Isle of Palms

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  “Seems like it.” The mystery plant was on the floor next to Lucy’s desk. I had all but forgotten about it. “Who sent this thing?”

  “Dunno,” she said, “no card.”

  “Where’d it come from?”

  “Belva’s.”

  “If you have a minute, why don’t you call Belva’s and see who it was.”

  Somehow I got through the day without giving myself away and, of course, promptly forgot about the origin of the plant. Besides, Mr. Don’t Want to Get Involved called around three.

  “Wassup, Ms. Abbot? You busy?”

  “Not at the moment. What’s on your mind?”

  “I was just thinking about you. You know, last night and everything.”

  “I’m never getting on another boat for the rest of my life.”

  I could hear him laugh a little and instantly I began to relive the other, more intense episode that made me sleep like the dead in the first place. I couldn’t decide whether I had better never see him again or put him on a leash. Who was I kidding? I wanted him all to myself.

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “I’m sorry, Arthur, I was just thinking about last night and this place is a little noisy. What did you say?”

  “I said, I don’t have to work Thursday night. Do you want to go do something?”

  “Sure,” I said, and then remembered that Jim was leaving Thursday. “Wanna cook or go out? Movies?”

  “I was thinking about this restaurant I found downtown. It’s pretty charming.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I said.

  “And, Anna?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I enjoyed last night, I mean what happened between us. I enjoyed it very much.”

  “Me too.”

  We hung up and I was so pissed off I thought I would spit fire. He enjoyed it? What was I? Dessert? He couldn’t say something like, Wasn’t it incredible? No. This unromantic dumb-ass was thanking me like I had given him a piece of pie instead of my body and soul for hours on end and I’d wound up dressed in a garbage bag, humiliated beyond description.

  He enjoyed it.

  Well, isn’t that special. I had to assume that him calling me was slight headway. Actually, given his politics, a phone call from Arthur probably should have been considered hot pursuit/stalking. Was I taking a crumb he tossed my way and making something larger out of it?

  Yes.

  This whole dating thing made me truly insecure.

  I turned my attention to planning something for Wednesday night to say bon voyage to Jim. I knew he needed some uplifting. It sounded like it was going to be all but impossible for Jim to have a civilized visit with Gary’s family. I realized that my stupid, almost obsessive, musings over Arthur were pretty low on the scale of real issues like the one facing Jim and Gary. Once again, my relationship with Jim had helped me put things in perspective. I decided to go all out and have a big cookout in the backyard.

  I called Frannie on the off chance that she might be free to come and surprise Jim. Besides, I was dying to see her myself. It had been far too long since we’d made the effort and Jim was a great excuse for anyone to go the extra mile.

  “Hey! Frannie! It’s me. You got a minute?”

  “Girl! Where have you been? I’ve been missing you! You got your house and opened your business and I suck so bad, I didn’t even send you a plant! How’s it going?”

  I brought her up to date, leaving out the story of Arthur and the boat. Then I told her about Gary and how upset Jim was, that he was going to try and see him.

  “I think he needs us, Frannie.”

  “Whoa. No shit. And, I expect that Miss Trixie knows nothing.”

  “Probably not. I didn’t ask him if he had told her or not. I should call her and ask her to dinner for Wednesday.”

  “Lemme get this straight. You’re calling me on Monday to see if I can be there Wednesday?”

  “Yeah. No can do, right?”

  “Wait a minute. I have to be in Raleigh on Friday—tobacco business—don’t ask. I could leave on Wednesday, fly to Charleston—can I spend the night at Chez Anna?”

  “Of course!”

  “Then I could fly out Thursday night. Let me see if there’s a flight. I’ll call you back.”

  In an hour, it was all done. Frannie was coming.

  I called Daddy and invited him, after checking with Lucy to see what the temperature of their relationship was. They were back in love. Naturally, I invited Brigitte and Bettina and her husband and I assumed Emily and David would be there. I should have told Arthur, but he probably had to work. Everyone agreed to help and we kept it a secret to surprise Jim.

  After work, Emily and I took a long look at the backyard. I didn’t have a deck. I only had one tiny charcoal grill. I didn’t even have a hammock. All that existed there was beach grass, a shed, and a ton of flowering bushes and plants. I looked at my checkbook and the story was pretty dismal. However, I did have a Visa card with a liberal limit that I almost never used. Once again, since leaving the watchful eye of Daddy, I was about to blow the bank.

  “Emily? Let’s go to Lowe’s and just see what it would cost to make this yard look like something.”

  “Can we stop at Taco Bell?”

  “You bet.”

  Six tacos and two Diet Pepsis later, while strolling the aisles of Lowe’s, Emily and I calculated that we could get a table with an umbrella, six chairs, a medium-sized Fiesta gas grill, and a small Pawley’s Island rope hammock on a frame for right under a thousand dollars. This “Sydney” collection of furniture wasn’t out of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, but it would do the job.

  “What the hell, Mom,” Emily said, “go for it.”

  I did. For another forty dollars I bought enough citronella torches to make the backyard look like we were having a luau.

  “I don’t want to point this out, Mom, but you got six chairs and ten people.”

  “We’ll use the chairs in the house.”

  “And, you gotta have food. What are you gonna cook?”

  “Obviously, something from the grill! Don’t wreck my good mood, missy. I’d hock my jewelry for Jim.”

  “Um, you don’t have any jewelry.”

  “Well, if I did . . .”

  “Whatever.”

  By Wednesday morning, I had a menu, courtesy of Bettina and Brigitte. I had seven pounds of baby back ribs marinating in Lucy’s refrigerator for the grill. And I planned to serve steamed shrimp to pick on while the ribs cooked. Brigitte was bringing salad and a watermelon basket. Bettina was bringing meatballs. Lucy was bringing her blender.

  And I had invited Trixie. It went like this.

  “Trixie? Hi! It’s Anna.”

  There was a sigh, punctuated with silence and another sigh. “Well, hello,” she said, “how are you, dear?”

  In Trixie’s vocabulary, dear was a name reserved for those she held as slightly putrid. I thought, Oh, screw her, let me just invite her and be done with it.

  “I’m fine, thanks, busy. You know.”

  “Ah’m sure you are. Bless your heart.”

  “Anyway, the reason I called is that you know Jim’s leaving on Thursday . . .”

  “No, Ah didn’t know. Is he going back to California?”

  “Uh, yes. So Emily and I thought it would be a good idea to do something like have a cookout for him Wednesday night and we were hoping you could join us.”

  “Ah’ll have to let you know. Ah’m not sure of what’s on my calendar and I’m just running out the door now. Call you later?”

  Call me never for all I care. “Sure. That’s fine.”

  Why was it that certain people in my life made me feel guilty over every single thing? Was it my fault that Jim hadn’t told her he was leaving? No. After the way she had treated Emily I should have just reduced our relationship with her to greeting cards on required occasions. But, hell no. The good little Catholic girl in me was always willing to turn the other cheek. The Queen of Darkne
ss in her was always willing to give that cheek another slap. I’d never accept that Trixie was just as committed to inflicting personal pain as I was to reconciliation. Intellectually, I wanted to be nice to Trixie for Jim’s sake and I wanted her to have a place in Emily’s life. And, years ago, she had tried awfully hard to help me, so I owed her something.

  She called later to accept. She asked if she could bring anything. Now we would be eleven. Maybe she could bring a chair.

  On Wednesday, I sent Jim off with a list of things to do. Most of them were just silly errands to keep him out of the house so he wouldn’t know I had anything going on that night. Lowe’s called at three to say they were ready to deliver the furniture so Lucy and Emily took off for home to make sure it was in the right place, level with the ground, and wiped down with Fantastik. By the time I got home, the table and chairs were immaculate, the umbrella was raised, the hammock was hung, and the citronella torches were in place. It looked like I was having a party except for one thing—no word from Frannie. She was supposed to have arrived by four. Maybe her flight had been delayed. I asked Emily to call the airlines and check.

  “Air traffic controllers delayed the flight because of some storm system that they think might get in the way, Mom. Nothing she can do about that.”

  “Storm system, bull. It’s eighty-five degrees and clear as a bell. Probably a security thing.” We went outside and looked at the skies. Not a cloud in sight in any direction. “Well, let’s hope she makes it tonight.”

  Lucy went home to shower and returned at six-thirty with an aluminum folding table to use for a buffet, hauled by David, who had taken a bath in some kind of loud cologne and couldn’t take his eyes off Emily, who had stripped the color out of her hair that afternoon and begged Brigitte to apply a platinum blond toner, which she did and finally Emily looked like Emily. In fact, Emily looked like she’d never left the Lowcountry, thus beginning a pronounced change in Emily’s appearance and attitude. Maybe the clothes she wore had been in her closet all the time, but she had on a baby pink T-shirt and white shorts, which were too short, but I said not one word about it. With all that swinging blond hair and those green eyes of hers, she looked her age and she looked pretty.

  “You got a white sheet?” Lucy asked me.

  “Toga party?” Emily said.

  “No, Klan meeting,” I said.

  Emily got this look on her face.

  “Oh, for pity’s sake, Emily. She needs a sheet for a tablecloth! Go look in the linen closet!” Lucy and I exchanged looks of mock despair. Adults are not allowed to make jokes that aren’t one hundred percent politically correct. Adults are not allowed to have a sense of humor that is counterpoint to the teenager’s. Adults should admit they’re old and boring and just go someplace and be quiet, except when teenagers need money, car keys, or rescue from any number of things.

  “Kids,” she said.

  Bettina and Bobby arrived with a covered pot, so hot that Bobby carried it with pot holders, rushing ahead of Bettina, who was fishing something out of her trunk.

  “Hi!” I said.

  “You gotta be Anna,” he said, “heard a lot about ya.”

  “I’m so glad to meet you, Bobby. We love Bettina to death!”

  “Nice place,” he said, nodding his head at my flower beds. “Where do you want me to put this?”

  “Oh! Let me take it for you!”

  “Nah. Too heavy,” he said, “I’ll just put it in the kitchen.”

  Manly. Very manly. Whew.

  “Got my CDs and my boom box,” Bettina said and whizzed past me on her wooden platform mules. “I brought eighties dance club music from New York!”

  Well, I thought, there goes the shag contest. Guess I’m gonna have to learn how to Hustle.

  Next came Brigitte with a huge watermelon, carved to look like a basket with a handle, filled with strawberries, cantaloupe, and all kinds of chopped fruit.

  “Holy cow! Did you make this?”

  “This is what a sporadic sex life does to you. Your freaking Martha gene rears its highlighted head and you start carving rosettes out of radishes.”

  “I’m single and, lemme tell you, honey, I couldn’t make one of those if life and limb depended on it. But I can garden.”

  “My point exactly,” she said, standing there with the watermelon balanced on one hip. She looked hard at the explosion of flowers that were all but growing up the sides of my house and into the windows. She turned to me with an arched eyebrow and said, “This place looks like the freaking Charleston Botanical Gardens!”

  “It’s all about the dirt,” I said.

  “Sure.”

  “Let me help you,” I said.

  “Here,” she said, “I’ll go get the salad.”

  “Okay, we’re out back.” I went inside and out through the kitchen to the backyard.

  I had a cooler in the backyard filled with beer and a few bottles of opened white wine. Emily was spreading a sheet over the table—pink and gray plaid, which actually looked pretty good next to the gray-and-white-striped seat cushions around my new table.

  “Yeah, first I grabbed a contour sheet,” she said, “figures. But you have to say this looks, like, completely perfect.”

  Lucy was unwrapping the plastic tumblers, plates, and paper napkins and, when Daddy arrived, the blender started to hum. The new grill, which we rolled over to the folding table, was fired up, and soon the ribs were spread across the grate filling the air with the scent of Stubb’s barbecue sauce and pork fat. There was nothing to compare with the smell of melting brown sugar, mustard, and meat cooking.

  Trixie strolled in with preruffled feathers and Daddy immediately went to her side and was the consummate diplomat. Finally, she spoke to Emily.

  “There now! Don’t you look nice?”

  “Thanks, Gram,” Emily said. “I decided blond hair was better for the summer. I was gonna put some blue streaks in, but I didn’t have time.”

  “I heard that,” I said to her, grabbing her arm as she tried to escape. “Was that necessary?”

  “Yes,” she said, “good one, huh?”

  “You’re my girl and don’t ever forget it,” I said to her in a low voice.

  “Learned at the knee of the master!” she shot back and took off in the direction of David, who Lucy had breaking up ice in the cooler.

  I turned back to see Trixie holding her bosom and Daddy shaking his head.

  Then I heard him say to Trixie, “You know, these young people always want to get our goat, don’t they?”

  “Ah imagine so,” she said, with her chin raised and her lips pursed as tight as a cheap perm.

  Daddy took her arm and led her to Lucy, who was mixing rum drinks and fruit in her blender, which was attached to my kitchen by the longest orange extension cord I had ever seen. Just give her one of your frozen bombs, Lucy. Set her mind right!

  Bettina had her music blasting from her boom box and was dancing with Bobby, who was a dead ringer for John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, the way he moved. Good Lord, I thought, this is not your typical Lowcountry party. No one was wearing Weejuns or Pappagallos and there wasn’t a stitch of Lilly Pulitzer in sight, except for Trixie, who was fully swaddled in a watermelon print with a matching green sweater set. I realized that times had changed. The rest of us looked like we could have been from anywhere in the country. The Lowcountry had been invaded once again by Yankee apparel chain stores. We were in danger of losing our fashion identity. Then I giggled because I would rather have gone naked—and I had done that, hadn’t I—than look like Trixie.

  By the time Jim arrived, there was a party in full swing.

  “Surprise!” everyone said.

  “Have y’all gone completely mad? Where did all this furniture come from?”

  “Where do you think?” I said, taking his arm and bringing him to the gathering little crowd that we were.

  “Girl! You shop Lowe’s like other girls shop Saks!”

  “Ah was beginning t
o think you weren’t coming,” Trixie said.

  “Hi, Mother!” He kissed her cheek. “You look like a picture of summer!”

  Trixie smiled and twisted her pearls.

  Jim was delighted. Everyone came up to Jim to wish him well on his trip, to tell him what a marvel he was, to say that they would miss him, and to ask when he was coming back. He spotted Emily with her new hair and smiled, obviously liking what he saw.

  “You look beautiful, Emily,” he said, then turned to David, who had his arm around her shoulder. “Watch yourself with your arm, young man. That’s my only child in your possessive clutch. I can always come back here and—”

  “Oh, Daddy,” Emily said.

  All she had to do was say Daddy and Jim dissolved into a sputtering mush ball.

  “Well, there’s a hand attached to it.” He took her by both shoulders and said, “Oh, Emily, I’ll miss you, sweetheart.” He threw his arms around her and hugged her until I thought she would wind up with cracked ribs. “You know my cell number, right?”

  “By heart,” she said.

  “Use it, okay? Call me if you need anything—especially if you’re thinking of doing something stupid.” He shot David a look that said it all.

  “We’re not doing anything stupid, sir,” David said, blushing deep red.

  Emily took David’s hand, and they walked away.

  I lifted the last of the ribs from the grill, put them on a platter, and placed them on the table, thinking it would be a thousand years before I ever got the grill clean.

  “Smells good,” said a familiar voice.

  I looked around to see my oldest girlfriend.

  “Frannie! You made it!”

  “I wouldn’t have missed the chance to see all this! Wow! You have a house and a yard and everything! Saints preserve us! How’d you do it without me?”

  “I had Jim.”

  “Where is that old dog I dragged my behind all over hell’s half acre to see?”

  “He’s here and he’s gonna faint when he sees you! Oh! I’m so thrilled to see you, you just don’t know. Where’s the other half of you? How much weight have you lost?”

  “A billion pounds! Stress, a new man, and Weight Watchers. But you are not half as thrilled as I am! I can’t believe I’m here!”