“Millie? Is that you?”
“Nope! It’s me, Rusty!”
I swung around the far end of the table, smoothing the cloth as she stepped into the dining room. She had the most peculiar look on her face.
“Hey! Good morning! What’s wrong?”
She sighed with a gush of air I could feel from five feet away.
“It seems our camellias are in bloom again.”
“What? They bloomed in January, didn’t they?”
“Yeah, but now we’re growing actual bloomers.”
She held up two very skimpy-looking pairs of thong underpants on her index fingers. I gasped. She cocked her head to one side.
“Nice. Don’t you think?”
“My God!”
My mind began to race. Rusty had found these on the camellias. Their provenance was unmistakable. The intention was insulting. The girls were screwing the gardeners or landscapers or whatever it was those young men from last night did for gainful employment. It was an in-your-face vulgar gesture that I, in the wildest moment of my life, would not have deemed appropriate under any circumstances except an 8.9 earthquake, a circumstance when you had to abandon all propriety and your clothes and run for your life. Perhaps the girls’ earth had moved, but they had done this to be deliberately disrespectful to Rusty and Trip and to let them know they intended to do as they pleased.
“Throw them in the garbage before Millie gets here and don’t give the nasty little tramps the satisfaction of grossing you out. We’re going to ignore this.”
“Is this an outrage or what? What do you think?”
“I think those young men could do so much better. My nieces are a disgrace. That’s what I think. Now hurry. She’ll be walking in the door any second.” I heard the back door open and close again. “No! Wait! She’s here! Hide them.”
Rusty threw the panties in the open door of the linen press and slammed it shut.
“Not on my grandmother’s linens! Mother of God!” I hissed.
As fast as a bolt of lightning could scorch the earth, I opened the front windows and dropped the offending garments behind the boxwoods. At least they were out of the house. I would put on gloves and maybe a Hazmat suit and dispose of them later. To be honest, I felt a little faint. I closed the window and turned to see Millie standing there with that knowing look on her face.
“Don’t make me go scrying in my bowl this morning, you ’eah me? What’s going on ’round ’eah?”
“Scrying?” Rusty said.
“The art of predicting the future by staring into water. Nostradamus did it all the time. Very handy for predicting the end of time and all that,” I said. “You don’t want to know, Millie. Let’s get some sausage going in the pan. They’ll be here soon.”
“Humph. Suit yourself. You don’t have to tell me what I already know,” she said with some annoyance in her voice. “I’ll be in the kitchen kneading dough.”
We followed her and I realized that keeping secrets from Millie was a worthless pursuit on many fronts. She was my finest ally and siding with Rusty over her would offend her. So as always, I came clean.
“It’s Belle and Linnie,” I said.
“Playing with them man-boys I saw?” she said.
“More than playing,” Rusty said.
“The vulgar little wenches left their thong bikini underwear in Rusty’s camellia bushes last night.”
“What? What kinda fool nonsense you telling me?” Millie’s eyes narrowed and she put her hands on her hips.
“Bloomers. They probably thought it was funny,” I said. “Hold on! Rusty? You’d better check their rooms for pot. That’s stoner humor.”
“Good grief,” Rusty said, sounding defeated before the next battle had even begun.
The dining-room door swung open and there stood Eric with bed hair, drawstring pants drooping, and a wrinkled T-shirt, stretching, looking much like a yawning Statue of Liberty.
“Morning, Mom!” he said. “Hey, Rusty. Hey, Millie. ’S’up?”
“Hey, baby!” I gave him a hug and ruffled his hair. “I’m glad you got up. Go make yourself presentable. Everyone’s coming for breakfast and they’ll be here anytime now.”
“ ’Kay,” Eric said, and did an about-face. “Biscuits. Sweet,” I heard him say behind the muffled wood of the swinging door.
“If kids couldn’t say ‘sweet,’ ‘excellent,’ or ‘awesome,’ I wonder how they’d communicate,” Rusty commented.
“Not as well,” I said. “And that’s the pitiful truth.”
Rusty squeezed five pounds of oranges for juice. Millie made dozens of biscuits and stirred a huge pot of grits. I hauled out my largest cast-iron skillet and fried up tons of Bobby Mack’s apple-wood-smoked pork-sausage patties while I scrambled a dozen eggs in butter in another. The kitchen smelled like paradise. Breakfast was and would always be my very favorite meal.
My grandmother’s old Sheffield silver warming dishes, gleaming like mirrors, were soon filled. We were just placing pats of butter and jelly dishes on both ends of the table as Trip and the girls arrived. Speaking of Bobby Mack and jelly, I still needed to unload all that inventory. I made a mental note to call him.
“Mornin,’ y’all! I’m starving,” Trip announced.
“What else is new?” I said.
He gave me a smooch on the cheek and tried to pour himself a mug of coffee. The pot was empty.
“Morning, Aunt Caroline!” Amelia said. “Can I help with anything?”
“Morning, sweetheart! Thanks, but breakfast is all ready and in the dining room. Girls? Why don’t y’all wash your hands and let’s go to the table.”
Linnie and Belle rolled their eyes and went to the sink.
“I already washed them this morning.” Chloe held out her hands for inspection. Clearly, she had missed a few places. “Guess I’ll just wash them again anyway.” She was still wounded from the night before. At least she seemed sullen and I knew Rusty’s impending marriage to Trip was still the reason.
“Can’t hurt.” I smiled at her with all the warmth I could muster. “But hurry now before it all gets cold! Nothing worse than cold grits!”
“Ew!” she said, and literally hopped to the powder room like a bunny.
Poor little cabbage, I thought, she can’t even wash her hands right.
I sat at one end of the table, the one closest to the kitchen, where Miss Lavinia used to sit. Trip took the other end, where, yes, our father sat when he was alive. It was always a little unbelievable to me that we were now the rightful owners of those places at the table unless I married again, which, as we all knew, was not very likely. But there we were. I was in Mother’s chair; Trip was in Daddy’s. I loved sitting in Mother’s chair and I hated it, too. Trip probably felt the same way about Daddy’s.
Rusty was seated on Trip’s right, with Eric and Chloe on my left, and Amelia was seated to my right, with Belle and then Linnie on the end. The whole family minus Frances Mae. It wasn’t that Frances Mae’s absence went unnoticed; it was that Rusty’s presence and new status were so much more immediate. I became nervous suddenly because I wanted everything to go well and I knew it might not.
Trip offered a blessing that went on for so long it would soon be lunchtime if he didn’t wrap it up. I swear, ever since he stopped drinking and gambling, it was obvious that he had lost a big chunk of his brains. I cleared my throat.
“Ahem, ahem!”
Everyone giggled. Even Trip broke into a grin.
“All right. All right,” he said. “Thank you, Lord, amen.”
“Whew!” I said. “Moses, Trip! Is there anyone left to pray for or to thank? Come, let’s fill our plates. Chloe, why don’t you help yourself first since you’re the youngest.”
Well, don’t you know, little Chloe, who was never first for anything (except to be in line to get beat up with the ugly stick), sprang from her chair with her plate, rushing to the buffet.
“Wait, honey, let me help you,” I said, intending to rem
ove the lids of the warming dishes. I knew they would be hot to the touch.
But no; hell, no. There was not a stitch of obedience in that child’s makeup, no urgency to heed the words of an elder, and no sooner had she lifted the top of the dish than she immediately burned her hand, and the whole business, the lid of my grandmother’s antique silver dish, came crashing to the floor with a spoonful of eggs. It all landed on the Nien rug that had graced the floor since John C. Calhoun came here to duck-hunt. Okay, maybe that’s not quite accurate, but didn’t I tell that child to wait?
Rusty jumped up from her seat and rushed to Chloe, who was screaming from pain whose severity was highly exaggerated, let me assure you.
“Let me see your hand, sweetheart,” she said.
Rusty said it so sweetly that Chloe’s howl was instantly reduced to a whimper and she unfurled her fingers. This was momentous. Rusty had soothed the little beast. For the moment.
The dining-room door swung open and Millie whooshed in.
“What happened?”
“It’s all right, Millie,” Rusty said. “I think Chloe was surprised by the heat of the lid; but it’s all right. She’s not burned. But let’s put some ice on it anyway, okay?”
Rusty said this to Chloe, who nodded. Millie picked up the lid, placed it by the side of the dish, scooped up the eggs in her hand, and took the spoon to rinse it. The three of them disappeared into the kitchen to administer some TLC, making me slightly ashamed of my judgmental self, that part I had obviously inherited from Mother. It was genetic, you see, not my fault.
“Well, I could eat a horse,” Eric said. “Mind if I serve myself?”
“Of course not, darling! Help yourself! Girls? Y’all, too! Let’s not let one little snag ruin the whole meal. Chloe’s fine!” I smiled at them all, hoping I sounded like a loving caring aunt, knowing I was a disingenuous, judgmental stinker of a witch who only wanted to slap Linnie and Belle across their silly faces for what they had done to insult my brother and Rusty, who would be a much better stepmother than either of them deserved.
Everyone fixed a plate of food for themselves and I waited until last, hoping Rusty and Chloe would rejoin the table, but they did not. I decided not to remark on this but fervently hoped in the other side of my heart—that part that was not the judgmental stinker of a witch—that Rusty was in the kitchen making some headway with Chloe. Life would be so much sweeter if we could only just get along. And if everyone would just behave themselves. The way I wanted them to.
Finally, I took my place, spread my napkin across my lap, and lifted my fork. Linnie and Belle had not waited for me and in their haste they were already scraping up the last bits of grits and eggs from their plates. Trip cleared his throat, which was his way of letting his two middle daughters know their poor manners were a disappointment to him. They didn’t even give Trip’s disapproval a moment’s notice.
Amelia said, taking her first bite, “Don’t mind them, Aunt Caroline. They can’t help it.”
“Well, dear, hopefully we can teach them some manners by Christmas,” I said.
“What’s happening Christmas? Mom, this is so good. Can somebody pass the biscuits down here?” Eric said.
“Well, I haven’t had the chance to discuss it with my brother yet, but I’d like to give a ball in Amelia’s honor.”
“What? Why?” Amelia said.
“To present you to our friends as a young lady, a young woman ready to take her place in Lowcountry society.”
“I’m gonna F-ing puke,” Linnie whispered to Belle, and they both giggled.
“I heard that,” I said. “If you need to excuse yourself, you may.”
To my utter surprise, Linnie and Belle actually straightened up. I guessed I had a formidable way every now and then.
“I don’t know if I’m up for all that,” Amelia said. “I don’t even have a boyfriend to take me. Who would I dance with?”
“Nonsense,” I said. “You’ll dance with Eric. And your father.”
Belle and Linnie were about to fall from their chairs in laughter and from elbowing each other.
“I’m sure you think this is all a riot,” I said, “but let me tell you, it will be a gorgeous night and we’ll all have lots of fun.”
“Basically,” Eric said, “it’s just a dinner dance. It’s fun. I went to Miss Nancy’s granddaughter’s deb ball last year. She came out with St. Cecilia’s in Charleston. Now, that was an anthropology experiment.”
“If she doesn’t want to . . .” Trip said. “Besides, I never joined St. Cecilia’s you know.”
“What? What’s the matter with you, Trip Wimbley? Every woman in this family for the last hundred years has been a debutante! Except me because I was in New York with Richard that year. I’m aware you never joined and I think we all know why.” The minute the words were said I regretted them.
Trip looked at me in a burst of anger. For the first time in a long while he was deeply provoked with me. I had stepped over a line I was not entitled to cross. We could rag on Frances Mae all we wanted to in private, but it was never all right to put her down in front of his girls. The truth was that Trip was entitled to be a candidate for the St. Cecilia’s Society but he had never tried to join because Frances Mae Litchfield was so unsuitable. In all likelihood, he would have been rejected, Mother would have been mortified, and the whole thing would have had disastrous repercussions for the next hundred years. And I also knew he was about an inch from reminding me that I had been living with Richard and intended to marry a Jewish man nearly twice my age and that was the real reason I had skipped the deb experience with the Charleston crowd.
“Caroline?”
“I’m sorry, Trip. Let’s just say it wasn’t right for us at the time.”
“That’s more like it.”
“Anyway, all that was aeons ago and who cares? We don’t need St. Cecilia’s. I can rent the ballroom at the Francis Marion Hotel. I’ll invite everyone, we can have a beautiful dinner and fabulous music, and we’ll all have a marvelous time! Don’t you think it sounds like fun, Amelia?”
Amelia. Poor Amelia. She might as well have had a target painted on her forehead once she was in my sights. I was already redesigning her appearance, promising myself to be subtle about it, remembering how fragile a girl’s confidence could be at her age. I couldn’t imagine her thoughts and I wanted to give her some time to see the wisdom of my proposal, knowing she’d come around. As we know, of all of them, Trip’s whole brood of Halloween-scary offspring, she was the one for whom I had the highest hopes of making a suitable marriage and a successful life.
“Um. Sure. Probably,” she said. “I mean, it’s awfully nice of you to think of doing something like that for me. Really it is.”
“Well, you’d meet lots of nice young people your age and that can’t hurt. Maybe we’ll fly to New York for a dress. How does that sound?”
Amelia was very surprised by even the mention of something in her honor, much less a trip to New York.
“Shoot, I’ll go with you, Amelia,” Eric said. “I can go see Dad and my half brother.” I gasped a little and Eric laughed. “I haven’t seen him in two years, Mom. Might be nice to check in? You know, see if Harry has won a Nobel Prize yet?”
“We’ll see,” I said.
“I’ve never been to New York,” Amelia said. “Could we go to Radio City and see the Rockettes?”
Amelia was interested and I was so glad! Whoever knew that she had the slightest desire to see the Rockettes? And if Eric went along, it would be more fun for her. Most important, what other dreams did Amelia have?
“Absolutely! And we can go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim, and hear an opera and see a ballet . . . why don’t you go online when you have some time and do a little research. You tell me what you’d like to do and I’ll try to make it happen.”
“Wait a minute,” Belle said. “Wait just a minute! How come she gets to do all this stuff and we don’t?”
“Do you
really want me to answer that question in front of your father?” I said with my sweetest smile.
Trip ignored me but the air became suddenly heavy, as though devils were rising from between the planks of flooring and oozing from the corners of the walls.
“Maybe not, Belle,” Linnie said, giving Belle big eyes and a push on her arm.
“I think I’m gonna get some more grits, if that’s okay. How about you, Mom? Can I get you something?”
“No, thank you, sweetheart,” I said, and then looked back at Belle and Linnie, giving them the flambé hairy eyeball, a variation which I had just learned from Millie.
Just then the door opened and Rusty and Chloe were back to rejoin the table. Chloe had three large Band-Aids across her palm. She plunked herself in her seat and whispered to me with her eyes stretched as big and wide as two saucers.
“I’m really getting a puppy, Aunt Caroline! Don’t tell, okay?”
“Okay!” I winked at Rusty, who winked back at me and smiled. With her other hand, Chloe continued eating a biscuit Millie must’ve given her.
“What’d we miss? Is there anything left for us?” Rusty said.
“You didn’t miss a thing,” I said, “and there’s enough left for Beauregard’s army!” It was then I remembered to do what I had intended to do in the first place. “Linnie? Belle? Amelia? And you, too, Chloe . . . did your daddy ever tell you about the time that some of Sherman’s army, who were obviously lost, came to this house during the War Between the States?”
“What?” they all said together.
“She means the Civil War,” Trip said with a laugh.
“She is the cat’s mother and I mean the War of Yankee Aggression! Well, here’s what happened and every word is true. Every single word!” Okay, maybe not.
12
Settling Down
WE WERE IN THE KITCHEN, just Eric and I, packing a small cooler of leftovers for him to take back to school. Somehow we all made it to Sunday afternoon without bloodshed and only minor squabbles. Tomorrow would mark Frances Mae’s absence as one week. We had only seven weeks left to shape up Trip’s girls. I shuddered at the thought of her return.