Visible Empire, page 25
She found him one night in the study. There were still so many boxes in the house, many of them remaining to be unpacked. The baby was upstairs sleeping. Robert was sitting in his office chair, the one that Candy and George Randolph had given him last Christmas.
“This was my favorite place while you were gone.”
He’d patted his thigh. “Sit with me,” he said.
She’d shaken her head. “Not tonight,” she said. “I want to go stare at him while he sleeps.”
“Kiss me, then,” he said.
She leaned down and kissed him.
When she stood up, he saw the letter in her hands. He recognized the envelope instantly, its light yellow color. She held it out to him and he took it. Then he looked up.
“Before you read it,” she said, “I want to say I’m sorry.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t talk yet.”
He nodded.
“I’m sorry I opened it. I’m sorry for how it ended with her. I can only imagine how it must feel. I’m mad at you, Robert. I’m mad still. But I want to tell you I understand. I want to tell you that I understand how big the heart is, how capacious an organ. There’s so much room inside. I see that now.” She was quiet for a minute. She was thinking of Piedmont no doubt. She’d told him so much already. “That’s all I’ve got.”
“I can talk now?”
“You can say anything you want.”
“Is it very important I read this letter?”
She thought about that. He had the impression that he’d surprised her with this question; that she’d been prepared for many possibilities but not for this.
“Yes,” she said at last. “I think it is.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Then I will.”
She bent low a final time and kissed him again, but now only on the forehead.
“When you’re ready,” she said, “come watch him sleep with me.” At the doorway, she turned. “But only when you’re ready.”
Lily
Many days later, they returned the baby to the basket in the backseat and pulled around the buckle to keep it from shifting as they drove north out of the city. Lily kept her head turned toward the window. She was contemplative, not sullen. Robert let her be.
An hour before, Piedmont Dobbs had declined to greet them, to meet with them at all. Lily had been surprised by this, though Robert had warned her repeatedly in the days leading to their visit that she shouldn’t get her hopes up.
“He was inside,” she said as, rebuffed, they’d taken the steps back down to the first floor, the same steps they’d only minutes earlier climbed. “I know he was inside. I could feel it.”
“I think you’re probably right,” Robert had said. He was holding the baby and walking behind so that Lily could use the banister and set the pace. She was still a little wobbly on her feet. “But his mother said he was gone, and that means he didn’t want to see us.”
Lily considered this. The stairwell was dark, it was August, the heat was relentless, and the railing seemed to give, spongelike, where her fingers came into contact with it. She tried to conjure an image of Piedmont taking these stairs, first as a child, then as a teenager, and finally as a man. He had them memorized, no doubt, their intricacies and minute peculiarities. He could take them at a full-tilt run with his eyes closed. That’s what she suspected anyway.
In the car, many, many hours later—the baby asleep in the basket in the back, Atlanta a few hundred miles behind them, Raif Bentley’s farm in Virginia still ahead—she would allow herself to cry as she gazed out the window, her head turned away. She wouldn’t mind if Robert saw. There was nothing he didn’t know about, nothing she hadn’t told him about her own heart. She’d fallen for Piedmont. She believed he’d fallen for her too. But she wasn’t naïve. And she believed Piedmont wasn’t either. There was no place for them in this world. In another, perhaps. In twenty years, fifty, maybe a hundred, there would be another Piedmont and another Lily, and they would look and act and talk just the same as the originals. But they’d be together, they’d be allowed to be together, they would know how to navigate the world hand in hand. Or so Lily liked to imagine and would continue to imagine from time to time as she and the baby aged alongside Robert, who would also age.
That Robert hadn’t made fun, hadn’t gotten angry, hadn’t laughed or sworn or called either of them names, that he’d simply sat at the side of the hospital bed and listened as she told her story, that he’d done so was one of the reasons she was with him now, why she’d asked before they even left the maternity ward if he wanted to see—just see, no pressure, no expectations—if they could start over.
What he’d said, and this was maybe the real reason she was with him now—exiting the apartment building where Piedmont Dobbs lived once again with his mother, about to drive north for the remainder of the summer and possibly even the fall—what he’d said was, “No. Not start over. Let’s never start over. Let’s start now. As we are. As you are. As I am. Let’s start like this.”
She’d nodded, stupid little tears springing to her eyes. “It’s the hormones,” she’d said. “I’m not sad.”
“I know,” he said.
“Do you think”—she bit at her lip—“do you think it will be different?”
Robert looked down at the baby, who had been placed in Lily’s arms by the nurse assigned to them. “I don’t know,” he said. The baby’s eyes were closed, but his head jerked gently side to side. “Look,” said Robert. “He’s already fighting.”
Lily had looked down that day in the ward. At her side was her baby, her son. She would love him and she would love Robert too again one day, sooner in fact than she thought. She would love them in ways she’d formerly not known were possible—she would love them to the brink of language, the place where words butted up against emotion. But just then she wasn’t thinking of them, she was thinking of Piedmont, the boy who was really a man, who’d driven her to the hospital and saved her life and possibly also this baby’s.
And now, several weeks removed from that hospital bed, having walked up the three flights of stairs with Robert, then turned around and walked back down, having secured the baby safely in his basket in the back of the car, Lily turned once more before getting into the car herself. She looked up at the brick apartment building. She counted the floors. In a center window, she thought she saw a dark shape step quickly out of view. It could have been Piedmont. It could have. She raised her hand to her chest and closed her eyes.
“Are you ready?” asked Robert. He was on the driver’s side, his hand on the latch.
She nodded, her eyes still closed, her face still turned up toward the window where Piedmont might once have been standing or might not have been standing at all.
“I’m ready,” she said.
They were on the dark side of town, and a hot summer breeze swept up from the asphalt, putting the whole city in motion, a kind of fast-forward of movement and life. In the breeze, hints of tar and sulfur, pipe tobacco and pork beans, Pine-Sol and peaches and always Coca-Cola. Cars whizzed by; sidewalks filled in as if on cue. Men strutted, women sauntered, kids hopscotched down one alley then back up another.
This was life, a version of it.
This was Atlanta.
This was 1962.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to
Jeff Clymer
Rion Amilcar Scott
Bobbie Ann Mason
Michael Trask
Leon Sachs
Eleanor Ringel
Patrick Smith
Carvie Williams
If it weren’t for my father, Jack Pittard, and his endless supply of anecdotes, memories, and stories about Atlanta, this book would not exist as it is.
It if weren’t for Helen Atsma’s unabashed enthusiasm and unwavering editorial support, this book would not exist at all.
Works Consulted
Abrams, Ann Uhry. Explosion at Orly: The Disaster That Transformed Atlanta. Atlanta: Avion Press, 2002.
“Article Regarding Harry Belafonte and Associates Denied Service.” June 1, 1962. The King Center. http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/article-regarding-harry-belafonte-and-associates-denied-service.
Balcomb, Theo. “A Promise Unfulfilled: 1962 MLK Speech Recording Is Discovered.” All Things Considered. NPR. January 20, 2014. http://www.npr.org/2014/01/20/264226759/a-promise-unfulfilled-1962-mlk-speech-recording-is-discovered.
Branch, Taylor. Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963–65. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998.
British Movietone. “Orly Plane Crash I—No Sound.” Filmed May 1962. YouTube video, 2:13. Posted July 21, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYaqdWYmQx0.
British Pathé. “Orly Airport Boeing Crashes in France (1961).” YouTube video, 2:20. Posted April 13, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwvzB_IA94A.
“Civil Aviation Disasters.” Pilot Friend. http://www.pilotfriend.com/disasters/crash/af.htm.
“Civil Rights Movement.” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. https://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/Civil-Rights-Movement.aspx?p=2.
Dartt, Rebecca H. Women Activists in the Fight for Georgia School Desegregation, 1958–1961. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008.
Esquire. April, June, July, August, 1962.
“FBI FILE NY 105-8999.” The Malcolm X Project at Columbia University. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ccbh/mxp/.
“Flyer Advertising SCLC Benefit.” The King Center. http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/flyer-advertising-sclc-benefit.
“Georgia Cold Cases.” The Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project. April 30, 2015. https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/emorycoldcases/georgia-cold-cases-2/.
Godbold, E. Stanly, Jr. Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter: The Georgia Years, 1924–1974. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Golden, Randy. “Airplane Crash at Orly Field.” About North Georgia. http://www.aboutnorthgeorgia.com/ang/Airplane_crash_at_Orly_Field.
Grady, James H. Architecture of Neel Reid in Georgia. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1973.
“Great Monkey Hoax, The.” Museum of Hoaxes. http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/the_great_monkey_hoax.
Haine, Edgar A. Disaster in the Air. New York: Cornwall Books, 2000.
“History of Georgia Power.” Georgia Power. https://www.georgiapower.com/docs/about-us/History.pdf.
JET Magazine, March 8, 1962.
Karazin, Christelyn D. “Swirling in History Part Ten: Vintage Swirl.” Beyond Black & White. March 1, 2013. http://www.beyondblackwhite.com/swirling-history-part-ten-vintage-swirl/.
Kennedy, Randall. “Lifting as We Climb: A Progressive Defense of Respectability Politics.” Harper’s Magazine, October 2015, 24–34.
Kruse, Kevin M. White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007.
Link, William A. Atlanta, Cradle of the New South: Race and Remembering in the Civil War’s Aftermath. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013.
LIFE, June 1, June 8, June 22, June 29, 1962.
LIFE: The First Fifty Years 1936–1986. Boston: Little, Brown, 1986.
Maddox, Lester. Speaking Out: The Autobiography of Lester Garfield Maddox. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975.
Mann, Barry Stewart. “The Story of the Orly Disaster.” Unpublished notes for oral history performance.
McGill, Ralph. “Violent End of a Quest for Beauty: In Stricken Atlanta, a Legacy of Art Lives On. Those Who Cared for the Important Things.” LIFE, June 15, 1962, 30–41.
Mitchell, William R., Jr. J. Neel Reid, Architect: Of Hentz, Reid & Adler and the Georgia School of Classicists. Photography by James R. Lockhart. Savannah, GA: Golden Coast Publishing, 1997.
Mixon, Gregory, and Clifford Kuhn. “Atlanta Race Riot of 1906.” New Georgia Encyclopedia. September 23, 2005. http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/atlanta-race-riot-1906.
Playboy, April, May, June, July, August 1962.
“Report to the American People on Civil Rights, 11 June 1963.” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/LH8F_0Mzv0e6Ro1yEm74Ng.aspx.
Rooney, Donald R. “Orly Air Crash of 1962.” New Georgia Encyclopedia. December 9, 2003. http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/orly-air-crash-1962.
Russell, James M. Atlanta: 1847–1890: City Building in the Old South and the New. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988.
Short, Bob. Everything’s Pickrick: The Life of Lester Maddox. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1999.
“SNCC Constitution.” The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute, Stanford University. http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/sncc_constitution/.
Wainstock, Dennis D. Malcolm X, African American Revolutionary. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008.
Whisenhunt, Dan. “50 Years Later, Orly a Painful Memory.” Reporter Newspapers, May 4, 2012. http://www.reporternewspapers.net/2012/05/04/50-years-later-orly-a-painful-memory/.
Whitaker, Mark. “Interracial Couple in 1950s: Bravery, Faith and Turning the Other Cheek.” CNN, October 17, 2011. http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/17/us/interracial-parents-courtship/.
X, Malcolm. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. With the assistance of Alex Haley. Introduction by M. S. Handler. New York: Grove Press, 1965.
Zainaldin, Jamil. “Charles Lindbergh’s Atlanta Legacy.” SaportaReport, September 16, 2013. http://saportareport.com/lindberghs-atlanta-legacy/.
1
They were on the road later than they intended. They’d wanted to make Indianapolis by noon, but they overslept. Mark offered to walk the dog while Maggie packed up the car. He’d wanted her to pack up the car the night before, but Maggie said it was nuts to leave a car full of luggage on a side street in Chicago.
“Every time,” she’d said. “We go through this every time.”
“You worry too much,” he said.
“Maybe you don’t worry enough.”
It was dark by the time they’d had this argument and late, which meant Maggie had already won.
And so, in the morning, it was Mark—as promised—who took the dog out so that Maggie could arrange the car. But downstairs, in the private entrance to their apartment (Private entrance! It had taken forever, but three years ago they’d finally found the perfect apartment with its own perfectly private entrance, which they didn’t have to share with a single other person, a fact that, to this day, continued to bring Maggie sharp, if fleeting, joy) was the week’s recycling, just sitting there at the bottom of the stairs. Mark swore he’d taken it out.
Clearly, he hadn’t.
She put down the luggage and was about to pick up the bin to do the job herself when she saw it: a pink-gold length of foil peeking up from beneath a newspaper. She pushed the paper aside.
Her heart sank—exactly what she thought: the foil was attached to an empty bottle of champagne. Her bottle of champagne. Hers and Mark’s, from their last anniversary. She’d been saving it. For what, she didn’t know. But she’d liked looking at it every now and then where she’d stashed it above the refrigerator next to the cookbooks. True, it had been a while since she’d taken any real note of the thing. Even so. It made her sad to think he’d thrown it out without ceremony, which was an overly sentimental concern—did an empty bottle truly merit ceremony?—but what was she going to do? Suddenly become a different person?
According to the Enneagram, which she’d taken on the recommendation of her therapist—former therapist, Maggie had stopped seeing her three weeks ago—everyone emerged from childhood with a basic personality type. Maggie’s was Loyalist. Think: committed, hard-working, reliable. Also according to the Enneagram (she’d done some recent reading on her own), people didn’t change from their basic type. Instead, throughout their lives, they vacillated between nine different levels within their type, the healthiest being a One.
Lately, Maggie was about an Eight. Think: paranoia, hysteria, irrational behavior. Her goal, by the end of the summer, was to be back at her usual Three or Four. There wasn’t an overnight solution.
She picked up the bottle. Even empty, its weight was significant. Mark had splurged because they could. Because life was good and on what else were they going to spend their money? “There are no luggage racks on hearses,” they sometimes said to one another. “Spend it if you’ve got it.” Mostly they were joking—they never spent beyond their means. But it was only just the two of them. They had no children’s educations to consider, and so why not enjoy an extravagance every once in a while?
She tore off a sliver of the pink foil—the tiniest of keepsakes!—then slipped it into her back pocket. Perhaps Mark was testing her, measuring her steadiness by relieving her of an ultimately trivial trinket. Yet he’d been so patient these last nine months, so generous with his affection—kissing her shoulder before clearing the table, squeezing her hand before falling asleep. Sure, they’d quarreled about the luggage and maybe the last three weeks had been more strained than usual, but quarrels, as Maggie and her former therapist had discussed, were the latticework of relationships. They were the branches—interlacing the pattern, strengthening the structure—that sheltered them and kept them together.
She put the bottle back in the bin, right at the very top. She didn’t need to say a thing about it. She would pass his test with flying colors.
Mark and Gerome were crossing the street when she emerged from the front door.
“What are you doing?” said Mark.
“The recycling,” she said. She held up the bin. “You didn’t take it out.”
