by Hadley Hury
Four months after breaking the engagement and returning her full attention to her work, Sydney had met Charles Douglas Cullen at a festive opening in the Tula arts complex. Chaz was charming and handsome, and, though he was not apparently a weak man, a slightly haunted look behind his large, languid brown eyes told her that, despite his easy wit and physical confidence, he was looking for a kind of guidance. They sat at the far end of the parking lot, listening to WSB under an overhang of hackberries, and he talked freely about his wastrel phase, the boozing and hard drugs, even as they traded a few brief draws on a discreet cocktail-sized joint he had pulled from his jacket.
She joked about being an actress who was in flight from the stage but who kept being trapped in nightmarish training films not wholly of her devising. She acted out a particularly tedious passage a megalomaniacal manufacturer had not let her revise in his firm’s human resources video. He talked rather off-handedly about his little business and she guessed that perhaps he was trying hard to make himself believe he liked it more than he actually did, that perhaps it was a vanity venture, a passing thing.
“I’m really happy these days,” he said. Sydney thought that this, too, might be overstatement. But she thought that he could, indeed, be happier.
With her.
They made a stunning pair. She knew almost at once that she would never meet anyone who needed her as much and yet would manage to wear that need with such light, ironic grace. Chaz might not be perfect but she felt that she could optimize his assets. He was a gentleman with, though of course nothing like the Landerswaite fortune, some prospects and talents, he was sexy and fun and he had a good background and he absolutely adored her, and so she allowed herself, in so far as it seemed she ever might, to be in love.
***
Daphne’s idea of Friday expansiveness was to take fifty minutes for lunch, and even then she had used her cell phone twice. As Daphne talked, Sydney had looked down now and then, with a bemused smile, away, into the willows and oaks and beyond to the river, less from discretion than to indicate to her fellow diners that she bore in mortified silence her tablemate’s lapse in etiquette. They had not gotten together in three or four months, but had nevertheless managed quickly to dispense with Sydney’s engagement, Daphne’s Christmas escape to Barbados with a divorce attorney she’d been dating, and her impending promotion to vice-president. Also, a bit about Sydney splitting her time between the videos and Chaz’s business. And, finally, Chaz’s father’s death.
“Well, is Chaz, I mean, okay or whatever? Were they close?”
Sydney hesitated for a second. Instead of saying, “If you only knew how little love was lost there,” she said, “They were as close, I think, as most fathers and sons. He’ll miss him, but he’s all right.” It was not for nothing that Daphne was about to be made a VP for communications. She was a talker. And although most of her realm of influence lay outside the Perimeter, in the boardrooms, media outlets, and cocktail parties of the exurban counties, Sydney was nonetheless on guard.
It was over coffee, as Daphne looked at her watch for the third time, that she picked up Sydney’s earlier mention of Chaz’s recent visit to Old Laurel.
“Who is it, now, a brother?”
“No, his father’s cousin. I’ve never met him. He was apparently quite close to Chaz’s father. I’m eager to see his home in Laurel. Chaz says it’s really wonderful.”
“Old Laurel? Never been there. Near Destin?”
“Well, sort of, but it’s closer to Seaside, just three or four miles down the beach.”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve never been. When I was growing up we’d go over to Pensacola and Destin, but I haven’t been in years. I admit it: I’ve become a Hilton Head kinda girl. At least those crackers know how to dress.”
She paused. “You know, it may be Laurel Beach. I don’t know, one of those, Santa Rosa, Seagrove, Laurel, Something Beach, where that sleazebag ex-husband of my cousin’s ended up.”
“Sounds like a story.”
“A dirty little one. It is Laurel. Yeah, that’s it. I think he’s a bartender at some restaurant or bar that’s some sort of a local big deal.”
Sydney never forgot a name, and although she had only heard Chaz mention once or twice the one that now leapt to her mind, she said: “Terry Main?”
“My God, I think that’s it! Martha and I weren’t especially close, she’s a second cousin, and I never met him, but, yeah, I believe that’s it. How in the world do you know him?”
Sydney didn’t miss a beat. “Never met him. But you know me and names, and I think Chaz just mentioned it in passing. His uncle…” she was editing herself as she went, “…lives near that place, I think, so they’ve been there. Laurel’s really just a village. The Green House? or the Blue Bar, or…”
“I think that’s it, the Blue Bar.”
“So what’s his crime?”
“Well, that he was a smarmy, scheming asshole, at least as that wing of the family’s legend has it. This was eight or nine years ago and I was already up here and missed a lot of the juicier details. But apparently there actually was a crime. At least a sort of small-scale, tawdry one. Word had it later that he’d never really cared about Martha, that he’d only married her to promote himself. He’d worked his way up from the Ninth Ward and finished Loyola law school at night.”
“After the wedding, he became corporate attorney for Martha’s father’s firm. After several years he apparently started embezzling money from the firm. Nothing dramatic. I think I remember my mom saying it was something like two hundred thousand eked out over three or four years. The marriage had been on the decline anyway, but Martha and her folks didn’t want to bring charges. There was a small daughter, seven or eight. So there was a quick divorce and Susie father told him to leave town, not to apply to the Bar in any other state and or ever come back, or they would prosecute with the evidence they’d put together. A couple of years ago, someone from New Orleans who was staying in Destin mentioned to my brother that they’d seen the guy behind the bar at some place they went to in Laurel.”
Sydney smiled and shook her head gently, looking as dismissive as possible. “Small world.”
Now it was she who looked at her watch, counted out a tip, and moved her chair back. Daphne followed suit. When they hugged briefly beside her Mercedes, she laughed and said: “You’ll have a wonderful time whenever you get around to going down there—but watch out for pirates and criminals and all those other local-color Gulf Coast characters.”
“Oh, we will. Chaz’ll be going down for another weekend sometime in the next few weeks, and we’ll get down there together before long. We want some time away from here. From business. Eat shrimp. Swim. Be naughty.”
“Now, let me know what you decide about a wedding.”
“Okay.” Sydney waved her off and got into her own car. She would leave a voice mail message letting Daphne know about a sudden decision to elope, just as they would, in some more sentimental manner, let Uncle Charlie know. That was of little consequence.
But what she had just heard about Terry Main could be, she felt sure, of consequence. As she drove back to town, oblivious to the brilliant sun dappling down through the hills and trees of Ashford-Dunwoody, Sydney began sorting out the hows and whys.
Terry Main. The only other member of Charlie’s little clan who seemed, like his beloved cousin’s son, not to have made the cut.
Chapter 16
“How nice to meet you. Charlie’s spoken of you often,” said Camilla Stokes.
My friend the poor widower, no doubt, thought Hudson.
“Are you settling into your house?” She smiled up at him, peering over tortoise half-glasses. She checked some detail in the reservations list, then removed the glasses, patted the arm of the very tall, striking, young redheaded woman who had materialized at her elbow, and murmured, “The Georges want to come at nine instead of nine-thirty. Seven or eighteen should be free, I think.” She came from behind the narrow mahogany table
with its small reading stand, offered her hand, and gracefully edged Hudson toward the least crowded corner of the large foyer. “Laurel’s so wonderful….”
She was a slender woman of medium height and wore a long, pale pistachio shift and plain gold earrings that set off her eyes and hair. Her eyes were hazel and revealed a certain calm, almost a languidity, and her slightly graying brown hair, parted in something like an old-fashioned page boy, fell attractively to one side, blunt cut midway on her long, graceful neck.
“Charlie has spoken of you as well. ‘The manager he’d been looking for’ were the exact words, I believe.”
“I’ve been here a little less than three years, but it seems so much longer, and I mean that in the best possible way. Charlie’s made me feel, and Fentry and Victor, too, like part of the family.”
Hudson looked out to his right across the 26-A’s large, two-tiered main dining room, and up to the open staircase on the left to another mezzanine dining level and bar. A quiet hubbub filled the airy rooms, a discreetly shifting sea of summer sounds and colors, as the attractive and well-to-do from miles around arrived or departed through the beveled-glass front doors or the tall arch of the adjacent lower bar, or stood or sat in small groups along the paneled side banquettes as they waited for their tables.
“Must be a handful.”
“Never a dull moment. In a former life I taught second grade for a few years. 26-A is almost that exciting.” She had a rich, low voice, with humor in it. “You teach, don’t you?”
“Freshman and AP English.”
“Well, then you know what I mean.”
“I’ve only been back at it for four years. They wear me out and I absolutely adore it.”
“We’ll have to trade war stories some time,” she smiled.
Charlie, who had been waylaid by old acquaintances as soon as they’d walked in, now broke free and joined them.
“Greeting your public?” said Hudson.
Camilla whispered conspiratorially, “Just like a royal walkabout. Fentry and I amuse ourselves by watching who gets how much time.”
Charlie laughed. “Now, now. You know,” he said, leaning in, “I’m getting better. I am. Really curbing it a bit. For years I’ve felt I had to talk to everybody and his Aunt Sally who set foot in the place. Every local celebrity and VIP real or imagined. Now, if they’re not old friends or acquaintances, forget it.”
Camilla nodded with a hint of sarcasm. “Mr. Tough Guy.” She rolled her eyes at Hudson, then looked back at Charlie. “The royal table awaits.”
***
Hudson sat back, enjoying the view from Charlie’s table, fairly secluded at the far end of the mezzanine level but with a sweeping prospect, not only across the room and into a part of the upper bar (half of which was a clubby interior and half, through sets of French doors, a palm-embowered roof garden), but over a good bit of the large room below.
Charlie’s visual signature was the elaborate system of pin spots, each one focused, without a millimeter of spillage onto a patron, on an arrangement of flowers at the center of each table. With only a pale golden ambient light lightly washing the walls as barely discernible background, the flowers looked like exotic, brilliant jewels, floating in the shadowy rooms.
“I had forgotten just how beautiful it is.”
“Thanks.” Charlie grinned.
***
For their second drink, they had detoured downstairs to the main bar. Without having turned from a conversation at the end of the long mahogany and cane bar, Fentry seemed to have sensed their presence, as he seemed to sense every seismic shift in his domain whether physical or psychological. He had quickly wrapped up his regalement of the little group, turned dramatically, and said in his most musical Barbadian tones: “Good evening, Mr. Brompton. And you, Mr. H! How good a sight to see.”
“Oh, Lord,” Charlie had said. “He’s in top form tonight.”
They drank their cocktails standing there, chatting, Fentry managing his seemingly effortless trick of giving them his undivided attention when in actuality his attention was dividing simultaneously in a dozen different directions. Not particularly tall but with posture approaching that of a dancer, Fentry did indeed seem in fine fettle, the voice running agile scales, the smile ready and brilliant, his starchy white shirt and black bow tie gleaming against his cinnamon skin.
At one point Charlie had been drawn away, and Fentry had suddenly fallen silent; he leveled his enormous eyes, even more glistening than usual, at Hudson, reached across the bar, and patted his hand in a kind, all-encompassing gesture.
Dinner was a succession of triumphs from Victor’s large and capable hands. The big man himself dropped by the table early on to say hello and inquire after the salad (which looked like a Matisse floral still-life on the plate and memorably involved julienned beet, walnuts, arugula and cream). He couldn’t linger; he was dealing tonight with what he called in his softly gruff Australian baritone “a careful sauce, calls for a bit of attention.” Hudson didn’t know Victor terribly well, one or two conversations, usually with Charlie; but Kate had twice spent long afternoons, at his invitation (rare, according to Charlie), in the 26-A kitchen, learning about soup stocks and some of the finer points of shellfish.
“He looks like a great bear, but in that kitchen, in his element, he moves like Baryshnikov,” she had said.
Now, Victor hesitated for a moment before leaving and then, with the same gentility that Fentry had shown, though in a more awkward and reticent style, he had nodded to Hudson, looked at a spot on the table for five seconds and then back up at him, and said quietly, “I’m very sorry for your loss.”
***
“What’s on your calendar for tomorrow? I guess schoolteachers try to stay away from schedules in the summer, though, right?”
Charlie sipped his brandy. They had driven back to his house for a nightcap and were seated in comfortable chairs up on the gallery. He had dimmed the lights inside, the only light on the long verandah a small shaded lamp on a table nearby. They looked out into the great trees, silhouetted in the moon. There was a smell of magnolia and the darkness quaked with the cascading rhythms of cicadas and tree toads and, further out, nearer the beach, the occasional jagged cry of a gull.
“Exactly. I’m trying to avoid even the semblance. But I do have work to do. Lots of reading. And there’s the collection. I suspect when I get back into some of these reviews I haven’t seen or thought about in so long, I’m going to want to revise or, at least, re-edit some of them. I think I’m going to let the weather set my pattern. You know, beach or other activities before eleven or after five, and hole up for the heat of the day.”
“Very civilized.”
“And you?”
“Well, I have to get in gear. My cousin’s son and his new wife are due from Atlanta on Monday, for about two weeks, and I have to ‘do around’ as my daddy used to say.”
“You’ve talked about Peter, of course, but we were never here at the same time.”
“I appreciated your letter, Hudson.” He paused. “This is his only child, my namesake actually, but he goes by Chaz. He had some pretty rough patches growing up and into his twenties, but I’m proud of him. He’s thirty-five now and he really seems to have gotten it together these last four or five years.”
“You must miss Peter.”
Charlie’s jaw tightened and he looked at Hudson with uncharacteristic sadness in his eyes. “Well, we didn’t get together that often. Every few years I’d go up or they’d come down. But yes, yes I do. Sweet man. You may remember, we were really close growing up together in Louisville. My mother’s sister’s son. We went through UK together and then he went to law school at Emory. Joined a firm there and married. His wife Nancy had a lot of family in the Carolinas, and never was much of a beach person. Sometimes she and Chaz would go there for visits and Peter would come down for a few days by himself. Occasionally Chaz would come with him. Always behaved himself. He likes the Gulf, and I think the fact tha
t I’m gay sort of appealed to his rebel instinct or something. Oh, he may have smoked a little dope while he was here, but most of the time he was on the beach or sitting around the house reading, happy and good-humored. And through all his troubles and all the disappointment he caused them, he never went out of his way to actively antagonize his parents. He had a grudging respect for his father and adored his mother.”
He smiled. “We’re a family of only children. Peter was the closest thing I had to a brother. Real family. I do miss him, and I suspect a good deal of it may be that thing you apparently start saying when you reach a certain point, the one about losing part of yourself when you lose the people who remember.”
“You have friends. Many, who love you.”
“Yes, I do, and for whom I am eternally grateful. But you know, Hud, over the past, oh, twelve or fifteen years, I lost three really dear friends to AIDS. And though I’ve certainly made my peace with it, I always, always, wanted Andrew and me to work out a life together. Not meant to be, and I finally had to draw a line under it, but…still….”
Hudson realized for the first time, and felt incredibly self-involved and stupid at the discovery, that Charlie, at least at times, was lonely. That though he was still attractive, apparently fit, and as charming as ever, he was looking old age in the face.
He said: “Alex the shrinking priest has asked me a couple of times, ‘Wouldn’t you rather have discovered, rather know, that you have the capacity for love, than not?’”
Charlie searched Hudson’s face in the near-darkness: “What did you say?”