After I divorced Joe, I tried to reinvent myself. I’d failed at being a well-adjusted wife to a nicer-than-average husband; failed to appreciate what everyone else thought was my amazing good luck at being taken in by one of Charleston’s most respected law firms—his family’s; and failed at even that most basic biological function, baby-making. I gave up trying to explain to anyone but my best friend Ellen why I couldn’t stay at the firm or why I’d left Joe, and no one but Ellen and Joe knew about the miscarriage. Most of my colleagues—though of course no one said this to my face—assumed there must be something really wrong with me, some fundamental defect of personality, an if not fatal at least very unfortunate character flaw.
I couldn’t disagree with them. I never blamed Joe. “He’s a wonderful guy,” I’d say if pressed for an explanation, “we just weren’t a good fit.” And I never said anything negative about his family firm. After all, his father and his uncles had tried to accommodate me—I, the first female in the firm’s 130-year history. “They couldn’t have been nicer,” I’d say, “but I missed my public interest work.”
I now realize that my desire to reinvent myself arose out of distorted logic: If I was defective, I thought, I might as well be defective in an interesting way. If I had a character flaw, or more than one, I might as well be a character. I cut my hair very short, limited my wardrobe to black and neutral colors, eschewed makeup, even lipstick. I furnished my new apartment in minimalist style, with a white sofa, a black chair, a glass-topped dining table, and a bed. All my old furniture, the frayed but comfortable stuff, I put in storage. (I guess there was some frayed, comfortable part of me that needed to hang on to it.) I bought some cheap Rothko reproductions—his “black and gray” phase—and hung them on the walls. On the nights I didn’t eat at home I sat by myself in a corner booth at Greens and Grains, an earnest vegan restaurant that soon went out of business. I bought expensive running shoes, started jogging and lost ten pounds, though I hadn’t been overweight to begin with.
This was my misguided attempt at self-purification, the purging of everything Sally. “You’re being too hard on yourself,” said Ellen. “And—I hate to say this, but who the hell else is going to—that haircut is not at all flattering. Your ears are not your best feature.”
“I don’t have time for hair,” I said. True, I’d been spending long hours trying to stay on top of my new caseload at the public defender’s office, the mostly hopeless cases of the mostly guilty. But Ellen worked as hard as I did as an assistant solicitor, prosecuting child abusers and rapists, and somehow she managed to find time for regular appointments at the salon, not to mention a husband, a baby, and a well-kept house.
“I don’t want any encumbrances,” I said.
“Would a rug be too much of an encumbrance?” she asked, looking around my apartment living room. “Or maybe a coffee table?”
“I want to be really careful about my choices from now on,” I explained. “I don’t want to blithely accumulate things. That’s what happens to people—they start accumulating things and before they know it they’re up to their ears in stuff they don’t need.”
“Does ‘stuff’ include relationships?” Ellen’s good at cross-examination.
“We were talking about furniture.”
“I know, but don’t you see what you’re doing to yourself?”
“I’m trying to start over. A clean slate. Whatever I buy from now on will be the result of a deliberate and conscious choice—not just a bunch of stuff I’ve accumulated.”
She laughed. “Wow, you’re in worse shape than I thought! You’re twenty-six years old, honey, still young, that’s true, but way past the clean-slate stage. You can’t just wipe out your past and start over as if it never happened.”
She was right, of course. I needed a coffee table, preferably one I wouldn’t mind putting my feet on—like the one in storage with the dents and scratches—for those nights I’d come home from court, beat. And I needed my old sofa back, with its paisley print that would graciously accommodate the drips from a coffee cup or the excess mustard from a hastily made sandwich. I needed my books and my cheap sagging bookcases and my stacks of old New Yorkers. The Rothko prints depressed me. I missed the Kandinsky reproduction with the red comet, though it was slightly faded, and even the lousy paintings I’d done in college when I imagined myself an artist.
Gradually all this stuff found its way back into my apartment and shared the space with my new purchases. It was clear to any observer that Sally-the-Decorator had a split personality, equal parts ascetic and eclectic. And now I seem to have accumulated, deliberately or not, a great deal more than mismatched furniture: I’ve got a boyfriend who wants to be a husband, an ex-husband I can’t quite get out of my heart, and an aging mother with all her accoutrements. Plus a cat.
This evening when I get home, my mother is in the act of sorting out some stuff of her own. “She’s been packing a suitcase,” says Delores. “Says she’s going to ‘the plantation.’ You think she means that place—Middleton?—where I took her a while back?”
“Could be, or maybe she heard me say something about going out to Edisto.”
“How was it? Nice house?”
“It’s seen better days.”
“Like with a hundred slaves?”
“You know that’s not what I mean.”
“I got some cousins on Edisto, live over there behind the AME church. Seems like the jungle to me, snakes and all that. And what’s an old lady gonna do if she needs to get to the hospital? Takes an hour on those curvy roads, and you can’t go too fast or you’ll end up in the swamp. Anyway, she must have been plenty lonely.”
“Mrs. Mackay had Beatrice to keep her company.” Delores eyes the carrier, the creature inside. “That cat don’t look too happy.”
“She hates the car, but she’ll calm down. Did Mom have supper?”
“A cup of split pea soup and some corn bread. I had to push it on her—she was all riled up, bound and determined to pack that suitcase.… You want me to stay a little longer so you can have a few minutes to yourself? There’s plenty of soup; I left it on the stove. And the corn bread’s still warm.”
“No, you go ahead, unless you want to stay and have some supper yourself.” I’ve noticed that since Charlie’s death, Delores doesn’t seem in her usual hurry to get home.
“That would be nice. I’ll make us a salad, too.”
Mom is back in her bedroom, the suitcase open on the bed, her arms full of clothes. “Mom, where are you going?”
She turns around, her eyes darting, her mouth and jaw set in that expression I’ve seen before. She’s forgotten where she is, yet she’s determined to go somewhere else. She doesn’t answer, but folds the clothes, arranges them in the suitcase, except for one dress. She lifts it up, shakes it out so that the long skirt falls to the floor. “Maybe this one should go on a hanger,” she says.
I put my hand on her shoulder, speak as gently as I can, “Mom, where are you going?”
“To the party. The party in the country.”
“It must be a really fancy party.” The dress is gorgeous, emerald-green taffeta. I can’t remember the last time she wore it, or where.
“We’re staying for the weekend,” she says.
“Who are you going with?”
“Frank doesn’t want to go, so Ed Shand’s taking me.” My father, Frank, never liked parties.
“That should be fun,” I say. Delores has taught me to play along, let her have her fantasies as long as they’re not dangerous. “But you can finish the packing later. Delores and I are going to have some soup. She’s made you a cup of tea and some of those oatmeal cookies you like, okay?”
She may not know who she is, or where she is, but she’s in an agreeable mood tonight. She leaves the dress on the bed, closes the suitcase, and follows me into the kitchen. The cat, who’s finished her visit to the litter box, follows her.
“What kind of dressing you want on your salad?” Delores asks me.
“Vinaigrette’s fine, thanks. This soup smells wonderful.”
“Would have been better with a ham bone, but I did it like you said.”
“It’s healthier this way.”
“You got nothing to worry about, skinny as you are.” She turns to my mother. “Watch out now, Miz Margaret. That tea’s hot. And you,” she says to the cat, who’s rubbing her back against Delores’s thigh, “you go on over there, finish your dinner.” She points to the bowl by the refrigerator. “At least this varmint’s cleaner than that dog. Whatever happened with those people, anyway? They still together?”
“So far.”
“Good,” says Delores. “Once you been married long as they were, you might as well stick it out. She ever go to court for that burglary business? The Hart lady, I mean.”
“The case was dismissed.”
“Figures. Rich old lady like that, she can pay her way out of trouble. Couldn’t make that stuff up! Two old people getting a divorce, fighting over their little dog! Crazy judge gives the dog a lawyer, like he’s a human or something. Old woman says the old man’s running around on her, but then it turns out she’s the one out in the middle of the night, only not for what you think—no, she’s out breaking into people’s houses stealing their dogs!”
“She wasn’t ‘stealing,’ she was rescuing the dogs from abusive owners.”
“But she gets herself arrested,” Delores says, chuckling.
“It wasn’t very funny at the time,” I say.
“But then they get back together and the case is over, and when the news people show up at the old lady’s door, she tells them all about how lawyer Sally Baynard is a miracle worker!”
“She might have been a little drunk.”
“So you think they’ll stay together now?” asks Delores.
“I’m no an expert on long-term relationships. You’re the one who managed to stay in love for twenty years.”
“But we weren’t married until the very end.”
“Maybe that’s the reason,” I say.
“It’s not that simple,” says Delores. “Use your napkin, Miz Margaret.” Tea dribbles down my mother’s chin.
“You always said you were better off not married.”
“But it’s not like there’s one rule for everybody,” she says. “You ain’t me. I ain’t you. Charlie and me, we worked it out to suit the two of us and we was mostly happy, but we could still have some wicked fights.… I don’t mean hitting or anything … just words. We had one right before he died, ’cause he kept talking about how I needed to find somebody else when he was gone, and it made me mad.”
“Well, he was right,” I say.
“No,” she says. “I can’t get used to another man, ’specially not one who won’t measure up to Charlie.” Tears glisten in the corners of her eyes.
“There are a lot of good men out there, Delores.”
“You should take your own advice sometimes.”
After she leaves I help my mother with her shower, then into her nightgown. She doesn’t object when I hang the green dress back in the closet. Just as she’s falling to sleep she says, “I should have married Ed Shand.”
* * *
I turn in early, glad for the comfort of my own bed, my quiet room, where for a few hours no one will need anything from me. Even Beatrice seems fine without much attention.
“It’s weird,” I tell Tony when he calls, “She’s here in bed with me, but she’s … I don’t know exactly how to describe it … aloof. Maybe she’s still getting used to me.”
“Cats aren’t like dogs,” he says. “They’re more reserved about showing affection.”
“So it’s not me, then.”
“She’s paying you a high compliment by just being near you at this point.”
“She’s purring.”
“She’s content,” he says.
“We had a stressful afternoon.” I tell him about the visit to the plantation, the conversation with Gail Sims. “I can’t understand why Mrs. Mackay didn’t just choose Gail. She and Beatrice are great together. She doesn’t want to live in that big old house, but she and her fiancé have a place not far away, and they have cats of their own.”
“That could be a problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“Cats are territorial.”
“She seemed to think it wouldn’t be a problem.”
“But didn’t the old lady’s will—”
“It’s a trust.”
“—didn’t it say that the cat should live on the plantation?”
“Her son—Randall—wants the house. He’ll get it anyway when the cat dies, but he wants it now. I can see his point. A cat doesn’t need a plantation. And Randall won’t object to Gail being paid to take care of Beatrice. It seems like such an obvious, practical solution.”
“Except for the other cats.”
“But Randall’s threatening to challenge his mother’s competency if I don’t let Gail have the cat.”
“Can he do that?”
“It’s an uphill battle, and if he loses he could forfeit his remainder.”
“His what?”
“What he gets after the cat dies. She put a special provision in the trust that says if he challenges it, and he loses, he forfeits that.”
“Sounds like a pretty big chance for him to take.”
“Which is why I think he’s probably just threatening. But the last thing I want is to get tied up in litigation in the Probate Court.”
“I thought you lawyers like litigation.”
“But I’d be stuck with the cat while…” The moment I say this, Beatrice stops purring, as if she’s insulted. “My life is complicated enough.”
“What’s so complicated?”
It aggravates me that he’d even ask this question, and maybe I’m a little sarcastic when I answer: “Well, let’s see. There’s my mother. My law practice. You.”
“I’m a complication?”
“I just meant, I’m trying to take care of my mother, my clients, spend some time with you, and now I’ve got this cat to worry about.”
“Sorry to add to your burdens.”
“You know that’s not what I’m saying. I’m looking forward to spending tomorrow night—”
“I thought you were going to stay the weekend.”
“I’m taking my mother to church on Sunday morning—she likes to go, and she hasn’t been in a while—so I should probably stay in town Saturday night. “
“I guess I’ll take what I can get,” he says.
“Okay if I bring the cat? She hates the car, but I don’t want to leave her here with the sitter if I can help it.”
“Sure. Bring the cat. Bring your mom. Bring your case files if you want to. What the hell.”
“Unless you’d rather I not come at all.”
He ignores this. “I’ll have dinner ready. You got an old blanket?”
“I should bring my own bedding?”
It’s a relief to hear him laugh. “For the cat. Cut up an old blanket, line the bottom of her carrier. She’ll be more comfortable on the road. And bring a toy for her.”
“I don’t have any toys.”
“Empty a pill container, put a few dried beans inside, screw the cap back on. She’ll have a good time batting that around.”
“See you tomorrow, then.”
“I love you,” he says.
“I love you, too,” but I know how easy it is to say these words, and how difficult it is to live them.