On my way back to my seat, I gave Adam a little stink eye. He shrugged and threw his hands up in defeat, smiling sheepishly.
“Well, if you need an old lady to help you carry your bags, let me know,” Clarabeth said. “I’ve got a little time on my hands and I’d love to see Greece!”
“I went out with a Greek man once,” Cookie said and sighed wistfully. “We used to drink ouzo and make out like jungle animals in heat. He was a gorgeous thing.”
“Mother!” Eve said.
“What? It’s the truth.”
Adam was smiling then. Cookie was a trip. She always carried herself like she was related to the Queen of England. She dressed like she was Anna Wintour’s mother and tried to come across as royalty. When she opened her mouth, we all knew the devil had arrived.
And of course, Clarabeth was right. If you had a longing in your heart, it had to be dealt with. I saw Adam look at Eve. Eve was staring in his direction and then she quickly looked away. What were they going to do about their longing for each other?
chapter 10
adam
wild dunes, winter 2010
A typical Lowcountry winter goes like this: In the early morning, it’s cold and damp, the temperature ranging anywhere from low thirties to low fifties. If you’re near any kind of a body of water, and the chances of that are high, there might be an otherworldly rolling mist. You need a sweater, a windbreaker, and a neck scarf. By noon, the mist has burned away, evaporating back into the genie’s lamp. You’ve shed your jacket and scarf, and the sweater you’re wearing is probably starting to itch, making you question your own judgment for ever buying anything made of wool. By three in the afternoon, you very well might be playing tennis in shorts, feeling like the weather is absolutely California perfect. But when you venture out to that backyard oyster roast later that night, it’s cold and damp again. Bundle up, Bubba.
So much of how I plan my day depends on the weather. In our house, we talked about it a lot. In the months following the holidays, it could rain frequently, causing my business to slow down somewhat. But not this year. Boeing had come to Charleston, and the need for housing was off the charts. I was insanely busy. We were in Summerville most days and for long hours. So long that I rented a trailer to use as an office and hired a receptionist to field all the phone calls.
It was the dead of February. Eliza was visiting Max at Duke and not due back until tomorrow. I decided it was a good time to work some handyman voodoo on our Wild Dunes condo. There was a dripping faucet in one of the bathrooms, a sliding glass door that was always getting stuck in its track, and some drawer pulls missing in the kitchen. I was sure that I would find a dozen other handyman jobs because DIY had become my specialty. So I packed up my toolbox, a cordless drill, a six-pack of beer, and an overnight bag. As soon as I rolled into Mount Pleasant I stopped at Lowe’s to buy some drawer pulls that I hoped would resemble the original ones that were still in place. It would be nothing short of a miraculous event to find the same ones. I found some that bore a resemblance and they would have to suffice for now, which of course would drive me crazy and eventually I would replace them all. Call it builder’s pride.
When I crossed the connector bridge to the Isle of Palms, I was struck for the millionth time by the natural beauty of the marshes and the changing colors of the marsh grass. The water seemed to be a deeper blue than it was in the summer, and maybe it was the current or the cooler temperature or the time of day, but the water beneath me shimmered and sparkled. To my right, long skinny docks with dry-docked boats dotted the Intracoastal Waterway. I thought then that I should try to make friends with the guy who owned that dock right down there because I could bring my boat over and enjoy my summer vacation even more. The Wild Dunes yacht harbor was always jammed. It would be so much nicer to just pull up to a private dock like I did at home on the Stono, which always made me feel like a man who had arrived.
I stopped at the Red & White grocery store to pick up a few things like coffee and milk and an Entenmann’s coffee cake that I could eat unseen. Eliza was always telling me to watch out for my cholesterol like it was the family menace, some live thing lurking in the kitchen shadows, waiting to sink its claws into my good health. My cholesterol was perfect, thank you. Well, as long as I took my statin. Just gimme the coffee cake and nobody gets hurt. And I bought burgers and buns I could throw in a pan for dinner.
By the time I pulled into my driveway at Wild Dunes, the sun had slipped away for the night, leaving the horizon ablaze in deep crimson and majestic purple, like the color of a king’s robe. I know that sounds a little sappy coming from me, but I don’t know how else to describe the scene. It’s that dumbfounding, like it deserves a soundtrack from an opera. I should go to work for Hallmark, I thought, I’m such a poet. A regular dang Walt Whitman.
I went inside, dropped my things on an armchair, popped open a beer, and went outside to watch the sky. Winter sunsets always gave me pause. How could they not? It was like being in church. I was calm like the great Buddha, reminded once again how small and insignificant I was in the scheme of things—the cosmos, the universe, all that was out there. Venus appeared in the western sky, the first star of night in the cold months. It was going to be a beautiful night. I was intensely grateful to be a witness.
Eventually, my hands grew cold, and finally every trace of day disappeared. I was freezing in the forty-degree weather. The skies above me began to twinkle as the stars came out of hiding.