Folly Beach by Dorothea Benton Frank Read Free Book Online Page A

china tea set, newspaper, two chairs.
    Director’s Note: Show photographs on scrim of side porch with table set for breakfast and the picture of Jenifer. When she talks about her story “The Young Ghost,” show a cover of McCall’s magazine. Voice of DuBose Heyward comes from off-stage.
    Act I
    Scene 3
    Dorothy: There are some events in your life that are indelibly imprinted in your mind—funerals, childbirth, your wedding, the day the curtain goes up on your first play that made it to Broadway and on and on. You just don’t forget anything about these things. It absolutely was in late February of 1934 that the haunting, or whatever you want to call it, began. I am going to be very careful in how I recount this story because otherwise you might think I was exaggerating. Writers are notorious for their expansive imaginations, you know. But, on my word, here is what I remember with certainty.
    DuBose and I were comfortably settled at the old weather-beaten table on our side porch, enjoying our morning coffee and reading the newspaper. Jenifer was in school, fully ensconced in a kindergarten on James Island just a few miles away. It was a gorgeous day, crisp and clear, and although it was chilly, the sun warmed us as it danced on the countless ripples of the Atlantic Ocean right across the street. The world was alive and open for business. I brought up the previous night to DuBose in what I hoped was a nonchalant manner.
    “DuBose? Did you hear all that crying last night?”
    “Crying? No. I didn’t. You know, darling, I sleep like the proverbial stone. It was probably some feral thing—a bobcat or a stray.”
    “Well, I don’t think it was an animal. Golly, I was up half the night! Would you like an egg or some toast? Maybe food will wake me up.”
    “No, no breakfast for me thanks. Don’t trouble yourself. You’ve always suffered so terribly with insomnia. Maybe we should stop the madness and just ask the doctor to give you something?”
    “Maybe. I’ll think about that. But DuBose? This is serious. I’m sure I heard a woman crying all night long, weeping! It was absolutely pitiful. She sounded just like that woman in my short story, ‘The Young Ghost.’ Remember her?”
    DuBose folded his section of the newspaper back neatly to scan the obituaries.
    “My, my. Look at this, will you? Old August Busch, the beer magnate, is gone to Glory! Looks like it was a suicide, it says here. Now why would someone with all that money do himself in?”
    “DuBose! Have you heard a word I’ve said?”
    “Yes, yes, of course I have. ‘The Young Ghost’! That’s the one about the accidental death or the suicide—another suicide!—of that young woman, isn’t it?”
    “Yes! Remember? Suzo, the very young bride, dies in the bathtub and Bobbel, her husband . . .”
    “What kind of quirky names are those, dear? Russian?”
    “They had nicknames for each other like we do. Well, like you do.”
    “Little Dorothy.”
    “Precious.” I was not always so fond of being called little Dorothy . Dorothy wasn’t really my name. “But remember how her husband struggles so hard? He’s tortured really, trying to understand how and why his wife died. Was it an accident or not?”
    “Right! And then the cad of the story . . . what was his name?”
    “Keene Everett.”
    “Yes! Ah, Everett the Scoundrel, Connoisseur of the Wives of Others! As I recall, Everett let it slip that he and Suzo were an item and he implies that our little Suzo kills herself because her husband, Bobbel, the widower with the unfortunate name, said they had to stop riding around the town in his car with each other. Or some such nonsense.”
    “Nonsense? That story ran in McCall’s magazine!”
    “There, there! I meant no offense. It’s just that . . .”
    Too late. I was indeed offended, reminded for the umpteenth time that DuBose considered my writing to run along popular veins and that he was a more literary writer, more serious. After all,