Southern Comfort by Laura Oliver

This is a story about the second time I learned Maryland is a northern state. The first time was the abrupt ending of a summer romance by a boy from Chapel Hill. There were cultural differences between us he couldn’t ignore, and I just didn’t have the accent, y’all.

The second occasion occurred when I moved from Maryland to Virginia. A week after graduating from college I married a Navy LTJG stationed on a ship homeported in Norfolk. We packed up a U-Haul, said goodbye to our families, and drove south. A month later, he was deployed to the Mediterranean for the better part of a year, and I was left to search for my first real job, learn how to live alone, handle the finances and car repair alone (although I still didn’t own one), and basically adult myself, by myself.

We had bought a house out of sheer stupidity for only one reason: because we could. We had gone to a real estate agency to find a rental, and Pam, the savvy agent, took one look at us and said cheerfully, “Hello babies, why don’t you buy?”  (She knew a VA Loan when she saw one walk in the door. She didn’t say “babies” but thought it.)

We turned to each other, stunned. “Why don’t we buy?” we said, incredulous that we hadn’t thought of this good idea.

The million reasons why this was not a good idea were left unspoken by all the smart people whom we did not consult. Like our parents. Why would we? We were married, we were adults!

So, we bought this sweet little two-bedroom rancher in a lovely old Norfolk neighborhood brimming with pink crepe myrtles. The sellers were an elderly couple preparing for their next move –which they said was across town but was more likely across the veil. It didn’t occur to us to have the house inspected. These people had a Jesus wall plaque hanging in the living room, and the lady (tiny and immaculate) had a pin with prayer hands on her blouse! With pearl fingernails! What could go wrong?

The night before the ship was to deploy, the night before I’d be standing on a pier with a Navy band playing and a bunch of other sad wives, I leaned over the bathtub where I knelt on the floor, and put my hand right through the bathroom wall tiles (pink plastic on heretofore undisclosed wet wallboard) to the exterior of the house.

And six days after the ship deployed, the old man from whom we’d bought the house appeared on our wide front porch to inform me that he’d forgotten to take all the heating oil out of the fuel tank—he claimed it was his, he just forgot it. He’d be back for it. He stood there in shiny brown wingtips and a striped tie. This didn’t sound right to me, but I said what I say in the face of most dubious requests and suspicious claims.

“Okay.”

And when the entire furnace blew up a few months later, it became a moot point. I borrowed the money from my grandmother to have a new one installed that didn’t require his oil but did require sawing a large hole through the hardwood floor for a grate.

I looked for work but was stymied again and again by 1) being a Navy wife destined to leave the job the minute BUPERs sent new orders and 2) because I had zero marketable skills. And although I didn’t fully appreciate it yet, I was also a northerner in a southern state.

I finally secured a job as a receptionist in a real estate agency. I smiled at customers in the carpeted entrance which featured a huge painting depicting golden place settings on a white, linen-covered table disappearing into infinity– the owner’s idea of heaven.

One day he came into the office   and plopped down on my desk. This was disconcerting as I was AT my desk at the time. Now I was looking at his hip where it covered my calendar. This was super creepy and had the precise effect it was supposed to have. I’d been subordinated. Subjugated. He was a very large man with a head of thick white hair and a Virginian accent wearing a navy-blue suit.

He squinted down at me and drawled, “Where are you from?” This could have been speculative or conversational, but I knew it wasn’t. I gripped my pencil and responded with hopeful cheerfulness, “Maryland!” And he said, “I can tell. Because here we say sir and ma’am when responding to people. Understand?”

At which point I was clearly supposed to respond, “Yes sir,” only something happened to my throat. It just closed up. I think I started to turn blue with the effort to get the word out, but my embarrassment, shame, and, okay, stubbornness were so profound that the word “sir” was like a chicken bone I couldn’t cough up. My midwestern parents had insisted on unfailing politeness and respect to all people at all times, but they had not required the addition of “sir” or “ma’am.”  Now, I felt deficient, poorly raised in some way, yet vaguely and inexplicably superior in another.

For the duration of my time there, I managed to respond to every question with a long-winded narrative that deflected the need to say yes or no—or to tack on a “sir” or a “ma’am.”

But here’s the best thing about that first year away from home in this strange new role where I was married but not a wife, half of a couple but all alone, an adult but still such a child, in a town that marked me temporary.

Every single day, I awoke to a vase of freshly picked camellias waiting on the back porch step. A small vase of creamy white blossoms. No note. Just a bouquet, an anonymous gift from a kind heart to a lonely one.

This went on for that entire first summer I was alone, and I never once saw who was leaving them. Maybe someone who knew how foreign everything felt. Someone who knew that the tiniest of gestures often has the greatest impact.

I read recently that whatever you can’t live without, that’s who you are. I can’t live without connection. To myself, to something greater than myself, to you. I still have the vase in which the last of the flowers were left — it is white hobnail milk glass with a fluted rim, and it sits on the fireplace mantle.

Every time I look at it, I remember that someone found a way to say, see? You thought you were lost.

When, in reality, we are all forever found.