Plantation

  “No. Dr. Levine had an emergency out in Long Island and left his office at two o’clock. Would you like me to call him?”

  Long Island? That was where Lois, his ex-wife, and son lived! We didn’t have any friends out there and Richard’s patients were usually from Manhattan. “No, that’s all right. I’m sure he’ll be home soon. Thank you.”

  He had probably gone out there to calm Lois down. She was having a giant temper tantrum because we were getting married. I didn’t blame her for that. She was a stupid ass to let him get away in the first place. I never could figure out why either. I wrote him a note, taped it to the front door, and left.

  It was freezing outside, low twenties. Just last week we had a snowstorm that left Manhattan covered in twenty inches of snow. After it was shoveled and banked, it froze. The doormen of all the buildings in the city had to cut passageways in the banks so people could get off the curb to a cab without climbing a wall. The cold didn’t bother me. In fact, I loved it. I pulled my black coat around me and walked quickly to the Pierre.

  By six o’clock, Trip and I were way ahead of Mother and Millie in the alcohol consumption department. I have to say, they made a heroic effort to catch up as quickly as possible. Mother thought I was too thin; Millie thought I looked the same. Mother didn’t like my haircut—made me look older; Millie thought it was chic. Mother said she didn’t like New York; Millie said she thought it was exciting. Frances Mae sat silently, sipping on orange juice, picking at the nut bowl, and finally, at six-thirty, Richard appeared. I spotted him and got up to bring him over to our table.

  “Ooh!” Frances Mae said, “he’s a hot one!”

  “Yes, he is!” I said.

  “For God’s sake, Frances Mae!” Trip said, rolling his eyes.

  I put my arm through Richard’s and whispered in his ear.

  “Where have you been, darling?”

  “Fighting with Lois, darling,” he whispered back. “But, you look beautiful tonight, darling!”

  “Come meet my family, darling.”

  My scowling mother had him in her sights and he went directly to her side, taking her offered hand in between both of his.

  “It seems that I have made the greatest mistake of my life, Mrs. Wimbley,” he said to her.

  “Oh?” she said.

  “Yes. I’m marrying the daughter when it’s her mother who has stolen my heart on sight.”

  “Suh? That is one crock if I ever heard one, but you just go on and flatter me to death!” Mother was grinning from ear to ear, fingering the pearls. “Do call me Lavinia, won’t you? Come sit next to me, you adorable man. Isn’t he adorable, Trip?”

  “Just precious, Mother,” Trip said.

  Richard shook hands with Trip, gave Frances Mae a peck on the cheek, and finally turned to face Millie.

  Millie looked more elegant than I had ever seen her. At five feet tall and maybe one hundred pounds dripping wet, she didn’t look a day over forty, even though she was in her fifties. Her laser eyes cut right through you and could see your soul naked. I used to tease her that the long braid she wore around her head was where she hid her third eye! She was wearing a pale pink wool bouclé suit with black trim. It looked just like Chanel and probably was. Yep, elegant but not happy. Something had come over her like a bad mood. I knew that look too well.

  “Richard, this is Millie Smoak. She’s been running Tall Pines all my life and she’s my dearest friend in the world.”

  “It is a great pleasure, Mrs. Smoak, a great pleasure indeed.”

  “So you’re the man who’s going to marry my Caroline?” Millie said. She looked at him, staring deeply into his eyes.

  “Yes, ma’am, I am the one who is not only going to marry her, but I’m going to love and cherish her for the rest of my life.”

  “Well, you be sure you do!” Millie said and two big tears splashed her cheeks.

  “Oh, Millie!” I threw my arms around her and we hugged.

  “I was there the day you were born, Caroline!” Millie said and sniffed, trying to compose herself. “The very minute you came into this world!”

  “I know, and I love you, Millie, you know I do!” Then I felt like I was going to cry.

  “Well, then,” Richard said to the approaching waiter, “let’s have a bottle of champagne!”

  “Um, I’d prefer Jack Daniels on the rocks with a tiny splash? Does that suit?” Mother said.

  “Me too,” said Trip.

  “Make it three,” Millie said, “and call me Millie.”

  “Oh, what the hell, Richard,” I said, thinking I hadn’t drunk bourbon since college, “I’ll have one too.”

  Richard turned to the waiter and said, “I’m new to the family. Forget the champagne, I’ll have a Dewar’s neat. Bourbon all around. And please bring another orange juice for my future sister-in-law.”

  Richard picked up the check. After that, Richard could do no wrong. We moved on to the Post House and had the most delicious dinner—big steaks, steamed lobsters large enough to give you nightmares, creamed spinach, and cottage fries. We ate and told stories until after ten o’clock.

  “Does anyone care for dessert?” Richard said.

  They all declined, except Frances Mae, but when no one else ordered dessert, Trip told Frances Mae she didn’t need it either. She went into a serious funk. I was a little surprised he spoke to her that way. I would have kicked my husband in the shins under the table! But, in all fairness to my brother, Frances Mae was rotund.

  “Does anyone want to go over to our apartment for a nightcap?”

  They declined again, saying they were tired, that didn’t the bride need her rest and so on. Mother had discreetly slipped her American Express card to the captain, so the bill was handled before Richard could even offer to pay it. He got up and bowed to Mother, kissing her hand. We said good night at the door and went our separate ways.

  “You were utterly charming,” I said as we crossed Park Avenue, “thank you.”

  “They are very nice people, Caroline,” he said, “and, I love you.”

  “Thank God,” I said, “because I sure do love you too.”

  Eddie the doorman held the door for us and into the lobby we went.

  “Eleven degrees,” he said.

  “Really?” I said, “I didn’t feel cold a bit!”

  “Aye, that’s love for ya,” Eddie said and pressed the elevator button for us.

  Tomorrow I would become Mrs. Richard Levine. I felt pretty wonderful.

  Caroline Boswell Wimbley

  and

  Dr. Richard Case Levine

  Request the honor of your presence

  At a reception to celebrate their marriage

  February 26, 1987

  Le Perigord Park

  563 Park Avenue

  Six o’clock in the evening

  The favor of your reply is requested by January 30

  Black Tie

  Four

  Going to the Chapel

  1987

  OUR wedding ceremony, which was to be held in our new apartment, was minutes away. I was in our bedroom with Mother and Millie, nursing my nerves with breathing exercises—ujayia breathing, a technique I learned in yoga class to organize my prana. It wasn’t working all that great.

  “Do you want something to help you compose yourself, dear?” Mother asked. “You certainly don’t want to go out there and look like a damn fool all jittering, now do you. Five milligrams of something might be a big help.”

  I took another deep breath before answering, turned away from the closet door mirror, and just stared at her instead. Why did she say these things? Mother was not going to aggravate me, no matter what.

  “Miss Lavinia?” Millie said, jumping right in. “You leave this chile alone! This yanh is her day! You done had yours! You be the fool, not she! Imagine trying to give drugs to the bride! Shame on you!”

  “Oh, hush, you old woman!”

  “Oh, brother,” I said, laughing, “will you two bir
ds quit fighting over this worm?”

  The girls loved to bicker—they always had.

  I had just finished my makeup and was brushing my hair behind my ears. I could hear our guests outside my door, talking and greeting each other. The ivory crepe dress, just a simple sleeveless sheath, slipped over my head and Millie moved in to zip it.

  “You look beautiful, chile,” Millie said, “you truly do.”

  I put the small matching pillbox on my head and attached the tiny combs to my hair. Millie and Mother welled up with tears, and Mother got up from the chaise.

  “My hair used to be even more blond than yours,” she said.

  I thought she was coming over to give me a motherly last placement of a hair or to kiss my cheek. She opened her small beaded purse and handed me something wrapped in an old lace handkerchief.

  “Now, Caroline,” she said, “before I give you this I want to know one last time if you truly, with all your heart, want to go through with this.” I saw her grip tighten.

  “Mother,” I said, “I know you don’t understand me some of the time, but I love Richard.”

  A long silence hung in the air while she searched my eyes for any glimmer of self-deception.

  “All right, then,” she said, “if you change your mind later, you don’t have to give this back. This handkerchief was in the waistband of your great-great-grandmother’s wedding dress the day she married Henry Wright Heyward IV in 1855. You do have to give that back. It has been in the hands of every bride in my family for good luck. There’s something inside from me.”

  I took the handkerchief from her. In the true style that only my mother and Martha Stewart seemed to possess, the handkerchief, frail from the years, had been washed and folded like origami into an envelope and tied with an ivory ribbon. Inside was an exquisite diamond pin, obviously very old, in the shape of a bow, its edges trimmed in tiny channeled sapphires.

  “Oh, Mother!” I said, holding it in my palm, “it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Don’t touch the stones,” she said, “your body oil will dull them. Here, let me pin it to your shoulder.”

  “Who did this belong to? I’ve never seen it before.”

  “How should I know?” she said. “I bought it from Corey Friedman on Forty-seventh Street yesterday. That’s why I was late for cocktails!”

  It was clear. She wasn’t going to waste an heirloom on a marriage she didn’t fully endorse. I didn’t mind that, really. She would come around in time. “Mother, thank you so much.” I gave her a kiss on the cheek.

  “Careful, child, you’ll smudge Mother’s powder.”

  I shot Millie a glance. She was wiping her eyes but burst out in a good-natured laugh at Mother’s impossible disposition. We just shook our heads while Mother stood back to survey her work.

  “Good! Now you have a corsage!” She lifted my left hand to inspect my engagement ring, shook her head in disgust at its small size and modern style, and stood back again. I started to giggle. Nerves, I suppose, but I’d not seen mother so cross in years.

  “I love you, Mother,” I said, “and I’m not marrying Richard to annoy you.”

  “Of course, I realize that,” she said, “but just remember, you can always come home if it doesn’t work out.”

  “Why are you so worried, Mother?”

  “Oh, Caroline, I don’t know. It’s just that you’re so different from each other! It’s going to make everything more difficult.”

  I looked deep into her fading blue eyes and said, “Mother? Richard and I are cut from the same bolt of cloth. Two peas in a pod—don’t worry, we’ll be fine.”

  “Okay,” Millie said, “my turn. Take off that shoe, missy bride!”

  “What?”

  “You heard me! Gimme your shoe!”

  “Which one?” I sat on the side of the bed.

  “Get up or you’ll wrinkle the dress!” Mother said, a little too loud for my already rankled nerves.

  “Mother!” I said. Nonetheless, I popped up like toast.

  “The right one!” Millie snapped.

  I balanced on one foot and slipped off my ivory suede pump. She reached down in her pocket and produced a small greeting card for me to open. Inside was a penny, covered in lace. Love that man hard, she had written, but don’t forget to love yourself! Millie Smoak. I knew instantly the penny was for my shoe. Tradition. As much as I shunned it, at that moment I loved every traditional thing in the world.

  “I made that lace, girl,” Millie said. “Don’t lose it tonight or you have bad juju. And that penny is from nineteen sixty-one, the year of your birth.”

  “Millie! Thanks so much!” I threw my arms around her and she hugged me back. “Isn’t it just like you to be so thoughtful?” God, I loved Millie so much. “I’m so glad you’re here. Thanks for coming and bringing Mother.”

  “What? Me miss all this? All right then, we gone have us a wedding today? Or we gone stand around yanh yapping? I gone directly to your brother to see if it’s time.”

  “Get Frances Mae too, okay?”

  “Iffin you say so!” She gave me a wink and closed the door. “Guess we have to.” This made Mother and me snicker. Everyone had kindly tried to spare me the torturous company of my sister-in-law again until the absolute last moment, and for good reason. As you already know, Frances Mae was pregnant, but she wasn’t pregnant like a normal female of our species.

  Last night at dinner she gave us enough material to keep us howling for a week. When she excused herself to go to the ladies’ room, she extended her stomach for attention, lumbering across the restaurant like an extra large-size model on a catwalk, holding her lower back.

  For some unknown—but surely to be discussed at another time—reason her maternity clothes had revealing necklines to entice all the men with her “ready to lactate with champagne at any moment” mammaries.

  Mother said that one night she begged my brother to rub her swollen feet after dinner in the dining room and it had hallmarked the end of Mother’s patience and composure with her forever. Maybe Frances Mae thought she was a Trojan Horse whose belly held the Second Coming. Why Trip actually married her and how he could tolerate her was a mystery of karma. Maybe she had washed his leprosy sores in another lifetime. In any case, Frances Mae wasn’t pregnant, she was so so so pregnant! Jeesch.

  By now the apartment was filled. I could feel the vibration of the voices. Some of my friends from the bank were here and a few of Richard’s colleagues. Outside in the hall and the living room, their voices were strong and melded together in a dull sound over the music of the chamber ensemble we had hired to play.

  I turned to face Mother. Her face was a combination of resignation and melancholy. I felt my spirits sink a little. “Thinking about Daddy?”

  “Yes, how can I not? Our only daughter getting married in an apartment instead of a church? Him not able to be with me and with you?” she said, telling me her sorrows.

  “Mother? You’re practically an agnostic.”

  “So what? A church wedding would’ve been beautiful.”

  “Small problem. I’m not a member of any organized congregation. It’s not like I could have just used the Yellow Pages and made a reservation, right?”

  “I know and I respect that but it just seems so odd to get married in your living room.”

  “Mother? I’m going to tell you something I believe. Even though Daddy’s not here in the flesh, I really truly believe he’s here in spirit.”

  “You sound like Millie.”

  “That’s fine. And, we’re getting married here because we are only having twenty people and because Richard really wanted a rabbi to perform the ceremony.”

  “Great God! A rabbi?” She sank to the bed, shaking her head back and forth and looking at the floor. “I cannot, for the love of God, believe my ears! Do you mean to tell me that there is a Jewish minister here to perform this ceremony? Your father would spin in his grave!”

  “I seriously doubt
that. Listen to me, Mother, I don’t care where the ceremony is held because I believe God is everywhere. Jesus said that when two or more were gathered in His name, that He was in our midst! Didn’t He?”

  “He was referring to Himself and even I know that Jews don’t accept Christ.”

  “Mother?” I was smiling now, trying to smooth her wrinkled brow. “God is God, is God. First person, second person, twentieth person, it doesn’t matter! Don’t you see that what does matter is I’m marrying the man I love and that he loves me and that we’re all here together?”

  “I suppose so,” she said looking at me, almost agreeing. “You always did have an unorthodox view of the world, Caroline. You always did. And the older I get the less sure I am of anything.”

  I wasn’t sure what she meant by that. She just seemed a little lonely, I guess. The afternoon sun was pouring through my windows and the room was warm despite the February chill. I smiled again at her and just as I was about to tell her once more that I loved her, she snapped at me again.

  “You’ve got lipstick on your teeth! Wipe it off!”

  “I do?” Just as I looked back to the mirror, the door swung open and Frances Mae and Trip came in. I should say that Frances Mae’s swollen-with-life belly came first and that she followed minutes later, but that would be an exaggeration of fact. It just seemed that way. “Hi! How are you?” I said, as though she was my best friend, leaning forward to give her a hug.

  “Don’t you look beautiful!” she said, clutching her hands to her chest. “Trip? Darlin’? Gimme a tissue! I can just feel the tears coming! Why do I always cry at weddings?”

  “I don’t know, Frances Mae,” Mother said dryly, “why do you?” Mother rolled her eyes to the ceiling and then to Millie, who stood by Trip, witnessing Frances Mae’s performance.

  “Well, Mother Wimbley, I suppose it’s just the innocence of the bride and the hope of the future. Although in this case, Caroline’s hardly an innocent child bride, are you, dear?”

  “Frances Mae?” I said with a straight face. “See the chandelier over the bed?”