Lowcountry Summer (17 page)

“The Wimbleys are made of mighty strong stuff!”

I could hear my Miss Lavinia’s voice in my head just like it was yesterday.

But this particular Lowcountry morning was deep into spring and it was also the stuff of dreams and great imaginings. The temperature was perfect, somewhere around sixty. The linens on my bed were cool to the touch. I plumped my pillows, fell back into them, and stretched. Somewhere in the distance a few birds were singing for their breakfast and a woodpecker was at work on a dead tree limb. It felt like six o’clock and I rolled over to check my alarm clock to confirm it. It was exactly five minutes before six. Wasn’t it a marvel how the body perfectly sensed that for which the mind demanded proof?

It was going to take some of the Wimbley bravery and cunning to weather the coming weeks. I wondered if Amelia and her sisters had ever even heard the stories of Henry Heywood Wright IV and his stalwart wife, Elizabeth? Would Trip have told them? Maybe bits and pieces, but all the family portraits still hung on the walls of this house, not his. And the artifacts were here, too. Frances Mae would have resisted hearing our history because it would have intimidated her. I was sure of that. How stupid! Perhaps if Frances Mae realized that our family’s place in South Carolina’s history books was not bought but hard earned, she might have been inspired to rise instead of fall. Now, there’s a thought.

Perhaps a little family education would help to bring the girls around. As soon as the hour permitted, I would get them all over to my house for a big fattening breakfast—eggs, bacon, grits, and genealogy with fresh-squeezed juice.

I showered, dressed, and looked in on Eric, taking a deep breath. There is nothing more intoxicating than the smell of your own child. And even though he was nearly a man, he was sleeping like a sweet angel. He was still and always would be mine. I decided to leave him alone, to let him snooze a little longer.

I rang Millie at eight to see if she felt like helping with breakfast. It was really her biscuits I was after, which I’m sure she knew. My stomach rumbled at the thought of them.

“Mornin’! You up?”

“What do you think, chile?”

Millie had a long-established habit of starting her day before early birds even thought about worms. She got up to read her Bible and to work her garden before the sun was too high in the sky.

“Well, I’m calling Trip to bring the brood over here for some eggs and to fertilize the family tree, Lavinia style.”

“I ain’t missing this! I’ll be right over!”

“Great!”

Then I called Trip. He was up all right. He’d already been up and down the Edisto, dropped the papers on our back steps, and exercised his dogs. He was on his second pot of coffee he said and hankering for Millie’s biscuits, too.

“We’ll be there at nine-fifteen! Thanks!”

I decided that breakfast in the dining room was in order. We were going to start the day in a dignified way with a beautiful meal. I opened the silver chest, deciding to use the family’s oldest flatware and most intricate linens to set the table. I removed the napkins from the linen press and counted out eight. They were always wrapped in acid-free tissue to prevent those nasty little brown spots Miss Lavinia treasured as symbols of the history of the linens. These were gorgeous old Irish linen, softened from innumerable launderings, with hand-tatted lace borders attached all around by tiny even stitches. The lace was so light and I fingered it gently. I remembered the story that told how my grandmother Amelia had made them as a gift for her mother’s birthday when she was a young girl. It must have taken her forever because they didn’t have electricity in those days. I wondered if she sat in the living room or her own bedroom and worked by the light of gasoliers or candlelight. But then I remembered that needlework would be done in the daytime using natural light. Whatever the circumstances, I could not have tatted lace like that if my life depended on it.

There were many surviving remnants of my grandmother’s needlework, all of them beautiful—pillowcases with lace insets, hand-embroidered monogrammed handkerchiefs, and so on. But their age and fragile state had relegated them to the special-occasion category of usage. I had done some fine needle crochet work in my time, but that had been years ago, when I was a mere girl. In the rat race of New York City living, I had never even considered seeking out a crochet needle or an embroidery hoop. Richard would have laughed in my face, saying how silly I was to compromise my eyesight and why didn’t I just trot myself over to Bergdorf’s and buy what I wanted? The skills and refinements that were once a lady’s great pride were lost to the past; that was for sure.

As I snapped a snowy damask cloth in the air to settle it over the dining-room table, it occurred to me that all these things should fall into conversations with Trip’s girls. Even if they had no interest in learning about them, they should know that all embroidery and lace was not born in some steaming sweatshop in a remote village in China, created by some poor peasant woman with her only child strapped to her back while she squatted near her small Buddhist altar, burning incense and sipping cold weak tea. Right? It was possible to surround yourself with gentility for very little money. It was all about how you spent your time. A young lady could either waste her life away with pursuits like Guitar Hero, singing god-awful karaoke like a braying mule, or she could opt for something more useful.

Lord! Have mercy on my body and soul! I sounded more like my mother with each passing hour. Well, that wasn’t the worst thing, was it?

I was folding the last of the napkins, carefully placing them on the left of the forks, when I heard the back door open and close.

“Millie? Is that you?”

“Nope! It’s me, Rusty!”

I swung around the far end of the table, smoothing the cloth as she stepped into the dining room. She had the most peculiar look on her face.

“Hey! Good morning! What’s wrong?”

She sighed with a gush of air I could feel from five feet away.

“It seems our camellias are in bloom again.”

“What? They bloomed in January, didn’t they?”

“Yeah, but now we’re growing actual bloomers.”

She held up two very skimpy-looking pairs of thong underpants on her index fingers. I gasped. She cocked her head to one side.

“Nice. Don’t you think?”

“My God!”

My mind began to race. Rusty had found these on the camellias. Their provenance was unmistakable. The intention was insulting. The girls were screwing the gardeners or landscapers or whatever it was those young men from last night did for gainful employment. It was an in-your-face vulgar gesture that I, in the wildest moment of my life, would not have deemed appropriate under any circumstances except an 8.9 earthquake, a circumstance when you had to abandon all propriety and your clothes and run for your life. Perhaps the girls’ earth had moved, but they had done this to be deliberately disrespectful to Rusty and Trip and to let them know they intended to do as they pleased.

“Throw them in the garbage before Millie gets here and don’t give the nasty little tramps the satisfaction of grossing you out. We’re going to ignore this.”

“Is this an outrage or what? What do you think?”

“I think those young men could do so much better. My nieces are a disgrace. That’s what I think. Now hurry. She’ll be walking in the door any second.” I heard the back door open and close again. “No! Wait! She’s here! Hide them.”

Rusty threw the panties in the open door of the linen press and slammed it shut.

“Not on my grandmother’s linens! Mother of God!” I hissed.

As fast as a bolt of lightning could scorch the earth, I opened the front windows and dropped the offending garments behind the boxwoods. At least they were out of the house. I would put on gloves and maybe a Hazmat suit and dispose of them later. To be honest, I felt a little faint. I closed the window and turned to see Millie standing there with that knowing look on her face.

“Don’t make me go scrying in my bowl this morning, you ’eah me? What’s going on ’round ’eah?”

“Scrying?” Rusty said.

“The art of predicting the future by staring into water. Nostradamus did it all the time. Very handy for predicting the end of time and all that,” I said. “You don’t want to know, Millie. Let’s get some sausage going in the pan. They’ll be here soon.”

“Humph. Suit yourself. You don’t have to tell me what I already know,” she said with some annoyance in her voice. “I’ll be in the kitchen kneading dough.”

We followed her and I realized that keeping secrets from Millie was a worthless pursuit on many fronts. She was my finest ally and siding with Rusty over her would offend her. So as always, I came clean.

“It’s Belle and Linnie,” I said.

“Playing with them man-boys I saw?” she said.

“More than playing,” Rusty said.

“The vulgar little wenches left their thong bikini underwear in Rusty’s camellia bushes last night.”

“
What?
What kinda fool nonsense you telling me?” Millie’s eyes narrowed and she put her hands on her hips.

“Bloomers. They probably thought it was funny,” I said. “Hold on! Rusty? You’d better check their rooms for pot. That’s stoner humor.”

“Good grief,” Rusty said, sounding defeated before the next battle had even begun.

The dining-room door swung open and there stood Eric with bed hair, drawstring pants drooping, and a wrinkled T-shirt, stretching, looking much like a yawning Statue of Liberty.

“Morning, Mom!” he said. “Hey, Rusty. Hey, Millie. ’S’up?”

“Hey, baby!” I gave him a hug and ruffled his hair. “I’m glad you got up. Go make yourself presentable. Everyone’s coming for breakfast and they’ll be here anytime now.”

“ ’Kay,” Eric said, and did an about-face. “Biscuits. Sweet,” I heard him say behind the muffled wood of the swinging door.

“If kids couldn’t say ‘sweet,’ ‘excellent,’ or ‘awesome,’ I wonder how they’d communicate,” Rusty commented.

“Not as well,” I said. “And that’s the pitiful truth.”

Rusty squeezed five pounds of oranges for juice. Millie made dozens of biscuits and stirred a huge pot of grits. I hauled out my largest cast-iron skillet and fried up tons of Bobby Mack’s apple-wood-smoked pork-sausage patties while I scrambled a dozen eggs in butter in another. The kitchen smelled like paradise. Breakfast was and would always be my very favorite meal.

My grandmother’s old Sheffield silver warming dishes, gleaming like mirrors, were soon filled. We were just placing pats of butter and jelly dishes on both ends of the table as Trip and the girls arrived. Speaking of Bobby Mack and jelly, I still needed to unload all that inventory. I made a mental note to call him.

“Mornin,’ y’all! I’m starving,” Trip announced.

“What else is new?” I said.

He gave me a smooch on the cheek and tried to pour himself a mug of coffee. The pot was empty.

“Morning, Aunt Caroline!” Amelia said. “Can I help with anything?”

“Morning, sweetheart! Thanks, but breakfast is all ready and in the dining room. Girls? Why don’t y’all wash your hands and let’s go to the table.”

Linnie and Belle rolled their eyes and went to the sink.

“I already washed them this morning.” Chloe held out her hands for inspection. Clearly, she had missed a few places. “Guess I’ll just wash them again anyway.” She was still wounded from the night before. At least she seemed sullen and I knew Rusty’s impending marriage to Trip was still the reason.

“Can’t hurt.” I smiled at her with all the warmth I could muster. “But hurry now before it all gets cold! Nothing worse than cold grits!”

“Ew!” she said, and literally hopped to the powder room like a bunny.

Poor little cabbage, I thought, she can’t even wash her hands right.

I sat at one end of the table, the one closest to the kitchen, where Miss Lavinia used to sit. Trip took the other end, where, yes, our father sat when he was alive. It was always a little unbelievable to me that we were now the rightful owners of those places at the table unless I married again, which, as we all knew, was not very likely. But there we were. I was in Mother’s chair; Trip was in Daddy’s. I loved sitting in Mother’s chair and I hated it, too. Trip probably felt the same way about Daddy’s.

Rusty was seated on Trip’s right, with Eric and Chloe on my left, and Amelia was seated to my right, with Belle and then Linnie on the end. The whole family minus Frances Mae. It wasn’t that Frances Mae’s absence went unnoticed; it was that Rusty’s presence and new status were so much more immediate. I became nervous suddenly because I wanted everything to go well and I knew it might not.

Trip offered a blessing that went on for so long it would soon be lunchtime if he didn’t wrap it up. I swear, ever since he stopped drinking and gambling, it was obvious that he had lost a big chunk of his brains. I cleared my throat.

“Ahem, ahem!”

Everyone giggled. Even Trip broke into a grin.

“All right. All right,” he said. “Thank you, Lord, amen.”

“Whew!” I said. “Moses, Trip! Is there anyone left to pray for or to thank? Come, let’s fill our plates. Chloe, why don’t you help yourself first since you’re the youngest.”