Beach Music (27 page)

Many people, including Celestine, thought that General Rembert Elliott would have made Commandant of the Marine Corps if he’d never had any children. His only child, Jordan, had done more damage to his career than the Japanese bullet that had almost killed him at the Battle of Tarawa.

Celestine led me into the living room and poured us two cups of coffee as I looked out toward the Atlantic at a ship making its way north toward Charleston.

We sat and exchanged pleasantries before I handed her an elegant Fendi bag containing two letters and several gifts from her son.

“There’s trouble, Celestine,” I said quietly.

A deep voice echoed before she could utter a word. “More trouble than you’ve ever known, my dear.”

Rembert Elliott, every inch the Marine general, stared at his wife with a blue-eyed look that was as pure and uncomplicated as sea air. He stood in the doorway that led to the back door of the house. All color drained from Celestine’s face and I calmly reached over and took the two letters she was holding.

“Hand me those letters, Jack,” the general ordered.

“They’re mine. I wrote them,” I said, standing.

“You’re a liar. You and my wife are both liars,” the man said, his rage so visible that it almost made his face indecent. “You’re a traitor, Celestine. My own wife, a traitor.”

“What happened to your golf game on Hilton Head, General?” I asked. I had not expected him to be at home.

“It was a ruse to catch you two in the act,” the general said.

“I call it a lie,” I said. “Welcome to our little club.”

“Capers Middleton gave me these photographs taken in Rome,” the general said. He started to hand them to his wife, then thought better of it and threw them violently to the floor. Celestine said nothing as she picked up the photographs. Tidiness was second nature to her even during the most savage of her husband’s assaults. She paused to look at one of the photographs of her pale, ascetic son.

Then Rembert Elliott did something that surprised both his wife and myself. He stepped back as Celestine retrieved the scattered photos, unsure of his next move, transfixed by doubt. The assault of fortified beaches was his specialty but the beachhead he now faced seemed much too dangerous for storming. It required strategies that demanded the subtleties of veils, ruses, and secret envelopment. The general had attended no war college that made his encounter with his own small family more easeful and less subject to discord. Even his wife, as she now stared at him defiantly, looked like an enemy scout who had slipped into his house beneath concertina wire to booby-trap his kitchen.

When this man of action found himself unable to act, I took advantage of his uncharacteristic fixity. Leaving him posed in a standstill, I walked to a bathroom on the first floor and tore Jordan’s letters into fragments and flushed them down the toilet. When I returned, both Celestine and the general were sitting in chairs measuring their reborn distrust of each other.

“You made me sit through a memorial service for a son who’d disgraced me when you knew he was alive?” the general asked.

“I thought he was dead,” she answered.

“Why didn’t you tell me when you found out?”

I answered, “Because you hated him, General. You always hated him and Jordan knew it, Celestine knew it, I knew it, and you knew it. That’s why she didn’t tell you.”

“I had a right to know,” the general said. “It was your duty to tell me.”

“I’m not a Marine, darling. A fact you have some difficulty remembering.”

“Your duty as a wife,” the general corrected himself.

“Let’s talk about your duty as a father,” she fired back angrily. “Let’s talk about how you treated your son from the day he was born. How I sat by and watched you bully and torment that wonderful, sweet boy of ours.”

“He was effeminate when he was a child,” the general said. “You know I can tolerate anything but that.”

“He wasn’t effeminate,” she shot back. “He was nice and you can’t tell the difference.”

“He’d have grown up as one of them if I left his raising to you,” her husband said, his voice accusatory and contemptuous.

“One of
them
?” I asked.

“A homosexual,” Celestine explained.

“Ah! The horror of horrors,” I said. “The fate worse than death.”

“Exactly,” she said.

“I wouldn’t’ve put so much pressure on Jordan,” the general said, “if you’d been able to bear other children.”

“Of course, how convenient it’s all my fault.”

“A lone wolf makes the worst kind of soldier,” General Elliott
said. “They’re a danger to any unit. They can’t tailor their egos for the good of the group.”

“Sort of like you, dear,” Celestine said. “When it comes to family.”

“You’ve never understood the military.”

She laughed and said, “I’ve understood it all too well.”

“For fourteen years, I’ve thought my son dead,” the general said, turning to me. “How do you expect me to feel?”

“Glad,” I suggested.

“I’ve already notified the proper authorities,” the general said.

“What did you tell them?” Celestine said.

“The name of the church where these photographs were taken,” he said. “And the possibility that he committed a crime. You’ve got a lot of questions to answer, Jack.”

“And few answers to give, General,” I said.

“You destroyed those letters, I presume,” he said.

“Just notes I wrote to Ledare Ansley,” I said.

“Tell her I’d love to see her,” Celestine said. “I heard she was in town.”

“Jack,” the general said, “I could have you arrested for hiding a fugitive.”

“You certainly could,” I answered. “Except no one’s been accused of a crime. And the criminal you suspect seems to be dead.”

“Are you denying that my son is in those pictures?” the general said.

“In Italy, I’m limited to those confessors who speak English,” I said.

“It’s Jordan, isn’t it, Jack?” the general asked, his voice straining, incautious.

“I can’t tell you that,” I said.

“You mean, you won’t,” he said. “Celestine?”

“Darling, I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” she said.

“All those trips to Italy,” the general said. “I thought it was your passion for art.”

“The art’s always one of the highlights of the trip,” Celestine said.

“I hate art museums,” General Elliott said to me. “That’s where she meets with Jordan. I see it clearly now.”

I studied the general’s face and for a moment felt a chord of sympathy for this emotionally limited and tightly wound man. His mouth was as thin as the blade of a knife. He was short but powerfully built, in his late sixties, and his eyes burned with a simmering blue that could terrify men and charm women. All his life, people had been afraid of Rembert Elliott and this knowledge had given him great pleasure. He was the kind of man America needed during wartime but did not know where to put when the armistice was signed.

Like other men who’ve spent much of their lives training to kill enemy soldiers, Rembert Elliott had made a perfectly appalling husband and father. Throughout his marriage, he had treated his wife like an adjutant who’d received a bad fitness report. Jordan had been raised by his mother’s kisses and his father’s fists.

The general rose heavily and went over to study the photographs again.

“That priest. That’s my son, isn’t it?” he said to me.

“How the hell would I know?” I said. “It’s my confessor. You ought to get to church more, General. You’ll notice this little screen separating the priest from the poor sinner. It’s there for a reason. So you can’t see each other clearly enough to make an identification.”

“You’re claiming this isn’t my son?” the general said.

“It’s my confessor,” I said again. “No court of law can make my confessor testify against me or vice versa.”

“I think this is my son.”

“Great. Congratulations. Together at last. Don’t you love happy endings?”

Celestine walked over and stood in front of her husband, looking directly into his eyes.

“It is Jordan, Rembert,” she said. “Every time we’ve been to Rome, I’ve gone to see him. I tell you I’m shopping.”

“Liar. Liar,” the general whispered.

“No, darling,” she said softly. “Mother. Mother.”

The general turned to me. “So you’ve been the courier.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” I answered.

“I was raising him to be a Marine officer,” the general said.

“Looked like the Gulag Archipelago to me,” I said.

“Jordan came of age in the sixties,” he said. “That’s what destroyed him. What would any of you know about fidelity or patriotism or a sense of values or ethics?”

I shot back, “Ask us what we know about child abuse.”

“You were a generation of liars and cowards. You shirked your duty to your country when America needed you.”

“I just had this same stupid conversation with Capers Middleton,” I said. “Let me sum up: bad war, started by bad politicians, fought by bad generals, and fifty thousand guys were flushed down the toilet for no reason whatsoever.”

“Freedom’s as good as any reason to die.”

“Vietnam’s or America’s?” I asked.

“Both,” he said.

Then I went over and embraced Celestine. “He moved to another monastery in another part of Rome. He’s safe,” I told her. “I’m sorry I had to destroy his letters.” And I walked out of the house.

As I was getting into my mother’s car, General Elliott appeared at the door and shouted down to me, “McCall.”

“Yes, General.”

“I want to see my son,” he said.

“I’ll tell him, General. He’s never had a father before. He might like it.”

“Will you help arrange it?” General Elliott asked.

“No, I won’t.”

“May I ask why?”

“I don’t trust you, General,” I answered.

“What do you suggest I do?” he asked.

“Wait,” I answered.

“You don’t think it’s possible for a man to change, do you?” he asked.

I looked at the straight-backed, unspontaneous man and said, “No, I don’t.”

“That’s smart,” the general said. “I don’t either.”

Celestine hurried out onto the porch. “Jack, go straight to the hospital. Tee just called. Your mother’s out of her coma.”

A
ll my brothers except John Hardin were waiting for me outside the main entrance of the hospital when I arrived. I jumped out of the car and found myself surrounded by my brothers, who tossed me back and forth embracing me.

“Mama,” Tee screamed aloud, “she did it.”

“Is she tough or what?” Dupree said.

“It’ll take more than cancer to take that old girl out,” said Dallas.

“I couldn’t help but think she was pretending to be dying,” Tee said, “just to make me feel guilty.”

Dupree hit Tee playfully on the shoulder. “Mom’s got more important things to do than make you feel guilty.”

“Yeah,” Tee challenged. “Like what?”

“Yeah. Like what?” Dallas agreed.

“Only Dr. Pitts has seen her. He thought it would be a great idea if you went in to see her first,” Dupree said.

“Mama,” I said. “Mama.”

We whooped and hollered again and Tee reached over and held my hand briefly just as he used to do when he was a very small child and I was the largest, gentlest brother in the world to him.

The nurses had moved Lucy from intensive care and the family had gathered in a different, happier waiting room.

A spirit of euphoria seized us all and even the saturnine Father Jude looked relieved by the turn of events. We gathered around Dr. Pitts and listened to him repeat what the doctor had told him. As he told us of the fever’s lowering, the stabilizing blood pressure, and the slow return to consciousness, my brothers and I felt like inmates listening to a proclamation of amnesty. Since we had been jittery and downcast for so long, the elation felt odd, the sense of ebullience, foreign.

“Why don’t you go in to see your mother, Jack?” Dr. Pitts said.

“Tell her a few jokes,” Tee said. “Belly laughs are what she needs now.”

“I hardly think so,” Dr. Pitts said.

“Thinking’s never been Tee’s long suit,” Dallas said.

They were still talking among themselves when I left them and walked down to my mother’s private room.

Her eyes were closed, but her face was still remarkably pretty for a woman fifty-eight years old. I had not spoken to her in five years and that knowledge tore at me as I approached the bed. I had gone to Rome to save my life and had never once considered the thoughtless cruelty of just walking out of the lives of so many people. Lucy opened her eyes and her blue-eyed gaze took me in. Without question, Lucy was the most maddening, enthralling, contrary, and dangerous woman I have ever met. She claimed to know everything there was to know about men and I believed her. Her powers of description were vivid and refined. Her imagination was extraordinary and could not be reined in. She was a liar of prodigious gifts and saw no particular virtue in telling the truth anyway. She could walk into a roomful of men and stir them up faster than if someone had thrown a rattlesnake among them. She was also the sexiest woman I had ever seen in my life. One thing my brothers and I had learned the hard way was that it wasn’t easy being the son of the sexiest, most flirtatious, most legendary woman in your town. My mother never saw a marriage she didn’t think she couldn’t break up. She boasted that she had met few women in her league.

I waited for her first words.

“Get me some makeup,” Lucy said.

“Hi, Jack,” I said. “It’s wonderful to see you, son. Gosh it’s been a long time.”

“I must look like a crone,” she said. “Do I, do I look like a crone?”

“You look beautiful.”

“I hate it when you’re insincere.”

“You look like a crone,” I said.

“That’s why I want the makeup,” Lucy said.

“You must be tired,” I said, trying to say something neutral.

“Tired?” she said. “You’re not serious. I’ve been in a coma. I’ve never been so rested in my life.”

“Then you’re feeling good?” I tried again.

“Good?” she said. “I’ve never felt worse. They’re pumping me full of chemotherapy.”

“I’ve got it now, I think. You feel rotten, but very well rested,” I said.