“Stop,” Drake said as Chenille climbed the steps leading to Chiffon’s house.
She paused on the landing underneath the yellow bug light. “What’s wrong?”
“Be still for just a moment, please.” Drake arranged his hands into a viewfinder and gazed at her. “I wish you could see yourself right now. Standing there, bathed in moonlight, you look like a statue carved from alabaster.”
Chenille’s cheeks grew hot. “Drake. The things you say!”
He seized her hand and covered her knuckles with butterfly kisses. “All of them are true.” He was so close to her now, she could smell the citrus of his cologne and feel the heat of his breath on her cheeks. Under dark, lush eyelashes, his eyes searched her face.
“Tonight my life has begun anew.” His lips lightly brushed hers in one brief, electric moment. After the kiss, he stepped back and regarded her with a penetrating gaze. “Good evening, my sweet.”
After he left, Chenille stood on the step, watching the red trail of his departing taillights. Enveloped in a haze of euphoria, she groped for the doorknob and floated inside the house. Chiffon was sitting on the sofa in her bathrobe with Walter by her side.
“Did the two of you wait up for me?” Chenille asked as she shut the door behind her.
“‘Course we did. How was Kenny G?” Chiffon asked.
“Fine. I think.”
“What do you mean you think,” Chiffon yawned. “Was it any good or wasn’t it?”
Chenille hugged herself. “Who cares about saxophone music when a handsome man like Drake whispers wonderful things in your ear during the entire concert?” She slid into a chair beside her sister.
“What sort of things?”
“Beautiful, poetic things. He said my hands looked like little white doves.”
Chiffon laughed. “Don’t you think that’s a mite over the top?”
“No, I don’t,” Chenille said defensively. She held her hands out to inspect them. “My hands are nice, and I’m flattered he noticed.”
“I don’t know,” Chiffon said, shaking her head. “Something about him seems kind of hinky.”
Chenille had been extremely nervous about introducing Drake to Chiffon. In the past, whenever the two sisters were together, men would practically trample over Chenille to gain her sister’s attention.
So, earlier this evening, when Chiffon answered the door wearing a very snug sweater, Chenille had braced herself for Drake’s appreciative glances and flirtatious banter. To her relief, Drake didn’t drool, grovel, or preen when he met Chiffon. Perhaps her sister wasn’t used to being ignored. Was it possible she was just jealous?
“I’ve always dreamed of going out with a physician,” Chenille said.
“He’s a vet,” Chiffon said in a snide voice.
Ah, so she is jealous!
“You know, I could always ask Drake if he has a nice friend or colleague. Maybe we could double-date.”
“Chenille, I’m married!”
“I know that. I just thought—” Chenille plucked a bit of lint off her skirt. “Never mind.”
Chiffon fluffed a sofa pillow and wedged it underneath her head. “Call it intuition, but I don’t think Drake’s the guy for you. Plus, I’ve asked around and nobody knows a thing about him.”
“He lives in Augusta. He probably travels in much more sophisticated circles than Creek people.”
Chiffon sprang up from the cushions. “Chenille Chastity Grace, I can’t believe you said that.”
“I’m just stating the truth. Creek folk and city people don’t mix much.”
“You’re hardly citified yourself, hailing from Bible Grove.”
“A suburb of Greenville,” Chenille reminded her.
“Big whoop. Greenville ain’t exactly Gotham,” Chiffon grumbled. “Speaking of Bible Grove, did you know I have an appointment with the doctor day after tomorrow? My ankle feels a lot stronger. I’ll probably be able to turn in my crutches.”
“Which means you won’t need me anymore,” Chenille said softly. “Which means it’s time to go back home to Bible Grove.”
“You don’t have to, you know,” Chiffon said.
“Drake asked me out for another date next weekend.”
“There’s also the Bottom Dollar Girl calendar. We’re counting on your input.”
Chenille toyed with the beads of her necklace. “Would I be putting you out if I stayed here for a little bit longer?”
“You’re welcome here for as long as you like,” Chiffon said as she got up from the couch and slid her feet into a pair of terry-cloth mules. “Although I’m sure you’re tired of sleeping on a rollaway bed in the living room.”
“It’s not so bad. But I’ll have to go home soon. I’ve got to find a job.”
“Me, too. I dread going back to waiting tables. Good night, Chenille,” she said. Chiffon started shuffling off to her bedroom, but then paused to glance back at her sister. “I almost forgot, Garnell called. He wants you to give him a ring in the morning. Something about getting together with Miss Beezle.” She waggled her eyebrows. “You’ve certainly been the belle of the ball lately.”
“We’re just friends,” Chenille said brusquely.
“Too bad. I think Garnell is precious.”
“He’s nice, but I’ve wished for a man like Drake all my life.”
“Well, you know what Granny Eugenie used to say. Be careful what you wish for, because one day—”
“It might just kick you in the fanny,” Chenille interrupted. “Granny certainly had her own way of saying things. But believe me, Drake is the exception.”
The next Monday, Chiffon was able to walk without her crutches for the first time in days. Although she was grateful to regain her mobility, she didn’t want Chenille to go back to Bible Grove just as the two of them were getting along so well. Both sisters were subdued when they left the doctor’s office.
“What’s going on at the Bottom Dollar Emporium?” Chenille asked as they traveled down Main Street on their way home. Chiffon glanced out the window to see Mello Vickery, Prudee Phipps, and several other women from the Baptist Ladies’ League picketing outside. She slowed the car and read the signs aloud. “‘Bottom Dollar Girls, Keep Your Drawers On.’ ‘How Dare You Bare?’ ‘Just Say No to Carnal Calendar.’”
“Oh my goodness! How’d they find out about the calendar?” Chenille said.
Chiffon jerked her gearshift into park. “I don’t know, but let’s go in and see.”
She hoisted Gabby from her car seat, grabbed the carrier, and strode to the store entrance with Chenille following behind her. Mello stepped in front of Chiffon before she could open the door.
“If you cross this threshold, you’re entering a pagan’s den,” Mello said, flinging her fox fur over her shoulder.
Chiffon brushed past her. “I’ve always been partial to a little sinning.”
Prudee pressed a button into Chenille’s hand that said harlots repent. “Wear it with pride, sister,” said Prudee.
Chenille followed Chiffon into the store. Birdie, Mrs. Tobias, and Mavis were chatting in a tight knot near the cash registers, and Attalee was stationed behind the soda fountain.
“How did they find out?” Chiffon asked. Three heads swiveled in Attalee’s direction.
“I only mentioned it to my roommate,” Attalee said peevishly.
“Myrtle, aka Mouth of the South,” said Birdie with a smirk. “Telling Myrtle is like hiring a skywriter to fly over Cayboo Creek.”
“I told her about the calendar because I thought she might want to be one of the models,” Attalee said. “Don’t know why I even bothered to ask. She has a face like a bulldog chewing on a wasp.”
“It’s all right, Attalee,” Mavis said. “You meant well.”
; “Are those ladies outside driving away business?” Chiffon asked.
“Some,” Mavis said. “I’ve seen a few Rock of Ages congregation members turn around in the parking lot when they spotted the picketers.”
“Perhaps this calendar isn’t such a good idea after all,” Mrs. Tobias said. “It’s much too racy.”
“And this community is so conservative,” Birdie added. “Maybe no one would even buy it.”
Chiffon poured herself a cup of coffee and leaned against a wooden barrel filled with sour chews. “Well, we can’t have Mavis losing business over this.”
Just then the front door swung open and Reverend Hozey from the Rock of Ages Baptist Church stormed in wearing a charcoal suit and a stormy expression.
“This is a house of heathens,” he rumbled, his face the color of stewed tomatoes. Tugging on his graying sideburns, he scanned the room with the cold, narrow eyes of a copperhead. When he spotted a pale-faced Mavis by a display of oil lamps, he thundered, “Mavis Loomis, do you consider yourself a sister in Jesus Christ?”
“Yes, yes, I do,” Mavis said.
“Then why have you invited Satan into our midst?”
Attalee sidled over to the reverend, holding a drink in her hand. “Why don’t you simmer down with a nice, frosty glass of root beer?” she said. “No sense in rattling the windows when no one’s going to pass around the plate.”
“There are no cold drinks in hell, Attalee Gaines,” he said, ignoring the draught she’d offered.
“For goodness’ sake,” Chiffon began. “I don’t know what you’ve heard, but this calendar is perfectly respectable.”
“Who are you?” he asked, regarding Chiffon. “I’ve never seen you in the Lord’s house.”
“I go to the Methodist church,” Chiffon said. Although her last visit had been Easter Sunday two years ago.
“That godless place with a woman at its helm?” he said. “What do you know of goodness?”
Mavis meekly stepped forward. “Reverend Hozey, the girls and I, we were just discussing—”
“I’ve heard you call yourselves the Bottomless Girls,” he said. “How could you befoul our fair community in such a wanton manner?”
Chiffon planted her hands on her hips. “It’s called the Bottom Dollar Girls, and—”
“Silence, strumpet!” he roared.
“Now, wait a darn minute—” Chiffon said.
“You wait,” he continued. “Mavis, if this project continues, you’ll be banned from the church nursery. Likewise for Birdie and her piano playing. If this calendar is published, your services as a musician will no longer be welcome at Wednesday-night suppers. Am I understood?”
“Yes, Reverend,” Mavis said in a small voice.
“That’s very good to hear, sister. I knew you were an instrument of the Lord.” His bellowing voice softened into benevolence. “May y’all have a blessed day,” he said, lifting his hand to his forehead.
“There’s nothing dirty about the human body,” Chenille interjected, surprising herself by speaking out. “Besides, the calendar was going to be very tasteful.”
Reverend Hozey fixed his dark eyes on her. “The only person who would find something tasteful about old, flabby bodies is the devil himself.” He turned on his heel and slammed the door behind him.
“Who you calling old?” Attalee hollered after him. “Bet you don’t look so hot in your skivvies, either!”
Mrs. Tobias smoothed her skirt over her knees. “I take exception to his comment about flabby old bodies. I still fit into the same Chanel suits I wore as a young bride. And lately I’ve embarked on an exercise regimen with Campbell’s soup cans which has yielded pleasant results.”
Birdie patted her middle. “I cut out my morning doughnut run, and I think I may have lost a pound or two. It’s a shame we’ll have to think of some other way to raise money for the Senior Center.”
“Why should we come up with something else?” Mavis said, a resolute look in her eyes.
“You know how stubborn Reverend Hozey is,” Birdie said, tugging on the ribbon of her hat. “Plus, I think we were all beginning to agree that maybe this idea wasn’t right for us.”
“I was having my doubts, too,” Mavis said. “But then Reverend Hozey called me ‘an instrument of the Lord.’ If I was truly the Lord’s instrument, I wouldn’t worry about what Reverend Hozey and his flock thinks; I’d focus on what project would best serve the Senior Center. And I truly believe this calendar will make us the most money.”
“How will we deal with Reverend Hozey?” Birdie said. “He’ll have our heads for lying to him.”
“I didn’t lie to him,” Mavis said. “I just said I understood him. That’s not the same thing at all.”
Chiffon linked her arm with Mavis’s. “But what about the nursery? I know you love looking after those babies.”
“Sometimes you have to make sacrifices,” she said. “Being an instrument of the Lord isn’t always pleasant.”
Mavis glanced at Attalee. “Don’t breathe a word of this to anyone. What Reverend Hozey doesn’t know won’t kill him. He’ll find out when the calendar comes out, and I’ll deal with his wrath then.”
“My lips are sealed,” Attalee said, zipping her fingers over her mouth.
“They’d better be,” Birdie said. She studied the faces of the women around her. “It looks like operation Bottom Dollar Girls is full steam ahead. Is everyone in?”
Mrs. Tobias nodded. Chiffon and Chenille smiled, and Attalee danced a jig around the room.
“We’re going to be calendar girls!” she shouted.
Twenty-One
God wants spiritual fruits, not religious nuts.
~ Message in a Methodist church bulletin
When Janie-Lynn Lauren had said things were going to get nasty if Chiffon didn’t sign the divorce papers, she wasn’t just whistling “Dixie.” After Chiffon and Chenille left the Bottom Dollar Emporium, they drove home to find the yard crawling with news trucks and reporters.
“What now?” Chiffon said, parking behind an NBC van.
“I thought they were finally going to let us alone,” Chenille remarked.
As the sisters warily emerged from the car, the reporters and photographers closed in on them, like bullworm moths on a corn ear.
“Chiffon, how do you respond to Lonnie’s allegations that he didn’t father any of your children?”
“Is it true that you seduced other men while your husband was at work?”
Gabby started whimpering and clutched frantically at her mother’s T-shirt. Chiffon stood motionless in the swirl of questions, eyes glazed with shock.
Chenille tugged at her sleeve. “Chiffon, are you okay?”
Chiffon ducked her head down, saying, “I don’t know anything about this.”
“Have we struck a nerve, Chiffon?” asked a male reporter with spiked blond hair and a sharp nose. “I don’t see you breaking out the squirt guns or the whipped cream.”
Chiffon’s chin trembled, and she looked helplessly at the mob bustling around her. “I want to go inside. I feel sick.”
“It’s a simple question, Chiffon,” the same reporter continued. “Did you get some nookie underneath Lonnie’s nose?”
She didn’t answer but instead stood motionless, blinking back tears.
“Of course she didn’t,” Chenille said, putting a protective arm around her sister. “Chiffon is loyal as the day is long. This isn’t Hollywood; it’s Cayboo Creek, South Carolina, and we have morals around here.”
She took Gabby from Chiffon’s arms and nudged her sister gently toward the house.
“Chiffon, people claim you’re the town tramp,” said a male reporter from The Star. “Care to comment?”
“That’s enough!” Chenille sa
id, pushing past him. “Scat, you vulture! Why don’t you get a job with a decent magazine, like Family Circle or Guideposts?”
When they finally squeezed their way through the jam of journalists and into the house, Chenille sat her sister down on the couch and made a cup of hot tea.
“Those people don’t have a smidgen of decency,” Chenille said, covering her sister’s shoulder with a frayed afghan. “And I will not buy a ticket to see a Janie-Lynn Lauren movie ever again.”
Chiffon held the cup of tea to her lips with shaking hands. “I don’t know what I would have done without you. I froze out there.”
“You were in shock, and who could blame you? After listening to such vile lies. To suggest that your darling babies were conceived with strange men. I’ve never heard such a—”
“Chenille,” Chiffon interrupted. “I’m suddenly feeling exhausted. I think I want to crawl into bed.”
“You do that. This terrible situation is wearing you down. I’ll look after Gabby and see that the kids do their homework when they get off the bus. Then I’ll prepare all of us a healthy supper.”
While Chiffon slept, Chenille kept busy screening phone calls. Attalee checked in saying she’d seen reporters hanging around Main Street, grilling folks about Chiffon. Chenille told her about the rumors surrounding her sister.
“Those scandal sheets cut no squares with me,” Attalee said. “Our Chiffon would never cheat on Lonnie. She’s a regular Tammy Wynette.”
A break in calls during the afternoon allowed Chenille to help Emily find a shoe box for a social studies diorama and to play a game of Chutes and Ladders with Dewitt. Later, as she prepared supper, the phone rang and Garnell’s voice drawled over the answering machine.
“Hello, Garnell,” Chenille said, picking up the receiver. “I know I was supposed to call you today, but everything’s gone haywire around here.”
She told him about the reporters camped outside the house and what they’d been saying about Chiffon. “Poor thing,” Chenille clucked. “The fight’s gone right out of her.”
A Dollar Short (The Bottom Dollar Series Book 2) Page 15
