Isle of Palms

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  “Not me, honey,” Jim said. “I ain’t going to the South Seas unless the IRS is after me.”

  “Well, for the moment,” Frannie said, “I’d settle for just one long weekend of lying in the sun and reading one of the books I’ve bought but haven’t had time to read. It would be so great to just hang out together and really get back in each other’s lives. You know?”

  “Definitely,” Jim said. “I’ve got this awful feeling that by August I’m going to need some heavy doses of cheer.”

  “Y’all know what all this means, don’t you?” I looked from Frannie’s face to Jim’s. “It means we need to take an oath that we’ll see each other more often. We’re practically family—at least we used to be.”

  “Anna’s right, Jim. I mean, shoot! Look at us! We’re not getting any younger. Life is traveling faster than light these days. Pretty soon those idiots at AARP are gonna start jamming my mailbox with coupons for, God knows—adult diapers! Ugh!”

  “She’s right. We’re getting older by the second,” Jim said. “Frannie ain’t got no husband. In fact, none of us do, but at least you have Arthur. How’s that going?”

  “He’s great, but he doesn’t want to get involved, even though he’s involved. And because I know you’re dying to know, the boy is hot, okay? I’m seeing him tonight.” I picked up my plate, taking it to the kitchen. “Y’all want another pot of coffee? I gotta get to work.”

  “No more coffee for me,” Jim said. “I’m going to the beach. Okay?”

  “Anna,” Frannie said, “Jim and I thought we might spend the morning on the beach and I was hoping you or somebody in your salon could do something with my hair this afternoon before I have to fly out of here.”

  “No problem! I’ve been dying to get my hands on your head for about a million years, girl! Y’all go to the beach and I’ll see you around three? You can’t leave here without seeing the salon anyway!”

  “Can I go to the beach too?” Emily said, coming out from the bedroom, yawning and struggling to open her eyes.

  “Forget it,” I said, “you’re lucky I’m not tearing up your behind for last night.”

  “Mother Superior! You’re a tough nut!” Jim said. “Let her come! I never get to see her! How about I bring her in at noon? I have to be at the airport by two.” He looked at Emily. “What’d you do, you little wench?”

  “Nothing,” Emily said, face flushed.

  “She and David ripped off a six-pack and she sneaked into bed, half trashed, after midnight,” I said. “She smelled like a derelict.”

  “Emily!” Jim said. “I am shocked! If this young gentleman can’t provide the contraband for your entertainment without reducing you to common thievery, I say, dump the lout! Like that!” He snapped his fingers in midair and flicked his wrist. “What’s the drinking age around here anyway?”

  “She ain’t there,” Frannie said, “but neither were we when we used to buy cases of beer with fake ID.”

  “Good point,” I said. I didn’t approve of underage drinking one bit, but the fact was that we had all done it. “Okay. You get yourself to the salon by noon, ’eah?”

  “Okay,” Emily said. “Whatever.”

  I loved when she said whatever. What did it mean? That she didn’t care what I said when I knew she really did?

  I sailed into the salon before nine-thirty. Bettina and Brigitte were gathered around Lucy. The hair on my neck stood up. I knew I had been betrayed. It was obvious she had told them about Everett and was squeezing every drop of sap from the story for them that she could. Murder crossed my mind. After swearing up and down she wouldn’t say anything, she had told them. I couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t my imagination, because they all looked nervous and guilty.

  “Morning, Anna,” Brigitte said, walking away from them, reaching for a tissue to blow her nose. “Excuse me. Allergies. Thanks for last night. We had a great time, didn’t we?”

  “Oh! Yeah!” Bettina said. “I never saw Bobby eat so much! Those shrimps were fan-tas-tic!”

  Lucy slithered toward the bathroom, like a snake from the bottom of the swamp.

  “Morning, everyone,” I said, and threw my purse in the cabinet next to my station without looking at them, closing the cubby door harder than I should have. “Lucy? Can I have a word with you?”

  Silence.

  “Sure! I just have to powder my nose, okay?”

  They knew I was angry. I looked in the mirror and rubbed a trace of mascara from beneath my eyes. For a split second I imagined myself the founder of a nonsmearing mascara company for humid climates. I stood there and ran a comb through my hair, over and over.

  “I’ll be waiting,” I said to her back. “Anybody got today’s schedule?”

  “No,” Bettina said, at the same time Brigitte said, “It’s right here,” and handed it to me.

  “Looks like we have another wild day ahead of us, right?”

  The front door opened and the first two clients of the day walked in, saving Bettina and Brigitte from certain embarrassment. They made themselves busy with them and I waited at my station for Lucy, who had been in the bathroom long enough to change the wallpaper, her mind, and her story. Finally, I walked to the door and rapped on it lightly with my knuckles.

  “Do I need to call the plumber?”

  The door opened and she was in there sniveling into a tissue, chest heaving, silent sobs. Classic Lucy.

  “Come on, Judas,” I said, and took her out through the back door into the rear parking lot. “First of all, calm yourself down. We have a business to run.”

  “I’m sorry, Anna. . . .”

  “Don’t say one word or I don’t know what I will do to you.” I was so enraged I thought I might actually hit her. “Just listen, okay?” She seemed to understand that her life was hanging by a thread so I continued. “We’re talking about trust, Lucy. Knowing about my life is not a license for you to wiggle your tongue for the ears of anyone who will listen. This is my child’s life, my life, and our privacy. It was my deepest secret—mine, not yours—you’ve revealed and I can’t imagine that I’ll ever trust you again. I want you to go home and when I calm down, we’ll talk some more.”

  “Am I . . . fired? Oh, God! I am so sorry! It just came out!”

  “Right. It just popped into your brain and rolled off your tongue, just like a sliding board. No, you are not fired but I am so upset right now that I know I can’t spend the day with you. So, go.”

  As she walked away from me, her shoulders were shaking so hard I knew that everyone in the salon must’ve thought somebody died. It would be impossible now to keep it from Emily. I was filled with dread and a heaviness in my chest that was so awful, I thought I might die on the spot, falling dead on the floor.

  I watched her push the front door open and go toward her car. I wished that Jim wasn’t leaving. Or Frannie. I needed to talk to them. I couldn’t tell Daddy. He would just go to Lucy with it and the damn story would spread like kudzu. I had to put a lid on it right away.

  For the next two hours, I answered the phones, took care of two walk-ins, and stayed busy. In between clients, Bettina and Brigitte avoided my eyes—knowing they were sharing space with a nuclear warhead with a short fuse. Neither one of them asked me where Lucy had gone. Eventually, I began to calm down and took them aside.

  Brigitte’s client was under the dryer and Bettina’s was drying her nails, sipping a smoothie through a straw; both of them were unaware of my trauma. I took Brigitte and Bettina to the towel area in the back.

  “Look. Emily is going to be here any minute. One word, one funny look from any of us and she’s going to start asking questions I’m not ready to answer. I don’t know what Lucy told y’all, but she shouldn’t have said anything. It wasn’t her place.”

  “I agree,” Brigitte said, “and to tell you the truth, I didn’t want to know anyway.”

  “Well,” Bettina said, “I, for one, understan’ Lucy, you know? She’s a dumb-ass and can’t help herself. The world
is loaded with dumb broads. Don’t be pissed at her, Anna. We probably woulda weaseled it out of ya eventually anyway. No way we wouldn’t have heard it sooner or later. You woulda told us, right? Am I right, or what?” She looked from me to Brigitte, who shrugged her noncommittal shoulders.

  “Probably,” I said, “but in my time, not hers.”

  “If it’s timing that’s giving you agita, don’t sweat it. By the end of the day you’ll owe us two Oscars for Best Actress. Am I right, Brigitte?”

  “She’s right. Emily will notice nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “All right. Let’s get back to work.”

  When Emily arrived, we put her on phone duty and I went outside with Jim, after he had said his good-byes to Bettina and Brigitte. The sun was raging overhead and I knew I couldn’t stand the heat for long. I felt very emotional as we stood by his rental car. He got inside and turned on the air conditioner and got out again.

  “Your nose is red,” I said.

  “Because I have aristocratic skin.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “In five minutes it’ll be ten below zero in there,” he said, smiling at me. “That’s one thing about Detroit—they understand air conditioners. German cars? Forget it.”

  “Oh, Jim, I wish you didn’t have to go,” I said. “The cat’s out of the bag and I need you worse than ever.”

  “What cat?”

  I told him and he said, “Oh! That cat! Well, listen, Anna. We’ve been saving each other’s behinds since fifth grade or something like that and this is just another challenge in a long list of ones that have been met and dealt with.”

  “I know but, damn! Why did she do it?” I didn’t really expect an answer to that, I just needed to figure out what to do so that Emily wouldn’t find out until I wanted her to.

  “Because Lucy is as thick as a post. Don’t you worry. I’ll think about it and call you tomorrow, okay? Tell Frannie. See what she thinks.” He shook his head. “That Lucy is a nice gal, but, man! She’s got all the judgment of a two-year-old playing with matches.”

  “Exactly. God, I’ll miss you. Good luck in Ohio. I’ll be thinking about you every second.” I knew his anxiety over Gary must have been eating him alive.

  “I’m kind of a philosophical guy, you know? I mean, I think things will work out because they always seem to. That goes for you too. Don’t fret—it gives you wrinkles, and we don’t want wrinkles.”

  I shook my head at him as he got in the car and put it in reverse, lowering the window for a final word.

  “I love you, Anna. Count on it.”

  “I do. And I love you, Jim. Until we rot and after that too.”

  I kissed my fingertips and wiped them all over his face. He hollered and raced to raise the window on my hands. I shrieked and jumped back, laughing. We waved at each other as he pulled away and I thought, once again, that I had never known a better friend. I would count the days until his return.

  The rest of the day flew by until Frannie arrived, greeting everyone like she’d known them all her life. She fit right in like the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle, making the place seem complete, with her wise-cracking humor matching Bettina’s and her poise on par with Brigitte’s. Frannie had plenty to say about the salon. After about fifteen minutes, a smoothie, and a cappuccino, she finally got in a robe and into my chair.

  “So, I got out this magazine and started wondering if you could make me look like Julia Roberts and then I decided that it wasn’t really my hair that kept me from looking like her. Right? Soooo! Then I started thinking about Elizabeth Taylor and how she used to look and all. National Velvet? And I figured that was hopeless too. Can we do a supermodel thing?”

  “Sure, I’ll just take a little off the sides,” I said. “Want another cappuccino?”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ll get it. My pleasure!” Bettina said. “And then I’m doing your nails! Maybe I’ll airbrush Brad Pitt on your pinky!”

  “God, don’t you love her?” Frannie said.

  “To death, but let’s talk hair for a few minutes, okay?”

  I removed the rubber band that held her enormous chignon in place. Her thick hair, shot with silver threads, tumbled past her shoulders in uneven lengths. She had the kind of hair a girl like me would kill for.

  “Look at this! Jee-za-ree! When’s the last time you had a haircut?”

  “When Dubya’s daddy was in the White House. What do you want for my life? I’m busy!”

  “What do we have? An hour and a half?” My mind was racing. “Let’s get going.”

  I put a single-process mahogany glaze on her hair, just enough to bring out the fire in her natural color. When I blew it dry, it was a full three inches longer. I loved the color too.

  “Woman? You got too much hair! Jeez! You got hair for four women!”

  “Then, cut it!”

  “I’m painting your nails red,” Bettina said. “With your kinda sass, you need red nails!”

  I rewet Frannie’s hair and started to cut, bringing it up to right above her shoulders and giving her some long layers in the front. When I blew it out it was swinging and glossy.

  “Wow!” Frannie said. “I’m going on a manhunt! This is too good to waste!”

  “You look gorgeous!” I said, watching Bettina roll her cart over to another client. “You get on that plane, make some man pay for the pleasure of your beauteous self, and call me when you get to your hotel. We gotta talk.”

  “Something happen?” Frannie whispered.

  “Yeah.”

  “Lucy told the troops?” She whispered again.

  “Yeah.”

  “Shit. I could smell it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

  “Good.”

  We hugged like best friends do and I watched Frannie leave.

  I started to worry about Emily seeing David that night. I knew that if I went out with Arthur and she went over to Lucy’s to watch TV, there was a huge window for trouble. It was an awful thing to have to worry about someone like Lucy betraying me again. And, it made me mad all over again.

  I decided to call Daddy and see if I could talk him into taking Lucy out for the night or maybe he could just go over to her house for the evening. If he was around, she wouldn’t dare take it on herself to start telling Emily anything. She would doll herself up and make Martinis and maybe, in all her drunken stupidity, she’d forget what she knew for the night. Nothing like wishful thinking.

  I went out to the parking lot and called Daddy on my cell phone.

  “Daddy? I’m in a pickle again. I need your help.”

  “What’s up, sugar?”

  “It’s about Lucy and her tongue that’s as long as I-95.”

  Daddy cleared his throat, and I realized I had either given Daddy lewd thoughts or he already knew. He already knew.

  “She called me about an hour ago,” he said. “That’s the whole problem with women. They talk too much.”

  “Not all women, thank you,” I said. “This one in particular thinks she’s obliged to tell it all like the National Enquirer. I could kill her, I’m so mad.”

  “Well, I don’t blame you for being angry and I’m not sure it means you have to tell Emily anything. At least, not yet.”

  “But soon,” I said and choked up thinking about it, “soon I’m gonna have to pay the devil.”

  “Maybe not,” he said. “I think we can figure out a way to present the truth and leave the devil out. Right now you’re upset and can’t think straight.”

  I hated it when he said things like that, implying female hysteria. “I’m thinking pretty straight and here’s the immediate problem.” I told him about Arthur and that I intended to keep the date I had with him, but I was concerned about what could happen that night.

  “So, you want me to put some static on her line? I can do that. I’ll call her back and see if she wants to go out to supper.”

  “Then all I have to worry ab
out is Emily and David doing what they shouldn’t with no adult present in the house.”

  “Good Lord, Anna,” Daddy said, “listen to you! What are you worried about? Unprotected sex? How old is Emily? Do you really think she’s so promiscuous that she’d hop in the bed the minute she could?”

  “You know what, Daddy? She’s old enough that she’s going to do what she wants anyway. I just don’t like the idea of providing the opportunity by leaving them alone in a house with beds. It seems like an invitation to go crazy.”

  Daddy roared with laughter and I realized that I sounded like my grandmother. Then I started to laugh too.

  “I’m an idiot,” I said. “Violet lives!”

  “You . . . oh, God, that was funny . . . you never heard of the backseat of a car? Honey, if young people want to have sex, they find a way!”

  “Just take Lucy out to dinner and then hang around for a while, okay?”

  “Okay. Now quit worrying so. We will figure this all out, because at some point, you have to tell Emily the truth, you know. She’s entitled to some version of the truth, Anna.”

  He was right. I had waited too many years because the truth was so entangled and ugly. I wanted to know that Emily was strong enough to take it like an adult. I had hoped she would be so happy with Jim and me as parents that she wouldn’t want to know about anything else.

  “Are you listening to me?”

  “I’m sorry, Daddy. What did you say?”

  “I said, I’ll call you later, okay?”

  “Thanks. Daddy? I love you, you know. A lot.”

  “You have to learn to forgive, Anna. People make mistakes. Lucy can’t help it.”

  It was true. I wasn’t very forgiving. But he wasn’t exactly perfect about forgiveness either.

  Later on that night, after a great dinner and a lot of wine, I was lying in bed with Arthur, enjoying the ol’ afterglow. I told him what had happened with Lucy, which led to telling him about Everett. I thought he might have some advice for me. I waited for him to say something but he was strangely quiet.

  “What are you thinking?” I said.

  “I’m thinking that this is what I hate about relationships.” He rolled over on his side, propped himself up on one elbow, and faced me. “You see what I mean?”