Plantation (63 page)

“Is that a fair question on a day like this?”

How the hell should I know? Jesus. Hadn’t I been through enough for one day? The day I scattered Mother’s ashes would be remembered as the day I gave my husband permission to file final papers? The day I inherited Tall Pines? How insensitive could he be? In fact, maybe this would be the time to cut him loose. Let
him
remember that it was
his
insensitivity and
his
proclivities that ruined what we had!

“Just want to keep a tidy life, that’s all,” he said and sort of smirked.

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I opened the back door for him to leave—his rental car was in the yard. I just stood there.

“If you want to say good-bye to Eric, just call for him.”

“Okay,” he said and opened the screen door. “Well?”

“File ’em, Richard,” I said, “and keep things tidy. After all, tidi-ness is next to cleanliness is next to godliness. Right?”

He looked surprised and I couldn’t for the life of me imagine why. “I enjoyed meeting your friends—that Tantric fellow, Josh?

He’s quite something. Very talkative. And Jack? Seems nice. Certainly thinks
you’re
special, Caroline.”

“Is this some kind of a threat, Richard?”

“No, Caroline. I just thought you’d like to know they gave me an earful at the wake.” Suddenly his face looked mean.

I held the palm of my hand in front of me and worked my fingers up and down the way a child does. “Bye-bye, Richard. Thanks for coming.”

“Caroline? Know what? Looking at you is like looking at your mother.”

I said nothing but watched him go. Seeming to be like her was the highest compliment I could imagine. And, he surely meant it as an insult.

He didn’t call Eric to say
Good-bye, son
. He just got in his little tin can car, the smallest, cheapest, ugliest rental car I’d ever seen, and drove away. I watched his dust and said out loud to no one,

“Y’all come back now, yanh?” Right.

About eight-thirty that night, I was tucking Eric in bed.

“Is Daddy coming back soon?” he said.

“If you want him to, I’m sure he will. Or I could take you to New York to see him too, you know.”

“Nah, let him come here. It’s more fun here. The city sucks.”

“Eric!” I said in mock horror. I scratched his back, smiling. It was true.

“Think Grandmother’s in heaven?” he said.

“I know it! Honey, she did so many good things in her life, 5 1 2

D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k don’t you know the Lord was happy to have her? And, you know, I think that in her last days, she had an honest conversion.”

“What do you mean?” He rolled over and looked at me.

I wasn’t sure either what I had meant by that, but in retrospect, she had asked forgiveness, she had shown remorse, and she had tried to mend her fences. In addition to all that, she was somehow changed, in that she had reconciled her soul.

“Well, I’m no expert on this, son, but I guess you could say she came to terms with God.”

“How come we don’t go to church?”

“Because there was always a question of bringing you up Jewish or Christian.”

“So you brought me up nothing? Am I agnostic?”

I could see this was not going to be a simple tuck-in so I stretched out on the bed next to him. Every bone in my body screamed at me to rest.

“No, I have tried to bring you up aware of all religions and thought that when you expressed an interest or a preference, then Daddy and I would guide you.”

“Well, I’m picking Christian.”

I rolled over and looked at him. This child never ceased to amaze me. “How come?” I said.

“Better action,” he said.

“What?”

“Yeah, see? I found this Bible next to my bed—”

“Oh! Here we go! Young man, you go to sleep tonight! There will be plenty of time to discuss it tomorrow, okay?” I got up and pulled the sheet up over his shoulders and he settled into his pillows. “Love you, Eric.”

“Love you too, Mom.”

We were all turning in early as it had been an impossibly emotional day. I thought of calling Jack. I had seen his face in the crowd and we had spoken for a minute or two. I was just too tired to dial the phone. I’d call him in the morning.

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I went downstairs to turn out the lights and saw headlights coming up the driveway. I squinted in the light, trying to make out the car, and saw it was Trip’s. He pulled up to the front door, got out, and went around to the back and lifted the door. His SUV was packed to the roof with stuff. When he saw me, he stopped, put his hand on his hip, and called out.

“Hey! You got a room for a nondrinking, nongambling man?”

What in the world? “Want your old room back?” I called out.

“That’d be good,” he hollered to me, “gimme a hand!”

“Forget it! We’ll do it tomorrow!”

He thought for a minute, then slammed down the door and came up the steps.

“I couldn’t stand her another minute,” he said.

“We’re even,” I said, “Richard couldn’t stand me another minute either.”

“Do you have a boy in this house who needs a full-time uncle?”

“Yep, and a woman who needs a good brother!”

He put his arm around my shoulder and squeezed. I threw my arm around his waist and squeezed back. The lights in the house blinked off and on again.

“Good night, Mother!” I said and laughed.

“What a woman,” Trip said.

He followed me around, turning out lights.

“I’ll sleep well tonight,” I said, “yes, I will.”

I climbed the stairs with my brother, never feeling more protected or happier in my entire life. Even though Mother was technically dead, everything was right with my world.

Epilogue

ITH Rusty’s support, Eric began public school in Jacksonboro right before Labor Day. He finished the W first marking period and brought home a report card of all A’s. I was so proud of him I thought I would burst. He was playing junior varsity football, loving it and leaving whatever frustrations he had on the ball field. Yes, there was a woman in his life, a very young woman of thirteen named Tracey, with freckles and transparent braces on her teeth. She did nothing but giggle and turn cartwheels whenever he intercepted the ball. She was a cheer-leader. Rusty continued as his tutor in all subjects, twice a week.

Between Tracey and Rusty, my young man’s confidence was a spiral of sure and steady growth.

Once the ink was dry on his separation papers, Trip and Rusty were inseparable. She adored Trip and Eric. Their feelings were the same.

By October, I decided that the house was too small for Trip, P l a n t a t i o n

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Eric, and me. It wasn’t just Trip; it was Trip, his romance, his dogs, and visitation from his brood that was doing us in. Frances Mae’s frequent calls, the dogs yelping under my window with every sunrise or rabbit that ran across the yard—it was too much of Animal/

Frat House for me. Eric and I needed a steady quiet environment.

Trip realized it and was sorry for it but with Mother only gone a few months and all of our lives turned upside down, it was just one issue too many for him to solve.

I took that horse by the reins and called Mother’s lawyer. We had a great discussion and together we studied a land survey of the entire plantation. I had him draw up some papers for me.

I told Eric about my plans and he all but jumped in happiness.

“If he says yes, can I have my own dog? I mean, not a giant Lab, but maybe a Lab puppy?”

“Lab puppies grow to become big Labs, Eric,” I said, but when his face fell I said, “Let’s see what Uncle Trip says first, okay? But no dogs in the house! Remember the Aubusson!”

When Trip came in from the river that afternoon, Eric and I met him at the dock.

“To what do I owe the honor of this greeting committee?” he asked with good nature.

“Well, brother, I thought we would have drinks on the verandah and discuss the future of the world. Catch anything?”

“Didn’t catch anything but the breeze,” he said. “Here, Eric, grab this line like a good fellow, okay? Wanna help me wash down the boat?”

“Sure!”

“I’ll meet y’all up at the house in an hour, all right?” I said.

“Fine,” they both said.

Eric was helping his uncle put up the boat for the night. I loved it. In the few short months we’d been at Tall Pines, so many things had occurred—most of them wonderful, the kind of changes that made you look forward to each new day. We were clearly taking root.

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D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k I watched Eric and Trip for a moment and then turned to go back to the house, filled with satisfaction. Their relationship had given both of them something neither one had—understanding, devotion, and loyalty. Pretty darn key to happiness, if you asked me.

All these they gave each other and more, as naturally as day turns to night and then day again. Trip never missed a ball game of Eric’s and Eric never failed to meet Trip at the door or the dock. Eric was fast becoming Trip’s surrogate son and Trip, Eric’s surrogate father.

I had finally cleaned out Mother’s closets, donating a lot of what she had to the Costume Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. For all her zanyisms, Mother had been a serious collector and preserver of fashion history. Her collection of Worth, Chanel, and Balenciaga from the fifties gave the estate a whopping tax deduction when combined with unworn shoes and barely used handbags, not to mention boxes of handmade hats and trunks of costume jewelry.

I had kept some things—a few robes, some sweaters—mainly because they smelled like her. When melancholy took over, I’d throw her sweater over my shoulders or nap in her robe.

In any case, that fall afternoon, I was wearing my own clothes again, black trousers, a tan sweater, and loafers, and walking toward the house, thinking of the new role I had assumed—that of mistress of Tall Pines. Soon, I would change her history, as Mother had when she deeded Millie and Mr. Jenkins’s property to them.

Halfway to the house, I stopped to give her another look. God, she was bold! Perched on the rise of the ground like a fortress, she beckoned me from the distance to embrace her. It was impossible not to want to love her every brick and board. All I could think of was the hardships suffered over the years to keep her going. My ancestors, all the men and women before me who had lived and died between her walls. The house pulsated with invisible story-tellers to be discovered through Mother’s collection of journals. I had barely touched them. Too many things had blocked their path.

The whole business of me becoming Millie’s apprentice had P l a n t a t i o n

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gone by the boards. Even she thought that Mother’s death had changed me and redirected my personality.

“Just give me that boy of ours! He’s twice as smart as you ever were anyway!” She said this to me one morning over coffee.

I banged my hand on the counter and looked at her with squinted eyes. “You think you’re gonna turn my boy into a voodoo medicine man?”

“No, I’m gonna help him learn to be a healer and a scientist!”

She grinned a little too wide for me, meaning a zinger was coming.

“Anyhow, Miss Lavinia, you’re too busy being Miss Caroline! Or is it the other way around?”

“Millie Smoak! My mother would’ve had a fit to hear you say that!” Sometimes she said the most hurtful and peculiar things, truly she did. “You mean old woman!” I said, hand to my heart.

“You have cut me to the quick! Truly you have!” In fact, I felt a little tweak in my chest muscles. I did! Lord! What next?

“Mm-hmm,” she said, her eyebrows in the vicinity of the ceiling.

We both started to laugh. Lavinia still ruled. Sort of.

“And what about you and Mr. Jenkins?”

“Don’t you know that old fool come around my house last night to read me poetry by some man who calls himself Amiri Baraka? What kind of a name is that? I like Sonja Sanchez and Paul Genega’s work better.” She was smiling and looking at the countertop, running her fingertip around in a little circle. “Yeah, we drank some wine and sat on my porch until the moon was up and high. Who would’ve thought that at our age . . .”

“Humph!” I said. “You ain’t dead yet, girl! Go on and have some fun!”

Go on and have some fun,
I had said to her, and she took me at my word, rarely showing up around suppertime in the past weeks, unless Jack was coming for the evening. Even then, I wasn’t sure if she came to help or to listen at the door. Probably both!

The kitchen was deserted when I arrived there. Millie had 5 1 8

D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k taken a casserole of lasagna out of the freezer, and left me a note on how to reheat it. Don’t you know I knew perfectly good and well how to do that? What did she think, that I was so incompetent that I could kill a frozen casserole? No, she probably had a date with Mr. J!

The dining room table was preset for three; a salad and sliced bread—both covered with plastic wrap—waited on the sideboard.

A pitcher of sweet tea was chilling in the refrigerator. Dinner would be a snap.

I put the oven on to preheat (per Millie’s instructions) and went upstairs to Mother’s room, where I was now fully installed. I loved everything about the space; the only change I made was to move one statue, of Lord Shiva, to the attic. It freaked me out, to say the least.

I brushed my hair in the vanity mirror, gathering it at the nape of my neck with a gold barrette. I decided to change for dinner. I slipped on a pair of black silk pull-on pants, red suede flats, and a black cashmere tunic sweater. Without even thinking about it, my hands reached for the pearls. I smiled at myself in the mirror and saw I needed lipstick. It was almost as though Mother had told me to apply it! Satisfied with a second look, I picked up a journal, intending to read on the verandah while the lasagna baked.

I did just that, and found myself completely absorbed by the words of Elizabeth Bootle Kent. She was in her midtwenties at the time of the Civil War. Her daughter Olivia was a little girl of three.