The Death of Santini: The Story of a Father and His Son (35 page)

“Oh, son of Don, progeny of Zeus, chattel maker of women, since I’m a girl, I’m just roach dung in the field for the golden issue of Apollo. Though he acts like a sun god, Pat is a war god and Carol Ann is his
immortal enemy. I’ll bring you down with my poetry. My art will put you into your grave. You’ll write for Hallmark cards.”

I always cherished these moments when my sister made her long-winded mythological and psychological attacks on my character. I found them erudite, hilarious, and perfectly close to the mark. Though I knew I dealt with a chickenhearted assimilation in my dealings with adults, I never saw the wisdom in alienating them to the core, as Carol Ann was so apt to do. I liked it when Mom kissed me rather than putting me to the floor with a broom. It was Carol Ann’s belief that an artist had to be a rebel in constant war with the world around her. She would bring the world to its knees with her poetry, and I would make them kneel at the communion rail with the shit I wrote. When we were kids and all the way through college, Carol Ann Conroy and I were locked together in a two-step dance to survive the windchill factor of our parents’ marriage. For twenty-five years, we kept up a running commentary on the hopelessness of our situation in fashioning some kind of normal life from the ruins of the Conroys’ undermined hermitage.

Early and often we remarked about the real damage our parents had inflicted on us and wondered drearily about the fates of our younger brothers and sisters. To us, Peg and Don did not appear to grow more facile with the art of parenting as they aged. When we left home for college, it seemed like an escape from the pages of a blighted hymnal. Though I hated the plebe year at The Citadel, I also believe that Carol Ann caught some sickness of her lonely spirit in her first six months of Winthrop, but neither of us gave serious thought to returning to that scene of breakage that had produced us. Not that our folks would welcome us home. When a Conroy kid went off to college, there was no bed to come home to, no chest of drawers or a closet, or bathroom privileges, or even a place at the dinner table. You had to squeeze your way in, find how the house worked without your participation, and hope for a mattress on a basement floor to sleep on. College became not only our new home, but also our destiny. There was no such thing as looking back.

Of all the people I’ve ever talked to about literature and books, Carol Ann was the most insightful. She possessed a natural gift for summation and a broad-minded affection for other writers’ work. We grew up believing both of us would be writers. At the time, I didn’t think we
had any reasonable chance to succeed at this ambition, since our education was sketchy and run-of-the-mill. There were long odds against us, but neither of us cared, and both were innocent in the extreme.

The break between us was gradual, but I now believe inevitable. When Carol Ann was in college, she made a bold move by announcing to the family that she was a lesbian. It was the summer of 1969, when Dad was in Vietnam, and Carol Ann came to Beaufort with her roommate from Winthrop, Chris Cinque. I’d never spent any time with her friend Chris, but Carol Ann had written great letters about her steadfastness, charm, and reserve. She had stated that Chris Cinque was the perfect roommate for her.

At the request of my mother, Carol Ann had come down for the weekend so the happy Conroy family could pose for a group photograph for my father’s camp desk in Vietnam. After dinner Carol Ann made her disruptive but colorful move. She charged into the kitchen with her blue eyes flashing her desire to take center stage, with Chris trailing like a fledging bird behind her. Carol Ann cried out, “I have an announcement to make.” All eyes in the room turned to her as she stood there, her booted feet set solidly on kitchen tiles and her face filled with righteousness.

“I am a lesbian!” she shouted. “I am a bull dyke.”

My mother hurled herself around, undone like I’d never seen her before. Then she began chanting, “I knew it. I knew it all along. I knew from the morning she was born. Something was off. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I couldn’t name it. But she’s always been off. Now I’ll never have grandchildren. I wanted so much to have grandchildren.”

As I helped my mother to her feet, I said to her, “Just look around, Mom—you’ve got three grandchildren looking at you.”

“I’m proud to be a lesbian, Mother!” Carol Ann said, still in shouting mode. “I’m proud to be a bull dyke. I’ll shout it from the rooftops, from the highest trees.”

“Subtly done, Carol Ann,” I said as I helped Mom into a kitchen chair.

“I’m declaring who I am. It’s important to me that all of you accept me as a beloved sister and as a lesbian.”

In complete innocence, my mother looked at pretty Chris Cinque and asked, “Is Chris a lesbian, too?”

This brought Chris and Carol Ann to the point of collapse, and they held each other as their laughter reached hysteric proportions.

I felt a tug at my fingertips and I looked down to see little Jessica and her puzzled face beneath me.

“Daddy,” Jessica asked, “what is a dyke?”

“Jesus God,” I moaned, and then said, “Let me think about this for a sec. A dyke. Yes. It’s coming to me. Got it. You know that story I read to you girls? The one about that brave little Dutch boy who put his finger in the dike? Well, Carol does that. She runs around and finds holes in dikes and dams and holds her finger in them.” Then I turned to Barbara to ask, “Don’t you think it’s time to put the girls to bed?”

“Oh, no,” Barbara said, “I wouldn’t miss this show for anything.”

Stanny jumped in and said, “You aren’t a lesbian, Carol Ann. I’ve sailed around the world five times and I can guarantee you’re not a lesbian. I’m worldly, you know.”

“Are you calling me a liar, Stanny?” Carol Ann said. “I thought you, as a gallant woman, would accept this with the love and courage it requires. In the South, I’ll have very few people supporting me in the racist, lesbian-hating world that surrounds me. But you? The great traveler in our family, who has been everywhere and done everything? You’ve been the great experiencer of the family, the voyager, the Odysseus traveling for years to get back home. If you fail me, where will I turn?”

“Don’t know, but you aren’t close to being a lesbian,” Stanny said with maddening certainty.

My mother said, “Can’t we change the subject? It’s getting rather boring.”

Again Carol Ann lit up like a Roman candle and exploded. “My sexuality is boring? Do you realize you’re putting a stake in my heart by saying something that stupid and insensitive? Look at me. I’m your daughter. The hated, tormented first daughter. See me, Mother. For the first time in your life, please try to see me.”

“I see you, I see you,” Mom said. “So now will you shut up?”

“No, I won’t, Mother. No one shall muzzle me or silence me again. I’ve come out of the closet and into the streets. For the first time I’ve come into the light, and I love the light and I’ll never be hurled into darkness again.”

“She’s the farthest thing from a lesbian I’ve ever seen,” Stanny continued. “She’s not even close.”

Carol Ann started haranguing Stanny about the rights of women and the history of women’s liberation, ending with a thrilling, “Stanny, when you were born, women weren’t even permitted to vote.”

“Listening to you run your mouth tonight, I kinda see the point,” my mother said unhelpfully.

The mother and daughter exercise flared up again, and I jumped between the antagonists and kept them away from each other. Both women were ready to claw each other’s eyeballs clear out of their heads, and they were trading epithets that were growing more profane by the second. I saw Barbara moving the kids out of the battle zone and I heard my grandmother say something that seemed irrelevant to the intellectual social discussion that was under present review:

“Carol Ann’s never even been to Beirut.”

When I got Carol Ann to retreat to the doorway, near where she and Chris held hands and Mom was sitting again facing Stanny, I assumed my natural role of peacemaker between the two women. It had been my role since I was a child.

“Let’s discuss this calmly,” I said.

Carol Ann rolled her eyes and said to Chris, “This is the part of my brother I hate the most. The kindly one. The Goody Two-shoes. The perfect one. U Thant. The ambassador to the peaceful kingdom.”

“Shut up, Carol Ann,” I said, “or I’ll beat the living shit out of you and leave you for dead.”

“That’s what he really wants—to silence womanhood,” she declared. “To threaten us with bodily harm. But I’m telling you this right now, buster: Womanhood won’t be tamed or condescended to or have our mouths taped shut again. We are billions and we are on the move.”

“Before I tape your mouth shut, Carol, I’d like to say something to you,” I said.

“Say it,” she said.

“You’re my oldest sister. You and I grew up together. Learned to read together. You know I adored you and admired you from the time I was a little boy to this very night. We’re as close as any brother and sister I’ve ever met. I think you are a great poet and great person.”

“Cut the bullshit,” Carol Ann said. “Get on with it.”

“You’ve had a difficult life in a difficult family. But you and I survived. By staying together, you and I got through the worst of things. We did it by loving and trusting each other. Trust me now. Mom will get over it. Stanny judges no one. Your brothers and sisters all love you like I do, like Mom does. But I don’t think you stage-managed this announcement very well. I believe it could be done in private. But if you’re a lesbian, I’ll accept it. If you love Chris Cinque, I’ll love Chris. So will your family. Except for Dad. You’re on your own with Dad. He could kill you for all I know. I don’t even know what lesbians do to each other and I don’t care. But if that’s who you are, I’m fine with it. I support it and I hope you’re happy the rest of your life.”

Carol Ann threw herself into my arms and both of us trembled with emotion. Then I led Carol Ann to Mom and they embraced each other and cried. I hugged Chris and the whole room restored itself into a quiet equilibrium.

Later that evening, still in the kitchen, we were at the table talking about that day’s events. I was curious about something and I asked Carol Ann, “Why this lightning strike, Carol Ann, why this blitzkrieg into Beaufort, bringing us these tidings of good joy?”

Carol Ann and Chris were at the sink washing dishes, and she said, “I had to work fast. I needed to tell you tonight because I’m insisting that Chris be included in the family photograph we send to Dad.”

My mother exploded beside me. “Over my dead body! She’s not a member of our family and she never will be.”

“She’s a member of my family, and I say she’ll be in this photograph,” Carol Ann retorted. “Or I’ll refuse to be in it.”

“That’s fine with me, young lady,” my mother snarled.

“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Stanny said. “A lesbian in a Southern family photo.”

“Quiet, Stanny,” I said. “Don’t get yourself involved in this. Carol Ann, are there any more surprises? Any more hand grenades you want to lob into this kitchen?

“No. That’s the last one,” she said. “But I resent you calling my lover a hand grenade.”

“Mom,” I said as I pulled up a chair beside her, “this is just a photograph.
Dad won’t even notice there’s someone else in the picture. Tell him Carol Ann’s roommate was down for the weekend and we wanted to see if he even noticed a stranger in the family lineup. It doesn’t have to be a big deal.”

“It’s a big deal to me,” Mom said.

“Ladies, ladies, ladies,” I began, then stopped, tongue-tied, and couldn’t think of one thing to say, but out of perverse frustration I said, “Mom, Chris is going to be in our goddamn family portrait or I’m not going to be; nor will any of the other kids.”

“You can’t make an ultimatum like that,” my mother said.

“I just did, and I meant every word of it.”

Carol Ann turned to Chris and said, “Golden boy comes through again.”

“It’s just not right,” my mother said, but with an echo of surrender in her voice.

Later, in the living room, we gathered for a glass of wine before we went to bed. It had been a hard day in the Conroy household, but we were long accustomed to high drama and angry voices. We were battle-scared veterans of many fractious skirmishes of both the body and spirit. The wounds of the night would heal and the tempers would be smoothed by sleep and darkness.

But Carol Ann asked my mother whether there was anything about lesbianism that troubled her, or whether she and Chris could answer any questions that would set her mind at ease.

My mother thought about it, then said, “Yes, I’ve always been curious about lesbianism.” I had never heard her mention the word in my entire life. “There is something I’d like to know. When you and Chris make love, if that’s what you call it—”

“That’s what we call it, Peggy,” said Chris.

“Well, whatever, but when you do to each other what you do, who takes the ‘male’ role? You or Chris?”

“We don’t play roles like that,” Carol Ann explained.

“Oh, come on. You asked if I was interested or not, and I’d just like to know which one of you plays the male aggressor, who makes the aggressive animal-like moves toward the more feminine of the two.”

Finally, Carol Ann had come to the end of her patience, and she
stood up and put her jackbooted foot up on the arm of Mom’s chair. She rolled up the cuff of her overalls to the knee, tightened the muscles in her arms, and growled with apelike ferocity, “Mother, it’s me.”

My mother fled out into the night.

The next day we arrived at Ned Brown’s studio for our family portrait. It remains, by far, my favorite family portrait. One can study the clothing styles and the haircuts of that unlovely era. Take your time doing it. In that pyramid of faces, I see much of my life passing by in review. The long hair on the boys I attribute to my mother’s not handing out money to pay for haircuts more than I do to the sixties. The cheap eyeglasses on the boys are one of my mother’s trademarks. My brother Tim’s shirt belongs in a museum somewhere. Mom is radiant after the tumultuous dinner at my house the evening before. Always, when I see my lost brother, Tom, there is a heartache that’ll never heal. My children and my wife are lovely and I look happy.