The Spy on the Tennessee Walker (4 page)

CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 5

MAGGIE
MAGGIE

OAKLAND

The great chef Michael Fiori swept into the kitchen and did all the showboat work for the paella. He did kiss his sous chef in gratitude for all the menial chopping I had done, changed Pandora from the Billie Holiday station to the CeeLo Green
Fuck You
station, and proceeded to report on how brilliantly he had outwitted some poor government tax lawyer in locking up even richer benefits for his philanthropically minded, but still a little greedy, client.

“Okay,” I said. “You've now used the word ‘brilliant' to refer to your IRS-evading machinations not once, not twice, but three times. Does that mean this was brilliance of a whole new world order?”

“It does,” beamed Michael, “and cut me some slack,
cara.
How often do the good guys win?”

“Well, my love, when you are running the gunboats, it appears the good guys always win.”

“Ain't it the truth?” he crowed as he dumped fresh clams onto the saffron-infused rice. “Call those boys to dinner, Maggie. It's time for them to see their dad be brilliant in the kitchen, and those clams are opening in front of our very eyes.”

“Hey, what about honor and glory to the lowly chopper and dicer?” I asked, heading for the stairs.

“You get to sup with the chef. That should be plenty of reward for any kitchen help.”

I stuck my head back in the kitchen. “You, Michael Fiori, are insufferable.”

“You're right. And that's why you find me so irresistible.”

In the dining room, Josh was at his most tragic, removing the extra place he'd set for Lexie. “She can't come,” he said. “Her stupid parents are taking her to some dumb dinner in Berkeley.” He sighed and collapsed in his chair, wiped out by disappointment. Apparently I'd forgotten just how exhausting young love can be. To make matters worse, I was in horrible, unfeeling mother mode — squelching Josh's attempt to reopen the discussion of climbing Half Dome with Lexie and reminding Zach not to feed Raider, our aging German shepherd, under the table for approximately the ten thousandth time. Mom, the perennial spoilsport.

“Hey,” I said. “Delicious paella, Michael. And we got an interesting package in the mail today. Josh, would you go get it?” Josh had regained some small measure of energy simply by shoveling in three generous servings of paella. Marginally restored, he went over to the sideboard and brought the double-framed pictures Phoebe had sent and put them in front of Michael.

“Who do you see, Dad?” he asked.

“Grandma Alma,” he said without hesitation. “But…who's this?”

“Who does it look like?”

Michael looked at the photo of Victoria and looked
across the table at me. “It's Mom,” he said. He put the frame down and picked up his glass of wine. “Pretty slick Photoshopping. You look like somebody out of the nineteenth century.”

“Wrong, as usual,” snapped Josh, rejuvenated by the opportunity to correct a grown-up.

Michael looked at the photo and back at me. “Well, Annie Oakley — if it's not some touched-up version of you on the horse, who is it?”

“That,” I said, “is exactly what I'd like to know. And,” I said, swirling the last of the light Spanish red around in my glass, “that's why I want us to go to Oxford to visit the Cardworthy Henhouse Museum.”

Michael did his eyebrow-raising trick. “Oh, tell me more. Just don't tell me I have to show up at one of those football games in a blue blazer and rep tie.”

“You do, and you will,” I said. “And just FYI, since both you and Josh keep throwing Annie Oakley into the discussion, I'd like to point out that she came from a different generation than my great-great-great-grandmother. Victoria was born in 1841, Annie Oakley was born nearly twenty years later — 1860, I believe.”

Silence fell around the table. “Mom,” said Zach in a stage whisper. “I think you're being a know-it-all again.”

CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 6

MAGGIE
MAGGIE

SMALL TOWN
OFFICE, SAN FRANCISCO

       
“It [California] is the land where the fabled Aladdin's Lamp lies buried and she [San Francisco] is the new Aladdin who shall seize it from its obscurity and summon the genie and command him to crown her with power and greatness and bring to her feet the hoarded treasures of the earth.”

— Mark Twain

Hoyt runs a damn fine story meeting at
Small Town.
For a man who's soft-spoken, who still rises when a woman enters the room, and who reminds me of my mother's family, with that leisurely Mississippi (pronounced “Mi'-sip-ee” by the natives) drawl that sounds like a gentle waltz around colloquial Southern English, there is no nonsense at Hoyt's core. The trains run on time, and so do the writers, designers, copyeditors, and a small, rotating army of freelance photographers and illustrators. All thanks to Hoyt, who is unshakably polite and indisputably no-nonsense. I'm the editor-in-chief, but without Hoyt's shepherding, nagging, and constant
surveillance, nothing substantive would get done.

It was the usual suspects around the table: Andrea “Starchy” Storch, New England's preppy gift to journalism, who did features and covered film and theater; designer Linda Quoc, dressed, as always, head to toe in black; Puck Morris, scourge of the music beat; and a couple of eager-beaver young writers who represented the sensibility of youth. They managed the online content of
Small Town
and wondered why
any
piece of writing would be longer than a tweet. Calvin Bright rounded out the team by wearing multiple hats: most favored
Small Town
photographer and sweetheart of Starchy Storch. Just two preppy sweethearts who bonded over Burberry and signet rings.

Hoyt rapped on the stained tabletop in the conference room. “My friends, we are gathered,” he said. “And now, once more into the fray!”

Calvin made an elaborate show of examining his ten-million-thread-count cuffs, all meant to distract us from the fact that he was inching his hand down to Andrea's knee. Puck was building a mini tower of his signature hockey pucks, all of which bore the inscription, “Pucked by Morris,” sent as an advance warning to some unsuspecting musician or group when he was readying a particularly vitriolic review.

“The sight of that growing edifice does not fill me with joy, Mr. Morris,” said Hoyt. “I know you have submitted only two reviews in the upcoming issue, so even if you loathe both the groups, you can't possibly need all those pucks.”

“Oh, man,” said Puck. “One of these groups is so godawful, I may send a whole box of pucks. One for
being lousy guitarists, one for being derivative, one for forgetting to tune ahead of time, and one for really creepy red Spandex getups.”

“I predict a small avalanche of outraged letters from the Spandex wearers,” said Hoyt.

“Don't you worry, big guy,” said Puck. “I know these guys can't read music, and I'm pretty sure they can't read words either. They'll never know what hit 'em.”

Hoyt glanced at me, looking for help. “Puck,” I said, “you know it's not your job to hate everything, right?”

Puck sat up very straight, thereby adding a good three-quarters of an inch to his not-quite-five-and-a-half-foot frame. “The Puck is mightier than the sword,” he pronounced. “I calls 'em as I sees 'em.”

“We are reminded,” said Hoyt, “of Alice Roosevelt Longworth's embroidered throw cushion, ‘If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.'”

The rest of the story meeting evolved as usual: writers pitching, Hoyt catching, me reporting out on a couple of major features in the hands of outside writers, reviewers previewing what they might like or loathe, Linda taking us through the digital portfolio of hot new conceptual photographers for a story on the Twitterization of Hayes Valley.

Since Twitter and Google had moved into the city proper, complete with buses that looked as if they were going to and from summer camp, the real estate prices in San Francisco — always ridiculous — had become laughable. Young people regularly showed up at completely unremarkable one-bedroom apartments, fiercely outbidding each other until a round of all-cash
offers for million-dollar apartments went into smack-down. The restaurant scene was in a constant state of churn — tapas were down, prix-fixe was up, insects were ingredients (and not by accident), and edible foam was back. Bacon doughnuts were about to become passé.

“We will have one moment of silence,” said Andrea, “for the way Hayes Valley used to be — seedy, weird, not very clean, and dispensing botulism out of every eatery. Come on, guys, let's not romanticize squalor.”

And with that we were back to the story list. After the meeting I followed Hoyt down to his office.

“Guess where I'm going next week?” I asked.

“To find some backup lawyers for the next time Puck sends some ungifted musician around the bend?”

I laughed. “Not yet.”

“Then I'm a lost ball in tall grass. Where are you going, Maggie, and why isn't it on the vacation schedule?”

“Oops, sorry. And it's really just a long weekend, but I'm going to your hometown: Oxford, Mississippi.”

“Better you than me. One of the blond cousins getting married?”

“Research. I'm checking out a new museum — the Cardworthy Henhouse Museum, owned and operated by my aunt and uncle and open only when they are in residence.”

“And what is prompting this visit?”

I opened my briefcase and put the double-frame photo on Hoyt's desk. He pulled the frame close for a look, put it down, and looked at me.

“Who are these fine-looking ladies?”

“One is my grandmother Alma, the one in the uniform. I don't know for sure who the other woman is, and
that's why I'm going to Oxford.”

“Do the proprietors of the Henhouse Museum know who she is?”

“They're vague, but apparently she's my great-great-great-grandmother, and she was a nurse in the Civil War.”

“Or as my people used to call it, ‘the War Between the States,'” said Hoyt. “Well, whoever she was, she is a beautiful woman, and she looks as though nothing would stand in her way. My guess is you and she have more in common than a handsome head full of curls.”

“What was it like, Hoyt? Growing up in Oxford? I've been going there all my life, off and on, to visit family, but I have no sense of what it's really like to live there.”

Hoyt closed his eyes. “You know, Maggie, I can still conjure what the place smells like.”

“Good or bad?”

“Oh, in spring, when the lilacs are coming into bloom, and the heat warms up the jasmine and honeysuckle, there's nothing like it. You can get drunk.”

“I love lilacs,” I said, “and we can't grow them very well in California.”

“No,” he said, “they need hardship, a good cold frost, to thrive come spring. Most things do better with a little hardship. You know what I was remembering about the lilacs when I was a boy? I was coming home from school one day, and we had just read about the death of Lincoln, so our teacher had us memorize Walt Whitman's poem, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd,” and I passed Miz Sorrelli's house, and the fragrance of those lilacs — purple ones and white ones, lining her fence — almost knocked me down. It was as if Walt Whitman
himself had planted them for me as an extracurricular enhancement to his grieving poem.”

“We memorized that poem, too. I'm not sure kids do that anymore.”

“Stays with you.”

And remarkably, that beautiful poem of love and grief came into my head.

       
“When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom'd,

       
And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,

       
I mourn'd—and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

       
O ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring;

       
Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west,

       
And thought of him I love.”

“Brava,” said Hoyt. “And then Miz Sorrelli came out and saw me burying my nose in her lilacs. She said, ‘Aren't they just glorious?' sounding exactly like Amanda Wingfield in
The Glass Menagerie
, although not nearly so crazy and self-aggrandizing.”

I laughed. “Oh, when Amanda rhapsodizes about the jonquils that all her gentlemen callers brought her, that's what you mean?”

“Exactly right. And then Miz Sorrelli reached right into her apron pocket and pulled out some shears, clipped me a big bunch of lilacs, and wrapped the ends in a faded tea towel she fished out of another pocket, and handed the entire thing over to me.

“She told me to take the bouquet to my mama with her regards and congratulations for raising a son who knew enough to stop and worship at Mother Nature's altar.”

“I love that story,” I said.

“Me, too,” said Hoyt. “That's the best part of small Southern towns, the kindness of relative strangers. And I didn't deconstruct all this when I was a kid, but I knew that Miz Sorrelli was a lady who lived a far grander life than we did. She had a beautiful house near the square, and people called her a ‘rich widow.' But I just remember that she was always out in that front garden or the back garden, doing her own hard work with a hoe. And she was kind to me. I think she knew that we lived pretty hand-to-mouth, tenant farming not being venture capital and all.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “Well, isn't that more of a story than you wanted to hear?”

“I always like hearing your stories. And you've put me in the right mood for this trip. I feel so fish-out-of-water when I go see my mother's relations. It's like I'm going on a field trip to the Old Curiosity Shop; everything seems so strange.”

“Such as?”

“Oh,
everything.
I love my family, but it's ‘Miss Maggie,' this, and the endless discussion of who was or was not First Runner-up in the Maid of Cotton competition. I mean, when you're forty years old, are you're still thinking of yourself as in the market for a tiara? And the clothes and full makeup to go to the Piggly Wiggly!”

Hoyt shook his head. “Honey, this is your family, and you're going on a visit. You're not an anthropologist analyzing the tribal patterns of a lost colony. And
I would like to remind you that those Maids of Cotton were very hardworking young women. They represented the cotton industry not just in the South but in other cotton-growing states, like California.”

I snorted. “Anthropology is exactly what I'm doing! Or at least that's always what I catch myself thinking about. You cannot imagine the depth and complexity of the conversations about handbags among my young cousins.”

“On the other hand, if memory serves, that Maid of Cotton deal ended altogether in 1993, when the Cotton Council folks decided there wasn't enough juice left in the whole competition. Plus, there is the food.” We both fell silent for a few moments. “I'll tell you what I'm thinking about if you'll tell me what you're thinking about.”

“Fried chicken,” I said. “Cheese straws.”

“Hmmm…now that sounds fine, although I do think of cheese straws as food for the ladies. But I'm thinking about the cornbread sticks my grandmother made.”

“In a black iron pan, with molded sides so that the sticks came out looking like little ears of corn?”

“I have that very pan.”

“For a man who got out of Oxford the minute you could, you're sounding downright nostalgic.”

“Oh, no — I miss my family, I miss the food, and I do miss the good manners, but I don't miss much else about the South. It always felt very feudal to me. You're defined by someone else's version of the people you came from. It's an economically based version of ‘I'm up, you're down.'”

He fell silent for a moment, then spoke. “It doesn't
matter anymore. That's one of the things I love about this city. It's this little peculiar oasis of meritocracy.”

“Hoyt, you've got to be kidding. The ‘who's on top' game is alive and well in the City of St. Francis. We have the power brokers and the social butterflies and the nouveau insanely rich geeks and nerds. You are so, so idealizing this city.”

“I don't think so, Miss Maggie. You and I both know that those socialites can be tougher than nails. And what I love about them, and why I still take pride in this silly magazine, is that some of those social butterflies are perfectly willing to go to the mat to get things done.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “And some of them are willing to get their lovely, manicured hands very dirty in doing actual manual labor.”

“You're thinking of Grace Plummer. And I am so proud of the story we did on her.”

“I am, too.” We both paused for a moment, thinking of the glamorous Grace Plummer, who transformed herself and her life from a tragic childhood into a life of substantive, hard work.

“Spring and fall make me think of Grace,” I said. “Sweating over a cultivator and digging amendments into the vegetable garden at A Mom's Place, and then harvesting good things to eat up until Thanksgiving.”

“And outfitting all those sweet little unwed moms in her fancy dresses when they had a chance to go out and have fun.”

Grace Plummer, murdered in the back of a limo, had prompted all of us to rethink what socially connected women could accomplish.

“Oh, my, we were snobs,” I said. “Dismissive of
Grace without knowing all she had come from and all she had done.”

“Hubris, Maggie, that's what it is.”