Plantation (58 page)

I handed her two pills and a glass of water and noticed she was clammy, that her forehead was wet with perspiration.

P l a n t a t i o n

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“Come on, let’s sit down.” I led her to the side of her bed and she sat. “You okay? Want to talk about it?”

“What is there to say? That this hurts? Yes, it hurts, but as long as it hurts, I’m still alive.”

I was silent. She searched my face and my eyes and then she took my hand.

“My darling daughter,” she said. The tears began to flow. “I don’t much like the idea of this, you know. I mean, I’ve had a wonderful life and I’m grateful for that. But I finally find you again and now I’m the one who has to leave. It doesn’t seem fair.”

I began to cry silently. She continued talking. As she spoke I found myself trying to memorize her words. I was racked by a terrible fear that this would be our last conversation, knowing that our parade of pontoons was the last. All prior river exhi-bitions, the ones I swore humiliated me, were now treasures. As were her costumes, her outrageous behavior, and everything else that was a part of her. My anxiety increased as I realized then how precious these moments were. She was going and I couldn’t follow. There was a limit to something I had never considered would truly end. I knelt in front of her and put my head in her lap while she stroked my hair. She was giving me the comfort I had longed for as a child when Daddy died. I only cried and tried to listen to her.

“. . . oh, I know I wasn’t everything you needed, but I loved you, Caroline. I always loved you so. Everyone has moments of complete stupidity! Well, I certainly had my fair share! Maybe more! You were my little girl and I just hated it when you grew up.

Do you understand that?”

“Yes, ma’am, I do,” I said.

“Well, it does my heart good to see you with Eric. You’re a better mother than I was and I’m so proud of you, Caroline.”

“Oh, please don’t say that. Mother? Maybe you weren’t all goopy and touchy but you’re Miss Lavinia! How is the world going to manage without Miss Lavinia? I just don’t know.”

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D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k She lifted my face and although we were a sopping sight with our red eyes, when she smiled at me, I smiled right back.

“It’s going to be all right, they’ll have a Miss Caroline, dear girl.”

“No, there’s only one of you!” I wanted to cry again.

“And thank God for that, yanh? You’ll just have to figure out on your own how you’ll go about it!”

That made us giggle like old friends.

“Reach in my top drawer like a good girl and hand me the blue felt sack with my pearls.”

I did and I took them out, handing them to her. “Thank you,”

she said.

Their luster was brilliant in the morning light and she fingered each one, then stopped. I knew she was thinking about Daddy.

“When I see my Nevil, I’m going to thank him again for these.” She put them on as she had a thousand times before. “And, I’m going to tell him what a wonderful daughter we have.”

I began to choke up again.

“Will you please not cry? If you use your tears now, you won’t be able to sob at my funeral! I’m counting on that, you know.”

Her eyes twinkled. Mother’s wicked humor would be the thing that got us through the coming weeks.

“You kill me,” I said.

“Good. Now, for the love of God, go put on some makeup.

There’s a photographer coming and I don’t want you to look like a scrubwoman!”

“Miss Lavinia?”

“Yes?”

“You’re impossible.”

She shooed me away and I left her to do as she said. I went to my room and the Bible was on my bedside table. I decided to test the Good Book once more and shoved it under my pillow, locked my door, and went into my bathroom to put on my makeup.

I forgot all about it while I flossed, brushed, rinsed, gargled, P l a n t a t i o n

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washed, applied fruit acid, moisturizer, and antiperspirant, and creamed my legs. I brushed the dickens out of my hair and looked in the mirror. She was right. I needed makeup. It was nearly nine when I finished the old
daily toilette
. While I was digging through my closet for something not black to wear, the phone rang.

It was Matthew.

“Long time, no hear,” he said.

“Oh, Matthew!” I flopped on the bed and tried to think fast. I knew I owed him some explanation of why I wasn’t returning his phone calls. “You wouldn’t believe what’s been going on around here.”

“Try me. You’re Miss Lavinia’s daughter and Trip’s sister. I know there’s an outrageous story in there somewhere.”

After I thanked him a million times for getting Trip’s butt out of trouble I told him about Mother.

“Please don’t tell me this,” he said.

“It’s true and this morning she’s going to break it to her two best friends while we float down the Edisto on three pontoons.”

“Seems like a crazy way to ambush your best friends with bad news, but nobody’s asking me, I reckon.”

I was quiet at his words. He was right.

“Matthew? You are an angel. No, an archangel. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

“You know? It seems like all I ever do is thank you for something.”

“Yeah, seems that way, doesn’t it? Listen, Caroline, I’m awful sorry about your momma. If I can do anything, it would be an honor.”

“I’ll call you, Matthew. I swear I will.”

We hung up and I made a mental note to call him. Maybe I’d make dinner for him. Yes. That would be nice. God knows, he had the patience of a saint with me. The least I could do was cook something for him. And, keep the information on Jack to myself.

The doorbell rang. I knew it was one of Mother’s friends—

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D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k either Miss Sweetie, Miss Nancy, or both. I had to stop her from telling them this way. On the way out of my door, I glanced at my bedside table. There it was. The Bible.

I had no time to waste on the supernatural. I ran to Mother’s room. She had left and was going down the stairs, wearing a bil-lowy white silk caftan and South Sea pearl earrings to match her necklace. She looked positively virginal and angelic.

“Mother!”

Eric was running from the kitchen, sliding in his socks across the glossy heart pine floors, to answer the door too. She stopped and faced me.

“What? Come on, we have a parade in my honor to attend!”

“Mother, please! Eric, get the door.”

“Going there anyway!” he called out. I was momentarily amazed by the fact that three people could simultaneously inhabit the same space—all with different realities.

I pulled her back into my room to talk to her. After I said my piece, she took a deep breath, sucking in the air supply of Charleston County, and then released it.

“Oh, fine!” she said. “I’ll tell them later.”

As it turned out, she didn’t have to. We—Mother, Miss Sweetie, Miss Nancy, Eric, and I—proceeded to the docks, where the photographer waited with Frances Mae and Amelia. Trip was already on the boat with Millie, Reverend Moore (who had very skinny legs in his madras Bermudas), and Mr. Jenkins.

Frances Mae rushed toward us and threw her arms around Mother. “Oh! Mother Wimbley! When I realized I was making ham salad for your last river parade, all I did was cry!”

Miss Sweetie and Miss Nancy looked at each other and then at Mother.

“Have I said something wrong?” Frances Mae said.

“Frances Mae? I swear to God, I could just wring your neck,”

I said.

At least she had the brains and humanity to flush deep red.

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Amelia hid behind her. Mother took her friends, looping her arms through theirs, and walked to the lawn chairs.

“Oh, God damn,” Frances Mae said, “I’ve done it again! Why do I always put my foot in my mouth?”

“Because you’re an ass, that’s why,” I said, not giving a hoot if she exploded.

The breeze was coming from the river, blowing my hair in my face, but I stood and faced her, thinking that I might just slap the hell out of her. Little Amelia stepped forward to break the tension, or so I thought at the moment.

“My momma’s not an ass, Aunt Caroline,
you
are!”

My eyes shot open to the size of saucers and I bent over to get very close to my niece’s face. “Oh. No, I don’t think I am,Amelia.

But your mother is,” I said, throwing caution out with propriety,

“she’s an
ass
and
so are you!
”

“Well! I never!” Frances Mae grabbed her daughter, the one with enough meanness in her to scare all the alligators on the planet back to the Everglades, turned on her heel, and rushed toward the dock, shouting, “Trip? Darlin’! Trip? Darlin’! Your sister . . .”

“Oh, blow it out your ass, Frances Mae.”

She didn’t hear me, but I felt better for having said it. I wasn’t even sure what it meant, but that didn’t matter.

I joined Mother, Miss Sweetie, and Miss Nancy.

“. . . and I just wasn’t going to do this without y’all,” Mother was saying. “Here! Take a tissue!”

Both women were crying and took them, wiping their eyes. I put my arm around Miss Sweetie, whose chest rose and fell with heavy sadness.

“Well, we knew it anyway, Lavinia,” Miss Nancy said, “we just didn’t know it for sure.”

“We’ve been knowing you all our life! Of course we knew!”

Miss Sweetie said.

“I told Frances Mae something bad,” I said. They looked at me. “Real bad. I’ve been reported to my brother.”

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

“Good!” they said together.

“Frances Mae needs a good whipping, if you ask me!” Miss Nancy said.

“She doesn’t have a sensitive bone in her entire body!” Miss Sweetie said.

“Or a smart one,” I said for good measure.

“Gee,” Mother said, “I’m really gonna miss her, yanh? Maybe I’ll haunt her ugly self.”

With that they began to laugh, releasing the tension and some of the sorrow. They still had their friend and I still had my mother.

We would not waste a moment of it wallowing around in self-pity.

I heard a car and turned to see Frances Mae leaving in a cloud of dust as fast as she could. We giggled again.

“I hope she took her nasty ham salad with her,” I said.

“Don’t worry,” Miss Sweetie said, “I’ve got enough food for a hundred men.”

“And, I brought my special chicken, Lavinia. Fattening as hell.”

“Good! Come on,” Mother said, “the river’s calling! Let’s go, yanh?”

Matthew’s car pulled in. He got out wearing shorts and a knit shirt, looking very good.

“Would you look at what I see?” Miss Nancy said, with all the slow phrasing of a construction worker ogling a pretty girl on a hot summer’s day.

“He’s a big one,” Miss Sweetie said, as Matthew got closer.

“Yessireee!”

“Yeah, look how he walks. I’ll bet it’s eight, no, ten inches,”

Mother said.

“Mother!”

Jesus, these girls were terrible! It was sweet of him to come by.

“Morning, ladies!” He nodded to them and then gave me a light kiss on the cheek. “Thought your brother might need a bar-tender!”

“I’m sure he’d appreciate the help,” I said.

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Matthew and I walked away toward the boats. I turned around to make sure Mother and her friends were following. They were clucking, high-fiving me and measuring in the air as though Matthew’s britches held an eel. Honest to God. They were some bunch.

We boarded the boat and Mr. Jenkins and Matthew took each lady’s hand to be sure they didn’t fall in the drink. We pushed off from the dock. Trip put on his sunglasses and barely spoke to us; certainly he made no reference to Frances Mae’s departure. Good.

I didn’t want to hear it anyway.

The day was glorious—sun shining, no humidity, a perfect breeze. The sounds of birds blended with “La Vie en Rose” sung by Piaf. We drank champagne—mimosas—and munched on Miss Nancy’s barbecued chicken, deviled eggs made with shrimp that were the most divine I’d ever tasted, ever, asparagus with the perfect crunch wrapped in proscuitto, and Miss Sweetie’s mondo strawberries with whipped cream. Would you believe Mother had requested, and received, a Sonny’s shredded pork barbecue sandwich on a hamburger roll and one large onion ring.

“Mother! Where on earth did you get that?”

“Mr. Jenkins went down to Charleston for me!”

Mr. Jenkins looked up at Mother and grinned so wide I could count his back teeth. He loved Mother and I was sure he knew everything that was going on.

“You’re a doll, Mr. Jenkins,” I said, “did anybody ever tell you that?”

“Nope, but I wouldn’t have been able to read that menu without my Miss Lavinia. I reckon I’d go to hell for her iffin she ask me, yanh? Yes, sir, I would.”

“Well, let’s hope you don’t have to come there to find me!”

Now that the bad news was out in the open, Mother fully intended to horrify us with gallows humor. But, we just shook our heads instead. Even in the face of her own demise, she was irre-pressible. And amazing, gracious, and very beautiful.

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D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k Mr. Jenkins turned his watery eyes away from her as she left our pontoon to hop on another. He looked over the expanse of water, marsh grass, tiny creatures all over the small shores, and out at the cloudless blue sky. I could tell his thoughts were a million miles away. I put my hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

“It’s okay, Mr. Jenkins,” I said.

“We don’t truck with Gawd’s will, Miss Caroline, no sir. That don’t mean you have to like it. But you got to accept it. Ain’t that right, Millie?”

“I hear you, Jenkins! You gonna spoil Miss L!” Millie said, teasing him. “Oh, yeah, Jenkins got his philosophy book out now!

Y’all better watch out!”

“It’s the Bible—not just some old book, Millie! The Bible!”

“Don’t talk to me about Bibles,” I said, “I’ve got one with legs!”

I told them the strange story and they threw their heads back, laughing good and hard.

“It’s not funny, y’all!” I said. “It’s seriously strange!”