Folly Beach - Dorothea Benton Frank [81]
“Well, that’s not hard to believe, because her letters to him were destroyed. He probably dumped them so his Nosy Nellie mother wouldn’t read them.”
“Maybe.” John laughed at that.
“Or, she threw them out after he died, trying to cover her footprints so he could be all shiny and bright when he took his place in history next to Gershwin.”
“Maybe. I mean, what if that’s all true, everything you’re proposing?”
“Who cares?”
“Well, I do. And you know what else, Nancy Drew?”
“What?”
“So would others. Who cares if it’s speculation? This story would make a wonderful play for Piccolo Spoleto Festival. I mean, you said you wanted to write a play, didn’t you? Give it a shot!”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t. I mean, I don’t know enough. And isn’t it sort of treasonous to screw around with DuBose’s reputation?”
“Absolutely not. Have you been to the theater lately? Nothing’s sacred. I say, go have a ball!” He reached across the table and took my hand in his. “I’m not kidding, Cate. Do it.”
Holy hell, wait until I told Patti about this. I was holding hands with this gorgeous man who was telling me to become a playwright. Maybe I would! I looked at his hand and thought, wow, it’s beautiful. I loved the shape of his fingernails, the light brown color of his skin . . . the waffle of my virtue was gaining speed.
“Well, I’ll think about it. Anyway . . .” Our entrées arrived and the aromatics of pancetta and pecorino riding on the steam rising from my spaghetti were divine. “This looks amazing. Italian food in Charleston. Wow.”
Our waiter grated some additional cheese on our food; then he stepped back.
“Buon appetito!” he said and walked away.
“So, John?”
“Ah! Yes, you want to know about Lisa, I guess?”
Her name was Lisa.
“Yeah, well. Yeah.” I wound several strands of spaghetti around my fork and blew on it. “Hot.”
“Lisa is in a small hospital slash jail where she will spend the rest of her life.”
“What’s the story?”
“The story. Well, we got married right out of college. We were young and foolish. We were living in Maryland then. She was working for an insecticide company and I was teaching ninth-grade English. For a while we were getting along just fine and then she started acting paranoid and accusing me of running around on her.”
“Were you?”
“God, no. I was working every minute I could, trying to save money to buy a house for us. Anyway, one night I came in sort of late and she flew at me with a knife, saying she was going to kill me. I got the knife away from her but then she kept on screaming and it became obvious to me she didn’t know who I was.”
“She snapped or something?”
“Yeah. So I got out of there and went to a buddy’s house to spend the night on the sofa. The next day, I went back to get a change of clothes and she acted like nothing at all had happened. When I asked her about what the hell she was trying to do, she didn’t know what I was talking about.”
“But, she must have.”
“Well, who knows but anyway, I stayed with her. Then the same thing happened a few more times so I moved out. She refused to see a doctor or anyone. I felt terrible for her but I couldn’t live like that.”
“Who could? Where was her family?”
“Father took off when she was a kid and her mother was basically a street person in Salem, Oregon, making jewelry with beads made out of recycled paper, selling the stuff for whatever she could get.”
“You mean useless?”
“Exactly. Anyway, Lisa wanted us to get back together and all that but I said no, I really didn’t think it was a good idea. And, there were lots of hysterical phone calls and crying and I just held my ground. I mean, I was as nice as I could be. I kept telling her she needed help but she refused, saying she was fine. Somehow she continued to function. Then one day all the phone calls stopped.”
“And you had not filed for divorce yet?”
“No. I didn’t have money for a lawyer and I wasn’t seeing anyone so it didn’t matter. Anyhow, she found out where I was living and one day when I was out . . .”
“So she was watching your house?”
“Had to be.