The Last Original Wife (12 page)

I thought about this quickly and decided that there was absolutely no reason to believe that his call was anything more than a friendly gesture to help out an old friend in need. But, Lord, he sure did have a big head.

“Well, thanks. I'm getting pretty tired of this business.”

“You probably don't even need that sling anymore, but let's see.”

I wrote down his office address and said, “Thanks, Jonathan. I'm in such a fog over here, I hadn't even thought about it.”

“Well, let me do the thinking on this one. See you tomorrow.”

“Great. Thanks.”

It was true that I had spent the week sort of wandering around in my head, befuddled, and definitely not making any forward progress. The only conversation I'd had of any real satisfaction was with Danette, who called to say she didn't see a single thing wrong with coming to Charleston for a while. This was before Harlan verified the money situation and when I was thinking that leaving Wes would mean I'd most certainly spend my old age in poverty.

She said, “Shoot. Wes and Harold go on business trips all the time. So maybe you need a little time away for the business of your life! What's wrong with that?”

“Exactly!”

It was more than just a little time away and we both knew it, but I wasn't sure how to articulate it. Besides, Danette had never been the kind of friend who would try to push me into saying things I wasn't fully ready to discuss. I was grateful for her patience and to know she was in my corner.

When I had told her the story of Cornelia and Lisette getting into a brawl at the golf club, she sighed deeply.

“I have to say, I view these reports as validation that Harold is certifiable.”

“The whole world has gone mad,” I said. “It was like some tawdry reality show.”

“I don't blame you for walking out,” she said. “Wes called me, you know.”

“No, but that's okay. I didn't call you because I didn't want to put you in the middle of it.”

“I appreciate that. Damn it, Les! Do I have to buy a beach house down there so I can still have my best friend around?”

“Maybe? I don't know.”

Now I wished she was next door so I could tell her about Jonathan and my arm and get her opinion.

So I called her.

“Got a minute?” I said.

“Sure! What's going on?”

“Get comfortable. This is kind of a long one.”

I told her all about Jonathan and what we had meant to each other all through high school. I was a student at Ashley Hall and he went to Porter-Gaud. He came to my class plays and I went to his football games. We spent so many lazy summer days on Sullivans Island at his grandmother's house at Station 22, eating egg salad sandwiches, drinking iced tea, walking the beach, waterskiing on the Intracoastal Waterway all the way up to Capers Island. We had the classic, idyllic teenage love affair. And then I went away to college in Atlanta. And he went to Duke undergrad and then medical school. Unlike everyone's expectations, we drifted apart and married other people. Then I saw him at Harlan's party.

“Good Lord, Les. Get your hair blown out, put on some lipstick, and go see him. What could be more benign? He sounds darling!”

“He's way beyond darling, which makes me think he'd never take a second look at me—especially now. I'm sure he's just being nice.”

“Okay, so he's being nice. What's wrong with
that
?”

“You're right. It's just that what could be worse than being rejected by your first boyfriend?”

“What does that mean?”

“You know. What if he thinks I'm an old cow?”

“He didn't reject you the other night, did he?”

“No. But it was dark, and alcohol was involved. Isn't this kind of the ultimate litmus test for whether or not to crawl into a cave and gnaw on your arm until you stop living?”

There. I'd said it, more or less. Jonathan was the
one that got away
. But was I
his
one that got away?

“Girl? Please don't be so insecure. Put a smile on your face, get yourself moving, and call me afterward, okay?”

The next day I arrived at Jonathan's office on the stroke of four and announced myself to the receptionist, who was well into her seventies, had a perm tight enough to hold a dozen Bic pens, and was quite plump. The name tag on her bow blouse read
CAROL ANNE
, a double name I actually liked.

“I gonna take you right in, Mrs. Carter.” She all but jumped from her seat to open the door for me. “You must be a very important patient.”

“Why's that?” I said and followed her down the long hallway.

“Because you can't find neither hide nor hair of Dr. Ray on Fridays after four!”

“Oh, well, I'm just an old friend from a million years ago.”

“That's so nice!” She stopped and turned back to me, whispering behind her hand. “He could use a friend, old or new, if you know what I mean?”

“I'll remember that,” I said. Good Lord. Some people sure like to work their jaws, I thought.

I went into the examining room and put my purse on the chair next to the examining table and concluded it made absolutely no sense for me to perch myself up there like I was here for a Pap smear. Perish the thought! Almost immediately, the door opened and there stood Jonathan, in his white coat over his blue-and-white seersucker suit, white shirt, and adorable red foulard bow tie. The sight of him was so cute and wholesome, all the way down to his white bucks, that I laughed in delight.

“What's funny?” he said with a huge smile.

“Nothing! You just look so, so . . .”

“Madam, have you forgotten that this is the standard that sets the gentlemen of Charleston apart from the rest of the world?” He pulled back his jacket and snapped his skull-and-crossbones braces against his chest. “I wore these just for you.”

“Wonderful!” I said and laughed, shaking my head. “Dr. Killer! You are too much!”

“Hmmm,” he mused. “Now let's see that arm.”

I held it out, and he carefully undid the Velcro fasteners and removed the cast. My arm was as white as a fish belly.

“I remember these freckles,” he said.

“You do?” Now, why that remark sent my thermometer up is anybody's guess, but it had been a really long time since anyone said anything remotely personal to me. “I need a tan.”

He smiled. “And I want an X-ray of this pretty little arm of yours. Let me call our tech.” He picked up the phone and asked for Betty. “I'm pretty sure, just by the way you're moving, that you don't need the cast, but I want to be sure. Any discomfort?”

“Zero.”

“Good sign.”

Twenty minutes later the X-ray of my arm was on a light box and we were looking at it together.

“Clean break, no displacement . . . looks very good to me. I'd say you can safely dump the cast and sling. Just take it easy for a week or two—no handsprings, okay?”

“Gee, just when Cirque de Soleil called me back for a second audition? Rats.”

He looked at me and chuckled. Unlike Wes, who rarely got my sense of humor.

“Want to go to the rooftop bar on East Bay and get a martini?”

“Why not?”

So just like that, I walked out of Jonathan's office with him, slingless and castless, deciding on the spot that there was nothing wrong with having one drink. Even if there was, I was doing it anyway.

CHAPTER 10

Wes Isn't Happy

S
o it was Sunday morning and I had a late tee time. I was relaxing, listening to my boy Sinatra and reading the paper, drinking my second cup of coffee, and the phone rings. Was it my lovely absentee wife? No, it was my daughter.

“Daddy? I need a huge favor! Please say yes!”

“Whaddya need, princess?”

“I need you to take Holly for a couple of hours. There's a huge open house this morning, and if I can sell this house, it could totally change my life.”

I thought about it for a minute. First, I'd have to cancel my golf game, but so what? I probably play enough golf. Second, nobody understands the value of work more than I do. If she's got a chance to make some money, she should do it. Third, it would give me a chance to spend some time with my granddaughter, who's finally old enough now to talk to like a real person.

“Daddy? Are you still there?”

“Yeah, I'm just thinking, that's all.”

“Oh . . .”

“Okay, I'll cancel my golf game. You bring her over. I'll take her out to lunch or something.”

Well, she must've been calling me from the car because as soon as I hung up with Harold, I heard her coming through the door.

“Pops!”

“Holly Doodle!” I called back and squatted to catch her. She broke into a tear, flying down the hall, and threw herself into my arms. I swung her around and planted her little feet back on the ground.

“Upside down!” she squealed, grabbing my hands and starting to walk up my legs in her sneakers—they had blinking lights in them—so she could do a backflip.

So I flipped her over a couple of times while Charlotte watched from the doorway.

“She'll throw up, Daddy. You'd better stop.”

Charlotte smirked at me, and I winked at Holly.

“Your momma doesn't know that we do the magic flip that does not make the flipper barf, don't we?”

Holly thought about it for a second. “Not gonna barf,” she said to Charlotte and reinforced her words with a deliberate nod in the affirmative.

“You go on about your business,” I said to Charlotte. “Holly and I will be fine. What time do you think you might be back?”

“Around three? Is that okay?”

“Sure! That still leaves me time for nine holes before dark.”

Charlotte gave me a kiss on the cheek and left. I closed the front door of the house and turned to face Holly.

“Want to watch the Golf Channel?” I said.

“What's a Golf Channel?” she said.

“Oh, sweetie! It's the most important thing on television! Come on, let's get a bag of cookies and watch it!”

“Okay!”

“Wait! Did you have lunch?”

“Nope.”

“Well, come on then. Pops will make you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich! How does that sound?”

“And bananas and Nutella too?”

“Why not?”

She clapped her hands and followed me to the kitchen. Skipping. So I skipped with her. I'm sure we looked ridiculous, but who was watching? You really do have more fun with your grandchildren than your own children. I don't think I ever skipped through the house with Charlotte or Bertie. And I sure as hell never skipped anywhere with Leslie.

I picked Holly up and sat her on a bar stool at the island in the middle of our kitchen. Just for the record, this is an English country kitchen, and what that meant was that Les hired some decorator who convinced her she needed all new cabinets and all kinds of stupid things like a pot filler. I mean, eight hundred dollars for a pot filler? A stupid faucet that comes out of the wall over a pot on the stove? Do you know how much spaghetti you'd have to eat to break even on that? A boatload, that's how much.

“You comfy, sweetheart?”

“Uh-huh,” she said and bobbed her head up and down.

“Don't fall off, okay?”

I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on whole wheat and a Nutella and banana sandwich on white bread, cut them in half, and put them on a plate. I did it just like I'd seen Les do it at least fifty times. That wasn't so hard, I thought.

“Would you like a glass of milk?”

“Can I have Coke?” she said.

“Wellllll, you should probably have milk, but what the heck? This is a special day!”

“It is? Is it your birthday?”

“No, no. It's special because you're here!”

“Oh!”

I poured her some in the little Coca-Cola glasses Les used for juice because Holly's hands were too little for a regular glass. Maybe I didn't do this kid stuff all the time, but that didn't mean I wasn't paying attention. Not much got by me.

“Here you go, Holly Doodle,” I said and put the knife and small cutting board in the dishwasher. “So what's new in your life?”

She drank her Coke straight down without taking a breath.

“What's new in
your
life?” she said, parroting me.

“Not much. You need some help with that sandwich?”

“Can I have more Coke, please?”

“Sure!”

I refilled her glass. She pushed her plate toward me, and I took a piece. It was delicious. No wonder kids ate peanut butter and jelly all the time. The Nutella wasn't bad either.

“Where's Gammy?”

“Oh, Gammy took a little trip to see her brother.”

“Oh,” she said and looked pretty sad.

“Hey! No Gloomy Gus, young lady! As soon as you finish your lunch we can go watch the Golf Channel and eat Oreos!”

“Yay!” She began to stuff her sandwich in her mouth and wash it down with the remains of the bottle of Coke she picked up from the counter as soon as I stepped away.

I looked in the pantry for the bag of Oreos and the bag of potato chips I bought at the gas station earlier in the week. They were nowhere to be found. Could they be in the bread drawer? They were not. Where could they be? Wait! Didn't Martha have a teenage kid, a son who drove her back and forth to work every day now that I needed full-time, thank you, Leslie? Would her boy take food out of my house without asking? I couldn't even ask Martha if he did because Martha didn't speak ten words of English! How in the world did Leslie deal with her? Now what? I promised Holly a special treat, and the treat I had promised simply wasn't there. Okay, I thought, this is a desperate moment. I would have to break into my special stash of Twinkies. And maybe even the Devil Dogs. They were behind the cans of tomatoes and boxes of broth in the pantry, hidden where I couldn't take them out without some effort. At least they were there, I thought as I brought them out to the counter.

“Well, it's not Oreos,” I said. “But this is very good stuff! Come on, Holly Doodle, the Golf Channel waits!”

She climbed down from the counter on her own and wiped her hands on her dress. Needless to say there were some pretty impressive grape jelly stains on her clothes.

“Come over here and let's wash your hands,” I said, thinking she'd get food all over the sofa.

I pulled out the small step stool Leslie kept in the kitchen to help her reach the high shelves and put Holly on it.

“Okay,” I said, squirting some liquid soap into her palms, “hold your hands under the water and rub 'em like crazy.”

“Pops?”

“Yep?”

“I know how to wash my hands. I'm almost four, you know. I'm not a baby!”

“Good grief! What was I thinking? Of course you can! You're probably going to college next week!”

“Ha-ha-ha! You're funny, Pops!”

I made big eyes at her and she laughed some more. See? I told myself, I can do this! How smart did you have to be to watch a kid? I wiped her dress with a damp paper towel and most of the jelly came off.

So we got on the sofa and I clicked the remote, bringing the beautiful seventh hole on the third nine of Baltusrol into view. I love that course. It is a par seventy-two, one of the more forgiving courses of the top one hundred, and on a side note? I intended to play them all before I went to Glory.

“See that, honey?”

“What?” Holly didn't seem too enthralled.

“That's Springfield, New Jersey. Isn't it pretty? Want a Twinkie?”

“Yeah!”

Now I had her attention! Holly made short order of her Twinkie and asked for another one. I thought it probably wasn't such a good idea to give her so much sugar, but then I remembered that when I was a kid I could eat six of them. No problem. And wash it all down with a quart of milk!

“Have all you want, baby! But eat slowly! Be sure to chew slowly! Isn't golf great?”

She looked over at me and in all seriousness said, “Pops? You watch TV. I'm gonna go color.”

“Oh? You want me to find your crayons for you?”

“No, I know where they are!”

She scampered away with a third Twinkie in her fist and I thought, Boy, this is great! She's getting more and more independent every day.

The next thing I know it was almost three o'clock, and there was no sign of Charlotte. I called her cell phone and it went right to voice mail. I waited fifteen minutes and tried her again. I got her voice mail for the second and then for the third time. I started getting pissed.

Finally I gave up and called Harold. “Well, I don't know where my daughter is and I can't go off and leave my granddaughter, you know?”

“Don't sweat it! We've got eighteen holes in the morning. Why don't you meet us at the club later on? We can get a good steak and have a few laughs. Paolo and Lisette are coming.”

“Sure. Sure. I'll let you know.”

A few minutes later, Holly appeared in the doorway of the family room.

“What's the matter, sweetheart?”

“I wanna go home. My tummy hurts.”

With that, she threw up all over her dress, her shoes, the carpet, and God knows, there were intermittent events of exploding vomit in a trail behind us as I rushed her to the bathroom. She began to wail and I struggled to get her clothes off.

Is this what Leslie dealt with?

An hour later, Holly's stomach was finally finished lurching and pitching, and I had her in one of my T-shirts, tucked into her usual bed in the guest room. She was sleeping like a lamb and her clothes were in a plastic garbage bag by the door. Poor kid. She shouldn't have eaten so much junk! It took an entire roll of paper towels to clean up the mess, and then I discovered her artwork. She had drawn red and purple flowers and orange suns with smiley faces all over the bottom cabinets of the kitchen. They were ruined. Wasn't Holly too old to be drawing on the walls? Apparently not. I called Charlotte again, a number of times, and she still did not answer my calls.

Seven thirty rolled around and I was wildly pissed with Charlotte. What was the matter with her? Didn't she think I had to eat dinner? I was starving! She did this exact same thing all the time to Leslie. But it was different! Leslie was her mother and she didn't have the same social responsibilities that I did. Finally, at right before eight, I saw her headlights through the window as she pulled into the driveway. I felt like wringing her neck.

I went to the door and opened it, waiting for her to get out of her car.

“Just where the hell have you been?” I yelled to her.

“Daddy! Daddy! I'm so sorry! I didn't know my phone was off! I should've called you. I know, I know.”

She walked past me and into the house. I closed the door and followed her, jabbing my finger into the air between us.

“Do you know your little girl has been throwing up her guts
all afternoon
?
No!
Of
course
you don't because
you
don't have enough
sense
to keep your
phone
on!”

“Oh, please! Kids throw up all the time. I look at her and she throws up. It's no big deal, Daddy.”

“Really? Wait till you see what she did to your mother's custom-made kitchen cabinets!”

“Come on. Show me.”

“And another thing, Charlotte. Where's your consideration of my time? I had a golf game this afternoon! People were
waiting
for me!”

“I thought you said you weren't playing, Daddy. That's what you said.”

“No, ma'am. It is not what I said. You said you'd be back by three and I said good, I'd still have time for nine holes! Remember now?”

“Well, I'm sorry. I really am. Wow! She really did a number on Mom's kitchen, didn't she?”

“It's probably gonna cost twenty thousand dollars to replace them and who's supposed to pay for that?”

“Oh, Daddy, they're washable markers. Do you have like Windex or something? I can wipe it right off.”

“Oh, sure you can! How should I know if we have Windex? Look under the sink. Good luck with that.” I knew the cabinets were ruined, and I was almost disappointed when Holly's artwork disappeared in minutes as though it was never there. When it was all spotless, I started to calm down.

“So what did you feed her?”

“Feed her? Um, well, she had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and then half of a Nutella and banana sandwich and some Coca-Cola and then later on while we were watching television she had a couple of Twinkies and I think one Devil Dog.”

“Are you trying to kill her? You want to know why she got sick? Jesus, Daddy, what were you thinking?”

“Don't criticize your father. Didn't you ever read the Bible?” I knew she was right, but what was the point in admitting guilt? What was done was done. So I wouldn't do it again.

She was staring at me with that same face of indignation her mother had from time to time, standing there with her hands on her hips.

“So, Charlotte, did you sell the house?” I knew that would get her.

“Oh, please! It was just an open house, Daddy. It was fifty brokers eating chicken salad sandwiches and gabbing their heads off. But I think I have a buyer who would love it. We'll see. I'd better get Holly home. She's asleep?”