Folly Beach (5 page)

“Yep. Long may you wave—whatever that means. Let’s call the kids. All this food is just sitting here. It’s a
sin
. Russ? Sara?”

“Don’t forget Alice.”

“Like anyone could? Humph. Alice?”

“Don’t talk to me about sin today. Shirley Hackett was probably right. It’s a good thing he’s gone or
I
might have helped her husband plot Addison’s demise myself.”

I picked up a small roll and examined its contents—smoked salmon with chive cream cheese. Platters of beautiful sandwiches—lobster salad on croissants, turkey on a combination of pumpernickel and rye bread, Black Forest ham and brie on sourdough, and others I had yet to discover—were placed on one side of the table and platters of bite-size pastries on the other. The coffee samovar stood on the far end with cups, saucers, cream, and sugar, and the tea service was on the other. Almost all of it was untouched.

“And no jury in the world would convict you either. Where are the kids? Russ!”

“I’m right here, Aunt Patti.”

“Get something to eat, sweetheart,” I said. “This is dinner.”

“Yeah, sure,” Russ said. “Gotta wonder what my little half-brother is eating tonight, right?”

Although Russ was usually my quiet child, it never meant the wheels of his clock weren’t turning. The woman with those baby pictures had clearly upset him.

“You listen to me right now. There’s no proof of anything,” I said. “That child could be the mailman’s for all we know.”

“Your mother’s right,” Alice said and I smiled the incredulous smile of the mother-in-law who would be happy with only the merest crumb, the tiniest bit of support, and then is so very pleasantly surprised when the daughter-in-law throws her a whole baguette. “Won’t you ask for DNA tests? I mean, she might be a complete fraud. I’ve heard of people like that, you know, showing up at weddings and funerals and making claims?”

I almost liked her then.

Mark, who was standing by taking large bites of a lobster salad sandwich, said, “Alice might be right but I think we ought to wait for her to rattle
our
cage. In the meanwhile, I asked Mel if there was a wills and estate guy in his firm.”

Alice beamed with pride, vindicated for a brief moment from her unchallenged position as the family’s royal pain in the ass.

“He’s with Smythe and Lincoln,” Patti said. “They probably have a
hundred
people who can take care of this.”

I knew Smythe and Lincoln. They were an old, white-shoe law firm with a pristine reputation that dated back to the Revolution, one of the few left in the world you might actually trust to represent you with dignity and integrity. However, I also knew their historic dignity and integrity would probably cost four hundred dollars an hour. Or more. Ah, lawyers. Everyone knows the minute lawyers get involved, they turn their meters on like a taxi on a wild goose chase and that having a paralegal merely Xerox a document and send it across the street could cost you an outrageous amount of money. Before you know it, your wallet was hemorrhaging and you could have bought oceanfront property in Costa Rica for what it would cost to probate a will. I always exercised caution when I called a lawyer.

“Yeah, well, that sounds like a good plan to me,” I said. “If I hear from her . . . what was her name?”

“I don’t even remember,” Mark said. “Did she say . . . ?”

“Jezzy LaBelle,” Patti said over Mark.

“She never said her name,” Sara said. “I was standing right there. All she did was flash the pictures of her bouncing little bastard and then Mom hit the dirt.”

“Nice way to phrase it,” Alice said, with her mouth twisted in disapproval.

“Who asked your opinion?” Sara said. “Do you have to have an opinion about everything?”

Alice shrugged her shoulders and looked away.

The doorbell rang and Albertina, who had been picking up glasses in the living room, hurried across the foyer to answer it. I put my arm around Sara to give her a little maternal support. My tiny Sara, dark-haired and moody, had never found her groove with her blond, lanky sister-in-law. Simply stated, the problems between Sara and Alice were that Alice had a boatload of advanced degrees, had stolen her precious brother, and had doomed him to a lifetime of prescribed boredom. Sara, who had a degree in musical theater from Northwestern and was a glamour puss if I ever saw one, felt inferior to Alice, which was completely ridiculous. I kept telling Sara that one day she would have a leading role in a film or on Broadway and she would show them all. So far, she had been in a television commercial for a feminine hygiene product and another one for garbage bags. But before I could pull her to the side, I looked up to see the county sheriff standing in the vaulted anteroom between the Corinthian columns that led from the entrance hall to my dining room. Something was wrong.

“Can I help you?” I didn’t know if I was supposed to call him officer or sheriff or what. I mean, it wasn’t like I welcomed the law into my home every day of the week.

“Are you Mrs. Cooper?”

“Why, yes. Is something wrong?” A rhetorical question if ever there was one.

“Ma’am, I understand from your housekeeper here that your husband’s funeral was this afternoon and I know this probably seems like terrible timing, but I’m here to serve you with papers. The bank is foreclosing on your house for nonpayment of the mortgage.”

“What?”

“Yes, ma’am. You are almost a year in arrears. And there’s three big trucks outside from the D&D Building in New York? Your decorator sent them. Nonpayment of bills. Seems they want all your furniture, too. Except your mattresses—the bedbug thing, you know. And basically they’re gonna take anything else they might be able to sell at auction to recoup their losses. Except for the chandeliers and the appliances. An electrician’s coming tomorrow for that stuff.”

“What are you saying?”

“Except your clothes. You can keep your clothes and linens, too. Did I mention that?”

“No.”

“I’m real sorry about this. You’ve got forty-eight hours left to vacate the premises yourself.”

“Forty-eight hours? Are you
serious
? Mark? He can’t be serious, right? There must be some
mistake
! This is a horrible mistake!”

Mark took the papers from the sheriff and started looking them over.

“Son of a bitch,” he said, “apparently this is your third notice. Addison must have known. He must have known about
all
of this!”

“He did know,” Dallas, Addison’s accountant, said. “I’ve been trying to hold them off for a while. I mean, I told them . . .”

We all stopped and stared at Dallas. I always thought he was a lightweight, now I knew why.

“Which is why he left first,” Patti said. “Asshole. He might have said something besides
I’m sorry.
”

“Why didn’t Addison
tell
me?”

“Because he was a coward?” Patti said.

Mark said, “Officer, have a heart here. There has to be some way to do this another day, given the circumstances and the weather . . . ?”

“Believe me, sir, I’m not happy about this, either. I’m really sorry, I mean, the lady here just lost her husband and all. Makes me feel like a monster.”

“You sort of are,” Alice said.

“Shut up, Alice,” Russ said.

“Oh, my God,” I said and sank into a chair. “Oh my God! I’m broke! I’m ruined!”

“No, you’re not,” Patti said. “We’ll figure this out, Cate.”

“Mom!” Sara almost screamed. “What are we gonna do?”

“You might try getting a real job,” Alice mumbled, not too quietly.

“Alice!” Russ said and gave her his most fearsome look.

The next few hours were completely unbelievable. After these burly men wrapped my dining-room chairs in plastic wrap and paraded them out, I couldn’t stand anymore. I felt sick, physically sick. It was too much. I mean, I had said about a zillion times that I wanted a simpler life, sure, but surely there was an easier and more dignified way to get that, wasn’t there? Holy shit, holy hopping hell, holy hell. Be careful what you wish for! And it wasn’t like I hated
everything
in the house. Was this really happening? There were many things—rugs, paintings, lamps—that I completely adored and the thought of losing those things was wrenching. And losing
everything
and especially like
this
was so unbelievably shocking, I was reeling, just reeling, still not understanding what was really happening.

Patti said, as she took me by the arm, “Come on, let’s get you out of here. We can go in the kitchen or something. You don’t need to watch this.”

“Okay. I think I might throw up. I’m not kidding.”

“You’re not going to throw up. Ever since you were five years old, I’ve seen you twist yourself like a freaking Cirque de Soleil acrobat so you wouldn’t throw up.”

“True.”

“And let me tell you something, sister, if Old Aunt Daisy’s string bean casserole didn’t make you puke till you were purple, this won’t either.”

“I missed her today. She’s always been our pillar of strength.”

“Look, she sent gorgeous flowers and she’s got a broken foot.”

“True. Ah, Jesus, wait until she hears this part of the story.”

“Yeah, her hair’s gonna stand straight up on end.”

“I never liked the dining-room table anyway,” I said.

“Me either. Too Baroque.”

“Baroque is when you’re out of Monet,” I said and Patti looked at me like I was crazy. “I have a T-shirt that says that.”

“If you wear it in public I’m never speaking to you again,” Patti said, deadpan.

“It used to be funny. Not so funny now.”

“No. Not so funny now. Maybe I need a good shot of vodka.”

“Maybe I need a martini.”

The door from the butler’s pantry whooshed to a close behind us and I suddenly realized that Richard and his team, and most especially Albertina, all of them had to be horrified by what was going on all around them. It had all happened so fast, I hadn’t even thought of what to say to them. Repo men in the middle of a storm like this, on a day like this, at Cate Cooper’s? No way.

Richard and his team had packed all the food up in aluminum containers and put them in the refrigerator and they were all standing by the back door, already bundled up in their coats and scarves, hats and gloves, ready to leave. I was going to tell him to take the food but he had already gone to the trouble of putting it away.

He came over to me, took both of my hands in his, and said, “I’ve gotta get them out of here before the roads freeze.”

“Richard, thanks. I mean it.”

“Listen, this is on the house today. When better days return? I’ll charge you double.”

That made me smile a little and I just shook my head with gratitude. Then I put my arms around his neck and hugged him.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

“Me too,” I said. I wanted to add
thanks,
but the word got caught in my throat and I thought I might begin to cry again.

Albertina was wiping down the counters with a spray bottle of some mixture specifically designated for granite in one hand and a soft cloth in the other.

“It’s none of my business,” Albertina said to no one in particular. “I’m not asking any questions.”

I put my hand over hers to stop her from giving the counters another single motion of polish, and I could see her eyes well up with tears.

“It’s okay, Tina,” I said, using her nickname. I wanted to show her I was feeling terrible for her unexpected loss, too.

“No, it’s not okay,” she said, and some pretty big tears bubbled over and rolled down her cheeks. She pulled a tissue from her sleeve with her free hand and wiped them away. “How can they
do
this to you?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’ll find out everything sooner or later but I’m sorry, Tina, I mean about your job here. I guess this is the end of the road for us.”

“Oh shoot, Ms. Cooper, I can get a job tomorrow. That’s no problem. Don’t worry about me. But Mr. Cooper left you like
this
? I can’t believe it. It’s so wrong.”

“Yeah, it’s not great, is it? But I have my health. I have good children. I have . . .”

“Aw, jeez, Cate,” Patti piped in. “All that’s true enough but we’ve got to make a plan, sister. We’ve got to make a plan.”

Chapter Five

Setting:
Porgy House, upstairs, side porch. Old table with cloth, flowered china tea set, newspaper, two chairs.

Director’s Note:
Show photographs on scrim of side porch with table set for breakfast and the picture of Jenifer. When she talks about her story “The Young Ghost,” show a cover of
McCall’s
magazine. Voice of DuBose Heyward comes from off-stage.

Act I

Scene 3

Dorothy:
There are some events in your life that are indelibly imprinted in your mind—funerals, childbirth, your wedding, the day the curtain goes up on your first play that made it to Broadway and on and on. You just don’t forget anything about these things. It absolutely
was
in late February of 1934 that the haunting, or whatever you want to call it, began. I am going to be very careful in how I recount this story because otherwise you might think I was exaggerating. Writers are notorious for their expansive imaginations, you know. But, on my word, here is what I remember with certainty.

DuBose and I were comfortably settled at the old weather-beaten table on our side porch, enjoying our morning coffee and reading the newspaper. Jenifer was in school, fully ensconced in a kindergarten on James Island just a few miles away. It was a gorgeous day, crisp and clear, and although it was chilly, the sun warmed us as it danced on the countless ripples of the Atlantic Ocean right across the street. The world was alive and open for business. I brought up the previous night to DuBose in what I hoped was a nonchalant manner.

“DuBose? Did you hear all that crying last night?”

“Crying? No. I didn’t. You know, darling, I sleep like the proverbial stone. It was probably some feral thing—a bobcat or a stray.”

“Well, I don’t think it was an animal. Golly, I was up half the night! Would you like an egg or some toast? Maybe food will wake me up.”

“No, no breakfast for me thanks. Don’t trouble yourself. You’ve
always
suffered so terribly with insomnia. Maybe we should stop the madness and just ask the doctor to give you something?”

“Maybe. I’ll think about that. But DuBose? This is serious. I’m sure I heard a woman crying all night long, weeping! It was absolutely pitiful. She sounded just like that woman in my short story, ‘The Young Ghost.’ Remember her?”

DuBose folded his section of the newspaper back neatly to scan the obituaries.

“My, my. Look at this, will you? Old August Busch, the beer magnate, is gone to Glory! Looks like it was a suicide, it says here. Now why would someone with all that
money
do himself in?”

“DuBose! Have you heard a word I’ve said?”

“Yes, yes, of course I have. ‘The Young Ghost’! That’s the one about the accidental death or the suicide—another suicide!—of that young woman, isn’t it?”

“Yes! Remember? Suzo, the very young bride, dies in the bathtub and Bobbel, her husband . . .”

“What kind of quirky names are those, dear? Russian?”

“They had nicknames for each other like we do. Well, like
you
do.”

“Little Dorothy.”

“Precious.” I was not always so fond of being called
little Dorothy
. Dorothy wasn’t really my name. “But remember how her husband struggles so hard? He’s tortured really, trying to understand how and why his wife died. Was it an accident or not?”

“Right! And then the cad of the story . . . what was his name?”

“Keene Everett.”

“Yes! Ah, Everett the Scoundrel, Connoisseur of the Wives of Others! As I recall, Everett let it slip that he and Suzo were an item and he implies that our little Suzo kills herself because her husband,
Bobbel,
the widower with the unfortunate name, said they had to stop riding around the town in his car with each other. Or some such nonsense.”

“Nonsense? That story ran in
McCall’s
magazine!”

“There, there! I meant no offense. It’s just that . . .”

Too late. I was indeed offended, reminded for the umpteenth time that DuBose considered my writing to run along popular veins and that he was a more literary writer, more serious. After all, he was a founding member of the Poetry Society of South Carolina. And a celebrated poet. Descended from la-dee-da aristocracy. And I? I was only the Belmont Prize winner of Professor Baker’s playwriting class from Harvard, thank you, which had been performed on Broadway, but I was from, alas, Ohio. In the world my husband grew up in, you were either a Charlestonian or you were not. You were literary or you were not. I pouted and waited for him to speak again but he was buried in that past Sunday’s edition of the
New York Times,
which usually took us the whole week to finish.

“DuBose? I thought that story had a delicious air of mystery to it.”

Not anxious to take on the task of self-defense first thing in the morning, DuBose avoided my eyes, put the newspaper down, and poured himself another cup of coffee from the pink-and-green flowered breakfast set that I treasured so. It had been a birthday gift from his formidable mother, which is the nicest way to describe her personality.

“Mysteries are fine for those who can abide them, I suppose. More coffee?”

Again, DuBose had stepped on my pride.

“What? No. Thank you.” I took a deep breath and sighed hard, exasperated. “You know, DuBose, sometimes you are an insufferable snob. Many highly educated people happen to adore mysteries, myself among them. I’m just asking you this. What do you think? Why did she haunt the tenant with all that weeping?” What I really wanted to know was why was a weeping woman haunting
us
? Well,
me,
actually. And who was she?

He knew I was growing touchy and quickly working myself into a foul humor. DuBose, who obviously could not recall the finer points of “The Young Ghost,” decided to take a benign position and let me talk it out.

“I have no idea, sweetheart. My memory isn’t as sharp as yours. You tell me.”
There, that’s better,
I could see him thinking,
compliment her a little without seeming disingenuous.

“Very well, I will! It was an accident. But here’s the rub. People were blabbing all over town that she was having an affair with that simp Keene Everett when she most definitely was not. The rumors were terrible! So now that she was dead, how could she ever make her husband know that she loved only him?”

“Right, I remember now.”

“She was robbed of her reputation and of her very life by an accident. But the crying? She was very worried that she would become nothing more than a bad memory. So she haunted their tenant, hoping he would help her straighten things out with Bobbel. Don’t you remember she says, ‘I’d rather be forgotten than be something you try to forget and can’t.’ She didn’t want her husband to spend the rest of his life thinking she was unfaithful. And I’m telling you that all last night I heard a woman crying her heart out just like Suzo. Not some silly cat down the street. That’s all.”

At that point, DuBose had stopped and stared across the table at me. I could read his mind. Did
I
feel robbed? Had I ever thought of loving someone else? He dismissed the thought almost immediately with a shudder. No, if DuBose Heyward was certain of anything in his life it was my devoted love. Women were such complicated creatures, he thought loudly enough to be heard, but deliciously so.

“Perhaps I will have that egg,” he said. “And maybe a slice of toast?”

“I’m ravenous this morning,” I had said, “I am going to the kitchen. I’ll be right back in two shakes.”

I came around to his side of the table, smiled wide, kissed my fingertips, and touched his cheek with them. Harmony was restored. I knew that man and every cell of his brain. For the life of him, he could not even begin to comprehend why asking for an egg and a slice of toast would shake me from my truculent mood, but it seemed as though it had. At least I let him think so. I had made my point, and if I gave him a thousand dollars and all the tea in China, he couldn’t tell me what that point was. Men.

Still, I had company the night before and I knew it.

Fade to Darkness