A Heart Divided (4 page)

My dad, who’d come down a few weeks earlier to find us a house and start his job, met us at the way-too-clean Nashville airport. He wore a broad grin, excruciatingly new jeans, and cowboy boots. Yes. Cowboy boots. He hugged us all and kissed my mom. I don’t think I’d ever seen his face shine quite that way before.

New York City summers, however oppressive, are the Ice Age compared to August in middle Tennessee. We stepped out of the main terminal into air so thick you could chew the heat and wash it down with the humidity. By the time Dad led us to a new Saturn—no shocker there—I was drenched.

Back in New Jersey, my father had made fun of country music. But now, as we headed down Interstate 65 to our new home, the radio was set to a yeehaw station. He sang
along. Meaning he’d already learned the words. Okay, so my dad was having fun with his new environment. That’s just the kind of guy he was. Immediately, Portia proceeded to prove the power of genetics by joining in on the repetitive, hooky chorus.

Seven heartbreak ditties later, we’d passed the Nashville city limits, skirted the community of Brentwood, and taken the exit for Redford. We’d almost rented a house in Brentwood, a town that looked pretty much like Englecliff, only with hills and more open space. In fact, my mother had flown down to approve the new place. But after she had returned to Englecliff, the owner reneged on the deal. So my father had found us a home in nearby Redford that he assured us was absolutely gorgeous.

After a short stretch of fast-food restaurants, gas stations, and car dealerships, we turned onto a wide, tree-lined boulevard. Welcome to Redford, Tennessee. Population 18,451. My new home.

As Dad negotiated Redford’s negligible traffic, he launched into a history lesson. Clearly he’d been studying. He seemed to know every obscure detail about the place, especially about the Civil War’s bloody Battle of Redford. We passed the municipal golf course, which Dad informed us was the old battlefield. The travelog continued as we rolled down sleepy-looking streets lined with quaint-looking shops and leafy-looking trees. Not many people were out, which was sensible considering the blast-furnace conditions. “Here we are,” Dad proclaimed as he pulled
into a brick-paved roundabout. “Redford courthouse square. There’s the monument.”

Hard to miss. A gray granite obelisk jutted skyward fifty feet from a grassy area in the center of the roundabout. I learned later that etched into the granite were the names of 3,000 Confederates and 1,800 Union men who had died in the Battle of Redford. Flanking the monument, flying high and proud, were two flags: one American, one Confederate.

“Pete. At the risk of stating the obvious, that’s a Confederate flag,” my mother said, obviously disgusted.

I shaded my eyes to peer up at it. “We’re actually going to live in a town that flies the Confederate flag? It may as well be a swastika!”

“I didn’t raise it, ladies,” my father said good-naturedly.

“The South lost, right?” Portia asked.

“Shhh, not so loud,” my father joked. “Some folks around here still call it the War Between the States.”

No one laughed. He pulled off the square and onto a side street, where we rolled past more quaintness on parade. I couldn’t believe the flag didn’t bother him. Clearly, the heat had fried my liberal Democrat father’s brain.

Ten minutes later, we were turning into the long driveway of a stately old home. “This is it!” my dad announced. He was grinning but also looking anxiously at my mother for her approval.

It came fast. She got out of the car and took in our new
home, which was, in a picturesque Southern sort of way, beautiful. There was a long white porch with four rocking chairs and a swing that faced the road. Blue shutters framed each window; delicate lace curtains hung behind the glass. Between the lawn and the house was a lush profusion of flowers—rosebushes, pansies, and morning glories. To one side of the detached garage, there was a patch of climbing vines, heavy with ripe tomatoes.

“Wow,” my mother declared.

“You like it?” he asked.

“I love it.”

“Fourteen hundred Beauregard Lane,” my dad marveled. “Who’d ever think that Pete Pride would live on Beauregard Lane?”

Portia was already dancing around the porch. “It’s fantastic, Daddy! It’s like out of a movie or something.”

I wouldn’t admit it out loud, but she was right. And impressive as the exterior was, the interior was even better. Downstairs was a huge kitchen with every possible convenience, a formal living room, and dining room, and a sitting room with its original fireplace. One flight up was a pair of enormous bedrooms, each with its own bathroom.

Portia followed me up the next flight of stairs, to my new room. It was a converted attic with sloping beams, cool from its own air conditioner. Along the far wall was a pile of boxes marked with my name. There was a cozy padded window seat under the eaves, and someone—Dad?—had already made my bed. Against my pillows rested the one
my mom had cross-stitched for me so many years ago:
THE PURPOSE OF LIFE IS A LIFE OF PURPOSE.

“Look!” Portia cried, flinging open a door. “You have your own bathroom. We won’t have to share anymore!”

Okay. The place was nice. My room was nice. Having my own bathroom was nicer than nice. That still didn’t mean I wanted to be there. I eyed the boxes. Unpacking would declare a permanence I wasn’t ready to embrace. So instead, I went out for a walk, to see what life looked like in a town that proudly flew a racist flag.

strolling through downtown Redford, which made sense, since the temperature was still in the mid-nineties. At first blush, the place reminded me of a 1950s movie set. The sidewalks and streets were red brick, as were most of the buildings. There was so little traffic that I could hear the grommets on the flags by the monument clang against their poles. As I waited to cross the street, an approaching car stopped even before I set foot in the crosswalk. The driver waited patiently and tipped his baseball cap to me as I crossed.

Like
that
would ever happen in Manhattan.

On closer scrutiny, though, I saw that the wholesomeness of the square wasn’t all Norman Rockwell. Sure, there was your basic town hall and courthouse, old-fashioned barbershop, five-and-dime, hardware store, small-town savings and loan, et cetera. But flanking Grover’s Hardware were a skateboard shop called Outrage and a used-CD place called Coda.

Next to Redford Savings and Loan was the Pink Teacup, a cozy dessert café whose plateglass window announced that it had been in business since 1928. Tinkling bells greeted me as I pushed through the door. Everything inside was pink, including the lipstick and hair ribbon on the fifty-something lady behind the counter (“My name’s Roberta, honey, but call me Birdie, everyone does”).

Birdie urged me to try some “fruit tea.” One sip and I was hooked—icy cold, it tasted of strawberries, peaches, and spring flowers. When Birdie learned I was new in town, she made me a present of two fresh-baked butterscotch chocolate chip cookies. “I’m famous for ′em, and you can’t get ′em up north,” she told me. “You come on back soon, honey, and welcome to Redford!”

Like
that
would ever happen in Manhattan.

I continued my exploration on a sugar high, passing the Revco drugstore, Jimmy Mack’s meat-and-three restaurant (Yankee translation: you choose a meat or chicken and three side dishes), and the one-screen Redford Cinema. Catty-corner from the cinema was an empty
storefront whose whitewash announced the opening of a new Starbucks. So, mass consumer culture was invading even this corner of America. Which meant that soon people would be able to sit on the sidewalk and sip Iced Caffè Latte while enjoying the Confederate flag snapping proudly in the breeze.

I saw a sign for the Redford library and decided to have a look inside. You can tell a lot about a place by the books—and the plays—it keeps. A block off the square, the library was housed in what looked like an old mansion. Inside, it was cool and calm. A few people read newspapers. In the children’s room, the walls featured giant murals of Winnie the Pooh and the Velveteen Rabbit. Kids on little chairs were listening to a librarian read aloud. That was nice.

I went to the front desk, where an elderly, white-haired woman with porcelain skin raised friendly blue eyes to mine. “Can I help you, dear?”

“I was wondering where I would find plays.”

“Theatrical plays?”

I nodded. “Shakespeare, Chekhov, Arthur Miller?”

“Well, Shakespeare, Chekhov, and such, you’ll find in the third aisle. Your more modern plays—I’m afraid we don’t have too many, we don’t get much call for that, but I’ve collected some fairly recently—you’ll find up those stairs and to the right, in Patricia Farrior’s bedroom.”

“Pardon me?”

She smiled. “Daughter of Colonel James Farrior, Army
of Tennessee. This used to be the colonel’s home. It’s a miracle it survived the battle. Do hold tight to the handrail on your way up, dear.” She pointed to a narrow, circular iron staircase.

Colonel Farrior’s daughter had not lived large. In a space a quarter of the size of my new bedroom, with a similarly sloped ceiling, there was one lonely, dusty bookshelf. It held a few rows of lonely, dusty plays. Near the wall was a single wooden table, with two ancient chairs. The air conditioning didn’t work as well up here; it was easily ten degrees warmer than downstairs.

I went to the bookshelf and scanned the play titles, plucking out one of my favorites,
When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder?
Still stung by Marcus’s parting comments, I reminded myself that while
Red Ryder
was a serious play, it was often laugh-out-loud funny. So why couldn’t I be, too? I slid into a chair and started to read.

“Ouch! Damn!” This came from
under
the table.

I pushed away from the table and jumped just as a guy crawled out and stood up. Objective truth of his physical self: my age. Tall, loose-limbed, athletic-looking. Golden tan, ditto hair; swimming pool-blue eyes. Subjective truth of his physical self: Oh. My. Gawd.

“You startled me, and I banged my…” He touched his forehead.

“I
startled
you?”

His grin could have melted the polar ice caps. “Sorry about that.”

“Is hanging out under tables a little quirk of yours?”

He looked sheepish. “I was looking for something.” He dropped his “g”s on “looking” and “something” with the slightest, sweetest of drawls.

“Lose your pen?”

“Not exactly.”

“What if I’d had a skirt on? A
short
skirt?”

He looked stymied for a nanosecond, then rallied. “If I picked this room to look up girls’ skirts, I’d be one sorry Peeping Tom. No one ever comes up here.”

Okay, that was funny. “I did,” I pointed out.

He chuckled. “Yeah. I guess you did.”

Heat radiated between us. Or maybe it was just the crappy air conditioning. Or both.
Red Ryder
had fallen to the floor when I’d jerked away from the table; he picked it up for me and checked out the title. “You know this play?”

“Yeah. Reminds me a little of
Bus Stop.”

“William Inge,” he said as he handed me back the play-book.
“Red Ryder’s
better, though.” He actually knew
Red Ryder
and
Bus Stop?
Who
was
this boy?

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “How do you like Redford so far?” What he meant was, if you lived in Redford, I’d already know you.

“Hard to say. I’ve been here”—I checked my watch— “three hours and twenty-seven minutes.”

“How long are you staying?”

“We moved here. From New Jersey.”

“Welcome to Redford. Name’s Jack.”

“Kate.”

“Hey, Kate from New Jersey.” He held his hand out to me. I took it. I didn’t let go. Neither did he. We just stood there. It was ridiculous and at the same time perfect.

“How do you know those plays?” I asked.

His eyes held mine. “How do you?”

“Jackson?”

The voice startled both of us. We let go of each other’s hand and backed off a half step. A pretty girl in a red-and-white cheerleading outfit with a bare midriff and world-class red hair stood at the top of the staircase. Jack—which I now understood to be short for Jackson—looked at her blankly for a second, almost as if he’d forgotten who she was. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on my part, the way I wanted it to be.

“Hey, Sara,” he finally said. “I was talking to Kate. She just moved here.”

“Nice to meet you, Kate.” Sara’s voice was all sweetness and light. Her eyes, however, held what Marcus called an oppositional subtext. In other words, she already hated my guts. She twirled in a circle, her little skirt swishing around her trim thighs. “What do you think, Jackson? We just got the new outfits.”

“Great,” he assured her.

“Everybody’s waiting on you at Jimmy Mack’s,” she said. “After that I’ve got a whole list of stuff we need to get done today, so chop-chop, baby.”

Chop-chop, baby?

Even as she tugged him toward the stairs, his eyes were still on me. “I’ll see you soon, Kate,” he said.