In Polite Company

by Gervais Hagerty

  Martha doesn’t budge. “I’m going to get your dog.” I walk across the patio, slowing for the little ground finches who subsist off muffin crumbs. Bruno jumps to his hind legs to greet me, his neck straining against the leash. When I rub his back, chunks of gummy fur stick to my palms. He smells like an aging bachelor: moldy laundry and tobacco smoke. One eye drips clear mucus. I unfasten him. “Come here, buddy.”

  Martha’s hands tremble as she lights a cigarette, and I wonder if she hasn’t already had a few cups of coffee. When she exhales, two dirty plumes tunnel down her nostrils. Brown roots sully her once-raven hair. When she crosses her legs, I spot a rip in her skirt. She looks as bad as Bruno. I consider delaying the breakup.

  “I’ve missed you, Simons.” She takes a big gulp of coffee. How she hasn’t burned a hole in her mouth is beyond me. Even with a generous splash of oat milk, mine’s too hot to sip.

  “I miss you, too, Martha.” The good parts of you, I think.

  “Yeah, but it’s more than that for me. I miss my old life. It was simpler. You have a simple life. You know?”

  Simple? I try not to feel insulted. She is not wearing her standard huge sunglasses, but it’s still hard for me to read those opaque eyes.

  “Look, can we just go back to the way things were?”

  “The way things were when?”

  “Can we just move on and forget about the whole Harry thing?”

  “I don’t know what—”

  She wraps her hands around the chair rails, squares her body with mine. “Jesus, Simons, you don’t have to pretend you don’t know. Be real for once. You’re mad at me because I was fucking Harry.”

  I’m not shocked. I don’t know what to feel at the moment, but I definitely don’t feel shocked. I had my suspicions.

  “I never even really liked him,” she adds.

  I rub my temples, trying to make sense of her calculations. “So, you knew I liked Harry. You didn’t even like him, and you slept with him anyway?” Saying goodbye is going to be a whole lot easier than I thought.

  “It just happened. We were on tour. When you share a tent . . .”

  “No. It didn’t just happen. That night, when you brought Harry to my apartment, I think you got jealous.”

  “You’re crazy.” Her face is wreathed in the coffee’s rising steam.

  “Maybe you felt like we were in some sort of competition.”

  “Seriously, Simons. Shut up.”

  “We couldn’t survive a love triangle.”

  “I wouldn’t call it that.”

  What genuine friendship can be unraveled by a man? I see more clearly than ever that Martha and I are terrible for each other.

  “Oh shit. Don’t cry, Simons.” She rolls her eyes.

  “I’m not crying,” I say plainly. I can speak plainly because it all feels so simple: it’s time for me to move on, to be intentional about my relationships, like Weezy said. I need to invest in people who are honest with themselves and who care about me, and to let others go. “I’m over Harry,” I tell her. “I don’t care about him anymore.”

  What I do care about is Laudie’s past, the passion for ballet that she traded for security. I care that she gave adventure a chance and that she guarded a secret that powered her through a lifetime of compromises, concessions, and criticism. I care about my family. I care about the people of Charleston: the independent store owners, the people excluded from Battery Hall, the women who aren’t believed. I care about our great city, slowly sinking, and the floodwaters and king tides and the disappearing land. But I don’t care about Harry. I care for Martha; I want her to be okay. But it’s time for me to let her go.

  “Oh, good,” she says, relieved.

  I stand. “Goodbye, Martha.”

  “You’ve got to go to work?”

  “I don’t work weekends anymore . . . ,” I start to explain, but realize she never paid attention to my schedule in the first place. “Martha, I care about you. I wish you well. But I can’t do this anymore.”

  She scrunches her face, looking at me like I’ve gone out of focus. “What are you talking about? Do what?”

  “I think we need some time apart. I think it might be best for both of us.”

  She laughs mirthlessly. “Simian, are you breaking up with me?”

  “Yeah. I am. At least for now.”

  Martha leans back in her seat. She studies me for a long time, tapping a finger on her lips. “I respect that.” She smooths her hair to the side, revealing the beautiful curve of her jaw. My knockout ex-friend. “Do we get to have makeup coffees?”

  “Ha. We’ll see.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To D.C. For an interview.”

  “D.C.? Why?”

  “I’ve just got to get out of here. See what’s out there.” I bend down to say goodbye to Bruno, perhaps for forever. He lunges at me, ready to smother my face with frantic licks. The poor guy. I want him to smell better, look healthier, and not have a chronically leaking eyeball. I dig in my purse and pull out the gold-and-pearl necklace that’s been zipped into a side compartment for weeks now. I fasten it around the dog’s neck, which is about the same circumference as mine. It’s a ridiculous look for a ridiculous animal, so it somehow works. I press his head firmly in my hands and hope to confer my well wishes onto the little beast.

  I have a goodbye gift for Martha, too. I take a button out of my purse and place it on the table in front of her. It reads: “CURIOSITY DOESN’T KILL EVERY CAT.”

  * * *

  Rounding the corner, I head north toward my apartment and into the heady scent of burning wood—someone at the end of the block is tending a fragrant oak fire. A handsome couple crosses the street toward a row of old, sherbet-painted single houses. I see the elegant steeple of St. Sebastian’s in the distance. Overhead, a solitary gull cries, flying east toward the ocean. I live in an achingly beautiful city.

  But if I want to protect it, to keep it from sinking, I must leave. Instead of writing the local stories about miscreant politicians or arts festivals, I need to help change the narrative. Sprawl must come to a full stop. We need to rethink our car culture. With multimodal transportation for everyone, we could turn parking spaces into bike lanes. We need to build more densely, more vertically. And the citizens must use all their creative energy to find a solution to save our sinking city. Instead of erecting a massive seawall, cutting off our access to the element that makes our home so special, we must find a way to work with the rising water, and in a way that’s fair to all communities. And that’s just for starters.

  49.

  Leaving on a Jet Plane

  The sound of knocking floats up my stairs. “Coming!” I yell. Ben’s here. He insisted on driving me to the airport.

  I’m hunkered over my laptop, moments from sending an email to the anonymous-tip line at work, the one Jasmine reads religiously. This could be her big story. The subject reads: “Battery Hall—Charleston’s Hidden Power Network.” I write that the Coastal Company owner and lead developer for Wildcat Acres are members, and so is the state planning director who approved the lucrative deal. I list the names of other powerful members—they are city council members and heads of banks. They dominate boardrooms and hold seats in the legislature. I put Judge Sonny Boykin’s name at the top of the list. How are women supposed to break these glass ceilings when the roof really resides in an all male-club? How can their stories be heard fairly when the lead characters controlling the narrative are almost always male?

  I attach a shaky image of the wall of portraits and finish the email with perhaps the most damning and distressing images of all—the watercolors from the ladies’ bathroom: the whitewashed scenes of enslaved people on plantations.

  The minute Jasmine sees the email, she’ll make some calls and ask for interviews, and because it’s the weekend, she’s the anchor who will break the story. She’s the smartest, most tenacious newsperson I know and is my best shot at getting this story national attention
.

  By the time the story gains traction, I’ll be in a high-rise somewhere near the Washington Mall. I won’t be around to be quizzed if I know anyone at Battery Hall. The story must be about the issue, not the source. It must be about power, racism, sexism, exclusivity; not about a father-daughter family drama.

  When I return, if I find the story hasn’t gotten enough coverage, I can pick up the torch as a lame-duck producer. I’m on my way out of the station; I could run as many packages on this topic as I want. If the story does have legs, I can monitor it closely, help steer where it goes. We could invite organizations across the Lowcountry to speak with the club members. We’ll hold them accountable. And I bet there are club members who are ready for change. Together, we can find a way to bring Charleston to a more just and equitable future. The story will be told.

  I click “submit.”

  I stash my computer in my carry-on, double check for my ID, and grab my phone. There’s a text from Angela. It’s a picture of a Labrador puppy with big, dopey eyes and golden fur. “Pee Dee wishes you luck in DC!” My heart warms. She got herself a dog. Of course she named it after another river in South Carolina, but I haven’t yet met any dogs named Pee Dee. I like it.

  “Precious! Thanks so much. Fingers crossed!”

  I zip up my phone. I’m wearing boots and my thickest sweater. My wool coat is folded over the top of my rollaway suitcase, which bounces down the steps behind me.

  On the other side of the street door, in the airy light of a perfect winter afternoon, stands Ben. He thrusts a fistful of flowers in my direction, clears his throat. “I found them while I was waiting for you.” He gestures with his other hand to the patch of green on the right-of-way, just beyond the shade of the crepe myrtle. He brings them to his nose. “They don’t smell like anything, though.”

  I take the bundle in my hand and count five petite zinnias, three magenta and two tangerine. All are missing at least a couple of petals; the ones that remain have browned at the edges. They’re vestiges of a long-gone vibrant summer season, but zinnias nonetheless. How could I have missed them?

  “Thank you.” I kiss him. “They’re perfect.”

  He smiles bashfully, scratches at the nape of his neck.

  I check my watch—Laudie’s watch. We still have time. “Can you wait a minute while I put these in water?”

  “You think they’ll last until you get back?”

  “I just have a thing for zinnias.” I hurry back up the stairs to the kitchen. Winter light streams through the ancient windowpanes, illuminating the lip of my couch, the corner of my bookshelf, and the old-but-scrubbed-clean linoleum in the kitchen, which has been bug-free since the first chill of the year.

  I line the flowers on my counter, cut the stems at an angle, and carefully lower the zinnias into a delicate porcelain vase. I place his bouquet on my coffee table. From this vantage point, the mantel frames the bouquet; the cherubs smile at it from either side. I pause to admire the scene—zinnias at the center—and think of Laudie.

  Acknowledgments

  Mary Alice Monroe, I am deeply appreciative of your generosity and wisdom. When you read my manuscript the first time, you told me to give Laudie a story. When you read it a second time, you circled moments of tension and wrote, “hit this hard.” And when you read it a third time, you wrote a beautiful and heartfelt endorsement. You also showed me the power of the tribe. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

  To the other women of the tribe. Nathalie Dupree—the Grandest Damest in all the Landest! We miss you in Charleston. To the nuclear-powered Marjory Wentworth, thanks for cheering me on. Thank you, Sandra King Conroy, for the exquisite blurb and for being possibly the sweetest person on the planet. Patti Callahan Henry, I met you the evening you spoke on Becoming Mrs. Lewis. We sat at Mary Alice’s dining room table, and while we were supposed to be celebrating you, you asked me, “How can I help?” When you got a call from a certain special someone at HarperCollins looking for a new southern voice, you, Mary Alice, and Signe said, “Gervais.”

  Ah, Signe Pike. I’m a total fangirl (blush). Thank you for opening up your home and your heart to me and my family, and especially for nudging me to think of my study as a sacred space. You bring magic to my life.

  And to the rest of my ladies in the Mango Club—Melissa Falcon Field, the day we met, you offered to review my manuscript. Who does that?! And Meagan Gentry—thank you for coaching me on the legal parts of the book. You’re a badass attorney and I’m so excited for you to make the transition into the writing world.

  Lauren Sanford, thank you so much for sharing your art expertise and for introducing me to the Kit-cat Club. And to the eternally cool Jessica Murnane—thank you for your support and interest in my career transition. One day, we’ll have that lunch date. (And, by the way, I’m now up to Two Parts Plant.)

  Ann Close—thank you for sharing your lifelong knowledge of publishing. You are an exceptional coffee date. Thank you, Kate Bullard Adams, for not holding back. Will Breard, Maggie David, Carolyn Matalene, Jennifer Wallace, and Aunt Susan Gaillard—thank you for reading earlier drafts—I hope you’ll be pleased with the way this book turned out.

  Thank you, Sarah Mae Ilderton. You were right, that’s how he would have done it. And to Beth Gavin for getting us all together; you’re the glue. Thank you, Katie Crouch, for being so kind as to share your literary contacts. I also want to thank my dear friend (and national treasure), Samar Ali. Samartime, you’ve been inspiring me since 1999.

  Thank you to my whip-smart agent, Kristyn Keene Benton—you’re a next-level connector. I look forward to working on many more projects with you. Plus, I just like chatting on the phone and hearing Charlotte coo in the background, so let’s do that, too. Thanks also to Cat Shook. You had me at “Waffle House.”

  I want to take a moment to thank Anne Rivers Siddons, an elegant and graceful southern lady who was possessed of a masterful storytelling mind. I miss dinners at her home, where, in her big red-rimmed glasses, she served us hearty soups, her Maine Koon cats rubbing against our legs.

  And Patricia P. McArver—my guardian angel. You went out of retirement again to take over The Citadel Public Speaking Lab so I could pursue my dream. Thank you for your leadership and friendship. I love you!

  Momunit. Babs. Babulous. Barbarella. Glama. Barbara G. S. Hagerty. Mom. You’ve read this book at least six times and you still pick up after the first ring to answer my questions about everything from syntax to formal evening wear. Thank you for always believing in me. Every child should be so lucky.

  To my siblings. Hart, you reminded me, “leap, and the net will appear.” It did. More than your advice, it’s your example of living that gave me the courage to jump. And Curry, the marketing mastermind, I’m so grateful for a confidante who says what she thinks. Sorry about the bugs. To Richard, thanks for helping me keep the creative juices flowing by letting me collaborate with you on your songs. Let’s get that tattoo.

  And to my dad, Richard Hagerty, who showed us that you can earn a living in the day, be a serious artist at night, and start a band in retirement. Rock on, Dad.

  I’m so grateful to Dottie Benton Frank. She wrote stories about the Lowcountry that captured her reader’s hearts and imaginations. She also hooked her editor, Carrie Feron, on stories about the South, which, in a way, sent her searching for me.

  Carrie, there are many writers who search their entire lives for an editor like you. I won the literary lottery. Thank you for your guidance, for showing me how to think of my story in a new way. Thank you also for your patience—I realize many of my ideas for book titles and covers were outlandish. Even when you end up saying no, you consider the thought, and that means a lot to me. You also laugh at my jokes, perhaps the greatest gift of all. Keep sending texts of zinnias and Dash and your life up North. And be sure to book that trip to Charleston because I adore you and want to give you a giant, in-person (not virtual) hug.

  To the business savvy bibliophiles at Harper
Collins—Liate Stehlik, Jennifer Hart, Ryan Shepard, Emily Fisher, and Brittani Hilles—I’m thrilled to be on your team. Thank you, Asanté Simons, for fielding all of my questions. I need lots of specific direction, as you know. To Andrea Monagle, the copyediting whiz. You healed Simons’s toe (otherwise, as you pointed out, she should have gone to see a doctor). And even seventh generation locals don’t know it’s called “White Point Garden.”

  Thanks to the locally owned businesses in Charleston that fueled my writing: to The Works and CPY—all those chaturangas boosted my energy and the wheels have helped me revert the hunch in my back from years of bending over a keyboard. And cheers to the neighborhood coffee slingers, Harbinger and Huriyali (Jade, here’s your shout-out :o)

  Finally, I want to thank my little family. To Sofia, at five, my bright, curious, critical thinker—your love of books will take you far. And Miro, my charming, witty three-year-old who already thinks out-of-the-box: may you always do things your own way. And my husband, Anthony—top chef, bass player, bearded mustachian, beer brewer, superman composter, sailboat racer—you make every day easy and fun. I love you.

  And lastly, I want to thank my grandmother, Aggie Street: the flower gardener who inspired this novel. I miss you. I love you, and I hope I made you proud. Every spring, I plant zinnias.

  P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*

  About the Author

  * * *

  Meet Gervais Hagerty

  About the Book

  * * *

  Reading Group Guide

  About the Author

  Meet Gervais Hagerty

  GERVAIS HAGERTY grew up in Charleston, South Carolina. After reporting and producing the news for both radio and television, she taught communications at The Citadel. When not writing, she works on local environmental and transportation issues. She lives in Charleston with her husband and two daughters. In Polite Company is her first novel.