Folly Beach

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  “Well, you’ve heard about the author? Fannie Hurst? She’s all involved with the Harlem Renaissance.”

  “Good for her,” I said.

  “No, seriously! I think I heard she even had Zora Neale Hurston working for her doing secretarial work or something,” DuBose said. “The world is changing every day and right before our eyes.”

  “Yes, but is that change for the better? They’re saying that Claudette Colbert is going to play Bea in the film. Can you imagine?”

  “She’s very pretty.”

  “I guess so, if you like that slick kind of Hollywood look. Big eyelashes? Shiny lips?”

  “She’s not nearly as pretty as you are, dear.”

  “Humph. You know that movie is going to come off as a, well, a racist disaster, polarizing everyone one more time. I mean, your buddy Langston Hughes liked the concept fine until that mean old Sterling Brown clobbered it.”

  “The devil has a special place in hell for critics of all types,” DuBose said.

  “What’s that again?”

  “I said, the devil has a special place in hell for critics of all types.”

  What a marvelous and consoling thought that all the critics might actually be in hell. We’d certainly wished them there often enough!

  “I’ll say. We had some of the same kind of rubbish over Porgy. Remember? It takes place in Charleston but it can’t be performed in Charleston? Bigots. It’s so wrong.”

  “I wish I could forget! I’m going to pour myself a little bit of brandy to warm my bones. Can I get some for you?”

  “Oh, why not? Now I’m all riled up again! I mean, DuBose! Listen! What’s life without risk?” I threw back my afghan and stood, slipping my feet back into my flats. The floors of the house were cold and drafty.

  “Pretty darn dull if you ask me. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

  “I’ll come with you. Maybe I’ll have a pretzel.”

  “This book really has your motor going, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes. Look, all this brouhaha is a little bit like saying that you can’t write about Italians if you aren’t Italian. Or that you can’t write about women if you’re a man! It’s just ridiculous!”

  DuBose opened the cabinet and took out two snifters. He reached for the decanter of brandy, removed its heavy top, and poured out a measure with his left hand. I stood there ready to help him. DuBose’s left arm had been greatly compromised by polio when he was a young man. Fortunately or by necessity he was right-handed. We didn’t talk about it and he was very modest, keeping it hidden as much as possible. But the task was completed without incident and he handed a glass to me.

  “You’re right, my dear! Here’s to taking a leap, to taking chances with words and in life!”

  “Cheers, darling! Cheers!” We touched the sides of our glasses and took a small sip. “Oh, DuBose! That’s so perfect! I can feel the brandy warming me up all over!”

  “Good, sweetheart! Shall we check on Jenifer?”

  “I’ll go. In a minute. DuBose? Do you remember my big leap? When I left the University of Minnesota and moved to Puerto Rico?”

  “I didn’t know you then, little Dorothy.”

  “Oh, phooey! You know the story well enough.”

  “But tell me again!”

  He was humoring me and I didn’t even care.

  “Oh, you . . . all I’m saying is that there is such a thing as the hand of Fate or something because think about it. When I was in Puerto Rico at Uncle Charles’s house I wrote that mess of a play? Then I had the pure temerity and stupidity to send it to Professor Baker. I remember that all I wanted to do was be in New York City. Oh! I wanted to be in New York so badly!”

  “You are a born playwright, my dear.”

  “Thank you. But remember? Professor Baker told me to keep at it so I went to Columbia? And there I wrote Jonica and that landed me at MacDowell! If I had not taken that risk, I would never have met you! Don’t you see? Sometimes Fate pushes you to take a chance on something in life and it can make all the difference!”

  “Thank heavens you had the courage to roll the dice!”

  “Yes! Or you would have married Jo Pinckney!”

  “What? Ho! I don’t think so! I was not meant to marry Jo.”

  “That doesn’t mean you never considered it.”

  DuBose paused for a moment and I could see his wheels turning. He always wondered how was it that women were so sly and clever? How did I know things I had never been told? There was no real reason for me to be jealous of Jo Pinckney, her social standing, or her intelligence. But I kept my ear to the ground and the gossip mill said that Jo’s mother had made it plain ages ago when DuBose was scratching around Jo’s door that he didn’t have enough to offer her daughter and that was the end of that business. They remained good friends to this very day. Besides, he knew Jo was happier to be single, to entertain numerous gentlemen, and to have her freedom to travel the world. I hope you all got what I meant to imply.

  “The moment I met you, my dear, the whole world stopped spinning and I knew I was meant to be with you.”

  I smiled then, reasonably placated and satisfied. It might have sounded like baloney, but in my heart I knew it actually was true. DuBose and I were meant for each other.

  “We even look alike,” I said with obvious pride.

  “Yes, yes, we do. Ah, Dorothy. Come now, tell me. What’s bothering you?”

  “There’s going to be a drastic change, DuBose. Something or someone is coming. I can feel it in my bones.”

  “A storm?”

  “I don’t know . . . something . . . someone. I don’t know.”

  “Hmmm. And your bones are never wrong.”

  Fade to Darkness

  Chapter Twelve

  The Piano

  I slept until past ten o’clock in the morning, which wasn’t a particularly long stretch, considering I had not nodded off until long past the witching hour. There was so much to do today. No. Wait. No, there wasn’t. Beyond seeing about what I could do to help Aunt Daisy and maybe checking on my car, my dance card was empty. This was going to be a problem. If anything was going to happen in my life, to me and for me, I was going to have to plan it and then make it happen. Day two on Folly and it dawned on me that this new existence, if I stayed around here for any length of time, this unexpected second act of my life could turn into a state of withering desolation if I wasn’t careful. Great. Nice thought.

  It was a good thing that Aunt Daisy needed my help, because truly, otherwise, what was I going to do with myself? Mourn Addison? Well, I sure wouldn’t find Aunt Daisy or Ella in that camp, would I? I wasn’t surprised at all when she said she never really liked him. Addison’s brand of hauteur bordered on a kind of social terrorism and could be a turnoff to a lot of people who didn’t know him. I always believed his posturing came from his fully loaded buffet of deep-seated insecurities and usually found him funny, because the way he preened and posed was just ridiculous. But no more. Every single thing about him was less funny now. By a lot. Everything.

  Under normal circumstances I’m sure I would have mourned him like crazy. If he had died ten years ago I would have worn black for years, but given all the recent revelations, how was I supposed to behave? Maudlin and bereft? But I didn’t exactly feel like throwing on a short red dress either. My Widow Thermometer hovered somewhere between extremely subdued and very sad but I had frequent spikes of fury about the deprivation and poverty in which he had left us, never mind all the mortifying betrayals and the morass of lies. But honey? We were poor now. Like Aunt Daisy used to say, and still would say even if the queen of England was standing in the room, I was so poor I didn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. I don’t care who you are and what kind of luxury you’ve been showered with, what Addison did to all of us was really pretty terrible. Make that very terrible. I gave him the best years of my life and this was how he treated me. No insurance. No nothing. Not even a roof. If I didn’t have family
to turn to I would have been homeless. I wondered if I would ever reconcile my feelings enough to forgive him and I thought then that no, no I would never forgive him. I felt like such a fool. And stupid. How could I have not known what was happening?

  But when it came to discussing Addison’s life and death with the children, I knew I still had to be a poker player, the standard-bearer of graciousness and forgiveness. They had never and would never hear me speak ill of their father. Wasn’t what I preached the place from where the children would take their lead? No, they were not so young or impressionable anymore. Well, Sara cared what I thought but I was sure that Russ, under the laser focus and Svengali direction of his mental masseuse of a wife, had already drawn his own conclusions. He had yet to return my phone call, too. Maybe he had been out late last night. Maybe his team had a game. He would call eventually. I was sure of that. Boys didn’t call their mothers every five minutes. Girls did.

  I filled the old kettle, placed it on the back of the stove, and put a slice of bread in a creepy-looking toaster oven I had discovered in the cabinet. After I knocked it against the wall of the sink, checking for spiders. No spiders. I opened the new box of cereal, poured some in a bowl, and covered it with skim milk. While I stood on the back porch, shoveling bran flakes in my mouth, and waiting for the water to boil, I decided that as soon as I’d drunk a cup of coffee I was going out to buy a newspaper. And a coffeemaker. And a toaster. I wasn’t destitute yet.

  The yard was a mess. It appeared that a raccoon had made himself at home in the garbage can last night. But there wasn’t much to clean up, just some paper that I had used to wrap things and the paper towels I had used to wipe down the counters. I’d have to get one of those elastic straps people used to keep the lid on cans. What did you call them? Well, I’d just go to a hardware store and ask.

  The kettle began to go insane with its high-pitched whistle, so I spooned a heaping scoop of coffee crystals into a mug and stirred them around in the boiling water, lacing it with a generous pour of fat-free half-and-half, which definitely seemed like an oxymoron if I’d ever heard of one. It didn’t smell that bad at all.

  Somewhere in the distance I heard a rooster crowing like mad and wondered who had chickens in their yard? And how often did that crowing happen? Wasn’t it supposed to be only at dawn? That could grow to an annoyance. Quickly. I wondered if the raccoon that got into my garbage had ever bothered the chickens down the road. I think I heard somewhere that the crazy bandits like pullet eggs better than anything in the world and they didn’t mind snacking on the mother, either. How could such an adorable little animal be so nasty?

  I rinsed my dishes—no dishwasher—and went upstairs to dress. My cell phone was ringing. It was Patti calling.

  “Hey you!” I said, happy to hear her voice. “What’s going on?”

  “You’re asking me? Nothing. High today of fourteen. It’s colder than a whore’s heart. That’s what. How’s it going at the Porgy House?”

  “Well, to be honest, and I know beggars shouldn’t be choosers, it’s about ten steps above camping. But it’s actually pretty sweet at the same time. I mean, it’s old, you know? Nothing in here post-Eisenhower. But, well, I like it. You’d think an ex-princess like me would be miserable, digging around under the mattress for peas.”

  “Truly.”

  “I mean, we’re talking no dishwasher. No shower.”

  “No shower?”

  “Yup.”

  “Wow. Dishwasher, who cares? It’s just your own mess, which can’t be much.”

  “Right. And if I wanted to make a big dinner I could, I’d just have to be hyper-organized, because it’s about the size of a Manhattan studio apartment kitchen.”

  “That would kill me.”

  “No, it wouldn’t. You, of all people, would adapt.”

  “Humph. How’s the oven?”

  “June Cleaver used to make Thanksgiving for Wally and the Beav in it.”

  “That’s when ovens were really ovens. Remember Aunt Daisy’s was like thirty years old when we were kids? That thing baked a perfect cake.”

  “True story. Now they make appliances to wear out in five years. Ah, Patti. There’s so much wrong with the world. So much.”

  I could hear her laugh a little and thought I was glad I could spread a little mirth in her direction. It would make her worry less about my mental health.

  “Well, we can’t change it, honey. But! There is some news on this end.”

  “Tell it.”

  “Your piano is ready. What should we do with it?”

  “Hmmm.” I thought about it for a minute and then said, “How much do they want to ship it?”

  “Nada. Mark’s got it covered.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, he didn’t tell you but he ripped off a case of LaTour that was in the garage. He says it was worth a load of money.”

  “That dog! Ship it to the Porgy House. The front parlor needs something jazzy and it’s from the thirties, I think. So it would probably look amazing here.”

  “So? I gather then that you’re thinking of staying there for a while?”

  “Yeah, I guess. I mean, it’s not like I have so many choices.”

  “Well, you have to stay there long enough for me to escape this wretched cold weather and come visit for a few. Right?”

  “I’d love that. No lie.”

  “Okay! Done! I’ll tell Mark to ship the piano to Folly and I’ll go online and look for a deal on a ticket.”

  “Thanks, doll. So what else is happening?”

  “Well, tell me about the aunties. Are they still as feisty as ever and are they still picking at each other like a couple of woodpeckers?”

  “Did you say peckers?”

  “You’re disgusting!”

  So we giggled at my locker-room humor, talked for another ten minutes about whether I had seen Russ yet and how’s Sara and how much damage was there to the Subaru? And, of course, who was John Risley?

  Patti laughed and said, “So, he’s like Dr. Love, right? I can hear it in your voice.”

  “What the EFF is the matter with my voice? Sara heard some funny thing in my voice too. What did I do wrong?”

  “Nothing. When you get excited, your voice goes up higher. It always has. So gimme the juice on him!”

  My voice. Another traitor I needed to watch.

  “Patti? I haven’t been here long enough to know where all the light switches are. If I have any juice, even a drop of it, I’ll call you pronto. Scout’s honor.”

  “You were never a Girl Scout.”

  “Moot point.”

  I had decided that my thoughts late last night about John Risley were too premature to have any kind of a sensible or meaningful discussion about them. The potential situations that drove me insane in the middle of the night often disappeared in the morning. I’d wait and see. I might have been exaggerating his appeal in my mind. A couple of fish tacos and some guacamole did not a relationship make, sayeth the soothsayer. But if he so much as touched my arm, I knew I was calling Patti and screaming like a diva. We hung up and I punched in Aunt Daisy’s number.

  When I asked her what I could do to help her that day, she didn’t hesitate.

  “I’ve got new tenants moving into the Jolly Buddha this Saturday. There was a problem with one of the bathrooms. Some rotten kid stuffed LEGOS in the toilet and flushed it. Thank you! Water everywhere! If you could meet the plumber over there, it would be such a help. He’s supposed to be there at noon sharp. He promised. Just stop over and I’ll give you the keys.”

  “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

  Just as I was pulling out of my driveway, my cell phone rang again. My caller ID read College of Charleston and I knew it was Risley.

  “Hey!” I said. “How are you?” My voice was definitely higher.

  “I hate caller ID. Takes the mystery out of everything. I’m fine. You?”

  “Good, good! What’s going on?”

  “Well,
I was thinking that if you’re free, after classes this afternoon we might take a ride out to the body shop and visit your car.”

  “You mean, like going to see someone in the hospital? A corporal work of mercy?”

  “Yeah, I guess. You know and then we could go get a glass of wine or something?”

  This following flash of thought blasted through my brain: I had not expected anything like an invitation to imbibe or to spend any kind of time with him doing something that could be misconstrued to look like a date to rear its head so soon. BUT! If I blew him off I knew he might never ask again. AND! What was the harm in having one glass of wine? BUT! He did have that big boldface M tattooed on his forehead, didn’t he? AND! Hadn’t I taken a vow to myself? SO WHAT? I told myself, this is the twenty-first century and it’s a glass of wine, not room service in a no-tell motel with mirrored ceilings.

  “Should we bring my poor Subaru flowers and candy?”

  “No, I think just our presence will help her heal, just knowing we cared enough to show up.”

  “You’re a little nuts, you know.”

  “Uh-uh, I’m not the crazy one, but that’s another story. I’ll pick you up around six? The body shop stays open until nine.”

  My cell phone pinged in my ear to tell me that I had another call. This sure was a busy morning. Now, here’s something about my techno-capabilities you may as well know. I don’t know how to use the call-waiting feature on my cell phone. So I hung up on Risley.

  “Got another call! Gotta go! See you at six!” I clicked off, knew he thought I was abrupt or a spaz, and just as suddenly I heard my boy’s voice.

  “Hi, Mom!”

  “Hey, darling!”

  “Welcome back to South Carolina!”

  “Well, thanks honey! How’s everything?”

  “Great! We played Wando last Friday and kicked their miserable butts.”

  “That’s great, sweetheart.”