In Polite Company

by Gervais Hagerty

  “They sound nice.”

  “Maybe a month later, they finally convinced me to go dancing. They were always trying to cheer me up. And when I walked in the door, I saw John in the corner with another gal. He looked at me as though he had never seen me before.”

  “Oh, that’s awful.”

  “Your grandfather was never perfect, but he is loyal. So I telephoned him that night and asked him to please fetch me.”

  “Wow. You were heartbroken?”

  “Oh, yes. I was heartbroken, but I got over it. Mainly I was just so glad not to be pregnant. And, after all, if I hadn’t come home, I wouldn’t have you. Or your mother. Or Weezy and Caroline and Francie. Plus, I still have my secrets.”

  “Have secrets? There’s something more?”

  “Of course.” She winks. “Always. It’s my granddaughter bait.”

  “You said you’d tell me the whole story.”

  “I will”—she taps her watch—“but we need to get going.”

  “No fair,” I tease.

  “What I want you to understand, Simons, is that the worst part of the story was that I lost my confidence. I think that’s what happens when people have a big scare: they run back to what they know, even if it was what they were trying to get away from, even if they had a bright future ahead of them. I don’t want that to happen to you.”

  A ripple, quick and disturbing, races across her face. I think of a riptide—water moving lightly on the surface but roiling ferociously underneath. She blinks hard; the filminess returns to her eyes. To speak, she forces her words. “I stopped being brave.”

  I place my hand on Laudie’s arm—more bone than flesh and as dry as chalk. “Laudie, are you okay?”

  She jerks her hand away. “Yes. Don’t you start treating me like a baby, too.” She takes the tiniest sip of tea, the glass seemingly as heavy as a milk jug in her shaky hand. “Oh, that helps.” She presses her hands against the table to push herself to standing. After raising her body just a couple of inches, she flops back into her chair.

  I look away, not wanting to embarrass her. She can do it on her own. She must. At the second attempt, she hovers between sitting and standing, her legs shaking with effort. She is suspended in a strange halfway posture, unable to stand or sit. She’s not going to make it on her own. I hurry around the table, put my hands around her hips, lift her upright. Neither of us speaks, tacitly agreeing that to acknowledge the moment is to admit going to the ballet is a bad idea. “Get my keys,” she commands.

  We walk to her car, which sits unused except for our excursions. In the passenger seat, she struggles to fasten the seat belt. After a few attempts, she lets it snap back to its cradle above the door. Instead of buckling her belt for her like she’s an invalid or a child, I resolve to drive extra carefully, my hands gripped tightly at ten and two.

  I notice dirt between the folds of my knuckles. A plumbago leaf clings to my dress. A faint patch of sweat lingers at the back of my neck.

  I pull into a handicap spot, parking tickets be damned. Overhead, the clouds converge. The wind gathers strength, blowing hard from the south. Ravens and crows crisscross the sky. I hurry to the passenger side to retrieve Laudie.

  We walk carefully from the car to the Gaillard Center, our arms interlocked. I’m entirely focused on getting her inside safely, one step at a time. My eyes scan for obstacles: curbs, tree roots, uneven pavement. The tips of her Capezio shoes flash in and out of my narrow field of vision.

  But once inside, on the smooth marble of the lobby floor, Laudie slides her arm out from mine. She pulls back her shoulders and lifts her neck with all the elegance of a great egret rising from the marsh. She pauses for a moment, inhaling deeply, as she does just before her exercises at the barre. Her feet are turned out into first position.

  Some old Charlestonians weave their way toward us to give Laudie a kiss. I want to shoo them away, afraid they might knock her over, but Laudie receives them like a queen greeting her subjects. They comment on her outfit and her beauty; she charms them with her knowledge of the dancing troupe and scenes from La Sylphide she’s particularly excited to watch. I stand proudly beside her, watching my brave and bold grandmother hold court, until the house lights flicker a second time.

  The grand performance hall is cavernous. A massive velvet curtain shields the stage. When the curtain is pulled back, the recessed stage looks like the back of a monster’s throat, ready to swallow us whole.

  Thunder cracks and booms. Rain drums on the roof and lashes the building. Laudie, finally safe in her seat, turns to me. “Isn’t it grand?”

  I turn to look at my grandmother—at the gleam in her eyes and the determination behind them. “Yes, it is grand.”

  The lights dim. A single violinist plays a few haunting notes. Soon, the whole boisterous orchestra joins in. The tempo gains momentum. The horn section blasts, cymbals crash, and the timpani drum rumbles. To my right, Laudie waves her hands in the air as though she’s the conductor.

  The curtain opens. Onstage, a man sleeps in a regal chair beside a giant hearth. La sylphide, a ghost fairy, appears. She wears white, her tutu so delicate it could have been spun from cobwebs. He wakes from his reverie, or maybe he’s still in a dream. They dance together, but she’s the star. She floats across the stage as though the laws of gravity don’t exist for her. Her movements appear effortless: she seems wholly an otherworldly spirit. When she stops mid-twirl to stretch into an arabesque, Laudie seizes my arm. “Stunning.”

  The first act concludes with the man’s fiancée weeping; she is heartbroken because he loves someone else. Still, the music is happy. The corps de ballet gathers, maybe forty dancers in all, leaping, twirling, flirting, and spinning onstage together. The curtain closes for intermission. The Charleston audience, known worldwide for its often wildly enthusiastic applause, leaps to its feet. I join the standing ovation and turn to Laudie to help her up, but she’s slumped in her seat.

  “Laudie?” I lift her up by her shoulders, try to read her face. Her eyes are open but vacant. If I were to let go, she’d collapse to the floor. “Laudie, are you okay?!”

  Laudie mumbles, but I can’t hear anything over the applause. Don’t leave me! Oh my God, what did I do? She was fine, better than fine, just moments ago. Wild panic overtakes me. “Is there a doctor?” I yell louder, desperately. “Is anyone a doctor? I need a doctor!” Soon, people nearby join my call for help.

  An usher jogs toward us, his flashlight winking as he hurries over. A woman appears and squats at Laudie’s feet. “I’m a doctor.” She pulls her glasses from her shirt pocket; her eyes scan my grandmother. She presses a thumb against the inside of Laudie’s wrist. “What’s your name?”

  Laudie mumbles. Her head slumps like a wilted zinnia after weeks of drought.

  The doctor’s face, stitched with concern, tightens. “Look at me. Can you smile at me?” Laudie doesn’t move. The doctor turns to the usher. Firmly but calmly, she says, “Call an ambulance.”

  23.

  Sick as a Dog

  The newsroom is nearly anarchic. Multiple phones ring at once. The normally silent TV monitors are on full blast, making it seem as though the anchors from different news channels are in a yelling match. Police and fire scanners screech like herring gulls fighting over a chicken bone at the beach.

  In my peripheral vision, an object is ballooning in size and headed right for me. Before I can step out of the way, I’m nearly run over by a photog the size of a linebacker. He pivots just in time to keep from knocking me flat on my back, but he still somehow manages to stomp on my foot. Ouch. He might have crushed a tiny bone.

  “Shoot, I’m sorry,” he says, but keeps on running. He shoves open the door to the parking lot and bolts into the sunshine.

  “Simons!” Angela hollers for me from her desk. Making my way to her, I walk on the outside of my right foot; it minimizes the pain. While the rest of the newsroom swirls in chaos, Angela is cool—a black hole among comets.

  S
he brushes crumbs from her chest. A few remain on the shelf of her bosom, caught in the pilled ribbing of her sweater. “We already had our morning meeting. Everyone came in early. I just sent Justin and a photog to the courthouse. If there’s no traffic, they should make it in time.”

  At least that explains why the photog was in a mad dash. My right big toe throbs, but the pain is nothing compared to the knot in my heart that tightens each time I think of Laudie and my supreme idiocy. I saw the signs. Any sane adult would have known it was foolish to push a fragile person beyond her limits, and all for what?

  * * *

  The press conference starts at 5:30, when most people are commuting home. In the control room, Angela stands next to me, her arms crossed. She smells like coffee and dog. We watch the wall of monitors. All the stations, even the national ones, aim their cameras at an empty lectern with a dozen microphones propped up along its rim. People milling in the background of the frame look awkward and self-conscious, like strangers in a crowded elevator waiting for their stop.

  My mind wanders to the hospital. When Mom entered the room, she stopped abruptly as though blocked by some invisible wall—a force field generated by her reaction to the scene. Laudie lay asleep in the bed; the overhead fluorescent lights heightened the contours of her face, accentuating her hollow cheeks and sunken eyes. Her lips looked as rubbery and dead as chicken skin. A clear tube ran across her face just beneath her nose.

  She was dressed in a blue-and-white hospital gown so voluminous that it swallowed her. Laudie would never wear anything so ill-fitting. I had tucked the fabric around her shoulders in an effort to give the gown some shape. I readjusted her socks and gathered her sheets neatly around her legs, trying to make her look more like the real Laudie, the strong-willed young woman who ran off to Atlanta to dance, not some feeble old sack of bones who just suffered a stroke.

  Mom raised her hand to her mouth as two fat tears slid down her face. After a long moment, she spoke. “Oh, Simons.”

  I started to get up from the chair, the backs of my bare legs sticky from the nylon cushion. “Mom, I’m sorry.”

  Mom put a hand up, signaling me to either stop talking or stay put. I wasn’t sure, so I kept quiet and stayed in my corner.

  Mom walked over to Laudie and took her left hand from beneath the sheets, revealing more tubes. “Mother, it’s Carry Ann.”

  Laudie opened her eyes. They were still a crystal blue. She patted my mother’s arm and turned to me. “It’s okay,” she said weakly. “It’s okay.”

  Those two words are all that have kept me going the past seventy-two hours. It’s okay.

  Sonny Boykin approaches the podium, snapping my attention back to the newsroom. He’s assailed by the rat-ta-tat-tat of clicking lenses and the blinking strobe of the cameras’ lights, but he doesn’t react. A tiny American flag is pinned to his lapel. I strain to see his cuff links, with the telltale mark of “BH,” but it’s impossible to make them out. Before he speaks, he furrows his brow like men do when they want to look intelligent.

  He begins in medias res. No opening statement. Just chitchat about his boyhood in Beaufort, South Carolina. “As many of you know, I backed my car into a utility pole. It seems this little incident has made headlines across the state.” He smiles ingratiatingly, chuckles even, implying we are silly for all the fuss. “There’s all this talk about the failed field sobriety test. I was so shaken by the wreck, I couldn’t see straight. Once we got to the station, they came to their senses and let me go.” His tone grows stern. “I’m not a perfect driver, but mark my words, I’m also the victim here. For whatever reason, that woman wants to drag me through the mud. It’s a smear campaign. And the media is so desperate for content, they’ll broadcast anything, even disgusting pictures.” He shifts his gaze; I’m sure he’s scowling at the bank of reporters in the back of the room. “Shame on you. And shame on her. Her story is false. It’s completely untrue, ridiculous.”

  “Total denial. I should have guessed.” Angela spins on her heels, heads back to her desk.

  * * *

  With clips of Sonny’s press conference dominating the news rundown, it was easy to write a script for the seven o’clock broadcast. My draft has been cooling in Angela’s inbox for nearly a half hour—eons in the news world. She reviews each script daily, one of her myriad duties as news director, and normally she can never get the scripts early enough. When I go to check on her, she’s staring at the wall.

  “Angela?”

  “I just got a call back from the vet,” she says finally. “Cooper has cancer.”

  “Oh, no. I am so sorry, Angela.” Pictures of Cooper surround us. Cooper at the beach. Cooper sacked out on a divan. Cooper with trick-or-treaters. Cooper shaking hands with a fireman.

  “He’s not that old. He’s only eight.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Make this summer go away.” She absentmindedly scrolls over the script. “Or help me sell my house so I can move back home.”

  She’s my boss, but she’s also human. Unsure if it’s what she wants, I dip low to hug her. She stiffens at first, but then she lets her head fall on my shoulder for a moment. “You want to leave Charleston?”

  “There’s nothing for me here.”

  The beaches, the ocean, the historic houses, the secret gardens—how could anyone ever move from Charleston? “Sure there is.”

  “You’ve got to go, too, you know.” I must look bug-eyed, because she tells me not to look so surprised. “Listen to me. I believe in you. You’re actually a really good producer, and you’d be even better if you got to write about puddles and fish or whatever it is you want to write about. Charleston has never been your market. You have to go to a bigger market for an environmental science reporting gig. You can’t get anywhere here, at least not yet.”

  Leave? I can’t leave Charleston.

  24.

  If the Dress Fits

  Mom dressed up for today’s outing. She wears a pink gingham dress, low spectator pumps, and pearl earrings the size of june bugs. Every now and then she slips out of view, disappearing behind billowing white dresses.

  We are at Elegant Evening, Charleston’s go-to dress shop for balls, cotillions, weddings, dances, proms, galas, and black-tie events. I am sitting on the bridal boutique stage—a raised, carpeted platform bordered on three sides by full-length mirrors. My reflection, framed by hundreds of lavish white dresses, is repeated over and over—shattered fragments and vivid reminders of the way my life could have been. I remind myself that it was my decision to call off the wedding. This is what I wanted.

  While our relationship has cooled since I broke my engagement to Trip, Mom still swung by to deliver the occasional basket of Johns Island tomatoes or soft peaches from the South Carolina upstate, but our visits hadn’t been much more than a quick embrace and a hand-off. After Laudie’s stroke, however, Mom hadn’t said a word. Nor had Tito or Dad said anything. So, when Mom texted to say she’s taking Caroline dress shopping, she was extending an olive branch. Somehow, this shopping trip will right some wrong, if only a little. I’ll do what it takes to be accepted back into the tribe. For her, I put on foundation and some pearl studs from my debutante days.

  Laudie is still hospitalized. Doctors confirmed an ischemic stroke; she had a blood clot in her brain. They say most of the recovery will happen in the next three to four months. She has already regained most of her speech, but they are not yet letting her walk around unassisted. She has spent five nights at the Medical University of South Carolina. She’ll be discharged any day, her doctors say.

  Our family has developed a routine. I visit her in the early mornings. Mom comes at lunchtime, and Dad often stops by on his way home from the office. Tito visited the second day but since has stayed at home, apparently too busy hiring a handyman to remove the barre.

  Afraid of catching some nasty virus in the hospital, Weezy opts to video chat with Laudie through Mom’s phone during her visits. Afterward, Weezy c
alls me to report on Laudie’s afternoon status: “She’s tired. She still slurs her words a bit, but her spirits are good.”

  Last time I checked, she didn’t seem too tired to me. Even though she was stuck wearing a hospital gown, she refused to look like a patient. Her hair was coiled in a dancer’s bun; she even dabbed on the peacock-blue eyeshadow she wore to La Sylphide. Although confined to bed, she sat up straight, ready to receive company. Her speech sounded fine, too. When I pressed her for the end of the story, she said, “You’ll have to wait until we can do it over lunch.”

  “I’m sorry you’re stuck here, Laudie.”

  “Simons, listen to me, I’d rather die going to the Gaillard than wither away at home. Really.”

  That statement raised my spirits. “We were brave, weren’t we?”

  “We were.”

  Caroline emerges from the dressing room with the gait of a princess. She holds her arms inches away from her body, her wrists flicked upward. The ivory gown cinches in at her waist, balloons out just below her midsection. She steps onto the stage and engulfs me in a whirlwind of fabric. I have to scoot over so I won’t be devoured by her massive skirt. “Jesus, Caroline. Just a sec.” I bat at the layers of her dress.

  Caroline gathers up handfuls of fabric to clear the space between the two of us. “Simons!” she whispers above the rustle of crinoline and organza. “Why do you have to sit in the one spot where I am supposed to stand?”

  “I didn’t think—”

  “I know. You weren’t thinking at all. Seems to be the theme these days.”

  “Caroline, don’t you think I feel horrible enough?”

  Mom appears behind me, or at least I think that’s her behind another blizzard of fabric. “Caroline, what do you think about the dress?”

  My sister returns her attention to the mirror. “I don’t know. It’s pretty, but I want something a little more . . . fun.”