Folly Beach - Dorothea Benton Frank [32]
“Yeah. Cupcakes.”
“We’ll see. I’d better get going. The sun’s up.”
After many oaths to be careful and to call and yes, to be careful some more, I finally cranked up the car and pulled away from Patti, Mark, and my former life in Alpine, New Jersey.
Why was it that I had so many ambivalent feelings about New Jersey until I was leaving it? Now, for the first time, I began to make a list of the many things I’d surely miss—riding my car through swirling leaves down the Palisades Parkway when the Canadian maples turned red and the towering oaks became gold, all the great Italian food, diner food, and sushi, and hiking Eagle Rock Reservation, the first snowfall of the season, crocuses poking their tiny but hopeful purple tight blooms through the last snow of the season promising spring’s return, the bridges, the views, proximity to Manhattan with all the temptations and thrills to be found there—Lincoln Center, Broadway, the museums, Carnegie Hall, on and on. The best of this and the best of that—world-class everything. Yep, I’d miss it a lot but since I couldn’t really afford the tolls much less the parking or the tickets or the meals, I was reconciled, almost, to a period of peaceful harmony and introspection.
Indeed, I spent the first night in Petersburg, Virginia, at the Ragland Mansion, a true piece of Americana, for the reasonable rate of eighty-five dollars for the night, including breakfast. Dinner was a small amount extra and would I like to have dinner? I would. My knees were so cramped I had to stop driving for a while or I’d never stand upright again. I took my overnight bag up to the Magnolia Room and wished I’d had my camera. It was buried somewhere in a box in the car. There was a king-size iron bed from New Orleans and several nineteenth-century gouaches of Naples and Capri on the walls. A charming fireplace, aglow from the small gas flame that danced around the cast-iron log. Best of all, there was a deep bathtub calling out to me to come back soon for a long, hot soak.
“I’ll be back, honey,” I said to the tub and was happy to see a container of sea salts on the corner shelf, to which I could help myself for a mere five dollars.
I emptied my pockets on the dresser and there was the envelope Patti had given me earlier that morning. I had forgotten all about it. I ripped it open and inside was two thousand dollars in crisp one-hundred-dollar bills, with a note that said, Remember these two things: there’s big money in cupcakes and sisters are forever. xxx
For the millionth time, I choked up and cried, thanking God for giving me such a wonderful sister. I called Patti right away and promised to save the money to use for something important.
“Spend it however you want,” she said. “I just wanted to be sure you had some emergency cash.”
I didn’t even know what to say. She made me feel suddenly empowered to go and do something, something big enough and grand enough to make her proud of me. The most I had hoped for since Addison’s death until that moment was some measure of emotional stability, to quickly achieve financial self-reliance, and to regain my self-respect. But Patti’s generosity gave me new strength.
I would be damned if I would let her hear me crying over her gift and I struggled to make laughing sounds to make her think I was just happily surprised and grateful. I knew how much flour she had to sift and how much sugar and butter she had to cream to stash away that much money to give away as a gift. I also knew then that she had not told Mark, because otherwise they would have given it to me together. I wondered how that was, to spend your life with someone from whom you kept all the facts. Maybe everyone had secrets. Addison certainly had had his share of them. Boring old me never had anything going on that was exciting enough to conceal. Hopefully that would change. In fact, I would make it a point to test my limits!
After Patti and I said good-bye, I called Aunt Daisy to say I’d see her