The Hurricane Sisters (34 page)

“You insignificant little whore,” he said, “you’d better learn to keep your mouth shut or next time . . .”

Right before I thought I was going to black out, I saw Tommy’s face. He grabbed Porter by the back of his jacket and spun him around. Then in a series of moves that had to be the chops and kicks of some kind of martial arts, he whipped Porter’s ass. When Porter was knocked completely unconscious, Tommy looked at me.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” I said, but my voice was raspy and I was shaking from head to toe.

He pulled out his cell phone and dialed 911.

“I never liked this guy. Told you he was an asshole.” Tommy came over, put his arm around me, and gave me a squeeze. “Let’s get you a cold cloth.”

We stumbled to the kitchen, threw a clean dish towel in the sink, covered it with cold water, and wrung it out. Tommy gave the details of what had happened to the authorities and where we were. In minutes I heard sirens.

There was a police car, a fire engine, and an ambulance in the yard.

“Why’d you come back, Tommy?”

“To get my tie. That thing cost almost a hundred dollars!”

“Really?”

“And I had a bad feeling.” He smiled at me.

I could feel my lip starting to swell. And there was blood all over me.

The police were suddenly inside the house and when they saw Porter on the floor, they recognized him and called for a stretcher.

“What happened here?” said the police officer. “Isn’t that guy a senator? What did he do?”

“He was trying to choke her when I got here,” Tommy said.

“No, he wasn’t,” I said and then I stopped.

My mother, Mary Beth, and Maisie were also there.

My mother said, “We’ve been calling your cell phone for almost an hour! I was frightened out of my mind! Are you all right? Oh my God! What did he do to you?”

“What the hell, Ash?” Mary Beth said.

“Oh, my poor sweet girl! Come here and let me see your lip,” Maisie said.

Before I could move, the officer said, “It looks like the senator has some explaining to do. Do you want to press charges, young lady? I’m gonna need everyone’s names and some ID.”

“No,” I said.

“Yes,” my mother said. “She wants to press charges. Ashley. You have to. It’s the right thing to do.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Liz!” Maisie said. “Why in heaven’s name do you want to subject your daughter to a public free-for-all? It won’t do any good. It won’t change anything.”

“Oh, yes it will. Do you understand that if this sweet young man—what’s your name, son?”

“Tommy. Tommy Milano.”

“Mother, if it hadn’t been for Tommy here, we’d be planning a funeral for my daughter for the same reasons we buried Juliet.”

“What are you talking about? Juliet died from an aneurysm,” Maisie said.

“An aneurysm caused by a head injury caused by
abuse
. Her stupid abusive boyfriend banged her head on the
floor
!”

“He did no such thing.”

By now, there was a small audience of people with dropped jaws, just listening. Except for Galloway who was handcuffed to the gurney and bellowing about his rights.

“Ashley!” he screamed. “Tell them the truth! Tell them Tommy did this to you and I was trying to save you! It was not me! Tell them!”

I walked over and looked him right in the eyes.

“I’m not lying for you, Porter,” I said.

“We really could have had something,” he said and closed his eyes.

“Juliet’s boyfriend did no such thing,” Maisie said again. “He was a lovely man.”

“No, he wasn’t and, yes, he did,” my mother insisted. “You knew it and I knew it and we denied it for years! Why do you think I do the work I do?”

“I’m sorry, Liz,” Maisie said and she started to weep. “Oh, God.”

“What’s done is done, Maisie.”

“I should’ve been more honest with myself and you. All these years, we’ve carried Juliet’s tragic death in our hearts and silently, I blame myself.”

“Don’t do that, Mom.”

My mother called Maisie
Mom
.

“But you don’t understand! Ashley is just so much like my Juliet. I just wanted to do the things for her that I would’ve done for your sister if she had lived. That’s all.”

“We can’t change the past. If I couldn’t help my only sister, at least I can help others. But, most of all, I’ll be damned straight to hell if I’m going to stand by and watch my daughter be strangled and pummeled by this scum.”

“You’re right,” Maisie said.

“So, yes, we’re going to court and, yes, it’s going to be messy but this is the last time Porter Galloway is going to hurt anyone and most of all, my daughter. Ashley? Are you with me?”

“One hundred percent,” I said and I began to cry. This was all too much for me. I was completely overwhelmed.

I watched and listened as the police officer read Porter his Miranda rights and the EMS attendants rolled him out of the house.

“You’re going to regret this!” Porter screamed.

Mom leaned over Porter’s face and said quietly, “No. We won’t, but you will.”

A chill ran through my body.

“You okay now?” Tommy said.

“I think so. Tommy—thank you.”

“Sure,” he said. “Officer? Do I need to come with you?”

“Yes, you do. I just want to get a few more details from Ashley. You all right, sweetheart?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

But I wasn’t fine. Mary Beth put some ice in a baggie and covered it with a thin towel and handed it to me.

“Hold this on your cheek for a few minutes and then switch it to your lip,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said, and we exchanged looks of horror and disbelief.

I answered the officer’s questions while my mother, who was also weeping, held my free hand. I had never loved her as much as I did then. She only left me for a brief moment when she walked the police officer and Tommy to the door and then it was just us—Maisie, my mother, Mary Beth, and me.

“Y’all hungry?” Mary Beth said, breaking the loudest silence ever.

Maisie blew her nose with a tissue from somewhere up in her sleeve. “Is there any gin in this house?”

“No, I don’t think so. But there’s vodka,” I said.

“Good,” said my mom.

“Vodka’s fine,” Maisie said. We all stared at her. None of us had ever seen her drink a drop of anything except gin. “Hell, there’s a hurricane raging out there. We have to make do, don’t we?”

And, to my complete surprise, we actually laughed.

“And we’ve got food for a hundred,” Mary Beth said, spilling the beans.

“What are you talking about?” Mom said.

“Oh shoot, I guess there’s a little more to tell,” I said.

“I’ll fix up a quick buffet,” Mary Beth said. “Ash? You want a glass of white wine?”

“Well, maybe a little one will get my pulse back to normal. What do you think?”

“There’s medicinal value in it,” Maisie said. “I need to call Skipper.”

“Therapeutic too,” Mom said, dialing her home phone and handing it to Maisie.

“I got this,” Mary Beth said and hurried to the kitchen.

“Tell me, Ashley. What’s going on, baby?”

“Let’s wait for Mary Beth,” I said.

Very soon after, Mary Beth and I confessed the story of our parties while we nibbled on plates of shrimp salad and cherry tomatoes stuffed with mozzarella and picked at a platter of cheese and fruit. My mother’s eyes grew larger and larger until she finally burst out laughing. Maisie began to chuckle then too. My mother stood up and kissed me on the top of my head and she kissed Mary Beth on her cheek. She couldn’t stop laughing.

“You think it’s funny?” I said. “I thought you’d disown me!”

“Well, I’m torn between admiration for your cunning and ingenuity and by horror over who might have been here and come back in the night and murdered you in your bed!”

“I know, right?” Mary Beth said. “We were lucky.”

“Speak for yourself,” I said. “I was just almost murdered by a senator in broad daylight!”

“He was just a state senator. It wasn’t like he was Fritz Hollings or somebody,” Maisie said. “But here we are in a hurricane, three generations of survivors!”

“Here’s to the sister I never had!” Mary Beth said, holding up her glass to me.

“And here’s to the sister I lost!” my mother said, raising her glass to Maisie.

Maisie looked at us and said, “All right now. No more sadness. From here on in, we’re going to live life to the fullest! Life is for the living. Here’s to us, we’re the Hurricane Sisters!”

“Yes,” I said. The Hurricane Sisters. I liked that. I liked it a lot.

We all toasted one another and quietly acknowledged that something very special had happened that night. I guess it would be similar to how men say it is when they’ve fought a war together. In the trenches, or wherever it is that men go when they have to fight a war, there’s a bond they form. A bond that lasts forever and supersedes the stupid mistakes we all make. Because they lived and survived combat together, just as we had survived a literal hurricane and some long overdue but painful truth telling.

Eventually, we walked out to the portico to check out the storm.

“Looks like Melissa must’ve changed her mind and gone on up to Cape Hatteras,” my mother said. She sounded wistful but most of all, she was relieved.

We were all relieved.

The wind had died down, but the water was still crashing against the shore.

“Skipper thinks we should probably all stay here tonight,” Maisie said.

“What if Porter gets out of jail and no one believes me?” I said.

“Won’t happen,” Mom said.

“You’ve got witnesses,” Mary Beth said.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ve got a plan up my sleeve that will keep him away from you forever,” Maisie said.

“What are you thinking?” I said.

“Don’t you worry,” Maisie said. “But I’ll give you a hint. It involves a lady of a certain age, a llama, and a short trip on Highway 17 South.”

No one wanted details. We didn’t want to ruin our own surprise. And we didn’t doubt the cleverness of Maisie’s idea one bit. After all, it was she who dubbed us the Hurricane Sisters, a team of clever girls who could get through everything as long as we stuck together and told the truth. And as to my mother? I had to admit, Liz knew what life was all about. Deeply and completely. The rest of us still had much to learn.

EPILOGUE

Liz

It was the Saturday night before Thanksgiving. Bill Turner was taking Judy to Paris the next day to celebrate her fiftieth birthday. We joked with them that they’d have a hard time finding a turkey in Paris, but I don’t think they cared about that too much. They’d tough it out and dine on truffles, foie gras, and caviar instead in some gorgeous French restaurant like Le Taillevent or Lasserre.

In any case, when the news broke about the Porter Galloway attack on Ashley, the Turners were the first people to come to Ashley’s defense. She took a leave of absence from work because of all the attention Galloway’s trial drew, a decision fully sanctioned by her father and me. We had wanted her to come stay with us downtown until it was all over, but she insisted on staying at the beach. She needed her space, she said. Reluctantly, we agreed but checked on her well-being and state of mind every day.

The Turners were so upset they drove over to Sullivans Island where they found her in the cottage, painting like mad.

“Binge painting is excellent therapy,” Bill said.

Ashley, as you might imagine, was traumatized by the attack and a bit depressed. As predicted, she didn’t enjoy the negative attention the trial brought. The most debilitating remnant was that she was so disappointed in her own judgment. She had really believed in Porter’s integrity at one point and she had placed herself in a risky situation at another. She blamed herself for both and wondered when she could trust herself again. Still, she handled herself with a grace I didn’t know she had.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” she said.

“You certainly did not,” I replied every time she said it.

The irony was not lost on me that even with a career of learning about domestic violence—I was supposed to be an expert on the subject—I still had failed to spot the signs in my own daughter’s life. Even when they were staring me in the face and even when I was warned.

Maisie and I had been in a similar situation that resulted in the death of my poor sister. Maisie knew Juliet was being abused because
I told
her,
but she wouldn’t believe it because she had not seen it herself. And we paid a horrible, horrible price by not acting on the facts and our intuitions. This was the wound between us that festered for all these years. There was nothing to be done about that now except to try and forgive ourselves and each other.

But back to my other point, the Turners were among Ashley’s first and strongest supporters. What the Turners didn’t expect when they visited her studio was to be astounded by Ashley’s work. To Ashley’s complete surprise, they offered her a show. She was happy for the first time in a long time. And we, Clayton and I, were so touched that I told them so.

“Thank you for doing this for her,” I said. “Maybe this is just the thing that will bring her back to her normal self.”

“That’s not why we’re doing this. Ashley deserves a show on the merit of her work. I wouldn’t even entertain the idea unless she did. None of us realized that your daughter has such an extraordinary talent,” Judy said. “Fresh and new . . . I just love her point of view.”

Of course, Maisie, on hearing the news, piped up and said, “Well, I always thought so. I said so from the time she was this big.”

She held her thumb and forefinger just slightly apart in front of my face, to show us just how long ago she knew. I just wanted to pinch her, you know?

When Clayton and I saw Ashley’s paintings all lined up against a wall, we were shocked. There was a series of palmettos and birds painted in bold and vivid colors, but her figurative paintings had a powerful emotional punch and were very moving. Even a little strange. Especially the one of Ivy, at least I thought it was Ivy, sitting all alone on the front steps of a big building. It made me want to sob because all I could think about was all the unnecessary pain we inflicted on one another. But that was buried in the attic of the past where it belonged.