by Cathy Holton
He began to load his tools into his toolbox, picking up scraps of lumber and dropping them into the burn barrel. Nita sat there, trying not to feel self-conscious while she watched him clean up, not sure if she should go into the house or offer to help, not knowing if he was serious about the woodworking or just making pleasant conversation with a lonely housewife, something he probably did at least once a week.
He closed the lid on his toolbox. “Okay,” he said. He picked up his toolbox, but just stood there looking at the pool house.
She tested her weight, leaning first on one foot and then the other, but not rising. “Okay,” she said.
Without a word he reached his hand out and took her arm to help her rise. The electricity of that touch traveled up her arm like a lightning strike, blasting all other thought from her mind, and in the moment of clear-headed emptiness that followed, Nita felt herself weightless, freed from the burden of gravity and duty, and she was suddenly floating up over the patio and the pool house and the arching branches of the trees toward the deep blue sky. She was definitely having an out-of-body experience. She had seen episodes of Unsolved Mysteries that talked about out-of-body experiences and she was definitely having one now. She looked down on the top of her head and Jimmy Lee’s head. She saw the sparkling water of the pool and the steep-pitched pool house and the green grass of her yard and the Zibolskys’ yard spread out below her like she was looking through the lens of a telescope. Bump, bump, bump went her head against the moss-draped branches of the live oak where a curious woodpecker watched her ascent. Thump, thump, thump, went her heart.
He let go of her arm. There was a whirring sound in her ears and Nita felt herself being sucked down from the blue sky and the arching branches of the live oak and back down to earth. It happened in the blink of an eye. One minute she was up bouncing in the top of the live oak and the next she was standing on the patio beside Jimmy Lee.
“I meant what I said about the woodworking. You have my number. Call me.” He grinned and walked away, whistling, the gate banging shut behind him, leaving her to stare in astonishment at the glittering water of the pool, and the azalea bushes, and the woodpecker perched and shining like a jewel in the top of the tall tree.
CHAPTER
* * *
FIVE
THE DAY OF the party dawned unseasonably hot and muggy for early October. Sunlight fell oppressively over brown lawns like a bad omen. Flies as big as fruit bats darted in the bright, still air. Lavonne, who had not slept the night before, sat despondently at her kitchen table sipping a cup of lukewarm coffee and watching for the arrival of the Shapiro van with a feeling of dread that coalesced and spread through her abdomen like an oil spill. Above, she could hear Leonard’s footsteps as he crossed from the bathroom to the bedroom. She could feel each footstep deep in her belly, low and rhythmic like the clacking of railroad cars, like the ticking of a time bomb.
What had she been thinking? She asked herself this as she sipped her coffee, her bleary eyes fixed on the street where, at any minute, the old blue Shapiro van would come careening around the corner. After that lunch meeting with Virginia Broadwell she had convinced herself that Mona Shapiro would be the perfect choice to cater. She had assured herself that given the fact she couldn’t find anyone else at this late date, she had no choice but to hire her. But now, a week later, with the reality of her decision weighing heavily on her conscience, Lavonne realized there had been a deeper, more profound motive to hiring Mrs. Shapiro. Her plan had seemed so perfect, her revenge so noble, a blow struck for her mother and Nita, and Mrs. Shapiro, and all the other sweet, docile women she had known in her life who seemed incapable of fighting back. It had seemed so courageous that day and now it all seemed foolish and immature and extremely disloyal to Leonard. What exactly did she have to complain about? She asked herself this again, trying to pinpoint the exact cause of her unhappiness. She lived in an expensive house, her daughters attended an expensive private school, her husband saw to it that they lacked nothing in the way of material comforts and still she was unhappy. Her problems, which had seemed that day so burdensome, seemed to her now, observed in the bright, clear light of her husband’s coming embarrassment, insignificant and petty.
She was not a champion of downtrodden women. She was a bored housewife with nothing better to do than plan petty revenges on a husband who did not deserve them.
NITA ROSE FROM bed with a dull headache. Her eyes felt swollen. Her skull felt like it had been stuffed with cotton. Images seemed hazy, sounds seemed muffled. Below her in the kitchen she could hear Charles shouting at the children. This was a big day for him and he was as nervous as a crippled bridegroom. Poor Charles, she thought dejectedly. Poor, poor Charles.
“Goddamn it, boy, get that mess cleaned up! There’s a party here today! You don’t have the sense God gave a grasshopper!” Nita listened to him shouting at their son in much the same way she imagined Charles’s father had shouted at him.
Everybody in town knew stories of the old judge, how he’d been born the grandson of a tenant farmer, the son of a hardware clerk; how the boy had bettered himself through a scholarship to the Barron Hall School and later the University of Georgia, and later still, the University of Georgia law school. Everybody knew how he’d built that big old house out on the river and filled it with the carcasses of animals he’d killed in far-off exotic places like Zimbabwe and Montana; how in thirty-five years of marriage the judge and Mrs. Broadwell had managed to produce only one child, Charles, who cried when he lost at sports and never bagged anything bigger than a goat. When the judge died, Charles locked himself in his bedroom and wept for two days. He had refused to eat and refused to sleep. Virginia had gone away shaking her head as if she had no idea what troubled him, but Nita had known. His daddy had died before Charles could prove himself a man. Now, eighteen years later, he was still trying to prove himself, surrounded by his daddy’s old friends and clients, trying to prove to the people of Ithaca he was every bit the man the old judge had been.
“Go to your room, boy!” Charles shouted from the kitchen. “Go to your room and don’t come out until I tell you to.”
The feeling of weightlessness that had occurred that day in the garden with Jimmy Lee was gone. In the week since she saw him last, she had awakened every morning to a feeling of heaviness and melancholy. He had told her to call him but Nita knew she wouldn’t. She couldn’t.
All she wanted was a good marriage. All she wanted was a marriage like the one her mama and daddy had shared in the little house she grew up in, with its atmosphere of quiet and unrepentant love. Her father still called her mother “baby.” He still held her arm when they crossed a street. Nita had watched her parents love each other all her life. Love and happiness and a simple life. That’s all she ever wanted.
“Goddamn it, boy, are you stupid? I said move it,” Charles roared.
Nita listened to Charles fulfilling his family legacy. Her head hurt. Her heart felt like a wasteland. Nothing would ever grow or flower there again. The best she could hope for was a quiet life. The best she could hope for was a husband who tolerated her, and children who grew to adulthood without hating her too much.
EADIE AWOKE EARLY and made one last call to Denton to go over the plan for tonight’s party. She had rehearsed him twice now because she was afraid he would forget his lines.
“Yeah, yeah, I know what to do,” he said, sounding sullen and sleepy. “Make your husband crazy with jealousy. I get the picture.”
“I’m counting on you,” Eadie said. “Don’t fuck this up.” She hung up. Eadie had spent a week planning tonight’s little fiasco, but for some reason she couldn’t get excited about it. She was tired of Denton, tired of living in this big house all alone, tired of not being able to work. She wanted her husband home in her bed. In their bed.
She lay on her back and watched the sun climb across the ceiling. After awhile she rose and went to stand next to her goddess, looping one arm around the torso’s shou
lders and staring wearily at the slow-moving tourists passing on the sidewalks with their guidebooks and their blank upturned faces. The windows were open and a balmy breeze blew through the room. In the street below a little girl saw her and waved. Eadie raised her hand and waved back. Against her hip, the goddess swayed slightly.
She had not worked in months, not since Trevor left. A kind of lethargy had overtaken her, an anxious feeling that left her tired and listless. It occurred to Eadie that the only times in her adult life that she hadn’t been able to work were after Trevor left her for another woman. Both times she had been seized with aimlessness and inertia. He was the only man she had ever met who she thought strong enough to survive loving her, and yet here he was again making her miserable and desperate and killing her creative spirit in the process. Making her unable to work for long periods of time. Making her doubt herself. She wondered if he was aware of the effect his cheating had on her art.
A thin ragged dog slunk down the street poking his nose under the public trash cans. “Don’t touch him,” the mother said to the child.
“Here doggie, doggie,” the child said.
If Trevor didn’t come home, would she ever work again? What was it Denton had called her goddess—a sad abandoned seal lying on the ice waiting to be beaten? Eadie pushed her hair out of her eyes and scratched dejectedly at her hip. After awhile she shook herself and stood up straight. No, she wouldn’t think like a defeatist. She hadn’t won the Miss Snellville Beach contest by thinking like this. She hadn’t dragged herself up out of a life of poverty and adverse destiny by thinking it couldn’t be done. She hadn’t made Trevor Boone fall in love with her by pretending it couldn’t happen.
And he did love her. Goddamn it, he did love her. Eadie knew this even if Trevor didn’t. Even if he had somehow managed to forget. She wrapped her robe tightly around her waist and gave the goddess a hard slap on her contoured rump. Her natural self-confidence and optimism was returning. Trevor would come home where he belonged and she would work again. Eadie was sure of it. She smiled, thinking of her plans for the party.
Trevor had managed to convince himself he didn’t love her anymore, but tonight she would remind him just how much he still did.
BY TEN O’CLOCK, unable to bear the suspense of waiting for the arrival of the Shapiros, Lavonne suggested Leonard and Charles go out to the club for a round of golf. She watched them walk to the car, Leonard swinging his golf bag over his shoulder and whistling like a chubby choirboy, and Charles dragging his bag behind him like a crucifix.
Fifteen minutes later the Shapiros arrived and Lavonne went next door to greet them. Mona Shapiro climbed out of the van wearing a faded cotton housedress and tennis shoes. “We got the good clothes in the back,” she explained, pointing toward the van with her thumb. Lavonne stared at the driver, who had climbed out and was sauntering up the driveway in front of a ragged group of boys wearing baggy shorts and flip-flops.
“Let me introduce you to the Burning Bush boys,” Mrs. Shapiro said proudly to Lavonne. There was Little Moses Shapiro, no longer clean-cut but sporting a goatee and a Bob Marley T-shirt. There was the Finklestein boy, whose real name was Isaac but everyone called him Johnny. There was the Goldfarb boy, who went by the name of Weasel, and there was Goodman Singer, who wore a bandanna and a long gold earring shaped like the Star of David in his left ear. They all wore their hair in dreadlocks.
Stunned and speechless, Lavonne stood looking at them. “So what exactly is Jewish Reggae?” she asked finally, wondering what in the hell she was going to do.
“It’s kind of a blues and reggae mix based on the words of the Torah,” Little Moses said.
“Do you want to hear some?” Weasel said. “I’ve got my guitar in the van.”
“Maybe later,” Lavonne said, struggling against a rising sense of desperation. She wondered if she could talk Ashley and Louise into serving. She wondered if she could pay them and some of their friends to work the party. She could feel a strange humming vibration behind her right eye. She reminded herself she needed to have her blood pressure checked, but decided it was probably high right now given the fact that the firm party was fixing to turn into a disaster and she was in charge of it and all.
Little Moses whistled, looking up at the Broadwell’s big house. “Damn, Miz Zibolsky, is your old man a doctor or something?”
“A lawyer. And I live next door.”
“No shit,” Johnny said. “I may need me a lawyer.”
“Okay boys, let’s discuss our pending court cases later,” Lavonne said, turning around quickly before she had a chance to change her mind. “Follow me and I’ll show you where to get set up.”
The truth of the matter was she only had eight hours until the party started. It was too late to find other servers. I didn’t have any choice, Leonard. No one will remember who catered the party. Let’s take a trip somewhere and forget this ever happened. From now on I’ll be a good wife, I promise. She rehearsed her excuses, running them together until they whined through her head like a chain saw.
TEN MINUTES BEFORE the guests were scheduled to arrive, Charles saw Mrs. Shapiro and the Burning Bush boys standing out by his pool, and he said, “Who in the hell is that?” The boys had changed into their good clothes, which Lavonne now saw had been a mistake. Cousin Mordecai had sent over what he considered perfect catering attire; four powder blue tuxes with wide lapels trimmed in black velvet. Looking at them, Lavonne thought, All they need are platform shoes and pimp hats.
“They’re the caterers,” Nita said.
“You’re not funny,” Charles said. “Who in the hell are they?”
Nita looked at Lavonne. They were standing on the Broadwells’ screened porch, overlooking the pool and the patio that had been set with long tables of flowers and silver serving dishes and bowls of exotic-looking fruits. The ice statue, a three-foot replica of Tara replete with garlands of ivy and Star of Bethlehem lilies and even a small carved figure of Scarlett O’Hara standing on the steps in a hoopskirt and wide hat, had arrived and the boys were busy trying to hoist it into place in the center of the main table. Gone with the Wind was Nita’s favorite movie. When the ice artist asked her what she wanted the sculpture to look like, she hadn’t even hesitated. Nita had spent her whole life wanting to be exactly like Scarlett and knowing she never would be.
“They’re all we could get, Charles,” Lavonne said, waving her hand vaguely at the Burning Bush boys. “On such short notice and all.”
“Those are not the caterers from Atlanta.” Charles ignored Lavonne and spoke directly to his wife. There was something wrong with one of his eyes. It stuttered and blinked while the other one stayed stationary, focused hard on the Burning Bush boys.
“They’re the only caterers we could find, Charles,” Nita explained in a small voice.
Lavonne hoped Leonard would take it better than Charles was taking it. “Calm down, it’s not the end of the world,” she said to Charles. “If you act like nothing’s wrong, your guests will follow suit.”
His look of disbelief was childlike and almost touching. “Those can’t be the caterers,” he said.
Lavonne grimaced and sucked her lower lip. Nita looked at her feet. The setting sun hung over the yard like a bare bulb suspended from a cord.
“But they don’t even look like caterers.” Charles shook his head stubbornly. He was beginning to catch on, but slowly. “What are they wearing on their heads? Oh my God, is that their hair?”
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Lavonne said.
“Oh my God, I’m ruined.” His nostrils flared. A vein pulsed in his temple like an emergency flasher.
Lavonne said, “It’ll be over before you know it. My advice to you is to just sit back and relax and let it happen.” At least Leonard had a slight sense of humor. Balding and fat, he was used to being laughed at, whereas Charles Broadwell, the golden boy, obviously was not.
“They’ll think I was too cheap to hire decent caterers!” he shouted
at Lavonne. He stopped and took a deep breath. Moisture clung to his upper lip. “All I asked was that you handle one simple little party,” he said, lifting his arm to wipe his face. “This isn’t brain surgery, it’s a party. When my mother said—”
“Yes, let’s talk about your mother,” Lavonne said.
“You leave my mother out of this! My mother loves me! My mother wouldn’t sabotage this party when she knows how much it means to me! My mother . . .”
The doorbell rang and Nita jumped and dropped a glass on the floor. A terrible revelation came gradually over Charles. His nose quivered. One eye drooped at the corner.
Lavonne said, “Once the margaritas start flowing no one’s going to notice who we got to cater.”
Nita swung around and went to answer the door. Crows settled like vultures on the ridge of the Zibolskys’ garage.
Charles said, “Margaritas?”
FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER, Virginia Broadwell arrived to find the party in full swing. Loud music blared from the patio speakers, some kind of grating monotonous music that Virginia didn’t recognize, although some of the guests seemed to know it well. A small group clustered around the pool throwing their hands in the air and moving their hips in a shocking manner. In the yard, Mavis Creal, the firm’s bookkeeper, danced the macarena. Standing on the porch and looking down at the vulgar chaos below her, a slight smile of satisfaction appeared on Virginia’s face.