WAINWRIGHT ROYALTY STILL RULES
In a day and age when the world is filled with war, hunger, and poverty, debutante balls seem frivolous and outdated. But this year Carlisle Wainwright Cushing, daughter of former Debutante of the Year Ridgely Wainwright managed to pull together a Hundredth Annual Ball that raised record amounts of money for the Willow Creek Symphony. To accomplish the feat, she brought together both old and new Willow Creek families, and presented us with eight young women of elegance and charm, who showed us they won’t be bound by outmoded ways.
This isn’t the Peace Corps, but it isn’t your grandmother’s or even your mother’s debutante ball anymore.
Overnight I had become something of a celebrity. Following in my mother’s footsteps, Morgan had been voted Debutante of the Year by the Texas press corps. Even India experienced a reprieve from haut bitchdom when she promised to spend more time getting to know her mother and new family just as soon as she returned from a trip with her father to the Middle East, where he spent so much of his time working. Not anyplace I’d take a child, mind you, but who am I to judge. As the man said, it was time his daughter saw more of the world than her own backyard.
And maybe that was the case. Maybe you had to get out, see the world beyond your own backyard, in order to understand what you have, or to be bigger than ideas that never have a chance to grow beyond the strictures of a single place.
Janice got a job writing for the Willow Creek Times editorial page, not society page, as they had initially offered. Janice and Morgan immediately started planning a mother-daughter trip to Barcelona. My brother couldn’t believe the change in his life.
“What about me?” he asked, regarding the trip.
“We certainly don’t want to take you away from work,” they said, then laughed like schoolgirls.
After the article ran, my mother quickly found redemption among the women of Willow Creek. She told me she was thrilled with the outcome of the ball, telling me she had never doubted my abilities, and she swore again that she would stay out of trouble. I half believed her on both counts.
Then there was my sister. The morning after the ball, we found Savannah in the foyer, packed and ready to go with Ben to Dallas. They returned two weeks later after adopting not one baby, but two. Twin girls. And if our mother has anything to say about it, I have no doubt they will be future twin debutantes.
As for me, after all that had happened I couldn’t imagine that I would ever marry. But who knew. The sight of my sister with those babies made me believe in miracles.
One thing that I told myself wasn’t possible, however, even with my new status as minor celebrity, was staying in Willow Creek. But that was the rub. Where would I go?
Sure, I could go back to Boston, and it made perfect sense. I might even convince Mel Townsend it wasn’t too late to take on his case. But how to explain to everyone why I hadn’t let them know I had money? And how would I work with Phillip every day? Not that I couldn’t get beyond those things, but quite frankly, I didn’t want to. I wanted the chance to start over in a new place where I’d have the freedom to re-invent, the mistakes of the past not known.
With everything done, there was no reason for me to stay any longer. I went to the office on the second floor of Wainwright House. I found the old atlas I had used when determining my last destination. There was comfort of ritual, I suppose, when I pulled the old leather-bound book from its place in the floor-to-ceiling shelves.
Laying it out on the desktop, I opened it to the map of the United States, but then turned a few more pages until I found a double-page spread. Why limit myself? It seemed only appropriate to open myself to the world this time.
Closing my eyes, I tried to empty my mind. But oddly, all I could think about was the attic.
When I couldn’t get it out of my head, I resolved to return to the atlas later and trudged up the flight of stairs. The late afternoon sun streamed through the windows, motes of dust caught in the yellow-orange light.
I rummaged through boxes and cabinets until I came to a box marked “Carlisle.” I sat on the floor and opened the top. Inside there were debate trophies, report cards, certificates of achievement. I could see my orderly workings on everything I had done. A tiny handprint dried in clay, mounted on a piece of painted plywood with young but still neat block letters providing my name, age, height, and weight. A fifth-grade report I had written then bound with cardboard and neat stitching along the spine.
At the sound of footsteps I turned.
“I thought you might be up here.”
My mother came up the stairs wearing her signature tasteful attire and heirloom pearls, her low-heeled bone shoes ladylike as she crossed the wooden plank floor. When she came up behind me she glanced over my shoulder, then smiled. “Ah, the report you did in fifth grade. ‘Six Reasons Why Eleanor Roosevelt Should Have Been President Instead of Her Husband.’” She tsked. “Since you lived in a house with me and your sister, I never understood where you got all that seriousness. No interest in dances or boys or, later, sororities. You were always different, and needed something different than what I could give you here.”
“Is that what you told Jack. When I left?”
She cocked her head. “So, he told you.”
“Yep. He told me everything.”
“I wondered what you were doing when you were gone for so long from the courtroom, and Jack gone too.” She nodded. “Good. I’m glad it’s out there.”
“You should be. When I figured out the real reason you wouldn’t help me with the case I was ready to let you fry.”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be dramatic.”
Which made me laugh. “I learned it from you.”
“At least I can claim credit for something.”
Which made us both laugh.
We were silent then, both lost to our own thoughts.
“He also told me you were proud of me,” I added.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
She hesitated, then said, “I ran into Jack today.”
I glanced at her. “Based on your expression, either you ran him over or you have decided to direct your charms his way.”
“Carlisle! Really.” Then she smiled. “Though he is a nice-looking man. Young, of course. And I am blissfully happy with Vincent.” She straightened. “But that isn’t the point. He’s moving.”
“What?”
“I was shocked too.”
“What about that house I heard he was building? And what about Racine? Is she going with him?”
“As I understand it, he broke up with her. Not that he said that. I heard it at the Velvet Door beauty salon. Apparently Racine was in there yesterday making quite a scene, saying that he had broken up with her, broken her heart.”
Jack moving? On the heels of which came, Jack not with Racine?
Mother walked over to the window and ran her finger along the sill. “I wasn’t wrong to tell Jack he wasn’t good enough for you,” she said. “He wasn’t. Though it had nothing to do with his family or anything else you might be thinking. He wasn’t good enough because he was wild and disreputable, and you always had a soft spot for him. That kind of love can ruin a girl. And let me tell you, Carlisle Cushing, he would have ruined you.”
“Mother—”
“I should know. Your father was like that.”
“What?”
My mother’s perfect features went dreamy in the early afternoon sun that streamed in through the window. “Your father was amazing, dashing, filled with life, and if he hadn’t run that little sports car of his into a tree he would have made me miserable.”
That I hadn’t expected. The tree part and the miserable part.
“When I married him he was older than me but still a boy with good looks, easy charm, and a wild streak as wide as the Missouri River. My daddy told me not to marry him. He’d only make me unhappy, he swore. But he was wrong, at least at first. I was delirious with happiness when we first married. We opened Lucky Stars and traveled and made love—”
“Mother.”
“Well, we did. But a grown man can’t live life as a boy, at least not when he has a wife and children who depend on him.” She looked at me. “I loved your daddy, Carlisle. But our life together was already spiraling out of control before he died. And Jack Blair was just like your daddy. Can you understand that I didn’t want the same life for you?”
I had heard more about my father in the last five minutes than I’d ever heard. And had seen more of my real mother than I knew existed.
“You always had so much promise,” she continued. “You could be anything you wanted. And I knew that by leaving, you’d be able to realize all that potential. It was the least I could do to let you go.”
“And make Jack let me go too.”
“Exactly,” she said without an ounce of apology.
She walked over to a tall file cabinet and pulled open the top drawer. She dug around then pulled out a small box. “Here.”
I took it warily then started with surprise when I opened it and found the plastic ring Jack had given me in high school. “Where did you get this?”
“From that little house you lived in by campus. After you left—without so much as a word, mind you—Lupe and I went over there to pack everything up. I found it hanging on a chain in your bedroom.” She walked back and kneeled down in front of me. “You have loved Jack since you were thirteen years old, Carlisle. And whether you want to admit it or not, you’re not just attracted to him—”
“Mother—”
“You still love him.”
I dropped my gaze, my throat idiotically going tight. “For all the good it’s done me.”
“It’s certainly doing no good with you sitting here on the floor rummaging through a hundred years of clutter.”
“But you didn’t want me to be with him.”
“I didn’t. Not back then. But things change. And it turns out, Jack isn’t completely like your father.”
“What do you mean?”
“He let you go.” She touched my chin and raised it. “It was the right thing to do, and he did it. That’s the kind of man who’s worth a lifetime. I might not have been much of a mother to you, but I did the best I could. And the best I can do for you now is to tell you to get up and go after your man.”
As only my mother could put it.
I thought of Janice and Morgan, Merrily and Betty, even me and my mother. It occurred to me, sitting on that floor with a hundred years of family history around me, that my mother was right and if we’re smart, mothers are strong enough to let their daughters find out who they really are, and daughters are strong enough to realize that mistakes or no, every mother has done the best she can… and if she’s lucky, her own daughter will one day give her the same gift of understanding.
That’s what my mother had done. For all my complaining about her and her larger-than-life drama, I realized that she had seen to it that I could be who I wanted to be. She hadn’t forced me to wear ruffled dresses as I knew she wanted. She hadn’t made me take the dance lessons Savannah had been so great at. And when I fled to Boston, she hadn’t forced me to come back. She had let me find my own way. That had been her gift without my even realizing it.
“But you’re forgetting one thing. Jack has made it clear he doesn’t love me.” He might want me in some sexual way—or maybe it hadn’t even been that, and had just been the whole men’s room thing that got him going, as Janice had predicted about men.
Mother shrugged her delicate shoulders. “Well, that might be.”
Ouch.
“But you’ll never know for sure if you don’t go over there and find out. Wouldn’t you rather know one way or the other?”
Not necessarily, at least not when I suspected there was a fair chance the truth wouldn’t go in my favor.
She gave me a look. “Carlisle.”
“You’re right. You’re right. Better to know.”
I pushed up and headed to the stairs as if walking toward a guillotine.
“Good heavens, Carlisle, where’s that red cape?”
Which made me laugh out loud, a bud of excitement pushing at the fear of rejection. “Tell me this, how did you know the ring was from Jack?”
She scoffed and waved me away. “How many times do I have to tell everyone around here that I know everything that goes on underneath my roof.”
Then just as India had done, I ran back, gave my mother a hug, before I hurried down the stairs and out the back door to the Volvo. I shot through town and pulled up to Jack’s house with my heart beating hard. When he pulled open the door and just looked at me, my mouth went dry. Though said mouth turned to sawdust when I saw how far along he was with the packing.
He leaned up against the doorjamb. “Hey.”
Just like that.
“Hey.”
You can imagine how I felt, what with him dressed in those 501s and a T-shirt just tight enough to make me dream of his broad shoulders. But that didn’t help me figure out how to proceed from there.
“You know, leaving town is overrated,” I ventured. “I should know. Though if anyone understands the draw of going someplace new, it’s me. Finding another town where you’re not that Wainwright girl who face-planted into the floor… or that Blair kid who had to follow in his big brother’s footsteps.”
But still nothing.
“Though, really, how can you leave lobster and mesquite-grilled anything? Or what about all this wide-open sky and everyone knowing your business? You can’t buy that in a new town.”
I was trying to make him laugh, for all the good it did me. So I took a deep breath and dove in deep. I swallowed my fear of letting myself love, knowing what I had to do regardless of the outcome. “I’d really hate it if you left.”
He didn’t answer right away, just continued to study me. “Why?” he said finally.
There was no hint of a smile, just the seriousness that spoke of all that deeper stuff in him.
“Do you remember this?” I asked, and pulled out the plastic ring.
He was totally confused.
“It’s from high school, when you brought the gum machine egg to thank me for giving you the answer to the question?” I prompted.
Those dark eyes sparked. “You kept it?”
“I kept it for years, then my mother found it and kept it for me.”
He looked back. “What does it mean?”
A smile crooked on my mouth this time. “It means that I have loved you since you sat down next to me in Mr. Hawkins’s math class, and after fifteen years it’s time to get things right between us.”
Call me melodramatic, but that’s what it was. Who knows if my mother was right about how things would have been between us if I had stayed? Who knows what would have happened if I had done things differently? That wasn’t the issue.
I shrugged my shoulders, feeling like a thirteen-year-old again. Which maybe wasn’t so bad.
“I love you, Jack Blair, and I thought maybe we could start over. Forget the past.”
He still didn’t move. “You want to do that?”
I bit my lip. “I’d like to try.”
He hesitated. “We could,” he said, but didn’t look convinced. “Or we could keep everything just like it is,” he added, then took my hand, that sweet molasses smile surfacing, “and keep going. I’m not sure I want to erase the memory of you in the courthouse men’s room.”
Okay, so Janice really was right about men and their fondness for sex in strange places.
Blood rushed to my cheeks and I laughed. Looking at him, I felt all those ridiculous feelings from the past and a huge all-encompassing love. I had never felt it before him, or since, which was why I had always done my very best to steer clear.
But then things had changed, circumstances I hadn’t created bringing me back to this place. I had returned to Texas and saved the symphony from bankruptcy. I had saved my family’s connection to the debutante ball, and my mother’s assets. But standing there, I realized that maybe I had saved myself in the process. Not from Boston. Not from Phillip. But from the continual denial that what I had been doing my whole life was running.
I still didn’t know what the future held. I didn’t have a map or even a plan. But I had learned that’s what life was—risky, messy, no way to tie it up in neat little packages despite my desire for it to be otherwise. So when he tugged me inside the house, I went. When he picked me up and carried me to his bedroom, I held on tight. Because I knew that I was one of the lucky ones. I had reached beyond denial and found that rare sliver of grace where the dream of what life should be meets the reality of what it really is. And in doing so, I had found my way back to my roots. To my family. I had found my way home.