I let the subject drop. We’d had variations of this discussion plenty of times previously. Before my sisters and father came to visit us on Fripp for the first time, I reminded Pat that they were good, salt-of-the-earth people but not the kind of sophisticates he was used to. With the exception of the country folks I’d met on his mama’s side, I was convinced that his family was much more refined than mine. (Though, granted, that wasn’t saying a whole lot.)
Pat hooted at the idea and that instigated a battle of “dueling families,” with each of us trying to outdo the other with if-you-think-that’s-bad tales.
“So, your dad’s a peanut farmer and your mama was a Florida cracker,” Pat said dismissively. “Big freaking deal. My dad’s from the Southside of Chicago, so I can tell you a thing or two about less than sophisticated relatives. I made the mistake of taking my New York publicist to dinner at my grandparents’ house one time when I had a talk in Chicago. We were eating dinner when my grandma threw a meatball at me and cackled like a crazy woman. That’s how uptown they are.”
During our dueling-families debate, we reached an agreement on one thing: our siblings had a lot in common when it came to fine dining in that none of them particularly cared. Pat and I thought of ourselves as foodies, as were our kids and most of our friends. It was something we sort of took for granted. Our siblings, on the other hand, just weren’t that interested in gourmet fixings. Pat teased his brother Mike about his preference for frozen fish sticks over fresh. Bringing in a platter of local flounder when the family gathered around the table on one occasion, Pat waved it under Mike’s nose. “You don’t know this, Mike, but that’s what you call a fish. I bought it at the fish market. It has fins and scales and was swimming in the ocean this morning. And guess what? It’s not rectangular.”
At another family dinner, Pat made pasta and marinara sauce. “Okay, gang, listen up,” he said to his siblings when he brought his pasta bowl to the table. “You remember how Mom made spaghetti?”
“Every Thursday night,” his sister Kathy reminded him. “Spaghetti on Thursday, fish sticks on Friday.”
“Well, this ain’t your mama’s spaghetti,” said Pat. “Everybody got that? That’s why it might look funny to you. Mom boiled the noodles to a clump, cut them up, and put a piece on our plates. Then she poured canned tomato sauce over it. Makes me gag to this day just thinking about it.”
“I thought it was good,” Mike dared to say.
“You would,” Pat retorted. Then he went around the table with the Parmesan cheese grater, liberally garnishing everyone’s pasta, which he’d served in individual bowls roughly the size of a watermelon half.
Mike looked at his suspiciously and Pat sighed in exasperation. “No, Parmesan cheese doesn’t come in a can and look like sawdust, Mike.”
Pat returned to his chair and looked around the table in satisfaction. “This pasta”—he kissed his fingers with a flourish like the best Italian chef—“this is the real shit. You won’t get anything like it except in Rome, It-ta-lee! So eat up.”
My siblings were pretty much the same; there were just fewer of them for Pat to tease. Plus he was too chivalrous to pick on my sweet little sisters, neither of whom had had much exposure to the outside world. Nancy Jane had traveled more than Beckie. While a student at the University of Alabama, Nancy Jane had worked so vigorously for Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign that she not only visited the Carters at home in Plains, where she took part in one of the softball games with the press, she was also invited to the inauguration. Pat roared in delight when Nancy Jane told him the story of her first night in a hotel in downtown Washington, a country girl in the big city. Her hotel was so close to a nearby one that she could easily see the folks moving around their rooms, and she watched the occupants curiously. But to her horror, she caught the eye of a man who exposed himself to her, laughing at her shocked expression. When she came back later and dared look again, the man saw her and did it once more.
Nancy Jane called the front desk. “There’s a man exposing himself to me and laughing about it!” she told them, panicky.
“A man’s in your room, madam?” the snooty desk clerk asked.
“NO! He’s in the hotel right across the way! And he exposes himself every time I look out the window.” She was practically in tears at this point.
A pause on the other end, then the desk clerk said, “Madam, I suggest you close your curtains.”
* * *
Unlike me, Nancy Jane had never tried to impress Pat by pretending to be sophisticated when it came to food or anything else. She was totally unapologetic about not liking to cook. What she did have, however, was an avid curiosity about food, which endeared her to Pat. My sister Beckie was another matter because she had little interest in cooking or eating, either one. I’d tried to warn Pat but he had to find out for himself. Beckie, a cute little kindergarten teacher, is one of those feisty southern girls who’s pure country and proud of it. She’s always tickled Pat good. Whenever I got on the phone with Beckie, Pat would take the receiver to do his best imitation of Stanley’s love cry in A Streetcar Named Desire, calling “BECK-KEEE!” instead of “STELL-LA!” And in her thick Alabama drawl, Beckie would answer him back, “PA-ATTT!”
At one of my Birmingham signings for my third novel, The Same Sweet Girls, Pat took some of my friends to dinner to celebrate, along with Beckie and Nancy Jane, who had driven in for the occasion. My son Jason had been a cook at Birmingham’s famed Highlands Bar and Grill when Pat and I first married, but he’d left to work with some friends who’d opened a new restaurant. Ordinarily Pat wouldn’t dream of going to Birmingham without dining at Highlands, but out of solidarity with Jason and his friends, he decided we’d try their place. He said afterward that it was a bad career move on Jay’s part, but he was sure glad he hadn’t taken such a wild crowd to Highlands. (Remember, I’d tried to warn him.)
Beckie was seated by Pat, and I saw her eyeing the menu with a frown. It might not be Highlands, but Jay’s friends had opened a first-class joint with white tablecloths, candles, and an extensive wine list. Taking charge, Pat took everyone’s wine orders, moving around the table and nodding approval at some of the choices, until he got to Beckie. Nancy Jane was seated by me, so I’d had a chance to prep her, knowing what was coming. “Do not order white zinfandel,” I’d whispered just before Pat got to her. “I’ll explain later. Just tell him to pick out a nice rosé for you.”
Nancy Jane looked puzzled. “But I love white zinfandel.”
“Keep that to yourself. Pat will just tell you there’s no such thing and make you order something else. Trust me on this, okay?”
After Pat had gotten everyone else’s order, he turned to Beckie with a smile. “Okay, darling, what would you like?”
“I only drink red wine,” Beckie told him, and Pat beamed in approval. Then she added, “Over ice, with half Sprite.”
Pat’s face fell. He cut his eyes to me, but I wasn’t about to go there. Gamely, he pushed on. “What kind do you usually get, Beckie?”
She shrugged. “I can’t remember but I’d know it if I saw it. It comes in a big green bottle and they carry it at Walmart?”
Pat blinked. “Okaaay.” Taking advantage of the chance to educate her, he patted her back in encouragement. “I don’t think they have that brand here, Beckie, but don’t worry. I’ll order something nice for you.”
Beckie eyed him suspiciously. “Can I have it over ice?”
“Ah . . . tell you what. Try it my way first. If you don’t like it, you can send it back. That a deal?”
Beckie agreed. I could tell by Pat’s self-satisfied smile as he ordered her an expensive pinot noir that he was sure my sister was a rube just waiting to be transformed by his patient tutelage on the finer things of life. Henry Higgins was a role he enjoyed and played well.
When our predinner wine arrived, Pat proposed a toast to the success of my book, and we clicked glasses all around the table. I had my usual prosecco and sipped
it happily, knowing it would be unusually fine and dry because the grasshopper had ordered it instead of the ant. Pat watched expectantly as Beckie took a swallow of the twenty-bucks-a-glass wine he’d picked out for her.
“Oh, yuck!” Beckie cried with an exaggerated shudder. “Pat Conroy! That wine has soured or something.” She handed him the glass as though it were poison. “Here. Tell them to take it back. I can’t drink that godawful stuff.”
When I caught Pat’s eye, I raised my glass of prosecco to him with a sympathetic shrug. You can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl, Henry Higgins be damned.
* * *
Before long, our relatives would become the least of my worries. I was up to my neck in preparations for Megan’s wedding in June. Lacking a daughter of my own, I figured it’d be the only wedding I’d ever get a chance to plan and I threw myself into it. Engrossed in bridal bouquets and bridesmaids’ luncheon invitations, I came late to the drama Pat had gotten himself caught up in—though drama falls short of describing what went on during that time. It was more of a passion play, complete with pain, suffering, and sorrow. And the resurrection scene, the catharsis of passion plays the world over, was not in the script.
I’m not sure what set this particular Oberammergau performance in motion but assumed it was triggered by the wedding plans. After Susannah had set up an email account for her father the previous summer and taught him how to use it (something she probably came to regret), Pat got captivated by the fun of sending emails and getting such quick responses back. He’d never learned to type, the reason he wrote his manuscripts in longhand, but that didn’t stop him from emailing. His messages, which he painstakingly typed out with one finger, were unintentionally a hoot. He never figured out how to delete, space, or punctuate, no matter how many times I showed him. Pat claimed that he typed like a chimpanzee, but I’m pretty sure a primate would’ve done a better job.
Because Pat’s office made up half of our bedroom, separated from our bed by a folding screen, I was used to his habit of getting up through the night to go to his desk when he couldn’t sleep. Once he found that his low-wattage desk lamp didn’t bother me (except when he woke me up to ask if the lamp was too bright), he often got up from bed to work. He was a terrible insomniac and roamed at night, mostly to the dining-room bar for another nightcap. But one night I woke to an odd glow coming from his office instead of the usual lamplight. Puzzled, I crept out of bed to peer around the screen and was surprised to find Pat at his computer, typing furiously with his forefinger. Who on earth could he be sending such late-night messages to? I wondered, but I went back to bed before I got myself wide awake. Whether friend or foe, nothing I could do about it till morning anyway.
The next day I had two choices in solving the mystery of my husband’s nocturnal rendezvous—I could either sneak into his computer or just ask him. But if he was corresponding with a lover, would he answer me truthfully? I was being silly, I knew; if he was going to set up a tryst via computer, email would’ve been the dumbest way of doing it. Hardly a day went by when Pat didn’t screw up whatever he was typing and have to ask for my help. He was always forgetting how to send, forward, or even open a message, and it didn’t appear to bother him when he got me to do it for him. A lot of my emails contained stuff I wouldn’t want anyone else to see (not even Pat!), but he didn’t seem to have any such qualms. So over our breakfast of yogurt and granola, I bit the bullet and asked him who he’d been emailing through the night.
To my surprise, he pushed back his chair then went into the kitchen for more coffee. On the rare occasions when we had breakfast together, we ate on the screened porch in back. When Pat returned, he plopped down and said nonchalantly, “Was I up last night emailing? Hmm. I don’t remember that.”
I snorted. “Then you were either drunk or sleepwalking. I saw you.”
He looked out over the lagoon. The snowy egrets roosting in the low-hanging branches fluttered their wings in solidarity, as though sensing his troubled gaze. Without meeting my eye Pat said, “Oh yeah. Last night. I must’ve been writing Susannah.”
Instantly I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. His relationship with his youngest daughter was still shaky and fraught with tension. I’d been hopeful, despite their terse parting words last year, that they’d taken the first steps toward a reconciliation. Pat had written Susannah beautiful, loving letters that he’d shared with me, as if to say See? I’m playing nice. He sent flowers on her birthday and a stunning diamond necklace for Christmas, though he wasn’t sure she got them since he didn’t hear back. In addition to her reticence in responding to his overtures, another concern plagued him. After returning home from her summer visit, Susannah had developed some health problems. Pat didn’t know until Lenore faxed him the bills to pay, and an unusually high medical bill alarmed him. He surprised me by immediately picking up the phone on the fax machine and calling his ex-wife to ask what was wrong. During all our years together, it was the only time I knew him to talk to her. He demanded to know what was going on with his daughter. Before hanging up he requested, in a more polite tone, to be kept in the loop.
On the porch that morning, I leaned across the table to put a hand on Pat’s and asked, “What’s going on? Is Susannah sick again?”
He sighed and shook his head. “No, she seems to be okay now. It’s not that.”
I waited to see if he’d say more. Instead he sighed heavily again, picked up his coffee cup, and went inside. Instead of returning to the porch, he refilled his cup and went to his office. I didn’t see him until later that day, when he reappeared for dinner. Instead of drilling him about Susannah, I asked about the bridesmaids’ luncheon. Not only were he and Suzanne Pollak preparing the bridesmaids’ luncheon, Pat was making it a chapter in his cookbook. His face brightened as he launched into menu ideas, always a safe and happy subject with him.
That night I came to bed late, unusual for me. After dinner I’d retreated upstairs to finish a story for an anthology a friend was putting together. I’d missed the deadline but had been given a reprieve. Once I finished the story, I went downstairs to our bedroom, where I found Pat propped up sound asleep, reading glasses askew and book still in hand. I slipped into the bed, eased his glasses off, and tried to free the book without waking him. Huge and heavy, the book was The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov, one of Pat’s favorites. I admired Nabokov but would hardly choose him as a bedtime read. At least his stories weren’t as dark as some of Pat’s other choices. A few nights previously he’d read a heavy tome (literally and figuratively) about the Bataan Death March, which disturbed him so much he had nightmares. Served him right, was my unsympathetic response. I no longer watched the news before bedtime for that very reason.
When I tugged harder on the Nabokov book, Pat’s eyes flew open, startled, and he tightened his grip on it as if a burglar were trying to lift his wallet. Seeing it was me, he smiled a sleep-dazed smile and relinquished his grip. It was early for Pat, the night owl, but he reached up to turn out the lamp, then he wrapped his arms around me.
But it wasn’t romance he had in mind. Instead, he blurted out, “I’m afraid I messed things up with the emails I sent Susannah.”
I’d learned that the man who opened his heart to millions on the page wasn’t always as open one-on-one and would clam up about his worries if pressed. So I kept quiet until he went on, even though I was thinking, Oh Lord. What’s he done now?
As I feared, he’d done plenty, and it came pouring out in the moonlit darkness of our bedroom. “I always said I’d kill myself if I ever became a bully like Dad,” Pat said in a choked voice. “Yet I’m more like him than you know.”
“You’re not like your dad,” I protested. “You’re a dear, sweet, and loving man. I don’t like it when you beat up on yourself.”
“I can be an asshole.” He said it so sincerely that I stifled a laugh.
“Okay, so you’re a dear, sweet, and loving man who can be an asshole. I can
’t relate, myself. I’ve never said an unkind word to anyone, my whole life.”
Pat scoffed. “You probably haven’t.”
“Oh, please. You know how my Alabama friends call me K.B.? What do you think the ‘B’ stands for?”
Pat cleared his throat and said, “I’m pretty sure that I blew it with Susannah.”
“In what way?”
“Just . . . ah . . . I said some harsh things to her. Really mean things that I shouldn’t have said. And I came down on Megan too.”
“About the wedding?” I asked hesitantly. Only a few days ago I’d come into the bedroom to find him on the phone with Megan. Since I had a dozen questions for her, I sat on the bed to wait my turn. My timing was off; Pat began to berate her for inviting Lenore to attend the wedding, so I scurried out of the room, coward that I am. Nor did I respond when he reported later how the conversation had gone. He’d issued an ultimatum: if Megan didn’t withdraw the invitation to his former wife, she would have to find someone else to walk her down the aisle.
Although he and I’d only been together a few years and I hadn’t seen it much, I knew that Pat had a temper. He also had a tendency—like my father—to fly off the handle and say hurtful things that he’d later regret. My boys have always said that if Granddaddy King couldn’t hurt your feelings, they couldn’t be hurt; later they’d say the same about Pat. But oddly enough, my father, the gruff old farmer, was better at making amends than Pat, the sensitive male writer. I can still picture Daddy, after snapping at one of us for whatever had irritated him, looking repentant and hangdog as he made his clumsy apologies. Pat, on the other hand, tended to let such things alone and hope they blew over. He wouldn’t mention his transgressions in the hopes that the injured party would forget before he had to apologize. Lucky for him, it worked like a charm with me because I can’t remember crap. Sometimes after Pat and I had a fuss, I’d catch myself laughing and joking with him until it hit me: Wait—aren’t I mad at him about something?
Tell Me a Story Page 17
