Bulls Island (11 page)

“Really? Why? Thanks.”

Dad seemed annoyed for some reason.

“Well, he’s a good kid and I think he gets bored out here in the sticks. I mean, there aren’t any kids around, he doesn’t have a license yet…what’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I mean, it’s just that Rosie is our housekeeper…”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“You’re right. I’m just being a narrow-minded old fart. Take the boy. It’s nice of you to do it. Besides, I gotta ride down to Hilton Head to see a buddy late this afternoon. Maybe I’ll have a short nap.”

Dad slapped me on the shoulder in a fatherly good-bye.

“Say hi to Mom,” I said.

“She means well, son,” he said, which was what he almost always said.

“Right.”

Shortly after Dad left, Mickey and I were on our way, shooting the breeze.

“So, Mickey?”

“Yeah?”

“When are you getting your driver’s license?”

“Six months, two weeks, and five days.”

“You sound pretty sure about that.”

“Unless Motor Vehicle is closed that day, I’ll be in there when the doors open. I’m getting my permit this year in school. We all take driver’s ed.”

“You’ll ace that.”

“I’ve already taken the test online about fifty times.”

“And?”

“I think I got it nailed.”

I smiled. “Well you know what they say, Mickey, success is about ninety-nine percent perspiration and one percent luck.”

“Yep. That’s true.”

I gave him a little shove in the arm. “You sound like a grown man over there, kid.”

“Yeah, right.”

We drove on for a while, air-conditioning on low and the windows open as well, enjoying the mix of hot salt cut with cooled
air. It was good not to let your body become too chilled by the air-conditioning because when you stopped your vehicle and got out, the slam of the heat could almost knock you off your feet.

I was lost in thought watching the landscape and it seemed that Mickey was as well. We were crawling along Maybank Highway and had just passed the sign for the Angel Oak, which was thought to be around fourteen hundred years old. I remembered taking Betts out there when we were teenagers. I had just attained the same Holy Grail to which Mickey was counting down the days. My license was still warm in my wallet and I was driving my dad’s car. We would walk all around Angel Oak, find a secluded spot, and I would coerce her into kissing and fooling around a little. Hiding in the shadows of a public place meant we could only go so far, but even at sixteen we knew we would wind up in a bed before we found our way to the altar. That was a fact.

“So, she’s coming back,” I said, without realizing I was talking out loud.

“Who’s coming back?” Mickey said.

To say I gulped would be the understatement of the day.

“My, uh, mother. She’s, uh, out at Kiawah, I think…at a ladies’ lunch or something, and, um, I could have given her a ride home. Poor planning.” I was a terrible liar. Well, not in all situations. Sometimes I could lie like a pro, but when caught by Mickey, I bumbled around like an idiot. I cared what he thought of me, I guess.

“Uh-huh. Right. Hey, J.D.?”

“What?”

“If my momma was in this truck, she’d tell you you lie like a cheap rug. I mean, it ain’t none of my business and all…” Mickey started laughing, knowing he had me in a corner.

I thought about it for a minute, then against my better judgment, I decided to tell him a partial truth.

“Oh, Mickey.”

“Sounds like a woman to me.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because you said
she
.
She’s
coming back.”

“Ah, Mickey. When you’re my age, you’ll understand.”

“Understand what?”

“That life’s complicated.”

“I think I already know that.”

I had no doubt that he understood the many complications life could throw your way. But I said no more.

We finally reached the finest gated community Langley Construction had built. River Run. It was one of the projects of which I was particularly proud, except for the nasty business of fighting for dock permits and building setbacks and a long list of other details that had cost the family business plenty. At the end of the day, there was only so much waterfront property in the world. My job was to identify what existed in our area, buy it, and develop it before anyone else did. And if some out-of-state developers, like Wall Street boys with buckets of money and upstate developers, beat me to the punch, my family’s attorneys could make it very difficult for them to break ground, since, in such an eventuality, we would suddenly become great crusaders for the cause of conservation. Usually, if we threw enough money at the problem, it ceased to be a problem.

“Hey! How’s it going?” I called out to the foreman, climbing down from my truck.

“Good, good. I think they sold the last unit today, but you’ll have to check with Marianne over in the office.”

“I’ll do that. I’ll do that today. Everything okay?”

“The usual—replacement motors for the faulty air-conditioning units not in yet, I don’t like the size screws the men used to attach the shutters on the Dunes Villas…”

It was the normal list of problems we always faced before the
owners would take occupancy, but this time we were thirty days ahead of schedule and that miraculous detail would please our family’s management company to no end. You see, Langley Development bought the land, got the permits, provided the infrastructure—roads, sewage, and so forth—and built the houses and condos. Then we sold the entire kit and caboodle to my mother’s cousin’s real-estate company—Charleston’s Finest Homes—who, in turn, sold the housing to individuals and dealt with everything from mortgages to upgrades on faucets, all the details I could not endure.

Dad’s real job for the past ten years had been to manage our family’s investments, something that seemed to come naturally to him. He took the profits of our construction business, deposited them in Langley Trust, which was a portfolio of every kind of holding you can imagine, from T-bills to an organic-herb communal farm. The earnings of Langley Trust that were not rolled over were the donations Mother made to charitable institutions. It was a very pleasant merry-go-round and only Langleys were allowed to ride it. So, in essence, as Mother liked to say when she was in her arrogant cups, we didn’t really own Charleston, only the parts we wanted.

Mickey and I walked around and looked at some of the condominiums. It always amazed me that my opinion of necessary space could adjust itself so easily. At home, Valerie and I easily wandered five thousand square feet in the footprint of our house, but I could walk through a twelve-hundred-square-foot condo and tell myself that it was more than enough. Frankly, it was.

“What do you think, Mickey?”

He was staring out a large picture window that overlooked the Kiawah River. The water glistened like a billion shards of diamonds in the afternoon sun and the tall grasses scattered along the water’s edge moved slowly in the quiet breeze.

“How much does one of these things cost?”

“Depends. You know, how many bedrooms and all that. Why?”

“Because I’d like to buy one for my mom. You know? Someday, that is. I’d like to go to college and get some great job and buy a place for my mom, so when she came home she could feel like this. Like I feel right now. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah, but how does it make
you
feel?”

He looked at me hard, his blue eyes so intent, filled with an adult seriousness I remembered in myself from his age.

“It makes me feel like it’s worth it.”

“What’s worth it?”

“Getting up every day and doing what I have to do. If I could come home from school or work or whatever and look at this, I could suffer a lot.”

I wasn’t going to ask him if he thought his mother was unsatisfied living in our sharecropper’s cottage. The question would have been inappropriate. Their housing came free with the job and was not exactly the Ritz-Carlton. It was adequate, airtight, leak-free, but no frills. And squeaking all of life into that space wasn’t like stopping in your living room to look out at the sparkling waters of the Kiawah River on a perfect August afternoon.

“You hungry?” I said.

“Are you kidding? I’m a teenage boy. I could eat twenty-four/seven.”

“Let’s go get us a burger at the Sanctuary and figure out how you’re gonna earn enough cash to buy you and your mom a place on the water.”

“Sweet. I’m in.”

In the parlance of the day, which required watching YouTube or the Comedy Network on a regular basis. Mickey meant he was amenable to the suggestion of lunch and the formation of a long-range plan.

“Do you want fries with that? Coleslaw or fruit salad?” a waitress, whose name tag read
Agnes Mae, Vidalia, Georgia,
said to him.

Mickey looked at me like she was an alien.
Of course
he wanted fries. To a young man of his years, a burger with fruit salad was a despicable, sissified blasphemy.

“Definitely fries,” he said.

“Swiss, Cheddar, or blue cheese?”

“Blue cheese?” He made the face of horrors. “Cheddar’s good.”

“And how—”

“Medium well,” he said, before Agnes Mae of Vidalia-onion fame could finish asking. “Just no blood.”

“Got it.” She looked to me.

“I’ll have the turkey club with two slices of bread and fries. Extra pickle, please. Mayonnaise on the side. Thanks.”

“I’ll get that right out,” she said, and walked away.

We stirred the lemon into our sweet tea and I decided to give him some sage advice.

“Want to know how to get rich, young man?”

“No. I want to know where I sign up for food stamps.”

“Wiseass.”

“Of course I want to know how to get rich! What’s the secret?”

“Well? There are a couple of ways it happens. First, you’re born into wealth. We call it being a member of the Lucky Sperm Club. Or, you can win the lottery. But the best way is to make a plan.”

“Duh.”

“No duh. Look, if you want to get rich, you don’t major in third-century European history or spend your life studying the sex lives of newts. You go to business school or law school. You go into a field that’s lucrative to begin with.”

“Makes sense. What did you do?”

“Carolina Law School. I started out to study environmental, but then I switched my concentration to real estate…”

We talked on and on about real-estate development, iTunes, women, and the value of a really great burger. The bill was paid and
Mickey was finishing off a slice of pecan pie, sopping up the last puddle of vanilla ice cream with the crust.

“I must say, Mickey, I have great respect for your ability to clean a plate.”

“Thanks.” He grinned as wide as he could. “Lunch was awesome.”

“Good. So, what do you say? Want to ride around Kiawah and I’ll show you some of the early buildings of Langley Construction? See how they’re holding up?”

“Sure, why not?”

The temperature had passed its high for the day, and because we had lingered at the table for so long, when we stepped outside we got the immediate sense that evening was already approaching.

I loved to think about families ending their workdays with some satisfaction and coming back together for the night. Yes, although it was not yet four, people everywhere were looking toward supper. Housewives were already snapping beans, kids were climbing down from the high limbs of trees thirsty for a drink, and beachgoers were packing up their SUVs and knocking sand from their flip-flops. Goober and Peanut were probably sleeping in the shade dreaming about chasing squirrels.

We climbed into my truck and took off for the Sea Breeze Villas, Langley Development’s first project on Kiawah Island.

“So what kinda wildlife they got on this island? Anything different from what we got?”

“They got more alligators, I think, and I’ve seen more river otters over here.”

“Otters. Weird.”

“Yeah, they’re funny little devils.”

Suddenly a distinguished-looking shock of white hair caught my eye. It was an older gentleman leaving his condo. Senator Hazelton. And a woman. Mother. It was Mother. There was no “ladies lunch.”
Clearly, it was a damn lie. My mother was screwing Senator Hazelton. Brant Hazelton, who also happened to be my father’s partner in a dozen different deals.

My shock must have been apparent. Mickey said, “Hey! J.D.? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said. “I just remembered that I have to be someplace that I forgot about.”

“Oh. No big deal. I got stuff to do, too.”

I tried to look away from the senator and my mother, but it was like the train-wreck phenomenon—I couldn’t tear my eyes away, and sure enough, I could have sworn that Mother caught my eye. I saw her step back under the building’s overhang and reach for her sunglasses…as though I wouldn’t recognize my own mother? I stepped on the gas to get away as fast as possible. Luckily, Mickey was fooling with the radio, cruising from one station to another, or he might have seen her, too.