Khaki

YANKEES DO HAVE MANNERS

Unless they have a severe aversion to the color, I always paint my clients’ offices a shade of green. Green helps focus the brain and hold attention. That day, I was wishing I had a little green because all I could think of, driving from that Chapel Hill doctor’s office to the Raleigh airport to pick up Daniel, was pink and blue.

Daniel was a fellow designer who had been working at my antiques store in New York for years and became manager right around the time I became a bi-state commuter. He had taste as flawless as a Tiffany diamond, but I had yet to let him help me with the buying for the store. Graham says it’s because I’m a control freak. I say it’s because I’m particular.

When we pulled into the cigarette haze also known as baggage claim, Daniel was already waiting with his roller suitcase, looking freshly pressed as always, like he hadn’t even been on a plane. We didn’t get out to greet him because the terminal was a mess of uniformed officers and blowing whistles and buses.

“Hey, y’all,” Daniel said, sliding into the backseat of the Suburban. Graham and I looked at each other and laughed, exactly what we needed to break our baby-fueled tenseness.

“What?” Daniel asked.

“Oh, nothing,” Graham said. “It’s just interesting to hear ‘y’all’ with a Queens accent.”

“No good?”

I looked back and said, “Dan, you need to put your seat belt on.”

He looked around, confused and said, “Seat belt? I’m in the backseat. You don’t have to wear a seat belt in the backseat.”

Graham snorted like Daniel was going to be sorrier than if he’d renounced the Republican Party to my daddy.

“Oh, sure,” I huffed. “No problem. Leave your seat belt off. Then when you come flying through the windshield in a wreck, you won’t only kill yourself. You’ll hit Graham and me, snap our necks, and kill us too.” I turned around to look at him again, and he was already buckling as I said, “We wear our seat belts in this family.”

“Geez,” he said. “I’m buckling. I might even wear my seat belt in cabs after that lecture.”

Graham patted my leg reassuringly. He knew that I was more wound up than usual because, while I was jabbering on to Daniel about seat belts, all I could think was: What if I never get to buckle another baby seat into the back?

Daniel rubbed his hands together and said, “Well, so far, the Raleigh airport is one of the nicest I’ve been to. Is the rest of North Carolina that great?”

“Sure,” I said, thinking about how backwoods and undeveloped Kinston would look to someone from Manhattan. But the slow pace and quiet moments were what we loved most about our little map dot. And our farm, no matter where you were from, was something to be proud of.

“Hey, Dan,” I said, “I’m just reminding you that if you had flown into Greenville or New Bern this ride home would only have been thirty minutes.”

“Yeah,” he said. “But then I would have had to switch planes and risk my life during two flights.”

Graham winked, and I shook my head.

An hour and a half later we turned up the tree-lined driveway to the double wraparound front porches that had recently graced the pages of Southern Living.

Daniel whistled. “Wow . . . I see why you ditched New York for this place. It’s amazing.”

“Wait ’til you see the inside,” Graham said. “I didn’t know how bad I was living ’til this little lady spruced me right on up.”

Graham was always complimentary, but I knew he was trying to make me feel better after my heartbreaking morning. I didn’t know how I was possibly going to get through the next two days with Daniel, shopping and chatting and acting like everything was normal.

Fortunately, I wouldn’t have to do much talking that night because we were having family dinner at Mother and Daddy’s—a big, gracious, country “welcome” for my city friend. Daniel politely kissed Mother, shook Daddy’s hand, returned Pauline’s bear hug, and nodded to my sister, Virginia, and her husband, Allen. But when they had turned their backs to go to the table, he said, “Holy hell. Is this place going to be in your next book?”

I looked around the entrance hall, with the grand double-branched staircase, the intricate woodwork seeming slightly less formal and definitely freshened for a new decade by the sisal runner. The casually covered, French-framed love seat and chairs in the foyer had been almost a harder sell than getting rid of the dark Oriental and Persian rugs that, to me, made somewhere cavernously huge seem dark and stuffy.

I nodded to Daniel and said, “It only took me a decade to convince Mother to let me get my hands on it.”

“It was worth the wait.” He smiled, letting me walk before him to the living room, proving that, no matter what my daddy told me, Yankees do have manners. My brother-in-law Allen, on the other hand, a native Southerner, showed over dinner that it doesn’t matter how many grits you ate growing up; some people simply have no class.

I assume the half-dozen beers he had before dinner contributed to his foul mouth that night. But why he would think it was appropriate to tell the story he did I’ll never know. As we sat down across from him, my sister’s husband was saying, “So that stripper was as butt-ass ugly as you’ve ever seen—”

I could feel the table vibrating from Virginia kicking Allen, and Graham interrupted him saying, “So, Mrs. Mason, did Rider’s arrange these gorgeous flowers for you?”

It was a clear ploy to get Allen to stop talking. He was either too dense or too drunk to get the hint. “Man, I’m telling a story here,” he said, slurring slightly. “So, one of my friends went upstairs, found her purse, and stole all her money.” He banged his hand on the table, making the crystal water glasses spill over onto the linen place mats. He snorted and said, “Isn’t that the best damn thing you’ve ever heard?”

Mother pulled her chair back from the table and walked into the kitchen. The rest of us just sat there, a stunned silence filling the room like the smell of frying chicken. I raised my eyebrows at Daddy, who rolled his eyes and shrugged. Virginia was looking down at her hands, her face the color of the pickled beets Pauline was whisking through the door.

“So, Daniel,” Daddy said. “Tell us the truth. How is it working with my Khaki?”

Daniel said behind his hand, “Does he know your name is Frances?” Everyone laughed, breaking the tension in the room.

Graham rubbed my shoulder and said, “A little nickname for a little farm girl.”

Daniel nodded, put his arm around me, and said, “You know, I owe everything to your daughter. She’s taught me all the tricks of the trade. I love her like family.”

I leaned my head on Daniel’s shoulder and said, “Aw, thanks, sweetie.” Then I picked my head up, looked at him, and said, “But I already told you, you aren’t getting my office.”

Mother reappeared, apparently having composed herself from Allen’s totally inappropriate story time, and said, “Virginia, I think your children need you at home.”

Virginia looked at me helplessly, but I didn’t rush to her defense. I loved her, sure, but I couldn’t stomach Allen. I remembered how happy Mother and Daddy had been when he proposed to Virginia. Allen was Daddy’s right-hand man on the farm, so it was one of those great Southern alliances from which everyone could benefit. But I wasn’t fooled for a second. I’d always found him to be crass, mannerless, and unfit for my sister.

Tonight was no different. “If it’s a kid thing, you’re the woman,” he said. “You go. I’m having a good time.”

“I think you better go on home with your wife, Allen,” Daddy said gently.

When I complained about Allen, Graham used to tell me that I would never think anyone was good enough for my family. He didn’t say that anymore. As it turned out, I had been as right about Allen as I had about cornice boards. They were both fine as long as they weren’t in my house.

As the front door slammed, Momma said, “Daniel, I am so very sorry for my son-in-law’s behavior. There’s no excuse, and I hope you weren’t uncomfortable.”

Daniel, fortunately, had a quick wit and a way of making others feel at ease. “No problem. I ride the subway. Strippers are nothing compared to my morning commute.”

Graham raised his glass and said, “I’d like to propose a toast. However we create them, here’s to our families.”

We clinked glasses, and, though Graham might not have known it at the time, that toast was more of a mouthful than any of us would ever have believed.

I snuggled into Graham when we got home, amazed at how just the smell of him could still render me spellbound all these years later. I sat awake in bed thinking about that poor stripper who was probably a single mom with two kids at home just trying to make ends meet, being robbed by one of Allen’s idiot friends.

That night, I made love to my husband for the first time in a long time where I wasn’t thinking about the end result, about the baby I hoped and prayed we’d made. In those moments we shared I thanked him for not being like Allen, for not being like Ricky, but, most of all, for being like him. I told him that he was the rock in my life, that his steadiness and steadfastness, the way he had loved me without question for decades, was the only thing real and true in my life.

It’s a puzzling dichotomy, but, though I can write all day long about duvet covers and contemporary art, expressing my feelings to the people I truly love eludes me like a golf ball on a dark fairway. While other men in my life have pushed me for that reassurance, Graham never has. And that’s the magic of our relationship, the fairy dust unraveling from the wand. I say to him what needs to be said through my body, not my mind. And it’s a language he always understands.