Plantation (32 page)

Well, Miss Sweetie, Miss Nancy, and I exchanged looks of panic. Mother sounded like Rosalind Russell in a live audition for
Auntie Mame
. I didn’t know if she meant to resurrect that old pontoon boat and start her river parades again or if she meant to teach him to drink bourbon and shoot trap! At least she had shown up looking normal, wearing a blue cotton sweater set and navy trousers.

I thanked the heavens that she had not shown up in one of her costumes. That was unfair of me to think that. In fact, she hadn’t done anything like that in years.

She apparently wanted Eric to see her as normal, warm, and grandmotherly, of which I hoped she was capable should the occasion arise. I turned back to our welcome committee, the two well-wishing mother hens and Mr. Jenkins.

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“Welcome home, Miss Caroline,” Mr. Jenkins said, extending his hand, which I took and shook soundly.

“Thanks, Mr. Jenkins, thanks a lot.” I looked around at Miss Sweetie and Miss Nancy, who stood by, waiting for me. “Let’s go get the bags. Well, y’all were right. We have about twenty suitcases!”

Jenkins loaded most of our things in the back of the van and Eric helped. Mother watched Eric laughing with Mr. Jenkins over the strategy of packing the van. Jenkins pretended not to know what to do, scratching his head. Eric began giving instructions like a diplomatic drill sergeant. Mother turned to me, saying, “Caroline?

The time has come to start concentrating on that boy’s gifts! I can tell you in one look that he’s a brilliant child!”

“Mother, you are so right!” For once, we were in perfect agreement.

In minutes, the convoy to Tall Pines Plantation was under way. I rode with Miss Nancy in her BMW, Mother rode with Miss Sweetie, and Eric rode with Mr. Jenkins.

“Caroline?” Miss Nancy said, backing out of her parking space. “Your mother is so happy that you came to her, you can’t imagine. Do you want some music?”

That remark revealed that Mother had told her friends that I was leaving Richard. Who was I kidding? With all this luggage?

Hell, most of the world probably knew. Gossip traveled the Lowcountry at the speed of light.

“Life is weird, Miss Nancy.”

“You can say that again,” she said. “I always say, if you can live long enough, you’ll see just about everything.”

I wanted to say,
You don’t know the half of it,
but I opened the console to look for tapes instead.

“Sorry, hon, my music’s in the CD changer in the trunk. Just mash that button and then the next one and you can cruise through

’em.”

Mash it!
That was the first time I’d heard that term in eons! The next thing I knew, Shania Twain was singing “I Feel Like a 2 5 4

D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k Woman!” and we were tearing down Highway 17 south, blasting by Mother’s and Mr. Jenkins’s cars, waving and laughing our heads off.

She must’ve been doing nearly one hundred miles an hour. My heart was in my throat. When Miss Nancy was sure she had them far behind her in the distance, she slowed down to around sixty-five.

“You don’t know Lavinia like I do,” she said. “That old biddy will read our lips and we won’t have a moment’s privacy! So tell me, you all right?”

I had no doubt that she was right, but she didn’t have to scare the hell out of me to make her point. “I’m fine, Miss Nancy, I
swear,
we’re both fine.” What was I supposed to say?

“Okay, enough said. If you need anything I expect to hear from you, okay?”

“I need a little time to get organized, that’s all. I guess for the time being, we’ll be staying with Mother. But eventually, I’ll have to find a place for us. I think we would enjoy living in downtown Charleston, or maybe over on Sullivan’s Island. What do you think?”

“Real estate prices are through the roof ! Wait till you see! But I have a niece who’s a broker. I’ll give her a call over the weekend.

If there’s anything decent on the market, she’ll know about it.”

“That’d be great. Meanwhile, I’ve got a lot to do to get Eric situated.”

“School?”

“Nope, I’m gonna homeschool him. I’m really looking forward to it.”

She dropped her head to one side and got quiet.

“No good?” I said.

“Caroline, I’d be the last person on the planet to advise someone on raising their children, especially considering how mine turned out.” That made me giggle. Her son was a forest ranger living in Colorado, alone in the woods, writing a book on the secret life of screech owls. Her daughters, both of them, lived in a com-mune in Vermont and had multitudes of children, with different P l a n t a t i o n

2 5 5

partners, without the time-honored tradition of a marital ceremony.

Growing up, I remembered their escapades were bizarre. “But, it occurs to me that it might put extra stress on your relationship with your boy. I stressed my kids to death and it didn’t pay. They all took after Houston, my dearly departed husband. There wasn’t a thing I could do to change them.”

“I don’t want to change Eric, but I don’t want to stress him out either. I’ll have to give that some thought. Tell me something, Miss Nancy. What’s your opinion of Mother? Trip seems to think she is having trouble keeping things going.”

“He’s as crazy as hell too, yanh?
Excusay moi,
but they could both be a lot nicer to Lavinia, if you ask me.”

“I’m asking.”

“You stick around awhile and you’ll see. It’s not all that subtle.”

“Well, last weekend she seemed fine to me.”

“She is. Don’t you worry about Lavinia. She’s got better beans than Boston!”

I smiled and sat back and listened to the sounds of her car’s engine as we roared down the highway. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a state trooper appeared at our side, indicating we should pull over to the shoulder of the road.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Miss Nancy said, “I hate this! They always pick on me because I’m a senior citizen!”

I thought to myself, yeah, a senior citizen with a lead foot
mashing
the hell out of the gas pedal! She rolled down her window and started fishing around in her wallet for her driver’s license.

“Afternoon, ma’am,” the trooper said, and took off his aviator glasses. I recognized him! Who was he? I had gone to school with him!

“Don’t I know you?” I said.

He looked at me and some major pheromones passed between us. This man had the greenest eyes and the most beautiful smile I had ever seen.

2 5 6

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

“No, ma’am, I’d remember you if I did.”

“Where’d you go to school?” I said, more convinced than ever that I knew him.

He pulled off his helmet and I took off my sunglasses.

“Caroline? Caroline Wimbley?”

“Yes! Matthew? Matthew Strickland?”

“My God! I thought you had run off to New York City and you were never coming back!”

Miss Nancy was visibly relieved and allowed us to continue our reunion, hoping it would save her points on her license and a big fat fine.

“Matthew, can I have a word with you?”

“You surely can! I’ll be goll-derned.”

He even came around and opened my door, just as he had when we dated each other in the Dark Ages of high school. I got out of the car and stood next to him, brazenly appraising what the years had wrought. We had burned it up together, dancing at the Merchant Seamen’s Club in the wee hours of the hottest summer on record. He was still one of the finest specimens of male composition ever to walk the woods. It had troubled me that he never wanted to go to college. It had troubled him that I
did
want to go to college. Ambition broke us up, and serendipity had brought us back together—for the moment. What in hell was I thinking?

Naughty, naughty. That’s what.

“Matthew? How’s your family?” I checked out his left hand.

Naked.

“Sheila left me five years ago. All my kids are grown and gone.”

“That’s just
awful,
” I said, as insincerely as I could.

The wind was blowing his hair back from his face. He squinted and I could see he had tiny lines around his eyes. They did not detract. I imagined that unlike Richard he did not have one ounce of flab on him. The guy was a brick.

“How’s that sumbitch you married,” he said, “that head doctor?”

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“Frankly, Matthew, I’ve left the sumbitch. I’m going to be staying at Mother’s with my boy, Eric.”

“Is that a fact now?” He looked at the ground and then back at me.

This was no time to be coy. “That’s a fact. We’d love to have you stop by.”

“Yeah, Gawd, I always heard your husband was a few bricks shy of a load.”

“That’s one way to put it.”

He put his helmet back on, opened the car door for me, and as he closed it he put on his sunglasses. “I’ll come by some evening, Caroline. It would be fun to catch up. Y’all have a nice day!”

I looked at Miss Nancy. “I used to date him.”

“I gathered as much,” she said.

In the time it took to drive halfway to Tall Pines, I had ripped off and wadded up my mourning clothes, thrown off the mantle of sorrow, and flirted my guts out with a state trooper. Nice work!

Down south when we ran short of men, we recycled.

M i s s L av i n i a ’s J o u r na l
When Sweetie and I got in the car, we carried on like girls.

I think the old gal was almost as excited as I was to see Eric
and Caroline, but Sweetie’s always been a gusher. I pride
myself on restraint. But, Lord! Eric has grown so! What a
beautiful boy and what a vocabulary! Nevil would’ve eaten
him up! God, her disaster has brought me such happiness!

Did I say that right?

Twenty-five

On My Shield

}

Y daddy always said that when soldiers went to war, they came home either carrying their shield Mor on their shield. I guessed I was on mine, and feeling pretty darn defeated. In everyone else’s favor, they didn’t hold it against me.

Millie came out to greet us when we arrived and hugged me until I thought she’d crack my ribs. When she hugged Eric she began to cry.

“Come on, Millie,” I said, “I can’t take it if you crash!”

“I been saving these tears for a long time, Miss Caroline, and they got to flow now. Can’t hold them back no more!”

“Get a hold on yourself, you old fool,” Mother said, hurry-ing by her, “we need to get dinner on the table! My grandson is starving!”

Millie dried her eyes and started laughing. She released Eric to 2 6 0

D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k Mother’s outstretched arms. As they walked away, Millie said to me, “She is one cantankerous old bird, you yanh me?”

I nodded and said, “Come on, I’ll help you.” I linked my arm through hers and we walked into the house together.

Dinner was filled with small talk and anything but questions about what had actually happened between Richard and me.
Y’all
have a good trip? Cold in New York? Isn’t it a beautiful day?
In one way, that was a relief and in another, it was waiting for the inevitable.

Millie called everyone to the table at noon and we all assembled in the dining room—me, Eric, Miss Sweetie, Miss Nancy, Mother, and, at the last moment, Trip arrived.

The buffet was arranged with Mother’s old Sheffield covered dishes filled with a sausage and shredded chicken dish in one, steamed rice in another, and fresh corn and tomatoes in a third.

They were practical as well as beautiful, each one having a well in the bottom to hold hot water, designed to keep the food warm throughout the meal. I hadn’t seen them in years.

“Oh, Mother! I remember these casserole dishes!” I put my plate at my place and helped myself to a biscuit.

“I’m not sure I’d refer to them as
casseroles,
Caroline! They are hardly Pyrex!” But that remark lacked its customary sting, as Mother was honestly teasing me.

“They are
ex-quis-eete,
Lavinia!” Miss Nancy said.

“Lavinia? Aren’t they the ones given to your mother by Senator Sanders and his wife when she married your father?”

Miss Sweetie said.

Senator Sanders’s family had saved their plantation, Beech Hill, from Sherman’s torches by calling out,
“If you burn the house, you
burn me!”
Unlike the live oaks of Tall Pines, it had an avenue of palmettos. The Sanders family had quite a history, but they had not given Mother that silver. Daddy had bought it in New York for Mother when they celebrated her fortieth birthday with a vacation there. I remembered the day she unpacked them and I played with all the pieces like a puzzle, fascinated by their detail.

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“Why, yes, I believe you’re right, dear!” Mother said.

Trip shot me a glance—a straight face with arched eyebrow.

I giggled. Mother never passed up any opportunity to distinguish her reputation—honestly or otherwise. We all served our plates and found our places, Trip giving Eric the first of many lessons on protocol.

“Come on, boy,” Trip said, “help your uncle seat the ladies!”

“Sure!” Eric said and followed Trip’s lead until we were all seated.

This caused the eruption of many little remarks on how Eric had grown and my, my, what a little gentleman, and aren’t you proud of him, Caroline? Yes, yes, I said, I certainly was. Eric grinned with the realization that this wasn’t Kansas at all, while we all waited for the Great and Terrible Oz to lift her fork.

“This smells so good, Mother!” I said, famished from our trip.

“Good, darling!” She slowly unfolded her napkin and draped it across her lap, smiling at everyone, knowing they waited. Then, in a dramatic sigh, she finally picked up her fork and took a small bite.

“I made it this morning!” Miss Nancy said.

Eric looked at me. “What is this stuff ?” he whispered.

“Young man, it’s the food of the gods! Chicken Pilau and fresh vegetables! Try it!” Trip said.

Eric wasn’t a picky eater, he was a plain eater. We were always watching our weight, so he wasn’t accustomed to sauces, spices, and gravies. Chicken Pilau had a reputation in our kitchen for as long as I had lived. Every time anyone passed the stove, they sprinkled more pepper in the pot.