“How are you today, Ms. Jarvis?”
Whatever would she do without Pilar? Pilar knocked and let herself in Jeannette’s suite of rooms and made her way to the kitchen to put the daily installments of soda in the refrigerator. Pilar, you’re my pillar of strength, Mrs. Jarvis liked to say, thinking it rather clever.
“I have your diet ginger ale, Ms. Jarvis.”
Five years in this country and she still slightly says “CHarvis” rather than Jarvis—but Jeannette wouldn’t hear a word said against her! Jeannette had been fearsome with many of her assigned attendants. The bed not made right. The breakfast brought cold. The mail not brought in a timely fashion when everyone knew it arrived at one every afternoon. Lax supervision of the Mexican cleaning crew, who could be told nothing in English. Jeannette was well aware what Lattamore Acres cost and yet nothing less than a base competence could be expected, when excellence shouldn’t have been out of the question.
Jeannette called out, “Now don’t forget your cans, Pilar!”
“No no, ma’am. Ha-ha, never forget the can.”
Jeannette was so weak when she first got here, with everyone thinking she was only a few more months for the world, cancer removed from three places in her body, that she barely could utter a peep as insipid or inadequate attendants filed past. That dreadful Anne, with bad country teeth and no education in how she talked—low-church Christian, oh the bottom of the white barrel, snake-handling and foot-washing for all Jeannette knew, liable to launch into a backwoods sermon. Anne was good people, she supposed, sweet and always available when called. But to look at those brown, crooked teeth every day … it put one off one’s feed.
Then lovely, lovely Carlotta, who was one of those take-charge colored women the world would have crumbled to dust long ago if not for the existence of, but her reign was short, just a year and a half.
And then when she retired, it was a parade of Hispanic women of some variety looking in on one, all with broken English and telling Jeannette about ever so many points of origin. Guatemala, Peru, El Salvador—two attendants from there, in fact, both named Maria, one following the other, for goodness’ sake. And yes, there was one woman absolutely, for sure, who was let go as a result of Jeannette’s complaints, but Guadalupe was a scapegrace from start to finish and her termination was only a matter of time. Many of the ladies had reported things missing and when Jeannette’s pearl-inlaid hairbrush disappeared, she was fairly sure Guadalupe was involved because Guadalupe had mentioned to Jeannette how beautiful the brush was, had reached out to touch it and rub her hand along the spine of it, in fact. Anyway, water under the bridge. And now the Filipinos had invaded, including Pilar.
“You feel good today, Ms. Jarvis?”
“Quite well, considering all the aches and pains that arise afresh in this old broken-down sack I pretend is a body.”
“You take your medicine today?”
“I’m still alive last time I checked, so I suppose I did.”
Pilar wiped down the kitchenette counter, and there, sitting there, waiting to be hidden in the trash, but overlooked by Jeannette, was a ginger ale can: sugared, not diet. “You want me tell Dr. Sidhu you drink a sugar drink?”
“I’m in here parched like an old bone in the desert with this central heating, and my medicines are turning me into … into the Mummy. I’ll drink whatever I please from the vending machine, and that’s what I told Dr. Sidhu. Besides, your cans wouldn’t pile so high if I didn’t go to the drink machine.”
The empty aluminum diet ginger ale cans were worth five cents apiece when you took them to a redemption center. Jeannette recalled seeing those homeless men pushing around shopping carts of cans, hoping to get enough for a liquor bottle, no doubt. But Jeannette figured Pilar made quite a little pocket change on the mountain of cans that she piled up. Jeannette could have tossed them out but she liked looking after her dear Pilar, since her own family didn’t require her attentions.
Why, she’d barely ever had a soda before Lattamore Acres … oh, maybe a Coca-Cola back in the days of soda fountains where they mixed it with seltzer and syrup, like over at the Woolworth’s uptown—my land, those were good. Nothing in a can could ever compare! But she had become addicted now to canned diet sodas, even though her doctors discouraged it. The only thing after the chemotherapy and operations four years ago, the only thing she could keep down was ginger ale, and then, with the diabetes, it had to be diet ginger ale, but she certainly kept Canada Dry in business! (That horrible country-Christian Anne would always bring her bargain-brand ginger ale and that is something you can not go cheap on.)
Jeannette had a special blue plastic bin for the cans and, if you made an inspection, you would invariably find some contraband sugared soft-drink cans amid the diets. There was a drink machine on the floor and Jeannette, when weighed down with a surfeit of quarters, would sneak-purchase the prohibited sugar-laden ginger ale, despite the severity of her diabetes. Pilar would tsk-tsk and threaten but she would never tattle on Jeannette to the doctors; they were conspirators, despite the banter.
“Oh my wonnerful wonnerful can, yes ma’am. How are we doing…” Pilar went to the light blue plastic bin and opened the lid to inspect her pile.
“You can take that bunch. Must be at least two dollars in there.”
“Oh thank you, Ms. Jarvis. Every can help, you know.”
“Oh yes I know. I know very well. I wasn’t always rich enough to be in Lattamore Acres, it may surprise you to learn.”
“Nah you say, Ms. Jarvis. You act like a woman born to be a lady through and through.”
“Be that as it may, I was not raised with very much money at all. But hard work will get you far in America. Remember that.”
“Yes, Ms. Jarvis. What work did you do?”
Jeannette was suddenly tired of talking. “Oh this and that. It was my husband who really worked, who made the money while I made a home for him and three children. A country lawyer who made some very good investments in real estate and art.”
“Art! Oh he musta been very very smart, Ms. Jarvis.”
“That he was.”
Pilar held up the white plastic bag full of aluminum cans, rattling it like a sleigh bell. “Thank you so very very much for my can, Ms. Jarvis.”
Jeannette Jarvis smiled fully; the conversational ordeal was at an end.
“You want tea when your daughter come today?”
“Yes, when she arrives you can bring it up yourself. I don’t want that oaf Melanie sloshing it all over the place.”
“Yes, Ms. Jarvis.”
Jeannette always looked forward to any family visit until about an hour before it happened, and then she wished she was left alone. Unlike some of the sentimentalists in this home who revivified from their coffins solely for visits by grandchildren and great-grandchildren, Jeannette was often not at all sorry that her family didn’t visit more often. Her own children were fractious and blamed her for everything that had gone wrong in the universe, and the grandchildren were a fright.
Dillard’s only child, drug-addicted Christopher who died in his thirties, had stolen money from her purse. Jerene’s brood were a strange lot, too. Jerilyn had been the most normal of the bunch and now look what she has gone and done. Annie the motormouth, the size, Jeannette Jarvis swore, of a blue whale, who wanted to unionize the Mexicans in Lattamore Acres’ janitorial brigade. Jeannette had never met any of Annie’s parade of short-lived matrimonies—that was an ignominious first for the family. Joshua, poor thing, who sat in her parlor with all the relish of a condemned man waiting for a call from the governor. Not bad looking, but no wonder he has had so little luck finding a girlfriend with so little charisma, fading into the wallpaper, invisible. (Hard to believe he is Duke Johnston’s son.) And then Bo, who preached a sermon one Sunday here in the Lattamore Acres Chapel as a guest minister during which Jeannette Jarvis, his own grandmother, fell asleep. Jeannette liked Bo’s perky little wife, Kate, though, alas, she wasn’t from good stock.<
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The phone rang and the reception center informed her that her daughter had arrived and was coming up to her second-floor room. Jeannette took a steadying, deep breath. She called the “assistance” number and asked the managers to page Pilar for tea service.
Jerene looked magnificent. You’d never know she was neck-deep in a morass of lawyers, filings, depositions with financial ruin lurking around the next corner. Whatever Jeannette did wrong as a mother, she nonetheless instilled in her daughters a sense of public presence. Neither Dillard nor Jerene ever so much as fetched the morning paper without being dressed and presentable to a world always rendering judgment. Much had declined in public manners since Jeannette’s day but my girls, she thought, despite scandal and mistaken life choices, possessed a dignity of an earlier age—and surely that was Jeannette’s great accomplishment. Jeannette lightly hugged Jerene at the door and bade her come in. “Tea is coming,” she announced.
“I really don’t think I’ll be here that long,” her daughter said, not shedding her winter coat or stylish leather gloves.
“The whole of Lattamore Acres is ablaze with talk of the civil suit. We’ll be lucky not to have the activities director charter a bus to the Charlotte courtroom to watch the trial. Oh, that ungrateful bitch, Liddibelle Baylor. How could she turn on you like that?”
“Funny how people get when one of your children shoots one of their children.”
“I could talk to her. Liddibelle’s mother and I go way back as well.”
“I’d appreciate you staying out of it, Mother. It’s all under control.”
Jerene sat in the upholstered chair before the little table and Jeannette sat on the sofa with its matching pattern. “It doesn’t feel the least bit under control. If you lose we’ll all be bankrupt. And though I don’t know what Duke knows about the law, I was your daddy’s wife, and is it … is it true you have retained Darnell McKay as your counsel?”
“For reasons that must be very clear to you.”
“But he is a tax lawyer, and perhaps not adept in civil suits—”
“Liddibelle’s got her detectives going over us with a fine-tooth comb. He is as interested as I am in keeping certain things … Mother. I am not discussing any of this with you before we deal with the business at hand.”
Jeannette raised her hand for a halt. “Why don’t we wait until the tea arrives before we discuss things.”
There was a rap at the door and Pilar entered with the tea, rolling forward a little cart with Wedgwood pot, cup and saucers, cream, and an array of finger sandwiches fanned out upon a platter, under cellophane. During the arrival of the tea, Jeannette suddenly swooned: she now knew what this visit was about. How she could have gone this long thinking it was about the shooting and not the more obvious thing? She had a very few defenses prepared but none of them was likely to save the day. Jeannette decided to play innocent, widening her eyes, and stall for time.
“Poor Jerilyn,” Jeannette exclaimed. “Tell her that her grandmother is thinking of her. You know, young folks can get past anything. I’m sure by the one-year anniversary, they will be laughing about all this.”
Jerene didn’t say anything for a moment. “I do not believe there will be a one-year anniversary. They have already separated.”
“The boy, what … Skip can’t forgive her?”
“It’s Jerilyn who wants out.” Jerene appeared as if she hoped that might finish the discussion but her mother, waiting, stared holes in her, so she elaborated. “Skip demanded she go to marriage counseling and Jerilyn said no. Jerilyn insisted that Skip make his mother drop the civil suit and he said he had tried but he couldn’t tell his mother what to do. He’s right about that—Liddibelle is as stubborn as a cement block.”
“But if it was an accident, when they were horsing around…”
Again Jerene looked burdened to be producing information she found distasteful. She glanced at Pilar who was pouring the tea. “Thank you, Pilar.”
Pilar deftly slipped from the room, closing the door behind her.
Then Jerene resumed: “I don’t think it was an accident. Jerilyn’s romantic life, shall we say, was a series of misadventures with those … aggressive spoiled boys down there at Carolina. I won’t shock you with details, Mother.”
“What sordidness young people get up to could not possibly surprise me anymore.”
“Well, you use your imagination—sordid is the right word for it. An assault, a pregnancy scare, many ill-considered relations, then she ran headlong back to Skip who she’s known since childhood, I suppose, hoping for some comfort there. Jerilyn told me Skip sought counseling for drugs once upon a time—he has a compulsive personality. He was going to go to a sex addiction group, Jerilyn told me.”
“Roly-poly Skip Baylor?” Jeannette shook her head faintly. “That’s a little hard to picture.”
“Jerilyn was drunk and upset, and Skip, I imagine, tried to hug and console her, then that led to him being inappropriately amorous—I’m just guessing here, Mother—and she snapped like a twig, grabbed the gun and shot him.” They were both silent a moment. “So that’s that,” Jerene concluded. “I think that marriage is over and I don’t imagine there will be a line of suitors queued up at Jerilyn’s door anytime soon. For appearances’ sake, they will wait a while to do anything official. Fortunately, very few people know anything about the details of it all.”
“They will when the civil suit goes forward. What’s her name—Nancy Grace—will have it all over the national news on Court TV.” (Jeannette never missed Nancy Grace or any courtroom show.)
Jerene examined her hands, having taken off her gloves. “As I said, don’t worry about that suit. Liddibelle won’t go through with it, when I talk some sense into her. We have a long history. I pushed for her to be in Theta Kappa Theta at Carolina when she transferred from Sweet Briar. I broke up with Becks and stepped aside so she could have a run at him. I gave her a perch in Charlotte Society by making her one of my trustees at the Mint. I gave her son and daughter-in-law a flawless wedding which she was moved to tears by. When she considers our long intertwined history, she will think better of the lawsuit.”
“You should have married Becks Baylor and you would be a right bit better off.”
“Becks was a boor. Crude and rough and a little stupid except for business. I was happy to set him up with Liddibelle. They were very happy together, before he died—and when he left her his fortune, she was even more happy. But speaking of money.” Jerene was unsentimental. “We come to the purpose of my visit, Mother. You have to leave Lattamore Acres.”
Jeannette said nothing. Tears would certainly not be effective, nor theatrics.
“Dillard, Duke and I can’t keep you here any longer. It’s been a huge financial drain for years now but with the lawsuit and the expenses, it’s out of the question that we should continue paying for this resort.”
“Leave Lattamore? But my whole life is here, my friendships, my … my doctors come here…”
“They can visit you in a new home, I’m sure.”
“But the attendants on call know everything about my health—which is very delicate, as you may imagine.”
“I imagine no such thing—you have proven indestructible. You are in sufficient shape to live to a hundred like a number of matriarchs in our line. No one has ever known how to die in this family and you are following in the tradition.” Jerene serenely took a sip of tea.
“Can’t Gaston—couldn’t you ask him—”
“I did ask him, and Dillard pleaded with him, too. ‘If not for your mother, then do it for us,’ we begged. He has refused and wishes you out on the street in rags, and that is the nice version of what he envisioned for you. You see now the long-term disadvantage of allowing your children to be your buffer against a brute of a husband.”
Jeannette’s hand shook as she brought her teacup to her lips. Yes, in some quarter of her mind, she knew this talk would come. “You’d think my … my own family would…”
“Do you see them here? Do you see them gathered round you like a Christmas Norman Rockwell print? You do remember our last Christmas together as a family, don’t you? What a celebration of good cheer.”
Jeannette merely pursed her lips as she always did when the children were being disagreeable.
Jerene went on, “You wouldn’t speak to Dillard for four years after she married Randy. And when her only child died you chose that moment to lecture her on child-rearing and how it was her own fault. You! You whose response to Daddy beating Gaston every time he got drunk was to blame us all for provoking our father. You could have left Daddy, but you were too…”
Jerene set down her teacup, her hands were clenched; Jeannette feared her daughter would crush the porcelain into powder.
“You were too weak. You cared more for your social station than whether we survived that hellish home you both made for us.” Jerene gathered her purse, unfolding the coat in her lap. “You offered us all up,” she added in cold recollection, now standing. “Better us than you. At any point, we could have gotten in the car and driven to Uncle Fred’s and he’d have taken us in and not said a word about anything. Indeed, you could have stayed married to Daddy and not lived with him, that sort of thing was done all the time. But you had appearances to keep up. Apparently you still do. Well, those appearances are no longer affordable.”
Jeannette blurted out, “We had a deal!”
Jerene seemed not to know what deal she was referring to. Then she figured what her mother meant. “Not a deal, an arrangement. I got to preside over the Jarvis Trust and we paid for you to spend the rest of your days in this palace. Did we not put you in the best possible place? This is a country club. Most people would spend their whole lives working to go on a vacation so they could live one single week like you do all the time. We chose this place so you could have a final few months of peace before what we thought—”
Lookaway, Lookaway Page 26