say it took weeks to bring him home. Red tape. So! That’s the short version of what happened to our parents. I still have no memories of either funeral and it’s probably just as well.
I don’t like to think about those days. What’s the point? But Patti and I get mammograms religiously every year and we try to do a lot of cardio and eat heart-healthy meals. Well, most of the time when we’re not eating cake and pecan pie. Or sausage. Or waffles.
Anyway, all that said, from a very early age, we came to the beach to unburden our young souls, to find some kind of comfort in nature and from each other. We were too young to fully comprehend that life goes on and the world doesn’t really care about your personal sorrow. It just kept turning. There was always someone to consider who had less, some poor soul in a worse situation to pray for, and we were constantly told that we should be grateful for what we had. And we were grateful, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a struggle to hold ourselves together, keep our grades up, and lopsided smiles on our faces.
I remembered then how the kids in school pitied us and how I hated their pity because it was false. Children are so cruel and when we were labeled as unfair game for the usual bullying, sarcasm, and backstabbing that went on among girls, they ostracized us as weird. They called us The Bummer Sisters behind our backs but we knew it. Who knows? Maybe they thought our situation was contagious or that we could use our loss to some advantage over them. All their mean-spirited childish quarantine really accomplished was to drive Patti and me closer together. Those were the days that Patti became elevated to the status of the ultimate big sister and that poor Aunt Daisy learned what it was like to raise long-eared mules.
Today it was nearly impossible to remember our parents beyond their faces frozen in time in the scrapbooks Aunt Daisy kept and the few pictures we had. It wasn’t like Aunt Daisy didn’t do everything she could to give us a stable and loving home. And when Ella was there, she was an angel to us, helping with homework, listening to us, or cooking something delicious to eat. But it wasn’t the same thing as having our own two healthy parents in our life and we all knew it.
Funny, I didn’t seem to need to dance like crazy to rid myself of the hangover of Addison’s death. An unconscious sock-slide across the floor had seemed perfectly appropriate. The only thing I felt for Addison was seriously pissed off. Maybe I’d simply had enough of death for one lifetime and by the time he took the leap into the next world, I’d certainly had enough of him. The crazy selfish son of a bitch.
Even though it was just forty degrees, I shivered a few times and moved back from the railing to a chair at the table in the sun. Forty degrees in February in New Jersey would be considered a sign of early spring and here it made me have chills if I was in the shade. I took a few more sips of my coffee and thought about Patti up there in the frozen tundra of Alpine and all the misery that came with winter. Black ice. Furnaces that sputtered and failed. Slippery roads. And being so damn cold your teeth clattered if you had to walk across a parking lot. I should call her, I thought, and let her know I’m thinking about her, tell her I love her and rehash my drive down here once more. I wished then that she was here. Last night we had spoken briefly, briefly because I drank two of Ella’s martinis and there wa
s no point in trying to have a real conversation with anyone after that. She knew I was alive and here safely and she was relieved and satisfied. I would call her later. I wasn’t getting up then. I was too comfortable sitting there, my head thrown back in the warmth of the sun, like a lizard. Later on I would retrieve my cell phone from its recharger, plugged in somewhere in the house, somewhere between the vermouth and the olives. Ahem. I would call her later.
“What in the world are you doing?”
It was Aunt Daisy’s voice right behind me. She startled me so that my body lurched, throwing the remains of my coffee into the air and fortunately not on her. Or me.
“What? Hey! Good morning!”
“You’d better put a hat and sunglasses on your head or you’re going to look like me before you know it!”
“You’re probably right. Not that looking like you is a bad . . .”
“Oh, hush! I know what you mean! I’m a thousand years old. You think I don’t know I have a few wrinkles? Prune face, that’s what. And this wattle?” She flipped the hanging skin beneath her chin and laughed. “Never mind my upper arms. You want more coffee? Ella’s making breakfast.”
She stood before me like an obelisk fashioned of milky-pink marble pulled from the depths of the quarries decades upon decades ago. Her hands were firmly planted on her hips.
“Well, I think you look great. Maybe I’ll get another shot of coffee but I don’t really feel like break . . .”
“Yes, you will! We all need breakfast, otherwise our blood sugar plummets before noon and we get all cranky. Besides, you can’t live on pecan pie, no matter how good it is.”
“Well, I sure would like to give it a try,” I said and stood up to give her a peck on the cheek.
“Me too.” She sank into the chair next to mine and put her mug on the table. I sat again. “But I’d get as big as a house. So now tell me. Did you sleep well?”
“Like a stone.”
“Good, good. After breakfast, I want to get you moved over to the Porgy House. I think it’s best if you have your own space. Besides, all my rentals are full.”
“Well, that’s a lucky thing, isn’t it? I mean, who rents a house at the beach in the winter?”
“Honey, this is Folly Beach. Everyone wants to come here. Remember? We’re a bargain next to the downtown B&Bs. And the hotels? Forget it! Sky-high! You’d think only millionaires can afford a vacation!”
“Well, especially these days . . .” I was thinking about the god-awful unending recession.
“What? That’s just ridiculous! No, no. I’m busy all the time, calling the housekeepers to come clean up after the last tenants and get ready for the next horde, coming with five more people than they stated on the contract and nasty old dogs that aren’t allowed. I had one renter last month who brought their pet boa constrictor.”
“What? What. Are. You. Saying? A boa?”
“Yes! They said, Oh, don’t worry. Walter’s in his cage. I said, Oh really? I feel much better! Get Walter and his cage outta here on the double or y’all can leave right now! During the summer it’s ten times worse. So, I stop by unexpectedly, you know, on the excuse to see if they’re happy, bring them brochures of things to do and then I count bodies and pets at the same time.”
“Well, maybe I can help you with some of that. You know, the spy stuff.”
“That would be a blessing, Cate. I mean, there’s not much to it. Just some running around that . . . well, obviously, my running days are on hold until this silly cast comes off.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty clear. So how much longer is it supposed to be on?”
“I don’t know. I go back to that damn fool doctor sometime next week. I wish they’d just give me the one you can take off so I can get a decent shower! I’m so tired of wrapping my leg in dry-cleaner bags and rubber bands, you can’t imagine!”
“Actually, I can. I wouldn’t like it, either.”
She stopped and looked at me. I knew she wanted to ask me something that she didn’t quite know how to ask.
“Come on, Aunt Daisy. I can smell your wood burning. What’s on your mind?”
“It’s none of my business.”
“Let’s make it your business. I don’t mind.”
“All right then. I want you to tell me how someone as smart as you are got completely bamboozled by that son of a bitch Addison Cooper. And Lord love a duck, I probably shouldn’t say this, but Ella and I never liked him one damn bit. I mean, look, I understand a little bimbo on the side. It’s not nice, but I get it. I even understand a love child—it happens. And I get the chasing skirts in the office. Men can be very stupid about their you-know-whats. They all think they’re made out of gold!”
“Boy, that’s for sure.”
“Amen. And nobody understands how a business can fail any better than I do. I’ve been to the edge and back one hundred times. But here’s what I don’t get. Tell me how he leveraged your whole life, your house, your furniture, your everything down to your lightbulbs . . . tell me, number one, how he got that one by you and number two, why weren’t you even suspicious?”
Wow, I thought, wow. Like I had not thought this through for almost every waking minute since I found his body? She must have thought I was the biggest idiot to ever draw a breath. Suddenly I didn’t want to talk about it.
“Eggs might be good for me. You know, protein?”
“Well, as I said, Cate, it’s none of my business. I know that.”
I didn’t know how to respond, so I just said, “You know what, Aunt Daisy? I don’t know the answers to your questions. That’s one of the reasons I came here, to try to figure that all out. I mean, you’re right, it’s bad enough to lose everything, including your husband, his reputation, which used to be something else entirely, stellar, in fact, and then to realize all of it was going on right under your own nose. And as far as borrowing money against the house, he must have forged my signature.”
“My word! The skunk!”
“Exactly. That’s all I can imagine, because Mark said the banks would’ve required two signatures. But who knows how elaborate his shenanigans were? How deep does that river of deception run? I learned about it all in a seventy-two-hour tidal wave until there wasn’t a glass left in the house to fill up with liquor to chug or a bar stool to fall off of if I did. It doesn’t really matter how he got away with everything, does it? It doesn’t matter anymore, because it’s a fait accompli. But I’m still a little shell-shocked, to tell you the truth. Yeah. I’m shell-shocked.”
Aunt Daisy looked at me for what seemed like forever, planning her response. At first, she had been angry for me and even with me but now she saw me as I was. Damaged. Floundering.
“Truth,” she finally said. “Do you want to know the truth?”
“Right now? No. I don’t. Somewhere between Charlotte, North Carolina, and the outskirts of Charleston I decided that maybe the best thing for me would be to get into some heavy denial and tell myself this isn’t my fault. Otherwise, I think I might crack into a million little pieces.”
Aunt Daisy looked at me again with watery eyes, their once-blue color faded from age to a soft dove-gray. She leaned forward, taking my hand in hers. “It’s not your fault.”
I thought I would break down then. “You really don’t think it was?”
“I do not think it was your fault. Any of it. And if you had your suspicions about things, and I’m sure you did from time to time, it would be only natural to sweep them under a rug.”
“You know, I’m sure Patti told you, he was really changed.”
“Stress. Stress does that to people. Why, he, he . . . he took his own life, Cate. He must have been completely, completely defeated.”
“He didn’t know how to lose, Aunt Daisy.”
“Loss is a bitter pill. A bitter pill.”
“Especially for someone like Addison. He was a very proud man. Don’t you know he probably went through every possible scenario he could think of to save himself and our ho
use?”
“Of course he did.” She patted my hand and I looked down at hers. Aunt Daisy’s knuckles were swollen and arthritic and probably ached all the time. After a moment or two she stood up and rubbed her hands together briskly to warm them. “Come on, now. Let’s get some breakfast into you and get this day moving. Ella will tan our hides with a switch if we don’t gobble up every crumb and tell her how wonderful it is.”
“Aunt Daisy?”
“Yes?”
“In the end, I didn’t like him, either.”
“Well, now we’re getting someplace.”
“And what am I going to do if that woman with the little boy turns up?”
“We’ll deal with that if and when the time comes. That’s why God invented lawyers.”
“I’m not so sure that was God.”
So, while we talked about my children and Patti and Mark, we ate Swiss cheese omelets and rye toast and drank glass after glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice.
“I do love me some orange juice,” Aunt Daisy said, sounding like a silly young girl from the ’hood.
She was so funny sometimes.
“You know, Cate,” Ella said, “your aunt was voted the number-one supporter of the Marsh Tacky Association and they sent us a bushel of oranges.”
“And I got a plaque! Don’t forget I got a plaque! A nice one, too, with a little three-dimensional brass horse on it. I’ll show you later.”
“Humph,” Ella grunted. “She needs another plaque like a hole in the head.”
“You two,” I said, remembering Aunt Daisy’s wall of fame in her office. “Listen, why don’t you let me clean up the kitchen and y’all can go get dressed?”
“She’s pretty particular about her kitchen,” Aunt Daisy said, hooking her thumb in Ella’s direction.
Ella smiled, shook her head, and pushed back from the table.
“I’ll inspect it later with my magnifying glass. Come on, Old Cabbage, let’s get moving.”
“Old Cabbage?” I said.
“It’s what Prince Phillip calls Queen Elizabeth!” Aunt Daisy said, beaming. “I saw it in that movie Queen.”
Folly Beach Page 10
