Folly Beach Part 13

"Thanks," I said.

"Sorry it took so long. The bartenders are slammed. Okay! Got a few specials for you tonight," she said and began describing the intergalactic heights to which the chef planned to elevate the unsuspecting humble tilapia and how the ceviche was going to change the way we viewed southwestern cuisine, especially now that it had collided into a spectacular fusion of chilies and seafood from the pristine waters around the Lowcountry. "And, not to be overlooked are some mighty fine spiced shrimp, wood grilled and finished off with a cilantro garlic b.u.t.ter and that comes with a side of sweet corn pudding. Of course there's always the South by Southwest Mixed Grill . . ."

"I'm full from just listening!" I said.

John shook his head, smiling at his former student. "I always said, Ms. Geier, you should go into theater. You're missing your calling. Do we really need more lawyers?"

Ms. Geier grinned and said, "I don't know, sir. I hope so. Y'all need a few minutes?"

"No, I think I'm all set. How about you, Cate? See anything interesting on that menu?"

"Sure, I'm thinking the ceviche to start and the Hawaiian sunfish? How's that sound?"

"Very good! And you, professor?"

"I'm thinking all that effort on the tilapia shouldn't go to waste and I'll have the day-boat scallops to begin."

"Perfect! I'll get your order right into the kitchen."

"Thanks," John said, watching her scuttle away. "She's a real talent. Would've made a great playwright."

"Hmmm," I said. "I always wanted to write a play, a big musical with great ch.o.r.eography like the old days or maybe something for the screen."

"And why didn't you? Cheers!"

"Cheers!" I said, touching the salty side of my gla.s.s to his frosted mug with a musical clink. "Well, I started down that road but then I hit a few twists and turns, you know, marriage, children . . ."

"So did Dorothy Heyward."

"You mean DuBose Heyward's wife?" I took a large sip of my c.o.c.ktail. "Gos.h.!.+ This is really delicious. But wait, she was a playwright." Even I knew that much.

"Yep. I know. Dorothy Heyward always intended to be a playwright, from the time she was a little girl but the facts of her actual career make for a very interesting saga on their own."

"Tell me the saga," I said, feeling infinitely more relaxed as the alcohol entered my bloodstream.

"I don't want to bore you . . ."

"I don't think you could, but I'll let you know if you do. I mean, I really am interested."

"Okay. So, in the very beginning of her career one of her professors urged her to get to know the theater from the inside out."

"Good advice. You should always know the business inside and out."

"Definitely. So somewhere in between the time she went to New York to study playwriting at Columbia and when she went to Harvard to join George Baker's famous Workshop 47, she got herself cast as a chorus girl in a traveling show."

"Seriously? I danced in plenty of chorus lines, including the play A Chorus Line, for the exact same reason! So, how did she like it?"

"Hated it. Thought it was demeaning to be a chorus girl, especially back then, in the vaudeville days, when theater people were suspect anyway. I think the whole theater world probably was a pretty s.e.xist environment then."

"This would have been what year?"

"Early twenties. The story goes that in this particular play, all the girls had to enter the stage in their underwear, carrying a little suitcase and wearing high heels. Then all the girls would file down into the audience, pull out a dress from their suitcase and, get this, sit on a man's lap so he could b.u.t.ton her up the back of her dress."

"You're kidding, right?"

"No."

"I am beyond stunned. How many laws would that break today?"

"About a hundred, I'll bet. Talk about creating a hostile work environment?"

"No lie. That was a pretty gutsy thing to do for her time, wasn't it?"

"Yes, it definitely was. Especially given her background. She grew up on the right side of the tracks with her aunts. She lost her parents when she was a young girl . . ."

"What?"

"But her aunts seemed to have done an amazing job of giving her a cultured life."

"Aunts?"

"Yep. I mean, she began going to the opera as a child and later she was sent to universities and so forth. And this was in the day when women rarely went to college except to become a teacher or a nurse. Dorothy was encouraged to be creative. Her whole family was very musical."

"Was she? Dorothy, I mean. Was she musical?"

"Not so much. In her papers she talks about the fact that she had a tin ear and couldn't play any instrument very well, except for the piano, a little."

"This is sounding creepy-like you've been reading my diaries, professor, not Dorothy Heyward's."

"I thought you might find her history interesting."

"I do. Where are these papers?"

"Right here in Charleston. They're all in the archives at the South Carolina Historical Society downtown. For a slight fee, like five dollars, you can go read them and you really should. After all, you're living in her house."

"You're right, you're absolutely right."

"Yeah, they were quite the couple, old Dorothy and DuBose. She was definitely the pepper in his pot."

"And him? What was he like?"

"Well, I think he can be described most politely as a man of his time."

"That's pretty cryptic."

"Yes. Because I think people should draw their own conclusions about others, especially when it comes to relabeling Charlestonians with aristocratic backgrounds."

"So, what you're really saying is that anything less than veneration of Mr. Heyward could be considered desecration of something sacred?"

"Exactly. Look, among other things, here's the guy who allegedly put Charleston on the map again with Porgy and Bess."

"What do you mean allegedly?"

"DuBose published the book Porgy in 1925, not the play."

"Then who did? The Gershwins?"

"Nope, the play Porgy appeared on Broadway in 1927. Gershwin's play didn't run until 1934. And you should know, DuBose dropped out of school at fourteen and went to work in a hardware store. Then on the docks. Then in insurance."

"But Dorothy went to Harvard . . ."

"My goodness! Miss Cate Cooper! You are one quick study!"

"Do you understand this kind of talk is practically treason?"

"What? What did I say? I didn't say a thing! You did!"

"Holy moly. John, this is serious."

"Yeah, it is. Would you like another drink? I'm gonna have another beer."

I looked at the bottom of the inside of my gla.s.s to see that I had all but chugged this, my Magic Margarita. I wasn't feeling magical but I surely knew that John Risley was capable of pulling away the curtains and exposing the Wizard of Oz. I was fascinated.

"Yes. Yes, I would. Thanks. Maybe a gla.s.s of white wine? Like a pinot grigio?"

John turned away and scanned the restaurant and after a minute he made eye contact with young Ms. Geier. My wine and his beer were ordered, our appetizers and entrees came and went, and I listened with both ears. I had found a new purpose for the days and weeks ahead. As we talked some more about Dorothy and DuBose Heyward, many other characters of their day came exploding to light, exploding because that was the way John presented them.

The members of the Charleston Renaissance and especially the Poetry Society of South Carolina were like a little army of determined carpenter ants, chewing their way out of the final mounds of Civil War ashes, through the poverty of the Great Depression and into the light of modern day-a new day. Their collective mission was to look to the future, to find everything about it worth living for and to take their artistic colleagues from every discipline of the arts from all over the country, bring them to Charleston, educate her citizens on what was happening in the larger world, and move forward. Whew! Now, there's a mission statement, if I ever heard one.

When John spoke of these people-John Bennett, Josephine Pinckney, Hervey Allen, Beatrice Witte Ravenel, and others-he became contagiously animated. His eyes danced and he leaned in across the table in conspiratorial whispers when he talked about the alleged private life of Laura Bragg or when he revealed the secrets of Julia Peterkin.

"You make it sound more exciting than Woodstock," I said and we laughed.

"It was."

"I want to know everything about it."

"I'll make an historian out of you before I'm done. If you stick around long enough, that is."

"I think I'll be around for a while."

Driving home across the Cooper River Bridge, high above the port of the City of Charleston, for perhaps the hundredth time in my life, I was struck by the great beauty of the s.h.i.+pping industry. Even with some of the container s.h.i.+ps in their weathered state, I thought they were all beautiful. So many rested below us, docked overnight for an evening of sh.o.r.e leave, waiting for cargo that would come in the morning, waiting for the harbor captain to give them the signal to s.h.i.+p out, just arriving from Belgium or Port Elizabeth, or perhaps bound for someplace exotic like Singapore.

"It's always something to watch, isn't it? The port, I mean," I said.

"Yeah, it's irresistible to me, too. All those people, all that cargo, coming here, going somewhere else. Nothing stagnant about harbor life, that's for sure."

"That's the attraction, I think."

"Definitely. That whole industry has changed so dramatically since technology moved into our lives. But, like a lot of things, the more it changes the more it stays the same."

"I like being able to rely on things staying the same, well, I used to anyway," I said and then realized how pitiful that must have sounded.

John was quiet then and I thought, oh Lord, he's probably worried that I'm getting emotional. Men hated it when women let their feelings get the better of them. I had probably just ruined the night by reminding him about the loss of Addison, that I was broke, and that I was mortified by my changed circ.u.mstances. He was deciding then and there that I was too much trouble to get involved with. I probably was. He was probably wondering what I did to make my husband want to kill himself. Good grief, I thought, I'm not only a broke widow, I'm also damaged goods. Maybe dangerous, too.

My paranoid indulgence was for nothing. Just as I turned to him and was about to launch into an I'll-survive explanation for what I'd said, he reached his hand out to cover mine and gave it a squeeze.

"Look," he said, "I know it hasn't been easy lately. It's okay. Anyway, sometimes change is good."

"Maybe."

"No, not maybe. Definitely. I mean, look, how do you know what's going to happen to you now? The universe, or whatever you believe in, might have something unbelievably wonderful in store for you."

"I have merely retreated to the familiar and I believe in G.o.d, just so you know. I grew up Catholic, but in Aunt Daisy's Leftist cafeteria sect."

He laughed then, a hearty laugh that had been unused for a while. I began to laugh, too. The pall was officially lifted.

He said, "I want to hear all about that."

"In between history lessons?"

"Anytime."

We finally pulled up to the Porgy House and I was safely home, back on Folly Beach. There was nothing darker than a beach on a moonless night, and at the door, I fumbled around in my purse to find the keys.

"You need a porch light," he said.

"Boy, no kidding!"

"I can take care of that. I mean, it's no big deal. I go to Lowe's all the time."

"Thanks. But I don't know if it would be historically correct. Aunt Daisy doesn't want anything changed."

"Oh, well, maybe the Heywards used tiki torches. Let's find out."

I giggled again. G.o.d, I was glad he had a sense of humor. What's worse than a humorless man?

I finally found the house key and unlocked the front door. Rather than invite him in (dangerous territory), I decided it was wiser to just say good night so that the evening would end on a high note. I turned to face him only to see him retreating down the steps.

"I had a great time," he said.

"Me too," I said but there was no mistaking the disappointment in my traitorous voice.

He stopped and turned around. "What's wrong?"

"Wrong? Nothing! Nothing's wrong. I just thought, you know, well . . . I thought, well, okay then. I had a great time, too!"

"Did I do something wrong?"