by Pat Conroy
“It would be more fun with you,” I said.
“That’s just not a very good idea, Will. Maybe I’ll see you when I get back for Christmas next year.”
“That would really be nice, Annie Kate. What’s your address? I don’t know where I’ll be yet, but I’ll write you some letters and let you know what’s happening in the holy city!”
“Oh, that won’t be necessary. Mother will tell me everything that’s important. Next year will be a very big year for me. It’s the start of my debutante season, you know. There will be hundreds of parties to attend before I’m presented at the St. Cecilia’s ball.”
“I’ll bet you look beautiful that night,” I said.
“I can assure you of that,” she said, studying her nails. “Maybe I’ll send you a picture.”
“Maybe you’ll need an escort,” I said.
“Oh, that will be taken care of, Will. They’ve been doing these things for hundreds of years. It’s the oldest, most prestigious ball in the country.”
“It’ll be something,” I agreed. “I’ve never seen a debutante ball.”
“Of course you haven’t. Well, Will, it’s been real nice seeing you again. I’ve got bunches of work to do before I leave tomorrow.”
“Would you like me to drive you to the airport? I get out of classes at noon and I can possibly work out a Charleston pass with the Bear.”
“Oh, no,” she said, “I’ve got someone who’ll be glad to drive me to the airport.”
“You’ve got at least two people.”
“That’s sweet, Will. But I’ve made all the arrangements.”
“Well,” I said, trying to smile and keep my voice steady, “I guess this is good-bye, Annie Kate.”
“Oh, I never, ever say good-bye. I detest farewells of any sort. They make me sad and make my skin break out.”
“I wouldn’t want to make your skin break out,” I said sarcastically.
“Don’t start your meanness now,” she scolded. “You’ve been very sweet today and I want to remember you as an angel. You were my friend when I really needed a friend. I don’t want to remember you with any negative feelings at all.”
“The stuff I said the other night about getting married, Annie Kate. I meant that. Every word of it. I would still like to marry you and I’ll be glad to wait for you to finish college or any time you like. I’m ready any time you are if you’re still interested.”
“Oh, that’s so sweet,” she said, touching my cheek. “But I think you should look for someone else, Will. Someone who could really appreciate your good qualities. You see, Will—and I don’t want this to hurt your feelings—but I’m erasing all those bad thoughts out of my mind this year. All of them. I’m never going to think about this year at all. I’m going to pretend that none of it ever happened. I’m going to erase every single bad memory from my mind. You’ve been very sweet, Will, but you’re a large part of the worst year of my life. When I see you, it reminds me of all that happened, of what I’ve been through.”
“Meeting you was the best thing that ever happened to me, Annie Kate.”
“Don’t say that,” she said shrilly. “Don’t think it. Did you ever stop to think about me just once, Will? Can you imagine how humiliating the entire experience was for me? To get pregnant by a boy I loved from a fine family and have him tell me that he wouldn’t marry me and that he felt no love for me at all? Can you imagine hiding for six months, terrified that your friends might see you, that you might be discovered or ridiculed and talked about at dinner parties? Only six people in the world know about my year of shame. Five of them will never say a word about what happened, Will. They are all Old Charlestonians and I can trust them with my life.”
“But you’re not sure about the ol’ kid, huh, Annie Kate? You can’t be sure what I’ll say to my fat ugly wife when she’s hanging out clothes at the trailer park.”
“Don’t get ugly. There’s no need for that, Will. You must try to understand me. I can’t ever love someone like you. We’re too different. We want different things out of life. I want things that you can never give me. And you know too much about me that isn’t really me.”
“What are you talking about, Annie Kate?”
“I wasn’t myself this past year. I was someone different, someone sad and lonely. Someone pitiful and afraid. I could never love anyone who loved me this past year, Will. I just couldn’t. I don’t even respect you very much for wanting to marry someone who was pregnant with another man’s child.”
“Who is going to love you, Annie Kate? Who will be worthy? Because the fact is that whoever marries you will be falling in love with a woman who was pregnant with another man’s child at one time in her life.”
“No, he won’t, Will,” she said simply. “He’ll be marrying a virgin.”
“What?”
“You’ll figure it out, Will. In time, you’ll understand.”
“You won’t tell the guy?”
“He’ll never know. None of it ever happened. None of it. It was a terrible dream, but I’m awake now and everything is lovely again.”
“Yeh, it’s lovely.”
“It’s time for you to go, Will.”
“I guess so. Well, I’ll be seeing you around,” I said.
“Thanks so much for dropping over, Will,” she said, smiling at me and extending her hand. “It’s so sweet of you to think of me.”
I shook her hand and said, “I was in the neighborhood. Goodbye, Annie Kate.”
“Hush. I already told you that I simply do not believe in saying good-bye.”
“Hello, then. I hope you have a good life, Annie Kate. I really do. I’m sorry I’m not going to be a part of it. Let me hear from you. I’m sorry your baby died. I never got to tell you that.”
“There was no baby, Will. There was only a bad dream and so much you didn’t know or understand.”
“I’m sorry your bad dream died,” I said as I left her and walked toward the gate. “And I’m sorry I ever met you, Annie Kate.”
The door closed behind me.
Two weeks later, I received a package in the mail from Santa Barbara. It was the cricket box full of sand dollars. Most of them had broken in transit. There was no note and no return address.
Chapter Thirty four
On Palm Sunday, I received an invitation to tea from Colonel Edward T. Reynolds. I met him and his wife on the steps of St. Philip’s Church after the eleven o’clock service. Colonel Reynolds was easy to pick out of a crowd, and he made the other Anglican communicants look like an anemic, malnourished race indeed.
When he spotted me he said, “Remove thy carcass from the steps of the one true church, you papist swine.”
His wife smiled and said, “Good morning, Cadet McLean.” She was a small, delicately formed woman who weighed approximately as much as her husband’s legs. There was an alarmed, nervous flutter to her eyelashes whenever she spoke in his presence, and I could not imagine the form and content of their conversations with each other when they were alone. She was the only one who had ever referred to me as “Cadet McLean.” I had had tea at her house on several occasions and never once heard her express an idea of her own or disagree with one of Colonel Reynolds’s.
“My dear,” Colonel Reynolds said, turning respectfully to his wife, “while you are preparing tea, I would like your permission to take Mr. McLean on a brief stroll of the holy city.”
“Of course, dear,” she replied unhesitatingly, “but you and Cadet McLean will not be long?”
“Only long enough to digest that harmless drivel of a sermon we endured this morning.”
“See you in a little while, Mrs. Reynolds. I won’t let him play in any mud puddles,” I said.
She looked at me, then at her husband, and slowly it dawned on her that I had made a joke. Her lips formed a nervous, unnatural smile as she excused herself and walked toward their house on State Street.
When she was out of earshot, Colonel Reynolds, sensing my slight discomfort
, said, “Strict formality is the only thing that can save a marriage, Mr. McLean. It is a fearful institution. Although, of course, I am fond of my own spouse, I am acutely aware of my own shortcomings and realize that I am a demon to contend with, regardless of how she cherishes her marital vows. But enough of that, I have some things to tell you.”
The azaleas were in full bloom and the gardens hummed with the gratitude of bees and the voices of lean, towheaded children playing spiritedly behind wrought-iron fences. We walked in the sunlight past the Dock Street Theater and the Huguenot Church, and it was like walking through the delicate pastels of a watercolor. The cold season had passed, and Charleston was celebrating the coming of spring with a thriftless, blazing eruption of flowers in its cemeteries and parks and gardens. The bells of St. Michael’s solemnly rang at fifteen-minute intervals, dividing the lives of all the privileged citizens within hearing, fragmenting the day and the season with sound—a gentler, more civilized, bugling. The houses we passed began to exude the aromas of Sunday dinner: mulled shrimp, fried chicken, fish poaching in wine and cream sauces. At one house, I caught the smell of paprika; at the next, a hint of curry escaped from an open window. We walked the city, slowly, inhaling and appreciating its marvelous profusion of smells. Turning on Broad Street we moved toward the river and the Battery, past Rainbow Row and St. Michael’s Alley. At first, we did not speak at all. The city had us, prisoners of its beauty and inertia. When we finally spoke, our voices seemed to violate the soundless scrimmage between the inaudible purr of the river and the green emergence of the gardens. No city could be more beautiful than Charleston during the brief reign of azaleas, no city on earth.
Colonel Reynolds walked as though his feet hurt, as though they had developed strategies to protest bearing the enormous weight they were not designed to carry. He carried himself with a strict absurd dignity; he was a heavy man who walked as though he was still a lean one, and he had the penetrating, confident eyes of one who seems to possess all that he sees. The sight of the Cooper River tranquilized him, as freighters navigated the channels, moving toward the sea lanes and away from azaleas.
“I have read too much history, Mr. McLean,” he said, moving past Vanderhorst Row. “And it has depressed me about my fellow man.”
“Why has it depressed you, sir?” I asked.
“Because the single theme of human existence is atrocity, sir. Even the most casual perusal of the subject would tell you that. Anything that man can do that will irreparably harm his fellow man, he will certainly do. I can close my eyes, Mr. McLean, close them this instant on this very pleasant walk, and my brain will come alive with horrendous, unspeakable images of heinous crimes men have performed against other men. Nothing surprises me anymore. Nothing shocks me. I have reached the point in my life when I am seized with an utter hopelessness about the human race. And you, sir,” he said, fixing his gaze on me, “how do you feel about the race that violates this lovely planet?”
“I like human beings all right, Colonel,” I said, “better than wart hogs or stingrays, anyway.”
“I assure you, cad, that you would receive far more justice and mercy from a wart hog than from one of the monstrous chimps who wears a black robe and sits in judgment against his fellow man. The God that created man in his own image, Mr. McLean, must be a vile, unconscionable being. Or he must be highly amused by depravity.”
“Is that why you seem so unhappy, sir? Because of history?”
“On the contrary, Mr. McLean. History is my single pleasure. My unhappiness stems from the fact that I have contributed nothing to the study of history. My unhappiness is due to my mediocrity at the craft in which I once felt I was born to excel.”
“But you wrote The History of Carolina Military Institute, sir.”
“Yes, Mr. McLean, and Gibbon wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. And Prescott wrote about the Conquest of Mexico. I chose a small insignificant topic because I had such pitiful gifts. Reynolds chose to write about an obscure military college located in an obscure Southern state. Do you know why I chose that subject, Mr. McLean? Do you have any idea why?”
“No, sir. Except that you love the school.”
“I chose to write that book because I knew that no one else would want to. I would have the field completely to myself. I had to choose a subject small enough to fit my talents. I lacked the style, the vision, and the courage to undertake a grand project. . . . But this is not what I have come to talk to you about, Mr. McLean.”
“I know I could do better in English history, Colonel. Now that basketball season is over, I promise to do better, to study a lot harder, and to make better grades.”
He looked at me with complete bemusement.
“I give not a scat for your performance or lack thereof in the field of English history. You are an Irishman and a scoundrel, Mr. McLean, and I cannot expect you to master the sweep and scope of an alien and enemy culture. No, I have called you here today to make a confession to you.”
“A confession, sir?” I said, puzzled.
“I do not stutter and I do not slur the King’s English,” he thundered imperiously. “A confession I said, and a confession I meant, Mr. McLean. Since when do I need to explain the meaning of the word to a sniveling papist? I have something to tell you that I should have told you that day you came to my office. But first, I want to make an inquiry of you.”
“An inquiry, sir?”
“Yes, goddammit. I want to ask you a bloody question!”
“A question, sir?” I said, grinning up at his broad flustered face. Teasing Colonel Reynolds always afforded me enormous pleasure.
“Why did you come to my office to question me about my knowledge of The Ten?” he asked.
“Because I thought you’d be the one person who would answer me honestly if he knew anything at all. Also, I trust you and consider you a friend, even though you’re not fond of the Irish.”
“It’s not that I am not fond of the Irish, Mr. McLean,” he explained. “You have not fully comprehended my feelings for those godforsaken wretches. I absolutely loathe the Irish. It is an effort for me even to look at your face, so strongly do you bear the mark of your lowborn race. I only wish Cromwell had been less lenient and humane in his dealings with these pitiful, contemptible brutes. But I must apologize to you and tell you that I betrayed the trust you so ingenuously proffered me.”
“How, sir?”
“I wrote a small section in my history book tracing the history of The Ten. It was almost pure speculation, and I had only one source.”
“There was nothing in your book about The Ten, Colonel,” I interrupted. “Not a single word.”
“There was when I sent it to the Institute print shop, Mr. McLean,” he said. “I mentioned only the barest facts that I could garner by piecing together the rumors and innuendoes that I had heard over a lifetime at the Institute. Do you remember my telling you that I attended the funeral of General Homer Stone, the hero of the Bulge?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, “that’s where you counted the ten carnations and the ten doves.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Well, the Widow Stone, a steely-eyed harridan of penurious Scottish stock, handed over to me her husband’s correspondence of a lifetime. You would have thought she was entrusting me with the Rosetta Stone. The letters were boring and nearly illiterate. Literacy is the hallmark of neither generals nor heroes. But there was one letter of utmost interest to me. In it, General Stone was discussing the character and personality of a junior cadet who was about to be inducted into the ranks of an unnamed organization. The letter stated that the cadet met all the criteria for membership save one. He was an outstanding leader, an excellent student, was militarily sound, and had exhibited exemplary loyalty to the Institute. He lacked, according to General Stone, the physical stamina that the organization deemed necessary.”
“And you think General Stone was talking about The Ten.”
“He was not talking, Mr. McLean,” Colonel Reyn
olds stated with impatience. “He was writing a letter.”
“Who was the letter addressed to, Colonel?”
“It was addressed to Colonel Adamson, at whose funeral I first noticed the carnations and doves in the year of our Lord 1958. It did not take a grand creative leap on my part to speculate that the organization of which he spoke was the elusive Ten. So with caution and restraint and citing the letter as a source, I wrote a rather jocular account of The Ten in my history, carefully stating that no one knew for sure whether The Ten existed or not, but that the rumor of its existence had always had a powerful hold on the imagination of the Corps and the alumni.”
“What happened to that section, Colonel?”
“It disappeared,” he answered. “It disappeared as though I had never written it.”
“Did you ask the printer about it?”
“I asked the printer nothing, sir. I screamed at the printer and threatened to throttle him within an inch of his worthless life. But he told me that he printed the material that was handed to him, and indeed, upon investigation, he spoke the literal truth. Someone had removed that section. Not that it made any difference as to the quality of the work. The work is mediocre, though quite workmanlike. Not disgraceful, mind you, just mediocre.” As he spoke, his face clouded over with a painful melancholy, as though he were uttering a truth that froze the very roots of his soul. “I complained to the head of the department who complained to the academic dean who complained to General Durrell. I received a note from the General saying that the printer had made an honest mistake, and perhaps that mistake had saved me from the embarrassment of being exposed for shoddy and inaccurate historical research. Imagine the nerve of Durrell, that upcountry dandy, chiding me for shoddy scholarship. He even assured me that he himself had personally searched for some small clue about the existence of The Ten and had come up with nothing at all.”
“Did you show him the letter, Colonel? That letter proves something.”
“The letter proves nothing, Mr. McLean, because nothing is stated directly or resolutely. I was taking historical license, and I did not wish to confront a military man with a concept too difficult and complex for him to understand. But I wanted to clear this matter up with you, Mr. McLean. You scored a direct hit on an intellectual wound when you asked me why I had not mentioned The Ten in my history.”
