Porch Lights Read online

  She clicked here and there on the keypad of her cell phone, and suddenly there was a picture of men’s boxer shorts. In living Black Watch tartan color. So? He had a thing for Scotland too? Another thing we had in common.

  “My. My! You’re a genius, Jackie. Glory! I’ll tell you one thing,” I said, “technology is a marvelous thing.”

  “Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. I’ll print it for you.”

  I had no idea what she meant by her comment, but I was fast learning that when it came to anything technical beyond my laptop, it was best for me to simply nod my head.

  By ten o’clock Jackie was on her way to Murrells Inlet and the breakfast dishes were humming away in the dishwasher. The dogs were curled up on the front porch, snoring softly, snoozing after their morning run, and Charlie was sitting at the kitchen table playing his electronic game, which had him so hypnotized that it irked me just as it irked Jackie.

  “So, old fellow? What shall we do today? Would you like to go on a picnic?”

  “A picnic? To where?”

  “Well, wherever you’d like to go. I was thinking we might take the ferry out to Bulls Island. Or maybe we’d just have us a walk out to the back beaches and I can show you millions of little fiddler crabs and how they dance. What do you think? Or we could save the picnic for another day and just go to Poe’s Tavern. They make pretty good fish tacos.”

  “You mean Poe like that guy you were telling me about?”

  “That guy indeed. I can see I’m going to wind up having to buy you the T-shirt.”

  “Awesome! Let’s go there.”

  “Only if we walk there on the beach?” It was just too hot to walk on the street.

  “That’s cool with me.”

  “All right, then. Give me about half an hour, and then we’ll meander our way down the island and see what we find.”

  I attended to some household business, namely doing a load of laundry, running a dust cloth across the furniture, and wiping down the bathrooms. Then I consolidated all the garbage and had Charlie haul it out to the bins.

  “Make sure you always close the tops tight! Raccoons!”

  “Got it!” he called back to me.

  Then there was the boring business of recycling. I began gathering up all the magazines, and don’t you know that right away I put my hand on the issue of Southern Living that ran the profile article on the makeover queen of Charleston? Fate! I immediately sat down and flipped to the page: “Margaret Donaldson Makes Miracles!” The subtitle read “Look Ten Years Younger!” I tore the article out and put it aside. Not that I had an apostle’s faith in that sort of thing, but as soon as I had a private moment, I was going to call Margaret the Miracle Maker and give her the challenge of her career. I wasn’t all that possessed by my appearance (okay, maybe I fussed over myself more than the average girl), but I wouldn’t mind if, on occasion and in the right lighting, people took Jackie and me to be sisters. Maybe that was asking too much. Or not. But I definitely needed a haircut. Well, we’d see what she said.

  It wasn’t long until Charlie and I were walking the beach. I brought along a plastic bag from the Bi-Lo grocery store in case he found shells or coral or anything else that he wanted to bring home. Now, I worried about my carbon footprint with the best of the tree huggers out there and did not use plastic bags as a general rule, but tossing some salty wet carcass into my canvas tote bag, a premium I received from a donation I’d made to the Spoleto Festival, would have ruined it, as would a package of chicken that dripped water and traces of blood.

  When we finally reached Poe’s Tavern, it was bulging with people, locals and tourists. Charlie was as quickly sucked into people watching as I was. Every kind of person in the world was there. Pretty young girls in sweet sundresses had his attention, and so did the teenaged girls who seemed to be showing too much bosom and bottom for my money.

  “Your mother never dressed like that,” I said. “I would have killed her.”

  Charlie covered up his mouth with his hand and giggled. “I’ll bet!”

  After waiting for fifteen minutes or so we got a table, and as soon as he was finished reading the menu, he was ready to talk. I, on the other hand, was feeling indecisive and had already drained my glass of water.

  “What should I have, Charlie?”

  The waitress, or maybe they call them servers these politically correct nowadays, stepped up to our table, refilled my water, and rattled off some specials. I looked at Charlie, shook my head, and shrugged my shoulders.

  “She’s gonna have the Annabel Lee burger, and I’d like to have the Gold-Bug chicken sandwich with a side of fries, Edgar’s Drunken Chili, and extra cheddar cheese. And we’d like some chips and salsa for the table. And extra ketchup? And a Diet Coke. Whatcha drinking, Glam?”

  “Why, I think I’d like a Diet Coke too!” I sat back in my chair and looked at my grandson, who had just simply stunned me by the way he’d just taken over. “Heavens!”

  “I’ll get that order right in for y’all,” our server said and scurried away.

  “Charlie! I have to say you sure handled that one. How did you know I liked the Annabel Lee sandwich?”

  “Because it’s a pretty name and you like pretty things. Besides, someone had to be the man, and I was the only man at the table. So tell me some more about Poe.”

  “Well, I have to tell you, Charlie, your momma isn’t so keen on me dwelling on Mr. Poe with you. She thinks he’s too creepy.”

  “My mother treats me like a baby,” he said. “If she ever read my comics she’d probably faint. They’re as scary as all you-know-where.”

  “I see. And this you-know-where would be someplace that’s even hotter than this island today? Mercy!”

  “Exactly! Anyway, she worries way too much about every single little thing.”

  “Look, even though your momma is a grown up with a son who’s a big boy, she’s still my baby and I worry about her all the time. It’s the number one specialty of mothers all over the world.”

  “Well, tell me about Poe, and I promise to downplay it with Mom. How’s that?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him and clenched my jaw. Could he be trusted with the really dark and sinister material? Absolutely not.

  “All right,” I said against the advice of that nagging little voice in my head that told me I was heading for trouble. “In 1827, he was stationed here at Fort Moultrie for thirteen months under another name.”

  “What name?”

  “Edgar Allan Perry.”

  “Why did he use a fake name?”

  “Well, no one is really sure about that, but usually when somebody uses a fake name, it’s because they want to avoid discovery. And Edgar was extremely poor and in debt, so I imagine he was trying to elude his creditors.”

  Over a basket of warmed nacho chips and salsa verde, we discussed Edgar’s brief military history and why he’d grown up with such a thorny personality.

  “Apparently it didn’t take too much to get his temper going,” I said.

  “Having a bad temper gets you nowhere fast,” Charlie said.

  “Yes. You’re right. How do you know these things?”

  “They’re what my dad always used to say.”

  We ate our lunch and I tried to stick to the topic of Poe, but it was clear that Charlie’s mind was wandering as he ate.

  “We could talk about Poe long into the night because there’s so much to know about him and his work. But why don’t we tackle his famous cryptograms?”

  “What’s a cryptogram? Do you want a bite of chili?”

  “Sure. Thanks!” He pushed the bowl to my side of the table, and I scooped some out and put it on the side of my plate, thinking that chili with jalapeños might come back to haunt me. “It’s like a puzzle you make up to do secret writing in code. For example, if you substituted numbers for the letters of the alphabet, using one for an A and two for a B, you could write a message in code. Like ‘The treasure is buried under the magnolia tree!’
”

  “Wow! That’s more fun than writing computer code, that’s for sure!”

  “What do you mean, computer code?”

  “You know, Glam, you use it to write a program for your computer.”

  “Oh, that computer code! Oh yes, of course.” The child appeared to be speaking English, but I had no idea what he was talking about. “Anyway, cryptograms, buried treasure, and the famous Captain Kidd are at the heart of Poe’s well-known story called ‘The Gold-Bug.’ I think you’re mature enough to read it, but the language is very old. It might be fun if we read it together. What do you think?”

  “I think definitely! Didn’t you tell me that we have a copy at home?”

  “Oh, me! My brains are going to mush! Anyway, cutie, I have his complete works!”

  “Sweet!”

  “Yes, it’s pretty sweet. Poe was a dark and deeply peculiar little man, and many people thought he was crazy.”

  “Maybe he was. This is so good!”

  “Good! Well, actually at the end of his life he was completely mad. Most people thought he lost his mind due to excessive alcohol, but just recently they found out he had a brain tumor the size of a lemon.”

  “How’d they find that out?”

  It was simply impossible to talk about Poe without going to the macabre.

  “Well, they exhumed his corpse to give it a more prestigious location in the graveyard—”

  “You mean, they dug him up?”

  “Uh, yes. Gross, right?”

  “Uh, duh!”

  “Well, it’s just too bad that he was never recognized as the genius he was during his lifetime.” I was trying to switch the conversation away from death to the achievements of Poe’s life.

  “Neither was my dad.”

  I heard a crack in his voice and looked down to see his eyes filling up with tears. So I stopped, leaned over, and put my hand on the side of his face. I could feel the heat of his distress.

  “Baby, it’s okay to be sad. Tell me how your daddy was a genius.”

  “Because he could do anything and anything he did, he did it so great.”

  Charlie spoke quietly, so quietly that I could barely hear him. Obviously he didn’t want to make a scene, but he couldn’t hold back his tears either. Bless the little fellow’s heart. Bless his dear sweet heart.

  “And he knew what I was thinking before I even said it. And he could read Mom’s mind too.”

  “That’s because he loved you and your momma so very much, Charlie. His mind was perfectly in tune with y’all’s.” Big tears flooded his face. I reached up my sleeve and produced a tissue. I held it over his nose and said, “Blow!”

  Charlie blew so loudly that he honked like a goose.

  “Glory be!” I said.

  He laughed then, looked up at me with those impossible eyes of his, and said, “I just miss him, you know?”

  “I know, sweetheart, I know.”

  I paid the bill and bought him a T-shirt with the likeness of Poe on the front. Charlie was thrilled. On the way out of the restaurant we spotted the family from Greenville.

  “Hey! Y’all going to the beach later?” Charlie said. “I got the T-shirt!” He waved it in the air.

  “Oh, great,” their father said, “now I get to buy three!”

  “See you later at Twenty-six!” they said in a chorus.

  As soon as we left the restaurant and were back on the beach he stopped, pulled off the T-shirt he was wearing, and pulled the new one over his head.

  “How do I look?” he said.

  “Don’t you want me to wash it first?”

  “Wash it? What for?”

  “Oh, never mind. Let’s get moving. It’s already two o’clock. What do you think you might like for dinner? Do you still like fried flounder?”

  “Love it! Can you still make hush puppies?”

  “I imagine I can!”

  We walked together but at a distance from each other. Charlie was too old to hold hands, and even if he’d wanted to there was a certain self-awareness about him that was surprising for his age yet would have prevented him from doing anything that smacked of babyish. I’d never raised a boy, and perhaps that was normal. He had mentioned again that he felt like Jackie treated him like a baby. Pulling away was part of growing up. That was true enough. At least he wasn’t too old to be tucked in at night or too old to be read to by his grandmother. That was welcome evidence that his childhood still existed.

  I watched as he stopped now and then to examine something that had washed ashore. He’d lift a specimen from the sand, give it a hard look, and if it was broken he’d hurl it high into the air, over the dunes. If it was worthy of his growing collection of found artifacts, he would bring it to me to put in the bag.

  “Is this a conch shell?” he asked.

  “Actually, it’s a whelk. But it’s a very nice one. Should we bring it home?”

  “Definitely! What kind of a whelk is it?”

  He thought he had me on that one.

  “Well, it’s a knobbed whelk. The Latin name is Busycon carica. And you can tell it’s a knobbed whelk by its coloration but also by the nine little knobs on the shoulder of its body whorl. See? Count them.”

  He touched each one with the tip of his finger and counted. “Yup. There’re nine all right.”

  “So how do you like them apples? Does your Glam-ma continue to dazzle her perfect grandson?”

  “Uh, yeah! Wow! Did you like study shells or something?”

  “I guess so. I mean, not in school but on my own. I like to know these things.”

  “Me too,” he said.

  “I’ll give you a shell guide when we get home,” I said.

  “Cool,” he said and ran off to see what else he could find.

  I couldn’t get his tears out of my mind. Of course he missed his father. What he didn’t know was that he always would and that in all those important moments that were yet to come to pass in his life, there would be a searing wound. Over time the wound would grow smaller, but it would never disappear. Jimmy would never see Charlie graduate, become an adult, and marry. Jimmy would never know Charlie’s children. He would never be there to herald Charlie’s successes or to offer comfort or advice when it was needed. No, Jimmy was gone and Charlie had been robbed. People believed, and I had also been brought up to believe, that there was a Heaven and someday we would be reunited with our loved ones. Well, that’s nice, but death tears a hole in your life and losing someone you love is horrible. Especially for a child.

  I hoped then that Jackie would marry again. Although she was understandably in the worst frame of mind possible to even slightly entertain the notion. I got that message almost every time we spoke. Lord, she was so restless and churlish, but I imagine she just couldn’t help herself. The entire life that she and Jimmy had built had just imploded. She needed a lot of time to adjust. Maybe she had a bit of post-traumatic stress disorder. That made sense.

  I hoped she was having a good visit with Buster up in Murrells Inlet. He would help her heal. He was really a precious old devil when he wanted to be, and God knew, he had a sweet spot for his daughter. Wasn’t he the one she’d called crying? This was not the time for stories about me and Mr. Sea Hunt; it was about getting Jackie back on solid emotional ground. Hopefully, Buster would sit her down and get her to talk. She needed to unburden herself of her grief and every single other thing she was worried about. Maybe the reason she wasn’t telling me much was that she didn’t want me to see her as weak.

  When I reached the house, Charlie had already gone inside, having sprinted the last hundred yards. It must have been a thousand degrees then, because if even the slightest amount of blazing hot white sand slipped into my sneaker, it burned. I stayed alive (slight exaggeration) by thinking of a cool shower and a nice big glass of iced water.

  I pushed open the screen door. Charlie was on his knees on the porch, hooking the dogs up to their leashes, and the telephone was ringing inside the house.

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nbsp; “Gotta take them out for a bathroom break,” he said.

  “Right! I’ll get it,” I said.

  Be still, my heart, it was Dr. Steven Plofker on the caller ID.

  “Hello?” I said as calmly as I possibly could.

  “Hi! Annie? It’s Steve. Am I catching you at a bad time?”

  “Oh, heavens, no! What’s going on?”

  “Well, Mike Veeck, one of my patients who’s covered in poison ivy welts and can’t tolerate the sun for a few days, just gave me two tickets to the RiverDogs game for this afternoon. He’s an owner of the team. And I thought, Why not? I don’t have any appointments after four. And I wondered if Charlie might like to go with me? He told me how much he loves baseball. Should I ask Jackie?”

  “Sure, but Jackie’s up in Murrells Inlet with her father, the man formerly known as The Husband. What time does the game start?”

  “Let me see here. Um, it looks like it starts at five. And according to my Mike, one of his other partners, Bill Murray, is supposed to be at this game.”

  “Really! Well, I’m sure Charlie would love to go!”

  “Great! Tell him to be ready at four thirty. I’ll pick him up.”

  “That’s awfully sweet of you, Steve.”

  “Hey, I’m a sweet guy, and besides, what fun is a ball game without a kid?”

  “You’re right! I’ll make sure he’s ready. And Steve?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks for thinking of Charlie.”

  “Sure. See you soon.”

  I went out to the front porch and once again filled my eyes with a beautiful scene of Charlie at play with Steve’s dogs. I wished then, as I had secretly wished so many times since their arrival, that Jackie and Charlie would stay forever. Shouldn’t families be near each other? New York had had its chance with them, and I deeply believed I was entitled to a turn. Jackie needed me, didn’t she? And wasn’t Charlie just blooming? In no time at all, he was turning as brown as a berry, not that I’d ever eat a brown berry but I’m pretty sure that’s how the saying goes. Anyway, why wouldn’t you want to surround yourself with people who loved you?

  He was heading back toward the house. I couldn’t wait to tell him the news. “Hey! Guess what?” I held the screen door open for him to come inside.