Although I never found out what set him off or why he reacted the way he did to the incident, I let it go. Over time it was forgotten but I can’t say regretted. Pat had been right about one thing: as painful as it was, our fight inspired a crucial scene in my book and I used it with no compunction whatsoever. When it comes to gathering material for a story, writers have no shame.
* * *
I never told Pat what else I did to put that unpleasant rift behind me. The owners of the house we’d rented where our fight happened were friends of mine, a young gay couple. The following summer we were staying in a different part of Highlands when one of them, Steve, gave me a call. Because he and I had discussed a mutual interest in spirituality, mysticism, and the afterlife (and other weird stuff that Pat referred to as New Agey bullshit), Steve had called with exciting news. A wiccan witch from the famed Cassadaga spiritual community in Florida was coming to visit them, and I was invited to meet her. We would gather at their house, the very one that Pat and I had occupied the previous summer. Then we’d go to a nearby clearing for a rite to celebrate the full moon. Was I interested?
Was I ever! I could hardly wait. Not only would I get to be with a real witch, I asked Steve if she’d meet with me in private beforehand, and he said sure. I didn’t tell him the whole story, only that Pat and I’d had a nasty spat when we were staying in his house. Maybe the witch could exorcise the bad spirits? Steve assured me that was right up her alley. She never traveled without her white sage for just such purposes. (I never travel without white sage either. You never know when you’ll end up in a haunted hotel.)
When the time came, I couldn’t decide what to tell Pat about my disappearance that evening. He already teased me mercilessly about my interest in New Age stuff. If I told him I was meeting with a witch for a full-moon ceremony, he’d be convinced that I’d finally gone off the deep end. But I could hardly say I was going to dinner with a friend, because the ceremony didn’t start until midnight. I had to either flat out lie or sneak out after he went to bed. The latter would be difficult since Pat read almost every night until one a.m. or so. I finally decided on a variation of the former. Maybe I could get by with just being vague.
It didn’t go quite as well as I’d hoped. We were in the kitchen fixing dinner, with him doing the salad as I sautéed chicken breasts for piccata, when I said nonchalantly, “Babezee? After dinner I’m going over to Steve’s. It’ll be late when I get back so don’t wait up for me.”
Pat’s curiosity was understandably aroused since neither of us ever went anywhere that late. Plus we were staying at the top of an unpaved, winding mountain road that wasn’t easy driving in daylight. At night it’d be treacherous. “What’d you mean, after dinner?” he asked sharply. Normally he didn’t question my comings and goings, but this wasn’t a normal outing.
“Ah . . . closer to midnight. But don’t worry. If you’re asleep, I’ll slip out quietly.”
“To Steve’s?” His eyes narrowed. “You running around on me, girl?”
“Yeah, right. You and Steve’s partner both have a lot to worry about.”
“Then what the hell’s going on?”
I busied myself squeezing a lemon over the chicken. I knew with a sinking heart that Pat would prefer I had a lover than hear what I was really doing. Suddenly I had an inspiration. “Well, Steve and Rick have a visitor from Cassadaga they want me to meet. She’s a . . . er . . . spiritualist. I was thinking I could interview her and maybe do an article.”
Proud of myself, I wondered why I hadn’t thought of that before. If there’s anything a writer understood, it was a work assignment. But Pat was too smart for me. He stopped chopping tomatoes and said, “Is that right? And this so-called spiritualist only does interviews at midnight, huh?”
“Well. You know how spiritualists are,” I said lamely. “Salad ready? I’m about to dish up the chicken.”
Pat dropped the interrogation but knew good and well that I was up to something. I’d catch him eyeing me with a knowing smirk. I hoped by some miracle he’d be asleep when I left, but no such luck. At our bedroom door I threw him a kiss and he threw one back with a mischievous grin. “Full moon tonight,” he said.
“Is it? I haven’t noticed.”
“Watch out for werewolves!” he called out. I heard him chuckling as I closed the door behind me.
* * *
In the past I’d attended séances, met with mediums, and had my fortune told numerous times. Even after my marriage to Pat I’d kept it up as research for the psychic Madame Celeste, a character in The Sunday Wife. But I’d never attended a full-moon celebration nor met a real live witch, “white” or otherwise. Sudie was the real deal with residence in Cassadaga, the acclaimed “Psychic Capital of the World,” as her credentials. I was a bit taken aback when I met Sudie at Steve’s house that night. She looked really ordinary—a middle-aged postal clerk, maybe. At least she was dressed somewhat appropriately in a long floral muumuu like a lot of older women in Florida wear. Sudie was primping when we met in the guest room before the other guests arrived, getting dolled up for the moon-gazing ceremony. She sat in front of a mirror and penciled in her eyebrows while I perched on the daybed and told her my story. Without going into the gory details, I explained that my husband and I’d had a bad spate here, which had probably left bad spirits hanging around.
After applying rose-colored lipstick and blotting it with a tissue, she turned her attention to me. Her eyes held mine in the mirror and she nodded as I jabbered on and on. “Bad spirits are here,” Sudie said when I’d finished. “I sensed it as soon as I arrived. I already told the boys the house needed cleansing.”
Which she did, going through the darkened house waving a smoking bundle of white sage and chanting something that sounded like someone speaking in tongues. I trailed behind and truly felt as if something heavy had lifted from my heart when she finished cleansing the room where I’d unwittingly raised the window that prompted our fight. By then the others had arrived, about a dozen of us in all. We gathered outside then marched single file down the dark streets of the neighborhood with only the moonlight and Sudie lighting our way. In our hands we carried the candles that she’d given us, but only hers was lit. I hoped and prayed that the neighbors were safely asleep, especially since Sudie chanted in a singsong voice as we walked. The candle sent flickering shadows over her face and I figured if anyone saw us, they’d call the police for sure.
We reached the wooded, vacant lot and I breathed a sigh of relief. It was not only a safe distance from the neighboring houses but also enclosed by tall, dense rhododendron bushes. Once we were hidden away, Sudie directed us to form a circle. She lit the candle of the person next to her, who then turned to light the candle of the person standing by him, until we had formed a circle of candlelight.
No longer distracted by my nervousness I began to feel strangely elated. The clearing was eerily beautiful in the white light of the moon and the flickering of candles. I knew no one but Steve and Rick and no introductions had been made, yet I felt a kinship with those in the circle. Looking different now than she’d appeared seated at a dresser with eyebrow pencil in hand, Sudie stood tall and commanding in her muumuu, which rippled like a priest’s robe in the cool breeze. Fittingly enough, the moon hung right above her. It was a sharply defined and absolutely perfect night without a cloud in the ink-black sky.
In a low but clear voice, Sudie spoke about the spiritual phases of the Goddess Moon, the mythic cycle of death and rebirth. Her eyes traveled around the circle and lingered on each of us for a moment as she spoke. She told us that the “Queen of the Night” was a powerful source of creative energy in all phases but especially when full. Every month we should celebrate the full moon, and we’d learn how meaningful its energy could be. Then she explained the ritual. First we were instructed to blow out the candles so we could rely solely on celestial light. Then we should stand facing the moon and taking in her power. We were to hold our arms over our heads and open t
hem up in a bowl shape to channel the energy of the moon. Either silently or aloud, whichever worked best for us, we should call on the essence of the divine light to come down and fill us up, as though filling a bowl.
Sudie instructed us to focus fully on the ritual rather than looking to see how others were doing it. Keep our face and arms open and turned upward. Once we were filled with the divine light, she said, it was appropriate to thank the goddess for empowering us. That could be done in any form that felt right: folding our arms around our body to hold in the energy, bowing to the goddess, saying a prayer, crying, laughing, dancing—there was no right or wrong way. We would only know when it happened.
Sudie urged us not to break the spell afterward but to depart the circle quietly, making our way back to our lives renewed by the divine source of all life.
Following her example, we did as she instructed by blowing out our candles and placing them on the ground by our feet. I felt self-conscious and a little foolish until I raised my face to the moon and lifted my arms over my head.
I can’t explain it except to say that something magical happened. It was as Sudie had said: I felt a flow—a jolt, even—of a strange energy flowing through me. I lost myself in it and became totally unaware of my surroundings. It was just the Goddess Moon, me, and the Divine. Although I could hear the voices of others offering up their praises, they didn’t intrude on my moment of connection with the universe. For me, it felt right to bow in gratitude and to say a prayer of praise. Not a simple bow of my head as I did in church when approaching the altar or when the acolytes passed by holding the cross aloft; this was a full-fledged, from-the-waist bow that I was barely conscious of doing. It came naturally because I was so filled with gratitude for the powerful experience.
Walking back in silence to reconnect with my life outside the circle, renewed by the divine source, I didn’t break the spell. The reverence stayed with me much as it did in church after I left the communion altar having partaken of the body and blood of the Lord. It was only as I drove away that a niggling image played in my mind. Try as I might, I couldn’t summon enough of the celestial energy I’d just filled up with to shoo it away. Now that I was back on earth, I could picture myself standing there so earnestly in the midst of the circle with my arms raised above my head in a bowl shape, waiting to be filled with celestial energy. And I knew without question that if Pat had seen me, he would’ve had me hauled off to a mental hospital in a heartbeat.
* * *
I’d learned a lot about fictionalizing some of the real people in my life when I wrote The Same Sweet Girls a few years back. After I had plotted out the book, I’d mulled over my talk with Anne Siddons, when she’d advised me to tread carefully. To my surprise, even Pat warned me about the peril of turning close friends into characters. He wasn’t hypocrite enough to tell me not to; he just wanted to make sure I knew what I was getting into. I didn’t, but I hoped that following my heart and my instincts would carry me through the dilemma. By taking bits and pieces of the stories the Same Sweet Girls told one another over the years, I ended up making a collage of fiction, fantasy, and fact.
The real-life group of women that the book’s based on have been friends of mine for decades (longer than any of us like to think about). We met in college, formed our bond, and have called ourselves the Same Sweet Girls ever since. Because we had such a special and unique friendship, I wanted to tell our story. It was one I thought that readers would find meaningful, and that’s proven to be the case. I still hear from readers who have similar friendships, and from groups who call themselves the Same Sweet Girls in tribute.
The Same Sweet Girls’ annual beach get-together was coming up not long after I signed a contract to write the book, so I decided to wait until then to break the news. The whole get-together I was a nervous wreck, wondering how I’d tell such dear friends that Judas Iscariot lurked among them, having sold the story of our friendship for thirty pieces of silver. I put it off until our last night together. With everyone gathered around the dinner table, I blurted out that my next book would be The Same Sweet Girls. After a startled silence, everyone burst into applause. I could’ve wept in relief. Giddy at their response, I promised to disguise everyone so they wouldn’t be recognized. Fortunately they knew me well enough not to believe it. (Writers don’t make the most trustworthy of friends.) For my next birthday one of the SSGs mailed me a T-shirt: behave or you might find yourself in my next novel.
In truth, I probably would’ve written the book regardless because I felt it was a story worth telling. Our group had met in the 1960s, when we were freshmen at Alabama College, a picturesque campus founded in the 1890s as an all-girls school. Although it had just gone coed, the college was still run as a girls’ finishing school, a bastion of idealized southern womanhood (something I hadn’t realized when I applied). There was a strict dress code and even stricter rules of decorum. In public we had to wear modest dresses or skirts, no slacks or jeans. I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I entered through the school’s ornate iron gates. I found out quickly, and to my dismay. Unless we wanted to be sent home in disgrace, female students were expected to toe the line. Even though it was the ’60s and revolution was brewing elsewhere, the times were far from a-changing in Alabama.
The stirring of something I’d later recognize as feminism was buried deep within me, but I had no way of articulating it then. All I knew was, I was miserable and lonely my first few months at school, away from home for the first time and not knowing anyone. I didn’t fit in with the southern belles and debutantes who filled the dorms of my college but had no idea where I belonged instead. My bohemian dreams were dashed by the strict decorum of campus life, which couldn’t have pleased my mother more. There I was, yet again trapped in a pattern I seemed destined to repeat—torn between my true self and the role society (and my mother) expected me to play.
To my great surprise, an incident at a student convocation drew me into the group of like-minded young women who would become lifelong friends. On that day, the convocation speaker was a senior who told us about her reign as a national beauty queen, when she’d represented the US as an ambassador of goodwill all over the globe. She was stunningly beautiful, poised, and a gifted speaker, but it was her parting words that got my attention. She assured her audience that although she’d traveled the world, met kings and queens and heads of state, she was still the same sweet girl she’d always been.
I stifled a giggle and lowered my head to keep from laughing out loud. That remark summed up my whole dilemma. No matter what else I might be, how educated or well traveled I might become, I’d better stay sweet and ladylike, as my mama had raised me to be, or there would be hell to pay. Then I noticed that I wasn’t the only one struggling to keep her composure. Some of the girls seated around me elbowed each other, shoulders shaking in mirth. Even more surprising, they were the beauty queens, the campus leaders, the sorority girls—all of whom I thought of as the prim and proper ladies I could never be. Yet there they were, the same as me, trying not to laugh at a remark that struck us as both sad and funny. All of us, like generations of southern women before us, had been taught to take more pride in our sweet, ladylike behavior than in our accomplishments.
It was the moment that we dared to laugh at ourselves and one another that I realized kindred spirits had surrounded me the whole time. Unknowingly, I’d been in the midst of irreverent soul mates, disguised as demure southern belles, and they were as unfit for the role as I was, and as eager to break free. From that day forth we joined forces, and we became—and remain—the Same Sweet Girls.
When Pat and I had first started seeing each other, he met a couple of the girls, which made him eager to meet the rest. One was Loretta, who’d introduced me to Pat at the party the night we met. Pat said if the rest of the SSGs were anything like the luscious Loretta, then he couldn’t wait to see the whole crew. So I invited another of the girls, Floozie, for a visit not long after I moved to Fripp. She and her
husband were the only friends of mine to meet the Great Santini, who totally charmed them. (I made sure to introduce Flooz to the colonel by her real name, Carol.)
On my and Pat’s first road trip to New Orleans, I’d introduced him to my take on the fabulous term floozie, one of the many buzzwords of the Same Sweet Girls. We’d stopped for lunch and I mentioned that our waitress was such a great floozie. “You know her?” he asked in surprise. I said no, I didn’t have to. He looked bewildered and I explained.
“It’s like this, Pat. A floozie isn’t a fallen woman or a hussy with a bad reputation. She can be, but that’s not the thing. Floozie is an attitude. It’s a way of carrying yourself, and the way you look at the world.” I thought about it a minute. “Well, sort of. Something about a floozie has to look floozie. You know, flirty, with a certain twinkle in her eyes. There’s usually one little thing about her appearance that gives her away—jeans a tad tight, or a bit of cleavage showing. Some floozies are more subtle than others.”
Pat gave me a knowing smile. “You’re the one who made this up, weren’t you?”
“Maybe. But wait and see—once you get it, you’ll notice floozies everywhere.”
“You’re talking about a certain kind of southern girl, right? As you call it, prissy.”
I shook my head. “Not really. Matter of fact, most prissy girls aren’t floozies. And it’s not just a southern thing either. New York has some of the greatest floozies in the world.”
He mulled it over. “And I’m guessing that Maine has the fewest?”
“See, you’re catching on! New Orleans will be crawling with them. I’ll help you figure out which is which. Let me give you a test to see if you’re ready. Think about the women we know, and name the best floozie among them.”
He didn’t have to think long. “Melinda?”
“Perfect! Anyone else?”
Tell Me a Story Page 23
