Revenge of the Kudzu Debutantes (9 page)

“Oh shit,” Lavonne said, staring across the crowd and holding her margarita glass to her lips the way a priest holds the communion chalice. “Here comes your damn mother-in-law. “

Virginia walked across the yard like a tiny ballerina on point. She stopped and chatted with those few she knew who were still sober enough to carry on a conversation, and waved when she saw Trevor Boone. She couldn’t believe he had brought his slutty secretary, Sonya or Anya or whatever she was called. It was disgraceful behavior not befitting one of the founding families of Ithaca. Maureen Boone must be spinning in her grave. Actually, imagining Maureen spinning gave Virginia a little shudder of pleasure. Maureen had snubbed her on more than one occasion and it was pleasant to imagine her discomfort at seeing her only son with that bleach-haired trollop. Besides, it would give Virginia something else to gossip about tomorrow over lunch at the club, something besides the music and the margarita machine and the ridiculous caterers.

“Trevor!” she called gaily, standing on her toes to kiss his cheek. Trevor was blond and blue-eyed and stood about six foot one. He was just about the best-looking man Virginia had ever seen and she always got a little thrill of excitement just being in his presence. “Hello, Virginia,” he said. The minute his back was turned Virginia gave the girl a withering glance. She at least had the decency to blush and look at her feet. Virginia turned and strolled across the lawn toward Nita and Lavonne.

“Shouldn’t you two be seeing to your guests?” Virginia said briskly, sitting down at the table.

“We’re taking a break,” Lavonne said, scowling into her drink.

It hadn’t taken Virginia long to get the word out that she’d had nothing to do with this tragic party. A well-placed word here, a raised eyebrow there, a shrug here and her disclaimer was complete; she had no doubt it would be all over town tomorrow. She could relax now and enjoy the spectacle going on around her. She leaned across the table and put her hand on Lavonne’s arm for effect. “
Where
did you find those caterers?” she said.

“Help yourself to the brisket,” Lavonne said, moving her arm. “It’s good.”

Virginia said,
“Brisket?”
and laughed, showing her sharp little teeth. Her steely eyes rolled in her head like ball bearings.

Lavonne sipped her drink and tried to pretend she was somewhere else. Stars littered the sky like shards of broken glass. Billy Idol belted out “Rebel Yell.” Leonard’s secretary, Christy, stumbled past the table, listing to one side like a sailboat on stormy seas.

“Good Lord, is that one of the office staff?” Virginia said, frowning at the woman who, inebriated past the point of decency, sported a short skirt and stiletto heels.

“That’s Leonard’s secretary,” Lavonne said grimly.

“Well no wonder everyone is sleeping with the secretaries,” Virginia said. “Whoever is doing the hiring over at the firm needs to be fired.”

Lavonne was suddenly, undeniably, sober. She realized she needed to get this party closed down, get rid of Virginia, and drink another pitcher of margaritas, and not necessarily in that order.

Sunny Hawkins lurched over and putting both hands on the table, she leaned over and said loudly to Nita, “Oh my God, this food is fucking wonderful.” Her eyes were bloodshot. Mascara ran down one cheek. She was having trouble getting the words out but she was determined. “I
love
the music, not like that boring shit you usually play, and I absolutely
love
the margaritas. This is the best party you ever had, Nita. I’ve been coming to these parties for fifteen years and I can honestly tell you this is the best one ever. Ever, ever, ever—” She noticed Virginia then, noticed her expression and her gray eyes glittering like bayonet points. She thrust herself off the table, giggled, and, giving Nita a little wave, stumbled off into the darkness.

No one said anything. Nita went back to staring at the moon and wondering what Jimmy Lee was doing right now. Lavonne, feeling optimistic for the first time all evening, thought that with any luck this party would be over in an hour with no more lasting repercussions than a few scattered hangovers. Virginia decided there was nothing worse than ingratitude and thought gloomily that if something terrible didn’t happen soon, this party might actually wind up a success.

Over by the pool house, Dillon Foster kicked over one of the concrete garden urns and began to roll it across the lawn like a happy lumberjack.

Charles hurried past the table where his mother and the Zibolsky woman sat enjoying themselves while Nita picked obliviously at a plate of brisket. As if he didn’t have enough to worry about trying to contain this damn party, it was obvious there was something wrong with his wife. Nita hadn’t been herself lately. He had to give her instructions over and over again to get her to do them. Simple but important instructions, like picking up his shirts at the cleaners or rolling a tube of toothpaste the right way or making chicken for dinner when he had specifically told her he wanted beef.

Ed Trotter, one of his prep school comrades, passed him and shouted, “Great party, Broadwell.” Charles thought,
Fuck you, buddy.
Charles said, “Thanks, Ed,” and clapped him on the shoulder. So far, six people had told him what a great party it was, but Charles knew sarcasm when he heard it. Charles was an expert on sarcasm.

Sure everyone was having a good time now, laughing and whooping it up like a bunch of rowdy teenagers while a blood-red moon rose over the yard like a brushfire. But he knew that tomorrow, when they sobered up, they would remember the kugel and the matzo balls and the dreadlocked freaks and they would call one another on the phone and giggle and whisper and roll their eyes while they recounted the entire night. Charles’s ears burned and his palms sweated, just thinking about it.

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.

F
IFTEEN 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.

F
OR 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.