He pulled his white tee shirt over his head and dropped it at his side. “I can’t entice you to take your shirt off.”
“Not a chance.”
“Didn’t think so.” He laughed and lay back down and looked at her. “Do you think you can—I mean, can one—ever return to a place one’s left?”
“What do you mean? I’m here.”
“I mean, can you ever truly find the place you left?”
“Because the place is the same, but you are not?”
“Exactly, that’s exactly what I was thinking.”
“No, I guess not,” Eliza said and covered her eyes with the bend of her elbow. She wanted to stop her mind from thinking, from going any further than the perimeter of her body. No past, no future, just here—the hot sun, the water lapping against the dock, the salty, rich smell of the pluff mud, and Henry by her side, as if nothing bad had ever happened.
She had drifted half asleep, when Henry asked, “So tell me, what did you mean by ‘perhaps’?”
Eliza took a minute to find her bearings. “What are you talking about?”
“At Caroline and Simon’s wedding when Jamie went to get you a drink, I said he is crazy about you, and you said, ‘Perhaps.’ What did you mean?”
She sat up and looked at Henry. “I’m not sure I know.”
“Is it that, or is it that you don’t want to tell me?”
“Probably a little bit of both.”
Henry nodded his head. “Any chance of explaining to me why he didn’t come to Charleston with you?”
“As soon as you tell me why you aren’t married.” Eliza shaded her eyes to look at her watch. “Ten thirty-four A.M.—neither too early nor too late for serious subjects. You’re safe to tell me. Why didn’t you stay with Issie?”
Henry got up and sat on the edge of one of the dock chairs. He took a deep breath and then looked straight at Eliza. “I didn’t love her, not even close. I never did. We got together at one of those wild house parties at her grandmother’s plantation where everyone drank way too much. I told her it was wrong, that it never should have happened.” He pulled a splinter of wood from the floorboard. “I loved you. Issie went back up to Boston, and I never expected to hear from her again.” Henry’s voice turned quiet and soft. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “At the beginning of the fall, she came down to Yale and told me she was pregnant, it was too late . . .”
“That’s when you came to tell me,” Eliza said.
The tide slapped and gulped against the side of the floating dock. Eliza sat down on the edge and watched the current run across the arches of her feet. “You know, when you called me and said you were coming to Princeton, I thought you just wanted to see me.” She shuddered as if trying to shake off something. “I remember it was in October—right before my midterm exams.” She lifted her feet a quarter of an inch and leaned forward to see how thin she could make the layer of water run over her arches. She watched the iced tea color of the river water disappear into perfect clearness as the layer got thinner. “I met you at PJ’s Pancake House across the street from Firestone Library, and I remember, as you were telling me about what had happened between you and Issie, watching the cream disappear into my coffee and feeling as if my skin were a thin layer of metal, and that there was nothing inside of me except air. I remember getting up and saying to you, ‘I would never have done that to you,’ and walking back across the street to the reading room on the first floor of Firestone and sitting there all day. I felt as if my mind had disappeared. I couldn’t process anything.” She looked up at Henry, who was standing over her. “I thought you were my best friend. I didn’t really understand what had happened.”
“Oh, Eliza, I . . .” Henry moved toward her.
“Please go on. I interrupted you.” She had only meant to listen, but returning to the memory of that day had overwhelmed her.
“So we got married three months before Lawton was born, and we divorced three months after. God, as I say this, it sounds so mechanical, but actually that’s the way it was. Do you want me to keep going?” Henry looked down the river. “We got married to make things right for Lawton, or as right as we could. We were married in form only—we never were together. Issie never really wanted Lawton. I think she was just looking for a sense of security with me, and that wasn’t going to happen. So she gave him up to me, and with the help of my mother, I’ve been raising him ever since. But you knew some of this, right?”
“Some,” she said.
Henry paused before continuing. “As soon as Lawton was born, Issie split to travel around Europe, I think she went to school for a bit in Paris, but she didn’t stay there very long. I haven’t seen her since she left, Lawton has never met her, last I heard she was living with a painter or an art dealer in Tangier. The more exotic, the better for Issie. Her grandmother died a year or two after Lawton was born, and the funeral was in Boston. Very few people from here went. I don’t even know if Issie came back for it. Issie’s father kept his mother’s plantation on the Combahee River as well as her house in town, but both have been closed up for some time. Do you want to hear this? Do you want me to stop?”
“No, it’s okay.”
The approaching hum of a motorboat made Henry and Eliza turn to look down the river. They watched the boat make a slow curve and turn toward a sandbar. The driver turned the motor off and let the boat glide into the shallow water. Three adults, two small children, and a dog jumped out. They wandered around the edges, looking for things in the sand. They were far away and looked like stick people. The two children sat down and began to play in the sand.
“I thought about you all the time. How I’d screwed up everything. And I thought so many times about finding you and trying to explain everything, but then I guess I thought I didn’t have the right. I didn’t deserve another chance. The best I could do was to give Lawton everything I had. And I guess, too, I felt if you wanted to be with me, you’d come back.” Henry looked back down the river, as if he were waiting for something to happen. He turned back to Eliza. “Why didn’t you?”
“Why didn’t I what?”
“Why didn’t you come back?”
“I don’t know. It’s not that I didn’t want to come back, it’s just that I—I don’t know—I had a lot going on in New York. Then London. And it’s not as if Charleston were going anywhere. I’d get wedding invitations from friends, and I suppose I should have come down for them, but Charleston felt both too familiar and too far away in a lot of different ways. I felt I knew everybody and everything down here. And right after we broke up—I didn’t want to run into you and Issie—or anybody really—but then later it was more that I never had a reason to come back.”
Henry looked up into the sun and shook his head. “Eliza, I’m so very sorry. It was god-awful of me. I’ve thought all these years about what I would say to you, but now that I’m with you, I can’t think of anything to say except that I’m really sorry. What I did was unforgivable. You have every reason to hate me. Whatever happened between Issie and me—whatever you want to call it—ended as soon as it began—a decade ago.”
“I still didn’t want to run into her. Or you.”
“It shouldn’t have happened. It would have never happened if we had been together.”
She turned and looked at him. “You’re not going to—”
“No, no, Eliza, that’s not what I mean.”
“It can’t be repaired,” she said.
“What can’t?”
“Any of it.”
Henry’s voice calmed. “I know. I know that. It’s just that I’m trying to explain it—to get you to understand it a little better. Life doesn’t always go as planned. It’s rare that it goes smoothly or without complications. It’s messier than that. It’s not like those night trains we used to listen to. Nothing is perfect, and nothing is ever quite in its place.”
“If you cared so much, why didn’t you come and see me or even write me a letter? One lett
er. Just one. You know, as devastated as I was, as much as I felt I hated you—for over two years—every time I checked my mail—I don’t even know now why I’m telling you this—I thought there would be a letter from you.”
“Eliza, I don’t know what to say.”
“Why didn’t you write to me?”
Henry paused before he answered. “I should have. But I guess I was so certain that you were completely finished with me that it would have made things worse. I went to see your mother about a year after we broke up, and she told me it wasn’t a good idea to get in touch with you. She was very clear that I should leave you alone. And so I did, and I know it sounds like a story, but I always thought about you, and I kept thinking that I would run into you at some point in Charleston. And enough time would pass so that things between us wouldn’t be so raw, and things would heal over time—slowly and naturally. I knew if I tried to force—or push it—it would never work. Eliza, I’m fearful of telling you this because I may scare you off, but you know I am in love with you. I never stopped loving you.” He stopped and looked down at her. “Look, I know I’m asking a lot, and I know my odds aren’t great, but just give us one more chance. Really. What do you have to lose?”
“I have quite a lot to lose, Henry.”
“Jamie?”
“Yes, Jamie, and a much sought after fellowship at the Courtauld and a whole other world over there that has nothing to do with anyone or anything down here.”
Eliza lightly tapped the soles of her feet against the top of the water. Henry sat down beside her. “I remember once with Weezie, we’d been given lockets for our birthday with our birthstones. She had a garnet, and I had an aquamarine, and we were on her dock down on Wadmalaw Island, and we dared each other to hold our locket above a crack in the dock and let go and then try to catch it.” Eliza pulled her knees to her chest and rested her forehead on her knees and took a slow deep breath. “I have no idea why I’m remembering this now.” She started to stand up. “Listen, would you mind if we went back into town? My mother and Ben are going back to Middleburg this week, and I should spend some time with them.”
Henry didn’t respond.
“You know, Henry, who’s to say we would have stayed together way back when. We were so young.”
Henry stood up and turned her toward him. “Eliza . . .”
She looked at him hard before she spoke. She didn’t pull away. “I’m just tired—that’s all. In the past thirty-six hours, I’ve had three hours of sleep.” She turned and walked up the ramp and leaned down to pick up her moccasins. Eliza looked back at Henry. “Thanks for the tour and,” she added, “not getting us lost.” She squinted up at the sun and checked its position overhead. The afternoon was stretching long in the sun. “I should stop at the house to get the photograph for Mrs. Vanderhorst.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
ELIZA DIDN’T WAKE UP UNTIL AFTER LUNCHTIME THE NEXT day. There was a tight pain on the tops of her shoulders and the backs of her legs. She ducked her head under her pillow to escape the light. She listened to the staccato sounds of footsteps across the hardwood floors on the first floor. Her mother was saying something in a loud voice to Cornelia. Things never changed here—that was both the comfort and the danger. She could leave for another ten years and slip right back in. But London wasn’t that way. In ten years there would be different people everywhere—new artists, new museum directors, new ideas, new collectors. When she returned in two weeks, something—she didn’t know what—would have happened that people would be talking about. Eliza’s thoughts were broken by voices from downstairs and the front door closing.
Eliza found Cornelia in the kitchen. When Cornelia saw her, she threw her hands up and gave her a big hug. “You had me thinking you weren’t ever coming back. Miss Pamela just left, but she told me to tell you there’s a party this evening she wants you to go to with her and Mr. Ben. She wrote it down, now what have I done with that piece of paper—seeing you has gotten me all stirred up. I’ll find it directly.”
They sat down at the kitchen table and had coffee. Cornelia told Eliza all about the aches and pains in her back and neck and knees, and Eliza knew it was Cornelia’s way of explaining why she worked only two days a week now. As they sipped coffee together, Cornelia was filled with questions. Had Eliza ever met the queen? Did she go around wearing a crown? Had Eliza ever been to Buckingham Palace? Cornelia left the kitchen to look for the mislaid note, saying to herself that one day she sure would like to get over there and see for herself. Cornelia returned triumphant. Eliza’s mother would be back at three. Richard and Lydia Alston were having a few people over for a light supper and wanted Eliza to come. Allington would be there, and Eliza’s mother hoped Eliza could spend some time with him. Eliza had only the high heels she had worn to Sara’s party. She thought she would walk up King Street to Bob Ellis shoes and look for a new pair of dressy sandals.
THE MIDDAY SUN WAS MOVING ACROSS THE TOPS OF ROOFS when Eliza set out. She checked her watch. She could buy shoes and still make it back in time to settle into a few solid hours of work before the Alstons’ cocktail party. She avoided three young boys on skateboards, reckless and oblivious to her existence, who looped up and down the driveway slopes of the sidewalk. She walked up Church Street past the Eveleigh house. Legend had it that Francis Marion had broken his ankle by jumping off the second-floor balcony. It was a story Charlestonians never let go of, despite the incongruity with the facts. There were a number of such tales in Charleston—tales about pirates and ghosts and duels and embellished family histories. Charleston had its own mythology, its own rules, and sometimes its own language. We see with our memories, she reminded herself. Maybe that was one of the reasons why—without knowing it—she had left and had not come back. Maybe she had needed to be in a place where the past held no dominion.
Eliza crossed Water Street and passed in front of the window of the rare-book shop with the first editions of DuBose Heyward’s Mamba’s Daughters and William Faulkner’s Sanctuary in the window. She continued walking north, past the First Baptist Church, and then across Tradd. She paused in front of Century Antiques. The yellow jasmine that surrounded the door architrave was unkempt and fragrant. A tall woman with short dark hair and glasses appeared from the back room. Eliza asked about Mrs. Vanderhorst. “No, dear, she only works on Tuesday and Thursday.”
“Would you tell her Eliza Poinsett dropped by? I’ll try to come by tomorrow.”
Eliza walked on past 82 Church Street. A young woman dressed in a light blue shift was leaving with a large white shopping bag tied with a pink ribbon. She was followed by three little girls—Eliza guessed them to be between the ages of six and ten—all in matching white cotton dresses. A bell attached to the door jingled as it closed. Eliza remembered that same sound—no doubt it was the same bell—when her mother had brought her to 82 Church to pick out a new party dress.
Charleston felt quieter because she no longer recognized all the faces, and voices were meant for other people besides herself. It was as if she were invisible. All that happened in the city now bore no relation to her, had nothing to do with her. The mother cautioned her youngest daughter to be careful of the step down to the street. Her accent was southern, but the way she stretched out words defined her as not being from Charleston.
Eliza walked past the Nathaniel Heyward House and paused to admire the symmetry and balance of its facade with its five openings repeated on three floors. She had remembered going with Henry to a reception in honor of his father after he had restored the house and donated it to the city. She noticed a new plaque placed just under the one designating it a National Historic Monument. The new bronze plaque revealed that it was in the Nathaniel Heyward House that the citizens of Charleston had entertained George Washington on his visit to their city in 1791. She crossed Church Street and turned east down Elliott Street past Poinsett Tavern, which had been built in the eighteenth century by an ancestor. She had heard that it had been sold several years ago to some
one from New York. Its trim had been freshly painted, the brick repointed, and a Preservation Society plaque added to its facade.
A horse-drawn carriage with a tour guide dressed in gray Civil War trousers with a red sash was stopped in front of the small building. “Elisha Poinsett was the builder of this tavern in 1732. His descendant Joel Roberts Poinsett served as secretary of war from 1837 to 1841 under President Van Buren. As minister to Mexico in 1825, he introduced the poinsettia to the United States.” The tour guide slapped the reins on the rumps of the two large draft horses. The leather harness creaked as they leaned forward. The voice of the tour guide evaporated.
Eliza thought about what Henry had said about returns. Charleston was a place that now—more than ever—looked more backward than forward. People were defined by who their ancestors were—when and from where their families had come and for how long they had stayed, what families they had married into, who their first and second cousins were. Where you were from rated more than where you were going. When someone not from Charleston bought a house South of Broad, the house was never referred to as theirs, but as the house of the last Charlestonian who had owned it. Charleston seemed to be protecting and cherishing something that no longer mattered, or at least no longer mattered beyond its boundaries. Even the way they spoke—the absence of any drawl, the long closed-mouth vowels and dropped r’s that almost sounded English—defined them as being different from the rest of the South. And Charlestonians, especially the older generation, prided themselves on this difference. Beer sounded the same as bear, pen was indistinguishable from pin, house rhymed with mousse, and eight was in its own category. While some of the distinctive pronunciations had softened with her generation, when people first met Eliza and found out that she was from the South, they would always ask her, “What happened to your southern accent?” and she would have to explain that Charleston had its own distinct accent. It was an inflection that clung to the past. A number of the first inhabitants of Charleston were from upper-class English families who had come to Charleston to pursue fortunes. Eliza’s mother was descended from the seventh son of an English earl who had come to Charleston as primogeniture insured he would inherit very little. Thoughts of England were never far from these early settlers. They imported furniture, silver, china, silks, and yards and yards of decorative plaster to adorn their ceilings and cornices. In the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth century, they sent their sons back to England to be educated. Eliza didn’t know if the vestiges of England that still remained in the language were by choice or circumstance. And yet there was something soothing and seductive about coming back home, as if Charleston were whispering to her, “Come back. Stay. Don’t ever leave again.”
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