Downtown Charleston is a labyrinth of one-way streets. The maze forces drivers to venture blindly into intersections, execute tight turns. It drives the tourists—expecting logic in the traffic patterns—absolutely bonkers. I’ve always liked the capricious, unpredictable layout of my town. It forces me to tack like a sailboat through hidden alleys and narrow lanes: Bedons, Zig Zag, Stolls, Horlbeck, Philadelphia, Little Lamboll. I wend my way through the antebellum warren until I reach South Battery. My grandparents’ oyster-shell driveway jostles the liquor bottles in the trunk.
Before heading inside, I make my usual detour to Laudie’s garden. The herringbone brick pattern along the pool points toward the wall of greenery. I walk beneath the camellias and into white sunlight. When I enter her garden, I feel hollow, weak-kneed. Only now do I fully understand that my grandmother is gone.
Most everything in her garden is dead now, or at least dormant. The dried, brittle lantana crunch beneath my feet. The bare stalks of hydrangeas make me think of the hands of scarecrows. The rosemary remains green, but the mint has shriveled.
The last of the zinnias look like something out of an old photograph. Time-faded. Sepia-toned. I grab my shears to cut the last of the good ones. Their tough old stems don’t yield easily.
The remainder of the zinnias, the dead ones, need to be removed. When I pull them up from the ground, it’s as easy as lifting a tissue from its box. I rake my hands through the soil, gathering the soft webs of tired roots and tossing them in the shade of the sago palm. Soon, the garden is nothing but a mound of freshly turned soil. I can’t help but think it looks like a grave.
I return the shears to my hook in the potting shed and search for a rag to wipe my hands clean. A drawer houses her tools: shears, florist’s tape, narrow-gauge wire. Also inside, rolled up neatly, is an opened zinnia packet containing around thirty seeds. An unfinished project. I rescroll the packet tightly, keep it safe in my fist.
I head back to the car and stash the seed pack in my purse. I lay the wilted zinnias over the box of booze and haul it up the back steps. I hip-check the kitchen door to let myself inside.
I had expected to come into a house somber with death, but instead the atmosphere is festive with party preparations. But why am I surprised? Partying is what Charleston does best, and always has for more than three hundred bourbon-soaked years.
Ashley runs past with a stack of silver platters. In the dining room, Louisa takes inventory of the vases. Dad’s bent over a folding table, snapping open the legs. He looks up. “Let me help,” he says. He takes the heavy box from me, placing it on the massive mahogany table where Laudie had served thousands of meals. It seems he’s warming up to me, but by no means am I out of the doghouse yet. “Tell her about Dr. Legare,” Dad says to Louisa. “Simons could put it in the news!”
Oh gosh, parents with news tips—never a good idea.
Lousia holds two vases out for me to choose. “You knew Dr. Legare, of course. The widower.”
I guess so. There are so many Legares in this town. I nod and place the papery flowers in the crystal one, Laudie’s favorite. “Thanks, Louisa.”
“Well, just before he died, he told Mr. Mackey he wanted to be buried with his dog. And Mr. Mackey said, ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t put your dog to sleep,’ and Dr. Legare said, ‘Oh, no, Coon’s been dead for years.’ He told him he buried Coon in his garden, but that he amputated the dog’s tail first. And of course this was easy for him to do, since he was a surgeon. He kept the tail in the back of his freezer for four years. Four years, can you believe it? He phoned Mr. Mackey right after he did it. Told him to fetch it when the time came and put it in his coffin.”
“You forgot the best part!” Dad interjects. “When his housekeeper was cleaning out his refrigerator, she nearly put it in the garbage. Apparently, he had told her it was a corn dog and that he was saving it for a special occasion.”
“Oh, that’s right. And then Mr. Mackey had to go and pick it up. And, of course, his housekeeper was wondering what on earth the funeral director was doing in the freezer. Isn’t that a trip?”
I wish she wouldn’t say “trip,” but no one seems to notice. Dad and Louisa laugh, sharing details of rummaging through frozen hamburger patties and ice cream bars.
The buzz inside the house dies when Mom enters the dining room; the kitchen door swings shut behind her. She looks nearly like she always does: neat, pulled-together. She wears a kelly green shirt, matching cardigan, and khaki trousers. But her hair is a touch out of place, and she had buttoned her sweater incorrectly—one side hangs a smidge lower than the other. Mom drops into one of the Queen Anne side chairs pushed up against the wainscotting. “Andy’s plane just landed.” Andy is Mom’s younger brother. He lives in Dallas. No one born in Charleston can understand this.
I circle the dining table to sit beside Mom. The stuffing in the chairs is so worn down from the decades I may as well be sitting in a shallow bucket. “Are you doing okay, Mom?”
“About as well as I can.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
Mom blows her nose. “Can you go upstairs and get some photographs of Mother? So people can see her in her glory days.”
“Of course.”
* * *
Upstairs, it’s déjà vu. The bedroom looks as it always did, before Laudie entered hospice. Most noticeably, the curtains are open; full sun enters, strafing, as it always did this time of day, the bureaus, highboy, pillows, paintings, and chairs. On her dresser, the pearls she wore to the ballet spill over a silver dish. Her matching, monogrammed silver hand mirror and hairbrush rest beside her jewelry box. The medicinal vials and ointments have been removed from the bedside table. Her nightgown and robe hang on a hook at the bathroom door. Everything is in its place, as though she might walk in at any moment to change for a session at the barre.
The hospital bed is gone. Unhooked, unplugged, removed. I’m glad. I never liked it. It was just a primer for a coffin, anyway. Good riddance. Her and Tito’s marriage bed, which had been moved a few feet over to make room for the hospice bed, has been pushed back to its proper location at the room’s center. The blanket is neatly folded at the foot, just as always. I set the zinnias on her nightstand.
Around the room, photos of Laudie depict her as a wife, mother, and grandmother, but I want Charlestonians to see the Laudie that no one truly knew. On the mantel is a black-and-white studio portrait of Laudie taken in her early twenties, always my favorite photo of her. I lift the photo, the silver frame tarnished, to stare at my grandmother as a young woman: a brave and hopeful maverick. Her closed lips suggest mystery and a hint of mirth—a knowing Mona Lisa smile. Those wide-set, challenging eyes seem to look right at me. “The letter,” she says. I blink hard. Obviously, she isn’t speaking to me through her photograph, but the command feels so immediate, so unambiguous, that she might as well be.
What letter? I wrack my brain, listening for footsteps of anyone who might come upstairs. Agreeable sounds—familiar voices, the clink of liquor bottles and crystal glasses being arranged on the bar—drift up from the first floor. Everyone is busy, occupied.
With the coast clear, I duck into Laudie’s closet. Dozens of suits, dresses, and ball gowns—a collection curated over more than half a century—wait to be worn again. When I rake the hangers to the side, hunting for a box of papers or mementos, Laudie’s scent—a mix of Shalimar and Oil of Olay—almost overpowers me.
The shoe boxes beneath her dresses hold her pumps, sandals, and her adored collection of Capezios. I rifle through all the boxes, finding nothing but tissue paper and more shoes. Larger round boxes on the upper shelf contain her hats. In the top corner, stacks of zippered plastic bags prevent moths from eating her sweaters. Belts on hooks dangle like snakes from trees in the far reaches of her closet. I search high and low. No letter.
I ransack her dresser, sift through bras, stockings, and silk slips. No letter here, either, but I take a moment to stroke the leather soles of her ballet slippers.
“Simons?” Mom calls from the top of the stairs. “What are you doing?”
I stash her shoes back inside the dresser drawer. “I’m looking for something.”
Though I should be picking out photos, Mom appears more curious than mad. “For what?”
“Remember I told you Laudie said something about a letter?”
“I do, but, honey, her mind wasn’t all there.” Mom crosses the room to check herself in the mirror. “Will you look at that? My buttons are all wonky.”
“Mom, I really think she wanted me to find some sort of document, or whatever it was.”
“Oh, Simons, what on earth could she have possibly been hiding all these years?”
Mom needs to know the real Laudie. She should know about the rebellious girl who jumped from train trestles and trespassed to skinny-dip. She should know the young woman who danced in Atlanta clubs where the music set people on fire. Mom needs to know about Laudie’s secret love affair with a handsome man because, in a way, it’s part of her story, too.
When Mom knows Laudie, she’ll understand that a hidden but very alive part of Laudie surfaced in a Chanel suit that fateful day I took her to the ballet, demanding I take her on her final adventure. If Mom knew the real Laudie, she might have taken her to La Sylphide herself. “Mom, there’s a lot more to Laudie than you got to know and what Tito has told us all these years.” I hand her the black-and-white studio photograph of Laudie. Mom studies it, clasps it to her chest. I pat the bed, signaling for her to join me. “Let me tell you a story.”