There is a lot of old money in Old Bienville and there’s a lot of big money in Old Bienville. But no one has bigger or older money than the family of Teddy Mac Trenton. His mother was a Hawkes, Lacey Wilkes Hawkes, to be precise, and she came from a long line of Bienvillites, people she easily described as rumrunners and pirates who raped and pillaged their way into a fortune before civilizing themselves and settling down into the legal business of importing and exporting. Lacey Wilkes, for that was her full given name, was loaded. So loaded that she completely flouted local convention while at the same time serving as Bienville society’s unofficial tastemaker. She’d been through a string of husbands, at least five, to my recollection. She always professed absolute and eternal adoration for each one, at least until they started stealing money from her or cheating on her or visiting prostitutes that ended up singing like canaries to the local press. Teddy Mac was the result of marriage number two, to a real estate developer from Memphis who had returned home after the divorce due to irreconcilable differences. Lacey Wilkes always survived her heartache and devastation, primarily due to her extensive indulgence in retail therapy, her everlasting belief in love, and her devotion to young Teddy Mac, who she called her “Teddy Toy” and declared the only man worth trusting. In return, Teddy Mac adored his mother and served as her little houseboy. He fetched her cocktails, lit her cigarettes for her back when she smoked, and performed tap dances for her guests upon request.
Lacey Wilkes was frequent fodder for the Old Bienville gossip mill. Everyone loved talking about the husbands who came from all over the place, about how poor Teddy Mac had to deal with that series of stepfathers, how Lacey Wilkes took off for weeks on end to Dallas or Paris or New York to indulge in the retail therapy that was the only thing that could get her over her latest breakup. I can’t tell you how often I overheard the women of Old Bienville state that Lacey Wilkes was “ostentatious as a Texan” or “had the morals of a Yankee.” But Lacey Wilkes didn’t care what the ladies said, and they certainly kept their mouths shut whenever she donated a wing to the Bienville Infirmary or wrote a check to somebody’s pet charity. No, everybody in town knew what side the bread was buttered on: Lacey Wilkes’s.
Teddy Mac and I had always gone to different schools, but our mothers were friends, so every once in a while I would end up at Hawkleigh for an afternoon playdate. Yes, the Hawkes’s family estate was so grand it had a name. Picture a Southern plantation house, a two-storied Greek Revival palace with wide verandahs upstairs and down, fronted by an alley of majestic oaks. You could almost see Miss Scarlett and her sisters on the front steps. The lawn was beautifully landscaped, and I loved to play hide-and-seek amongst the azaleas. But Teddy Mac always dragged me up to Lacey Wilkes’s closet which, unlike Mrs. Churchville’s orchid house, was wide open to kids. We played dress-up while our mothers sipped bourbon-spiked lemonade and gossiped on the verandah downstairs.
“Jane, Jane, Jane, kudos on the most dramatic Magnolia Maid Pageant ever!” Thirty minutes later we had repaired to the Dixie Cup Diner out on Grand Boulevard for giant breakfasts of sausage, biscuits, and milk gravy.
“Oh, you were at the Magnolia Maid Pageant?” Brandi Lyn had what can only be described as a mystified expression on her face. She had worn it ever since we ran into him.
Teddy Mac clutched Brandi Lyn’s arm. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world! Of course, it’s usually a done deal which girls are gonna get selected. The same old boring same olds, but this year, I tell you! Mother and I nearly fainted ourselves, we were so surprised! Look, I got the best picture of you catching Brandi Lyn on my iPhone!” He brandished an action photo of Brandi Lyn, legs sprawling, me all mouth wide open as I struggled to keep her from falling.
Brandi Lyn went red as the checkered tablecloth.
“Charming, Teddy Mac. Charming,” I said.
“Anyway”—he dug into another sausage biscuit—“I hear Ashley LaFleur is fit to be tied.”
“Hell, yeah. She’s conniving all sorts of ways to toss us out of there and sneak Katherine and Courtney on.”
“They are such sheep. Don’t have an original idea in their heads. Just follow her around doing whatever she tells them. Being all judgmental.” He turned to Brandi Lyn and fluffed at her big hair. “You, girlfriend, I love this look you have going on. Amy Winehouse, with a dash of Dixie, wouldn’t you say?”
“Well, thank you, but…” Brandi Lyn looked pained. We exchanged glances.
“Uh-oh. Did I just step in conversational do-do?”
“Teddy Mac, we have a problem.” I explained our entire situation about being on Magnolia Maid probation and about how we needed to shape up if we were going to get off it and fit in according to Martha Ellen Upton’s specifications.
Teddy Mac howled with laughter. “Oh my lands, I know just what you girls need! Southern belle drag!”
“No, not drag.” Brandi Lyn raised her eyebrows in horror. “It’s not an act. We need to be fine ladies of the South.”
“Oh, honey, everything’s an act. All the world’s a stage, don’t you know?” His arms swished out so far that he nearly hit Brandi Lyn in the face. She jumped back fast, spilling coffee all over the place. “And I am just the one to help you with this.”
Teddy Mac called for the check and skedaddled off to the little boys’ room, giving Brandi Lyn the chance to turn to me with great concern as she wiped up her coffee. “Jane, your friend, is he, um, well…”
“What, Brandi Lyn?”
She squeezed her eyes shut tight. “Do you think he’s homosexual?”
“Well, I haven’t seen him in six years and we haven’t exactly been Facebooking, but I would hazard a guess and say the answer’s hell yes with sugar on top. Want to ask him?”
“No, no, no! Jane, that would be so rude!” Brandi Lyn sighed. “It’s just I’ve never met a homosexual before.”
“Seriously. Never?”
“Lord’s truth. Have you?”
“Yes. I mean, definitely in boarding school there were a couple of people who were out of the closet and a few who, well, we had our suspicions.”
“Really?! Well, how should I act? I’m just not sure what to do.”
“You do what you normally do. Be yourself. Be Brandi Lyn.”
And Teddy Mac was back. “Okay, dumpling babies, let’s get to work.”
I raised an eyebrow at Brandi Lyn. “Are you in, Brandi Lyn?”
She pasted a nervous smile on her face. “I’m ever so excited.”
When we were little, Teddy Mac and I played dress-up in his mother’s walk-in closet, which at that point was the size of a small bedroom. But the space that Teddy Mac led us into, after a tour of Hawkleigh that left Brandi Lyn wide-eyed in shock (she kept saying, “You live here? This isn’t a museum?”), was not a closet. It was big as a house. “Mama had a whole new wing built onto the back of the house about three years ago,” Teddy Mac explained. “We just didn’t have enough room for what we need.”
“Damn, Teddy Mac, Carrie Bradshaw would give up half her Manolos for this thing.” I paced the east wall, studying the collection of evening gowns and fur coats.
“My whole house could fit in here!” exclaimed Brandi Lyn.
“Isn’t it obscene? We just love it!”
At that moment, a voice trilled up from downstairs. “Teddy? Teddy Toy?”
“Up in the wardrobe, Mother!”
Lacey Wilkes Hawkes swooped in on a cloud of angel-blonde hair and White Shoulders perfume. Seriously, she looked otherworldly. Well-preserved. “Now, Teddy Toy, you disappeared from church and I do not appreciate that. Do you know I looked for you a whole ten minutes! And then I had to leave. You know these shoes were killing me.”
“Beauty equals pain, Mother. You knew the new Louboutins weren’t broken in yet.”
“But they’re so pretty. Evil, pretty things.” Lacey Wilkes sank into a wing chair to take off the evil things. That’s when she noticed me and started screaming like a banshee.
“Mother, what in the world?” Teddy Mac rushed to her side.
“Cecilia?”
“No, Mother, Miss Cecilia died years ago. This is her daughter, Jane.”
“Oh, of course. So tragic, Cecilia leaving this earth so young. But she was still beautiful, at least she had that.” Lacey Wilkes composed herself as I walked over to put out my hand. “Hi, Mrs.…” I trailed off.
She jumped up and hugged me. “Oh, honey. I’m back to Hawkes. What with all the getting married and getting unmarried, I could never remember how to sign a check, what a disaster. So I just went back to my maiden name. Much easier that way. Teddy Toy, fetch Mother some champagne. My nerves, I’m so unsettled since Skip and I hit the rocks.”
Teddy made his way over to a closet within the bazillion-square-foot closet, revealing a fully stocked bar, including a mini-fridge filled with every alcoholic beverage known to man (or woman, in this case). He poured his sweet mother a glass of bubbly.
She swigged it down fast. “I swear I thought I had laid eyes upon Cecilia’s ghost. Such a tragedy, her declining the way she did. I did love her so. Anyway, Teddy Toy and I were just delighted that you were selected to the Magnolia Court. And who is this?” She beamed at Brandi Lyn, who stammered out her name. “Land sakes! The girl who fainted!”
“Yes, ma’am, I’m afraid so.”
“Darlin’, don’t be afraid. You got everybody talking.”
“I know. I looked such the fool.”
“Honey, please. The year Cecilia and I were Magnolia Maids, I fainted a good dozen times, I’m sure. But that was the anorexia. I’ve recovered, as you can tell.” She gestured at her by no means fat, but by no means anorexic, figure. “I couldn’t take any more stitches in my head. I even broke my nose once! But that turned out fine. Got a brand-new one in Houston and my first husband to boot! Teddy Toy, what was his name?”
“Dennis.”
“Oh yes. Gosh, he was adorable.” She giggled. “If a bit of a man-whore. Anyway, it’s so delightful to see you girls in my closet.” Lacey Wilkes’s expression suddenly turned to horror.
“What’s wrong? Are you feeling faint again?” Brandi Lyn looked terrified.
“No. I am the rudest thing in the world, and that is not okay! Forgetting to offer you a drink. Y’all want champagne? A little mimosa? We have orange juice up here, don’t we, Teddy?”
Brandi Lyn gaped at her response and I had to laugh out loud. My mother had always called Lacey Wilkes a tornado of whimsy in heels, and she certainly was that. She was what is called Down South “a character.” It was hard to keep up with her tangents and the hands constantly clutching at her throat or at someone else’s arm to make a point. I had to take a mimosa just to chill out from watching her in action. Brandi Lyn declined on account of she doesn’t drink, but she would take a Coke, diet of course. Then Teddy Mac got down to the business of explaining what we were doing up there in Lacey Wilkes’s wardrobe.
Lacey Wilkes howled at the idea of turning us into proper young ladies. “Although, darlings, I’ll tell you, not a soul in Bienville thinks I’m proper. I’m just too rich for them to pick at. But I am not surprised to hear Martha Ellen Upton is gunning for you, Jane. Not one bit.”
“I take it you’ve heard about my boarding school experiences.”
“Oh no, not that. It’s that she hated your mother. Simply could not stand her.”
My eyes widened. “What?! Someone actually hated Cecilia?”
“Why, yes, honey, she beat Martha Ellen out for queen.”
I laughed. “Well, that explains a lot.”
“Martha Ellen got it in her head that because her daddy was in the chamber that she was a shoo-in for queen. But that girl was just as sour then as she is now, and not one Maid voted for her. Not one. It was Cecilia, and it was U-nanimous, you can be sure about that.”
Brandi Lyn and I exchanged glances. “Gosh, Jane, it’s good you declared war on her then,” she said.
Lacey Wilkes nodded. Suddenly, she was all business. “Now. Let’s start in the summer dress department, shall we?”
“Exactly what I was thinking!” Teddy Mac urged us over to an entire wall demarcated with a sign reading, SUMMER. “Now, Brandi Lyn, your outfit looks fit for a young Shania Twain.”
“Really?” Brandi Lyn beamed. “I made it myself.”
“Did not!”
“I did, I did!”
“Girl, oh my God, Mother, do you see this?”
“You should be designing for those country music stars. Shania, and who’s the other one I like, TT?”
“Carrie Underwood.”
“Oh yes, she’s a cutie. She’d look adorable in something like that. Tell me you’re going into fashion design.”
Brandi Lyn looked down demurely. “Y’all are so sweet. Really. I’m planning to be a newscaster, though, but wouldn’t it be fun to design on the side?”
“I couldn’t agree more,” replied Teddy Mac. “What I’m thinking, though, is that your look is a little too star, not enough lady.”
“Not enough lady?”
“It’s the difference between a Marilyn and a Jackie. Marilyn’s all boob-y and sex, sex, sex, but Jackie’s all sedate and proper. We just need to Jackie you down a bit. Bienville is not The Hills, you know. Those Hollywood vixens wouldn’t know sedate if it hit them in the face.”
Disappointment flittered across Brandi Lyn’s face. “Jane kind of told me the same thing, but I like the way I dress.”
“Well, of course you do, because you look like a star! But those Magnolia Maids are about being ladies. Just think of it as your new act. What do you think of this?” He held up a colorful shift.
“Oh!” she exclaimed in delight. “Why, it’s magical. This herringbone stitch is so intricate!”
“Doesn’t it just bring out the color of the fabric? I was nervous about it, but it worked out so much better than I could have imagined.”
“Than you could have imagined?” I asked. “Teddy Mac Trenton, did you make this dress?”
Lacey Wilkes glanced up from pouring herself another glass of champagne. “Honey, he did more than half the things in here. That’s why we needed the closet expansion, to keep up with his creations. Isn’t my Teddy just brilliant?”
Teddy waved a hand at her. “Mother exaggerates. I do the designs, but we have a girl who cuts the patterns and sews the outfits.”
Lacey Wilkes plastered Teddy Mac’s head with kisses. “Aren’t I the luckiest mother in the world, to have my own dress designer for a son?”
Even I was impressed. “Damn, Teddy Mac, you’ve come a long way from playing harem princess.”
“Honey, that was the start of it all!”
She and Teddy Mac chattered on about whipstitches and hemlines and bodice choices and all sorts of things that I didn’t really know—or care to know—what they were. Brandi Lyn whipped off her country star gear, down to her undies (to my surprise, but she seemed to have forgotten that Teddy Mac was male), and let him go to work.
With all this Teddy Mac–Brandi Lyn BFFing going on, I had tons of time to obsess over my ludicrous Luke Churchville sighting. Had he actually seen me? Did he have any idea I was there on a scouting mission? If he had seen me, what was it like after all these years? Was I more cute or less cute than he would have imagined? Did he even think of me at all? Now what was I going to do the next time I saw him? Maybe it wasn’t too late to go back to boarding school.
Brandi Lyn ended up with ten dresses, a few skirts, some simple sleeveless tops, and a half dozen pairs of shoes. She and Lacey Wilkes wore the same size shoe, although all the clothing would have to be altered a bit. Luckily, Lacey Wilkes also shared Brandi Lyn’s big chest, but she had a bigger middle, too, despite years of Jenny Craig, liposuction, and biannual spa treatments at Canyon Ranch up in Massachusetts. Teddy Mac took Brandi Lyn’s measurements and promised to send everything out to Laverne, the seamstress, for alterations and to make an appointment with his mother’s hairstylist to update her ’do. Brandi Lyn protested, claiming their overwhelming charity was just too much, but Lacey Wilkes batted her words away like a pesky housefly.
“No, no, no. I will not tolerate this talk. It is my pleasure to support your cause and, by the way, I can always have Teddy Toy whip me up something new when I need it. So you just hush and go look beautiful and be sure to drive that Martha Ellen Upton crazy with your propriety.” The last words came out as a slur. Lacey Wilkes had downed most of the bottle of champagne and she was now wobbling more than ever. “Teddy Toy, Mother’s feeling a little tired now, so I’m going to take me a nappy-poo. But, honey, you are going to have a time getting this one out of the black.” She wagged a finger at me and teetered out of the closet and down the hall to her bedroom.
I braced myself. “I know. I have a feeling this is going to be painful.”
“You just need a little color and sparkle, dumpling,” Teddy Mac said.
“Oh hell no.” I backed away in horror. “No color. No sparkle. No cute.”
“Oh, Jane,” Brandi Lyn chortled. “Let Teddy do his magic. I think you’d look gorgeous in deep pink.”
“Nooooooo! I don’t care if it’s deep as the ocean. No pink of any kind! Help!!!!!” But she and Teddy Mac attacked me with a couple of Lacey Wilkes’s sundresses and before I knew it I was in front of the three-way mirror gazing at myself wearing a red-and-white polka-dot sundress with a snazzy kick pleat in the back.
Brandi Lyn exclaimed, “Jane! You’re from another era!”
“Well?” Teddy Mac waited breathlessly.
“It’s… cool. Kind of retro. Sassy.”
“That’s your look, then. Forties vamp. Sassy and original, but ladylike all the same. Let me see what else I can pull out for you.” He paused. “But, Jane. This is going to cost you.”
“Oh yeah, fine. I’ll write you a check.”
“That’s not what I mean. There’s something else I’d like.” A sly grin crossed his face.
“Ohhhhh-kay…,” I drew out.
“Once your Magnolia Maid dress is done, will you let me try it on?” Okay, that is so not what I was expecting. My jaw hit the ground and Brandi Lyn gasped. “Pretty please? Sugar on top? Just one time?” Brandi Lyn and I burst into laughter.
Teddy Mac huffed away. “Forget it.”
“No, Teddy Mac, it’s fine. Really. I was just taken by surprise. You seemed so serious, I was worried there for a second. Honestly, you can try on my dress whenever you want. But on one condition…”
Teddy Mac arched an eyebrow at me. “What?”
“You agree to be my dandy.”
Both Teddy Mac and Brandi Lyn screeched with delight.
My guess is that was a yes.