The Red Hat Society's Queens of Woodlawn Avenue

by Regina Hale Sutherland

  “Why me, Henri?” I asked quietly, half-hoping the whooshing of the fountain in the middle of the plaza would drown out my words. I was a fool to rock a boat while I was so desperately clinging to the sides.

  “Because Jane recommended you, bien sur.” But his eyes twinkled so that I knew he was teasing me.

  “You know what I mean.”

  And then he stopped, turned me toward him, and put his fingers beneath my chin, lifting my eyes to his. “You truly do not know?”

  I shook my head and would have looked away, embarrassed, but his fingers held my chin in place.

  “To begin with, you are very beautiful.”

  I tried to shake my head in denial, but he leaned forward and kissed me softly on the lips.

  “I’m middle-aged,” I protested.

  “And that means you cannot be beautiful?”

  Well, he had me there. Because here in America, that pretty much summed it up. Evidently the men in France hadn’t gotten the memo.

  “You are also intelligent,” he added, kissing my forehead. “And compassionate.” He kissed my cheek. “And you have taken pity on me, a stranger in a strange land.” He kissed the tip of my nose. “How could I do anything but adore you?”

  And despite my misgivings, I believed him. His eyes, his voice, his touch all oozed sincerity. In a good way.

  “Perhaps,” he said, “it would be better to ask why a woman like you would take pity on a pathetic specimen like myself.”

  And then he kissed me in earnest. The fresh air of a cool spring night bathed my heated cheeks, and I allowed myself to feel the happiness that poured over me like water from the fountain next to us.

  You’ve been doing what?” Jane’s jaw dropped, practically brushing my hardwood floor, where the four of us sat around my dining room table at our next chapter meeting, the ever-present red hats in place and lots of munchies on hand.

  “We’re having a bit of a…well…fling, I guess.” I was blushing to the roots of my hair. I had managed to keep the level of my involvement with Henri to myself for two whole weeks—fourteen days of amazing kisses and the ego-building attentions of an incredibly sexy man. Whenever I felt a Twinkie twinge, I pictured Henri, and the urge to binge quickly receded.

  The cocktail party the night before had been a smash ing success. I’d found an amazing little black dress on the 75 percent off rack at Dillard’s, and the shrimp puffs and caviar had been crowd pleasers. As I circled the room, directing the two waiters I’d hired for the evening and encouraging the bartender to practice liberality, I’d taken great satisfaction in the evening’s success. Henri had lavished praise on me in front of his colleagues with as much enthusiasm as he kissed me with when he followed me into the powder room. For a woman who’d been a certified couch potato a few weeks before, I’d undergone a serious transformation. I’d charmed and satisfied every guest, pulling off an elegant gathering of fifty of Nashville’s top business people.

  And over the course of those two weeks, even Jim’s increasingly frequent phone calls couldn’t perturb me for more than an hour or two.

  At first, I had put the calls down to a need to rub my nose in his happiness with Tiffany, but over the last few days, I’d begun to wonder if my assessment was correct. Especially when the last time he’d called, he’d wanted to know how to wash delicates. In twenty-plus years of marriage, Jim had never expressed the slightest interest in washing anything, delicate or otherwise.

  “Are you sure that’s wise?” Linda asked, pulling me back to the here and now. “Dating Henri?” For the first time, the Queens of Woodlawn Avenue were meeting at my house, and in honor of the occasion, I’d bought my first red hat. It was a 1920s-style cloche, its turned-up brim anchored by a purple ribbon rosette. “You know what they say about mixing business with pleasure.” Linda frowned and her green eyes looked troubled.

  I’d waited until we were in the middle of a hand to drop my bombshell. Grace and I had lost the bidding to Linda and Jane, but halfway through the hand, Grace had the lead. She slid an eight of hearts into the middle of the table. Jane reached over and pulled a ten from Linda’s dummy. I looked at the cards in my hand, completely void in hearts, and pondered which of my trump suit to play. Excited at the prospect of an extra winner, I pulled a five of spades from my hand and slid it on top of the other cards.

  Grace frowned. Not a good sign. Then Jane pulled a card from her hand and threw it on the pile. “Don’t send a boy to do a man’s job,” she said as her king of spades trumped my little five.

  Shoot.

  Grace didn’t look too happy with me. “Don’t send a boy to do a man’s job,” she repeated. “That means, don’t underplay your cards, thinking you can squeak out an extra winner. If you’re going to take the trick, do it with authority. Otherwise you let your partner down. Next time play a higher card.”

  Jane nodded in agreement. “Don’t be afraid to use your power.”

  Don’t be afraid to use your power. Her words coalesced in my brain and wouldn’t leave, even after the bridge game was over and the other Queens of Wood-lawn Avenue had long departed.

  I was still wrestling with the implication of those words later that night. Curled up in bed in an old pair of flannel pajamas, I’d taken a wooden box from its place of honor on my nightstand, opened the lid, and lifted out its contents piece by piece.

  I’d made the memory box at some Amway-style party where one of my former Belle Meade friends had been hawking the latest distraction/activity for bored housewives and stay-at-home moms. Being me, I’d not been satisfied with a slapdash job. No, my memory box, with Ellie & Jim written in elegant calligraphy across the top, had been a flipping work of art. A monument to a marriage that was dying right under my unknowing nose.

  The box was full of mementos. Intimate things. Bits and pieces of my life that now lay strewn across my bedspread. A scrap of lace from the negligee I’d worn on my honeymoon. Ticket stubs from plays and movies we’d enjoyed. Little notes Jim had written me over the years. To My Dearest Ellie. With all my love, Jim. A remnant of love from happier times. The only use I’d found for these mementos over the past nine months had been as instruments of self-torture. Over and over again, I’d sifted through the contents of the memory box just as I was doing now.

  And then the phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me.”

  My pulse shouldn’t still leap at the sound of his voice. I decided to attribute my reaction to the maudlin stroll down memory lane.

  “What do you want, Jim?” Too bad I couldn’t keep the asperity out of my voice. I wanted to sound cool and distant.

  “Did you get the check I sent?”

  “Yes, thanks.” I wasn’t going to praise him for alimony that was fourteen days overdue. I had deposited it in the bank with a sigh of relief, grateful for the small cushion it provided.

  “How’s your business going?”

  “Fine, thanks.” I didn’t say anything else, because somehow the combination of his voice and the sight of all those mementoes lying on the bed tied my tongue. Jim was silent for a long moment, too.

  “Well, I guess that’s all I really wanted. To make sure you got the check.”

  “Okay.” Two syllables I could barely force past the sudden constriction in my throat.

  Another silence.

  “Okay, well, good-night, Ellie.”

  “Good-night, Jim.” I hung up the phone, and, darn it, tears sprang to my eyes. That old hurt welled up in my chest, and it was like the last two weeks had never happened. I was the same, pitiful wreck that Jim had walked out on all those months ago.

  And then suddenly Grace’s words ran through my mind again. Don’t give your power away.

  I wiped away the tears with the back of my hand and took a deep breath. Then I picked up the phone and, stabbing at the buttons, dialed my old number.

  “Ellie?” Jim had apparently looked at his Caller ID because he didn’t bother to say “hello.” “Is a
nything wrong?”

  “I want you to quit calling me.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know why you’re doing it, but I want you to quit calling me. If you want to know if a check has ar rived, send me an e-mail. If you need to know how to wash Tiffany’s lingerie, ask her. And for heaven’s sake, Jim, if you’re lonely, don’t drink and dial. Go find your little floozie and bother her. But quit calling me.”

  The words rushed out in a torrent, and with them came a feeling of relief. A cleansing.

  “You don’t have to be nasty about it,” Jim snapped. “I was just trying to be nice.”

  Only he wasn’t. Trying to be nice, that was. “You can’t eat your cake and have it too, Jim. We’re done. You made sure of that. So quit calling me.”

  “Are you seeing someone?”

  Two weeks ago, the jealousy in his voice would have thrilled me to the core. Now, it left me tired and exasperated. “That’s none of your business.” I began to stuff the mementoes back into the memory box.

  “You are seeing someone.”

  “Jim, even if I’m dating, you’re about to get married, for pete’s sake. What does it matter if I have a boyfriend?”

  “Who is it?”

  “I’m hanging up now, Jim. Go talk to Tiffany if you need your masculinity reinforced.”

  “She’s at work,” he snapped, and the words stung. He’d only called because his hootchie mama was off plying her wares for minimum wage plus tips to a bunch of salivating Neanderthals just like him.

  “Lucky her.” I slammed down the phone, closed the lid of the memory box with a snap, and returned it to the bedside table. I flicked off the lamp.

  And then I lay sleepless in the dark for a very long time.

  * * *

  I spent the next week putting the finishing touches on Henri’s apartment and attending a couple of Red Hat events. Henri worked late every night, so I didn’t see him at all. Instead, I cooked gourmet meals that I left in Tup-perware containers in the refrigerator for him to heat up when he got home. And in his absence, doubt took root in my mind like all the weeds I was pulling from my flower beds. Who was I kidding, carrying on with Henri like a twenty-something in love for the first time? Henri’s attentions might be a balm, but the wound beneath was still there, still fresh. And I found myself wishing in my darker moments that Jim would start drinking and dialing again.

  Jane passed along leads for more clients, but with all I was doing for Henri and the few others I’d already acquired, I didn’t have time to follow up on them. I even splurged on a visit to the salon to have my highlights brought up to date.

  That’s where I ran into Roz.

  There I was, trapped under a heat lamp with enough aluminum foil residing on my head to make me look like an extraterrestrial. I was flipping through the pages of the latest French Vogue I’d picked up at the bookstore, hoping to pick up some tips on being less American and more confident, when one of the stylists brought someone to the chair next to me. I looked up and saw Roz.

  “Ellie!” She smiled in that feral way of hers, the one that told you she was the kind of woman who would eat her young. In this case, though, it looked like she was willing to settle for me.

  “Hello, Roz.”

  “Ellie. I’m so glad I ran into you. I have big news.” She said it in such a way that I knew it wasn’t going to be very pleasant news, whatever it was. At least not for me.

  “About the Cannon Ball?”

  “Yes. Very exciting. We’ve changed the date.”

  My head popped up and banged against the heat lamp. Pain spread across my scalp, aided by the conducting properties of the foil.

  “Will it be later in the fall?”

  Roz’s smile revealed her extra-sharp canine teeth. It was a wonder, with all the cosmetic dentistry she’d had, that someone hadn’t filed those fangs down.

  “No, actually. We’ve been hoping for ages to move it to the summer, but the museum couldn’t accommodate us. Now they can, though.”

  Summer? I wanted to leap out of my chair, but I’d already banged my head against the heat lamp once. “So we’re talking what—July?” I asked hopefully.

  Roz shook her head. “Oh, no. Too hot then. No, we’re the first Saturday in June. Only a few weeks away.”

  My head started to swim. No way. There was no way the committees, any of the committees, could pull that off.

  And then I saw the gleam in Roz’s eye, and I realized the truth. She had done whatever was necessary to change the date merely to inflict suffering on me, and she didn’t care who else got caught in the line of fire.

  “The date change shouldn’t present that big of a problem. You’re on top of it, aren’t you?”

  “I am.” When had I become such a glib liar? “No, the change won’t be a problem.”

  We both knew the truth, though, and Roz just sat there, smiling, basking in her triumph. I had thought she would be satisfied with humiliating me with the transportation assignment and then watching as my committee deserted. But apparently that wasn’t enough to satisfy her blood lust.

  Thankfully, at that moment, my stylist appeared to take me away to the shampoo room so she could remove the foil and rinse out my hair. I managed to avoid Roz until I left the salon, highlights glowing golden in the sunlight, but I couldn’t so easily escape the sound of the ominous, rapidly ticking clock my old nemesis had planted in my brain.

  By Friday night, I was desperate for my Henri “fix,” so I put on a new silk dress that I really couldn’t afford and headed for his apartment. Since I had my own key, I could let myself in. He’d called earlier in the day, distracted and harried, but at least he asked if I would join him for dinner at his apartment. I hadn’t even minded when he wanted to know if I’d be willing to cook the meal.

  A romantic evening, tête-à-tête, was just what the doctor ordered, so to speak. No Jim. No Roz. No worry about whether Your Better Half would turn out to be more than a one-hit wonder and no talk of bridge or red hats. Just a delicious meal and Henri’s even more delicious attentions.

  He turned up an hour late, by which time I’d reheated the beoufbourgignon to the point of disintegration. If Jim had kept me waiting like that I would have been livid, but since I was waiting for the mouth-watering Henri the delay only served to heighten my already fevered state of anticipation.

  “Ma chère” he purred when he came through the door, dropping his briefcase with a thud and sweeping me into his embrace. Then there was no conversation at all for a nice long time. Finally, when we came up for air, I could return his greeting.

  “How was your day?” I took him by the hand and led him to the kitchen so I could serve the meal. His fingers threaded through mine as we went, and a warm glow took over for the hunger pangs that had been gnawing my stomach. I’d forgotten how sensual merely holding hands could be.

  “My day? Horrible” Henri said. “I will never understand you Americans.”

  I hid my wince. At times, Henri’s contempt for the good old US of A and its inhabitants rubbed me the wrong way. But then he would kiss me and I’d forget all about it.

  “Maybe this will help.” I picked up the plates of food. “Grab the wine,” I said and led him back to the dining room.

  I’d set the table with a pristine linen cloth and tall tapers in the silver candlesticks my mother had given to Jim and me for our twenty-fifth anniversary shortly before her death. I lit the candles while Henri poured the wine.

  “This is what a man dreams of when he is trapped in an office all day with imbeciles.” Henri leaned over to kiss me when he handed me my glass of wine.

  Okay, so he was arrogant, but he was also the most amazing kisser. He pulled out my chair for me—a courtesy Jim had rarely performed—and we sat down to eat. As the stresses of his day melted away, Henri turned on the charm and easily ensnared me.

  Dinner gave way to an aperitif on the new leather couch in front of the fireplace. I slipped off my shoes and curled up next
to him. His arm slid comfortably around my shoulders.

  “You are an extraordinarily amazing woman,” he murmured in my ear. He was quite the ear-murmurer, Henri, and it would have seemed a little slick if it hadn’t been so darn effective.

  “You’re not so bad yourself.”

  “Not so bad?” He arched one eyebrow. “I can see that I must improve your opinion of me.”

  And he did. First on the couch, and then later when we moved to the bedroom. I’d bought the enormous four-poster bed for him with less than pure intentions, I must admit. The sheets were six hundred count cotton, so luxurious they might as well have been silk. And the small stereo system surrounded us with soft jazz.

  All in all, I’d set the scene for my own seduction. And to my delight, Henri definitely wasn’t a boy sent to do a man’s job.

  Over the years of my marriage, I’d gradually forgotten how exciting making love for the first time could be, but I’d also forgotten the awkwardness of the morning after. The night before, I’d been emboldened by the wine and the firelight. In the cold, harsh light of Saturday morning, though, I faced the reality of being a middle-aged woman who’d taken a new lover.

  “Eleanor?” Henri mumbled sleepily when I slipped from the luxurious bed, taking the flat sheet with me so that I could conceal myself for the trek to the bathroom. The ravages of time and gravity on my figure could be camouflaged in the dark, but nothing short of a burka could cover them in the glaring light of day.

  “Be right back.” My dash for the bathroom was hampered by the constricting wrap of the sheet. I looked over my shoulder when I reached the bathroom door to find Henri smiling at me with his usual combination of sensual interest and amusement.

  The bathroom was a veritable hall of mirrors, so I clutched the sheet as I moved to the vanity and leaned closer to examine my reflection. My face looked the same as always—the crow’s feet flowing from the corners of my eyes, little red splotches here and there across my cheeks and brow where I’d once had smooth, even skin tone. My face was no different from that of any fifty-year-old woman. I was disappointed, because I would have thought something as amazing as the night before would have shown up in the mirror.