A Southern Girl (17 page)

“You’re yelling,” I said calmly.

“Of course I’m yelling. And I’ll tell you what else I’m doing. I’m adopting this child and you better get used to it. I’m calling Open Arms Monday morning to tell them we’ll take her and if you don’t like it, fuck off and leave.”

I’ll never know if she would have carried through on her threat to call Open Arms. Early Monday morning, while I was in the shower, Mother called, telling Elizabeth my father had suffered a stroke during the night, and that she needed me in Charleston as soon as I could get there.

I caught a mid-morning flight, arriving just past noon. Mother greeted me somberly at the arrival gate. Yes, Dad had seemed fine the night before. No signs of dizziness or headache. He had left their bed around two. She
had stirred, heard him enter the bathroom, heard the faucet turned on and off. The most jarring moment of his collapse came when the glass he was holding smashed against the tiled floor. The EMS response had been twenty minutes.

We drove from the airport to the hospital. Mother, exhaustion evident, refused to enter the ICU, saying she had been there all morning and wasn’t up to returning at the moment. Dad lay comatose, an IV running into his left arm and digital readouts surrounding him. I approached the bedside, grasped my father’s hand, and squeezed. No response. For the fifteen minutes I stood at the bedside, monitors hummed and winked. Pixilated graphs rose and fell, keeping physiological score with automated indifference.

I drove Mother home, urged her to go to bed, then unpacked for what I sensed might be a stay of some duration. She needed me. The law firm could manage without me for a time. I called home, reporting what I knew.

“And how’s your mother?” Elizabeth wanted to know.

“Holding up and holding on. I need to spend some time down here.”

“Yes, you do.” Then, a pause. “Coleman, you don’t think Sarah will blame this on me, do you?”

I hesitated, because that thought loomed. “I think in her heart of hearts she blames us both.”

“Then that means me.”

“Dad’s doctor warned them both last year that his blood pressure was too high.”

“I don’t want to come down there if she thinks I caused this.”

“Let me talk with her over the weekend.”

“Okay.”

“Elizabeth, promise me you won’t call that agency.”

“Now’s not the time. I see that.”

“Good. I’ll call you tomorrow. Kiss the boys for me.”

In the days that followed, sobering retreats followed faint spikes of optimism, Dad’s doctors straddling that vague line between medical art and science and refusing to place bets either way. If they held a long range view, they withheld it in professional reticence. Should we urge my aunt Constance, Dad’s sister, to abandon a long planned South American cruise to come to Charleston? No, that “probably isn’t necessary,” the doctors
opined. If he lived, as it appeared likely now that he would, it was doubtful he would regain all of his speech, and he would require speech and physical therapy. Mother could not care for him without so much assistance that a nursing home made economic sense, doctors advised. She balked. He would come home, and that was that.

I spent the next few days shuttling back and forth to the hospital and, between trips, helping Mother acquire the medical equipment and supplies that would make Dad’s return home after therapy possible. Still in ICU, he communicated in a rudimentary code by blinking. No, he was not in pain. Yes, the nurses treated him well. Yes, he looked forward to going home.

Returning from the store, I passed the tree Philip Huger and I climbed during one afternoon of prepubescent exploring. It made me smile, despite the broken arm I received when Philip jumped down too soon. I forgive you, Philip, I thought, thinking also about how many times over Philip repaid me in Mexico. At the thought of Mexico, my smile broadened.

Back at the house, I sat in my room, at the old oak desk where I did my homework while in high school. In front of me rested a stack of files I asked the office to ship down. I had been working my way through them for over two hours when Mother knocked at the door.

“He’s better,” she said brightly. “Some movement in his left hand. Dr. Adams says he’s being moved out of ICU.”

I rose to meet her as she sagged against me, relief palpable. “He’s tougher than he looks,” I said. “Let’s go check out his new room.”

On Sunday, friends and neighbors who had stayed away from the hospital in deference to the uncertain outcome brought food. A party of sorts evolved, subdued at first. Visitors conversed in a respectful hush, raising the covers of chafing dishes silently, as if the sudden clash of silver would precipitate a relapse in the man sleeping five miles away in the Newberger Rehabilitation Center. Gradually, like spring edging winter, the library hush gave way to laughter and boisterous chatter.

I served drinks, thinking as I mixed and poured how, under any other circumstances, Dad would have been first in line. I spent time with the members of his poker club, who gathered in one corner of the sunroom and told stories, little vignettes of brazen bluffs and memorable calls meaningless to just about anyone outside this group of retired card table warriors.

“Your daddy has this tic,” explained Horace Wannamaker as he swirled ice in his second gin and tonic. “Every time he draws a really strong hand he gets this twitch in his right eyelid. He knows it, but there isn’t one goddamn thing he can do to control it. Am I right, Scotty?”

Scott Lesesne, nursing his first bourbon and ginger, smiled. “Dead on.”

“So he got into the habit,” continued Wannamaker, “of covering his eye with his hand which, don’t you see, is a bigger red flag than the twitch.” Wannamaker laughed loudly.

Scott Lesesne clapped a hand on Wannamaker’s shoulder. “But he got you good that once.”

Wannamaker shook his head. “He did that. Pot must have been twenty-five, thirty dollars. Big money. Whipped that hand up to that right eye and bluffed me out with a pair of fives. Never has let me forget it, either.” They all laughed.

Lesesne took up the sportsmen’s tale. “Over the years, he’s found something on every one of us. Nothing malicious, you understand, just some little quirk or habit he’s noticed and ribs us about. Whenever he looks at you with that twinkle in his eyes, you know it’s coming.”

I circulated, greeting those I had known growing up. As I entered the den I recognized Barron Morris, seated in the leather, overstuffed chair my father preferred. The ample old gentleman, whom I judged to be perhaps seventy-five, wore an impeccably tailored three piece suit of dark blue wool and faint pinstripes. From his suit pocket protruded a burgundy silk scarf matching his tie, and his collar, white on the pale blue background of his shirt, held a gold stick pin. Across his waist, which in the compression of his body in the chair, tilted upward toward the ceiling, he sported a gold fob. As I approached the chair the man held out his hand.

“Hello, son. My circulation isn’t what it used to be or I’d stand to shake your hand. Please forgive me. Pull up that ottoman and let’s talk if you have the time.”

When seated, I said, “Good to see you, Mr. Morris. It’s been a while.”

“Indeed it has. I don’t believe I’ve laid eyes on you since that reception your parents gave before you were married. I’m so glad your father’s doing so much better. He’s a good man; a mighty good man.”

“Your name came up in a conversation with him just before his stroke.”

Morris shifted slightly in his chair. “Is that so? I remember asking him to have you give me a call sometime. I hope you’ll do it. Tell me, how are things going up there in Virginia? Your father told me you made partner.”

“A few months ago. I guess some luck and the network among UVA and William & Mary grads was enough to fool them.”

“Fine schools,” acknowledged Morris, “but I suspect you paid your dues. I suppose you know that I’ve got a little law firm down on Broad Street.”

I grinned. “The last time I checked Martindale-Hubble, your little firm had thirty-five lawyers and represented just about everyone in South Carolina worth representing.”

Morris nodded his oversized head decidedly, a wisp of ivory hair falling onto his forehead. “We do all right for country boys. We have a few country girls as well. Your practice is litigation if your father told me right.”

I nodded.

“Big business, that litigation. The world’s got too much of it, in my opinion, but you have to change with the times. I sure miss the old days. Why, no Broad Street lawyer worth his salt would be seen in his office before eleven. By the time you signed a couple of letters or, on a big day, drafted a will, it was time for lunch.”

“That doesn’t sound much like my schedule.”

“Nor mine anymore. Tell me about your practice up there.”

I outlined the structure of my firm and its primary areas of expertise. Morris listened with his eyes half closed, nodding occasionally, but his questions showed his mastery of every detail I disclosed.

“Tell you what,” Morris said. “I want you to come have lunch with me. Can you do that?”

“I’ll be here for a few more days. I’m sure I can.”

“Good. How’s Wednesday?”

We agreed and shook hands.

On Monday evening, in a call to Elizabeth, I told her to expect me that weekend. “Dad gets a little stronger each day, and Mom likes having me around, but I’ve got a trial next week, and if I stay any longer I’ll have to get it continued.”

She hesitated. “I hate to bring this up, but we have to give Open Arms an answer. Soon.”

I sighed, and I’m sure she heard it. “The timing couldn’t be worse. Besides, I thought we had that discussion.”

“I hoped you would reconsider.”

“To be honest, I haven’t given it the first thought.”

“That’s understandable, but we need to make a decision. Perhaps I was too emotional the other night. This is not something I want to do alone.” Under other circumstances, I would have seized upon her concession. Elizabeth did not normally give ground.

I locked and bolted the front door as Mother watched from a chair in the living room.

“You bolted that door just like your father,” she said. “When I do it, which isn’t often, I brace it with my knee, nearer the floor. He always pushes against it with his left arm, above the lock, while he turns the key.”

“It’s late, Mother. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Yes, you can fix me a drink and sit up with me for a few minutes. Bourbon, two fingers over ice.” At the bar, I poured twins. When I returned, she continued. “So many years, son. We lived our lives in phases. I suppose everyone does. Remember, your father and I had only each other for over twelve years. That’s longer than you’ve been married. We’d given up hope of having a child. We figured it was the two of us, for better or worse.”

“Stop me if this sounds too personal, but was it better, or worse?”

She looked at me in a way that transformed us into contemporaries, lounging in a fraternity house. The whisky helped. “He was so shy,” she explained. “The mystery of our marriage has always been his need to limit the world and my need to expand it. Here, in this house, with just the two of us, he could be himself. I made certain of that. I swore I’d never press him to be other than he was. My gift to him was an appreciation for his vulnerability, and he loves me for it. He was a shy, honest man with a wonderful sense of humor. That was enough for me, or so I thought. Then you came along and my world changed, like it’s about to do again. I kept my promise; I never pressed him, but you did. Innocently, of course. You were just being a kid, just being yourself. But in a very strange and painful way–I don’t want this to come out wrong–a painful way you reminded him of every well adjusted, athletic, ambitious guy he’d played second fiddle to all his life.”

“He resented me?”

“Not for an instant. He worshiped you. He turned the resentment on himself.”

I stared, fitting things together. “Did you ever talk about it?”

“Rarely. But I knew him as well or better than he knew himself, so we got by. I’ve worried more about its affect on you. He was never one to put his feelings into words or to discuss … personal things, like his shyness, for example.”

Or adoption? I thought, then thought again. “I can’t say I’ve ever really understood him.”

Mother’s voice dropped. “He loves you.”

“I’ve assumed that.”

She leaned away to look at me directly. “You intimidate him.”

“But that’s crazy. He’s been successful.”

“In his modest way, yes. He comes from a fine family and he made a good living in accounting, but never the kind of money that attracts attention here. Even in Charleston, your name only gets you so far.”

I began to wonder why this conversation, or others like it, had not taken place five years before, or ten. Why wait until invalidism to air such thoughts? My mother, the most outgoing of people, must have been drawn into my father’s web of reticence, I reasoned. Was it sheer loyalty? By showing candor of which Dad had been incapable, would she have somehow highlighted her husband’s failing, like a woman who would never think of criticizing her mate, yet complains to friends about having no money when her husband produces all the income? Or was it futility? Was there something in my father’s illness that freed her?

In the muted distance, church bells tolled the hour. “Tired, Mother? Maybe we should call it a day.”

“In a moment.” For the first time she swirled the ice in her glass, nervously signaling something. I guessed. “First, tell me what is happening with your plans to adopt this foreign child. You haven’t spoken of it.”

“That’s been intentional. It’s obviously a sore subject and neither Elizabeth nor I thought it appropriate to bring up when … on this visit.”

“Then your plans have not changed.” She said it flatly, without emotion. But she glanced at me expectantly from the corner of her eye.

“Our plans aren’t certain. Elizabeth and I haven’t … worked it all out yet.”

“I gathered as much. For what it’s worth, your father is very set against it. He worried himself sick about it.”

“Enough to cause a stroke?”