THE LAND OF MANGO SUNSETS
Dorothea Benton Frank
In loving memory of my mother
In the Dream of the Sea
I call you from the open water
surrounding us, speaking
across divided lives.
I call you
from the waves
that always have direction.
Where strings of morning glory
hold the dunes in place,
I call. In winter,
when wind pours
through cracks in the walls.
Inside, I call
although my voice
has been silent
and dissolving.
In sand
pulled back
into the body
of the sea,
from the blue
house build on sand
balanced at the edge
of the world
I call you.
Drowning stars,
shipwrecks, and broken voices
move beneath the waves.
Here, at the open
center
of my ordinary heart
filling with sounds
of the resurrected,
in the dream
of the sea,
I call you
home.
—Marjory Wentworth
Contents
PROLOGUE
We called it the Land of Mango Sunsets. None of…
Chapter One
MANHATTAN—SOME TIME AGO
Chapter Two
GESUNDHEIT!
Chapter Three
THE CANDIDATES
Chapter Four
MIZZ LIZ
Chapter Five
PHONIES
Chapter Six
WHAT’S THAT SMELL?
Chapter Seven
MELLIE SLOWLY EMERGES
Chapter Eight
IN THE DARK
Chapter Nine
THE BIG SPILL
Chapter Ten
RUFFLED FEATHERS AND WORSE
Chapter Eleven
AUNTIE AND UNCLE TO THE RESCUE
Chapter Twelve
MOTHER HEN
Chapter Thirteen
THE MIGRATION BEGINS
Chapter Fourteen
WITHOUT A STITCH
Chapter Fifteen
LIZ’S BIZ
Chapter Sixteen
SEX, LIES, AND PENICILLIN
Chapter Seventeen
DENIAL
Chapter Eighteen
I DO, HE WON’T, AND SHE DOES
Chapter Nineteen
THE TANGLED TANGO
Chapter Twenty
ALABAMA BLUES
Chapter Twenty-one
SANDS OF TIME
EPILOGUE
It seemed that my world came to an end the…
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
OTHER BOOKS BY DOROTHEA BENTON FRANK
CREDITS
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
PROLOGUE
We called it the Land of Mango Sunsets. None of the old islanders knew what we meant by that, as they had only ever heard of mangoes. Bottled chutney perhaps, but that was about the sum total of their experience with a food that was so foreign. But I knew all about the romance of them from my earliest memories of anything at all. My parents had honeymooned in the South Pacific, which in those days was considered a little reckless, certainly titillating, and above all, highly exotic. Every morning they left their beds, still half dreaming, to find a tray outside the door of their bungalow. They would bring it behind the curtains of mosquito netting and into their bed. Still in their nightclothes, my mother’s hair cascading in tendrils and my father’s young beard stubble scratching her young complexion, they would burn away the sour paste of morning breath with a plate of sliced mangoes, dripping with fleshy sweetness, a pot of strong tea, and a rack of toast. From then on, mangoes were equated with love, tenderness, and hopeful beginnings, and we spent our lives looking everywhere for other examples of them.
On the island where my family had kept the same cottage for over one hundred years, there was a sliver of time late in the day when the sun hung in the western sky, after it stopped burning white and before it dropped into the horizon. For just a few minutes it would transform itself into a red orange orb. Wherever we were on the island, we would all stop to face it and my father would say to my mother, Look, Josephine, the mango sunset. We would wonder aloud about the majesty of the hand that shaped it. About heaven. About where our ancestors were and could they see us looking for them in the twilight. I believed that they could.
As if in a postscript, great streaks of red and purple would appear on some evenings and on others streams of light, burning through clouds, dividing the horizon into triangles of opalescent colors for which there are no words. The Land of Mango Sunsets was a force all on its own. And whether you understood mango sunsets or not, the ending of most days in the Lowcountry of South Carolina was so beautiful it would wrench your heart.
On Sullivans Island there was of a chorus of bird whistles and song to begin and end each day. On the turning of the tide there were endless rustling fronds brushing the air in a windy dance only they understood. And perhaps most important, there were the leathered but loving hands and peppermint breath of old people, always there to help. The pungent smells of salt and wet earth haunt me to this day because you see, before I could speak, I could smell rain coming, sense a storm, and knew enough to be afraid of fast water that would spin you away from life in an instant.
It was there on that island that I learned about the power of deep love and came to believe in magic, only to forget it all later on. But years later, the struggle came to remember, a struggle worth the salt in every tear shed and the blood of every bruise to my spirit.
I was a very young girl then with an empty head, who knew little more than a nearly idyllic reality. I did not know yet about heartbreak and I was not old enough to have the sense to plan for a future or even to think of one. Wasn’t that day enough? Yes, it was. When we were on Sullivans Island we lived from day to day without a care in the world, or so it seemed to me.
The story, this story I want to tell you, is all true. It may not always be pleasant to hear and I know that much of the time you won’t agree with me and the things I have done. I was not always nice. But if you will indulge me just a bit, in the end I think you will see things a little more from my perspective. That’s a large part of the point of this. Recognizing yourself mirrored in my mistakes won’t be pretty, but perhaps it will keep both of us from making the same mistakes again.
I am on the porch now, rocking back and forth in Miss Josephine’s rocking chair. In my ear, I can hear the lilt of her honeyed voice and feel the touch of her hand on my shoulder. She’s telling me the same thing I am going to show you.
Things happen for a reason. You’ll see what I mean. Think of all the times you have told yourself, Well, I wish someone had given me a clue. Or, Why didn’t I see that coming? How could I have been so stupid? Or what’s the point of trying? Those thoughts always occurred when you were about to learn a lesson in life.
I am older now and it doesn’t matter anymore if someone thinks I am a fool. It makes me laugh because I have been a fool so often that if you could stack the occasions one upon another, they would reach the top of the sky and then spiral away into their own orbit. But I hope I am a fool no longer. If I catch myself falling back into my old ways, I would like to think I would just forgive myself, pick up, and carry on. I know now what matters.
Think of a heavy key chain and this story is one of
the keys. Use it on the quest toward the happiness there is to be found in life on this wretched but beautiful earth. It’s not the answer to everything, but it might help. Let’s start at the height of my stupidity.
Chapter One
MANHATTAN—SOME TIME AGO
Dear Ms. O’Hara,
Your father was such a lovely man and this tragic loss will be felt by everyone who knew him for years to come. In my mind’s eye, I can still see him cleaning my grill with a vengeance. That man surely did love a clean grill. Please accept my deepest and most sincere condolences.
There is the small matter of his rent for the month of January. Not wanting to be an additional burden at this terribly sensitive time, I will simply deduct it from his security deposit. Although I am loath to broach this subject, I must notify you that the timely removal of his personal property will obviously impact the amount of money I am able to return to you.
Once again, please accept my profound sympathy.
Cordially,
Miriam Elizabeth Swanson
Making my way across Sixty-first Street, I checked that the stamp was secure and slipped the envelope in a mailbox. The weather was fast changing from cold and damp to a bone-chilling arctic freeze. My snow boots were tucked in my PBS member’s canvas tote bag, just in case. I knew it was not very chic to be traipsing around Manhattan with a canvas tote bag. But the proud logo sent a message to all those people who enjoyed the benefits of Public Television but felt no compunction to support it even with the smallest of donations. The fact that people took without giving irked me. On the brighter side, I had always thought it would be great fun to be a volunteer in their phone bank during a campaign, to sit up there doing something so worthwhile as hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people, looked on. I had submitted my name as a candidate for the job many times, but I had never been called. Perhaps I should have sent them a more thorough bio with a more flattering photograph. Something youthful. Ah, me. Another disappointment. Another rejection. But what member of the human race didn’t have unfulfilled little fantasies? Chin up, Miriam, I told myself, and trudged on.
The weather continued to deteriorate and Charles Dickens himself would have agreed that it was a perfect day for a funeral. Bulbous gray clouds lowered toward the earth and covered every inch of the sky. They were closing in and threatening to burst. It would surely pour snow or sleet at any moment. There was nothing I could do about the weather or my feelings of gloom brought on by a claustrophobic sky. After all these years in New York, I was as resigned to winter as I was to any number of things that fed my love/hate relationship with the city. Anyway, where else was I to go? Live with my sons? No way. Live with my mother? Not in a million years.
I adjusted my muffler to protect my cheeks. At least I had written Ms. O’Hara a note, and despite the inclement conditions, I had been sure to get it in the mail. I couldn’t help but pause to think there was something so lazy about people who abandoned fountain pens or pens of any kind in favor of the expeditiousness of e-mail on any and every occasion. Including expressions of sympathy. Believe it or not, I actually heard a story of someone receiving an e-mail telling of a close friend’s death. Including a frowning emoticon, God save us. The reason I remember was that it was so completely absurd to me. And speaking of fountain pens, they now had a disposable variety available at all those office-supply chain stores, which to me defeated the purpose of using a fountain pen in the first place. Wasn’t it about holding a beautiful object in your hands and feeling its solid weight? Its worth and the importance of its history? Remember when penmanship was taught in the classroom and its beautiful execution was prized?
But that is what the world has come to. Quick this and disposable that. To my dying day, I would remain a lonely standard-bearer in a world that continued to toss aside every inch of civility we have ever known. Handwritten notes seemed to have gone the way of corsages—their existence was rare. It just was the way it was.
I hurried along to the funeral service, tiptoeing inside the church and finding my seat next to my dearest friend and other tenant, Kevin Dolan.
“I have always loved St. Bartholomew’s,” I whispered to him. I removed my coat and gloves and, as inconspicuously as possible, settled in the pew. The service had already begun and I regretted the fact that I was late, even if it was only by a few minutes. In the steamer trunk of middle age, folded, packed, and wrinkled with one physical and emotional insult after another, perimenopause had delivered a measure of intolerance, even toward myself.
“Me, too,” Kevin whispered back, and sighed. “Poor Mr. O’Hara. Whoever thought he would just drop dead on the crosstown bus? Just like that! Poof. Gone.” He popped his wrist in front of him in a gesture that equated Mr. O’Hara’s death with a magician’s now you see it, now you don’t!
“Hush,” whispered someone in front of us.
We paused in silence in deference to the occasion and then couldn’t resist continuing our recap of the fragile nature of life in the Big Apple. That was the effect Kevin always had on me. In his presence I became a young gossiping washwoman, emphasis on young.
“Pockets picked and ID stolen,” I added at a carefully calibrated low volume of clear displeasure. “Disgusting!”
“Five days in the city morgue? Dreadful! If I hadn’t called his family…”
“He’s lucky he wasn’t eaten by rats. Thank heavens for dental records…”
“Who could believe he went to a dentist with his snaggleteeth?” Kevin said.
“Please. He was my…” said the woman in front of us, her shoulders racking with sobs.
Chastised for a second time, we were immediately quieted, but our eyes met over our lowered sunglasses with identical expressions of devilish curiosity. Did our Mr. O’Hara have a lover? Was this reprimanding woman in front of us Mr. O’Hara’s tart? We shook our heads. Not possible, I thought, but knew we would discuss it later. Who had the strength and tolerance for relationships? Certainly neither of us did. Although I wouldn’t mind if, on occasion, George Clooney found himself between my sheets.
I was wearing black, of course, and my most provocative black felt hat secured against the wind with an antique onyx hat pin, thinking I looked rather smart. Kevin, bald as a billiard ball with his thick round tortoiseshell glasses, was impeccably turned out in a deep charcoal pinstripe suit. He smelled as luscious as he looked. His lavender silk tie was dyed to match his shirt, jacquarded in the tiniest of damask rectangles. If we kept our sunglasses on, which we did, an onlooker might have assumed we were a couple, which we were not. I was his landlady and he was what my grandmother used to call a confirmed bachelor. However, strict definitions aside, we were the dearest of friends.
Finally, the service reached its conclusion and the pallbearers carried the casket down the aisle. The bereaved family followed, leaning on one another, choking back tears. Even my heart made a little leap at their sorrow. It was bad enough that Mr. O’Hara had died in the first place. Why did his family have to suffer the added indignities brought on by living in New York City? In moments like that, I wondered why I had stayed in this godforsaken place for so long. I shrugged off the question as quickly as I had considered it.
It was depressing to think about it.
But wasn’t depression an eager companion, lurking behind everything including Christmas? Long ago I had sworn off that sorry dark suitor with his cheap wilting flowers and his promises of commiseration. I was far better served by Kevin’s company, a stiff cocktail, and a conversation with Harry, my bird who was so much more than a bird.
As we stepped out into January’s afternoon light, countless tiny snowflakes swirled all around us. The steps of the church were partially covered in thin patches of white.
“Snow day,” Kevin said drily.
“You’re not going back to the office?”
“Please,” he said. “I need a Bloody. Don’t you? Funerals completely bum me out.”
I nodded in agreement.
“Take my arm so you don’t slip. P.J. Clarke’s is right around the corner.”
We made our way over to Third Avenue, huddling against each other for warmth. The raw air was so bitter that talking stung our teeth. Conversation was all but curtailed until we reached our destination.
Inside the restaurant we shook the snow from our coats and handed them to the coat-check girl. My hat had gathered powder in its rim and I took a moment to remove it, worrying that melted snow might discolor it.
“It’s getting veeerry baaaad out there,” she said, watching me as I placed my hat right back on my head. “Nice, uh, hat.”
“Thank you.” Apparently, she was unaware that hats worn during lunch were perfectly acceptable. And a highly desirable accessory in between salon visits, if you know what I mean.
“What does the Weather Channel say?” Kevin asked, slipping the coat checks in his pocket.
“Six to nine in the city and twelve north and west. And I gotta take the LIRR to pick up my kid from day care before six! It ain’t easy, right? It ain’t easy.”
“Gracious!” I said. “Maybe you’d better leave a little early.”
There came an onslaught of visions of an unswaddled toddler, stumbling through drifts, whimpering, shivering, wandering around blindly, searching for his desperate and harried mother, who trudged through snowbanks, rushing to her child’s side, carrying a cooked chicken and fresh carrots in doubled plastic bags from D’Agostino’s. Then I looked at her again—chewing gum, tight top, bizarre gold highlights strewn through her dyed black hair, and a chain on her neck that spelled out her astrological sign—what was I thinking? Cheap bling and Juicy Fruit. This was the kind of mother who would pull a hot dog from the freezer and throw it in her sticky microwave without the benefit of so much as a paper towel. I knew her type. This Scorpio would tuck juice boxes and dry Cheerios in the corner of her baby’s crib so that in the morning she could sleep off the debauchery of her prior evening…not that I’m judgmental…