Charleston

by Margaret Bradham Thornton

  SHE DROVE DOWN TO OAKHURST. SHE PARKED OUTSIDE THE locked gates and walked around the brick piers through the woods. She walked down the oak allée to the house. She knew she would hear his camera click, and she would hear him call to her, and she would turn and see him emerging from the woods. He would wave, and everything would be just as they had left them.

  THE SUN CAST STRETCHED-OUT SHADOWS OF THE LIVE OAK trees across the lawn and burned the expanse of rice fields across the river. She walked down to the edge of the Edisto and watched the tide take the river away. She would hear Henry telling her about the river, about the tides, and the fish, and the nest of baby egrets he had just discovered.

  A GREAT BLUE HERON HUNTING MINNOWS IN THE MARSH launched itself in the air with a slow graceful lift of wings and arced low and then high across the river.

  ELIZA COULD ALMOST SEE HIM AT TIMES, SEE HIS SMILE, hear his laugh, feel his touch, almost, almost. . . . She had always believed that somehow she would know where he was. But now all she felt was the space that he had once taken up, as if the air that had been pushed back and shaped around him—still remained. That was all she felt. But with time that would disappear, too. For someone who had been so alive, to be so completely gone, to vanish, and to leave no trace of where he had gone.

  SHE WOULD NEVER SEE HIM AGAIN. SHE WOULD NEVER HEAR him tell her she was missing her lines. She would never be able to give him the manuscript with his name written in the margins. There was no chance of her ever catching a glimpse of him or running into him or hearing the slowed-down sputter of his laugh or feeling his hand on her wrist. Never.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  ON THE MORNING OF THE DAY AFTER HENRY’S FUNERAL, a gray geometric tanker appeared on the horizon and throbbed a steady beat. An orange sun rose above Castle Pinckney and disappeared behind gray clouds. Joe Childs walked down three flights of stairs at the Sergeant Jasper and waited on the corner of Broad and Ashley for the bus to take him to work. At the Confederate Home, Kit Vanderhorst moved a potted tea olive out of the direct sunlight and sat back in her chair to wait for the day to pass.

  In the late afternoon, Eliza went to see Mrs. Heyward. She embraced Eliza and asked her to sit next to her on the sofa. She held Eliza’s hand. “I just think of him at Oakhurst. He was always disappearing down there. He loved it down there. So I just tell myself that he is at Oakhurst.” As she spoke, Mrs. Heyward looked at the ceiling to keep the tears from spilling. “I’m just so grateful that he had you. He always adored you, you know.” She took a deep breath before she continued. “The Heyward men have not been blessed with strong hearts. No one ever thought that it would affect him now, but Henry did have to take drugs every day. It’s too early to know yet, but Lawton may have to be careful, too.”

  “How is he?” Eliza asked.

  “He is very, very sad. I know you know.” Mrs. Heyward squeezed Eliza’s hand. “You were not much older than Lawton when you lost your father. But Lawton has a lot of love and support in Charleston, and, of course, he will always have me. You may not know this, but he is very fond of you. He often tells me about conversations the two of you have had. You have always understood him.”

  Rascal trotted into the room and looked up at Eliza and waited for her to pet him before lying down at Mrs. Heyward’s feet.

  “He’s a very sweet little boy. I remember how proud he was to tell me about the baby screech owl he and Henry rescued.”

  Mrs. Heyward smiled and blinked hard. There was nowhere left to go with words.

  Rascal got up and began growling at the fireplace.

  “Rascal.” Mrs. Heyward clapped her hands softly. Her tone was more of a plea than a command. “I think there must be a nest of baby birds in the chimney, but it is the wrong time of year. But I do think that is what he’s hearing.”

  Mrs. Heyward turned back to Eliza and shook her head, “And that Issie. She left right after Henry’s funeral. I knew she wouldn’t stay long. I didn’t see her at St. Michael’s. She left me a note and said she had to go back to Boston to take care of some things and would let me know when she would be coming back. But I don’t expect to hear from her anytime soon.”

  “She left?” Eliza asked. “Did she say good-bye to Lawton?”

  Mrs. Heyward shook her head. “She is just a child, that girl . . .”

  “Where is Lawton?”

  “He’s in the carriage house. He’s been there since the funeral. I can’t get him to leave. He fell asleep there last night, and I had to get Isaiah to carry him to his bedroom upstairs, but it’s too much for Isaiah. I can’t ask him again.” She looked out the window. “And this rain, I just feel if he could get outside, he would feel so much better. It’s stopped now, but they say it’s going to start again tonight and last all week.”

  “Can I go see him?”

  ELIZA LISTENED TO THE SOUND OF HER FEET ON THE OYSTER shells. She remembered that first night when she had come back from London and stayed with Henry. Everything had been dark, and the sound of their footsteps on the crushed brittle shells had seemed so loud and so familiar and yet so foreign, as if they were crossing into a world they had just discovered. Eliza opened the door to the carriage house and called up to Lawton. She looked out to the garden before she climbed the stairs.

  “Lawton? Lawton?” she called again, but she also knew that saying his name made her feel safe as she crossed through Henry’s bedroom. She did not allow herself to look anywhere but straight ahead.

  Lawton was crumpled on the floor of his bedroom with a shoe box of black and gray and white Lego pieces beside him. “Oh, Lawton,” she said, “there you are.” He cradled a half-built ship in his hands. He didn’t look up.

  Eliza pulled up a low stool from the corner of the room and sat down next to him. “Can I see that?” He didn’t respond. “Lawton, I know your heart is breaking. And I know it doesn’t feel as if you will ever be able to put it back together.” Lawton didn’t look at her but instead kept staring at his pieces of Lego. He rocked his foot back and forth, as if warding off grief.

  Eliza leaned forward and put her hand on his shoulder. “I know something of what you are feeling. When I was about your age, I lost my father, too.”

  Lawton stopped rotating his foot from side to side and continued staring at his half-made ship.

  “My father was driving back home late one night from Augusta, Georgia. He was driving down Ashley River Road, and his car crashed into one of those large live oaks that line the road, and he was killed. And no one could tell us—my mother and me—why. He could have fallen asleep, or a deer could have run across the road, and he swerved to avoid hitting it. We will never know, but what we do know is that he was on the last mile of Ashley River Road before it intersects with Bees Ferry. Just one more mile and he would have been safe. And I remember someone coming to tell my mother, and I remember thinking, no they have it all wrong, he will be home soon, and when I came to understand that my father would never come home again, I felt as if someone had pushed me in a tight box that I couldn’t escape from, and I felt as if I were suffocating. I hated everything around me. And then one day Anne de Liesseline came to see me—she and my father had been great childhood friends, and she took my hands, just like this.” Eliza leaned forward and took Lawton’s hands in hers. “Anne turned my hand over and said, ‘Look at that.’ I didn’t know what she was talking about, and she said, ‘Look, you have your father’s hands.’ I looked at my hands, and I saw that she was right. And she told me to go look in the mirror, and she said, ‘You have your father’s cornflower blue eyes, and you might not be able to see it right now, but you also have your father’s smile. When you look in the mirror, you’ll always see him. And when you’re by yourself, you’ll always be with him because he’s so much a part of you.’ And, Lawton, it’s the same with you, but even more so. Doesn’t everyone always say you look just like your father?”

  Lawton shrugged his shoulders.

  “I want to show you something, I’ll be right
back.” Eliza stood up to get the photograph of Lawton playing with a toy car from the chest of drawers next to Henry’s bed. She kept her eyes on the floor in an attempt to dodge the emptiness of Henry’s room.

  Eliza sat back down next to Lawton. “See this photograph of you playing with a car? I want to show you something.”

  She turned the frame over and opened the back. Lawton pushed up off the floor and stood next to Eliza to watch what she was doing. She lifted another photograph from behind the plate. It was another image of a small boy playing with a toy car on a table. She handed Lawton the photograph.

  “Do you know who that is?”

  “Me?”

  “No, it’s your father. Turn it over.” They read in silence, “Henry, age two, April 1961.” Eliza put her arm around Lawton. “Not only do you look just like him, but you have his laugh. Before I met you, I thought your father was the only one in the world who sounded like a lawn mower slowing down until I heard you laugh. You know, Lawton, when I am with you, I feel as if Henry is right here. I can hear him telling you to jump for the sun.”

  Sobs like indifferent waves knocked Lawton into her arms, and she comforted him—afraid that if she let go he would drift beyond reach. Wilted with grief and exhaustion, he finally gave up his anger and his fear and collapsed into her arms.

  “Would you like it if I stayed here with you tonight?” She smoothed his bangs away from his eyes. “Do you want me to ask your grandmother if it’s okay?”

  AND AS ELIZA WATCHED OVER LAWTON ALL NIGHT IN THE armchair by his bed, she listened to the sound of the gentle rain on the clay tiled roof of the carriage house. And that night, as she wrapped herself in the sound of the rain and in the sound of Lawton’s slow and steady breathing, she knew that she would stay until Lawton no longer needed her. And through the hours of that early morning, she tried to unravel all that had happened until finally she understood that reasons and road maps could not be found. And she understood, too, that Charleston had not finished with her, and she knew that it might never be.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  For Eliza’s discussion of Henrietta Johnston, I have relied primarily on Margaret Simon Middleton’s biography, Henrietta Johnston of Charles Town, South Carolina: America’s First Pastellist (University of South Carolina Press, 1966), as well as the 1991 exhibition catalogue Henrietta Johnston: who greatly helped . . . by drawing pictures (Museum of Decorative Arts, 1991).

  For information on the slave potter Dave and on the tradition of Southern stoneware, I have drawn on I Made This Jar: The Life and Works of the Enslaved African-American Potter, Dave, edited by Jill Beute Koverman (University of South Carolina Press, 1998); Crossroads of Clay: The Southern Alkaline-Glazed Stoneware Tradition, edited by Catherine Wilson (McKissick Museum, 1990); and Great & Noble Jar: Traditional Stoneware of South Carolina by Cinda K. Baldwin (University of Georgia Press, 1993).

  For Eliza’s discussion of Dave, I have relied primarily on Jill Beute Koverman’s essay “Searching for Messages in Clay: What Do We Really Know About the Poetic Potter, Dave?” in I Made This Jar. The passage dated April 1, 1863, (“One day in years gone by . . .”) is sourced by Koverman from the Edgefield Advertiser, April 1, 1863, volume XXVIII, no. 13., p. 2; the memories of an elderly slave (“He used to belong to old man Drake”) come from the Charleston Museum Archives, “Notes made on trip to Seigler’s Pottery, near Eureka, S. C. October 4, 1930”; and the passage dated 1858 (“I wonder where is all my relations . . .”) is sourced by Koverman from the South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, SC, Edgefield County Probate Records, Estate of Harvey Drake, Box 9, Package 304, microfilm roll #ED8.

  The couplets attributed to Dave are taken from Koverman’s list of all known (at the time of publication) verses composed by Dave and inscribed on his pots, in her essay “Dave’s Verse as Social Response,” in I Made This Jar.

  The passage from Joseph Brodsky (“No one can tell you what lies ahead . . .”) is taken from his collection of essays, On Grief and Reason (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997).

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo by Louise Field

  MARGARET BRADHAM THORNTON is the editor of Tennessee Williams’s Notebooks, for which she received the Bronze ForeWord magazine Book of the Year Award for Autobiography/Memoir and the C. Hugh Holman Prize for the best volume of southern literary scholarship, given by the Society for the Study of Southern Literature. She is a native of Charleston, a graduate of Princeton University, and currently resides in Palm Beach, Florida.

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  ALSO BY MARGARET BRADHAM THORNTON

  Notebooks by Tennessee Williams (editor)

  CREDITS

  Cover design by Allison Saltzman

  Cover photograph by Clifford Coffin © Condé Nast Archive/Corbis

  COPYRIGHT

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  CHARLESTON. Copyright © 2014 by Margaret Bradham Thornton. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  Title page painting: Alfred Hutty, Magnolia Gardens (1920), courtesy of the Gibbs Museum of Art

  ISBN 978-0-06-233252-3

  EPub Edition July 2014 ISBN 9780062332547

  1415161718OV/RRD10987654321

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