Up Island by Anne Rivers Siddons Page A

he turned and took the offending drink away. She went back to studying the menu, seemingly unaware of the hostility washing over her like surf.
    “I will have her barred from this club,” Charlotte said in a voice an octave higher than I had ever heard. “I will attend to it on the way out. This is outrageous. Carlton is one of us.”
    Despite my shock, I almost laughed. By now, I supposed, he almost was, and I wondered what that might mean to Carlton in his life outside the club, providing, of course, that he had one. Then the laughter died. Tee came on to the patio and walked over to Sheri’s table, kissed her on the cheek, and sat down opposite her. His back was to us. I was glad, at least, for that.
    His mother drew in her breath to speak, then let it out in a long, ragged sigh. I did not look around the patio, but I knew that a good fifty pairs of eyes were fixed, first on Tee and Sheri Scroggins, and then on Charlotte and me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw two figures, women, get up and drift languidly toward the ladies’ lounge. The club phones, I figured, would be tied up until two o’clock.
    The two of them leaned their heads together, one dark and one fair, over the menu, and all of a sudden I was looking at Tee and myself. Tee and me, when we were young and first in love and all things seemed possible. He looked, in the dappled shade, hardly older than he had then, his snub face lit by his slow smile. And she…she was, in her tallness, the width of her shoulders, the sleek, wet, dark hair, the flash of 86 / Anne Rivers Siddons
    blue across the pool that was her eyes, the way she tipped her head to his…she was me. A much younger me, so full of vitality and the nearness of him that I hummed with it. Oh, her features were different…there was, somehow, a sort of Toltec cast to her face, a remote, sensuous, faintly cruel bluntness. But the surface resemblance was astonishing. No wonder Charlie had thought she was Caroline. Caroline looked remarkably like I had at that age. Now, of course, few people remarked on the similarity.
    “She looks like me. Like I used to, I mean,” I said stupidly, as if I were remarking on the weather.
    “She looks nothing at all like you,” Charlotte said. There were two hectic red spots on her cheeks, and she was breathing audibly. “She looks just like what she is, a South Georgia shantytown whore. Theron is out of his mind. I can put a stop to this, and I will. I imagine she thinks she’s hooked herself a rich man; I can disabuse her of that, and him, too, with one phone call to our attorney. Which I shall make the instant I get home. Whatever happens, my dear, you and Teddy will never lack for anything. I promise you that. Are you finished? I think we’ve both had enough of this spectacle.”
    She rose, gathered up her little Chanel bag, and walked with her long, graceful, athlete’s stride across the patio ahead of me, not looking to see if I followed. I did, of course. Followed blindly along in her wake with my chin held as high as I could manage, looking neither to the right or the left, conscious on every inch of me of eyes fastened on both of us like leeches. My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it.
    We had to pass their table to leave the patio. I thought I would die rather than do it.

    UP ISLAND / 87
    I did not see him notice us, but I felt it.
    “Mother,” he said in a voice I did not know, a silly voice, high-pitched. “Molly…”
    Sheri Scroggins was in front of us suddenly, barring our way. She looked like a panther who had just come out of a dark jungle river. The black suit was still damp, as was the lightless black hair, which was unplaited now and flowed over her shoulders like a cape. She smiled. She seemed to have too many teeth, all bone white in the tawny gold of her face. The eyes burned as blue as methane.
    “We haven’t met, but we should,” she said, including Charlotte and me both in the smile. She held out her hand.
    I noticed