Plantation (27 page)

“You don’t scare me, Aunt Caroline, my momma says you’re bad. I know what I saw!”

“You go right ahead and do that, Miss Amelia, and you’ll find out all about grown-up anger.”

“I’m telling my daddy!” She started running toward the house.

“Daddy! Daddy!”

“You do that,” I said. I turned around and leaned on the railing.
Great
.
This is just great
.

Frances Mae went to bed and slept.

Before Frances Mae reappeared for dinner, Trip, Mother, and I had another chat over cocktails outside as the grill heated up.

“Do you know what my daughter told me?” he said.

“I can only imagine,” I said.

The sun was beginning to set and the sky was deep red and bright purple against the fading blue. I turned away from it to face Trip and Mother.

“Trip, surely you don’t believe for a minute that . . .” Mother said.

“Of course I don’t,” he said. “Caroline has grounds to push her, but she doesn’t have that kind of desire to endanger anyone.

After all, she’s got the soul of a vegetarian now.”

“Oh, fine, knock it off, okay? I’m glad she’s all right,” I said.

“Hell, Trip,
you
know she’s crazy.”

“Crazy is a big word, Caroline,” Trip said. “I wouldn’t say she’s crazy. Every time she’s pregnant, she acts up. I’m sorry for what she said about Eric. I know it’s not true.”

“I have a suggestion,” Mother said.

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For Mother to have a suggestion and not a solution or an order was certainly a gentler, kinder Mother than we had known.

“Tell it,” I said.

“Why don’t we just pretend that everything’s all right and be a family tonight?”

I looked at Trip; he looked at me. We both hated the pretend-thing, but the price we’d have to pay to settle all our differences with each other at this point was just too high.

Frances Mae was properly subdued at the table, Trip served up fabulous steaks, Millie brought out a huge salad and steaming baked potatoes with freshly snipped chives from her garden. Yes, I ate steak and loved it too. We drank two bottles of California special reserve cabernet sauvignon from the Stag’s Leap cellars. We watched the girls twirl and dance in the growing evening light until they were mere silhouettes against the trees and water.

None of us had the desire to fight or compromise. Frances Mae’s fall had jarred us into a reprieve. So we pretended things were all right to get through the night. The truth would reveal itself in its own time.

M i s s L av i n i a ’s J o u r na l
Dear Nevil, Dear Diary, Dear Caroline, and Dear God, this
is sounding like a letter; isn’t it? Well, it’s just that I don’t
know if anybody listens or if anyone will take the time to
read this. If anyone does, it will be Caroline. So, girl of mine?

What a show! Old Frances Mae went for a swim.You
should’ve drowned her, except for the fact that she’s carrying
my boy’s baby.That’s exactly how I feel. If there’s one thing
that I despise, it’s vulgarity. It’s not your fault, Caroline. Oh,
I don’t feel so well tonight. I could hardly swallow my dinner.

I’m a little dizzy too.Well, maybe a good night’s sleep will
pick me up.Tomorrow, we’ll go to church together and I think
this time I’ll say a prayer or two. It can’t hurt and, who
knows, it might help.

Twenty

Should Be Getting Better, but It

Keeps Getting Worse

}

UNDAY morning, as I dressed for church, I was feeling all out of sorts. All at once, going back to New York Smeant living in confinement. I had never looked at New York that way. It also meant, and this was the larger issue, that although I had Richard, good friends, and even some clients who cared about me in New York, they weren’t from my blood. No one I knew in New York gave a moment’s regard to my soul. For the first time in many years, I thought about my own longings. Millie, Trip, and Mother. All of them confided in me, needed me, and cared about how I felt—not just on the surface, but deep inside.

I knew also, and I would never admit this, that I lavished Eric with nearly all my focus and ever since Richard went to London with Lois something in me was suspicious of him. I was trying to figure out why I guarded my heart with him and thought that maybe, it was because he was always judging me. I was always coming up short, somehow. In all the years we had been together, he 2 1 4

D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k could never specify what it was that I wasn’t enough of to thrill him. Instinctively, I knew there was an underlying current of general dissatisfaction. Frankly, I didn’t have the desire to know either.

What did that say about my marriage? That it had run its course?

Mother came in the room with a glass of juice for me.

“Well, Caroline, you must say that you got your money’s worth out of your plane ticket.” She leaned against the dresser, smiling victorious.

“You could sure say that.” I stopped folding and packing and took the glass, draining it in one long gulp. “Thanks. I needed something to drink. You look nice.” I put the glass down on the end table. Mother was wearing a pale blue wool crepe suit with matching pumps. She smelled like gardenias.

“Don’t do that. You’ll make a ring.”

“Sorry,” I said, and quickly put a tissue under it even though it was dry as a bone.
Once a mother, always a mother,
ran through my brain. In the next moment, a swell of emotions filled me and I felt myself choking up. “Mother?” She was looking at pictures of all of us that decorated the dresser in little silver frames.

“Hmm?”

“I don’t know, I just . . .” I couldn’t help it. I started to cry.

“Caroline! What is it? What’s the matter? Come here, child!”

She came and put her arm around me! I was so surprised by that, I wept and wept. We sat on the end of my bed. “Whatever has happened?”

“Nothing! Everything!”

I cried the tears of a thousand years of holding back, of denial, of feeling unloved, out of place, out of sync, of things I couldn’t identify. I stretched out across the bed and she rubbed my back until finally I got a hold of myself. The next thing I knew, Millie was in the bedroom doorway.

“You been gone too long, girl, that’s what’s the matter with you,” Millie said.

“Yeah,” I said, “you know, we might be a screwed-up family, P l a n t a t i o n

2 1 5

but we are still a family. And I do love y’all. Except Frances Mae.

Mother, am I required to love Frances Mae?”

Unknown to me, Mother had cried silently with me. I hadn’t seen her eyes wet since my father died. But my question made her smile and even laugh a little. “No, Caroline, you don’t have to love Frances Mae and neither do I. She is—what is it the young people say? Ah, yes, pond scum!”

“Mother! Pond scum? Oh, my God!”

“Now, let’s dry our eyes and go to church and pray for forgiveness for the wretched things we say about her.” She stood up, took the tissue box from the dresser, and offered it to me.

I took one, wiped my eyes, another to blow my nose, and almost laughed. “Mother? This is all highly unusual, you know. I know how you feel about church and religion.”

“Wait till you lay eyes on the reverend!” Millie said. “I hear tell he looks like one of them fellows on
Baywatch!
”

I turned to Mother, who was reapplying her lipstick, gauging the depth of her lascivious grin.

“He’s hot, all right. Who knows? Perhaps I’ll find religion.”

“That’s how we know she’s old,” Millie said in a whisper to me, “getting worried about Judgment Day.”

“What’s that, you old fool?” Mother said.

“She said you want to take him down to the river for a baptism,” I said, giggling.

“All right, you two. That’s sufficient! What time is your plane, Caroline?”

“Six this afternoon,” I said.

“Well, wonderful! Perhaps we can squeeze in a round of clays after all!” She stopped and looked at me. “Brush your hair, darling.

You look frightful! I’ll be downstairs waiting for you.”

When she left the room, Millie turned to me and said in a whisper, “I think this one’s over fifty.”

“Well, thank God for that.”

In my opinion, the reverend in question was no more than a 2 1 6

D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k peacock. Every widow in the congregation had shortened her skirts for him. I sat in the back row with Mother, Miss Sweetie, and Miss Nancy, listening to and watching them remark in gestures and giggles about his various attributes. His sermon about sins of the flesh couldn’t have been any more useless than it was on those three. No, they clucked like schoolgirls and preened like bathing beauties. After church, in the yard, I was introduced to him by Miss Sweetie, who dragged me to his side.

“Reverend Moore? I’d like to introduce you to Caroline Wimbley, Lavinia’s daughter from New York City!”

I reached out to shake his hand. “Levine,” I said. “It’s nice to meet you, Reverend. Great sermon.”

“Thanks. Please call me Charles. Did you say Levine?” he said, raising his chin to look down at me. “I’ll bet there’s a story there!”

He smiled at me and I glared at him. Just what in the hell did that mean? Stupid ass.

“I’m sorry, that didn’t come out right. I meant that you were living in New York! It must be wonderful and filled with exciting adventures.”

In his defense, he flushed a deep scarlet with embarrassment at sounding anti-Semitic. Suddenly, Mother was at my side.

“Won’t you join us for brunch, Reverend?” Mother said.

“Oh, I would love to, Miss Lavinia, but I’m afraid I’m already committed. Another time. How long are you staying, Caroline?”

There was no mistaking the look in his eyes. Boy, was he bark-ing up the wrong tree.

“I’m leaving this afternoon,” I said, adding, “Charles.”

“And you’ll be back soon, I hope?” he asked, much in the same tone the Big Bad Wolf would have used on Red Riding Hood.

“Yes,” I said, hurling him the practiced New Yorker eye that said,
You must be kidding yourself!

“Come along, Caroline! We’ve taken enough of his time.

Another time, Charles—we’ll call in advance.”

We said our good-byes and all the way home Mother went on P l a n t a t i o n

2 1 7

and on about the reverend’s obvious attraction to me. She didn’t like it one little bit.

“He liked you, Caroline. Did you see the way he stared at you?”

“He’s too old for me, Mother—and too young for you! Plus, he’s an ass! Plus, I’m married!”

“I know, but I’ll bet he’s hot in the sack!”

“Jesus! I’ll bet they ran him out of his last church for chasing skirts!”

When we got home, Trip’s car was there.

“How was church?” he asked as we pulled up to the front of the house in my rental car.

“I’m never stepping foot in there again!” Mother announced as she hopped out to offer her cheek to Trip for a kiss.

“Why not?” he said.

I slammed the door and came around to join them, laughing to myself.

“Because that minister’s a philandering pedophile!” Mother said as she flounced up the steps and into the house.

Trip stared at me for a translation.

“Flirted with me, not her,” I said, deadpan.

“Ah!” he said and burst out in a great laugh.

We stood out there guffawing and punching each other for a few minutes until Mother reappeared.

“There’s not one damn thing funny about it either!” she said from the front door. “Come on in and let’s have Bloody Marys and omelets! Caroline has to leave by four!”

Her announcement caused another round of laughter. Finally, Mother laughed too.

“He’s a skunk,” she said, “now, for the love of God, Trip, mix the drinks!”

He limited the vodka to a mere dash across the top of the glass.

I took mine into the kitchen to help Millie.

“Mother says we have to shake a leg, so I came to help you.”

2 1 8

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

“Your mother’s always saying something. If she doesn’t like the way I’m doing things, she can cook it herself! Now, how about that minister?”

“Major loser,” I said.

“Go set the table, girl, and I’ll have this out in two shakes.”

I set the table with Mother’s Herend china, the Victoria pat -

tern, my favorite. We ate our meal in a hurry because we all wanted to get outside. During lunch, Mother and I inquired about Frances Mae.

“She okay?” I said.

“Yeah, seems so,” Trip said.

“Good,” Mother said.

I didn’t say we belabored the issue of Frances Mae’s welfare, I said we
inquired
.

Millie was in the kitchen when I brought in the plates and silver.

“Great brunch, Millie. Thanks. Trip says Frances Mae’s okay.

What do you think?”

“You’re welcome. That all depends,” she said, giving me a look that spelled out the arbitrary nature of Frances Mae.

“On what?”

“Yesterday, I made her some comfrey tea. That should have calmed her down. But that woman got it in her mind that you try and hurt her and that’s all.” Millie stood with her arms crossed across her waist, shaking her head. “She has a sickness of the spirit, Caroline, something like evil. They say the devil protects his own, but he sure enough let her fall in the water.”

“Millie, I don’t want to take the blame if she has early labor. I did not try to hurt her. She backed away from me when I went to her to try and find a solution to our troubles with each other. She tripped over the bucket and fell. Here, look what she did to my arm. God, Millie, you know me! I would never do anything like that!”

Millie examined the scratches on my arm and sucked her teeth.

“Caroline? You got trouble, yanh?”

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“Millie! I didn’t—”

“No, chile, that ain’t the trouble. The trouble is you don’t know where you belong. Nobody yanh knows your boy. People love bad talk. They love to say something bad about you when you seem so lucky.”