Bulls Island Read online

  I had to hand it to old Louisa. Looking back, my meeting Valerie was another of her subtle “orchestrations.” At least Mother had the manners to wait until the Christmas holidays to debut someone she thought was a suitable date for me, someone she deemed close to being worthy of the Langley name.

  Betts was long gone to New York by then, a choice I never quite understood, but then volumes could be filled with the things about the fair sex that eluded the likes of me. Anyway, my parents were throwing a huge holiday cocktail bash to celebrate the Christmas season. I was in no frame of mind for a party, having just spent my first semester of law school studying all the time and moaning over the state of my personal life.

  That fall I had lived in the condo that had been meant to be our home. Out of deference to my extreme misery, I had refused to do more than barely furnish it. There was a mattress and box spring on the floor of the bedroom with some cheap chest of drawers and an end table that I picked up at a yard sale. I had taken a desk and a chair with a lamp from a departing student. I never bought a sofa, just a recliner chair and a television that I put on a stand. If there had not been built-in bookcases already, my books would have been stacked against a wall.

  Mother was appalled by the way I was living. It was a good thing she bought out the local Belks, or I never would have had a pot or a drinking glass. I just accepted whatever she brought to the condo and said thank you in the most civil tone I could manage. Throwing worldly possessions in my direction did not compensate for the evil of what she had done. Living like a bum and having the most minimal conversation with her as possible was my revenge.

  The only thing I was happy about was that I was out of my mother’s house. I didn’t have to look at her face every day and constantly be reminded of what she had stolen from me. But there seemed to be no escaping Louisa. I would come home from classes and find her there, unpacking and putting away whatever she thought I couldn’t live without. A wine rack. A wall clock. An area rug. She would make the effort to begin a conversation, but soon every word between us was filled with recrimination. You need to get over her! How can I? You ruined my life! I did not ruin your life! Yes, you did! Then, when she wanted to really stick it to me, she would pick up the framed photograph of Betts I kept on my desk and sigh.

  She would say something really insensitive, like, “Why don’t you just throw this away, son? She’s out of your life now.”

  And I would say, “Why don’t you mind your own business, Mother?”

  “Don’t you speak to me that way, J.D.,” she would say.

  I would curl up the corner of my mouth and shrug, an indication that I didn’t give a damn what she thought.

  “You’re acting like a zombie,” she would say.

  “You made me one,” I’d say.

  When Mother and I weren’t arguing, she pretended to be perky while I smoldered. I swear, in today’s market, someone would have carted me off to some classes in anger management and some serious grief counseling. But years ago things were different. Back then I called a buddy, we just went out to the woods, bagged a deer, drank a bunch of beer, and I came home to smolder some more. Pitiful.

  It’s funny what you remember and what you forget. In those first months, I had tried many times to reach out to Vaughn and Joanie, but they wanted no part of me—or of Betts, for that matter. They told me they didn’t have her address or phone number. They hadn’t heard from her. Part of me actually believed them because everyone knew Adrianna’s death had caused a terrible schism in their family. Even Sela advised me to stop trying to find her, saying Betts would find me if she wanted to find me. Betts had been all but officially banished from her family and she disappeared into Manhattan, becoming one of the anonymous swarm.

  So there it was—my first semester in law school and life with Betts was behind me. The holiday season was in full swing, and I was unenthusiastically at home. Naturally, pretending that there was peace on earth, Mother had decorated the house from stem to stern. There were Christmas trees in almost every room, wreaths in every window, and candles burning on every table, or so it seemed to me. My toy train from childhood was running around on its track in the den and the old Christmas village was up on display in the sunroom.

  The night was dark and unusually cold. Small fires flickered and burned in three fireplaces to take the chill from the rooms. Someone was playing a selection from Handel’s Messiah on my parents’ Steinway. If old Louisa knew how to do anything, she knew how to throw a party. Amazing to me, everyone she invited always came, and they brought their holiday houseguests. There must have been two hundred people in the house, beyond the catering staff. I figured this would be the occasion when Mother would slip in a ringer and she didn’t disappoint me.

  As commanded, I put on a tie and a smile and came downstairs, committed to being nice for a while. My plan was to eat a little, drink a little, and then disappear back to my room. My inner smartass taunted me, saying that my mother had planned this party with the singular mission of pissing me off, and it was working. I was feeling sour and cranky. Just then I spotted Mother in Dad’s study, talking to someone. I went in to say hello and make my token appearance. As I came around the corner, I saw that she was talking to a breathtakingly gorgeous young woman around my age with more teeth than I had ever seen in one mouth. My mood took a sudden and dramatic rise. The red dress this creature wore had some kind of a treacherously low scooped-out neckline, with her…you know, propped up like a couple of flawless ivory balloons. Not one freckle. I must say, they were riveting. Was she for real? At that moment I did not care.

  “Oh! J.D.! There you are, darlin’! Come and meet my new friend, Valerie! Her mother, Alice, is a trustee on the Spoleto board with me. Valerie, this is my son, J.D.”

  “Hey, J.D.,” she said with a slow and dangerous breathy drawl. “Merry Christmas.”

  “Well, Merry Christmas to you, too,” I said, thinking even a dead guy would sit up for this ripe morsel.

  She was grinning and swaying back and forth the way girls do when their whole body is sending you a message. I figured I could get her panties off in about five minutes. Four, if we left the room. Gentlemen, set your timers.

  Mother stepped away on the excuse that she needed to see about her guests. Bullshit. However, at the moment, it seemed to be the only right thing Mother had done in ages. Valerie watched my mother disappear into the throng of guests and then turned back to me in a way that reinforced her intentions, which were obviously to be my date for the evening.

  “Your momma said you go to law school at Carolina. What kind of law you gonna practice?” She shifted from foot to foot, which I took to mean that either her shoes were too tight or that she wanted me to get the view from as many angles as possible.

  Long blond hair, big blue eyes, perfectly matched orbs, and a gyrating pelvis. It was all I could do not to lick my lips. My best friend began to pulsate and twitch.

  “Probably environmental,” I said, trying to focus. “It’s still a pretty new field, but it’s growing. You?”

  “Math. I’m still an undergraduate in Athens.”

  “Greece?” In that moment, as I gave her my most irresistible grin, Betts’s face flashed across my mind. Guilt. Then the devil reminded me I couldn’t carry that torch every night into eternity. Besides, here was a flagrant opportunity.

  “No, silly! Georgia! I’m a Bulldog!”

  “You don’t look like a bulldog to me.”

  “Oh? What do I look like?” She actually batted her eyes and I actually found it charming.

  “Valerie? Is that it? Valerie?”

  “Yeah, that’s me, hon.”

  “Valerie? You look like the angel on top of my momma’s tree.” I couldn’t believe I’d managed to say that with a straight face.

  “Ooooh!” she squealed with delight. “And I’m a thirsty little angel, too!”

  “Well then, let’s get you the proper libation to fit this momentous occasion.”

  I took he
r elbow and directed her to the bar in the dining room, thinking she might be excellent fun for a holiday romp. Well, she slammed down three cups of my dad’s eggnog that I knew was half rum or bourbon and then asked me to take her home to her aunt and uncle’s house where she was spending the holidays. Her parents were in Switzerland.

  “The house is just a few miles from here, and Lord have mercy on my soul and body, this party’s so boring, isn’t it? I mean, not to be rude, but we are the youngest people here by at least thirty years!”

  “The year Mother hired Hawaiian musicians was much worse. I swear.”

  Valerie giggled. I took her hand and steered her to the garage as quickly as I could before her virtue returned.

  I remember that brief interchange like it happened yesterday, but I couldn’t tell you what we talked about in the car, except that she was pleasant enough and not stupid. However, I recall with crystal clarity what happened when we got to her aunt and uncle’s house.

  We drove down quite a long dirt road and the house seemed to appear from nowhere, rising up from the darkness. It was large and white, a classic plantation house with porticos and Corinthian columns strung across the front, much like ours. Happily, no one was home. Things heated up pretty quickly during the requisite house tour. The next thing I knew we were upstairs and on her bed in a guest room. Four minutes, forty-two seconds.

  Now, one thing I had learned during my puppy years was that humping was not going to bring about the desired result. So for starters at least, there was none of that. What we did was a lot of groping, slurpy kissing, and fast and furious mutual undressing. The sight of her scantily clad body nearly burned the corneas of my eyes. She was wearing very small red panties and, by necessity, a large red lace bra. I was, um, feeling eager. And like we say in law school: there did not seem to be any objection from the second party of the second party.

  What a wonderful fabulous girl she was, crawling all over me like one of Santa’s elves in red lace, and all that glorious hair! Okay, I’ll admit, it was base and disgusting animal lust, but so what’s the matter with animal lust?

  The first round of sex was hot, sweaty, and fast. There was lots of moaning and that sort of thing. Then Valerie said, “What about me?” She wanted more? This was better than a pony under the tree, I thought, thinking Christmas had indeed arrived early. The second round ended after a lot of rolling around and repositioning and by that point my heart was pumping so hard I thought I might die. I quickly calculated that I was too young for a heart attack, so I gave her all the gusto I had on the Big Bang theory and every trick I had ever learned from watching videos in undergraduate school. She loved it. We rested then, when all of a sudden the overhead lights switched on. There stood her aunt and uncle, returned earlier than expected, obviously, from my parents’ party, instantly sobered, slack-jawed, and audibly gasping. Her uncle’s hand was on the switch, which he quickly turned off, cleared his throat, and said, “Pull yourselves together!” With that, he closed the door and they left. Valerie and I were in some mighty deep feces and I knew it.

  Here was the situation. We were old enough for consensual sex, but in the Lowcountry’s polite circles, when one had consensual sex, it generally occurred in a frat house, a dorm, or someone’s apartment. Not in the bushes, on the beach, or in the backseat of a car unless absolutely necessary. If someone were to discover you in flagrante delicto, it would normally be someone of your peer group, there would be a lot of snickering, and that would be the end of it.

  Not so in the adult world. You didn’t do it with some guy you just met a couple of hours ago, and at your aunt’s house in the guestroom bed. Further, it was considered rude and crass to get caught naked and sweaty.

  I could feel the onslaught of a shit storm in the air. I knew Valerie’s aunt was going to pitch a fit, tell Valerie’s mother, her mother was going to call her a slut, and it was going to get ugly. Very ugly. If only for the sake of the mores of the day, it was best for me to declare my affection for Valerie. So I did. I had never met anyone as happy to show off her lingerie as Valerie Pritchard of Athens, Georgia. For that reason, and the fact that she was gorgeous and in possession of a reasonably good brain, my best friend and I ran a mattress marathon with Valerie until Valentine’s Day, when I gave her a diamond. If I couldn’t marry Betts, at least I could have a good-looking nymphomaniac of whom my family approved.

  My mother was as close to being thrilled as she could be. Perhaps because my engagement to Valerie meant that the McGee-family episode was finally behind us, or because, in appearance, Valerie was close to being a carbon copy of my mother, minus thirty years. But whatever the reason, old Louisa was so delighted to have a girl to mold she gave me my great-grandmother’s diamond to give to her.

  When I brought Valerie home wearing the ring, my dad looked at me askance and we both acknowledged in that one silent moment that Valerie wasn’t who I really wanted, that I was settling for less. Later on he took me aside for a whiskey and a father-and-son talk, during which he said, “Things don’t always go according to plan. A fallback position is a good idea.” There was no enthusiasm in his voice, just resignation with a trace of pity.

  I said, “Look, Dad, she’s a sweet girl.”

  “J.D., if she makes you happy, I’ll learn to love her.” He looked down into his glass and up to me. Valerie was Mother’s choice, not mine. Dad knew it. And he knew I was going along with it because something in me was dead.

  Pathetic? Well, guess what? I was pretty sick and tired of being lonely and feeling remorse over something I could not have controlled, and Valerie appeared to everyone to love me to death. After the intense love I had felt for Betts and then lost in the blink of an eye, I would never risk that much of myself again. Too painful. Valerie was safe goods. She had some mileage on her, to be sure, but I didn’t care.

  It began to get around that I was engaged. I knew it was only a matter of time before Betts would hear about it and I wanted her to hear it from me. I mean, it didn’t seem right for her to discover that kind of news from anyone else. What was I to do? I knew her father and sister would be useless, so naturally I went to Sela.

  After Thanksgiving, Sela had returned to Charleston from Atlanta, where she had completed some kind of cooking school with the famous chef Natalie Dupree, and had just opened her own restaurant. Too early for supper, it was about half filled with tourists and locals seeking an afternoon hydration experience. I sat on a bar stool and waited for Sela to spot me, which she did almost at once.

  The conversation went something like this.

  “Hey! Sela! Congratulations on the restaurant! It looks great! How are you?”

  “Exhausted. We were here until two in the morning last night, doing the books and all that stuff. You?”

  No one had ever accused Sela of being bubbly, at least not around me. But she was civil, which was more than I could say for Betts’s family.

  “Good, good.”

  “Can I get you a drink?”

  “Yeah, sure. Whatever you have on tap is fine.”

  She poured out the beer and placed it on the counter with a thud. I could tell that she smelled something suspicious. Of course she did. Why else was I there?

  “So, what’s up, J.D.?” she asked. “You getting married to that little blond, um, blonde?”

  I knew she wanted to say whore, but she did not and I was grateful for it.

  “Uh, yeah, we just got engaged.”

  “I heard that.” She paused and stared in my eyes so intensely it was unnerving. “Congratulations.”

  Hold your enthusiasm to a minimum, I thought.

  “Thanks.” We looked at each other and silently acknowledged that I had made a stupid, but almost unavoidable, decision. “Listen, I was thinking. I haven’t spoken to Betts since, well, you know, since she left, and I just thought she should hear about this from me.”

  “You’re right. Here’s her number.” She hand me a piece of folded paper from her pocket, which told me
she had just been waiting for me to show up. “I always said you were a decent guy.”

  “Thanks. How’s she doing?”

  “Managing.”

  No point in elaborating, I thought. Sela had never revealed anything of consequence to me.

  Meanwhile, customers continued arriving and gathering around the bar area.

  She had to serve them, so I said, “What do I owe you, Sela?”

  “On the house, J.D. See you soon.”

  I put the paper into my pocket and couldn’t get to a telephone fast enough. My hands were shaking as I dialed Betts’s number.

  “Hello?”

  It was absolutely her voice. I was certain of it. God, what a thrill to hear it!

  “Hello?” she said again.

  “Betts?”

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s me. J.D.”

  Silence.

  “Betts? I have to talk to you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Betts, I got engaged…”

  “Really?”

  Her voice was flat. No emotion. Not angry. Not congratulatory. Just flat as she waited for…what? An explanation?

  “Yeah. I just thought—”

  “Well, good luck, J.D. Nice to hear from you. Thanks for the call.”

  Click.

  She’d hung up. Here’s the amazing thing. I would have bet my life that I heard a cat mewing in the background. I was positively sure that I heard the distinct sound of a cat. But Betts hated cats! Who cared? I had her phone number and that was all that mattered to me.

  Months later, right before the wedding, when I got cold feet, I called her again. I was thinking—desperately hoping, actually—that Betts would tell me to come to New York, we would get married, and just screw what our families thought. But I soon learned that her number had been disconnected and there was no forwarding number. I didn’t have the gumption to go to Sela again, so I took this as a sign and married Valerie, knowing that in my heart I was still in love with Betts.