The Secret Lives of the Kudzu Debutantes

by Cathy Holton

  No, it wasn't crazy. Lavonne knew exactly what he meant. She'd gone through the same thing two years ago when she realized her daughters were nearly grown, her husband had a life of his own, and she didn't know what she wanted to do with the rest of her's. It wasn't long after that that she latched on to the Shofar So Good Deli plan. “I know what you mean,” she said. She played with a container of Sweet 'n Low, stacking and restacking the little packets while she thought about it. “You spend the first half of your life living up to everyone else's expectations, and then one day it hits you. You're not happy. You're not living the life you want to live. I think everyone goes through it, but everyone reacts differently. Some people buy sports cars, some get plastic surgery, some undergo a health or spiri-tual crisis, some start new businesses or new careers. And some start new families. I want you to think of the number of men you know who leave twenty-year marriages and then turn around and marry a woman who looks exactly like the first wife, only twenty years younger. Men with grown children who turn around and start having kids again.”

  “You mean, they're trying to recapture their youth?”

  “Maybe. Or they're trying to start over, only this time they're trying not to make the same mistakes they made the first time around. For most of us, that's all middle age is. It's letting go of what happened in the past and starting over.”

  He took both of her hands in his, smiling. “How'd you get to be so wise?” he said.

  “Years of pain and suffering.”

  Little Moses came out of the back carrying several plates that he set on the pickup counter. He thumped the bell and called out, “Number twenty- six, your order is ready!” He saw Lavonne and grinned.

  “Do you need some help?” she said.

  “No.” He shook his head and waved at her to stay where she was. It was one-thirty and the lunch crowd had thinned considerably. Lavonne put her chin in her hand and looked at Joe.

  “So tell me,” she said. “If you could do anything you wanted, what would that be?”

  “You mean like an occupation?” She nodded and he scratched his head and smiled, like he was afraid to tell her. She waited, her eyes fixed steadily on his face. “Okay, I know it sounds crazy, but I've always wanted to open a small bike shop. Maybe start a company that manufactures carbon composite alloy bikes similar to the one I built myself. And I've always wanted to go to France and live for a while, maybe bike around Europe. You know, the Tour de France and all that.”

  She smiled and lifted her glass.

  He shook his head apologetically. “I know. It's crazy.”

  She sipped her tea and put the glass down. “No, it's not that,” she said. She unstacked and restacked the Sweet 'n Lows. “I used to want to move to the south of France and write a cookbook.”

  He laughed. “See,” he said. “We're soul mates.”

  She smiled, afraid to look at him in case he was kidding. The front door swung open and two tourists came in carrying shopping bags. One of the women opened her bag and the other leaned over and said, “Oh my God, those shoes are darling. I almost bought a pair but they didn't have my size and I can't wear normal shoes since my feet are so skinny.” Lavonne rose to clear away Joe's empty plates.

  “Here, I'll do that.” He stacked the dishware and took it to the clean-up station. “Hey, are we still on for Seinfeld at my place?” he said, looking at her over his shoulder.

  “Sure,” Lavonne said. “I'll bring the beer.”

  ————

  BY THE FIRST OF APRIL, EADIE AND LAVONNE HAD SETTLED INTO a comfortable routine. Lavonne left for the deli a little before six o'clock and Eadie got up and went out to work in the shed behind the house where she had fixed up a makeshift studio. It was one of those old-fashioned one- car garages with double doors that swing out on heavy hinges. The previous owners had used it as a garden shed but Lavonne was not a gardener, and she'd had no objections to Eadie taking it over.

  Eadie was amazed at how much work she'd gotten done since returning to Ithaca. She had spent her entire life involved in a life-and-death struggle with her hometown, but she had thought all of that would disappear once she moved to New Orleans to start a new life. What she had discovered, though, was that her old desire to prove herself to people who had tried to hold her down her whole life was still there. What she had found was that some things never change.

  She was working in oils again. She had started out painting neoabstractionist women from the waist up, but over the weeks her style had evolved into something more traditional, and now she found herself painting baroque cherubs who sported around the dark-hued canvases like winged gargoyles. The backgrounds were industrial, postmodernistic, and oddly disjointed behind the round rosy figures of medieval infants. There was an odd sense of the religious about the canvases, which was unusual given the fact that Eadie was an agnostic, a surreal vision of a chaotic but unseen world, like Dante's vision of Hell in The Divine Comedy.

  “Goddamn, you need to lighten up on the vodka martinis,” Lavonne said, the first time she saw the work. “This shit's scary.” She was standing in front of a canvas that showed a red-cheeked cherub with wings like a bat flying over a fortress that belched fiery smoke into a metallic sky. Skeletal trees rimmed the fortress. Dead fish floated in the moat.

  Eadie wiped her fingers on a rag. “Does it disturb you?”

  “Hell, yes.”

  “Good. Art should be disturbing.”

  She had seen Trevor three times since she left New Orleans; once in New York, once in San Francisco, and most recently in Atlanta. They spent their weekends together holed up in some four-star hotel, ordering room service and getting reacquainted in every way they could think of. Eadie had made him promise not to ask her about her work, and she tried not to ask him about his. She knew the prepublication reviews had been good and there was already a buzz going about his novel. The publicists were quickly lining up an extended signing tour, which meant that after May, he wouldn't be home much anyway, so it was a good thing she had decided to spend the summer with Lavonne. They kept it light, enjoying each other's company without talking too much about the past or the future or when things might get back to being normal between them again. Trevor was being patient with her but Eadie knew his patience wouldn't last forever.

  Their last night together in Atlanta, they had dinner at an upscale restaurant in Buckhead. It was a beautiful balmy night in April and the dogwoods were blooming all along Peachtree. They sat in a bricked courtyard at a linen-covered table, surrounded by eight or nine other couples sitting at linen-covered tables. Candles flickered in the soft darkness. Vivaldi played in the background.

  Trevor picked up her hand and kissed her fingers. “Come with me to New York next month,” he said. “I'll do my book signings and then we'll go out to the Hamptons and lay in the sun.”

  “I can lay in the sun down here,” Eadie said. “Besides, I can't think of anything more boring that standing around listening to a bunch of fawning flatterers tell you how wonderful you are.”

  Trevor grinned, his teeth glimmering in the candlelight. “You never know. You might enjoy that.”

  “I might enjoy watching your head swell like a beach ball? I don't think so.”

  “My head will never swell as long as I'm married to you. You've got a tongue like an ice pick.”

  “You didn't complain about that last night,” Eadie said, taking out her compact mirror. “I didn't hear you complaining about my tongue being too sharp then.”

  Trevor watched her with a bemused expression. He raised his hand. “Waiter,” he said. “Check!”

  “Stop it,” Eadie said. “I'm not ready to go yet.”

  “Sorry, that sounded like an invitation to me.”

  “Everything sounds like an invitation to you.” Eadie took out her lipstick and reapplied it carefully. She closed the compact and slid it back into her purse. “I tell you what,” she said. “Let's go back to the hotel and drink a bottle of Merlot.”

&nb
sp; Trevor looked around for the waiter. He leaned forward and crosssed his arms on the table. “Well, now that sounds good, honey, but I have to ask. What's in it for me?”

  She put the lipstick back in her purse. She yawned and covered her mouth with her fingers. “We'll drink a bottle of wine and then, if you're really lucky, maybe I'll let you rub my feet.”

  Trevor grinned and shook his head. “That's not what I had in mind,” he said.

  “Oh well,” she said. She looked around at the other dimly lit diners.

  “I tell you what.” He reached his hand across the table and took her wrist like he was checking for a pulse. “I'll rub something of yours if you'll rub something of mine.”

  Eadie giggled.

  “My choice,” he said.

  EADIE HAD ONLY BEEN BACK IN TOWN TWO WEEKS WHEN SHE organized the first bunco meeting.

  “Bunco? What in the hell is that?” Lavonne said.

  “It's where you get a bunch of women together to drink and gossip and roll dice and at the end of the evening the one with the most points takes home a pot of cash.”

  “That sounds like something you might get arrested for. I think gambling might be illegal in the State of Georgia.”

  “Hell, if they arrested us, they'd have to arrest every bridge group between here and Resaca. Don't tell me those bridge ladies don't play for money.”

  As it turned out, Grace Pearson won the bunco pot at the first meeting and Nita won the most wins. Their second meeting was scheduled for a Thursday night in mid-April. After Lavonne left for work, Eadie went out to Sam's and bought a bunch of party food and then she stopped by the Shake Rattle ‘n Roll Liquor Store and picked up several bottles of vodka. When Lavonne got home that evening, Eadie had three card tables set up on the back deck. She'd strung some party lights shaped like margarita glasses in the trees and the citronella tiki torches were flaring. On the CD player Southern Culture on the Skids sang their ode to female frailty, “Liquored Up and Lacquered Down.”

  “Is that our theme song for the evening?” Lavonne asked, indicating the CD player.

  “You bet,” Eadie said.

  “Damn, you've been busy.” Lavonne stood at the kitchen bar where Eadie had set out trays of quiche bites, crab dip, cream cheese with pepper jelly, and pecan-crusted baked brie.

  “It was a labor of love,” Eadie said. “Martini?”

  “Hell, yes.” Lavonne sat down at the bar and watched Eadie shake up a batch of pomegranate martinis. “What time do the girls get here?”

  Eadie took a tray of martini glasses out of the freezer and set two glasses down on the counter. “I told them to come around seven-thirty.” She poured out two glasses and handed one to Lavonne. “Cheers,” she said.

  Lavonne sipped it and closed her eyes. “Damn, that's good.” Eadie smiled at her over the rim of her glass. Lavonne set her glass down and said, “Where'd you learn to play bunco?”

  “New Orleans. I used to play with a group of my neighbors.”

  “It's funny,” Lavonne said. “I never pictured you hanging out with groups of women. You were always so adamant about not joining sororities, church groups, social clubs, the Bar Auxiliary, or the Junior League. And you never talk much about your childhood, but I kind of got the idea you were like me. A solitary kid.”

  Eadie shrugged. “People change,” she said. Eadie never talked much about her childhood. Her father had left soon after she was born, and her mother, Reba, worked a number of jobs to put food on the table. At various times she worked as a beautician, a waitress, a maid out at the Holiday Inn, a cashier at the Piggly Wiggly, and a laborer on a construction road crew. Reba was one of those women who couldn't be happy unless she had a man around to make her miserable. After Eadie's daddy left, she brought home two more husbands until Eadie reached an age where she could put her foot down about having any more stepdaddies. The first was Luther Birdsong. He was what you called in the South “bad to drink,” meaning that when he was sober he was as docile as a lamb and when he drank he was prone to episodes of violence. Eadie and Reba spent most Friday nights hiding under the bed in the little trailer watching Luther Birdsong's big feet go stomping past.

  The second stepdaddy, a manic-depressive encyclopedia salesman named Frank Plumlee, was even worse. Eadie was twelve by the time Reba dragged Frank home, and already the kind of girl who could stop traffic in the street. It didn't take long for Frank to start bothering her, sitting around in his underwear in the small trailer and following her with his eyes, leaving her with the feeling he was touching her in places she didn't like to think about. When she came home from school one day to find Frank alone and half-naked in the trailer, his private parts flopped out on his thigh like a sea slug, Eadie did the first thing that came to mind. She threatened to put on her Girl Scout uniform and go downtown and tell the sheriff and his big deputy what Frank had done, unless he agreed to take the money she'd been saving and leave town immediately. In those days treatment of pedophiles, especially those who trifled with Girl Scouts, was swift and severe. Frank, being a man of above-average intelligence and a coward to boot, took the money and ran.

  “You think we'll need to turn on the bug zapper?” Lavonne asked. “The mosquitoes are getting pretty bad.”

  “No, I think we'll be all right,” Eadie said. “I've got the citronella candles burning. If you think the bugs are bad here, you should see New Orleans. They've got mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds and those Formosan termites will eat through anything.”

  BY TEN O'CLOCK THE BUNCO PARTY HAD DEGENERATED INTO A raucous affair of screaming women, clattering dice, and clinking martini glasses. Someone had turned up the CD player and the song “Put Your Teeth (on the Windowsill)” reverberated across the yard, followed shortly thereafter by “Dirt Track Date” and the ever-popular “Daddy Was a Preacher but Mama Was a Go-Go Girl.” Every fourth round of dice rolling, the losing partners got up and moved to the next table, which kept things lively and also indicated who was in need of a designated driver to get home. By the twentieth round, Nita, Lavonne, Eadie, and Grace Pearson found themselves seated at the same table.

  “How's Trevor?” Grace said. She and Nita were partners and so far had the most losses for the evening. Which was good, because the ones with the most losses got to go home with their money.

  Eadie shrugged. “He's out in L.A. putting the final touches on his movie deal. I forgot to tell y'all. His manuscript's been optioned by Paramount.”

  Lavonne looked at her with a stunned expression. “How do you forget to mention something like that?” she said.

  “This thing that's going on between you two,” Grace said, rolling two ones. “You don't call it a trial separation. What do you call it?”

  “A working vacation,” Eadie said.

  Over at the next table Kaki Murdock squealed “Bunco!” and clapped her hands like a cheerleader.

  Eadie said, “No way. Y'all are cheating. That's five buncos tonight. There's odds against that happening.” She looked at Lavonne for confirmation of this mathematical precept.

  Lavonne, a former accountant, lifted her drink and said solemnly, “The law of probability makes that a definite improbability.”

  “See,” Eadie said.

  “You're just jealous 'cause I'm winning and you're not,” Kaki said. She flipped Eadie the bird and wrote down her score. “Rolling twos,” she shouted.

  Eadie picked up the dice at her table and rolled. “Speaking of husbands, Grace, whatever happened to yours? You didn't chop him up into little pieces and hide him under the floorboards, did you?”

  “Who, Larry?”

  Eadie stopped rolling and looked at her. “Yes, Larry. How many husbands did you have?”

  Grace shrugged her wide shoulders. “He moved up to Atlanta about twenty years ago. He works at a bar down in Little Five Points called Gay Par-ee.”

  Eadie lost her roll and handed the dice to Nita. “Hey, I know that place,” she said. “All the employees are female imperso
nators. They dress up like Marilyn Monroe and Liza Minnelli and Madonna and …” She stopped talking suddenly and looked at Grace.

  Grace grimaced. She nodded her head slightly. “That's right,” she said. “He goes by the name of Lola Fellatio.”

  Eadie's eyes were round as bottle caps. Her mouth was a perfect O of astonishment.“Oh my God,” she said. “Larry Pearson is gay?”

  Lavonne said, “Say it a little louder, Eadie. I don't think they heard you over in Dooly County.”

  Two tables over, Sally McBryde stopped rolling. She said, “Little Larry Pearson that graduated in my brother Clay's class?”

  “Here we go,” Lavonne said.

  “Little Larry whose sister plays the organ down at the Church of God?”

  “That's right. The one who was married to Grace. His mama was a Stockett.”

  “What about him?”

  “He's queer.”

  “So what? All the Stocketts are queer.”

  “No, not queer. Gay. You know.”

  “Little Larry Pearson is gay?” Sally said.

  “Cooter Pearson is a transvestite?” Kaki said.

  “Who needs another martini?” Eadie said.

  Later, after she got them calmed down, Eadie leaned across the table and said to Grace, “I'm an idiot. Sorry about that.”

  Grace shrugged. “It's an old secret and I'm surprised it hasn't got out by now. It really doesn't affect me one way or the other. I'm just glad Larry's happy.” They were rolling threes now. After a minute, Grace looked at Nita and said, “Speaking of secrets, how's Virginia?”