Plantation (48 page)

Trip wasn’t at the dock—his boat was, but he wasn’t. We walked over to the barn. Mr. Jenkins was there, at Daddy’s old desk, reading a Burpee catalog. It was the first time I had ever seen him reading. Suddenly I was proud of Mother for what she had done.

“Hey, Mr. Jenkins! This is my friend, Matthew Strickland.”

Mr. Jenkins stood up and Matthew extended his hand, shaking it soundly and smiling.

“Mr. Jenkins? They still got you over here working you to the bone?” Matthew said.

“Mr. Matthew Strickland,” Mr. Jenkins said, “I should say, Chief Strickland! I ain’t seen you since you was just a young buck!

My goodness, I must be an old man if you’re this grown!”

“You ain’t old, Mr. Jenkins. You just hitting stride, that’s all!”

They looked at each other for a long while, remembering years long gone. I was remembering too—Matthew and me riding horses, waterskiing, teasing each other, all the fun we had enjoyed so many years ago. Matthew was one of those men who exuded competence, reliability, integrity, and enough masculinity for all the men of a small town. I was struggling to remember what it was he didn’t have enough of to hold my interest. I think I was so possessed with my own need for escape that he must have just disappeared from my radar screen. Yes, it had to have been something stupid like that. No, Matthew wasn’t someone to be taken lightly or to play with like Josh. He also wasn’t someone I could orbit around my planet either, reeling him in when it suited me and 3 8 6

D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k reeling him back out when I was temporarily finished with him for that moment.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“What?”

“Didn’t you hear what Mr. Jenkins said? Trip took Eric out to shoot skeet. God, girl! Are you getting flighty on me?”

“No, I was just thinking about something else. Sorry.”

We stopped outside the barn. He grabbed my upper arms and looked at me.

“First, we solve this problem for your stupid brother and then we have cocktails at a party in Charleston then dinner later at my house. Is that okay with you?”

My insides felt funny, slightly gelatinous, squiggly. He made me nervous because I thought I was sure that dinner meant sex. Was it sex in return for saving Trip’s behind? Was I wrong? I was afraid to know the truth. This would not be a night where I would call the shots.

“Matthew? I’d love to spend the evening with you. I’d love you to solve Trip’s problems. But, I gotta tell you, I’m nervous.”

Truth was the best policy, I had decided.

“You should be,” he said, smiling with one side of his mouth.

“Let me go talk to your brother alone.”

“I’ll come with you to take Eric,” I said.

We walked in step, his stride and mine perfectly matched.

Later, when Eric was back in the house, and Matthew was long gone, and Trip had returned to Walterboro in a state of obvious relief, after Mother had read him the riot act behind closed doors in Daddy’s study—later when I was in the shower, and then dressing for Matthew to pick me up at six, I had some tiny truths revealed to me. I hadn’t allowed myself to be serious about Matthew because I had spent my entire life avoiding men like him.

Superficial was safe. Matthew was dangerous.

This had nothing to do with me growing up with privileges or Matthew growing up the son of a shopkeeper and his wife, a P l a n t a t i o n

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bookkeeper. It had to do with risk. Would I continue on this road of self-serving love affairs like Mother? Was that really what she had done? Wasn’t she maybe just lonely? Was I?

I opened the French doors in my bedroom. The smells of Japanese honeysuckle drifted in. I watched the river for a few minutes, thinking of all that had been placed before me in just a few short weeks. I needed to deal from strength with all those things—

Millie’s wishes, Trip’s trouble, Frances Mae’s attitude, Mother’s suspected illness, Eric’s education, and, most important—my legacy.

Perhaps it was indeed time for me to
be my father’s daughter
. He had been a problem solver, fearless and edgy. Up until today, when I reached out to Matthew, I had been a freaking wimp. Now that I had taken a risk, asked an old friend for a favor, depended on his integrity, what seemed a life-and-death situation had been reduced to a simpering mass of bubbles, floating away with each passing breeze from the river. No, this was good. Everything for Trip would work out. We had worked together—Mother, Millie, and I—worked together with what we could offer to solve a nasty, nasty flaw in my brother’s character.

I knew then that he gambled to rebel. He was rebelling against Frances Mae, Mother’s thumb, Daddy’s death, and who knew what else? Logic told me that if he removed what there was to rebel against, the compulsion to bet would fade. Maybe. We’d have to see.

I took a long drink of the sweet air. And then, another. For the first time in years, I was excited to be alive and I almost liked myself. I wasn’t a victim and I wasn’t a savior. No longer content to live in the script written by others, I was finally a woman almost worth something. Now the games would begin. Now, I would wage my mettle against fate.

Hell, I thought, Caroline? You watched your daddy blow up as a girl, you were most certainly abandoned emotionally by your mother immediately thereafter, you left home in a huff for what?

You married the most bizarre of all men you had ever known in 3 8 8

D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k some attempt to resurrect your father. You have carried these things alone for too many years.

Now, finally, you have turned a tiny corner. You just took a small step toward your mother’s care and your brother’s well-being.

Yes, I had done this. What else was I capable of doing? And, was I really as clever as I wanted to be? Probably not, but maybe there was a higher force at work?

I was no magician. I knew that. Yes, I felt things and they happened. And I dreamed things that came true. And, on a rare occasion, I heard things and saw things. Don’t ask me to describe them.

It has taken this long to admit it. I needed Trip’s trouble solved, Mother’s health to be all right, Eric to find his power spot and then I could concentrate on the veils of understanding and realization that were lifting faster than I could count their colors.

I would greet Matthew with relief and gratitude. I would make him my friend again. I needed his friendship. We all did.

Thirty-eight

Family Stew

}

HE front doorbell rang promptly at six. I thought I looked pretty darn cool in my Manhattan armor—little T black dress, hair blown out straight, minimum makeup, major CFM Manolo Blahnik low-heeled slides in leopard. Bare legs—creamed within an inch of their lives. Small black handbag holding breath mints, lipstick, house key, comb, and a twenty-dollar bill, in case of whatever.

Eric all but broke his neck getting there to answer it.

“I’ll get it!” he called out all over the house.

I heard him say hello and take Matthew into the living room, presumably to grill him. That’s what he did these days. Protect Mom.

“I’ll be there in a minute!” I said, calling down the stairs. I just wanted to say good night to Mother.

I stuck my head in her room and she was there, stretched out on her chaise, fast asleep with a magazine on her chest.

“Mother? I’m going out now,” I whispered to her.

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I was purple! “Eric! Good grief !”

Eric turned to me, decanter of scotch in his left hand and his jaw set firm. He was aggravated.

“I just want to know what’s going on around here, that’s all.

We were supposed to go to Charleston today and we didn’t.”

God, he was right. “You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“You have time for this guy but not for me, is that it?”

“Eric! Where are your manners?” I was mortified by Eric’s outburst. He had never acted like this before!

“Eric,” Matthew said, “would you like to come with us? We’re going to a cocktail party down in Charleston for some old friends of mine and then we’re going out to my house on the Ashepoo to cook dinner. You’re welcome to join us. You can help me grill the steaks.”

“My mother’s a vegetarian,” Eric said. As if to say,
Shows you
what you know!

“Not anymore,” I said. “I’d love a steak.”

“Want to come?” Matthew said. “Last chance! Not gonna beg you.”

“Nah, I’m all dirty. Maybe next time.” He looked to me.

“I’d love to have you along,” I said. “Just take a quick shower and throw on some khakis and a clean shirt.”

“Really?” His blue eyes started to dance.

“Yeah, really. Now, move it! You have exactly ten minutes or we’re outta here without a chaperone!” Matthew said.

Eric took off running up the stairs, stomping every step like a herd of elephants.

“He’s never acted like that, Matthew. I’m sorry.”

“He’s perfect. Now about that scotch? A light one?”

In fifteen minutes, we were on our way in Matthew’s Buick. I had thanked Matthew profusely in the living room and in the car for whatever it was he had done for Trip—which he obviously wasn’t prepared to discuss. Fine with me, I thought. Just end it.

I don’t need the details. All I knew was that they were going to 3 9 2

D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k mark the money that Mother was giving Trip and that would help them trace the hands it crossed.

Eric was in the backseat fully absorbed by his Game Boy. Very soon, the traffic became heavier as we approached Charleston, and then slowed, as we passed the Citadel Mall. He took Highway 7

over to the Cosgrove Avenue Bridge, then to Interstate 26 and we exited at East Bay Street.

“Faster than going downtown,” he said.

All along East Bay Street, we pointed out things to each other that we remembered.

“Ever sneak into Big John’s?”

“What self-respecting underage person didn’t chug their first beer in there?” I said.

“I heard that, Mom!”

“Well, just because I did it, that doesn’t mean you should.”

“What about my self-respect?” Eric said. “Nailed you on that one!”

“The boy’s sharp,” Matthew said.

I just rolled my eyes over Eric’s giggles. It occurred to me that I had no idea where we were going.

“Whose house are we going to?”

“Susan Hayes on Queen Street. Know her? She’s a bit older than us. She’s giving a party for the daughter of a friend of mine who’s getting married. Should be fun.”

“No, don’t think I do. I’ve been gone so long, who remembers anything?”

We turned right on Queen Street and pulled up behind a line of parked cars, taking the last available parking place on the street.

“It’s up there on the left,” Matthew said. “You’ll like Susan.

She’s hilarious!”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, husband dumped her for another woman; she’s a single parent.”

“Sounds frighteningly familiar,” I said.

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“Well, her ex got prostate cancer, nearly died but didn’t. They say he was cured by a miracle. Who knows? He and his new girlfriend moved to California. Susan took it up with her childhood sweetheart. He’s a pussycat of a guy. Simon. Rifkin, I think. I’ve only met him two or three times.”

“Well, this sounds like fun. Eric, leave your Game Boy in the car, okay?”

“Okay,” he said, with a groan, and tossed it in the backseat.

I combed his hair with my fingers and gave him instructions.

“Now, remember your manners. Look at people in the eye and shake their hands, all right? And just stay with me like a good boy.”

We rang the doorbell of the old Victorian and were ushered in by a teenage girl.

“Hi! I’m Beth Hayes,” she said to us. “Who are you?”

“I’m Eric,” my son said, completely moonstruck by her young beauty.

“Wanna play Sims?” she asked. “My cousins are upstairs in my room going nuts with it.”

“You got the Sims game? Cool! Yeah! See ya, Mom!” Eric looked at me and took off up the stairs.

“All the children are upstairs, eating pizza and having their own party,” she told us. “The bar’s in the living room.”

This made me giggle, as she couldn’t have been over sixteen.

“Thanks, Beth,” I said and followed Matthew into the next room.

It was a good-looking crowd of people—mostly in their forties, some slightly older, some younger.

“White wine?” Matthew said.

I nodded my head.

“How did I know that? Be right back.”

I made my way through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd to the side of the room and found myself with my chest pressed against the back of a navy blazer. When he turned to me I saw he was one of the most gorgeous men I had ever seen. I gasped.

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

“Excuse me,” he said, “the enthusiasm of this crowd can be dangerous to your health.”

“Are you a doctor?” I said, like an idiot. His eyes were like molten chocolate. He was my height. He had the most adorable salt-and-pepper curly hair.

“Do you need one, ma’am?” he said and grinned at me.

“No,” I said and tried to step back only to be pushed into him again, this time chest to chest. I blanched eighty ways to hell and back in pink, then red, then crimson. “But my mother does. Do you know Jack Taylor, by any chance?”

“He’s my tennis partner three times a week,” he said. “Do you want to go somewhere to talk? Or should we stay here and get crushed ribs?”

“If you can find a safe place, that’d be great.”

He took my hand and worked his way through the crowd.

Then he stopped in the kitchen, where the caterers were in full force, moving around and in between each other, stacking appetizers on silver trays and taking racks of glasses over their heads back out the door. It was organized, professional bedlam. He grabbed two glasses, a corkscrew, and a bottle of wine and I followed him out to the backyard.

“Whew!” I said. Another very intelligent remark, guaranteed to impress this man.

“Well put,” he said. “White okay?”

“Sure,” I said.