Isle of Palms (15 page)

It was the afternoon of the burial. Daddy and I were in the kitchen. Jim and Frannie were helping me put food away. I had told them that morning that I was pregnant and they were understandably stunned. Frannie cried and ranted and Jim was just as upset as we were. They knew everything about me there was to know, especially that I didn’t deserve this.

We were flooded by company that day. As always, to mark the passing of a neighbor or the arrival of one, the whole neighborhood had appeared at our door with cakes, turkeys, hams and casseroles of every description. I couldn’t believe people came with meals to honor Violet, but they did. We wouldn’t have to cook for a very long while. When our friends had dwindled down to just Dr. Goodman, Frannie, and Jim, we all sat down at the table for another piece of cake.

“Do you want some milk?” Frannie asked me.

“Sure,” I said. “I should probably give up Cokes, huh?”

“She knows?” Daddy said. He looked worn out, his face a mixture of sadness and resignation.

“They both do. Jim and Frannie are my best friends, Daddy. They were
there,
remember?”

“Yes, of course.” Daddy paused, cleared his throat, and said, “We haven’t ever had the opportunity to talk about this, but I want both of you to know how deeply grateful I am for how you helped Anna that night.”

“Sure, Dr. Lutz,” Frannie said. “We had no idea . . .”

“No,” Daddy said, “I’m sure you didn’t.”

“I’m gonna marry her, Dr. Lutz, that is, if you’ll let me,” Jim said.

You could have pushed me off my chair with the flick of a finger, I was so shocked. My face must have turned blood red, because it suddenly felt much warmer. Frannie’s jaw dropped, as did Daddy’s and Dr. Goodman’s.

“I said, sir, that I’d like to marry Anna,” Jim repeated. “This child needs a name and a father. She can’t possibly marry Everett Fairchild and I wouldn’t let her. I’ve loved Anna since we were children and I think I am the best man applying for the job.”

“Jim!” I said. “You
know
I love you to pieces, but I can’t marry you!”

“Why not?” he said, and stood up.

“Because I don’t
want
to get married! Besides, you’re my friend! People don’t marry their best friends!”

Daddy cleared his throat and said, “Well, they
should.
”

Daddy’s remark unleashed a pack of wild dogs in my mind. Was Daddy saying that marrying for love was for fools, that he had been a fool to love Momma, and that I should marry Jim, when he knew perfectly well that Jim was, in all likelihood, a gay man? It wasn’t enough that I was raped and now pregnant, that I couldn’t go to USC, pledge Tri Delt, have boyfriends, and go to dances and football games. Now he wanted me to sign away my life to a man who would never be a traditional husband. Was it because parents couldn’t stand to think about their children having a sex life? All of this so that this baby would have a name? Even at my young age it seemed too much to ask of me. I gathered up my courage to speak.

“Jim? You are so unbelievably generous to make this offer or proposal or whatever it is, but I can’t accept. I just can’t.”

I got up and went to Jim to give him a hug. He hugged me back, took my hand, and led me to the back door, turning to speak to the jury. “Would y’all excuse us for a moment?”

They were still in a stun gun state and nodded their heads in the same way corks bob on water.

Jim walked me out to the yard and said, “Sit.”

I sat on one of the three Adirondack chairs that had been on the lawn since we moved there.

“Okay. Have you considered an abortion?”

“
Jesus,
Jim! Listen, in the first place, I’m almost three months’ pregnant. Maybe if I had known six weeks ago, I might have thought about that. But I am so stupid, I didn’t even think in my wildest dreams that I
could be
pregnant! Besides, I can’t go through with something like that. I just can’t. I’m too chicken.”

“Well, I needed to ask that.”

“Jim! Do you realize I didn’t even know I had sex with that bastard? He drugged me, for God’s sake.”

“Good Lord. Somebody needs to beat the shit out of that no-good son of a bitch.”

“You already did. Remember?”

“Yeah, well, if I ever have the chance I’ll bust his head wide open like a watermelon.”

“That would be why I have always loved you.”

“And, I will always love you too. Look,” he said, “I’m doing us both a favor. This might be the only chance I’ll ever have in my whole life to call a kid mine. My brother, Paul, is graduating from college next spring and marrying this girl he’s practically living with. She’s got big damn hips like an old brood mare and will probably get pregnant before they cut the cake! Honey, she’s gone go and start spitting out grandchildren for old Miss Trixie and Mr. Jimbo like I don’t know what!” He was snapping his fingers all around himself.

I smiled. Jim was so wonderful and even in a moment of that intensity, he was funny.

He took a deep breath and kneeled down in front of me. His face was very serious and he spoke quietly. “I would love to have a child, Anna. I would also love not to be disinherited from my father’s will, okay?”

I picked my cuticles and looked at the ground. “Jim, you know this isn’t right. People don’t get married so they can inherit money.”

“Since when? Are you kidding me? Read your history! People marry for every reason in the world! Don’t you see? If my father knew I sang Judy Garland songs in the shower, he’d kick my pretty ass all over downtown Charleston and then some!”

“What if it doesn’t work?”

“What if
what
doesn’t work? Listen, we can go to the College of Charleston. My parents will help us. My mother will adore you and the baby! Jesus, girl, you’d think I was asking you to lie down in front of a speeding Mack truck! Come on, say yes.”

I got up and walked to the water’s edge knowing I was looking at my best offer and my only offer. If I didn’t take it, my baby would be illegitimate. I thought about that and knew this baby didn’t ask to come into the world this way. I had three choices. Adoption. I knew I couldn’t do that. Two, I could raise an illegitimate baby with Daddy, or three, a legitimate baby with Jim.

“Look, Jim, let’s be blunt here. You’re gay. Right?”

Silence. He just stared at me as though I had slapped him. But I had some difficult things to say and it wasn’t easy to hear or say them.

“You’re my best friend, Jim, and I’m gonna love you for this until the day I die. But I don’t want to throw away whatever chances I have for a marriage to a man I fall in love with because I’m married to my best friend who is also gay. And, I don’t want you to be stuck! You know what I mean, don’t you?”

“Anna, I know what you mean. But that could happen when? Ten years from now? Look, here’s what I propose. Marry me and we’ll live together and give this baby a name. I will be discreet. You be discreet. You don’t embarrass me and I won’t embarrass you.”

“You mean
what?
That if we want to fool around with someone it’s okay as long as we don’t announce it?”

“Yeah, I mean, I know that sounds kind of crummy, but yeah.”

“How much money is your father supposed to leave you?”

“Buckets,” he said and smiled.

“Jeesch! Okay, okay. I’ll marry you but only if your family approves.”

“Are you kidding? If we’re crazy enough to do something like this, we’re not asking their permission. We’re going to Georgetown this weekend and that’s it!”

“Can we take Frannie?”

“Come here!” Jim put his arms around me and hugged me good and tight. “Anna, I want you to not worry, okay? I’m about to become a family man, God help me!”

That was the beginning of Jim’s mother, good old moneybags Trixie, wedging herself into my life.

How’s Trix?

OKAY, you’re shocked. I married a gay man. Well, let me tell you this: being married to Jim wasn’t bad at all. In fact, he was a sweetheart pussycat every single day during the four years we were together. As for sex? Listen, I wasn’t ready for one-half of what was happening to me, much less sex.

Just imagine this. You are barely eighteen years old. Your rock-hard abdomen is growing with the speed of light. There’s talk that there’s a baby in there who is going to fight his or her way out. Then, your husband comes in from school, fixes you a cold drink, rubs your feet, and makes you laugh your head off with endless crazy shenanigans. He tells you that you’re beautiful, is thrilled to place his hand on your tummy and feel the baby kick, and brings home stuffed animals and little outfits every time he can find some extra cash. He is entranced by your metamorphosis. He can’t wait to start Lamaze classes. He, honey chile, is the perfect man. To this day, I kiss the ground he walks on.

Now, about Trixie. Okay, I know she meant well and I truly believe she did. From the minute we announced our marriage, his mother was delighted. His befuddled father, who had suspected something all along about Jim’s sexuality, went into a dither. He was joined by Daddy, who we didn’t tell where we went on that Saturday. The three of them scrambled like wildcats until Trixie emerged as victor.

She announced she would take charge, find an apartment for us, and take care of everything. She did—she found a perfectly adorable carriage house, tucked away in a private alley right off of South Battery. It was owned by a widow, Mrs. Augustine Bennett, who declared she was pleased to have a young married couple on her property. Miss August, as she liked to be called because it implied she was a centerfold, was a darling octogenarian who rarely left her house.

Trixie negotiated the lease, since we were too young to sign one anyway, and insisted on paying for it, saying that she didn’t want Jim or me to work. It was a small thing to ensure that Jim had ample study time, and she said that I should rest. Besides the fact that I couldn’t think of anyone who would hire a pregnant person, I couldn’t work because I didn’t feel very well. I intended to start classes and work as soon as the baby came and I could arrange for day care.

Filled with determination to create marital bliss, Trixie proceeded to decorate for us. Although the two-bedroom cottage was furnished, she had everything moved into storage while every square inch was scoured and repainted. Trixie then refurnished it as she thought it should be done, mostly with cast-off Depression relics from her attic. Jim’s childhood furniture—a single bed, bookcase, chest of drawers and a bedside table—was repainted with white enamel for the baby’s room. Our bedroom had a queen-size mattress and box spring on a frame, pushed against the wall and covered to look like a daybed with every pillow in Christendom. We had two end tables and a sofa in the living room and a rectangular table for our dining area, which quickly became Jim’s study space. The kitchen had a two-burner stove and a tiny refrigerator. Trixie wanted to change them but Jim and I insisted they were fine. I figured we’d live on what I knew how to make, as neither one of us had learned to seriously cook.

Once Trixie had covered the windows with remade curtains from some dead relative and once the bathroom was hung with new towels, she finally began to slow down. Somewhat. Her last gift was a copy of
The Joy of Cooking.

“Ah just want to be sure you feed mah boy
properly.”

Nice shot to the head, I thought. “Thanks.”

“Ah hope you don’t think Ah’m intruuuding?” she would say.

Nothing to be done about her accent. “No, ma’am,” I’d answer, “I don’t know what we’d do without you!”

Now, in all fairness to everyone, I was a motherless, grandmother-less, pregnant teenager who did not possess one clue of what was normal in the arena of maternal parental involvement. But I can tell you this without a degree in psychology: Trixie was a well-meaning but overbearing mother who probably knew in her heart that this baby was no more her son’s child than the man in the moon’s. Still, she drove me up the wall.

Meanwhile, she made all attempts possible to take me into her family and supported the charade with all the heart she had. I think she always knew that Jim was gay. Maybe she thought if she loved me really hard that Jim would become straight. Maybe she thought if she tried to micromanage our marriage, it would last. Poor thing. She even tried to turn me into Julia Child, that is, when they could get me to rise from the couch.

I spent the next six months inspecting the bathroom and the ceilings of our apartment.

“Ah’ve never seen someone so nauseated from pregnancy in all mah days!” she would say. “Why don’t you eat some saltine crackers, dear?”

The mere mention of saltines sent me waddling at my top speed for the relief of release and then back to the couch to recover. Jim was always standing by with a cold cloth for my head and a Coke with the bubbles stirred out.

“Don’t talk to her about f-o-o-d, Mother,” Jim would say and turn on
I Love Lucy
reruns to divert me. “The doctor says she’s fine and the baby’s fine. This just happens sometimes.”

“Well, you’re a regular Terry Brazelton,” she said over and over. “Ah never got sick like this! Ah blossomed with mah boys!”

So, go blossom in hell,
I would think but never say. She tried. She really did. I had a lousy sense of humor then.

And, Jim began to take an interest in our home, doing lots of things to make it ours. He brought in plants and rearranged the furniture. It was clear he had an eye for interior design, because with a natural ease and almost no money, he made our carriage house something worthy of a layout in a magazine. He was a marvel.

But show house or no show house, when Emily was born with platinum blond hair and the spooky green eyes of Everett Fairchild, Trixie never said a word. Maybe because I was blond. But those eyes of Emily’s had obviously come from somewhere else. It was at that point that we both realized a lot was going unsaid but we let the silence be what it was and went on with living.