by Pat Conroy
“Once we find out about Mom, I’m outta here,” I said.
“It’s not like this usually,” Dallas said. “But when we’re trapped … all in one room.”
“Dante couldn’t have described hell more vividly,” I said.
“Never read the cat,” Dallas said. Then looking around the room, he whispered, “Do you know I told my wife not to come here today. Not because I didn’t want her to be here, but because I’m worried about the unknown. I never know what’s going to happen or who’s gonna blow. Humiliation takes so many forms here. I don’t know what to look out for.”
“In our family that’s easy,” I said. “Look out for this: all men, all women, and life in general.”
“Oh God,” Dallas groaned. “Just when I thought it was safe to go back into the water, here comes Dad. Will it be the drunk Dad or the sober Dad?”
My father knew all the nuances and protocols of the grand entrance, especially when he was sober. He appeared at the door clean-shaven and impeccably dressed. He stood erect, like the infantryman he once was, his eyes sweeping the room like a raptor surveying an acre of hunting ground for prey.
I counted to four and then inhaled; the smell of English Leather cologne stormed my nostrils and brought back everything that was wrong about my childhood. English Leather was an unmistakable sign that my father was going to try to clean up his act and not drink for the next several days. He seemed to have an internal barometer that registered when he had crossed some line of conduct or self-regulation that required fine tuning. He was not just an alcoholic, he was a complicated alcoholic. He used sobriety as a weapon of surprise. All during my childhood he would suddenly stop drinking, splash himself with cologne, and give those who loved him great reason to hope that life would be better. That was the meanest thing about him. But we all eventually learned never to fall in love with our father sober.
“English Leather,” I said. “The smell of pain.”
“I get physically sick when I smell that stuff. I swear I do. I buy him a new kind of aftershave lotion. Think he ever wears it? Hell, no,” said Dallas. “That’s what my office smells like.”
“Boys, I’d like to thank you for taking care of your father last night,” the judge said, his voice avuncular, intimate. “I tried to take a brief catnap in a room not in use. I’ve been so worried over Lucy, I didn’t realize how exhausted I was.”
“No problem, Pop,” Tee said.
“I woke up with a grand feeling this morning,” the judge said.
“Only person I ever knew who liked hangovers,” Dupree deadpanned.
My father continued, “I think her leukemia’s on the run as I speak, routed from the field, and I think we’ll all be laughing about this in a month or two. Look at you guys, down in the mouth, hangdog. Where’s the pep?”
“We don’t need a cheerleader, Dad,” Dallas said. “Try being a father. That might help.”
“A good attitude can carry you a long way in this life,” the judge said. “I suggest you boys start working on one.”
“Good attitude’s tough, Dad,” Dupree said, “when your mother’s dying of cancer.”
“C’mon, bro,” Tee said, “you’re not letting something that small get to you.”
“I confess,” Dupree said, “it bothers me.”
“Relax, boys,” our father said, trying to comfort us. “I know that woman in there better than anyone else alive. Her toughness is going to get her through this. She’s pretty as a picture and that sometimes makes people underestimate her. But that’s a Trojan warrior that gave birth to you. You could stick her hand in a fire and she wouldn’t give you the password to Troy.”
“Our dad,” Tee said. “Homer.”
“Sit down, Dad,” Dallas suggested. “Her doctor’ll be here soon to give us a report.”
“No cancer’s tough enough to kill Lucy McCall,” the judge said. “She’s one tough nut. I need to go in there and let her know I’m at her side. I could always comfort Lucy when the world was going to hell around us. I was her rock, her safe harbor in the storm. During my career on the bench many people used to come before me to plead their cases. I’m a student of the law and have been my whole life. I know the law inside out. I know its majesty and its coldheartedness.”
“Hey, Dad,” Dallas said. “Does this look like a jury? We’re your sons. Don’t make speeches to us.”
“When the law failed, as it sometimes does, I would often fall back on the power of prayer.”
The talk irritated Tee, who said to us, “I like him better when he’s drinking.”
“No one likes him when he’s drinking,” Dallas corrected. “You like him when he’s passed out.”
“Let’s you and me take a ride,” Dupree said to John Hardin, who had begun pacing in great agitation, like a leopard in a new wing of a zoo.
“Drop it, Dad,” I said, not liking what I saw in John Hardin’s eyes. Something was closing in on him from the inside out. His eyes looked as if they belonged in a runaway horse.
“Let me get you some coffee, bro,” Tee said to John Hardin.
“Caffeine makes it worse,” Dupree said.
“Who hired you to be my watchdog?” John Hardin said to Dupree through clenched teeth. “Did you answer a want ad? Who gave you the job of overseer? Who told you to run my life?”
“Fell in my lap,” Dupree said, flipping through a magazine, but not reading a single word, tense, ready for action. “Just blind good luck.”
“He baits me. You’re witnesses to how he drives me crazy. It’s subtle. An undertone you can barely hear. But he’s like an echo. I say something and his voice follows a couple of seconds later. It’s always a slight disapproval. An editorial. A commentary that makes me look like some nut on the loose. What you see is what you get. All of you can see that I’m perfectly okay. There’s nothing wrong with me that a little peace and quiet couldn’t cure. Of course, I’m worried about Mom. They’re lying about her. But lies don’t work with me. I see them for what they are. I’m not saying Mom’s not sick. Maybe she’s got the flu. But leukemia’s out. Leukemia, guys. Remember Mom and leukemia? It couldn’t be. Law of averages, man. Remember.”
“We remember Mom and leukemia,” I said. “Trust me.”
“It’s a joke,” John Hardin said.
My father’s hands began to tremble as he started to speak again. “I couldn’t sleep last night …” he began.
“He was out cold,” Dallas whispered and moved toward the window, which he opened, letting in the smell of the river.
“So I prayed to our Lord for a miracle last night and when I saw the sun rise over the Atlantic this morning, I took it as a sign that he’d heard my prayers and that he’d deliver poor Lucy from her appointment with the Black Angel of Death.”
“I didn’t know death was a Negro,” Dupree said, but he was not looking at his father now, he was watching every movement of his brother John Hardin.
“Shut up, Dad,” John Hardin screamed. “Don’t you ever know when to shut up? There are satellites up there. Miles up there. The Russians put them there. The angels listen to us from up there. They use the satellites. The satellites are connected to these light fixtures. Everybody can hear everything we say or think. So will you shut up?”
“Come with me, John Hardin,” Dupree said, his voice friendly but firm.
“Leave my boy alone,” the judge said. “He’s upset about his mother.”
Dallas looked over at me and said in surprise, “This is why you live in Italy. You’re the smartest one of all of us.”
“Plenty of room over there,” I said, watching as Dupree moved in on John Hardin.
“Two things I ain’t worried about, bro,” Tee said, trying to calm John Hardin down. “Satellites and angels.”
“You’ve never seen the big picture,” John Hardin explained.
The door opened at the end of the room and Lucy’s doctor, Steve Peyton, walked in with James Pitts. Dr. Pitts had tears in his eyes and as Dr.
Peyton tried to comfort him John Hardin started to scream.
“Quiet, son,” the judge ordered. “This is a hospital zone. You could get a citation.”
It was his stepfather’s tears that got John Hardin started. Tears were few among McCall males; they were as rare as pearls in that severe treasury where grief was stored.
“No change,” Dr. Peyton said. “No good news to report except that she’s hanging in there.”
“Get hold of yourself, boy,” the judge said to his screaming son, who had lowered his voice to a moan as the doctor spoke.
“No shot,” Dupree said. “The bats in his head are all busting loose.”
John Hardin looked to that part of the room where his brothers were. He shut his eyes, trying to clear his head of extraneous noise and disturbance, but all was humming and in uproar there, and neither world, the one inside or the one he opened his eyes to face, was safe for him now.
John Hardin’s voice broke as he said, “They’re killing our mother in that room and none of us care. We should go in there and help her. She protected us from him when we were just little babies … There’s the bastard who’s killing our mother.”
“Meet John Hardin, Doc,” Tee said. “Bet you didn’t learn about him in med school, did you?”
John Hardin began to walk toward Dr. Peyton in a menacing but mechanical way.
“Let’s move, Jack,” Dupree said, both of us rising to intercept John Hardin’s unsteady passage across the room toward the doctor. Expertly, we altered his path and moved him toward the soft drink machine, where Dupree put in three quarters and got his brother a Coca-Cola.
“I’d rather have a diet Coke,” John Hardin said. “I’m trying to lose weight. Everyone in this town’s fat as pigs and I want a diet Coke.”
“I’ll take the Coke,” Dallas said.
I fished three quarters from my pocket, separating them from a handful of Italian change.
“What’s that stuff?” John Hardin said, taking an Italian coin from my palm and holding it up to the light.
I said, “A thousand-lire piece,” I said. “Coin from Italy.”
“What a stupid country,” he said. “Can’t even make quarters.”
John Hardin put it in the machine and the Italian quarter slid all the way through the system without a hitch. “Worthless. Even the machine won’t take it.”
But the coin had diverted John Hardin’s attention.
The doctor surveyed the room and it was clear from his eyes that he was ill at ease among our brawling, quicksilver McCall clan. Our high-spirited unpredictability was unnerving him.
“Mrs. Pitts has a temperature of one hundred and five degrees,” Dr. Peyton said and his announcement silenced the room. “John Hardin’s technically right when he says that I’m killing his mother. I’ve put her on the most powerful chemotherapy we can. Her white cell count is alarmingly high. She’s in terrible danger. Lucy could die at any time. I’m trying to prevent that. I don’t know if I can.”
John Hardin screamed, “Ha!” and began a threatening walk toward the young doctor, wagging an index finger menacingly. “All of you heard him. He admitted he isn’t worth a shit. He just admitted he’s killing her. Follow me, brothers. We’ve got to save our mother’s life.”
“Calm down, John Hardin, or I’ll be driving you to Bull Street myself,” Dupree said, mentioning the location of the state mental hospital.
“But you heard him, Dupree,” John Hardin said, his arms outstretched now. “He’s killing our mother. He just said it.”
“He’s trying to save our mother,” Dupree said. “Let’s not make it any harder on the doctor.”
The judge cleared his throat from across the room and the court of venue changed again in that emotionally charged room.
“This is God’s way of punishing Lucy for leaving me,” the judge said in the silence that followed. “This is just desserts. Nothing more or less.”
I had promised myself I would keep calm and be inconspicuous, but Dad’s remark flushed me out into the open. “Hey, Dad, how ’bout shutting up. Nothing more or less.”
“You don’t frighten me, son,” he said. “Free speech is a protected right in America the last time I was in a law library. Add that to the fact that I’m armed.”
Dr. Pitts and Dr. Peyton were wordless as they both stared at judge McCall, who returned their stare without malice and with perfect equanimity.
“He’s just kidding, Dr. Peyton,” Tee assured him. “Pops doesn’t have a gun.”
With this challenge, Dad lifted a pistol from an ankle holster and began spinning it on his finger, a parody of old gunslingers. Dallas walked across the room, took the gun away, and returned with it, opening the cylinder, revealing that the gun was not loaded.
“No guns in the waiting room, Judge McCall,” Dr. Peyton said, relieved.
“I got a deputy sheriffs badge right here.” The judge held up his billfold. “Says I can carry a gun anywhere in Waterford County. Bring that firearm back to its rightful owner, son.”
“Give it to you later, Dad,” Dallas said. “It makes me nervous when you flash it when you’re sober.”
“I’m glad we don’t have gun control in this country,” Dallas said. “So drunks like Dad can walk around practicing their draw.”
“It keeps the Indians away.” The judge tried to joke, but his sons were angry with him.
I began to feel the roots of exhaustion curling into the deepest tissues of my body. I had written over ten articles on the perils of jet lag and considered myself something of an expert on how a precipitous change of time zones can exact a terrible price from a traveler. And now, deep inside myself, I felt my body preparing for sundown in Italy, even though the day was young in South Carolina. I was used to the night sounds of the piazza, of police sirens far off in the city of Rome, musicians playing mandolins for tourists, and the sound of Leah’s bare feet coming down the hall to have me read her a story.
Leah. Her name cut into me and I checked my watch and promised myself to call her at three in the afternoon, which would coincide nicely with her bedtime. I looked at those surrounding me in the waiting room and realized Leah would not recognize a single person in this room besides myself. And I couldn’t decide if I had rendered her a great service or cut her off from those powerful forces that were one half her legacy of blood and cunning and folly, the legacy that was gathered in a dark vigil to protest the death of our mother. Though I had differences of opinion with almost everyone in the room and though dissonance was what my family did best, there was an inalienable beauty and affirmation in this drawing together and it moved me. Five years ago I had declared myself a man without a family. Now, I could not decide if that was a cardinal sin or merely wishful thinking.
I got up, restless, eager to move around.
Walking down the corridor to be alone, I was followed by Dr. Pitts and we continued until we found ourselves standing outside the main entrance. Though he was still uncomfortable with me, his solicitude and obvious concern for my mother moved me.
“Jack, may I have a word with you?” Dr. Pitts asked.
“Sure.”
“Your mother wants to receive the last rites.”
“How do you know?”
“I know everything about her,” Dr. Pitts said. “I know she would want me to get in touch with Father Jude at Mepkin Abbey. You know him.”
“The Trappist,” I said. “Mom used to take us up to visit him a lot when we were kids. He even lived with us for a while in the fifties.”
I walked back to the telephone and called the abbey, and then returned to the waiting room and led my stepfather to an open window, away from the family crossfire.
“Have you called Father Jude?” he asked.
“I talked to his abbot. I’ll drive up for him now.”
“Take your mother’s car, it’s still in the lot,” Dr. Pitts said. He then broke down and with those tears, he proved again that his love for her was, at least, a match f
or our own.
Chapter Twelve
I could smell my mother’s perfume, White Shoulders, in the airways and crannies of her Cadillac. Part showboat and part gas hog, the car in its imperial spaciousness fitted the image my mother had constructed for herself since she’d become a doctor’s wife. A judge’s wife is always shortchanged by the need for judiciousness and caution. Though Lucy had led a spectacularly injudicious life, she’d always felt the pressure of those strict injunctions. As a doctor’s wife, she’d blossomed into the sweet vanity of her natural flashiness. Leukemia is her reward for such behavior, I thought.
Taking back roads all the way, I drove from Waterford toward Mepkin Abbey, a small city of prayer hidden deep in a semitropical forest thirty miles from Charleston, South Carolina. Its isolation was intentional. In the hazes of the backwater of the Cooper River, quiet men with their heads shaved retreated from the world to dedicate their lives to solitude and spiritual rigor.
Here, silence was one of the lesser gods and fasting one of its adherents. They raised their voices in song each day, some of the men, old and frail and lovely as hourglasses. They sold their eggs and their honey to local middlemen, Baptists and Methodists, who distributed the produce throughout the state. I had always thought these were the oddest men, despite the fact that Mepkin Abbey had been a place of refuge for my mother and the rest of us when the judge had been drinking heavily. We used to come to Mepkin Abbey to escape and heal our broken spirits. We would stay in the guest houses and go to Mass each day with the monks and my mother would walk the woods with Father Jude for hours. I grew up believing that my mother was in love with this baffling and quiescent man.
As I drove down the long driveway leading up to the monastery, a small red fox, a saucy and fresh-faced pup, ran out of the forest and stopped. I slowed down and watched the pup, which showed not a trace of fear. I whistled and he cocked his head, his stare steady and inquisitive. Then his mother rushed out of the woods and grabbed her errant pup by the nape of his neck and carried him swiftly back to her lair.
