The Secret Lives of the Kudzu Debutantes

by Cathy Holton

  Her eyes fluttered for a moment. Leota stirred, rousing herself.

  “Everyone invited her to their parties except for Mary Lee Hamilton. She and her older sister, Maureen, were two of the prettiest girls in town. Their daddy owned the Chrysler dealership and they wore department store clothes and lived in a big columned house in the good part of town. Every year Mary Lee would have a Halloween party and every year Miss Virginia wasn't invited. Mary Lee Hamilton would come to school and pass out invitations to the girls she wanted at her party. I'd see Miss Virginia coming back across the river in the rowboat with her daddy and her little shoulders would be shaking but her head would be up. Miss Virginia never was one to let others see her cry. She was too proud for that. She'd come in the back door and walk through the big hall with her head held high and later on I'd go into her bedroom and she'd be laying on the bed with a pillow over her head and her little shoulders would be shaking with her sobs. I'd stroke her back until she was quiet. Later on, she'd gnash her teeth and beat the pillow with her tiny fists and I'd think to myself, Lord, Lord, I wouldn't ever want to make her so mad at me, I wouldn't want to be that Mary Lee Hamilton or any of those snotty town kids for all the tea in China.”

  The old woman's lids fluttered down over her eyes. In a few minutes, she was snoring softly. Nita quietly closed her notebook and gathered her things, and then turned off the bedside lamp as she went out.

  TWO DAYS AFTER TREVOR LEFT, EADIE AWOKE TO THE quiet of an empty house. She had been dreaming about her dead mother. Reba had been trying to tell her something but Eadie couldn't remember what it was. She struggled up out of her Ambien-induced sleep and looked around the room. Pale sunlight slanted through the blinds. Dirty dishes were stacked on the floor and on the dresser an opened jar of peanut butter stood with a knife stuck in it. Now how did that get there? she thought dully. The room was cold. Her breath fogged the air around her face and she put her hand on her cheek and felt something sticky. She pulled her hand away and smelled her fingers tentatively. Peanut butter.

  She had no recollection of going downstairs to make herself a sandwich. Or of anything else she'd eaten, although from the looks of the stacked dishes, it had been quite a feast. Her head felt swollen. She felt like she used to feel after a particularly vigorous drinking binge; groggy and thickheaded. She took a long, hot shower and when she got out she felt better. She checked her cell and the house phone. Trevor hadn't called. She turned on the TV for company and cleaned up the bedroom and made the bed. It was almost eleven o'clock.

  She went downstairs and made some lunch and took it out into the garden to eat. Sunlight slashed through the overhanging trees and fell across the mossy bricks and the glossy leaves of the banana plants. Eadie sat in a lounge chair in a pool of sunlight, wrapped in a blanket, trying to warm herself. The garden fountain splashed and frothed in its mossy basin. Traffic passed lazily in the street. After a while, she began to feel drowsy. She had already slept twelve hours but it didn't matter. Sleep was like a drug. It was better than work or chocolate Mondo Logs. It was better than sex.

  She remembered a time not long after they moved into the house when they had quarreled and Trevor had left in the middle of the night with his suitcase. The doorbell rang the following morning and she rose, bleary- eyed and groggy from lack of sleep and went to the door, thinking it was one of the workmen come to fix the kitchen stove. It was Trevor, holding a bouquet of lilies, his suitcase resting at his feet.

  By noon, she realized he was not going to call. By two o'clock she had made up her mind what she must do, and wrapping the blanket tightly around her shoulders, she rose and went into the house to make her flight reservations.

  SHE LEFT THE HOUSE AT NOON ON FRIDAY, TAKING A TAXI TO THE airport. The sky was gray and blustery, and the overpasses were slick with rain. Streetlamps stretched into the distance like a necklace of pearls. Beneath the leaden sky, the lights of Metairie glowed in the distance.

  She arrived at LaGuardia a little after six o'clock, and took a taxi to the Crown Park Hotel. Leaving her bags at the front desk, she asked the concierge to ring Trevor Boone's room.

  “I'm sorry, Mr. Boone cannot be disturbed,” he replied.

  “I'm his wife.”

  He smiled smoothly. “In that case, Mr. Boone is in the bar,” he said, pointing toward a set of ornate doors across the lobby.

  The bar was filled with the usual assortment of tourists and after-five office workers. Eadie saw him immediately, sitting at a corner table with two men and two women. He had his back to her but as she approached, one of the women said something, and he swiveled his head around. Seeing her, he stood up.

  “Eadie,” he said. He was glad to see her. He smiled so deeply his dimple showed.

  “Trevor.” She was still a little embarrassed about her crying jag the other night. She had never cried in front of him before. She had never showed any sign of weakness in front of him.

  He leaned over and kissed her, lightly, on the mouth. He looked tired, she could see it now around his eyes, a slight yellow puckering of the skin. “I wasn't expecting you,” he said.

  “Obviously,” she said, looking at the women.

  He wasn't drunk, just tipsy enough to fumble the introductions. The two men at the table stayed seated. Eadie looked from one to the other, nodding her head curtly. Say what you like about Southern men, at least they had good manners. They might be child molesters or wife beaters but they knew to stand up when a woman entered the room. One of the men was a television producer and the other was an editor at Trevor's publishing house. The two women were introduced as “friends.” One of them was strikingly beautiful, with a dark exotic face. She put her hand possessively on Trevor's arm as he sat down and slid around in the booth, making room for Eadie. “I won't stay long,” Eadie said, sitting down. “I have a nine o'clock flight to catch.”

  “What do you mean?” Trevor said, moving his arm away from the woman. “You just got here. Where are you going?”

  “I came because I had something to tell you. Something I didn't want to tell you over the phone.”

  Trevor glanced nervously around the bar. “Do you want to go upstairs?” he said, in a low voice.

  “I don't have time.”

  “We can move to another table,” he said, indicating a dark corner of the bar. “Someplace where we can have a little privacy.”

  “It doesn't matter.”

  Trevor looked at her like he was trying to read her mind. He seemed nervous, although Eadie couldn't tell if it was because she'd caught him with the dark beauty, or because he was afraid of what she might say. “Do you want a drink?” he said, looking past her at the waitress who had appeared at the table.

  “I'll have a cranberry vodka martini,” Eadie said.

  “Don't you mean a mint julep?” the dark woman said to her companion, sipping her drink. The companion giggled. Eadie eyed them steadily.

  “My wife's an artist,” Trevor said to the men, trying to draw her attention away from the women. He put his arm around her but Eadie sat stiffly at the table, refusing to relax.

  “Cool,” the book editor said. “An artist.” He was the younger of the two, a slightly balding thirty-year-old named Mike.

  “Southern artist?” the woman said, slanting her eyes at Mike. “Isn't that an oxymoron?”

  “Kind of like well-mannered Yankee,” Eadie said.

  “Smart redneck,” the woman shot back.

  “Sexy Jew,” Eadie said.

  Trevor sighed. “Okay girls,” he said. “That's enough.”

  Everyone at the table got real quiet. Eadie was embarrassed by her last outburst. She didn't normally like to cast aspersions on minorities or ethnic groups, but the woman had goaded her, not to mention the fact that she obviously coveted Eadie's husband. Still, Eadie had promised herself on the plane ride up here that she would get a handle on her rage and feelings of insecurity. She had agreed to make some changes in her life, starting now. Mike and the TV producer, Sa
m, launched into a discussion on the movies of Quentin Tarantino. It was obvious this conversation had been going on for a while. The two women looked around the bar, bored. Trevor leaned over and kissed Eadie, trying to start over again. “I've missed you,” he said quietly. He tapped two fingers gently on the inside of her wrist.

  “Really? Is that why you didn't call me?”

  “You didn't call me, either.”

  “I guess it's a draw then.” The waitress brought her drink. Eadie sipped her martini and avoided Trevor's eyes. Behind his shoulder the two women were arguing over a Sex and the City episode. “I'm going back to Ithaca to try and figure some shit out,” she said to Trevor.

  He slid his arm off her shoulders and put his hands on the table. At the bar, two men laughed loudly, looking at Eadie. Trevor picked up his glass, chewed a sliver of ice, and then set the glass down again. “Are you leaving me?” he asked finally.

  “No. I'm leaving a big empty house.”

  “Eadie, it won't always be like this.”

  “It's like this now,” she said.

  He laced his fingers around the glass. “Let me talk to my agent,” he said. “Let me see if I can rearrange my schedule.”

  “No,” she said. “That's not what I want.” She worked on her drink a little while and then set it back down on the table. “You were right when you called me a succubus. When you said I wanted too much from you.”

  Trevor groaned. He put his head back and bumped it repeatedly against the booth partition. When he had finished, he looked at her again and smiled sadly. “Sometimes I'm an idiot, honey. You should know that after twenty-two years of marriage.”

  “For true.” It was one of the things she had learned to say living in New Orleans. Eadie sipped her drink. She wasn't going to make this easy for him. “But every so often you're right, and you were right this time. Whatever it is I need, you can't give it to me. I need to figure it out for myself.”

  Trevor slid his hands off the table and dropped them into his lap. He looked tired and dejected. He'd been in love with Eadie long enough to know that once she set her mind to something, there was no talking her out of it.

  “Where are you going to stay?” he asked.

  “With Lavonne.”

  “And this is only temporary?”

  “Yes,” she said. She finished her drink. Mike droned on about symbolism and violence in American culture. The dark-haired woman said, “Carrie should have known Mr. Big wasn't in it for the long haul. He had noncommitment written all over him.” Faintly, in the background, Paul Simon sang about going to Graceland.

  “At least let me take you to the airport.”

  “No, you stay here with your friends.” She kissed him and stood up. Mike stopped talking. “It was nice to meet y'all,” Eadie said, nodding at everyone but the dark-haired woman. She was turning over a new leaf but that didn't mean she had to be a hypocrite. She kissed Trevor again and slung her purse over her shoulder. “I'll call you when I get there.”

  “Eadie,” he said.

  She bent down and put her hand over his mouth. “I'll call you when I get there and we'll talk about when we can see each other again. Maybe I'll meet you in New York or London. This isn't a separation, Trevor. It's something I have to do until I can figure out what I need.”

  She glanced behind her as she reached the doorway. He was still watching her from the shadowed booth. He lifted two fingers and gave her a sad little wave. She waved back, and then went out, the heavy door closing with a soft sucking sound on her heels.

  JOE SHOWED UP TEN MINUTES EARLY FOR THEIR FIRST DATE BUT Lavonne was ready. She opened the front door to find him standing on her porch holding a bouquet of orchids.

  “Jesus,” he said, sweating into his collar. “This is worse than my first prom. I can feel my face breaking out.”

  “I'll worry if your voice starts to squeak,” Lavonne said.

  They went out to dinner at The Pink House Restaurant and then to a movie. Later they went back to Lavonne's house to sit out on the deck and drink Coronas out of icy bottles.

  “So you went back up north recently?” Lavonne asked. “How was that?”

  “Look, there's Orion,” he said, pointing at the sky. “I picked my daughter up in Chicago and then drove to my mother's place in upstate New York.” He had an eleven-year-old daughter named Katie from his prior marriage. Over dinner, Lavonne had discovered that he'd been married to the same woman for fifteen years, divorced about five years, and saw his daughter several times a month, as well as a month every summer and every other Christmas vacation. His ex-wife had remarried soon after the divorce and moved with her new husband and his three kids to Chicago. Joe had allowed the move, even though it meant less parenting time for him, because he thought it was better for Katie to be in a family environment. That's the kind of father he was.

  “Isn't that Taurus?” Lavonne asked, pointing at the glittering constellation. She'd spent a week at Lutheran Camp when she was a girl and had never forgotten how to read a night sky.

  “Wow,” he said, sipping his beer and looking at her appreciatively. “You must have been a Girl Scout.”

  “Nope. Camper for Christ.”

  “That's not something a Hebrew boy wants to hear.”

  She laughed and picked up her beer. The moon, wreathed in yellow clouds, hung low over the trees. One block over, the neighbor's neon Christmas lights lit up the street like the Las Vegas strip.

  “I don't know if I could sleep with those things on,” he said, pointing at the lights with his beer.

  Lavonne wasn't sure if this was an invitation or just an observation. She cleared her throat and said, “They turn them off about eleven.”

  “Shouldn't they take them down now that Christmas is over?”

  “This is the South. We like to leave our Christmas lights up until Easter.”

  He finished his beer and leaned over and kissed her lightly. “I had a great time tonight,” he said.

  She smiled, amazed at how easy that kiss had felt. She hadn't seen it coming and she appreciated that, she appreciated how smooth and relaxed he had made it seem. He was only three years younger, so his first-date expectations were obviously not as high as Lavonne had worried they might be. “I had a great time, too,” she said.

  “Hey, try not to sound so surprised.”

  She leaned back, trying to see his face in the shadows cast by the dimly glowing porch light. An owl swooped above the shed roof. The moon lay in slivers across the frosty lawn. “I don't get out a lot,” she said. “In fact, you're my first date in a long time.”

  “How long?”

  “Twenty-two years.”

  He grinned, his teeth gleaming in the darkness. “It's a good thing I didn't know that before I came over,” he said. “That's the kind of pressure that could give me hives.”

  Lavonne pulled on her beer and then set it back down. “How about you?”

  “I don't know. About three years, I guess.” He pushed one of the deck chairs out and put his feet up. “I tried dating after the divorce, but it felt weird.”

  “So you're not one of those guys who rushes out after the divorce trying to find a new trophy wife?”

  “Oh, I wouldn't say that,” he said, looking at her steadily.

  Lavonne reddened and lifted her beer. She'd only dated two men her whole life; a quiet shy boy she'd bagged at Lutheran Camp named Carl Imhoff, and Leonard. Neither one had been the type to give compliments. Three weeks after she began dating him in college, Leonard, feeling chivalrous, had told her she had “small feet for a big girl.” It was the best he could do.

  “I didn't mean to embarrass you,” he said.

  She sipped her beer. “Yes, you did.”

  “I figured a woman like you must be used to compliments by now.”

  “A woman never gets used to compliments.” She almost told him about her seventy-five-pound weight loss, but then she didn't. She kind of liked the fact that he thought she'd always been
thin and attractive.

  He looked like he might kiss her again but just then someone started banging on the front door. Lavonne set her beer down on the table. She turned half way around in her chair with her hand resting on her throat. “My God,” she said, “who in the world can that be at this time of night?”

  He was already on his feet. “Stay here,” he said. “I'll find out.”

  EADIE HAD RENTED A CAR AT HARTSVILLE AND DROVE TO ITHACA, arriving a little before midnight. She had planned on surprising Lavonne. She hadn't called her, not because she was afraid she wouldn't have a place to stay, but because she was afraid Lavonne would try to talk her out of leaving Trevor. Even temporarily. Once Eadie was there on her doorstep, it would be harder for Lavonne to scold her and send her home.

  She was surprised, turning down Lavonne's street, to see a strange car in the drive. She figured it might be Ashley, home from college for the weekend. Eadie parked in the street and took her suitcase out of the car. The porch light was on but the rest of the house was dark except for the kitchen. She rang the bell twice but the house was quiet. Finally, in desperation, she pounded on the door.

  It swung open suddenly and she found herself face to face with a strange man. For a moment, given her current emotional state, Eadie wondered if she might have come to the wrong house. But then he said, “Eadie,” and she recognized the man from the park. He stepped back to let her enter.

  “Hello, Joe,” she said.

  Lavonne materialized suddenly in the darkness behind his shoulder. “Goddamn it, Eadie, it's a good thing I don't have a gun or you'd be dead,” she said.

  Eadie dropped her suitcase at her feet and stared at Lavonne who stood there fluffing her hair nervously. “What kind of greeting is that,” Eadie said. She grinned slowly, looking from Lavonne to Joe and back to Lavonne again. “Am I interrupting something?”

  Lavonne did her best to ignore the question. She looked at the suitcase slumped against Eadie's feet. “Are you running away from home?”

  “Sort of.”