Plantation

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  She busied herself with the details of his death, brows narrowed and lips pursed. Trip and I stopped at the back door and waited for her to say more.

  “Who’s he?” Trip said, looking at me like he’d never heard of anybody named Clarkin.

  “Just someone I used to know, that’s all,” Mother said, sighing. “My, my. He was such a wonderful dancer!”

  “Old boyfriend, hmmm? Come on, Mother, ’fess up,” I said, by the open door. Reading aloud to us was a tactic to delay us. Trip slipped out to the back porch and was getting impatient.

  “Well, you go on with your brother, dear. I don’t want to bore you with stories about old lovers.”

  “Lovers?” Now my eyes got wider.

  “Come on, Caroline! Are you staying or coming with me?”

  Mother looked around to face me and just smiled. “Don’t keep your brother waiting, Caroline. It’s terribly rude.”

  “Right,” I said, and closed the door. Classic Lavinia. Bait and switch. Oh, go with your brother! No! Stay with me! Jeesch. I opened the door again. “You can manipulate me as soon as I get back, Mother!” When she saw me laughing, she squinted her eyes and shook her head.

  “Take a jacket!” she said.

  I ignored her and hurried down the back steps. Trip was already twenty yards in front of me, talking to Millie. I ran to catch up to them.

  The early morning pungent fragrance of damp pine and earth gave me a start. I had nearly forgotten how smells defined the time of day. Soon the sun would burn away the dew and this part of the world would smell like something else. What would it smell like at noon? Before a summer rainstorm? How funny, I thought to myself, that I had nearly allowed those memories to drift away, so easily, that familiarity with my past. But the ACE was powerful. I thought I’d discuss that one with Richard when I went home. He’d wax volumes about the meaning of remembering smells, while I sat like an adoring idiot. Maybe I’d be better off just to look it up on the Web.

  “Mornin’!” I called out to Millie. Trip’s dogs came bounding toward me. They were gorgeous animals, sleek and healthy. I scratched their heads and behind their ears. Trip had kept dogs for years. Sometimes he brought a brace of golden retrievers for bird hunting, but today he had Labs. Anybody who loved animals couldn’t be all bad.

  “Mornin’!” Millie called back.

  The dogs followed me as I walked and Millie drove her golf cart toward me. She stopped, took off her jacket, and handed it to me. “Don’t you know better than to go out in the morning air without a jacket?” She looked stern as she said it.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Whatcha doing up so early?”

  “Shoot, girl, don’t you know I got powder to spread?” She dropped her jaw in a snap to jar my memory. “Last night?”

  “Right,” I said, pointing my finger at her, “see you later.” Trip had untied the cleats, boarded his boat, started the motor, and was getting ready to cast off from the dock when I hopped on. His dogs sat on the dock, where they would wait for his return.

  “New boat?”

  “Yeah, I took this one out of the hide of an investment banker. He used to live in downtown Charleston on the Battery. Now he lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Atlanta.”

  “Probably costs the same. I hear Atlanta’s got some high-tone apartments.”

  “Not that high. There’s beer in the cooler,” he said.

  I looked at my watch. Eight o’clock. Good grief.

  “Nah, that’s okay,” I said, “but thanks. So did this little puppy put you in the poorhouse?”

  He coiled the ropes on the floor of the boat and pushed away from the dock with a paddle.

  “In the thirty neighborhood by the time she was all fitted out. Hand me a Heineken, will you? You girls behave! I’ll be right back!” he said to his dogs.

  “Sure. Well, she sure is yar.” I waited for a response. Silence. “I heard Katharine Hepburn say that once in the The Philadelphia Story. Yar? Get it?”

  “Yar, I get it.”

  He laughed and I shook my head. I dug around in the ice of the cooler, pulled out the coldest can, and gave it to him. Trip’s drinking seemed pretty excessive to me. I mean, I knew it was Lowcountry tradition to drink beer on the boat and I knew that cocktails were a part of life and that wine with dinner was a sign of sophistication and . . . what was I doing but justifying his behavior? Hell, I wasn’t such a prude just because I didn’t drink that much! I just didn’t like anything that made me foggy in the head. The first minute Richard could see that any alcohol was beginning to make me tipsy, I’d hear about it. But, if I didn’t have Richard to make sure I didn’t overindulge, would I? Was I being an enabler to Trip? God, perish the thought.

  I watched Trip from the side as we made our way down the Edisto, past old Hope Plantation and all the others. His thirties had brought him good looks; I had to admit that. God knows he was gawky in his teens and twenties. But his chin was filled out and all his outdoor sporting adventures had given him a nice tone. And, he was probably lonely. It couldn’t be easy in his shoes. Something about lonely men was appealing.

  I looked around at the riverbeds, and the old rice gates. What marvelous inventions they were. I could almost see them rise and fall and hear the voices of men speaking Gullah calling out to each other. After rice was planted in the fields, the gatekeeper would raise his panel gate, allowing freshwater in on high tide to flood through a trunk—usually a hollowed-out log. That freshwater allowed the seeds to germinate. When the heads of the new plants peeked out from the water, he would wait for low tide, open the gate on the other end first, and the water would rush back to the Edisto. If the incoming water contained the smallest amount of salt, the entire crop would die.

  The scene was from another time, all of it built by the ingenuity of slaves to make the white man rich. It made me sick to think about it. I knew more about slavery than the average white person because of Millie, and because I was descended from rice planters.

  The entire concept of owning someone baffled me all my life, although women were certainly treated like property until recently and still were in many places.

  The river always did that to me—made me think about things I ignored day to day.

  The Edisto River was a trickster with many personalities. One was her freshwater area that supported certain fish, crustaceans, and vegetation. It was so clear you could drink it. And, if you didn’t want to drink it, you surely wanted to run your hand through it as the boat made its way downriver. That’s exactly what I did.

  The winding estuaries on its sides were home to everything from oyster beds to alligators, fiddler crabs, and osprey. When you looked at the riverbanks, they reverberated with small creatures, birds and fiddlers, busy with their day. It was another world in miniature, except for the alligators. Some of those suckers were huge!

  When you arrived downstream to the salted water, everything changed again. You caught different fish, heard different birds, and saw different vegetation. At that moment, I was filled with awe by the incredible beauty around me. Then I remembered Trip, Frances Mae, and Mother—the reason for my visit.

  I was on a fact-finding mission; so far I knew several things. One, my sister-in-law was a horror show. The fact that she was a crass and gross individual from a family of scum was not nearly as offensive as her ambition. Two, Mother seemed fine, aside from her entitlement issues and all her dinner table hoo-ha. Why Trip thought she needed to live in a retirement community was beyond me. She obviously had the means to support herself and, although Millie was getting on in years, I’d prefer one Millie to a thousand younger care-takers. And, three, why did Trip put up with Frances Mae?

  Over the years, Trip had become the most successful divorce lawyer in Colleton County. All a woman had to do was leave Trip’s business card on the table and her husband instantly became the benchmark of perfection. Divide by two. That was Trip’s motto and no man wanted to do that. Better to take up hunting and fishing more regularly and ignor
e the wife. That was what Trip himself appeared to be doing, in addition to drinking his ass off.

  “Hey, Trip!”

  “What?”

  “Gimme the wheel! I know these waters just as well as you do!”

  “Oh, fine!”

  I took the wheel and pushed the accelerator forward, causing the front of the boat to pitch up high.

  “You’re gonna scare the gators if you don’t kill us first!” he said under his breath. Trip had a habit of mumbling his opinions.

  “What?” I pretended not to hear him, but pushed the accelerator forward again. I could see him smiling from the corner of my eye. We both liked to race the river. It felt like flying, like you never had to stop, like it was yours. The river air was thick and delicious and it was going to be a beautiful day. “So, tell me about Mother, Trip. What’s really going on here?”

  “She’s getting old, Caroline, that’s all there is to that.”

  “She seems the same to me. I mean, she’s getting older, sure. We all are.”

  “Yeah, that’s true.” He looked down the river as we headed toward St. Helena’s Sound. He was deep in thought.

  “Talk to me,” I said.

  “Okay. Here’s the story. Believe what you want, but Mother did, in fact, try to shoot me. She knew damn good and well it was me in the yard. Who the hell else would it be? I’m here at least four times a week! She said she was cleaning the gun. Well, she probably was. But, by pure coincidence, I had just had a discussion with her a few days before about what her plans for her future were. She was plenty pissed about that too. Old Lavinia ain’t fond of taking advice from nobody, no how.”

  I thought about what his words implied. That he was here all the time, that he wanted Mother to move out, that he wanted, and Frances Mae wanted, to move in. It made me sad, to think that Mother would be so angry that she would do something so foolhardy. Neither one of them had told me what was literally said, but it must’ve been pretty bad. Greed was a horrible thing. Fear was worse. I decided to remain silent and to see what he would say. We drove on for a while, nothing but the wake behind us and the sound in front of us. Soon, he spoke again.

  “Caroline, you’re not here, so you don’t know how it is. Mother has worn me out with her games. You saw her last night at dinner, how she went for the girls like a bull-dog? She’s mean as shit. And, Frances Mae might be a royal pain in the ass, but she is my wife and I wish Mother wouldn’t treat her like dirt.”

  “I thought she overreacted about saying grace. It wasn’t the nicest thing I ever saw her do. Seems like she doesn’t have much patience.”

  “Patience? Let me tell you something, Caroline, when she was screwing the landscape architect,” he said, with plenty of sarcasm, “it was embarrassing enough. But when he dumped Mother and took it up with somebody else, she went nuts for weeks!”

  “Hell hath no fury . . .” I said.

  “Right, but even Mother knows you don’t drink booze on the quail buggy to the point where you fall off on your face.” He paused and looked at me, shaking his head in disgust. “If she can’t act right, then she shouldn’t be allowed to handle guns.”

  “Look, Trip, I sure don’t disagree with that. And, I’ve been thinking about Millie. If something happened to her, Mother would surely have to make other arrangements. And I think she realizes that. But I don’t think we have the right to discipline Mother. She isn’t crazy; she’s angry. Very different. And, if I were you, I’d call before I showed up, just to be on the safe side.”

  Now why had I said that? Because Trip’s side of the story had some merit? Or because my old anger toward Mother was so dark that it kept me from standing up for her? The tangle of issues that came with aging parents was something I had never considered. I didn’t want to deal with Trip and Frances Mae. Or Mother, face-to-face. But, it was what I had come home to do.

  “And this business with Jenkins is just another indication that Mother’s completely off the deep end.”

  “I’m still not sure of that, Trip. I’m just not.”

  “Ask Millie if we both haven’t seen her coming out of his cottage at the crack of dawn.” Trip spat over the side of the boat, a symbol of his disgust.

  Judging people made me nervous. I had lived a long time in a world of considering others and trying to overlook or to understand others’ frailties. If anyone looked that closely at me, God only knew what they could find.

  “This ain’t easy,” I said. It was the smallest of all olive branches I used to cool his smoldering. But it would buy me a little time. “Let’s go on up to the Bait and Tackle in Skeeter Creek.”

  “For what?”

  “I gotta get me a Moon Pie and a cold RC if you want me to figure this out.”

  Eighteen

  On Dry Land

  TRIP and I rode the waters for another hour. I was ready to go back home then. He wasn’t telling me what he was really worried about. Maybe Mother would tell me what was really happening here. The end of our morning excursion came about naturally when he decided to drop his hook in the water.

  “I’m gonna see if I can catch some fish,” Trip said, “wanna come?”

  “Nah, thanks, though, just drop me off at the dock,” I said.

  Be my daughter. The words were ringing in my ears as I jumped off the side of his boat and his dogs jumped on. I walked across the yard. Obviously, I was his daughter. Then I knew what Daddy meant was that I should act as he would if he were still here. In the flesh, that is. What would Daddy do? I asked myself this over and over.

  Well, for starters, he certainly would not have been proud of the precise words I used on Frances Mae last night. That’s for damn sure. Daddy never looked down his nose at anyone in his whole life. That was Mother’s sin. And mine. I would try hard to change that, but Lord! Frances Mae was so déclassé!

  Change! I heard him in my brain. Okay, I’d make every human attempt to do that. Just my luck I had a dead father who spoke in sound bites. Change! There he was again. Alright, already! Jeesch. It was broad daylight and I was walking to the kitchen from the dock. Well, if my daddy intended to haunt me, I could live with head noises. But if he showed up in a body, forget about it. I’d be home in New York before they knew I had left. The very thought gave me the shivers.

  Daddy would’ve approved of the boat ride. It was good. I needed to find out what was on Trip’s mind and how he saw things. Everybody always had their own perspective on things. Before I left my goal was to try to make everyone share one version of the truth. I would enlist Millie and Richard, and try to keep Daddy’s spirit going to monitor my progress.

  It was nine-thirty, according to the kitchen wall clock. Trip wouldn’t be back until lunch. I thought I’d find Mother in the kitchen, but she wasn’t there. I immediately assumed she was probably fussing around somewhere in her shoe closet. That stinking shoe closet still gave me nightmares. When I was little she spent more time there than with me.

  My own shoe collection was another Zen experience—all black. Loafers, one pair. Low pumps, suede and leather, one pair each; mules, black grosgrain; flat boots, one pair. Tennis shoes, one pair, white. Period. Good girl.

  It dawned on me suddenly that perhaps my minimalist approach to shopping was the result of some episode of maternal neglect. And, whether it was real or imagined, it shouldn’t matter anymore. Suddenly, it didn’t. What a joke! How many other things in my life had I embraced because I thought Mother would choose the opposite? That was too scary to consider.

  I reached for the kitchen wall phone and saw the first line was lit. That meant she was working her jaw with somebody, probably Miss Sweetie or Miss Nancy, telling the tale of her Aubusson.

  It was a good moment to have a private conversation with Richard. I went upstairs to use my bedroom telephone to call him. On the way up the steps, it also dawned on me that at the first blush of self-realization, I ran to Richard. He answered on the first ring.

  “Hi! What are you doing? Sitting on the phone?�
�

  “Well! Sweetheart! Yes, I suppose I am! How are things down south?”

  “Richard, you ain’t gonna believe what happened last night.”

  I told him the story of dinner and the unfortunate dance recital and then, saving the best for last, the bit about Frances Mae’s bladder and Mother’s rug. Thinking it wise to do so, I left out the late-night visit to the graveyard, bringing Daddy back to life, and conjuring up spells with Millie. I also skipped the part about her remarks on Eric, half in fear he would agree with her.

  However, we did discuss Millie’s eventual retirement and my ride on the Edisto with Trip. I could tell he was thoroughly appalled by Frances Mae’s behavior.

  “What a foul person your sister-in-law is!”

  “Excuse me, your family ain’t exactly rampant with royalty either, you know.”

  “Sorry. Well, what’s to be done, Caroline?”

  “I don’t know, I called you for your sage wisdom.”

  “Hmm. Well, there’s no point in Trip and Frances Mae attempting to run Lavinia out of her house on the grounds of insanity. She can change her power of attorney with a one-hour visit to her lawyer, which I would certainly advise her to do.”

  “Excellent point! Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “Being brilliant is how I keep you loving me.”

  “No, baby heart, that’s only one reason.”

  “Good girl. And, I think it would be propitious to have a conversation with Lavinia about gun safety and make her promise not to drink and shoot.”

  “Right. Propitious. Love that word. I think I’ll do that as soon as we hang up. So, Richard, do you miss me?”

  “Passionately. When are you coming home? I need a woman.”

  “Tomorrow afternoon. And, Richard?”

  “Yes?”

  “I would prefer if you would say, I need you.”

  “I need you, Caroline. I want to throw you down! I ache for you. I want to rip off your panties! I die for you. I pine for you! I weep . . .”

  “Oh, for the love of God, lemme talk to Eric.”