The Red Hat Society's Queens of Woodlawn Avenue

by Regina Hale Sutherland

  “I’m on the committee, too, this year.” Linda drew a club on the pad next to what she’d written. “I can pull some strings, but you have to do your part.”

  As much as I appreciated her willingness to champion me, the very thought of tackling the last leg of my social climb under my current conditions made my stomach hurt. At the higher levels of involvement, volunteers were expected to give more than time and energy—they had to offer up copious amounts of money as well. Without Jim’s checkbook at hand, I had no way to meet that expectation. My invitation to the first planning luncheon hadn’t been lost just because I was single.

  “I don’t really think I’m the one to reverse years of social practice.” The muffled laughter, the whispers, the promised invitations that never arrived. I’d seen enough divorcees take a tumble to know what I would be up against, even with Linda’s support. Sure, if I could snag a bigger catch than Jim in the next two weeks, all might be forgiven. But a single woman chairing the Cannon Ball? It was never going to happen.

  Linda, though, didn’t look like she was going to take no for an answer. “It’s late. Don’t decide anything tonight. In fact, why don’t I come over Monday morning? I’ll take you shopping.”

  “Why would I need to go shopping?” Plus, it wasn’t like I had any actual money to go shopping with.

  “You’re going to buy a smart new suit to wear to the first planning meeting for the ball.”

  “But—”

  “It’s not an extravagance. It’s an investment. In your social standing. For your business, even.”

  “But I don’t have a—”

  “Not yet,” Linda soothed, “but with Jane behind you, that won’t take long. Besides, I know where I can get you a really good deal on the most amazing clothes in town.” She winked one of those green eyes at me. Then she passed the pad over to Grace. “There’s only one thing left, then.”

  I couldn’t imagine what that might be. The elderly Grace was the Queen of Spades. What that had to do with planning for my future, I couldn’t say.

  “We can get to work on your garden right away. It’s gone to pot since Flossie’s children put her in that nursing home.” Grace pursed her lips in disapproval. “They never had the proper appreciation for that garden.” She jotted down her contribution on the pad and drew a warbling spade beside it.

  Gardening? Now I was really sorry I’d had that second helping of squash casserole. “Not a great idea.” I couldn’t return Grace’s smile. “I’ve got the world’s brownest thumb.”

  Grace was undeterred. “There’s no such thing, dear. All you need is a little help. I can teach you what you need to know.”

  “But—” How had this happened? How had they wrenched what little control I had left over my life out of my hands so quickly and efficiently? Was there something in the casserole besides squash?

  “It would certainly add to the value of your house.” Jane, as a realtor, would be the one to know. “Landscaping always does.”

  “Digging in the dirt will do you a world of good,” Grace added. “Best way I know to bury your grief.”

  Her frank acknowledgment of my bereavement both stung and soothed. “Okay, okay. I surrender.” I threw my hands up in the air. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you the first time I kill a cactus.”

  “We have your goals, then.” Jane ripped the list off the score pad and pushed it across the table toward me.

  “But—” I looked at all the notes written there. I hadn’t agreed to all of that, had I? Evidently my assent wasn’t necessary, though. From the determined looks on the faces of the other Queens of Woodlawn Avenue, I wasn’t going to get away with hiding in my house anymore. These ladies clearly weren’t the type to let me continue my Krispy Kreme Pity Parties in solitude.

  I knew I wasn’t ready for all they were proposing, but it felt good to have their support. That feeling had been missing from my life since before Jim walked out the door and drove away in his BMW Roadster. How had it happened, over the years, that the one person I most enjoyed spending time with became the person I saw the least? But Jim had his practice, his patients, his hospital responsibilities and the occasional teaching stint at Van-derbilt Medical School. I’d lost myself in the children, the church, PTA, Scouts, and sports. Like continental drift, our estrangement had been immeasurable to the eye, but slowly, over time, the gaps between us had grown steadily wider. “I’m not sure what to say.”

  “You don’t have to say anything,” Linda squeezed my shoulder. “You’re one of us now.”

  And that’s the moment, with Linda’s simple words of acceptance and the concurring nods of Grace and Jane, when I truly felt I’d become an official member of the Queens of Woodlawn Avenue.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Taking Tricks

  I awoke the next morning with yet another carbohydrate-induced hangover, but also with the knowledge that my life had very nearly been hijacked by three would-be fairy godmothers in red hats. Sure, last night, all four of us had some fantasy that I could somehow be gotten back on track. But in the light of that April Sunday morning, as I nursed a cup of Sanka on the cracked concrete patio and tried to pretend it was a nonfat latte from Starbucks, I knew otherwise. Building my own business, chairing a prestigious charity event, even reclaiming the tattered garden where I sat—all were far beyond my limited resources.

  The phone rang inside the house, and I reluctantly stood up and went inside to answer it. The old princess phone I’d dug out of Courtney’s things didn’t have a Caller ID screen, I had to answer, though, because it might be one of the kids.

  “Hello?”

  “Ellie? It’s Jim.”

  My stomach sank. “Good morning.” I forced myself to sound cordial, if not particularly warm. I hadn’t seen him since the last mediation session several weeks before. How unfair that the rich timbre of his voice still resonated in my heart as it had done from the first time I met him.

  There was a long moment of silence as I walked back outside and waited for him to say something. Finally, around the tightness in my throat, I said, “Did you need something?”

  “Um, well…”

  It had been a long time since I’d heard Jim utter such tentative syllables. In fact, the last time he sounded so awkward was right before he proposed. The memory of that moonlit night, his hands holding mine as he looked into my eyes, was too painful to be revived, so I wrapped the phone cord tightly around my finger, hoping the pain would keep me from drowning in the past.

  “What is it? Is it one of the kids?” His terseness scared me.

  “No, no. Nothing like that.”

  I could hear Our Lady of the Hooters singing Britney Spears in the background. The fact that she had the same musical tastes as my twenty-year-old daughter might have made me feel culturally superior, but it also made me feel old.

  “What’s the matter, Jim?” As my fear receded, impatience took its place.

  “Nothing’s wrong. I just thought I should be the first to…That you should hear it from…”

  When had my socially adept, well-educated husband lost the ability to formulate a complete sentence? Clearly the Hooters hottie had taken a toll on his IQ.

  “Hear what?”

  “I just thought you should know that, well, Tiffany and I are getting married.”

  Well, of course they were. I couldn’t suppress the bark of laughter that erupted from my throat. But the dark humor was a cover for a deeper, lethal pain. I looked down at the cracked linoleum beneath my feet, wondering how I managed to remain upright. Could the black hole that had just opened up in my midsection spread to the floor below me? And here I thought I’d already found the bottom of my emotional pit.

  “Congratulations, Jim. I always knew you had it in you. You’ve finally made a total ass of yourself.”

  “C’mon, Ellie,” he said in that tone of hurt/annoyance that had crept into our marriage over time. “You don’t have to be that way. You’re going to have to accept what’s happ
ened.”

  When pigs fly, I thought, but it was a sentiment I kept to myself. “Pardon me if it takes me a bit longer to forget about the last twenty-five years, but one of us had a significant head start.”

  “If you’re going to be that way, I’m hanging up.”

  “Since I didn’t ask you to call in the first place, that will really be no hardship for me.” I reached over and opened a cabinet to pull out a glass.

  “Was there anything else?” I really made an effort to sound detached. In an attempt to make things seem normal, I reached into the refrigerator for a pitcher of iced tea.

  “Just a small thing.”

  Right. I poured the tea into the glass. The last “small thing” Jim had dumped on me was the news that he was taking me off his health insurance plan. At the moment, if I were to be hit by a car, I’d have to be left on the side of the road like a stray dog.

  “How small?”

  “It’s about my alimony check. With all the wedding expenses, it’s going to be a few weeks late.”

  “A few weeks?” I hated it when I shrieked. After the last time we went to divorce mediation, I’d sworn not to anymore. But I couldn’t help it. It was gut instinct, born of terror.

  “Jeez, Ellie, why don’t you do that a little louder so the whole neighborhood can hear you?”

  I swallowed, took a sip of tea, and tried to remember that somewhere underneath this walking midlife crisis was the man I’d loved, and who had loved me, for most of my adult life.

  “When can you send it?” The only bright spot about tying up most of my available cash in this new house was that I had a month’s grace period before I had to make the first payment. Jim, though, didn’t need to know that.

  “We’re getting married in June. I’ll get it to you after that. I promise.”

  “June?” It was April. “And what am I supposed to live on for the next three months?”

  I could hear him bristle through the phone line. You would have thought by that point he’d have learned to avoid the word “promise” within my hearing.

  “If it’s more than two weeks late, I’ll take legal action.” If only my heart could be iced down like the glass of tea in my hand.

  “Ellie, don’t say that. We both know you haven’t got the money.”

  “Then I’ll pawn something. Or I’ll borrow it. I don’t think you want your partners to know you’re a deadbeat.”

  If I had to end up garnishing his paycheck, everyone in his medical practice would know, because the bookkeeper was the biggest gossip since Rona Barrett and she was on my side—her husband had dumped her for a pole dancer. Amazing how shared suffering created those bonds.

  “Okay, okay. It’ll be there on time.” He paused for a moment. “I was hoping you’d be at least a little happy for me.”

  “Then you’re a bigger idiot than I thought.”

  The weird thing about everything that had happened since the day of Jim’s big announcement was that he still wanted my approval. At first it had infuriated me. Then it galled me. Now I was starting to see it for the pathetic need to shirk responsibility that it was, the emotional equivalent of his beloved Harley-Davidson. I wondered, not for the first time, how other couples managed to navigate their midlife crises and still be married. Clearly there was some secret formula to which Jim and I hadn’t been privy.

  “Good-bye, Jim.” There was no point in prolonging the agony. Or the anger. He mumbled a good-bye of his own, and I hung up the phone. The agony receded, but the anger remained. Suddenly, I craved a Twinkie with every last fiber of my being.

  No. I pounded my hand on the kitchen counter, hoping the physical pain would replace the emotional scourging. I had to stop. I wanted to stop. With a sob, I sank down, my back scraping the cabinet handles on the way down, until I rested on the scarred linoleum.

  I couldn’t stop the thoughts swirling through my head. I couldn’t stop wondering what I’d done wrong. What I should have done differently. How I could possibly have prevented myself from growing older.

  That thought hurt the most.

  Because no matter what, turning fifty was the one thing I couldn’t have changed.

  Linda St. John was a woman of her word. She showed up at ten o’clock on Monday morning, looking chic and polished in a linen sheath dress and strappy sandals. I couldn’t remember when I’d last had the energy to iron linen or the well-maintained feet to carry off such dressy sandals. Linda’s pedicure glowed brightly enough to signal the space station. I wiggled my own pathetic toes in my plastic Target thongs. How could I even think of doing what Linda wanted me to do? But after Jim’s phone call the day before, after I’d dried my tears and scraped myself off the floor, I had acknowledged to myself that I was tempted by her offer of help. My inner Amazon, the long-buried warrior woman who was raging mad, well, she had apparently begun to stir down there in the tomb where I’d incarcerated her.

  “Come on.” Linda stood just inside the front door. “We’re going shopping.”

  “I still don’t understand how one outfit’s going to save my social standing.”

  Linda smiled. “You’ll see.”

  “I may need a minute to get ready.” Since Jim’s phone call, I’d come to at least one conclusion. I didn’t want to continue to sit home consuming vats of Rotel-and-Velveeta cheese dip and speculating just how gaudy Tiffany’s wedding invitations were likely to be. If Linda could help me keep my spot on the planning committee for the Cannon Ball, maybe I should give it a try. I couldn’t humiliate myself any more than Jim had already done. Well, okay, I could, but at least it would be at my own hands and I would be the instrument of my own downfall, not simply an unwilling victim of another woman’s DD-cup bra.

  “Give me a few minutes to change, and I’ll be ready,” I said to Linda. She nodded, and I headed back to my tiny bedroom and my even more minuscule closet.

  I’d always heard that Linda St. John knew two things: how to manipulate people and how to dress them. I wanted to take advantage of her talents, but I also didn’t want to be evicted from my squalid little house when it came time to pay the mortgage, assuming the arrival date of Jim’s alimony check wouldn’t do that for me. I would rather have a roof over my head than silk shantung from the new spring line on my back.

  So, of course, half an hour later, Linda led me into Elliott’s, the most glamorous store in town, like she owned the place. I slunk in behind her like I planned to shoplift a few items while no one was looking. Furtive is as furtive does. Well, at least I could look around, and then maybe we could go find a comparable designer knockoff at TJ Maxx.

  An elegant saleswoman named Carol introduced herself, and she and Linda hugged like long-lost college roommates. During my marriage, I’d tended to be more Chico’s than chic for a number of reasons. One, I liked to hide my lack of a bustline behind draping tops and jackets. And, two, because I’d spent most of my clothing allowance on our home, making it beautiful and comfortable so Jim and the kids couldn’t wait to come home at the end of the day.

  “A suit, I think.” Linda gave me the once-over with a practiced eye. “But not too business-y. Very ’ladies-who-lunch.’”

  Carol nodded and looked me up and down. Then she took my hand and led me to the front of the store so she could study my complexion in the harsh daylight streaming through the plate glass windows. She turned me this way, then that. I wished I’d kept that last appointment at Illusions to touch up the blonde highlights in my otherwise ordinary brown hair. Salon visits, too, were now a thing of the past.

  “Blue,” she finally pronounced. “This way.”

  She spun on her stiletto heel and headed toward the back of the store. “Follow me,” she ordered over her shoulder, and I did just that, too intimidated not to.

  At Elliott’s, the price tag amount increased with each square foot you progressed into the store. At my best guess, we were already twelve feet beyond my budget. Oh, who was I kidding. We’d passed my budget out in the parking lot.
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  Carol went all the way to the back, and I saw where she was headed long before we got there. The suit—a stunning confection of robin’s egg blue—hung like a crucifix above the holy altar of fashion. Any woman who wasn’t legally blind would have fallen to her knees and worshipped that suit. And there was no way the price tag had less than four numbers to the left of the decimal point.

  “Perfect.” Linda nodded with approval. Carol pulled a carbon copy of the suit in my size from the rack on the wall.

  “If you’ll follow me.” She walked away, and I understood that it was a command, not an invitation.

  The changing room was bigger than my new bedroom and far more elegant. I slipped out of my clothes and into the suit, knowing all the while that it was certain to fit perfectly, the way that clothes you can’t afford always do. There was no point looking at the price tag. Slowly, I turned toward the full-length mirror.

  The suit echoed the classic lines of Chanel, with three-quarter-length sleeves and a tightly fitted waist. Despite my recent junk food binge, the skirt clung to my curves in all the right places. The tiny ruffle around the lapels and the slightly fluted skirt made me look thoroughly feminine. If I died on the spot, I would want to be buried in that suit. It looked so good I would easily have agreed to spend eternity wearing it. Figured.

  “Come out and let me see,” Linda called.

  I drew a deep breath and headed out of the changing area. Not only was I going to have to do battle with my own common sense, I was also going to have to convince Linda that there was no way I could possibly afford the suit.