The Girls of August (3 page)

“Well, number one, it’s not empty. There’s a small Gullah settlement on the western
side.”

“Oh, well, Gullahs…”

“Most Gullahs I know are far more substantial than a lot of the people we call friends,”
Mac snapped.

“I didn’t mean they weren’t. I just meant they’re not likely to want to mingle with
three middle-aged white ladies and a baby girl, are they? And by the way, do you
know any of Baby’s people? Seems you would, given that both your families have houses
out there.”

“Had houses. Ours is long gone. You know that. And, yeah, I probably met them, but…”
He trailed off, lost in thought, and I wished I could crawl into his brain and find
out what was going on up there.

I was just about to say, “Earth to Mac,” when he leaned up on his elbow and stared
down at me, his eyes more serious than I thought they needed to be. “Did I ever tell
you about all that time I spent on Tiger when I was a boy? We swam and built bonfires
and told lies, and I don’t know what all. The Gullahs treated us like we were their
own kids. We literally grew up together, some of us.”

I touched his lips. “So maybe you still have friends out there.”

Mac fell back into his pillow. “Nah. Time changes things, Maddy. I doubt a single
soul would remember me.”

“But you
must
know Baby’s people.”

“Not really. Our house was on the northern tip and theirs is closer to the southern
end. I still don’t know how their house survived Hugo and ours didn’t.”

“Why didn’t y’all rebuild?”

“Too hard. Too much hassle. Too much money. And besides, if memory serves me, I was
a handsome resident chasing after a beautiful young Pink Lady right about then.”

I lifted his hand to my lips and kissed his fingers. “You know,” I said, “you might
be surprised. I mean about anybody out there remembering you.”

“I don’t think so, Maddy. That was another time. People change, move on. But back
to my original point.” He pulled me close. “Won’t you girls at least consider staying
in Charleston?”

“Why on earth, honey, do you mind us going to Tiger Island so much?”

“Maybe, just maybe,” he said, cupping my face in his giant hands, “it’s because
I love my wife. And I don’t want to be away from her for two whole weeks. Maybe I’ve
gotten spoiled these years, having you all to myself.”

I traced his lips with my finger and whispered, “Just think how you’ll feel after
all those days spent away from each other.”

We kissed and one thing led to another as such things are wont to do. When all was
said and done, I drifted to sleep, dreaming in fits and starts of a baby, and even
as I dreamed, even as I saw her crawling across my kitchen floor, I knew it would
never come true.

Two months later, the three girls of August and Baby Gaillard loaded up the SUV
and Mac drove us out of Charleston. Our destination? A rickety dock on a nearly deserted
stretch of coast located just past the southernmost point of Cape Romain National
Wildlife Refuge. Baby texted and prattled all the while. No one, not even Rachel,
could have accused her of being unable to talk and use her thumbs at the same time.

“Y’all are all Teddy talks about,” she said, tapping her smartphone’s keyboard with
one hand and pulling her blonde curls over one shoulder with the other. “He says
he wants me to be one of the girls of August when I grow up. Ha!” Judging by the
whoosh
sound, she’d evidently just sent a text into the ether. “That Teddy, he sure is a
funny guy.”

“In the unlikely event that ever happens,” Rachel said under her breath, glowering
out the window.

Baby guffawed. I’d give her that: She had a big-girl laugh and she wasn’t afraid
to let it rip. “When I grow up! I said to him, ‘Why, sweetheart, I AM grown up. Lookee
here. I have the boobs to prove it!’”

“How does he stand one minute—” Rachel started, snapping her gaze from the window
and aiming it at Baby.

This was going far worse than I had imagined.

“Now, Rachel,” Barbara interrupted, clipping short what was surely going to be a
cut-to-the-bone quip, “you know as well as I do how gullible grown men can be in
the presence of a pretty young woman.” Barbara adjusted her big moon-shaped sunglasses
and shot Baby a venom-dripping fake smile.

I was actually taken aback by Barbara’s appearance. She had lost a good ten pounds
since I’d seen her in June, had a new hairstyle with lovely platinum highlights,
and had pretty much replaced her schoolmarm charm with sexy cougar sass. “Men don’t
think straight when a pretty young thing walks into a room. They drool in places
we don’t even know about.”

“Thanks so much for the vote of confidence,” Mac said, adjusting the rearview mirror,
probably to get a better look at the girls.

“How old are you, anyway?” Rachel asked, pulling a sterling flask from her boho bag.

Baby tugged on a halter top that barely contained her boobs—she really did have
a nice rack, as Mac so demurely put it—and said, sweet as the first dew, “I am twenty-two
years old, which is, I believe, close to y’all’s ages when you first became the girls
of August. I have a degree in pharmacology from the University of Kentucky—go, Wildcats!
But I don’t work, not now, anyway, because Teddy says we have all the money we need.
I can recite all of the US presidents in the order they served in under one minute.
And I am fluent in Arabic.”

“No you aren’t,” Rachel spit.

Mac started laughing that low, rumbling growl that takes over when he’s truly tickled.

“Yes, I am,” Baby said. And then, in a breathtaking show of not getting it, rather
than speaking Arabic, she proceeded to—very rapidly—spout off the entire presidential
roll call. I didn’t know if it was a parlor act or not, given that I couldn’t keep
up with her, nor did I know if Fillmore came before or after Pierce. And how did
Grover Cleveland get in there twice but not consecutively? I gazed at her pretty
pink lips, which were moving at the speed of light, and the smattering of freckles
that moved in tandem with her words, and I thought for a moment that I had underestimated
the child. I looked at Rachel, who was taking a pull from her flask, and then at
Barbara, who watched Baby with all the disdain one casts at a bad lounge act, and
decided that no, if anything, I had given Baby Gaillard too much credit.

“Ta-daa!!!” Baby said brilliantly after “Obama” rolled off her tongue. And then she
started texting again.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap
!

“Give me some of that,” Barbara said, taking the flask from Rachel. In as ladylike
a manner as possible, she took a sip, dabbed the corner of her mouth with her pinky,
and said, “These kids’ thumbs are going to look like thighs one day.”

“Who are you writing?” Rachel asked.

“Texting,” Baby corrected her without looking up. “I’m texting.”

“OK, who are you
texting
?” Rachel let the word drop off her tongue as if it were dung.

“Friends. Teddy. Mostly friends though because Teddy’s too busy.” She gazed into
the screen, her eyes scanning her latest message, and started laughing.

Barbara said, “That’s all my kids do. They don’t even e-mail anymore.”

“They text during physical exams,” Mac said. “Joe told me a young woman was in for
a pap smear last week and she texted her way through the whole damn thing.”

The image of a woman in stirrups texting away as the doctor inserted a speculum hit
me as hysterically funny. Soon my giggles bloomed into all-out guffaws. Barbara joined
in, tears streaming.

But not Rachel, who wasn’t just annoyed at Baby—she was clearly hostile—and not
Baby, who appeared to be fascinated with her latest message, her bright eyes scanning
the tiny screen. While Barbara and I held our sides and howled, Baby began clicking
away again, the fake keyboard sound a counterpoint to our laughter.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Rachel snapped, and before we realized what was happening,
Rachel rolled down her window, snatched Baby’s phone, and hurled it out.

Baby looked up, her green eyes wide, her mouth caught in a shocked, open-jawed silence.
Barbara and I haltingly quit laughing and Mac scrunched down deeper in his seat as
if he wanted to be anywhere on the planet except here, in this car, with an angry
woman and a hurt child, ferrying us to an almost uninhabited island.

“Jesus, Rachel!” Barbara muttered, staring out the window and then taking another
long pull on the flask.

This was not like Rachel. She might be a no-nonsense kind of gal, but tossing a
phone out of a moving car was out of bounds even for her. I shot her a what-do-you-think-you’re-doing
glance but she kept her gaze averted.

 “There’s no cell service out there anyway,” she said, glaring into the distance.

We were traveling down a two-lane blacktop that was bordered by marsh on both sides.
There was no way the phone could be retrieved, but Mac, who is as good-hearted as
the day is long, started to slow down, and he caught my eye in the rearview.

I shook my head no. “It’s all marsh grass and gators,” I said.

Mac let out a heavy sigh and Rachel grabbed her flask away from Barbara. The sweet
scent of bourbon mixed with the bracing salt air and the stink of decaying vegetation.
It’s all that dead stuff that makes the marsh muck so rich
, I thought ruefully, regretting I had ever agreed to this little outing. My stomach
lurched and I was afraid I was going to be sick.

“Baby, do you want me to call Teddy when I get home? Tell him to buy you another
phone so that you’ve got one waiting for you when you get there?” Mac, the peacemaker.

Baby, grim-lipped, nodded yes, but she did not speak.

Rachel rolled her eyes. Barbara refreshed her lipstick. I pressed my hands against
my belly and took a few deep breaths.

And that’s how we traveled the rest of the way, to what could be described as the
end of the earth, in silence, fuming, Baby’s bottom lip trembling as she fought back
tears, sea light and birdsong all around.

Fossey Pearson was as barnacled as his boat, an old wooden-hulled retired shrimp trawler
named
Miss Lucky Eyes
. The boat’s name struck me as particularly hilarious given the fact that grizzled
Fossey Pearson had only one eye and precious few more teeth.

“Got here just in time,” he said, popping out of the wheelhouse and keeping his
singular gaze aimed at Baby. He stepped onto the pier and put out his hand. “Good
afternoon, Ms. Gaillard. I mean Patterson. Nice to see you again. Tide’s just about
to turn.” He nodded in the direction of a barrier island rising like an emerald out
of the blue Atlantic. “
Miss Lucky Eyes
can’t get over to Tiger in a full-moon low tide. So, ladies”—his cigar bobbed from
one side of his mouth to the other—“fire your engines. There’s no time to waste.”
Then he aimed his good eye at Mac. “You coming too?”

“No sir. Just the ladies.” Mac had donned a pair of aviator sunglasses, pulled his
ball cap seriously low, and slipped on his windbreaker even though it was hot as
blazes. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought he was trying not to be recognized.

Fossey stayed in motion, unburdening Baby of her small overnight case. “Everything
on board! Right now!”

Mac, who was carrying four duffel bags because he truly is a Southern gentleman, whispered
in my ear, “It’s not too late.”

But Fossey—his gruffness, his decayed charm—had rekindled my interest in Tiger Island
and our time together. Rachel would calm down. I would make sure of it. “Not on your
life,” I whispered back.

He nodded, sensing my resolve. “Everybody got everything?” Mac asked, dumping the
duffel bags aboard.

“Coolers. We need the coolers. And Baby, let’s go help Mac with the grocery bags,”
I said.

She looked as though she might go into a teenage sulk but evidently thought better
of it. “Sure,” she said breezily, walking toward the SUV, adjusting her short shorts.
“Gawd, I can’t wait to get out of these clothes and into the water.”

“Clothes? That’s what she calls that getup?” Rachel hissed, wiping sweat off her
upper lip and then hoisting a bag into Fossey’s sunburned, scarred arms.

“Just wait, we’ll all be half naked with her before you know it. And it’s not just
her. Nobody her age wears clothes anymore,” Barbara said, thrusting a second bag
at Fossey, who appeared to be winded: His cigar was drooping.

“Y’all plan on staying the whole doggone month?” he grumbled.

“A prepared gal is a happy gal,” Barbara said brightly.

“Is that so?” Fossey said, taking in her sweet, angular features, her jaunty ponytail.
“Well don’t that beat all.”

“Mr. Pearson,  I do believe you’re flirting,” Rachel said, and for a moment her tense
visage gave way, revealing the old, playful Rachel of a couple of hours ago.

“A man might age,” he said, hoisting up his belt-less pants, “but an old salt like
me”—he winked that faded blue eye—“never gives up.”

Barbara beamed, her fresh red lipstick glowing in the high-noon sun.

“He comes from an old, old family who have been in these parts forever,” Baby whispered
as we made our way down the dock. “His great-grandmamma was a Cherokee princess and
his great-granddaddy was a Gullah king. A very important man, his great-granddaddy.”

“Really?” I asked, sizing up the bent, sunburned old man who was gallantly taking
Barbara by the hand and helping her aboard. “Well, whatever he is,” I said, adjusting
my bag of kippers and saltines, peanut butter and bread, “he’s our only way on and
off the island, so I hope his royal heritage keeps him on the straight and narrow.”

“Hurry up, ladies,” he called to Baby and me as Mac lifted the final cooler onto
the deck. “The tide waits for no man,” he bellowed, his arms outstretched as if he
were Poseidon himself.