Shem Creek (21 page)

We sat on the dark porch until our eyes became accustomed to the light of night and our ears attuned to the sounds of the woods and nearby marsh and we talked. At first we spoke of the dinner, Alex, Brad and the loss of Loretta and how Alex seemed to be adjusting so well. We moved on to Louise and Duane and the whole hilarity of their friendly fire. Then our minds turned to other things. But not our mouths. That was how we were. Our family preferred not to speak of things that were uneasy to hear. We would hem and haw around them like a patch of green stickers in the grass and we were the barefoot children, unprepared for pain, unwilling to give pain a chance to teach us something.

So, there was small talk about Lindsey leaving. Small talk about our new home. Small talk about how it all felt—these changes in our lives. Little jabs and tidbits about life that should have kept us up until the break of day. But not us. No. We said we had to get up early. We said tomorrow would be very tiring indeed. We said good night.

But we said
thank you
a thousand times to my sister (who had promised to make us biscuits in the morning) and we told each other we loved each other, and even though an onlooker would have said it was a routine deliverance of a polite requisite, we knew we meant it—meant it that we loved each other. We knew that the hearts of women knew no generation or borders, that love was complete. It was.

THE sun rose sooner than I wanted to see it, but there it was, creeping through the venetian blinds of Mimi’s guest room, where I had been holed up since the middle of June. It was a landmark day because up until then we could have told ourselves that we had just been trying this new life on for size. Having decided it fit pretty well, we consented to sink new roots in the Lowcountry. Even Gracie, who said she didn’t understand why, was comfortable here and felt safer than she did in New Jersey. After all, the Lowcountry was the land of my ancestors and one we could claim with no apology. It was not a runaway destination. Rather, it was where we had begun, generations earlier. The Lowcountry belonged to us and us to her.

All that said, moving back to Mount Pleasant was still the single largest defiant act of my adult life. Giving Fred his walking papers was big, but moving us over seven hundred miles away was more impressive, at least in my mind. I think it had shocked everyone so much that no one had really fought me on it, besides Gracie, that is. And, the greater hand of life had been kneading our hearts ever so gently, giving us the courage to rise to the challenges and changes.

Gracie’s stubborn determination to prove she could fit in anywhere on the planet, and in a front seat, thank you, had served her well so far, except for her one drunken incident when we first arrived and her sassy mouth. She was involved in school, flirting with Alex—although she would have vigorously denied it—and her environmental interest was her new cause célèbre.

Lindsey was ready to leave, but in Lindsey’s normal lowkey style, she repressed any expressions of wild enthusiasm. She probably knew that if she reveled in the family headlines, Gracie’s ego would demand that she do something more spectacular and dramatic to secure center stage. We all knew and accepted that Gracie just had to have the spotlight. From the day she was born, she had always been just the kind of kid who clamored for attention. Although no one said it, there was still the worrisome thought that if Gracie became rattled, she would take off for New Jersey and wind up a drug addict, living in the streets of Newark or Paterson. As long as we focused on the positive aspects of our new life in Mount Pleasant, Lindsey’s stellar achievements could quietly glow under the bushel. While that wasn’t quite fair to Lindsey, families did things that weren’t quite fair in the name of peace.

I was fully entrenched in my new job and there were many things I liked about it. The hours were flexible and I knew what had to be done. As long as I did everything, no one seemed to care when I did it. Louise wasn’t quite ready to relinquish control of the staff, which was fine with me, because I could not quite see myself executing orders with the same authority she possessed. We were operating like co-captains and it was working out well. When Louise needed me to fill in, I would act as waiter or bartender but I had yet to trespass into the inner sanctum of the kitchen. O’Malley’s whole personality was a combination of professionalism and pleasure and the drama of Duane’s kitchen kept us all in stitches—except for the occasional outburst of anger, which was unnerving. The restaurant was always busy, which made the days go quickly. Brad was nice to work for, although he rarely said anything that sounded like instructions. When he was there, which was about half the time we were open, he sat at the end of the bar and shot the breeze with customers. From that perch he had the ideal view of Shem Creek, which was music for my eyes at every glance, no matter what the weather.

Overall, life was better than I had dreamed it could be and all over the course of a summer. Basically, I had stepped in it, if you know what I mean.

I stretched under the sheets, wanting to linger for a few more moments, linger to search for a deeper read on our new life, and I decided, while in the midst of a smell fest with the sweet jasmine-scented water my sister used to wash her linens, that I had made the best possible call. It didn’t matter that the call had been made in a moment of panic, brought about by the antics of my youngest. I thought about that old
retreat to the familiar
and decided that it had nothing to do with us beyond the obvious. We had few alternatives. Given that, we, that is
I,
had chosen a sensible solution. I mean, was I expected to move to Duluth?

I stretched again and even before I wiped away the sleep from my eyes, I allowed myself to be happy, just a little. It was important that my daughters felt I was in charge of our little family and so what if I had enlisted the aid of my sister? It had given my sister purpose, my girls a chance to know her again and the work I was doing had brought them jobs and a sense of usefulness too. No, all these things were good.

My morning adrenaline kicked in and I was getting anxious to get the day moving so I rolled over and looked at the clock. It was only six forty-five. If I got up, surely no one else would be awake, so I laid there for a few more minutes. My first thought was that I would preheat the oven for Mimi’s biscuits. It took a while for her oven to reach four hundred and fifty degrees. I would wash my face, pick up the newspaper from her front walk and dress myself. I was compiling a list of things to do and more came with each thought. I threw back the sheets and said in a whisper,
Thank you, God. Thank you for everything.
It was not the prayer of a devout
anything
but only of a woman relaxed and hopeful for the first time in years. Wasn’t it funny, I thought, that sometimes you didn’t know how miserable you had been until you weren’t miserable any longer.

I was brushing my teeth and thinking how sparkling and perfect the basin was. Although I cleaned up after myself and wiped the sink and faucet to a spotless shine each morning and I would always encourage the girls to do the same, I knew that Mimi came behind us with a sponge and a bottle of disinfectant. Soon, that evening in fact, we would begin to encrust our new sinks with little bits of toothpaste and clog our new drains with hair. I laughed to myself, thinking I wouldn’t have a clean house like my sister until the girls were both gone and that then I would no doubt hate the cleanliness.

I dressed myself and went about, beginning the day at the kitchen table with the newspaper. I was reading “Dear Abby” when Lindsey appeared with a glass of juice.

“Morning,” she said, “wanna know what I just thought of?”

“Morning, baby,” I said, folding the paper and putting it away. “Listen to this. Here’s a letter to Abby from a twelve-year-old girl with a big bust. She wants to know why the guys don’t like her for her brains. Want some eggs?”

“Who cares about her? I get to move twice in one week! How disgusting is that? You’re gonna die without me around to help you, you know.”

I looked up at my beautiful daughter and the reality of her leaving me grabbed my heart for the millionth time. But I wouldn’t let her see that. It was too early for tears.

“There’s no doubt that I’ll be at enormous risk,” I said. “Want some eggs?”

“Eggs make me gag, Mom, you know that.”

“Pour your poor old mother another cup of coffee, sweetheart.”

She took my cup, refilled it and gave it back to me. “I’m gonna go get dressed.”

Soon the kitchen was alive with activity, Mimi’s biscuit preparation carefully monitored by each of us.

“Mom? Can you make biscuits like Aunt Mimi?” Lindsey said.

“Not if my life depended on it,” I said, stuffing a hot one in my mouth, dripping with fig preserves she made from figs she grew.

“Oh, man! These things are banging!” Gracie said, buttering at least her third if not fourth one.

“Banging?” Mimi said and looked in my direction.

“Gracie, in our day that term had another meaning.”

The girls giggled, knowing exactly what I had meant.

After we had consumed enough carbohydrates to fuel every runner in the NYC Marathon, we stripped the beds and threw all the sheets in the washer.

“Don’t want to leave you with a big mess,” Lindsey said to Mimi.

I was coming through the kitchen with an armload of damp towels and almost knocked Mimi over.

“Here! Lord! Don’t worry about all that!” She took them from me and marched to the laundry room.

“I need the exercise! Seriously!” I said.

“Look! Why don’t you all just take the first carload over to the new house and I’ll be right along!”

I hugged her neck and said okay.

“You don’t mind?”

We were so excited to begin moving in; it was ridiculous. The car was stuffed to the hilt.

“So, where am I supposed to sit?” Gracie said.

Lindsey patted her thighs and a groaning Gracie crawled in. We backed out of Mimi’s yard.

“I can’t believe we’re really doing this,” Gracie said.

“Did you brush your teeth?” Lindsey said to Gracie. “Your breath smells like shit.”

“Yes, I did. And, by the way, yours smells like ass!”

“
Girls!
Do you mind? Jeesch!”

For the duration of the short ride, Gracie exhaled in Lindsey’s face, Lindsey exhaled on Gracie and both of them argued over what radio station they were going to blast. I was so obsessed with a list of what we had to do that I was almost oblivious.

“I called SCE&G, the phone company, the water bureau,” I said out loud and to the interest of no one. “And, I ordered the
Post and Courier
for Sundays, and put in a change of address with the post office.”

“I’ll be in the club, with a bottle fulla bub . . . ,” Gracie rapped along with the radio.

I just rolled my eyes and pulled into the yard of our new house. As we moved down the long drive, the girls got quiet.

“Wow,” Gracie said, “it looks smaller than I remember.”

It did to me as well.

“Well, we’ll just make do, that’s all. We have to wait until we sell the house in Montclair and then we can buy something. In the meanwhile, we’ll manage.”

We began unloading the car, carrying clothes over our arms and tromping up the steps. I opened the door and we were home, at least for the short term. I had asked the Epsteins to remove the bric-a-brac, and without all the framed pictures, books, area rugs, potholders and so on, the place looked completely unloved. On the other hand, they had put a fresh coat of paint on the living room/dining room/kitchen and that brightened things up considerably. We were keeping the beds and the rest of the furniture until we could move our own and figure out where we would be long term.

“You can have the larger bedroom,” Lindsey said to Gracie. “Since I’ll be gone and all.”

“Oh, thanks a lot, Miss Generous!”

This kicked off another spirited exchange of comments regarding the frugal nature of one versus the martyr status of the other, but it was all a big joke because one bedroom was a matchbox and the other one was a shade smaller.

“Just hang your stuff up and let’s keep moving!” I said.

We must have gone up and down the front steps a thousand times that morning and the screen door slammed so many times, I thought I would hear it in my sleep.

Mimi arrived around ten with groceries, specifically salt, flour and sugar.

“It’s bad luck to buy your own or maybe it’s bad luck to sleep in a new home on the first night without it. Whatever! I can’t remember! I just know you’re supposed to have it, that’s all.”

She had also brought diet soda, chips, salsa, microwave popcorn, canned soups, frozen pasta and pizza, bread, and eggs, basically one of everything from the grocery store. She also brought a flashlight and extra batteries.