know, if you want to think about it…”
“I don’t,” he said, grinning. “I don’t want anybody but you. I just don’t want you to go all broody on me down the line.”
“I’ve been taking care of children since I was eight years old,” I said. “I don’t want to go back to the diaper phase of it.”
And so we did not have children of our own. Until very recently, I did not miss them.
Lewis continued to keep his hideous hours at the clinic. Dinner, if we could manage it together, was often at nine or ten o’clock. On weekends we usually left on Friday for Sweetgrass and stayed over Saturday night. On Sunday we went to the beach house. That seldom changed.
No, the armature of our lives was not altered appreciably. But at least for me, the interior changes were profound. I learned to laugh. I learned to play. I learned to lose my temper, yell, sulk, behave irrationally. I learned to cry. When we had our first fight, over Lewis accusing me, unfairly, of neglecting to pay Corinne, our cleaning lady, I shouted at him and burst into tears and ran upstairs. I lay on our bed, heart hammering with the enormity of my outburst, waiting for him to come coldly up and end our marriage. Of course he didn’t; when I crept back downstairs hours later he was reading the Post and Courier and eating cold pizza.
“Did you take a nap?” he said.
“After all that stuff about Corinne?” I asked, incredulous.
“Oh,” he said. “I found her check in the pocket of my lab coat. Want some of this?”
I realized then, for the first time, that marriage is about all of you, not just the best parts. Nothing in my child’s or grown-up’s world had taught me that. The liberation was like learning to fly.
We went to a lot of parties in our honor that first year, and I went to King Street and bought a few things that I thought would serve, though I never attained the elegance and brio that marks a downtown Charleston party, and when the first of the charity ball invitations came, I cried.
“Lewis, I can’t,” I snuffled. “I just can’t. I can maybe do the smaller stuff but I can’t do a ball.”
“You don’t have to. I gave them up when Sissy left. Nobody expects me anymore. We just won’t.”
“But we’ll have to reciprocate for all the parties this year, sooner or later,” I said.
“Why?” he said.
And so we became the Eccentric Aikens, who did not give parties, who did not do balls.
“I shudder to think what your mother would have to say about all this, Lewis,” an old lady said to him once, at brunch at the Carolina Yacht Club. Those I could manage.
“Everybody’s saying you’re just turning your back on your whole heritage.”
Her gaze skimmed me and bounced off.
“Come on, Tatty,” Lewis said to the old lady, who was undoubtedly an aunt or a second cousin or a something-in-law. “You know I never went to parties much.”
“Well, you did for a while,” she said. “And it was lovely to see you out and about.”
I knew she was referring to the Sissy era, and my face burned, but where once it would have been embarrassment, now it was anger.
The old lady tottered away on her Ferragamos, and Lewis said, under his breath, “ ‘But that was in another country, and besides, the bitch is dead!’ ”
Every head in the dining room turned at our adolescent snicker.
We never moved out of the Bull Street house. Year after year, we went to Sweetgrass, and we went to the house on Sullivan’s Island. We had occasional trips, some abroad, but somehow, wherever we went, I felt like a bird perched on a wire, ready for flight. I often had the feeling that the beach house was where my real life was, and that the rest was a sort of rich, endlessly fascinating half-life. I enjoyed, even loved, downtown Charleston, but it was where I went to wait to go to Sullivan’s Island.
I did not see how the others could possibly feel the same way; it was the mind-set of the pilgrim, not the clan dweller. And yet,
“I don’t,” he said, grinning. “I don’t want anybody but you. I just don’t want you to go all broody on me down the line.”
“I’ve been taking care of children since I was eight years old,” I said. “I don’t want to go back to the diaper phase of it.”
And so we did not have children of our own. Until very recently, I did not miss them.
Lewis continued to keep his hideous hours at the clinic. Dinner, if we could manage it together, was often at nine or ten o’clock. On weekends we usually left on Friday for Sweetgrass and stayed over Saturday night. On Sunday we went to the beach house. That seldom changed.
No, the armature of our lives was not altered appreciably. But at least for me, the interior changes were profound. I learned to laugh. I learned to play. I learned to lose my temper, yell, sulk, behave irrationally. I learned to cry. When we had our first fight, over Lewis accusing me, unfairly, of neglecting to pay Corinne, our cleaning lady, I shouted at him and burst into tears and ran upstairs. I lay on our bed, heart hammering with the enormity of my outburst, waiting for him to come coldly up and end our marriage. Of course he didn’t; when I crept back downstairs hours later he was reading the Post and Courier and eating cold pizza.
“Did you take a nap?” he said.
“After all that stuff about Corinne?” I asked, incredulous.
“Oh,” he said. “I found her check in the pocket of my lab coat. Want some of this?”
I realized then, for the first time, that marriage is about all of you, not just the best parts. Nothing in my child’s or grown-up’s world had taught me that. The liberation was like learning to fly.
We went to a lot of parties in our honor that first year, and I went to King Street and bought a few things that I thought would serve, though I never attained the elegance and brio that marks a downtown Charleston party, and when the first of the charity ball invitations came, I cried.
“Lewis, I can’t,” I snuffled. “I just can’t. I can maybe do the smaller stuff but I can’t do a ball.”
“You don’t have to. I gave them up when Sissy left. Nobody expects me anymore. We just won’t.”
“But we’ll have to reciprocate for all the parties this year, sooner or later,” I said.
“Why?” he said.
And so we became the Eccentric Aikens, who did not give parties, who did not do balls.
“I shudder to think what your mother would have to say about all this, Lewis,” an old lady said to him once, at brunch at the Carolina Yacht Club. Those I could manage.
“Everybody’s saying you’re just turning your back on your whole heritage.”
Her gaze skimmed me and bounced off.
“Come on, Tatty,” Lewis said to the old lady, who was undoubtedly an aunt or a second cousin or a something-in-law. “You know I never went to parties much.”
“Well, you did for a while,” she said. “And it was lovely to see you out and about.”
I knew she was referring to the Sissy era, and my face burned, but where once it would have been embarrassment, now it was anger.
The old lady tottered away on her Ferragamos, and Lewis said, under his breath, “ ‘But that was in another country, and besides, the bitch is dead!’ ”
Every head in the dining room turned at our adolescent snicker.
We never moved out of the Bull Street house. Year after year, we went to Sweetgrass, and we went to the house on Sullivan’s Island. We had occasional trips, some abroad, but somehow, wherever we went, I felt like a bird perched on a wire, ready for flight. I often had the feeling that the beach house was where my real life was, and that the rest was a sort of rich, endlessly fascinating half-life. I enjoyed, even loved, downtown Charleston, but it was where I went to wait to go to Sullivan’s Island.
I did not see how the others could possibly feel the same way; it was the mind-set of the pilgrim, not the clan dweller. And yet,
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