Getting the Important Things Right

by Padgett Gerler

  I did as I was told. I put on my goddamn clothes and got my ass out front. I did not wash my face, brush my teeth, or comb my hair. Those things were not on The Colonel’s to-do list. And for an hour and a half I rode back and forth in front of the house, wondering what The Colonel was getting out of watching a twelve-year-old girl ride a bike that she didn’t want as he sat on the cold brick porch steps in his shirt sleeves.

  When the caterer arrived to set up the Albemarle Christmas buffet, The Colonel yelled from the front porch, “Good show, Baby Girl.” And he disappeared into the house.

  I got off the bike and pushed it into the yard. As I passed the caterer’s truck, her two assistants—a pimply-faced boy with hunched shoulders and greasy hair and a girl in a short, tight uniform with heavy black eyeliner—said, “Hey.” I didn’t look their way, didn’t acknowledge their greeting. As I reached the porch steps, I released the bike and let it fall to the ground. When I went in the house, I found The Colonel already supervising the layout of the buffet.

  When he heard me come in, he said, “Oh, good, Baby Girl. We could use your assistance. Now, run on upstairs and spruce yourself up so you can help me coordinate this effort.”

  And he said it as if we had just spent a pleasant family Christmas morning together.

  As I turned to leave, he said one more thing: “and don’t you go near Percy’s room, if you know what’s good for you.”

  I trudged upstairs and paused in front of Percy’s bedroom door, knowing that The Colonel was still standing at the foot of the stairs, just daring me to go into my brother’s room. I remained there long enough to make my father curious but not long enough to make him charge up the stairs in a rage. When I felt I’d annoyed him sufficiently, I clomped down the hall, went into my bedroom, and slammed the door just hard enough to let Colonel Tom know I was pissed but not hard enough to elicit an outburst from him.

  Once in my bedroom, I found that Ma’am had laid my Christmas outfit neatly across my bed: a green plaid pleated Pendleton skirt and matching green cashmere sweater that she had bought for me on her last shopping trip to Richmond. With it she had paired green tights and black velvet ballet flats. I was old enough to protect myself from my raging father, but I wasn’t old enough to pick out my own clothes. I shook my head in confusion, something I’d become way too accustomed to doing. My family’s dysfunction left me in a constant state of bafflement.

  I pulled on my sweater and tights and stepped into my skirt. I slipped my feet into my shoes and crossed my room to my dresser, where I quickly ran a comb through my hair. I scraped my flip back from my face with a red hair band and headed for the bathroom to brush my teeth and wash my face. Then I walked slowly, reluctantly down the stairs to join the Albemarle Christmas festivities.

  All afternoon the neighbors and The Colonel’s colleagues wandered in and out of the house, inhaling platters of shrimp and beef tenderloin and ham and all the trimmings, as if they were packing it in before winter hibernation. The Colonel and Ma’am cuddled and cooed and presented the picture of a loving, cohesive family. They explained Percy’s absence as being caused by a bug that had sent him to bed, but, no, no, they were sure he’d be good as new by, say, tomorrow.

  I smiled sweetly around clenched teeth and passed trays and filled glasses while Oops marched and marched. The guests eyed her quizzically, but Ma’am and The Colonel were unable to explain her marching. They, too, were unfamiliar with Oops’s world.

  Several times I filled a plate with food and headed for the stairs. Each time The Colonel materialized at my elbow, took the plate from my hands, and leveled me with his gaze. He would have loved chastising me for defying his orders by trying to sneak food to Percy, but he would never have criticized me in front of our guests. Had he done so, his friends might have seen the not-so-perfect Albemarle family. And we certainly wouldn’t have wanted that.

  When the last guest trickled out the door, The Colonel was still clutching Ma’am—not because he wanted to but because he had to. Ma’am had been sipping all afternoon; her eyes were glazed, and her knees were wobbly. As Colonel Tom deposited her on the sofa and went to help the caterers clear away the leftovers, I excused myself and retreated to my bedroom.

  I kicked my shoes across the room in frustration, with little impact. Velvet ballet flats crashing against wall-to-wall carpet don’t make a very profound statement. I shed my clothes and left them lying in a puddle on the floor. I put on my warm, flannel pajamas, but before climbing into bed, I purposely planted my foot on the green pile of clothes and ground my heel a few times.

  I was hours away from my bedtime, but I pulled the covers up to my chin and stared into the darkness. My clothing abuse had done little to assuage my anger since Pendleton was not at the root of my rage. But I had become accustomed to accosting inanimate objects since my parents, the cause of my vitriol, were way out of reach.

  I was still staring into nothingness when my way-out-of-reach mother cracked the door, having slept off her afternoon of sipping, and stuck her head in.

  I feigned sleep when she whispered, “Merry Christmas, Dear.”

  When I didn’t respond, she tiptoed across the room and retrieved my pile of crushed clothes from the floor. She smoothed them gently and draped them across the back of my bedside chair. She collected my discarded shoes and tucked them side-by-side beneath the chair. Then she backed quietly from my room, eased the door shut, and tiptoed away.

  The following morning I got out of bed, put on my jeans and sweatshirt, washed my face, and combed my hair. I went downstairs and found Ma’am and The Colonel sitting at the kitchen table, drinking Bloody Marys and reading the paper. Neither acknowledged my presence, so I didn’t speak to either of them. I fixed myself a bowl of Lucky Charms, took it to the living room, and sank to the floor in front of the television. There was nothing on the TV that I wanted to watch, but I’d have preferred staring at a blank screen to looking at my parents.

  When I finished my cereal, I put the empty bowl in the sink, took my coat off the hook by the back door, and said, “I’m meeting Suzanne and Mary Sue at the skating rink.”

  Without looking up, Ma’am and Colonel Tom mumbled, “Um hum…,” and I headed for the front door.

  I found that someone—I’m guessing The Colonel—had up-righted the dead bicycle. I climbed on and pedaled in the opposite direction from the skating rink. I rode to the edge of town, got off the bike, and walked it deep into the woods where I let it fall. Then I walked back home—very slowly.

  I found The Colonel in the living room, nursing a beer and watching TV. I strode right in and said, “Someone stole my bike,” waiting for the fireworks, welcoming the fireworks.

  The Colonel looked up at me with so much pity in his eyes and said, “Oh, Baby Girl, I’m so sorry. I’d file a police report, but that thing is probably halfway to Mexico by now.”

  I had no idea why someone in Mexico would have wanted my blue bike with a wicker basket and silver streamers.

  Then The Colonel said, “Don’t cry, Baby Girl; I’ll get you another bike tomorrow.”

  I wasn’t crying, and I didn’t want another bicycle. But I knew that I had no choice. And I knew that no matter how many new bikes I threw away, another would miraculously materialize to take the last one’s place. This was a fight I just wasn’t going to win.

  I wasn’t going to win any of them.

  Nine

  Ma’am’s great-great-grandfather owned a cottage on Pawleys Island, a small beach community near the coastal town of Georgetown, South Carolina. The beach house had been passed down through the family till it had come to rest with my grandmother, Big Lydia. Since childhood Lydia had spent her summers on Pawleys, rocking on the porch, playing in the surf, crabbing in the creek, churning ice cream. When she married Jim Daddy and started a family, she took her babies to Pawleys. Each summer Jim Daddy would drive Big Lydia and their children from Wilson, North Carolina to Pawleys Island, set them up in their cottage, and head back home
to run the family business. He’d join his wife and their children for carefree weekends at the shore, while weekdays found him farming tobacco.

  Jim Daddy and Big Lydia’s children grew up and started families of their own, but summers still found my grandmother on Pawleys. Her island-home door was always open, and an endless parade of children and grandchildren trooped in and out. All five of Big Lydia’s children made arrangements to bring their families together at Big Lydia’s beach house one week each summer.

  Percy, Oops, and I loved our trips to Pawleys. We loved our lovable but domineering take-charge grandmother; we loved our nine cousins; we loved our aunts and uncles. But, mostly, we loved our mother during our week at Big Lydia’s beach house on Pawleys Island.

  Ma’am was transformed when she was with her mother and siblings. She laughed — a head-thrown-back-can’t-get-my-breath laugh. She danced. She acted silly. She gossiped with the other women. She was happy.

  And she didn’t drink one drop of alcohol during our week on Pawleys.

  The Colonel, however, hated Pawleys Island (and, I believe, Ma’am’s family) and didn’t go to Big Lydia’s beach house with us.

  Big Lydia’s house was wonderful: a huge two-story, white-washed building on stilts, nestled among the sand dunes, overlooking the ocean. The first floor had a large living-dining area and a kitchen, as well as five bedrooms for the adults. The upstairs was one huge room where all of the children slept. We shared just one bathroom. The place was perfect.

  Ma’am would say, “If this ain’t heaven, I don’t want to go to heaven!”

  Days at Pawleys were filled with wave jumping, crabbing, and digging in the sand. Nights were spent tending sunburns with Noxzema, playing games, and listening to the adults talk about the good times.

  Uncle Freeman was always first to arrive. By the time the rest of us pulled into the drive in front of Big Lydia’s cottage, he and Aunt Celia had thrown open the windows, swept the floors, dusted the furniture, stocked the refrigerator, dragged the wicker rockers out to the porch, and made all the beds. Their daughters, Celeste and Tatum, had done nothing but claim our bed. Celeste, hands-down the funniest person I have ever known, was my age; Tatum was two years older, Percy’s age. While Celeste was a scrappy, knobby-kneed tomboy, Tatum was a debutante in the making—and the spitting image of my mother. I adored them both, but I worshipped Tatum. She loved me, too, fawning over me and spoiling me for the entire week we spent together at Big Lydia’s house at the beach. She painted my nails, made up my face, curled my hair, and hugged me. That’s the part I loved the best—someone who looked just like my mother, hugging me. To this day I love being with Tatum. I take every opportunity to hug her. Tatum understands.

  The huge dormitory room where all the twelve cousins—boys and girls—slept housed four double beds and four single beds—just enough for twelve kids. But Celeste, Tatum, and I chose to share one double bed. And it was the same bed year after year.

  The bed Celeste and Tatum claimed every year for the three of us was the best in the room. Its head faced the large window that looked out onto the beach. The other cousins would complain that they never got to sleep in the beach bed, and Tatum would say, “You get here first, you get the beach bed,” knowing that she’d always be the first to arrive at Pawleys. And since Tatum was the oldest—by a month—and the prettiest—by a mile—no one argued with her.

  The adults took the five downstairs bedrooms. Uncles Rex, Freeman, and Parker and their wives each had a room; Ma’am and Big Lydia shared a room; Aunt Tots slept alone.

  Colonel Tom called our aunt queer. I thought The Colonel meant she was just strange. And she was, in a sense. What bright young woman would shun boarding school and college to stay home and work in a tobacco field? But Tots was funny and smart and the best aunt any kid could want. And she was so cool. When Percy and I confided to her that we had made up a game called Cuss Scrabble, she wanted to know all the rules. We explained that it was just like regular Scrabble but that we’d give ourselves double score for spelling a cuss word. When she’d come to Waynesville to visit, as soon as Ma’am and The Colonel went to bed, she’d raise her eyebrow suggestively, and say, “Get out the board, kiddos; it’s gonna be a hot night.” And even though Percy and I had invented the game of Cuss Scrabble, Aunt Tots would beat us every time we played. It was as if she had been using those words all her life.

  The summer I was fifteen, Aunt Tots arrived at Pawleys with a friend. Rachel Wurtheimer had moved to Wilson the previous fall to teach sociology at Atlantic Christian College. Aunt Tots sat on the Board of Directors at the College, occupying the seat vacated by Jim Daddy upon his death. Tots cast the deciding vote that brought Rachel to Wilson, North Carolina, and the two women had been fast friends ever since.

  All of us liked Rachel and were glad that she had come along to Pawleys with Aunt Tots. She had a wonderfully boisterous laugh and smoked skinny little brown cigarettes. She had come to the South from Long Island. We thought she was so sophisticated. But I was most fascinated with her Jewishness, not that her being Jewish made her behave any differently than the rest of us. But we had just never had a Jewish friend.

  Late one night after everyone was asleep, I awoke to voices. I was lying on my stomach on the beach bed, wedged between Celeste and Tatum. Each had a sunburned, humidity-sticky leg thrown across me, and I loved the intimacy of their familiarity. I didn’t want them to untangle themselves, so I inched quietly to the top of the bed, following the sound of the voices. I rested my chin on the window sill and peered out at the full moon making diamonds dance on the crashing waves. While I was mesmerized by the rumble of the surf, my eyes were drawn to the boardwalk leading from our house over the dunes to the beach.

  Aunt Tots and Rachel sat in the gazebo on the boardwalk, and Rachel released one of her infectious laughs at something my funny Aunt Tots said. It quickly drowned in the thundering surf. Then they both fell silent and gazed into each other’s eyes. Rachel took Aunt Tots’ chin in her hand, leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the lips. When they parted, my tomboy aunt smiled at Rachel like a sweet, shy teenage girl receiving her first kiss. Tots took Rachel’s hand in both of hers, and, closing her eyes, brought it to her lips. Tears caught in my throat as I watched them, still holding hands, turn and look out to sea.

  I have never told a soul what I saw that night. Not even Percy.

  The following morning Tots and Rachel appeared at the breakfast table, acting as if they were the good friends the family perceived them to be. It saddened me that they had to pretend, while our uncles nuzzled their wives, and our aunts giggled and kissed their husbands right in front of all of us. But this was the 60’s, and the world wasn’t ready for women loving each other—in that way.

  Tots and Rachel have been together since that week at Pawleys so long ago. I am proud to say that my family (all except Colonel Tom, of course) accepted their relationship long before society did, and Rachel is as much a Carlyle as any of the rest of us. Once Percy called her Uncle Rachel, and she laughed her wonderful laugh and grabbed him in a bear hug. The name stuck, and everyone, including the adults, calls her Uncle Rachel to this day.

  And that woman can play one wicked game of Cuss Scrabble!

  Each morning shortly after breakfast, we’d hear a knock on Big Lydia’s screen door and a voice bellowing, “Bawled pee-nuts!”

  Ma’am would grab her purse and race to the door to buy each of us a bag of boiled peanuts from the little black boy selling them door to door.

  The peanuts were packaged in small brown paper bags. Briney water seeped from peanut shells and soaked the brown paper, making the bags weak and soggy and ready to disintegrate.

  Big Lydia loved boiled peanuts but didn’t want salty peanut water dripping all over her house, so she’d say, “Get those messy things out of my house and onto the veranda.”

  Uncle Parker would spread newspaper the length of the old plank table on the screened porch—Big Lydia’s veranda—and Ma�
�am would pass a bag of peanuts to each of us. We’d gather around the table, ripping into our peanut bags, tilting our heads back, coaxing soft peanuts and briney water out of their shells with our tongues. When our bags were empty and the table was littered with shells, Uncle Parker would roll up the newspaper and toss it in the trash, leaving the veranda as sparkling as Big Lydia’s house.

  Then we’d all head for the beach. The cousins would run ahead, bearing instructions that we weren’t to put even a big toe in the surf until the adults arrived with quilts and towels and Coppertone and paperback books and the transistor radio and eyes to watch the children’s every move. While we waited impatiently, we’d race up and down the beach, playing tag, turning cartwheels, stomping through ankle-deep tidal pools already warmed by the morning sun, and digging fiddler crabs from the sand with our toes.

  Once our parents arrived, we’d help them spread the quilts and then stand in line for a slathering of Coppertone, our only application of the day. We might as well have skipped the suntan lotion, since we ran right into the surf, washing it off our bodies and out to sea. All of us kids loved frolicking in the waves, but none loved it as much as Percy and I. We’d stand nose-to-nose, holding hands and giggling maniacally, as we jumped wave after wave after wave. From time to time we’d encounter one we just couldn’t conquer, and we’d be sent tumbling end over end to shore. Once we surfaced, we’d gasp for air, blow saltwater out of our noses, tug at our sand-laden swimsuits, and rush back out to tackle more swells. We out jumped and out stayed all of the others, and by lunch time we were exhausted and ravenous.

  At noon Big Lydia would bring us trays of ham sandwiches made with white bread and Duke’s mayonnaise, bags of Wise potato chips, jars of chilled, crunchy Mt. Olive dill pickles, and Coca-Colas. We would eat as if we hadn’t had a bite in years. After we finished our lunch, Big Lydia would return with popsicles. She’d always save the banana for me.