“Chloe’s right, Uncle Trip,” Eric said. “She’s a kid. Kids need to raise their own pets. You know, a pet that’s loyal to them.”
“Maybe,” Trip said.
“I’ll see what Owen thinks. Personally, I’d love to see a puppy around here. Dogs are good for people.” Rusty smiled at each girl and they actually smiled back at her. Sort of.
This was headway, not much, but Rusty and I were glad to have found something, anything, to build on with Amelia, Belle, Linnie, and Chloe.
I was congratulating myself on the success of the evening when our new young friends from Guadalajara began a sidebar conversation.
“Esto sabe a mierda,” Juan said. This tastes like shit.
“Ni le daria de comer esto a mi perro,” Antonio added. I wouldn’t feed this to my dog.
The girls and Eric, who all spoke some basic Spanish, exchanged looks and snickers.
Rusty gave the guests a frosty smile “Okay ¡Por favor! No hablen de la comida de esa manera. ¡Nos tomo mucho trabajo para prepararla!”
The girls’ eyes got wide and Juan and Antonio gulped. Properly chastened, they quickly replied, “Lo siento mucho, señora.”
We all knew what that meant, just by the expression on their faces.
“Señorita,” she corrected them gently.
“Not for long,” Trip said pleasantly.
A mushroom-cloud silence blanketed the table immediately and completely. In fact, the silence was so profound that it seemed the crickets ceased to chirp, the birds stilled in the trees, not one more leaf rustled, and all the way down in the Edisto, the fish failed to jump and flop. All ears, perked like bird dogs’, awaited an explanation for Trip’s remark. There was a long pause until Amelia spoke up.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said.
“Exactly what I said,” he said. “You girls are old enough to understand, aren’t you? When my divorce is final, I intend to take Rusty down the aisle and marry her.”
Now the silence that continued was greatly intensified, so much so that I could almost hear the girls’ hearts slam against their ribs as panic set in. Glasses returned to the table with muffled thuds, forks and knives clinked against plates, and they became quiet. Amelia, Linnie, Belle, and Chloe looked from one face to another for some support or a cue on how to respond.
“Look,” Rusty said, being magnanimous and sensing trouble, “a year is a long time. A lot can happen.”
“Momma’s gonna die,” Amelia said.
The world of Frances Mae’s girls was rocked once again. First, their father had left them. Then their mother left them, and although it was temporary, she was still gone. And now, puppy or no puppy, there was a stepmother in their probable and close future. The news understandably deflated whatever sense there was of hopefulness around the table, and personally, I thought Trip had revealed his intentions way too soon. It was very insensitive to me that he had not waited awhile for the girls to get their bearings. He had not waited for Rusty to find a groove with them, something easy and quantifiable that they could all depend on. Maybe his nerves were frazzled and he just blurted it out, assuming they had probably guessed his intentions ages ago. But they had not. It was obvious, to me anyway, that Amelia had not thought about it beyond the pain it would bring Frances Mae. Belle and Linnie were so self-involved that they probably only thought of Trip actually marrying Rusty in terms of accepting that they had better somehow find a way to deal with their new reality, as this was, in fact, their new reality. But Chloe was visibly upset. Later on, as I tucked her in for the night while Trip and Rusty were closing up the kitchen, she seemed particularly quiet and uncertain about how to express her unhappiness.
I said, “What’s bothering you, sweetheart?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on now. Tell your aunt Caroline.”
She turned her face into her pillow and wouldn’t look at me.
“What is it?” I said again.
“Tell Rusty . . . tell her I don’t need her stupid puppy anymore. I don’t want it.”
“Oh Lord. Darling? Let’s say your prayers like a good girl and let’s see what tomorrow brings, shall we?” I kissed the back of her head and promised to make her pancakes in the morning. This child, this poor child, was killing me. She was fast asleep before I closed the door, and if not, at least her breathing was even.
A short while later I was back at home. I walked down to the dock before going inside. I was not quite ready to turn in for the night. Eric had stayed behind with the older kids to watch something on television. So, I stood there alone, leaning over the weathered rails, watching the water moving along beneath me. As my eyes adjusted to the night, hundreds of stars began to come into view. I couldn’t get poor Chloe off my mind. What had transpired over dinner, the news of Trip’s intended marriage, that is, marked another step toward the loss of her innocence. Her words wrenched my heart. Tell her I don’t need her stupid puppy anymore. The poor child. She needed a puppy to love more than anyone on earth.
I had to help Trip and Rusty make the girls thoroughly comprehend that choosing to get along with Rusty did not mean they were rejecting their own mother. It did not mean that at all. And I had to make Trip consider that just because the girls appeared to have every benefit that wealth, health, and youth could offer, it didn’t mean they were not vulnerable to other sinister forces like drugs, alcohol, or depression. Not to mention the temptations of promiscuity. A change in a parent’s marital status could trigger any of those things.
Amelia, Isabelle, Caroline, Chloe, and Eric’s generation was vastly different from mine or Trip’s. Our childhood was hugely complicated and fraught with other kinds of issues that led to some bizarre choices in our personal lives when we were young adults. But we weren’t caught in between our parents, wishing with all of our hearts that they would reconcile or that somehow they could just go back to the life they had when they were all under one roof, living as a family. We had no guilt about our reality. It just was. Trip’s girls were left to wonder if and how much their shenanigans had contributed to the problems of their parents, resulting in their separation and now there would be a divorce. How much of a burden did they carry in their hearts? And I always wondered if Eric suffered because of Richard’s preference for Harry. Of course he must. But Eric knew that I would see Richard dead, buried, and gone to hell before I would excuse him for it. The difference between my divorce and Trip’s was that Richard was just wrong. In Trip’s case, he had married the wrong person, stuck with her as long as he could, and when he couldn’t take it anymore, he bolted. Come to think of it, hadn’t I done the same? The one difference there, however, was that Trip bolted to Rusty’s arms a little too soon for societal convention to give the happy couple a smile of approval. I just came home to Mother.
Miss Lavinia may have been crazy and eccentric, but life at Tall Pines had given a solid rhythm to all our days. Our rules were not exactly carved in stone but at least the adults exercised some discretion when our moral compass took that occasional spin counterclockwise. In any and all cases, there were expectations. Lines drawn. An observance of certain proprieties. A rigid adherence to specific traditions and manners. And when I came back to Tall Pines with Eric, there was plenty of warmth and love to go around, especially from Mother, who was making up for the lost years. But while she heaped her affection on Trip, Eric, and me, everyone knew there was no love lost between Mother and Frances Mae and, by extension, her daughters.
That was what the girls lacked. Love. Guidance. Structure with some flexibility in its parameters. And some major oversight. They needed to learn that disappointments, even catastrophic ones, were inevitable but bearable when you had someone to whom you could turn who would carry you through whatever darkness had the better of you at that moment. Frances Mae could not possibly have had the first clue on how to raise her girls as young ladies. That was where I would come in, beginning with Amelia. As the reigning queen of Tall Pines, it was my right to
insist on the continuance of certain ways of life. As though an evangelical healing was taking place in me, I could feel a transformation rising in my veins. All at once the vision became clear. This December, Amelia Wimbley would take her rightful place in Lowcountry society. Trip and I would present her at a lavish Christmas cotillion. With my help, a lot of coaching, and the right dress, she would set a new tone. One of dignity and higher ideals. When their time came, her mealymouthed, uncivilized little sisters would clamor to follow in her footsteps. Somehow I would bring this all to pass. The queen would make ladies of them all. God Save the Queen.
11
More Dirty Laundry
MORNING SEEMED TO ARRIVE EARLY, the first glints of sun sighing, breathing between the slats of the blinds, forerunners of light that eventually spilled all over my bedcovers at angles hued a soft silver blue. Of course morning always arrived early, except during the dead of winter when heavy mist rolled in from the Edisto. Fog blanketed Tall Pines with clouds so thick you would strain to see halfway down the avenue of oaks before the midday sun melted it away. Those winter dawns, when day seemed indefinable, I became the consummate slugabed, cocooned under blankets with pillows over my eyes to block the light. I could not rise. I would lie there and dream back in time, sometimes envisioning myself in the 1860s, an observer of the Civil War battles that had taken place all around our property. Yankee soldiers, in their bedraggled uniforms raced toward our house on horseback. I could nearly hear the approaching thunder of hooves, louder and louder, until the soldiers finally stopped in the front of our house, dismounting and firing their guns into the air to frighten us, to let us know our freedom was at an end.
Their diabolical intention was to throw all my family out, seize all our possessions for their own use, turn our home into a hospital or a covert meeting place where they would plan the slaughter of more dissenters and devour our food, leaving us to starve on the side of the road. My mother used to recount these stories to me and Trip as her mother had told them to her and her mother before her. These were the family myths, remembered so vividly and massaged, exaggerated, and stretched as the mood saw fit. I loved them all.
“They did not know that we had hidden all our silver and jewels in barrels that were buried safely belowground in the icehouse. That’s why we still have so many beautiful things that you’ll inherit one day!”
I didn’t care about inheriting anything when I was six years old. Inheritance meant my family had to die and I could not bring myself to consider that.
“And they never expected us to sneak into their rooms as they slept and slip our butcher knives between their ribs, killing them one and all. But we did. We knew the secret passageways through the chimneys and walls. It was awful, I’m sure it was awful, but it was the only way to save Tall Pines from ruination! Of course we threw their nasty traitorous corpses right into the Edisto to feed the gators and posted cholera and smallpox signs all around the property. ‘Warning! Keep out!’ That held those Yankees back! By golly! We surely did. We saved the day, didn’t we?”
Mother told us those stories in such a dramatic way that she might have been hallucinating the memories of her ancestors. Her eyes grew large and she waved her arms. Sometimes she whispered so low that Trip and I had to lean in to hear what she was saying. Then she would stand and shout so loud that Trip and I would get overexcited and couldn’t sleep that night. We’d ask her a thousand questions, begging for more details, and she would always comply, right down to descriptions of what the ladies were wearing, how they manipulated the bricks to reveal the hidden tunnels, what day of the week it was, what they said to each other . . . In retrospect, I’m sure the stories were mostly fabricated because no one loved a good yarn like our Miss Lavinia. There were many diaries, stored for safekeeping since Mother’s death, in the attic trunks. I’m sure Mother read them all, and most likely, they were the source for her stories. One of these days I would open the old trunks and have a look. When I found the time . . . In any case, I had always been wildly proud of my ancestors’ resolute bravery and cunning. Those were the qualities that my mother always emphasized to us when she told the stories. For years I had dressed as a colonial dame on Halloween and sometimes on Thanksgiving. When I was feeling confident that Trip wouldn’t tease me to death, I would wear the outfit all day.
“The Wimbleys are made of mighty strong stuff!”
I could hear my Miss Lavinia’s voice in my head just like it was yesterday.
But this particular Lowcountry morning was deep into spring and it was also the stuff of dreams and great imaginings. The temperature was perfect, somewhere around sixty. The linens on my bed were cool to the touch. I plumped my pillows, fell back into them, and stretched. Somewhere in the distance a few birds were singing for their breakfast and a woodpecker was at work on a dead tree limb. It felt like six o’clock and I rolled over to check my alarm clock to confirm it. It was exactly five minutes before six. Wasn’t it a marvel how the body perfectly sensed that for which the mind demanded proof?
It was going to take some of the Wimbley bravery and cunning to weather the coming weeks. I wondered if Amelia and her sisters had ever even heard the stories of Henry Heywood Wright IV and his stalwart wife, Elizabeth? Would Trip have told them? Maybe bits and pieces, but all the family portraits still hung on the walls of this house, not his. And the artifacts were here, too. Frances Mae would have resisted hearing our history because it would have intimidated her. I was sure of that. How stupid! Perhaps if Frances Mae realized that our family’s place in South Carolina’s history books was not bought but hard earned, she might have been inspired to rise instead of fall. Now, there’s a thought.
Perhaps a little family education would help to bring the girls around. As soon as the hour permitted, I would get them all over to my house for a big fattening breakfast—eggs, bacon, grits, and genealogy with fresh-squeezed juice.
I showered, dressed, and looked in on Eric, taking a deep breath. There is nothing more intoxicating than the smell of your own child. And even though he was nearly a man, he was sleeping like a sweet angel. He was still and always would be mine. I decided to leave him alone, to let him snooze a little longer.
I rang Millie at eight to see if she felt like helping with breakfast. It was really her biscuits I was after, which I’m sure she knew. My stomach rumbled at the thought of them.
“Mornin’! You up?”
“What do you think, chile?”
Millie had a long-established habit of starting her day before early birds even thought about worms. She got up to read her Bible and to work her garden before the sun was too high in the sky.
“Well, I’m calling Trip to bring the brood over here for some eggs and to fertilize the family tree, Lavinia style.”
“I ain’t missing this! I’ll be right over!”
“Great!”
Then I called Trip. He was up all right. He’d already been up and down the Edisto, dropped the papers on our back steps, and exercised his dogs. He was on his second pot of coffee he said and hankering for Millie’s biscuits, too.
“We’ll be there at nine-fifteen! Thanks!”
I decided that breakfast in the dining room was in order. We were going to start the day in a dignified way with a beautiful meal. I opened the silver chest, deciding to use the family’s oldest flatware and most intricate linens to set the table. I removed the napkins from the linen press and counted out eight. They were always wrapped in acid-free tissue to prevent those nasty little brown spots Miss Lavinia treasured as symbols of the history of the linens. These were gorgeous old Irish linen, softened from innumerable launderings, with hand-tatted lace borders attached all around by tiny even stitches. The lace was so light and I fingered it gently. I remembered the story that told how my grandmother Amelia had made them as a gift for her mother’s birthday when she was a young girl. It must have taken her forever because they didn’t have electricity in those days. I wondered if she sat in the living room or her own be
droom and worked by the light of gasoliers or candlelight. But then I remembered that needlework would be done in the daytime using natural light. Whatever the circumstances, I could not have tatted lace like that if my life depended on it.
There were many surviving remnants of my grandmother’s needlework, all of them beautiful—pillowcases with lace insets, hand-embroidered monogrammed handkerchiefs, and so on. But their age and fragile state had relegated them to the special-occasion category of usage. I had done some fine needle crochet work in my time, but that had been years ago, when I was a mere girl. In the rat race of New York City living, I had never even considered seeking out a crochet needle or an embroidery hoop. Richard would have laughed in my face, saying how silly I was to compromise my eyesight and why didn’t I just trot myself over to Bergdorf’s and buy what I wanted? The skills and refinements that were once a lady’s great pride were lost to the past; that was for sure.
As I snapped a snowy damask cloth in the air to settle it over the dining-room table, it occurred to me that all these things should fall into conversations with Trip’s girls. Even if they had no interest in learning about them, they should know that all embroidery and lace was not born in some steaming sweatshop in a remote village in China, created by some poor peasant woman with her only child strapped to her back while she squatted near her small Buddhist altar, burning incense and sipping cold weak tea. Right? It was possible to surround yourself with gentility for very little money. It was all about how you spent your time. A young lady could either waste her life away with pursuits like Guitar Hero, singing god-awful karaoke like a braying mule, or she could opt for something more useful.
Lord! Have mercy on my body and soul! I sounded more like my mother with each passing hour. Well, that wasn’t the worst thing, was it?
I was folding the last of the napkins, carefully placing them on the left of the forks, when I heard the back door open and close.
Lowcountry Summer Page 12