Plantation (35 page)

D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k of fear you cannot imagine that they would come across something the dogs had missed. No, they could not play outside. There would be so many sweeps of the fields until we were satisfied—Jenkins, Millie, and I. So life stopped when Nevil died. At least until we could reconcile ourselves that we had done all we could.

So, forgive me. I was a little preoccupied with the search to locate my husband’s limbs to give the proper attention to Caroline and Trip. Call me a terrible mother, but I do not have in my possession a manual that tells one how to conduct oneself when something like this happens. But I did have Millie and Jenkins, and my friends saw to the children—Sweetie and Nancy, always there.

Nancy took Trip to Charleston for a day of visiting churches and talked to him over lunch about how he thought the funeral should be arranged. She was such a dear to do this. Nancy was so modern and up on things like child psychology.

And Sweetie took Caroline to Columbia to the Happy Book-seller to buy her summer reading. Caroline and Sweetie liked nothing better than a good book, except to have a stack of them, unread and waiting. Sweetie told me she bought Caroline her first iced coffee, which Caroline drank to the last drop. She made Caroline feel grown-up. Then she took her shopping for lingerie and nightgowns at Belk’s. I suppose it was time for Caroline to wear underwear that matched. Leave it to Sweetie to make that decision! It was the furthest thing from my mind, I swear.

Having them out of my hair gave me the chance to, pardon the expression, put all the pieces together for my husband’s funeral.

Jenkins and I chose a casket from wood samples brought over from Bagnal Funeral Home in Walterboro. I simply could not bring myself to make the trip. It would be solid mahogany with brass handles. The coroner delivered Nevil’s remains to them and a time was set aside two days later to bury Nevil in the family graveyard at Tall Pines.

First, there would be a small reception in our family’s tiny chapel. Nevil’s casket would be there on a platform draped in the P l a n t a t i o n

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whitest linens, covered with a blanket of flowers interwoven with flowers from my garden. Two huge sprays had been ordered for either end of it and the family’s silver candelabra would be lit.

Then, at three o’clock, a graveside prayer service led by the Episco-palian minister from Walterboro, where Helena Blanchard from Charleston would sing “Ave Maria” and some other spirituals that were Nevil’s favorites. A grand reception would follow at the house, with the chamber ensemble from the Charleston Symphony. I was determined to send my Nevil to Glory in style. The children and everyone else would see how much I loved Nevil by the funeral I had planned. I truly hoped they would.

Millie was my well of strength. She helped with all the details, making hundreds of phone calls and taking at least that many messages. The morning after Nevil died, I found her in the kitchen, her command central, on the phone when I went downstairs for some toast.

“I managed to find five cases of Dom Perignon in the storage room at the Hibernian Society in Charleston through Mr. Moultrie,”

she said.

“What year?” I said, because if it wasn’t a vintage year, we simply wouldn’t pour it.

“Miss L?”

She looked at me with those eyes of hers, the black light through slits that said
We are damn lucky to find it at all!

“Oh, all right. Tell them to deliver this afternoon,” I said. “Did the Colony House call back?”

The Colony House in Charleston was one of our favorite restaurants. When Ray Smiley, the owner, found out about Nevil’s accident, he called immediately to offer to bring all the food and waiters. I accepted his gracious favor and asked him to have the chef call me regarding the menu. When the fellow called the first time, I was appalled by his proposal. He must have thought he was Craig Claiborne or somebody with all the foie gras and Gougette and pike mousse he proposed. No, no! He had probably taken a 2 8 0

D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k summer course in Paris. God only knows. His name was Ashley.

Any man named after a river could probably cook fish and simple things, I figured, so I said, “Ashley, darlin’? You are so, so sweet to plan something so grand for my Nevil, but I am afraid I was thinking of something less complicated, like little pieces of goose liver and apple on toothpicks and some hot cheese puffs people can just pick up from a tray. And maybe some little whitefish fluffed up in a tiny pastry shell.”

“Leave it to me, Miss Lavinia,” he said, “just leave it to me.”

I had decided that he had understood the subtlety of my message so I said, “Fine. Just call me when you have it all together, all right?”

“Yes, ma’am, I will.”

That was at ten in the morning. Now it was noon and I was famished—toast would settle me, I decided.

“Yanh’s the menu,” Millie said, handing me a legal pad when I came into the kitchen.

“Roasted turkey with a creamy dijonnaise on small rye bread rounds with a cranberry confit garnish, roasted tenderloin of pork on wild rice blini with a mélange of apple to finish, Angels on Horseback with a citron dipping sauce . . .” On and on it went with one highfalutin dish after another. It tried my patience, it truly did.

“Millie? I can’t deal with this! Yanh! Gimme your pencil!” I started crossing things out and making changes. “Get this Ashley on the phone, please, and tell him the turkey’s fine, but just mix up a little mayonnaise and mustard and use regular cranberry sauce on the top. Tell him pork’s fine too, but use those little pancakes and just applesauce on top! Angels on Horseback? Does he think I never broiled bacon on scallops? Tell him a lemon butter sauce with that, please. God in heaven! Every chef thinks he’s an artist!

Isn’t that the truth?”

This made Millie chuckle and if there was one thing we needed it was a chuckle.

“You doing all right, Miss L?”

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“As well as can be expected,” I said. “Did the florist call?”

“Go look in the living room,” she said, “they been arriving since eight o’clock this morning.”

As much as I adore flowers, these were flowers I never wanted to see. Indeed, the room overflowed with baskets, sprays on stands, glass vases and bowls—all of them filled with exquisite flowers; every surface of the room and all over the floor were flowers for my Nevil. I began to cry, the tears just came upon me in a rush of I don’t know how many feelings. That I missed Nevil, that I didn’t know so many people cared about us, that the sheer number of arrangements shocked me and I had had just about all the shock one woman could take.

I began taking the cards from their holders to see who had been so generous.
Miss Lavinia, If I or any member of my family can be
a comfort to you, please call on us. You and the children are in our prayers.

Strom Thurmond
. The next one was from Fritz Hollings:
My dear
Lavinia, Petesy and I are so very sorry and send you our love and prayers.

Fritz
.

That was nice, I thought, because after all, Nevil and I had entertained for our two senators during every campaign I could recall and truly, we had become the dearest of friends. Truly we had. Why, just last year, Strom’s wife brought me all the sheers from their town house in Georgetown, D.C., when I was searching for fabric to decorate the pontoon in honor of Princess Anne and Capt. Mark Phillips’s wedding. We covered the rails in white festoons and wrapped greens all around it. We flew the American flag and the flag of the motherland. She rode with me, drinking champagne to the music of “Rule Britannia.” She was such fun.

On and on the note cards went. I wondered through my tears if all these people would attend the funeral. It occurred to me that I hadn’t checked the newspaper for Nevil’s obituary, which had been written by Moultrie.

I was suddenly overcome by the strong odor of so many sweet scents that I thought I would actually fall to the floor. Rather than 2 8 2

D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k risk breaking my hip, I opened the French doors to the verandah and went outside to collect myself.

There before me, the Edisto rolled downstream. I stood for I don’t know how long and thought about how I was so awfully sad.

I guess something in me always knew I would lose Nevil, that he would be the first to go. I had always found his recklessness appealing, never dreaming it would cost him his very life. I thought he’d die a more manly death—maybe a hunting accident. This was a stupid way to die. It made me mad at him for being so thoughtless.

Yes, I was hopping mad.

I turned to see Millie in the doorway, coming toward me with a tissue to dry my tears.

“I know, Miss L, this yanh is a terrible day for us all. It surely is.

Poor Jenkins is beside himself.”

I gathered myself and took the tissue, blowing my nose, gently, as was my custom. “Tell Jenkins to pull himself together and take all those flowers down to the chapel. The men from Bagnal’s are coming to dig Nevil’s grave and . . .” My lip trembled and I just broke down completely, falling into Millie’s arms.
Dig his grave, dig
his grave. No! No! Please, God, no!

We walked back inside together, both of us weeping, trying to stop.

“Help me, Millie.” There was so much to do and I didn’t have the strength for it. “We have to catalog the cards from the flowers for thank-you notes. Then they have to be moved down to the . . .”

“Miss Lavinia, you go on and wash your face. I’ll call Jenkins.

We gone take care of everything.”

“Thank you, Millie. Thank you.”

I walked back through the living room, through the jungle stench of flowers, into my hallway and faced the stairs. I am a widow, I thought. How dreadfully horrible. What would I wear to bury my husband? I didn’t think I had the appropriate ensemble. I ascended slowly, holding the rail, taking each step one at a time.

Twenty-eight

Daddy’s Gone

}

1974

woke up the morning of Daddy’s funeral to the sounds of trucks outside, coming and going. Unable to face the I day alone, I ran down the hall to see if Trip was still asleep. His room was empty. As quickly as I could, I dressed and went downstairs to find Millie. I found Mother instead, at the front door signing a receipt for a delivery of cases and cases of booze.

“Morning, Mother,” I said, from the bottom step.

Mother looked back at me, sucked her teeth, and turned away to close the door and bolt it.

“Caroline? Please go make yourself presentable. This day is horrible enough without my child looking like an orphan.”

“Mother? This is the first thing you’ve said to me since Daddy died two days ago. Don’t you think you could come up with something nicer?”

Mother turned on her heel to face me. I thought she was gonna cross the hall and slap the hell out of me again. I would not 2 8 4

D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k have cared if she had. But she stared at me instead, not knowing what to say. I was furious at her because she couldn’t
find
anything to say. So we just stood, faced off like two cowboys at high noon, waiting to see who would draw first. In that moment, I decided that this was a real line in the sand, so I crossed it without another word, went past her, through the dining room to the kitchen.

Mother had said nothing still, and my fury grew. What kind of a mother was she? What kind of a person?

Millie was in the kitchen with a bunch of men and women, waiters, I guessed, fixing food on platters for later.

“Hey, Millie, where’s Trip?” I said, taking a banana from a bowl of fruit.

“Gone out with the dog to walk. Left early this morning! You sleep all right, darlin’?” Millie said, and gave me a hug I didn’t want at all. I stiffened. “What you so mad about? I see that look in your eyes. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I’m okay,” I said.

There were too many people in the room to discuss anything, coming and going out of the back door, bringing in crates of food and bags of ice. But, Millie read me like my brains were wrapped in Saran Wrap instead of bone. She always had.

“Get yourself out to the yard. I’ll be right along. I want to talk to you.”

When Millie told you to do something, it wasn’t optional. So I went outside and waited. While I waited, I became even angrier with Mother. What kind of a woman would rush her children out of the house with her friends or send them to bed without a single word of comfort on the day they saw their daddy blow up right before their eyes? Hell, I was thirteen, and I was used to Mother turning her love off and on like a soap opera actress, but poor Trip was little! And honestly, Mother’s demonstration of love wasn’t winning any Emmys. I worried now how cold our house would become without Daddy.

As soon as I talked to Millie, I had to find Trip. If he had gone P l a n t a t i o n

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off with Chalmers, our retriever, he had the blues. Trip was one of those kids who never seemed happy and there was no real reason for it—just his nature. I figured he was down at the barn, talking to Ginger. Maybe I’d let him ride her this morning. That would cheer him up. I’d find my little brother and be as nice to him as I could.

In a few minutes, Millie appeared with a canvas tote bag, walking across the lawn, her stride brisk and determined.

“I know this ain’t no kinda breakfast, but you need to eat something. I put two ham sandwiches in yanh, two cold cans of Coke, two brownies, and two apples. Go find your brother, get him to eat, and then get on back to the house. Now tell me what’s up, missy. We ain’t got all day.”

Even though that sounded stern, it wasn’t and I knew it. This day would be harder on Millie than anyone, so for her to show her concern for me by stopping working was generous. I was looking at the ground and the truth just rolled off my tongue.

“Mother. That’s all. She’s such a bitch.”

She grabbed my arm and held it hard. “Shut your mouth, you yanh me?”

“Ouch! She is, Millie and you know it!”