“And it’s not like he’s given you one to stay, either, has he?”
“Except that it might have been nice to know we had twenty-two million dollars to our name.”
“Again, you didn’t know it because he didn’t want you to know it. You need to think about that. How many other secrets does he have?”
“Other than that? I think he’s pretty transparent. Maybe he’s hiding new golf clubs or something, but he’s not a womanizer—at least not in the past ten years. Well, not that I know of.”
Except maybe for a possible escapade in Atlantic City, but I kept that to myself. This fire didn’t need any more fat.
“I rest my case,” he said. I looked up at him and he added, “Temporarily. Now there’s one other matter of business we have not discussed.”
“Which is?”
“Did you love seeing Jonathan Ray ogle you to death last night?”
“Oh, come on. You know it’s always wonderful to discover an old friend again, isn’t it?”
“Don’t be coy with me, honey bunny. I saw you two eyeballing each other. Hmmmm?”
“He’s just an old dear friend, Harlan, who said he’d be happy to take care of my arm for me while I’m here.”
“I’ll bet he wants what’s attached to that arm as well!”
“Harlan! What a scandalous thing to say!”
“You know what, Leslie? Maybe a good scandal is exactly what you need! And a pair of diamond stud earrings. Why don’t you take yourself over to Croghan’s Jewel Box and get a big old sparkly pair? Let Wes see that on the Visa card. That might wake him up.”
“You’re a devil, sweet brother.” It wasn’t a bad idea.
“Hmmm. Maybe sometimes, but I’m gonna tell you something.”
“What?”
“You only have one life, Leslie. I think you’ve sacrificed too much for too little in return. Charleston is our birthplace, our heritage. As they like to say around here, it’s the blood-soaked land of our ancestors, people who gave everything they had for freedom. There’s a lot to be learned from it, especially when things don’t seem so clear.”
“Oh, Harlan, I know you mean well but . . .”
“Hush, Sister, and let me finish. Why don’t you take some time and just look at the women who have gone before you in this town? The Pinckney girls, for example—Eliza Lucas Pinckney, for sure, but Miss Josephine Pinckney most especially. You’re walking the same floors she walked, for heaven’s sake. You know?”
“Okay. I’ll do that.”
“Promise? They both faced worse horrors than Wesley.”
“Such as?”
“Redcoats! Yankees! Seriously, Eliza Lucas practically put the indigo crop on the map. She was an absolutely amazing woman. Really. Read her letters. She ran three plantations simultaneously.” He stepped out to the sitting room and took a volume from his shelves, handing it to me with a flourish. “This is a treasure.”
“I will treat it like one,” I said. “Thanks. I need a diversion.”
Then we laughed in some kind of relief, and I hugged him with all my might. Maybe he was right. Maybe I needed a deeper understanding of my real feelings so I could make better decisions about my future. At that moment I couldn’t even imagine a future. And I didn’t have emotions that incited me to real anger or raging grief—just something that felt like utter frustration. Maybe the Pinckney girls could shed a little light. Coming to Harlan was the smartest thing I could’ve done. Ever since we were kids we went to each other over every problem we had. He was my rock.
“But Josephine is still a mystery to me,” he said.
“Why’s that?”
“Well, her novel Three O’Clock Dinner sold almost a million copies. Maybe more. I mean, that was a huge number in the 1940s! Think about it—no Barnes & Noble, no Books-A-Million, no e-readers. Did you ever read it?”
I shook my head.
“To be honest, Harlan, you’ve been throwing her name around for years, but I’ve never even heard a single thing about her. I mean, I hate to sound like a dimwit. I know we’ve got Pinckney this and Pinckney that all over Charleston, but I’ve never heard a peep about Josephine. Besides your dog, that is.”
“That’s my point exactly! She sold millions of books. She got the highest advance ever paid back in the day for a book-to-film deal. MGM gave her something like a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. And we’re all saying Josephine who? How does a woman with this drop-dead historic pedigree and platinum résumé just vanish into obscurity?”
“Good question.”
“Well, sweetie, we don’t want it to happen to us, either. She should’ve written a book about a Gullah-speaking vampire dog that’s into erotica. There’d be a statue of her in Marion Square right next to John C. Calhoun!”
We laughed at the thought of it. Would Charleston really tolerate one of its aristocrats writing such a thing? Well, it sort of had! Josephine Pinckney allegedly had courage in spades.
“What’s this world coming to?”
“I don’t know, but somewhere in her papers is the answer to her obscurity. Maybe you can figure it out with women’s intuition, because I sure couldn’t.”
A challenge. All our lives we had challenged each other on various things: Who starred in what movie? (Harlan always knew the answers.) Who made the best lasagna? (Me. Hands down.) Gumbo? (Harlan—his was divine.) Who had the prettiest garden? (Well, it depended on the season.) An outsider might have accused us of sibling rivalry, but we viewed these contests as legitimate competition with winners and losers and then we laughed about it for ages. And truly, who cared? If Harlan made his famous gumbo and I got to eat it, how did I lose?
Harlan left for Rome with his group from the college on June eleventh. I stayed on in Charleston. We agreed it would be good for me. I still had not spoken to Wes. He knew where I was and didn’t care as long as I wasn’t dead.
Harlan called me on the house phone when he arrived and got settled.
“Hey! How was your trip?”
“Too perfect for words,” he said. “Everything okay?”
“Everything is just fine. How’s Rome?”
“Ah, R-r-r-oma!” he said, rolling his R. “The Eternal City! So gorgeous! Every time I come here I just want to throw on a toga and rush to the Colosseum! All I can think about is Tony Curtis in Spartacus. How wild is that?”
“Very. Please don’t pull the sheets and make a toga. Better to call room service for a plate of pasta.”
“I’m sure you’re right but the temptation is fierce.”
He promised to call every few days.
Yep, so back in Charleston there was just me, my lurking dilemma I was trying to ignore, and Harlan’s pup. She really was a darling little thing, but spoiled rotten didn’t begin to describe her personality. When late afternoon rolled around and the sky began to turn red at the horizon, she positioned herself in front of the large window on the second floor in Harlan’s study from where you could see the sunset. As soon as the day faded into darkness, she’d run from the window and bark at her wardrobe closet. She didn’t stop barking until I brought down her pearl pink quilted satin dressing gown with the marabou trim and fixed it on her little twelve-pound body. She even stood on her hind legs to make it easy to put her front legs through the armholes. When she was satisfied that she was appropriately dressed for the evening, she’d hop up into her Marie Antoinette–style bed and curl up into a ball. This was only good for as long as she didn’t need to be given a moment in the moonlight with nature, which was usually just before my bedtime when she barked to remind me to open the door. There was little doubt as to who was really in charge. Maybe I needed a dog. But then did I really need another thing to boss me around?
I had only been in Charleston for a few days, and let me tell you, they were the longest days of my life. All my routines were broken and I was on the lam, sort of. But what was I doing? Had I really left Wesley? At that moment I didn’t want a divorce, but I also didn’t w
ant to go back. I just couldn’t see myself in that life anymore. And for the life of me, I surely could not see Wesley changing the smallest detail of his habits or his personality. Wesley’s truth was the only truth that mattered. If he thought he was fine, he was fine.
And here’s a terrible thing to consider. Even if he decided to give up golf, would I really, truly, and honestly want to spend an entire Saturday or Sunday with him? What would we do? Play Scrabble? Chitchat? On top of my growing pile of complaints, now that I knew the truth about our financial situation, everything was changed. I was furious with him in a way I didn’t know I could be furious with anyone. What a colossal liar he was. How could I ever trust him again?
I finally turned my cell phone back on, and the first person’s call I returned was Charlotte’s.
“Mom? Are you okay?”
“I’m perfectly fine,” I said. “How are you? How’s Holly?”
“We’re all fine, Mom. So? What’s going on?”
“I’m watching your uncle Harlan’s house for him while he’s away.”
“Oh. So when are you coming home?” I could hear the veiled annoyance in her voice.
“I’m not sure. Why?”
“Well, I need you, Mom. Dad needs you.”
“Oh, I’m sure y’all are managing just fine without me.”
There was a long silence.
“Mom? Did you and Dad have like a terrible fight or something?”
“Not at all.”
“Well, it’s just so weird for you to pick up and go to Charleston without telling anybody.”
“I wanted some time off.”
“From what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Cleaning the house with my arm in a sling?”
“Oh. Wait. Don’t you have what’s her name? Martha?”
“Twice a month.”
“Well, Mom, that’s ridiculous. If you need her more, just call her.”
“It requires an act of Congress to adjust the budget. You should know that.”
“Yeah, Dad’s pretty tight.”
“It’s easier to be here for now.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet it is. Charleston’s gorgeous. Can I come and visit?”
“Of course you can. Just let me know when you might like to come so that I don’t make other plans, okay?”
“Plans? With who?”
“Honey, you seem to forget that I still have a few friends in Charleston.”
“Oh, I’m sure you do.”
“So how’s the world of real estate going?”
“Well, it’s kind of hard to work when I don’t have child care.”
“Ah,” I said, and let it go with that.
“And the housing market is in the tank, you know. Everyone wants like the Taj Mahal with a media room for under two hundred thousand. Ain’t happening. People are so unrealistic.”
“That’s true,” I said, hoping that I might strike a chord with her conscience, which I may have done.
There came another silence, one where I could hear the wheels in her head churning with frustration. She knew I didn’t think much of her business acumen, and she suspected I didn’t think much of her mothering skills either. But she probably inherited the latter from me.
“Mom? Come on. What’s going on? Are you having an affair?”
“What? Don’t be ridiculous. And remember, missy, just because you think you’re an adult doesn’t mean you can ask your mother such a rude and personal question.”
“Well, stranger things have happened in this world, you know.”
“Really?”
We hung up a few minutes later and I thought, So, it would be that strange if I had an affair, would it? Good old Les! Your father thinks it’s fine to cavort with whoever strikes his fancy and his friends have new wives who are half their age, but women like me never had affairs? Or worse yet, it would be a modern-day miracle if someone actually wanted a woman like me? Wait a minute! Did I have an expiration date stamped on my forehead? What was that old story about how women had a better chance of being abducted by aliens than they did getting married after forty? Was that it? Hell, I couldn’t remember the details, probably due to my age. So shoot me. If Charlotte came to Charleston, I was going to give her a piece of my mind.
I still had only spoken to Wes once, that unfortunate occasion when I hung up on him. There were at least a dozen messages from him the first day and then none after that. I guess he thought it was up to me to call him and it probably was, but to be honest, I didn’t feel up to his harangue. He would try to outargue me and convince me I should come home with my tail between my legs. No way. My desire to face him, even on the telephone, was nil. Part of me felt that by day five, he should’ve been doing some huge soul-searching and then upon his self-realization that he was, in fact, an ass of gargantuan proportions, he should’ve been sending me flowers—buckets of them. But then an hour later I’d realize if I was going to wait for him to come to me on bended knee with his arms flailing apologies all over the place, I had better find a comfortable spot for my pity party slash self-righteous indignation to camp out. Wes never apologized for anything because in his mind he was never wrong. Ever.
On my stronger days, I was actually enjoying my time alone, listening to classical music, which of course Wes despised. I scanned Harlan’s shelves and naturally, in addition to an entire library of books on art history, he owned a signed first edition of everything Josephine Pinckney had ever written. I had begun Three O’Clock Dinner and was enjoying it enormously, surprised by how contemporary it felt even though it was published in 1945. Class struggle still thrived even in 2012.
Walking from room to room, I had to say that Harlan had himself one helluva house. I thought about the burden of living in a historic home, one owned by an ancestor of Governor Thomas Pinckney, one of America’s first ambassadors to Great Britain, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, who signed the Constitution. Oh la dee da, my inner cynic said. But it was true that being a Pinckney was a far heavier burden to carry than being a Kennedy, Johnny-come-latelies, our mother always said as though our family had hopped off the Mayflower. But Harlan insisted that Jo Pinckney, as she was known to her friends, was a truly modern aristocrat, and always looked forward, not the least bit encumbered by her heritage or by the memories of the Civil War, of which her own father was actually a veteran. If anything, he said, she used her name to great advantage, gaining entrée into the most sophisticated literary circles up and down the East Coast when women were generally excluded. She was ambitious and serious minded, beautiful and talented; and any way you shook it up, so far my reading proved that she was a very interesting writer. Perhaps by the time Harlan returned I’d have an answer.
The weather had been gorgeous. The temperatures were still below ninety, and if I walked the Battery Wall, the breezes were saturated with the fragrance of so many different flowers and the salt of the sea, it was enough to get you drunk. In fact, Jo Pinckney’s first book, a volume of poems, was named Sea-Drinking Cities, which I thought was a brilliant title. I took long strolls with Miss JP through White Point Gardens and thought about the real Miss Jo, and of course, I thought of Wes and Charlotte and I wondered if my little Holly was missing me. I wondered what Josephine Pinckney would do about Wes if she was in my shoes? Then I had to laugh. As far as I could tell from what I’d read, a man like Wes would’ve bored her to death. He was far too pedestrian for a woman whose great friends were the likes of Amy Lowell, Laura Bragg, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. No, she’d take all his money and walk.
Harlan said that if I wanted to get an idea what life was really like in the forties and the fifties that I should go across the street to the South Carolina Historical Society and read Josephine’s papers. Maybe I would if we got a rainy day. Heaven knows the history of anyone else’s life was more exciting than mine.
Apparently Jo Pinckney never married or had children, but she enjoyed the company of two prominent gentlemen for long periods of time, both of whom were married
with children. I’d bet the Charleston tongues wagged a gale force wind about that! Harlan quoted her saying, “Few people realize how much courage it takes in a community like ours to ignore the established taboos.”
I liked the idea that she had the courage to thumb her nose at the social conventions of the day and find a port in the storm. Charleston’s genteel citizens must have believed that her extreme creative bent combined with her undeniable pedigree allowed them to overlook her passions of the flesh. Still, she must’ve been a very brave woman, I thought.
Ah, Wesley! Why are you such a Neanderthal? I know him so well and I could see him in my mind’s eye, standing in front of his sink in the morning while he shaved and saying something like She’d better apologize for this! Well, I wasn’t apologizing. And the longer I didn’t hear from him, the more I was convinced that my absence was only a frustrating inconvenience. He obviously didn’t miss me one bit except for the duties I performed that facilitated his everyday life. He probably had our housekeeper there every day. Let’s be honest, if I could be replaced by my own housekeeper, what did that tell me?
On other days, I wept. I would torture myself over every detail I could remember from all the years of our marriage and how I might have steered things in another direction for our children if I’d only had the courage. But Wes was always so volatile. He argued with me over every single thing! The least little thing would cause him to bellow. Go bellow in hell, I thought. Go bellow in hell. Look at the two fine messes we have for children. I did everything your way, Wes, and look at them. Look at us. I hope you’re happy.
And then Jonathan called. Just as I’m daydreaming about the lovely prospect of Wes yelping, dodging Satan’s pitchforks, Jonathan calls. Hello, Trouble?
“Hey! How are you?” He sounded so warm and nice.
“I’m good,” I said, completely surprised. “How are you?”
“Well, if I waited around for you to call me, Christmas might come and go!”
“Was I supposed to call you?” I said and remembered he had given me his card.
“If you want to spend the rest of your life with your arm in a cast, that’s your prerogative.”
The Last Original Wife Page 11
