The Secret Lives of the Kudzu Debutantes

by Cathy Holton

  He leaned toward her, his palms leaving damp marks on the new granite countertop. “You can stop this anytime you want,” he said in a reasonable voice. “You know how.” He swung around, and padded out of the kitchen on his bare feet, waving at the women in the living room as he passed. Lee Anne Bales waved back. “Y'all don't drink too much!” he shouted, disappearing up the stairwell.

  Since then, Virginia had been unable to dispel the chilling sense that things were spiraling quickly out of control. She had avoided Logan as much as possible since the incident in the kitchen, and had been glad to see his car leaving this morning as he pulled out of the driveway and headed for school. She had decided that, in the future, she would avoid being alone with him, and in public she would put on her brave cheerful face and go about her business as usual. If Logan and his mother thought they could intimidate her into showing her hand, into allowing her carefully constructed façade to crack, then they had another think coming. Virginia had been wearing a mask all her life. She was good at it.

  She would continue in her portrayal of naive grandmotherly goodwill and concern, at least until the final custody hearing, until Nita's life came crashing down around her the way Virginia's had when Boone & Broadwell folded. She had made her plans and she would not be swayed from her course.

  Still, it was hard, at dinner the following evening, to keep her cheerful façade intact. She sat at the dining room table with Redmon and Whitney waiting for Logan to join them. He was downstairs, practicing with his rock- and-roll band in the basement.

  “Them boys are getting good,” Redmon said, cocking his head to listen.

  Virginia thumped the table irritably with her fingers. “Della,” she called, repeatedly, until the black woman stuck her head through the kitchen door. “Did you tell Logan to join us at five-thirty?”

  “I told him,” she said. “He says he won't eat if his friends can't eat, too.”

  “Them boys are welcome,” Redmon said. He'd taken a special interest in Logan and his friends, spending large amounts of time with them down in the basement. Virginia suspected he was providing them with beer and regaling them with tales of his happy boyhood in the Alabama swamplands. Redmon waved his hand at his step-granddaughter. “Sugar, run on down stairs and tell your brother and his friends they can come on up for supper.”

  “Whitney, stay where you are,” Virginia said sharply.

  Whitney snapped her gum and rolled her eyes at the injustice of being used as a pawn. She slid back into her chair.

  Virginia slowly regained her composure. “Really,” she said, unclenching her teeth and smiling at Redmon. “Della has only made enough dinner for four. We can't just ask her at the last minute to provide for two additional guests. Two uninvited guests.”

  Della called amicably from the kitchen, “I can fix another couple of plates.” She stepped through the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron. She looked at Virginia and grinned. “That won't be no trouble at all,” she said.

  Virginia glared at her above the floral centerpiece. Della stood there wiping her hands and humming something that sounded suspiciously like “We Shall Overcome.” A tinny, thumping sound filled the room and Whitney leaned over quickly to answer her cell phone. Virginia's eyes left Della and swung over to her granddaughter, where they rested like a load of steel girders.

  “I'll call you back,” Whitney said sullenly, and hung up.

  Virginia set her teeth and smiled in a pleasant manner. “What have I told you, darling, about talking on the phone at the table?”

  Whitney rolled her eyes toward heaven as if calling upon God to witness what she was made to suffer on a daily basis. “Oh, who cares?” she said. “Logan's not here anyway. We're just sitting around waiting on him so what difference does it make if I talk on the phone?”

  Whitney often behaved like a spoiled brat, which was something Virginia had not picked up on when she only saw the girl a few times a week. “It's not polite to talk on the phone at the table,” Virginia repeated, for what might have been the twentieth time.

  Whitney yawned and plucked at her hair. “Oh, who cares?” she repeated in a tired voice.

  Virginia's hand slapped the table so hard the silverware jumped. “Go and get your brother,” she said sharply. She lifted her glass and sipped her water, struggling to regain her composure. Whitney stared at her and then stood up, threw her napkin on the table, and slouched toward the basement door, swinging her hips in an exaggerated, insolent manner.

  Watching her leave the room, the unfortunate Redmon chuckled.

  “What are you laughing at?” Virginia said. Her sharp eyes pierced him like arrow points.

  He recovered quickly. His face went slack. He had, after all, been married to Virginia for close to nine months and he was an expert now at defensive strategies. “Nothing, honey,” he said mildly.

  After dinner, Virginia and Redmon sat in the living room drinking coffee and watching CNN on the big-screen TV. Charles was supposed to join them later for dessert. Whitney had gone upstairs to study for an English test and Logan and his posse had retreated to the testosterone charged confines of the basement where they were putting the finishing touches on “Kill Me.” Redmon wanted to be down there, Virginia could tell, watching the way he listened to them tuning their guitars, his head turned expectantly toward the basement door. He loved having male company in the house. Despite Virginia's admonitions to the contrary, Logan had brought his friends to the dinner table. Redmon had thoroughly enjoyed himself, joining in the teenagers' noisy banter and grinning from the end of the table like a doting mafia don gazing upon his dangerously dysfunctional family.

  Only Virginia had sat quietly, putting in a cheerful word here and there, trying to ignore the fact that Whitney sat at the table with her knee up or that Logan's table manners seemed deliberately bad. He kept smiling and glancing at her as if daring her to say anything as he speared his pork chop with his fork and tore off large chunks of flesh like a heavily mascaraed Henry VIII wolfing down a leg of lamb.

  Virginia ignored him.

  After a while she stopped paying attention to the table and its ill- mannered occupants. Instead she focused on the room around her. She noted all the changes she had been able to accomplish through desire and careful planning. She looked proudly around the dining room that had been redone in a sand-and-taupe color scheme, complete with plantation shutters on the windows and new furniture in an English Chippendale style. It had taken several months of pleading and sexual fantasy to bring the transformation about, but it was worth it now, she thought, looking around. It would showcase nicely in a television spread. She felt a little tremor of excitement, remembering.

  She had tried for years to get the Gracious Southern Living television show to come and do a segment on her home and they had steadfastly, but politely, declined. She had watched jealously over the years as homes less spectacular than her own, as hostesses less accomplished than she, were showcased in the entertainment segments. It was not until she married Redmon, and he, upon hearing of her unsuccessful attempts to lure them, had made a few phone calls, that the news had come that Gracious Southern Living would be happy to photograph a holiday gathering at the Redmon house.

  Redmon's exact words had been, “Honey, them snotty Gracious Southern Living people will be happy to do a spread on a family throw-down at Casa Redmon!”

  Virginia looked at him in horror. “Oh, for heaven's sake, you didn't call the house that, did you?”

  “Why not?” he said, slapping her fondly on the rear end. “That's what it is. Casa Redmon.”

  Remembering, Virginia shuddered. They were coming two weeks before Thanksgiving to film a show that would air Thanksgiving weekend. She had decided to host a buffet and she would invite not only family members but also various society guests as well (at least those who looked presentable on film). She frowned, wondering how she would be able to pull it off with Logan here. Perhaps she could bribe him. Perhaps she could offer to send him
and his bandmates down to the Florida condo for the weekend. She would get Redmon to offer him a thousand dollars, in cash, to go. Logan would, no doubt, up the ante but she would pay him whatever he wanted. She would allow nothing to spoil her triumphant Gracious Southern Living segment. It was the one thing in Virginia's life, besides her laborious crawl to the top of Ithaca society, that made up for the childhood humiliations she had suffered at the hands of her small-minded provincial classmates. It was a joyous affirmation that she had lived her life the way she was meant to live it.

  The only thing that had come even remotely close to giving her the same sense of joy and accomplishment had been the look on Maureen Boone's face the day Virginia married the old Judge.

  That, too, had been priceless.

  CHARLES WAS LATE, AND WHEN HE FINALLY ARRIVED HIS FACE was flushed and he spoke in a breathless, agitated manner that made Virginia suspect antianxiety medication.

  “I'd offer you a bourbon, son, but Queenie's got me off the hard stuff,” Redmon said. He was leaning back in one of the reclining parts of the sectional with his booted feet up on the footrest, clicking through the channels with his oversized remote control shaped like a bikini-clad female torso. It was next on Virginia's list of things to go, right behind the reclining sectional sofa with the built-in beer cooler.

  She slid her eyes over to Redmon. “I'm sure the boys in the basement could offer you a beer,” she said archly to Charles.

  Redmon tightened his hold on the bikini-clad remote but other than that betrayed no sign of nervousness. Charles appeared not to have heard her. He sat down on a chair and then rose and went to stand at the windows overlooking the back lawn. A high-flying gaggle of geese passed slowly overhead. Charles had just come from a meeting with Nita and he was so excited he couldn't sit down. They had met for coffee and Nita had pleaded with him again to help her get the children back. She had also let him know, in a casual, offhand way, that the redneck carpenter had moved out of the house. Charles had felt an immediate sense of relief and optimism wash over him. He had barely been able to keep himself from wrapping his arms around Nita and picking her up in an exuberant bear hug. Caught up in the ecstasy of the moment, he had promised her he would talk to his mother about dropping the custody case.

  Looking at his hulking shape reflected in the window glass, Virginia said suspiciously, “Charles, what is it?”

  He continued to face the window. He cleared his throat several times. “Mother, I've been thinking. This custody battle might not be the right thing.”

  “Let me guess,” she said flatly. “You've been talking to your ex-wife.” Virginia made a scornful sound, but before she could say anything else, Redmon spoke.

  “I think your boy might be right, honey,” he said, watching her peripherally, the way a cautious man might watch a rattlesnake coiled and ready to strike. “She's a sweet, pretty little thing that never meant a bit of harm to anybody.”

  Virginia shifted her steely gaze to Redmon. “What does being sweet and pretty have to do with anything?” she asked icily.

  Redmon's left eye flickered like a bad circuit. “Nothing of course,” he stammered. “Only she's a good mama, too.”

  “Good enough to take her children and run off with a man thirteen years her junior just because she felt like it. Good enough to destroy a sixteen- year marriage.” There was a flapping sound in Virginia's head like a flock of startled bats. Her face felt warm.

  “She wasn't in her right mind,” Charles said stubbornly, still not turning around. “He enticed her to leave. That carpenter made her leave.”

  “Oh for heaven's sake, Charles, don't be such a fool.” It was hard, sometimes, believing he was her child. It was enough to make Virginia question genetic probabilities and long-established theories on nurture versus nature.

  Redmon swung his grizzled head around and looked at her with a strange expression on his face. His eye stopped fluttering. His defiant cowlick stuck out behind his head like a bird-dog's tail. “If I didn't know better, Queenie, I'd say you had a hard streak the size of Alabama running through you,” he said gruffly. “I'd say you was coldhearted as an ex-wife's lawyer.”

  The sound in her head was a roaring clamor of flapping, black-winged creatures. Virginia ducked and scurried back inside herself. She wasn't ready to reveal that much of her true nature to Redmon. At least not yet. She decided on a different tact. “What choice did I have?” she asked, raising her little hands helplessly. She turned her pleading eyes on her husband. “I told you before. Once the deal with Mr. Motes fell through she would have taken the child and I would never have seen her again. She would have blamed me for what happened with the State of Georgia,” she noticed him looking at her curiously and she hurried on, “although, of course, it wasn't my fault. She would have blamed me anyway. She always blamed me for everything.”

  Redmon set his jaw obstinately. “She's a sweet girl,” he said, shaking his head. “I don't think she would have done something like that. Keep the grandkids away from you, I mean.”

  Virginia stared at him with a look of utter disdain. She appeared to be on the verge of a full-blown seizure. “Sweet girl?” she said scornfully. “Have you forgotten what that sweet girl and her sweet friends did to you and Charles and that idiot Zibolsky out in Montana?”

  That shut him up.

  “That was more Eadie Boone's and Lavonne Zibolsky's doing,” Charles said, swinging around from the window. “Nita would never have done any of that on her own.”

  Virginia snorted. “Well, if you want to believe that, go ahead.”

  “You never liked her,” he said.

  “I knew she wasn't the right girl for you.”

  “She was the right girl then, and she's the right girl now,” Charles said, scowling.

  “Don't be ridiculous,” she cried. “Nita's not going to come back to you just because you retrieve her children. Any idiot can see she's not in love with you.”

  Charles chose to ignore this comment. He thought it best not to tell his mother he had invited Nita to Virginia's televised pre-Thanksgiving buffet and she had accepted.

  Redmon picked up the shapely remote and turned the sound up on the TV. “Damn, Queenie, why don't you just drive a stake through the poor bastard's heart? Why don't you just cut off his legs at the knee and feed him to the hogs?”

  Virginia took a long series of deep breaths. A commercial for Fast Eddie's Auto Sales came on the TV. “No credit, no problem,” Fast Eddie promised. Virginia panted like a rabbit caught in a trap. Her bosom rose and fell until it gradually grew still. Her top lip quivered and then lay flat. “I know it seems cruel, darling.” She let her eyes mist over for effect. The flapping in her head had subsided now to a mild fluttering. “But sometimes a mother's got to do what a mother's got to do.” She smiled gently at Charles. “Like a badger. She protects her young at all costs.”

  “I thought badgers ate their young,” Charles said sullenly, but his mother had already turned away, and apparently didn't hear him.

  SOMEWHERE AROUND THE END OF OCTOBER, EADIE AND Lavonne began realizing just how hopeless their task of hunting down Virginia's phantom baby was. They checked and rechecked every lead revealed by Nita's magic spreadsheet, but nothing panned out. They were all dead ends. Eadie didn't give up easily but it was beginning to look like they'd have better luck finding the Holy Grail than hunting down a baby Virginia may or may not have had. But Nita refused to give up. She put her head down and proceeded with her county-by-county search. Lavonne and Eadie became steadily less encouraged.

  And then, just when it seemed things were completely hopeless, Nita got a break. She was surfing through Internet websites featuring archival photos of long-defunct homes for unwed mothers, and she came across a photo that made her stop. It was taken at the Brainerd Home for Unwed Mothers in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and it showed a group of solemn- looking young women gathered around a long table. They appeared to be sewing. The photo was black and white and grainy with
age. It was difficult to make out the faded background, but it was one of the young women's faces that had caught Nita's attention. She was in profile, and appeared to be turning away from the camera when the photo was snapped. The date scrawled across the bottom of the photo was March 5, 1951.

  A week later, Nita called Lavonne and Eadie. When they showed up thirty minutes later, she had already made a shaker of Cosmopolitans.

  “What are we celebrating?” Eadie said, when she saw the shaker and three martini glasses in the middle of the kitchen table.

  “This,” Nita said, handing her the photo she had printed. They huddled together under the overhead lights, studying the young women. Lavonne went to her purse and got her reading glasses. She put them on and peered at the photo again.

  “What exactly are we looking at?” she asked.

  “Here,” Nita said impatiently, jabbing the photo with her index finger. “Who does this remind you of?”

  “She looks oddly familiar,” Eadie said slowly.

  “Of course she does. She looks like Virginia.”

  “No.” Eadie shook her head. “Not Virginia. Someone else.”

  “Oh for crying out loud, can't you see?” Nita said. “That's Virginia. That's her.”

  “You can't really see her face,” Lavonne said. “She's turning away from the camera.”

  “Exactly.”

  Eadie glanced at Lavonne and raised one eyebrow.

  “Here,” Nita said, handing her a photo of Virginia and Charles as a baby.

  Eadie compared the two. “I don't know,” she said doubtfully.

  “Look at the date,” Nita said, jabbing again with her finger. “It fits.”

  “Were you able to come up with a list of names?” Lavonne said, handing the photos back to Nita. “Of the unwed mothers, I mean.”

  “They were only listed by first name and last initial,” Nita said, rummaging around in a stack of papers on the table. “From what I gather this wasn't exactly a legal operation.” She found what she was looking for and held it up. “Look at this. Jennie K.”