“I guess so,” Mimi said. “If you would have me. And, I was thinking too that if we had a little staircase next to my entrance, I could send folks up to the sunset deck to wait. Have a drink? We could get beepers, like they have at some of the other restaurants. Then they wouldn’t have to stand around in my little space.”
“Mimi? I think it’s an outstanding idea and yes, I will gladly take your money! I’ll call Robert and have him help me figure it all out. Has anyone heard from O’Malley?”
Duane said that O’Malley was at his girlfriend’s house for the day and that he had spoken to the Zone Man and some of the others about coming back for the reopening on the first of February.
I said, “Listen, y’all, rehire the Zone Man for sure but the rest of them? It’s like trying to herd cats!”
“Right!” Louise said. “Herd cats? I like that.”
This was the conversation over Thanksgiving dinner, which we had at Mimi’s house with almost the entire core gang. It had been a gorgeous day, the kind where the air is cool but the sky is brilliant blue and everything in the world is drenched in sunlight and good spirits.
I don’t need to tell you that Duane cooked, but you would have been amused to hear not only Louise but now Mimi as well giving him a lot of coaching in the fine art of producing the quintessential Thanksgiving bird, one worthy of the cover of Gourmet magazine. Cover the tips of those wings with aluminum foil! Turn that bird! Baste that bird! Mimi had made the cakes, pies and biscuits. Louise had made the stuffing and the oyster stew. And poor Duane just suffered.
Gracie and Alex, sworn friends for life, were involved with other people. Gracie was dating a friend of Alex’s and Alex had not only hooked up (in the parlance of the day hooked up meant they were dating, and if it meant more, I didn’t want to know) with another sophomore, but he and Gracie had become friends with her friends. Gracie had achieved what six months ago seemed to be like finding the Holy Grail—a normal teenage existence, replete with bunches of giggly girlfriends and a driver’s license. She found her niche dancing hip-hop because she felt she would never again meet the rigors of modern dance. Even though her ankle had healed, she continued her physical therapy to strengthen it.
“I just want to dance,” she said, “it doesn’t matter. Anyway, hip-hop’s more fun.”
If the number of times she professed that sentiment demonstrated her honesty, then she was surely telling the truth.
The framing of the restaurant was under way and a variety of ecological considerations were included in its design. It would still resemble a dump—hey, we have our traditions here in the south, you know—but now it was going to include a bakeshop for Mimi and probably a stairwell to the sunset deck.
That same day, Gracie lobbied for a rack to hold informational flyers about what was going on with the waters of Shem Creek and what the average citizen could do about protecting the environment. Gracie had promised to design them and write the text and by the time we got to pecan pie, Brad had agreed to pay for them. If we couldn’t do anything ourselves to stop the developers, at least we could try to reach out to the public. Needless to say, the news that Jason Miller was scheduled to be sentenced the second week of January made its way around the table a few times.
Lindsey, who was home for the holidays, regaled us with colorful stories of living in Greenwich Village, so much so that we all promised to make a trip there to visit her. I thought it would be a thrill to take Brad to Rockefeller Center to see the tree and then to look at all the store windows. Maybe we would see a play or attend something traditional like the Christmas Show Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall. I knew Brad and Alex would love the Rockettes. All those legs! They were like a human centipede.
The day after Thanksgiving, I made reservations for all of us—that is me, Brad, Gracie and Alex—to stay at the Grand Hyatt and found reasonable airline fares through Winston-Salem. The day the kids got out of school for the holidays, we were on a plane to New York.
Gracie and I planned to stay in one room and Alex and Brad were supposed to be in the room next door. Oh fine, I can hear you saying that I’m an old frump and that no one would’ve cared if I had stayed with Brad, but in my mind there were certain details standing in the way, like a trip down the aisle, impressionable teenagers in tow, and then what would that have meant? That Alex and Gracie would stay in the same room? Over my dead body! I mean, I knew the odds were that nothing would have happened, but in my opinion, we had tested the boundaries of luck enough to last at least another decade.
Well, don’t you know that Brad called ahead to the Hyatt and had us upgraded to a suite—two bedrooms and a living room in between them? It seemed like an unnecessary extravagance to me, but he had other ideas.
“Well, sweetheart? I thought Lindsey might want to sleep over and I wanted to be sure we had plenty of room,” he said.
“Well, it’s awfully generous of you, darling,” I said, and gave him a kiss.
Yes, we called each other the old traditional names like sweetheart and darling. Every time we used the terms, Alex and Gracie rolled their eyes and said ew! I didn’t blame them but for my part, I fell in love a little deeper with each endearing term. How peculiar that for the first time in my life I was someone’s sweetheart and darling?
I was still ring-less and slightly uncertain, which of course was ridiculous because Brad did a million things to assure me that his love was forever. Still, I have to say that the whole idea of commitment to one person for the rest of your life was rather breathtaking. But insecure or not, I loved Brad with a passion I had never felt for any man. In fact, I didn’t even know I could love that much.
So, when we checked into the Hyatt, I was slightly unraveled, thinking of all these things. We went up to our rooms and they were magnificent. The center room had a huge sectional sofa that converted to a queen-size bed, four armchairs, a dining table with eight chairs, a wet bar, a powder room, and a complete entertainment system. Naturally, the first thing the kids wanted to do was order video games. The adults prevailed. We had no intention of bringing them the whole way to New York for them to vegetate in front of a screen that rearranged their brain waves resulting in their favored techno stupor of fast-frame catatonia. Nope. Don’t even take your coats off!
I was the designated tour guide, as I was the one most familiar with the city. My plan was to take them in a taxi to FAO Schwarz, walk the few blocks to see the tree and look at the windows along the way. We would stop at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, light a candle and buy a bag of chocolate-covered orange rinds from Teuscher in Rockefeller Center. Next, I planned to give them a wild ride on the subway, pick up Lindsey at her dorm, and we would all have dinner in the Village.
Things did not go according to plan.
We got out in front of Bergdorf Goodman and Brad said, “Listen, why don’t you ladies go look at what Bergdorf Goodman has and Alex and I will meet you right here in an hour?”
I looked at him and thought that this was perfect. We could slip over to the Bergdorf Goodman Men’s Store and I could find something unusual for Brad for Christmas. I had already bought him a gorgeous sweater from Berlin’s in Charleston, and some cologne from Saks, but I wanted there to be something special under the tree for him. Something I couldn’t find in Charleston.
Gracie and I made our way across the streets through the unbelievably enormous crowd of holiday shoppers.
“I forgot how many people live in this city! You can hardly stay on the sidewalk!”
“These people aren’t New Yorkers!” I said. “They’re all from Iowa or something. No one with good sense comes to the city after Thanksgiving until January!”
“Then, what the heck are we doing here?”
I laughed and said, “Because sometimes your momma ain’t got good sense. Now, come on!”
We roamed the aisles, looking at ties and shirts, and after about thirty minutes I knew there wasn’t anything here that Brad really needed or couldn’t live without. If he wor
ked on Wall Street, I could have bought him a Hermes tie. But our lives were so casual that I decided to look around again when we got home. Maybe I would buy him a kayak.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
“Thank God!” Gracie said. “It’s so hot in this store and so crowded I was about to kick somebody!”
“Then, let’s definitely get out of here.”
We bought a hot pretzel on the corner of Fifty-seventh and Fifth and stood there waiting for the boys. It was getting dark and it was freezing cold. By five o’clock you would have sworn it was the middle of the night.
Brad and Alex popped out of the crowd. We had not even seen them coming. Their noses were red and I imagined ours were too.
“Let’s grab a cab,” Brad said.
“I thought we were gonna go see the tree and St. Pat’s first,” I said.
“Nah, I just called Lindsey and she wants to see it with us. So let’s pick her up, come back to the tree and eat over on Third Avenue. There’s a great Italian restaurant I want to check out. I got us a table for six o’clock.”
I must have looked annoyed because Brad said, “What?”
My plan had been mashed like corn into grits, but I didn’t say anything about that.
“You called Lindsey?” That was all I said. It just seemed a little peculiar for him to call her.
“Yeah, why not? I mean, shouldn’t we do all this stuff together?”
“You’re right, of course.”
We raced downtown at the breakneck speed of thirty-five miles per hour in a dilapidated cab with no shock absorbers and a driver who had a name on his badge I could not have pronounced for love or money. Since there would be five of us going back uptown, the driver refused to take us all. After hailing another cab we were back at Rockefeller Center in what seemed like a flash.
It had begun to snow a little and we stood before the long row of lighted angels on the promenade leading to the huge tree with its thousands of lights. It was exactly how I knew it would be. Brad had his arm around my waist and the kids went on before us. We met up with them at the railing above the ice skaters.
“Mom? Can we go get skates?” Gracie said.
“I can’t ice skate,” Alex said.
“We’ll show you how, bubba! Come on!” Gracie said. “Lindsey?”
“Let’s go for it!” she said and they were off.
For the next thirty minutes we watched Gracie and Lindsey on either side of Alex as they took him around the rink. At one point Gracie broke away and did some spins and flying camels that Lindsey and Alex applauded. Then we watched Lindsey take the center of the ice and do her routine of skating backward and then a little jump and spins. Alex was very impressed, waving to us to make sure we didn’t miss anything.
“Aren’t they beautiful?” I said.
The snow continued to fall. Pure white flakes gathered in our hair and sprinkled our shoulders. Brad tightened his grip around my waist. “Yes, they are. We are going to be a beautiful family.”
That was when the small but highly coveted blue box from Tiffany appeared.
“This is for you, Linda. Merry Christmas. I love you.”
He put it in my gloved hand.
“Brad?”
“I bought you something else too, but I wanted to give you this now.”
“Brad?”
“What?”
“Is this . . .”
“Open it! I can’t do the next part until you open it!”
“Oh! Sorry!”
“Yeah, hurry up! You’re holding back the wheels of progress here, missy!”
“Okay, okay!”
Well, it’s not like I wrote the protocol for this, you know. And it’s not like Fred Breland ever gave me a diamond either.
I saw our children heading our way and decided to wait until they were all there.
“Whatcha got, Mom?” Gracie said, knowing exactly what it was.
“Open it!” Lindsey said.
“Alex? No comment from you?” I said.
“I’ve already seen it,” he said, “I’m pretty sure you’ll like it.”
My hands were shaking as I pulled the end of the red satin ribbon. As it fell away, Lindsey caught it and put it in her pocket. Inside was a velvet box and in that box was a beautiful round diamond set in platinum.
“Take off your gloves,” Brad said, and took the ring from my hand as he dropped to one knee. “Okay, Linda, this is it. Will you be my wife?”
“And will you be my mom?” Alex said, dropping on one knee as well.
That was it for the waterworks in all of us. Brad slipped the ring on my finger. I grabbed Alex and said, Oh, it would be an honor, Alex! I am honored. Yes! I promise not to be a bossy boots mom! As I looked across their teary-eyed faces I said yes again and again, hugging and kissing them all. It was the most spectacular moment of my life and the last moment that I ever thought about our lives as separate.
From the moment we returned to Charleston until today, which is Valentine’s Day, our lives have been moving forward in a kind of happy delirium. We had said that when the restaurant reopened the first private party would be our wedding reception. It was a very impractical thing to have said. First of all, Lindsey didn’t finish classes until June and I wasn’t getting married without her. Oh, I suppose I could have brought her home for the weekend and just thrown something together, but I didn’t want our wedding to be like that. The other truth was that reopening the restaurant took a lot more energy than we thought it would.
Anyway, once you say that you are going to join your families together and if everyone wants it to happen, it will happen on its own timetable.
I knew that Brad was talking to Lowell about buying the big house from him for us to live in. They were in Pawleys Island almost all the time now. The big house had five bedrooms, two fireplaces, a new kitchen and it really was a fabulous piece of property. Brad suggested that we keep Lupe and thought it might be nice for her to live in the boathouse. Then we could all have some privacy. Maybe Lowell’s father would come to her in her dreams and tell her to talk less and listen more. He knew I had reservations about her being around all the time, but Brad had hired Miguel the dishwasher to do his landscaping and the Epsteins had taken him on as well. Don’t you know he was from Costa Rica and that he and Lupe had become very tight friends? And honestly? Lupe was a great housekeeper, which everyone knows is a rarity in the extreme. My hope was that if all this came to pass that Lupe would speak Spanish to Miguel and that I wouldn’t have to be involved. Ah well, every blessing came with a cross.
Jackson Hole was back in business and the restaurant next door was scheduled to reopen in a few weeks. The constant hammers were driving us all to drink, but I was just as sure that our combined hammers gave migraines to all our other neighboring restaurateurs.
O’Malley was behind the bar serving drinks. The Zone Man had taken over the position of cat herder and this time he had all new cats. Duane and Louise were in their new kitchen cooking up a storm and arguing over sauces just like in the old days. And, my darling sister Mimi was as happy as a clam in her little bakery, which seemed to be doing a brisk business in baked goods and takeout, especially to single men.
I walked through the restaurant, which was jammed to capacity with Valentine’s Day couples. There was a small group waiting outside. Some were reading Mimi’s menus or Gracie’s flyers and others were just talking. I climbed the steps to the sunset deck to have a look around for Brad. He wasn’t there. In fact, it was so chilly that no one was. But old habits die hard and I thought he might have slipped up there for the sunset.
The sky was raging red and cut with jagged edges of gold and purple. It had to be the most outrageous sunset I had ever seen. I could follow the path of the creek and see the exact point where it spilled out into the glistening teal waters of Charleston’s harbor. It was an awesome sight and one that I knew I would never abandon again.
I had become a serious woman since returning to
the Lowcountry, one who came to treasure every heartbeat as a priceless gift. I had learned that for me to be alive, I had to have warm sun on my face and salt air in my lungs. Once I had it again, I wondered why I had denied myself something so splendid for so long. Maybe I had forgotten how splendid it was. Yes, and almost forgotten who I was along the way too.
I still mourned the years I had wasted in a soulless existence of merely making ends meet and not celebrating the love of my daughters over something as simple as a bowl of breakfast cereal. I could not regain those years. They were gone, marked off the calendar of my days forever.
But I had another chance at a family and this time with a son. He may have been Loretta’s boy and I knew he would never be mine but, I would love him for her sake as she would have if she had been alive and able. I would love him for my own sake as well. And I had a wonderful man for my girls to admire and from whom they would see and learn what it was to love family.
A second chance, and this time I baptized my future with the waters of Shem Creek, knowing it was a sacred pact. I had been an amateur at living my life and I recognized that it was in the Lowcountry that I found my strength to try again. Really try. Living where you don’t belong can be the saddest mistake you can make. But maybe I had needed the suffering and the loneliness to appreciate being home again.
I was going to relearn every square inch of the islands and rivers and of the city of Charleston herself and become a worthy citizen. I was going to share it with Gracie and Alex, like the long-promised trip to Bull’s Island. As soon as it was a little warmer, we would go—Brad too. I would bring the binoculars he had given me for Christmas and try to name all the birds.
Much like lovers saw themselves in each other’s eyes, we would gather the edges of the Lowcountry into our focus, see ourselves in its landscape and each other and hang on to that too.
I filled my lungs with the air and decided to go in search of Brad. It was Valentine’s Day, after all. I looked down at the water once more and could not help but think of the ideas and plans friends and families shared here along this creek, over frozen drinks or a basket of fried seafood. I hoped the waters worked their magic on them the way they had on me.