Folly Beach - Dorothea Benton Frank [137]
“I told them to have her cremated and to send me the ashes.”
“Oh, John. I’m sorry, baby.”
“It’s okay.”
“So, what are you going to do with her ashes?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’ll keep them in the closet until I figure that out.”
“Look, when you get them, we’ll pick a nice windy day and maybe we’ll go down to the beach across from the Morris Island Lighthouse and let her spirit fly. If you want, I can probably even find a willing member of the clergy to put a blessing on them?”
“You’d do that for me?”
“John? I’d do anything for you. You know that. I love you.”
I did. I surely did.
And as threatened or promised, depending on your point of view, Aunt Daisy and Ella put on their vagabond shoes and started combing the globe. They sent me postcards from everywhere. I especially loved the ones from Egypt that were pictures of them riding on camels.
They spit! That was all Aunt Daisy wrote on the card. Classic Daisy McInerny.
And while they were away, I collected their mail, paid their bills, and took care of the dozen houses that were someday to be mine and Patti’s. I hoped that day was never going to come.
By the middle of March, Alice was throwing up all the time but still gaining an alarming amount of weight. She cried all the time and Russ, who had become poor Russ, had his hands full. I walked the beach with Alice and tried to tell her that her feelings were normal. But I think all she heard was that her pregnancy wasn’t special and that she wasn’t the only woman in the world who ever had a baby.
“If she wants to sulk, let her sulk,” Patti said.
“I don’t think it’s healthy, Patti, and it’s not good for Russ, either.”
“Then maybe you can find a nice way to remind her she has a husband who needs a healthy wife and a happy home?”
“Oh sure!” I laughed and said, “Tell you what. Since she’s your niece-in-law, you have every right to have an opinion. So why don’t you call her up and tell her that?”
“Are you kidding? I like my life. You think I want that little crank to come up here to New Jersey and kill me?”
“My poor son,” I said.
“Truly. He carries a heavy cross. Say, how’s your play going?”
“Oh, Patti, I am so nervous about this. I finished it. I mean, I stopped working on it because John said it was ready and that I was just whaling on a dead horse. Anyway, John loves it, and of course, I never could have written this without him.”
“He helped you a lot, huh?”
“Well, yeah! He didn’t actually write it, I did that, but he helped tighten it up, you know, he made suggestions.”
“Well, good! You know what? It sounds like he’s the Dorothy to your DuBose, you know, as writing partners?”
“Yeah, he sort of is! So then he wrote a letter and submitted it to the Office of Cultural Affairs, because he wants to produce it in a little black box theater at the College of Charleston.”
“And he can’t do it if they don’t approve it?”
“I’m not sure how it all really works but if it’s going to be advertised in all their printed materials it has to be accepted. So I’m waiting to hear if it’s worthy.”
“Worthy? God! What a scary word! I’d be a wreck, too. So when do you hear?”
“I guess when they make up their worthy minds.”
“Ugh. Well, you call me the second you hear anything, okay?”
“Listen, if they say yes, you’ll hear me screaming the whole way to Alpine. If they say no, you may as well take my number out of your speed dial.”
“They’re going to say yes, Cate. I can feel it in my bones.”
“Wouldn’t that be a dream?”
And it was but not the dream I expected. I was just coming back from the Next Stop Morocco, a house next to the Washout, where all the surfers went or I should say hung out. It was the last property Aunt Daisy acquired before she retired and hit the road. John’s car was parked in my yard. I hopped out of the Subaru and there he stood with a bottle of champagne and the most incredulous expression I’d ever seen on his face.
“What’s up? Did you hear? You heard! They said . . . what? Tell me!”
“You are one amazing woman,” he said, shaking his head and smiling.
“Why?