The Fortunate Ones

by Ed Tarkington

  As the sun came up, people began to emerge and trickle outside, stripping down to their underwear and leaping into the pool. Two couples initiated a spirited chicken fight. I walked out onto the deck just in time to see Arch executing a perfect flip off the diving board, surfacing a few feet away from where he went in, right into Vanessa’s outstretched arms, whereupon they started necking with abandon. This seemed to set off some sort of chain reaction; within moments, all of the couples were making out in the pool. The sadness I felt watching Arch and Vanessa there, both of them so beautiful, felt beyond reckoning. I was drunk, of course, which didn’t help. But I was alone, and very lonely, and they had each other, and I knew then that they were a unit, a circle that was closed to me.

  I went back inside and returned to Jamie and the juniors with the vodka. We sat at that table taking shot after shot. Jamie smoked cigarettes and told dirty jokes. A stereo was blaring a Van Halen album, but no one seemed to be listening. Upstairs, a caterer was laying out breakfast. We kept drinking until Alice and Melissa came down to tell us it was time to leave.

  Arch and Vanessa were waiting for us in the Suburban. Arch sat behind the wheel. Jamie and I climbed in after our dates and took the two middle seats.

  “You two reek,” Vanessa said.

  I couldn’t help myself. “Don’t judge me,” I said.

  We had to stop twice for Jamie to get sick. Finally, we reached Belle Meade. Arch dropped off Melissa and Alice. Both seemed relieved that neither Jamie nor I was capable of walking them to the door.

  Back at the Haltoms’, Vanessa guided Jamie along the pathway toward the kitchen. Arch grasped my hand over his shoulder and led me into the carriage house. We found my mother in the middle of the floor, her eyes puffy and red, stuffing clothes into suitcases.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Get your things,” she said. “We’re leaving.”

  “What do you mean, we’re leaving?” I said.

  “Bonnie?” Mr. Haltom said. He was standing in the doorway behind us. He looked from my mother to Arch to me and back at my mother.

  “I’m not afraid of her,” my mother said. “Not anymore.”

  “I know you’re not,” he said.

  “Mom?” I said.

  “Archer, you and Charlie go back to the car,” Mr. Haltom said.

  “Mom?” I said again.

  Arch dragged me outside. He opened the car door and pushed me up onto the second seat. I had yet to gather the strength to sit up when I heard Mrs. Haltom shouting.

  “Where do you think you’re going, Archer?”

  “Hi, Aunt Cici,” Arch said.

  “Don’t you ‘Aunt Cici’ me,” she said, moving toward us fast enough that the tails of her robe and sash flared up on the air behind her. “Get that piece of shit off of my property.”

  “Calm down, Aunt Cici,” Arch said.

  “Shut your smug little mouth.”

  Arch held his hands up as if she were robbing him at gunpoint. Her eyes narrowed.

  “You knew, didn’t you?” she said.

  Arch looked at me.

  Mr. Haltom came out of the carriage house, his face a grimace of fury. “Nancy!”

  “Is your whore still in there?” Mrs. Haltom said.

  That was the last I heard. As we turned sharply onto the Boulevard, my head began to spin as if the Earth were tilting off its axis.

  “Pull over,” I said.

  I had just enough time to get the door open before I retched. When I caught my breath, I sat up, leaned back, and rolled my head toward Arch.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “No worries, bud,” he said. “I’ve got you.”

  Arch drove us out to the hunting camp. When we arrived, I went straight into one of the guest bedrooms and fell into a deep, troubled sleep. When I awoke, I had a terrible headache. My mouth tasted of bile. I walked to the kitchen and drank a glass of water in one long gulp. The water spread across my gut like ink on blotter paper.

  The sun was bright but on the wane. The clock on the stove read 2:06. I called through the house for Arch but heard no answer.

  I walked into the clearing and found him lying down, stretched out on top of his father’s grave. It was a soft spot, thick with pine needles. Arch’s hands were tucked into his armpits, his feet crossed at the ankles, his eyes closed. A shotgun leaned up against the tree behind the headstone. I sat down on the bench. His eyes opened slowly. He tilted his head toward me but did not lift it from the ground.

  “Hey, bud,” he said.

  “What’s the gun for?” I asked.

  “Snakes,” he said. “It’s that time of year. How long have you been up?”

  “Not long.”

  “You were pretty hammered,” he said.

  Arch lifted himself onto his elbow and rolled into a sitting position, wrapping his arms around his knees.

  “Did you know?” I asked.

  “You didn’t?”

  “No.”

  Arch looked up as the wind rushed through the high branches of the poplars, scattering the rays of light through the canopy.

  “I talked to Uncle Jim while you were sleeping,” he said. “He and your mom are going to live at the farm in Leiper’s Fork for now. Maybe for good.”

  He stood up and brushed the pine needles off the back of his T-shirt and the seat of his pants, and sat down beside me on the bench. The breeze picked up. A shiver passed over me. I rubbed my arms. Arch walked around the edge of the circle and then sat down again, casting a furtive glance toward the woods behind us, as if he thought someone might be eavesdropping.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I don’t know. I should have. Every time I thought about it, I told myself you probably already knew.”

  “I didn’t,” I said. “I should have, though. I saw things.”

  “Most of the time, we see what we want to see,” he said. “I’m really sorry. I just didn’t know how you’d take it, that’s all.”

  “I feel like an idiot.”

  “I do too.”

  “What about Vanessa?” I asked. “Does she know?”

  “She knew a long time ago,” Arch said.

  “Did you tell her?”

  “She figured it out on her own.”

  “So you talked about it?” I asked. “That’s just great. I mean, terrific. Really.”

  “She said she thought you knew. And if you didn’t, it wouldn’t be right for us to tell you,” he said.

  “Bullshit.”

  “It’s not bullshit. I mean, yeah, we were scared of what might happen. Uncle Jim was going to run for governor, for fuck’s sake. You think I wanted to be the one to blow that up?”

  “You think I would have told?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It was just easier not to say anything.”

  “And what about Jamie?”

  “He would have told you.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Jamie couldn’t keep a secret like that to save his own life.”

  “Fucking A,” Arch said.

  I shook my head.

  “All that crap Mr. Haltom’s always preaching to us about,” I said. “Honor, loyalty, integrity. It’s just a bunch of bullshit to him, isn’t it? He’s just another creep.”

  “That’s not fair,” Arch said. “Uncle Jim loves your mom—can’t you see that? And from what I can see, she loves him too. I think it just happened. Things like this happen, you know.”

  “Like your dad and Mrs. Potter?”

  “That was different.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  I stood and turned my back to Arch so he wouldn’t see the tears forming in my eyes.

  “Shit,” he said. “I thought Aunt Cici knew anyway. I love her, but you know Aunt Cici. She’s nuts. I mean, hiring your mom as her assistant, moving y’all into the house—I figured it was one of those ‘keep your enemies closer’ things. Or maybe she was okay with it so long as no one else knew, and havin
g your mom around all the time would make it easier to hide. Or maybe it was an arranged thing. I don’t know. I didn’t want to know. You know?”

  All at once, the last four years came flooding back to me, cast in a different tone and hue. I saw my mother in her former life at Café Cabernet, leaning over a bar table to serve drinks to Mr. Haltom and a couple of business associates. I saw him come back alone, again and again. I saw her slide into the booth next to him when the floor was slow, heard him ask her about herself. I imagined her describing her lonely, introverted son and his troubles at his rough public school in East Nashville, musing about moving to the west side when she could save the money. I saw his eyes brighten, saw the wheels spinning in his head, heard him say, “I’ve got just the solution for your problem.” Then I pictured Mr. Haltom calling Arch into his study, sitting him down, confiding in him, man-to-man. “I’m going to need a favor from you,” he would’ve said.

  I looked over at Arch.

  “Is this why we’re friends?” I said. “Why I’m at Yeatman?”

  “Uncle Jim has helped a lot of guys over the years,” Arch said.

  “Was he poking their moms too?”

  “Come on, Charlie.”

  Would I have turned down everything I’d been given by the Creighs and the Haltoms if I’d known it was all because of my mother? Of course not. Still, it felt cheapened and tainted. For so long, I’d believed that Mr. Haltom had seen something in me—that Arch had too. What a fool I’d been.

  “When I first met you, I was doing a favor for Uncle Jim,” he said. “But once I got to know you, you were my bud, for real. My brother. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything before. I didn’t really know how to bring it up. But here we are.”

  Arch looked down at his father’s headstone.

  “My father was weak,” he said. “Truth be told, he was a fucking joke. I can work for the rest of my life to live down his mistakes, and it won’t be enough. He had everything handed to him, and he couldn’t do shit with it. About the only thing he had going for him was Uncle Jim. And if he hadn’t died, he would have stayed a joke for life, and I’d be a joke too.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “You’re missing the point,” he said. “Uncle Jim is a self-made man. He’s a winner. You could do a hell of a lot worse for a stepdad.”

  Arch’s words rang hollow. I didn’t want a stepdad. I wanted to remain in teenage oblivion, where none of us had to know or care what the adults in our lives were doing when we weren’t watching. I wanted to keep pretending I was special, that I belonged at Yeatman—and with the Haltoms. Above all, I wanted to feel again as I had felt ever since that first day, when Arch appeared before me and extended his hand and lifted me up, out of a drab, colorless, meaningless life and into the bright and beautiful world over which he seemed destined to preside.

  eleven

  A little after five, Arch delivered me to the Haltoms’ farmhouse in Leiper’s Fork. I waited until his truck was gone before I knocked. Mr. Haltom met me at the door.

  “Come on in, son,” he said.

  He had been calling me “son” for as long as I could remember. The term had never seemed unwelcome before. I resisted the urge to say something childish and followed him into the living room. My mother didn’t get up when she saw me, nor did I go to her.

  “Sit down, Charlie,” he said.

  I sank into the couch across from my mother. Mr. Haltom stood in front of the fireplace.

  “Your mother and I have been discussing how to break this news to you and to the twins for quite a while,” he said. “We didn’t want you to find out the way that you did.”

  My mother snatched a tissue from a box on the coffee table and dabbed at her eyes.

  “I love your mother very much,” he said. “Neither of us wanted this to happen, but it did.”

  My mother cast a wistful glance over her shoulder at Mr. Haltom. Or perhaps that was a performance. How was I to know? She’d fooled me for months—perhaps years.

  “There’s no delicate way to tell you this,” he said. “You’re going to have a sister, Charlie.”

  My mother reddened. Mr. Haltom paced in front of the fireplace, hands in his pockets.

  I looked around the room. Boxes and suitcases were stacked in the corner. On the table in the adjoining dining room: stacks of books and papers and a rotary phone with a cord stretching out of the kitchen.

  “Do you have anything to say, Charlie?” my mother asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Congratulations?”

  My mother began to cry. I felt a twinge of shame. I had not meant to be kind, but neither did I intend for the remark to sound as ugly as it did. My stepfather-to-be took it in stride. He was not one to tolerate insolence, but he was coolheaded enough to know when venting his spleen wouldn’t serve his purpose.

  “So you’re going to live out here now?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ve already asked your mother to marry me, and she’s accepted. I mean to make the divorce happen as quickly as possible. I’d like to do it sooner, but the divorce will take some time—probably a year or more.”

  I understood. Mrs. Haltom would fight over every penny, every stock, every property, every stick of furniture—not out of need, but out of pure (and perhaps justified) spite.

  “What about Vanessa and Jamie?”

  “They’re legally adults now. I assume they’ll want to stay with their mother for the sake of convenience. I hope they’ll give me equal time.”

  I wondered what he meant by “equal time.” Even compared to other ultrarich Belle Meaders, who depended on a bevy of nannies and maids and golf and tennis pros to do most of the child-rearing for them, the Haltoms were pretty hands-off parents. What would equal time consist of in their minds—an hour a week between cocktail hour and dinner?

  I looked at my mother.

  “Why is he doing all the talking?” I said.

  “What do you want me to say?” she asked. “You’re so angry.”

  “How should I feel, Mom?” I asked. “Proud?”

  “Oh, Charlie,” she said.

  “It’s all right, Bonnie,” Mr. Haltom said. “He has a right to be upset.”

  I hated myself for agreeing with him.

  He sat down next to her and grasped her hand.

  “You need to know this doesn’t change anything,” he said. “I’ve come to love you like a son. And I’m going to continue to take care of you.”

  Like a son? I thought. He had a son. If the way he treated Jamie was what he called love, I wasn’t much interested. Did he love me as he loved Arch? I couldn’t imagine he ever would. But what did I know of love? I loved Arch in the needy way of a disciple following a guru, feasting on his attention. I loved and needed him in a way he could never requite, even if he tried. I loved Vanessa just as much, albeit in a more complicated manner. I felt loyal to Jamie, but I didn’t love him or even particularly like him. I loved Sunny, but not enough to visit her or even call her between Christmas and her birthday.

  And I loved my mother, though I can see now with the gift of hindsight that my love for her was very selfish and self-absorbed. This is true for most children, but I think it was worse with me. I had become so consumed by my own wishes and desires that I had never entertained the possibility that she might have wishes and desires too. The discovery that she’d had a life of her own, of which I had been ignorant, filled me with jealousy and resentment—of her, more even than of Mr. Haltom. For so long, I had taken her love for granted, and had even felt superior to her, as if all the good fortune that had befallen her was the result of her connection to me. I now knew the opposite was the case—that everything had come to us because she had finally found the perfect man to lift her out of the gutter into which my arrival had cast her.

  “Can I use your phone?” I asked.

  I called Arch first, but he didn’t answer. I dialed the number for the Haltoms and held my breath. To my great relief, the voice o
n the other end of the line was Shirley’s.

  “This is Charlie,” I said. “Is Vanessa around?”

  I heard Shirley call for her and hand her the receiver.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Do you hate me?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “God, no. Of course not.”

  “Then please,” I said, “please come.”

  “I’m on the way,” she said.

  We drove along the Natchez Trace Parkway in silence—the same road we’d traveled just a few weeks before, though it looked much different in daylight.

  “It’s very French, don’t you think?” she said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Men have mistresses in France all the time. Separate families. Their wives often know about the mistresses. They don’t care. It’s just an accepted part of the culture.”

  “This isn’t France,” I said. “And your mother cares.”

  She pulled the car into an overlook.

  “Do you hate me?” I said.

  “You already asked me that.”

  “But do you?”

  “You’re one of my dearest friends,” she said. “You know things about me that no one else knows. Nothing could ever make me hate you.”

  “What are we going to do?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Move on, I guess.”

  “You’re much better at moving on than I am, I think.”

  “Don’t be mean.”

  “I’m not,” I said. “I mean it. I’m not good at getting over things.”

  She pushed her sunglasses onto her forehead so I could see her eyes.

  “Who says I’ve gotten over anything?” she said.

  “You don’t show it.”

  “It isn’t easy.”

  “How do you do it?”

  “I just think of something to look forward to. I think to myself, ‘If I can just make it to that next thing, I’ll be all right.’” She reached for my hand and held it. “In two weeks, we’re graduating. Then there’s summer, and then we’ll be in college.”

  “I won’t be as far away as you are.”

  “You don’t ever have to come home if you don’t want to,” she said. “You won’t ever have to even see any of them.”