Moon Over Edisto
By BETH WEBB HART
Thomas Nelson
Copyright © 2013
Beth Webb Hart
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-59554-202-1
Chapter One
Julia Bennett
New York
When the bright red delivery truck from Gravy parked
halfway on the sidewalk by the doors of the Kent
Risen Art Gallery on Prince Street, Etienne winked
at Julia and went out to pay the delivery boy.
"Po'boys," she said as she glided back through the gallery's
thick glass door while lifting the greasy paper bags high. The smell
of fried seafood filled the narrow space as Chih-Yang put down his
wire cutters and rubbed his hands together. "I'm starving."
"Can't." Sanchez removed a nail from between his lips and
began to hammer a hole in the black wall where he was planning
to hang his 3-D "found objects" portrait of Bill Clinton, whose
hair and eyebrows were made out of bubble wrap and crushed Diet
Coke cans.
Etienne rolled her dark eyes. Sanchez had ordered them all the
macrobiotic platter from Caravan of Dreams the night before, and
Etienne had spat out the bland mixture of tofu and sea vegetables
before lecturing them on French cuisine and how sad she felt for
anyone who didn't regularly partake of butter or cream or mussels
or red meat. Then she'd marched down the block and purchased
a burger combo from the Fanelli Café that smelled so good even
Sanchez asked for a french fry.
"In honor of our Southern belle," Etienne said as she unwrapped
the shrimp po' boys piled high with large fried prawns and creamy
coleslaw.
Julia winced ever so slightly. "What?" Etienne said. "I've read
your bio. I know you grew up catching shrimps down in South
Carolina."
"Sorry, Etienne." Julia pushed her glasses up on her nose. "I just
can't do imported shrimp."
Chih-Yang, who had already taken a heaping bite of a po' boy,
began to chew slowly. Then he shrugged and swallowed. "Mealy
Asian prawns with salmonella are my
favorite." He took another bite
as Sanchez shook his head and lifted his portrait up. Then Chih-Yang
hunched over for a rather impressive pec flex. (He was the
youngest, fittest artist in the group.) "My body thrives on toxins."
"Well, how about some fried chicken then?" Etienne opened
the second bag, which contained a bucket of wings and legs as well
as a basket of biscuits.
Sanchez was trembling as Julia reached for a wing. "Don't
worry, Joseph," Julia said to her old friend from art school. "Do you
think a restaurant this pricey would serve anything other than free
range?"
Sanchez fanned himself with one of the gallery's brochures. "I
think I need some fresh air." Then he slid on his organic hoodie
and headed out the door as Julia imagined throwing the cast net
off the bow of her father's old johnboat. And how, on a good day in
late June or early July, their casts yielded nearly half a cooler full of
the small, succulent tidal creek shrimp that her mother would boil
up and serve with a bowl of melted butter at the end of their rickety
dock on Store Creek on the south side of Edisto Island.
"So how often do you go back?" Etienne tore open a biscuit,
and Julia was mesmerized by the steam rising from it and the comforting
smell of flour and butter. "To eat the nontoxic shrimps in
South Carolina?"
"Rarely," Julia said. She hadn't thrown the cast net, hadn't
stepped foot on the old dock, in nearly two decades, and she had no
intention of ever doing so again.
Two hours later Julia rounded the corner of
Fifth Avenue onto East 92nd. The hall entrance light was on at
the bottom of her brownstone, which sat four doors down on
the opposite side of the street. Well, it wasn't actually
her brownstone.
It belonged to her old friend Bess, who was married and
had four children. There were a psychiatrist and a chiropractor
on the first floor. Bess lived with her family on the next three
floors. Julia had the fifth floor, the "penthouse," really just a large
studio apartment with a nice-sized rooftop deck. Julia painted
and gardened there by day, and by night she stretched out on the
old Pawleys Island hammock beneath her potted ficus trees and
stared at the sky.
On a clear night she could see the moon. She would have felt
like the luckiest woman in the world—a gainfully employed artist
with a charming significant other and a rooftop view in the middle
of one of the world's greatest cities—if it weren't for the forlorn
look on the moon's face.
This will not end well, the face seemed to
say.
Buzz off, she said back to him sometimes.
East 92nd between Fifth and Madison was nearly noiseless
this time of night. It was a little after ten and most everyone in
this little section of Manhattan was bedded down, sleeping deeply
before the predawn wake-up call that catapulted them out of bed
and into their designer suits and private school uniforms.
Almost all of her colleagues at the college lived in either
Brooklyn or the East Village or Harlem or the Bronx. Sometimes
she felt a little silly living in the posh Carnegie Hill neighborhood
on the Upper East Side, a stone's throw from Central Park. Wasn't
an artist supposed to live in the real world? The earthy, gritty one
where you were regularly intersecting both depravity and danger?
Didn't pure art spring from facing the grit and gristle head-on,
and not only that, but from immersing oneself in it? Ah, well, she
had done that. For over a decade she had done that, and it hadn't
proved to be nearly as inspiring or romantic as she'd hoped. In
fact, it had left some scars as well as some steep therapist bills.
So when Bess and her husband, Graham, bought the building
a couple of years ago and invited Julia to check out the penthouse,
she didn't think twice. She was through with life-on-the-edge. She
was a tenured professor in the art department of Hunter College
with health insurance and a retirement plan. Within the next year
she was slated to become department chair. She had finally entered
into a season of balance and security on nearly every level, and she
was not going to let anything keep her from her own little piece of
Manhattan sky.
Julia crossed the quiet street toward home. As she got closer
to her building, she spotted a figure just beyond the glass-paneled
street door who had not yet been buzzed into the main entrance.
The figure's back—it appeared to be a woman—was to Julia, and she
was leaning against the wall, head and all, as if she had fallen asleep
standing up. The woman was slightly hunched over in a thin beige
raincoat. Not nearly heavy enough for this crisp March evening.
Probably one of Dr. Hu's patients, Julia thought as her high-heeled
boots steadily clapped the street before she slowed down
and took a cautious step onto the sidewalk. She dug through her
bag for her cell phone. She'd better wake up Graham, who was
surely snoozing in the master bedroom on the fourth floor. She
hated to bother him, but she didn't need to be wrangling with a
mental patient on an unpeopled street this time of night.
Why
a psychiatrist's office in my building? she thought as she dialed
Graham's number.
Why not an optometrist or a dermatologist? Why
not two chiropractors? She might have called Simon too, but he was
an ocean away in England visiting his sons. She missed him.
As Julia waited for Graham to pick up, the figure slowly turned
around. Julia pressed End and dropped her phone in her bag as her
heart caught in her throat. Beneath the fluorescent light the familiar
face looked as though it had aged twenty years. The last time she
had laid eyes on it was at Julia's father's funeral four years ago. Her
thick mane of rich, brown hair had thinned substantially and was
streaked with gray. Her sharp azure eyes, blue like the center of a
flame, were now sunken into a thin, weathered face. Her gaze met
Julia's. She looked almost fragile or elderly—like a deflated balloon
or a carved-out jack-o'-lantern left out on the stoop too long. She
was forty, just one year older than Julia, but she might as well have
been in her late fifties.
Julia ground her teeth, willing the familiar symptoms of her
panic attacks to subside: sweaty palms, racing heartbeat, constricted
throat. Once you'd had one panic attack, your greatest
fear was having another—it was even greater than the fear of what
might trigger it. No, she said to her pounding heart.
Stop, stop, stop.
Please stop. She breathed deeply and blinked several times, hoping
the stars she was seeing would fade away.
Lord, have mercy, have
mercy, have mercy, she prayed. She had all but abandoned her childhood
faith, but somehow this old prayer her Aunt Dot had taught
her (when she was six and afraid to go to sleep because of some
vivid nightmares involving Doberman pinschers) helped to stave
off a full-blown attack.
Christ, have mercy.
When her heart slowed a little, the woman came back into
focus. Then the thought crossed Julia's mind: run, run down the
street, hang a right onto Madison, and zip over to Zinnias for a
nice glass of pinot noir. And maybe another. Though, truth be
told, she hadn't had a second glass of wine in years.
Against Julia's better judgment, against every signal from her
tense and trembling body, she found herself slowly walking toward
the door. This was her house, her life. Had she not learned anything
from her therapist? She knew exactly what Dr. Johansen would say:
don't let anyone invade it.
She set her jaw, and the woman shifted her weight and reached
to the wall to steady herself. "This ought to be rich," Julia muttered
under her breath. Spite was the second best fuel she'd found to
battle the panic attack symptoms, and as she bridled it in her gut,
she could already feel her heart slowing down further, her throat
muscles relaxing slightly. She took a deep breath and then found
her key, shoved it into the hole, and turned it with a flick of her
knobby wrist.
As the door slammed behind her, the glass rattling in its pane,
the woman slowly cocked her head.
"Julia," she said. "We need to talk."
Marney held a handbag that looked as though she had dug
it out of some Dumpster in the textile district. She'd never had
much taste. Much style. Much sense of fashion whatsoever. And
that hadn't changed. It was the eyes that she had. And at one time,
curves in all of the right places and a full face with even fuller lips.
Most of all, she had gall. Or maybe it wasn't so much gall as it was
ferocity. (Julia had received years of counseling regarding the subject
of Marney.)
They rode the cramped elevator up to the top floor of the small,
narrow building together. Julia turned her face away from the antiseptic
smell coming from Marney. Like she'd just come from the
doctor's office or a medical supply store. Marney wrung her dry,
weathered hands, and Julia noticed that she still wore her wedding
band. She wouldn't have put it past Marney to remarry right away,
to have someone waiting in the wings, but it was the same one from
before, the simple gold band with the fig vine engraving. Marney's
husband was dead. Deep in the grave. Why did she still feel the
need to wear it?
The elevator opened right into Julia's apartment. There was
the tightly made bed in the far right corner, the studio in the far left
beside a panel of windows, and around a curve in the wall there was
a galley kitchen, which opened up onto the deck where Julia had
recently planted tomatoes and lemons in several large terra-cotta
pots along the far right edge where the sunlight was best.
The moon was nearly full and the sky was clear. Julia had an
eerie feeling. As if the moon were winking at her.
Told you, it might
have said. She nodded to the little sitting area, two chairs and a
small table, in the center of the apartment. "Okay," she said. "Have
a seat. I'll put on some tea. Then you can tell me how you are going
to ruin my life today."
"I'd rather have water." The woman's voice was faint and
groggy. She took out a yellowed men's handkerchief and blew
her nose.
"Sure."
Julia poured two glasses of water from the tap. As she carried
the glasses toward Marney, she thought of an old Bible verse Aunt
Dot used to read to her. Something about loving your enemies.
Feeding them a big meal. Maybe something about offering a cup of
water. Oh, she'd fallen out of the habit of going to church sometime
during college, but that stuff still stuck. It surfaced unexpectedly
like a porpoise fin rising out of the dark water.
Julia handed Marney the glass and took the seat opposite her.
"How are the kids?"
"Surviving, I guess." The woman cleared her throat. "I have a
son now."
Julia nodded in as civil a manner as she could muster. She
remembered how big Marney had been the day of Julia's father's
funeral.
Julia's father was buried in the Bennett family plot at Magnolia
Cemetery outside of Charleston on a sweltering hot day in late
August, and Aunt Dot was worried Marney might go into labor
right there at the graveside service. She'd been having contractions.
Her feet and hands were swelling. Her blood pressure was
all over the map.
Marney always seemed to be the center of attention. Just by
existing. Even at a funeral. Her husband had been well one morning,
catching and cleaning trout for a late breakfast, and dead by
dinnertime. He'd keeled over in a plastic chair on the dock next to
his acrylic tubes and easel, the canvas showing the beginnings of
an egret hunting at low tide on the far marsh bank of Store Creek.
And wouldn't it have taken the cake for Marney to deliver the dead
man's fifth child, his first son—Julia's half and only brother—on
the day that he was being lowered into the ground?
But Marney didn't deliver the baby that day. No, Charlie
Foster Bennett III was not birthed at the funeral of Charlie Jr.,
age sixty-six. Julia was on a plane back to New York late that
afternoon, and to this day she had no idea how or when the baby
actually arrived. It was her own mother who called to invite her
home for Thanksgiving, who mentioned the baby's birth some
weeks later. And then she'd received a birth announcement with
Aunt Dot's handwriting and a photograph of the infant in a bouncy
seat flanked by his two older sisters on the old Edisto porch of
Julia's childhood summers. Aunt Dot, trying to patch the family
together. Trying to be the glue of Julia's father's mistakes. Always
the big sister, Julia supposed.
Marney was picking at a string on her raincoat. She had picked
at things in college too. Julia had been paired up with her for a
roommate her freshman year at the University of Georgia, though
she had requested a room of her own. It was a cruel twist of fate
brought about by the UGA computer system (or whatever demon
inhabited it), but Julia didn't realize it at the time.
In fact, she had adored Marney, who smelled like cloves and
was both older and street-savvy, yet very fragile. Marney's father
had left her when she was just a young girl, and her mother had a
prescription drug addiction that had landed her in and out of rehab
over the course of Marney's childhood. Marney had seemed so
alone. So on her own. Like a compelling protagonist in a young
adult novel. Like the character about whom you think,
How or why
does she go on? And yet you can't look away because you want her to
survive. You want her to thrive. She'd managed to get a scholarship
to the university, and she was studying biology. She'd wanted to be
a veterinarian.
So Julia had been compelled, compelled to bring Marney
home during their college summers because she had no place to
go. Each year they'd head to Edisto and wait tables at Dockside
and spend the days lounging on the beach or taking the johnboat
out into the tidal creeks and waterways. Marney had grown up in
a concrete suburb of Atlanta, and Julia showed her porpoises, alligators,
foxes, bobcats, and even a copperhead slinking across the
orange and dusty dirt road. She taught her to fillet her first fish
with a rusty boat knife and how to peel the heads off of a cooler
full of shrimp too. Julia's mama, who was an amazing gardener and
cook, would prepare big meals for them. Fresh-caught shrimp with
plenty of butter for dunking, fried flounder and trout, tomato pies,
okra soup, sweet corn on the cob, fresh-baked biscuits, and lots
of creamy grits to go with everything. Julia's younger sister, Meg,
was always there with a friend or two from town, and so was Julia's
father, who took nearly all of the summer off from his law practice
to do what he loved best—paint.
The last summer between their junior and senior year, Julia
had been invited by her art professor to spend eight weeks touring
the art museums of Italy and France. She jumped at the chance.
Her parents invited Marney to spend the summer at Edisto, as
usual, if she'd like. And she did. At the same time, Julia's maternal
grandfather had a massive stroke, and her mother moved back to
Charleston to care for him. Meg went back too. She was seventeen,
and she had a crush on a South of Broad boy who taught sailing at
the Carolina Yacht Club, so she spent the summer taking lessons
from him. She would marry him seven years later.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Moon Over Edisto
by BETH WEBB HART
Copyright © 2013 by Beth Webb Hart.
Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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