by Pat Conroy
“Too much wine taste,” Leah said, wrinkling her pretty nose.
It was a windless night, and the air smelled of rosemary as Ledare lit eight candles around the terrace and I laid out the dessert. We sat beneath a trellis of yellow roses and I cut off roses for Leah and Ledare. When I smelled the flowers I thought of South Carolina and quickly put them away. The yellow jackets had already retired for the evening, and the pigeons moaned in their invisible nests on the rooftops and an ambulance raced along the streets beside the river with its siren caroling its eerie two-note melody.
“Oh, Daddy,” Leah said suddenly, bringing both hands to her mouth. “I forgot. You got a telegram. Antonio brought it up to Maria, and Maria gave it to me before she went home.”
“I’m glad you forgot it. Nothing good can come from a telegram. Whatever it says will ruin this meal and give us indigestion. I can’t think of a single reason why we should stop eating to read something which can only mean trouble.”
“Jack,” said Ledare. “It could be urgent.”
Leah had already darted out of her chair and was in headlong flight through the next room. By the time I called out to her, she had descended the first five steps of the circular staircase. We could hear her running through the long hallway to her bedroom. Then her footsteps ran back toward us as a violinist played “Für Elise” for the early diners at Er Giggetto.
“There,” Leah said, laying the telegram beside my place. “Special delivery.”
I had a premonition as I studied the yellow envelope with its opaque cataract window. I smelled the yellow roses in the trellis again.
“I’ll open it after we finish.”
“How can you eat when something important might have happened?” Ledare asked.
“Someone might have left you a million dollars,” said Leah.
“Too much television for you, my dear.”
“This isn’t a television show,” Ledare said. “This is real life. That’s a real telegram. Read it.”
Carefully, I opened the envelope. The telegram read: “Come home. Mom’s dying of cancer. Dupree.”
I rose and walked to the edge of the terrace and stared out to the dark strip that was the river and at the lights on the hill above Trastevere. Ledare took the telegram and read it with a gasp.
Then to my surprise, I laughed, an idiot’s chuckle that I couldn’t suppress. It broke loose all the inhibitions that clustered about those seven words, arranged like forbidden fruit in the telegram. I howled with laughter that was both helpless and pain-filled.
“Jack,” Ledare said. “Please let me in on the joke. I can think of lots of ways one might react to a telegram like that. But laughter’s not one of them.”
“My mother’s not even sick,” I said. “She’s just after something. Something big. Lucy’s a great strategist.”
“How do you know, Daddy?” Leah said, taking the telegram from Ledare. When she read it she broke into tears and went to Ledare for comfort. The telegram had opened up an old family wound that I had long forgotten. I did not know how to begin to explain to either Ledare or my daughter the scenes from my life with my mother where she had used the imminence of her own demise.
“Mom does this to get attention,” I said, realizing I was convincing no one. “This is an old story between us.”
“Don’t you think you should call your brother and find out?” Ledare suggested.
“If you sent me a telegram saying you were sick, Daddy,” Leah said, sobbing, “I’d go to you.”
“Laughter,” Ledare said. “That’s the last thing I’d expect out of you. Lucy may not be perfect, but she’s certainly worth a tear or two.”
“I’m telling you, she’s not dying of cancer. I look bad to you right now, but if you place this moment in time, my reaction’s perfectly reasonable, even predictable.”
“Why are you laughing when my grandmother is dying? What would you think if I laughed when I heard you were dying?” said Leah.
She began to weep quietly again and Ledare took her into her arms.
I looked at them both for a moment, then finally said, “I didn’t prepare you very well for this moment, Leah, because I never thought it would happen. I thought my parents would die and get buried and none of my family would bother me about it. My express wishes were that none of my brothers, parents, or any member of my family would ever bother my sorry ass again. But I guess I was wrong.”
“It’s my family too, Daddy.”
“Only in the abstract. You haven’t made eye contact with any of them in years, and you don’t remember a single thing about them. My mother’s not dying. She’s acting out. She’s got something spectacular up her sleeve.”
“Cancer’s not spectacular enough, Jack?” Ledare said, still stroking Leah’s long dark hair.
“She says she has cancer. If my mother claimed it was a nice day, I wouldn’t believe it unless she took a lie detector test and had a notarized letter of confirmation from the weatherman. Look. Mom’s told us she was dying of cancer before. This is an old trick of hers. She’s the type of woman who thinks that cancer’ll elicit sympathy from her callous and ungrateful children.”
“None of you will care if this poor woman is dying?” Ledare asked in amazement.
“You’re not listening to what I just told you. She did this same thing fifteen years ago. I’ve seen this play before, and so have all my brothers. Look, I’ll prove it. Come down to the living room and I’ll put in a call to my meddling brother Dupree, and I’ll let you listen in on the other line, Leah. You can interpolate how the conversation’s going, Ledare, by listening to my side of the good-natured family banter. The McCalls of Waterford—we’re known for the high hilarity of our family brouhahas, the nuclear potential of our rapier-like wit …”
“What means this word ‘brouhaha’?” Leah said.
“ ‘What means this word, “brouhaha”?’ ” I repeated. “Do you think I’ve kept this poor child in Italy too long? She’s losing all the natural rhythms of her native tongue.”
Leah lay down on my bed next to the telephone and I went to the other phone and dialed my brother’s number in Columbia, six time zones away in a pretty house near the university.
After the telephone began to ring, I asked Leah, “You there, sweetheart?”
“I’m lying on your bed, Daddy. I’ll be listening to every word.”
“Did I ever tell you that you were the greatest little girl who ever lived on the planet Earth?”
“About a hundred times. But you’re prejudiced. You’re my father.”
Then Dupree McCall picked up the phone and said “Hello?” in an accent and intonation that I would have recognized had I been gone from South Carolina for a hundred years.
“Hello?” Dupree said again.
“Dupree, it’s me, Jack. Jack McCall. Your brother.”
There was a long silence.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t have a brother named Jack. The name’s familiar, and I’ve heard legends about the boy’s existence, but, sorry, pal, I can’t help you. As far as I know, there’s no brother named Jack in my family.”
“Very funny, Dupree. I’ll accept some good-natured ribbing about my disappearance from the family circle, but not much.”
“Oh, did it appear I was being good-natured? Excuse me, you rotten son of a bitch. I’m mad as hell and I plan to beat the shit out of you as soon as I see your sorry ass …”
“Say hello to Uncle Dupree, Leah,” I said.
“Hello, Uncle Dupree. This is your niece, Leah. I can’t wait to meet you.”
“Leah, sweetheart,” said Dupree, nonplused. “Forget what I just said to your daddy. I was just joking with that good-for-nothing scoundrel. How are you, baby?”
“I’m just fine, Uncle Dupree. I’m going to be nine my next birthday.”
“I got a boy that’s nine, name of Priolieu.”
“What a pretty name. I’ve never heard of it.”
“I married a Charleston g
irl. They name all their kids last names. It’s an odd habit, ask your old man.”
“I got your telegram, Dupree. That’s why I’m calling.”
“Could I talk to your father alone, honey?” Dupree said. “I know why he wanted you on the phone, but he’ll explain everything to you after we’ve finished talking. I want to talk to him brother-to-brother. Is that all right, Leah?”
“Of course, Uncle Dupree. Is it okay, Daddy?”
“It’s fine, darling. I’ll tell you everything after we hang up.”
“Hey, Leah,” Dupree said. “You got lots of people over here who love you. We don’t know you very well, but we’re waiting for the chance.”
Leah hung up the phone. “The telegram, Dupree.”
“You’re calling to see if it’s bullshit, right?”
“You’re getting warm. I roared laughing when I read it. My daughter and Ledare Ansley, who’s here in Rome, seem to think it denotes a certain shallowness in my makeup.”
“Every one of the brothers who got the news laughed.”
“All my brothers laughed too,” I said to Ledare, who was watching as I talked. Leah went and sat beside her on the sofa. They looked to me like a gathering of a grand jury.
“Listen, Jack, I know you’re wondering,” Dupree said, “if I’m lying about Mom and her condition. Let me put it this way, Tiger. Do you think I would gather together in one room the four biggest assholes I’ve ever met just to satisfy a lifetime of white lies?”
“No, it seems out of the question,” I admitted. “What kind of cancer does she have?”
“I’m not answering that question,” Dupree said. “I’ve still got rights.”
“You’re not going to tell me …” I said, knowing instantly what he was going to say.
“Go to the head of the class,” Dupree said. “You’re the first one to guess. If you think about it, God does have a certain wry sense of the absurd. Mom’s got leukemia.”
I shouted and began laughing again as Leah and Ledare looked at each other with expressions of horror.
“Is this another lie?” I said, getting control of myself again.
“It’s the living truth,” Dupree said. “It’s what’s going to kill our mother.” He started to say more, then stopped, and I could hear his tone change.
“She’s in a coma, Jack. She may not come out of it. She wants you to come,” Dupree continued. “She asked me earlier to call you. I told her I had enough problems without eating your ration of shit.”
“What’s that sound?” I asked.
“What sound?”
“Are you crying, Dupree?”
“Just a bit. So fucking what?”
“I’ve never heard you cry before.”
“Get used to it, pal. Mom’s dying. You can laugh all you want to, but I’ve been in there to see her. It’s bad, Jack, and I’m not sure there’s much time.”
I looked at my watch and thought about plane schedules, reservations, and when the Alitalia office opened the next morning.
“I’ll be in Savannah tomorrow evening. Can you pick me up at the airport?”
“Dallas wants to get you. I’ve already called Shyla’s parents and told them you were coming.”
“Why the hell did you do that?”
“The papers you signed said the grandparents had visitation rights.”
“Not in Italy, they don’t.”
“You’ve proven that. They want to have a peace parley. I think it’s a good idea.”
“Did they tell you Martha was over here?”
“She called to tell me she was going.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
“You haven’t talked to me in years, Jack.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know when I’m arriving.”
“Are you bringing Leah?”
“Not this trip. Good-bye, Dupree.”
I hung up the phone, walked to the window, and stared down to the traffic of our austerely beautiful piazza.
“I’ve got to go to South Carolina, Leah,” I said. “I’ll only stay a few days. If my mother dies, I’ll fly you over for the funeral. If she doesn’t, we’ll go back next summer. It’s time you were reunited with Frankenstein’s family.”
“You were wrong to laugh, weren’t you, Daddy?” Leah asked.
“It appears I was very wrong.”
“Are you sad about your mama?” she said.
I looked at my daughter and felt the mortal tenderness I always felt for this child who had given me most of what passes for meaning in my life.
“I’ve always been sad about my mother,” I said. “But now, I’d better call Maria and tell her to pack a suitcase tonight.”
“Go pack,” Ledare ordered. “Leah and I have things to talk about.”
I was breaking a solemn vow I had made after Shyla had leapt from a bridge in Charleston. I was going home.
Part II
Chapter Nine
Not having a daughter was the great sadness of my mother’s life. She had produced a houseful of boys to raise and the noise level was always too high and the rooms overheated with testosterone and the sheer energy of roughhousing and life lived by the seat of the pants. All her life she added to her doll collection, which she planned to pass on to the daughter who was never born. Lucy McCall had always appeared too breakable and glasslike to have produced such a tall and boisterous tribe. My mother carried an ache inside her always that I am sure the birth of a daughter would have done much to alleviate. We had made her life boy-haunted, son-possessed. If there was such a thing as being too male, we McCall brothers embodied it.
I saw my brother Dallas before he saw me. He was the third son and the only one who had followed my father’s footsteps into the practice of law. Dallas had long ago become expert at hiding the rough edges of himself and keeping his darkness undercover.
We shook hands and exchanged pleasantries in the most formal manner.
“You never said good-bye to any of us,” Dallas said as we walked to the baggage claim.
“I was in a hurry,” I said, shaking his hand. “Good-bye.”
“Joking about it’s just going to make it worse,” Dallas said.
“You’ve got a lot of answering to do.”
“I’ve got no answering to do, Dallas.”
“You can’t just walk back into a family’s life after five years just like nothing happened …”
“Yes, I can. I’m an American and a free man and I was born into a democratic society and there’s no goddamn law in the world that says I have to have a fucking thing to do with my weird-ass family.”
“Only laws of decency apply,” Dallas said as we waited for the luggage. “You should have brought Leah—we need to get to know her and she deserves to know the other members of her family.”
“Leah doesn’t know what the word ‘family’ means,” I said. “I admit it might screw her up in the long run. But it also might make her the healthiest human being on earth.”
“Sounds like a test tube baby to me,” said Dallas.
“Would you rather have been a test tube baby or be raised by Mom and Dad, just like we were?”
“He’s leading the witness, Your Honor,” Dallas said to an imaginary judge.
“How are you raising your boys, Dallas?” I asked.
“I tell them that the only thing they’ve got to look out for is … everything. Be careful of everything. Hide your head and cover your ass and always make sure you carry a flashlight and dry matches.”
“McCalls,” I laughed. “You’re raising them to be McCalls.”
“No, that’s what I’m raising them to watch out for,” Dallas said. “You haven’t asked how Mom’s doing.”
“How’s Mom doing?” I said.
“She’s worse today.”
“Which hospital’s she in?”
“She insisted on staying in Waterford.”
“You didn’t take her to Charleston or Savannah? You put her in the goddamn Wate
rford hospital? Why don’t you just put a gun to her temple and blow her brains out? She’s got leukemia, Dallas. You go to the Waterford hospital for hangovers and blood blisters and cold sores, but never for anything serious. Would you go to the goddamn local hospital if you had leukemia?”
“Hell no,” he admitted. “But Mom insisted on Waterford. A lot of new talent’s come to town. We even got our own surgeon.”
“Our mother’s dead meat,” I said. “She’ll be killed by her own stupidity. Serious diseases require serious doctors and serious doctors go to serious cities to make serious money. Loser doctors go to loser towns the same way that shit floats downstream. There’s my baggage.”
“Do I have to listen to grief from you about the lousy medical care we’re giving to the mother you’ve ignored for five years?” he said. “Dupree’s cabling you was not universally applauded.”
“I wish he hadn’t,” I snapped as I removed my bag from the conveyor belt and started following the crowd out toward the parking lot.
“Call us old-fashioned,” he said, taking my briefcase. “We come from that school of thought that thinks it’s proper to cable a son when his mother has made that particular request.”
“You should’ve done it after she was dead.”
“Mom’s changed a lot in the last five years. Too bad you didn’t get to see any of those changes. Her new husband’s been good for her.”
“Do I have to meet her new husband?” I asked. The thought of adding any more emotional weight to my coming home seemed unbearable. I had completely forgotten that I might have to meet my new stepfather for the first time.
“I haven’t even begun to figure out my own father,” I protested. “I see no reason to muddy up the waters and try to begin a relationship with a man who’s only committed a single crime.”
“What crime has poor Jim Pitts committed?”
“He married the woman who ruined my life and made it impossible for me to find happiness during this lifetime.”
Dallas laughed and said, “She was a rookie when she raised you. Just getting started. It was the youngest kids who felt the full flowering of her genius.”
“Lucky me,” I said. “Funny about Mom. I think I’ve been mad at her my whole life, yet I adore her. I can’t bear to think of her hurting or in trouble.”