Tell Me a Story

by Cassandra King Conroy

  When I woke at eight the next morning, I splashed water on my face, brushed my teeth, and ran my fingers through my hair. I looked like a fool in the same pantsuit I’d worn to dinner, but too bad. Nobody’d see me. When I heard the upstairs door open, I brewed coffee in the little hotel pot.

  Pat came downstairs dressed in his suit, and I smiled as I handed him a cup of coffee. Without asking, I figured he’d like it with plenty of cream and sugar. “You didn’t have to dress up on my behalf,” I teased.

  He sipped the coffee eagerly and gave me a thumbs-up. I’d guessed correctly. Then he sat on the sofa and motioned me to sit beside him. “You’re not going to believe what I have to do today,” he said.

  “Preach a funeral?” I guessed, then froze at his expression. “Oh God, Pat—don’t tell me—”

  He nodded. “Yep. I’m giving the eulogy for a friend in Atlanta this afternoon. Going straight there from here.” He waved me off as I stammered my regrets, wondering if I was doomed to stick my foot in my mouth every time I saw him. Maybe we were better off staying phone friends.

  After asking how I’d slept on the sofa, Pat picked up the phone and called room service. Without asking, he ordered the All-American breakfast for one. I couldn’t resist teasing him again and said, “For one? You’re not eating anything?”

  “Can’t,” he said. “I’d hoped to spend some time with you this morning, but I’ve got to get on the road.”

  “You drove from South Carolina?” I asked, confused. Hadn’t my friend at AUM picked him up at the airport? Pat went on to explain that the funeral had changed his plans, then he reached for the phone again to call for his rental car and a bellman to take his suitcase down.

  As we waited, Pat said, “If my friend had died a few days later, I would’ve been out of the country. I’m about to travel to Asia and will be gone for a couple of weeks.”

  “Asia? How fabulous! Have you been before?”

  He hadn’t, and we talked about his trip, where’d he be and what he hoped to see. He asked for my address and said he’d send me postcards from exotic locales. He didn’t mention if the trip was business or pleasure, and I didn’t ask. Although we chatted easily, there was a bit of a distance between us that morning. He was preoccupied, his mind already on the road to Atlanta and the sad occasion that awaited him.

  The bellman arrived to pick up the suitcase, and Pat told him that he’d be right down. I joined him by the door to say our goodbyes. He gave me a long hug, then patted my back. “Sorry things turned out this way, kiddo. Typical of my shitty life. I didn’t even get a chance to hear what’s going on with you.”

  “Not much to hear,” I told him. “I’m just sorry about your friend but hope your trip to Asia turns out to be good. Maybe you’ll get some rest.”

  He frowned down at me. “I shouldn’t have invited you to come all the way over here for this. After last night, the least I could’ve done is gotten my fat ass up and taken you out for a proper breakfast. I’m sorry that things didn’t turn out the way I planned.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I had a great time. It was a thrill for me to meet Anne Siddons and see her receive the award. Your introduction was fabulous.” I gave him a gentle nudge out the door. “But you’d better get on the road so you’ll make it to the funeral in time.”

  He’d barely gone when the breakfast arrived, and I realized how hungry I was. Sitting down to the lavish spread, I thought again about Pat and what an incredibly nice person he was. Despite having to go to a funeral for a friend, he’d thought to order me breakfast. I wished I were half as thoughtful; if so, I wouldn’t have let him get off without making sure he took some food with him. I couldn’t help but feel guilty enjoying the breakfast that the conference provided for him—though not guilty enough to turn it down. I should’ve made him take some coffee, at least. Oh well. As Lady Macbeth said, what’s done is done and can’t be undone. Next time, I’d do better.

  If there is a next time, I thought as I closed the door of the fancy suite behind me and headed toward the elevator. Pat was off to Asia, and me back to my teaching. Who knew if our paths would ever cross again?

  A couple of days later, a surprise. I came in from my night class to see the answering machine blinking. Pressing the button, I heard a familiar voice and I smiled, remembering.

  “I’m about to leave for Asia but I’ll be back in two weeks, and I’d like to see you again,” Pat said. “I had a really good time, King-Ray. I liked having you with me. I mean that. Having you with me felt . . .” There was a pause as he searched for the word. “Right. It felt right.”

  Chapter 4

  Going Courting

  Our potential romance (or whatever you wanted to call it) was far from smooth sailing after such a tenuous start. In March 1997, Pat called when he returned from his two-week trip to Asia. His call wasn’t as unexpected as it’d been in the previous two years; while he was away he’d sent a couple of entertaining, albeit impersonal, postcards. (One said, I’ve been making waves in Hong Kong and Thailand and have been loving my first trip through Asia. I loved seeing you in Montgomery and Birmingham and delighted that you’re happy in Gadsden.) Despite the fact that we hadn’t spoken for a few weeks, Pat plunged right in to the reason for his call, without preamble or as much as a how-d’you-do. When was my spring break? he wondered. He would like to pay me a visit.

  It was coming up the following week, I told him, but unfortunately I wouldn’t be home then. I was speaking at a writers’ group in Savannah and would be traveling with my friends Bill and Loretta. Pat groaned in frustration. Ordinarily he’d be at his home on Fripp Island, only an hour from Savannah, but that week he had to be in Atlanta on business. It was one of the reasons he’d hoped to arrange a visit, he added, since Atlanta was only a couple of hours away from where I lived.

  The man whom I’d found to be as awkward and inept with pursuing women as he’d claimed was surprisingly insistent. When I expressed regrets that things wouldn’t work out for him to visit, he ignored me and pushed on. Wait—wouldn’t I be traveling through Atlanta on my way to Savannah? he demanded. Matter of fact, we were, I told him, and we’d be staying overnight with some friends there. Pat thought a minute then asked the question: Would it be okay with my friends if we met up somewhere so he could take me out to dinner? He’d been trying to find a time to take me to dinner for so long that it’d be a shame not to at least give it a try.

  It was a date, and the arrangements made. My friends dropped me off at a prearranged place convenient to them, where Pat waited in his car. From there he and I went on to have dinner at an authentic Italian restaurant called Abruzzo’s. Small, dark, and charming, Abruzzo’s was exactly as I imagined a restaurant on a backstreet of Rome to be (strictly in my imagination since I’d never been to Italy). Looking back, I can’t believe that I wasn’t more apprehensive about the evening; the last time he and I were together had been pretty awkward, what with the table arrangements at the awards dinner, the drunken poet, the hotel room, and his rush to get off the next morning. But strange as it was, I felt like I was meeting up with a dear old friend, and he appeared to be equally relaxed with me. Pleased to hear that I loved Italian food (an understatement!), Pat described the dishes he ordered for me and entertained me with stories of his years in Italy. During the 1980s and his unfortunate second marriage (his words), he and his family had lived in Rome for three years. They’d loved it and planned to live there forever, until his mother got sick and they moved back to be with her.

  To my surprise and without prompting from me, he began to open up as he talked about the joy of the Italian years, and how terribly things fell apart after their return to the States. “My ex-wife and I went through a nasty, bitter divorce a few years after moving back,” he told me. “We were in San Francisco then. I’d been so crazy in love with her that it seemed impossible that things could turn so ugly and sordid. But we were both such damaged people that the chaos of our life together finally drove us apart.”


  I sat back in my chair, stunned. Thinking about my own marriage, I wondered if he’d hit on something profound. Maybe it didn’t really matter how much two people loved each other when they pledged to be together forever. Despite the love and passion they felt, forces already in play could tear them apart. Wouldn’t bringing two damaged souls together only create twice as much chaos? Could it be that some lovers are just doomed from day one because of what each brings to the other? Even though their own union might be ill-fated, they could marry someone else and live in perfect harmony. I asked Pat if that’s what he was saying, and he considered it, frowning.

  “Hmm. It’s certainly something to think about.” He swirled his wineglass around and stared off into the distance. “My former wife and I? Our lives were chaotic from the first day we met. We lived in such a toxic environment it’s a miracle any of us survived. Both of us came from failed first marriages, and we were emotional messes when we met. Lenore’s ex was a madman, and he did everything imaginable to tear us apart. She’d tried to run him over in her car; he and I fought and I ended up in jail for assault; he sued over and over for custody, then their daughter accused him of sexual abuse. Things went from bad to worse.”

  “Worse?” I stared at him in disbelief. “Jesus Christ!”

  “Oh yeah, it got a lot worse. Their godawful custody battle was one of the reasons we moved to Rome, to get away from him. We were happy there,” he added, his voice wistful. “If we had stayed, I think we’d still be together. Our daughter was born there, and I fell in love all over again.”

  “Your youngest daughter, Susannah—the great gift of your middle age,” I said with a smile, quoting from the dedication page of The Prince of Tides.

  Pat’s face fell and his pale blue eyes darkened. “Ah! That’s another story, King-Ray.”

  I was taken aback by the change in his mood. “Oh dear. And I’m afraid it’s not a happy one. Right?”

  When he didn’t respond, I put a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry, Pat. I didn’t mean to pry.” I cast around desperately for another subject. Holding up my glass, I motioned to the waiter for a refill. “What kind of wine is this? It’s really good.”

  Pat motioned for a refill as well, then he smiled ruefully at me. “It’s okay, King-Ray. The truth is, I need to talk about all this shit. It’s going to kill me otherwise.”

  For the next hour or so, over course after course of fabulous Italian specialties that the chef had prepared just for him, Pat told me more stories of his tempestuous life. From time to time I interrupted with “Wait a minute, you lost me,” or “Remind me who this person is?” Otherwise I listened wide-eyed. It was as if he were reading from the books he’d written, and I found my head spinning as I tried to keep fiction separated from real life. The old adage “Write what you know” took on a whole new meaning that night. No writer has ever taken that advice quite so literally as Pat Conroy.

  He’d written Beach Music, Pat told me, as a love letter to Susannah, whom he called Leah in the book. “She was the most magical kid you’ve ever seen.” His voice was filled with so much longing that it broke my heart for him. “God, I adored her! But I knew if I left her mother, I’d never see her again. She was eleven when we split up, thirteen when the divorce went through.”

  I did a quick calculation. “And you haven’t seen her since then?”

  He shook his head. “Barely. We were living in San Francisco at the time. In California, a thirteen-year-old can choose whether or not to see either parent.”

  “That doesn’t sound right to me. A child that young shouldn’t have such a burden.”

  “I don’t blame her for refusing to see me,” Pat admitted. “I was severely depressed and drinking too much—and I mean, way too much. Then I got involved with someone else, which was another nail in the coffin. I was a mess, a suicidal mess. Most of my time I spent trying to come up with the best way to kill myself.”

  I found myself telling him something I’d never told anyone, except a therapist I saw after my depression got so bad it scared me. “I’ve been there, Pat. A few years ago, I had my final exit all planned out, down to the last detail. It was a good one too, foolproof. The only thing that stopped me was my boys. I was afraid their father’d be so mad at me for offing myself that he’d take it out on them.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t,” he said, and reached for my hand.

  “I’m glad you didn’t either.”

  Before we parted that evening, me to Savannah and Pat back to the business that had brought him to Atlanta, he insisted I schedule a time for him to visit Gadsden. Here was the thing, he said. He saw on a map that Gadsden was about an hour’s drive from the little town his mother was born in, where he’d been planning to visit for a long time. Might as well kill two birds with one stone, right?

  Much later, Mr. Romantic would tell me that was sheer malarkey; he had no desire to see either his mother’s old homeplace or Gadsden. He could’ve fooled me (and did, obviously). But he seemed so sincere that I had no reason to doubt him. Once again we parted ways with nothing more than a friendly hug, friendly goodbyes, and friendly plans to get together again.

  * * *

  I had my first real indication of where we stood when Pat’s long-awaited visit finally came about, a couple of weeks later. After our heart-to-heart in Atlanta, I was anxious to talk to him in depth again, and not just on the phone. His revelations about his “screwed-up life” had both haunted and intrigued me, and I wanted to hear more. A longer visit would be the perfect chance for us to talk in more depth.

  Typical of our unusual relationship, I had no idea what to expect from his visit, however. When he’d called to ask where I wanted to go to dinner when he came to town, I told him I’d rather cook. Surely he was tired of eating out, right? He’d love nothing more than dinner at my place, he responded enthusiastically. That was settled, but I didn’t know if he planned on staying with me, nor could I think of a polite way to ask him. He hadn’t inquired about a hotel, but neither had he asked about my living arrangements and whether I had an extra room. Giving him the address, I’d described a small circle of town houses and told him that most of the occupants were other old ladies like me.

  I was equally unsure of what we’d do during his visit, how long he’d stay, or anything else. Nothing of particular interest was going on in Gadsden that weekend; no plays or concerts or water events at our one great tourist attraction, the majestic Coosa River. Should I plan on our doing something in Birmingham? I wondered. I figured my illustrious guest would end up so bored he’d run back to South Carolina the following day. I led a blissfully quiet life, bound to be dull compared to his in the fast lane. Each night when I got in from classes, I poured myself a glass of wine and turned on bluegrass music. Because I was a recovering vegetarian, my supper was usually pasta and a salad, which I ate while marking essays or making lesson plans. Things had fallen into a predictable pattern, and I reveled in my cherished solitude and new sense of serenity. I’d been standoffish enough with my other involvement that he’d gotten the hint and wasn’t coming around as often.

  How could I possibly know that after one lovely but platonic dinner date, Mr. Conroy was about to come storming into my placid life with the force of a category 5 hurricane, and that nothing afterward would ever be the same?

  Friday evening, Pat arrived at my door starved and appreciative of the fancy dinner I’d labored over half the day. At the community college, the faculty’s forty-hour workload was crammed into four ten-hour days, Monday to Thursday, but no one complained about having Fridays off. I spent most of the day cooking, cleaning, and arranging flowers from my little patio garden. Since I had mostly herbs, I used rosemary as greenery to fill in my scraggly bouquets of daisies. Centerpiece in place, I ironed napkins and pulled out the pottery dishes I used for company. Because the kitchen only had room for a small breakfast table (a yard sale special), I decided we’d eat on the patio by candlelight. At a thrift store, I’d found a couple
of wicker chairs with a table and turned the patio into a lovely place for alfresco dining.

  My town house had two identical bedrooms upstairs, so I fixed up the guest room with fragrant rosemary and fresh flowers, bottled water, and fluffy towels folded on the daybed. Just in case. I still had no inkling of whether or not Pat planned to stay with me. Late afternoon when he arrived with wine, a bouquet of roses, and an overnight bag, I figured it out. “Come upstairs,” I told him after we’d greeted each other with a hug, “and I’ll show you where the bathroom is. And you can put your stuff in your room.” Paying no attention whatsoever to my gesture toward the guest room, Pat plopped his overnight case down in my bedroom across the landing. Okaaay, I thought, hiding a smile. Looks like I’d be taking the daybed, then.

  After all my fretting and worrying, Pat’s first visit to Gadsden went much better than I could’ve imagined. As we’d done from the start, we fell into cozy, comfortable conversation and could’ve spent the whole weekend sitting on the patio or sofa talking, talking, talking. But I was determined to be a good hostess, so I showed him the sights, what little there were to see. He loved the Coosa River as much as I did, and Noccalula Falls Park, with its trails and caves, aboriginal fort, and re-created pioneer homestead. The ninety-foot falls was where an Indian princess (of course) had flung herself over the rapids rather than agree to a loveless marriage (a lesson to be learned there, I told Pat). He and I tossed crumbs to the ducks at the foot of the falls, just like my little grandsons did on their visits. At our only museum in town Pat lingered over old pictures of the Coosa when it teemed with steamboats.