Full of Grace by Dorothea Benton Frank Read Free Book Online

through baseball, he was gathering donated children’s books for hospitalized kids or large-print novels for folks in his mom’s nursing home.
    I parked on historic John Street and locked my car. Rue de Jean was located right next to Gallery Chuma, which housed the work of Jonathan Green, one of the South’s most revered artists, who painted startlingly beautiful images of the Gullah culture. His work was one more instance of the unique gestalt of the Lowcountry’s living history. Someday, I thought, I would love to have a small piece of his work.
    Looking up and down the street, I thought about how much I enjoyed summer nights, the fading light that lit the streets and streaked the sky with color until almost nine o’clock. To call the summer weather of Charleston sultry was the understatement of the year. There was something about the toasted air and the diffused light that was a drug. I was happily addicted.
    With a little reluctance to leave the pretty scene, I went inside the restaurant and spotted Michael at his table.
    Rue de Jean was a popular place for its old-world ambience as well as its fare. It was a classic bistro in the Parisian Left Bank style offering the dishes you would expect in such a place—croque monsieur sandwiches, salade niçoise, steak au poivre with pommes frites and, of course, the mussels steamed with garlic and white wine that were on my mind.
    The hostess brought me to the table and Michael stood, giving me a polite kiss on both cheeks, barely brushing my skin.
    “Très Frrrranche, mon cher!” I said, in exaggerated and poor but humorously executed French.
    “Très bien,” he said as the hostess held my chair and handed me the menu. “You are zee sight for zee poor eyes.”
    “I think we can drop the French,” I said with a giggle. “The foreign-language police have a warrant out for our arrest.”
    “And the grape police are just around the corner. I’m doing my bit for California’s agricultural products. Not France. Gosh, you look wonderful! You’ve got nice color. Did you go to the beach?”
    The waitress appeared and said, “Can I start you off with something to drink?”
    “Sure,” I said. “I’ll just have a glass of whatever he’s having.” The waitress nodded and left. “The beach? No, no. We just hung out at Big Al’s version of Nikki Beach. There were too many moving parts to try and organize a trip to the actual ocean. Besides, Big Al hates the sand.”
    Smirking, Michael stared at me and said nothing.
    “What?” I said, knowing he was about to lob a cherry bomb my way.
    “No, it’s okay. I was just thinking how funny it is to buy a house at a beach resort when you don’t like the beach…”
    “You know he moved there for the golf,” I said.
    “Yeah, I know, but still…”
    “Right, they could’ve gone to Palm Springs or something…”
    “Right. And I was thinking how much better I feel just to see you sitting there in front of me.”
    We went into our lovers’ trance of smiles, stares, then sweet leering and thoughts of lying down together at the end of the evening. Our fingers were intertwined and I said, “Oh Lord! Isn’t love just about the most wonderful thing in the world?”
    “Yes. It’s amazing.”
    The waitress put the glass of wine in front of me and said, “Ahem? Specials, anyone?”
    We listened, and after a cursory glance at the menu, we ordered.
    “I’ll have the mussels with a lot of bread to soak up the sauce,” I said.
    “And I’ll have the roasted chicken with string beans and French fries. And a bottle of the Merryvale.”
    “Very good,” she said, and left.
    “A bottle plus two glasses? Are we bingeing?”
    “No, just easing the stress.”
    “The stress of what?” I said, and before I could finish that thought I realized I hadn’t asked about his mother. “Oh, God, sorry…how’s your mom?”
    “Considerably worse than the last time I saw her,” Michael said,rubbing his temple in a circular motion