Folly Beach - Dorothea Benton Frank [55]
I definitely remembered this house from when I was a girl. It wasn’t the Jolly Buddha then or maybe it was but in my memory it was just a cottage without a name. All summer long this house and dozens of others like it were filled with families and children, arriving on one Saturday and leaving the next. Their rambunctious voices, raised in laughter and games, traveled over the dunes to Patti and me as we walked by on our way to Center Street for ice cream or whatever nonsense we were after. I could remember hearing them then, teenagers in bathing suits, shouting from the balcony upstairs to someone on the deck below. I always wondered who these people were, where they had come from, wishing to Patti that we could go there and play. She would tell me I was crazy, that you couldn’t just waltz into someone’s house and expect them to be glad to see you. It was trespassing and stupid and undignified. But those were the days when we were pretty well convinced we were no longer entitled to accidental happiness. I shuddered remembering how sullen we were when we were alone with each other. Thank God that part of my life was in the past. Wasn’t it?
I continued snooping around. The kitchen had been recently renovated, had new countertops and a brand-new stainless-steel refrigerator. Everyone seemed to think that stainless-steel appliances were the ticket to heaven. I had a higher appreciation for the table with various styles of retro wooden chairs, all lacquered red. Very slick, I thought. And clever. The bedrooms were all comfortably furnished with new striped bedspreads and vivid artwork decorated the walls. Everything was clean and although it was an old house, it wasn’t musty like many beach houses are. When all the doors and windows were opened wide, and the ceiling fans were spinning, it must have been wonderful to listen to the ocean and feel the breezes moving through the rooms especially in the fall and spring.
You didn’t have to live in a palace like Aunt Daisy’s to enjoy the best aspects the island had to offer. The magical air on Folly Beach was everywhere, a powerful drug that could make you forget there was a world on the other side of the bridge. That was why people were so passionate about this place. It made them forget all their troubles by simply washing them away on the turn of the next silvery tide.
I walked out onto the deck, down the steps, and, lo and behold, there was a gray cement statue of the Jolly Buddha himself, rooted in the sandy yard facing the ocean. His robes were flung back revealing his well-fed protruding belly. His arms were stretched over his head and his face was filled with happiness. Maybe I could learn a thing or two from him as well. Garden statuary of gnomes and deer, geese and fairies, angels and squirrels were peculiar to me but the Jolly Buddha had my attention. Maybe it was okay to get a little bit fat on the pleasures of the world as long as you did no harm, as Buddhists preached. I looked at him for a few minutes almost as though I expected him to tell me what to do with my life. Then a truck pulled up in front of the house and there was the recognizable loud metal clang of an unevenly hung car door slamming.
I rushed up the steps to see our plumber peering through the glass-covered screen door.
“Come on in!” I said and gave him the once-over. Smiling Lou was about my age, spiky salt-and-pepper hair, gelled to a sheen. In his day? I’d have bet my front teeth that he took in more skirts than Saks Fifth Avenue. Lou the Dude was in the house.
“Thanks,” he said, stepping into the dim light of the foyer. “Where’s the problem?”
“Right in there,” I said, pointing to the bathroom.
He walked into the room, presumably took a look, and came right back out.
“Gotta get my snake,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
One hour and forty-five minutes and $130 later, Lou had his check, I had a bill marked paid, the Jolly Buddha was locked up tight, and