9. Keaton Reputation
By my fourth day in Beaufort, I have managed to thoroughly clean the exterior of the kitchen (the cabinets and drawers seem too daunting!), the living room, and the dining room of the seventies showhouse. Well, clean is maybe an overstatement, because I have cleaned around everything but left it exactly as it was, which is driving me insane because it means I can’t fully clear any of my checklists. I don’t know why, but I can’t quite bring myself to move anything. The entire house—except my mom’s room, where I am sleeping—has this museum-like quality I can’t bear to disturb. I have only had time to do some cursory digging in the drawers, which are chock-full of general junk like phone company notepads from Southern Bell, assorted pens from Security Bank, dried-out rubber bands, a thumbtack or two, old bills, rock-hard glue, rusty scissors, and on and on. But the fact that it’s all from the seventies or before makes it so interesting that I can’t possibly throw it away. The fact that my grandparents touched these things makes them treasures. I keep reminding myself of the commission, that I’m here to do a job. But that is getting harder with every passing minute.
I’m lying in bed, debating whether to try to go back to sleep or get up and go get coffee, and I finally reach my breaking point: I can no longer control the urge to Insta-stalk Allison and Jonathan. As soon as I type in Allison’s handle on Instagram, there it is: her pregnancy announcement. The top comment says: Only a goddess like you could find a way to repair your broken family. Gag me. She is not a goddess. She puts on a good, good show. In my mind, I hate-message every fan who’s written an ooey gooey comment about how thrilled they are for her.
I decide to go back through her feed to see if there were any clues I missed. Um, let’s just say there were. TBT photos of when Allison and Jonathan were married, their faces scrunched together in “work trip” selfies. A caption about how Allison didn’t know what she would do without Jonathan. Was I blind? When I get all the way down to Allison’s posts from three years ago, I realize that this has to stop. It’s not helping me to ruminate. I make a deal with myself: If I put the phone down, I will allow myself to do the thing that has felt too hard, too personal, too scary until now. I reach over to my nightstand and pick up the white leather notebook I’ve been so curious about. I lift the cover and peek inside the inner sanctum of Becks Saint James’s life. And I laugh.
I know I must tell the Dockhouse Dames about this, and so I hoist myself out of bed, realizing how sore I am from—what? Vacuuming?
Thirty minutes later, I am telling the Dockhouse Dames all about my inner turmoil with the top secret notebook—how, somehow, peeking into Townsend’s life that seemed so vast and intricately detailed felt less scary than lifting the lid on this tiny notebook that Becks carried with her everywhere. They all lean forward as I say, “So I finally looked at the book. And do you know what is on the very first page?”
“Well, what?” Violet asks impatiently.
I grin. “Her chicken salad recipe.”
The women around the table laugh. “Well, you’d better share the wealth. I’ve always wanted Becks’s recipes,” the woman I now know is named Betty says. She has worn her neon sun visor to coffee all three days I’ve attended, which is incredibly helpful as it makes it impossible to forget which one she is.
“What else?” Arlene, the pretty one who always looks like she’s going to an important function, asks.
I smile, my heart feeling warm. “I haven’t made it that far, but it looks like it’s her recipes, her guest lists, her conversation starters for each party.” It surprises me that my voice catches when I say, “And little entertaining and life tips for my mom.”
Violet’s eyes well as she smiles at me.
“I don’t know if I should give this to her,” I say. Now that I’m here, everything just seems sadder and harder. My mother was so incredibly loved. I was never loved quite like that. It hits me hard.
“I think you should,” Suzanne in her Iris Apfel glasses says. “It’s up to her what she does with it, but I think she should at least have the opportunity to choose.”
I look around the table at three other nodding heads.
“Have you found anything else interesting while you’ve been cleaning?” Violet asks.
I groan. “Don’t even get me started on cleaning. I just can’t bear to throw anything away. The house is like a living shrine to my grandparents. Who am I to disturb it?” I hand Salt pieces of my bagel, which he gobbles up enthusiastically. “Is any of it interesting? I don’t know. Because, to me, everything is.”
“You should hire a housekeeper to help,” Betty says.
I shake my head. “No, I couldn’t. What if they threw something away?”
Violet and Arlene share a look.
“What?” I ask.
“Well, it’s just… Do you think that your inability to throw any of their things away means that maybe you want to know more about your grandparents? That you want to dig more deeply into their lives?”
My entire childhood I felt this weird void. When we were doing family research projects or talking about our family trees, when other kids would share anecdotes about their grandparents during the Great Depression or World War II, I always felt this deep longing. Not only because I didn’t have my mother’s parents but also because I didn’t know their stories. But it wasn’t until right now that I realized that, although I’d never get to meet my grandparents, it wasn’t too late to learn about the life they’d left behind.
I sigh and take a deep breath, steeling my nerves to ask the question that, for some reason, I don’t want to ask. I think it’s because, then, I’ll have to acknowledge what my mom really went through. But I’m here, and who knows if I’ll ever get another chance. “Violet, why did you say my grandparents disappeared?”
The ladies share glances. There must be some unspoken conversation that I am not privy to because Suzanne suddenly produces a manila folder and hands it to me. “We thought you’d never ask,” she says.
I open the folder, which, at a glance, seems to contain roughly a dozen newspaper articles. I read the first headline, from August 30, 1976: NEW UPDATES ON REBECCA AND TOWNSEND SAINT JAMES DISAPPEARANCE. I don’t read further, knowing I’ll want to pore over this later, and, really, what could the newspaper know that these ladies don’t?
“My mother Sarah, Ellen, and Laura were Becks’s dear friends,” Suzanne says. “She saved all of this like she would be the one to find them—or at least find out what happened to them. I never thought she’d recover.”
“What happened?” I ask, wanting to read the last page before the whole book.
Arlene shakes her head. “We don’t know. They were never found. But my mom and dad—Patricia and Daniel—were also best friends with Becks and Townsend. My mother was devastated, and I’ve never seen anything tear my dad apart like their deaths.”
My stomach clenches. These past few days I am starting to feel like I know my grandparents. I can see my grandmother’s face in her pictures, smell the lingering scent of her perfume in her bedroom, stand inside her perfectly organized closet and touch her beautiful dresses, her rows of shoes. I can hear my grandfather’s voice in his journal, smell the pipe tobacco preserved in the pages of his books, and almost feel how much he loved the dozens of fishing rods housed inside a stunning glass and mahogany cabinet in his office. A knowing washes over me: My mom and uncle aren’t emotionally stunted; they are scarred. Parents dying in a car crash has an aspect of closure: horrible and sad, but a concrete tragedy a person can heal from. But I’m realizing something more traumatic happened here, and I am suddenly filled with love for my mother, who protected me from that. Maybe she wasn’t always the mother I wanted. But maybe she was the only kind of mother she could be.
“So why does my mom say they died in a car wreck?”
“That’s what the police thought,” Betty says.
Suzanne gestures toward the folder. “After their last dinner party in 1976, Becks and Townsend’s convertible was found sunk in Taylor Creek. But Becks and Townsend weren’t inside.”
“What?” My eyes widen. I want to ask them how this large body of water connecting to the ocean came to be known as a creek in the first place, but this feels like the wrong time.
Violet leans over to pat my hand. “Sweetie, how do I put this delicately…”
Suzanne, who is not delicate, chimes in. “There are a lot of things swimming in that water that could cause a person to disappear without a trace.”
I gasp and Violet smacks her hand on the table. “Honey, we are crazy old ladies with nothing better to do than come up with conspiracy theories. Of course your grandparents died in a car wreck. It has been decades. If that isn’t what happened, we would have known by now.”
“Yeah, that’s true. And surely my mom would have mentioned something about it at some point in our lives if she believed differently, right?”
Suzanne nods. “Absolutely, sweetie.” She reaches her hands out. “In fact, you should just give me that folder back. There’s no use in even entertaining the mess in there.”
But I hold the folder to my chest protectively. “Maybe I shouldn’t have brought it up,” I say. “But now I can’t give these back.” I look around at the ladies. “Okay. Someone change the subject!”
They all smile and Arlene says, “Perfect. Because we have a question for you.”
I look down at Salt, who has just perked up from his nap, his floppy ears at their version of attention. I want to say, I know, buddy. I can tell that whatever these ladies want to rope me into is probably something I’m going to want to run from. Fast. I’m already making a list of polite excuses in my head.
“We want the house to be on tour!” Arlene squeals. Three sets of eyes glare at her. “What?” she says. “Sorry. I was excited.”
“But remember how we talked about this?” Violet says. “How we’d ease into it, sell her on the idea?”
I ignore her. “Wait. What? You mean, like, my grandparents’ house? Disco central? And what is ‘on tour’ anyway?”
“Well, I’m chairing the Old Homes Tour this year,” Violet says importantly. “It’s the single biggest fundraiser of the year for the Beaufort Historic Site, and people come from all over to step inside beautiful Beaufort homes and get a taste of its history. It’s only three weeks away, but we thought it would be so special if folks could tour a house that hasn’t been touched since the 1970s.”
“What’s the Beaufort Historic Site again?” I ask tentatively. I should know by now, but, um, I do not.
“It’s right downtown with the historic houses, the Beaufort Welcome Center, the apothecary, the old jail, the art gallery, the courthouse…” Violet pauses. “And you know the Old Burying Ground?”
That I do know because I have walked through there, shocked at how peaceful it is to be in that tree-shaded, gated cemetery with headstones dating as far back as the early eighteenth century. It’s a reminder that life is short. “Right,” I say. “And we’re raising money to…”
“It costs a ton to keep all those things up!” Suzanne exclaims sharply, as if I’ve offended her.
“Right. So the Old Homes Tour raises money to preserve the town’s history?”
“Exactly,” Betty says kindly, shooting Suzanne a look.
My mind floods with all the reasons it’s a bad idea to put the house on tour. “No,” I say. “I’m sorry, but I just don’t think it’ll be possible. I can barely get the place clean, and I really don’t want to move all the dishes and stuff in case my mom wants to see the way they left it that night one last time.”
Ohhhhh…It isn’t until I say it out loud that I realize that to be true. I feel better that I’m not totally losing it, that my inability to throw away so much as a rubber band isn’t all about me. Deep down, I just want my family to get some closure.
“Well, that’s even better!” Suzanne says. “The chance for people to experience a famous Becks Saint James dinner party one more time.”
“We will be your docents,” Arlene says.
“Docents?” I ask.
Arlene nods. “You will have people in every room to talk about the history of the house, answer any questions—”
“And make sure no one steals your stuff,” Suzanne says wryly.
“Well, yeah,” Arlene agrees. “We will ensure that no one touches a thing, and we will tread impossibly lightly.”
“And,” Violet adds, “think of all the people who will walk through in the two days it’s on tour. Buyers, buyers, buyers. You could set a new real estate sales record in town.”
My mind darts to all the many, many things in my grandparents’ house. Could I use this tour as an opportunity to sell some of it? The idea makes my stomach turn, so I quickly decide I’m not ready for that—and I don’t think I’ll be ready three weeks from now. But a new real estate record? This does give me, the newly unemployed, pause. And then there’s the fact that my grandparents’ sad, empty house would be filled with people one last time, just the way they liked it.
When I don’t say anything right away, Suzanne says, “Tell her, Violet.”
Violet shakes her head. “I don’t want her to feel pressured.”
“I do!” Suzanne scoffs.
“Well you have to tell me now,” I say.
“Well, sweetie,” Violet starts, “your grandmother was actually the one who started the Old Homes Tour.”
“Her last summer,” Betty continues in a tone that is laced with importance. “She wanted to leave a legacy, to know that the historical association she loved would continue to be funded.”
I feel my eyes widen. “She did, really?”
They all nod, and I feel my heart swell with pride.
“All our moms were on the original committee…” Violet adds.
“And now you can be too,” Arlene finishes.
I gasp. “Well, then, I don’t see how it could possibly not be on tour. It’s what Becks would have wanted.”
Violet nods in agreement. “She would have.”
And Lon will want all the foot traffic. I’m pretty sure about that. And, well, Mom sent me down here without preparing me for what I was walking into, so in my opinion, she had lost her right to vote. “It’s only on tour for two days?” I clarify.
“Just two days,” Violet says. She appears to be holding her breath.
Two days isn’t that much of a setback. “Then I’m in,” I say.
Cheers all around.
I leave the Dockhouse realizing I have a lot of work to do if I’m going to get the house tour-ready. I think this is the perfect thing to motivate me to actually start going through things. But, first, I’ll need sustenance.
Although I have some meager groceries from the Coastal Community Market waiting for me back at the house, I decide to stop by Turner Street Market to grab a pimento cheese sandwich to go because Violet has gone on and on about how good it is. Plus, they give dogs a free piece of bacon, and Salt deserves bacon. I lean down and rub his head. “Because you’re such a good boy, aren’t you?” He prances ahead of me regally, with perfect posture as if proving my point.
I wave and smile at the half dozen semi-strangers who stop to say “Hi, Salt!” and rub him behind the ears along the way. My dog is already a bit of a local celebrity. He really was designed for small-town life and is loving the attention—and the evening swims we take in the creek. Although now that I know about the allegedly carnivorous beings in there… I shiver.
I tie Salt’s leash to a bike rack, open the market door, and smile as the woman behind the counter calls, “Hi, Keaton!” Everyone already knows my name. Everywhere. It’s hilarious. I’ve only been here once and I’m already a regular.
I order my pimento cheese sandwich with a side of deviled eggs and sweet tea, put my AirPods in, and say, “Call, Harris.”
“Well, if it isn’t small-town Suzie,” Harris answers.
I roll my eyes. “Um, Harris. Do you know that our grandparents disappeared, never to be heard from again?”
“Well…” He breathes for a second on the other end of the phone. “That’s often what happens when people die in a car wreck.”
“Probably died in a car wreck,”I say. “But their bodies were never found.”
He’s quiet on the other end.
“Harris?”
“Keat, do I need to come get you? I know this has all been a lot on you. The affair, losing your job. You know, let’s just hire someone to clean out the house, and you can come live with me. Enjoy the bachelor pad.”
“Harris, I’m not…” I stop and laugh. “The model dumped you?”
“I never said she was a model.”
“But she was, right?”
I say “Thanks!” as I grab my to-go order.
“Hope you enjoy, Keaton!” the woman behind the counter says.
Maybe I am small-town Suzie.
“Yes, she was a model,” Harris continues. “But that’s like being an actress in LA. What does that even mean?”
“You should come to Beaufort for the Old Homes Tour. It’s in three weeks, and our house is going to be on it,” I say, ignoring his comment as I walk down the street.
“Keaton, who are you? You go to Beaufort for a few days and you’re, like, a townie?”
I laugh as I untie Salt’s leash from the bike rack and walk toward home. “I think I am. Everyone’s just really nice, and we all have to chip in to preserve our town’s history. The tour raises tons of money for the Historic Site and our grandmother started it.” Then I see the internet truck in the driveway. “Crap!” I say. “I’ve got to go.”
“Garden club emergency?” Harris asks.
“Worse: Wi-Fi. Goodbye, loving brother. See if you can keep any models from moving in for like a month to save room for me.”
“I don’t know that you can hang in New York City now. You’re small-townified. Up here, you’ll just complain about long lines and traffic.”
I laugh as I hang up and run through the front door, which I definitely locked when I left. I can see who I presume is the internet guy standing with Alex the pirate and… Bowen? They are all laughing.
“Um, hi?” I say out of breath, restraining Salt from jumping all over the strangers. I have a lot of questions as to why they are in my house uninvited, but, on the other hand, I haven’t had to deal with the internet guy, so maybe I should let it go? Before I can decide what to say, I see what they’re laughing at. My grandparents’ ancient—but no longer dust-covered, thank you very much—wooden-box-on-the-floor television is playing. And in color at that! “No way,” I say, perching on the arm of the sofa. “That thing works?”
“It took some doing,” Alex says, adjusting his pirate hat.
“But we were up for the challenge,” Bowen says.
“Well, ma’am, you’re all set,” the internet guy adds.
“Oh, but I didn’t order cable.”
He waves his hand like it’s nothing. “Don’t worry. It’s on the house.”
I’m confused. “Wait. What?”
Bowen pats my arm. “Small-town kindness takes some getting used to. You’ll assimilate soon.”
I roll my eyes at him. “Wow. Well, thanks.”
“Internet is running, cable is set up,” cable guy continues. “Forgive me for not being able to add your apps to your TV for you.”
Now I have to laugh, because the whole thing is so absurd. “Is Lawrence Welk included in my package?” I ask.
That sets us all off again.
As he leaves and Alex follows behind him, I turn to Bowen. “I’m really sorry you had to deal with this,” I say. “They gave me a three to five p.m. arrival window.”
Bowen snickers. “And you believed them?”
“I guess I did. Silly me.” Now I’m kind of annoyed. I look around. “Um, how did you get in?”
He holds up an ancient-looking key on a Texaco key chain. “Your spare is under the planter.”
“Ah. Good to know.”
He starts to walk out the door, and I say, “Well, thanks for helping me. That was really cool of you, if you ignore the breaking and entering.”
He nods and almost, maybe, smiles at me. “Well, you know, it was the neighborly thing to do.” Exactly what Anderson said.
I know I shouldn’t want him to help me, but the idea that he jumped in without being asked makes me happy. And I have to needle him just a little. “Wait, so are we like friends now?”
He makes a skeptical face and says, “If you feel like you need to tell people that around town, you can.”
I’m about to be annoyed again until he adds, “I know you’re new here, but those Dockhouse Dames shouldn’t be your only friends. They have quite the reputation.”
As he leaves, I am laughing out loud. Yeah. Betty, Arlene, Violet, and Suzanne are pretty sketchy. Hang with them too long and you might just get involved in the Maritime Museum. Or worse, the church bazaar.
Bowen’s funny. Who knew? For just an instant, he showed me a side of himself I didn’t know was there. And, as much as I hate myself for it, I have to admit that a part of me wants to know more.