Islands: A Novel Part 14

"You've got to be kidding," Fairlie said. "It must be thirty degrees out there. I didn't bring a coat."

"Wrap up in a blanket," Camilla said. "You can't miss this."

We bundled ourselves into whatever we could find.

"Give me five minutes," Camilla said. "And I need to borrow Henry."

"When didn't you?" Fairlie said, almost inaudibly.

I thought I was the only one to hear her. It was true. Camilla had asked Henry for help of one sort or another many times since Charlie died, and he had given it affectionately and without question. So what? The other men had come to her aid at times, too. We all had. We were, after all, the Scrubs.

I watched as she and Henry went out the back door and vanished down the steps. She had on her old raincoat and seemed to float on Henry's arm like a captive cloud. From the back you did not notice the cruel hump. As they vanished out of sight down the steps, she was saying something to him, and he was bent close to listen, laughing.

"Now," she called up presently, and we went out into the cold of the dying century.

Someone had put up the old tiki torches in a circle in the sand, and lit them, and the glow was both beautiful and unearthly. In the center of the circle they made sat a group of large tin boxes and cans, half sunk in the sand. Just outside the circle was an aluminum washtub filled with champagne on ice. Beside it was a tray of those ghastly plastic flutes that you can buy in grocery stores around the holidays.

We were silent, looking at Camilla and Henry.

"Fireworks," Camilla said, laughter caught in her throat. "Charlie absolutely loved them. Henry got as many of the fancy ones as he could find, and we're going to shoot them off at midnight. Light up the whole sky. Let Charlie and everybody else know the Scrubs are still here."

And we did. We filled the awful gla.s.ses full of the wonderful champagne, and held them up in silent toasts to one another, and as the bells of all the churches in Charleston and Mount Pleasant and Sullivan's Island rang out, and the great eruption of fireworks from the waterfront park across the bay in Charleston bloomed into the sky, Henry reached down and lit the fuses.

"Get back," he said, and we jumped back just as there was a great whump and the air exploded with the sound and light and color. Streaking arcs shot into the sky and became multiple showers of pure color, drifting slowly toward the earth. Great bangs produced green, blue, and red flowers, never seen in an earthly garden. Exploding stars seemed to shriek in midair, and died gently on the sand in tiny sizzles of yellow and silver. It was amazing, an aurora borealis that we had created for Charlie at the birth of this looming epoch.

No one spoke for a long moment, and then Lila whispered, "What are they, Henry?"

"Cherry bombs, screamers, Roman candles. Only not the old ones we used to shoot off when we were kids. These are the real deals. I got them at a stand on West Ashley. We probably needed a permit."

"If we didn't get a permit to launch Charlie," Fairlie said, grinning, "we sure as h.e.l.l don't need one to shoot off a few firecrackers."

After the last spark had settled to earth and vanished like a snowflake, we all kissed. We had never done this at our other New Year's Eve celebrations, only with our husbands or wives, but this seemed the natural and indeed the only thing to do. Lewis kissed me deeply and long, his hands in my hair. Simms's mustache brushed and tickled as he bent down to me. Henry's kiss was soft, and as sweet and unaffected as Henry himself.

"Happy New Year, pretty girl," he whispered.

"Happy New Year, Charlie," Camilla said in a light, clear voice.

Mine were not the only wet eyes as we went back up the stairs and into the warm house.

"I brought brandy," Camilla said. "Let's have some in front of the fire before we go to bed. I hate to let this night go."

We sat before the dying fire, mostly quiet, sipping the old Courvoisier. My mind, lulled with brandy and firelight, did not alight on any one thing, but hovered back and forth over the years in this house, sipping at them like a hummingbird. Lewis sat on the rump-sprung sofa beside me and held my hand, his finger tracing soft scrolls on my wrist. For a long time no one spoke.

Then Camilla said, "There's one more thing. I've been thinking for a long time about how to end this night, and I think this is perfect. I hope y'all will agree. Let's renew our vows. Let's repeat the Scrubs's sacred oath to take care of each other forever, and swear it on the photograph, like we did way back when."

Her eyes and skin glowed, and her mouth curved in the soft smile she smiled when she had done something to please one of us, a smile of pleasure and grat.i.tude at being allowed to serve. If she had asked me at that moment to swear to murder, I would have done it.

We all raised our voices in delighted agreement. Like the rest of Camilla's night, it was simply the perfect thing to do.

Simms had stood up to get the photograph from its place on the wall when Fairlie said, "Oh, let's wait till the next time we're out here. We've really got to get back to town, and I don't want to rush it."

We all stared at her. Her cheeks were flaming.

"You aren't staying over?" Camilla said. They always did, on New Year's Eve. We all did.

None of the rest of us spoke. Strangeness curled into the air.

"Well, I just wanted to start off the next thousand years in my own bed."

"Your own bed is upstairs, too," Camilla said softly. She looked at Henry, who would not meet anyone's eyes. Finally he raised his own to Camilla's, and then to all ours.

"We have something to tell you," he said. "There's no sense in waiting."

"Henry!" Fairlie spat. "You promised...."

"It's not right, Fairlie. We've let it go too long," he said, and his voice was steely and even. I had never heard him speak so to her. My breath seemed to stop. Whatever it was, I suddenly wished I might die before I heard it.

"You know I've been talking about retiring," he said. "We've decided that I'll do it early next summer, and...that we'll go to Kentucky."

He paused, as if waiting for us to reply, but no one did. Camilla made a soft sound of pain but did not speak. Fairlie was looking steadily into the fire, her lips a tight line.

"Fairlie's given up most of a lifetime to me and Charleston," Henry said, almost pleadingly. "It's only fair to spend the rest of it in her place. Her brother is selling us the family's farm, and Fairlie's going to have horses. All her old friends are there, and she's always wanted to breed flat racers."

"And what will you do?" Lewis said, his voice quiet and thick. I knew that he was near tears, or real anger. For myself, I only felt a white, ringing shock.

"Muck out the stables," Henry said, but his voice was not behind the joke. "No, I'll spend a lot more time with the flying docs, and maybe do some consulting work in Louisville. It's not far. And we'll be here every summer. We'll want to see Nancy and the kids, and of course, we can't do without you all. We'll have lots of time. That's what retirement is for."

Still, no one spoke. In the silence I could hear the cras.h.i.+ng of walls, the pattering rain of mortar.

There was a flurry of polite conversation then, all of us murmuring our good wishes and agreeing that of course we'd see them, almost as much as we did now. I knew that no one believed it. Fairlie's eyes were fixed far away from this house on the island. I wondered if she'd ever really loved it. I wondered if I'd ever really known her.

They got up to go, and Camilla went to them and kissed both of them on the cheek.

"Nothing matters but that you're happy," she said. Her eyes were closed. I did not want to look into them. Henry's were blank.

After they had gone, we went, one by one, up the stairs to our bedrooms. There did not seem to be anything else to say. In the high old bed in the room that had always been ours, Lewis and I clung close together under the dusty piled quilts. Once he started to say something, but I shook my head against his neck, and he did not. After a while, I think he slept.

But I did not, not for a long time. I lay still, watching the dust-speckled path of the moon arch over our bed and finally fade away. Camilla's room was next to ours, and I heard no sound from it, though I listened. I thought that I might get up and go to her if it sounded as though she was in distress. But the night was silent, except for the wind and the peppering sand on the windowpanes.

I had a very strong sense of her, though. It was almost as if I could see and feel her through the wall, physically touch her. I felt the presence of Camilla Curry in the next room almost painfully clearly, Camilla lying absolutely still and silent, alert in every atom of her being. I had the odd sense that she was keeping watch.

The first Tuesday of the new year I was scheduled to fly to New Orleans for a consultation trip. I was still feeling shocked and bruised, almost physically, and did not want to go.

"Go on," Lewis said. "It'll help."

So I made my plans.

The morning of the day I was to leave, Fairlie called me. The sound of her voice jolted me, as if she had spoken from the grave. But it was her normal voice, rich and slow, this time full of annoyance.

"I am so mad at Henry I could spit," she said. "He's going out of town tonight with those d.a.m.ned flying f.u.c.kers, and he'd promised me he'd take me to see Tosca at the Galliard. I'm going to run away from home. Want to come out to the island with me and spend a couple of nights? We could have a slumber party. Give each other Tonis and stuff."

It was as if she had never murdered the Scrubs with one stroke.

"I'm going out of town, too," I said, keeping my voice as neutral as I could. "Sounds fun, though. Maybe Camilla would like to go."

"No," Fairlie said. "She said she had the flu. She sounded terrible."

"Well, will you mind being alone out there? I've always loved it."

"Actually, no," she said. "It'll be good for me. I can be as sour and awful as I want to. Maybe I'll run naked on the beach. Maybe I'll pee on the fire. Maybe I'll eat worms."

I laughed a little, because she sounded so like the old, non-murdering Fairlie, and because I could see her doing it all.

"Pee away," I said. "See you when I get back."

I called Camilla. Her voice was hoa.r.s.e and nearly inaudible.

"Have you got the flu?" I asked. "Fairlie said you did."

"Not really. Just laryngitis. I just didn't much want to go out to the island with her."

"Do you hate the thought of her being there? I do."

"Of course not," Camilla said. "It's as much her house as it is mine. I just don't feel like going."

"Well," I said, "take care of yourself. I'll be back in a couple of days. I'll come up."

"Do," she said. "I miss you when you go away."

The meeting in New Orleans was interminable and largely unproductive, and to add insult to injury, my connecting flight out of Atlanta to Charleston was four hours late. It was nearly three in the morning when I pulled into our courtyard on Bull Street. The downstairs windows were lighted. I frowned. I had thought Lewis would be out at Edisto.

He was sitting at the kitchen table, a cup of untouched coffee in front of him. He was in his scrubs, and he looked ghastly, white-faced and hollow-cheeked. His eyes and nose were red, as if he had been crying.

"Oh, G.o.d, Lewis, what is it?" I cried softly, running to kneel beside him.

He took both my hands in his, and squeezed them so hard that I flinched. I knew he did not notice.

"Anny...," he said, then his voice died. He cleared his throat. I waited, almost totally shut down inside.

"Anny. The beach house burned. It burned tonight. There isn't anything left."

"Fairlie," I said, my ears ringing.

His voice seemed to come from a great, windy distance.

"Fairlie didn't get out," Lewis said, and began to cry.

Part Three.

8.

THE NEW HOUSE-or houses, rather-sat on a small hummock of palmettos and live oaks, looking out over spa.r.s.e, winter-grayed marshes into a wide, wind-whipped stretch of steely water. Around them, as far as you could see, there was nothing but marsh, hummock, forest, water, sky. Wildness. It was beautiful, even in winter, and I knew that when the marsh greened with spring and the waterfowl and the creek's small, scuttling citizens came back, it would be spectacular. It was early February, and a low purple-and-orange sunset burned over the water and the marsh and woods beyond. The whole vista was steeped in a vast silence and stillness so profound that you instinctively whispered. Though it was creek and marshland much like that on which Sweetgra.s.s had been built, it did not feel the same. I did not whisper at Sweetgra.s.s. When I got out of the car with Lewis and stood looking at the three houses, I ached, suddenly and almost mortally, for the sound of the sea.

We had turned off the Maybank Highway and crossed over to John's Island from Wadmalaw Island. It seemed a long drive. I was used to the semirural landscape going to Edisto, and the ba.n.a.l jumble of small subdivisions, convenience stores, fast-food places, and occasional used-car lot along the highway was depressing.

Though Lewis had not told me, I knew that we were going to see a place that the others had thought might be a possible replacement for the beach house. Oh, of course not that, but a place on the water that could shelter the Scrubs. We had not spoken of it, but I knew that I for one would never again go to Sullivan's Island, never again spend time with the sight and the sound of that warm, personal sea. But that did not stop me from mourning them almost as deeply as I mourned Fairlie, and I did not think that I could like the new place. I did not say so, but I knew that Lewis could read my silences as well as my words. He didn't speak much, either, during the drive. When at last he said, "Here we are," his voice sounded rusty from disuse.

The road was graveled and pocked with winter rainwater, and though small, stark one-story brick buildings stood on either side of the turnoff, the road itself was wild and steepled with moss and branches. There seemed to be nothing on either side but the old, encroaching forest. A few of the trees wore faded orange ribbons around their trunks, but they did not intrude on the thick, chilly isolation. When we came out into a clearing and saw the houses and the marsh and the water beyond, something p.r.i.c.kled in my mind. It seemed that something else entirely should be standing at the end of the long, stout dock that stretched forever out over the marsh before it reached the water. I could almost see it, a sort of pentimento beneath the landscaped hummock and the three graceful little tabby houses set in a semicircle on a circular sh.e.l.l driveway.

I looked at Lewis, my brow furrowed, and he grinned and said, "Booter's. Remember?"

And I did, suddenly: the tin-roofed pavilion where we had eaten oysters and drunk beer and danced like wild things under a white moon so long ago, the first time I had ever been out with Lewis. Now there was no flimsy lattice of sagging docks and grubby, wallowing boats, but instead the grand, silvered walkway and dock with a fretwork Victorian pavilion at the end, and three slips for boats, empty now.

I looked back up at the houses, flushed pink with the last of the sun. Thick plantings of oleanders and crepe myrtle framed them, and the great live oaks behind them made a silvery backdrop with their moss. In the spring, I knew that resurrection ferns would explode from their trunks. The houses had long, low verandas and porch swings, and I could see, just behind them, a great screened enclosure that meant a pool. A small, low tabby building beyond that proved to be a guest house. Lights glowed sweetly in the mullioned windows of the middle house.

"Oh, Booter," I said around a lump in my throat. "What happened to Booter?"

Lewis came around and opened my door, but I did not get out. I wanted to slam the car doors and wrench the car around and squeal out of this beautiful place that lay over the bones of Booter's Bait and Oysters. A small bit of the sinew and bone of my youth was interred with Booter's.

There's less and less of us left now, I thought. Not of the people we were. It's being blown away, or burned or buried.

"Booter is in the VA hospital with Alzheimer's and emphysema," Lewis said. "He's been there a long time. Henry and Simms and I go by and see him sometimes, but he doesn't know us. I don't think he can last much longer. He sold the place and the chunk of land around it-it must be a hundred or so acres-about fifteen years ago, to some super-rich guy from New Jersey who wanted a private hunting-and-fis.h.i.+ng place for his buddies and a getaway for his family. He got as far as these houses and the dock before he got hauled off to the slammer for insider trading."

"Who owns it now?"

"As a matter of fact, Simms does," Lewis said. "He bought it as investment property right after the guy got sent up. I think he thought he might develop it one day. But so far he hasn't. He's kept the houses and dock in good shape, but beyond that, nothing's been touched. We thought it might...you know..." His voice was so freighted with hope that I smiled and squeezed his hand.

"It's pretty, isn't it?" I said. "Not at all what you'd think a New Jersey convicted felon would build. Let's go take a look. Somebody's here already. But I'll bet you knew that."

He grinned and nodded, and we scrunched across the oyster-sh.e.l.l driveway and up to the middle house on Booter's marsh.

The weekend after Fairlie's memorial service all of us except Henry met at Camilla's loft and sat looking out over the cold, tossing harbor toward the island that no longer held anything for us, and talked about what to do next. From time to time, one or more of us broke off to mop at tears, and Lewis and Simms sat patting the old dogs, and looking steadfastly at the open ocean, not the island. Henry was not with us. I did not know when he would be, again.

n.o.body had really wanted this meeting or this conversation, but Camilla had insisted.

"If we don't have a plan, we won't do anything, and the Scrubs will just drift apart and none of us will even have each other. I know it's too soon. I know n.o.body wants to talk about another place. But we need for things to go on, one way or another, and I think we need each other and the water, and I think we need to do it sooner rather than later. It will never be the same, but it might come to be something real to us. A different place for changed people, maybe, but still ours. I need the us of us. Please think about it for my sake, if nothing else."

And my heart pinched me, because Camilla literally never implored. And of us all, she had lost the most. Charlie, and her friend, and her house. I still thought of it as Camilla's house. I think we all did, except maybe Camilla.

"I think we should do it," I said, clearing my throat. "I don't think we should drift too long. What if we're not us except when we're together?"