Folly Beach by Dorothea Benton Frank

  “But . . .” Ella started to object.

  “Besides, even though you all think she’s asleep, she’s sedated. She knows there are people around her and she won’t rest as well with an audience. So, y’all are welcome to stay a few more minutes but let’s let Ms. McInerny get her rest. I know you wouldn’t want to impede her healing process.”

  “No, of course not,” Ella said.

  She spoke to all of us just as politely as I had hoped she would but Ella knew the nurse’s comments were directed to her. Ella also knew this was an experienced nurse who knew what she was talking about. And it was obvious that our sweet Ella was bone-tired.

  “I know what,” I said. “Let’s all stop somewhere on Folly Road and get something to eat. And, Ella, I’ll bring you back here in the morning whenever you’re ready.”

  “Besides, if you don’t go home, how’re you going to make us another pie?” my favorite nurse said.

  “That one’s all gone?” Ella said, perking up again.

  “Not a crumb left,” Tolli said so sweetly that it pulled my heartstrings. “Now, if y’all will excuse me I want to check on my patient,” she said and slipped into Aunt Daisy’s room. “Nice meeting y’all.”

  “Nice to meet you, too,” Russ and Patti said.

  Nursing was truly God’s work. And this young woman was practically glowing with a saintly presence, putting all our worries, but Ella’s most especially, to rest.

  “How about the Crab House?” Russ said. “It’s not crazy expensive and it won’t take all night.”

  “Alice isn’t afraid of shellfish?” Patti asked. “You know raw shellfish can be dangerous in the first trimester. Smoked seafood, too. Not to mention sushi . . .”

  “Oh great. Please don’t bring it up,” Russ said. “I’ll encourage her to eat flounder.”

  “Yeah, and don’t let her eat tuna salad, either,” Patti said.

  “Since when are you the OB/GYN nutrition expert?” I said.

  “Oz was on Oprah last week while I was on the treadmill,” she said.

  “I hate treadmills,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, my walking buddy abandoned me and flew south,” she said.

  “I drove.”

  “Let’s get a move on,” Ella said. “It will do us good to have supper together. I know we ate a little something earlier but now I’m starving!”

  I took it as a promising sign that Ella was so hungry. She felt relieved enough to get back in touch with her appetite. And the Crab House was fun. It would lift everyone’s spirits.

  Locals in Charleston usually go out to dinner on the early side, so it should have been pretty easy for us to get a table at eight thirty. But the Crab House was still filled with patrons eating and drinking and having a good time. After seeing Aunt Daisy, we needed to be surrounded by happiness.

  We waited for a few minutes, got a table, and ordered drinks.

  “I’ll have a glass of the Raymond Sauvignon Blanc,” I said, choosing from the list.

  “Me too,” Patti said.

  “Iced tea for me,” Alice said. “I can’t drink alcohol.”

  “Oh, no problem,” said the waitress. I could tell she was wondering if Alice was on the wagon, out of rehab, allergic, or what.

  “She’s having a baby,” Russ said. “Actually, my baby.”

  The waitress cocked her head to one side and looked at Russ like he was warped to be telling her his private business that would be patently obvious as soon as Alice started to show.

  “We’re married.”

  “Well, good for you hon,” the waitress said, without missing a beat.

  Russ turned red. “And I’ll just have an Amstel Light,” he said.

  “And for you, ma’am?” the waitress said.

  “I’ll have a Crab House Slammer,” Ella said, looking up from the menu.

  We all looked at her at once.

  “What?” she said. “Y’all want to see my ID?”

  “No! I think you should get whatever the heck you want,” I said. “It’s been a rough day.”

  “Absolutely,” Patti chimed in.

  “I’ll get those drinks right out for you,” the waitress said and left.

  We all studied the menu, trying to make our decisions.

  “So, Alice?” Patti said. “Tell me how you’re feeling.”

  “I feel great, except that I want to eat everything in sight,” she said. “I’m just really going to have to discipline myself so I don’t get as big as a house, you know? Well, actually, you wouldn’t know since you’ve never been pregnant . . .”

  “How do you know?” Patti said, not wanting to miss the opportunity to stick it to Alice. “So, let me ask you this. Anybody rub your belly for good luck yet?”

  “What?” Alice said.

  “Ahem!” I cleared my throat and kicked Patti under the table.

  “Ow! Sorry, so tell us how you plan to stay fit? Are there some new guidelines?”

  “No, no. I’m just going to eat lots of protein and fresh vegetables and try to get some exercise every day. And sleep, which won’t be a problem, because all I want to do is sleep.”

  “That sounds good, honey,” Ella said, being nicer than my sister.

  The waitress reappeared with a tray of our beverages and began putting them in front of us.

  When she got to Alice she said, “I didn’t know if you wanted lemon in your tea so I put it on the side.”

  “There aren’t too many calories in a squirt of lemon, are there?” Alice asked.

  The waitress looked up at the ceiling.

  “You may squirt with impunity,” Patti said, but she was smiling when she said it so Alice didn’t think she’d been jabbed again.

  “Actually, lemon juice is a natural diuretic,” I said. “So, if your ankles get swollen this summer, make lemonade. Or eat asparagus. They help, too.”

  “I did not know that,” Alice said. “Thanks for telling me.”

  “On the house,” I said and smiled at her. After all, she was pregnant with my grandchild.

  The waitress waited to take our orders.

  “So, girls? What are we having?” Russ said. “I’m thinking seriously about the tuna.”

  “Who you calling a girl?” Ella said, winking. She raised her glass. “To Daisy, who would be right here having a martini if she could. Get well quick!”

  “Amen,” I said. “Here’s to Aunt Daisy!”

  And everyone touched the rim of their glass to another’s.

  “I’m having the shrimp platter with collards and grits,” I said.

  “That sounds good but I’ll have the crab cakes,” Ella said. “With red rice and collards. I’ve been thinking about the crab cakes ever since Russ said we should come here.”

  “So good. Coconut shrimp for me with fries and cole slaw,” said Patti.

  All eyes were on Alice.

  “And you, hon?” said the waitress.

  “Well, I can’t eat tuna because of the mercury thing and all this other stuff is too fattening so I’ll have the cheeseburger and fries with a side of mac ’n’ cheese? That mac ’n’ cheese isn’t a big portion, is it?”

  “No, no. You could barely feed a mouse with it,” the waitress said.

  “Eat what you want,” I said. “You’ll never be able to eat like this unless you get pregnant again.”

  “Yeah, but then you have to starve yourself to lose it all,” Alice said.

  “The weight will fall off of you like water,” I said, wondering if the whole dinner was going to be monopolized by Alice’s new favorite subject—herself.

  It was.

  We crawled through dinner, listening to Alice regale us on the topics of prenatal care, breast-feeding, Lamaze techniques, and her mother’s advice. Almost every sentence she spoke began with well, my mother says . . . I thought, yeah honey, when you go into labor and your momma ain’t here, you’d better learn how to spell Cate.

  Hugs and good-nights for Russ and Alice took place in the par
king lot and then we drove out to Aunt Daisy’s and Ella’s house. Except for a few choice remarks about Alice, the ride was pretty quiet. We went up in the elevator with Ella just to be sure there were no robbers hiding behind the curtains or monsters under the beds. It was just really lousy manners to let a woman of her advanced years, or a woman of any age, for that matter, enter an empty house alone. Plus, Patti said in the car that she wanted a Diet Coke in the worst possible way and of course I didn’t have any at home and all the stores were closed. But Ella offered her a twelve-pack, because they had just made a Costco run and her pantry was fully stocked. So, we had our solution for Patti and our excuse to follow Ella in without making her feel like she needed special senior-citizen coddling.

  “They’re right in the pantry in the kitchen,” she said, going from room to room, turning on lights and televisions.

  “Thanks. Wow! The house looks great, Ella,” Patti said. “Did y’all redecorate the living room?”

  “No, not everything. Just changed the drapes and repainted.”

  Patti had her cans of Diet Coke balanced on her hip and she was standing by the sliding glass doors, debating opening them to take in the beach at night.

  “Here,” I said, “let me do that.”

  I took the drinks from her and put them on the coffee table and opened the doors. The salty air rushed in and the ocean was loud. It was high tide and the waves rolled in relentlessly, banging the shore and grabbing all it could on its way back out. We stepped outside.

  “Holy mother!” Patti said. “Why is it so easy to forget how powerful this place is?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “The first morning I was here I stood on this deck and just looked out over the water, wondering why I ever left.”

  “Why did we leave?” she said.

  “Because we were stupid knuckleheads, that’s why. And we thought Nirvana was out there over the causeway, just waiting for us.”

  “You can say that again,” she said. “Meanwhile, Nirvana was right here.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  The door opened again and Ella came out to join us.

  “You girls want hot chocolate or are y’all too old for that?”

  “Not too old,” I said. “Too fat.”

  “Oh pish!” Ella said. “Remember when I used to make it for you when you were little?”

  “Yep,” I said, throwing my arm around her shoulder. “I sure do. Your hot chocolate mended plenty of disappointments and broken hearts.”

  “Remember you used to put candy canes in it at Christmas?” Patti said.

  “Only if you were good,” Ella said, smiling.

  “We were always good around Christmas,” I said.

  “That’s why you only got candy canes in December!” Ella said with a chuckle.

  “I knew there was a reason,” Patti said.

  “Come on, let’s go back inside,” I said, yawning. “It’s late and I’m completely exhausted from last night.”

  “Me too,” Ella said. “Sleep sounds like a good idea.”

  “Well, Ella, it’s so good to see you,” Patti said, giving her a hug. “I missed you.”

  “I missed you, too, girl. You are a sight for sore eyes.”

  I gave Ella a parting hug, picked up the Diet Cokes, and held the elevator for Patti.

  Back at the Porgy House it was as dark as pitch and maneuvering the uneven ground with Patti’s luggage was a bit of a minefield.

  “Don’t you have a porch light?” Patti said.

  “Right? You’re not the first person to make that remark. John said he was going to get me one and then we never got around to it. Well, so far.”

  I opened the door and flipped on the light switch, illuminating the exhibition room and my piano. Patti stepped inside, put her bags down, and looked around. I went back to the kitchen and turned on the light there, too, and in the back bedroom.

  “Holy cow,” Patti said. “This is a little weird. All this stuff?”

  “It grows on you. You want a Diet Coke?” I said. “Come see the kitchen.”

  “Coming!” Patti walked right in and the first thing she did was open the oven door to inspect the insides. “Cate?”

  “Wild, isn’t it?”

  “Totally. Ain’t no way I’m leaving here without baking something in this baby.”

  “Be my guest,” I said. I held a Diet Coke can in one hand and a cold bottle of white wine in the other. “Your call.”

  “Just gimme all the grapes and nobody gets hurt,” she said.

  I giggled and began the process of twisting out the cork.

  “I’m good for about twenty minutes and then I am going to pass out facedown like a starfish.” The cork came out with a loud pop! “Love that sound!”

  “Me too,” she said. “You have to be dead on your feet.”

  “Pretty much,” I said, handing her a glass. “Here. Cheers!”

  “Yeah, here’s to Aunt Daisy getting the hell out of that place in one piece pronto.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” I said and we hoisted our glasses again. “Pretty scary, right?”

  “Scary as hell,” she said.

  “And here’s what’s worrying me . . .”

  I told Patti that besides the small concerns I had about Aunt Daisy’s business, which she agreed to help me look into the next day, I was becoming more and more worried about her estate. Did she have a will, an executor, a plan? What would become of Ella if she went first and how did Aunt Daisy want her own eventual demise to be handled?

  “I mean, those two operate like they’re thirty-five,” I said.

  “True but I can’t imagine this world without Aunt Daisy in it,” Patti said.

  “Me too,” I said. “But either we’re going to bury her or she’s going to bury us.”

  “Look, she’s a very smart woman. I’ll bet she’s got a will and an executor and she probably has even picked out the outfit, including a hat and gloves.”

  “Maybe. I hope you’re right.”

  “I want everyone to have cake and champagne at my funeral,” she said. “Lots of lovely cake!”

  “Does Mark know this? I mean, I’ll try to remember it but I don’t plan on going anywhere until I’m two hundred years old and I don’t know how good my memory will be then.”

  “Probably best if I write it down somewhere, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, we’re hilarious. So give me the short version of what’s happening with lover boy.”

  “He’s wonderful.”

  “Not that short. Elaborate, please?”

  “He’s trying to turn me into a playwright.”

  “Now there’s a practical career. Is he nuts?”

  “Right? Well, look, I’m also getting more involved with Aunt Daisy’s business so I can pay the rent when I rent something. When she decides to pay me, that is. Anyway, writing a play is just an old dream of mine. And I came up with this idea.”

  “Let’s hear,” Patti said and sat down at the kitchen table.

  “So, I’m living here in Dorothy Heyward’s house . . .”

  “Why don’t you refer to it as Dorothy and DuBose’s house?”

  “I’ll get to that. Anyway, John says you know, you really should go down to the historical society and read all her papers. So I did.”

  “And you found what? Are you falling asleep?”

  “No, actually, I’m getting a second wind here. Probably the sugar in the wine. Who knows? Anyway, what I found in all those boxes and files were lots and lots of contradictions.”

  She refilled my glass and hers. I pulled a box of white cheddar Cheez-Its from the pantry closet, opening it and dumping a pile of them on a paper towel.

  “God, I love these things,” she said, eating a handful.

  “Me too. In my old life we would’ve been picking these out of a Steuben bowl.”

  “And they wouldn’t taste as good, either. Okay, gimme some contradictions.”

  “Well, there a
re all these recipes for soups and stews for a nickel a serving and two cents a serving.”

  “So they were broke? Writers starve. Everybody knows that.”

  “Yeah, but wait. When they got married, DuBose was living with his mother. And she was quite the force to deal with, too.”

  “That couldn’t have been any fun for Dorothy. I mean, a married woman needs her own house.”

  “Exactly. One too many hens in the henhouse. So, listen to this. The first thing they do is build the mother a house on St. Michael’s Alley and then they build themselves this gorgeous Federal-style house in North Carolina on ten acres or more—I can’t remember exactly—but they had a writer’s cabin in the yard and a little bridge over a stream and these huge fieldstone fireplaces. It was really something.”

  “So where’d they get the money for all that? We go from two-cent soup to St. Michael’s Alley and the glam life?”

  “Exactly! My theory is that Dorothy was loaded. Look, her parents were dead so she inherited whatever they had. And she went to boarding school in Washington, not cheap, and later she studied at Columbia University and Radcliffe College, which were also no bargains.”

  “Well, somebody had to pay for all of that.”

  “Right? So she came from money. He dropped out of school and worked some pretty low-rent jobs to try and help his mother put food on the table. I mean, DuBose and his mother and sister were so poor that his mother took in sewing and rented rooms but she also did some other pretty demeaning things, too.”

  “Oh, please tell me that she shook her tail feathers in one of those seedy bars up by the navy base?”

  “You’re terrible. No, she stood in the lobby of the Francis Marion Hotel and recited little rhymes in Gullah, hoping the tourists would give her a dime or a quarter.”

  “Wow. That’s like being a beggar.”

  “No. That is being a beggar. Anyway, DuBose had all these lofty ideas about living his life as a poet . . .”

  “While his mother is killing herself to pay for the gruel.”

  “Yep! So, he’s going to make a living as a poet . . .”

  “Now we’re really talking two-cent soups.”