A Southern Girl: A Novel

19

A Southern Girl 180 twenty minutes max. Instead, in sweat clothes I ambled along the sea wall we call the Battery. There, in one of those absent-minded reveries that seem to transport me regularly these days, I mentally unspiked the massive mortars and calculated the trajectory necessary to hit Ft. Sumter. Around me, hundreds of soldiers and civilians in antebellum dress shouted angry defiance at the harbor, fists raised to underscore their outrage. “Yeah,” I yelled with them, “goddamn Yankees.” The ground shook beneath us with each successive salvo and an acrid mist mingled among us. Suddenly, a roar erupted and the soldier next to me pointed to the fort and I saw through the smoke the first distant tongues of flame scar the air above. I stood there a long time, until half past nine, when I jogged back home and called the office. My client wasn’t pleased but then too often clients aren’t. I dressed leisurely and drove unhurriedly to work. I see headlights turn onto Church Street and think Allie is returning but the car drives past. It is the Smathers’ Buick. Moments later I hear their gate opening and soon all is quiet again. That morning on the Battery—what does it mean when you stand up a client to daydream over a long lost battle? For the first time in memory I feel myself shadowed, but by a person or event or mood I cannot say. In the basement the other night, looking for the lamp, I almost touched it so palpable was its presence . Whatever its nature or substance, it is brooding, insistent, and, I sense with a quick shudder that could be just a chill, disturbing. j 19 i A steady drumming in my temples rouses me the following morning. Bathrobe on inside out, my slippers still missing, I descend to the kitchen. Two aspirin and sixteen ounces of industrial strength coffee prepare me to charge into my forty-eighth year, more or less. I am reading the Post and Sentinel in the den when Allie enters in jodhpurs, her feet in socks. “Morning, Dad,” she says sweetly as she passes on her way to the kitchen. “How is the old bod feeling?” I lift my eyes from an editorial on the soaring cost of medical care in time to see her disappear through the swinging door. After some kitchen Flow 181 noise, she emerges with orange juice and a banana, sits in an overstuffed chair opposite me and pulls her feet up under her. “So, what are your plans today?” she wants to know. “Idleness followed by some relaxation hard on the heels of some serious lying around. My day is packed.” “I guess at your age you need time to recover from staying out so late.” She grins around a bite of banana. “Speaking of late hours . . .” “I was home by two; if you don’t believe me ask Chris.” “Did he enjoy himself last night?” My question seems innocent enough. “You mean at your party or after?” My mind flashes to Adelle’s account of the fog-filled car. “The party, of course. What happened after is none of my business, is it?” “Only if you care about your daughter’s reputation.” I deposit the paper into my lap and stare. “Oh?” I am not at all sure I want to hear what’s coming. Allie has always been too candid about these things. “Yeah, we must have broken a record for sucking face last night. My lips are chapped.” “I see.” “Want to hear the rest?” “No. It usually only gets messier.” “Not much,” she says casually, as if she doubts it will rain. “I let him get by with a cheap thrill but when he started maneuvering for a big thrill I had to fall back on my elbow-in-the-ribs defense. He took it well. I like that about Chris. I’ll bet his ribs are sore this morning.” “Sweetheart, how do you expect me to act casually around Chris when you tell me this stuff?” “Relax, Dad, nothing happened. He was just giving it his best shot. We’ve been out four times now. He has expectations.” Why is God forcing me to listen to this? Most of my contemporaries can’t get a word out of their teenagers and when they do, black lies follow white ones. Just my fate to have acquired “Miss Open Book of the Orient .” I had...