Never Sit Down in a Hoopskirt and Other Things I Learned in Southern Belle Hell (11 page)

“Why? Why, why, why, why, why?” I punctuated each “why” with a punch of the steering wheel. The speedometer was hovering around eighty and the steel girders of the Bienville Bay Bridge were flying by. There's something about hitting and stomping and pushing things that feels oh so satisfying when what you'd really like to do is put somebody's eyes out.

“Get out of the way, blue hairs!” I punched the horn and slammed on the brakes to avoid a couple of sweet little old ladies out for their afternoon drive. “If you can't keep up, get out of the way! Or I'm calling the nursing home!” Seriously, the centenarian in front of me was clutching the steering wheel like a lifeline. Not exactly the model of a responsible driver.

Neither is a pissed-off seventeen-year-old flooring it up to ninety.

I used to call the man who is my father “Daddy.” It's a term of such affection, one that implies cozying up in front of a fireplace to read a storybook, tugging on a shirt hem to beg for a lollipop, or the keys to the minivan so you can run to the mall and spend his money, depending on your age. “Dad” has a more serious ring to it, no longer little girly, a bit more mature, very much “I'm too grown up to call my daddy ‘Daddy.'” “Papa,” well, that was tailor-made for an old man, and “Father” has a formal ring to it, like you live in a castle with servants and minions. I've never known what to call my father because, well, he was never around, not after my mother died. Except for fleeting visits and monthly phone calls, I never knew where he was or what he was doing.

So “Daddy,” as I called him back then, was never around, but then Grandmother strong-armed him into coming to Bienville to see me one Thanksgiving. Sound familiar? It's just like what she was doing with this Magnolia Maid Debut. That time, she had this big plan that Daddy and I would go off to Disney World for a little family fun. How excited was my twelve-year-old heart? RIDICULOUSLY. I had been telling everyone at school about it for days and days and weeks and weeks. Made everyone pea green with envy. Made myself pea green with excitement.

Thanksgiving came and Daddy did, too, with gifts of a sari from India that no self-respecting Bienville girl would ever wear—too weird!—and an overstuffed doll from England that would have been just right for a five-year-old. So what if they weren't a pair of Lucky jeans, who cared? Daddy was home!

But he wasn't. Not really. He was always on a call to Greece or e-mailing Liberia or conversing with his secretary in London. Grandmother had to steal his cell phone to get him to come to the Thanksgiving feast she and Charisse had prepared. Daddy politely complied, telling jokes, solicitously paying attention to Aunt Edna's Alzheimer's-induced tales from the war. Which war? I'm not real sure. But as soon as the dinner was over, he got up from the table and went back to calling Liberia because, hey, they don't celebrate Thanksgiving there. Might as well have been another workday.

Oh, well, I told myself. We're going to Disney World tomorrow. How many cell phone calls could he make from Space Mountain?

The answer: you wouldn't know unless you actually made it to Space Mountain.

We never did.

By supper time, not that anyone wanted to eat, considering we had crammed ourselves full of enough stuffing and cranberries and turkey to digest until Tuesday, Daddy had come up to my room and broken the news to me that, unfortunately, he wasn't going to be able to make it to Disney World. Some disaster had occurred with the Liberians and ship-docking rights, and he was going to have to fly in with a team of executives and fix it, stat! He was leaving on the next flight out of New Orleans.

Now what does a girl do under these circumstances?

Be sweet.
That's right.

And I was. I told him that I understood, that business was very important, him being the head of an international shipping company and all, and I agreed with his placation that we would do it “some other time,” which we both knew was a figment of our imaginations, but hey, might as well play along with it.

I expressed not one whit, one cent, one ounce, one teaspoon, of the disappointment that was pulling my stomach out through my eyeballs and shoving it back up my nose. I politely excused myself, then tore down to Grandmother's “summerhouse,” flopped on a chaise longue, and sobbed my heart out.

I have no idea how long I was there before Luke came looking for me after he got back from dinner at his grandparents' house.

“Janie, what's wrong?” He panicked when he saw me comatose on the chaise. “Are you sick?”

“We're not going to Disney World.”

“What, are you grounded or something?”

“Dad has to go to Liberia.”

“Aw, that sucks. Really? I'm sorry.”

“Yeah. It sucks.” I stared off into space.

Luke tried to bring me back. “Yeah, it really sucks because you were going to go on ‘Pirates of the Caribbean' and tell me how it's changed since the movie. Now how are we going to find out? Am I going to have to go myself?” He was being supersweet and joking and trying to cheer me up, but I wasn't having it.

He tried again. “Come on, Jane. Want a hug?” Now, this wasn't that crazy of a question. We had hugged on occasion, and right at that moment, I did want a hug. Nodding, I sat up and put my arms around Luke and he enveloped me in his. We hugged. But very quickly it became apparent that this wasn't our normal sort of hug, or merely a hug of comfort. Something was different, something was changing. Before either of us even had a chance to think about what was happening, our faces turned, our lips met, and the hug transformed into a kiss. A gentle, nudging first kiss. And it was sweet. So sweet.

Until Daddy walked in.

“Jane?” We barely heard him calling from the yard. “Where are you, honey, I have to leave in a…?” He crossed the threshold just in time to see me and Luke scrambling to opposite sides of the summerhouse.

“Hi, Mr.…”

“Daddy! We were just…”

But Cosmo held up his hand for silence. Then he hit the roof. Blasted through it. Entered the
stratosphere
with his rage. He blew up, called the Churchvilles, screamed at Grandmother that she was completely unfit to raise me, that she had turned me into a wild, undisciplined hussy, that I was too young to even know about boys! The Churchvilles were surprised to hear what happened, but not upset, and Luke being a boy and all, they certainly didn't flip out. Mr. Churchville just gave him a lecture about responsibility and called it a day. Me, I was forbidden to speak to Luke ever again and banished to the first of my boarding schools.

Gosh, Daddy Papa Cosmo Father Dearest, thirteen schools and counting later, I guess I showed you just how undisciplined and wild a child can be.

I slowed down when the bridge reached landfall again and assessed the situation. Where in the world was I? I pulled out my iPhone and used the GPS feature to determine that I was in Fairhope. Did I know anybody in Fairhope? No. Maybe I should keep driving, continue east on I-10 to I-95, then drive all the way down to the tip of Florida. Set up shop in some cool art deco pad in Miami Beach and entertain Europeans with my wit and intellect.

Or I could call someone and complain. But who? Who did I know? Who exactly were my friends? Did I have any? I careened through my contact list:

Brandi Lyn—she'd be genuinely sympathetic and concerned, but then she'd get all “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow” on me and I'd have to strangle her.

Caroline—if I could rip her nose out of whatever romance novel she had it plastered in, she would be quietly kind. But the cloud of sadness and desperation hovering over her was too much to bear on a day like this. And the thought of running into Mizz Upton made me want to puke.

Ashley—the mere fact that she was in my iPhone was a laugh! Mizz Upton had insisted that we all have each other's contact info so that we could be in constant Magnolia communication once the season got underway. Ashley helping me out with anything was as likely as a snowstorm in July, unless of course, she could figure out some way to use it against me.

Mallory—not quite as annoying as Ashley, but close enough. Besides, I had come to understand that she was as likely to play the optimism card as Brandi Lyn. “Jane, aren't you excited that your father wants to be a part of your life? I don't understand why you're so upset!”

Teddy Mac Trenton—the oh-so-fabulous Teddy Mac. He would get it. But with Teddy Mac came Lacey Wilkes, and I just couldn't take an afternoon of the whimsical tornado.

Zara—Aha. Zara! Gracious, sweet-as-pie, perfect mixture of humor and gravitas. And as out of her element and lonely as I was here in Bienville. I hit
SEND
, it rang, she picked up. “Hello, Zara? What's shakin', Magnolia sister?”

I will say this: Jay and Felicia Alexander, the king and queen of satellite communications, do not skimp. There was no corner cut, no luxury not appointed to the nouveau French chateau they constructed on an entire acre of prime property in the Country Club District. It was evident even in the fancy cars lining the driveway that semicircled through their front yard: a Ferrari, a Mercedes SUV, Zara's little Porsche roadster, a few Cadillacs, a Lexus or three.

A housekeeper answered the door and ushered me through the foyer into a living room so expansive and freshly decorated it could have been the lobby of a five-star hotel. “Miss Zara, you've got company,” the housekeeper announced into an intercom.

“Who's that?” a voice boomed out from deep inside the grand hall, where I spotted a dining table packed with dressed-down business execs. That explained the huge number of fancy cars out front. They barely glanced up from their work as a tall, imposing, linebacker of a man got up from the head of the table and approached me.

“You must be the famous Jay Alexander,” I said.

“I don't know about the famous part, but I am Jay Alexander.” He shook my hand but regarded me suspiciously. “And who are you?”

“Jane Fontaine Ventouras, pleased to meet you, sir.”

“And you know Zara how?” Okay. A little imposing, this guy.

“Uh, through the Magnolia Maids. We're on the Court together.”

“Humph.” What did that mean? “Hmmph”? Luckily, Zara arrived at that moment. “You got a friend here, Z,” he said.

“I see, Daddy. Hey, Jane.”

“Hey, Zara.”

“Is Daddy giving you a hard time?”

“No, I checked all my weapons at the door. We're good now.”

Zara's mom, Felicia, glided over. “We're so happy to meet you, Jane. Z's told us a lot about you.” I could see where Zara got her height, grace, and beauty from. Mrs. Alexander looked picture perfect, totally dressed to the nines even on a Saturday at home. She turned to her husband. “Cosmo Ventouras is Jane's father, Jay.”

“Cosmo Ventouras? No kidding!” Oh, now a smile breaks through the sullen suspicion on Mr. Alexander's face? Mentioning
Cosmo
gets me out of suspicion jail? Apparently. “We put the satellites on a good half dozen of his ships. We just set a meeting with him in a couple of weeks, Felicia, did you know that?”

“Great! Terrific. You think he'd be interested in the new XZ-17 technology, Jay?”

As Jay answered Felicia's question, I raged inside my head. So that was the reason old Cosmo was willing to travel a bazillion miles to Bienville from wherever he was. Not to play cheerleader to my fabulous debut at the Magnolia Maids, but because he had a high-powered meeting with the biggest entrepreneur in the state. Of course. “Great, terrific” was right.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Alexander was beaming at me. “We're glad you're here, Jane. We're so happy to see Zara making friends. It's not the easiest thing in the world to move in your junior year.”

Mr. Alexander threw his arm around Zara and pulled her to his side. “But what's the family motto, Z?”

“‘Flexibility is the key to success.'” Zara stated this by rote, as if she'd been forced to memorize it in kindergarten alongside the ABCs.

“That's right,” Mr. Alexander said. “Alexander Communications is built on that motto.” His cell phone rang, and he answered with a bark of his name. “Alexander! Give it to me, Vito, how are those numbers?”

“That's our cue,” Mrs. Alexander said as she and her husband headed back to the dining table packed with employees. “Zara, give Jane the grand tour, why don't you?”

The grand tour was in a word, grand. Lacey Wilkes Hawkes may have had the biggest closet in town, but I'm pretty sure that the Alexanders were the only people who had a
gift-wrapping room.
The place was filled with all sorts of rooms that usually only exist on English estates: a billiards room, a two-story library, a music room with an organ, a piano, a harp. Not to mention a most serious home theater.

I poured myself into the most comfortable lounge chair ever made by man. “Okay, I am never going to the movies at the mall again. That screen is bigger than the state of Texas!”

“Yeah, Daddy likes to watch his sports big. It makes him feel like he's on the field again.”

“He was a football player?”

“Yeah, in college and then he went pro for a while, then he and Momma went to business school.” She motioned to a side door. “Let's go out that way and I'll show you the lagoon.”

Lagoon?

The lagoon, for those of you who don't live on say, some tropical island covered with them, was a dark-bottomed swimming pool meandering like a stream through an extravaganza of tropical plants and palm trees. A cliff rose up on one side, with a waterfall cascading down into the pool itself, sending gentle waves in the direction of the faux shore. It was fake as the day is long, but Lordy, it was beautiful.

“Sweet Tropic of Thunder, Zara, did we just teleport to Hawaii or what?”

“I know. Isn't it crazy? The landscaping was inspired by a picture I took in Kauai a few years ago.”

“It's gorgeous.” I noticed a set of stairs carved into the faux cliff that led up the side of the waterfall. “What's up there?”

“A hot tub.”

“A hot tub? Okay, that's it. I'm moving in.”

As we headed toward the four-car garage, Zara sighed. “I don't know. I think it's a bit much. Part of their master plan to…” She stopped mid-sentence and frowned.

“Master plan to…?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“Oh, come on. Tell! Tell all to your sweet, little Magnolia sister!”

Laughing, Zara confessed that deep down inside she felt that building this giant house was phase one of an elaborate “move back to Bienville in style and prove to everybody that the local kids did good” plan.

“What were the other phases?” I asked.

“Two, donate an entire wing to the Bienville Infirmary and slap all the grandparents' names up on it.”

“That was nice of them.”

“Three, construct a humongous office complex to house the shiny, new headquarters of Alexander Communications.”

“Which created like, hundreds of new jobs in our crappy economy in the process.”

“Four, get me on the Magnolia Maids. Make a big splash and integrate it for the first time.”

“I see what you mean. Everybody knows who y'all are now.”

“I love Momma and Daddy, I really do, but sometimes, it just all seems so fake. Like they have to show off all the time. ‘Look at us. Look how good we've done.'” She led me up the garage stairs to what appeared to be a large junk room and we made ourselves comfortable on a couple of beanbags.

“Oh, please. You want to talk fakery? Let me tell you.” I gave her the extended remix version of how I had gotten into a fight with Grandmother about Cosmo coming to town for our debut at Boysenthorp Gardens and how I was going to be expected to play the perfect daughter to his perfect father. “So I'm thinking, this is all bull, and he knows it and Grandmother knows it and I know it. And that he's just coming to check up on me to make sure I don't besmirch the Ventouras name in public. But then I get over here and your dad says that about having a meeting with my dad, and now it's so obvious, Cosmo's not coming for me. It's business. Ugh! It's just too much fake for a girl to take!” Now truly annoyed, I leapt up from my beanbag and paced the junk room.

Zara mulled this new information over for a moment. “Makes me wonder.”

“Wonder what?”

“What's worse, a father who's never around or a father who is up in your business 24/7.”

“Is that what your dad's like?” I asked.

Zara blanched. “Did he jump up from the table and run right over the minute you walked in the door?” I nodded. “Stare you down like you were a criminal?”

“Oh yeah. I felt like I had just been busted for shoplifting.”

“That's my daddy. Always has to know who is messing with his baby. It's embarrassing. Momma and Daddy are dying for me to make friends, but I don't even want to bring people over.”

“Eww. That
is
obnoxious. Hey, what's this?” My pacing came to a screeching halt as I nearly ran smack into a black-and-white photo hanging in the air. Actually, there were dozens of photos hanging at about eye level, all clipped to a clothesline leading to what would have been a closet door, except a red neon sign above it read,
IN SESSION
. “Zara, is that a darkroom? Like for
film
?”

She nodded. “Yeah, it's my consolation prize. Momma and Daddy said if I'd move down here quietly, they'd build me a darkroom and studio.” She gestured toward the other end of the space formerly known to me as the junk room. I noticed for the first time that the walls curved where they met the floor instead of joining at a ninety-degree angle, just like in the backdrops you see models posing in front of during photo shoots.

But what really intrigued me was a set of candid photos of three girls. “These photos are amazing!” I said, and Zara explained that they were of her best friends, Caitlin, Sabina, and Beatrice. She had taken them her last big day in DC, one of those paint-the-town-red kind of days, where they had perused modern art at the Smithsonian, devoured Ethiopian food in Adams Morgan, danced at an all-ages show in Dupont Circle. “It was the best way to spend the last day,” Zara said wistfully.

I moved along the clothesline to a very different series of photos, this one of a very good-looking guy, older than us—I don't know, like twenty or so? The first picture was a candid of him studying a contact sheet through a viewfinder. Unaware of the camera, he was completely dedicated to the task at hand. He was unselfconscious, focused. The next photograph, however—
hello
! Clearly it been taken a moment later. The guy must have realized his picture was being taken, so he glanced up directly into the camera. But he didn't seem irritated by the distraction. Oh no, not at all. In fact, he looked so delighted that every inch of his face was smiling, from the curve of his lips to the crinkles around his eyes. I swear, even his eyebrows looked happy. “Who is this hottie?” I asked.

Zara froze. “A friend.”

“A friend. What kind of friennnnnd?” I drew the word out playfully. “You took that picture, didn't you? The way he's looking into the camera, it's like fifty degrees warmer than ‘friendly'!” Zara rose from her beanbag chair, suddenly becoming awfully interested in one of the paint-the-town-red pics. She was so not answering the question. “Oh, come on, Zara, you're killing me! This guy obviously adores you. Who is he?”

She shook her head. “I'd rather not talk about DC. If you don't mind.”

I was on the verge of pressing for more dirt, but there was so much sadness in her eyes, I decided to go easy. “All right. Fine. Let's talk about something else then.”

“Let's go back to your dad.”

“My dad? Not exactly where I thought the conversation would head, but okay.” I plopped back down on my beanbag. “Talk.”

“Well, I'm just wondering if you're looking at this thing with your dad and your grandmother all wrong.”

I raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

“It sounds like your grandmother really wants you to have a relationship him. Like she's really going out of her way to make that happen.”

“Yeah, that's Grandmother. Family is really important to her.”
So much so that she talks to her dead husband and daughter and encourages me to do the same
.

“So when's the last time you saw Cosmo?”

“Right after I got kicked out of the Banning School. He flew over and read me the riot act and got me situated at Foxcroft. That was last summer.”

“A year ago? And you were all in rebel Jane mode then?”

“Definitely.”

“But look at you now. You're all cleaned up, toeing the line. You're like a different woman.”

Hmmm. This was true. Being back in Bienville was turning out to be the equivalent of getting a lobotomy. “So what are you thinking?”

“I just think it's an opportunity for you to show that you're doing great. That you're not this rebellious kid he's used to. That you're a lovely young woman of…” Zara giggled. “Magnolia caliber.”

I snorted. “That sounds like a bullet I should be putting in my head right about now!”

“You and me both!” We laughed. “Seriously, Jane, think about it. Letting your dad see you now could really be good for you.”

I stuck my tongue out at her and rolled my eyes, like the mature young woman I clearly had turned into. But on the way home, Zara's words ran rampant through my head. Maybe she was right. Maybe I could develop an adult relationship with Cosmo. Whoa! News flash in my head! I had never considered the possibility that our relationship could evolve. What was it that Jay Alexander said? That flexibility was the key to success? Hmm. If I were flexible, and didn't fight Cosmo's return, if instead I prepared for it… suddenly this fantasy of how cool life could be invaded my thoughts. I would be going to college next year (if anyone would have me), and college has breaks, and everyone wants to go to smokin'-hot places on breaks…. Cosmo was always gallivanting around to smokin'-hot islands, beaches, international ports on business. So maybe if I showed him I was responsible and mature, I could spend my college years gallivanting around with him. Getting to know him, dining at beautiful restaurants, sailing around Mediterranean islands on his sleek boats, gambling at fabulous casinos.

Wait a second! This was sounding a lot like one of Brandi Lyn's five-year plans. And, dear me, it was sweeter than a headache-inducing artificial sweetener. Not to mention awfully ambitious given the dark period of sadness and separation that we'd lived in since Cecilia's very first fall. And in the back of my mind wiggled a nagging thought: was I setting myself up for Thanksgiving at Disney World, part deux?