A Southern Girl (42 page)

“Exactly,” I affirm and I can see this pleases her. Good, Margarite. I will try to lie as best I can so that all your images of your son are intact. Forgive my need, my compulsive need, to preserve the mirage of the living.

“It must have been difficult breaking the news to Adriana.”

“God, it was awful,” I lie. “She cried and pleaded and I almost gave in. I think I would have if Philip hadn’t been there to keep my feet on the ground.”

“You would have done the same for him, Coleman.”

No, Margarite, I would not have done for Philip what he did for me. Not in a dozen lifetimes. “Oh, sure,” I agree. “Philip and I had that kind of friendship.”

“And so you left?”

I should simply nod and leave it at that, but I see no real harm in weaving into my fiction a few more details. “Philip and I packed the morning we pulled out. Adriana walked us to the train station. The train was late, of course. We sat talking and I think she had cried it out by then and when
we finally got up to go she kissed us. She kissed us both. We climbed in and that was that.”

“Oh, Coleman, I think I’m going to cry. The thought of you two boys standing beside that train kissing that beautiful girl; it’s too romantic.”

That’s exactly what it is, Margarite: too romantic, not that the truth lacks romance. “She took our addresses but I never heard from her. I don’t guess Philip did either. He never mentioned it.”

“No,” she says, “I don’t ever recall him getting a letter from Mexico. I wonder what happened to her?”

“I’ve wondered that many times. Some lucky Mexican man married a beautiful wife, I suppose.”

We stand and she steadies herself discreetly. “You have no idea how much I appreciate your coming here. It makes me happy to think you boys had each other.”

“Philip was a big part of my life. As long as I’m around, you don’t have to worry about him being forgotten.”

“I know that. In a few years or maybe sooner—we never know—I’ll be seeing him again. That’s my faith and it keeps me going. But now I’ll have something else to talk to him about when I get there, and to think about while I’m here. Mexico.”

We walk down stairs and she sees me to the front door, smiling again at the pleasure I have given her. I tell myself that I have done well by Philip today. To ease his mother’s burden I would do almost anything. Anything, that is, short of accounting for myself in Mexico. Same old Coleman.

Later that evening, with Adelle at the Cooper Club, I relate conversation with Margarite and share my guess at the set-up culprits.

“Charlotte Hines for sure,” she agrees. “Jeanette … ? I’d be more inclined toward Sandy Charles.”

“Because of Charlotte’s influence?”

Adelle nods. “It’s like the pied piper.” I am listening intently without appearing to be straining. This is as close as Adelle has come to discussing the fateful vote. I am too much a gentleman to ask her to boldly violate a confidence, and to her credit she has lived by the code of silence. But the calls to Margarite offer a fresh opportunity for discussion, and every gentleman knows that the back door is more revealing than the front. By
assaying her thoughts on reactions to the news article, I may deduce much she is too discreet to share.

“Naturally, Margarite was reticent,” I prompt. “She merely said two people, so we can’t rule out the men.”

Adelle sips her bourbon and ginger, nodding agreement but offering nothing further. The club is busy tonight, and I am certain that my imagination is a freshly coated flypaper for every furtive look behind my back, every askance I think I see from those passing near the table. The news article has left me feeling like a visitor being appraised from the deep reaches of leather tufted booths, by eyes operating like two way mirrors. I am uncomfortable where I have experienced only comfort and security before.

I tell Adelle of Margarite’s commitment to the search for a loophole. “The fact that no one has seen the rules since the 1700s may cut both ways,” I note. “On the one hand we’re fighting a phantom and on the other hand they’ll have a tough time pointing to the provision that keeps her out.” I stab the remaining olive in my martini. “I just wish I knew how many votes I actually need. I’ve been assuming it’s one but now I’m not sure.” This is blatant baiting, a shameless circling to the front door.

“Actually, I’m surprised you need any votes at all,” she says meaningfully.

“What?”

“Coleman, we pledged confidentiality on the discussion because of its sensitivity, but perhaps you ought to know that no one other than Margarite knows the outcome. She counted the ballots. I couldn’t tell you what the margin was because she didn’t tell us. She merely announced that the exemption was denied.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Charlotte Hines was going to object if a different decision was announced because Margarite seemed, on the surface, to be with you.”

On the surface? Suddenly, I am blindsided by the fear that more lurks in the jungles of Haiti than wide-eyed leopards. Margarite? Impossible.

Adelle continues. “I see now that I should have made the same demand Charlotte was planning, because I was sure you had four votes.”

“The discussion persuaded you,” I say, charging through the front door after demolishing the screen.

“I am honor bound not to divulge the discussion. But I hope you know me well enough to believe that if I knew the vote count I’d find some way to tell you even if it meant one blink for yes and two for no. Perhaps that’s why Margarite kept it to herself.”

I sit back in utter disbelief.

She leans forward conspiratorially over her drink, her eyes casting about as though spies linger. “You cannot breathe a word of what I’ve told you. I can’t prove it. I just hate to see you put your hopes in someone that could let you down. If she’s against you, Allie’s chances are nil.”

I nod, resigned. So true. My basis for optimism has all along consisted of Margarite and Adelle. So that’s why Margarite hinted at the larger margin for the nays; she wants to discourage any hope I might harbor that turning one person around will clinch victory. She wants me to perceive such an uphill struggle that I give up and go home. While I sit in her Haiti room disclaiming all manner of legal action, she is secretly breathing a huge sigh of relief. Unbelievable!

Adelle’s voice pulls me back. “Coleman, I’ve said too much. You’ve got to promise me, your most solemn oath, that you will never let on that I told you. If you do, Margarite will know the source at once and so will the other members. Promise me.”

Her pleas are genuine. I have to work at holding my composure. All too strange that Margarite would stoop to treachery over such a matter. Does her self-image as a conscience-compelled egalitarian mean so much? If Adelle’s implications about the debate are true, my gut feel of a narrow win, so strong with me the night I addressed them at the Hall, was on target after all. Once more I find myself a victim of my inability to attribute bad motives to good people.

I have been told that among the qualities contributing to my reputation as the Great Conciliator is the respect I habitually accord the opinions and desires of warring factions. Those generous souls assume this trait to be, in me, the perfection of a practice fundamental to my art, like putting to golf. They imagine me sitting in protracted negotiations reigning in my prejudices with the strength and skill of a consummate teamster, whose arms have been flexed and muscled by the repeated weight of raising his judgments above his biases. “Of course Coleman knows who’s right,”
these admirers tell themselves. “He’s just allowing the other side to have its say.”

Yes and no. Certainly a mediator who wears his bias on his lapel will shortly be looking for other work. Undeniably, an aura of impartiality is oxygen to the beast. But such an aura need not be the product of a rigid discipline nor iron practice; it can, as with me, be sincere. This much I have learned: a bad person is sometimes right on the facts. I grudgingly acknowledge this truth, and when I happen upon such instances, either professionally or in private life, I remind myself that some higher justice, if it exists, will sort it out later.

In a good person is found, whether right or wrong on the facts but at all times, a pulse of compassion and the willingness to be ruled by it, though his or her worldly interests lie elsewhere. My asset is my most glaring liability: I assume all people to be good. It is as primal in me as a salmon swimming to spawn. It is not a judgment; to persist in demonstrable illusion is the rankest naivety. But instinctively, in negotiations or my personal affairs, I feel for the pulse, at times probing beyond prudence in the expectation of its beat and often, particularly with someone close, willing to ascribe its absence to my own feeble powers of detection. What others credit to equanimity can be my stubborn refusal to give up on the corpse.

Elizabeth, on the other hand, was sprinkled with the salt of cynicism. In her, a latent mistrust lingered, predisposing her to guard her valuables and lock her doors against those untested souls she knew only casually. She was right more often than not, and when wrong took it less to heart, so that when someone she had initially been leery of proved worthy, she accepted it as gift, a pelf of unexpected pleasure. I miss the balance she brought to our collective assessments. Had she been in my place the night of the vote, she would have viewed that Board through her peculiar telescope, one hand firmly on her purse.

Margarite is a good person. I have known her too long and too well to believe otherwise. It will be a struggle against my nature to find in her character the infidelity suggested by Adelle, brought to view by a motive so impelled as to arrest the pulse I have felt often. I also lack Elizabeth’s charity when proved wrong. I am devastated.

25

Today has been one of those marathons, beginning at 7:00
A.M.
with a breakfast meeting at the Marriott. Some doctors are putting together a limited partnership to construct a medical complex in Mt. Pleasant and have hired me to build the paper fortress assuring them maximum return, minimum risk, and tax liability $1.00 above the IRS’s profile triggering audits.

Doctors are a strange breed where money is concerned. They have it, of course, despite in many of them business judgment so erratic that were the same discretion to color their practices they would kill more people a year than lightning, floods, and drunk drivers combined. Several of the younger ones are “struggling” on three hundred grand a year. Over orange juice, one confides that his malpractice premium fell due last month, causing him to miss the payment on his Porsche. “Actually, my wife’s Porsche; the payment on mine is current.”

After the docs break up I rush to a meeting of Junior Executives, an organization doing some good work among the minority youths of our city. Some business acquaintances got me involved two years ago. The kids organize and run their own businesses as tyro capitalism, while my senior friends and I look over their shoulders. I do this as part of my pro bono work. I like it. One of our kids, Anthell, started a T-shirt operation two years ago and it will be a close call as to whether he will be able to afford college—not the tuition, he already has that banked, but whether he can afford the opportunity cost college for him represents.

I break away from the Juniors early to make a 10:30 meeting at the office. Russell Evans, a long time client, is three months in arrears on his mortgage and about to lose his home. We review his finances, I make some calls and we buy another month, during which he will attempt to accelerate or borrow against an expected tax refund. At 12:00, Russell departs and so do I, for a Rotary meeting I would joyfully skip were I not today’s program. My twenty minute talk on the strengths of the Junior Executives program is received well. My afternoon is no lighter, with appointments beginning at 1:00 and ending at 4:30.

With a cup of coffee and my feet propped on my desk, I at last have a moment to read the morning paper. The Soviet Union continues its plummet, sheering off states as it falls. The Swilling jury has been impaneled; four blacks and two whites. His lawyers have called him, the perjuring little pervert, as their first witness. Scott Edwards reports that his lies are expected to take two days to relate. The Chicago Bulls are still flying high in the NBA, leading their division by a mile. I am about to turn to the classifieds when Harris’s voice comes over the intercom.