Getting the Important Things Right Read online

  Getting the Important

  Things Right

  Getting the Important

  Things Right

  Padgett Gerler

  Copyright © 2011, Padgett Gerler

  ISBN 978-1-105-27964-5

  Disclaimer

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  For Ed.

  Acknowledgements

  Amanda, my love to you for making me laugh harder than anyone else has ever made me laugh and for believing that your mom can be anything she wants to be. Thanks for showing me the joy of following one’s passion. You are my heartstrings, Mandi.

  Grace, my love and gratitude to you for your endless love, support, encouragement and editorial expertise. Thank you for calling me a writer.

  Ed, thank you for making me believe I could do this. I have loved sharing this journey with you. I did the writing. You did everything else. Thank you. I love you.

  Prologue

  “Let me help you with that.”

  Lydia Rose looked on in horror as the young Army officer knelt, took the shoe from her hand, and, cradling her petite foot, slipped it on and buckled it around her shapely ankle.

  Shocked and unable to speak, Lydia Rose, thought, “How dare he! The brazenness! The impudence! He is certainly no southern gentleman! Why, he is no gentleman at all!”

  The year was 1942. America was at war. Moral attitudes had loosened, but this behavior was totally unacceptable. Young southern ladies did not permit strange men to fondle their feet.

  But Lydia Rose was partially to blame. She should never have removed her shoe in the Officers’ Club. But the quarter-size blister on her size-four foot was hobbling her after that last lindy hop. Her mama, Big Lydia, had told her not to wear her new shoes to the dance until she had broken them in, but Lydia Rose just wouldn’t listen. How could she not wear them when they were a perfect match for her new blue crepe dress with the peplum?

  Still holding her foot, the young officer said, “Ah, perfect fit! You know what that means, don’t you?”

  Lydia Rose tossed her blonde curls, shot daggers from her azure eyes, and snapped, “If you say I’m Cinderella and you’re my Prince Charming, I promise I will have these gentlemen throw you out of here this very instant!”

  Curling his lips into a sly grin, he said, “Why, Ma’am, I wasn’t going to say any such thing. I was just going to say, ‘Now you can dance the rest of the night away in your pretty new shoes.’”

  “Well, I, I…” Lydia Rose sputtered, as she blushed crimson.

  Gently releasing her foot and standing to bow at the waist, the young officer said, “Pardon my brashness, Ma’am; It was not my intent to offend you. I’m Lt. Thomas McChesney Albemarle, III. May I have the honor of knowing your name and the honor of having the next and every dance with you?”

  Softening to the young officer’s charm, Lydia Rose thought, “Well, maybe he is a gentleman, after all.”

  And he was so handsome, with the heart-stopping good looks of Cary Grant and the come-hither charisma of Clark Gable.

  Still bowing with his hand extended, he was waiting for her to say, “Yes, you may have all my dances.”

  But her dance card was full.

  Pondering his request for only a moment and with just the smallest shred of guilt, Lydia Rose tossed the dance card in the air, breaking the hearts of dozens of young officers. Batting her obscenely-long lashes and smiling coyly, she reached for the young lieutenant’s hand.

  She spent the remainder of the evening in Lt. Albemarle’s arms, swaying slowly, while others hopped and twirled around them to the strains of String of Pearls, Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, and Chattanooga Choo-Choo. At midnight when the band director announced, “Last dance,” and the band’s sultry songstress stepped to the mike and began crooning, “At last, my love has come along,” Lydia Rose felt her pulse quicken as the young officer held her close to him and swayed to the seductive music.

  “Hurry, Lydia Rose!” gasped Anne-Whitley, when, at the end of the song, she grabbed her cousin by the arm and pulled her toward the exit. “We’re gonna miss the train, and Jim Daddy will ground us for sure.”

  As Anne-Whitley dragged her away, Lydia Rose looked back over her shoulder at handsome Lt. Albemarle.

  “May I see you again?” he called through the thundering crowd.

  “You’ll have to ask my daddy. That’s the way gentlemen do it down south,” she giggled, as she waved and hobbled on her wounded foot toward the train that would take her home.

  One

  Lt. Thomas McChesney Albemarle, III was sixth generation military, an only child, who followed his father, General Thomas McChesney Albemarle, Jr. from post to post. He was also a motherless only child, she having died giving birth to him. Without a gentle hand to guide him, Tom, III had only one side: masculine, powerful, take-charge.

  Lt. Tom was not a particularly bright student, but he was a shoo-in at West Point, since Tom, Sr. and Tom, Jr. had both graduated from West Point with highest honors. Tom, III completed his education with no honors at all, but he was a graduate, nonetheless. He was fresh out of The Academy and stationed at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina when he met Lydia Rose Carlyle.

  Lydia Rose was of the North Carolina tobacco Carlyles, and she had just completed her education at St. Mary’s School for Girls in Raleigh, the finishing school that her mother, Big Lydia, and grandmother, Lala, had both attended. She had also just made her debut over in Raleigh, serving as leader of the deb ball, just as her mother and grandmother before her.

  Neither Big Lydia nor Lala approved of Lydia Rose’s traveling by train from their home in Wilson to the Army base in Fayetteville to dance with young men whose lineages were unknown to the family. Such behavior was just not acceptable in proper southern society. But Lydia Rose’s daddy, Jim Daddy to all, said, “Our girls can’t serve in the military, so they must do their duty to our country the best they can. And they can do that by cheering our brave men in uniform as they depart on missions to face god-knows-what.”

  As much as they disapproved, Big Lydia and Lala couldn’t argue with that, so weekend after weekend Lydia Rose joined her friends for the train ride from Wilson, North Carolina to buoy the spirits of the young officers at Fort Bragg.

  The weekend after their meeting, Lt. Tom traveled to Lydia Rose’s home in Wilson to ask her daddy if he might court his daughter. The handsome young officer charmed Lydia Rose’s mama, and Jim Daddy was completely taken with his darling daughter’s young suitor. Although Jim Daddy was a proud North Carolina State University alum, he was delighted that Lydia Rose would be keeping company with a West Point graduate, whose father and grandfather before him had been West Point men, as well.

  After a respectable courtship, Lt. Tom, once again, approached Jim Daddy and asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage. When Jim Daddy had given his approval, Lt. Tom slipped his mother’s heirloom diamond onto Lydia Rose’s dainty finger.

  As etiquette mandated, General Thomas McChesney Albemarle, Jr. traveled from his post in Okinawa to meet the future in-laws of his only child. The General and Jim Daddy spent three days sampling smooth Kentucky bourbon, smoking fine Cuban cigars, and one-upping each other with their pompous tales in which each was the hero of his own stories.

  At the end of the visit, they slapped each another on the back, proclaimed themselves family, and said, “Hell, yeah, let’s do this thing!”

  Following a brief engagement of dances, teas, and showers, the young couple
married in St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, which the Carlyle family had helped build generations before. Since Jim Daddy was Senior Warden of the Vestry at St. Mark’s (and had been for as long as anyone could remember), he took it upon himself to coordinate the entire affair. He began by employing a wedding consultant who flew a designer from New York to create the perfect bridal gown for Lydia Rose.

  The dress was an elegant confection of candlelight silk shantung with a train half the length of the aisle of St. Mark’s, eighty-six silk covered buttons down the back, and as many silk rosettes circling the hem of the hooped skirt. As exquisite as the gown was, it was a bit much for Lydia Rose’s petite frame. In her wedding portrait the over-gowned bride looked like one of those big birthday cakes with a plastic doll impaled up to her waist in frothy icing. But Jim Daddy was of the belief that more is better, and he intended for his precious princess to be and to have the best and the most.

  Lydia Rose had twelve bridal attendants, one of whom was her tomboy older sister, Theresa, known as Tots. While Lydia Rose had been attending tea dances and making her debut, Tots had been working the tobacco fields and smoking cigarettes. She threw a tantrum over having to wear a frilly pink bridesmaid’s dress and begged to be a groomsman, along with their three younger brothers, twins Freeman and Parker and baby Rex. Their mama, Big Lydia, would have none of her daughter’s nonsense and insisted that Tots behave herself, put on the bridesmaid’s dress, and act like a lady for just one day.

  Puffing a Pall Mall and blowing smoke rings, Tots bellowed, “Holy shit, that was the ugliest piece of pink crap I’ve ever seen, and there were twelve of the goddamn things. It looked like a vat of Pepto Bismol had exploded in the sanctuary.”

  Tots behaved herself, though, and the wedding was perfect. There was just enough southern-sticky humidity to give a pink, dewy glow to all the female guests who delicately pinched organdy bodices while fanning powdered bosoms. Red-faced gentlemen with comb tracks in their slicked-back hair, wearing their Sunday-go-to-meetin’ suits, grimaced as they tugged at stiffly starched collars.

  The bridesmaids were all beautiful but not as beautiful as the bride, of course. Each was perfectly matched to a groomsman who was as handsome as his maid was lovely. The flower girl was precious, though somewhat precocious, and dropped her pink rose petals precisely where she was supposed to drop them. The air in the sanctuary was sickeningly sweet with the aroma of exactly one thousand gardenias as the soloist sang “Oh, Promise Me” and the bride and groom said “I do” and “I do, too.”

  When the wedding ceremony ended, all five hundred guests were shuttled the two miles to the North Carolina Country Club, another landmark established by the Carlyle family, where they dined on pheasant and lobster and danced to the big-band sounds of the Bo Bright Band. Gentlemen shed their jackets and loosened their ties while ladies bared their calves to dance the jitterbug. After hours of eating and dancing and greeting, the newlyweds said goodnight to their guests and left for their honeymoon. Jim Daddy, on the other hand, entertained until the last reveler knocked back one for the road and bowed out at three in the morning.

  Jim Daddy was a happy man.

  He left the club alone, slid behind the wheel of his big black Cadillac, and drove the half-mile down the lane to his home. He tiptoed into the house so as not to waken his family, climbed the stairs to his bedroom, sprawled, fully clothed, on his huge poster bed, closed his eyes, and died.

  Since Lydia Rose’s parents no longer shared sleeping quarters, Jim Daddy’s family did not miss him until he failed to appear at the breakfast table the following morning. Big Lydia knew that her husband had partied till the wee hours, but she felt that was no excuse for him to lolly-gag in the bed and alter the household schedule.

  Big Lydia always said, “Those who dance must pay the fiddler,” and she insisted her family be up and at ‘em and at the breakfast table when Minnie served at seven a.m., regardless of their previous night’s revelries. So Big Lydia told Enos, the houseboy, to go fetch Jim Daddy before his shrimp and grits got cold.

  Now, Enos wasn’t much of a houseboy beyond doing Big Lydia’s fetching. Jim Daddy just called him the houseboy because he wanted a title of some sort. Enos’s mother, Minnie, the family cook, had given birth to him when she was just a teenager, and Enos had been a part of the family ever since. He had blonde hair, green eyes, and a yellow complexion and looked suspiciously like Jim Daddy’s boyhood friend, Fitz Drummond. This likeness, however, was never mentioned. Who was Jim Daddy to point out the obvious when Minnie was the spitting image of his own daddy?

  But Jim Daddy loved Enos more than he loved most of his own children. His boys were surly and disobedient, and that girl, Tots, was a law unto herself. Enos trailed Jim Daddy everywhere he went, Jim Daddy being the only father figure he had ever known. The two went to Tibb Spivey’s Feed and Seed Store every Saturday, where Jim Daddy paid Enos his weekly wage for being his houseboy. There Enos spent his few pennies on stick candy and dill pickles.

  Enos loved his life with Jim Daddy.

  So when Big Lydia ordered Enos to go wake Jim Daddy, he scurried up the stairs, his bare feet slapping as he took the steps two at a time. He wasn’t gone a minute before he came clattering back down, screaming, “Jim Daddy daid, Jim Daddy daid!”

  Big Lydia and Tots went up to Jim Daddy’s bedroom to substantiate Enos’s hysteria, and, sure enough, they found that Jim Daddy was, indeed, daid as a doornail, still decked out in his tux and patent leather evening pumps.

  Everyone’s first question was, “How are we going to tell Lydia Rose?”

  After much discussion, the family decided that Lydia Rose need not be told about Jim Daddy’s death until she and Lt. Tom returned from their honeymoon. Why spoil their trip? Jim Daddy was going to be just as dead when Lydia Rose returned as he was at that moment. By the time the newlyweds got home from their honeymoon, Jim Daddy had been eulogized, memorialized, and planted in the family plot.

  Some say Lydia Rose was never quite the same. All say Lydia Rose never fully forgave her family.

  Two

  By the time my siblings and I came along, our father, Lt. Thomas McChesney Albemarle, III had been promoted to Colonel Thomas McChesney Albemarle, III. We never called him Dad or Daddy or Pop or any other normal name. He insisted that everyone, including his own children, call him Colonel Tom.

  And since we never called our father Dad or Pop, why, then, should we call our mother something ordinary like Mother or Mom? Well, we don’t, of course. We call our mother Ma’am. Even Colonel Tom called her Ma’am.

  And since we’re all very polite people, we say, “Yes, ma’am, Ma’am.”

  When I was born, Colonel Tom and Ma’am named me Lydia McChesney Albemarle, but I was never called by my given name—either one of them. Colonel Tom and his friends called me Baby Girl. Ma’am and all of her friends called me Dear. My brother and sister and all of their friends called me Sis. My own friends heard my siblings call me Sis, so they called me Sis, too.

  I have a brother who is two years older than I am. Colonel Tom named him Percy. Sounded like The Colonel was trying to teach his boy who wore the pants in the family, should the question ever arise. Well, Percy rose above his name and thumbed his nose at The Colonel every chance he got. When he was in high school, his friends began calling him Pussy. Percy found that most amusing (At least, he appeared to be amused by it.) and even started calling himself by that name. Colonel Tom and Ma’am, however, were not the least bit amused. Something tells me that’s why Percy did it.

  Our little sister was born when I was five years old. Colonel Tom wanted to name her Oops, but Ma’am said since he got Percy, she claimed this one. Ma’am named her Sophia Colleen. Still Colonel Tom called her Oops. So did Percy and I.

  Oops and I didn’t get along as kids, and there were good reasons. First of all, I was the baby for five years, and along came Oops and made me the middle child. And everything they say about middle children is true. We’re not the old
est, the leader. We’re not the baby who is cute just because we’re babies. Instead, we’re stuck in the middle, having to sing louder, dance more gracefully, study harder, behave better than anyone else.

  Also, Oops was a whiney tattletale of a kid, and Percy and I didn’t much care for whiney tattletale kids. Who does? So we seized every opportunity to torment the hell out of her. She was so easy to tease, being so much younger than both of us. She’d run crying to Colonel Tom and Ma’am, and Percy and I would feign innocence and act as though we didn’t care enough to waste our time teasing her. It made her look like such a brat, and we loved every minute of it.

  Three

  Just as Colonel Tom followed his father, General Tom, from base to base when he was a child, we followed Colonel Tom as long as he was on active duty.

  He’d say, “Time to go straighten out another bunch of knuckleheads,” and Ma’am would start packing boxes.

  In about a year, when Colonel Tom felt his current bunch of knuckleheads was sufficiently straightened, we’d be off again, eager to work the kinks out of yet another bunch.

  Our living quarters were interchangeable from base to base: one side of a two-story cinderblock duplex with a small living area and out-dated kitchen downstairs and two tiny bedrooms and a bath upstairs. Ma’am always had what she referred to as her veranda, which was nothing more than a concrete stoop jutting out from the front door, just big enough for two aluminum lawn chairs.

  Ma’am tried her best to make our base housing a home. She dragged her family’s antique furniture, fine china, and Oriental rugs with her each time we moved and would install them in our latest space-challenged duplex. Percy said it was like putting a tutu on a fish, but, apparently, Ma’am felt that our string of identical fish looked stunning in tutus.

  Percy and I shared a bedroom, and once Oops arrived, we skootched over and made room for her in our already-cramped space. And, of course, the closer Oops was to us, the easier it was to torment her.