“Pat, you’ve got to see this,” I cried as I stepped out on the balcony. “Holy Mother of God!”
I heard him stumbling out of bed, then he appeared next to me bleary-eyed and disoriented. Wearing nothing but his drawers, he stood blinking for a full minute in the cold morning breeze before saying, “What the fuck is it?”
I laughed but kept staring through the binoculars even though they were hardly necessary. As the ship drew nearer, I discarded the binoculars and took a couple of steps backward in amazement. Pat put an arm around my shoulders and we shivered together as the Rock of Gibraltar loomed over us, a monolithic message of hope on an Easter morning. “I didn’t want you to miss this,” I whispered to Pat.
“Be pretty hard to do, darling.”
If our early-morning entry into a new port of call was an exciting, joy-filled way to greet the morning, our departures were bittersweet. It was traditional for the passengers to gather on the top decks of the ship and raise a glass of champagne as a toast to our departing city. Then, as the gigantic ship pulled away from the port, loudspeakers played a farewell song, Louis Armstrong singing “What a Wonderful World.” I couldn’t help myself; I cried every single time and still get choked up on hearing that song again, with the memories it brings.
Pat, of course, made fun of me being so sentimental about our departures, so I smiled bravely as I raised my glass to toast each departing port. Pat knew I’d be crying my eyes out when we got back to the room, so he tried to cheer me up. When Louis Armstrong sang the chorus, “And I say to myself, what a wonderful world,” Pat would sidle up next to me and sing his version in my ear, which made me laugh through my tears. In an imitation of Armstrong’s gravelly voice, he’d pull me close and croon, “And I say to myself, what a shitty world.”
* * *
It wasn’t all champagne and lullabies. Before we landed in LaGuardia on our way home, an inevitable snafu brought us down from our romantic high and we hit hard. Although Pat had showed me over and over how to fill out the customs card, I screwed up so many times he lost patience. Yanking the card and pencil out of my hand, he snarled, “Give it here, goddammit!”
I glared furiously until his head was bent over the card, then I waved my middle finger under his nose and hissed, “Jackass.” The flight attendant, a lovely middle-aged woman whom I’d chatted with earlier, caught my eye. Chagrined, I mouthed, Too much togetherness, and she nodded with a knowing smile. On our way out, she touched my arm. “No trip is complete without at least one blowup. All the best to both of you.”
God knows we’ll need it, I thought, but once we were back on American soil, everything was forgiven. As much as I’d loved the cruise, I had missed Fripp Island and couldn’t wait to get back. Since the fateful day I decided to pull up stakes and move there, Fripp had become my home.
Chapter 13
The Bottom Falls Out
Pat and I had been married almost ten years when the bottom fell out. For once in our lives, it was literal and not metaphorical. The house on Fripp had been remodeled shortly before I came on the scene, but evidently the contractor didn’t do the best job in the world, nor would he fix his mistakes. I heard a joke: What’s the difference between a contractor and a criminal? At least a criminal returns to the scene of the crime.
We suspected trouble when the deck began to separate from the back of the house. To go out the back door onto the deck required a leap of faith. I knew nothing about home repairs but figured the deck falling away from the house couldn’t be a good sign. Then the chimney began to leak when it rained, and leak bad. Pat must’ve gotten drunk during the remodeling process and thought he was in outer Siberia instead of on an island off the coast of South Carolina, because he’d decided he wanted a fireplace in the master bedroom. Needless to say, we never built a fire, except one cold winter night when we planned a romantic evening in. When the fire got going, we had to open a window to keep from passing out from the heat.
Poor Pat had always been teased about his lack of mechanical skills. He swore that in high school he scored low enough on the mechanical reasoning part of the standard achievement tests to be classified mentally challenged. No one argued with him or claimed it was another of his exaggerated tales. The man who could turn out some of the most beautiful prose in the world didn’t know one end of a hammer from another. One night, I’d been away for a few days and returned home much later than I expected. I hurried back to our bedroom to surprise Pat but ended up being the one surprised. Propped in bed reading, Pat was in the dark. Or almost; the only light he had to read by came from the lamp on the table on my side of the bed.
“Pat! How come you’re in the dark?” I asked in greeting.
He got up to hug me, then shook his head in exasperation. “Aw, my damn lamp’s broken. Broke right after you left.”
“Why didn’t you sleep on my side of the bed? Or move my lamp to your side?”
He looked sheepish. “Oh. Didn’t think of that.”
I unplugged his lamp, which was one of our favorites, with an antique brass base. “Don’t worry. I’ll take it to Bobby Joe tomorrow.” Pat’s sister Kathy’s husband, Bobby, was a whiz at fixing things, and had already repaired a couple of other lamps for me. In preparation, I wrapped the cord around the base and unscrewed the bulb, which rattled suspiciously. “Ah, Babezee? You checked the lightbulb, right?”
He gave me the sheepish look again. “Thought I did,” he mumbled, not meeting my eye.
I replaced the blown-out bulb, turned on the lamp, and saved myself a trip to town. But the next time, I went to the local hardware store and bought myself a tool set. My daddy had taught me to hammer a nail in straight and had once taken a motor apart to show me how it worked. Every girl needs to know how to fix stuff, he’d said. I loved my new toolbox so much that I bought a book on home repairs and started taking on some of our repairs myself. I figured that one mentally deficient mechanic in the family was enough.
Our falling-apart house was beyond my meager skills, however. Try as I might, I couldn’t get the deck back onto the house or stop the copious leaking around the chimney. Even more alarming, it was impossible not to notice that the downstairs commodes were wobbly. I kept expecting to find myself in nether regions whenever I made use of one. Finally I turned to Pat in desperation. “We’ve got to get a contractor here before the whole blamed house caves in.”
Pat decided to ask a former student, Mike Sargent, to look at it. Mike was who he’d wanted for the original work, but he hadn’t been available. “Mike was one of the biggest pain-in-the-ass students I ever had,” Pat told me, “and I’m pretty sure he failed my course. But he’s a great guy.”
I adored Mike on sight, an old hippie with a long gray ponytail. Pat had been twenty-three years old when he taught at Beaufort High School his first year out of The Citadel, so Mike was only a few years younger than us. He took Pat’s ribbing with a good-natured laugh. “You couldn’t keep your damn mouth shut during my class, Mike,” Pat reminded him. “I threatened to beat your ass more times than one. I hope I failed you.”
“No, sir,” Mike said with a grin. “You gave me a D if I promised not to take your class again.”
Mike was less jovial about the state of the house. He showed us the problem with the chimney and said we were lucky it’d been too warm for fires because we could’ve easily burned the house down. Even without a fire, we could’ve perished because the wiring was so bad. And, as the separated deck and wobbly commodes proved, the foundation had shifted and fallen in. After cussing enough to condemn his soul to hellfire and damnation forever, Pat settled down and asked Mike if he could fix it. Mike’s frown wasn’t exactly reassuring.
“Yessir,” he said finally. “I can. But it’ll take some time. Y’all will have to move out.”
Pat’s eyes bulged and his florid face turned even redder. “Have to do what?”
Mike lowered his head. “I’m really sorry, Mr. Conroy. But the foundation’s got to be rebuilt from the
bottom up. It’s the only way.”
“How long?” I asked weakly.
Mike grimaced. “As soon as I finish the job I’m on now, I’ll devote full time to getting y’all back in. Maybe two or three months?”
It was early fall. Both of us let that statement sink in, then I dared to ask, “But . . . we’ll definitely be here for Christmas, right?”
Mike avoided my eyes. “I can’t promise, but I’ll do my best.”
Pat was more furious than I’d ever seen him. We both had books to finish, and an extended time away from home was not in the plans. If we could’ve stayed in part of the house while the work was going on, we would’ve gladly done so. But Mike said with all the noise and construction, it would be extremely difficult for us to get any work done—especially Pat, since his writing space was square in the demolition zone. And there wouldn’t be any floors.
That’s how we ended up spending several months in Highlands, North Carolina. It was not a new experience for Pat; in the 1980s he’d hidden away in a friend’s cabin in Highlands for several weeks to work on The Prince of Tides. He and I had spent some time there in the previous summers as well. I loved Maine and would’ve gladly returned every summer, but it would’ve been without Pat. As much as he loved the Siddonses, he wouldn’t go back. It was just too far for him.
I couldn’t argue the point and wouldn’t have anyway, because I saw how hard the trip had become for him. During our years together, I’d learned much about the kind, generous, and fascinating man I’d married and loved deeply, none of which caused me to have second thoughts or love him any less. But many of his habits caused me great concern and plenty of sleepless nights. Pat was careless with his health to a degree that bordered on self-destructive. From the first he’d been honest with me about his drinking, but it took a while to make a believer out of me. And not because of denial (though I’m certainly guilty of that in every aspect of my life). Instead, Pat Conroy could hold his liquor better than anyone I’ve ever seen. Friends of his told me if they drank one-tenth of what he did, they’d be on the floor; but Pat could consume a copious amount of the hard stuff without showing it. Maybe it was genetic. Another cringeworthy joke I heard: Why did God make whiskey? Answer: To keep the Irish from ruling the world.
Pat was equally careless about diet and exercise. He’d get on different kicks, as he did with his drinking, and straighten up for several months at a time. I’d cook healthy (which he seemed incapable of doing), and he’d swear to eat right from then on. And he did—until he didn’t. His doctors would lecture him or he’d have a health scare, and then he’d vow to give up his bad habits. He’d go on the wagon, start exercising or walking every afternoon, and soon feel better than he’d felt in years. About the time I relaxed and decided that he’d finally reformed, he’d be back to his old habits again. His weight was up and down, mostly up, which caused even more problems. So when he told me he couldn’t do long road trips anymore, I didn’t argue. Fickle by nature anyway, I easily transferred my love of Maine to Highlands, a lovely little town high in the mountains of western North Carolina. Best of all, we could drive it in half a day.
* * *
We went into exile in October, when the lavish leaves of the Blue Ridge Mountain forests turned into brilliant shades of red, orange, and gold. Highlands certainly wasn’t the worst place to retreat to; on the contrary, it was magnificent, though neither Pat nor I was particularly happy about having to be there. We would’ve been a helluva lot unhappier if we’d known it would be April before we made it back to Fripp.
We rented a cottage across the street from Lake Sequoia, a serene body of water a mile or so from town. There were only two places in the house where the lake could be seen, one the small back deck and the other an upstairs bedroom window. Binoculars in hand, I spent many happy hours peering at the scenery through the bright, fluttering leaves of the trees encircling the lake. The locals, descendants of the early settlers, fascinated me, as did the well-to-do summer people who had second homes there. I had no doubt they came with many intriguing stories, great material for a new book. After the book tours were done for my fourth novel, Queen of Broken Hearts, I promised myself the next one would be about Highlands. And I felt the same surge of excitement that always came over me when the inspiration for a new book hit.
Pat was still disgruntled over our living situation, but with admirable resilience, he made the best of it. He often said he might not always like the things life threw at him, but if he didn’t have a choice, no point bitching and moaning about them. Personally I enjoyed bitching and moaning too much to give up either one, but I commended his attitude. Part of his frustration was the lack of a good writing space. The desk in our rental was a ladylike one ill-suited to his bulky frame. Set up in the spare room, it provided him the necessary privacy, however, so he approached it gamely, toting his yellow pad and pen.
After doing the two nonfiction books about basketball and cooking, Pat had gone back to fiction. South of Broad was set in Charleston and almost as vast in scope as the last novel he’d published, Beach Music. Ever since Pat’s days as a cadet at The Citadel, which is located in Charleston, the charming old city had held a fascination for him so strong it bordered on obsession. Charleston had appeared in some form or other in all his books and would be the setting for the last one he worked on.
The writing of South of Broad, however, caused Pat almost as much anguish as Beach Music had. Its storylines and themes were so heavy and depressing that I had to wonder: With Pat, was suffering so intertwined with creativity that he couldn’t work without it? For the first time in his tumultuous life, Pat claimed to have found some serenity and peace. Lacking the chaos and turmoil he’d become accustomed to, would he have to create it elsewhere? When I raised the question with him, he looked startled as understanding began to dawn. “Good God,” he said finally. “I think you’re right. Chaos is my siren song and always has been. I’ve never gone this long without it.” To my surprise he grabbed both my hands in a death grip and said, “Don’t let me fuck up what we have like I’ve done everything else in my pathetic life. Promise me!”
I tried to reassure him that it wouldn’t happen, but my words felt insubstantial, like snowflakes that melt on touch. I could only hope that our bond was strong enough to ward off the demons that would always call his name.
* * *
Although Fripp Island offered all the isolation any writer could want, Pat and I were in a totally different mode of solitude during our exile in Highlands that fall, winter, and early spring. The house was hidden from the road with no neighbors in sight. We were more completely alone with each other than we’d ever been, sometimes going weeks without seeing another living soul. The friends we’d made there were either weekenders from Atlanta or had closed down their houses after Labor Day and wouldn’t be back till May. Most folks with any sense stayed away from Highlands’s notoriously icy winters. Restaurants and stores closed and roads were impassable. But we figured that we’d be long gone before winter came.
By mid-November, Mike Sargent had let us know that we wouldn’t be back in our Fripp house by Thanksgiving. Pat’s buddy from Atlanta days, Jim Landon (whose cabin Pat had used to work on The Prince of Tides), took pity on us. Jim invited us to have Thanksgiving dinner with him and his friends. His invitation turned out to be a happy one for us because we made new friends, the Sullivans and Mannings, and Pat reconnected with another Atlanta friend, George Lanier. Fortunately for our budding friendship, none of them knew that I’d one day use the whole lot of them as characters in my Highlands novel. Pat had written about Jim and George before, so they were used to his treachery, but mine would take them by surprise.
We had such a great time and great food at the Thanksgiving feast that we invited ourselves to continue the tradition from that year forth. I knew I was with kindred spirits the following year when the very elegant Jim Landon (whom I would base an equally elegant character on in my book) showed up in a turkey costume
. To surprise us, Jim cut through the wooded path from his cottage to the Sullivans’ house up the mountain, velvet tail feathers dragging behind him. He was lucky not to encounter an overzealous hunter; he would’ve either been shot or the hunter would’ve keeled over at the sight of such a large turkey coming his way.
Good thing we enjoyed Thanksgiving and the in-state rivalry football games on TV that weekend because reality hit us hard afterward. With December came the realization that we wouldn’t be back in our house for Christmas. Pat’s mood dipped, and even I, who’d come to love Highlands so passionately, didn’t take the news well. Not being able to get into our house—by this time the floors were nonexistent—upset me not only because I loved Christmas on Fripp, but also because of the gifts I’d stashed in my gift closet. And what about the decorations? I wondered. We had so many at home that it would’ve been foolish to buy anything else. Brooding, I decided to go Little House on the Prairie and decorate with greenery from the woods. For a Christmas tree, I’d put a cedar branch in a large vase and drape it with strung popcorn and cranberries. It’d be fun, I told Pat. Holly grew in the dense woods behind the house and we might even find mistletoe. “C’mon!” I said to him, excited. I found a hedge clipper in the garage for cutting the greenery and waved it in front of him, ready for our adventure.
Pat gave me a look over his newspaper. “You’re shitting me,” he said. When I assured him I wasn’t, he groaned. “In case you didn’t get the memo,” he said, “they have bears here. They live in the woods.”
“They hibernate,” I told him.
“How do you know?”
“Because they’re bears.”
“That might be a rumor they put out to lure folks into their lairs. Dummies like you go traipsing around looking for holly and mistletoe, then bam!—they’re never seen again. Bear’s got him a tasty treat.” He lowered the paper and his eyes twinkled with mischief. “Maybe you’re right. Once they get their bellies full, they hibernate until they get hungry again.”
Tell Me a Story Page 21
