Miss Dreamsville and the Lost Heiress of Collier County (19 page)

“No, I'm fine,” Jackie said. “I just picked up a few things at Winn-Dixie before I picked up Dora, nothing terribly perishable. You know what?” she said, as she passed by us and went into the house. “I keep buying melons and they just seem to disappear. It's the strangest thing.”

I pretended to be distracted. Thankfully, Plain Jane poked her head out the door. “Y'all come on in! Mrs. Bailey White and I been busy making Boston Coolers. And we've got some talking to do.”

There was nothing quite like ginger ale in a tall glass with a scoop of vanilla ice cream to make gathering at a table for a difficult conversation a tad easier. While the unfortunately named (from a Southern perspective) Boston Cooler had been the rage in the Victorian era even in the South, the drink had fallen from favor in recent years. In fact, it was considered a relic from days gone by. But Mrs. Bailey White, who hailed from way-back-when herself, always seemed to have the ingredients on hand.

Priscilla spooned a little out of her glass and let Dream taste it.

“Ha ha ha, look at that,” Mrs. Bailey White shrieked. “She loves it!”

“She should not be getting so many sweets,” announced
Plain Jane. “Of course, her mama can give her whatever she wants. And today is a special day. I'm just saying that in general she shouldn't have them.” Plain Jane turned and glowered at Mrs. Bailey White.

“Uh-oh, here we go again,” Jackie said. “Priscilla, we need to review Dream's diet with you while you're here. We were going to ask your grandma but now that you're here, you can set us straight. There have been some—shall we say—
disagreements
. Especially now that Plain Jane has become an expert.”

“What?” Plain Jane said, setting down her spoon. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“I didn't mean for that to sound as mean as it did,” Jackie said. “It was supposed to be a joke.”

“A joke?” Plain Jane looked like she'd been stabbed with a fork.

“Well, now that you've given up writing for
Sexy Secretary
magazine and started contributing to
Perfect Mother Weekly
, you've started to believe you actually are an expert. And it's kind of funny. And charming.”

“It's not
Perfect Mother Weekly
.” Plain Jane almost spat the words out. “It's
Pious Mother Weekly
and you know it.”

“Whatever you say, dear,” Jackie said. “I just miss the days when I had a friend writing incognito for sexy magazines, that's all.”

Plain Jane relaxed a bit. It was a trait I'd always liked about her. She could laugh at herself. “Well, that's true,” she said. “Those were the days!”

“Have you given up writing poetry?” I asked, and immediately regretted the question.

“Of course not,” Plain Jane said. “My first volume will be
published next year. It seems to be taking forever but that's the way academic publishers work, or so I'm told. In the meantime, I'm paying the bills with stories about babies and child rearing.” She blushed. “I admit it's become something of an obsession to me.”

“It's my fault,” Jackie said with a wink. “Ever since I loaned you my copy of Dr. Spock, you turned into an authority.”

I peered at Priscilla out of the corner of my eye, wondering what effect this conversation was having on her. She looked like she was trying to suppress a smile. When she saw me looking at her, she spoke up. “I appreciate how much y'all care about my baby,” she said.

“You probably didn't think they would go off the deep end, though,” I said teasingly.

“No,” Priscilla said, “I surely did not. But I'm awfully glad they have. I know Dream is in good hands. And I do appreciate you calling me when there is a problem or a question,” she added, looking directly at Jackie. “Now, what was it that we needed to talk about?”

“Oh,” Jackie said. “Oh yes,
that
.” She sighed heavily. “Well, you know I've been living up to my promise of staying under the radar with Dream. We all have. But out of the blue, Mrs. Bailey White received a letter. Seems they thought we were breaking some kind of rule that limits the number of unrelated people living in one house. Well, we were able to show them that for Plain Jane, Dora, and me, Mrs. Bailey White's house is not our legal residence. But they also raised a question about one of the residents being a child who is unrelated to any of the residents. They concluded that we need a permit for running a home or school for children.”

“Who's
they
?” Priscilla asked quietly.

“Well, the letter came from the zoning department. We went down there to talk to them and at least we straightened out the first part. But, they don't want Dream living here. And they mentioned you, too.”

Priscilla jerked back in her chair. “Me? They mentioned me?”

“Well, not by name. But they knew you stay here occasionally.”

“I see,” Priscilla said softly. “So they've been watching us.”

“Apparently,” Mrs. Bailey White said.

“But y'all have been looking after Dream for more than a year. We had that trouble last spring and it died down. Why this? Why now?”

“We think it has something to do with Darryl's plans,” Plain Jane said, looking at me.

Priscilla turned to me. “Darryl?” she asked. “You mean your former husband?”

I felt red, the color of shame, move up my cheeks like a brushfire. “Well, I'm not married to him anymore,” I said, exasperated. Why was I always having to explain Darryl? “Look, to make a long story short, he's raisin' Cain around here with plans to fill in the swamp and the river and build a development—a golf course, houses, and shops.”

“He wants to call it Dreamsville,” Jackie added. “If you can imagine the nerve.”

“Oh!” Priscilla said. “I saw the billboards on my way into town.”

“What billboards?” Jackie asked, sitting straight up.

“They said, Coming Soon—Welcome to Dreamsville, or something like that.”

Jackie, inhaling her cigarette, began to cough.

“Good Lord. They must have just put those up,” Plain Jane
muttered. “Priscilla, they didn't have a photo of Jackie on them, did they?”

“No,” she replied. “Not the ones I saw.”

“Well, that's good news, at least,” Jackie said, choking through her words. “But nothing would surprise me at this point. Can you believe it? He can call it Dreamsville Estates and the lawyers say I can't stop him.”

“This is terrible,” Priscilla said. “But what does it have to do with me or Dream staying here at Mrs. Bailey White's home? I don't understand.”

There was a noticeable pause. Finally, Jackie spoke. “We think it's retaliation,” she said. “We've been fighting Darryl to try to stop him. His plans are outrageous. He wants to tear down Dolores Simpson's house and—oh, Priscilla!—it looks like his development might include where your grandma lives.”

Priscilla looked like someone had slapped her. “At the settlement?” she cried out. “I wonder if they know! Probably not. They'd probably be the last ones to find out.”

“They might not know,” Plain Jane agreed. “It had been hush-hush for a while, and it's happening very quickly.”

“Is there anything we can do?” Priscilla said, her voice rising.

“We're working on it,” Mrs. Bailey White said grimly. “But by fighting Darryl, we've stirred up a hornet's nest. That's what Jackie meant by retaliation. We think it's the reason the town is suddenly asking questions about you and Dream. Darryl has the backing of the mayor and all the other bigwigs in town. It wouldn't take but one phone call from Darryl to get the town to start harassing us.”

“I suppose it could be a complete coincidence,” Jackie added. “We can't rule that out. Either way we have to deal with it.”

“There ain't no such thing as coincidence when it comes to
something like this,” Mrs. Bailey White scoffed. “Just follow the trail and it leads to one place: money.”

Priscilla began chewing her nails, something I'd never seen her do before. “Oh, sweet Jesus, what a mess we have here,” she said, her voice low, like her sorrow was between her and the Lord himself, or maybe it was “graveyard talk,” the things you say to a loved one who has crossed to the Other Side.

“I told them that your legal address, and the baby's, too, is at your grandmother's house,” Mrs. Bailey White said to Priscilla. “I hope I did right.”

“Why, of course you did right,” Priscilla said. “You've all done right.
More
than right. But I don't know what we should do now.”

“Well, before you get any more upset, let me tell you about my idea!” Jackie said. She didn't quite grasp that her ideas were not always joyfully met, but we were desperate for any kind of hope, so we latched onto it. “The clerk said that Dream shouldn't be living here, right? But she also said, ‘unless you have a license for a school or a home for unwed mothers and their babies,' or something along those lines. So you see, that's the solution!”

“What's the solution?” Priscilla said.

“We open a house for unwed mothers and their babies!” Jackie said triumphantly. “See, we can go through the state and circumvent those idiots downtown. I've already had Ted look into it while he's in Tallahassee. He said it shouldn't be a problem. That way it would be okay for Dream to stay here and for you to visit! And maybe we could expand—”

“Imagine that,” Mrs. Bailey White interrupted. “My old house, empty for so long, and it could be a place full of life. We could call it the Collier County Home for Unwed Mothers.” I could see that Mrs. Bailey White was hooked.

“What do you say, Priscilla?” Jackie asked, anxiously. “This way we can keep Dream and maybe, at some point, help some other young women, too.”

Priscilla smiled. “Jackie, I admire your faith,” she said slowly. “If you all want to try to make this happen, I won't stand in your way. It sounds like the Lord's work to me.”

“I'm on board,” Plain Jane said. “It may not work out, though. It might make things worse, at least in the short term—”

“Then we'll deal with that if it happens,” Jackie said, cutting her off. The rest of us exchanged glances, and I guessed that we were all on the same page. There weren't no use in arguing. As Mama used to say, “You can't reason with crazy.”

P
riscilla stayed for only one more day; Jackie drove her to see her grandma for a brief visit. Jackie waited in the car, as she usually did to give Priscilla some privacy, but she asked Priscilla ahead of time to check with her grandma to see if she was aware that Darryl's plans might include paving over the Negro settlement.

Well, they didn't know, or at least that's what they said. Maybe they knew more than they were saying but didn't want to become a target. Sad to say, but it wouldn't help if they got involved. It wouldn't bring any sympathy to our side of the fight.

Meanwhile, Jackie was momentarily distracted by something that occurred on the home front. Judd was busy making amends with his lawn-mowing business and got the bright idea that the family could really use a new mower. The one they brought down from Boston was hard to push through South Florida grass. Judd had the blades sharpened but that wasn't enough. He figured he'd make a deal with his dad: Maybe they could go in on a new mower fifty-fifty.

Before he had the chance to make his case with Ted, he tried a trial run with Jackie. One thing that Jackie did not want to spend money on was a lawn mower. She insisted on demonstrating that the current mower was adequate. The problem was that Jackie had never pushed a lawn mower in her life. She pretended it was easy, all the while struggling to make progress, while Judd stood to the side sulking and drinking a Coke.

At this exact moment, Judd's classmates rode by on their bicycles. The image of Mrs. Jackie Hart mowing her own lawn in a muumuu and tennis shoes while her able-bodied son stood to the side caused them to stop, stare—and laugh. They took off before Judd could say anything, but the damage was done. At school the next day, Judd was teased mercilessly.

A particularly nasty boy, Calvin Treadwell, saw his opportunity to take Judd down a peg or two. Judd was a star in Civil Air Patrol; this was the root of the jealousy that now expressed itself openly. “Is that what y'all do up north?” Calvin hissed. “You let your
mama
mow the lawn for you?”

“That's not what happened; my mom was just trying to prove a point,” Judd had replied, but no one wanted to hear the truth when Calvin's version was so much better.

Calvin used the opportunity to remind everyone in earshot that Judd was the same “dumb Yankee kid” who ate fried chicken and watermelon with a knife and fork. “He thinks he's better than us,” Calvin sneered.

It was a cruel reminder to Judd that he was still very much an outsider. “Why does it matter?” he asked me wistfully. Judd had absconded with another melon from home and was helping me slice it for the turtles. “I mean, it was kind of funny, I guess, but why do they always bring up the fact about my being Northern?”

“I guess it's just 'cause you're different. I'm different, too.”

“How are you different? You mean because of the turtles?”

I thought for a minute. “Well, the turtles, yes,” I said slowly. “But also, because I'm divorced. Or,
especially
because I'm divorced.”

“Oh,” Judd said. “So there are some things that are okay. Being the Turtle Lady is fine. Being divorced isn't. Like being from up north.”

“Yes, I guess some sins are worse than others,” I said, meaning it as a joke but it fell flat. “Look, Judd, they're just picking on you, that's all. There's always folks who will do that. Not just kids. Through your whole life there will be people who try to make you look small, any way they can, just to make themselves feel big. It's pathetic, really. But you can decide if they're going to make you unhappy or not. Ignore it. Laugh about it. You'll see—it will pass. They'll move on to something else.”