Soon after my tenth birthday, my mother, Marguerite, took me on a tour of Europe. Not the grand tour of debutantes but a two-week jaunt in the company of a dozen exemplary citizens from Atlanta: middle-aged, church-going professionals, bankers, dentists, lawyers, accountants, and their wives.
My mother stood out among the matrons. She was younger and slimmer as well as beautiful with sophisticated taste and a short, chic haircut. For evening strolls through the capitals, she wore a charcoal gray wool suit with a voluptuous gray fox collar. For bus rides and days tramping through museums and palaces, she put on camelhair slacks and a matching cashmere sweater. In whatever attire wherever we went, she drew the attentive gaze from men of every nationality.
For Marguerite, it was Harrods that confirmed we had arrived in Europe. “At last, we can go to Harrods!” she exclaimed with an ardor reserved exclusively for clothes.
Harrods sounded so muffled to my ear. Had the L accidentally been omitted?
“Harolds?” I timidly asked.
“Har-RODS,” mother snapped. “The finest store in the entire world.”
Before the Tower and after St. Paul, between lunch at The Savoy and tea in Piccadilly, mother hailed a black cab, as big as a sarcophagus, to carry us from the Strand to Brompton Road. I stood on the sidewalk in awe, staring at Harrods’ flags, crests, and crenelations. My mother was positively correct. Harrods was the finest store in the entire world.
In May, few winter coats remained on the racks. In my size, there was only one, fabricated from heavy, coarse, Scottish wool, faintly purple like boiled rhubarb, and thoroughly unbecoming. Its single redeeming feature was a half-dozen carved wooden buttons that I immediately began to twirl.
“Stop fidgeting!” mother commanded. “If you don’t ruin it, next winter you’ll be glad to have a coat from Harrods.”
From London, our tour flew to Brussels where we were met by a bus, a driver, and a guide. Oskar was historian, polyglot, and hedonist, who promised to introduce the Georgian provincials to European wines and risqué art. Although a child, I would soon be privy to both.
The itinerary transported us by bus across Belgium, along the Rhine, and into Switzerland. Wherever we stopped, I acquired a postcard or cloisonné charm to remember the quaint towns, the castles and churches, the rivers and farms, and the cuisine so different from my own.
Late spring outside Bern was an inspired combination of wild flowers and snow-capped peaks. Our hotel was a chalet, decorated with wide shutters and painted barge board. I pranced across its lawn and passed two Alpine days with my middle-age companions, clambering around mountainsides and eating fondue.
On the morning of our departure, I overheard my mother cursing in the bathroom.
“I can’t get the goddamn thing off,” she cried.
I peeked through the door. Armed with tweezers and hairbrush, Marguerite hovered in a contorted position over a brass and porcelain faucet handle attached to the bathroom sink. As soon as she spied me, she threw the hairbrush at the floor in a pique and tried prying the handle loose with her hands.
“Why?” I asked in alarm.
She wrestled on. “I can’t get it off.”
Like most children, I was thoroughly cognizant of the minute shades of difference between taking, borrowing, lending, and stealing. In defense of my mother, I rationalized. Perhaps, she had asked permission. Perhaps, the antique (and likely worthless) fixtures would not be missed. Perhaps, my mother knew that the proprietor intended to replace the “old things” with modern, dependable ones and had enlisted my mother’s help.
Marguerite wiped her forehead, dripping with effort. She had broken a fingernail, and her elbow was bloody from pressing down on the chipped drain. “Get over here and help.”
I hung back.
“Hold on while I tug.”
I slouched to the sink. Outside was my escape into a valley of flowers. However, I lacked the requisite courage to jump onto the cobblestone courtyard and run away.
“I’ll wait downstairs,” I attempted, but the words stuck in my throat.
She steadied my hand and pushed it forward as a vice. Finally, she succeeded in loosening a rusted screw. “That’s quite a lot of work,” she sighed, balancing the object on her palm. “But it’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
I puzzled over the question. My appreciation of beauty did not include bathroom fixtures.
“What are you staring at?” My mother’s voice shrilled with its familiar accusation that I was always staring off at something.
“Mountains,” I mumbled.
Mother gave the scenery a dismissive glance. “I shall paint our shutters blue, too,” she announced in reference to the old-fashioned stone and brick house she and my father had recently bought. Its architecture, in fact, was identical to a chalet with shuttered casement windows, a slate roof, beamed ceilings, and a stairway encased in a circular tower. “That exact blue,” she pointed to a wing of the genuine Swiss chalet that extended along the winding drive.
By now, she had the other handle. “These,” she said, holding up the spoils, “will go in the powder room.” Indeed, the powder room was the most extravagant corner of the house, decorated with a silver leaf dressing table and oval mirror swagged with crystal ropes.
She stuffed the two handles into her purse. It was time to leave. Closets and chest of drawers had been emptied and suitcases repacked, including the coat from Harrods.
“You haven’t forgotten anything, have you?” mother asked.
“No,” I faltered. On the contrary, if only I could retrieve the whatchamacallits and screw them back in place.
“Why are you standing around?” Mother poked me with an umbrella. “Pick up the bags and get downstairs.”
Underneath the bus, the luggage hatch was propped open. Everyone had settled into their seats, some preferring the front next to Oskar, others stretched out in back to snooze.
“Good morning, madame, mademoiselle,” Oskar greeted us cheerily.
We nodded and took our customary seats midway down the aisle.
“Ready?” he asked, counting the passengers again.
The bus door slammed shut. The engine turned over. Several nauseating wafts of diesel smoke drifted through the open windows as the behemoth rolled backwards into the parking lot. The driver then coasted towards the gravel road that wound across a bright, spring green valley and down to the highway.
“Stop!” A ruddy-faced man yelled from the hotel verandah. “Stop the bus!”
Through the windshield, everyone watched an oversized figure leap down the chalet stairs, waving his arms like the blades of a windmill.
The driver pressed the brakes. The concierge dashed up the steps of the bus, through the door, and gasping for breath, bellowed, “There is missing.”
While he and Oskar consulted in German, the genteel tourists from Georgia tried to decipher what he meant. “Missing?” Bewildered looks raced from front to back.
Oskar shuddered. It was very unpleasant news. “The bathroom hardware in one of our rooms has been removed,” he grumbled.
An explanation that only increased everyone’s confusion. “Bathroom what? Removed from where?”
A humiliated Oskar said, “We cannot leave until they’re returned.”
Still puffing, the concierge concurred.
An oceanic murmur rose. “More than one?” No one could imagine.
I shut my eyes, wishing to be whisked away, transported to a mountaintop where I might spend my remaining days with Heidi, Grandfather, and the goats. Anywhere but on this bus.
When my eyes reopened, Oskar and the concierge had not budged. They stood stolidly in place, eyeing each passenger in turn.
“The room number is 217,” they finally said.
“Wasn’t that you, Marguerite?” one of the bank presidents asked.
“I didn’t notice,” she shrugged.
“I was in 215,” someone asserted.
Coolly, Marguerite felt inside her pockets. Coolly, she checked under the seat. Then, pausing as an afterthought, she opened her purse and groped inside.
“You mean these?” She yanked out two antique brass and porcelain handles, engraved with chaud and froid.
The concierge nodded icily as they were passed to the front of the bus. Two dozen censoring eyes fell upon us.
Mother rose. She laid a hand on my hunched shoulder.
I recoiled, clasping and unclasping my fingers, bowing my head in a futile prayer.
“Sue, can you tell us why you took them?” Her voice quivered but within seconds, it was strong and certain. “Can you tell us why?”
The bus idled as if it were waiting for the answer, too.
My numbness was deeper than an Alpine crevasse, but like an understudy called to her first leading role, I said firmly, “I don’t know why.”
“Sue doesn’t know,” Marguerite repeated in case anyone had failed to hear.
Then, rising slowly, I dragged myself to the back of the bus as the engine shifted into gear.
Early on, my cousin, Peggy, discovered that her greatest talent was the ability to turn a boy’s simplest request into the world’s biggest marvel. “Peggy, can I walk you home?” they begged. “Peggy, can I sit beside you at the picture show?” In response, Peggy’s chin would tilt, her gaze lift, her lips moisten, her calves flex, and her breasts rise. Peggy was irresistible.
By the end of high school, after she had been squeezed, groped, rubbed, pounded, and humped, she eloped (out of sheer exhaustion) with the next young man who asked. (It was her third proposal of the summer.)
Fifteen years later, she returned to Atlanta, a divorced mother of two. Buckhead was no longer a small suburban center. It was its own center, bursting with commerce and style. The owner of a popular bar (that prided itself on imported beers) was a local boy, glad to hire Peggy. The patrons of the Acme were glad, too. They were from the old crowd.
Peggy recognized their names and faces, but what they recognized in her was sacred. They had never given her up. They were still seeking a way to leave their mark on Peggy, for above everything else, she represented the moment when they believed they would leave their mark on the world.
“I never saw a girl who attracted so many boys,” her mother reminisced nearly everyday. “Remember whosit who tried to climb down the chimney? And the night Charlie Key drove over the lawn? There were so many corsages in the fridge, we couldn’t find room for leftovers.” Edith’s voice choked with admiration. She had conceived a blond, willowy wildcard in a gene pool that normally favored short, heavy, and mousy brown.
“Men don’t court women anymore,” Peggy informed her mother. “If a man has money, he doesn’t spend it on a woman. He expects her to have her own money and spend it on herself.”
“The night Wash Smith invited a string quartet to play under your window? And Cyrus Temple, etching your initials on his arm with hydrochloric acid?”
“They weren’t my initials,” Peggy protested.
“His mother said you ought to be banished from the state before you wrecked another boy’s sanity. It was wonderful,” Edith sighed nostalgically.
“It isn’t fashionable now to be romantic.”
“Pooh!” her mother said. “Men are as primitive as they have always been.”
“I saw Charlie last night,” Peggy reported. It made her feel fifteen to say his name.
“He ruined my camellias. He ran that blue Impala around my yard like a monkey on a trike.”
“He’s looks the same.”
“Don’t be vague, Peggy. Is he available?”
“There were grease stains on his tie.”
“You weren’t so critical then.”
“He pals around with Wash.”
“I suppose he made something of himself.”
“He’s a drunk.”
Edith shook her head despairingly. Peggy had had every opportunity, natural and otherwise, to make a good catch. It wasn’t too late. “You ought to do something productive with your looks while they last. Damnit, Peggy, you rode the senior float and now you’re a barmaid.”
“Waitress,” she corrected.
“I thought the job would take your mind off your troubles, but it’s making you bitter. And you’re irritating your wrinkles when you smile. Tell me more about Wash.”
“He wrote a screenplay. He says it’s going to be a movie.”
Cocking her head like an ingénue, Edith asked, “Is he going to put you on the silver screen?”
“It’s about four gay men who die of AIDS.”
“Wash is a fairy?” Edith’s celebrity future melted into a blur.
Peggy’s past was springing up with ardor. Charlie Key sent her a dozen roses wrapped in an expensive silk scarf. Over the weekend, Zip Feinstein stopped in town for his father’s birthday and offered to give her money (lots of money) for a new car. Wash invited her to visit him in Hollywood (the film was going forward). And Jim Gerber telephoned from Santa Fe, wanting to know what happened to the school’s best-looking girl. He offered to fly her out. “To get a look,” he said.
“Guess who came up to me in the store today?” Edith tittered. “Cy Temple introduced himself in the produce department. He even showed me the scar from the acid.”
“He showed you?”
“Pooh! It’s nothing. He apologized up and down for the trouble he caused back then. He is the nicest man. He is just your type. He loves to travel. He loves kids. He’s got a steady job.”
When Cy walked into the Acme, Peggy didn’t recognize him. He sat in her section and ordered a Corona.
“Remember me, Cyrus Temple, the weirdo?” He giggled and lifted his glass in a toast. “I saw your mother, did she tell you?”
“She told me,” Peggy said.
“I bet it happens all the time. Boys stopping by, swearing that you’re the prettiest girl in the world. You haven’t changed.”
“I’ve changed,” she said wearily.
“Remember your fuzzy white sweater?”
“Angora blend,” Peggy mused.
“The round-collared blouse with little flowers?”
“Liberty of London.”
“And tasseled?”
“Bass Weegens,” she interrupted. She remembered every article of clothing from high school. Some of it, she had kept.
Cy pushed up his sleeve. “And this?”
Peggy looked at the lump of scar tissue. She was surprised. It did resemble her initials.
Cyrus Temple drank five beers. He stayed until closing, lingering outside the bar, hoping to drive her home.
“The prettiest girl with the biggest freak, who would believe you’re talking to me?” He pinched himself.
“That nonsense doesn’t matter now,” Peggy said.
“We never had a chance to talk. I mean, really talk.”
“Nobody did. We were going through the motions. Like clothes, trying things on, taking things off.”
“I adored you,” Cy whimpered. “That’s a fact.”
Peggy turned away. She didn’t want to hear it. She had heard it enough.
Mustering his courage, Cy swivelled Peggy around and smacked his lips against hers. When his tongue darted into her mouth, she clamped down her teeth as hard as she could.
“Aieeeee!” he shrieked.
Peggy had already started to run. Into the darkness, past the shops and restaurants of Buckhead, she ran like a panther, the most desired animal in the world.