Secret Lives of the Kudzu Debutantes (33 page)

“Mama, stop,” Nita said, giving her a little shake. “You're only making things worse for me.”

Rosebud came out of the courtroom carrying a big black briefcase. She was a tall, heavyset woman who walked with a pronounced limp. She stopped beside Nita and said, “Well, that didn't go as well as I planned, but we'll be ready for them next time. At least the psychiatrist didn't get a chance to speak.”

Nita faced her but kept a tight hold on her mother. “Was that the little skinny guy?”

“Yes.” Rosebud nodded grimly. “Virginia's got her seeing a child psychiatrist, but we'll get our own expert witness before the next hearing. Don't worry,” she said to Nita. “We'll prevail in the end. Until then, just hang in there.” She clapped her once on the shoulder, nodded at the rest of the group, and then limped off. They watched her as she went out through the double glass doors, and past Logan, who stood on the courthouse steps smoking a cigarette.

“The only one who needs a psychiatrist is Virginia,” Eadie said.

“She'll need more than a psychiatrist when I'm through with her,” Loretta said.

Nita nodded at Eadie and Lavonne. “Y'all go on,” she said. “I need to talk to my mother.”

“What is it?” Loretta said nervously, after they had left. “Look, if it's about me trying to kick Virginia's ass in the courtroom, I'm sorry.” She sniffed and tugged at the end of her sleeves and you could see she wasn't sorry at all. “Something came over me and I just lost it for a moment there, that's all.”

“Mama, it doesn't help me if we're trying to prove how stable our home life is and then you climb over three rows of seats and try to strangle Virginia in front of ten people. That kind of defeats the whole stability thing, if you know what I mean.”

“I saw the way she was sitting there, smug as a cream-licking cat, the way she always is when she thinks she's pulled the wool over everybody's eyes. Like we're all too stupid to figure out what's going on.”

“I'm not stupid, Mama. I've figured it out.”

Loretta's face softened. “Well, I know that, honey.” She put her hand up and smoothed the hair off Nita's face. “But you're my own little girl. I can't just sit back and let someone walk all over you like that.”

Nita took a deep breath. “Mama, I'm a grown woman,” she said gently, not wanting to hurt Loretta's feelings. “And you've been fighting my battles for me all my life. I love you, and I know you just want to help, but it's time I stood on my own two feet. I know what I have to do and you have to trust me and let me do it my way.”

Loretta stared rigidly at her daughter. A muscle moved in her cheek. Gradually, her expression changed. After a few moments, her shoulders slumped. She looked suddenly tired and infirm, as if the knowledge that Nita no longer needed her protection had aged her twenty years. She looked down at her feet and Nita could see her scalp shining through her thinning hair, speckled and fragile as a robin's egg. Nita leaned and put her arms around her mother and kissed her.

“I love you, Mama.”

Loretta patted her back. “I love you, too, honey,” she said. “All I ever wanted was to shield you from pain and sorrow.”

“I know, Mama, but you can't.” Nita stood back but kept her hands on her mother's shoulders. “Pain and sorrow are part of life. It's what builds character.”

Loretta shook her head sadly. “Yeah, well, just remember: what doesn't kill us, maims us for life.”

“Mama, you're a closet pessimist.”

“No, honey, I'm a realist.”

Outside the glass doors, Logan had finished his cigarette. He motioned for his mother to come on, and Nita smiled and put one finger up. Loretta took a tissue out of her handbag and blew her nose. “Well,” she said. “Rosebud's a good lawyer. I guess she knows what she's doing.”

“I guess she does,” Nita said.

On the ride home, Nita let Logan drive. She sat with her head resting against the window glass, watching the long rows of pecan trees that stretched away from the highway like the spokes of a giant wheel.

Logan cleared his throat. “Look, Mom, I've been thinking,” he said, and she turned and looked at him. He had combed his hair for the hearing and although it still glinted with purple highlights, it lay neatly against his skull. He had removed his lip ring and wore only a small conservative nose stud.

Nita tugged lightly at the sleeve of his dress shirt with her fingers. “What have you been thinking?” she asked fondly. It was only when you got up close that you noticed the pattern on his tie was actually rows and rows of cannabis plants.

“I've been thinking that I know how to get Whitney back. If you really want her back, that is.” He raised one eyebrow and glanced at her, and Nita smiled faintly and looked at him with a weary expression.

“Don't you worry about Whitney,” she said, smoothing his tie with her fingers. “You let me and Rosebud worry about getting her back.”

“It came to me while I was sitting in the courtroom listening to Virginia's lawyer spouting all that bullshit about how she only wanted what was best for her grandchildren. It came to me in a flash, what I had to do.”

Nita was curious. And it was sweet, the way he wanted to help, the way he wanted to step in like the man of the house to rescue his mother and sister. She stopped fidgeting with his tie. “I'm listening,” she said.

He looked at her and grinned, and Nita thought how handsome he was despite his purple hair and metal-studded face. He looked a lot like his father, like the kind of boy Charles might have been if he hadn't had Virginia for a mother, if he hadn't been trapped by birth and circumstance and culture. “Well,” Logan said. “Virginia wants one grandchild. She wants Whitney. Right?”

“Yes.” She felt guilty admitting this but Logan didn't seem bothered by it.

He glanced at her and then back at the road. “I wonder how she'd feel about having two.”

Nita said, “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I'll pack my bag and show up on her doorstep. Tonight.”

Nita looked at him for a few moments, her eyes filled with sadness. “But, honey,” she said gently, “Virginia doesn't want you living with her.”

Logan gave her an evil grin. His hair glinted like a crow's wing in the sunlight. “Exactly,” he said.

Despite the tragedy of the situation, Nita put her head back and laughed. It
was
funny imagining Virginia's face when her Mohawked grandson showed up on her doorstep.

“I can keep an eye on Whitney and make Virginia's life a living hell at the same time,” he said reasonably. “And with all that bullshit she fed the judge, about only caring for her grandchild's well-being, she won't dare ask me to leave for fear it'll look bad in court.”

Nita had seen enough of their interactions to know that Logan did make Virginia nervous. And she knew, too, that Logan was more than a match for his grandmother. But at the same time, who knew what Virginia might be capable of pulling out of her sleeve? “I don't think so,” she said finally, wiping her eyes with a Kleenex. “Virginia's a scary person. I won't send a child to do battle with her.”

Logan stopped grinning and his face took on a hard, determined look. When he looked like that, he reminded her again of Charles. “First of all,” he said. “I'm not a child. I've made my mind up to do this no matter what. Second, I'm not afraid of Virginia. She's more afraid of me than I am of her. And third, this won't take long. Trust me, after a few weeks of me, after a few weeks of me and my
friends
hanging out at her place, Virginia will be calling you and begging you to take your kids back.”

The prospect of sending another child into Virginia's lair should have filled Nita with dread, but somehow it didn't. Somehow, when things were looking their bleakest, Nita was beginning to recover her faith and belief in the future. She was daring to hope that everything was going to turn out okay.

“I don't know,” she said. She watched the long flat peanut fields stretching into the distance. Beyond the fields a pine forest rose and above the blue rim of the trees, a hawk soared against a gunmetal sky. “I'll have to think about it. I don't know if I can stand losing both you and Whitney.”

His grin spread slowly across his face. His nose stud shown like a hollow point casing. “Trust me, Mom,” he said cheerfully. “We'll be home by Christmas.”

O
N A
W
EDNESDAY EVENING IN EARLY
S
EPTEMBER
, L
AVONNE
and Eadie sat out on Lavonne's deck drinking Cosmopolitans. “I'm a little disappointed,” Eadie said, looking up at the soft purple sky. A pale sliver of moon rested on the top of Lavonne's garage like a scimitar. “I was really hoping we'd be able to come up with some way to get even with Virginia for stealing Nita's child.”

“‘Hope’ and ‘Virginia’ don't belong in the same sentence.”

“Yeah, you're right. Virginia sucks hope out of a room the way a vacuum sucks dust.”

“Nice analogy.”

“Thanks. I haven't talked to Nita this week. How's she holding up under the strain?”

“As well as can be expected,” Lavonne said. “She keeps busy working and visiting with her kids. She's substitute teaching, when she can. It keeps her occupied until the next custody hearing.” She'd given Nita a part-time counter job down at the Shofar So Good Deli so she could fulfill Judge Drucker's employment requirements.

“It sure has been fun being roommates,” Eadie said, tapping her fingers against the side of a citronella candle. “I've had a great time.”

“You say that like you're getting ready to leave.”

Eadie shrugged. “I've got to go home sometime. Before Trevor gives up and throws me out for good.”

“What about staying to support Nita? What about the Kudzu Ball?”

Eadie frowned and passed her finger back and forth over the candle flame. “When's the final custody hearing scheduled?”

“Sometime the first week of December. And you can't miss the Kudzu Ball. It's the third weekend in September and you can't miss it again this year. Come on, Aneeda. You know how much fun we always have.”

“Well, Ima, maybe I can go home and then come back for the ball and the custody hearing.”

Lavonne looked up at the glittering stars. “If you go home you won't come back,” she said.

She got up and went inside to get a sweater. Eadie sipped her drink and watched the moon rise over the yard. She wondered what Trevor was doing right now. He was off on the West Coast somewhere, at a writing conference, and she was supposed to meet him in San Francisco for the weekend. They were still meeting every other weekend at exotic places, where they holed up in various four-star hotels like a couple of adulterers, making love and arguing and living off room service. In between, they lived separate lives; Eadie working on her canvases, and Trevor writing when he could in New Orleans and jetting off to writers' conferences and speaking engagements. He was quickly losing patience with their arrangement and the only reason he hadn't pressured her to come home now was because his book was doing well, and he was traveling a lot. She had promised him, last time they met, that she'd be home by the middle of September.

Lavonne came back out carrying a sweater in one hand and a shaker of Cosmopolitans in the other. She handed the sweater to Eadie, and Eadie smiled, said “Thanks,” and put it on.

Lavonne sat down and poured two fresh drinks. “This is my new favorite cocktail,” she said, leaning back and putting her feet up on the empty chair in front of her. “I think I like it better than a martini. I like it better than a margarita.”

Eadie smiled and sipped her drink. “You're pretty fickle when it comes to alcoholic beverages,” she said. “You'll change your mind in a week or so
and then Sex on the Beach will be your new drink du jour. Or maybe a

Tequila Slammer, Back Street Banger, Tahitian Tongue Tickler …”

“Wow,” Lavonne said.

“Test Tube Baby, Paralyzer, Tetanus Shot, Baltimore Blow Job.”

“You know, Eadie, if this art thing doesn't work out, you might consider work in the glamorous field of bartending.”

“Maybe,” Eadie said. She looked up at the sky with its dome of glittering stars. “Was that Joe who called earlier?”

“Yeah. He's in Boston on business but he's coming home tomorrow.” Joe was doing a lot of traveling for DuPont. It was his last-ditch effort to prove himself loyal to a job he didn't really want anyway. He figured he had about three months before the ax fell and then he'd be a man unencumbered by a job, free to set off for the south of France with his bicycle and his notebooks and Lavonne, too, if she'd agree to go. “Did you ask Trevor about his father and Virginia?”

Eadie shook her head. “He doesn't believe any of that is true. He says they may have dated, briefly, but he's pretty sure they didn't carry on an affair after their marriages. His dad died when he was small and he doesn't remember him too well, but he says his dad and mom went together from the time they were freshmen in high school.”

“Oh well,” Lavonne said. “I was hoping there might be something there we could use to help Nita get Whitney back.”

“I think it's all up to Rosebud.”

“I think you're right.”