Bed & Breakfast Read online

  “I wonder,” he said, “why so many young people have trouble conceiving these days. Do you s’pose it’s because they put it off for too long, or do you think it has something to do with pollution?”

  “Can’t blame the women for putting it off. You know how hard it is for young couples to make it financially these days and—”

  The bleat of the telephone cut her off and Dozier watched as she dried her hands on her apron and went to pick it up. She was the only women he knew who still wore an apron and seeing her in it gave him the nostalgic, relaxed glow he got from listening to Golden Oldies.

  Josie said, “Hello,” and, not even waiting for a response, “Cuba, is this you?” She knew it would be Cuba, saying she wouldn’t be in on time, possibly saying she wouldn’t be in at all, so she just went, “Uh-huh, uh-huh,” while Cuba told her that her youngest grandchild, Antoinne, had a fever so she wouldn’t be coming in till late afternoon when the other childrens would come home to watch over him. In all the years they’d known one another, Josie had never been able to coax Cuba away from misplaced plurals (childrens instead of children, mens instead of men) any more than she’d been able to get her to say “asked” instead of “axed.” “I axed the gentlemens,” Cuba would say, and Josie would picture a crashing guillotine with aristocratic heads tumbling into baskets.

  She told Cuba to come in when she could, hung up, and reached into the closet for the cleaning caddy. “I’ve got to go make up the room,” she told Dozier.

  “Can’t you leave it?”

  She shook her head. “Didn’t I tell you that Mrs. Beasley’s coming in this afternoon? She’ll want the lavender room because it’s got its own bathroom and TV, and Mrs. B.’s got to have a TV, and I put the Canadians in the lavender room last night.”

  “Didn’t know we were getting Mrs. Beasley. That’s like getting a lump of coal in your Christmas stocking.”

  “It surely is, but you know things are always slow this time of year, so I couldn’t tell her no. I’ll be back down soon’s I can.”

  The lavender room had the usual detritus—shells and pinecones from the beach at Hunting Island, real-estate brochures the tourists always picked up and left behind—but was otherwise neat. She wiped down the bureau and dressing table with lemon oil and looked at the carpet. Since she didn’t want to bother Dozier to lug the vacuum cleaner upstairs, she decided to give it a miss. She was getting that tense, queasy feeling she’d known since childhood: too much to do and not enough time to do it in.

  As she scoured the toilet, basin, and tub and collected the towels, she thought about Mrs. Beasley and began to feel more queasy. Mrs. Beasley had a condo in Boca Raton but her only relative, a niece, lived out on Fripp Island. Mrs. B. visited several times a year and always stayed at Josie’s, saying she didn’t want to stay with her niece because she valued her privacy. It hadn’t taken Josie long to figure out that Mrs. B.’s niece, who had her eye on a sizable inheritance, couldn’t afford to reject Mrs. B. entirely but simply couldn’t stand to have the woman in her house. Josie understood why. Mrs. B. watched Oprah and Montel and Sally so much that she’d adopted their style, asking the most intimate questions as though she were merely asking the time of day. She was also a terrible snoop. The last time she’d stayed, Josie had caught her lurking in the hallway, eavesdropping on Josie’s phone conversation. It was a rudeness she would not have tolerated in a friend but she’d pretended not to notice. Mrs. B. was a regular guest and she couldn’t afford to alienate a regular guest.

  As she stripped the bed, she realized that she would have to decorate the tree before Mrs. B. arrived, otherwise Mrs. B. would notice it and, hoping for a refill on the complimentary glass of sherry Josie offered guests upon arrival (no one, she’d noticed, scrounged freebies more avidly than the wealthy), Mrs. B. would ask why none of Josie’s children were coming home for the holidays, mutter some cliche about “we poor lonely widows,” and offer to help her decorate it. She couldn’t bear the thought of Mrs. B. touching ornaments that had been in the family for generations. Couldn’t bear the thought of Mrs. B. herself.

  Feeling winded, she sat down on the bed, the soiled sheets in her lap. She could hear, almost verbatim, the terrible fight she and Bear had had when he was getting ready to retire and she’d said she wanted to buy the house. What, he’d wanted to know, did she want with “a goddamn plantation”? They couldn’t afford it. He wanted to travel. Travel? she’d said in a whisper; then her voice had gone into a yowl of protest. Travel? When she’d spent her whole adult life being shunted from base to base, when he’d destroyed her life, their childrens’ lives by constantly uprooting them? And it wasn’t as though they had the money to travel in style, sit in front of some whitewashed hotel in Portugal, and watch the fishermen. If they traveled, it would be in a camper where she couldn’t even fix a decent meal! She didn’t have to remind him how he’d squandered their savings and thrown away their security because she knew, after a lifetime of arguments, that if she made him feel too guilty he’d just walk out and she might not see him for days. She did remind him of his promise, the promise that had kept her at his side, the only promise he hadn’t broken: when he retired she would get a real home, a fine home. Or was that another sop he’d thrown her? A lie, as she’d said then, “like all the other lies in this rotten marriage?” (Why was it that ugly words, words that could never be taken back, stuck in the mind so clearly?) She wanted this house, next door to the house her brother-in-law had bought for her sister, in this town where she’d been born, wanted it so much that if he didn’t let her have it, she’d leave him and get every damned penny she could get out of him.

  She’d softened that threat with a practical plan: she knew the house was too big for the two of them, understood that they couldn’t really afford it (though it was going for a ridiculous price and a blind man could see that the town was expanding), but she’d be willing to work to make it possible. She’d turn it into a B & B, not with a vulgar sign out front (neighbors on The Point wouldn’t have stood for that anyway), but a graceful, comfortable place that would provide them with a cash flow. Despite her reasoning, he’d walked out anyway. It was the first time in years that he’d stayed out overnight, and the last time he would ever do so.

  When he’d come back the next morning, he’d just said, “Do what you want. It doesn’t matter anymore,” and she’d known that she’d won the final battle but had lost him for good.

  Remembering that awful morning, she put her hands to her mouth, lowered her head, took a deep breath. Since the thought of preparing food usually calmed her, she turned her mind to lunch. “I’ll fix spinach salad for lunch,” she thought. “Peatsy likes spinach salad.” But she still felt a hum of fear, not a memory of past troubles but a sense that something terrible was going to happen that day. “You’re crazier than a bedbug” she said out loud, and, picking up the cleaning caddy, she left the room.

  Two

  DOZIER HAD FINISHED putting the dishes away and was sitting at the kitchen table reading the classifieds in the Gazette when she came back downstairs. “You okay?” he asked as she tossed the dirty sheets and towels into the laundry room.

  She retrieved her rings from the windowsill, studying her hands as she put them on. “I’m all behind like the cow’s tail. The girls are coming here for bridge so I’ve got to run over to the Winn Dixie and pick up something for lunch.” When he rolled his eyes to the ceiling she added, “I know you think I’m a sucker.”

  “No, you’re just a tad too accommodating. Always have been. Can’t help it. It’s your sweet nature.”

  Being told that she was sweet when she felt she couldn’t do anything right made her eyes moist. “Do you ever have one of those days,” she began. “From the moment I opened my eyes this morning, I knew . . .”

  He folded the paper and stood up. “Steady as she goes, sister. You’ll get through it.” The most natural thing would have been to bring her head to his chest, put his arms around her, and give he
r a comforting hug, but he pushed his glasses higher onto the bridge of his nose and said, “Saw an advertisement for a moving sale over in Port Royal. ‘Divorce sale’ they call ’em now. Print it right in the paper. Anyhow, I think I’ll drive over. Might could find a bargain.’Member when I found that Art Deco wall sconce you liked so much?”

  “Uh-huh. And I remember you near electrocuted yourself installing it.”

  “I guess there’d be worse ways to go. By the by, I noticed that one of your porch lights is burned out.”

  “You know . . .” She tilted her head and smiled up at him. “When I was young I always thought that those songs about a woman needing a handyman were dirty, but since I’ve had this house I’ve come to realize that when a gal’s crooning about needing to have her furnace fixed maybe she really does need to have her furnace fixed.”

  Dozier patted her shoulder. “I’ll check out that porch light soon’s I get back. If you win at bridge you can tip me.”

  At 11:45, as she was tossing the spinach salad, the doorbell rang. She knew it would be Mary Gebhardt. Mary had been a high-school principal in Cleveland before she and her husband, Mort, had retired and come South and Mary still conducted her life as though bells rang every hour. “I came a little early,” Mary explained, raking her hand through her close-cropped white hair, “because I want to copy your recipe for cornbread stuffing. Now that Mort and I take most of our meals at the clubhouse, I can barely remember how to fry an egg.” Mary had lived out on Dataw Island for years but she still wore outfits that made her look like a tourist. This morning she was in Reeboks, an aqua velour running suit and, in lieu of a purse, had a fanny pack strapped around her waist. Why was it, Josie wondered as she ushered Mary into the kitchen, that people nowadays, even people with money, wore what amounted to an exercise uniform but usually looked out of shape? And in Mary’s case it really made no sense, since her leathery complexion came not from outdoor exercise but from lying next to the pool, cigarettes close at hand.

  She had no more than settled Mary at the kitchen table, given her pen and paper and a copy of her Lowcountry Cooking (which Mary was always saying she was going to buy but never did), when the bell rang again. “That,” Josie predicted, “will be Peatsy.” On her way to the front door she paused as she passed the hall mirror, smoothing both her hair and her skirt. Unnecessary gestures, since she knew that Peatsy had an aristocratic disregard of convention and wouldn’t have cared if she’d come to the door buck naked. When Mary had first met Peatsy she’d pulled Josie aside and said, “I heard this joke, that there are only two kinds of South Carolinians: those who have never worn shoes, and those who make you feel that you have never worn shoes. I mean, I’ve got a master’s degree and Peatsy Gibbs never went further than high school, but she makes me feel like I’ve never worn shoes. Is that because she was married to a general?” To which Josie had replied, “That’s part of it, but Peatsy ... well, Peatsy’s from Charleston.” Mary didn’t get it, so Josie’d tried to explain that to Charlestonians like Peatsy, who could trace their lineage back to buddies of King Charles II, the question “Who are your people?” was more important than how much education, talent, or even money you might have.

  Peatsy, in a velveteen blazer and violent silk dress, tottering on heels no sane woman in her seventies had any business wearing, came in on a mist of Youth Dew. Josie could tell she’d just come from the beauty parlor because her hair, which had the weight and color of chicken feathers, had been puffed into flossy fullness, and her face beneath her makeup was as flushed as if she were still sitting under the dryer. “Are you feeling all right?” Josie asked.

  “Fine, fine,” Peatsy assured her, “just the usual Christmas rush.” One of her hands, now so bony that her diamond rings were loose, fished her pearls from the neck of her dress. The other was outstretched, her purse and a battered Harrod’s shopping bag dangling from her wrist. “Be a sweetheart and stash this somewhere till we’ve finished the game, will you?” Josie took the shopping bag and saw that it contained three small boxes wrapped in gold paper. She didn’t have to be clairvoyant to know they contained Estée Lauder perfume. She could even guess that it would be Cinnabar for Mary, White Linen for Edna, and Beautiful for her. Only Mary would have taken their agreement not to exchange gifts seriously. Josie had bought each of them a book on South Carolina history, which Mary claimed to be interested in and Peatsy could have written if only she’d had the discipline.

  Since the weather was so balmy they decided to play on the sun porch. They’d already settled themselves at the table when Edna came though the back door, letting it slam behind her. Peatsy jumped and Mary said, “What the hell!” but Josie was used to Edna’s entrances. Ever since she’d been a child she’d felt as though she melted into the wallpaper when her sister Edna entered a room. “Sorry I’m late,” Edna said, dropping her shoulder bag next to her chair and stripping off the jacket of her cerise pantsuit. “That new girl I hired to work in the shop is about as reliable as a politician’s promises.” Peatsy smiled but cut her eyes over to Josie, giving her an “Edna’s late again” look, then she reached for the cards and began to shuffle. Josie set a glass of iced tea next to Edna’s place and went into the kitchen. “I’ll never know how you can drink iced tea year-round,” Mary said with a mock shiver.

  “Do you think we could start?” Peatsy asked. “I haven’t near finished packing and you know I’m flying up to D.C. tomorrow. And I’ve still got to do some shopping.”

  “Shopping,” Mary groaned as Edna shucked off her gold bracelets and called for Josie to bring her some Sweet’n Low. As Josie set the salad plates before them, Mary said, “I read Evie’s column in the paper today. She’s so right about these godawful Christmas holidays.” Josie braced herself, hoping Evie hadn’t written about some miserable family scene from their past. “And all the psychologists agree with her,” Mary went on. “They say more people go into depressions around the holidays than at any other time of the year. The holidays induce trauma. I’m glad I married a Jew. At least we never had to go overboard celebrating Christmas, though when the kids were little ...”

  “Trauma?” Peatsy interrupted. “Why should a holiday celebration induce trauma?”

  “Well, you know,” Mary insisted, “everyone has such unrealistic expectations of love and togetherness, and then there’s the pressure to buy gifts—”

  “We’re not drafted into celebrating,” Peatsy reminded her. “If people don’t want to do it, then they just shouldn’t bother.”

  “But the social pressure,” Mary insisted.

  “Oh, social pressure!” Peatsy scoffed. “I simply don’t understand all this fiddle-faddle about social pressure.” For Peatsy, conformity was not a straightjacket but a shield, and she’d understood since girlhood that you could do anything you damned pleased if that shield was in place. “Are we playing cards, or what?”

  After the fourth rubber they’d finished their salads and settled down, playing with killer concentration. The conversation had meandered down the usual back roads—the weather, diets, the commercialization of Christmas—and hit the highway of serious gossip. “I dropped by Beaufort Memorial yesterday to see Grace,” Peatsy said. She lowered the cards, which she always held stiff and close to her mouth like a geisha’s fan. “George told me they’re going to have to take her up to Charleston for the next operation, but they haven’t told her yet.”

  Mary rearranged her hand with her usual swift precision. “I think it’s downright criminal to hold out on people when they’re that sick. On some level people always guess when they’re going to die and when those around them won’t admit it, it just isolates them.”

  “You sound like Shirley MacLaine,” Edna said. “How the hell does anyone know when they’re going to die?”

  “I just think they do,” Mary insisted. “After Grace had that first operation and went through chemo, they said they’d got it all, but now, just six months later, she’s back in the hospital. She’s got to
know. If people’d just have the guts to tell her the truth she’d at least be able to prepare for it.”

  “How could she prepare for it?” Josie asked.

  “Well, she could get that lousy son of hers to come visit. He’s so neglectful. He hasn’t been to see her in years.” Realizing that she’d touched a sore spot, Mary quickly looked away from Josie. “She could arrange her will,” she stumbled on. “She could say good-bye. She could . . . well, not that I’m a believer, but she could prepare herself spiritually.”

  “I can tell you,” Peatsy said, “you won’t catch me going through chemotherapy.”

  Edna laughed. “Oh, Peatsy, you’re so vain you’d rather die than have your hair fall out.”

  “Maybe so,” Peatsy agreed, “ ’cause I feel that the quality of life is important. If you’re just holding on by your fingernails, being snatched bald by chemo, so sick you can’t eat or drink . . . I just don’t see the point of it.”

  Josie said, “I guess none of us can know what she’d do unless she was confronted with the real situation.” She hated it when the conversation turned, as it invariably did, to sick friends, doctors, and medical bills, but she supposed that at their time of life this was as natural as teenage girls talking about dates. “I’ll swing by and visit Grace this afternoon,” she said. Then, standing up, “Everyone ready for dessert?”

  “What are you offering?” Edna wanted to know.

  “Just some thawed-out coconut cake and strawberries.”

  “I’ll pass,” Peatsy said. “I’ve been chasing around since early morning and I’m feeling a little woozy.”

  “And you’re the only one who doesn’t have to watch her weight,” Mary complained. “I guess I’ll just have the strawberries. Remember when we were kids and only rich people ate fruit out of season? We were lucky we didn’t get scurvy during those winters in Cleveland back then. And speaking of winters, I was watching the Weather Channel last night and I saw where New York’s supposed to get a big storm. I hope Cam’s prepared.”