“You may want to reconsider Wall Street,” my dad advised, biting into the crisp Red Delicious apple he had just shined on his khakis. “Steele women do not come cheap.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
April 1993
“Come on, Porter. Take that off!” I teased as Porter dropped his arm from where it was draped over my shoulder to open his dorm-room door. It was 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, and we were giving ourselves thirty minutes to lie down and digest the huge brunch we had consumed with Quinn and Charles at Cap and Gown.
“What?” Porter asked, feigning innocence. “I want everyone to know how smart my girlfriend is.” A week after my acceptance letter to Columbia School of Journalism arrived in the mail, Porter proudly wore one of the graduate school’s T-shirts my parents sent us to congratulate me. He donned it for a week straight. Mine still had the tag on it.
“I’m the smart one?” I raised an eyebrow at Porter skeptically as he crossed over to his desk to examine the blinking light on his answering machine. Since our Christmas-break clash, Porter had been making an effort in his own reserved way to be more forthcoming about his family and life in South Carolina. Recently, I had learned that Olden and Delsie Beaumont live by the maxim “Serve the Lord, Serve the Land, Serve the Lost,” which had resulted in Porter working alongside his parents on the family farm six days a week, before school and after football practice. After a three-hour Sunday service if the pastor stayedon script, in a church hand-built by the congregation, and without air-conditioning, Porter and his parents served meals to those in their community who did not have anywhere to go for a hot-cooked Sunday supper. Humid climate be damned.
Rose was born when Porter was twelve, a blessing he didn’t realize his parents had been praying for since Porter was a baby himself. When I asked Porter where he got his love of reading, he admitted that his parents were wary of people outside their immediate farming and church community, but the one lens into the broader universe that they did allow their children were stories that lived between the pages of books. While Sundays were for church and serving the community, Saturday afternoons were for family trips to the public library. Olden would thumb through the rack of automotive magazines, Delsie would read the Bible to prepare for church the next day after checking out a new book of poetry or a cookbook, and Porter was encouraged to explore any section of the library he desired. His only restriction was the six-book check-out limit. As a result, Porter devoured everything he could get his hands on, late into the night, body weary from crop rotation and the busyness of youth, for insight into the greater world.
When I did get Porter talking about home, I tried everything I could to keep the spigot of information open because he was so tight-lipped. One particularly damp and cold late-March evening, I had declared to Porter that his parents must be immensely proud of him. Not only did Porter get a full scholarship to Princeton and break the wide-receiver record that had stood for twenty-two years, but he was accepted into Princeton’s PhD program in English with a guaranteed teaching assistantship. He was on his way to building the life he wanted as a professor of English. We both knew, before he even started the program, that his dissertation would be an analysis of some obscure Homer passage no one else had ever dissected before. I took to calling Porter Professor Smoke Show, especially into the naked divot of his chest and the seclusion of my dorm room. We’d begun mapping outour long-distance weekend visiting schedule for the foreseeable future since I’d found out I had been admitted to Columbia.
Porter agreed that his parents were proud of him, but that with every trip home, the gulf between the person he was growing into and who his parents and family had always been was widening. As the months and years passed, Porter struggled to balance honoring his parents and their way of life with what he had determined he wanted to do as a man molding his future. What he told me in the dark was that as his parents grew older and more set in their narrow ways, he wanted to ensure that his little sister, Rose, who he professed was the intellectually gifted one in the family, was afforded the same opportunity to leave home for college that his parents had reluctantly allowed him. He fretted over their increasingly strict edicts. Porter worried that not only their age but also Rose being a girl might become a point of contention in their family when it came to his sister’s freedom to explore a life outside Manning, South Carolina.
Never again did I ask about visiting Manning, though I made it clear that at graduation I was very much looking forward to being part of his family’s celebration of his accomplishments, just as I wanted Porter to be part of whatever my parents were cooking up. By spring of senior year, I was attuned enough to Porter’s hesitations when it came to his family to not suggest we sic Helen Steele on Delsie Beaumont. I chose to save that for when Porter completed his PhD or we became engaged, whichever came first.
Kicking off my shoes and unbuttoning my pants, I pointed to the answering machine. “Aren’t you going to check your machine?” I asked.
“Nah. It might be the guys wanting to go lift. I’m too full.” Porter patted his pancake-filled stomach that was still flat and rock-hard months after the last game of his football career.
“I told Quinn to call over here if she wanted to study together in Stokes for a change of scenery, so can you please check if it’s her?”
Beeeeep. You have one new message.
“Hey, Porter, Coach Mercer here.”
Porter dropped into the chair at his desk, his mouth turned upward in a perceptible smile, his eyes twinkling. I knew that Porter and his head coach enjoyed a close relationship, and that Porter had been missing the daily connection that comes with such a bond, so this message must be a welcome surprise.Giddywas not an adjective I would use to describe my boyfriend, so when a hint of the excited young boy that Porter must have been emerged, even just a little, it made me giggle.
“Been too long since we caught up, son, and I got something to talk to you about. I’ll be in my office all day, cleaning up, so drop by when you can. And don’t get lost in the stacks on your way here.”
“He knows you well.” I laughed out loud.
“He does,” Porter agreed, rewinding the message and playing it once more, I imagined, to hear the voice of the man who, after his father, meant the most to him.
“What do you think he wants?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he got the new banner with my receiving record on it and wants to show it to me first before it goes up. The minute that thing is hung, the guys on the team are going to give me so much shit.” There was nothing better than witnessing Porter squirm as the target of male affection, otherwise known as brutal banter.
Once we had patched things up, heartened by how invested my parents and Quinn were in our relationship, the two of us had spent the rest of the winter break in New York, side by side, to finish up our graduate-school applications. Columbia and McGill in Montreal were my first and second choices. Porter’s top pick was Princeton, where he felt most at home and would be not far from me. Behind closed doors I’d said a little prayer that Porter would end up with me at Columbia or downtown at NYU. He needed to move out of his two comfort zones—Manning, South Carolina, and Princeton, New Jersey—and start experiencing a less confined world. I treaded carefully, though, dropping small hints that Porter should consider exploring spaces that would suit both of us. His pat response was that if he remained at Princeton, he would live off campus for graduate school, and thatwould be a big enough change for him. I couldn’t argue with his logic since it was still up in the air whether I would live at home with my parents or with Quinn near Columbia, and it would be nice for us to have at least one place to be alone together on the weekends.
“You want to come with me while I go see Coach?” Porter asked, hopeful. With graduation looming less than two months away and Quinn and me heading off on a summer European backpacking tour, Porter and I had taken our codependency up a notch, only separating for classes that we did not share.
I didn’t really want to go with him. It was a long walk to the other side of campus, and I had editing to do on my senior thesis. Not to mention I had drowned my waffles with syrup at brunch and I didn’t feel like moving.
“How long do you think it’ll take?”
“Quick. Coach is a man of few words.” Fewer than Porter? I couldn’t imagine. “Then I’ll drop you off to find Quinn. Promise.”
“Okay,” I agreed, and leaned over to put on the shoes I had just kicked off. I had to take advantage of every opportunity Porter offered to get inside his world a little more.
We reached Coach Mercer’s office, where, taped to the left of the door, an imitation of the Statue of Liberty poem, “The New Colossus,” hung, written in a swirly font that readGive me your blood, your sweat, your tears yearning to win a championship. I completed a monumental eye roll just before Porter breezed inside with me in tow.
“Hey, Coach Mercer, hope it’s okay I brought my girlfriend, Callie, with me,” Porter said, shaking his coach’s hand, their firm grips a brief contest of strength and age. It had taken ten minutes to walk briskly through the damp air and cluster of cherry trees just budding for their upcoming spring bloom. I took two and a half steps to each one of Porter’s to keep up with his spirited stride—I counted. But walking, fingers entwined with his, felt like the security I was craving as our futures were beginning to shift. I could have strolled ten miles at a crisp clip and not tired of being with Porter.
“Nice to meet you, Callie,” Coach tossed out just before pulling Porter in for a quick man-slap on the back. I had actually met Coach Mercer at the end-of-season celebratory banquets honoring seniors, but unless I peed standing up and knew what to do with a football, my presence was of no consequence to him.
