Moon Over Edisto

by Beth Webb Hart

  Julia held her breath for as long as she could, then asked, “Have there been any arrangements made for the kids?”

  Aunt Dot paused. “No,” she said solemnly. “No, there haven’t. They’ll stay with me until I have my second hip operation in February . . . I’m praying to the Lord for strength and provision to take care of them, but I just don’t know some days if I have the strength. They aren’t even in school, you know, Julia, and I certainly don’t think I can homeschool them the way Marney was . . .”

  Julia could hear a clattering in the background. Then she thought she heard Charlie’s muffled voice. Aunt Dot held her hand over the phone, then came back rather breathless. “I’ve got to go, honey.” The elderly woman cleared her throat and spoke directly. “But do come down if there’s anything else you want to say . . . to Marney. She’s still awake, but I don’t think she will be for long. I know it’s your wedding week, but I can’t stop what’s happening here. It’s a freight train barreling toward us. All we can do is brace ourselves.”

  Anything else to say to Marney? What did Aunt Dot mean?

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll call you back tonight to check in and talk to the kids.”

  “All right, dear. The Lord be with you.” Aunt Dot had already started speaking to someone else in the background before she hung up the receiver. There was a whine and then a click and then silence.

  Julia walked back out to the table where Simon’s sons were toasting his success at landing the MOMA exhibit. He was planning a ski trip to Switzerland in February, and he wanted them to join him and Julia over their winter school breaks to celebrate.

  Julia watched Simon beaming as he held up his champagne glass. He was a man who had everything he needed, and she was a woman who was growing more distraught by the moment. She had filled him in on Marney’s condition and grave prognosis, but she hadn’t told him about her outrageous request a few weeks ago. There just was never a right time. And while she knew it was an impossibility, she didn’t want him to tell her so.

  “Who was that?” Simon asked as she took her place and a waiter came by to hand her a fresh linen napkin.

  “My aunt.” She picked up a champagne glass and watched the bubbles rising from the blackberries that had been plopped in the bottom of the glass.

  Simon’s clink against hers startled her, and she spilled a little on the linen tablecloth. “What’s up with Aunt Dot?”

  She cleared her throat and put down the glass. “They’re moving Marney to hospice.”

  He took another sip and raised his eyebrows. “A sad end, Julia. I’m sorry to hear that.”

  She nodded and looked into the bright faces of his children, who were completely lost by the conversation and growing more uninterested by the moment. Then the plates of yellowtail sashimi and whitefish with dried miso arrived, and the boys put their heads down and delved in as if they hadn’t eaten in weeks, loading their sushi with wasabi until their eyes watered and their noses burned and ran.

  Julia couldn’t eat. She excused herself, and Simon walked her to the curb to catch a cab home.

  “Are you all right?” he said, pressing gently on the small of her back. “I don’t want anything to ruin this week for you.”

  “I’m distressed,” she said. “Distressed for Marney and the children. It’s unspeakably tragic.”

  “Yes.” He lifted his hand as a taxi did a U-turn and bumped up on the curb beside them. He turned to look her in the eye and squeezed her shoulders. “But it’s not your tragedy, Julia. You’ve lived through your tragedy and so have I. This is our time for happiness.”

  He kissed her sweetly on the lips and opened the door for her. Once she was settled inside, he ducked his head in. “I’ll call you in a few hours after I take the boys over to MOMA.”

  “Okay.” She closed the door and waved to him. “I’ll be home.”

  “IT’S HEARTBREAKING,” BESS SAID, AND SHE REACHED out her hand to squeeze Julia’s. Bess and Julia had been friends since grade school so she knew every part of Julia’s story. And Julia had told her about the recent visit to Charleston, about Marney’s request.

  “Do you think I should go and say good-bye to her?”

  “I don’t know.” Bess wrung her hands. “It is four days until your wedding. Isn’t your mother arriving tomorrow?”

  Julia nodded her head. “Yes.” She looked out at the neighboring apartment building and up to the gray December sky.

  “But,” Bess continued, “you have to face whatever is going on inside of you, Julia. Something has changed since this summer. I can see that. If that involves seeing Marney before she passes, then do it. You’ll regret it if you don’t.”

  Julia twisted her hair into a knot and rubbed her hands together quickly as if she were on a lift chair in the Alps without gloves. She felt cold, completely cold to the bone, even though she could hear the heat pouring into the room and she knew the thermostat read seventy degrees. “Do I have the most dysfunctional life or what?”

  “No, you don’t.” Bess let out a chuckle. “It’s certainly dysfunctional, but it’s not the most dysfunctional. I can assure you of that. And what can you do? You have to play the cards you’re dealt. You can’t turn them back in because you don’t like them.”

  Julia chuckled back and then stretched. “I really just want to take a nap. I feel exhausted.”

  “Okay. I’ll leave you alone,” Bess said. She stood and hugged her friend and then headed back down the elevator to the second floor. Julia crawled beneath her comforter and took a long rest, ignoring her cell phone as it quacked, ignoring her e-mail as its bell sounded from her computer.

  It was dark outside and the clock read five p.m. when she woke up and walked over to the drawer in her kitchen where she kept a stack of photographs. She pulled out the one from when Charlie was a baby, the one with Heath and Etta proudly flanking his side, their heads tilted in toward the infant who was poking his pink lips out as he gargled.

  Before she knew what she was doing, she packed an overnight bag, put on her overcoat, and hailed a cab for the airport where she purchased a direct flight on Delta to Charleston. She’d be there in less than three hours.

  She boarded the plane and took a seat by the darkened window. Staring at the lumps of dirty snow piled up on the sides of the runway, she pulled out her phone to call Aunt Dot.

  “I’m on my way,” she said. “I do need to speak with Marney.”

  Aunt Dot let out a long sigh. “Oh good,” she said. “I had hoped against hope that you would come.”

  “What’s the address of the hospice center?”

  “It’s on Glenn McConnell by St. Francis Hospital.”

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll rent a car and get a hotel room near there and then I’ll come to your house to visit the kids after I see Marney tomorrow morning.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Thank you, Julia.”

  “Don’t thank me.” Julia bit her lip. “I’m not sure why, but I know I need to do this.”

  “Yes, you do,” Aunt Dot said. “You most certainly do, my precious child.”

  THE NEXT MORNING JULIA CHECKED IN AT THE FRONT desk of the hospice center. They walked her back to where Marney was in a bed at the very end of the corridor. The hallway smelled sweet like an apple pie–scented candle, and it had several framed prints of wildlife and the salt marsh. One was even by her father. It was a print of his Moon Rising Over Store Creek. It showed an orange crescent above the live oak trees and the black glittering water.

  She fought back her nerves and tapped on the door that read “Mrs. Bennett.” A nurse opened it and nodded to her as if she knew exactly who she was.

  “I’ll come back in a few minutes,” the woman whispered. “Buzz if she needs me.”

  Julia nodded and walked toward the bed where Marney was propped up against several pillows and reclining slightly back, her brown, graying hair fanned out around her as if she were floating on the surface of the water. Her lips had been coated with
Vaseline and her face looked pallid and dry. She had a rattle in her throat that was eerie and her mouth was half-open, taking in air laboriously. When she opened her eyes, rather suddenly, she locked them on Julia in a gaze that was part resignation, part plea.

  The tears rolled down Julia’s cheeks, and her stomach felt as though it had caught in her throat. To see someone in their last days battling a disease that was winning over their body, devouring it cell by cell, was horrifying. Even if the person was your worst enemy. It suddenly occurred to Julia that in the end, your worst enemy was death, and it would have its way with you this side of heaven when the appointed time came.

  “Jul-ahh,” her voice spoke through the rattle.

  Julia walked right up to her bedside and sat down. With a force that came from somewhere else, she reached out and laid her hands gently on top of Marney’s. Though the sickly hands were nearly cold to the touch, they responded kindly but faintly by giving Julia’s forefinger a meager squeeze.

  Then Julia spoke with a voice that also came from somewhere else, a voice she could not stop and did not want to stop. She got right up beside her old friend’s face and said, “What can I do for you, Marney?”

  Marney turned to face Julia head-on. She breathed slowly until the words came to her and then she said, unblinkingly, “Love . . . me.” She kept her gaze on Julia, and Julia knew full well what that request meant: it meant forgiveness, it meant being the presence of God, whose nature is love, to the woman who had hurt her most, and most of all, it meant sacrifice.

  She must, Julia knew. She must love Marney. Even though it would be costly. Even though it meant laying aside everything that she had come to build and value.

  “I will,” Julia nodded, and she squeezed Marney’s hand back as she met her eyes. “I will love you.” Then Marney lay back and closed her eyes as if something in her had been released and the tenseness in her limbs seemed to relax and soften, as did the rattle in her throat.

  “I . . . hoped . . . you . . . could,” she said, then she turned back to Julia as if she’d saved a small reserve of energy for this moment. “Raise them well. And tell them that I love them. I wasn’t the perfect mother by a long shot, but I loved them with all that I could, Julia. And so did your father. Please remind them.”

  “I will.” Julia rubbed her enemy’s hand gently and leaned in to whisper into her ear, “I know you loved them, and I promise not to let them forget.”

  Suddenly Julia became concerned about the legal issues and the details. “Is there a will? Is there something else we need to do?”

  Marney shook her head and let her eyelids close completely. “Dot . . . knows,” she said. “She will tell you everything.” And then as she relaxed back into the mound of pillows, “Go . . . to the children. And bring them back . . . today . . . This is it.”

  AT AUNT DOT’S, JULIA SAT THE CHILDREN DOWN AND explained what was happening to their mother and that she would take care of them from here on out. She would move to Charleston and raise them.

  Heath was nodding through tears, and Etta was so curled up that Julia sensed she was beginning to mourn in the only way she knew how, quietly and somewhere deep inside herself. Charlie was angry and threw his plastic fire truck at the Oriental rug. It bounced a few times and then the ladder broke off and he lost it, running into Julia’s arms and weeping like a frustrated baby. She scooped him up and held him tight, rocking him back and forth as Heath bent down and tried to fix the ladder.

  Then they filed into Julia’s car and drove out to hospice where they saw their mother for the last time, hugging her and kissing her as she lay limp in bed, eyes closed, peaceful. She died early the following morning, days before anyone at hospice expected she would.

  CHAPTER 36

  Meg

  Meg was racing the children from the Santa brunch at the Yacht Club to the Christmas pageant rehearsal at the church when her phone buzzed, flashing her mother’s cell number. Just as she was reaching for it, she spotted Preston—in the rearview mirror—clocking Katherine over the head in the backseat with his long, wooden shepherd’s crook. Meg let the phone ring and pulled over the car where Broad Street met East Bay and yanked him out on the sidewalk by the collar of his pressed white oxford shirt.

  “You’re going to bed at seven thirty tonight.” He shrugged and she was so angry she was seeing spots. “And if I were you I’d be very concerned about the strong possibility of Santa erasing my name from the good list.”

  Preston rolled his hazel eyes. “I know it’s you, Mom, and you’ve probably already bought the stuff.” Yes, she had bought all of the stuff, and it was stored at the Toys “R” Us in North Charleston where she planned to pick it up during the pageant rehearsal. But she’d had just about enough of his smartness, and she was willing to pull out all of the stops to teach him a lesson.

  “Everything’s returnable, Preston. Santa’s elves keep all of their receipts.” She placed her manicured hands on his shoulders and put her powdered nose just inches away from his freckled one. “Now, I want you to be kind to your siblings and anyone else you’re around all day, all night, and all week long, or the elves are going to trade all the good stuff in for coal and switches. Do you hear me?”

  Meg glared at her firstborn son, waiting for his response. She didn’t bother looking at the car honking behind her or the friends that passed by in their luxury SUVs on their way from the Yacht Club over to the church. And she didn’t flinch when her phone continued to buzz and then blip, indicating her mother had left one very long message.

  Preston looked down at his polished loafers as the brisk December wind sifted through Meg’s thin hair, messing up her do. Had she gotten his attention? Did he have a conscience somewhere in there or at least a desire to behave in order to get the iPod Touch and the BB gun he had asked for? Was she as terrible a mother as she felt?

  Finally, he met her eyes and nodded slightly. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Thank you, Lord,” she uttered. Perhaps she had hit home somewhere inside of his heart and mind. She gently squeezed his dimpled chin as he began to shiver. How she loved him. How she loved each of them. How she hoped they would turn out all right in spite of her maternal shortcomings. In spite of their natural inclinations toward greed and control and, in Preston’s case, violence.

  You were loved. She heard these words in her gut. They were not audible, but they were clear and heavy as lead. You were loved. You were loved. And the thought crossed her mind that God had just answered her back with something other than, You’re welcome.

  Her son swallowed hard and she shook her head as if to clear it. Then he slipped back into the car where he quietly apologized to Katherine, who was still rubbing the top of her head.

  “I forgive you,” she said.

  ONCE THE CHILDREN WERE DRESSED FOR THE REHEARSAL in the parish hall, Preston in a shepherd’s costume, Cooper in an ox costume, and Katherine in an angel costume, Meg delivered them to the sanctuary for practice. Then she ducked away from the gaggle of mothers under the portico and dipped into a quiet corner of the graveyard where there was a bench and an overhang of thick, bare wisteria vines. She only had a few minutes to talk if she was going to make it to North Charleston to pick up the toys, hide them back at her home in Mount Pleasant, and pick the kids up downtown at the end of their rehearsal. Her husband didn’t like it when she drove and talked on the phone at the same time after she nearly ran over a cyclist at an intersection a few months ago, so she crouched down on the bench, hoping not to be noticed by the chatty mothers or the pageant director, who was always asking for last-minute help, and found her mother’s number on the call screen.

  Her mother should be in Manhattan by now. She had taken the train up with her neighbor friend, Nate. The one she’d threatened to sue just a year before. She had somehow befriended him and they seemed rather tight. Meg had spotted them walking their dogs down Broad Street toward Berlin’s for his tuxedo fitting just the other day, and her mother had even turned down a T
hanksgiving invitation to Preston’s mother’s house because she was joining Nate’s family at Charleston Place.

  “Don’t you want to spend Thanksgiving with the grandchildren?” Meg had asked her mother. It wasn’t that she wanted her to come so badly as she was embarrassed to report to Preston’s mother that her mother was on a date with her gruff neighbor from off.

  “Well, of course I do,” her mother had said. “I was hoping you all would come over to my house for dessert in the evening.”

  Meg had thought to protest: a day with Preston’s family and then an evening with her mother was going to wear her out. But she softened momentarily and said, “All right, Mama. We can do that. I’ll bring a pumpkin pie.”

  NOW MEG CALLED HER MOTHER BACK WITHOUT listening to the message.

  “Have you heard, love?” her mother said. There was an echo in her mother’s voice as if she were in the bottom of a well.

  “Heard what?” Meg pressed her other ear down with her index finger and listened hard.

  “Marney passed away yesterday.”

  Meg pulled her red peacoat tighter around her and buttoned it to the top as a chill ran up her spine.

  Marney. Passed. Away. Yesterday.

  The words sounded otherworldly at first. As if they were foreign and impossible to decode. Then they felt like a pin pricking an enormous water balloon Meg had been carrying on her back, and Meg jumped slightly as a thick lump formed in her throat.

  “No,” she said. “I had no idea.” She had known the cancer was back, but she didn’t realize how bad it was. She had ignored Aunt Dot’s call a few days ago. Christmas was a busy time, and she did not want to get bogged down in her old family history this time of year.

  Now she thought of her half sisters and brother: Heath, Etta, and Charlie. She saw their round faces in her mind, their big, unblinking eyes. Then she pictured her father and the way he had danced with pregnant Marney at Meg’s wedding in the back corner of the Yacht Club ballroom behind a potted plant. A place where he thought they wouldn’t be noticed.