Secret Lives of the Kudzu Debutantes (11 page)

“Look, Virginia, if you want to know what happened, why don't you just ask your new husband. He was there.”

Virginia stiffened. A cloud passed suddenly over the sun, darkening the yard and bringing with it a cool breeze off the water. “Yes, I know that,” she said shortly. “I know he was there.”

Eadie noted Virginia's discomfort. She grinned suddenly. “I thought soul mates told each other everything,” she said.

Virginia stared at her steadily for several seconds, her face becoming less soft and childlike and more like a slab of granite. She poured the rest of her drink out on the ground. “Oh, I'll find out what happened,” she said briskly, squaring her little shoulders. “You can bet on it.”

Eadie shrugged. “Good luck with that,” she said. She turned, and moved off through the crowd.

Virginia watched her go, a tense expression on her face. Her eyes flattened out over the crowd of revelers and then grew sharp as pitchfork prongs as they settled on the hapless Redmon, who, unaware of his wife's piercing gaze, trundled by with Loretta James wrapped in his arms.

V
IRGINIA SAW HER GRANDSON LATER, STANDING AT THE EDGE OF
the crowd, watching the band play. Public school had obviously not been good for Logan. He was dressed all in black—black pants, black T-shirt, a black leather jacket, and his hair was dyed a deep purple color. He was with a lovely girl, a breathtakingly beautiful girl, who reminded Virginia of herself as a young woman. Startled, she realized it was her granddaughter, Whitney, who, over the nine months since Virginia saw her last, had metamorphosed from a chubby adolescent into a slim-waisted swan. It was too late for Logan, of course, but Whitney showed signs of promise. Virginia imagined herself taking the girl under her wing. She imagined tea parties and shopping trips to Atlanta. Virginia had always thought she would make a better mother to a daughter than she had made to a son. If only fate had worked to her advantage. She pulled herself up straight, and watched the girl, her lips pursed. With the right guidance Whitney might yet make something of herself. Her eyes narrowed. Her breathing slowed. She stared at her granddaughter, feeling a slight tremor of excitement.

Virginia had suddenly realized what shape her revenge would take.

T
HE DAY AFTER THE WEDDING
E
ADIE WOKE UP EARLY, BORROWED
Lavonne's car, and drove out to the office supply store at the mall. She bought herself a sketchbook and some charcoal pencils and then she dropped the car off at Lavonne's and walked down to the River Park and sat and sketched families throwing Frisbees, families picnicking in the sun and Rollerblading along the concrete sidewalks. She hadn't worked in nearly eighteen months but today it just poured out of her. She filled page after page of the sketchbook.

Around twelve-thirty, Lavonne called. “Hey, where are you?” she said, still sounding sleepy.

“I'm down at the River Park, sketching.”

“Sketching? Really? Stay right there. I'll go by the store and pick up a couple of double lattes and some cream cheese muffins and meet you there.” Lavonne was happy to have the day off. The deli was closed on Sundays and Mondays. Usually she just sat around working on her laptop, but Eadie was flying back to New Orleans tomorrow so Lavonne was glad to spend the day with her.

Eadie put her cell phone down and thumbed slowly through the sketch
book, amazed at the work she had done. It was as if something inside her had suddenly let down like rainwater through a clogged gutter. Eadie didn't believe in therapy but she could imagine a therapist making much of her sudden flow of creativity. She could imagine a guy who looked like Freud saying,
Go back to your hometown and find out why it is the source of your unhappiness. Find out why you feel disconnected and disjointed when you are away from it
.

Far out on the river a barge passed, its metal decks gleaming in the sun. Swallows darted in the deep blue sky. Eadie thumbed through the sketchbook and tried not to think about Trevor.

Driving through the outskirts of Ithaca a few days ago, she had felt the baggage of her childhood settle through her like sediment. It had stunned her to feel that old familiar feeling of dread returning. She had made Lavonne turn right on Tuckertown Road and drive slowly through the Shangri-La Trailer Park, past the lot where the Wilkenses' trailer had stood, past the sandy creek bank where Eadie had sat as a child and dreamed of a life better than the one she had.

Trevor was responsible for all this somehow. She wasn't quite sure how, but it was easier to blame him than it was to crash through all the barricades she had long ago erected inside herself. He was the one who'd insisted they could go away and start over again. It had been easy for him. He'd had every opportunity: money, looks, family connections, a safe and happy childhood. Talent. It was hard loving someone so damn perfect.

Eadie saw Lavonne's car pull into the parking lot and a few minutes later, Lavonne was crossing the lawn, carrying the double lattes in a cardboard tray with one hand, and the bag of cream cheese muffins in the other.

“Hey, look at you,” Lavonne said, sitting down on the bench. “You're working again.”

Eadie closed her sketchbook. A slight sheen of perspiration glistened across her forehead. She looked tired but happy. “It just came over me,” she said, reaching for one of the lattes. “I got up this morning and knew I had to work.” She took the plastic lid off the coffee and sipped carefully. “I think it has something to do with this place,” she said, looking around the crowded park.

“I know, isn't it great? They finished it right after you moved to New Orleans.”

“No. I don't mean the park. I mean Ithaca. I mean running into Virginia
and Lee Anne Bales at the wedding. It has something to do with conflict. I need conflict to work.”

“What,” Lavonne said, opening the sack of muffins, “you don't get enough conflict married to Trevor?” She offered one to Eadie.

Eadie shook her head sadly. “We don't fight like we used to,” she said. “He's always working. And when he's working, he's happy.”

Lavonne chewed slowly and stared at her for several minutes. “You poor thing,” she said. “Your husband's happy and you don't fight anymore. How do you stand it?”

Eadie made a wry face and sipped her coffee. “It's hard to explain,” she said. “It's complicated.”

She had met him her freshman year at the University of Georgia, where he was a second-year law student. They were from the same small town but Trevor was six years older and he came from money and the land-owning aristocracy. Eadie came from people who had only recently embraced the joys of indoor plumbing, people whose idea of moving up was a double- wide trailer instead of a single-wide.

Their attraction for each other smoldered for a few weeks and then erupted into a blazing love affair, more like a wildfire than a controlled burn. She met him in September and by Thanksgiving he had proposed. Eadie was aware that everyone in Ithaca thought she married him for his money, but the truth was, this never occurred to her. She married him because she had never met anyone like him. Until Trevor Boone, she had never met anyone she felt had the stamina, courage, and strength of character to survive loving her. Not to mention his all-American good looks and the fact that he was an absolute pervert in bed. Eadie was crazy about him and would have married him if he'd been penniless. The family name and money was just a bonus.

His mother, horrified, put her foot down but it did no good. The wedding was held at a small Episcopal chapel near the UGA campus, and Maureen Boone attended because she could not bear for the rest of Ithaca to gossip about Boone family squabbles. She could not air the family linen in public. Still, she could, and did, sit in the front pew sobbing so loudly the priest had to raise his voice to be heard. When this didn't work, she fainted. Eadie, looking over at her prone mother-in-law, thought grimly,
So that's how it's going to be
. Trevor, accustomed to his mother's histrionics, smiled calmly at the rector, and in a deep voice said, “Proceed.”

“There's a solution to your problem,” Lavonne said. “It's called therapy.”

“Therapy's for whiners and weaklings,” Eadie said. “Therapy's for poor slobs who don't know how to make a good vodka martini.”

A slight breeze blew across the river, bringing with it the scent of fish. Over by the picnic pavilion a young man took out a guitar and began to play. Lavonne pulled another muffin out of the bag. She chewed thoughtfully and watched the sunlight playing along the surface of the river. “I guess I'm just caught up in the irony of your situation,” she said to Eadie. “It's what you always wanted. To get away from Ithaca. To make Trevor be faithful to you and his art.” She looked at Eadie. “And he has been faithful, right?”

“Yes.”

“So what's the problem?”

Eadie tapped the rim of her latte with her fingernails. “Like I said, be careful what you wish for.”

Lavonne squinted her eyes and looked at the sky. A kite floated motionless, its tail curling in the breeze. “It's not as if Trevor's being inattentive,” she said. “He's called a dozen times since you've been here.”

Eadie shrugged. “I think he's nervous. He knows I'm bored. He's afraid I'll relapse.”

“He's afraid you'll sleep with someone else?”

“No. He knows I won't do that.” Eadie repressed a sudden, graphic image of the young po'boy sandwich maker stretched out, naked, in her bed. She sighed. “The only thing he's going to catch me in bed with these days is my vibrator.” She told Lavonne about the unfortunate incident involving Milton.

Lavonne dropped her jaw in amazement. She put her head back and laughed. “Oh my God, are you telling me your husband caught you using your vibrator? How humiliating.”

“Right,” Eadie said. “Like your husband never caught
you
.”

“Eadie, I don't even have a vibrator.”

She twisted her head and looked at Lavonne in astonishment. “What? You were married to Leonard Zibolsky for twenty-one years and you don't have a vibrator? No offense, Lavonne, but I
know
Leonard.”

Lavonne didn't look offended. Leonard was pretty much universally unappealing to women. “Celibacy is an underrated virtue,” she said.

“Are you crazy? That's not healthy. When was the last time you had sex?”

Lavonne didn't like being reminded of the barrenness of her so-called
sex life. “I don't know,” she said. “Big hair was in. Princess Di was still in love with Charles.”

Eadie didn't think this was funny. She sipped her coffee and looked at Lavonne the way she might look at a crippled dog that had been run down in the street. After a while she said, “Okay, we're going to fix this problem.”

“What problem?” Lavonne said nervously. “There is no problem.”

But Eadie was on a mission. There was no stopping her now. “I was going to order a replacement for Milton anyway,” she said. “They've come out with a new and improved version. The Love Monkey II. When we get back to your place, we'll get on the Internet and order two, one for you and one for me.”

“Are you crazy?” Lavonne said. “I can't have the postman delivering a package to my door with a return address that reads Love Monkey II.”

“It comes in a plain brown wrapper,” Eadie said. “Everything from Fleshy Delights comes in a plain brown wrapper.”

“Fleshy Delights?”

“It's an Internet sex shop where you can order sex toys and marital aids. You know. Vibrating panties, flavored skin lotions, strap-ons, handcuffs.”

“There's a whole portion of your life I don't want to know anything about.”

“Don't worry. I'll show you how to use it.”

Lavonne groaned and put her head in her hands. After a minute she tried again. “Look, Eadie,” she said evenly. “I appreciate your concern over my sex life, but you don't need to worry about it. I'm doing just fine, even without the Love Monkey II. I'm older than you are. I'm forty-seven years old. I'm nearly fifty. I'm too old to be ordering stuff from a porn web- site.”

“Don't be ridiculous. Fifty is the new thirty. Look at Goldie Hawn. Look at Meryl Streep and Susan Sarandon.”

“Hey there.” They both turned around. A man dressed in biking gear stood about twenty feet away in the shade of a boxwood hedge. He perched on the bicycle seat with one foot resting on the bike path and the other resting on a pedal. “How're you doing?” he asked, still trying to be friendly. Men were always trying to pick Eadie up. Lavonne was used to it by now.

Eadie, obviously thinking the same thing, stretched her legs out in front of her. She yawned and put her fingers over her mouth. “Do I know you?” she said.

“Hey, Lavonne,” he said, taking off his helmet and his sunglasses.

“Joe,” she said, sitting upright. “I didn't recognize you.” A sudden unpleasant realization came to her. She wondered how much of their conversation he had overheard.

He swung his leg over the bike and walked it toward them. It made little clicking sounds, like a cricket stuck in a closet, like a time bomb ticking down to destruction. Lavonne handled the introductions as best she could. She felt him studying her and her face flamed. “Joe Solomon, this is Eadie Boone. Eadie, this is Joe.”