Revenge of the Kudzu Debutantes (28 page)

The girl seemed confused. “Okay?” she said and went out, closing the door softly behind her.

Charles stared at his wife, dumbfounded. “Nita, is this true?”

Nita looked at her hands.

He leaned across the table and shouted at Lavonne, “You took advantage of my wife while I was out of town and you talked her into doing something she wouldn’t normally have done. My wife was a good simple girl until she started hanging out with the two of you, and don’t think I don’t know you put her up to this. Don’t think I don’t know she never would have come up with this on her own. I won’t have it. I simply will not have it. I’ll sue both of you. I’ll sue you for everything you’ve—”

“Shut up, Charles,” Nita said.

Charles stopped shouting. His looked at his wife. His jaw bunched and sagged around the column of his throat like an old sock. “Honey?” he said.

“The sooner you be quiet the sooner we can get through this mess and be on our way,” Nita said.

“Why is there a ‘Sold’ sign in my front yard?” Leonard, who had been sitting stunned and bloated as a toad, stirred and pointed at Lavonne and Eadie. “Why are you dressed like that?” he croaked. Eadie was wearing a purple taffeta prom dress she had picked up down at the Goodwill Store. Lavonne was wearing a strapless, pastel pink, satin bridesmaid dress with a big bow that rode just above her ass. Mona Shapiro had lent her a fur stole that was supposed to be fox, but with its sharp nose and beady little black eyes, bore an uncanny resemblance to a giant wharf rat. Both debutantes were wearing tennis shoes and kudzu vines in their hair.

“We’re dressed like this because we’re going to the Kudzu Ball.”

“No you’re not! No you’re not!” He glared at his wife with his good eye and said, “I made that clear two weeks ago. You are not going to the Kudzu Ball.”

Lavonne leaned over and pulled a scrapbook out of her briefcase. She set it on the table and pushed it toward Leonard. “You’re through giving me orders,” she said.

Charles stared at Nita like he was trying to figure out who in the hell she was. “Look, honey,” he said, stretching out his hand, but she shook her head and said, “Look at the scrapbook.”

They sat there looking stupidly at the book and then Trevor pulled it toward him and opened it up. He flipped through the pages slowly and when he was finished he shoved it at Charles and Leonard. “Is this what we’ve come to?” he said to Eadie. He looked angry now, not at all amused. “Blackmail? Could you possibly have sunk this low, Eadie?”

“Don’t you lecture me on morality,” Eadie said. “It’s only because you came back early that you’re not in those pictures, but don’t think I don’t know what happened in years past. Don’t think I don’t know all about your little escapades at the Ah! Wilderness Game Ranch.”

Trevor frowned. “What in the hell are you talking about?” he said.

“What’s going on?” Leonard said, looking around wildly. “For the love of God, what’s going on?”

Lavonne told him. She told him about the smell in his hunting locker, and the condoms in Charles’s hunting jacket, and the conversations with Ramsbottom about the girls he had provided in past years. She told him how she had used the power of attorney to sell the house rather than close on Mona Shapiro’s bakery, and how Nita had sold the Duesenberg and how she and Eadie had sold all the household goods they could get their hands on. She told him that Rosebud Smoot had a list of additional assets, including hidden assets (she looked at Leonard when she said this), with instructions to begin divorce proceedings immediately. She told them that she hoped they would agree not to prosecute over the items already disposed of, and to settle fairly with any other assets. She told them at this time she and Eadie had no intention of going after partnership assets, nor had they any intention of making the scrapbook photos public, but all that could change, of course, depending on how the husbands conducted themselves.

When she finished talking, no one said anything. Leonard huddled over the photos, slowly turning the pages. Charles looked like he had swallowed battery acid. Trevor put his head back and laughed.

Eadie finished her drink. “I’m glad you think this is funny.”

Trevor slapped the table with one hand.

“You wouldn’t think it was so funny if we had photos of you.”

“You girls are something else,” Trevor said finally, shaking his head and raising his Corona in a mock toast. “Hell, I should quit trying to write legal thrillers and write about you Kudzu Debutantes instead.”

Charles grabbed the edge of the table with both hands and leaned toward Nita. “I’m confused,” he said. “Are you telling me you’re going to divorce me, or not? I hear Lavonne saying
we
but I don’t know if she means
you.
”

They all looked at Nita. This was the moment she had been dreading for weeks. The moment when she could no longer lie to herself about what it was she needed to make herself happy. The moment when she had to admit that being a good girl was not all it was cracked up to be, when she had to face the guilt of a failed marriage and the fear and uncertainty of an unknown future. It helped that she was in love with Jimmy Lee Motes. It helped that she had a bank account with six hundred fifty thousand dollars in it.

“I’m leaving you, Charles,” she said finally.

Charles took the scrapbook from Leonard and slid it across the table. “Those pictures won’t prove anything,” he said to Lavonne. “Photos can be digitally altered these days and that’s what we’ll claim you did.”

Lavonne opened her laptop and slid it to the middle of the table so they could all see the screen clearly. She took a DVD out of her purse and slid it into the computer. They watched Leonard and Charles rolling around in horseshit while they pummeled each other over Stella; watched some footage of the strip poker game; watched Leonard strap on a bra and a pair of high-heeled shoes and do his imitation of Cher singing “Do You Believe in Life After Love.” They watched while Stella pulled an obviously intoxicated Charles to his feet so forcefully that Stella’s wig slipped to one side and her face, pushed close to the camera in embarrassment, showed clear signs of razor burn and five o’clock shadow.

“Oh my God, is that a
man
?” Leonard said.

Charles slammed the laptop closed. It was all becoming clear to him now, the hazy images of him and Stella climbing the stairs, the disturbing dream of frilly underpants and something unpleasant hidden there. His stomach spasmed. Bile rose in his throat. He put his hand over his mouth.

Lavonne slid the laptop back in its case, and then leaned forward and folded her hands on the table. Leonard, who at the moment was having an out-of-body experience, who in the shock and horror of realizing he had French-kissed another man had popped out of the top of his head and was floating somewhere near the ceiling, noticed, looking down at his wife in a distant and detached way, that Lavonne had lost weight. She looked good.

“Here’s the deal,” Lavonne said patiently. “You can claim those photos have been digitally altered, you can even claim the videos were digitally altered, but what you have to ask yourself is this: Do you really want anyone in this small loose-lipped town to actually
see
those photos or that video?” Lavonne looked from one to the other. “No, I didn’t think so,” she said. “We’re not trying to be unreasonable here. The proceeds I got from the sale of the house roughly equal what you’ve got stashed in your secret accounts, Leonard, and the proceeds from the sale of the Duesenberg mean that Nita doesn’t want alimony from you, Charles, or her interest in your home, only child support and insurance and educational costs for the kids. We’re trying to be fair here. We’re trying to be reasonable.” She looked at Trevor and said, “Of course, you’ve always been fair and reasonable and we expect you to continue to be so even though we don’t have any blackmail photos of you.”

“Naturally,” Trevor said, lifting his Corona and looking steadily at Eadie.

“If you won’t contest the divorce, if you won’t try to come back against us legally for selling the house and the car, then those photos get locked up in a safe-deposit box where no one will see them. And in addition to legal amnesty for us, I also want legal amnesty for anyone who assisted us; Ramsbottom, Dallas Padgett, Mona Shapiro. You get the picture.”

“Nita, you can’t be serious about all this,” Charles said, trying to take her hand, but she moved it away. “You can’t tell me you’re going to leave your husband and your children . . .”

“I’m not leaving my children,” Nita said coldly. “That’s part of the deal. I get sole custody, although I’m willing to grant you visitation rights as long as you behave yourself and don’t try and punish me through the kids. As long as you’re nice to the kids and pay their child support, you’re welcome to see them as much as you like.”

The pedestal he had built for Nita shattered and broke into a million pieces. The illusion of his wife as a good, simple girl, the dream he had carried with him all these years evaporated and crumbled like chalk. Compared to his treacherous wife, his mother was starting to look like Mother Teresa.

“And there’s something else you need to know,” Nita said, in a strong clear voice. “I’m in love with someone else. Someone who treats me nice and makes me happy. Someone who’s nice to the kids and makes me feel like my life has meaning and purpose.”

Lavonne and Eadie exchanged glances. Eadie grinned. “I know who it is,” she said in a singsong voice.

“It’s Jimmy Lee Motes,” Nita said, looking Charles squarely in the eye. “He’s the carpenter you hired to fix the pool house and I love him and he loves me and I haven’t slept with him yet but I plan to. I thought you should know.”

“What?”
Charles shouted.

“We’re going to need to extend that amnesty to cover Jimmy Lee, too,” Lavonne said.

“You sly dog,” Eadie said, grinning at Nita.

“I hope you’re not getting ready to tell me you’ve fallen in love with that goddamned personal trainer,” Trevor said to Eadie. “Because in case you haven’t heard, I’ve given up Tonya.”

“Well aren’t you special,” Eadie said. “Aren’t you the most special dirty cheating swamp rat there is.”

He grinned at her. “You keep sweet-talking me like that, I might think you still care,” he said.

“Fuck you,” Eadie said.

“Where am I supposed to live?” a bewildered Leonard asked Lavonne. “What am I supposed to do about furniture and stuff like that?”

“I kept some of your stuff and put it in storage. You’re welcome to pick it up whenever you like. I’ve rented a house for me and the girls and once my business takes off, I’ll probably buy something smaller.”

“What business?” Leonard said.

“If you want to sell the Boone house that’s fine with me, honey,” Trevor said to Eadie. “I don’t care where we live. I don’t care where we live as long as we’re together. You know,” he reminded Eadie, “I’ve left Tonya for good.”

“You already said that,” Eadie said, and threw her empty glass at Trevor’s head. He ducked and it shattered against the wall. “You think just because you’re not sleeping with your secretary anymore I should take you back? What about all those other women?”

“What other women?” Trevor said.

Charles had had time to collect himself. “If you think I’m going to let you humiliate me in this town by running off with a pool house carpenter, you better think again,” he said grimly.

“No,
you
better think again,” Nita said, standing up so violently her chair banged the wall. “You better think about what’s more humiliating: me running off with a carpenter, or you showing up in an X-rated movie with a man wearing a garter belt.”

Charles had a sudden clear picture of the way his life was going to be from here on out.

The waitress came back into the room to take their order. She smiled and said, “The special tonight is roast duck with horseradish sauce.”

“I might as well just go ahead and kill myself,” Charles said.

“Oh it ain’t that bad,” the waitress said. “It’s a little on the greasy side but you get used to it after awhile.”

“I think we’ll skip dinner tonight,” Lavonne said, closing up the scrapbook and gathering her purse. “Go ahead and tally the bill and give it to that gentleman,” she said, pointing at the bewildered Leonard. She stood up and Eadie rose with her. “Now gentlemen, if you’ll excuse us, we have a ball to attend.”

N
ITA DIDN’T WASTE
any time. After the meeting at the Pink House Restaurant she had Lavonne drop her off at her car and she drove as fast as she could to Jimmy Lee’s house. He was sitting in his little den watching TV. The lights were on and the room looked cozy and neat. She stood at the door feeling her heart pound her chest like a jackhammer, and when he didn’t get up from his chair, she knocked again. He heard her this time, and when he saw it was her, he jumped up and crossed the room with a few long strides.

He swung the door open and pulled her inside. “Hey, baby,” he said, taking her in his arms. His touch was like an electrical current, and she understood suddenly and completely the concept of magnetic force and attraction. They stood for a while, wrapped in each other’s arms, his chin resting on top of her head. “How’d it go?” he asked her, finally.

She told him, briefly, about the meeting at the Pink House. She had promised him that after the meeting, after she told Charles the truth, things would be different between them, that all the barricades that stood in the way of them taking their relationship to the next level, would be down. But here she was and they were suddenly shy with each other.

“I just got home from the Kudzu Festival and I haven’t had a chance to shower yet,” he said.

“How’d it go?”

“I took fourth place in the recliner race but came in third place in the Betty Cracker Cook-Off with my Heart Thumper Shake.” His chest was hard and flat beneath his Austin City Limits T-shirt.

She laughed and he leaned over and kissed her, long and slow. “I thought for sure you’d win the breakfast category,” she said, sliding her hands into his back pockets.

He grinned, looking down at her with his eyes half-closed and his head tilted slightly. “First prize went to White Trash Breakfast, a one-skillet meal of eggs, Spam, butter, and Velveeta.”