Destiny Lingers (10 page)

“This is a disgrace,” he says. “Anyone who will disrespect your parents like this is just a heartbeat away from disrespecting you—if he hasn’t already.” Daddy scowls at Garrett. “My little girl may have been fool enough to marry you, but it doesn’t mean I’m fool enough to let you disrespect her family or our home. If you don’t like it here, can’t stand us, and refuse to respect me and my rules, then you can pack your bags and leave my house right now.”

“Fine!” Garrett spits. “I will.”

“No, you won’t, Garrett! Daddy!” I exclaim, trying my best to calm down the two men I love the most, but Daddy storms off into the beach house after Mother. Garrett angrily grabs the keys to the rental car.

“Garrett! Where are you going? Honey, wait! Sit down. Please!” I reach for Garrett’s arm, but he jerks away from me.

“Get out of my way, Destiny, I gotta get outta here!” Garrett angrily storms past me and out the screen porch door. It slams with a whack behind him.

“Garrett,
please
!” I yell after him as he flees down the stairs, but he won’t listen. He is fuming. Aunt Joy and I stand there on the porch of our beach house named Tranquility and see all but that playing out around us. We watch in disbelief as Garrett speeds off, swerving around the corner, and skidding onto the highway in a dusty haze of sand and seashells.

There is nothing but silence left amid the ocean’s roar and the occasional squawks of hungry seagulls. And then, there is the squeak-squeak-squeak of Aunt Joy’s rocking chair again. It is squeaking faster than usual now as she shakes her head and bites her nails while looking out over the boisterous sea.

“What in the world has gotten into this family?” she asks. “I just don’t understand it.”

“I give up,” I say as I plop down in the rocking chair beside her. She takes my hand, and we rock in silence, not knowing what other surprises this day may bring.

Chapter
Twelve

I
t is well after noon, and Garrett is still not back. His luggage and plane ticket are still here, so I guess he’s coming back eventually. But I am getting stir-crazy, cooped up in the house, waiting for a husband who stormed off hours ago and still hasn’t returned. I am also angry with my parents for pushing Garrett’s buttons. I am pissed at him for letting them. And I am mostly mad at myself for believing that this would actually be a blissful holiday. What happened to our dream of a peaceful weekend at Tranquility?

Mother comes waltzing on to the porch, dressed in a pair of bright yellow linen knickers, matching top, and espadrilles. She holds a wide-brimmed sun hat with a long, flowing yellow scarf neatly tied around its crown. Her purse is embellished with seashells and an ornate bamboo handle. She looks like a resort fashion model.

“Come on, Diddle-Dee,” she coos. “Let’s get out of this house for a bit. You’ll drive yourself and everyone else crazy if you stay here pent up and peeping off the porch like a sea widow all day. C’mon.”

“Mother, I think maybe I should be here when Garrett gets back. I don’t want him fighting with Daddy again. You know how they are.”

“
They
?” Mother inquires with a raised eyebrow. “Hm. Well, your father is sound asleep. He’ll be in dreamland for a while, thank God. You know how he escapes. Now, come on. Garrett needs to know that you’re not just sitting around here moping all day, waiting for him.”

Mother cocks the brim of her sun hat over her right eye. And then, and as if appearing before a crowd of fans, she cascades down the beach house steps, yellow scarf flying in the breeze, and gets in her car. She impatiently honks the horn for me to hurry.

“Go on,” Aunt Joy says, nudging me. “It’ll be good for you to get out and sightsee the island for a while. It’ll also give me a chance to have a word or two with Garrett when he gets home. Maybe I can finally talk some sense into one of those men.”

I give Aunt Joy a big kiss on her cheek. “I love you so much, and thank you, Aunt Joy.”

“I love you too, kiddo!” She winks.

Mother and I tool around the island for a while, marveling at all the new houses and carefully keeping our conversation bright. Neither of us dares mention Garrett or the family’s breakfast battle.

“I tell you, those damn Yankees are buying up everything down here,” Mother says. “Who knew it would one day be so busy on Topsail.”

While we’re out, we decide to stop by Food Folks, the only supermarket on the island, where cross-sections of the different residents meet. We are pushing our shopping cart through the store when mother sends me off to get paper goods while she haggles with the butcher over a couple of whole fryer chickens.

I am standing in the paper section, trying to decide on the best deal on paper towels. I choose the big pack at the lowest price and drop the bundle into the shopping cart. I then turn to move down the aisle—and I surprisingly run into the police chief again. This time, he is off duty and in civilian clothes. He wears shorts, a brightly colored Hawaiian shirt, and flip-flops. Instead of the police chief of Topsail Island, he looks more like a Hawaiian chief of Big Island.

My heart skips a beat, and I have to catch my breath. He is at the other end of the same aisle with an older woman who is picking out dinner napkins. I struggle over whether to say hello but instead decide to turn my cart around and scram back to Mother as quickly as I can.

And then I hear his voice.

“Hey, you!” Chase calls out from the other end of the aisle. The chief starts walking toward me. “Hey, there. How you doin’?”

“Oh, just fine,” I lie.

“I see you twice in one day—must be a lucky one.” He grins wide, his teeth white and his eyes as pale green as the sea. “Did you eat all those spots yet?”

“Yes, yes, I did—I mean, we did. My whole family and me.”

“Well, save some room for more tomorrow. You’re still coming to the fish fry, right? Bring your whole family.”

“I’ll certainly try,” I say politely. I don’t know why I’m so nervous.

“Chase? Let’s hurry on now.” The older woman walks up with her shopping cart.

The handsome, sun-kissed police chief in the Hawaiian shirt turns to me. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t even get your name.”

“Destiny,” I say with a shy smile.

“I’m Chase, Miss Destiny,” he replies. “And this here is my mom, Fern McKenzie.”

“Nice to meet you, Mrs. McKenzie,” I say and politely extend my hand to Chase’s mother, who, to my surprise, doesn’t take it. Instead, she busies herself rearranging the few items in her shopping cart. She does not even look at me, appearing to have no interest in meeting me at all.

“Destiny, why does it take you so long to buy paper towels?” My mother comes marching around the aisle with two big fryer chickens in her hands. I am relieved to see her.

“Mother, this is the Topsail police chief, Chase McKenzie, and his mother, Mrs. Fern McKenzie.” I try to be as pleasant and polite as possible through my growing discomfort. I don’t know why I want to impress Chase’s mother so much when the woman doesn’t even want to shake my hand.

My mother takes one look at Mrs. McKenzie and suddenly freezes in her tracks. Her face morphs into stone. “Fern McKenzie …” she mouths in slow motion.

Mrs. McKenzie frowns at my mother and purses her ultra-thin lips. The two are locked in what appears to be a stare-down. No more southern niceties here. Abruptly, Mother takes the chickens she just picked up from the butcher and slams them down into the shopping cart.

“C’mon, Destiny,” she snaps. “Let’s go right now!” With one last hardened look at Chase’s mother, she snaps her head under her wide brimmed hat and tornadoes away.

“I said, let’s
go
, Chase,” Mrs. McKenzie barks and marches her cart off in the opposite direction.

Chase and I stand here in the middle of the middle of the paper goods aisle, looking at each other in total shock, confusion, and embarrassing dismay.

“What in the world was that all about?” Chase seems just as dumbfounded as I am.

“I have no idea,” I respond, feeling dazed, “but I’d better go. My mother’s waiting.”

“Yeah, mine too. But what the …?” Chase shakes his head. “I swear that was the weirdest thing I’ve seen. What just happened there?”

“I have no idea,” I again respond. “But something happened somewhere. I apologize, Chase, for my mother’s rudeness. I don’t know what’s gotten into her. We had a long morning—and she’s already a bit on edge. Just family stuff, you know?”

“No, no, no, I apologize for my mom,” Chase insists. “She’s just acts old and bitter sometimes. Let me go find her. Hope I’ll see you later, Destiny.” Chase dashes off down the aisle.

By the time I make my way through the checkout line, Mother is already sitting outside in the car, fuming.

“What in the world was that about, Mother?” I ask. “Don’t you think you were a little rude to Mrs. McKenzie?”

Mother doesn’t answer me. She stares out the car window with her arms crossed, breathing heavily with squinted eyes.

“Mother?” The more she refuses to answer me, the angrier I get. “
Why
do you always do this?”

“Do
what
?” she barks.

“Why did you have to make everyone so uncomfortable, causing a public standoff in the store like that?”

“They need to be uncomfortable—that
Fern McKe
nzie
!”

This shocks me, as my seething mother just spewed out the woman’s name as if she actually knows her. “Mother, forget Mrs. McKenzie. Chase is my friend. I like him, and he has been very kind to me. And he’s the
police chief
, for goodness’ sake! I just don’t understand why you’d react like that.”

“Because they deserve it!” she spits. “And trust me—that man is no friend of yours. I can tell you that!”

“Mother, you don’t even know them.” I fear the incident with Garrett this morning has caused my mother to lose her mind.

“Oh, I know them all right,” she says with evil-sounding gravel in her voice. “And trust me—what I know, I don’t like!”

“How in the world do you know them, Mother? You rarely ever came to the Topsail. How can you make such judgments on people you don’t even know?”

“Why don’t you ask
them
about the judgments
they
make? I swear, Destiny! You are so naïve!”

“Naïve about what, Mother? You know, you are really scaring me now.”

“Oh, no! What oughta scare you is the fact that that woman’s child is now a
police chief
, of all things. They’ve probably brought back public lynching!”

“Okay, Mother! That’s enough!” She is taking this drama way too far. “I think you may be wrong about Chase. He has been nothing but a kind and generous man to me.”

“Oh, really? Well, watch your neck. The apple doesn’t fall far from the lynching tree.”

“Oh, Mother.” I’m exasperated.

“Did your ‘kind and generous’ friend remind you about that time you two kids were fishing on your grandfather’s beach. Just two little innocent kids, for God’s sake, fishing, and in storms that white witch, Fern McKenzie, marching her nary ass across our property, yelling at that poor little boy to
‘Git off that nigger beach’
? Huh? You remember that? That dragon nearly tore that poor child’s ear off, dragging him across the sand like the trailer-park heathen that she is!”

“Whoa … whoa, Mother. Wait a minute. You’re talking too fast. I—”

“And what nerve! That was
our
beach. Her little trailer-park–trash son had no business in our neighborhood anyway, much less running his dirty little bare feet across our property!” Punctuating her point with a dramatic gesture of the hand, Mother swerves the car off the road before swerving it back on it again.

“Mother, slow down, please!” My head is whirling as fast as her red-lipsticked mouth is still running. She continues cursing and condemning the McKenzies with every breath in a determined litany. But I cannot hear her words for listening to my own inner voice and remembering scenes of a day and a boy long ago that I still wish I could forget. But that boy could not be my new friend Chase. No way. I remember the boy’s name now. It was Chip, not Chase. My mad mother is mistaken.

But try telling her that. She is still fuming and running off at the mouth, while I am still confused and numb, stunned by all that I have just seen, heard, and suddenly remembered. But, surely, Police Chief Chase—that Adonis running in the sunset, that golden man with the sea-green eyes in the Hawaiian shirt, that kind cop who shared his fish and has a jacked up stencil on his squad car—that man could not possibly be that same little boy I was forever forbidden to see. Could it really be him? No, I remember—that boy’s name was Chip. I don’t remember a Chase back then, but I do remember that fateful day with a boy named Chip.

I was a child, and it was the first time I’d ever heard the “N” word. I never dreamed it was a thing a friend’s mother would say. My family forbade me to ever play with Chip again. But that didn’t stop us. We’d sneak and play anyway, deep in the marshes by the sound, hidden from the prejudiced eyes of a Jim Crow South. Every summer we would meet and together seek secret hiding places to play to avoid racial trouble. And as we grew, so did our secret love.

I remember the first time Chip kissed me. We were two preteens, madly in love. It was under a full moon and in the shadows of the marsh trees. He had been sucking on peppermint candy as he rode his bike to meet me. I still taste his wet peppermint lips as I remember kissing them to this day.

“I do have reason to be angry.” Mother takes a deep breath and shakes her head. She grips the steering wheel and says, “There’s just so much you don’t know, Destiny. That boy’s mother brings back so many hurtful memories for our family—our whole community. Memories that have made me hate this place as much I hate white folks. I couldn’t stand coming here.”

“I always thought it was the sand.”

“No, it’s the
crackers
!” she hisses.

“Mother, please. I hate that word, and I don’t think—”

“Well, it’s not only that you don’t
think
, my dear; you just don’t
know
all the things that your father and I have protected you from all these years. We never wanted to see you hurt by some of life’s realities. Clearly, we’re not doing a very good job of that anymore. But trust me; that Fern McKenzie would rather see you swinging by your neck from a tree than making it in this world, much less being all chummy with her police son.”

Her words sting so badly that they bring tears to my eyes. I do not want to believe that my own mother is just as hateful and racist as Chase’s. I can’t fathom that the little boy I admired so much—the boy I was never allowed to play with, even speak with, and was told to forget—was actually a young Chase. Is Chip really there inside Adonis somewhere?

“Oh, your father and I protected you all right.” Mother is relentless in making her point. “Like that time you couldn’t go to Tanglewood Park. Do you remember that?”