Baroque and Desperate

by Tamar Myers

  I glanced around the room. I was at home, in my own little house where I live alone, except for Dmitri, my cat. I could definitely see things, just not angels.

  “Yeah, I see it, Mama.”

  “But Abby, dear, your shop doesn’t have a phone anymore, remember? It doesn’t even have a phone jack.”

  “Uh—I’m using Tradd’s cell phone.”

  Mama jumped on that before Congress could vote themselves a pay hike. “Who is Tradd?”

  “Tradd Burton. His grandmother is Mrs. Elias Burton Latham III. Her given name is Genevieve. She has a place down there near Georgetown. Have you ever heard of her?”

  I had to wait while Mama retrieved the receiver she dropped. “The name sounds familiar,” she finally said. “Why do you ask?”

  “Well, I’ve been invited to join the family for the weekend down there. Tradd wants to drive me down tomorrow.”

  “And?” Although Mama sings soprano in the church choir, she seldom hits notes that high.

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  Mama sucked her breath in so sharply I felt the receiver press against my head. “You better think fast, dear, because you’re getting a bit long in the tooth, and now that you no longer have a penny to your name—well, you get the picture. It isn’t any fun to grow old alone.”

  “I thought you liked Greg,” I wailed.

  “Greg, shmeg—the man couldn’t commit to his shadow if he had the choice. You take my advice, dear, and reel in the first good man to tug on your line.”

  “You mean I shouldn’t follow your example?”

  “Don’t be rude, dear—you’ll just have to apologize again. Besides, I’m beyond the age of romantic involvement. For you, however, there is still a glimmer of hope.”

  Somehow Dmitri, who had been rubbing against my legs, got his tail tangled in the phone cord. It took only a few seconds to extricate him, but during that time he caterwauled like a pair of toms on a backyard fence.

  “What was that?” Mama demanded.

  “What was what?”

  “Abby, you’re not at the shop, are you?”

  “Stay away,” I hissed at my darn cat.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said, of course I’m at my shop. I’m looking at your angel right now.”

  “Ah, yes, the angel,” Mama said, thankfully distracted. “It’s going to bring you good luck, Abby. You just wait and see.”

  “All the luck in the world won’t put this Humpty Dumpty together again,” I muttered, and then immediately felt guilty for being such an ungrateful and pessimistic daughter.

  Oh, what a difference a day makes. Friday morning I woke up just as broke as I’d been when I went to bed, but I was much richer in spirit. Not only did I feel determined to climb out of my financial hole, I felt strangely optimistic about my chances of doing so. Perhaps that was the good luck Mama had predicted.

  “Rise and shine,” I said to Dmitri, who was lying on my stomach. “You and I are taking a trip to the coast.”

  Dmitri rolled over and purred, waiting for his chin to be scratched.

  “Up, you flea-bitten feline!”

  He yawned and then resumed purring. No doubt I would have given in and scratched him into heights of ecstasy, had the phone not rung. As it was, I was lucky to take the call with my innards intact.

  “Abby’s Love Palace,” I said breathlessly.

  “Abby?”

  I sighed. “Yeah, it’s me, Greg.”

  “What the hell kind of way is that for you to answer the phone?”

  “This is my house, dear. I can answer any way I want.”

  “What if I’d been someone else?”

  I paused long enough for the Senate to eliminate pork from the legislative menu. “If you were someone else, odds are you wouldn’t be grilling me like a weenie.”

  As usual, Greg misinterpreted what I said. “Is there someone else?”

  “That really isn’t any of your business, is it?”

  “Damn it, Abby, you’re not really planning on going down there with that guy, are you?”

  “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t.”

  “Because you hardly know the dude.”

  “Bzzzz. Wrong answer—you lose.” I hung up.

  Tradd said he would pick us up at my house in Charlotte, North Carolina, but I told him to meet us at Mama’s house down in Rock Hill, South Carolina. It was on the way to Georgetown, and I had a few things to straighten out south of the border.

  Rock Hill is not only my childhood home, it’s home to lovely and prestigious Winthrop University, where both my children are in attendance. I was driving down Oakland Avenue when I saw Susan sitting in the sprawling shade of a live oak tree in front of the Tilman Administration Building. She was not alone, and from what I could see, her companion appeared to be of the male persuasion. I strained to see more.

  It pains me to say this again, but it is therapeutic; my daughter has terrible taste in men. I suppose I am to blame for that. Just look at the example I set for her. It would be nice to blame it on genetics, but Daddy was a wonderful man, and so were both my grandfathers. No, it all goes back to that fateful day when I met Susan’s father on a water slide, and didn’t have the sense to realize that the slide wasn’t the slipperiest thing around.

  I found a place to park behind the music department and by the time I hoofed it around to the front lawn the young man was gone. I know his disappearance was incidental, because the second Susan looked up and saw me, her eyes grew wide as magnolia blossoms.

  She jumped up. The one good thing her daddy gave her was six inches of height. At five feet three she towers over me.

  “Mama!”

  “Hey, Susan—”

  “Didn’t Nana tell you I was sorry? I was going to mail the check, I really was—”

  I hugged her. I imagine a gazelle being hugged by a python has a similar reaction. We were, after all, in the open, in broad daylight, and I am her mother. At least the gazelle has a chance of escaping.

  “Mama, don’t,” she gasped, “there are people looking.”

  That was nonsense, because at the moment we were completely alone, if you didn’t count the couple intertwined next to the bushes fifty yards away. Their eyes were certainly not on us. I let go anyway.

  “I just don’t want you getting away before I have my say.”

  She sat down glumly.

  I sat cross-legged, facing her. “I’m not mad, dear.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No. These things happen. I forgot to mail my insurance in once myself.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes, but—well that was a long time ago. The point is, I understand completely.”

  “You do?”

  I nodded. It’s harder to spot a growing nose on a bobbing face.

  “I really was going to mail it, Mama. In fact, I was on my way to the post office when a friend asked me if I’d help him look up something in the library for a quiz.”

  “Is that the same friend you were talking to a few minutes ago?”

  She turned the color of a ripe pomegranate. “Were you spying on me?”

  “Of course, not, dear. It’s just that when I drove up I saw you talking to a young man. Is he your boyfriend?”

  “Mama!”

  “Be coy if you want, dear. Just don’t expect me to tell you about the hunk with the Jaguar who’s taking me to the beach.”

  I seldom drink, I don’t smoke, and I haven’t done you-know-what for ages. One of the few pleasures I get out of life is shocking my kids.

  “Get out of town! I don’t believe it!”

  “It’s true, dear. Well, we’re not going to the beach exactly. But close enough. His grandmother has a house down near Georgetown.”

  “His grandmother,” she said and sniffed. “Sounds like a lot of fun. Does he really have a Jaguar?”

  “You bet. And a tan like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “What’s his name?”
/>
  “Unh-unh. You first.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Geez! All right, his name is Randy, and he’s just a friend.”

  “Is he a student here?”

  “Yes, he’s a student. Now, can we drop him and talk about your hunk?”

  I suppressed my urge to jump up and do a little soft-shoe victory dance. Or maybe burst into a rousing rendition of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”.

  “Well, my hunk—his name is Tradd Maxwell, and—”

  “Ooh, sick! Tradd Maxwell is too young for you, Mama. That’s disgusting.”

  I felt as surprised as the python, had the gazelle hugged him back. “You know him?”

  “Sure. He hangs around with my friend Caitlin. She’s going to puke when she hears about this.”

  “Maybe it’s not the same Tradd Maxwell,” I said hopefully. “This one is blond, and wears a gold chain around his neck that could wipe out the national debt.”

  “Give it up, Mama. He’s half your age.”

  “So you do know him?” I would have dug a hole and crawled into it, except that the venerable old oak had a plethora of roots and my only tool was a nail file.

  “Stick to someone your own age, Mama. Somebody old, like Greg.”

  I told Susan I loved her, despite her poor manners, and that if she ran into her brother, she should tell him the same thing. The love part, I mean. Charlie is as selfish as any nineteen-year-old boy, but he is seldom rude.

  Then, feeling like a balloon that has been deflated, chewed on by a slobbering puppy, and dragged through the dust, I went over to Mama’s.

  Mama opened the door wearing a pink dress with a full skirt pouffed to ballet proportions by a trio of starched crinolines. Since it was the week after Labor Day, her shoes were black patent leather. Her pearls, as always, were white. Judging by her outfit, it could have been any day of the week.

  “Come in, dear, come in!”

  “I can’t, Mama. Dmitri’s in the car and—”

  Mama grabbed my right arm and yanked me into the foyer. “He’s just a cat. He’ll be fine if you parked in the shade.”

  “Mama, is that a pork roast I smell?”

  She patted her pearls innocently. “I don’t smell anything.”

  That was like the pope saying he’d never been to church. Mama can smell what her sister Marilyn is cooking for supper over in Atlanta, and that’s a five-hour drive. She claims even to be able to smell trouble. I will admit to having a pretty good sniffer myself, but I am nothing like her.

  “Mashed potatoes, pan gravy—black-eyed peas, and let’s see, peach cobbler for dessert. Am I right?”

  Mama shrugged, pulled me in, and closed the door behind me. “Please, dear, there’s no reason for the neighbors to hear.”

  “Am I right?”

  “You forgot the garden salads.”

  Unlike my mother, I have a hard time smelling lettuce across a room. “This better not be for me, Mama. I told you I’d be stopping by for only a minute.”

  “Everyone has to eat lunch, Abby. And besides I thought that nice C.J. could join us.”

  For a fact, Mama is fond of C.J. For some strange reason the two of them giggle together like schoolgirls. But this was not the sort of lunch Mama fixes for single women. This was her snag-that-rich-handsome-bachelor-for-my-poor-divorced-daughter special.

  “So you have heard of Mrs. Elias Burton Latham III, haven’t you?”

  “Abby, dear, everyone in the low country has heard of Genevieve Latham. Old Money Bags they call her down in Georgetown. But not me, of course—I would never say such a rude thing.”

  “Of course not, Mama. It would be foolish to gossip about prospective bridegrooms for your desperate daughter.”

  “Why, Abby, how you talk!”

  “Mama, don’t you have better things to do than to meddle in my life?”

  “Not a darn thing,” Mama sniffed and headed for the kitchen.

  The doorbell rang and I rushed to get it, but Mama beat me to the foyer. It’s amazing how fast she can run in high-heeled pumps.

  It was Tradd and C.J. He was just as handsome as ever, having ridden down from Charlotte with the top down—perhaps a bit more tanned even—but C.J. looked like something my Dmitri might have dragged in from under the back hedge.

  “Hey, there,” Tradd said, flashing his set of pearls at Mama. “Is your mother home?”

  “This is Abby’s mother,” C.J. said dryly.

  Mama was beaming. “Come in, dear,” she cooed. “I thought y’all might like a little lunch before y’all leave.”

  “It would be a pleasure, ma’am.”

  I glared at my progenitor.

  “Sweet tea or plain?” Mama chirped obliviously.

  “Sweet.” Tradd’s golden eyes were already busily scanning the living room, no doubt judging Mama, and by extension me, by her 1950s decor.

  Mama seated us at the dining room table, Tradd on her right. C.J. on her left. I was, of course, at the opposite end, far out of kicking range. In all fairness, it was a delicious lunch and my mother behaved herself admirably until dessert.

  “So,” she said, adding an extra scoop of vanilla ice cream to Tradd’s cobbler, “do you have any older brothers?”

  “Mama, please,” I hissed.

  Mama turned and gave me a wide-eyed, innocent look. “Not for you, dear, for me.”

  Tradd grinned, sending roaches three blocks away scrambling for the cover of darkness. “No, ma’am. Just two younger brothers. Harold’s married and Rupert is—”

  “Spoken for!” C.J. looked like she was ready to tussle it out with Mama in the remains of the pork roast and mashed potatoes.

  I wanted to die. “Ladies,” I wailed, “you’re embarrassing the man.”

  Tradd waved a bronze hand. Considering the weight of the gold tennis bracelet around his wrist, it was a wonder he could lift it at all.

  “No, ma’am, I’m not embarrassed. I hear this kind of thing all the time. Guess it goes with the territory.”

  “Is that so?” I crammed a spoonful of cobbler in my mug before I could say anything that would jeopardize my participation in the ridiculous treasure hunt his grandmother was hosting. It was no wonder Pretty Boy drove a convertible. A regular car couldn’t accommodate his swollen head.

  Three hours in a convertible may sound glamorous, but it is guaranteed to produce a month of bad-hair days. Thank heavens my dark hair is short, and reasonably manageable under normal circumstances. Poor C.J. was cursed with fine, dish-water-blond hair that she keeps shoulder length. Even by the time she arrived at Mama’s she looked like she’d dipped her head in oil before sticking her finger into a light socket.

  All that sun and wind is not kind to one’s skin either. C.J. was as red as the ink on my bank account, and I could feel my own skin coarsen by the mile. I was beginning to entertain the possibility that Tradd Maxwell was really a sixteen-year-old boy under that tan, and Susan was on to something.

  As for Dmitri, the poor dear had taken refuge under the seat before leaving Mama’s driveway, and was clinging to the floorboard for dear life. Either that, or he had jumped out unnoticed, and was already soliciting a new mistress. I didn’t have the nerve to check.

  “Would you mind putting the top down, dear?” I wasn’t about to look like a California raisin five years in advance of my fiftieth birthday.

  “What?”

  “The top!” I shouted. “Would you please put it down?”

  Tradd grinned, shrugged, and pressed the pedal even closer to the metal.

  It was pointless to argue. I cinched my seat belt even tighter and prayed that Jaguars didn’t have airbags on the passenger side. I ate all my fruits and veggies as a child, so it is not my fault I am vertically challenged.

  Just before we got to Georgetown, about six miles south of the junction of federal Route 701 and state Route 52, Tradd turned left onto a dirt road. The land was low and flat, the earth sandy. All around us were woods, predominantly pine, but with a notabl
e sprinkling of magnolia, cherry laurel, and oak. We were still miles from the ocean, but already I could smell a change in the air.

  The Jaguar slowed and conversation became possible for the first time since leaving Rock Hill. Tradd Maxwell was due an earful of words.

  But before I could open my mouth, Tradd opened his. “I used to hunt in these woods,” he said wistfully. “Deer, squirrel, possum—you name it.”

  “Bear?” C.J. asked.

  “Well, not bear. But just about anything else.”

  “I hunted bear with my daddy.”

  “Killed her a bear when she was only three,” I said.

  C.J. poked me with an unnaturally strong finger. “How many points was your biggest buck?”

  Tradd smiled, and the sun temporarily dimmed. “He was a twelve-pointer. Bagged him on my eighteenth birthday. How about you?”

  C.J. clapped her hands in delight. “Sixteen points!”

  “Damn! I didn’t know they got that big. What kind of gun?”

  It was time to jump back into the conversation, even though I know nothing about guns. “Shot me a twenty-pointer when I was only ten,” I said. “Or was that a ten-pointer when I was twenty? At any rate, do you realize just how dangerous it is to drive that fast? Especially in a convertible?”

  Tradd laughed. “Ah, that’s just insurance hype. A convertible is just as safe as any other car.”

  “It’s pickups that are really dangerous,” C.J. said solemnly. “My Uncle Elmer, Aunt Mabel, and their seven kids died in the back of a pickup.”

  I turned to look at her. There were tears in her eyes.

  “I’m sorry to hear that, dear. You never mentioned that before. Rear-end collision in Shelby?”

  “Oh, no. They were hitching a ride in a pickup along the Broad River when there was a flash flood. They drowned when they couldn’t get the tailgate down.”

  Fortunately for C.J. the estate of Mrs. Elias Burton Latham III was now visible through the trees.

  4

  The Latham estate was built by slaves. It began as a rice plantation, a labor-intensive enterprise, and a 1790 census shows that Col. Elias Latham owned two hundred and eighty-five slaves of African origin, and four indentured servants from Wales, three male, and one female.