CHAPTER TEN
“The thorn in your foot is temporarily appeased, but it is still in.”
—GULLAH PROVERB
I awoke to face a window full of honey-colored light. I lifted the window and held my hand out into the open air that felt as though it waited for me today—an expectant day holding its breath. Or maybe it was only I who was expectant; Cate was coming to visit. After Mother had finished talking to Sissy, I’d had an intense need for some connection, a friend who knew me well in my present life. I’d called Cate and invited her to come spend the day with me. Although she’d been surprised to hear I was in Seaboro, as I hadn’t told her, she was only two hours away and promised to be here before lunch. I’d then called Tim to beg him to show my best friend the better parts of Seaboro—the water.
I opened the bedroom closet. I hadn’t worn any of my matching outfits or laced sundresses except to the Ladies of Seaboro luncheon. I leafed through the sundresses and had the odd feeling that I was peeking in someone else’s closet, trespassing on the wardrobe of a woman who was much more together than I was.
I yanked a pair of wrinkled shorts from the laundry basket, dug around for a clean T-shirt and went down to the kitchen. Mother sat at the table waiting for me. She had always been beautiful; I had no doubt that Daddy assumed he was as lucky to have her as she thought she was to have him. Even now a stunning face lingered behind the sagging skin, the age spots and wrinkles, as if it were all a tissue veil over the beauty underneath. Her hair had once been blond as the sun at midday; now it was silver and still long and consistently pulled behind her head in a severe knot.
Her hair was down again, which meant she had no plans for the morning. “This is nice,” she said.
“What?” I asked, and poured myself a cup of coffee.
“Having you here for breakfast every morning . . . I’m getting used to it.” And she actually smiled.
Although I felt I should say something profound and loving in return, I only grinned like a goofy five-year-old who had just been told her scribbled artwork was a Picasso. I walked over, leaned down and kissed her cheek.
She squinted at me, glanced up and down at my outfit. “What are you wearing?” she asked.
“Clothes.” I laughed.
“Meridy, surely you have some better clothes than that.”
“Well, I invited a friend from Atlanta to come visit today and—”
“A friend?” She stood. “To stay here?” She swept her hand across the kitchen.
“No . . . just for the day. Cate—she’s in Wild Palms.”
She sat, breathed out. “Well, will she be coming for lunch?”
I nodded. “Is that okay?”
Mother lifted her chin. “Of course it is. I just need to prepare something.”
“You do not need to prepare anything . . . really. It’s just Cate and we’ll be gone most of the day.”
“Well, you still have to eat,” she said.
I laughed. “Yes, we do.”
“Well, where are you headed this morning? Not out with that Tim . . . are you?”
I half lied. “No, I’m headed to Tulu’s this morning. I’m hoping to wrap up this curriculum today. I’ve done as much research as I can and I just want to ask her a few more questions.”
“Good. I wouldn’t want you to . . . with Beau not here and everything, I wouldn’t want . . .”
“I wouldn’t either.” I reached for a biscuit. I wasn’t sure what mother didn’t want to happen, but I might as well agree.
“Lil’ one,” Tulu said, “you see, the songs are more than the songs. They too are the story.” She spoke to me on her front porch. I leaned back in a rocking chair, absorbing her melodic voice. She’d sung a few spirituals, told a ghost story. “The story is always what matters. Our lives are a story; you’re a story.”
I laughed and leaned forward. “No, Tulu, I’m a character in someone else’s story, that’s all.”
“Well, then, there’s your problem. This is your story, child.”
Past her lawn, two children across the street stared and pointed at me, giggled as they ran behind some bushes. My story? I was more worried about how I fitted into everyone else’s story. “Tulu, I swear, you drive me crazy. I came here to get some information on the Gullah music and ghost stories. You’ve turned it back around again.” I handed her a piece of printed paper with a list of proverbs. “Here are the proverbs I’ve found. I remember some of these; some I’ve never seen.”
“You go to the Penn Center?”
“No. I got these off the Internet before I left Atlanta.”
Tulu leaned forward. “Let you in on a little secret . . . my greatgrandmother was a slave child and was set free and went to the Penn Center. It was once called the Penn School and was part of the Port Royal Experiment—a school to educate Sea Island slaves freed at the beginning of the Civil War.”
“Tulu, that is amazing. I can’t believe how much of your history I didn’t know. So those proverbs . . .” I tapped the piece of paper on her lap. “Was this how y’all talked to each other?”
“We just call the proverbs the ‘palm oil with which words are eaten.’ ” Tulu leaned back in her chair and smiled.
I wrote down what she said, scribbled across the pages. “Thanks, Tulu. I never want to misrepresent any of this. . . . I just want to give it in a form the children will enjoy and understand.”
“You was always wanting to teach. . . . As long as you could speak, you wanted to teach children.”
I tilted my head. “No, I didn’t. That must have been Sissy.”
“You’re joking with me, right?”
“No, I went to college for business—”
“I didn’t say what you went to college for. I was talking about what you wanted to be, what you walked around pretending to be with your notebooks and fake blackboard and pretend schoolroom in the corner of the bedroom. That’s what I was talking about.”
“I didn’t . . .” I halted in confusion. Had I really set up a pretend schoolroom?
“Yes, you did.” Silence ran between us. “You looked into that box yet?”
“No, there’s no need for that right now,” I said.
“There will be.” She rocked, with tiny pushes of her feet against the porch. “You asked yourself what you want?”
“Want?”
“Yes, want. Do you know what you want?”
It had been so long since anyone had asked me that question that I wasn’t even sure I had an answer. “What do you mean, Tulu? I want to write this curriculum, spend some time with Mother and Tim. Get the arts festival off the ground. Go home . . . I don’t know.”
“Beyond that . . . beyond those doings, beyond those chores and then all the way to the being.”
“Being?”
“Who you’re wanting to be.”
“Just me, just Meridy.” Wasn’t that what I wanted? It seemed the right answer.
“Ah, who is that?”
“I’m sitting right here. But I know. I need to go home. Talk to my husband, find out what is . . . missing. Running away never solved anything. No lectures, please.” But I smiled when I said this.
“You don’t talk to someone to find that, Meridy. You go inside for that.” She leaned her head on the back of the chair, closed her eyes.
“I’m sorry, I’ve made you tired.” I stood.
“It’s not you, lil’ one,” Tulu mumbled.
I leaned down and kissed her forehead. “You need anything before I leave?”
She shook her head. “My son, Will, he arranged for someone to bring me my groceries and now I’m just getting lazier and lazier.” Her head drifted backward and the soft sound of sleep whispered through her lips.
I leaned my forehead against the glass pane of the side panel to the front door, gazed out to the empty driveway. Mother came up behind me. “Staring out the window every two minutes will not get her here any sooner. You are still so impatient.”
I laughed. “Thanks, Mother. I’m just worried—she’s late. She called from the road and said she’d be here by eleven.”
Mother glanced at her watch. “Ten minutes late, Meridy. Come in the kitchen and have a cup of tea with me.”
I nodded and turned just as the sound of a car motor purred up the drive. I threw open the front door; Cate’s Mercedes appeared. I waved, ran to the car and hugged her before she even fully emerged from the driver’s seat.
“You’re here,” I said.
Cate laughed, stumbled on the crushed shells. “Yes, I am.” She nodded toward the house and Mother standing on the front porch with her hands on her hips. “This is where you grew up?”
“Yes . . .”
She leaned her head in, whispered, “You made it sound like a place you never wanted to come back to, but this is paradise.”
I nodded. “I know. But sometimes appearances are deceptive.”
She nodded back. “I do know that. Come on, show me around this place.”
After a formal tour of the house, Mother, Cate and I sat down for lunch. Mother placed Wedgwood china in front of us with her Waldorf chicken salad, poured iced tea into the large handblown glassware she hadn’t used since I’d arrived.
“So”—Mother sat—“what are you ladies doing today?”
I glanced sideways at Cate. “What do you want to do?” I attempted to make a be-quiet face, but Cate didn’t catch the hint.
“Thought we were going out boating and fishing with your friend Tom.”
“You mean Tim?” Mother asked, placed her fork back on the table with a clatter of emphasis.
“Yeah, that’s it,” Cate said, oblivious to Mother’s tone of voice.
I held my fork up in the air. A glob of chicken salad landed on the table. I grimaced. “Tim offered to take us out in the boat and I thought Cate would love to see the water, the river and all.”
“Oh,” Mother said, wiped up the fallen food.
In stiff conversation, we finished our lunch, telling Cate about the idea for the arts festival and sharing local gossip about people she’d never met. She laughed and smiled, but looked sideways at me with the left side of her lip upturned in an expression of curiosity.
Finally Mother stood to clear her plate; I grabbed the other dishes and placed them in the sink. “Okay,” I said, “let’s get going.” I grabbed Cate’s hand, nodded toward the door.
Cate spoke to Mother. “Thank you for such a lovely lunch. It’s been a long time since someone cooked for me.”
“Oh, you’re welcome.” Mother brushed her hand through the air. “You two go have fun now.”
After Cate changed into shorts we walked to my car. She grabbed my hand. “Now, what the hell is going on?”
“What do you mean?” I tossed the car keys in the air, caught them.
“I haven’t felt undercurrents like that during a meal since the day Harland came home and told me he had something very important to talk to me about. I thought it had something to do with money or investments or family—but nope, it had to do with a mistress and divorce.”
“Mother has that way about her. She can make you feel something is . . . well, wrong when nothing is.”
“Are you sure?”
I glanced at Cate. “This is a very long discussion. Can we have it some other time?”
“How about the CliffsNotes version?”
“Mother thinks something is going on between Tim and me . . . and there’s just a lot of misunderstanding between us. Nothing to do with you.”
“Is there?”
“Is there what?” I stopped next to the car.
“Something going on between you and Tim?”
I opened the driver’s-side door, looked at Cate. “No.”
She held up her hands. “Okay, okay. Just had to ask.”
I nodded and got into the car, took a deep breath as Cate climbed into her seat. “Come on, let’s show you Seaboro,” I said.
River swells banged against the hull as Tim’s boat rocked back and forth with the rhythm of the tide. Cate and I stood on the splintered dock; she dug her sunglasses out of her bag and I called Tim’s name.
His head popped out from the galley. “Hey.” He jumped up onto the dock, held out his hand to Cate. He wore a faded blue bathing suit and a bright red T-shirt; a baseball cap was pulled low on his forehead. His curls poking out from beneath the hat made him look fifteen again. “Hi, Tim Oliver.”
Cate blushed and tucked her hair behind her ear. “Hi, I’m Cate Larson.”
I raised my eyebrows as she used her maiden name. “Better known as Meridy’s lifesaver,” I said, stepping between them in an instinct I didn’t understand.
“You two ready?” Tim grabbed the towels I held in my arms.
“We are,” Cate and I said in unison.
The boat cut through the water, and the waves separated in a V as the cloudless sky reflected light off the whitecaps the boat created in the water. The motor hummed a soft lullaby and I leaned my head back on the seat, closed my eyes.
Cate touched my arm; I looked at her eyes. “This is so beautiful,” she said. “You are so lucky you can do this every time you come home.”
Tim laughed, pushed the throttle forward.
“What’s so funny?” Cate glanced at me.
“I didn’t go out on the water until last week,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“I haven’t been out on the water since I moved away . . . until last week.”
“You have got to be kidding,” Cate said, then looked at Tim. “She’s kidding, right?”
“Sorry to say—she’s not. But she’s reformed now.” He glanced over his shoulder at me. “Right?”
“Reformed?” Cate asked.
“Something like that . . . ,” I said.
Tim leaned back in his seat, steered with his knees as he grabbed three beers from the cooler and tossed one to each of us. Cate popped hers open, then glanced at me as I took a long swallow of mine. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you drink a beer,” she said, pulling her sunglasses down to stare at me.
“Really?” I said. “That can’t be right. . . .”
“No, it’s right. I’ve never, ever seen you drink a beer.”
I shrugged my shoulders as Oystertip Island came into view on the left side of the boat. Cate took a deep breath. “Oh, that is absolutely beautiful. What is that?”
And, as one does on the water, while waves and wind soothe the rougher places of life, I answered before I gave it much forethought. “That’s Oystertip Island. Remember when I told you about my high school boyfriend, who died on graduation night? Well, that’s where they found his body.”
Cate gasped. “What? You never . . . well, you implied something terrible happened to him, but . . . not . . .”
“It was terrible,” I said.
Tim looked back at me, winked, then pulled back on the throttle. The boat idled as he reached behind the seats for the fishing poles. “This is a perfect fishing spot for whiting. Or at least it was yesterday.” He handed Cate a pole. “You ready?”
Cate shrugged her shoulders. “I guess I’ll try.”
In the deeper silence of tide and nature the three of us sat and hooked the bait, threw our lines over the side of the boat. Tim threw me another beer.
Cate glanced over at me, her line tangled in her hand. “Meridy Dresden, are you having a second beer?”
I glanced down at my hand. “What?”
Cate shook her head at Tim. “I can never get her to have that second drink. I bet you can even get her to be late to a party or wear shoes that don’t match her outfit.”
“Not me. I’ve never been able to make her do anything, ever. Meridy’s always done exactly what she wants to do.”
“Well, there must be two Meridys then. . . .” Cate lifted her knotted line in the air. “I think I need a little help here.”
Tim laughed. “Never done this before?”
Cate shook her head. “Nope. But perfectly eager to learn.” She glanced at my pole, steadied between my legs with one hand, droplets of water dancing on the nylon line. “Where in the hell did you learn how to fish?” she asked.
“I grew up with it,” I said.
“My God, where have you been all this time I’ve known you?”
“What does that mean?”
“Where has this Meridy been?”
“Right here,” I said.
The afternoon passed in the glorious haze of two friendships, each of which defined the separate parts of me. Cate left Seaboro before dinner to make the two-hour drive before dark. When I hugged her good-bye, she pulled back, stared at me. “We never talked about what is going on with you . . . and Beau.”
I shrugged. “There really isn’t anything to talk about. I just needed a day like this—to enjoy you, the water. You know? I’ve really missed you and somehow just being with you puts things in perspective. We didn’t have to talk about anything.”
She placed her hand on my cheek. “Well, if you need to talk about anything, you know I’m here.”
I nodded. “I do.” I glanced over at Tim, who sat in his truck waiting for me—he’d said he wanted to show me one more thing.
Cate nodded toward the truck. “You two have a very . . . unique relationship.”
“I’ve known him since . . . I don’t remember not knowing him.”
“You’re lucky.”
“Yes, I am. I have you.” I hugged her again and she climbed into her car, waved out the window until she rounded the bend at the end of our driveway. I jogged over to Tim’s truck, climbed in the passenger seat. “Okay, let’s go. Where you taking me this time?”
Tim’s truck pulled up into his driveway. “Your house? You wanted to show me your house?” I opened the passenger door.
“One of the things . . .”
We walked up to the front porch and stood in front of Tim’s double front doors. I ran my hand across the carved wood. In the top right of the door, a dolphin curled around the corner, pointing his nose to the sky. If I could have reached to touch it, I would have, but Tim’s doors were at least nine feet tall. I pointed to the dolphin. “Did you carve that?”
“Yep. Remember . . . when all three of us threatened to get dolphin tattoos after we found out that a Celtic dolphin stood for the power of water?”
“We snuck out that night and drove to Savannah—to that tattoo parlor. My God, what were we thinking?”
“Well, I think it was Danny who finally pushed us out of the tattoo parlor. So I made y’all a box with the dolphin instead.”
His boyish eyes were still open wide, as if he was always ready for something good. “You remember that?” I asked.
He laughed. “I sure do. You probably lost that thing by now.”
“Not entirely . . . come on, show me this gorgeous home.”
Tim pointed out the heart-of-pine floors, hand-carved banister, twelve-inch molding, until we stood in the kitchen. A window as large as the wall opened out to the sea. Bloated clouds sat motionless, waiting for direction from the wind. The top halves of the clouds were bleached and puffed cotton, the bases gray and expectant.
“It’s like you live outside but inside,” I said.
“That was the idea.”
“You know”—I took a deep breath—“you’re the only one who did exactly what you said you’d do—build houses.”
“No one does exactly what they said they’d do. I never said I’d get a divorce. I never said I’d live on Mom and Dad’s property taking care of them, barely scraping by—life just happens.”
“Okay, Mr. Philosophy.” I held my hands up in surrender. “Where else did you want to take me today?”
Rain skidded across the tin roof of the Keeper’s Cottage and broke into shattered drops denting the sand. I didn’t shield my eyes or wind-whipped hair from the downpour, which the latent clouds had released along with the stinging sand whipping my legs. In the late-evening light, I stared at the Keeper’s Cottage or actually at an exact replica of the cottage that the town had built two miles inland. The porch was missing, the tower gone; only the left side was painted. I stared at a building that might be a half-finished dream or nightmare.
“You okay?” Tim touched my back.
“Yes . . .” I turned to him, stared at him through my own memory of that horrid night. He’d been thinner. His hair had touched his shoulders, despite his father’s disapproval. His mouth had been fuller but with the same smile. “Why are they doing this?” I squinted at the cottage; it really was quite miraculous. “It’s like traveling back in time. Why are they trying so hard to reconstruct it?”
“They started the reconstruction about a year ago, then ran out of money. There are a lot of reasons to build it, but mainly because it is a historic landmark for our humble town. There are also a couple families who actually had ancestors in the Civil War who died while disassembling the lighthouse so the Union troops couldn’t use it. Those soldiers took the Fresnel lens out and buried it in the sand a few miles away. They were shot coming home, so the families want the cottage as a tribute. Also it is, or was, the oldest Keeper’s Cottage in South Carolina. . . .”
“None of this . . . restoration is a tribute to the fire, is it? To Danny?”
He closed his eyes, let out a long sigh before he opened them again. “The fire is only one more tragedy associated with the cottage. There are quite a few of them. I even heard about a time in the early 1900s when a plantation owner gave huge parties here for hunters’ escapades. One of his guests got drunk and fell off the tower. There’s more. But this committee seems to think that restoring it or saving it is more of a tribute to the people who survived than to those who didn’t. I agree.”
“So do I.”
“I wanted to show it to you before you went home. I knew you hadn’t seen it. Let’s get out of the rain.”
I ignored his suggestion. “Can we go inside?” I pointed to all the yellow caution tape surrounding the cottage.
“No, the floors haven’t been reinforced yet.”
“Will they put the tower back on?” I pointed to the roof. “Where the light was, where he fell off?”
“Yes.” Tim took a deep breath. “God, I should have gone up there with him.” He groaned, dropped his head. “I ran with Karen, tried to help her out. I ran toward the woods, away from my best friend. I wish I knew what happened to him . . . you know?”
“I know,” I whispered.
“I mean, did he get trapped? How exactly did he . . . die?” Tim didn’t look at me as he spoke, as though he spoke to the regret and sadness surrounding the cottage.
“I used to lie in bed at Mawmaw’s and stare out the window at the mountains and use them as a backdrop like a movie screen to picture the different ways Danny could’ve died. I saw him flying through the air. I saw him collapse on the tower. I saw him try to swim and be pulled under.” I closed my eyes. “But I think he died from the fall . . . I don’t know why I think that. It was just what I saw most in those days when I’d try to . . . imagine him.”
“I guess we’ll never know.”
“I guess it doesn’t really matter,” I said.
“Or maybe it does because maybe I could have stopped it.”
“No, you couldn’t have. You had no idea the tower would collapse. . . . I passed out on him. I left him alone too. I’m the coward—I never returned, never faced any of it.”
“Damn, Meridy, there is enough blame to go around. None of it goes to you.”
“Yes, oh, yes, it does.” I kicked at the sand. “Hell, yes, it does.”
Tim threw back his head and rain scattered across his face. “Did little Miss Perfect just curse?”
“Did you just call me ‘perfect’?” My mouth dropped open. “That’s what Alexis called me. What are you people talking about? I’m a jumbled mess of a woman right now.”
“A perfect jumbled mess.” Tim leaned down and kissed my forehead, as if I had a fever. “Come on, let’s get out of this rain.”