Southern Fried (12 page)

across it before, sorry to say.”

She had a point, and I groaned at it as I hopped out of the bed,

my sneakers on in no time flat, both of us heading downstairs

before I said my goodbyes and made my way to the address she’d

handed me. Thankfully, the cars were all still there. After all, they

all belonged to Jeeves now, and he was the one I was headed to.

§ § § §

He didn’t live too far away, as it turned out, an old two story

house that had long ago been subdivided into apartments. It was

a nice enough place, but not the mansion. That was for sure. Still,

I could see why Pearl’s windfall was so upsetting; by the looks of

things, he most certainly got the short end of the stick.

I sighed and looked down at my secret weapon. Suddenly

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it seemed pretty weak. Like tossing a powder-puff at a tank.

Still, with little choice, I hopped out and trod on over, walking

inside a vestibule and up a short flight of steps. I breathed in

deeply, counted to ten, then ten again, then breathed in again,

added another ten for good measure, and then rang the bell. I

remembered to exhale just as his door creaked open, his face

appearing from within the gap.

He eyed me suspiciously, a look of out and out hatred washing

over him like a tidal wave. Then again, that was pretty much how

he always looked, so it was hard to tell just how pissed off he was

to see me. “What are you doing here, Trip?” he asked, lips barely

pried open.

“I, uh,” I managed to push up from my lungs, followed by

a rather painful pause, which was, of course followed by yet

another one. At the best of times, I had little to say to the man.

And these clearly weren’t the best of times. In fact, these were

the dark ages and the black plague combined, tossed in with a

little herpes outbreak for good measure. “I, uh, was hoping you

could help me.”

And then he laughed. Scare-fucking-ey. Which was promptly

followed by his slamming the door in my face, the sound echoing

down the hallway before boomeranging back into my ears. But I,

of course, was not to be deterred. Frightened, yes. Deterred, no.

Besides, I still had my secret weapon. I knocked this time around,

loudly. “I have something for you,” I said, my lips a mere inch

from the wooden door.

“Go away,” he replied back, his voice muffled on the other

side.

I removed the tinfoil. “Pearl made them special for you.”

The silence was deafening. Then the door opened ever so

slightly. “What?” he growled, hungrily eyeing the dish.

“Fried green tomatoes,” I replied. “Your favorite.” I gulped

down my pride, tossing in a “Walter” for good measure.

He snickered, and the door opened a few more inches. “You

have five minutes, Trip. No more.” He ushered me in and quickly

70 Rob Rosen

grabbed for the dish. “Now, what is it?”

He stood. I stood. He stared down at me and I up at him.

“Beau Pellingham,” I managed.

“What about him?” he asked, tapping his foot.

“He’s, uh, he’s either my brother or my cousin,” I replied,

meekly. “He’s, he’s Granny’s other grandson either way.”

He shook his head. “Nonsense. You are that infernal woman’s

only living relative.”

I shook my head back at him. “Or so we thought,” I said. “You

skedaddled before the rest of the will was read. Granny left the

remainder of her estate to Beau and I, her grandsons.” And still I

stared at him, and waited. But he said nothing, clearly pondering

what I had just said. “You knew her the longest, Walter. You

were at the mansion before I was born. You, you must know

something about this. About Beau.” And still his head shook, the

tapping gladly and abruptly stopping. “Did Granny have another

child? Did my parents?”

He walked away, reaching for one of the fried green tomatoes.

“Nobody makes these like Pearl does, Trip. This is pure South, this

is.” He popped it in his mouth, then another, sucking the grease

off his fingers, his eyelids fluttering. Gross, I know. “Suppose I

do know something. What would it be worth to you?”

“
Do
you know something?” I asked, peeved that I was

suddenly being blackmailed. And by the likes of him, no less.

“I said
suppose
I know something,” he replied. “Then what?”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “What do you want, Jeeves?”

“Walter,” he corrected, wagging his finger at me.

“What do you want,
Walter
,” I amended, fairly choking on the

word.

He paused, a new look appearing on his face. It was just for

the briefest of moments, really, a hiccup in time, but I recognized

it just the same. It was sadness. Resigned sadness. “I, I’d like

to keep my job,” he said, his usual gruffness quickly making a

triumphant return.

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71

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Why? You’d be working for me

then.” But I knew the answer even before he told it to me. His

job, after all, was all he knew. Thirty years of it. It was his life.

Without it, there was nothing. He had no family nearby, no home,

no fancy house. So of course he still wanted his job, even with me

now in the mix. So I stopped him. I didn’t need to hear him say it.

In fact, I didn’t want to. “Fine. Your job, plus a ten percent raise,”

I blurted out. “Now, tell me what you know. Please, Walter.”

The sadness on his face returned and stayed put this time.

“Until you mentioned it, I’d completely forgotten about it.” He

sat down, tired looking in his everyday clothes. The chauffeur suit

gave him a regality he was now missing, a respectability. Strange

how I never noticed it before. Anyway, he continued. “Your

grandparents hired me as soon as I walked into the mansion.

Took one look at me and offered me a job. I was just barely in

my twenties. Poor as poor could be, after, well, after I’d recently

lost a job.”

I nodded. “Granny always enjoyed helping out those less

fortunate. I’d seen it as a kid. Betty, in fact, told me something

similar when I met her.”

He sighed, looking all his years. Like he’d been put through

the ringer and still hung up wet. “Yes, she was like that. But still,

I had no experience. And she knew nothing about me. Nor did

your grandfather, for that matter. This was more than charity,

Trip.” He looked straight ahead, though clearly not seeing me.

Like he was staring into his past. “I saw it in their faces. It was

desperation. They needed me as much as I needed them.”

I found a chair and sat down. “I don’t get it. Granny was

never desperate. Ever.”

He blinked, smiled. “She grew into that woman, Trip. Many

southern women do. Especially the widowers, which would

come soon enough for her.” He paused again, head tilted down.

“Anyway, this was a different kind of desperation. They needed

me because they needed someone new to town. Someone who

didn’t know who they were or what they meant to everyone.”

The light was flickering on above my head now. “They had a

72 Rob Rosen

secret. Something you’d never know about.”

“And was too young to dare ask. Or blab about should I ever

find out,” he told me, head lifted up again, eyes locked with mine.

“She had another child?” I asked.

He laughed, low and soft. “Of course not, Trip. How could

she keep something like that a secret? She couldn’t just disappear

and come back, could she?”

That light above my head was now burning bright. “But my

mom could. A young woman, maybe sent away for a brief time.

Traveling. Going to school.”

He nodded. “To Europe, they told me. She returned just after

I started at the mansion, your father in tow. She said they met in

France, fell in love. They married soon after that, the whole town

turning up, me included. Only…”

“Only what?” I yelped, heart racing now. “What?”

He continued. “Only, whenever I asked her about Europe,

what she saw, how they met, she never answered. I was young,

curious. She understood and was sweet as could be. Still, there

was never a response. Eventually, I stopped asking. Stopped even

thinking about it. Until, until today, just now.”

My heart was now beating rapid-fast, ready to explode from

my chest. “So he’s my brother then. Beau.”

He shrugged. “Stands to reason. That sort of thing happened

back then. It also explains his comings and goings around

the mansion. I never could figure out what he did for your

grandmother. And she, of course, wasn’t about to tell me if she

didn’t want to, which clearly she didn’t.”

My shoulders slumped. “He lived there. In the mansion.”

“Nonsense.”

“No, he did. When you were on your days off, he lived in my

room. But why? Why not let everyone know? Thirty years later,

who would care? She was an old woman. Times had changed.”

He stood up and popped another tomato in his mouth,

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offering me one, mainly because southern hospitality always

trumps disdain. In other words, I took it, the tart green tomato

bursting from within its crispy, salty coat. I stifled a moan because,

yes, they really were that good. Secret weapon indeed. “Times

had changed, passing her by along their merry route, Trip. Her

only daughter had a baby out of wedlock. The neighbors still

would’ve had a field day with that, the whole town, in fact.”

I nodded, grabbing for another tomato. “I get it,” I said,

chewing and swallowing. “But why not tell me? Tell me I had a

brother? Let us get to know each other?”

He set the dish down and scratched his head. “Now that is a

mystery, one I think you’ll have to figure out on your own. Or ask

Beau. My guess is that he knows more than either of us.”

Once again I sighed. “Easier said than done. I don’t have a

clue where he lives. All anyone seems to know is that he did some

sort of work for Granny.”

Again he smiled, which was getting really unnerving. “Then

she must have paid him. Which means she wrote him checks.

Which means she had records of him in her files, I’m assuming.

Unless it was all under the table. Still, worth a shot. Maybe an

address will turn up, at any rate.”

I stood. “Will you show me?” I asked. “Tomorrow, I mean.

When you come in to work?”

The smile remained. He emptied the remaining contents

of the dish into some Tupperware, then returned it to me.

“Tomorrow then, Trip,” he said, leading me out the door. “Just

like you always sang as a child,
the sun’ll come out tomorrow
.”

Oh, God, was I really that gay?

Don’t answer that. Rhetorical question.

I didn’t go directly back to the mansion; I drove into town

instead. It’d been ten years, but nothing had changed all that

much. And though there were certainly no Internet coffee

houses, there was, thankfully, a public library, small though it was.

And, lo and behold, there was one computer tucked neatly in the

back of the place.

Not surprisingly, because life is never that easy, I quickly

discovered that there were no local Beau Pellinghams on

Facebook or LinkedIn. None on MySpace or Twitter, either.

Those that did pop up were long dead, found only in obituaries,

or lived many states away or were clearly the wrong age. Still, I sat

there and scrolled through it all, alone in my corner, heart racing

when that last name appeared. Like a whistle, it blew in my head

each time I came across it.
Pellingham
. Oddly, the name sounded

vaguely familiar, only, I couldn’t for the life of me remember why.

It was like it was tucked away, cobwebbed in the farthest recesses

of my brain, unwilling to break free and reveal itself.

Turned out, as I was soon to discover, it was a name with

deep southern roots, all the way back to the early South Carolina

settlers. Meaning, lots of old money. And power. Which is exactly

when it hit me why the name sounded so familiar. “Pellingham,”

I whispered. “Senator Pellingham.” Living in the North, it wasn’t

a name I came across all that often. Why would I?

I gulped, though, because Granny, I knew damned well and

good, ran in just such circles.

But Senator Pellingham was pushing eighty now. Certainly, he

couldn’t have had an affair with my mom and had a son with her,

could he? I dug further. Yippy for Wikipedia. Senator Bertram

Pellingham had a son, namely one Robert E. Pellingham. I kid

76 Rob Rosen

you not. Robert E. And southerners eat that shit up. Pretty much,

you get an extra thirty percent of the vote just for naming your

kid that, fifty in the rural areas. Not that Republican senators in

the South have much fear of losing their seats, mind you, but it

never hurts to hedge your bets.

Robert E. Pellingham, I read, was about my mom’s age, if she

were still alive. He was living in Savannah now. A big-shot lawyer,

with a wife and two kids, twenty five year old twins, Jessica and