by Ad Hudler
Boone Parley, head of the membership committee, sat in the daytime dining room of Sugar Day, awaiting his mother and talking with Comer McDonald, the club’s manager. Though neither would say it out loud, both men had spent much time pondering the significance of the three powerful Yankee men’s snubbing of Sugar Day, and just that morning, as if someone had been reading their minds, an item in Chatter gave them extra gristle to chew on.
Dear Chatter: To all you Old Selby families: Your names are fading just like Norma Desmond and the silent film stars. You are outdated and out of touch. You’re losing your grip on this town. See you at the bottom of the food chain.
Boone wondered: What was it about the privileges of membership that these men could not understand and appreciate? Who could not like Sugar Day? Who could not embrace Bulldog Saturdays in the bar, when the men of The Reservation would gather to eat boiled peanuts and drink bourbon as they cheered on their alma mater? Who could not like the Fourth of July with their private fireworks display and low-country boil, a stew of crawfish, spicy sausage, tomatoes, potatoes and corn served poolside, with corn bread and champagne in sterling-silver goblets? Who could not like the fellowship and sanctuary from their wives that Sugar Day provided? Boone lived for his Saturday mornings when he would meet Donny and Langston and Dunill on the crest of the tee-off for hole one, the toes of his brown-leather, saddle-style golf shoes darkened by cool morning dew; his aluminum, insulated cup of morning coffee warm in his hands; the verdant, rolling landscape enshrouded in a light morning haze; the mockingbirds that cockily swooped and darted from magnolia tree to Georgia pine to the top of the Greek Revival clubhouse, chirping their schizophrenic collection of sounds that hadn’t changed since Boone was a child growing up in the white Italianate on the sixth green.
“Here comes your momma,” Comer McDonald said. He and Boone stood up from the table to greet her.
“Miss Evelyn.” Comer leaned in to air-kiss her cheek. “You’re lookin’ beautiful as ever.”
Wearing her cobalt-blue St. John knits and a simple strand of pearls, her gray hair pulled back into a bun, Evelyn Parley had just come from a board meeting at the Telbottom House, which was not only regional headquarters for the Daughters of the American Revolution but also Selby’s only architectural casualty of the Civil War. After burning Atlanta, Sherman, for unknown reasons, marched right on past Perry County and Selby, ignoring her, as if she had nothing to offer and was not worth his soldiers’ trouble. It created in Selbyites an odd inferiority complex that lingered to this day. Indeed, when the Olympics came to Atlanta, Selby was the only second-tier Georgia city that did not have a sporting venue; it never even occurred to local leaders to ask for one.
Because of Sherman’s snubbing, the city could now boast of more historic structures on the National Register than even Savannah or Charleston or Macon, but it also had turned the town into the crippled man who gets left behind while his compatriots go off to fight then come back with war wounds and bravado and stories of valor. Instead, all Selby had to show was a single, accidental wound from an errant cannonball that Sherman’s troops had intended for a passing munitions barge floating down the Muscogee River. The black orb flew across the watery divide, over the granite and marble mausoleums of Rosemont Cemetery, almost grazing a second-floor gable of the historic courthouse before arcing downward and into an open window of a wealthy textile merchant’s home where it unceremoniously landed with a thud at the base of the stairs in the vestibule. Within days, it was soldered into place and became a bittersweet landmark for what old-Selby families called The War Between the States.
“I hope I’m not interrupting you boys,” Evelyn Parley said.
“Oh, no, ma’am,” said Comer. “I was just fixin’ to go to a meetin’. Y’all have a good lunch. The lobster bisque is pretty good today.” He winked and walked away, disappearing through the swinging stainless-steel door of the kitchen.
Boone helped his mother with her chair. He then instinctively unbuttoned his navy blue blazer and seated himself.
“How was your meeting?” he asked her.
“Well, it got a little ugly today.”
“What happened, Momma?”
Evelyn looked at the painted turquoise fingernails of the African American waitress who leaned over to fill her glass with sweet tea. “There’s a new girl on the board who thinks we need to rewrite the little cards that go with the exhibits.”
“From Selby?”
“From California. The wife of the new president of WSEL. She says that the exhibit’s funny, can you believe that? She says the writing sounds paranoid. And I spoke up and tried to tell her that those cards were written a hundred years ago, and even if you don’t agree with ’em, we should not be messing with history. And anyway, she starts to get ugly with Marlyn Finstrom who’s trying to keep control of the meeting. And this woman, Boone, this woman started pointing her finger at everyone like it was a gun, and she was saying how we were the laughingstock of the South. And I’ll tell you what, we just sat there and didn’t say anything. There was just no need to yell at the board like that.”
“No, ma’am.”
“And on the way there, to the meeting, someone honked their horn at me for no good reason. I can’t remember anyone ever honking their horn at me.”
Evelyn took a drink of her tea then wiped her mouth with a pink linen napkin that was the signature of Sugar Day.
“Anyway, I’m not here to tell you about my day, Boone. I’m here to talk about Suzanne. I’m concerned about her.”
Evelyn thought Suzanne seemed manic of late, rushing to and fro like Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, as if a door were going to slam shut any second, and happiness would vanish as quickly as it appeared. Convinced that Suzanne had been avoiding her more than usual—indeed, Suzanne screened her calls through the answering machine—Evelyn Parley called Boone the previous week to ask about his wife, pitching at him question after question that he could not answer: Who was Suzanne’s ob-gyn? Had she found a pediatrician yet? Was she sick in the mornings? Which bedroom were she and John David remodeling for the nursery?
“Well, I did find out about the pediatrician, Momma,” Boone said. “She’s going to her momma’s pediatrician in south Selby.”
“Do you know him?”
Boone shook his head. “I’ve seen his name pop up a few places, but, no, I don’t know him.”
“What’s his name?”
“Madison. She doesn’t know his first name.”
Evelyn shook her head. “Why did she choose a south Selby doctor?”
“I don’t know, Momma.”
“You know I called and offered her Dr. Stinson. He’s not taking new patients but he agreed to see Suzanne.”
Evelyn sighed. “You know I’ve tried with your wife, Boone. I’ve tried very, very hard.”
She thought back to the time she took Suzanne to pick out her pattern at Beverly Bremmer’s Silver Shop on Peachtree Road in Atlanta. Just as Evelyn feared, Suzanne immediately turned toward the overly ornate Versailles pattern and then, even worse, to the Edgemont, a new Queen Anne–inspired pattern from Gorham that featured highlights of gold that twisted upward around the handles like a serpent.
Evelyn excused herself and Suzanne from the salesperson and walked away from the glass counter, leading Suzanne with her hand around her arm, to a corner of the store where the julep cups and sterling frames were on display.
“Darlin’,” she whispered to her future daughter-in-law. “It’s called silverware for a reason.”
“What do you have at home?” Suzanne asked.
“Chantilly,” she answered. “You can’t go wrong with Chantilly, Suzanne. It’s dignified but not fussy. You want something that cleans up easily but looks nice. Always look for things that are both practical and beautiful but not tacky. Versailles is overdone, and it’s hard to get polishing paste out of those tiny crevices.”
Despite her coaching over the years, Suzanne continued to d
isappoint her mother-in-law. Evelyn did not like her having two cars, both the Lexus and the matching black Suburban, and she thought a three-car garage was vulgar. She did not like the china with Fabergé eggs painted on the gold-rimmed plates. She did not like the quail-and-pomegranate-motif, Lacy-Champion rug that was custom designed to match the colors of Suzanne’s dining room. She did not like how Suzanne went out of her way to buy only clothes and accessories that were easily recognized or specifically branded, mainly the interlocking C’s of Chanel on her shoe buckles and lipstick and compact. Nor did she like how John David had taken pictures of every table in Suzanne and Boone’s house so that Josephine, whom Evelyn shared with Suzanne, would know exactly where to return things after dusting.
Evelyn shut her large black menu and handed it to the waitress.
“I don’t know why I even bother looking at this,” she said. “I’ll have what I always have—the niçoise salad.”
“Sir?”
“I’ll have the fillet, medium rare.”
“You want the house béarnaise sauce?”
“Please.”
Methodically, habitually, like a flight attendant serving drinks in slow motion, Evelyn carefully pulled her reading glasses from her face, folded then pushed them back into their floral-patterned sleeve. She then picked her purse up off the floor, clicked it open, and gently set her glasses inside. She had carried this brown-leather purse for sixteen years, needing only to replace the buckle on the strap after a frightening encounter with the unforgiving automatic doors of the train in the Atlanta airport. Once each month, Evelyn had Josephine nourish the leather with mink oil.
“Now,” she said, folding her hands on the table before her. “Boone, as I was saying, I’m worried about Suzanne. She doesn’t look well.”
“Momma, she’s pregnant.”
“No, darlin’, it’s more than that. She looks like she’s living on the edge … like she’s fixin’ to fall out of a tree house.”
Boone thought of the weathered, wooden tree house still perched in the live oak behind his parents’ home, where he used to hide his Playboy magazines in a cardboard Chiquita carton he and Reilly Conover found in the Dumpster behind Sugar Day. He wondered now: Could they still be up there after fifteen years? It was possible; the two lowest boards, which ascended the trunk of the tree like buttons on a shirt, had long ago rotted and fallen away. Boone told himself that before his baby boy could climb, he’d need to replace those boards and retrieve the contraband literature … and the old, navy blue, Sunday school sock he would use to wipe off the pages.
“She’s under a lot of stress, Momma. She’s got that Dogwood Festival party on her mind. You know we’re havin’ the Dogwood party.”
“Yes, I know,” she answered. “Everyone knows, Boone. Suzanne’s made sure of that.”
“Well, aren’t you happy about that? It’s an honor to have that party. I’m glad it’s staying with an old Selby family like ours.”
“Is she taking prenatal vitamins, Boone?”
“I don’t know, Momma. How would I know that?”
“Because you’re her husband.”
“She’s been sleeping in. I don’t see Suzanne many mornings now.”
“If she was taking vitamins she’d have that healthy, rosy glow that pregnant ladies get, and she doesn’t have that glow, Boone. She looks malnourished and all deep-eyed. She isn’t still drinking, is she?”
“No, Momma, she’s not drinking.”
“Suzanne likes her chardonnay, Boone.”
“She’s not drinking, Momma.”
“Well, I don’t know what it is, but she just looks frantic to me. Bless her heart, that girl has never been a happy one.”
Evelyn cocked her head and looked beyond Boone’s shoulder, at a gilt-framed watercolor of two sailboats.
“But then again,” she said, thoughtfully, as if speaking to herself and not her son, “she seems happier now, like she’s not as lost. Like she’s found something she’s looking for.”
“Momma, I don’t understand what you’re sayin’.”
Evelyn exhaled loudly and looked at her son. “I just can’t shake this feeling that something’s going to happen. Something’s not right, Boone,” she said, spearing a vinaigrette-coated olive. “Something’s not right. Mothers know these things.”
Years ago—how much of this was his fault … and how much hers?—Boone had exiled his wife to a deserted island in a sea of the mind to which he’d never return. It was nothing he’d done consciously, as is so often the case with marriages that take a wrong turn, but he slammed shut a door in his mind on the day he learned that Suzanne had lied to him about her ability to conceive. She trapped him for personal gain knowing very well that the Parley name would die in his hands. It was murder on her part, and she had made him an unwitting accomplice.
And through these dry years, though they still had sex and dined together in the evenings, Suzanne had become as vague and indistinguishable as the furniture in the house she had commandeered. Though she took his arm at social functions and dinners at friends’ homes, though she would ride next to him on the way to Christ Church every Sunday, he had ceased to see his wife, and she him. That Thanksgiving, looking at Suzanne from across his parents’ dining room table, he noticed her hair looked shorter and asked her when she’d cut it. “Labor Day,” she said. “Do you like it?”
It was a marriage of motions, a cohabitation similar to sitting through a mediocre movie in a pleasantly cool theater on a blazing August day, neither happy nor stimulated but not upset enough to leave and face the sweltering heat outside. And by the time Boone finally reached the summit of his anger and began to ponder his descent to détente, Suzanne had retreated into her own world, wherever it was she went, whatever it was she did every day with John David. The timing of their personal evolutions, he realized now, had been awful.
But then, this miracle. And this resurrection of feelings akin to the smell of freshly overturned soil. What did it mean when a man’s opinion of his wife could change overnight just because she was carrying his child? Was she happier because he was being nicer or vice versa? Suzanne no longer complained when he kissed her before shaving. She’d been letting him leave the floor lamp on the side of his wing-back chair that he preferred. And one night last week during dinner, she smiled coyly and slipped down her chair as if it were a slide, submerging herself beneath the table and coming up for air at his crotch, where the sound of giggles intermingled with the clinking of his belt buckle as she undid his pants.
“No, Momma,” Boone said, trying to contain a smile. “Things are just fine.”
The Mediterranean-looking man standing at the entrance to the Prada boutique had wavy, black hair shiny with pomade and teeth that were white and strong and carnivorous looking. His thin but muscular torso appeared to be shrink-wrapped in an ecru silk T-shirt.
“Great top,” he said to the woman passing by.
“Thank you,” Suzanne Parley answered. “It’s Pucci.”
“Of course,” he said. “Not Prada, but I’m sure you already have some Prada.”
“No,” Suzanne answered. “I don’t think so.”
He raised his eyebrows, slowly, flirtatiously, as if they were a piece of clothing he was peeling away from his coffee-with-cream skin. “Would you like some Prada?” he asked.
“Well, I don’t know,” Suzanne answered.
“Please,” he said, standing aside and motioning with his arm to enter the boutique. “Come in. Let me show you some beautiful things. Would you like some champagne?”
Finally, someone in a chi-chi boutique on the second floor of Neiman Marcus in Lenox Square was offering Suzanne champagne! For years, in her weekly trips to Atlanta, she had watched this from afar and always wondered why other women, most of them not as attractive as she, were chosen for special treatment, and she was not. But why today? She was certain it had to be the Pucci, which she’d bought on her last trip to town.
Thrilled, Suz
anne leaned back in the blocky, black-leather chair with chrome legs and reached for a crystal flute that he presented to her on a silver tray. She had never seen such a flute, tall and triangular and sharp, like an elongated, upside-down pyramid.
Piece by piece, he brought out his wares, and as Suzanne absorbed this personal parade of haute couture and drank this handsome young man’s expensive champagne, she was distressed to discover that she did not like clothes from Prada; they were so bleak and dark and mean looking.
“What about somethin’ lighter?” she asked.
“Ma’am?”
“Somethin’ more colorful,” she said. “Like this Pucci top.”
“Ahh, yes. I have exactly what you’re looking for.”
He disappeared through a doorway and returned a few minutes later with a clear plastic raincoat trimmed in black. Suzanne thought it looked no different from the plastic, taffy-thick raincoats her mother used to buy at Walgreens.
“These came in today,” he said. “I haven’t even put them out on the floor yet. This,” he said, draping it over his arm, “is the rage of Manhattan. No one in Atlanta has one of these. Not yet, anyway. Can I help you with it?”
Suzanne stood, and he slipped the raincoat onto her back, and when she turned around to face him Suzanne saw his hands coming toward her. Without asking, he began to click shut the round, black snaps of the coat, starting at her breasts and slowly moving downward.
“Oh, no, I can do that,” Suzanne said.
“It is my pleasure, madam.”
He continued downward, past her stomach … her waist … her knees … gently brushing the back of his hands against her with the randomness of a windsock in a breeze. Suzanne looked down at the back of his neck and admired the way the curls of his black hair crested and broke over his skin, reminding her of waves on a deserted beach. And then she tried to imagine this man lying on this beach, and, unlike Boone, he would have no hair on his chest or stomach or back. Instead, the surface of his body would resemble the Sahara from five hundred feet up, a smooth landscape with ripples and rises formed not by sandstorms but ribs and muscles. And then, she would trace these undulations with her fingers, dragging them across his sun-warmed skin.
