The Widows of Sea Trail-Tessa of Crooked Gulley Read online

  Still not ready to confront the world yet, and comfortable in my gradually tanning skin, I called room service and had dinner delivered. I spent my final night shipboard, packing to go home and checking my “new” tan. Just before preparing for bed I admired my tan in the full length mirror and thought it looked really nice. So for good measure, I slathered on another coat, “blew” my body dry and slipped between the cool sheets for what I hoped would be a restful night.

  At about three in the morning, I was hot, sticky and practically clawing my skin off with long, lacerating scrapes of my fingernails. I had never experienced such prolonged itching and immediately ran for the bathroom and a cool shower. The sight that met me as I stared unbelieving into the full-length mirror on the door caused me to sway and grip the doorjamb to keep from falling. My beautiful tan had completely disappeared and I had the measles! Plus Chicken pox, scabies, hives, and the worst rash you can imagine. The word Shingles came to mind and I felt my body fill with dread.

  Many of my friends on the plantation back home had come down with this hideously painful malady during the last few years and the thought that I might have the disease, and from the looks of me, one of the most serious cases surely to ever be recorded, sent me into a panic. There wasn’t an inch on my body that did not have a welt, blister, rash, splotch of crimson, series of hash marks, or a lacerated gash caused from my fingernails digging into my skin. I turned around to see my back and buttocks, and gasped out loud. It looked as if I had been liberally sprinkled with the red sugar I often used to decorate Christmas cookies. And in the places I had been able to reach, you could see what appeared to be whip marks crisscrossing my skin, but they were actually long gouges caused by my raking fingernails. And the damage wasn’t nearly over. As I stared at my body, in complete shock, my fingers curled in ragged claws and savagely attacked my body again and again.

  Despite my brain screaming for them to stop, my hands, on their own volition covered my body with frenetic speed while I danced a jig from one end of the room to the other. The itching was unbearable. If it hadn’t been so scary and so daunting a prospect to be coming down with such a devastating virus, it would have been comical. I looked like a naked, red stork hopping all over the room while cursing non-stop.

  I hated to do it, but I really had no choice. I was petrified with fear and at the same time worried that if I didn’t do something right away that I could end up making things even worse than they already were. Although how that could possibly be, I couldn’t see. There wasn’t an area you could poke a pencil that wasn’t red, raw or bleeding. Where was my magnificent tan, I wondered, the one I had worked so hard on? I picked up the phone asked them to wake the ship’s doctor.

  By the time the doctor arrived I had managed to get myself into a soft, silky, short nightgown, just enough to cover the essentials. And even with that I could hardly stand the material touching me; it actually hurt wherever it touched. I had initially opted for my soft cushiony robe at first, but then changed my mind, as I wanted to be sure he had the full effect, that he knew just how serious my condition was. I had visions of him taking one look at me and calling the Captain to have me airlifted to Johns Hopkins or to The Mayo Clinic.

  After swearing him to secrecy, I let him in and closed the door behind him and his nurse. He examined my face while pulling on gloves and I thought, Uh, uh, somebody gave me the Ebola virus and no way was he going to touch me without some heavy-duty protection.

  He smeared something on his gloved hands and I stood still, trying not to look into his eyes while he turned my face this way and that. I was sure that if I did I would see the terror in them, so I was not at all prepared for his questions.

  “Have you been using a new kind of sunscreen or had a facial or massage in the spa? Are you allergic to any cosmetics or lotions?”

  “Umm, not that I know of . . .”

  “What do you use on your skin, what lotions or oils?” As he asked this he walked into the bathroom and started moving things around on the counter. He came out with the almost empty tube of self-tanner. “When did you use this?”

  I told him what I had done, flushing with embarrassment in front of both him and his nurse when I explained that I was trying to amuse my friends by coming home as a “woman of color.”

  “Well, I’d say you are having a reaction to the PABA used in this product and in virtually every skin care product on the market these days. And furthermore, you aggravated your skin by first exfoliating it to remove the dead skin and allowing a deeper penetration of the chemicals. Rubbing it in over and over again and then blow-drying it and setting the chemicals even further into the derma.”

  I was relieved. “Then I don’t have Shingles?”

  “No, but you have as bad an allergic reaction as I have ever seen short of being in anaphylactic shock. Let me listen to your heart and get your blood pressure to see how your body is internalizing all this.”

  Minutes later he began putting all his paraphernalia away and then he pulled out a prescription pad. “I’m going to go to the ship’s pharmacy and get you started on some cortosteroids and then I’m going to give you a prescription for the itching and one for the pain. If you can avoid scratching and irritating things further, you should be fine in about a week. If you have to scratch an area, I would recommend that you use a Q-tip to minimize scarring and reactivating the area. There are also some things you can use when you’re back home to soak in to relieve some of the itching. I’ll see you in the morning with a list of those. Meanwhile, I’m going to give you a shot to get the healing process started and an antibiotic to stave off an infection from anything coming in contact with all these open rashes. And a sleeping pill to make sure you get some rest.”

  “But I have to be ready to get off the ship at eleven.”

  “You’re going to have to be one of the last to disembark. If people see you they’re going to wonder what you picked up and whether or not you’ve got something they can catch. The cruise industry has enough to worry about with the Novavirus and the MRSA threats. Besides, I don’t think you really want people to see you like this, do you?”

  I turned back to the mirror and shook my head. “No, you’re certainly right about that.”

  “You’re not flying from the port are you?”

  “No, I have my car, I drove down from North Carolina.”

  “Well, I can’t say how comfortable you’ll be driving back, but I can guarantee you’ll be more comfortable driving than you would be flying. I’ll get you some Clotrimazole and Betamethasone Cream and Jenna here will help you apply it if you’d like.”

  “That would be wonderful, thank you.”

  “I would recommend that you inspect every single cosmetic you have at home. After an outbreak like this you’ll be more sensitive. Make sure that from now on you read the ingredients on every single item you buy that will touch your skin—sunscreens, lotions, moisturizers. Ironically, even some anti-itch creams have PABA in them. And I wouldn’t use any self-tanners anymore. All those chemicals being absorbed into your skin can’t possibly be good for you.”

  “Yes, sir, I won’t sir. Thank you sir.”

  I sat on the bed after they had injected me, dosed me, and slathered me from head to foot. I would have had a good cry, but the sleeping pill won out and I didn’t wake up until the loudspeaker over the door in my room crackled to life and announced it was time for everyone to go to the mezzanine level with their luggage.

  Jenna came to help me dress and an hour later, I was in a wheelchair being escorted off the ship. I wore a pant set that was lightweight cotton and under it my arms and legs were wrapped with gauze. I wore a floppy straw hat to shield my face from the sun and oversized sunglasses. The doctor had said all my medications were photosensitive and of course, we all knew the last thing I needed was a sunburn on top of everything else. I looked like an old lady. Every inch of my skin was dotted with something akin to Calamine lotion giving me a white pasty look. I was stoop-shoulde
red because I was trying to keep my clothes from touching me, and I had old fashioned white cotton gloves on my hands to keep me from tearing at my skin. I had no doubt that this was going to be a memorable three-hour drive home. The crew couldn’t have been nicer, wheeling me down the gangway and helping me get my luggage and me into my cute little VW Convertible, a car that would not see top down days again for quite some time.

  Jenna went over all my medications one more time, told me to check in with my own doctor as soon as I was able, and wished me a safe journey home. I gave her a hundred dollar tip that she tried to refuse twice but finally accepted, and I was on my way home—home, to Sea Trail Plantation and to my best buds who were definitely going to get the last laugh over my latest caper.

  Chapter Ten

  Home again, home again, jiggety-jig Imade really good time driving home. I couldn’t wait to get home, strip everything off my body and soak in a cool bath. I pretty much ignored the speed limit as I figured no trooper would want to take my license and registration from me, nor would he want to hand me his ticket pad and pen. I looked like a specter in all shades of white with something deadly just waiting to rub off onto somebody.

  I pulled into Sea Trail’s east gate, the main one as far as I was concerned, since it was always the most beautiful. As I made the turn, I admired the new plantings that had been put in while I was away. It was as if they had changed the weary, overcrowded and fully mature flowers of summer to the vibrant ones of fall just for me. The tiny purple and yellow pansies planted in perfect diagonal rows reminded me of how orderly my life had been just a week ago, how predictable. Roman had taken the life of an ordinary retired widow and turned it upside down, it was time to put it back to rights, and because it was late October, it was time to change from hosta and gladiola to pansies and peonies.

  At the stop sign, I turned right onto Club House Drive and followed the road around, going over the bridge that separates the Maples Course from the Jones Course. It is a lovely view. At Crooked Gulley Circle, I hung a left and followed the winding road around until I got to my house, just past Baroney Place. As I pressed the remote to open the garage door, I let out a heartfelt sigh. Man! It felt good to be home! Not so good to be alive, necessarily, I muttered as I shifted in my seat for what must have been the three hundredth time, but good to be home!

  It took a lot longer to get out of the car than usual and light years longer to unload all my stuff. I dumped everything in the hall between the garage and the kitchen and stripped off my clothes as I made my way to the bedroom. I had left the blinds partially open so that my plants could get some light while I was away, but I am oblivious to the golfers driving just thirty feet away from the edge of my deck. I have to get these clothes off right now. I have to get some relief. I spun the faux crystal knob and began filling the bathtub, tossing in some Epsom Salts. Before it fills a scant three inches I am in it, pulling at my gauze bandages to unravel them.

  I have no idea what temperature is preferable, but cold seems to work better; it numbs me from the outside in. I recline in the freezing cold water as long as I can because I feel better chattering my teeth and watching my flesh pimple with goose flesh than I have felt since waking up with this damned rash in the middle of the night. When I can no longer stand the intense shivering, I pull myself up out of the tub and just stand there. I stare at myself in the mirror and suddenly I have to laugh. I look like I was attacked by a swarm of bees, a contingent of mosquitoes, and chiggers galore, all maniacal and all carrying red Sharpies.

  I grabbed Tom’s old flannel robe from the back of the bathroom door. The Stewart plaid is faded and is gray in places where it should be a vivid green. It has been washed many times, perhaps a hundred times before Tom died, and certainly double that since, as I have spilled everything imaginable on it. I consign myself to doing laundry and putting all my stuff away. There is no way I can leave the house, perhaps for the better part of a week. It’s TV for entertainment and whatever I can find in my pantry or freezer as sustenance as I sure wasn’t going to venture out to the local Food Lion. I debated about calling Cat and Viv to let them know I was home, but honestly, I was so tired, I opted not to. For the first time that I could remember, I feel asleep on the sofa, the television blaring and the lights on full bright.

  I woke up at four a.m. to a loud preacher and stabbing pain in my eyeballs from the glare of the overhead arc lamp. I did not have to be reminded of how miserable I was. Every nerve ending either ached, stung, or itched. And the ones that itched were the worst. I managed to get to the remote to mute the zealous evangelist and to the dimmer switch on the wall to soften the light. Then I made my way to the kitchen and to my pain medication. Unfortunately, I neglected to heed the instructions and took it on an empty stomach. Twenty minutes later, I was as miserable as I had ever been in my life. And it was at that exact moment that the doorbell rang.

  I thought I was hearing things; surely no one was at my door before the sun was showing any inkling of even coming over the horizon. Holding my stomach with one hand and my head with the other, I shuffled in my bare feet to the door and looked out the glass side panel. In my dazed state I thought I was staring at a six-foot tall skunk as the only thing I could make out was a prominent shock of white against black. It actually took a moment for it to register. Then I closed my eyes, leaned my head against the door and whispered, “Oh shit.”

  I tried to hide, leaning against the solid panel of wood in the middle of the door, but it was too late, he’d already seen me.

  “Tessa! It’s Roman. I got here as fast as I could.” His smooth, sweet brogue should have sent warm, shivery feelings through every fiber of my being, but it didn’t. Dread was the operative word here. How could I let him see me like this? This was singularly, the most hideous and ridiculous I have ever looked in my life. And I was about ready to throw up.

  “Go away!”

  “I’m not.”

  “Really Roman, this is not a good time. Come back

  next week.”

  “Let me in Tess.”

  “No. I don’t feel well and I look like hell.” “I don’t care. Let me in.”

  “No,” I whimpered, “I don’t want you to see me

  like this.”

  “Ya got no choice.”

  I heard scratching sounds on the wood and then as I

  looked down at the handle I saw the lever dip and then the door was eased open, forcing me to back up. I looked up in time to see him insinuate himself in the opening before grabbing me and pulling me to his chest. Against my ear I heard him whisper, “You’ll not keep me away, not with that flimsy lock anyway.”

  I felt his arm slide away as if he was putting something in his jacket pocket before it came back to encircle me again. “The Captain said you had to leave the ship in a wheelchair, but he would na tell me what was the matter, only that you would get better. I had to see you; I had to make sure you were going to be all right.”

  He stepped back and held me at arms length. “ ’Tis no as bad as I feared, but somethin’ has certainly happened to you. What did the doctor say you have? Said he could not tell me as you swore him to secrecy or some such rot.”

  I looked down at my feet and had to laugh at the absurdity of all this. “I am apparently allergic to a self-tanner I bought in one of the ship’s boutiques. And to compound it all, I exfoliated my skin to accept it better, put on several coats and then baked them in with a blow dryer. In effect, I poisoned my body and it revolted—big time! The doctor gave me some medicine to help with the pain and the itching, and said I should be better in about a week. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go throw up!” I ran for the bathroom and slammed the door behind me. I did not have a second to spare; I got the lid up just in time.

  The next thing I knew, a cold washcloth was covering my face and I was being assisted to my feet. “What are you doing here?” I yelled through the damp cloth. I didn’t even try to hide my irritation; I did not want this man seeing me lik
e this.

  “I am taking care of you,” he said, and I was swept up into his arms and carried into my bedroom.

  I was tucked into bed, spoon-fed soup and tenderly dabbed with ointment on every one of those “Sharpie” spots. I felt a soft kiss above my brow and then I tumbled into a deep sleep, waking only when the sun had risen high enough in the sky to come through the top half circle window almost nine feet up the bedroom wall—and that meant it was late afternoon and that I’d slept all day.

  I sat up in bed, rubbed my face, and ran my hands through my tousled curls. Then I sat perfectly still. Two things came to me at once, one was that Roman had been here when l’d fallen asleep, so where was he now? And two, nothing itched. I jumped off the bed and stared into the mirror over my dresser. I was so much better. I looked pretty much normal again—a little bit splotchy, but the majority of the damage to my skin had cleared up. I couldn’t believe it, the doctor had said it would take a week or better. I rubbed my cheek and smoothed my hand down the side of my neck. I certainly didn’t have the tan I expected when I started this nonsense, but I also didn’t look like Pippi Longstocking after a day in the sun. I fluffed my hair and smiled. Now, where was Roman?

  I walked all over the house calling out his name, but he was nowhere to be found. I was halfway to convincing myself that he had been a figment of my imagination when I spotted a note on the kitchen counter.

  “You’re adorable when you’re sleeping, even with spots all over your body. I took the liberty of applying an old island remedy to draw out the poison. You should be feeling better by the time you wake up. Had to go back, work awaits. Invite me back for a barbeque sometime, so I can enjoy the lovely view from your deck. Roman”

  Chapter Eleven

  Back in the bosom of good friends Ifelt better after a cup of tea and an English muffin so I sat on the couch and called Viv and Tessa to let them know I was back from the cruise and to set up brunch at Magnolia’s for Sunday. Then I decided to walk over to my friend Amy’s house. She lives behind me and off to the right. Her house backs up to the same green as mine so I just have to walk over a little rise and take the shortcut instead of walking all the way down to the corner and taking a left on Baroney.