Lookaway, Lookaway

by Barnhardt, Wilton

  Annie looked caught out. She’d not told her father anything about her business life except that she was wildly successful. “The housing bust finally is coming to Charlotte,” she admitted. “Starting and spreading out from Ground Zero, my pocketbook. Let’s not talk about my situation,” she said with a wince. Duke assumed he would hear if Annie was teetering toward bankruptcy like so many other people in real estate. Annie made no secret of her sufferings, as a rule. But maybe this, financial failure, after she had been riding so high, was too much to advertise.

  “But speaking of real estate,” she began, “and I’d like an answer unvarnished, if you would.”

  “I’ll do my best, sweetheart.”

  “Are you and Mom losing the house?”

  Best not to temporize: “Yes, by the end of the year. The bank will own it—they already do, in a manner of speaking. You may have heard that Gaston was going to help us, but he’s feuding with us again.”

  “I could go try to speak with him. Uncle Gaston likes me.”

  For one thing, Duke had heard Gaston berate Annie recently in the unkindest of terms—loud, vulgar, materialist, a woman who had wasted her magnificent intelligence—and second, Duke hated for any hope to be revived, even to be attempted. He and Jerene had made up their minds to leave and they would leave. “We don’t really need the house anymore, darling,” he said. “It’s big and expensive. Property taxes, the yard, Alma’s getting older like we are and will retire upon our departure. Our children are all grown up and gone.”

  “Your children are not gone. We’re all bankrupting ourselves in turn and will come home with great frequency.”

  “I beg your pardon. Bo has a lovely manse courtesy of Stallings Presbyterian.”

  “That Nazi church is always about to fire him. Josh says they’re shutting down stores at Uomo Modallll.” She over-performed the Italian name of the ridiculous place. “And Jerilyn needs a place to hide out until the court case has gone away.”

  “And you’re planning on returning again, are you?”

  “You never know.” She changed tone. “Dad, it’s a lovely old house that’s been in the Johnston family forever—”

  “Just over a hundred years, let’s not exaggerate.”

  “I’m surprised you want to sell it. I’m doubly surprised Jerene wants to lose her perch in Myers Park.”

  “Very shortly, your mother and I hope to be in Lookaway, Dixieland. It will have a guest room for your cyclical bankruptcies.”

  Annie was fooling neither of them; she hated fundamental change, only preferred it around the edges. She couldn’t stand to be without the house she grew up in. “But your Civil War Study with the fireplace,” she wheedled. “You’re not going to have such a nice period room in some pre-fab condo somewhere.”

  “I’m surprised to hear such concern for my Civil War Study. You said once if you could bring General Sherman back from the grave you would do so in order for him to burn down my study.”

  “Gimme a break, I was a teenager.”

  “That was just a few years ago, sweetheart.”

  “This development sounds dreadful. Gated community, snobby, exclusive…”

  “Just the ticket, for your mother.”

  “Filled with South Carolina Republicans.”

  “We should hope so.”

  “I’ve seen that billboard on Seventy-seven. The house on the sign is like a mini-Tara, white columns and foyers that’ll be impossible to heat or cool. Three-car garages, tacky chandeliers in high-ceilinged rooms that don’t have any more floor space than McMansions in Huntersville and Morristown that are half the price. God. What do you suppose the guy in the gatehouse will be forced to wear? White-powdered wigs and breeches with stockings?”

  “I was hoping for a girl in a hoop skirt.” Duke saw Daryl, the proprietor, emerge from the kitchen—he waved. It seemed Daryl saw him, looked right at him, but turned around back inside. Must be busy. But it was two P.M., a bit late for lunch, and the dining room was not that crowded.

  Annie was still ranting: “… and I’m ashamed to have parents living in South Carolina. North Carolina has worked very hard not to be South Carolina and here y’all go and sink to their level, in a gated community—and these enclaves represent nothing less than Southern apartheid. Maybe that slogan can be a selling point for Mr. Boatwright and his crowd: slavery still permitted here.”

  “I’ll suggest it to the residency association.”

  “Are we really out of money? I mean, as a family. Have we gone bust? I think I have a right to know.”

  “I think it is debatable whether our finances are much of your concern. We’ve clothed and fed you, we’ve educated you, inasmuch as that took, and we’ve been generous as we could be throughout. And we’re done, darling, we’re just simply done.” He didn’t mean to sound harsh. Duke smiled again, his trademark twinkle. “Yes, we’ve gone through it,” he went on, “in the tradition of great Southern families.”

  “But Mom could sell some of the paintings,” she ventured.

  Duke stared at her. That would be the very last thing that could transpire with her mother still breathing. “You know that’s not going to happen. Any more than I’m selling my pistols or muskets.”

  “But they’re just things—”

  “Yes, things that mean a great deal more than houses—which, by the way, are also things. Cars are things. Annie, why don’t you sell your BMW and chip in? That is two years of property taxes sitting in the parking lot.”

  Annie said slowly, “If it could save the house…”

  “Oh don’t even pretend you would sell your car so we could pay property taxes. No one in this family sacrifices anything for any greater good—it’s not how we’ve ever operated. Your mother would rather have the Jarvis Room at the Mint than sell paintings for … for what? Taxes, groceries, deodorant? The Jarvis Room is her legacy.” He had actually stuck up for Annie, too, trying to convince Jerene that she would do well by the Jarvis Trust for American Art. Of course, Jerene always knew best—Annie would have the paintings at the pawnshop by mid-afternoon on the day she got her hands on them. He continued, “I intend to hoard my Civil War artifact collection until I am a near-corpse and give it to some museum that will display or care for it. And you’ll be driving around…” Duke pointed to the parking lot again. “… in that overpriced car that tells your clients you are successful until you trade it for the next spectacularly overpriced car. There is no point pretending things are not as they are.”

  There was nothing now but a desperate emotional appeal. “Dad. I can’t stand to think of our home with other people in it.”

  Duke wondered if she would say the thing no one in the family would say to his face. Even Jerene in recent years stopped hinting or expecting there would ever be a change: if only Duke Johnston would go to work again. Resume his law practice.

  “It’s the bottom of the market, Dad.” Annie sighed. “A terrible time to sell. Might make the difference in one to two hundred thousand dollars.”

  But then a male voice: “You, sir, have some nerve coming in here.”

  It was Daryl. Duke thought it was somehow the beginning of a comic riff, and stood up to introduce Annie. “Daryl, my friend. This is my daughter Annie Johnston—”

  “Father or daughter,” said Daryl, “no Johnston is welcome in here. We all trusted you, Duke, to preserve our heritage.”

  Duke now gauged just how upset Daryl was.

  “I believe I—”

  “Have you seen what they’re turning the battleground into? I remember you pulled five hundred dollars out of me—sacred earth, blah blah blah. Where Charlotte fought, blah blah blah. And you swore that you’d keep the developers off that site, and damn if you weren’t part of the team developing it all along. Hope you got your thirty pieces of silver.”

  “I haven’t seen what they’ve done, Daryl. I—”

  Daryl grabbed their bill off the table. “This is on me. Consider it a payback for all the busine
ss you got me in April. I guess there’ll be no more re-enactments, thanks to what you and your rich buddies’ve done down there. Now, if you’ve finished up, I’d like it if you folks got on your way.”

  They drove toward the trestle in silence.

  Annie broke it one time saying, “You know, Bob Boatwright and that crowd are douchebags. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that they didn’t do anything they said they would do. I hear things. I hear … that like Beazer Homes, they’re all being investigated. Predatory practices, false estimates of value, secret lot-splitting after the assessments, big bonuses paid to partners out of development money, earnest monies paid in cash back and forth to each other. I hope they all go to jail, Dad.”

  Duke sighed. “Well. Not at least until we move into our home and the ink is dry on the deed.” He cleared his throat. “Then we’ll build a scaffold.”

  Oh God. Oh no.

  Worse—much worse than he feared …

  The riverbank that had served as the “historical field of battle” had been denuded of all grass and trees; some of the great riparian oaks were now fresh stumps. It had been scraped bare by bulldozers, acres of topsoil and red clay exposed; Duke wondered how many shells or buttons or artifacts had been churned under the soil by the earthmovers. That element was, at least, reparable. So they replant their field with grass and make it more of a lawn … all the better to re-enact upon. But Duke walked farther down the shoulder of the roadway to investigate: there were wooden stakes and cement blocks which marked out the dimensions of a tremendous building about to begin its construction. Duke remembered this, a columned porticoed faux-antebellum mansion/activity center for wedding parties, balls, meeting rooms, a high-end bar and restaurant, with a river-deck outdoor restaurant … But it was supposed to be farther upstream! Placing it right in the middle of their field would leave fifty yards or so between it and the makeshift ramparts. The re-enactors would be virtually on the back patio.

  Duke never brought his still unfamiliar cell phone anywhere, so he borrowed Annie’s. She looked as downcast as he was.

  “I’ll pay you back for these directory assistance calls,” he said.

  “Jesus, Dad. Don’t worry about that.”

  Calls to Bob Boatwright turned up a secretary who, after delay, her hand over the receiver, muffled voices and a TV broadcasting CNBC running in the background, returned to declare Bob was traveling on business. Calls to Mr. Yerevanian never picked up. Calls to Mr. Brownbee didn’t even get to a message box. Duke called the landscape architect that he had spoken with before, Mr. Arens, and he indeed was in his office. But he told Duke he had been let go from the assignment, and that others—he didn’t know who—were in charge now of designing the area around the trestle. They (Bob and his fellow investors) had asked that the clubhouse and restaurant be moved closer to the trestle as a sound buffer for the homes; when the new embankment downstream raised the Catawba River twenty feet—

  “What embankment? They’re going to flood the whole area?”

  Yes, said Mr. Arens, they envisioned a marina to come out from the ramparts so the fisherman-motorboat crowd could take advantage of new waterfront.

  Duke heard his own weak voice. “But what of the historical park to be made around the trestle?”

  The former architect said that it had been in his design, but that design was rejected. He was sorry he could not be of more help. Duke nonetheless was gracious to the man who had drawn such a heartening design for the path from the parking area to the trestle, a monument near the ramparts, a circular sawdust trail for an eventual statue, perhaps, and a paved trail through the muddy marge under the trestle that would lead to an outdoor display, a series of three plaques, the pictures on which would be chosen by Duke—with text by Duke Johnston as well. All of that, Duke knew in an instant, was never going to happen.

  “What have I done?” he said simply to his daughter. “They couldn’t have gotten the building permit without me. I raised a small fortune from friends, family, the Charlottetowne Country Club, to preserve this site and then … I was instrumental in destroying it.”

  Annie didn’t insult him, at least, by saying he was some blameless victim. “They were awful men you were dealing with, Dad.”

  “I suppose you should take me home.”

  They rode in silence again. Duke didn’t feel the gloom lift even when he saw the familiar WELCOME TO NORTH CAROLINA sign.

  Annie said quietly, “You could sue.”

  “Nothing was in writing, darling. It was all gentleman’s agreement stuff, handshakes and promises. I’ve known Bob at Charlottetowne for ages. Besides, my compensation for my help with this development…” Here Duke raised his hands to cover his face—he was overwhelmed by what was happening to such a long-held dream. “My compensation was held in an escrow account which I would transfer back to them when I took possession of our new home. They had worked out this legal way to give your mother and myself a condo for our troubles. I can’t sue them and expect them to pay up.”

  But now Annie was sniveling. “I’m so mad at myself.”

  Duke was surprised she was so upset. “Oh it’s my folly, sweetheart. No need to be so upset. Not the first time what I’ve done has come to nothing.”

  “I’m upset over my folly,” she said. “Oh bother.” She was tearing up enough not to be able to see properly, so she pulled into a Kangaroo service station lot, parking off to the side. She fished through her purse for some tissues. “I had to make these last stupid, stupid house purchases. So fucking greedy—sorry about the language.”

  “It’s all right. I’m fucking mad at fucking Bob Boatwright.”

  Annie laughed, at last. “Fuck those … fuckers.”

  “Yes, absolutely. Fucking … what did you just call them?”

  “Douchebags. Fucking douchebags.”

  “Fucking swine, fucking low-life criminals.”

  Annie laughed again, wiping her eyes. “The F-word doesn’t sound dirty coming from you. Why is that?” She sighed. “I knew the market was sinking but I went all in. I had tens of thousands on hand last year. Thousands I could have lent you and Mom. I might as well tell you a fantasy of mine. To buy our house through a third party and turn around and give it back to you as a surprise. But then you said Uncle Gaston was coming through so I spent it all on three homes in Lakewood. They’ve lost half their value since I did it, too.”

  “Oh darling.”

  “I so wanted to give you your house back.” She hit the steering wheel, biting her lip, then wiping another tear. “And maybe make up for my loud, misspent youth when I put you and Mom through the wringer.”

  Duke shook his head. “You spend your own money on your own life—your mom and I have had our time in that house, in Charlotte. And it’s time for a new phase.” He didn’t much believe it himself, but it was the view from where he now stood. He surprised himself by adding, “I am the only utter failure in the family, sweetheart. Not working these last twenty years. I should have gone back to the Law, much as I didn’t like it.” Duke felt his own eyes filling, in pure self-loathing and disappointment. Couldn’t this one thing—the Skirmish at the Trestle, the memorial park—couldn’t this one project have succeeded? The world had strewn petals in Duke Johnston’s path that he might make something of himself, every skid greased, every impediment removed, and nonetheless he had assiduously failed the cheering crowds at every turn of the race. Every aspiration muffed, every earnest stroke of ambition shanked, he was a bumbler and a flop. He put a hand out for a tissue. He didn’t want to cry in front of Annie, so he said something about needing to blow his nose and pretended to do it while dabbing his eyes, and she pretended not to notice, although it made her start crying again.

  “We had a very privileged upbringing,” she said at last, “and you gave us that, so you’re off the hook for that one, really. If we haven’t made a great success of it, it’s our fault, not yours.” She blew her nose, composing herself. “It’s never been about money for me—or
for any of us, Bo, Josh, Jerilyn. I guess we had Mom the Materialist who kept her eye on the checkbook.”

  Duke did not like the note of judgment in Annie’s voice, but he was not going to argue with her now over how she treated, always treated, her mother. “Someone had to, Annie. We all managed because Jerene was the one providing for the family. We’d have starved without her.”

  Annie was quiet a moment. “I envy you two. What you guys have I will never know. Nor Josh or Jerilyn, it looks like. We all took for granted you and Mom, married forever, happy, ambling along. All of our peers’ parents were getting divorced, once, twice, serial divorces, half brothers and stepsisters and all kinds of convoluted family arrangements, and you guys…” More tears. “You guys were the Rock of Gibraltar. That’s where I fucking dropped the ball, where I couldn’t follow suit.”

  Her father patted her shoulder. “You are too harsh with yourself.” Duke then waited, sort of knowing what was coming next.

  “Chuck and I are divorcing. Or, he informed me we were. He’s taken up with a lawyer in Nag’s Head, Olivia Something, and she has convinced him he is entitled to some of my commission money, since he floated me for the first year when I got up and running here.”

  “Convenient, then, that you’ve run out of cash just as Olivia Something is trying to take it from you.”

  Annie pressed the tissues into her eyes again, stifling a sob.

  Duke offered comfort: “I didn’t think Chuck was the sort to cheat on you. I didn’t know him well—you saw to that. But I thought he would not have done that to you.”

  Without looking at her father, she said in a small voice, “I cheated first. With some of my real estate partners. No excuse, but we had too many late nights and late dinners and … Chuck was three hundred miles away in Hatteras. So he can have his money. If he can find any of it.” She recovered, the confession made.

  Duke wondered about Annie somberly, just as he had after her abortion pronouncement at Christmas dinner last year: had she ever made a discrimination that something was too personal to tell or that a parent might not want to hear it? And now, with the confession made, Duke could see that she was lighter in spirit. After all, it was now his to dwell upon, not hers; she had dropped her adultery into his lap.