The Fortunate Ones

by Ed Tarkington

  “She comes around every now and then.”

  “When can I see her?”

  “Whenever you like.”

  “Maybe I’ll wait,” I said. “Until I get the lay of the land.”

  “Understood,” Arch said.

  “The developers have descended like vultures to snap up all those federally funded building projects,” Scott said. “You haven’t seen so many carpetbaggers on the streets of Nashville since Reconstruction. But Arch here will save us from the Yankee invaders.”

  I looked over at Arch.

  “How’re you going to do that, exactly?” I asked.

  “Later,” he said as we turned into the long driveway out to the farm.

  The car came to a stop in front of the house, and the front door opened, and a little girl—My sister, I thought, as if such a thing were as rare as a white elephant—came bounding out, the dark ringlets of her hair bouncing as she descended the porch steps and stopped to stare at me. Behind her was Vanessa, her hair a whiter blond than it used to be, her body longer, perhaps a bit heavier, but only in the way girls become women. Her eyes were as they had always been, and so my own were drawn to them, and to her serene expression, which moored me, for a moment at least.

  I looked down at little Dolly.

  “Hello,” I said. “I’m Charlie.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “You do, do you?”

  “Yep,” she said. “Who’s that for?”

  She pointed at the Tiffany bag dangling from my fingers.

  “I think you know,” I said.

  A gap-toothed grin spread out across her face.

  “Can I open it?”

  I handed the bag to my half sister. Vanessa descended the stairs and embraced me. I held her—not too tightly, I hoped. The moment I touched her, to my great shame, but not my surprise, all the feelings I’d thought I’d outgrown came flooding back. The passage of time, her remoteness from me, her marriage, my life in San Miguel—none of these had dimmed my infatuation in the least; it had lain dormant in me like a seed stirred to life by the coming of spring.

  As I let her go, she let her arms slide down mine and grasped my hands. On her left ring finger she wore a platinum band and a large diamond engagement ring.

  “Congratulations,” I said.

  “You don’t say ‘Congratulations’ to the bride, Charlie,” Vanessa said. “You say ‘Best wishes.’”

  “I missed that day in cotillion class,” I said.

  “I’m just teasing,” she said. “I don’t think very many people remember those little rules. Only people like my mother care about that stuff. Isn’t it funny how someone so rude could make such a fuss about manners?”

  Dolly tugged on Vanessa’s elbow.

  “Look,” she said.

  She held up her hand, dangling the little heart necklace from the ends of her fingers.

  “Would you like me to put it on for you?” I asked.

  Dolly nodded. I knelt and unfastened the clasp and lifted the silver chain over her head. She turned around, beaming.

  “Do you like it?”

  She nodded.

  “What do you say, Dolly?” Arch asked.

  “Thank you.”

  Dolly broke away and ran to Arch. He scooped her up into his arms and held her, kissing her on the cheek.

  Envy: it seems sometimes to be the greatest and deadliest of my sins.

  Arch set Dolly back on the ground. She grasped his hand and looked at me.

  “Want to see the ponies?” she said.

  I caught Vanessa’s eye.

  “Charlie needs to see Mommy first,” Vanessa said.

  “Will you come with me?” I asked Dolly.

  “Are you afraid?” she asked.

  “A little,” I said. “But I won’t be if you’re there.”

  I glanced at Vanessa. Her eyes were wet.

  “Is it okay if Dolly comes in with me?” I said.

  Vanessa wiped her eyes and nodded.

  “I’ll show you the way,” Dolly said.

  She took my hand and led me into the house, past the Audubon bird prints in the hallway and through the warm den with its great stone hearth, up the two flights of stairs and past my old bedroom. The door was shut; I imagined its walls painted a pale pink. The door at the end of the hall stood open. My sister pulled me along, straight into the room, so that it came to me all at once: my mother, curled up in the bed, and Jim, seated in a straight back chair pulled close to her so that he could hold her hand.

  The lids of my mother’s eyes lifted. Her lips formed a weak smile.

  “Hey, baby,” she murmured.

  Jim did not stand to greet me; instead, he began to sob.

  “Daddy’s crying again,” Dolly said. “It’s all he ever does anymore.”

  My mother stayed conscious for only a few moments and then closed her eyes, drifting off to the sound of her husband’s whimpering.

  I thought of all of the things I had wanted to tell her over the years, and the things I wanted to say now. That I had missed her. That I was sorry. That I had wanted her to be sorry, but I had also wanted her to be happy. That I loved her.

  But I couldn’t say any of that in front of these people.

  four

  Dolly was waiting for me when I came down the stairs, Vanessa beside her. I offered one hand to my sister, and Vanessa took the other, and together the three of us walked down the porch steps and off toward the pasture.

  On the other side of a white rail fence, the horses were grazing in the center of the field. Dolly explained to me which one was which and what they were like.

  “So you like to ride?” I said.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “My father was good with horses.”

  “Daddy?” Dolly said.

  “No. We don’t have the same daddy, remember?”

  “But we have the same mommy.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Dolly,” Vanessa said. “Would you like to go down to the barn and feed the chickens?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  “Charlie and I will catch up.”

  Dolly broke away from us and ran down to the barn.

  “Arch says you’re trying for children,” I said.

  The color rose in her cheeks.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I just thought—I was just going to say, I can tell that you’re going to be a wonderful mother.”

  “I’m getting a lot of practice these days.”

  “Along with the lawyering.”

  “Actually, I’m leaving the firm. Daddy can’t seem to manage at the moment, so I’ve started to take over his responsibilities. But I can do most of that from home.”

  “Arch told me you were thinking about taking a break,” I said. “Mind if I smoke?”

  “Go right ahead,” she said. Then as I lit up, she said, “Can I have a drag?”

  I handed her my cigarette. She took a long pull and exhaled a luxurious plume of smoke.

  “Have your own,” I said, offering her the pack.

  “Arch would kill me,” she said. She winked.

  “I hear your mother has a new companion,” I said.

  “Not new to us. But yes. She’s better with him than without.”

  “I’m glad she has someone to keep her company.”

  “We don’t see her much.”

  “That must be a relief.”

  “She’s still my mother, Charlie,” Vanessa said.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything.”

  I flicked the ash off the end of my cigarette, pinched the butt, and tucked it into the front pocket of my jeans.

  “So you like the new man?” I said.

  “He’s a bit of a sponge, but he keeps her occupied. I do worry that she might be fool enough to marry him, but I doubt her accountant would let her do it without a prenup,” she said. “And what about you?”

  “I’m between things right now.”

 
“Arch says you’re living with your old art teacher,” she said. “I remember thinking you had such a crush on her.”

  “If I had, I’m not her type, so nothing would have come of it,” I said. “I expect Arch told you that too.”

  “He did,” she said. “I never would have guessed. We were so sheltered, weren’t we?”

  “I guess we were.”

  “We’ll have to come down to see you in San Miguel,” she said. “A friend of Daddy’s owns a hotel there.”

  “Which one?”

  “Where Arch stayed, I assume.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  Dolly emerged from the barn, waving her hands over her head. A scattering of clouds moved across the sky, sending swift-moving shadows across the meadow.

  “Why did it take this to bring you back to us?” Vanessa asked.

  “I don’t know. Pride, I guess. Habit. You get used to living a certain way in a certain place, and you just keep doing it.”

  “What about your family? Your home?”

  “This was never home to me. I was always living in someone else’s house.”

  “We missed you,” she said. “Very much.”

  My throat ached. Why did it matter to me that she had said “We” and not “I”?

  Dolly waved at us.

  “Come on,” she said.

  We walked down the hill toward where my sister stood waiting for us.

  five

  The roads leading into Nashville, pure farmland and hill country the last time I’d seen them, were now lined with strip malls and apartment complexes, and residential developments full of starter homes and condominiums with identical facades and floor plans.

  “You told me I wouldn’t recognize it,” I said.

  “You’re either growing or you’re dying,” Arch replied.

  On Belle Meade Boulevard, however, things were as they had always been. When I saw those houses for the first time as a boy from the wrong side of the river, they had dazzled me. Now, they filled me with a sense of the familiar, albeit tinged with melancholy.

  They put me in the carriage house, in my mother’s old bedroom. Mine had been turned into an office, which I found filled with a dozen blank canvases, along with an additional rolled canvas, an easel erected in the corner, and another portable one on a desk next to a few hundred dollars’ worth of new acrylic and oil paints.

  “I called the art department over at Vanderbilt and asked them what a painter like you would need,” Vanessa said. “I had Scott pick everything up. I hope he got the right things.”

  “This is about a year’s worth of stuff,” I said.

  “We didn’t know how much to get,” Arch said. “Better too much than not enough.”

  “Will you teach me how to paint?” Dolly asked.

  “I would love to,” I said.

  After dinner, I took Dolly back out to the carriage house. I set up three small canvases on the floor over butcher paper. With a piece of charcoal, I drew the head of a bull on one panel, a can of tomato soup on the next, and a bouquet of flowers on the third. Dolly filled the lines with random colors.

  When we were finished, I took her back over to the house to be bathed and put to bed.

  “Are you tired?” Arch asked.

  “Not really,” I said.

  “Then what do you say we go to Jamie’s place? He’s dying to see you. Might be good to get that out of the way so he doesn’t show up at the farm half-drunk or hungover.”

  The sign that once read CAFÉ CABERNET had been replaced by another, which read harpeth junction. The old white plaster exterior had been replaced by reclaimed wood, no doubt from one of those collapsing barns I’d seen along the road out to Leiper’s Fork. A pair of wrought iron gaslights framed the door beneath an antique-looking neon sign. Steely Dan and Supertramp had been usurped by Kenny Chesney and the Dave Matthews Band. The restaurant floor was mostly empty—it was nearly ten on a Tuesday—but the bar was full, with the same sort of people I remembered from when my mother worked there, different only in the change of hairstyles and clothing. Cigar smoking seemed to be experiencing a renaissance of popularity. The whole place reeked like a riverboat casino.

  I spotted Jamie behind the bar, dressed in a garish plaid blazer and a white shirt that stretched at the collar despite being open to the third button. His hair was thinning on top but boyishly long on the sides.

  “Charlie Boykin!” he bellowed. “I’ll be goddamned!”

  He barreled around past the cocktail waitresses’ pickup station, knocking over an empty wineglass with his elbow. The glass fell to the floor and shattered. Jamie didn’t break stride. Before I could speak, he’d embraced me, pulling me tight against his girth.

  “I know,” he said. “I’m a big lard-ass now.”

  “No,” I said. “You look good.”

  “You were always a shitty liar. Want a drink?”

  “Scotch,” I said.

  “Excellent, excellent. I’ve got a fleet of single malts. You ever tried Oban? I love Oban.”

  “Johnnie Red is fine,” I said.

  “Oh, don’t be such a cheapskate. I’m putting it all on Arch’s tab.”

  Arch was already on the other side of the bar, at a table with a group of two men who looked to be about Jim’s age and a guy about our age, a louche preppy with a deep tan that brought the sun out in the shock of blond hair that fell across his forehead. I looked back at Jamie. A flash of disappointment flickered across his face, and he was again familiar to me.

  It was an expression I recognized from the very first day I had known him, drinking beer after beer by his pool. Now, Arch was the master of Jamie’s old house, and Jamie was still the same boy—only nursing his loneliness with top-shelf scotches instead of beer and a host of “friends” with tabs that most likely went forever unpaid.

  “I love what you’ve done to the place,” I said.

  “It’s great, isn’t it? I brought the chef in from Charleston. He’s an award winner. Write-ups in Gourmet and Southern Living. We’ve been open for almost two years now. Packed every night. You wouldn’t believe how much has changed around here. We’re bringing Midtown back.”

  “That’s great,” I said. “I’m proud of you.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “I hear you’ve had some other changes in your life.”

  Jamie rolled his eyes. “Let me put it to you this way: Marriage and kids are the best things that will ever happen to you. Put them off for as long as possible.”

  He pulled out his wallet to show me pictures of his son.

  “He’s beautiful,” I said.

  “It changes you, you know,” he said.

  “Absolutely,” I said, though I had yet to see evidence of much change beyond his having lost hair and gained weight.

  He slipped his wallet back into his pocket and wrapped his arm around my neck.

  “Man,” he said. “I didn’t realize how much I missed you ’til I saw that sweet face of yours walking through the door.”

  “I missed you too,” I said.

  “How long are you home? For good, I hope.”

  The sweetness in my face must have gone sour; Jamie went a bit pale.

  “Oh shit,” he said. “I mean, I know you’re not home just for a visit, but I was just hoping maybe you’d be around for a while. I always loved your mom, you know. She’s been so good to the old man, whether he deserves it or not.”

  “It seems that way.”

  “So you’ve been out to the farm?”

  “This afternoon.”

  Jamie shook his head. “Goddamn,” he said. “Ten years. Has it really been that long?”

  “It seems strange, doesn’t it?”

  “It sure does,” he said. “Look at old Archer over there. How long has it been since he was sitting in the back of a pickup truck in some field, drinking beer and dipping snuff on a school night? Now he’s about to run for fucking mayor.”

  “You’re joking,” I said.r />
  “Shit,” Jamie said. “He didn’t tell you? I don’t think it’s a big secret. He hasn’t made his official announcement, but everyone knows. This is sort of his campaign headquarters, if you know what I mean. See those guys over there? The bald one is Randy McArthur. He runs the Metro Tourism and Convention Commission. The one with the glasses is Buck Mangold. He’s head of the transit authority. Arch has had all kinds of guys like that in here. Marshaling his columns to charge the foe.”

  “Who’s the foe?”

  “Well, there will be at least three to start with, but the only serious contender is Clem Cardwell.”

  “I feel like I know that name. Is he a Yeatman guy?”

  “No, those guys are all lining up behind Arch. Cardwell’s boys went to Montgomery Bell, but he grew up in Donelson himself. Self-made man. Put himself through UT and made his millions in real estate. Big-money guy for the Democrats. More of a backroom wheeler-dealer than a politician. But he’s got a lot of people around the city in his pocket, and the hicks love him, ’cause he’s one of theirs. Plus he’s built about three-fourths of their houses and just about every apartment from Nashville to Lebanon and Murfreesboro. He’s also built a lot of the new public housing, and the apartment complexes in North Nashville, and he’s held the rent down, so he’s got most of the black preachers too. Arch has his work cut out for him.”

  “He’s a little young to be running for mayor, don’t you think?”

  “Kennedy was twenty-nine when he ran for Congress.”

  “Yeah, but his dad pretty much bought his seat for him, didn’t he?”

  “Exactly.”

  That familiar sadness flared up again in Jamie’s eyes. I remembered how Jim had been grooming Arch almost since birth, how Jim himself had intended to run for governor before my mother and Dolly sidetracked him. Arch had plenty of advantages—the largest of which was Jim Haltom, the fortune and influence he brought to bear—and no liabilities. At least none anyone knew about.

  “Who’s the guy next to Arch?” I asked.

  Jamie sighed.

  “That’s Nick Averett. He’s a consultant Arch brought in from Texas. Some Ivy League hotshot who made his bones working for the Bushes. He’s all right, I guess, but he’s got his nose so far up Arch’s ass you can see the tip of it every time Arch opens his mouth.”