The Prince of Tides

by Pat Conroy

Since their arguments were so common, we did not see the exact moment when my mother’s umbrage and cross-grained wrath turned into a deadly hatred of my father. But the cycle of her impotent rage began early and there were years of fruitless interchange before my mother entered the field of fire with her own bitter reprisals. Henry Wingo believed that women should never discuss business. There were two types of southern men: those who listened to their wives and those who did not; my father had a black belt degree in turning

They undermined the entire superstructure of their vulnerable love through a lifetime of evasion and subterfuge. Both of them became adept at killing off the best qualities of the other. In some ways, there was something classic and quintessentially American in their marriage. They began as lovers and ended up as the most dangerous and unutterable of enemies. As lovers, they begat children; as enemies, they created damaged, endangered children.

Then we huddled and something magic had happened. In the eyes of my teammates I saw that sacred gleam of oneness, of solidarity, of brotherhood, which is the most glorious thing in the kingdom of sport. It lives in the heart but is secreted through the eyes. I saw the coming together, the making of the team. “Nigger, nigger. Roar, roar.” The sounds enveloped us.

When I try to recall my mother’s voice as a child, it is lifted in a grave euphorious lament of our economic situation; I hear her chansons and plainsongs of her ineradicable belief that we lived out our days in the most hideous poverty. I could not tell you then if we were poor or not. I am not sure if my mother was miserly or frugal. But I do know that I would rather have asked to suckle her right breast than ask her for ten dollars. The subject of money caused a new woman to be born in her soul; it also diminished her in her children’s eyes. It was not because she didn’t have it; it was because of how she made us feel when we asked for it. And I always suspected there was more of it around than she claimed. I always feared that she simply loved it more than she loved me. But I never knew.

“There’s only one thing difficult about being a man, Doctor. Only one thing. They don’t teach us how to love. It’s a secret they keep from us. We spend our whole lives trying to get someone to teach us how to do it and we never find out how. The only people we can ever love are other men because we understand the loneliness engendered by this thing denied. When a woman loves us we’re overpowered by it, filled with dread, helpless and chastened before it. Why women don’t understand us is that we can never return their love in full measure. We have nothing to return. We were never granted the gift.” “When men talk about the agony of being men,” she said, “they can never quite get away from the recurrent theme of self-pity.” “And when women talk about being women, they can never quite get away from the recurrent theme of blaming men.” “It’s not easy being a woman in this society.” “Boo-hoo. Let me tell you something, Lowenstein. Being a man sucks. I’m so sick of being strong, supportive, wise, and kingly that I may puke if I have to pretend I’m any of those things again.” “I haven’t seen much evidence that you’re any of those things, Tom,” said the imperturbable Dr. Lowenstein. “Most often I don’t know what you are or what you represent or what you stand for. There are times you’re one of the sweetest men I’ve ever met. But there are other times, always unpredictable, when you become bitter and cornered. Now, you tell me you can’t feel love. Other times you claim to love ever...

A waiter, who looked as if he had been cornstarched in arrogance,

“You’re not a bad mother. Bernard is a teenager. Teenagers are, by definition, not fit for human society. It’s their job to act like assholes and make their parents miserable.” The waiter

Because I failed to understand her, I would face all the women of the world as strangers and adversaries. Because I did not understand her fierce treacherous love for me, I would never be able to accept a woman’s love without a sense of profound dread. Love would always come to me disguised in beauty, disfigured by softness. The world can do worse than make an enemy of your mother, but not much.

“You could be more, Luke,” said Savannah. “You could be so much more. You listened to them and believed everything they said about you.”

The girls are all pretty and perky and the boys all kick ass. No, I’m sick of hiding what I really am, what I feel inside. I’m going to New York where I don’t have to be afraid to find out everything there is to know about myself.”

An eighteen-year banquet of light and grief was coming to an end and I couldn’t stand it and I couldn’t tell them what I felt. A family is one of nature’s solubles; it dissolves in time like salt in rainwater.

As I applauded, I knew that it would always be my burden, not that I lacked genius, but that I was fully aware of it.

“You can’t wash a mill village out of your system, Tom,” Sallie said. “I’ll never be able to give you what some of these other girls can give you.” “And I can’t wash the shrimp off my deck either,” I answered. “I like shrimp,” she said. “And I like cotton.” “Let’s show them, Tom,” she said, kissing me. “Let’s you and Sallie show them all. We won’t have everything and there’ll be some stuff we’ll always be lacking, but our kids will have everything. Our kids will have everything in the world.” Those were the words I had been waiting my whole life to hear and I knew the right woman had entered that life.

These are the moments of surprise and consecration that hold me forever in debt and bondage to the memories I bring to bear from a southern life. I fear emptiness in life, vacuity, boredom, and the hopelessness of a life bereft of action. It is the death-in-life of the middle class that sends a primeval shiver through the nerves and open pores of my soul. If I catch a fish before the sun rises, I have connected myself again to the deep hum of the planet. If I turn on the television because I cannot stand an evening alone with myself or my family, I am admitting my citizenship with the living dead. It is the southern part of me which is most quintessentially and fiercely alive. They are deeply southern memories that surround the lodestar of whatever authenticity I bring to light as a man. Because of our intensity, I belonged to a family with a fatal attraction for the extraordinary gesture. There was always an outrageousness to our response to minor events. Flamboyance and exaggeration were the tail feathers, the jaunty plumage that stretched and flared whenever a Wingo found himself eclipsed in the lampshine of a hostile world. As a family, we were instinctive, not thoughtful. We could never outsmart our adversaries but we could always surprise them with the imaginativeness of our reactions. We functioned best as connoisseurs of hazard and endangerment. We were not truly happy unless we were engaged in our own private war with the rest of the world.

Savannah did not understand that I had a burning need to be a decent man and nothing more. When I died, I wanted Sallie to say when she kissed me for the last time, “I chose the right man.”

“I don’t know how to deal with someone I love who has all the answers,” I said. “Mom has all the answers and you have all the answers and it seems like an endemic disease with all the women in this family. Don’t you ever find yourself plagued with doubts?” “Yes,” she said. “I have great doubts about you, Tom. I’ve got serious doubts about the choices you’ve made in your life. I don’t see any direction to your life. I see no ambition, no desire to change and take chances. I see you floating along, slightly detached from your wife and children, slightly alienated from your job, not knowing what you want or where you want to go.” “That’s what makes me an American, Savannah,” I said. “There’s nothing rare about that.” “You come home after coaching, make yourself a drink, and sit in front of the television set until you’re tired enough or drunk enough to go to sleep,” she said. “You don’t read books, you don’t have conversations, you only vegetate.”