East is East

Saxby was nine at the time. Though his mother had been born in Macon and gone to college at Marietta, she stayed on in the big empty house in Ossining rather than return to the big empty house on Tupelo Island. In her grief and bewilderment, she turned back to poetry—the poetry that had been the romantic bulwark of her youth—and she found solace in it. Six months later, she returned to Tupelo Island and founded Thanatopsis House, “that mysterious realm, where each shall take/His chamber in the silent halls … ,” a palace of art sprung up from the ashes of her husband’s death. Saxby spent three years with her there, and then, because the local educational system was “nothing but white trash and niggers,” she sent him north again, to Groton. After Groton, it was the string of colleges that entangled him for years before finally setting him loose in California, another Yankee bastion. And so, Saxby had a foreign accent. He was a Southerner, all right, no doubt about that—but only part-time.

It was a long story. To make it short, he rolled his eyes for Abercorn and thickened his accent till it dripped: “Well, Massa Abacoan, Ah sweah Ah jest doan know—Ah’m jest folks like anybody else.”

Abercorn responded with a startled bray of a laugh. “That’s good. That’s really good.” Then he capped his Uni-Ball pen, stuck it in his shirt pocket and gave a little speech about how he’d never been out off the Georgia coast and how he was wondering if maybe Saxby’d mind if he tagged along—since he was in the boat already and everything.

Saxby studied him a moment—the long jaw and glistening teeth, the toneless skin and unnatural hair—and shrugged. “Why not?” he said, and fired up the engine.

The first week of august was as slow and silken and sweet as any Saxby could remember, and he fell into the embrace of it—of home, of Ruth, of his mother—with an inevitability that was like a force of nature. He was up late each night with Ruth—hoisting cocktails and dining with poets, painters and sculptors, letting his mind drift over the earnest declarations of the evening’s poetry or fiction reading, joining in the clubby chitchat of the billiard room till the close lingering heat gave way to something just a breath cooler coming in off the ocean. He slept late, through the relative cool of the morning, took his breakfast with Septima and contemplated the vacant perfection of his aquarium. In the afternoons, he fished, snorkeled, swam. In the evenings, there was Ruth, and the day started again.

She was something to watch, Ruth. She worked the cocktail hour, dinner and the ceaseless ebb and flow of billiard-room dynamics like a politician—or maybe a guerrilla. There was a little joke or routine for everyone, from the unapproachable Laura Grobian to the chummy Thalamus and the lesser lights too. She was amazing. Body signals, pursed lips, an arched eyebrow or nod of the head that meant worlds: every time he looked up she was holding a dialogue with somebody. One minute she’d be having a cocktail hour tête-à-tête with Peter Anserine and two of his skinny solemn attendants, and the next she’d be across the room, laughing with Clara Kleinschmidt till they both had tears in their eyes—and all the while mugging for Sandy or Regina or Bob Penick or for him—she never forgot him, no matter how wound up she got—and she would give him a look that passed like electricity between them.

And then she missed cocktails again one night and he stood around with a glass in his hand radiating his own brand of wit and charm, but all the while craning his neck to look for her. When she caught up with him—she slipped in beside him at the table halfway through dinner—she was out of breath and her eyes were big with excitement. “What’s up?” he’d asked, and she’d taken hold of his arm and pecked a kiss at him, all the while nodding and winking and grinning in asides to half the room. “Nothing,” she said, “just work, that’s all. This story I’m working on’s a killer. The best.” “Terrific,” he said, and meant it. She paused to slip a morsel of veal between her lips. “Listen,” she said, “can we drive into Darien tomorrow? I need to get some things.” “Sure,” he said, and she was eating, small quick bites, her teeth sharp and even. “Groceries. Crackers and cheese and whatnot—for my studio. You know,” she said, giving him a look, “a girl gets hungry out there.”

Hungry. All right. He whispered in her ear and when they kissed he tasted the meat on her lips and everyone was watching.