“I don’t know if the stars aligned or you rearranged them, but this is the best first date I’ve ever been on.”
I wanted to make a joke. But she looked so sincere that I couldn’t bear to break the moment. I had spent a lot of years in this town being scrutinized, the center of attention, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. But now, on this back porch, I had to wonder if maybe I had finally found someone in Cape Carolina who would do for me what everyone had always done for Aunt Tilley: accept me for exactly who I was.
TILLEYA Test
Tilley met her dear departed Robert her first day of high school. He was the new boy who had just transferred to Cape Carolina High from Broughton, a high school in the big city of Raleigh. He was wearing a tight-fitting striped polo shirt tucked into blue bell-bottoms—this was the ’70s, after all. Tilley still remembered that outfit. It was what caught her eye first. Now a man dressed like that would be laughed off the street. Fashion is funny that way.
At any rate, Tilley and Robert passed each other in the hallway, and something extraordinary happened: he didn’t even look at her. She almost laughed. All those songs about the best thing about a beautiful girl is that she doesn’t know she’s beautiful? Please. She knows she’s beautiful. Tilley knew she was, and she got plenty of attention for it. And Robert had the gall to simply walk by as if his day had not been made by the mere sight of Tilley.
As luck would have it, they had chemistry together. The class, not the chemical attraction of love. But Tilley was going to make sure they had both. She couldn’t act interested in him. That would have been terribly improper for a sweet Southern girl raised with good manners no matter the decade. She hung back, saying hello to a girlfriend untilhe took his seat. Then, not looking athimthis time, Tilley casually slid into the desk beside Robert. She didn’t listen to a single thing the teacher said. Although, that wasn’t so unusual. Tilley wasn’t ever much of a student. But now, she had a plan to formulate.
Without ever looking at Robert, about halfway through class, Tilley “dropped” her pencil. It was a test. If he didn’t even try to get it, he obviously wasn’t the one for her. But, as the pencil clinked to the ground, they both leaned for it at the same time, their fingers touching. Still crouched over, she looked up and smiled at him. He smiled at her. And, well, that’s when Tilley knew:Theirchemistry was as real as the table of periodic elements hanging to the right of the blackboard.
“I wonder if I ever told Robert that story,” Tilley said, as Amelia unearthed swimsuits from her dresser drawer. Tilley was perched on the end of Amelia’s bed, vetting her niece’s choices as she prepared for four nights in the British Virgin Islands with her love.
“I don’t know,” Amelia said, holding up a cream-colored one-piece with a big ruffle over the shoulder.
“Oh, yes. Take that,” Tilley said. “That one is darling.”
“Or should I only take bikinis?” Amelia asked. “Isn’t there some rule that you have to stop wearing bikinis at forty or something?”
Tilley raised her eyebrow. “Well, there’s no rule. But perhaps it’s the better part of wisdom.”
They both laughed. As Amelia folded the swimsuit and put it in her suitcase, she said, “I don’t know if you told Robert that story, Aunt Tilley, but I think he knows how it ended, right?”
Tilley smiled. She almost let herself go back to those days when they were together, when he was there, when they were happy. She loved living in that place. But no. She needed to stay here. She wanted Amelia to have a great trip, and Amelia needed Tilley’s packing help. Obviously.
“Don’t worry about a thing while you’re gone,” Tilley said. “I will take care of Greer and George, of course.”
Tilley was self-aware enough to know that no one would trust her to take care of their children, but she wanted to say it anyway. It was a ruse they kept up that made their whole all-under-one-roof situation work.
“I feel very comforted that you will be here,” Amelia said.
“Yes. Because how well do we even know this Daisy character?” Tilley asked. She wasn’t incensed that Amelia hadn’t asked her to babysit, but she was maybe a little bit irritated on behalf of her sister and her best friend. As soon as she said that, though, she wished she hadn’t.
“Well, Mason sure seems to like her,” Amelia said. “Did you see them at the game last night?”
“Yes. And I cooked them dinner afterward.”
Amelia studied her, and Tilley laughed. “I did, Amelia! He was too famous in the restaurant and kept getting interrupted, so I made them grilled cheese and tomato soup and pie.”
“Well, that was very kind of you.”
“Seeing them made me feel so nostalgic for Robert,” Tilley said.
Amelia nodded, examining a dress, then putting it back down. “Aunt Tilley,” she said, “do you think you would ever consider dating again?”
Tilley scoffed. Just as the beautiful girl Tilley had been knew that she was beautiful, the somewhat batty woman she now was knew that not every man wants a woman who is here half the time and someone else the other. The town accommodated her Victorian outfits and multiple personalities. But she would never expect a man to do such a thing. So she said, very truly, “Darling, I think that is sweet, but who in the world even knows how I would behave? I certainly can’t predict it.” Then again, wasn’t there someone for everyone? Tilley wondered…
Amelia nodded. “Maybe not. But you are such a romantic, and I wonder if having a new love to take the place of Robert could help keep you in the here and now.”
Tilley shook her head. “He was my only one, Amelia. That’s what made it so hard.”
Amelia bit her lip. “I’m just playing devil’s advocate…”
Tilley held up a silk pareo and handed it to Amelia, gesturing for her to pack it. It would be perfect with the ruffle swimsuit.
“Okay, so play it.”
