Page 11 of Hello, Summer
“I get why you clean out the fridge, but why polish silver that nobody’s going to be around to use?” Conley said, holding up another piece. “What’s this one?”
“Asparagus tongs.” Winnie took the piece, inspected, and nodded her approval.
“We’ve never really discussed thewhypart,” the housekeeper admitted. “But your grandmama isn’t getting any younger. She don’t allow anybody to know her age, but I think it’s because every time she leaves this house now, she thinks, ‘This could be the last time. Next time I come back here, it might be in a coffin.’ So she wants everything nice. Just in case her next cocktail party ends up being her own wake.”
“Speaking of cocktail parties,” Conley said, holding up an inside page of theBeacon.“Rowena Meigs? I can’t believe we’re still running that ridiculous column of hers.”
Winnie glanced at the newspaper. “I never pay any attention to it, but your grandmama says lots of folks only get the paper so they can read Hello, Summer.”
“Listen to this,” Conley said, reading aloud in her most exaggerated Southern accent.
Wedding Bells were ringing last Saturday at Silver Bay First United Methodist when Miss Katherine Ann Cruikshank and Mr. Frederick Mark Eppington Jr. pledged their troth in front of a multitude of some of the finest members of local society. Katherine, known to all as Kitsy, is the daughter of Tinkie and Raymond Cruikshank. Ray Cruikshank is the owner of the Silver Bay IGA, and Tinkie is a fearsome adversary at the bridge table. The bride was radiant in a strapless dress of blush duchesse satin with a hand-sewn pearl bodice made from her own design.
“What the hell isduchesse satin?” Conley asked, pausing her read-aloud.
“Beats me, but it sounds pretty fancy,” Winnie said.
Conley read on.
Her veil, of Alençon lace attached to a pearl-and-rhinestone-studded tiara, was a family heirloom handed down from her great-grandmother. The wedding bouquet consisted of exquisite freesias, white orchids, white sweetheart roses, and baby’s breath. Katherine was attended by a bevy of beauties arrayed in striking ombré-pink satin sheath dresses. “Rick,” who is the son of Dr. and Mrs. Frederick M. Eppington of Bonita Springs, wore a black Hugo Boss tuxedo, as did his groomsmen. The ballroom at the Silver Bay Country Club was arrayed in dazzling ropes of tiny white lights, ferns, and a multitude of white princess roses. Guests dined on steamship round of roast beef, crab imperial, and—in a novel twist—a mashed potato martini bar. The wedding cake was a scale model of White Columns, the bride’s maternal grandparents’ antebellum home in Thomasville, Georgia.
“Oh my God! A mashed potato martini bar and a wedding cake shaped like Scarlett O’Hara’s plantation house!” Conley howled with laughter. “But wait, here’s the best part yet.”
Young and old frolicked the night away to the tunes of Mickey Mannington and the Moderntones. Kitsy and Rick will honeymoon in Aruba, then return home to their apartment in Panama City, where they are both employed by Pirate’s Alley Mini-Golf.
“The Moderntones!” Conley said, giggling. “I think they played at our junior high cotillion.”
“I don’t think Rowena means for her column to be funny,” Winnie said.
“Which makes it even more tragic—that we still print it,” Conley said, balling up the newspaper page and tossing it in the trash.
She reached over to the stack of silver and held up a large serving spoon, admiring the elaborate whorls and flourishes of the engraved monogram. “Just how long have you been working here, Winnie?”
“Well, let’s see. I believe you were maybe two, and Grayson was probably four. So how many years is that?”
“I’m thirty-four, She’s thirty-six. So you’ve been here thirty-two years. And how old do you think G’mama was back then?”
“Don’t know,” Winnie said. “Older than me, for sure, and I’ll be seventy-four in September. If I had to guess, I’d say she’s mideighties. And still sharp as a tack too.”
“You knew my mom, right? From before?”
Winnie shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “We weren’t friends, if that’s what you mean. My folks, they didn’t have nothing. I came up on the wrong side of the wrong side of the tracks over in Plattesville, and well, Melinda grew up here.”
“Was she always crazy, or did that come later?”
“High-spiritedwas what your granddaddy called her.”
“Which is a Southern euphemism forcrazy as a bedbug.”
“I’m not a psychiatrist,” Winnie said. “She was always different. So funny! You never knew what she was gonna say or do next. I think you get your sense of humor from her. And of course, it didn’t hurt that she was drop-dead gorgeous. Had those light green eyes and all that dark hair, same color as Grayson’s. Everybody said she looked exactly like a young Natalie Wood. I guess that’s what made yourdaddy fall for her and then stay married to her all those years when she was acting out.”
“‘Acting out,’” Conley said bitterly. “Another quaint Southern euphemism forhaving a flaming affair with a guy you meet at the Jiffy Lube.Ordropping off your kids at your parents’ house, then skipping off to a ‘weekend yoga retreat’ and forgetting to check in for another six years.”
Winnie piled the polished silver into a plastic dishpan and dumped it into a sink of soapy water. She wiped her hands on a dish towel and turned around to face Conley.
“You ever hear from Melinda?”
“Not in a long, long time. Last I heard, she was living out west someplace. Oregon, maybe. She’d read a piece I’d written when I was working atThe Charlotte Observer,and it went out on the Associated Press wire. She saw it in a paper out west and sent me a postcard, care of the paper. A postcard, for God’s sake!”
