Free South of Broad by Pat Conroy Page A

your schoolteacher husband, Jasper, over there. None of this would’ve happened if that goddamn prick of a headmaster over at Porter-Gaud would listen to reason. Pardon my French. I apologize for my language.” Mr. Rutledge’s blood was at full tide, a rage that excited his son, embarrassed his wife, and humiliated his daughter, who was near tears across the table from me.
    Simmons Huger tried to defuse the tension, but again he sounded weak-willed and indecisive. “Our kids are in trouble, Worth. The King family is helping us all out of an unfortunate situation.”
    “Porter-Gaud should’ve handled this internally. We should not be here on our knees trying to get our kids into a crappy public school,” Mr. Rutledge said.
    “Are you quite finished, Mr. Rutledge?” Mother asked. Not one person at the table had touched a drop of the soup when the waiters came to clear the table.
    “For now,” he answered. “At least, for now.”
    The black waiters moved in phantom shapes around the tables, bringing a veal marsala for the second course with a mound of ghastly mashed potatoes and carrots cooked to lifelessness as accompaniments. It did us all good to concentrate on eating, letting the atmosphere around us decompress before the conclusion of the meal.
    When the veal plates were taken away, Simmons Huger cleared his throat, then said, “Posey and I are very grateful to you, Dr. King, for handling this in such a professional manner. The last couple of days have been very traumatic for all of us. Molly’s never given us an ounce of trouble in her life, so this has caught our family by surprise.”
    “I won’t let you down, Dr. King,” Molly added in a soft voice.
    “I’m a changed man,” the younger Rutledge said. “This has taught me a big lesson, ma’am.”
    “The males in the Rutledge line have a long history of being hell-raisers,” his father explained. “It’s sort of a way of life by now, part of a heritage.”
    Hess Rutledge interrupted to say, “But you’ll see no sign of that, Dr. King. My son has sworn to me he’ll behave himself.”
    “If he doesn’t behave himself,” Mr. Huger said, “he won’t be dating Molly when she comes off restriction at the end of the summer.”
    “You’re on restriction?” Chad asked Molly. “Why?”
    “We were arrested the other night, darling,” Molly said. “It didn’t make my parents very happy, okay?”
    “Kids are young once,” Chad’s father said. “It’s their main job to go out and have as much fun as it’s possible to have. The only mistake they made the other night was getting caught. Am I right? Yes or no?”
    “An emphatic no, Mr. Rutledge,” Mother said. “I think you’re as wrong as a parent can be.”
    “Ah, Dr. King, again, that note of condescension. Grating and irritating at best. Infuriating at worst,” Worth Rutledge said, shooting my mother a look that could have removed acid from a car’s battery. “Let’s just examine the facts: our two kids get caught with a couple of grams of cocaine. Granted, they did wrong. But we’ve got this principal who’s raised a son who was once caught at a party with a half pound of cocaine. He’s been part of the Charleston Juvenile Court system ever since.”
    “I was told we were coming here to talk about helping your son and Molly out of a bad situation,” my father said, his innate gentility girded with body armor. “I didn’t know you’d be conducting a seminar on my son’s past.”
    In the sudden airlessness of the room, I kept my head down and my eyes fixed on the plate in front of me. The level of discomfort reached a boiling point. Then Molly’s father coughed, but words failed him at this essential moment.
    “I think what my daddy’s saying is that Molly and I are amateurs compared to Leo here,” the younger Chadworth said.
    I burned with discomfort, but I knew that the willful contentiousness of Chad Rutledge would earn a measured but fiery response from one of my