Arch’s house, on Glen Eden, was a Colonial Revival with a slate roof, three dormer windows, two brick chimneys, and a white-columned side porch facing out onto a large yard that sloped gently down to the street.
He pulled around the back, in front of a two-car garage. I followed him through the back door into a kitchen with a ten-foot ceiling and a large island with tiled countertops. At the end of the counter sat a woman. She looked up and smiled.
“Charlie,” she said. “What a pleasure to meet you.”
Mrs. Creigh had bobbed silver hair. She wore no makeup. The pink reading glasses at the end of her nose made her seem too old to be Arch’s mother. Her shirt and wrists were faintly soiled; a pair of gardening gloves and a straw hat lay beside her teacup and newspaper.
“There’s some chicken salad and pimento cheese in the fridge,” she said. “Do you like chicken salad, Charlie?”
“Sure,” I said.
“I’ll make some sandwiches,” she said.
“Thanks, Mom,” Arch said.
What a thing it would be, I thought, to come home every day to such a house, to find your modestly elegant mother sitting at the kitchen table perusing the newspaper or the latest issue of Southern Living, waiting to ask you about your day and make you a chicken salad sandwich.
I followed Arch through a hallway where the walls were covered with family photos: Arch and his older sisters at every age; his mother holding an infant, his eldest sister’s child; the whole family dressed in matching chinos and white shirts on a beach. The offshore wind blowing their hair just so. Arch’s mother looked more or less the same; his father looked much younger than his wife, with a thick head of golden hair and a smile identical to his son’s. The sisters were striking, in the way people with breeding can be.
The hallway opened up onto a sun-splashed room with a sectional couch and a glass-top coffee table with a bright flower arrangement in a ceramic urn. A pair of bookshelves flanked an enormous television. On the opposite wall by the windows stood a pool table. Arch racked the balls and handed me a cue.
“You want to break?”
“You go ahead,” I said.
He cracked the cue ball and set to work clearing the table. After a few minutes, Mrs. Creigh appeared in the doorway with plates holding sandwiches and little ramekins of fruit salad. She set the plates on the coffee table. Arch leaned his cue against the wall and opened up the cabinet beneath the television set to reveal a hidden bar refrigerator.
“Want a Coke?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Hey,” he said. “You want to go swimming later?”
“Where?” I asked.
“A friend’s house,” he said.
“I don’t have a suit,” I said.
“You can wear one of mine.”
“All right.”
After a few games of pool, Arch led me upstairs and down another corridor decorated with family photos, to his bedroom. He had a desk set strewn with books and school supplies, a queen-sized bed, a cabinet filled with awards and trophies, Pink Floyd and Grateful Dead and Rolling Stones posters on the walls. He disappeared into his closet and came back out holding a pair of yellow swim trunks.
“My old Birdwells,” he said. “Size medium. Try them on.”
“Where’s the bathroom?” I asked.
“What?” he said. “Scared to get naked in front of me?”
It felt like some sort of dare. I took off my shoes and pants. Eyes fixed on the floor, I slid off my underwear and stepped into the yellow trunks.
“Fit all right?” Arch asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks.”
He stripped before searching his drawers for his swim trunks and a T-shirt. I was unused to being around another boy so at ease in his nakedness. This turned out to be the case for many of the Yeatman boys, conditioned as they were, from years in country club and private school locker rooms, to be unashamed of their bodies. It was easier for Arch, no doubt. He was tan and lean and muscled. I took my time tying my shoes.
I followed him back downstairs into the kitchen. He grabbed his keys and sunglasses off the counter and walked out the back door.
“Bye, Mom,” Arch called.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“To the Haltoms’,” he said.
Haltom—that was the name of the man sitting in the office during my interview with Dr. Dodd, watching over the whole proceeding like some sort of auditor.
We drove through the leafy lanes until we came out onto Belle Meade Boulevard. Both sides of the street were lined with houses too grand to be called such. I had difficulty imagining anyone actually lived in such places—that to someone, these places were home.
“The Haltoms are old friends. Family, really,” Arch said. “You probably know Jamie. He’s a freshman too. His twin sister, Vanessa, goes to Steptoe. We’ve known each other all our lives. Jim Haltom is like a dad to me, especially since my own dad died.”
“Your dad died?” I asked.
“I didn’t tell you that, did I?” he said. “I forget sometimes that people don’t already know. Yeah, my dad died, when I was twelve. Brain cancer.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“At least I had him for twelve years, right? You never got to know your dad at all.”
“I didn’t know what I was missing.”
“I guess you could look at it that way. Anyhow, Uncle Jim was my dad’s best friend since college. He promised my dad he’d look out for my mom and me. He’s pretty much my best friend, to tell you the truth.”
Even then, it did not occur to me that Arch Creigh being assigned as my big brother might have been more than a happy accident.
Near the end of the Boulevard, not far from the country club, he turned onto a pea gravel driveway that led through a moss-covered stone gate and wound up past a lawn dotted with tall trees. At the top of the slope stood an enormous stucco manor home with a steep-columned porch and a slate roof lined with copper flashing turned a luminous green. We parked and walked up to the side door. Arch rapped on it. A light-skinned black woman in a white short-sleeved blouse opened it.
“Hi, Shirley,” Arch said. “This is Charlie.”
“Pleased to meet you, Charlie,” Shirley said. “Jamie’s out back. Y’all walk on through.”
I can still see the great house on the Boulevard as I did on that first day: the drawing room, with the toile settee and the velvet Empire sofa and armchairs, and oil paintings of landscapes, and portraits of prize-winning horses and hunting dogs and distant ancestors, and the crystal chandelier descending from the high vaulted ceiling. The dining room, with its broad teak table, the inlaid sideboard with the silver tea set, the hand-painted wallpaper depicting scenes from medieval China. Outside the windows, the bright blooms of heirloom roses.
I followed Arch out the French doors, onto the stone porch, and down through the rose garden, toward the pool and the small white house next to it. Across from the diving board stood a fountain trimmed with a tile mosaic. On the other end, a slate path led to the open doors of the pool house. Inside, someone hidden by the back of a large couch was playing Punch-Out!! on the TV.
“Typical,” Arch said as we came in. “Beautiful day, sweetest backyard pool in Tennessee, and Jamie Haltom’s inside playing video games.”