“You were innocent, Leo. So were the rest of us. But not like you.”
“But I’ve turned into the most sophisticated and worldly of men. I’m looked upon as somewhat of a Renaissance man here in this city.”
“How is your mother, Sister Mary Gonzo Count Dracula Godzilla Norberta?” she asks.
“I still let her into the morgue each night. Want to swing by and see your mother?” I ask her.
“I had lunch with my mother today,” Sheba says. “It’s getting serious, Leo. Just like you told me six months ago.”
“Let’s drop the subject of mothers,” I order. “Our friends are gathering South of Broad to celebrate your return to the Holy City.”
We drive beside Marion Square, with the old Citadel anchoring the border, the statue of John C. Calhoun grimly surveying the harbor from the highest pedestal in town. Sheba insists that we roll down the windows so she can inhale all the complex aromas of the city and I acquiesce, even though I consider the inventor of the air conditioner the equal of the caveman who invented the wheel. Beside me, Sheba snorts and breathes in the smells of the port city. “That’s confederate jasmine I smell. It’s low tide in the rivers. That’s the smell of the pluff mud.”
“All you’re smelling is carbon monoxide. The fumes of rush-hour traffic.”
Sheba looks at me. “What happened to the romantic in you?”
“He grew up.”
We shoot past Hyman’s Seafood and the slave market, which is crowded with tourists in Bermuda shorts, T-shirts, and flip-flops, then we are stopped at the traffic light at the intersection called the Four Corners of Law. Catty-cornered is St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in its starlight whiteness and all the assuredness that good taste can bestow on a house of worship. I once got in trouble with the Roman Catholic bishop of Charleston for begging him, in print, to hire only Anglican architects whenever he felt like erecting a new grotesquerie in the Charleston suburbs. My coreligionists who worship in those toadstools wrote me hate mail for weeks, but their vitriol did nothing to make their churches prettier.
As I pull south of Broad after the lights change, the siren and flashing blue lights of a police car catch me by surprise. Instinctively, I look at my speedometer and see that I am traveling at less than fifteen miles an hour. I go quickly through the list of items that allow me to drive as a free South Carolina citizen without a criminal record—insurance, registration, tax receipt, license renewal—and I am certain I have taken care of these responsibilities in an efficient and timely manner, a rarity in my life.
“You didn’t moon that cop behind us, did you, Sheba?” I ask.
“If I mooned someone in South Carolina with my beautiful ass, there’d be lawsuits and fatalities. In L.A. only lechers and lesbians notice.”
“Sir,” a cop says as he approaches my car. “Put both hands on the steering wheel. Then slowly get out of the car. Let me see your hands at all times.”
“Officer?” I ask. “What seems to be the problem?”
“I’ll ask the questions,” the cop says. I can hear the black inflections softening the ending of every word he speaks. “Place your hands on the hood of the car and spread your legs wide. There has been a reported kidnapping of a well-known actress by a local sex offender.”
“Son of a bitch, Sheba,” I say. “It’s that living pain in the ass, Ike Jefferson.”
“Ike!” Sheba screams. She leaps from her side of the car, they rush into each other’s arms, and Ike spins Sheba in ever-widening circles, to the delight of the ladies who sell their tightly woven baskets of sweetgrass to tourists and locals alike. Ike has been a hero in Charleston’s black community since he was a young man, and it is not a surprise to the basket ladies to see him whirling the most famous white girl in recent Charleston history. Because it always terrifies me in the most primitive fashion to be stopped by the police, no matter how innocent I am or how bogus the encounter, it takes me several moments to stop my hands from shaking. I take my hands off the hood, only to have the baton of another cop poke into one of my kidneys. A female cop, I realize as I hear her harsh whisper. “Freeze, white boy. I think you were given a lawful order to place your hands on the hood of your ugly, white-trash car.”
“Don’t hit me with that stick again, Betty,” I say, “or we’re going to have a fistfight in the middle of Meeting Street.”
“Resisting arrest. Threatening a police officer,” says Betty Roberts Jefferson, Ike’s wife and a sergeant on the force. “You heard it, didn’t you, Captain?”
“I did,” Ike says. “Search his trunk, Sergeant.”
“I hope you have a search warrant,” I say. Of course, Betty puts one in front of my face, signed and sealed by Desiree Robinson, the first black judge in the history of the city courts.
“The worst year in American history was 1619,” I say. Sheba is laughing at me, still enfolded in Ike’s powerful arms. “First black slaves imported into the Virginia colony. It’s been downhill for the South ever since.”
When their cackling finally passes, Ike says, “Sheba, ride in my squad car with me. Betty, you ride with that cream-puff white boy.”
“Not until I give this girl a hug,” Betty says, turning toward Sheba. “Hey, Sheba, how’s my favorite white bitch?”
The two women embrace fiercely. Sheba says, “Betty, let me take you west. I’d have casting directors creaming all over themselves to put you on the silver screen.”
“Got to stay here and keep my eye on the new chief of police,” she says, nodding in the direction of her husband.
“Chief?” Sheba cries loudly. “You’re the goddamn chief of police in Charleston, South Carolina, Ike Jefferson? What happened to good old white racism? Segregated lunch counters? Whites-only drinking fountains? Where is it now that we really need it? Chief of police! I’ve never felt this much pride for anyone in my whole life.”
I say, “It’s amazing what a little graft, corruption, gun smuggling, and drug dealing can do for a bad cop’s advancement.”
“It won’t happen for a few months,” Ike says to Sheba, ignoring me. “Then there’ll be a big ceremony, and The Citadel’s going to throw a parade in my honor. It’d be an honor to me for you to be there.”
“Wild horses and a role in the next Spielberg movie couldn’t keep me away,” she says. “No, I’m lying about the Spielberg movie. But only Spielberg could keep me away. That’s a promise. Who’re you going to invite?”
“Dignitaries. Big shots,” Ike says, giggling. “Just the cream of white society. Hell, even Leo won’t be invited.”
“I’m buying dental floss that weekend,” I say. “I don’t have time to eat chitlins with social-climbing black traffic cops.”
“Put that white boy in handcuffs, woman,” Ike says. He opens his patrol car for Sheba, bowing elaborately as she sweeps into the front seat. “I’m tired of his lip.”
Betty and I drive behind Ike’s car. “Think my man’s safe with Sheba?” she asks.
“A man’s never safe with Sheba,” I answer. “And there’s never been a woman born who didn’t know it.”
“She’s always looked like a movie star, carried herself like one. It’s almost unnatural, isn’t it? Oh, I almost forgot, the future chief ordered me to handcuff you, Leo.” In an effortless motion combining experience and deftness, she cuffs my right hand to the steering wheel.
“Take the handcuffs off. I don’t want to report you for police brutality.”
I love Betty’s high-pitched laugh. “It excites me to see you in handcuffs, Leo. Makes me feel like a dominatrix. You know, the old white-black thing, reversed.”
“Race,” I say. “At least it’s not complicated down South.”
“Yeah,” Betty agrees. “We always have that. Complete ease and trust among my people and yours.”
We turn into the driveway of the mansion on East Bay Street where we are gathering for the evening, the home of Molly and Chad Rutledge. Sheba rushes out, runs up the front stairs, and she and Mol
ly hug, screaming on the piazza. Ike, Betty, and I watch from our cars below.
Leaning over to remove the handcuffs, Betty gives me a quick peck on the cheek. “Do you know what I love about Sheba coming to town?” she asks. “I always feel more alive. I feel that something big is about to happen.”
“It’s no accident she’s here, Betty,” I say. “Sheba will take us all to center stage tonight.”
“She’ll never be happy, will she, Leo? What does she want from us?”
“I’m sure she’ll tell us. Nothing comes free with Sheba.”
“Our girl’s in trouble,” Ike says.
“Did she say anything to you in the car?” I ask.
“Her typical Hollywood bullshit,” Ike replies. “But I think she’s in trouble.”
“That girl’s been in trouble her whole life,” Betty says, shaking her head. “Are we really going to Chad and Molly’s? Every time I walk in their door I feel like Cinderella going to the ball.”
Ike laughs. “With your cop’s uniform and those shit-kicker shoes?”
“Use your imagination,” Betty says. “This is a ballroom gown and I’m wearing glass slippers. Leo, give me your arm. I’d like a white Southern gentleman with a sense of style to lead me into the Pinckney-Barnwell mansion.”
With a smile, I escort Betty Jefferson up the winding exterior staircase of one of the twenty-five most distinguished private dwellings south of Broad. Molly comes out to greet us on the veranda.
“Hey, Molly Mouse,” I say.
“Good golly, Miss Molly,” Ike adds, and we all take turns hugging Molly.
I catch a glimpse of Sheba roaming toward the guesthouse. Molly says, “Sheba insisted on a quick shower and costume change before the other guests arrive. Let’s go to the library, where Leo will be in charge of making drinks. I picked up some T-bones from the Piggly Wiggly. Do you and Ike mind grilling them if my absentee husband does not make it home from his office?”
“Chad’s working late again?” Betty asks. “Am I wrong or does he spend more time at his fancy office than he does at home?”
“You’re not far from wrong. Hey, Leo,” Molly says as she holds me close to her. “I need more than a proper greeting from you. Do you mind putting a hickey on my neck?”
All of us laugh. “I was thinking about a more creative place. How about your right thigh?”
We enter the great house and walk past two hundred years of Charleston history in the shape of antiques too exquisite to sit on or otherwise use. In the center of the room, a chandelier hangs that looks like an ode to cut glass. An ebony grand piano stands guard in a corner overlooking the Cooper River, and a great fern-shaped harp stands in elegant attendance across the room. In all the years I have known the Rutledge family, I have never heard anyone play either instrument. I have never sat down on one of the priceless divans or chairs made by the earliest furniture makers in the colony. In its lackluster inertness, the room strikes me with the same pity I feel for an abandoned child; the piano and harp seem like they are dying from the absence of melody. Charleston is filled with such somber rooms maligned by lack of use. The large dining room with a mahogany table large enough for twenty-four shapely but fragile chairs finds use only on special occasions, and it too exudes a feeling of sterility and desertion. I would bet a month’s salary that it has been years since someone has eaten breakfast in its forbidding shadows.
But in the library, the house springs to delicious modern life with its well-stocked shelves of books that climb from floor to ceiling along one wall, the huge TV where we gather to watch the Carolina-Clemson game that is a communal rite in our state, the comfortable chairs and sofas, some leather and some made from the most decadent fabrics, the wet bar with its tiers of bottles, the fireplace with its renowned grillwork by the great Charleston cabinetmaker Thomas Elfe. This is a room that carries happy memories for all of us, the place we come to party, relax, and sometimes fall apart. It was filled with the memories that attend the reef-like accretions that build up friendships. That is the necessary role Molly plays in all our lives, the first real grown-up our circle produced, a mother figure long before she even became a mother. Only her husband, Chad, seems incapable of appreciating his wife’s goodness and wise counsel. But all of us are old enough to know that marriage is an institution that can breed hostility and indifference when none is justified.
Molly puts me in charge of distributing drinks. I have played bartender for this group ever since high school, when I was the only one among us who didn’t drink. I pour gin and tonics for Molly and Betty and retrieve a Heineken from the small refrigerator bar for Ike. But he says, “Hey, you gossip columnist!”
I turn to him. “Excuse me, sir, I consider myself the conscience of this town. Its daily chronicler. Its heart and soul. Now, do you want me to get your sorry ass a beer or not?”
“I drank beer when I was a traffic cop. What do you think the new chief of police should drink when he steps into high society?”
“I got to put up with this shit for the rest of my life,” Betty says. She lifts her glass to Molly, who touches it in a show of solidarity.
“Would his lordship like Wild Turkey on the rocks? A margarita with a salt-rimmed glass, or an old-fashioned, a Manhattan, or would you join me in a dry Beefeater martini, stirred like a son of a bitch, not shaken?”
“I love that double-o-seven talk,” Ike says. “Yeah, give me that James Bond drink. He kind of reminds me of myself.”
All of us look up when a figure in the doorway materializes without warning. Molly says, “What’s the password, mountain boy?”
Niles Whitehead smiles and takes in all the faces. “Molly Rutledge is the goddamnedest broad in the history of Charleston.”
“Not true,” Molly says. “Your own wife is.”
“Except for my own wife,” Niles agrees.
“What about my damn wife?” Ike says.
“About time, husband,” Betty says. “Niles, you quit that flirting with Molly.”
“I’m allowed to flirt with my sister-in-law, Betty,” Niles says. “It’s almost a requirement in Charleston. But I make it a habit not to flirt with a woman who packs iron on her hip. Especially when her husband’s in the same room and glad to provide backup.”
“Hold your fire, Ike. Don’t shoot the mountain boy when he runs his mouth. I like it when the white boys flirt with me,” Betty says.
“Betty Jefferson is the goddamnedest broad in the city of Charleston,” Niles says.
“I like the sound of it,” Betty says. “You can tell the mountain boy’s being sincere. He’s not full of crap the way you Charleston boys are. Thanks, Niles. You made it sound real nice.”
“It’s the orphan factor,” I say. “Niles always gets a break from women because of his Oliver Twist background.”
“Oliver Twist. I’ve heard of him. We go to school with him?” Ike asks.
“I married an idiot,” Betty says, covering her face. “Don’t forget I grew up in an orphanage too, Ike.”
“You guys go down and light the charcoal,” Molly says. “I don’t know where we’re going to eat because Sheba didn’t hand out a production schedule for the evening’s events. By the way, Leo, your mother’s invited too.”
I stop dead as Niles and Ike laugh and head down to the yard. I groan, and there is not a person in the room who does not understand the authenticity of that sound. “Why did you do that, Molly?”
“Cowardice comes easily to me. So does human weakness. True Southern girls need to please, no matter what the consequences. Monsignor Max called and said he heard Sheba was in town and wanted to come see her. He offered to be your mother’s chaperone. He caught me by surprise, Leo. I’m truly sorry.”
“It doesn’t seem like a good idea, Molly,” I tell her. “Sheba and my mother aren’t members of each other’s booster clubs.”
Molly comes up and kisses me lightly on the cheek. “I also knew you’d forgive me, no matter what I did. You always have, Leo.”
“You’ve always been my weakness, kid.”
“Weakness, my ass,” Betty says, grinning at both of us. “Look at Leo’s eyes. He’s been in love with you since high school, Molly. The boy never could hide it. Still can’t. Used to be cute, now it’s just sick.”
I ignore her, and ask Molly, “Did you tell Sheba that my mother’s coming?”
“Yes, I did,” Molly replies. “That’s what I’m really worried about.”
The doorbell rings, and I know that my mother and Monsignor Max have arrived. I shudder at the multifold possibilities the evening holds in its precarious balance. Since my father’s death all those years ago, my mother and I have skirmished over the most trifling matters, and have even gone to war on several occasions when confronted by issues that neither of us felt to be paramount. A new combustibility has grown up between us that can easily turn a pilot light into an inferno. Recently, my mother threw a drink in my face while we were arguing the place of colons in an English sentence: Mother thought of them as elegant pauses and an artful way to let a sentence breathe; I thought of them as ostentatious. When Father died, my mother and I lost our referee and middleman, our greatest fan who could translate the hidebound idiosyncrasies that could drive us crazy in a moment’s notice; we forever lost that demilitarized zone that kept us from each other’s throats. Yet she is constantly searching for inroads to navigate our relationship, and I know that this party is the ultimate white flag she can use from her breached walls. I appreciate the gesture of goodwill.
I let my mother and the monsignor in the front door. Though I should’ve known better, I do not notice the gargoyles forming on the waterspouts or the trolls licking their lips under the boxwoods. “I know I was the last person you were expecting to see tonight,” my mother says as I peck her cheek. Mother and I could give college-level courses in false displays of affection.
“I was delighted when Molly told me,” I answer. “Hello, Monsignor Max. It’s wonderful to see you.”
“If that little minx Sheba thinks she’s going to come to Charleston without seeing me, she’s got another think coming,” he says.