By the time I met Trip, many of those misfit boys dropped out of college to wait tables, play in a band, or disappear altogether behind the heady gray fog of a bong hit. I stayed at UNC–Chapel Hill; I never thought not to. I loved studying journalism, but my friend crowd was thinning. It was time to look elsewhere, so I started hanging out with the Betas.
Trip’s real name is William Simons Buchanan III. One of his fraternity brothers introduced us, warning that we might be cousins because we’re both from the South and share the name Simons. In Charleston, it’s a big deal, at least with Laudie’s generation, to be a “one m” Simons. It’s pronounced with a short “i,” (like “shrimp”), not like Simon (as in “Simon Says”). The “y” in Smythe, however, is said with a long “i.” When spammers call, they often ask for Simon Smith; I appreciate the heads-up.
While Laudie taught me about plants, it was my mother who gave the history lessons. She said the original Simons to come here was Benjamin Simons, a seventeenth-century Huguenot immigrant from La Rochelle, France. She also told me not to talk too much about our genealogy, because it’s not polite to speak about our pedigree to people from “Off,” the place people are from if they’re not from Charleston.
Trip and I quickly determined that we were not related. In fact, I was surprised to learn that he had never heard of the Huguenots. Mom always talked about our ancestors as though they were celebrities.
After a few games of beer pong, he walked me out to an old green couch that had been dumped on the Betas’ front lawn. We kissed. We have been together ever since.
I didn’t feel excited when I first met Trip—a feeling I now realize I should have explored more—but I did feel comforted. He was so familiar. He was a gentleman, like Dad. He called to ask me out to dinner. When he arrived to pick me up, instead of sending a text (“here”), he turned off the engine, got out of his truck, and knocked on my door. When the server delivered the check, he reached for the bill. No equivocation. No hesitation. The roles were established.
During our early years, we went for long walks through Raven Rock State Park and around Jordan Lake. When I picked up a stray Snickers wrapper, he opened the pocket of his Barbour jacket so I didn’t have to carry litter back to the truck. In a deep voice, thickened by his southern drawl, he identified different types of hardwood by studying the shapes of fallen leaves. I rarely spoke during those hikes; I liked just hearing him talk. “Did you know you have red in your hair?” he asked once. “I can see it when you’re in the sun. It’s not red, red. But a little bit. Like a cinnamon stick.” The name stuck. After that he called me Cinnamon.
The night we discovered we both knew the Lindy Hop, we danced in his apartment while the pasta boiled. Like many pampered southern children, we had been sent to cotillion during our elementary and middle school years. Trip had suited up in loafers, coat, and tie for weekly dance lessons in North Carolina; I wore short white gloves and a dress with crinoline and a sash.
It seemed that each Wednesday during my cotillion years, I spent the afternoon frantically searching for those gloves. I pulled them on as I raced up Meeting Street to South Carolina Society Hall, a stately building with towering columns stacked high. I would hurry with the other tardy children, taking two steps at a time up the bifurcated staircase. Panting from the mad dash, I said hello and gave one compliment each, as required, to the ladies running the show.
Then I scanned the room for an open seat. Fifty girls lined up on the right of the ballroom; fifty boys lined up on the left. For many of us, our very first dance partners were picked in utero (sign-ups had to be with a girl-boy pair). Mom still plans her Wednesday walks around when cotillion ends so she can see the boys in blazers climbing on the wrought iron railings, girls hopping down the stairs. “It makes me happy,” she said. Passersby who happen upon cotillion letting out—mostly strolling tourists—often pause to photograph this anachronistic scene.
The Lindy Hop was drilled into us over those years. Step, ball, step. Step, ball, step. Shift weight. Step, two, three. Arch, two, three. Shift weight. We found the steps worked for just about any band: Creedence, Widespread Panic, the Allman Brothers . . . We danced for hours that winter night, polishing off two bottles of André champagne. We forgot about the pasta until the smoke alarm sounded. We laughed as Trip chucked our burned dinner into the snow.
He took me for long drives out in the country, taking me to a river or a one-stoplight town. Hand in hand, we’d poke around, skipping rocks along the water or peeking into an antiques store. On the way home, in the dark, I’d stare at his dashboard, the orange lights calculating our movement through space and time. His truck sailed smoothly over highways—no jostling, no bumps. Perhaps in the safety of that big leather seat I fell under the spell that many women find so intoxicating. He was the driver. I was the passenger. It was a relief to surrender.
I lost my virginity to Trip. More overwhelming than having sex for the first time was the intimacy of feeling his heartbeat. My ear became almost suctioned against his warm, damp skin. His heart thudded powerfully. We were young and so alive, which somehow left me feeling vulnerable. I ached, knowing that one day, like all things, his heart would stop. It was impossible to be together forever. Impossible for anyone.
“Are you crying?” he had asked.
That was when I told him I loved him. And I meant it. Then.
Around his second year of law school, my love for him began to fade. Instead of taking day-trips, he watched football on the weekends. I ran errands: Target, Costco, the farmers’ market. Most Saturday mornings I went to a yoga class, leaving the afternoon free for a house cleaning project, like wiping the dirt from windowsills and baseboards. We haven’t burned a meal since that first year. At some point, we stopped dancing in the kitchen. We cooked, and monitored, and tasted, but did not dance. He took up golf around that time, too. “Deals are made on the green, Cinnamon. I’m doing this for us.”
When did we get so grown-up?
When he picked me up for a dinner party at the home of one of his law school friends, he asked me to change out of my black corduroys and into a floral-print dress. He said he’d like to run for public office one day, that his friend’s family was very influential. On our drive over, the illuminated face of a new watch flashed inside the car’s darkness. He always had his phone on him. Why would he need a fancy watch? Did it matter what I was wearing? And I never even thought about windowsills or baseboards before. Why was I cleaning them? It was on that ride that I first considered our end might come before our hearts stopped.
It was a toxic idea. That night at the dinner party, under the low light of a dimmed chandelier, I sank back in my seat. From behind Trip’s shoulder, I peered at the other couples in the room. Who was all in? Which ones secretly plotted their next life?
When I reached for a second helping of potatoes au gratin, Trip pressed his hand against my thigh. His signal, invisible beneath the table, told me not to stuff myself in polite company. So there I sat, in my demure floral dress, feeling small and hungry and trapped. I thought of Laudie.
That was when I decided to lock eyes with the host. He was married; his wife was attractive. But ever since I had met him, I always got the sense that he was undressing me. He gave me an extra-tight hug when we arrived, and his hand lingered against my waist a bit longer than propriety would allow. Men can be dogs.
Why do they get to be dogs? I tilted my head and smiled slyly, taking a baby step toward infidelity. He stiffened, his eyes widening. That stolen glance, that what-if, sent a surge through my body, making me feel ten feet tall.
The following Monday, tromping up the echoing stairwell to my desk at the News & Observer, where I landed my first job after college, I ran into Barnes Cather. I had frequently passed this spritely thirtysomething for three years, thinking nothing more than He’s cute, but short. The end. But that Monday was the first time I thought about shoving him against the wall, thrusting my hand down his pants, and squeezing his balls.<
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Like most toxins, the idea was insidious. Not only did other men begin to appear more attractive, Trip became less attractive. I found my gaze settling on the parts of him I didn’t like. Instead of wanting to run my arms over his bulky shoulders, I caught myself staring at his lips, noticing for the first time that they were thin. I saw that his stomach had started to hang over his belt, his shirt tugging at the buttons from both sides. Or was it always like that? Maybe, I thought spitefully, he should lay off those second helpings, too.
I used to crave his touch. When we passed each other in his tiny apartment kitchen during college, I happily anticipated a hearty butt pat. By the time he moved into a better apartment with a bigger kitchen with his solid clerkship salary, I winced when our bodies brushed. I spun away from him when he came near. It was a new kitchen dance.
In January, I moved from North Carolina back to Charleston when I got a producing job at News 14. Trip still had another five months to finish his clerkship in Raleigh, so my move meant we’d be long-distance for a while. I said that I wanted to move from print journalism into broadcast news. A braver woman would have said that she didn’t want to get married.
Only once did I wonder whether he might feel the same way. He shocked me by picking a firm in Columbia, that scorching-hot concrete city in the middle of the state. This choice would extend our long-distance engagement, which privately thrilled me. He told me he needed to be with the lawmakers. He said when he moved down to Charleston, a city saturated with lawyers, his experience in the legislature would make him a top candidate at any firm in the Holy City, as well as for any elective office he might want to run for.
I didn’t tell Trip marrying me would bring his career aspirations within reach much more quickly. I’m a Smythe, a member of Old Charleston—that hidden enclave within the city that the tourists don’t see. Our society operates along its own distinct bloodlines, traditions, and rules. Old Charleston does a remarkable job of making sure that it’s difficult to infiltrate. Membership at Battery Hall—a good-ol’-boy’s club—provides a formalized tally of who is who, with new members voted on biannually.
Trip, with his law degree and southern pedigree, fits the mold. But even he—as someone from slightly Off—wouldn’t have access to this private club without me, whose father is a Smythe and whose grandmother is a Middleton. Names matter. Lineage matters. I’m Trip’s ticket inside.
Since we’re now engaged, all Trip has to do is have lunch with Dad and some of his buddies at Battery Hall, and bam, he’ll have a job downtown, probably at a prestigious Broad Street firm. With a few more handshakes and bourbons at the club, Trip could start his campaign for office. The circle is really that tight.
Charleston mothers have their own ways of securing their children’s futures within the local aristocracy. The entry starts with cotillion, where Charleston’s daughters and sons learn the rituals and dance steps of our culture and practice the art of giving compliments. Later, these same mothers will host parties for their friends’ daughters who are first debutantes, then brides, and later expectant mothers in a series of teas, luncheons, and showers.
They throw other parties, too: holiday parties, cocktail parties, supper club dinners. “Why do Charleston men live so long?” the joke goes. “They pickle themselves!” At these parties, the guest lists look similar from year to year—heavy on names like Smythe, Middleton, and Rutledge—varying only as the generations evolve; it’s not uncommon for a boy to be the fifth, sixth, or seventh person to bear a particular name.
Charlestonians rarely relocate. Our town is a bastion of homeostasis. So, when we go to a party, we see a friend we’ve known since we were babies. We know that person’s parents and grandparents. It’s tribal; our roots go back for years, decades, centuries. We are entwined.
Our wedding date won’t be for at least another year—and maybe longer, if I don’t get my act together and book a venue, a band, and a photographer. Plenty of time to fall back in love. But today I’m saved from the downward spiral of examining my love life; work starts in thirty minutes. I give my temples a few good rubs, whip myself off the couch, and head to the office.
3.
Control Room
I’m a news producer at WCCC News 14. On normal days, the job is a never-ending bug-eyed stress-fest of research, writing, and hard deadlines. Office chitchat in the break room? An occasional leisurely lunch? Ha! Never. Then there are the berserk days—the ones when our satellite truck has mechanical issues or a major story breaks. Sometimes I don’t leave my desk for hours. I once got a UTI because I didn’t have time to pee for six hours.
Inside the sprawling one-story building, it’s frigid as usual. Rows of messy desks flank the dusky-violet walls. A bank of boxy TVs runs the broadcasts of our local competitors. The clickety-clack of fingers on keyboards is muffled by the never-ending buzz of police and fire scanners. Over the airwaves, operators speak to each other in staccato shorthand. I’ve learned quite a few codes over the years: 10–56 is “intoxicated pedestrian,” 10–45 means “dead animal.”
In the time it takes my computer to boot up, my left pinkie toe has gone numb in the newsroom’s polar air. I swap my flip-flops for the wool socks I keep on top of a wool blanket in my drawer.
My phone buzzes. A new text. “Hey there. It’s Paul.”
Paul, from last night. Paul had a testosterone-saturated confidence, a sexual bullishness that scared and excited me. He’s not my type, but the thrill of his attention deepened that growing chasm between me and my impending marriage. I let him buy me that second glass after I gave him my phone number. As a friend, I told myself. That’s all I can remember.
I put my phone into my drawer, push it shut. It’s about time for the morning meeting. Every workday at 9:28 a.m., I leave my computer to join the news team in a circle of chairs at the base of the Desk. Our lead reporter, Justin, looks up from his iPhone and flashes me a TV-ready smile. He wears a silver ring on his right thumb; his fingers are slender and tanned.
At 9:32, Angela lumbers toward us. She wrestles with a couple of empty wheeled chairs to make room in our circle. Her medium-length brown hair is always clean but never styled; she wears it loose around her shoulders. A pronounced wrinkle rises from the space between her eyebrows. She’s middle-aged, average height. She wears baggy clothes and constantly dusts pale strands of dog hair from her chest.
Like so many transplants to the Lowcountry, she named her dog after the river on the peninsula’s east side: Cooper. (Some people name their dog after the river on the west side: Ashley.) She keeps framed photos of him on her desk: Cooper in a bandana at the beach, Cooper dressed in a Santa hat, Cooper obligingly raising a paw.
“We’re starting at the top with Judge Boykin’s little trip to the pokey. We’ve got some decent footage of his car backed into a utility pole. Gonna tease the hell out of it,” she says.
Sonny Boykin? His daughter was on my volleyball team at Crescent Academy. He lives somewhere on South Battery, up by the Coast Guard station. He must be nearly seven feet tall, his shoulders as wide as a refrigerator. Sonny is personable like all the men of Battery Hall, but I’ve always felt he stands a little too close. He went to jail?
I don’t ask because I don’t want to draw even the slightest connection between him and me. If Angela understood the deep-rooted, entangled connections of the locals here, she’d know that of course I know him. And because even the loosest of acquaintances has a better chance of catching a sound bite than a stranger, she’d make me knock on his door to get the scoop myself.
I see Sonny at holiday parties, and I’m pretty sure he goes to the same church as Mom and Dad. Even if it was an innocent wreck involving a utility pole, questioning him assumes some sort of guilt. Like it or not, Sonny is part of my tribe. I don’t care to protect him, but I know on some level Dad and Mom would be embarrassed if I were to question him. Someone else can do it. I hide my face, pretending to take notes.
Angela shakes her chocolate dri
nk. “What have you got, Justin?”
Justin wiggles his pen between his long fingers. “A homeless man’s body was found on Nassau Street. I’ll interview his neighbors—”
“He’s homeless, Justin. He doesn’t have any neighbors.”
“Yeah, well, I mean I’ll interview the people who live near where his body was found.”
“What else?” I can’t see her feet, but I know she has crossed her legs and is bouncing her top foot. It’s the same at every meeting. Her body vibrates with wild, nervous energy fueled by caffeine, stress, and probably too many years in New York.
“The Army Corps put out a news release on the seawall, saying that the pump stations shouldn’t fail,” I say. “How can they know they won’t fail?”
“Math.”
“Angela, if one of those systems goes down, Charleston will become a toxic bathtub.”
“When that happens, we’ll have a story. Just run a B-block voice-over on Spoleto.”
Spoleto? It’s a great arts festival but hardly front-page news. “It could be a feature—”
“Everyone is sick of hearing about the wall. Nothing has happened yet.”
“Okay, fine, I’ll do the Spoleto story, but one day Charleston is going to drown, and building a giant wall around the peninsula without wetland restoration and surface water storage is only going to sink it faster.”
Angela smiles and rolls her eyes. We get along, but she makes it clear who is in charge.
* * *
At 5:40, it’s time to head to the control room, which looks like a cave constructed from televisions. Justin once counted all the monitors: forty-two. I take my seat in the producer’s chair and face dozens of talking heads from both local and national stations. I adjust my headset to check in with the talent. “Dan, you good?”
In Polite Company Page 3