Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (23 page)

“I don’t suppose I need to tell you,” Adler said, “that not everyone is happy about what we’re doing here. Some people complain privately about poor blacks living in subsidized housing so close to the historic district. A few people, like Jim Williams, have even spoken out publicly about it. Jim Williams says we’re dealing with the ‘criminal element.’ I take it you’ve heard of Jim Williams.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve met him.”

“Mmmmm. Do you know about the Nazi flag incident?”

“He told me about it,” I said. “He said he draped it over his balcony to interrupt a film being shot in Monterey Square.”

“That’s right,” said Adler. “He had all those little faggots hanging the swastika out there and moving it from window to window.”

On Anderson Street, Adler stopped in front of a freshly
painted gray-and-white house. “Now I’m going to introduce you to an example of our so-called criminal element.”

We climbed the steps, and Adler rang the bell. A black woman in a flowered housedress came to the door.

“Morning, Ruby,” said Adler.

“Morning, Mr. Adler,” she said. Adler introduced me to Mrs. Ruby Moore.

“Ruby, I’ve brought this gentleman to see what life is like in the Victorian district. If you don’t mind—”

“Oh, that’ll be fine,” she said pleasantly. “Come on in.”

Ruby Moore’s duplex was cool inside. It had three bedrooms, a modern kitchen, and high ceilings. There was a small garden in back. A portrait of John F. Kennedy hung over the living-room mantel. Adler led me on a quick tour, upstairs and down. Then we rejoined Mrs. Moore in the front hall.

“These houses was pitiful before they was fixed over,” she said. “I never dreamed they would look like this after they got through. While they was redoing them, I was over here every day looking, ’Cause I knew I was going to get one. I really do appreciate my apartment. I really do. It’s got central heat and air.”

“Is everything okay, Ruby?” Adler asked.

“Oh, yes,” she said. Then she turned to me. “Would you sign my book, please?” A guest book lay open on a table in the living room. As I signed my name, I noticed that I was not the first outsider to be brought to this house by Lee Adler. A reporter from the
Atlanta Constitution
had signed a few spaces above.

We got back in the car. Adler told me that Ruby Moore qualified for one of his apartments because she was a longtime resident of the Victorian district, because she worked—she was a housekeeper at the Days Inn—and because her income was below a specified level. She paid $250 a month in rent, and federal subsidies covered the rest. Adler said that Mrs. Moore more than satisfied his inspection staff; her house was always immaculate, and she was the rule rather than the exception. “We’re not interested in housing the whores or the gamblers or the dope dealers,” he said.

We headed back into the historic district.

“I could show you another hundred apartments just like that one, but you probably get the picture. Once we got it going, private investors started buying houses, and property values began to rise. The Victorian district has been acclaimed as a national model for how to restore inner cities without uprooting the poor. We sponsored a national housing conference here in 1977, and four hundred people came from thirty-eight states. The next year, Rosalynn Carter came down and taped a segment of
Good Morning America
in one of our renovated apartments. And this Friday we’re going to Washington to explain it all to Prince Charles.”

We entered Monterey Square and swung around it counterclockwise, coming to a stop in front of Adler’s house. “Well, there you have it,” he said. “Historic preservation used to be an elitist hobby, something rich dilettantes dabbled in. But we’ve turned it into a grass-roots operation. In the process we created a $200 million tourist industry and brought people back downtown to live. Not bad, huh?”

“Quite an accomplishment,” I said.

Adler looked at me over the top of his half-moon glasses. “It ain’t braggin’ if y’really done it.”

A week later, the
Savannah Morning News
published an account of the Adlers’ meeting with Prince Charles. Lee Adler was quoted saying that the prince “showed a keen interest in the problems of cities.” Emma Adler said the prince had asked “marvelously intelligent, wonderful and apt questions.” Four days later, the newspaper ran yet another article about the meeting, this one a first-person account written by Mrs. Adler. “It was a heavenly day in Washington,” she wrote. “The sun was bright, the sky a deep blue. The weather was perfect for a suit ….”

Once again, the Adlers were the topic of conversation in certain circles. The talk was nowhere more animated than at the meeting of the Married Woman’s Card Club on Tuesday night.

“Do you suppose,” said a woman in a blue taffeta dress, “that the newspaper had to twist Emma’s arm to get her to write that article? Or do you think Emma twisted the newspaper’s arm to make them print it?” The woman’s dress had a bow across the shoulders as big as wings.

“Julia, you’re wicked,” said a woman wearing a black velvet headband and single-pearl earrings.

“No, I’m not,” the woman in blue replied. “The Adlers could have kept their audience with Prince Charles a private matter if they’d wanted to. But they’ve gone running to the newspaper as usual, and that changes things.”

“True.”

“I mean, Emma could have restrained herself a little, don’t you think? She sounded so prissy and pleased with herself.”

“Now, Julia,” said the other woman, her voice dropping in volume, “I do believe you’re jealous.”

The two ladies had not yet begun to play cards. In fact, they were still standing outside Cynthia Collins’s front door, waiting to be admitted. That was one of the unusual rituals of the Married Woman’s Card Club.

Married Woman’s (as it was known for short) was one of Savannah’s most exclusive societies. No other city had anything like it. It was founded in 1893 by sixteen ladies in search of amusement during the day while their husbands were at work. There were always sixteen members—no more, no less. Once a month, always on a Tuesday, they would gather at one of the members’ homes for two hours of card playing, cocktails, and a light supper. Thirty-two guests would be invited by engraved invitation so that the number of ladies in attendance always came to forty-eight—twelve card tables in all.

According to custom, the ladies would arrive a few minutes before four in the afternoon, wearing white gloves, long dresses, and huge hats adorned with flowers or feathers. They did not ring the doorbell. Instead, they waited outside, either in their cars or on the sidewalk, until the hostess opened the door punctually at four o’clock. The ladies would then enter, sit down at the card tables, and start playing at once. In the early years, they
played whist or euchre or 500. Later the game became auction bridge, then contract bridge. But for many years there was always one table of whist, because Mrs. J. J. Rauers refused to learn how to play anything else.

Once the ladies had begun playing, events proceeded according to a strict schedule that began with the serving of a glass of water. Every member was given a printed copy of the schedule upon joining Married Woman’s. It read as follows:

Being the hostess at one of these affairs was a serious matter. It was viewed as reason enough to paint the house or redecorate the parlor. At the very least, one took the silver out of the vault. As for keeping to the printed schedule, there was always a cadre of maids who knew the sequence of events better than the members did, and they would be loaned to nervous hostesses in order to ease their burden. The importance of the schedule was that it enabled the married women to get home in time to greet their husbands when they returned from work. Husbands were as much a part of Married Woman’s as their wives. They were, after all, the ones who footed the bill for the dinners and for refurbishing the house beforehand. And they were, of course, the major qualification for membership: A woman had to be married to belong. The rules stated that if a member obtained a divorce, she would be forced to resign and forfeit her dues. More
than one marriage had been held together by that rule alone. In any case, three times a year the hour for Married Woman’s was moved from four to seven-thirty so that the all-important husbands could attend. The men would wear black tie.

On the Tuesday following the Adlers’ return from Washington, husbands were invited to Married Woman’s. Mrs. Cameron Collins was the hostess for the evening. She and her husband lived with their three children in a townhouse on Oglethorpe Avenue. Men in black tie and women in long dresses began milling around in front of the house shortly before seven-thirty. I, too, had put on a black tie that evening, having been invited by Mrs. Collins.

“I am not jealous of Emma Adler,” said the woman in blue. “Not at all. I’d be the first to admit that Emma does a great many worthwhile things. She is an asset to the community, and if anybody deserves to meet Prince Charles, she does. It’s just this … this grasping for recognition. It’s so undignified. They always do it. You’d think Lee restored Savannah single-handedly. Lee loves basking in the limelight, and so does Emma.” The woman turned to a man with thinning blond hair, who was leaning casually against a tree with his hands in his pockets. “Darling,” she said, “do you think I’m being unfair?”

The man shrugged. “If you ask me, Emma Adler is a vast improvement over her mother.”

Emma Adler’s mother was Emma Walthour Morel, a large and domineering woman known around town as “Big Emma.” Big Emma was one of the richest people in Savannah, being the largest stockholder in the Savannah Bank, and she had a forceful personality. As one family friend put it, Big Emma was the sort of person who wasn’t happy unless she had a table to pound on. Stories about her had become legend in Savannah. At home, she kept a padlock on the refrigerator to keep the help from stealing the food. She would get up from the table ten or fifteen times in the course of a dinner party to go into the kitchen and unlock and relock the refrigerator. Later on, after the guests had left, John Morel would slip into the kitchen and tip the help generously
in an effort to soothe feelings bruised from an evening of Big Emma’s abuse.

Well into her nineties, Big Emma could still be seen driving around Savannah at the wheel of her Mercedes limousine with her German shepherd sitting next to her on the front seat and an ancient black chauffeur, dressed in full livery, sitting in back. The chauffeur, who had worked for Mrs. Morel for more than thirty years (and for her mother before that), was permitted to drive her smaller car but not the Mercedes limousine. No one but Big Emma was permitted to drive that one; it was her exclusive domain. One recent noontime, she drove downtown to the headquarters of the Savannah Bank on Johnson Square to sign some papers. Before setting out, she had called ahead and told the bank’s trust officer to meet her with the papers by the curb in front of the bank. She was in a hurry, she said, and did not want to be kept waiting. Twenty minutes later, Big Emma turned the corner into Johnson Square, the massive German shepherd sitting at her side and the old uniformed chauffeur cowering in back. She drew up to the trust officer, but never quite came to a complete stop. The trust officer trotted alongside the limousine, handing papers through the window, pleading, “For heaven’s sake, Emma, stop the car!” Big Emma glided along at eight or ten miles an hour, scribbling on papers and handing them back, one by one. They were halfway around Johnson Square when she handed the last document back to the trust officer, rolled up the window, and sped off.

Of all the tales told about Big Emma Morel, the one most often repeated was her vociferous opposition to the marriage of her daughter to Lee Adler on the grounds that he was Jewish. Big Emma was vehement. She bellowed. She orated. She pounded on tables. She would not listen to arguments that John Morel, her own husband and Little Emma’s father, was one-quarter Jewish himself. When Little Emma stood her ground, Big Emma turned sullen. She refused to take her daughter to New York to buy her a wedding dress. Lee Adler’s mother took her instead. At the wedding rehearsal, Big Emma stood as
far away as she could from the Adlers. Then at the reception after the wedding, she refused to let the Adlers join the receiving line. She froze them out. That episode was still remembered today, twenty-five years later. And it was the reason why the man standing outside Cynthia Collins’s house with his hands in his pockets compared Emma Adler favorably with her mother.

At seven-thirty on the dot, a beaming Cynthia Collins opened her front door wearing a long black dress and carrying a black lace fan. “Come in, everybody,” she said cheerfully. Her guests filed in and wandered among the card tables set up in the living room and the dining room. As soon as they found their place cards they sat down, and within minutes the tables were full. Conversation subsided to a muted hum, and the sound of shuffling cards swept through the house like autumn leaves blowing across a lawn.