Beach Music

by Pat Conroy

  “I’m going home, Mike,” Ledare said.

  “Please stay, Ledare,” Betsy said. “We can talk about the kids while the men talk about business.”

  Ledare looked at Capers with an expression that was startled, birdlike. “I can’t believe she said that to me.”

  “Betsy has this old-fashioned idea that you might like to hear about the progress of our mutual children.”

  “Everybody into the den,” Mike ordered. “I’ll pour the cognac.”

  The tension in the room made the air strange and electric. While Mike poured the cognac, I tried to guess at Betsy’s age, then remembered she was twenty-five. I knew I had seen her before, but could not place where. Then it came to me and I laughed out loud.

  “I was thinking of doing several things, Jack,” Ledare said. “Laughing was not one of them.”

  I pointed at Betsy, barely able to speak. “Betsy was Miss South Carolina. Capers dumped you for a Miss South Carolina. Betsy Singleton of Spartanburg.”

  “I was very proud to serve my state for an entire year,” Betsy said and I liked her scrappiness. “And to represent South Carolina at Atlantic City before the whole world was my happiest moment before my wedding day.”

  “I’ve been living in Europe too long, Betsy. I forgot girls like you existed. You might win this governor’s thing, Capers. South Carolina might just buy this shit.”

  “Give her a break,” Mike said. “She’s just a kid.”

  “She’s been wonderful to our children,” Capers said. “Ledare will be glad to tell you that.”

  “Betsy has been very kind to me also,” Ledare said.

  “That’s so sweet of you to say,” Betsy said.

  “Ledare didn’t mean a word of it,” I said. “It reeked of insincerity.”

  “Let me be the judge of that, please,” Ledare shot back icily.

  “You gave up Ledare Ansley for Betsy,” I said to Capers. “What a shallow fuck you are, Capers.”

  “Jack, please, please control it, man,” Mike said.

  “Kiss my ass, Mike.” And I turned to him. “I’ll never forget what Capers Middleton did if I live to be a thousand and I’ll never forgive the son of a bitch either. What the hell did you think was going to happen when you brought us together? That we were going to go out to a blind and shoot ducks together tomorrow?”

  “This was a very cruel idea, Mike,” Ledare said, suddenly rising and taking her snifter and pouring her cognac into Mike’s glass. “You shouldn’t have done it to Jack or me. You shouldn’t have done it to Capers or Betsy.”

  “How else can I get us all back together?” Mike said. “It’s for the project. Remember who’s producing this project. Please stay.”

  But Ledare was already striding with her pretty long legs out the back door. Mike followed her, trying to talk her into returning, but I heard the motor crank and knew the boat was moving toward Waterford.

  I turned to study Capers’ yearling wife, Betsy.

  She was one of those Southern girls too pretty for me by half. Betsy looked like a poster child for an ad extolling the virtues of drinking milk. Everything about her struck me as overdone and combed out and thought through. Her perkiness was of that dreamy, mechanical sort that often wins beauty queens Miss Congeniality trophies. She possessed the kind of looks that inspires praise but not lust. Her smile made me want to ask for her dentist’s name.

  “You’re twenty-five, aren’t you, Betsy?” I asked.

  “Are you running a census?” Betsy fired back.

  “Yes, she’s twenty-five,” Capers said.

  “Let me guess. A Tri Delt at South Carolina.”

  “Bingo,” Mike said, coming into the room again.

  “Junior League.”

  “Bingo,” Mike said again.

  “How did you know that?” Betsy asked.

  “You’ve got the Junior League squint. All sorority girls in college learn to squint that way to make their husbands feel properly adored when they utter some inanity.”

  “You’re stereotyping me, Jack,” Betsy said and I saw real fire in her.

  “The South stereotyped you, Betsy. I’m just testing the limits of the stereotype.”

  Capers put his arm around his wife and said, “Betsy was raised to be a Southern belle. No harm in that.”

  “I’m proud of it,” Betsy said.

  “Southern belle,” I said. “It’s a mark of shame in the South now, Betsy. Smart women don’t call themselves that anymore. If a woman calls herself that, it usually means she’s dumb as a pinto bean. You’re obviously very bright, even though you have deplorable taste in men.”

  “I’m still a Southern belle and I think I have the best taste in men of any woman in South Carolina.”

  “I married Betsy because of her loyalty, Jack.”

  “Wrong. There’s only one real crime a man can commit that is unforgivable.”

  “What’s that?” Capers asked as Mike resumed his seat.

  “It’s unforgivable for a man of any generation—any generation—to betray and humiliate the women of his own generation by marrying a much younger woman. You didn’t marry Betsy for her loyalty, pal. You married her for her youth.”

  “There are unexpected pleasures in betrayal,” Capers said and Mike laughed in agreement. “I always liked your piety, Jack.”

  “I’m a lot cuter than the women of your generation,” Betsy said, playing up to Capers and Mike.

  “Wrong, junior Leaguer.” I could feel myself turning mean. The cognac was doing its work and I felt the thrilling disquiet that had come into the room. I took Betsy’s measure, and went for her throat. “The women of my generation were the smartest, sexiest, most fascinating women ever to grow up in America. They started the women’s liberation movement, took to the streets in the sixties to stop the unbearably stupid Vietnam War. They fought their asses off for equal rights in the workplace, went to law school, became doctors, fought the corporate fight, and managed to raise children in a much nicer way than our mothers did.”

  “Chill out, Jack,” Mike said. “Betsy’s a kid.”

  “She’s a dimwit,” I said. I turned to Betsy. “The women of my generation make men like me and Mike and your chicken-hearted husband look puny and uninteresting by comparison. Don’t talk about those women, Betsy, unless you’re on your fucking knees genuflecting out of admiration.”

  “He was in love with Ledare once, Betsy,” Capers said with his elegant composure intact. “She broke up with him just before the St. Cecelia’s ball in Charleston. Jack’s always been bitter that he comes from the lower classes.”

  “Betsy, you aren’t worthy to kiss Ledare Ansley’s panty hose,” I shot back.

  “But she married Capers, and dumped you,” Betsy said. “I do have to say she’s gone up in my estimation.”

  “I thought I could count on you to have good manners,” Mike said to me, trying to defuse the rapid escalation of the repartee. “Betsy’s a great chick. She and Capers have been out to my place in Beverly Hills a couple of times this year.”

  “I’m only trying to hurt Capers,” I said. “Because Capers knows I can write Betsy’s life story right here, this moment, in this room. I’ve met a thousand women like poor Betsy. It bothers Capers that he has married a living, breathing Southern cliché. I can tell Capers who Betsy’ll vote for in the next fifty years, how many children she’ll have, and what she’ll name them. I can tell Betsy her silver pattern, her china pattern, her father’s profession, her mother’s maiden name, and the Confederate regiment her great-great-grandfather served in at the Second Battle of Bull Run.”

  “My great-great-great-grandfather was killed at Antietam.”

  “So sorry, Betsy. These details sometimes trip me up.”

  Betsy took a sip of cognac and said, “Where’d I get my master’s, asshole?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t use language like that, darling,” Capers said.

  But I was thrilled and surprised by the comeback and said, �
��Not bad, Betsy. Complimenti. I never would’ve guessed. Every time I think I know everything there is to know about Southern women, they send me a curve ball I could never hit. That was simply terrific.”

  “I only marry smart, savvy, and beautiful women, Jack,” Capers said. “I should have proven that to you by now.”

  “Shut up, Capers,” I said. “I need to insult your wife a little more so she’ll run off in a huff.”

  “I’m thinking about kicking you out of my house, Jack,” Mike said.

  “Unfortunately, Mike, there’s a size problem,” I said. “You shut up, too, because you and I are going to have a long talk about why you set up this evening.”

  “Hey, Jack,” Betsy said. “Now I understand why your wife jumped off the bridge. I’m just amazed it took her so long.”

  “Ever say that again, Betsy, and I’ll beat up your husband. I’ll beat his face in so badly that he’ll be working in a freak show instead of the governor’s office.”

  Betsy turned toward Capers, who remained unflappable. “My husband doesn’t look scared.”

  “He’s scared. He just doesn’t show it.”

  “He went to Vietnam. You were a draft dodger.”

  “That’s right, Miss South Carolina. Funny part is, I can still kick his ass. If guys like me had gone to Vietnam, we would’ve won the war. Ponder that the next time you’re making cheese biscuits or deviled eggs.”

  “Liberals are all the same,” Betsy spat out, and she was uncomfortable on center stage. “I heard your wife was a raging feminist.”

  “We both were,” I said. “I’m raising my daughter to be one too.”

  “What good will that do her?”

  “She won’t be a fucking thing like you, Betsy,” I said, “because I’d throw my daughter off the Cooper River bridge if she was anything like you or married to someone like Capers Middleton.”

  Betsy Middleton rose with great dignity and turned to her husband. “Let’s go, Capers. We can spend the night at your mother’s. I’ll call the maid.”

  “Night, night, Betsy,” I said, hearing my voice mocking and cruel. “I remember the talent portion of your Miss America number. You twirled fire batons. I was embarrassed for my whole state and every woman in it.”

  Betsy was in tears as she left and I felt a sickening sadness overwhelm me.

  “Nice, Jack,” Mike said, shaking his head. “What a sweetheart.”

  “Call Betsy tomorrow for me, Mike,” I said. “Tell her I’m sorry and that I’m usually not such a perfect shit. It’s her husband I loathe, not her.”

  Capers Middleton seemed unruffled by my attack on his wife. His eyes were clear and blue. In this light and time, I thought he looked like a man hatched from an egg near the arctic circle.

  “If you ever did that to a woman I loved,” I said, “you’d be calling your dentist to set up a surgical appointment.”

  “Exaggeration,” said Mike, stepping between us. “It’s always limited you.”

  I looked at Mike. “A guy from Hollywood should never get into a discussion about exaggeration.”

  Capers cleared his throat as if about to speak, then looked directly at me.

  “I need your help, Jack, and I’ve missed our friendship.”

  “Listen to him, Jack,” Mike said. “Please listen to Capers. If Capers gets to be governor he plans to run for president of the United States.”

  “If he gets it I swear to God as my witness that I’ll apply for Italian citizenship,” I said.

  “I would like you to become a part of my campaign team, Jack,” Capers said.

  I looked at Mike, amazed. “Am I having trouble making myself understood to this asshole? I hate you, Capers, and besides you’re a Republican. I hate Republicans.”

  “I used to hate ’em too,” Mike admitted. “Then I got rich.”

  “Our breakup is well known in the state and that might present me some problems in the campaign.”

  “I certainly hope it presents you with a million problems and you fully deserve all of them,” I said.

  “Next month, the state newspaper is doing a long in-depth profile of me and a local TV show is almost finished with a documentary that follows my entire career through South Carolina politics.”

  “Do they do the part at the university?” I asked.

  “Both go into it,” Capers said, and there was an evenness to his voice that seemed uncanny. “Most South Carolinians think it proves my love of my country. But the downside is that others think I betrayed the trust of my closest friends. It could become a character issue and we think the Democrats are going to try to play it up.”

  “Viva le downside. If Judas Iscariot had mated with Benedict Arnold, you’d have inherited the earth.”

  “Capers has shared his vision of the state with me and if he gets elected there won’t be a more forward-looking governor in the country.”

  “Stop it, Mike. I’m getting dewy-eyed.”

  Capers continued, “What happened to us in college wouldn’t have happened at any other time except for the Vietnam War. But I was standing up for what I believed in. I thought my country was in trouble.”

  “The tears. They still come. Drivel does that to me,” I said.

  “Those were heavy times,” Mike said. “Even you have to admit that, Jack. I dodged the draft then because I thought it was the right thing to do and I didn’t want to get my ass shot off in a country I couldn’t even spell.”

  Capers added, “All of us made mistakes during the Vietnam War.”

  “I didn’t,” I said. “I didn’t make one fucking mistake during that entire war. I honored myself by being against that silly-ass war.”

  “The tide’s turning in favor of Vietnam vets,” Capers said.

  “Not with me. I’m tired of hearing Vietnam vets whine. Has there ever been a group of vets in this country who were such crybabies, who shouted ‘poor me’ so loud and so often? They seem to have absolutely no respect for themselves.”

  “A lot of us were spit on when we came back to this country,” said Capers.

  “Bullshit,” I said. “A lie. An urban myth. I’ve heard it a thousand times and I don’t believe a word of it. And it always happens in the airport.”

  “That’s where it happened to me,” said Capers.

  “If it happened as much as Vietnam vets claim it happened, no one during those years could have stood up in the airports of America with all that spittle on the floor. You’re lying, Capers, and if it happened you should have rammed the teeth down the asshole’s throat that did it. That’s what I can’t believe. A million Vietnam vets get spit on and no one loses a tooth. No wonder you lost the fucking war.”

  “Always loved this about Jack,” Mike said to Capers. “Still do. Some people may not like it, but Jack takes it to the hoop.”

  “It’s what I’ve never liked about him,” Capers said, staring at me. “In his world there’s no room for compromise, for shadings of meanings, for elbow room, for maneuvering. Yours, Jack, is a world of either-or, all or nothing. It’s a world of extremes played outside of all known margins. It always sounds sincere, but it has nothing to do with life on earth.”

  “Eloquent shit,” Mike said in admiration. “Very eloquent shit, that.”

  “I’m a flexible man,” Capers said. “It’s what brought me this far.”

  “You’re an amoral man,” I said. “That’s what’s brought you this far.”

  I walked toward the front door without saying good-bye and heard Capers’ voice behind me say, “You’ll be calling me, Jack. Because one thing I know about you. You love Jordan Elliott. That’s your weakness.”

  In a blind rage, I drove away from Mike’s place fast, spinning my mother’s tires on the dirt road that ran through the center of his property. My hands were shaking on the steering wheel and I felt cold all over, even though the April air was warm and flower-scented. I was mad enough to run over a person or a highway sign, but nothing got in my way when I hit the main high
way going west back toward the town.

  I drove straight to Ledare’s house, where she was waiting for me in a white wicker chair on the veranda. On the wicker table was a bottle of Maker’s Mark and a bucket of ice.

  I was still trembling from my confrontation with Capers and spilled some bourbon as I poured myself a drink, and then threw myself into a chair.

  “I knew you’d come. Practically dreamt it,” Ledare said. “How’d you like your encounter with the Prince of Darkness?”

  “Do you mind if I break this bottle and sever every artery and blood vessel in my body?” I said.

  Ledare kicked off her sandals and brought her feet up beneath her. I took a swallow of the bourbon.

  “I hate this town, this state, this night, those people, my past, my present, my future … The only thing I absolutely look forward to is my death. This makes me very rare among human beings, who seem to fear death above all things—but I look upon it as a long, paid vacation where I’ll never have to think about South Carolina or Capers Middleton again.”

  Ledare laughed and said, “In the movies, now’s the time for the heroine to utter a meaningful, life-affirming line. Like ‘I know that was hard, darling, but don’t you find me cute?’ You’d then look at me, desire me passionately, then realize the night was young and life is long.”

  “That’s how it works in the movies?” I asked.

  “That’s how it works in real life too,” she said.

  “So I’m supposed to find you ‘cute.’ ”

  “I’d prefer ‘darling,’ ” she said.

  I looked at her, and as always, liked what I saw.

  “I went after Betsy,” I said, moaning. “That poor woman’s never done a single thing to harm me and I went straight for her jugular. All because I wanted to get Capers.”

  “I couldn’t be more delighted,” Ledare answered. “You know, there’s nothing more humiliating than having your own children being raised by a child herself.”

  “You and I have both been sued for the custody of our children. How did Capers win? I thought I had a great chance of losing Leah and I understand why, but I bet you’re a good mother.”