Bulls Island (16 page)

“Ah! So you’ve arrived,” she exclaimed. “Great! We have about a bazillion and one things to go over!”

“I’m sure! But I’m just as sure you have it all under control. I’ll see you first thing in the morning…unless you need me now?”

“Nope, I copied you on some e-mails, but not to worry, just get yourself squared away because the work’s not going anywhere.”

“What’s on top of the agenda?”

“Gatorzilla and trying to catch the sucker. Ever since the Department of Wildlife guys began looking for him, he’s been hiding. But
they’ve already moved over a hundred alligators to Capers. And a mess of cougars or bobcats or some kind of killer cat.”

“A mess of? You’re acclimated!”

“Still! Who wants that job? Can you imagine trying to humanely capture critters who would just as soon eat you for lunch?”

“Nope, but well, it’s a noble beginning. I’ll see you in the morning.”

I hung up wondering if the natural habitat of Capers could sustain the alligators and made a note to check it out. It probably could, but I wasn’t sure, and should their numbers begin to decline, that was the kind of detail that would kill the project. Alligator lovers would unite and come after us with a vengeance. Worse, what if they could walk back to Bulls Island at low tide like you could walk from DeBordieu to Pawleys? I wasn’t even going to bring that up to anyone.

I opened my hanging bag and began to put my clothes in the closet, shaking them out, as the incredible humidity had crept its way in between all the zippers, turning every piece of linen into a slightly damp dishrag. Suddenly I could smell all the dry-cleaning fluids in my clothes and it made me gag. It couldn’t be healthy to have all those chemicals on your skin, I thought. I wondered then if I would even wear any of the clothes I had brought because they all looked wrong.

Next my curiosity took me to the pillows, the linens on the bed, and the towels in the bathroom. I threw back the bedspread—blue swirls on beige with nylon batting to provide backing for the quilting. The backing was covered with picks and pulls. Not okay. The sheets were so thin you could read a book through them and the pillows were lumpy fiberfill foam, slept on by a thousand heads. I knew even before I tried one that the bath towels couldn’t cover the backside of a four-year-old. It was no surprise that there was no soap dish, bathroom glass, or tissue-box cover. Renters have a reputation for stealing everything, so what is usually supplied is of the lowest reasonable quality. And everything wears out so quickly because
who’s there to tell them not to take the bedspread to the beach or to use the pots to make sand castles?

If not tonight then tomorrow, I was headed to Bed Bath & Beyond to drop a few dollars because I freely admit that at this point in my life, I wasn’t going without some basic creature comforts. Rental linens were not even remotely as nice as hotel linens. Besides, when the job was all over, I could give whatever I bought to Dad, assuming he would even accept a contribution from me, or I could ship a box home.

I wasn’t fooling myself. It was already after six o’clock and I was doing everything in the world to avoid picking up my cell phone and calling Dad. But on reconsidering the possibility that my sister was the cause of his silence, my warrior gene became inflamed. I dialed his number. He answered right away and my anxiety dissolved. I was thrilled and relieved to hear that his voice sounded so robust.

“Dad? It’s me, Betts. The prodigal daughter?”

Gasp and then silence. Not a good sign, so I just plunged ahead.

“I know you probably don’t want to see me, I mean, I knew that when you didn’t return my call—”

“What? What call?”

“I called you a couple of weeks ago.”

“I never got any message from you. I…I mean, you say you called a couple of weeks ago?”

“Yes. I did.”

The silence that hung between us told him that there may have been other occasions when I had tried to reach out to them. Of course there were. Anything else would have been unnatural.

“Betts, I don’t know what to say…”

Without uttering a single word, we knew it was Joanie who had thwarted my efforts to reach him. Then I thought with a rush of nausea, What about his side of the story? Had he given Joanie birthday cards over the years to mail to me that she had simply thrown away? Christmas gifts? Letters? Had she denied knowing my cell
phone number or my office number? What kind of despotic megalomaniac had she really become?

“Just tell me that I can come see you, Daddy. I want to see you.”

I could hear the whole truth in his long sigh of surrender and disappointment.

“Of course you can. I have missed you, girl. Missed you with all my heart. I thought you had…I thought you stopped loving me.”

“Oh, Daddy! No! And I thought you had stopped loving me.”

“Never.”

The hourglass had turned over and the sands were now running in my direction. It was my time to receive my father’s love again. But regaining his affection and trust was not going to happen with the snap of my fingers or his. I hadn’t been available for all those years. Had he tried to find me? Ever? I did not know. Maybe he had. Perhaps he had given up when his efforts to find me were met with no response. It was clear that we were going to have to confront Joanie.

Joanie. The family terrorist. Perhaps Daddy had developed some minor version of the Stockholm syndrome, but now in this conversation, from one second to the next, I could feel his defenses coming down like a house of cards that was waiting for a strong wind and would have settled for a breeze.

“Are you in Charleston?” he asked.

I told him yes, I was, and that I would be for a month or two or maybe longer. I could hear him sigh again, but it was a sigh of possibilities. He asked me when I wanted to get together and I suggested dinner at O’Farrell’s the following night. He said he would be there at six and then he started to cry. He was silently admitting that he knew Sela had always known where I was. The ugly truth was that he had made no effort to contact me through her and had allowed Joanie to take over his life. But in deference to the many unknown facts, I said nothing. What was the point?

“I thought I had lost you forever, Betts. Those damn good-for-
nothing Langleys and all the heartbreak they have caused. I hope they all burn in hell.” He had conveniently shifted the blame to the Langleys and I did not argue the point. We would sort out the truth at a later date…somehow.

I choked up and then sniffed loudly. “Well, Daddy? I hope they
all
don’t burn in hell, but I’ve got a short list of candidates if the Lord wants to know.”

He sniffed, too, and then he sort of chuckled. “Starting with that no-good Louisa, am I right?”

“Yes, sir. She’d scare the hell out of the devil himself. Daddy? I can’t wait to see you.”

“Me, too, sweetheart. Me, too.”

“Want to bring Joanie?” Loaded question.

“I’ll ask her and we’ll see.”

We hung up and my mind was racing. Had he become so dependent on Joanie that he would have gone to his dust without ever asking Sela to tell him where I was? What possible motivation could he have for such inaction? Once more, I decided to put it all aside.

Tomorrow night, I would start by telling him that I loved him and that I wanted him back. Those words had not been a part of my plan because, first of all, I had no plan and, second, that statement would probably lead to other painful revelations. But I had not expected him to become so emotional or so accepting when we spoke. Hearing his voice crack—just hearing his voice at all after so long—nearly made me fall to the floor with weakness. Joanie aside for the moment, he was all I had left, and just as important, he was all I had left of my mother.

How could we have let this terrible separation happen? Had we been so overwhelmed by the drama of the moment? Yes,
I
had been, but how could I have let so many years go by, years of my stupidity, my fears, my frustrations…no, it didn’t matter anymore because the most important step had been taken—the first one, the one where I did battle for myself.

Joanie or no Joanie, Langleys be damned, he was still my father and we could redraw the terms of a new relationship without anyone’s permission or approval. I burst into tears and sat down on the ugly worn comforter that covered the lumpy bed, the one where I would doubtlessly struggle to find sleep. I wept. But these were tears of relief. The first major obstacle had been cleared—maybe not like an Olympic champion, but cleared nonetheless.

Finally, I got up and continued putting things away, but I stopped when I opened the closets and smelled the musky scent of salt in wood. Nice for a candle, not so great in lingerie. I added shelf paper to my mental list. I emptied as many suitcases as I could until I could no longer ignore the growling of my stomach. I was famished.

I put my makeup and toiletries in the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I had a long road ahead of me, but wasn’t it worth it? Yes, I told myself it was. I washed my face, reapplied a little makeup, grabbed an apple, and left.

I should have been exhausted, but I was strangely invigorated, like I’d caught a second wind while running a marathon. Deciding that order and familiarity would make me happiest, I swung around over the connector bridge to the Towne Centre Mall. I knew I would find everything I needed there. Within an hour, Sela’s SUV was loaded once again and now I was truly ravenous. So without going home, I took Rifle Range Road to Coleman Boulevard and headed for Sullivans Island. They say that when in doubt, you should retreat to the familiar, so I did.

Monday night on Sullivans Island was pretty quiet, even during the heat of the summer. I had no problem finding a parking spot in front of Station Twenty-two Restaurant. I locked the car and went inside. One of the other nice things about the islands was that I didn’t have to worry about theft. The car had an alarm system and what self-respecting thief wanted pink sheets and towels anyway?

They were just closing the kitchen, but because I must have
seemed a little pitiful, they seated me anyway. Jessie, the very attractive manager, took one look at me and knew I was from out of town.

“Can I get you something to drink?” she said with a smile.

“Yes, thanks. Ice water and a big glass of Sauvignon Blanc.”

“Had yourself a day, huh?”

“Unbelievable. I haven’t been here in twenty years. I think the last time I was here this place had just opened.”

“I’ll get that drink order right away. We’re out of the crab cakes, but the flounder is fabulous. I’ll be right back.” She handed me the menu and walked away to the bar.

I looked over the offerings. Aunt Mattie’s Crab Cakes, Crispy Whole Flounder, the Paradise Burger, Island Fried Seafood, hmm—it all looked good, but one thing was certain, for dessert I knew I was blowing the diet on Uncle William’s Brownie Fudge Pie.

“Did you decide?” Jessie said, placing the glass of wine in front of me.

“It all looks great, but I think I’ll go with the flounder. I haven’t had flounder in forever.”

“Well, you won’t be disappointed,” she said pleasantly, and took my order to the computer to enter it.

She had great bone structure in her face and I thought, Wow, I’ll bet when she’s seventy she’s going to still look fifty. Lucky!

After I practically Hoovered the fish, all the vegetables, two pieces of hot cheese bread, and Uncle William’s fudge pie, I paid my bill and waddled out. Fabulous, fabulous.

I drove back to Wild Dunes and to my lovely condo and threw the new sheets and mattress cover in the washing machine. It was around ten. Too early to nap on the couch and I wasn’t a big fan of television. I called Adrian and he was studying, could he call me tomorrow? And, yes, he was fine, please don’t worry.

I decided to open the balcony doors and step outside. It was a gor
geous night, the ocean was roaring and the sky was lit with countless diamonds. I decided then that like all the islands that dotted the coastline of South Carolina, this had to be the sexiest and most hypnotic place on the planet. I stood there for a while just listening and watching the stars winking at me, telling me the roller coaster was waiting, did I have my ticket?

T
riangle Equity
. That’s what we were calling ourselves for the Bulls Island Project. We had formed a separate corporation whose principal stockholder—actually, the
only
stockholder—was ARC. I was on my way to the office, which was rented space downtown—just three rooms, but I was excited to see it.

Traffic was terrible. When I was a teenager I could fly from the end of Isle of Palms to the cradle of Charleston, also known as the Holy City, in twenty minutes and now I was crawling along Highway 17 South like a turtle commuter on the Long Island Expressway. What was this boom of traffic all about? I mused over this and then remembered reading somewhere that Mount Pleasant was the seventh or tenth fastest-growing town in America. All you had to do was look around to see what it meant. Live oaks, hundreds of years old, were being destroyed and every kind of wooded area mowed down in the name of housing developments and shopping malls. It bothered me.

In fact, the whole thing bothered me and I didn’t know why or by what wave of a magic wand I had grown such a grand social conscience over Bulls Island and housing developments. Maybe I just wanted to come back to Charleston and find everything the same as it had been when I left. Wasn’t the whole mantra of Charleston and indeed of South Carolina to preserve, preserve, preserve?

I didn’t understand why there had to be a fifty-thousand-square-foot grocery store flanked by a string of chain stores everywhere I turned. No question I was sensitive to grocery stores because of my family’s mercantile history, but every time I passed a branded mall I wondered how an immigrant today could come to America and live his dream, make a profit, support his family, or be a part of a neighborhood. Maybe there were still places even in the Charleston area where one could set up shop, but I had yet to see them and did not expect to.

I was sickened by the visual blight I was passing on Highway 17, with frontage roads and strip mall after strip mall. There was something so wrong about it. I could remember when Mount Pleasant was a little fishing village with charm and personality. Who had planned this mess? Obviously someone with no regard for the face and fabric of the town. Where could a mother roll a stroller, stop for a sandwich, or run into a friend? Where was a shaded area? Where was the landscaping? A little park? No, there was nothing. And was I any better than the ruiners of this town if I was involved in the Bulls Island Project? I had better be.

Again I remembered my first conversation with Ben Bruton and how flabbergasted I was that Bulls Island had been sold. It hadn’t seemed possible. But if anyone had told me twenty years ago that Mount Pleasant would come to this, I would have had the same reaction.

As I drove along the highway, I tried to sort out my feelings. My primary reason for hesitating to take on this assignment had been
nervousness over returning to Charleston. The magnitude of the emotional problems I faced knowing that I had to deal with the Langleys reduced my issues with my father and sister to a teaspoon of chopped chives. At first, the thought of confronting J.D. or Louisa or Big Jim gave me the cold sweats, but after reading the newspaper articles Sela had given me, I began to think differently. If this project was going to have the support of ARC and Triangle, then every detail was going to be scrutinized and rescrutinized until I was satisfied that we were doing our absolute best for the environment and the protection of natural habitats. The Langleys may have been the well-financed local muscle, but Triangle would be the wallet with a voice of caution and morality.

Finally moving past the traffic jam, I began to cross the Cooper River on the glorious new bridge. You could ask anyone and they would tell you that the other ancient rattletraps connecting the islands to the mainland had given legions of drivers some stupendous white-knuckle experiences. But this new bridge, named for Arthur J. Ravenel Jr., was a brilliantly executed piece of engineering. Its suspension coils reminded me of an angel’s harp. I was surprised to learn that the night-lights had been lowered to protect the fish and crustaceans that lived below it. The Ravenel Bridge was proof that when people of noble purpose put their minds together, good things could happen.

I didn’t know yet how J.D. felt about environmental issues, but I suspected he was the same as he had always been. I could hear the speech! They loved the land and the Lowcountry, but as I had witnessed for myself, the out-of-control building of new housing and commercial properties was inevitable, so they might as well reap the benefits from it. They were the pragmatic destruct-icons.

I pulled into the parking space reserved for my car and found the offices without a problem. triangle equity. The sign looked good. We had leased the first floor of a Charleston house and I liked the
idea that our building had a porch, some history, and some character. I wondered for a moment who had lived there in the past, what their lives had been like, and I marveled at how short they must have been as I reached to turn a doorknob that was substantially lower than any I’d touched in years.

I turned it and stepped right into the reception space.

“Well, hello, Miss Sandi! Look at this glorious little camp we have here! This is great! How are you?”

Sandi stood up from her chair, smiling to see me. She was around thirty, pretty, but as buttoned up as a nun. Except for the Prada logo on the side of her eyeglasses, you would never know who made her interchangeable wardrobe of jackets, skirts, and low-key professional attire. She was the epitome of geek chic. But she was in possession of a quick dry wit. Quick and dry was my favorite style of funny.

“It
is
great, isn’t it? And I’m fine. Glad to see
you
! Come see! But it’s gotta be a quick tour.”

“Lose the gum,” I told her with a wink.

“Sorry,” she said, with a shrug and a pseudo-Brooklyn accent, discarding it into a tissue.

I hated gum chewing.

“Sorry to be such a stickler.”

“No biggie. Come see!”

The rooms were laid out railroad-flat style. Sandi was positioned in the center space with her desk, two upholstered chairs and a small table, a reading lamp, and a stack of current magazines. To the left was the conference room with a round table and eight chairs, probably more than we would ever need. The left wall had French doors, and a nonworking fireplace was in the center of a sweet view of Wentworth Street. The panes of the windows were warped by age and opened and closed by pulleys.

“Look at this,” I said, pointing out the mechanism.

“Cool, right?”

“Very.”

A powder room and kitchenette had been constructed behind the reception area. The kitchenette would be handy for late nights or lunch meetings. My office was to the right of the front hall and could be accessed either way. My space, which overlooked a small garden with a fountain, also had French doors that opened onto the porch and a nonworking fireplace that Sandi had filled with a basket of eucalyptus branches.

“This smells good,” I said. “Nice touch.”

“Thanks. I have dried hydrangeas coming for the conference room.”

“Good idea. Warms up the place.”

I suspected that at one time my office had been a dining room because the ceiling was hand-plastered in a design of fruit and flowers. And there was a chandelier in the center. Something grand had perhaps once hung there, but its replacement was an inexpensive job from someplace like Lowe’s.

Behind my office was a locked room with an outside entrance that the building’s owner had reserved for himself.

“I think he’s an artist because I can smell oil paint in the morning,” Sandi said. “He’s never here during the day.”

“Who cares? This is completely charming! Where’d you get all the furniture?”

“Well, some of it was here, like the rugs, but I got the chairs and the curtains at Pottery Barn. I found your desk at an antiques store for like no money and got it polished up. The conference-room furniture is leased. My desk is leased, too. So are the phones. I bought the palms and the artwork is on loan.”

“The owner’s work?”

“No, I got a gallery to give it to us for ninety days. It’s all for sale, though.”

“I’m sure. Well, kiddo? You did a heckuva job. You’d think we had been here forever.”

“That was the general plan, wasn’t it? You said you wanted it to
look stately and serious like Charleston. But I think we need tchotchkes, you know, to give it a little more personality. Maybe some blue-and-white ceramics for the mantelpieces? An umbrella stand?”

“Don’t worry yourself. We’re not going to be here forever.”

“I’ll raid my brother’s house, see what he’s got we can borrow.”

“Oh, how’s he doing?”

“Fine. He’s a vet out in Summerville, you know.”

“Married? Kids?”

“Widowed. My sister-in-law died two years ago. Breast cancer. She was only thirty-six.”

“What? Oh no! That’s horrible!” How did I forget these things? Was I going senile?

“They were going to have kids, but she found out she had cancer at thirty-two. She fought it like a tiger, but it was this very rare rapid-spreading thing that was all in her lymph nodes and liver and everywhere by the time they even found it. I thought you knew all of this.”

“Know what? I’m sorry. I probably did, but there’s so much breast cancer around that I hear about another case almost every week.”

“It’s okay. But I mean, who gets breast cancer at that age, right?”

“Unfortunately, a lot of people. Gosh, you have to be so vigilant these days.”

“It’s the truth. So listen, we need to talk about approximately one thousand things.”

“Yeah, I know. My friend Sela gave me this little mountain of newspaper articles.” I rattled the manila envelope in the air. “We’re in some deep trouble in our public-relations department.”

“I’ll say. Hey, I didn’t know you had friends here. I thought you were from Atlanta.”

“Sandi? There’s so much that nobody knows about me, you’d go running out the door if I started talking…”

“I doubt it.”

“Anyway, let’s send Sela a huge arrangement of flowers once a week for her restaurant, O’Farrell’s, okay?”

“Sure. No problem.”

“Well, maybe I’ll tell you a long story, but for now let me get unpacked and settled and let’s figure out what to do about this lovely fiasco we are facing.”

I went into my new office, dropped my laptop case on the desk and my briefcase on the floor along with my handbag, and plopped myself into my chair. I was completely worn out before I had even begun the day.

Sandi, whose shopping gene had to be jacked up on mega vitamins, had seen to it all. There was a beautiful desk blotter, a lamp, a pencil cup, a stapler, and small dish of paper clips right next to a funny-looking little monkey wearing a fez that held a platter of business cards. Sandi had even printed up business cards with our logo, a triangle naturally, our Charleston address, phone number, e-mail, and it appeared that my whiz kid had constructed a website for us as well. She was amazing at details and it was a good thing she was because that was the most important skill I needed at the moment. My stomach was doing somersaults.

I heard the phone in the outer office ring and a few seconds later Sandi buzzed me.

“You want to talk to J. D. Langley? He’s called three times.”

Did I want to talk to J. D. Langley? No, I did not want to talk to J. D. Langley. Strangle him, perhaps, run away with him maybe, but there was no reason to talk to him except in a professional capacity. Wait. This
was
a professional capacity. My feelings were clearly conflicted. Should I talk to him now or put it off as long as possible?

“Take a message? Tell him you’re on another line?”

Talking to J.D. meant that I had to be ready for anything. I wasn’t ready for anything.

“Hello? Betts? You there?” Sandi was quiet for a moment. “How ’bout I just tell him you’re on with New York.”

I saw the light on the phone go dark and within two minutes my door opened. There stood Sandi.

“Look,” she said, a little at sea over how to deal with my peculiar behavior, “you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to tell me, but is there something I should know?”

“That was put about as diplomatically as the ambassador to France would say it. Sit.”

Sandi took a seat, and for the next forty-five minutes she listened. I told her everything, almost, because the time of secrets had to come to an end. I needed her on my side, and if she was to really
be
on my side, and be of any use, she needed some facts. I did not tell her about Adrian, but if she did the math, she would probably figure that out anyway.

“Holy Mother! What are you going to do?” she asked when I’d finished my story.

“I was hoping you might have a thought or two on this,” I said, hoping for a tone of gallows humor. “Actually, until I see him and his parents and hear their position on all these environmental and conservation problems, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Ideally, I would like them to be sensitive and for all of us to find a way to make this happen peacefully and profitably.”