Beach Music (37 page)

So Elizabeth faded into her role of wife and mother and hostess and, by all accounts, brought a great dignity to every aspect of her life. Her character was true and her beauty deepened with the years and even Mary Chesnut cited her attendance at three balls in her Civil War diary and each citation was more glittering than the last.

After the Civil War began, Sherman did not come South again until he came to set it on fire. He made the South suffer and burn in the high octane of its own passionate codes. More than any other Northern general, Sherman loved the South because he understood both its pride and contradictions, but this knowledge did not keep him from moving through its mountains and river valleys with a cold and unstinting fury. He had come with his men from the Mississippi to the city limits of Atlanta and he had watched his armies choking on their own blood and leaving the corpses of tens of thousands of Illinois and Ohio boys planted forever in Southern earth his men had made holy by their sacrifices. Cutting his supply lines, Sherman laid waste to Atlanta and taught his soldiers the value of matches when you wanted an enemy whimpering and on his knees. Sherman remembered his elegiac time in Charleston and the extraordinary love that Southerners exhibited toward their fragrant land and comely houses. For five hundred miles, he ravished that pretty South and burned every house his armies approached. From Chickamauga to the Atlantic, he rode out the seasons, moved his men with relentless and inexorable cunning, and wrote his name in fire and blood across the sacrificial body of Georgia.

Sherman made the boys of the South shed their blood and their lives in a hundred Southern streams and fields and roadsides. He made Southern women scream out for their dead and wounded and he found out that the suffering of bereaved and hungry women could be as effective as a fresh regiment in bringing a war to its close. He cut through Georgia as if the state were made of butter and he taught the state some unalterable lessons about the horror of warfare. Through the long cool autumn of 1864, he rode with his army loose in the field, moving unappeasably through the smoke of burning plantations as the South’s first conqueror.

Sherman’s name became the vilest two-syllable word in the South. Beautiful women with the manners of countesses spat in the dirt after pronouncing his name aloud.

Sherman was leading his men toward Savannah and the trading lanes of the Atlantic and the history of military strategy. He was riding toward Elizabeth. My mother continued, “When General Sherman took Savannah after his pillage of Georgia, it was greatly
feared that he would aim his armies at Charleston, the city and the populace that had begun the hostilities in the War Between the States. Charleston had endured a bitter siege and all were preparing to evacuate the city before the onslaught of Sherman’s army. The citizens of Charleston had already decided to burn Charleston to the ground by their own hand and not to allow the hordes of Sherman to put the holy city to the torch. Those who loved Charleston would burn it. The Yankees were not worthy of such distinction.

“Rumors abounded that Sherman had moved his armies across the Savannah River and those rumors proved true. The entire South and the entire nation waited to hear that Sherman had turned the fury of his forces on the city that had begun the terrible conflict. But as he reached Pocotaligo, Sherman turned his armies on a surprise advance and drove them toward Columbia, where he wreaked great havoc and burned that city to the ground.

“After Sherman made his surprise move and razed that city, he wrote a letter to Elizabeth’s mother, who still lived in this house. When the Yankees had taken over Waterford early in the war, her mother had refused to flee and spent the entire war under Yankee domination. They accorded her great respect. This is the letter that General Sherman wrote to Elizabeth’s mother,” she said.

My mother walked the length of the library as the crowd parted to let her pass. She flicked on an electric switch lighting a Chinese vase lamp that illuminated a framed, handwritten letter hanging on the wall.

“Since all of you can’t get close enough, I’ll read this aloud if you don’t mind.”

But my mother did not have to read the letter on the wall; she had long ago committed it to memory and there was not a sound in the house as we listened to my mother’s voice.

No tour group in history ever got more bang for their buck than those lucky house-lovers who were led through the Varnadoe Cotesworth house by my mother. I knew that every time she told that story she was trying to regain something for herself. My mother wanted someone to feel about her the way Sherman did about Elizabeth and she knew that my father would never be that man. I used to stand on our dock looking back at that sun-struck house of my childhood and tell myself that I would one day love a woman the way Sherman did. I wanted to walk the whole world until I found a girl I could write letters to that her descendants would hang up on library walls. I would march to the sea with that girl’s name on my lips, and I would write her name in the sands until the tides washed over it. The story marked me. But it changed my mother’s life.

She had made the story hers and hers alone. It struck a chord of abundance and resonance deep within her. It could not mask the limitless hurt she had suffered as a child, but it could give her a rich
faith in the future, in all the negotiable currency of pure possibility. This great story made the truth bearable for my mother. Against all odds, Lucy was the keeper of Elizabeth’s house, the owner of General Sherman’s pure cry of human loss and love.

As the crowd moved down the steps away from the house, my brothers called out to me and I turned around to wave good-bye to them. I would be leaving the house forever in several months and my sweet brothers would be left to their own devices.

“Hey, good-looking,” my mother called out, “you’re not getting away without kissing your mother good night.”

I blushed but ran up the stairs and my mother hugged me tightly to her. Mike and Capers and Jordan applauded loudly and I blushed again.

My mother rubbed the lipstick from my cheek and we looked at each other suddenly and all the swiftness and cruelty of time came over me in a rush and almost brought me to my knees. My mother saw it too and felt it. Her eyes fastened on me and her hand touched my cheek.

“General Sherman, General Sherman,” a girl’s voice cried out. “We’re leaving now.”

The voice was exaggerated and Southern and my mother laughed and said, “He’s coming, Elizabeth.”

I ran toward the voice and the outstretched hand and was surprised to see it was Shyla.

Part III

A
s a travel writer, I know my airports and I know every square foot of the Leonardo da Vinci airport in Rome by heart. But on the day my mother touched down for her first visit to Italy the following December, the airport itself seemed transformed and magnified by the significance of my mother’s arrival. We had nearly lost her in that first week when she had been in the coma and her recovery had assumed magic proportions for all of us. It had brought me back into the family circle after a long intermezzo of sadness and lost time when I tried to heal a spirit badly damaged by Shyla’s death. I had reconnected with something of the highest consequence and the repercussions of that visit rang in the deepest channels with an echoing richness that amazed me. Going back to see my stricken mother, it never occurred to me that I would encounter my lost self waiting for me at her bedside.

As the passengers began to make their way out of the double doors, past the customs inspectors and the unsmiling soldiers armed to the teeth, I pointed out my mother to Leah and said, “Go give that woman a hug. That’s your grandmother, Leah.”

Leah moved easily through the crowd and I trailed behind her. As Lucy searched for us, Leah approached her and said, “Ciao, Grandma. I’m Leah McCall, your granddaughter.”

Lucy looked down at her dark-eyed, lovely grandchild and said, “Where you been all my life, darling?” then knelt down on the floor
and folded Leah into her arms. Then she rose and kissed me. We collected her bags and Lucy, holding Leah’s hand, followed me out of the Rome airport and into a Roman taxicab.

My mother’s recovery was remarkable and her face shone with a ruddy good health that seemed impossible after the no-holds-barred assault her body had just withstood. Her hair had grown back though it was very short; her step was light, and I saw more than one middle-aged Italian man give her the once-over with their languorous, appreciative glances. She had written me that she was walking five miles a day and had only missed a single month of checking the beach each summer morning for the signs of a nesting loggerhead turtle. Even in December, my mother had the best suntan in the airport.

Lucy looked out at the throngs pressing forward to meet travelers and shook her head at the noise and congestion. “Gives new meaning to the phrase ‘Chinese fire drill,’ ” she said.

“I’m trying to raise Leah not to be a racist, Mom,” I said good-naturedly.

“That’s not racist. I’ve never seen a Chinese fire drill in my life,” Lucy said, “until just now.”

She took out her Italian money, which she had acquired in Savannah for the trip, and showed it to Leah. Holding a thousand-lire note, she said, “I don’t know whether that’s worth a nickel or a billion dollars.”

“Think of that as a one-dollar bill, Grandma,” Leah said.

“What a smart little girl,” Lucy said. “A girl with a head for figures doesn’t need to worry about hers.”

“You look great, Mama,” I said. “Remission becomes you.”

“I was bald as a pig for a couple of months,” she said. “If you’ve got any extra money lying around, invest in wigs, son. You’ve got beautiful hair, Leah. Just like your mother had.”

“Thank you, Grandma,” Leah responded.

“I’ve got more presents for you in my bags than I have clothes,” Lucy said. “Everybody in Waterford sent you a present, because they want you to know how badly we want you to come home.”

“December 27,” Leah said. “We’re going back to Waterford with you. You’re going to love Christmas in Rome, Grandma.”

“Do you remember how much I loved you as a baby, Leah?” Lucy asked, hugging the child to her.

“I can’t remember anything about South Carolina,” Leah said. “I’ve tried, but I just can’t.”

“Next summer I’m going to have you work in my turtle program on the Isle of Orion. We’re saving the great loggerhead turtle from extinction.”

“Wow. And I can see all this?” Leah said happily.

“See it?” Lucy said. “I’m going to train you to be a turtle lady.”

“Waterford must be so wonderful,” Leah said. “Do you know, Grandma, you’re the first person I’ve ever met who knew the Great Dog Chippie besides Daddy.”

“Chippie?” Lucy said glancing sideways and oddly at her son. “A great dog.”

“I tell stories about Chippie to Leah,” I explained.

“What’s to tell,” my mother said, puzzled. “Chippie was a mutt. A stray.”

“No, Mama,” I said and she caught the slight disapproval in my voice. “Chippie was a magnificent beast. Fearless, brilliant, and a great protector of the McCall family.”

“He sure saved the McCall family a bunch of times, didn’t he, Grandma?” Leah said.

Lucy finally got it. “Oh yes,” she said. “I don’t think any of us would be here today if it wasn’t for Chippie.… That great, great dog.”

That night, when I was putting Leah to bed, she hugged me tightly and thanked me for allowing her grandmother’s visit.

“I love your mother, Daddy,” Leah said. “She is so sweet to me and you’re exactly like her.”

“Please,” I cautioned. “Don’t go overboard.”

“It’s true,” Leah said, “and she said I’m the spitting image of Mama. What does that mean?”

“Spitting image?” I said. “It means you look exactly like your mother. Would you like me to tell you a story? How about the time that Shyla and I fell in love at the beach? Or any of the others?”