by Cathy Holton
Eadie tapped her fingers against the table to give Lavonne a few minutes to think about it. She smiled sweetly and said, “Do you want your guests standing around critiquing the food or do you want them down on the floor gatoring to ‘Gimme a Pig’s Foot and a Bottle of Beer’?”
“Point taken,” Lavonne said.
Nita played nervously with her silverware. Eadie smiled and closed her purse. She hoped Lavonne would remember later how much help she had been in planning the party and forgive her for the scene she was planning on creating. It was unfortunate that the party-crashing had to take place on Lavonne’s watch, but it was unavoidable. Eadie lifted the glass of merlot to her lips, frowned, and then set it down with a sharp clanking sound against the table. “Oh shit, what’s she doing here?”
Lavonne swiveled around to see who Eadie was staring at. Nita glanced up, her eyes skittering away from the front door, across the rose-colored walls, and coming to rest finally on the pine-planked floor.
Virginia Broadwell stood at the hostess desk. She saw Nita and began to make her way across the crowded restaurant, a small slim woman with a spine as straight and rigid as rebar. She nodded slightly, regally, to people she knew, ignoring those she didn’t.
“Ya’ll, I’m so sorry,” Nita said, still looking at the floor. “Charles made me ask her.”
Virginia reached the table and stood waiting for the waiter to pull out her chair. She smiled pleasantly at Eadie and Lavonne, but it was obvious she didn’t mean it. “Hello, Eadie,” she said, sliding into her seat.
Eadie picked up her wineglass. She thought, Hello Satan. She said, “Hello, Virginia.”
Virginia nodded. “Lavonne.”
“Virginia.” Lavonne had disliked Virginia Broadwell from the moment she first saw her presiding over a meeting of the Ithaca Garden Club, smiling in her false, pleasant manner and politely squashing the suggestions of the new members like the benevolent dictator she was. Virginia was a snob, a fact that made her greatly appreciated in the small, closed social set of Ithaca, Georgia. Her great-great-grandfather’s property had been nothing more than an overgrown island in the middle of the Black Warrior River, his slaves no more than a handful of ragged, scrawny men who would hail the passing steamboats for food. Virginia’s great-grandfather had lost the island in a card game. Her father had worked for the railroad. The old-moneyed aristocracy of Ithaca laughed at Virginia. They laughed at her snobbish manners, and her big house filled with animal trophies, and her dead husband, the judge, who was himself an upstart, his own grandfather having been nothing more than a tenant farmer.
Virginia was ridiculed by the old aristocracy, but she was revered by the people she detested the most, fellow members of the Ithaca Garden Club and the Junior League, many of whom hailed from places north of the Mason-Dixon but who, once settled in the old mansions lining Lee Street, became even more fiercely loyal to the ideals and prejudices of the Old South than their native-South neighbors. Tacky Yankee Corporate People, Virginia called them. They were the scourge of the new South, Virginia maintained, worse even than the carpetbaggers had been. She had never forgiven DuPont for opening up a plant on the outskirts of town ten years ago and bringing with it prosperity and droves of Tacky Yankee Corporate People who came from nothing yet lived in big houses, drove expensive cars, and sent their children to the best private school in town.
“I hope I haven’t kept ya’ll waiting,” Virginia said, unfolding her napkin on her lap. She was dressed impeccably in an Ann Taylor suit and dark pumps. Her hair was cut in a fashionable bob. “Have you already ordered?” Without waiting for a reply, she waved the menu away and said to the waiter, “I’ll have a Caesar salad and a glass of sweet tea.”
He looked at Eadie and smiled. “Another merlot?”
“I’m going to need one of those big frozen margaritas,” Eadie said, holding up two hands to show him the size. “The bigger, the better.”
“You better bring me one, too,” Lavonne said, closing up her Daytimer.
Virginia leaned her elbows on the table, laced her well-manicured fingers together and rested her chin there, looking expectantly from one to the other. “So what did I miss?” she asked. She smiled broadly, showing a row of sharp little teeth. When no one answered, she put her hands in her lap and said brightly, “Well, I’m sorry I’m late but I had a meeting at Bitsy Manchester’s. She has a new Cambodian yard boy, and honey, her yard is just lovely. Not a weed in sight. Roses everywhere. Dogwood trees that look like they sprang up overnight. You should see about getting yourself one, Nita.” She turned to her daughter-in-law, patting her arm the way you’d pat a colicky baby. “You could use some help with your lawn. You could use some help with the weeds and that brown mold you have growing all over you rhododendrons.” She stopped patting Nita. Nita slid her hand into her lap. “I wonder where you go to find a Cambodian yard boy?” Virginia mused to no one in particular.
“Gee, I don’t know,” Lavonne said. “How about Cambodia?”
Virginia pursed her lips and let her eyes rest, briefly, on Lavonne. She leaned over the table and said, lowering her voice confidentially, “So, have you found a caterer yet?” She pretended to be concerned but secretly, of course, she hoped they had not. She had overheard Charles two weeks ago bragging to someone that the firm’s party basically ran itself and she had immediately decided to teach him a lesson. Virginia had handled the details for this party for the last fifteen years, and it had been a monumental and thankless task ripe with the potential for disaster. She could only hope that this year Charles would discover this for himself. Perhaps it would make him more grateful and less boastful. When she heard he had turned the planning over to Nita and Lavonne she had secretly crowed with delight. Everyone knew there were no decent caterers in this town and to hire one from Atlanta required months of advance scheduling. Virginia had promptly fired the Atlanta caterer when she decided to teach Charles a lesson (she had lied to him and said it was the caterer who backed out at the last minute). Now all she had to do to succeed was pretend to be helpful, and sit around and watch Nita and Lavonne turn the party into a disaster.
“We’re working on it,” Lavonne said.
Virginia sighed. “I’m so sorry I had to withdraw for health reasons and then that idiotic caterer in Atlanta backed out at the last minute. I had no idea Charles would expect ya’ll to come up with a caterer at the last minute, it really doesn’t seem fair at all, and what good, good sports ya’ll are being about this whole wretched affair.”
No one said anything. The waiter brought their drinks. Virginia glanced around the table to get a good look at what everyone was wearing. Virginia was very particular about appearances. She was one of those Southern women who cannot imagine why a woman would let herself go the way Lavonne had let herself go. To give way to obesity suggested deep-seated unhappiness and MoonPie binges. It hinted at poor breeding and a tendency toward white-trashery. Seeing as how Lavonne was a Yankee, Virginia figured she might not know all this. Virginia figured it was her duty to suggest methods for improvement. “You know, Lucy Metcalfe went on that Atkins diet and lost sixty pounds,” she said to Nita.
“Lucy Metcalfe went to Atlanta and had her stomach stapled,” Eadie said, lifting her big margarita. “Any idiot can do that.” She grimaced and sipped her drink. She’d had about all she could take of Virginia Broadwell. Another ten minutes and things were going to get ugly.
Virginia was accustomed to ignoring Eadie Boone. “Lavonne, have you lost weight?” she said, smiling sweetly. “You look like you have.”
Unperturbed, Lavonne buttered another roll and took a big bite before answering. In June, she had gone on Weight Watchers and gained ten pounds. Then in August she went on the Palm Beach Diet and gained fifteen more. If she kept dieting at this rate, she would put on forty pounds by Christmas. “No, Virginia,” she said finally, still chewing. “I haven’t lost weight. Thanks for asking though.”
Eadie touched her big margarita glass to the rim of Lavonne’s glas
s. She motioned for the waiter to bring them another round.
It made Nita nervous the way Eadie and Lavonne were draining their big drinks. The last time Eadie and Lavonne drank tequila around Virginia, they’d gone out to her house in the middle of the night, stolen her lawn jockey, and painted him to look like Bozo the Clown, then returned him to his rightful place in the middle of the front flower bed. It had taken Nita a week of steady pleading to talk Charles and Virginia out of hiring a private investigator to find out who defiled the jockey.
“So what’s your plan for finding a caterer?” the irrepressible Virginia said, trying to sound like a coconspirator. She rested her sharp little chin on her palm and looked from one to the other.
“My plan is to get the hell out of town,” Lavonne said. “My plan is to throw my suitcase into the back of my car and head for the beach.”
Eadie thought this was funny. “Now you’re talking,” she said. “I’ll go with you.”
“I haven’t been to the beach in so long,” Nita said wistfully. The last time had been six months ago for their sixteenth wedding anniversary. Remembering, Nita felt a vibration of guilt in the pit of her stomach. Charles had ordered room service and they’d eaten on their balcony overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Maybe the condoms weren’t even his, Nita thought suddenly. Maybe he’d found them on the ground and picked them up and put them in his pocket.
Virginia looked at her daughter-in-law as if she were noticing her for the first time. “Nita,” she said sharply. “What’s wrong with you? You look terrible.”
Nita blanched and knocked her water glass over. “Charles hung his hunting jacket in my closet,” she blurted out, mopping the water with her napkin, “and I had to move it.” She looked around the table. They were all watching her now, Lavonne and Eadie above the rims of their big-as-a-cereal-bowl margarita glasses, and Virginia with a pinched expression on her face, as if she’d just caught a whiff of something unsavory.
“Maybe you should try sleeping pills,” Virginia said.
Nita said, “Sleeping pills?”
The frustration of watching this exchange grew inside Lavonne like a tumor. She’d been watching it for years, Virginia, cruel and manipulative, and Nita, soft and yielding as butter. Lavonne felt Nita’s life would be better if just once she told her mother-in-law to fuck off. Except for Nita’s steadfast refusal to join the Junior League, Lavonne could not think of a single time Nita had openly opposed Virginia. She took everything Virginia had to dish out, and never said a word in her own defense.
“Maybe you should try Prozac.”
“Prozac’s not the answer for everything, Virginia,” Lavonne said.
“It’s the answer for most things,” Virginia said.
“Well, you should know,” Eadie said.
“I don’t have to sit here and be criticized by an adulteress,” Virginia snapped, feeling her fa¸cade of sympathetic good cheer beginning to slide.
“Well, fuck me,” Eadie said.
“I think that’s her point,” Lavonne said, sipping her drink.
Nita had had enough of this bickering. She couldn’t handle open conflict. She put her hands on the table, palms down, and leaned forward slightly. “Maybe we should just concentrate on making this the best firm party ever,” she said with the forced fervor of a cheerleader.
Lavonne smiled and said, “Hear, hear.” Virginia took a deep breath and regained her composure. Eadie sipped her margarita and thought, Oh, this’ll definitely be the best party ever. They’ll be talking about this one for years.
The waiter brought their food and they settled down to eating. While they ate, Virginia droned on about the Ithaca Cotillion Ball she had attended two weeks ago. The Ithaca Cotillion Ball was one of the oldest debutante balls in south Georgia. People from all over rural Georgia sent their daughters to be presented here, people from towns like Moundsville and Sandy Hook and Shubuta. In Eadie and Nita’s day, the only way you could be presented was if your grandmother had been presented or you were nominated by some rogue chairwoman who was herself a member of the committee but who didn’t follow the traditional rules of decency and good breeding by allowing new girls in. Mothers worked furiously for years to assure their daughters a berth on the coveted list of twenty-five debs. But over the years the prestige of the ball had begun to diminish. Some of the girls whose grandmothers had been debutantes didn’t care about such things now. They refused to participate, leaving room for daughters of doctors and lawyers and corporate executives who were swarming into Ithaca like a horde of nouveau riche barbarians. Getting an invitation to attend the ball was almost as hard as getting an invitation to be a debutante. Lavonne had lived in Ithaca eighteen years and had never been invited. Nita and Eadie had only been twice. Lavonne guessed, unless her daughters somehow managed to be asked as debs, she might spend her entire life without ever attending a debutante ball.
“I don’t even think we have debutantes in Cleveland,” Lavonne said suddenly.
“Probably not,” Virginia murmured.
“Or if we do I don’t know about it.” Even after eighteen years of living in the South, Lavonne was still trying to work out the complexities of the social scene. Southern society could be broken down into two broad groups: those who were debs, and those who weren’t; those who went to private school, and those who didn’t. When someone down here asked “What school did you go to?” they weren’t asking about college.
“The South is a place of tradition and culture,” Virginia reminded them, lifting her sharp little chin.
“Tradition and culture,” Lavonne said, raising her glass in a toast. Eadie grinned and lifted her glass. Nita put her face in her hands. “I’m reminded of it every time I’m asked to mash an elevator button or carry someone to the store,” Lavonne said. “Every time I’m asked to chunk somebody the remote control.”
“Or tote a watermelon to a picnic,” Eadie said. “Or whomp somebody up side of the head to get their attention.”
Lavonne grinned and tapped her glass against Eadie’s. “I’m reminded of the tradition and culture that is the South every time I drive to the Git n’ Gallop or the Honk ’n Holler to pick up a quart of milk.”
Virginia had had enough of this conversation. Lavonne was obviously intoxicated. Virginia could tell from looking at the woman that she’d been sampling the frozen margaritas a little too freely. Virginia had been raised to avoid open conflict, she had been taught that no matter how deep an antagonism may run, surface civility must be maintained at all costs. Virginia could hug an enemy to her bosom with one hand, and disembowel her with the other. This was obviously not a skill taught up North.
Virginia lifted her chin slightly and turned to her daughter-in-law. “Nita, did your yard man finish the pool house?” She took her napkin out of her lap and placed it on the table. “You know Charles won’t like it if there are scraps of lumber everywhere. You know he likes the yard to look nice the week of the party.”
“Jimmy Lee finishes up today,” Nita said, remembering. He was finishing up even as she sat here. She’d probably never see him again after today. She picked up her spoon and gazed down into her tomato basil soup. She felt light-headed. Her stomach bounced around her rib cage like a hyperactive gymnast. She wondered if her dream of little blue fishes had something to do with the condoms she’d found in her husband’s hunting jacket. She wondered if she was coming down with the flu.
“Jimmy Lee?” Virginia said, frowning.
“Jimmy Lee,” Lavonne said. “The south Georgia yard boy.”
Nita swirled her soup with her spoon. Jimmy Lee should be loading his tools into his truck right now. She stared into her soup like she was staring into a crystal ball. She could see him reflected there, standing with the sun shining on his dark glossy hair. If she hurried maybe she could get home before he left.
Virginia clucked her tongue and looked around the crowded restaurant. She wished now she hadn’t overheard Charles and gotten her feelings hurt. For one brie
f moment she wished she hadn’t turned the party over to her daughter-in-law and her drunken friends. It was sure to be a disaster, and then Virginia would have to spend weeks explaining to everyone who’d listen that she hadn’t had a thing to do with it. “Look,” she said to Lavonne, opening her purse and taking out a business card. “Call this woman. She works out of her home in Valdosta. I haven’t used her, of course, but I understand she did the Chasen girl’s engagement party when the girl got herself in the family way and her parents didn’t have time to plan a decent function.”
Lavonne could feel a muscle twitching above her right eye. She felt like someone had tied a plastic bag around her head. She had a sudden vision of her mother lying dead on the frozen ground, a basket of wet clothes strewn around her like the petals of some monstrous flower. “She won’t use it,” her father had said, when Lavonne asked him why he hadn’t hooked up the new dryer she’d brought her mother for Christmas. “Why hook it up when she won’t use it.”
“Do you want it or not?” Virginia repeated, holding the card out to Lavonne like she was offering entrails to a rabid dog.
Lavonne shook her head. “Keep it,” she said. “I’ll find my own damn caterer.”
CHAPTER
* * *
FOUR
ON THE WAY home from the lunch meeting, Lavonne decided to stop at Shapiro’s Bakery for a cream cheese brownie. She was feeling depressed and anxious and she figured a cream cheese brownie might be just the thing to take her mind off the party. The traffic was light and she found a spot in front of the bakery and parked.
Lavonne hadn’t even known there were Jews in the South when she first moved here. She had been amazed to learn that Dixie Jews went by names like Junior and Bubba and prided themselves on being Southerners, first, and Jews, second. The South was like that. It could take in any ethnic group, culture, or religious sect and pretty soon they’d be saying “ya’ll” and fixing greens and corn bread for supper. Maybe it was the drinking water filtered out of murky lakes where alligators slept, maybe it was the sultry, siesta-prone climate or the way the jasmine smelled blooming on a moonlit night. Whatever the reason, within a generation of arriving here from Bialystok in 1886, the Shapiros were as Southern as they come.