WHEN WE ENTERED Wainwright House through the wide sweep of the back veranda, noise came from every direction. My older brother, Henry, and his wife, Janice (of fertile fame), had arrived in Texas from California only a few weeks before me.
As far as my mother was concerned, there were three kinds of women. The ones who were born fabulous. (Think Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis.) The ones who learned to be fabulous. (Think Princess Diana.) And the ones who would never, no matter what, be fabulous. (Think Jessica Simpson.)
There were others who said there was a fourth variety. The ones who swore they could be fabulous if they wanted to, but it was beneath them to try. (Think the no-makeup, Birkenstock sort who believes a razor is nothing more than a form of female subjugation.)
My mother does not subscribe to this fourth distinction, her argument being, “Who doesn’t want to be fabulous?”
My mother swore that if I, with my own blond hair, blue eyes, and Wainwright alabaster skin, just tried I would fall solidly under the second category (as in Could Learn to Be Fabulous, i.e., Princess Di—I was her daughter, after all), but I had never put any effort into it, and now I was wasting said dormant fabulousness living north of the Mason-Dixon line. I couldn’t imagine what she would think (and no doubt say) if she learned I was living as “that penniless girl from Texas” in Boston. But I didn’t argue. Not that I was interested in arguing any point in regard to fabulousness (who wants to compare themselves to a potentially crazy, though more recently, totally dead princess), nor did I want to argue the case in defense of my sister-in-law.
Janice Josephine Reager was a Pulitzer Prize—winning journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Despite the fact that she had been born and raised in Willow Creek, she had found her like-minded brethren among the granola and Birkenstock crowd who believed they were saving the world… and anyone who didn’t agree with them was not. You’d think she had never heard of Texas if it weren’t for the fact that with a little digging it was easy to find her Lone Star roots.
Despite her Southern origins, she was a rabid, card-carrying women’s rights activist who once compared all things social to ethnic cleansing in third world countries. If I recall correctly, she made this statement during what my mother now refers to as the Thanksgiving from Hell. Given that Ridgely Wainwright-Cushing-Jameson-Lackley-Harper-Ogden was all about everything social, it was not hard to see why their relationship was strained.
Their affiliation had been less than perfect from the beginning. The first thing Janice did wrong was be born into the Buford Reager family, as in the Buford Reager of Nuts, Bolts, and Scrap Metal, Inc., fame.
The second thing Janice did wrong was, well, be herself when she met my mother back when she and my brother started dating in high school.
Number three on the list was that Janice got pregnant during her and my brother’s senior year at Willow Creek High.
There were times when I swore my outwardly laid-back brother married Janice just to make my mother insane.
“Why are Henry and Janice here?” I asked.
“Because of Morgan,” my mother explained, referring to my eighteen-year-old niece. “Lord have mercy, did you see her last night at dinner? The child sulks and carries on as if she has been dragged against her will to the land of hillbillies and hayseeds. While no one has bothered to tell me why they showed up here unexpectedly, I just happened to overhear them talking. It turns out that Morgan has been kicked out of yet another school in the greater San Francisco Bay area. From what I heard no one else would take her, especially this late in her senior year. So Texas, here they came, apparently.” She smoothed her St. John suit, then raised a perfectly plucked brow. “Though you didn’t hear that from me.”
“Why in the world are they staying with you?”
Janice wasn’t an idiot (proof surely found in the Pulitzer), and she didn’t like my mother any more than my mother liked her. I couldn’t imagine her moving anywhere near Wainwright House, much less into it. Beyond that, after Janice and Henry’s unexpected pregnancy in high school, they hadn’t slowed down since and Janice had managed to produce three additional offspring along with her Pulitzer.
“I offered, of course,” my mother said, “couldn’t do anything less. But I never expected them to accept.”
My mother had a habit of saying what she should say without meaning it, then bemoaning the fact that people didn’t know better than to simply give her credit for being nice and decline her generous offers.
Inside the house, it sounded as if my brother’s children had gone berserk. Lupe was in the kitchen cleaning, her iPod turned up so loud that even we could hear Rick Martin singing “La Vida Loca.” Ernesto couldn’t be coaxed through the door, complaining that his hearing aids couldn’t take the noise.
Neither Henry’s nor Janice’s car was in the drive when we pulled up. Though my sister, Savannah, appeared as soon as we walked in.
“Finally!” she said. “Mother, you have to do something about those children.”
My sister, Savannah Wainwright Cushing Carter, was a younger version of my mother. Beautiful, ethereal, and used to getting her way. Standing in the kitchen, she looked like yet another china doll pulled out of a glass cabinet, her blond hair brushed back, her skin so perfect it looked like porcelain, her eyes as blue as… well, something really blue.
My mother stiffened. I knew she was rattled after the meeting with Jack and Vincent. In fact, I expected her to head for the bedroom at any second to lie down. Instead she walked into the living room where her only grandchildren were sprawled and carrying on among her antique furniture and family heirlooms.
“What is going on here?”
Morgan slouched in the Louis XIV settee, one leg slung over the delicate arm, fiddling with a long strand of her orange-dyed hair. Henry Herbert Cushing the fifth, aka Cinco, a ten-year-old bundle of energy, slid down the stairs on a piece of cardboard. Priscilla, the eight-year-old princess, looked as if she should be Savannah’s child with her blond hair, blue eyes, and a fondness for pink. A screech interrupted everything as two-year-old Robbie woke up from a nap with a wail of displeasure.
“Where is your mother?” my mother asked Morgan.
“Mom says that raising kids is a shared responsibility. Today’s my dad’s day to deal with us.”
Ridgely’s jaw tightened. “Forget my feelings on where a woman belongs, just tell me where your father is.”
“He went out. Said there was too much noise.”
My mother did some screeching of her own. She pressed her eyes closed, shook herself, then tried to get the children to behave. But no such luck.
“Call 911 if you see blood. I’m going to Brightlee.” She turned to Savannah and me. “Girls, come along. We’re going to the tearoom for lunch.”
Savannah glanced from my mother to me, then back. “We’re taking her?”
“What’s wrong with me?” I demanded.
My mother and sister looked at me.
“Nothing,” my mother said.
My sister rolled her eyes.
“The fact is,” Ridgely added, “I have to be seen. Everyone has to know that I’m doing great, better than great. Besides”—she glanced at her grandchildren—“seems like a good day to get out of the house.”
WE ARRIVED AT BRIGHTLEE and as soon as my mother, sister, and I entered the tearoom everyone turned to stare. Brightlee is the Junior League of Willow Creek’s headquarters. It was just off the center of town, an old sprawling mansion made of limestone with a wraparound porch, and a cedar shingle roof. Inside, they have a tearoom with high ceilings and antique furniture. It was the place for ladies of a certain distinction to go to be seen.
The tearoom waitresses were Junior League volunteers, so there was no guarantee of an efficient use of anyone’s time. Fortunately, the cooks and bakers were professionals, so while it might take forever to get a waitress’s attention, whatever she brought would be divine. The orange rolls were something not to miss.
We walked into the dining room, our heels sounding overly loud against the hardwood floor. Even I sensed the knowing whispers that floated through the room at the sight of us.
Not one to be intimidated, my mother smiled and strode forward, her Hermès crocodile Kelly bag swinging on her forearm. My sister, more a Birkin bag girl, followed, with me bringing up the rear with my plain black briefcase. As the three of us walked through the tables, women said hello, but even I could tell that Ridgely was not getting the usual homage that women generally afforded her.
“Carlisle?” more than one Junior Leaguer said in surprise. “I hardly recognized you. What with all the flat hair and black clothes… Well, never you mind about that, sugar. How are you?”
A barb wrapped in smiles and “sugars” and “aren’t you sweets.” A Southern specialty that ranked right up there with sweet tea and barbecue.
We were seated at an antique oak table set with silver flatware and fine bone china, though it took even longer than normal before a waitress appeared. It was Carol Simmons, a shy member who blushed as she took our order. I had the distinct impression that she had been forced to take our table, and I was certain of it when I noticed that the rest of her tables were clear on the other side of the room.
“What is going on?” I asked.
Savannah snapped her compact closed. “Some of the women are saying that the debutante ball is a mess. And there’s a nasty rumor going around that this year’s group of debs are going to back out and go to San Antonio or Dallas to make their debuts,” she explained, glancing around the room, preening in all her blond hair, perfect cashmere, and heirloom pearls. The strand had been a gift from our grandmother.
I had a strand, but couldn’t bring myself to wear it. One, because somehow I felt it turned me into someone I didn’t want to be. But there was a two in the equation: I missed my grandmother dearly since she had passed away the year before. She had always supported me, told me to go after what I wanted. Which I had, in Boston.
The times I had put the pearls on they never ceased to remind me of her, and quite frankly it was hard to be a cutthroat, ball-busting divorce lawyer when you were choked up over your deceased grandmother. So when I moved away from Texas, I left the pearls in a small velvet-lined jewelry box in my childhood bedroom dresser.
“To make matters worse,” Savannah added, “after last year’s debacle, the symphony is having money problems.”
The annual Willow Creek Symphony Association Debutante Ball was one of the oldest and most prestigious debutante balls in the country and the most prestigious in the state of Texas. More important, the Willow Creek Symphony, along with its debutante ball, was founded by a Wainwright one hundred years ago. Everything deb-related had been a priority to my grandmother until the day she died.
“How bad are the problems?” I asked.
“Very bad.”
I swung my head to look at my mother in disbelief. “Is the symphony going bankrupt?”
My mother glowered at my sister.
Savannah just smiled. “Yes, they are.”
After my grandmother died, my mother had stepped into Grand-mère’s shoes and taken over last year’s event. Unfortunately the ball had been an unmitigated disaster when the famous (now infamous) conductor Alberto Guiseppe Rinaldi was caught in the young debutantes’ dressing room the night of the big event. Not with one of the girls (which would have been a disaster), but secretly slipping into one of the girls’ ten-thousand-dollar ball gowns (in Texas, a bigger disaster). The reporter who found him snapped his picture, and the next day the photo ran on the front page of just about every newspaper across the state of Texas with the caption:
Willow Creek’s Debutante of the Year
They don’t make them like they used to.
Worse yet, the picture was taken from behind, Signor Rinaldi glancing over his shoulder like an innocent coquette, unfortunate amounts of hairy back revealed where the zipper wouldn’t zip.
As you might imagine, my mother was mortified. But I thought she had moved beyond it, pulling together another set of the traditional eight girls with money and old-family connections who would make their debut in a little more than three months. The names were supposed to be announced in just over a week. Soon, last year’s debacle would be nothing more than a bad memory.
“According to the rumor the current crop of debutante mothers are going to boycott the ball unless the reins are handed over to someone else,” Savannah explained, seeming amused. “They blame Mother for last year’s debacle and don’t want to risk another repeat.”
“Is this true, Mother?”
“Yes. And we can’t let it happen. We can’t let those women destroy a hundred years of our family history. A Wainwright has always been in charge of the debutante ball.”
My eyes narrowed. While I hated that my grandmother’s beloved event had taken a hit, I really hated the sudden use of the “we” word.
Several women whispered to one another as they glanced our way.
“Keep smiling, girls,” my mother hissed, her own smile plastered on her face.
I got a headache from the tension of my minor supporting role. All I had to do was sit, smile, and make mindless small talk, offering up the requisite laugh now and again to “show” what a fabulous time we were having, and how nothing, certainly not any gossip, was bothering me any more than it bothered my mother. I might have lived in the Northeast’s cutthroat world of divorce law for the last three years, but I still remembered how to act in Texas polite society.
My mother started looking a tad stressed around the mouth, a huge no-no for her since she prided herself on her younger-than-her-years good looks. Everyone marveled that without a lick of surgery, she could pass for our sister. “I’m so fortunate to have such good genes,” she was fond of saying.
“Here,” Mother said, pulling a letter from her purse. “You need to read this. Grand-mère wrote it before she passed.”
“A letter?” I frowned. “What letter? Why haven’t I heard about a letter before now?”
Savannah scoffed. “Because Mother didn’t want you to see it.” She laughed. “Now she’s desperate.”
I gaped.
My mother smoothed her hair. “It’s not like you cared one whit for your heritage, proof being that no sooner was your grandmother’s funeral over than you hightailed it back to Boston.”
Confused, I took the envelope.
I held it for a long second before I lifted the flap. Instantly I could smell my grandmother’s subtle perfume. L’Air du Temps.
I took a deep breath, swallowing back a traitorous swell of tears, then started to read. My mother eyed me in speculation. Savannah waved to someone across the room.
Dear Carlisle,
I’m sure you’ll be surprised by this letter, but in time I believe you will come to understand. As a concession to the Wainwright family for starting the Willow Creek Symphony, the founding charter states that a Wainwright is to be in charge of the annual debutante ball. For one hundred years it has been part of who we are.
But now, the truth is Savannah has other things on her mind than debutante balls. And your mother, bless her heart, while she loves the ball, she has no interest in the many details that go into making such a function truly work. If she were in charge, I’m afraid the ball would, let us say, incur problems.
As had been exhibited the first year my mother took over.
We need someone at the helm who understands the importance of details. You, my lovely girl, are all about details.
Step up to your legacy, Carlisle. Please.
If you can’t, I understand. But know, the position is yours unless you say otherwise.
All my Love,
Grand-mère
Me?
Take over?
“I can’t do that!”
My mother took another sip of tea. “That’s exactly why I didn’t give you the letter in the first place.”
Savannah smirked with her special version of disdain and condescension, combined with perverse glee. “It was a crazy idea anyway, given your own experience with deb balls.”
My mother shuddered. “True. After your own debut disaster, we certainly didn’t need you anywhere near the ball. I couldn’t imagine what Grand-mère was thinking.”
Sorry, I might have left out a small (read: gigantic) detail. While I had been around etiquette, manners, and the waltz since I was born, no one had ever accused me of being Debutante of the Year. As it turned out, my debut had been something short of successful. But they didn’t have to get ugly about it.
“However, that was years ago,” my mother added. “No one remembers Carlisle’s debut.”
My sister snorted. “See? She’s desperate.”
“Savannah, enough. The fact is,” my mother continued, “our family’s legacy is at stake. And Grand-mère asked Carlisle to do this.”
My heart pounded, and not in a good way. “What about you, Savannah? Why don’t you do it?”
“As Grand-mère pointed out, I have other things to deal with now.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Excuse me. Like get pregnant.”
My sister had spent the last seventeen years trying to have a child. She was on her second husband (had announced with not a little superiority that this one was her perfect match) though still had no baby with forty and its corresponding plunge in fertility rates just around the corner.
Savannah launched into her latest theory on why she was sans children. She went on about acupuncture, soy-rich diets, and even something called imaginary wombs. I hadn’t a clue what she was talking about, didn’t ask, didn’t want to know.
I needed a break. Without a word, I pushed up from the table, then headed for the front door. But I knew Ernesto was out there waiting. Not interested in running into him, I hurried down a long hall that took me the back way to the ladies’ room.
Two League members were fixing their lipstick when I entered. Not wanting conversation, I went into the very last stall, closed the lid, and slid the lock securely in place. I needed a few minutes alone to gather my wits and clear my head.
I heard the women snap their handbags shut and leave the ladies’ room. I started to get up, but the door swung open again and two other women entered.
“Can you believe it!” a woman said. “Can you believe Ridgely sits there and pretends everything is still the same. Ha! Is she ever going to be in for a surprise when she has to address the ultimatum of stepping down or losing the debs. Everyone is going to look at her and her crazy family differently, now.” The woman laughed. “And Carlisle! Can you believe she’s back? Remember her debut?”
Insult melted into a cringe as the two women laughed.
“How could I forget? I swear her nose is crooked from the fall.”
I had to swallow back a groan by covering my face as I remembered my big night. I had worn the requisite long white gown with white gloves, my hair pulled up in an elegant twist. I felt on top of the world, beautiful, as I came down the formal staircase, a barely remembered stepfather at my side, my escort waiting for me at the bottom. When I reached the end of the stairs I stood for one perfect moment between my escort and the stepfather, then began the famous Texas Dip, a deep, full curtsy where a girl sinks so low that she touches her forehead to her skirt. Tricky for most girls, a disaster for me when I lost my balance and did a face-plant into the hardwood floor.
Hiding in the bathroom stall, I felt the humiliation of eleven years earlier as if it were yesterday.
The two Junior Leaguers stood side by side in front of the sinks and mirrors. Through the crack between the door and jamb, I could make out each of them fluffing their hair as they laughed with wicked glee as if they were girls in the bathroom at Willow Creek Junior High.
Normally, I would have barged out and demanded an apology. But somehow I couldn’t force myself to do it. Instead, I carefully (in an embarrassingly juvenile Witness [the movie] moment) pulled my feet up off the floor.
“I hear she’s a lawyer now. A divorce lawyer.”
More laughter, not coming from the stall.
“Have you ever heard of a plain-as-vanilla-cream-pie divorce lawyer? No doubt she’d get eaten alive in a Texas court.”
My mouth fell open. These women could insult my clothes, ridicule my hair, but how dare they question my abilities as an attorney?
Suddenly my cell phone vibrated in my purse. The supposedly silent sound made a faint buzz.
“What was that?”
“What was what?”
“That noise?”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
I hugged my purse close to my chest, though fortunately the phone didn’t buzz again.
One of the women leaned down and I could see her long strawberry-blond curls swing low as she looked under the first stall.
Great, my mind shrieked. Bad enough not to confront them, but then to get caught hiding?
Then the hair swung down again as she looked under the next stall.
My heart jammed in my throat as my mind raced. What to do? What to say?
I was just about to burst out of the stall when the outer door slammed open and the head waitress burst in. “What are you two doing in here? We have customers! And they want their tea!”
“Fine, fine, we’re coming.”
My breath gasped out of me as all three women departed.
I sank back against the commode in relief, though I only gave myself a second before I unlocked the door and went to the sink. Splashing water on my face, I glanced at my reflection in the mirror. “I am Carlisle Cushing. Strong. Tough. In control,” I whispered. I was no longer the fatherless girl, the one whose mother was drawn to drama like the queen bee to honey, the girl who did the face-plant into the floor.
My reflection stared back and, quite frankly, it didn’t look convinced, which made me angry.
Feeling strangely determined for reasons that in that second I couldn’t have named, I went back to my mother’s table. As soon as I sat down two women swept over and stopped. Loud enough for everyone to hear, a petite strawberry-blonde said, “Ridgely, I was just sick when I heard the news.”
I knew this couldn’t be good, especially since I realized right away that this was one of the women from the bathroom.
“Maylee Pearson,” my mother said, “I’m not sure who you think you’re speaking to with that tone of voice?”
Maylee glanced around the room and saw that everyone was watching.
“Why, Ridgely, sugar, I’m speaking to you of course. And after the embarrassment of last year’s ball, this year’s event is irrevocably tarnished. Everyone says so. I thought it only fair that someone told you to your face that the debutantes are reconsidering the wisdom of being a part of the Symphony Association ball if you stay in charge.”
A collective gasp shuddered through Brightlee. Not that everyone didn’t already know this; there were no secrets in Willow Creek. But no one could have expected such a blatant challenge thrown down in the middle of teatime at the Junior League tearoom.
I saw the embarrassment on my mother’s face. As much as I wanted to ignore it, I couldn’t. Emotion surged up, of the sort I really don’t do.
As a child, I used to pull a red beach towel from the linen closet and tie it around my shoulders like a magic cape. It was the first time I felt I had power, different from my mother’s, different from Savannah’s, but still a certain strength that I wrapped myself in.
It was with the thought of that silly cape that I stood. “Why, girls, haven’t you heard?” I asked with the sweetest Texas accent you can imagine.
Their brows furrowed as they glanced nervously from table to table, then back.
“My mother is so busy, what with all her tremendous responsibilities managing the Wainwright assets and charitable contributions, that I am taking over this year’s debutante ball.”
After a moment of surprise, the girls looked more relieved than worried. “You, in charge of a debutante ball?”
I heard the snickers, which made me even more determined.
“It is going to be pure heaven,” I cooed dramatically. “And after living in Boston with all those Mayflower descendants and their seriously prestigious old-money debutante balls, I can’t tell you all the fabulous things I have learned and plan to implement.” Of course I knew absolutely nothing about deb balls in Boston, imagined they were austere sorts of events, given their Puritan roots, but these women didn’t need to know that. “We’ll be written up in all the major Texas media. It’s going to be fabulous!”
Crazy, I know. Foolhardy, no doubt. And who knows why I said it. The mounting stress of the fake me in Boston? The sudden unsettling thought that I had to be fake to succeed? Or maybe it was simply my closing in on thirty and the chest-squeezing tick-tick-tick I woke up with in the mornings? It was hard to say. All I knew was that I couldn’t stand by and watch my mother be humiliated.
“This year’s debutante ball is going to be a true affair to remember.” I smiled serenely. “Mother. Savannah. I believe we are done here.”
Ridgely and my sister sat at the table, surrounded by the better women of Willow Creek, looking as if they had been shot. Without too much effort, I bustled them out to the parking lot, gossip surging up behind us like a wave in our wake.
Ernesto leaped out of the car and raced around to open my mother’s door. With just one look at her, he yelped, “Wha happen to you mama?”
I didn’t respond. I herded my mother and sister into the Mercedes. It only took five minutes to arrive at Wainwright House, but long enough for my mother to recover her wits. When we pulled into the drive, she turned to me. I expected her to take my hand and thank me profusely.
She shook her head. “Let’s just hope Grand-mère wasn’t losing her marbles when she wrote that letter and didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.”
“I can do this,” I found myself saying. “And I’ll do a great job.”
“Now, dear, let’s not get carried away. You have never been great at anything social. I’m just hoping for something higher on the scale than disaster to give us time to regroup before next year.”
“Mother!”
“Well, that’s no lie. And quite frankly, I’m surprised you care. You’ve never cared about being good at anything except intellectual matters like the law.”
“Which is why I am taking the case.”
Both of us were surprised by that, but as soon as the words were out of my mouth I knew it was true. I might have built a life in Boston, but I wasn’t going to let Jack Blair or anyone else look at me as someone who couldn’t hack it in Texas.
“I’m going to take the case and whip the deb ball into shape. It’s going to be fine.”
Mother might have snorted, but I was too busy planning to notice.
I was going to do whatever it took to fix the Hundredth Annual Willow Creek Symphony Association Debutante Ball and my mother’s divorce. And good manners or not, I had the exceedingly inappropriate thought that by the end of it I would make those women regret the day they insulted my family, my mother, and, well, me.