Isle of Palms (34 page)

I pushed the jar of strawberry preserves in his direction and the biscuit basket too. He reached in for another one and hollered like he got stuck with a needle.

“Ow! What the hell is that?”

Jim had grabbed my sand dollar. I had this sand dollar that looked like a coaster. You put it in the oven with the biscuits and then placed it in the basket to keep them warm. At four hundred and fifty degrees, it could be mighty risky to grab it with bare hands. Usually, I put it under the napkin, but I’d been in a hurry and just stuck it in toward the bottom.

“You okay?” I asked and jumped up to get him some ice.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Don’t get up!”

I was already up and in the kitchen, digging in my icemaker for some cubes to drop in a Ziploc.

“What is that thing? Some kind of weapon?”

“A biscuit warmer. I gotta renew my license for it.”

“Mom’s a riot, isn’t she?”

“Watch it, kiddo.” I handed the bag to Jim. “Hold this on the hot spot for a few minutes.”

“I swear to God! I’m fine! Really!”

“Eat! Today is a busy day!”

“So what’s up, Mom? Do we have any OJ?”

“Sorry, honey, I forgot juice. It’s too healthy anyway. Right after breakfast, I am taking both of you to the
Palms!”

“All
right!”
Emily said.

“We are going to do final inspection and then this afternoon, we are all having a barbecue in the backyard. Arthur’s coming.”

“Should I hide myself under the bed?”

“Very funny. No, I think he’s probably cool with everything.”

“I’ll just be around, you know, alone and pouty, making sure you don’t do anything risqué.”

“I appreciate that.”

Breakfast was over in one-tenth the time it took to prepare it. That was what annoyed me about cooking. First, you went to the store, then you hauled everything home, put it all away, took it out again, cooked it, and then everyone ate it in two seconds. Then, you got to clear the table, wash the dishes, scrub the pots, and take out the garbage. You could get exhausted just thinking about it. However, my little gripe session aside, it had been wonderful to look around the table at Jim and Emily enjoying something I had prepared. For a moment I felt like one of those fifties moms on
Father Knows Best
, except that on second look my daughter looked like a backup singer for Marilyn Manson and my ex-husband could do a wicked lip-sync to Barbra Streisand anything.

After the dishes were all done, the bedrooms cleaned up, and we were all dressed, I wanted to get everyone organized to go to the salon for last-minute anything. I called Lucy to see if she wanted to come along.

“Oh, honey! Can I meet y’all down there? I’m trying to find sheets and towels for David. He called me and should be here any minute.”

“No problem. Can I get you anything?”

I was walking toward Emily’s room with the cordless phone to pull up Jim’s bed. Emily was in the closet, rummaging for something to wear.

“No, I bought enough groceries and beer for a football team! You know how boys eat! But thanks.”

“Okay, see you later.”

I clicked off and looked out the window at the red Saab pulling up in Lucy’s driveway.

“Emily!” I said in a whisper. “Come here!”

Emily had put on ancient jeans and a tight black T-shirt from a Grateful Dead concert tour. She looked like Miss Defiant, USA.

“Wha . . . ?”

Holding back the curtain like spies, we watched the young man we assumed to be David unfold himself from the front seat of his adorable car. He stood up and stretched.

“Oh, shit. He’s totally ripped.”

“Yeah,” I said, “he’s worth a shot.”

Emily cut her eyes at me and we giggled.

“You’re a perv, Mom,” she said.

“I most certainly am not! Well, maybe a little.” I wiggled my eyebrows at her. “Come on. We’ve got tons to do.”

“I’m just gonna quickly change, okay? Just gimme a few.”

“No problem.”

Apparently she decided her ensemble wasn’t the most alluring combination to be caught wearing around a prospective date who, from across the yard and through our walls, was emitting the vibration of a screaming jungle animal. I had the distinct impression that I was about to witness my daughter in a way I’d never seen her. If it had been anybody else’s teenager, it might have been amusing. We were still at the starting line, and I was not amused.

“Ask Daddy if we can take his convertible.”

“Sure.”

“I mean, I just think it would be more fun, you know?”

“Yeah, definitely.”

“I’ll drive,” she said.

All at once I realized I was just as uncomfortable about my daughter and her sexuality as my father had always been about mine. Well! That wasn’t very modern thinking, was it? I decided I wouldn’t be an old poop, that I would take the wait-and-see approach. It seemed very sensible at the moment.

I didn’t know if Lucy’s nephew was watching as we got into Jim’s car and pulled away, but Emily did enough posturing around the outside of the car to warrant it. Somewhere in her belongings she had come up with faded jeans (tight), a white T-shirt (tight), and it appeared that all body piercing ornamentation had been temporarily removed. Her hair was tucked up in a baseball hat and she had on sunglasses. Right out of the blue, I began to worry that he
wouldn’t
find her attractive. How stupid! How pathetically typical. But if he didn’t fall immediately in love with Emily I would be furious with David, Lucy, and all their ancestors back to the potato famine.

We drove along the short distance never going over twenty-five miles an hour. Traffic was terrible, but that was no surprise. The day was fabulously beautiful and it seemed that everyone was coming to the beach for the day. I loved this time of year. This was when women were full of hope for a new love and realized it was time to do their roots. Maybe highlights? Be a little more blond? Cut their hair like Glenn Close or Gwyneth Paltrow or whoever was on the cover of any supermarket magazine? We can
do
it! I couldn’t wait to open the doors.

“Whatcha thinking about?” Jim said.

“Just thinking that I am a happy woman, I guess.”

“Watch out, Mom. Optimism kills.”

I didn’t know what she meant by that—probably some college slang meaning that the universe would slam you if you got cocky—so I said, “Thanks. I’ll dispense my optimism in small doses.”

It must have been the right response because she said, “Good idea.”

We parked in front of the salon and they stood looking at the shop while I fumbled around for the keys. I opened the door, turned off the alarm, and pushed up the lights.

“It’s beautiful,” Jim said.

“Très cool, Mom,” Emily said. She immediately plunked herself into one of the leopard print chairs and began to spin herself around. “I like it.”

Jim walked from back to front, looked through the products and the accessories, and took a deep breath before he spoke. I could tell he wanted to put in his two cents.

“Spit it out,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, “here’s the opinion of one businessman. This place is fab, absolutely fab!
BUT!
It looks too conservative, too clean, too new. It doesn’t scream out,
Come in this place and change your bloody life!
In fact, to be perfectly blunt, it doesn’t scream anything.”

“What does it need?”

You have to understand that if anybody else had said this I would’ve given them a left hook to the right jaw, but Jim was a visionary and I knew I should listen to anything he had to say.

“Let me surprise you, okay? You stay here and fuss around. Emily and I are going shopping.”

“Have at it, bubba! I have tons to do, but you gotta take me home to get my own car.”

“Deal. Let’s go.”

We drove home and I was so excited by what Jim had planned, even though I didn’t know what it was that he
had
planned. It was fine. Whatever. Part of me hated having the responsibility for everything anyway. I had always depended on Jim and loved the fact that I could relax and not worry for a while. I would wash my hair and do my makeup and finish grocery shopping for Arthur’s dinner of seduction, I mean, for the perfectly innocent evening I had planned to make up for that unfortunate incident at High Cotton.

“Just gimme two hours!”

“Take three! Thanks! Love y’all!”

It was just noon. I called Lucy to tell her that we weren’t going to the salon yet. “The salon is being held hostage by Emily and Jim until further notice. I think he wants to fluff it—you know, add this and move that to give it the exact look that Jim thinks it needs?”

“That’s fine! I’m still feeding the boy!
Six
sandwiches!”

“God knows what Jim’s up to! Anyway, I’m getting dinner together for Arthur. I went to the New York Butcher yesterday and bought out the place.”

“The New York Butcher? This must be
serious,
girl!”

“It is. I’m insane over Bill, the guy who owns it. I said to him, ‘Listen, I think Mr. Right is coming to dinner tomorrow. What do you have wonderful that I can put on the grill and make him fall in love with me?’ So he says,
‘Whatever you do, don’t overcook the meat.’
I said,
‘yeah’
—I started imitating a Yankee accent without even thinking about it. Somehow when he opens his mouth he sounds like, I don’t know, something between Al Pacino and Tom Brokaw. I always think I’m talking to a movie star when I’m around him for some stupid reason. What’s the matter with me?”

“Good grief, Anna! Tom Brokaw? Take an antihistamine! Maybe it’s pollen?”

Sometimes, Lucy said the dumbest things.

“Probably. Anyway, I’m running out to The Pig in a few minutes to get salad and sour cream and a few other things. When I get back we’ll go over to the salon, okay?”

“Fine, gimme a shout. So what
are
you making for dinner?”

“Um, let’s see. I got three pounds of different sausages—Bill makes them—standard sweet Italian and some others with garlic and pesto and then chicken sausages with apples and onions. They’re insanely excellent. Then I got some tiny New Zealand lamb chops and some pork chops stuffed with rosemary, mozzarella and garlic. I figured I’d grill all that and serve it with stuffed potatoes and a big salad. If that doesn’t bring this boy to his knees, I don’t know what will.”

“And what are we wearing to drive him wild?”

“Who the hell knows? Whatever I can find that’s clean. Maybe I’ll buy a new T-shirt at the Piggly Wiggly in honor of all the pork that went down the tubes for our dinner. Wha’d’ya think?”

“You’re a regular Pamela Anderson, honey. Why don’t you stop by Banana Republic and get a V-neck something and a short skirt?”

“If I have time. Maybe.”

And some thong underwear and a Miracle Bra
. . . you know? I felt like saying,
Do you think it would be obvious to serve dinner with an air mattress strapped to my back?
I mean, I knew everybody in the world (except me) was obsessed with sex appeal and all that and yes, I was in the beauty business. But, I was in the beauty business from a
service
point of view. People needed their hair cut, I cut it. They wanted color, I colored. Trim? I trimmed. I didn’t believe in promoting personal insecurity. I prided myself on conservative advice and promoted healthy skin and hair. Boy, was I boring or what?

I thought about my boring persona up and down the aisles of the Piggly Wiggly, blaming overexposure to my father as the culprit. He was the most conservative man on the earth. I confess I had always thought it was the best way to be. Nice and safe. But did he seek out conservative mainstream women? No, he didn’t, did he? They came to him, arms wrapped up in hope and chicken parmesan, thinking they were simpatico, that they could fill each other’s voids. No committed relationship had ever materialized from any of them. No, when Daddy was following his natural instincts, his hunt was quite different. He liked beauty queens like Momma and tarty babes like Lucy.

By the time I got around to the bread aisle I realized Daddy had a glaring weakness for commercial beauty. Maybe most men did. Maybe I was another divorced idiot who had always praised substance over style and finery over fashion. The burning questions were, Could my self-respect (
insecurity
) keep me warm at night? Would my principles (
gross fear of rejection
) give me comfort? I had to face it. I was going to be single for the rest of my life or I was going to have to loosen up. I paid for the groceries and went straight to Belk’s.

Now, Belk’s wasn’t the sexiest store in the world, but it had very nice merchandise for the sensible woman. It took me two seconds in the Ralph Lauren department to realize I needed something besides black pants and another black top. To hell with sensible for once. I walked out and went to Banana Republic and decided to buy something young and fun. It seemed that every article of clothing was the same price. Inside of half an hour I had tried on and bought an aqua tank top with spaghetti straps and a thin short cardigan that matched; a beige stretch cotton short straight skirt with a little slit; and low platform aqua slides. I felt like a whore but the salesgirl assured me that her mother had the same outfit. This did very little to lift more than my left eyebrow. (Note, if I ever go into the retail clothing business—Cut off tongues of all sales job applicants under twenty-two. And it might not be a bad idea to slap them silly once a day.)

I went home to organize my kitchen and grill. I laid the clothes on my bed and looked at them. How could this little bit of fabric and leather cost over two hundred dollars? Was I crazy? I
never
spent money like this!

Oh, fine. What would Jim say? Emily? They would say nothing because if they did I wouldn’t feed them. It was three-thirty. I called Jim’s cell.