DELLA
One remarkably mild Saturday afternoon at the end of January, Della and Lish were watching the kids kick a soccer ball in the garden when an unfamiliar car pulled up and a young man stepped out with a certified letter that he asked Lish to sign.
Della helped Lish stand and steady herself by holding the rocking chair with her fingertips. Lish slowly nodded at the man and carefully signed the letter with his thick silver pen. Then she sat down and carefully broke the seal as the man backed out. Della watched her eyes move back and forth as she took in the words.
Then Lish handed the letter to Della, who read it quickly to herself as the children screamed with delight as the ball made its way into their makeshift goal, a cast net draped over two camellia bushes. Drew was filing for a separation. He admitted that he had committed adultery. He would provide for Lish and the kids. He would give them whatever they needed. He wanted to end their marriage as soon as possible.
“Lish.” Della took her cousin’s hand and squeezed it tight. She watched as Lish brought a teacup up to her lips, sipped, and swallowed before scooting back in her chair.
Then Lish settled the cup back in its saucer, placed it on the rail, and reached over to pat Della’s arm as if she was the one who needed reassuring. “No . . . surprise.”
“Mama!” Andrew called. “Look at this lizard we just found!” He lumbered up the piazza stairs, with his sister on his heels, and opened his hand to reveal a bright green lizard with a red, bloated throat. Mary Jane squealed as the lizard promptly leapt out and onto the old floorboards, darting between their feet. They all watched with wide eyes as the creature scurried off the side of the porch and onto a limb of the tea rose bush.
“Wow,” Lish said unhurriedly. She forced a smile and nodded her head. “That’s something.”
One afternoon in February as Della was checking her e-mail during a planning period at school, she received a letter from the editor at her publishing house. She’d been waiting for him to respond to her novel for three months now. It had never taken this long.
Now she stared at the three-paragraph response to her three-hundred-page novel with disbelief. She read the heart of the letter several times:
While the writing is strong and the story, at times, is quite riveting, the ending fails on many levels. It doesn’t ring true somehow. It’s abrupt and incomplete. And it leaves the reader feeling both baffled and cheated. Yes, the murder is inevitable, but is that all there is to the story? I’m not sure why you chose to end it here, Della. What was your thinking?
As it stands now, the novel is unpublishable, and we simply can’t accept it. In my mind, you have two options: 1. To rewrite the last third of the manuscript, contemplating what makes an ending that is both complete and resonant. 2. Take nine months and write something new.
Let me know what you want to do as soon as possible.
“Ugh.” She leaned over her desk and rested her forehead on the heel of her hand. She didn’t know whether to scream or cry. It was not too easy to write a novel when you taught six sections of middle school English every day, and you were caring for your cousin and her children every other night. And she needed that advance money something awful. Her old Honda had died two weeks ago on her way over to Legare Street, and she and Peter had picked out a used pickup on the lot at Marsden’s Mitsubishi that they were going to buy as soon as the money came in.
“Bye-bye best seller,” she said to herself as the students filed into her classroom, laughing and throwing a crumpled ball of notebook paper back and forth. She had tried to create a kind of commercial novel, a page-turner, and her editor had out-and-out rejected it. That hadn’t happened to her in years.
She walked home in a daze with Cozy’s hand in hers. The girl was chatting a mile a minute about a scuffle that occurred on the playground between two fourth-grade girls who were fighting over a swing. Her teacher had had to come between them and order them both to the lower school principal’s office.
When they rounded the corner toward their crumbling, plum-colored duplex, Della saw Peter in the driveway putting a license plate on the truck they’d been eyeing.
Cozy ran ahead. “Daddy! Daddy!” He hugged her tight, and then he threw her high up in the air, her thin arms and legs spread and slightly bent at the joints as if she was a marionette or a sky diver in mid-fall.
“You bought the truck?” Della said. Her right hand was firmly on her hip, and she was trying to keep her composure.
He turned to her and grinned. “Remember the two shrimp I took out to that new art gallery on Kiawah Island a few weeks ago?”
“Yeah.” She vaguely recalled him loading the sculptures in his father’s truck early one morning.
He mimicked her by cocking his hip and slapping his hand on it. “They sold late yesterday to a couple from New York.” He leaned forward and put his nose against hers. “Turns out this couple is pretty well-to-do, and they’ve asked me to sculpt three turtles for a home they have in Maine.”
Then he straightened up and pulled a wad of cash out of his pocket. “I cashed the check, bought the truck, and I’ve got a dental appointment for Friday afternoon.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Della breathed deeply and let her hand fall to her side.
Peter shook his head as if to say no. “And there will be enough left over to put a few thousand bucks in the bank.” He stuffed the cash back in his pocket, reached over and patted her backside. “How about them apples?”
She swung her arms around his hips and rested her head against his chest as Cozy jumped up and down chanting, “Take us for a ride!”
“In a minute,” Peter said as he pecked the top of Della’s head. “So how was your day?”
She pulled back and looked up at him. “Not nearly as good as yours.”
“You can tell me all about it over dinner at Rue de Jean.”
“Rue?” she said. It was her favorite restaurant, but they hadn’t been able to afford a meal out in months.
“Yep.” He reached out and pulled Cozy into the center of their embrace. “Anne agreed to watch this little monkey along with the rest of the gang tonight.” He rubbed the little girl’s head with his knuckles, then leaned down and cupped his hand around her ear to whisper, “I’m taking Mama on a date.”
“All right!” Cozy looked up at her mother and flashed a knowing grin. “Can I help you get dressed up, Mama?”
“You better.” Della rubbed the child’s cheek with the back of her hand.
That night after a bowl of the curry mussels, the duck special, and a choice glass of champagne, Peter and Della rode over in their newly purchased truck to 18 Legare to pick up Cozy, who they hoped was sound asleep in the lower bunk of Andrew’s bed.
Lish was waiting for them on the piazza. She was rocking slowly back and forth in the dark in a flannel nightgown with two thick wool blankets draped around her shoulders.
“Hi.”
Della jumped back, and Peter steadied her. She made out the figure of her cousin and said, “Sorry, Lish. You scared me.”
Della hadn’t seen her cousin in more than forty-eight hours, and it seemed like a long time now that she spent every other night at her home.
Lish looked up to them both. “How was . . . your date?” She tried to focus, to meet their eyes; Della knew it was hard for her this time of night, and she was not surprised when Lish looked away.
“Really nice.” Peter leaned against the railing. “We were overdue for one of those.”
“I’ll say,” Della chuckled.
They watched Lish for a moment as she grasped the edge of the chair and began to rock. They heard the heavy breathing of two late-night joggers, and in the distance the honk of a car horn.
Lish turned back to them. “Can I talk”—she swallowed with effort—“to you both?”
“Sure.” Della took a seat next to Lish, and Peter leaned forward, giving Lish his full attention. “What’s up?” he said.
Lish adjusted her posture. She examined the veins snaking their way across the tops of her hands and said, “I want y’all . . . to move in.” She nodded across the garden. “To the carriage house.”
Della looked to Peter, who crossed his arms and waited for more.
Lish’s blue eyes glistened in the darkness. She licked her chapped lips and turned to Della. “I won’t charge you . . . any rent.” She wrung her hands. “Maybe you could . . . sell your place . . . or rent it out.”
Then she peered up at the half moon hanging in the clear winter sky above them. “I . . . need you.” She shook off a chill. “I need . . . your help.”
Della cleared her throat. The thought hadn’t crossed her mind, but she knew what Lish was trying to say. She might not get well this year or next year or the next after that. And they couldn’t go on this way, spending every other night over here, living out of suitcases and Food Lion grocery store bags. Plus, Anne was in love for the first time ever, and she needed more time with Roy to see where things were leading.
Della reached out and took hold of Lish’s shoulder. Her eyes were on Peter. “Let us talk about it, okay?”
Lish waited for a moment before she slowly nodded her head twice. “Okay.” She stood and turned toward the grand front door. “Thank . . . you.”
That night on their back porch, Peter patted his knee, and Della took a seat on it.
He squeezed her tight. “What do you think about your cousin’s proposal?”
Della rested her head against his and looked up at the same half moon. “I don’t know.”
Ever since they drove away from 18 Legare, she’d been trying to decode a hidden message or another layer behind her cousin’s request. She stared at the half face of the man on the moon. “I think she’s trying to tell us she’s not sure if she’s going to get well.” She sighed. “And that terrifies me.”
He rubbed her back and pulled her even closer. “I think she was just asking for our help.” He kissed her forehead. “Nothing more and nothing less.”
“Maybe.” Della sat up and turned back to him. “She’s asking for help—indefinitely, I guess.”
“Don’t think of it like that.” He rubbed her thin arms with his wide hands. “None of us can predict what’s going to happen from one day to the next, you know?”
They both watched a thin layer of mist move across the moon. She felt his lips on her ear as he said, “I’m up for it if you are.”
Two weeks later, Della and Peter got an offer on their half of the duplex. It was practically a miracle; nothing was selling on the peninsula as the economy continued to tank. But the parents of two college kids who had bought the upstairs unit a few years ago, when their twins enrolled at the College of Charleston, spotted the For Sale By Owner sign one Saturday morning, knocked on the door, and said: “We’re interested.”
“That’s fantastic,” Della had said as she stepped to the side and invited them in for coffee.
By the next week, they’d signed a contract, and by the end of March, Della and Peter and Cozy packed their little life into cardboard boxes and hauled it all over to the charming old two-bedroom carriage house behind the grand home at 18 Legare.