Blair was chuffed by the praise. “Another recipe from my grandmother. Not that grits are secret, but she had a secret method.” She paused. “Which is butter. The secret method is an obscene amount of butter. And an only slightly less obscene amount of white cheddar.”
“It’s funny, from what I know of your childhood, I’d expect fancier food.”
“What do you know about my childhood?” She couldn’t recall telling him anything.
“You referenced an estate behind a gate. A pool. Multiple porches.”
Right. Her embarrassing little speech about how muchIn Timemeant to her.
“I was imagining dinner at the estate would be prime rib served under a chandelier,” he said.
“Well, you’re right. My grandmother’s recipes were not my mother’s recipes—or, I should say, the recipes my mother had our cook make. Mimi married above her station. Those are her words, not mine. She favored hearty, down-home Southern fare. Sometime I’ll make you her biscuits and gravy; oh my stars, it’s so good. Better than the tomato and cheddar pie, even.”
“You were close to your grandmother?”
“Yes. She was great.” Blair missed Mimi so much sometimes, even all these years later.
“How so?”
“She was a character. My granddad was a banker—his daddy owned the bank—and they met when she was cleaning the bank. She had a real scrappy childhood. She used to shoot possums.”
“For fun?”
“For food! She used to wear pants, too, and it drove everyone crazy, apparently.”
“Even your granddad?”
“I think so. He died when I was young, so I never knew him firsthand, but to hear it told, he was perpetually exasperated. It wouldbe nice to think of them having had a grand romance. I mean, why does a rich boy working in a bank marry the pants-wearing, possum-shooting girl who cleans his office if not for love?”
“Unless he got the pants-wearing, possum-shooting girl who cleans his office pregnant, I tend to agree.”
“My dad, who’s the oldest, wasn’t born until a few years after they were married, so it can’t be that. By the time I was a tween and old enough to clock the dark family undercurrents, Mimi was firmly ensconced as the family matriarch, so everyone was deferential. On the surface, anyway. My mother could get impressively passive-aggressive; it’s one of her special talents. She was always embarrassed by Mimi, I think, but too superficially polite to be rude to her face.
“Anyway, I used to try to sit by Mimi at family functions, and she’d always whisper little observations about people into my ears.”
“Sounds like she had a talent for passive-aggressiveness, too, at least behind people’s backs.”
Blair considered it. “I guess, but to be fair she often was just aggressive-aggressive. And often to people’s faces.”
He smiled.
“Something she said to me was what actually gave me the guts to move to LA and try my luck in Hollywood. She died right after my deb ball, and—”
“I’m sorry, did you say ‘deb ball’? As indebutante?”
She smiled. It seemed like a lifetime ago. “I did indeed.”
“Wow.”
“Yep. I’d like to say I was the rebel deb, that I hated every moment of it. But I kind of dug it. The dress, the dance lessons, the politics of my deb class, the drama. There were so many stories there. And it appealed to my inner performer. I loved it. What I hated was what was supposed to come next.”
She didn’t like thinking about that time, the interstitial years after the ball but before she decamped for California. That was when she’dfirst gotten the cyclone. It was worse then, in some ways, because she hadn’t had any self-awareness about what was happening. Once she’d thought she was dying and had called 911. Thank heavens she’d been at Mimi’s. Mimi had footed the ambulance bill and agreed not to tell Blair’s parents after the doctors had proclaimed it a panic attack and Blair had convinced her grandmother that it was a one-off.
“What was supposed to happen next?” Jack asked.
“I was supposed to marry a good boy. If not Wyatt Banks Armstrong the Third, who was my escort to the ball and poised to inherit his family’s fertilizer empire, then someone like him.” Wyatthadbeen a good boy. Handsome and entitled but also kind, and kindness had been a rarity among the boys in her circle.
Jack guffawed. “Wyatt Banks Armstrong the Third, the Fertilizer King. So you marry him after the deb ball. How old are you at this point?”
