Greg Lilly: Fingering The Family Jewels

"Derek, what is it you do out there in California?" Edwina spoke to me, but looked at the muted television as if I would appear on the news to answer her.

"Edwina?" I tried to catch her eye with a snap of my fingers. She refocused her attention to me with a lazy turn of her head. "Is there something on TV you want to see?" I sat up straighter in Walterene's wingback chair.

"Derek," Ruby scolded, "Edwina is a very visual person. She's looking all the time, but she hears everything you say."

"Right you are, Ruby. Young man, I'm waiting to hear about your job and," she glanced back to the television, "I'm looking to see if Vernon is going to be on TV shaking hands and kissing babies."

Roscoe perked up. " Vernon 's good at shaking and kissing."

A rough, gravelly laugh erupted from Edwina like it was the funniest thing she had heard. Ruby looked at me and shrugged. " Vernon thinks," Edwina continued, "his next stop will be Washington, leaving those boys in charge of the company." With a crinkle of fabric, she folded her plump arms across her pumpkin body. "If he thinks I'll stand by and let him put my money in the hands of those wild boys, then he's got another thing coming." She ended the sentence with a sharp nod of her head, as if she had typed the final period with her chin.

"They're grown men," Ruby offered, "and they have been in the company all their lives…"

"Don't matter, don't matter one bit. Vernon has been president since Daddy died. Hell, Roscoe should take over if Vernon doesn't want to run it any more, not some snot-nosed kids."

I looked over to Roscoe on the edge of the couch, cleaning his fingernails with his pocketknife. "Roscoe, do you want to run the business?"

"Maybe," he glanced at his sister. "I could do better than the boys."

Tiring of this subject, I offered to go to the store for Ruby. I drove toward East Boulevard for the few groceries she had on her list. The dogwoods bloomed like white puffy clouds in yards along the way with burgundy and pink azaleas lining driveways and sidewalks. I pulled onto Dilworth Road -one of the neighborhoods where few of the aging old money of Charlotte still held on against the younger affluent banking executives. I passed Latta Park and rounded a corner to see my grandparents' home. A three-story brick mansion sprawled across an acre of green lawn and towering oak trees. Porticos flanked either side of the house. I remember the older kids, Tim, Margaret, and Mike, had claimed one side for their headquarters, leaving the other side for the younger kids, Mark, me, and a neighbor girl named Alice. The older ones claimed we couldn't steal their "magic geranium," but we did and ran as fast as we could around the house to the safety of our headquarters. That summer, the geranium must have circled the house from portico to portico at least fifty times.

My grandmother, Eleanor, still lived in the house, but Mother and Father had moved in "to take care of her." Knowing Gladys the Bitch, I wondered what taking care of her meant. A vision popped into my head of Gladys slipping strychnine into her mother's coffee, then grabbing the will, hopping on her broom, and flying out the attic window to the lawyer's office, cackling the whole way.

Deciding to come back to visit Grandma when I knew Mother wouldn't be there, I pulled the car back on the road and headed on to the grocery store.

EDWINA AND ROSCOE had ambled on to their next relative's house by the time I came in with the groceries. Ruby said Mark had called and she'd told him I was staying for awhile. "He said he and Kathleen wanted you to come over for dinner tomorrow night."

"I can't."

"Yes you can," Ruby insisted. "You need to see your cousins while you're here. Anyway, I already told him you would be there-eight o'clock. They live downtown on Church Street in one of those new buildings."

"Ruby! I can decide if I want to have dinner with Mark."

"Go, go, you can't stay huddled up here with me the whole time.

I'm okay. Go have fun."

Fun? Yeah, right. But I knew she had made up her mind, and I was a little curious about Kathleen.

THE NEXT DAY I drove Ruby to the lawyer's office to finalize some of Walterene's affairs. We had lunch with Valerie. She said Mother attended a book club on Monday afternoons, so Ruby and I decided to drive back to Dilworth to visit Grandma. I pulled into the circular driveway and parked in front of Grandma's door, then helped Ruby out of the car.

"I could get used to this kind of treatment." Ruby smiled as I offered her my hand up the steps to the front porch. Ferns swung in the warm breeze along the porch, near wicker chairs arranged in groups for evening gatherings after dinner. I rang the doorbell and Martha, Grandma's maid, answered.

"Mister Derek, how nice to see you." Martha had to be almost as old as Grandma. She had always been so sweet to all of us, even in the seventies when Margaret and Valerie tried to liberate her from white elitist dominance. Margaret had even convinced Martha to wear her hair in an afro; that lasted about one day before she combed it out.

We walked into the entrance hall, and I could still smell my grandfather's pipe and grandmother's Chanel No. 5. A staircase curved gracefully up to the second story. The living room to the right had the same furniture and pictures I remembered; even the carpet held the same straight tracks from the vacuum cleaner. Grandma hated to see footprints on the carpet.

"Your grandmother is feeling good today," Martha said. "She has her good days and bad days."

"Bad days?" I asked.

"Well, sometimes she gets stuck in the past." Martha led us back to the sunroom where Grandma sat reading the newspaper. Grandma's hair was thinner than I remembered, but she sat up straight with her diamond rings and in her designer dress, hose, and pumps as if she waited to go to a church luncheon. Her beige hose sagged around her ankles and her rings slumped on her thin fingers; they had been bought for a more robust Grandma than I saw seated at the wicker table.

"Aunt Eleanor," Ruby called as we walked in. "Look who is here to see you."

She turned and smiled. "My little Derek, come here."

I leaned over to hug her. She seemed so fragile and small, a far cry from what I remembered from childhood when she would chase me across the backyard being the "tickle monster." Mother and Valerie would sit on the back porch and laugh as I would turn on Grandma and run after her. "Grandma, I'm glad to see you."

"Little Derek," she patted my hand and winked at Ruby, "he's as big as Papa was, but he's still our baby."

"Yes ma'am," Ruby agreed, settling into a rattan couch; a potted banana tree's leaf hovered above her head.

I sat next to Grandma at the table because she still held my hand. "How are you feeling?" I asked.

She pushed the newspaper out of the way and looked into my eyes. "I remember the spring this house was built; Papa designed it himself." She stopped for a moment, lost in her memories. "Erwin and Edward helped build it while Ernestine and I took care of our baby brother Earl." She smiled a faint smile down at the table, then looked at me again. "You remind me so much of Earl. He moved to New York; you know he went to work for William Henry Belk as a buyer. I don't hear from him as muchas Iused to."

I couldn't remember if Great-Uncle Earl was still alive and didn't want to ask Ruby in front of Grandma, in case he wasn't.

Ruby added, "I remember Daddy talking about building this house. Derek, he met Mama that summer."

"Oh, yes," Grandma fired up, "Erwin was oldest and handsomest; Edward always tried to outdo him. Guess being the second boy is tough. Edwina acts just like her daddy." She patted my knee. "Erwin and Rebecca would sneak off to Latta Park and kiss on the bench that used to be behind some pine trees." She looked at Ruby withgreat concern. "Are there still pines in Latta?"