“Yeah, well, me too. I only smoke at night and never in front of Simon!”
She lit another one and blew the smoke, checking the yard to make sure the guys weren’t on their way inside. “Yeah, old Valerie! She must have gone down with half the staff at the Medical University before Jack would believe it. He was devastated. It was a good thing she died because I don’t think Jack would have divorced her under any circumstances.”
“Why? Are you kidding?”
“Nope. He loves his son so much; I guess he was afraid she’d get custody and take him to another state.”
“Well, that’s exactly what I did to my husband, but it was okay with him.”
“Oh, God, Caroline! I am so sorry! I had no idea! I didn’t mean to say . . .”
“It’s okay,” I said, “it really is!” I laughed because she was so upset that she had offended me. Then she laughed too. We could hear the men coming. She quickly drowned her cigarette under the faucet and threw it in the garbage can.
“Me and my big mouth,” she said. “Why don’t we open another bottle of vino? It’s gonna take a lot of grapes to digest my cooking!”
She wasn’t kidding. We drank three bottles of wine on top of the beer the guys had. The chicken was torched and unchewable, so I pushed it around the plate, eating salad, which did not absorb the alcohol. That explained my extreme state of inebriation. I was so busy listening to them talk and tell stories, I just continued to drink.
I was very sleepy and just wanted to close my eyes. The next thing I knew, Jack had me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and was telling them good night. Everyone was giggling and I knew it was because of me.
I don’t remember a thing about driving anywhere. All I knew was that I woke up and he was tucking me into a bed and saying, “I’ll call your mother and tell her you’ve decided to stay over. Don’t worry. Just sleep. You’re gonna need to get in shape, Miss Caroline, if you want to run with this crowd.”
I slept so hard, I sat up with a jolt from the morning light. I was in a man’s pajama top. Jack’s. Shit! What had I done? I looked around. It was a very nice room, although it was covered in posters of race cars and sports trophies. I must have been in his son’s room. Okay, I haven’t been raped, I thought. I still had on my bra and panties. Thank God. And, I didn’t put out. Oh, sure, there I was commending myself for my high morals when I had been carried out of a dinner party over his shoulder.
I fell back against the pillows, cursing myself for being such a damn fool. Jack was a nice man and I liked him a lot. Now, I’d never see him again. The door opened and I had no place to hide.
“You alive?” he said. “Want some coffee?”
I groaned, dove under the pillow, and pulled the covers over my head. “I’m so embarrassed I could die.”
He sat on the side of the bed and fished around under the covers for my hand. He took it into his and leaned over the layers of cotton and duck feathers that covered my head and whispered, “If you could drink like those characters, I’d have serious doubts about your character, Miss Caroline. The fact that you caved in is a good sign.”
“It is?” I said, from under the pillow.
“It is. Now come on out like a good girl and drink this. Doctor’s orders.”
I know I looked like a shameful thing—if I didn’t, I sure felt like one. I took the mug from him and drank. It was delicious coffee.
“Thanks. What is this? Guatemalan roast with a touch of Colombian, ground by Juan Valdez’s own little hands?”
“Maxwell House,” he said, smiling. He smelled so good.
“Figures. Jack? I’m sorry.” I said this trying not to breathe my funky breath in his direction.
“Don’t be silly, nothing to apologize for.”
I rolled over and sat up. My head was a little squirrelly. “I need a shower.”
He stood and pulled me to my feet. “Aspirin’s in the medicine cabinet.”
Twenty steamy minutes later, I was dressed and smelling bacon. He was making breakfast. What a doll! I made up his son’s bed and wandered out into his kitchen. It was beautiful—state-of-the-art everything. I glanced at my watch. It was eight o’clock.
“Don’t you have to work today?” I said, munching on a piece of perfectly fried bacon. I knew I should call home and speak to Eric.
“Show me a doctor that works on Wednesday, and I’ll show you a desperate man. In Charleston, Wednesday is golf day.”
“Ah! Do you play golf ?” I said.
“Nope.” He motioned for me to sit at the table and I did. My mouth watered at the scrambled eggs and grits before me.
“God, this looks good,” I said. “Thanks! This is so nice of—”
“You look good,” he said.
In the cold light of day, sun on the rise, heat climbing and stone-cold sober, we took a long hard look at each other. This was it. Yep, that was just about all it took. I was about to be taken back to bed by Jack Taylor, and we had no intention of sleeping. He took my hand and I followed him.
He was amazing. The whole thing was amazing. We fit. I loved the way he looked, he smelled, and tasted. His skin was cool and smooth; his arms and chest were firm and beautiful. I was stunned. It was real. Right there and then, we were falling—together—into something that felt very much like real love. The kind you can’t deny and can’t fake—the kind that lasts forever. The genuine article. I was transformed. I knew real love was out there, but not out there for me. Or so I had thought. I rested my cheek on his chest, listening to his heart, and he stroked my hair. And, it wasn’t just the sex. Hell no. It was me letting my defenses down, letting him into my heart, him letting me into his. For whatever reason, it seemed we had chosen the same moment to surrender. I knew he could take care of me and I knew I could take care of him. I could love him more and more.
“Where have you been all my life?” he said, lifting my chin to him.
“Ah, Dr. Cliché, obviously in the wrong places,” I said.
He smiled at me again and said, “I mean it.”
I said, “Amazing.”
Forty-six
Rolling! Rolling! Rolling Down the River!
JACK, Trip, and Eric had all gone out on Trip’s boat Friday afternoon while Mother, Millie, and I put the final preparations on Saturday morning’s party. I had pretty well exhausted myself running around gathering all the things we needed. It was to be a pontoon party—a flotilla of three, closely joined, slowly traveling the Edisto—to mark Mother’s life as a celebration.
I had rented two pontoons from a company in Summerville and borrowed one from a friend of Trip’s. Millie and I set about decorating them while Mother, reclining in a lawn chair on the dock, gave out liberal advice, to which we said, “Yes, yes!” and then promptly ignored every word.
The railings of all three were festooned in navy and white sheer fabric for the colors of South Carolina’s flag. The lead boat would fly the flag of the United States, the second, the state flag, and the third, the flag of England—in recognition of our ancestors. No Confederate flag, thank you.
Boat one would have music and speakers; boat two, the ice bucket, refreshments, and a microphone for sending messages to the shore. All three boats would have fake palmetto trees and huge bouquets of fresh roses to signify Mother’s love of this place and the flowers she grew with such care and pride. A cameraman hired for the occasion would be on boat three with Mother (in her fan-back rattan chair) to film the others.
“I don’t see why you’re not on the lead boat,” I said.
“Because I want to watch my family and friends, that’s why. Is Frances Mae coming with the girls?”
“Yes, and she’s making ham salad sandwiches,” I said.
“Dear heavenly Father, please ask her not to put olives in it. I hate olives.”
“My pleasure. Any excuse to tell Frances Mae she’s screwing up is a welcome invitation,” I said. The wounds weren’t healed completely.
Mother arched her eyebr
ows at me. “Claws in, Sheena. I don’t want any trouble tomorrow. Did y’all invite Reverend Moore?”
“Yes, Lord, I did,” Millie said.
“Good; see that he gets enough food and booze. The clergy love to drink and they are always starving,” she said. “Everyone knows that.”
“Like she’s the expert on clergy,” I said to Millie.
“Don’t make jokes, missy, your mother has changed her heart about many things lately. Many things. And it’s all good, yanh?”
I knew that meant that Mother was praying. Hell, I was praying, especially since that Bible kept showing up on my night table. If I put it in my closet, it was back by nightfall. If I put it in the drawer, it was out again. You bet I was praying.
I was praying Mother wouldn’t suffer, I prayed my affection for Jack was going to grow and that he wouldn’t turn out to be another freak from sex hell. I prayed that Eric would come to understand his grandmother’s illness and death without a painful trauma, that Frances Mae would somehow become civilized, that Trip—recognizing her complete metamorphosis—wouldn’t dump her, that Trip would never gamble again, that Millie would live forever, that we would all be all right. And, I prayed that my daddy would be there to take Mother’s hand. I was praying with all my might that somebody, God, somebody was listening.
It was mind-boggling to me. Mother was dying before my eyes and there wasn’t a thing in the world I could do. And, not a single complaint from her either.
By Saturday morning, the world had changed. It was the day of the beginning of Mother leaving us, and in her own way. She seemed pretty much the same, except that she refused the tray of breakfast I brought to her. She didn’t appear to be in any pain—at least, if she was, she didn’t say so.
“Is it a crime if I don’t feel like breakfast?” she said.
She was brushing her hair in front of the mirror over her chest of drawers. I turned around, looking for a spot to place the tray, stepping by Shiva and her shoulder bags hanging from his arms.
“This is actually rather practical,” I said, adding, “Weird, but practical.”
I could feel Mother’s smile without looking at her, but when I raised my eyes to meet hers in the mirror, I caught her in a grimace of discomfort. She leaned forward on the chest of drawers, holding on to its edge for balance.
“I’m all right!” she said.
“No, you’re not,” I said. “Where’s your medication?”
“In the bathroom medicine cabinet, third shelf, on the left.”
I hurried to find the bottle, and saw that she was taking Darvoset. Jack told me that the time would fast approach when Darvoset wouldn’t do the job, that she’d need morphine.
I handed her two pills and a glass of water and noticed she was clammy, that her forehead was wet with perspiration.
“Come on, let’s sit down.” I led her to the side of her bed and she sat. “You okay? Want to talk about it?”
“What is there to say? That this hurts? Yes, it hurts, but as long as it hurts, I’m still alive.”
I was silent. She searched my face and my eyes and then she took my hand.
“My darling daughter,” she said. The tears began to flow. “I don’t much like the idea of this, you know. I mean, I’ve had a wonderful life and I’m grateful for that. But I finally find you again and now I’m the one who has to leave. It doesn’t seem fair.”
I began to cry silently. She continued talking. As she spoke I found myself trying to memorize her words. I was racked by a terrible fear that this would be our last conversation, knowing that our parade of pontoons was the last. All prior river exhibitions, the ones I swore humiliated me, were now treasures. As were her costumes, her outrageous behavior, and everything else that was a part of her. My anxiety increased as I realized then how precious these moments were. She was going and I couldn’t follow. There was a limit to something I had never considered would truly end. I knelt in front of her and put my head in her lap while she stroked my hair. She was giving me the comfort I had longed for as a child when Daddy died. I only cried and tried to listen to her.
“. . . oh, I know I wasn’t everything you needed, but I loved you, Caroline. I always loved you so. Everyone has moments of complete stupidity! Well, I certainly had my fair share! Maybe more! You were my little girl and I just hated it when you grew up. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, ma’am, I do,” I said.
“Well, it does my heart good to see you with Eric. You’re a better mother than I was and I’m so proud of you, Caroline.”
“Oh, please don’t say that. Mother? Maybe you weren’t all goopy and touchy but you’re Miss Lavinia! How is the world going to manage without Miss Lavinia? I just don’t know.”
She lifted my face and although we were a sopping sight with our red eyes, when she smiled at me, I smiled right back.
“It’s going to be all right, they’ll have a Miss Caroline, dear girl.”
“No, there’s only one of you!” I wanted to cry again.
“And thank God for that, yanh? You’ll just have to figure out on your own how you’ll go about it!”
That made us giggle like old friends.
“Reach in my top drawer like a good girl and hand me the blue felt sack with my pearls.”
I did and I took them out, handing them to her. “Thank you,” she said.
Their luster was brilliant in the morning light and she fingered each one, then stopped. I knew she was thinking about Daddy.
“When I see my Nevil, I’m going to thank him again for these.” She put them on as she had a thousand times before. “And, I’m going to tell him what a wonderful daughter we have.”
I began to choke up again.
“Will you please not cry? If you use your tears now, you won’t be able to sob at my funeral! I’m counting on that, you know.”
Her eyes twinkled. Mother’s wicked humor would be the thing that got us through the coming weeks.
“You kill me,” I said.
“Good. Now, for the love of God, go put on some makeup. There’s a photographer coming and I don’t want you to look like a scrubwoman!”
“Miss Lavinia?”
“Yes?”
“You’re impossible.”
She shooed me away and I left her to do as she said. I went to my room and the Bible was on my bedside table. I decided to test the Good Book once more and shoved it under my pillow, locked my door, and went into my bathroom to put on my makeup.
I forgot all about it while I flossed, brushed, rinsed, gargled, washed, applied fruit acid, moisturizer, and antiperspirant, and creamed my legs. I brushed the dickens out of my hair and looked in the mirror. She was right. I needed makeup. It was nearly nine when I finished the old daily toilette. While I was digging through my closet for something not black to wear, the phone rang.
It was Matthew.
“Long time, no hear,” he said.
“Oh, Matthew!” I flopped on the bed and tried to think fast. I knew I owed him some explanation of why I wasn’t returning his phone calls. “You wouldn’t believe what’s been going on around here.”
“Try me. You’re Miss Lavinia’s daughter and Trip’s sister. I know there’s an outrageous story in there somewhere.”
After I thanked him a million times for getting Trip’s butt out of trouble I told him about Mother.
“Please don’t tell me this,” he said.
“It’s true and this morning she’s going to break it to her two best friends while we float down the Edisto on three pontoons.”
“Seems like a crazy way to ambush your best friends with bad news, but nobody’s asking me, I reckon.”
I was quiet at his words. He was right.
“Matthew? You are an angel. No, an archangel. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
“You know? It seems like all I ever do is thank you for something.”
“Yeah, seems that way, doesn’t it? Listen, Caroline, I’m awful sorry about you
r momma. If I can do anything, it would be an honor.”
“I’ll call you, Matthew. I swear I will.”
We hung up and I made a mental note to call him. Maybe I’d make dinner for him. Yes. That would be nice. God knows, he had the patience of a saint with me. The least I could do was cook something for him. And, keep the information on Jack to myself.
The doorbell rang. I knew it was one of Mother’s friends— either Miss Sweetie, Miss Nancy, or both. I had to stop her from telling them this way. On the way out of my door, I glanced at my bedside table. There it was. The Bible.
I had no time to waste on the supernatural. I ran to Mother’s room. She had left and was going down the stairs, wearing a billowy white silk caftan and South Sea pearl earrings to match her necklace. She looked positively virginal and angelic.
“Mother!”
Eric was running from the kitchen, sliding in his socks across the glossy heart pine floors, to answer the door too. She stopped and faced me.
“What? Come on, we have a parade in my honor to attend!”
“Mother, please! Eric, get the door.”
“Going there anyway!” he called out. I was momentarily amazed by the fact that three people could simultaneously inhabit the same space—all with different realities.
I pulled her back into my room to talk to her. After I said my piece, she took a deep breath, sucking in the air supply of Charleston County, and then released it.
“Oh, fine!” she said. “I’ll tell them later.”
As it turned out, she didn’t have to. We—Mother, Miss Sweetie, Miss Nancy, Eric, and I—proceeded to the docks, where the photographer waited with Frances Mae and Amelia. Trip was already on the boat with Millie, Reverend Moore (who had very skinny legs in his madras Bermudas), and Mr. Jenkins.
Frances Mae rushed toward us and threw her arms around Mother. “Oh! Mother Wimbley! When I realized I was making ham salad for your last river parade, all I did was cry!”
Miss Sweetie and Miss Nancy looked at each other and then at Mother.
“Have I said something wrong?” Frances Mae said.
“Frances Mae? I swear to God, I could just wring your neck,” I said.
Plantation Page 44
