Whitegirl

by Kate Manning

  We waited in the sacristy, a little secret anteroom where the ministers’ vestments were hanging like bathrobes on hooks. It was crowded and bustling. Kevin was there doing maintenance on us girls. The Flower Lady was messing around with calla lilies. Bobbie was peeking at the ushers. “If that guy VD is the best man,” she asked, “who is the worst man?”

  Claire had many candidates.

  She and Bobbie were cackling about that, making jokes at my expense, such as Maybe the bride’s a little chilly what with that dress cut down her backside, don’t you think? Kevin came over and adjusted my headpiece and kissed me, saying “I remember the day you walked in off the street, in your cow T-shirt, as if it were yesterday!” He kissed my mother and my sister and said: “Oh! You gorgeous Halsey women!” They both beamed and blushed and hugged Kevin back. And I wanted to tell them You have just been kissed by a homosexual!! Was that so bad? But I didn’t. My mother was nervous and fidgety and having a grand time. In the end I believe she behaved because the wedding was a chance for her to get dressed up and have a title: Mother of the Bride. The Plaza Hotel awaited her with its red carpet and its crystal chandeliers. She would have a chance to meet the Couture King, the mayor, the Network anchorman, People magazine. She was thrilled. It was the allure of all this—Milo’s fame and fortune and the fashion world glamour of it—that finally won her over, that found her now all caught up in the excitement and the jitters, gazing at me saying: “You look so beautiful, Charlotte, honey, like the angel you are.”

  Hypocrite, I thought, while kissing her and telling her she looked beautiful, too. “Like a goddess, Mother.”

  The buzz of the guests was getting louder out in the church, and the strings had started up with the flute. “Five more minutes, everyone,” somebody said. Then outside, a siren careened up and stopped right out front: somebody arriving—the governor? The girls peeked out and said: The mayor! There were 300 people out there. Fashion Bigs and Network Wigs and the entire United States Ski Team.

  Then my father appeared in the doorway of the little room, uncomfortable in his tux and in other, less obvious ways, but a good sport, considering his objections.

  “Daddy,” I said, and took his arm, played with the satin on his lapel. “Are you ready?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be, Sunshine,” he said, and hummed the song: You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, softly so only I could hear it. Which he hadn’t done since I was small. His voice was low and out of tune. He was trying, bless his heart, for my sake, but he was all nervous tic, tucking his shirt, testing his hair, massaging his neck. He didn’t seem to know where to park his eyes. It seemed to me then, in light of my new information, that he was wishing he had a drink. Would do anything for just a belt of it.

  “It’ll be okay, Dad,” I said. “You’ll see.”

  “I pray to the Lord you’re right,” he said.

  We have the same prayer, I thought.

  Then it was time. My mother put her arms around me, kissed me, left cheek, right cheek, a custom she adopted after visiting me in Paris. “Break a leg,” she said mistily, what she used to say long ago, before my youth pageants. “Break a leg.” She looked at me to see if I remembered. I was tempted to say It’s not some kind of show. But there was something in the wings of her face, some apology, that stopped me. I hugged her. “I love you, Mommy,” I said. She swallowed and smiled, left stoically for her entrance, escorted by my brother Sean, going to sit in the first pew.

  Finally, out we went, me and Daddy. Down the middle, people stood up and craned to see, whispering Isn’t she lovely? Somebody’s kids said, Hi, Charlotte. All the Robicheaux cousins from Louisiana on the right and the Halsey relatives from the West Coast on the left, with me thinking If only we’d thought to tell the ushers not to follow that particular seating custom. Even in the midst of my wedding, I was arguing with myself: But why? Who cares?

  Bride’s side, groom’s side. White side, black side.

  Mix it up.

  Shut up, Charlotte, shut up.

  Up by the altar was my brother the Reverend Peter Halsey, acting as the guest minister, standing next to the groomsmen, my brother Sean and VD and Coach Winks.

  And Milo, waiting for me. I never let my eyes go off him. Everything else was on the misty sidelines. He was beaming at me, pulling me toward him with his gaze. That look. Had we been alone it would have been the look before our clothes came off. That hooking smile, going up one side of his face. So handsome. The way his mouth revealed just a hint of red between the lips when he opened them to say something. My name. Charlotte. He was saying it as I walked. Come here. Gooseflesh rose on my bare arms, the flowers in my hands trembling as if they were still growing in a breezy field. I clamped my eyes on him and walked.

  Claire took the bouquet from me, I think. I don’t know. What I remember is, Milo took my hands and held them. Our knuckles were bloodless, we clenched so hard. Our palms were slippery and hot. In the pictures you can see my chest and arms are blotched red, big splotches of color mottling the skin with feelings I had never shown in front of a camera before. Still, we spoke out forcefully.

  In sickness and in health. Till death us do part.

  I do.

  I do.

  Milo found my fourth finger, pushed the ring hard over the knuckle. His eyes were watery when he spoke. Take and keep this as a symbol of my love, wear it all the days of your life.

  I will, I said, and said the same words to him.

  I will, he said. You know I will.

  He reached to cup the back of my head. My arms slid forward around his waist, under the jacket, feeling suspenders crossed on his hard back. A long kiss, too long for in public. So what? We didn’t care, kissing with our arms full around each other, eyes shut, so there was laughter, finally, and us breaking up for air. Milo turned and held our hands high above our heads, beaming, like we had won something.

  The music came pealing out and everybody cheered as we passed, with more gusto than you’d expect at a wedding. They reached out to us from the pews, and waved, and dried their eyes. We got to the end of the aisle and I pulled Milo off to the side, down two steps into the little anteroom. I closed the door behind him and he pushed me against it. We were gripped together, out of breath, staring. We were married. I was crying. Milo was. He wasn’t ashamed of it, he let tears run down his face. I brushed at them, collected them in my hands.

  People think they cry at weddings because they are about happy hope and lovely love. All the materials involved are delicate as eggshell: lace and gauze, pearls and rice. But now I know weddings are really about terrible risks and gambles. They are about ends as much as beginnings; about the narrowing of possibilities, the putting of eggs all in one basket. To me it would make more sense if the ceremonial materials were steel and girder, masonry and cement. The bride wore a Kevlar gown reinforced with carbon fibers, and the groom was nickel plated.

  My tears were because of the risky parts and the happy parts, both, but also because of the way Milo looked at me in that room. It reminded me of that day in the woods, that big deer, before it realized why we were there, how its eyes looked up with a routine question, then widened with one pulse of panic. It was only a flicker there in Milo’s gaze, or maybe in how he swallowed.

  “Wife?” he said.

  Now we were laughing. Giddy. We were married. We couldn’t get over it: husband, wife. The words suddenly seemed inane, relevant as shoe, sock. We heard people outside the door but we didn’t want to go out and face them, not yet. The room smelled of elderly ladies, a cross of perfume and the spotted mold on hymnals. We straightened up and fixed Milo’s tie and caught a look at ourselves in the mirror there. It was mottled where the silver backing had flaked. Our reflection was blurry and aged.

  “That’s what we’ll look like in fifty years,” Milo said. I loved that he said that. We watched ourselves kissing in the mirror, imagining our seventy-five-year-old lips, locked like now, all that time ahead of us.

  We w
ere married. We were off to the party. When we got out of the limo in front of the Plaza Hotel, all the men from the ski team lifted me up, lifted Milo, and carried us in.

  The toasts were strange.

  My brother Peter tapped his glass: “Milo, we’d like to welcome you to the Halsey family.” Stiff as a steeple. “On behalf of my mom, dad, my sister Diana and my brother Sean. God bless. Three cheers for the happy couple!” And he led everybody in the cheer, made them say: Hip hip hooray! like British people, while under her breath, Claire was muttering to Bobbie, He wouldn’t know hip if a hippopotamus fell from the sky on his head. Bobbie was choking back laughs behind her hand.

  Milo’s father stood then, serenely. “My son,” he said. He perched his half-glasses on his nose and read notes off a napkin. “All your life you’ve skied your own trail. Sometimes into trees. (Laughter) Sometimes off cliffs. Though we often wondered where you were headed, you yourself have never had a question, and wherever you end up, it’s always somewhere glorious. Your mother and I, we trust that this trail upon which you set out today will be no different in that respect than the others you’ve blazed, and we’re proud of you, Milo. Congratulations to you and Charlotte on your wedding day.”

  I clapped and blew him a kiss. Then my father stood up.

  “We always knew Charlotte would do something crazy—”

  Nervous laughs and looks of alarm started going back and forth at our table. Milo reached for my hand.

  “So that’s why we’re glad she found young Robicheaux here to keep her out of trouble.” He raised his glass.

  Relief bubbled up all around. Rick—VD—stood up, and everybody went: Uh-oh. There were groans coming from a table of skiers. VD said: “When Milo was at his peak—”

  Hoots and razzes.

  “I mean the peak of his downhill form.”

  “Oh yeah!”

  “We used to call him Black Ice.”

  Milo shifted in his seat.

  “Ice! Ice-man!”

  “Now, for those of you who are not skiers, let me explain: Black ice is solid water, frozen sheer, under new snow. You can’t see it, but when you hit it you are in trouble. You can’t grab an edge or hold a tuck. You’re f—… Sunk. Excuse me.” (Jeers and hoots. Milo with a stiff smile on his lips.) “It’s extremely dangerous. You can never win with black ice. And that was Milo. Dangerous. But, I have to say, and all of us agree, now that he’s met the lovely Charlotte Halsey—”

  Whoops. Wolf whistles.

  “He’s melted. The Ice is melted!”

  Cheers. Applause. Blushing by me.

  Now Milo stood up and raised his glass. “Those of you who know me know I like to go fast. So this won’t be a long speech.”

  “Go Smilo!”

  “When I found Charlotte, I knew by the speed of my heart racing that she was the one for me. To my wife,” he said, “I love you.” He pulled me to my feet and put a glass in my hand and linked our arms around so we drank to each other like that, twined. You couldn’t have pried us apart for more than ten minutes that whole party, not with a crowbar or a bucket of cold water.

  Everybody cooperated. It was etiquette that did it. Follow the proper procedures and you will be fine. Start with the outside fork. Scoop soup away from you. Bride dances with father. Groom cuts in by bowing. Mother of the bride dances with father of the groom, mother of the groom with father of the bride. Emily Post thought she could save the world with manners, and I see why.

  They managed. They really did. The older generation was a little bit lost at sea, never having imagined it quite that way: Milton Robicheaux in a tuxedo, bowing to my coiffed mom in her gown modeled on the First Lady’s shirred chiffon Inaugural Ball dress, the two of them doing a polite dancing school waltz. Then my handsome dad in his cummerbund, his shirt studs shaped like fish, the symbol of Christ, leading cool Hattie Robicheaux in her grape-colored dress and her dangling earrings. Chatting about nothing. Certainly not about the grandchildren, who’d they take after? All of us had to smile fondly at them later in the party, when the music got the better of everybody, and the Robicheauxs let fly with fancy steps, and the Halseys did an actual jitterbug, left over from their pre-Christian days, so you couldn’t help but conjure them all up twenty-five years before, with dewy skin and doo-wop hair, never in their wildest dreams thinking of this night, not this version, all dancing at the same party, their children in each other’s arms.

  19.

  How I feel now is undone, prised apart and strewn to the wind in drops of water like pieces of Charlotte raining down across the place, making no marks where they land. It’s as if I am a mess of rain waiting to pelt out, bottled up in back of my face. I am sad.

  Milo writes he is sad, too. He writes, Please believe me. Believe what? I didn’t hurt you. You did, you did.

  It hurts to be stabbed with betrayal and cut with lies, bloody with sorrow and jealous ache at the knowledge of what he did behind my back. How broken and angry I still am at him for it.

  You should just never love anyone.

  I loved him, Milo. Shallowly, at first, for his wisecracks and his celebrity and the way his eyes were green as chameleons, I loved him next for the way he peeled the neck of my T-shirt down my shoulder like the skin off a clementine and made random drawings around the hollow of my clavicle with his fingertip, his tongue, his breath. In between I loved him for stupid, sugar-pop reasons, like that he knew the words to Hendrix songs, the way he wore loafers with no socks and white tennis sweaters with a blue stripe at the V neck. But in the end, the whole time, I loved him for deep and complicated reasons, some of which had to do with me, what I needed.

  Did he love me? Yes he did. He loved me first, he said, because he hated me, for not noticing him, and then because of my abandon in bars, dancing. He loved me next for the way he could see my photograph all over town. In between he loved me for my snide remarks, referring to various people as skankballs, toadstools, rodents. He loved me for refusing to flatter him, because I told him what he could do with his fame. He loved my refusal to be impressed.

  But in truth I was impressed. And he knew that, too. He loved me finally because he knew I saw his ordinary American cheer was not cheer, but really bravery. I did not think his famous, talented life was a piece of cake, bowl of cherries, any kind of sweet food. He loved me because I respected his grace in the face of his experiences, his hometown, the police. He loved that I would listen to his stories.

  Listening made me feel important. It was as if, by Milo telling me his life, I fixed something about him, and he fixed something about me, some feeling of worthlessness both of us, for utterly different reasons, had grown up with. Are these the “wrong” reasons people accuse us of? I don’t think so.

  When he heard I was with Milo, my old boyfriend Simon called me up. “So, you’re with the dusky Moor?” he said.

  “Si-mon,” I said.

  “But you have read it? Othello? You know he kills her, don’t you?”

  I hung up on him. But then of course I went and read it, worried that there was something about it everyone else knew, but not ignorant Charlotte, with my blond education, sneaking it so Milo would not catch me. Didn’t much care for it, really, what with the thick language and the racist commentary! It was beyond me, clearly, I couldn’t get through it. Still, there was a part I liked, where he, Othello the battle-scarred soldier, says: She loved me for the dangers I had passed, and I loved her that she did pity them. I did not pity Milo. Certainly I knew he hated any kind of pity. But I liked this part because it made me realize what it was that we loved in the other: Milo seeing himself in my eyes as a hero.

  But as much as he tried, Milo did not know how to navigate his fame the way he could a downhill course or a New Hampshire town. When I met him again after college, Milo had already been famous for five years, but it was not until he got to New York that he learned why fame has been called a drug. Like some drugs, you can handle it in moderation. With the right doctors. But try it with t
he wrong ones, and the sky will surely fall on you, or an acorn that feels like the sky, so that pretty soon you are Chicken Little, your whole life a panic. What I am trying to say is: Like Chicken Little, the idea of the falling sky will so distract you, you will not notice that it’s the Fox who is inviting you to take shelter in his lair.

  In this story, Darryl Haynes is the fox.

  Okay, he’s not. Probably he’s not. More like the goat. The scapegoat. I’m telling you I wish I could blame him. Anyone. God. Someone besides myself. Darryl is without shame. He is out there acting like what happened to me, this crime, is a spectacular spectacle, something to promote and profit from. Which he will, mark my words. He’s taking out ads! Pages of newspapers. In the L.A. Times there was a double-page spread: one side with pictures of white cops standing over dead black men in pools of black blood, cops leading black men in handcuffs, mug shots of corrupt white cops; the other page had shots of handsome Milo shaking the hand of Ronald Reagan, Milo holding the Olympic medal aloft, Milo in his blue blazer from the Network’s Wild World of Sports, Milo in his beloved role as “Cade, Rebel Fury,” from the whole Cade series of action films. “Who do you believe?” goes Darryl’s copy. “Them? or Him?” with an uppercase H, as if Milo were holy.

  Mr. Top Agent Darryl is talking to everybody, all the press: Milo Robicheaux would not hurt a flea.

  Well, he hurt me.

  She says it’s my child. Milo said this one night, sat me down and confessed: “Geneva says it’s my son.” Left me gasping like a goldfish dropped on the carpet. An ordinary Wednesday night. Hallie was in bed. We had finished up the dishes. “Come here,” he said, “my darling. We have to talk.” And he said: “She says it’s my son.”

  So: Who am I to say, after that betrayal, that Milo is not also the one who did this? Who nearly severed the carotid artery in my neck? Come here my darling we have to talk. They say they found me in his arms.

  The man came home and found his wife half dead, Darryl says. And if it weren’t for him, she’d be all the way dead. My client was trying to save the life of his wife, and he did.