Lowcountry Summer (36 page)

I heard the kitchen door open and close. Millie had returned to supervise the restoration of order.

“Excuse me for a moment, won’t you?”

Trip did the bounce, which is the act of lifting his bottom several inches from the seat without fully rising to acknowledge that a lady was leaving the table, as my father did for my mother in their day. Owen followed suit, and Richard, who saw no reason to do anything except pour another scotch, remained firmly planted in his chair because Brits only rose for the queen of continents. I hurried to the kitchen.

“What?” Millie said when she looked at me, and then she knew without me saying a word. “What? No! That man is here? Do I need to call Jenkins and tell him to get the pitchfork and chase him clean back to New York City?”

“Millie? Be cool. He’s Eric’s father. And he’s drunk. I think. But he’s staying. In the guest room. There’s not much we can do without making a terrible scene. I won’t have Rusty’s service marred by the asinine antics of my ex-husband.”

“I’m gone tell him hello. You stay put.” She went toward the swinging door to the dining room.

“I’ll do no such thing.” I was right behind her.

“Well! Do Lord! Looky who’s here! It’s my old friend Dr. Levine!”

Richard hurried to his feet. He wasn’t unsteady in the slightest. I would have fallen right on my face with that much liquor in me.

“Mrs. Smoak! You are as pretty as ever! How are you, my darling?” He took her hand and kissed the back of it. “Don’t you ever age?”

I saw her smile and get suckered in as he regaled her with his litany of lovely but completely shallow compliments. In the next instant, she got ahold of herself and her jaw went back to steel. “No, you are right. I don’t age. Thank you for acknowledging that.”

“Ah!” Richard said, not to be brushed off so easily. “Still the charmer, I see! Well, that’s good.” Then he quickly took his seat with his back to her.

He was the biggest boor on earth.

“Does anyone care for seconds?” I asked.

Everyone shook their heads.

“Pie might be good,” said Chloe.

“You don’t need pie. Dinner was great, Aunt Caroline,” Amelia said, taking her plate to the kitchen.

“Yeah, especially the entertainment,” Belle said, following her.

“I’m saying nothing,” Linnie put in, and scooted by, giving me the hand that said “talk to the hand.”

I’d had it.

“That’s probably best for everyone,” I said. The little snipe.

Linnie stopped, came back, and leaned down to whisper to me: “Nice husband, Aunt Caroline. You may think my momma is trash, but this guy is the biggest fucking asshole I ever saw.”

“You’re right, Linnie. Thank you.”

“What was that?” Trip said.

“She said she thinks you’re doing remarkably well tonight.”

“Well, thanks, Linnie,” Trip said. “Getting together like this with my family is good for all of us.”

Richard raised his glass to Trip in agreement and continued to try to dominate the evening.

“So, Owen! It’s Owen, isn’t it? Tell me all about yourself, old man! And, Trip? Why don’t we all go in the den and let the others clean up? I want to hear how you’re really feeling about this god-awful tragedy.”

Trip got up, I took his plate, and I walked to Richard’s side.

“Richard?” I whispered. “Go easy on Trip, okay?”

“My God, you’re a beautiful creature,” he whispered back. “Have I ever told you that?”

“Kiss my ass, Richard,” I whispered.

“Love to!” I heard him say, and my skin crawled.

What had I ever seen in him? I mean, seriously! He always was an arrogant ass, but now he was a balding, paunchy, drunken, sexist, really unattractive arrogant ass, with those dreaded liver spots on the back of his hands and wiry hair growing in his big stupid ears. All my alarms began sounding in my brain.
Danger!
Richard was not being so ridiculously flirtatious with me for nothing and he had not come here because of Rusty. There was another reason and I was going to find out what that reason was. So far, all I knew was that his chances of seducing me were zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. It was time to turn on the frost.

The men disappeared to my father’s den and I went to the kitchen with the others. Eric looked at up me when I came in, shaking his head. I could see he was distressed.

“Come here,” I said, and we stepped away from the others. “You okay, baby?”

“No. I am like totally pissed. I mean, like what’s up with Dad showing up like this?”

“I am just as clueless as you are, sweetie.”

“I mean, I haven’t heard from him in months. I make one lousy phone call to him to tell him about Rusty because I thought I should, and boom! He drops in like he was just in the neighborhood? And he’s flirting with you like that? I mean, do you want him to flirt with you like that?”

“Absolutely not.”

“I didn’t think you did. So, what’s he doing here?”

“I guess we’ll find out. But why are you so angry?”

“Didn’t you see the way he was acting? Completely bizarre!”

“Yeah, pretty strange.”

“He’s my father, you know? And he embarrasses me.”

“Baby, he doesn’t embarrass you or me. He embarrasses himself.”

“Whatever. He’s such a total jerk.”

“Don’t say that. He can’t help himself.”

“I’d lock my door tonight, if I were you.”

“Don’t worry, Eric. I’m a big girl and I can handle it. Come on, let’s get these dishes.”

I hoped there would be nothing to handle.

The kitchen was finally clean and I had managed to avoid any other confrontation with Linnie, who I think I surprised by agreeing with her assessment of Richard. But what could I say? She was right. She shouldn’t have said it, of course, but she was right. At least we agreed about something. Just as I folded my dish towel over the rack to dry, Trip came into the kitchen. He looked like he was a thousand years old.

“I’m exhausted,” he said. “Richard wears me out.”

Trip’s eyes were bloodshot, his shoulders were slumped, and everything about him spelled sadness. I hoped that Richard had come out of his stupor long enough to do Trip some good.

“You poor thing. Why don’t you take your girls and Owen home and get some rest. Is Richard sleeping yet?”

In our family,
sleeping
was a well-worn euphemism for “passed out.”

“No,” he said incredulously. “Any
normal
person would be.”

“He’s not normal.”

Trip gave me a sliver of a grin. “I’ll say. It’s incredible how stupid people seem when they’re drunk and you’re sober. Hey, FYI, I got the dirt on Prince Harry.”

“Spill it. Spill it this instant.”

“He got kicked out of MIT for plagiarism, moved to San Francisco, developed a drug habit, and was last seen panhandling on the streets in the Haight.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Good one, right?” Now he was grinning. Trip knew about Richard’s low opinion of Eric versus Harry’s superiority and that his cruel comparisons had eroded any affection I ever felt for him. “
And
Richard and Lois are all washed up.”

“Oh, sure. He used to tell me that all the time.”

“No, this time it’s for real. She married a nice Jewish dentist named Herb and she’s moving back out to the Five Towns on Long Island. Hewlett, I think.”

“Holy crap! Herb? Who names their kid Herb?”
Crap
is the perfect word.

“I saved the best for last.”

“Let’s have it.” I cringed. I knew I wasn’t going to like what I was about to hear.

“Steel yourself, sister. He asked me if I thought he had a chance with you.”

“Oh. No.”

“Yeah. He wants you back.”

19
Glory Rising

W
HEN I WOKE UP, THE
house was unusually quiet. Yes, I had locked my door last night, and no, praise everything holy, I have no recollection of Richard tapping on it like some idiotic little mouse seeking shelter from the storm. I simply assumed he found his way to the guest room or that he had fallen asleep downstairs and stayed there. I mean, if he didn’t have better sense than to arrive at my house uninvited and unannounced with a suitcase, to proceed to get roaring drunk, and to monopolize the evening’s conversation and mortify us all? He could sleep in his cheap rental car for all I cared. I looked up at the ceiling and thought, Mother? What would you do if you were me? I could almost hear her giggle. I knew immediately that she was telling me to find some humor in the
situation
and at the same time not to relinquish control for a single second.

I got up and dressed for the service, knowing that once the day was under way, there would be no time to come back to my room and change. I wore a simple black linen sheath and flats. And of course, Mother’s South Sea pearls. I took a large-brimmed black straw hat from the closet in case I wound up in the sun and I put lots of tissues in my little black bag with my lipstick and, yes, reading glasses.

Millie was already in the kitchen kneading dough for biscuits.

“Good morning!” I said.

“Humph,” she replied.

“Millie? It’s not even eight o’clock! Isn’t it a little early to start harumphing?”

“I’m harumphing because
somebody’s
ex-husband is passed out facedown on the floor of the living room with a liquor bottle in he hand that he clutching for dear life, smack-dab in the middle of your poor dead momma’s Aubusson.
That’s
why I’m harumphing. Miss Lavinia be spinning in she grave, that’s what.”

“Really? Grave spinning seems to be a family specialty lately. Let’s leave him there and see if he has the decency to feel awkward about it.” I poured myself a mug of coffee.

“Doubt it.”

“Me, too. But you have to say, Mother’s rug sure has taken a beating from the in-laws, hasn’t it?”

“What? Oh Law! Girl? You bad today, ’eah?”

Millie started to laugh, and then I began to laugh, until we both had tears streaming down our faces, remembering. I was referring to the epic, pyrotechnic catfight I’d had with Frances Mae when she was nine months pregnant with Chloe and not playing well with others. I was home from New York for a visit and Trip brought his entire clan for dinner. Afterward the little girls gave us a ballet performance, during which Linnie knocked a Waterford bowl from its spot on a table and sent it crashing to the floor. Mother made some unfortunate remark about how it came directly from the hands of Robert E. Lee and was irreplaceable—this was a complete lie—and she went on to say that she would deduct it from Trip’s inheritance. I knew she was joking, but Frances Mae did not. Well, let me tell you, Frances Mae had a meltdown about the size of Three Mile Island, screaming it was robbery not to reward her for her overactive reproductive system—my words, not hers. Then she made the fatal mistake of calling my son a moron and retarded and I said some pretty terrible things to her including “get out of my house,” which was the clincher. Frances Mae had always believed, for absolutely no good reason at all, that when Mother went to her great reward, she and Trip would inherit all of Tall Pines and its contents and she would reign. So when I told her to get her ugly, mean, redneck, stupid, trashy fat ass out of
my
house, she peed on Mother’s rug. Yes! Peed! Then she blamed me for making her lose control of her bladder. I ask you this. Would Lavinia Boswell Wimbley have given this house to someone who peed on a priceless Aubusson that had once covered the floor at Versailles in Marie Antoinette’s bedroom? Never! Maybe I should say “nevah!” Oh, all right, Mother bought the rug at Stark Carpet in New York after I was born, but it was pretty enough for Marie Antoinette, okay?

Millie and I finally stopped laughing.

“Oh, mercy! I needed that! Whew! Do you want coffee?”

“No, chile. I already had mine.”

“Oh, goodness! Well, I guess I should go and get the old bastard off the floor and send him to the showers before his son sees him like that. What do you think?”

“Tha’s up to you, but it’s probably the nice thing to do. Take him some aspirin, too, and water. He’s gone have the broken-bone fever all day long.”

In the Lowcountry, broken-bone fever was what you had when every bone in your body ached like they were broken, for no apparent reason.

“You’re right.” I filled a glass with water and grabbed the bottle of aspirin from the drawer where I kept Band-Aids and disinfectant, bug spray and safety pins, rubber bands and spare change. “One of these days I’m going to have to sort out this drawer. I’ll be right back.”

I got to the living room and there he was in all his glory, arms and legs akimbo, flat on the floor like a skinny octopus wearing a navy Brooks Brothers blazer, snoring like something from the forest primeval. One leg of his trousers was up around his knee and his argyle kneesock was pushed down around his ankle. If I had to guess, I’d say he had an itch, tried to scratch it, and fell asleep in the process. Lord! When was the last time his legs had seen the sun? Ew. He couldn’t have been very comfortable. And shame on me, I wished I had a camera.