Chapter 3 - The Ghost of Greenville
Margaret Bennett was the only sister of Richard Bennett, but she lived as if the Bennett name were an alias she had successfully shed forty years ago.
She lived in a converted barn in Kimberton, surrounded by three rescue goats, an unruly patch of heirloom tomatoes, and forty years of ceramic sculpture that Eleanor Bennett had once described as *“aggressively unmarketable.”* Margaret had not been invited to Rebecca’s wedding. She had been excised from the family roll fifteen years earlier after she brought her long-time partner, Claire, to a Christmas dinner and refused to apologize when Claire pointed out that Richard’s corporate portfolio included several notorious industrial polluters.
“Put her on speaker,” Olivia said, rinsing her plate.
Margaret’s voice filled the small kitchen, accompanied by the distinct crackle of a wood stove and the distant barking of a dog.
“—and so I called Richard’s mobile,” Margaret was saying, her voice a rich, tobacco-and-whiskey rasp, “and I could hear Eleanor in the background shrieking like a peacock caught in a combine harvester! She said James had destroyed Rebecca’s grand entrance. Did you really walk out, boy?”
“We walked,” James said, leaning against the counter. “They put Olivia at the vendor table, Margaret. Under Crawford.”
There was a three-second silence on the line, followed by a sudden, sharp bark of laughter from Margaret. It was not a cruel sound; it was the sound of a woman watching an old, familiar comedy play out for the hundredth time.
“Oh, that’s pure Eleanor,” Margaret chuckled. “Pure, distilled, uncut Eleanor Vance. She never changes her script. Not even the font.”
“What does that mean?” Olivia asked, drying her hands on a dish towel and stepping closer to the phone.
“Hello, Olivia, darling,” Margaret said warmly. “Good for you for walking. God, I wish I’d seen Rebecca’s face. Did her eyeliner run? She buys that waterproof French garbage that cakes up like plaster when she cries.”
“Margaret,” James pressed. “What do you mean about the script?”
“Did I ever tell you about Claire at the Philadelphia Cricket Club?” Margaret asked. “This was… oh, ninety-two, ninety-three. Richard was trying to get on the board. Eleanor was running the cotillion committee. Claire and I showed up for the anniversary gala. Claire had her master’s in culinary arts from Johnson & Wales, running two of the best kitchens in Center City at the time. You know where Eleanor put our place cards?”
Olivia stopped drying her hands. “With the caterers.”
“Behind the service screens,” Margaret said, her tone suddenly devoid of amusement. “Right next to the ice machine. Eleanor told everyone Claire would feel ‘more at home’ observing the kitchen’s plating techniques. She even asked Claire if she’d mind checking the temperature on the prime rib because the club’s sous-chef was new.”
“Jesus,” James muttered.
“She does it because she smells blood, James,” Margaret continued. “Eleanor has an internal radar for anyone who doesn't come with a notarized certificate of pedigree. She has to push them down to keep her own head above water. Which is always the funniest part of this whole pathetic circus.”
“Why?” Olivia asked, her curiosity piqued by the old woman’s tone. “Eleanor’s family… the Vances. She talks about the Vance summer house in Newport like it was Versailles.”
The sound that came through the receiver was a long, wheezing sigh of pure amusement.
“Olivia, honey,” Margaret said. “Eleanor’s grandfather wasn’t an ambassador to Belgium. He was a shift foreman at a textile finishing plant in Greenville, South Carolina. Her father taught eleventh-grade world history at Greenville High until his pension kicked in, and her mother, my dear late sister-in-law’s mother, was a stenographer for the county clerk.”
Olivia froze. She looked at James.
James’s mouth was slightly open. His brow was furrowed in genuine, uncomprehending bewilderment. “What are you talking about? Grandfather Vance had a seat on the New York Cotton Exchange.”
“Grandfather Vance owned four cotton shirts and a 1968 Dodge Dart,” Margaret said flatly. “Eleanor got a partial scholarship to Bryn Mawr because she was poor enough to qualify for the regional endowment. She arrived on the Main Line with two cardboard suitcases and a Southern accent she spent three hours every night in front of a mirror trying to eradicate. She met your father when he was a junior at Penn, and she practically reinvented her family tree out of whole cloth.”
“And Dad didn't know?” James asked, his voice shaking.
“Richard was an idiot with an inheritance,” Margaret said bluntly. “He was twenty-one, dazzled by a girl with big blue eyes who told him her family had ‘lost their holdings during the mid-century textile reorganizations’—which was a very fancy way of saying her daddy got laid off when the mill shuttered. By the time they married, Eleanor’s parents had both passed away. There was no one to contradict her. She had a trunk full of silver-plated flatware she bought at an estate auction in Wilmington and told everyone it was Vance family silver from the antebellum era.”
Olivia sat down on the kitchen stool. The room felt suddenly altered, the light from the pendant lamps hitting the walls at a completely different angle.
All those years.
All those afternoons sitting in Eleanor’s drawing room, listening to her discourse on the “decline of regional breeding,” watching her finger the monogrammed linen napkins, listening to her dismiss Olivia’s parents because her father had been a Teamster and her mother worked for a dentist.
*A history teacher.*
Eleanor Vance’s father had been a high school teacher. Just like Olivia.
“Why didn’t you ever tell Richard?” Olivia asked.
“Because Richard didn't want to know,” Margaret said softly. “Your father, James, is a coward when it comes to the truth. He liked the myth. He liked having a wife who looked like she’d stepped out of an equestrian catalog. Eleanor built a fortress out of lies, and Richard was happy to live inside it because it saved him the trouble of having to be interesting on his own merits. But she’s terrified, Olivia. She’s been terrified every day for forty-five years that someone from Greenville will show up at the Merion Cricket Club with an old yearbook.”
“Does Rebecca know?” James asked.
“Rebecca is her mother’s creature,” Margaret said with a snort. “Rebecca believes the fairy tale because without it, she’s just an unpleasant, average girl with an overbite and a trust fund she didn’t earn. Don’t let them bully you, James. Don’t you dare let them make Olivia feel like she’s less-than. Eleanor is a hollow doll stuffed with old newspaper clippings.”
After Margaret hung up, the kitchen was silent for a long time.
May you like
Olivia reached out and picked up her water glass. Her hand was completely steady now. The ghost had been named. The grand, unassailable, ancient monument of Eleanor Bennett was not made of granite at all; it was papier-mâché, painted grey to look like stone, shivering in the slightest breeze from the south.
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