Porch Lights (32 page)

“It’s a French seafood stew,” Charlie said. “Aunt Maureen and I love it. Every time Mom got deployed she’d take me to this place called La Bouillabaisse. Just me and her.”

“See?” I said.

“Really? What’s in it?” Buster said.

“Tomatoes, fish, onions, garlic, I don’t know what else. I can look it up on the Internet if you want. Want to make some?”

“If you learned how to make it, wouldn’t your aunt Maureen be delighted?” Charlie got a peculiar look on his face and I asked, “What is it, honey?”

“I thought you understood,” he said. “I can’t go back there.”

“Why not?” Buster asked.

“Because it will be a disaster.”

“I have to talk to you about this, Buster,” I said. “I need your help.”

I looked at Buster, and his eyebrows were knitted in that old familiar way that showed his concern.

“Come here, Charlie,” he said, dropping the bucket of fish to the ground by his SUV. He kneeled down to look Charlie straight in the eyes. “What can I do to help, son?”

“Let me stay,” he said and began to cry. “Please let me stay.”

Buster stood up, put his arms around Charlie, and hugged him for all he was worth.

“Oh, dear,” I said and dug in my pocket for a tissue. “Here, sweetheart.”

“Come on, buddy,” Buster said. “There, now. Let’s go home and make some sandwiches and talk about this. It’s lunchtime. We’ll figure something out.”

Well, wasn’t that just like Buster to tell Charlie we’d figure something out? What? Just what did he think we could figure out to solve
this
? It was Jackie’s call to make, not ours.

Charlie climbed into the backseat of Buster’s SUV, and we were home in a few minutes.

“All right, young man. It’s time to clean the fish. You gonna help me?”

“I guess so.”

A very somber Charlie and a deeply concerned Buster took the bucket of fish under the house, and I climbed the steps to the house.

“Tomato sandwiches all right with y’all?” I called out to them.

“Yeah, God, it’s too hot to eat anything else,” Buster called back. “Thanks.”

The very first thing I did was wash my hands. Please! I had touched the handrails of a bridge and a fishing rod, and I felt so sticky that if I didn’t have to make lunch I would’ve hopped in the shower. Actually, my hopping days were behind me. Now I stepped cautiously into the shower.

The second thing I did was take Buster my largest rectangular Pyrex dish, in which he could put the cleaned fish. It was like the old days. He would bring me beautifully cleaned and filleted fish, and I would figure out what to do with it.

“Thanks,” he said and smiled at me. “Feels like old times.”

“You’re welcome,” I said, thinking, Well, it’s not. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge in all these years. Then I looked at Charlie. “You okay, baby?”

“Yeah, I guess. Boy, cleaning fish is a messy business, isn’t it?”

“Well, yes. I think I would faint if I had to cut the head off a live fish.”

“Well, they’re not exactly alive,” Buster said. “They’re sort of stunned.”

“Okay, well, I’m going to go back upstairs and make lunch. Y’all come on up when you’re ready.”

“Will do,” Buster said. “We won’t be too long. Right, Charlie? Hand me that knife, please.”

When Buster and Charlie came inside for lunch, the table was set for three. A platter of tomato sandwiches cut in half was in the middle with a bowl of potato chips and a smaller bowl of pickles. I had a pitcher of iced tea, of course, and a small bowl of lemon wedges. But I had a new beverage for Charlie: the Arnold Palmer. Half iced tea and half lemonade. Surely Jackie couldn’t object to that. And, most important, I had rinsed the remaining guts off the fish before I let them near my Big Chill refrigerator.

“I’ll just cover this with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for now,” I said. “We’re going to have an amazing supper.”

Buster washed his hands at the kitchen sink and encouraged Charlie to do the same, which he did. That simple act of washing hands together, the sight of their backs at the sink, well, it was a diamond-sharp example of why grandparents loved being grandparents. The little boy who feels so much and knows so little yet about the world and about life, standing next to the older man who would love to show him everything he knows that’s of value and worthy of pursuit. And most important, it’s as though they both know that time is the enemy, working against them, so the time they
do
have together is so cherished.

We sat down, and I passed the platter of sandwiches around. I had made a fast recipe for basil mayonnaise in the blender and used it instead of the store-bought goop.

“Wow,” Charlie said. “This is really good, Glam.”

“Yeah, it really is, Annie. I’ve missed your basil mayonnaise. Nothing like it.”

He was on his best behavior, and I suspected that the closer we got to nightfall, it would improve even more. By bedtime I might have Prince Charming on my hands.

“Thanks, guys. So you liked fishing, did you, Charlie?”

“Yeah. I wonder if Edgar Allan Poe could fish.”

“Probably. I mean, it’s not that hard,” Buster said. “But who knows?”

“Well, that’s an interesting question to ask, because I’m pretty sure the answer is no. The early part of his life was spent in urban environments and in boarding school in England. Then he attended the University of Virginia, got tossed out, joined the army, and arrived here on the island. It was in November of 1827, I believe.”

“Using a fake name,” Charlie said, taking a bite of a pickle. “Edgar Perry, right?”

“That’s right. Anyway, his job was to order and organize all the food and supplies they needed for the whole fort. It wasn’t exactly like being a general, but he did such a good job handling his duties that he was promoted to sergeant major. But there’s no evidence he caught the fish they ate.”

“Annie? Since when do you know all this about Poe?”

“Well, darlin’? I’ve had a lot of time on my hands in the last few years, haven’t I?”

“Hmmm. Yeah, I reckon so.”

“Charlie, I hope you and your momma can be here when I give my talk at the library.”

“Me too!”

“What talk?”

“Well, Deb wants to raise some money for the library, so she asked me if I’d give a talk on Poe. Listen, he was a real interesting character.”

“Was he ever!” Charlie said.

“You don’t know the half of it, Charlie. Come back and see me when you’re eighteen! Anyway, so, she’s going to ask her volunteers to make some sandwiches and cookies and whatever, a punch bowl of something, I guess, and charge a little admission. Hopefully, it will work.”

“Well, put me down for a front-row seat,” Buster said.

“Really?” I said, a little surprised because I had thought Buster would never be interested in Poe.

“Yeah, really. I’m real proud of you, Annie.”

“So am I, Glam. Now if y’all could just figure out a way I can stay here, the world would be awesome.”

“What’s the
real
problem, Charlie? Just spill it,” Buster said.

Charlie told Buster basically the same things he had told me, and Buster shook his head.

“Do you want me to talk to our daughter?” he asked.

“I’ve wanted to ask you to do that. Yes, please, talk to her.”

Buster reached over and patted the back of Charlie’s hand. For some reason it gave me hope.

Chapter 17

“. . . Acting on this hint, I made the division thus: ‘A good glass in the bishop’s hostel in the devil’s—twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes—northeast and by north—main branch seventh limb east side—shoot from the left eye of the death’s-head—a bee-line from the tree through the shot fifty feet out.’ ”

“Even this division,” said I, “leaves me still in the dark.”

“It left me also in the dark,” replied Legrand, “for a few days; during which I made diligent inquiry, in the neighborhood of Sullivan’s Island, for any building which went by the name of the ‘Bishop’s Hotel’ . . .”

—Edgar Allan Poe, “The Gold-Bug”

Jackie

“S
o you caught this fish
yourself
, did you?” I asked Charlie over dinner that night.

“Yep, and that sucker was a real fighter too. He really gave me the devil, didn’t he, Guster?”

Charlie had developed a beautiful golden tan, and because of all the sun, he was sprinkled with freckles that made him even more adorable. He was also beginning to adopt a lot of my dad’s sayings, such as “He gave me the devil” and “that sucker.” Ah, family.

“Yep. But Charlie reeled him in,” Dad said. “I’m real proud of our boy here.”

“Nothing like fresh fish,” Mom said.

“I like it better fried in flour and milk,” Dad noted.

Mom cleared her throat to express her annoyance. I couldn’t blame her if she was a trifle irked. Even to the casual observer it would have seemed that all she did was put one meal on the table after another and every morsel was always fresh and as delicious as she could manage. Even since Charlie and I had been here, who could even calculate the hours she’d spent thinking up, shopping for, preparing, serving, and cleaning up after meals alone? The kitchen, the table, the porch, the island. That was just about the entirety of her world.

Was I more satisfied because my world was larger? The answer, which had been an unequivocal yes when I had arrived with Charlie in tow, was disintegrating into something I recognized as the cobwebs of confusion. I had no idea how life would be when we returned to New York. Rather than my looking forward to it, it had become a terrible dreaded challenge to be faced.

My mother was so very proud of her meals and the tables she set. It seemed that since I’d been home she’d gone to even more effort than I could recall from other visits. No, this was a lovely world of her own imagining and carefully manifested by her hand alone. All day long and through the night she did everything in her power to make it inviting to us and pleasing to all our senses. It was all hers. I’d even go so far to say that she would be justified to claim some partnership with the ocean, the breezes, and the beach itself. How she took care of her family and friends was deeply important to her. And Dad, who never gave things like what made Mom tick a thought in the world, dropped these little cherry bombs. I’d talk to him.
I like fish fried in flour and milk.
If he could see, indeed if they
both
could see, what went on in Afghanistan, they’d be so grateful to God to have a family, food, friends, and most of all the freedom to enjoy them in safety.

“Yeah, we all love the crunch of fried fish batter, but we’ll live longer if we eat our fish cooked this way,” I said. “And it’s better than the fish in Tikrit.”

“I expect
that’s
true,” Mom said.

“I never had fish in Tikrit. But I sure ate a lot of goat. When I was lucky enough to get it. Mostly we ate really skinny chicken.”

I gave Dad the hairy eyeball.

“Good grief!” Buster said and paused, his faux pas sinking in. “Annie? This fish is actually delicious. And I’ve heard goat can be tasty too.”

“Tastes like chicken!” I said.

“Does it really?” Mom asked.

“No, but that’s what we told ourselves.” I laughed. “No one goes to Afghanistan for the food.”

The fish in question was just grilled, with lemon juice, olive oil, and fresh thyme. Naturally, we had the two staples that came with a fish dinner: grits and salad. But no hush puppies. Despite Dad’s protestations that fish could be vulcanized into worthiness only when cremated in a cast-iron skillet swimming with heart-clogging, bubbling-hot grease, he was enjoying it immensely, literally gobbling it up. We all were.

“I’m just feeling kind of hangdog about not really teaching Charlie how to fish until today. I mean, when he was little we went crabbing and sometimes he’d help me reel one in, but today I was fishing with a young man, not a kid.”

“Oh, come on, Dad, you used to take him out in the boat with you all the time,” I said.

“Guster is right, Mom. Today was different, the real deal. I’ve grown up a whole lot since the last time we went fishing. Can I have some more grits, please?”

“Of course you
can
, but
may
you?” Mom said and passed the serving bowl to him.

“She means you should say ‘May I have some more grits?’ instead of ‘can,’ ” I said and wiggled my eyebrows.

“She is the cat’s mother,” Charlie said.

“No inside jokes,” Dad said, pretending to be dour. “No, our Charlie here has learned how to tire out the fish by letting him run with the line to really sink that hook in his cheek. And then, just like those fellas on the fishing channel, he slowly reeled him in.”

“Yup! That’s what I did. Hey, Glam? Is there a book about the battles on Sullivans Island?” Charlie said.

“Oh, sweetheart, I’m sure there are many!” she answered. “I’ll bet there are some right here in this house.”

“Why don’t you run a search on Dr. Steve’s e-reader?” I said.