“I did. He forgot.”
“Shows you how real it looked. Sure beat that fake rock you had by the steps. Where’s the key now?”
“Under the pot of begonias over yonder. I’ve got my own, though.” I got up from the steps. “Come on in and tell me about your date with Berry.”
“It was great.” Sister followed me into the kitchen. “He called and said to dress casually, that he had a surprise. And, Mouse,” Sister pulled out a chair and sat down, “it was wonderful. He had By Request fix a lovely picnic basket, and we went to the Oak Mountain Amphitheater to see Michael Crawford. I’d been meaning to get tickets, but it was sold out when I called.”
“How wonderful,” I said, and I meant it.
“And he’s funny, Michael Crawford is. I’ve always
thought of him as just singing. But he’s a comedian, too. He had that audience right in his hand. It was great.”
“Did he reach way out on ‘The Music of the Night’?”
Mary Alice slightly cupped her hands and did a pretty good
Phantom of the Opera
reach.
“Oh, my.” I got each of us a Coke from the refrigerator. “I would have loved to have seen that.”
“You could have. All you have to do is buy two tickets and get Fred up off his butt.”
“True. We’re in a rut, aren’t we?”
“Yep.”
“Maybe things will be changing soon.” I told Sister about the offer Fred had had for the business, that he would be going to Atlanta and Chattanooga the next week to find out all the details.
“Are you going with him?”
“Don’t think so. He hasn’t mentioned it.”
“Why don’t you go to Destin with me, then? They’re having a writers’ conference at Sunnyside I’m going to.”
I took a sip of Coke. “You’re deserting a man who takes you to see Michael Crawford and plies you with goodies from By Request?”
“Oh, he’s going to be down there. Some friend of his is building a big development on Choctawhatchee Bay. He wants to go check it out.”
“Hmmm.” Twenty-five years ago, Sister bought a three bedroom condo in Destin, Florida, “The World’s Luckiest Fishing Village” (so the sign at the bridge says). Located on the Panhandle between Panama City and Fort Walton Beach, Destin was, at that time, a few old beach houses on piers and a few stores on Highway 98 that sold mostly fishing supplies. We thought she had lost her mind. That high-rise
condo stuck out like a sore thumb. For heaven’s sake, we told her, there’s not even a grocery store!
“It’s a great investment,” she assured us. “You need to get in on it.”
We should have known what was going to happen. Highway 98 has six lanes, condos have bloomed like mushrooms, and elegant shops, restaurants, and, yes, grocery stores are right outside the big iron security gate that guards Sister’s building and that looked so dumb by itself out on the beach not too long ago. It has been interesting, and in some ways sad (the little houses on piers are gone), to see so much change. It was bound to happen, though. The whitest beaches in the world are along this coast, and the water temperature is in the eighties until November.
“Haley and Frances might like to come, too,” Sister said. “It won’t be an adventure, but it should be fun.”
“I’m sure they would if they can work it out. When are you going?”
“Monday, I guess. That’s not carved in stone, though. We could stay as long as we wanted. Even take separate cars.”
It sounded great to me. I could use some nice warm dips in the Gulf and some elegant meals. It would be fun if the four of us could go together, too.
“You want me to call them and see?” I asked. But I knew what their answers would be.
“Last time there were four of us women down there,” Sister said, “all we did was eat, play bridge, and watch dirty movies. We had a great time.”
“Whoa,” I cautioned. “One of the women this time is my daughter.”
“She was one of them last time, too.” Sister smiled sweetly.
F
rances and Haley both jumped at the chance to go to Destin.
“But I can’t come until Tuesday,” Frances said. “I’ve got a dentist’s appointment Monday. A new crown I’ve got to get put on as soon as possible to start getting my money’s worth.”
“I’m already packed,” Haley said.
As for Fred, he wasn’t sure the girls’ vacation was such a good idea. “How long will you be gone?” he wanted to know. “Who’s going to water the plants and take care of Woofer?”
Lord, Mary Alice was right! Fred at I needed a few days apart.
“I’m leaving Monday, I’ll be gone at least a week, and Mitzi will take care of Woofer while you’re in Atlanta,” I answered, stretching my arm out like The Phantom of the
Opera to get a can of Healthy Choice Split Pea and Ham soup from the pantry for supper.
But the truth is that we are apart so seldom that by Sunday night we were already missing each other. Our usual TV watching was punctuated with “I’ll call you tomorrow night at ten” (Fred), and “Remember you’ll be an hour ahead of us” (me). “Don’t let Mary Alice drive too fast. She has a heavy foot” (Fred). “Don’t drive too fast. You know how they’re always working on the Atlanta interstates” (me). We finally went to bed early, exhausted at the thought of going in different directions the next morning.
“Y’all need to go to a marriage counselor,” Mary Alice had told me once when I made the mistake of telling her how I felt when Fred and I were going to be apart for a few days. “That’s not healthy.”
The funny thing is that once we say goodbye, I have this great feeling of freedom. Go figure.
Mary Alice’s black Jaguar pulled into our driveway about eight the next morning. Fred carried my suitcase and hang-up clothes out and I followed with a styrofoam cup of coffee. The plan was to go by and pick up Haley at her apartment.
“You want some coffee?” I asked Sister.
“Nope. Thought we’d stop in Clanton for a snack.”
Fred put my clothes in the car; I kissed him goodbye and got in the front seat. He shut the door and
swack
! the seatbelt grabbed me. Coffee went everywhere; I screamed.
“What happened?” Fred opened the door and looked at the mess in amazement.
“It’s okay,” Sister said. “It’ll wipe right up from these leather seats.” She was worried about the seats? The seatbelt had caught my bent arm in just the right position to catapult hot coffee from my head to my feet, and she was worried about her car?
“Lord!” Fred said. “What did you do, honey?”
“Not a damn thing.” I crawled out of the car.
“It’s the automatic seatbelt,” Mary Alice explained. “You can’t forget to buckle up.”
“Now you tell me. I’ve even got coffee in my hair. God, what a mess!” Such a mess, I had to shower, wash my hair, and change clothes. When I got back, the leather seats had been wiped off and Fred and Sister were talking about the other safety features in the car.
“Anything else going to surprise me?” I asked. My hair was wet and the shirt and pants I had rinsed out and left hanging over the shower rod might have permanent coffee stains.
Mary Alice assured me that there wasn’t and that she hoped I would get in a better mood, that happy campers were a necessity for a happy trip. Before I could say anything, Fred closed the door, and this time the seatbelt didn’t seem to grab me like it had before. So much for being forewarned.
“Y’all are late,” Haley informed us as we pulled up to her apartment.
“Your mama’s fault,” Mary Alice said. “She decided to wash her hair after I got there. What’s all that?” She pointed to the various sacks, bags, and suitcases that surrounded Haley. There were so many, it looked like she had been evicted.
“I never can decide what I’ll need at the beach,” Haley said.
“Well, you’re playing it safe.” Mary Alice opened the trunk of the car and we started piling stuff in.
“A cappuccino machine, dear?” she asked.
Haley nodded. “You never know.”
Mary Alice rolled her eyes at me. I didn’t say a word; I’d had enough trouble with coffee that morning.
By ten o’clock, we were hauling down I-65. We made our first pit stop forty miles south of Birmingham at the Shoney’s at Clanton.
“I’ve died and gone to heaven,” Haley said, coming back from the restroom. “Remember, Mama, how we went all the way across South Carolina begging Papa to stop at a bathroom? Tom was like that, too, never wanting to stop.”
“You miss a lot of Confederate cemeteries that way,” Sister said. “And caves. And folks selling quilts.”
“You know what I want, Aunt Sister?” Haley reached for a sweetroll. “I want to stop in Georgiana and see the Hank Williams Museum.”
“We’ll do that,” Sister promised. And we did. We also stopped at The House of Turkey, took a detour to see Hurricane Lake, and walked through a daylily nursery in Wing, Florida. We bought boiled peanuts in Red Level at a farmers’ market and washed them down with Grapicos. And while we were doing all this, we had come down from the Appalachians, traversed the great fertile Black Belt below Montgomery, and entered the coastal plain. As we crossed the Mid-Bay Bridge across Choctawhatchee Bay, the sun was low in the sky, and ahead of us the Gulf of Mexico was a green mirror.
Haley sighed contentedly. “Eight hours to make a four-and-a-half-hour trip. Wonderful.”
We entered the city limits of Destin and Mary Alice slowed down. The speed limit is thirty, which doesn’t mean thirty-one. Sister’s learned this the hard way. “Y’all want to eat first or go to the apartment?” she asked.
“Go to the apartment,” Haley said. “Maybe we’ll see the green flash.” What she was talking about was the bright
green flare that is visible some evenings as the last orange of the sun disappears into the Gulf. Even if it doesn’t appear, and usually it doesn’t, just watching the sun sink into the water is spectacular.
“We’ll have to hurry then,” Sister shaded her eyes with her hand and looked toward the western horizon. “The sun’s going down fast.”
We made it to the condo balcony just as the sun touched the water.
“Don’t look right at it,” I warned Haley.
“Look through your fingers,” Mary Alice said, holding her hand before her face.
“What good does that do?” I asked.
Mary Alice leaned over the balcony railing. “Don’t be silly. It cuts out half the rays.”
I was still trying to figure out a response to this when the sun disappeared into the water. There was no green flash, but that was okay. The western sky was every color of pink and orange, and the crowd of sunset watchers gathered on the seawall below us applauded. We did, too.
“A good one,” Haley announced.
“Mary Alice!” A man had broken away from the crowd and was standing below our balcony.
“Hey, Fairchild!” Sister called down.
“I saw your light come on!”
“What light through yonder window,” I murmured to Haley.
“I’ll bet he knew when she came in the gate,” Haley murmured back. “I think it’s the pheromones.”
“Fairchild Weatherby wouldn’t know a pheromone if it hit him over the head. I think Aunt Sister’s are dried up, anyway.”
“Y’all shut up,” Sister said. Then to the figure below, “How are you, Fairchild?” It came out as Fay-uh-chile.
“She’s talking Southern,” I said. “We might as well go on and start unloading the car.”
“Maybe if we wait a while, Fay-uh-chile will help us,” Haley said.
“True.” We went back into the living room and left Mary Alice flirting with Fairchild, who stood six floors below her. Not an easy thing to do.
“I love this place,” Haley said, settling down on the sofa.
“I do, too,” I agreed. In spite of being a luxury condo facing the Gulf of Mexico, the apartment was not done in the “beachy” style much favored on the Florida Panhandle. No interior decorator had placed little shell soap dishes in the bathrooms or furnished the living room and dining room with white rattan furniture and lucite tables. Instead, there was a deep beige sofa to sink into, one that had once been in Sister’s den in Birmingham. One that had been recovered many times because it was, simply, the most comfortable sofa in the world. The diningroom table was an oak one I had found at an estate sale. Three of the chairs matched. Each of the others was different. The walls were a pale blue and the carpet a beige Berber. A couple of wicker rockers with peach-colored cushions added some color. But the walls of windows, and the sliding doors that opened to the balcony and the Gulf, were the focal points of the apartment with their unbelievably beautiful view.
“Sometimes I forget how rich Aunt Sister is,” Haley sighed happily, propping her feet up on the coffee table.
“And never hit a lick at a snake.”
“She got married three times.”
“For her that was like falling off a log, not hitting a lick at a snake.”
Haley looked at the balcony, at Mary Alice waving down to Fairchild Weatherby. “I guess you’re right.” She grinned.
Sister gave a last wave, turned, and came in. “Y’all come on,” she said. “Fairchild’s going to help us unload the car.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Haley said, getting up from the sofa.
“Because you take after me. Nothing surprises me.” Sister headed for the door, stopping before the mirror in the hall to check her makeup. “Not even cappuccino machines being carted to the beach.”
“You just wait,” Haley said. “You’ll be glad I brought it.”
Fairchild Weatherby lives in the condo next to Sister with his wife, Millicent. Fairchild is from Toronto and arrived in the Panhandle to spend the winter eleven years ago with his first wife, Margaret, who managed to plow their Lincoln Continental into a utility pole on Highway 98 on New Year’s Day, thereby knocking out all the electricity to Holiday Isle, where most of the condos are located, during a Sugar Bowl game between Alabama and Florida State. I believe the national title may have been at stake. The intenseness of everyone’s sorrow over the accident touched Fairchild; total strangers wept. When Margaret died from her injuries (as did Florida State’s unbeaten record), Fairchild took her home to Toronto, had her cremated, and came back to Destin where the rent was paid through March, which, he had been led to understand, was the best golf month on the Panhandle.
“Brave soul,” the condo ladies said of the then sixty-year-old Fairchild. “Holding his head up through all his troubles.” It also happened to be a handsome head with a lot of white hair. And they comforted him with casseroles and invitations to dinner. Millicent Abernathy, the recently wid
owed resident manager ten years his junior, was the most help, though. When he informed her he was thinking of moving to Florida, she advised him to do it immediately while he could still see well enough to get a driver’s license. Once he had the license, she assured him, he would never be retested.
It was practical advice like this, plus the fact that Millicent was a sharp, nice-looking woman who owned a plush three-bedroom condo, that paved the path to true love. Fairchild and Millicent have been married ten years. The only flies in the ointment seem harmless: Fairchild’s mad crush on Mary Alice and his tendency to call Millicent “Margaret.” Millicent is still the resident manager, and Fairchild plays a lot of golf, having discovered that March is only one of the great months.
“How come Fairchild has a British accent?” Haley asked. We were sitting on the deck of The Redneck Riviera restaurant an hour later eating boiled shrimp. Quite a stack of shells lay on the newspaper between us.
“He’s Canadian,” Sister explained.
“Canadians don’t have British accents,” Haley said. “They talk just like we do.”
I turned and looked at her. “Surely you jest.”
“Well, you know what I mean.” Haley dipped another shrimp into the bowl of red sauce in the middle of the table.
“He’s a retired insurance executive,” Mary Alice said.
Haley grinned. “Well, that explains it.” She popped the shrimp into her mouth. “How come I get the impression,” she said as soon as she finished chewing, “that he could eat you with a spoon, Aunt Sister?”
“Because it’s true.” Mary Alice picked up a shrimp and examined it. “He says I’m a luscious Southern peach.”
I spluttered into my iced tea. “Fairchild Weatherby said that? My, my, what would Millicent say?”
“She’s not worried. She knows they don’t make a spoon with a handle that long.” She held the shrimp toward me. “What’s this?”
“The black thing? Looks like part of a bay leaf.”
“Good. I knew if it was a fly it was boiled, but even so—” Sister peeled the shrimp and dipped it into the sauce. Haley opened another package of crackers.
“Fairchild says Millicent’s making tons of money in that development over on the bay. Remember, Mouse, when her first husband bought a lot of that land for something like ten dollars an acre and everybody thought he was crazy? Paying ten dollars an acre, for worthless piney woods. I’m sure it’s the one Berry’s coming down to see. Fairchild says lots are selling like hotcakes over there.” Sister motioned for the waitress to bring her another beer.
“I hate to see them develop all the land around here,” Haley said. “We’re running all the poor animals out, the bears and foxes. The butterflies. There weren’t nearly as many monarchs here last fall. Did you notice?”