Chapter 13
AFTER TWO YEARS IN MONTREAT, I’D LEARNED A NEW RHYTHM that was as certain as the changing seasons.
At the end of the summer, the tourists and vacationers would return to homes in faraway places that I never imagined I’d visit one day.
Washington, D.C. New York City. Charleston, South Carolina.
Dallas. Atlanta. Even California and foreign countries.
Many motels, farm stands, tourist shops, and other seasonal businesses were boarded up until the following year.
Montreat’s club program and related activities would cease, the lake closed.
Anderson Auditorium was where we went to church in the summer.
It could hold two thousand people, almost all of them strangers.
I was glad when the services would return to the small, cozy Gaither Chapel.
Off season, the population would shrink to around two hundred permanent residents.
I didn’t have to dodge traffic or wait in line.
But I’d feel sad when everything stopped, as if the town was in mourning.
There was no family night skating, no square dancing, no swimming in Lake Susan, the icy water a shock when I’d first jump in, mindful of snapping turtles.
I’d swim as fast as I could to the green-painted dock where I’d stretch out in the sun, careful of splinters.
During an outing to the Kmart department store in Asheville where we shopped for clothes twice a year, Mom bought me a blue plastic boat that I’d drag to and from the lake, making a godawful scraping sound.
I named it Drifting Star and floated blissfully until Jim would flip me over.
In those days, Montreat residents had free access to hiking trails, tennis courts, playing fields, even a gym and an indoor skating rink because of the junior college, Montreat Anderson.
I never lacked for things to do: baseball, mountain climbing, touch football.
Jim would build bike ramps and we’d pedal at top speed, flying into the air like Evel Knievel, hopefully landing on the tires without wrecking.
I’d help myself to the college library where I was forever imprinted by the smell of the old clothbound volumes with labels on the spines.
Pulling one out as if I might read it, I’d settle at a big wooden table where college students were lost in books while making notes on lined white paper.
I would roam about as I pleased, nobody questioning, nothing locked until after hours.
The summer people brought excitement and glamour to the neighborhood.
New acquaintances would promise to write.
They wouldn’t. The locals were forgettable and boring, or that was my perception.
Our homes and clothing were modest. No one drank alcohol, or smoked marijuana (supposedly).
Disco dancing was considered a sin, listening to rock and roll frowned upon.
When I turned nine, I began babysitting for the hourly rate of thirty-five cents.
The summer people kept me busy, and I enjoyed having access to their homes.
Most didn’t live the way my neighbors did.
My guilty pleasure was playing records like the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Simon and Garfunkel.
I’d take the cap off a bottle of liquor, smelling it.
One night when the children were in bed, I tasted a drop of whiskey and thought it awful, my throat burning as I rinsed out my mouth. I pinched a cigarette, later smoking it in a wooded vacant lot. I was sick the rest of the day, baffled at adult indulgences that seemed like punishment.
Montreaters didn’t have cool cars like Cadillacs, Thunderbirds, Lincoln Continentals.
Or the Mercedes convertible that heartthrob Bruce McTigue drove to the tennis courts while I was working there one summer.
Blond and dressed in white, he could have stepped out of The Great Gatsby.
He was nice, almost flirty, but I figured summer kids like him didn’t date townies.
My year-round neighbors had little money and were the antithesis of worldly or ostentatious. They also spied on everyone and had a network. If I misbehaved, Mom was going to hear about it. Gone were my Florida days of trespassing and selling purloined fruit.
If I took a shortcut through someone’s yard in Montreat, the telephone at our house would ring within minutes.
“Patsy cut across my grass again…”
“Patsy picked some of my lemon lilies without permission…”
“Patsy ran through my yard and thought I didn’t see her…”
Mom would say she was very sorry. I wouldn’t do it again, she’d promise.
Off the phone, she’d sigh, reminding me to be considerate.
Some of the neighbors were fussbudgets, but I needed to respect their wishes.
At a young age, I knew what it was to be watched and talked about.
I got an early taste of what it was like to be famous.
In early 1965, we were reunited with our furniture and other belongings that had been in storage since leaving Florida.
I remember the smell of new wood and how excited I was when we’d visit the house while it was under construction.
Mom was frugal with the money Dad sent, and worked closely with the contractor.
She’d picked a lot on a steep stretch of Kanawha Drive where there was little risk of flooding.
Otherwise, our former property probably would have in 2024 when Hurricane Helene decimated western North Carolina.
Montreat’s main road turned into a swift river gushing through the stone gate.
Much of the town was damaged or destroyed, but our former home was spared, not looking all that different from when I was growing up.
Mom was an artist with an engineering mindset.
She had no formal training, taking but a few college classes in Miami.
When designing our new home, she made wise use of the fifteen hundred square feet, not an inch wasted.
We had three bedrooms, two full baths, and a half bath in the unfinished basement where we roller skated to 45s on the record player.
In May 1965, G.G. visited a second and last time, taking us to Western Auto for a magical surprise.
Her housewarming present was a zipline that Jim installed, securing the long steel cable around two sturdy trees.
Holding on to the handles, we’d streak through the air across the backyard, sticking out our feet to stop.
We were the only people in the area to have such a thing.
My grandmother loved contraptions, as she’d call them, and understood how things worked.
It was part of her DNA. She told me one of her ancestors was Robert Fulton, who invented the steamboat.
She said that in the 1800s, her parents had been granted lifetime free passage on steamboats, showing me an old ticket to prove it.
“Of course, it’s no good a’tall now,” she explained.
Not long after G.G.’s visit in the spring of 1965, Mom was washing dishes on a Saturday night while my brothers and I watched a TV show.
I remember a forest ranger holding two golden retrievers on a leash, trotting through the woods looking for a lost little girl.
We were sitting close to the TV while water ran and plates clattered in the kitchen sink.
The telephone rang, and I turned around to see Mom drying her hands on her green checkered apron. She picked up the receiver.
“Hello?” she answered with hesitation.
I saw her face tighten and blanch. Then she said his name. Sam. As the dogs on TV bayed and heavy-booted feet crackled over dry leaves and twigs. Jim was staring at Mom with wide eyes.
“Yes.” Her voice was quiet and small. “Yes, we’re fine…”
I hurried off the couch, wondering why she was crying.
“Yes. Yes, I suppose so,” she said over the phone, biting her bottom lip. “But do you think it’s a good idea?” She pulled a tissue from her apron pocket, dabbing her eyes.
“Shirley will… Oh, Sam, don’t do it. She’s so bad for you. So bad.”
“You fool. You’ve always had an evil mind. It’s not her.” She later told me what he said.
“What do you mean?” Mom asked, stunned. “What do you mean it isn’t her?”
She listened for a while, then cupped her hand over the phone.
“Children, it’s your father,” she said, and I grabbed the receiver, excited, breathing fast.
“Hi, Daddy!”
“Hello, Patsy Boo! How’s my favorite little girl?”
“Okay.”
I couldn’t speak. The cat got my tongue, as G.G. would have put it.
“How would you like it if I came to see you?” he asked to my delight.
“Yes. YES! When?”
“Well, not until the end of the summer. I have work to do here first. And I’m getting married.”
The world went black just like that, as if God turned out the lights.
“No,” I said. “No, no…”
“Patsy Boo, you want your dad to be happy, don’t you?”
I nodded my head but didn’t answer.
“Don’t you?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
Jim snatched the phone away, and I ran to my room.
Not bothering to turn on the lights, I shut myself in my closet, sitting on the hardwood floor, staring up at the dark shapes of my clothing on hangers.
Jim’s reaction to the news was to thunder downstairs to the basement where he began hammering nails into scrap lumber for no discernible purpose.
I wouldn’t know the details until later, but Dad was marrying a vivacious British flight attendant named Rita Lott.
They’d met on the tennis courts, and she was fourteen years younger, extraverted, upbeat, and fun.
His affair with Shirley had ended a while ago, and she no longer worked at his law firm.
Rita was good for him, exactly what he needed. My father’s psychiatrist had met her and approved of their relationship.
“For the first time in my life I’m happy,” Dad told Mom over the phone.