Mad Girls In Love (36 page)

We were invited to Louie's mother's house on Mobile Bay. A few miles past the Grand Hotel, he turned off the road and stopped in front of an imposing iron gate set in a high stucco wall, the old brick showing through in places. The black wrought iron was decorated with what looked like a donkey, with words spelled out under it in curlicues. It appeared to be a coat of arms, but I wasn't sure. Louie's window zipped down and he reached toward a metal box, punching in numbers. The smell of pine needles and salt water blew into the car. I was worried about meeting my new mother-in-law, Honora DeChavannes. If she was anything like this elaborate gate, then I was in trouble.

“I can't make out those words.” I squinted at the gate. It made a whirring sound then creaked open. I thought
ane
might mean ass, but I couldn't remember. Since the incident with Walter's family, my French had deteriorated.

“It's a long story.” Louie sighed and drove on through. A paved road twisted off into the pines. “First, you have to understand that Mother isn't ostentatious. But she married into a family that was. You should've seen the old gate. It was encrusted with gilded fleur-de-lis and big DeCs.”

As Louie drove, he explained that his grandmother, old Mrs. DeChavannes, had named the house Chateaux DeChavannes. After her death, the house had passed into Honora's hands. “My mother never bought into the pretension of my father and his family. So, when the gate needed replacing, she devised a new escutcheon,” Louie explained. “She came up with
chauve,
which means bald and hairless.
Ane
means ass, as in donkey, but it also has the same association as in English with fool. One of her artistic friends designed a symbol—a bald, dumb-looking donkey—to be used like the lion and unicorn of England. That's what's on the gate.”

“What does it mean?”

“As far as Mother could tell, my daddy's family must have been the French equivalent of tenant farmers, with just a bald mule to their names, and they added the ‘de' to try and class themselves up.”

I nodded, trying to appear nonchalant, but my heart was pounding. Louie's mother sounded brilliant and whimsical, but what if she turned out to be like Claude's mother? I looked out my window and saw five peacocks strolling under the live oaks, dragging their plumage.

“Not much farther,” said Louie. The road curved, and the house came into view. It was three stories high, beige stucco with red roses growing up the walls. Louie parked his Mercedes in a circle drive, under the shade of a live oak.

“Baby,” he said, reaching across the seat and patting my hand. “I've got to tell you a little about Mother. She collects people. All kinds of people. Some of them are down on their luck, and some are quite gifted. Musicians, artists, burned-out movie stars, ex-junkies. They all end up at Mother's.”

“She sounds kind.”

“Yes, she's kind,” Louie said. “But she takes it to extremes. She's also direct. You'll know in two seconds if she likes you.”

As we walked toward the house, I brushed my hands over my pink floral skirt—which suddenly seemed too short and garish. We stepped under a rose trellis and walked past a fountain. “See that statue?” Louie asked. “It's Circe, pouring poison into the water.”

“Circe?”

“An enchantress from the
Odyssey
, with a penchant for turning men into animals,” he explained. He pulled me around a curved path, where we passed a marble chessboard, scaled for human-size pieces, the black-and-white squares denting the St. Augustine grass. I squeezed his hand. He was eight years older, but a thousand years wiser. I prayed that my good luck would continue, that he would love me forever.

The path swept up into a series of rounded steps, which led to another wrought-iron gate, festooned with more donkeys. In the sagging branches of a live oak, a brilliant blue peacock called out,
Eee-yah!

“Honora's guard dogs,” Louie said, laughing. He nudged the gate with his knee, and it swung open. I had never seen a yard like this before, except in magazines. I looked up. The trees blotted out the sky, and moss hung from the trees. “Is this the front of the house?” I asked.

“Yes, but we're going around back.”

I tucked my polka-dot handbag under my arm, hoping it wouldn't show. If Louie had really grown up in this mansion, then he must have been spoiled rotten. The last thing I needed was another Wentworth.

“I've got to give Mama credit,” Louie was saying. “She's done her level best to turn the old mansion into a gigantic country house. She added striped canvas awnings one year, and a screened-in porch the next. If she didn't love sunbathing so much she would have filled the swimming pool with dirt and plant trees and made another garden.”

Straight ahead, the walkway opened up into an enormous brick patio, where an L-shaped pool sat in deep shade. Dotted here and there were Grecian urns, each one spilling ivy and pale pink flowers. The iron furniture looked regal, burnished green chairs and chaise lounges with brass claw feet. At the far end, sheathed in trees, stood a cabana, its front door invitingly ajar. Baskets of fuchsia, the petals dripping red and purple, swayed back and forth in a breeze that smelled of chlorine and honeysuckle. Through the Spanish moss, I saw a pier jutting out into the choppy waters of the bay.

“Home sweet home,” Louie said in an ironic voice. He waved one hand. “Come on inside, I'll fix us something cool to drink.”

We stepped through French doors into a sunny kitchen, with peach and white tiles, creamy marble counters, copper pans hanging from the ceiling. A cast-iron pot bubbled on the stove, filling the room with the smell of stock and the seasonings. Tea towels hung on a rack, each one embellished with Honora's donkey. The kitchen had four ovens, two gas stove-tops, with a total of twelve burners, two side-by-side refrigerators and two dishwashers. The Green Parrot didn't have this much equipment, and the café fed hundreds every day. I wondered if my new mother-in-law was a gourmet cook, or else entertained on a grand scale.

“Mama?” Louie shouted. He looked at me and shrugged. “I can't imagine where she's gone.”

“In here,” a woman called. I followed Louie into a glassed-in room off the kitchen, filled with plants and oil paintings. An attractive brunette set down a brass watering can and stepped over to Louie. She looked to be in her mid-fifties, and her hair was pulled back into a sleek bun. She wore beige slacks and a black turtleneck, the style favored by Jackie O. Across the room, two women and a bald-headed man sat around a glass table, smoking cigarettes. The table was littered with ashtrays and empty margarita glasses, and it wasn't even lunchtime.

“Darling,” said the brunette, kissing Louie's cheek. “I see that you've brought Bitsy. My, she
is
lovely. You didn't exaggerate.”

“The last girl he dragged here had green hair,” said a middle-aged blonde, lighting a cigarette.

Dragged?
I thought, wondering if the word had been directed at me.

“A hideous shade of green,” said the bald-headed man.

“But hadn't she fallen into Honora's pool?” asked a woman with sharp green eyes and a chin-length bob.

“I'd forgotten all about that,” said the blonde. “She smelled poignantly of chlorine.”

“She positively
reeked
of it,” agreed the bald-headed man.

Louie turned in my direction. His smile was blinding, almost too happy. “Hey, baby, come meet my mother and her pet vultures.”

“First, let me give her a hug.” The thin brunette smiled and embraced me, giving off gusts of a delicious perfume. Then she pulled back, her eyes wide and unblinking. “Darling, I'm so sorry I wasn't out front to greet you. By the way, I'm Honora.”

I felt tongue-tied. But I saw exactly where Louie had gotten his good looks, the dark, slanted eyes and high cheekbones. Honora pulled me over to the glass table and began making introductions. “Y'all, this is Bitsy, Louie's bride. That cute little blonde number over there is Desirée, and the green-eyed vixen is Gladys. The bald creature is Merrill.”

“Creature?” Merrill gave Honora a withering stare. “Have I been demoted?”

“Never.” Honora took the cigarette from Merrill's hand and touched her red lips to the filter. Exhaling smoke, she said, “Guess who's living in my guest room?”

“There's no telling, Mother.”

“Isabella. She's camped out upstairs with her Yorkies.” Honora sighed, then she turned to me. “Isabella D'Agostino, the actress? Have you seen her movies?”

“Nothing but film noir,” sniffed Desirée.

“Hush, Desi,” scolded Gladys. “You're just jealous.”

“Better Honora's guest room than mine,” said Merrill.

“Well, she's got twelve,” Desirée said.

“And
all
the rooms are occupied,” said Merrill.

“All?” Louie's eyes widened. “Mother, how many people are living here?”

“You mean, this week? Six at the moment,” Honora said, giving the cigarette back to Merrill. “But it fluctuates. Isabella requires two bedrooms, of course. One for herself, and one for the Yorkies.”

“They're just using it as a lavatory, I'm afraid,” said Gladys. “You'll need to fumigate when Isabella leaves.”

Honora ignored her friends and stretched her arms above her head, then walked over to the French doors and flung them open. The pool glowed with an eerie green light. “I might take a swim,” she said. “But what I'd really like is a kilo of Beluga caviar. Can't you see it, ladies? A gold can surrounded by crushed ice. A silver platter glinting in the light, full of toast points and maybe some latkes.”

“A mother-of-pearl spoon,” said Gladys.

“And a tall, blond butler with buns of steel,” said Desirée.

“We're not normally like this,” Honora told me. She held out one arm, her skin gleaming in the light.

“No, usually you're worse,” said Louie, kissing his mother's cheek.

“Oh, poo,” said Honora, pinching his cheek. “You're a fine one to talk. Now, fix your darling wife a drink while I show her around.”

 

FROM THE CRYSTAL FALLS
DEMOCRAT

—“Who's Who & Who's Where,” a column by Rayetta Parsons, page 3, August 10, 1978

Claude E. Wentworth IV and his bride, Regina Henley Wentworth, have just returned from a wedding trip to Hilton Head, South Carolina. The couple were married in a private ceremony at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Claude E. Wentworth III on August 1, 1978. They will reside in Crystal Falls, where Claude Wentworth IV is the new president of Citizen's Bank.

Clancy Jane set a pot of lentils on the stove, then turned up the heat and wandered into her empty living room, her footsteps echoing. She dragged the tasseled pillows over by the windows to a patch of sunlight and lay down. She only meant to close her eyes for a minute, but the bleating smoke alarm jolted her from a long, torturous nightmare involving Byron and the redhead.

The house was filled with a billowing black cloud, stinking of charred lentils. She scrambled to her feet and ran to the phone, which was sitting all by itself on the far end of the room. After she called 911, she hurried to the kitchen, flinging open doors and windows as she went, calling to her cats. Through the smoke, she thought she saw flames. A cat shot between her legs. Covering her mouth with one hand, she batted smoke with the other. Then she grappled for the cat-shaped oven mitts, which hung on a hook beside the stove. She'd bought them in Pass Christian when she went to Bitsy and Louie's reception. Fitting them over her hands, she lurched toward the smoking pot. God, the burned lentils smelled awful, it was enough to make her give up beans forever. She grabbed the handles and ran out of the kitchen, down the porch steps, into the backyard. When she reached the honeysuckle vine, she heaved the pot. It clunked against a tree. Then she staggered back to the porch and sat down, her head in her hands. She kept calling to her cats until she was hoarse, but the little bastards had gone into hiding, under beds and in closets. Only a few stragglers hunkered in the bushes.

She was still sitting on the steps, dazedly watching the smoke drift out the back door, when she heard the siren. A minute later, two fire engines roared up her driveway. The firemen hopped off the trucks, with hatchets and hoses, and marched into her house. One of the firemen stopped and touched Clancy's shoulder. He was tall, way over six feet, with dark bushy hair and intense blue eyes.

“Ma'am? You all right?” he asked.

“Yes. But my k-kitchen is ruined.” Her teeth were chattering; she couldn't make them be still. “I was c-cooking lentils, and I t-threw the pot into the honeysuckle. Over there.”

She pointed toward the woods. The fireman nodded.

“You sure you're all right, ma'am?” he asked again.

She nodded. It had been a long time since anyone had asked that question.

“Don't you move,” he told her. “I'll be right back.”

“I'll be here,” she said, hugging herself. After all, where would she go?

 

As soon as her kitchen was functional—she needed new appliances and the ceiling had to be repainted—she called the fireman and invited him for supper. When Tucker O'Brien stepped into her house, he was carrying a six-pack of Budweiser. Clancy Jane led him into the kitchen and shoved the beer into the new side-by-side refrigerator. She slammed the door and turned and smiled. He was tall—much taller than she'd remembered. “Supper should be ready in about—”

He silenced her with a kiss. Rough, callused hands slid up her cotton blouse, tickling her skin. His hair smelled of shampoo, with an underlying scent of smoke from a warehouse blaze earlier in the afternoon. They undressed all the way to her bedroom, littering the polished floor with jeans and shoes and undergarments. The mattress was on the floor, centered directly beneath the ceiling fan. They sank down.

Later, during supper, Tucker sat cross-legged beside the harvest table. “How many inches off the ground is it?” he asked Clancy Jane.

“Oh, about six,” she replied. “Are you uncomfortable?”

“No, I'm just fine. Would you hand me another slice of bread, please?” He ate three helpings of vegetarian lasagna and half a loaf of honey nut bread. Then she threw tasseled pillows onto the living room floor and stacked records on the turntable. There was a click and a whoosh, and the Stones began singing “Time Is on My Side”—Mick's definitive song of love, sex, and retaliation.

Tucker brushed his hand over her cheek, and she thought,
What if he turns out to be a loser?
Then she thought,
So what?
Even if he turned out to be wonderful, she wasn't sure she could stand that, either.

“This room sure is big,” he said.

“An illusion. If I had furniture, it would seem smaller.” She drew her legs into a half-lotus position.

“Why don't you have any? Did it get smoke-damaged?”

“No, I'm studying Buddhism, and—”

“Boo-
what
?” He gave her a blank stare.

“Some people think it's a religion, but it's more a philosophy of life. Anyway, I'm trying to reduce my fondness for material objects. I'm a long way from Nirvana.” She held up her wineglass. “See? I still drink.”

“Where's Nirvana?”

“It's the goal Buddhists aim for.”

“Tell me about it.” He stretched out on the pillow, crossing his long legs. Thrilled to have a captive audience, Clancy Jane began to talk rapidly, her voice rising and falling. He would nod, pausing to interrupt her now and then for clarification. For all his small-town ways, he seemed to understand everything, except the concept known as All Is Suffering. That took a bit of explaining. When she finished, Tucker glanced around the empty room.

“You might be onto something,” he said. “People do get wrapped up in stuff. Cars and boats and TV sets.”

“Yes!” Her eyes widened. “Exactly.”

“When I'm putting out fires, you wouldn't believe what the folks beg me to go after.” His eyes met hers. “Can you teach me it? This Buddhism?”

“I'd
love
to.” She clasped her hands.

“Damn, I can't wait.” He grinned and tugged a lock of her hair. Just for a moment, Clancy Jane was reminded of Mack. He was always starting sentences with damn. It was a way of talking favored by Southern punks. Not that Mack had started out that way. Over the years, he'd lost what little polish Dorothy had inflicted upon him, and the moment she was locked up, he'd fallen under the spell of Earlene and her bawdy ways.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“Twenty-eight. Is that too old, too young, or just right?” When she didn't answer right away, he picked up her hand, rubbed her knuckles. “What?”

When she was seventy-one, he'd be fifty-eight. Was that so terrible? Well, maybe not for her, but chances were they wouldn't be together two weeks, much less two decades. She tilted her head, smiling up at him.

“I'm thinking that this empty living room is perfect for dancing.”

 

During a late-night phone call to Violet, Clancy Jane said, “I'm madly in love.”

“With the fireman?”

“Yes, and I swear he is
the
one. When he put out the fire in my kitchen he lit another fire in my heart.”

“Oh, Mama. That's so lame.”

“He's real tall and muscular, like the lumberjack on Brawny paper towels.”

Violet laughed.

“We went camping last weekend, and he didn't complain once about the nuts and fruit I brought along. I put some frozen pepperpot soup into a cast-iron pot and we cooked it over an open flame. His best friend Joe is the fire chief in Crystal Falls. And he's got a houseboat on Center Hill. They cruised by our camp site and we swam out to the boat. We just had a ball.”

“I'm glad for you, Mama. You deserve to be happy.”

“Yes, it's about time. But wait—I haven't finished telling you about a house that burned up. Tucker went in and rescued a cat. He breathed air into its little lungs and saved it. Then he brought it to my house. We named it Cinders. He's got a singed tail and whiskers, and his meow is so pitiful—it's real hoarse.”

“Just what you need: another cat.” Violet laughed again.

“There's always room for one more. And you know something else? Now that I'm teaching Tucker about Buddhism, I'm able to see where I went wrong. How I went to extremes.”

“You mean your no-frills decor?”

“Exactly. I'm a middle-aged woman, not a monk with a begging bowl. If I have a sofa set and a dresser for my underwear, it won't undermine my journey toward Nirvana. Besides, I won't make it there in
this
lifetime. It's like Tucker said, getting dog-drunk is probably worse than having pictures on the wall. So we gave up beer and wine, and now we just drink iced tea with lots of lemon.”

“Get out of here,” Violet cried in an incredulous voice.

“I'm thinking about selling this house and buying a little cottage in town. Oh, Violet. You've just got to meet him.”

“Bring him to my wedding,” Violet said.

“Your—oh, my God!” Clancy Jane squealed. Her voice echoed in the empty house. She began jumping up and down, and the phone cord twirled like a jump rope.

“Calm down.” Violet laughed. “It's not till next summer. You've got plenty of time to find a dress.”

“My dress! What about yours? Oh, my gosh. My baby's getting married. Remember how much fun I had planning Bitsy's wedding to Walter Saylor? Maybe you can come home—bring George, of course—and we'll pick out flowers and music and cake.”

“We've already done that.”

“Oh?”

“George and I want to have the wedding in Memphis. The reception will be at the Peabody.”

Clancy Jane began untangling the telephone cord. After a moment she said, “Are you having bridesmaids?”

“No. And I barely agreed to a wedding. But George's mother would've been disappointed.”

George's mother?
Clancy Jane winced.

“Mama, you still there?”

“Mmmhum.”

“You're not mad, are you? Please tell me you're not mad.”

“Mad? No, I wouldn't say that.” Clancy Jane lifted her chin, determined not to be annoyed. “I've never been to the Peabody. Should I rent a tuxedo for my honey?”

“Honey?”

“Well, at my age, boyfriend sounds pathetic.” Clancy Jane laughed.

“You can always call him your significant other. And no, a tux isn't required.”