Bound South Read online

  Advance praise for Bound South

  “From chapter one, you are in the unsentimental, annoying, and enormously funny New South. Susan Rebecca White has perfect pitch and a wicked pen.”

  —Anne Rivers Siddons, New York Times bestselling author of Off Season and Peachtree Road

  “Susan Rebecca White has written a wonderful novel of women, friendship, and serious longing for a father’s love. Reading it made me miss my father, want to call my best friend, and need to stay up all night till I’d read the last page. Bound South is a Southern novel that really touched this Northern heart.”

  —Luanne Rice, New York Times bestselling author of What Matters Most and Sandcastles

  “I was enthralled by this book. The story depicts the clash between the Old South and the New as played out in the lives of characters that are sympathetically and realistically drawn. In fact, I think I know some of the characters.”

  —Ann B. Ross, author of Miss Julia Strikes Back

  “Move over, Margaret Mitchell—and Tom Wolfe, too! Nobody has ever written about Atlanta with such insight and humor—and she gets it all right, right down to those famous crackers at the Driving Club. With characteristic brio, White fearlessly tackles complex issues of class, race, gender, money, and the dark side of family life—all those things Southerners are never supposed to talk about. And what characters! I feel like I have known these people all my life, yet I’m still stunned by the richness and complexity of these characterizations, not a stereotype among them.”

  —Lee Smith, author of The Last Girls and On Agate Hill

  “For a Californian like me, who’s never been to the South, reading Susan Rebecca White’s finely drawn novel was like taking a fascinating trip to a foreign land, complete with inimitable characters, curious cultural ritual, and plenty of unforgettable spectacle.”

  —Janelle Brown, author of All We Ever Wanted Was Everything

  “Here is the modern South in all its trumped-up glory, hypocrisy, genuine kindness, and class consciousness; and here is a young woman’s tumultuous and compelling journey from red state customs to blue. Susan Rebecca White has a keen sense for how her characters talk and think. An impressive debut.”

  —Tom Barbash, author of The Last Good Chance

  “I can’t recommend this book highly enough.”

  —Wayne Johnston, author of The Custodian of Paradise

  “Susan Rebecca White places her characters in Margaret Mitchell territory, arms them with cell phones, and graces them with the ability to change. The South may, indeed, rise again. Bound South tells us that might not be such a bad thing.”

  —Ann Goethe, author of Midnight Lemonade

  “With a deft hand, White paints scenes of stunning literary veracity. Each chapter is a self-contained wonder: evocative, poised, and resolutely complete.”

  —Chandra Prasad, author of On Borrowed Wings

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  to Alan

  Part One

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Other Side of Town

  (Louise, Fall 1998)

  Probably it is for the best that Caroline has chosen to go to play practice rather than to attend Sandy’s funeral with Nanny Rose and me. Still, Nanny Rose will give me hell when she realizes that neither Caroline nor John Henry is coming. (Nor Charles for that matter, who is only eleven and too young for this.) Sandy worked for Nanny Rose for the last thirty-three years. The last eleven of those years she worked for us too. That was Nanny Rose’s gift to us after I had Charles; she sent Sandy over to our house once a week. Of course she waited until I had a boy to offer help, even though it turned out Charles was an easy baby while Caroline nearly drove me to the loony bin.

  Sandy was there the day I brought Charles home from Piedmont Hospital. And a year later, when we moved from our Peachtree Hills starter house to our current home in Ansley Park, Sandy held the baby while I directed the movers with the furniture. Poor Sandy. When she walked out the door of our little house carrying Charles, our dog Cleo up and bit her on the leg. Cleo had never been a biter; the only explanation was that Cleo thought Sandy was taking away the baby same as the movers were taking away all the furniture. Most of the movers were African American, as is—was, I should say—Sandy.

  After that I kept Cleo in the fenced side yard every Monday when Sandy would come. Sandy loved Baby Charles. Once he was old enough to chew, she’d bring him a candy bar every week. I would have to drive to the gas station on Peachtree and buy Caroline one too or else suffer through her tantrum. Of course I would have preferred it if Sandy had brought both children a treat, but I didn’t feel that I could ask her to do so, knowing that she didn’t have any extra money.

  She spoiled Charles, as did I, and he seemed none the worse for it. Our spoiling just made him sweeter. Really. He was just as pudgy and smiley as a baby could be. How John Henry and I created such a sweet boy—such an open and loving little person—from the same genes that formed Caroline the Terror, I will never know.

  I NEVER NOTICE how messy my car is until it is time for either John Henry or Nanny Rose to ride in it. John Henry is fond of saying that I use my car as a giant handbag, stashing all sorts of stuff in it. Well, I’m sorry. My house and my person are always tidy. There has to be one place where I can allow things to get a little cluttered. I pick the empty Diet Coke cans off the car floor and throw them into the Herbie Curbie. If Caroline were with me she would insist that I recycle them, but the recycle box is inside the house and I simply do not have time to go back in there. I honk good-bye to Charles and Faye (my other cleaning lady, who comes on Thursdays, although now I suppose I’ll have to see if she can come on Mondays as well) and pull out of the driveway heading down Peachtree Circle toward Peachtree Street. Nanny Rose lives a few miles north, in Buckhead. The funeral is on the south side of the city, so it is out of the way to pick her up, but Nanny Rose is seventy-seven and both John Henry and I try to make sure she drives as little as possible. John Henry jokes that in her dotage she “speeds more and sees less.”

  EVEN THOUGH I was born in Ansley Park, and John Henry and I have lived here for over ten years, it still gives me a little thrill to drive through my neighborhood. I just love the tall old trees, the fine architecture, the sense that even though the skyscrapers of Midtown frame the neighborhood, when you are in Ansley Park you are in the South. So many of the old houses here remind me of the houses that line Franklin Street as you drive into Chapel Hill, where John Henry and I met, or rather, where we began our relationship, as we had met once or twice before we went to college. Our families, both from Atlanta, ran in similar, though not entirely overlapping circles. (Frankly, John Henry’s family was “older” than mine.) Before college John Henry and I hardly knew each other. The fact that we went to rival high schools had a lot to do with that. He attended Coventry while I went to Birch.

  If John Henry had his way we would probably live in Buckhead or even Sandy Springs. He complains that the houses in Ansley Park are too close together and that there are too many cars parked on the streets, especially during the weekends, when people from other neighborhoods drive over here, park, and walk to Piedmont Park. And good Lord don’t even get him started on Freaknik, when students from all of the black colleges around the South meet up at Piedmont Park for a party, but not before blocki
ng the traffic in our neighborhood for hours with all of their jumping in and out of each other’s cars and dancing in the streets.

  What really bothers John Henry about the neighborhood is that he’s in the minority being a Republican over here. Not that Ansley Park is a hotbed of radicalism. (Lord no. Daddy, whose political views often put him in the neighborhood minority, still counted many from Ansley Park as his friends and allies.) Still, to John Henry’s chagrin, most of our neighbors are progressive in their politics. They are usually tasteful about it, of course. Most people from Ansley Park would rather write a big check than make a big scene.

  Another thing John Henry is not thrilled about is Ansley’s close proximity to Midtown. Not the office buildings, but the little strip of shops on Piedmont and Tenth Street that cater to a gay clientele. Midtown, after all, has become the gay capital of the South, and John Henry is not, as my colorist, Chevre, says, “gay friendly.”

  But I love our neighborhood. I love the tall modern buildings peeping over the gracious old homes. Living in Ansley Park, you never forget that Atlanta actually is a city. Most people who say they live in Atlanta do not live in the city at all. Most of our four million residents live OTP—outside the perimeter. But Ansley Park is in the center of things, and consequently I never have to drive more than fifteen minutes to get anywhere I need to be. The farthest I drive is to Coventry, where Charles and Caroline are in school, and that’s only about five miles away. It’s like my best friend Tiny always says: “The only time I go OTP is when I’m on an airplane.”

  Caroline says that the whole city is one big strip mall. I say it’s made up of neighborhoods, that the old homes are really its attraction. True, there isn’t one spot in Atlanta where you stop and think, “Now I’m in the heart of the city.” Atlanta isn’t like a New York or a San Francisco. There’s no equivalent to Greenwich Village or North Beach here.

  Virginia Highlands, with its boutiques and restaurants, tries to be that, I suppose, but it doesn’t have the diversity, the push and pull, the tumult. To be honest, Oakland Cemetery, over there off Memorial Drive, is where I feel most in the city. The cemetery is wide, hilly, and shaded with oaks. The two smokestacks of the old mill in Cabbagetown border it on one side; the modern Atlanta skyline on the other. Inside the actual cemetery are crumbling brick paths, stone gravestones, and mausoleums bearing the names of important Atlanta families. Also, there are thousands of unmarked Confederate soldiers’ graves and a section where large tombstones bearing Stars of David and Jewish names are all smushed together (the cemetery was originally segregated and the Jews were only given a small plot). Bobby Jones is buried at Oakland. So is Margaret Mitchell.

  I wonder where Sandy will be buried. I don’t even know how you go about getting buried nowadays if your family hasn’t already bought a plot of land for you. Maybe Sandy will be cremated, though I doubt it. I have a feeling that as a Baptist, she’d rather be laid in the ground so that her body will be around for the Resurrection.

  I TURN RIGHT on Peachtree Street and head toward Nanny Rose’s white brick house on Peachtree Battle Avenue, the same house John Henry grew up in. Nanny Rose has not redecorated since she moved in over fifty years ago. She once told me that “good taste never goes out of style,” which, frankly, assumes a lot. John Henry’s old room is painted egg yellow, same as it was when he slept there as a boy, and it still has two metal-framed twin beds in it, one for John Henry and one for Wallace, John Henry’s twin brother, who shot himself in the head his senior year at the University of Georgia.

  IT’S ONE THIRTY on the dot when I arrive at Nanny Rose’s house, but even so, she is waiting outside in the ninety-degree heat. (I’ve lived in Atlanta my entire life except for when I was at college, yet every year I forget that early September is often just as hot as August.)

  Nanny Rose has a way of making you feel that you are always late. You wouldn’t think such a little woman could be so intimidating.

  Her hair is so black it looks almost blue in the midday sun. She must have colored it last night. I have asked her a million times to let Chevre do it, to give it a softer, more natural look, but she refuses, even though Chevre is the absolute best, able to transform my dull brown hair—embedded with lots of gray—into the glossy, rich color of polished mahogany. Nanny Rose says that hiring someone to fix her hair would be an unnecessary indulgence.

  As much of it as she has, she’s really quite frugal with her money.

  I drive up next to her, stop the car, lean over the passenger seat, and push her door open from the inside. She stands stiffly beside it. I sigh, turn off the ignition, and get out. Oh Lord. Here we go.

  After officially opening the car door for her, I hold Gunther, her blond Pomeranian, who is apparently going with us to the funeral, while she lowers herself sideways into the seat.

  “Come on back to Mother,” she says, holding out her hands for the dog.

  Once Gunther is safely in her lap, she rotates her bottom until she is facing forward. I close her door and walk back around to the driver’s side. Once in my seat, I notice that Nanny Rose’s smell, a mix of floral perfume and Aqua Net, has already permeated the air.

  “Hello, Louise,” she says. She tilts her cheek, almost imperceptibly, toward me and I lean over to kiss it. Her cheek feels dry and powdery beneath my lips. She has applied her rouge in a red circle, much as a clown would, although on Nanny Rose it doesn’t look clownish, just old-fashioned.

  “Nanny Rose, I like your suit,” I say.

  I do. She wears a pink-and-white-checked suit—ancient Chanel, I’m sure—nude pantyhose, and pink flats. As always she wears a thin gold chain around her neck with her diamond engagement ring and her wedding band hanging from it. Her fingers, which are bony and long, swell from arthritis. She runs her right hand roughly over Gunther’s spine. He emits a low growl.

  “Where are the children?” she asks, peering around to look in the back of the car as if Caroline and Charles might be hiding below the seats. “Where is John Henry?”

  “John Henry has a deposition in Birmingham, and Caroline—well—she got cast in the school play, Steel Magnolias, and she really didn’t feel that she could miss practice.”

  Nanny Rose looks at me as if she just swallowed something that tastes terrible. “She can’t miss play practice for a funeral?”

  “Apparently it was a huge deal that she got a lead part as a sophomore, and she’s just nervous about it. She doesn’t want to upset the director.”

  “Do you think it’s appropriate for her to put so much time and energy into extracurricular activities when her grades are so dismal?”

  I shrug my shoulders. Frankly, I have no idea what I should do about Caroline and her terrible attitude toward school, but I’d no sooner take acting away from her than I would throw her out on the street. That girl lives to perform.

  “John Henry never had any scholastic difficulties,” says Nanny Rose. “He was an excellent student.”

  “I know, Nanny Rose,” I say, flashing her a smile before focusing again on the road. “He and I met at Chapel Hill, remember?”

  “Oh yes. Of course. Which house were you in?”

  “Chi Omega,” I say. We have been over this a hundred times.

  “Chi Omega is a good old house. Of course, Pi Beta Phi is best, isn’t it, Gunther?” She scratches the dog under his chin.

  “Chi O was a top house,” I say, turning onto the entrance ramp of I-75 south.

  “We’re taking the expressway?” asks Nanny Rose, her voice alarmed. Nanny Rose never drives on the expressway.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say. “Don’t worry, this will pop us right over to the church.”

  “Thirty-three years Sandy worked for me and I never knew she was a Baptist.”

  “Sandy didn’t talk much about her personal life,” I say.

  Nanny Rose nods solemnly. “I know. That was one of the things I liked best about her. She always showed up on time and never called to say she was sick and couldn
’t make it. I had this other girl working for me—Josephine. She’d come on the day Sandy was at your house, except she hardly ever came. There was always something the matter with either her child or her car. Not Sandy. Sandy was as reliable as the postman. More so!”

  I glance at Nanny Rose and see that her eyes are pooling with tears. She reaches into her quilted clutch, pulls out a linen handkerchief, and dabs her eyes with it.

  “I’ve slowed down,” she says. “I can’t do everything for myself the way I used to. Sandy, she used to help me in and out of the bath; she used to help me into my clothes. Why, it got so I’d even let her help me into my girdle! Now she’s up and left me and I’m not going to have anyone to help me get around anymore. You can’t help me, can you, Gunther?” she asks, lifting Gunther’s chin with her hand.

  “I’m not going to be able to go to circle or to play bridge or to go have lunch at the Club now that my Sandy is gone. No one will be there to help me get myself together.”

  Nanny Rose is crying in earnest now. She looks so small in the passenger seat. She looks like a child.

  “You got yourself together today, didn’t you?” I ask. “Look at how nice you’re dressed.”

  Nanny Rose blows her nose into the corner of her handkerchief and then folds it over.

  “We’ll find you someone else,” I say. “Sandy might have a granddaughter or a niece who would like to come and work for you.”

  I consider suggesting that Faye might be available, but I refrain. Though I’m sorry that Sandy died, I am not sorry to be done with sharing “help” with Nanny Rose. The less tangled my day-to-day life is with my mother-in-law, the better.

  “No one will be able to replace her, Louise. You ought to know that.”

  I have never heard Nanny Rose talk about Sandy this way. They were always so formal with each other. Nanny Rose still had Sandy wear a maid’s uniform, for goodness’ sake, a little starched black dress with a white apron. Nanny Rose was always “Mrs. Parker” to Sandy. Nanny Rose even had a little silver bell she would ring when she needed her.