St. Dale

by Sharyn McCrumb

  Surely, though, rural Wilkesboro would be beyond the reach of her Rolodex. At the other end of the telephone, Terence had sat at his own desk looking at this week’s page on his Papini leather desk diary. Would it be convenient for you to attend the funeral of your biological father? he asked himself. He sighed and drew an X through all the appointments for the next two days. He cradled the receiver between his jaw and shoulder as he wrote. His mother was still rattling on about how she had come to be notified about the funeral. From the law firm who had represented the deceased, apparently. Terence, who was consulting his planner, hadn’t been paying close attention.

  “Will you know anybody there, Mother?” he asked when she finally paused for breath.

  Terence heard a gasp and then silence, a sound which he recognized as his mother’s moment of deliberation before saying something cruel in the gentlest possible way. Pas devant les domestiques might be her motto. Or devant le monde, perhaps, in her case, because she considered most of the rest of humanity to be inferior in some way to her own little circle. Not that she was ever rude about it. Heaven forbid. Her response to this was to treat other people with a formal civility, a tacit sympathy for their social handicaps: lack of money, lack of pedigree, physical defects, unprestigious alma mater. When Terence had brought school friends home to visit, he always knew where each one stood in his mother’s estimation by the scrupulous courtesy which she displayed toward those found wanting. “Your mother is so sweet,” his public school friends from church would say, and Terence would writhe in silent mortification, knowing that he had seen the last of them.

  “No, dear,” she said at last. “I wouldn’t know anybody down there. He never remarried, so there’s only you for family, I suppose. I had met his parents, of course. Simple, earnest people but of course they died years ago.”

  Simple people. And I’ll bet you bought them really expensive presents while you were their daughter-in-law, Terence was thinking. That was another velvet subtlety in Claudia Paxton Clark’s rules for killing with kindness. If she really liked and respected you, she gave you jokey, trifling presents on Christmas or your birthday, because it was assumed that you could buy whatever you really needed or wanted. Only social inferiors received elegant, costly gifts. The fact that most of the recipients never saw her generosity as an insult in no way diminished her satisfaction in the gesture.

  Terence knew she didn’t want to go to the funeral. Wouldn’t go. If he insisted, she would reluctantly agree to accompany him, but it wouldn’t happen. The night before they were due to leave, something would come up to prevent her going. A virus, a domestic crisis, car trouble-anything vaguely plausible, though never, of course, true. Anyhow, he was in New York and she was in Washington, so they couldn’t travel together, and she would be no help at all with “ordinary people,” so why should he bother to insist on her coming? He would get a direct flight from LaGuardia to Charlotte, and rent a car there for the rest of the journey. Getting a few days off from the brokerage shouldn’t be a problem. After all, you could only go to your father’s funeral once-well, you could go any amount of times in these dysfunctional days, Terence corrected himself, but this was his biological father, and surely that funeral was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Anyhow, Merrill Clark, his stepfather ever since he could remember, was such a fitness zealot that he would probably outlive everybody else in the family, so surely this paternal funeral was a rare occurrence in Terence’s life. He did not mind going alone.

  There was one way in which his mother might be helpful, though. “What should I wear?” he asked.

  Again the delicate hesitation. “Well, I hardly think it matters, Terence. Heaven knows what the rest of the mourners will be wearing. Anything from kilts to bib overalls, I should imagine. I think you should wear what you’d wear to anybody’s funeral. Don’t dress down, of course.”

  “All right. My new black suit. The Armani.”

  “Perhaps. Or even something a little less…obtrusive. Anyhow, darling, I think it’s very brave and martyrish of you to go to the funeral. You hardly ever take time off work for anything, poor you. I wish it could be a wedding-you know, something less dreary than this for your outing.” She paused again, and Terence waited for the rest of it. “Actually, Merrill and I have a dinner party this weekend. You know, the congressman’s wife has written a children’s book and I’ve put together a little group of people she might like to meet. Published people.”

  Terence nodded to himself. This was the actual way that his mother gave gifts: by introducing people she liked to people who would be useful to them. Sometimes he thought of her as an elegant silk-clad spider, tweaking her web each time a new fly alighted. The mention of the dinner party had been intended as the broadest of intimations that she could not possibly attend this funeral, in case he had been too distracted to register her previous reluctance.

  “You needn’t go,” said Terence. “After all, it’s only strangers. I don’t suppose it matters to him anymore. I just think I ought to attend. Thanks for letting me know.”

  “Safe journey, darling,” she said. “And, of course, Merrill and I will send along a sweet little wreath.”

  The most expensive one in the shop, thought Terence, replacing the phone.

  On the red-eye flight the next morning, he tried to tell himself that he was not going out of vulgar curiosity-he hoped he wasn’t-but he didn’t suppose that one could sincerely mourn a total stranger, even if you shared half his DNA, and the truth was that he did wonder how his expensive and elegant mother could have come to marry the man she called “the hog farmer.” If she mentioned him at all, which happened no more than half a dozen times that Terence could remember.

  When he was twelve, he had pieced together some of the story from old photo albums in a trunk in the attic. In fading snapshots, he saw the progression of his mother’s coming of age: the times they are a-changing, indeed. This impossibly young version of her was so strange to him that he found himself thinking of the girl in the snapshots as a seventies’ Barbie doll. There were high school photos in which a laughing Claudia Paxton with a Jackie Kennedy hairstyle and a watermelon-pink sheath dress posed with her girlfriends beside a Corvette convertible. There she was, a few pictures later, in a white prom dress beside the obligatory crew-cut jock in a white sport coat. Graduation gown, cradling a bouquet of roses. And then came the college pictures. The hairstyle changed after that and so did her outfits. Gone were the preppy clothes and the Breck Girl good looks. The collegiate Claudia, decked out in army fatigues, hunched over a folk guitar, scowling at the camera through a curtain of lank hair. Counterculture Claudia, cigarette in hand, sprawled on the grass with a gaggle of equally scruffy companions. A young marine began turning up in the pictures after that. Terence knew who he was because a version of that face looked back at him from the mirror. This was Tom Palmer, the soldier from Camp LeJeune, who met Claudia Paxton at a folk music concert, and three months later eloped with her to Dillon, South Carolina. It hadn’t lasted long. The young sergeant from the hills of Carolina and the genteel belle from the Tidewater had been chalk and cheese, and when the passion cooled, there was nothing to keep them together. Well, nothing except Terence himself, but apparently that hadn’t been enough.

  After a few months of playing house as the wife of an enlisted man, trying to live on his army pay while her stock dividends piled up in the bank, young Claudia had taken the baby and gone back to her parents’ house. If her parents had wanted her back, they had used the perfect strategy: no hint of disapproval toward the déclassé groom with the high school education, but refusing to provide any financial assistance to the newlyweds. Terence didn’t know if his father had followed his wife and son to the coast, or if he had ever made any effort to save the marriage. If so, it hadn’t worked.

  A divorce, handled by the family lawyer, had ended Claudia’s “Adolescent Rebellion,” and she had never strayed again. Her second marriage, when Terence was four, had been to Merrill, an
investment banker and eminently respectable son of friends of her parents. He supposed that they were happy as a couple. He had no complaints about the courteous but distant Merrill as a stepfather, and if the man was dull, he was also reliable and prosperous. Perhaps Claudia had experienced enough drama in her year as a sergeant’s wife to last her a lifetime.

  Around him, the sonorous words of the funeral oration droned on.

  Terence kept his head bowed in what he hoped was a respectful pose for a next-of-kin, but his mind would not focus on the service. He kept thinking a dozen other thoughts: that he could have worn his Armani after all and not looked out of place among the other mourners; that the minister did not look or sound like a television evangelist; that the flowers were all real; and that the apple-blossomed hillside looked like a nice place to spend eternity.

  Now that he considered it, the decal on the coffin had not really surprised him. It was exactly the sort of thing he had been expecting at the funeral for the father he never knew. It was the only thing that had lived up-or down-to his expectations of the burial of the man his mother always spoke of as “the hog farmer.” He hadn’t seen any hogs, either, come to think of it, which was a pity, because Terence was fond of animals. He had never been allowed to have a pet when he was growing up, but lately he had been thinking of getting, perhaps, a cat. He didn’t think he could manage a dog in a small Manhattan apartment.

  “A pet is a lot of work,” his secretary remarked when he’d mentioned the idea to her.

  Not as much work as people, Terence thought.

  At last the minister finished his homily and invited those present to share their reminiscences of the deceased. Terence felt a moment of panic, envisioning all eyes turning to him, but that had not happened.

  Instead, Vance Howard stepped forward and nodded to the assembled mourners. “If Tom is listening to all this somewhere, then he’ll probably laugh when I say how much I’m going to miss him. We’re all going to miss him. He was an original.”

  When the services ended, most of the people lingered for a few more minutes in the spring sunshine, talking quietly among themselves. Then they shook hands with Terence and walked back down the hill to their cars. A few stragglers accompanied him back to the house. A few minutes earlier, Mrs. Nash had touched his arm and whispered that she was going back to the house to set out the food. Before he could whisper his thanks, she had hurried away.

  The white frame farm house sat in a grove of old oak trees in the shelter of the hill. Two stories high with a pitched roof, its columns supported a square, covered porch above the front door. The sunny kitchen, a one-story addition at the back of the house, had obviously been added many years after the original structure had been built. Terence supposed that this was the Palmer family homestead, but he knew nothing about that half of his heritage.

  On a starched linen tablecloth, Mrs. Nash had set out plates of fried chicken and bowls of potato salad, sliced tomatoes, deviled eggs, and a glass pitcher of iced tea. Now she was stacking plain dark earthenware plates at one end of the table next to a tray of silverware. Beside it was an assortment of glassware-none of it plastic, he noted.

  “This is really kind of you,” said Terence, nodding toward the laden table. “It looks lovely. Did you bring the plates and silver from home?”

  Sarah Nash gave him an appraising look. “All this belonged to your father,” she said. “So you can tell your mother he didn’t eat off paper plates.”

  The shot hit home, for he had been thinking exactly that. “The others will be along soon, I guess,” he told her. “They stopped to talk to that older gentleman in the black suit. Mr. Johnson. Who is he, anyhow? A senator? Everyone else seemed awed by him, so I didn’t like to ask.”

  Mrs. Nash smiled. “That was Junior Johnson,” she said. “Now, why don’t you look around a bit? He left everything to you, you know.”

  Terence nodded. He had been wondering what on earth to do with all of it. The furniture looked old, comfortable, and well-made, in keeping with the style of the house, but he could hardly turn his tiny Manhattan apartment into a set for The Waltons. But uppermost in his mind was what she had just said. “Junior Johnson? The Junior Johnson?”

  Sarah Nash smiled. “That was him. I didn’t think you’d know who he was.”

  “Of course I know who he is. He’s in the lyrics of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Cadillac Ranch,’ for heaven’s sake. Junior Johnson came to my father’s funeral?”

  Sarah Nash’s expression did not change but there was a twinkle of pleasure in her eyes. “Well, he lives around here,” she said.

  “And I guess I expected him to look like Jeff Bridges. You know, the movie. Last American Hero. You forget how long ago that was. He’s older now. Of course he is.” He looked down musingly at the hand that had shaken the hand of Junior Johnson. “I love that film. Haven’t seen it in years.”

  Sarah Nash was still studying him, as if she were trying to guess his thoughts. Finally she said, “Well, you own it now. There’s a copy in the den. It was Tom’s favorite movie, too. All of this is yours now.”

  He nodded. “I’m not sure what to do about that,” he said.

  “I don’t think it matters what you do, as long as you do it intelligently.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She considered it. “Would you know what a David Hockney painting looks like?”

  “A Hockney?” Terence blinked. “I think so. Well, in a museum, I would. And if it had a swimming pool in the foreground. Maybe not if I found one unframed in an attic.”

  She gave him a tight smile, and went back to rearranging the covered dishes. “Well, don’t worry about that. You won’t find one here, nor a Rembrandt nor a Faberge egg. Your father was an art collector all the same, though, and some of his things are more valuable than you might suppose. I don’t believe you’d recognize the sort of art he went in for, so I thought I’d mention it to you before you start giving museum pieces to Goodwill.”

  Terence looked around, seeing now not a shabby old farmhouse, but a carefully arranged set piece of American primitives. He thought the furniture must be Stickley. He had seen pieces in the apartments of some of his artsy colleagues. Of course! It was made in North Carolina. The old man must have bought it years ago, probably for a song. Terence wondered if his father had known how much the pieces would go for today. He probably did.

  The pottery was more of a problem, though. He didn’t recognize it at all. There was a display of ceramics in the china cabinet behind the table, but one shelf display in particular looked so amateurish that he might have supposed his father had taken beginning ceramics classes for a hobby. More importantly, he wondered if Mrs. Nash had assumed that he had only come for the pickings, rather than out of duty. Perhaps she was testing him.

  “I have a trust fund,” he said at last. “And a job on Wall Street.”

  The tight smile again. “Well, I didn’t suppose you needed the proceeds from a yard sale, Terence, and I doubt if any of this is to your taste. I can’t say much of it is to mine. I just think it would be a shame if you went away not understanding what you saw. Like these.” She nodded toward the shelf of blue and green pottery decorated with white figures. At first glance he had taken them for Wedgwood: he was familiar with the graceful white classical figures that decorated the English cameo ware of Josiah Wedgwood and Company, but these vases-and sugar bowls and tea pots and coffee mugs-were different both in theme and in execution. The rendering of the puppet-like figures suggested that the artisan had never mastered proportion. Instead of the elegant Grecian themes of Wedgwood landscapes, the clumsy beings on this pottery inhabited a world of log cabins, tepees, and covered wagons. Had his father or one of his friends been attempting to imitate Wedgwood in some American idiom?

  “That’s Pisgah Forest pottery,” said Sarah Nash. “Made near Asheville in the first half of the twentieth century by a man named W. B. Stephen. I wouldn’t expect you to know it, but piece for piece it sells for mo
re than Wedgwood, and rightly so, because each piece is the work of just one man instead of a mass-produced factory item.”

  Terence peered at a brown coffee mug depicting an Indian on horseback in pursuit of a buffalo.

  “I suppose you recognized the Stickley pieces. That desk over there is American chestnut, which was wiped out back in the Thirties, so the desk is irreplaceable. And those five-gallon jugs with jack o’lantern faces on them belong in a museum.”

  Terence looked at the leering faces and protruding ears on a row of brown pottery jugs-ceramic jack o’lanterns, he thought. Still wondering if the conversation had a subtext, he made a guess. “Would you like any of these pieces as a keepsake?”

  She smiled. “That’s kind of you, but they would wreak havoc with my Williamsburg decor. Your father liked American primitive, but I favor the cavalier-in-denial school of decorating-the furniture of the settlers who pretended they were still in London instead of on the eighteenth-century frontier.”

  “What would my father have wanted me to do with all this?” he asked.

  Mrs. Nash shrugged. “Enjoy them if you can. If not, there’s a good auction house in Asheville. Brunk’s. Collectors prize these things. Or there are museums and universities that would be glad to have them.”

  “I was hoping to get some idea of what my father was like from seeing his things, but this isn’t telling me much, except maybe why he didn’t stay married to my mother. She’s a cavalier-in-denial type, too.”

  “Why didn’t you ever come to see him?”

  Terence hesitated. “Shyness, I guess. He never asked me and I was afraid to push it. I thought about going when I turned twenty-one, but I had so many other things to do. Job hunting, moving…I thought I’d like to have figured out who I’d grown up to be before I met him. I always thought I’d have time for him when the chaos subsided in my life.”

  “We always think that. I guess we’d go crazy if we didn’t. Well, if knowing your father’s interests will get you any closer to him, you might want to take a look in the den there.” She nodded toward a closed door at one end of the kitchen. “That was Tom’s study. Go look.”