A Southern Girl: A Novel

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Flow 303 The courthouse is dark but for the usual security lights. In the reserved parking spaces abutting the building I see a large, balding man about to duck into his car. “Willie!” I call out. He pauses and stares. “It’s me, Coleman . Did Lydia send them home for the night?” “Hey, Coleman,” he answers, one leg inside the car and the door half closed. “She sent them home for good. Verdict for the city.” Natalie’s elbow is in my side before I can utter, “You’re not serious .” “City Hall is ecstatic,” he calls. “The joke is they’re taking the ‘for sale’ sign off the building.” I drift toward him in shock, Natalie following. “You’re serious.” He swings his stored leg from the car and sits facing me. “Serious as a little ole’ heart attack. Brandon interviewed the jury foreman before she left. Two of the black women are heavy duty Baptists and Swilling calling those officers mf’ers nailed him. They didn’t believe a word he said. Excuse me, but I gotta go. I’m late for dinner.” “Go figure,” I say, turning back to Natalie as Willie cranks his car. “French,” she says. “Some ambiance, a fabulous wine list. The kind of place where listing entre prices is considered gauche.” “I can’t believe it.” “Did I mention Paris?” she is saying. “Our bet said nothing about being restricted to Charleston.” “Arliene’s is French,” I say lamely. “Three blocks down.” “Perfect,” she says. “Did I tell you I’ve been in treatment for a rare bulimia involving a compulsive hunger for truffles?” “Are you enjoying this?” “I’m about to. You’re sure tonight suits?” “Let’s eat.” j 30 i Arliene’s, hole-in-the-wall gourmet, features twelve tables precisely set with starched white tablecloths, linen napkins, and heavy cutlery. By artful subterfuge of plants, columns, and lighting, it is easy to lull into A Southern Girl 304 the illusion that one table, your table, is the sun of this cozy universe, around which planetary waiters, busboys, and chefs hover in measured orbit. Muted strains of Puccini or Verdi, played so softly as to be virtually unheard until a tenor or soprano climbs the upper registers, accompany escargot and pate as fine as I’ve tasted anywhere. Within minutes of being seated, my sting of defeat begins to wane. Between us, a single fresh-cut Cherokee Rose blooms in its unadorned vase, its yellow stamens encircled by petals of resurrection white so that in color it compliments the lone candle, in which the same yellow fires the wick and rises into an aureole of white flame, the flower the perfect living embodiment of the candle. We begin this fete with Russian caviar and a champagne toast to my sure-footed instincts about juries. She accepts my sword with the grace of a kindly conqueror wise enough to leave the vanquished a mule and some land. By the time the waiter uncorks a St Martin Merlot, I have begun to relish losing. As we await entrees, the fragmentary silica of Natalie’s mosaic come together in a pattern of benevolent neglect at the hands of parents wellmeaning but insensitive. At fourteen they sent her to boarding school, a female academy in Connecticut magnetic in its attraction of girls with learning and eating disorders. She hated it. After a year and a half, they let her come home, although not to the one she left but a new university town where her father taught on sabbatical. I learn that her reference to bulimia was uttered out of the reservoir of confidence that beating it had replenished. While her mother had urged “fresh air and sunshine” as a prescription for her internal convulsion, she put herself in therapy. A year later she emerged, behind in school but more or less intact emotionally . She modestly described the effort required to make up lost credits, the school at which she spent her senior year being her fourth in four years. She saw its principal “two or three times” prior to the afternoon he awarded her diploma. “A couple of years after the divorce,” she says, tossing her hair with a turn of her head, “Mother confided that they had stayed together for me. It was my sad duty to tell her I didn’t believe it, that staying married for the sake of a child implied affection for the child and I had felt...