South of Broad (10 page)

A small but important friendship sprang up between Jasper and Sister Michele, and they began to look forward to their June 16 encounters. She would give Jasper reports on Norberta’s progress, and one time Sister Michele said, “She’s got more natural talent than any young woman I’ve ever seen at this convent.”

These reports both pleased Jasper and filled him with dread. Each time he approached the pretty convent, he hoped to find Lindsay waiting for him on the front steps, holding her small bag and wearing the same dress as the one she wore on the trip up from Charleston. Jasper wanted to see Lindsay rushing into his arms, declaring that it had all been an unfortunate misunderstanding.

That first September, he entered the gates of The Citadel, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, pleasing his family immensely. But he was well aware that he chose to attend The Citadel only because he had never taken the time to form a plan of his life that did not include Lindsay. He became a physics major, and soon understood that he was subject to the laws of inertia like all other objects on earth, and that Lindsay’s abandonment had set him in motion toward an unplanned though ineluctable destiny. He found it easy to surrender himself to the codes of discipline of The Citadel, fell in love with the natural order of the regiment, and took a young man’s pleasure in the care of uniforms, in marching in step to the beating of drums and the calling of cadence. As the convent was a hermitage of women devoted to prayer, The Citadel became a priesthood for Jasper. That priesthood turned into a caste of warriors on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

When Jasper took his physical for the army, he had memorized the eye chart used by military optometrists and so passed the vision test with a perfect score. He entered the war as a second lieutenant and fought with distinction in the European theater, entered Normandy in the third wave on D-day, took part in the liberation of Paris, and had just spent his first night in Germany when V-E Day was declared. After a year with the occupation army in Germany, he was sent home to Charleston to begin his real life without Lindsay. Jasper had written her a letter once a week all during the war, but she had never seen a single one. Sister Mary Michele prided herself in possessing more than a layman’s knowledge of human nature, and she could feel Jasper’s love for Lindsay pulsing in every line. So she had kept the letters from the young woman.

During the war, Jasper insisted that his father appear at the doorway of the Sacred Heart convent every June 16 and ask Sister Michele about their needs for the coming year. My grandfather did not enjoy the commission, but he did it because he was superstitious enough that he believed his son might be killed in battle if he refused to perform a charitable act for a convent full of nuns. As requested, my grandfather honored the anniversary of Lindsay’s delivery to her vocation and appeared without fail on the afternoon of June 16. On the battlefields of Europe, Jasper received four brief thank-you notes from Sister Michele and assurances that the young Sister Norberta was a rising star.

Her superiors were quick to identify Lindsay’s intellect, and after taking the veil, she enrolled in Catholic University. In a rigorous accelerated program, she completed her work for her doctorate in English literature and already began writing her dissertation on
Ulysses
. On her first reading, she had discovered that the novel’s action all took place on a single day, June 16, 1904. Because it was the same day that Jasper had driven her to the convent to begin her life in the sisterhood, the date acquired a magical significance to Lindsay. Often, she would think about Jasper. She knew from her parents that he was part of the war in Europe, and she prayed for his safe return as she took Communion every morning. When she received word from Sister Michele that Jasper had survived the war, it convinced her further that the power of prayer was a natural, unimpeachable force for good in the universe. In her heart, she believed it was her prayers and entreaties that had brought Jasper safely home from Europe.

He returned to Charleston, got a job teaching science at Bishop Ireland High School, and moved into his old room at his parents’ house on Rutledge Avenue. He limited his social life to an occasional date with a new teacher at Bishop Ireland, or with the sisters of his classmates at The Citadel. He made an affable and at least acceptably attractive partner, and several women let him know that they were ready for a serious commitment if he had finally been cured of his famous case of puppy love. Whenever the subject came up, he made fun of himself for his constant infatuation with a woman who had made herself unavailable to any man. But he had promised himself he would never marry a woman unless he felt exactly like he had when he floated, fully clothed, on an inner tube caught in the tidal currents of Charleston Harbor when he was seventeen years old. He knew exactly what love was and how it was supposed to feel.

In the summer of 1949, he bought a two-acre lot on the saltwater lake along the Ashley River that was separated from the river by Lockwood Boulevard. With the help of friends, he built a two-story brick home that added little to the architectural significance of his city. The house was as functional and as homely as a Catholic church built in the Charleston suburbs of that era. He built a working science lab in an upstairs room in the back of the house, and even his mother teased him for building a five-bedroom house for what was likely to remain a bachelor pad. But Jasper had developed a long-range plan that he thought would take some of the sting out of bachelorhood and help with the mortgage payments: he invited other young bachelors teaching at the high school to rent rooms from him, and he always had at least three male teachers living there. He remembered it as a happy time because there was a house party almost every weekend, and the laughter of young men and women dancing together was a kind of music that the house needed badly.

Several of these young men became some of the best friends Jasper made in a lifetime rich in friendships. Even Father Maxwell Sadler spent six months in an upstairs bedroom after an electrical fire damaged his rectory. Jasper did not charge the priest for rent, and he was sorry when Father Max moved back to the rectory when the repairs were finished. Few of his other housemates knew of his deep love of Lindsay, and he felt free to talk of his unquenchable love for her with Father Max. With infinite patience, Father Max never tried to talk Jasper out of his constancy toward Lindsay; instead, he introduced him to other pretty young Catholic girls whom he met in his work.

Because of Jasper’s bachelorhood, false rumors of homosexuality made their way along the corridors of Bishop Ireland, which Jasper did little to eliminate as he resigned himself to a single life. After his first years back in the city, there were fewer and fewer sightings of Jasper at cotillion balls or dinners with eligible young women in downtown restaurants or in the back rows of the Dock Street Theatre. A fellow English teacher asked Jasper to cruise a gay bar with him one weekend, and Jasper never spoke a civil word to that colleague again. Instead, he grew more inward with the passage of each year, more judgmental and pietistic and rigid, and young teachers stopped being comfortable renting rooms in his house.

Living alone did not prove beneficial to Jasper, and his habits began to turn slowly into noticeable eccentricities. He took the effects of loneliness to heart, but failed to note the corrosion of his sunny personality. The silences of his house caused him to reflect and despair of a life that might have been perfect. Still, he wrote to his beloved nun once a week, and sent the letters to the convent in care of Sister Michele. He would sometimes tell himself it was high time that he met and fell in love with another woman, but the falseness of the words tortured him. Writing his former girlfriend, he invented stories of beach parties, sailing trips to Bermuda, art openings, a planned summer trip to Europe, the purchase of a golden retriever, a fishing trip to the Gulf of Mexico, a spiritual retreat to Mepkin Abbey, and a hundred other remarkable events that never happened. His letters were pure fiction. My father may have been the first man in history who lived in fear of boring a nun.

On June 16 of every year, he kept his appointment with Sister Michele in Belmont. One year, Jasper brought fifty pounds of fresh iced-down shrimp that he had collected off a shrimp boat at Shem Creek. Another year, he unloaded a hundred small azalea plants that he had cultivated and grown in a makeshift greenhouse in the back of his house. Always, Jasper brought bushels of fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, and corn from a farm on Wadmalaw Island. He brought boiled peanuts and jars of jellies, chutneys, and preserves he had put up himself. The mother superior enjoyed the young man’s sense of humor and the romantic hopelessness of the cause he pursued in spite of the fact that she offered him no encouragement and would not allow him to broach the subject of his former girlfriend. Sister Michele never told him that Sister Norberta had not been in residence at the convent since 1940 and was spending that summer teaching literature at the University of Notre Dame. Nor did she once reveal that convent rules forbade her to deliver his letters to his former love. But she did break a convent rule by saving the letters and keeping them boxed in her office, tied with a white ribbon. That she saved his letters bothered her not at all. But that she had read every one of them with avidity and even pleasure, she considered a kind of minor-league sin.

On June 16, 1948, she treated Jasper to lunch at a downtown Charlotte restaurant famous for its steak. During the meal, he asked, “What does the convent need this year, Sister?”

The nun laughed. “You won’t believe this, Jasper. But we need hand soap.”

“That’s what I gave you the first time I met you,” he said. “You gals need to bathe more.”

When Jasper left her that day, Sister Michele surprised him by kissing him lightly on the cheek and thanked him for all he had done for the convent over the years. The kiss was a strangeness and a kindness, and he had an entire year to interpret its meaning. At the high school, an accidental fire set by an incompetent student shut down his chemistry lab. His mother began showing the first signs of dementia, and his father was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx. He moved back home to care for his parents, and he rented his house to four bachelors who taught in various high schools. His house became infamous for hosting the wildest parties in the city. But he was too busy to care, and for the first time he almost forgot his June 16 appointment at the Convent of the Sacred Heart.

Eleven years after Jasper had delivered Lindsay Weaver to the door, a younger nun he had never seen before motioned for him to follow her to the visitors’ room after he informed her that he had an appointment with the mother superior. The young nun nodded and moved out of the room, as silent as wood smoke.

Another nun appeared at the top of the stairs leading to the visitors’ room. Sunlight poured through a Palladian window and framed the outline of the nun, who moved too gracefully to be Sister Michele.

The sunlight now hit the lenses of Jasper’s glasses, blinding him. Squinting, he said to the figure on the stairs, “I was expecting my old friend, Sister Michele.”

“Sister Michele died of a stroke over a month ago,” the nun said. “I’ve been selected as the acting superior of the convent. That’s why I’m meeting you here today.”

“Why didn’t anyone get in touch with me?” Jasper asked.

“Her death was very sudden and unexpected.”

He said, “I’m so sorry. I’d grown close to Sister Michele.” Still blinded by the bright sun, he turned his head, removed his glasses, and began cleaning them with a white handkerchief.

“Even though you can’t see me clearly, don’t you know my voice, Jasper?” the acting mother superior asked. She moved out of the sun and into the shadow of that funereal room where visitors and family members summoned the nuns of their lives from the mysterious upstairs hideaways. When Jasper saw her face, he fell to his knees and howled like a wounded animal. His shriek brought nuns running from all corners of the convent. Sister Norberta was now in the unenviable position of explaining why this out-of-control man had gotten to his knees in front of her. Sister Michele had been the only one who knew the whole story of this love-struck weeping man.

“Should I call the police?” asked the young nun who had led Jasper to this room.

“No, of course not. This is Jasper King. He makes a large donation to the convent each year. I just told him about the death of our good Sister Michele. They were close friends.”

“Then should I call a priest?” asked another nun.

“No, no, Jasper will be fine. Can someone bring us a glass of iced tea? Do you still like sweet tea, Jasper?”

Several nuns helped Jasper to his feet and into a chair; his body appeared boneless and weightless. When the tea came, it seemed to revive him, and he thanked the nun who brought it. He was disoriented and now extremely mortified over the spectacle he had made. Quietly, the other nuns slipped out of sight.

“Sorry, Lindsay. I mean Sister Norberta,” he stammered. “I’d given up all chances of ever seeing you again. You caught me off guard.”

“Off guard, Jasper?” She laughed. “I guess I did. I had no idea you had such a theatrical side.”

“Neither did I,” he said, and they both laughed.

In our small boat, in the tangy, salt-brimmed air, I reeled in a nice-sized bass as my father described his elation at seeing Lindsay Weaver again.

“So you didn’t recognize her?” I asked when I realized he was too overwhelmed to continue.

“She was in the light,” he said finally. “The light came over her shoulder into my eyes.”

“But her voice?”

“I wasn’t expecting ever to hear it again. Nothing had prepared me for this encounter, Leo. I’d reconciled myself to never seeing her again. Didn’t even know I’d done it. But I had.”

“What did Mother say?” I asked. “After you settled down?”

Reeling in his line, my father put another live shrimp on his hook before casting it over toward James Island in a smooth, athletic motion. Then he continued his story.