by that's me
Yes, project is a good way to think of it. It makes it all sound very businesslike-which is precisely what this is, when you get right down to it.
He had no idea about this part, of course. No reason for that.
No, this is strictly my own little scene.
Time to roll up the sleeves-and get to work.
The third floor is always stuffy at this time of year. Electric box fans in two of the windows do little to cool the sultry air.
Perched beside the third window in her wheelchair, Jeanne Remington longs for a genuine breeze as she gazes down at the darkening grounds of Oakgate.
Her late brother refused to have central air-conditioning installed in the old house, saying he didn't want to rip apart the walls to install the necessary ductwork. Nor would he even allow window units in the bedrooms; the wiring was so old the extra strain would be a fire hazard, and replacing it was, again, too much trouble.
Anyway, he liked to say, generations of Remingtons got through Georgia summers without air-conditioning. We don't need it.
Maybe he didn't…
But up here in the attic, there are only three windows that open, all of them small dormer-style. The others are even smaller: round bull's-eyes sitting high beneath the eaves, lacking even window treatments to block out the afternoon sun.
Gilbert never did spend excessive time worrying about anybody else's comfort, though. He was a difficult, self-centered man, to say the least A challenging boy, too, from what Jeanne can remember-when she chooses to remember anything at all about her childhood.
She was a few years younger than her brother, and frequently exasperated by his daring antics… when she wasn't feeling sorry for him as he endured his father's harsh punishment for sins real and imagined.
She probably should have been grateful that she never had to endure being locked in her room, or having her mouth washed out with soap, or, far worse, being beaten with a leather belt.
Oddly, though, along with pity, she felt a strange resentment whenever her brother suffered at their father's hands. Not just resentment toward the man who dealt the harsh punishment, but resentment toward her brother.
Sometimes she could almost convince herself that any attention from the man she called Father would be better than none at all.
But he ignored her. Totally. For as long as she could remember. He didn't discipline her, barely spoke to her, never even pretended to love her.
She didn't comprehend the reason until her eighth birthday, when she found herself in tears, once again, because of something Father said-or, more likely, failed to say. That was when her big brother told her the truth: Gilbert Remington wasn't her real father, and he knew it. In fact, everyone in the household knew it. Everyone but Jeanne.
In retrospect, she and Mother were probably fortunate that Father didn't throw them both out of the house. His old-fashioned pride kept the family intact, if only for appearances' sake.
If Savannah was the most genteel of Southern cities, Father, with his impeccable manners, was the most genteel of its residents.
The first Gilbert Xavier Remington was an expert at keeping up the public charade. But in private, he had no use for Jeanne or her mother, Marie. He saw to it that neither of them would inherit a penny of the family fortune, and stipulated that if his son died without heirs, he was to leave his estate to a public trust-not to his sister.
That didn't happen. Gilbert II lost his wife and both of his sons years ago, but he has heirs: three grandchildren.
You can't resent them, or Gilbert, for that matter, Jeanne reminds herself. Your brother did more for you than you ever could have hoped or expected.
Unlike his father, Gilbert II had a heart. He must have. Because he clearly felt sorry for Jeanne. Especially when her mind started to go, just as Mother's did so many years ago.
Or so everyone believes.
Father isn't the only Remington who's an expert at charades.
* * *
"Let's go into town and have dinner," Royce suggests,giving Charlotte's hand a squeeze.
"Town," she knows, is not the Achoco Island's commercial strip but rather Savannah, about forty-five minutes' drive north of here.
"Here" is Grandaddy's vintage red brick, black-shuttered, white-pillared mansion.
Once a thriving plantation producing rice and indigo, Oakgate lies on the top third of the island, amidst the coastal marsh not far from the northernmost causeway. Its boundaries once encompassed several thousand I acres of the island's narrower upper end, including a rice mill and brick slave cabins that now lie in ruins deep in the marsh. When the rice industry waned following the Civil War, the Remingtons sold off the southernmost parcels of land, traded for a prosperous paper mill.
Years before Charlotte was born, Remington Paper was swallowed up by an internationally renowned conglomerate, Global Paper Corporation; its operation moved to the Midwest, the paper mill was razed and a low-income housing development built on its site.
Grandaddy reinforced his position as one of the wealthiest men-and the family name among the most prominent-in coastal Georgia. As the local newspaper's social columnist once wrote: Boston has the Kennedys, New I York the Rockefellers, Delaware the Duponts, and Savannah the Remingtons.
What the press failed to note is that unlike his Northern counterparts, Grandaddy wasn't exactly a philanthropist The world never knew-or at least the press refrained from mentioning-his frugality. His children and grandchildren were provided with perfunctory trust funds, but he was determined to control the family purse strings until he died. His sons, who had been content with their figurehead positions in the mill, were equally content to live off the profits as long as they could afford their bon vivant lifestyles.
"What do you say?" Royce is asking. "Some seafood, a nice glass of Pinot Grigio…"
"The Pinot Grigio is definitely tempting. I wish there were a bottle in the house, though… That way we wouldn't have to go out." But there's no liquor here at Oakgate. Grandaddy didn't imbibe, or condone it in outers, or allow the stuff to cross his threshold.
"Oh, let's go. Maybe we can even catch a movie after we eat. It'll get your mind off things."
"I shouldn't really be out socializing in public tonight,"
Charlotte reminds her husband. "It doesn't look right."
His brown eyes overcast with understanding, Royce nonetheless shakes his head and urges, "Come on,Charlotte. We're not staying on the island."
"Grandaddy wasn't exactly anonymous in Savannah, and neither am I. People will say, 'Look at her, out celebrating all those millions she just inherited.'"
That disappro
ving comment was uttered by Grandaddy himself about the widow of Dr. Silas Neville, his lifelong friend, when she showed up at the hospital ball in a red gown just weeks after the funeral.
"Who cares what people think?" Royce asks.
"Not me, but…"
Oh, who are you kidding, Charlotte?
The magnolia blossom doesn't fall far from the tree, or so Grandaddy liked to say. The Remingtons have always played by the rules of polite Southern society. Charlotte was raised to be a lady at all times.
That, in part, is why it took her so long to get out of her marriage to a man who was anything but a gentleman. If Vincent hadn't taken it upon himself to end it, she might still be with him.
What an abhorrent thought.
"I'm just not in the mood to go out," she tells Royce. "But you go, take Lianna. And maybe you should see if anyone else wants to join y'all," she adds as an afterthought, remembering the Remington relatives currently staying with them at Oakgate.
"I barely know your cousins."
"That makes two of us. They were much younger, and I only saw them when they visited down here in the summers, remember?"
"Well, forgive me for saying this, but from what I do know, I'm not exactly anxious to spend the evening with them."
She smiles briefly. "It's all right. I don't blame you. But Lianna-"
"She won't come out of her room."
"Why not?"
"Who knows? She's refusing to talk." Charlotte sighs. "Again?"
"She's probably just upset about your Grandaddy."
Charlotte shakes her head grimly. Her temperamental daughter took to barricading herself in her bedroom in stony silence well before her great-grandfather's fatal heart attack.
If the doors in this old house had been updated in the last sixty years, Charlotte wouldn't hesitate to unlock her daughter's and barge in whenever she pulls this. But Grandaddy, whose parents reportedly used to lock him in his room for days as punishment, had all the two-way locks removed when he became head of the household.
Now there are no keys; all bedroom doors lock only with latches on the inside. And Charlotte refuses to stand in the hall begging Lianna to open up, having endured that futile power struggle on more than one occasion.
Although handling Lianna's recent transformation from docile child to tantrum queen pales in comparison to other, far more traumatic maternal experiences Charlotte had faced in the past, it's distressing nonetheless.
With a rustle of her black-silk funeral dress, she stands and heads for the doorway.
"I already tried to talk to her," Royce warns. "She won't even answer. I think she's locked in for the rest of the night."
"I'm not going to try to talk to her. I'm going to change out of this dress so you can take me to dinner, just the two of us."
"Really?"
"Really." Suddenly, the last thing she wants is to spend a long evening in this house with a sullen teenager, a batty old aunt, and assorted relatives who came for the memorial service and obviously feel entitled to linger.
It's been a couple of years since Charlotte has seen Gib and Phyllida. Gib is presumably an attorney in Boston by now, and his sister moved to the West Coast years ago to pursue acting, before she was married. Charlotte hasn't seen Phyllida's husband, Brian, since their wedding, or glimpsed so much as a photo of their son, Wills.
But they all showed up for the funeral, and this is their house as much as anyone's-or so they seem to believe.
As the Remington homestead, Oakgate at times accommodated several generations of extended family. But for the better part of the last decade, only Grandaddy and his younger half sister, Jeanne, have remained in residence.
They were joined several months ago by Charlotte, Royce, and Lianna.
The Maitlands could have rented a place while their new home in Savannah was being remodeled. But Grandaddy invited them to stay here, Royce thought it was a good idea to save money, and Charlotte reluctantly agreed.
Now Grandaddy's gone, and moving on won't be as; simple as Charlotte had anticipated.
As she crosses the second parlor toward the large hall that runs through the center of the house, she can't help but notice that every time she thinks she's moved out of Oakgate, the old place sucks her back in.
Almost like the relentless grasp of a rip current at sea.
No, she admonishes herself, startled by the bizarre comparison.
Not like that at all.
Oakgate is just a house.
Just an inanimate pile of bricks and tabby and wood. It holds no power; it isn't dangerous.
Nor is it deadly.
Yet an odd chill of foreboding seems to follow Charlotte as she moves through its eerily still entry hall today, along with the flinty gazes of Remington ancestors forever caged in gilt-framed portraits.
Hearing footsteps approaching the second floor, Phyllida Remington Harper braces herself for yet another intrusion.
First came her husband, Brian, changing from his dark suit to a pink polo and madras slacks, and gathering the golf clubs he insensitively remembered to pack for this funeral trip back East.
"You won't mind if I hit the links, will you, Phyll?" he asked, and didn't wait for the reply.
Shortly after his departure came the housekeeper's knock and the inquiry about whether Phyllida and her son planned to eat dinner this evening here at Oakgate or elsewhere.
Elsewhere?
As if there are dozens of restaurants in this godforsaken place. One would have to go down to the southern end of the island to find a decent meal, or even the closest grocery store, as Phyllida pointed out to Nydia. With a sleepy, out-of-sorts toddler to care for and nary a nanny in the house, that's out of the question.
Nydia conspicuously avoided the unspoken invitation to babysit Wills for the evening-not surprising, since she never did seem to have a way with children. Phyllida distinctly remembers being intimidated by the woman's unyielding austerity whenever she and her brother visited, and finds it hard to believe that Nydia actually had a hand in helping to raise Daddy and Uncle Norris after Grandmother Eleanore died.
Soon after Nydia left the room, Phyllida's brother barged in to "catch up." Ah, Gib, with his swaggering comments, nosy questions, and barely gratuitous attention to his only nephew, who now lies sleeping in the ancient wooden crib across the room.
All right, not ancient. Charlotte claimed to have used it whenever she visited Oakgate when her own children were young. But safety standards have changed. For all Phyllida knows, the rails are far apart enough for little Wills to get his blond head stuck.
Being a responsible parent, unlike Brian, she doesn't dare leave the room. Not even for a moment.
Yes, she's a prisoner here; prisoner in an over-furnished, overly fussy cell awash in cherry antiques, Waverly wallpaper, and Laura Ashley linens. The room was once part of the much larger one next door, now occupied by Charlotte's daughter, and the dividing wall is thin. She can hear every word that's said in there, and no doubt vice versa.
Which means she can find herself serenaded, and not just by music, at all hours. Currently, Lianna's television is blasting some MTV show with a rap soundtrack. The throbbing bass grew so loud earlier that Phyllida tapped on the wall.
Lianna did turn it down that time. But not much, and subsequent knocks have yielded no response.
Yes, this is far from her favorite guest room in the' house.
