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Ella had been as aware as everyone else of the sad demolition years ago of the majestic Ocean Forest Hotel and other landmarks at Myrtle Beach, and she remembered friends back in Charlotte also complaining about other modern changes over the past couple of decades that had transformed much of the entire Grand Strand into a major resort that now engulfed the hitherto independent small beaches of Ocean Drive, Cherry Grove, and Crescent. Nothing, however, could have fully prepared her for not only the sleazy theme restaurants, amusement parks, and strip malls that now lined both sides of Kings Highway but also the towering, concrete, ocean-front hotels and condos that had replaced most of the gracious old family cottages and inns. Of course, Goldie was awed by all the spectacle and glitz, but she kept her excitement to herself when it became obvious that Miss Ella was nothing less than shocked as they slowly made their way along Ocean Boulevard past one flashy high rise after another, looking anxiously for a sign that read “The Priscilla.”

Then, there it was, the same pinkish-white, shingled, dignified structure recessed off the road that Ella had known in the old days and that stood almost in noble defiance of progress and trendy vulgarity. Both the inn and its spacious parking lot were virtually camouflaged by old palmettos and tall, thick borders of well-trimmed myrtle hedges that guaranteed an optimum of privacy for the privileged guests, and when she looked up from the car, Ella noticed that every window was now graced by a neat blue awning with a small white P in the center of each. On the front was a long, white, bannistered porch with rocking chairs overlooking a wooden terrace and plush lawn between the inn and the ocean, and, as all the locals knew, the formal dining room inside still served what was without question the finest Lowcountry cuisine on the entire beach.

Pulling through the front gate to the main entrance of the inn, they were greeted immediately by an older, uniformed attendant, who opened Ella’s door, directed them to the reception area, and said he would park the car and handle the luggage and fishing rods. Inside the quiet, wood-paneled hall furnished with deep cane armchairs, a handsome bookcase, and tasteful seascapes on the walls, it was as if time had stood still, and when the familiar, salty aroma of fresh sea air swept through the front porch doors into the vestibule, Ella had the strange, comforting impression that she’d been here only yesterday.

“Young man, when you’ve finished checking us in,” she addressed the attractive clerk behind the desk, fishing in her pocketbook for a credit card while he glanced furtively at Goldie, “I’d like to have an important word with you.

“Yes, Mrs. Dubose, by all means,” he acknowledged cordially in a thick Lowcountry accent, taking the card, running it through a machine for an imprint, and indicating where she should sign the registration form. Ella thought about commenting on the vulgarity of credit cards, but she’d learned that she was just wasting her breath ridiculing this modern phenomenon.

“Do you know what incognito means?” she almost whispered, leaning up and touching the sleeve of his blue blazer.

The lad looked perplexed. “No, Ma’am, I can’t say I do.”

“You don’t? Well, I’ll tell you. It means somebody who prefers not to be recognized, who’s in disguise, and that’s the way I’m traveling on this trip --- incognito.”

“Oh,” he uttered, still baffled by what the elegant lady was trying to put across.

“You see, I and my family were coming to the Priscilla years ago --- before you were even born.” She stopped to laugh softly to herself. “And I’m now returning with my companion here mainly to rest and relax and not be disturbed --- total privacy.”

The clerk, his blue eyes wide open, remained quiet a moment, then said, “Oh, yes Ma’am, we try to respect the privacy of all our guests.”

Ella frowned slightly, her hand still on his arm. “I don’t think you fully understand, young man, so let to try to put it another way. As far as this inn is concerned, I don’t exist, I never checked in here, and if there should be any phone calls for me, you’ve never heard my name. I have my own very personal reasons, and, take my word, there’s nothing shady going on, but can you assure me that this request will be honored, and your telephone operator notified, and...?”

“Don’t forget about Mr. Tyler,” Goldie interrupted quietly, nudging her arm.

“Oh yes, my son from New York City, Mr. Tyler Dubose, will be joining us on the weekend for a few days --- I believe you have his reservation --- and he also will be staying here incognito.”

By now, the poor clerk, who was trying to be sophisticated in accordance with his training, was so confused that all he could do was excuse himself, tap on an office door just off the reception area, and speak momentarily with a much older gentleman dressed in a beige linen suit.

“Good day, Mrs. Dubose,” the man greeted, approaching the desk and eyeing the dark-skinned woman with the beads and bracelets before turning his full attention to Ella. “I’m Albert Glover, the general manager, and I understand that you’ll not be accepting any incoming calls during your stay with us.”

“That’s correct, Mr. Glover. In fact, I’d like our registration --- and my son’s this weekend --- to remain anonymous, if that’s no problem. I have my reasons.”

For an instant, the manager wondered to himself if perhaps the perfectly respectable looking lady might be either a celebrity or kook, but then he quickly determined that she was no more than a well-off, harmless eccentric with a peculiar companion who, for whatever reasons, simply wanted to be left totally alone.

“No problem, Mrs. Dubose,” he assured in a friendly manner. “As you might know, we’re still a very old-fashioned, traditional place, and go out of our way to accommodate all our guests’ every wish, so our lips are sealed if that’s what you ask. And please let us know if there’s anything at all we can do to make your stay more pleasant.”

Once Ella had thanked him, the two women were shown to their adjoining rooms on the third floor, Ella’s on a corner with sweeping views of the sea and coastline, and Goldie’s much smaller connecting one on the side. The first thing Ella did was cut off the air conditioning and open all the windows, and after hanging up a couple of dresses and leaving the rest of the unpacking to Goldie, she looked down at the blue and white cabanas that were similar to those where she used to sit sewing and watching Big Earl and the children romp in the waves. She now felt tired and a little groggy, and as she gazed out over the ocean with thousands of small whitecaps reflecting the hypnotic afternoon sun, what came to mind first was the day so long ago when she and Jonathan frolicked up the beach in front of the Ocean Forest, and he held her tight around the waist, and she was so in love. Then she remembered worrying, years later, about Tyler one morning strolling all alone up the beach while his father pitched baseball with Little Earl, and how she caught up with him and they searched together for beautiful shells. And next surfaced the vision of pier fishing with Earl, and pulling in a large blue, and standing back in horror as he ripped the hook from the struggling fish’s mouth while Little Earl and Liv cheered him on. One by one, the disparate memories emerged and clashed, and if, sitting there in a partial trance with the warm, familiar breeze blowing across her venerable body, Ella sensed a remote happiness being back in her beloved Lowcountry where important chapters of her long, rather ordinary life had unfolded, she was not so distracted by the promise of pleasure and relaxation to forget the primary reason for this deviant trip. Nor could she disregard some of the irritating family circumstances back home that threatened to darken her entire mood.

“We’re concerned, Mama, and not just about your physical health,” had been Olivia’s exact words that day at Bull’s Barbecue.

“When somebody gets to your age, there’re changes in the system that can effect everything we do from making important decisions to... driving a car,” had been Little Earl’s added two bits.

Not that Ella had really wanted to go to lunch with her son and daughter on that hectic Saturday. It had been a trying week, so much so that if one single thing else went wrong she thought she might reach for the gun in her pocketbook and blow her own brains out. First, she was still recovering from a nasty touch of the colic, most likely brought on by a strange shrimp dish she’d ordered at Phoenix Garden when her old friend Lilybelle Armstrong invited her out to celebrate Ella’s 74th birthday. Because of a terrible, really inexcusable mix-up, the man due to clean the crystal chandelier in the dining room had yet to show up. Nor had young Billy next door come over on Wednesday after school, as promised, to help Miss Ella move one of the two heavy artificial Christmas trees on wheels from behind a large Indonesian screen in the sun room to a corner of the library.

All week long, her soaps on TV had been preempted hour after hour by the news of some factory or house or bus that had been blown up over in Israel. And as if that annoyance were not enough, Ella now had good reason to worry that the garbage man might start asking questions about the potted marijuana plant growing taller each day in a remote sunny area of the spacious porch that wrapped it round two sides of the house. She had almost burned the bottoms of jelly cookies intended to be served at her charity league luncheon, then Lucy, sick as a dog with a migraine, had called to change the regular hair and manicure appointment at the beauty parlor. And what should arrive in the mail from up north but a copy of Tyler’s new memoirs revealing not only certain aspects of his unusual life that should have been kept private, but also a few embarrassing details about the family that were not at all necessary.

All of which meant that Ella Dubose was not exactly in the best frame of mind when Little Earl called out of the blue to announce that he and Olivia would like to drop by the house on Saturday and take their mother out to Bull’s Barbecue for lunch. Ella immediately suspected something shady since it just wasn’t normal for her younger son and daughter to pay a visit together, much less pick a Saturday to eat barbecue when everybody in Charlotte knew how horrendous Saturday crowds could be at any restaurant. Maybe if Earl had said that he and Betty Jane, his wife., were simply planning to drive over to visit, Ella wouldn’t have been so leery, but no, it just wasn’t normal for the two of’ them to be coming together and wasting a good Saturday that could be and usually was spent with their own children or some friends.

“Son,” Ella began to beg off, “that’s awfully sweet of you both, but to tell you the honest truth, it really doesn’t suit this weekend. I’ve had a pretty bad week, and besides, much as I love it, I’m not one bit sure I should be eating barbecue after this little intestinal spell I’ve had.”

“Oh, Mama, you know as well as I do that half of that’s in your head,” he had challenged in his nonchalant way when trying to sway his mother. “What you need is to get out of that big house and forget about your problems for a while. If you don’t feel up to barbecue, you can always have a good bowl of Brunswick stew, and a few hushpuppies, and plenty of ice’ tea, You know how much you love the Brunswick stew out at Bull’s, and it might do your tummy lots of good. And Liv’s dying for a barbecue plate.”

Ella stood her ground. “Earl, honey, please don’t try to humor me, for heaven’s sake. As I said, this has not been a very good week, and I’m aware when my nerves are on end, and I certainly know what I should and should not eat after I’ve had a little set --- back. I also know that I have no intention, no intention whatsoever, of waiting over there for a table on a busy Saturday.”

Earl could be as persistent and stubborn as his mother, not only at his company but when dealing with any of his ken. “Now, Mama, I think you’ve forgotten, I think it’s completely escaped your mind that I’ve known Bull Godwin ever since we started coaching Little League together, and that Bull will have me a table ready anytime faster than you can shake a stick. All it takes is a quick phone call, so you can’t use that as an excuse.”

“Son, I’m not going to argue with you till I’m blue in the face. Some of the girls from the church are coming over this afternoon to strip palms and make crosses for Sunday, so I don’t have time to argue. Goldie’s here now helping me fix tea sandwiches and roll nutty fingers, and we still have to straighten up the sun room. If you and Liv want to drop by just for a visit, fine, but I’m not making any promises about going to Bull’s. Just depends on my condition.”

Ella had every right to wonder about her son and daughter coming over together to take her out to lunch on Saturday. Not that she’d ever had any reason to distrust her own flesh and blood. It was simply because she couldn’t remember the last time just the three of them had gone out together to eat barbecue or anything else, and her maternal instincts told her that something odd was up --- something peculiar that she could detect merely from the tone of Earl’s voice on the phone. Of course, had she been a fly on the wall at his and Betty Jane’s home the previous weekend while the two of them and Olivia sat around the kitchen table drinking cola or coffee and nibbling on snacks, she’d have known in an instant why any wariness was justified.

“Haven’t you noticed some weird changes in Mama Ella’s behavior the last few months?” Betty Jane asked Olivia, twisting a clump of tinted blond hair with her thumb and index finger.

Olivia, wearing a jersey with “CAROLINA” stenciled over the front, was sipping coffee from a mug with the figure of a blue ram on one side. Her short, auburn hair was flecked with gray, and it was obvious that one day it would be as radiantly silver as her mother’s.

“Nothing Mama does these days really surprises me,” she answered, snickering in a childish way.

“Well, we’ve noticed, and it worries the hell out of us,” Earl asserted, popping another small cheese biscuit from a tin into his mouth and washing it down with Diet Coke. “And I think we need to talk about it before…” He stopped to listen to the TV in the den when there was a roar from the crowd at a basketball game. “Did B. J. tell you what Mama was doing just the other day when she drove over there to return some of her china? She was baking dog biscuits. Dog biscuits!”

Betty Jane, who couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds and dressed in expensive skirts and blouses even when at home, now had an almost stunned look on her face. “That’s right. Baking dog biscuits for dogs in the neighborhood. Can you imagine?”

“Sounds more like something Goldie might do,” Olivia uttered.

“Listen,” Earl added facetiously, “if Mama decided to dynamite the Charlotte Coliseum , that damn squaw would be right there to light the fuse.”

“Well, one thing that really does bother me is how Mama seems to be having more of her strange spells,” Olivia remarked with more concern. “Haven’t you noticed recently she sometimes just stares into space like she doesn’t know where she is?”

Earl leaned back from the table, sucked in his ample gut, then ran a hand over the almost totally bald top of his head that betrayed his 49 years. “Honey, that’s part of what’s worrying hell out of me.”

Olivia’s expression became even more serious. “Lord, you’re not saying you think Mama could be headed for something like a bad stroke or... Alzeimer’s?”

“Who knows,” he grunted in exasperation, shaking his head and reaching for a handful of potato chips. “She’s got that heart murmur, and Dr. Singer’s been begging her for ages to have some more tests, but you know how bull-headed Mama can be when it comes to doctors and tests and all that.”

“Have you talked to Tyler recently about this?” Betty Jane asked, pulling at the large pear-shaped diamond ring on her finger.

There was another clamor on the TV, which moved Earl to jump up and peer around the corner for a minute to see what was happening at the game.

“Tyler?” he muttered as he sat back down, a disgusted frown on his slightly tanned face. “How could I talk to Ty when he and lover boy were living it up over in Paris? Last time I brought up the subject of Mama’s health, he said Mama knew what she was doing and started to raise Cain, so I just let it drop. Of course, Big Brother sits up there in New York with all his fancy friends living high on the hog while we watch out for Mama and wonder what will happen next.” He leaned back in the chair trying to hear the sports commentary, then fixed his bulging eyes on his sister. “You know Mama can do no wrong in Ty’s eyes, but, dammit, one day he’s gonna have to face reality about what it’s like for us down here. As if he ain’t already brought enough disgrace to this family.”

Little Earl made no pretense about the way he felt about his older brother --- not to his sister, or his wife, or his mother, or anybody else in the family except maybe Tyler himself. Not that there’d ever been any real open strife between the brothers, or that the two weren’t civil enough to one another in a respectful Southern way on the rare occasion, usually at Christmas, when Tyler flew home to North Carolina to visit his mother. But it was no big secret that Earl had little use for Tyler and his way of life, or that the two couldn’t have been more different in their sophistication and even in their physical characteristics.

Happily married to Betty Jane for over thirty years and the proud father of a fine son and daughter, Earl was the president of Charlotte’s largest and most prestigious printing and engraving company. Founded by his father and a partner when Big Earl and Ella moved to Charlotte back in the forties, Creative Graphics had been a highly lucrative success over the years, and from the day Little Earl began working at the company after graduating at State in Raleigh with a degree in business management, it was taken for granted that one day he’d inherit the whole enterprise when Big Earl passed on.

Little Earl knew everything there was to know about printing and engraving, and nobody could ever have accused him of not being even more ambitious and industrious than his daddy had always been. As a result, he not only commanded the utmost respect throughout Charlotte’s business community and his health club, but he and Betty Jane enjoyed considerable social status at Christ Episcopal Church and Quail Hollow Country Club, as well as prized seats at Lowe’s Motor Speedway and all NFL Panthers games. Although heavyset like so many Southern men who eat three square meals a day, he had always been called Little Earl within the family, not because of his size but to distinguish him from his daddy. Most friends simply called him Earl, but at the company he was respectfully addressed by employees as either Mr. Earl or Mr. Dubose, and at work he was never seen without a jacket and tie, much as he hated dressing up. Like many prosperous Charlotteans, he and Betty Jane had a weekend retreat up at Lake Norman near Davidson College, and that’s where Earl could really relax in a pair of jeans, or cutoffs, or bathing suit without compromising his image as one of the city’s more reputable citizens.

Tyler, on the other hand, couldn’t have been less interested in family or civic activities, religion, social clubs, and certainly not sports and quaint lakeside cabins. Almost two years older than Little Earl and much more independent by nature, he had received a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Duke in the ear1y seventies, landed an assistant professorship at Princeton, and might well have become a leading scholar of English Romantic literature had an unfortunate and well-publicized indiscretion with a male student not suddenly ended his promising vocation and sent him fleeing to Manhattan to pick up the pieces of his life and try his hand at writing fiction. News of his disgrace that leaked back to Charlotte shocked and embarrassed Big Earl and everybody else except Ella, and even after Tyler’s first popular novel became a best seller all over the country and launched what would develop into a phenomenal career, most Charlotteans still chose to dwell with disapproval on the mostly fabricated gossip about his private life up north than on the hometown boy’s literary success.

Rather elegant in demeanor and still remarkably handsome for his age, Tyler, no doubt, had spread his wings far and wide in younger days, as revealed in his new juicy book of memoirs. But the truth was that, for a number of years, he had been living rather conventionally with the same man, an intelligent, successful fine arts dealer originally from Chicago with whom he shared both a well-appointed duplex apartment on East 67th Street in Manhattan and a comfortable but modest home out in Amagansett on Long Island where Ella would occasionally visit the two. What possibly caused the most resentment in his Charlotte family, in fact, was the deep affection that Tyler and his mother had always shown toward one another, a love and devotion that bordered on adoration and that many felt was simply based on their mutually rebellious, liberal, and downright eccentric personalities. Even as a teenager, Tyler had never been very close to Big Earl since the two shared very few interests, and it’s for sure that he never had much in common with his younger brother. As for Olivia, Tyler had always been rather protective of his sister when they were growing up since she was never the most popular girl with the boys in her class, but after she eventually got married and began raising a family, the relationship with her older brother became more and more remote and impersonal.

Such friction had undoubtedly caused Ella some distress, not only because she loved every member of her family but considered the large family home on Colville Road to be a happy haven where she and Big Earl had lived since the fifties, the house where Tyler, Little Earl, and Olivia had all been reared, and the house where everybody should be able to gather together any time in total harmony. The white Colonial Revival structure was certainly not as grand as the stately mansions along Queens Road West or even some of the more modern spreads out in the Providence Plantation area of town, but it was a gracious, comfortable, two-story home with attractive grounds in a fine old neighborhood. Ella loved her house, and as long as she was physically and mentally capable of faring for herself, she planned to remain there till, as she often proclaimed, they carried her out feet first. And except for a slight heart murmur and the first signs of mild glaucoma, which she occasionally combated by secretly smoking a little home-grown marijuana, Ella was still more fit, energetic, and alert at 74 than many women ten years younger. It could even be said, in fact, that she could conceivably outlive Tyler who, unbeknownst to everyone in the family and to practically everyone up north except his doctors and Barry, had been waging a nasty battle with colon cancer for much of the past year.

“Of course, you know what really drives me to distraction is Mama wheeling that big car all over Charlotte day and night --- even when she’s been drinking,” Earl went on, popping the tab on another Diet Coke. “I mean, I don’t know when her eyes were last checked, and all we need is for somebody to call and announce that she’s just plowed into three or four cars and killed God knows how many people.”

“Mama really shouldn’t be driving at her age,” Olivia commented in her simple way. “Lord, what is she had one of her spells out on Independence Boulevard?”

Betty Jane chuckled. “Well, all I can say is I don’t want to be around when somebody so much as suggests to Mamma Ella that she should give up her white chariot.”

“B. J., I don’t find one thing funny about this,” Earl scolded his wife. “The point is, we gotta have a long talk with Mama and try to convince her to at least go to Dr. Singer for a thorough check-up. Then we might have some clue to what we’re dealing with.”

Betty Jane pretended to fan her face with one hand. “Boy oh boy, the fur’s gonna fly.”

Chapter Three

Rising from her chair at the inn overlooking the sparkling ocean, Ella decided to take a nap before getting dressed and going downstairs with Goldie for drinks and dinner, but since the thought of that fretful lunch with her younger son and daughter back in Charlotte continued to prey on her mind, all she could do was lie wide awake on the bed, stare at the ceiling, and reflect further on that and the real reason she’d decided so compulsively to flee to the beach. Then, as if overcome by a strange compulsion, she got up and went over to the bureau, opened the top drawer, and nervously rummaged beneath a pile of carefully folded elegant silk scarves for the discolored package of tattered letters tied together with frail string that, back home, she’d kept concealed with other old mementos in a shoe box. Since the yellowed envelopes had been mailed from U. S. army bases in England and France during the war, there were no postmarks, and since the writing on the time-worn, creased pages was all in pencil, many words and parts of whole sentences were now too smudged or faded to read. Still, sitting on the foot of the bed, Ella opened randomly a few of the letters, and as she began to scan the contents for the first time in nearly forty years, she was so gripped by a terrible wave of nostalgia and confused emotions that she could almost hear her heart pounding.

“My darling Ella, Tonight, in…seemed like a hundred years…in that pretty polka dot dress as the train pulled out.”

“Over 2 dozen casualties to handle today, but we know the job must be done, and all we pray is the unit…before you know it.”

“My sweet Ella, Do you remember when you got that bone caught in your gum at Perdidas? Well, yesterday when we were on patrol near Louviers, a very…farm woman offered…began laughing my head off.”

“…promise when this hell is finally over and we’re back together, we’ll…teach me how to tango like Valentino. How I miss you. Always yours, Jonathan.”

For a while longer, she continued to look through the troubling letters, but when the exercise seemed to produce more anxiety than revelations that might help her carry through her self-imposed mission, she tucked them back into the drawer and purposefully distracted her thoughts back to the present by once again pondering the annoying implications revealed at lunch with her two youngest children.

When, in fact, Little Earl and Olivia had arrived at their mother’s shortly before noon, Ella had still been wavering over whether her system was yet up to eating at Bull’s, but after Little Earl coaxed and coaxed, and again mentioned the onion hushpuppies, and added that he and Liv were both hungry as dogs, she had finally given in if for no other reason than to stop all the bickering and make her children happy.

And, just as Earl had promised, there was indeed a booth ready for the Dubose family, even though at least a dozen other customers milling about the lounge area were waiting patiently to be seated. Almost immediately, Earl and Olivia both ordered the chopped barbecue platter that included cole slaw, french fries, and a cup of Brunswick stew, and Earl told the waitress to bring also a basket of hushpuppies and pitcher of ice’ tea. Overcome by the aroma of smoky meat that filled the entire restaurant, Ella dropped all her defenses and decided to have a barbecue sandwich. Then, after asking the pretty waitress if she could have just a glass of ice water, she began rummaging in her dark green leather pocketbook and slyly pulled out a small silver flask that she furtively cupped in her wrinkled hand.

“Oh Mama, you’re not,” Earl whined disparagingly, shifting his eyes to see if anybody close by was watching.

“I most certainly am,” Ella countered boldly, “and I don’t want to hear a peep from either one of you. “You know I enjoy a little nip when I go out, especially when I’m getting over an upset, and if your friend Bull Godwin would have the gumption to get a liquor license for this place like every decent restaurant in Charlotte has, maybe I wouldn’t be reduced to having to bootleg my own.

“Mama, what if the waitress notices the color of the water,” Olivia asked nervously, rubbing the front of her V-neck rose cashmere sweater.

“Well, honey, have I ever embarrassed you in public?” she huffed indifferently in her rather raspy voice. I’ll simply tell her it’s a medication I have to take before eating --- that’s what. Now, for heaven’s sake, would you two just mind your own business and tell me what this is all about?”

Olivia, sitting beside her brother, glanced up at him.

“What’s what all about, Mama?” he pretended confidently, laughing.

Before Ella could answer, there was a muffled beeping inside the left side pocket of Earl’s jacket, and when he pulled the cell phone out, his mother frowned in disgust.

“Hi, Frankie,” Earl drawled. “Naw, I’m busy this afternoon with my mama and sister. Maybe next Saturday. Yeah, I’ll give you a call. Thanks, ole buddy.”

“Lord, I hate those vulgar contraptions,” Ella groused as he rammed the phone back into his pocket. “Oughta be outlawed --- like computers.”

“Mama, why do you hate anything modern and practical,” he commented, “Cell phones are here to stay, so you better get used to them. If you’d let me get you one, you’d see how convenient they are --- and what they could mean in a bad emergency.”

“Over my dead body,” Ella mumbled, feeling the side of her hair.

After the waitress returned with a pitcher of tea and the water, Ella very deftly poured from her flask into the glass of water, stirred the ice with a spoon, and took a sip.

“Now listen, you two, you don’t both sacrifice a perfectly nice Saturday just to eat barbecue with your old mother --- not without Betty Jane or Jesse or one of the kids. So what’s up?”

“Oh Mama, don’t be like that,” Earl drawled, reaching over and playfully popping her arm. “The three of us haven’t been together by ourselves in a coon’ s age, and I don’t think you realize how much Liv and I worry about you being over there alone in that big house all the time and not getting out more.”

Ella put her glass on the table, reached again in her pocketbook, and took out a dull gold cigarette case with the engraved initials EPH barely discernable on one side.

Olivia looked surprised, almost shocked. “Mama, you told us --- you promised --- you’d stopped smoking those filthy things.”

Ella lit a cigarette with a small gold butane lighter and took a long, delicious draw. “Oh, honey, I have --- almost. I’ve been quitting for the past forty years, as you know, and now go days without smoking. But when I have a cocktail in a restaurant, or my nerves are really on end...” She took another drag, then picked her glass back up and gazed at Earl. “And, son, I don’t know what in this world you’re talking about when you say I’m not getting out of the house enough. I mean, I go to the beauty parlor every Friday and to church every single Sunday, and have my charity league and bible class, and go to the store with Goldie at least twice a week, and have lunch with Lulu Woodside, and Folly, and Jinks Ferguson, and…Why, the very idea that I don’t get out enough. You two just don’t know what all I do do. I stay busy as a bee, and maybe if you called more often…”

Earl twisted his mouth to one side and grumbled, “I’ve never understood what you see in that Mrs. Ferguson.”

“Why, I don’t know what you mean, son. Jinks Ferguson is a very nice lady who devotes lots of time to the charity league.”

“Well, I just don’t trust any of those Catholics with all their sick hangups.

“Now, why would you make an asinine remark like that?”

“Well, we could start with Mrs. Ferguson breeding six children and then mention her love affair with the gin bottle, couldn’t we?” He chuckled. “People at the club still talk about the night she got so tanked that one of her sons had to be called to come take her home.”

Ella drew back indignantly like some startled exotic bird. “That is absolutely not true, not a word of it --- just malicious gossip. I happen to know that, at the time, Jinks was still getting over her husband’s tragic death, and that she was simply on the verge of a bad nervous breakdown. I’m sure Jinks enjoys a social drink from time to time like the rest of us, hut I can tell you that at our meetings I’ve never seen her touch anything but a nice glass of sherry.

Earl twisted his mouth again smugly and raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, with a float of gin on top. Those Catholics are crazy people --- just eaten up with guilt over everything.”

“Son, sometimes I think you’ve lost your mind when you make ugly remarks like that. None of that nonsense about Jinks is true, and, besides, it’s not one bit of your business what she or any other of my friends do.”

The waitress brought the food, and the second Little Earl saw the hot hushpuppies, he popped one in his mouth without even buttering it. He asked his mother if she didn’t want to taste the Brunswick stew, placing the small bowl in front of her, so she took a spoonful and pronounced the thick concoction to be excellent --- as good as her own. She then asked about the grandchildren and wondered why she didn’t see more of them. Earl, who had both a son and daughter, said that Carter was already showing great promise at the company, and that he and B.J. had every reason to think he and Lena Rose Hitchcock were much more serious about each other than they let on. As for daughter Bippie, well, Bippie had been spending more and more time helping some Italian guy from Monroe run the wine shop over in Sardis Mall, and all anybody could do was pray there wasn’t more to that shady relationship than meets the eye. Cameron Lee, Olivia’s and Jesse’s only child, was still working hard to set up his podiatry clinic just off Park Road, Olivia informed, and while they couldn’t be more proud of him ever since he finally finished all his training down at Emory, they did wish --- they prayed every night --- that he’d hurry up and meet the right girl and think as much about starting a family as playing golf every weekend and becoming a rich foot doctor.

Earl wolfed down his entire platter before Ella had taken three bites of her sandwich, but Olivia, who was always battling her weight, left some barbecue on her plate and didn’t touch the french fries. Earl had never managed to take off the thirty pounds he put on after he stopped smoking some years ago, and, like most reformed smokers who tend to substitute food for nicotine, he was now fidgety with nothing more to satisfy his appetite than glass after glass of ice’ tea.

“As I was saying a little while ago, Mama,” he resumed almost impatiently, “I and B.J. and Liv here worry our heads off about you over there in that house alone at night without so much as a cell phone in ease of emergencies.

“Oh please, son, let’s not beat that dead horse again. You know how I loathe all those modern gadgets and will not have one in my home. So would you please hush about that once and for all?”

“Okay, but we’ve been doing a lotta thinking, Mama, and we think we all need to talk about your health and well-being.”

Ella put her sandwich down in her dainty way, took another slow sip of the whiskey, and glared at him as if the reality of the situation was beginning to dawn on her. “There’s not one thing wrong with me.”

“How would you know, Mama?” he bolted. “You haven’t seen a doctor in at least three years.”

“So that’s what this little get-together is all about. You two want me to go to Dr. Singer and let him give me the once-over. Right?”

Appearing more agitated, Earl poured more tea into his glass. “Well, frankly, Mama, you just haven’t been acting like your old self lately --- whether you’re aware of it or not. And all we’re asking, all we’re begging is that you go to Dr. Singer and let him give you a complete check-up the way any normal person does from time to time.”

Ella began tapping her perfectly manicured red fingernails on the table. “There’s not one thing wrong with me --- nothing --- and if there’s anything I hate, it’s a doctor fooling aroundwith me, and making me take one pill after the next, and lecturing me about smoking and drinking. I’ve just had lots on my mind lately --- that’s all --- and I will thank you both just to let me attend to my own affairs. I think you’ve forgotten who somehow raised you.”

“Mama, you’re not being very reasonable,” Olivia chimed in, picking at a french fry as if debating whether to eat it. “What if they found something wrong?”

“If they did, my dear, I probably wouldn’t do a thing about it --- not at my age. I now believe simply in letting nature take its course.”

When Ella lit another cigarette, leaving the rest of her sandwich uneaten, Olivia fanned the air, prompting her mother to exclaim, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, child, stop being so silly.”

Earl drew back in his seat and swept a hand over his stomach protruding well over his belt. “What about your heart condition, Mama? You know you have a bad heart, just like Paw Paw had.”

“I have nothing of the sort. They told me it was just a slight murmur, and I don’t classify a murmur as a bad heart. And besides, my daddy died of pneumonia, not a heart attack.”

Earl reached over for a fingerful of Olivia’s fries and dragged them through a small mound of catsup on the plate before stuffing them into his mouth in a single bite as his mother watched and frowned.

“And since we ‘re here obviously not for just a nice Saturday lunch but to discuss health and doctors,” Ella continued in irritation, “I could say that at the rate you’re going, son, I’ll end up burying you long before I go to meet my maker.”

“That’s ridiculous, Mama,” he groused. “Sure, I’m a couple of pounds overweight, but I don’t smoke or drink or stay up till the wee hours the way you sometimes do, and Dr. Singer told me just last month at my physical that I’m basically fit as a fiddle.”

Ella slowly rubbed the gold cigarette case and sat very quietly for a moment. “Can we please just drop the subject and talk about something more pleasant?”

“But we’re concerned, Mama,” Olivia pursued. “And not just about your physical health.”

Again, Ella didn’t budge, debating whether to argue further or insist that they get up and leave.

“What are you implying, honey? That I’m going off my rocker? That I’m losing my mind?”

“Of course not, Mama. But you know as well as we do that when somebody gets to your age, there’re changes in the system that can affect everything we do from making important decisions to…driving a car. And remember, Mama, that Goldie’s not always around to help.”

Ella’s expression suddenly became almost hostile. “So now you’re saying I shouldn’t be driving my car. Is that what you two are getting at?”

Fidgeting even more, Earl buttered another hushpuppy, even though it was now cold.

“Mama, all we’re saying, all we’re trying to put across is that we’re worried sick that something really bad could happen if you don’t start taking better care of yourself and maybe make a few changes. Is it so wrong for two children to worry about their mother?”

“Have you two forgotten that I also have another child and you have an older brother who most likely disagrees with everything you’re saying,” she stated sarcastically.

“Of course not, Mama,” Earl drawled in exasperation. “And I think Ty’s just as concerned as we are, as Daddy would be if he was still here.”

“Tyler minds his own business, like he should, which is one reason we rarely have a cross word.”

“Yeah, all Ty has to worry about up there is his next party, and gettin’ his name in the paper, and his next million, and…that Barry,” Earl cracked indiscreetly.

Ella slapped her hand on the table, then began reaching for her pocketbook and light sweater next to her. “You’ll not talk about your brother like that. I won’t stand for it. And as for my condition, you let me worry about that, okay? When I’m no longer able to function normally and think I’m becoming a burden to you all, I’ll be the first to make some changes, but till then, I’m still in charge of my life. Is that understood? This conversation has made me almost nauseous, so would you kindly pay the check. Goldie and I were planning to put out some marigolds in the side yard, so I’d like to go home.”

By the time Earl had put some bills on top of the small paper tab and pulled himself up from the booth to give his mother a hand, she was already headed for the shiny black Lexus SUV parked outside.

“Why anybody in his right mind would want to drive one of these vulgar tanks,” Ella grumbled as Earl almost hoisted her into the front seat of the enormous vehicle.

On the way back, Earl and Olivia didn’t have much more to say, and Ella’s mind was going a hundred miles an hour as she sat silent and gazed at a medium in the road bursting with giant yellowbells. When the children dropped her off at the house after the fretful lunch, Goldie was already on her knees in the side garden loosening the soil with a spade, flats of marigolds spread out on the yard. Normally, Ella’s role would have been to hand her the multicolored flowers and direct exactly where they should be places, but this time, she told Goldie that she had a sick headache and just to plant the marigolds as she liked. She then proceeded into the house without saying another word and collapsed in her favorite reading chair in the library next to a picture window overlooking a massive pin oak at the edge of the lawn. For a long while, she simply sat there, gently fondling her gold cigarette case and glancing wistfully from time to time at the huge tree. Finally, she got up, went to one of the mahogany bookshelves, and removed a flimsy photo album that she carefully opened on her knees, turning the brittle pages slowly till she came to a faded black and white picture of a young couple standing arm in arm on a beach in front of what looked like an immense, opulent, white hotel in the background. Still rubbing the case, she stared at the photo as if mesmerized, tears soon forming in her delicate blue eyes. Closing the album and dabbing her eyes with a soft cotton hanky from her pocketbook, she next fixed her gaze on the framed picture of Tyler on a tea table taken when he graduated from Myers Park High School. Then she looked out again at the oak now full of tiny, silver --- green leaves that shaded a large area of the lawn, and it was at that moment that Ella decided what she had to do, before it was too late, to come to terms with certain ghosts of the past that had haunted her for an entire lifetime.

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