Downtown

by Anne Rivers Siddons

  “You think not?”

  “I know not. We’re all special people, I think, the ones who are part of it, but he’s what pulls us together, and the…the sum of us won’t scatter unless he pulls out of it. Can you see Matt pulling out of Downtown?”

  I could not. But still, the grief I felt for the perfect, soaring, spinning comet that Downtown had been when I came to it a year before was real; it was profound. It followed me through the dark-bright days along the path toward Christmas like a sad and faithful beast.

  On the surface, not so much changed. Matt was still distracted and distant, but no more so than he had been before Tom told us he was leaving. He was abrupt and curt and often downright churlish, but I remembered that he was often so, to a lesser degree, around holidays. Matt hated holidays, for reasons that no one ever really ascertained.

  “It’s because he wants to be God or president,” Teddy grinned ruefully when Matt had snarled at Cecelia Henley, the pretty little new receptionist he had hired to replace the vanquished Mary Kay Crimp, about the gigantic, ceiling-brushing Christmas tree she had dragged in on her lunch hour. “He only hates the official holidays. The ones he organizes himself, like the lake last summer, he adores. Don’t take it personally, Cecelia. He almost blew me out of the water one year when I put a wreath on his door, but he didn’t take it down.”

  And he didn’t order the tree out of the office. When we had gotten it decorated it looked very pretty indeed, and was much admired throughout the chamber. In fact, the artificial silver and blue tabletop tree that had skulked in the corner of the chamber lobby upstairs for years, Teddy said, disappeared after Culver Carnes saw ours, and a live one, even larger and more elaborately dressed, went up.

  And the great Christmas War began. Whenever we added a bauble the chamber added three. Our mistletoe bunch became, upstairs, garlands and masses of it. Cecelia strung up tinsel; the chamber offices looked like the web of a great silver spider. After a weekend in mid-December, the chamber staff came in on Monday morning to find their tree wearing, in addition to its expensive new baubles, the chamber’s entire complement of cupholders. Culver was in Matt’s office, the door closed, within minutes of the discovery, and we could hear him shouting all the way to the water cooler outside our offices. But in the end nothing came of it. All of us had demonstrably been somewhere else over that weekend; work slowed to a sludgy trickle around Christmas, and no one stayed late or worked on weekends. Matt himself had been in Gatlinburg with the Playboy PR woman, skiing. I have never seen an angrier man than Culver Carnes when finally he left Matt’s office. He was so red of face and short of breath that we could hear him breathing as far as the elevator lobby. We waited until the bell dinged before we collapsed in grateful laughter.

  We never did find out who did the Christmas tree job, though I sometimes thought that Hank and even Matt himself were the culprits in the other coffeecup capers. Matt stoutly denied culpability.

  “If he doubts I was skiing at Gatlinburg he’s only got to ask about a hundred people who saw me ski straight down the slope and into the side of the lodge,” he said, grinning. It was a real grin, one of the few famous Comfort grins we would see for the rest of the year. Victory over Culver Carnes could always do it.

  “Did you really ski into the lodge?” Hank said. “I’d have given a good deal to see that.”

  “I did. I knew you were supposed to yell something when you couldn’t stop on skis, but I couldn’t remember what it was. So I yelled, ‘Fore!’ Didn’t help a goddamned bit. I still ran over two assholes in those little French racing suits.”

  It is an image I still cherish, a vastly rumpled little gnome of a man in borrowed ski wear two sizes too big, chestnut hair spraying out like a wind-torn bird’s nest, windmilling down a frozen slope bellowing “Fore!” Over the years it has made me smile in the face of many things.

  Luke and I talked about going to his parents’ home in Baltimore for the holidays, but in the end we decided not to. His sister and her husband and three children were going to be there, he said, and while he was fond of his sister, he could not abide his brother-in-law, nor stomach what he had made of his small niece and nephews.

  “He’s a fat little fascist in a three-piece suit and a Rotary button,” Luke said. “He’s a smug little professional Catholic and a rabid Republican and such a blood-thirsty hawk that his poor little kid told me last time I saw him that he thought we ought to bomb everybody in Vietnam until we sank the island. I think Johnny’s teaching them geography, as well as politics. He thinks I’m a communist pothead, and says so, though not to my face. He married my sister because my old man has money, and I think he’s pissed as hell because the old man won’t die and leave it to her. He thinks I’m out of the running, and he’s probably right. But he sucks up to Dad until even the old man gets sick of him. I’ve learned to stay away from him; it hurts too much to see what Sarah has turned into. She used to have paint under her nails all the time, you know? Now she has perfect nails and her face is just dead. I said we’d come in the spring, maybe. You think we ought to go see your folks?”

  “No,” I said. “I called my father on his birthday and told him I’d like to bring someone home at Christmas for him and Mother to meet, and he said he wasn’t interested in meeting any of my Atlanta paramours. He said paramours, Luke. I’m not going home after that. I was going to ask him to put Mother on the line, but I could hear her start crying in the background, and all of a sudden I just…it just made me so tired, and so sad, and so angry. There’s no reason for him to talk to me that way. There’s no reason for her to cry all the time. I don’t want to go home. I don’t care if I never do again.”

  He rubbed my back absently.

  “The Irish and their damned, sad, awful anger,” he said. “It’s always under there, isn’t it? Though I guess you could call me a paramour if you wanted to, come to think of it. It has a nice seventeenth-century ring to it. So what do you want to do about Christmas?”

  “Have our own tree. Maybe…maybe go to midnight Mass at Christ the King. You know, we could even have a little party. Have some eggnog or something, and ask a few people to come by. I know Matt’s going to Texas to see his mama, but Teddy will be around, and Hank, and I don’t think Tom is going to New Orleans since he’ll be moving there right after New Year’s.”

  “There’s something else we could do,” Luke said. “I’ve been thinking whether to tell you about it or not. I’m not supposed to tell anybody, but I don’t think that includes you.”

  “What, for goodness’ sake?”

  “We could go to the Spelman-Morehouse concert. It’s the weekend before Christmas. Do you know about it?”

  “I’ve heard of it. With the combined college choirs? Teddy says everybody goes, black and white; it’s a real old tradition. She says you never heard such singing. Her family has gone for years. I forgot about it, but I’d love to go. Why shouldn’t you mention it to me?”

  “John’s bringing the Panthers in,” he said.

  “What?”

  “My reaction exactly, when he told me. He’s got a…what, a cadre of them, I guess, coming in, kind of to show the city that we can all get along together, that they can be a part of the city without disrupting anything, that nobody should be afraid of them, I guess. That they don’t shoot honkies on sight. They’ll be in full regalia—you know, the leather jackets, and the berets and all. The deal is no guns, though. I guess that would be a little much, sidearms at a Christmas concert in a chapel. John is really high on it.”

  “But you aren’t?”

  “I don’t know. On the face of it, what’s the harm? They’ll march in and sit there and sing and all and march out again; nobody’s going to make a real fuss in a chapel. I can’t think of a safer place for them to show the flag, if that’s what they want to do. All that peace and love and reverence built in, black and white together, all that stuff. But still, the public perception of them is just not good. I think it could scare shit out of som
e people.”

  “Whose idea was it, anyway?”

  “I don’t know that, either. John didn’t say. It sounds like Juanita baby to me. And I can’t figure out what her motives are; surely she ain’t looking to recruit the liberal white folks. I guess it’s to clinch things with John. Get him in the fold once and for all. Shit, maybe they really do want to hold out an olive branch to the SCLC, to the King camp. That would be the place for it. I wouldn’t have said that was on their agenda, but stranger things have happened.”

  “Does Dr. King know about it? Any of his people?”

  “I don’t think so. Not from John, and ostensibly not from the Panthers. The surprise is the thing, you see. I’ll be surprised myself if somebody doesn’t get wind of it, though. Somebody always knows when those cats are going to be in town. I thought I’d go and get some stuff for Life; it’s going to be a real coup. Can’t you see it? The Panthers singing carols? Little white kiddies with their eyes full of leather jackets and Afros? Buckhead matrons in their minks, side by side with dashikis or whatever?”

  “You couldn’t keep me away with a ten-foot pole,” I said. “Maybe Matt would let us do something for Downtown.”

  “Are you kidding? Culver would have his ass before an issue hit the stands. Panthers at Atlanta social and cultural events? In a chamber of commerce magazine? Tell you what, though; I’ll see if Life wants some words from a journalist who was on the scene. They ought to jump at it.”

  “Then Culver Carnes would have my ass, Luke,” I said.

  He shrugged.

  “You’re going to have to decide what you want some day, Smokes,” he said. “Maybe this is the time for it. It would be a real feather in your cap.”

  Oh, not yet, not yet, I cried in my heart, but I did not say it aloud.

  “Can I just go with you and decide later?” I said. “I’d love to hear the concert, no matter what we end up doing about it.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “But don’t say anything about it to anybody. John was adamant about that. Any media at all and Boy Slattery will run them out of town before they’ve set a foot in Sisters’ Chapel. Or try to.”

  “Why Boy Slattery? You know Governor Wylie wouldn’t, and Boy would have to go through him.”

  “Haven’t you heard?” Luke said. “I guess you haven’t. You were at that meeting with the theater people when Matt told us. Ben Cameron told him at the Commerce Club at lunch. Lint Wylie is at Johns Hopkins having treatment for some kind of lymphoma. It was sudden; he collapsed in his office late yesterday afternoon. They aren’t releasing it to the media until probably in the morning, depending on what the word is out of Baltimore, but it means that Boy is acting governor for the time being. With all attendant powers, like calling in the state police or the national guard, or whatever crosses his tiny little mind. He’d just mortally love to mix it up with Panthers.”

  “Oh, God, Luke. Do you think John ought to cancel it?”

  “No. I think that would look like he’s scared of Boy, and he’s not. But I think the longer he can keep it quiet the better. I personally don’t think he can, but maybe he can keep it from getting to those assholes around Boy. It’ll help that it’s Christmas and all. It would likely get to Ben Cameron first, and he’s not going to tell Boy.”

  “Oh, Lord, how awful,” I said, meaning it. “Boy Slattery sitting in the governor’s seat. How bad is it with Governor Wylie? What happens if he…if he dies?”

  “I don’t know how bad it is,” he said. “I don’t think some lymphomas are as bad as some other kinds of cancer, but it’s never good. If he dies, we’re stuck with Boy until there can be a special election, I guess. At least until the end of January, when the legislature convenes. I don’t really know how Georgia does it. I think the best thing to do is pray for the worst winter in a hundred years.”

  It looked as if it might be. The bitter cold did not abate. Worse, the winter rains that usually set in in January and February came early, and ice storm after ice storm swept in from the west, sent, the newspapers said waggishly, by Birmingham, just to trim Atlanta’s sails a bit. The media was having a field day with the inclement weather; huge black headlines that read BRRRRRRR or ICE NOT NICE dominated the front pages of both the morning and afternoon papers, and television weathermen kept their sleeves rolled up and their ties askew for weeks at a time.

  Atlanta usually gets one or two fairly substantial snows a year, and they are the stuff of municipal rejoicing, but the more frequent ice storms are not nearly so welcome as the fickle, pretty snows. Power lines go down, plunging whole sections of the city into cold and darkness; road conditions are hideous and made worse by Atlanta motorists’ homicidal determination to drive on them no matter what; fractures and sprains proliferate; the incidence of house fires caused by faulty space heaters and malfunctioning fireplaces soars, especially in the miserable ghettos and public housing projects. That year Ben Cameron kept the city’s fire department on alert, and petitioned his peers in other cities for extra sand and power trucks. The phone company all but gave up.

  In Ansley Park, where Luke’s carriage house was, the combination of huge old hardwood trees and aging power lines meant that we were without power more often than not. At first I did not mind; weather has always been the stuff of festivity and exhilaration in the Deep South, and I had never seen an ice storm before. The big living room fireplace roared day and night, kept blazing from the dwindling woodpile behind the widow’s garage. She herself went to her daughter’s new house in Dunwoody, where the power lines were prudently buried. Luke had a campstove, too, and kerosene lanterns and fuel. We found an elderly kerosene heater in the garage and he cleaned it up and lugged it in, and between fireplace and heater and the kitchen’s gas stove, we were fairly warm, and could have hot meals.

  We were luckier than most and I knew it, but when day after cold, dark day went by, I began to yearn for light and music and a deliriously long, hot bath. I longed to zip down Peachtree Road to work in the Morgan again, instead of the wallowing, sliding, perpetually late 23 Oglethorpe bus that I had to trudge two long, frozen blocks to catch. I got to know and fear that peculiar, raw wet smell in a night sky that means ice is on the way, and the flashing “We interrupt this broadcast to bring you an emergency weather bulletin” signs on the newly restored television set sent me nearly frantic. On several days the office was closed because no one could get in, and Luke shut himself into the darkroom and developed film for hours, catching up on the ever-present backlog. I read by lamp and candlelight until my eyes ached, and slept a great deal in his old sleeping bag, in front of the fire. I never thought I would tire of the hollow hiss and snicker of an open fire, or the sweet smell of burning fatwood, but I did.

  On the last week before Christmas the weather loosened its grip somewhat, and the swollen gray-white clouds thinned to reveal segments of tender, milky blue, and a penitent sun came sidling out. The staff met in the Downtown office like survivors of an arctic whiteout. Tales of hardships endured mounted in sheer awfulness until we had to laugh at them, and the renewed excitement of the looming holidays made us manic. We were out of the office more than in it, scurrying out to buy Christmas presents, nipping back to answer our mail and return phone messages, going for long lunches, phoning old friends, making dates with new ones. Little Cecelia Henley had an unexpected talent for gift-wrapping, and we shamelessly browbeat her into wrapping our packages. Soon the office was strewn with mounds of beautiful, glittering gifts, and Sister and Sueanne came in each day with another batch of divinity or Christmas cookies made from old family recipes.

  “Sister, have these things got liquor in them?” Hank said, biting into a cookie from a new batch.

  “Old family recipe,” Sister said. “I knew you put bourbon in ’em, but I couldn’t remember how much, so I just dumped the rest of the bottle in. Do you like ’em?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Hank said, rolling his eyes. The cookies were gone by midmorning.

  It was, I remember, a lovel
y, manic, foolish, shiftless time, that week of my second Christmas at Downtown. Very little work got done.

  Matt did not come into the office for four days.

  “He’s doing some work at home,” Hank said on the second day, when we noticed Matt’s absence and began asking.

  “Sueanne talked to him yesterday and he said to hold his calls and take messages, that with Christmas and the weather, it was a good time to get some planning ahead done, and catch up on his column. He’ll see us before the holidays.”

  But he sounded doubtful somehow, and I said, “Hank?”

  “That’s all I know, Smokes,” he said. “God knows we need the column. I’ll call him tomorrow if I haven’t heard from him.”

  No one heard, and late that next afternoon Hank called Matt at his apartment.

  “Has a bad cold,” he said briefly. “He does sound bad. Says he’ll be fine by Friday, though, and to tell everybody he’ll take us for lunch at the Top and then let us go home early.”

  “And you think he’s really okay? I mean, just a cold?” I said. I was brushed with unease. Matt was never sick. He never went out of the office unless it was on unavoidable business, and then with bad grace. “Goddamned froufrou,” he called the speeches and fund-raising sorties that were often required of him. I could not imagine him languishing in bed with Vicks salve on his chest and chicken soup on his bedside table.

  “That’s what the man says,” Hank said, and went back into his office and closed the door.

  “You think it’s more than a bad cold?” I said that night to Luke.

  “I think it’s more likely a bad hangover,” he said.

  “Oh, Luke!”

  “He’s been drinking way too much, babe. And I know he does it sometimes at home by himself. I’ve been over there in the mornings and seen his empties. I’ve never known him to miss work, though.”