It’s a late July afternoon when loud, obnoxious chatter from the street pulls Lucy’s attention away from her rose garden. She sighs heavily, sparing one last look at her beloved flowers before walking towards the piazza of her Broad Street mansion. The noise continues to grow as she approaches the front of her home, and Lucy barely holds back an eye roll. She settles into her favorite rocking chair on the piazza and stares out into the street.
Lucy’s gaze first lands on a group of giggling young women dressed in t-shirts with “BRIDESMAID” plastered on the front, being led by a woman with a “BRIDE” shirt and plastic tiara.
“Ladies, we need to hurry if we’re going to make our 7 o’clock reservation at Hyman’s,” a bridesmaid yells, waving her arms to hurry the group along.
As the women rush down the street, Lucy turns her attention to a couple across the street. The woman stands in front of Lucy’s neighbor’s house, fake-laughing into the distance as her boyfriend snaps photos on his iPhone.
“Chad, are you sure you’re getting good angles? The ones you took on Rainbow Row were completely off-center, I don’t even want to post them.”
A man with a dog’s leash looped around his hand speed-walks between the couple, ruining Chad’s shot. When he stops to check his phone, the German Shepard poops on the sidewalk. The man slides his phone back into his pocket and walks away, pulling the dog alongside him and leaving the mess behind.
A woman in a bright pink sundress notices Lucy on her porch and strides over, waving her arm to catch her attention.
“Excuse me,” she yells.
“Do you know where the really rich guy from that reality show lives? It’s filmed down here!”
Lucy actually does know, but she shakes her head and tells the woman that she has no idea.
As the woman bounces away, Lucy closes her eyes and rests her head against the wooden back of her chair. Lucy comes from an old-Charleston family, and she can’t imagine living anywhere else in the world, but afternoons like this leave her with an odd feeling in her chest. The pride she has for her city battles with strong possessiveness.
She feels it as she walks down King Street, weaving strategically through the sidewalk to avoid the tourists who stop in the middle of the path to take photos. She feels it when she’s late for lunch with her sister because she was stuck in her driveway for half an hour, answering a stranger’s questions about the history and architecture of her home. She feels it today, when the noise of the city invades her once-quiet street.
If Lucy ever begins to feel guilty for her internal musings, she just thinks of her husband. Andrew’s disdain for the “new” Charleston is almost unparalleled. Every night over dinner, he grumbles and rants about new hotel construction, chain restaurants, and overcrowding.
Lucy knows for a fact that she lives in the most gorgeous city in the world. Unlike her son, who spent the summer touring Europe, Lucy has no desire to visit anywhere else that she knows won’t compare.
When Lucy walks through the streets of Charleston, she doesn’t feel lucky. She feels the satisfaction of someone who has been given everything she’s earned and rightfully deserves. Charleston is hers in a way that tourists and transplants never can understand. With this in mind, she’ll give a welcoming smile as she rattles off restaurant recommendations to tourists. She’ll always be the first to volunteer her flawless home for the annual house tours. She’ll patiently explain that yes, scenes from two different Nicholas Sparks movies were filmed on the College of Charleston Campus, and yes, Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling did lie in the street in front of the theater on King Street.
I wrote this remake because Abigail St. Croix from Pat Conroy’s The Lords of Discipline is a character that I find intriguing. In the excerpt that we read, we see Will’s perspective of Charleston, and what his perspective of the old Charleston families, but I wanted to explore this perspective a little further. When writing this remake, I tried to imagine how Abigail would view Charleston today. From what we see in the excerpt, Abigail seems warm and welcoming, but Conroy still separates her and the rest of the St. Croix family from Will. I also wanted to incorporate Conroy’s idea of Charleston elitism and exclusion.