Reunion Beach by Elin Hilderbrand (best ebook reader under 100 .TXT) 📗

been a fine actress. You have the portraiture of, I don’t know, Greer Garson by way of Margot Kidder. Hard to think of great actresses from the 1970s unless you get into Goldie Hawn and Liza Minnelli territory. Nothing wrong with either, very talented, but when I think of you, I go back to Hollywood’s Golden Age and, no, I don’t mean Shelley Winters in The Poseidon Adventure.

I gotta tell you I’m still laughing at when you said you woke up on the morning of your 57th birthday and looked in the mirror and screamed Shelley! Now, that was funny. You don’t look like Shelley Winters, nothing wrong with her, by the way, you look like you, which is fine by me. Cassandra and I always said you were an Irish beauty. Fresh faced. Blue-eyed. Pie-eyed.

Love ya, Pat

To: DBF

From: PC

I stepped in it again with that last postcard. I did not mean to disparage the great Irish, including you and me, with the offhanded drinking comment. Pie-eyed, you know what I mean. More to the point, and a better description of you: you’re wide-eyed, eager, curious, and adventurous. But let’s face it, we know a lad and a lass or two from the Emerald Isle who enjoy their spirits. Anyhow, I meant no offense.

My initials are PC, which is everybody’s shorthand for politically correct, which I almost never am, even though I wish I were, or had been, when I was alive if only to flaunt my moral superiority, which, by admission, would mean I never had it in the first place. Moral superiority, that is. I should have done the right thing more often, but who knew at the time that slights and hurts are racked up over a lifetime like parking tickets?

Would like to know what you made for dinner. Something tells me pork chops. Is Peter home or is he off on a business trip? The kids? I am sure they are thriving. They could care less about your old pal Conroy. Who could blame them? If they did, they’d be living in the past. Don’t live in the past.

Love ya, Pat

To: DBF

From: PC

I didn’t mean to tell you how to raise your children or give you spiritual advice in general, including the ancient don’t live in the past nonsense. Live however the hell you want, because the truth is, eternity is just more of the same with one caveat. Nothing hurts. Not even my feelings, which is slightly odd because I have empathy for you; it remains on this side, but I don’t need it for myself from you, or any of my friends or family. How bizarre is that? They say that’s what it means to be divine—to shore up others, without regard to self. That’s saintly, don’t you think? It’s either saintly, or just the surrender of will by a person who has learned to get along in a big family.

I’ve met a couple of saints but they are deadly dull. They parse their words as if each one had a calorie count and they were permanent residents at a Fat Farm. When they’re not talking, they just sort of stare at you with big eyes. The statues of their visages in cathedrals look much better than the real thing. They don’t seem too interested in leading our group forward, or even pulling us together in a common cause. They are of zero help when it comes to finding out what’s in store for us here. I don’t expect you to unpack their behavior (even though you were raised Catholic, as was I). They are aloof, which is as they were on earth. They were comfortable on pedestals.

I can’t explain this place with any specificity. Life is confusing on earth, whereas on this side, there is a constant flow of understanding. It’s like a river, but that’s bad writing. It’s not like I’m swept away here, or pulled under, we just are. We accept everything in the name of adaptation and transfiguration (a fancy word for mystical glow) whether the saints fraternize with us or not. Knowing you, there will be some fraternizing.

Love ya, Pat

To: DBF

From: PC

I have been thinking about the American South and the things I miss about it. After my wife, children, the marshes, and blue herons of South Carolina’s Lowcountry, I rank covered dish suppers high on the list. There was nothing like them. I used to help roll the brown butcher paper on the tables in the church basement before the ladies set out the buffet. The covered dish suppers were fairly similar across the various denominations, the only difference: the Catholics always put candles on the tables whereas the Methodists placed flowers.

I liked the parade of the platters. The ladies of the congregation would arrive with their casseroles with a look of superiority tinged with the smug afterglow of daytime sex. (I didn’t recognize it then but could easily spot it now.) The point is this. You’ve never seen such self-confidence. The women carried their Tupperware and 8 × 10 sheet pans down the steps into the church basement as if they were the crown jewels. Each woman believed her offering for the buffet was the best. There was a sense of self-confidence on the part of these gals that you could cut with a knife. Or was it arrogance? Who knows, until they place the pans on the table, and in short order, the ladies realize that most of the women didn’t follow the sign-up sheet.

So, there are eight chop suey casseroles, several platters of deviled eggs, and way too many Texas sheet cakes. There’s nothing green, no one made a salad, so the buffet looks autumnal brown and yellow, but who cares, everybody’s hungry and nobody is interested in the loaves of cornbread or the fishes. (Who’s the cheater who brought a bucket of Long John Silver fish instead of cooking?) Nobody’s telling and nobody cares. Every dish that was placed on