Isle of Palms

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  “What about Trixie?”

  “Let the old bitch figure it out for herself and we can watch her twitch.”

  “Mother McCree! I could probably sell tickets if I had the time,” Frannie said.

  “This is not one damn bit funny, okay?” I said.

  Everyone became quiet.

  “Momma? Who the hell cares what Trixie thinks anyway? Come on, we gotta set another place at the table.”

  “No,” I said, “not so fast.”

  “I hear my potatoes screaming,” Frannie said. “Let’s go up to Lucy’s.”

  I looked at Everett. “I can’t think of a thing you could say that I’d want to hear. And all of you can go up to Lucy’s. You too, Emily. Go! All of you!”

  How could he just show up? What did he think? Did he think we’d just say, Everett! So nice to see you again! How’re they hanging, bubba? I knew Frannie’s joke about selling tickets was her nervous anxiety. And, obviously it didn’t matter what Trixie thought.

  I watched them cross the yard and climb the stairs to Lucy’s. They let him in the house like he was a normal person. A normal person. There was the man who had drugged and raped me, broken my nose, and left me pregnant, walking up the stairs with my daughter and my dearest friends as though he belonged. He did not belong.

  I could already see that Emily could handle this. In fact, everyone could handle it except me. I was going to do something terrible.

  I went inside my house, reached under my sink, and took out the hammer. The house was empty. I went back outside to see what was going on. Everyone else was on the terrace or still up at Lucy’s. I looked at Everett’s shiny black Mercedes-Benz SL600 and wondered how he’d feel if I banged the hell out of it.

  I started with a headlight. It smashed and glass fell all over the road. I looked up at Lucy’s to see if anyone had heard the sound of it. All quiet. I smashed the second one. I started to perspire like crazy. Then I hit the hood as hard as I could—the passenger door, the roof, the back fender, the trunk a few times. I went around to the driver’s door and pounded it about six times before I heard the voices.

  Anna! Stop! Jim! Somebody! Make her stop! Anna! Please! Momma! Stop!

  I turned around and saw every single person invited there for dinner, all of them, staring at me. The look of horror on Emily’s face would follow me to my grave. So would the faces of the others. I started to cry again and dropped the hammer on the road. I felt myself slide down the driver’s door. I sat on the ground with my head buried in my arms and from somewhere outside of my own head, I heard my own convulsive sobbing.

  In seconds, I felt someone take my elbow to lift me up on one side and then the other. What had I done? I looked up to see who was trying to help me and I saw Jim on one side and Arthur on the other.

  “Come on, baby,” Arthur said, “it’s okay.”

  “Someone go get a Xanax or something, okay?” Jim said. “Come on, Anna, let’s go in the house.”

  I saw Frannie, Lucy, Trixie, and Brigitte all leave to search for something to calm me down. I looked back at the car. It was ruined. I didn’t care. Before I could think of what to say, Everett came up to us and we stopped.

  He looked at his car and back at me and said, “I don’t blame you one bit. If I had only known about Emily . . . things would’ve been so different. Forget the car. Are you all right?”

  “Fuck you, Everett. I mean it.” I looked at him again. “I feel better, I think. I’m not sorry about your car.”

  “Don’t apologize, Anna.”

  “I didn’t.”

  Then, to our complete and total amazement, Everett Fairchild burst out into tears, then got in his car and locked the doors.

  “Mercy!” Trixie said.

  Finally, Daddy spoke up loudly. “Would somebody like to tell us just what in the hell is going on here?”

  “Come on, sugar, let’s hush,” Lucy said, taking his arm, “and let’s go get my blender.” Then she turned to everyone else and said, “Y’all come on over too! Yes, you too, Miss Mavis and Miss Angel! It ain’t gonna kill you to come in my house! We’ll explain everything.”

  Off they went, everyone except Emily, Jim, and Arthur, who took me in the house, and Everett, who was hanging on his steering wheel, weeping in his locked car. He could sit there until Christmas for all I cared.

  I plopped on my couch and put my legs up, kicking off my shoes. Jim gave me a glass of wine. Arthur got a box of tissues and gave it to me. Emily just stood in shock. She spoke first.

  “Momma? Are you crazy? Why . . . ?”

  “Be quiet, Emily,” Jim said, “your mother did what she had to do.”

  “Yeah, Everett’s lucky as hell she didn’t use the hammer on him,” Arthur said.

  Emily was staring at me and little lights began coming on in her mind. If Everett was the birth father and I had demolished his car, the relationship could not have been a good thing.

  “Everett drugged and raped your mother at her prom, Emily,” Jim said. “She got pregnant, didn’t prosecute, and then I married her. We never heard from him again and we never tried to find him. We never told you because we couldn’t figure out how to tell you and now here we are. That’s the truth. I’m sorry.”

  “Holy shit, Momma. No wonder you whacked the daylights out of his car!”

  Jim had told Emily that it was rape. But it was all out and there were no more secrets to keep. I began to relax a little and sat up to blow my nose.

  “Take a sip,” Arthur said, and held my goblet out for me.

  “No, no, thanks,” I said. “I’m okay now. Thanks, y’all.”

  “Anna,” Jim said, “nobody blames you for what you did. We only just wish we could’ve helped you do it.”

  “There’s more to the story, Anna,” Arthur said. “Do you want to tell her or should I?”

  “I’ll start,” Jim said, “and you correct me if I get it wrong.”

  Everett had told them everything at Lucy’s. Bettina had been right. His wife, the evil Joanne, had been having an affair with one of Everett’s employees. He caught them at a motel by accidentally spotting their cars.

  “He said it was a pretty ugly scene. He knocked on the door and this dumb sumbitch answered it. There was Joanne, naked as a jay-bird, sitting up on a water bed with a look of holy shit on her face.”

  “Can you imagine?” Arthur said. “That must’ve taken some monster-sized balls to knock on the door.”

  “Probably took King Kong’s to come here,” Jim said. “Everett said he didn’t think twice before he did it. I mean, her car was sitting there for all the world to see with her license plate that said CARPEDIEM. Seize the day. Puh-leez! Go seize yourself a good attorney, girlfriend.”

  “He said he said to his employee, ‘You’re fired,’ and then he looked at Joanne and said, ‘We’re all done,’ ” Arthur said.

  “Too bad,” I said. “Joanne deserved it.”

  “Who’s Joanne?” Emily said.

  “His wife,” I said. “I’ll tell you everything in a few minutes.”

  “Yeah, well, anyway,” Jim said, “he went home and threw all her clothes in four suitcases and that’s how he found the picture in her drawer. After he stared at it for a few minutes, he thought it was you, Anna. But he completely flipped out when he looked at Emily’s face. Apparently our Emily is the spitting image of his mother. And the eyes were the final clue. He sent all Joanne’s things to the Holiday Inn, drove up here, and that was pretty much that.”

  “That’s some story,” I said. The plan had worked, but not as predicted.

  “This guy may have been a bum in college,” Arthur said, “but he was on drugs too. Did you know that?”

  “No. I didn’t. I should’ve figured that out, but I didn’t. What else did he say?”

  “That he got kicked out of the Citadel, went to jail for distributing, had the hell scared out of him by the boys inside the cooler, and then got his life together. He doesn’t drink, smoke, or do drugs of any kin
d. And, he wants to pay for Emily’s college tuition.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. He said to tell you he’d call you over the weekend to discuss it.”

  “What does he expect in return? Our adoration?”

  “It seems he doesn’t want a thing,” Jim said. “He might need a tow truck, but . . .”

  I looked up at him and then to Arthur and to Emily. There were traces of relief and half smiles on everyone’s face, including mine.

  “Tell him to get his ugly ass out of his ugly-ass car and come in here like a man and talk to me.”

  They all left to get him and returned in a few minutes.

  “Hey, Emily,” Arthur said, “how’s about you and me moseying over to Lucy’s and seeing what the old people are doing?”

  “Yeah, good idea. At some point, we gotta eat.”

  As soon as they were far enough away not to hear us we started talking.

  “I just didn’t know, Anna,” Everett said. “How could I have known?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “the news killed my grandmother, you know.”

  “Oh, my God!” Everett said.

  “Don’t worry. You did me a personal favor. She was unbelievably awful.”

  I sort of smiled at him then and saw that it didn’t pay to be angry anymore. It was time to let it all go. He was dealing with his own serious pain and guilt. Somehow, I’d have to find forgiveness in my heart for him, or at least be open to the possibility that he had changed and was truly sorry for everything.

  I looked over at Jim and said, “Oh, fine. Call Lucy’s and tell Emily to set another plate on the table.”

  If I was going to forgive the son of a bitch, I had to forgive the son of a bitch. Forgiving him would surely earn me time off in hell. I washed my face a dozen times and tried to make myself presentable.

  Inside of an hour we gathered for the strangest and most stressful Thanksgiving dinner of all times.

  Daddy was calm when he spoke to me. “If you can find forgiveness, Anna, so can I. So can I.” He hugged me and went to get his bird out of the fryer.

  Trixie was smug and I knew as sure as anything that she’d have something to say at the worst possible moment. I was prepared for her.

  Frannie, who was licking a mound of whipped potatoes from her finger and feeding Jake at the same time, said, “How is it that the lowly spud can make my heart sing so?”

  “It’s the butter,” Brigitte said. “Everybody take a platter, okay? Let’s go.”

  We were using my table with the umbrella as a buffet. It was loaded all around with every kind of delicious thing we could manage to produce. Daddy had the fried turkey on a huge carving board at one end, where he stood in charge like an admiral on a ship. He had on one of those ridiculous aprons. On the chest it had a printed cartoon turkey dressed like a pilgrim, holding a sign that said EAT MORE CHICKEN!

  “Where’d you get that apron?” I asked him as I put the stuffing and gravy down.

  “I bought it for him,” Lucy said. “Isn’t he adorable?”

  “Adorable.” Daddy harrumphed. “I’m a dignified man!”

  Lucy and I smiled at each other and, looking around, saw that everyone seemed fine, that the tornado had done its damage and had apparently moved on. They were all talking to each other, gathering around to serve themselves dinner.

  Everett was talking to Brigitte a lot and I thought that it would be good if she could keep him occupied. Now, if I could just manage to be sure he wasn’t seated facing Trixie. Fate was as deaf as a freaking doornail.

  “Let’s say grace,” Daddy said.

  We were all standing around the buffet table. Everyone became quiet and bowed their heads.

  “Dear heavenly Father, thank You for this beautiful day, this bounty of food, and for each other. As we look in our hearts to examine our souls, please make us see Your greater will. Please bless us with Your grace and Your love so that we may be of better service to You and to each other. And, Lord? Please send a special grace to those . . .”

  “The potatoes are getting cold,” Frannie whispered.

  “Shush,” I said and actually managed to squeak out something like a giggle.

  “Thank you, Lord. Amen.”

  “Amen!” everyone said and began helping themselves.

  Miss Mavis was the first to give Everett the once-over. “Let me look at you, young man! Who are your people?”

  “My family’s from Atlanta, ma’am, but I live in Clearwater, Florida.”

  “How’s that?” she said.

  “Fla-ra-da!” Miss Angel said loudly enough to scare all the fish in the Atlantic out to the Gulf Stream. “You’ll have to speak up, young man, if you want to talk to Mavis.”

  Everett nodded his head and smiled.

  “I went to Florida not long ago,” Miss Mavis said. “I was looking at retirement communities where I can live alone!”

  “Humph,” Miss Angel said, “she ain’t gwine nowhere.”

  I shot Trixie a look and she looked upset.

  “You look very nice, Trixie,” I said, “I’m glad you could come.”

  “Ah’m not so sure if you really meant for me to be here, Anna, but . . .”

  Would you believe the old Great White choked up? Just how much crying was going to go on today anyway? I put my hand on her arm, not wanting her to rust. Go rust at your house, I thought.

  I said, “Come on, Trixie, it’s Thanksgiving. Let’s try to get along.”

  “Ah didn’t want to be alone today, you know? And when Jim called Ah thought well, gracious me, Ah could certainly make some effort. You’re the only family Ah have here.”

  “Well, today let’s try to be cheerful. There’s enough misery in the world.”

  That had gone well enough, until, don’t you know, she parked her fat butt right across from Everett and began to stare. Everett was seated next to Emily. I thought Trixie’s eyes would surely land in her plate at some point.

  Here we go, I thought.

  But all through dinner, she didn’t say a word. A miracle. A world-class miracle. A world-class miracle of short shelf life, I have to add, because when she left—and thank heavens she left earlier than everybody else—she turned to me and whispered, “Ah knew it.”

  The old viper just couldn’t keep her tongue in her head, could she? I looked at her and said, “So what, Trixie? What does it mean?”

  She stood by my front door with a smug expression and said, “It means that Emily’s not my blooood. Ah knew it all along.”

  “Well, thank God she’s not your blood or she might be like you. There’s the door.”

  I heard her laughing on her way to her car and thought, Well, I guess that’s what it sounds like in hell.

  Daddy, David, and Lucy had taken a pile of dishes back next door. Frannie, Brigitte, Jim, Everett, and Emily were still at the table.

  “Y’all ready for dessert?”

  “We’re ready for everything and anything,” Emily said.

  “She’s a wonderful young woman, Anna,” Everett said.

  “Thanks. Yeah, she is.”

  Although I tried as hard as I could, I couldn’t wait for him to leave. I wondered if his car would even start. It probably would. I made myself busy and avoided him. He didn’t push me.

  Later, when everyone had finally either gone home or gone to bed, Arthur and I walked on the beach. It would’ve been an exhausting day even if Everett had not shown up. But I didn’t want everything to end without a walk along the water.

  Billions of stars lit up the crisp November sky. It was breathtaking. At first we walked and then Arthur took my hand. The temperature was dropping and I shivered a little in the damp air. He stopped, took off his sweater and gave it to me. I put it on and we walked again, this time with his arm around my shoulder.

  “Life’s good,” he said.

  “Yeah. Except for the surprise guest and Trixie’s usual truckload of trash. How’d you like Everett showing up like that?�
��

  “Pretty heavy. But you know what? When the flatbed truck showed up to remove the ruins, we shook hands and all that.”

  I stopped and looked at him as if to say, Between you and Jim, y’all’s hands must be worn out.

  “Okay, look, I mean, at the moment he seemed like a perfectly decent piece of shit to me, so I shook his hand. It’s not like I want to be his fishing buddy.”

  “Well, that’s nice to know.”

  “Man! You’ve got some understandable but unresolved anger issues, you know that?”

  “And you wouldn’t?”

  “No, you’re right, you’re right. Anyway, Emily said to him, ‘So now what? Will I ever see you again?’ And he said, ‘Here’s my phone number and address. If you ever want to come and visit, bring some friends, whatever, I have a big house in Clearwater and I’d love to get to know you. After all, you’re my only child.’ I mean, pretty stressful day for the guy, you have to say.”

  “Forgive me, but I don’t give a rat’s ass about his stress, okay? I was dealing with my own?”

  “Yeah. Definitely. Well, all things considered, that was about the best thing he could’ve said.”

  “Oh, hellfire, it was a long time ago and I was pretty stupid too.”

  “You’re not stupid now.”

  “Really? I destroyed a hundred-thousand-dollar car earlier today.”

  “That wasn’t stupid. It was genius. But remind me to get out of your way when you’re in a bad mood, okay? Maybe I’ll go to Lowe’s with old Douglas and get something to lock up the tools.”

  “Thanks, I think.”

  “Besides, he really didn’t care that much. He said he expected something would happen.”

  “He was right. He’s lucky he didn’t spend twenty years in the cooler.”

  “Yeah, he got off cheap.”

  We walked along a little and I thought about Arthur and Daddy at Lowe’s looking for lockboxes.

  “Hey! Did you hear this? Daddy’s gonna ask Lucy to marry him.”

  “No kidding?”

  “Yeah, is that weird or what?”

  “No. They love each other, don’t they?”

  “Yes. A lot.”

  “Well, when two people love each other, they usually do something like that, don’t they?”