“Fix yourself a plate,” Arch said. “I’ll take care of Jamie.”
When we returned to the pool house with the food, Jamie’s eyes were red and stained with tears. Vanessa sat beside him on the couch, arms folded, her eyes dark with fury.
“Fixed a plate for you, Jamie,” Arch said.
“I can fix my own fucking plate,” he said, but when Arch set the food in front of him, he grabbed the tenderloin sandwich.
“Come on, Van,” Arch said.
Vanessa stood and smoothed her dress. I followed the two of them out onto the pool deck.
“I’ll be back in a bit,” Arch said. “Don’t let him go anywhere.”
“How’s Mother?” Vanessa asked. “Did she ask about Jamie?”
“I think she’s having too much fun to care,” Arch said. “She’s showing Charlie’s mother off like she’s some sort of acquisition.”
“Oh God,” Vanessa said, turning toward me. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “Mom’s having a good time, I think.”
“And Daddy?” Vanessa asked.
“Didn’t see him,” Arch said. “He’s probably in the study having man talk with the big dogs.”
“That’s good, I guess,” Vanessa said.
I enjoyed the idea of teaming up with Arch and Vanessa, conspiring to preserve the illusion of domestic bliss in the Haltom household. I tried not to smile.
“What if Jamie tries to go inside?” I said. “I don’t think I could stop him.”
“Just turn on a video game,” Arch said. “He’ll stay out here all night.”
“Good idea,” I said.
Arch could see how excited I was about being entrusted with what I took to be a vital and significant responsibility.
“We should go,” Arch said.
Vanessa leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek.
“Thank you,” she said. “You’re such a good friend.”
I watched the two of them walk back toward the house, my body thrumming, a faint breeze from the open door cooling the spot where Vanessa’s damp lips had touched my skin.
Back inside the pool house, Jamie was making a mess of himself.
“I’m such a fucking loser,” he moaned.
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am. I’m a fucking joke. Right now, all those assholes are in there laughing at me. I should just kill myself already. No one would care.”
“Don’t talk crazy,” I said. “Come on, let’s play some vids.”
As usual, Arch was right. Once I turned on the Nintendo, Jamie calmed down into a benign state of inebriation.
In retrospect, Jamie’s self-loathing made perfect sense. By the time he’d reached high school, the weight of expectations had ground his ego into grist. His father was charismatic and commanding. His mother was frosty and supercilious. His twin sister was blond and blue-eyed and leggy and clever. Jamie, on the other hand, was awkward and ungainly. He was neither an athlete nor a scholar. He was not hale or beautiful. If we’d all been born pigs, Jamie would have been the runt of the litter, denied the sow’s teats and left to starve. And in a way, Jamie had been starving, for a very long time—more so since Arch’s father’s death had made it possible for Jim Haltom to shift his attentions to Arch.
As someone who had never known his father nor grown up in luxury, I’d have been entitled to hate Jamie. But I felt sorry for him.
He had sobered up somewhat by the time Arch returned.
“Your mom’s looking for you, bud,” Arch said to me. “Folks are starting to leave.”
I set my game controller on the table.
“I better go,” I said.
Jamie paused his game but did not sit up from the couch.
“Thanks for chilling with me,” he said, as if it had been a typical evening. I suppose for him it was.
I followed Arch back across the lawn.
“Sorry for leaving you out there babysitting,” he said.
He stopped in his tracks and gazed across the lawn at the house.
“About sixty percent of the people in that house right now are complete assholes,” he said. “And about thirty-five percent are total imbeciles.”
“What about the other five percent?”
“Well, two of them are standing right here,” he said.
You can imagine how it felt to hear that.
We found my mother in the entrance hall with Mr. Haltom and Dr. Dodd. People were putting on their coats and heading out to their cars, talking and laughing and waving to one another. Everyone looked “a little tight,” as polite people liked to say.
“Thanks for letting us steal Charlie so often, Miss Boykin,” Arch said. “He’s a great kid.”
“You really are too kind, Arch,” my mother said.
Too kind.
My mother and I shook Dr. Dodd’s hand and waved to Mrs. Creigh and thanked the Haltoms. We walked silently down the driveway, passing out of the light into the shadows, the only sounds the crunch of our feet on the stone pebbles and the fading voices of partygoers. When we reached our car and climbed in and shut the doors, we both drew in a deep breath, as if the journey from the house to the car had been an underwater swim.
Driving home, my mother breathlessly chattered about the people she’d met, the things they talked about. I mentioned Miss Whitten; she said they’d spoken. She made a few dry remarks about Dalton, Miss Whitten’s date. She told me about Dodd, and the Haltoms, and Mrs. Creigh, who had been “just lovely.” She gushed about the house, and the food, and the general grandness of it all.
“You are so fortunate to have made these friends, Charlie,” she said. “So fortunate.”
six
After her debut at the leftovers party, my mother became a kind of mascot to a small coterie of society women, led by Ellen Creigh. Given that Arch’s sisters—both married and moved away—were not much younger than my mother, it was only natural for Mrs. Creigh to turn her attentions toward this fallen angel, rescuing her from Café Divorcée and surrounding her with a less outwardly dubious caste of people. Within a week, Mrs. Creigh had arranged a job for my mother as a personal assistant for the elderly Mrs. Kenton Tate, whose late husband had been a prominent insurance company executive, and a second job as a salesperson at an appointments-only dress shop. How could my mother turn these down? What woman would prefer schlepping drinks in a shady bar for a bunch of leering creeps to helping a genteel matron host tea parties in her manse on the Boulevard? And thanks to Mrs. Creigh, my mother soon found herself being extended every imaginable courtesy by women who would otherwise have looked down their noses at her.
“Watch yourself, honey,” Sunny told my mother. “Those Belle Meade folks might seem nice, but you’re trash to them.”
Sunny did not envy the country club set, nor did she believe in miraculous escapes from hard living and hard times.
“They’re not like you think,” my mother said.
Sunny took a long drag on her cigarette.
“We’ll see about that,” she said.
A week or two before exams and the end of my freshman year, Mrs. Haltom invited my mother and me over for family dinner. I’d been around long enough to know that “family dinner” was not really a thing in the Haltom home. But when we arrived, Mrs. Haltom behaved as if the four of them held hands and said grace six nights a week over wholesome meals prepared by her own design, if not her own hand. The twins and I exchanged a few curious glances. But we played along.