Folly Beach (9 page)

“You are a dear, Mark, but I’m just heading straight down I-95 until I reach Aunt Daisy’s and I know the way like the back of my hand.”

“Right. I know. And you could always ask for directions if you need to,” Mark said.

“No! Don’t stop except for gas and don’t talk to strangers and for God’s sake don’t stop at a truck stop! Bad things happen at truck stops, you know.”

“Yeah, especially since I’m driving this hot car and all. They’ll probably hijack it and me and this will be a short story. The end.” I smirked at her and she shook her head.

“Just don’t do anything stupid, okay? Like sit on a public toilet seat anywhere! And call us?”

“Don’t worry! I know how to hold my purse and tinkle in midair!”

“Please!” Mark said in mock horror. “Tinkle?”

Patti and I made nasty, nasty
ew
faces at each other.

“I might stop and spend the night around Richmond if I’m getting tired. If I do I’ll call you.”

“That’s a really good idea,” Mark said. “Something like ten percent of all road accidents are caused by falling asleep at the wheel.”

“Yeah, but three times as many men as women,” Patti said and I stared at her as if to say, how in the hell did you know that? “I looked it up on the Internet.”

“Oh,” I said and was astonished to see that they had put more actual effort into my trip than I had. But they had done so to bring facts and statistics to light. And because they loved me. And in the end, this was a hallmark day.

We were all busy sighing and smiling, sighing and smiling. Mark was saying that he would be in touch with Dallas and Mel regarding Addison’s estate but we all knew there wasn’t anything to be gained there, that is, no inheritance for me or for the children. I gave Mark power of attorney so if there were documents for me to sign he could do that for me. More sighing, more smiling. Don’t worry, don’t worry. Bankruptcy is not the disgrace it used to be. Let’s see what your real liabilities are, if any, probably nothing. Well, you can’t get blood from a stone, Patti said and we smiled and sighed some more.

We were convinced this was the best possible decision for me for the short term. It wasn’t exciting or uplifting, because it didn’t fit the normal categories of why one usually took a road trip with all their belongings. I didn’t feel like Katharine Hepburn playing Jane Hudson in the old fifties movie
Summertime,
the one where the schoolteacher goes to Venice, the trip of her dreams, to fall in love with some gorgeous Italian man.

Nope. I was going to my aunt’s house on Folly Beach in an old Subaru. The truth was something had to be done with me and this was the most benign choice, couched in the excuse of taking care of Aunt Daisy.

I overate at breakfast, probably because of nerves and the fact that I had not indulged in blueberry pancakes since December, when Patti made them for all of us on Christmas morning. God, Patti was lethal in the kitchen. And there was the fact that when the meal ended, it would be time for me to go. Time to go and let go. Well, I had told myself that this was just going to be a trip and not necessarily a permanent move. I could tell myself anything I wanted to but it was plain to all of us that this trip had every possibility of becoming just that. And along with that new home address came an avalanche of other considerations, not the least of which was how would I adjust? Exactly how small would a new home have to be so that I could afford it? Two rooms and a hot plate? Well, all of that would be based on what I could earn. Doing what? This whole adventure and its background music produced a whopping case of acid reflux. Ugh. I noted that for the foreseeable future I should eat lightly. And before I got on the road, I’d stop at a CVS for some TUMS.

We hugged and hugged and Patti slipped something in my pocket.

“Wha . . . ?”

“Shhh! Later!” she whispered.

“Oh, Patti!” I was tearing up again and so was she.

“Stop!” she said. “Look, you can always come back here and live with us.”

“Oh, right! That’s not too screwed up or anything. Mark would shoot both of us after a week!”

“No, seriously! I’ll teach you how to make cupcakes. They’re all the rage now.”

“Cupcakes,” I said, thinking how ironic it would be to actually be able to support yourself making something like multitudes of cupcakes. But then, years ago, Pet Rocks, Zoo Doo, and Beanie Babies put some guys into the millionaire’s club, as did Chia Pets and any number of weird fads.

“Yeah. Cupcakes.”

“We’ll see. I’d better get going. The sun’s up.”

After many oaths to be careful and to call and yes, to be careful some more, I finally cranked up the car and pulled away from Patti, Mark, and my former life in Alpine, New Jersey.

Why was it that I had so many ambivalent feelings about New Jersey until I was leaving it? Now, for the first time, I began to make a list of the many things I’d surely miss—riding my car through swirling leaves down the Palisades Parkway when the Canadian maples turned red and the towering oaks became gold, all the great Italian food, diner food, and sushi, and hiking Eagle Rock Reservation, the first snowfall of the season, crocuses poking their tiny but hopeful purple tight blooms through the last snow of the season promising spring’s return, the bridges, the views, proximity to Manhattan with all the temptations and thrills to be found there—Lincoln Center, Broadway, the museums, Carnegie Hall, on and on. The best of this and the best of that—world-class everything. Yep, I’d miss it a lot but since I couldn’t really afford the tolls much less the parking or the tickets or the meals, I was reconciled, almost, to a period of peaceful harmony and introspection.

Indeed, I spent the first night in Petersburg, Virginia, at the Ragland Mansion, a true piece of Americana, for the reasonable rate of eighty-five dollars for the night, including breakfast. Dinner was a small amount extra and would I like to have dinner? I would. My knees were so cramped I had to stop driving for a while or I’d never stand upright again. I took my overnight bag up to the Magnolia Room and wished I’d had my camera. It was buried somewhere in a box in the car. There was a king-size iron bed from New Orleans and several nineteenth-century gouaches of Naples and Capri on the walls. A charming fireplace, aglow from the small gas flame that danced around the cast-iron log. Best of all, there was a deep bathtub calling out to me to come back soon for a long, hot soak.

“I’ll be back, honey,” I said to the tub and was happy to see a container of sea salts on the corner shelf, to which I could help myself for a mere five dollars.

I emptied my pockets on the dresser and there was the envelope Patti had given me earlier that morning. I had forgotten all about it. I ripped it open and inside was two thousand dollars in crisp one-hundred-dollar bills, with a note that said,
Remember these two things: there’s big money in cupcakes and sisters are forever. xxx

For the millionth time, I choked up and cried, thanking God for giving me such a wonderful sister. I called Patti right away and promised to save the money to use for something important.

“Spend it however you want,” she said. “I just wanted to be sure you had some emergency cash.”

I didn’t even know what to say. She made me feel suddenly empowered to go and do something, something big enough and grand enough to make her proud of me. The most I had hoped for since Addison’s death until that moment was some measure of emotional stability, to quickly achieve financial self-reliance, and to regain my self-respect. But Patti’s generosity gave me new strength.

I would be damned if I would let her hear me crying over her gift and I struggled to make laughing sounds to make her think I was just happily surprised and grateful. I knew how much flour she had to sift and how much sugar and butter she had to cream to stash away that much money to give away as a gift. I also knew then that she had not told Mark, because otherwise they would have given it to me together. I wondered how that was, to spend your life with someone from whom you kept all the facts. Maybe everyone had secrets. Addison certainly had had his share of them. Boring old me never had anything going on that was exciting enough to conceal. Hopefully that would change. In fact, I would make it a point to test my limits!

After Patti and I said good-bye, I called Aunt Daisy to say I’d see her the next day. She congratulated me on my level-headedness. I wasn’t being so level-headed at all. I was totally exhausted.

“I don’t believe in driving at night. Too many crazy truck drivers on the road, all hopped up on something!”

“You’re probably right about that,” I said. I knew the kitchen was closing, so I said good-bye to her, too, and ran a brush through my hair.

Downstairs there was a ballroom, a solarium, a library, and the walls and decorative ceilings—all of it with innumerable architectural details. It fascinated me, because it was so old and all done by hand. Hundreds of wood rosettes decorated the huge beams, probably hand-carved on the spot by an immigrant from Italy or Poland, some poor fellow perched up on a scaffolding, who spoke two words of English. You could almost feel the ghosts of all the craftsmen and artists who had made this home so beautiful. There I was, recently sprung from a culture that screamed NEW, and Lord, OLD was so much more warm and appealing. It was absolutely charming and I wished suddenly that I had more time to spend there, just to sightsee, since Petersburg, according to the brochures by the front door, had more eighteenth-century homes than anywhere else in the country. Somehow, and by God’s grace, that devil Sherman missed it.

To my delight, I was not the only guest of the Ragland Mansion. There was a family from Pennsylvania there with their children, traveling to Washington, D.C., to see all the monuments and the Smithsonian. All of them had red hair, shining like new copper pennies, and the map of Ireland all over their faces. I had forgotten about spring breaks and winter breaks for schools. Those days were behind me as were so many things, which gave me a sentimental pause, remembering my trips to Boston and Washington with my children. Not now and not ever again. Now I was The Widow. Not to be confused with the merry one. Traveling alone.
Tell us your story
. . . Thankfully, they could not have been less interested in me. I could’ve been a Russian spy or an escapee from a mental institution for all they knew. But then, would my future be anything more than occasions where I was the silent bystander, of no interest to anyone? Would I shrivel up with each passing holiday until I was a wizened old crone? Screw that, I thought, I ain’t gonna let that happen. Hell, I used to dance on Broadway! I had a story! I’d find my way. I would.

The good news was that the McDonough family was a highly conversational and energetic group of five, who kept the innkeeper busy all through dinner, peppering him with questions about the history of the house, local points of interest, and were there any nuts in the bread, because Junior, their five-year-old mouth-breather kid whose finger rarely left the inside of his nose, was deathly allergic. I kept my novel open under my left hand, and avoided them all. The meal was actually pretty good—roast beef, mashed potatoes, and some kind of mixed vegetable casserole. Dessert was a simple baked apple with a cinnamon stick propped inside against its missing core like a straw, and I washed it down with my third glass of a mediocre red table wine that was there for the taking. It’s good for my cholesterol, I told myself. And my attitude. And after my date with the soaking tub, I slept like someone had shot me dead.

The next morning arrived, bright, clear, and beautiful. I was downstairs in the dining room again, reading the local newspaper, munching away on a warm cranberry-pecan muffin and drinking a mug of delicious coffee laced with almond, when Junior the Allergic appeared at the breakfast buffet without the benefit of adult or sibling supervision. I watched his germy little hand approach the muffin basket in slo-mo, all the while he was eyeing me, just daring me to say something. I knew his kind. But, still, I had a conscience.

“There are nuts in them,” I said.

“So?”

“So, you’re not my kid, but I just thought you might want to make an informed decision about how you die.”

“Oh.” The hand retreated.

“You could probably get pancakes, if you asked nicely. You know, use the magic word?”

“You mean
please
?”

“Yeah, that’s the one. Works like a charm. Usually.”

“Okay,” he said and practically ran through the swinging door to the kitchen, oblivious to the possibility that someone on the other side may have been charging through to the dining room with a tray of something fragile or a tureen of boiling grits at the exact same moment.

God protects children and fools went the saying, or something like it, because just as I was finishing up my breakfast, having amused myself over the local Police Blotter Report in the paper, Junior reemerged with the chef and a platter piled high with steaming pancakes, dripping with butter and maple syrup and sausage patties glistening with grease. Junior carried a large glass of chocolate milk and I thought, oh boy, somebody’s stomach is gonna be begging for mercy before they get to the Lincoln Memorial. In that moment, I was not nostalgic for the days of mothering young children. Not in the least.

“Have a great day!” I said and smiled at the little redheaded, freckled sack of hell.