Low Country (25 page)

ing canceled their plans and drifted in, distraught and

aimless. The two new couples had both left earlier in

the week, but Sophia Bridges, who had not planned

to go back to New York until Christmas, came. I was

a little surprised at that. She had not known Jeremy,

and knew few of the others; I had heard that she kept

pretty much to herself and did not attend the formal

and informal social occasions the company provides

its employees. Shawna said, sniffling, that she seemed

to prefer the company of her son to anybody else’s,

and that that was probably a good thing, since nobody

could find a baby-sitter that suited. The child was in

the company’s modern day-care center when his

mother was at work, but the rest of the time he was in

her company. I wondered what she had done with him

218 / Anne Rivers Siddons

this evening. She had obviously come to our house in

haste; her sleek black hair was disarrayed, and she still

wore the slim jeans and sweatshirt she had obviously

changed into when she got home that evening. Who-

ever she found for the boy would have to have been a

last-minute solution.

I had asked Estelle to stay, and she had ordered

groceries and made sandwiches and cheese straws and

baked a ham while I went to the liquor store and

picked up deli potato salad and a couple of carrot cakes

from the little specialty pastry shop in the mall. Clay’s

youngsters picked at the food, but they lit into the li-

quor as if they were dying of thirst. By eight that

evening more than a few of them were slurring their

words, and some were weeping aloud. I didn’t blame

them. If it had not been the time and place that it was,

I would have loved to have drunk bourbon and cried

along with them. I had known Jeremy, too, and loved

him, as they did. It had been impossible not to. I knew

that the tears were not only for his death but for the

sad, shocking trajectory of failure and waste that led

up to it. The word flies fast in a close, ingrown com-

pany like Clay’s. Everyone there knew about the col-

lapse of Calista Key. Most knew that it would be a

severe blow to the company, although few if any could

have known just how severe. Under the grief and in-

credulity was fear. Fear of what the

Low Country / 219

catastrophe might mean to both the company and to

them personally, and a deeper and older fear: the fear

of the golden, vital young when the first and the best

of them falls.

I moved among them, patting shoulders and kissing

cheeks and hugging whoever held out their arms. Some

of them are only ten or so years younger than I am,

but they have always seemed like my children to me,

or rather, like young kin that I do not see often but

still feel a vague responsibility for. With the exception

of Sophia Bridges, I have known them all for some

time, and many for years. It was as easy and natural

for me to mop tears and exchange funny or bittersweet

fragments of remembrance about Jeremy as if we had

all been students together or denizens of the same small

town. The only thing I could not seem to share with

them was the tears. Mine lay, clotted and swollen, just

at the base of my throat, and would not fall. I remem-

ber wondering if I could not cry for Jeremy Fowler,

who on earth would I ever weep for again?

In a way I was glad it was just me on this first

evening. In deep distress Clay goes still and silent, and

sometimes seems cold and correct but little more. This

is not true, of course; inside he suffers and bleeds like

everyone else. I have often thought of Emily Dickin-

son’s “After great pain, a formal feeling comes”—when

I think of Clay in grief. It is his only armor, and I bless

it for what

220 / Anne Rivers Siddons

ever ease it may afford him, but others, the young es-

pecially, need to be wept with and held. I could do

that or, at least, the latter. Clay could have done

neither. Later was when his iron and stillness would

serve them. And as for Hayes, it seemed to me that he

could only gibe. This night was not the time for that.

By nine o’clock most of them had gone home to

drink some more or drive the baby-sitters home, to sit

up into the small, cold hours of the morning talking

about it, to cry again, and finally to sleep. I poured

myself a cup of coffee from the big silver urn and went

over and sat down beside Sophia Bridges. She was

sitting where she had been for most of the evening,

alone on the white sofa beside the fireplace in the big

living room that looks out to sea. I had forgotten to

draw the curtains, and, following her gaze, could see

the distant line of white lace that was the surf curling

in on the dark beach. The fire had burned itself nearly

out.

“I’m sorry I haven’t had more time to spend with

you,” I said, sitting down on the arm of the sofa. “This

has just about done us all in. Jeremy was something

special. I wish you had known him.”

She smiled up at me faintly. Her face under the un-

tidy hair seemed younger this evening, and softer. I

thought perhaps it was because I had never seen her

smile before.

Low Country / 221

“Oh, but I did,” she said. “I’ve heard nothing but

Jeremy since I got here. By now I feel like I know him

like I would know my brother. I think maybe it wasn’t

such a good idea to come tonight, but I thought it

would be worse if I didn’t. He was obviously a

powerful icon. I didn’t want to seem to diss him.”

She smiled again, as if to show me that her use of

the slang was intentional. Two smiles in one evening,

back to back. Through the fatigue that suddenly

swamped me, and the numb, dumb desire just to go

to bed and sleep, I felt a small sting of sympathy for

her. It is not easy in the best of circumstances to walk

into the Peacock Island Plantation Company and be

instantly accepted. How much harder it must be if you

were black, alone, and known to be “the best of the

lot.” I knew that I had seen no one in conversation

with her for any length of time all evening.

“It was just the right thing to do,” I said. “They’ll all

appreciate it when they’ve got a little perspective on

this. I know it’s not so easy at first, getting your feet

wet down here. It must seem like the other side of the

moon from…where was it? New York?”

“New York; right,” she said, stretching her long arms

and rotating them in their sockets. Even in the sweat-

shirt she looked as elegant as a Modigliani.

“We’ve lived in the Village since…for a cou

222 / Anne Rivers Siddons

ple of years. On Bleecker Street. A fabulous little car-

riage house; I was so lucky to find it. There was a wo-

man next door…a lovely Swedish woman; she got to

be a real friend…who came in and stayed with Mark

every day. I wouldn’t have been able to finish my

doctoral degree other-wise. I guess you can see why I

was so hesitant about having an African-American

woman stay with Mark. He’s never had one. For a long

time I didn’t realize that he’s actually afraid of people

with dark skins. Now I see that I was not only foolish

to insist on that, but I was doing him actual harm. I

need to apologize to you about that little remark, Mrs.

Venable, among other things. When I’m scared I get

snotty.”

“Call me Caro, please,” I said, liking her, all of a

sudden, very much indeed. I could see precisely why

she pulled isolation around her and her son like a

cloak. She probably had few peers. How many young

black women could imagine being where Sophia

Bridges was in her life? How many young white wo-

men could imagine the life itself?

“You have absolutely nothing to apologize to me

for,” I said. “As I said, there are a million things easier

than walking into a tight little society that has existed

quite nicely without you for a long time. They’ll come

to you eventually; I’ve seen it happen over and over

again. Though not many of them came here with

reputations like

Low Country / 223

yours preceding them. That may be part of the prob-

lem. Clay thinks you’re awfully special.”

The easy smile vanished and the remote Ibo princess

was back. I knew that there would be no easy victories

with this one. But it was good to know, too, that there

were chinks in her armor.

“I’m glad to have his high opinion,” she said form-

ally. “I’ve worked very hard for a long time to be spe-

cial. It’s what I have now in place of friends or a nice

house in Connecticut or a husband. In the long run,

I’ve always known that when you’re black you’d better

be special, because you can’t count on the rest of it.

It’s something I want Mark to learn young. But you

were right that first day; he has to live in the world he

finds himself in. My baby-sitter tonight is an African-

American woman, and he was doing fairly well when

I left him. He’d almost stopped sniffling. She’s as old

as his grandmother, and she’s lighter than me.”

“Well, good,” I said, unsure whether it was the right

thing to say or not. Was that going to be her criteria?

Black women might tend her son only if they were

mulatto matrons? I wondered if she had ever seen the

movie
Six Degrees of Separation
.

She made no move to leave, and declined coffee or

a bite to eat or another glass of wine. So I hauled my-

self up by my mental bootstraps and said, “How is

your work going? Clay said you

224 / Anne Rivers Siddons

had a degree in cultural anthropology; are you finding

it useful here?”

“Yes, that was my master’s,” she said. “Up to now

I’ve mainly been doing orientation, and you know of

course that that’s the same for everybody. I’m starting

now to research the Gullah culture, though. I’m going

into Charleston to the library next week. It should have

something. I understand that there are several neigh-

borhood units in this area, almost intact. It would be

interesting to tie that in with the new development

somehow; I think a lot of prospective home-owners

would find that sort of ethnicity an attractive part of

the whole picture. It would give such texture and res-

onance to the package.…”

I thought of the dilapidated little gray houses in

Dayclear, warm with pine and kerosene lamplight

against the winter twilight, and the sweet, liquid, and

nearly incomprehensible music of the Gullah tongue

that was still sometimes spoken over on the island,

and about the immense dignity and beauty of the old

faces I knew from there. They would be amazed to

know that they could be considered texture and reson-

ance. My liking for her faded. I realized that I would

love nothing more than to take her out to the settle-

ment and fling her into the middle of it and leave her

floundering there among her theories and pretensions.

“Then you should really come with me some

Low Country / 225

day soon to my part of the island, back on the

marshes,” I said. “I spent most of my summer vacations

there, in my grandfather’s house, and the house is still

mine…ours. There’s one of the oldest Gullah…ah,

units in the Lowcountry near there, a little settlement

called Dayclear. Why go to the library when you can

go to the source?”

“Clay mentioned something about Dayclear,” she

said. “I didn’t realize it was actually part of the island.

That would be a real opportunity for me, Mrs. Ven-

able…Caro. I could take my tape recorder and a cam-

era, and I’d love for Mark to see something like that

in situ
. Could we take you up on it soon?”

“Oh, yes,” I said, baring my teeth in a smarmy smile.

“We can go early next week, if you like. I’m tied up

with this Thanksgiving oyster roast thing, but maybe

the Monday or Tuesday after that?”

“I’ll put it down,” she said. In another five minutes

she was gone and Estelle and I put the kitchen to

rudimentary rights, then I sent her home and went up

to my little study and fell asleep almost before I hit the

daybed.

It was nearly a week later before I got Sophia Bridges

and her son, Mark, over to the island. Late on

Thanksgiving evening our crisp weather gave way to

a long spell of fog and murk, with

226 / Anne Rivers Siddons

occasional fretful spatters of rain. Despite the com-

pany’s advertising brochures, our late fall weather is

seldom anything to cheer about; it is the start of our

tenacious fits of sulking humidity that the Gulf exhales

all across the deep South. Lingering leaves and moss

hang sodden and sticky at eye level; doors swell and

shoes go furry gray-green in closets, for the temperature

is not cool enough for heat and too cool for air-condi-