"I"ll try to borrow one from one of the young "O" Club wives. We can"t afford to go out and buy a formal dress that Mary Anne will only wear once in her life."
"The h.e.l.l we can"t," Bull disagreed.
"Times are lean, Bull," Lillian said, pulling away from her husband and breaking step. "I"m sure one of the girls has a spare formal that will do just fine for Mary Anne."
"She"s going to have her own dress. The Great Santini has spoken."
"The Great Santini doesn"t handle the books," Lillian answered fiercely. "The Mrs. Great Santini does."
"You see," Mary Anne said to Ben, "she is a dangwallet."
"Hey, sportsfans," Bull called to Mary Anne, "are the other girls in your cla.s.s buying dresses or borrowing them?"
"They"ll say they"re buying them. But they"ll be borrowing dresses, mark my words," Lillian insisted.
"They"re buying dresses," Ben said.
The following day, after a furious argument with his wife, Bull Meecham drove Mary Anne to Sarah Poston"s dress shop on River Street and bought a full length formal gown for the Calhoun High School Junior-Senior Prom of 1963.
Dressed in his tuxedo and feeling conspicuously elegant, Ben came downstairs on the night of the prom. His father was reclining on the sofa reading the evening paper. Ben walked over to his father and came to attention by clicking his heels together and pulling his shoulders back.
"You look good, sportsfans. Your hair"s sticking up in the back but otherwise you win the Commandant"s Cup. Where"s Mary Anne?" Bull said.
"She"s upstairs still getting dressed."
"She"s been getting dressed for about three days."
"She really likes that gown you bought her, Dad."
"She ought to, sweet pea. Your mother"s been jawboning about that dress for two G.o.ddam weeks. I told her that I only want the best for my hogs."
"Do you think this coat"s too loose?"
"Naw, it looks fine. You"ll probably be raped by a broad or two before the night"s over. Go on out to the porch so your mother can complete the inspection."
Lillian was sitting on the steps, smoking a cigarette and looking out at a barge coming through the opened bridge.
"How do I look, Mama?" Ben asked.
"Like a prince," she said. "Turn around."
Ben spun around in a circle pretending to dance. Lillian rose and went to him. "Let"s practice those steps once more," she said, taking his left hand and putting her arm around his neck. They danced in silence for a moment or two with Ben watching his feet and Lillian smiling at his adolescent discomfiture in formal dress.
"Any girl would be proud to go to the prom with you," Lillian said.
"Mary Anne acts like she"s mad that I asked her," Ben replied.
"She gets that from your father"s side of the family. Let"s sit down and breathe in the river. There"s nothing more beautiful than a southern night in late spring," she said, sitting on the top step again and taking out a cigarette. Ben fumbled to take her matches away from her, then lit a match, the glow of the flame catching her for a moment, framing her in the nimbus of its brief life. "Thank you, darling. At least I"ve taught you to be a gentleman. That"s something no one will ever be able to take away from you."
"Mama?" Ben asked, his eyes staring into the darkness. "Am I southern?"
"What a silly question. Why do you ask, sugah?"
"Because I want to know."
"Of course you are, darling. You were born in Georgia and you"ve always lived below the Mason-Dixon Line."
"There are times when I don"t feel southern, Mama, when I don"t feel much of anything. Philip Turner knows everything about this town, knows every person in it, knows a story about every house we pa.s.s and the history of every person we see. I don"t know anyone"s history, not even my own. I do know that Dad is midwestern and Irish. And I know that you"re southern. Sammy Wertzberger is southern and so is Mr. Loring and Mr. Dacus. But I"m not. I don"t talk like a southerner and most of the time I don"t think like a southerner. I"m really not anything. Do you know what I mean?"
"I have worried about it some, sugah. All the boys I grew up with could hunt and fish, knew what to wear, had a strong feeling about the land, and about the traditions of their homeland. You"ve got to stay put to have this. You can"t move every other year and be anything but a transient. I"ve worried that my children would grow up and be neither southern nor Yankee but something far worse-that my children would be nothing but geographical mulattos with no roots. That"s why I take you back to Atlanta every time your father goes overseas. I want you to get to feel that Mamaw"s house is your real home, the place you go back to when you think about where you belong. I"ve always hoped you would build up a storehouse of rich memories from that house. It"s also why I encouraged your nights out with Toomer. He was all the South used to be and all it should still be and all it"s never going to be again. So is Arrabelle. You can look into her face and see a most glorious and n.o.ble history of pain and even of victory. I knew when Arrabelle walked in my back door that I would hire her and we would become friends. Some of the strongest and most admirable people I have ever known came to me through kitchen doors. But to answer your question, Ben, and I think it"s a most important question, indeed-you are not completely southern but you are more southern than anything else and I"d rather be almost southern than almost Queen of England."
"Can you be southern if you want to be?" Ben asked.
"No," Lillian said. "It doesn"t work like that. A southerner is. And a southerner knows he is."
They heard Bull give a piercing wolf whistle from his vantage point on the sofa and they knew that Mary Anne was coming down the stairs. Together they rose and entered the house.
The dress was blue with white ruffles at the shoulders and Mary Anne made her way down the stairs cautiously, afraid of tripping. She had borrowed a string of pearls from Lillian and a pair of long white gloves from Paige Hedgepath. She was not wearing her gla.s.ses and she held tightly to the bannister during her descent.
"You look absolutely stunning, sugah," Lillian said.
"I didn"t know you were so stacked, sportsfans," Bull crowed.
"Hush, Bull," Lillian admonished, "before G.o.d or somebody hears you."
"How sicko can you get?" Mary Anne said, but she blushed with a forbidden pleasure at the compliment. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, Ben pinned an orchid corsage on her, bowed deeply, offered his arm, and they promenaded across the living room to the sofa where Bull lay, pivoted, then walked to the stairs again. Karen and Matt had come from the kitchen to watch.
"Wait here while I get my Kodak," Lillian said, going toward the kitchen.
"You look beautiful, Mary Anne," Karen said.
"Thank you, Karen. But I"m tired of all these honors befalling me because of my beauty. I"ve been homecoming queen for two years in a row now and it just isn"t fair to the other girls. But this year when the captain of the football team begs me for a date, I"ll just politely refuse and let the honor fall to some other fair maiden."
"Boy, what a joke that is," Matt said. "You a homecoming queen."
"Go twit out the window and find Peter Pan, Tinkerbell," Mary Anne snapped.
"O.K., Dad," Matt said turning to his father, "belt her one for that or it"s gonna be Simba Barracuda for ol" four eyes."
"Shut your yap, Matt," Bull said.
"Hold still for a picture," Lillian said, returning with a small camera with a flash attachment.
"Where are your gla.s.ses, Mary Anne?" Karen asked.
"They detract from my heavenly beauty, so I"m not going to wear them. Of course, I"m blind as a stone without them. Ben"s not only going to be my date tonight. He"s going to be my Seeing Eye dog."
"You hogs better hurry," Bull said, glancing at his watch. "Your reservations at the Club are at 1900 on the b.u.t.ton."
"Let"s see you walk across the room just one more time, sugah," Lillian said to Mary Anne, "only this time remember what I told you. Lift your legs high beneath the dress. Prance like a pony."
Once again Mary Anne crossed the room under the careful scrutiny of her mother"s gaze.
"You got that walk from your father"s side of the family. But that"s much better. Now give me a kiss, both of you, and be off to the Club."
As Lillian kissed Ben, she looked into his eyes and said, "Your eyes come from my side of the family, Ben. They are a brilliant blue."
"Dad has blue eyes, too, Mama," Karen said.
"Yes, but his blue eyes are washed out, almost colorless. Ben has Barrett eyes. All of you do. Eyes with character and depth."
"Yeah," Bull said. "My eyes ain"t nothin"."
"We"ve got to hurry," Ben said.
As Ben opened the car door for Mary Anne, Matthew appeared on the porch and shouted, "You look nice, Mary Anne," then ran back inside the house.
What do you think we got from Dad"s side of the family?" Mary Anne asked Ben as they drove to the air station. "Mom doesn"t give the beast too much credit for pa.s.sing on good genes."
"Let"s figure it out," Ben answered. "What would Mom attribute to Dad"s side? The dread Chicago side."
"Freckles, pimples, a vile temper, a funny walk, wide feet, stubby fingers, a tendency to be alcoholics, and madness," Mary Anne suggested.
"True," Ben agreed. "All that comes from Dad"s side of the family. Also things like boogers. Our boogers come from his side of the family."
"Very inferior boogers," Mary Anne said. "Her side of the family produces Grade-A, government-inspected boogers, or so she thinks."
"Also we inherited the t.u.r.ds of the Meecham family," Ben said. "Mom"s side of the family p.o.o.ps vanilla ice cream."
"That"s not true," Mary Anne said. "They p.o.o.p moonbeams, dimes and quarters, and sanctifying grace."
"You realize, of course, how guilty I feel talking behind Mom"s back. You realize that our mother is a saint," Ben said.
"Of course she"s a saint."
"G.o.d likes her a lot."
"She"s also a dangwallet. But her being a dangwallet fits in perfectly with her conception of what a saint should be. Lillian is perfect. Absolutely perfect. She is beautiful. She is good. She is holy. She prays all the time. And she is married to The Creep. Her sainthood is a.s.sured and G.o.d has no choice but to like her."
Ben said, "I only wish she would take herself a bit less seriously. I mean just the other day I heard Mrs. Grantham tell her that she was a saint on this earth. And do you know what Mom did?"
"I"m afraid to ask. Truly afraid."
"Mom just nodded her head as though she agreed one hundred percent with Mrs. Grantham and was pleased as punch that Mrs. Grantham was so, so ... you know, so perceptive."
"Mom has only one fault. She has no faults. That"s why a lot of people hate her guts. I"ve known some women who have pretended to like her who really hate her and will always hate her. I"ve seen them look at her when she wasn"t looking back."
"I"ll take her over Dad any day."
"Not me, brother man," Mary Anne said with conviction. "Dad"s not so bad. I remember when I was a kid and Dad used to have fun by punching me in the fontanel and I thought he was a wee bit wanting as a father. But not now. That was just Dad preparing me for life as he knows it. Dad is Bull Meecham and he"s never pretended to be anything else. Sometimes he is the beast, I admit, but he is a consistent beast."
The car pulled up to the main gate and Ben pulled down the sun visor and tried to age his face five years by a.s.suming a stern, no-nonsense expression. When the sentry snapped a salute at the car, Ben nodded his approval and said, "Good evening, son."
"You got that from Dad"s side of the family," Mary Anne said as Ben drove toward the Club.
The maitre d" of the Officers" Club seated them at a candlelit table in the center of the room. There were very few couples dining in the main room, but the bar was crammed with young Marine officers, their wives, and their dates. Ben ordered for both himself and Mary Anne since Mary Anne could not decipher a single letter from the menu without her gla.s.ses. She blamed the dim light.
Before the first course arrived, the headwaiter brought a dozen red roses and presented them to Mary Anne.
"Who sent them?" Mary Anne asked, frowning as though she were the victim of a joke or a conspiracy to embarra.s.s her.
"Read the card," Ben said.
"I can"t read it and you know I can"t read it," she said. "The El Cheapo Marines use this candlelight because they hate spending a dollar or two on electric lights."
Ben took the card and, holding it close to the candle, read aloud: " "Here"s twelve roses for the prettiest girl at the hop. Don"t tell the dangwallet or she"ll jawbone about the cost of the flowers. Have a good time. The Great Santini." "
"Dad is so childishly sentimental," Mary Anne said. "Isn"t this ridiculous?"
"I thought you were going to come up with a dead word," Ben said.
"Dad is an a.s.sinego," Mary Anne said promptly.
"What does that mean?"
"It means that he"s a young, silly a.s.s sometimes."
"What are you?"
"I am a damirep. A very flighty woman, too free in her manners."
"Did you look up b.u.t.thole?" Ben asked.
"You"re just jealous, Ben. You don"t know any big words you haven"t learned from Mr. Loring"s vocabulary lists. It makes you mad that I"m discovering things about words that you"ll never know because you"re a jump-shooter."
"Well, you"re just showing off learning words that aren"t even used anymore. And it doesn"t do any good to insult someone when they don"t even know they"re being insulted."
"I feel sorry for dead words," Mary Anne said. "Have you ever wondered how a perfectly good word dies and a useful word at that? If I use a dead word then I think it"s possible it can come alive again."
"G.o.d, that"s weird," Ben said. "Do you know what I worry about, Mary Anne? I"m worried that someday I"m going to be visiting you in some nut house where you"ll have turned into a rutabaga or something. I can see me bringing you toothpaste and deodorant and you"ll be sitting there with your brain burned out, drooling in your shoes. And some nurse will say to you, "Rutabaga, do you remember your brother Ben?" "
"And I"ll say, "Yes, I remember the sin-eater." That"s my dead word for you, Ben. It was an ancient custom at funerals to hire poor people to take upon themselves the sins of the deceased. You know, to eat the sins of the rich. But you, Ben, would be much too pious to eat sins for money. You"d do it just to be good."
"This is why you never have any friends, Mary Anne. You"re always trying to be so G.o.ddam smart and know-it-all."
"When I die, Ben, I want you to eat all my sins just like you"re eating that salad there. I want to shoot like a rocket up to heaven. For all eternity, I want to float like a Sputnik around G.o.d"s head. All because you chowed down on my acts of commission and omission."
"You don"t always have to show off what you know," Ben said.