Low Country (18 page)

“My God,” I whispered. It was literally incomprehens-

ible to me that there was still a place in the world, es-

pecially so close to my world, where women and ba-

bies died alone in childbirth and small children starved

beside them, waiting for help that did not come. How

could this be? An old pain, sharp and terrible, that I

thought I had buried forever, tore at my heart. I put

out my hand jerkily, as if it moved by itself, and

touched the black curls, then dropped it at my side.

“How did that happen?” I said softly and

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fiercely. “How in the world could you let that happen?”

His face closed. It looked like a Toltec mask, severe

and blunt and empty.

“Her father was dead. Her mother stayed on at the

farm in the mountains because the baby was so nearly

due; she could not travel. There were no close neigh-

bors. Everyone had gone. It is very poor back in those

mountains. Most of Cuba is very poor. I could not

prevent it. I have not been back to Cuba in almost forty

years. I cannot go back. I would be arrested.”

“I’m sorry,” I said miserably. “I spoke out of turn. It

must have been awful for you. Was her father your

son?”

“Her mother was my daughter.”

We were both silent then. I looked at him across a

sea of troubles that for once were not my own. It

looked uncrossable. I was ashamed.

“Please come into the house and have some coffee

with me,” I said. “And I think there’s a jelly doughnut

in the freezer. Maybe by that time the ponies will come

back and we can see the baby.”

I smiled at the child and she smiled back, a fuller

smile this time.

“Her mother’s name is Pianissimo,” I said. “My

daughter named her when she was about your age.

It’s because she has big yellow teeth like a piano.”

154 / Anne Rivers Siddons

The child laughed aloud, a liquid gurgle of pleasure,

and her grandfather smiled. I did, too, surprising my-

self.

“If she comes back maybe you can help me think of

a name for her baby,” I said. “Meanwhile, let me show

you my house. I used to come here to the island to

visit my grandfather, too, and this is where he lived.

My name is Caroline Venable, but you can call me

Caro.”

The little girl made the shape of my name with her

lips, but silently, “Caro.” The man stopped and stared

at me, and then laughed again, with surprise and, I

thought, pleasure. This was a man, obviously, to whom

laughter and tears and who knew what else came nat-

urally and were not reined in.

“Mrs. Venable,” he said. “I’ve heard of you, but I

thought you’d be…older, I guess. I knew we’d meet

sooner or later, though. I’m working for your hus-

band.”

I stopped and looked back at him, surprised. He was

definitely not the sort of man who usually came to the

Plantation to work for Clay.

“You work for the company?” I said. “For Clay?”

“Not really,” Lou Cassells said. “This is a one-time-

only deal, I think. I’m doing some landscape consulting

for him. For the project over at Dayclear.”

I stared at him.

Low Country / 155

“It’s named for the Gullah settlement up at the other

end,” he said, mistaking my silence for ignorance. “You

know, where the little houses are, and the old people.

That’s to be the center of it, so that’s what your hus-

band is calling it for now. Clay, yes. Privately I call

him Mengele. I’m hoping to charm you thoroughly

enough so you won’t tell him.”

Still I did not speak.

“If that was out of line, I apologize,” he said, his face

changing. “More than one person has told me my

tongue is going to get me into bad trouble. Again.”

I held up my hand, shaking my head.

“No. I mean, no, I don’t mind you calling him

Mengele. Well, I do, I just…I wasn’t aware that there

was a property planned for Dayclear. It’s way back on

the river, in the middle of the marsh.…Why would

anybody want to make a…project…of it? How could

they, if they did?”

He shrugged. “I thought you would know about it.

I hope I’m not the bearer of bad news for you. Actu-

ally, it will make a beautiful…ah, property, as you say.

The river is deep and wide and navigable there. Good

natural basin for a marina. It would be simple to

dredge the rest. I don’t know, I only work there.

Mengele…Clay…hired me to do a landscape workup,

see what would grow there, what plants to keep, what

to take out, what to import. It’s my specialty. I have

156 / Anne Rivers Siddons

a master’s degree in subtropical botany from Cornell.

Please don’t bad-mouth me to your husband; this is

miles above working as a disc jockey in a twenty-

megahertz rock ’n’ roll station out Wappoo Creek

Road. That was my last job.”

I turned and went on up the stairs. They followed

me. The hangover bell jar of detachment and torpor

descended again. I pushed the thought of the develop-

ment at Dayclear outside it. I would deal with it later;

there was, of course, some mistake. This man had his

facts wrong. It would be easy for a casual employee

to do that. He probably meant that Clay was using the

settlement and the land around it as a model for a

marsh property he was developing somewhere else.

The vegetation would be virtually the same. I would

straighten this out with Clay when he got back from

Atlanta. There was simply no sense borrowing trouble.

Sufficient unto the day the evil thereof. It was some-

thing I had learned, and learned well, in the long days

after Kylie died. I was good at it.

I sat them down on the sofa before the fireplace and

lit the half-burned logs, and they leaped into life. The

fire felt good. With the clearing of the fog had come

fresh, stinging cold air from the west. I thought that

we were done, now, with the last soft, wet traces of

the Lowcountry Indian summer.

The child sat quietly while I made coffee, but

Low Country / 157

then her curiosity got the best of her and she got up

and began to roam around the house. She picked

things up and examined them and set them down

again, very gently, looking at me as for permission.

Her grandfather said something to her in soft, rapid

Spanish and she stopped and clasped her hands behind

her, but I said, “No, let her look. There’s nothing here

she can hurt. It’s all childproof. I did the very same

thing, and so did my daughter.…”

He spoke again, and Estrellita went back to her sol-

emn examining. He got up and came into the kitchen,

where I was getting mugs down from the rack beside

the stove and pouring milk, and leaned against the re-

frigerator.

“This is a good house,” he said. “It feels lived and

loved in, and it looks just like it should. It honors the

marsh.”

I smiled.

“That’s a good way of putting it,” I said. “I think it

does, too. My grandfather would have liked to hear

that.”

“He’s gone then.”

“Yes. For several years now. But sometimes it seems

to me that he’s still here, in this house and in the

marsh.…”

I fell silent, reddening. Now he would think that

Mengele’s wife was some sort of New Age fruitcake,

though why I cared what he thought I could not have

said.

158 / Anne Rivers Siddons

“Yes, it’s odd, isn’t it?” he said. “Odd and good,

how our dead stay with us sometimes, if we are very

lucky. I often feel my daughter close, though I did not

see her after she was very small, smaller even than this

one here. I wish I could feel my wife, but she does not

come. Ah, well. She never did want to leave Cuba.

Why should she leave it now?”

I shot him a swift look. He was smiling gently, as if

the memory of his wife was a warm, quiet one.

“She’s gone, too?” I said.

“She died two years ago, in Havana. She had been

raising Lita. One of my Miami relatives was able to

arrange to get the child out for me. I don’t know what

would have happened to her otherwise. I’m very

grateful.”

He spoke so matter-of-factly of his unimaginable life

that it put me at ease. Somehow I thought he had

learned to do that so that his American friends, so

unused to this sort of tragedy, would not be smitten

with guilt and pity. It was a graceful thing to do. I liked

him for it.

I handed him a cup of coffee.

“I’m not going to pry into your life, but I wish you’d

tell me how you got to the South Carolina Lowcountry.

That trip must be some kind of story.”

“One day,” he said, smiling so that the crinkles

fanned out from his eyes. “One day I’ll do that. But

Low Country / 159

I want to hear about you now. You already know a

lot about me. Turnabout is fair play.”

We sat down on the sofa in front of the fire. Lita

had gone out onto the deck and was swinging on the

low branch of the live oak that curved over it, shawled

in silvery Spanish moss. I knew that it was sturdy

enough for her slight weight. It had borne mine, and

later Carter’s, and Kylie’s.

“It’s awfully tame compared to yours,” I said. “I’d

bore you to sleep.”

I did not want to talk about myself. In fact, now that

I had invited them in and settled them down, I wanted,

perversely, for them to be gone again. The hangover

and the shame and the accompanying uneasy fatigue

surged back full bore. I wanted simply to lie down on

the sofa and go back to sleep.

He seemed to sense my hesitation.

“Another time we’ll meet and swap stories, maybe,”

he said. “I think you’re tired, and you said you weren’t

feeling well. We need to get back, anyway. I don’t

think my hosts know where we are.”

He started to get up. A thought struck me.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Why do you call him

Mengele? Clay?”

He grinned. It was white and wolfish, framed in the

dark skin. It was also the grin of a havoc-minded,

completely unrepentant small boy, and I had to smile

back.

160 / Anne Rivers Siddons

“Well, number one, I’m Jewish, and I have a very

well-developed sense of both paranoia and history.

When somebody threatens me, I automatically think

of Josef Mengele. Number two, those amazing blue

eyes. They look at you as though he’s wondering what

would happen if he connected your liver up to your

kidneys, whether you’d piss bile or what. No other

reason. He’s been a perfect gentleman to me.”

“But he threatens you.…”

“Not so much me. Just…oh, shit, I don’t know.

Maybe nobody. For all I know he raises Persian kittens

and butterflies in his spare time. It’s just that I’ve seen

eyes like that in photographs from Nuremberg. Haven’t

you ever thought how…extraordinary they are?”

“They are that,” I said. “But I never found them

threatening. Intense, maybe.”

A stronger surge of nausea flooded through me, and

the fine trembling came back, and I leaned my head

back and closed my eyes for a moment. When I opened

them he was looking at me gravely and the smile was

gone.

“This is none of my business,” he said. “But I think

you ought to let me put a drop of bourbon in that

coffee. I know a hangover when I see one. You feel

like death. It’ll help, if you don’t have any more.”

I started to protest, and then simply did not. I felt

too badly, and there was something disarm

Low Country / 161

ing about this man. He did not intimidate me in any

way, despite the piratical skin and hair and the big

Chiclet teeth. I suddenly did not care what he knew

about me.

“How’d you know bourbon was my drink?” I said

dreamily.

“Well, for one thing, I smelled booze on you when

we first met. For another, there’s a half-empty bottle

of it just under the coffee table. And for still another,

it was my drink, too, and I’d know the smell of good

bourbon anywhere, even if I haven’t tasted it for eight

long years. I’ve been where you are. It feels damned

awful. A little hair of the dog is not a bad thing, if you

stick to one. After that I think you ought to go home.

It doesn’t do to be by yourself with a bad hangover.

Is there somebody there to look after you?”

I thought of my vast, beautiful, empty house in

Peacock Island Plantation.

“That’s a good idea,” I said. “I’ll do that. I think I’ll

skip the hair of the dog, though.”

He was silent for a moment, and then he said softly,

“I think you’re lying, but I’ve been there and done that,

too. Just promise me you’ll go on home and we’ll be

on our way. Your daughter, is she in school? You want

to be there when she gets home.…”

“My daughter is dead,” I said, still wrapped in the

peace of the bell jar. “She drowned five years ago. She

would be fifteen now. I thought

162 / Anne Rivers Siddons