Bulls Island

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  But that was eons ago and here I was at forty, rolling down Highway 17, with this pulchritudinous female who, I was almost sure, drank and self-medicated, and in whom I had almost no interest.

  I pulled into our garage and gave Valerie a nudge.

  “Come on, Val, time to wake up.”

  She stirred and then yawned loudly. “Golly! I must’ve dozed off!”

  Dozed off. Sure. Call it what you want.

  A few days later, Valerie and I were walking down King Street when I spotted Betts’s sister, Joanie, coming toward us, half a block away. She was literally being dragged along by four of the ugliest dogs I had ever seen in my life. Giraffe-necked, bulging-eyed, flapping-tongued, crazy-faced dogs, loved no doubt for the first time in their lives, by someone with no career and no prospects of a future except for a modern-day version of Life with Father. She was, that is to say, still living at home with Vaughn, ostensibly in order to see about his care, but the truth was that Joanie had grown into a dumpy, angry, middle-aged woman with a negative opinion about everything. Who wanted to take that to bed? Not me, that was for sure. I remembered reading in the Post & Courier that she was raising money for a local animal rescue operation. It appeared she was taking the business to heart.

  The closer she got, the fewer seconds remained for us to cross the street to avoid her. Naturally, as the demons of fate would have it, that was not meant to be. Valerie stepped into Stella Nova for her monthly fix of exotic hair products and soaps, the cosmic buzzer on their door went off with what sounded like a guffaw, and Joanie’s menagerie all but knocked me down.

  “Whoa, fella!” I said, and pushed the large wolfhound–slash–Heinz 57 dog’s paws down from my shoulders. “Hi, Joanie. How’re you?”

  “Ugh,” she said, as though she had just encountered a leper with open sores. “J.D.?”

  Was that a rhetorical question or some kind of a half-assed greeting?

  “How are you?” I repeated.

  “How am I?” She cocked her head, which was as close as she was coming to one, and yanked her dogs to make them stay. “How am I? I am wondering why you bother to speak one word to me when you know how I feel about you.”

  “Jeez, Joanie. How many times am I supposed to apologize for something I didn’t do?” I leaned down to scratch the basset-hound-slash-who-knows-what behind the ears.

  “There are some things, J.D., that can be forgiven but should not be forgotten.”

  “How’s your dad?”

  “The same. Dementia. Worse all the time. He needs me.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to hear it. How’s Betts?”

  “That would be none of your beeswax, sir.” Even Joanie knew that this was too rude, so she added, “Like I would know anyway? We haven’t heard from Her Majesty in ages.”

  “Oh,” I said, realizing that Joanie justified her otherwise meaningless existence by pretending that Vaughn was an invalid, and martyr that she was, she was sacrificing all prospects of finding a husband to act as her father’s caretaker. Like there was a line of men carrying little velvet boxes extending from her front door all the way down the street to the Battery? Not. And where was Betts? Shirking her responsibilities to her father, that’s what Joanie liked to think and say. Loudly. For years, according to the local gossip, Joanie railed against Betts at every opportunity.

  At that moment Valerie stepped out of the store.

  “Well, hello, Joanie. Don’t you look, um, nice?”

  Of course Joanie was dressed like a pioneer from the Oregon Trail and Valerie was outfitted like she shopped for a career, which, in fact, she did. I don’t have to tell you she and Joanie had yet to find common ground much less each other’s middle path.

  “You, too,” Joanie said as her eyes traveled the full length of Valerie’s zillion-dollar designer ensemble. As if an effort to be attractive were a mortal sin punishable by an eternity in hell, Joanie shook her head in disgust. “I gotta go.”

  “What was that all about?” Valerie said, after Joanie and her canine entourage disappeared from view.

  “You just saw what transparency looks like,” I said. “That woman is made out of cellophane.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yep. And I’ll bet her house smells like a kennel.”

  All afternoon and into the evening I smiled because of Joanie’s blatant hostility. Every thought she had was out in the open and plain to see. But here’s what was interesting. She clearly did not know Betts was coming back to Charleston. The War of Yankee Aggression was a wienie roast compared to the pyrotechnics that were on the horizon. I just had to figure out how and where to position myself before the opening volleys were fired.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Betts and Her Bundle of Joy

  Good news traveled via jungle drums with respectable speed, but bad news took an SR-71 Blackbird, which, to the best of my knowledge, was still the fastest plane on the planet. It may seem strange that a gal like me was into airplanes, but I’ll admit it. I was really something of a speed junkie. Fast cars? Not so much. I had a seven-year-old Toyota Camry in the garage that for the amount I used it, it would last for forty years. But fast planes that took me from one deal to another? Time was still money in my book. But most importantly, I loved the rocket-ship liftoff feeling you got from small jets.

  ARC owned a G-4, which was a lumbering old hag next to the Citation X I flew when the G-4 was in use. The X could fly to Los Angeles in less than four hours at forty thousand feet and almost seven hundred miles per hour. But the Blackbird? Never been on one, but how’s Mach 3.5 at eighty thousand feet? Imagine having breakfast in New York and arriving for an early lunch in Frankfurt with time to refresh your makeup.

  So when I got a piece of good news, I was like the Blackbird, screaming into the air. Naturally, soon after I went through the mail and found the good news, I called Sela.

  “What are you doing? Busy?”

  “Signing checks for distributors as usual. Please. Interrupt me.”

  I giggled. Who liked to pay bills?

  “Okay. Guess what?”

  “What?”

  “Adrian finally got off the waiting list and into Columbia!”

  “Oh my! Glory hallelujah! Congratulations! How fabulous! Did you tell Aunt Jennie?”

  “Are you kidding? First call went to Adrian—no cell-phone reception, of course. Then I called Aunt Jennie. She’s thrilled! Called you third. She’s coming for dinner tomorrow night.”

  “You’re cooking?”

  “You have to take a cheap shot at my culinary skills because I called you third?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Honey, don’t you know New York is the world capital of takeout? We’ll be feasting on Adrian’s favorite sushi—fatty tuna and smoked eel—Aunt Jennie’s favorite veal Parmesan, and my favorite ribs from Blue Smoke. Anyway, Adrian is going to be seriously out of his mind with some huge unmitigated glee.”

  “And you are, too…”

  “You know it,” I said. “Doing a happy dance over here! Ivy League is a very big deal.”

  “Absolutely. It absolutely is. Well, give him a big kiss from his auntie Sela.”

  “I’ll do it!”

  “I’m gonna send him something, too. Good grief, Betts, where does the time go? Seems like yesterday that I went up to Nantucket with y’all. Adrian was just a little squirt jumping waves and making sand castles.”

  “Right? Now he’s six feet tall with a man voice, and a dead ringer for he-who-shall-remain-nameless.”

  “Nameless. You know what, girl? There’s something so wrong with keeping so many secrets.”

  “I know, I know, but my tangled web was woven so long ago…”

  “Adrian still thinks his father died in an accident with your parents, doesn’t he?”

  “What am I supposed to do, Sela, say, ‘Oh, Adrian, by the way…remember that story I told you?’ Be serious. It’s better this way.”

  “Speaking of, did you call your father yet? To tel
l him you’re coming to Charleston?”

  “Ummm…”

  “Um, yourself. You know what, Betts McGee? One of these days, all this lying and procrastination is gonna put your fanny on a barbecue spit.”

  “Okay. I’ll call my father. Ah, crap. Can you imagine how that’s going to go?”

  “Probably a scream fest, but I’m just guessing here.”

  I was quiet for a moment, knowing that if I was to install Adrian in his dorm in two weeks and leave for Charleston in three, the moment had arrived, passed, and was long overdue to tell my father and sister I was coming back for a while.

  “Betts? One lie breeds another…”

  “And another. I know. I just keep remembering how crazy Daddy was when I told him I was leaving.”

  “Well, you didn’t have that many options.”

  “No, I didn’t.” Sela was the only one who could understand how complicated it was. “I could have had an abortion, which I never would have done…”

  “Because you’re Catholic…”

  “No, not really. Because my child was conceived in love and that one tiny fact changed everything, as far as I was concerned. And you know what, Sela? That baby was all I had then. I had lost everything. I did the only thing that made sense to me at the time. And to you, I’d like to remind you…”

  “True enough. Well, thank God I had an aunt Jennie to save you from life in the streets.”

  “Truly. Sela? In all my life, I still have never met a more generous woman than her.”

  “Yeah, she’s great. Thanks.”

  “No, she’s not great. Jennie Moore’s a freaking living saint. I mean, there I was on her doorstep with two suitcases and less than one hundred dollars. No job, nothing…”

  “Fifty bucks of that money was mine.”

  “I never sent you a check?”

  We had a good laugh over that.

  “Anyway, she was so good to me, never a single judgmental remark. She’s been like a grandmother to Adrian all his life. I just love her so much.”

  “Yeah; me, too. By the way, after all these years, I think we’re unofficially related now.”

  “We should be. I’ll claim you anyway.”

  “Me, too. Isn’t it amazing how much good people can do for each other when you give them the opportunity to help?”

  “Yes. That might be the needlepoint-pillow remark of the day, Miss Sela.”

  “No kidding. But think about it. You were just a few years older than Adrian when you went to New York.”

  “I was a certified genius, right? Incredible. A terrified, certified genius.”

  “You were a baby.”

  “That’s for sure. A baby having a baby. Stupid.”

  “Maybe, but you know what, Betts? You have a wonderful son, you’ve had one heck of an adventure in your career, and…”

  “And what?”

  “And now your son is going to college and it’s time for you to get a life for yourself.”

  “I have a life…”

  “No, I mean one that includes sex.”

  “Oh. That.”

  “Yeah, that.”

  “Right. Well, I’ll put that right on my to-do list.”

  Sela and I gabbed some more and then finally we hung up. The only time I’d returned to Charleston in all those years was when she married Ed O’Farrell. After all, she had asked me to be her maid of honor and I would have done anything to be there. I slipped into town like a stealth ninja, attended all the wedding festivities at Wild Dunes, and then slipped out again.

  I always felt a huge twinge of guilt that I had made no attempt to see my father or sister, but every time I’d tried to contact them, I got a dose of my sister’s wrath. Good grief, she had a temper! Daddy had to have known how Joanie carried on, but he never said a word about it to me.

  After as many altercations as I could bear, I felt deeply abused and that’s one reason why I stopped calling them. I sent my father and sister cards and gifts on the expected occasions, but at some point, I’d just stopped calling. They had to suspect that Sela knew where I was, but my every birthday and holiday went unremembered, and I cannot tell you how much that hurt. Being forgotten is one thing, but to be purposely overlooked over and over is very painful.

  Joanie always seemed to conveniently dismiss the fact that I had lost my mother as well as the affection of my father, my sister, and J.D. But everyone looks at the world from their own point of view. Momma used to say that Joanie had been born angry. There was hardly such a thing as a pleasant encounter with Joanie for anyone as far as I knew. Sela thought I needed a sex life? Well, perhaps I did, but Joanie’s need for some kind of a cure, sexual or otherwise, surely surpassed mine.

  I looked at the clock. It was about six in the evening. Where was Adrian anyway? Then I remembered. That morning he had told me he was going down to the Village with some friends and then out to a movie. I decided to call his cell again.

  Please enjoy the music while your party is reached… I then had the distinct privilege of thirty seconds of unintelligible noise that passed for music with Adrian’s generation. At last, he picked up.

  “Hey, Mom. What’s up?”

  “Somebody got a letter from the admissions office at Columbia University today.”

  I could hear the excitement in his voice as his breathing quickly escalated.

  “And?” he said.

  “You’re in!”

  “You’re kidding! Sweet! Hey, guys! Guess what?”

  The sounds of high-fiving and “Congratulations, man!” in the background was deafening.

  “Adrian? Adrian?”

  “Sweet! Awesome! This is some very awesome news!”

  “Excellent! You got it made, man! Got it made! Awesome!”

  If young people could not use the word awesome (and to a lesser degree, excellent and sweet), I feared their ability to communicate might be greatly impaired.

  “Adrian?” I was calling loudly, as I knew he had lost interest in my end of the conversation. In fact, moments later, he closed his phone and we were disconnected. Kids. There was no point in calling him back. I supposed then that his acceptances to Colgate, Brown, and Penn were now a thing of the past. My basic mission was accomplished. He would be close to home and to me. When I got back from the trial of my life, that is.

  I left him a note on his pillow, along with the acceptance letter, that said I was meeting two guys, McGrath and Pinkham, from ARC senior management for dinner at Del Frisco’s. They had said they wanted to discuss business, but I knew their wives were out in the Hamptons and they were bored.

  I told Adrian in my note that I expected to be home by ten. Funny, I never worried about him navigating the city. Ever since he was old enough to push a turnstile, Adrian had been using the subway like the map of it was imprinted in his genetic code. And he was with his friends, so he was doubly safe. They were all good guys who liked baseball, comic books, and electronic games. One of the many things I admired about my son was his innate practical sense about the world around him. Adrian was cautious but unafraid of almost everything. He reminded me so much of J.D. that sometimes, when we were together, I would think J.D. was in the room with us. Well, part of him actually was, and that gave me enormous solace.

  I felt a little deflated that Adrian wasn’t home just then so we could have shared a moment of celebration, but there would be time for that. He was out running around in the heat and having fun, as he should have been. Manhattan in late summer can be oppressive, with hot winds gusting on the cross streets. But at Adrian’s age? Who cared?

  McGrath told me to pick the spot. I had chosen Del Frisco’s because besides the meat locker at Lobel’s, it had the best air-conditioning I knew of in the entire city. More importantly, as was almost always the case, I was with men. I was just one of the guys. Men loved big steaks, big Bordeaux, and sexy female waitstaff. I was the babysitter who could vouch for their behavior and they could deduct the dinner if we talked about business. It di
dn’t hurt that Del Frisco’s wine list was phenomenal. Perfect choice, I told myself, admitting that I didn’t mind a glass or two of great wine either.

  I ran a brush through my hair, threw on a little black linen sleeveless dress with black-and-white striped sandals, and left my building as quickly as I could.

  “Need a cab, Ms. McGee?” Sam, the doorman, said from the curb.

  The heat of the day had broken and that warm breeze was wafting on the avenue.

  “No thanks, Sam,” I said, smiling at him. “I think I’ll walk.”

  He gave me a little salute and I crossed over Park toward Madison Avenue. I felt pretty happy at that moment. The big puzzle pieces of life seemed to be falling pretty neatly into place. I was healthy and financially independent, and my son was going to his top-choice university.

  But what about the elephant in my date book? My assignment in Charleston began the third week of August. When you didn’t want to deal with certain things, life had a way of throwing you on the battlefield anyway. The ten-block walk to the restaurant would give me more time to think that through. Daddy might be an old bear and Joanie might be wretched, but they were still my family and I hoped the Prodigal Son story would hold true for me. I would start with my dad, not Joanie. If I went to my father in a humble and apologetic spirit, perhaps we could find a way at last to put the unhappiness behind us and be a family again. Or at least take some first steps. Yes, that was what I would do. Of course I would tell them about Adrian at some point. I just didn’t know how to open that Pandora’s box. I mean, too many years had passed.

  I knew it was very wrong of me to have kept my son from all of them, but once the die was cast, it became more complicated with each passing year to tell them the truth. I also knew—from Sela—that J.D. and Valerie had no children. Of course J.D. deserved to know he had a son, but some part of me took secret satisfaction in denying Louisa any knowledge of her grandson. Without a doubt, hiding Adrian’s existence from them was the most evil thing I had ever done, but if Louisa Langley could live with what she’d done to my mother with no remorse, and my sister could blame me for it, then I could justify what I had done. Somehow.