Trouble was, I wanted to get past these two social stalwarts with minimal gawp and gawk—but then I wanted the savored victory as well, knowing also the summary conclusion they would pounce on as one with the rest of our little circle of friends. I wanted them to see up close that Aníse was more than met the eye; not that she disappointed the ocular senses, but she was French, which wasn’t necessarily Huguenot but came a might closer to where we lived than African, in a manner of speaking, though I supposed Africa was her geographic source, indirectly. But by God we were all Goths and Visigoths if you go back far enough.
Which isn’t what I meant at all. Rather she was artistic as well as artsy, not like the artsy fartsy we saw too often in town but the real McCoy, so to speak. I wanted them to know that I’d done well, much better than Hedley Rice, who ran his mouth like a wood chipper over one woman and another who might want to lie down with him if he could only figure out how in the world he could, you know, get her there.
Tackle her, goddamnit! That was not my actual advice on the proper pursuit of a woman but an accurate measure of my exasperation. Was he the only man with libido unanswered? No, he was not. My asexual life was a function of a similar failure, which was an aging man’s doubt that a woman could possibly see what was once there. The difference between the exasperated men and me was that I had the cure.
I wanted Hedley and Ashmead to sense the magnitude of my good fortune, my just reward for following my heart. I wanted them to know I’d fared better than they had done; me, a brickbatter no more but a man of the world, if not for all seasons, at least for more than one.
I should have anticipated what came next but didn’t, which may prove the importance of remembering your own social matrix in a kind, soft light. That is, Ashmead and Hedley saw perfectly well what Aníse was, a woman of unique beauty, which is not to lean too hard on salacity or highlight her sexual allure in any way, but they had the good sense to stay on the high road. They stood up in one movement, effusing the molasses and honey charm that went along with our standard greeting, except that nothing was standard here. Again moving as a single gesture, Ashmead slipped sideways to block our path and pull a chair into Aníse’s path as Hedley said, “Please.”
Ashmead concurred, “Won’t you join us?”
I know those two nosy bastards wanted firsthand dirt on what I was up to, maybe pick up some root talk and love stories to share with the crowd down at the Hibernian or the club or over group lunch, but they neither smirked nor tittered; nary a wink nor a grin arced between them. Rather the old warmth flowed like the molasses was pre-warmed and ready to pour, like Aníse and I were regular folks out to dinner. “Oh! You are so kind,” she tittered, casual as a lady running into old friends, whose smiles out-warmed and out-reached her own, and who then bowed slightly in deference to the chivalry extant in our private time warp, as they waited for the lady to be seated.
I made the introductions. “Aníse. Hedley Rice is one of our foremost …” I checked myself spewing days of yore, and relaxed. “Hedley’s a doctor. And Ashmead here is a lawyer, like me.”
“Like you used to be,” Ashmead sniggered.
“Yes. Like I used to be.”
So it was officially time for everyone to be seated, ladies first for chivalry that shall not die, eyes popping for the whirlpool suddenly revealed down Aníse’s dress. The shadowy surfaces sorely tested their night vision, the black wool blending with the black skin so a man had to stretch his neck and squint into focus more than good taste could warrant.
Nobody’s fool on a tit shot, Aníse eased us into this most unusual gathering with a suggestion. “Why we do not share the oyster as we wait for … ah …plus encore … ours. And then we share those too.” Oh, a topping suggestion indeed, agreed our old friends, now brimful and spilling forth with good cheer, yet tongue-tied still in the face of the world suddenly arrived. Aníse signaled the waiter and ordered two more shovel loads of oystérs—letting a merci bien slip softly at the end. She retained control of my brethrens as rapt attention by easing them further into our pleasant repast, picking out a steaming beauty and handling it with admirable delicacy in her fingertips. Ashmead took the opportunity to present opening comments for the plaintiff: “You not from around here. Are you? I heard you weren’t. I heard you were from … way out.”
She explained that her family was not entirely from Charleston, except for her Uncle Mose, who sailed away at an early age and wound up on Guadeloupe, which they, Hedley and Ashmead, well knew as part of the French West Indies, where the balance of her family remains. “I am a Cohen by blood. You may know my Uncle Jim. My family name in Guadeloupe is Coquelin. She brought her oyster to the point of tasting, no longer able to resist its seductive scent, and worked it with her lips to the chew, to the point where staring any longer would have been rude.
When the boys—I call them boys strictly in a social sense, not as “old boys,” a vile shibboleth we’re too often burdened with; they’re simply longstanding male acquaintances of mine—caught themselves watching, Hedley blushed but Ashmead resorted to local tactics, back-quoting the facts as surmised. “You’re Aníse Coquelin, then?” Yo Ainus Cokelin, den?
“No. Ce n’est pas ay-nus. Ay-nus is, how you say, ass hole. Aníse. Like the spice.”
“You mean the … licorice one?”
“Yes. That one. Do you like it?” The boys couldn’t keep their eyebrows down on that juicy tidbit, that AC’s new squeeze was black as licorice and had the same name.
“I am Aníse Monfret. I was married once before.”
Ashmead queried further, as if for clarification, yet I sensed that his dubious motivation was to be spokesman for the whole. “You’re … visiting then?”
Aníse favored me with a suggesting, though possibly ill-timed sparkle. “I don’t know.” Her exquisite sensuality showed along with the soft allure, the French flair, albeit the flair derived from a small island likely as parochial as our own. Her general succulence enticed while her social ease felt familiar, though we knew what was different here, what was, in a word, wrong, underscoring the taboo in our hearts and minds and history. But they too felt the charm, maybe from the accent, personifying, after all, what we fancied ourselves to be. Moreover, here she was, thrusting us, some of us more than others of us, into a dimension unanticipated for the entirety of our lives.
“But you are staying with your family here?”
She ate another oyster, taking her time, not so much savoring the taste or the tension but, I think, weighing her answer, which came with another smile. “I was. I am staying now with Arthur.” Ah-tuh, she called me, in a sweet blending of accents, that from Guadeloupe along with the underbelly of our own marsh islands.
Hedley’s eyebrows rose again, though Ashmead managed to keep one seated as the other rose.
“You staying out there with Arthur? I mean, at the place?” Hedley back-quoted again, like a cross-examiner eager to pin down the facts slowly, so the court reporter could get every juicy tidbit.
“Mm hm,” she hummed, nodding sidelong at the cooling pile of oysters, which the boys and I now proceeded to eat.
Ah, nothing like a good meal to ease a conversational impasse, and so we ate, muttering and mumbling sounds of goodness and appreciation for the delectable morsels before us. “You don’t get oysters like these over there, do you?”
“No. We do not. You are very lucky here. But you know that. Do you not?”
“What sort of … What do you … What were your days like over there in Guadeloupe?” Hedley asked.
“Oh, you know. The same as anywhere. You try to enjoy life. Guadalupe is very warm, you know.”
“Yes,” Hedley affirmed.
“But did you have a … you know, a job?” Ashmead pursued.
“I was assistant in an office of legal affairs,” she said, which got them nodding, perhaps betraying their yen for something to approve of. “But that was before. The last few years I live with my boyfriend. He was a dj, you know, a
disk jockey, but not at a radio station. He works at a club, where I help. It was quite nice and very popular. We often dance all night.”
“You danced all night?”
“Yes.” That harsh reality rounded the table in silence, until Aníse asked the follow-up, “You never dance all night?”
Hedley and Ashmead shared their first glance across the table at each other; no, they had not danced all night.
“Drank all night, maybe,” I injected. “But these two haven’t danced since they did the shag at Folly Beach before the pier burned down.”
“The shag?”
“Another holdover habit,” I explained. “It was a dance popular in the fifties, which was a safe time, so we preserved that part of it.”
“Ah, so you never dance with ska or zuké?”
“Who?”
“Island music.”
“This boyfriend. He wadn’t da former husband, was he?”
“Oh, no. I was not married for years.”
Ashmead moved, unfortunately then, for the summary judgment. “So you worked in a night club till you broke up with your boyfriend the dj, who was not the former husband, and now you out to Wadmalaw with Arthur Covingdale?”
“I think you are a lawyer too,” she said. “Tell me something. Have you been married?”
“Yes, Ma’m,” Ashmead said. “Both of us.”
“But no longer?” Ashmead shrugged and then shook his head. Hedley grimaced tentatively.
“And you have no girlfriend?”
“You got any girlfriends for us?” Hedley asked, verging on the har, har, har meant to diffuse an awkward exchange; what a laugh, the three of us professional white males going dancing all night with a troupe of musty womens.
“You are a man of not bad looks,” Aníse apprised him. “I wonder why you have no girlfriend.”
“Well,” Hedley intoned, picking another oyster to underscore what he well knew, that “there’s more to life than dancing and having fun, darlin’.”
“What? What could be more? Are you homosexual?”
That liked to brought a pair of oysters back up.
“Arthur. I think you got yourself a spitfire here.”
Ouch. I’d read that word not too long ago in a crumbling copy of the local newspaper describing Judge Waring’s new wife as a Yankee spitfire. So much of what I’d sorted through these last few months suddenly surfaced in a wave of emotion that tingled on my skin and left me speechless. I wanted to explain to Hedley and Ashmead that this woman was no spitfire but my girlfriend, plain and simple, and a better girlfriend in all ways than they could hope to find today or tomorrow or in a month of Sundays. As it was, I could only say, “Hedley …”
Aníse intervened, wiping her fingers and settling them on Hedley’s arm. “I want to enjoy life to the maximum. Don’t you? I have hear that you do. Arthur, I think he may be not too bad for dancing. I will teach him, but he’s got none of the rhythm naturále. Oh, but he do show me a rousin’ good time, you know.” The boys could only stare down their empty shells and ponder. “I think he in love. C’est vrais.”
She had us bound and gagged, relieving the boys of any doubt remaining on the bliss of my island days, but perhaps burdening them with further fantasy. I suppose she liberated me too, rendering me free of my compulsive elaborations. I kept this one brief. “Fuh true,” I translated, in case their French was rusty.
The boys declined her invitation to join us for dancing after dinner, at the beach. Hedley had to, uh, er, work early in the morning. Ashmead Montague shook his head, presumptively over the principal of the thing and said, “Sheeyit. You crazy?”
XV
What Was I Thinking?
And that was that, completing our first and, with any luck, last effort to penetrate civilization. We gained further clarity and confirmation on a few rhetorical and stereotypical notions, proving with certainty and possible finality that I lacked the natural rhythm gene. She marveled at the disconnection, heart and mind to hips and hind end, especially in view of demonstrable aptitude with similar undulations in horizontal application. On the horizontal note I suspected flattery but again took her at face value. If she played it up to make me feel good, it worked. Moreover it served us both, inspiring me anew to reach deeper in my energy reserve for a personal best, later that same night.
To call that memorable evening enjoyable, however, would have been a stretch. The oysters were excellent, and surviving dinner with the boys was a relief, as was the brevity of our sojourn to the single bistro open for business on Folly Beach. The Hog Call was dark, dank and thick smelling with spilled beer and soggy butts. A handful of hippie types at the bar looked us over, and one of them voiced approval with, “Right on, man.”
A tired old jukebox took my quarter with a dull clang and played three tunes that sufficed to complete our dancing experiment. I hoped she was only discouraged and not demoralized. Enjoyable it was not.
Relief restored us once we were in the car, insulated from social challenge, cruising south on a beautiful night over moonlit causeways, bridges and marshes, gaining distance on what seemed tolerant and tolerable at best. The outing concluded meditatively, as it were, with sparse dialogue but apparent communion in mutual enjoyment of the scenery, the ride, the cushy warmth of my Mercedes sedan. Serene security, just like in the ads, filled in as we neared home.
We ended our adventure with agreed relief on arriving home and closed the evening on a high note, initiated by Aníse’s most thorough display of gratitude for my compliance, or for dinner, or a terrific ride in a luxury sedan, or gentlemanly behavior. What else could I do but assure her in kind that the honor was all mine, that I too was grateful for her exquisite presentation, her wonderful taunting of my old friends, her salacious lilt and suggestive eyes?
Or maybe I only presumed gratitude; she may well have shown me nothing but love. Or maybe her motivation was purely hormonal, and a pogo stick cut from excellent raw stock by a well-reputed English manufacturer would have sufficed to receive her favors. Perhaps I only responded with biological need for the luscious woman in my bed.
I’d reached the happy point at which underlying causation was merely incidental to the moment, and the moments were sweet. In any event, she soon snored gently beside me; she was forty-one, or two, after all. And I, old guy on a lark, followed suit like a cheap chain saw clear-cutting the thicket surrounding us.
In the eighth month of our first year, Aníse Monfret, née Claudia Coquelin, of the Guadeloupe Coquelins and the Wadmalaw Cohens, swelled with her first child, causing her pitch black skin to glow eerily ruddy, like an aurora borealis much farther south and closer to the ground. Her eyes also shone with the popularly construed warmth of encroaching motherhood, though on her it looked more alert, or maybe alarmed, like the gaze of a wild creature suddenly sensing momentous change in the forest. She looked a little crazy, which I, for one, rather enjoyed, considering, as I did, the essence of our attraction as that between the known world and the unknown. She seemed more exotic and mysterious on each approach. I can only speculate what I must have seemed, but I think it was bolder, with fewer compunctions and inhibitions.
She confided her condition with trepidation, rambling in and out of English and French, that she fully understood the impracticality of an established white lawyer fathering a black baby, so if I could provide a few dollars to help with the birth and childhood, she would take over from there. She understood this to be a common arrangement, and though she’d been plagued to date by financial shortfall, she didn’t anticipate such a default from me, after all, since it would be nothing to me but a few dollars here and there.
As I digested the news and proposal quickly pursuant, she eased down beside me on the ratty sofa that so many established white lawyers had relaxed upon. She lolled an arm tentatively, as if to lay it on my shoulders but instead held it aloft, where the fingers dangled then gave in to the slightest gravity, touching my head and resting briefly before venturing movement, t
hen stroking my graying temples to ease the burgeoning realization and acceptance just beneath the skin.
Stunned with what would have been no surprise to a more grounded, stable man, my mind turned circles like a tiger chasing its tail, as if Little Black Sambo Covingdale watched from overhead, rigged up in his knee breeches and natty Fauntleroy accessories on his way to private prep school with the other children of recorded ancestries and very few addresses, all with low street numbers. But wait; Little Black Sambo was Indian, not African; how else could he have watched a tiger instead of a lion? No, change that to, uh …
So I pondered what character of African mythology or fable or fairy tale or joke could serve as imagery for the burgeoning reality pressing my skull and her womb. I stared off, though my eyes gave in to gravity as her fingers had done. Her far hand went from black to pinkish beige, rounding from the back of it to the palm, just like the hands on her blackest of forbears, hands that had grubbed like garden tools, hardened like wood and gnarled like cypress roots; hands that had pressed palms down to achieve invisibility. I took her hand in both my own; she sensed affection, but I too lolled, coming in for a closer look, feeling her softness and realizing, among other things, that this hand had not worked cotton or oysters, not for a living, not with those long fingernails painted red, a habit of the dancing days, or should I say nights, on which she shook her booty (her words) till dawn, then entwined shamelessly (my thoughts) with her former … what? Boyfriend?
I held her hand in my own and pondered it grasping and guiding—no, I declined those thoughts, deferring to the current habit of grasping the new boyfriend, which she currently and deftly did. Call her devious or manipulative, or, more likely, intuitive; she won the moment, for what it was worth, along with most of the hour in another display of gratitude or love or tribute, take your pick, with the gift most popular at our house, hormonal release, no matter what its prime motivation.
How could I lean on sixty as a boyfriend? How could I have a black woman as mother to my child? Could she assuage the mounting repercussions with repeated sexual dalliance, as if I was nineteen and couldn’t get enough, and love would conquer all?
In a Sweet Magnolia Time Page 22