26. Becks The Difference
SATURDAY, AUGUST 28, 1976
Tip: Tea—hot or iced—requires its own spoon. Shrimp requires its own utensil, too. And “saving your fork” for the next course is for hospital cafeterias and jails. Your guests are neither patients nor prisoners. (God willing.)
Becks was jittery and distracted all day. She tried to forget, to ignore that tonight marked the end of an era, that it would surely be the last summer supper of her life. She tried to be positive, to think that maybe there would be a miracle—maybe she would live to see one more season. But, well, she was too tired for all that. And so she mourned privately, despite the fact that, outwardly, she whistled in the kitchen, baked brownies, and drank coffee on the front porch with her family, waving to the neighbors as they walked down the street. Yes, by all accounts, today was a normal day in the Saint James world. Only Becks knew that tonight would be the last night of normalcy for their family.
She had decided, since both of her children were home, that she would tell Townsend about the cancer after the party, giving them the opportunity to tell Virginia and Lon together before the children left town tomorrow. Then they would have enough time to prepare for her death and mourn before she was gone—but not too much. Becks had given this a great deal of thought.
Chef Evelyn, Charles, and the other servers arrived one by one to get ready for supper, just like always. Becks reflected on her own preparations. Her beloved Historic Site was in good hands. Her funeral plans—and Townsend’s, whenever he may need them—were fully detailed in her notebook, so Virginia would have little to do besides make the phone calls. Her will had been updated. The freezer was full of enough food to last her dear husband for months, and she had already asked Chef Evelyn to increase her hours. And now, before she was too ill to continue, there was one final matter she had to attend to. “Charles, dear, could you please join me in the library?”
If Charles, her chief waiter, wearing his usual perfectly pressed blazer with matching slacks, was alarmed, he didn’t let on. He only followed his boss into the library and sat in the chair when she gestured toward it.
“Charles, how long have we been together?” Becks asked. She walked to Townsend’s bar and removed a cigarette from the sterling holder. Charles fumbled in his pocket and offered her a light, which she gladly accepted. The surprise at her smoking showed on his face, but he didn’t mention it.
“Oh, almost thirty I believe, Mrs. Saint James.”
Becks nodded. “And you are still employed at the deli during the day.”
“Yes ma’am,” he said.
She wanted to tell him that he could drop the formalities. But at a time like this, the formalities soothed her nerves. Or maybe it was the cigarette. Becks couldn’t quite say.
Becks stopped pacing and stood in front of the man she had known for so long but, due to his unwavering professionalism, knew very little about. “Charles, if I needed you full time, would you be willing to give that job up?”
He nodded. “Of course, Mrs. Saint James. But what would you need me for full time?”
Becks studied Charles’s face, the kind lines around his eyes and mouth, the crinkle in his forehead, the way his brown eyes sparkled. She had never asked his age straight out—it would have been rude—but she’d put him in his late fifties or so. Still strong, still agile, still nimble. The perfect man for the job.
“Well, Charles, as you know, Mr. Saint James is getting older. And it would take a great burden off me for him to have a companion. Someone to accompany him on the boat, drive him in the car, just be a watchful friend when Daniel or the other men can’t be around.” She paused. “I want to be clear that I’m not suggesting you take on nursing or caregiving duties. Nothing like that. I just feel it might be time for him to spend less time alone.”
Charles nodded, and Becks could tell he was suspicious. But he didn’t press her for details. “Of course, Mrs. Saint James.”
“And Charles,” she said gently. “You might have to insist. Because Townsend is not a man to lose his independence easily.”
He nodded.
“So you will insist?” she asked. “For me?”
He smiled. “For both of you, Mrs. Saint James.” He stood and looked intently down at her. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything.”
The kindness in his face combined with the relief she felt caused tears to spring to her eyes. “Thank you, Charles.” She cleared her throat. “I am ever so grateful.”
Two hours later, as she sat at her vanity applying moisturizer to begin getting ready for the night’s festivities, Becks mused that her affairs really were in order. What a gift she had been given, this time to make sure her great loves were cared for after she was gone. Of course, she did feel her dear Virginia could use more time with her. But, well, Becks had given her the tools she needed in her notebook, if not the will to use them. She was confident that, when tested, her girl could and would stand on her own two feet.
Becks ran her finger over the only picture she had of her wedding with Townsend, the one she looked at every morning as she applied her makeup. Coming face-to-face with one’s own demise does cause a person to get somewhat nostalgic, Becks realized.
Admittedly, it wasn’t the wedding she had envisioned having when she was a girl, with her father officiating while throngs of family members and friends looked on. She wore a simple white suit and a pillbox hat instead of a frothy confection of a gown with a trailing veil. The twelve members of the congregation were virtual strangers, women and their husbands who had refused to allow Becks and Townsend to marry with no one who loved them there to witness it. She had no attendants, where she imagined she would have at least a dozen, and Townsend’s best man was his brother, not his father. A kind and generous man—but, again, a relative stranger—stood between them at the altar rail of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Beaufort announcing his intention to make one flesh out of two.
And yet, Becks had never felt happier. Because the only thing that mattered about that day was that she was marrying Townsend Saint James. His hands were the hands holding hers. His voice was the one promising to love her forever. And she knew he would. She knew that, come what may, Townsend was her future.
Becks couldn’t say what had made her enter the double doors of the simple, austerely beautiful church on Ann Street a few weeks before. She had to think now that it was God. Or, perhaps, the blessed Virgin Mary, who had factored so little into Becks’s spiritual life growing up but now, as she sought to understand her fiancé’s faith more, seemed increasingly important. Because who would understand the predicament Becks found herself in—choosing her great love over her family—more than another woman?
Either way, Becks opened the church door, which was unlocked twenty-four hours a day for those looking for prayer or solace or, at more desperate times, simple shelter. The church was silent and empty, and sunlight shone through the stained glass windows. The church had a simplicity about it, yet, to Becks’s mind, also seemed more ornate than the Methodist church of her youth.
As she sat down on the straight-backed wooden front pew, looking at an altar that was both foreign and familiar, she barely even noticed a man in a black shirt with a white clerical collar slide in beside her.
The man didn’t look at her, and Becks didn’t know what prompted her—an often-silent sufferer—to say “I shouldn’t be here.”
“And why is that?” the man asked, still not looking at her.
“I’m not Episcopalian. I’m a Methodist minister’s daughter, and I’m in love with a Catholic man, and I killed my father.”
That was the phrase that finally elicited a head turn.
Becks turned her head too. The priest peered at her. “I’m very intrigued by this story, but I have to say that the killing of your father interests me most right now.”
Becks realized what she had said and laughed in spite of herself. “I’m sorry,” she said. “My father died right after he found out I was engaged to a Catholic. Heart attack. I didn’t run him over with my car or stab him with a turkey knife.”
The priest put his hand to his chest and exhaled loudly. “Whew. It’s not every day that a man comes face-to-face with a confessed murderess.” He paused. “And I have to think that maybe your father died because it was his time.”
Becks shrugged, tears coming to her eyes. “My mother doesn’t seem to think so.” She looked into the hazel eyes of this middle-aged stranger. “Am I crazy to still want to marry Townsend? After all of this?”
“Townsend Saint James?” he asked.
She nodded.
He smiled. “Townsend Saint James is a fine fellow.”
Becks’s stomach rolled. She felt so guilty. She looked down at her hands. “How could I choose him over my family? What kind of person would do that?”
The priest patted her arm. “One who knows her heart, I think.”
It seemed so simple when he said it.
“These marriages can be tricky, but we’ve had quite a few success stories here, people who have found common ground between their faiths in the pews of this church, at this altar rail. If we can find love between us, we can work the rest out.”
Becks felt a surge of warmth wash over her. And all at once, she knew she had found the place where she and Townsend could bridge their one difference. She didn’t want to convert to Catholicism—fearing that, even if she did, she would never truly be welcome. And the catechism of her youth was so very different from Townsend’s. The Episcopal church was a bridge between the two, technically Protestant, but maintaining many tenets of the Catholic faith that the Methodist church did not. Namely, transubstantiation, the belief that the bread and wine blessed by a priest transformed into the body and blood of Christ during Communion, and that marriage was a sacrament. Becks couldn’t help but smile thinking that Townsend’s mother would at least be happy about that.
“So we would be accepted here?” she asked, although she felt, looking into his kind eyes, she already knew the answer.
“Everyone is accepted here,” he responded. “And if you and Townsend feel this church could help you bridge a gap, I’d be more than happy to help you join us.”
Becks looked at the photograph again, taken in that church where she felt she belonged for the first time in a long time, thinking of the special day when she promised to love Townsend Saint James for better or worse, forsaking all others. Until we are parted by death.
The memory of those words took her breath away, and it finally hit her that death, that thing that seemed so impossible back then, was coming for her soon. They would be parted. It would be over.
“Hello, my beautiful mother,” a male voice—one she loved equally as much as Townsend’s—called from the door, bursting the bubble of her thoughts. She could see Lon, her precious baby boy who had arrived last night, entering her room in the reflection of the mirror. She stood up from her vanity to hug him. He squeezed her tight. “What can I do to help?”
“Your being here is all the help I could possibly ask for,” she said.
“Mother, you look sensational,” he said, kissing her cheeks. She appreciated the effort even though she knew it wasn’t true. Underneath her A-line dress she was painfully thin, and even several layers of foundation barely hid her positively gray pallor. But she was glad to know she was pulling it off.
She squeezed her son’s arms, and she couldn’t help but say, “Do you know how proud I am of you?”
He smiled at her. “I do now.” He paused. “But, yes, Mom, of course. I’ve always known. I suspect you’d like some grandchildren out of me, but otherwise, I think you’re proud.”
She shook her head. “Those things can’t be rushed. People assumed your father would never settle down, and look how well that worked out.”
“Yes, but there aren’t other women like you, Mom. And that’s the difference. That’s the problem. I just haven’t found anyone who’s as perfect for me as you are for Dad.”
Oh, her precious boy. He always knew the right thing to say. With his dark hair and dazzling eyes, Townsend’s height and chiseled physique—combined with that velvet tongue of his—she knew he had broken more than a few hearts. But not hers. Never hers. And she would never have to share him with a daughter-in-law, never face a day where she was second best. Would she have traded that fate? In a minute. But since she could not, it was a small bonus.
Townsend entered the room now, slapping his son on the back. And there they were, the two men in her life, the ones who felt like the very blood that coursed through her veins.
“Why don’t you two go off and have some fun before dinner?” Becks said. That was all she wanted for them, after all. She wanted them to be happy.
“Boat or plane?” Lon asked, looking at his father excitedly. It was like going back in time. These two had been partners in crime, best buddies, united by a love of sport, game, and adventure from seemingly the moment Lon came into the world.
“The boat’s out front,” Townsend said.
They each leaned down to kiss one of Becks’s cheeks.
“Thanks, Mom!”
She watched them leave, her dearest, darling loves. “I have loved you with everything inside of me,” she whispered when they were out of earshot. “I always will.”
Until we are parted by death.