“She doesn’t like Judy either,” Ted said. “And Judy’s almost her age.”
“Jealous,” I said, and Ted nodded.
“She probably would’ve had a better time if she had not felt it was her moral duty to offer her staunch opinion against May-December romances,” Carl said.
“Come on!” Adam said. “I mean, we know Cookie’s bold, but that’s social suicide.”
Eve said, “Yes, it is! And it was. Here’s how bad it got. By day three on her trip down the Seine, people left the room or moved to another sofa when they saw her coming. And she ate almost all of her meals alone.”
“That’s terrible,” I said. I felt bad about it, but I had to laugh.
Even Ted snickered. Carl and Adam were snorting and laughing.
Eve said, “When she got home I told her, Mother? This is how the world is today. You have to learn to be happy on your own before you can be happy with somebody else.”
“We all have to learn that lesson,” I said.
“Some of us more than once,” Ted said.
“Ever since Eve stopped drinking, she’s a font of knowledge and advice,” Carl said.
“Her mind is razor sharp,” I said.
“I can’t get away with jack,” Carl said.
“You never could!” Eve said and laughed.
Eve swearing off wine had given her a mental clarity I didn’t know she could access. These days she never missed a trick. Sober Eve was much more desirable company. If we had lived in the same town, we would’ve been inseparable.
Eve said Cookie thought that her advice was a lot of hooey, but she’d signed up for another river cruise in July, this time down the Rhine River.
“She promised she’d try harder to be more congenial and less judgmental on her next trip. She’s determined to make this idea of retiring on cruises work.”
Well, that’s where Cookie found love, on a side trip offered by the cruise line, in the picturesque village of Kinderdijk, snuggled in the southern tip of the Netherlands. His name was Hans, and he was a cheesemaker, a big man, she said, who wore wooden clogs everywhere he went. Or maybe it was the windmills that stole her heart. She called Eve to say she was staying. She got off the river cruise with all her belongings and checked into a quaint bed-and-breakfast.
And of course, Eve told me all this as soon as we got to Wild Dunes and had a moment to ourselves.
“Oh! My goodness! You’re kidding! Wait until I tell Adam!” I didn’t know whether to be horrified or to start laughing hysterically. “Clogs?”
“Yes! She told me his house has a thatched roof and that you can see the windmills from his bedroom. She said, ‘He gave me a night of Dutch magic.’” She imitated Cookie in a dreamy teenage girl’s voice.
“Dear holy mother!”
“Then she said, I’ll let you know if I’m ever coming back.”
I thought, maybe all Cookie ever needed was a good roll in the hay herself.
Eve continued, “Ew. Dutch magic? I don’t even want to know what that means. How’s Adam feeling?”
I had to laugh. Cookie was happy? Puh-leaze!
“What a story! Adam? You’d never believe he was ever so sick, to see him running around these days. So how are you and Carl getting along?”
It was as hot as Hades, the dead of July, and Eve and I were sitting by the pool like we always did. The boys were out playing nine holes despite the heat. We weren’t going to let a little thing like an organ transplant and Cookie running away from home ruin our annual vacation. And that year was sans children. And sans Ted, who had stayed home to oversee the construction of new porches and a new roof on the old plantation house.
And Clarabeth, of course, was absent too. Wild Dunes seemed a little strange and haunted without her.
“Carl is just the greatest guy in the world,” Eve said. “What’s that old Joni Mitchell song? ‘Don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’? Something like that. I almost blew it! But you know, Adam’s illness saved us, crazy as that sounds!”
“I almost blew it too! Yes, Adam’s illness saved us all,” I said in agreement. “He’s always said, there are no coincidences.”
“I think I might actually agree with that,” she said.
“Me too.”
That night we went over to the Shem Creek Bar and Grill for dinner. Ted and Judy met us there. We ordered tons of food—salads, deviled crabs, fried shrimp, hush puppies, and flounder.
“That ought to do it,” Angie Avinger, the restaurant’s owner, said.
“They got you waiting tables, Angie?” Ted said.
“For you, darlin’? Anything.”
“She’s my favorite,” Ted said.
“Do I need to be jealous?” Judy said.
Ted reached over and squeezed her hand. “Not for one second. How’s everything at Wild Dunes?” Ted said to Adam and Carl.
“Hot on the golf course,” Adam said.
“Today was a scorcher,” Carl said.
“That’s because you boys don’t have the sense to get in the shade! Ted, it’s the same beach as last year,” Eve said. “I love it there.”
“Me too. I love the Isle of Palms. And it will be the same beach next year,” I said. “I hope.”
“Well, next year I’ll put aside a week and join you,” he said. “This year it just didn’t seem right.”
Adam said, “Dad, we understand completely. How’s that new roof coming?”
“It’s coming, but so is Christmas,” Ted said.
“I’m so looking forward to our trip to Greece,” Judy said. “I’ve been to some of the islands but never Corfu.”
“It’s pretty special,” I said. “My mother was born there and her sister still lives there. And I still have lots of cousins all around Corfu Town. They all say we can’t get there fast enough.”
“Well, your family looks so nice,” Ted said. “This is going to be a real treat.”
Later that night, Adam and I took a stroll on the beach. It was low tide and there were approximately a billion stars glittering above us. We found an old palmetto log and sat there for a while, just musing. Adam took my hand in his and kissed it.
“I love you so, so much,” he said.
“Enough to live here a few months out of the year?” I’d been waiting to ask that question for a while.
“Which months?”
“Oh, I don’t know. March, April, May? It’s a slower rental time.”
“What about your garden?”
“I can put it in with Mr. Proctor and he can watch it, don’t you think?”
“Yes, he could. What about the commute?”
“Well, sweetheart, if you’re still building in Summerville, it’s only about ten minutes longer from here than from where we live.”
“True. You really love this place, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do. And to be perfectly honest, it’s a lot closer to civilization.”
He looked at me, and even in the dark I could see him thinking about the many inconveniences of living so far away from all the places we liked to go, inconveniences that had impacted my day-to-day living and my social life for twenty years.
“Maybe we should just build a house over here. What do you think? I can bring a dump truck of black dirt from our property and you can have a garden here. That is, when we find a piece of property to build on.”
“Oh, Adam! Do you mean it? Oh, you’re the most wonderful man in the world!”
“That might be overstating it, but only slightly,” he said, smiling. “Hey! We had a great year and all I want to do is make you happy!”
“Oh, I love you, sweetheart!”
The next morning, Adam and I were lying in bed. Neither one of us felt like getting up. We were talking about buying property. He said we should take a ride around the island that afternoon and see what was for sale. I was so excited. He was too.
“Last night was fun, wasn’t it?” Adam said, fluffing his pillow an
d turning over on his side to face me.
“Yes. I love deviled crabs,” I said. “I never think to order them because of the breading. But theirs are really good. I love them.”
“I love you,” he said.
I turned over to face him. “And I love you.”
For the next few minutes we just lay there, like two lovers do, and stared into each other’s eyes. Then he took his hand and began to rub his knuckles lightly along the side of my arm. I had missed his touch for a long time. I had a fleeting thought about how much time we might actually have left together, then I let it go. I had been avoiding sex because I was afraid it might hurt him somehow. I was waiting for him to let me know when he was ready. He was ready.
“Are you sure?” I said.
“I played golf and I didn’t drop dead,” he said. He had that devilish smile on his face, the one I fell in love with so long ago. “Feel this.”
He took my hand and pushed it down to his Lowcountry.
“Good Lord! Adam!” He was like a teenage boy seeing a Playboy magazine for the first time.
“This won’t take long,” he said, unabashedly and brazenly, and then he smiled like he used to when we were younger—wide smile, full of beans.
He’s bragging about a quickie?
“Okay, but if you die, don’t blame me.”
“I won’t.”
He pulled my nightshirt over my head and threw it somewhere and slipped out of his pajamas at the same time. Before I could say anything, he was inside of me, and I thought, Oh, God. I have missed my husband!
“I love you, Adam. You feel so good.”
“I love you, Eliza. Yes. You feel wonderful.”
Well, I should’ve made note of the time. It was not a quickie. It was an Olympic trial if not a main event. Adam was in charge and going for the gold. I was holding onto the headboard for dear life while he enthusiastically plunged in me over and over for at least fifteen minutes, maybe longer. The headboard was banging the wall so loudly, I knew our neighbors knew what the rhythmic sounds meant. At that moment I didn’t care. I could barely participate or add anything to what was happening. I could hardly think. All I could do was lie back and enjoy it. So I did. When he finally reached orgasm, he began touching me. An onlooker (not that there had ever been one, except for that one time the boys caught us when they were little and thought we were killing each other) would’ve said Adam had a future in gynecology. I would’ve said to that onlooker that Adam knew how to make my body sing arias like a diva. There was no way sex got any better than that.
We were lying there in a pool of our bodily fluids and sweat, trying to bring our heartbeats back to normal.
“I’m pregnant,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”
“No, you’re not. You’re menopausal.”
“Screw you,” I said and laughed.
“You just did,” he said.
The doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it,” I said. “You just stay right here.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said.
I pulled my nightshirt over my head and yelled, “Coming!”
Adam said, “You just did!”
“Very funny, Mr. Stanley.”
“Be right there,” I said. I looked through the keyhole. It was Carl and Eve. I thought, Oh, okay, and I opened the door. “G’morning!” I said, chipper as a baby bird just out of the shell.
“Sweet Jesus, girl! What happened to your hair?” Eve said.
I ran my fingers through my hair and stopped at the rat’s nest in the back of my head the size of a grapefruit.
“Um,” I said, feeling its Rastafarian mass. “Yeah, wow.”
“And your nightshirt is inside out,” Eve said. They both snickered. “Busted!”
“Yeah,” Carl said, innocently. “So what’s going on in the Stanley house this morning?”
“Exactly what you think, Mr. and Mrs. Landers! We’re giving each other a little thrill. So, why are you here at the crack of dawn?”
“It’s actually nine o’clock and we’re supposed to be going out for breakfast at the Sea Biscuit? Remember?” Eve said.
“Really?” And then I remembered. “Well, why don’t y’all get us a table and we’ll be there as fast as we can.”
“Come back to bed, woman!” Adam yelled from upstairs. “I’m not done with you!”
“Adam! Stop! You’re just going to milk this to death, aren’t you?”
“We’ll see you soon,” Carl said and took Eve’s elbow. “Let’s go, sweetheart, and let these old people try and recoup their dignity.”
They left, and by the time I got upstairs, Adam had the shower running. He was brushing his teeth and I began to work on the knot in my hair.
“I have three choices,” I said, looking at it with a hand mirror. “I can grow dreadlocks starting now, I can cut it off at the roots, or I can carefully untangle it.”
“I’m going with dreadlocks,” he said. “I think they’re interesting.”
“I’m interesting looking enough,” I said. “Get your shower. The Landerses are waiting.”
When we got to the Sea Biscuit, Eve and Carl were still waiting for a table.
“This place is impossible,” I said.
“You should open a breakfast place on this island,” Eve said. “You’d make a fortune!”
There was a shortage of breakfast places on the Isle of Palms and nothing on Sullivan’s Island, the next island over.
“What do I know about running a restaurant?” I said, and then I remembered I knew someone who did. Alexandros.
I’d talk to him when we returned to Corfu. Maybe he’d like to have a second restaurant here? Maybe I’d be his partner? It was certainly something to think about. A Greek diner on the Isle of Palms? Why not? I’d had crazier pipe dreams than that.
Later on, Carl and Eve went downtown to check on Cookie’s house and Adam and I scouted the island, looking for a real estate opportunity. Sadly, there was nothing on the market that we liked.
“You should call that guy who’s on all the Carolina One For Sale signs—Everett Presson. Looks like he’s listed every darn house on the market! Tell him to let us know when something good comes up.”
“Good idea,” I said.
Three weeks later, the elders of our tribe were all on the way to Greece and I had a cell phone with an international plan. My bag was stuffed with gifts for everyone I could remember. JJ and Tasha were flying to Athens from Boston, and we were able to coordinate our flights to land within thirty minutes of each other. Then we would take the domestic airline to Corfu together. I called him the night before we left just to see if they were all ready.
“I’m psyched,” he said. “Tasha’s been shopping around the clock.”
“I’m really excited too,” I said.
The plan was that Eve and Carl would stay in the precious house on the beach where Carl had the most expensive one-day vacation in his life. Adam and I wanted them to have the best property to themselves. Ted and Judy were going to stay in Yiayia’s house with us along with JJ and Tasha. There were two small bathrooms upstairs and three bedrooms. One for JJ and Tasha, one for Ted and Judy (we knew what was going on with them. They were seventy-eight, for heaven’s sake. So probably not much) and the last one for whoever snored. A snoring room sounded crazy, but no, it wasn’t.
On the trip over, after sleeping for three or four hours and a breakfast of rubber eggs and inedible fruit, Ted and Judy peppered us with questions about Kiki and Nicholas. I assured them over and over that it was not an imposition to stay in Kiki’s house and how insulted she would be if we did not.
“But remember, it’s rustic. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!”
“What does that mean?” Judy said.
I could see she had a little trepidation over the accommodations and spending a lot of time with people with whom she could not communicate in English.
“We’re going to live like the natives. You’ll see, Judy. I promise you it
will all be fine.”
I went to check on Eve and Carl in their seats.
“Y’all okay?” I asked.
“Oh yes, we’re just great,” Carl said. “Did you sleep?”
“Yes. But I think I’ll be taking a nap this afternoon. Hey, Eve?” She looked up at me. “I kept forgetting to ask you about Cookie. Does she know we’re going to be on Corfu?”
“Yes, she sure does. I asked her to come spend a night or two with us. God only knows what she’s really gotten herself into.”
I shook my head, thinking, Oh no.
“And?” I said.
“She never responded.”
“We can hope,” Carl said.
I laughed and returned to my seat. The plane was preparing to land. As before, we cleared customs in Athens, then we found JJ and Tasha at the gate for our next leg and boarded the plane for the short flight to Corfu.
Kiki and Nicholas met us at the airport with a large van.
“Hello! Hello! Welcome back! Welcome home!”
Kiki was effusive, overflowing with love and warmth. I hugged her hard and so did Carl.
“This is Adam!” I said proudly. “And do you remember JJ?”
“Oh, on the head of my saint! It’s you! JJ! Do you remember me?”
“Yes, I sure do, and it’s great to see you again! This is Tasha, my wife.”
Carl said, “This is my wife, Eve, and that’s Ted, Adam’s father, and his friend Judy!”
“And here is my Nicholas,” Kiki said.
Everyone shook hands and over the next twenty minutes we gathered all our bags. We were a gregarious and boisterous crowd, and the people around us must’ve thought we were all hard of hearing because we were loud. Loud Americans. I hoped we weren’t offending anyone.
The plan was to get us settled and then Nicholas and Kiki would pick us up at around nine that night and we’d go to Alexandros for dinner. Aunt Anna would join us as well.
On the drive to Dassia, I realized that the island was in bloom. There were abundant flowers everywhere, cascading over garden walls, spilling out of window boxes, climbing anywhere the blooms could attach themselves. Morning glories, bougainvillea, and others I didn’t know. Oleander bushes, like the ones all over the Isle of Palms, blossomed in every shade of pink and white too.