Secret Lives of the Kudzu Debutantes (14 page)

She never picked up a tennis racket again.

W
HEN
E
ADIE GOT HOME FROM
N
ITA'S WEDDING
, T
REVOR
was glad to see her. He had made scallops Creole with rice and they ate in front of a roaring fire in the dark, cavernous library. After dinner they laid down on the sofa and got reacquainted in ways that went beyond what might have been expected of a couple that had been married for twenty-two years. The following morning they got up at noon, packed a hamper full of sandwiches and martinis, and went for a picnic at Lafayette Cemetery #1. It was a beautiful day, cool and sunny. A damp fishy breeze blew steadily from the sea. The gravestones and walls of the old mausoleums were covered in lichen and mildew, and around the graveled paths the St. Augustine grass grew in thick, springy clumps. They found a secluded spot in one of the back corners, between the brick wall and the tomb of Angelique Wirz who died in 1826 at the age of twenty-one. Trevor spread the blanket and they lay down, their martini glasses resting on their stomachs, gazing up at the azure sky through the thick twisted canopy of live oak.

Eadie closed her eyes. After a while Trevor rolled over on his side and
propped himself up on one elbow, setting his drink on the ground in front of him. He picked a handful of coarse grass and dropped it, blade by blade, onto Eadie's face.

“Stop it,” she said, waving her hand in front of her nose like she was swatting a persistent fly. “I'm trying to sleep. I'm tired.”

“I'll bet you are,” he said. “After last night. After this morning.”

She opened one eye and regarded him lazily. She yawned and patted her mouth. “Jet lag,” she said.

“Jet lag, my ass,” he said, and leaned to bite her belly.

She yelped and sat up, spilling her drink. “Now look what you made me do,” she said.

“Here, I'll make you another one.” He took her glass and sat up, pulling a metal cocktail shaker out of the hamper. He topped off both drinks, and they lay down again on their sides, facing each other.

“In all the get reacquainted frenzy last night, I forgot to ask you.” He grinned and she did, too. “What's new in the old hometown?”

She ran her finger lightly around the rim of her glass trying to make it sing. “Not a damn thing,” she said.

“Did you see any of your old boyfriends?”

“What old boyfriends? I don't have any old boyfriends from Ithaca.”

“You have one,” he said.

She snorted and lifted her glass, arching one eyebrow. “Some boyfriend,” she said.

He groaned and rolled over on his back. “Come on, honey, don't bust my balls. I know you love me. I know you missed me.”

She leaned over, giving him the full effect of her almond-shaped green eyes. “Yeah?” she said. “What makes you so special?”

He rolled over on top of her and nuzzled his face roughly against her neck. “You know very well what makes me so special.”

She poked him in the ribs but he wasn't ticklish. “Get off me, peckerhead.”

“That's not what you said last night.”

“Very funny.”

It didn't last, of course. He was attentive for two whole weeks but on a rainy Tuesday evening she heard him rise, long after he assumed she had gone to sleep, and walk quietly out of the bedroom and down the stairs. After a while she rose and followed him.

He sat at his desk in the library, his face lit by the neon screen of his laptop.
A fire crackled in the grate. Outside the long windows, a steady rain fell, drumming against the roof and rattling the glass.

“What're you doing?” she said.

He jumped and swung around, ducking his head slightly. “Goddamn it, Eadie, you almost gave me a heart attack. Don't creep up behind me like that.”

“Sorry.”

“Why were you turning the lights on and off in the kitchen?”

“I wasn't in the kitchen.”

He frowned. “Then who was?”

“I told you the house was haunted.”

He sighed and ran his hand over his face. Then he clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. “Look, if you don't want to live here, that's fine. You don't have to make up stories just to get me to sell the house.”

She went over to the bar to pour herself a whiskey. She stood for a moment with her back to him, listening to the rain. “Do you have any idea how insulting it is to find you skulking around the house at all hours of the night, hiding so you can work?” she said, turning around to face him.

He watched her steadily, his elbows spread out on either side of his head like wings. He said, “Do you know how guilty it makes me feel, that I can work and you can't?”

“Now you know how I've felt for most of our marriage.”

“Then you should be more sympathetic.”

“I could work and you couldn't.” She smiled arrogantly and lifted her drink. “As I recall, you drowned your frustration by chasing tail.”

“Just like you drown yours in sleep and Mondo Logs.”

She threw the glass at him. It crashed against the far wall and fell against the floor, shattering. He watched her coldly. “Sooner or later,” he said. “I'll get too old to duck.”

She went back upstairs. A little while later, he followed her.
My Fair Lady
, the late-show movie, was playing on Channel 9. Eadie was lying in bed with a box of Mondo Logs resting on her stomach. She rummaged around in the box, the empty papers rustling like leaves along a deserted street. He stood in the doorway with his shoulder pressed against the jamb, his arms hanging down against his sides.

“You'd be happier if you were working,” he said.

“No shit, Trevor. You're a genius at stating the obvious.”

He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. Outside the window the rain fell in sheets.

“I worked the whole time I was in Ithaca,” she said.

“So what are you saying?”

“I'm saying I can't work here.”

“Look, I love New Orleans,” he said, pushing himself off the jamb. “Don't blame the city just because you've got artist's block.”

“I'm not blaming anything,” she said. “I'm just telling it like it is.”

“You're showing the classic symptoms,” he said.

“The classic symptoms for what?”

“For depression.”

“Fuck off, Trevor.”

“You sleep all day, some days you don't even get dressed. I want to help you, Eadie,” he said. “But I don't know what to do.”

“Stay here,” Eadie said. “Don't go to New York.”

“Goddamn it, Eadie, that's so unfair.”

“I need you here.”

“You
need
. That's the problem, Eadie. You need too much. You're like a goddamn succubus. I can't give you everything you need and have anything left for me.”

He went to the closet and took down his suitcase. Eliza Doolittle was learning to say,
The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain
. Trevor put the suitcase on the end of the bed and opened it. Then he went to the dresser and began to take out stacks of clothing. He tossed them into the case without looking.

“I thought you weren't leaving until Thursday,” Eadie said.

“I've got to get some work done. I've got a second novel to write, Eadie. I've got deadlines and pressures. If I can't write here, I'll write in New York.”

She kicked suddenly and pushed the suitcase off the bed onto the floor. He picked it up and flung it onto a chair and began to repack.

“Don't bother going to New York,” she said evenly. “I'll leave. You can stay here and I'll go.”

Trevor slammed the suitcase lid closed. He went into the closet and came out with a couple of dress shirts and a tweed sports jacket. They were still on hangers and he zipped them into a garment bag and laid it over the chair. He stood looking at her, his face shadowed by the green glow of
the TV screen. “I love you, honey,” he said. “And I want to help you. But I can't do anything if you won't try.”

“Unpack that suitcase,” Eadie said. “You're not going anywhere.”

“Sally Potter gave me the name of a good therapist.” He took his wallet out of his back pocket, opened it, and began to rifle around inside. “She gave me his card.”

Eadie's mouth sagged. Her face flushed on one side like she'd been slapped by an unseen hand. “Tell me you haven't been talking about me with Sally Potter,” she said. They'd served together on a committee to raise money for Audubon Park. Eadie hated the woman.

“Sally's been on Prozac for about a year now. She says it's made all the difference. She says some women have trouble with their endorphin levels as they age.”

“Tell me you haven't been talking about me with goddamn Sally Potter.” She was so mad she began to cry, which surprised even Eadie. She'd never been the kind of woman who cried, especially during heated arguments with her husband. Crying seemed like the coward's way out.

“Honey, you need endorphins. You need serotonin.” He took a step toward her but she put her hand up to stop him. He swung the garment bag up on his shoulder.

“I don't need a therapist,” she shouted.

He picked up the suitcase. “Sleep won't work,” he said sadly. “Mondo Logs won't work.”

She grabbed pillows off the bed and began to fling them at him as he walked out of the room. They bounced off his head like pellets fired from a shooting gallery gun at a row of moving ducks. Over the years, she'd become a pretty good shot. “If you leave now, we're through,” she sobbed. She wasn't even sure why she had said that. She floated around on the ceiling looking down at the violent crazy woman below her. She thought,
Who is that woman
? She thought,
Maybe I should get my hormones checked
. She said, “If you walk out of this room, our marriage is over.”

She'd run out of pillows to fling. “I'll call you tomorrow,” he said. He closed the door softly behind him. She was reminded of all those times, years ago, when her lonely mother had brought home a steady procession of worthless men who never seemed to stay longer than a few days. Eadie would awake some mornings to the sound of her mother sobbing quietly in
the tiny bedroom of the trailer and she would know that the latest Romeo had gone, stealing away in the dark hours just before dawn.

She lay back down in the middle of the big empty bed. Downstairs she heard Trevor's car pull out of the drive but she wouldn't go to the window to look. She wouldn't stand there and watch him drive away. She thought of all the men who had paraded through her sad mother's dreary life. Eadie hadn't had a parade of men.

She had only had one.

O
N A
W
EDNESDAY IN LATE
F
EBRUARY
, J
OE
S
OLOMON SHOWED UP
for half-price cookie day. Lavonne was in the office working on some inventory reports when Little Moses stuck his head in the door. “Hey, you've got company,” he said, grinning. “A gentleman caller.”

“A gentleman caller?” Lavonne said. “What in the hell is that?”

Little Moses lowered his chin and pursed his lips. “Come out front and I'll show you,” he said.

Joe Solomon was standing over by the display case she had set up showcasing some of their bottled products. She hadn't seen him since that day in the park after Nita's wedding. When he saw her he grinned and lifted a slim bottle. “Grandma Ada's Kosher Barbecue Sauce,” he said. “Now this I have to try.” He was dressed in a blue oxford cloth shirt and a pair of khaki slacks. His eyes, she noticed, were less green today and more of a slate-blue color. She wondered where he'd been the last couple of weeks.

“I'll make you up a gift basket if you like. We've got several kosher products you might enjoy. We make them from my partner's old family recipes.”

Joe walked slowly toward the counter still holding the bottle. “I'll take a basket and I'd like one sent to my mother, too, in Buffalo.”

“We can do that,” Lavonne said, trying not to seem too friendly. She figured if he hadn't been in since that day in the park, he probably wasn't that interested in her. She'd probably imagined the whole thing. She stared steadily at Little Moses who was wiping down the top of the glass case as if he was the only one in the room, as if he wasn't listening to every word of their conversation.

“Oh,” Little Moses said, feeling the weight of her eyes. He grinned. “Let me get those baskets for you.”

“That would be nice,” Lavonne said.

“It'll take just a minute,” Little Moses said, putting down the cloth. “I'll have to go in the back to make them up.”

“Yes I know that.”

He stood there grinning and wiping his hands on his apron. Lavonne made a slight movement with her head toward the kitchen door. Joe pretended to read the ingredients label on the back of the bottle. Little Moses thrust his arm suddenly across the counter. “Moses Shapiro,” he said to Joe.

“Joe Solomon,” he said, taking his hand firmly. He set the bottle down on the counter.

Little Moses cocked one eyebrow at Lavonne as he went out. “You kids be good,” he said. “I'll be right back.”

“He's a cheerful fellow,” Joe said as the door swung shut on his heels.

“Yes, isn't he.” Lavonne picked up the cloth Little Moses had dropped and began to clean the glass. Now that they were alone in the room, she felt self-conscious, aware of the fact that he was watching her work with a curious expression on his face.