The Death of Santini: The Story of a Father and His Son (16 page)

“Hey, you and I are the whole show, son,” he said. “They can’t do it without us. Your mother’s right, Mr. Negative. Sheesh.”

The news came to my mother on a Monday afternoon. Dr. Egan reported that Mom cried out when she received the devastating news of how many premiere tickets were allotted to the Conroy family. She went to argue her case the next day with the same result and the insistency that the allocation of the tickets was irreversible and nonnegotiable. Dad came over to my place on a rare nightly visit and his look was distraught.

“Your mother needs you, son. She needs you bad,” he said.

“How in the hell would you know she needs me? You two haven’t talked in years,” I asked.

“Her husband, John Egan, called me. He asked that we keep his call secret from your mother. But he says that she needs you more than she ever did. Beaufort got her again. But this time, it really got her.”

In what was becoming another great circle in my life, I pushed off for Beaufort the next morning, even though I lacked any clue of what had mortified Mom this time. Though I’d called her after talking to Dad, she was far too hysterical to talk to me on the phone. As I drove along the forested borders of I-20, I went over every single thing that could’ve gone wrong, but I could come up with no scenario that could’ve sent my mother into this paroxysm of rage and shame. She could handle her rage just fine, but shame always brought her to her knees. The way an Inuit knows a thousand forms that snow can take, I knew all the separate registers and cries that mother’s lifelong vocation of twisting the claws of her shame could take.

Dr. Egan was downstairs when I came in the back door. The tide was high and there was a soft breeze that seemed to carry a little of the river with it, while the sun shone off the bay giving it a milky, opaque light. The doctor pointed upstairs and I headed to the bedroom.

I knocked softly on the door and heard Mom’s frailest voice asking me to enter.

“I heard they’ve been messing with my mama again,” I said.

It did not have the calmative effect on my mother I was hoping for. Instead, she put her face into a very wet pillowcase and sobbed to the point of screaming. Massaging her shoulders, I tried to get her to tell me what was wrong, but she began saying things like, “I told John that we were moving out of this goddamn hypocritical town—maybe move to Lake Lure, where Stanny had a home, or to Asheville, where I’ve always wanted to live. But it’s farewell to Beaufort. Goddamn little crapola of a town! I can never walk down its streets again—ever. I’d have to wear a Halloween mask or a bag over my head.”

“Just tell me what happened, okay?”

“I got a call from the head of the
Great Santini
premiere committee,” she said.

“I didn’t know there was such a committee.”

“Neither did I, until I got the call,” Mom said.

“Who is the chairman of it?” I asked.

“Col. Paul Sigmund,” she said. “He flew with your father in the Marine Corps. I met with him at his office and he told me that all the plans have been solidified for the premiere.”

“It’s his job,” I said. “No harm in that.”

“I asked him how many seats my family was allotted,” she said, and I could tell by her voice that she was lining up to place the sword into the bull’s spine.

“Do tell,” I said.

“Three,” she said.

“Three?” I echoed, realizing that the skimpiness of the number had taken me by surprise.

“One for me. One for your father. And one for you,” she said.

“It seems I have business with Colonel Sigmund this morning,” I said.

“He’s expecting you,” Mom said. “He told me you’ve no chance to change his mind, and no matter what you say it will not affect the decisions of the great premiere committee.”

I looked at my mother. “Wanna bet?”

The committee worked out of a simple office in downtown Beaufort. My mother was right: Colonel Sigmund was waiting for me with I thought a little too much emphasis on being confrontational and not enough on being conciliatory. After we exchanged pleasantries about the Marine Corps, Colonel Sigmund got right down to business.

“I know why you’re here, Pat. Your mother has gotten hysterical in this office several times. But the committee has taken a very disciplined approach to this. We are having the premiere at the local cineplex, where seating is extremely limited. Your mother has made this most difficult and frankly hasn’t done her cause any good.”

“May I see the list of the committee?” I asked. He handed me two pages of names in a double-spaced list. “How many members of the
Great Santini
premiere committee are there?”

“There are ninety, Pat,” Colonel Sigmund said.

“How many tickets do members of the committee receive?” I asked.

“Each receives two.”

“Ah, one hundred eighty tickets for the
Great Santini
premiere committee. Three for the Great Santini’s family. Do you know my mother remarried, Colonel Sigmund?”

“I know Dr. Egan well, but he’ll not be coming,” Colonel Sigmund said. “I already made that perfectly clear to your mother.”

“This list. It’s all white people,” I said.

“I believe it is,” the colonel said.

“Anybody read my books in this town?” I said. “And they’re going to give me a segregated premiere? Are you aware that Don and Peg had six other children besides me?”

“And they won’t be coming either, Pat,” he said.

“You don’t seem in the mood to solve this with any sense of diplomacy.”

“I’ve nothing to deal with. These rules were carved in stone.”

“Anyone think of putting my mother on the committee?”

“I wasn’t privy to any discussion like that,” the colonel said. “Well, I told you I was sticking by my guns and I’ve done it.”

“Yes, you have, and now I’d like to present you with my own commands and wishes.”

“You’re not in a place to issue commands,” Colonel Sigmund said. “Didn’t you learn anything about the chain of command at The Citadel?”

“I learned everything about the chain of command at The Citadel,” I said. “And here is what you didn’t learn about the chain of command in the Marine Corps.”

“And what is that?” he asked.

“You ain’t in command. And if you don’t do something about making my mother happy before this premiere, I promise my father and I will not show up.”

At that point, Colonel Sigmund made one of those mistakes that people who don’t know me always do when he said, “I bet wild horses couldn’t keep you and your father away.”

“You’re going to learn about me and my dad before this is over. And because you made that snotty remark, neither of us will be at the
Great Santini
premiere.”

“I have my doubts,” he said. “Your dad’s got quite an ego, and I’m betting that you do, too.”

Colonel Sigmund and I shook hands and said farewell to each other forever.

I was no stranger to the city-states of colonels, and I knew a great deal more about Paul Sigmund when I walked into his office than he would ever learn about me. First, he possessed an elegance and sophistication that I found a rarity in the Marine officers I’d grown up with. His polish and sense of self-possession made me surprised he’d never made general, and in his smoothness of manner and pleasantness of speech he exposed my father for the happy vulgarian he always was proud to be. Yet I liked Colonel Sigmund a lot and I thought we could’ve become good friends if circumstances had been different between us. But by becoming an agent in my mother’s humiliation, he made me draw up the most explosive card I carried in my deck and flip it at him to give him ample time to think over what the committee had done.

When I returned to the house on Carteret Street, Mom was still in bed and still weeping. When I tried to lift her head to change her pillowcase, she wouldn’t allow me to touch it. Though she did not say it, it appeared that she wanted some accurate measurement of how much grief the town had caused her.

“How did the meeting go with Colonel Sigmund?” she asked me.

“Exactly like you said it would,” I reported.

“He gave you nothing. Not a single ticket,” she said.

“Not a one,” I said. “But don’t worry; that’s all about to change.”

“How can you be so sure?” she asked.

“Because I told him the Great Santini and I were not going to the premiere.”

“But it’s your big night. And Don’s,” she said.

“Not anymore,” I said.

“How will you talk your father into this?”

“I’ll tell him what the committee did to you. I know Dad. He won’t come near the joint.”

“What if it doesn’t work?”

“It’ll work. But don’t you jump at the first offer. Let it play out, Mom. Have fun with it,” I said. “Make ’em squirm.”

“That’s a promise, Pat,” she said.

The next night I took my father to Petite Auberge, a nice French restaurant in the Toco Hills Shopping Center. Though he rarely let me take him to restaurants where the food cost more than three dollars a pound, I told him I needed to have a serious talk with him in a muted, convivial atmosphere.

As Dad looked over the menu, I watched the old sneer cross his eyes as he said, “Frog food. This place doesn’t have anything but frog food.”

I said, “It’s called a French restaurant. French restaurants kind of specialize in frog food. Shall I order for you?”

“Yeah, you’ve lived in France,” he said.

With great mischievous intent, I ordered him a meal of escargot, frog legs, a salad, and a crème brûlée. With his Chicago obstinacy, he ordered himself a Budweiser, scoffing when I offered to buy a bottle of wine.

“I’m a beer drinker—wine is for pussies.”

When his escargot came, Dad stared at it as if I’d ordered him a plate full of roaches. The escargot was not served in snail shells, but in those indented metal plates that held the escargot swimming in that ineluctable butter and garlic and parsley sauce.

Dad stared hard at the first snail he held at the end of his fork. “Now, what in the hell might this thing be?”

“It’s from a very rare French cow, bred near the Alps. They cut precious bits from near the tenderloin and a master butcher makes sure the cuts all look the same. Put some sauce on it, Dad. Then sit back and enjoy.”

Dad ate the first one and said, “That’s the shittiest beef I’ve ever eaten, but damn, that sauce is terrific.”

When the frog legs came, I informed Dad that these were the legs of Bresse chickens, the most prized hens in a French kitchen. The salad he approved of, and he moaned with happiness over his crème brûlée. Then we came to the business of the evening.

Starting from the beginning, I told about Mom’s first meeting with Paul Sigmund.

“Hey, I flew with Paul. He’s a great guy. I’ll give him a call and straighten this out.”

“Listen to the rest of the story,” I said. I told of finding Mom in bed, where she had been lying for several days crying with a sense of morbid disgrace she could neither hide nor deny. When I told him about the three tickets they promised the entire Conroy family, my father’s face darkened with fury.

“Three fucking tickets!” my father exploded. “That’s an outrage.”

“To get Mom the tickets, I cut a deal with Colonel Sigmund,” I said.

“But you said you walked out of his office with only three tickets.”

“I told him that if he didn’t make Mom happy, then the Great Santini and I would not attend the premiere. Colonel Sigmund went too far with me by saying, ‘I bet wild horses couldn’t keep you away from that premiere.’ ”

“God, he doesn’t know your oversensitive ass, son,” Dad said.

“And he doesn’t know about your loyal one.”

“We won’t go, son. We’ll do it for Peg,” he said.

“I knew you’d say that,” I said.

“How’d you know that?” Dad asked.

“Because you’re an Irish Catholic from Chicago. I think your people are the biggest pains in the ass in the world, but they’re also the most loyal. I remember your family coming after me after
The Great Santini
came out. I didn’t like it much, but I sure could admire it.”

“How do you know your little trick’s going to work?” Dad asked me.

“I don’t. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

“You could be making a damn fool of yourself, Pat.”

“There’s always that possibility—in everything we do,” I agreed.

It was a luminous, green summer in the section of Ansley Park where I was living in Atlanta. I was still jogging during that time of my life, and there was not a more beautiful place in the city to run. It was a cutoff enclosed hermitage with shapely, eccentric houses shoulder to shoulder with one another, streets that harbored well-tended gardens, and the smell of jasmine always hovering in the air. The oak trees lorded over the lesser species in the park and offered the entire neighborhood the cool silages of darkness and the peacefulness of shade.

My mother heard nothing back from the
Great Santini
premiere committee until late September. Colonel Sigmund was charming and
conciliatory this time, and invited Mom up to his office again. This time, John Egan accompanied my mother so that she would not be bullied or overwhelmed once more.

“Colonel Sigmund upped the ante, Pat,” my mother said. “The Conroy family now gets five tickets—five big ones. But it comes with a catch. You and Dad have to attend.”

“None of the kids can go,” I said. “Not interested.”

“I think Hollywood found out that you and Don were boycotting the event. There’s a lot of pressure to see this problem settled.”

The next week Mom had ten tickets, and the following week she scored fifteen. As time for the premiere to occur loomed as a large lunar force on the political and social forces of Beaufort, the complimentary tickets began taking to the airwaves over Mother’s place like homing pigeons.

“Fifty tickets,” my mother said one night, her voice flushed with victory that I found unfortunate.

“Mom, drop that tone out of your voice. You don’t want your neighbors to see you gloating over their embarrassment.”

“I don’t mind gloating and I certainly don’t care if they see it.”

“Mom, be gracious, be thankful, and be classy. You’ve always gotten through your worst times by showing great class,” I advised.