by that's me
She and Brian spent their wedding night in the more spacious, elegant quarters down the hall.
But Charlotte and her husband occupy that room now, and apparently have for quite some time. Lianna's is the second-best location, a corner room with a private bath and fireplace, still spacious despite having been divided years ago.
Phyllida is hard-pressed to keep her envy at bay. Not that she wants to spend any more time in the dreary old mansion than is absolutely necessary. But it would have been nice to have seen more of Grandaddy in his final days.
At least, that's what she told Charlotte this afternoon, after their grandfather was laid to rest alongside his wife, Eleanore, and generations of Remingtons in Oakgate's cemetery.
"You're lucky, you know," she told her teary-eyed cousin. "I hadn't even seen Grandaddy in ages." Not since her wedding, in fact, three years ago. "I hope he knew how much I missed him. I think about him all the time."
Well, not all the time.
But she did, occasionally, think about her grandfather.
More often, she'd be willing to bet, than her brother ever did.
Leave it to Gib to show up at Oakgate mere minutes before the funeral started, with a mountain of luggage in the limo, requisite blonde on his arm-he apparently still dates only blondes-and chip on his shoulder.
Her brother never did get along with their father's side of the family. He preferred to mingle with the maternal Yankee relatives.
Now he knows as well as Phyllida does that it's going to take more than what's left of their Remington trust funds to see the two of them through the remainder of their adulthood, not to mention helping to care for their mother eventually.
Right now, Susan Remington is living in Providence with one of her sisters and working at a boutique. Someday soon, she's going to need financial help, and it will be up to her children to provide it. What else does she have? Her own family lost everything when their importing business went belly-up years ago; she'll get nothing from them.
Gib's law degree is mostly for show, as far as Phyllida can tell. When she pressed him, he admitted he has yet to join a firm.
"But don't tell Mother," he warned. "I let her think I accepted an offer last month-just so she won't worry about me," he added at Phyllida's frown.
As for her, the mere few million she received on her twenty-first birthday barely funded her move to California, a house in Beverly Hills, acting lessons, cosmetic surgery, and her wedding.
She chose Oakgate as the setting-not out of sentiment or Southern tradition, but because it was free- cost-wise and scheduling-wise. She was pregnant; the wedding had to be thrown together in a matter of months; there was no time to wait for an opening at a glitzy Beverly Hills reception hall.
Anyway, Oakgate was large enough to hold, and in close proximity to, hundreds of well-heeled guests who came bearing lucrative envelopes.
Hers was a fairy-tale wedding, the kind she'd dreamed about ever since she was a little girl, despite the fact that she was secretly well into her second trimester when she walked down the aisle.
But it hasn't been a fairy-tale marriage.
Well, whose fault is that? You could have married a rich husband, she reminds herself.
But back then she was still crazy about Brian. With his square-jawed, swoop-haired, preppy good looks and upscale wardrobe, she thought he came from a wealthy family.
Turned out he was probably a better actor than most of those trying to make it a profession in LA: he grew un in a blue-collar household in Long Beach. When Phyllida met him, he was a caddy at a fancy country club and M salesman in the men's department in Neiman Marcus where he made good use of his natural charisma and his employee discount.
Infatuated, Phyllida was naive enough to believe them could indefinitely live a Beverly Hills lifestyle on his pay her trust fund, and the wedding booty. But there was always the promise of Remington millions on the horizon-not to mention her acting paychecks once she hit it big.
So far, she hasn't, though she hasn't given up that dream. But at this point, Phyllida is banking on her inheritance from Grandaddy as optimistically as her brother is, if not as blatantly.
So, she's certain, is Charlotte. That second husband of hers is some kind of computer technician. He can't possibly be supporting her and Lianna in the style to which they were accustomed.
Sorry, Grandaddy, but your death is a blessing.
For all of us.
Her palm skimming the polished wood banister as she goes upstairs, Charlotte is reminded of the time Grandaddy caught her sliding down it as a little girl.
"What on earth do you think you're doing, child?" he boomed, startling her so that she nearly toppled to the marble floor below. 'That isn't a dime-store pony ride. Get down this instant! You know better."
She did, and it was the first-and last-time she ever broke that, or any other rule of the household. For years after, she would glance longingly at the inviting slope and remember those stolen moments of childish glee, so swiftly curtailed.
Back then, she was a mere visitor at Oakgate-and an occasional one, at that. Grandaddy's primary residence at the time was a Greek Revival mansion on Orleans Square in Savannah that had been in the family since the eighteenth century. Hardly the sentimental type, Gilbert sold it well before the revitalization of the historic district. Charlotte, who was sentimental, wistfully walked by it sometimes when she was growing up; saw it fall into disrepair, turned into tenements, and ultimately torn down.
Thank goodness her grandfather chose to keep the immediate grounds and gardens of Oakgate, including the forlorn little ancestral cemetery. The brick main house was built by Charlotte's great-great-greatgrandfather, and its ownership has never strayed beyond the Remington family. It was constructed in typical antebellum style: symmetrical facade fronted by grand white pillars and a wide portico; hipped roof punctuated third-floor dormers; distinctive raised basement wall constructed of tabby, a regional mixture of oyster shell sand, lime, and water.
Oakgate didn't become Charlotte's official residence until the summer after she graduated from Duke, when she settled here rather than return home to live Savannah with her recently widowed mother.
Daddy had been the bond that held the two of the together; without him, she felt out of place at home She was closer to her grandfather than to her mother, and it seemed logical that she live at Oakgate with him.
It wasn't natural, on the heels of free-and-easy dormitory life, to settle into an old man's household with an old man's unbending rules and rituals. But somehow, they made it work. Charlotte eventually found herself looking forward to the r
igid daily schedule of domestic events at Oakgate, in such stark contrast to her parents' chaotic nonroutines.
Every morning at precisely seven o'clock, Nydia served the same breakfast: grits, poached eggs, and slabs of thick country bacon that in the end probably contributed to Grandaddy's demise. The timing and menu didn't vary with the day of the week or the season; nor did it vary with the personal whims of the cook or diner.
It was grits, poached eggs, and bacon at seven. Always.
Grandaddy napped every afternoon after lunch, snoring peacefully in his recliner. A lifelong insomniac, he claimed it was the only place he could ever fall asleep-and stay asleep-without the prescription medication he often resorted to in the wee hours.
Every night, after supper and his bath, Grandaddy watched the NBC Nightly News at six thirty. Then, without fail, he would turn off the television and turn on the radio, the one on the mantel. It was always tuned to the same Oldies station, which ironically played swing music that was probably newer than the radio itself. Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Count Basie…
That first Christmas she lived with him, Charlotte got her grandfather a brand new stereo system.
It still sits, unused from that day, in a cabinet in the far corner of the living room, along with the stack of golden oldies CD's she bought him to go with it. She has long since gotten over the hurt, having come to understand that Gilbert Remington was a creature of habit. He wanted to hear his old music on his old radio.
She stayed for almost two years, moving out only when she married Vincent.
But the Savannah condo and later the two-story, center-hall Colonial that she shared with her first husband never entirely felt like home. Not even when Adam was alive. Selling the house and returning to Oakgate after the divorce hadn't been a difficult decision, though Lianna had complained. But soon even she grew comfortable here.
It was Charlotte who couldn't quite settle in.
That had nothing to do with Grandaddy or the house. She was still mourning her losses. Initially, she thought being at Oakgate would make her feel closer to her little boy, buried in the family graveyard behind the house.
Instead, it was a constant reminder of all that she had lost; of what will never be.
She had already decided to buy a house of her own hack in Savannah before that fateful Labor Day weekend three years ago.
It was shortly afterward that she met Royce, under the most horrific of circumstances.
The first time he showed up at the bereaved parent group she used to attend, she instantly recognized him from the beach.
She watched him running that day, screaming for his son. She saw him hurtling himself helplessly into the water, screaming for Theo, until the lifeguards dragged him out.
Lianna witnessed it as well.
As far as Charlotte knows, her daughter hasn't been back to the beach since.
But Lianna seemed to welcome Royce into their lives, when Charlotte finally got the nerve to bring him home.
Theirs was a whirlwind courtship that seemed inevitable from the moment they met. Each had found the only other person in the world who truly understood what they had been through.
Sometimes, even now, Charlotte finds it difficult to wrap her mind around the eerie, cruel coincidence that brought them together. She still wakes up every morning of her life wishing desperately that it had never happened, that Adam had never died. Yet if he hadn't, and if Royce hadn't lost his son, they wouldn't have found each other.
They've long since stopped asking why. It's far too painful to look back. They've both done their best to accept what is, to only look ahead toward their future and the fresh start they're building together.
But that isn't easy here at Oakgate, where the past exists hand in hand with the present.
Built on a slight knoll at the end of a long lane bordered by an arch of Spanish moss-draped live oaks, the red brick mansion's rooms remain filled with heirloom nineteenth-century furniture, and seem to echo with ghosts of a bygone era.
Charlotte has long harbored a curious mix of affection and dread for the old place, which, like many old Low Country homes, is rumored to be haunted.
She's never actually seen a ghost, but that doesn't mean they aren't here… And it doesn't mean she wants to continue living under this roof any longer than is absolutely necessary. Especially now that Grandaddy is gone.
But for the time being, with their own home in Savannah undergoing extensive renovations after having been gutted down to the studs, she, Royce, and Lianna are stuck here.
Everything will be brighter for all of us when we can get back home, Charlotte tells herself wistfully. We just have to hang in there until then.
Phyllida tosses a shrewd glance at the man in the framed photo on the nightstand.
The black-and-white image of her grandfather in his youth came with the room, of course. Though maybe she'll take it with her as a nice little memento when she goes back to California.
Yes, physical evidence of her loss will make her friends and neighbors out West even more sympathetic. She'll keep the picture on the mantel for a while and when people come to visit, she'll affectionately point out Grandaddy's cowlick, so like Wills's, and the bruise on his cheek undoubtedly caused by some youthful Prank.
I'll tell everyone he got hurt rescuing the family dog from a burning house, Phyllida thinks dreamily. I'll say that he used to take me on his knee and tell me that story when I was little.
She smiles faintly at the image of herself as a wide-eyed little girl curled up on her grandfather's lap, almost believing, for a split second, that it really happened. But, of course, it didn't Widowed when his sons were toddlers, Grandaddy was a tough old son of a bitch; tougher, even, than Phyllida's father. And unlike Phyllida's father, who didn’t seem to care much for either of his children, Grandaddy played favorites.
Uncle Norris's daughter, Charlotte, was the only one Grandaddy ever really noticed. Not Phyllida, not even Grandaddy's own namesake, Gilbert IV.
Growing up, Phyllida couldn't help envying her Southern cousin. But not so much for their grandfather's attention. Nor for demure Charlotte's natural grace, hen genuine kindness and goodness… nor for the feet that she always seemed to do and say the right tiling without even thinking about it.
No, more than anything else, Phyllida was jealous on Charlotte's effortless beauty. Even as a child, she was lithe and long-limbed, with wavy black hair, porcelain skin, and unusual purplish eyes fringed with thick, dark lashes. She even inherited the "Remington chin," the same distinctive, comely cleft shared by Grandaddy and some of her ancestors, whom she's seen in old family portraits.
Today, Charlotte's striking fa�
�ce and figure remain unenhanced by cosmetic surgery-unlike Phyllida's.
But in the end, none of that matters, does it? In the end, everything equals out.
Phyllida has plain-old blue eyes, not aquamarine like those of her brother, father, and grandfather, nor Liz Taylor-violet like Charlotte's. She considered-and dismissed-the notion of wearing colored contacts, despite how authentic-looking they are these days. But thanks to Dr. Zach Hilbert of Beverly Hills, Phyllida is now easily as stunning as her East Coast cousin.
And Charlotte will be entitled to the same third of the family fortune Phyllida and Gib will get. No more,no less.
Financial fair-mindedness was a proud trait of Grandaddy's, and always had been.
Phyllida's father had always assured her of that. Grandaddy deplored his own father's decision to cut his daughter out of his will. Great-Aunt Jeanne got nothing; Grandaddy got everything-on the stipulation that he not leave a penny of it to his sister upon his death.
