Southern Charm

by Tinsley Mortimer

  “I’m just saying, I know what this boy does to you,” she said to me during one phone conversation. “And I understand that he is a capital-C catch, but it’s important you play this very carefully.”

  “Mother,” I said, “calm down. We haven’t even been on a date yet.”

  “But you want to go on a date with him, am I right?”

  I was silent for a moment. “Yes.”

  “All right,” she said, wheels turning. “Look at it this way. That boy has always had a thing for you. Let’s say the first go-around wasn’t the best timing. Maybe there’s a reason you’ve found each other again. And if you insist on carrying on with this New York City nonsense for longer than a few months, you should probably find yourself someone to make it worth your while.”

  “Mother, you’re getting ahead of yourself, as always.”

  “Keep in mind, Minty,” she continued, “I was married by the time I was your age. If you’re going to spend all of your time daydreaming about making dresses, one of us has to focus on the practical things in life. Finding a husband. Having children. You’re not a college kid anymore. It’s time to get serious.”

  “Getting serious,” it turned out, included a full overhaul of my lifestyle. My mother became borderline obsessed with decorating my apartment and it wasn’t long before I was being bombarded with FedEx packages filled with fabric swatches and mood boards.

  On the phone one night in early November, I let it slip that Ruth was closing the offices on Friday for some renovations. I immediately cursed myself, knowing my mother would jump at the opportunity to fly up to New York and spend the day with me. She’d been campaigning for weeks for us to visit the Decoration & Design Building so we could get started decorating my apartment. The D & D Building wasn’t open on weekends, and it was the only place she would shop. As excited as I was to make my apartment a more comfortable place to come home to, I was also desperate to catch up on all of the sleep I’d missed in the process of trying to impress Ruth in the aftermath of the Hermès debacle. But she jumped at the chance to make a plan.

  “It will be painless,” she said. “Maybe even fun!”

  “Mother, I need sleep!” I protested. “Please. We’ll do it another day.”

  “There are no ‘other’ days, Minty,” she said. “You told me yourself that Ruth woman won’t let you take a day off before the holidays.”

  I pleaded with her to let me have the day to myself, but she showed up anyway. At seven A.M., no less.

  “Good God, Minty, what have you been doing in this place?” Her signature drawl, high-pitched and twangy with a touch of an aristocratic lilt, jolted me from sleep.

  When my eyes finally came into focus, I realized I wasn’t dreaming. No. She was actually standing over my bed, perfectly dressed and accessorized in a Chanel tweed suit, tapping her foot on the parquet and humming to herself.

  I grumbled and slowly came to. No call, no key, no doorbell ringing. How the hell did she get in? I turned over and buried my face in my pillow as I came to a frightening realization: she must have some sort of covert agreement with the doorman.

  “Mommy,” I whined, pulling the covers up under my chin, “what are you doing here? I was at work until God knows how late last night.”

  “We’ll get to that situation in a moment,” she said. “But, honestly, Minty, at least feign some excitement. I haven’t seen you in months!” She sauntered over to my bedroom window, where she pulled back the curtains gingerly, as if the fabric was covered in something unseemly

  “Minty, honey, these are all wrong,” she said, her face scrunched disapprovingly. “What color is this? Chartreuse? Chartreuse in the bedroom! Honey.”

  I frowned. Her tone had gone from conciliatory to patronizing.

  She peered through the windows onto Sixtieth Street and gasped. “Oh,” she said. “What an interesting view.”

  My bedroom window looked down onto a perfectly normal New York street, but it was no Central Park.

  “What do they call those little corner stores again? The ones where they play the ethnic music all day and sell overpriced cans of soup? I see you have quite the panoramic view of one of those very stores.”

  “Bodega, Mother,” I sighed, sitting up. “Bodega.”

  “Well. At least you’ll never want for scratch-off lottery tickets.”

  “Mother.”

  “Really, Minty.” She moved away from the window and glanced around the room again. “Any stranger walking into this apartment would think you grew up in a hovel, not one of Charleston’s most historic homes.”

  I sighed. I had been remiss in failing to create the proper environment, and Mother had found me out. And we were only in the bedroom. She still had my living room, kitchen, and bathroom to pick apart.

  “Anyway, Mother,” I said. “I should probably get dressed.”

  When I emerged several minutes later, wearing a plum sweater dress and knee-high suede Prada boots, she was positioned in the center of the living room, surveying its contents with disdain written all over her perfectly microdermabrasioned complexion.

  She took off her Chanel ballet flats one by one and placed them to the side.

  “Sisal, Minty?” She dragged a pedicured foot over the surface of the rug. Her cherry-red toes shone against the drab, oily finish of the cheap weave. I’d bought it because it was quick and easy and I needed a rug! I figured I’d have it replaced before she even had the chance to see it.

  “It’s just temporary, Mother!” I said guiltily.

  She stared back at me, stone-faced.

  “There is no such thing as temporary,” she said. “Only second-rate.”

  The last part of that statement I said along with her, I knew it so well.

  She glared back at me, annoyed and amused at the same time.

  “Don’t mock me, child,” she countered with a wagging finger, a tiny smile creeping onto her face.

  “Mommy,” I said, slipping back into a little-girl voice, “I’ve been very busy. I don’t have time to decorate. I barely have time to get dressed!”

  She looked concerned for a moment; she tilted her head to the side and exhaled. I had seen this look before: serious, then focused, and finally morphing into the calm, resolved countenance of a woman preparing for action.

  This is the thing about southern women (and my mother is a prime example of the species): They may come across as sugary-sweet and fluttery at first. They can be frivolous, fragile, trivial even. But not so fast. Beneath the perfectly coordinated ensembles; behind the hair blown dry to perfection; under the lipstick, with lips drawn in first with pencil, filled with a waxy garnet and finally blotted with the most delicate, most exquisite of handkerchiefs, southern women are all backbone. Suggest to my mother that she is not allowed to do something, even intimate to her that there is a possibility she will not be able to get her way, and may God have mercy on your soul.

  “Enough with the excuses, Minty,” she said.

  I humphed and fell backward into my sofa.

  “I just praise the Lord your grandmother isn’t around to see this. You pick up and move to New York City, leaving behind your family and friends, your hometown, everything you have ever known—”

  “Jesus Christ, Mom.”

  “—adopt some of the more uncouth habits of the North and casually use the Lord’s name in vain.” She paused dramatically, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand and raising her eyes to the ceiling. “All of that I can handle. All of that is just fine. But this”—she stopped and waved her arms around like Vanna White on steroids—“living in this . . . situation . . . with store-bought window treatments and a Bottega on the corner.”

  “Bodega.”

  “In the midtown of all places, overrun with frozen yogurt establishments and . . . chain retailers.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call Sixty-first Street and Lexington midtown, Mother. And you had a hand in placing me in this building, which is perfectly safe and in a respectable ar
ea.”

  “If I had known it was going to turn out like this, I wouldn’t have let you come up here.” She put her hands on her hips. “We’ve got to do something about this.”

  I was already dreading Monday, which marked my first Fashion Week meeting. Even though New York Fashion Week was in February, months away, we started planning before Thanksgiving in order to stay ahead of the curve. On one hand, it would have been nice to have a quiet, relaxing weekend to myself, but I couldn’t help but agree with her—my apartment was in desperate need of a little TLC and I’d already put it off for too long.

  “All right, Mother,” I said, secretly excited. “Let’s do it.”

  As Scarlett guided me through the countless showrooms of the D & D Building, she was in rare form (even for her). Fueled by the shock of my halfhearted decorating job, not to mention the words “Bed, Bath and Beyond,” it was clear that she was on a mission to create a new life for me—the life she’d imagined I had been living in New York. She moved from Brunschwig & Fils to Manuel Canovas to Scalamandre like we were contestants in some sort of interior design version of The Amazing Race.

  By the time we’d finished, it was almost four P.M. and I was starting to feel like the D & D had swallowed us whole. We had been in the Schumacher showroom for over an hour.

  “Mommy, I’m sorry to interrupt, but the turquoise is just fine and if I don’t eat something I’m going to pass out in that pile of silk taffeta over there.”

  She stopped dead in her tracks and turned to me, fabric in hand. “The turquazzz,” she began, using the correct French pronunciation, “belongs on a pillow, not a wall, dear,” she said, her tone serious, sober. “I’m thinking more along the lines of the chocolate brown grass cloth. It’s a bit more dramatic, don’t you think?”

  I sighed. “Yes, of course. The chocolate brown.”

  She motioned to the salesperson, who looked more weary than I felt, if that were possible.

  “And, fine, Minty,” she continued. “We’ll finish up for now and grab a bite to eat at Serendipity.”

  Serendipity is sort of a tradition for my mother and me. Ever since that first trip when I was eight, we made a point of going to Serendipity whenever we were back in New York.

  Housed in the basement level of a tenement building and decorated like a turn-of-the-century parlor with white walls and Tiffany lamps, it’s like something out of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The speciality is Frrrozen Hot Chocolate, a large sundae glass filled with rich, chocolatey goodness and topped with an inordinate amount of whipped cream. I was trying to be good (I’d tried on one of Emily’s size 00 samples a few days before, and let’s just say it didn’t exactly fit) but as we walked in and were shown to our table, I told myself, maybe just this once. After all, I’d earned it patiently listening to my mother explain the merits of wool over sisal and gold hardware over stainless steel for the last six hours.

  “Well, that’s a start at least,” she said as we sat down. “I’m going to have to clear the next couple of weekends of course to install everything, but as long as the larger pieces arrive on schedule I should have everything set by Christmas.”

  “Christmas!”

  Christmas was more than a “couple of weekends” away. I had not planned on a houseguest, let alone my mother orchestrating an interior-decorating job worthy of a four-page spread in Architectural Digest.

  “Minty, calm yourself, I’ll stay at the Plaza,” she said, holding up a menu. She perused it briefly, lips pursed and eyebrows raised, and then placed it down next to her plate. “Shall we share the Caesar salad?”

  This was her way of saying, “Shall we not order the Frrrozen Hot Chocolate?”

  “But, Mother,” I said. “We always get—”

  “Focus, Minty,” she interrupted. “You’re a New Yorker now. I won’t have those girls in size double zero dresses outshining you at one of those charity events.”

  God, I thought. She picks up on everything.

  “Fine,” I said. “Boring Caesar salad.”

  Mother flagged down the waitress. “We’ll share the boring Caesar salad, sugar,” she said to the waitress, shooting me a glance. “Dressing on the side, please.”

  Over dry lettuce and unsweetened iced teas, I filled her in on my new life. I admitted that New York was not the easiest place for a girl like me to adjust to. Everything was dirty, for one. I was going through shoes like they were disposable pedicure flip-flops and just the day before I’d almost been run over by a bike messenger. And then there was Tripp. Since the night he dropped me off in the town car, he’d been calling me nonstop and was practically begging me to have dinner with him. But I was still feeling slightly hesitant.

  Tripp was technically my first love, the first boy I ever kissed. He was sophisticated, confident, charming, and smart. He made me laugh. But he had hurt me, however long ago. If we had any chance of rekindling any kind of romance, we had a lot to talk about. And the Tabitha situation was still so unclear.

  I asked Scarlett her opinion on the matter.

  “I wouldn’t even give this Tabitha business a second thought.” Mother paused, taking a sip of her tea and swallowing dramatically, like a motivational speaker taking a break in the middle of a speech. “God gave you a lot to work with, Minty Davenport. So start working with it!”

  I couldn’t help but smile.

  “Thank you, Mommy.”

  She flicked her wrist at me. “Enough of this ‘thank you, Mommy’ and ‘I don’t know’ and ‘I guess.’ Where has the Minty I raised run off to? The one who took the stage at the annual St. Gertrude’s School recital when she was just eight years old and wowed the crowd by lip-syncing to ‘Material Girl’ in a custom-made Madonna outfit? The Minty who led her debutante ball? The Minty who took the St. Gertrude’s tennis team to three national championships and went on to captain the tennis team at one of the top Division One universities in the country?”

  “I see what you’re saying,” I began. “It’s just—New York is a lot tougher than I think I was prepared for. It’s a lot different. I’m a lot different. I’m used to fitting in somewhat easily. I’ve never had to think twice about what I was wearing and if it was appropriate and how much makeup I should be putting on. Here, it’s like I can’t get it right.”

  As I was speaking, I noticed that Scarlett had checked out slightly. She was on her phone, texting away to someone. This was not a rare occurrence, especially when she felt that she had already made her point, but it was disconcerting nonetheless.

  “Mommy.”

  She looked up.

  “Oh,” she said. “Of course, dear. You’re different and . . . well . . . welcome to life.” Her phone buzzed and she picked it up, glanced at it, and tried to contain a smile. Then she put the phone down and focused again, staring directly at me. “You’ve got two choices here. You let this get the best of you and come home. Which, by all means, Minty, feel free.” I responded by rolling my eyes and sinking back into my chair. “Or, you can get up to the net and volley that ball right back in their faces before they can even anticipate what’s coming for them.”

  I smiled.

  “Well, then.” Mother motioned to the waitress. “Shall we get going? I already have a few deliveries scheduled for this evening and I’m going to need to be there to make sure everything runs smoothly.”

  “This evening?”

  “Yes, Minty. Do you think I have nothing better to do than decorate your apartment? I have company arriving on Tuesday and three cocktail parties scheduled next week. If we’re going to do this and do this right, we have no other choice but to work round the clock.”

  “I see.”

  We gathered our belongings and walked onto Sixtieth Street. The light was just starting to dim. There was a crisp, auburn glow that marks the calm before the weekend storm. Some of the higher buildings toward Lexington caught a bit of the sunset and looked as if they were illuminated by a spotlight, while at street level it seemed to be almost nigh
ttime. Dusk had always been one of my favorite times of day, but dusk in New York is like something right out of a movie. As we walked west on Sixtieth, my mother surprised me by stopping on the corner to pull me toward her for a quick squeeze.

  “What was that for, Mommy?” I asked.

  She stepped back and gazed at me very dramatically. I was starting to feel a bit suspicious.

  “I just want to have a good look at my little girl,” she said. I tried to pull away, but she kept me locked in front of her.

  “I’ve never gone this long without seeing you,” she continued, staring at me so intently I thought she might go cross-eyed. “It’s all going to come together,” she said. Then she stopped, her eyes widening with what was clearly mock surprise. She directed her gaze behind me and slightly to the right.

  “Oh my, look who it is!” she exclaimed.

  I turned around and there was Tripp, looking handsome as ever in a wool overcoat and jeans. He was also attempting to look surprised.

  Was she serious? Was he serious? Did this kind of thing really happen outside of an eighties sitcom? When Scarlett Davenport is your mother, yes.

  “Tripp,” I said.

  “Minty,” he replied.

  “Oh”—my mother cupped her face in her hands—“isn’t this just crazy? Tripp, sweetheart, how are you? It’s been years!” She leaned in and touched his arm, lowering her voice. “You know, Minty will have my head for telling you this but we were actually just talking about you! Can you believe it? So funny the way things happen.”

  “Very funny,” I said.

  If it were possible, Tripp had less acting ability than my mother, because he broke character and just started to laugh, as if the whole thing was a big joke and there was nothing strange or creepy about the fact that he’d been communicating with my mother behind my back.

  “Minty, honey,” she said, stopping to get ahold of herself. “You have to admit we planned this all quite well.”

  “Your mother’s the mastermind of the whole operation,” Tripp said. His blue eyes twinkled once again, which annoyed me even more. He was like a little child who could get away with anything because he made it impossible to stay mad.