The Jardin was filling up with vendors. Children chased one another around the feet of viejos and abuelitas sitting on the wrought iron benches beneath the ficus trees. We took a table in the portal outside the café and ordered coffee and huevos rancheros. The coffee was hot and fresh and strong.

“I saw your wedding announcement in the Times a few years ago,” I said. “How’s life in New York?”

“We’ve been reclaimed.”

“Reclaimed?”

“Do you remember Alice Hudson?”

“Sure,” I said. “We went to senior prom together, remember?”

“That’s right. Well, Alice finally found herself a nice fellow to marry,” Arch said. “Van was in the wedding. At the reception, I was swarmed by a bunch of Belle Meade blue-hairs. ‘Archer,’ they said, ‘when are you going to bring poor Vanessa back to the South?’”

Arch sipped his coffee.

“We were ready,” he said, “New York is great, but I don’t want my kids to be Yankees.”

It was sort of a track for Yeatman alpha males: Ivy or Vandy or W&L, a few years on Wall Street or the junior executive track, an MBA, then a few more years in the city before migrating back home, marrying a Steptoe girl, and going to work for a firm full of partners who still wore their high school rings. Thereafter, a lot of hunting and fishing and playing golf. The Steptoe wife would get into tennis or golf or whatever happened to be the trendy workout of the day, get the occasional nip-and-tuck and plumping injection, work part-time or volunteer at the private schools. Together, they would raise a slew of beautiful children destined one day to do the same.

“How is Vanessa?” I asked.

“Busy,” he said. “Since we moved back to Nashville, she’s been an associate at Wilton, Mosby, and Cobbs. Contract law.”

“Sounds thrilling.”

“Well, it isn’t sexy, but it pays,” he said. “Besides, she won’t be doing it much longer.”

“Why wouldn’t she?”

“Vanessa wants to be a stay-at-home mom.”

“I don’t believe it,” I said.

“She doesn’t want our kids to grow up the way she did.”

“In what sense?”

“Raised by the help. She’s scared to death they’ll end up like Jamie.”

“I can understand that,” I said. “How is Jamie, by the way?”

“Remember Café Divorcée? He bought it,” Arch said. “The old owner got into a little trouble with the IRS. Jamie was looking for something to do with his trust fund. He hired a consultant from Dallas to come in and rebrand the place. They reopened last year. He calls the place Harpeth Junction. It’s actually a pretty nice place. Good food. Jamie gives away too many free drinks, but he doesn’t really need it to be profitable.”

I laughed. “I can’t see Jamie running a restaurant.”