Plantation (3 page)

I thought it was my mission to open Mother’s eyes to Trip’s intentions. To make her see that she needed to take it down a notch or two. Surprise, surprise. I was the one, not Mother, who was about to have her eyes opened. It was
my
cage that would be rattled until the fillings in my teeth vibrated. It was
my
complete sense of who I thought I was that would be wrung out to dry. Most importantly, I was to discover who we all truly were.

Over the years, as much as I would vehemently deny my passion for the ACE Basin of South Carolina, its pull on me was an all-powerful force. The ACE is Eden. It’s where the Ashepoo, Comba-hee, and Edisto Rivers join at St. Helena’s Sound. The ACE is home to more species of birds, fish, flowers, and shrubs than you could name. Every inch of it wiggles in song; its beauty is stupefying.

No, once the ACE has you under its spell, you are hers for life.

You could turn me around, blindfolded, in the handbag department of Bergdorf Goodman on Fifth Avenue and I could point my finger to the Edisto River the same way a compass needle always points north. I was nothing more than an extension of her waters.

A displaced tributary.

So tonight we were all here in the Bagnal Funeral Home in Walterboro with Mother’s body. There must have been three hundred people who came and went over the hours that I sat with Trip, Frances Mae, Millie, and Mother’s closest friends.

People told stories of Mother’s crazy theme parties that celebrated Cleopatra’s birthday or some little-known Aztec holiday.

There was the time she dressed herself as a goddess and floated down the Edisto on our pontoon—decorated with billowing white bunting—to celebrate
The Birth of Venus
. Trip and I were 6

D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k youngsters at the time and humiliated beyond words. I hated her then.

After Daddy died, Trip and I were parceled off to boarding schools; then came the parade of her lovers. She was quiet about her relationships at first, but once she was comfortable with her new way of living, the tempo quickened and the fireworks began.

It was then Mother discovered Rod McKuen poetry and found her G-spot in an article in
Cosmopolitan
magazine. There was no stopping her. Back then I despised her flamboyance with every part of me.

Lately, I had completely changed my mind. If Mother was shockingly indiscreet, so what? Everyone adored her. You had to admit that she enjoyed her liberation. She was Miss Lavinia, the ACE Basin version of Auntie Mame. What a gal!

I looked among the crowd for Rev. Charles Moore and spotted him talking to Richard. At least she’d had the good judgment not to sleep with the minister, even though he probably would have gladly hopped in the sack with her. Endowment campaigns did strange things to people. Well, I thought, maybe she’s left him something in her will. God knows, he lobbied hard enough for a bequest.

So many people came for Mother, to offer their love and sympathy. It was remarkable. But even though they were all courtesy and protocol on the outside, I knew there was a strong undercur-rent. The unspoken gossip was nearly tangible—the wanting to know, Who would inherit the plantation? What of her renowned fortunes? How much was there? Would Frances Mae be the new queen of Tall Pines? Would I, the errant daughter who’d married that odious Brit, a Jewish man, and a
shrink,
come to my senses and renounce him? It was a
situation
I was sure was driving the Lowcountry gentry nearly mad from not knowing.

Situations
were what my family called times of indecisiveness and trouble that led to sullied reputations.
Situations
were best dealt with quickly and as quietly as possible. Between Mother’s legendary P l a n t a t i o n

7

soirees and love affairs, Frances Mae’s greed, and my reappearance on the scene, we had enough jaws working overtime to keep the ears of Charleston, Colleton, and Dorchester Counties burning indefinitely.

All the while I shook hands and thanked people for coming, I fantasized that even there, in the funeral home, money was changing hands. Bets were being placed. Until the rumors became facts, gallons of mint juleps would be consumed all over the Lowcountry. The practiced and polished sweet tongues of prediction would wag! The social wizards would convene and foretell our future from imagined signs, fabricated reports, and supposed hints from someone inside the bosom of the Wimbley family.

Well, it wouldn’t be me. I had come home to
see about Mother
and I had every intention of executing a dignified farewell for her.

So did Trip. In Mother’s memory, he and Frances Mae were hosting a fabulous reception—with Millie’s oversight—to take place when we left the funeral home. They had truly pushed all the buttons they could find to make it something people would remember. And they would.

“Let us pray,” Reverend Moore said.

People became quiet and stood by respectfully. Trip and I had discussed this prayer service with the minister beforehand. All of us were grateful that Reverend Moore had agreed to stick to the standards and not to make a fuss about Mother’s character. Her obituary in the
Post and Courier
had caused us some very unnecessary embarrassment. I suppose that there are some people who read them for entertainment—certainly the journalist who wrote Mother’s needed to be reassigned to the Used Automobile pages.

At the same moment we bowed our heads in prayer with Reverend Moore, one hundred tuxedoed waiters from Atlanta were over on Lynnwood Drive, popping corks from cases of Veuve Cliquot and arranging seafood and sushi on a sprawling bed of crushed ice. Silver platters were being filled with delicious finger food and a fifteen-piece band with a horn section was going 8

D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k through a sound check. There would be a tasting bar for Mother’s favorite bourbons and many pounds of Sonny’s barbecue would be hot and waiting in silver buffet dishes to be dolloped on tiny hamburger buns. In my head I could see the hustle and bustle of preparations. Trip and Frances Mae had absolutely done everything they could to give Miss Lavinia the send-off of the century. For once, I didn’t have anything ugly to say about Frances Mae.

Millie and I had planned a more toned-down and traditional reception for tomorrow afternoon, after we spread Mother’s ashes.

But it too would be lovely. All these plans were spelled out in Miss Lavinia’s final wishes. We had done our best to comply.

The prayer service ended and people began milling around again, offering condolences to us. Many of them were misty; Mother’s best friends had wept openly, holding on to each other.

They broke my heart all over again. I had known them all my life and to see them so upset was just awful.

I got up and walked over to Mother’s casket. I was out of tears for the moment. Besides, Mother would have wanted me to keep my wits about me at her wake.

Reconciling finding Mother’s heart and then losing her so quickly was going to be my ultimate challenge. I prayed she would haunt me forever. Just because she was dead, she had no right to desert me.

I looked down at her in her casket and thought about how peaceful she looked. I was going to need her grit and wisdom to survive, every ounce of it. I wasn’t even one-third the woman she was in her weakest moment. I had been a coward for far too long, hiding my emotions behind my Manhattan wardrobe of all black. I brushed back a lock of her hair, thinking how I loved her so desperately and how many years I had wasted mired in anger and resentment. Trip appeared at my side.

“You okay, Caroline?” His eyes were moist.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Lavinia would have loved this, don’t you think?”

P l a n t a t i o n

9

“Definitely,” he said. “She got enough flowers for a senator!”

It was true. The room overflowed with baskets of gorgeous arrangements. Trip and I had ordered two enormous sprays and a blanket of roses for her. The fragrance of the room was head-spinning. Trip looked shaken, so I gave the old boy a hug, and I could almost see Miss Lavinia smiling. He returned the embrace with an honesty I hadn’t felt from him since we were children. I guessed he needed me.

Mother may have slipped through my fingers, but not without leaving a sweet residue. She had given me back my love of life, complete with permission and directions on how to live it. I had wasted no time in starting. Across the room, two of my most recent diversions were chatting away like old fraternity brothers. It gave me the giggles because Josh, the old Kama Sutra scholar with dreadlocks down to his waist—the one who could make you twitch in places you didn’t even know had nerve endings—stood out in complete contrast to Jack, my doctor friend in the cashmere sport coat.

Jack had the most beautiful hands I had ever seen on a man.

Then, over there, was Matthew . . . oh dear, in spite of these
grave
circumstances, I had to admit that my recent liaisons had more than a passing resemblance to Mother’s.

I moved through the crowd to the windows and spotted my son, Eric, outside happily playing kick the pinecone with an energetic gang of children. He had never been so happy as he had been here, smack in the middle of the most turmoil I’d ever endured. He was free of stress and filled with alpha energy, truly happy just to be alive and a kid. It was obvious that the ACE was the medicine he needed.

Maybe it was what I needed too. For all those years I told myself there was no life for me here. That I was a city slicker and didn’t need them. That I was streetwise. That I had my own family now and I’d evolved to a woman of few emotional needs.

Sure. When Mother came along, needing me for the first time, that theory exploded with all the insignificant fanfare of the care-less dropping of a thin-shelled egg.

1 0

D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k Humph, I thought, looking around; for the first time in my life, I had more men in the room than old Miss Lavinia. It seemed that I had a little
situation
of my own. Never be like her? I raised my hand to my throat, twisted her South Sea pearls around my finger, and let loose the longest sigh in respiratory history. Sonuvadamn-dog, it was in the DNA.

M i s s L av i n i a ’s J o u r na l
I don’t think I need anyone to tell me that my children are a
big, fat pain in my neck. No, I don’t. On one hand, I’ve got
my boy,Trip, as lazy as the day is long. Sent him to law
school, helped him build a practice, and, Lord, every time I
look out my window, he’s putting his boat in the water.

Doesn’t he ever work? No! Does he call me? No! And,
if he comes in the house it’s always for a cold beer! And my
girl, Caroline? Well, I’m sorry to say that she’s all but become
a Jezebel! Sleeping with her professor! And studying for a
master’s degree in
business
! Lord! Where did I go wrong? I
just don’t know, truly, I don’t.

One

Richard

}

1984

HEN I was twenty-three, I thought I was pretty hot stuff. I enrolled at Columbia University in New W York, much to the chagrin of Mother and everybody else I knew.
Why the hell do you want to live in that horrible
place? Why can’t you get your master’s at Carolina? If you want an
MBA, go to Harvard! New York City is no place for a girl like you! What
do you want a master’s for anyway? You’re just gonna get married and the
whole thing will be a waste of your money!

I was highly tempted to reply that the reason I was moving to New York was to get away from people like them! But the nice southern girl in me couldn’t bring myself to do it. We tried to keep our sass to a minimum. A hopeless endeavor.

Actually, I think the reason I
did
choose Columbia was simply for the experience of living in a major city and I knew the great financial minds were in New York. I had toyed with the idea of P l a n t a t i o n

1 3

becoming an investment banker and a true power broker. But that wasn’t what Life’s Great Plan had in store for me.

I had signed up for a psychology course as an elective, joking to myself that maybe I’d finally figure out my family if I could understand the machinations of the human psyche. In particular, I wanted to understand why I was so driven to leave South Carolina and why my family was so compelled to stay.

One hundred and seventy-five students were gathered in a small auditorium for class. The first day, lost and frazzled, I arrived a few minutes late. The professor, Richard Levine, was already lecturing. The hall was dead silent when I pushed the door open.

He stopped talking and looked at me. So did everyone else. I was mortified.

“Nice of you to join us, Miss . . .?”

“Wimbley,” I said in a low voice, hoping he’d forget my name as soon as he heard it. He had an English accent and he was gorgeous. He looked a bit like Steve Martin and sounded like a diplomat. I wondered if he was married. From where I sat in the top row, I couldn’t see a ring.

“Class begins at eight, Miss Wimbley, not”—he stopped and looked at his watch—“not at eight-fifteen.”

He was smirking at me! It was obvious he knew I thought he was attractive. I could tell by the smirk.

“Yes, thank you. Sorry, sir.” I tried to hide my fascination with his face.

“Whittaker? Kindly pass this to Miss Wimbley.” He handed a sheet of paper to a fellow down front and it was passed back to me.

I must’ve looked confused because he spoke to me again. “It’s a syllabus, Miss Wimbley, not a summons for jury duty.”

The class laughed. My neck got hot. Great, I thought, this guy is gonna think I’m a dope. I cleared my throat to mark my annoyance. Jokes at the expense of others were not funny to me. I suppose I was overly sensitive. How about I was just embarrassed?

1 4

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

“As the great Freud said, ‘What
does
a woman want?’ ” he said.

Every male in the class guffawed and elbowed each other, agreeing with the professor. He was clearly pleased with himself. I knew that unless I wanted to be taken lightly, I’d better come up with a retort. I raised my hand.