The Secret to Southern Charm Read online

  It was an ordinary phrase, yet for my daughter, nothing was ordinary, nothing was right. Sloane’s entire life had been turned upside down in one moment. I thought, unfairly, cruelly, that this was Adam’s fault. He had always wanted to be more than a husband and a father. Why couldn’t that be enough for him? Why couldn’t he have a normal job, with regular hours that let him get back home to his young family?

  Mom squeezed the top of my arm but didn’t say a word. What was there to say?

  “What do I do?” I whispered.

  She shook her head. “You can’t fix this for her, Ansley.”

  I shrugged. “I know that, but I can’t even get her out of bed.” I paused and took a deep breath. I didn’t want to say it out loud. But I had to. “It has been almost three weeks, Mom. I’m afraid if she doesn’t get out of that bed now, she never will.”

  I had spent countless hours Googling depression, calling doctor friends, and buying books that, due to my status as grandmother-turned-primary-caregiver for two toddlers, had sat practically untouched on my bedside table. But the reality remained. I had already learned about depression in the worst way, which might also be the best way: firsthand experience. I knew what it was like to find out your husband was dead, that you were the only one left to fight for your family. But Sloane wasn’t there. Not yet. She needed help. But how could I help someone who didn’t want it?

  Caroline, Emerson, and I had been entertaining Sloane’s boys constantly, trying to distract them from the fact that the only time they saw their mother was when they crawled into bed with her. She would smile at them blankly, without even seeing them, and stare back at the TV screen where home videos of her and Adam with the boys were playing on a continuous loop, night and day. We were doing the best we could, but they wanted their mother. Taylor cried for her five or six times a day, and it broke my heart. AJ was acting out. Throwing toys and tantrums over nothing, pinching Taylor. We were doing all we could for them, but I felt fairly certain these boys had lost their father. They couldn’t lose their mother, too.

  My mom shook her head again. “I’m proud of you,” she said. “I’m proud of how you’ve stepped up.”

  Though she had said nothing that could possibly help me in this impossible situation, as she took my hand, I felt calmer. It was, as it always had been, my mother who gave me this incredible strength and inner peace, my mother who lent me fortitude when I needed it most. It was then that I realized it. Sometimes, being a mother isn’t about having to fix it. Sometimes, the best thing a mother can be is there at all.

  THREE

  the light

  sloane

  June 16, 2010

  Dear Sloane,

  I will be home in ten days. Ten days until I get to hold you and kiss you and make you my wife, ten days until we get to stand in front of our family and friends and say how much we love each other, how we fell in love in this most unusual way that we will both cherish for the rest of our lives. I don’t know how you’ve done all this while I was away, planned this entire wedding for me, for us. I am so grateful to you, my beautiful girl. And I am the luckiest man alive that I get to spend the rest of my life proving it to you.

  All my love,

  Adam

  june 16, 2017

  “GET UP.” I VAGUELY heard Caroline’s voice breaking through my dream, where Adam and I were driving down the road, singing to the radio on the way to our favorite hotel in the North Carolina mountains, a small bed-and-breakfast in downtown Blowing Rock that had a fireplace in every room and amazingly reasonable off-season rates. His parents knew how much we loved it and every Christmas, they gave us a gift certificate for two nights at the hotel—and two nights of their expert child-care services. It was my favorite gift. “You’ve been wallowing in here for thirty-four days,” Caroline said. “And you kind of stink.”

  Ah, yes, Caroline. Always the tactful one.

  I opened one eye, and it all came flooding back to me. Adam wasn’t in the car beside me. Adam wasn’t in the North Carolina mountains. Adam was gone. Adam was lost somewhere in the Middle East, somewhere I couldn’t find him. My heart began to race with panic.

  My sister threw open the curtains, and I thought I might go blind from the harsh brightness. How had I ever relished the feel of the sun on my skin or lain in it to warm my body? I wanted to tell Caroline to close the curtains. Then it hit me. Was Adam in the sun? Was he being scorched alive by the very thing that was supposed to give him life?

  It had been thirty-four days since those uniformed men came to tell me my Adam was Missing in Action, my mind filled only with terror and dread, worst-case scenarios that pinged day and night like a loose ball on a racquetball court. The death didn’t scare me; the torture did. The starvation, the pain, the indignity. For years, ever since the night we met only three weeks before his deployment, I imagined I could feel Adam, that my heart was connected to his the way the moon is connected to the tide. That connection controlled our world.

  Looking back on those thirty-four days, I don’t remember my sons’ laughter. I don’t remember them snuggling in bed with me. I don’t remember my sisters taking turns sleeping with me, my mother feeding me, my grandmother singing to me. It is as though my mind is a bloody crime scene that has been wiped meticulously clean. The only thing I can recall from all those days is my memories of the past, my videos of the happy times, my letters from Adam.

  Day thirty-four and still, every time my bedroom door opened, I felt a jolting panic that someone was going to tell me he was gone. My mom had come in just before Caroline and paused my video, which terrified me at first, but I was too weak and exhausted to protest. “Darling,” she said, “time to get up. The boys are having a very hard time without you. If we need to get you to a doctor or on some sort of medication, we can and we will. But you have to get out of bed.”

  I thought of my children. I felt like I was crumbling from the inside out. I loved them. I needed them. They needed me. But I was so numb, my heart a desolate desert where nothing could live, nothing could grow. My children were better off without me.

  When I didn’t say anything, Mom left. But now Caroline was here, playing bad cop to Mom’s good cop. It was a pretty proven strategy, but it wasn’t going to work on me. It was clear they had decided today was the day for the intervention. But I wasn’t ready to be intervened upon, so it didn’t much matter. Caroline lay down beside me in bed but abruptly got up and moved to the chair—she had forgotten how badly I stunk. If you stink too badly for even your sister to lie beside you, that’s a problem.

  She crossed her arms. “Sloane, you are neglecting your children, and quite frankly, you’re neglecting me.” I think she was trying to be funny, but I was past the point of finding anything funny. “Your kids need you, Sloane. They’re miserable and angry and they don’t understand what’s happening. It’s your job to be there for them.”

  I was used to Caroline’s insults, her judgment, and her harshness. I braced myself for what she would say next. So when she took a deep breath, softened, composed herself, and said, “Sweetie, I want to read you this essay Vivi wrote for school,” it was actually worse. If she had yelled at me or told me I was being selfish, I could have taken it. But her sympathy meant I was even worse off than I had thought. Changing her tactic from forceful to soft meant something was shifting between us. I didn’t like that.

  “It’s titled ‘My Hero.’ ” She cleared her throat, and I knew this essay was about her uncle Adam, her hero. I wasn’t sure I could take it. But I knew how she felt. He was my hero, too.

  So it caught me off guard when Caroline read, “My Aunt Sloane is my hero. Her husband, my Uncle Adam, is a sergeant first class in the Army, which means he fights hard for our country and goes on special missions that no one else can do. When he is gone fighting, my Aunt Sloane goes on special missions too. She takes care of my cousins AJ and Taylor all by herself. She even homeschools them. They are really smart. AJ can already read, and even little Taylor k
nows his alphabet. She cooks all their meals and sings lots of songs and she always remembers to buy me a birthday present even when she’s really busy. She calls my mom every day to make sure we are OK, so we always remember how much she loves us. My Aunt Sloane prays hard to God every day to keep my Uncle Adam safe.

  “That’s how I know he is OK, even though he is Missing in Action in Iraq because his helicopter crashed and he was captured by insurgents. Everyone is worried, but I know he is OK because my Aunt Sloane knows he is OK because she prays about Uncle Adam every day. She prays hard and she works hard and she loves her family and is the best mom. That’s why my Aunt Sloane is my hero.”

  I’m not sure when I started crying, but I felt something shift in me when Caroline read my eleven-year-old niece’s words that I knew her Uncle Adam was OK because I prayed for him every day. Was that true? Did I know? I wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

  “It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Caroline said.

  I nodded. I wanted to say something. I wanted to thank her or tell her to hug Vivi for me, but my mouth wouldn’t work. So instead I let her feed me a little chicken soup. I didn’t want it, but I didn’t want to feel this way anymore either. That was progress, I thought.

  “I would kiss you,” Caroline said, “but you smell worse than the crab pots on the dock.”

  As Caroline was feeding me, AJ burst through the door, my mom on his heels, with so much energy that I felt even more tired. “Mommy, Mommy,” he said urgently. “Mommy! I’ve got to ask you a question,” he said, peering up into my face from the floor below. Caroline smiled at him, a laugh in her throat.

  “Is Daddy dead?”

  I froze, the few bites of soup I’d eaten growing heavy in my stomach.

  “Oh, honey,” Mom said, taking his shoulders gently and saying, “Let’s go play while Mommy finishes lunch.”

  “Is he, Mommy? Because Billy down the street says Daddy is dead.”

  I felt something stir inside me, something that felt a little like fight, a little like hope. “No,” I eked out, my voice sounding rough and rusty, like a screened door that hasn’t been opened in far too long. “No, sweet boy. Of course Daddy isn’t dead.” It was then that I realized I believed it. I believed my husband was alive.

  “Oh, good,” AJ said, his voice laden with relief. “Because he’s going to get me a BB gun for my sixth birthday.”

  Mom and Caroline chuckled, and I almost smiled. Almost. The simplicity of children, the wonder of it all, was one of the great joys of life. I had forgotten that.

  It wasn’t until after they had left, until after I hit play again, that I realized Mom had set up an easel in the corner of the room with a single canvas, a paintbrush, some paint, and a small palette. But I didn’t paint anymore. And she certainly wasn’t going to get me to paint now.

  I looked back at the screen where Adam was talking, videoing me as I gave AJ his first bath. Then I looked back at the easel. There was something about it that seemed inviting, that tugged me toward it.

  I tried to sit up. My eyes got starry and everything went black. I persevered, though, putting one foot on the ground and then the other. I held onto the wall as everything went black again. With my past flashing on the screen beside me, I picked up that brush.

  I don’t know how long I sat there, but when I looked at what I’d created, I felt a little better. It was an abstract piece of blacks and grays with hints of silver.

  As I examined my work, something inside me felt a little lighter, a little less closed off, as if maybe the world as I knew it wasn’t ending. Maybe.

  My little sister Emerson came through the doorway quietly. She was the tall one, the most beautiful one, the nearly famous one. Even still, Caroline and I both felt the need to protect her. There was such an innocence to her, even at twenty-six. We couldn’t help but want to shelter her.

  She stood beside me, studying the painting, and said, “It’s sad. But it’s beautiful.”

  “Thanks,” I whispered, realizing there was paint all over me. I set the brush down on the palette. Emerson took my hand and said, “Come on, sweetie. Let me get you into the bath.”

  Was this what my life had come to? People had to bathe me now? I thought of my grandmother downstairs, who had come to live with us, whom my mom was taking care of. My grandmother. Caroline and her two kids. Emerson. My own two kids.

  It had started out as so much fun, all of us in the same house, playing and laughing. That was me then. The me I was now couldn’t imagine ever smiling again. Ever laughing again. Ever . . . Adam, oh Adam. Where was he? What was happening to him? Would I ever know?

  It was September 11 all over again, knowing my dad was in that tower, knowing it had fallen, not knowing if he was alive but feeling certain I would never see him again. I had believed I knew what my mom went through in the wake of my dad’s death. I felt like I understood her, that losing your father had to be equivalent to losing the love of your life. But I hadn’t, not really. Not until now. I remember overhearing my mom telling her friends it still haunted her that she couldn’t remember telling my dad good-bye, that she couldn’t remember if she had kissed him before he left that day, that between packing lunches, making sure Emerson had her costume for her play, signing my permission slip, and telling Caroline she had on too much makeup, she couldn’t remember if she told him she loved him.

  At the time, I had thought that was silly. He was dead. We would never see him again. Who cared if she had kissed him good-bye? But now I understood. All I could think about was what I said the last time I had talked to Adam, what I wished I had done differently. It wasn’t a good feeling.

  I heard the water running, and I let Emerson help me to the bathroom. I couldn’t believe how devoid of energy I felt, as if every ounce of the person I had been was running out of me like the bathwater down the drain. As Emerson helped me with my shirt, I realized I wouldn’t have been able to do this without her. I glanced at the mirror and didn’t recognize myself. My face was gray and drawn, making my brown eyes hollow. I’d been worried about losing the last ten pounds of baby weight. Now my skin was taut over my ribs and belly.

  I lowered myself into the tub, allowing the water to cover my face. I opened my eyes under the water and watched the bubbles coming out of my nose, the light from the chandelier above me wiggling and distorted. For a moment, I considered not coming back up for air. I could let the water take me away, where I wouldn’t have to feel or think or fear anymore. I could just leave. Quietly, without a struggle.

  As my lungs grew hot, I heard an echoed, faraway “Mommy.”

  If I didn’t take that next breath, my children would be all alone. I lifted my head out of the water, gasping for air. Taylor, my twenty-month-old, laughed at the sight of me. “Mommy!” he said again with glee. “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!”

  He leaned his face over the tub and planted a sticky kiss on my cheek, wrapping his warm arms around my wet neck. I remembered Vivi’s essay. I remembered I was someone’s hero. I had promised Adam, had vowed to him, that when he was away, I would be here, raising our babies and continuing our life. It was my job as a military wife to make good on that promise. This was my role, the one I had chosen. Or maybe it had chosen me. It was hard to tell now.

  I closed my eyes and saw my painting again. I felt its strength. I thought of Vivi again, of her belief in me.

  I believed in Adam. It was going to be OK.

  It would be easier to retreat back into my cocoon of memories, my home videos, my letters, my sorrow. But Caroline was right. Mom was right. Emerson was right. I had my boys to live for. I had to carry on.

  Instead of succumbing to the dark, if I was ever going to come out of this, I had no choice but to look for the light.

  My son’s blue eyes were a perfect start.

  FOUR

  transitional

  ansley

  When I opened the door to the store that morning, the first thing I did was rush to my store-manager-turned-design-assistant, Le
ah, and hug her. Her strawberry-blond hair was pulled up in a tight ponytail, and she was wearing an emerald-green silk blouse, the exact color of her eyes. The dusting of freckles across her nose had become more prominent this summer.

  I looked around. Everything seemed pretty much the same despite my almost total absence over the past month. The living room display set up at the front of the shop, the tables of accessories, the shelves of books and candles. The only thing better than the inside was the gorgeous view out the window of the waterfront. And I never took for granted that work was a two-block walk from home. It was the best commute I knew of.

  She laughed. “What was that for?”

  I shook my head. “What was it not for? You have run my entire life for more than a month, Leah. There aren’t enough thank-yous.”

  She waved me away like it was nothing, and before I could say anything else, she asked, “Any thoughts on those ceilings at the Turner house?”

  But it wasn’t nothing. That she had taken over like this said a lot about her future at the store, her future with me—and made me realize that I needed to give her a raise.

  The Turners had just bought the house at the end of my street. It was surrounded by water on three sides and, built in the mid-1700s, was one of the oldest white clapboard houses in town. That, of course, posed a few design challenges. But if there was anything I loved, it was a challenge. Admittedly, I had a few more than I wanted coming at me these days, but I could handle one more if it meant figuring out how to make seven-and-a-half-foot ceilings seem taller and make tiny rooms feel more spacious.

  I nodded. “I’ve been going back and forth, but I think we need to rip them out like we did in the kitchen. Let’s stain the exposed rafters to give them a beam-like feel and lacquer the shiplap between them. It will give them a few more inches of height.” I paused. “And will add so much character.”

  She smiled. “I love that, and we are so on the same page. I was thinking about going a little bit transitional, adding some modern flair.”