Downtown (15 page)

“Don’t forget you’re talking to a reporter,” I said.

He laughed. “I know Culver Carnes and his precious YMOGs,” he said. “You could write that my father is a Nazi war criminal and he’d just take it out. I’m safe, whether or not you like it, and whether or not I do.”

“But you don’t approve of the way your father does things.

And I gather you don’t approve of Boy Slattery, for governor or anything else.”

“Right to both. That’s no secret to people who know me, especially the younger ones of us. Boy Slattery would be the biggest disaster this state ever had, and Atlanta couldn’t survive if the old-time hard-liners like Dad should prevail.

Race is the single most important problem we’ll ever have.

A lot of us know that. We’ve got to do better than we have so far, by a long shot.”

“I would like to quote you on that,” I said. “Matt will like that. He thinks the same thing. He’s on this committee, 113 / DOWNTOWN

or council, or something, a kind of task force the mayor set up to help sort out the racial thing—”

“I know,” Brad said, smiling. “Focus. I’m on it, too. Dad almost had apoplexy.”

“I know somebody else on it,” I said. “Sister Joan, from Our Lady. Matt got me a room there for a week or so when I first came here, until I moved in with Teddy.”

“Sister Joan, yeah. Nice lady. Plays a mean guitar. Well, well. So you’re one of Our Lady’s girls. I can’t wait for you to meet my father. He thinks the Catholics are the ones stirring up the Negroes.”

“I can hardly wait,” I said dryly. “Hadn’t you better tell me something good about your dad, drop just a little filial loyalty, as befits a scion and future president of Hunt Construction? Mr. Carnes will make me invent it if you don’t.”

“My dad’s probably the best businessman in Atlanta, and that’s saying something,” Brad said. “It’s no secret I don’t always get along with him. Chris doesn’t, either, or Sally.

It’s why Chris races sports cars and Sally married a Jew and moved to Upper Montclair. In your face, Daddy-o. That doesn’t mean I don’t think we’ve got the solidest family business in the state, or that I don’t plan to run it as well as I can one day. I’ll tell you interview stuff after dinner. Let’s don’t ruin this…whatever this extraordinary meat is…with that. Tell me, why is it that you had an Irish accent last Saturday night, but you don’t tonight?”

“I only do that when I’m very nervous,” I smiled. “I’m not nervous now.”

“No? I hope not. I sincerely hope not. All the same, I liked the accent. Don’t lose it entirely.”

We ate a middling bad dinner and drank a lot of wine, and had rich, wonderful Black Russians before the fire afterward, and laughed a lot, and he did, indeed, ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS / 114

give me, tersely and as if he were reciting, more than enough to make an interview. I knew that I would do it well. I did not know if I could manage to capture the duality about him that intrigued me; the almost exotic—at least to me—mantle of the well-born Southern liberal that he wore; the wing-brush of darkness that I sensed about him. I had met no one like him. He made me laugh and he made me think, and by the time we stood in the chill air of the portico waiting for the Mercedes to be brought around, I realized that I had not felt in the least ill at ease with him since I climbed into his brother’s ridiculous car at the beginning of the evening.

When we drew up in front of my apartment he did not get out immediately. He lit a cigarette and sat looking out over the dark golf course, at the lights of the houses along Northside Drive on its other side winking through the bare branches of the trees, then he turned and took my chin in his hand and raised my face to his and kissed me, softly. He kissed me again, not so softly, and then dropped his hand and studied me. In the green light from the dashboard his narrow, uplit face looked Oriental, eerie, a Chinese statue’s face.

“Will you be back for New Year’s Eve?” he said. “If you are, I’d like to take you to a party. One of my fraternity brothers from the university is giving it. We’ll drop by my parents’ open house beforehand. I want them to meet you.

That is, if you’re not tied up with family doings in Savannah.”

“Brad,” I said, “what happens at my house in Corkie on New Year’s Eve is that my mother goes to midnight Mass and my brothers go to Perkins’s Pub and my father gets drunk in front of the TV and waits for the ball to drop in Times Square. I want to be clear about all that from the very start. We’re light-years away from…your parents’ open house and the Driving Club. We’re

115 / DOWNTOWN

probably downright poor, truth be known, only I don’t guess I ever realized that. Poor and Irish Catholic. I’d love to go to your party, and meet your parents, but I’m still going to be poor and Irish and Catholic after I do. That’s not going to change. I’m not sure, from what you’ve told me, that your parents are going to think a whole lot of that.”

He did not speak, only smiled.

“Or is that the point?” I said.

“Partly,” Bradley Hunt III said. “Partly it is the point. But only partly.”

And he kissed me again.

5

I
DID THE YMOG PIECE WELL. I SAT UP ALL NIGHT AFTER

Brad left and wrote it. I could not have slept. There was too much roiling around in my head. My first story for
Downtown
; my first real foray into the insular, complex world of Old Atlanta; my first kiss since I came here. I thought back, and laughed softly to myself: my first non-Catholic kiss ever. Not bad, I told myself, for a Corkie girl who’s been in town less than a month.

I was pleased with myself. I knew I had written well. The piece had seemed to organize itself swiftly and surely, as they did when I was writing at the top of my form. From the first sentence it found its voice; it was particular and cogent and informative and laced with small glimmers of irony. I thought Brad would like it, and Matt. I write badly often enough to know when I do it well, and allowed myself the small surge of self-satisfaction because I knew that all too often in the days ahead I would flounder in self-doubt. I had already seen that Matt could do that to me with the lift of an eyebrow or a drawled word.

116

117 / DOWNTOWN

I was just gathering up my papers when Teddy appeared downstairs, dragging her robe and knuckling her eyes.

“Lord, how long have you been up?” she said.

“I haven’t been down yet,” I said. “I thought I’d just go on and do this so Matt could have it today, instead of after Christmas. It’ll give me more time if he wants a rewrite.”

She put on coffee and flopped down heavily on the other end of the sofa. Morning is not Teddy’s best time.

“So. What did you think of the Driving Club?” she said.

“It’s big and pretty, and the food is awful.”

She laughed. “And Brad?”

“Big and pretty.”

“But not awful.” It was not a question.

“Not awful. Not a bit awful. Strange, though. There are so many contradictory things about him. I wanted to dislike him on principle, but I don’t.”

“Nobody does,” Teddy said. “What’s to dislike? He’s rich, handsome, nice, funny, and his heart is in the right place.

He believes in all the right things—”

“So why isn’t he married or at least taken? I’m assuming he’s not.”

“Not that I know of. He’s always been the despair of my crowd, and our mothers. He dates all the time, of course, but when it gets right down to it he just…withdraws. Nicely; Brad doesn’t do anything mean or vulgar, ever. He must have been through every girl in Buckhead between the ages of twenty and thirty, and none of them have taken. I think it’s his mother.”

“What about his mother?”

“Oh, God, she’s awful. She’s strident and touchy; you know, one of those women who finds something to be offen-ded by in everything. And she’s the worst racist I think I ever knew. That’s not to say there aren’t a lot of ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS / 118

them in Buckhead, but mostly they’re very seemly about it, doncha know. Marylou Hunt is horrible to her help, and talks about the niggers this and the niggers that in front of them. No wonder Brad and Sally and Chris went the opposite way. She’s tried to run off everybody any of her children got serious about, and who knows, maybe she’s succeeded with Brad. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to get serious for fear his marriage will be like his parents’. Big Brad drinks all the time, and spends most of his time either on the golf course or off hunting down at their plantation in Thomasville. No ladies allowed down there.”

“I wonder why he puts up with her?” I said.

“She’s very beautiful,” Teddy said. “When she was young she just took your breath. Brad looks like her. And the money’s hers, most of it. Everybody knows her daddy just flat bought Big Brad for her.”

“I simply can’t wait to meet her,” I said. “Brad’s asked me to go by there for the open house on New Year’s Eve, before another party. Maybe I should rent an Old Buckhead suit.”

Teddy laughed and padded into the kitchen and came back with two mugs of coffee.

“You’re getting open housed to death, aren’t you? Well, it’ll be interesting. Whoever of Ol’ Buckhaid you didn’t meet at my parents’ you’ll meet there. You’ll know more of them in the short month you’ve been here than some of us who’re supposed to be of them. We’ll make a Buckhead matron of you yet; get you a tennis dress, maybe, and sneak you into the Junior League. Want me to help you figure out some protective coloration? Virtually nobody else would care about you coming from Corkie, but I assure you that Marylou Hunt will.”

“Nope. I’m going in full Irish regalia, with a mouthful of the Old Country. I want her to know right up front what she’s dealing with. I made sure Brad knew.”

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“He wouldn’t care,” Teddy said.

“No. He didn’t. I think he wants to flaunt me under his mama’s nose.”

“Do you care?”

“Nope.”

“Did he kiss you?”

I looked at her. She was sipping coffee and regarding me with interest over the rim of her mug.

“He did.”

“Oh, shit. You’re a goner,” she groaned.

“How do you know? Have you ever kissed him?”

“I told you,” Teddy grinned. “He’s dated everybody female in Buckhead who isn’t downright deformed or demented.”

“I’m glad to know he has his standards,” I said peevishly.

“Were you in love with him or something?”

“No. I think we just knew each other too well. I used to go to dancing school with Brad, and he taught me to smoke, out behind the gym at North Fulton. We both threw up.

That may be why he doesn’t stick with any of us. Familiarity and contempt.”

“You are a virtual walking encyclopedia of Atlanta folkways and mores,” I said, heading upstairs to the shower.

“Think of me as your guide through all the levels of hell,”

Teddy said.

I left the profile of Brad Hunt on Matt’s desk. Shortly before noon he came in and sat down on the edge of my desk and looked at me through the wire spectacles. His rich oxblood loafers were coated with dust and grime, and the Pentel in the monogrammed pocket of his oxford cloth shirt had leaked, leaving an ineradicable ink blossom there. Some of it had transferred itself to his hand, and from there to his chin.

“It’s a good piece,” he said crisply. “I’d probably want you to do some rewriting, but I’m not going to ask, since ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS / 120

we’re right on deadline. Maybe I’ll put you on YMOG full-time. Think you could handle it?”

“Oh, yes! Oh, Matt, thanks—”

“Don’t mention it,” he said, and went out of the office as quickly as he had come. I waited until I heard his footfalls fade from the office and the elevator bell ding, and then I got up and ran into Hank’s office and threw my arms around him and swept him into a stumbling dance. Tom Gordon, lounging in Hank’s visitor’s chair with his long legs stretched out before him, hummed a snatch of “The Rain in Spain.”

“You won the lottery,” Hank said.

“Matt liked my YMOG! He’s maybe going to let me do them full-time,” I caroled.

“Well, that son of a bitch,” Tom said, grinning. “Don’t you let him stick you with YMOG, Smoky. You’ll never get out from under it.”

“Yeah, but it’s the first step, and I had to take it,” I said.

“It’s only a short hop from YMOG to the good stuff. And it’s a byline.”

Hank gave me a swift kiss on the cheek and hugged me briefly, and sat back down.

“Way to go, Smokes,” he said. “That’s taking the YMOG

by the old…well, I hope you didn’t do that. How’d you like Hunt?”

“I liked him,” I said. “I’m going out with him New Year’s Eve. How ’bout them apples?”

“Uh oh,” Tom said.

“If I’d known you were going to be back in town, I’d have asked you out myself,” Hank said, scowling. “You want to watch out for the rich kids from Buckhead. Pretty soon you’ll be running by Cloudt’s on the way home and planning your fall around Fashionata.”

Hank’s eye and ear for social nuance never failed to astonish me.

121 / DOWNTOWN

“Come on,” Tom Gordon said. “I’ve got a freebie for lunch at that new Chinese place on Luckie. I’ll muscle you both in, to celebrate Smoky’s first YMOG.”

I danced along the cold, windy street arm and arm with both of them, dodging through crowds of gift-laden people, whirling by windows glittering with the bounty of Christmas, thinking that life in Atlanta could hold no more for anyone than had been given me.

But Savannah, now, held little. When I got in, at dawn on Christmas Eve, having sat up in my Greyhound bus seat the entire way, holding the armful of roses Brad had sent to the office, it was to be met by my father in the Vista Cruiser, and we had a swift, immediate quarrel. The rest of the holiday went rapidly downhill.

My father was still a little drunk, and much annoyed that he had had to get up early to come and fetch me. He glared at the roses in my arms and his color rose when he noticed the new haircut and the red suit and the length of opaque white tights that showed beneath its hem.

“And are you afraid the neighbors won’t have seen your behind, is that it, that you have to come home showin’ it?”

he said sullenly.