“You’d better watch your mouth, Frances Mae.”
I was boiling mad and knew I shouldn’t have said a word, but anti-Semitism was something I could not and would not abide. And nobody, but nobody, was calling Miss Lavinia names.
“Come on, Frances Mae, let’s go,” Trip said.
“Good luck, Frances Mae.” I was shaking with anger as my adrenaline pumped its way through my veins. I wanted to stab her but instead I said, “Get out of my house and don’t ever come back.”
“We’ll just see about that, won’t we, missy?”
“Humph,” Millie said when they were out of the door, making their way toward the van that had indeed arrived during the time we were listening at the door.
“I really don’t like her,” I said.
Millie looked at me and nodded. “Right now? There ain’t much to like.”
7
Chaos
HE CAME BACK INSIDE THE house and we looked at each other, Millie, Trip, and I, dizzied by the shock of Frances Mae’s hysterics. Her fury was still whirling around the room like hundreds of tiny poltergeists, slamming from wall to wall and floor to ceiling. My throat quivered from the struggle to find words to accurately describe how I felt.
“Oh my God, Trip! She’s completely insane!” I knew I was on the border of hysterics of my own. “Let’s start with her false sense of entitlement and work our way around the barn. She still thinks she’s supposed to have my inheritance!” I tried to calm down. What was the point of getting so upset?
“Well, she’s not going to have it and you know it. So let’s move past that now.”
“You’re right, of course, but do you know how it feels to have someone insist that your home is theirs?”
“You’re talking about the ranting of a drunk. It’s craziness, so forget it! I just hope this place she’s going works on craziness, too.”
“So does the rest of the world.” I took a deep breath.
“Great God. I really, really hope this works.” There was a well of sadness in his voice as though he believed the cause of Frances Mae’s problems really could be laid at his feet.
“It can’t hurt,” I said.
“I’ve never seen her cry like that. I mean, she was wailing!”
Trip was obviously profoundly moved by Frances Mae’s passionate grief and that squelched my annoyance considerably. Because the truth was that I wasn’t in my state because I was insulted. Who cared about her ridiculous outburst anyway? Okay, me, but just a tad. No, our concern was quickly redirected to Trip’s crumbling status quo, to his conscience and the fervent desire that Frances Mae’s horrible alcoholism would finally come to an end.
“I’m gone pray for her,” Millie said, and that meant she would be praying like no other woman I had ever known.
This episode was a dark chapter in our family’s history. We had hung our share of drunks in the family tree but they had been all male. We’d suffered a fair number of philanderers and ne’er-do-wells like every other family but they were men, too. Nothing compared to the controversy and disgrace Frances Mae and her two middle daughters had brought into our lives. Maybe I cared more about that than I should have but I still hated it. No doubt Frances Mae’s departure would be grist for the gossipmongers, and Lowcountry tongues would wave like flags in a squall on the Fourth of July.
But Frances Mae was gone and this terrible chapter was in the past. We had to pick ourselves up and go on to the other issues racing to the forefront. Rusty. The girls.
Suddenly, as though the universe sensed we needed a momentary distraction, the rich and savory smells of the roast filled the air. It still had hours to cook, but if it tasted like anything close to its perfume, I might have found a use for the strawberry-pomegranate jam after all. A small blessing in a day of deep potholes but I would take it and be glad for it.
“Where’s Oscar?” Trip said.
“Oh!” I said, not having given Oscar’s whereabouts a single thought since Frances Mae’s arrival. Precious Oscar! “What kind of a hostess am I?”
“It’s not as if we were giving a tea party here, sister. I’ll go get him.”
Trip left the room and Millie leaned back against the sink and sighed loudly.
“This is some day, ain’t it?”
“You can say that again. I was just thinking, Millie . . .”
Trip came through the swinging door with Oscar the Possibility on his heels.
“So, in just a few months I’m a free man,” Trip said, managing to just barely smile.
“Congratulations. So, Einstein? Have you worked out the details of this colossal change with the kids?” I said. “And Rusty?”
“Nope. It was enough to organize an intervention and tell Belle to bring Chloe home from school. What’s in the oven? Pork?”
Had he heard and processed what I said? Well, if he didn’t want to elaborate I wasn’t pushing the issue. Yet.
“Fifteen pounds of paradise. Bobby Mack’s coming for dinner and I’m trying to unload a quantity of jam impersonating a marinade. It’s just a business dinner.”
“Oh,” said Trip.
“Right,” said Millie, who knew better.
“It smells great,” Oscar the Pelvis said.
“It is great,” I said, and winked at him, which I knew was very cheesy but no one saw me do it. Out here in the country, a single woman had to maximize every potential. It wasn’t like I spent my day tripping over the bodies of available men.
“ ’Eah, Mr. Oscar, come see.” Millie opened the oven door and pulled the rack out to show off the meat. “That, sir, is a roast!” Then she turned her attention to Trip. “So, tell me something. Who’s gonna make them girls dinner?” She closed the oven door and stood up straight with her hands in the small of her back. “And see about their homework and all that?”
“Well, I guess Rusty and I are gonna take over and figure that out as we go.”
“Humph,” said Millie, rinsing the basting brush and knocking the water from it on the side of the sink.
“That ‘humph’ from Millie means you’re being naive, Trip,” I said as politely as I could.
“In fact, I’m gonna go pick Rusty up now and get over to Walterboro. I think the thing to do is sit them all down and talk to them.”
“Yeah, but what are you going to say?” I said.
“I’m gonna tell them to start packing. They’re moving in with us.”
I began to panic. “Wait a minute. Do you really want Belle driving your girls back and forth to school in Walterboro? That road is only two lanes with deep ditches on both sides and there are eighteen-wheelers all over the place going a million miles an hour! And, it’s too far!”
“Then we’ll stay in Walterboro and bring them here on the weekends.”
“Trip? Have you taken leave of your senses?” I said. “Do you really think Rusty is going to sleep in Frances Mae’s cootie bed? Are you crazy or what?”
“She won’t care. We’ll take our own sheets. Whatever. Anyway, the kids are out of school at the end of May. Belle graduates and then they move in here with us.”
“I love you, Trip, but I think you’re dreaming. Seriously.”
“We’ll see. This is my responsibility now.”
Oscar the Pelvis was standing by the door, ready to leave.
“It was very nice to meet you,” he said, moving his nose from side to side like a small rabbit that had just hopped out from a thicket.
Why hadn’t I noticed this annoying twitch before? It was clearly not allergies. Well, he would still suffice in a drought, but that twitching nose thing would have to stop. It was very distracting. And to be perfectly blunt, I preferred my seismic activities to occur in the south, if you know what I mean.
“It was lovely to have met you, too,” I said, and held out my hand to him. He took it into his like a rare jungle gardenia and gave it a gentle squeeze. “I hope we’ll meet again!” I forced my eyes to smile at him as he and his twitch backed their way out of the
house, grinning at me, at Millie, and yes, even at Trip.
“Lawsamercy, girl!” Millie said when Trip and Oscar were out of the house. “Of all the things you had to inherit from your mother! You cast a spell on that poor little man like the voodoo queen from the bayous of Louisiana!”
“Oh, come on, Millie! I was just having a little fun with him.”
“Humph!”
“Look! It’s slim pickings out here in the woods! You sure are harrumphing a lot today! What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking you scare me you’re so much like you know who! Girl? Where’s your mind? Don’t you know your telephone is gonna be ringing off the hook for the next week or who knows how long? Them girls ain’t gonna do what Trip says just because he’s their daddy. Daddy? Daddy? So what? They’s teenage girls who don’t listen to nobody on a good day! All hell’s about to bust loose and I don’t mean maybe.”
“Oh Lord. You’re right. Maybe we should try to give them a little heads up. I mean, maybe we should tell Amelia what’s happening so that if the girls go running to her she’ll already be in our court. What do you think?”
“Call her. Call her right this minute.”
I dialed Amelia’s number and the call went to voice mail. I waited until the recorded voice gave me an opportunity to leave a message and then I hung up.
“You ain’t leaving no message?” Millie said.
“Nope! She’ll call back twice as fast. Watch!”
Within three minutes Handel’s Water Music filled the air, one of my favorite ring tones. The one I had designated for Amelia. Ah, memories. I answered the phone, and indeed, it was Amelia.
“Aunt Caroline? Is everything okay?”
Worked like a charm every single time.
“Amelia? Do you have a moment, sweetheart?”
“Yeah, sure! What’s going on?”
“Well, this morning there was an unfortunate incident involving your mother and several cans of spray paint . . .”
I went on to tell her all the details and of course she became angry and finally she began to cry.
“Why does she do these things? Why can’t I have a normal family?”
“Define ‘normal,’ ” I said. “No one has a normal family. Maybe the Cleavers were, but how boring were they? I’m just so sorry this has happened, but I’ll tell you, this was inevitable.”
“Well, thank God Mom’s finally getting some help, even if it is her ninth attempt. Maybe it will work this time.”
“Fifth. And we’re lucky it was nothing worse. I mean, at least she didn’t hit a tree with Chloe in the car.”
Amelia was very quiet then, probably envisioning her little sister’s lifeless body lying in a gutter like the literal one in which she was born and how a real tragedy may have been averted by her father stepping in.
“Listen, Amelia, here’s the thing . . .”
We talked about the geographical, emotional, and psychological challenges of the girls coming to live with Rusty and Trip at Tall Pines and the commuting issue. Amelia agreed that Rusty would never and should never stay in their house in Walterboro, even if it were just for a short period of time.
“They hate her guts, Aunt Caroline. They’re so stupid they’d probably kill her in her sleep and think they were doing Mom a favor.”
Guts again. I really didn’t like to hear that word coming from her mouth.
“That’s pretty extreme.”
“I know but I wouldn’t put anything past them, would you?”
“I . . . I don’t know.”
“Do you think I should come home and take care of them?”
“Absolutely not.”
One thing was certain. Amelia had grown to be such a promising young woman in so many ways. I didn’t want the tawdry habits of her gum-chewing, body-pierced, Goth-haired sisters to hold her back one inch from wherever she was headed.
“Amelia, I think it’s best for you to stay in school right where you are. In fact, I am certain of it. Your dad’s on the way there now with Rusty. We have to let them figure this out. After all, they’re the adults.”
“Go tell that to Belle and Linnie. Chloe? Sure, she’ll do whatever they tell her to, but not Belle and Linnie.”
“Well, listen, if they call you, and I’m sure they will, please ask them to go along with your father for now and to go easy on Rusty. This has been a terrible day for everyone.”
“Sure, I can do that, but I can’t swear they’ll listen to me. Eric and I are having supper together tonight. Do you want me to tell him about all this?”
“Please. It’s probably best that he knows, in case they show up at his dorm or something crazy like that.”
“Right. Okay, then . . .”
“And tell him anytime he wants to talk to me about his girlfriend, I’m happy to listen.”
I heard her gasp before she said okay and good-bye and it left me to wonder what was it about this one that was so different?
I hung up and Millie was standing close by waiting to hear what Amelia had had to say.
“Nothing earth-shattering,” I said, because she could tell enough from my side of the conversation that it wasn’t worth repeating it all.
“I’ll set the table for you,” she said.
“Thanks, Millie.”
“For your business dinner . . .”
Millie knew I meant monkey business.
Oh, shoot. I felt my heart being pulled in fifty directions and I felt sorry for everyone. Was it true that Frances Mae was still in love with Trip? Maybe. And did she really feel low class and unwanted because of Mother’s snobbish attitude? Probably. And was it because of Trip’s place in Mother’s heart that they had driven her to drink, to become an alcoholic, to take incredible risks with her children? It was conceivable. And how much of the guilt rested on my shoulders? A healthy percentage. And now that Mother was gone, had she transferred all that hatred and resentment to me? It seemed so. I probably deserved a lot of what Frances Mae felt toward me, though I was loath to admit it. But did she have one iota of understanding of what it was like for us to have someone like her in the family?
From the very first moment Mother and I laid eyes on Frances Mae, she was completely inappropriate. There she was in a tube top, jeans and high heels, and bleached hair, grinding her well-used pelvis into Trip’s on the fender of Trip’s car right in front of our house. And she had plumped-up slick red lips just like a bigmouth bass. Heavenly days. I would carry the memory of Mother’s slack-jawed profile into my dotage as well as the image seared into my mind of Frances Mae eyeballing the house, calculating its worth. I watched with fascination over the next few years as she inventoried our home and its contents and as she began her crusade to acquire it all by producing babies, an unproven method if ever there was one.
I never really cared when Frances Mae went on the occasional bender. She usually did it at home and no one knew except her children and us. Everyone knows, except illiterate families who never watch Dr. Phil, that alcoholism affects the entire family and makes them all liars. Everyone becomes a part of a conspiracy to protect the drunk. Belle and Linnie might have been mean and rotten little stinkers, but even they would experience a sense of relief that they would have a reprieve from their mother’s drama when they learned their mother was going to be gone for sixty days. Sixty days was not a long time, but maybe that relief would bring them to the negotiating table in better humor. Although Belle was eighteen, which I assumed was the legal age of consent for everything except marrying your first cousin, did she really want the responsibility of Chloe and Linnie and the house? Did she want to go to the grocery store and prepare meals? I didn’t think so. Surely Belle would realize this would bring her an enormous amount of additional aggravation and responsibility when she needed to be focused on finals and where she was going to college in the fall, a detail that still hung in the air, although Carolina seemed willing to have her with some academic stipulations. That was probably where she would go, since Eri
c and Amelia were there.
It was almost six o’clock. I took a wedge of cheese from the refrigerator and some green grapes and put them on a platter to let them come to room temperature. Bobby Mack was going to arrive within the hour. I basted the meat again, threw some potatoes, onions, and carrots in the pan to roast, and said good night to Millie.
“Don’t you want me to stay and help you with dinner? I don’t mind, you know,” she offered, knowing my answer before I could speak.
“Oh, Millie, it’s been such a trying day. Thanks, but I can handle this myself.”
“I have no doubt about that!” she said, and shook her head.
When she left, the house seemed surprisingly quiet. It was finally mine again. I passed through the dining room and turned on some music that I bought from Williams-Sonoma. Love songs from Brazil filled the air and I was filled with excitement. The roast wouldn’t be ready for at least another two hours. What would I do to entertain Bobby Mack until dinner was ready? Talk about a rhetorical question? I raced upstairs to shower and change, leaving the front door unlocked.
It wasn’t long until I heard Bobby Mack’s car door close. I had just slipped one of my mother’s wilder animal-print caftans over my head and was debating the matching turban, finally deciding to leave my hair loose around my shoulders. I gave myself generous spritzes of Joy in all the important places.
“Caroline?”
“I’ll be right there, darlin’!”
I took a slow walk down the stairs toward where he stood in the foyer. He seemed heavier and I wondered if he was aware that he was gaining weight. His face was turning red, which I took as flattery.
“Look at you, pussycat,” he said in a sort of breathless tone.
“Meow,” I said.
He swept me right into such a muscular embrace that my C-three and C-four disks clicked with a crunch, relieving the tension that had been hidden there for days. Bobby Mack’s hug was more potent than an orthopedic specialist.
Lowcountry Summer Page 8