After lunch, they sat around the pine picnic table, pine needles stuck between the slats of the table and bench. “Sometimes,” Rose said, “when I look at my skin, or my arms, or catch myself in the mirror I can’t believe it’s me. Inside I am not fifty-five. Inside I am the same as I ever was, but outside . . .”
“All of us,” said Daisy, who’d made her famous chicken salad and sangria for lunch. “I’m stunned over and over. When one of Sara’s kids calls me Grandma. When I get the AARP card in the mail, I am shocked again.”
Victoria had just returned, and she twisted her fork in the salad, pushing it around more than eating it. “Beatrice, ten minutes ago we were at your senior project show, admiring your fantastic birds. We were headed into our lives.”
“And now,” said Beatrice, “already passing the middle of our lives, are we making any better decisions than we did then?”
“I hope so.” Rose shrugged and settled back. “But how to know? Daisy, tell us all about the guy you’ve been . . . seeing? Is that the right word these days?”
“It’s weird to date now. Hard to . . . give a word to. I mean, we aren’t dating. But we are.”
“So it’s a booty call?” asked Victoria.
The rest of them ignored the question.
Beatrice propped her elbows on the picnic table. “Tell us about him.”
“Well, it started oddly. On a bet really. During that totally surreal social isolation during the coronavirus last year, both my college girls were home with me and without my permission they made me a Bumble account as a widow.”
“Bumble. What’s that?” Rose asked with raised eyebrows. “Sounds like a society for beekeepers.”
“No. It’s a dating app but the women are in charge. Women make the first move. So Sara set up a profile for me and the first match was this guy who loved Chopin, the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, and the poetry of David Whyte. We started talking—well, texting—and two months later we met for coffee. He doesn’t live in Charleston; he lives in Atlanta, so I only see him when he comes to town. He’s a magazine writer—a nature writer, so he travels. Anyway, I’m enamored but definitely not in love. He’d like to be more serious but,” Daisy shrugged. “I am nowhere near ready. But it’s fun.”
During Daisy’s telling, Victoria drew closer to her along the picnic bench. “He sounds lovely. And . . .” She looked around the table. “Familiar.”
“What does that mean?” Daisy pulled her hat’s brim up to gaze at Victoria.
“What’s his name?” Victoria asked.
“Charlie.”
“Holy shit.” Victoria stood up and laughed, her neck hinged backward as she lifted her face to the sky. “Are you kidding me?”
“No, why?”
“What’s his last name? Please God, don’t say Rogers.”
Daisy removed her sunglasses and stared at Victoria. “Yes. Rogers. How the hell do you know that? Have you been in my phone?”
“No, I haven’t been in your phone, but I have been in his bed. I’ve been sleeping with him.”
“What the hell.” Daisy flipped her hair behind her shoulders.
Beatrice pressed her lips together and then said, “This can’t be true. You can’t both be dating the same guy, right? It has to be two different people.”
Victoria threw her hands in the air. “Nope. Same guy.”
Daisy stood and then sank again. “Oh my God. I’m such an idiot.” She looked up to Victoria. “How the hell am I supposed to compete with the likes of you?” She covered her face.
“Compete?” Victoria sat down and put her arm around Daisy. “Are you kidding? This guy is an obvious scumbag. He’s been dating us both and telling us both he wants to get more serious. What is that about? If it’s the both of us I guaran-damn-tee there’s more.”
Daisy looked up. “How did you meet him?”
“Same. Bumble.”
“He’s a Bumble stalker,” Rose said. “And I don’t even know what Bumble is. It sounds like a thing you drop in your bath or use to clean the toilet.”
At that, the women dissolved into laughter, finally even Daisy. “I can’t believe this. I believed him. He said he—”
Victoria interrupted. “Loved you to the depths of the sea and back.”
“Exactly. Aghhhghg!” Daisy stood, picked up a rock, and threw it into a tree. “What an ass.” She looked to Victoria. “Did you tell him you loved him back?”
Victoria shook her head. “No! I barely know him anywhere but the bed.”
The friends laughed but then stifled it as Daisy’s face fell with disappointment, biting her bottom lip. “I didn’t either, so I guess there’s some saving grace. But . . .” She shuddered. “We have been sleeping with the same man. I am horrified.”
Beatrice took a long swig of her sangria and shook her head. “Maybe we should get together more often. Who knows what else we’d find out.”
Victoria walked over to Daisy and lifted her cell phone. “A selfie of the two of us. We’ll send it to him, and I don’t think anything else will need to be said.”
Daisy leaned into Victoria’s shoulder, and Victoria snapped the photo. “When I have service, I’ll send this beauty right off.”
Daisy shook her head. “I think I need a little walk.”
Rose nodded toward the shoreline. “There’s not very far you can go. Walk in a circle?”
“True, but . . .” And off she went, disappearing around the corner only to appear less than thirty minutes later when they had all returned to their blanket and their books, to their quiet afternoon.
Daisy plopped down and Beatrice set down her sketchpad where she’d been drawing the horizon of scrubby brush across the water. “I’m sorry, friend.”
“Well, that’s what I get for falling for a guy whose life I know nothing about while I pretend we know each other because we texted for months and months. It’s gross. I’m embarrassed of myself, but I get . . . lonely.”
“We all do.” Beatrice fell back on the blanket. “It’s part of it, isn’t it? Finding our way while finding if we can ever love again.”
“Doesn’t seem so worth it to me right now,” Daisy said.
“It’s worth it. It’s always worth it,” Beatrice said. “We try anyway. The odds are always against it working out, but there we go—”
“Coming from a woman who loves a good man.” Daisy smiled sadly. “You’re answering your own questions.”
Beatrice wasn’t quite so sure.
6
The Last Night
Their last night fell quiet with the thick aroma of pluff mud as they reconvened once more at the water’s edge.
Victoria broke open an aloe leaf from a nearby shrub and rubbed the gooey insides on Daisy’s sunburned shoulders while speaking to Beatrice. “What’s most important for this gathering, for now, is this: Did we help you figure anything out, Bea? Our grand Pegasus, do you know how high you can fly?”