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be. If he slept on the sofa all night, he was a horse’s ass.
    Somewhere around four in the morning, I felt him next to me.
    No, I smelled him first. Eau Sauvage. Jesus! How perfect was that?
    I pretended to be sleeping while his fingers traced my side. He snuggled up closer and we were like two spoons. I started to drift back to sleep, thinking in my haze how nice it felt to be curled up this way, how safe I felt. He started to shift his position and it didn’t take long to figure out why.
    “Caroline?” he said in a whisper.
    “Hmm?”
    “Sorry to wake you, dear, but I . . .”
    “Come here, Richard. I want you too.”
    That old bed of mine started to rock and squeak, and if our mouths seemed tailor-made for each other, the rest of our bodies were like Legos. He made me feel so exhilarated, I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t have caught my breath long enough for anything more than gasping for air. Making love with Richard was like body-surfing a tidal wave—I had never been so high, so terrified, and so thrilled at the same time. Yes, indeedy, this man was a 2 2
    D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k keeper. When the sun came up and woke us, the bed was five feet away from the wall and the sheets were off the mattress. If not for the Goldbergs’ carpet, we would’ve rolled right into the living room. We laughed our heads off. I had met my match.

    M i s s C a r o l i n e ’s J o u r na l Mother’s bloomers are all twisted in a knot over Richard and me getting married in New York. She hasn’t said so, but I feel it in my bones.What does she expect me to do? Come home and go through brunches and showers given for me by people I haven’t seen in a million years? I can see it all now—I’ll be unwrapping Tupperware and Corning casserole dishes wearing a hat made from gift ribbons stapled on a paper plate.
    Somebody will take a picture and send it to Richard and he’ll think I’m a total ass and call off the whole wedding. I’m not nervous, really I’m not. I suppose I should call Mother and talk to her about it. No matter what I do, she’s not going to like it. Oh, forget it! Richard and I are getting married in New York and that’s it! That’s what he wants so that’s what I want too! But, she hasn’t even met him. . . .

    Two
    Miss Lavinia Would Like to
    Have a Word with You
    }
    1987
    am not going to New York City! Don’t start with me, Millie!”
    I “Yes, you are! I’m going, Trip and Frances Mae are going, and so are you! We ain’t letting Miss Caroline become Missus Caroline without us there to wish her well!”
    Millie turned on her heel and flounced out, leaving me madder than a wet hen. “Just where are you going, Mrs. Smoak?”
    “I’m going to pack your clothes, and if you don’t like it, that’s too bad, yanh?”
    We had been in the kitchen when Trip called the house and told us that Caroline had called him and asked him to give her away. What was there to give away? She had run off years ago!
    How can you give away what’s gone? I told Trip that if he and Frances Mae wanted to go, that was just fine. I wasn’t going to budge from Tall Pines Plantation.
    Frankly, I planned to spend Caroline’s wedding day dressed in P l a n t a t i o n
    2 5
    black veils, communing with my dear Nevil’s spirit down at the family chapel. I would take a good bottle of champagne, the ’61
    Dom Perignon, perhaps two, to mark the occasion and toast my daughter from the bluffs over the Edisto River. If she wanted to marry a foreigner she could do it without me. And, the ceremony was going to be in their apartment! Not even a church!
    It was no kind of wedding, if you ask me, and they had not.
    No, they had not asked for my permission, my blessing, or cared one fig if I approved. She had been living in sin with that man for nearly three years, shacked up in that nasty little hovel she called an apartment. Now they’re living in a co-op on Park Avenue. How pretentious can you get? And now she calls