Chapter Four Lillian
Chapter Four
Lillian
We Southerners are known for our grits. Cooked slowly with loads of butter and salt. Eaten plain or topped with the same sort of foods a Northerner might ladle over mashed potatoes.
People from outside our neck of the woods either love grits or hate them. No middle ground. Opinions are strong either way. Rather like the strong will of a Southern woman. Because yes, we are also known for our grit. At least, that’s true for the women in my line.
So when Elsie called that morning insisting she intended to emancipate herself and live with me in Virginia, I didn’t hesitate to book a ticket on the next flight out of Dulles International Airport to Charleston, South Carolina.
Not an easy feat with an impending tropical storm.
I said goodbye to my husband at the hospice facility with a hug and lined up a nurse’s aide to assist him while I was gone.
However, as I’ve mentioned before, the women in my family aren’t easily deterred, and I knew if Elsie had set her mind to this emancipation notion, she would succeed. Unless someone with a stronger will interceded.
Namely, me.
I did try to phone Rosalynn with a heads-up, but I couldn’t get through and had to resort to generalized texts.
We tended to do that sometimes—ignore calls from each other—when we needed a breather from the friction.
She often accused me of micromanaging. Fair point.
I would then suggest she was prickly. Also a fair point.
And so the cycle continued.
During my layover and after landing, I’d resorted to more of those texts and prayed Rosalynn received them in time to meet me at her house.
I’d refrained from too many details, not that Elsie had given any hint of what was upsetting her.
Too much can be misinterpreted in text exchanges—a generational thing, perhaps.
Like the whole notion of Ubers. I had a love-hate relationship with the app, but all the rental vehicles had already been spoken for, due to widespread panic about the weather. Flights had been canceled and stranded passengers had opted to drive out.
And that’s how I ended up in a rideshare with a chauffeur named Bubba.
During our trek from the airport, with his little sedan buffeted by sporadic gusts, he’d told me how he started working for Uber because of the flexible hours during his chemo treatments.
I couldn’t tell if his story was real or manufactured for bigger tips.
I decided to err on the side of compassion and added 25 percent to the bill.
It was hurricane season, after all, and I made my living fighting for underdogs.
I hefted my signature briefcase in one hand and lifted the handle on my small carry-on with the other.
The muggy South Carolina weather swamped me with familiarity even after more than three decades of living just outside DC.
The incoming storm swirled a briny wind full of mosquitoes seeking a safe place to latch on for dear life.
The ocean roared a little louder. Waves crested a little higher.
Maybe that was why my granddaughter hadn’t come out to greet me. Unless she wasn’t here. After all, Rosalynn hadn’t answered either. Had they evacuated? If so, they’d left the windows unprotected and none of the porch furniture had been moved.
“Yoo-hoo . . . Elsie?” I called out.
Blinds parted in a far window, and I caught a glimpse of my granddaughter before the slats closed.
My rolling bag bumped along the grooves in the walkway as I trekked toward the front door with the welcome wreath undulating.
Seeing my daughter’s lovely clapboard home unprepared for the incoming storm fired an anger so deep in my belly I stopped walking.
I had to gulp down three breaths of that salty air to rein in my temper.
Even with the For Sale sign out front bending in the wind, this was still Rosalynn’s home.
Her dream house on the water. The one-story bungalow was nestled on a gently sloping hill along an inland canal.
Most of the other houses in the area were built on stilts.
I’d offered to pay for an elevator if she wanted one of those homes, but this place had stolen her heart.
So instead, as a housewarming gift, I’d paid for a stone seawall to offer additional protection against flooding.
Rosalynn had drawn up plans for the planked walkways and the dock, both wheelchair accessible.
When deciding to sell, she’d vowed she didn’t mind downsizing to a house better suited for the day Elsie went to college. But dreams died hard.
And some dreams were the very best part. Like being a grandmother.
Elsie burst through the front door on bare feet.
“You made it.” She ran to me with her arms outstretched, her brown hair flying loose and free like her mother’s at that age, but with hints of gold she’d inherited from Seth.
I dropped my bags and hugged her hard. No one had been able to prepare me for how much I would love my grandchild.
I’d spent Rosalynn’s entire pregnancy worrying myself sick no matter how many times her obstetrician and neurologist assured us that with careful monitoring, she should be able to safely carry and deliver a baby. The physicians had been correct.
When Elsie had been placed in my arms, swaddled in that blanket with a pink knit cap on her head, I’d been gobsmacked by powerful emotions. My heart had swelled and I’d been utterly defenseless.
I still was.
Proof positive? Booking a plane ticket in the middle of an oncoming tropical storm at a single call from my grandchild.
I angled away and swept her hair from her face, trying to read her green eyes. “Elsie, what weren’t you telling me on the phone?”
She glanced away and made a big show of picking up my briefcase, a vintage piece covered in needlepoint—a hobby I’d begun to pass the long hours in waiting rooms while Rosalynn finished PT and OT.
It hadn’t taken my daughter long to evict me from the sessions.
She’d always been more overt in asserting herself, whereas Elsie could be an avoider by nature, like my own mother.
Elsie climbed the porch steps and set the case beside the rocker. “I can’t believe you came so fast. After we hung up, I started to feel guilty for taking you away from Ace. I tried to call you back but couldn’t get an answer.”
My fist clenched around the roll bag. My husband was dying in the hospice facility. But he wasn’t leaving the earth just yet, and he’d been emphatic that I needed to be in South Carolina. That said, I couldn’t return to him fast enough.
“Ace is stable, and he insisted I come. And not a moment too soon. Now that I’m here, I can help you and your mother evacuate for the hurricane—”
“Tropical storm,” Elsie interjected.
“For now. As my mama would have said, ‘Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.’” And my mind was chock-full of all the worst possibilities, the added risks and obstacles for Rosalynn if she was trapped in the middle of a natural disaster.
I sat in the rocker and tugged off my pumps, switching them for gym shoes from my bag.
“Open the garage door so we can haul out the plywood for the windows.”
Which would give us time for a little conversation.
“Board up the house? On our own? You’re kidding, right?”
“Hope for the best,” I repeated. “Prepare for the worst.”
“Maybe Dad could . . .” She shook her head. “Never mind.”
She flipped open the cover on the garage’s security pad and tapped out the code.
The door rumbled open to reveal the cavernous space with kayaks on one side and boards stacked neatly against the other wall.
I had wanted to gift Rosalynn with permanently affixed hurricane shutters, but my husband’s COPD and lung transplant had cut our plans short for the extra expense.
A transplant that was now failing. My fingers clenched around my purse handle, right above the picture charm of our wedding photo, with Rosalynn beside us holding flowers.
A lifetime ago.
I swiped away a bead of perspiration and wished I had time to change, but I needed to scout the lay of the land with Elsie before Rosalynn arrived. “Back to my question. What’s this I hear about emancipation?”
“Just what I said.” She carried a box marked Clips for securing the boards. “I’m ready to move out. I took the practice GED online and passed it, so the real test should be a breeze. I won’t need anything from you except help filing the emancipation paperwork—since you’re a lawyer and all.”
And since I was an attorney, I’d cross-examined enough lying witnesses in my career to recognize something in Elsie’s phone conversation just didn’t line up.
Maybe I should have been more persistent in contacting Rosalynn, but that maternal instinct had nudged me to take a speedier, direct approach.
Yes, I understood my propensity to overcompensate had roots in that accident decades ago. But like most Southern matriarchs, I knew the world depended on me. After all, it wasn’t micromanaging when assistance was needed.
I’m sure a counselor could have a field day with that notion. “Does this have something to do with your parents’ divorce?”
“No,” Elsie blurted. “Not at all.”
The divorce was definitely a subject I’d needed to steer well clear of with my daughter.
I’d negotiated high-profile, multimillion-dollar lobbying cases in the nation’s capital.
I’d been offered—and turned down—judgeships by administrations from both political parties.
Most recently I had been approached to run for Congress, something that had never been anywhere on my life-goals bingo card.
I told them no thank you. I preferred to be a free agent, taking up cases of my choosing.
None of that experience had come close to helping me with Rosalynn. Our mother-daughter tug-of-war had an extensive history long before her brutally misguided choice to marry Seth Yates, a spoiled frat boy who still hadn’t cut his mama’s apron strings.
My disapproval hadn’t gone over well with Rosalynn. Now that they were divorced, my daughter had become even more defensive. I wanted to assure her that I didn’t intend to say “I told you so.” Except even that simple declaration would accomplish nothing other than giving airtime to “I told you so.”
After a final yank to my shoelaces, I shoved to my feet, reaching behind me automatically to still the chair. “Why the rush to leave home? You could do a dual enrollment in a local college and still live at home, enjoy your senior year with your friends.”
“I meant it when I said my leaving isn’t about the divorce.” Elsie dropped the box of clips in front of a three-panel picture window. “Although since Mom and Dad have split, if I go ahead and leave now, Mom can start over in her new house. We can all have a fresh start.”
“What did your mother say about this plan?”
She stopped dead. “You didn’t tell her already?”
Ah, that had been the point of her call. Elsie must have hoped to dodge broaching the subject. “No, apparently not. That’s the reason I flew down. I only mentioned you’d reached out. But no specifics.”
“Well, when you tell her,” Elsie said, scuffing a toe through the sandy earth, “make sure you let her know I’m going to continue my education. I have my college fund.”
“When I tell her? Think again, my dear.” The kid had my heart, but that didn’t mean I was a pushover. “Your mother should be here soon and we can hash this all out together.”
Elsie went pale, backpedaling faster than a cat in a pile of fire ants. “I, uh, need to call a friend to see if school has been canceled. If Mom gets here before I’m done, feel free to go ahead and start that conversation without me.”
My heart hurt for Elsie. Truly. I’d seen firsthand how the crumbling of my marriage had hurt Rosalynn, both before and after the accident. Elsie had apparently decided to handle her torn loyalties by leaving altogether.
But even as my heart hurt for her, an overwhelming relief swept over me too. I must have been wrong this morning when I’d worried Elsie’s crisis involved something far darker.