South of Broad (55 page)

“He died hard, that sack of shit,” I say, “and it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. What is that apartment all about, that Sheba theme park?”

“When obsession goes bad,” Ike says, “it goes very bad.”

When Betty comes in later that evening and finds us sitting half-drunk in the den, she says, “I’m tired of saving the whole world. I need to get laid tonight.”

“Sorry, honey,” Ike says. “I went one bourbon too far.”

“Leo?” she asks. “I know I can depend on you.”

“You know I get horny when I hear your name.”

“So what’s the dish?” she asks. “Anything interesting happen today?”

A long time passes before Ike and I can stop laughing.

CHAPTER 30
Lightbulbs

O
n March 1, 1990, six months after Hugo, I sit in my office thinking about the column I am going to write. It is one of those times my mind feels like a waterless basin. Every thought I manage to coax into daylight seems clubfooted and lackluster, when a column presents itself out of the void of time, and I receive a phone call from a sheriff in rural Minnesota. He asks me if I am the husband of Starla King. When I tell him I am, and ask if she is in trouble, he tells me in a gentle voice that they have recovered her body from a hunter’s cabin not far from the Boundary Waters near the border of Canada. The deputies found an empty bottle of scotch and an empty vial of sleeping pills on the floor beside the bed. The owner of the house discovered her body when he drove up from St. Paul for the annual spring housekeeping. The corpse was in bad shape, and it was obvious she had broken into the cabin sometime after the fall hunting season. Starla was in the late stages of pregnancy and, of course, the fetus was dead too.

“Of course,” I echo, as if I am hearing a weather bulletin instead of the news of my wife’s death. I feel a profound sense of nothingness, but still retain some fragments of human decency that make me regret not feel ing anything else. I ask the sheriff to arrange for Starla’s body to be flown home to Charleston, and give him the phone number of the J. Henry Stuhr funeral home on Calhoun Street. He apologizes that Starla left no suicide note, and expresses sympathy at the unnecessary death of my son. I see no good reason to explain that I had not been responsible for placing the lost embryo in the body of my deceased wife. He tells me that Starla had left a manila folder on the kitchen table full of my columns from the past year, and that that’s how he knew whom to contact. I thank him for that grace note, then tell him I’ve been awaiting his phone call my entire married life.

In a daze, I write a column about my wife, from our original meeting to the Minnesota phone call. How that when I first met her, Starla was handcuffed to a chair in St. Jude’s Orphanage. I tell about Dr. Colwell performing an operation for free to fix her wandering eye, and how she walked the world as a beautiful woman after the success of that operation. I tell how I fell in love with her slowly, a little bit at a time, the way shy boys always fall in love with shy girls, in baby steps and small increments. Though I did not recognize it at the time, I am one of those unlucky men who are destined always to fall in love with women with sad stories, that love seemed a real and hard-earned gift to me. I describe her lifelong war with a mental illness that maddened and drove her to drugs and despair, and explain that because I am a devout Roman Catholic, I would never grant her desire for a divorce. I believe I am responsible for her death as much as anyone. I mention that she was pregnant when she committed suicide. I speak of my shock and my lack of grief, and my dread that I have to rise from my desk and drive across the Ashley to deliver the news to Niles Whitehead that his beloved and fragile sister is dead. In the integrity of his grief, I am sure Niles will pay high honor to the life of his sister while all I have to offer is the disgraceful gift of nothingness. I try to describe what nothingness feels like, but I turn mute and wordless, and prove unworthy of the task. I turn my column in to Kitty, then go to see Niles.

I find him in his office on the lovely campus of the Porter-Gaud School, which fronts the marshes and commands a magical view of Charleston’s severe and disciplined skyline. We walk toward the river and I can’t find the words that will change Niles’s world forever. I talk about the Atlanta Braves and the damage Hugo had caused at The Citadel and everything I can think of that has nothing to do with the death of his sister. Finally Niles tells me that Porter-Gaud is a job, not a hobby, and that the school fully intends for him to earn his salary. So I tell him the news of Starla. He roars like a wounded beast and falls to the ground sobbing. He places his face against the earth and cries as hard as any man I’ve ever seen.

“She never had a chance, Leo,” he says, weeping. “Not a fucking prayer. She was so hurt, nobody could fix it. Not you. Not me. Not God. Not anybody.”

His sobs are so loud they bring teachers and students running toward us from the main campus. They engulf Niles and hold him tightly, stroking him and wiping away his tears as I walk back to my car, still uneasy with my new citizenship in the country of nothingness. On my drive home, I wonder if I will ever feel anything again, and if I really want to.

Starla’s funeral is a low-key but heartbreaking affair. Monsignor Max gives a moving sermon, displaying his intimate knowledge of both Starla’s charms and her insurmountable demons. He speaks of suicide with compassion and a deep philosophical understanding of mental illness. He explains that he thinks God holds a greater love for his hurt and suffering children than he does for those who lead privileged and graceful lives. His words soothe me and I taste their sweetness as they flow over me like the mountain laurel honey the wild bees make in the mountains where Starla was born. I appreciate Monsignor Max’s words even more as I study his gaunt, emaciated face. Mother whispers to me that his lung cancer isn’t responding to chemo this time, and his prognosis is grim. Because of his illness, his performance is elevated from brilliant to heroic. When I ask how much time Monsignor Max has left, Mother cries for the first time since the service began.

In St. Mary’s cemetery, we bury Starla next to the graves of my brother and my father. The city shimmers in a pearly, illuminant light as the sun shoots through the high thunderheads of a cumulus cloud bank. St. Mary’s is bone white in the austere economy of her symmetry. I try to pray for my lost wife, but prayer refuses to come. I call on God to explain to me the ruthless life he granted to Starla Whitehead, but my God is a hard God, and he answers me with a silence that comes easily to Him from his position of majesty. But the terrible silence of God can offend the violated sensibilities of a bereft and suffering man. For me, it does not suffice. If the only feast my God can provide me is a full portion of nothingness, then prayer dries up in me. If I worship an uncaring God, then He wouldn’t give a passing thought to the fact that He had created a difficult, unmovable man. My heart is drying up inside of me, and I can barely stand it. What can a man do when he decides to fold up his God as though He were a handkerchief and place Him in a bottom drawer, and even forget where he put Him? Though I am entering the outer ring of despair, I have not named it as such and need time to put all the movable parts together and make some kind of sense out of the life I am either living or refusing to live. As I stand there over the coffin, there is a transformation of the God of my childhood, who I could adore with such thoughtless, devotional ease, to someone who has turned His back on me with such sightless indifference. In the black-rooted withering of my faith, I take note of the workings of my annoyed heart and mark the sense of desolation I feel when I demote God to a lowercase
g
as I kiss Starla’s casket before they lower it into the earth.

I throw the first shovelful of dirt into her grave and the second. Niles throws the third and the fourth. Mother, the next two. Then Molly, Fraser, Ike, Betty, then Chad and their children. Then Niles and I finish it off. I step back and survey the crowd; I try to speak but lose the shape of words as they cleave to the roof of my mouth. All sense of direction abandons me and I stumble. Niles and Ike grab my elbows and hold me up, then lead me back to the funeral home limo.

The spring shows early signs of being otherworldly. Mother spent long hours putting my garden into shape after Hugo, and her wizardry can be seen in the texture and spacing of palmettos and leather leaf ferns with morning glories and purple salvia. As a dedicated rosarian, she has dedicated a secret corner of the garden to Peace roses and Joseph’s Coat roses and Lady Banks roses, which eventually will curl over the koi pond. Since Mother has come to live with me and Trevor after the storm, she has transfigured my garden from a wasteland to a wonderland in a short space of time. In the great tradition of Charleston gardeners, she can stare at a square foot of mud and urge the shoots of buried lantanas and impatiens to fight for the sunlight.

Back at the house, my friends feed more than two hundred people while Coach Jefferson handles the bartending, as usual. It is a cool night, and our guests walk out in the garden to smell what spring will bring tiptoeing into Charleston in a scant two months. My walk toward the Cooper River seems narcotic and zombielike, but as I make a steady promenade along the seawall, I can feel Charleston beginning to perform the sacred rites of healing my withdrawn heart. To my right, I pass a row of dazzling mansions, and the perfect architecture pulls me tightly to the center of the city’s roselike beauty. It is a city of ten thousand secrets and just a couple of answers. Since the day I was born, I have been worried that heaven would never be half as beautiful as Charleston, the city formed where two rivers meet in ecstasy to place a harbor and a bay and an exit to the world.

My mother followed me. Mother and I stand at the point where the rivers meet, and look across to James Island and Sullivan’s Island. The sky, pearled with stars, throws a slash of moonlight on the water that lights up both of us. The tenderness of Charleston enfolds me in its solemn vows of palms and waterworks. The bells of St. Michael’s ring out for me, and it is surprising that they call out my name, and my name alone.

Walking down Broad Street, the city’s soft hands continue to heal the lesions and distempers of my inflamed psyche. As we pass the first floors of houses we peek into the private lives of our neighbors and can study their nighttime activities as though they are anchovies or pilot fish in an aquarium. One family is eating a late-night supper; one solitary woman listens to
Così Fan Tutte
by Mozart. Most families sit in joyless clusters watching television.

Before we make the turn at Tradd Street, Mother stops me. “There’s something I need to tell you, Leo. You’re not going to like it.”

“Hey, it’s the day I buried my wife,” I say. “A day like any other day.”

“It’s not perfect timing, I will admit,” she says, “but there’s never a good time. I’m going back to my convent. My order has accepted me back.”

“Una problema, piccola,”
I tell her in my pidgin Italian. “What about me? Most nuns don’t have children.”

“You’re no problem,” she says. “They have a program for former nuns who’ve married and lost their husbands. Monsignor Max and I have been praying about this for a long time.”

“Can I visit you? Hey, Sister, I’d like to visit Mother. She’s a nun.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Mother says. “I’ve been floating on air since I made the decision.”

“Did I hear an evil cliché enter your conversation?” I ask in mock consternation.

“Well, that’s how I feel, like I’m floating on air. I’d like you to do the honor of driving me up to North Carolina, just as your father did all those long years ago.”

The next month I drive Mother to the hospital, and I remain outside the monsignor’s room out of respect for the privacy and devotion they had brought to their extraordinary friendship. Mother stays for an hour and is crying softly as I lead her back to the car. I drive her to the house that Father built, and she goes inside the freshly restored home and admires the improvements the construction crew has made. While she inspects the house, I spot a lone magnolia blossom high in one of her trees and scramble up to retrieve it, feeling older with every branch I climb. I break off the flower, the first of the season, inhale its sweetness, and decide it was worth the climb. I hand it to Mother and am delighted when she pins it to her hair.

We drive leisurely on the back roads of the Carolinas; the magnolia’s aroma makes the car smell like a broken perfume bottle. We note the exact moment we depart the Low Country and begin to climb the continent with a nearly imperceptible gradualness. Mother names every tree, shrub, and flower we pass, and she applauds when I stop the car and help a snapping turtle across the highway near a black-water creek. We eat lunch in Camden and reach the convent before five o’clock. The mother superior is waiting for us. She embraces Mother and says: “Welcome back, Sister Norberta.”

“It’s where I want to be, Sister Mary Urban,” she replies.

Mother and I take each other in and try to make it easy. But there is nothing on earth that can make this departure anything less than trying. I don’t remember when I started loving Mother, but it had happened. Nor do I have any idea when she started loving me, but the knowledge that her love is available in a boundless source had presented itself to me. I can use it as a sword on a pillow or a hermitage; a warm bath, a butterfly garden, or a flow of molten lava. Her love is thorned and complex and it can sometimes hurt me in the most tender places. But who said either love or life would be a cakewalk? Mother and I have fought our way screaming and clawing and lashing out as we rolled in the bloody dust, testing the brute, tensile strength of that armory where the sheet lightning of our love was stored. Our love ties us together forever.

“Thanks for letting me do this, Leo,” she says. “It’s generous of you.”

“My mother’s a tough old bird. She’s her own woman.”

“Will you take care of the monsignor?”

“I’ll read him a story every night,” I promise.

“I know you’re hurting now, Leo, but don’t give up on the Church.”

“I’m on a sabbatical,” I say. “Maybe it’ll be a brief one.”

“I wasn’t meant to be a mother,” she confesses. “I’m sorry I was such a poor one.”

“Best I ever had,” I assured her, and in an instant, she is in my arms.

“Try to meet a nice girl,” she whispers. “I’d love for you to become a father.”

I look over Mother’s shoulder toward Sister Mary Urban and ask, “Can a nun become a grandmother?”

“This one can,” the mother superior says with a smile.