The more obvious Pat’s quirks became, the happier it made me that our idiosyncrasies were compatible with each other. When they weren’t, that was okay too. We’d already discovered that our circadian rhythms were out of sync; he was a night owl who read until well after midnight while I preferred to retire and rise early. He was surprised but pleased to find that his late-night habit didn’t drive me crazy as it had his other wives and lovers. At first he was fidgety when I dozed off beside him and he kept asking me over and over if having his lamp on was bothering me. “It’s not the light,” I grumbled; “it’s you waking me up every five minutes to ask.” In new-wife mode, I instantly regretted my less-than-loving tone and added, “But you’re sweet to worry.”
Pat had other characteristics that endeared him to me. He didn’t point out my annoying habits in front of others or ask at a dinner party if I really needed that second piece of cake. If I balked at going somewhere with him, he didn’t sulk, pout, or refuse to go alone. He simply shrugged it off and went by himself, and I did the same with him. We pretty much left each other to our own devices. As time went on, our travels took us our separate ways more often than not. I figured that as long as we enjoyed our time together more than our time apart, we’d be fine.
Doing our own thing might’ve worked for us, but it tended to bother others. (“You’re leaving Pat alone for a whole month?” one of my friends screeched when my first big book tour came up. “Have you lost your mind?”) I understood what she was saying; there were certainly times when our schedules bothered Pat and me as well. One time Pat surprised me when I told him, laughing, that my ex went on a hunger strike anytime I had to be away from home. “Can’t blame him,” Pat muttered. “I hate it when you’re not here. I want you with me all the time.”
I was aghast; he’d not only encouraged me to do book promotions, he’d said I had no choice. Occupational hazard. When I said I’d much rather be home, his response was “Too bad.” He’d said he also would rather be home, but as writers we were obliged to promote our books. I wondered if he’d been teasing about being unhappy when I was away. With Pat it was impossible to tell. He always left notes for me to find on my return, some sweet and others joking. He wrote, Welcome home, darling. You were sorely missed. I fixed dinner and will come back and cook it. I missed you. But the next time his note read, Welcome back from the West Coast tour. There is boiled shrimp and a ketchup-horseradish-lemon-juice sauce in the refrigerator. I am in the bedroom becoming gay.
In truth, it thrilled me to find that Pat was the most undemanding of spouses. If my quirks bothered him, he kept it to himself. In the early days, we were too starry-eyed and drunk on love to let petty annoyances spoil things. But I also think our laissez-faire attitude set the tone of our marriage from day one. We rarely squabbled or got into those embarrassing public tiffs some couples do, where the tension makes everyone miserable. (Though we certainly would have our moments.) Coming from relationships that felt more like combat zones, our battle-weary souls craved peace. We were ready to be done with the dysfunction of our previous lives and create our own dysfunction.
My theory is, our attitude toward togetherness worked for us at that time in our lives, though it might not have if we’d been younger, with loftier expectations. Marrying after you turn fifty, especially if you’ve been around the block a few times, is quite different from marrying when you’re young and don’t know any better. On our first anniversary I told Pat that lowering my expectations about marriage had exceeded my wildest dreams. I was only halfway joking. The truth was, I’d had enough controlling, smothering, anger-fueled relationships to last me a lifetime. To me an inattentive mate was far preferable to a demanding one, and I believe that Pat felt the same way.
* * *
Undemanding though he might be, Pat was insistent about one thing at the beginning of our life together, and he made sure I heard him loud and clear. I was to take any room in the house and turn it into my own. It would be sacred space—my very own writing room.
When we first began seeing each other, Pat had been appalled to hear that I’d never claimed a space for myself in any of the houses I’d occupied in my previous marriage. But where did I write? he asked. In between student conferences, advising, marking essays, and making lesson plans, my office at the English department had served that purpose. Except for the constant interruptions, and the departmental rule that one’s office door remain open at all times so students would be encouraged to confer, my office had been a welcome haven that I’d been grateful to have. (Rather pathetically so, I realized later.)
In my previous married life, I’d never been bold enough to demand space of my own. (Or much of anything else either, which disgusts me to think back on. What was wrong with me that I ended up such a Stepford wife?) The bishop moved his preachers around to various churches, and the churches provided a nice parsonage, spacious enough for whatever size family came their way. So it wasn’t a lack of room that kept me from claiming a space of my own; it was my reticence to demand anything for myself. Why, the very idea of the pastor’s wife hogging a whole room for herself! Everyone knew that extra room had been fixed up by the parsonage committee as a study for their dear pastor, not his lowly spouse.
The irony was, like most instructors of freshman comp, I’d taught Virginia Woolf’s landmark essay on the necessity of having one’s own space, then followed up by assigning an essay on the importance of nurturing one’s creativity and valuing it enough to demand time and a place for it. I’d read hundreds of student papers and scribbled words of encouragement in the margin: “Good for you, Susie! I hope you’ll continue to nourish your artistic side.” (Hypocrisy has always been one of my most unpleasant vices.) Despite my blathering in class, it shames me to admit that I’d never had the self-respect to make demands in order to nurture my own career. Although my love of writing was an essential part of me, as essential to my well-being as air, it took me years before I’d treat my writing seriously and respectfully, let alone nourish it.
After I moved into the house on Fripp Island, I found myself yet again hesitant to claim my own space. Although it was plenty spacious for the two of us, the house was far from palatial. Made up of a living room / dining room combo, kitchen, a small den and even smaller screened porch in back, with two extra bedrooms besides the master bedroom, the house lacked an obvious space to put down my stakes. The smallest of the bedrooms had no windows so we dubbed it the “tomb room.” Since I’m claustrophobic, that one was out for me. I never liked putting guests in there either, afraid they’d be too polite to tell us they suffered the same malady. The other guest room was upstairs, the only room there, and would’ve been the ideal escape for writing. It was not only private but lovely, with a bank of windows overlooking the lagoon in back. But Pat had four daughters, and I didn’t want to be the wicked stepmother who took over everything, including the room with a view at the top of the stairs. Then they’d have no choice but to stay in the dreaded tomb room during their visits.
But Pat wouldn’t listen to my protests. I was, by God, going to have my own writing room. There was a perfectly good and private room upstairs, and he couldn’t understand why I was reluctant to take it. Finally he said that if I refused the upstairs room, he’d rent me an office elsewhere. The island had several such places, built for management but unoccupied; he was sure he could work out a deal for one of them. The man knew my heart of darkness. By then I’d been busted as an ant (I preferred to think of myself as wise and thrifty). Threatening to spend unnecessarily was sheer blackmail on Pat’s part, but it worked.
I took the room upstairs. After years without a space of my own, I felt guilty about claiming such a grand one—a feeling that lasted a whole minute at most. Other, less noble feelings took over. I had to admit that Pat had been right, absolutely unequivocally right on. Naturally he gloated when I told him so. I adored having my own space. I reveled in it. I enjoyed every minute I spent there, every butt-numbing hour that I perched on th
e daybed with my laptop on a wicker tea tray I’d found at the Salvation Army store. After I got everything set up to suit me, I wrote feverishly and for hours on end, as though I could make up for the lost years I’d spent denying myself.
Pat was pleased with himself for the gift he’d prodded me into taking, and it remains the best thing anyone has ever given me. Like a proud papa adorning a nursery, he brought presents for my room. “Thought this would look good in your office,” he’d say nonchalantly as he handed me a first edition of one of my favorite books, Cross Creek by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Knowing that I had a thing for birds, he bought bird prints to hang on the walls. His first gift to me was a painting by a local artist I admired. Beautiful in its simplicity, it shows a woman alone, propped up in a chaise with a book on her lap.
Old habits die hard, however. When guests came who balked at the tomb room, I gave over my space to them, which helped to appease any lingering guilt on my part. In addition, I couldn’t help but fret over the difference in my private space and Pat’s. His writing room was actually part of the master bedroom suite, separated by a four-paneled screen as room divider. Although he’d demanded I have a room, technically he didn’t have one himself. When I pointed that out to him, he insisted it suited him fine and had served him well for years. A hard point to argue, considering the works he’d produced there.
As long as no one bothered him, Pat was happy as a clam in his makeshift office. He was surrounded by shelf after shelf of his books, which made him happier than anything else. Since his desk faced the bay window in the back, he was turned away from anyone entering. Plus he played music full blast (mostly country music), so I could’ve driven a tank in without disturbing him. I rarely interrupted him at work unless I had to. He might be irritated by the interruption (an interview that he’d forgotten about), but to his credit he didn’t take it out on the messenger. He’d sigh, cuss a blue streak, then drag himself up. I wasn’t the only hypocrite in the family: he’d then greet the dreaded visitor with a hearty welcome and big smile, as if the interruption was the best thing that’d happened to him all day.
Although Pat didn’t take it out on me for calling his attention to a forgotten appointment or visitor, it occurred to him how he could make himself look good when it happened. His method would become a bone of contention between us, but he never gave it up, no matter how much I bitched about it. Once he figured out that he could always blame it on me, he beat that dead horse over and over. The first time he did it, I couldn’t believe my ears. I’d brought him out of his room for a reporter from Charleston who’d had to wait several long minutes for Pat to shower and dress. Although he’d totally forgotten about the interview, Pat greeted the reporter with a hearty handshake and a newly minted excuse. “So sorry to keep you waiting,” I heard him say on my way back upstairs. “My wife forgot to tell me that I had an interview today.”
Full of himself for his brilliant way of casting the blame elsewhere, he grew expansive with his fabrication. “That’s why I’ve given my wife the nickname Helen Keller,” he went on to explain with a laugh. “She never tells me anything.” Eventually the family heard it so much that they’d beat Pat to the punch when they arrived for a visit: “Let me guess, Pat. Helen Keller didn’t tell you we were coming, right?”
* * *
Since neither of us liked to interrupt the other at work, we came up with a plan. Pat told me to yell at him if I needed anything, and he’d do the same for me. Occasionally he’d bring lunch upstairs, knocking politely before entering. You don’t have to knock, I’d tell him. Anyone bringing me food was more than welcome to barge in. If he was feeling especially romantic, he’d adorn the tray with a flower. Thanks to Fripp’s deer population, which devoured anything green and growing, the only flower we had in the yard was the poisonous oleander. But it’s the thought that counts.
If I was still working by late afternoon, Pat would scramble around and find us something for dinner. Unless we were having company and wanted some of Pat’s fabulous Italian dishes, I’d pretty much taken over our daily dinners. Although I preferred Pat’s cooking to mine, and it was a luxury to have someone cook for me, I didn’t have much choice. I don’t know how the man fed himself until I came on the scene. He must’ve made almost daily trips to the grocery store. I can truthfully say that Pat Conroy was the most scatterbrained person I’ve ever known. Going twenty miles into town to fetch the ingredients for an osso bucco dinner he’d been craving for days, he’d return without the veal. I learned quickly that it was a waste of time to make him a list because he always lost it. After we’d been married a couple of years, I instigated Sunday afternoon powwow sessions, me with pen and paper in hand. “Tell me what you want to cook this week,” I’d say, “and I’ll go into town tomorrow and get everything. Then we won’t have to shop every day.” That simple plan made him think of me as an organizational genius. I’m not, but I managed to look modest when he bragged about me to others.
* * *
Pat had been right about another thing as well. He said that if I had my own space to write without an endless pile of essays to grade, my creativity would be unstoppable. Having time to devote to my writing turned out to be an unbelievable luxury, and the years we lived on Fripp were the most productive of our lives for Pat and me both. Working late into the night, I wrote essays and short stories for anthologies, articles for magazines, and the books that had been percolating in my head for a long time. The first of those was my second novel, The Sunday Wife, which Pat took full credit for making me write. Yet again, as much as it pains me to admit it, he’d been right in insisting that was the story I needed to tell.
It came about soon after we settled down into our married life. One night after dinner, Pat asked, “Remind me—what’s the book you’re working on now?”
I told him for the umpteenth time that it was about a female rodeo rider, and I was about halfway done with it. (Later I’d finish the book but it remains in the back of a drawer.)
With a sly grin Pat said, “Glad to hear you’re taking the age-old advice, write what you know.”
“Ha ha,” I said dryly, but his remark put me on the defensive. “I told you that I’ve always dreamed of leading the rodeo parade on a golden palomino.”
“One of the great things about writing fiction, we get to be whatever we want to be,” he agreed. Then he studied me for a few minutes before bringing up something that had been bothering him. “I can’t believe you’re not writing about the time you spent as a preacher’s wife, though. What you went through to find your own identity is quite a story. That’s the one you need to tell.”
I shook my head. “I can’t do it, Pat. The truth is, I started working on that book while I was living it, but it turned out to be too hard. Reliving that time took its toll on me emotionally, so I put it aside and made up another story instead. Telling the truth about your life is more difficult than I thought. You know what I mean? I don’t want anyone to know what a failure I was. And I’m afraid they’ll turn against me for saying things they don’t want to hear.”
I realized what I’d said, and who I’d said it to, as soon as it came out of my mouth. I was talking to the man who’d spent his whole career revealing the unpleasant and hidden truths that none of us likes to talk about, everything from child abuse to mental illness. And he’d paid the price with splintered relationships and emotional breakdowns (which he also wrote about). Not only that, he’d been repeatedly accused of making it all up and told me he’d been called a liar as much as any writer in history. Although tell-all books, either in the form of memoir or fictionalized stories, would later become common, early in Pat’s career it wasn’t done much. He had blazed his own path.
Unintentionally, I’d hit on the core of my problem as a writer. I was afraid. I’d lived much of my life afraid of everything: I feared offending others, taking a stand, going against the grain, questioning the status quo, even claiming a life of my own. After a long silence, I dared glance Pat�
�s way. “Ah . . . you might be right. Guess it’s time to pull out my preacher’s wife book and have another go at it.”
* * *
Looking back, it still surprises me that I spent over two decades of my life, from my midtwenties to late forties, as the wife of a preacher. It’s something I could never have imagined doing. Although I’d been raised in a pious, churchgoing family, I’ve never been particularly pious myself. My interest had always been more with the mystical and otherworldly aspects of spirituality than with conventional religion. Not only that, I’d observed the comings and goings of the preachers in small-town churches, and everything about their lives appalled me. The pastors’ families existed in a goldfish bowl, with their every movement scrutinized and commented on by the good people of the church. Who would want that?
Even so, I came from a generation of southern women born to be pleasers, to be devout and well-behaved young ladies who didn’t make waves. I would never have voiced my unconventional views of religion any more than I would’ve voiced my views about much of anything else. As a child I’d baffled my mother by being different from my beribboned, girlie-girl peers: I was overly imaginative and dreamy-eyed, with my head in the clouds and nose in a book. I even had the fanciful notion that I could be a writer. Oh, I rebelled as a teen but always overtly, by sneaking away from my mother’s watchful eye to party, drink, and raise hell. I grew up torn between being the good, compliant girl I was expected to be, and leading the artistic, bohemian life I yearned for. The first chance I got, I promised myself, I’d leave the farm and move to Europe, where I could become a writer. Only then would I have something to write about.
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