by Cathy Holton
“Nita!” Eadie said, when she saw her standing in the doorway. “Come over here, girl, and give me a hug.”
“Y'all aren't drinking are you?” Nita said, taking off her coat and laying it over the back of one of the chairs. She hugged Eadie and then Lavonne.
“Of course we're drinking,” Lavonne said. “Join us.” She patted the stool next to her and Nita sat down at the counter. Eadie stubbed her cigarette out in an ashtray and got up to make some more drinks.
“Where'd you get the cigarettes?”
Lavonne blew a couple of smoke rings at the ceiling. “Ashley's room. We found them in the bottom drawer of her dresser next to a box of diet pills that she also told me she didn't use.”
Nita giggled. “Y'all are terrible,” she said.
Eadie danced around the kitchen, shaking her hips to the rhythm of the cocktail shaker like a hyperactive Carmen Miranda, like Charo on speed. She opened the freezer and took out three freshly chilled glasses and poured martinis all around.
“This'll put hair on your chest,” Eadie said.
“Nectar of the gods,” Lavonne said.
“Is something burning?” Nita asked, sniffing.
Eadie looked at Lavonne. “Oh shit,” she said. “The bread.” She threw on a couple of mitts and flung open the oven door. A thick cloud of black smoke rolled out and Eadie reached in and retrieved the loaf of bread that now looked like a long narrow charcoal briquette. She carried it out onto the back deck, smoke billowing in her wake, and set the baking sheet down on the railing. Lavonne followed her out. They both stood looking down at the black lump of burned bread.
“Oops,” Eadie said.
“Martha Stewart you're not,” Lavonne said.
“That's the problem with martinis. You lose track of time. It's like being caught in a time werp.”
“Did you just say a time werp? Have another martini, Eadie.”
Eadie put her arm around Lavonne's shoulder. She pointed at the brick of burned bread. “Who's hungry?” she said.
Nita stood in the doorway and watched them laugh. She hoped it wouldn't take long for the martini to work its magic. She hoped it wouldn't take long to feel whatever it was they were feeling.
Eadie put her other arm around Nita and they went back into the house. Lavonne and Nita sat down at the counter. “I haven't laughed that hard in a long time,” Lavonne said. “I think I might have pulled something.”
Eadie took some bowls down from the cupboard. “Who wants jambalaya?” she said.
Later, after they had finished eating, Nita got up to stack the bowls and silverware in the dishwasher.
“Leave it, Nita,” Lavonne said, lighting up another cigarette. “We'll clean up in the morning.”
“Pass me one of those cancer sticks,” Eadie said.
Nita sat back down at the bar. She was working on her third martini now and she was feeling relaxed and happy. She giggled. “I definitely won't be driving home tonight. I'll have to call Jimmy Lee to come get me,” she said.
“Just spend the night here,” Lavonne said.
“Yeah,” Eadie said. “Let's have a slumber party.”
Jimmy Lee wouldn't like that one little bit. He wouldn't tell her no, but he wouldn't be very happy about it, either. “I've got class in the morning,” Nita said. “I shouldn't even be staying up this late when I have to get up at seven o'clock.”
“Oh come on, Nita, live a little.”
“Yeah,” Eadie said. “It's bad luck for the groom to see you before the wedding.”
Nita didn't like to think about this. She didn't like to hear bad luck and wedding spoken in the same sentence. She was jittery enough as it was. She sipped her drink and said to Lavonne, hoping to change the subject, “Were you able to find those little sweet peppers we talked about?”
“Don't change the subject,” Lavonne said.
“What are you studying at school?” Eadie said. “What are you hoping to be when you grow up?”
“I'm not sure yet. I'm trying to decide whether to major in women's studies or elementary ed.”
“I can see you as a teacher,” Eadie said. “You're always so patient. I'd rather poke sticks in my eyes than work with a bunch of kids all day, but you'd be good at it.”
“Is that meant to be a compliment or an insult?” Lavonne said.
“I like kids,” Nita said. “I volunteer at the school every chance I get. I substitute teach when I can.”
“What was the name of that little girl you practically adopted back when your kids were small?”
“Angel,” Nita said. “Angel Phipps.”
“Hey, I remember Angel,” Eadie said. “She kind of reminded me of myself at that age. She's the one you bought clothes and books and toys for. The one you had over for dinner all the time.”
Lavonne said, “The one who let the air out of Charles's tires. The one who played street hockey with his golf clubs and put rocks in his shoes.”
Eadie grinned. “She didn't much like him, did she?”
“She was a sweet child,” Nita said.
“Hell, Nita, you'd say that about little Charlie Manson. You'd think little Jackie the Ripper was precious. You think everyone is sweet.”
Nita colored slightly and shook her head. “No I don't,” she said.
Lavonne said, “Little Jackie the Ripper?”
Eadie smiled lazily and twirled her hair around one finger. “How're your kids doing?” she said to Nita.
“They're fine,” Nita said. “Logan just got his license and he drives Whitney to school for me every morning. He likes public school so much better than he ever liked Barron Hall. He seems a lot more comfortable there.” She looked apologetically at Lavonne, whose daughter had graduated early from Barron Hall and gone off to college just a few weeks ago.
Lavonne shrugged. “Hey, private school isn't for everyone,” she said.
“How about Whitney?”
Nita frowned, looking down at the pale-pink liquid in the bottom of her glass. “I'm not sure if Whitney is happier or not. Nothing much seems to please her these days.”
“Don't worry about that,” Lavonne said. “She's an adolescent girl. It's her job to be surly and ungrateful. Trust me, I know. I've raised two daughters.”
“I was terrible to my mother,” Eadie said, finishing off her drink.
“Really?” Nita said, feeling hopeful. She had always felt it was her duty to make her children happy, it was one of the primary reasons she had left Charles, and Whitney's morose behavior left her with a sense of her own failure as a parent. She and her own mother, Loretta, had always been close. Nita could not remember ever fighting with Loretta the way Whitney fought with her.
“Lavonne says you're writing a paper that might get published.”
Nita smiled shyly, happy to talk about something besides her daughter. “It's for my Women's Roles in the Post-Depression America class. I've been interviewing women who worked as domestic servants in the South prior to the civil rights movement. My professor thinks it might be good enough for publication.”
Eadie put her arm around Nita. “I'm so proud of you,” she said. “See how everything's worked out for the best? A year and a half ago you were still married to that asshole, Charles Broadwell, and now you've taken control of your life and gone back to school and you're getting ready to marry the man of your dreams.” She got up and poured another round of drinks. Nita wished she could feel as optimistic as Eadie did. She didn't tell them how the women's sad stories had affected her in a way that went deeper than the usual relationship between an interviewer and interviewee.
“What did you decide to do about your honeymoon?” Lavonne asked.
Nita shook her head. “We're not taking one. At least not now. I've got school and there's no one to leave the children with, so I think we're going to take one in the summer, when the kids are on vacation with Charles.” She sipped her drink and then put it back down. “Not everyone takes a honeymoon. It doesn't mean anything. Vi
rginia didn't take one.”
Eadie rolled her eyes. “Hey, I'm having a good time here,” she said. “Let's try not to spoil my buzz by talking about Virginia.” She looked steadily at Nita. Nita pretended to find something floating in her glass. Eadie said, “Please don't tell me you still talk to that old witch.”
Nita tapped the edge of her glass nervously. She didn't tell them how she'd gotten a call yesterday about a woman named Leota Quarles, who had supposedly worked for Virginia's family back when Virginia was a girl. Nita was still trying to figure out whether or not to take the interview. “I ran into her in the grocery store,” she said, waving her hand vaguely.
“Well that was a special bit of bad luck for you,” Lavonne said. “But remember, you don't owe her anything. She's your ex-mother-in-law.”
“That's right,” Eadie said. “Count your blessings.”
“And Jimmy Lee's mother is dead so you won't have a new mother-inlaw.”
“There you go,” Eadie said. “Count another blessing.”
“Not everybody has bad mothers-in-law,” Nita said. She looked at the calendar above the phone. She cleared her throat. “Sometimes people change,” she said in a small defiant voice.
Eadie and Lavonne looked at each other. The clock ticked steadily on the wall. A delivery truck rumbled down the street, its headlights casting geometric shadows against Lavonne's plantation shutters. “Is there something you want to tell us, Nita?” Eadie said, looking at her curiously.
Nita cleared her throat again. “How's Trevor?” she said.
Eadie glanced at Lavonne and then back at Nita. “He's fine. He said to give you a big hug and tell you congratulations.”
“He's so sweet.” A delicate blue vein threaded its way up Nita's temple. She touched it lightly with her fingers and then dropped her hand back down on the counter. “I'm just so proud of him, about the book and all. I can't wait to read it.”
A muscle moved in Eadie's cheek. “Let me guess,” she said flatly. “You invited Virginia to the wedding.”
Nita flushed and pushed her hair out of her face. “Look, y'all, she's the children's grandmother,” she said stubbornly. She fanned her fingers out and flattened them on the counter on either side of her glass. “I believe in forgiveness and redemption. I believe in giving people a second chance. Virginia's not the same person she was when I was married to Charles.”
“Really?” Eadie said, raising one eyebrow. “Was there an exorcism while I was away? Did someone call a priest while I was in New Orleans?”
Lavonne, who had sat quietly through all this, said, “Actually, Nita may have a point. Regardless of what Virginia may have done in the past, regardless of how underhanded, selfish, immoral, and unethical she may have been, Nita's forgiveness of her sets Nita on the path to psychological wholeness and redemption.”
“Is that the pomegranate martinis talking, Lavonne, or is that you?”
“Mix up another shaker and I'll let you know.”
“I shouldn't drink any more,” Nita said. “I should call Jimmy Lee to come get me. He'll be worried.”
“Forgiveness is overrated,” Eadie said. She lifted her drink, took a long pull, and then set the glass down carefully on the counter. “Revenge. Now there's a concept you can sink your teeth into, there's a concept you can build your whole damn life around.” She looked at Lavonne for confirmation.
“Put a scooch less pomegranate in this batch,” Lavonne said. “I like to taste my vodka.”
Eadie made up a new batch and poured another round of drinks. “I really should get going,” Nita said. “I've got a lot to do tomorrow.”
Eadie propped her chin on her hand. She waved her finger back and forth in front of Nita's nose. “Just say the word, Nita, and I'll call Virginia and uninvite her from the wedding.”
Lavonne sipped her drink. “You don't owe her a thing,” she said.
“I've thought about this and I think it's the right thing to do.” Nita frowned and shook her head. “It's like starting over, you know. Rebuilding fences.”
“Fences?” Eadie said. “Hell, you'll need to build a goddamn fortress if you're dealing with Virginia.”
“Build a siege engine,” Lavonne said.
“A trebuchet,” Eadie said. “Or better yet, an underground bunker.”
Nita giggled. She pulled her cell phone out of her purse to call Jimmy Lee. “Y'all are overacting,” she said. “Virginia's not that bad.”
VIRGINIA AWOKE ON FRIDAY MORNING TO FIND REDMON GONE. This was a rare occurrence; they normally breakfasted together, and she found herself wondering if he might have tired of her already. Far from depressing her, this thought gave her a little hopeful trembling sensation in the pit of her stomach. But when she went into the kitchen, she found a note beneath the sugar jar: “Queenie, had to go up to Atlanta. I'll bring you something nice. Love Red.” Virginia shuddered to think what “something nice” might be. The last gift he gave her had been a leopard-print push-up bra and matching thong, the kind of thing Jane might have worn if she was trying to coax Tarzan into a new zebra-skin sofa for the tree house.
Virginia poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. Behind her the coffeepot gurgled and steamed. She sipped her coffee and tried not to think about last night. She supposed the slight tinge of self- loathing and nausea she was feeling was probably no different from what a Saigon brothel girl must feel every morning of her life. Her marriage to the Judge had been no different, although with him sex had been all about power; and with Redmon it was all about his admiration of her. She supposed, in some distant, remote, unexplored crevice of her heart, she felt flattered. It wasn't love, but it wasn't exactly disgust, either. At least, not entirely.
Bright sunlight fell through the long windows, and beyond the lawn a dark rim of trees rose against a slate blue sky. She glanced at the newspaper that Redmon had left open on the table. After a while, fortified by her second cup of coffee and unable to stop herself, she picked up the paper and opened it to the editorial page. It was a long-standing habit, one of which, although painful, Virginia had never been able to break herself. The woman's photograph, small and gray, hung from the upper-left corner of the editorial page. Her byline read “Grace Pearson, Staff Writer.” She seemed to gaze out at Virginia with the scornful, knowing expression of one who smells something foul, and knows it emanates from Virginia's direction. How anyone could name a six-foot, overeducated, liberal-minded Amazon Grace was beyond Virginia's comprehension.
Grace Pearson was a local girl whose parents had had the misfortune and short-sightedness to send to Wellesley. She had rewarded them by returning to her hometown to work as a political writer for the local newspaper, where she churned out truckloads of liberal propaganda. She and Virginia had been enemies for years.
One of Pearson's earliest editorial targets had been Judge Broadwell. She had written an article about the strict sentencing of juveniles and African Americans that occurred in his courtroom. In the article she referred to him as “the Hanging Judge.” On reading this, he had gone into an apoplectic fit so severe Virginia had thought he was having a stroke. After that, he took to calling Pearson a femi-Nazi obstructionist and would read her editorials aloud every afternoon over cocktails and rant and rave like a lunatic.
After he died, Pearson took on his son. Charles had been named president of the Bar Association and was just beginning what he hoped would be a long and illustrious career that might end in the governor's mansion or, who knew, maybe even in the U.S. Senate. As president of the Bar Association, he had made it his mission to try and bridge the deep divide that existed between the local legal and medical professions. With that in mind, he had gone out to the Ithaca County Hospital to observe doctors in action, the idea being that direct observation of the daily life-and-death decisions made in the operating room might lead to more understanding on the part of the legal profession for their medical colleagues. The walk-a-mile-in-myshoes theory. Unfortunately for all concern
ed, Dr. Willis Guffey had ruined this opportunity for conciliation by choosing this very day to operate on the wrong knee of a young black athlete by the name of Dicie Meeks. This blunder was made worse by the arrogant Dr. Guffey, who, on being informed of his mistake at the first slice of the scalpel by the operating room nurse, quickly cursed her into horrified silence and continued cutting, bellowing from time to time, “Goddamn it! I don't see a thing wrong with this knee. Cartilage is fine. What in the hell is wrong with these people? Wasting my time like this! There's not a goddamn thing wrong with this knee!”
Charles did what he could to hush the matter up, using his position and considerable influence to ensure that no local lawyer agreed to take the Meeks case. But Meeks's parents went to Grace Pearson, and when the story broke, the scandal it caused reached all the way to the capital and beyond, thus forever squashing Charles Broadwell's plans for a political career.
Virginia shook out the paper and raised it to eye level. Despite her determination not to, she began to read. Pearson's column today was on the inequality of women in the workforce. The whole time she read, Virginia kept her top lip curled in a scornful grimace.
Having survived the treacheries of a man's world, Virginia had little compassion for the less determined members of her own sex. She had never had a close female friendship, she gave her money to preachers who preached against the independence of women, voted against legislation that promoted sexual equality, and was a staunch member of the Republican Party. Indeed, it was during her stint as president of the local Republican Women's Club that her secret dislike of Grace Pearson had flared into open warfare. Virginia believed that a lady should never disgrace herself by allowing her name in print, but angered by one of Pearson's columns, and emboldened by the example set by her own personal hero, Phyllis Schlafly, Virginia had responded in a quarter-page letter to the editor. She had refuted Pearson's liberal viewpoint with an argument no sane, feminine, well- bred Christian woman could possibly deny as truth. Rather than retiring from the field in shame, Grace Pearson had mounted her own counterattack, one that began with the bold-faced, italicized words, My Dear Madame President.