I cruised around for the Breeze radio station, the one that only played beach music, found it, and rolled down the highway on top of the Swinging Medallions. I definitely needed a double shot, but not of my baby’s love. Oh, God, I would just get there, try to stay out of arguments, see what was really happening to Mother, and then I would return to New York.
It didn’t take long until I lost radio reception and turned it off. The quiet brought me to a contemplative place. I opened the windows and the old familiar smells rushed in to greet me like ghosts. Pine mixed with the loamy smells of the earth. Soon the car was occupied by more spirits and memories than there were pecans in the grove Daddy and I had planted when I was just a little girl. I began to relive that sweeter time.
We had ten saplings with their roots wrapped in burlap lined up like soldiers on the flatbed of Daddy’s pickup truck. We drove out to the clearing and my daddy showed me how to plant a tree. I don’t know where Trip was that day—he may have even been there—but in my memory, it was only Daddy and me. He had prepared the land over the past two weeks.
First, he had had Jenkins and four other men clear it of trees and bushes. There were loblollies and some other pines, which were the main population of this chosen acre. Next, Jenkins had disked the land by pulling the blade behind his tractor to turn up the earth about three or four inches, clearing it of grass and small plants. Finally, he used a drag harrow to smooth out the land. Every evening I would ride out with Daddy to check the progress. We had great discussions about where to plant them and how deep the holes needed to be. By the time the day arrived to actually put the plants into the ground, I knew more about the planting of Schley Paper Shell pecans than anybody in the third grade. I knew that one square acre should hold nine to eleven trees, that the holes had to be dug down two and one-half to three feet and that the long taproot had to be planted fully extended. I also knew they were thirsty and that this meant Daddy and I would have many opportunities to go out in the cool of the evening to water them for the first year.
I remembered riding on the tractor with Jenkins as it bumped along the ground. The tractor seat was so high off the ground and I was so small that Daddy had to lift me high in the air for Jenkins to take me from him. I loved the taste of pecans and I envisioned us soon cracking nuts together. I learned that these trees would not bear nuts until I was long gone to college. And it was in those next twelve years that we lost Daddy in a small plane accident.
That thought of Daddy and how we were robbed of him lingered as I drove on toward Tall Pines. It was time to focus on what awaited me. Maybe things would go well. Maybe Mother was fine. Maybe Trip had matured. Maybe Frances Mae was less materialistic. Maybe blonds had more fun. Sure. Dream on.
I was so deep in thought that I nearly missed the turn for Parker’s Ferry Road, but caught it at the last second. In minutes, I was passing the Penny Creek Landing, the Shiloh Baptist Church, the New Bethlehem AME Church, and the infamous Blue Garden Social Club. On my right were other plantations—Prospect Hill, Wilton Bluff, the Hermitage—and finally, the wall that ran the length of the front of my mother’s property came into view.
The foundation was made of bricks, all of them handmade over one hundred and fifty years ago. Short columns rose up at regular intervals of about twenty feet. In between the columns and resting on the base stood beautiful wrought-iron fencing, each one of its thin spears twisted like taffy with a sharp arrowhead on its top—the kind you shouldn’t jump.
I pulled into the private road of Tall Pines and entered the pass code to open the gates. The ancient gates were filled with wrought-iron ducks, turkeys, and pine trees. I used to think the gates were stupid and now I saw them as extraordinary. They swung open and I passed slowly down the avenue of Spanish moss-draped live oaks, bumping along the hard-packed earth. In between the oaks were stands of azalea bushes and palmetto trees and clusters of low-lying camellias.
Mother’s whole property was naturalized over the years, planned and executed to appear as if it were designed by God, not man. The only part laid out in a formal design was her rose garden. On either side of the road were acres and acres of beautiful land, old rice fields and cotton fields, now transformed into bird-killing and clay-smashing heaven.
Several ponds sprung up here and there, edged by shocks of the last vestiges of her azaleas, pampas grass with its white plumage, and cypress trees whose roots’ tannic acid turned the water brackish. At last my car crossed Duck Tea Bridge and the house came into view.
Tall Pines, the undisputed queen of all antebellum plantation homes in the Lowcountry. She had begun life as a simple farmer’s house. Two stories, a classic floor plan of four rooms downstairs and four upstairs. The original kitchen was a separate house in the yard with a walkway leading to the main house. There was a good reason for it to be separate. Back in the nineteenth century they had not yet perfected the fine art of chimney construction, so about once every couple of years the kitchen fires would send hot ashes up the chimney to the cypress-tiled roof and the whole thing would burn to the ground.
By the time my great-grandmother was born, two wings had been added to the main house, one of which included an enormous kitchen, pantry, and laundry facility. Each of the two wings had long windows to match the ones that crossed the front and back of the original house. Wide columned porticos were added all around, which gave the house a new personality, one that said, “I’m big, I’m beautiful, and I’ll be around when you’re long gone.”
Tall Pines’s foundation was brick, made from local clay, its walls were cypress, and the roof had been changed from cypress tiles to slate tiles. The entire inside of the house had heart pine floors and my father had added mahogany paneling to his beloved library. Tall Pines was a grand lady. Grand, imposing, and haunted as the day is long. Oh, yes! Haunted!
Tall Pines stood there looking at me as if to say, And just where have you been, missy? I got out of the car and looked at her. Once the house got the sense that I appreciated her great beauty and strength, the voice in my head sighed and went away. I’d been back two minutes and I was already talking to the house.
Suddenly, the door opened and Mother appeared on the portico. Her white hair was cut blunt right below her chin and her silk skirt waved in the afternoon breeze. She seemed shorter than I remembered, smaller somehow.
“Hello, Caroline! Do you need help?”
“No, thanks, Mother! I’ll come back for my things in a minute.” I started up the steps determined to get the visit off on the right foot. “First, I want to have a look at you and give my mother a kiss!” She held her arms out to me and I gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek.
“Oh!” she yelped.
“What’s the matter?” I looked at her cheek again and saw the scrape. “Mother! What happened?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing at all.” She began picking up the packages that had come in the mail, which were piled up by the door. “Here, help me bring these inside. You’ll have to move your car soon. The girls are coming.”
“Mother, tell me what’s happened to your cheek. I want to know.”
“Oh, it was the most foolish thing. I was jumping down from the quail buggy and my heel got caught in my trouser hem and I fell on my cheek. Scraped the dickens out of my hands and knees too. It could’ve happened to anyone.” She looked at me and her eyes told me to mind my own business.
“Well, you’re lucky that’s all that happened. Here, give me that.” I took another package from her and she continued to stack the boxes high in my arms, and led the way into the house empty-handed. “Mother? What is all this stuff?”
“Caroline? They are life’s necessities from various catalog companies. If you think you’re coming down here to question me on how I spend my money, you may as well go on back to New York!”
“Good grief, Mother! I just asked a simple question. I’m sorry.”
I dumped all the packages on the hall bench. The phone was ringing.
“Fine. Gu
ess I’m a little sensitive. I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to bite your head off. Oh, Lord, I’ll get it myself,” she said and muttered under her breath, “I don’t know why I have to be the one to answer the phone all the time. Mrs. Smoak is just too busy and important to do it, I imagine.”
“I’ll go get my things,” I said, but began riffling through the boxes instead. There was one from Barnes and Noble. Another from Saks Fifth Avenue. There were two from Williams-Sonoma. Under the box from Scully and Scully, I saw an envelope from Victoria’s Secret. What was my mother doing ordering from there? Was Trip right? Was Mother going smack off the deep end?
I went out the door to get my things and move the car. The afternoon sun was clear and bright and the air cool and comfortable. It was already spring. The strong smell of pine made me feel like a young girl again. I pulled my luggage out of the car and left it by the steps and then moved the car around to the side of the house where the garage was. Walking back, I found Mother waiting for me on the porch again.
“Do you still play bridge?” she called out to me.
“Not in years, why?”
“Helen has a bad tooth or some such nonsense and can’t play. I need you to take her place or else the whole day is ruined.”
“Oh, no, Mother! Can’t you find somebody else?”
“Not now. It’s too late in the day.” She smiled at me and I knew my goose was cooked. It was actually a small thing she was asking of me. “You’ll have fun,” she said. “And I made those little smoked fish sandwiches you like so much. Cucumber too!”
“Oh, fine, bribe me with food. I’ll try, Mother,” I said, carrying my things up the steps, “but I’m telling you I haven’t played since I left home.”
She held the door open for me and didn’t offer to help. “Just do your best,” she said. “Your old room is made up for you. Now go wash your face and put on a nice dress.”
“I don’t think I brought one,” I said under my breath, knowing full and well that I had a dress in my bag.
She ignored me and went back down the hall toward the kitchen. I climbed the stairs and pushed open the door of my old room and realized that it was still a shrine to my childhood. In all the years that I’d been gone, she hadn’t changed a thing.
MISS LAVINIA’S JOURNAL
It’s time for me to dig in my heels and put a stop to all the nonsense in this family.
Thirteen
“Hush Up and Deal!”
AIRLINE travel just wasn’t what it used to be. It didn’t seem to matter if I flew for thirty minutes or twelve hours, I was so tired and felt so completely sticky when the plane landed, all I wanted was to take a shower and go to bed. It was probably all that nasty recycled air. So, it was not on Mother’s suggestion but of my own free will that I washed my face like a good girl. I felt better but I wondered just what it was about Mother that made me so belligerent. Hell, I was a grown woman and a mother myself!
Coming out of my bathroom, I looked at my watch. Two-forty-five. I decided to quickly unpack, knowing that Mother was downstairs obsessing over her petit fours and tea sandwiches. I was hanging my jacket when I noticed the photograph of my father and me on the bedside table. I sat down on the side of my old bed with the small silver frame in both hands. The air left my chest in a rush.
I was probably only three or four years old at the time but I remembered the occasion clearly. It was Easter Sunday. Daddy was running toward the camera with me perched high on his shoulders, hanging on to his forehead for dear life. I stretched out across the bed, kicking my half-empty suitcase out of the way, and looked at the picture some more. I had his eyes and his chin. I missed him more than ever. Thoughts of him brought him back to life if only for the moment. I looked like him and that single accident of resemblance reassured me I had once belonged here.
I could’ve lain right down and gone off to sleep and dreams but I figured Mother would yank my hair out of my head if I did. I literally leapt from the bed and decided to go face the Grand Dame’s music. When Miss Lavinia called for a card game at three, you had better be on time. Being punctual was at least one thing Mother and I had in common. Maybe I could find other things and try to build on them. I put the picture of my father back in its place and I was feeling so clever and agreeable that I put on a black linen dress. If that was all it cost to make the old bird happy, I could live with it.
Before I could get down the stairs, I ran into Millie coming up the stairs to give me a piece of her mind. The Sister of Merlin, the Esoteric Empress, the most mysterious of all women—Millie, the Prestidigitator of Tall Pines.
“You don’t come to my office anymore and say hello?” she said, pretending to be insulted. “And yanh I made a devil’s food cake for you? Make it by my own two hand and you can’t come to say hello? Ought to spank your bottom but good!”
We hugged and started to laugh.
“God, I’m sorry, Millie.” She pushed me back to have a look at what horrors Yankee Territory had delivered in the last year and a half. “Mother’s got me playing bridge this afternoon and I was rushing to unpack and get dressed.”
“Don’t call on God like that. Wait till you need him, yanh?”
“Devil’s food cake?”
“Yes, ma’am, and ain’t that just perfect for a bad girl like you?” She stood now with her hands on her hips and shook her head. “You something else now, girl. You look fine. Even though you can’t buy nothing but black.”
“So do you, Millie, thanks. And I wear black because . . . you know what? I don’t know why!”
Millie laughed again and said, “Now go on, girl, and help your mother.”
Between two minutes to three and one minute after, the doorbell rang twice. I was bringing a platter of food to the dining room when Mother answered the door. I could hear her chatting away. I stuffed a whitefish tea sandwich in my mouth and poured myself a glass of iced tea.
“It’s so good to see you! Now where is that darling girl of yours?”
It sounded like Laura “Sweetie” Mahoney and it was. I had known and loved Miss Sweetie to death all my life. She lived on another, smaller plantation and was the most normal of Mother’s friends. She, like Mother, was a garden club judge and raised prize-winning roses. She also raised thousands of strawberries every summer and made the best jam I ever tasted. When I was a little girl I used to help her pick them and sort them, eating almost as many as I picked. I’d come home with a red face, sticky hands, and T-shirt all covered with juice from the berries and Millie would give me the dickens. I hadn’t seen Miss Sweetie in ten years but I hoped I could depend on her to tell me what was really going on with Mother.
“Miss Sweetie! How are you?” I hugged her.
“Oh, do now! Look at my Caroline! All grown up and so pretty! I brought you something. When your mother told me you were here it was just the best news! I swanny it was!” She handed me a quart jar of strawberry preserves. It had red gingham cloth around the top tied with red ribbon. “Like my label?” The label said, TBDJOTP, STRAWBERRY, MADE BY HAND FROM LAURA MAHONEY’S KITCHEN. “I made it myself on my notebook.”
“Notebook? No kidding.” And I was expecting a little old lady with a cane. “What does this mean?”
“It means ‘the best damn jelly on the planet,’ that’s what. Don’t tell anyone that, though. I wouldn’t want it to get around that I use bad words. On occasion only.”
“Your secret’s safe with me. What kind of computer do you have?”
“Why, a Dell, of course! Got me a LCD screen on my big one at home and so I don’t fry these old corneas. And it ain’t beige either! It’s red! And my traveler only weighs four pounds! Five hundred megs and more RAM than they got in the mountains. It’s how I run my business.”
“Business?”
“Your mother didn’t tell you? When Moultrie kicked the bucket, I said to myself, Sweetie? You ain’t going with him just yet, and you need something to keep yourself out of trouble. So I went on down the road to the Coll
ege of Charleston, took a course in business and another one in computers. This year I’m gonna ship close to ten thousand bottles of jam. That should have been plenty for me, but now I’m thinking pickles.”
“Pickles?” My eyes grew wide and hers twinkled. She was thoroughly pleased with herself to be able to shock me with her news.
“Oh, yes, ma’am, there’s good money in pickles. Good thing Moultrie is dead ’cause he’d die anyway if he knew how much money I spend on all this technology! Keeps me busy. So tell me everything. How’s that precious boy of yours?”
“Oh, Miss Sweetie, Eric’s great. Just the love of my life, that’s all.”
“And Richard?”
“Well, Richard’s still Richard.”
“Men. I tell you, some days I just scratch my head and wonder just what in tarnation makes ’em tick. Pain in the ass. All of’em. Let’s get us something to eat.”
Mother came into the room with her other best crony on her arm, Nancy Cotton, affectionately known as Miss Nancy. She had short blond hair and green eyes, and she looked to be about thirty in her khaki pants and blue shirt. And, she was wearing black Prada loafers with white socks. Very cool.
“Caroline, come say hello to Nancy!”
“Hey, Miss Nancy! How’re you?”
“Well, for an old lady I’m still managing to get around. Come give me my kiss, child.”
“Miss Nancy! You’re not old!” I gave her cheek a light kiss.
“Not so old as your mother!” Miss Nancy said, eyes twinkling with mischief.
“What?” Mother said. “What kind of foolishness are you telling this time, Nancy!”
“Calm à vous, Lavinia. A mere chronological tidbit of truth, my dear Lavinia. May I please be fed before I faint?”