Bulls Island

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  I put my makeup and toiletries in the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I had a long road ahead of me, but wasn’t it worth it? Yes, I told myself it was. I washed my face, reapplied a little makeup, grabbed an apple, and left.

  I should have been exhausted, but I was strangely invigorated, like I’d caught a second wind while running a marathon. Deciding that order and familiarity would make me happiest, I swung around over the connector bridge to the Towne Centre Mall. I knew I would find everything I needed there. Within an hour, Sela’s SUV was loaded once again and now I was truly ravenous. So without going home, I took Rifle Range Road to Coleman Boulevard and headed for Sullivans Island. They say that when in doubt, you should retreat to the familiar, so I did.

  Monday night on Sullivans Island was pretty quiet, even during the heat of the summer. I had no problem finding a parking spot in front of Station Twenty-two Restaurant. I locked the car and went inside. One of the other nice things about the islands was that I didn’t have to worry about theft. The car had an alarm system and what self-respecting thief wanted pink sheets and towels anyway?

  They were just closing the kitchen, but because I must have seemed a little pitiful, they seated me anyway. Jessie, the very attractive manager, took one look at me and knew I was from out of town.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” she said with a smile.

  “Yes, thanks. Ice water and a big glass of Sauvignon Blanc.”

  “Had yourself a day, huh?”

  “Unbelievable. I haven’t been here in twenty years. I think the last time I was here this place had just opened.”

  “I’ll get that drink order right away. We’re out of the crab cakes, but the flounder is fabulous. I’ll be right back.” She handed me the menu and walked away to the bar.

  I looked over the offerings. Aunt Mattie’s Crab Cakes, Crispy Whole Flounder, the Paradise Burger, Island Fried Seafood, hmm—it all looked good, but one thing was certain, for dessert I knew I was blowing the diet on Uncle William’s Brownie Fudge Pie.

  “Did you decide?” Jessie said, placing the glass of wine in front of me.

  “It all looks great, but I think I’ll go with the flounder. I haven’t had flounder in forever.”

  “Well, you won’t be disappointed,” she said pleasantly, and took my order to the computer to enter it.

  She had great bone structure in her face and I thought, Wow, I’ll bet when she’s seventy she’s going to still look fifty. Lucky!

  After I practically Hoovered the fish, all the vegetables, two pieces of hot cheese bread, and Uncle William’s fudge pie, I paid my bill and waddled out. Fabulous, fabulous.

  I drove back to Wild Dunes and to my lovely condo and threw the new sheets and mattress cover in the washing machine. It was around ten. Too early to nap on the couch and I wasn’t a big fan of television. I called Adrian and he was studying, could he call me tomorrow? And, yes, he was fine, please don’t worry.

  I decided to open the balcony doors and step outside. It was a gorgeous night, the ocean was roaring and the sky was lit with countless diamonds. I decided then that like all the islands that dotted the coastline of South Carolina, this had to be the sexiest and most hypnotic place on the planet. I stood there for a while just listening and watching the stars winking at me, telling me the roller coaster was waiting, did I have my ticket?

  CHAPTER TEN

  Remember Me?

  Triangle Equity. That’s what we were calling ourselves for the Bulls Island Project. We had formed a separate corporation whose principal stockholder—actually, the only stockholder—was ARC. I was on my way to the office, which was rented space downtown—just three rooms, but I was excited to see it.

  Traffic was terrible. When I was a teenager I could fly from the end of Isle of Palms to the cradle of Charleston, also known as the Holy City, in twenty minutes and now I was crawling along Highway 17 South like a turtle commuter on the Long Island Expressway. What was this boom of traffic all about? I mused over this and then remembered reading somewhere that Mount Pleasant was the seventh or tenth fastest-growing town in America. All you had to do was look around to see what it meant. Live oaks, hundreds of years old, were being destroyed and every kind of wooded area mowed down in the name of housing developments and shopping malls. It bothered me.

  In fact, the whole thing bothered me and I didn’t know why or by what wave of a magic wand I had grown such a grand social conscience over Bulls Island and housing developments. Maybe I just wanted to come back to Charleston and find everything the same as it had been when I left. Wasn’t the whole mantra of Charleston and indeed of South Carolina to preserve, preserve, preserve?

  I didn’t understand why there had to be a fifty-thousand-square-foot grocery store flanked by a string of chain stores everywhere I turned. No question I was sensitive to grocery stores because of my family’s mercantile history, but every time I passed a branded mall I wondered how an immigrant today could come to America and live his dream, make a profit, support his family, or be a part of a neighborhood. Maybe there were still places even in the Charleston area where one could set up shop, but I had yet to see them and did not expect to.

  I was sickened by the visual blight I was passing on Highway 17, with frontage roads and strip mall after strip mall. There was something so wrong about it. I could remember when Mount Pleasant was a little fishing village with charm and personality. Who had planned this mess? Obviously someone with no regard for the face and fabric of the town. Where could a mother roll a stroller, stop for a sandwich, or run into a friend? Where was a shaded area? Where was the landscaping? A little park? No, there was nothing. And was I any better than the ruiners of this town if I was involved in the Bulls Island Project? I had better be.

  Again I remembered my first conversation with Ben Bruton and how flabbergasted I was that Bulls Island had been sold. It hadn’t seemed possible. But if anyone had told me twenty years ago that Mount Pleasant would come to this, I would have had the same reaction.

  As I drove along the highway, I tried to sort out my feelings. My primary reason for hesitating to take on this assignment had been nervousness over returning to Charleston. The magnitude of the emotional problems I faced knowing that I had to deal with the Langleys reduced my issues with my father and sister to a teaspoon of chopped chives. At first, the thought of confronting J.D. or Louisa or Big Jim gave me the cold sweats, but after reading the newspaper articles Sela had given me, I began to think differently. If this project was going to have the support of ARC and Triangle, then every detail was going to be scrutinized and rescrutinized until I was satisfied that we were doing our absolute best for the environment and the protection of natural habitats. The Langleys may have been the well-financed local muscle, but Triangle would be the wallet with a voice of caution and morality.

  Finally moving past the traffic jam, I began to cross the Cooper River on the glorious new bridge. You could ask anyone and they would tell you that the other ancient rattletraps connecting the islands to the mainland had given legions of drivers some stupendous white-knuckle experiences. But this new bridge, named for Arthur J. Ravenel Jr., was a brilliantly executed piece of engineering. Its suspension coils reminded me of an angel’s harp. I was surprised to learn that the night-lights had been lowered to protect the fish and crustaceans that lived below it. The Ravenel Bridge was proof that when people of noble purpose put their minds together, good things could happen.

  I didn’t know yet how J.D. felt about environmental issues, but I suspected he was the same as he had always been. I could hear the speech! They loved the land and the Lowcountry, but as I had witnessed for myself, the out-of-control building of new housing and commercial properties was inevitable, so they might as well reap the benefits from it. They were the pragmatic destruct-icons.

  I pulled into the parking space reserved for my car and found the offices without a problem. triangle equity. The sign looked good. We had leased the first floor of a Charleston house and I
liked the idea that our building had a porch, some history, and some character. I wondered for a moment who had lived there in the past, what their lives had been like, and I marveled at how short they must have been as I reached to turn a doorknob that was substantially lower than any I’d touched in years.

  I turned it and stepped right into the reception space.

  “Well, hello, Miss Sandi! Look at this glorious little camp we have here! This is great! How are you?”

  Sandi stood up from her chair, smiling to see me. She was around thirty, pretty, but as buttoned up as a nun. Except for the Prada logo on the side of her eyeglasses, you would never know who made her interchangeable wardrobe of jackets, skirts, and low-key professional attire. She was the epitome of geek chic. But she was in possession of a quick dry wit. Quick and dry was my favorite style of funny.

  “It is great, isn’t it? And I’m fine. Glad to see you! Come see! But it’s gotta be a quick tour.”

  “Lose the gum,” I told her with a wink.

  “Sorry,” she said, with a shrug and a pseudo-Brooklyn accent, discarding it into a tissue.

  I hated gum chewing.

  “Sorry to be such a stickler.”

  “No biggie. Come see!”

  The rooms were laid out railroad-flat style. Sandi was positioned in the center space with her desk, two upholstered chairs and a small table, a reading lamp, and a stack of current magazines. To the left was the conference room with a round table and eight chairs, probably more than we would ever need. The left wall had French doors, and a nonworking fireplace was in the center of a sweet view of Wentworth Street. The panes of the windows were warped by age and opened and closed by pulleys.

  “Look at this,” I said, pointing out the mechanism.

  “Cool, right?”

  “Very.”

  A powder room and kitchenette had been constructed behind the reception area. The kitchenette would be handy for late nights or lunch meetings. My office was to the right of the front hall and could be accessed either way. My space, which overlooked a small garden with a fountain, also had French doors that opened onto the porch and a nonworking fireplace that Sandi had filled with a basket of eucalyptus branches.

  “This smells good,” I said. “Nice touch.”

  “Thanks. I have dried hydrangeas coming for the conference room.”

  “Good idea. Warms up the place.”

  I suspected that at one time my office had been a dining room because the ceiling was hand-plastered in a design of fruit and flowers. And there was a chandelier in the center. Something grand had perhaps once hung there, but its replacement was an inexpensive job from someplace like Lowe’s.

  Behind my office was a locked room with an outside entrance that the building’s owner had reserved for himself.

  “I think he’s an artist because I can smell oil paint in the morning,” Sandi said. “He’s never here during the day.”

  “Who cares? This is completely charming! Where’d you get all the furniture?”

  “Well, some of it was here, like the rugs, but I got the chairs and the curtains at Pottery Barn. I found your desk at an antiques store for like no money and got it polished up. The conference-room furniture is leased. My desk is leased, too. So are the phones. I bought the palms and the artwork is on loan.”

  “The owner’s work?”

  “No, I got a gallery to give it to us for ninety days. It’s all for sale, though.”

  “I’m sure. Well, kiddo? You did a heckuva job. You’d think we had been here forever.”

  “That was the general plan, wasn’t it? You said you wanted it to look stately and serious like Charleston. But I think we need tchotchkes, you know, to give it a little more personality. Maybe some blue-and-white ceramics for the mantelpieces? An umbrella stand?”

  “Don’t worry yourself. We’re not going to be here forever.”

  “I’ll raid my brother’s house, see what he’s got we can borrow.”

  “Oh, how’s he doing?”

  “Fine. He’s a vet out in Summerville, you know.”

  “Married? Kids?”

  “Widowed. My sister-in-law died two years ago. Breast cancer. She was only thirty-six.”

  “What? Oh no! That’s horrible!” How did I forget these things? Was I going senile?

  “They were going to have kids, but she found out she had cancer at thirty-two. She fought it like a tiger, but it was this very rare rapid-spreading thing that was all in her lymph nodes and liver and everywhere by the time they even found it. I thought you knew all of this.”

  “Know what? I’m sorry. I probably did, but there’s so much breast cancer around that I hear about another case almost every week.”

  “It’s okay. But I mean, who gets breast cancer at that age, right?”

  “Unfortunately, a lot of people. Gosh, you have to be so vigilant these days.”

  “It’s the truth. So listen, we need to talk about approximately one thousand things.”

  “Yeah, I know. My friend Sela gave me this little mountain of newspaper articles.” I rattled the manila envelope in the air. “We’re in some deep trouble in our public-relations department.”

  “I’ll say. Hey, I didn’t know you had friends here. I thought you were from Atlanta.”

  “Sandi? There’s so much that nobody knows about me, you’d go running out the door if I started talking…”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Anyway, let’s send Sela a huge arrangement of flowers once a week for her restaurant, O’Farrell’s, okay?”

  “Sure. No problem.”

  “Well, maybe I’ll tell you a long story, but for now let me get unpacked and settled and let’s figure out what to do about this lovely fiasco we are facing.”

  I went into my new office, dropped my laptop case on the desk and my briefcase on the floor along with my handbag, and plopped myself into my chair. I was completely worn out before I had even begun the day.

  Sandi, whose shopping gene had to be jacked up on mega vitamins, had seen to it all. There was a beautiful desk blotter, a lamp, a pencil cup, a stapler, and small dish of paper clips right next to a funny-looking little monkey wearing a fez that held a platter of business cards. Sandi had even printed up business cards with our logo, a triangle naturally, our Charleston address, phone number, e-mail, and it appeared that my whiz kid had constructed a website for us as well. She was amazing at details and it was a good thing she was because that was the most important skill I needed at the moment. My stomach was doing somersaults.

  I heard the phone in the outer office ring and a few seconds later Sandi buzzed me.

  “You want to talk to J. D. Langley? He’s called three times.”

  Did I want to talk to J. D. Langley? No, I did not want to talk to J. D. Langley. Strangle him, perhaps, run away with him maybe, but there was no reason to talk to him except in a professional capacity. Wait. This was a professional capacity. My feelings were clearly conflicted. Should I talk to him now or put it off as long as possible?

  “Take a message? Tell him you’re on another line?”

  Talking to J.D. meant that I had to be ready for anything. I wasn’t ready for anything.

  “Hello? Betts? You there?” Sandi was quiet for a moment. “How ’bout I just tell him you’re on with New York.”

  I saw the light on the phone go dark and within two minutes my door opened. There stood Sandi.

  “Look,” she said, a little at sea over how to deal with my peculiar behavior, “you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to tell me, but is there something I should know?”

  “That was put about as diplomatically as the ambassador to France would say it. Sit.”

  Sandi took a seat, and for the next forty-five minutes she listened. I told her everything, almost, because the time of secrets had to come to an end. I needed her on my side, and if she was to really be on my side, and be of any use, she needed some facts. I did not tell her about Adrian, but if she did the math,
she would probably figure that out anyway.

  “Holy Mother! What are you going to do?” she asked when I’d finished my story.

  “I was hoping you might have a thought or two on this,” I said, hoping for a tone of gallows humor. “Actually, until I see him and his parents and hear their position on all these environmental and conservation problems, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Ideally, I would like them to be sensitive and for all of us to find a way to make this happen peacefully and profitably.”

  “Tomorrow is the groundbreaking.”

  “Swell.”

  “Press like crazy, hard hats and gold-plated shovels, catered event under a tent, the whole nine yards.”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “You could put off talking to him until tomorrow. But you know that.”

  “You’re right. But I’m no coward. Get him back on the phone and let’s see what we’ve got.”

  “Okay. Done.” She turned to leave and then turned back to face me. “This is going to be really interesting. I mean, this could be like a soap opera.”

  “You’re right, but you know what they say—truth is just a whole lot stranger than fiction.”

  She closed my door and buzzed me a few minutes later.

  “J. D. Langley is on one.”

  “The plot thickens,” I said, and took a deep breath, pressing the button to take the call. “Well, hey, J.D. How’re you?” Benign enough, right?

  “Betts McGee. Betts McGee. It seems that destiny wants to screw with us one more time, doesn’t it?”

  “Yep, looks like it. So, how are you?”

  “’Bout the same, a few grays here and there.”

  “Still dressing up in camouflage and killing stuff on the weekends?”

  “Nah. I’m lucky to drop a hook in the water. Or catch a Clemson game. How about you? How are you?”

  “Fine! You know, good. Yeah, I’m good.”

  I wanted to say, “How am I? I am terrified of seeing you, that’s how I am!” But I didn’t because the warrior in me was determined to maintain a completely inscrutable stance.