Low Country (10 page)

mering in my throat, tears of fright and something else

entirely welling up in my eyes. My fingers gripped the

arms of my chair as if they alone might save me. Beside

me Clay, in his chair, did not move either, did not

breathe.

“My God,” I whispered finally. “My God.”

“Not an alligator, was it?” he said.

“Oh, no. No. No alligator on earth ever sounded

like that,” I said. I had begun to tremble.

Then he said, “I know what it was. That was your

grandfather’s panther. That’s what he’s been hearing.”

“Lord Jesus,” I said, and it was a prayer. “Then it

was true.”

“Everything out here is, I think,” Clay said, and got

up out of his chair and came over and put his hands

on my shoulders, and kissed me.

And that was that.

3

W
hen I came downstairs, showered and
more or

less together, Clay was sitting at the round table on

the back veranda making notes on the omnipresent

clipboard that goes everywhere with him, and Estelle

was pouring coffee for him out of the little French

chocolate pot that he likes to use for his coffee. Estelle

and I have both tried to persuade him that in this cli-

mate pottery or china would be more suitable, but he

bought the little silver pot on our honeymoon, in

Cuernavaca, and admires it inordinately. The fact that

someone has to polish it after every use does not

bother him in the least.

“What do we have Estelle for?” he will say when I

fuss about the pot.

“Not for polishing your coffeepot every morning of

her life,” I say. “I’ve been doing it for years, if you must

know.”

80 / Anne Rivers Siddons

“I do know. And I thank you,” he says. “The pot

makes me happy and it makes me happy that you

polish it for me.”

And so I do it, because I will not ask Estelle to, and

it is, after all, a small thing. He does not ask much

foolishness of me. There is not much foolishness in

Clay.

I knew that he had chosen the back veranda because

I simply could not have looked at the sea this morning.

He loves the marsh vistas, and always has, but it is the

open ocean that calls to him. I sometimes think that

the sheer, intense orderliness of his soul finds a kind

of release in that ultimate, untamable disorder. He can

sit and look at the sea for hours, though he rarely sits

and looks at anything anymore for hours but whatever

is on his drawing board or his clipboard. He is restless

during enforced inactivity; cocktail parties are torture

for him, though he goes to and gives enormous num-

bers of them and does the walk-through perfectly. Clay

never did drink much and is impatient with the slight

silliness, the looseness, that ensues after an hour or so

at the best of them. He chews ice fiercely and eats

enormous quantities of hors d’oeuvres, waiting to be

released. When we have drinks before dinner, either

at home or at a restaurant, he can go through an entire

basket of bread, waiting for everyone else to finish their

drinks. He sometimes waits a long time. There seems

to me to be quite

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a lot of drinking in the Plantation. Despite the

munching, I am fairly sure he has not put on an ounce

since we married. I never see him weigh himself, but

the contours of his long, angular body do not seem to

have changed.

Estelle poured out a second cup of coffee and

plonked a plate of sticky buns down in front of me.

They were still warm from the oven. The rich cinnamon

rose to my nose and I sniffed appreciatively, though

my stomach heaved at the thought of food.

“They smell wonderful, Estelle, but I think I’ll just

have coffee,” I said. “Will you put some aside for me?

I’ll eat them with my tea this afternoon.”

“You eat them now,” she ordered. “You looks like

the hind axle of hard times. You been up in that room,

haven’t you?”

I looked over at Clay, and she said, “Mr. Clay didn’t

tell me. I seen the door still open. And I know that

look on yo’ face. You ain’t got no call to be broodin’

in that room, Miss Caro. It don’t do nothin’ but stir

you up. She ain’t in there. She in a better place than

this, and happy as a little lark. You try to rejoice in

that an’ leave her po’ things be.”

I bent my head over my coffee so she would not see

the unsheddable tears gather. Estelle’s faith is earth-

simple and granite-hard. Not for the first time I felt a

profound ache of pure envy. I

82 / Anne Rivers Siddons

had ceased negotiations with God on the day that my

daughter died. I felt no anger at Him, only a dreary

and cell-deep certainty that whether He was there or

not, that door had slammed shut for me. There was a

kind of peace in it.

We drank our coffee in silence. I was grateful for it.

Clay knows that I cannot abide hovering when I am

feeling out of sorts. Even if I could, I don’t think it is

in him to hover. He deals with his deepest feelings by

snapping them firmly into the steel grid inside him and

going back to work. The night that Kylie died, he

stayed at his board all night, working furiously, while

I slept in a thick swamp of barbiturates. The master

plan for Calista Key Plantation, on the south coast of

Puerto Rico, was conceived almost in its entirety that

night. It is thought by most critics to be by far Clay’s

most innovative and attractive property. I have never

been there. He does not go often, either. Neither of us

can forget what terrible fuel fed the fire it was born in.

Finally he lifted his head and said, “You ready? I

went ahead and put the flowers in the car.”

And we went out into the misted morning to get the

guest house ready for the new nestlings.

The Heron Marsh section of the Plantation is, except

for the seaside neighborhood, the oldest. It was Clay’s

thought to offer to the first venturesome investors and

home buyers the choice water

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front lots on the ocean and the marsh tidal creek that

separates Peacock’s from “the island.” In between, he

devised lovely neighborhoods of single-family and

cluster homes bordering man-made lakes, lagoons, and

a golf course, each with its own pool and tennis court.

So, theoretically, everyone who lives in the Plantation

has his own bit of waterfront. But it is the great

dazzling vistas of sea and marsh that are the prizes,

and they were gone almost in the first year of the

Plantation’s existence. I have always loved the Heron

Marsh homes. They sit so deep in lush ocean forest

that they are all but hidden from the road, and the

contrast of coming out of that dark cave of green into

the light that seems to pour like sour honey off the

wide marshes is stunning. All the Heron Marsh homes

have long back lawns and gardens that slope gently

down to the reeded marsh’s edge, and the deep, swift

tidal creek that is the belt on the island’s midsection

is studded with docks at which cheeky outboards and

slim sailboats bob. From this part of the creek you can

reach the harbor and open ocean in a five-minute sail.

The water is almost unfailingly calm and shining; even

our fierce summer storms can’t reach their clawing

fingers here. I remember that I wanted to build on

Heron Marsh when I first saw it, because it looks

straight over into “my” part of the island, the secret

green heart where I spent so many summer weeks with

my grandfather. But Clay was in love

84 / Anne Rivers Siddons

with the ocean even then. It does not bear thinking

that we might still have Kylie if we had come here, and

I try hard not to. I really do. I have always known that

there was simply no blame to be assigned, except per-

haps to my child herself. Certainly not to Clay. I sensed

even in the depths of my very earliest grief that that

way lay the death of our marriage.

The house Clay uses as a guest house is the largest

of twelve on the marsh. It was built for a very rich

family from Spartanburg who had eight children and

innumerable grandchildren, and so it sprawls octopus-

like among its azaleas and oleanders and great ferns

and overhanging live oaks, harboring a staggering

number of smallish bedrooms, each with its own bath.

There is an enormous family room and a kitchen and

dining room that can accommodate an emerging na-

tion, a wraparound veranda that steps down one step

to a huge pool, and two Har-Tru tennis courts at the

fringe of the water. It is made of our tradition-hallowed

tabby, a mixture of sand and crushed oyster shell that

dates back who knows how many hundreds of years

in the Lowcountry. I always loved the thick, pitted

surface of tabby; it looks as if it could stand for millen-

nia, and may well do so. The tabby and the now-ma-

tured plantings are, to me, the only things that save

the guest house from a rather daunting institutionality,

which may be why the rich Spartanburgers sold it after

the first

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year, though local legend says that it is because an al-

ligator came out of the creek and ate the wife’s Yorkie

and was going for the youngest child as dessert before

the screams from the children drove the sensible beast

back into the water.

I always try to cram as many big, loose, rowdy

bouquets as I can into the bedrooms and common

areas, to soften the look of an upscale Elks Hall. Today

the back of my Cherokee was almost full of them.

Clay helped me take the pails and vases into the

kitchen and did not make a move to leave, but I knew

that he was at least an hour past his customary time

for going to his office, so I said, “Why don’t you go

on and catch up? I’ll finish this up and then I think I’ll

walk over to Lottie’s. She’s starting a humongous new

thing of the lighthouse that I want to see. I’ll probably

have some lunch with her, too. What time are your

chickens coming in?”

“The two couples should be in about two. I think

the woman…you know, the black woman…is getting

in an hour or so later. Hayes is going over to Charles-

ton to pick her up; the others are renting a car. Did I

tell you that she’s got a child with her?”

“Oh, Clay, no, you didn’t. How old a child? She’s

surely going to need a sitter, isn’t she? Or do you think

she’ll even want to go out and leave it? What is it, by

the way?”

86 / Anne Rivers Siddons

“A boy. I think she said he was five or six. Yeah, I

guess she’ll want a sitter. Can you leave them with

sitters at five? I don’t remember…”

“Just,” I said. “But she may not want to. I’ll pick up

a few things for a light supper for her and the little boy

in case she wants to stay here and bring them over

after lunch. I want to put some breakfast things in the

fridge for everybody, anyway. Lord, I hope I can get

somebody at this late date. There’s an awful lot going

on around the island this time of year.…”

“Don’t you bother with that; I’ll get somebody in

human resources to do it. There’s a list over there. It’s

what they’re for.”

“No, I’ll do it this time. I know how I’d feel if I was

coming to a new place with a small child. If all else

fails maybe I can heavily bribe Estelle to do it. She was

saying the other day she missed having her grandchil-

dren at home now that Emily has moved to the main-

land.”

He kissed me on the forehead.

“You okay now?”

“Yes. I’m sorry about that.”

“Don’t ever be sorry. Just don’t do that to yourself.

That’s all I ask. Estelle’s right. It doesn’t…get us any-

where.”

“I know.”

He got into the Cherokee and drove away, and I

filled vases and pitchers and set my riotous roses

around, watching the stark rooms catch

Low Country / 87

flame with them, and then I went out back and sat for

a time on the low wall that bordered the veranda,

looking west into the dull-pewter noonday dazzle to-

ward “my” part of the island. From the dark line of the

distant woods a pair of great, gawky birds rose into

the air and lumbered away into the sun. Wood storks,

I thought. They had been homing into the Ace Basin

for some years from their historical habitats in Florida,

because extensive development there has left them no

home. Now, in all of the Carolina Lowcountry, they

come only to the Ace. These, I thought, had been

fishing one of the small freshwater ponds on the island

and might be headed back to one of their rookeries.

My grandfather had said, just before he died, that he

thought there were perhaps three of them.

He had died seven years earlier, suddenly, because,

as Kylie said seriously when we told her, “His heart

attacked him.” He died on the porch of the marsh