Downtown (13 page)

“Why do you think that?” I said, flattered.

“There’s just something about you. A kind of vulnerability, I think. I know Atlanta guys. There are going to be a lot of them who want to take care of you.”

“I don’t intend to be taken care of,” I said firmly, meaning it. “I just left home to get away from all that.”

“Oh, I know,” she said. “But it doesn’t mean a whole slew of them aren’t going to try.”

And so, on a Saturday night pearled with the cold white mist that seemed to be endemic to Atlanta in early winter, I went in my new red suit and Rich’s haircut and sweating palms with Teddy, in her smart little green Mustang convertible, to an enormous stone and stucco house on West Andrews Drive, in Buckhead, to attend the Fairchilds’ annual party.

I had never seen a house as big as the one Teddy’s parents lived in. Or been in one, at any rate. I had been driven past many of the old river plantation houses outside Savannah, of course, since I could remember, and some of them seemed to me enormous. But the homes in Savannah proper, even those of the very wealthy, tended to be tall, narrow, elegantly proportioned town houses. This house sat far back on the crest of a wooded hill, overhung with enormous old oaks and hickories. It was reached by a long, curving drive that swept between stone gateposts and described a circle in front of the portico. In the middle of 97 / DOWNTOWN

the circle a huge evergreen glowed with outdoor lights, and each of the seemingly countless windows on both floors spilled out more light. Even from the street, I could see that they all had candlelit wreaths hung in them.

A steady stream of cars wound ahead of us up the shrub-lined driveway, where a uniformed Atlanta policeman, huddled into a leather jacket, was directing them. I could see that three or four young men in white jackets were helping people from their automobiles at the portico, and then driving the cars somewhere out of sight. Already intimidated by the drive among the old dowager houses of Buckhead, where I had not been before tonight, and by the blur of spangled Christmas lights and spotlit green wreaths on white doors, I felt my throat close up when we turned in between Teddy’s gateposts. I had no business in a house like this; I did not know how to talk to people like these; I would say something irretrievably gauche and tasteless; I would trip on some fabulous Oriental carpet, spill something on priceless tapestry, break some treasured ancestral bibelot….

The officer touched his cap to Teddy and she waved and mouthed, “Hi, Wayne,” through the frosted glass, and pulled the car smartly up in front of the steps, where one of the young men opened the door for her. Another dashed around to my side.

“Merry Christmas, Miss Fairchild,” Teddy’s young man said. “You staying the night? I’ll put it in the garage, if you want me to.”

“Merry Christmas, Leon,” she said, skinning out of the Mustang, her sedate navy satin climbing up her thigh. The boy tried to look as if he had not noticed. “No, I’m going on back to my place. But could you maybe just tuck it somewhere so we can make a fast getaway if we need to? I don’t think I can take much of our esteemed lieutenant governor tonight.”

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The boy tittered. “Yeah, he’s primed for bear. You could smell the Christmas cheer ten feet away when he got here.

I’ll put your car behind the poolhouse, headed out the back way.”

“Is he talking about Boy Slattery?” I said, too intrigued to remember that I was nervous. Thomas John Slattery, Georgia’s lieutenant governor, was known far outside the borders of his state for his boozy, good-ol’-boy—hence the nickname—antics, his drawling courtliness that masked a snake’s venom, and his baroque racism. He was despised and feared by the liberal and moderate forces in the South, adored and venerated by the hardcore reactionaries in the state—my father and all of Corkie among them—and laughed at by almost everyone else. He was the son of one of these houses, I knew, but had made his political fortunes by courting the state’s white rural poor, and got endless local and national, press coverage for his boisterous high jinks in the state legislature before the present liberal young governor, Linton Wylie, made the worst mistake of his life and picked him for his lieutenant governor in the past election. Lint Wylie had thought to cash in on Boy Slattery’s enormous grass-roots popularty and then put a firm lid on him, but it had not worked out like that. So far, he had managed to keep Boy from declaring open warfare on Dr. King and his young lieutenants, but only just, and there were no thoughtful Southerners who looked forward to Georgia’s next gubernatorial election. Boy was twice as popular as Lint Wylie, and totally without the shackles of conscience and moderation. He kept a little Negro jockey hitching post at the curb of his Buckhead mansion, and flew the Confederate flag daily on his lawn. People who thought he was merely a colorful Southern clown were making a very bad error of judgment.

99 / DOWNTOWN

“Boy Slattery in the extremely unattractive flesh,” Teddy said in disgust. “He was my dad’s roommate at Virginia, and Mother and Daddy always feel like they have to ask him and Mrs. Slattery, even though they both have the way he carries on. They’ve both known him and her, too, since they were all in dancing school, or something. I guess he wasn’t always like he is. Every year my father says, ‘By God, it’s just too much, Lucy; I can’t take him again. Half the people here will see him and have one drink and leave. I’m tired of that damned fool ruining this party every year,’ and every year Mother says, ‘We can’t just cut him off, Oliver. I know he’s an ass, but you have to feel sorry for Becky. This is about Christmas, not politics.’ And so every year he comes and pinches Mother and me on the fanny and drinks all Daddy’s liquor and insults half of their guests, and after he’s gone Mother and Daddy both agree he’ll never come again, and then of course next year he does—”

“Boy Slattery,” I said half to myself, hardly hearing her.

“What a profile he’d make.”

She looked at me sharply. “Put it right out of your mind.

Matt would run a profile on Satan before he’d do one on Boy.”

“Yeah, but it could be, you know, a subtle indictment. We ought to be doing tough pieces too, not just things on people everybody loves—”

“Have you forgotten we’re the official organ of the chamber of commerce, among other things? Half the chamber might secretly love old Boy, but the rest of the country doesn’t.

Run a profile of him and you can kiss most of the Fortune 500 companies good-bye.”

“I can see that this chamber of commerce stuff is going to wear pretty thin before long,” I said, following Teddy up the shallow steps of the portico.

“Well, tell Culver Carnes,” she said. “He’s always here. He went to North Fulton with Daddy.”

ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS / 100

A black man in a white coat opened the door, and I goggled at him. My lord, a real butler, or houseman, or whatever you called them in Buckhead. He said, “Good evening, Miss Teddy,” and smiled, and she smiled back and said, “Hi, Frost. Merry Christmas. This is my new roommate, Smoky O’Donnell.”

Frost smiled and nodded and held out his hand, and I took it. He looked at it as if it were a ticking package, and then at Teddy, and I realized that he was holding out his hand for our coats, and dropped his hand, my face and neck flaming. Teddy gave him her smart black, silver-buttoned coat and I handed over my London Fog, and we started into the party. As we did, she whispered, “Don’t worry about it, for God’s sake.”

When I whispered back, “I’m not,” my voice was thickly felted with the finest brogue Ireland had to offer. Dear God, I prayed silently, please take this miserable accent and let me sound, just for this one night, like one of these people.

But God was not doing accents that night, apparently.

When Teddy introduced me to her mother and father, standing before a roaring fire in what looked to be the Great Hall of a small medieval castle, I still sounded like Deirdre of the Sorrows. Teddy grinned and her father, a tall, stooped, silver-haired man of astounding good looks, smiled and took my hand, and her mother, a plump duplicate of Teddy in floor-length red velvet, kissed me lightly on the cheek and said, vaguely and sweetly, “Hello, dear. Teddy said you were called Smoky, but she didn’t say you were Irish. Isn’t that interesting? The Irish part, I mean. Well, the Smoky, too—”

“Teddy’s mother speaks in tongues,” Oliver Fairchild said, patting my hand before releasing it. “Welcome, Smoky.

Teddy tells us you’re the new gal at that magazine of hers, and a very talented one, too. It’s doing a great job 101 / DOWNTOWN

for the city; we’re proud of you young people. Comfort is something of a miracle worker. It’s a treat to hear that pretty brogue; I spent some time at Oxford after Virginia, and I used to go up to Ireland for houseparties every now and then. You take me right back, you surely do.”

I muttered something that I adjudged to be proper and followed Teddy into the dining room, where a table covered with white damask and shimmering with candles held more silver and more crystal and more food than I had thought there was in the world. A great mahogany bar at the far end of the room, set before a wall of French doors, was four and five deep with tuxedo-clad men and women in silks and satins and velvet. My cherished Wood Valley red wool felt too plain by half and too short by four inches, and my chest and face still flamed. If Oliver Fairchild had heard accents like mine at county houseparties in Ireland, he had been hanging around a lot of kitchens. I wondered if it was possible to get through an hour, or possibly two, with only smiles and nods.

I remember the following two hours as unquestionably the longest in my life. I moved among the handsome, sedate crowd of Teddy’s parents’ friends like a small dinghy being towed by Teddy, nodding and smiling brilliantly when I was introduced to someone, nodding and smiling brilliantly as I listened to this conversation and that, striving to look as though I were fascinated by the banal, alien talk of children and servants and other parties and absent friends, as if I moved each evening of my life among ease and privilege like this, as if I could wish for nothing more than to stand with the rich of Buckhead a week before Christmas and beam my good will upon them. I did not say another word. I did not dare. I felt as ungainly and inept as a village idiot who had strayed into a Romanov ball, and was profoundly surprised, shocked, even, when Teddy told me afterward that her parents

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and their friends all thought I was “such a nice, pretty girl, and so interesting, too.” And, “How lucky Teddy is to find someone as nice as Smoky for a roommate.”

“Nice,” apparently, was an operative word in Old Atlanta.

Teddy was meticulous about staying at my side, never letting me stand tongue-tied in a strange group, seeing that my champagne glass was kept filled and my canapé plate laden. I think, without her, I would simply have opened my hands and dropped my glass and plate and dashed out the great front door into the night, leaving Old Atlanta goggling after me. As it was, her presence and the silky, fizzing champagne kept me nodding and smiling in a modicum of comfort, and by the time she whispered, “Let’s blow this joint,” I was able to say, with only just a lingering trace of Corkie, “Let’s.” Of course, it was only one word….

“Let’s just run downstairs first and say hello and good-bye to Ollie,” she said. “I haven’t seen him in over a month. He’s been in Richmond opening an office for Daddy.”

I nodded and she led me down a great, curving staircase to a huge paneled cave of a room, carpeted in muted tartan and hung with great brass lamps. Another mahogany bar was crowded around with people, mainly men down here.

More clustered around the largest, grandest pool table I have ever seen. It shone in its polished mahogany grandeur like an island in the middle of the carpet. In the crowd of men I recognized many faces from the pages of
Downtown
. Half the Club must be in this room tonight, I thought.

A short, thick, red-faced man and a tall, thin, younger one leaned over the table, watched by the others. It was their match, apparently. The soft light from the hanging brass lamp fell on the heads of both; the younger one did 103 / DOWNTOWN

not lift his, but kept his eyes levelly on the table, looking once or twice into the face of the older man. His hair was very curly, cut short around his narrow head like a rough cap, and it was almost silver in the light. His skin was the dull, matte gold that some blonds tan after long hours in the sun, and his eyes were so blue that they seemed almost to spark. He wore a plaid cummerbund and tie with his tuxedo, and was so handsome that I almost laughed aloud. He looked as if he were designed to go with this room, and others like it.

The older man lifted his bald head and looked at Teddy and me when we entered. It was Boy Slattery.

“Teddy, sweetie pie,” he said in his loud, nasal drawl, and I realized he was quite drunk. “Come over here and give Uncle Boy a kiss.” He put down his stick and came around the table, staggering just slightly. The tall blond man watched him expressionlessly. Several of the other men smiled in indulgent anticipation.

“Merry Christmas, Mr. Slattery,” Teddy said, sidestepping neatly. “Hello, Brad. Long time no see. This is my roommate and
Downtown
’s new senior editor, Smoky O’Donnell.

Smoky, this is Brad Hunt and Lieutenant Governor Slattery.

We’re just leaving, but I wanted to see Ollie a minute. Is he around?”

“He’s in the kitchen,” Brad Hunt said. “Hello, Smoky O’Donnell. You have eyes the color of rain.”

I smiled at him, tentatively. Boy Slattery moved in on me and Teddy, both hands reaching.

“How about a little Christmas kiss, girls?” he said, leering showily at the watching men. “Christmas kiss for Teddy, hello kiss for the little new girl here. What did you say your name was, peaches?”

“I didn’t,” I said, wincing as the brogue reasserted itself. I would, I swore silently, find myself a voice coach the very next week.

ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS / 104

Teddy melted away into the kitchen, leaving me standing there. She closed the door smoothly behind her before I could follow Damn you, Teddy, I thought.