TWENTY-FIVE
true south
sloane
March 28, 2016
Dear Sloane,
You can’t imagine how much the thought of you keeps me going, how much knowing I have you to come home to makes me know everything is going to be OK. Now that I’m the Sarge, everything feels different. I have to be the strong one now, Sloane. I have to be the brave and fearless leader, the one they look to when they are feeling low. It’s hard for me to stay strong sometimes, but I look up at the stars at night, and I picture you there in Georgia, in the land of peaches and pecans and peanuts, of all the things that are right with the world. And I know one thing for sure: you are my true South. No matter where I am, no matter how far away, my heart’s compass will always, always lead me back to you.
All my love,
Adam
WHEN I HEARD THE voices downstairs begin to get louder, I finally roused myself to get ready for the day. For Grammy’s day. Her last day at Starlite Island.
We think and talk a lot about our firsts, but we never really take the time to savor our lasts. Not enough time, anyway. Maybe it’s because they break our hearts so much. I don’t actually remember, for example, the last time I nursed either of my babies. I likely won’t remember the last time either of them sits on my lap or kisses me on the lips. Maybe that’s just as well, because it would be too hard. In the savoring, we would never be able to let it go. And letting go is the essence of life, the thing that keeps us moving forward.
That’s what made this morning particularly difficult, realizing it was, definitively, the very last time we would spend the day with our sharp, beautiful grandmother over at the island where we had spent countless hours with her in childhood. That last made me think about the last time I had Skyped with Adam. I had been upset with him, angry even, something I seldom was. I was an expert at putting on my brave Army wife face, but on the inside, I was a wreck most of the time. The thing I respected about Adam most, his dedication to his country, freedom, and his family, was also the thing that bothered me most. Because, in my heart of hearts, I just wanted him to come home. To me. To the boys. He could get a regular job or go back to school. But I never said that. Well, not until that day.
Through my tears, I had said, “Adam, please. Make this your last tour. Just come home already.” The look on his face had pained me.
“I know this is hard on you, babe,” he had said, to which I had retorted, “No, Adam. ‘Hard’ is an hour-long spin class. This is unthinkable.”
I knew the exact difference between the two, in fact, because Caroline had made me go to an hour-long spin class the day before.
Even through the not-always-wonderful Skype reception, I had seen Adam was hurt. I didn’t want to hurt him, especially not when he was living through something so unimaginably difficult. I wanted to make things easier for him and be that strength he needed, and 99 percent of the time, I was. But not that night.
“I can’t stand this, Adam. The kids are getting older. They’re going to start to remember when you aren’t here for months on end. I know your country means a lot to you and so do your men, but you need to choose us.”
I knew he wanted to argue with me then because he thought fighting for freedom and safety was choosing us. That was how he saw it. Sometimes, that was how I saw it too. But not that night. He didn’t bother to argue with me.
He simply sighed and said, “OK, Sloane. I’ll think about it. We can talk about it when I get home.”
That had been our last conversation. Oh, I hated that. I always said that last conversations didn’t matter when you truly knew how much you meant to each other. But now I understood. It was awful to think that the last time you spoke to someone, especially someone you loved so much, was in anger.
But there was little I could do about that today. All I could do was make sure I didn’t have another regret, that I gave my grandmother a proper good-bye, the kind of good-bye that would make me look back with a smile, not with sadness that I hadn’t done the right thing.
It was that idea that finally got me out of bed. Sometimes, no matter how you’re feeling, how sad you are, how hurt, the only option is to get up and keep going. I had heard it all my life. Now I was living it.
An hour later, Caroline was leading the charge to the boat, and all I could think about was how Mark and Emerson were so in love, giggling and cuddling. It was like stepping back in time, as if I were looking at the head cheerleader and star center from Peachtree Bluff High, the kids they had been when they fell in love the first time. Nothing had changed at all. They didn’t even look older. I hated them a little.
“OK, Grammy,” I said to my grandmother, who was sandwiched between Hal and James. “How do you think these crazy characters are planning to get you in here?”
“Oh, seems pretty simple to me,” Kyle interjected as he slid his arm under Grammy’s knees, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. I saw her wince when he lifted her, but, instead of complaining, in true Grammy style she said, a deep Southern accent dripping off her every word, “I’ve always depended on the kindness of a stranger.”
Caroline, Emerson, and I laughed, and she looked back at us, putting her hand up to stop Kyle from walking. “Take note, girls. That accent is the secret to Southern charm.”
“Why whatever do you mean, Grammy?” Caroline asked in what was one of the best Southern accents I had ever heard, real or otherwise.
“Come on, Caroline,” Emerson said, in her regular voice, which was a little Southern. “You’re a New Yorker.”
“And yet,” Caroline said, still channeling her inner Scarlett, “I do the accent better than any of you.”
We all laughed again, and Caroline, Emerson, and I crowded around Grammy, who was lounging in a pile of pillows at the dining table banquette. “This really is the way to ride, girls,” she said.
I noticed Jack coming out of the cabin, and when, a few minutes later, Mom followed, Emerson, Caroline, and I all shot each other looks. “That looks pretty suspicious,” I whispered first.
“We all see what’s happening here,” Emerson said. “We aren’t twelve.”
“Maybe you girls should talk to her about it,” Grammy said.
“Maybe you should talk to her about it,” Caroline said. “She’ll listen to you.”
“She never has before.” Grammy exhaled, and we all laughed. Then she added, “But now I’m dying, so she has to.”
Just like that, our laughter turned to tears, as quickly as a summer rain shower bursting from a stray dark cloud.
“Oh, girls,” Grammy said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. You have to remember I’m very, very high right now.” We erupted into watery giggles.
As I looked over to Starlite Island, I thought about the fairy stones Caroline had found for us there, how we had kept them in our pockets, how Grandpop said they were a gift to us to keep us safe. We had lost them on that same island where she had found them—and we were devastated, to say the least. And Grandpop had said to us, “The fairies gave your stones to someone else, someone who needed them more than you did.”
I had found that comforting, but it still hurt to remember what we had lost. They were more than a toy. They were a gift given to us by the land, by the sea, by this place we got to visit every summer that we loved so much.
I looked up at Caroline, whose eyes were on me. It didn’t matter now. It had been so long ago. But I still wondered who that man was that Mom was arguing with that day on the beach when we left the stones.
“What are y’all laughing about?” Mom asked.
“Oh, nothing,” I said, looking around. Amidst this strange, sort of sad, sort of funny, sort of happy day, I had to pause to realize how incredibly lucky my mother was. These people were here today because of her. They were here, in the morning, on a gorgeous summer day, when they could be doing anything else, because they were that devoted to her and wanted to give her an amazing memory with her dying mother.
I walked inside the boat, where Taylor and AJ were examining how one of the hatches opened and closed, and pulled them both onto my lap, wiggly creatures that they were. I knew this wouldn’t be the last time I held them, but I breathed them in anyway. I squeezed them to me, savored their warmth, memorized how good it felt to hold my children.
It was a fleeting moment. AJ, with his Superman cape tied around his neck over his life jacket, wriggled free and, yelling, “I’ll save you, Gransley!” was back on the stern in a flash. I kissed Taylor and set him free too.
The beach looked truly beautiful. Caroline had a trellis set up, about triple the size you would see in someone’s wedding, and it had yellow-and-white-striped paper lanterns—yellow was Grammy’s favorite color—hanging from it. The table underneath the tent was overflowing with flowers, and Kimmy was fussing over the trays of delicacies I’m certain she had been up all night creating. I hoped Grammy would be able to eat a bite or two.
I put my arm around my sister. “You’re really something, you know that?”
She grinned at me, popping a cherry tomato into her mouth. “I am, aren’t I?”
I noticed how Kyle fussed over Grammy, how he helped Kimmy, how he talked intently to Jack—anything to keep from watching the Mark-and-Emerson lovefest taking place in the corner.
“It’s like they never broke up,” Caroline said.
“Wait,” Mom said. “Maybe that’s what’s happening. Maybe it’s really 2008 again.”
We all laughed.
“They look pretty together, though,” Caroline said.
Mark was super cute. Not scorchingly hot like Kyle, but cute. And Emerson looked happy. That was all that mattered. “All I’ve heard from her,” I said, “is how she doesn’t have time to worry about relationships because all she can think about is her career.”
“Well she doesn’t look worried . . .” Caroline said.
Emerson took a bite of a ham biscuit Mark was feeding her. She didn’t look worried at all.
I walked over to the table, poured us each a glass of champagne, handed one to Grammy, one to Caroline, one to Mom, and said, “Here’s to love.”
“Here’s to love!” Grammy said.
Tears caught in my throat with the realization that, in no time at all, this beautiful woman, this head of our household who had done nothing but love us, would be gone.
Grammy had said earlier that the accent was the secret to Southern charm. But she was wrong. This putting on a brave face, carrying on, helping others, being kind and humble and giving, believing with all your heart that the world could be a better place and that maybe you could make it that way . . . that was Southern charm. Looking around at these women who all embodied those qualities so well, I had to think that maybe Grammy was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t a secret at all.