Plantation

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  “Frances Mae!” I called out, “I thought I’d come out here and watch Three Mile Island burn off a little steam.”

  “Oh!” She looked puzzled but glad to have the company. “I declare, Caroline. You look so thin and elegant. I just feel so fat and ugly.”

  “You are not fat and ugly,” I said, “not even a little bit.” I put my hand on her shoulder and I saw her eyeball my wristwatch.

  Exactly like Mother, she released a long sigh. “Is that a real Cart-tee-ay watch?”

  “Yes. Actually, I bought this for myself for my thirtieth birthday.”

  She looked longingly at it and then at me. “I don’t believe your brother would ever do something so grand for me.”

  She sounded so sad that I almost fell for it. “Frances Mae? You’re missing the point.”

  “Oh, Caroline, I’m sure I am not missing the point. You may have bought it for yourself because you have a job. You have your own money. My job is to be a good mother to Trip’s children, a loving wife, and a good daughter-in-law to y’all’s mama. I love my job but the pay’s scarcer than hen’s teeth.”

  “Well, we’ll have to put a bug in Trip’s ear for Christmas or something.” It was the first time I looked at the world from her point of view in maybe ever. But, I also knew that women who played the victim usually chose it through some passive-aggressive desire to illicit pity and admiration. At least that was what Richard always said. Maybe I’d been married to a shrink for too long. It annoyed me that she still hadn’t asked about Richard or Eric.

  “Good luck, honey, he’s a wonderful man but he could squeeze the balls off a buffalo nickel.”

  I winced at the thought of bovine genitalia. “Trip? Cheap?”

  “Are you serious? He squeaks! Look at me! Do I look like the wife of a rich man? Why, Trip Wimbley spends money on three things—hunting, which includes dogs, fishing, which also includes dogs, and betting on football. If the washer breaks down . . . oh, Caroline, I know I shouldn’t talk ugly about Trip. He’s a wonderful husband and I love him with my whole heart, but we are gonna burst out of our house when this baby comes. I can’t bring home a toothpick and find a place for it.”

  I hadn’t been to their house in Walterboro for several years, but I could imagine that she was right. She obviously spent whatever money Trip gave her on the girls and their clothes. Their house had only three tiny bedrooms.

  “Come on, Frances Mae”—I offered her an arm to pull her up—“we’ll call California Closets tomorrow. Tell Trip I made you do it.”

  “Oh, my! Bless your heart! What a wonderful idea!”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Now, let’s get those little tornadoes of yours up to the house and ready for Millie’s dinner and Miss Lavinia’s table.”

  The girls came when we called them away from their game of swing the statue and followed us like ducks in the twilight. Frances Mae continued to coddle them, fussing over their appearances. Suddenly, I realized she was probably petrified of Mother. And, of Trip. And not too sure about me.

  “Let them go on ahead, Frances Mae; I want to ask you something.”

  “Why sure, Caroline. Y’all girls go on now and wash your hands. I’ll be there directly.”

  The girls slammed the door behind them and we stood on the porch. In the evening light she didn’t look or seem so dangerous. I only had one question for her.

  “Frances Mae? If I ask you a question, will you give me an honest answer?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” she said, a little defensively.

  I ignored that and plunged ahead. “What’s really going on around here with Mother? Why do you think that my brother wants to put her in an assisted-living community?” She stared at me and then the horizon, which was blazing red with the final light of day. I could tell that she had waited for this moment.

  “Why, Caroline, what on earth are you talking about? I never heard such nonsense in my whole life!” She looked hard at me and all the old feelings of anger and hatred flooded her face. She turned to walk into the house, leaving me alone outside.

  “I’d like to see him try it,” I said.

  Hearing my threat, she stopped, turned back to face me, and smiled the knowing smile of an enemy. Then, like the serpent in the garden, she slowly slithered through the door.

  MISS LAVINIA’S JOURNAL

  Just a quick note—have to go to dinner—Nevil, can you hear me? Pay attention!

  Fifteen

  Dinner Is Served

  I suppose because I was home, Millie was serving dinner. As a general rule, Millie would cook something for herself and for Mother and then go home to her cottage on the property. Or, Mother would cook for her. She had ceased to act as household help years ago and had become the estate manager, directing Mr. Jenkins’s attentions to the never-ending renovations and repairs required to keep Tall Pines in good shape. Millie had a lady originally from Mexico, Rosario, who cleaned house. Rosario’s daughter, Paula, did the laundry. Millie was also the Almighty Possessor of Mother’s checkbook, paying the bills and balancing her accounts. However, only Millie was allowed to dust Mother’s Meissen collection or polish certain pieces of silver. That wasn’t because Mother said so, but because Millie trusted no one else to do it right.

  Millie ran a tight ship. She earned seventy-five thousand dollars a year with a package that included housing, a car, car insurance, full medical benefits, a golf cart, and cash bonuses. She was worth double every nickel she earned. I worried because she was obviously near retirement and then what would Mother do?

  When Millie appeared at the living room door and announced dinner, we left our drinks and followed Mother to the dining room. I went last, taking Millie’s arm, whispering to her.

  “Millie? We gotta talk.”

  “Humph. Plenty, yanh? See me later, girl, hands too full now,” she said and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Mother stood at the head of our enormous mahogany table, waiting for Trip to seat her. After Mother was seated, he helped Frances Mae take her seat at Mother’s left and then I was seated at Mother’s right. Trip sat Amelia to my right, then Isabelle. He took Daddy’s seat after he seated Caroline next to Frances Mae.

  We all waited for Mother’s cue.

  “We need more men in this family!” Trip said, trying to be humorous about the amount of women he had the burden to seat.

  Trip’s humor would never give him the opportunity to give up his law practice and go on the road. No, it teetered somewhere in between corn and sarcasm, sort of like Chris Rock in a real bad mood.

  “Bread! Gimme a piece of bread!” Caroline said, in a loud voice.

  “Caroline!” Trip said, “you know we wait for Grandmomma to begin.”

  Caroline crossed her arms and pouted. Silence. Mother looked down her nose at her, raising her eyebrows and lowering her chin. Classic “Miss Lavinia,” to show her annoyance. Mother took her napkin from the table, snapped it crisply, and draped it across her lap. Then, she shook her head sadly and with an audible sigh. The gesture spoke of Mother’s faith that anything springing forth from her daughter-in-law’s womb was just a hopeless case.

  “Who would care for gumbo?” Mother said, lifting the lid from the tureen in preparation of filling the stacked soup plates before her. The steam escaped all around her and the dining room was filled with the rich smells of tomatoes, onions, and seafood.

  “Aren’t you gonna say a blessing, Grandmomma?” Isabelle said.

  “What did you say, child?” Mother said, the lid still in midair.

  “Hush!” Frances Mae said.

  “I said, we need to bless the food before we eat it, don’t we?” Isabelle said.

  “Miss Lavinia’s Theater” was now officially open for business.

  “I do not believe that I have just heard, with my own ears, my granddaughter correct her grandmother! Is that possible?” Mother said. Mother’s face was incredulous and she spoke in a low and even tone, similar to the one I use when preparing to throw a major
tantrum. She continued to hold the lid of the tureen high.

  Silence at the table again. Frances Mae blushed hard as she bit her lips to hold back her tongue. Trip cleared his throat. Even I was surprised that Mother took issue with such a small faux pas.

  “Isabelle,” Trip said, “I know you did not intend to be rude, but you should never correct your elders, sweetheart.”

  “We always say a blessing at home,” Frances Mae said, in a small disingenuous voice.

  She defied Lavinia to take on Jesus. Mother declined.

  “I see,” Mother said, her voice dripping fury. “As you are entitled to do. But I do not wish to be reprimanded by a child. Is that beyond your understanding, Frances Mae?”

  “Isabelle?” Frances Mae said.

  “I meant no disrespect, Grandmomma,” Isabelle said.

  She spit the apology out so quickly and articulately that I knew she had done this many times. I looked at her and her face was flushed with embarrassment. Another fun dinner with Lavinia was under way. So far Amelia and I were the only ones who hadn’t taken a bullet.

  “Mother? Not too much, all right?” I said.

  “As you wish, dear,” she said, and passed my bowl to me.

  The gumbo was thick and rich, the same recipe Millie always used. She’d start with bacon, frying it crisp, then use the grease to fry onions and bell peppers. She added tomatoes, some water, tomato paste, a little salt, and a pinch of sugar to take the acidic edge from the tomatoes. Then she’d add lots of chopped okra. Close to serving time, the shrimp, chicken, and sausage were added. The whole stew was served over fluffy, steamed white rice. It was one of those dishes I could eat until I rolled off the chair. Even though I had been something of a quasi vegetarian for years, I’d eat whatever Millie cooked, except a big steak or venison. Elsie and Bambi. No can do.

  While every plate was served, we waited. No one dared lift their fork until Mother lifted hers and had taken the first bite. She looked all around the table to be sure no one had defiled this ancient reverence for her position and southern gastronomic ceremony. Satisfied, and with her dinner fork in hand, she said, “Shall we begin?”

  And we did. It was mouth-wateringly delicious. Millie appeared from thin air with a sweetgrass bread basket, lined in antique linen, and moved in silence around the table offering hot biscuits. When she got to me, I could tell from the enlargement of her eyeballs that she had heard every word of our conversation and did not approve of Mother’s attitude.

  “Don’t mind me, Millie,” I said, “I’m just sitting here masticating.”

  “Make you grow hair on your hands too,” she said and giggled. “You bad.”

  “My stars! The children!” Frances Mae said.

  “It means ‘to chew,’” I said. What I meant was, It means “to chew,” idiot.

  Trip rolled his eyes and refilled his goblet with white wine. It was an inside joke. When Daddy was alive, we had “word of the day” at dinner in his relentless efforts to educate his knuckleheads. Masticate cracked us up. Anything naughty, no matter how remote, cracked us up, especially body parts.

  Trip cleared his throat loudly. “So, Caroline! What’s new in the big city?” He added, “Would you like some wine?”

  “Yes, please,” I said, hoping it would help me relax.

  He rose from his seat and poured for Mother and then for me.

  “Thank you, dear,” she said. “Yes, Caroline, what’s new in the big city?”

  “Y’all know what? I think there’s more going on here than in New York!”

  That pleased everyone to no end, because if there was one thing my family loved to believe, it was that they lived in the true center of the universe.

  “Oh, come on now,” Frances Mae said, trying to bait me, “what about all those museums and Broadway shows and shopping?”

  “The museums are incredible, true, but Broadway is about half dead from revivals and I only shop twice a year,” I said, revealing next to nothing. “Fill me in on the local gossip, Frances Mae. How’s your family doing?”

  Flattered, she said, “Well, my mommer’s fine and Diddy’s fine—he just got new plates . . .”

  “Plates?” Mother said. “You mean he bought your mother some new china? How lovely!”

  “No, ma’am, uppers and lowers. You know, teeth to mas-tuhcate with?”

  “Touché,” I said. “How about your brothers and their wives and children?”

  “Well, they’s fine, ’cepten Johnny, who won’t be home till the fall.”

  Johnny was her ne’er-do-well, sad sack of a brother who made a living working part-time at a gun shop in Goose Creek.

  “Oh?” Mother said. “Is he away on business?” Clearly, Mother wasn’t paying close attention.

  “No, ma’am,” Frances Mae said, whispering behind her hand so the girls wouldn’t hear, “he’s up the river.”

  “Meaning?” I said, quietly.

  “He wrote a rubber check,” she whispered. “A big one. He’s so stupid. Even I know you can’t be doing that, ’specially when you paying back taxes!”

  Mother and I nodded our heads as though it was perfectly normal for our family to have an in-law in the pokey.

  “And, his children?” Mother asked, unsure of how to continue.

  “Erline’s got her hands full with them four wild thaings.” Frances Mae just shook her head in sympathy for her sister-in-law.

  “I imagine she does,” Mother said, her voice drifting off.

  I watched Trip pour more wine for himself. Who could blame him?

  “Trip, if there’s anything left, I believe I’d have a splash of that,” I said. And they thought Mother was a scandal?

  “Regretfully, dear sister, it seems to have disappeared. I shall uncork another right away,” Trip said in his fake English accent.

  Trip was always English when he got in the bag. I used to think it was to make fun of Richard; now I recognized it as simply “the bag.”

  “So, Amelia? Isabelle? What’s going on at school? Are we making good grades?” I asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” they said together. “You are not either!” they then said in stereo, each accusing the other of lying, and then broke into a fit of giggles.

  “I see,” I said, amused. “Do you still like to dance, Amelia?”

  “Uh-huh,” she said, bobbing her head up and down.

  “So does Isabelle! And our Caroline has just started up at dancing school at Miss Ginny’s, isn’t that right, sweetheart?” Frances Mae said.

  Caroline, who had a milk mustache and tomato stains on her dress, also said, “Uh-huh.”

  “You should say, ‘Yes, Aunt Caroline,’ not ‘Uh-huh!’ We love the English language in our family, don’t we, Caroline?” Mother said, trying to rescue her granddaughter from a certain plunge into a life of Frances Mae-speak.

  “Oh, yeth!” I said, mimicking a good little girl voice, “we have a love affair going on wiff it!”

  This made Amelia and Isabelle laugh and diffused another one of Miss Lavinia’s zingers for Frances Mae and her children. Even Mother had to take a deep breath, knowing she was being mean.

  “Oh, I know what y’all think of me,” she said, and looked around the table at the girls, who were now on the edge of control. “Go ahead and laugh!” Mother smiled at all of us. Trip returned and refilled our glasses.

  “We think you are a rare bird, Mother! A rare bird,” I said, and toasted her.

  Frances Mae arched her eyebrows and raised her water goblet. “Yes, indeedy do, Mother Wimbley, you have your own feathers!”

  “Here, here!” Trip mumbled from his end of the table.

  “Now, after dinner . . .” Frances Mae started to say, then shot the evil eye to Trip to slow down his alcoholic consumption. “You have to drive, you know,” she whispered to him.

  “Not!” he said, suddenly reduced by his excesses to one- and two-word replies.

  He raised his glass to Mother again. I watched her smile and return the to
ast.

  “Well, I’ll drive, then,” Frances Mae said and Trip nodded his head, “but after dinner the girls have a special show for their grandmother and aunt! Isn’t that right, girls?”

  “Yes, you are quite correct, Mother dear,” Amelia said with a smug grin.

  What a little smart-ass! “Having a love affair with the English language?” I said.

  “Just dating,” she said, “I’m too young for an affair.”

  “Amelia!” Frances Mae said.

  “I think this meal is finished,” Mother said. “Let’s have dessert in the living room.”

  The girls kicked back their chairs and scampered out of the room. Trip filled his glass and stood, swaying slightly, and went out on Frances Mae’s arm. Mother still sat in her place and turned to me as though I had a solution for their behavior.

  “She makes him happy on some level, Mother,” I said.

  “I cannot fathom,” she said. Then she snickered, placed her hand on mine, and said in a sober voice, “She wants my house, you know. She wants me to move to a retirement community so they can have my house.”

  “Over my dead body,” I said. And I meant it.

  The “show” my nieces had orchestrated required music. Frances Mae had brought along a CD of The Four Seasons and put it on to play. We sat on the sofa and the chairs, and waited, surprised she had heard of Vivaldi.

  Millie appeared with hot coffee, decaf of course, and a pitcher of half and half, placing them with the silver service on the butler’s field tray. The tea service was one of Daddy’s last gifts to Mother. I remembered for a moment the Christmas he gave it to her. It came in robin’s egg blue boxes wrapped with white ribbons. Tiffany’s. Each piece stood on tiny elephant’s feet, including the oversized tray. Mother’s initials were engraved by hand on everything in an elaborate script. We all held our breath as she opened each box. I remember that I thought it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. I could see my face in the tray, its patina was so flawless.