Traveling with Pomegranates (20 page)

As a full-time assistant at the magazine, I answer the phone as instructed—“
Skirt!
, this is Ann”—but I can’t quite spit it out without the words running together.

“
Skirt!
, thisisZan.”

“Who?” people ask.

“Ann. I’m new here.”

“New to
Skirt!
or new to Charleston?”

“Both.”

(“Have you seen the gardens at Middleton Place?”)

Then there are the calls that begin with me telling an advertiser the amount of his or her overdue bill, which elicits a variety of responses: “The check is in the mail,” or “Sorry, it has been tough lately, what with the business going under and all,” or “Don’t ever call me again and tell me I owe you money! I’m well aware of it!” To the latter I want to reply, “Perhaps, however, you are
not
aware that rudeness is a misdemeanor in Charleston.” Instead, I say, “Yes, I understand. Have a nice day.”

A few months ago, I began to read article submissions. After the editor’s initial reading, she will hand me the manuscript and say, “Read this and tell me what you think.” Afterward, I always get the impulse to write something myself. It fizzles out quickly, though, almost like I never had the thought.
What do I have to say? How could it possibly be any good?
Impulse going . . . going . . . gone.

Lately, the editor has been encouraging me to submit an article. Does she think I inherited my mother’s writing genes? Does she know that the last essay I wrote was an academic paper about the Peloponnesian War? I tell her I’ll think about it, which is a polite way of saying no.

I grew up thinking I wanted to be a writer. My writing experience amounts to a batch of stories, comic strips, family newspapers, and embarrassing poetry I began in elementary school, plus two writing competitions. The first was a seventh-grade fiction contest, in which I won first place in my school. My prize was a trip to Columbia, South Carolina, to attend seminars by local authors. Whatever happened to trophies? I didn’t want to go. My mother, who didn’t really have a history of insisting I do anything extracurricular, insisted. She drove me there herself and in the end I was glad I went. Then, in the tenth grade I placed third in a Halloween story contest sponsored by the local newspaper. This time I won a white beach towel with the newspaper’s weather mascot on it—the Weather Hound, a gangly dog, standing on two legs and wearing a cape. My brother, Bob, teased me about it. “Are you going to hang it on your wall?” he’d say. I don’t think the editor at
Skirt!
would be impressed by my grade-school contests or my cutting-edge poems about teddy bears and skyscrapers.

Scott and I hear the
Wild Kingdom
sound again. This time we track it to the stable yard and find a peacock draped on top of a fence, its iridescent plumage folded up like a Chinese fan. We look at each other and laugh. Mystery solved. I will discover later that the peacock is associated with Hera, Goddess of marriage, the way the owl belongs to Athena.

Behind the plantation house, we walk down wide grassy terraces onto a straight, manicured path that cuts between two lakes, which are shaped like the open wings of a butterfly. “We’re on the butterfly’s back,” I say, suddenly realizing the layout. From here we have a clear view of the Ashley River, the marshes and rice fields. It took one hundred slaves close to ten years to build this butterfly and just about everything we’ve seen.

Strolling into the gardens, I see hydrangeas bloom everywhere, violet-blue and pink. We stop before a giant live oak, estimated to be five hundred years old. Rooted on the banks of the Ashley River, it is massive—eighty-five feet tall and thirty feet around the trunk. The limbs spread out one hundred and forty-five feet in twisting tangles. Moss hangs from the branches like old Christmas tinsel that has been slung on impatiently.

Dwarfed beneath the branches, Scott and I cannot resist the urge to touch the trunk. We stand there for a few moments with our hands pressed against the bark, as if to say,
Yep, it’s a tree, all right
, though this could never be perceived as an ordinary tree. I think about all the things that must have gone on around it in five hundred years, all the terrible history—slavery, Sherman’s army, earthquakes, and hurricanes—but mostly I just feel the enduring beauty of the tree. I actually feel peaceful in its presence. The feeling hits me like the kerplunk of a stone splashing into the river and sending out its ripples.

Scott says, “This tree is amazing, isn’t it?”

“It is,” I say. I love that he gets this tree.

After I returned from Greece, I wrote Demetri a letter. I told him I hoped he could forgive me for not seeing him in Athens. I did not mention the part about purposely not answering his phone call. How could I? I had not even attempted to explain it further to my mother. In the letter, I merely said I’d missed his call and that we’d left Athens the next day.

No letter came in return.

Then one afternoon when I was alone in the apartment, folding laundry, the phone rang.

“Ann?”

I saw the Acropolis over his shoulder—a world away.

“Demetri?”

“Ann, how are you?”

“Fine. I’m fine. How are you?”

“Good. I just got your letter. I’m sorry, too, that I did not see you.”

“Oh.” I paused.

“I’m not mad at you.”

“Good,” I said. “I was worried you might be.”

“Maybe there will be a next time.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say.

He said, “I will write to you and you write to me, okay?”

“Okay.”

He let out a breath.

“Well . . . it is nice to hear your voice.”

“It’s good to hear your voice, too.”

After we hung up, I sat on the floor beside the laundry basket. He was on another continent, but his voice was still in my ears. I picked up a hanger and draped Scott’s dress shirt over it, unnecessarily fastening every single button until I reached the collar.

Demetri and I continued to write letters. Sometimes Scott picked up the mail and hand-delivered them to me. “You’ve got a letter from your pen pal,” he’d say, jokingly. And I would tell him, “It was thousands of miles from here, a long time ago. We’re just friends.”

Once, when he dropped the envelope with the Greek stamps into my lap, I remembered the movie
Shirley Valentine,
which I’d watched at least twice now. Shirley goes to Greece and meets a handsome Greek man. She sums up her experience by saying, “I didn’t fall in love with him, I fell in love with life.”

I wondered if that was what had happened to me.

Scott and I decide to end our day at Middleton Place in what the map refers to as “The Secret Gardens.” When I see them, I understand how they got their name. Two large, square-shaped enclosures are surrounded by tall, English hedges, thick as walls.

In one of the gardens, a marble statue of a woman stands in each corner. Scott sits on a wooden bench while I take a closer look at them.

“I think they represent the four seasons,” I tell him, “because this one has flowers, and this one is holding wheat. Spring and fall, right?”

I sit down beside him and rub my arms to settle the chill bumps. I had dressed for heat, but the sun never came out. We sit there without talking. Scott reaches into his pocket. When he pulls his hand out, he’s holding a tiny box.

Inside is a diamond ring. It gleams in the light while I stare at it.

“Will you marry me?” he says.

I had expected we would get engaged in the future—
future
being the operative word. I assumed I would know about it beforehand, as if the proposal was something we would plan together, then enact, preferably in a garden setting like this with all the seasons of life looking on. I hadn’t expected to be surprised.

My brain is sending signals to my mouth, informing it what to say, but astonishment has created some sort of interference. I can only look at him. In those paralytic moments, I don’t wonder if I’m too young or if I should wait till I figure out my career. Instead, what goes through my mind is that I’ve always been sure about him.

I nod.

“Is that a yes?” he asks.

“Yes!” I say, laughing, finally able to talk.

Scott breaks into a smile and reaches for my left hand, and there’s my Athena ring on the finger that’s reserved for engagement rings.

“I know what she means to you,” Scott says. “We’re not replacing her.”

I work the Athena ring over my knuckle, then move it to my right hand, and Scott slides the engagement ring onto my finger.

“It’s beautiful,” I say.

When I get home, I call my mother. “Guess what? Scott and I are engaged!”

There are about three seconds of stunned silence and then: “Ann, I’m so happy for you! Congratulations! Oh my God.” Now I hear sniffles. “You must be so excited.”

“Yeah, I am,” I say.

“Did you talk about when the wedding might be?”

“Next June, I think.”

“Are you thinking of a church wedding?”

“I’m wondering about getting married under the oak tree at Middleton Place.”