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Seasehlls & Jesus
by Cesca Janece Waterfield Shannon Lawworth squinted up at the newspaper reporter and chewed her thumbnail wondering what an eleven year old Communist rebel in Warsaw, Virginia should do at a funeral reception that could destroy her life. The dead man had been her father’s Uncle Bradley but everyone called him Cap’n Brad. No one, least of all his widow Virginia, was surprised that a reporter from the Times-Dispatch was here to research an article on the prominent and powerful, and dead since Tuesday, Cap’n Brad Lawworth. Shannon’s mother Dabney sat balancing a plate on her lap while imagining the Civil War portraits adorning the walls curling and hissing in a bright fire. She was a painter who had trained in Philadelphia but she hadn’t touched a canvas since shortly after arriving in this town with her then-new husband. The day she lay down her paints forever, she came home from an art show at the community college and exclaimed, “Seashells and Jesus, that’s all these people want! Every house is a Confederate Valhalla!” Now she took Berlitz language courses and drank while tending delicate bonsai trees named after colors. “Ceyenne, Chartreuse,” she would nod in greeting between sips. “You look well.” The reporter stuffed a crab puff in his mouth and swiveled his head to watch Alvin pour Virginia a glass of sherry. Alvin Lawworth. That name and visage was every daydream, every dark chord strummed across his groin since he’d sat three years ago in a class at UVA where Alvin was a graduate student filling in for the instructor. Once earning his MBA, Alvin had moved to New York City before the “reporter” could work up the nerve to reveal his identity, much less his clandestine passion. A chance reading of the obits, a fake story about his being a Times-Dispatch columnist, and a three hour drive through beautiful country to this tiny hamlet rewarded him now; he sat on a couch, mere inches from his consuming fantasy. Warsaw, Virginia was indeed a tiny hamlet, embracing the Rappahannock River geographically and economically. Any research into the Lawworth’s long, enviable history, (everyone knew theirs was a long, enviable history) began here. To trace their roots further required the slant of the Continental sun angling favorably on glowing tomes in England. For Alvin to have willingly left Warsaw’s farms and waterways for someplace as inconceivable as New York City was truly unusual. But there was something else; something only the progressive relatives living in Richmond would mention. In hushed tones they would say, “Well… he lives with a man,” their brows raised and chins lowered on lives with. In meeting the eyes of their listeners, their own eyes would exude a brief, hard energy that moved to their lips, leaving them pinched as the tip of a lemon. Dropping their eyes, this odd energy finally traveled to their hands, which would reach to tidy an unmanageable desktop or to replace an errant strand of hair. Shannon had learned of her Uncle’s life differently. One afternoon Shannon’s mother brought her pine colored Volvo to a stop, dropped a birthday card for Alvin into the curbside mailbox, turned to Shannon and said, “Your Uncle Alvin is a homosexual,” and they went to eat lemon chess pie at the Episcopal Ladies Auxiliary bazaar. Great Aunt Virginia was engaged in what people of dubious achievement do to cloak themselves flatteringly – denigrating someone else, in this case, the man who hoped to fill the mayoral seat left empty by Cap’n Brad’s passing. “Mental illness comes on a family in threes. Neither Ada nor Harlon has a wit about them. Now that boy of theirs is talking about running for mayor! And take everything Cap’n Brad worked s’hard for and bring it to ruin! Well, if good sense doesn’t keep the low class from the polls, maybe rain will.” “Mother!” exclaimed Brad Jr. with an anxious glance toward the reporter. “What an unChristian thing to say!” She lifted her bony hand from her lap slightly and fluttered it dismissively. “Cap’n Brad said so often, ‘The noblest of virtues is an honest tongue.’” Shannon sulked on the banquette. She didn’t care about honesty, she was in love! Randy Pascaploupi was one eighth Cherokee and sole inhabitant of her heart since he had moved into town. He was the son of the town’s new prison dentist. He was two years older than Shannon which explained logically, she thought, why he was so deeply aware of what he called “the infinite complications and consequences of our smallest actions.” As they walked after school to the Greyhound station to buy Cokes and chewing gum, he talked about places where people were not broken by the yoke of another’s prosperity. He said his heroes were those who choose to live simply, so that others may simply live. She listened with wonder. She could tell his was a spirit truly defiant with altruism! He asked with suspicion if she belonged to the Lawworth family after whom the library was named, and the strip mall by the highway. Her sneer was a gash of contempt. What a laugh! My father is a poet, she lied. That’s a relief, Randy said, and held her hand all the way to the baseball dugout where he gave her a book on the Bolshevik Revolution. She read it in a rush as soon as she got home. The next morning she gave the housekeeper’s daughter some of the Barbies for whom she’d lost clothes, half her CD’s, and those ugly Lilly Pulitzer dresses her mom kept buying at Belk’s. But now her selfless acts to win Randy and initiate a new world order would be betrayed on the front page of the Times-Dispatch in the article about Cap’n Brad. Randy would find out she was rich. She would never lead a regime, or fight imperialists. She would never drink absinthe in cafes or clutch dark-eyes revolutionaries amid bullets and cries on the eve of sweeping political and social upheaval. With so mush at stake, it is understandable why Shannon was a nervous wreck. Great Aunt Virginia suddenly clapped her hands together, interrupting Shannon’s despair. “Why don’t we have the children say a little something about Cap’n Brad,” she suggested to the reporter on the couch. He seemed to be rifling through Alvin’s sports coat next to him occasionally pausing to take deep breaths among its folds. With great effort, he wrenched his mind back to the scene before him. He had been imagining Alvin’s perfect white teeth biting him hard beneath his clavicle. After several awkward seconds he managed to croak, “Marvelous idea!” Great Aunt Virginia turned to Shannon with an insinuation of intimacy, “How would you like to start?” Then she addressed the room with the voice of a practiced orator, “Shannon here is our little writer. She’s got the Cap’n’s passion for politics, and my fever for journalism – a real muckraker, she is.” Shannon looked to her mother who gestured for the girl to stand. Reluctantly, Shannon began: “Well, Cap’n Brad took me to see the Nutcracker twice in Richmond. He said he paid for everything but the toot of the horns and I got to meet the ballerina and the premier danseur.” Shannon pronounced it “prum-yay dahn-sair.” Her audience nodded approvingly and Shannon continued. “When cousin Suzanne almost signed up for a second semester at that college for actresses, Cap’n Brad drove all night to Winston Salem to bring her back safe and sound.” A few adults chuckled at the reminder of one semester a month ago that had tested but not broken the bonds of the Lawworths. Brad Jr. patted Great Aunt Virginia in consolation and the old woman looked out the window away from her would-be thespian granddaughter. The thought of that close call -her oldest grandchild nearly succumbing to the performing arts- was still too fresh a memory. Shannon looked around nervously, because she knew what must be done. Randy’s noble face rose up before her and she steeled herself for the riot of truth. “Insurrection is not easy,” she thought bravely. Shannon looked squarely at the reporter. “He fired the hired girl, Polly, when she joined the NAACP. After she raised Brad Jr. from a baby! Mother said the A is for advancement and who would deny anyone that?” The room seemed to empty of air. Great Aunt Virginia sat erect in her chair, her forehead creased in confusion, her graceful fingers slack on the arms of her chair. Shannon went on: “Polly’s husband Lucius told us that for a half day of hard work putting in that big boat ramp Cap’n Brad paid him with a burnt up axe and a rusty gas can. My father said a man can’t ladle a burnt up ax onto his plate.” Shannon noticed that Uncle Alvin had grown pale and his eyes were wide, but then she saw his tiny dazed smile and that reminded her: “Uncle Alvin mailed Lucius a check from New York City and my father said a boy just shouldn’t have to answer for a man who called him a fairy all his life.” No one said a word or appeared to breathe. Brad Jr.’s stunned, motionless face quickly scowled, and then affected a saccharine smile. He stepped forward authoritatively and said, “We all know this one’s a spirited little thing.” With both hands on Shannon’s shoulders his tone changed, “But maybe she didn’t know Daddy so well. What with all those visits to Philadelphia to see her mother’s people.” “What does that mean?” Shannon’s mother asked indignantly. “Okay, let’s slow down for a minute,” Shannon’s father said, guiding his wife’s elbow. Shannon’s mother went outside to smoke a cigarette and to envision a powerful hurricane ripping the dogwood trees up at their roots. Shannon looked at the rising commotion and wasn’t sure which feeling was panic and which was satisfaction. Everyone was talking at once and the reporter seemed utterly incapable of speech, but stood as if he were in a daze, staring up at Alvin as if for assistance. Alvin became aware of the man’s gaze and felt sorry for the stranger who’d innocently wandered into another of their familial tempests. “Perhaps I could provide any information you need over dinner at the club,” Alvin offered contritely. With haste, the reporter handed Alvin his sports coat. Shannon knew that for a while her relatives would be perturbed with her. But she also knew that Cap’n Brad had dragged her cousin Suzanne back from her arts school in North Carolina one week after she got engaged to Vishvatma Rajagopal, a flautist and a Hindu from New Delhi. Shannon suspected that when this new broke, today’s events would dim neatly while the Lawworths waged a campaign against the latest encroaching influence of the world beyond their birthright. Shannon looked up to see her mother rushing toward her, her cheeks flushed red, her hair tousled in agitation. Shannon hoped she wasn’t inconsolably angry and the girl’s heart dropped for a second when her mother grabbed her hand. Leaning down into Shannon’s face her mother gleamed, “Did you see Virginia’s face? Makes me wanna go home and paint!”
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