by Cathy Holton
Not that he blamed Nita for the Rastafarian caterers. She would never have done anything so blatantly disloyal to him, something so sure to make him the laughingstock of Ithaca. No, the blame for the dreadful party did not rest on Nita’s docile head—it rested clearly on the oversized shoulders of Lavonne Zibolsky. In the future, Nita would have to learn not to let people like the Zibolsky woman walk all over her. She would have to learn to be more assertive.
Charles stopped in the shadows behind the buffet tent, trying to catch his breath and watching his guests with a mixture of horror and repugnance on his face. Trevor Boone strolled across the lawn with his bimbo secretary. One of the hairy waiters, shirtless now, passed him carrying a tray of God knows what. Leonard’s secretary, Christy, leaned over the pool and was sick. Shit, it could be worse, Charles thought, trying to cheer himself up.
Considering the music and the margarita machine and the excessive drinking his guests had been doing, it was an absolute miracle a fight hadn’t broken out yet, and Charles supposed he should at least be thankful for that.
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, Eadie Boone showed up.
“Oh dear God, no,” Charles said, dropping his drink.
“Oh shit,” Lavonne said.
“Oh my,” Virginia said, rolling her eyes with delight. Her terrible miracle had arrived. Lavonne popped up out of her chair like a marionette and walked toward the deck where Eadie and Denton stood surveying the guests. Charles, who had personally witnessed numerous Boone altercations but never actually hosted one in his own home, swung around on his heel and hurried toward the buffet tent where he could see Trevor and Tonya talking to Adams Webb.
The minute Eadie and Denton arrived, the tone of the party changed. The air crackled with anticipation. Small groups stood around chattering behind their hands, watching Trevor and Tonya move among the buffet tables, watching excitedly as Eadie strolled down the steps and through the crowd like a movie star, wearing a dress that was cut low in front and high around the thigh, and trailing Denton Swafford behind her like a lapdog on a leash. Those few who hadn’t heard were told about the country club dance two years ago where Trevor broke Chip Boatner’s jaw for touching Eadie on the ass. Someone remembered the incident at the Tivoli Theatre during the early days of the Boone marriage, when, upon being asked to remove her feet from the seat in front of her, Eadie declined, and the usher, touching her briefly on the calf to make his point, was knocked over two rows of seats by Trevor.
Watching Eadie and Denton move toward her through the restless crowd, it occurred to Lavonne that this party was about to get interesting. This party was about to become legend.
“Where’d you stash the margarita machine?” Eadie called to her in greeting.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to crash my goddamn party?”
“I knew you’d try and talk me out of it.” Eadie grinned. “Where’s the tequila?”
Realizing the machine was set up close to the tent where Trevor and Tonya were still circulating, apparently unaware of Eadie’s presence, Lavonne said quickly, “Go rescue Nita. I’ll bring you a margarita.”
Eadie followed Lavonne’s pointing finger and saw Nita sitting alone and helpless with her cold-blooded mother-in-law. “Oh Lord,” Eadie said. “She looks like she needs rescuing.” Over her shoulder she told Denton to fix her a plate and meet her at the table.
Lavonne stood where she was, watching Eadie stroll through the crowd and trying to figure out what she was going to do. Across the crowded yard, her eyes met Charles Broadwell’s, held for a moment and then disengaged. Trevor and Tonya still hadn’t realized that Eadie was here. Charles swung around and went over to the clueless couple, slipping an arm around both of their shoulders and propelling them toward the back gate, away from the buffet tent and the waiting guests, and Eadie.
FOR TEN MINUTES, through a miraculous combination of fate and timing, Lavonne managed to keep Eadie corralled at the table. If Eadie was aware of Lavonne and Charles’s unspoken pact to keep her and Trevor apart, she gave no sign of it. She kept looking around the crowd but Trevor and Tonya hadn’t been seen since they disappeared with Charles. Lavonne was hoping he’d somehow convinced them to leave.
A small candle in a glass globe flickered in the middle of the table. The women sat around nursing their drinks and trying not to listen as Virginia droned on about the weather and the difficulty of finding decent yard boys. Worland Pendergrass stopped by to chat with Virginia about the Ithaca Cotillion. Worland was small and blond with a long face and teeth that were large and slightly equine. She was a born social climber. She’d spent her whole life in Ithaca, sucking up to those she considered her social superiors and ignoring those she considered her inferiors. You could pretty much judge your social standing in Ithaca by how Worland Pendergrass treated you. Now that Trevor Boone was rumored to be finally divorcing Eadie, her social standing had slipped back to the gutter where it belonged. Worland no longer had to be nice to Eadie.
“Hey, who’d they name as king of the ball?” Eadie asked Worland. They always picked some old white guy, preferably of Anglo-Saxon heritage, to be the king.
Worland ignored Eadie. She had had her face done recently, and her lips, too. Her face, which had always had a slightly bowed appearance, now, with the recent lift, seemed even more pronounced. One eye sat up slightly higher than the other. The collagen in the top lip had plumped up slightly larger on the left side. The overall effect was terrifying. She looked like a flounder with a harelip. She looked like a Picasso painting gone bad.
“We took Mary Alice up to Atlanta to have her dress made,” Worland said to Virginia. Worland’s oldest daughter, Mary Alice, had been named Queen of the Cotillion Ball two weeks ago. Mary Alice was a freshman at Sanford who had managed to pledge Chi O. So far her life was on track to being everything her mother wanted her to be. To be named Queen of the Ithaca Cotillion Ball ranked right up there with discovering a cure for cancer or mapping the human genome.
Eadie sipped her margarita and said to Lavonne, “That whole debutante ritual is really just a throwback to virgin sacrifice.”
“You mean, kind of like Persephone being kidnapped by Hades, God of the Underworld. That whole birth/death/sacrifice/rebirth cycle thing?”
“Kind of like that.”
“Does the virgin have to kiss the old guy?” Lavonne said.
“Maybe in the old days,” Eadie said, “but not now.”
“She’s not a virgin!” Worland said defensively, and then realizing what she had said, she flushed an ugly red color. Her face shone like fiberglass. “I mean, she’s the queen,” she said patting her hair in place. “That’s what she’s called.” No one said anything. Eadie sipped her drink loudly. Worland seemed suddenly flat, deflated. She promised to call Virginia for a lunch date. “Oh, yes, do call me,” Virginia said. They kissed each other on the cheek and after a few minutes Worland wandered off. “Good Lord, what did she do to her face,” Virginia said, watching her go.
Eadie poked her head up and took a good look around. Lavonne knew she wasn’t looking for Denton. She tried to think of something she could say to keep Eadie from leaving the table to hunt for Trevor.
“Speaking of debutantes, I might get to be one after all.” It was all she could think of. Nita, who had barely said two words since they sat down, picked at her farfel cup. Eadie drummed her fingers on the table and looked around for Trevor. Virginia stared at Lavonne like she had spinach in her teeth. “I’ve been asked to the Kudzu Ball,” Lavonne explained, grinning at her. “I’ve been nominated as the Kudzu Queen.”
Eadie stopped scanning the crowd and looked at Lavonne. “You sly dog,” she said.
The Kudzu Ball had been started five years ago as a parody of the Ithaca Cotillion Ball. The Kudzu Ball was open to everyone, and was a big favorite of the young professionals and corporate transferees who were slowly infecting Ithaca like a virus. The debs presented themselves and ranged in age from twenty-one to seventy. They
wore thrift-store dresses wrapped in kudzu vines, and kudzu garlands in their hair. The queen, who was chosen by random lottery, chose her own king, the only requirement being that he must be at least ten years her junior. The women from her book club, all of whom had graduate degrees and could discuss literary symbolism and figurative language without batting an eye, had nominated Lavonne. When she told Leonard he had looked at her like she was crazy. “Don’t even think about attending the Kudzu Ball,” he’d said. “Don’t even think about being Kudzu Queen. We’ll be social outcasts if you do.” And seeing the look on her face he wagged his finger and said, “If you won’t think about us, at least think about your daughters. They’ll be blackballed from the Cotillion Ball. They’ll never make the Junior League. You’ll ruin their lives forever.” Lavonne wondered if her daughters would even care if they never made the Junior League. Even if she was asked to be a Cotillion Deb, Louise, who wrote articles for the school newspaper on the evils of the American Dairy Association, would probably turn up her nose at being a debutante, while Ashley, who had been on the Homecoming Court every year since seventh grade, would most likely jump at the chance.
Virginia took her little hands out of her lap and laid them on the table. She took a deep breath to steady herself. “You can’t seriously be thinking about going to the Kudzu Ball,” she said, frowning at Lavonne. “Surely this is just another one of your little jokes.” Virginia had been trying to get the Kudzu Ball closed down for years. It irritated her that people would make a mockery of everything she held dear, that they would ridicule what took her years of scheming and hard work to achieve. And what was even worse, younger members of her own social class appeared to be going over to the enemy. If this alarming trend continued, the old traditions would eventually die out and social equality and anarchy would not be far behind. Virginia had done everything she could short of bribery and extortion to close the Kudzu Ball down, but when you’re dealing with middle managers and college professors, what could you expect?
“When is the ball?” Eadie asked. She and Nita were not Cotillion debs. They had never been presented, Eadie because of her trailer-trash upbringing, and Nita because she was the last girl in the world Virginia had wanted Charles to end up with; she’d done everything possible to sabotage the romance between them, even going so far as to have Nita blackballed. Charles had gone as Lee Anne Bales’s escort.
“It’s the weekend our husbands get back from their little hunting trip.”
“I’ll go with you,” Eadie said, the flickering light of the candle illuminating her face. “I’ve always wanted to go.”
“Yes, well, what do you have to lose?” Virginia said, motioning for Little Moses to bring her another glass of wine.
“I don’t like your tone,” Eadie said.
“How about you, Nita?” Lavonne snapped her fingers but Nita wasn’t listening. She was staring into the candle flame and imagining Jimmy Lee Motes standing by her pool with the moonlight shining in his eyes.
“Nita has more sense than that,” Virginia said, squaring her little shoulders. “Besides, Charles would never let her go.”
Eadie yawned. She put her hands over her head and stretched. She was tired of making small talk. She had a husband to find, and a marriage to save. “So, where’s Trevor?” she said, finally asking the question they’d all been waiting for.
“I’m pretty sure he left,” Lavonne said quickly.
“He’s gone,” Nita said.
“He’s down at the garage behind the back fence,” Virginia said, sweetly pointing toward the gate. Lavonne looked at her like Die, bitch, die. Virginia smiled and patted her smooth hair. “With his date,” she added.
Nita couldn’t believe Virginia had mentioned the garage, disguised as a storage shed, where Charles kept his father’s old car—the Deuce. She and Virginia weren’t ever supposed to talk about the car. Charles had given strict orders, and to her recollection, Nita had never disobeyed one of Charles’s strict orders. For sixteen years she had followed all of Charles’s orders. She had been loyal and faithful as an old dog. She had cooked his meals, washed his clothes, bore his children, and loved him as best she could. She had been a good girl. Now she could not trust him. She could not bear to have him touch her. She hated the sound of his voice. She hated the way his ears stood out on either side of his head, hated the whistling sound he made when he slept. Good girls did not do things like that. Good girls did not hate their husbands.
Eadie said, “What garage? What back fence?”
Trevor and Tonya sailed suddenly into the yard, dragging the hapless Charles behind them like an anchor. He was speaking and gesturing wildly, and looking around for Eadie, and when Lavonne saw him, she shook her head in disgust. Here she was hoping he had convinced Trevor to leave and he hadn’t even managed to warn him that Eadie was here. It was up to her to keep Eadie and Trevor apart, to avert the inevitable tragedy that this party had been moving toward all evening.
Lavonne tried to think of something clever to say but her tongue went numb.
“Oh look,” Virginia said, smiling sweetly and pointing. “There’s Trevor and his date now.”
Lavonne imagined herself wrapping her hands around Virginia’s trim little neck and squeezing until her eyes popped. Her head felt swollen. She could feel her pulse in her temple. With her luck, it was an aneurysm and she’d be dead in ten minutes, facedown in a plate of kosher barbecue.
Eadie swung around to look, following Virginia’s pointing finger. Her eyes locked onto Trevor and she smiled and rearranged the front of her dress. Denton came up carrying a plate of food but she shook her head impatiently and stood up. “You know what to do,” she told him.
She started across the yard, but Denton just stood there holding the plate and watching her go. Eadie had warned him what to expect and he had agreed upon the price, but now that the moment was here he was having doubts. The truth of the matter was, he needed his face to make a decent living. Even one punch might break his nose, and then what was he supposed to do? Make ends meet as a personal trainer? Teach tennis for a living?
Trevor and Tonya stood with their backs to Eadie in front of a long buffet table. Charles watched Eadie’s approach with the dull, dazed look of a cow caught in the headlight of an oncoming train. The crowd around the pool stopped shagging and began to cluster around the tent. Queen sang about that “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” Guests began to spill through the kitchen door onto the screened porch. Some watched from the family room windows.
Eadie moved up behind Trevor and Tonya, who had stopped in front of the buffet table. “There you are,” she said.
Hearing her voice, Trevor swung around. Something flickered in his eyes and was quickly buried. Seeing this, Eadie smiled.
“Hey, Trevor,” Charles said, moving up behind the buffet table and trying to draw his attention. “How about them Braves?” His voice trailed off feebly. This party had been a disaster from the first, and it was fixing to get worse. He looked around wildly for his mother.
Tonya tried to take his arm but Trevor shook her off. “Why are you here, Eadie?” he said and his voice had a cold metallic ring.
“Why shouldn’t I be here?” Eadie said. “I’ve been here for the last fifteen years, except one. Why should this year be any different?”
Charles could smell tragedy the way a tethered goat smells a grizzly bear. It was coming and there was nothing he could do to stop it. “Can you believe what they’re paying that Chipper Jones?” His voice rose, hung for a moment, and then plummeted. He tried again. “Can you believe how much money those guys make?”
Trevor and Eadie stood facing each other like gladiators. The air was heavy with the scent of pine tar and citronella. Charles looked around desperately for his mother. He could see her now, standing at the edge of the crowd, her small pale face looking almost . . . pleased? Nita stood beside her, watching Charles with sorrowful, accusing eyes.
“Come on, Trevor, let’s go,” Tonya said, t
rying again to take his arm.
“Not now, Tonya,” he said.
“Do you mind?” Eadie said to her. “This is a private conversation.”
Tonya looked at Eadie the way she would something blind and slimy found under a rock.
“You’ve chosen a very public place for a private conversation,” Trevor said, tipping his head at the restless audience.
“Here’s as good a place as any.”
“Don’t blame me,” he said. “I wouldn’t have wanted it this way.”
Eadie didn’t give a shit about the crowd and the look she gave them told them so. “You left me no choice,” she said to Trevor.
“Now you’re starting to scare me.”
“Come home, Trevor.”
“I don’t want to do this here.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“Jesus!” Trevor shouted and banged his fist on the buffet table. Dishes bounced and clattered. In the middle of the table, the ice sculpture of Tara had begun to melt. Scarlett O’Hara had shrunk noticeably. Beneath her wide crystal hat she looked like a humpbacked dwarf. After a minute Trevor sighed and shoved his hands deep in his pockets. “Goddamn it, Eadie,” he began, and then stopped. Tonya looked nervously from one to the other. He pulled his hands out of his pockets and rubbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers. Dark half-moons swelled the skin beneath his eyes. Eadie put her hand up to touch his face, but he moved his head. “I’m trying to tell you something,” he said evenly. He studied her face a moment, and then sighed again. “I know I’ve been a shitty husband.”
She grinned. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. If he could admit he’d been a shitty husband, they could work from there. It was like one of those twelve-step programs. I am an alcoholic. I am a shitty husband. It was the same concept.