A Southern Girl (55 page)

“Now we’re getting somewhere. Once you permit tepees, you have to allow their occupants, so then what have we done?” She eyes me sophomorically, like the answer should vault from my lips.

“I suppose we’ve … allowed Indians to move into the neighborhood.”

“Precisely,” she says, pleased. “But our pride wouldn’t allow that. Pride in being who we were and who we are. It makes all the difference. If you’ll think about it from that standpoint, I’m sure you’ll understand the Board’s vote.”

I rise. This has been every bit as ludicrous as I expected. I cannot resist leaving her with something to ponder. “Charlotte, what do think about allowing tepees at the naval base once it shuts down?”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

“Then we’re even, but thanks for your time. I’ll be running along now.”

Jeanette Wilson’s gift shop is my last outreach. As I drive toward the market, I review. Charlotte is a bigoted no, as I knew before I visited. For her, the human race worthy of preservation lives south of Broad, she will never change, and tepees, slums or, for that matter, nuclear waste are irrelevant as long as they remain discreetly beyond her myopia. But with Doc Francis’s stunning contrition yesterday, I have more cause for optimism. Charlotte stands as the sole implacable opponent, with Sandy Charles declaring a willingness to listen and Clarkson Mills firmly in my service. At this moment, Jeanette’s support appears superfluous, but taking nothing for granted I will bring to my meeting with her the honed concentration worthy of the deciding vote. She is behind the counter, reading a magazine in the deserted shop, when I enter.

The Open Oyster sells commemoratives of an antebellum past unrecognizable to those who lived it but no less treasured by their descendants. In the idealized city found within this twelve-hundred square feet, stately homes along the Battery suffer none of the ravages inflicted by year-round
exposure to the Atlantic’s whims of nor’easters and salt. Colorful prints capture blacks selling flowers, but not captured blacks being sold like flowers. Here, even the Yankees find stylized redemption as innocuous villains, miniature soldier casts no more destructive than your traditional crossstate football rivals. A yesteryear that never was can be purchased for as little as $8.95 by those willing to settle for authentic reproductions of the lace doilies used in the lobby of the Charleston Hotel, razed in 1960 but elegant when it counted: 1860.

Jeanette closes Cosmopolitan as I close the door behind me.

“Would you believe,” she says, “that you’re my first customer this afternoon?”

“Would you believe I’m not a customer? I came to see you about my daughter.”

Jeanette is my age. She has a way of looking at men that takes them all in, the kind of sizing up faculty found in veteran tobacco buyers. Her very shapely leg, crossed over one knee and exposed, begins pumping as she speaks.

“Allie walked by the shop last week. She’s a pretty thing.”

“Thanks. You should see her in a formal evening gown.”

“Now Coleman, don’t start in on me.” She divides my name into two distinct syllables, so that it sounds like Cold Man. “I was no more comfortable with that whole St. Simeon business than the rest of them. I could shoot you for making us decide.”

“I’m sorry, Jeanette. You know what old Harry Truman said about the buck.”

Jeanette is unique. She married James, the best surgeon in town and a man we all assumed to be gay. Childless, they lead totally separate lives. He puts in marathon hours at the hospital and is rarely seen at social functions other than the St. Simeon while she never misses a tea or cotillion. Some believe her religious devotion to Charleston’s peculiar gentility masks her true passion: men of all ages, sizes, and colors. Rumors gather around her like ducks around bread in Hampton Park. A particularly vicious one several years back had her in a rented house on Kiawah Island with three Greek sailors for an extended weekend. She is one of those women who look as though they were designed and built for middle age, and I cannot imagine her young though I have known her for fifteen years. When drinking heavily, she is quite aggressive, yet fanatically observant of her
friends’ marital boundaries, never to my knowledge risking her social rank by coming on to the husband of someone in a position to damage her. Until Elizabeth died, Jeanette’s conduct with me personified decorum, in pointed contrast to her more recent sultry but discreet advances at the Cooper Club after four martinis.

Of one thing I am convinced: she voted with the majority as best she would have been able to determine it by the arguments advanced during debate. But for the aromatic spice of her rumored sexual peccadilloes she is a relentless “me too,” unwilling to venture a centimeter beyond the crowd that gives life meaning outside her bedroom. How a woman could simultaneously exhibit such numbing social conformity with the devious lust attributed to her I have not figured out. Perhaps she has been maligned by the jealous, but her pumping leg and her “try me” look today say otherwise.

“That meeting surprised me,” she offers. “Knowing your daddy was a past president, and knowing how close you are to the members, I assumed you would get what you were asking us for.”

“I may ask again,” I say, fingering a guide to historical homes displayed on the counter. She absorbs my information on the Lafayette exemption with practiced disinterest. Jeanette will attempt no independent analysis of its bearing on my request. She will await the pronouncements of those closest, then throw in with the winners. Her first question demonstrates her grasp of what I said.

“Lafayette was French, wasn’t he?”

Dear God. “Very French,” I confirm. “Without asking you to commit yourself, I was hoping the precedent for an exception would alter your thinking.”

“So you’re just assuming I was against you. Did Adelle tell you that?”

“Adelle has told me nothing. I assumed it because I lost.”

“I think she has talked, personally. Sandy and Charlotte think so too. She’s violated our agreement.”

This is something that has worried me from the beginning, the assumption that Adelle’s loyalty would run to violating the Board’s injunction. “No,” I insist. “Quite the contrary. I’ve been frustrated because I can’t get anything out of her.”

“Well, she’d better stick to our deal. Just because she took no part in the debate she has no right to reveal what’s confidential.”

No part in the debate? This squares with nothing, but arguing will only convince her that Adelle has given me a full account. “Of course not. But I swear to you she has played by the rules. If I leaped to a conclusion about your vote, I apologize.”

A real customer enters the store, diverting her attention.

“All I’m asking, Jeanette, is a fair hearing if it comes back for another vote. Can I count on that?”

“Sure,” she says, “we all want to be reasonable.”

Returning home, I scan the mail. An electric bill, a solicitation from the Heart Fund, and a flyer hyping an art opening. The phone rings. Mr. Quan has just heard from his brother.

“The Children’s Home is still there. They can give him no information about their files. Everything confidential.”

I make a reservation for tonight.

“I will have the kitchen fix something special,” he says.

“Speaking of something special, I won’t be with Adelle.”

“I understand,” he says in a wry voice. “Mrs. Roberts is busy this evening.”

“Something like that.”

Natalie is ready when I ring her doorbell in North Charleston. A part of me has been apprehensive about this first private reunion, but she ushers me in casually, glad to see me but not awkwardly so. She offers a drink. Her scotch is my brand and I know she has shopped for me.

I make small talk. Her back is to me as she stands at the counter fixing herself what appears to be mineral water with a twist of lime. Instinct pulls me forward to nuzzle her neck, but I refrain.

“Any word from Korea?” she asks over her shoulder.

“Yes. I spoke to Mr. Quan just before I left home. Have you had dinner?”

Driving to the Red Dragon, we talk of the last few days. There is in her an unrushed exodus from the tightly harnessed personality I met. Emotions within seem to be undergoing a chemical reaction that will produce new substance, but it is yet too early to predict its form and properties. I see elements of caution, but not much, of relief, of longing, and even a touch of fear. Noticeably absent is any sense of urgency. She offers no explanation for our involvement, no theories of how or why, and solicits none from me. Somehow, what to me has come as suddenly as lightning
from a cloudless sky she takes, on the surface at least, as a progression, if not anticipated at least not unduly skewed. I look forward to learning more of what is going on inside the relaxed woman sitting beside me.

Pham greets us near the door and shows us to a table, explaining as we walk that Mr. Quan is upstairs on the phone. Our food is brought immediately, the special off-menu fare he promised. We are well into succulent if unrecognizable dishes when he appears. At introduction to Natalie, he is formally polite.

“My brother called back. He forgot one detail.”

“Speak freely,” I tell him as he sits. “She knows the whole story.”

“He left this number for the home. In case you would like to call,” he says.

“I would,” I say, taking the slip of paper he’s offered. “I wonder what time it is over there.”

“Afternoon,” he says. “You may use my phone upstairs.”

I return ten minutes later. He and Natalie are discussing the unlikely subject of Vietnam antiwar protests. “That was a waste of time. They’re very nice, but the woman who answered speaks limited English. I think she said they have a policy of not discussing much of anything by phone. Understandable, since I could be anyone.”

“Maybe you should go over there,” Natalie says. “Didn’t you tell me you were planning to take Allie for graduation?”

“In June.”

“So, go early. Maybe she would like to visit the home where she stayed.”

“It’s a thought,” I say. “Mr. Quan, why don’t you come with us. You could visit your brother.”

“That was suggested once before,” he says in diplomatic deference to Natalie being seated now where Adelle was seated then. “I have been thinking it over. I would like to see him, and we are getting older.”

“Great,” I say. “Let’s book it.”

“Just a moment,” he says. “As you Americans say, ‘hold your horse.’”

“Horses, but go ahead.”

“I have a proposition. I will accompany you if you will accompany me.”

“Where?”

“Vietnam.”

“You have been thinking it over.”

Natalie asks, “You have family there?”

“My cousin has not been seen in Saigon for over three years. An old friend of mine thinks he may have moved to the country.”

“What about the old friend?”

“Yes,” Mr. Quan says, for the first time showing some vulnerability around the eyes. “A veddy old, dear friend. After so many years he is still a good friend. We shared great times in the old days and much danger during the war. Now we are old. Well,” he says, business-like again, “will you come?”

He and Natalie stare at me expectantly.

“Why not?” I say, more defensively than decisively. I look to her. “Want to come?”

Natalie shakes her head. “Love to, but there are at least three problems. I have no passport, no money, and no time. I’m starting a trial next week that has been postponed twice.”

“What about you?” I say to him. “Do you have a passport?”

He nods. “I visit Europe,” he says. He is thinking. After a silence, he adds, “That is as close as I have come, until now.”

“You look worried,” I suggest.

“It … is not safe.”

“Why, will they arrest you?”

“The danger is not of that kind. It is not safe here,” he says, pointing to his chest. “Everything has changed in Saigon,” he says. “The communists rename everything. Revolutionary themes. Veddy third world,” he says, shaking his head.

“I’ll keep you company,” I say. “It’s a deal.”

Natalie and I return to North Charleston. She asks if I regret committing to Mr. Quan.

“No. Allie really wants to go. I owe it to her. Why wait until graduation when we can take care of some business now? Of course, I didn’t bargain for Vietnam, but what the hell.”

Natalie laughs and drapes her arms around me. “You realize what you’re doing, don’t you?”

“Yes. I’m taking my daughter to the land of her birth.”

“And what else?”

“Nothing else.”

“Yes, something else.”

“Nothing else.”

“You’re going halfway around the world to avoid what you’ll end up having to do anyway: sue your friends.”

“Maybe,” I say.

Allie is waiting when I return home at the thoroughly decent hour of 9:30. “Mr. Quan called,” she says before I can remove my coat. “He says he’s packing his bags and you’d know what that means. What does it mean?”

“It means,” I say, smiling at her, “that if you’re willing to take off a week from school you’re going to get your graduation present in April.”

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