by Robert Inman
It didn’t help that the Palmers made it clear they considered New Bern an outpost of civilization, no matter that it had a rich and hallowed history including the graceful and sturdy Tryon Palace, where a long-ago colonial governor had resided. No, the Palmers saw Greensboro as the center of the universe and their daughter as an exile. Clarice began to spend more and more time in Greensboro and, in the summers, with the Palmers at Nags Head. Will tried not to resent it, or at least not to show his resentment. Still, he felt an outsider, looking on from afar as the Greensboro Palmers meddled freely in each other’s business and spoke in an intimately familiar shorthand that encompassed everything in their mutual past and their shared notion of the way things were.
The younger generation of Palmers were a mixed lot. Donald was pleasant enough, and his wife Pookie, who had come from good Greensboro stock, occasionally drank a bit much and told bawdy jokes outside the presence of the elders. Fern had -- a year or so after Will and Clarice’s wedding -- married a doctor named Beau, an effeminate-acting prick who ran with the runny-brie-and-dry-chablis crowd and wore bow ties as if they were the Legion of Merit. To Clarice (who didn’t like him much either) Will referred to Beau as “Doc Savage.”
Will decided early on not to try to woo the Palmer family. They were, he sensed, un-wooable. He could be with them but never quite of them, but then he really didn’t care to be. As long as they didn’t meddle to excess in his life, he would be okay. He might not ever really like them, but they could accommodate each other. So when he was around Sidney and Consuela and the rest of them, he tried to make himself at ease. And he avoided the subject of golf. He kissed no fanny, but he also made no waves.
*****
Will’s contact with his former life on the Cape Fear River became almost cursory. He had taken Clarice to Baggett House several weeks after they settled in New Bern. It had not gone well. For one thing, the house was beginning to show signs of decay. Will hadn’t paid much attention before, during the years when he had visited from college. But now he saw that it was in need of a paint and repair. Not a good first impression for a girl from Irving Park.
Min worked until late Saturday evening at the store, had little to say at dinner that evening, and left early the next morning. Business in Wilmington, she said. Will showed Clarice the grounds and Barney the alligator, and after that, there didn’t seem to be much to do. They left just after lunch on Sunday. Min hadn’t returned.
He tried again when Palmer was two. They arrived late on Saturday afternoon and Will was relieved to learn that Min had no pressing business on tap for Sunday. They were up early and Min hauled some ancient toys down from the attic for Palmer, setting him up under the liveoak tree while she sat nearby in a lawn chair reading Retail Monthly magazine. Will and Clarice were enjoying an especially vigorous intimate moment in his old upstairs bedroom when they heard Palmer’s screams. They grabbed dressing gowns and bolted for the yard to find that Palmer had wandered away from the toys and stumbled into a patch of sandspurs.
Clarice snatched him up, glaring at Min furiously. “I thought you were watching him!”
“Well my goodness, it’s just a few sandspurs,” she retorted.
And then they engaged in a heated argument about the best way to treat sandspur wounds. Clarice marched off to the house with Palmer in her arms, and when Will found them upstairs, she had him calmed down and was packing their suitcases. “We’re going home.”
“Clarice, for gosh sakes…”
“And don’t you,” she whirled on him with pointed finger, “say it’s just a few sandspurs!”
“Okay. Let’s go.”
He said a hasty goodbye to Min, who didn’t seem much perturbed by their departure. When they pulled away, she was still sitting under the liveoak reading Retail Monthly.
And Wingfoot? He turned up once at the New Bern TV station just as Will was getting ready to go on the air with his late evening weathercast. He parked Wingfoot on a stool in a corner of the studio, and when he was finished, they went for a beer at a local tavern that stayed open late. He offered the couch for the night, but Wingfoot was on his way to Richmond. A new job, he said, doing construction.
It was the week after the disastrous trip to Baggett House and Will recounted it to Wingfoot. “Min’s getting peculiar,” he said. “I got the impression she didn’t care whether we came or went.”
“Living alone will do that to you,” Wingfoot said.
“And the house looks like…well, Clarice said, a tumor.”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t mention it to Min. She’s pretty touchy about the house.”
“How do you think I oughta handle Min, Wingfoot?”
“Carefully. That’s my advice.”
Wingfoot looked good, he thought. He was getting some new wrinkles around his eyes, probably from being out in the sun a lot. He had spent the past several months crewing on a fishing boat out of Oriental. But he was rock-solid and he looked as if he were easier with himself. The old intensity in his eyes had softened a bit.
“Are you okay?” Will asked.
“I’m vertical,” Wingfoot said with a crooked smile. And then he was gone into the night.
*****
In the Fall of 1980 one of his former professors at Chapel Hill called to tell him that the long-time weatherman at Channel Seven in Raleigh was getting ready to announce his retirement. The competition for the job would be fierce, so if Will was interested, he should get cracking.
Will hung up and called Clarice. “What would you think about Raleigh?”
“Well, it’s not New Bern. That says a lot for it.”
“I don’t know if I can get the job.”
“Of course you can,” she said. “You’re good, Will. You’re ready. They’d be lucky to have you in Raleigh.”
“And you’d like being closer to home.”
“Of course.”
He went straight to the New Bern station manager. “I’m going after the weather job at Channel Seven in Raleigh.”
The station manager said, “Well, I knew I couldn’t keep you. Let me know what I can do to help.”
“Give me tomorrow off.”
“Done.”
By early afternoon the next day he was standing in front of Old Man Simpson’s desk at Channel Seven, wearing his best suit and holding a videotape of his weathercast. Old Man Simpson took the videotape and added it to a pile on the credenza behind the desk, then showed Will to the sofa in the big corner office, just under the painting of long-ago Governor Zebulon Baird Vance. “All right, Will,” he said, “tell me why you think I should hire you.”
“I’m ready. I’ll do you a good job. I’ll work like the dickens.”
Simpson hiked one leg over the other and gave Will a long look. “Charlie Tuttle’s been doing our weather for twenty-five years. He’s better known in Raleigh than the governor. You young folks in the business these days, you’ve always got your eye on the next rung up the ladder. I’m not interested in Channel Seven being a waystation.”
“Mister Simpson, I’ll be honest with you. I won’t promise to be here as long as Charlie Tuttle. But I don’t have my eye on the next rung up the ladder. I’ve got a wife and a small kid, and I’m not interested in bouncing all over the country with ’em. Hire me, and we’ll see if we like each other.”
Simpson looked over at the pile of videotapes on the credenza. “Lots of talented people, experienced people, want to be my weathercaster. This is a good station and Raleigh’s a good place to live. We’ll see. You’ll get a fair shot, Will. Meantime, go back to New Bern and keep your mind on your work.” He smiled. “And don’t pester me like you did the station manager over there when you went after that job.”
“Yes sir.”
He heard not a word from Old Man Simpson for six weeks. Instead, he heard from Sidney Palmer. “I’d like to take you to lunch, Will.”
“Well…sure.”
“Carolina Country Club in Raleigh. Noon Saturday.”
“Just go have lunch with Daddy,” she said.
He drove to Raleigh Saturday morning, found the club, found Sidney waiting in the lobby. Sidney offered his hand. Will shook. Sidney had a nice, firm grip, for all his cool air of detachment. Will didn’t ask how Sidney had arranged lunch at Carolina Country Club. He supposed people like Sidney had connections with people like himself just about everywhere. Hong Kong Country Club? Sidney could probably arrange lunch there, too.
“A drink?” Sidney asked when they were seated and a waiter hovered at the table. Will hesitated. “I’ll have a scotch and soda,” Sidney said.
All right, Sidney. Whatever the hell this is all about, let’s just be us guys here. No baggage, huh? No Tyler Baggett, no deflowered daughter, no mismatched marriage. Just us guys. “Scotch sounds fine. On the rocks for me.”
They made small talk over their drinks -- Clarice, Palmer, beach living, prospects for the upcoming basketball seasons at Duke and Chapel Hill. Sidney was affable, almost expansive. Will tried to match his mood. They chewed over London along with their lunch. Sidney and Consuela had just returned from a two-week trip on which Consuela had, Sidney confided, acquired a rather hideous elephant-foot umbrella stand at the Saturday flea market along Portobello Road. “Sometimes we have to indulge our ladies,” Sidney said with a conspiratorial smile.
Over coffee, he got right down to business. “I understand you’re considering a move, Will.”
“Yes, Sidney, I am.”
“Raleigh’s a good town. State government, the university, now the Research Triangle Park. A lot going for the place. We have friends who like living here a lot, people whose families go back generations. Old Raleigh people. They worry about the growth, all that sprawl out on the north side and the traffic and all. But all in all, a good town.”
“You should be a spokesman for the Chamber of Commerce,” Will said.
Sidney smiled. “But have you considered alternatives?”
“To what?”
“A job in Raleigh.”
“I might not get the job in Raleigh. The owner at Channel Seven…”
“Barfield Simpson.”
“Yes sir. He says I’ll get a fair shot, but there’s a lot of competition.”
“So, if you don’t get the job here?”
“Well, I won’t stay in New Bern much longer. I’ll start looking.”
“But you want to stay close to…well, home.”
“Not necessarily.”
Sidney finished his coffee, wiped his mouth delicately, and tucked his napkin under the edge of his saucer. “Would you consider Greensboro?”
“I didn’t know there was an opening in Greensboro.”
“I mean…with the family business.”
It took Will a good while to say anything at all. Finally he said, “I really don’t know exactly what the family business is, Sidney.”
“We’re investment bankers.”
“I see.”
“Are you familiar with investment banking?”
“Not really.”
“It’s really very interesting, I think. My father started the business some years ago. I came in when I finished Duke, and now there’s Donald. We’ve been talking about bringing someone else along.”
Will was thoroughly taken aback. But he had presence of mind enough to see what this was: a peace offering. More than that, a measure of acceptance. He would never be a Palmer, not in any sense of what that might mean, but here was Sidney saying that he could, if he wished, gain entrance to the inner sanctum, at least on a permanent visitor’s pass. Sort of a second-tier Palmer. But did he want to be a second-tier Palmer? No he didn’t.
If there were only himself to consider, he would have told Sidney Palmer to stick investment banking up his rear end. But there was Clarice to think about. And his son. His relationship with his in-laws, or lack of one, was already a sore point, something around which he and Clarice tread warily, something they kept shoved back in the recesses of their marital closet. He loved Clarice and she, despite her occasional streaks of rebelliousness, loved her parents. It was a dicey game they played. And handling this present business the wrong way would cause a ruckus he didn’t even want to think about. So -- how to decline the job without declining the peace offering?
“Sidney,” he said, “I can’t tell you how flattered I am. That’s very generous, and more than that, it’s kind-hearted. But it wouldn’t be fair to you and Donald -- or to Clarice or anybody else in your family for me to accept. I would be a disaster at investment banking. I have a hard time balancing a checkbook.” He gave Sidney what he hoped was a self-deprecating smile. “My job is to be a good husband and father to Clarice and Palmer, and the best way I can do that is to stick with the business I’m in. It’s not investment banking, but it’s something I know how to do.”
Sidney looked at him impassively for a long moment. Then he said, “I respect that, Will.”
“I love your daughter, Sidney. I’ll always take care of her and cherish her and protect her. I promise that.”
“Consuela and I couldn’t ask for more.” He paused. “If you ever change your mind…”
Will couldn’t, in his wildest imagination, believe he ever would.
He was braced for fireworks from Clarice when he got back to New Bern, but she said only, “If that’s what you think you need to do, Will.” Odd, but he let it rest.
On Monday, he got another phone call. “Will, this is Barfield Simpson at Channel Seven. Could you get free from work and come talk to me again?”
By sundown Tuesday he was Channel Seven’s new weatherman.
*****
Clarice went straightaway to Raleigh to look for a house while Will wrapped things up in New Bern. Consuela joined her and brought along a nanny to take care of Palmer while they toured.
By the weekend, Clarice had settled on what she wanted, and Consuela decamped back to Greensboro with Palmer and the nanny and left Clarice to deal with Will.
It was a two-story Cape Cod on LeGrand Avenue in the Cameron Park neighborhood, not far from downtown and the North Carolina State campus. A quiet and gracious street, lined on both sides with towering oaks and sidewalks. Will pulled into the driveway and they got out and stood there looking at it for awhile. “It has a nice yard,” he said hopefully. But the only thing really nice about it was the size. It was shaded by two large maples between the house and the sidewalk and the undernourished grass was patchy, laced liberally with chickweek and dandelion. Whoever had planted the shrubbery years ago had started it out too close to the house and now it crowded against the brickwork of the foundation and sprawled, tired and leggy, toward the lawn, straining for light and space. The house and detached garage needed paint and Will could see signs of rot on some of the fascia board beneath the roofline. The roof itself was an ancient moss-encrusted slate thing.
The interior, if anything, was worse. The house was fifty years old and the floor plan was outdated. It had a nice-sized living room and a huge dining room, but the only thing that remotely resembled a den was a tiny room off the kitchen, barely large enough for a TV set and a couple of chairs. Closet space was miserly, the carpet was worn, and the furnace, Clarice admitted, was on its last legs. The kitchen had chipped metal counter tops and cabinets and aging appliances. The fixtures in the bathrooms also looked original -- huge ball-and-claw-footed tubs and pedestal lavatories.
They toured, Clarice expounding brightly on the great possibilities for the house -- tear out a wall here, add a wall there, an updated kitchen, pull up the carpet and refinish the hardwood underneath, on and on. Will kept his mouth shut until they were back outside on the front walkway.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because it’s what I want,” she said without hesitation.
“Why?” he asked again.
She took in the street and neighborhood with a sw
eep of her hand. “It’s a good neighborhood, Will. It’s established. Not like those new places sprawling out up there in North Raleigh. It’s a good place for Palmer to grow up. A nice yard, sidewalks for him to ride his tricycle. Parks, an elementary school nearby. Good neighbors.”
“How do you know the neighbors are good?”
“Will,” she said, “I wouldn’t have even known about this place if a friend of Mama and Daddy’s hadn’t told us. It’s not even on the market yet.”
It was the first time he had noticed there wasn’t a FOR SALE sign in the yard. “Mama and Daddy have friends here,” he said. “I see.”
“This is Old Raleigh, Will.”
“Like Old Greensboro.”
He stood there a moment longer, looking over house and grounds while she watched him. “How much?”
“A hundred twenty-five. It’s a good price. Homes in this area are going for a lot more. Sure, it needs work, but there’s nothing basic…"
“Good God, Clarice. We can’t afford that. And all that work you’re talking about inside…for crying out loud.”
She shook her head and then marched back inside the house, leaving him there on the walk. He found her in the front hall, hand resting possessively on the stairway bannister. “Okay, I see,” he said. “Mama and Daddy.”
“Just a loan, Will.”
All right. Another moment of truth here, just like the one last Saturday at the country club with Sidney. I can get my bowels in an uproar over my in-laws interfering in my life, or I can keep peace and make my wife happy. And besides, I have other fish to fry.
“ Just a loan,” he said.
“That’s all.”
He crossed the hallway and took her in his arms and kissed her. She kissed him back and the kiss grew deeper and deeper until, almost before he realized what was happening, their clothing was in disarray and she was sprawled backward on the staircase and he was on her, in her, and she was crying out and he was crying out and…the house was theirs.
*****
So they occupied the house and made it a home and seasons passed and they became as much a part of Old Raleigh as newcomers can become, more so than most. It was, as Clarice said, a good neighborhood. There were, as she said, nice neighbors. Palmer rode his tricycle and then his bicycle on the sidewalks. Clarice formed a book club. And Will Baggett threw his energies into becoming Raleigh’s most popular TV weatherman.