“He’s adorable,” I said. “I just wish I had the energy for him!”
“You’re so bad, Mother!”
“And, you’re a priss, honey,” I said to Caroline, taking the wind right out of her sails. “No, seriously, y’all, he did some tests and we should have results on Monday. I suspect he’ll want to dig on that mole some, but we’ll see.”
“Well, if that’s all there is to report, let’s shuffle and deal!” Nancy said.
And we did. We played two hours of some of the most exquisite bridge I’d ever played in my life. When they left, we all kissed each other in midair and they looked deep in my eyes and Caroline’s too, trying to find out what we knew. Caroline was an impregnable wall of resolve and so was I.
I knew good and well that my best friends knew I was lying to them about the doctor’s news. We all knew it. When I felt they were ready to hear, I’d tell them. But just for that one morning, I just wanted everything to be normal. I thought that was perfectly understandable. The very fact that they didn’t pry told me that they knew.
In one way it was selfish not to share my horrible news with them, but then I would have been in the unfortunate position of having to deal with their feelings too. For right then, it was all I could do to handle my own.
Forty-five
This Is for Real
FOR the next week, Mother was reasonablyfine. I had begun to worry that I’d find her on the floor—that she’d crack her head open, give herself a concussion—who knew? But no, the only changes I noticed was that her skin was distinctly yellowing—not every day; some days more ochre and some days less—and that she seemed a little wobbly in the mornings. In addition, her appetite and energy were truly fading away. I called Jack to see what it all meant and he confirmed my suspicion that it was jaundice and liver failure that was turning her complexion yellow. Appetite and energy loss were a part of the progression of the disease.
Jack brought another doctor in—a guy named Dr. Harbin from Charlotte, North Carolina. He was an oncologist, specializing in skin cancers and in particular with geriatric patients. If Mother ever heard that her name and geriatrics were linked, she’d have shrieked! This Harbin fellow prescribed enough pain medication to last for a month. Jack would check on her periodically and monitor her dosage.
Mr. Jenkins was Mother’s full-time driver now, taking her back and forth to Jack’s office and the Medical University, and Millie looked over Mother like a mother hen. I looked over Millie and Eric, and Trip stopped by once a day to look over us. We were quite the vigilant team! The extra attention we were all giving each other was warm and reassuring. Not that things would be all right, but that we would all do our best.
Of course, Mother had yet to tell her two best friends what was going on. She said she just wanted to think about it for a while. They surely suspected because they called her every day and when she was napping, I spoke to them, trying to assure them that Mother was doing fine. I longed to tell them, but it really wasn’t my place to do it, especially given that Mother had clearly asked me not to.
I was to have dinner with Jack on Tuesday night. That morning, Mother called me to her room. She didn’t look well at all. But her spirits were as they always were—lively and full of the devil.
I brought her a glass of one of Eric’s concoctions—carrot, apple, celery, and parsley juice. She was resting in her bed, reading Josephine Humphreys’s Rich in Love.
“Good! You’re here!” She sat up and removed her reading glasses, accepting the glass. “Rat poison?”
“Yes. Good for you!” I said and sat on the side of her bed. “How are you this morning?”
“Did you deadhead the roses?”
“You know I did.” I patted her leg. “Eric’s downstairs with Rusty, making big eyes at her. She’s got him building rockets and calculating the volume of cylinders. I think he’d eat fire if she asked him to and make a graph to chart the pain.”
Mother smiled at that. “So sweet.” She looked at me for a moment, once again evaluating my skills and strength. “I need your help.”
She told me her plan of how she would break the news to Sweetie and Nancy and it was the most outrageous and wonderful idea. We would have an event. She could supervise, but she was feeling more tired than usual and did I mind doing all the work? I assured her that I didn’t mind in the least—that her little surprise was the most splendid, appropriate, and sane thing I’d ever seen her envision.
I simply called Miss Sweetie and Miss Nancy and arranged for them to come Saturday morning at nine with their cameras and tape recorders. I enlisted Millie and Mr. Jenkins to help with the rest of the details. It was to be a great secret.
I drove to Charleston to meet Jack at his office at six. We were just going to grab an early bite and maybe stop by the home of his friends, Simon and Susan, for a drink.
His office was empty of patients and staff. I found Jack at his desk, answering e-mail.
“Hey!” I said, in a quiet friendly voice, so I wouldn’t scare him out of his skin. “How goes the war?”
“Oh, Miss Caroline! Hi!” He got up and kissed my cheek.
It was nice. So, I don’t know, normal! I was not used to normal!
“Hi, yourself, Rhett Butler! How was your day?”
All right, I liked him. A lot. There was nothing not to like. He was so genuinely nice and pleasant.
“Let’s see now,” he said, rubbing his chin and looking at the floor, “I removed six warts, fourteen moles, and a broken toenail this afternoon in the office. This morning I had a stubborn case of acne—all around, it was a decent day. How about you? How’s our Lavinia?”
“Well? She matches her lemon-colored sheets. That can’t be good.”
“Did you call Harbin?”
“No, she’s not complaining, so let the man be. She’s got plenty of pain medication.”
“Okay, good.” He took off his lab coat and slipped on his jacket. “Caroline, at some point, she’s gonna feel this—once it gets in the spine. And the more it progresses into the brain, she may act out of character.”
“Pain, I’ll recognize. Mother out of character? You don’t know her when she’s in character!”
I laughed a little and Jack shook his head.
“You be nice now, Miss Caroline. You’re too pretty to talk ugly.”
Somehow that kind of distinctly southern, infinitesimal but polite chastisement had a warming effect on my heart for him. He was sensitive and, still, he was a doctor. In my experience, that made him a contradiction. Of course, my experience of intimate relationships with doctors was limited to Richard.
He was turning out lights and closing doors to set the alarm system and I followed behind him.
“Let’s stop by Susan and Simon’s first, okay? I think they want to see you again—Susan said something about some shoes?”
“I left my shoes at her house,” I said, remembering.
“Oh, well, I’ll remind you to take them.” He pressed the numbers of his code into the keypad and I stepped outside the back door with him. He double-locked the back door.
“No, they were a gift. I left them on her hall table with a note.”
“Don’t most people bring wine?”
He looked at me like I had a large void between my ears.
“It’s a sister thing,” I said. “Girls do things like that.”
His eyes danced in the gold light of late afternoon. “Sounds pretty generous; must be a good thing. Leave your car here; we’ll take mine. Come on.”
He pulled out his cell phone as we walked across the gravel in his parking lot. He dialed their number.
“Hey, bubba! I got this woman here with me and we’re coming over to take advantage of your hospitality. That okay with you?” Pause. “Dinner?” Pause. “Yeah, you better do that.” He put his hand over the phone and looked at me, smiling. “He’s checking with the real boss.”
It was adorable—the way he became animated when talking to his friend. I li
ked that careful quality of not giving away too much of himself to me, but that there was more warmth and obvious good humor under the top layers of his staid personality.
“Okay, yep. Can do. You got it!” He hit the End button and dropped his phone in the pocket of his jacket. “Wants us to pick up some vino. He said Susan’s got enough food for a block party. I don’t understand how they stay so skinny! Susan’s been cooking all this weird stuff—things in puff pastry with antennas coming out of them. Her pastry obsession reminds me of my mother when she got a hold of cream of mushroom soup! It was everywhere except the breakfast table!”
“That’s funny,” I said. “I’ve been trying my hand in the kitchen lately too.”
“You like to cook?”
“Well, I like to eat. I cook with cookbooks, pictures, and exact recipes. I’m not exactly a gourmet or anything.”
“Me either, but I have to cook for myself if I want to eat. When my son comes home on the weekends, we usually go out to eat.”
It was true; Jack was positively the all-American, charming guy. Innocent and clean-cut. What a radical change for me.
He had a great car, a 1998 Mercedes, S Class, 500—black, with deep luggage tan interior. I liked it that he drove a sedan. It was sort of welcoming, like a tweed sport coat, unlike Josh’s sports car, which was the fashion equivalent of a strapless dress worn with a huge hat. Josh, that ass. I had carefully avoided him all week. Still, I had no replacement for him and the truth was, he was a good occupational therapist. He had Eric catching a baseball, something I thought he would never accomplish. But he was too out there for me.
Yeah, step-by-step, Jack was becoming more soothing and comfortable.
I waited in the car, listening to Ray Charles, while he went into Harris Teeter’s for wine. Fifteen minutes later he came out carrying three huge shopping bags.
“I thought you were just getting a bottle of wine!”
“Yeah, well, I figured as long as I was in there . . .”
“God, I do that all the time.”
He cracked a smile and I grinned too, finding a weakness in common. We drove down East Bay Street to Queen and turned right, passing wonderful old houses, many of them probably still inhabited by the families that built them when Charleston enjoyed an economic boom from trade in the 1700s. All of them were lovingly restored. The sagging pitch of the ancient porches, the low entrances of the street doors, and the overgrown live oaks, roots kicking up the sidewalk—all of it proof of the property’s authenticity and historic value.
We pulled in the narrow driveway and drove slowly around to the backyard. Simon was working on the grill, stoking the coals.
“Hey!” Simon called out. “How y’all doing?”
I started to open my door and Jack reached across, put his hand over mine, and said, “Caroline? No lady should have to open her own car door.”
“Will you carry me inside too, suh?” I said, oh, smart mouth of mine, unaccustomed to any sort of male gentility, embarrassed by my lack of memory on the subject.
“If you’d like me to, I’m sure I can manage,” he said.
Now, if this had been any other man, I would have thought I was being corrected once again for some sort of behavior that “came up short,” but Jack didn’t even have that kind of criticism in him. No, he didn’t. He was just a guy, a southern gentleman, whose momma had trained him right. I had forgotten that southern men treated women with a kind of lovely deference, reserved for those considered or assumed to be ladies. It was a compliment, not a kick in the sexist head. It was damn romantic.
I struggled, fooling around with my purse and hair, waiting for him to open my door, trying to make myself busy so I wouldn’t appear to be embarrassed, ungraceful, unappreciative, or a big-ass klutz. When he opened my door, he had been calling some remark over his shoulder to Simon, but he took my hand to help me out, looking in my eyes. It was the strangest feeling. While I was in his company, I was in his care. Very strange to realize this, I noted, strange, but sort of nice. I stood up next to him; he smiled and closed my door, releasing my hand.
“I’m going to get the bags from the trunk,” he said, walking around to the back of his car.
“I’ll help you,” I said.
“No, no,” he said. “My mother always said, it was enough that she had to unpack the groceries. Men carry the bags, ma’am.”
“Wow,” I said, standing there like an idiot, “what a woman she must be.”
“Eighty-three, still gardens, drives to church, and knits,” he said, piling the bags on the ground. “She lives in Monck’s Corner. Spry as ever! You’d love her.”
“I’ll bet I would.”
Jack hauled the bags into the kitchen, through the back porch, and Simon and I exchanged hellos across the backyard.
“Susan’s in the kitchen!” he said, calling out to us.
“Great! See you in a few!” I said.
I opened the kitchen door and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the low lights. Susan was headfirst in the refrigerator, looking for something. When she heard us, she popped up, smiling to greet us.
The first thing she did was say, “Hey, Jack, you old dog, you been behaving?” But she passed him by and threw her arms around me. “She’s here! My shoe fairy! Oh, my God, I can’t tell you how those mules have changed my life!”
Sure enough, they were on her feet. She had on a black linen sundress to her ankles, hair up in a knot at the back of her neck, and if I’d ever seen a happy woman, she was the one.
“I am so thrilled you like them!” I said. “Can I help you cook?”
Jack reached in the refrigerator and took out a beer. He popped the top and said, “I’ll be in the backyard with Simon. Y’all holler if you need help, okay?”
He winked at Susan and went outside.
“He’s adorable,” Susan said, “and nice.”
“He’s awfully nice,” I said. “In fact, I can’t remember meeting anybody that nice in a long time. Where’s your daughter? My boy, Eric, was crazy over her.”
“What do you mean was? She’s at the movies so we can have an adult night.”
“Oh! Eric’s just twelve! What can I do to help?”
“That’s right; I remember now! Okay, here, you can take these salads out of these deli containers and put them in bowls to make it look like I made them—there’s tomato, cucumber, and red onion; tortellini salad; and some crab dip I need to put out with crackers. I can’t cook worth crap.”
She was rushing around, banging cabinet doors and cussing under her breath when she couldn’t find what she wanted. She was a whirlwind and hilarious to watch. I began scooping salads into bowls and then dug through the groceries that Jack had brought. One bag had two six-packs of beer, the next had three bottles of red wine from California, and the third had taco chips and chocolate frozen yogurt.
“Well, we got ourselves a real gourmet treat here!” I said, and lined everything up on the counter. “Would you look at this?”
“Good. I can’t find the crackers.”
She ripped open the bag of Doritos and poured them in a basket. Then she handed it to me with the bowl of crab dip. “Tell the boys I made the dip, okay?”
“Why would I tell them? Admit nothing!” I said and took it outside to the chefs, thinking that Doritos and crab dip was about the worst possible combination of foods on earth.
I could smell something burning and when I got to the grill, I saw that the chicken was completely black. I put the chips and dip on the picnic table and went for a closer inspection. Jack handed me a glass of wine and I took the long fork from Simon. I stabbed a piece of the chicken, which was all but unrecognizable and inedible.
“I think it’s done,” I said, trying to be polite about its condition. “What do you think?”
“A few more minutes,” Simon said, “it’s Susan’s specialty. Hand me the basting brush, will you? She likes it crispy.”
Jack rolled his eyes at me and I laughed.
<
br /> “Okay! Whatever you say!” I said and went back to the house.
Susan was leaning against the kitchen counter, smoking a cigarette, sipping a glass of wine, looking out the window at the boys.
“Isn’t he great?” she said. “He lets me pulverize, marinate, and kill that chicken a thousand times and he still eats it just like it’s food. God bless ’im.”
“He loves you,” I said.
“He must,” she said and looked at them, musing, and turned to me. “I knew Jack’s wife. She was sort of a halfway friend of mine.”
“What was she like? Can I set the table?”
“No, already done. Want some more wine?”
“Sure,” I said and held out my glass. “Thanks.”
“Are we friends?”
“Are you kidding? You’re wearing my Blahniks!”
“Okay, seal of confession?”
“You got it; what was she like?”
Susan stubbed out her cigarette and took a deep breath. Then she sort of sucked in her cheeks. “First of all, I know it’s a thousand years in purgatory to speak ill of the dead, but if meanness were a disease, that woman woulda been dead years ago.”
“That bad?”
“Honey, you and I don’t know any bitches like this woman. She was in a class all by herself. She ran around on Jack, spent his money like she was crazy, lied to him all the time, and treated his momma like hell. I couldn’t stand her and neither could anyone else. I know it’s horrible to say this but when we found out she had throat cancer, it was like justice had been served.”
“Jesus! Susan! That is a terrible thing to say!”
“Listen. I know it is. But you didn’t know her. What kind of mother leaves her five-year-old son at home on Christmas Eve when her husband’s at the hospital for an emergency so that she can go get drunk and screw one of his colleagues? They got so crocked, they wrecked the car and wound up in the emergency room where Jack was on duty!”
“Holy hell!” Damn, I thought, she was bad!
“That ain’t the half of it! You smoke?”
She offered her Marlboro Lights to me, but I waved my hand, declining. “No, thanks,” I said, “I quit.”
Plantation Page 43
