Full of Grace

  Michael went off to college at Duke and returned that first Thanksgiving to find his mother withdrawn and distracted, her voice reduced to whispers. By Easter the principal trustee of his father’s estate recommended a full medical workup for her. The best diagnosis the neurology team at the Medical University of South Carolina could offer was that she was extremely depressed, and so Laura Higgins became another guinea pig in the emerging medicine of psychotropic drugs. The private nurses, the extensive visits to sanitariums, the experimental medicines didn’t matter except that they depleted his father’s estate and his mother disappeared into her own world anyway. Every time Michael visited his mother, he was filled with self-loathing that he was unable to stop her deterioration.

  But Michael persevered as I did, him doing his duty, me doing mine and neither of us discussing it too much. Discussing our families at any length would have made Michael’s mother and my family real and three-dimensional, an extension of our own relationship. There was only miserly space in our world for all the trouble and ill health of Laura Higgins, Al’s patriarchy and the unending peculiarities of the entire Russo clan. It was too dangerous.

  Later, at home, Michael flipped through the four hundred stations on our television and I called Eric Bomze.

  “Bomze? It’s me. Is this a good time to talk?”

  “Ah! La Principessa! I’m with the Baroness, and as we uncork this very excellent bottle of Pétrus, I have a special favor to ask you. Tell me yes right now!”

  “Yes! Of course the answer is yes. What do you need?”

  “Well, there’s good news and bad. Which do you prefer?”

  “Bad first.”

  “Missy Belton in the Atlanta office was in a terrible automobile accident and broke her leg in fourteen places.”

  “Oh! God! That’s awful! Is she gonna be all right?”

  “Of course! She’ll be fine after a year or two of physical therapy and hopefully she won’t limp for the rest of her life.”

  “Good Lord! What can I do? Can I send flowers?”

  “What? Oh, of course. If you want to. But she’s not in a room yet, so I’d wait a few days…”

  “She couldn’t get a room? That’s awful! What exactly happened?”

  “What happened? An eighteen-wheeler came flying down an exit ramp in the pouring rain and didn’t see her little Toyota. Mashed it like a bug. And a Honda and a minivan loaded with gospel singers. She’s lucky to be alive. They all are. But apparently it caused a lot of commotion at the ER. Anyway, she was supposed to take a group of execs and their families to Sardinia next week for five days. I need you to take her place.”

  I swallowed hard. I hated what Bomze was asking of me. I didn’t know the clients, I hadn’t planned the trip, and suddenly I was supposed to step in and take over? I knew Missy from annual sales meetings and liked her well enough, but I also knew her well enough to look into my mind’s eye and see an itinerary peppered with black holes of unfinished details.

  “Of course I’ll go,” I said. “But I’ll need the entire folder first thing in the morning. Bios on the guests, food allergies—the whole thing, okay?”

  “Done, done and done! You’re an angel!”

  I’m an idiot, I thought, and hung up. I turned to Michael. “Want to run away to Sardinia with me for five days?”

  “You know I’d love to, but—”

  “Right, I know.” I leaned into our refrigerator and pulled out a carton of orange juice. I poured myself a glass. “Results of a test study due and blah, blah, blah?”

  “You know it.”

  I hadn’t expected him to come with me. He rarely could. His work was as all-consuming as mine was erratic. Later, I came out of the bathroom from my shower expecting to find Michael waiting in bed. He wasn’t there. I went silently down a few of the stairs thinking he had probably fallen asleep reading. But when I saw him I knew immediately that Michael was in trouble. Whether it was a headache or heartbreak over his mother’s condition, Michael was sitting at the dining-room table holding his head. His shoulders shook. He was crying. Frightened, I went back upstairs without a word.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  DARWINIA/SARDINIA

  At around four in the morning, I was fully alert; but that was how it always was with me. If I went to bed worried about the slightest thing, any noise or movement would wake me and I would never go back to sleep. The devil of it was that I would drag myself through the next day like an old hag.

  As quietly as I could, I untangled myself from the sheets and got up. Michael was there sleeping as though everything was right in the world. I knew the peaceful look on his face was a midnight illusion, but I made a conscious effort to tell myself that we were fine. He was fine, I was fine, we were fine—if I kept conjugating our status it would become true.

  My first steps on the cool bare floor felt good. Small things could bring such pleasure, especially when stealing time from the deep hours of night. Without leaving the house, I knew what it would feel and look like outdoors. Silent streets lit in soft angles of blue light, air thick with dew, the low hum of the transformers that swept the streets of Charleston with enough light to pass from a car to a porch. You would hear the murmuring of a window-unit air conditioner somewhere in the neighborhood. The changing gears of a few cars would be well off in the distance, background music to the dreams of thousands. The parks would be empty, the skies silent for another hour or so, the sanitation department had yet to begin its rounds, and the only things moving around would be cockroaches, moody cats and a patrolman looking for coffee and a doughnut.

  I pulled the sheets and coverlet over Michael’s shoulders, and kissing the tips of my fingers, I transferred the kiss to the edges of his hair.

  We had thick area rugs, unmatched kilim runners on each side of our queen-size bed. I had brought them home from a trip to Turkey two years ago. Many people preferred the quiet muffle of wall-to-wall broadloom carpeting for their bedrooms—something to match the curtains, something that didn’t cause static shock, tasteful but reasonably priced. But I loved the uneven slope of the ancient floors and the patina of the heart pine, lovingly buffed over the decades to a glossy shade of coffee. I never thought of covering them with anything that would detract from their integrity.

  The geometric Anatolian motif of the kilims reminded me of Native American rugs. I always marveled to discover that all over the world, similar designs appeared in arts and crafts, no matter how disparate the cultures and how far-flung one might have been from the other. Sand paintings in New Mexico resembled sand paintings in Tibet. And rugs from here were like rugs from there.

  Without turning on any lights, I used the bathroom and filled a glass with water, drinking it straight down. My mouth was dry from sleep and the water seemed especially cool and crisp. I refilled my glass and drank again until my thirst was finally quenched. Returning to our bed, I stood over Michael, watching him breathe, looking for any sign of discomfort. He seemed fine and so I quietly slipped between the sheets, concentrating on not disturbing him. But my best sleeping hours were finished for the night and I lay awake for a long time before drifting off into a kind of half-dream, half-waking state.

  In the hour or so between waking and drifting through nonsensical dreams and thoughts of the day, my nervous mind ran through the fast-approaching trip to Sardinia. I dreaded learning what Missy had left undone, knowing there would be hundreds of loose ends. Missy ran her business one way and I ran mine another. The good thing was that I had four days to get my arms around the itinerary and I could catch up as the trip unfolded. In addition, because of the level of hotels we patronized, I was sure the concierge would be helpful. Yes, I thought, I will enlist the hotel talent to pull this off.

  I turned over to face Michael’s back and readjusted my pillows. My thoughts drifted again to him and wondering what in the world could cause him such anxiety. I thought about my fierce love for Michael and then, for some inexplicable reason, my thoughts were of the lines I had n
early drawn in the sand with my father. How Freudian! I pushed both of them away—that is, my father and even Michael.

  Sardinia. I would figure that out and it would be fine. I knew I had all the resources at my disposal to make it happen as it should. But my mind drifted back to Michael again. I couldn’t bear the idea of Michael so upset over something that he would go off alone to cry. That just wasn’t like him. Surely he was frustrated and worried about his mother. I would make a great dinner that night for him and encourage him to tell me what was on his mind. After all, that’s what a good partner would do and what the other would want.

  With work tucked aside for the moment and with the framework of a plan for Michael—because, practical girl I was, I realized there was nothing to be done anyway at that hour—I began to dissect my weekend with my family. I had really loved my brief visit with Frank and Regina, although I saw that I had virtually ignored my niece and nephews, and why was that? It was always the same at my mother’s house—chaos caused by feeding crowds, and always the brunt of the work fell to the adult women. It was all we could do to get from meal to meal, and so the only conversation I had with the younger relatives was around the table, and that was scant at best. Nonna and my father seemed to monopolize all the airtime, and sidebar conversations were looked upon as poor manners.

  And Nicky? God in heaven! Nicky and that stupid Marianne of his. I envisioned the wedding and the thirty bridesmaids Marianne would want to have at her side. All dressed in lavender taffeta gowns and matching hats copied from Gone with the Wind. There would be a bubble machine and their names monogrammed on every possible item at the reception. Marianne would tear up and her mascara would be blotted by a friend with a lavender linen handkerchief. Everything would be lavender and mint green or pink and she would order so many flowers Big Al would have to pave every parking lot in South Carolina and Georgia to pay for them. They would release doves. The doves would drop poop on Marianne and I would snicker…

  I did not think I had turned into a snob. Not really. What kind of a girl had I expected Nicky to wind up with anyway? One like Marianne who worked that southern thing to death. But I surely would have loved a little sister with a brain instead of a bobble head. Regina was great but she lived too far away. Even with e-mail and cell phones, we were too busy in our very different lives to pursue anything more than what we had.

  I loved my family and my father with everything I had in my heart. Oh, Big Al, Big Al, Big Al. Why can’t you be fabulous like Paul Newman? Smart like Al Pacino? I knew it was selfish to wish he was a different kind of man. But I did.

  At his best, he could pull off a kind of Robert De Niro—handsome and appealing, warm and welcoming and even marginally elegant in some moments. But if Big Al had one too many beers watching the Golf Channel and an ad for Victoria’s Secret went slinking across his giant plasma television, there was no mystery about which part of his anatomy he would grab and yell, “I gotcha secret right here!” Even if the president of the United States were there eating peanuts. What could you say? Big Al was a loose cannon and best served up to the public or maybe someday to Michael in a controlled environment.

  As at last the beginnings of daylight appeared and the light in the room began to rise, I realized with the sounds of the alarm clock and the smells of coffee brewing that I had in fact fallen into a dreamless sleep. Michael was already in the shower. I poured two mugs of coffee, and when I returned to the bedroom he was dressing.

  “Hey, g’morning,” I said. “How are you feeling?”

  “Thanks!” he said, taking the coffee. “I’m fine. You?”

  “I didn’t sleep all that great.” I pulled a white linen skirt from the closet and began to rummage around for a top. “Whatever…I have so much to do…You home for dinner tonight?” I reached down for my low-heeled green pumps and threw them behind me on the bed.

  “Yep.”

  “Good. I’m cooking.”

  Michael looked at me and smiled. “I’ll bring home some wine.”

  Within the hour, the steamy bathroom had raised the temperature of the house by five degrees, but the dishwasher hummed, the bed was made, the garbage had been put by the curb, and we were off to our respective places of employment. For the moment Michael seemed perfectly fine, and I decided to put his troubles aside for the day.

  When I arrived at my office, the phones were ringing off the hook. I thumbed through the waiting stack of messages while Joanie, the receptionist, answered and redirected calls to various people.

  “Bomze wants to see you on the double,” Joanie said, and answered another line. “Bomze Platinum Travel. How may I direct your call? That line is busy. Would you like his voice mail?”

  “Well, it’s right after a holiday,” I said.

  “You can say that again! Bomze Platinum Travel…”

  I jammed my messages into the side flap of my bag, making my way down the hallway saying “Hello! How was your Fourth?” to a number of coworkers and their assistants, and arrived at Eric Bomze’s door. I rapped my knuckles lightly on the frame.

  “Come in!” he called out. He was on the phone with the Baroness. “Yes, my angel! Yes, my precious! I’ll be there! Don’t worry!”

  I stood just inside his door, waiting for him to end the conversation.

  “Yes, my sweet. No! It’s all arranged. She just came in. I’ll call you back!” Bomze hung up the phone, took a deep breath and looked up at me. “Being married to royalty can be a royal pain.”

  “Yeah, right? I’m sure. Okay, so what have we got on Sardinia?”

  The morning blew by with phone calls and faxes flooding the wires with details. The guest list for Sardinia was made up of trustees and actual and potential donors from a major university in Atlanta who had a special interest in architecture and archaeology. I liked architecture well enough, but I had zero interest in or knowledge of archaeology. Missy had had the foresight to engage the services of a historian from Emory University who studied and lectured on both topics. Dr. Geraldine Post had just returned from the islands around Greece and said she could make herself available to us in Charleston as soon as her clothes returned from the dry cleaners.

  “I’m sure I can be there by Wednesday,” she told me.

  “That would be wonderful,” I said. “I just want to go over everything with you.”

  “Sure thing. These nice folks are gonna get the weirdest education. Sardinia—home of nuraghi and dolmens.”

  “Yeah, I was about to bring them up. Are we speaking English here?”

  Dr. Post had a good laugh then. “Actually, I’m sure not! Probably some derivative of some Roman language…but anyway, between the Phoenicians and the Barbarians…”

  Dr. Post was quite a character—obviously knowledgeable about the obscure and the ancient. She would add some scholarship laced with good humor to the days just ahead. That was what the crowd always wanted, a good time, a little takeaway value and, in addition, some pampering of the mind, body and spirit.

  A real itinerary began to fall into place that included historic tours, shopping, meals and time slots for other indulgences. I began to feel more optimistic and actually impatient to make the trip.

  By the time I got home that evening, loaded with groceries to prepare veal Marsala and risotto with fresh asparagus, I was mentally fortified to investigate Michael’s anxiety from last night. If I fed him well and we drank some wine together, I felt reasonably sure that he would tell me what was on his mind. It was probably about his mother. If that was my mother—estranged as we might be to each other these days—I would surely cry my eyes out, too.

  The heat of the day was broken by six and I decided to serve dinner in the brick courtyard that spilled out from our living room. We loved eating outside; somehow everything tasted better. And I could decorate outside and create an atmosphere that ranged from tropical to elegant. Sometimes, when we were in the mood for Bali, I took our potted palm trees and rolled them up to the table. I would have as many as fi
fty votive candles lighting the wall (thank you, God, for inventing Pier One) and serve a seafood stew in carved-out loaves of bread. Or I could stretch for eighteenth-century elegance, using every piece of crystal, silver and lace-trimmed linen I owned, which wasn’t a lot, but Michael was always good enough to say he got the picture. We loved the fantasy of pretending to be somewhere else or in a different time, and the night always progressed to a walk on the Battery Wall, time spent marveling at the stars, the breezes that floated across the water and, most of all, a moment reflecting on the profundity of Fort Sumter.

  Michael would always say something like “Can you believe all these people died for their country, just like that? Crazy!”

  I would shake my head and say something like “Only to be outdone by the crew of the Hunley. Those guys were completely nuts!”

  It wasn’t that we weren’t patriotic; like too many of our peers, we couldn’t imagine the passions of war. And the H. L. Hunley crew that drowned was the third crew to do so. Can you imagine the guy in charge asking for volunteers? Okay, men, here’s the deal. Even though the first and second crew drowned trying to sink the Yankees, we need seven good men to keep the Hunley going and a crew captain. Our target is the Housatonic and those sumbitches who will burn Charleston to the ground if we don’t get ’em first…

  For as much as Michael or I would have done to save Charleston—and that was a lot—neither of us could envision offering to die for the cause with the full knowledge that we most assuredly would die for the cause. I was a major chicken.

  I went outside to check the weather wondering What would I die for? Was there anything? Or anyone? No. The president? In theory, perhaps I would, or I could understand that the Secret Service was trained to take the proverbial bullet. I had never entertained one second of ambition to join the Secret Service. Would I die for Michael? Better yet, would he die for me? And what happened when you died anyway? If Nonna was right, the guys from the Hunley were all up in heaven having a big party with the martyrs from the Roman Colosseum. But I didn’t think that was an actual possibility. Heaven and hell just didn’t make any sense to me. It was true enough that my faith had wobbled for years and then gone into hiding. But my theory on the afterlife and the possibility of its existence was like Occam’s razor—all things being equal, the simplest answer was usually the correct one. When you died, you died. Except for Nonno? In any case, it had been a long time since I had really thought about it.