“Oh Lord! What did he do?”
“He said, ‘Girls? If you want continued financial support for all of you, you will show Rusty all the respect I show her. Understood?’ ”
“Go, Trip! Go right for the wallet! That man could make a buffalo scream!” I threw a fist into the air. “I didn’t know he had it in him!”
“Frankly? Me either! I don’t know what happened to him but, boy, is he on a mission!”
I glanced at the wall clock, the one that worked. It was after eight and I knew I needed to get going. With the morning traffic it would still take almost an hour to get to Charleston and to find Bobby Mack’s room at the Medical University. Parking was guaranteed to be a nightmare.
“Good, right? It’s about time he got on a mission!”
“I guess it’s time for me to get moving. Give Bobby Mack my best. Poor thing.”
“Yeah, I think it really scared him. But then if having a heart attack doesn’t put the fear of God in you, what will?”
“Linnie and Belle. They could frighten the devil himself,” Rusty said with a laugh as she got up. She put her mug in the sink and filled it with water. “I have to keep telling myself that they’re just girls and not so scary. Really.”
“I’m sure you’re right, but remember, I’m happy to be the port in the storm.”
“I’ll remember that.”
I watched Rusty back out of my yard thinking how glad I was for her optimism and for her dedication to Trip because Trip never could have handled his three girls by himself. Not in a million years.
Just as I was leaving the house, Millie was coming in.
“Morning!” I said. “I’m going down to Charleston. I’ll see you this afternoon. Can I get anything for you?”
“Caroline? Before you go running off, I’d like to have a word with you.”
I could feel it coming. I knew Millie was upset about last night. And thoroughly embarrassed. Once the ambulance left, she and Mr. Jenkins had gone home as quickly as they could and left me there with Matthew. Honestly, I knew Matthew couldn’t have been too happy with me either. I mean, it had to have been uncomfortable on some level for him to witness everything, but thank the Lord, he was hungry. Saved by the stomach. I fed him the dinner I had prepared for Bobby and me. The whole time he ate I was waiting for some kind of rebuke and I wondered again how I would unload all that jelly. The rebuke never came from Matthew. However, now it was the light of day, Millie was here and she still had that look on her face—the resolute steel jaw and steaming hairy eyeball—the ultimate combination.
“Sure. What’s up?”
“You’re going to see Bobby Mack, I assume?”
“Of course!”
“Now you listen to me. What happened here last night was not your fault.”
“Shoot, Millie! I know that!” Thank God she thinks that, I thought.
“Just the same. I want you to be a little more careful. You hear me? That man has too much fat all ’round his belly and that’s an invitation for heart trouble, ’eah?”
“Well, you’re right, of course. So I should just go after skinny men?”
“That’s up to you, but it ain’t fittin’ for the EMS to be coming ’eah in the night and hauling off naked little fat men, ’eah? Your momma? She spinning in she grave today! And you gone tell me that your Matthew wasn’t so embarrassed, too? Nice as he is to you and all this crazy family?”
“He was actually fine with it.”
“Humph. Maybe ’cause with Bobby Mack out of the picture, that clears the coast for him?”
“Oh, come on! We’re just friends!”
“Is that what they call friends today? Humph! That’s some fool, ’eah?”
Millie knew that Matthew had a part-time residence beneath my duvet, but in the interest of decorum, we never discussed it. I picked up my handbag, checked to make sure I had my cell phone, which I did, and I opened the back door.
“I’ll be back by two. Call me if you need me, okay? Oh, by the way, big news flash. Trip needs a housekeeper to live in five days a week until Frances Mae comes home. ASAP. Do you know anyone who’s masochistic enough to consider it?”
“Anyone I’d send into
that
hornet’s nest? No, ma’am.”
“Well, maybe an enemy?”
“I’ll think on it. Maybe Rosario knows someone.”
Rosario had been our housekeeper for ages. She spoke almost no English and just came, did her job, and left. We loved her.
“Thanks.”
I left Millie and tried to put Trip’s problems out of my mind for the ride to Charleston. It was a gorgeous day to take a drive. The sky was that crazy impossible blue found only in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. Crayola should’ve made a crayon and named the color of it just that—Lowcountry blue. Like French-blue cotton shirts or navy-blue wool uniforms. The sky was bluer than a robin’s egg, more blue than cornflowers or all the bluebonnets in Texas. And when you stood on the shores of Sullivans Island or Edisto Beach and looked out over the endless ripples in the sparkling water to where the horizon met the sky, it was simply breathtaking. All that blue! It made you want to fly or to sing or to fall to your knees in thanksgiving.
I was feeling pretty lucky then, to be surrounded by such great beauty, to have a little time for myself away from everyone and the insanity of the past few days. So Millie was upset with me for dating someone who was a walking heart attack? Baloney. She could say that but I knew she was more concerned with propriety than anything else. What did I care about propriety? Who was there to judge me? The squirrels? And if others did judge me, what did I care about their opinion of my behavior? Very little. I mean, I was living an authentic life, doing what I wanted. I tried very hard not to embarrass Eric, and I thought I did a pretty good job at that. The truth was that I was bored to death living out in the country, selling truckloads of strawberries and fooling around with a pig farmer here and an officer of the law there. I was so bored I had even momentarily considered the assets of a man whose nose twitched like something feral.
Maybe I needed to think about a condo in Charleston. Perhaps I could find a new social life in downtown, become a volunteer for the museum or the symphony. I could raise money, run a gala, do some good in the world. Or I could get involved with the university in Columbia. Surely they had organizations for parents who were sort of miserable?
What was the matter with me? Some days there weren’t enough hours to do half of what I intended to do and on others, like this one, I was like a rudderless boat floating down the river to nowhere. Oh, yes, I was going to see Bobby, but I also knew that his heart attack marked the end of our affair. It could be years before Bobby would have the courage to have sex again. Don’t ask me how I know this. Let’s just say that I do. In a few weeks we would have dinner. He would be apologetic after dessert and say that he’s sleeping more lately, since his incident, and that his doctor said he should take it easy, you know, not to do anything too athletic. But I knew that his doctor would have advised him to resume his life and not to worry. No matter. It was human nature to worry that if your heart had betrayed you once, it could do it again. So, if the choice was life without sex versus sex and possible death? No decision. I’d let him think it was his choice to end things, that he had fallen out of love with me rather than the horrible truth that he was frightened by his mortality.
When I finally arrived at Bobby Mack’s bedside with an overpriced bouquet of flowers in a cheap glass vase and the
New York Times
tucked under my arm, the scene was exactly what I expected it would be. A couple of fellows from his business were there, standing up, getting ready to leave, when I pushed opened the door. There was my sweet guy propped up on pillows with an IV in his arm. His friends nodded politely and knowingly to me as they passed. I knew they would snicker like schoolboys once they were out of earshot. Did I care? Um, no.
My spirits sank as Bobby’s eyes met mine. They said it all.
“How are you, darlin’?” I said.
“I cheated death, Caroline. For a man who cheated death, I reckon I’m doing fair to partly cloudy.”
I put the vase of flowers and the newspaper on his bedside table and kissed his forehead.
“Well, you look wonderful,” I said, and thought, Damn, I’m gonna miss this man.
W
HEN FRIDAY ROLLED AROUND, RUSTY
and Trip had yet to locate a willing victim to serve as housekeeper for the Walterboro residence. Neither Millie, Rosario, nor I had any leads either.
“Maybe you’re not exactly offering an irresistible deal,” I suggested ever so gently to Trip over the phone.
“You serious? I’m offering two hundred and fifty dollars a week, health-care benefits after six months, and a paid two-week vacation! That’s a bloody fortune just to keep house and fix dinner for a bunch of girls!”
“What? No. It’s not a fortune. It’s right at minimum wage. Granted the health benefits are nice if she’s not suicidal in six months, but a two-week vacation is very standard stuff, Trip.”
“Really? What’s minimum wage these days?”
“Not much. Five dollars and eighty-five cents an hour. I think.”
I heard Trip whistle, low and long. “Wow.”
“Not wow. Miss Sweetie pays eight dollars an hour to our most menial laborers. A gallon of milk is like four dollars or something. You can’t believe what it costs to live these days.”
“Five eighty-five? Still seems like a lot to me. I think I made two bucks an hour or less when I was in college.”
“Um, m’dear? College was a long time ago, Mr. Wimbley. I think if you want anyone to take that job, you’re going to have to sweeten the deal by a lot.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“Ain’t no maybe about it,” I said.
“Well, I’ll be bringing Chloe out after school this afternoon and I thought it might be nice for you to come over and barbecue with us. The girls are coming, too. I’m gonna break in the grill! Her maiden voyage! Rusty’s got steaks marinating and I’ve got some Wahoo thawing. And as King of the Grill, I’ll even make you a julep. The julep of your life!”
“Now you’re talking. What time?”
“How’s six?”
“See ya!”
King of the Grill indeed.
All week long, Rusty had entertained the United Nations of candidates in her kitchen and mine. In addition to leaving a dozen messages for Frances Mae’s old housekeeper, she’d spoken to women from Chile, Guatemala, Belize, Brazil, Portugal, Ghana, and even some from Romania and Croatia. It wasn’t like she wasn’t trying. Most of them only spoke a few words of English and none of them had legal papers for working in the United States. The one woman who was barely fluent only had to say, “Girls make too much laundry, too much hair in the sink,” and that instantly soured her interview.
Rusty called and said, “I’m interviewing right here. I can’t be driving all the whole way out to Walterboro to show the house until I find someone who at least looks like a possibility. Do you blame me?”
“No, of course not. Chances are you’d run into one of my darling nieces at home playing hooky anyway! I mean, who knows what they’re up to when Trip leaves in the morning?”
“Not even an hour ago, Trip said the same exact thing to me. Frankly, I don’t like to think about it.”
“Me either,” I said.
“It makes my stomach hurt to know how vulnerable these girls are. I mean, I really hate to criticize, but they wouldn’t have such bad attitudes if anyone had ever been vigilant enough, meaning Frances Mae. A little guidance wouldn’t kill them.”
“Well, Trip did have to show up at his office and make a living like most men do. And you know the old Chinese saying, right? Fish stink from the head down? They’re just like their mother. Well, not Amelia so much anymore or Chloe yet.”
“This is our big chance, Caroline. You know, to undo some of the madness and show them how to behave.”
“Oh my God! Does this mean I have to set a good example? I hate that!”
We had a good laugh and I told her I’d see her at six.
But as the afternoon wore on I had a growing anxiety that steadily crept toward a full-blown bummer. Frances Mae was gone away and their girls were coming here. I thought about my childhood and compared it with theirs. Maybe Trip had left their family household, and maybe he had a live-in girlfriend, but he wasn’t dead. Dead was final in a way those girls had yet to understand. Frances Mae’s nasty relatives went to the cooler on a regular basis, but they came back. And would any of them help Trip now? They barely spoke to each other! They had yet to find common ground.
Her girls were clueless about the reality of growing up wondering what your father would have thought of you—would he have been proud? Would he have cried like a sentimental fool at your graduations, wedding, and when you put your first child into his arms? And did they know what was it like to live your whole life trying to please and to win the approval of a parent whose spouse’s accidental death shattered your world and the heart of your family into so many pieces that there was no repair?
No. They did not. I did. But they did not.