A Southern Girl: A Novel

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Flow 383 “Tonight? I suspect with relief. The idea of court, newspapers, thrusting herself into the limelight—none of that appeals to her. I’m feeling some of that relief myself.” Inside the front door I call to her. She answers upstairs, saying she’ll be right down. Natalie and I are seated in the den when she enters. “The Board changed its mind,” I say. “That envelope on the sideboard is for you.” She gives a quick glance over but shows no emotion, seating herself on the sofa nearby. “Was it ugly?” “Very civil,” I say. “Natalie’s presence helped, but I think the result would have been the same.” “I think so, too,” Natalie says. “I guess Adelle will hate me now,” Allie says. “That is Adelle’s problem,” I say. “Your problem is to come up with a dress in a few days.” “I have to call Kenny,” she says. “I asked him to find me a horse show this weekend, just in case. He entered me in a show in Greenville.” “He’ll understand.” “Natalie,” she says, “would you like to help me shop for a dress?” “I’d like that very much.” “Cool,” she says, rising. “Well, I have homework to finish.” She turns, passing within three feet of the engraved invitation as she mounts the stairs to her room. j 40 i Tonight, we will attend the St. Simeon, as Carters have done for almost two and a half centuries. Sarah, whom I have not seen since our return from Korea, is coming over for an afternoon meal before we dress. I have offered to send Steven to Sullivan’s but she insists on driving herself into town. Natalie reminds me that with Allie’s invitation, she is the sole uninvited guest at the Church Street gathering. I need no reminder, but she is teasing. “I hate dancing,” she says. “Besides, it’s a cultural thing; not my A Southern Girl 384 culture.” One side of my brain says she is right, but the other side and a goodly portion of the rest of me would like to take her anyway. Perhaps another year. I am preparing the grill for steaks, glancing at the clock as it is now almost three and Sarah was expected at two. I instruct Steven to call his grandmother while I fine-tune the marinade. He reappears on the patio, reporting no answer. Odd. Allie is making potato salad. In jeans and a sweat shirt, she stands in the kitchen peeling spuds and, but for her styled hair purchased at the cost of a morning at the salon and for a sum equal to the interest payment due the World Bank by a medium size developing nation, could as easily be awaiting a horse show as the Ball. Christopher is circling the kitchen, cola in hand, tickling her periodically and laughing as she brands him “a perfect nuisance.” “Steven,” I say, “I’m getting worried about your grandmother. Try her again.” “I just called,” he replies a bit testily. “Try again. It’s not like her to be this late.” Mid-April heralds the barbecue season, and if I stand accused in this life of any failing, the want of any fidelity, should I be indicted, as the Nicene Creed expresses it, for having “left undone those things which we ought to have done,” there cannot be numbered among my crimes the neglect of barbecue season. Spring comes to my neighbors in accord with the timeless dictates of biology. The prodigal sun returns from its winter solstice, the ambient air temperature pushes the mercury in outdoor thermometers roofward, the setting on Mother Nature’s turf blanket is raised to warm phlegmatic bulbs, birds nest, bees pollinate, weeds rouse. Not so here. The Carter patio obeys the laws of an aberrant botany. Let the patios to either side be shaded in new verdure, let their dogwoods shower down the snowflakes of falling petals, let their magnolias molt, live oaks live, quinces jell, tea olives triumph—let the entire raiment of spring be spread upon their boughs and branches and the Carter patio will remain in remiss hibernation, refusing every order, enticement or blandishment save one: the lighting of the grill. Hovering over my charcoal, a man who cannot boil water on his best day in the kitchen becomes the living embodiment of Monet and Pasteur Flow 385 combined...