The Secret to Southern Charm

by Kristy Woodson Harvey

  It shouldn’t have been unexpected, of course. I should have prepared myself for that, closed the wind shutters, battened the hatches. But I hadn’t known yet how spending those weeks with Jack and giving birth to his baby would cause a deep longing for what we could have had to take permanent residence inside my chest and remove the light from my eyes.

  I never talked to Jack. Never called him. Never visited or wrote a letter. But it was no consolation. No salve existed for the pain of being apart from him, yet I knew instinctively that the anguish I felt over losing him was nothing compared to what it would be if I left Carter and chose Jack like he had asked.

  So the night Carter had come to me and said, “I think we should start trying again,” I held myself back, but I wanted to run upstairs, tie my shoes, and hop the first plane to Atlanta. I was like an addict who had spent years without a fix, still craving it with every ounce of her being. I was going to give in to my primal need for it again. In the back of my mind, I knew it would only make things worse and prolong this profound loss I felt in every cell.

  Time would never erase the memory of Jack and what we shared, would never allow me to get past what I felt for him. And so, seeing him again, asking him this unaskable favor for a second time, might be, as my father would say, a temporary solution to a permanent problem.

  If I wanted another baby, which I did, desperately, this was how I would get one. I knew already without hashing it out with Carter again.

  At the time, it didn’t seem odd to me that he was so against people delving into our personal and financial lives. He had always been private. He had convinced me that if we let an adoption agency dig around, they might find out that Caroline wasn’t really his. I could never let that happen.

  I realize now that was just a cover. He wasn’t worried about them finding out about Caroline; he was worried about me discovering what a disaster he had made of our finances. As soon as he died and I found out about the debt, it all made perfect sense. I should have been angry at him for leaving me out in the cold, for not telling me the truth. But I knew even then that, in his own way, he was trying to protect me. Plus, there was no sense in holding grudges—especially against a dead man.

  Much like that rainy night in Peachtree Bluff when I boarded a plane into a great, wide unknown expanse of which I could never have predicted the consequences, that morning, I kissed my husband, stroked my sleeping baby’s forehead, and left for what I’d told Carter was a girls’ trip. He didn’t delve deeper. He knew better.

  My stomach was in knots the entire flight, a mix of anxiety and unadulterated, nearly maddening excitement. What if he was involved with someone else? What if he wouldn’t agree to this again?

  Soon after I landed, I was swigging Pepto-Bismol in the back of the cab on the way to his house. It felt riskier this time, showing up unannounced. By the time I had arrived at Jack’s small but charming Buckhead home, admiring the ivy that grew over the trellis around the front door, I was so worked up I had almost convinced myself to go back home.

  But the need for his lips to be on mine felt stronger than my need to make the safe choice.

  It was a Tuesday evening, so I figured he would be home. Only, when I knocked, there was no answer. I knew immediately I should have called. What if he was away on a trip? What if, even worse, he came home with a woman? I had to be prepared for that scenario, didn’t I? I had no claim to him whatsoever, except for, I had to consider, his heart. A hot flash of jealousy ran through me at the thought that someone else might have his heart now and he hadn’t given me a second thought.

  I walked around the side of the house and into the backyard, the high heels I had laboriously picked sinking into the grass. I leaned to the left to compensate for the weight of the heavy duffle bag on my right shoulder. I smelled the grill before I saw him. I stood quietly at the edge of the patio, on the small pathway surrounded by mature bushes that were probably eight feet tall. I watched the way his mouth curved as he sipped his beer, the way that vein on his forearm I had always loved running my finger down became more pronounced as he flipped the steak, the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled to himself. I took a step forward, into the safety of the bushes and, as if I had triggered some silent alarm that only he could hear, Jack turned. Our eyes met. I smiled.

  I expected him to run to me and scoop me up in his arms, or at least walk casually toward me in his completely charming and irresistible way.

  But he did neither. Instead, he sat down in a black wrought-iron chair behind him and put his head in his hands. I had the sinking feeling that I had made a huge mistake, that this was going to be nothing like what I had envisioned and I had ruined Jack’s life. I had caused him the same pain and anguish I had caused myself.

  I dropped my duffle on the edge of the patio, and even in his distress, even though I wasn’t sure it was the right thing, I went to him. I had to at least try to ease the pain I had caused. Jack’s head was still in his hands, and as I kneeled to look at him, I realized he was crying. I knew then I shouldn’t have come. But he looked up at me, put his hands on my cheeks, and said, “Oh, thank God.”

  I realized his weren’t tears of distress. They were tears of relief. All those months that Jack had been the insistent tick-tock in the back of my mind, the beat so persistent and rhythmic that you incorporate it into your life, learn to coexist with it, that the things he had said, the way he smelled, the feel of his lips on mine had been running through my mind on an endless loop, he had felt the same. And now I was here. In that way I had felt like I couldn’t live one more moment without a fix, he couldn’t either.

  He didn’t say any of that, of course. But those three words told me more than any long, convoluted monologue could have, because those three words perfectly expressed what I had felt all that time. He pulled me onto his lap and kissed me not with passion but with ferocity, as though he could make us one, make it so I could never leave again. In that moment, as I felt myself ripping the T-shirt over his head, I thought that was what I wanted too, to be with him, to never leave, to be one with him like I had dreamed of since we were children.

  Never before and never since have I completely lost myself like that. I’ve never felt as though I had disappeared into another person and that time and space and direction no longer existed. It was only Jack and me in that private backyard paradise that, in the coming months, would become a place I would lie in to feel the sun on my skin, a place where I would pretend for hours on end that I was going to bring Caroline and never leave, a place where I would experience emotions so complicated, so convoluted, and so intense that I was certain I would completely lose my mind.

  But then, it was just Jack and me and the love we’d had since we were teenagers in his Boston Whaler. Just Jack and me in the knowledge that sometimes love really isn’t enough.

  Just Jack and me. And a horribly charred steak. And the realization that what we had done wasn’t making a baby. It was reigniting a flame, an old one, one too intense, perhaps, for either of us to stand. We wanted that fire. We never wanted it to go out. And, lost in Jack that night, I never could have predicted how irreparably we, like that steak, would burn.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  true south

  sloane

  March 28, 2016

  Dear Sloane,

  You can’t imagine how much the thought of you keeps me going, how much knowing I have you to come home to makes me know everything is going to be OK. Now that I’m the Sarge, everything feels different. I have to be the strong one now, Sloane. I have to be the brave and fearless leader, the one they look to when they are feeling low. It’s hard for me to stay strong sometimes, but I look up at the stars at night, and I picture you there in Georgia, in the land of peaches and pecans and peanuts, of all the things that are right with the world. And I know one thing for sure: you are my true South. No matter where I am, no matter how far away, my heart’s compass will always, always lead me back to you.

  All my love,

&n
bsp; Adam

  WHEN I HEARD THE voices downstairs begin to get louder, I finally roused myself to get ready for the day. For Grammy’s day. Her last day at Starlite Island.

  We think and talk a lot about our firsts, but we never really take the time to savor our lasts. Not enough time, anyway. Maybe it’s because they break our hearts so much. I don’t actually remember, for example, the last time I nursed either of my babies. I likely won’t remember the last time either of them sits on my lap or kisses me on the lips. Maybe that’s just as well, because it would be too hard. In the savoring, we would never be able to let it go. And letting go is the essence of life, the thing that keeps us moving forward.

  That’s what made this morning particularly difficult, realizing it was, definitively, the very last time we would spend the day with our sharp, beautiful grandmother over at the island where we had spent countless hours with her in childhood. That last made me think about the last time I had Skyped with Adam. I had been upset with him, angry even, something I seldom was. I was an expert at putting on my brave Army wife face, but on the inside, I was a wreck most of the time. The thing I respected about Adam most, his dedication to his country, freedom, and his family, was also the thing that bothered me most. Because, in my heart of hearts, I just wanted him to come home. To me. To the boys. He could get a regular job or go back to school. But I never said that. Well, not until that day.

  Through my tears, I had said, “Adam, please. Make this your last tour. Just come home already.” The look on his face had pained me.

  “I know this is hard on you, babe,” he had said, to which I had retorted, “No, Adam. ‘Hard’ is an hour-long spin class. This is unthinkable.”

  I knew the exact difference between the two, in fact, because Caroline had made me go to an hour-long spin class the day before.

  Even through the not-always-wonderful Skype reception, I had seen Adam was hurt. I didn’t want to hurt him, especially not when he was living through something so unimaginably difficult. I wanted to make things easier for him and be that strength he needed, and 99 percent of the time, I was. But not that night.

  “I can’t stand this, Adam. The kids are getting older. They’re going to start to remember when you aren’t here for months on end. I know your country means a lot to you and so do your men, but you need to choose us.”

  I knew he wanted to argue with me then because he thought fighting for freedom and safety was choosing us. That was how he saw it. Sometimes, that was how I saw it too. But not that night. He didn’t bother to argue with me.

  He simply sighed and said, “OK, Sloane. I’ll think about it. We can talk about it when I get home.”

  That had been our last conversation. Oh, I hated that. I always said that last conversations didn’t matter when you truly knew how much you meant to each other. But now I understood. It was awful to think that the last time you spoke to someone, especially someone you loved so much, was in anger.

  But there was little I could do about that today. All I could do was make sure I didn’t have another regret, that I gave my grandmother a proper good-bye, the kind of good-bye that would make me look back with a smile, not with sadness that I hadn’t done the right thing.

  It was that idea that finally got me out of bed. Sometimes, no matter how you’re feeling, how sad you are, how hurt, the only option is to get up and keep going. I had heard it all my life. Now I was living it.

  An hour later, Caroline was leading the charge to the boat, and all I could think about was how Mark and Emerson were so in love, giggling and cuddling. It was like stepping back in time, as if I were looking at the head cheerleader and star center from Peachtree Bluff High, the kids they had been when they fell in love the first time. Nothing had changed at all. They didn’t even look older. I hated them a little.

  “OK, Grammy,” I said to my grandmother, who was sandwiched between Hal and James. “How do you think these crazy characters are planning to get you in here?”

  “Oh, seems pretty simple to me,” Kyle interjected as he slid his arm under Grammy’s knees, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. I saw her wince when he lifted her, but, instead of complaining, in true Grammy style she said, a deep Southern accent dripping off her every word, “I’ve always depended on the kindness of a stranger.”

  Caroline, Emerson, and I laughed, and she looked back at us, putting her hand up to stop Kyle from walking. “Take note, girls. That accent is the secret to Southern charm.”

  “Why whatever do you mean, Grammy?” Caroline asked in what was one of the best Southern accents I had ever heard, real or otherwise.

  “Come on, Caroline,” Emerson said, in her regular voice, which was a little Southern. “You’re a New Yorker.”

  “And yet,” Caroline said, still channeling her inner Scarlett, “I do the accent better than any of you.”

  We all laughed again, and Caroline, Emerson, and I crowded around Grammy, who was lounging in a pile of pillows at the dining table banquette. “This really is the way to ride, girls,” she said.

  I noticed Jack coming out of the cabin, and when, a few minutes later, Mom followed, Emerson, Caroline, and I all shot each other looks. “That looks pretty suspicious,” I whispered first.

  “We all see what’s happening here,” Emerson said. “We aren’t twelve.”

  “Maybe you girls should talk to her about it,” Grammy said.

  “Maybe you should talk to her about it,” Caroline said. “She’ll listen to you.”

  “She never has before.” Grammy exhaled, and we all laughed. Then she added, “But now I’m dying, so she has to.”

  Just like that, our laughter turned to tears, as quickly as a summer rain shower bursting from a stray dark cloud.

  “Oh, girls,” Grammy said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. You have to remember I’m very, very high right now.” We erupted into watery giggles.

  As I looked over to Starlite Island, I thought about the fairy stones Caroline had found for us there, how we had kept them in our pockets, how Grandpop said they were a gift to us to keep us safe. We had lost them on that same island where she had found them—and we were devastated, to say the least. And Grandpop had said to us, “The fairies gave your stones to someone else, someone who needed them more than you did.”

  I had found that comforting, but it still hurt to remember what we had lost. They were more than a toy. They were a gift given to us by the land, by the sea, by this place we got to visit every summer that we loved so much.

  I looked up at Caroline, whose eyes were on me. It didn’t matter now. It had been so long ago. But I still wondered who that man was that Mom was arguing with that day on the beach when we left the stones.

  “What are y’all laughing about?” Mom asked.

  “Oh, nothing,” I said, looking around. Amidst this strange, sort of sad, sort of funny, sort of happy day, I had to pause to realize how incredibly lucky my mother was. These people were here today because of her. They were here, in the morning, on a gorgeous summer day, when they could be doing anything else, because they were that devoted to her and wanted to give her an amazing memory with her dying mother.

  I walked inside the boat, where Taylor and AJ were examining how one of the hatches opened and closed, and pulled them both onto my lap, wiggly creatures that they were. I knew this wouldn’t be the last time I held them, but I breathed them in anyway. I squeezed them to me, savored their warmth, memorized how good it felt to hold my children.

  It was a fleeting moment. AJ, with his Superman cape tied around his neck over his life jacket, wriggled free and, yelling, “I’ll save you, Gransley!” was back on the stern in a flash. I kissed Taylor and set him free too.

  The beach looked truly beautiful. Caroline had a trellis set up, about triple the size you would see in someone’s wedding, and it had yellow-and-white-striped paper lanterns—yellow was Grammy’s favorite color—hanging from it. The table underneath the tent was overflowing with flowers, and Kimmy was
fussing over the trays of delicacies I’m certain she had been up all night creating. I hoped Grammy would be able to eat a bite or two.

  I put my arm around my sister. “You’re really something, you know that?”

  She grinned at me, popping a cherry tomato into her mouth. “I am, aren’t I?”

  I noticed how Kyle fussed over Grammy, how he helped Kimmy, how he talked intently to Jack—anything to keep from watching the Mark-and-Emerson lovefest taking place in the corner.

  “It’s like they never broke up,” Caroline said.

  “Wait,” Mom said. “Maybe that’s what’s happening. Maybe it’s really 2008 again.”

  We all laughed.

  “They look pretty together, though,” Caroline said.

  Mark was super cute. Not scorchingly hot like Kyle, but cute. And Emerson looked happy. That was all that mattered. “All I’ve heard from her,” I said, “is how she doesn’t have time to worry about relationships because all she can think about is her career.”

  “Well she doesn’t look worried . . .” Caroline said.

  Emerson took a bite of a ham biscuit Mark was feeding her. She didn’t look worried at all.

  I walked over to the table, poured us each a glass of champagne, handed one to Grammy, one to Caroline, one to Mom, and said, “Here’s to love.”

  “Here’s to love!” Grammy said.

  Tears caught in my throat with the realization that, in no time at all, this beautiful woman, this head of our household who had done nothing but love us, would be gone.

  Grammy had said earlier that the accent was the secret to Southern charm. But she was wrong. This putting on a brave face, carrying on, helping others, being kind and humble and giving, believing with all your heart that the world could be a better place and that maybe you could make it that way . . . that was Southern charm. Looking around at these women who all embodied those qualities so well, I had to think that maybe Grammy was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t a secret at all.