Mom and Dad wait for me in the atrium of Battery Hall. The club turned one hundred the year I was born. After all that time, the membership has remained white, male, mostly Protestant, definitely Christian, and—as far as I can gather—straight. Few Charleston newcomers know about this club; it doesn’t even have a website.
Membership is capped at four hundred. Tito is a member. So is my father. My sister’s husband is, too. Members’ wives and their children are welcome as guests but only in the dining hall and only four days a week. Otherwise, the small but well-manicured compound is for members only.
The club was originally built as a sort of entertainment den: a billiards hall, an oak-paneled anteroom for cards and chess, a shuffleboard court outside. As Charleston grew in power, so did Battery Hall’s members, and it has since become a place where decision makers gather. Partnerships are formed here, candidates are anointed, and deals are brokered.
To accommodate the changing nature of the club, Battery Hall removed the shuffleboard court sometime in the eighties and built the dining hall that doubles as a giant meeting room. Quarterly, all members gather for a surf and turf dinner and a talk from one of the South’s leading politicians.
During the hot minute South Carolina had a woman for governor, the members debated whether to invite her to the annual gubernatorial supper. When the rules were written, the all-male membership simply never imagined a woman holding the top political seat in the state. In the end, they invited her to speak. How radical.
Dad mostly comes to have a glass of bourbon and play the occasional bridge game. In high school, I pressed him about the policy on women. “Why is Battery Hall just for men?”
“Oh, Simons,” he responded in a calm, reasonable tone. “It’s very normal for the sexes to separate. Your mother wouldn’t want me barging in on her Ladies’ Charleston Charities meetings. Besides, Battery Hall is nothing more than a boys’ club. We just want a place where we can hang out with each other in our leisure hours. Where is the harm in that?” I found his points hard to argue; it was also the first time I wondered if he had wanted a son.
For the last few years, I’ve managed to dodge family meals at the club, always having to drive back to Chapel Hill on Sundays. Today, I don’t have an excuse. Plus, we’re here to celebrate Mom’s birthday. Everything looks the same. On the far wall are portraits of the past twenty-five Battery Hall presidents. With his back to me, Dad studies the oil paintings, each rimmed by a gilded frame and stamped with a little plaque that notes their years of leadership.
The portraits are uniform. They all have the same inky background. Though they sit in slightly different positions, all men face the viewer. We see their heads, torso, and hands, all painted in the same scale. The presidents wear the Battery Hall tartan blazer, which is a plaid of moss green crisscrossed by thin white and red stripes. Only the presidents get to wear that tartan blazer. All are buried in it. While Dad, like all members of Battery Hall, was given a pair of gold cuff links on the day of his induction, I wonder if he ever dreams of his portrait on that wall. Does he want to be among these men, in a club within a club?
On the far left is the first ever president. Near the bottom of the fourth row, a younger version of Tito stares back at me. He was the nineteenth president. To the right, starting a sixth line of portraits, is a new painting covered by a carefully draped canvas. The current president’s portrait has been completed. Soon, there will be an unveiling ceremony.
Dad spins around. “I kind of want to peek,” he jokes.
To see what, another dude who looks like all the rest? What could possibly be interesting under there?
Mom wears a pale pink skirt and matching cardigan. She’s looped a beige scarf around her neck. When she looks up from her phone, she inhales audibly. “Simons, you can’t wear that jacket.” She looks at me as though I stapled a bunch of tampons to my collar, some sort of super-absorbency accessory.
“I thought no jeans.”
“Honey. No denim. Period. It’s always been this way.” She hurries toward me and tugs on my sleeve.
“I’ve got it,” I whine, sounding like a teenager. Being here at Battery Hall—with its archaic, arbitrary rules for me to run afoul of—makes me feel like a child again. The twenty-five men on the wall glare at me, making me wish I had walked in with a tampon collar, maybe stuck a couple up my nose.
At least I am wearing an appropriate dress—sleeveless, knee length, spackled with red roses. I fold my jacket in half, drape it over my purse. Mom removes her scarf and tucks it over my jacket, hiding the illicit fabric as though we’re smuggling contraband into the fancy-pants restaurant.
A hostess walks us to our table, which is set for six adults, plus a high chair for Francie. Along the wall is a high banquette. Above it, a mirror reflects our table; our snowy linen napkins have been folded into swans.
In the corner of the banquette, Weezy spoon-feeds Francie something orange and mushy. Weezy’s husband stands to greet us. His name is Ashley, which is a normal and quite respectable name for a guy around here.
His younger brother, Clay, stands, too. Clay wears a candy-cane-striped bow tie stamped with the Greek letters of his fraternity. Pale freckles, as though applied by a pointillist artist, dot every inch of his face. When he smiles, his gums show.
“May I sit next to you?” I ask Clay.
“Totally.” He lifts the menu to hide from the rest of the table and whispers to me, “Is this a boozy lunch? Or should I just order sweet tea?”
“I think one or two beers would be fine.”
“Got it.”
“How were exams?”
“Brutal. But one more year and I’m done. Where’s Caroline?”
“At her internship in Charlotte.”
“Oh, right. Cool. How’s Trip liking Columbia?”
The air conditioning gives me goosebumps, but I don’t dare put on my jacket. I open the napkin and flap the swan away, cover my thighs. “Good. He likes his new job a lot.”
We order drinks. The server places an iced tea in front of me. Next to my glass, he sets a tiny pitcher of simple syrup and a long spoon. I pour and stir and taste, finding it impossible not to enjoy this little tea party for one.
Dad raises his pint glass. “I’d like to make a toast to your mother.”
Mom straightens—her perfect posture even more perfect. Dad talks about her kindness, her patience, and her beauty. He says she’s a lovely woman, an outstanding wife and mother, a devoted friend, a fantastic tennis player, and a helpful neighbor; everyone at the table nods in companionable agreement. Dad ends his speech by handing her a card—the same card he hands her every year, right here. And every time Mom opens it, she looks genuinely surprised to find a thousand-dollar gift certificate to Crawford’s Jewels, hands down the best jeweler in town. Sometimes she treats herself to what she calls a bauble, though Crawford’s doesn’t sell trinkets. Other years she saves the cards, letting them stack up for when she wants to buy something extra sparkly.
Like a cloud sliding beneath the sun, casting a giant shadow, a blue blazer blocks my view of the right side of the table. A large hand lands on my shoulder. When I turn to see who it is, a leather belt becomes level with my nose. Button by button, my gaze inches up the towering chest of Sonny Boykin. Shit.
Dad, Ashley, and Clay stand to shake his hand. Generally, I stand when guests greet our table; it seems lazy for the women to stay put, and why are only the men expected to stand, anyway? Sonny’s hand weighs me down, and I’m not sure I want to honor the judge by rising.
“Oh, please, sit down, sit down,” Sonny says. “Celebrating the birthday girl, hey?”
Mom pats the banquette. “Join us.”
“Oh, I can’t. We’re headed home. Nancy has a mile-long honey-do list waiting for me.”
Dad remains standing. “Sonny, I’m sorry about all the fuss you’ve had to deal with.”
“It’s ridiculous. There were no charges and still the reporters are saying I’m some sort of criminal.”
Mom shakes her head. “It’s just awful.”
“This too shall pass.” Sonny lifts his hand from my shoulder to wriggle his fingers at Francie. She smiles. “Y’all take it easy. I’ll see you at the unveiling on Thursday.”
Mom leans over the table, her eyes following Sonny as he disappears into the lobby. “Honey, can’t you do something for Sonny? He had to spend a night in jail. Isn’t that bad enough? People should know he’s an honorable man from a good family.”
“He spent three hours in a jail, not a whole night. And even if that wasn’t the case, I’m not going to write a fluff piece about him to make him look better. That’s not how news works.”
“You could make them stop running the videos about his little bump into a pole. They make him seem like a drunk.”
“We report the facts. He got into a wreck, failed a field sobriety test, and then was taken to the station, where he was released without ever having to take a breathalyzer test. I think it’s all a little odd, don’t you?”
The table quiets. Weezy and Ashley inch closer to each other. Clay retreats behind his menu. Francie freezes; her fist stays high in the air, gripping a hunk of sourdough. Twelve eyes are upon me, all of them wary.
“He wouldn’t drive drunk. We’ve known him our whole lives. He and Nancy have been married for thirty years.”
I think of the portraits of the men on the wall, how images of Sonny, Dad, Ashley or Clay could be easily interchanged. These are the types of men my mother has known her whole life. Men who held the door open for her, vaccinated her children, sold her land on Edisto. These are good men. They are kind to her. They don’t drive drunk, wreck their cars, and get magically released from jail.
I have a growing sense of unease that the wall of portraits represents far more than the leadership of the club. They are the figureheads of a powerful network; they look out for each other. These are the men who run the city, quietly, carefully, out of the limelight. And here I am, a modern woman—I like to think—stirring tea with a tiny spoon in the belly of the beast. “I don’t think you should be so quick to be on his side.”
When people are mad, they meet each other head on. They square off. But this look, where Mom cocks her head to the side, is a look of concern. Weezy and Dad are doing it, too. They wonder why I’m picking a fight.
“Simons,” Mom says, brightening, “What if you got married at Battery Hall?”
Here’s the thing about Charleston families: we regard civility above all else. No matter what is said or done, we remain in polite company. It’s what we’ve been bred to do: hide our disagreements beneath the smiles. Not say what we mean. It’s why Laudie never speaks up to Tito. It’s why I said yes to Trip. It’s why Mom changed the subject, and why I agree to move on as well, even though this new subject isn’t a whole lot better.
“Remember we decided we needed a bigger venue?”
“Oh, that’s right.”
The server appears and takes our orders. I excuse myself to visit the powder room, weaving through tables occupied by Charleston’s bluebloods. By the window, a couple of Laudie’s friends, both widows, idle over after-lunch coffee. In one booth, a mother—maybe one of Weezy’s old school pals—wipes ketchup from her daughter’s gingham pinafore.
There isn’t a hand-dryer in the bathroom; instead of using the single-use, high-quality paper hand towels embossed with the Battery Hall logo, I shake my hands dry. Dallying, I examine the prints that hang in the women’s powder room.
The watercolors depict seemingly idyllic scenes of pre–Civil War plantation life. In one, enslaved women relax in the sun while their children nap, suggesting plantation life was filled with such languid afternoons—a visual denial that their babies weren’t oftentimes snatched away and sold to other owners, never to see their mothers again. Another takes place just beyond the steps of a large plantation home. Enslaved people line up to shake the hands of a finely dressed white couple—their oppressors. In the painting, everyone is smiling. Jesus. Who chose these prints for the ladies’ room? Why are they hanging in this club? It seems Battery Hall is even more backwards than I had feared.