A storm churns out of the south, whipping the branches of oaks, ripping off the older leaves; they skitter down the dry asphalt and get caught along the curb. A gush of cool air flings a floppy hat off a tourist; a plastic bag takes flight. Thunderheads gather in the distance. Later this afternoon, it will pour.
As Mom and Caroline suggested, I’ve come to watch a streaming version of the ballet with Laudie. I packed us a ballerina-approved snack: bottles of Perrier and a bag of low-fat popcorn sweetened with stevia.
Just as I reach the bottom of the back staircase, a horn blows. Tito’s ride to his weekly chess tournament has arrived. My grandfather emerges from the back door and begins his careful descent, one hand on the railing, the other gripping a cane. I should offer to help or at least wave hello, but instead I set the bag of snacks against a topiary and make a detour to Laudie’s garden.
As I walk through a tunnel of greenery, long-tongued aspidistra lick my ankles. Camellia branches bump against my back. The needle-sharp leaves of the sago palms rake my forearms. When I enter the garden, my stomach turns.
What was once a fairy-like landscape of free-spirited, joyous shapes and colors is now a ramshackle knot of weeds and dirt. Our shell collection lies half-buried under decaying magnolia leaves. The ficus vine she had trained to crisscross the back wall has grown so unruly and heavy that it’s started to peel away from the bricks, like a blanket being stripped from a bed.
And the zinnias. They’re all but dead. Their petals have browned. Caterpillars have banqueted on the leaves, leaving them riddled with holes. Invasive weeds—crabgrass, thistle, and nightshade—usurp their water supply.
Even the little potting shed in the far corner looks slumped and tired. I grab a trowel and some shears. I drop to my knees to rip up the Bahia grass. I rake through the hot soil to hook roots of renegade spurge and chickweed. I toss clumps behind me in fistfuls, and when the pile is big enough, I dump it in the shade of a sago palm. Methodically, I work left to right, removing every errant plant from this little plot. Eventually, all the messiness—the decay and mutinous weeds—are gone. The dozen or so zinnias that remain stand erect, stalwart, restored—at least partially—to some semblance of order and beauty.
* * *
Laudie waits for me at the kitchen table. A beam of light, slicing through the coming storm and into the window, blanches the left side of her body, halving her into shadow and light. She wears a tweed skirt suit. She’s dabbed on peacock-blue eyeshadow to match her outfit. A gold jaguar with ruby eyes slinks up her lapel. Her hair is tied back in her signature low bun. A string of fat pearls encircles her neck. Her pocketbook rests squarely in front of her, straps neatly folded. Next to it is a pair of tickets. Oh, shit.
“You’re taking me to the ballet.”
“Laudie . . .” My throat goes dry. Even if I take her and nothing happens, we won’t get back until after Tito gets home. He’ll know. My family will know.
“I’m not asking you, Simons. I’m telling you. I’m not going to wither away in this house, waiting to die.”
“But, Laudie, I can’t.” Mom and Tito forbid her at the barre, let alone out on the town.
“Yes, you can. You definitely can. Besides, if I can go through all the trouble of getting this dressed up, I can certainly sit for a couple hours in a theater.”
“You do look magnificent,” I admit. But extra rouge and shoulder pads don’t fully camouflage her weakened frame, her pallor.
She straightens as she sees me size her up. “I won’t tell you the rest of the story if you don’t take me.” She gestures to the spread on the table—another measly dancer’s feast: some crackers and fruit, iced tea. Still, it’s a place setting, like the one she made when she first told me about John. Typical of Laudie: even for just saltines and grapes, she has set the table with place mats, cloth napkins, and sterling silver cutlery. “Do we have a deal?”
I feel myself relent. Sitting across from her and reaching for my glass, I recall that old expression: better to ask for forgiveness than for permission. The ice has melted a bit. After the first watery sip, her no-calorie instant tea tastes as it always has—strong and bitter. “Tell me.”
She grins. “We’ll start where we left off, with John. He and I went steady for months. Even though I phoned Mother once a week, I never told her about him.” I notice that her watch, given to Laudie by her mother to remind her to call home, is now back on her left wrist. The cast is gone.
“Because you knew she wouldn’t approve?”
“Well, yes. But mostly because John was my secret, a part of my life that no one else owned. He was dashing, Simons. Any woman would have fallen for him. Many women did. I did. And when we walked into a dancing hall together, the crowd parted. Oh, we were horrible show-offs. We had the best time hogging the spotlight.
“We were an item those days. We joined the other boardinghouse gals and their beaux by the river or at drive-ins. We sat on the hood of the car and drank hooch and ate boiled peanuts. We were madly in love, and so, well, we did what lovers do. People talked, of course, but none of them knew my family in Charleston. So I didn’t care.”
I compute her age at the time and realize that she first had sex at a younger age than I did. How on earth did that happen? I suddenly feel better about my fling with Harry, even if he never calls back. “Do you miss him?”
“I miss the idea of him. But he wasn’t who he seemed. Or maybe he was. I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Back in those days, we didn’t talk about birth control. I thought I was pregnant.”
“You must have been so scared.”
“I was terrified. How could I face my family? How could I dance with a big old belly?” She laughs, but I find it hard to join her. “I called John and told him I thought I was pregnant. He told me he would come pick me up immediately, that we would figure it out.” She twists her lips. “He never came.”
“I’m so sorry. He abandoned you.”
“That’s what it felt like. I felt so foolish, Simons. No one said it, but everyone predicted it.”
I wonder if she had an abortion, but decide to avoid leading with such an invasive question. “So, what did you do?”
“I had my period. Or maybe it was a very early miscarriage. I’m not sure. But I was so relieved. Still sad, but relieved.”
“Did you tell anyone?”
“No. The girls just thought I was sad about the breakup. I let them take care of me, reading to me or rubbing my back or combing my hair. Those were thoughtful girls.”
“They sound nice.”
“Maybe a month later, they finally convinced me to go dancing. They were always trying to cheer me up. And when I walked in the door, I saw John in the corner with another gal. He looked at me as though he had never seen me before.”
“Oh, that’s awful.”
“Your grandfather was never perfect, but he is loyal. So I telephoned him that night and asked him to please fetch me.”
“Wow. You were heartbroken?”
“Oh, yes. I was heartbroken, but I got over it. Mainly I was just so glad not to be pregnant. And, after all, if I hadn’t come home, I wouldn’t have you. Or your mother. Or Weezy and Caroline and Francie. Plus, I still have my secrets.”
“Have secrets? There’s something more?”
“Of course.” She winks. “Always. It’s my granddaughter bait.”
“You said you’d tell me the whole story.”
“I will”—she taps her watch—“but we need to get going.”
“No fair,” I tease.
“What I want you to understand, Simons, is that the worst part of the story was that I lost my confidence. I think that’s what happens when people have a big scare: they run back to what they know, even if it was what they were trying to get away from, even if they had a bright future ahead of them. I don’t want that to happen to you.”
A ripple, quick and disturbing, races across her face. I think of a riptide—water moving lightly on the surface but roiling ferociously underneath. She blinks hard; the filminess returns to her eyes. To speak, she forces her words. “I stopped being brave.”
I place my hand on Laudie’s arm—more bone than flesh and as dry as chalk. “Laudie, are you okay?”
She jerks her hand away. “Yes. Don’t you start treating me like a baby, too.” She takes the tiniest sip of tea, the glass seemingly as heavy as a milk jug in her shaky hand. “Oh, that helps.” She presses her hands against the table to push herself to standing. After raising her body just a couple of inches, she flops back into her chair.
I look away, not wanting to embarrass her. She can do it on her own. She must. At the second attempt, she hovers between sitting and standing, her legs shaking with effort. She is suspended in a strange halfway posture, unable to stand or sit. She’s not going to make it on her own. I hurry around the table, put my hands around her hips, lift her upright. Neither of us speaks, tacitly agreeing that to acknowledge the moment is to admit going to the ballet is a bad idea. “Get my keys,” she commands.
We walk to her car, which sits unused except for our excursions. In the passenger seat, she struggles to fasten the seat belt. After a few attempts, she lets it snap back to its cradle above the door. Instead of buckling her belt for her like she’s an invalid or a child, I resolve to drive extra carefully, my hands gripped tightly at ten and two.
I notice dirt between the folds of my knuckles. A plumbago leaf clings to my dress. A faint patch of sweat lingers at the back of my neck.
I pull into a handicap spot, parking tickets be damned. Overhead, the clouds converge. The wind gathers strength, blowing hard from the south. Ravens and crows crisscross the sky. I hurry to the passenger side to retrieve Laudie.
We walk carefully from the car to the Gaillard Center, our arms interlocked. I’m entirely focused on getting her inside safely, one step at a time. My eyes scan for obstacles: curbs, tree roots, uneven pavement. The tips of her Capezio shoes flash in and out of my narrow field of vision.
But once inside, on the smooth marble of the lobby floor, Laudie slides her arm out from mine. She pulls back her shoulders and lifts her neck with all the elegance of a great egret rising from the marsh. She pauses for a moment, inhaling deeply, as she does just before her exercises at the barre. Her feet are turned out into first position.
Some old Charlestonians weave their way toward us to give Laudie a kiss. I want to shoo them away, afraid they might knock her over, but Laudie receives them like a queen greeting her subjects. They comment on her outfit and her beauty; she charms them with her knowledge of the dancing troupe and scenes from La Sylphide she’s particularly excited to watch. I stand proudly beside her, watching my brave and bold grandmother hold court, until the house lights flicker a second time.
The grand performance hall is cavernous. A massive velvet curtain shields the stage. When the curtain is pulled back, the recessed stage looks like the back of a monster’s throat, ready to swallow us whole.
Thunder cracks and booms. Rain drums on the roof and lashes the building. Laudie, finally safe in her seat, turns to me. “Isn’t it grand?”
I turn to look at my grandmother—at the gleam in her eyes and the determination behind them. “Yes, it is grand.”
The lights dim. A single violinist plays a few haunting notes. Soon, the whole boisterous orchestra joins in. The tempo gains momentum. The horn section blasts, cymbals crash, and the timpani drum rumbles. To my right, Laudie waves her hands in the air as though she’s the conductor.
The curtain opens. Onstage, a man sleeps in a regal chair beside a giant hearth. La sylphide, a ghost fairy, appears. She wears white, her tutu so delicate it could have been spun from cobwebs. He wakes from his reverie, or maybe he’s still in a dream. They dance together, but she’s the star. She floats across the stage as though the laws of gravity don’t exist for her. Her movements appear effortless: she seems wholly an otherworldly spirit. When she stops mid-twirl to stretch into an arabesque, Laudie seizes my arm. “Stunning.”
The first act concludes with the man’s fiancée weeping; she is heartbroken because he loves someone else. Still, the music is happy. The corps de ballet gathers, maybe forty dancers in all, leaping, twirling, flirting, and spinning onstage together. The curtain closes for intermission. The Charleston audience, known worldwide for its often wildly enthusiastic applause, leaps to its feet. I join the standing ovation and turn to Laudie to help her up, but she’s slumped in her seat.
“Laudie?” I lift her up by her shoulders, try to read her face. Her eyes are open but vacant. If I were to let go, she’d collapse to the floor. “Laudie, are you okay?!”
Laudie mumbles, but I can’t hear anything over the applause. Don’t leave me! Oh my God, what did I do? She was fine, better than fine, just moments ago. Wild panic overtakes me. “Is there a doctor?” I yell louder, desperately. “Is anyone a doctor? I need a doctor!” Soon, people nearby join my call for help.
An usher jogs toward us, his flashlight winking as he hurries over. A woman appears and squats at Laudie’s feet. “I’m a doctor.” She pulls her glasses from her shirt pocket; her eyes scan my grandmother. She presses a thumb against the inside of Laudie’s wrist. “What’s your name?”
Laudie mumbles. Her head slumps like a wilted zinnia after weeks of drought.
The doctor’s face, stitched with concern, tightens. “Look at me. Can you smile at me?” Laudie doesn’t move. The doctor turns to the usher. Firmly but calmly, she says, “Call an ambulance.”