“So what do you do?” he said.
I thought about it. Did I have a gift? I’d considered myself a promising student, but after only a week at Yeatman, I had discovered myself to be decidedly mediocre. What else was I good at?
“I’m pretty good at drawing,” I said.
“So you’re an artist,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Cool.”
We sat together playing Punch-Out!! for what seemed like a very long time, Jamie draining beer after beer. By the time Arch returned with the takeout, the evening had grown cool and fragrant with the scent of the magnolia trees surrounding the pool. No one asked what had become of Vanessa; I assumed she was having dinner with her mother.
Arch flipped on the pool lights, turning everything cornflower blue. On the other side, across the lawn, the house was lit up like the Magic Kingdom at Disney World. Indeed, the whole effect of the evening was quite magical, save for Jamie’s crack about my cheap shoes and the collection of spent beer cans he was accumulating on the pool deck.
At some point, Jamie wandered off toward the trees behind the pool, returning with three beers in his hands.
Arch stood. “No, thanks,” he said. “Gotta drive Charlie home. Come to think of it, we probably ought to get going.”
I said goodbye to Jamie with a timid wave and followed Arch back across the lawn. Just inside the kitchen door, he came to an abrupt stop. Standing before the refrigerator, the door open, was a slim blond woman who looked to be about fifty, holding an open bottle of white wine by the neck in one hand and a half-full glass in the other. Her long white bathrobe had fallen open, revealing a silk nightgown beneath. She gazed at us with a benumbed expression.
“Oh,” Arch said. “Hi, Aunt Cici. We were just leaving.”
Aunt Cici, Mrs. Haltom. She teetered a bit. I worried that she might drop the bottle or the glass and step into the shards with her bare, tender feet.
“Where’s Vanessa?” Arch asked.
Mrs. Haltom muttered something as she tipped the bottle and splashed wine into her glass.
“Vanessa!” Arch called back into the house.
Mrs. Haltom shuffled forward toward the island countertop. Without thinking, I took the bottle and placed it on the marble surface and grasped her hand. She turned toward me and opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.
“This is Charlie, Aunt Cici,” Arch said.
Vanessa appeared in the doorway. “I thought you’d gone to bed,” she said.
She reached for the wineglass. “Come on, Mother,” she said. “Let’s go upstairs.”
Mrs. Haltom jerked her hand back, splashing wine on her nightgown.
Arch stepped forward and slung her arm around his shoulder.
“Go wait in the truck,” he said to me.
A few minutes later, Arch came out of the house, climbed into the truck, and started the engine.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he said as we rolled down the long driveway.
If anything, I felt relieved. In Montague Village, someone’s mother staggering around blind drunk didn’t arouse much notice. It was somehow reassuring to learn that such things also happened on Belle Meade Boulevard.
When we reached Montague, Arch parked and cut the engine, perhaps waiting to see if I would invite him in. I had no intention of doing so. But neither was I eager to part from him.
“I guess I should be going,” he said. “See you Monday.”
“Okay.”
I stepped out and shut the door, and stood watching as Arch navigated out of the parking lot, following his taillights down the narrow side street until he made the turn onto Gallatin and disappeared.
four
On Monday morning, Arch waited for me outside Dean Varnadoe’s harbor with two grocery bags, filled with pairs of used Top-Siders and duck boots just half a size too large; some faded shirts with the little alligator on the lapel; khakis and button-down shirts only slightly frayed at the collar; and a nearly new navy blazer.
“Jamie can be a real asshole,” Arch said. “But he’s right about your shoes.”
I put on Arch’s Top-Siders and tossed my shoes in the garbage.
Abandoning my old life took no effort whatsoever. I woke and left the apartment an hour before the other kids in Montague went out to the bus stop, and returned after dark. No one seemed to miss me. Terrence had varsity football and a new set of friends. On nights when both Sunny and my mother were working, I might hear the rap of Louella’s cane on the door, inviting me over to have supper with her and sometimes Terrence, or offering a plate of hot food covered in tinfoil. Terrence hadn’t turned on me completely, but when we saw each other, neither of us could pretend that things had not changed between us. Hence, when I was home, I kept to myself, doing homework, yearning to be on the other side of the river in the lavish houses of Belle Meade.
Arch began to offer me rides home in the afternoon and kept nudging Jamie and me together. I didn’t object. Few childhood friendships begin through any kind of sincere linking of souls; people mostly cling to whatever they can grasp. I was a good choice of companions for Jamie. I was a better student than he was, but nowhere near the top of the class. Nor was I an athlete, or a star debater, or a musician. Being good at drawing and painting didn’t win you any popularity contests at Yeatman. So I had no advantages over Jamie, and every reason to be impressed, even awed, by the trappings of wealth that were commonplace to most of the other boys. I was eager and earnest, just happy to be there.
Jamie told me things I wasn’t meant to know—about his mother’s drinking and pill-popping, for instance, and about his father’s ruthlessness.
“Don’t buy his whole gentleman act,” Jamie said. “My dad is a pure son of a bitch. He destroys anyone who crosses him. He always gets what he’s after. The guys who don’t like it just have to sit there and suck on it.”
I said nothing. But I had no trouble believing Jim Haltom got what he wanted.
“It’s hilarious, really, watching all of those ‘old Nashville’ snobs bowing to kiss his ring,” Jamie said. “It must kill them, having to suck up to a hick from the sticks like my father.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“You don’t know? My dad’s no blue blood. He’s a hillbilly. I’ve got cousins who are married to each other. Dad’s disowned his whole family, but everyone who’s been around long enough knows he’s new money trash. He never would have gone to college if he wasn’t good at football. Then when he got to Vandy, he latched on to Uncle David, and the rest is history.”
“Uncle David?” I asked.
“Arch’s dad,” he said. “He was a snob like all the rest of them, but even snobs get starstruck by the starting fullback. And once Dad saw the way people like Uncle David lived, he went after it like he was running the ball against Alabama. Which is why people who don’t know any better assume he’s a fifth-generation Belle Meader, not a guy who grew up going barefoot nine months of the year.”
Jamie’s revelations about his father did not disillusion me; instead, they engendered even greater admiration and empathy. I knew exactly how Jim must have felt to come from nothing and find himself surrounded by people who had everything.