South of Broad

  “Hello, King residence. This is Leo speaking.” My Southern race does politesse with thoughtless grace.

  An unknown woman’s voice spoke. “May I speak to Sister Mary Norberta?”

  “Mary Norberta? I’m sorry, but no one lives here by that name.”

  “Excuse me, but I believe you’re mistaken, young man. Sister Norberta and I were novitiates at the Sacred Heart convent many years ago.”

  “My mother is the principal of a high school. My high school. I can assure you that you have the wrong number.”

  “You are Leo,” the voice said. “Her younger son.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I am Leo, her son.”

  “Except for your glasses, you’re a very attractive young man,” she said. “I suggest you remove your glasses when your father takes your photograph.”

  “He’s photographed me my entire life,” I said. “I don’t know what his face looks like, but I know what his camera looks like.”

  “Your mother brags about how witty you are,” the voice said. “You get that from your father’s side of the family.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Oh, I haven’t identified myself, have I? My name is Sister Mary Scholastica. I called to wish your mother a happy Bloomsday. I bet that rings a bell with you, doesn’t it?”

  “Never heard of it,” I said. “Sister Scholastica.”

  “She’s never spoken to you of her time in the convent?”

  “Not once in my life.”

  “Oh, dear, I hope I haven’t broken a confidence,” the nun said.

  “Not that I’m aware of,” I said. “Are you saying that my brother and I were illegitimate?”

  “Oh, heavens, no. I’m afraid I must go gargle; it seems I have put my foot in my mouth. So, has she raised you a feminist? She bragged that she would.”

  My mother had, indeed, bragged such a thing, to everyone, since I was born. “My God in heaven,” I breathed. “You do know her. Sister Norberta, huh?”

  “She was the most beautiful nun I ever saw. Any of us, for that matter. She looked like an angel in her habit,” Sister Scholastica said. “Will she be in later?”

  “Let me give you her phone number at the school.” And I did so, my rage a bile I could hardly control. But then I finished the task: added vanilla and the benne seeds, dropped them in dollops from a coffee spoon on a pan lined with aluminum foil, and placed them in a slow oven. Then I dialed my mother’s number.

  When she answered, I said, “Yes, I admit it: once I called you Mother. But from now on, you’ll be Sister Mary Norberta to me.”

  “Is this one of your jokes?”

  “You tell me, Mother dear, if this is a joke or not. I’m on my knees, praying to St. Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes, that it is a joke.”

  “Who told you this?” my mother demanded.

  “Someone with a dumber-sounding name than Norberta. Her name was Scholastica.”

  “She knows that she’s never supposed to call me at home.”

  “But it’s Bloomsday, Mother,” I said with more than a pinch of sarcasm. “She wanted to share your joy.”

  “Was she drinking?” Mother asked.

  “We were on a telephone. I don’t have a clue.”

  “You get rid of that tone right this minute, mister,” she demanded.

  “Yes, Sister. I’m sorry, Sister. Please forgive me, Sister.”

  “I didn’t really keep this a secret. Look at the photograph on my dresser, the one with his parents and your father. You’ll see.”

  “Why couldn’t you just tell me?” I asked. “And quit saying you’re raising me as a feminist.”

  “You’ve always been strange enough, Leo. Steve knew all about my life as a nun. But you were so different and so difficult that I wasn’t sure how you’d handle it.”

  “It’s going to take a while to get used to this,” I said. “It’s not every day a boy finds out his mother’s a professional virgin.”

  “My vocation was very fulfilling to me,” she informed me firmly, then changed the subject in a sidestep unusual for her. “Have you taken the cookies to our new neighbors?”

  “I’m baking them now. Then I’ll let them cool.”

  “Do not be late. Lunch at the yacht club, then four o’clock to meet your new coach. And, Leo. I’m proud I’m raising you to be a feminist.”

  “No wonder everybody treats me like an oddball,” I answered in amazement. “I was raised by a nun.”

  Just after three, I began packing the cookies in a tin as my father entered the kitchen carrying two bags of groceries.

  “Benne seed wafers?” he said. “They’re not mentioned in Ulysses.”

  “This is not part of the Bloomsday feast,” I said. “A new family’s moved across the street, remember?”

  Jasper King put the grocery bags on the counter and said, “The sweetest boy in the world needs to be kissed by his father.”

  I groaned, but knew the folly of resistance. He kissed me on both cheeks like he learned to do in Italy during World War II. All during my childhood, my father made up excuses to kiss me and my brother on both cheeks. When we were young, Steve and I would practice the groans we’d make whenever he approached us.

  With great care, I packaged the wafers in a rounded tin that once housed salted pecans. I tasted one to make sure it was worthy to enter a stranger’s home. It was. “I’m going to run these over to the new neighbors,” I said. “Sister Scholastica called, by the way.”

  “Haven’t heard from her in a coon’s age.”

  “You know her?” I asked, ignoring the subject of my mother’s nun-hood for the moment.

  “Of course I know Scholastica,” he said. “She was the maid of honor when your mother and I got married. By the way, I ran into Judge Alexander on Broad Street. He bragged about how highly your probation officer thinks about you. I told him how well you were doing.”

  The moving van had already departed when I crossed the street to the Poe family. The cookies were warm in the tin as I bounded up the stairs of the nineteenth-century house that needed a facelift and a touch of rouge. I knocked twice and heard someone moving toward the door in bare feet. It opened and I got my first rapturous glance at Sheba Poe, who became the most beautiful woman in Charleston the moment she crossed the county line. Everyone I met, male or female, remembers the exact place where they first caught sight of this spellbinding, improbable blond beauty. It was not that we lacked experience in the presence of beautiful women; Charleston was famous for the comeliness of its well-bred and pampered women. But as Sheba stood tall in her doorway, her presence suggested a carnality that took me to the borderline of a cardinal sin just because of what I thought about as I gaped at her. To me, it felt like no appreciation of mere loveliness, but some corruption of covetousness or gluttony. Her green eyes drank me in, and I noted flecks of gold.

  “Hello,” she said. “My name is Sheba Poe. I’m the new kid on the block. My brother, Trevor, is sneaking up behind me. He’s wearing my ballet shoes.”

  “I’m wearing my own ballet shoes, thank you.” Trevor Poe appeared beside his sister. I was struck dumb by both his composure and his elfin size. If anything, he was prettier than his sister, but thinking that seemed to rewrite the laws of nature. Trevor noted my silence. “Don’t worry; Sheba strikes everyone that way. I have the same effect on people, but for an entirely different reason. I’ve played Tinker Bell in more class plays than I can count.”

  “I made you some cookies,” I said, flustered. “To welcome you to the neighborhood. They’re benne wafers, a Charleston specialty.”

  “Does it have a name?” Trevor asked his sister. It was an odd echo of my conversation earlier that day with the orphans, as if I weren’t in the room.

  This time, I answered: “Its name is Leo King.”

  “The Kings of Charleston? As in King Street?” Sheba asked.

  “No, we’re no relation to the famous Charleston Kings,” I said. “I’m descended from
the nothing Kings.”

  “A pleasure to be friends with one of the nothing Kings,” Sheba said. She took the tin of cookies and handed it to her brother, then took my hand and squeezed it, as mischievous and flirtatious as she was lovely.

  Then a darker, more menacing presence approached from the rear of the house unsteadily, like a dog with three legs.

  “Who is it?” There was something wrong with the woman’s voice. A lovely but diminished version of both her twins appeared in the doorway, parting her two children like a wave. “What do you want from us?” she asked. “You’ve already got your check for the move.”

  “The movers are long gone,” Trevor said.

  “He brought us some cookies, Mama,” Sheba said, but there was a nervous, stilted quality to her voice. “From an old family recipe.”

  “It’s from Charleston Receipts,” I said, “a local cookbook.”

  “My great-aunt has a recipe in that cookbook,” the woman said, and a note of familial pride entered the slurred speech of what I now recognized as a common drunk.

  “Which one?” I said. “I’ll cook it for you.”

  “It’s called breakfast shrimp. My aunt was Louisa Whaley.”

  “I’ve cooked it often,” I told her. “We call it mulled shrimp and serve it over grits.”

  “You cook? What a faggoty thing to do. You and my son are destined to be bosom buddies.”

  “Why don’t you go back inside, Mama?” Sheba suggested, but with diplomacy in her voice.

  “If you become friends with me, Leo,” Trevor explained, “it’s a kind of kiss of death to my mother.”

  “Oh, Trevor, Mama’s just joking,” said Sheba, guiding her mother back into the shade of the house.

  “You wish,” said Trevor.

  “Would you like to subscribe to the News and Courier?” I asked the retreating figure of Mrs. Poe. “We’ve got a special introductory offer: the first week is free except the Sunday edition.”

  “Sign us up,” she said. “If you’re the milkman, we need milk and eggs too.”

  “I’ll call the milkman,” I said. “His name is Reggie Schuler.”

  Sheba appeared at the door again and said in an exaggerated Southern accent, “I don’t know what my mother, Miss Evangeline, would do without the kindness of flaming assholes.”

  I laughed out loud, surprised by the profanity coming from such a pretty face and knowing the witty reference to Tennessee Williams, which seemed dangerous. Her twin was not nearly as amused as I was and chastised his sister. “Let’s wait until we make a friend or two until we reveal our true trashiness, Sheba. My sister apologizes, Leo.”

  “I most certainly do not,” Sheba said, mesmerizing me with her eyes. Her Southern accent was extraordinary for its depth, although it was certainly not a Charleston accent, which was gussied up with its own bold flares and Huguenot accessories. Her brother’s voice was high-pitched, but hard to place in a geographical setting, though I would have guessed the West.

  “My natural charm has captivated Leo, has it not, my little benne wafer?” Sheba had opened the cookies and was eating one as she passed another to Trevor. Their mother’s sudden reappearance took them by surprise.

  “You haven’t left yet,” the mother said. “I forget your name, young man.”

  “I don’t think I introduced myself to you, Mrs. Poe. I’m Leo King. I live in that brick house across the street.”

  “I find it most undistinguished,” she said.

  “My father built it before the Board of Architectural Review got strong,” I explained. “It’s considered dreadful by most Charlestonians.”

  “But you’re a King. One of the King Street Kings, I suppose.”

  “No, ma’am. We’re the nothing Kings. I already explained that to your kids.”

  “Ah, you’ve met my darling children. A faggot and a harlot. Not bad for a single lifetime, don’t you agree? And to think I came from the Charleston aristocracy. The Barnwells, the Smythes, the Sinklers, all that and more. So very much more, Mr. Nothing King. The blood of the founders of the colony flows through these veins. But my children are hideous disappointments to me. They poison everything they touch.”

  Mrs. Poe stopped in midstream that was half-genealogy and half-tirade and finished off a drink in a cut-glass tumbler. Then she placed her nose against the screen door leading to the piazza and said, “I think I’m going to puke.”

  She did not puke, but she did fall through the screen door and straight into my arms. I caught her, stumbled once, then righted myself and lifted her off the piazza floor, where she would have suffered some severe damage to her face. Sheba and Trevor both cried out, then together we carried their mother to her upstairs bedroom. The furniture we passed smelled newly out of the box, cheap copies of antiques, even the four-poster, rice-planter bed we laid her upon. The twins seemed undone that I had witnessed this humiliating event. But I was feeling heroic for catching their mother as she popped through her front door, invoking the infield fly rule and declaring her immediately out, and carrying her out of sight before anyone on the street could report the event.

  Back at the front of the steps, Sheba grabbed my hand and asked, coming very close to begging: “Please, Leo, don’t tell anyone what you just saw. This is our last year in high school and we can’t take much more.”

  “I won’t tell a soul,” I said, and meant it.

  Trevor said, “This is our fourth high school. Our neighbors can only take so much of this. Mom is capable of far worse.”

  “I won’t even tell my mother and father,” I said. “Especially not them. My mother’s your new high school principal, and my father will teach you physics this year.”

  “You won’t allow this to hurt our newfound friendship,” Sheba said, close to tears.

  “I won’t let anything hurt our friendship,” I said. “Nothing at all.”

  “Then let’s start with some truth. Just a little dab,” Trevor said. “My mother is from Jackson, Wyoming. We last lived in Oregon. You don’t want to know a thing about my father. Mama doesn’t have a drop of Charleston blood. And my sister is one of the greatest actresses who ever lived,” Trevor continued.

  That’s when Sheba astonished me by falling silent, wiping her eyes with her fingers, and giving me the most dazzling smile. “But that’s all part of the secret too. No one can know that either.”

  “I won’t tell a soul,” I repeated.

  “You’re an angel,” the newly composed Sheba Poe said, kissing me gently, becoming the first girl ever to kiss me on the lips. Then Trevor kissed me lightly on the lips too, and sweetly, causing me much greater surprise.

  At the bottom of the steps, I turned back toward the twins, not wanting to walk out of their presence just yet: “None of this happened. Simple as that.”

  “Some of it happened, paperboy,” Trevor said as he went back into the house, but his sister lingered.

  “Hey, Leo Nothing King. Thanks for being in the neighborhood. And by the way, Leo, it’s not just my good looks that will make you fall in love with me. You’re not going to believe how nice I am, kiddo.”

  “You could be mean as hell and ugly as sin, Sheba Poe,” I said. “But I’d still fall in love with you.” I waited several beats, then added, “Kiddo.”

  Floating back to my house, I realized I had never said anything like that to a girl, ever; I had flirted with a girl for the first time. A changeling self crossed that street as I skipped toward my house, having been kissed by both a girl and a boy for the first time.

  CHAPTER 3 Yacht Club

  It was the noonday hour, under a man-eating Charleston sun, the air so full of humidity it made me wish for a set of gills beneath my earlobes. I walked into the main dining room of the Charleston Yacht Club for the luncheon my mother had ordered me to attend. The yacht club was plush but threadbare and in need of renovation. For me, it carried the silent menace of enemy territory as I walked beneath the contemptuous stares of the club’s founders. Their fac
es scowled down at me, disfigured by the ineptitude of their portraitists. The artists of Charleston made the movers and shakers of the river-shaped city look like they needed both a good dentist and an effective laxative. My freshly shined shoes moved across the Oriental carpets as I looked for a uniformed guard to halt my progress toward the inner sanctum of the club, but the few men I passed neither noticed nor spoke to me as I moved toward the murmurous conversations of the lunchtime crowd. Outside, the Cooper River was lined with white sails limp in the breathless air like butterflies trapped in a strange, city-spawned amber formed by buttermilk and ivory. Even behind the closed windows, I could hear the profanity of the stalled sailors cursing the lack of wind. Before I entered the dining room, I drew a deep breath and wondered again what I was doing at this lunch. Charleston could produce men and women so aristocratic they could smell the chromosomes of a passing tramp in the armpits of a tennis-playing Ravenel. It was a city and a club that knew exactly who it wanted, and I didn’t fill the bill in any of its particulars. And I was well aware of it.

  Across the room my father rose out of a chair and motioned for me, and I felt like a booger in a Kleenex as I crossed the room. But I noticed that the stillness of the river lent it a green, almost turquoise, shine; the slight movement of the tides cast moving shadows on the ceiling that passed like reluctant waves from chandelier to chandelier.

  The table I joined was not a happy one, and my intrusion seemed welcome. “This is our son, Leo King,” my father said to the table in general. “Son, this is Mr. Chadworth Rutledge and his wife, Hess. Sitting beside them is Mr. Simmons Huger and Mrs. Posey Huger.”