“Your friend Loretta?”
“You’re a natural at this, Pat. Trust me, it’s going to enrich your people-watching immensely. You’ll be coming up to me at parties with floozie alerts, like the SSGs and I do.”
“Is your friend Floozie one?”
I pondered that. “Well, yeah, Flooz is definitely a floozie, but she’s a bit too girl-next-door to be one a hundred percent. She’s more like three-quarters. But wait until you meet the rest of the Same Sweet Girls, and you’ll see all varieties. And I’ve got two cousins you’ll meet called the Floozie Cousins.”
Pat raised his glass of tea in a salute. “You’ve added much to my pathetic life, King-Ray, and now you’ve done it again.” We clinked tea glasses and he said, “Why don’t you invite the Same Sweet Girls to have a get-together on Fripp Island? Think they’d like that?”
“Are you kidding me? They’d love it,” I responded, and Pat’s eyes lit up in anticipation.
As I predicted, Pat got a kick out of floozie-watching and spent many happy hours at it. During a low point of one of his hospital stays years later, I’d brought him books, read him volumes of poetry, and retold our old stories, all to no avail. Understandably glum and depressed, he couldn’t be distracted. It was easy to tell how sick Pat was; when he didn’t interact with the staff, I worried. Gloomy myself, I was pacing when the shift changed. Pat’s new doctor came in, looking so young I wondered if she was there to sell Girl Scout cookies. But when her long, tanned legs flashed beneath the white coat and stethoscope, I had her number. She got no response from prodding and questioning her patient until I positioned myself so she couldn’t see me. Catching Pat’s eye, I mouthed, Pat! Floozie alert.
Pat blinked and turned his head slowly like a turtle peering out of a shell. When he looked up at the pretty young doctor, I saw the old Pat for the first time that day. “Hey, Doc,” he said. “Where’re you from?” Before she left the room, he’d gotten her life story. She gave him a little wave as she closed the door behind her, and Pat pointed toward the yellow legal pad he always had with him. “Hand me my pen and paper, would you? Maybe I can use that story about how she got into med school somewhere.”
I fetched the tools of his trade with relief. I’ll never know whether it was the floozie doctor or the story she told, just that one or the other had greatly brightened his day.
Chapter 15
Only Love Can Break a Heart
When I look back on my life with Pat, I try to concentrate on the good times. It’s easy to do because they by far outnumber the bad. Pat had so many admirable qualities: compassion, generosity, kindness, and unselfishness. He hated injustice and never sacrificed his principles or backed down from a fight. He’d literally give you the shirt off his back, and he would always go to bat for you. He was brilliant but never snobbish or patronizing. But if I had to pick one thing about him that I cherished above all else, it’d have to be his sense of humor. He was every bit as funny on a day-to-day basis as he is in his books. That was what I first loved about reading him, how I could be laughing out loud on one page and crying on the next. Pat and I spent most of our days together sharing funny stories and making fun of ourselves or the foibles of human nature. But there were still plenty of times when things turned too dark for any light to shine through. As all of us do, he and I had our share of sorrow and loss.
In 2004, Pat lost his beloved high school English teacher and mentor, Gene Norris. Pat’s written extensively about his admiration for Gene, and the profound influence Gene had on his life. Like everyone who knew him, I came to adore Gene as well, and we entertained him often at the Fripp house. He was always included in family gatherings or when we invited writer friends for a to-do. I loved it when he joined us because it was an excuse to put on the dog. Gene was an elegant southern gentleman of the old school and also a bit of a snob. Entertaining him called for the best china and silver.
Which, in my case, was something of a challenge. Fancy dinnerware was slim pickings with me, a failed southern belle. At my mother’s insistence, I had a china pattern (Staffordshire Indian Tree), silver settings (Chantilly, of course, which I came to detest), crystal glasses, silver-plated serving dishes and trays, ornate gravy bowls, and embroidered tablecloths with matching napkins, including a set my mother embroidered herself. I love an elegantly set table as much as any other belle and made good use of my finery in my former role as a Sunday Wife. But when I left that life behind, I left the adornments as well. Instead I collected pottery and artisan utensils and wooden serving trays.
But no self-respecting belle, failed or otherwise, would serve Gene Norris on a pottery plate. I’d gotten back a few pieces of my fancy stuff from my ex; the rest I hunted up at estate sales and the Salvation Army store. It’d been a pleasant surprise to find that Gene was also an aficionado of thrift stores, and he joined me on many of my treasure hunts. Predictably, Pat teased us. “Norris,” Pat’d say to Gene, “you and my bride go to the Goodwill because you’re both cheap. She can’t help it because she’s an Alabama hick. And with your Scottish blood, neither can you.”
Pat knew better than anyone how to get Gene’s goat, and he never tired of doing so. Gene would draw himself up indignantly. No matter how often he heard Pat’s bull, Gene always took the bait. “I beg your pardon, Irish scumbag. I’m English, as you well know, and on both sides. There’s not a drop of Scottish blood in my family.”
Having succeeded in getting poor Gene riled up, Pat’s impish smile would light up his face. “My, my, looks like I hit a nerve. Someone’s awfully touchy about his heritage.”
Pat’s other favorite thing to tease Gene about was his religion, and he could kill two birds with one stone by including me as well. Gene and I being Episcopalian, Pat often said, and members of the hoity-toity old church in town that was founded in 1720, proved to him that we were social climbers. “Naturally, Sir John Eugene Norris would belong to the Church of England,” Pat said, eyes twinkling.
When Gene retorted, “By the grace of God, I’m not a papist,” Pat upped the ante, as he was prone to do.
“My church was founded by St. Peter” was Pat’s response, “while yours was launched by Henry the Eighth’s dick.”
Gene got back at Pat for the slights on his pedigree and religion by saying he wouldn’t eat with us unless I did the cooking. Health conscious, Gene was appalled by Pat’s extravagance with meals. Once when Gene was visiting, he became apoplectic watching Pat pour bacon drippings over an otherwise healthy dish of winter vegetables before roasting them. “I won’t eat those,” Gene sputtered furiously. “You can just go ahead and throw my portion out.” Another time, when Pat doused a bowl of fresh peaches with heavy cream, Gene almost fainted. “Are you trying to kill us?” he squawked. “Lord God, keep that man out of the kitchen!”
Pat took it with his usual good humor but readily turned over the task of cooking for Gene to me. Gene and I bonded over the southern tradition of comparing stories about our mothers’ and grandmothers’ cooking. Pat enjoyed listening to them even though he had none of his own to contribute. According to him, the only cook in his family worse than his mother was his grandmother.
A lifelong bachelor, Gene was a private person with great dignity. He was our sole dinner guest the night he broke the news to us. He’d been diagnosed with leukemia. But his doctor assured him that the treatment should put him in remission. Pat put up a brave front but he was devastated. Watching his mother die from leukemia in her late fifties had been a traumatic experience that he never got over. I tried to tell Pat that the treatment was much improved since then. I had no idea if that were true or not but would’ve said anything to help him get through what I feared was coming.
Gene did well for a while. He celebrated his seventieth birthday and was otherwise healthy. Whenever and wherever he was hospitalized, Pat went, despite doing final edits for the cookbook at the time. Gene made an appearance in that book as well, but he would not live to see it published.
The summer before the release of The Pat Conroy Cookbook, Pat and I spent a few weeks in Lake Lure, North Carolina, where a friend had offered us the use of her cabin on a creek thick with lily pads. Taking the canoe out, we paddled through lilies and dragonflies. Pat had wanted to take me to Lake Lure for a long time. It was the setting for one of his favorite movies, Dirty Dancing, and he could do a mean imitation of the song-and-dance number “I Had the Time of My Life.” But his attachment to the area was more sentimental. When Pat was a boy, his grandmother had a house there where his family often went. Since those visits took place when his father was deployed, Lake Lure held only happy memories for the Conroy clan. The house had long since been torn down but Pat showed me the site, on a high bluff overlooking the lake. He’d adored his colorful grandmother, Stannie, and wrote about her often. I remembered her best as the grandmother Ginny Penn in Beach Music.
During our stay at Lake Lure, Gene was hospitalized several times in Columbia, South Carolina, and Pat dutifully made the three-hour drive south to visit him. He returned chuckling because Gene had tried to run him off by insisting that Pat should be working instead of playing nursemaid. To calm him, Pat read aloud from Look Homeward, Angel and reminded Gene how he’d introduced him to the book when Pat was a high school junior.
“Worst thing I ever did,” Gene snapped. “You’ve copied Wolfe’s overwrought style ever since.” Pat told me that he’d given Gene’s oncologist our number at the cabin with instructions to call him immediately if Gene needed him. No cell service where we were staying, so the landline was the only way to reach us.
It was the first week in July. We’d spent a glorious Fourth on the lake with friends and stayed up late to watch the fireworks. Originally we’d planned to return home at the end of the month; but the following day Pat went to see Gene in Columbia and our plans changed. Gene was doing well enough to be released in a day or so. Figuring that he’d need help when he got home, Pat and I began to pack. Matter of fact, we decided, no reason why we couldn’t pick Gene up on our way. “And once he gets home,” Pat told me as he stuffed papers into his briefcase, “you can cook his favorites and I’ll pester him as always. That’ll keep him from fretting.”
Later that day I was surprised to answer the phone and hear an unfamiliar female voice asking for Pat. Because we both needed privacy to work, we had only given out the number to family and our closest friends. I didn’t disturb Pat when he was writing unless I had to, and he was trying desperately to finish editing before we left. I hesitated.
“I’m Eugene Norris’s doctor,” the woman said, and I told her to hang on and I’d get Pat. I took the phone to him, where he sat propped up on our bed with a legal pad in his lap. I sat beside him, waiting to hear that Gene would be released sooner than expected and we needed to head that way.
Pat took the phone with a frown, listened for a few minutes, then closed his eyes. “Thank you for letting me know, Doctor,” he said in a tight voice. He hung up and handed the phone to me without a word, his eyes still closed. I’ll never forget his face and the tears rolling down his cheeks. No need for me to ask if Gene had taken a turn for the worse. Pat’s expression told me the terrible truth. Gene was gone.
* * *
All our losses didn’t come in the month of July, but the next one did. Three years later, Pat and I were spending a month in Highlands. It was 2007, the year following our difficult time there, and a few days after I’d met with the witch for exorcism. Both of us were working on new books that summer (South of Broad for him, Moonrise for me) and were busy and happy, even though we’d just returned from a sad occasion. We had driven to Charlotte for the funeral of Doug Marlette’s father, whom I’d met a couple of times and whom Pat knew well. Even though Doug had told us not to make the five-hour drive to Charlotte for the funeral, his face lit up when he saw us coming into the church.
An odd thing happened after the funeral that haunts me to this day. We were the last to leave because we wanted to spend a few minutes alone with Doug and Melinda. Their son, Jackson, was attending college in France and had just gotten in, jet-lagged and teary-eyed. Jackson hugged Pat long and hard and thanked us over and over for coming. We’d parked across from Doug and Melinda, and the five of us walked together to our cars. In the parking lot we hugged each other again, saying our goodbyes. I’d come to love Doug and Melinda. Doug would sometimes call me to talk about his concerns about Pat’s health, particularly during the times Pat was hitting the bottle too hard. “Don’t tell him I called!” Doug would always say, which tickled me.
Standing by Doug’s car, Pat asked if Doug’s trip to Mississippi was still on. Ole Miss was doing a student production of the musical based on Doug’s syndicated cartoon, Kudzu. Several years back, Pat and I had gone to Chapel Hill to see it performed. In a few days Doug was supposed to travel to Oxford to meet the cast and see it onstage again. “Some happy news, then,” Pat said, clapping Doug’s shoulder. “Ole Miss is one of my favorite colleges. You’ll have a great time.”
Pat and I were walking to our car and something—I’ll never know what—told me to turn around. I looked back and Doug, too, had stopped beside his car and was looking at us. The early afternoon sun outlined him in a dazzling glow, so bright I put a hand up to shield my face. My eyes met Doug’s and held for a moment before his gaze shifted to Pat, where it lingered for an even longer time. Getting into the driver’s seat, Pat didn’t see him. Then both Doug and I lifted a hand for a wave of goodbye and got in our cars.
“That was odd,” I said as I buckled myself in and Pat pulled out of the parking lot.
“The funeral?” he asked in confusion, and I shook my head.
“No. Something about Doug.”
“He just buried his father,” Pat reminded me, but I shook my head again.
“No, this was something different.” I let it drop because I couldn’t explain it. I almost said, Doug was looking at me and you like he’d never see us again. But I knew Pat would demand to know what that meant and I couldn’t tell him. In the years to come I’d remember that moment, the golden glow of the sun and Doug’s strange expression, but I’d never know what to make of it.
It was only a couple of days later when we got the call. Doug had flown into Memphis where an Ole Miss student picked him up for the drive down to Oxford. He was to talk to the cast of Kudzu before the production and a big hoopla was planned. Melinda hadn’t gone with him because Jackson was about to return to school. It was a stormy day, and on the drive to the university, the student lost control of his vehicle, left the road, and slammed into a tree. Fortunately the student got out with minor injuries. Doug was killed instantly.
* * *
It seemed as though someone had pushed the domino that started the fall. Pat and I would remind ourselves many times that this was what happened as you grew older. You lost people you loved. I didn’t handle any of them well. It was as though each one tore off the barely healing scab of the last wound. In 2014, we lost another dear friend, Barbara Warley. I’d become friends with Barbara, the wife of one of Pat’s close buddies from The Citadel, John, after the Warleys relocated to Beaufort from Virginia. Barbara was a radiant, dark-haired beauty of Native American descent; otherwise, she and I had a lot in common. We shared the same political views and dark sense of humor. We’d both raised three sons and had plenty of war stories. Whenever our husbands got together, we were subjected to the same old Citadel stories. They hooted and hollered as though they’d never heard them before, while Barbara and I smiled indulgently and rolled our eyes.
Barbara differed from me in one crucial way, or so I thought. She was perpetually sunny and cheerful. A breast cancer survivor, she suffered the aftereffects of prolonged treatment and had to rely on pain medication to even move around comfortably, but she never let on or complained. She refused to talk about it or let it get her down. As time went on her suffering became more apparent, no matter how hard she gritted her teeth. But she kept up a good front. It pissed Pat of
f and he didn’t hesitate to say so. “Dammit, Barbara, stop being so brave,” he said to her. “Just because you’re an Apache from Idaho—or wherever the hell your tribe is—you don’t have to be the old Indian who goes off to suffer alone. Scream and yell and curse your fate like a normal person would.”
Barbara laughed and took Pat’s face in her hands, as I’d seen her do a hundred times. “You’re so cute when you’re mad,” she said. Pat melted, as he always did, but he had to have the last word. “If it were me, I’d be whining and crying like a big baby.”
“Amen to that,” her husband, John, said.
I had gone to Florida for a speaking engagement when I got the call about Barbara’s death. Stoic to the very end, Barbara hadn’t told anyone that the pain had become unbearable. Hearing that she was gone, I flung myself on the bed and buried my face in the pillow. It brought to mind the last time I was in a hotel in Florida, and Pat had called about Mike Sargent. I couldn’t help but wonder if I should ever schedule another event in the Sunshine State.
I returned home to find that Barbara’s memorial service in Virginia was scheduled for a time when Pat and I both had speaking engagements. Mine couldn’t be rescheduled, a ticketed event in Alabama that had been sold out for months. Pat’s couldn’t be postponed either; it was some hotshot award at USC that the university president was presenting to him at a fancy shindig. But his event wasn’t until the day after Barbara’s memorial service, so he could drive to Virginia first.
Before I left for Alabama, I baked a loaf of bread for the Warleys, my go-to for grieving families because sometimes a piece of bread is all we can manage when we’re sick with grief. After packing for both Pat and myself, I put the bread in the passenger seat of Pat’s car, along with a sympathy letter to John and the kids. Due to Pat’s notorious absentmindedness, I’d learned the hard way to tape notes on the steering wheel, front door, mirror, or wherever to get his attention. I also learned not to trust him to pack for himself, as embarrassing as it is to admit. It was less trouble to pack for him than to get wherever we were going and have to shop for shoes, a dress shirt, or even underwear. The man was pathetic. I had no choice but to take things into my own hands after we’d been married a couple of years and Pat was set to address the student body of Queens College in Charlotte. An hour before the talk, he buttoned the obviously too-loose pants to his suit and said to me, “Where’s my belt?”
Tell Me a Story Page 24
