Pawleys Island-lowcountry 5 (4 page)

“Here is what I think. I think we don’t have all the facts. And most importantly, I refuse to allow you to become all upset over this until we know what has happened to her. But I agree with you. It doesn’t sound right or seem right. Rebecca? Unfit? No, no. Can’t be. When this evening is over, we will have Rebecca out to the house for dinner. Maybe tomorrow night. And then we will speak to her without all these distractions. If what you say is true, it is time for our Miss Abigail to come out of retirement. It’s that simple.”

I was so relieved, just so relieved. I just nodded my head and thought that one more sherry would be very nice. Huey opened the door and led me back to my chair. Sallie Anne Wood was working her way through the crowd, took Huey’s arm and led him away to Rebecca’s paintings. Her hair was in flames—well, not literally, of course. I strained to make out her words by lip reading from across the room, which was a difficult task as there were people in the way.

Byron brought me a tiny glass and put it by my side.

“What’s happening, Byron?”

“Miss Wood’s a little bit furious, I think. But don’t you worry yourself, Miss Olivia. Huey can handle her.” Byron was a nice man, really. Well, at least he was solicitous. I drained the miserable little thimble of a drink in one sip and looked over at Huey and Sallie Anne. She was waving her arms and carrying on like a banshee and my poor Huey was staring at his shoes, just letting the prima donna rant and rave like she was Monet’s little sister. People nearby were watching them from the corner of their eyes and smiling at her public display of displeasure. She was well within her rights to be provoked with Huey, I will admit that much, but Huey’s lapse in judgment did not excuse her own bad manners. No one, but
no one,
was going to dress down my boy in public.

“Give me your arm, Byron, and help me up this instant!”

“Yes, ma’am!”

I went right up and stood in between them, putting my hand on Huey’s arm in a show of support.

“Now, see here!” I said and looked her square in the face. “What’s all this fuss about?”

“Ooh!” the diva said and started to turn on her heel and flounce away, but I stopped her.

“I don’t think I can quite believe my eyes,” I said.

“What?” she said, spinning back to face me.

“Mother!” Huey said. “I can handle…”

“Hush! Now, Miss Wood, were you about to turn your back on
me
and walk away? Is that
possible
?”

“Well, I…”

She became very flustered, little bits of her spearmint LifeSavers–scented spittle flying in every direction. I imagine little old ladies didn’t take Sallie Ann Wood to the woodshed very often. Wood to the woodshed? Perfect!

“Sallie Anne’s upset with me, Mother and I don’t…”

“Huey! Hush, son!”
I took a deep breath and looked back to her face for an explanation. “Well, Miss Wood?”

“I’m sorry. This is supposed to be a one-woman show and it’s not,” she said. “I have never been so humiliated in all my…”

“Oh, psssh! Settle yourself down and stop huffing and puffing! What is there to be humiliated about? Huey, how many of Sallie Anne’s paintings have you sold?”

“Eleven! And six more are on hold! I mean, Sallie Anne, don’t you think that’s incredible?”

“Son, that
is
incredible! Aren’t you pleased, Miss Wood?”

“I want another ten percent for this outrage and a feature article in
Myrtle Beach Magazine
.”

“Done!” Huey said.

“Christmas issue!”

“I’ll try,” Huey said.

Sallie Anne took a deep breath and smiled as wide as she could, revealing some rather dilapidated dental work. “It’s a pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Valentine!” She walked away, her sense of self-importance fully restored.

“Ridiculous woman,” I said for Huey’s ears alone.

“You were wonderful, Mother.”

“Anytime, son.” Let’s face it, Sallie Anne Wood wasn’t the first bully I’d dealt with on my son’s behalf.

“Come, let me get you a victory drink.”

“Well, all right.”

Huey poured me a healthy portion from his private stash and helped me take my seat again. I drank it all up like a good girl, and I declare, the gallery had become so warm and comfortable that I drifted off to sleep and unfortunately into a terrible dream that a soldier from the north was trying to kidnap me and take me away. He said he wanted to marry me. I was too young! He said it didn’t matter to him. I was terrified.

I cannot leave my family! I do not want to go to Connecticut! My daddy would die if I left the plantation! What? Unhand me! You brute! If this is what Yankees are like…I will throw myself in the river! I swear it!

I felt someone shaking my arm and looked up into Rebecca’s face.

“Miss Olivia? Are you all right?”

The gallery was nearly empty. I had slept through the entire party.

“Of course! Of course!” I straightened myself and smoothed my hair, which had become a little tangled and was no doubt in disarray. “It’s time for me to go home.”

“Huey is very happy,” she said.

“And why is that?”

“Well, he sold several of my paintings and almost all of Sallie Anne’s.”

She helped me to my feet and I ran my hands over the skirt of my dress, thinking I must have been some sight. Suddenly, I remembered what Rebecca had told me earlier. Then along came Abigail and Huey. Abigail so sophisticated in all black and Huey so angelic in all white. It made me choke up a little to think they would probably never marry. They were a study in opposites, which is probably why they so enjoyed each other’s company. People were always drawn to that which they did not possess.

“Miss Olivia? Let me take you to the car,” Abigail said. “We are closing up now.”

All at once I became quite provoked with my son.

“Huey! Huey! How could you let me sleep like that? In front of all those people?”

“Mother? You were so comfortable and even smiling in your sleep! And besides, I didn’t know you
didn’t
want to rest!”

Sometimes Huey tried my patience, I can tell you that.

I took Abigail’s arm and turned back to Rebecca.

“Rebecca? I like you, sweetheart and I think your husband has done a
terrible
thing. A heinous thing! We simply cannot let him get away with this! I think I might have to cut a switch and go down to Charleston and tan his hide!”

Abigail, who didn’t know a thing but soon would, looked at Rebecca and said, “Honey? You don’t know Miss Olivia and I have no idea what’s she’s talking about, but when she starts talking about cutting a switch, you may as well head for high ground! Looks like we’re in for the storm of the century.”

N
AT
was gone long before we separated. The happiness in his eyes flickered, faded and went blank. It just went blank. My perfect family began to fall apart.

Do you know how there are conversations, disagreements and even verbal slights that wound you so badly you remember everything about them? The mere thought of them evokes a sweat. You recall the heaviness of the blue denim shirt you were wearing, or you can still smell the chicken you were roasting. You can envision the dirty dishes in the sink and feel what the temperature was. You relive those kinds of memories in a physical power surge, and all the knots you felt when they happened are suddenly alive and in your present.

In the days Nat loved me, he would glide through the door in the evenings, happy to be home.
How was your day? Where are the kids? What’s for dinner? Oh! Wait till I tell you what happened! No! I’ll save that for later! Anything in the mail? How are you? Let me give my wife a kiss…

For years, we spoke the same words, asked the same questions that filled the air of a thousand homes in Charleston. Dusk would settle in, covering us in its delicious glow of contentment. Another day of work was ending and we were all safe and with each other. We would have supper, clean the kitchen together as a family. Then Nat and I would put the children to bed. Most nights we would watch a movie or read together, turning in before midnight, sleeping like spoons.

One day, without warning, the pot-stirring hag slipped through the walls and began to skulk in our shadows. Nat began to miss dinner all the time, claiming business reasons. He went to every Clemson football and basketball game and took the children, not me, saying he needed some time with them alone to make up for all the weeknights he was out. I hated football anyway, so at first I didn’t mind. But over time, they returned from Birmingham or wherever the Clemson team played and communicated with references and inside jokes that didn’t include me. Sami covered her walls in Clemson sports memorabilia—pennants, programs, posters—and she announced that her life’s ambition was to be a Clemson cheerleader. Evan was going to be a quarterback.

I became the target of constant criticism. My small flaws became large issues. The issues became
irreconcilable
. The air turned rancid and its stench blew and hissed in my direction on the breath of Nat and the children.

Like any mother, I urged Samantha and Evan to do their homework, pick up their clothes and put them in the hamper, put their glasses in the dishwasher and turn out lights when they left a room. Nat used to say,
Do as your mother says.
Somewhere along the line he began to ask me why I nagged them so much. Eventually he said these things knowing the children heard him.
Wipe up the counter, Sami
became
You’d better wipe up the counter, Sami, or
SHE
will go completely crazy.

The children started calling me a nag, and Nat would say nothing. Later I watched his lips curl into a smile as they hurled words and insults at me I never would have spoken to anyone.

They say that domestic abuse starts with sarcasm, then yelling. Next the shoving begins and then one day it’s a slap, then a punch. Women are murdered all the time because rage goes out of control. Nat raged over nothing. He began to say things like,
This is my house and I can act any way I want.
I would reply,
There’s no place in a civilized world where you or I can act any way we want.
His grumbling increased in exponential leaps with each rebuttal. Soon we were barely speaking. Then the pivotal event occurred.

One day this past spring I put together a barbecue for the kids and their friends. School was almost out for the year. I was grilling what seemed like hundreds of hamburgers, slipping them in buns and arranging them on trays. The yard was crawling with youth, calling out to each other as they jumped in and crawled out of the pool. Sami was wearing a bathing suit that I thought was too skimpy. I just didn’t think that a fifteen-year-old girl needed to wear an underwire padded bra top with a teensy bottom that barely stayed tied on the sides.

Every time I would ask her to tighten her bottom, Nat would snicker at me. It was very hot and humid and the heat from the grill made the outdoor cooking almost unbearable. I became fed up with him and his snickering and lost my temper.

“What’s so funny?” I said.

“You. You’re funny. Don’t you realize she doesn’t give a shit what you think?” He moved his face very close to mine and said in a low voice, “No one does, Becca. No one.”

“Know what, Nat?” I whispered back to him. “
You’re
a shit.”

I could see that little vein in his forehead start to twitch, the one that twitched when he got angry. I didn’t think he would do anything crazy because we were surrounded by teenagers. I was wrong. He picked up a hamburger, still hot from the grill, and pressed it into my face with a shove.

“Nat!”

“You repulse me,” he said and walked away.

You repulse me.

Those words would bang around the inside of my head forever.

From that moment on, we were finished. Our intimate life ceased to exist. But I wouldn’t give up. I begged Nat to make love to me, and when he gave in, he treated me like a whore. I had hoped that kind of closeness would bring some apology or some words of regret from him. But he never said a thing. When I finally said,
Why?
he looked at me with a blank face and said,
You’re pathetic.
The sadistic pleasure he took in insulting me in the most vulnerable moment was stark and plain. Still, I didn’t understand why it was all happening. What had I done? I would lie there in a pool of my own tears, and he would leave the bed in a silence of inexplicable disgust to sleep in the guest room.

I would have done anything to hold my family together. I made their favorite meals. They said dinner sucked. I asked them if they’d like to watch a movie, that they could use pay-per-view and choose anything they would like to see. They said no way, they had other plans. No matter what I did or what I offered, it was refused and refused callously with everything from eye rolling to snide remarks. By the time Sami and Evan left for their summer camps in Maine, I just held my breath waiting for Nat to deliver the hand grenade. He did not disappoint.

I came to Pawleys Island as soon as I could and not just to escape the gossip. Like any small city, Charleston’s drums would beat with a jungle-like fervor when there was news of a domestic blowup. I could only guess what people were saying about me. After all, what kind of a mother loses her children? Her home?

A bad one. An unfit one.

That’s what kept me up at night. Had I become like my
own
mother? I would call you a liar if you repeated this, but the truth, the deep ugly truth, is that in some secret part of my heart, I was relieved to be out of there. I felt so weary and bruised from playing all the mind games with Nat. My children had broken my heart into thousands of pieces. They said they hated me. My own children hate me. Can you imagine such a horrible thing? All I had ever done was to love them and try to be a good parent and they hated me for it.

I had never slapped them or abused them in any physical way. Their clothes fit and were clean, pressed and neatly put away. Every afternoon I greeted them with snacks—some cookies or brownies—when they came home from school. I never made personal plans for anything until I knew that their needs were met. I had been den mother to Evan’s Cub Scout troop and class mother for Sami at least three times, and I had taken them to Sunday school without fail to be sure they received a religious education. I made beautiful birthday parties for all of them and holidays were out of a magazine.

I volunteered for everything to try to distinguish our family’s reputation. I had been an officer in the Junior League and chaired committees for the symphony and the museum. I had done everything I could to make them happy and to set a good example. They hated me.

Anyone would have wanted to run away—at least, that’s what I told myself. Litchfield Beach was the perfect escape for me.

My old roommate from Carolina, Claudia Kelly, was the closet thing I had to a best friend. My friends in Charleston were carpool friends, soccer game parents—but that’s what happens when you’re raising children. Claudia was the only friend who had survived all the changes in my life. Even though she lived in Atlanta and had a very busy practice in plastic surgery, we still managed to stay in touch and to see each other at least once a year. The condo I was staying in at the Crescent was hers. She had always said,
Use it! Use it!
So, with the subpoena still in my hands, I had called her from outside the courtroom. She was as completely surprised by Nat’s shock-and-awe campaign as I was.

“Becca! That’s outrageous! How can he get away with this?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

She said, “You’ll go to the condo at Litchfield and stay there. Don’t tell the son of a bitch where you’re going either. Let
him
explain to everyone where you are. I’ll come down as soon as I can and we’ll figure this out.”

I knew that there was nothing anyone could do. It seemed to me that Nat had somehow sewn up the whole deal before I even knew what was afoot. The only people he would have to explain my whereabouts to were the parents of our children’s friends. Most kids were away at camp, so I wouldn’t be talking to their parents until school started again. And, of course, there was his dad, Tisdale, but I was guessing that he already knew. Funny. I hadn’t heard from Tisdale in weeks. Yes, he probably knew.

I was pretty damned depressed but hiding it quite well, or at least I thought I was. In the tradition of sailors surviving stormy seas, I seized Claudia’s port. I knew that the sight and sounds of the ocean would make me feel better. I didn’t know a soul at Litchfield. I would not be bumping into people day and night who would say,
Oh, Becca! I heard! We are so sorry! Is there anything we can do?
You knew in the pit of your guts that all they wanted was a tidbit of juice they could rehash over a gin and tonic with their spouse that night. It may be human nature to behave so disingenuously, but I wasn’t ready to face them.

My plan, as I was driving from Charleston to Claudia’s condo, crying so hard I could hardly see, was to dive into painting. Hopefully I would find some kind of a job to keep myself alive and fed until I could sort out my life. And there it was: Huey Valentine’s gallery, right on Highway 17, sitting there like Christmas morning. I had seen the sign that said Oak Lea and Gallery Valentine listed among the tenants and pulled over.

Did I have an inkling that they didn’t sell little statues of shrimp boats made from shells with little peg-legged captains on the bow? No. Did I know that it was a legitimate art gallery? No. Did I know he needed a framer? No. Luck! What a wild card. I had often thought about luck. Pretty arbitrary. It was better not to depend on it.

I was still adjusting to the idea of selling my work and Huey’s excitement over it. And Abigail’s. Last night’s opening had been your basic baptism by fire, but I somehow had managed to survive the craziness. I was bone tired, I’ll admit that much. The muscles in my arms ached from making so many frames.

I was late getting dressed and gathering up other watercolors I hadn’t taken to show Huey the first day. It must have been ninety-five degrees and it was just early morning. The air was oppressive and the sun was a burning laser. Just a glance into its face made my eyes stream water.

I decided to turn on the car and let the air conditioner run for a few minutes to cool it down, and then I would drive to work. The worst part of the car was that it had dark charcoal leather seats—a gift of torture from Nat. You don’t know what
hot
is until your bare legs have been stuck to dark leather seats in a car that’s been baking in the Carolina July sun.

My steering wheel, not my seats, had been special ordered in beige leather because the standard one was black. Forget black steering wheels, unless you’re a criminal and want to have your fingerprints removed. Just like folks in Minneapolis preheated their cars in February, we precooled our cars in July.

When the cars cooperate and start, that is. My car was as dead as Kelsey’s cow, whoever Kelsey is or was. Not a sound came from the dashboard area when the key was turned. I must have tried it ten times, and nothing. When I started to perspire and could feel that the hair on the back of my neck was already sopping wet, I gave up and ran back inside to make an air-conditioned call to the gallery.

“Huey?”

“Rebecca? Sweet angel? Are you on the way?”

“Yeah, well, I was, but my car won’t start. I don’t know what’s wrong. It was fine yesterday.”

“Listen to Uncle Huey. Don’t fret. Abigail is coming here in thirty minutes. I’ll call her to pick you up. And I’ll get Byron to see about your car.”

“Oh! Thanks! Huey, seriously, thank you so much!”

I hung up realizing I was on the verge of tears. It had been so long since anyone besides Claudia had offered to do anything for me that I choked up and wanted to cry. What did that say about my mental state? Pathetic.

My cell rang moments later and it was Abigail, saying it was no big deal and she was on her way.

“Precious place!” she said, when I opened the door.

Precious?
Where did she live? The Taj Mahal?

Crisp
described her manner and her dress. She was wearing black Bermudas, a starched white sleeveless shirt, a black alligator belt and a black-and-white visor in the tiniest check print. Although she had on black sandals, I suspected that somewhere in her car there were a pair of black-and-white golf shoes. I watched as she glanced at the row of photographs of my children.

“Thanks. It belongs to a friend of mine from Atlanta.”

“Three bedrooms?”

“Yeah, and a great view of the ocean,” I said. “Come see.”

I put my portfolio against the back of the sofa and opened the curtain over the sliding glass door that led to the balcony. We stepped outside into the breeze, and Abigail leaned over the rail.