The Book of Peach

by Penelope Stokes J.

  I just never brought them home.

  9

  I never brought Charles Chase home, either, but for an entirely different reason.

  Under better circumstances, Charles might have been just the kind of man you’d bring home to meet your mama. He was sweet and considerate and down-to-earth; cute, but not handsome enough to raise suspicion; and although I knew next to nothing about him, he seemed like a pretty upstanding guy.

  I wondered, though.

  We mostly met at the cabin out on the river, which made up in privacy what it lacked in ambience. I assumed he had taken the fishing camp as his primary residence after the separation from his wife, but I could have been wrong. We never talked about it.

  We never talked about anything.

  We just . . . well, you know.

  Maybe this is why people are attracted to the idea of having affairs. There are no complications, none of the dull, ordinary stuff that gets in the way. No socks on the floor or empty toilet paper rolls, no baskets of laundry or smelly gym shorts.

  Just pure (or rather, impure) sex. The giddiness of romance without the weight of reality.

  The problem is, I like reality. Despite the pain I’ve gone through with Robert’s rejection, I find myself still wanting the normal stuff—the dailyness of life shared with another human being, the conversation, the challenges, the easy laughter, the inside jokes, the memories that build, one by one, into a history.

  I want commitment.

  I just don’t want it with Charles Chase.

  There was nothing wrong with Charles, except that he obviously did not care about having a relationship. He wanted an affair. He occasionally took me out for elaborate and expensive dinners in Tupelo and Tuscaloosa, places where no one would recognize us. He bought me flowers and, once, a small gold heart on a chain. He told me I was beautiful and opened doors for me and treated me as if I were royalty.

  But he never said, “I love you.”

  Love.

  Now, there’s a subject big enough to keep every therapist in the nation rolling in dough. Especially if the client in question has been brought up to be a Southern Lady.

  Let’s put aside for the moment the silver screen’s steamy images of the sexuality of Southern women—Natalie Wood in Splendor in the Grass, for example, or Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Southern women are not taught to enjoy sex. Southern women are coached to use sex to gain and maintain power.

  All right, I’ll admit it—it’s a generalization. Some Southern women probably do enjoy sex and have fruitful, fulfilling intimate lives with their chosen mates or whoever else strikes their fancy. But the Bell women, from Great-great-great-grandma Alberta right down to the present, saw more potential in copulation than merely a method of reproduction or an afternoon delight.

  All Southern mothers read out of the same Bible. The first commandment is: “Make your mama proud, now.” The second is like unto it: “Good girls don’t.”

  It’s sort of an all-purpose principle that can be applied in a variety of situations. Good girls don’t smoke—or if they do smoke, they don’t do it standing up or on the street or any place where the preacher might see. Good girls don’t drink—or if they do drink, they order up a feminine buzz like a pink lady or a fuzzy navel, and always in moderation. Good girls don’t get drunk—or if they do get drunk, they do so in the privacy of their own boudoir, not out in public.

  Good girls don’t do a lot of things. But most important, good girls don’t have premarital (or extramarital, or nonmarital) sex. On the other hand, if they do have premarital sex, good girls don’t get pregnant. And . . . if they do get pregnant, good girls don’t let the bastard get away without paying for it.

  The Southern Lady’s approach to sex can be very confusing for an adolescent whose hormones are beginning to assert themselves. Just as I was entering puberty, Mama started trying to give me “the talk.”

  As if I didn’t already know where babies came from. After all, my best friend, Lorene Clay, was the oldest of seven children. The most recent two babies had been born at home, with Lorene assisting. In addition, the bedroom Lorene shared with two of her sisters was only a paper-thin wall away from her parents’ room.

  She told me how she would lie awake at night and listen to them generating the next little Clay offspring—a process punctuated with moans and groans and repeated prayers of “Oh, God!” (the Clays were apparently a very religious family) and culminating in a shuddering creak of the old iron bed. She had even seen them doing it once, during the year her father was unemployed, one afternoon when she came home from school early with a stomachache. Apparently she had watched for a long time, terrified at the primal energy but fascinated by her mother’s agility and her father’s endurance. She had described the incident in graphic detail.

  No wonder my mother didn’t want me associating with White Trash.

  Mama’s “talk” with me omitted most of the more salient particulars I had picked up from Lorene Clay. Mama explained what was happening to my body—she called it “the curse”—and how I would have to put up with this inconvenience every month of my life until I got really old, maybe forty or fifty, and then it went away. In the meantime, as long as I was getting my Monthly Visitor, it was possible for me to have a baby.

  A woman became a mother, Mama said, when her husband “took his pleasure” with her. Without ever using a single anatomically correct term, she got the basic information across about how this happened. But the more important message she wanted to convey was how a Southern Lady dealt with this anomaly, this strange ritual of human mating.

  First, Mama emphasized, a Southern Lady never, never does it until she is married. Something about buying the cow and giving away the milk for free. I didn’t understand the bovine analogy, but I did know she wasn’t telling the truth. As far back as Great-great-great-grandma Alberta, Bell women had done it before marriage. GiGi told me so—or at least implied it. Otherwise how would Alberta have had the leverage to force Adolphus Bell to marry her?

  Second, Mama said, once a Southern Lady is married, she only does it with her husband, and at his initiation. “Marital obligation,” she called it, which left me with the distinct impression that engaging in sex was rather like scrubbing the kitchen floor—not high on a woman’s list of desirable activities but necessary for the maintenance of a proper home. Something you did once a week whether it needed doing or not.

  Once she was satisfied that I understood the basics, Mama launched into a diatribe entitled “What Men Want.” This diatribe was only superficially concerned with the issue of male libido—it was, at base, a primer on the Southern Lady’s control of the phallus.

  “Men have certain urges, Priscilla,” my mother said. “Urges that drive them to want . . . well, what they want. We women have more discretion, and a true Southern Lady, if she is wise, will employ those powers of restraint where physical intimacy is concerned.”

  Translation: When you’ve got a guy by the family jewels, you can get just about anything your deceptive little heart desires.

  My mother didn’t know it, but I had already seen the principle in action. I had, on certain occasions, watched her subtle interchanges with my father, how she would spurn his romantic overtures with a word or a disdainful glance, only to turn around and play up to him when she wanted something from him. It was a delicate dance, this waltz of rejection and desire. Seduction, even within the holy bonds of matrimony, was a woman’s most effective means of exercising control.

  And control—particularly in sexual matters—was the operative word for a Southern Lady.

  “It is the girl’s responsibility to say no,” Mama emphasized. “You can’t count on a boy—even a properly brought up Southern boy—to behave like a gentleman. The girl has to set the standard and hold to it.”

  Even as an adolescent I was aware, in a vague way, of how patently unfair this system was—unfair to the boy as well as to the girl. On the one hand, the girl had to be th
e one to “set the standard,” as Mama put it, always taking responsibility for guarding her virginity. On the other hand, a girl could use whatever sexual wiles were at her disposal to make a boy desire her, only to put the brakes on and leave him frustrated to the point of acceding to her every whim. The ultimate whim, of course, being the long trip down the aisle.

  Once the nuptials had been accomplished, however, the rules of the game changed. The girl was now free to say yes—in fact, she was duty bound to say yes. She was expected, on the wedding night, to throw off years of restraint and conditioning and surrender to her groom with open arms, to sacrifice her virginity upon the altar of marital obligation. But she shouldn’t expect to enjoy her newfound liberty. Instead, she was instructed to lie back and let him “have his pleasure” at her expense. Her consolation prizes for this gesture of generosity were a diamond—preferably one much larger than he could afford—a house, a car, a regular income, perhaps a baby or two, and a whole new social circle of other friends who were Happily Married.

  Before the wedding, according to my mother, a Southern Lady withheld the ultimate sexual favor in exchange for a gold band—in short, she remained chaste in order to be chased. After the eligible mate “chased her until she caught him,” she then bartered the Act for other goods and services.

  It sounded perfectly horrible to me—a covert prostitution, sanctified by holy vows and whitewashed by a lace dress with seed pearls. I didn’t want anything to do with it. Ever.

  But of course I didn’t tell my mother that. For a Southern Lady, the only thing worse than having a promiscuous daughter was having a single one. If your daughter turned up pregnant, you could explain to your friends how the poor girl had been taken advantage of by some smooth-talking cad. Or—if the boy in question was socially acceptable marriage material—you could spring for a hurry-up wedding before she got too far along for the white dress. You could weep happy crocodile tears at the service, as if your friends didn’t know the truth. And then you could boast about her incredible good fortune when the eight-pound “premature” grandbaby came along six months later.

  But you couldn’t, under any circumstances, give justifiable cause for a daughter who chose to remain single, have a career, and live on her own. A daughter who refused to play the game by any rules. Virginity was a prize to be guarded, but only up to a certain point. Beyond that, well, people might talk. And if they came around to whispering the L word behind their hands, the poor mother might as well slit her wrists and put herself out of her misery.

  Mama never said it outright, but she made perfectly clear what my responsibility as a Southern Lady was: first to say “No,” then to say “I do,” and finally to say “Yes.” Within the bounds of reason, of course, and when it suited my purposes.

  Good girls didn’t. Unless they had something to gain.

  Unless they had something to gain. . . .

  That was exactly what I was taught, although Mama would never have admitted it, never in a hundred lifetimes.

  The larger question was, what did I hope to gain with Charles Chase? I was a grown woman, capable of making her own decisions, no longer ruled by the expectations of others. What did I get out of this affair with Charles that kept me coming back for more?

  Not love, certainly. He quite deliberately avoided using the word, perhaps in a misguided effort not to lead me on. It wasn’t sex, either, because although I’m quite capable of enjoying the experience, I’m also old enough and, I hope, wise enough to realize that physical intimacy is only a small component of the much larger picture.

  No, it was something else. Something I couldn’t name.

  Or something I didn’t want to name.

  There was the white-haired old fool again, buzzing in my ear: Everything you need is already within you. You have the insight. You know the answer. Find it. Seek it out. Let it rise to the surface of your consciousness.

  Maybe he was right. Maybe the truth was within me. But I wasn’t going to dredge it up now. I was pretty well exhausted, and I still had to get ready to meet Charles at seven.

  I’d take a page out of Scarlett’s book and think about it tomorrow.

  After all, tomorrow is another day.

  10

  Tomorrow.

  You always think you can deal with things tomorrow, until the new day dawns bearing bad news. Until it shows up with an unanticipated change of direction that jerks a knot into every preconceived notion you had about how things were going to be.

  There is no tomorrow. Only today. Only right now.

  “Living in the present” might seem like a worthy goal, but only if the present is worth living in.

  It’s time for a change. It’s time for God or the universe or somebody to give me a break. I don’t want to live this way anymore.

  I looked down at the words and felt as if someone else had written them:

  I don’t want to live this way anymore.

  Those were the exact words Charles Chase used last night when he broke it off. He was going back to his wife, he said, to try to work things out. I had helped him see the truth about himself, helped him become a better man, and he would always be grateful.

  And he had finally uttered the L word—love. Only not in reference to me.

  Was this the way my life was destined to be? Forty-five and single, a former beauty queen gone to seed and headed downhill, abandoned by those who claimed to love her—or at least want her?

  I don’t want to live this way anymore.

  I read the sentence over and over again, prodded by that niggling awareness that comes with years of therapy—the knowledge that something I’d read or heard or taken out of context was exactly the insight I needed, if I could just find the way to apply it.

  I could envision my therapist peering at me over the top of his glasses, smiling, eager. Waiting for the moment of revelation that would validate his existence and change me forever.

  I stared at the sentence until my eyes burned, as if the words might suddenly shift and morph into something different, a coded message that held all the answers in the universe. But no doorway opened up to the world beyond. No magic happened. Just blue ink on a white page in neat, even handwriting.

  Without so much as a warning knock, the bedroom door opened. I slammed the journal shut and looked up. Mama, dressed to the nines in a white linen suit and lavender silk blouse, raked me up and down with a steely gaze.

  “The service,” she said, “begins in thirty minutes.”

  Service? I had no idea what she was talking about. And then it hit me. Sunday. It was Sunday, and Mama expected me to go to church with her.

  Sheesh. I got to my feet and ran a hand through my hair, and for a fleeting moment I considered the possibility of doing exactly what Mama expected me to do—rush around to get ready, dress up . . .

  I don’t want to live this way anymore.

  I sat back down on the bed. “Thanks anyway, Mama, but I think I’ll pass on church this morning.”

  She stared at me as if I’d grown a third eye. “Excuse me?”

  “I’m just going to stay here—make some breakfast, sit on the verandah. Do a little journaling.” I held up the brown leather book.

  “Young lady—”

  “Mama, I do not want to go to church this morning. I don’t know why you want to go, for that matter. You’ve told me a hundred times how much you despise this new minister.”

  “That’s beside the point.”

  “What is the point, then?”

  “The point is,” Mama said, “you go to church because it’s the right thing to do.”

  I wanted to ask, Right for whom? But I left it alone, and when she realized I wasn’t going to budge on the issue, Mama abandoned me to my sin and went on to worship without me.

  I made a fresh pot of coffee, took my journal out to the back verandah, and began to reflect on religion.

  Mama is mistaken. Or deluded.

  Maybe for some, churchgoing is about doing right. But
for others, it’s about appearing to be right.

  All Southerners claim to be Christians. They can turn fire hoses on a civil rights demonstration or spend Saturday night wearing a white sheet, drinking corn liquor, and burning crosses in the front yards of black and Jewish community leaders, but come Sunday morning, they are spiffed up in their finest, warming the family pew and singing gospel songs.

  In the South, being a Christian—and a regular churchgoer—is an important statement about your values. You can’t get elected dogcatcher, never mind mayor or senator or governor, without at least one photo shoot on the steps of a church, with a big black Bible in one hand and the other wrapped around your smiling wife and children. Whether you ever open that Bible or give a second thought to its teachings is beside the point. As long as you’re a professing Christian it doesn’t matter if you’re a practicing atheist. It’s the image that counts.

  I stared at the page, wondering where such cynicism had come from. I believed in God, prayed on occasion, and liked Jesus a lot. At least I liked the earthy, human Jesus who roamed the pages of the gospels, preaching love and healing folks and touching lepers and gathering in the outcasts. I had to admit I didn’t much care for the other Jesus, the judgmental one who seemed to hover around conservative pulpits these days, separating sheep from goats and making sure the wrong people didn’t get in through the narrow gate.

  Right now I could have used a good dose of that first Jesus. Someone, anyone, who would see me for myself, who would love me and accept me unconditionally, without criticism, without expecting some monumental transformation.