Islands Page 15

  As she had said, the center held.

  6

  JUST BEFORE CHRISTMAS 1999, with one millennium sliding inexorably into another, we sat in the early dark before the fire in the beach house, reluctant to get up and begin to clear the redolent remnants of our annual Sullivan’s Island Christmas feast. All of us had family celebrations on the day itself, and we would cherish their warmth and the familial chaos that was as much tradition as the smilax ropes on the staircase banisters, and the turkey or duck that was the provender of the family hunters. Few Charlestonians bought their Christmas bird.

  The various downtown clans would gather, replete with great-aunts and imperial grandmothers and shrieking children and handsome young men and women home from Princeton and Harvard and Sweetbriar and in a few renegade instances, outposts such as Bennington and Antioch. Whatever living arrangements and leisure-time pursuits and body parts with rings and piercings occupied the collegial young during the school year, they were laid aside for the velvets and satins and blue blazers and bow ties of home.

  Christmas was the height of the debutante season, and some of the young women and their families swept giddily from one party or ball to another, often twice or three times a day. That some of the young women would go back to studies of international law or particle physics or forensic medicine in no way impeded the magic of this hiatus.

  Just for this time, downtown seemed to me much like it might have been in an earlier, more graceful century. The magnolia leaf and Williamsburg wreaths on doors would not come down until Twelfth Night, and white tapers would burn in tall windows from dusk on. There was a feeling abroad in this particular season that it was necessary and right to bring out the oldest ornaments, the oldest receipts; to sing the oldest carols, to dip in and out of friends’ homes as had been done since the nineteenth century, hugging and crying, “Merry Christmas,” and leaving a small gift or a batch of benne seed cookies.

  “Stay and have a drop of eggnog with us,” the visitees would cry, and the visitors would do so. Charleston eggnog is hallowed and potent, often made with the same Barbadian rum that great-great-grandfather used. I often imagined that Christmas morning in many homes south of Broad might be a bit bleary.

  Perhaps no one spoke of it, but I thought that the new millennium threatened to change lives and personal ecosystems here more violently than in most places in America. There was simply such a deep well of beautiful stasis. Many of us knew full well and without question who we were until midnight on the thirty-first of December. Who would we be on January 1, 2000? Elsewhere they feared Y2K; here the demon was the necessity of making our way in a totally new thousand years. We did not know how to do that. That sort of change had never visited Charleston. It made no sense, perhaps, but the great, creeping shadow of the impending change stalked the old streets.

  “Somehow I keep wanting to look over my shoulder,” Lila said on the night of our Scrubs Christmas dinner. “I know with my mind that nothing will change, not really, but this is the only place that I feel will stay…like it’s always been. Where we’ll stay like we’ve always been.”

  “We’re not that now.” I smiled at her. “And I have the fanny to prove it.”

  “You know what I mean,” Lila said. I did.

  I got up and stretched and walked out onto the porch to clear my food-and-drink-smogged mind. The air was still and very cold for Charleston at Christmas. There would be frost on the spartina in the morning, and a hard freeze inland. Already the suicidal azaleas and camellias that always rush the season downtown wore mantles of sheeting and quilts. My own huge pink Debutante camellias back on Bull Street sported brittle, moth-eaten velvet draperies from Lewis’s Battery house. They had been folded in the attic for many years; perhaps, like the animals in the legend, they would speak at midnight on Christmas Eve, and talk wistfully of the grand, candlelit balls and feasts that they had once presided over.

  “Get real,” I said aloud to myself, and looked up at the black, star-pricked sky. The stars seemed to swim so close and burning cold that you could reach up and touch them; the Milky Way was a luminous cloud. I breathed deeply. Over the smells from the house—wood smoke and cedar and wax myrtle from the tree and swags and wreaths we had put up, and Christmas dinner itself—a river of clean, cold salt poured off the sea and into my face.

  I hope I die here, I thought, and then remembered that Charlie had, and wept a little, for the place that was never set at the table now, and the tottering old dogs who never ceased sniffing for him. But I still thought that it would be the finest place imaginable to end a life that had been so defined by it.

  There was a sharp rap on the glass door, and I looked to see Lewis, gesturing me in.

  “Come back in,” his mouth said silently.

  “You come out here,” I mouthed.

  “Are you crazy?” his lips said. And I smiled and went back inside. For a moment, the house was stale and stifling, but only for a moment. Warmth wrapped me again, and I sat down on the raised hearth, realizing only then that I was shivering. Over the layered aromas of roasted oysters and port-glazed goose—Fairlie’s idea for a change from the turkey or duck we usually had, and a very bad one—the sharp tingle of champagne tickled my nose.

  “Time for the toast,” Henry said, handing me a glass and raising his. It was his turn this year. We all raised our glasses.

  “To the Scrubs, which were, are, and ever will be,” he said. “And to the next thousand years. To the great blessing of being present at the beginning of the journey. And to Lila and Simms. Merry Christmas. Happy anniversary. Happy millennium.”

  We touched glasses all around and cried, “Here, here,” as we had always done, and drank deeply. The crisp froth of champagne washed away the lingering taste of goosey port. We all moved up to hug Lila and Simms. Henry, tall and tawny in the leaping firelight and suddenly so like the Henry I had laughed with all through Mexico that it took my breath away, poured another round, and we drank that, too. Silence fell. For a moment, there seemed nothing to say. It had not been, all told, a comfortable day.

  Lila and Simms had been married on the day before Christmas Eve in St. Michael’s, of course, and this day was their fortieth anniversary. Lila had told us in the fall that she and Simms were repeating their wedding vows on this anniversary, and instead of St. Michael’s, wanted to do it here.

  “What a lovely idea,” Camilla said. “We should all do it.”

  We were silent. There was no “we” for Camilla anymore.

  “It’s the place we’ve really been happiest,” Lila had said, not looking at Simms. He said nothing. He nodded. Lewis and I exchanged glances. There was a strange note in Lila’s musical voice, one that I had not heard before. It seemed equal parts iron and tremolo. But then it was gone, and she went on sweetly.

  “We always planned to do it on our fiftieth, but I wanted to do it in the same century we were married in. Who knows if we could still get up the church steps ten years from now? And all of a sudden, instead of the big hoo-ha at St. Michael’s, and all the children and grandchildren and half of Charleston, and the reception and endless bad champagne, I just wanted to have it here. Just us. The family is not at all pleased, but we’ve promised them they can have a high holy mass with the archbishop of Canterbury for our fiftieth, if they want to. By then maybe we’ll be too senile to care.”

  So we hung a few extra holly wreaths and banked the fireplace in green and white poinsettias, which most of us hated but had been developed in Charleston and had been massed at the altar on Lila and Simms’s wedding day, and lit candles and turned off the lamps and, by fire and candle and tree light only, Lila and Simms Howard reaffirmed their vows.

  They had chosen late afternoon, instead of seven o’clock, when the original ceremony had taken place, because Simms had a command performance later on at his company’s Christmas party, and did not feel he should break tradition. His grandfather and his father had raised the toast and spoken a few avuncular words each Christmas o
f their times, and Simms always had, too.

  “It seems like bad luck not to do it this time,” he said. “I don’t want to hex the company for the next millennium. I’ll just stay an hour or so. I can probably be back for dessert.”

  We all nodded. Some of us smiled. The thought of Simms, stuffed full of goose and champagne and in his khakis and a crew-neck sweater, presiding over the vast, distinctly suburban holiday revels of a medical supply company was an engaging one. As if she could read our thoughts, Lila said, “He has his tuxedo in the car. He says he’ll change in the rest room at the plant.”

  Simms grinned and most of us did, too. Lila did not. Neither did I. Would there be a little-used rest room in some tucked-away corner of the plant? Would a honey-haired, silky-skinned young woman with a flat upstate accent wait there for him?

  I hated the thought and looked over, involuntarily, at Lila. She was looking straight ahead. I looked at Camilla. She was staring intently at Lila, as if to hold her upright with the sheer force of her gaze. I did not know if it was still going on, Simms and his women. But I knew that Lila, and the rest of us, were forever changed by it, even if most of us did not know it. Even if the center still held, there was a tiny crack now.

  “Oh, Simms, who or what could be worth it?” I whispered just before Creighton Mills, more massive and commanding now, but still in his beach clothes, set down his sherry glass and moved to stand before the fireplace. The firelight leaped on his glasses and the cross on his chest, and he wore his clerical collar, but despite these he was still simply one of us.

  “Church is in session,” he said, smiling. “Lila, Simms. Will you stand together before me, Simms on my right hand and Lila on my left?”

  They moved into their positions. From behind them I could not see their faces, but I could see the faces of those of us who could. Camilla watched, perfectly still, her beautiful face neutral. Henry smiled in simple happiness; pure Henry. Fairlie, beside him, her face smoothed into girlhood by the firelight, reached for his hand. Camilla’s eyes moved briefly to them, and then back to Lila and Simms.

  “ ‘Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this company, to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony…’ ”

  Creighton Mills’s beautiful voice and the flickering firelight were hypnotic. Our days and nights in the place seemed to unroll before me like a strip of film. The Scrubs rushing me into the surf on my first day here, laughing. Fairlie and Henry doing the shag ankle deep in the rushing green and white water, to show me how it was done. Henry and Lewis heading out with their surf-casting gear while Fairlie, stretched out in the hammock, said, “Don’t even think of bringing those fish in here.” Camilla, alone and far down the beach with Boy and Girl. Lewis and me, naked in the phosphorescent surf, on fire with joy in our every atom. Charlie bellowing with glee as a long flight of pelicans grazed the water just beyond him, “Goddamn! It’s the loan committee!”

  Oh, Charlie.

  All of us, on my first night, hands on the photo of the Scrubs on the first day they had come into the house as owners, swearing to share our lives forever.

  Lila and Simms holding hands as they climbed the stairs from the beach at twilight, their heads bent together, talking earnestly. Talking, talking…

  “ ‘…let him now speak or else hereafter for ever hold his peace.’ ”

  There was a silence; even the fire seemed to hush its breathing, and then Creighton said, “ ‘Wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honour, and keep her in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?’ ”

  “I will,” Simms said. I could scarcely hear him.

  When it was her turn, Lila’s voice rang out as bright and hard as a diamond.

  “I will.”

  “ ‘Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?’ ” Creigh said.

  Camilla got up from the rocker beside the fire, and stood, bent and fragile.

  “I do,” she said.

  It was an enormously moving moment. Tears glimmered in more than one pair of eyes. In my mind I saw Camilla as she had been on the day I had met her, on the beach under the faded umbrella that we still used, glowing and beautiful, holding out her arms to me, saying to Lewis, “Well, Lewis, you finally got it right.”

  I did not really hear the rest of the ceremony, nor see it clearly. Tears blinded my eyes and the past in this place roared in my ears. I heard Simms say “ ‘…to love and to cherish, till death do us part, according to God’s holy ordinance, and thereto I plight thee my troth.’ ”

  You’d better, you son of a bitch, I thought fiercely.

  When Lila repeated the vow, her voice was nearly inaudible.

  Simms slipped a ring onto her finger. It was an enormous sapphire, almost the color of Lila’s eyes, and it looked like a great bubble of trapped seawater on her ring finger. She looked at it, and then up at Simms, a perplexed look, as if she had expected to see the small Tiffany solitaire with which he had married her. I wondered how much it had cost. Not enough. Not nearly enough.

  “ ‘…Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder,’ ” Creighton Mills said. Camilla was still in her fireside chair. Her eyes burned into the side of Simms’s face. He did not turn. How could he not have felt those eyes?

  “ ‘…I pronounce that they are man and wife,’ ” Creigh said. And instead of the traditional benediction, he paused for a moment, and then said, “ ‘Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.’ ”

  “Amen,” we all whispered. We looked around at one another. Creigh Mills caught the looks and grinned and said, “It’s the old collect for aid against perils. Part of the traditional evening prayer. Lila asked for it. Come to that, it’s not such a bad way to end a marriage ceremony, especially in this new millennium. I think I’ll incorporate it in the future. Beats prenuptial counseling by a country mile.”

  Simms bent his face to Lila’s and kissed her. Both their eyes were closed. When they turned to face us, smiling, I saw that both their faces were wet.

  A little silence held for a moment, and then Lewis said, “That ought to last you guys for a while. Let the games begin!”

  We ate our feast then, murmuring compliments over the oyster-and-pecan dressing, drinking up all of the excellent Chilean wine that Lewis had brought, jibing at Fairlie’s gelatinous goose, oozing fat and port and mired in prunes.

  “Well, you should have known better,” she said lazily. Fairlie was no better a cook now than the day I had met her. “Next year just assign me the booze. I can’t go wrong. You guys will drink anything.”

  For the first time that I could remember, our beach house Christmas was an edgy and tenuous one. Everyone, not just I, seemed to feel the frisson, though I am not sure most of us could name it. Simms left just after the meal, and his absence seemed to leave a fissure in the skin of the evening that no one was eager to step over. Lila showed her new ring around, smiling at the compliments, but her eyes went every now and then to the door. Henry and Fairlie got up immediately and began to stack dishes in the pitted old white enamel sink, even though, over the years, Fairlie had been known to take long walks in bone-chilling cold or pouring rain to avoid the moment. Henry and I began to gather crumpled paper and ribbon. Camilla sat still, watching us, and then said, “Leave it, please. Everybody just sit down. I’m coming back out in the morning; I’ll do it then. Right now I just want my people around me.”

  “You’re coming out here on Christmas Eve?” I said worriedly. We were used to her habit of spending solitary hours and even days here, but surely now, at this season of homing…

  “The children and grandchildren aren’t getting in until tomorrow afternoon,” she said. “
I think little Camilla is dancing in the Nutcracker for the four-millionth time tonight. Just as well. My cousin Mary Lee is having one of her unspeakable brunches at noon, and I don’t have to go to the airport until four. I’ll do scalloped oysters for just us tomorrow night, and Lydia is having everybody for Christmas dinner. Thank God it’s at five. That will give us all time to get drunk. I’d love the time out here alone in the morning….”

  Camilla rarely drank, but I knew that her battalion-like extended family harbored a few imbibers. Most Charlestonians’s did. Lewis had said that when he was a child he had thought that carrying Uncle Joe Henry Cannon upstairs to sleep off the punch was as much a ritual of Christmas as the tree and the carols.

  We laughed.

  But still…but still. Tonight had always been our own Christmas ritual. None of us had ever come here on the actual festival days.

  Lewis and I took the sacks of trash out to stow them in the big receptacle under the house. Everyone else settled themselves back around the fire and Camilla. The smell of perking coffee followed us out the kitchen door and into the cold. I looked back. It was a Norman Rockwell scene: the whispering fire, and the tree lights on the faces of old friends, drawn close at this season. But it felt like just that, an illustration.

  We stood in the cold sand behind the house, holding each other close. I smelled the mothy wool of his sweater and felt his breath warm on my hair. We did not speak for a while, nor did we move to go back in. Overhead, the stars wheeled and burned, and the surf breathed on the beach.