Beach Music (16 page)

N
ot having a daughter was the great sadness of my mother’s life. She had produced a houseful of boys to raise and the noise level was always too high and the rooms overheated with testosterone and the sheer energy of roughhousing and life lived by the seat of the pants. All her life she added to her doll collection, which she planned to pass on to the daughter who was never born. Lucy McCall had always appeared too breakable and glasslike to have produced such a tall and boisterous tribe. My mother carried an ache inside her always that I am sure the birth of a daughter would have done much to alleviate. We had made her life boy-haunted, son-possessed. If there was such a thing as being too male, we McCall brothers embodied it.

I saw my brother Dallas before he saw me. He was the third son and the only one who had followed my father’s footsteps into the practice of law. Dallas had long ago become expert at hiding the rough edges of himself and keeping his darkness undercover.

We shook hands and exchanged pleasantries in the most formal manner.

“You never said good-bye to any of us,” Dallas said as we walked to the baggage claim.

“I was in a hurry,” I said, shaking his hand. “Good-bye.”

“Joking about it’s just going to make it worse,” Dallas said.

“You’ve got a lot of answering to do.”

“I’ve got no answering to do, Dallas.”

“You can’t just walk back into a family’s life after five years just like nothing happened …”

“Yes, I can. I’m an American and a free man and I was born into a democratic society and there’s no goddamn law in the world that says I have to have a fucking thing to do with my weird-ass family.”

“Only laws of decency apply,” Dallas said as we waited for the luggage. “You should have brought Leah—we need to get to know her and she deserves to know the other members of her family.”

“Leah doesn’t know what the word ‘family’ means,” I said. “I admit it might screw her up in the long run. But it also might make her the healthiest human being on earth.”

“Sounds like a test tube baby to me,” said Dallas.

“Would you rather have been a test tube baby or be raised by Mom and Dad, just like we were?”

“He’s leading the witness, Your Honor,” Dallas said to an imaginary judge.

“How are you raising your boys, Dallas?” I asked.

“I tell them that the only thing they’ve got to look out for is … everything. Be careful of everything. Hide your head and cover your ass and always make sure you carry a flashlight and dry matches.”

“McCalls,” I laughed. “You’re raising them to be McCalls.”

“No, that’s what I’m raising them to watch out for,” Dallas said. “You haven’t asked how Mom’s doing.”

“How’s Mom doing?” I said.

“She’s worse today.”

“Which hospital’s she in?”

“She insisted on staying in Waterford.”

“You didn’t take her to Charleston or Savannah? You put her in the goddamn Waterford hospital? Why don’t you just put a gun to her temple and blow her brains out? She’s got leukemia, Dallas. You go to the Waterford hospital for hangovers and blood blisters and cold sores, but never for anything serious. Would
you
go to the goddamn local hospital if you had leukemia?”

“Hell no,” he admitted. “But Mom insisted on Waterford. A lot of new talent’s come to town. We even got our own surgeon.”

“Our mother’s dead meat,” I said. “She’ll be killed by her own stupidity. Serious diseases require serious doctors and serious doctors go to serious cities to make serious money. Loser doctors go to loser towns the same way that shit floats downstream. There’s my baggage.”

“Do I have to listen to grief from you about the lousy medical care we’re giving to the mother you’ve ignored for five years?” he said. “Dupree’s cabling you was not universally applauded.”

“I wish he hadn’t,” I snapped as I removed my bag from the conveyor belt and started following the crowd out toward the parking lot.

“Call us old-fashioned,” he said, taking my briefcase. “We come from that school of thought that thinks it’s proper to cable a son when his mother has made that particular request.”

“You should’ve done it after she was dead.”

“Mom’s changed a lot in the last five years. Too bad you didn’t get to see any of those changes. Her new husband’s been good for her.”

“Do I have to meet her new husband?” I asked. The thought of adding any more emotional weight to my coming home seemed unbearable. I had completely forgotten that I might have to meet my new stepfather for the first time.

“I haven’t even begun to figure out my own father,” I protested. “I see no reason to muddy up the waters and try to begin a relationship with a man who’s only committed a single crime.”

“What crime has poor Jim Pitts committed?”

“He married the woman who ruined my life and made it impossible for me to find happiness during this lifetime.”

Dallas laughed and said, “She was a rookie when she raised you. Just getting started. It was the youngest kids who felt the full flowering of her genius.”

“Lucky me,” I said. “Funny about Mom. I think I’ve been mad at her my whole life, yet I adore her. I can’t bear to think of her hurting or in trouble.”

“She’s a paradox,” Dallas said. “The last thing you want your mother to be.”

“How’s your law practice?”

“So many clients I have to give out numbers in the waiting room,” said Dallas. “I’ve had to hire armed guards to control the crowds.”

I laughed and said, “Going into practice with Dad hasn’t turned out so well.”

“People in small towns like their attorney of record to be sober when he draws up their will or checks a title,” Dallas said. “Dad passed out on the conference table last week while we were conducting a deposition.”

“Didn’t you tell me he was on the wagon?” I remarked.

“His liver must look like a distillery,” Dallas said. “Let us say it hasn’t done the practice much good.”

“Do you still hero-worship me and consider me a god among men?” I asked. “Like you did when I was a kid.”

“I’ve missed you, Jack,” Dallas said. “I don’t make friends easily. We’re brothers and don’t have any choice in the matter. I take my family seriously because it’s all I’ve got.”

“I had to heal myself, Dallas,” I said. “I didn’t do it so well, but it came naturally. It felt right to go to Rome.”

“You can leave,” he said, “I’ve got no problem about that. But where’s the rule against visiting. What about letter writing?”

“When I first left,” I said, “I wanted to disappear out of my own life. You ever felt that way?”

“No,” he answered. “Not once in my life.”

“We’re different people.”

“I like guys like me a lot better than I like guys like you,” Dallas said.

“So do I,” I answered and my brother laughed. Though my whole family was bruised and tested, it had found solace in the healing unctions of laughter. This dark humor had preserved us from both sanctimony and despair.

“How’s your darling wife and family?” I asked.

“Fine. Thanks for asking,” he answered.

“Don’t worry. I won’t call her Miss Scarlett when I see her.”

“Thanks for nothing,” Dallas said.

“You tell her Lincoln freed the slaves yet?” I asked.

“I don’t care that you hate my wife.”

“I don’t hate your wife, Dallas,” I said, delighting in his defensiveness. “She kind of floats into view like a Portuguese man-o’-war … or a jellyfish. I distrust women who float.”

“She just has good posture. We’re very happy together.”

“Anytime I hear a husband pathetically say, unasked, that he’s very happy with his wife, I smell the divorce courts, mistresses, and midnight flights to the Dominican Republic for quickie separations. Happy husbands never mention the fact. They just live in pure ether and grin a lot.”

“A positive attitude takes you a long way,” he said. “Something you haven’t had for a long time.”

“Nothing phonier than a good attitude,” I responded. “It’s so American.”

“Great to have you back,” Dallas said, shaking his head. He started the car and eased out of his parking space. “It seems like only yesterday that I used to think you were a fabulous guy.”

“Time flies.”

“I’m glad you came, Jack. Mama might be dead by the time we get there.”

“That old positive attitude,” I said, then caught myself.

When Dallas said nothing, I attempted safer territory.

“Where am I staying?”

“You can stay with us if you like, but Dad really wants you to stay with him. He says you can have your old room.”

“Great—just what I long for,” I said sarcastically.

“He’s gotten kind of lonely, Jack. You’ll see. It’s hard to hate someone who’s so needy and eager to please.”

“It’ll be a snap for me.”

“Do you ever get tired of having all the answers?”

“No,” I snapped back. “Do you ever get tired of asking none of the right questions?”

“Can you ever forgive Mom and Dad for being exactly who they were born to be?” Dallas’ eyes were focused on the dark band of roadway leading from Garden City to the small bridge that crossed the Savannah River west of the city.

“No, that’s the one thing I can’t forgive them for.”

“Fine,” he replied grimly. “Half your problems with the world are about to be solved, big fella.”

“Watch the road, counselor,” I said. “We’re passing into our home state.”

Because it serves as a borderline between two states, the Savannah River holds a prominence in my mind that other rivers lack. A sign bid us farewell to Georgia and another welcomed us into the state where all the McCall children had been born, raised, and touched by the routines and dialects of our homeland.

But some invisible river also runs among the members of my family, marking off separate realms of the spirit that render our brotherhood both inscrutable and promissory. People have always made the mistake of thinking we are closer than we really are. We resemble each other in some ill-made, unthought-out way, like cheap copies, but in most things we relate to the world in opposing styles.

Dallas is comfortable being a Southerner and has never aspired to being anything else. What makes him feel complete and centered in the world can all be found in a hundred-mile radius of our birthplace. He carries himself with a seriousness missing from the nervous systems of the rest of us. Of all my brothers, it is Dallas who has chosen the most conventional path, one with built-in safety features. Throughout his life, he admired the men who became church elders in Waterford, or served on the city council, or headed up the funding drives for United Way. People trust him because he avoids extremes. His is the voice of reason in our passionate, breakneck family, where screaming is considered a higher form of discourse and a shouting match the upside of dialogue.

I reached across the car and squeezed the back of my brother’s neck. His muscles were taut and he winced with pain at my touch. Though Dallas had a reputation for being gifted at arranging treaties of armistice and missions to the interior, I knew that was only a trick of the trade the lawyer’s art had taught him. He had forged a reputation for levelheadedness that he had paid a steep price for in bulk purchases of antacids. His calm exterior had been won with the chalky help of Maalox. Though Dallas faked his way through his
professional life by assuming an air of self-possession and presence of mind, he knew there was not the slightest chance I would be fooled by the charade. Though he longed to take his place among the cooler heads in our town, a working knowledge of fire was the way to his heart.

I breathed in the low country air as each mile took us farther away from the industrial effluents that distilled in the bright sunshine of Savannah.

The shinier, silk-tender air came streaming over me with each mile we traveled and I could smell my own boyhood sneaking up in a slow, purloined dream as I closed my eyes and let the chemistry of time allow me to repossess those chased-off, ghostly scents of my lost youth. I found my whole body leaning forward in anticipation as the car crossed over the pine barrens of Garbade Island and I saw the long graceful bridge that spanned the mile-long Broad Plum River. On its own, my spirit seemed to relax, like a folding chair let out by a pool. Because even beauty has its limits, I shall always remain a prisoner of war to this fragrant, voluptuous latitude of the planet, fringed with palms and green marshes running beside rivers for thirty miles at a time, and emptying out on low-lying archipelagoes running north and south along the coast before the Atlantic’s grand appearance. The low country had laid its imprint on me like the head of some ancient king incised on a coin of pressed copper. The whole earth smelled as though a fleet of shrimp boats had returned for a day’s work on tides of rosewater and eelgrass.

“Miss that smell?” Dallas asked. “You could live in Rome for a thousand years, but I bet you’d still miss the smell of those tidal flats.”

“Rome’s got its own smells.”

“You gotten the itch out of your system yet?” Dallas asked. “It’s hard to make your life’s work packing a bag.”

“My life’s taking place in another part of the world,” I said. “No sin in that.”

“You raising Leah to be an Italian?”

“Yep. I sure as hell am.”

“Better get that girl on over here. We’ll give her a couple of weeks of basic training. Bring out the redneck in her.”

“You know, you sound like an idiot when you play ‘Southern boy’ with me,” I said.

Dallas punched me playfully on the shoulder. “That’s why I do it. See if you still get pissed off when I go into one of my routines.”

“It’s not a routine anymore, Dallas. I suspect, by now, it’s a life.”

“I’m Southern to the bone,” Dallas said, glancing at me. “Unlike you, I don’t hang my head when I say it out loud.”

“You know better than that,” I said, then changed the subject. “What does Mama look like?”

“Like road kill,” he said through tight lips.

“How’s everybody taking it?”

“Great,” Dallas said sarcastically. “Mom’s dying of cancer. Things couldn’t be rosier.”

The hospital was prettily situated on the banks of the Waterford River, but once inside, it gave off that institutional antiseptic smell that was uniquely American. The hallways were lined with drawings by schoolchildren, octogenarians, and lunatics who had excelled with crayons and fingerpaints during occupational therapy. For the last twenty-four hours I had made a grand effort to think of everything except my mother’s condition. The past was one country where I tried to limit the number of free trips. When we came to the waiting room where the family had gathered together in mute, rough-hewn vigil, I felt as if I were walking into a mine field.