by Terry Kay
“Cole Bishop, that’s not what I mean and you know it,” she said angrily. “You’ve got some promise. Or you better have. I don’t like wasting my time. But you’ve got more faults than almost anybody I know.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Like not knowing who you are.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’ve been pretending to be somebody else so long, you get it all mixed up. Every book you read, you believe you’re the person you’re reading about. If you ever have to be just you, you’re going to be lost. That’s one big fault.”
“What else?” I asked.
“You trust people.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing, if they’re the right people. But you trust everybody, and that’s crazy. Don’t ever trust anyone who’s smarter than you.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” I argued. “Everybody’s smarter than other people in some things.”
“God in heaven, you make me mad,” she snapped. “Do you know that? I keep trying to help you and you don’t listen to a word I say. I told you: someday you’ll be famous, you’ll be somebody. You won’t be Cole Bishop, high school fool. You’ll be Cole Bishop, somebody. Except you’ll never completely lose the fool part of you. Every bum who comes along, no matter if he’s dressed in a pair of overalls or a three-piece suit, you’ll take him at his word, and if you’re not careful you’re going to fall flat on your little quarterback ass.”
“Don’t talk like that,” I said.
“Like what?”
“Why don’t you try to be a lady?”
“Is that what you want?” she said. “A lady?”
“I want you to be one.”
“I can’t,” she countered. “You ruined me.”
“How?”
“By getting me in the backseat of your car all those times. The girls keep asking me how you are on that backseat. I tell them that’s our secret.”
“For God’s sake, Marie, don’t say that,” I whined.
“Am I any good?” she purred.
“How would I know?” I snapped.
“You want to know?”
“No.”
She smiled coyly. She glanced toward the door leading to the living room. A peel of muffled laughter rose and died from the television. She could hear her father cackle. “Tomorrow night, after the game,” she teased. “We’ll call it a celebration.”
“No,” I said again in exasperation.
“Why not?” she whispered. “I’m beautiful. I’m as beautiful as anybody in school. You’ll see when we show up at the prom together next spring. I’ve got the biggest breasts in our class. It’d take a whole box of tissues for Sally to be as big as me, no matter what that ridiculous Art Crews tells you.”
“Stop it, Marie,” I warned. “You’re just doing that to aggravate me.”
“Want to see my breasts, Cole?” she whispered.
“No, Marie, I don’t. I definitely do not want to see your breasts,” I answered in a hushed voice.
“Don’t you trust me?” she said.
“Yes,” I told her.
“You’re a fool, Cole Bishop. You’ll never change.”
NINE
On Thursday morning, December 23, he drove to the First United Methodist Church of Raemar and selected a six-foot Christmas tree, a spruce, sold in a fund-raiser by the youth fellowship, and then he returned home and placed it in a metal stand in his living room, far enough from the stone fireplace for safety, and he decorated it with ornaments he had acquired after his divorce, having lost the finer collection to Holly. He did not string lights. It seemed useless.
Still, with a new-blaze fire in the fireplace, there was a cheerful spirit to the room, and a scent of cedar. Once he had gone into the woods to cut his Christmas tree, but the romance of such a tradition had long been lost to the drudgery of labor. Now, he only went into the woods in winter to visit the harvesting of maple sap on the farm of Dexter Williams, a friend he had met during his first year at Raemar. Dexter operated a nursery and had a small facility for making maple syrup. He was also a reader, a lover of the stories of Southern writers, and his time with Cole was spent in prying for information. On the day Larry Brown, the Mississippi writer, died, Dexter had called, saying, My God, we’ve lost one of the good ones. He could have been a giant.
At lunch, Cole called his sister, Amy, telling her he was sorry he had elected to stay in Vermont for the holidays. Next year, I’ll be there, he promised. But since I’m coming down in April, I thought it would be best to stay here.
Amy wanted to know how he was spending the holidays.
I’m doing a little writing, he said.
Poetry? she asked.
He chuckled, answered, No. I guess you could call it faction.
What’s that?
Some fact, some fiction, he told her. A friend of mine calls it a word brew.
And what is this faction about? she asked.
Growing up, he said.
She laughed the laugh she used when teasing him. If it’s about you, I think you’d better let me and Rachel read it, she said. You do have a way of gilding the truth.
No, he replied, I have a way of dignifying the truth, unlike my two sisters, who believe gossip is the holy word of God. You forget, dear one, I am a man of letters, trained to be compassionate and, at the same time, detached. I am, modestly speaking, something of a genius at it.
She laughed again and there was happiness in her voice. I do miss you, Cole. I miss your stories, she said softly.
And I miss telling them, he replied, also softly.
Are you going to be alone on Christmas? she asked.
No, he told her. I’m having dinner with Tanya and Mark Berry. You met them when you were here. She’s a psychologist.
The pretty one? she said.
She is, yes, he admitted. And very bright and, like you, she enjoys irritating me.
Good, Amy said. I feel better knowing you’ll be in the kind of company that knows how to handle you.
It was mid-afternoon when he resumed his writing, feeling invigorated from his decoration and his conversation with his sister and from a short walk he had taken.
December 23, afternoon
I have been doing this for so many days now I have to resist beginning each session by writing, Dear Diary. There are moments when it feels as though I am composing a journal fifty years after the fact. And perhaps it is that, with a slight difference: I am not searching for memories; I am letting memories come to me. Surprisingly, they seem eager to show themselves, their behavior being a little like men in a sports bar bellowing about a weekend game, each needing to out-do the other.
See? I will take the bellowing about a game as an omen.
The Overton High School Purple Panthers won the last football game of the season, defeating the Maryville Owls, 18-14. It was an upset. Maryville had won eight games. All three of our touchdowns were scored by Wormy. We (or I) failed on each extra point, all on attempted quarterback sneaks. Still, we won, ending the year with a record of six victories, four losses, the best in school history.
After the game, Marie stood away from the mob that rushed the field to gather around Wormy, and then she strolled casually toward me.
“Who won?” she asked in a bored voice.
“Yeah, sure,” I said, laughing.
“Am I supposed to hug you?” she cooed.
“Why not?” I told her. “Give everybody a thrill.”
She wrapped her arms around my neck and squealed.
“Jesus!” I said. “That’s my ear.”
“That’s what Connie did,” she said. “I saw her.”
“She didn’t bust my eardrum doing it.”
She giggled and released me. “Now, what do we do?”
“Go to the dance, I guess,” I said.
“Do I have to dance?”
“Yeah. Once, at least.”
“I’m not very good at it. I
even got expelled from a ballet class in Washington.”
“There’s nothing to it. You just stand there and sway.”
“In your arms?”
“Yeah.”
“My God, that sounds juvenile.”
“It is,” I said. “Come on.”
“Oh, I have to walk off the field with you?” she asked in a sugary voice.
“I’m a hero. You’re my woman,” I told her. “Besides, everybody’s looking.” I put my arm around her waist and we began to stroll away.
An orchestra of sound—voices with the tongues of trumpets and violins and drums—blared in unrelenting profusion across the field. Bodies sprang up and down on pogo legs, pirouetting in a dance of glory. Hands clawed the air for mystic souvenirs of the moment. Flashbulbs sizzled, spitting shots of heat into the cool air.
Marie caught my arm with both hands and held it tightly. “Good God,” she screamed, “these people are crazy. I feel like I’m in the middle of a Roman orgy.”
“Close to it,” I said. I ducked under the wingspread of an arm aimed for my neck, and pulled Marie around a pile of bodies wallowing on the ground. In a moment, we were free of the frenzy.
“You love it, don’t you?” she said.
“Yeah, I do,” I answered honestly. “But it’s over.”
“No, Cole. It’s just started. You’re going to be famous.”
The dance was noisy, the night intoxicated with energy. I was muscle-sore, but happy. Marie, who had protested that she did not know how to dance, was spectacular on the hardwood floor of Kilmer’s Recreation Hall. “Cole,” she said in a bored voice, “I lied to you about being expelled from that ballet class. I was great at it. This is nothing.”
I did not arrive home until one o’clock. To my surprise, my parents were sitting in the kitchen, drinking coffee
I asked why they were still awake.
“Just talking,” my mother said.
“Kind of late for old people,” I joked.
“Kind of late for young people,” my father said soberly.
“Well, we had the dance, and a bunch of us just got to talking, and—”
“You don’t have to tell us,” my mother said gently. She reached for my hand and stroked it. “We’re very proud of you. You played a good game.”
“We were lucky,” I said.
“Sometimes things happen you don’t expect,” my father said. I could feel his eyes boring into me.
“Oh, honey, we noticed that same little girl walking off the field with you,” my mother said cheerfully. “What’s her name again?”
“Marie,” I answered. “Marie Fitzpatrick.” I added, “We’re just friends.”
My father cleared his throat and looked away.
“Is anything wrong?” I asked.
“Of course not,”my mother answered. “We just heard some, well, talk.”
A queasiness swept over me, filled my mouth. “Talk?” I said.
“You know how people are, honey,” my mother said. “They can twist the truth until it looks like a plateful of spaghetti.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I told her.
“What your mama’s saying is that people are talking around that you’re about to get married to that girl,” my father said sternly.
I laughed, unexpectedly, inappropriately.
“You think that’s funny?” my father demanded.
I sat in a chair and wiped my fingers over my mouth to control the laughter. “Daddy,” I said, “that’s just a joke. I promise you. Marie’s, well, she’s different.”
“What I hear tell, she’s crazy,” my father growled.
“No, she’s not crazy, Daddy,” I said, trying to be firm but not argumentative. “She’s the smartest person I’ve ever met, and when she came here, everybody treated her like she had leprosy. All she’s doing is toying with some of the girls at school.”
“You’re sure, honey?” my mother asked in a begging voice. “You’re not about to throw away your chance at life, are you?”
“No, Mama. No,” I said. “I like Marie. She’s a good friend. But I’d rather spend the rest of my life farming with Toby than be married to her. She’s too smart. She’d drive me nuts.”
“Oh,” my mother said.
“You be careful,” my father advised. “Hot blood’s got no brains.”
I did not inform Marie of my parents’ concern about our relationship until years later, in a letter meant to comfort her over a breakup with a boyfriend. I remember one line from her reply: Oh, my God, were we that accomplished in our little game, Cole?
Considering it now, from such a distance, yes. Yes, we were.
The rumor of our impending marriage—shrewdly manipulated by Marie—blew through Overton High School like a bawdy joke told in school-ground huddles. It was laughed at, shrugged off, but not forgotten. For the rest of the school year, occasional reminders of the rumor appeared with the regularity and familiarity of an old standard punched up on a jukebox. In its harmless, settled-in way, it became part of the culture of the class of 1954–1955. As fall turned to winter and winter surrendered to spring, Marie attended basketball and baseball games to cheer lustily for me. She wore my football letter jacket like a cape belonging to royalty. We were called Mr. And Mrs. Overton High School. For a tease, she often could be found dreamily gazing at wedding dresses in women’s magazines. The Wedding March was included in the Glee Club’s Winter Concert, disguised in the program as a selection from Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin. Everyone in the audience knew why. Everyone laughed.
It was because of the way we reveled in the ribbing that it continued.
“Let them have their fun,” Marie said. “They don’t know it, but the best is yet to come.”
“What does that mean?” I asked suspiciously.
“The Junior-Senior Prom, fool. We’re going to make their eyeballs spin at the prom. I told you, I’m going to be beautiful. No, ravishing. The most spectacular sight this sad little town has ever seen. Every boy—and man—in the place will spend the night picking his chin up off the floor. Before the night’s over, Art Crews will be throwing bricks at Sally Dylan, and Sally will hate me. They’ll all hate me. Every girl—and woman—there will hate me. If you look halfway decent, they’ll be talking about us into the next century.”
“Don’t over-do it,” I warned.
“Oh, but I will, Cole,” she promised. “I’m going to over-do it in ways that your celebrated, but listless, little imagination could never comprehend.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, and I could hear the worry in my voice.
“I’m going to be a woman, Cole.”
There was both fear and anticipation in my vision of how Marie would appear at the prom. I knew only that she and her mother had driven to Atlanta one weekend to shop for a gown. When I asked about it on the following Monday, she fluttered her eyes and sighed seductively, and a sinking feeling, followed by warm joy, shimmered through me.
That afternoon, I purchased from Hendley’s Department Store a double-breasted soft-gray wool suit, a pale lavender shirt with French cuff sleeves and wide lapels curled open by flexible stays, a dark burgundy silk tie, and cordovan-red wingtip shoes. Harry Hendley pronounced my selections as “…top of the line.” To show his enthusiasm, Harry contributed a handkerchief to my attire. The handkerchief had been monogrammed in a small, cursive thread script with the letter H. “H for Hendley. Just for our appreciative customers,” Harry whispered.
After buying the suit, I crossed the street to the New Bloom Flower Shop and placed an order for a wrist-band orchid. Because I could not describe Marie’s dress, it was decided the orchid would be the color of lavender, matching my shirt.
In the coming-of-age acts that all young people experience, I believe the purchase of that suit for the prom and the selection of the orchid for Marie was the beginning of my independence.
Yet, after these many years, I am still coming-of-age.
TEN
He did not email what he had written to Tanya. It was incomplete and he wanted to finish it—to tell of the prom and what happened there and afterward. He needed clear thinking for it, and he knew he was exhausted from the day and from the lateness of the hour.
Yet there were two letters from Marie he wanted to read again.
The first had been written in 1976. On a trip from Columbus, Ohio, to Charleston, South Carolina, to attend a medical convention, she had impulsively driven through Overton.
Dear Cole,
On the day that I left Overton, I did not believe I would ever return to it, yet I did. Or maybe it couldn’t be called a return. I did not stop in the town, afraid that someone would remember me and escort me to a lynching tree. If it has changed, Cole, I didn’t see it. Well, a few things. Bell’s is now a jewelry store, which made me wonder where the young and privileged of today waste their time, or where young ladies purchase their Kotex. I drove by our old home with its wraparound porch (and that I did like from those ancient days), and I drove to the school, except it isn’t a high school any longer. There was a sign: Overton Middle School. The swings were gone from the playground, Cole. Gone. I almost cried. Damn them. Why can’t people leave the swings of children alone?Do they forget about the joy of swings? I think that is why I raced away, even running a signal light. I had thought of finding Jovita, but I couldn’t make myself stop the car and ask about her, and I had forgotten where she lived. I simply couldn’t. I have never felt so sad, so in need of you.
The only place I stopped was at Breedlove’s Cemetery—out of town and out of sight. I picked wildflowers and put them on the grave of Daniel Breedlove.
Do you know what’s strange to me, Cole Bishop?It’s strange that you are always the first person I think about when I get desperately lonely. Maybe if I had given in to one of those drunken marriage proposals that I’ve received over the years, I could put you away like a winter sweater I have worn for the last time. Just forget you. But I’m now thirty-eight years old and, for me, that’s old age. Why didn’t you come and rescue me, Cole? Why did you have to marry that horrible woman who has a name like a Christmas wreath? Holly. God. Cole and Holly. It doesn’t sound nearly as wonderful as Cole and Marie, or, better still, Marie and Cole. I’m glad I’ve never seen pictures of the two of you. (And I hope she reads this letter. She needs to know I despise her.)
