Excerpt

Ella had been as aware as everyone else of the sad demolition
years ago of the majestic Ocean Forest Hotel and other landmarks at
Myrtle Beach, and she remembered friends back in Charlotte also
complaining about other modern changes over the past couple of
decades that had transformed much of the entire Grand Strand into a
major resort that now engulfed the hitherto independent small
beaches of Ocean Drive, Cherry Grove, and Crescent. Nothing,
however, could have fully prepared her for not only the sleazy
theme restaurants, amusement parks, and strip malls that now lined
both sides of Kings Highway but also the towering, concrete,
ocean-front hotels and condos that had replaced most of the
gracious old family cottages and inns. Of course, Goldie was awed
by all the spectacle and glitz, but she kept her excitement to
herself when it became obvious that Miss Ella was nothing less than
shocked as they slowly made their way along Ocean Boulevard past
one flashy high rise after another, looking anxiously for a sign
that read “The Priscilla.”

Then, there it was, the same pinkish-white, shingled, dignified
structure recessed off the road that Ella had known in the old days
and that stood almost in noble defiance of progress and trendy
vulgarity. Both the inn and its spacious parking lot were virtually
camouflaged by old palmettos and tall, thick borders of
well-trimmed myrtle hedges that guaranteed an optimum of privacy
for the privileged guests, and when she looked up from the car,
Ella noticed that every window was now graced by a neat blue awning
with a small white P in the center of each. On the front was a
long, white, bannistered porch with rocking chairs overlooking a
wooden terrace and plush lawn between the inn and the ocean, and,
as all the locals knew, the formal dining room inside still served
what was without question the finest Lowcountry cuisine on the
entire beach.

Pulling through the front gate to the main entrance of the inn,
they were greeted immediately by an older, uniformed attendant, who
opened Ella’s door, directed them to the reception area, and
said he would park the car and handle the luggage and fishing rods.
Inside the quiet, wood-paneled hall furnished with deep cane
armchairs, a handsome bookcase, and tasteful seascapes on the
walls, it was as if time had stood still, and when the familiar,
salty aroma of fresh sea air swept through the front porch doors
into the vestibule, Ella had the strange, comforting impression
that she’d been here only yesterday.

“Young man, when you’ve finished checking us
in,” she addressed the attractive clerk behind the desk,
fishing in her pocketbook for a credit card while he glanced
furtively at Goldie, “I’d like to have an important
word with you.

“Yes, Mrs. Dubose, by all means,” he acknowledged
cordially in a thick Lowcountry accent, taking the card, running it
through a machine for an imprint, and indicating where she should
sign the registration form. Ella thought about commenting on the
vulgarity of credit cards, but she’d learned that she was
just wasting her breath ridiculing this modern phenomenon.

“Do you know what incognito means?” she almost
whispered, leaning up and touching the sleeve of his blue
blazer.

The lad looked perplexed. “No, Ma’am, I can’t
say I do.”

“You don’t? Well, I’ll tell you. It means
somebody who prefers not to be recognized, who’s in disguise,
and that’s the way I’m traveling on this trip ---
incognito.”

“Oh,” he uttered, still baffled by what the elegant
lady was trying to put across.

“You see, I and my family were coming to the Priscilla
years ago --- before you were even born.” She stopped to
laugh softly to herself. “And I’m now returning with my
companion here mainly to rest and relax and not be disturbed ---
total privacy.”

The clerk, his blue eyes wide open, remained quiet a moment,
then said, “Oh, yes Ma’am, we try to respect the
privacy of all our guests.”

Ella frowned slightly, her hand still on his arm. “I
don’t think you fully understand, young man, so let to try to
put it another way. As far as this inn is concerned, I don’t
exist, I never checked in here, and if there should be any phone
calls for me, you’ve never heard my name. I have my own very
personal reasons, and, take my word, there’s nothing shady
going on, but can you assure me that this request will be honored,
and your telephone operator notified, and...?”

“Don’t forget about Mr. Tyler,” Goldie
interrupted quietly, nudging her arm.

“Oh yes, my son from New York City, Mr. Tyler Dubose, will
be joining us on the weekend for a few days --- I believe you have
his reservation --- and he also will be staying here
incognito.”

By now, the poor clerk, who was trying to be sophisticated in
accordance with his training, was so confused that all he could do
was excuse himself, tap on an office door just off the reception
area, and speak momentarily with a much older gentleman dressed in
a beige linen suit.

“Good day, Mrs. Dubose,” the man greeted,
approaching the desk and eyeing the dark-skinned woman with the
beads and bracelets before turning his full attention to Ella.
“I’m Albert Glover, the general manager, and I
understand that you’ll not be accepting any incoming calls
during your stay with us.”

“That’s correct, Mr. Glover. In fact, I’d like
our registration --- and my son’s this weekend --- to remain
anonymous, if that’s no problem. I have my
reasons.”

For an instant, the manager wondered to himself if perhaps the
perfectly respectable looking lady might be either a celebrity or
kook, but then he quickly determined that she was no more than a
well-off, harmless eccentric with a peculiar companion who, for
whatever reasons, simply wanted to be left totally alone.

“No problem, Mrs. Dubose,” he assured in a friendly
manner. “As you might know, we’re still a very
old-fashioned, traditional place, and go out of our way to
accommodate all our guests’ every wish, so our lips are
sealed if that’s what you ask. And please let us know if
there’s anything at all we can do to make your stay more
pleasant.”

Once Ella had thanked him, the two women were shown to their
adjoining rooms on the third floor, Ella’s on a corner with
sweeping views of the sea and coastline, and Goldie’s much
smaller connecting one on the side. The first thing Ella did was
cut off the air conditioning and open all the windows, and after
hanging up a couple of dresses and leaving the rest of the
unpacking to Goldie, she looked down at the blue and white cabanas
that were similar to those where she used to sit sewing and
watching Big Earl and the children romp in the waves. She now felt
tired and a little groggy, and as she gazed out over the ocean with
thousands of small whitecaps reflecting the hypnotic afternoon sun,
what came to mind first was the day so long ago when she and
Jonathan frolicked up the beach in front of the Ocean Forest, and
he held her tight around the waist, and she was so in love. Then
she remembered worrying, years later, about Tyler one morning
strolling all alone up the beach while his father pitched baseball
with Little Earl, and how she caught up with him and they searched
together for beautiful shells. And next surfaced the vision of pier
fishing with Earl, and pulling in a large blue, and standing back
in horror as he ripped the hook from the struggling fish’s
mouth while Little Earl and Liv cheered him on. One by one, the
disparate memories emerged and clashed, and if, sitting there in a
partial trance with the warm, familiar breeze blowing across her
venerable body, Ella sensed a remote happiness being back in her
beloved Lowcountry where important chapters of her long, rather
ordinary life had unfolded, she was not so distracted by the
promise of pleasure and relaxation to forget the primary reason for
this deviant trip. Nor could she disregard some of the irritating
family circumstances back home that threatened to darken her entire
mood.

“We’re concerned, Mama, and not just about your
physical health,” had been Olivia’s exact words that
day at Bull’s Barbecue.

“When somebody gets to your age, there’re changes in
the system that can effect everything we do from making important
decisions to... driving a car,” had been Little Earl’s
added two bits.

Not that Ella had really wanted to go to lunch with her son and
daughter on that hectic Saturday. It had been a trying week, so
much so that if one single thing else went wrong she thought she
might reach for the gun in her pocketbook and blow her own brains
out. First, she was still recovering from a nasty touch of the
colic, most likely brought on by a strange shrimp dish she’d
ordered at Phoenix Garden when her old friend Lilybelle Armstrong
invited her out to celebrate Ella’s 74th birthday. Because of
a terrible, really inexcusable mix-up, the man due to clean the
crystal chandelier in the dining room had yet to show up. Nor had
young Billy next door come over on Wednesday after school, as
promised, to help Miss Ella move one of the two heavy artificial
Christmas trees on wheels from behind a large Indonesian screen in
the sun room to a corner of the library.

All week long, her soaps on TV had been preempted hour after
hour by the news of some factory or house or bus that had been
blown up over in Israel. And as if that annoyance were not enough,
Ella now had good reason to worry that the garbage man might start
asking questions about the potted marijuana plant growing taller
each day in a remote sunny area of the spacious porch that wrapped
it round two sides of the house. She had almost burned the bottoms
of jelly cookies intended to be served at her charity league
luncheon, then Lucy, sick as a dog with a migraine, had called to
change the regular hair and manicure appointment at the beauty
parlor. And what should arrive in the mail from up north but a copy
of Tyler’s new memoirs revealing not only certain aspects of
his unusual life that should have been kept private, but also a few
embarrassing details about the family that were not at all
necessary.

All of which meant that Ella Dubose was not exactly in the best
frame of mind when Little Earl called out of the blue to announce
that he and Olivia would like to drop by the house on Saturday and
take their mother out to Bull’s Barbecue for lunch. Ella
immediately suspected something shady since it just wasn’t
normal for her younger son and daughter to pay a visit together,
much less pick a Saturday to eat barbecue when everybody in
Charlotte knew how horrendous Saturday crowds could be at any
restaurant. Maybe if Earl had said that he and Betty Jane, his
wife., were simply planning to drive over to visit, Ella
wouldn’t have been so leery, but no, it just wasn’t
normal for the two of’ them to be coming together and wasting
a good Saturday that could be and usually was spent with their own
children or some friends.

“Son,” Ella began to beg off, “that’s
awfully sweet of you both, but to tell you the honest truth, it
really doesn’t suit this weekend. I’ve had a pretty bad
week, and besides, much as I love it, I’m not one bit sure I
should be eating barbecue after this little intestinal spell
I’ve had.”

“Oh, Mama, you know as well as I do that half of
that’s in your head,” he had challenged in his
nonchalant way when trying to sway his mother. “What you need
is to get out of that big house and forget about your problems for
a while. If you don’t feel up to barbecue, you can always
have a good bowl of Brunswick stew, and a few hushpuppies, and
plenty of ice’ tea, You know how much you love the Brunswick
stew out at Bull’s, and it might do your tummy lots of good.
And Liv’s dying for a barbecue plate.”

Ella stood her ground. “Earl, honey, please don’t
try to humor me, for heaven’s sake. As I said, this has not
been a very good week, and I’m aware when my nerves are on
end, and I certainly know what I should and should not eat after
I’ve had a little set --- back. I also know that I have no
intention, no intention whatsoever, of waiting over there for a
table on a busy Saturday.”

Earl could be as persistent and stubborn as his mother, not only
at his company but when dealing with any of his ken. “Now,
Mama, I think you’ve forgotten, I think it’s completely
escaped your mind that I’ve known Bull Godwin ever since we
started coaching Little League together, and that Bull will have me
a table ready anytime faster than you can shake a stick. All it
takes is a quick phone call, so you can’t use that as an
excuse.”

“Son, I’m not going to argue with you till I’m
blue in the face. Some of the girls from the church are coming over
this afternoon to strip palms and make crosses for Sunday, so I
don’t have time to argue. Goldie’s here now helping me
fix tea sandwiches and roll nutty fingers, and we still have to
straighten up the sun room. If you and Liv want to drop by just for
a visit, fine, but I’m not making any promises about going to
Bull’s. Just depends on my condition.”

Ella had every right to wonder about her son and daughter coming
over together to take her out to lunch on Saturday. Not that
she’d ever had any reason to distrust her own flesh and
blood. It was simply because she couldn’t remember the last
time just the three of them had gone out together to eat barbecue
or anything else, and her maternal instincts told her that
something odd was up --- something peculiar that she could detect
merely from the tone of Earl’s voice on the phone. Of course,
had she been a fly on the wall at his and Betty Jane’s home
the previous weekend while the two of them and Olivia sat around
the kitchen table drinking cola or coffee and nibbling on snacks,
she’d have known in an instant why any wariness was
justified.

“Haven’t you noticed some weird changes in Mama
Ella’s behavior the last few months?” Betty Jane asked
Olivia, twisting a clump of tinted blond hair with her thumb and
index finger.

Olivia, wearing a jersey with “CAROLINA” stenciled
over the front, was sipping coffee from a mug with the figure of a
blue ram on one side. Her short, auburn hair was flecked with gray,
and it was obvious that one day it would be as radiantly silver as
her mother’s.

“Nothing Mama does these days really surprises me,”
she answered, snickering in a childish way.

“Well, we’ve noticed, and it worries the hell out of
us,” Earl asserted, popping another small cheese biscuit from
a tin into his mouth and washing it down with Diet Coke. “And
I think we need to talk about it before…” He stopped to
listen to the TV in the den when there was a roar from the crowd at
a basketball game. “Did B. J. tell you what Mama was doing
just the other day when she drove over there to return some of her
china? She was baking dog biscuits. Dog biscuits!”

Betty Jane, who couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred
pounds and dressed in expensive skirts and blouses even when at
home, now had an almost stunned look on her face.
“That’s right. Baking dog biscuits for dogs in the
neighborhood. Can you imagine?”

“Sounds more like something Goldie might do,” Olivia
uttered.

“Listen,” Earl added facetiously, “if Mama
decided to dynamite the Charlotte Coliseum , that damn squaw would
be right there to light the fuse.”

“Well, one thing that really does bother me is how Mama
seems to be having more of her strange spells,” Olivia
remarked with more concern. “Haven’t you noticed
recently she sometimes just stares into space like she
doesn’t know where she is?”

Earl leaned back from the table, sucked in his ample gut, then
ran a hand over the almost totally bald top of his head that
betrayed his 49 years. “Honey, that’s part of
what’s worrying hell out of me.”

Olivia’s expression became even more serious. “Lord,
you’re not saying you think Mama could be headed for
something like a bad stroke or... Alzeimer’s?”

“Who knows,” he grunted in exasperation, shaking his
head and reaching for a handful of potato chips. “She’s
got that heart murmur, and Dr. Singer’s been begging her for
ages to have some more tests, but you know how bull-headed Mama can
be when it comes to doctors and tests and all that.”

“Have you talked to Tyler recently about this?”
Betty Jane asked, pulling at the large pear-shaped diamond ring on
her finger.

There was another clamor on the TV, which moved Earl to jump up
and peer around the corner for a minute to see what was happening
at the game.

“Tyler?” he muttered as he sat back down, a
disgusted frown on his slightly tanned face. “How could I
talk to Ty when he and lover boy were living it up over in Paris?
Last time I brought up the subject of Mama’s health, he said
Mama knew what she was doing and started to raise Cain, so I just
let it drop. Of course, Big Brother sits up there in New York with
all his fancy friends living high on the hog while we watch out for
Mama and wonder what will happen next.” He leaned back in the
chair trying to hear the sports commentary, then fixed his bulging
eyes on his sister. “You know Mama can do no wrong in
Ty’s eyes, but, dammit, one day he’s gonna have to face
reality about what it’s like for us down here. As if he
ain’t already brought enough disgrace to this
family.”

Little Earl made no pretense about the way he felt about his
older brother --- not to his sister, or his wife, or his mother, or
anybody else in the family except maybe Tyler himself. Not that
there’d ever been any real open strife between the brothers,
or that the two weren’t civil enough to one another in a
respectful Southern way on the rare occasion, usually at Christmas,
when Tyler flew home to North Carolina to visit his mother. But it
was no big secret that Earl had little use for Tyler and his way of
life, or that the two couldn’t have been more different in
their sophistication and even in their physical
characteristics.

Happily married to Betty Jane for over thirty years and the
proud father of a fine son and daughter, Earl was the president of
Charlotte’s largest and most prestigious printing and
engraving company. Founded by his father and a partner when Big
Earl and Ella moved to Charlotte back in the forties, Creative
Graphics had been a highly lucrative success over the years, and
from the day Little Earl began working at the company after
graduating at State in Raleigh with a degree in business
management, it was taken for granted that one day he’d
inherit the whole enterprise when Big Earl passed on.

Little Earl knew everything there was to know about printing and
engraving, and nobody could ever have accused him of not being even
more ambitious and industrious than his daddy had always been. As a
result, he not only commanded the utmost respect throughout
Charlotte’s business community and his health club, but he
and Betty Jane enjoyed considerable social status at Christ
Episcopal Church and Quail Hollow Country Club, as well as prized
seats at Lowe’s Motor Speedway and all NFL Panthers games.
Although heavyset like so many Southern men who eat three square
meals a day, he had always been called Little Earl within the
family, not because of his size but to distinguish him from his
daddy. Most friends simply called him Earl, but at the company he
was respectfully addressed by employees as either Mr. Earl or Mr.
Dubose, and at work he was never seen without a jacket and tie,
much as he hated dressing up. Like many prosperous Charlotteans, he
and Betty Jane had a weekend retreat up at Lake Norman near
Davidson College, and that’s where Earl could really relax in
a pair of jeans, or cutoffs, or bathing suit without compromising
his image as one of the city’s more reputable citizens.

Tyler, on the other hand, couldn’t have been less
interested in family or civic activities, religion, social clubs,
and certainly not sports and quaint lakeside cabins. Almost two
years older than Little Earl and much more independent by nature,
he had received a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Duke in the
ear1y seventies, landed an assistant professorship at Princeton,
and might well have become a leading scholar of English Romantic
literature had an unfortunate and well-publicized indiscretion with
a male student not suddenly ended his promising vocation and sent
him fleeing to Manhattan to pick up the pieces of his life and try
his hand at writing fiction. News of his disgrace that leaked back
to Charlotte shocked and embarrassed Big Earl and everybody else
except Ella, and even after Tyler’s first popular novel
became a best seller all over the country and launched what would
develop into a phenomenal career, most Charlotteans still chose to
dwell with disapproval on the mostly fabricated gossip about his
private life up north than on the hometown boy’s literary
success.

Rather elegant in demeanor and still remarkably handsome for his
age, Tyler, no doubt, had spread his wings far and wide in younger
days, as revealed in his new juicy book of memoirs. But the truth
was that, for a number of years, he had been living rather
conventionally with the same man, an intelligent, successful fine
arts dealer originally from Chicago with whom he shared both a
well-appointed duplex apartment on East 67th Street in Manhattan
and a comfortable but modest home out in Amagansett on Long Island
where Ella would occasionally visit the two. What possibly caused
the most resentment in his Charlotte family, in fact, was the deep
affection that Tyler and his mother had always shown toward one
another, a love and devotion that bordered on adoration and that
many felt was simply based on their mutually rebellious, liberal,
and downright eccentric personalities. Even as a teenager, Tyler
had never been very close to Big Earl since the two shared very few
interests, and it’s for sure that he never had much in common
with his younger brother. As for Olivia, Tyler had always been
rather protective of his sister when they were growing up since she
was never the most popular girl with the boys in her class, but
after she eventually got married and began raising a family, the
relationship with her older brother became more and more remote and
impersonal.

Such friction had undoubtedly caused Ella some distress, not
only because she loved every member of her family but considered
the large family home on Colville Road to be a happy haven where
she and Big Earl had lived since the fifties, the house where
Tyler, Little Earl, and Olivia had all been reared, and the house
where everybody should be able to gather together any time in total
harmony. The white Colonial Revival structure was certainly not as
grand as the stately mansions along Queens Road West or even some
of the more modern spreads out in the Providence Plantation area of
town, but it was a gracious, comfortable, two-story home with
attractive grounds in a fine old neighborhood. Ella loved her
house, and as long as she was physically and mentally capable of
faring for herself, she planned to remain there till, as she often
proclaimed, they carried her out feet first. And except for a
slight heart murmur and the first signs of mild glaucoma, which she
occasionally combated by secretly smoking a little home-grown
marijuana, Ella was still more fit, energetic, and alert at 74 than
many women ten years younger. It could even be said, in fact, that
she could conceivably outlive Tyler who, unbeknownst to everyone in
the family and to practically everyone up north except his doctors
and Barry, had been waging a nasty battle with colon cancer for
much of the past year.

“Of course, you know what really drives me to distraction
is Mama wheeling that big car all over Charlotte day and night ---
even when she’s been drinking,” Earl went on, popping
the tab on another Diet Coke. “I mean, I don’t know
when her eyes were last checked, and all we need is for somebody to
call and announce that she’s just plowed into three or four
cars and killed God knows how many people.”

“Mama really shouldn’t be driving at her age,”
Olivia commented in her simple way. “Lord, what is she had
one of her spells out on Independence Boulevard?”

Betty Jane chuckled. “Well, all I can say is I don’t
want to be around when somebody so much as suggests to Mamma Ella
that she should give up her white chariot.”

“B. J., I don’t find one thing funny about
this,” Earl scolded his wife. “The point is, we gotta
have a long talk with Mama and try to convince her to at least go
to Dr. Singer for a thorough check-up. Then we might have some clue
to what we’re dealing with.”

Betty Jane pretended to fan her face with one hand. “Boy
oh boy, the fur’s gonna fly.”

Chapter Three

Rising from her chair at the inn overlooking the sparkling
ocean, Ella decided to take a nap before getting dressed and going
downstairs with Goldie for drinks and dinner, but since the thought
of that fretful lunch with her younger son and daughter back in
Charlotte continued to prey on her mind, all she could do was lie
wide awake on the bed, stare at the ceiling, and reflect further on
that and the real reason she’d decided so compulsively to
flee to the beach. Then, as if overcome by a strange compulsion,
she got up and went over to the bureau, opened the top drawer, and
nervously rummaged beneath a pile of carefully folded elegant silk
scarves for the discolored package of tattered letters tied
together with frail string that, back home, she’d kept
concealed with other old mementos in a shoe box. Since the yellowed
envelopes had been mailed from U. S. army bases in England and
France during the war, there were no postmarks, and since the
writing on the time-worn, creased pages was all in pencil, many
words and parts of whole sentences were now too smudged or faded to
read. Still, sitting on the foot of the bed, Ella opened randomly a
few of the letters, and as she began to scan the contents for the
first time in nearly forty years, she was so gripped by a terrible
wave of nostalgia and confused emotions that she could almost hear
her heart pounding.

“My darling Ella, Tonight, in…seemed like a
hundred years…in that pretty polka dot dress as the train
pulled out.”

“Over 2 dozen casualties to handle today, but we know
the job must be done, and all we pray is the unit…before you
know it.”

“My sweet Ella, Do you remember when you got that bone
caught in your gum at Perdidas? Well, yesterday when we were on
patrol near Louviers, a very…farm woman offered…began
laughing my head off.”

“…promise when this hell is finally over and
we’re back together, we’ll…teach me how to tango
like Valentino. How I miss you. Always yours, Jonathan.”

For a while longer, she continued to look through the troubling
letters, but when the exercise seemed to produce more anxiety than
revelations that might help her carry through her self-imposed
mission, she tucked them back into the drawer and purposefully
distracted her thoughts back to the present by once again pondering
the annoying implications revealed at lunch with her two youngest
children.

When, in fact, Little Earl and Olivia had arrived at their
mother’s shortly before noon, Ella had still been wavering
over whether her system was yet up to eating at Bull’s, but
after Little Earl coaxed and coaxed, and again mentioned the onion
hushpuppies, and added that he and Liv were both hungry as dogs,
she had finally given in if for no other reason than to stop all
the bickering and make her children happy.

And, just as Earl had promised, there was indeed a booth ready
for the Dubose family, even though at least a dozen other customers
milling about the lounge area were waiting patiently to be seated.
Almost immediately, Earl and Olivia both ordered the chopped
barbecue platter that included cole slaw, french fries, and a cup
of Brunswick stew, and Earl told the waitress to bring also a
basket of hushpuppies and pitcher of ice’ tea. Overcome by
the aroma of smoky meat that filled the entire restaurant, Ella
dropped all her defenses and decided to have a barbecue sandwich.
Then, after asking the pretty waitress if she could have just a
glass of ice water, she began rummaging in her dark green leather
pocketbook and slyly pulled out a small silver flask that she
furtively cupped in her wrinkled hand.

“Oh Mama, you’re not,” Earl whined
disparagingly, shifting his eyes to see if anybody close by was
watching.

“I most certainly am,” Ella countered boldly,
“and I don’t want to hear a peep from either one of
you. “You know I enjoy a little nip when I go out, especially
when I’m getting over an upset, and if your friend Bull
Godwin would have the gumption to get a liquor license for this
place like every decent restaurant in Charlotte has, maybe I
wouldn’t be reduced to having to bootleg my own.

“Mama, what if the waitress notices the color of the
water,” Olivia asked nervously, rubbing the front of her
V-neck rose cashmere sweater.

“Well, honey, have I ever embarrassed you in
public?” she huffed indifferently in her rather raspy voice.
I’ll simply tell her it’s a medication I have to take
before eating --- that’s what. Now, for heaven’s sake,
would you two just mind your own business and tell me what this is
all about?”

Olivia, sitting beside her brother, glanced up at him.

“What’s what all about, Mama?” he pretended
confidently, laughing.

Before Ella could answer, there was a muffled beeping inside the
left side pocket of Earl’s jacket, and when he pulled the
cell phone out, his mother frowned in disgust.

“Hi, Frankie,” Earl drawled. “Naw, I’m
busy this afternoon with my mama and sister. Maybe next Saturday.
Yeah, I’ll give you a call. Thanks, ole buddy.”

“Lord, I hate those vulgar contraptions,” Ella
groused as he rammed the phone back into his pocket. “Oughta
be outlawed --- like computers.”

“Mama, why do you hate anything modern and
practical,” he commented, “Cell phones are here to
stay, so you better get used to them. If you’d let me get you
one, you’d see how convenient they are --- and what they
could mean in a bad emergency.”

“Over my dead body,” Ella mumbled, feeling the side
of her hair.

After the waitress returned with a pitcher of tea and the water,
Ella very deftly poured from her flask into the glass of water,
stirred the ice with a spoon, and took a sip.

“Now listen, you two, you don’t both sacrifice a
perfectly nice Saturday just to eat barbecue with your old mother
--- not without Betty Jane or Jesse or one of the kids. So
what’s up?”

“Oh Mama, don’t be like that,” Earl drawled,
reaching over and playfully popping her arm. “The three of us
haven’t been together by ourselves in a coon’ s age,
and I don’t think you realize how much Liv and I worry about
you being over there alone in that big house all the time and not
getting out more.”

Ella put her glass on the table, reached again in her
pocketbook, and took out a dull gold cigarette case with the
engraved initials EPH barely discernable on one side.

Olivia looked surprised, almost shocked. “Mama, you told
us --- you promised --- you’d stopped smoking those filthy
things.”

Ella lit a cigarette with a small gold butane lighter and took a
long, delicious draw. “Oh, honey, I have --- almost.
I’ve been quitting for the past forty years, as you know, and
now go days without smoking. But when I have a cocktail in a
restaurant, or my nerves are really on end...” She took
another drag, then picked her glass back up and gazed at Earl.
“And, son, I don’t know what in this world you’re
talking about when you say I’m not getting out of the house
enough. I mean, I go to the beauty parlor every Friday and to
church every single Sunday, and have my charity league and bible
class, and go to the store with Goldie at least twice a week, and
have lunch with Lulu Woodside, and Folly, and Jinks Ferguson,
and…Why, the very idea that I don’t get out enough. You
two just don’t know what all I do do. I stay busy as a bee,
and maybe if you called more often…”

Earl twisted his mouth to one side and grumbled,
“I’ve never understood what you see in that Mrs.
Ferguson.”

“Why, I don’t know what you mean, son. Jinks
Ferguson is a very nice lady who devotes lots of time to the
charity league.”

“Well, I just don’t trust any of those Catholics
with all their sick hangups.

“Now, why would you make an asinine remark like
that?”

“Well, we could start with Mrs. Ferguson breeding six
children and then mention her love affair with the gin bottle,
couldn’t we?” He chuckled. “People at the club
still talk about the night she got so tanked that one of her sons
had to be called to come take her home.”

Ella drew back indignantly like some startled exotic bird.
“That is absolutely not true, not a word of it --- just
malicious gossip. I happen to know that, at the time, Jinks was
still getting over her husband’s tragic death, and that she
was simply on the verge of a bad nervous breakdown. I’m sure
Jinks enjoys a social drink from time to time like the rest of us,
hut I can tell you that at our meetings I’ve never seen her
touch anything but a nice glass of sherry.

Earl twisted his mouth again smugly and raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah, with a float of gin on top. Those Catholics are crazy
people --- just eaten up with guilt over everything.”

“Son, sometimes I think you’ve lost your mind when
you make ugly remarks like that. None of that nonsense about Jinks
is true, and, besides, it’s not one bit of your business what
she or any other of my friends do.”

The waitress brought the food, and the second Little Earl saw
the hot hushpuppies, he popped one in his mouth without even
buttering it. He asked his mother if she didn’t want to taste
the Brunswick stew, placing the small bowl in front of her, so she
took a spoonful and pronounced the thick concoction to be excellent
--- as good as her own. She then asked about the grandchildren and
wondered why she didn’t see more of them. Earl, who had both
a son and daughter, said that Carter was already showing great
promise at the company, and that he and B.J. had every reason to
think he and Lena Rose Hitchcock were much more serious about each
other than they let on. As for daughter Bippie, well, Bippie had
been spending more and more time helping some Italian guy from
Monroe run the wine shop over in Sardis Mall, and all anybody could
do was pray there wasn’t more to that shady relationship than
meets the eye. Cameron Lee, Olivia’s and Jesse’s only
child, was still working hard to set up his podiatry clinic just
off Park Road, Olivia informed, and while they couldn’t be
more proud of him ever since he finally finished all his training
down at Emory, they did wish --- they prayed every night --- that
he’d hurry up and meet the right girl and think as much about
starting a family as playing golf every weekend and becoming a rich
foot doctor.

Earl wolfed down his entire platter before Ella had taken three
bites of her sandwich, but Olivia, who was always battling her
weight, left some barbecue on her plate and didn’t touch the
french fries. Earl had never managed to take off the thirty pounds
he put on after he stopped smoking some years ago, and, like most
reformed smokers who tend to substitute food for nicotine, he was
now fidgety with nothing more to satisfy his appetite than glass
after glass of ice’ tea.

“As I was saying a little while ago, Mama,” he
resumed almost impatiently, “I and B.J. and Liv here worry
our heads off about you over there in that house alone at night
without so much as a cell phone in ease of emergencies.

“Oh please, son, let’s not beat that dead horse
again. You know how I loathe all those modern gadgets and will not
have one in my home. So would you please hush about that once and
for all?”

“Okay, but we’ve been doing a lotta thinking, Mama,
and we think we all need to talk about your health and
well-being.”

Ella put her sandwich down in her dainty way, took another slow
sip of the whiskey, and glared at him as if the reality of the
situation was beginning to dawn on her. “There’s not
one thing wrong with me.”

“How would you know, Mama?” he bolted. “You
haven’t seen a doctor in at least three years.”

“So that’s what this little get-together is all
about. You two want me to go to Dr. Singer and let him give me the
once-over. Right?”

Appearing more agitated, Earl poured more tea into his glass.
“Well, frankly, Mama, you just haven’t been acting like
your old self lately --- whether you’re aware of it or not.
And all we’re asking, all we’re begging is that you go
to Dr. Singer and let him give you a complete check-up the way any
normal person does from time to time.”

Ella began tapping her perfectly manicured red fingernails on
the table. “There’s not one thing wrong with me ---
nothing --- and if there’s anything I hate, it’s a
doctor fooling aroundwith me, and making me take one pill after the
next, and lecturing me about smoking and drinking. I’ve just
had lots on my mind lately --- that’s all --- and I will
thank you both just to let me attend to my own affairs. I think
you’ve forgotten who somehow raised you.”

“Mama, you’re not being very reasonable,”
Olivia chimed in, picking at a french fry as if debating whether to
eat it. “What if they found something wrong?”

“If they did, my dear, I probably wouldn’t do a
thing about it --- not at my age. I now believe simply in letting
nature take its course.”

When Ella lit another cigarette, leaving the rest of her
sandwich uneaten, Olivia fanned the air, prompting her mother to
exclaim, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, child, stop being so
silly.”

Earl drew back in his seat and swept a hand over his stomach
protruding well over his belt. “What about your heart
condition, Mama? You know you have a bad heart, just like Paw Paw
had.”

“I have nothing of the sort. They told me it was just a
slight murmur, and I don’t classify a murmur as a bad heart.
And besides, my daddy died of pneumonia, not a heart
attack.”

Earl reached over for a fingerful of Olivia’s fries and
dragged them through a small mound of catsup on the plate before
stuffing them into his mouth in a single bite as his mother watched
and frowned.

“And since we ‘re here obviously not for just a nice
Saturday lunch but to discuss health and doctors,” Ella
continued in irritation, “I could say that at the rate
you’re going, son, I’ll end up burying you long before
I go to meet my maker.”

“That’s ridiculous, Mama,” he groused.
“Sure, I’m a couple of pounds overweight, but I
don’t smoke or drink or stay up till the wee hours the way
you sometimes do, and Dr. Singer told me just last month at my
physical that I’m basically fit as a fiddle.”

Ella slowly rubbed the gold cigarette case and sat very quietly
for a moment. “Can we please just drop the subject and talk
about something more pleasant?”

“But we’re concerned, Mama,” Olivia pursued.
“And not just about your physical health.”

Again, Ella didn’t budge, debating whether to argue
further or insist that they get up and leave.

“What are you implying, honey? That I’m going off my
rocker? That I’m losing my mind?”

“Of course not, Mama. But you know as well as we do that
when somebody gets to your age, there’re changes in the
system that can affect everything we do from making important
decisions to…driving a car. And remember, Mama, that
Goldie’s not always around to help.”

Ella’s expression suddenly became almost hostile.
“So now you’re saying I shouldn’t be driving my
car. Is that what you two are getting at?”

Fidgeting even more, Earl buttered another hushpuppy, even
though it was now cold.

“Mama, all we’re saying, all we’re trying to
put across is that we’re worried sick that something really
bad could happen if you don’t start taking better care of
yourself and maybe make a few changes. Is it so wrong for two
children to worry about their mother?”

“Have you two forgotten that I also have another child and
you have an older brother who most likely disagrees with everything
you’re saying,” she stated sarcastically.

“Of course not, Mama,” Earl drawled in exasperation.
“And I think Ty’s just as concerned as we are, as Daddy
would be if he was still here.”

“Tyler minds his own business, like he should, which is
one reason we rarely have a cross word.”

“Yeah, all Ty has to worry about up there is his next
party, and gettin’ his name in the paper, and his next
million, and…that Barry,” Earl cracked
indiscreetly.

Ella slapped her hand on the table, then began reaching for her
pocketbook and light sweater next to her. “You’ll not
talk about your brother like that. I won’t stand for it. And
as for my condition, you let me worry about that, okay? When
I’m no longer able to function normally and think I’m
becoming a burden to you all, I’ll be the first to make some
changes, but till then, I’m still in charge of my life. Is
that understood? This conversation has made me almost nauseous, so
would you kindly pay the check. Goldie and I were planning to put
out some marigolds in the side yard, so I’d like to go
home.”

By the time Earl had put some bills on top of the small paper
tab and pulled himself up from the booth to give his mother a hand,
she was already headed for the shiny black Lexus SUV parked
outside.

“Why anybody in his right mind would want to drive one of
these vulgar tanks,” Ella grumbled as Earl almost hoisted her
into the front seat of the enormous vehicle.

On the way back, Earl and Olivia didn’t have much more to
say, and Ella’s mind was going a hundred miles an hour as she
sat silent and gazed at a medium in the road bursting with giant
yellowbells. When the children dropped her off at the house after
the fretful lunch, Goldie was already on her knees in the side
garden loosening the soil with a spade, flats of marigolds spread
out on the yard. Normally, Ella’s role would have been to
hand her the multicolored flowers and direct exactly where they
should be places, but this time, she told Goldie that she had a
sick headache and just to plant the marigolds as she liked. She
then proceeded into the house without saying another word and
collapsed in her favorite reading chair in the library next to a
picture window overlooking a massive pin oak at the edge of the
lawn. For a long while, she simply sat there, gently fondling her
gold cigarette case and glancing wistfully from time to time at the
huge tree. Finally, she got up, went to one of the mahogany
bookshelves, and removed a flimsy photo album that she carefully
opened on her knees, turning the brittle pages slowly till she came
to a faded black and white picture of a young couple standing arm
in arm on a beach in front of what looked like an immense, opulent,
white hotel in the background. Still rubbing the case, she stared
at the photo as if mesmerized, tears soon forming in her delicate
blue eyes. Closing the album and dabbing her eyes with a soft
cotton hanky from her pocketbook, she next fixed her gaze on the
framed picture of Tyler on a tea table taken when he graduated from
Myers Park High School. Then she looked out again at the oak now
full of tiny, silver --- green leaves that shaded a large area of
the lawn, and it was at that moment that Ella decided what she had
to do, before it was too late, to come to terms with certain ghosts
of the past that had haunted her for an entire lifetime.

Dancing in the Lowcountry
by by James Villas [5]

Genres: Fiction [10]
paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Kensington
ISBN-10: 0758228473
ISBN-13: 9780758228475