A Southern Girl (14 page)

Looking straight ahead and still gripping the door handle, he cleared his throat. “If, ah, you and Elizabeth decide to go through with this idea of yours, what … ah, will you name her?”

I stared evenly at his profile. “We picked out Allison for a girl years ago, but of course we haven’t had a chance to use it.”

“I meant the last name.”

“Carter. What else?”

Dad turned toward me, and on his face he wore a florid look of undisguised rage, his features contorted into a twisted malevolence that caused me to look away. “You’re going to give our family name to some slant-eyed nobody. Unbelievable.” He jerked at the handle, sprang from the car, and slammed the door behind him. He had marched up the walk almost to the house before I realized I had not taken a breath since the word “nobody.”

I remained in the car, my breathing returning to normal as I relaxed my grip on the door handle and my heart rate slowed. I stared at the front door as if expecting Dad, against all logic and experience, to return. Instead, Elizabeth emerged from the house carrying clothes. Together, we packed the car in silence. Sarah alone kissed us goodbye, gave the boys candy for the ride home, and stood in the driveway waving until we turned out of sight.

In the late afternoon, as the car left the brooding desolation of the Francis Marion National Forest, I turned down the radio and, prompted by a sadness that had been with me since our departure and had deepened with the distance from Charleston and the moodiness of the forest, said to Elizabeth, “Why do I feel like I just left my parents with a dozen dead roses?”

“What an odd thing to say. They’ll get over it—you said so yourself. They’ll be mad for a few days until they’ve had a chance to get used to the idea. Don’t worry about it. I’m not.”

I fell silent again. Dead flowers, perhaps suggested by the moss hanging ghoulishly from oaks. The image wouldn’t leave me. I had felt their anger, yes, but beyond anger, suffering, from a wound I had inflicted. The world made less sense to me than it had four days earlier. It was as though some fundamental law of physics had been breached in the materialization of suffering out of thin air. Matter had indeed been created. By what? Not the birth of a child but the mere prospect of an anonymous child in a country I wasn’t positive I could locate on an unmarked map. How was that possible? It seemed in remoteness the equivalent of an American catching a cold across the Atlantic from a sneeze, not by a European but the ghost of a European. And now, because of some spirit once removed, I had carried those dead suffering flowers to South Carolina.

It didn’t have to be this way, I decided. If matter could be created, it could be destroyed. I could stop this process before it went further. But doing so meant bringing the dead flowers back to Virginia and delivering them to Elizabeth. No matter what I did, someone I loved would end up holding those flowers.

I thought about it all the way home. Crossing the James River Bridge late that night, I very much needed to hear the reassuring strains of
Samma-Kamma-Whacky Brown,
but Elizabeth and the boys were sleeping soundly and I did not wake them.

9

Elizabeth

Like most people, I do some things because I want to and a lot more because I have to. The midwinter ball at the Riverside Country Club was always for me a “have to,” because the crowd it drew consisted of many of the same people we saw all the time, only for this they dressed up. I’ll bet a committee of women started it as an excuse to wear their fur coats, which they do even on the mildest evenings, and you could count on Sandra Hallet sporting her sable—a fucking sable—like we lived in Moscow, and you could count on me getting slightly drunk when I saw her because the I’ve-got-more-money-than-you bitch drove me up a wall. I went because it was important to Coleman, or he said it was.

It had been a month since we left Charleston, and while we hadn’t heard from his parents I felt sure they had calmed down by now, resigned to the idea and maybe even a little excited at the prospect of another grandchild, the last they will have if I had any say in the matter, which of course I did.

I needed a dress for the midwinter thing, so I stood in my closet going through my better dresses one at a time, trying to remember the last time I wore what and whether the same people would have been there and the odds were good to the point of certainty that they had been. Another reason I hated this ball was that it always brought up the old argument with Coleman about becoming members, which he was very much in
favor of and I had zero interest in. The club was all white (no Jews, either) and the wait staff was all black. This was not a coincidence, because the kind of bigotry practiced at Riverside was the subtle kind passed down through generations. Coleman said no minorities ever applied, and I didn’t doubt it because who wanted to be the Lone Ranger at that picnic? But don’t peg me as some high-minded altruist, because the simple truth is I’m not a club type of person, which is why I turned down the Junior League soon after we arrived, and if you think that didn’t wad the panties of every member you don’t know New Hampton because I got no fewer than four telephone calls asking if I’d made a mistake, checked the wrong box by mistake, the last caller telling me no one had ever refused membership. I heard Coleman come into the room just as I was deciding on a dress.

From inside the closet I said, “I really have nothing to wear to this thing, but I refuse to spend a lot of money just to please these people.”

“Elizabeth, you say ‘these people’ like they’re lepers.”

“You know how much I love country club functions. You would think they would get sick of each other.”

“I want you to try to be a little more charitable where the club is concerned.”

I came out of the closet, a black silk dress draped over my arm. “Why should I?” He sat at the bedroom desk, a pencil in hand and the monthly bank statement spread before him.

“Because this could be important to our future. These midwinter balls are the traditional stockyards where members get to inspect new meat on the hoof, so to speak.”

“I told you before I don’t want to be a member of the Riverside Country Club. Surely we can find better uses for the several thousand dollars a year we would have to pay in dues, not to mention the initiation fee. What do you think of this dress?”

“You know I love that dress.”

“Have I worn it lately? I can’t remember.”

“You wore it to the Cancer Society Benefit last year. I spilled a drink on it.”

“That’s right. Oh, there it is. I’ll get it cleaned tomorrow. Where’s your tux? I’ll take it, too.”

“Behind the door of the closet. Let’s get back to membership in the club.”

“Do we have to?”

“First, we don’t pay initiation or dues, the firm pays. Second, the firm expects us to join. We’re on Donald and Cynthia Mahoney’s invitation list, and when the firm’s rainmaker puts you on his list, it’s more than an invitation. And it means we’ll be asked to join unless you get drunk and moon the orchestra.”

I sat down at my dressing table, fingering earrings in the top drawer of the mahogany jewelry box he gave me on our fifth wedding anniversary. “Well, I can’t be expected to moon the orchestra sober.” I glanced at him and grinned playfully, but he wasn’t amused.

“I’m being dead serious, Elizabeth. I have to practice law in this town and to afford such luxuries as food and shelter I’ve got to go where the clients go. Like it or not, that means the club.”

“But there are so many lawyers in it already.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s a base we need to touch. I don’t make the rules, I just try to play by them.”

“I’m going, aren’t I? I’m outfitting myself more than thirty minutes before we walk out the door. That should tell you something.”

“You have a point. Just please make an effort on this. It’s important for all of us; you, me and the children.”

“I’ll do it for you, but I don’t have to like it.”

Coleman tossed aside his pencil. “What’s not to like?” he demanded, his voice rising. “It’s a party, for God’s sake. You know, people dressed up, food, drinks, laughter, dancing. Most people have fun at that sort of thing.”

My voice rose to meet his. “You grew up with ‘that sort of thing,’ as you put it. It makes me uncomfortable, like people are judging me. Besides, they’re narrow-minded and exclusionary.”

He stood, crossed the room with an angry stride and closed the door. Wheeling, he said, “Don’t be troubled by gross generalities.”

I shrank back momentarily, caught off-guard by the force of his reaction. “Not all of them, of course. But quite a few. Besides, are there any blacks in the club yet?”

“Now we’re getting somewhere! This is all wrapped up in your bleeding heart liberal tripe that will one day force our sons to marry Eskimos to prove their egalitarian upbringing. The club has no black members because no blacks apply. It has no Jews because the Jews have their own
club that looks down its nose at Riverside. Why are you turning a simple party invitation into an ethnic litmus test?”

“I said I’d go.” If Sandra Hallet is there, I’ll scream.

The next day I had coffee with my dear friend, Betsy Miller, who listened patiently as I predicted that spring would bring new life into my home and my marriage. I’m sure I sounded more hopeful than certain.

Betsy wasn’t so sure, and said so. “The last time I brought it up he changed the subject.”

She and I have been best friends for as long as we have lived in New Hampton, and it was only to her that I could impart the doubts I found myself suppressing. Slim and smart, Betsy has been mistaken for my sister more than once.

Mid-morning sun filtered through the breakfast room. Betsy brought her cup down firmly, as if to punctuate a thought just completed. “What you need is a face. For this baby to become a person instead of an idea.”

“You think?” I said. “If he doesn’t like the idea …”

“I’m not talking about him.”

“I can hardly sleep now I’m so eager.”

“I see that,” said my friend, “but you’ll need more. I loved being pregnant, but once Jessica was born I realized that for nine months I had been wrapped up in becoming a mother, which is not the same as being wrapped up in your child. Of course, it only takes .5 seconds to make the switch, but you know what I mean.”

I nodded at a distance, newly conscious of a truth that had been lurking, waiting for a conversation like this to be seen in full light. The idea of adopting an Asian child held me in a certain grip; would the grip of the child herself be as strong? I narrowed my eyes. “Why are you complicating my life?”

Betsy laughed. “Me? Would I do that? Don’t answer.”

“Is this payback for some sin I’m unaware of?”

“Hell, no,” she replied. “I’ll let you know when you’ve sinned. It’s the only way to keep score.”

Perhaps it was the karma of that coffee that brought an envelope from Open Arms in the afternoon mail. I opened it expecting correspondence, but instead found an infant looking up at me from a passport size photograph, a blanket pulled to her waist concealing all but her head and arms. A small, red pull toy rested at her side. “Soo Yun,” said the paper to which
the photo was attached, along with a brief description of her as having a pleasing face, a pleasant disposition, and normal bowels. And that was it, the sum total of the information upon which we would check a block at the bottom: yes or no.

I called Coleman’s office, but he was in court and I had to settle for his secretary’s promise that when he returned she would tell him to come home immediately. I paced the living room, the paper in my hand, looking at Soo Yun every few seconds and staring at the two boxes at the bottom: yes or no. Every woman knows the potential significance of those two words, but in this context they loomed larger than any two words I’d ever read. Yes or no, one or the other, and no matter which I checked I knew that lives, hers and ours, would be forever altered by the choice, and altered not just for decades but for generations. For the first time I felt overwhelmed. One sparse paragraph of information on a child we’d never met to decide the futures at stake in such a decision. The lottery of procreation is one thing, because at least you’ve had a choice in your mate even if you have none as to which of his sperm wins the race to your egg, so you accept, love and embrace the random result as ordained by God or chemistry or fate. The inevitability of it all is more comfort than most parents acknowledge; the fact that your son or daughter is the way they are depends, at least at the beginning, on a biological card shuffle, and you willingly play the hand you are dealt. But this!!