ONE
AS I MANEUVERED THE UNFAMILIAR HONDA HATCHBACK THROUGH the foggy roads of South Carolina’s lowcountry, I wondered why I was making this torturous journey to see Mark Sanford. It was 1987, and I’d only been on a handful of dates with him, dates that were not overwhelmingly romantic. One such date was brunch with my parents (not exactly a recipe for romance) in New York around Thanksgiving. Shortly thereafter, he’d invited me to spend New Year’s Eve weekend with him and his family at their farm on the South Carolina coast. I had found the invitation intriguing because it was unexpected and because Mark was different from the men I’d dated before. I asked my mom for her two cents.
“He seems like a nice young man and you should go see him,” she said. “Go to South Carolina, it will be fun no matter what. And I’ll bet he has nice friends!”
I certainly agreed with her that it would be an adventure either way. Little did I know…
Mark had told me where to look for the car in the Charleston airport parking lot and that the directions for the fifty-mile drive to Coosaw, the family farm, would be on a clipboard on the passenger seat. I hadn’t anticipated the car would be a stick shift. Though I’d tried before, I didn’t really know how to drive a stick.
When I was a teenager, my friend Julie and I had tried to teach ourselves to drive a manual transmission truck on un-traveled back roads and small-town streets in northern Wisconsin. We laughed as we stalled and stalled, hardly able to go a few feet without having to start the truck again. We got around a bit, but we’d never taken the truck out in traffic and only drove in daylight. All these years later, I remembered the general idea and, with some bucking and stalling and squealing of wheels—and some out-loud questioning what I’d gotten myself into—I made it out of the airport as directed.
I had first met Mark seven months earlier, on Memorial Day weekend in the Hamptons, a summer destination for many young New Yorkers. My friend Moira and I had taken the train from Manhattan out to a house we were renting with a few other women, and we needed a ride to meet up with some friends at a party. Mark had driven to Long Island from Manhattan, where he had a summer job at Goldman Sachs. He and his friend Bob were dispatched to pick us up, arriving in this same beat-up two-door hatchback. The car seemed way too small for Mark’s tall, lanky frame, and with all of us packed in, it was a very tight fit indeed.
There was something attractive to me about Mark right from the start. I was used to Wall Street’s suspender-snapping braggarts, the kind of men I met often in the mergers and acquisitions department at the investment banking firm, Lazard Frères and Co., where I worked. Mark was pleasant and soft-spoken. We exchanged phone numbers and I remember hoping this southern gentleman would someday call. But I have to admit that I met other men that summer who inspired that hope in me. We were all young—I was 24—that summer and I didn’t think that this would turn into something long-term.
I tried to picture that charming southern man as I continued on my frustrating journey to see him. The Honda stalled out twice before I got onto Highway 17 and headed south. The road was narrow with innumerable potholes and obscured by thick lowcountry fog. I charted my progress by the few signs I saw along the way, noting towns with names such as Red Top, Ravenel, and Edisto. My knuckles turned white as I gripped the stick, keeping the car in third gear the whole way. I was afraid to shift gears, slow down, or stop, terrified of hitting a deer or alligator or one of the other creatures Mark had told me might be around these parts. This was a long way from Manhattan, and a longer way still from where I grew up in Chicago.
As I drove, I had plenty of time to consider Mark’s intentions in inviting me to meet his family and ring in the New Year. It wasn’t entirely clear if he was interested in me romantically; making me drive myself didn’t suggest that I was someone he was dying to see. Our time together in New York had been fun and engaging and, by this point, there was a flirtatious attraction between us, but things hadn’t progressed to true romance. I still wasn’t thinking long-term about him. What was he doing? What was I doing? After about forty-five minutes, I carefully pulled over when I saw a phone booth in Jacksonboro, then scarcely a town, with only a gas station and a closed-down restaurant. I tried to call Mark, but no one answered at Coosaw. I was thankful I also had the phone number of the home in Yemassee, where the New Year’s Eve pig roast was being held. I got the hostess, Evie Chace, on the phone and explained my situation.
“Good God, you’re by yourself in Jacksonboro!” she exclaimed. Evie told me that Mark was already at the party—he’d left Coosaw without waiting for me. She gave me directions to her house and said she would let Mark know I was on my way.
I arrived to the party well underway. Evie—wearing a necklace of blinking Christmas lights (how could I not love her immediately?)—welcomed me warmly and began to introduce me around conspiratorily: “This is Jenny, Mark’s date. Can you believe he left his car for her at the airport and she made it here on her own on a night like this?!”
Gradually I found my way around the room to Mark and his family. Mark gave me a peck on the cheek and coolly said, “Hey. Glad you made it” as though I’d just stopped in from down the street. He was completely relaxed and enjoying the party, not particularly focused on me or my comfort. Truth to tell, I started looking around for those cute friends Mom thought he might have.
Another handsome young man greeted me. He offered his hand politely, “Bill Sanford. Nice to meet you. You must be Jenny.”
“I am,” I responded, “and I am so glad to be here and not in that Honda.”
“Can I get you some wine?” asked Mark.
It’s about time! I thought. “Yes, thanks, that would be nice.”
Mark disappeared momentarily to get me a glass, and I began to look around the crowded dining room. As I scanned the room, I saw a woman who looked a lot like me, but dressed in tweedy hunting attire. She introduced herself.
“You muuust be Jenny!” she said, with dramatic emphasis. She continued: “I cannot believe Mark left a car for you. I’m Saahrah Sanford and we are all so excited to meet you.”
“That wasn’t a problem,” I said. “I just wish I knew how to drive stick!”
“John Sanford. Nice to meet you. You mean you really don’t know how to drive stick? What did you do?” asked another Sanford clone.
“I just drove,” I said, matter-of-factly.
“Our brother can be such a piiig!” said Sarah.
Mark and his siblings looked so much alike with their dark brown hair, warm hazel eyes, and just the right amount of freckles. What a good-looking family, I thought. As the wine hit my system and the warmth of the room and the people swept over me, I began to unwind from the harrowing drive, leaving my New York intensity behind. Mark started to introduce me around with pride, showing genuine interest in me. I was glad I had not complained about the drive or drawn attention to the strain I left behind when I entered the party. I felt I had just passed some test with Mark, and not complaining about what I’d endured was part of it.
After cocktails, Mark found me a jacket to wear when we went outside to sit around picnic tables draped in red-and-white checkered cloths. Dinner was roast pig and slaw, a delicious traditional South Carolinian feast that I would come to eat my fair share of in the years ahead. Mark said he had been celebrating New Year’s Eve at Evie’s with these folks as long as he could remember. This was just the type of familial gathering that was missing in my New York banking life, so far from my own family and home. Mark and I held hands by the open fire as fireworks exploded over the rice fields just beyond.
After leaving the party, we drove a short distance to Coosaw; blessedly, Mark took the wheel. He had described the farm as rough and tumble, yet beautiful. By the time we arrived, however, I could barely see anything in the pitch-black night. We formally welcomed the New Year with a sweet midnight kiss alone on a dock overlooking the river, the fog hovering close over the water.
As I fell asleep that night i
n a small cabin not far from the main house, the pride I felt from having passed the test fell away a bit and I began to wonder why I had to be tested at all. Tonight it seemed Mark was actively testing my mettle, assessing my tolerance for what exactly I didn’t know. There still seemed to be a lot I didn’t know about him. But even as I was uncertain about him, I certainly was interested and wanted to know more.
I knew that Mark’s father, a surgeon, had died after a long battle with Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS) when Mark was still in college. He was buried at Coosaw, sacred ground for the Sanford family. Mark was now in his last year of the graduate business program at the University of Virginia, and I could tell he was driven; he talked about a big future for himself in real estate. But I didn’t have a sense of his dreams beyond his ambitions; yet knowing about those dreams suddenly seemed of interest to me.
I have always thought of love as more than just a feeling. To me love is a verb, an action that you engage in every day through the things you do for those you cherish. I had had a serious relationship in college and thought I was really in love. In time, that feeling faded, and my commitment wore thin. In my first years on Wall Street, I’d had a few brief relationships, some more intense than others. As a result, I knew what it felt like to look one day at a man I had strong feelings for and realize I couldn’t possibly spend my life with him. I didn’t want that kind of relationship anymore.
Mark’s even-keeled nature was part of the intrigue for me. Perhaps developing a friendship with Mark before the sparks began to fly was part of his appeal. Gradually getting to know each other, slowly opening our hearts was novel to me personally and suggested the kind of old-fashioned love I’d heard about from my parents and grandparents.
I had long witnessed my parent’s complete dedication to one another. Theirs still is a steady, solid love, and they’ve stayed committed to each other through fifty years and my mother’s long battle with melanoma. My grandparents were fiercely committed to each other, too. In my Gramps, Bolton Sullivan, I saw a passionate love of his wife, literally until his death.
Gramps lived the last ten years of his life in a great deal of pain from damage to the nerve endings in his feet. He would spend hours in his chair by the window at their home in Florida and often, when I visited, he would tell me of his love for Nana. Even as he felt his body deteriorating, he repeatedly said he wanted to live because he didn’t want to leave his beloved wife. Not one for sentimentality in the same way, and to diffuse the inherent sadness in what Gramps said, Nana quipped: “I’d go today if the good Lord would have me, but I’m not sure He wants a grumpy old woman like me.”
By the time my grandfather was ninety-four, he had become quite frail. Nana’s health had also deteriorated after she broke her hip and she developed congestive heart failure. She was sick enough that a priest was called in to bless her and read her last rites. As the priest prayed over Nana with family nearby, Gramps quietly closed his eyes in the next room and died. Incredibly sweet love. Thinking she had gone, he had clearly decided peacefully to join her; he just couldn’t fathom being separated. Just as Gramps was absolutely true to his love until the end, Nana was true to her loveable, cantankerous self, too: She recovered and lived many more months happily playing bridge in a nursing home!
I hadn’t yet found the man who had inspired that kind of devotion, the kind of man worthy of the kind of love I knew I was capable of giving. Honestly, I hadn’t been looking too hard. Although I hadn’t experienced it yet myself, I expected that the platitudes about true love were absolutely true. I imagined that it would involve understanding, patience, sacrifice, selflessness, and commitment. If I was going to commit, I would give it my all. I wanted to pledge loyalty to another person, to a set of values, goals, and dreams, and to a family. I realize that to some this might seem the opposite of romantic. But I saw from watching and talking to my parents that passion and romance come and go through the seasons of life; what sustains you are shared values and common goals. I found that incredibly romantic.
Just a few hours later, Mark came to the small cabin where I slept and handed me old hunting gear so we could hike to a freshwater pond in the woods to watch the sun rise. The sun was coming up as I slipped my feet into the rubber boots and donned a thread-worn jacket. Mark held my hand as we worked our way in silence to a spot in the reeds at the side of the pond where dozens of mallards and buffleheads flew in to feed. As the daylight grew brighter, I slowly became aware of the beauty of this place. Egrets and blue herons soared gracefully over the still water. Mark named the creatures as if they were old friends and wasn’t at all anxious about the alligators he spotted nestled in the pluff mud for warmth. City girl that I was—and largely still am—I thought they were logs at the water’s edge.
As the sun rose, I soaked in the magical beauty of Coosaw, a large tract along a tidal basin just past the mouth of the Combahee River. The sparkling waters of the river served as a backdrop for palmettos and large live oak trees draped with clumps of gently swinging Spanish moss that surrounded us. This was a place outside of time, a world that filled me with peace. But I was seduced by more than the natural beauty of the landscape. I could see that this was where Mark’s heart resided, and as it became clear what the place had meant to him over the years, I began to see it in the same way.
Mark was a junior in high school when his father was diagnosed with ALS and the family—Mark, his two brothers, sister, and their mother—moved from Florida to their summer home on Coosaw, the place they thought he’d be happiest in his final days. Although the doctors had given his father only six months to live, his dad died almost six years later when Mark was finishing his undergraduate degree. The eldest of his siblings, Mark went to great effort to save this family home. As his father declined, his focus on spending all his time with the family kept him from preparing financially for what would happen after he died. When his father passed, Mark discovered how expensive it was to maintain the farm and understood that he needed to raise money immediately to pay ongoing farm expenses and the inheritance taxes.
The estate advisers told him he would have to sell the farm to meet the family’s obligations, but Mark refused. Although he was only a young man, Mark stepped into the role of head of the family and made some difficult decisions to save the farm. He sold the herd of cattle that had grazed the land for years, and reluctantly let the seven full-time employees go. Much of the maintenance of the farm had to be deferred, unless Mark and his siblings could do it themselves. This was a painful time for the family, a time of stress and hardship when every day Mark feared that he might make a choice that would result in them losing this precious homestead. Yet he kept his vision clearly focused on what mattered to him and the family and, through his discipline and their collective effort, they managed to keep Coosaw.
When the sun was higher on the horizon, I walked with Mark back to the main house, a lovely but worn old brick structure. Though technically a plantation, in the light of day I could see why Mark and his siblings referred to Coosaw as a farm. To me the word “plantation” conjures an image of a grand old antebellum home with servants bringing trays of mint juleps to the veranda for men dressed in seersucker and women in cotton dresses. Coosaw certainly wasn’t that. But it also didn’t fit my Midwestern idea of a farm with rows of corn and barns and cows and chickens.
Scattered around the main house were several falling-down red-roofed barns with faded and chipped white paint. Old tractors and farm equipment in various states of disrepair dotted the landscape, along with a few small hunting cabins. The Sanfords had a homemade fix for everything. They had replaced the rusted-out floor of a jeep with a sheet of plywood. Sure, Coosaw was tumbledown, but I was completely charmed.
We entered the incredibly comfortable and lived-in main house. The décor was tired, the upholstery faded and tattered, and generally the place was a mess, with dirty boots and shotguns heaped in the entryway and clothes drying by the fire. Mark’s family and a few friends had co
ngregated in the kitchen. Everyone was pitching in to prepare a big breakfast, swapping stories of hunts from the weekend, or catching up on each other’s lives. When the meal was set out, we all paused, holding hands in a circle for the blessing. As soon as the meal was done, everyone was up, cleaning the kitchen or setting off to tackle one of the many chores that had been discussed over breakfast: tending the dikes, grading the dirt road, moving the tractor, fixing the dirt bike, or cleaning the guns.
I was put on the kitchen crew. While tidying the kitchen, surrounded by family photos of Sanfords at Coosaw or at the old home in Florida, I got the chance to chat at length with Mark’s mother, Peg. She spoke of how delighted she was to have all of her children home. I was flooded with a sense of Mark, of his tight-knit family, of Sanfordness. Even though we came from very different backgrounds and parts of the country, it became clear to me there that we had a great number of things in common.
My big Catholic Midwestern family was, in its way, as close knit and fiercely loyal as Mark’s Southern Protestant clan. I was raised in Winnetka, Illinois, a well-to-do suburb of Chicago. Both my parents grew up there as well, and my siblings and I all attended the same grade school, Saints Faith, Hope & Charity. I was the second child of five and the oldest of three girls in a row. It sure seemed that the girls dominated the Sullivan household, despite the presence of our brothers Bolton and John. (Perhaps that is just how I wistfully see it now, looking back from this world of mine that is so completely populated by men and boys.)
Our childhood was a happy one, safe and secure. We walked or rode our bikes to school, came home for lunch daily, and even in the dead of the winter, Mom routinely sent us out to play, warning us not to come in until dinner. There were always kids everywhere. In addition to my siblings, within just a few blocks we had two sets of nine first cousins. Our family gatherings never had fewer than twenty people and frequently as many as fifty. While I was studious and a bit shy, I was never lonely. The family just opposite our home had ten children, including the youngest one, who had bells attached to his shoes so his family could find him when he wandered away, often ending up lost in our house. I now can see this setting as wonderfully old-fashioned and simple; it was in many ways idyllic. I considered us blessed.
Staying True Page 2
