Son of Destruction

10




Nenna


It was weird at Lunch Bunch today, acting like everything was all right with me when everything was all wrong, what with Davis turning out to be a rat and me laying down the line and not knowing which side of it I was on. I should have stayed back, but in Fort Jude you have to go out and show yourself to the people because you don’t want to hear what they say about you when you don’t.

In a way it was a relief, sitting down with the girls like always, pretending nothing’s changed and it’s all fine. We were assigning chores for Patty Kalen’s engagement party, which we’re giving because her dad’s a drunk and poor Cecilia died before the divorce went through. Davis or not, tonight I’m dressing, if not to kill, then at least to maim, because in this town acte de presence is everything, and four hundred people are coming to the club! Kara Coleman had Buck order Champagne from a Napa vineyard and the club staff is doing the wet bar and the buffet, and if Brad bitches we’ll tell him, ‘Cheap at the price.’ He’s paying, but we’re in charge. Cecilia suffered at his hands but she loved him so we never said a word, and whatever she suffered, tonight is our big chance to make it up to her. We’re damn well helping Brad do right by their daughter, so she can look at the pictures years later and be proud.

It was an odd day. Sallie put down her checklist. ‘Wow,’ she said, and I still don’t know if she was sorry. ‘Lucy died. My nephew saw it in the New London Day. It’s not like it’ll be in the Fort Jude Star,’ and then she said, because Sallie is that kind of awful, ‘Turn your back on Fort Jude and Fort Jude turns its back on you.’

We weren’t close, but she was prom queen in our year! That’s too close. I saw the grave yawning and it scared me because to tell the truth, it didn’t look all that bad to me.

Sallie picked up her clipboard. ‘Moving right along.’

Jessie sailed in before she could start; she looked amazing. ‘Big news.’

‘You’re late!’ Sallie hates being interrupted and she hates women attractive to Chape. Lucy was one, back in the day. ‘We were just . . .’

‘You’ll never guess who just checked in at the hotel.’

I guess Jessie made two. Sallie stepped on her hard enough to squash her flat. ‘Shhh. We’re mourning,’ she said, although it wasn’t exactly true. ‘Lucy died.’

‘Oh!’ Jessie said, and the ones of us that don’t like Sallie all that much listened hard. She looked shaken. ‘I hadn’t heard.’

‘Of course not.’ Sallie stuck it to her, the bitch. ‘You were never close.’

‘No.’ In fact, Jessie was a parade of different faces. There are things we don’t ask now that she’s one of us, and with friends, you don’t really want to know about their sordid past. She got it together, but it cost her. ‘As a matter of fact, this guy . . .’

Sallie struck back. ‘We were deciding on the centerpiece.’

‘Shut up and listen!’ Jessie pre-empted, take that. ‘It’s her son.’

Of course all Fort Jude will know by the time the party starts, but thanks to Jessie, we were the first.

Sallie was like steel. ‘What makes you so sure?’

‘Name on the credit card. Dan Carteret.’

‘That doesn’t mean . . .’

Then Jessie shut her up for sure. ‘I saw Lucy in his face.’

Now, Jessie grew up over on Pierce Point along with the Pike brothers and other people we don’t know, but even then she was sharp, didn’t study, never raised her hand, but you knew. What if she did leave town under a cloud? She came back a different person. The boys used to call her ‘anybody’s,’ but Jessie Vukovich is somebody now. High-end car, designer clothes, bought the Flordana outright, started in with United Fund and Meals on Wheels, months and months of selfless volunteering and now she’s practically one of us.

‘Green eyes, I wonder where that comes from. I looked at him and I swear I saw Lucy Carteret, he must be here because she’s . . .’ She sort of choked. ‘Now, Carteret. That’s not a common name.’ If there’s more, Jessie wasn’t saying it.

Betsy said, in that flat tone that means the opposite, ‘Isn’t it wonderful Lucy has a child.’

‘Had.’

And one of us said what we were all thinking, ‘I wonder who the father is.’

Even Sallie realized we were on Jessie’s side in whatever war she thought they were having. She said, ‘Poor Lucy,’ and we knew we were done talking about Jessie’s news. Then, wham! She got me in her sights. ‘Nenna, what were you doing, risking death out on 38th Street last Thursday, what’s going on?’

‘Who, me? That wasn’t me.’ I thought fast. ‘Listen. We should do something for poor Lucy.’

‘Why? She never did anything for us.’

I saved Betsy from Sallie a dozen times back when we were little. She owes me, so she jumped in. ‘Don’t blame Lucy, blame her grandmother,’ she said, and we were off.

Even Cathy Rhue lined up with me. ‘We could have a little memorial down at Trinity, you know, since she died so far away from home.’

Sallie said, ‘What for? We didn’t know her all that well.’

Kara said, ‘That was Lorna’s fault,’ so there was nobody left on Sallie’s side.

‘Making her ride everywhere in that big old car, like she was too good for Fort Jude.’

‘It must be awful, dying up north, with nobody around to mourn.’

Jessie laid back, the way you do when you’re not sure of your position, but we were all glad to have someplace new to put our miseries. I said, ‘Maybe we can get the deacon at Trinity to do it here at the club.’

And everybody but Sallie said, ‘Let’s do!’

Things happened and we wouldn’t, but planning helped. It was all the funeral we could give her, you know?

We went around the table, all, Lucy was pretty, she was nice, she was too nice for us, because you had to be a mean girl to make it through high school, you just did. So were our mothers; it’s something you don’t outgrow. They said Lily Archambault started Northshore Elementary with them but Lorna yanked her out, like Fort Jude was some kind of social disease that she could catch, and packed her off to Ashley Hall. She married a man in Charleston without telling her mother, things between them were that bad. Lorna brought Lily back to Fort Jude in her coffin – toxemia in the last month of pregnancy with Lucy, our mothers said, so you cut down on the salt.

She also brought home the baby like a prize.

Poor Lucy! If Hal Archambault hadn’t dumped her and moved out to the beach with Eden Rowse it might have been different, but Lucy was all she had left. She was always overprotective and cranky, but it got worse after the divorce. She locked Lucy up like Rapunzel in that tower, so it’s not our fault she didn’t fit in.

I said what everybody else was thinking, ‘I guess the old bitch got what she deserved.’

‘You mean the fire.’

‘Whatever it was.’ My God, last week I was in her front yard!

Out of the blue, Jessie said, ‘She lost her man. No wonder she was a bitch.’

I choked on my B.L.T. and ran to the john before anybody could say, ‘Are you all right?’