Sweet Caroline(20)

“No.” I take over behind the counter. “Hey, Mr. Feinberg, I haven’t seen you in a while. More coffee?”

Mr. Feinberg taps his cup with his fork. “Sure, Caroline, freshen her up.”

I fill Mr. Feinberg’s cup, then tend to the rich-looking, retired couple’s iced teas and clear away a plate of half-eaten fries shared by three teen girls. When the lull comes, I sneak around the wall with the newspaper and stand inside the kitchen door.

Front page. Below the fold. A story on the Café with a then-and-now picture. The headline makes my heart jump: “Saying Good-bye to the Frogmore Café.”

Answer to my early question? I should not be honest with the press. Small blurb in the Living Section, my eye, Melba Pelot.

I skim the article. Stuff about Jones, the history of the Café, and the old doctor’s home. Then:

Sweeney, twenty-eight, who inherited the café from McDermott, is undecided about its future.

Town Councilman Davis Williams: “I’d hate for Beaufort to lose the Frogmore Café. It’s true lowcountry, part of our rich heritage. And where else can hungry folks find Bubba’s Buttery Biscuits?”

In the early ’60s, McDermott defied Jim Crow laws by removing the separate eating sections for blacks and whites.

“It caused quite a stir,” Williams said. “But if I heard Jones once, I heard him a hundred times. ‘If I can share a foxhole in Korea with a colored, I can certainly share a meal in public. Jim Crow laws be damned.’”

I crinkle the paper to my chest. “Oh, Melba, why’d you do this to me?” It’s one thing to shut down a beat-up old diner no one remembers. It’s another thing to shut down a man’s legacy.

Mercy Bea zips around the corner with her arms loaded with dirty dishes, almost crashing into me. “There you are. Mr. Feinberg is calling for you.” She nods toward the paper. “Well, you done it now.”

“I suppose.”

“If you haven’t made up your mind, there you go. Folks aren’t going to want the Café to go away, Caroline.” She drops her load on the counter for Russell to wash later.

“Yeah, well, then folks are going to have to find their way here to eat once in a while. Sentiment doesn’t pay the bills.”

I sound brave, but inside, I’m terrified.

Sunday I have the whole day off. After sleeping in late, doing a load of laundry, and surfing cable channels, I call J. D. to see if he wants to go fishing or down to the beach. I don’t want to sit home all day, thinking, fretting.

“I’m working, babe,” he says, “filling in for Lem Becket.”

Babe ? The intimate reference makes me feel googly. “Guess I’ll talk to you later, then.”

“I’m glad you called.”

After a twittery good-bye, I absently dial Mitch’s cell, but hang up before the first ring. Do I want to risk my securely closed heart doors by hanging out with his easy, familiar manner? Being good friends is what caused me to trip and fall in love in the first place. It was all Mitch and nothing but Mitch for far too long.

I smile at the memory. Hard to believe my friend and first love was voted by People magazine “The Man You Want to Be Stranded with on a Desert Island.”

Oh, how wrong they are. If Mitch can’t shower at least once a day, he considers it barbarian living.

No, if I’m stranded in the middle of the ocean on some two-by-four island, it best not be with Mitch. Not if I want to survive, anyway.

Heart: We should give him a call.

Head: No, we’re moving on. Just like he’s done.

Heart: But it’s Mitch—best friends and all that.

Head: But it’s Mitch—left us high and dry without so much as a “how do.” Let the past be the past.

Heart: You . . . are no fun.

Head: Yeah, and when you get hurt and bruised, who has to relive it over and over? Me.

I dial Elle. “You up for a movie or something?”

“Meet me at my place. I’ll drive. Last time I road-tripped with you, I was picking bugs out of my hair until the next morning. Really, you should get Matilda’s top fixed, C.”

“I’ll get right on it.” Picking bugs. She’s crazy.

We choose a Drew Barrymore romantic comedy playing at the Plaza. During the drive over and in between buying tickets, popcorn, and large sodas, Elle rattles on about ways to find a good, decent, marriageable man, and when she pauses to breathe, I fill her in on Jones’s will and the opportunity with Carlos Longoria.

She’s appropriately stunned—“No, I didn’t see Melba’s article in the Gazette”—and gawks at me with wide, round eyes while nabbing a kernel of popcorn from the top of her ginormous bag. “Carlos Longoria. He’s on the cover of Forbes, like, every other month. Look at me; I’m green with envy.”

She whips her arm in front of my face. In the dim light of the movie theater, I can’t make out the color of her skin, but I’m pretty sure it’s not green. Elle is doing what she loves: photography and art. Owning an art gallery is her passion. A week—no, a day—as any businessman’s apprentice and she’d pull out her hair. His too.

“Elle, O wise one, I’d love your thoughts on this.” The theater lights fade to black and advertisements roll across the big screen.