Porch Lights (7 page)

“Nursing homes. All of them. Except for Uncle Thomas and Aunt Ellen. Uncle Thomas is the one who was a priest? He lives in the archdiocese’s retirement home. And Aunt Ellen, well, she’s just not the same as she was.”

“What happened to her?” I asked.

“She’s got signs of Alzheimer’s,” Jackie said. “She needs to be in assisted living, but she won’t go. She wants to stay in her own home. She goes nuts if anyone tries to talk to her about it.”

“What’s Alzheimer’s?” Charlie asked.

“It’s the meanest disease in the whole world,” I said. “Would you like some more, Charlie?”

“Uh, no thanks. But it was delicious!”

“Alzheimer’s is a terrible illness that makes you lose your memories a little bit at a time until you don’t know who anyone is,” Jackie said.

“Oh,” Charlie said and drained his juice. “Gross.”

“Charlie? Sweetie? Why don’t you put your dishes in the sink and let’s you and me go for a walk on the beach?”

“I don’t feel like walking the beach,” Jackie said.

“You never did,” I said with a forgiving smile. “I was just thinking that it might be nice to spend some time with my grandson. That’s all.”

“That’s actually a great idea,” Jackie said. “I’ll clean up the kitchen.”

“Thanks! Let’s get out of here, Charlie.” We started out of the room and I stopped. “Jackie?”

“Hmmm?”

“Listen, remember how we always wiped down the front windows?”

“I’m all over it, Mom. Y’all go have fun!”

In minutes, we were on the other side of the dunes. I slipped off my sandals and left them at the bottom of our steps. Charlie was barefooted. We were heading toward the lighthouse. Within twenty yards of our walkover, Charlie spotted a horseshoe crab.

“Wow! Look at the size of this! It’s a monster.”

Without any trepidation, he kicked it over with his big toe. It was predictably empty.

“Probably a female,” I said.

Charlie looked at me with the most curious expression and then a devilish grin. I knew what he was thinking. Where, exactly
where
, were the genitals?

“How do you know?”

“Because, my young scholar, this shell is easily twenty inches long and males don’t get this large.”

“But it’s got this long thing . . . doesn’t that make it a boy?”

“No, that long
thing
you refer to is a tail spine, not a tallywacker.”

“Tallywacker?”

“Yes. And you know exactly what I’m talking about too! But it’s probably best not to tell your momma I said that word, okay?”

“Sure. Then what’s it for? Defense?”

“Well, defense against its own habitat, I suppose. You see, sometimes a wave can flip them over on their backs. They stick that tail of theirs in the mud and flip themselves back over on their stomachs. Pretty cool, huh?”

“Yeah. Way cool. Can I keep it?”

“Of course! Why don’t you run it back up to the house now before someone else comes along and takes it.” Charlie was gone in a shot. “And makes a lamp out of it.” I was talking to myself and lost in the moment of watching my grandson filled with the joy of discovery. Oh, he had seen horseshoe crabs on this beach before, but this was the first time he had touched one without thinking twice. He was growing up. Before I could think about the tide or the dogs on the beach Charlie was running back. What energy little boys have! I thought.

“I put it on the deck to catch the sun!” he called out.

“Good, because if it’s not completely dried out—”

“I know, I know. It draws ants. Meanwhile, I got the biggest crab shell in the world!”

We picked up our walk, moving to the water’s edge so the incoming tide would wash over our feet.

“The horseshoe crab isn’t really a crab, you know.”

“It isn’t? Well, then, what the heck is it?”

“It’s an arthropod. Related to the scorpion and spiders in general. Hasn’t changed a thing about itself in two hundred million years!”

“For real?”

“Yep. People call them living fossils.”

“Wow.” Charlie was quiet for a few moments before he spoke again. “So what else do you know?”

“What else do you
want
to know?”

A flock of seagulls was wandering around the shore, and they began to scatter and fly away as we approached them. Charlie, as any little boy would, ran toward them waving his arms and growling like a crazy lion. When the remaining few took off in a panic, he laughed.

“Dumb birds. A lot of stuff. Like what’s the story on that lighthouse?”

“The lighthouse?”

“Yeah. It’s really weird-looking. Aren’t they supposed to be round?”

“Well, they usually are, but a triangle is a stronger shape. See the way the edge faces the ocean? This one has survived hurricane winds over 125 miles per hour. But I agree with you, it is weird-looking.”

“Can we go in it? I mean, not right now. But sometime?”

“Oh, I think I could get us an invitation for a tour.”

“Sweet. Totally sweet.”

“Ah, Charlie, there are so many wonders here, just waiting for you to find them.”

“Like what?”

“Well, Charleston’s very historic. I mean, even this island has its share of important history that happened right on this very sand.”

“History is a snore. Boooor-ing!”

“Really? Really? Do you think pirates are a snore?”

“Oh, please, Glam. All that baloney is just made-up junk.”

“Pretty cynical for ten years old, aren’t we?” He shrugged his little shoulders, and my heart melted. “How about Blackbeard? He was here all the time. Did you know that?”

“Come on.”

“No,
you
come on! Grandmother never lies. I’m going to give you a book to read that will tell you all about Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet and all those characters. Their very real lives of danger and mayhem were a huge influence on Edgar Allan Poe, you know.”

“Who’s Edgar Allan Poe?”

I stopped dead in my tracks, grabbed my blouse over my heart, and gasped long and loud for effect. “What? You don’t know . . . he was
here
! Stationed at Fort Moultrie before the war!”

“Which war?”

“The only one that mattered, dear heart. Poe is the father of the detective novel and a pioneer of science fiction . . . oh, Mother McCree! I can see I have my work cut out for me!”

By now Charlie had his arms folded across his chest and was staring at me through his bangs. I caught a glimpse of the man he would become, strong-willed and determined, but the stubborn little devil was caught in my snare. I had him right where I wanted him. So rather than lecture him, I began to walk again, making him beg me to tell him stories. He was amazed to learn that Robert Louis Stevenson’s
Treasure Island
was actually Poe’s “The Gold-Bug,” just re-imagined.

“I read
Treasure Island
last year in a comic book! But I never even saw a copy of the bug book.”

“ ‘The Gold-Bug.’ I’ll give you my copy if you’d like,” I said. “There’s even a Goldbug Island right over the Ben Sawyer Bridge!”

“Really?”

“Yes. Most people think ‘The Gold-Bug’ takes place on this very island because it is also believed that Blackbeard and a lot of other pirates used to bury their loot here. And they made maps to come back and find it. Pity the poor fellows who had to dig the holes to bury the booty.”

“Why? And Glam, booty isn’t a nice word either, you know.”

“What?” I could feel my face turn red. “ ‘Booty’ means ‘treasure.’ Anyway, because the captain would throw them in the hole with
the treasure
!”

“You mean, they were buried alive?”

“I imagine they shot them first. But being buried alive was a recurring theme in a lot of Poe’s work too.”

“That is some seriously creepy stuff, Glam.”

“Well, it could never happen today, but back in Poe’s day they didn’t have funeral homes who prepared bodies for burial. So the family would see about all that. And sometimes people in deep comas were accidentally buried alive. You should read
The Fall of the House of Usher
. I’m telling you, Poe was like Stephen King!”

“Stephen King? The guy who wrote that movie
Carrie
? It’s Mom’s total favorite.”

“Really? Well, Stephen King wrote the book on which the movie was based. If there is one, you should always read the book before you see the film.”

“Why?”

“Why? Oh, my dear . . . because a book lets your imagination soar and a movie makes all the decisions for you. A book is almost always, but not always, a far richer experience than a book turned into a movie. But I think it’s probably a real challenge to condense a whole book into an hour and a half or two hours on film.”

“Wow. Mom says books are better too, but now I know why.”

I smiled. If I had done anything right with Jackie, I had given her a love of reading. We walked and walked, talking about pirates and treasure maps and all kinds of things until we were finally walked and talked out.

“Let’s go home,” I said. “It’s long past lunchtime.”

“It is?”

“Charlie? Look at the position of the sun.”

I gave him a quick lesson on the sun and shadows, and he was simply amazed. What did they teach these kids in school nowadays? How to write poetry in Mandarin? Phooey on that.

“And,” I added, “you’re going to notice that when the thermometer gets to around one hundred degrees, around four in the afternoon, the skies will get very dark and then we’ll have a great thunder boomer for about half an hour. When it’s over, the skies turn blue and the sun comes back out.”

“Wow, this is like being in a rain forest or something, isn’t it?”

“Some people consider us to be semitropical.”

“Semitropical.”

“Yep. Semitropical.”

Later, at home over a fast lunch of tomato sandwiches and cups of leftover soup, Charlie regaled Jackie with all the things we talked about on our walk.

“She knows all this
stuff
! I mean,
amazing
stuff! Can I have some ketchup, please?”

“She is the cat’s mother,” I said with perfect timing, but neither one of them reacted. I was so sleepy then, I would have given a front tooth to just close my eyes for an hour. Charlie had flat worn me out, and it was barely three o’clock.

“You’re telling me?” Jackie said and handed him the bottle of ketchup, which he used to thoroughly douse his sandwich. “She’s my mother, you know.”

“I know! But how come you never told me any of these stories?”

“I don’t know . . . I guess because you never asked?”

“Well, children, if you’ll clean up, the cat’s mother is going to take her book out to the porch and read for a while.”

Finally they stopped talking and looked at each other.

“The rule is,” Jackie said, “you’re not supposed to refer to Glam as
she
, especially when
she
’s right in the room. It’s considered disrespectful.”

“Oh,” Charlie said. “Sorry. I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay, precious,” I said. “Have a brownie.”

I was lost in tenth-century Scotland’s social machinations and what the lassies and laddies did in the dark when Jackie and Charlie joined me. I quickly closed my book, not that there was anything to be ashamed of in the pages, just a few bees and a couple of birds.

“So what are you up for this afternoon?” Jackie asked. “I was thinking I might take Charlie to the aquarium. You want to go?”

“Oh, no thanks. All those sharks give me nightmares.”

“Sharks?”

“Charlie, you
know
they have sharks there. How many times have you been to the aquarium?”

“Not since I was a baby.”

“Really?”

“Yep. I still have that stuffed turtle in my room at home, though. It’s a baby toy covered in crusty baby slobber. Smells like sour milk.”

“What?” I said with a grimace. “Nasty!”

“Your nose is growing, boy,” Jackie said. “I’ve washed that thing a hundred times. At least.”

“Well, that was from the last time I went. Hey! Look at the dogs!” Charlie said, squealing in excitement.

Stella and Stanley, Steve Plofker’s chocolate-colored Boykin spaniels, ran across our dunes and right up to the edge of our deck. They were sniffing around his horseshoe crab shell. Charlie ran down the steps to ward them off, and moments later Dr. Love appeared to retrieve his pets. From where we stood up on the porch we could hear him call out to Charlie.

“They won’t bite,” Steve said. “Go ahead, you can pet them. Who are you?”

“I’m not allowed to talk to strangers,” Charlie said, acting nervous. He looked up to the porch. “Glam? Mom?”

“It’s okay, Charlie. Well, hello, Dr. Plofker! Got the day off?” I called out. “Come say hello to my daughter, and that’s my grandson, Charlie.”

He was all sweaty, and it was obvious he’d been running, getting his daily exercise. He was wearing shorts. Nice legs.

“Hi, Charlie. Watch my dogs for a minute?”

Charlie was already on his knees on the ground, scratching them behind the ears. “You bet!”

“Great! Thanks!”

Steve ran up the steps, opened the screen door, and said, “It’s Sunday. That’s why I’m not working.”

“Merciful Mother of God! In all this excitement, I forgot to go to Mass!”

“It’s okay, Mom. We all forgot.”

“Well, we’ll just have to go twice next Sunday,” I said. “Would you like a glass of iced tea?”

“Sure . . . actually, just water would be great. Thanks.”

“San Pellegrino, Evian, or island
eau naturel
?” I said, thinking there was no end to my cleverness and that suddenly I had as much energy as a young woman. “Say hello to Jackie. Jackie, say hello to Steve.”

“Anything’s fine, Annie. It’s nice to meet you, Jackie. I’ve heard a lot about you and Charlie, and well, I’m so sorry for your loss. I’d shake your hand, but I’m pretty sweaty.”

Yeah, you’re sweaty, I thought, and you smell like something irresistible out of tenth-century Scotland.

I left them on the porch, and, as fast as it was humanly possible, I poured some Evian over ice in a glass and rushed back. Steve was leaning against the banisters, and they were talking about Afghanistan. It was probably prudent for him to be made aware that my daughter was handy with a gun and that she knew her way around an operating room too. Might as well get all that unfeminine but necessary weapons expertise business out in the open, right? I handed him the glass, leaned in discreetly, and took a good whiff. Wow.