Return to Sullivan's Island Read online

  “Yes. She’s housebroken.” Beth accidentally made a guttural sound, picked up Lola, and left the room.

  The fact was that Lola was not entirely housebroken and there would be hell to pay if Maggie’s rugs got ruined. Beth made a mental note to double up on Lola’s outside schedule, wondering again how she got suckered into this.

  Upstairs, Beth dropped Lola on the bed and Lola settled down to watch her. She hung up her clothes, arranged her ten pairs of flip-flops and four pairs of shoes on the racks in the closet, stacked her books on the floor, and made a pile of laundry to wash later on. It was remarkable to her that she could unpack almost four years of her life in under an hour.

  “Want to go see the Atlantic Ocean?” she said to Lola.

  Lola lifted her tiny head from the bed and then plopped down again, staring at Beth through the fringes of her long eyebrows. Lola, having had enough action for one day, was bone tired from her trip and needed a long nap.

  “Okay,” she said, “you rest right there, don’t move, and I’ll be right back.”

  It was just like having a baby, Beth thought, but a very hairy one that would never give her any sass. She changed into a T-shirt with a high neck to calm her aunt’s nerves.

  Downstairs she found them in the kitchen, lunch cleared away and everything tidy as could be. They had moved on to the next item on their agenda. Maggie was painting Eiffel Towers on plastic wine-glasses, but Eiffel Towers that appeared to be dancing.

  “Isn’t it unbelievable that you went from writing that ‘Geechee Girl Remembers’ column to teaching in Paris?”

  “I’ll say!”

  They stopped talking when Beth came in.

  “All unpacked? Do you need anything?” Maggie said.

  “No, everything is fine. Lola is zonked out. What are y’all doing?”

  “Planning your momma’s bon voyage soirée. Want to help?”

  “Sure,” she said, and sat at the table. “What can I do?”

  “Here,” Maggie said, “stamp these napkins. Ink pad is in there.”

  She handed Beth a small shopping bag with several packages of white paper cocktail napkins, an Eiffel Tower stamp, and a flat tin of black ink on a blotter pad. She opened everything, lined it up in front of her, and stared at it.

  “Now what?” she asked. “When’s the party?”

  “Next Saturday. Okay, let’s try one on an angle and one straight, in the corner there, and then we can decide which one we like best. What do you think?”

  “Sure,” she said, and stamped two napkins, holding them up for judgment. “And the verdict is?”

  “On an angle,” Mom said.

  “I agree,” Maggie said.

  “On an angle it is then,” Beth said, and proceeded to stamp away, thinking this was the most ridiculous job in the world. “So, who’s coming to the party?”

  “Our whole clan,” Susan said. “Kids too.”

  “Excuse my groan,” Beth said.

  “Who makes you groan, darlin’?” Maggie said. “Doesn’t this look so good?” She held out a wineglass for us to observe her creation, and what could you say? She was right.

  Beth had to give the devil her due. Maggie was one of those people who could duplicate the colors inside an abalone shell in bedroom paint and it would make you feel like a goddess when you woke up in the morning. She could spot a piece of driftwood on the beach, bring it home, redesign the living room around it, and have it featured in Charleston Magazine. She was the family wizard in all things artistic and culinary, while Beth and her mother were, well, not.

  “Looks amazing,” Beth said, and continued to stretch her creative muscle by stamping napkins. “Uncle Henry’s boys are a pain in the neck. They’re coming too?”

  “Yep. But it’s Uncle Henry who’s the colossal pain in the neck of all times,” Susan said, “not to mention our sister-in-law Teensy, right, Maggie?”

  “It is poor taste to speak badly of one’s own family,” Maggie said. “And Henry is our patriarch, so he says.”

  Beth giggled to herself. “Who doesn’t talk about their relatives?”

  “You’re both right, of course,” Susan said, looking at them in false innocence. “I just think it’s a shame Henry can’t think of anything to talk about besides his wallet.”

  “And too bad that Teensy can’t find clothes to fit her size zero cadaver,” Maggie said. “But maybe if she didn’t spend so much time in the loo—”

  “She wouldn’t be so skinny,” Susan said, finishing Maggie’s sentence.

  “Yeah, and it’s a pity Uncle Henry’s charming boys got kicked out of Sewanee for plagiarizing term papers from the Internet,” Beth said. “If they hadn’t been caught with that case of liquor and all those files, they’d still be in college.”

  “Now, now,” Aunt Maggie said, “let’s be charitable. Phil’s going to finish up at Athens this fall and Blake is going to be a sophomore at Georgia State. They’ve learned their lessons.”

  Beth and Susan just looked at each other and shook their heads.

  “Yeah, sure,” Beth said. “And what about the rest of Uncle Timmy’s crew?”

  “Uncle Timmy and his slightly less exciting family will be here Friday morning,” Susan said. “Crazy or not, I can’t wait to see every last one of them. I mean it, y’all.”

  “Me too, but you have to say that Aunt Mary Jo is a little bit of a mouse,” Beth said. “At least their daughters are somewhere in the range of normal. Boring but normal.”

  “Hush now,” Maggie said. “They cannot wait to see you! They told me so three times. Timmy said his girls said the only way they were coming was if you were here.”

  “See?” Susan said, smiling like they had all just won the state lottery.

  “See what?” Beth said. “If they are all staying here, this place is gonna be a crazy house! Where’s everyone gonna sleep? Do we have help to clean up and all?”

  “What for?” Maggie said with her quiet smile. “We don’t need help. Why, we’re all healthy and you’re all young…If everyone pitches in, it won’t be a burden to anyone.”

  Beth began to stamp napkins with a vengeance. She had been brought home in shackles to watch a house that would be watching her and to cook and clean for a bunch of ingrates. Her cheeks and neck were scarlet and she knew it.

  “Have you heard from the twins?” Susan asked Maggie.

  “Sophie’s coming for sure. I think. But Allison? Who knows about Miss Hoity-Toity? She’s too important to return phone calls,” Maggie said.

  “She’s a pain in the A,” Susan said.

  “Aunt Sophie’s coming?” Beth perked up then because Aunt Sophie was her favorite and she rarely saw her.

  “As far as I know,” Maggie said. “She’s got a new cell number if you want it.”

  “Definitely,” Beth said.

  “Yeah, so big house party next weekend and then I’m off to Paris,” Susan said. “Incredible.”

  “It’s what you always wanted,” Maggie said. “Remember when you used to say you were going to run away to Paris and live in a garret and smoke French cigarettes?”

  “I was thirteen.”

  “Well, now you’re postmenopausal and isn’t Simon good to let you go?”

  “Thanks for reminding me not to pack tampons—”

  “Hush! Your! Mouth!” Maggie said in horror. “We’re in the kitchen!”

  “Whatever. You think the milk will go sour? Anyway, I did not need his permission. Like he asked me if he could go to California for a year to work with Grant?”

  “Like he could do anything about it anyway?” Beth said, trying to catch her breath from laughing so hard. “When my mom wants something that badly, I wouldn’t want to tangle with her!”

  “Seriously, Maggie, I didn’t need my husband’s permission. That’s ridiculous!”

  “Well, I’ll keep an eye on him,” Maggie said. “All those cute young nurses! Woo hoo!”

  “Oh, thanks a lot,” Susan said.

>   Maggie took some measure of delight in making her sister insecure, but Susan knew it and after all these years, she had learned to take it in stride.

  Beth had finished all the napkins and suddenly couldn’t hold her eyes open.

  “I’m going to catch a nap for a few minutes,” Beth said.

  “You go on, darlin’,” Maggie said. “Thanks for all your help.”

  Susan followed her to the foot of the steps and then gave her a hug.

  “I’m glad you’re home, baby,” she said. “I always miss you.”

  “Me too, Momma. Call me if I sleep more than an hour, okay?”

  “Sure,” she said, and kissed her on her forehead.

  Beth climbed the stairs envisioning the laughing faces of her relatives. Her mind had time-traveled to the next week and she could already feel them there. She became giddy thinking of the endless teasing that would go on, the advice that would be freely dispensed from their generation to hers. She knew how it would be. Their voices would be a continuous hum like a swarm of honeybees around a hive. White breezes from the Atlantic would drench the rooms in something sweet and delicious. Thousands of memories would be whispered to them from inside the weathered boards of pine. And they would move around one another like tiny planets in their own elliptically shaped orbits, revolving and revolving.

  She was so tired. Her legs seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. She reached her room and could barely open the door. Beth did not remember having turned down her bed or that she had put Lola in her crate, where she snored in tiny puffs. But there were the facts. She could not recall lowering the blinds and positioning the slats just so, so that the air could sweep in and around the room cooling everything off, with the rising tide playing its age-old lullaby. It was all a welcome mystery, typical of the things that happened there. She pulled off her jeans, dropped them to the floor, and slipped between the crisp white sheets. Pale fragrances of mint and jasmine escaped from the pillows, lulling her into dreams of what? She did not know. Someone was there; she could feel them, there in the room with her. A faint presence. She was too tired to open her eyes or to ask who it was. It did not matter. She did not care. She smiled to herself knowing she had already been sized up, the rules of engagement were being laid forth, and the games were about to begin.

  2

  Bon Voyage

  BY FRIDAY, THE house was loud, bulging with bodies, excited voices, and there wasn’t a vacant bed or chair. Beth’s aunts Sophie and Allison had yet to arrive but all the others were in various stages of getting settled. Everyone wanted to spend the weekend in the bedrooms of their childhood, but that was, of course, impossible.

  On the flip of a quarter, Uncle Henry and Aunt Paula, affectionately known as Teensy, were enthroned in Uncle Henry’s old room, which did not measure up to Teensy’s highfalutin standards at all.

  “There are mosquitoes in here, Henry. Do you hear me? Nasty!” she complained in her often-imitated shrill juvenile voice from behind their closed door.

  “Shut your damn mouth,” Beth heard her Uncle Henry say. “The whole world will hear you.”

  But they were staying there anyway because everyone knew that Uncle Henry was tighter than a mole’s ear and wouldn’t waste money on a hotel if he didn’t have to, which was probably one reason why he had so much money in the bank. As a boy, he had shared that room with Uncle Timmy. Uncle Timmy and Aunt Mary Jo had decided to sleep in the twins’ old room, downstairs with two of their four kids in the next bedroom, on creaking rollaway beds that were older than Beth. Maggie and Grant were staying in her grandmother’s old room, and her mother and Simon were staying across the hall.

  The rest of the clan was sleeping down the island in Mary Ellen Way’s rambling eight-bedroom house on the marsh, which she occasionally loaned to friends or friends of friends. Maggie and Grant’s oldest son Mickey, who was now called Mike because he was twenty-six after all, knew about Mary Ellen Way’s house because he had dated her niece and, after winning the campaign for the uncles, including Henry, to foot the bill for some groceries and so forth, he invited all the boys to stay there and organized everything. Beth thought this was an excellent idea as there was only one bathroom on the second floor of their house and two tiny ones downstairs. It didn’t matter how large the capacity of the hot-water heater was, no residential system was going to deliver hot showers to that many people. Anyway, the most important detail is that Beth had too many cousins to know and all of them were lazy cows when it came to pitching in to help.

  Coming to that same realization, as she tripped over running shoes and tote bags that were thoughtlessly tossed and dropped everywhere, that her nieces and nephews were a bunch of slugs, Maggie snapped out of her delirium and engaged the services of a woman named Cecily Singleton to help with meals on Friday and Saturday. Cecily was the granddaughter of Livvie Singleton, who, according to family lore, had single-handedly saved the whole family from implosion back in the sixties when Beth’s mother was a girl. So, between the second house and an extra pair of helping hands, Beth began to think they might survive the house party after all.

  Friday afternoon, almost everyone had disappeared to walk the beach or to browse the new Whole Foods for exotic breads and olives. Beth’s hair was restrained in a ponytail, her breasts were almost concealed, and she was tying on an apron (with an Eiffel Tower hand-painted on the front) to help with Friday night’s fish fry, which would take place in two hours’ time. She looked out the kitchen window and there came the person whom she rightly assumed was Cecily, straight up the back steps. She rapped on the screen door, but before Beth could answer it she walked right into the kitchen like she owned the place.

  “Humph,” she said, looking Beth up and down with a huge grin, dropping her tote bag on the table with a thud. “Nice apron.”

  “Humph yourself,” she said. “I’m Beth.”

  “If you say so.” Cecily arched an eyebrow at her. “Where’s our Miss Maggie?”

  Beth arched an eyebrow back at her and said, “Out on the front porch with her hot glue gun, building a last minute four-foot-tall Eiffel Tower out of shells she personally collected from the beach. With her own hands. Without wrecking her manicure.”

  Cecily held herself still for the entire span of two seconds and then they both burst out laughing.

  “Oh Lord! That woman is so crazy!” Cecily said between hoots. “You got an apron for me?”

  “You’re telling me?” Beth said, reached for a tissue to blot her eyes, and tossed her an apron that matched her own.

  “But it’s a good crazy, I guess. Thanks.”

  “Yeah, I think so too.” She blew her nose and looked at her again. “So you’re Livvie Singleton’s granddaughter, huh?”

  Cecily was tall and lean with high cheekbones and a smile so bright that it seemed to flash light all over the room. Her hair was pulled back in a low knot and she was dressed in white linen trousers and a jade green cotton knit shirt. Beth liked her right away because Cecily was smart and for some inexplicable reason she seemed like an old friend.

  “That’s my claim to fame,” she said.

  “That’s a very big pair of shoes to fill. It’s great to meet you.”

  “Same here,” she said, and they shook hands.

  “So, how do you know my Aunt Maggie?”

  She reached in her bag and pulled out a business card, handing it to her. It read:

  Get it Together

  For all your Organizing Needs

  Cecily Singleton 843-555-1212

  “Cool,” Beth said. “This explains a lot. Except that it reads like you do more office work.”

  “Honey, at twenty-five dollars an hour, I do office work, cater, garden—you name it, I can do it, and if I can’t, I call my men who can. In this recession? Wouldn’t you?”

  “Yeah, most definitely.”

  “I’ve got over thirty houses and condos I take care of. It’s a great business,” Cecily said.

  “Wow!” Beth said.


  “And, your mother and Miss Maggie hired me to see about you while they’re gone.”

  “Oh really?” Well, that was annoying. When was somebody going to tell Beth she had a babysitter? “To do what?”

  “Pay all the bills, balance the household accounts, take care of all the hanging baskets and window boxes, make sure the yard gets cut and I guess to generally just see about things—you know, call someone if something breaks? Like the plumber?”

  Admittedly, none of those jobs held any appeal for Beth, and although she was glad to have them taken care of by someone else, she was still mildly torqued. When were they going to treat her like an adult?

  “Oh. So, if we need a plumber, I have to call you first?”

  “No, you call the plumber. I’ll give you the list of household contacts.” She looked at her, understanding why she was miffed. “Beth? You don’t want to do all that stuff, do you? Please. Anyway, aren’t you gonna get yourself a job or something? Hand me a cutting board, okay? I need to start chopping onions.”

  Beth pulled the old wooden board from under the cabinet where all the cookie sheets and trays were lined up like warped soldiers.

  “I can do it,” she said. “What do we need onions for?”

  “You ever have a decent meal that didn’t have onions in it?”

  “Guess not,” she said, and didn’t bring up cereal or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, the two headliner onionless dishes from her student budget.

  “We’re making onion rings and hush puppies. As long as we’re going to stink up the house frying fish, we may as well go all the way. Why don’t you put together the salad?”

  “Fine,” she said. “Okay, so, tell me about Livvie. There must be at least one story I haven’t heard.”

  Cecily cut her eyes in Beth’s direction in the first of what would become countless glances to note unspoken inside jokes and mutual understandings.

  “She was something else, ’eah? I’ll tell you about her but first you have to tell me why your hair is so blazing red. It ain’t natural!”