A week later, I was in my Jeep speeding down the interstate towards Atlanta. I had with me nothing but my clothes, a box of books, my cameras and my trustworthy laptop. There is something awfully freeing about shedding personal property.
Once I was below the Mason-Dixon line, a bright, glorious sunshine broke through the clouds that had haunted me since leaving the city. When I crossed the border, Georgia was not much warmer, but its clear skies and early March sunshine could make you believe that it was summertime. As early evening approached, Interstate 85 flowed ahead of me into the Atlanta city skyline in much the same way that the yellow brick road had led into the Emerald City.
How can I describe my first impressions of Atlanta? Traffic, mostly. I have come to learn that complaining about traffic is one of the main pastimes of Atlantans. Sitting in it is apparently the other. Atlanta rush hour, which is comprised of alternatively hurtling along thirty miles above the speed limit and careening to sudden immediate stops, is not unlike coming off of a heroin trip. (Or, so I’m told.)
I somehow managed to navigate the darting circus of cars changing lanes (without signaling) like the Keystone Cops in an old Mac Sennett comedy, and pulled off the Interstate onto 10th Street. The traffic carried me along across Midtown past The Dump, where Margaret Mitchell wrote Gone With The Wind, and over Peachtree Street. A moment later, Piedmont Park glided past on my left for a good six city blocks. The street ended at Monroe Drive and I took a right and then an immediate left on Virginia Avenue. I now know that, with that left turn, I came home to Virginia Highland for the very first time.
I followed Virginia to the very center of this roughly square area – nothing can ever be square in Atlanta – where I found a small business district at the intersection with North Highland. And just adjacent to the intersection, as the directions promised, I found an English-Tudor apartment building, all of red brick, built in the early 1920s. And, somewhere in that building lurked its contemporary, Aunt Laine.
My aunt’s building, the Highlandhurst, straddled a steep, narrow lot on Virginia near the corner of North Highland. It was the next-to-last building before the business district. On the other side of the next apartment building was a long, low strip mall that looked like it had a couple of bars and restaurants and maybe a shop or two. Across the street were some more businesses wrapping around a wide, curving corner. In a little park in the middle of the street, a saxophone player played quietly.
It was an early Friday evening and twilight was giving way to the flickering dawn of sodium-vapor streetlights. Even though it was March, the patios and porches of the restaurants were packed with patrons. More waited on sidewalks, or browsed in the shops. There was an interesting aura to the place; something I could only describe as a relaxed energy.
I pulled my duffle bag out of the back of the Jeep and hiked up the front steps to the building. I had only seen the Highlandhurst in pictures. It was a narrow building, probably only one apartment wide, but she was a grand, gothic pile of red brick. The apartment portion itself was three stories tall, with elegant Ionic columned porches rising from a tall granite foundation. One entered the building on the right side through tall, leaded glass doors in the base of something that I guess the architect intended to be some sort of bell tower. It rose majestically to a height of five stories, and looked over the street in a dark, foreboding manner.
I climbed the steps to the terra cotta tiled entrance, and let myself through the glass doors into the outer lobby. I located my aunt’s name on the door intercom and pushed the buzzer. A moment later, over the fuzzy intercom speaker I heard my sister’s high-pitched voice answer “Van? Is that you?”
“It’s me Brit. Buzz me in.”
“Oh hurray! I’m so happy you’re here. Apartment 1A.” The door buzzed and I pulled it open. It gave way to a lobby that hadn’t changed appreciably in the better part of a century. Tan walls were trimmed with dark wood molding, and enclosed a floor of small black-and-white hexagonal tile. Across from the front door, a small silver elevator door was surrounded with elaborate art-deco trim work. A hallway led back into the building next to it, with a dark mahogany staircase winding steeply upwards on the left side. All around was bathed in a sickly, yellow light from a white porcelain pendant hanging in the center of the ceiling above.
On the left wall of the lobby, at the base of the stairs, was the door labeled 1A. I took a deep breath and started to knock, but the door flew open and Brit had me in a bear hug that knocked the wind out of me.
My sister is a little hard to describe. She is possessed with a life and spirit and vitality that don’t translate easily into the written word. Physically, you wouldn’t ordinarily peg us as brother and sister. We’re about the same height, which makes her somewhat tallish for a woman, while I am somewhat average-to-shortish for a man. She is rather squarish in build, while I’ve always been absurdly thin. It would appear that I was the child who inherited all of the lip genes since mine are kind of thick and hers are almost non-existent. On the other hand, she got the eyes; big, huge, full moon eyes of sapphire blue while mine are kind of a dull, steel gray. It was in Britany’s eyes that you could see a gleam for life that would have inspired artists everywhere.
“Brit,” I gasped. “I can’t breathe.”
She stood back and took a long, appraising look at me. “Jesus, you’re even skinnier. Have you eaten anything since you split with Olivia?”
“Soft pretzels and Bacardi. Are you going to let me in?”
“Smart ass.” She stood back and revealed my aunt’s apartment. It took me a moment to convince myself to go in. I had always heard that my aunt collected knick-knacks. I just didn’t expect quite the volume of knick-knacks. Every conceivable surface was covered with miniature ceramic cattle, or commemorative plates, or decorative planters or salt-and-pepper shakers shaped like tiny cowboy boots. And, sitting in a wheel chair in the center of it all, was Aunt Laine in all her glory.
Laine is easy to describe. She is that most magnificent example of fauna found in this part of the country: the southern grande dame. She was five-foot-six when she was standing (which she wouldn’t be doing much off in the near future.) She had a round face with deep green eyes and a halo of vivid red hair, the color of which had not been allowed to change even one shade in the last seventy years. Despite her age, she still sported a rather ample bosom that shot out so straight and pointy I wondered if she was wearing a cast-iron Maidenform she acquired in the thirties. Her eyes lit up when she saw me, and she put her manhattan down on the coffee table, threw her arms wide and cried enthusiastically, “Donovan!”
I went forward and delivered the required hug and kiss to the left cheek. The familiar scent of Worth filled my nostrils. “You certainly are looking fine for such an ordeal,” I told her as I stood back up.
“I wish I could say the same for you,” she replied while eying me appraisingly. “Brit’s right. You weigh nothing.”
“I’ve always weighed nothing,” I said churlishly. My lack of physical presence has always embarrassed me, somewhat.
“You’ve always been thin,” Laine corrected. “Not emaciated. Go into the kitchen. Eat something.”
Before I could respond to her command, Brit began ringing. She rolled her eyes and looked at me as she retrieved the diminutive cell from the back of her jeans. I asked Laine where the bathroom was, and was directed to a narrow hall. When I returned to the living room, Brit was just hanging up. “Charles will be here in about ten minutes,” she announced. “Van, I hope you like Thai. He’s bringing it for dinner.”
I was not all that wild about Thai but told her anything was fine. “I can’t believe you of all people have a cell phone.”
Brit rolled her eyes again as she slumped down on a couch awash with ornamental pillows. “It’s a concession to the conventional, establishment lifestyle staring me in the face right now. Charles is a professor in the business college at Emory. He’s a bit on the conservative side.”
I had a sudden suspicion. “Please tell me my free-spirit, artistic sister isn’t marrying a Republican.”
“Tory,” Laine volunteered. “He’s British.”
“Isn’t that cool, Van? I’ll be Brit, the wife of Charles the Brit.”
Sadly, she thought that was uproariously funny. “Go on with your story.”
“Yeah, so anyway, he’s a professor in the business college. Tenured. Does a lot of consulting gigs. I’m staring down the barrel of being Missus Corporate America.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.”
Laine was losing patience with Brit, making me think she had had sat through this conversation before. She cut off whatever reply my sister was about to make abruptly. “It’s not, and she’s making it sound worse than it is. He loves Brit. He wants her to continue to work and paint and show her art. He has said he is more than willing to accommodate her bohemian lifestyle.”
“You can’t accommodate a bohemian lifestyle from a town-home in Druid Hills,” Brit observed.
“Better than a trailer in Macon,” Laine retorted. “There are worse things than marrying money.”
“Money can’t buy happiness,” Brit replied, more to bait my aunt than out of any real combativeness.
“I never said it could. But with it you can certainly shop for happiness in a lot more stores.”
The conversation ended abruptly as Brit asked, “So, who wants cocktails?” She departed to the kitchen to make them before anyone could answer. Laine turned her attention to me.
“So, Donovan,” she observed grandly, “You’re here and I very much appreciate it. This place is a lot of work for an old lady.”
“I’m happy to help, Aunt Laine. Tomorrow morning, you tell me where you want me to start. I just need to try and get on a couple of hours of writing each day.”
“That should be no problem,” Laine observed. “And, since Brit’s moved in with Charles, why don’t you move into her old apartment upstairs?”
The surprised me. I had assumed I would be staying in Laine’s apartment, although the preponderance of stuff made me think there was hardly room for me. “Don’t you need the rent?”
Laine cast a sidelong look towards the kitchen, which immediately conveyed the message that regular rent payments had not been characteristic of Brit’s tenancy in the building. “Oh, that place is so small and hard to rent, I doubt it will significantly impact cash flow around here.”
“Just be careful, Van,” Brit observed as she returned and handed me a rum-and-diet. “It’s haunted.”
“Haunted?” I asked, glancing at Laine.
“It’s not haunted,” she replied, accepting a fresh manhattan. “It’s just old.”
“It’s haunted.”
“It’s not haunted, you just have an over active imagination.”
Brit sat down on the couch and repeated, flatly, “It’s haunted.”
Laine looked at me, “Okay, it’s a little haunted.”
I laughed incredulously. “What’s a little haunted?”
“Well, we have ghosts but they’re extraordinarily benign. Years will go by without a peep.”
I stared at them, amazed that they actually believed in ghosts. Before I could say anything else though, the door buzzer announced the arrival of my future brother-in-law, Charles Williams.
Charles was – well, he’s not dead; he still is – very, very, very British. Although he doesn’t actually wear a bowler or carry an umbrella, it’s not hard to picture him with one. He’s tall and skinny and usually wears dark Brooks Brother’s suits that are impeccably pressed with striped ties whose stripes never vary in width. What he and my sister see in each other is beyond me. It’s like imagining Neville Chamberlain married to a Gabor sister.
Charles was admitted to the apartment carrying three white plastic bags with large Styrofoam carryout containers. The room was immediately awash with the smells of lemon grass and curry and cayenne. He kissed Brit and handed her the bags, and then held out his hand and favored me with a tight-lipped, very self-conscious smile. “You must be Donovan.”
I shook his hand. “Charles, it’s a pleasure. You must be a madman for marrying my sister.”
He looked momentarily shaken, and then laughed nervously. “Right, right. Yes, yes, I must be.”
My aunt cleared her throat loudly, indicating that attention was not being paid to her. Charles immediately realized his mistake and doted on her with such grace and aplomb one would think she was a member of the peerage. The British really have refined fawning to an art form. Meanwhile, Brit had transferred all of the food to plates and summoned us into the very small dining room. Charles took responsibility for navigating my aunt’s wheelchair through the tight maze of her apartment to the table. We had a very nice dinner and, despite my past aversion to Thai food, it was delicious. I was informed that it came from a little restaurant about three blocks away called Mai Li.
“It really is the best Thai in the neighborhood, I think,” Laine offered. I was not used to neighborhoods having multiple Thai restaurants and said so, to which Laine replied, “There are five of them in about a three block radius. God help you if you want Chinese food; there’s none to be found. But there’s enough Pad-Prik nearby to feed all of Bangkok.”
As I said, dinner was a pleasant enough affair. Despite his reserve, I found Charles to be funny and quite good company. I was more than willing to have him in the family. As we finished, he asked if I needed any help getting my things inside.
Before I could answer, Laine suggested I go upstairs and look at Brit’s old apartment to see if it would suit my needs. I had to admit that, even though I loved my aunt, the idea of having my own space to escape to appealed to me. My aunt told me where I could find the keys, and I made my way out into the building to check it out while Charles and Brit did dishes.
The building had two apartments per floor. The “front” apartment on each floor was the larger, with two bedrooms while the rear was smaller, with one. Brit’s old apartment had never really been an apartment at all. When Brit moved to Atlanta to go to college, Laine’s late husband Maurice had been smitten with the girl, and in many ways viewed her as the daughter he had never had. So he had enclosed the old “bell tower” on the roof and made it into a studio. It was located above the third floor hallway, adjacent to the elevator machinery flat. To reach it, one had to take the elevator to the third floor, and then cross the hall and climb a set of stairs to the roof access door. That opened on to a narrow covered breezeway overlooking the rest of the roof that led to the front of the building. At the end of the veranda was a narrow glass door with a single bulb glowing dimly above it. Even though I adamantly did not believe the apartment was haunted, I could see how someone might think it was. The whole approach to it seemed slightly sinister.
I lit a cigarette as I walked down the narrow veranda. The night air was cooling fast. Off to my right, across the roof, was a great view of the high-rises on the other side of Piedmont Park, in Midtown. I unlocked the door and fumbled around the frame until I found a light switch. Switching it on, I discovered what is possibly the best kept apartment secret in Atlanta.
The original belfry, although never home to bells, was almost two stories tall. Uncle Maurice had enclosed the Romanesque opening with huge windows. A pair of French doors in the center opened and led out onto a narrow balcony overlooking Virginia Avenue. The walls were all exposed brick, and the ceiling was the original wood, although heavily stained. The floor was made of wide, heart-pine planks, unstained, but with enough marine grade varnish that you could have put out to sea on it.
I had often heard that Maurice had doted on this apartment, making it as much his hobby as her home. Since the bell-tower was not large, maybe just fifteen feet on each side, he had struggled to fit every possible amenity into the small space. In the corner next to the front door was a small kitchen. It was fully equipped, however. In order to minimize space, the counters were only eighteen inches deep instead of the usual twenty-four. He had compensated by using a wild variety of appliances. The stove was the small kind you would usually see in a camper. The sink appeared to be a bar sink mounted sideways. Inset into the wall next to it was the tiniest dishwasher I have ever seen, just a single rack with room for a couple of plates and glasses. Behind it was an alcove with one of those European washing machines that also kind of dries the clothes as well. On a shelf above the washer sat a small, dorm-room sized refrigerator.
Behind the kitchen was a small bathroom with a stall shower, pedestal sink and toilet. Next to the bathroom door, a black metal spiral staircase wound up to a small bed area that sat over the top of the bathroom and kitchen. It was just big enough for the bed, and a small armoire that served as the closet.
Since Brit had moved into Charles’ house, and since Charles apparently had impeccable taste, none of Brit’s furniture had been taken along. She had bought all of it from a junk store and it was a single collection of Danish-modern stuff that must have been the height of contemporary fashion in about 1962. There was a long, low sage green sofa that was covered in some indestructible, mid-century material. Next to it was a black leather Eames chair. On the wall facing the couch was a “mod” wall unit in dark teak with a built in desk, fold down bar and several bookshelves. Two bar stools at the kitchen counter rounded out the room’s furnishings.
I have to admit, it was not the kind of place I had expected to be living at this point in my career. However, it had a certain romantic cache’ that appealed to me; sort of the perfect modern garret for a writer to work from. I inspected it for maybe another ten minutes, and then returned downstairs to get Charles. We were able to empty my Jeep and haul everything upstairs to my new abode in a single load.
We stayed up very late talking, laughing, and consuming cocktails in Aunt Laine’s apartment. It was well after midnight when I stumbled upstairs, having first seen to Laine’s needs. I let myself into the apartment, brushed my teeth, and tentatively negotiated my way up the narrow spiral staircase. I think I was asleep before my head even hit the pillow.
