A Southern Girl (30 page)

Charleston is not the same closed city of the last century, and newcomers are welcomed with what we still like to think of as exceptional hospitality. You won’t fall off “the list” here when your stock portfolio takes a tumble. Losing your job doesn’t mean losing your club, your friends and those things which matter most at the time you need them most. Money counts, but not overly much. And, there is something intangible here that is beyond the reach of even the wealthiest wannabes.

As much as I value that intangible, others don’t. Take Adelle’s exhusband, for example. Legare Roberts wore his family’s crest like an old T-shirt, tossed into a corner after a two day bender. He roared through money like he roared through liquor and women. He found Charleston, in a word, “preposterous,” and he now lives with a ski bunny somewhere
in Colorado. Legare could devise a cure for cancer and all the royalties off the patent couldn’t get him back into the clubs he snickered at.

On the dais I am greeted by knowing smirks that signal fun at my expense. Harris beckons a waiter to refill my wine glass and the rub begins. My mother delivers a piquant little tale of a seven-year-old me, the doctor, caught in
flagrante medico
with a Victoria Pettit, the patient. Laughter. More wine.

Josh is next. Looking a bit nervous and gesturing liberally, he relates an instance in his early teens when Elizabeth commanded me to discipline him for some egregious offense and I responded by sneaking him out of the house for ice cream. More laughter. More wine.

Next comes Harris. We’ve been partners for years. A massive guy, he works too hard, eats too much, and hunts ducks with a passion which surpasses comprehension. His hands are the meatiest I have ever seen on a human, yet when he raises his fingers, bulging like cooked franks, to adjust the glasses on the bridge of his nose, he does so with dexterity unmatched by most eye surgeons. He brings that same quality to litigation. Lawyers intimidated by his bulk brace against being run over while he subtly goes around to pick their pockets, figuratively speaking. As he regales them with anecdotes, then exaggerates my virtues as a partner, my mind inexplicably returns to Philip Huger. My friend Philip, dead now for twenty-eight years. “And do you know what?” I ask myself in one of those wine-induced reveries in which the mind seems focused with laser-like precision on the great truths even as the eyes are struggling to distinguish a neighbor from a lamp post, “Philip’s going to be dead a long time. He’s going to be dead forever and nobody is going to say nice things about him on his forty-seventh birthday because he isn’t going to have one.” A melancholy comes over me that I attribute mostly to the wine, and I re-double my concentration on Harris at the podium least my guests perceive my mood.

“But seriously, folks,” Harris is saying, “Coleman is known in legal circles as the Great Conciliator. Nobody has his ability to go into a room with two snarling adversaries and come out with everyone smiling and shaking hands. Show me a man who has practiced law in one place for any length of time and has so few enemies and I’ll show you a special man indeed. Coleman, we love you, boy. Happy Birthday.”

I rise, embrace Harris in the manly, ursine hug we both enjoy, and am about to disengage when he half-whispers, half-yells, “See me after—great news!” As I flash a quick thumbs-up, I turn to find the crowd on its feet, clapping and shouting echoes of Harris’s praise. I am quite moved. I thank them for coming, thank Adelle and Allie and Mother and Harris and Mr. Quan and everyone who had a hand in planning it. With a wave of farewell, it is over.

Standing down now, in front of the rostrum, I mingle informally with those who come forward to press the flesh. There is gaiety in their manner, heartfelt good will in the clasps of hands, thumps of shoulders, Platonic kisses and it comes to me what has given this celebration its added zest: the last time we—all of us here tonight—congregated was at Elizabeth’s funeral. Then, we groped for words because words are demanded even when they are useless. They are relieved; yes, that is the essence of it, as I am relieved, that we gather in the sunshine of food and jokes and reunion and that the long, dark shadow of that magnolia tree in St. Philip’s churchyard is part of our past.

Harris and Carolyn, his wife, are among the last to leave. He has that glassy-eyed wobble that tells me she will be driving home, not that I myself have any plans to get behind a wheel. I grin sophomorically at them and Carolyn, a petite blonde toy of a woman, sighs with her boys-will-be-boys patience.

“Ok, Deas,” I say, “what have you done?”

“What have we done, ma’ boy. The Performing Arts Center?” “Yeah?” I reply, anticipating what is coming.

“Met with Middleton late this afternoon, and unless he’s lying through his dentures we’ve got the votes.”

“Good work, son,” I commend him. “Should make for a banner year around Carter & Deas.” City council is preparing to contract out the legal work on the new Arts Center. Because of our expertise in municipal bonds and condemnation, we are one of only two firms in the city that can handle it. Harris has been working over councilmen, counting votes.

I am unconscious of the time these farewells consume. Adelle is in the kitchen squaring up with the club and the staff. Josh and Steven shook my hand some time back and Allie bolted, hand in hand with Christopher. The last guest is waiting at the coat check when Adelle joins me. I give her
a look that I hope conveys the appreciation I feel and together we go in search of our coats. As we exit, a freshet of chilly air cuts through the fog of the last few hours and my lungs drink it in. I pull Adelle closer as we walk to the car.

She starts the engine, shivering as the various warning lights and signals run their course.

“Great party,” I say, giving her a gentle chuck on the shoulder. “Thanks.”

“Coleman,” she says abruptly, as if she hasn’t heard me, “you’ll never guess what I saw tonight.”

“You’re right, I can’t guess.”

“You’ll be more serious when you hear,” she says.

“Then tell me. I can take it.” I have no clue as to what is coming.

“I came out to the car to get my checkbook—I left it in my other handbag—and I passed by Christopher’s car.”

“And?”

“The windows were a bit fogged but I could clearly see them kissing, and I don’t mean a peck on the cheek.”

“Allie and Chris?”

“Your daughter, my son.”

“Does that shock you? They are dating.”

Adelle winces in a controlled fret. “Yes, but they’ve always been such buddies. Just good friends for so long.”

I shrug philosophically. “Look at us. We were friends for years before Elizabeth died and Legare left. We’ve done more than kiss. Things change.”

“Yes, but we’re adults; they’re just children.”

“Adelle, ease up. They’re kissing, not screwing, and they’re both mature kids in an age when kids grow up mighty damn fast.”

She attempts a confessional grin. “I guess I’m being overly protective.”

I lean over, put my arm around her shoulders, and bring my lips to her ear. “If I were you, I’d stop worrying about your son’s virtue and worry a little more about your own. You’re in danger here, if you haven’t noticed.” I nibble on her lobe to underscore the obvious. She giggles and yields simultaneously.

She says, “At the risk of a cliché, your place or mine?”

“I feel particularly wicked tonight. How about a hotel?”

“Oh, Coleman,” she says, turning impatient, “you don’t feel wicked. You just don’t want to risk Allie finding us in bed.”

I release her and turn toward my window. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I just need to work this out so I’ll be comfortable.”

Now she leans to me, as far as the bucket seat will permit. “You seem tense no matter where we are. Look, it’s late and we’ve both had long days. Why don’t I drop you at home and we can talk it over tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” I say sheepishly, “that’s a good idea.”

At the curb back on Church Street I lean in, kiss Adelle, and thank her again for the party. By the time I reach the door, her tail lights are out of sight. The kids are not at home, and I am tired but not yet sleepy. At the bar I pour a short brandy and step out onto the piazza, flopping into a wicker chair that takes a minute to settle itself. The air is cold and thin and so still that I could easily converse with Brad across the street without raising my voice.

I think back over the evening and blush anew at my bungled come-on to Adelle. Sex; what a pain in the shorts. By the time you weigh the ethics, the moralities, the logistics, the public fronts and private realities, the explanations given or denied, the contraceptives, the lab reports, and all the rest it’s hardly worth it. Still, my relationship with Adelle is something I need to address. I keep reminding myself not to press, that sorting things out after Elizabeth will take some time.

Of course, some time has passed.

“Forty-seven,” I murmur. On balance, good years. I was blessed with parents who loved each other. After an expensive education, I married a lovely woman with whom I had a good, but far from perfect, relationship, and whom I miss terribly. Three fine kids, a good career, great friends. Lots of laughs and some tears dropped in for seasoning. That’s what life is, right? I’ve made it. I won my race.

“So explain to me,” I instruct myself between sips of brandy, “this nagging malaise of recent weeks. Tell me why a concentration as reliable as dawn has suddenly scattered like its first rays over the Atlantic. Why, when friends engage me earnestly, do I find myself contemplating their noses, or their ears, or neglected dental work? Why do I yawn at receptions, turn off football games in the fourth quarter when the score is tied, or sit in church and dream of sailing but while sailing think of the cocktail waitress at the country club who pressed against me serving drinks?”

Two weeks ago, I left the house as Allie left for school. An appointment with a client scheduled for 9:00 dictated a brisk walk around the block;
twenty minutes max. Instead, in sweat clothes I ambled along the sea wall we call the Battery. There, in one of those absent-minded reveries that seem to transport me regularly these days, I mentally unspiked the massive mortars and calculated the trajectory necessary to hit Ft. Sumter. Around me, hundreds of soldiers and civilians in antebellum dress shouted angry defiance at the harbor, fists raised to underscore their outrage. “Yeah,” I yelled with them, “goddamn Yankees.” The ground shook beneath us with each successive salvo and an acrid mist mingled among us. Suddenly, a roar erupted and the soldier next to me pointed to the fort and I saw through the smoke the first distant tongues of flame scar the air above.

I stood there a long time, until half past nine, when I jogged back home and called the office. My client wasn’t pleased but then too often clients aren’t. I dressed leisurely and drove unhurriedly to work.

I see headlights turn onto Church Street and think Allie is returning but the car drives past. It is the Smathers’ Buick. Moments later I hear their gate opening and soon all is quiet again. That morning on the Battery—what does it mean when you stand up a client to daydream over a long lost battle? For the first time in memory I feel myself shadowed, but by a person or event or mood I cannot say. In the basement the other night, looking for the lamp, I almost touched it so palpable was its presence. Whatever its nature or substance, it is brooding, insistent, and, I sense with a quick shudder that could be just a chill, disturbing.

19

A steady drumming in my temples rouses me the following morning. Bathrobe on inside out, my slippers still missing, I descend to the kitchen. Two aspirin and sixteen ounces of industrial strength coffee prepare me to charge into my forty-eighth year, more or less. I am reading the
Post and Sentinel
in the den when Allie enters in jodhpurs, her feet in socks.

“Morning, Dad,” she says sweetly as she passes on her way to the kitchen. “How is the old bod feeling?”

I lift my eyes from an editorial on the soaring cost of medical care in time to see her disappear through the swinging door. After some kitchen
noise, she emerges with orange juice and a banana, sits in an overstuffed chair opposite me and pulls her feet up under her.