A Southern Girl (12 page)

Sarah shook her head slowly. “I believe that’s wishful thinking. There is another matter you should consider.”

“What is that?”

“My son, your husband. I know this was your idea. He didn’t need to tell me that.”

“Yes, we guessed you’d make that assumption.”

“If Coleman agrees to this, he’s doing it for you. Deep down, he agrees with me. I know because of the way he was brought up. He can’t divorce his heritage, no matter how hard he wants to please you. Perhaps it is unfair to put him in this position?”

“Coleman is a grown man. He can say no if he chooses. I’m not forcing this on him.”

Sarah just smiled at that, a doubtful smile that said she didn’t believe me for a moment. “Good,” she said, reaching over to pat me on the arm. “You two talk it over. Pray over it. The right decision will emerge.”

We returned toward the house, making small talk for the duration of our walk. I had known it would come, eventually but inevitably, to where we left it. I would be the culprit, manipulating Sarah’s blameless son into a scheme he opposed and exposing Sarah’s grandsons to the Red peril, which in Sarah’s view had begun taking over America on the day the Japanese built their first transistor radio. “They’ve taken all those jobs from those poor people in Detroit. I’d rather die than drive a Honda.” At the root of Sarah’s xenophobia were the Communists, those tireless devils whose agent on earth was the Trilateral Commission. And the list went on: Robert E. Lee and Barry Goldwater were defeated but right, a woman’s place was in the home, “separate but equal” was “a sound policy which should never have been abandoned” and mankind took a giant step toward eternal damnation when the Episcopal Church approved the new Book of Common Prayer.

I perfectly understood my impatience with Sarah. We disagreed on everything from abortion to Vietnam, from cooking vegetables (Sarah cooked broccoli for forty-five minutes, until it was literally beyond recognition) to toilet training. On the other hand, she possessed an elusive
quality which drew me to her even as I had not been drawn to my own mother. It went beyond our mutual interest in Coleman, for Sarah loved her son uncritically and without reserve while I had come to a point in my life that I couldn’t say that, although I had said it when we married and thought I meant it. Marriage has taught me how difficult it is to love another person, any person, uncritically, and logic tells me it must be just as hard for anyone to love me that way. I’m convinced Sarah sees Coleman as perfect, rationalizing the imperfections as you might choose not to notice a tiny crack in your favorite mirror. Love for a spouse can’t be that way. You see the flaws, and he sees yours. The trick is to look past them, to the compensating qualities that brought you to him in the first place. I’ve even come to recognize my own flaws, at least some of them. I’m judgmental, for one, with little patience for those who disagree with me, particularly when they can’t back up whatever it is we disagree on. Uncritical love is a rare commodity, reserved for children I suppose. My love for Josh and Steven mirrors Sarah’s love for Coleman, and soon I will bestow that same kind of love on a child that may or may not have been born. Coleman says he isn’t sure he can love an adopted daughter that way. I’m betting he can, and that he will experience that sooner than he thinks. Sarah? Will she love her granddaughter as she loves her grandsons? I wonder.

As we approached the front door, Josh came bounding out of the house. “Mom, Grandma!” he yelled, nearly tripping as he reached us. “You should see Steven! Blood everywhere. His whole head is blood, blood, blood!”

I froze. “Josh, what are you talking about?”

“Steven’s head. He fell down on his bike and he couldn’t see after that because he had blood in his eyes and everywhere.”

My heart raced as I felt my knees and legs weaken. I grabbed Josh by his shoulder. “Where is he?”

“Daddy and granddaddy took him off. In the car.”

“Where were they going?” I demanded.

“Someplace to get the blood out of his eyes. You should have seen him, mom. I got some on my hands.”

I looked down. The sight of the red smears sickened me. “Oh, God. Get in the car, Josh. Sarah, where would they have gone.”

“Well, I’m just not sure,” said Sarah.

“Well, get sure!” I screamed. “Let’s go find them.” I got behind the wheel as Josh and Sarah entered the passenger side. I backed wildly down the driveway, narrowly avoiding a car parked on the street, threw the shift into forward, simultaneously hitting the gas and spinning my tires on the cobblestones. With a death grip on the wheel, I maneuvered through the neighborhood. Sarah held Josh as he explained, yet again, how much blood covered Steven. “Josh, please!” I pleaded.

Sarah, refocused, gave directions to the emergency room as her eyes widened and the speedometer climbed. We jammed on brakes at a traffic light that stayed red for minutes, causing me to first pound the wheel in frustration, then gun the car through the light, still red. I almost collided with a bread truck, avoiding disaster only by a sudden swerve onto a sidewalk. At the hospital, I pulled into the ER lot, parked so as to fill two spaces, and threw open my door. “Wait here,” I called as I slammed the door. Seconds later, I entered the building.

My father-in-law sat in the reception area, his eyes focused on the magazine in his lap.

“What happened?” I demanded.

“Oh, just a little accident,” he said calmly. “Steven fell off his bike.”

“But the blood!”

“He cut his forehead, but a few stitches should do it, according to the doctor. Coleman’s with him.” He nodded toward the double doors.

I found them in a harshly lit cubicle cordoned off by a green curtain. On the table lay Steven, his eyes open and riveted on the white-coated man hovering over him. On the other side of the gurney stood Coleman, who looked up from the intricate work being done on Steven’s forehead.

“Hi, dear,” he said cheerfully. “Looks like we’re going to get a late start on the trip home.”

Steven started to turn his head toward me but was restrained by the doctor, whose fingers bracketed the child’s forehead as his thumb and forefingers did the work. I knelt beside, holding his hand and whispering words of comfort as the doctor cautioned him against sudden movements.

“You wouldn’t want me to make a mistake and sew your nose shut, would you?” Steven’s eyes widened momentarily until the laughter of the adults, even mine, reassured him.

Ten minutes and four stitches later, the doctor announced he was through, but wanted Steven kept still for a time. I thought it best to drive
Sarah and Josh, still waiting in the car, home while Coleman waited for Steven to be released. On my way to the parking lot, I offered a ride to my father-in-law, but he declined.

8

Coleman

While I didn’t look forward to our time in Charleston, knowing the tempest that would ensue when we broke the news, I always enjoyed the trip itself. Holiday traffic in New Hampton receded as we crossed the wide expanse of the James River, cold and foreboding with choppy whitecaps stretching to the Chesapeake Bay. An hour later, as we entered North Carolina, the excitement of the trip gave way to fatigue, and I found myself the only one awake. I count the solitude of a long drive, unmarred by radios or conversation, among life’s simple pleasures.

I glanced at Elizabeth, dozing against her headrest, remembering that my second view of her had been in profile, like this one. In a larger sense I had been attempting to profile her ever since. Beyond the complex chemistries that explain mutual attractions, I sensed in her certain strengths and sensitivities I felt I lacked. I told her as much on our honeymoon.

“Yes?” she said. “Like what? Name them and don’t leave any out.” I hit her playfully with a pillow but she persisted. “I’m waiting.” We were in Barbados, still in bed at three in the afternoon.

“You have … intuition,” I said. “You trust your instincts more than I trust mine. I’m too analytical.”

“Are you saying I’m not analytical?”

“You pay more attention to your passions. I wish I was more that way.”

“You’ve been doing alright in the passion department for the past three days.”

“You know what I mean.”

We met, or re-met, as it turned out, in May 1970. She had been up all night, as had I. The month before, U.S. forces based in Vietnam had invaded Cambodia, seeking to destroy guerrilla bases in an area called the Parrot’s Beak. Four days later, amidst antiwar outrage, the Ohio National
Guard shot and killed four students during a protest at Kent State. Riots swept campuses of the nation’s top universities. I was in my senior year at the University of Virginia. The very last thing we needed tossed into our academic bunker, a bunker filled with seniors worried about the draft, sophomores angry about everything, and wannabe revolutionaries who would eventually go to business school, was the hand grenade unpinned when William Kunstler, a New York attorney who had achieved national notoriety by his defense of the Chicago Seven, and Jerry Rubin, a Kunstler client and a platoon leader in the antiwar army, came to Charlottesville to give a speech. They packed University Hall, otherwise used for basketball, and worked the crowd into a maniacal froth. Rumors abounded that some building or feature of Mr. Jefferson’s academic village would that night be sacrificed on an altar of revolution; that only by fire could the righteousness of the peace movement be sanctified.

Many opposed Kunstler, Rubin, their entourage, and their politics. Many more recoiled at the thought of torching the living history the Rotunda represented. A call went out for student volunteers to stand guard that night against any act of vandalism directed at university property.

I volunteered. Like so many with whom I would soon stand on that same lawn to take our degrees, I cursed the war for its toll, its ineptitude, its strategic schizophrenia, its mushrooming divisiveness, its monumental waste. But the war was in Southeast Asia, and I was there, in lovely Charlottesville, where every student feels, in varying degrees, the presence of Mr. Jefferson. I listened to all the zealots spouting quotes from the great man himself, quotes that they insisted justified and even encouraged the kind of revolt they felt part of, the “tree of liberty” to be liberally watered with the “blood of tyrants” like LBJ. All well and good, I thought, but not at his university, on his grounds, at the cost of his magnificent architecture. And not on my watch. Perhaps, I reasoned, if approached by anarchists set on destruction, I could talk them down, distract them, convince them that a target more replaceable was somehow more suitable.

They assigned me to one end of Cabell Hall’s portico. With another student I did not know, I manned my barricade, drinking black coffee from a dented green hunting thermos and talking with curious students who ambled by with fresh gossip but no hard facts. One rumor held that Rubin, at that moment, was massing a mob at a student crossroads known
as “the corner.” Another: that Rubin and Kunstler had gone to dinner at the Farmington Country Club and retired early. By 3:00
A.M.
, the coffee was cold, the grounds quiet, and a humid chill had settled over the lush mall leading to the Rotunda. My companion yawned, stretched, declared victory and left, abandoning me within shouting distance only of the hardcore cadre stationed at likely targets. At dawn, I spotted a group of five or six people advancing toward me. My pulse quickened as I sought to make them out in the dimness. I heard a female laugh, and from it reasoned that these must be doubtful arsonists, so I spoke. One woman offered the fact that they had come from another college to hear Kunstler, then stayed for the prospect of witnessing some historic havoc—Beach Week with a conscience. They traded rumors each had heard, not for their truth or falsity but for their aberrance. By now, it seemed plain that the campus would survive. What had happened became less interesting than all the things that could have occurred.

The women began walking away just as the sun rose behind Monticello and the first beams of a new day followed them through Cabell Hall’s colonnade, and at the moment I told myself I had seen the last of them, that my twelve hour shift defending Mr. Jefferson’s Lawn had ended and I could get some sleep—at that instant she had hesitated, offering me a momentary view of her profile. She fell out of step with her denimclad comrades, then turned to me, squinting into the sunrise, and said, “I know you.” I tried to place her, but four years had passed and much had changed since 1966, and at that moment she looked vaguely like every coed I had met during that brooding era.