When Annie Kate began to show through the raincoat, Mrs. Gervais moved her out to the family beach house on Sullivan’s Island, a gray Victorian structure on the south end of the island, directly across from Fort Sumter, with an uncommonly beautiful view of the harbor and the city. Mrs. Gervais lived in mortal dread that someone who mattered, someone prominent in the thinly oxygenated heights of Charleston society, would spot Annie Kate during one of her nocturnal promenades through the quiet streets or while she distractedly picked flowers and nervously paced the brick pathways of their desultory garden. If Annie Kate had been a prisoner in the house of Church Street, she became both a prisoner and expatriate on the island, even though the beach was practically deserted during the winter and her freedom of movement was far greater, as we took three- and four-mile walks on the sand, collecting shells, and watching the ships enter and leave the harbor. She would wave vigorously to the freighters coming to Charleston to unload their cargo; she would ignore the ships embarking from the city as though she could not understand why anyone or anything would want to leave a place so perfect and desirable. In the completeness of her loneliness, she was growing more petulant and irrational. She spoke of Charleston as though it were a prize that exacted an awesome tithe of spirit from those who loved it. She was obsessed with regaining the city for herself, with reclaiming her inherent right to its privileges and charms. The pregnancy had deepened her, she said, and had made her wiser as she faced the lights of the city directly across from her porch on Sullivan’s Island. I never forgot what she said about Charleston in those slow wonderful days when we talked for hours and hours about the uncertain future. Charleston was not just a city, she said. Charleston was a gift and the gift must be earned. She would then stare longingly at those enchanted lights, strung like a brilliant necklace along the curved neck of the peninsula, and swear that one day she would earn back her rightful place in the city she had lost as a girl before she even realized how passionately she loved it or knew how desperately she would miss it when it was so cruelly taken from her.
I visited Annie Kate on the island every weekend and on four occasions had wheedled Charleston passes from the Bear so I could eat dinner with her during the week. I do not know when I fell in love with Annie Kate, but that does not matter. Nor do I know why I fell in love with her, though that matters a great deal. All I know is that there came a point when I did not feel alive when I was not with her or talking to her on the phone or writing her a letter. She became part of every thought, citizen of every dream. I did not tell her of my love and barely even admitted it to myself. But I lived for those long casual walks down the beach and the sight of her small footprints in the glistening wet sand, and I prized each shell she lifted from the beach and examined in her delicate white hands. In those late months of autumn and in the first chill of that benign Carolina winter, I knew one thing for certain: It was not Charleston I was trying to earn.
I watched the changes in her body as her whole exterior ripened with child; the thing alive inside her had added its heartbeat to her bloodstream, its hunger to her hunger, its movement and needs to her own urgent desires. I observed her unconscious flowering, the effortless rosy bloom of her complexion, which seemed so vital and basic and life-affirming in that period of gestation in which I had no legitimate part. Her mother and I were the only witnesses to her shame and we alternately received both her gratitude and her scorn. She would cry often; her sorrow was of that black, despairing quality whose only cure she carried as flesh and baggage within her own flesh.
We were hunting sand dollars on the beach late on a Saturday afternoon in October. Annie Kate and I had explored the whole littoral for a mile, surveying the terrain left exposed at low tide with trained and patient eyes. This had become one of our rituals together, and though she would search for other varieties of shells when I was out of town or unable to see her, she would wait until I appeared on her front porch before setting off to extract these mute delicate coins from their settings in the sand. At first, we had collected only the larger specimens, but gradually as we learned what was rare and to be truly prized, we began to gather only the smallest sand dollars for our collection. Our trophies were sometimes as small as thumbnails and as fragile as contact lenses. Annie Kate collected the tiniest relics, round and cruciform and white as bone china when dried of sea water, and placed them in a glass-and-copper cricket box in her bedroom. Often we would sit together and admire the modest splendor of our accumulation. At times it looked like the coinage of a shy, diminutive species of angel. The sand dollar in its center bore the mark of a feathery cross, and it was this sign of the cross that we searched for in those leisurely hunts by the sea’s edge. Our quest to find the smallest sand dollar became a competition between us, and as the months passed and Annie Kate grew larger with the child, the brittle, desiccated animals we unearthed from the sand became smaller and smaller. It was all a matter of training the eye to expect less.
But on that cold Saturday, I lifted out of the hard wet sand the largest sand dollar either of us had ever seen. It was the size of an ashtray, and I was about to skip it across the waves of an angry, wind-roiled sea when Annie Kate stopped me.
“Have you ever opened a sand dollar?” she asked, taking it from my hand and breaking it carefully in half as though she were dividing a slice of bread. “It has religious significance like the dogwood tree. You know about the true cross on the outside of the shell, but I bet you didn’t know that the Holy Ghost made a home in the sand dollar on Good Friday. He had to find a quiet place to hide in the world during those hours Christ hung on the cross. Do you remember how the Holy Ghost always appeared in the form of a dove? Here are four doves, which commemorate the visit of the Holy Ghost. The cross, of course, represents Good Friday and the Crucifixion.”
Annie Kate carefully picked four birdlike shells from the dried-out insides of the sand dollar, small and perishable as the wing bones of a hummingbird, each identical to the other, and each a perfectly wrought image of a grieving, secluded Paraclete. I did not know if the dovelike cartilage was part of the sand dollar’s circulatory system or not and I never tried to find out. Southerners had a long tradition of looking for religious significance in even the most humble forms of nature, and I always preferred the explanations of folklore to the icy interpretations of science.
As I was looking at the four doves, Annie Kate said, “Mother doesn’t want me to walk on the beach during the day anymore. She says that anyone can tell I’m pregnant from half a mile away and I can’t take a chance on anyone in town accidentally seeing me.”
“Why has she just started worrying now, Annie Kate? I’ve been surprised she’s let you walk around on Sullivan’s Island the way she has. It’s not like you’ve gone to Tahiti. You can see the whole city from here.”
“But you don’t know Charleston,” she insisted. “Nobody who is anybody ever comes to Sullivan’s Island after Labor Day. Everyone knows that.”
“I can’t believe your mother owns two houses,” I said, changing the subject.
“She owns two houses and can’t afford to keep either one of them up.”
“Why doesn’t she rent this one out on the beach?” I asked.
“That would be admitting to the world that she doesn’t have any money. It’s true that she doesn’t have a single dime, but she’s far too proud to admit that. She thought I was going to marry a filthy rich boy who would restore our family to wealth and splendor. But then this happened,” said Annie Kate distractedly, as she patted her stomach and we began to walk back toward her house.
“Annie Kate,” I said, “can I ask you a personal question?”
I could feel her stiffen as we moved along the beach, our arms touching slightly. “It depends on how personal, Will.”
“I wouldn’t hurt your feelings for the world, I really wouldn’t,” I stammered. “But why did you decide to have this baby? Why didn’t you get an abortion when you realized you were pregnant? Why did you decide to put yourself through this incredible trauma? No one had to know. It would have made your life so much simpler. And you’d be so much happier now. Every time I see you it makes me sad to see you so sad. I can’t wait until the baby is born so I can see you smile every once in a while.”
She turned on me angrily. “Never mention the baby to me again, Will. There is no baby. There is no baby at all. There are just nine horrible months of my life that never happened. There are nine horrible months when time stood absolutely still.”
“What are you going to do with the baby, Annie Kate?” I said, looking away from her. “You’ve got to at least think about what you’re going to do.”
“You have no right to force me to think of anything, Will. I think too much as it is,” she said bitterly, then softened when she saw the pained expression on my face. “Before I met you, Will, I used to smile all the time. And I know when this is over, I’ll smile again. I’m really a very happy person. When I first realized I was pregnant, I hoped that I was just late with my period. I’ve always been irregular. I just drove the thought out of my mind. Even when I got morning sickness I pretended it was the flu. Meanwhile, I think I subconsciously knew what was happening. I was doing everything possible to get the boy to marry me before I told him. I didn’t want to force him. I couldn’t imagine telling my mother I was pregnant and had ruined all her plans for me. But I was even more embarrassed to tell her my boy friend said he never wanted to see me again. Finally, I was beginning to show a little bit, and I had to tell somebody. So I told him. I’ll never forget how he looked at me, Will. He told me he would pay for an abortion, but by then I was so hurt and angry and shocked that I couldn’t agree or disagree to anything. I was numb all over. Completely numb and humiliated. So for the next week I thought of ways to kill myself. I bought razor blades and collected sleeping pills. I called his house every single day and begged him to marry me. I went to his house once and begged him on my knees. It was horrible. I cried and cried until his mother brought me home; She was very kind and talked to my mother. They both cried for a long time. They cried for each other and cried for themselves but not for me and not for the baby. The boy left town the next day and went somewhere, up north to college, I think, but no one ever said. My mother and his mother concocted this plan: I was to tell everyone that I was changing my plans for college. Instead of going to Hollins, I was going to the University of California at Santa Barbara. Then I would hide out in my house until my time was up. There’s a doctor in Charleston, an old friend of my mother’s, who has agreed to deliver the baby. But I don’t want to think of that. You see, Will, I was alone, completely alone, until I saw you get into your car on East Bay Street at the end of August.”
“Do you wish you’d gone ahead and had the abortion?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” I said, staring at the cramped brick enclosure of Fort Sumter at the entrance to the harbor.
“Why?”
“Because I’d never have met you, Annie Kate. You’d be away at some snob college dating rich Virginia boys or rich Charleston boys, and I’d have never gotten a chance to know you or be your friend.”
“I haven’t been very nice to you, Will,” she said, adjusting the angle of my cap. “I’ve taken a lot of anger out on you that should be going toward someone else.”
“I haven’t minded. I just like being with you. I can’t wait for weekends to come, Annie Kate. I hate it when we play games away and I can’t see you. I can’t do anything without thinking about you.”
“How do you think about me, Will?” she asked coyly, a glint of renewed coquetry in her eyes. “Tell me everything you think about me.”
“You won’t get mad?”
“I’ll be furious if you don’t tell me.”
“First I’ve got to describe my fantasy life to you, Annie Kate. My fantasy life has always been a lot richer than my real life. These incredible scenes run on in my head like a movie that can never stop. Sometimes I’m a basketball player who cannot be guarded by anyone in the world. I’m superhuman. I mean that I can do things with a basketball that have never been done before, never been thought about. It’s all so vivid, Annie Kate. I can see every detail. I’ve been the lover of a hundred women who didn’t even know I was attracted to them. Most of them I had never talked to. I followed one woman down King Street one day. She was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. I not only became her lover; I became her husband, the father of her children. I never met her and she never saw me. But in my mind she was absolutely crazy about me.”
“Do you think about me like that?” she asked.
“Like what?”
“Do you think about making love to me? Is that one of your fantasies?”
“No, of course not, Annie Kate,” I lied, and blushed.
“Is that because I’m pregnant?”
“No, not at all. That has nothing to do with it.”
“Then you find me unattractive,” she said sadly.
“You’re beautiful, Annie Kate. Much too beautiful for me. I can’t even look at you for too long. You’re that pretty to me. When you stare at me I always have to turn away. It always makes me feel ugly.”
“Poor boys and their pitiful egos. Will, why do you always talk about yourself as if you were the ugliest boy in the whole world? Why, I’ve seen at least one or two uglier boys, at least. Now don’t you go looking like that. I was only kidding. See how your horrible humor is infectious? I bet everyone who is around you for any length of time jokes the same way you do. I was horrid and spoiled enough when I met you. Now I’m getting your sharp tongue, and no one is ever going to want me.”
“I don’t know of any man alive who wouldn’t want you,” I said.
“I know of at least one.”
“I want you to know this, Annie Kate,” I said, stopping on the beach and turning her toward me. “I don’t know who he is or what he does or why he decided not to marry you or at least stick by you during all of this, but I personally think the guy’s out of his mind to desert you. I think that anybody who walks away from you or walks away from your child has something bad wrong with him, that something is dead inside him that nothing can bring to life again. And I don’t think he’ll ever do any better with a woman as long as he lives.”
“That’s sweet, Will,” she said, taking my arm and smiling warmly to herself, as we began to walk toward her house again. “That’s beautiful and sweet and I appreciate it. Now let’s talk some about you. What are you looking for in a wife? Have you ever thought about that?”
“I’d like her to be female,” I said. “I’ve narrowed it down to that.”
“There you go again,” she scolded. “If someone tries to be serious and conduct an adult conversation then you start that horrible joking again.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I do that, Annie Kate, but I do it to everybody, not just you. If something gets too close or too personal, then I can tell a joke or say something sarcastic and redirect the conversation. It’s an old trick of mine, but I’ll try not to use it on you.”
“I have my little tricks, too,” she admitted.
“What are they?”
“That’s for you to find out and not for me to tell. It’s foolish for a woman to tell all her secrets. But I will tell you one, Will”—her voice dropped into a deeper, sadder tone—“I’m not going to be very good for you. I promise you that.”
“You’re the best thing that’s happened to me since I’ve been to the Institute.”
“You’re certainly not the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” she said bitterly.
We had reached the seawall, which ran for half a mile along the southwest beach. We were walking on the huge black boulders from which the wall was constructed. I removed her hand from my arm, sprang down from the rocks, and began walking swiftly to my car.
“Will,” I heard her call from behind me. “Where are you going, Will? I didn’t mean to say that. I was trying to be funny like you do. It wasn’t funny and I apologize.”
“You don’t make mean jokes like that to your friends, Annie Kate.”
“And I’m your friend who just said something stupid. And I’m your friend who just couldn’t bear it if you walked out of my life right now. Will, I’m begging you to come back.”
“You don’t have to beg,” I said. “I didn’t have anywhere to go except back to the barracks and that’s nowhere to go at all.”
“Come back here and sit down beside me. Let’s sit on the rocks and watch the sunset, Will. I’m alone too much, and I look forward so much to your coming over every week. The loneliness is killing me, Will. It’s absolutely killing me. If you didn’t call me every day and write me every day, I think I would have killed myself by now.”
My back was still turned away from her when I said, “When I write you or call you or even when I’m with you, Annie Kate, I keep wishing one thing—I wish that it was my child inside you. I wish that I had put the child inside you. I wish I was calling you to see how our child was doing, how my wife was doing, how the mother of my child was doing. I keep wishing it was our child, Annie Kate. That’s the only fantasy I’ve had for months. It won’t leave me, and I can’t get rid of it. It’s much too powerful.”
I felt my face coloring deeply. I was always so stiff and formal whenever I took to the floor to stumble out the elemental steps in my awkward dance of love. I felt as shy as a sand dollar. There was no confident flow or rhythm to my words; it was a panicked, frightened spillage of deeply felt long-suppressed emotion. I had a twenty-two-year-old need to tell some woman that I was in love with her. And I needed a woman who was in no position to refuse my advances, to dishonor and rebuff my initial fervent confession of love. Later, I would think that it was not an accident that I chose an unmarried mother half-crazy from loneliness and abandonment; there was enormous safety in loving such a woman.
“Come back here, Will,” she said softly, “and sit beside me.”
I turned and went back to her, standing on the rocks. The tide was beginning to roll in again, and those great black slabs of granite had the formidable task of inhibiting the erosion along the beach, of impeding the flow and will of the Atlantic Ocean with its immeasurable tonnage and its mindless habit, centuries old, of taking or giving or regaining whatever it damn well pleased. The whole Atlantic coast was littered with groins and jetties designed to keep a portion of the continent from plunging into the sea. The tide poured through the cracks and crevices of those boulders as easily as light filtered through stained glass.
A school of porpoises broke the surface of the water twenty feet from where we had sat down. Their air holes flared explosively like carburetors opening for fuel. Each individual porpoise made a sound slightly different from that of any other, so that the school, all twelve of them, flaring and sliding and dancing so near us, formed a kind of woodwind section on the sea’s surface or even a single instrument, something unknown and astonishing to man, a celebration of breath itself, of oxygen and sea water and sunlight. They had the eyes of large dogs and their skin was the loveliest, silkiest green imaginable.
But even the porpoises could not distract us from the dazzling, soul-altering, brilliant sun as it sank below the horizon out by Tennessee and Alabama. Fort Sumter was behind us now, and its history changed for me as I saw it through the thickets of Annie Kate’s blond hair, as I smelled it through the perfume behind her ears and on her neck. The waters of Charleston gleamed like a newly struck medallion on the last exhausted dissolution of light over water. The light filtered through the steeples of the city, and a faultless linen of the purest and most sensuous gold spread toward us on the water, like a glass of Chablis spilled across a light-stained table. The clouds above the city were filled with subtle shades of pink, magenta, pearl, mauve, and vermilion, but it changed slightly, imperceptibly, permanently with each passing moment, as though the colors were wrought from movable glass as in a kaleidoscope. The pressure of her hand changed as the sun changed and the world around Charleston darkened and the porpoises moved into deeper water and we could no longer hear the primitive music of their breathing. A huge white freighter with its interior lights turned on moved out toward the ocean, bright and celebratory, like a floating birthday cake. Annie Kate did not wave to ships that abandoned her city, but I waved vigorously and with a genuine sense of loss. I wanted the moment to last forever. I would have stopped the freighter near the buoy to Fort Sumter, turned it about, and presented its constant immutable approach to the city as a gift to Annie Kate, a ship that would never leave her. I cannot express how lordly and transfigured I felt at that moment. I was a prince of that harbor, a porpoise king—slim among the buoys and the water traffic. I was aware of the blood rushing in my ears, my heartbeat, the tiny pulse in my wrist, the veins as they stood out on my forearms. It was with a keen, famished regret that I watched the last inanimate light of the sun feather the edges of the horizon. But my hand still held tightly to the hand of Annie Kate, and I felt her body press closely to mine, and I knew that I was living out one of the most important days of my life.
We rose up from the rocks in half darkness with stars beginning to appear in the sky like pale, ethereal jewelry. Looking up at me she took my face in her hands. She studied me with the fine dancing eyes of a girl who has been well trained in the art of looking at a boy. I turned away and watched the waves break against the rocks where we stood. There was a pulse and rhythm to the tide’s aggression against the beach, the harmony and fearfulness of an irresistible force. The sun refused to die out on the horizon. She turned my face back toward hers. There was surprising strength in her small hands. I could barely see myself reflected in her pupils, a diminutive boy smiling foolishly back at myself in that tiny black cell that sang my name on those rocks. It is a precious, world-transfiguring stare when a girl looks at you with love in her eyes for the first time. Pulling my neck toward her face, she kissed me softly. Her lips brushed mine lightly, tenderly, and I felt her mouth open and her tongue slip easily between my teeth. Our tongues met and we kissed with a formal, comical chasteness. We spoke to each other with those searching, silent tongues, at the exact moment when language was not enough. I kissed her as though I was trying to drink her into me. I passed dreams into her and received hers on the black rocks beside the Atlantic.
I did not know a human mouth could taste so sweet or that a human body could feel so fine as it memorized my shape. In her kisses were the hint of berries, of ripeness and salt, all the happy taste of fruit harvested near oceans. For years my own tongue had ripened for this moment. The wind blew through our hair and the spray dampened our faces. The smell of salt and Annie Kate filled my nostrils. She licked the sea water from my face and the sea was ebony and silver through the blond shining flag of her hair. She kissed my eyes and both sides of my throat, taking her time, moving slowly as she memorized the shape of my face and throat. I wanted to make myself handsome for her; I wanted my face to transform into something irresistible, something so outwardly dazzling that she would never want to leave my side again. But most of all, I just wanted to be handsome enough, handsome enough to be the man loved by Annie Kate Gervais.