Palmetto Moon (2 page)

She scoffs and puts her tools away, satisfied that my dress looks the way Jacques Fath intended when he designed it. “You’ll not find the likes of this fabric on King Street, I can promise you that. And if you did, I wouldn’t know where to begin to make something this . . . perfect. And your wedding dress? Even grander, Vada. Really.” She pushes a strand of hair behind my ear. “You’re going to be a beautiful bride.”

All through the rehearsal and this ridiculous party, everyone has said those words to me, like somehow the way I look will determine the outcome of this union. But nothing changes the fact that this is a mistake.

The canvas of the massive white tent billows a little, and the night air is damp and thick. Well-wishing men dab at their foreheads with handkerchiefs, and little beads of sweat line the lips of pretty women who are sweltering in the late-June heat. But even their intrusions can’t hold my attention from the Ashley as it flows past Middleton Place. I can’t stop looking at the river, thinking about it. Where does it go? To Edisto? To Savannah? Does it matter? It’s free, unencumbered by family and duty.

“Tears of joy?” Justin’s famous second cousin, Josephine, dabs at my face. I shake my head and turn my attention back to the river. “Middleton Place is stunning. And while I do have El Dorado, in my bones I know this plantation shouldn’t have ended up with the McLeods, least of all Justin. But the gods split the lot the way they saw fit. Perhaps they intended for it to be your consolation prize.”

“Does it console you, Miss Pinckney?” I ask.

“Words console me.”

“Of course they do, your books. The movie.”

She laughs and shakes her head. “Yes, the movie. Well, I don’t think
Three O’Clock Dinner
will ever make its way to the theater, my dear. I hear Lana Turner’s off again, to Mexico this time, vacationing with Tyrone Power, and who knows who it will be next? Those Hollywood folks don’t know what they want, not really. Besides, I don’t
need
a consolation prize. But you? I’m not so sure.”

Most of the women here would kill for Josephine Pinckney’s lineage alone, much less her present status as the darling of the literary world. They comfort themselves with catty remarks and whisper that she’s plain and was never beautiful. But even in the moonlight, there’s something about her knowing look and those piercing eyes that make her stunning and powerful.

“Walk with me?” she says.

I nod and step toward the grassy steps that lead to the river and away from the party. Breaking a heel is the least of my worries, but instinctively I tiptoe across the boards that stretch out across the water, and Miss Pinckney does the same. The river makes a swishing sound and cuts hard around the posts that anchor the dock into the muddy bottom, and the waxing crescent of the palmetto moon dips low across the marsh grass. A fish skips like a stone over the top of the silvery black water, and for the first time tonight, I feel like I can breathe.

“
Run out—run out from the insane gold world, softly clanging the gate lest any follow
.” I’m not sure if she’s quoting her books or one of her poems, but even in my hopelessness, I feel her silent prodding.

“I don’t want this.”

She’s quiet for a beat. “What
do
you want, Vada?”

“What I can’t have.”

“Something you can’t have. Really? The only child of Matthew and Katherine Hadley? I speak from experience as an
only
child born into the pinnacle of this caste system we live in, there’s nothing you can’t have.”

“You’re—wrong.” The sob building inside threatens to turn me inside out, so everyone can see the truth that doesn’t seem to matter to anybody. Not my parents, not Justin, and least of all the party lemmings.

“Then what is it?”

I’m shivering in this heat, teeth chattering, unable to answer. All I can do is point to the river as it flows away from this horrible mess and escapes toward the ocean.

“
You
are wrong, Vada Hadley.” She wraps her silk stole around me and kisses my tearstained cheek. “You can have anything you want.”

Just before midnight, we arrive back at 32 Legare Street. Refusing to eat or drink anything has only left me feeling light-headed, drugged. As Desmond opens the iron gates, my father says something to me, but I don’t answer.

“I’m speaking to you, Vada.” I nod. “As I was saying, my great-great-grandmother’s mother . . .”

“Oh, Matthew,” Mother says, “you’re not going to tell that story now. It’s late, and we’re all tired.”

“Katherine, this is our history, Vada’s history, so yes, the story bears repeating.”

Mother rolls her eyes. She and I know what’s coming.

“Maria Whaley was just fifteen years old in 1829 when she scaled this very gate to marry George F. Morris, and without her parents’ permission, I might add.”

“It’s a legend, Matthew, a fairy tale for the young women to swoon over when 32 Legare was a girls’ school. If it is true, and I highly doubt that it is, Maria Whaley was
escaping
the premises. That’s hardly a tale to tell your daughter on the eve of her wedding,” my mother says. “Besides, a colonial woman of good breeding, hoisting herself over the Sword Gates? Impossible.”

“My point is, Maria Whaley had only met Morris a few times at dances, parties, and such. She barely knew the man and yet she put her mind to it and learned to love him so very much, and in such a short time, that she made her own miracle.”

“Matthew. Please,” my mother groans and massages her temples. “The story is inappropriate, and worst of all, George Morris was a
Yankee
.”

Desmond pulls the car around to the piazza and lets us out. My father continues the lesson as I start up the main staircase, past menacing-looking oil portraits of my ancestors that used to terrify me as a child. I stop midway, and my parents push past me, arguing the merits of family history versus silence. Maria Whaley looks back at me, frozen in time with a thin smile. It feels like she’s mocking me, reminding me that she escaped to marry the man she wanted and I’m locked behind these gates in a marriage pact I have no say over. I reach out and touch her face. Whether her story is fact or fiction, there’s something about her that has lasted for over a hundred years. She looks brave, and, like Josephine, very wise.

I throw open the door to my bedroom, and I am immediately assaulted by my wedding dress. It hangs on a hook on the back side of my open closet door. Beside it, the cathedral-length train makes a wide river of white illusion across the room. A perfect pair of white satin Salvatore Ferragamo pumps glisten in the dim light. All of this is Rosa Lee’s doing, a last-ditch effort to show me my future in hopes that I’ll change things before it’s too late.

Three trunks are packed for a monthlong cruise to Europe. The thought of being trapped on a boat with Justin cuts my legs from under me, and I plop down on the floor in the middle of the illusion. There’s a soft knock at my door, and it opens. Rosa Lee stands there in her robe. Her hair, which is usually in a tight bun, is past her shoulders. As she steps into my room, I can see that like me, she’s all cried out. She closes the door behind her and throws a large old suitcase on the bed. One of the latches sticks as she tries to open it, but it finally does, and the suitcase is empty.

“You got no more chances. Come morning, it’ll start up and you won’t be able to stop it, but you can now. Desmond’s dressed and ready to take you wherever you want to go.”

I hang my head and dissolve into the illusion.

“
Child
,” Rosa Lee hisses, snapping me to attention. “I didn’t raise you to go along to get along. Do you want to marry that boy or not?”

“
No.
” I’m surprised how strong my voice sounds.

“Well, when folks who are supposed to love you won’t listen, you got to listen to yourself. What’s yourself telling you, child?”

Her words propel me off the floor. I grab four dresses out of my closet and stuff them in the suitcase. I unsnap the trunk that holds my shoes and take no time to labor over picking favorites. Three pairs of sandals and a pair of pumps will have to do. My heart stops when Rosa Lee takes the dresses out of the suitcase and puts them aside.

“Not like this. You’ll be home in a week, and much as I like the sound of that, I know you won’t be happy.” She sets about rolling them up into tight long bundles so that I can have a proper summer wardrobe and two extra pairs of shoes. “I can fit two more dresses, maybe three if they don’t have a crinoline.”

She stuffs my makeup bag and my lingerie under the dresses, and when she thinks I’m not looking, pulls a little pouch out of her bosom and tucks it into the suitcase. “No, Rosa Lee, this is your
tredjuh
.” Even though my parents are sound asleep in the opposite wing of the house, I whisper the Gullah word and try to give her treasure back to her.

“Child, I love you, but you don’t have the first idea of how to make it out there in the world. You don’t know what it’s like, trying to make two ends meet.” She closes my hand over the pouch and shakes her head. “Lord, I’m going to worry myself to death, so you take this money. I wish it was more, but it’s all I’ve got, and you gonna need it.”

I try to give the pouch back again, but she won’t hear of it. “You fit in, you hear? You make whatever you do work to your good,” she says through tears, “and if you don’t need this, I want you to have it anyways. You’re my child. Always gonna be my child.”

Another soft knock at the door makes me freeze. “Rosa Lee?” She opens the door and pulls Desmond into my room. He looks at me and smiles. “Well, looks like we’re going someplace after all.”

I hug them both. My heart is racing like a hummingbird as Desmond picks up the suitcase. “Wait
.
” They both look at me, afraid that I’ve lost my nerve. I grab a blue A-line dress out of my closet and dash behind the antique screen. I slip out of my gown and into the dress I bought before I graduated.

Rosa Lee zips me up and unhooks my grandmother’s necklace. “Take this for sure, but keep it hid. You hear?”

“Yes, ma’am.” I drop the necklace into the small satin pouch the garters for my wedding came in.

“Don’t you keep that necklace anywhere but in your bosom. And nobody better be getting it there.” She straightens my Peter Pan collar and tucks in my tag. “Sears. I knew you had the gumption all along.” She turns me around to face her and is trying to look stern, but the tears and her quivering chin give her away. “Please, child, I beg you, promise me you’ll watch for the signs like I taught you. Make them work to your good.”

“I promise.” I hug her close one last time.

She holds me at arm’s length. “You’ll be fine. You hear? I love you, child. I love you.” My heart breaks as she sputters out the words. “Desmond, y’all best go. And hurry.”

Going down the stairs, Desmond bumps the suitcase, and I freeze. “This house is so big, they won’t hear a thing,” he says and bumps it again to prove it.

We walk around to the back gate to the old truck Desmond sometimes borrows from his brother. He throws my suitcase into the back, and I’m in the truck before he can open the door for me. “Know where you’re going?”

“The bus station.”

“No, ma’am, you’re not.” He shakes his head at me. “Besides that and the train station is probably the first place they’ll look.”

“Please, Desmond, I’ll take the first bus out.”

“I’m not saying the man behind the desk is going to recognize you, but he’ll remember your pretty face. Your daddy will track you down for sure if you leave by bus or train.”

“I’m not going to get you in trouble. What if Mother or Father needs you to drive them and you’re not there?”

“Middle of the night?” His hands knead the steering wheel, and he stares straight ahead. “That hasn’t happened since the night you were born. You came so fast into the world, right as we were pulling in to the hospital. If Rosa Lee hadn’t caught you, you would have plopped right onto the floorboard.” He looks at me. “You stole our hearts that night, and if you think I’m gonna drop you off at some bus station, you got another thing coming.”

“But there’s an even greater risk—” He shakes his head. If something happens, if the wrong people see me with Desmond, it could cost him more than his job. It could cost him his life. I grab my purse and open the truck door. “I’ll drive myself.”

“Your shiny red Cadillac will for sure get everybody’s attention. Now I’m gonna drive you and that’s that.” He puts his hand on my arm. “And don’t you worry about me. No risk is too great. Now you close that door this minute and tell me where to.”

“Round O.”

He gives me an incredulous look but starts up the truck, and we escape past the Sword Gates into the palmetto moon night.

A little over an hour later, we roll into a crossroads community so small, it doesn’t even have a road sign. The boardinghouse is there, just like my professor said it would be. Nothing fancy, but grand compared to the half dozen or so houses around. There’s a long clapboard building that claims to be a diner, a general store, and a post office.

Desmond kills the engine. “I was thinking if you were running away, you might want to go a little farther from Charleston than fifty miles.”

“There’s a job here.” I can’t believe this is really happening. “A teaching job.”

“Well.” He looks around the place. “When your daddy starts looking for you, I can guarantee this is the last place he’ll look.”

I throw my arms around him and breathe in the sweet scent of pipe tobacco one last time. “You need to go before someone sees us.”

“No, ma’am. I’ll wait until this joint opens.”

“No, Desmond. It’s dangerous enough that you’ll be driving back to Charleston so late. Look, there’s a porch swing. The sun will be up in a few hours; I’ll be safe there. Please, Desmond. For me.”

He takes his hat off and fiddles with it. “Guess this is good-bye.”

I nod and press a piece of paper into his hand. “For emergencies.”

He stares at the paper, smiling. “Well now, you did plan this out.”

“I had bits and pieces of a plan, but when I came home I stopped believing this was possible. I don’t know what I would have done if Rosa Lee hadn’t come to my room tonight, if you hadn’t brought me here. I owe you both so much, thank-you seems puny.”

He looks at the boardinghouse address and phone number I’ve written down, rips the bottom half of the page off, and scribbles his brother’s address. “You need me or Rosa Lee, just let Charles know, and he’ll pass on the message. And don’t you worry none. Your secret’s safe with us.”

It’s just before three when Desmond pulls away. I lean my back against the arm of the porch swing, ball my knees up to my chest, and pull the store-bought dress down over my ankles.

The night air is thick and humid. Claire Greeley stands by the open window, bouncing her three-year-old boy back to sleep. She alternates between watching the two figures in the truck in the driveway and glaring at her older sons, Daniel and Peter, who are sound asleep in the twin bed next to hers. They look angelic in the bed they share with their baby brother, Jonathan, but right now, she’d love to pinch their heads off for telling the poor little guy stories about the boogieman.

Jonathan makes a little grunt, like he used to when he was a baby. The sound makes Claire feel lonely and reminds her of everything her husband has missed. She breathes into the crook of the boy’s sweaty little neck, wishing she could catch a whiff of his baby smell just one last time. But at three, the scent is long gone, and when the child is awake, his sole focus is being a big boy like his brothers.

The idea of Claire’s boys growing up leaves her exhausted, something she’s grown accustomed to since her husband died in the war. She isn’t exactly sure when the feeling set in, but she’s felt this way for so long, it’s hard to imagine what it would be like not to feel this way. At first, the exhaustion came from the grief, then anger, but at some point during the past four years, it’s come from sheer worry. While she worries about normal everyday things, like who those two figures are in the truck and what they want at this ungodly hour, mostly she worries about her boys.

How long can they share this small room? One tiny bed? How long will she be able to make them follow all of Miss Mamie’s ridiculous rules? Up until now, it’s been easy to keep them in line. The fact that they’re all terrified of the old bat helps, but what about when they get older? The worst question doesn’t just keep Claire up at night; it follows her around every second of every day. How can she possibly make up for her boys not having a father?