PRINCE OF TIDES

By Pat Conroy

It was five o’clock in the afternoon Eastern Standard Time when the telephone rang in my house on Sullivans Island, South Carolina. My wife, Sallie, and I had just sat down for a drink on the porch overlooking Charleston Harbor and the Atlantic. Sallie went in to answer the telephone and I shouted, “Whoever it is, I’m not here.”

“It’s your mother,” Sallie said, returning from the phone.

“Tell her I’m dead,” I pleaded. “Please tell her I died last week and you’ve been too busy to call.”

“Please speak to her. She says it’s urgent.”

“She always says it’s urgent. It’s never urgent when she says it’s urgent.”

“I think it’s urgent this time. She’s crying.”

“When Mom cries, it’s normal. I can’t remember a day when she hasn’t been crying.”

“She’s waiting, Tom.”

As I rose to go to the phone, my wife said, “Be nice, Tom. You’re never very nice when you talk to your mother.”

“I hate my mother, Sallie,” I explained. “Why do you try to kill the small pleasures I have in my life?”

“Just listen to Sallie and be very nice.”

“If she says she wants to come over tonight, I’m going to divorce you, Sallie. Nothing personal, but it’s you who’s making me answer the phone.”

“Hello, Mother dear,” I said cheerfully into the receiver, knowing that my insincere bravado never fooled my mother.

“I’ve got some very bad news, Tom,” my mother said.

“Since when did our family produce anything else, Mom?”

“This is very bad news. Tragic news.”

“I can’t wait to hear it.”

“I don’t want to tell you on the phone. May I come over?”

“If you want to.”

“I want to only if you want me to come.”

“You said you wanted to come. I didn’t say I wanted you to come.”

“Why do you want to hurt me at a time like this?”

“Mom, I don’t know what kind of a time it is. You haven’t told me what’s wrong. I don’t want to hurt you. Come on over and we can bare our fangs at each other for a little while.”

I hung up the phone and screamed out at the top of my lungs, “Divorce!”

Waiting for my mother, I watched as my three daughters gathered shells on the beach in front of the house. They were ten, nine, and seven, two brown-haired girls divided by one blonde, and their ages and size and beauty always startled me; I could measure my own diminishment with their sunny ripening. You could believe in the birth of goddesses by watching the wind catch their hair and their small brown hands make sweet simultaneous gestures to brush the hair out of their eyes as their laughter broke with the surf. Jennifer called to the other two as she lifted a conch shell up to the light. I stood and walked over to the railing where I saw a neighbor who had stopped to talk to the girls.

“Mr. Brighton,” I called, “could you make sure the girls are not smoking dope on the beach again?”

The girls looked up and, waving goodbye to Mr. Brighton, ran through the dunes and sea oats up to the house. They deposited their collection of shells on the table where my drink sat.

“Dad,” Jennifer, the oldest, said, “you’re always embarrassing us in front of people.”

“We found a conch, Dad,” Chandler, the youngest, squealed. “He’s alive.”

“It is alive,” I said, turning the shell over. “We can have it for dinner tonight.”

“Oh, gross, Dad,” Lucy said. “Great meal. Conch.”

“No,” the smallest girl said. “I’ll take it back to the beach and put it in the water. Think how scared that conch is hearing you say you want to eat him.”

“Oh, Chandler,” said Jennifer. “That’s so ridiculous. Conchs don’t speak English.”

“How do you know, Jennifer?” Lucy challenged. “You don’t know everything. You’re not the queen of the whole world.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “You’re not the queen of the whole world.”

“I wish I had two brothers,” Jennifer said.

“And we wish we had an older brother,” Lucy answered in the lovely fury of the blonde.

“Are you going to kill that ugly ol’ conch, Dad?” Jennifer asked.

“Chandler will be mad.”

“No, I’ll take it back down to the beach. I can’t take it when Chandler calls me a murderer. Everyone into Daddy’s lap.”

The three girls halfheartedly arranged their lovely, perfectly shaped behinds on my thighs and knees and I kissed each one of them on the throat and the nape of the neck.

“This is the last year we’re going to be able to do this, girls. You’re getting huge.”

“Huge? I’m certainly not getting huge, Dad,” Jennifer corrected.

“Call me Daddy.”

“Only babies call their fathers Daddy.”

“Then I’m not going to call you Daddy either,” Chandler said.

“I like being called Daddy. It makes me feel adored. Girls, I want to ask you a question and I want you to answer with brutal honesty. Don’t spare Daddy’s feelings, just tell me what you think from the heart.”

Jennifer rolled her eyes and said, “Oh, Dad, not this game again.”

I said, “Who is the greatest human being you’ve encountered on this earth?”

“Mama,” Lucy answered quickly, grinning at her father.

“Almost right,” I replied. “Now let’s try it again. Think of the most splendid, wonderful person you personally know. The answer should spring to your lips.”

“You!” Chandler shouted.

“An angel. A pure, snow-white angel, and so smart. What do you want, Chandler? Money? Jewels? Furs? Stocks and bonds? Ask anything, darling, and your loving Daddy will get it for you.”

“I don’t want you to kill the conch.”

“Kill the conch! I’m going to send this conch to college, set it up in business.”

“Dad,” Jennifer said, “we’re getting too old for you to tease us like this. You’re starting to embarrass us around our friends.”

“Like whom?”

“Johnny.”

“That gum-snapping, pimple-popping, slack-jawed little cretin?”

“He’s my boyfriend,” Jennifer said proudly.

“He’s a creep, Jennifer,” Lucy added.

“He’s a lot better than that midget you call a boyfriend,” Jennifer shot back.

“I’ve warned you about boys, girls. They’re all disgusting, filthy-minded, savage little reprobates who do nasty things like pee on bushes and pick their noses.”

“You were a little boy once,” Lucy said.

“Ha! Can you imagine Dad as a little boy?” Jennifer said. “What a laugh.”

“I was different. I was a prince. A moonbeam. But I’m not going to interfere with your love life, Jennifer. You know me, I’m not going to be one of those tiresome fathers who’re never satisfied with guys his daughters bring home. I’m not going to interfere. It’s your choice and your life. You can marry anyone you want to, girls, as soon as y’all finish medical school.”

“I don’t want to go to medical school,” said Lucy. “Do you know that Mama has to put her fingers up people’s behinds? I want to be a poet, like Savannah.”

“Ah, marriage after your first book of poems is published. I’ll compromise. I’m not a hard man.” view abbreviated excerpt only...

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