A Southern Girl: A Novel

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A Southern Girl 222 “Dad, I’m so sorry we busted in on you two like that. I told Chris we shouldn’t go in but he seemed to think you would be sitting around playing cards or something. I can’t believe how naive he can be.” “Well, maybe we were playing cards.” “Right. We busted in at a terrible time; a few minutes more and it would have been really embarrassing.” “What are you talking about?” I demand. “Dad, get real. Does Adelle always wear her sweater with the label on the outside? Don’t worry, Chris didn’t notice.” I am certain that my blush would have put a pomegranate seed to shame. I am still blushing the next morning at St. Philip’s and into the afternoon, when I carry Sarah back to Sullivan’s. As I tote her bag to the house, yelping sounds come from the direction of the garbage bins. I drop the bag and walk over, Sarah slightly ahead. “It’s Ralph,” Sarah says, stooping. Ralph is the Irish Setter from down the block. He is sitting on his haunches inside Steven’s trap, looking forlorn and whimpering. The top to the can is off and some garbage litters the concrete. “Well,” says Sarah brightly as she opens the latch, “at least we proved it works.” She has a way of putting the best possible face on calamity. j 23 i On Monday morning, while dressing, I fixate on a one-item agenda: verbal dissection of Natalie Berman. Her covert solicitation of Allie, her effrontery in the school parking lot, her eel-like stealth in slithering behind my back have me in the blackest of moods. In the parlance of modern psycho-babble, I am among the anger disadvantaged . Coping tools available to others—flailing, screaming, fuming, ranting, raving, throwing, breaking, stomping, cursing, spitting, snorting, biting—I employ only by means of imitation since, as with any handicap, I have developed certain compensations. Acting out a missing reflex is not easy, no easier than suppressing a functioning one, such as sitting behind home plate and not blinking when a foul ball hits the screen directly in front. I suppose this malfunction should itself make me furious, but . . . ? Flow 223 It is with nervous envy that I observe others throw tantrums, instinctively reverting to the pacific calm which is my nature, retreating into something akin to a temporary hibernation in which my body temperature drops, my breathing shallows, and my pulse slows. It drove Elizabeth, whose anger reflex remained a well-oiled, finely tuned precision instrument, crazy. But when angered myself, either by a pricking of my pride, a calculated slight, or a direct insult, rare as those are, I feel acid in the stomach, the muscular stirring of rebellion, a taunting of nerve endings so that I am positive I possess the gene for anger, but this gene is unschooled in what comes next. It flounders, sending out its neural messages in a signing my brain does not read. I suppose this all adds up to some variety of psychological deficiency in that everyone seems to feel that anger is healthy. Certainly there is no shortage of anger in America today so we should be healthier than we have ever been. Places like Detroit and Miami, New York and L.A., should be downright rapturous. So though I know I am angry at Natalie Berman, that a logical, finite, and well-placed reason exists for that ire, and although I can feel within me the rising flood and surge of emotions I recognize as anger, I am very unsure of what I will do about it. The tongue lashing I am rehearsing as I abuse my necktie will not be delivered. That, my experience makes clear. In private, I can feign prickly, vitriolic, even animated, but in confrontation , sarcasm remains the outer reach of my left jab or right hook. Words snarled into my mirror this morning guarantee only that Natalie Berman will not hear them later. As soon as I arrive at the office I dial the number on her business card. Her address is listed as King Street, far to the north of Calhoun Street, an area in transition; what some might and do call slum. On the second ring a female answers. “ACLU.” “Natalie Berman, please.” “Ms. Berman is at the courthouse this morning. Is there something I can help you with?” “This is Coleman Carter. Are you her...