Bulls Island Read online

  Their attitude and all the looking down their long noses they did, sniffing at my family, was ridiculous, of course, but each family claimed to have legitimate reasons to dislike and mistrust the other. Frankly, they were legitimate. My ancestors had given money to their slaves to escape to the North and we were deeply involved in supporting the Underground Railroad. J.D.’s ancestors raised the cost of land to astronomical levels in order to discourage its sale to French/Irish businessmen, and at one point they opened competing businesses. Nonetheless, their slaves departed and my great-great-great-grandparents’ chain of small groceries, bakeries, and apothecaries prevailed over theirs and became wildly successful. But the alleged royalty in J.D.’s family still despised the alleged commoner in us.

  Just to make it more interesting, in the eight years J.D. and I had been together, the fact that my mother’s DNA contained some thin strand of Italian nuclei provoked many absurd references to the Mafia. It was all so stupid. That’s just how it was. Except that J.D. and I, young and optimistic, were deeply in love and hoped to somehow bring our families together.

  That evening late in July, J.D. and I were on the terrace, waiting for my parents to arrive, when he shocked me with an engagement ring. We were just out of college and twenty-one years old. The whole expanse of the Langley terrace was blooming with a profusion of pink and white roses, in beds bordered with thick deep green Mondo grass. Roses climbed the walls along with ivy and the entire area smelled divine. It was almost seven, and there was still plenty of daylight, humidity, and mosquitoes. Needless to say, despite the hour, the heat was still unrelenting.

  We were drinking a pitcher of strong lemonade, made with fresh lemons and lots of sugar, exactly the way we loved it. J.D. was wearing khaki trousers and a pale blue oxford-cloth shirt, which was pretty much what he wore all the time. I was wearing a white eyelet sundress and my shoulder-length hair was pulled back with a tortoiseshell clamp. We were sitting in the shade of the awning that covered the glider, moving back and forth to keep the air circulating around us.

  “I want you to be my wife,” J.D. said. He said it in such a serious voice that it startled me and actually made me laugh a little.

  “I know, J.D., and I want you to be my husband.” I smiled at him and squeezed his hand. “Who else would I marry? And who else would marry you?”

  “But, Betts, I mean now. Soon. This year.”

  “What?”

  That’s when he stood up, reached in his pocket, and pulled out the ring. My jaw dropped and he did as well—to one knee, that is.

  “Well? Will you?” J.D. was smiling and he looked so handsome. And fervent. My heart lurched with all the love I felt for him and I choked up.

  “Of course I will!” Up until that moment, no single event in my life had ever been more powerfully emotional or profound. We could hardly see through our tears of excitement, wiping our eyes with the backs of our hands, as he slipped the ring on my finger, sort of bumbling around, getting it over my knuckle. I threw my arms around him. He picked me up off the ground and swung me around.

  “Oh my God! I’m going to be Mrs. James David Langley the Fifth!”

  “Well, dahlin’? Ah ’magine you are.” These words came from his mother’s lips. I had not known she was watching us.

  J.D. plopped my feet on the terrace and I looked up to the unenthusiastic face of my future mother-in-law, Louisa. She was standing in the doorway, leaning against its side, and did not move a step toward us. J.D. ran to tell her what she already knew, but her chilly pronouncement told me all I would ever need to know. What would it be like to be a Langley? A living hell, no doubt, when she was around, I thought, then quickly scolded myself for being so cynical, reminding myself that I was marrying J.D., not his mother. But when our eyes met, I knew differently.

  She would always resent me. Her only son was marrying into the enemy camp, but I also saw that it wasn’t just me she resented. In Louisa’s mind, no one would ever be good enough for J.D. or worthy of becoming a Langley by marriage.

  “Would you like to see the ring?” I said.

  My question just burst forth, motivated by my heightened sense of insecurity. But wouldn’t the ring show her that our intentions were real, that our decision was ours to make and not hers? She could join in and celebrate our joy from this moment on, couldn’t she? Was I giving her an invitation to be a part of this occasion, or was I, in fact, drawing a line in the sand and staking my claim?

  It was a line in the sand. That’s just the truth.

  Despite my insecurity, I held my hand out for her to see the beautiful round solitaire diamond that flashed and sparkled. It was the most gorgeous ring in the world.

  “Well, it’s lovely, dear. Simple. Perfect for you.”

  Was that a barb? “It was such a surprise!” I said. “I mean, I had no idea…”

  “Of course you didn’t, or you would have had a manicure,” she said. “Come now and give me a hug. I imagine we will have to figure out how you will address me from now on, won’t we?”

  Why don’t I just call you Huge Bitch? I thought, and hugged her from the greatest distance possible. She patted my back twice, in little pats that wouldn’t plump a pillow. Then she stood back, raising her chin to me.

  “What if I call you Miss Louisa?” I was not about to call her “Mother” or “Mother Langley,” and she certainly was not a mom, momma, or mommy type. She gave me the shivers.

  “Lovely,” she said, with a sigh of resignation. “That would be lovely. Just fine. Ah ’magine we should have some champagne to celebrate? Y’all want a glass of champagne?”

  “Should we wait for my parents to get here?” I said.

  “They have arrived, dear. Let’s go inside…”

  I thought I heard a distant thunderclap, and sure enough, over the next few minutes a vicious summer storm descended without warning. Torrential rain began pouring from every direction, so thick and so heavy you could barely make out the silhouettes of the trees across the yard. But as frightening as all the sound effects of a huge storm could be, the smell of its approach was an aphrodisiac.

  Freshly mowed grass mixed with black dirt. Air infused with the life found in the Wappoo and all around it. Marsh grass. Twenty species of fish. The mud banks. The ripe smells of decomposing branches and leaves. Birds and fish bones. Maybe this sounds unappealing or unappetizing, but once this smell finds its way to your senses, you’re hooked on its crazy opiate effect. These elements were spun with roses into a wave of fragrance so strong it would make you forget every trouble in the world. And that’s exactly what I allowed myself to do. Taking a deep breath, I remembered J.D.’s love for me, pushed aside his mother’s poor manners, and ran to my own mother’s arms. My left hand was extended and waving; splashes of light from the facets of my ring splashed the walls.

  “Momma! Look! Look!”

  “What? What’s this? Let’s see!” she said. My beautiful mother stared at my hand and then my face. “Oh, my dear child! Are you surprised, Betts? Happy?”

  “Surprised like anything and happier than I’ve ever been in my whole life,” I said.

  “Then so am I! So am I!” We hugged each other with all our might and I could feel her begin to cry. “Tears of joy! What did you tell him?”

  “I told him yes! I said, oh, yes!”

  “Oh! My darling daughter! I am so thrilled for you!”

  My mother just blubbered like a woman whose baby had slipped from her hands into dark waters, lost forever.

  “Come on, Momma! It’s all right!”

  She quickly composed herself and smiled. “It’s silly of me, I know, but I guess…oh, there’s a part of me that will always see you as my little girl, running to me for a Band-Aid or with a report card, or missing teeth…you’ll see someday, Betts. There are just some moments that…well, you should sort of lose it!”

  “I am still that little girl, Momma, inside somewhere, but J.D.? Eight years together? It’s time, don’t you think?”

/>   She nodded. “I didn’t tell you, but J.D. came to us yesterday. We met for lunch and he asked both of us for our permission to marry you. Oh, he’s a wonderful young man, Betts. He really is.”

  Just then I noticed that J.D. and his father, Big Jim, were shaking hands with my father, Vaughn.

  “I’m gaining a daughter!” Big Jim said enthusiastically. “A beautiful one! A smart one!”

  “And our family will finally have a son! I couldn’t be more pleased,” my father said.

  My mother sighed, as she knew full well what chop my future waters held. Exhibit A: she nudged me and nodded toward Louisa, who was listing back and forth, doing a little wibble-wobble, as she silently poured champagne into the flutes. What in the world? Where were her congratulations? Were those few words on the terrace the best she had to offer? Wait! Had Louisa been drinking before my parents arrived? Young and inexperienced with alcohol as I was, I would not have doubted it at all. She had probably watched J.D. propose to me and gone running for the bottle. In fact, during our brief and antiseptic embrace, I noticed her breath did carry a whiff of gin, a smell I had always associated with something foul. I knew she favored martinis, and maybe because she was always so disagreeable, it was a cocktail I would not have consumed at gunpoint. Did she so despise the idea of me marrying J.D. that she had to drink in order to deal with it? Would I be driven to drink in order to deal with her? Perhaps. I knew with certainty that having her for a mother-in-law was going to be a serious challenge.

  By God’s grace, we got through the toasting and made it to the dinner table, where someone unleashed the hounds of hell between the cucumber soup and the pork loin with mashed potatoes. If the pork was swimming in gravy, my head was swimming with anxiety.

  “Ah ’magine we’ll want to have our wedding he-ah,” Louisa said, with a slight slur, as though the prospect of this was a burden as well a blessing. “Ah mean, Ah have always dree-ummed of my son’s wedding taking place he-ah.”

  “That is awfully kind of you, Louisa, but I have always dreamed of our daughter’s wedding taking place at St. Mary’s downtown.” My mother’s voice was polite but resolute.

  “Oh, Adrianna, a Catholic ceremony. I should have known. Well, there’s nothing to be done about being a papist, is there?” Louisa cracked a smile of obvious disappointment and sighed. There was no response from around the table to her rudeness. “De-ah me. Well then, we’ll have our recepshun here, won’t we, Elizabeth?”

  “Actually,” I said, “we have kind of a long tradition in our family of receptions at the Hibernian.”

  “The Hibernian? LAW!”

  Louisa gasped as though I had suggested a keg party with plastic cups at the worst dump of a broken-down shack on Folly Beach. Men without shirts and girls in coconut bras hopping around in conga lines, eating corned-beef sandwiches and cannolis. I could see that my intemperate future mother-in-law was hallucinating scene after scene of her own social suicide.

  Even at that age I knew she was completely wrong and that her behavior was preposterous, but it would have been a terrible gaff to object at the table. J.D. would have to explain the facts to his mother later. Besides, St. Mary’s Church was gorgeous and it was the closest place to heaven in Charleston and maybe on earth, except for the Vatican. And the Hibernian? The Hibernian Society hall was a fabulous, glamorous place for a dinner dance.

  I looked to Mother, who was just flabbergasted and filled with disgust. I could read her mind: Louisa Langley was an insufferable snob, she was thinking. Was this to be my life? I would be railroaded into accepting my mother-in-law’s choices for everything? I could feel bile rising in my throat. I looked to my mother’s narrowed eyes for support, but her jaw was locked as she stared at her plate, clicking her fork against the rim of it and making high-pitched ting sounds. She would not make eye contact with me. I knew she thought Louisa and Jim Langley had been informed beforehand that this would be an evening of great importance and that Louisa’s demeanor was unbelievably cold. Big Jim was nice enough, but he couldn’t make up for Louisa.

  Things were not going well. At all. With every thought the McGees had, Louisa Langley had another. Louisa was not satisfied to merely host the rehearsal dinner and provide the flowers for the church, which we knew would be extravagant.

  “But that’s tradition,” Big Jim said, trying to be the voice of reason.

  “But, dahlin’! J.D. is mah only child,” she said with the pout of a two-year-old child.

  Louisa wanted control of everything. She always did. So she became more cantankerous and my mother struggled to remain calm. On and on the verbal sparring and innuendo went, like something molten from hell, rolling across the rug, climbing the walls, ruining the night. The storm outside still raged as if Mother Nature had been hired to provide special effects.

  “Will you all be serving spaghetti and meatballs?”

  “No,” my mother said.

  “Well, does the chef at the Hibernian know how to cook Italian food? Or is his specialty corned beef and cabbage? You know, lots of potatoes and starchy things?”

  “Only on St. Patrick’s Day,” my mother said nicely, but I could see she was annoyed.

  To the complete mortification of the rest of us, Louisa and my mother, Adrianna, were engaged in a full-blown “sandbox” contest of wills.

  Finally, the dinner plates were removed and a slice of warm peach pie was placed before each of us. Three empty wine bottles stood on the buffet like generals over a bloody battlefield. It occurred to me that that was a lot for six people in addition to champagne. J.D. and I each nursed a small glass, as wine was not our drink of choice. Like most young people of college age, we drank beer.

  “Dinner was delicious, Mother,” J.D. said, attempting to lower the sweltering emotional temperature of the room.

  It was no use. The continuing swell of my parents discomfort had caused my mother to stop eating entirely. My father cleared his throat.

  “Tell me this, Elizabeth dear. Will you have the courage to wear white?” Then Louisa Langley actually cackled.

  I could feel the heat rising in my body and knew my face was bloodred. I did not answer her terribly inappropriate question.

  “Adrianna?” my father said. “I think we have enjoyed the Langleys’ hospitality long enough.”

  “Ahem.” Big Jim spoke up. “You probably shouldn’t drive in this weather, Vaughn. Why don’t we go in my study for a cigar?” He said all this with honest concern. But when Louisa arched her eyebrows at him to encourage my parents’ departure if they wished to leave, he slammed his fist on the table and added, “Dammit, Louisa, but I just don’t think anyone should be out on the dark roads in this kind of rain. Just look at the trees!”

  It was true. The sky, black as pitch, was rent every other minute with crackles and jagged bolts of lightning, piercing the horizon in a dozen places at once. It was all I could do to stay in my chair as the French doors around the room nearly succumbed to the storm. In those terrifying blasts of light you could see branches sweeping the ground, seeming to wail in protest against the wind and rain. No doubt children everywhere were crouched in corners, appliances were unplugged, rosaries were being said, and no one was on the telephone. Only a damn fool was driving unless it was a matter of life and death.

  Big Jim was right, but my father was already on his feet, pulling my mother’s chair away from the table.

  “We’ll be fine, thank you,” my father said as drily as you might imagine anyone who’d hung on to a remaining shred of dignity in his situation would.

  “Vaughn? Maybe we should wait until the storm passes?” my mother said, hesitating, and then took my father’s arm when she saw the “good riddance” in Louisa’s expression.

  “You’ll bring Betts home later?” Daddy said to J.D. “When the storm passes, of course.”

  “Yes, sir.” The severity of his disappointment in his mother was all over his face. “Don’t worry. I’ll be careful.”

  “Daddy?”r />
  He turned to me as I walked with him and Mother to the door. His eyes seemed so tired. I didn’t know what to say to him. He was insulted, as he should have been. Mother was furious and I didn’t blame her. The good intentions of the dinner had been doomed from the start and then overrun by Louisa Langley. I was so embarrassed I didn’t know quite what to do. I was very nervous about my parents leaving in anger, but it wasn’t my place to tell my father not to go.

  “Please be careful, Daddy.”

  “You know I will, sugar.”

  “Love you, Momma,” I said, and hugged her with all the strength I had left in me. The torture session Louisa called a dinner party had worn me out.

  Momma took my face in her hands and looked deep into my eyes. She said, “Listen to me, sweetheart. Love can work miracles. It happens every day. Wake me up when you come in so we can have a good look at this ring together, all right?” She winked at me and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “My girl!”

  “All right. I will.” I hoped she was right about the miracles. “Love you!”

  “Love you, too, baby! Vaughn? Give me the keys. I’m driving!”

  My father reached into his pocket and gave the car keys to her without argument. Well, that was a relief. At least Momma wasn’t going to let Daddy drive with so much booze in him. She was sober or seemed so.

  When I went back to the dining room, Louisa—that is, Miss Louisa, as I would become accustomed to calling her—had disappeared.

  “Where did your mother go?” I asked J.D.

  He just shrugged. He never said an unkind word about his mother. Never. Tonight it drove me mad.