Walker Percy - Love in the Ruins - The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World

“You know, you could be disappointed, Doc,” says Art thoughtfully but beginning, I see with relief, to put the application forms back in his case.

“Well, I’m hopeful.”

“You know how people resist a really radical innovation.”

“Yes, but this thing works, Art.”

“I know. Tell you what, Doc,” says Art cheerfully, snapping up his attaché case. “I’ll drop in next week.”

“Cant the funding be arranged without signing over control of the MOQUOL?”

“No doubt. But I’ll be seeing you in a day or two. Just in case.”

“In case of what?”

“In case you hit a snag. You never know about people, Doc,” says Art mysteriously.

“Very true,” I say, anxious only to get rid of him and get over to the Little Napoleon, a snug and friendly haven in any storm.

Some seconds pass before I realize that Art left by the back door, striking out across the dark ox-lot. I shrug. Perhaps he’s taking the short cut to the old Southern Hotel, where a few drummers and detail men still put up.

But how would he know about the short cut?

SUNDAYS I EAT BREAKFAST WITH MY MOTHER. But today is special. Yesterday was my birthday. Today is Property Rights Sunday. My mother, who is president of the altar society and also of the Business & Professional Women, is leading an ecumenical delegation to Saint Pius VII Church (A.C.C.). (A.C.C. = American Catholic Church.)

The Summer Moonlight Tour of the Champs is in full swing. The fish fry will be held this afternoon. Later this morning the Kaydettes corps of Christian baton-twirlers will give a performance. Tuesday they leave for the nationals at Oxford, Mississippi.

It seems I promised to go to church with Mother — because it is my birthday, because it is Property Rights Sunday, and because she wants me to “come back to the Church.”

We are sitting on a terrace overlooking the golf links where we are served a hearty breakfast by Eukie, Mother’s little black houseboy. His white jacket is too dazzling to be looked at. The pile of steaming grits is also white and glittering in the morning sunlight. I’ve already had my warm Tang plus duck eggs plus vodka, and my pulse races along at a merry clip. I am both alert and shaky.

Everything is lovely and peaceful here. Towhees whistle in the azaleas. Golfers hum up and down the fairways in their quaint surrey-like carts. Householders mow their lawns, bestriding tiny burro-size tractors. Why am I so jumpy?

On the other hand, the vines are encroaching. Mother’s yard is noticeably smaller.

My chair is placed so that I am facing Tara next door, Dusty Rhoades’s plantation house, which he purchased from Vince Marsaglia, a gangster from New Orleans who runs Louisiana.

Mother, I see, has all sorts of schemes afoot for me. She is saying:

“I can just see you and Lola walking up and down by moonlight while from the inside come the strains of lovely old-world music.”

“Lola Rhoades?”

“Ho ho, you can’t fool your mother! I know what’s going on between you two.”

“You do? What is going on?”

“I couldn’t be more pleased. She’s wild about you, Tom! What a wonderful girl!”

I am scratching my head: this is odd. Until now Mother hasn’t had much use for Lola, considering her Texas-raw and Texas-horsy. Lola’s cello-straddling always struck Mother as somehow unladylike. She’s been talking to Dusty, I reckon.

“You’re a Cancer and she’s a Taurus. It couldn’t be better!”

“That may be, Mother, but the fact is I don’t really—”

“Beware of Aries and Libra.”

“O.K., Mother, but—”

“Isn’t that little nurse of yours an Aries?”

“Who? Ellen? Good Lord, I have no idea, Mother. In any case, Ellen and I have no—”

“And isn’t that little Left snippet of yours a Libra?”

“Who? Moira? My Lord, Mother, how in the world do you know? And in any case why do you say ‘of mine’?”

“She’s not for you, son.”

“Are you speaking of marriage? Moira has no intention of marrying me.”

“Then all the more reason for breaking it off. But I’m not really worried about that. Here’s what’s been on my mind.”

“Yes?”

“Being a Cancer means that you are deeply sensitive and that family strife tends to cause you much suffering. God knows this is true in your case.”

“That it is.”

“Ginger Rogers and Red Skelton were Cancers.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“You are also under Moon rule, which means that you are emotionally unstable and tend to form will-o’-the-wisp relationships with more than one sweetheart.”

“That’s true.”

“What I wanted to tell you is that in this, the first week of July, I believe that certain things are going to become clear to you and that you will make some important decisions, but—”

“I believe that too.”

“But—! Do not make any real estate transfers until later in the month. I’ve told Dusty and Lola the same thing.”

“Real estate transfers,” I say, scratching my head.

“I’ve told Dusty and Lola and I’m telling you: whatever plans you all might have, don’t sell anything now or buy anything now.” She nods meaningfully at Tara.

“Sell anything? Mother, Lola and I have no plans. What did Dusty tell you?”

“Ho ho ho . I know a thing or two. And I know that Lola is a wonderful girl.”

It is true. Lola, a big beautiful cellist, is a wonderful girl. Last Christmas Eve we lay in one another’s arms in the grassy bunker of number 18 and watched the summer constellations wheel in their courses — I, smashed out of my mind with love, with scientific triumph, and brain hives, she full of love and music, hissing cello tunes in my ear. A brave girl, she saved my life at the expense of her reputation, went to fetch her father as I lay dying of love and hives in the bunker.

What Mother doesn’t understand is that we loved each other for one night and that was the end of it. One night I sang between her knees like an antique cello while she watched the wheeling constellations. A perfect encounter, but it is not to be thought that we could repeat it.

And yet — here’s the wonder of love — even as I bend shivering over the glittering mound of grits, love revives! Love is always possible, even here in the ashes of my forty-five-year-old life. Something stirs, a phoenix. Bad as things are, perhaps just because they are so bad, why not go to the fish fry this afternoon, see Lola again, drink a gin fizz or two?

“Doris was not for you, Tom,” Mother is saying. “God knows she was a wonderful person, but she was never for you. A Capricorn, your exact opposite. I told you!”

No, she didn’t. The truth is she was all for Doris at the beginning, embracing her as a Virginia aristocrat, which she was not, being no more than a good-looking Shenandoah Valley girl.

“Doris was not for you, Tom!” says Mother, swishing her leg angrily.

“Evidently she wasn’t.”

Look at Mother! Look at the difference between us! I, a shaky decrepit forty-five, she in her sixties as pert as a sparrow and on good terms with the world. She sits bolt upright handsome legs crossed, nylon swishing against nylon, one hand pressed deep into her waist to emphasize her good figure. This morning she’s been up for hours, rooting around in her garden, ordering the help around, calling prospects — she’s a “realtor,” makes forty thousand a year, is more successful now than my father in his prime.

She sparkles with good health and is at one with herself. I? I am six feet ahead of myself, ricocheting between terror and elation. My toes are rotating. The out-of-doors doesn’t suit me. I feel like Henry Miller, seedy and stove up, sitting in a park in Jacksonville, Florida. Her plate is clean. She eats like a longshoreman, yet is trim as can be, has a good skin and a clear eye. What a bowel she has! Unfortunately I have my father’s bowel, which is subject to conservative rages and liberal terror.