“But how will I know I’m recovering?”
“You’ll know.”
The terrors took more than a year to dissipate, and the rage, well, my temper could still blindside me. My early AA prayers consisted mainly of things like Goddamn it, if you’re out there, help me. If I could remember to say or even think that, I would start to feel better. So, hey, God, listen, I’m sorry for this foxhole stuff, but please don’t make me admit to anyone that I talk to you. Prayer seemed like the ultimate humiliation, the pathetic endgame. Yet slowly I did begin to recover, although during the first year I didn’t feel much like a winner. More like a C minus. Gradually, that notion passed too, and, yes, I became a winner, at least against alcohol and drugs, while stability filled in slowly, like ink on a map.
After I had learned the AA lingo, meetings felt less threatening. For a while I assumed that sooner or later I would find out who was really running this outfit and where all those crinkly dollar bills went. We passed a basket and were supposed to throw in a dollar or two, if we were able. I soon realized that we were like functional commies, and our slogans were more effective than Chairman Mao’s. Mao had said things like Learn swimming through swimming, which may be useful advice if you don’t want to be a brain surgeon, but Keep It Simple, Stupid, can function in any situation.
Estelle and I sat with Momma at the old mahogany table and ate boiled peanuts off paper plates. We had sent the health aide home. Momma liked to pick out the long peanuts with four or five wet nuts crammed inside one shell, and Estelle and I forwarded those to her plate. She began to growl with pleasure. Once, though, she surprised me by saying, “Hello, Ellen. How nice to see you.”
Her teeth appeared too large for her mouth but didn’t seem to bother her. I had sorted through the cabinet under her bathroom sink, where a thirty-year history of Merle Norman cosmetics crouched waiting, before finding an old set of teeth tucked inside a brown paper bag. I soaked the teeth in gin before giving them to her, afraid they would make her mouth sore, but I didn’t know what else to do. I tried calling her old dentist, but he was dead.
Later, after Momma fell asleep, propped up on pillows and snoring lightly—her snoring could sound like a tin gutter being torn off a house—Estelle and I settled into the matching rocker recliners in her bedroom. We turned the recliners toward the sliding glass doors and stared out at the lights of the Cooper River Bridge. After a while Estelle said, “Why do you think she invited me to sit at the table today?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because you don’t have on your uniform?”
“I didn’t think any human beings got to eat at that table, white or not. I’ve never even known her to eat there.”
My mother’s mahogany table was a source of great pride, like the hand-carved walnut piano no one could touch, although it was so out of tune it didn’t sound much like a piano anymore. “Maybe it was the boiled peanuts. She told me that when she was a kid, her people lived on a farm for a couple of years, and one of her best memories was about all the children digging up the peanut mounds and washing them and boiling them in a big vat of salted water. But who knows, Estelle, tomorrow she might start calling both of us ugly names.”
“She’s never done that to me.”
“She’s done it to me.”
“What did she call you?”
“Oh, just lesbian, unnatural, queer, stuff like that. My favorite line was, ‘How did a lady like me raise a daughter like you?’”
I felt Estelle’s smiling in the dark. “One of the best things about being raised by all those church ladies was learning to fight back without seeming like I’m fighting back. To keep myself contained and pray for my enemies and all that. Just to keep going forward.”
“You pray for Momma?”
“She’s not my enemy, but yes, I do, and I pray for you too.”
“Jeez, Estelle, you must have missed me.”
I heard the rocker clicking as she stood up. “Are we just going to keep sitting here like this?”
“I pray for you too,” I said as she eased herself into my lap. “Oh my God, you feel so good.”
Estelle and I often ended up in bed together if we were alone at night. This was a casual, friendly arrangement. For me, sex with one person rarely seemed related to sex with another, and Estelle, who had initiated this connection when we were still in Cambridge, seemed to feel the same way. We knew our attitude was unpopular, especially among women, and had learned our discretion separately at considerable cost. Ed Blake, though, Ed Blake might turn out to be a problem. He had unsealed something in me that felt dangerous.
Afterward, Estelle said, “You’re wide open.”
“Don’t ask.”
“Thank God for grown-ups.”
“Estelle, do you ever think maybe we’re going to mess our friendship up if we keep doing like this? I mean, I do pay you to stay with my mother.”
“That’s got nothing to do with you and me. And it’s your mother who pays me, not you. You’re just the intermediary.”
“I’m the intermediary. I like that.”
She reached toward the floor beside the bed. “Where’s my underwear?”
“What do you think I should do about the body?”
“Yours? Nothing, please.”
“You know who I mean. Lucia’s body.” I hadn’t wanted to say her name.
She rolled over and looked at me, her dark eyes askance. “I don’t understand your question.”
“Do you think I should just bury her?”
“What else would you do?”
Estelle’s drug of choice had been painkillers. Being a nurse practitioner, she could write prescriptions to false names and fill them for herself. Eventually, she graduated to snorting them and then to snorting heroin because I just wanted to see how it felt.
How did it feel?
Be glad you stayed away from it.
“We’d best get out of this bed now,” she said. “Your mother has been known to wander around at night, and she’s not so addled that she wouldn’t recognize what we’re doing. And, by the way, after tonight, while you’re back in Charleston, I’m going to stay out at my own place.”
“But will you go with me to the funeral home tomorrow?”
“Absolutely not. I told you I’m avoiding this whole mess. And I think you would have been wise to stay out of it too.”
Momma’s snoring stopped, and we were immobile until her motor restarted.
Then, in a low voice, I said, “I didn’t think I still had this much anger about my brother lodged inside me. I thought I’d accepted all that detachment stuff in AA.”
“Maybe it’s a lot easier to detach from the past than it is from the present, especially when it’s right in your face. And you’ve got a little girl’s body to deal with.”
“Tomorrow,” I said, “tomorrow I’m going to declare war on my brother.”
3
Royce’s ex-wife had always refused to talk with reporters, but she consented now to talk to me. Avery had not moved out of Charleston’s orbit, and I had always, in my trips home, tried to avoid her. Maybe I blamed her for hurting Royce, or maybe I didn’t want to know more about their marriage and its many disappointments.
Avery lived on a houseboat that she kept docked out on James Island. She suggested we meet out there, but I knew a boat would feel claustrophobic, so I recommended Magnolia Cemetery, which might also feel claustrophobic, but I did want to visit the old graveyard. I planned to bury Lucia in North Charleston, in our family plot at Carolina Memorial Gardens, a modern place that had opened in the 1950s just before our father died. Carolina Gardens offered no headstones, only ground-level plaques in a wide green lawn with small, skinny copper vases bolted to them. Most of the vases remained empty or held a few plastic flowers, which created a nightmarish, spindly crop.
Magnolia, on the other hand, was ridiculously romantic. Mossy oaks and heavy-scented magnolias shaded the paths that curved among the graves. Sometimes a breeze wafted in fr
om the river. These were mostly Confederate graves, interspersed with a few Yankees and other peculiarities, like a pyramid engraved with Masonic symbols, and a man buried under his cannon. But, since Magnolia is on the National Register of Historic Places, no one gets interred in the old section anymore. Only the crew of the Hunley had been buried here recently. The Hunley was an experimental Confederate vessel and, supposedly, the first submarine ever to sink another ship. A few years ago, when the Hunley was discovered and raised from Charleston Harbor, the six bodies of the crew were so well preserved that they still sat at their stations. Their burial had involved a great deal of hoopla, with hundreds of Confederate reenactors attending in their finery. One of my cousins wore his general’s uniform and rode on a gray gelding he had named Traveller, after Robert E. Lee’s mount. The crew of the Hunley had to be buried in concrete to prevent souvenir seekers from disturbing their remains.
I’d parked my canvas-draped car, the one Estelle had balked at driving, in the open area of the Dockside lot since Momma was only allotted one indoor space. My car stayed covered because I didn’t want the paint to fade, and also because each time I removed it, the old Cadillac still provided me with a frisson of delight. I’d named her Nadine, and she was a nineteen-foot-long 1970 Deville convertible. Originally an unimaginative blue, I’d had her repainted ruby red with metallic flecks, her bench seats redone in white leather. I thought Nadine was hot, but among aficionados of vintage Cadillacs, she was what is called a cut-and-paste job. Nadine was wrong on so many levels, from her switched-out 460-cubic-inch motor to her six-speaker sound system, but for me she was like a beautiful old hooker, rusty and worn up close, fine from a distance.
It was 9:45 and already too hot to have the top down, but I dropped it anyway. Then I put white stripes of zinc oxide on my nose and cheekbones like war paint, hooked my white Holy City cap down low over my dark glasses, and listened to the motor purr before hitting play for Tina Turner.
Avery had arrived at the cemetery before me. She sat in a Jeep parked in the shade under a live oak. When she climbed down, I was surprised at how emaciated she looked. There was an aging hippie quality to her I hadn’t expected. She wore no makeup except heavy eyeliner, and she kept her graying hair in a single braid that reached almost to her waist. A men’s long-sleeved white shirt protected her arms, a straw hat her face. Her boat shoes were not sufficient to prevent the peeling sunburn on her knobby ankles. Instead of a belt, a white nylon rope held up her baggy khakis.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you since the wedding,” I said.
She hugged me with wiry, surprising strength. “It’s so awful about those children,” she murmured, “but I do like your car.”
We began to walk along the path into the cemetery. “At least it’s cooler under the trees.”
“I’m glad there’s a breeze today,” she said. “But even on still days, it can seem like the ocean is breathing.”
“Wow, I sometimes think the ocean is breathing too. Is that what your boat thing is about?”
“We should get drunk together,” she said. “I bet we could really tie one on.”
“I’ve retired from drinking, Avery. With full honors, of course.”
“I heard that somewhere.” She lit a cigarette. “Want one?”
“More than you know. Regrettably, I’ve quit that too.”
“What’s left?”
“A few unfortunate light habits. But that does smell very good.”
“I got married twice more after Royce, you know, but now I just keep a nice young man on my boat. Your brother and I were trying to be people we weren’t.”
“Momma says youth is wasted on the young, and by the time you figure out what you’re doing, it’s just too fucking late.”
She smiled, revealing capped teeth. “I forgot you were funny. Your mother said ‘fucking’?”
“Okay, a small embellishment on my part. But why does it have to be so fucking beautiful here?”
“In the cemetery?”
“All of it. Charleston.”
“Ah.”
“Don’t you ever want to get out?”
“I did get out. I went to Barnard for a year. But everybody in New York was so busy. They seemed frantic, and not a bit friendly. It made me nervous.”
“I think now I should burst into song. You know, like, ‘What’s it all about, Alfie?’”
Suddenly, Avery boomed out, in tune: “What’s it all about, Allllllll-fieeeeeee?” She strung out the word Alfie so that it echoed across the water.
“You are so unexpected,” I said.
A tourist couple wandering the path ahead of us had turned, startled. “We’re living Charlestonians!” I called to them.
“Let’s sit on a grave and talk,” Avery said. “I’m not sure what you want from me.”
“I don’t think I can sit on a grave just yet.” We sat on a stone bench under the stinking magnolias and stared at the shimmering river.
“For one thing, I want to learn more about Royce’s relationship with Joe Magnus when they were still in high school. Do you do know anything about it?”
“Were you in Charleston during the hospital workers’ strike?”
I shook my sweating head.
“I wasn’t either, but Royce was a senior at Porter-Gaud. I’m a year older than him, so I was already at Barnard. They had stopped making the Porter-Gaud boys wear those military uniforms, but they still had to wear khaki slacks and navy blazers with red neckties and white shirts. Royce looked very handsome dressed like that. Royce was very handsome. And during his senior year he was a local star because of his golf game. But Joe Magnus went to Rivers High School in North Charleston, and that was where all the trouble started. Joe Magnus was so nasty. He was such a disturbing man. I couldn’t understand how Royce could be friends with him.”
I didn’t want to defend Royce, but I said, “Try to imagine it, Avery. Try to imagine their situation.”
“I know, but it was an accident,” Avery said.
“Yes, an accident in which Royce killed Joe’s father in front of him.”
She lit another cigarette. “Don’t say ‘killed,’ please. Say ‘caused his death.’” Her voice was so hoarse that I wondered if she had begun to tear up behind her dark glasses. “This is something your brother told me once,” she said. “He said that when the broom handle hit Skip Magnus’s temple, it was like a shiver came up the wood. It wasn’t a hard blow, everyone said it wasn’t a hard blow, but this shiver came up his arm when Skip’s temple gave like that. Royce said the broom handle felt stuck in his brain too, and he would never be able to escape it.” She wept openly, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “He couldn’t figure out how to live with it, Ellen. Skip loved Royce. Everybody loved Royce. He had this sweetness … I don’t know.” Her voice toughened. “The truth is, I didn’t even meet Royce until after the accident. The world is full of horrors, everybody knows that, but it’s different when it’s your own horror.”
“What’s your opinion, Avery? That the world is just a big series of accidents?”
“Maybe,” she said. “But then it gets all tangled together, like a bunch of knots. I didn’t know anybody else thought about stuff like this.”
“My guess is everybody thinks about stuff like this. Why are you living on a boat?”
“I wish I had children,” she said. “What I mean is, I wish Royce and I had children. Then maybe everything wouldn’t have gotten so messed up.”
“Or maybe it would have gotten even more messed up. Listen, it’s too hot to stay out here. Let’s ride down to Oscar’s and sit in the cool dark.”
Oscar’s, a small restaurant venerated by native Charlestonians, was located near the City Market. You rarely see tourists in Oscar’s. The decor is dated to the thirties or forties, but not in a designer way. It’s mildly creepy unless you’ve been going there all your life.
We rode in the Cadillac because I didn’t want to leave my car in a deserted place. I turned off Tina
Turner and spoke loud so Avery could hear me with the top down. “After the accident, Skip Magnus bought Royce a go-cart and brought it out to the plantation on Christmas afternoon, but our mother told him to take it home and give it to his own son. There was a lot of guilt and craziness going around.”
Oscar’s was deserted at eleven o’clock in the morning. We sat in a booth near a small stained-glass window, which gave us just enough light to peer dimly at each other. I ordered two Cokes, and Avery ordered a pitcher of beer.
“Beer? Back when you and Royce were married, I heard you were a pill addict.”
“Yes, Placidyls,” she said. “My mother and I both took them.”
“My family took Ambars,” I said. “For dieting. So it was amphetamines for us, barbiturates for y’all?”
“Doctors really didn’t know what they were doing. Lots of people got addicted.”
“Somebody gave me a Placidyl once, and I ended up in a diner shouting about some movie star, with a fork jammed into my cheek.”
“You get used to them, but they were very hard to kick. I had a convulsion once, trying to detox myself without medical help.”
“Did you do LSD and all that stuff?”
“Only marijuana. But I heard you did all of it.”
“Yes. My brain’s not completely fried, but it’s been, let us say, sautéed. Even now, if I’m too tired, I can look down at a rug and see it jump into 3-D. Or wood grain starts moving like it’s alive. After I got sober, I had awful anxiety attacks. But it’s hard to know what’s inborn and what’s from the drugs.”
Up close, our eyes uncovered by dark glasses, I glimpsed something. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“Sorry for what, Ellen? Don’t apologize for your brother.”
“Avery, are you an alcoholic?”
She finished the first glass of beer and poured another while I glugged down my Coke. “I’ll bet you see an alcoholic under every rock.”
“Maybe I just see that you’re unhappy.”
Tomb of the Unknown Racist Page 11