On Folly Beach Read online

  Catherine stood on a chair while Maggie’s nine-year-old sister, Lulu, used an eyeliner pencil to draw a line on the back of Cat’s long tan legs. Lulu sent a worried glance toward Maggie. Lulu never liked to take sides, but usually ended up with Cat, anyway, whether she wanted to or not. It was hard to say no to Cat, no matter who you were.

  Catherine waved her left hand with the gold band winking on the third finger. “I’m an adult now, and I can say what I want. And look, he’s made Lulu mess up, and now she’s going to have to start all over.” She wiped her forearm across her forehead. “Damn, it’s hot in here, considering that it’s January. I need to open this window right now.”

  She stepped off the stool and perched herself on the wide windowsill of the casement window. Squatting, she lifted the lever while pushing into the window with her hip.

  Maggie bit her lip but when she couldn’t stand it anymore, she said, “You’re going to get yourself killed, Cat, if you lean on the window while you open it. Why don’t we just wait so I can call somebody to get it fixed?”

  “And die of heat prostration first? I’d rather not, but thank you very much. Besides, I’ve been practicing, and I know how to do it now.” As if even mechanical things couldn’t argue with her, the window gave way at the same moment Cat leaned in to prevent herself from toppling out of the second-story window. “See?” she said, grinning as she stepped from the sill and back to the stool.

  Maggie sat on the edge of the white chenille-draped bed in front of the open window and shrugged out of her sweater. “It’s only sixty degrees, Cat. Hardly what anybody would qualify as hot and certainly not enough to warrant putting your life in danger to open a window.” A cool ocean breeze flipped the eyelet curtains into the room as if to accentuate her point. She noticed for the first time the tight white blouse and red skirt her cousin wore. “Are you going somewhere?”

  “Out. I don’t care where, just as long as I’m out. Because of all the soldiers coming in, they’re having dancing on the pier, even though it’s not summer. I swear I can hear the music, and I don’t see why I can’t have fun just like all the other girls.” Cat sent her a petulant look that only made her look more dangerous. Before her death, Cat’s mother had always hoped some Hollywood producer would discover Cat and make her a star. With blond hair, green eyes, and a body with curves in all the right places, she was sometimes mistaken for Lana Turner—a mistake Cat rarely corrected.

  Maggie bit her lip, not wanting another row. But a promise made on her own mother’s deathbed dictated that she had to try to rein Cat in, if such a thing were possible. After a deep breath she said, “It’s too soon, Cat. What will people say? We only just buried Jim, and his death deserves his widow’s respect.”

  Cat remained where she was like a golden statue, eerily silent. Lulu, sensing the upcoming battle, scooted away into a corner, hugging her knees to her chest.

  In a deep voice that didn’t even sound like hers, Cat said, “Jim’s dead, Maggie. Not me. I’m only nineteen years old, for God’s sake! I’ve got my whole life ahead of me, and I’m much too young to be buried next to a man I was only married to for three months.”

  Lulu began to cry, the sound like a whimpering puppy. She’d loved Jim as only a nine-year-old girl could. It was because of her that Jim had come into their lives. She’d fallen at the roller rink and hurt her leg, and Jim had carried her home like a knight in shining armor. Maggie had thought so, too, warming to his easy grin and gray eyes, touched by stories of his own little sister he’d left behind in Louisiana. He’d taken her dancing twice, and had kissed her once. But then he’d met Cat, and there had been no more dances or kisses.

  She stared at her cousin now, the old promise rubbing her like a new shoe. They’d been raised together, their mothers being sisters and Cat’s father having deserted his family long before Cat was even born. Maybe it was because only Maggie saw the desperation in Cat, the hunger and loneliness that dogged her as she hunted for love. And it would have bothered Cat greatly to know that most of the time Maggie only pitied her beautiful cousin.

  “You don’t mean that, Cat. I know that you don’t.”

  Cat stared out the window. “I want to live. I want to dance.” She turned around, her eyes hopeful. “Come with me, Maggie. You can be my chaperone, although it should be the other way around since you’re single and I’m the widow. It’ll be fun. Just like old times.”

  Maggie looked down at her freshly dyed black dress, and her frayed fingernails and stockingless pale legs. Going dancing with Cat was never fun. Maggie would slide into orbit around Cat’s sun, cast in shadow from her light. She wondered sometimes if Cat needed her to go so Maggie could witness that Cat was desirable and wanted, as if to prove that her father’s leaving and her mother’s death had nothing to do with them not wanting her enough.

  Cat stepped down off the chair, taking off the high-heeled pumps that she’d badgered Jim into buying for her instead of paying rent. She stood in front of Maggie, her green eyes pleading. “Come on, Maggie. I can’t go by myself—what would the neighbors say?”

  Maggie turned away, shaking her head at Cat’s use of Maggie’s own argument. “You’re a recent widow, Cat. You’re not supposed to want to dance. Or be in the company of other men.” Her heart tightened a little as it always did when she thought of Jim, of the way his eyes crinkled in the corners when he smiled, or the way he looked at you when you were speaking as if there was nothing more important in this world than what you had to say.

  Cat turned slightly to catch her profile in the cheval mirror in the corner, smoothing her blouse and skirt to accentuate her figure. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Maggie, there’s a war going on. All bets are off. Things that weren’t okay before are perfectly acceptable now.” She lifted her left eyebrow in the way she’d perfected after she’d seen Gone With the Wind. “I’ll let you borrow my blue dress—the one with the pretty collar—and my mother’s brooch. I’ll do your makeup, too. I can make you look like Bette Davis in that movie you like so much. You’re just as pretty, you know, if you just put some effort into it. Don’t you want a husband? There’re men everywhere now. And it’s up to us women to do our duty before they head off to do theirs.”

  “Jezebel,” Maggie said, saying the title of her favorite movie, which Cat could never seem to remember, along with Maggie’s favorite ice-cream flavor or how she was shy around men. At least she had been until she’d met Jim and forgotten to be shy.

  “What?” Cat asked distractedly, still studying her reflection. “Oh, right. The movie. Anyway, I can make you look just like her if you’ll let me.” She grabbed Maggie’s hands and squeezed them, looking right into her eyes, and Maggie knew what Cat was about to say before the words were out of her mouth. “You owe me, remember?”

  Of course she did. Cat had been reminding her since Maggie was eight years old and on a dare had left the safety of the sand and dove headfirst into an oncoming wave. Maggie supposed it had never occurred to either of them that she couldn’t swim, but Cat, with her strong and steady strokes, had made it to her side and hauled her out back onto the sand like a beached whale before another wave could drag her out into deeper water. And even though she reminded Maggie often that it had been she who saved her, Cat never did once mention that she’d also been the one who’d dared Maggie to do it in the first place.

  “Fine,” Maggie said, giving in to the inevitable, silently wishing she could stay home again with Lulu and their books, slipping away into other worlds where she was confident and beautiful like Cat and men were honorable and worthy like Jim.

  “Great,” Cat said, beaming. “You won’t regret it.”

  Maggie smiled back, halfheartedly knowing that she already did, and watched as Lulu turned her face away and began to cry again.

  FOLLY BEACH HAD LONG SINCE been considered the wilder sister of her barrier-island siblings. The cottages with their trademark weathered paint and rickety steps, the dirt roads and general air of don’t-gi
ve-a-damn made the tiny slip of island outside Charleston Harbor a haven to those who loved her, and an object of derision for those who didn’t know her well enough to love her.

  Maggie loved it because it was the place where the memories of her mother lived in each shell she plucked from the sand, and each marsh sunset she watched settle over the Folly River. Their home on Second Street, with its broad porch and flaking yellow paint, was the house her father, a Charleston lawyer, had built for her mother for a summer escape from the heat of the city right after they were married. Everything about the house had her mother’s touch, from the eyelet curtains in the two bedrooms and the large picture window in the front room that faced the street, to the baskets of sand dollars and collection of sea glass that dotted the windowsills.

  Seeing them and touching them each day brought her mother back into her life again, somehow making Maggie feel less lonely and wanting. It was why, when her father died, she’d moved here permanently with Lulu, waiting for the next phase of her life to start.

  She found Lulu in the backyard, nearly hidden by the bedsheets hanging on the clothesline. Cat was supposed to have folded up all the linens and brought them in before the evening chill made them too damp to fold, and Maggie sighed inwardly as she stepped forward.

  The sheets whipped in the unseasonably warm air, hiding and then uncovering Lulu in quick succession, and bringing to mind the end of a movie reel. Maggie’s hair whipped around her head, ruining the curls Cat had spent an hour ironing into her hair. Trying to tuck the loose strands behind her ears, she marched toward her sister, preparing to scold her for not being ready to leave.

  She stopped suddenly on the other side of a white cotton flat sheet, the yellow thread used to mend a hole flashing at her like a skittish cat. Peering around it, she saw Lulu kneeling in the sandy grass where she’d stuck a slender tree branch, its bark darkened and slick from being underwater for a long period of time. Maggie watched as Lulu lifted a green Coca-Cola bottle and inverted it before sliding the open end onto the stub of a severed limb; then Lulu sat back on her heels to admire her handiwork.

  Wind whipped sand up from the ground, stinging Maggie’s legs and smudging the black line Cat had insisted on drawing on them. But Maggie didn’t move, entranced instead with the sound of the wind in the bottle, a keening of depth and otherworldliness—a sound that spoke to the naked part of her that she’d never shown to another human being. Except once.

  “Lulu?”

  Her sister turned abruptly, knocking the branch and making it lean.

  Maggie lifted the sheet and stepped under it before kneeling in the sand in front of Lulu. Lulu’s hazel eyes were wide with surprise and something else that Maggie thought might be anticipation.

  “Did you hear it, Mags?”

  Maggie nodded. “Yes, I did.” Out of habit, she brushed a strand of light brown hair behind Lulu’s ear, a losing battle with the wind. “What’s it for?”

  “It’s a bottle tree. Jim told me about them. He said that African slaves used to put bottles on the trees outside their houses to scare away evil spirits.”

  Maggie wrapped her hand around the damp branch and straightened it, using her other hand to pack sand firmly at the base. “I didn’t know that Jim was superstitious.” She avoided looking at Lulu, afraid to see in Lulu’s eyes the same eagerness she felt to talk about him.

  “He wasn’t. Not really. He said that he’d been listening to bottle trees his whole life, on account of the people that worked for his mama and daddy on the farm. He said that it wasn’t really important if you believe in it; it was important just to have that little piece of something that reminded you of some place or someone you loved.”

  Lulu pursed her lips the way she did when she was debating saying something more, and Maggie knew to stay silent. Finally Lulu said, “Keeping away bad spirits is a good thing just in case, don’t you think?”

  Maggie stared into Lulu’s eyes. “You don’t really believe in bad spirits, do you? Because if I think you’re serious about all of this, I’m going to take you to see Father Doyle tomorrow for confession.”

  Lulu kept her gaze down for a long moment, but when she looked up at Maggie again, her eyes were dark. “If Cat’s going to live with us now, we’re going to need this bottle tree, don’t you think?”

  Maggie opened her mouth to chastise the young girl but found that she couldn’t say anything without lying to both of them. Instead, she rose and reached her hand out to help Lulu stand. They stood looking at each other while brushing the sand from their knees. Without saying anything else, Maggie took Lulu’s hand and pulled her away.

  “Come on. You’re staying at Amy’s tonight because Cat and I are going to the pier. I want you to help Amy and her mama take care of Amy’s little brothers, okay? It’s hard for them with their daddy gone. Just promise me you won’t talk about the war like you did last time. It really upset Mrs. Bailey.”

  Lulu kept her head down. “But you always told me to speak the truth, and that’s what I did. Soldiers die every day. Jim did. Maybe Mr. Bailey will, too.”

  Maggie’s heart rattled in her chest as she wondered if Lulu’s bleak outlook was due to the fact that her parents had died or just to the bitter wind of war that had blown sand into all of their lives. She squeezed Lulu’s hand. “Yes, Lulu, soldiers die every day. But the people they’ve left behind don’t want to think about that. They want to think about the time they’ll be coming back. We’ll add Mr. Bailey to our prayers tonight, okay?”

  Lulu stopped walking and looked up at Maggie. “Cat never prayed for Jim, did she? Maybe that’s why he died.”

  “Oh, no, sweetheart. That’s not why . . .”

  Lulu wasn’t listening. “I’m going to make a bottle tree for them instead, and give it to them as a present. Maybe that will keep Mr. Bailey safe.”

  They had reached the back door, and both stopped to see Cat standing in the doorway, an annoyed expression doing nothing to make her less beautiful. She carried her shoes in one hand, not wanting to ruin them on the dirt streets, but her feet were moving restlessly. “Come on, you two. I can hear the music already, and all the best guys will be taken before I get there.”

  Lulu brushed past her, her brows nearly knit together. “I can walk to Amy’s on my own.”

  Maggie watched her go, knowing her worrying over her little sister would be minor compared to the friction between Cat and Lulu if they walked together. Maggie called out, “Good night, Lulu. I’ll pick you up first thing. And don’t forget what we talked about.”

  Lulu’s shrug was the only indication that she’d heard a single word.

  Cat frowned after her departing back. “What’s got into her?”

  Maggie didn’t answer, but led the way through the house to the front door, remembering to lock it. It was something they’d never thought to do only a month before, when the navy yard and Charleston Air Base weren’t brimming over with men.

  They made their way down Second Street toward West Ashley with the older, bigger houses of the year-round residents giving way to the shacks and whitewashed cottages of the summer visitors. After crossing West Ashley, they walked on the beach with their shoes in their hands, avoiding getting their feet wet by the chilly Atlantic.

  Near the pier, they passed members of the new Folly Beach Mounted Patrol. Maggie wasn’t quite sure what they were looking for since the Japs were off the West Coast and the Germans were three thousand miles across the Atlantic. But she figured it made the men feel as if they were contributing somehow. She knew that after each patrol they’d head to McNally’s for a beer, storing their submachine guns in a closet while they drank. Maggie wondered if she was the only one who thought that residents had more to fear from drunks with machine guns than from spectral Germans.

  As they approached the pier, they passed more and more people, on foot and in cars, heading toward the pavilion and pier for dancing or roller skating or whatever eatery or entertainment was still open in the winterti
me. January was usually pretty slow on Folly, but with the influx of military personnel, the locals tried to accommodate the newcomers with as many diversions as they could.

  The long pier, constructed mostly of palmetto logs, jutted out into the water, its roof painted a dark green with a red Coca-Cola sign emblazoned on the side. It was a South Carolina icon, as evidenced by the fifteen thousand people who’d shown up there for the Fourth of July celebrations just five years before. Cat had just turned fourteen but had been allowed to go, and had danced every single dance while Maggie held her cousin’s shoes and fetched water for her all night.

  People were beginning to park their cars on the beach next to the pier, cheating the tide for the time being. With all the light and gaiety, it was hard to believe there were larger concerns than finding a dancing partner or a cold beer. Only the men in uniform, present in more and more numbers as the weeks went by, reminded everyone that America was at war.

  Regardless of Cat’s pleadings, Maggie had kept on her black dress, and when she saw the sailors and airmen in uniforms, all of them with their heads turned toward Cat, she wished she’d changed. It wasn’t that she wasn’t used to being ignored when standing next to Cat; it was more that she hadn’t even tried. Jim had told her that she had a beautiful smile and that she shouldn’t hide it from the world. Wearing her stay-in-the-background dress, she almost felt as if she were dishonoring him. She shivered as a cold breeze pushed in off the water, making her tighten her coat around her throat.

  Cat stopped before they reached the wooden boardwalk that connected Center Street to the pier and the site of the summer carnival, and turned her back to the crowd. Maggie stopped and watched as she opened her purse and drew out a tube of red lipstick. Maggie waited while Cat expertly applied it to her full lips before willingly allowing Cat to put some on herself. Maggie knew she didn’t look like Bette Davis, but she thought of Jim and what he had said about her smile, and she forced herself to let Cat paint her lips red. When she was finished, Cat grabbed Maggie’s hand and led her to the Folly pier, where a band had already started playing on the large stage. “Come on, Mags. Let’s show them how it’s done.”