Where the River Ends (9 page)

“I’m not talking about this with you.”

“Mary Provencal. Pretty, smart, probably keep you out of trouble. But you’d have to learn how to make a better martini.”

“I’m not believing this.”

“Karen Whistman.”

“Honey, she’s married.”

“Yeah, but she won’t be for long. She’s tall, outdoorsy, knows a thing or two about art and has more money than God.”

“Would you stop it?”

“Three. Stacy Portis. A little short but always the life of the party and from what I hear, great in bed. Which”—she laughed—“she’ll need to be after you’ve been married to me.”

“You’re killing me.”

“Fourth. A stretch, but…Grace McKiver.”

“Have you lost your mind?”

She pitched the remains of her Snickers in the river. “Probably, along with most everything else. Now, Grace might seem cold at first, but once you get to know her she’s sincere, loyal to a fault and, thanks to a very good plastic surgeon, a goddess with her clothes off.”

I watched the Snickers float like a short turd in the water. “That answers a lot.”

“Lastly, Jeanne Alexander.”

“I’m not listening.”

“She’s is probably the most like me, so you’d have to unlearn very few of your bad habits.”

“What bad habits?”

“Well, since you brought it up.”

“I didn’t. You did.”

“You leave your underwear on the bathroom floor. Toilet seat too often up. You squeeze the toothpaste in the middle. Never make the bed. Hate yard work. Haven’t cleaned your studio in ten years.”

“That’s ’cause I haven’t been in there in nearly three.”

She stopped and tilted her head, a practiced move. “Which brings me to my point.”

“This is your father coming out in you.”

“You should marry. I mean, not right away. Play the mourning widower and give it a year. Maybe eighteen months. Besides, it’ll get them competing.”

“Abigail.”

She didn’t look at me, but stared off into the trees. “You should. I hate the thought of you living alone.” She licked the chocolate off her front teeth. “But more than that. You must promise me that you will sit at your easel—”

“Abbie.”

“I’m serious. Promise.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because…”

She tapped me in the chest. “I know you. You can’t keep it all bottled up in there. Sooner or later, you’ll have to let it out.”

“You sound like Mom.”

“You’re trying to change the subject.”

I packed up the canoe and then scooped my arms beneath her, lifting her. She wrapped her arms around my neck. “Promise?”

I looked her in the eyes, fingers crossed. “I promise.”

“Uncross those fingers and say it.”

“I promise…I will always remember the way you burnt your first pot roast to a crisp.”

“Are you finished?”

“Okay…I promise I’ll always wish I could make the art you’ve always thought that I could.”

She nodded. “Fair enough.”

I looped the harness around me and began my snow-dog pull. She lay in the boat, staring at me. “You can, you know. It’s in you.”

“Can what? What’s in me?”

She pointed her 800 mcg lollipop at me. “Don’t start that crap with me.”

I didn’t have to turn around to see her windshield-wiper finger cutting the air. “Honey…” I stopped pulling, letting the lines fall slack. “Face the music. I fish better than I paint. I even helped your dad catch fish and he sucks. But in terms of art, other than a portrait here and there—which I’ll admit, I do seem to have some talent for—I’m a hack for hire. Just look at our house. Garage to attic, it’s full of stuff we can’t sell.”

“You’re not a reject to me.”

“Well, you’d be alone on that one.”

The Actiq often did this. Made her chatty and defiant. Not that she needed help on the defiance part.

“Band-Aid.”

A deep breath. Her adopted nickname for me. “Yes.”

“Come here.”

I untangled myself and sloshed backward, kneeling beside the gunnel. She rested her head on her palm. “I’ve seen art in Rome, London, New York…even Asia.” She touched my nose. “No one moves me the way you do.”

Despite my dashed hopes and her continued embarrassment, that right there is the singular reason I’ve not burned everything I’ve ever painted and continued to keep my studio. Because she believed long after I’d quit.

“I love you Abigail Coleman Michaels.”

“Good. Glad we settled that. Now,
mush!
It’s hot in here with no breeze.” I turned, lifted the straps across my shoulders and began pulling. As the tension pulled back, she said, “You know you might also consider Wendy Maxwell, her family’s got that place—”

“Would you shut up and go to sleep?”

She paused and her tone changed. “Not until you set my feet on Cedar Point.”

Her voice echoed with a sense of finality. I leaned into the harness, dug my feet into the sand, and the ropes cut into my shoulders.

9

T
he driver of the car was wearing a black hat and white gloves. I walked out wearing faded jeans—a hole in the right knee—a black T-shirt and my only sport coat—which was blue and missing a button on the right sleeve. “You think she’ll notice?” I asked. The driver stared at my sleeve and shook his head but said nothing. “Great,” I said, stepping into the backseat, “’cause I’d hate to overdress.”

Pushing the door closed he said, “I doubt that will be a problem.”

He drove me down King Street to South Battery and stopped before an imposing three-story crowded with people. Classic Charleston. All the women wore pumps and pearls while all the men were wearing the same brand of four-eye, lace-up leather shoes, the same shade of khakis, same style of blue button-down and slightly varied versions of striped ties.

I stepped out of the car and nearly choked on my own tongue. To my left, the sidewalk looked dark, desolate and inviting. I stared up at the porch, which held up the four huge columns in front of the house. She stood at the banner, engaged in conversation, looking at me.

I straightened my coat and the driver whispered behind me, “Don’t worry, sir. Most of them are just compensating. If the story about you, and what you did for Miss Coleman, is true, you’ll be fine.”

“And if it’s not?”

He studied the scabbing cut across my right middle knuckle and the purple under and around my left eye. “I imagine it is.”

“Thanks.”

I climbed the stairs into the aroma of designer perfumes married to Bermuda aftershaves. I’d never seen more diamonds in my life. Ears, neck, fingers. If these people were compensating, they had spent some money doing it. Mink, cashmere, camel hair and starched oxford broadcloth created the texture where high-pitched laughter echoed above the low hum of conversation.

She slid through the crowd like water. “Thanks for coming.”

“You know all these people?”

“Most.” She looped her arm in mine. “Come on, I want to introduce you.”

We walked through the front door, into a grand entry where five layers of trim accented the fourteen-foot ceilings and the crystal chandelier looked to weigh a ton. Along one wall a tall man in a white coat dipped a ladle into a silver punch bowl and filled china teacups with something that smelled of apple cider, cinnamon, clove and citrus. He offered me a cup, “Suh?”

“No thanks.”

Abbie took the cup from him and said, “Thanks, George.” She offered it to me. “It’s wassail. I made it.”

I sipped it. “Interesting, but…but good.”

She set the cup down, turned right and walked into a den where the firelight was glowing off flush faces and dark mahogany. A white-haired, distinguished, handsome man in a striped suit stood surrounded by forty or fifty people. Some swirled brandy, others sipped Chardonnay, all held a glass. He was the epicenter of attention and conversation. When the crowd parted to make way for her, which meant us, I recognized him. He was broader than I had anticipated and sounded taller on TV.

She led me forward, looping her other arm through his. Looking back, that was the moment I joined the tug-of-war. And he sensed it. “Daddy, I’d like you to meet Doss Michaels.”

I extended my hand. “Senator, sir.”

His handshake was firm, practiced and cold, and his cuff link was sharp and pointy. He had sized me up before our hands touched. “So, I have you to thank for saving my daughter.”

“No, sir. Given a few more minutes, I think she could have taken him.”

He smiled. “Well spoken. Well spoken.” The crowd laughed and then quieted. He addressed them. “Everyone, may I introduce Doss Michaels to you? A man I have just met and yet to whom I am forever indebted following the events of last week.” They clapped and made me wish I could jump through a trap door. She looped her left hand back through mine, interlocking our fingers, and spoke to all the women who’d gathered about—waving her right index finger like a windshield wiper through the air. “Not yet, ladies. He’s mine, you can just wait your turn.”

I had never seen one person more comfortable with and more in command of her surroundings. She had a gift. She led me outside to the porch and around another table where a lady was serving okra soup. Below us, near the center of the yard, two men stood over an open fire and roasted oysters. The backyard was well lit and looked like an English garden. The perimeter was an eight-foot-tall hedge that had been trimmed at perfect ninety-degree angles. She poured me a lemonade and said, “Here, drink this. It’ll take the edge off.” I sipped while she reached high and rubbed her fingers on a plant hanging above her. She sniffed them and then held them below my nose. It reminded me of roses.

“That’s a funny-looking rose.”

She laughed. “That’s ’cause it’s not. It’s a rose-scented geranium.”

“Are you one of those people who really knows plants? Green thumb and all that?”

She pointed across the backyard. “Would you like to see my garden?”

“If it’ll get me away from all these people, I’ll help you dig in it.”

We walked through the maze that was her garden while she pointed, named and explained. “That’s pittosporum…that’s my rose garden…twenty-seven different kinds…this is my citrus. Eighteen different trees from Dancy tangerines to Satsumas to Duncan grapefruit.” We turned another corner. “That’s a loquat tree.”

“A what-quat?”

Her laugh melted me. “Loquat.”

It was an odd-looking little fruit—round and maybe half the size of an egg. I picked one off a limb and smelled it. “It reminds me of those little things we used to throw at cars when I was a kid.”

“You sure those weren’t cumquats?”

“Well…it was some sort of quat.”

She rolled it in her palm. “They’re also called Japanese plums. You can’t buy them in a store ’cause they have no shelf life, but they’re sweet. You had one when you came in.”

“When?”

“Loquat liqueur. It’s in the wassail.”

“Where do you get it?”

“You don’t. You make it.”

My suspicion was growing. “You’re one of those people, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know,” she said smiling. “What kind of person is that?”

“Martha Stewart meets Julia Child. You probably sleep two hours a night and make your own wrapping paper at Christmas.”

She turned away, smirking. “What’s wrong with making your own paper?”

I looked back toward the house and the growing crowd of people. “You’re good at this.”

She snapped a dark red rose off a bush and slid the end of it into my coat pocket. “I’ve had a lot of practice.” She waved to an elegant older woman across the yard. “Born into it. Then adopted by it.” She smoothed my jacket collar and stepped closer, into my personal space. “By the way…it’s Abbie. But”—she waved her hand across the crowd—“most of these folks call me Abbie Eliot.”

I sipped and swallowed, letting the lemonade warm my throat. “I spent some time at the library this week. You…” She’d been written about in every magazine and paper you could mention.

“Don’t believe everything you read.”

“Which parts do I believe?”

She smiled, pulled on my hand and led me back across the grass. “You’ll have to ask me that.”

I followed. Her in one hand, the lemonade in the other. “Okay.”

I spent the evening walking in her wake, growing addicted to the smell of her perfume and the gentle pull of her touch. Whether by the smell of her or the taste of that lemonade, I grew more intoxicated by the minute.

After she’d introduced me to twenty-five people who’s names I couldn’t and wouldn’t remember, she led me across to the other, grassier side of the yard where tents were set up and people were nibbling on appetizers. She eyed the buffet. “You feel like grazing?”

I lifted a near-empty glass. “Yeah, my lips are feeling fat. I need something to soak up the lemonade.”

We filled a single plate and then sat alone on a bench in a darkened corner of the yard, overlooking the party. With no utensils in sight, I asked, “What do we eat with?”

She fingered a chicken leg and bit into it, talking with her mouth half full. “Fingers.”

I lifted a chicken leg and the barbecue sauce dripped down my fingers. “Doesn’t make sense to cover the women in diamonds and the tables in white linen but leave Charleston’s finest sucking on their fingers.”

“Welcome to Charleston.”

“By the way”—I chewed, mouth full, the corners covered in sauce—“I owe you a commission.”

Another bite. “Huh?”

“A lady came in this week and actually bought Miss Rachel. Asked me if I’d take seventeen hundred.”

“What’d you say?”

“I asked her if she wanted me to gift wrap it.”

She laughed. “So you paid rent this month?” I nodded, brown smear spreading across my face. “Good, it’s nice to know I’ll be able to find you and won’t have to play stupid, snooping around the art school again.”

“That how you found me the first time?”

She waved at someone across the yard and then stared out across the crowd. “People will tell you most anything if you know how to ask the right questions.”

“In your case, I’d say it had less to do with how you asked, and more to do with the fact that you asked at all.”

She looked at me, her voice growing soft. “Doss Michaels, you flirting with me?”

“That bad, huh?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Refreshing, actually.”

“I thought it sounded a bit rehearsed. Sort of like I rushed it.”

She set my glass on the grass, out of reach. “I’m cutting you off. No more lemonade for you.”

My tongue felt thick and the sides of my lips were tingly. “Good idea.” An iron gate marked the corner of the backyard and an exit for me. “You feel like walking?”

“You had enough culture for one night?”

“I’m not too big on parties. Never know how to act.”

She hooked her arm inside mine and led me through the gate. “Can you keep a secret?”

“Probably not.”

“That’s why they make the lemonade.”

We walked across South Battery, through White Point Gardens and onto the high battery overlooking the split of the Cooper and Ashley rivers. Named after Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, the twin rivers once served as the cotton highway of the Confederate South. Plantations floated their white gold downriver on barges, parked them in Colonial Lake—just a few blocks away—and waited on a buyer and export to the rest of the world. Which explains why most felt the Atlantic Ocean started at their doorstep.

The breeze was cool so I slipped my jacket over her shoulders. A well-lit yacht motored inland, returning to the marina. I waved my hand across the wake, making small talk. “A lot of history has passed through these waters.”

She considered that a moment. “Tell me about you.”

Her tone caught me. The playful woman at the party had been replaced by a serious, real and curious girl. I dangled my feet off the concrete wall. “So much for small talk, huh?” She shrugged. “I grew up on a…a river south of here. A paddle in one hand, pencil or paintbrush in the other.” I waved my finger like a wand over the landscape around us. “This is beautiful, but Charleston, for me, can’t hold a candle to the St. Marys. She’s…well…” Feeling foolish, I trailed off.

“What brought you here?”

“Art scholarship.”

“How’s that going?”

“Not sure. I don’t know if I’m learning how to make better art or forgetting that I once could.” She raised an eyebrow. “I used to think it was pretty simple. Being here, different teachers, different motives, it’s gotten complicated. Confusing. I’m not sure I look at a canvas the way I once did.”

“But your stuff is selling.”

“Well, let’s be honest. One piece sold. Thanks to you, but more importantly, I don’t make art simply to sell it.”

She stared at me. “But you’re selling it.”

“Sure, I hope it sells like hotcakes, but that’s not what I’m thinking about while I’m making it.”

“So you’re an idealist.” While she leaned against the concrete wall, I sat further back, dangling my feet. This placed her just inches in front of me. Lights from the marina lit the right side of her face, highlighting the lines of her cheek and the short wisps of hair just above her ear. My eyes traced the contour of her ear, the softness of her hair, then glided along the rim of her cheek, skating between the shadow of her eyelashes and the recess of her cheek. Moonlight bounced off the ripples of the water where it bled seamlessly into the edges of her face. In the distance, Fort Sumter sat twinkling between the rim of her lips and the lines of her nose.

“I was fourteen when my mom’s car slid off the road, broadsiding a concrete barrier. She was driving back from the store on bald tires in a light rain. On the front seat the paramedics found new paints and a roll of canvas. After the burial, I went home, lined up each of my inhalers on the fence and shot them with a stolen shotgun. Then I slipped beneath the cover of the river and disappeared. I had a lot of questions I couldn’t answer and was tired of living inside a plastic bag. For an entire summer, I paddled from the swamp to the ocean. No medicine. If I couldn’t breathe, I wouldn’t. I stole enough to eat and learned to duck and dodge people who asked too many questions. Sometimes early in the morning or late at night, when the mosquitoes hatched and the mist rose off the river, I’d lay on my stomach, my nose inches from the water, and squint my eyes trying to catch a glimpse of Momma’s God in the river.”