“When I emailed Susannah last night,” Pat continued, “I was really harsh about the wedding and a lot of other things. Actually it was worse than harsh. I completely lost it once I found out she’s not coming for a visit this summer. She’ll be here for Megan’s wedding but that’s it. She’s off to France for the summer instead.” Even in the dark, I could feel his eyes on me, feel the accusation in them. “Did you know that?”
I shook my head weakly. All I could say was “I’m so sorry, Pat. And no, I didn’t know. I’d hoped she’d spend more time here. It hadn’t occurred to me that she wouldn’t come at all.” That wasn’t strictly true; in fact I’d worried about it since the previous summer. Most departures are full of promises to visit again, even if no one means it. The way Susannah’d avoided committing to another visit had been ominous.
Pat’s mood shifted from remorse to fury. “Well, I’m not having it, by God. Susannah isn’t making an appearance at Megan’s wedding then rushing off to fucking France or anywhere else. Oh hell no! Not going to happen.”
I had absolutely no idea what to say, nor have I ever felt so helpless in offering comfort or words of wisdom. Nothing I could do would help to mend the tenuous relationship between him and his youngest daughter. Right before my eyes, things appeared to be disintegrating like a sand castle in the path of the incoming tide. Or more aptly, it brought to mind one of the tarot cards I always dreaded to uncover. The card depicts a stone tower as it’s struck by lightning in a raging storm and begins to fall apart. Even without the storm or the lightning you know the tower is doomed anyway: studying the card, you can see that the ground it stands on is too perilous to hold it up.
* * *
The wedding turned out fairy-tale beautiful, just as Megan had envisioned. Pat’s bridesmaids’ luncheon was a big hit, without a pimento-cheese sandwich or petit four in sight. Instead he and Suzanne prepared a cold cucumber soup and swordfish salad with garlic aioli, while I did my mama’s prizewinning pound cake to serve with fresh Carolina peaches. We hosted the lunch in our dining room around the leather-topped table for twelve that had originally been in the library of Oxford University. We hosted the rehearsal dinner as well, with an authentic whole-hog pit-in-the-ground barbecue near our backyard lagoon where gators lurked like uninvited party guests. Pat admitted all that entertaining was his unabashed attempt to impress Megan’s new California relatives.
Looking somewhat shaky and pale but lovely as ever, Susannah had arrived with her half brother, Gregory, Pat’s former stepson who was Megan’s age. I’d met Gregory during a previous visit and found him to be a quiet, amiable young man who seemed especially protective of his sister. (There was another sister, Emily, whom I hadn’t met.) Pat teased Gregory about being Susannah’s bodyguard, but his teasing turned hostile when he found out the two of them were only there for the wedding before going to Europe. The more frustrated Pat became, the more he ranted, raved, and threatened, which caused his daughter to retreat even further. The tension was palpable. To me, things seemed to be hurling downhill like a snowball headed for hell.
After everyone arrived, I got caught up in last-minute wedding details and the swirl of entertaining and forgot to worry about Pat’s problems with Susannah and Gregory. I knew he’d been upset when he first saw Susannah, thinking she appeared sickly, but with so much going on he didn’t get a moment alone with her. As long as he was preoccupied with playing host to the hordes of wedding guests, though, I wasn’t about to ask him the details. I figured I’d hear soon enough. One thing I’ve learned about trouble—it has a way of finding you whether you look for it or not.
Despite Pat’s cajoling, threats, and ultimatums, Susannah left to do a summer program at La Sorbonne, then spent a year in Rome finishing her high school term. During that time Pat had a lot of trouble getting in touch with her. His brothers were scornful. Cut off the money, they advised, and you’ll be surprised how fast you’ll hear. A former friend of Pat’s lived in Rome; he intervened and reported back that Susannah had agreed to see her father if he and I would come to Italy. Pat insisted she come to him instead, resulting in an impasse where neither would yield an inch. Negotiations faltered then stopped altogether.
The following year Pat heard from Megan that Susannah had returned to California and enrolled in Berkeley. Letters, emails, and gifts from her father went unacknowledged. Maybe with her health issues, Susannah couldn’t deal with Pat’s demands to see her; I don’t know. Without any communication, we were left to draw our own conclusions. As a means of forcing the issue, Pat was advised to cut off financial support as his brothers had suggested, but he wouldn’t. (It’d be years later before he’d return to court to ease the strain of supporting two households.) Tim Belk got furious with Pat and phoned me to rant, calling his old friend a softie of the worst sort for allowing himself to be manipulated. “Pat’s all talk and no action,” Tim grumbled. “Always running his big mouth but doing nothing to back it up.” It was hard to make others understand that Pat had no legal recourse in the matter. His daughter could either choose to see her father, or not.
At the stately old house on Presidio Avenue, a line was drawn in the sand that anyone with allegiance to Pat better not cross (or so we’d hear later). The cruel emails had the negative repercussions that Pat’d feared, and none of the loving or regretful messages that he sent could make up for them. In no time Megan, Melissa, Jessica, and the rest of the family were shut off as well. Megan, who’d been closest to Susannah, told me that once she realized what was happening, she’d gone to the house several times, where she banged on the door crying and begging for admittance. Her pleas to Lenore and Susannah fell on deaf ears, and her calls went unanswered. When she finally got through to Gregory, he agreed to meet her at a local coffee shop. After the second time he failed to show up or answer her calls, Megan gave up.
I honored Megan’s request not to tell her dad how she’d humiliated herself trying to find out why she’d been cut off from her sister and the family she’d been so close to, knowing how upset he’d be. Although I didn’t agree with it, I could at least understand Susannah’s decision to distance herself from her father. But breaking off all contact with the rest of the family, especially her sisters, struck me as extreme, to say the least. If the estrangement was intended to hurt Pat, it worked, but the girls were hurt too. They’d done nothing but continue to love both their father and their sister. It was a tragic situation I’d seen too many times before. After a bitter divorce one parent pits the children against the other parent, and it becomes a game of Got you, you bastard! It’s a sick and destructive game that everybody loses in the end.
Pat was fifty-three at the time of Megan’s wedding. He would be a couple of months shy of seventy before he saw his youngest daughter again. During the long years of their estrangement, he pleaded with friends and acquaintances from his former life for information about his daughter’s well-being. He also stayed in contact with his former stepdaughter, Emily, whom he helped support because he knew what a difficult life she’d had. But Emily’s relationship with her mother, brother, and half sister was also rocky, so she didn’t know much more than Pat did. Occasionally he’d get a tidbit of information from her but never knew if it was reliable.
The long estrangement from his youngest daughter killed something in Pat that he never really got over. Throughout the years, he continued to send her letters, gifts, and flowers. Even though he got no response, he never stopped hoping that one day, somehow, he and his daughter would find their way back to each other.
Chapter 11
It’s a Maine Thing
A few years after Megan’s wedding, Pat’s daughter Melissa would have a much simpler and quieter ceremony in the backyard of her mother’s house in Atlanta. Although it was an incredibly sweet and lovely affair, when the family reminisces about Melissa and Jay Shermata’s wedding, the comments are always the same: It was the hottest day any of us can remember, with one of the highest temperatures ever recorded in
Atlanta. At the outdoor reception, their beautiful, three-tiered wedding cake melted into a puddle, and so did the guests.
When Pat and I returned to Fripp, he sat me down for a heart-to-heart. “Helen Keller,” he said wearily, “this ain’t working for me. And you’re too stubborn to admit it, but it’s not working for you either. The summers are killing me. We’ve got to get out of here.”
He had a point. When you live on the beach, everybody’s your friend. After Pat and I had been together a couple of years, we’d start in the spring bracing ourselves for the upcoming summer, which we called Camp Fripp. And once the school year ended and relatives headed our way, that was exactly what our house felt like, a summer camp. Pat and I spent most of the summer cooking, washing sheets and beach towels, and sweeping sand off the floors. Every night we collapsed in exhaustion, worn out.
Pat came up with a way to celebrate the departure of our visitors, which he first did as a lark then later as entertainment for the grandkids. After the first couple of summers of constant visitors, Pat made up a victory dance when the last one was out the door. Big as he was, he was light on his feet and he cavorted, twirled, and jumped up and down singing “Oh Freee-dom!” He bent over at the waist with his arms above his head and genuflected to a sympathetic god who’d led us out of visitor bondage to the promised land of peace and quiet. It was the perfect release from the stress of endless entertaining.
“Pat Conroy,” I said when he suggested that we escape, “that may be the best idea you’ve ever had. So here’s what I think. Let’s tell the kids they need to come the first part of the summer—all of them, together. Get it over with! We’ll visit with them during their stay, then we’ll hit the road running. And we’ll stay gone until after Labor Day weekend.”
“Perfect,” Pat agreed. “But we’d better not tell them where we’re going. They might follow us.”
That’s how we ended up discovering Brooklin, Maine, and Highlands, North Carolina, as our summer destinations. Not only did getting away save our sanity (and probably our marriage and writing careers as well), it was the way I became better acquainted with some of Pat’s closest friends, who would become lifelong friends to me as well.
* * *
I don’t recall exactly when Pat first took me to Charleston to visit his friends Anne Rivers Siddons and her husband, Heyward, but it was a happy day for me. I’d met them at the Birmingham event a few years before and couldn’t believe how kind Anne was to me. Despite her success, she was as warm, charming, and unpretentious as anyone I’d ever met. I had long admired her work, especially Colony. I think I’ve read that book a dozen times. Her sixth novel, Colony is set on the coast of Maine and based on Heyward’s family compound there. At the time I’d never been to Maine but after reading Colony, I would’ve moved there in a New York minute.
When Pat proposed that we visit Anne and Heyward at their place in Maine, I couldn’t pack fast enough. For me, it was not just the beginning of a friendship with the Siddonses, it was the beginning of a love affair. In all our years together, Pat Conroy had only one real competitor for my affections. George Clooney might not get a second glance, but tempt me with a steamed lobster and I turn to mush.
Pat decided we’d make our visit to Maine a road trip—thankfully, since both of us were writing new books and had to tote a bunch of stuff, including my computer. Until his health became a factor, Pat would drive anywhere rather than fly, which he hated with a passion. He also saw this trip as a way of showing me some sights on the drive up, visiting places I hadn’t been. That was not a difficult task. I’d toured the East Coast on a road trip to Quebec when I was in my twenties; visited and gone sightseeing in both New York and DC; and spent a couple of weeks at a college in Vermont when I was teaching. Even though Maine had always been on my bucket list, those scattered visits were the extent of my knowledge of that part of the country. I couldn’t have been more excited if we’d planned a visit to Paris, France.
I’ve never gone on a road trip with anyone as easygoing as Pat. He didn’t mind admitting he was lost and would even ask for directions. My father had used his deafness to pretend he didn’t hear me and my sisters whining for ice cream or a Co-cola. Our wails would get louder until he’d tell us if we didn’t shut the hell up, he’d give us something to holler about.
Because of Pat’s frequent moves in his childhood with his ill-tempered father at the wheel, he never balked at stopping for a bathroom break, a scenic overlook, or a Hershey’s bar. For whatever reason, I crave Hershey’s bars (the small size with whole almonds) when on the road. They’re even better if it’s hot in the car and they melt just enough to get squishy. The chocolate-induced high is intensified by a bottled Coke (ice cold, of course), but I gave them up a long time ago. Drinking something that does a pretty good job of cleaning a corroded car battery doesn’t seem very smart to me, and certainly not with my delicate constitution.
Some of Pat’s road cravings I found appalling. It made me feel guilty since he was so good-natured and indulgent of me, but still. Even if we’d just had breakfast or lunch, he couldn’t stop at a service station without getting a couple of hot dogs from the rotisserie. Some of them looked like they’d sat out all day, and probably had. Neither could he resist those hot pickled sausages that come in a big bottle, usually near the cash register. They always gave him heartburn, which is hardly surprising considering how lethal they looked. Gathering up as many bags of potato chips as he could carry with a large Diet Coke in hand, Pat’d return to the car humming blissfully. Diabetes be damned, he always sneaked in a few bags of peanut M&M’s too.
Forbidden goodies weren’t our only road-trip indulgences. Pat and I discovered early in our relationship that we shared a passion for country music. We stocked up on CDs by Waylon, Willie, and the Boys, and we rode the highways singing. A good country song contains all anyone ever needs to know about what can go wrong with a relationship. As Dolly Parton warns in “Jolene,” if you’re not careful a hussy could take your man just because she can. Or worse, you could marry a hussy who takes her love to town because you’re a crippled war veteran. Maybe she leaves because of four hungry children and a crop in the field. Even so, you only stop loving her the day they put a wreath upon your door and come to carry you away. Pat was a great one for making up his own lyrics, and he’d serenade me with his version of a Waylon classic, “Amanda”: “Cassandra, light of my life . . . Fate should’ve made you a gentleman’s wife.”
Both of us agreed that country songs have a lot to teach writers about catchy titles, and I find some of them nothing short of genius. Who can beat “Thank God and Greyhound She’s Gone,” or “Drop-Kick Me Jesus Through the Goalposts of Life.” Naturally Pat’s favorite were the drinking songs, “She’s Acting Single (I’m Drinkin’ Doubles)” or, even better, “I’d Rather Have a Bottle in Front of Me (Than a Frontal Lobotomy).” Both of us made fun of sappy songs and cracked up whenever we heard “The Wind Beneath My Wings.”
Our trips were also a time for Pat and me to pick up where we’d left off telling each other the stories of our lives. On the three-day drive to Maine, Pat told me how his father wouldn’t let him get his driver’s license when he turned sixteen, which he saw as an obvious ploy to keep him under his thumb. It was Pat’s beloved English teacher, Gene Norris, who taught him to drive and took him to get his license. He was lucky, I told him. My father taught me to drive—or rather, he started out to. He made me so nervous I waited until he was plowing the fields to learn on my own, vowing that I’d never go through such an ordeal again. When the two of us got on the road with me behind the wheel, Daddy would scare the daylights out of me by suddenly yelling for me to stop. I’d slam on the brakes and he’d go flying forward. “Goddammit! Just pull over and let me out,” he’d holler as he grabbed onto the door handle for dear life. The time he cried out “Oh help me sweet Jesus!” and ducked down into the floor mat was the final straw for me. Driving lessons over.
After our almost-four-day d
rive up the coast, Pat and I got comfortably settled into the Siddonses’ guesthouse. I gave my driver a day’s rest before dragging him off to see the sights. Rarely has anyplace lived up to its billing like Maine did. For a nature lover, Maine’s a wild and rugged paradise of ancient glacial landscapes and dense primal forest. I loved everything: the rocky, panoramic coastline; the quaint lighthouses; the picturesque fishing villages and hidden coves dotted with sailboats. Not only is Maine spectacularly beautiful, it’s also a food lover’s paradise. I had lobster every single day because they were five bucks each at a nearby lobster pound. It’s not just the abundance of lobster; all the seafood is fantastic. The Siddonses live right on the water, where the salt-laden smells of Penobscot Bay were carried by brisk breezes into our opened windows. There’s nothing like a salty breeze to stimulate the appetite, and we ate like lumberjacks the whole time.
Pat was less enamored than I was. His jovial, hail-fellow-well-met overtures that endeared him to southerners went over like a lead balloon with the good people of Maine. (Or, as Heyward so colorfully put it, like a turd in a punch bowl.) Pat’s friendliness that normally had people eating out of his hand was met by Mainers with a stony silence. Anne had tried to warn him. The locals were every bit as taciturn and reticent as we’d heard, she said, and didn’t warm up to outsiders until they’d known you a long time. Instead of backing off as anyone with any sense would’ve done, Pat took it as a challenge and set out to win them over. By the time we left to go home, the count was Mainers one million, Pat zip. Although he never gained their affection, their staunchness earned his grudging respect.
Our first encounter with the stereotypical Maine taciturnity was with Anne and Heyward’s housekeeper, Lanett. Although Lanett and her husband turned out to be two of the kindest, most gentle souls we’ve ever met, none of us knew what to make of one another that first summer. For one thing, Pat and I had trouble with their Maine accents and mostly communicated with hand gestures. At least Pat had his deafness as an excuse. Talking with Lanett or her rough-hewn, bearded husband, I felt like I was in Scotland. I’d find out later that attitude worked both ways. After we returned to South Carolina, Anne called to make sure we’d gotten back safely. “Lanett really liked you and Pat,” Anne told me. It was a rare compliment, and I took it as such, pleased. “But you know what she told me?” Anne continued, laughing. “Lanett said, ‘Mrs. Conroy’s real nice, but with that accent of hers, I never understood a word she said.’”
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