“I know,” I said. “And even in high school, when she got really wild, and I was too chicken to do the stuff she was doing, we stayed friends. Even during college, when I went away and she stayed home and went to junior college, we stayed friends.”
“Force of habit,” Gloria said, arching her eyebrows. “Not always a good thing.”
“Hindsight,” I retorted, “unfortunately, not always twenty-twenty.”
“All right,” Gloria said, tapping her list again. “Let’s get to work. Who’s canceling the party tent and the ice sculpture? Me or you?”
A bell tinkled just then. When we converted Granddaddy’s second-floor storeroom into an apartment for me, Gloria had our electrician rig up a system to alert me when somebody opened the door downstairs.
“I left the door unlocked when I came in, but the sign says we’re closed,” Gloria reassured me. “Why don’t you just run down there and get rid of whoever it is?”
“What if it’s A.J.?” I asked, starting to panic.
“Don’t be silly,” Gloria said. “He knows better to come around here. After you took off last night we had words.”
“Hello?” a man’s voice called up the stairs. “Anybody here?”
“Just a minute,” Gloria called back. “Go,” she said, nodding at me.
I took the stairs slowly and peeped around the corner into the studio. What if it really was A.J.?
“Hey there,” the redheaded stranger said, looking up. He was staring down at my wedding gown, which Gloria had temporarily draped over my drafting table. “Will Mahoney. Remember? Your chauffeur?”
“I remember,” I said dully. “Go away. Okay?”
6
“Keeley!” Gloria exclaimed, sweeping past me.
“Hey there,” she said, taking both of Will Mahoney’s hands in hers, like some great, lost treasure. “I am Gloria Murdock. Please excuse my niece’s rudeness. She’s had her heart broken recently, and of course she’s never at her best this early in the morning.”
She treated him to one of her trademark, megawatt smiles.
My Aunt Gloria would not be called a conventional beauty; not in her prime, which was the seventies, or in the here and now, but she does have a powerful secret weapon: her smile.
Gloria’s was the kind of smile that made men want to doff their hats—even if their hat was a greasy ballcap—that made women want to take her to lunch and confide their deepest secrets, and then pick up the tab. I had seen that smile stop dogs from barking and kids from screaming. Gloria knew its power—and she used it shamelessly.
“And you’re Will Mahoney, of course,” she said, adding a wink to her arsenal.
“You know who I am?”
“Of course. I meant to speak to you last night, but then things got…unpleasant.”
“Keeley,” Gloria said, seamlessly changing the subject, “Mr. Mahoney here has bought the bra plant.”
I looked from Mahoney to my aunt and then back again.
“You did?”
Mahoney nodded. “Lock, stock, and patented twin crossover underwires.”
The Loving Cup Intimates factory, or the bra plant, as everybody in town called it, had been founded by Jacob and Dora Krichevsky, Ukrainian siblings from Brooklyn who’d intended to set up a lamp-shade operation down South back before the Depression.
Nobody knew why they’d settled in Madison, Georgia, but they did. Local lore had it that Dora, a full-figured gal, had despaired of ever finding a support garment to tame her double-D bosoms, until one day, while she was hand-whipping silk to the wire skeleton of a shade, she came up with the idea of incorporating horsehair and wire into her own brassiere.
Jacob, who was a bit of an amateur tinkerer, was unwillingly drafted into helping design such a garment, and the rest became lingerie history. At one time Loving Cup Intimates was one of the ten largest bra manufacturers in the country.
Every prepubescent girl in the South dreamed of the day she could purchase that first demure pink cardboard box and become a part of the Loving Cup sisterhood. Up in the attic at Daddy’s house, I am sure my own first Loving Cup—First Blush, I believe was the trade name for the training bra—was tucked away with all the rest of my girlhood.
Sometime in the eighties, though, Loving Cup had lost touch with the sisters. The company had changed hands four times, and as far as I knew, the plant was only running a skeleton shift these days, with most of its output being shipped off to Third World countries whose women couldn’t afford a Wonderbra.
“I understand you’re going to completely revamp the plant,” Gloria said approvingly. “Add more shifts, hire more workers. It’ll be a godsend,” Gloria concluded.
“If you know all that, then I guess you also know I’ve bought Mulberry Hill.”
Gloria’s smile dimmed a little. “You know how small towns are. News travels fast. And Mulberry Hill is an important old property to a lot of people in Madison.”
He held up a hand. “Let me save you some time, Ms. Murdock. I know you probably heard I was going to bulldoze the place. In fact, I was going to tear it down. But I’ve changed my mind.”
“It’s Gloria, not Ms. Murdock,” my aunt told him. “Good for you. Is the house back on the market again, then?”
He shook his head emphatically. “Not at all. I’m keeping it.”
Gloria clapped her hands gleefully. “Excellent.” She gave him a coy look. “I imagine it’s going to need some work.”
He returned the look. He did it pretty well too. “That’s where I thought you two could give me a hand. I want Mulberry Hill to be something special again. Something…amazing.”
“We’re interior decorators, not magicians,” I put in.
“Keeley!” Gloria snapped. “Be nice.”
“I have a contractor,” Mahoney said. “And an architect, and a work crew. They’re already at work out there.” He glanced at his watch. “In fact, they should be ripping off that shed kitchen at the back of the house, right about now.”
He looked up at me, those brown eyes way too observant.
“What I need is an interior designer. I’ve seen pictures of your work in magazines. I don’t know a lot about this stuff, but I liked what I saw. That house out in the country, the horse farm. I liked that a lot.”
“Les Morgan’s house? Barnett Shoals Farm? You saw that in the October issue of Veranda? How sweet of you to mention it. Les was a dream to work with. Very supportive. And open to new ideas.”
“And rich,” I put in. “Barnett Shoals Farm was a two-million-dollar project. Did you have a budget in mind for Mulberry Hill?”
“Whatever it takes, I guess. We’d be starting from scratch. None of my old stuff is anything I’d want in Mulberry Hill. You’ve seen the condition the house is in now, right?”
“Not really,” Gloria said. “It’s been empty for so long, I don’t know if I’ve been in that house since I was a child. Do you have a time frame in mind?”
“Absolutely,” Mahoney said. “I need the house done by Christmas.”
“Which Christmas?” Gloria asked.
“This Christmas,” Mahoney said. “It’s only June now. That should give us plenty of time. As soon as we get the framing, plastering, plumbing, wiring, and roofing out of the way, I was thinking we could buy some furniture and stuff and get the painters and those type folks busy.”
Gloria laughed and laughed.
“I should tell you, Mr. Mahoney, that Glorious Interiors is just the two of us. Myself and Keeley here. Right now I don’t know if we could take on another project of the scope you seem to be entertaining.”
“What do you mean?” Mahoney asked. “Are you saying you won’t do it?” He shook his head, perplexed. “You’re turning me down?”
“What you’re asking is impossible,” I explained. “Six months to do a whole house restoration? Even if we didn’t have all those other jobs ahead of you, it would be impossible. You don’t just go out and buy things, you know.”
&nbs
p; “Why not?” He ran his hands through his dark red hair, making the ends stand up. He badly needed a haircut. This morning he was wearing a pair of faded blue jeans, work boots, and a faded red T-shirt. He hadn’t shaved, and his chin was covered with red-gray stubble. He looked more like a truck driver than a successful business owner.
“Because that’s not the way it works,” Gloria said gently. “Most of what we do for our clients is custom work. Fine furniture, fabrics, wallcoverings, all those things take time. They have to be ordered and sometimes they have to be custom manufactured. When we buy antiques, we only buy the best. Keeley and I travel to auctions in Atlanta, Charlotte, Nashville, and New Orleans.”
“Travel all you want,” Mahoney said. “I don’t mind. I told you I want the best. I just have to have it all done by December.”
Gloria sighed. “Mr. Mahoney, we would love to work for you, we really would. I’m sure you’ll turn Mulberry Hill into an absolute showplace. But we just can’t do it. Not with that time frame. We’ve been working on Barnett Shoals off and on for three years, and we still haven’t finished buying art for the guest house.”
“The fabric for the downstairs powder room window treatment has been on back order for eight months,” I volunteered. “It’s being woven in France, and—”
“That’s ridiculous,” Mahoney said, cutting me off. “What kind of a way to do business is that?”
Gloria nodded sympathetically. “I know. But it’s the way things work. I can recommend another designer here in town, if you like. Traci is very good, and she’s just starting out, so she probably won’t have the time constraints—”
“No,” Mahoney said abruptly. “I want you two. Glorious Interiors. It’s you or nobody.”
“That’s sweet,” Gloria said. “But really—”
“Just come out to the house and take a look around,” Mahoney said, looking straight at me. “You can do that, right? We could go right now. What do you bill out at—fifty, sixty bucks an hour, something like that? I’ll pay you for your time. How about it? It’s Saturday, and I happen to know you’ve had a change of plans.”
“Fifty bucks an hour?” My face was starting to burn. I was feeling the urge to start throwing things again.
“Listen, you, you hayseed,” I sputtered. “This is not Rooms-to-Go here. You don’t just walk in here and start ordering up a house. Like I told you last night, this isn’t a sofa store. And Gloria and I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck.”
“Okay, okay,” he said hurriedly. “Cool your jets. I didn’t mean to offend you. That’s the last thing I want to do. I know you guys are the best. Like I said, I’ve been doing my research, but obviously I still have a lot to learn about interior design.”
He gave Gloria a pleading look. “Put in a good word for me here, will you?”
She laughed. “I think maybe you should just take no for an answer, and walk out of here while you still can, Mr. Mahoney.”
He looked at his watch again and frowned. “All right. I gotta meet the crew out at the house and I’m late as it is. We’ll talk again. When you’re in a better mood?”
I gave him a tight smile. “This is as good as it gets with me.”
“We’ll see about that,” he said. The door tinkled softly as he walked out. A minute later, we heard the deep throb of the Caddy’s engine.
Gloria stood at the window and watched him drive away. “Interesting man.”
“He’s an ignorant swine,” I said. “Fifty bucks an hour, my ass.”
“I think he’s adorable. And I’m dying to see the inside of that house,” Gloria said. “There’s a lot of potential there.”
“What are talking about here?” I asked, standing beside her. “Bra boy or Mulberry Hill?”
“Both,” Gloria said.
7
In a perfect world, on what would have been my wedding day, I, the devastated bride-to-be, would have been stretched out on that Parisian chaise longue, with cucumber wedges pressed to my eyes, perhaps mildly sedated with some of the Valium we keep in the office safe for stress-related emergencies.
But mine was not a perfect world. Gloria had put the chaise longue back in the window, and we were out of refills for the Valium. Anyway, the phone kept ringing, and somebody had to answer it, and that somebody, unfortunately, was us.
Gloria took the incoming calls, assuring everybody and their cousin who called that I was fine, just not up to taking calls yet. I did the outgoing calls, to all the assorted people who wanted to be told that their bills would be paid despite the cancellation.
Downtown Madison on a summer Saturday is a busy day. There aren’t really enough working farms left in the area to still call this a farming community, but old habits die hard, and one of the habits of small Southern towns is Saturday market day.
The street outside was clogged with traffic, and the other shops on our street stayed busy with Saturday shoppers. All afternoon I watched people strolling slowly past our shop, their eyes darting sideways, as if to catch a furtive glimpse of the train wreck inside our plate-glass window. If I caught their eyes, they’d cock their heads, give a sad smile, or glance quickly away.
At two I switched the office phone over to the answering machine.
Gloria put her phone down five minutes later.
“You hungry?” she asked. “I sent most of the reception food over to the Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians, but the smoked salmon blinis and the shrimp potstickers won’t hold. Elise is bringing some of it over here right now.”
“Salmon. Yuck. That was GiGi’s idea,” I said. “I guess I could maybe choke down a couple potstickers.”
She hesitated a minute. “What about the wedding cake, Keeley? What should we do with that?”
My right eye twitched. “Throw it out. Take it to the city dump. I don’t care. Just don’t make me look at that cake. Please, Gloria?”
She patted my leg. “All right. Elise wants to take it over to the children’s hospital. The kids will love that white chocolate frosting.”
I gave her a pained look. The chocolate had been A.J.’s inspiration. “It’ll be cool, Keeley,” he’d said. “Whoever heard of an all-chocolate wedding cake? And it’ll drive my mother fuckin’ nuts.”
If I hadn’t been sold on the chocolate idea before, the comment about GiGi sealed the deal. It wasn’t that I hated GiGi Jernigan. Not at all. I mean, she’s the whole reason I met and fell in love with A.J. It’s just that it was always fun to yank GiGi’s chain.
The Jernigans had been Gloria’s clients for years, even before I joined the business. GiGi was forever fussing with their houses, which included The Oaks on Academy Street, their lake house at Cuscawilla, and the mountain house up in Highlands.
I’d had plenty of dealings with GiGi over the years, of course, but I’d never really spent any time with A.J. He hadn’t gone to high school in Madison, because all the Jernigan men went to Brandon Hall, a snooty boarding school in Virginia, and then he’d gone to college at Washington and Lee, where all the Jernigan men went to college before they came back to work at Madison Mutual Savings and Loan, the family business.
The day I went over to Academy Street to measure for the new drapes GiGi had ordered for A.J.’s bedroom was only the second or third time I’d ever met him.
I was standing on the top rung of a stepladder in the bedroom, and it was wobbling because I was trying to measure the depth of the old cornice we were replacing. The door opened, and A.J. came strolling in. He’d been out jogging or something, because he was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt and was dripping with sweat.
“Oh, hi,” I said, embarrassed. The ladder wobbled just then, and a minute later he was steadying it and grinning up at me. And looking up my skirt, he admitted later.
Let’s face it, Andrew Jackson Jernigan was criminally attractive. Lots of glossy dark hair, his mother’s blue-green eyes, and just the slightest bit of lantern jaw—which made him appealingly imperfect. He was as tall as me, which was impo
rtant; he liked to laugh; and he was easy to talk to.
A month later, when I came back to install the drapes, he had no problem at all getting me into that walnut four-poster bed. And he was as much fun in bed as out of it.
Afterward A.J. had snuck downstairs and swiped half a pan of brownies his mother had baked for some garden club function. We’d eaten the brownies, naked, in that bed, and A.J. had sworn then and there that he’d never taste chocolate again without thinking of me. And sex.
Now the thought of that wedding cake made me want to heave.
Elise arrived a few minutes later, with a foil tray full of food. A complete professional, she wordlessly loaded the food into the refrigerator in the studio’s kitchen and left the bill on Gloria’s desk.
I was hungrier than I would have believed possible. Gloria heated up a plate of the potstickers, while I poured us a couple of Diet Cokes.
We were just sitting down to lunch when the shop bell jingled again. I looked up in dread. Had Will Mahoney come back to harass us some more?
But the visitor was a skinny brunette dressed in purple hip-hugger capris and a purple tank top that exposed both the silver ring piercing her navel and the tiny rose tattoo on her right shoulder.
“Oh,” I said. “It’s only you.”
“Yeah,” she said, opening the door again to toss the butt of her still smoldering cigarette onto the sidewalk outside. “It’s only good old Janey. Good to see you too, cuz.”
“That’s not how I meant it,” I said. “It’s just been so crazy around here today.”
“It’s been a zoo,” Gloria put in. She stood up and kissed the top of Janey’s head.
My cousin Janey gave Gloria an air kiss. “So Glo. You’re on suicide watch today? You keeping Keeley away from sharp objects and gas ovens?”
“Janey!” Gloria exclaimed. “That’s not funny.”
Janey shrugged. “Keeley knows I’m kidding.”
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