All the Single Ladies: A Novel (12 page)

“That must’ve been a fabulous experience,” I said.

“Well, it was a long time ago, but yeah, I still love Italy and gelato and pasta. And when I go there, I always drink the local wines. Have you ever been to Italy?”

“No, not yet. I haven’t really traveled too much. Oh no! This is dripping down my arm!” He handed me a napkin and I cleaned up. “Thanks! Colorado a ­couple of times but that’s about it. And I’ve been to the islands a few times.”

“Well, where would you go if you could go anyplace in the world?” he asked.

“Hoo! Loaded question! Well, a few places come to mind. Italy, definitely. And as long as I’m already in Europe, I’d try to go to France. And England for sure! But I’d also like to see to some other places, like India.”

“India? Why?”

“Yeah, and Thailand. Because they’re exotic to me and I was into yoga for a long time, which fed my curiosity about Hinduism and Buddhism. I mean, didn’t you ever ask yourself how is it that all these really poor ­people in India are so happy? I’d love to see that for myself. And I love Thai food and Indian food.”

“So do I but is there any really authentic Thai food in town? I mean, I love Basil’s like the rest of the world, but I’d like some un-­Westernized Thai.”

“Yeah, there’s actually a really good Thai restaurant west of the Ashley. I’ll get the name for you. I’m pretty sure it’s called Taste of Thai.”

“Hey, I’ll tell you what. If we’re still speaking after tonight, I’ll take you there!”

I looked at him and his sly grin. Then I stood up and threw the remains of my cone in a trash can. I was practically full from the gelato but I wasn’t ready to go home. Oh, hell no. I liked him and I loved Thai food.

“That sounds like a deal,” I said.

We climbed the stairs to the restaurant and stepped inside. It was very slick with baby-­blue bar stools that reminded me of the ones I had in my yoga studio. And it was packed. Regrettably, I was probably not their target customer. But as I looked around while Paul spoke to the hostess, I saw that ­people my age were there, ­couples who would be contemporaries of my parents, families, and young hipsters. That was a great relief. Suddenly I felt at home. Why should the young and hip have all the cool restaurants to themselves? I liked The Obstinate Daughter right away. In fact, it might become my favorite. Wait a minute, I go out to restaurants maybe twice a year. Diners were my specialty. Still, it could be my favorite.

A young man with a well-­groomed dark beard led us to our table. He didn’t seem old enough to grow one much less be wearing a wedding ring, which he was. I was getting old. He was probably thirty but he looked like a baby to me. That’s what happens as you age. While everything is starting to sag, your judgment goes to hell. Paul and I slid into a booth and sat opposite each other. The young man handed us menus.

“I’m Jonathan Bentley, one of the managers. Have you dined with us before?” he said.

“No,” Paul said, “but I’ve wanted to come here and see what y’all have done. Gosh, it didn’t look like this when it was Atlanticville. Not even a little bit! This is just gorgeous. Y’all are a certified green restaurant, aren’t you?”

“Yes, we are.”

“I’m a LEED architect, which is—­”

“No kidding? No, I know all about it. My undergraduate degree is in environmental studies. But yeah, over half of what’s here is either reclaimed or sustainable. And most of it’s from within a five-­hundred-­mile radius, except the blue glass backsplash. That’s all recycled and from France. It’s pretty cool, right?”

“No kidding,” I said, properly impressed.

Here was a whole new world for me. Sustainable? What was that? LEED? Lead who? Suzanne and Carrie might think Paul was a nerd but didn’t nerds rule the world?

“It’s wonderful,” Paul said.

“Well, thanks! I’ll pass that along. Can I get y’all started with a beverage?”

“Lisa?” Paul said.

I loved Paul’s manners.

“I think I’d like a glass of wine, maybe a pinot grigio?” I said.

“You’ll have to show me some ID, ma’am,” Jonathan said, and grinned.

“Adorable,” I said, and I knew we were going to have a wonderful time.

Paul ordered the same and in the blink of an eye our wine was placed before us.

“Cheers!” he said. “Now tell me why you’ve never been to Italy?”

“Well, I guess because until recently I was a single parent putting my daughter through college. It’s not easy you know.”

“I can imagine.”

“You have kids?”

“No. I was married once to a certifiable head case. No kids. She’s remarried and lives in Tokyo.”

“Tokyo! Wow!”

“She had friends there. She married some textile guy and I never heard from her again.”

So, there was no ex-­wife or stepchildren to contend with. Very good.

“Oh. Anyway, I had no one to go with. I don’t think Venice or Florence is somewhere I’d want to go alone. Does that sound silly?”

“Of course not. In fact, I agree with you. Sometimes business takes me to the most beautiful places and I’m always so sad to be there by myself.”

“And what exactly is a lead architect?”

“What? Oh, LEED is an acronym for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. It means I’m a certified green eco-­friendly guy.”

“That’s wonderful! I didn’t even know there was such a thing.” I looked at the menu again. “Do you know what you’re going to have?”

“I want everything,” he said with a laugh. “This menu is one temptation after another.”

We ordered Geechie fries with salsa rosa, Mepkin Abbey mushrooms, pappardelle with sausage and tomatoes, and the special fish of the day.

“Can we share?” I said.

“Of course!”

“There’s something else I wanted to ask you.”

“My life is an open book. Ask away.”

“You were close with Kathy Gordon, weren’t you?”

“How much time have you got?”

“I’ve got the rest of my life,” I said, and thought, Oh, the poor guy had his heart broken.

“So I met Kathy about six years ago. We met in the lobby of the Palmetto Grande movie theater in Towne Center.”

“She loved going to the movies,” I said, and had no idea if I was right or not. But who didn’t like the movies?

“Well, it was pouring rain like you couldn’t believe and I had an umbrella. She didn’t. Still, it was raining too hard to go outside even
with
one. So we stood there with a lot of other ­people waiting for the weather to improve.”

“Ah! The old damsel-­in-­distress situation.”

“Exactly. So we were talking and I said something like ‘Where are you parked?’ And she told me she was parked in the same vicinity I was. Behind Belk’s. Anyway, we really hit it off and the rain continued. It was a huge scary thunder boomer.”

“We have some very memorable storms around here.”

“No lie. Well, eventually the rain and the pyrotechnics calmed down. We wound up running across the street to this little pub and having dinner and talking for hours. She was one of the nicest women I have ever known. I miss her a lot.”

“Did you know she was so ill?”

“I didn’t have a clue. I would’ve come to see her. I felt terrible when I read the obituary. I just happened to see it. No family. Nothing. At one point, I even wanted to marry her. I even converted to Catholicism for her. Good thing I don’t have any family around here. My parents would sit shiva. Anyway, these days I guess I’m more agnostic than anything.”

“Where are you from?”

“New York. Anyway, out of nowhere, she broke up with me.”

“Good grief!” I wasn’t sure if I’d change my religion for anyone. “Why did y’all break up? Did you fight?”

“No. Never. We got along great. She just said she didn’t want to commit.”

“Maybe she had an inkling about her cancer.”

“She never said a word if she did. Somehow, as wonderful as she was, I always felt there was something she wasn’t telling me.”

The server, an adorable girl with straight brown hair, put the Geechie fries in front of us. They were really fried grits rolled in eggs and seasoned flour and served with salsa. To be honest, I liked fried anything. Who didn’t? I know, I know. I’m a nurse who eats fried food. But listen, I ate enough tofu for half the planet when I was Yoga Girl.

“Maybe she did have a secret that she never told anyone. Who knows?”

“Anyway, I really loved her.”

“I thought the world of her too. She had such grace,” I said.

“Yes. She did,” Paul said, and looked across the room, remembering her. “Hey! Would you like another glass of wine?”

I had drunk my whole glass while I listened to him talk. His glass was still half full.

“Sure! Thanks!”

He caught our server’s eye and ordered more.

“Now, tell me some more about you.”

“Oh, gosh! Next to your life? Mine’s going to put you to sleep!”

Forty minutes later I had delivered a sketch of my life to him that included my parents’ story, my brother and his long-­suffering wife, my ex-­husband and his bunker business, my yoga studio fiasco, and finally, my daughter’s venture into the world of legalized marijuana. All the while I was describing my adventures and those of my family we were wolfing down some of the most delicious food I’d ever eaten. And I was having a ball watching his eyes grow, especially when I got to the part of the story about Marianne.

“Your story is not putting me to sleep,” he said.

“Yeah, I don’t live in a cookie-­cutter world.”

“So, forgive me. We have to go back for a minute. I must have misunderstood you. Your ex-­husband thinks it’s perfectly fine for his daughter to squire a bunch of stoners around Aspen?”

“Yes. He says somebody’s going to make money with this and it might as well be Marianne. Unbelievable, isn’t it?”

“And Marianne’s justification is?”

“That her business keeps stoned tourists off the road. She says they don’t know where they’re going because they don’t know the area and they get too high because the pot is superpowerful and it’s going to be a real problem for everyone’s safety.”

“Well, she’s probably right about that. But I know how you feel. If she was mine I’d want to lock her in her room. Is she smoking it too?”

“No. Well, she says no. And unfortunately there are laws about holding adults against their will. It’s called kidnapping. But I know what you mean. Anyway, medical marijuana? I get it. ­People going to Colorado to get toasted? I just can’t. I don’t know. I think there’s not enough medical research that gives guidelines on how to use pot safely and wisely.”

“I think it’s stupid to smoke
anything
unless you’re terminal or have some other circumstance that actually warrants the risk,” Paul said.

“Thank you!” I said. “Thank you! So, Paul? Can I ask you something that might seem like an odd question?”

“Sure.”

“Did you ever visit Kathy when she lived in a guesthouse on Wentworth Street?”

“Yep, all the time.”

“Did she ever tell you where her antiques came from?”

“No. Why?”

“Because . . . well, there’s a strong suspicion that her landlady stole a big chunk of her estate.”

“Really? Good grief. That’s terrible. Let’s go to her house and get Kathy’s stuff.”

“It’s not that simple. Did you ever visit her when she lived anywhere else?”

“No. But I still say let’s go give this woman a little hell and tell her we’ll call the police.”

“Oh my goodness. Where have you been all my life?” I said, and laughed.

“Working on being green. It’s not easy, you know.” He grinned and his dimple appeared.

“Being green?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve heard that.”

I was falling in like (maybe) with Kermit. Great.

Chapter 10

On the Sofa

My last thought before I went to sleep last night was that I was excited to tell Carrie and Suzanne about my evening with Paul. It felt so nice to have met someone, a man, who was sane, age-­appropriate, and talented. And appealing. But when I woke up in the morning I knew there would be no beach walk that day. Rolling nickel-­colored clouds covered the skies, hanging low and dark. It was raining like crazy, hard and fast blinding rain. But the wheels of the Lowcountry still had to turn, and so we were all going to get wet. Running shoes were going to squeak, hair was going to go haywire, and T-­shirts were going to cling. That’s just how it was.

Driving in this kind of weather gave me anxiety. It was gloomy and the roads would be slick. Drivers unaccustomed to flash flooding would hydroplane, flipping over into ditches when they slammed on their brakes. It happened all the time.

“Ugh,” I said to Pickle as I opened the back door for her to go out.

She looked up at me as if to say,
Really? You want to send me outside into a hurricane for my morning constitutional?
She turned around, trotted back into the kitchen, and hopped into her bed underneath the table. She was having no part of it.

“I don’t blame you,” I said. “We can try again later.”

I was reluctant to fill her water bowl or to feed her, for obvious reasons. I knew her well enough to know she couldn’t hold it forever. At some point, she’d go out.

My shift was from ten to four that day. Maybe the storm front would move through quickly, as they often did in the summer months. I flipped on the television to catch the news. The weather report was not pretty. It was going to pour off and on all day. As I watched the ebullient child meteorologist telling us what to expect for the balance of the day and week, I wondered when it became appropriate to show cleavage at seven thirty in the morning. When I was a young woman, showing cleavage was trashy unless you were Sophia Loren.

I decided to do a load of laundry. It was one of the less pleasant household tasks on my weekly list but it had to be done. As I was dropping lingerie into the machine it occurred to me that if Paul called it might be a sign that I should invest in some underwear that actually matched. At some point, I’d consider it. I had no budget for that kind of indulgence these days. Maybe I would start clipping Victoria’s Secret or Belk coupons or watching the newspapers for a sale. The very thought of having sex made me shudder and feel really self-­conscious. It wasn’t like I was exactly a hot babe anymore. In the next breath I told myself to keep my bloomers on and get over myself. I’d had one dinner with him. Okay, it was the best dinner and the most fun I’d had in so long I couldn’t remember, but it was still only one dinner. But hadn’t he said it was a blast too? Yes. But one mutually felt blast did not translate into impending nakedness.

“Pickle? Mommy’s losing her mind. Want to try again?”

I opened the back door and she flew out, squatted, and very quickly zipped back in. She ran right to me and the towel I held because she knew the drill.

“Good girl!” I said, and ruffled her furry round little body until it seemed like enough and then I fed her.

She was on that bowl of food so fast I wondered how she didn’t make herself sick. But she never did.

It was getting close to nine by the time I put my clothes in the dryer and an armful of towels in the washer for a second load. My delicates were really pathetic. Maybe I’d actually do a little preemptive shopping even if Paul didn’t call. Heaven forbid I got in an accident with my current inventory of unmentionables. At a quarter of ten I threw the towels in the dryer and left the house, throwing caution to the wind. Am I not the wildest thing you’ve ever heard of, to leave the house with the dryer running?

It was still raining cats and dogs when I reached Palmetto House. As soon as I got to the nurses’ station, there stood the jury.

Margaret said, “So are we going to have to wait all day for you to tell us how last night went?”

Judy said, “Must’ve gone pretty well because she’s blushing.”

“All right, you two,” I said. “It was really, really fun.”

“Where’d you go?” Judy said.

I gave them the pertinent facts but I was smiling so much I knew I seemed like a schoolgirl, smitten for the first time. I didn’t really care.

“He sounds like a really nice guy,” Margaret said.

“Yeah,” Judy said. “In my day, we had to go bar hopping hoping against hope to find a decent guy who was halfway sober. Or you had to wait for someone to fix you up. And you met this one at a funeral!”

“It’s called fate,” Margaret said. “So? Did he put the moves on you?”

“Margaret Seabrook! What a thing to say!” I said. Is that how it was described these days?

“Well, did he?” Judy said.

“Sadly, no. Maybe next time,” I said, and giggled. “If there is one.”

“Hey, Judy? I’ll bet you five bucks he calls,” Margaret said.

“You’re on,” she said.

“I’ll let you know. Now, I’ve got to administer all these medications to our patients. Oh, by the way, I could use some extra hours this month.”

“What’s going on?” Margaret asked.

“I need a new place to live, so I’m going to need security-­deposit money and all that,” I answered. “And if you hear of a rental nearby I’d love to know.”

“Let’s see what we can do,” Margaret said. “If you get desperate let me know. I’ve got a sofa bed in my den.”

“Thanks,” I said, and hoped I’d not have to call her. I wasn’t a fan of sofa beds.

Later, just as I was going to lunch, my cell phone vibrated. I looked at the caller ID hoping it would be Paul. It was Suzanne.

“Hi!” I said. “Good day for the ducks, right?”

“Yeah, the ducks are swimming all over the streets. Listen, Miss Trudie’s had another fall. This time she grabbed a curtain on the way down to the floor and somehow she twisted her shoulder.”

Falling down was very bad but especially at her age. You break a hip and it’s the beginning of the end. Although, she was ninety-­nine. Not to be insensitive, but no one lasted forever. She was so with it mentally, it made it hard to believe she was that old.

“Oh no! Is she in any pain?”

“She says not, but you know what a stoic she is. I can see her wince when she reaches out, like to open a door or something.”

“She probably has a wrenched muscle. Make her an ice pack. Just like I told you the last time she fell. Pray it doesn’t go into spasms. Spasms are miserable. I’d hate to think of her in that kind of terrible pain.”

“Me too. Okay.”

“If her pain worsens maybe someone ought to take a look at her. I can get a recommendation for an orthopedist if you’d like.”

“Thanks. I’ll keep an eye on her and I’ll let you know.”

“It’s probably time to make some changes around the house. I mean, I don’t want to overstep the boundaries.”

“Like what? A ramp out the front door to the street? She says the day there’s a ramp in this house she’ll check herself into a nursing home!”

“No, no, I don’t think she needs ramps, but there are lots of little things you can do to make the house safer for her.”

“Like what? Dilute her gin? I’ve already done that.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at that.

“Oh my goodness! You are too much! Listen, why don’t I swing by after work? I’m out of here at four.”

“That would be great. Obviously, we could use some direction here.”

By four o’clock that afternoon, the rain had subsided to intermittent drizzles and the sun was struggling to push through the remaining clouds. First, I stopped at home to change clothes and to walk my dog. The door was unlocked. That wasn’t right. I always checked the door to be certain the house was secure. I opened the door slowly. From where I stood I could see that there were suitcases across the entrance to the kitchen where Pickle was. When she saw me, she started barking her head off and leaping into the air behind the luggage. Confused, I stepped into the living room and turned on the overhead light. There was a woman sleeping on the sofa. I nearly fainted from fright.

“Turn the light off!” she screamed.

“Who are you and what are you doing in my house?” I screamed back, leaving the door open in case I had to grab my dog and run. “I’m calling the police!”

She got up from the sofa and stared at me. She had a swollen lip that looked like someone had punched her. Her black hair was filthy dirty and she looked like she hadn’t slept in a week.

“No! You listen to me. This is my house! I’m Debbie Smith, Roy and Mary Anne’s daughter? I just drove here the whole way from Akron, Ohio. I’m exhausted!”

“I thought you weren’t coming until August first?” I said.

What did this mean? Did I have to move this afternoon?

“Yeah, well, I had to get away from my ex-­husband. He’s fucking crazy.”

“Oh!” I didn’t really need an explanation.

“So I’m here early. I’m sorry, but you’ve got to pack your stuff and get out of here today. I’m too old for a roommate.”

“But I have an agreement with your parents!”

“Not anymore you don’t. And take your dog too. It smells.”

I gasped. My dog did not smell like anything other than a clean dog. Who did this hateful person think she was talking to?

“Oh, great,” I said, and thought, What am I going to do? “Okay, look. Give me a ­couple of hours. I don’t have much here. I have to go get boxes. I am supposed to be somewhere right now to see about my friend’s very elderly grandmother who had a fall this morning.”

“So go see the old lady and go get boxes, and when you come back you can pack and get out. I’m sorry but I’ve been going through some . . .”

She sank to the couch, put her head in her hands, and began to cry. Suddenly I felt sorry for her. My phone vibrated. I took it out of my pocket and checked the caller ID. It was Paul. Boy, if there was ever an inconvenient time for someone to call, this was it. Against my better judgment, I took the call.

“Hey, Paul!”

“Hey, Lisa! I just wanted to tell you what a wonderful time I had with you last night.”

“Best first date ever!” I said. “But listen, I’m sort of in the middle of something. Can I ring you back a little later?”

Debbie Smith with the skank hair and fat lip began to bawl her eyes out. I was positive Paul could hear her.

“Yeah, sure. Is everything okay?”

No, I’m homeless,
I wanted to say. But I didn’t.

“Just a little snag in my rental agreement but I’ll get it sorted out. Call you later, okay?”

“Okay,” he said. His voice sounded uncertain and slightly alarmed. “You sure you’re okay?”

Debbie Smith continued to wail. Loudly.

“Yep. I’ll call you back in a few minutes.”

“Okay, then . . .”

“Bye bye!” I said, and touched the end call key. “Good grief.” I called Suzanne. “I’m on my way to your house now.”

Debbie continued to blubber.

“No problem. I just got home from work. Is everything okay?” she said.

“Oh, sure,” I said. “Everything’s fine.”

I ended the call and thought, Oh, brother. No, everything’s not okay. What am I going to do? I’ve got almost no money and nowhere to go. I hooked Pickle’s leash to her collar and started back toward the front door. Debbie was blowing her nose with all the majesty of a foghorn. I stood there and stared at her, waiting for her to stop. Maybe I’d call Margaret and ask for that sofa bed after all.

“What are you staring at?” Debbie said, wiping her runny black Tammy Faye Bakker mascara away with the back of her fingers.

“I’ll be back in a ­couple of hours,” I said.

“I knew that.”

I wanted to say,
You’ve got some nerve to march in here like this telling me to get out. Thanks for nothing.
But I didn’t because she was so wretched. Maybe I was temporarily homeless but I had a lot more going for me than she did. She was the poster child for that old saying about there’s always someone worse off than you are. Well, it’s true. Besides, it’s just not nice to kick someone when they’re so down. But Lord in heaven with all His saints, she didn’t have an ounce of grace to her name.

Pickle and I got in the car and began the drive to Suzanne’s. I decided to call my mother to tell her what happened.

“Mom?”

“Hi, honey! What’s going on?”

“Well, when I came home from work this afternoon, guess who was sleeping on the sofa?”

I told her the whole story and she was flabbergasted.

“Holy Mother Church! This is terrible!” she said. “What are you going to do?”

“Well, I thought about calling this woman I work with to see if I can stay there for a bit until I find something.”

“Well, if you can’t Daddy and I can help you. Maybe you could stay in one of those extended-­stay motels for a week or so? I can send you the money but you know it would have to be—­”

“I know, deducted from my inheritance. That’s understood.”

“I’m sorry, darling, but that’s how it is. You should hear the lecture I got from your brother for spending money with my dermatologist.”

“He’s a horse’s ass.” Did my brother think my mother was too old to see a dermatologist?

“No, he’s not.”

“Yes, he is. I’ll let you know about the money,” I said. “Thanks for the offer.”

“We’re always here to help,” she said.

We hung up and I thought, She thinks that’s help? Oh, boy—­which I seemed to be saying with some frequency—­if I ever win the lottery, I’m just going to give it all away with no strings attached.

Then I called Paul. We chatted for a few minutes about how much fun we’d had together and he stepped up, asking for the next date.

“So, what are you doing Saturday night?”

“Well, hopefully I’ll have a place to live by then,” I said.

“Why? What happened to your midcentury brick façade ranch?”

“Listen to this.”

I told him the story and he offered me the other side of his bed.

“I mean, I know we’ve only been on one date and this may seem somewhat forward, but I promise I wouldn’t . . . you know, you can trust me.”

He was laughing so hard and I thought, He sure is quick on his feet.