The Unlikely Lavender Queen: A Memoir of Unexpected Blossoming - Couverture rigide

CHAPTER ONE
Severed Roots
I couldn't have missed Mortimer's that night. From two blocks away I saw that the rarefied air surrounding this famous haunt of stupendous somebodies on the Upper East Side was shuddering with flashes of light. I was reminded of the view of thunderheads from an airplane—the convulsions of lightning inside always appeared to me as if the gods were battling within the clouds, and here in the loftiest neighborhood of Manhattan, gods of another kind were waging their own type of battle. For attention. The paparazzi were out in force, focused at the moment, I could see, on Ronald Perelman, the chairman of Revlon, and his wife Claudia Cohen, a gossip columnist. The two were standing perfectly still inside a wreath of photographers, his arm was draped around her shoulders. Their faces were frozen in a grin–gnash that barely hid the contempt for the hands that fed their celebrity.

Through the front windows, I saw swaying silhouettes in various party postures—drinks to mouths, hand on someone's shoulder, heads cocked back in an exaggeration of ecstatic laughter. Right before I crossed Lexington Avenue, into the arc of Mortimer's halo, I checked myself. Over a black camisole and a short black lace skirt, I wore a sheer black blouse with a gold shimmer that I'd bought at a SoHo boutique. On my feet were a pair of Manolo Blahnik pumps borrowed from a friend who worked for Anne Klein. I counted my blessings that I had a fashion industry friend who was my exact size.

Once I made my way through the door and into the bright light, I grabbed a glass of wine and began to circulate. I saw socialite Anne Slater, sitting at the bar in her famous -blue--tinted glasses, and thought that she must have been Anna Wintour's role model for sunglass ubiquity. I noticed Martha Stewart and publishing executives I could identify from Page Six. Two women whose skin was pulled tightly over their yesterday's–deb bone structure were gushing over the man who was the reason for this gathering, Dominick Dunne, who I noted was much shorter than I expected. It was May 1990 and the party was to celebrate the publication of his novel, An Inconvenient Woman.

As much as I enjoyed star watching, I was actually there to work—eavesdrop really. I was profiling the woman behind the event--a distinguished party planner named Nancy Kahan who had a track record of pulling off the most over-the-top publishing events in the city. I caught up with her and watched her in full schmooze for a while, then I had to race off to a French restaurant called Pierre's in Greenwich Village, around the corner from where I'd once lived.

This article I was writing—commissioned by a friend at Manhattan Inc. magazine—had caused a serious rift with my fiance, Ben. The magazine needed the story in a week's time to fill in a hole in the lineup of their next issue, and the seven–day deadline happened to coincide with my fiance's graduation from New York University Film School. Ben's father had come in from overseas and his mother was up from Nashville with her second husband. A man who loved good theatrics and high living, Ben had wanted to mark the occasion as if it were the Oscars. There was a week's worth of parties and dinners in his honor. He hadn't wanted me to take the assignment, but I refused to give up the opportunity to write something for Clay Felker, who had recently taken over as the editor of the magazine. Felker was a journalism legend, one of the original proponents of the New Journalism (nonfiction that reads more like a novel) I'd studied in my magazine writing class at the University of South Carolina. I had assured Ben I would sacrifice sleep to make all his events and my deadline.

That night I thought I would join Ben, his mom, and stepfather by the time they were ready to order their meal. But in the end, I didn't make it until dessert. Ben didn't even look at me as I slipped into a chair beside him and made my apologies.

When we got back to our Chelsea apartment, Ben finally deigned to talk to me. Well, talk isn't the right word. He was furious that I had missed dinner and cursed the story I was working on. "You're just not there for me," he said at the end of his rant.

Those words might as well have been a crank on a jack-in-the-box. Suddenly, I had sprung up out of my chair. I heard my skirt rip, but I'm not sure how I heard it, my voice was so loud. "Not there for you! Not there for you!" I spit. When I threw my hands in the air, as my 50 percent Italian blood preordained I must, I caught my silver beaded necklace. Beads bounced all over the floor as if a gumball machine had been broken open. I tried to convey the multifaceted ways in which his charge was offensive. The truth was I had taken care of him for four years, since I met him on an airplane flying from Nashville to New York in 1986. I had let him move into my apartment with me; I had helped him write his application to NYU film school. I ran our household, paid the bills, did the laundry, cooked our dinners. He had already exhausted me.

After my eruption, I locked myself in my office. I could not expend any more energy on fighting since I had to start writing my story on the party planner. I resolved to smooth things over so that I could get through the assignment and his grandiose graduation. I had a trip to Texas coming up the following week. That would give me time to think.

***

I have always been a leg woman. I love a well–shaped man's leg. I have been known to watch a men's tennis match solely for those moments, shot from behind, when the player is bent over slightly, dribbling the tennis ball right before serving. That angle affords the best view of long, handsome legs.

Nothing, however, beats seeing nice legs in the flesh, and a week later I was in Texas, eyeing a particularly gorgeous set. Calves like sinuous interpretations of an -upside--down Coke bottle. The pair belonged to a man I'd just met. He was a young photographer, single and straight, from what I could tell, and I was at a cookout at his house in Houston. We were scheduled to fly to Fort Worth the following day to start our story for Life magazine about B. Don Magness, the longtime director of the Miss Texas Pageant. I had met Magness once before in Houston and thought he was such an outlandish Texas character that he would be a perfect profile for Life.

I had not wanted a male photographer to shoot the story. A female would have less trouble getting behind-the-scenes shots. But several weeks earlier my editor had called me up to float an idea.
"I've got this guy in Texas I'd love to use, if you'll agree," she said. "He's so talented and young. And so cute."

"Okay," I told her after some thought. "I guess it could help to have someone from Texas."

Maybe it was the cute part that got me to agree. But it was the word young that spiked my eyebrow. I was used to people commenting on my youth. I was an associate editor of McCall's at twenty–two and editor-in-chief of my own magazine by twenty–five. I'd already been published in most of the major women's magazines and reported a cover story (among other articles) for Time magazine while working freelance in the New York bureau. At twenty–nine, I had reported several stories for Life—the Life magazine I'd read faithfully growing up—and now was writing my first Life feature.

After I agreed to this photographer, named Robb Kendrick, I had an occasion to doubt my choice. The night after I fought with Ben, I was wearing a perky party face for a get-together at our Chelsea apartment. I was in the steamer-trunk-sized kitchen cutting up pizzas I had made myself from my mother's recipe for hors d'oeuvres when Ben stuck his head in to tell me I had a phone call. "It's that photographer for the Life story, Robb Kendrick."

"Oh," I said, my fingers smeared with tomato sauce, "could you tell him I'll call him back tomorrow." Ben disappeared, and as I was putting the pizzas on a platter he came back with a quizzical look on his face.

"He said no."

"What?"

"He said no, you couldn't call him tomorrow. He needs to talk to you now."

Who the hell does this guy think he is, I thought as I washed my hands and wiped them on the blue tunic and skirt I'd recently bought in Paris. I walked back to my office, away from our chattering friends in the living room. Just what I need, another fucking demanding man, I thought. I was cranky from lack of sleep—I had stayed up till three the night before trying to make headway on the Kahan profile—and was prepared to let him know that we weren't going to work together well if he couldn't be flexible.

"Hi, Jeannie," he began. "I'm sorry; I know you're having a party, but I'm working on a story in the mountains in Georgia and I don't know when I'll be near a pay phone again."

Something about his voice—a mellowness, a rich timbre—calmed me. I found all my armaments sliding away. I chatted with him for fifteen minutes while the party swirled outside my office door. In the end, we were laughing over his rendition of "Dueling Banjos," inspired by his location in the mountains of North Georgia. When he found out that I was going to be in Houston the next weekend for a Glamour story before heading up to Fort Worth for Life, he invited me to a cookout at his house.

Now that I was in his backyard with some of his Houston friends, the sight of his legs somehow put the failings of Ben in stark relief. Ben's legs were chunky, with no differentiation between calf muscle and ankle. Even Ben referred to his lower limbs as Fred Flintstone legs. Comparing the two sets of legs—the photographer's and my fiance's—produced a stab of awareness. How c...

"Book clubs, start your engines! Jeannie Ralston's engaging read takes on all the current issues on a woman's plate -- career, marriage, kids, health, money, sanity and social conscience. It's good and it's good for you."
--Marianne Wiggins, author of The Shadow Catcher and Evidence of Things Unseen
“A smart, ambitious -and secretly ‘hayseed’- Tennessee girl comes to Manhattan and earns her props as a magazine writer. Then she falls in love with a Lone Star State-loyal globe-trotting photographer and agrees to chuck her hard-won sophistication to become a Texan, a ranch wife and mother, and finally, an herb farmer. Jeannie Ralston's deliciously intimate exploration of autonomy vs. partnership, worldliness vs. domesticity, and order vs. chaos is filled with epiphanies scented in lavender. Worried about finding your strength in a marriage to a (benignly) dominating man? Read this, enjoy, and have heart."
-Sheila Weller, author of Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon-and the Journey of a Generation and Dancing at Ciro's: A Family's Love, Loss and Scandal on the Sunset Strip

"From New York City to rural Texas, Jeannie Ralston's The Unlikely Lavender Queen entrances. Here is a smart, funny, and edgy voice, well worth following into the lavender fields!"
-Catherine Goldhammer, author of Still Life with Chickens

"Honestly, I was about as enthusiastic about reading a book about a lavender farm as the author once was about starting one, but Jeannie Ralston's sharp writing and old-school storytelling quickly drew me in. Her memoir is unusual and refreshing -instead of harrowing the reader with tales of tragedy and dysfunction, Ralston inspires with behind-the-scenes stories of a remarkable project and a life well lived."
-Marion Winik, author of Above Us Only Sky and The Lunch-Box Chronicles

"Jeannie Ralston magically takes us along on her nutty, agonizing, hilarious and uplifting journey to discover happiness and meaning in her own backyard. Learning to want what you already have is the greatest lesson in life and this wonderful story shows you how to let it happen."
- Martha Sherrill, author of Dog Man: An Uncommon Life on a Faraway Mountain

"Jeannie Ralston's memoir is a lovely read, and inspires us to know that you can find beauty-fields of it!- in the most difficult and unexpected places."

-Laura Fraser, author of The Italian Affair

"Brimming with piquant observations on everything from marriage to motherhood, careers to cappuccino, Ralston's exuberant memoir showcases the resiliency of the human spirit."
--Booklist