Prince of Tides

Tom recounts to Susan all the ways he finds Lila simultaneously triggering and fascinating. Lila has always been highly aspirational, wanting to better herself, a “work in progress” (249). To present a desirable social front, Lila constantly switches her demeanor and responses, a habit that unsettled Tom as a child. Her children, especially Tom, could not read her moods or please her, which turned her into a cipher for them. Tom recalls Luke telling him that Lila was so extraordinarily beautiful she was almost superhuman in her capabilities.

Lila’s own “hideous” (250) childhood has led to her insecurities. Her working-class family was from the Georgia mountains. Lila’s father was an abusive alcoholic who died when she was twelve, while her mother passed away when Lila was sixteen. Lila met Henry shortly afterward and made “a child’s mistake” (250) of falling in love with the first man who offered her comfort. Once married to Henry, Lila decides to reinvent herself, presenting to Colleton as a sophisticated, cultured society woman. However, Henry’s abuse and his flailing career as a shrimper interrupt Lila’s plans.

Matters are made worse by Colleton’s refusal to accept Lila in its inner circle. One time, Lila decides to submit an original recipe for the Colleton League cookbook contest, reading Gourmet magazine and inventing a recipe for weeks. When she presents her French-inspired masterpiece to the family, Henry refuses it cruelly in front of the children, asking Lila to cook him some real food. A hurt Lila gets her vengeance by serving Henry dog food disguised as a dish. Isabel rejects Lila’s recipe, insinuating she has plagiarized it. To add insult to injury, during a particularly bad shrimping season, the Colleton League brings a charity turkey to the Wingo house, suggesting the Wingos can’t fend for themselves. After the women leave, a humiliated Lila shoots the turkey.

The children are incensed at their mother’s repeated humiliation. To avenge their mother, Luke, Tom, and Savannah break into the Newbury mansion when the family is out on vacation. They leave behind a giant dead turtle in Reese and Isabel’s bed and turn up the heat in the house. By the time the Newburys return, the turtle has decomposed due to the raised heat, making the entire house stink horribly. The children give their mother a copy of the Colleton League cookbook with a cheeky hand-written recipe for dead turtle on the back page. Initially angry with the children’s prank, Lila gives in to their boldness and giggles like a schoolgirl.

Tom likes coaching Bernard since the boy is devoted to football. Tom meets Bernard at eight o'clock in Central Park every morning, buying him a coke after practice. Bernard, whom Tom senses is unhappy at home, begins to become an athlete under Tom’s guidance. Inspired by Bernard’s progress, Tom decides to apply for coaching positions at schools in South Carolina. Discussing Bernard’s progress, Susan says Bernard dislikes the fact that Tom makes him practice smiling. According to Tom, this is a way to get Bernard to loosen up and learn to be happy. He senses a deep dissatisfaction in Bernard, which he hopes football will address. Tom asks Susan if he can come over some night when her husband isn’t around so he, she, and Bernard can relax together. Herbert does not know about Tom coaching Bernard since he thinks of sports as a waste of time. Susan agrees to have Tom over.

Meanwhile, Sallie has not written to Tom even once in his four weeks in New York. During a session with Susan, Tom is offended by the doctor’s surprise that his mother had a subscription to Gourmet magazine. Tom retorts that the Wingos are not as uncultured as Susan assumes; it was Tolitha who gifted Savannah her first New Yorker. Tom thinks Susan patronizes him, while Susan struggles with Tom’s sensitivity about his southern heritage. Susan tells Tom that she knows he has been writing letters to Savannah. Letters from the family upset Savannah, and after reading one by Lila, Savannah became so agitated she had to be sedated.

In this chapter, Tom explores his difficult relationship with his father, Henry. According to Tom, forgiving his father was important for him to move on in life, even though, at some level, his father stole his childhood. As Tom confessed to Savannah at his daughter Jennifer’s birth, he continues to love Henry despite the abuse he suffered at his hands. One reason for the love is that Tom remembers other aspects about Henry apart from his cruelty. Like Lila, Henry too was aspirational, constantly launching into some get-rich-quick scheme or the other. He would often take the children on shrimping trips, hoping for a haul that would change their lives, telling them all about the shrimping business. Tom remembers these early morning trips fondly.

For Lila, Henry’s work as a shrimper didn’t matter because she wished for him to have a more respectable, white-collar profession. Henry’s desperation for Lila’s respect slowly turned him bitter toward her. Tom notes that Henry loved Lila greatly yet chose to abuse her. There was also palpable passion between his parents, which Tom cannot square with the rest of their relationship. Lila would grow exasperated with Henry’s changing ventures, such as his plans for watermelon farming or making films. She instead wanted him to invest in stocks. Every venture Henry embarked on failed, and Savannah cleverly coins the term “Sadim touch” (292) for her father: the opposite of the legendary Midas touch that turned everything to gold.

Tom explains to Susan that two such “Sadim touch” ventures proved to be their family’s undoing. One was Henry’s purchase of a corner gas station named “Wingo Esso” (297). Henry celebrated the station’s opening with his characteristic flair for extravagance, inviting a band and a circus clown to the inauguration. The clown is from a run-down visiting circus. Henry takes the family to the circus the night of the inauguration, and this is where the second fatal Wingo venture takes off. At the circus, the tiger attacks and kills one of the seals from the show “in front of three hundred schoolchildren” (302). Much to Lila’s horror, Henry decides to buy the disgraced tiger, Caesar. He plans to use the tiger as a marketing gimmick for his new gas station, pairing the slogan “tiger in your tank” (312) with a caged Caesar in the corner.

The gas station takes off briefly before an anonymous financer begins promoting a rival station near Wingo Esso. Wingo Esso folds, and Henry returns to shrimping. Caesar remains on Wingo property, despite Lila’s protests. Luke begins to train the tiger in secret, much to the delight of his siblings. Meanwhile, Reese wants to buy Melrose Island, but Henry refuses to sell his home. Henry later learns Reese was the anonymous investor behind the rival gas station. Later, he learns that Reese supported the Gulf station in the gas price war.

Tom says he has always “loathed Good Fridays,” mainly because of his grandfather Amos’s annual Good Friday performance in the streets of Colleton. Except for Luke and Henry, the entire family is embarrassed by Amos’s overt religiosity. He dresses up in a white choir robe and drags a heavy cross, signifying the walk of Jesus to Calvary. Tom and Savannah beg Amos to take the performance to Charleston or Savannah while Tolitha gets drunk in her room to avoid watching Amos in the parade. Later Tolitha tells Tom she left Amos because he quit his job during the Great Depression to become a self-styled religious preacher. After her travels, she returned to him because she was growing old and knew he’d always be waiting for her. While Tom is scandalized at the ease with which Tolitha discarded and picked up husbands, Savannah admires Tolitha for her ability to survive.

The only two people who support Amos’s performance are Henry, a devout Catholic, and Luke. Henry directs his father’s performance, asking Amos to deliberately fall under the weight of the cross at several points, recreating the suffering of Jesus. When Amos can’t lift the cross back up, Luke carries it for him. After the walk, Amos takes his grandchildren to collect oysters for their meal. In what Tom terms one of the indescribably beautiful “quicksilver” (323) moments of his childhood, the family gathers on a bridge to catch a rare glimpse of the beautiful white porpoise Snow that lives in Colleton waters and is considered the town’s symbol of good luck.

Later while shucking oysters, the siblings discuss the undertaker’s son Benji Washington, a Black kid joining their all-white school. Tom uses a terrible racial slur for Benji, which Savannah finds repugnant. As the fight heats up, Luke plays peacemaker.