The Land of Mango Sunsets (7 page)

I hung my few clothes in the closet, checked my face in the bathroom mirror, and then stopped dead. Maybe it was the bright blue light of the Carolina midday, but I noticed for the first time that the corners of my mouth seemed to be frozen in a permanent frown. Something had to be done about that.

Over soup and a crusty loaf of bread that she swore she had baked herself, I listened to my mother rattle on about the news on Sullivans Is
land. There was a gentleman who was teaching her to fish with a net. She pointed through the glass sliding door to a corner of the porch.

“See that?”

“No.”

“Look again. It’s hanging from the nail.”

“What in the world?”

“I’m crocheting my own net! Even got the little sinker weights worked in it. Isn’t that something?”

“Mother? Why are you doing this? I mean, it’s not like you can’t afford to go to Simmons Seafood and buy whatever you want…”

She laughed again and then turned to fix her eyes on me. “Miriam? That’s not the point! You may think this is crazy talk but I’ll tell you the whole story, if you’d like to hear it.”

“Okay. By the way, this soup is delicious.”

“Thank you. Listen; remember that 9/11 fiasco?”

“Who doesn’t? It happened just down the street from me.”

“Right. More soup?”

“Sure. Just half a bowl.”

She got up to serve us another portion. “Well, it had an impact on me. A powerful one. I just got to thinking that if all the big cities of the world got blasted to smithereens, the odds are they wouldn’t be blowing up this place. Or at least it would take a while to discover it. And, if radiation didn’t kill me, I wanted to figure out how to live without the Piggly Wiggly. I decided that I would surely live longer if I kept a garden and ate organic vegetables and chickens fed without grain-laced pesticides and—” She stopped and looked at me again. “You think I’ve gone batty, don’t you?”

“Not exactly. This is so good, Mother.”

“Good. Everything in the soup was grown in my yard or a friend’s yard. Well, what then?”

I wasn’t sure of what to say. She looked like Farmer Brown’s wife in her jeans and flannel shirt. And she hadn’t colored her long hair in a year
or more. It was ponytailed and wrapped in a knot on the back of her head, held up with two sticks—not the garden variety, thank heaven. Her once perfectly manicured fingers were now short and plain but buffed to a beautiful pink patina. She almost glowed with satisfaction and good health. But didn’t she miss her Chanel suits?

“What are you thinking, Miriam?”

“I’m sort of thinking that putting up tomatoes and all this stuff you’re into would be hard to execute efficiently in a pair of pumps.”

She smiled from some deep inner place and shook her head in a way that meant she was resigned to the understanding that I might never understand
her
.

“You’re right. But why would I try? And how do you like this?”

She kicked off her clog, held out her bare foot in my direction, and lo and behold, my mother was wearing a toe ring. Indeed, I thought. She had clearly lost all interest in the genteel outside world.

“Very nice, Mother.” I was horrified.

“I think it makes a statement for a gal my age, don’t you?”

Just then there was a rap of knuckles on the sliding-glass door and I looked up to see a man standing there with a string of fish. Mother got up to let him in.

“Harrison! Come on in!”

“Miss Josie? How are ya, darlin’? I brought you some fish.”

He looked like a medium-size Ernest Hemingway, tanned and weathered by the sun, deeply creased forehead and blazing blue eyes that sparkled from across the room as he caught sight of me. He was dressed like a bum and I suspected his fingernails were dirty more often than clean. And he smelled like he had been rolling around in the marsh.

“I’m well, thank you! Can I offer you a bowl of soup?”

“No, thanks. Just ate.”

“Miriam? This is my friend Harrison Ford.”

“I’m the other one, ma’am. The good-looking one. Not that wimpy actor.”

“Hello,” I said, and squinted at him, wondering what he was smiling about. Maybe he thought he was funny. I estimated his age to be in the zone of mine. Or a year or two older.

“Harrison, this is Miriam, my daughter.”

He nodded slightly, turned away, and said to Mother, “Want me to put these boys in the freezer?”

Was he ignoring me, then? My neck got hot. Well, go right ahead, Swamp Thing.

“Heavens, no! Let’s eat them tonight. Why don’t you join us for dinner?”

“Only if you let me fix ’em…”

“You come back around six o’clock and I’ll have the grill going. How’s that?”

“Sounds fine.” He slid the door to the left and turned back to me. “Nice meeting you.”

“Yes, it was nice to meet you, too.”

A
whoosh
and a
thwack
followed as the heavy door rolled into its frame and he was gone down the steps in an instant.

“He’s a sweetheart,” Mother said. “Brings me fish all the time.”

“What’s his story?”

“I met him at Wally’s.”

“Excuse me? What?”
Wally’s Bar was the island establishment for beer, arm wrestling, and more beer. Everyone went there at some point or another, but if you read the police blotter report in the
Moultrie News
or the
Island Eye News,
you couldn’t help but notice that most disturbances on the island were somehow traceable to Wally’s. “What in the world were you doing in there?”

“Drinking a beer with some friends of mine and listening to a little country music. I love the banjo, you know. Thinking I might learn to play it.”

“Country
music? Banjo? Are you serious?” I cleared my throat in disapproval. Country music was like nails across a blackboard for me. I would have preferred rap.

“Oh, Miriam. Honestly. Sometimes you’re such a prig.”

“I am not.”

Mother picked up our dishes and began cleaning up. “I love you. You’re my only child. Trust me. You’re a prig.”

I snatched the sponge, rinsed it out, squeezed it, and began wiping down the countertop.

“Thanks a lot,” I said.

“Miriam? Look at you! You’re at the
beach
and what are you wearing? A silk blouse all tidy and tucked into your wool skirt, stockings, for God’s sake, little heels with Pilgrim buckles, and pearls! Girl! We have to loosen you up! You need some fun in your life.”

“Kevin says the same thing, but the last time I let
Fun
in the front door, it was wearing a thong and cavorting with the husband of one of my friends!”

“Your new tenant?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Honey, I always want to know. Don’t throw those vegetables away. I compost, you know. What’s her name? This hussy.”

I drained the broth and scraped the vegetables into a large can by the sink. I could feel my pulse picking up speed. “Liz Harper, lately of Birmingham. So you want to hear the story?”

“I said I did, didn’t I?”

“Well, she seemed like just what the doctor ordered, you know, to add a little life to my otherwise dreary existence. At least Kevin seemed to think she was perfect. I had my doubts.” Just thinking about it caused me to be short of breath.

“Why? You missed a spot.”

“Where?”

“Right there.” Mother pointed to a large smear that I had not seen.

“I hate black cooktops. And granite. Can’t see a bloody thing unless you lean into the light…Anyway, I thought it was suspicious that she
worked at a college in a minor position and was able to afford to live on the East Side.”

“Where? Are you all right?”

“I’m perfectly fine.”

“Okay. What does she do?”

“Hunter College. Something in admissions, I think. So, then she tells us that she bartends for a caterer and does some nanny work. I mean, who does that sort of work?”

“Plenty of extremely respectable people, Miss Priss.”

“Whatever. Anyhow, the next thing I know, she’s got Truman Willis upstairs in the sack with her, going wild.
Ka-thump, ka-thump
all night long!”

“You could
hear
them?”

“Yes. Kevin says I should not go crazy and throw her out.”

“He’s probably right.”

“He says she probably didn’t know Truman was married.”

“He could very well be right about that, too. But you could
hear
them?”

“Yes. Disgusting. I mean, here I am trying with all I’ve got to get Agnes, his wife, to appoint me the chair of the decorations committee for the museum’s spring benefit. Let me tell you, since Charles ran off with that concubine of his, it has not been very easy for me to maintain my social standing.”

Mother started to laugh and I looked at her like she was certifiably insane. Funny thing, she was looking at me the same way.

“What?” I said. “Tell me what you see funny about this?”

“Oh, Miriam. Sit down. Let your mother give you some advice.”

“Thanks, but I don’t need any advice. I mean, aren’t you the one who taught me right from wrong?”

“Yes. I was. Would you like a cup of tea? It’s a little chilly in here.”

“Sure.” It wasn’t chilly at all.

She removed two oversize mugs from the cabinet and put the kettle on to boil. I couldn’t imagine what she could tell me that would change the way I felt about Liz and her shenanigans. Or about my life.

“Do you remember how insanely busy I was when your father was alive?”

“Sure.”

“I was always chairing a gala or worrying about a raffle prize or trying to sell space in an ad journal. Remember?”

“I surely do. You’re the one who taught me the value of volunteerism.”

“Yes, and it is terribly important. But I never depended on my volunteer work to influence or improve or secure my social standing in any way.”

“That’s not exactly what I meant.”

“Yes, it is. It is
exactly
what you are expecting! An able-bodied person has a responsibility to give back to their community. That’s just good citizenship. But it was your daddy’s money that gave me a highfalutin social life and I knew it from day one. Let me ask you something. Do you really think that Agnes Willis is your friend?”

“Of course she is! We’ve been friends for years!” I knew in my heart that my friendship with Agnes was
finito,
but I wasn’t prepared to admit it.

The teakettle roared like a freight train and startled me.

Mother smiled and lifted it to pour. “This thing’s enough to scare the liver out of you. It should have come with a warning, don’t you think?”

“Probably.” I took the mug from her and said thanks.

“Anyway, you don’t have to answer me. Just ask yourself this. If you had the flu, would she bring you soup or call you to see how you were? That’s what friends do.”

I stared at my mug of tea and then buried my face in the steam, taking a long sip. “What’s the point, Mother?”

“The point is that social pecking order in that world is nonsense—the way women bicker over napkin folds and a centerpiece is just ridiculous. But! It is noble, even personally fulfilling, to do good works. It is
good
to give away assets to help others. It is. But that’s not all there is to life, Miriam.”

“It has been the framework of my life for so many years, I don’t know what I would do without it. It’s what Charles loved about me—I mean, that volunteering gave us a marvelous life beyond his work and raising the boys.”

“Charles is a shallow bastard, Miriam, pardon me. If you ran the biggest charity ball in New York, do you think it would bring him back to you?”

“No.”

“If you were twenty years younger and skinny as could be, do you think that would bring him back?”

“No.” I felt nauseated. “Why are we talking about this? I don’t like to talk about this. You know that.”

“Because you need to put this disappointment behind you, for once and for all.”

“I have.”

“No, darling girl, Mother begs to differ. Here’s what I see. I see my wonderful, beautiful daughter, very unhappy, clutching at straws, trying to hang on to a life that isn’t worth the effort.”

“Mother? Charles and my boys and my volunteer life are all I have. Charles and my boys are gone. My volunteer career is going nowhere. What am I supposed to do?”

“Get another life.”

“Easy for you to say. My bills are paid by the rent I receive, a large portion of which is coming from a home-wrecking tramp, like the one who decimated my life. I came here, Mother, to you and to this island to try and figure out what to do.”

I just stared at the counter and didn’t say a word. Soon the lecture would end. I could go to my old room, crawl in bed, and have a nap.

“Look, this gal Liz? Don’t use your passion all up worrying about her. Life is so precious, Miriam. You have to realize that this battle cannot be won. Don’t waste any more time, honey. That’s all.”

Kevin had called me the minute he saw Agnes Willis’s envelope in the mail and read it to me. “Listen to this,” he said.

So! Despite the fact that
she knew
I was salivating to be on the decorations committee, she was throwing me in the invitations dungeon. Hiking in Spain, indeed. Maybe she would twist an ankle. Not enough to put her in a wheelchair, but enough to ruin her day. The invitations committee. I was so mad I wanted to spit, which is just a figure of speech. Ladies do not spit unless they are in the wine country and do not wish to be sauced before noon.

Invitations. If I had been a teenage girl I would have screamed my
head off and then left terrible comments about Agnes Willis at myspace.com. Or facebook, whatever that was. If I had been a teenage boy I would have punched holes in all the Sheetrock walls of my bedroom. My only alternative was to take a shower. Swamp Thing was going to arrive within the hour, and heaven forbid, I shouldn’t please my mother by making an effort to pass for an authentic Geechee Girl, a Daughter of the Dunes.

I combed out my wet hair, watching myself in the huge mirror that lined the wall behind the basin. My hair was getting longer. It was already well past my chin, skimming the collar of the old but still serviceable terry-cloth bathrobe I found in the closet. Maybe being satisfied in terry cloth was a little pitiful. Basically, it made me look lumpy. I wasn’t lumpy. I decided to let it drop to the floor around my ankles in a puddle in an act of defiance buoyed by false confidence. I had not looked at myself naked in quite some time.

I was not the prettiest sight in town, to be sure.

Embarrassed and feeling slightly panicked, I wondered if my figure was salvageable. I decided to assess it by region. My upper arms were sort of droopy but I knew they could be substantially improved with weight training. I had done it before; I could do it again. My stomach was not exactly taut. Was I too old for Pilates? What if I had a massive stroke while I was doing crunches? It would be a very stupid way to die. I looked at my breasts and inhaled to make them lift. They seemed reasonable, I thought, and in the next second it seemed absurd to refer to my breasts as reasonable. I mean, what did unreasonable ones look like? Are they argumentative pendulous melons?

My thighs? Well, what can we say about anyone’s thighs? The only probable reason they weren’t completely cottage cheese was that I did a fair amount of walking. But I definitely didn’t walk enough to lose any weight.

While I blew my hair dry I thought about Agnes Willis. She was as skinny as a supermodel. It was unnatural. She probably purged. Maybe she dined on laxatives. Maybe she took Truman’s wallet up to a plastic
surgeon on Park Avenue and Eighty-sixth Street and got herself liposuctioned twice a year. God knows, her face was over-Botoxed and stretched like a drum. At that moment, I hated her guts.

I looked at my war chest of cosmetics and realized that given the location and situation, Mother was right. They were inappropriate.

I had planned to set my hair in some Velcros to get that Park Avenue Patty helmet going and then said, “Oh, to hell with that” to the thin air, and tossed the whole bag of them in the wastebasket, along with my bomb-shelter-size can of hair spray. Au naturel was the Island standard? They would get au naturel!

I put some moisturizer on my face and a dab of pale pink gloss on my lips and looked in the mirror. Staring back at me was an anthropologist straight from the bush.

What to wear? I looked through the clothes I had brought and decided to wear a cotton turtleneck that someone had left in the bottom drawer along with a pair of jeans that were one size smaller than mine. Then I shrouded myself in my own dependable oversize cable-knit cardigan that was at least ten years old. I slipped on my old loafers and took one last look in the mirror. Perfume? Nah. To hell with that, too. Jungle Woman did not concern herself with such trivia. If Charles could have seen me he might not have recognized me. Kevin would have roared. But, I looked younger somehow. I took this new persona downstairs, where Harrison Ford and my mother were preparing dinner. And I wondered for a moment about the nature of their friendship. It certainly seemed to me that she had more of a social life than I did, and that was truly not right.

“Hi!” I said. “What can I do to help?”

To say they stopped dead in their tracks would be an exaggeration, but I saw the glint of satisfaction in my mother’s eye and amusement in Mr. Ford’s. It was obvious I had successfully dressed to please.

“You can help us drink this delicious bottle of scuppernong wine,” Harrison said, and handed me a goblet. “Here! Cheers!”

“Thanks,” I said. It was cloyingly sweet, much sweeter than wine I was accustomed to, but I sipped it, not wanting to be rude. “It’s very nice.”

“Harrison and his friend Butch made it!”

“Really?” Why was I not surprised? There was a screw cap to the bottle and the label was handwritten. But I didn’t realize they grew grapes around Sullivans Island. “There’s a vineyard on the island?”

“No, out on Wadmalaw,” he said. “Land’s cheaper.”

His words were true enough. Although Wadmalaw was being gentrified and developed like every other stitch of coastline in the country, its interior farming environs were probably much cheaper than Sullivans Island and Kiawah, which were two of the most fashionable sandbars in America.

“Right,” I said. “I remember going out there when I was a kid and buying vegetables. The dirt was very dark and cool.”

“Were you barefoot?” he asked, as though he could not envision such a thing.

“Of course! I had my flip-flop days, you know.” I narrowed my eyes at him and realized he was thoroughly amused. “Did you light the grill, Mother?”

“No. I forgot. Why don’t you and Harrison do that for me?”

“Sure thing,” he said, and refilled my glass.

“Ah, Wadmalaw! It’s positively thriving with all the small farms out there that grow vegetables for the gourmet market. Somebody’s growing those fat little pygmy carrots for Thomas Keller’s kitchens,” Mother said. “I adore them! Until this year, I haven’t had much luck with them, but now I have a cold frame of them coming along.” She smiled and looked at me. “They are loaded with vitamins and antioxidants. Yummy little devils.”

Mother continued to ramble about the merits of carrots and Harrison slid the door open for me to step out to the porch. The sun was hanging low and the color of, well you know, mangoes. Light streamed through the remaining wisps of cirrus clouds. The horizon held broad strokes of
royal purple streaked with red and rose quartz and the sky was fast becoming lapis. Venus was there, and for a moment, I felt an urge to make a wish. All at once I was filled with wishes—that Charles would regret what he had done, that my boys would come back to me, that my life was happier, that I had someone to love—on and on my wishes went, one after another. I knew Harrison and I were supposed to be going down to the grill, but the sight was so powerful and my heart was so melancholy. Neither one of us moved. I suspected he was having similar thoughts. Finally, when the sun slipped away, we sighed and went down the steps.

“Some sky, don’t you think?”

“Well, Mr. Ford, when day becomes night around here, it’s no joke.”

“You’re right, Mrs. Swanson. Every event of nature seems to be packed with drama.”

“Mrs. Swanson?” The formality sounded too stiff.

“Didn’t you just call me Mr. Ford?”

“I guess I did, didn’t I?” I flipped the light switch on the post of the pergola that housed our grill, refrigerator, and ice maker and we were instantly washed in warm yellow light.

Harrison threw back the hood of the grill with a clang. “Didn’t anybody ever give you a nickname?”

“No. Well, when I was young, my girlfriends called me Mira or Mizzy.”

Nodding and congenial, he reached in the cabinet, removing a brush and a small bottle of oil, perfectly at home, as though he had rummaged Mother’s cabinets a thousand times before. He probably had, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about this stranger being so familiar with my mother’s possessions. I was glad she had a friend, to be sure, and I supposed I was just being protective of her.

As he neatly painted the grill with oil, I watched him from the side. Sun damage and crow’s-feet aside, he was actually quite handsome in profile. But he was dangerously short, so short that I could look him in the eye. But then, I was five seven. So maybe he was five eight or nine. But
five eight wasn’t short. Charles had been six four. He was probably still six four. Five eight or nine was normal or even tall in many cultures. I snapped out of the height of my fog realizing that Harrison was talking to me. Height? Ah well, my humor is truly lame, but we already know that.

“What? I’m sorry.”

“I said, Mira?” he said. “Doesn’t suit you at all. What’s your full name?”

“Miriam Elizabeth.”

“I can’t see you as Mira. Nope.”

“Right? A couple of my sandbox enemies tried to call me Mitzi and I broke their crayons.”

“I would have recycled them. You are definitely not a Mitzi.”

“What is
that
supposed to mean?” Why
didn’t
he think I could have been called something lighthearted like Mitzi? No, he thought I was a lesbian storm trooper or something.

“Well, Mitzi is, I don’t know, red-haired and freckled, a tomboy? Flouncing around? Ditzy? You’re too feminine to be a Mitzi.”

“Oh. How about you?”

“Nope. I’ve always been Harrison.”

“I have a bird named Harry.”

“I rest my case. Nicknames are not for everyone. But you should be Mellie—a little bit of Miriam and some Elizabeth. M and Ellie.”

“Whatever you say…”

It was a banal conversation, ridiculous actually. Who cared about nicknames? But that wasn’t the point. He was flirting with me. A man was flirting with me. At least it seemed so. I realized then that age difference aside, it might be important for me to understand the real nature of his relationship with Mother. Nah, they couldn’t be…

The grill was fired up and warming. “I guess we should get some more wine,” he said. “Think of all the sober adults out there…”

“Right,” I said, and we were caught in the whirlpool of each other’s eyes. I thought, Well, this is just too stupid for words, but I wasn’t going
to be the first one to move away. The elixir of scuppernong grapes had emboldened me, and besides, I was a little bit fixated on what appeared to be double dimples in his cheeks. Or maybe it was the fading twilight, but I decided that Harrison was definitely not a character from
The Old Man and the Sea
. Who was this man anyway?

“Right,” I said, repeating myself, and cleared my throat. “It’s turning into a beautiful evening, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am, Miss Mellie, it is.”

Mellie. Okay. I could live with that.

We sat down to expertly grilled fish, just drizzled with olive oil and lemon juice and generously sprinkled with chopped parsley. Mother had prepared tomatoes and onions into a sauce and spooned them over a nest of steaming rice. Of course, she had grown the tomatoes.

“I still can’t give up white rice,” she said. “Brown rice is healthier, but my family’s been eating white rice for a thousand years and I’m not fooling around with tradition!”

“Well said, Miss Josie,” Harrison said.

I cleared my throat and said, “So, Harrison? Tell me about yourself. Is there a Mrs. Ford?”

“There was but she left me, oh, I guess it was a dozen years ago. Ran off with my favorite golfing buddy.”

“Good grief! That’s awful!”

“Yeah, it was. But you can get over anything in time, I think. Said I worked too much and I probably did.”

“She was a fool,” Mother said. “And so was Miriam’s husband, Charles.”

“You mean Mellie,” Harrison said. “I gave her a new name.”

“Oh? Well, why not? Mellie. I love it!”

I could feel my heat rising and knew that my estrogen shortage was probably obvious.

“Charles was indulging in the classic midlife crisis and I let him go have his adventure. We had some good years, though, and he gave me two
gorgeous, sweet grown sons. Do you have children?” I gritted my teeth as my lie about my sweet sons and the good years slipped between them. “By the way, the fish is unbelievable.”

“More?” Mother said, and moved to serve another portion to me before I could respond.

“Thanks. Yep. One daughter. Louisa. She works in Costa Rica, teaching English and health. She’s married to a great guy. No children, though. I don’t quite understand that, but having children is their business.”

“It’s a different world out there today than when I was a young woman,” Mother said. “I’m not so sure I’d have the courage to raise children in all this insanity. More rice, Harrison?
Mellie?
”

“Thanks, yes. Miss Josie? You are absolutely right. The world is a crazy place.”

We continued eating until nearly everything was gone. Harrison, after some prodding, talked about his recycling work—apparently he and Mother were the reigning royalty of the Lowcountry movement not only to conserve and reuse but also to raise awareness of how easy it was to incorporate these practices into daily life.

“If each person just did one thing, think what a difference that could make,” Mother said.

“You’re preaching to the choir, Miss Josie. Why don’t I clear the table and then squire you ladies down to the beach for a little walk to shake it all down. It’s so bright we can probably see cabdrivers in Lisbon.”

We put all the dishes in the sink, covered them with hot suds, laughing about the numbers of eyeglasses, toothbrushes, and sneakers they had gathered in the past year. Their projects were mildly interesting if not actually remarkable. Even to a dedicated skeptic like me.