Lowcountry Summer (10 page)

“What were you thinking, Frances Mae?” Trip’s voice was drenched with irritation and he struggled to maintain a civil tone.

“What?” she said.

“Defacing public and private property?”

“What did the messages say on the billboards, Trip?”

“For
me
to come back to
you
and that
my
gorgeous Rusty is an F-ing whore.”

Suddenly Frances Mae’s face changed and she began to weep, not sobbing, but tears poured out of her eyes like someone flipped on a faucet. I was stunned. I looked at Oscar, who quickly offered her his handkerchief—I loved men who carried linen handkerchiefs—which she took and used to blot her face. What was in the cake?

Trip’s mood had suddenly changed, too, and he said in a softer tone, “Look, Frances Mae. You need serious help.”

“No, I do not.”

“You’ve been drinking today, haven’t you?”

“No.”

I couldn’t believe what happened next, but Trip produced a Breathalyzer from his jacket. “Then you won’t mind breathing into this little tube?”

“What? Why should I do that? And what are you doing with that thing anyway? Are you the police now?”

“Nope. But you’re an alcoholic and we all know it. Frances Mae? You’ve got to go into a long-term in-patient rehab program or you will never get off the booze. Like I told you yesterday, I’ll pay for the whole thing. All the arrangements are made. There are two nice male nurses parked in the van out back and they are going to take you there straight from this house. And just so you know, I could’ve had you committed to the psych ward at MUSC but I didn’t. You’re going to sunny California instead.”

She had some fight left in her.

“Screw you, Trip Wimbley. I ain’t going nowhere.”

“Yes. You
are
going, Frances Mae. In the meanwhile, I’m taking full custody of the girls and I’ll take total care of them. But here’s the deal: I want you to sign the divorce papers. I am willing to give you the house in Walterboro and this much money . . .”

Trip showed her the number on the paper, and by the look on Frances Mae’s face, she was immediately sobered.

Frances Mae straightened up and put on her best voice of self-righteous indignation. “I will never give up my children, not even for twice that much money.”

Trip was stunned. Frances Mae had been married to him for long enough to know that the first offer was a lowball.

“I’ll just be in the kitchen,” I said, and no one noticed as I left.

I mean, honest to God, I had no business being there in the dining room. So I stood with Millie on the other side of the swinging door, after almost knocking her out cold when I went in.

“Sorry!” I whispered.

“Where’d you think I’d be?” Millie whispered back. “Now, shush!”

We heard Trip say, “Oh yes you will because another DUI is going to put your butt in the hoosegow for a mandatory five days, maybe up to a year, and maybe up to three.”

Frances Mae must have turned her face to Oscar.

“And, excuse me, but just who in the hell are you?”

“I’m representing Mr. Wimbley.”

“Well, screw you, too, because I ain’t signing nothing!”

“Frances Mae? It’s rehab or jail. In either setting you can’t care for the kids. And you’ll lose custody anyway, so why can’t we just be civilized about this?”

In my mind I had already said more “holy shits” than I could count and Millie’s eyebrows were dusting the ceiling. I cussed in my head all the time. And sometimes out loud, but hopefully not too much.

But Frances Mae, whether she saw the soundness of Trip’s argument or not, was still having no part of his plan.

“Civilized? You call yourself civilized? I’d call you a snob maybe, a self-centered momma’s-boy philanderer living with a tramp, maybe. But civilized? No, I don’t think it’s civilized to offer me money to sell my children.”

“I’m trying to help you, Frances Mae. I’m trying to be generous here.”

And this was when the halfway coherent sister-in-law became possessed by the redneck from hell.

“Generous? Yew spent more money on all yewr dogs ’en guns ’en boats ’en who knows what in one month than you ever spent on me in all our years together!”

“It may seem that way to you, but let me assure you that I am not talking about just money here, Frances Mae. I don’t have to give you anything. I could let you just get another DUI and sue you for custody, which I would win in any courtroom in the land. It would be all over the papers and the girls would be mortified one more time. Is that what you really want? To mortify your children?”

A seeming eternity passed before we heard Frances Mae answer.

“No.”

“So, what I’m doing here is trying to handle this with a little compassion for you to get you the help you need and to help you avoid any more humiliation. You must admit that the things you have done were absolutely irresponsible. And to be honest,
criminal,
Frances Mae.”

“Humph. Well, that’s just fine because I don’t need no man to be reminding me for one more second that I’m not good enough for this stuck-up family of yewrs. I’ll go to rehab and I’ll get sober, but when I come back, I want my girls.”

“Frances Mae?” Trip said. “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. So far there’s no evidence of your ability to stay off the bottle. Don’t you think you’ve embarrassed the children enough? Us
all
enough?”

What happened next was almost unbearable. Her waterworks went into overdrive and she began to wail.

“Oh God,
why
? You know I
love
yew, Trip. I love yew with
all
my heart and I’m gonna up and
die
without yew.
Please!
Won’t you come back home? Let’s try again, Trip. For the kids?
Please
give me another chance. I love yew
so much
. I’ll never drink another drop! All I ever wanted was to marry yew and have a family with yew . . . that’s all I ever wanted in my whole life . . . my whole life is yew and our kids. It is.”

“I know, I know,” we heard Trip say. “But it’s no good anymore, Frances Mae, and we both know it.”

I looked at Millie and she looked at me. We were both in tears hearing Frances Mae’s anguish and feeling how completely chopped to pieces her heart was. It was just awful.

“That cake ain’t working right,” Millie said. “St. John’s wort don’t agree with her.”

“Evidently,” I whispered. “Is she gonna be okay?”

“Oh, yeah. A few hours from now it’ll work its way out of her system.”

“Oh God! Please no!” Frances Mae cried, and then her sobbing began in earnest.

“I’m sure glad Mother didn’t live to see this either,” I said in a low voice.

“We’re saying that too often around here,” Millie said. “We need this
situation
fixed! Awful to hear and painful to witness, I know, but things got to change.”

Frances Mae must have signed the papers because about five minutes later we could hear Oscar say, “Okay. I think that does it.”

We moved away from the door as quickly as we could and tried to look busy. Sure enough, in seconds Frances Mae came sailing through with Trip.

She looked at me and said what she had probably longed to say for years.

“You know what? This house was supposed to be
mine
. But noooo. Your life was supposed to be mine! But noooo. When
your
marriage didn’t work out with that ugly nasty Jew shrink—big surprise, city girl—you came running home to your crazy-ass bitch momma with your tail between your skinny legs and y’all both ruined my whole life. Well, guess what? You ain’t seen the last of me, Caroline La-veen! No, you have not.”

“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

H
E 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.