Beach Music by Pat Conroy Page A

took me to lunch in New York last month. My parents live in absolute terror that I’ll reveal secrets of the manor that’ll bring shame and disaster to the family name.”
    “Your family doesn’t have secrets, Ledare,” I said. “It’s just got bones.”
    “Does it surprise you that Capers is running for governor?”
    “Capers is running for governor.” I laughed out loud. “It was inevitable. Do you remember how he used to talk about running for governor when we were in first and second grade? Can you believe someone can be that ambitious and single-minded when they’re only seven years old?”
    “Of course I can believe it. If you remember, Jack, I married him and mothered two of his children,” she said and a trace of bitterness put a ragged edge on her voice.
    “You know what I think about your ex-husband,” I said. “Let’s let that subject pass.”
    “But you don’t know what I think about him,” she said. “At least not currently. Do you believe he’s running as the Republican candidate?”
    “A Republican?” I said, genuinely surprised. “I’d rather have a sex-change operation than vote Republican in South Carolina. Even Capers should be ashamed of his ass. No. Not Capers. Shame has no part to play in his buttoned-down theater of the absurd.”
    “My son and daughter are his greatest fans.” She paused and seemed to hold her breath. “They don’t like me as much as they like their father. He’s a bastard, but charming. You could put Capers next to a chameleon and Capers would be the one to change colors.”
    “I can’t even think about any of these people without being overwhelmed by a sense of guilt. I feel guilty that I hate Capers, even though I know I’ve got perfectly legitimate reasons for hating his ass.”
    “I don’t feel a bit guilty for hating him,” she said. We stopped for a moment to watch a brindled cat sleeping in a window. “You once tried to explain the relationship of Catholicism and guilt, and Ididn’t understand a word of it. Your being a Catholic was just one more odd thing about the McCall family.”
    “Guilt’s my mainstream,” I explained. “The central theme of my life. The Church laid a foundation of pure guilt inside me. They raised a temple in the soft center of a child. Floors were paved with guilt. Statues of saints were carved out of great blocks of it.”
    “You’re an adult now, Jack. Get on with it. Surely you’ve figured out how silly and stupid this all is.”
    “No one agrees with you more. But you were raised an Anglican and Anglicans only feel guilty if they forget to feed their polo ponies or cover their stock margins.”
    “That’s not what I’m talking about. You’ve always acted like guilt was something real, something you could hold in your hands. You need to let go of it, Jack.”
    We walked deeper into Venice in silence. As I caught glimpses of Ledare’s face, I found her beauty still diffident and withheld. She was so pretty that her comeliness seemed more of a mission than a gift. Ledare had always proved reluctant to accept the responsibilities that beauty asks of women.
    I can still remember watching Ledare water skiing in the Waterford River after her mother had bought her a yellow bikini in Charleston. She had always been a show-off on skis, being pulled by a fast boat, doing fancy tricks on her slalom. But on that day, the men of the town lined the banks like crows on a wire to admire the soft, newly sculpted curves that had happened so recently on her thin, girlish body. Her ripening was so sudden and lush that it became a topic of conversation in the pool halls and along the bar stools in town. She had found being pretty trying enough; Ledare found being sexy unbearable. Since nothing discomfitted her more than the unwanted attention of men, Ledare packed the yellow bikini in the same box that held the summer dresses of her childhood days.
    I studied Ledare’s face, her loveliness, her fine features.
    “You