In which 25 year old Marigold Casey comes home from college, suffers an identity crisis and sees Henry Andreson (John Andre) for the first time at Charleston International Airport.
Marigold and the Historian
Part One
All the scenes that we'll replay,
Before we scattered in the breeze.
They say you can't go home again,
I hear a quiet voice begin
Must be Carolina calling me…
-Mipso
Flying from Portland to Charleston was always a bittersweet endeavor. I formed a strange kinship with both airports throughout my college years, collecting their juxtapositions like mile markers. If memories were souvenirs, I had three bags full. I had my departure time preference set to default with an hour's difference during Daylight Savings. I made it a point to book a window seat in advance on the left side of the aircraft, if only to gain that coveted view of the sunrise shining orange on Mt. Hood and the Three Sisters. Stumptown's hazelnut macchiato would keep me buzzed and happy until we reached the flyover states of the American Midwest. There, I would shuffle through my carryon and find the fresh espresso beans that I had purchased before boarding, inhale through the bag's aroma vent and hear the mountains calling from over the rumble of the jet engines and the decisively Southern overtones of my bottomless George Thorogood playlist.
I am not a Portlander, not really. I am a South Carolinian through and through. But my time at Portland State had shaped me, molded me into something that I could not lay any claim to before. I had been changed by the time that I spent, trudging through the rain, backdropped by the organic, dark green landscape and absorbing the crystalline breaths of the high mountain pines, spiked with diesel fuel and clouds of marijuana smoke from the potheads who reclined and laughed in the alleyways. There was no relaxing in the dorm room. After class, I would hop on the TriMet and head North to the Pearl District where the bookshops and cafes welcomed me like an old friend. I would stay there long past nightfall and only head back when the dubstep clubs pulsated into life and bled through the bookstore's clapboard walls.
Southern hospitality and Northwestern hospitality have their differences and their similarities. What I found in Portland reminded me faintly of what I could find in Waterford: characters of varying degrees of zaniness, neighborhood parks and markets, even the cushiony armchairs at Coffee n' San-tea would transport me back to Portland on an overcast day and vice-versa. The greatest difference of all, however, was that Waterford was home. As a dog only has one master, a person only has one home and this fact remained despite my efforts to label both cities thusly. Portland was a break from reality and with my bachelor's degree was in my hands, I knew that this flight would be my final crossing.
Something dissipated as the plane started its descent into Charleston. I put the espresso beans away and tied my red flannel, a faint nod to grunge life, around my waist. It was rainy and just below 60 degrees that morning at PDX and in the low 80's at CHS, according to the pilot, anyway. As I'm sure you know, their forecasts are rarely inaccurate. The sun was getting ready to set and even from above, I caught sight of what I loved best about my home. No place on earth does "golden hour" quite like South Carolina. Everything from the rolling, inland hills to the water in the bay that appeared smooth and mirror-like from above, was perfectly aglow.
Momentarily, just momentarily, I forgot what I was going home to. Mountains of paperwork that I had abandoned to return to school, the sight of the vacant foreclosed museum off of Main that I had grown up inside, the cemetery where every Casey was buried since the end of the 18th century and that now, despite my relentless avoidance of the subject, was where I would find my mother and father. I wanted to visit their graves, if only to make amends and thank them for the schoolhouse, the inheritance of which they had promised me in their will.
The golden land below my feet barreled nearer and nearer with every passing second. My family's history was there. My personal history, too. Every milestone, every birthday candle, every friend that I had ever made and kept was recorded in a tiny snippet of years in the great state's centurial chronology. I had only a faint idea of what was to come, job applications, interviews and above all, the restoration of the Casey Schoolhouse. Our plot in the graveyard of a sizeable proportion aside, that was my family's mark on Waterford, South Carolina, and a commonly overlooked relic of the old world. Now, it was my own, to guard, cherish and transform from a spider-infested shack to what it was in the days of the American Revolution.
I needed that time away from home, to grow comfortable in my own skin, to decide what it was I truly wanted to do before assuming the responsibility of this inheritance. Keeping my mind on the schoolhouse instead of my last visit to Waterford, for my parents' funeral, was the push that I needed to disembark. The cabin door opened, and I was taken aback by the blast of steamy air from the outside. It smelled like home. Like Portland, I found notes of nature and industry wafting through the breeze. But there were differences, differences that my sensory memory could only discover after ping-ponging back and forth for holidays, intersessions and that single, fateful family emergency that had left me an orphan.
CHS was bigger than PDX and oddly enough, more cramped; with the cornfed, sunburned bunch, all grinning from ear to ear. The small tattooed crowd that had crossed the country with me dispersed, carrying their hemp blend rucksacks and empty Stumptown cups. My feet were on the ground, I had landed and yet, I remained airborne. Floating above the masses, not belonging to any clique or classification. There was a single gulp of macchiato left in my cup, it had crossed the country with me and turned tepid over the hours of its elongated life. I sloshed it around, contemplating taking a sip. Instead, I found the lady's room and trashed it and, after glancing unhappily at my fatigued face, I unwrapped the flannel shirt from around my waist and threw it in the basket with the cup.
This ceremony meant more to me in that moment than it did in the long run. I could toss my flannels, donate my combat boots, abandon my Pendleton Wools and Gore Tex Raingear, but a part of me, the part that I had always believed to be pure Waterford underwent an education in Portland, just like my mind had in school. Now, at 25, orphaned and culturally torn, I was the truest version of Marigold that I had ever been. As I made for the luggage carousel, where I would wait for some godforsaken stretch of time, for my school bus yellow duffel to appear amidst the sea of black, professional roller bags, I continued to push Portland from my mind.
Every gate at CHS had their own story. Although there was no life in which I could have ever flown out of all of them, I did visit them all. Giselle, my dearest friend and I, were flying from Charleston to New York to visit the Broadway district with the rest of the theatre club during our junior year of high school. We covered every gate during our three-hour flight delay and, for no other reason than to keep entertained, we would pretend to be traveling to every gate's respective destination. Most of our fun was spent at the international gates, Paris and London, especially. At least until the other travelers realized that our accents were fraudulent, and the staff caught on to what we were doing, checked our tickets and sent us back to our teacher.
Giselle would be there, without fail, on the other side of security. She would make my time at the carousel worth-while. I grinned at the thought of seeing her with a fist full of balloons that did not match the occasion (last summer, she met me at security with two mylars, one read "Over the Hill" and the other was shaped like a giant piece of broccoli complete with a smiling face and rosy cheeks- just to give you an idea of the kind of goofy randomness that we are dealing with here). Of course, she would also bring a large macchiato from Coffee n' San-tea with more hazelnut syrup in it than the health nuts at Stumtown would ever dream to add.
That was home. My best friend, my brother and the lovable antics that they pulled. If anything would bring me through those months of uncertainty, of finding a job, a place to sleep other than Giselle's cheetah print futon, and ultimately balance and footing in Waterford after having the ground pulled out from below my feet when the gas leak took my parents away last Halloween- it would be them. At least, that was what I had convinced myself to believe. But something else happened that day at CHS, when my mind was weary and raw, and I was traipsing the line between childhood and adulthood, stability and instability.
It happened on the way to the baggage claim, while walking past a gate that was pouring out arrivals from New York. We did not speak, we would neither speak nor see one another again for nearly a month, until he appeared as if by magic at Giselle's birthday party roast. Our eyes met for only a moment before he articulated a gentle "pardon me" and was once again consumed by the hungry, impatient mob of travelers. He carried himself differently from any man I had ever seen, statuesque and tall, but not the least bit rigid. I tried to place him, to understand what his grace, his accent, and the charming grin that he extended me might imply. This was what I wagered- that he was a regal portrait come to life, a fantasy that my mind had conjured up after reading too much Jane Austen, a man from another place and time. All of these ideas were foolish, of course, and I allowed him to be what he was- a man who was just as misplaced, just as tired and homesick as I, who was briefly possessed by the ghost of chivalry.