Beach House Memories (7 page)

“Yeah,” she replied nonchalantly, wiping the sweat from her brow. “Palmer must’ve guzzled it all last night. Mama, he’s crazy about milk. There was hardly any for my cereal. Oh, thanks for getting the sweet cereal, Mama. It was good.”

Lovie beamed inside. “Glad you liked it. And let Palmer drink all the milk he wants to. I can always get more.”

They drove along Palm Boulevard, the main drag of the
island. There weren’t many houses affording her a wide view of Hamlin Creek with its racing current and docks stretched out into the water with boats at moor.

“Mama, stop! There’s Emmi!” Cara cried, removing her glasses and stuffing them in her pocket.

Lovie spotted the young girl in pink shorts and top walking along the side of the road, with her arms swinging free as you please. Lovie beeped the horn and pulled to a stop. Emmi froze and her head swung toward the car, eyes wide.

“Emmi!” Cara cried, leaping from the parked car.

Both girls squealed simultaneously. In a flash they had their arms around each other and were doing a happy jig. Lovie couldn’t help but smile watching them, remembering the exuberant joy at seeing Flo at the same age. When they pushed back, their eyes hungrily scoured each other in search of any changes time might have wrought over the past school year that they’d been apart. Cara was still taller by inches and Emmi was still heavier by pounds. Emmi was slightly burned from the sun bringing out the smattering of freckles over her nose and cheeks, despite summers of rubbing them with lemon juice.

“We’re going to the Red & White. Want to come along?” Lovie called out the window.

“Yes, ma’am,” Emmi called back. “I was heading there anyway.”

“Well, hop in.”

The girls hurried, giggling, into the backseat and commenced chattering like magpies. It was as though Lovie were invisible while she drove. She listened to every word, thrilled for this brief window into their lives.

Cara gasped in shock. “You got braces!”

Lovie looked in the rearview mirror to see Emmi bring her hand up to cover her mouth. Her blush made her freckles darken against her pale skin. She thought Emmi looked a lot like a
young Carly Simon, with her enormous smile and red-gold hair. Stratton once said Emmi’s smile was a statement. Now that statement had exclamation marks.

“I hate them,” Emmi said. “I look awful.”

“No you don’t!” Cara replied in earnest. “They’re cool. Everyone is getting them.”

Emmi’s hand slipped. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Cara replied with authority. “And your hair is so long now!”

“Mama says it makes me look like one of my Scottish ancestors.” She ran her tongue over her braces and added sullenly, “I still think I look like a dork.”

Cara sighed heavily and dug into her pocket to pull out her wire-rim glasses. She slipped them on.

“You got glasses!” Emmi exclaimed.

Now it was Cara’s turn to frown. “Yeah. Lucky me.”

Emmi put her hand over her mouth again, this time to hide her giggle.

“I don’t need them all the time, though,” Cara hastened to add. “Just when I have to see something far away. Like the blackboard, or when I’m riding my bike.”

“Now we can both look like dorks.”

Lovie held back her chuckle as Cara replied with a hearty, “Yeah.”

“You grew some, too,” Emmi said.

“Great,” Cara said with a groan.

“Mama says girls grow tall faster than boys. Then we stop around thirteen, and it’s the boys’ turn to grow.”

“You think?” Cara said, sounding heartened. “I hope so. I’m almost as tall as Palmer already, and it makes him mad. I can’t help it, right? It’s not like I want to be tall. The girls at school, they can be mean. Sometimes they call me . . .”

Lovie’s attention sharpened as her heart stopped. Immediately
she felt a primal urge to let out her claws and protect her child. How could she help her precious daughter understand that she was perfect—smart, beautiful, beloved.

Cara glanced to the front seat, suddenly aware of her mother’s presence. When she caught her mother’s gaze in the mirror, she delivered a stern
don’t look, don’t listen, just disappear
message. Then Cara leaned over and whispered into Emmi’s ear. Lovie tried to keep her gaze on the road ahead.

“Don’t you pay them any mind, Cara Rutledge,” Emmi replied to the secret in outrage. “They’re just jealous. When you grow up, you can be a model. They have to be tall, you know. They’ll be sorry when you’re famous, like Twiggy.”

Lovie’s heart expanded for the girl who defended her daughter. Cara would pay more attention to her friend than her mother on this topic. Lovie tried to cock her head to hear more, but the girls started whispering to each other in the back, interspersed with giggles.

Soon they arrived at the small shopping strip that housed a liquor store, a hardware store, and the Red & White grocery store. This was pretty much the only shopping available on the island and the hub of summer activity. She reached into her pocketbook and pulled out two quarters and gave one to each of the girls.

“You go get a treat while I shop,” she told them. The girls took off for the store at a run. Lovie strolled at a slower pace past the public bulletin board. As usual, she stopped to peruse the local island notices and ads. There was a garage sale at Catherine Malloy’s next week; someone was selling an old Impala, someone else a dining room table made of oak. An island boy named Brett was willing to do odd jobs. Lovie took down his number since Palmer wasn’t reliable. She glanced past a few other announcements when her attention was captured by the words
SEA TURTLE STUDY
written on 8 × 11 paper. Instantly curious, she removed her sunglasses and bent at the waist to read.

SEA TURTLE STUDY

Looking for volunteers interested in
participating in a study of the
loggerhead sea turtles on
Isle of Palms and Sullivan’s Island.
All interested should meet at
the Exchange Club
June 15, 2 p.m.

D
R.
R
USSELL
B
ENNETT

Lovie straightened slowly as her heartbeat quickened. A sea turtle study here on Isle of Palms? She brought her sunglasses to her mouth and idly chewed at one end. There’d never been a study before, not in the ten years she’d been personally monitoring the island’s turtle nests, not even in the thirty years she’d spent summers here. Why would they need a study now? Who was this Dr. Russell Bennett and why was he coming here, to study
her
turtles?

Lovie quickly jotted down the information, then glanced at her watch and hurried into the grocery store. Her mind was no longer on milk but on turtles.

Sea Turtle Journal

June 5, 1974

The sea turtle swims thousands of miles to reach the beach of her birth to nest. I sometimes feel I’ve traveled as far just to get to my beach house!

Four

L
ovie! You’re back!”

“Flo!” Looking up from her book, Lovie spotted her friend and rose from the deck chair and waved. Flo came trotting across her scrubby sand-strewn yard, up the stairs to the seaward porch, blue eyes sparkling.

Flo was two years older than Lovie, taller and athletic. Unlike Lovie’s sweet freshness, Flo was striking, with her lithe, finely muscled body honed from tennis and long walks on the beach. Her strawberry blond hair was worn short and curled.

The Prescotts had been her summer neighbor since she and Flo were children. The Prescott family owned what Flo’s mother, Miranda, claimed was the oldest house on Isle of Palms. It was a Victorian treasure and a rarity on an island largely made up of modest postwar houses built of brick and cinder block. Their main home was in Summerville, but Miranda had moved to the island full-time when her husband passed twenty years earlier. Miranda was the island’s beloved eccentric, everybody’s Auntie Mame, who traveled to exotic locations, wore long, flowing scarves, and painted brilliantly colored art.

Her daughter, Florence, couldn’t be more different. Flo was as
grounded as Miranda was ethereal. Miranda had raced through her husband’s money, and Florence, by necessity, was frugal. She’d gone to Vanderbilt University, got a master’s degree in social work, and worked with troubled teens in Summerville. Lovie, who never finished college, admired her friend’s intelligence and dedication to her career. But Lovie couldn’t relate to Flo’s ideas on how a woman could and should live an independent life.

Even when they were children, Flo didn’t want to play the housewife in their games. She wanted to be Amelia Earhart or a female Dr. Livingstone tromping through the marshes. As she grew older, the traditional marriage and family track that most young women subscribed to was not for her. Their friendship was so profound they didn’t question each other’s choices. They simply understood that Lovie was more of a romantic who desired love in the form of a husband and family, and that Flo wanted her independence. On the evening after Flo had rejected the proposal of Denny Duell, a great guy Lovie and everyone else thought Flo should marry, they’d had too many glasses of wine. Flo had leaned against Lovie’s shoulder.

“I’ve taken care of one child already,” she’d told Lovie, referring to her mother. “Why would I want to take on another?”

So at forty-one, Flo remained unmarried and her history of dating was legendary. Yet despite her successful career and diligent, loving care of her mother, Flo also was considered eccentric by locals because she did not marry. “Those Prescotts . . .” people would say with a resigned sigh and a small smile.

Even Miranda had her doubts. Though she might have been a freethinker and exotic in her own life, she continued to hope her daughter would find the right man and marry. It confused Miranda that Flo could date so many men and still not find a husband. When Flo celebrated her fortieth birthday, Miranda had worn black.

Lovie whipped off her sunglasses and sprang to her feet
to meet Flo at the stairs. The two women wrapped their arms around each other and suddenly they were ten-year-old girls again, overjoyed at seeing each other after the long winter.

“Lord, it’s good to see you again,” Flo said, lowering her sunglasses to peer over them and scour Lovie’s face. “Summer doesn’t start until Primrose Cottage opens its doors.”

“Amen to that. But look at you! So tan already.” Lovie twisted her lips in feigned annoyance as she checked out the glow of Flo’s early tan that she was showing off in white shorts and T-shirt. “Getting a jump start on me, I see.”

Flo couldn’t hide her smug smile at the compliment. Tanning had been serious competition between them in their younger days.

“What are you doing here so early?” Lovie asked as she led the way to the chairs in the cooler shade.

“What are
you
doing here so late? Don’t you usually come for Memorial Day?”

“Usually.” She turned her head to ask, “Do you want some coffee? Water?”

“Just had a cup. I’m fine. Thanks.”

Lovie slumped into her chair and moved her book to the table. Flo picked it up to read the title, then sat and lifted her long legs to let her feet rest on another chair.

“You’re reading Archie Carr’s book on turtles again?”

“Yep. He’s the authority.” She took the book back from Flo. “Anyway, I’m late in arriving because Stratton had guests come in from out of town,” Lovie replied, answering Flo’s question. “I had a dinner party for them.” She put her hand to her cheek and gently shook her head. “Was it only the other night? It feels like ages ago already.”

“You stayed for that?”

“Naturally.”

Flo smirked. “He couldn’t take them out to dinner at a restaurant, huh?”

“Now, Flo,” Lovie said, putting up her hand in an arresting motion to douse the spark before it became a fire. There was no love lost between Florence and Stratton. “It all turned out fine. I’m here now. But I don’t usually expect you till sometime in mid-June.”

“I’ve got workers commencing on the roof tomorrow, and I had to be here. They’re charging me an arm and a leg, but we couldn’t put it off another year. It was getting to the point that every time it rained we set out a fleet of pots to catch the drips. I apologize in advance for the noise and clutter you’re going to have to endure for the next few days.”

“You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.”

“Be sure to tell your two cuties not to run barefoot in the yard until I get a chance to scour the ground for nails. It’s gonna be a holy mess. Miranda comes back from Asheville next week, and I surely hope the work’s done by then. I couldn’t bear to live with her complaining.”

“How is Miranda?”

“More cantankerous than ever. Nothing I do to this house seems to be right. She doesn’t like to see anything changed from the original. I swear, if I move a chair she takes notice. I do believe she liked it ramshackle and falling down around her ears. Lord knows she lived in it like that for long enough.”

Lovie laughed, enjoying the familiar complaints. She knew that Flo adored her mother, and sometimes Lovie envied her, not so much for the devotion but for the teasing and banter between the two opinionated women. She couldn’t imagine that kind of relationship with Dee Dee, who was quick to take offense. She leaned back in her chair. “Sort of like my house?”