I line the little batch of zinnias on my countertop to determine a precise stem length for my arrangement. I trim the ends and pull off the fuzzy leaves, then drop the zinnias into the porcelain vase Laudie gave me. The bouquet looks lopsided. I extract the largest flower, a peach one, and tuck it back into the center. Better.
After leaning over to place the flowers on my coffee table, I straighten to a dizzying cosmos of stars blinking and fading in my periphery. The main events of last night come into focus. I let a man buy me drinks. I gave him my phone number. I shake out a couple of ibuprofen, chase them down with a giant glass of water, and try not to remember any more.
My apartment sits on the second floor of what’s called a Charleston single house. This style of house is long but narrow, just one room wide when viewed from the street. Like all Charleston singles, its porches run the length of the house. When the landowners chopped the home up into three units, they boarded up the first-floor porch to make more room for storage and the staircase that brings me to my second-floor apartment. Fortunately, there’s a small second-story porch on the east side of the house, accessible only from my living room. I don’t consider myself a traditionalist, but it does seem sacrilegious to live in this city and not have a piazza.
Mom says it has “character,” which is her euphemism for “shabby.” My walls are pale gray with eggshell trim. The paint is peeling. The windows are warped, and there’s visible wood rot. It’s one of the few remaining dwellings that has not been updated to house the thousands of affluent people moving here from New York and the Midwest, which means I can afford it, barely.
The apartment’s best feature is the fireplace. Although the chimney was sealed up years ago, it’s still beautiful. Two carved cherubs, one at each end, hold up the mantelpiece. They lean wistfully toward each other, clutching the ends of a carved laurel swag. A poster by local artist Jonathan Green hangs above the mantel. It depicts a Gullah woman, a descendant of enslaved Africans who live along the coast, wearing a billowing white dress against a backdrop of blue Lowcountry skies and cottony clouds. She holds a laundry basket in one hand and presses her sun hat to her head with the other. A warm breeze rips through the open air, sending the white sheets flapping behind her.
My first major purchase for the apartment was a mid-century couch, which I positioned to face the window that overlooks the porch. The window frames the upper stories of the nearby houses, some piazzas, a bit of red roof, a tangle of telephone wires.
It’s quiet today. I have grown accustomed to the noises of Coming Street—techno blaring from a College of Charleston dorm room or the rev of a Jeep speeding down the street—but graduation was last weekend and the students are gone. Charleston has returned to its sleepy self. I miss the commotion. Martha doesn’t. She welcomes the city’s annual purge of “zits, tits, and Schlitz.”
Buzz. Buzz. Another text from Trip. He expects me to answer immediately. I used to. Shouldn’t I want to?
I leave my phone and go in the kitchen to put a little more distance between us. Everything in here is a bit wonky: the floor slants so much that I had to stack coasters under the oven’s front legs, and the cupboards are tacked up to the walls like afterthoughts. The faucet on the right is for the hot water; the one on the left is for the cold. The only window is strangely off-center. Once in a while, a roach crawls to the center of my kitchen floor and dies legs-up. They’re as big as hushpuppies, darker than dirt, and impossible to keep out during the warmer months. Despite these shortcomings, I love my apartment. I have it all to myself until about a year from now, when I will be married to Trip and living in Columbia.
Columbia is South Carolina’s capital city, about a two-hour drive from Charleston. No beach, no mountains; it’s just sprawling suburbia smack-dab in the middle of the state. Trip tells me that when I give it a chance, I’ll see why people like it there. Though, of course, Columbia will not always be our home.
Trip and I met at a party our junior year at UNC–Chapel Hill. He seemed so normal, which was a relief. Finally, I thought, here’s someone I can introduce to my parents. He’s the corner puzzle piece—the one who can help me fit into the family jigsaw.
Before Trip, I fell for the misfit, truant boys—the ones who had skateboards and bad habits. From the start of high school, I chose to hang with the kids who smoked pot and hated their parents. I liked my parents and found that pot just made me feel confused. But that crowd—the boys with chain wallets and the girls with moody glares—was the one that accepted me. They intrigued me.
My sisters sat at lunch with the popular girls, always pretty in their pastel summer dresses and sun-kissed skin. And though I was asked to join that clique in my grade, I never felt comfortable. Those girls were always so confident, so sure of their place in the world. The closer I sat to them, the more amplified our differences became.
I stood out from my nuclear family as well. My older sister, Weezy, has curly brown hair like Dad. Caroline, the youngest, has thick, wavy blond hair like Mom. Mine alone is ashy brown, still as fine as a baby’s. In family photos, because I’m the shortest, I always get shoved to the front, looking gangly and bewildered between the natural family pairs. In fourth grade, I discovered a rogue hash brown in my four-piece chicken nugget Happy Meal; I bit into it thinking, that’s me.
But more than looks, my interests were different. Weezy was sporty, and that connected her to Dad. He drove her all over the state to compete in basketball and soccer tournaments. When they got home for dinner, Dad would place her trophies in the center of the table, regaling us with details of her three-pointers and chip shots. And then Weezy married a nice boy at twenty-six and had her first baby at twenty-eight—right on time.
Caroline and Mom are a team, too. Even through high school, Caroline would tag along with Mom on her errands, dropping off dry-cleaning, picking up a prescription. In curlers, they read People magazine and munched on carrots and wore matching pajamas to watch the Oscars.
Without a family partner or after-school activities, I mostly hung around my room alone and bored. I would make faces in the bathroom mirror and practice French kissing on my arm. I stared out the window, hoping to catch a burglar in action or see our neighbors having sex. Nothing ever happened.
Eventually I left my room, sniffing for something productive to do around the house. After the Bug Squad arrived in hazmat suits, I hosted a family meeting in the living room to make a case for slapping the occasional mosquito instead of carpet-bombing our garden with toxins. I experimented with vegetarianism, tacking gory PETA pamphlets to the refrigerator and mooing like a dying cow on hamburger night. The summer after middle school, right before we cut into Mom’s birthday cake, I suggested we forgo birthday presents because there’s already too much stuff in the world.
“Right now I’d say there are too many opinions,” my mother had said. “You need a hobby.”
The most radical hobby I could think of at the time was surfing. I bought a used board and Mom didn’t mind driving back and forth to the beach because I had finally picked up an interest that didn’t involve attempts to change her lifestyle.
Shortly after I found my hobby, I found my kindred spirit: Martha. We met the first week of high school in the girls’ bathroom. She wore Doc Martens and midnight purple fingernail polish. She noticed the buttons I had pinned to my bookbag. On one, a grumpy fish said, “SCHOOLS SUCK.” On another was a picture of an angry baby in a bib. The text read, “GIVE PEAS A CHANCE.”
Weezy had bought me a simple pinback-button-making machine for my birthday (conveniently at a time when my stance on presents had softened). It was a metal contraption with two large discs on a swivel; it had a heavy-duty red handle for ramming all the parts into place. I spent many nights that summer, just before sleep, writing slogans over sketches and popping my little pieces of artwork onto the spring pins.
I gave Martha one of my favorites: a garbage can with long legs in fishnets that said, “DON’T BE TRASHY. RECYCLE.”
“Can you make me one that says, ‘I’d rather be smoking’?”
“Sure.”
“Oh, and one that says ‘Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.’”
“Ha. Yeah, okay. Just don’t tell anyone who made it.”
“Deal.”
We skipped assembly so she could show me how to put on eyeliner. She painted the inside corners of my eyes, drawing them closer together with black arcs. The trick made me look more daring, less naive. The makeup helped to quickly identify me as one of Crescent’s alternative crowd, a collection of prep-school wannabe punks who wore Weedwacker haircuts, carefully chosen thrift-store shirts, and scowls.
By the time I met Trip, many of those misfit boys dropped out of college to wait tables, play in a band, or disappear altogether behind the heady gray fog of a bong hit. I stayed at UNC–Chapel Hill; I never thought not to. I loved studying journalism, but my friend crowd was thinning. It was time to look elsewhere, so I started hanging out with the Betas.
Trip’s real name is William Simons Buchanan III. One of his fraternity brothers introduced us, warning that we might be cousins because we’re both from the South and share the name Simons. In Charleston, it’s a big deal, at least with Laudie’s generation, to be a “one m” Simons. It’s pronounced with a short “i,” (like “shrimp”), not like Simon (as in “Simon Says”). The “y” in Smythe, however, is said with a long “i.” When spammers call, they often ask for Simon Smith; I appreciate the heads-up.
While Laudie taught me about plants, it was my mother who gave the history lessons. She said the original Simons to come here was Benjamin Simons, a seventeenth-century Huguenot immigrant from La Rochelle, France. She also told me not to talk too much about our genealogy, because it’s not polite to speak about our pedigree to people from “Off,” the place people are from if they’re not from Charleston.
Trip and I quickly determined that we were not related. In fact, I was surprised to learn that he had never heard of the Huguenots. Mom always talked about our ancestors as though they were celebrities.
After a few games of beer pong, he walked me out to an old green couch that had been dumped on the Betas’ front lawn. We kissed. We have been together ever since.
I didn’t feel excited when I first met Trip—a feeling I now realize I should have explored more—but I did feel comforted. He was so familiar. He was a gentleman, like Dad. He called to ask me out to dinner. When he arrived to pick me up, instead of sending a text (“here”), he turned off the engine, got out of his truck, and knocked on my door. When the server delivered the check, he reached for the bill. No equivocation. No hesitation. The roles were established.
During our early years, we went for long walks through Raven Rock State Park and around Jordan Lake. When I picked up a stray Snickers wrapper, he opened the pocket of his Barbour jacket so I didn’t have to carry litter back to the truck. In a deep voice, thickened by his southern drawl, he identified different types of hardwood by studying the shapes of fallen leaves. I rarely spoke during those hikes; I liked just hearing him talk. “Did you know you have red in your hair?” he asked once. “I can see it when you’re in the sun. It’s not red, red. But a little bit. Like a cinnamon stick.” The name stuck. After that he called me Cinnamon.
The night we discovered we both knew the Lindy Hop, we danced in his apartment while the pasta boiled. Like many pampered southern children, we had been sent to cotillion during our elementary and middle school years. Trip had suited up in loafers, coat, and tie for weekly dance lessons in North Carolina; I wore short white gloves and a dress with crinoline and a sash.
It seemed that each Wednesday during my cotillion years, I spent the afternoon frantically searching for those gloves. I pulled them on as I raced up Meeting Street to South Carolina Society Hall, a stately building with towering columns stacked high. I would hurry with the other tardy children, taking two steps at a time up the bifurcated staircase. Panting from the mad dash, I said hello and gave one compliment each, as required, to the ladies running the show.
Then I scanned the room for an open seat. Fifty girls lined up on the right of the ballroom; fifty boys lined up on the left. For many of us, our very first dance partners were picked in utero (sign-ups had to be with a girl-boy pair). Mom still plans her Wednesday walks around when cotillion ends so she can see the boys in blazers climbing on the wrought iron railings, girls hopping down the stairs. “It makes me happy,” she said. Passersby who happen upon cotillion letting out—mostly strolling tourists—often pause to photograph this anachronistic scene.
The Lindy Hop was drilled into us over those years. Step, ball, step. Step, ball, step. Shift weight. Step, two, three. Arch, two, three. Shift weight. We found the steps worked for just about any band: Creedence, Widespread Panic, the Allman Brothers . . . We danced for hours that winter night, polishing off two bottles of André champagne. We forgot about the pasta until the smoke alarm sounded. We laughed as Trip chucked our burned dinner into the snow.
He took me for long drives out in the country, taking me to a river or a one-stoplight town. Hand in hand, we’d poke around, skipping rocks along the water or peeking into an antiques store. On the way home, in the dark, I’d stare at his dashboard, the orange lights calculating our movement through space and time. His truck sailed smoothly over highways—no jostling, no bumps. Perhaps in the safety of that big leather seat I fell under the spell that many women find so intoxicating. He was the driver. I was the passenger. It was a relief to surrender.
I lost my virginity to Trip. More overwhelming than having sex for the first time was the intimacy of feeling his heartbeat. My ear became almost suctioned against his warm, damp skin. His heart thudded powerfully. We were young and so alive, which somehow left me feeling vulnerable. I ached, knowing that one day, like all things, his heart would stop. It was impossible to be together forever. Impossible for anyone.
“Are you crying?” he had asked.
That was when I told him I loved him. And I meant it. Then.
Around his second year of law school, my love for him began to fade. Instead of taking day-trips, he watched football on the weekends. I ran errands: Target, Costco, the farmers’ market. Most Saturday mornings I went to a yoga class, leaving the afternoon free for a house cleaning project, like wiping the dirt from windowsills and baseboards. We haven’t burned a meal since that first year. At some point, we stopped dancing in the kitchen. We cooked, and monitored, and tasted, but did not dance. He took up golf around that time, too. “Deals are made on the green, Cinnamon. I’m doing this for us.”
When did we get so grown-up?
When he picked me up for a dinner party at the home of one of his law school friends, he asked me to change out of my black corduroys and into a floral-print dress. He said he’d like to run for public office one day, that his friend’s family was very influential. On our drive over, the illuminated face of a new watch flashed inside the car’s darkness. He always had his phone on him. Why would he need a fancy watch? Did it matter what I was wearing? And I never even thought about windowsills or baseboards before. Why was I cleaning them? It was on that ride that I first considered our end might come before our hearts stopped.
It was a toxic idea. That night at the dinner party, under the low light of a dimmed chandelier, I sank back in my seat. From behind Trip’s shoulder, I peered at the other couples in the room. Who was all in? Which ones secretly plotted their next life?
When I reached for a second helping of potatoes au gratin, Trip pressed his hand against my thigh. His signal, invisible beneath the table, told me not to stuff myself in polite company. So there I sat, in my demure floral dress, feeling small and hungry and trapped. I thought of Laudie.
That was when I decided to lock eyes with the host. He was married; his wife was attractive. But ever since I had met him, I always got the sense that he was undressing me. He gave me an extra-tight hug when we arrived, and his hand lingered against my waist a bit longer than propriety would allow. Men can be dogs.
Why do they get to be dogs? I tilted my head and smiled slyly, taking a baby step toward infidelity. He stiffened, his eyes widening. That stolen glance, that what-if, sent a surge through my body, making me feel ten feet tall.
The following Monday, tromping up the echoing stairwell to my desk at the News & Observer, where I landed my first job after college, I ran into Barnes Cather. I had frequently passed this spritely thirtysomething for three years, thinking nothing more than He’s cute, but short. The end. But that Monday was the first time I thought about shoving him against the wall, thrusting my hand down his pants, and squeezing his balls.
Like most toxins, the idea was insidious. Not only did other men begin to appear more attractive, Trip became less attractive. I found my gaze settling on the parts of him I didn’t like. Instead of wanting to run my arms over his bulky shoulders, I caught myself staring at his lips, noticing for the first time that they were thin. I saw that his stomach had started to hang over his belt, his shirt tugging at the buttons from both sides. Or was it always like that? Maybe, I thought spitefully, he should lay off those second helpings, too.
I used to crave his touch. When we passed each other in his tiny apartment kitchen during college, I happily anticipated a hearty butt pat. By the time he moved into a better apartment with a bigger kitchen with his solid clerkship salary, I winced when our bodies brushed. I spun away from him when he came near. It was a new kitchen dance.
In January, I moved from North Carolina back to Charleston when I got a producing job at News 14. Trip still had another five months to finish his clerkship in Raleigh, so my move meant we’d be long-distance for a while. I said that I wanted to move from print journalism into broadcast news. A braver woman would have said that she didn’t want to get married.
Only once did I wonder whether he might feel the same way. He shocked me by picking a firm in Columbia, that scorching-hot concrete city in the middle of the state. This choice would extend our long-distance engagement, which privately thrilled me. He told me he needed to be with the lawmakers. He said when he moved down to Charleston, a city saturated with lawyers, his experience in the legislature would make him a top candidate at any firm in the Holy City, as well as for any elective office he might want to run for.
I didn’t tell Trip marrying me would bring his career aspirations within reach much more quickly. I’m a Smythe, a member of Old Charleston—that hidden enclave within the city that the tourists don’t see. Our society operates along its own distinct bloodlines, traditions, and rules. Old Charleston does a remarkable job of making sure that it’s difficult to infiltrate. Membership at Battery Hall—a good-ol’-boy’s club—provides a formalized tally of who is who, with new members voted on biannually.
Trip, with his law degree and southern pedigree, fits the mold. But even he—as someone from slightly Off—wouldn’t have access to this private club without me, whose father is a Smythe and whose grandmother is a Middleton. Names matter. Lineage matters. I’m Trip’s ticket inside.
Since we’re now engaged, all Trip has to do is have lunch with Dad and some of his buddies at Battery Hall, and bam, he’ll have a job downtown, probably at a prestigious Broad Street firm. With a few more handshakes and bourbons at the club, Trip could start his campaign for office. The circle is really that tight.
Charleston mothers have their own ways of securing their children’s futures within the local aristocracy. The entry starts with cotillion, where Charleston’s daughters and sons learn the rituals and dance steps of our culture and practice the art of giving compliments. Later, these same mothers will host parties for their friends’ daughters who are first debutantes, then brides, and later expectant mothers in a series of teas, luncheons, and showers.
They throw other parties, too: holiday parties, cocktail parties, supper club dinners. “Why do Charleston men live so long?” the joke goes. “They pickle themselves!” At these parties, the guest lists look similar from year to year—heavy on names like Smythe, Middleton, and Rutledge—varying only as the generations evolve; it’s not uncommon for a boy to be the fifth, sixth, or seventh person to bear a particular name.
Charlestonians rarely relocate. Our town is a bastion of homeostasis. So, when we go to a party, we see a friend we’ve known since we were babies. We know that person’s parents and grandparents. It’s tribal; our roots go back for years, decades, centuries. We are entwined.
Our wedding date won’t be for at least another year—and maybe longer, if I don’t get my act together and book a venue, a band, and a photographer. Plenty of time to fall back in love. But today I’m saved from the downward spiral of examining my love life; work starts in thirty minutes. I give my temples a few good rubs, whip myself off the couch, and head to the office.