Plantation

by Dorothea Benton Frank

“Jesus, Lavinia,” Nancy said, “I wouldn’t dream of it!”

  “Don’t mind her, Nancy,” Sweetie said. “Lavinia’s just excited.”

  And, I was excited. I couldn’t wait for her to arrive. I fussed around the house while Millie gave instructions to her staff, to recheck the bedrooms for hangers and drawer space and things like that.

  “The cable television man will be here by ten,” Millie said, “and the phone company will be here this afternoon.”

  “Whatever for?” I asked.

  “Miss L? Don’t you think that boy wants to watch the World Wrestling Federation? And don’t you know Caroline needs a modem? How else is she gone do her business?”

  “Well, you just think of everything, don’t you, Miss Smarty!”

  “Your green eyes are showing, Miss Kitty!” Millie said and started laughing. So did I. By golly, she was right!

  Oh! This would be wonderful! I stopped and called Trip.

  “Get over here and make sure you have gas for your boat, boy! You need to take your nephew fishing!”

  “Mother? What are you talking about? I have to be in court this afternoon!”

  “Your sister is coming home with Eric. I have to hang up. Gotta cut roses for their rooms. Come for lunch!”

  I took my largest basket and my best clippers and went out to my garden to see what I could find. Lost in thought, I gathered up roses and small magnolia branches and filled my basket to capacity. When I looked at all the materials I had cut, I had to laugh. I had enough to fill every room in the house! Maybe I should cut some camellias and float them in the toilet bowls like they did on those silly house tours! Oh, I was having such a good time, planning Caroline and Eric’s visit.

  I walked the whole way to the bluffs by the chapel. I put my basket down on the chapel steps and went to check on Nevil. Dear Nevil! Lord, I missed that man! I wondered what he would say to Caroline about her trouble.

  She hadn’t sounded heartbroken to me. I hoped she wasn’t because I didn’t have the strength to listen to a lot of babble about that man. Richard! Dear God! He had my power of attorney! Oh, hell! I’d have to change it again.

  Well, I was sure that Trip had told Frances Mae that Caroline was coming home with Eric. Ever since Caroline had put Frances Mae in line, she had behaved better. Meek, in fact. But, Lord! I hated a meek woman. Especially when I knew it was an act. No one could act like Frances Mae. I hoped she wouldn’t come around for at least a few days.

  I wiped off the dust from Nevil’s headstone and had a little chat with him. “Nevil? Do you hear me? That girl of yours is coming home with our grandson. Do you think you could help me figure out what I can do to help her? Dead, you say? Now, Nevil Wimbley, I’ll have none of that. You wake up, you old slackard, and think!”

  Satisfied that I had put him on notice, I left the graveyard. I leaned over the chapel steps to gather up my basket and garden shears, and don’t you know a wind came out of nowhere and blew my Kaminsky straw hat clean off my head. That was my Nevil for you. My hat sailed right back into the graveyard and landed on his plot.

  “You don’t scare me, you old devil!” I said, and picked my hat right up. I knocked the dirt off of it and thought for a moment. Either he didn’t like my hat, or he wanted to let me know he was around. Either way, Nevil apparently thought he’d have the last word. Not so. “Nevil? Lunch is at noon! I expect you to be there and to behave! Is that too much to ask?”

  My wristwatch said ten o’clock. The sun was climbing the sky and I went home, singing a little tune and thinking about where I’d put all the beautiful flowers. No one could spoil my good mood. Not the living or the dead. Caroline needed me and this time I wouldn’t let her down.

  Twenty-four

  Ace in the Hole

  Friday, March 17, 2000

  I took the aisle seat and Eric sat by the window. We were headed for the only place I could logically think of to go—Tall Pines. In between us, our mountain of carry-on—his backpack, my purple sack, magazines, newspapers—seemed like a statement of a long trip ahead. It was. He stared out the window. I tried not to appear unsettled should he look in my direction. I was.

  I flipped through a magazine and tried to rehearse what I would say to Millie, to Mother, and to Trip. Maybe they wouldn’t ask until I offered to tell. Sure. I wondered if anyone would meet us at the airport. In spite of my nerves, I was feeling brave and had nearly convinced my emotions that this was not a permanent move. But there was no question that it was. At the same time, intellectually I knew our marriage had taken the ultimate swan dive. I couldn’t see any conditions under which Richard and I could ever honestly reconcile. I was thoroughly repulsed by what he found to be perfectly acceptable and irresistible. And I wasn’t about to apologize about being a normal conservative person. I had married an imposter. On one hand, I felt pretty stupid that I had never realized this was how he was. Plain and simple, I had been tricked. Or maybe I had tricked myself.

  I may have felt stupid, but I had tried to be a good wife to Richard. I had also loved taking care of Eric. I had married the Prince of Darkness and, by the grace of God, given birth to a cherub.

  At least I had Eric to show for all those years. Sure, maybe I had my MBA from Columbia, and I had worked as a decorator and had some success. But my most important job had always been as Eric’s mother. I was profoundly grateful for that assignment. I knew that boys needed their fathers and I prayed that Richard and I could work that out. I didn’t have a lot of hope that Richard would give Eric the emotional support he needed right now, because he never really had. I would have to discuss that with him at some point. And, I would have to give Eric extra reassurances.

  At the moment the thought of Mother flashed through my head, along came a slice of guilt. Maybe all mothers tried their best. Maybe mine had too. She had warned me that marrying Richard was dicey. I wondered how she had known that fifteen years ago.

  I reached over and took Eric’s hand from the armrest.

  “Wassup, Mom?”

  “Just thinking, that’s all.” I held his hand up to mine, palm to palm, and measured the difference in their size. “I remember when I first saw this hand, you know.”

  Eric just smiled at me. “Bigger than yours, now.”

  “Yeah, that’s true.” I took a deep breath and looked at him. “Eric? Everything’s gonna be all right.”

  “I know that, Mom, I’m not worried a bit. I just thought it was so weird that he didn’t come tell us good-bye. Didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, but you never know, baby. He might have had an emergency. We can call him later just to let him know we arrived safely. How’s that?”

  “You don’t think he’s, like, furious at us for leaving?” Eric’s eyes searched mine and I knew I had to deliver some kind of truth or he would know I was placating him.

  “Eric, he might be a little bit angry, but you know what? It’s okay for him to be angry. Any judge in the country would agree that you belong with me. And, I’m going to take the responsibility from your shoulders of worrying about it. Worrying is my job. Dad and I need some time apart to think, so I want you to view this as an extended vacation. How’s that?”

  “Vacation?”

  “Sort of.”

  “I would’ve picked Disney World.”

  I knew his feelings were confused. Hell, mine were. I also knew I had to keep his spirits up. I would find the moment to tell him about the separation papers.

  “Did you know that Disney World is only six hours away from Tall Pines by car?”

  His face lit up. “You’re joking! That’s the first good thing I’ve heard in a while!” He looked out the window again. “Hey! That’s Charleston, isn’t it?”

  I leaned over and looked. “Yep, it sure is!”

  “Boy, what a quick trip!”

  “It’s a quick trip, baby, but it’s a million miles away.”

  Eric nodded his head and the bell pinged, followed by a flight attendant reminding us to replace our car
ry-on bags and all the usual landing instructions. That accomplished, I looked over to Eric again. “Hey, know what? This could be a real adventure. You’re going to become a Lowcountry boy! I’ll bet Uncle Trip can’t wait to teach you to cast a seine net!” Sure. Well, who knew? Maybe!

  The plane rolled up to the jet way and we gathered our things. It occurred to me that not one week ago I had considered coming back for another visit for fun. Now I wondered how long I would stay. Was I moving home permanently? More truth? I really didn’t know what I was doing! For now, I was just going to spin a cocoon around Eric and myself and try to recover from our trauma.

  To my utter astonishment, Mother, Mr. Jenkins, Miss Sweetie, and Miss Nancy were in the baggage claim area. What a reunion! We ran to them and hugged them, raising such a ruckus in the airport that I thought we would get in trouble for disturbing the peace!

  “We thought y’all would have a lot of luggage!” Miss Sweetie said, smoothing the arm of my jacket.

  “Oui! Mais, not just that! We wanted to see y’all!” Miss Nancy said, giving me a hug.

  “No, we all wanted to see if y’all were all right, Caroline. Now let me have a look at my grandson.” Mother looked right past me and took Eric’s chin in her hands and examined him. Then she turned to her friends and said, “Y’all? I want you to meet the finest boy in all the world!” Miss Sweetie and Miss Nancy cooed and smiled but, to our surprise Mother put her arm around his shoulder and walked away with him, saying, “All right! Now I’ve got my boy! It’s been far too long since I’ve seen you, sweetheart! I am going to show you things you’ve never dreamed of! There’s a whole world in the ACE Basin! A whole new world just waiting for you!”

  Well, Miss Sweetie, Miss Nancy, and I exchanged looks of panic. Mother sounded like Rosalind Russell in a live audition for Auntie Mame. I didn’t know if she meant to resurrect that old pontoon boat and start her river parades again or if she meant to teach him to drink bourbon and shoot trap! At least she had shown up looking normal, wearing a blue cotton sweater set and navy trousers. I thanked the heavens that she had not shown up in one of her costumes. That was unfair of me to think that. In fact, she hadn’t done anything like that in years.

  She apparently wanted Eric to see her as normal, warm, and grandmotherly, of which I hoped she was capable should the occasion arise. I turned back to our welcome committee, the two well-wishing mother hens and Mr. Jenkins.

  “Welcome home, Miss Caroline,” Mr. Jenkins said, extending his hand, which I took and shook soundly.

  “Thanks, Mr. Jenkins, thanks a lot.” I looked around at Miss Sweetie and Miss Nancy, who stood by, waiting for me. “Let’s go get the bags. Well, y’all were right. We have about twenty suitcases!”

  Jenkins loaded most of our things in the back of the van and Eric helped. Mother watched Eric laughing with Mr. Jenkins over the strategy of packing the van. Jenkins pretended not to know what to do, scratching his head. Eric began giving instructions like a diplomatic drill sergeant. Mother turned to me, saying, “Caroline? The time has come to start concentrating on that boy’s gifts! I can tell you in one look that he’s a brilliant child!”

  “Mother, you are so right!” For once, we were in perfect agreement.

  In minutes, the convoy to Tall Pines Plantation was under way. I rode with Miss Nancy in her BMW, Mother rode with Miss Sweetie, and Eric rode with Mr. Jenkins.

  “Caroline?” Miss Nancy said, backing out of her parking space. “Your mother is so happy that you came to her, you can’t imagine. Do you want some music?”

  That remark revealed that Mother had told her friends that I was leaving Richard. Who was I kidding? With all this luggage? Hell, most of the world probably knew. Gossip traveled the Lowcountry at the speed of light.

  “Life is weird, Miss Nancy.”

  “You can say that again,” she said. “I always say, if you can live long enough, you’ll see just about everything.”

  I wanted to say, You don’t know the half of it, but I opened the console to look for tapes instead.

  “Sorry, hon, my music’s in the CD changer in the trunk. Just mash that button and then the next one and you can cruise through ’em.”

  Mash it! That was the first time I’d heard that term in eons! The next thing I knew, Shania Twain was singing “I Feel Like a Woman!” and we were tearing down Highway 17 south, blasting by Mother’s and Mr. Jenkins’s cars, waving and laughing our heads off. She must’ve been doing nearly one hundred miles an hour. My heart was in my throat. When Miss Nancy was sure she had them far behind her in the distance, she slowed down to around sixty-five.

  “You don’t know Lavinia like I do,” she said. “That old biddy will read our lips and we won’t have a moment’s privacy! So tell me, you all right?”

  I had no doubt that she was right, but she didn’t have to scare the hell out of me to make her point. “I’m fine, Miss Nancy, I swear, we’re both fine.” What was I supposed to say?

  “Okay, enough said. If you need anything I expect to hear from you, okay?”

  “I need a little time to get organized, that’s all. I guess for the time being, we’ll be staying with Mother. But eventually, I’ll have to find a place for us. I think we would enjoy living in downtown Charleston, or maybe over on Sullivan’s Island. What do you think?”

  “Real estate prices are through the roof! Wait till you see! But I have a niece who’s a broker. I’ll give her a call over the weekend. If there’s anything decent on the market, she’ll know about it.”

  “That’d be great. Meanwhile, I’ve got a lot to do to get Eric situated.”

  “School?”

  “Nope, I’m gonna homeschool him. I’m really looking forward to it.”

  She dropped her head to one side and got quiet.

  “No good?” I said.

  “Caroline, I’d be the last person on the planet to advise someone on raising their children, especially considering how mine turned out.” That made me giggle. Her son was a forest ranger living in Colorado, alone in the woods, writing a book on the secret life of screech owls. Her daughters, both of them, lived in a commune in Vermont and had multitudes of children, with different partners, without the time-honored tradition of a marital ceremony. Growing up, I remembered their escapades were bizarre. “But, it occurs to me that it might put extra stress on your relationship with your boy. I stressed my kids to death and it didn’t pay. They all took after Houston, my dearly departed husband. There wasn’t a thing I could do to change them.”

  “I don’t want to change Eric, but I don’t want to stress him out either. I’ll have to give that some thought. Tell me something, Miss Nancy. What’s your opinion of Mother? Trip seems to think she is having trouble keeping things going.”

  “He’s as crazy as hell too, yanh? Excusay moi, but they could both be a lot nicer to Lavinia, if you ask me.”

  “I’m asking.”

  “You stick around awhile and you’ll see. It’s not all that subtle.”

  “Well, last weekend she seemed fine to me.”

  “She is. Don’t you worry about Lavinia. She’s got better beans than Boston!”

  I smiled and sat back and listened to the sounds of her car’s engine as we roared down the highway. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a state trooper appeared at our side, indicating we should pull over to the shoulder of the road.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Miss Nancy said, “I hate this! They always pick on me because I’m a senior citizen!”

  I thought to myself, yeah, a senior citizen with a lead foot mashing the hell out of the gas pedal! She rolled down her window and started fishing around in her wallet for her driver’s license.

  “Afternoon, ma’am,” the trooper said, and took off his aviator glasses. I recognized him! Who was he? I had gone to school with him!

  “Don’t I know you?” I said.

  He looked at me and some major pheromones passed between us. This man had the greenest eyes and the most beautiful smile I had ever seen. />
  “No, ma’am, I’d remember you if I did.”

  “Where’d you go to school?” I said, more convinced than ever that I knew him.

  He pulled off his helmet and I took off my sunglasses.

  “Caroline? Caroline Wimbley?”

  “Yes! Matthew? Matthew Strickland?”

  “My God! I thought you had run off to New York City and you were never coming back!”

  Miss Nancy was visibly relieved and allowed us to continue our reunion, hoping it would save her points on her license and a big fat fine.

  “Matthew, can I have a word with you?”

  “You surely can! I’ll be goll-derned.”

  He even came around and opened my door, just as he had when we dated each other in the Dark Ages of high school. I got out of the car and stood next to him, brazenly appraising what the years had wrought. We had burned it up together, dancing at the Merchant Seamen’s Club in the wee hours of the hottest summer on record. He was still one of the finest specimens of male composition ever to walk the woods. It had troubled me that he never wanted to go to college. It had troubled him that I did want to go to college. Ambition broke us up, and serendipity had brought us back together—for the moment. What in hell was I thinking? Naughty, naughty. That’s what.

  “Matthew? How’s your family?” I checked out his left hand. Naked.

  “Sheila left me five years ago. All my kids are grown and gone.”

  “That’s just awful,” I said, as insincerely as I could.

  The wind was blowing his hair back from his face. He squinted and I could see he had tiny lines around his eyes. They did not detract. I imagined that unlike Richard he did not have one ounce of flab on him. The guy was a brick.

  “How’s that sumbitch you married,” he said, “that head doctor?”

  “Frankly, Matthew, I’ve left the sumbitch. I’m going to be staying at Mother’s with my boy, Eric.”

  “Is that a fact now?” He looked at the ground and then back at me.

  This was no time to be coy. “That’s a fact. We’d love to have you stop by.”