Plantation by Frank Dorothea Benton

Author:Frank, Dorothea Benton [Frank, Dorothea Benton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780515131086
Publisher: Jove
Published: 2001-01-01T07:00:00+00:00

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D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k No wonder Mother had been anxious for lunch. She wasn’t going to let our arrival interfere with her bridge game!

“Unless the sky falls! I made strawberry muffins this morning,” Miss Sweetie said. “You can ride with me, Lavinia.”

“Let me just get my sweater,” Mother said.

“That’s just what we need is more food,” Miss Nancy said, in my direction.

I walked them all to the door, and stood on the porch as each car drove away. When I closed the ancient front door behind me, its thud and clank seemed heavier than usual. And more complete. It had closed the door on Richard and I was back where I started.

Tall Pines.

I went to find Millie to do a little self-indulgent moping, but the kitchen was empty. Looking out the back door, I saw her golf cart rolling down the lane toward her house. She must’ve cleaned the kitchen by wiggling her nose, I thought.

That seemed like a good time to take a walk around the yard and maybe visit the rose garden. The afternoon sun was warm and my legs were in need of a good stretch. I threw my sweater around my shoulders and left from the back door. I wasn’t twenty feet from the house when I had this urge to turn around. All at once, I realized that I was alone. In every sense of the word.

Why had I come back here? I could have rented an apartment in New York and just gone on with life, but to tell the truth, I was completely over the pace and the energy of the city. Life there had a black hole where its heart should have been.

Was Mother less happy to see me than her friends were? It certainly had seemed so. Maybe that wasn’t fair. I was being a baby, but I had to say to myself that some part of me wished she would have stopped her life for me. Maybe she was smarter than that. Maybe she wanted me to settle in at my own pace, give me some time to come to her.

Trip had certainly taken a shine to Eric. That was wonderful because maybe he could help take up some of the slack of Richard’s P l a n t a t i o n

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absence. Mother had definitely shown some sweet affection for Eric too. Depending on Trip and Mother made my alarms go off.

Could we coexist without some kind of mutual dependency? No, or else I shouldn’t be here. Tall Pines was not a boardinghouse. I had come here with my son for refuge. If I had found any kind of resolve in me it was that I wasn’t going to live any lies. Leaving Richard was just the first step in changing my life. Our lives. I hoped Mother wouldn’t disappoint Eric as a grandmother in that way she had hurt Trip and me when Daddy died.

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