Revenge of the Kudzu Debutantes (18 page)

Mrs. Shapiro looked at Lavonne, a look of dubious admiration on her face. “Lord,” she said, shaking her head. “Is that right, Miz Zibolsky?”

“Lavonne.”

“What?”

“It’s past time we got on a first-name basis.” Lavonne slid her purse strap up her shoulder. “Call me Lavonne.”

“Well, all right then,” Mrs. Shapiro said shyly.

“Think about it, Mona. And don’t sign anything with my husband until then.” Lavonne stopped in the open doorway. “And Mona,” she said, turning.

“Yes, Lavonne?”

“This is our little secret, okay? The partnership. Discuss it with Little Moses, but no one else. We have to be careful until the plan’s all set.”

Mrs. Shapiro grinned and made an “X” over her heart. “Cross my heart. I won’t tell a soul but Little Moses,” she said.

“I’ll call you in a few days.” Lavonne waved at Little Moses as she went out, glancing again at his T-shirt.
The Shofar So Good Deli,
she thought, closing the door behind her.
I like the sound of that.

CHAPTER

NINE

C
HARLES WAS SERIOUS
about using his mother to try and talk Nita back to her senses. In the weeks leading up to his ill-fated hunting trip, he spent less and less time at home. He was becoming more and more uncomfortable in Nita’s presence, more and more aware that mental breakdowns sometimes involve violence and running amok with sharp instruments. And there was
something
about Nita that hadn’t been there before the firm party; he was sure of it—a stillness, a sense of contained fury, which made him nervous in her presence. Just yesterday, at breakfast, he had told her he wanted pork tenderloin for dinner and she had looked at him over the edge of her book and in a strong steady voice that brooked no argument, she had said, “We’re having chicken.”

It left him stunned and shaken.

The Saturday after Lavonne met with Mona Shapiro, Virginia Broadwell pulled into Nita’s driveway. It was ten o’clock and Virginia had a luncheon appointment at twelve. She really didn’t have time to run around trying to straighten out Charles’s messy domestic affairs—she had warned him years ago not to marry Nita James—but, being a dutiful mother, here she was. She went in through the garage door, which Charles had left unlocked for her. The children were in the den watching Saturday morning cartoons. Nita was on the screened porch reading
Wuthering Heights.

“Don’t get up,” Virginia said, noting that Nita made no effort to get up.

She was wearing blue jeans and a blue V-necked sweater. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she was wearing very little makeup. “Charles isn’t here,” Nita said, not bothering to look up from her book.

Virginia stared at her steadily, her mouth puckered in a perfect little
o.
“Do you have any coffee?” she asked pleasantly.

Nita kept her eyes on the book. “In the kitchen,” she said.

Really, this was too much. Nita might as well have been a complete stranger dropped suddenly onto the bosom of the Broadwell family. Virginia tugged on the hem of her jacket and went into the kitchen to pour herself a cup of coffee. This was going to take more work than Virginia had imagined, and might, after all, require the professional services of Dr. Guffey and his arsenal of antidepressants.

She came back out on the porch and sat down. “Nita,” she began tentatively, settling her cup of coffee on her lap and searching for just the right words. “Charles is worried.”

“He should be,” Nita said.

Something in the way she said it startled Virginia. It made her feel that she should warn Charles of something, but she wasn’t sure what. Virginia’s little chin trembled. She stared at her daughter-in-law like she was trying to read tea leaves in the bottom of a cup.

A few minutes later, Lavonne and Eadie showed up to take Nita to Logan’s soccer game. Virginia wasn’t happy to see them, and this time she made no attempt to hide it. “I really need to speak with Nita in private,” Virginia said, as they came noisily onto the porch.

Nita looked at Virginia over the edge of her book. “If you wanted to speak to me privately, you should have called me and not just shown up. I have plans today. I don’t have time to talk to you.”

Lavonne and Eadie looked at each other and sat down on the willow sofa.

Virginia, dazed and uneasy, stared at the sunlight that slanted through the porch screens. She had become accustomed, over the years, to bullying and riding roughshod over Nita, but the woman sitting across from her did not seem the type who could be easily intimidated. Virginia felt suddenly and curiously timid.

Lavonne looked at her watch. “I’d go with you guys to the soccer game, but I’ve got a twelve-thirty appointment. Are we still on for tomorrow?”

“Yes.” Nita stretched her legs out along the lounger, ignoring her mother-in-law’s dazed look. “Mama baked a pecan pie and she was wondering if we’d like to meet over at her house around two-thirty. She says she hasn’t seen you and Eadie since Moby Dick was just a minnow.”

Lavonne grinned. “That sounds like something she’d say.”

“Meeting?” Virginia said.

Nita looked at her coolly. “School meeting,” she said.

Eadie poked Lavonne with her elbow. “Hey, I talked to Kari over at the bookstore about the Kudzu Ball and she said it was an absolute blast. She says it’s the best throw down this town has to offer.”

Lavonne hadn’t thought much about the Kudzu Ball lately. She’d been too busy planning divorce and revenge to think about much else.

“I think you should go,” Eadie said without waiting for her to reply. “I’ll go with you.”

Now that Lavonne was no longer trying to be the dutiful wife, there was no reason why she couldn’t go to the Kudzu Ball. It was the same night the husbands returned from Montana, and either everything would have worked out by then or everything would have turned disastrous. Either way, Lavonne figured she’d probably be needing a tequila binge.

“Okay,” she said. “It might be my only chance to be a debutante. It might be my only chance to be a queen.”

Virginia wasn’t about to let herself get drawn into this argument again. She didn’t really care if they went to the Kudzu Ball or not. If Lavonne wanted to ruin what little social standing she had, so be it. And as for Eadie Boone, once Trevor divorced her she’d be out of the social loop anyway. She might as well go ahead and meet some new friends, because none of her old ones would be calling. Virginia glanced through the French door to the kitchen wall clock. She didn’t have much time left. If she was going to get on with this intervention, she’d have to work fast. “You look a little pale,” Virginia began, leaning toward Nita and touching her on the knee. Nita moved her leg out of the way. “Maybe it’s time you saw Dr. Guffey.”

“We’ve already had this conversation,” Lavonne said.

“Lavonne, I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to Nita!”

“There’s nothing wrong with me that Dr. Guffey can fix,” Nita said, and Lavonne tapped the edge of Nita’s lounger with her foot and Eadie gave her a little smile.

Virginia continued as if she hadn’t heard her. “It’s amazing what a little Zoloft can do to lift the spirits. It’s amazing what a low-dose prescription of Prozac can do.”

“Tequila is my drug of choice,” Eadie said.

“Yes, we’re all aware of that.”

“Bite me, Virginia.”

Virginia, stunned, stopped talking. Her little mouth opened and closed. She looked like a carp hauled up on a riverbank. She wasn’t sure what “bite me” meant, but she was pretty sure it must be crude and disrespectful. Here she was trying to fix her son’s defective wife and all she got for it was criticism and hostility. Well, she was through trying. She forced herself to calm down. She forced her tremulous heart to be still. Let Charles fix his own problems. Virginia turned her head and looked through the French door at the kitchen clock. “I’ve got a twelve o’clock luncheon,” she said.

“Don’t let us hold you up,” Lavonne said.

Virginia stood up and smoothed her skirt. “I’ll just run to the little girls’ room before I go,” she said to no one in particular. She put her sharp little nose in the air and stalked off.

Eadie waited until Virginia had closed the door and headed down the hall and then she leaned forward and said excitedly, “Okay, listen. I talked to Ramsbottom. And he said we needed to take pictures. You know, of the husbands with the male prostitutes or female impersonators or whatever the hell you call them. It was his idea but he said he’d do it for the agreed upon price. Videos, too.”

“That’s illegal,” Lavonne said.

“I know,” Eadie said. “Isn’t it great?”

“I have to think about this,” Lavonne said. “Extortion isn’t something I planned on.”

“It’s not extortion,” Eadie said. “It’s blackmail. I mean, if you want to get technical about it. Besides, what do you think the husbands are going to do when they find out we’ve cheated them out of money behind their backs? Trust me, we’re going to need those pictures as insurance.”

“Let’s not talk about this right now,” Nita said, looking down the hallway where her mother-in-law had disappeared.

“All I’m saying is we better have a good backup plan,” Eadie said, taking her keys out of her purse. “And those pictures would be added insurance.”

No one said anything. A few minutes later they heard the sharp clacking of Virginia’s heels on the hardwood floor.

“I’ll think about it,” Lavonne said quietly to Eadie. “But remember, we mustn’t talk about this, even among ourselves, unless we’re all together. The more we talk, the more likely it is to get around town. We’ll discuss it again tomorrow at Nita’s mother’s house, but not a word to anyone until then.”

T
HE SOCCER FIELDS
were crowded. They had to park in the back lot and walk up from the lower fields, past the creek that flowed parallel to the road through a grove of beech, sycamore, and red oak. The water was slow and brackish. Logan skipped rocks across its dark green surface, his soccer bag banging against his knees as he walked. Through the chain-link fence ahead, Nita could see his team warming up on the practice field. “Honey, you better hurry,” she said.

“Have a good game,” Eadie said, ruffling his hair affectionately.

He smiled at her but didn’t move, standing in the middle of the road and kicking his toe in the sand. “Do I have to play?” he asked his mother. He hated soccer, but his father had pulled every string imaginable to get him on this select team. Quitting was not an option, and he knew it.

Nita stopped in the road and looked at him. “Of course you don’t have to play,” she said. “If you don’t want to.”

He squinted at his mother, holding his arm up against the sun. “Are you saying I can quit?”

“Anytime you want.”

He dropped his arm. The expression of relief that flooded his face made Nita think about all the ways she could have been a better mother. Why had she let Charles bully Logan into doing something he didn’t want to do? Why had she let Charles bully all of them over the past sixteen years? “We can go home now if you want to,” she said, pointing toward the parking lot. “I mean it.”

He frowned and looked at his feet. He dug the toe of his shoe in the sand. “Naw,” he said. “I’m already here. I better play. Besides, you never know, dad might show up.” He gave his mother and Eadie a little wave and headed off toward the field. At the edge of the green he turned around and shouted, “But this is the last time. I’m quitting after this game.”

They stopped at the concession booth and bought some popcorn and Cokes, and then they climbed up into the stands to wait for the game to begin. The day was cool and breezy and the warm sun felt good on Nita’s face.

“I’m working again,” Eadie said, tugging her straw in and out of the plastic lid of her Coke. It made a sound like wind whistling through a stovepipe.

“I’m glad,” Nita said. “You look good. Really rested. I think work agrees with you.”

“I’m trying a mixed medium,” Eadie said. “Oil and doilies.” She laughed and Nita thought how pretty she was with the sun shining on her face and the breeze in her hair. “I guess that’s what you’d call it. It’s kind of a cross between painting and collage. I haven’t painted in years, but it feels right to me now.”

Neither one mentioned Trevor or Charles or the fact that their worlds had, in a little over a week, gone completely topsy-turvy. Nita thought again how rested Eadie looked, not at all like a woman who had faced public humiliation and was soon to be embroiled in a contentious divorce. She wished she had an artistic outlet like Eadie had, or a hobby, something she could throw herself into to take her mind off her appalling marriage. She thought, briefly, of Jimmy Lee’s offer to teach her woodworking, and she smiled, remembering the silly hopeful woman she had been that day in the garden. She thought of Jimmy Lee less and less now, and she knew there would come a time when she would not think of him at all. Nita was too cynical now for romance.

Eadie stood up and poked her fingers in her jeans pocket. “Hey, do you want to split a bag of boiled peanuts?”

“Sure,” Nita said. She sat in the stands while Eadie went back down to the concession booth. Bright sunlight washed over the fields and the distant fringe of trees, glittering on the metallic roofs of parked cars and trucks. A thin cloud of dust rose over the parking lot as people continued to arrive. The Ithaca Raptors, in neon blue and white, were just finishing their game with the YMCA Dominators, in red and yellow. The Raptors were ahead 1–0. Players flowed and receded across the field like a red-blue tide. Mothers sat in the stands and gossiped and pleaded with small children who hung from the metal bleachers like monkeys. Fathers paced the sidelines, shouting instructions and pumping their fists in the air. Across the field, Nita could see Logan’s team warming up.

Eadie sat down beside her, holding a small sack of wet, steaming peanuts. “Who are they playing?” Eadie asked, nodding toward Logan’s brightly colored teammates.

“Reverend Bob’s team,” Nita said, in a low voice. She could see Reverend Bob sitting one bleacher row down and to their left. He was hard to miss.

“Oh God,” Eadie said.

The Reverend Bob Hog was six feet five inches tall. He had played basketball at Duke and engaged in drink and other assorted sins of the flesh until one night in a drunken orgy at Myrtle Beach with a group of Kappa Delt girls, he heard the call of the Lord.

“Bob Hog,”
the Lord said. “
Why do you ignore my Word? Why do you wallow in the trough of sin and despair?”

“Is that you, Lord?” Bob said. He sat, stunned and bloated with sin, pinned to the sofa like an arrow-riddled Saint Sebastian.

“Why do you conspire with harlots?”

“They’re not harlots, Lord. They’re Kappa Delts.”

“Go and sin no more, Bob. Preach my Word to the wicked.”

Bog Hog stood up and shook off the Kappa Delts like a dog shaking off fleas. After that he attended seminary at Bob Jones University, and now he was youth minister down at Ithaca First Baptist Church. The Reverend Bob liked to coach Little League and soccer and town basketball and city league football. He liked to teach boys about sports on one hand and fill them with the fear of the Lord on the other.