Folly Beach - Dorothea Benton Frank [126]
“Well, sorry for you, tootsie wootsie, but who could say no to anything coming out of Ella’s kitchen? Count your blessings. You could be eating your own cooking all the time.”
“You’re right.” I pulled in the driveway and said, “I think we’d better go in and tell her here, don’t you? Better than in the car, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, so we can stuff our faces while we do,” Patti said and laughed.
So, we hurried through the rain, went up the stairs, and I let us in. Ella was predictably in the kitchen and as we all know, there is nothing on this earth to eclipse the smell of butter and sugar baking with apples and cinnamon.
“Morning!” she said and gave us a hug.
“This is what paradise smells like,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”
“I’m starving,” Patti said. “Well, I’m not exactly starving but if I don’t get a piece of that cake in my mouth tout suite I’m gonna start crying.”
“Well, sit yourself down, chile, and let me cut you some. You want eggs?”
Soon the whole story had tumbled out across the table. Ella was unnerved by how quickly Aunt Daisy had been overcome by the respiratory arrest, and what the medical team had to do to get her breathing normally was just as upsetting.
“What if it happens again? I mean, what if we bring her home and it happens right here?”
“It won’t happen here, Ella,” I said. “She’s on massive antibiotics that are flushing all the possibilities of that out of her system.”
“Cate’s right. Even the nurse said they wouldn’t release her unless they were certain she was completely okay to come home.”
Ella got up, wrapped the second cake for the nurses in foil, and said, “Let’s move. I can clean this up later.”
We got up immediately, put our dishes in the sink, and turned on the spigot. We knew that for Ella to leave a crumb on her countertops, she was gravely concerned about Aunt Daisy, and probably furious with herself for not having been there with her. I checked to see that the oven was off and Patti flipped the switch on the coffeepot.
The ride from the beach to Charleston was something of a challenge. The marshes were so swollen with rainwater and the tide was so high that the waters threatened to wash over the causeway and carry us away to Kiawah Island or Hilton Head. Driving took all of my concentration and focus, and Ella and Patti didn’t say much as they knew I was working hard to keep us safe. But after a while my reflexes seemed to revert to autopilot and my mind started to wander. My new life, which was in so many ways the mature version of my childhood, seemed so natural to me. My re-immersion into Folly Beach and all its irresistible charms had been almost seamless. Watching the lone egret standing in low water and then lifting into flight like an angel, the twitter of a thousand birds in the early morning, the mango sunsets, the glisten of phosphorus on the ocean at night under a full moon that changed colors on its rise—these events, so specific to the Lowcountry—made me feel rich. But more, they reclaimed my weakened spirit that had so desperately needed assurance and gave me enough hope and strength to go on to try again. The stress of Addison, of pleasing him, impressing his colleagues, trying to live up to some impossible standard that in the end was completely frivolous and shallow—all of that was gone forever. There was nothing I’d left behind that I missed or felt I needed. I was perfectly happy, no, honored in many ways, to give some oversight to Aunt Daisy and Alice’s health, more than thrilled to have John in my life and wherever it all led—the play, managing real estate, whatever curveball came my way—I was ready to take it all on. Relaxed and ready. And there was something else, too. I couldn’t wait to hold my son and daughter-in-law’s baby in my arms. I could not wait for that.
When we arrived at Aunt Daisy’s room, we all filed in even though we were supposed to go in two at a time. She was sitting up in bed wearing a beret covered in flowers and working the New York Times crossword puzzle in ink. Her eyes twinkled with restored