Plantation (20 page)

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before her. The steam escaped all around her and the dining room was filled with the rich smells of tomatoes, onions, and seafood.

“Aren’t you gonna say a blessing, Grandmomma?” Isabelle said.

“What did you say, child?” Mother said, the lid still in midair.

“Hush!” Frances Mae said.

“I said, we need to bless the food before we eat it, don’t we?”

Isabelle said.

“Miss Lavinia’s Theater” was now officially open for business.

“I do not believe that I have just heard, with my own ears, my granddaughter correct her grandmother! Is that possible?” Mother said. Mother’s face was incredulous and she spoke in a low and even tone, similar to the one I use when preparing to throw a major tantrum. She continued to hold the lid of the tureen high.

Silence at the table again. Frances Mae blushed hard as she bit her lips to hold back her tongue. Trip cleared his throat. Even I was surprised that Mother took issue with such a small faux pas.

“Isabelle,” Trip said, “I know you did not intend to be rude, but you should never correct your elders, sweetheart.”

“We always say a blessing at home,” Frances Mae said, in a small disingenuous voice.

She defied Lavinia to take on Jesus. Mother declined.

“I see,” Mother said, her voice dripping fury. “As you are entitled to do. But I do not wish to be reprimanded by a child. Is that beyond your understanding, Frances Mae?”

“Isabelle?” Frances Mae said.

“I meant no disrespect, Grandmomma,” Isabelle said.

She spit the apology out so quickly and articulately that I knew she had done this many times. I looked at her and her face was flushed with embarrassment. Another fun dinner with Lavinia was under way. So far Amelia and I were the only ones who hadn’t taken a bullet.

“Mother? Not too much, all right?” I said.

“As you wish, dear,” she said, and passed my bowl to me.

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D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k The gumbo was thick and rich, the same recipe Millie always used. She’d start with bacon, frying it crisp, then use the grease to fry onions and bell peppers. She added tomatoes, some water, tomato paste, a little salt, and a pinch of sugar to take the acidic edge from the tomatoes. Then she’d add lots of chopped okra. Close to serving time, the shrimp, chicken, and sausage were added. The whole stew was served over fluffy, steamed white rice. It was one of those dishes I could eat until I rolled off the chair. Even though I had been something of a quasi vegetarian for years, I’d eat whatever Millie cooked, except a big steak or venison. Elsie and Bambi. No can do.

While every plate was served, we waited. No one dared lift their fork until Mother lifted hers and had taken the first bite. She looked all around the table to be sure no one had defiled this ancient reverence for her position and southern gastronomic ceremony. Satisfied, and with her dinner fork in hand, she said, “Shall we begin?”

And we did. It was mouth-wateringly delicious. Millie appeared from thin air with a sweetgrass bread basket, lined in antique linen, and moved in silence around the table offering hot biscuits. When she got to me, I could tell from the enlargement of her eyeballs that she had heard every word of our conversation and did not approve of Mother’s attitude.

“Don’t mind me, Millie,” I said, “I’m just sitting here masticat-ing.”

“Make you grow hair on your hands too,” she said and giggled.

“You bad.”

“My stars! The children!” Frances Mae said.

“It means ‘to chew,’ ” I said. What I meant was,
It means “to
chew,” idiot
.

Trip rolled his eyes and refilled his goblet with white wine. It was an inside joke. When Daddy was alive, we had “word of the day” at dinner in his relentless efforts to educate his knuckleheads.

Masticate
cracked us up. Anything naughty, no matter how remote, cracked us up, especially body parts.

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Trip cleared his throat loudly. “So, Caroline! What’s new in the big city?” He added, “Would you like some wine?”

“Yes, please,” I said, hoping it would help me relax.

He rose from his seat and poured for Mother and then for me.

“Thank you, dear,” she said. “Yes, Caroline, what’s new in the big city?”

“Y’all know what? I think there’s more going on here than in New York!”

That pleased everyone to no end, because if there was one thing my family loved to believe, it was that they lived in the true center of the universe.

“Oh, come on now,” Frances Mae said, trying to bait me,

“what about all those museums and Broadway shows and shopping?”

“The museums are incredible, true, but Broadway is about half dead from revivals and I only shop twice a year,” I said, revealing next to nothing. “Fill me in on the local gossip, Frances Mae.

How’s your family doing?”

Flattered, she said, “Well, my mommer’s fine and Diddy’s fine—he just got new plates . . .”

“Plates?” Mother said. “You mean he bought your mother some new china? How lovely!”

“No, ma’am, uppers and lowers. You know, teeth to mas-tuh-cate with?”

“Touché,” I said. “How about your brothers and their wives and children?”

“Well, they’s fine, ’cepten Johnny, who won’t be home till the fall.”

Johnny was her ne’er-do-well, sad sack of a brother who made a living working part-time at a gun shop in Goose Creek.

“Oh?” Mother said. “Is he away on business?” Clearly, Mother wasn’t paying close attention.

“No, ma’am,” Frances Mae said, whispering behind her hand so the girls wouldn’t hear, “he’s up the river.”

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D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k

“Meaning?” I said, quietly.

“He wrote a rubber check,” she whispered. “A big one. He’s so stupid. Even I know you can’t be doing that, ’specially when you paying back taxes!”

Mother and I nodded our heads as though it was perfectly normal for our family to have an in-law in the pokey.

“And, his children?” Mother asked, unsure of how to continue.

“Erline’s got her hands full with them four wild thaings.”

Frances Mae just shook her head in sympathy for her sister-in-law.

“I imagine she does,” Mother said, her voice drifting off.

I watched Trip pour more wine for himself. Who could blame him?

“Trip, if there’s anything left, I believe I’d have a splash of that,” I said. And they thought Mother was a scandal?

“Regretfully, dear sister, it seems to have disappeared. I shall uncork another right away,” Trip said in his fake English accent.

Trip was always English when he got in the bag. I used to think it was to make fun of Richard; now I recognized it as simply

“the bag.”

“So,Amelia? Isabelle? What’s going on at school? Are we making good grades?” I asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” they said together. “You are not either!” they then said in stereo, each accusing the other of lying, and then broke into a fit of giggles.

“I see,” I said, amused. “Do you still like to dance, Amelia?”

“Uh-huh,” she said, bobbing her head up and down.

“So does Isabelle! And our Caroline has just started up at dancing school at Miss Ginny’s, isn’t that right, sweetheart?” Frances Mae said.

Caroline, who had a milk mustache and tomato stains on her dress, also said, “Uh-huh.”

“You should say, ‘Yes, Aunt Caroline,’ not ‘Uh-huh!’ We love the English language in our family, don’t we, Caroline?” Mother said, trying to rescue her granddaughter from a certain plunge into a life of Frances Mae–speak.

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“Oh, yeth!” I said, mimicking a good little girl voice, “we have a love affair going on wiff it!”

This made Amelia and Isabelle laugh and diffused another one of Miss Lavinia’s zingers for Frances Mae and her children. Even Mother had to take a deep breath, knowing she was being mean.

“Oh, I know what y’all think of me,” she said, and looked around the table at the girls, who were now on the edge of control.

“Go ahead and laugh!” Mother smiled at all of us. Trip returned and refilled our glasses.

“We think you are a rare bird, Mother! A rare bird,” I said, and toasted her.

Frances Mae arched her eyebrows and raised her water goblet.

“Yes, indeedy do, Mother Wimbley, you have your own feathers!”

“Here, here!” Trip mumbled from his end of the table.

“Now, after dinner . . .” Frances Mae started to say, then shot the evil eye to Trip to slow down his alcoholic consumption.
“You
have to drive, you know
,
”
she whispered to him.

“Not!” he said, suddenly reduced by his excesses to one- and two-word replies.

He raised his glass to Mother again. I watched her smile and return the toast.

“Well, I’ll drive, then,” Frances Mae said and Trip nodded his head, “but after dinner the girls have a special show for their grandmother and aunt! Isn’t that right, girls?”

“Yes, you are quite correct, Mother dear,” Amelia said with a smug grin.

What a little smart-ass! “Having a love affair with the English language?” I said.

“Just dating,” she said, “I’m too young for an affair.”

“Amelia!” Frances Mae said.

“I think this meal is finished,” Mother said. “Let’s have dessert in the living room.”

The girls kicked back their chairs and scampered out of the room. Trip filled his glass and stood, swaying slightly, and went out 1 5 8

D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k on Frances Mae’s arm. Mother still sat in her place and turned to me as though I had a solution for their behavior.

“She makes him happy on some level, Mother,” I said.

“I cannot fathom,” she said. Then she snickered, placed her hand on mine, and said in a sober voice, “She wants my house, you know. She wants me to move to a retirement community so they can have my house.”

“Over my dead body,” I said. And I meant it.

The “show” my nieces had orchestrated required music.

Frances Mae had brought along a CD of
The Four Seasons
and put it on to play. We sat on the sofa and the chairs, and waited, surprised she had heard of Vivaldi.

Millie appeared with hot coffee, decaf of course, and a pitcher of half and half, placing them with the silver service on the butler’s field tray. The tea service was one of Daddy’s last gifts to Mother. I remembered for a moment the Christmas he gave it to her. It came in robin’s egg blue boxes wrapped with white ribbons. Tiffany’s.

Each piece stood on tiny elephant’s feet, including the oversized tray. Mother’s initials were engraved by hand on everything in an elaborate script. We all held our breath as she opened each box. I remember that I thought it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. I could see my face in the tray, its patina was so flawless.

“Look in the teapot, Lavinia,” Daddy had said.

Mother had looked first at Trip and then to me, as if to say,
What wondrous thing could be in the teapot?
She removed a pale blue velvet sack, which when opened, revealed the biggest, whitest pearls I could have imagined.

“South Sea,” he said.

Mother burst into tears from his generosity. Daddy fastened them around her neck and she wore them at dinner every day to this day.

Thinking about that, I poured for Mother and sat down again.

Unconsciously, she fingered her pearls. Trip helped himself to a cup of coffee, lacing it generously with cognac. He fell back into P l a n t a t i o n

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an armchair with a hassock and looked like he might zonk out at any time.

My three nieces waited in the hallway until Frances Mae cued them. When Frances Mae gave her signal, the three little destructo-cons came into view on their tiptoes with their arms over their heads like ballerinas. Amelia was first, followed by Isabelle and, finally, Caroline, who wore such a serious expression of concentration that it made us smile and elbow each other.

“Pretty hands, girls!” Frances Mae said. “Pretty hands! Middle finger to the thumb!”

The girls immediately checked their hands, adjusted their fingers, and began to twirl into the living room. They paused for a moment, lined up in a row. First,Amelia began to move, doing quick spot turns to the far opposite corner of the room. Next Isabelle followed her, determined to outdo her sister by spinning even faster.

Then came Hell in a Dress, at warp speed heading full throttle to disaster.
Crash! Crash! Crash!
The floor was covered in splintered Waterford crystal. Frances Mae stood horrified. Trip winced and I waited.

“Turn off the goddamn music, Frances Mae,” Trip said, quietly, finding his tongue again.

Frances Mae blanched and the stereo became silent.

“Now, Trip, don’t curse at your wife, son,” Mother said, “she’s expecting a blessed event and besides, that was from
your
share of my estate. Merely one less thing to remind you of me someday.

One less burden.”

I knew that Mother was kidding but Frances Mae did not.

“What are you saying? Are you saying that you have already divided your property between Caroline and Trip?” Frances Mae said, at a volume seldom used to speak to someone you respected.

Well, Mother had her on the hook now and as Millie appeared again and began to sweep up the pieces into her dustpan, Mother tortured Frances Mae.

“Lord, yes, child,” Mother said, “my worldly possessions have been legally designated on paper for years!”

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“You girls go wait in the car. Move it!” My nieces ran like all hell for the front door and slammed it behind them. Frances Mae turned back to Mother. “So, even though I drive you all over the place and visit you once a week and my children make cards and gifts for you, you would penalize us? What has your daughter done for you lately?” Frances Mae blurted this all out, waving her hands and gesticulating like a crazy person. The entire room, including Millie, stopped breathing. Mother just looked at her. She was completely aghast that Frances Mae had taken her seriously. Miss Lavinia possessed Mother again, and Miss Lavinia was pissed off in purple.