Choosing Charleston Read online

  As I stood stretching in Mamma and Daddy’s driveway, a tall, wiggling mess of blond fur materialized to greet me. A five-year-old Golden Retriever, Taffy’s lean body vibrated with excitement as she sniffed my legs and demanded to be petted.

  The rich aroma of chocolate chip cookies hit my nose when we reached the back screen door and my stomach responded with a hungry noise. Mamma always made them from scratch with freshly shelled walnuts, thick chunks of Hershey’s chocolate and in Daddy’s words, a dollop of love.

  She was on the phone with her back to me and, judging from the decibel level of her voice, I surmised that she was talking to my sister in Georgia. The intensity of Mamma’s voice always increased coordinately with the distance of the person she was chatting with. It had been that way ever since I could remember, even after communication satellites and fiber optic cable brought opposite sides of the world together without a hint of static. If she was talking in hushed tones when I was growing up, I knew that our next door neighbor, Miss Rose, was on the receiving end. If she was to the point of near yelling, I knew that it was Miss Nellie, a family friend who lived in Germany.

  “Hey, there Little Girl!” Daddy said, sneaking up on me with a bear hug.

  It was a term of endearment that he used on both me and my sister and it always made each of us feel special – even though we were twins and it was a shared nickname.

  I returned the hug, aware that if I clung to him any longer, he’d want to know what was wrong. We each took a step back to examine each other. He looked and smelled just like he did the last time I’d seen him. Thick white hair that was shaved to a near crew cut status and just slightly thinning on top, closely cropped mustache, dark eyebrows, tanned skin, trim build and the rich scent of cherry pipe tobacco hanging on his clothes.

  He’d recently turned sixty and was the only person I knew who looked forward to his annual physical exam. It wasn’t going through the motions of the doctor’s visit that he enjoyed, but rather bragging to Mamma about all of his numbers afterward. He could talk cholesterol, triglycerides and glucose levels like a pro.

  Before I had a chance to say anything to Daddy, his mother appeared behind him.

  “Jenny! How delightful to see you, dear!”

  My grandmother was a tiny woman with long manicured nails and a head of big white hair that defies gravity. I was surprised to see her since I hadn’t known she was visiting, too.

  “Hi, Granny,” I said giving her a hug. “It’s great to see you, too! But, I’m Carly. Jenny’s in Atlanta.”

  My birth certificate lists my official name as Carolyn Annabelle Stone, but I’ve been called Carly since I can remember. Apparently, I had a head of curly hair right out of the womb and Daddy’s nickname ‘Curly’ morphed into ‘Carly’ when my hair decided to straighten out at age two.

  “Of course you’re Carly,” she said, reaching up and giving my cheek a fond pinch. It was a much stronger pinch than she looked capable of giving. I gave myself a similar pinch on the other cheek to make sure their color matched.

  “Your grandmother has come to live with us,” Daddy explained.

  I felt my jaw drop and when no words came out of my mouth, I closed it. Two strong-willed southern women—with differing opinions on everything from how to make chicken bog to the proper way to prune a rosebush—were residing in the same house? It was unthinkable.

  “You look beautiful as always, Jenny,” Granny told me, running a spotted hand through my hair, pushing the bangs out of my eyes. “How’s that darling boy of yours?”

  “Your grandmother has gotten a bit forgetful,” Daddy whispered into my ear.

  “I’m Carly, Granny,” I told her again.

  Although my sister was a twin, we weren’t identical twins. And I don’t have any kids, whereas Jenny has already produced a clan of three.

  “Well, of course you’re early,” Granny said. “You’re not the type to run late.”

  “And a bit hard of hearing,” Daddy added under his breath.

  I shot him a questioning look. The concept of my vibrant grandmother growing forgetful or hard of hearing was difficult for me to accept. The last time I’d seen her, we conspired to write a best-selling cookbook, taken a yoga class and broken into an abandoned cemetery in search of what she was convinced was the location of Blackbeard’s buried loot. But that was before I moved north. Apparently, a lot had changed in the year I’d been gone.

  From Charleston, her home in Wilmington, North Carolina was less than a four-hour drive; it was an easy weekend trip and I saw her often. But since I’d entered Robert’s world, I realized now, I’d all but cut off my family. Sure, I’d made my weekly phone calls, but in retrospect the conversation was always one-sided. I’d talk about Robert and his job and our neighbors, as though giving a report. But phone calls are one thing, and spending time face-to-face is another. There had been nothing to prevent me from flying to Wilmington or Charleston for a long weekend. Nothing extraordinary stood out in my memory of events and I wondered where my days had gone. Daddy always said that days had to be embraced, enjoyed, used. Otherwise, they would multiply into months and years that would mock you from afar – just like my days with Robert were now doing to me. After all, what had I really accomplished during my time with him? I couldn’t think of a thing.

  I tried to decide if I had been embracing my days with Robert when a vivid picture of his sweaty body moving on top of Corin Bashley’s flashed on my mental video screen. I shook my head to clear the image. I wasn’t ready to think about him… at least not yet. It was easier to not think about what had happened.

  As far as Granny living with my folks, there was certainly enough room for her. A historic three story wood-frame building, Mamma and Daddy’s house has a garden, an open piazza and a large screened porch. Because nineteenth century homeowners often conducted business on the first floor of their homes and entertained on the second, the middle level has a huge drawing room with French doors that open onto an ornate balcony and a separate entrance that leads to the street. But since everyone in my family came and went through the rear screened porch that led directly into the kitchen, the second story entrance was never used unless Mamma was showing it to a visitor who wasn’t familiar with the architecture.

  My most poignant memories of growing up revolved around the old house. Knocking out a front tooth while twirling a baton in the back yard… the lopsided tree house where Jenny and I fantasized about kissing Billy Benton… Mamma’s aromatic kitchen that always had a treat baking in the oven and Daddy’s off-limits workshop that produced enchanting surprises like the three-foot tall dollhouse I’d received on my seventh birthday.

  I closed my eyes to inhale the rich fragrance of the memory-laden home. When I opened them, Granny was staring at me curiously, her head of big hair cocked, perhaps wondering which granddaughter I was.

  “Where are the cookies?” I asked brightly, to push away the thought of her mental deterioration with something more palatable. “I don’t see them, but I sure do smell them!”

  “Sell what, Dear?” Granny asked cheerfully.

  “Carly! You’re here,” Mamma declared, her words stretching into more syllables than Webster’s claimed they should have. She gave me a kiss on the cheek and produced a platter of still-warm cookies, seemingly all at once.

  Somebody famous once said that elegance is the only beauty that never fades. I think it was Audrey Hepburn and if they’d known each other, she could have been talking about Mamma. Seriously, my mother could walk a mile through a raging thunderstorm, in heels, and emerge in good cheer, as though it had been fun.

  “Jenny!” Granny said as if seeing me for the first time. “How delightful to see you, Dear.”

  Her condition was worse than simply forgetful, I decided. She was downright confused. Without bothering to correct her, I smiled and endured another rough squeeze on the apple of my cheek. Even though she had me mixed up with my sister, at least she was jovial about it. Daddy always said tha
t there was a bright side to everything. You just have to have the right perspective to see it.

  The four of us gravitated to a well-polished maple kitchen table that had been in our family for generations. It had come with the house when Mamma and Daddy inherited it from her grandfather Wade, along with the hardware store they ran – now a thriving building supply business where vegetable seeds could be bought by the scoop full, and lumber or shingles by the truckload.

  Mamma poured glasses of lemonade with paper-thin slices of fresh lemons and crushed mint leaves floating amongst the ice. She’d barely sat down when she jumped back up to make me a sandwich, pronouncing that I looked too thin.

  “A sandwich sounds good,” Granny said. “Have I eaten?”

  “Yes, you did,” Mamma assured her. “Barbecue with slaw, cornbread and sweet pickles. But if you’re still hungry, have a cookie.”

  “Robert and I are getting a divorce,” I blurted, getting right to the point of my visit and drawing a collective gasp of shocked attention. Even Taffy quit slurping from her water bowl to give me a quizzical look. “He is apparently no longer happy with me. Or perhaps he just wasn’t ready for marriage. I’m not sure. Anyway, I got Cheryl to handle my caseload for the next few weeks… so I’m just going to take some time off and relax.”

  Although I was a lawyer, I was a mediator by profession and the law degree simply added credence. The law firm I worked for had a special mediation and arbitration division. The bottom line was that if I couldn’t settle a dispute on friendly terms, it would go to arbitration or end up in litigation in an actual courtroom. My job was to help those with a disagreement settle their differences out of court. In essence, I persuaded opposing sides to sit down and compromise. Although I never fussed too much with my hair or makeup, I had a tendency to draw appraising looks from males and cold shoulders from females. When working a case, I found the most effective tactic was to counteract this reaction by paying an inordinate amount of complimentary attention to the women, and remain detached with the men. It seemed to work.

  “A divorce?” Mamma said incredulously. “Lord God Almighty.”

  “Yes,” I said to her and the Lord.

  We were all quiet for a moment. I drank some minty lemonade. Granny took out her lower denture to remove what may have been a piece of walnut and, fortunately for all of us, remembered to reinsert it.

  “Well,” Daddy said thoughtfully, “he wasn’t the right one for you anyway, Little Girl. Best to do it and get it over with. And don’t let the son of a bitch take a dime of your hard-earned money or get his hands on that house you bought!”

  I let out a sigh of relief, grateful for his no-questions-asked show of support. Daddy always had been a straightforward man. Make your decision and move on. No second-guesses. No self-doubt. It’s either black or it’s white and if it looks gray, pick a side and put it there. Find what you went into the store for, buy it and get out.

  Growing up, Jenny and I always had multiple items of the exact same article of clothing because when we found something that fit our gangly bodies, Daddy would have Mamma buy a dozen of them in different colors.

  “What do you mean, he wasn’t the right one for her?” Mamma said to him. “Robert is a darling young man. Successful. Polite. Handsome.”

  She looked at Daddy. Granny looked at them. The three of them looked at me.

  “I found him in our bed with Corin Bashley. A neighbor.”

  “He had sex with this floozy in your house? The bastard!” Mamma said.

  I think she was more outraged at the fact that Robert screwed his girlfriend in our house rather than the fact that he’d screwed her. Southern women had their standards. You simply did not insult a woman in her own home. And you did not cheat on your wife in her own bed, on her favorite yellow cotton sheets.

  “I’ll kill the son of a bitch!” Daddy threatened, not caring whose bed Robert had selected for his rendezvous.

  “It’s okay, really,” I told them with a brave front. “I guess we shouldn’t have gotten married to begin with.”

  “Are you going to eat that sandwich, Dear?” Granny asked, reaching for half of a pimento cheese on white bread that Mamma had put in front of me. “I don’t think I’ve eaten yet.”

  For the first time since I’d discovered Robert with Corin, a genuine smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. I was feeling much better about life and my role in it, and I’d only been back in Charleston an hour.

  Chapter Three

  On my second day in Charleston, I fell in lust, over a country ham biscuit at Diana’s. While I admit that I am occasionally prone to exaggeration, it’s an inherited trait and therefore an excusable one. Mamma was the queen of embellishment and I got the gene from her.

  On the other hand, something about the man had put every one of my five senses on alert and made me temporarily forget about my woes with Robert. Maybe my reaction to him was an unconventional defense mechanism; my body’s way of giving me some temporary pleasure, my mind’s way of taking a respite from the gnawing feeling of failure and disappointment.

  I wasn’t sure whose idea it was, but the night before, the five of us had spread ourselves out on the back porch to look at the stars and not talk about what a loser Robert was. Me, Mamma, Granny, Daddy and the dog. As we argued about whether or not the constellation we were looking at was the Big Dipper, and I took comfort from rubbing the underside of Taffy’s neck, someone decided that a nightcap would be good. And like old buddies trying to outdo each other at a pub, Daddy and I didn’t stop at one. When it’s just the two of us, we’re competitive like that. Mamma left us for The Tonight Show promptly at eleven-thirty and Granny wandered off in pursuit of some pecan pie. Even Taffy sauntered into the house, seeking the comfort of her L.L. Bean doggie bed.

  But Daddy and I, well, we embraced the night. As the euphemisms stacked up and the level of bourbon in the bottle of Jack Daniels dropped, we cheerfully greeted midnight and persuaded it to go on without us. We pondered meaningless questions like why Taffy liked to turn in circles before lying down. We talked about Robert, Daddy’s business, my job, the importance of wearing sunscreen and getting regular oil changes and the benefits of annuities. I cried, we laughed, Daddy sang me a song and I have a fuzzy recollection of a nearby dog howling and us joining in, the three of us harmonizing quite nicely.

  When I woke up, I could barely open my eyes to search for the perpetrator who’d coated my tongue with glue. I peeled the fuzzy appendage off the roof of my mouth, piled myself into my car and pointed it toward Diana’s restaurant in the historic district. My head hurt too bad to go back to sleep and my plan was to surprise everyone with country ham biscuits for breakfast. They weren’t specifically on the menu, but homemade biscuits were and country ham was, and Diana’s would happily make a takeout order if they had the ingredients. Plus, I could sit at the espresso bar and drink coffee while I waited for my food.

  It was not quite seven-thirty in the morning, a time during which I should have still been in bed, sleeping off a hangover. I was not ready to face the perky server who retrieved my biscuits, much less a construction worker with the deepest blue eyes and easiest smile I’d ever seen.

  Eager for anything to ease the nausea in my alcohol-saturated stomach, I’d plucked one of the crumbly biscuits from the bag and begun eating it while I sat at the counter, waiting on my change. During a struggle with a tasty, but uncooperative piece of ham, the whole biscuit fell out of my jumpy hand and hit the floor with a soft thud.

  “Shit,” I mumbled.

  As I debated whether to get off the bar stool and pick up the mess or push it under the counter with my foot, he swooped right out of male heaven to assist me. I temporarily forgot about my swollen brain and complaining stomach to appreciate the mesmerizing conglomerate of muscles, faded denim and blazingly white teeth. All packaged in one tall, well-mannered body.

  He gracefully retrieved the remains of my splattered biscuit. A big, crumbly buttermilk one, with the
perfectly browned top and edges.

  “You probably don’t want the rest of this one,” I heard him say.

  I nodded dumbly, agreeing.

  “I’ll just drop it in the trash.” His voice was deep and smooth and self-assured.

  “Thanks,” I heard myself reply.

  When our eyes made contact, my stomach lurched. Whether from nausea or desire I wasn't sure, but I was suddenly very conscious of the fact that my eyelids were puffy, my face was lacking makeup and I was wearing the same pair of crumpled jeans that I’d worn yesterday driving to Charleston. I couldn’t remember if I’d even bothered to brush my hair and felt my fingers subconsciously combing through it.

  I started to say something else to the stranger, but forgot what it was.

  I decided against ordering a replacement biscuit, thanked the server when she returned with my change and a to-go cup for my coffee, nodded at the construction worker and made a hasty retreat.

  Minutes later, he came to my assistance again as I stood frozen in the parking lot staring at my car. It had a very flat right rear tire. I’d gone car shopping to cheer myself up upon moving to New York and ended up behind the wheel of a new BMW 5 Series. It was less than a year old and wasn’t supposed to have a flat anything.

  “Shit,” I said with disgust for the second time that morning.

  “Expansive vocabulary you’ve got there.” His voice had come from behind me, and I heard a hint of amusement in it. “You got a spare in that thing?”

  “I certainly hope so,” I answered, not having a clue.