The Right Thing (24 page)

“For three years, I'd managed on the money the church ladies always sent me, a hundred dollars a semester, and that had been enough so that I didn't have to worry about having a job until summer vacation. It had been enough so that—if I was very careful—I could keep myself in decent clothes and have a little spending money. Tess, however, took one look at the invitation and told me there was nothing in my wardrobe that would pass muster with my future mother-in-law.

“ ‘Here,' she said, throwing open the door to our closet. ‘Take anything you like. This dress would be fun for the party since I'm sure it's not going to be a formal affair, probably just family and her intimate friends, and this suit's perfect, I think, for when you meet the old cat.' I tried the suit on, but Tess and I were only
almost
exactly the same size. This summer suit, made of a lovely peach silk poplin, was a bit tight across my bust and derriere. I turned and tried to look at myself from every angle in our mirror, tugging at the jacket and skirt.

“ ‘Hmm. Wear this blouse.' Tess pulled a white linen blouse with a floppy bow from the closet. ‘You can leave the jacket unbuttoned.' ”

Remembering how beautifully my mother has dressed since I was a child, I can just see her in her borrowed finery. “I bet you were lovely,” I say loyally, but she shakes her head.

“Oh, no, Annie. Two weeks later, when Wade and I walked up the wide front steps of the Banks mansion, that suit felt all wrong. Worse, when his mother rolled out onto the columned porch in her wheelchair, I could see reflected in her eyes a calculation that left me wanting. She smiled a faint smile, leaving me with no illusions. We were not going to have that moment I'd dreamed of.

“She dangled a diamond-ring-bedecked hand in greeting. ‘Colleen, sweetheart,' she said. ‘I've heard so much about you from Wade, why, I feel like I know you already. You're
exactly
as I've pictured you. Tell me everything about yourself.'

“Inside, I was cursing my damp palms as I took her hand, but your father must have only heard his mother being kind to a young girl, her beloved only son's fiancée, because he smiled and kissed the iron-haired woman in the wheelchair on the cheek.

“ ‘Now, Mother—hold off. Collie needs to come in and sit down, have a glass of Easter Mae's iced tea before she gives you the lowdown. It was a long drive up from New Orleans.' He squeezed her shoulder and then went out to the Jaguar to bring in our luggage. It was a sweet, disarming thing for him to have said, but old Mrs. Banks's eyes were flat and assessing, just like a cat's before it decides if it's going to eat that mouse or just play with it a while. Without saying a word, her narrow glance at Tess's peach suit informed me that she knew I was dressed in someone else's clothes, that I was an imposter.

“Face to face with a nightmare, I almost ran down the walk to the Jaguar, where Wade was unloading my poor old suitcase, to that wonderful car in which we'd shared kisses in front of my dorm. I wanted to ask him to take me back to New Orleans, but I knew he'd be mystified, maybe even think I was crazy because his mother hadn't said a thing to me that could be construed as anything other than a kindly interest, a warm southern welcome for the girl from the wrong side of the tracks who'd managed to snare her son with trashy, underhanded wiles.

“But even though I was afraid, I knew that I couldn't let her do that to me. The dream was within my grasp if only I had the nerve to reach out and grab it. I forced myself to smile at her.

“ ‘Thank you for inviting me,' I murmured. ‘It's so nice to meet you at last, too. Wade and I are
so
happy.' Mrs. Banks lifted an eyebrow, as if to acknowledge that the battle had been joined.

“ ‘Come in, do.' She turned her wheelchair around on the red tiles of the porch with a shrill shriek of rubber tires, turning her back on me. I hastened to hold the front door open for her. She didn't say thank you, and by dinner that evening, I knew what I was in for. Mrs. Banks had interrogated me mercilessly all afternoon—all under the guise of ‘getting to know you, honey'—until I felt as gray and tired as the mill creek behind our old house in Lannette. Thank the Lord we weren't just the three of us when we sat down in her gloomy, high-ceilinged dining room, where those old family portraits seemed to gaze disdainfully down at the interloper in their house. Thank goodness Aunt Too-Tai joined us, having driven up from the farm down near Meridian.
Her
suit was a heavy tweed, an odd choice for May.”

I smile, thinking of how Aunt Too-Tai must have appeared to my mother back then. I
know
that suit: she still has it. “I bet she was great.”

“Oh, of course.” My mother continues. “In fact, she was much the same as she is now. ‘Collie!' Too-Tai said in a booming, happy voice, her handshake as strong as a man's. ‘It's a great pleasure.' Wire-thin, gray-haired, and as tall as Wade, she towered over her thin-smiling older sister enthroned in her wheelchair at the head of the table. She said to me, ‘You're pretty as a speckled pup, girl. Glad to know you.'

“Throughout dinner with its five courses, from consommé to chess pie, Too-Tai told us funny anecdotes about her life on the ‘home place' while the silent maid served us all. Her friendliness was a bulwark against Mrs. Banks's constant, sweet hostility offered like poisonous bonbons on a pretty dish. Oh, and thank goodness for Emily Post, too. Before I'd devoured her book, all those forks and spoons would've looked like a silver tiger trap to me. I felt myself beginning to relax, to think that perhaps I was going to win my way through this war, and then Wade's mother casually mentioned that the help would be starting preparations for the party at six the next morning.

“ ‘We've a lot to do to pull this place together,' she remarked. ‘The flowers, the food, the folding chairs. My friends are helping me out with a few things, but Easter Mae and her cousin Methyl Ivory are going to have to get started at the crack of dawn if we're to be ready to receive by three.'

“Wade groaned. ‘This isn't going to be one of your crushes, is it, Mother? You said it was going to be a small party.'

“His mother shrugged and rolled her eyes, a picture of helpless charm. ‘Oh, Wade—you know how it is. Once I invited one family, I had to invite all the families. I'm afraid it's going to be rather a big do.' Her eyes slid over to mine, and I was startled to realize that, while she sounded like she was composed and pleasantly anticipating the next afternoon's party, in reality she was more than a little apprehensive.

“Of course she was. Whether I held up to scrutiny or not was going to be her problem, too. If I was trapped, then so was Mrs. Banks because by then I knew I wasn't going
anywhere
. You may find it hard to believe, but there was a hard little part of me willing to cut up just so she'd be disgraced along with me. It wouldn't be hard. I could talk like a hick, gobble the tea sandwiches, and pretend to be ignorant, but that part was the mill girl, the lint-head, the one who resented the fine folks living on top of the hills of Lannette and everyone just like them. I squashed that part of me flat. I couldn't bear the thought of being a laughingstock even if it would embarrass this cold woman, not when I'd fought so hard for my place at this table.

“We finished dinner after much discussion of the party—the food, the flowers, who was coming and who had sent their regrets—and then Mrs. Banks kissed Wade, gave Too-Tai a pointed reminder that she needed a new dress, and rolled her chair into her elevator to go upstairs to bed. At the foot of the grand staircase, Wade and I shared a quick embrace before he went to stay in the
garçonnière
at the back of the gardens.

“ ‘You're not worried, are you? Why, you're going to be fine, sweetheart,' he murmured in my ear. I laid my head on his shoulder and wondered. Before I went to bed in the most intimidating of the guest bedrooms, I unpacked the dress that Tess had loaned me and realized that it, like the suit, was all wrong. The poppy-printed silk sheath was too bright, too daring, and a little too tight for this immense, gloomy old house, with its servants and family silver. As you might imagine, I didn't sleep well, dreaming of appearing on stage without having learned my lines, wearing the wrong costume—or, worse, no costume at all.

“After a restless night, early the next morning I awoke to the sounds of the rental men delivering the folding chairs, and I sat up in the big half-tester bed in a panic until I came to the grim realization that there was nothing I could do about anything, none of it. I wanted to throw the covers over my head and never come out from under them.

“But then a knock on the door startled me. ‘Come in,' I said.

“Too-Tai poked her gray head into the room, wearing the same old tweed suit from the night before. ‘Gracious,' she said. ‘I'm always up early, but this is more noise than a baling machine in high gear. Listen, Isabelle's going to put Wade to work as soon as he has a cup of coffee. Why don't you get dressed? We'll have some breakfast and get out of here. I can show you around Jackson.'

“I couldn't imagine anything I wanted more. A couple of hours later, we were driving around the town in Too-Tai's brand-new black Chevrolet. ‘I usually bring the truck,' she confided. ‘But this time Isabelle swore she'd turn me away if I didn't wear my good duds and drive the car. Since I was dying to meet you, I've had to behave myself.' I giggled at that.

“Too-Tai glanced at me. ‘It's good to hear you laugh,' she said. ‘I was beginning to wonder if you knew how. Tell you what. Let's go do a little shopping. I've only got the one suit, and Isabelle's laid down the law—I have to wear a dress. I don't own a dress, and Maison-Dit has got loads of 'em.' I was too embarrassed to say that I hated shopping when I had no money to buy anything, so we found ourselves at Maison-Dit, being waited on hand and foot by Dolly, Aunt Too-Tai's saleswoman.”

I can't help laughing, thinking of Aunt Too-Tai in Maison-Dit. “What did Dolly look like before she became a quilt?” My mother smiles faintly.

“Much as she does now,” she admits. “Maybe not quite so thin. ‘Meet Miss Colleen O'Shaunessy, soon to be Banks,' Too-Tai ordered the hovering staff. ‘And bring us some coffee, please.' We were in the Collections Room, sitting on a velvet settee that was fearfully deep and ferociously soft. The headless mannequins showed off dresses I knew were just the thing for this afternoon's party, and thinking of my all-wrong outfit, I wanted to cry. Meanwhile the saleswoman bustled off to get Too-Tai the plain navy shirtwaist she demanded. Sipping my coffee when it came, wishing for the thousandth time I had money to buy what I needed, I resigned myself to disaster. Jackson's society folk would always remember me as the girl who wore a flashy cocktail dress to her own engagement party.

“ ‘Just put it in a bag,' Too-Tai told Dolly when she appeared with the shirtwaist. ‘I don't need to try it on.' She must have seen my wistful expression, though, like a child at a Christmas window, for she said next, ‘And I'd like you to bring Collie a few things to try on, too.'

“ ‘Oh, no!' I was aghast. I couldn't allow her to do that. ‘I have plenty of clothes. I mean, I already brought a dress for this afternoon.' Never mind it wasn't the right kind of dress.

“But Too-Tai shook her head. ‘Let me do this for you, child,' she said under her breath. ‘I'm Wade's only aunt, and I want to do something nice for his bride.' She patted my hand. ‘I've never had any nieces to spoil.
Please
let me do this.' ”

Smiling at her memories, my mother strokes Troy Smoot's head and he wriggles with pleasure. “Oh, it was beautifully done. She'd seen the suit the night before, as well as the shoes that were too cheap to keep up with it. In a million years, Too-Tai wouldn't have dreamed of pointing out that I needed clothes. She was too kind and well-bred for that. I couldn't refuse, not after she so tactfully offered what I needed more than anything, and so that morning I walked out of Maison-Dit with the perfect dress, a full-skirted grass-green linen that took my breath away because it was so sweet, so demure, and so wickedly fashionable. Too-Tai had insisted I get green linen pumps, too, a green that was as close to dyed-to-match as could be.”

My mother falls silent. Troy rolls over on his back, begging for a tummy rub now that he knows she's a soft touch. She obliges with a smile.

“So that was all you needed, right?” I ask. God bless Too-Tai.

“Oh, it was a lovely dress,” she agrees, “but I still had the party to get through. Back at the Banks house, we walked in the door to a controlled chaos. Jackson's gardens must have been stripped bare for Mrs. Banks's party, for there were masses of flowers in vases wherever you looked. The immense arrangement in the middle of the dining room table was a firework display of daylilies and phlox, early roses, ferns, marguerites, the last of the Dutch irises and tulips, all of them only just contained in a silver urn the size of a laundry basket. And I've never seen so much polished silver in my life before or since—epergnes, candy dishes, sandwich trays, a magnificent tea and coffee service, a punch bowl you could take a bath in, and an amazing array of gleaming flatware and serving pieces.

“ ‘Looks like Isabelle's throwing a party, all right,' Too-Tai remarked. ‘Good thing it's not bee season, what with all these flowers everywhere.' I shuddered at the sight of all those busy servants. It was going to be, as Wade had said, a crush. I took my new dress and shoes upstairs and tried to eat a sandwich for lunch, but couldn't manage more than a mouthful.

“And so at two thirty, in the relative calm of my room, I was dressed in my new dress and heels, had checked for the fiftieth time that the seams of my hose were straight and that I didn't have lipstick on my teeth. When there was a knock at the door, I opened it, expecting to see Too-Tai, but it was Wade, carrying a slim black leather box.