Authors: Dorothea Benton Frank
“I’ll bet so,” Patti and I said.
Our chatter continued until we rode up the elevator together, which was always a somber experience at a hospital. We were feeling pretty good after a delicious dinner and some wine and I was looking forward to the rest of the evening. As we stepped off we saw Tolli Rosol, several other nurses, and orderlies rushing toward Aunt Daisy’s room. We started running. I was thinking the worst and when I got there I nearly fainted from what I saw. Aunt Daisy was flailing her arms and legs, sitting up in her bed, choking. It was obvious that she couldn’t breathe. She was choking!
“What’s wrong?”
I said to anyone who might listen and give me an answer.
“Get them out of the room,”
Nurse Rosol said.
“But what’s happened?”
Patti said, just as panicked as I was.
“Please! Leave so we can do our job!”
John placed a firm grip on Patti’s arm and mine and pulled us outside. We watched in horror through the window. The orderlies were restraining Aunt Daisy, whose eyes were bulging in terror and another person, a man who I assumed to be a doctor, was holding what looked like a big oxygen mask over her face, trying to attach it. At the same time Nurse Rosol was giving her a shot of something. It was all so horrible and I thought they would never get her calmed down, fix what was wrong, and come out of that room. I started to cry and then Patti did, too. John stood in between us with his arms around our shoulders, squeezing us in between our sobs. I felt so completely helpless. What if she died right in front of us? Should we call Ella? No, I knew we should wait, because we didn’t even know what was happening to Aunt Daisy so what would we tell Ella? All we would do is frighten her and she was already at home for the night.
Oh God,
I thought,
please don’t let this be it. Please save Aunt Daisy from whatever is happening!
“Come on now, she’s going to be all right,” he said and I wanted to believe him.
I wanted to believe him with all my heart, but I couldn’t, because his words didn’t match what my eyes were seeing. Not even close. But a minute or maybe two passed and it appeared that Aunt Daisy was beginning to relax. They elevated the top of her bed and gently laid her back into her pillows with such tenderness I started to cry all over again.
Nurse Rosol turned to us and gave us a thumbs-up. Before I could even process the fact that we had gone from near-death to thumbs-up, she came out to speak to us, followed by the others.
“She’s fine,” she said. “She’s absolutely fine.”
“What
happened
?” I said.
I was still reeling. Nurse Rosol dug in her pocket and pulled out a couple of tissues, handing one to me and one to Patti.
“This happens all the time. Respiratory arrest. It’s basically a blockage in the airway, usually mucus. The BIPAP machine forces air in, moves the blockage, and then she can breathe. She’ll probably not need the BIPAP for more than an hour. I gave her a good dose of Ativan to make her relax and help her tolerate the machine. She’s breathing normally now so that’s a very good sign. I just want to have the doctor take a look at her.”
“Does this mean she won’t be coming home tomorrow?” I asked.
“Not necessarily but the doctor will make that call, not me. My guess is he’ll want to keep her for another day just to be sure she isn’t going to have another episode. Remember, the antibiotics are going to take care of the mucus. And believe me, this is a pretty common occurrence. I’ll be right back.” She went back to her station and picked up the phone, presumably to call the doctor.
“What do you ladies want to do?”
“I don’t know,” Patti said.
“I think we should stay until they take that thing off of her face, don’t you?” I said.
“Patti? How does my future sister-in-law take her decaf coffee?”
“Any way my future brother-in-law thinks I would like it,” she said and actually smiled.
So did I.
“I’ll be right back,” he said and disappeared down the hall.
“What a graceful, elegant man, Cate. I think you’ve found the real love of your life.”
“Me too.”
“And you know what’s funny?”
“What?”
“Well, if I understood everything you were telling me about Dorothy and DuBose, you know, how she gave him all the credit for her work and was always promoting him and never herself? And she was the woman behind the man?”
“Yeah?”
“He’s going to do that for you, Cate. He’s going to help you become a playwright. You’re going to have a whole new career. And even though he pointed you to where all the clues are about the Heywards’ private life and even though he will probably help you through the whole, entire process, I’ll bet you anything that he won’t take one ounce of credit. He loves you, Cate. It makes me so happy to see you with someone like him.”
“Thanks, Patti. I am
really
in love. It’s a little scary.”
“Honey, it
can’t
be any scarier than Addison, okay?”
“Yeah, he was pretty much the benchmark for scary husband.”
“But I have to ask you something.”
“What’s that?”
“What race is John?”
“His grandmother was an Inuit. Canadian. So he’s part Inuit, I guess. But he sure is beautiful, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he’s gorgeous. Whatever he is, his DNA is the perfect genetic cocktail.”
“You have no idea, sister, you have no idea.” Patti shot me a look of
oh ho! And what secrets have you not told your only sister?
and I added, “That’s all I have to say!”
The night flew by. We drank coffee and the medical staff came and went. Aunt Daisy slept, they removed the mask, and when we were comfortable that she was out of danger, we left the hospital to drive home.
It was pouring rain in torrents and the wind was gusting, swinging the traffic lights and bending the palmettos. I was glad that John was driving. I couldn’t see the road five feet ahead of us. But it was late and there wasn’t much traffic so we just drove a little slower. When we got home I told him not to get out, that we’d be fine and he didn’t need to get soaked to the skin. I was exhausted, and despite the fact that I was not looking forward to telling Ella what we had witnessed, I felt so lucky and so very blessed. I could say that my life was coming back together with at least some shred of confidence. Patti reminded him about dinner the next night, thanked him, and we said good night. We’d talk in the morning.
Patti and I held our jackets over our heads and hurried to the door.
“Hey, Cate?” she said, shaking out her jacket over the kitchen sink.
“Yeah?”
“I gotta tell you, this guy John is a prince.”
“I’m going to spend the rest of my life with him, Patti. I mean, it’s almost like the hand of God is in on this one, you know?”
Patti shook her head at me and laughed.
“I think we’d better start going to church.”
Setting:
St. Philips Cemetery.
Director’s Note:
Photos of New York’s theater district, cover of
Mamba’s Daughters,
Folly Beach, Christmas in Florida, Janie, and St. Philips Cemetery in the backstage scrim.
Act III
Scene 4
Dorothy:
DuBose and I knocked around the New York theater scene for a while after
Mamba’s Daughters
had its run, and we suffered with the ridiculous relationship we had with our director Guthrie McClintic and his wife. We were in rehearsals and I really thought we should cut a scene. It was just too melodramatic. But Guthrie’s wife was there, weeping at its perfection, and I just stood my ground. Don’t you know he accused me of calling his silly wife a nitwit, which of course I thought she was one but I would never have said it. Anyway, he
threw a chair
at me, careful to miss me but I thought,
that’s
it. I can go home to Charleston now and all you crazy people can have New York City. The only thing that saved
Mamba’s Daughters
was Ethel Waters who sang the lead. Lord, that woman could sing!
And DuBose was feeling the same way that I was, so we decided it was time to go home. It was 1937 and he was offered and accepted a seat on the Carolina Art Association, which managed this very theater. A little later on, with money from a Rockefeller grant, the Dock Street was able to hire DuBose as the resident dramatist. Well, we worked together really. Our mission was to develop local talent, so twice a week, we’d gather up ten local aspiring playwrights and read what they had, critique it, and they’d go home and rewrite it. I loved the work and for DuBose it felt like the old days. We were supremely happy.
Of course there was nothing to prepare us for his mother’s death. On June 10, 1939, Janie died from a heart attack. DuBose was devastated and the depth of his shock was a little frightening to me. He didn’t want to work, he said he was too tired and didn’t feel creative anymore. He started writing to his old friend Hervey Allen, who had moved to Florida, and during the Christmas holidays of 1939, DuBose, Jenifer, and I decided to visit them. Well, we had a wonderful time! Robert Frost was in town and we had the chance to catch up with him and everyone was so happy then. I thought, well maybe DuBose is going to come around. But when we returned to Charleston, DuBose became depressed again. He was worried about money. Janie had not left him very much, but she didn’t have very much to leave anyway. We decided to sell Dawn Hill and we did. To be free of that burden should have cheered him but it seemed there was nothing that could. He was sluggish and blue and I was at my wits’ end.
We were up in North Carolina, staying with our friends, the Matthews. I thought he should see a doctor before we went to MacDowell for the season but he refused. Finally, he agreed to see a doctor who was a cousin of his, Allen Jervey. Allen suspected a heart ailment but didn’t think there was an imminent danger. But on the way home from the doctor’s, DuBose had terrible chest pain. Margaret Matthew, my dear friend, drove him back to Allen at the hospital in Tryon and DuBose died there. Just like that. It was Sunday, June 16, one year and one week after his mother died. I was a widow and my daughter was fatherless, the same way I was when I was her age. Jenifer never spoke her father’s name again.
We laid him to rest beneath the venerable oaks in St. Philips cemetery. You know, DuBose was not a regular churchgoer. So it didn’t seem appropriate to have a big funeral in the church with music and hymns. But there was a poem he had written that I thought perhaps he might have written with himself in mind. It’s called “Epitaph for a Poet.”
Here lies a spendthrift who believed
That only those who spend may keep;
Who scattered seeds, yet never grieved
Because a stranger came to reap;
A failure who might well have risen;
Yet, ragged sang exultantly,
That all success is but a prison,
And only those who fail are free.
Fade to Darkness
In Control
T
he weather was not as violent in the morning as it had been the night before but the skies were still pouring plenty of rain. There was no sign of it clearing anywhere on the horizon no matter in which direction I looked. I got up with the birds, because since before the first ray of morning light crossed my floor at dawn, I had been worried sick that Aunt Daisy was down at MUSC all alone having another attack. Of course she had not, or the hospital would have called me. But as I lay there having all manner of paranoid fantasies, I couldn’t get my mind to slow down long enough to go back to sleep. So I got up, dressed, put on a pot of coffee, and started rereading some of the notes I had on Dorothy Heyward.
Patti must’ve smelled the coffee in her sleep, because when the pot finished dripping here she came, barefooted, crossing the floor in her flannel pajama bottoms and a T-shirt, scratching her stomach and yawning like a teenager.
“Hey!” she said and gave me a hug. “You’re up early.”
“Yeah, I was thinking about Aunt Daisy. Respiratory arrest. Screw that! It scared me to death. Coffee’s ready.”
“Still raining. Wow.” She ambled over to the windows and looked out. “The yard’s a mess. I’m definitely not washing my hair for this weather. You want a refill?”
“No, I’m good, thanks. Listen. As long as we’re up we may as well try to get Ella to Aunt Daisy’s bedside as early as we can. When we tell her what happened last night, she’s going to want to teleport herself there.”
“You are right about that,” she said and pointed her finger at me for emphasis. “Let me just guzzle a couple of mugs and wash my face.”
“Take your time. It’s just seven.”
“Cool,” she said and disappeared to the kitchen downstairs.
Dorothy, Dorothy, Dorothy, I thought, how would you like your story to be told?
And as if she was whispering in my ear I heard her say,
I was never as happy anywhere as I was with DuBose. And in this house. And on this island. Life without a great love is no life at all.
I thought, well, sugar? If we can just keep the dialogue going, I’ll have your story on paper in no time. I’d just be channeling Dorothy as soon as I got my laptop plugged in and when Patti went home, which would only be another day or two.
I went downstairs to get another blast of caffeine and continued thinking about Dorothy. We did seem to have an uncanny amount of things in common. Beyond the obvious similarities such as being orphaned and raised by our aunts, and having theatrical backgrounds and being widowed at a pretty young age, I’d been happy here, too. And, with Addison’s horrible legacy, I’d learned I could be happy with a lot less, which was kind of marvelous to know, although I’d still say that having pots of money was better than not. But Dorothy knew that, too, didn’t she?
So many nice things had happened in such a short time. I’d reconnected with the island and Aunt Daisy and Ella at a very important moment and I’d even made some headway with my wacky daughter-in-law, Alice. But perhaps most important, I might have found my great love right here, too. Yeah, for the foreseeable future, Dorothy Heyward and I had a lot to talk about. And I had hundreds of questions for her.
I called Ella at seven thirty, which, knowing her habits, seemed like a reasonable hour. She said she was just taking an apple-cinnamon coffee cake out of the oven for the nurses but that she had made one for us, too. We’d be there on the double, I told her.
In the car I said to Patti, “You know, lately, I feel like The Thing That Must Be Fed.”
“Well, sorry for you, tootsie wootsie, but who could say no to anything coming out of Ella’s kitchen? Count your blessings. You could be eating your own cooking all the time.”
“You’re right.” I pulled in the driveway and said, “I think we’d better go in and tell her here, don’t you? Better than in the car, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, so we can stuff our faces while we do,” Patti said and laughed.
So, we hurried through the rain, went up the stairs, and I let us in. Ella was predictably in the kitchen and as we all know, there is nothing on this earth to eclipse the smell of butter and sugar baking with apples and cinnamon.
“Morning!” she said and gave us a hug.
“This is what paradise smells like,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”
“I’m starving,” Patti said. “Well, I’m not exactly starving but if I don’t get a piece of that cake in my mouth
tout suite
I’m gonna start crying.”
“Well, sit yourself down, chile, and let me cut you some. You want eggs?”
Soon the whole story had tumbled out across the table. Ella was unnerved by how quickly Aunt Daisy had been overcome by the respiratory arrest, and what the medical team had to do to get her breathing normally was just as upsetting.
“What if it happens again? I mean, what if we bring her home and it happens right here?”
“It won’t happen here, Ella,” I said. “She’s on massive antibiotics that are flushing all the possibilities of that out of her system.”
“Cate’s right. Even the nurse said they wouldn’t release her unless they were certain she was completely okay to come home.”
Ella got up, wrapped the second cake for the nurses in foil, and said, “Let’s move. I can clean this up later.”
We got up immediately, put our dishes in the sink, and turned on the spigot. We knew that for Ella to leave a crumb on her countertops, she was gravely concerned about Aunt Daisy, and probably furious with herself for not having been there with her. I checked to see that the oven was off and Patti flipped the switch on the coffeepot.
The ride from the beach to Charleston was something of a challenge. The marshes were so swollen with rainwater and the tide was so high that the waters threatened to wash over the causeway and carry us away to Kiawah Island or Hilton Head. Driving took all of my concentration and focus, and Ella and Patti didn’t say much as they knew I was working hard to keep us safe. But after a while my reflexes seemed to revert to autopilot and my mind started to wander. My new life, which was in so many ways the mature version of my childhood, seemed so natural to me. My re-immersion into Folly Beach and all its irresistible charms had been almost seamless. Watching the lone egret standing in low water and then lifting into flight like an angel, the twitter of a thousand birds in the early morning, the mango sunsets, the glisten of phosphorus on the ocean at night under a full moon that changed colors on its rise—these events, so specific to the Lowcountry—made me feel rich. But more, they reclaimed my weakened spirit that had so desperately needed assurance and gave me enough hope and strength to go on to try again. The stress of Addison, of pleasing him, impressing his colleagues, trying to live up to some impossible standard that in the end was completely frivolous and shallow—all of that was gone forever. There was nothing I’d left behind that I missed or felt I needed. I was perfectly happy, no, honored in many ways, to give some oversight to Aunt Daisy and Alice’s health, more than thrilled to have John in my life and wherever it all led—the play, managing real estate, whatever curveball came my way—I was ready to take it all on. Relaxed and ready. And there was something else, too. I couldn’t wait to hold my son and daughter-in-law’s baby in my arms. I could not wait for that.
When we arrived at Aunt Daisy’s room, we all filed in even though we were supposed to go in two at a time. She was sitting up in bed wearing a beret covered in flowers and working the
New York Times
crossword puzzle in ink. Her eyes twinkled with restored health and the kind of joy that comes when you realize just how very happy you are to be alive.
“Good morning!” she said, still slightly hoarse. “Do y’all know a four-letter word for a two-toed sloth?”
“Unau,” Ella said. “She asks me this about once a month. I can’t remember the Rhine tributaries or the Asian mountain ranges, but that sloth devil? I got him! So, Old Cabbage, I heard y’all had a party without me last night.”
“Humph!” Daisy said. “Some party.”
“But how are you feeling this morning?” I asked.
“Right as rain!” she said.
“Well, that’s appropriate,” Patti said, “because it hasn’t stopped pouring for the last twelve hours.”
“Yeah, there are palmetto fronds all over the roads and some live oak branches, too. All the gutters are flooded and, of course, Lockwood Boulevard is a swimming pool.”
“I’m so glad you’re all right,” Ella said and took Aunt Daisy’s hand. “I was worried sick.”
We stayed for about an hour and then Patti and I left on the pretext of finding the right laptop and printer for me.
“So, our Mr. Risley is going to help you find a new career?” Aunt Daisy said.
“I doubt that much will come of this but I want to try. I mean, why not?”
“Why not indeed? You girls run along but bring me a surprise when you come back to pick up Ella, all right?”
“Time she start asking for sursies? Time she went home,” Ella said. “Let’s take this coffee cake to the nurses.”
So we did and Nurse Rosol was glad to have it.
“Y’all are too sweet!” she said.
“Not them,” Ella said, feeling full of beans after seeing that Aunt Daisy was going to walk out of there. “That’s
my
coffee cake.”
“Oh fine!” Patti said.
“When’s Aunt Daisy going to be released? Any clue?” I said.
“I’d say, if she continues to do as well as she’s been doing, probably in the morning after the doctor sees her.”
“Well, listen, I just want to say thanks, I mean thank you sincerely for all you’ve done for Aunt Daisy. She’s, well, she’s the most important person in our whole family.”
“It was my pleasure,” Nurse Tolli Rosol said and I wondered if she could yodel.
I told Ella before we left that she should call us and we’d swing by to get her. She said she would.
The rain had slowed to an intermittent drizzle. The storm seemed to be moving north, toward McClellanville and Georgetown. There was some sunlight breaking through the clouds, sending radiant streams of light across the sky.
“Looks Biblical, doesn’t it?” I said.
“Maybe it is,” Patti said.
“What’s the matter with you? Did you have some religious rebirth you haven’t told me about?”
“Hell, no. But every time I come back here I’m reminded how this place is closer to God than the congested, freezing-cold, super-competitive rat race I run,” she said loudly enough to alarm anyone nearby.
“Inside voice,” I said.
“We’re in a parking lot,” she said.
“Whatever. Had enough of New Jersey?”
“Yes. As soon as I get home and kill Mark for not telling me about Heather Whore, I’m putting the house on the market. I can make wedding cakes here and don’t people down here get bunions and ingrown toenails? We’re moving because there’s just no point in being there without my family. I don’t want to go back. Isn’t that awful?”
“No. I know exactly what you mean. I feel alive here. I feel young here. And my reasons are a lot different from yours, but I don’t ever want to feel like I did when Addison was alive. Not for another minute.”
“It’s a lot to think about,” she said.
“Yeah, well, in my case, the thinking got done for me. Still hard to believe, isn’t it?”
“Where’s the closest Best Buy or Staples? You’ve got a new life to start living.”
By late that afternoon I had my new computer set up in the bedroom downstairs, the one with the tiny desk. If that was the desk DuBose and Dorothy used to write
Mamba’s Daughters
it was surely good enough for me. In fact, maybe it would bring me luck.
Patti was in the kitchen making dinner. My job was to make the salad, set the table, and be alluring. Clearly, she didn’t trust my culinary gifts beyond poultry and I didn’t care if she had to be the alpha chef. I called Russ, who said he’d be glad to collect Ella and bring her home and he reported that Alice’s doctor was upset because she’d already gained eleven pounds.
“How far along is she?” I said.
“Seven weeks,” he said. “That’s a lot, huh?”
“Russ? You want to know the secret of how to get through this pregnancy?”
“The flower aisle at the Piggly Wiggly?”
“My genius son. Yes. We’re going to get you on
Jeopardy!
”
“You know, you were right about bringing her flowers and telling her she was beautiful.”
“Well, son? Think about it. She needs to hear it. Her entire body is working so hard to produce and support another life. Every hormone she’s got is like a whirling dervish. So until she gets to about her seventh month, she’s going to be a little extra touchy.”
“You mean, I’ve got
five more months
of this?”
“No, my precious heart, if you’re lucky you’ve got another fifty years.”
“Oh, man.”
“Listen to me, sweetheart, your life is about to change for the better in so many ways you can’t even imagine. You’re going to have a
child
! Your very own child to love and cherish and believe me, there is
nothing
in this world that can happen to you that will bring you greater happiness.
Nothing.
”