Sweetwater Creek (16 page)

“Well,
that’s
helpful,” Emily thought back. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He was silent. Emily knew that once he was quiet, she could not lure him into a dialogue again. Buddy picked his moments.

She did remember though, finally. It was a night just before the party, and her nerves were strung tight. It had been one of Lulu’s best nights; her pièce de rèsistance was the story of an impeccably groomed downtown matron who had sent out Christmas cards one year that featured herself buck naked, reclining on a chaise in the style of Goya’s
Naked Maja
.

“Only she had waited a trifle too long,” Lulu said. “If she was going to do it, she should have done it about five years earlier when her boobs—’scuse me, Walter—didn’t rest on her stomach. Right after that she ran off and left her husband and children and joined a commune in Ohio. Nobody was really surprised. People just said, ‘Oh, yes, her people were always a little funny.’ Mother knew her at Charlotte Hall. She said she was always walking around the locker room after gym naked as a jaybird. Grand just says some people weren’t born to wear clothes.”

“What did the card say?” Emily asked.

“It said, ‘God rest ye merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay,’” Lulu said grinning. “Half of Charleston figured they knew just which gentlemen she meant, but I doubt if anybody really did. People always say that.”

Emily and Elvis were heading up to bed when Emily heard her aunt and Cleta, who had brought Robert and Wanda over to see Gloria’s new puppies. In the kitchen the babies rolled on a folded quilt in a tangle of puppies, squealing blissfully. Jenny and Cleta stood at the bottom of the stairs, leaning on the banister, watching the babies and talking softly.

“Lulu was in rare form tonight, wasn’t she?” Jenny said. “Did you hear that story about the lady who sent out the naked Christmas cards?”

“Naw. Heard everybody laughing all night, though. She sho’ know how to tell a tale, don’t she? She remind me of that Sherry woman who had to tell fancy stories every night or the king lop off her head.”

“Who on earth…? Oh, you mean Scheherazade. The wife of some Oriental king who was going to have her beheaded but kept her alive another night to hear the next one because her stories were so good. Why in the world would Lulu remind you of her?”

“Ain’t you seen her face when she tell them stories, an’ her eyes, lookin’ around to see if y’all are laughin’? And them stories gets wilder and wilder every time she over here, almos’ like something bad gon’ happen to her if she don’t please y’all.”

“What bad thing could we possibly do to her even if we didn’t like one of her stories?” Jenny Raiford said in honest puzzlement.

“Send her home,” Cleta said briefly.

“Surely that’s for her parents to decide,” Jenny said. “Where did you hear about Scheherazade?”

“Buddy tol’ me and Emily ’bout her one day. He said, ‘Now there was a lady who knew how to look after herself.’”

She went into the kitchen to untangle the mass of puppies and babies, and Jenny stood looking after her. The small Lulu frown creased her forehead. At the top of the stairs Emily remembered.

It had been a gunmetal winter day; rain ticked against the windowpanes of Buddy’s room, and the fire spat damply. It was not particularly cold, but it seemed so in the big, dim room, and Buddy and Emily and Elvis sat close by the fire. Buddy was wrapped in an old plaid blanket that he said was the proper tartan of Clan McClellan, to which he had deduced, after weeks of perusing a book called
The Clans and Plaids of Scotland
, the Parmenters rightly belonged. A cadet branch, but valid just the same, he said. After he died Emily had brought the filthy old blanket into her room and put it away in the top shelf of her closet. Sometimes, on the nights when Buddy had been silent for a long time and loneliness howled in her heart, she got the blanket out and wrapped herself in it and drifted off to sleep to the sound of skirling pipes and clashing claymores. She knew she would keep it always.

That day Cleta had come in with a pile of freshly folded laundry and stopped to listen to Buddy tell of Scheherazade and the tales of the Arabian Nights. Emily had forgotten, but now it came back: the rain and the fire and the empathetic terror and elation she felt with the young woman who knew that only her wit and imagination were keeping her alive.

What if you were just too tired one night? she had thought.

In her mind’s eye she saw again Lulu at the dinner table, almost manic in her animation, totally absorbed in the tale she was spinning. Did she indeed look around at all of them to see if they were laughing? Emily had never noticed. Now she would. The notion of Lulu as Scheherazade was both unsettling and pitiable.

“What do you think? Does she remind you of Scheherazade?” she said to Buddy.

“Well, you thought of it first,” he said. “Earlier tonight, when you couldn’t quite remember who she reminded you of. Where do you think that came from? Jeez, Emily, do I have to spell everything out for you? Of course she’s Scheherazade.”

“Of course,” Emily thought grumpily to him. “Of course you said it first. Like always. But what awful thing will happen to her if we don’t like one of her stories?”

“You’d have to ask
her
,” he said, and faded away down deep. Emily knew the conversation was over. But she thought about it for a long time after she and Elvis piled into her bed and turned off the light, and when she finally slept, the bizarre image of Lulu performing for her life followed her down.

Emily stood at the top of the staircase the next night, afraid to go down. At the bottom, Lulu and Walter and Jenny and the twins were ranged, waiting to see Cinderella off to the ball. Lulu had spent hours with her earlier, fussing with the dress and piling her hair this way and that, and brushing something rosy out of a little pot onto her cheeks with a soft, fat brush. Now there was nothing left but to take her quailing alien self downstairs for the first of the scrutinies she would face this night. The unaccustomed flush of makeup on her face, the strange weight of her piled-up curls felt as though they would both slide off if she moved her head suddenly. The tiny kitten heels on the new sandals threatened to topple her. If she could have turned and run, she would have done so. Elvis, for once, had pattered on down the stairs ahead of her, and she could not feel Buddy anywhere.

But in the ranks of upturned faces Lulu’s shone with pleasure and approval. Emily knew that if she kept her eyes focused on Lulu’s luminous face and Elvis’s happy grin, she just might make it to the bottom without disgracing herself. She could worry about the actual party later. She could even, if she absolutely had to, simply refuse to go. In a state of white pique and terror, Emily started down.

There was a series of drawn breaths as she reached the landing, but no other sounds. Intent as she was on not stumbling in the new heels, she did not look up, but the silence smote her. She had expected at least some comment from someone, a few compliments even if they were forced. But not this breath-held silence. Never this. On the last step she froze and raised her head.

Lulu was smiling radiantly and nodding. The twins, Aunt Jenny, and her father were staring as if they had been turned to stone. Emily felt her hastily gulped dinner come up into her throat, and tears sting in her nose. What was the matter? Was Emily Parmenter dressed up for a party simply grotesque after all?

Walter wheeled and walked out of the foyer. After he left there was a small, ringing silence, and then Aunt Jenny breathed, “My God,” and the twins chimed in with “God
damn
!” and “Holy shit!” Lulu looked at them all perplexedly, and then back at Emily, whose eyes were shimmering with tears.

“You look absolutely beautiful,” she said to Emily. “Just gorgeous.” And to the others, “What is the
matter
with you all?”

“You look so much like your mother it’s uncanny,” Jenny Raiford said, smiling at last. “And you do look beautiful. Just…beautiful.”

The twins smiled, too, tentatively.

“Shit, you might have been Mama coming down those stairs,” Walt said. “I’ve seen her do it a thousand times. I never thought you looked like her, Emily, but you just…could be her.”

“Yeah,” Carter said. “She used to look like that on her way to parties and stuff. God, Emily, it’s almost scary. Pretty, though,” he added quickly. Emily had never had a compliment from either of the twins before. It added to the palpable strangeness of the night. She felt the tears begin to track down her cheeks through the peachy blush.

Emily turned to go back up the stairs. She felt Elvis close beside her, thrusting his muzzle into her head. She heard the thumping of footsteps that meant the twins were retreating to the television den where their father had fled, scattering like hawk-chased chickens before her tears. She heard Aunt Jenny’s voice, soft with pain for her pain.

“Emily,” she said, “please don’t run back up there. You look wonderful, beautiful. This is your night. I’ll talk to your father. It’s just that you look so much like your mother, and it’s hard for him…”

Emily whirled around to look at her, blinded with tears.

“Well, then, he’ll just have to trade me in for another model,” she said, her voice thick. “Or put me in a convent or something. Because if I look like her now, what will I look like when I’m older? Will he still be leaving rooms and closing doors when he sees me?”

“Of course not,” Jenny Raiford began. “He’ll get used…”

But Emily had turned again and started up the stairs.

“NO!”

It was Lulu’s voice, sharper and more commanding than she had ever heard it. She paused, but did not turn again.

“Don’t you
dare
go sneaking off up there like a scared rabbit! You’ve got nothing to run from. If he thinks he does, that’s his problem, not yours. Now get back down here and let me fix your face, and then we’ll get out of here. And high time.”

Lulu stood straight and tall, her hands clenched into fists, hanging straight down beside her. Her face was still, but two red spots flamed on her high cheekbones. Her eyes, narrowed, burned like a falcon’s from under her straight brows. Emily came down the stairs and walked into Lulu’s arms. Beside them, Jenny Raiford dropped her own outstretched arms. Elvis, wriggling with love, tried to nose his way between the two girls. There was not a sound in the foyer but the ticking of the old grandfather clock in the corner and Emily and Lulu’s breathing.

Presently Lulu held Emily away from her and looked at her critically.

“Mascara’s run and blush is streaked. Red nose, too. This is a job for Superdiva.”

And she took Emily into the downstairs powder room and set about her with puff pots and brushes.

“Now,” she said. “All fixed. Take a look.”

Emily had refused to look in the mirror while she was dressing. Now, in the wavering, dark-flecked old shell-rimmed mirror she saw a girl she did not know, a girl with a tumble of gold-red curls piled high on her head, tendrils curling around her face. A girl with cheeks flushed bronze-pink from blush and tears, a girl with tilted cat’s eyes and a soft mouth blooming with coral lip-gloss. A girl with a pointed chin and a long neck and smooth bare shoulders, her only adornment small pearl earrings and a single strand of creamy pearls. A girl who was going to a party.

She turned back to Lulu.

“I don’t know who I am,” she whispered. “I’m not me and I’m not her. I don’t feel real.”

“Get used to it,” Lulu smiled behind her in the mirror. “That very pretty girl is your future. Now let’s blow this taco joint.”

They went out into the foyer again. Emily’s heart was pounding with the inevitability of this night. Jenny still stood there, smiling slightly, and gave Emily a brief hug.

“You both look smashing,” she said. “Now go and have a good time and remember everything so you can tell me about it.”

Elvis whined, but stayed still, sitting beside Jenny.

Emily and Lulu went out into the warm, cricket-singing night.

Lulu had borrowed the truck for the trip to Maybud.

“Can’t you get somebody to bring your car out here?” Emily had said, when the arrangement was made. “Or at least let the boys clean their car up and take it. The truck smells like dog and dog food.”

“That’s the point,” Lulu had said. “If I’ve got to go to this thing, I’m taking the dogs with me for good luck.”

And so they ground and rattled down the driveway and onto the pitted road through the oak and palmetto forest toward the highway that would ultimately take them to Lulu’s family’s plantation. Lulu drove the cumbersome truck as well as she did everything else, wrestling it through ruts and over roots with elegant assurance.

“Where’d you learn to drive a truck?” Emily said.

“There are a million of them at Maybud,” Lulu said. “I always loved them. And a friend of mine had one that I used to drive a lot.”

They reached the crumbling blacktop that would lead them to Highway
174
and thence deep into Edisto Island to the south of Sweetwater, where Maybud Plantation had stood in its sprawling gentility on a deep tidal tributary of the Dawhoo River since
1798
. As the crow flew it seemed only a long stone’s throw from Sweetwater, which looked across the water from Wadmalaw Island to Maybud’s site on Edisto. But like so many Lowcountry venues, you had to drive many miles and wend your way down many back roads before you got there. Bridges were not a priority in this wild old backyard of the Ace Basin.

They said little as they drove through the deep velvet darkness of the August Lowcountry. Occasionally an insect committed spattering suicide on the windshield, and the red-eyed, dark shapes of who knew what wild night things scurried or loped across the road in front of them. But not until they turned onto the overgrown dirt road that led down to the water and Maybud did Emily speak.

“I’d have thought a big place like y’all’s would have some kind of gate or sign,” she said. “How do people know how to get here?”

“The people who come here know,” Lulu said. There was something in her voice that Emily could not quite catch, a kind of cool flatness that could have been anything at all except pleasure at coming home.