Hatteras Girl (Heart of Carolina Book #3) (6 page)

8

Davis Erickson isn’t in his office
at Rexy Properties when I enter at a few minutes before one. “He won’t be back until Friday,” the receptionist with the stick-on pink nails and lipstick of the same color tells me in a tone that makes me think I should have known this. She sits at a large, smooth desk with a disturbing painting by Picasso on the creamy wall behind her.

I guess there is no point in explaining to her that just the other day Davis told me to come to his office at one for an interview. Slowly, she reaches for a ringing phone as I stand in front of her desk. “No, no. He’s not here.” Her painted lips are still as she listens. Her name badge has BEV printed on it in gold letters. “He’s in Ohio. That’s right. Yes, I can take a message or I can give you his voice mail.”

I suppose I took Zane over to Ropey’s this afternoon for nothing, then. I exit the office and finger the card on which I wrote Davis’s contact information. Under his office number, I’ve written his cell number.

As I step onto the walkway that is lined with azalea bushes, my mind deliberates.
Dare I call his cell? Is that acceptable?

Driving back to my duplex in Waves, I think of how frustrated Selena will be if I don’t get this interview. By the time my truck is parked in our driveway, I’ve decided that I’ll call the man.

First, I pour a glass of iced tea. Minnie insists that Lipton with ginseng is the best. Of course my mom agrees. Mom was born with ginseng in her veins. When I was small, and stuffy from a cold, she made me cups of ginseng tea with other assorted herbs. She claimed that Korean ginseng was as strong as any prescription medicine. As she handed me the steamy beverage, she would insist that drinking it would not only cure my cold, but make my skin glow and my hair glossy. I wanted it to make my hair blond, but she said ginseng was not that powerful.

I prefer person-to-person interviews where I get to see the facial expressions of the one I’m interviewing. Minnie once asked if it makes me nervous to sit across from someone and ask them questions, but it doesn’t. As long as I have my questions prepared, I can’t lose. It’s as easy for me to do an interview as it is for Aunt Sheerly to talk about hairstyles.

When my tea is gone, I head into my bedroom with my notebook. The only thing I’m uncertain of today is if it’s within protocol to call Davis when we did not arrange for this to be a phone interview. Hopefully, he’ll understand. After all, he’s the one who told me a date and time to be at his office. I showed up; he didn’t.

Davis Erickson apologizes immediately. “I am sorry, Jacqueline. I’ll be glad to give you the interview now.” His voice is just as warm and articulate as the first time we spoke.

“You can call me Jackie.” When I called to set up the interview at his office, he kept calling me Jacqueline and I let him.

“Okay, I will, then. Give me just one minute to turn the blender off.” I hear a whirling sound and then a click. “There.” A pause. “Just making a smoothie.”

“Oh? What kind?”

“Well, my parents have peaches growing in their yard, so this is peach.”

“Where do your parents live?”

“Cincinnati. That’s where I was raised. How about you?”

“Here.”

“Which is?”

“Hatteras.”

“Oh, that’s great. You can go out on the water anytime you want to.”

My mom didn’t exactly agree with that. She was very big on Ron and me protecting our skin. Growing up, she reminded me that in Asia, many women carry umbrellas to shield their skin from the sun. I’d thought she was exaggerating until a Korean friend in college told me that her mother always carried a parasol during the summer months. Mom didn’t make Ron and me carry parasols, but we did have to slather ourselves with sunscreen before we went outdoors.

“Did you go to school in Hatteras?” Davis’s voice reminds me of Bono from U2, minus the Irish accent.

“Yeah, every single year. Then I left to go to UNC-Charlotte.”

“I thought maybe they just taught the kids out on the docks.”

“Barefoot,” I say.

He laughs, and then I do, too.

Calling him was the right thing to do.

Talking with him is comfortable; I stretch out on my bed and extend my legs like Shakespeare does on the sofa at work. One topic eases into another, and soon we’ve discussed food we both like, personal cooking disasters, childhood pets, the differences between life in the North and the South, and movies. I’m writing some of it down, but I know I need to get into the subjects Selena wants covered in the interview. Although I find Davis’s story about how his golden retriever saved his brother from drowning at a swimming hole in Upstate New York engaging, Selena isn’t going to see that as important to
Lighthouse Views
readers. To segue into real estate, I ask about the Bailey House.

“What do you know about it?”

“Is this part of the interview?”

“No, just for my interest.” I think of telling him how I loved going there as a child, how the lemon cookies were moist and tasty, how Ogden kept the grounds looking like a garden in an issue of
Southern Living
, but I decide not to disclose too much.

“I do have some connections to it. I know it’s vacant and in need of a buyer.”

My heart jumps against my chest. “Do you manage it? I mean, is Rexy Properties the one trying to sell it?”

“Possibly,” he says.

“What do you mean by ‘possibly’?”

“Technically, it’s not listed as being for sale. However, I do know that if the right buyer came along, he or she would be considered.”

His words confuse me a bit, but I switch to the question I’ve had for a long time. “Do you know how much it’s going for?”

“Sure,” he says. “Right under a million and a half.”

“Half a million?”

“No, one million and five hundred thousand dollars.”

“Are you teasing?” I bet he is. I clutch the phone, waiting to hear his laughter.

There is no laughter. “That’s actually a little reduced. In my opinion, it’s worth at least two million.”

“But it’s worn down. I mean, the outside of it looks pretty weatherbeaten.”

“Inside is gorgeous.”

I hope it is, I think, and then when I realize he’s serious about the price, my mind shouts:
Where in the world will you ever come up with 1.5 million dollars?
My brain searches for some way, some relative, some investment that would allow me to get that kind of money. I can’t think of anything. I knew the home would be costly, being prime real estate on the Outer Banks, but I never thought the price tag would be so monumental.

Still, my veins pulsate with excitement. I’ve finally found someone who knows about the Bailey House and hopefully can tell me even more. “That’s a lot of money, but it can be financed, right? I mean, should the right buyer come along?”

“I suppose.”

“Who would I contact about it? You?”

“Depends.” His elusiveness about the house bothers me, so it’s a relief when he changes the subject. “How long have you been working at the magazine?”

“Forever it seems. About five years.”

“You must be good at what you do.” His voice soothes like a summer breeze that comes in the window from across the Sound. “Do you like interviewing people?”

“Oh, I like to interrogate.”

He laughs. “Well, it’s been a pleasure talking with you. I don’t feel interrogated at all.”

Note to Selena: It doesn’t matter that his house needs painting. He’s a nice guy.

Conducting an interview is one thing; putting it all together on my computer is a different beast. I sit on the chair in front of my Dell and wonder how to turn all my sloppy notes into an article that will make Selena smile.

I head to the kitchen for some more iced tea, and feeling hungry, make a peanut butter and honey sandwich. As I squeeze honey onto a slice of wheat bread, my brother’s advice from the past fills my mind. “Write!” Ron would tell me whenever I’d complain about how difficult it can be to put words together in a way that conveys what you want to get across. I was on the high school newspaper committee, and some days I wondered why. “If you say you’re a writer, then why aren’t you writing?” Ron would say.

“Well, that is easier said than done.”

Which always led him to reply, “Don’t use clichés.”

“You know, sometimes clichés are the only way to say something that is easily understood.”

“The best writers avoid them.”

“Oh, really?” With plans to major in journalism, I felt I was a “best writer.”

“Yeah.”

“What do you know?”

“A lot more than you, apparently.”

I love Ron, in spite of his argumentative ways. He has an air about him that is refreshing. He’s a magnet, pulling you in, and you always get the feeling he’s arguing with you because he likes you. After all, he claims he only wastes his time arguing with people whose opinions he cares about. If you aren’t important to him, he doesn’t fritter away his time or words.

Ron went to Wake Forest University and now lives and works as a water ski instructor in Fort Lauderdale. Dad wonders how his degree in business administration helps him in the ocean, to which Ron replies that you always need a good business head in whatever you do. “My son plays from nine to five at the beach,” Dad used to tell friends. “Can you believe he went to college so that he can do that?”

Last Christmas, Ron said to Dad, “Do you know how hard it is to teach a three-hundred-pound man to water ski?”

Our father just shook his head.

“I got him up and skiing, too. He almost capsized the boat, but he skied, thanks to my instruction.” Ron was a little smug about it, but I think he made his point.

These days, Dad is more careful about criticizing Ron’s line of work. When they’re together, he and Ron like to play chess, a game of few words.

By the time the sun slips into a crimson-and-lavender western sky, I’ve not only finished composing the article about Davis, I’ve drifted into daydreaming about the Bailey House. The longing to enter its red door once again and walk on the Oriental carpets is so great that I consider heading over there to see if I can pry open a window. I should have asked Davis more questions. Instead, I acted like some sort of perky woman in love with her job and life, hiding the truth that on some days this very woman would sell her cherished fishermen’s hat collection to own that house on Red Pelican Court.

9

Minnie prefers to drive
when we go to the Morning Glory Home. Her silver Intrepid is a 2005, newer than my Ford, but I know that’s not the reason she wants to drive. She feels since it’s her mother we’re going to see, she should pay for the gas. She also enjoys pounding the accelerator on the ride home from Nags Head to our duplex. I think it’s her raw outlet after a visit, a demonstration of the frustration she feels over her mother’s condition.

Minnie also likes to get to the home before lunch so that she can help feed Irvy. Just the other day as we were drying breakfast dishes, she said, “I should be taking care of Mama.”

“You are.”

“She’s in a home.” Her eyes were red at the rims. I wasn’t sure if she’d been crying or if her allergies were getting to her.

“That is taking care of her,” I said.

“I should visit her more.”

“You do every week.” I tried to reassure her that she’s a good daughter.

“Zane doesn’t like the home.” Minnie gently wiped a plate and put it on a shelf with other dishes we moved over from her mother’s house.

“Zane is going through a phase of hating germs.”

“The place is clean.”

“Yeah, but it smells funny. Like disinfectant.”

“I’ve told him that takes care of the germs.”

“It doesn’t help when you tell him that.” I wanted to say that Zane whines about many things, that perhaps she needs to be stricter with the child, but I stopped myself. I concentrated on drying a cereal bowl instead and put it away in the cabinet. What did I know? Minnie and Zane moved in shortly after Lawrence’s death to have a cheap place to live, not for me to be the disciplinarian.

“I hate that Mama finally got a grandchild and yet she can’t play with him.”

Minnie has said this before, and I never have a good response. She and Lawrence tried for four years to have a child. Minnie never gave up hope; her own mother and father tried for ten years, and when they were both forty-four, they welcomed Minnie, their first and only child, into their lives.