“My day was… well, I decided to take your advice and act sweet. And I made a new friend. Two, actually. And we learned all this cool stuff about the dresses, and the city, and…”
Grandmother cleared her throat and uttered a most suspicious “Hmmph.”
I giggled. “Now Grandmama, what you just did there? Not exactly what I would call a ladylike utterance.”
She shook her head. “What goes on in your own home doesn’t always have to be ladylike. And when one is shocked by the behavior of another, a ‘hmmph’ can be a most appropriate expression.”
“Well, what’s so surprising?”
“You truly managed to avoid making waves today?”
“Maybe I’ve decided to turn over a new boat.” Her eyebrow raised even higher. “No, seriously I have, Grandmama!”
Her eyebrow lowered but the suspicion still played around her lips. “What a lovely turn of events this is, then.”
I continued eating and trying to act like I was the sweetest girl in the world, but her gaze lingered on me until I couldn’t take it anymore. “Okay, okay! It was not that fun! But it’s true I tried to be sweet, and I did make some friends, kind of. But Mizz Upton can’t stand me, and do you have any idea how much work we have to do?”
Grandmama slapped the table with a giggle. “There’s my girl! Oh, you had me scared there for a minute!”
“I have to learn all this history, and we have to plan these lame events, and the dresses! Do you have any idea how much they cost?”
“Don’t you worry about the money, darling.”
“That’s great for me, but Brandi Lyn, she’s freaking. And the girls! There are some serious snobs up in that joint! One in particular.”
I waited for a reprise of Grandmother’s “be sweet” lecture, but to my surprise, she chuckled. “That’s exactly how Cecilia felt.”
“My mother? Really?” My jaw dropped mid-chew, and a piece of roast beef fell out. Talk about manners unbecoming a Magnolia Maid.
“Oh yes. Well, she didn’t word it in quite the unladylike way you did.”
“Sorry.”
“But she considered some of the girls quite snobby. She would come home with the most horrendous stories of bitchery.”
“Wow. I thought Cecilia was all light and perfection.”
“We always think that about our parents. It’s never true. Cecilia behaved herself most of the time, but she nearly gave me a heart attack or two. And she could be quite critical of the organization.”
“Then what in the world did she see in it all?”
Grandmother got a mischievous look in her eye. “After supper, let’s go up to the attic, why don’t we, and I’ll show you.”
Mother’s Magnolia Maid dress was pink. Close to twenty-five years old, it looked as if it had been worn yesterday. Grandmother had stored it on a mannequin made to size and hidden it away in the cedar closet so that pesky moths and color-stealing sunlight couldn’t get to it. Tiny white rosettes trailed around the arms and the bodice, meeting in the V of the sweetheart neckline Miss Dinah Mae had talked up that afternoon. The thing was voluminous—there was enough fabric there to clothe a dozen orphans! Seriously, the skirt trained out six feet behind the dress! It must have billowed beautifully as Mother floated through Boysenthorp Gardens on a sunny June day, twirling her parasol and winking at cute boys.
Suddenly, it dawned on me. “Oh my God. She was the queen, wasn’t she?” I pointed at the long train and the rosettes. We had learned that afternoon that the queen’s dress could be any of the Court’s favored pukey pastel colors, but what distinguished her from the other Maids was the addition of the white rosettes, uh, “magnolia-ettes,” the excessively long train, all-white accessories, and a tiara worn at indoor appearances.
Grandmother nodded and pulled the dress off the stand. “Try it on.”
All I could do was stare and think: that was my mother’s? That thing? It was just so weird to think of her in that dress. To think that she had had a body that fit into it. I know that doesn’t make any sense. Of course she had a body. Of course she had clothes. Duh. But there was something so… mystical about the fact that this had been her dress. And that today I had spent all day getting measured for my own. Somehow it made me feel connected to her.
I slipped out of my tank top and jeans and into the bazillion layers that made up the skirt. When I got the last one on, I could barely move. “Grandmama! This thing weighs a ton!”
“It’s all that taffeta.”
“No wonder those antebellum belles were always fainting and fanning themselves.”
Grandmama buttoned me into the bodice. She led me over to an antique mirror in the corner and we studied the reflection. The dress was just a little bit big for me, especially in the chest, but it was weird. I looked so different. I barely even looked like myself. “This is so crazy! It looks like I stepped out of another era!”
Grandmama nodded. “Cecilia always said she felt like she was wearing history. How she loved to put on that dress and go to her appearances! That girl could talk on and on about the South and Bienville’s place in Gulf Coast history. You know, she met your father in this dress.”
“She did?! How come I never knew that?”
She shrugged, puzzled. “I guess with everything that happened, it’s just a story we forgot to tell you.”
I leaned into the sound of Grandmother’s voice as she recounted how it had happened. Bienville was hosting a shipping convention that year, and hundreds of ships had come in from around the world. The Maids were playing hostess down at the wharves, when the man who is my father arrived from Greece with his father. The Ventouras family was huge in the international shipping industry. They had tankers and barges all over the planet, and they had come to Bienville in search of the next big oceangoing vessel. The minute he met my mother, though, my twenty-one-year-old father lost all interest in ship buying and fell madly in love.
“Your mother, she had lots of boys calling around the house all the time, but she loved this Cosmo from the moment they met. He came over to the house every afternoon for a week to court her. I was entirely against it, of course.”
“Really? Why?”
“They were so young and he was going home to Greece in a few days and I just didn’t want her to get her heart broken. Of course, the fact that he wasn’t American, and even worse, not Southern, quite upset your grandfather.”
“Aw, that’s so sweet, Grandmama. Looking out for your daughter.”
Grandmother laughed. “She didn’t listen to a word I said. Every night she snuck out the window and met him down at the Dew Drop Inn.”
My jaw dropped again. “Okay, now you’re saying she was a rebel? Like me?”
“Well, she was in love, honey! They carried on the entire time he was in town. After he left, they became pen pals.”
“What’s that?”
“Back in the days before e-mail and FaceSpace and all that, people used to write letters by hand and send them in the mail.”
“Oh, yeah, those things you put stamps on. I’ve heard about those.”
Grandmother studied me in the dress and sighed. “Most days I think you don’t look a bit like her, but now…” A tear formed in the corner of her eye. “Just think. If Cecilia hadn’t worn this dress, she never would have met your father and they never would have married, and you never would have ended up here with me today. My darling girl.”
Shoot, I even wiped away a tear at that.
We both studied me and the dress in the mirror. “Would you like to wear it? As your Magnolia Maid dress?” she finally asked.
I stood there, dumbfounded for a moment, then quickly shimmied the bodice off my shoulder. “No, ma’am. No, thank you. Too many ghosts.”
Oh, Sweet Jesus and Junipers! I just realized: the first time I see Luke Churchville, I MIGHT BE WEARING A MAGNOLIA MAID DRESS.
HORRORS!!!!!!
Chapter Eight
Speaking of sweet Jesus, what I did NOT te
ll Brandi Lyn when I issued the invitation to church on Sunday was that I kinda sorta had an ulterior motive. Guess whose family goes to the Episcopal Church?
You got it.
I was dying to know: did Luke Churchville know I was back in town? Yes, of course, he had to. I’m sure the gossip mill had jettisoned that into his in-box the minute I crossed the Dauphin County line.
The real question was: how did he feel about my return?
Was he thinking about me?
If so, was it in a good way? Perhaps he has been imagining a scene such as this: I am looking supercute in my favorite lucky 7 jeans, and I am in a restaurant, maybe The Revelry downtown, with friends (to be determined), and it’s super-crowded, so we have to wait in the bar for a table even though we can’t legally drink. I am pushing through the crowd to the bathroom, when I feel eyes on me. I know it’s him. I turn slowwwwwwly to see that he is as handsome, as adorable as ever, only taller and with broader shoulders. Luckily, my lipstick is perfect, and I, too, am as adorable as ever. Powerful magnets of destiny draw us together.
“I missed you,” he says.
“I missed you back,” I reply.
We live happily ever after.
Awwww.
Or was he thinking of me in a bad way? Something along the lines of… it’s the hottest, most humid day in Bienville history. There is no water left in the bay because it has all been sucked into the air. If you live in Minnesota or California or someplace that has no such thing as humidity and you have no idea what I am talking about, go get in a steam room at the gym and sit there. All day long. And try to go about your daily business.
No one can breathe, and anybody who curled their hair today lost it the minute they stepped out the door, even though it’s only six feet from the air-conditioned house to the air-conditioned car.
For some reason, I have chosen this very day to go jogging, and not only that, but I have chosen to go at high noon. My body is drenched in forty-seven layers of sweat. Seriously, I feel it running down between my boobs, down my back, down my legs.
Suddenly, I hear someone call out my name. I turn and see a car—I’m thinking a Jeep Cherokee, black. In the passenger side, someone waving at me. I can’t tell at first who it is… wait, it’s Luke Churchville! Despite the fact that I feel like overwatered shower scum, I smile and wave. Delighted to see him.
His response? He throws a wad of chewed gum at me. It lands on my cheek, slides off. The Cherokee races off, peals of cruel laughter trailing behind it.
There is nothing good about that fantasy reunion. Nothing.
So it was with some trepidation that I eluded Grandmother’s attempts to drag me to First Presbyterian so that I could instead cart Brandi Lyn off to First Episcopal, but I just had to do it. I swiped the keys to the Caddie and drove out to Government Boulevard, a.k.a. God and Gun Road because along it lies church next to gun shop next to church next to gun shop as far as the eye can see. At Faith Joy’s Live Bait and Bible shop (the sign reads, GIVE A MAN A FISH AND HE’LL EAT FOR A DAY. TEACH A MAN TO FISH AND HE’LL EAT FOR A LIFETIME.), I took a right into Mac’s Woods, where Brandi Lyn lived.
I immediately thanked God that Ashley wasn’t with me. If she had been, she surely would have figured out a way to make Brandi Lyn’s place of residence a cause for double secret probation. Let’s just say that the style of Mac’s Woods didn’t exactly mesh with that of the historical district of Old Bienville. For one, big pickup trucks that slurp way too much gas were parked in driveway after driveway. Other than that, though, the recycling/reusing/repurposing habits around here were a testament to reducing the carbon footprint. Almost every front yard was filled with broken-down pickups, boats, trailers, and truck cabs to be fixed someday, one day. Then there was the yard art: old clawfoot bathtubs and wheelbarrows that served as planters, rotting tractor tires that had been converted into sandboxes for the kids. Ancient La-Z-Boys and prehistoric sofas, rather than expensive Lowe’s lawn furniture, adorned the front porches, providing comfy seating for passing the happy hours away.
Brandi Lyn’s house was no different. Three pickup trucks stood at attention in the front yard, one of them JoeJoe’s monster truck. When I drove closer, I noticed that JoeJoe was messing around under the hood. “Gun it!” he yelled, and a guy in the driver’s seat mashed the gas pedal, causing the truck to let out a mighty burp followed by a nasty screech. JoeJoe yelled for his helper to shut it down.
“Hey, JoeJoe,” I called as I made my way by them.
“Hey, Jane, how ya doing?” He introduced me to the guy in the front seat and another one under the hood—Sammy David and Eddie Dean Corey, Brandi Lyn’s older identical twin brothers. We shook hands, or we would have, except there was so much grease on all of them, I just ended up doing a little wave. “Nice to meet y’all.”
“Go on up to the house,” said JoeJoe. “Brandi Lyn’s waiting on you.”
“Up to the house” a man in a wifebeater stained with chewing tobacco pushed the screen door open for me, his eyes never leaving the early morning NASCAR commentary playing on a TV from the last millennium.
“Sammy Dean Corey, get a shirt on! Letting that girl in like that on a Sunday morning!” Brandi Lyn’s momma called out from the breakfast room, where she was ironing a dress to wear to her Sunday morning service. “I swear, am I the only one with any class around here? Sammy Dean, you hear me?!” Mr. Corey grunted and tore his eyes off the TV to head out of the room.
“Hey, Jane, hey!” Brandi Lyn ran down from upstairs, her hair in curlers and her body encased in a bathrobe. She gave me a quick hug.
“Brandi Lyn, why aren’t you ready? We’re going to be late!”
“My curling iron broke! It took me forever to find my hot rollers. They’re just about cool, though. Have a seat and I’ll be ready in two shakes of a billy goat leg.” She skedaddled out of there so fast, she nearly ran into her father, who returned with a plaid shirt that he rebelliously left completely unbuttoned. He parked himself back in his La-Z-Boy, not acknowledging my existence until the NASCAR show went to commercial. “You part of this Magnolia crap Brandi Lyn’s all up in arms about?” he asked.
I giggled. “Yes, sir.”
Mrs. Corey looked up from her ironing. “Sammy Dean, don’t call it crap, honey.”
“It’s all right, Mrs. Corey. I kind of think it’s crap, too.”
Mr. Corey hooted with laughter, while Mrs. Corey frowned at him. “Sammy Dean, we agreed, what Baby wants, Baby gets.”
“I didn’t agree to no seven thousand dollars when I signed that permission slip, though, now did I, Cora? No siree. Seven thousand dollars for a dress. Goddamn Queen of England don’t dress that good.”
“Daddy!!!!!” Brandi Lyn yelled from her bedroom.
“Sorry, Baby.” Mr. Corey threw a quarter into a giant pickle jar overflowing with quarters. “Brandi Lyn don’t like me cussing.”
Mrs. Corey shook her head. “I done tole you, Sammy Dean, the dress ain’t gonna cost seven thousand dollars because Baby’s gonna make it herself. It’s just a thousand for the fabric.”
“Oh, what a great idea,” I jumped in, trying to calm them down. “Really? Brandi Lyn’s gonna make the dress herself?”
“Well, sure. Baby makes most her clothes.”
“Wow. She must be a really good seamstress. Those dresses are so complicated.”
“Oh, child, yes. That girl can do anything, right, Sammy Dean?”
“Girl’s got more talent than any of those screamers on American Idol.”
“I’m sure she does,” I replied.
Moments later, as I drove us out of the neighborhood, Brandi Lyn pulled down the sun visor and started teasing her hair with a pick and a rain shower of Aqua Net.
“Okay, you know what?” I asked. “This is going to have to be part of the change.”
“I know. I got to get me a new curling iron and fast.”
“No, I mean your hair is just a wee bit too… big.”
“Big!�
� Brandi halted mid-tease, she was so horrified. “Hair can’t be too big!”
“Look, Brandi Lyn, I know people love their big hair down here in the South, but what you’re doing? It’s the Mount Everest of hair.”
She looked so defeated. “Really?”
“I’m afraid really.”
Brandi Lyn reluctantly returned the Aqua Net to her purse.
By the time we pulled into the parking lot of First Episcopal, it was already more than half full. Shoot. I had hoped to get there early so that I could stake out the best position for observation. Oh, well. As we joined the people filing through the front door, Brandi Lyn asked me how long my family had been attending First Episcopal.
“We don’t. We go to First Presbyterian.”
She looked confused. “Then why didn’t we go there?”
“Because Ashley and Mallory and Mizz Upton and all of those folks attend here, so I figured that it would look good if we made an appearance.”
“Oh, Jane, you’re so smart!”
I led Brandi Lyn up the stairs to the balcony, checking everywhere I went for the likes of Luke. Historically, his family sat downstairs in the second row, right under the nose of the priest. With a name like Churchville, you’ve got to be a staunch Episcopalian, right? When Grandmother allowed me to attend with Luke, however, his mom would let us sit up in the balcony, the known hideout for all lapsed Episcopalians, squirmy kids, and bored teenagers. We’d perch in the very last row, giggling and drawing pictures all over the fellowship log. I figured there was a fifty-fifty chance that he would be up in the balcony now.
Never Sit Down in a Hoopskirt and Other Things I Learned in Southern Belle Hell Page 8
