Secret Lives of the Kudzu Debutantes (35 page)

Eadie saw Nita and Loretta sitting alone at a table and she steered Lavonne in their direction. Nita was dressed in a high-waisted calico gown, the kind of thing a hippie bride might have worn in 1974. A bottled water rested on the table in front of her.

“Don't tell me you're drinking bottled water,” Eadie said to her, as she sat down. “Where's the Kool-Aid?” Kudzu Kool-Aid was the featured beverage of the Kudzu Ball and was rumored to be made from a number of ingredients, including various over-the-counter cold medicines as well as generous amounts of Curtis Peet's homebrewed whiskey. It was guaranteed to be strong enough to “suck the chrome off a bumper.”

“Y'all, I can't drink that stuff,” Nita said. “Last time I drank it, Jimmy Lee had to carry me home.”

No one wanted to talk about Jimmy Lee right now, so Eadie just nodded at Loretta and said to Nita, “Did you bring the notebook?”

Loretta was wearing a high-collared pink taffeta number and faux diamond studded librarian glasses. “What's this all about?” she said, leaning toward Eadie. Nita had told her about the notebook on the way over.

“First, I need a drink,” Eadie said. She waved her hand at Banks Hollowell who passed carrying a tray of drinks. He was dressed in overalls and a camouflaged baseball cap that read,
A Mind Is a Fun Thing to Waste
.

“Hey,” he said, smiling so they could see his plastic Billy Bob teeth, “do y'all need a drink?” He swung his tray down theatrically and Lavonne and Eadie each took a plastic cup. Banks had been an associate at Boone & Broadwell before it folded and Lavonne was surprised to see him here.

“Shouldn't you be over at the Cotillion Ball tonight?” she said, taking a sip of Kool-Aid. It burned like battery acid down the back of her throat. The first sip was always the worst. After that, you didn't notice much.

“Naw,” he said, grinning. “This is more fun.” He moved off into the crowd and Nita set the notebook out on the table.

“Whatever it is you have to say, say it quick,” she said to Eadie. “We're not staying long.”

“I thought you were our designated driver,” Lavonne said to Loretta. Her tongue stuck to her teeth like a sea slug. She was beginning to realize the preparty shaker of Cosmos might not have been such a good idea.

“I'll take Nita home and then come back for you,” Loretta said, squinting. “But from the looks of you girls, you might want to go easy on the Kool- Aid. I got a bad back. I'm not carrying anyone out of here tonight.”

“We'll keep that in mind,” Eadie said. She tapped her finger against the top of the notebook. “Read that last section,” she said to Nita. “The part where Virginia goes away after she finds out Hampton Boone is going to marry Maureen Hamilton.”

“He had too much sense to settle on Virginia,” Loretta said.

“Read it,” Eadie said.

Nita picked up the notebook and read, “
When she went away in January I was crying, and her mama was crying, and her daddy was crying and saying, ‘Poor little Queenie, poor little Queenie,’ over and over, but her eyes were dry and hard as bone. She sat down in the bow of the boat and held on to the sides with her little gloved hands and looked straight ahead like a woman who knows what it is she has to do.
”

“Okay,” Eadie said, her eyes flashing. “Now read that part right before. Where she's saying she needs to tell him something but only if he loves her.”

Nita frowned and followed the page with her finger. “You mean this?” she said, and began to read. “
The week before he went back to school, I held her in my arms again and this time she was crying and saying, over and over, Leota, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? I love him. And I said, you have to tell him, and she said, I can't unless I know he loves me
.”

Eadie grinned and slapped the table, looking from one to the other until Lavonne, losing patience, said, “What? What is it?”

“Don't you see?” Eadie said, grabbing Nita's arm and giving it a little shake, but Nita only looked annoyed. “Virginia had something to tell Hamp Boone that summer. Something important.” She picked up the notebook and read, “
When she went away in January I was crying, and her mama was crying, and her daddy was crying
…” She put the notebook down and looked at Lavonne but Lavonne only stared at her with a blank expression on her face.

“I don't get it,” she said.

“Virginia was pregnant! She was carrying Hamp Boone's child and that's what she had to tell him that summer, and that's why she went away in January. To have the baby!”

Loretta said, “What in the hell are you talking about?”

Nita and Lavonne looked at Eadie like she was crazy. “It doesn't say that,” Lavonne said stubbornly, picking up the notebook.

“Read between the lines,” Eadie said impatiently. “If she got pregnant in June, then she'd be about six months pregnant by December and probably showing. That's why she had to go away.”

“Who got pregnant?” Loretta said.

Nita frowned. “But why didn't Leota just say that? Why didn't she say Virginia was pregnant?”

“Maybe she forgot why Virginia had to go away. Or maybe she was trying to protect her.”

“Let me see that,” Loretta said, reaching for the notebook.

Lavonne shook her head slowly, still looking puzzled. “But Virginia was in high school. If she got pregnant, somebody would know.”

“She graduated early,” Nita said quietly. “She's always bragging about how she was smart enough to graduate from high school early and then went to work at Roobin's Department Store to save money for college. Only later she met the Judge, and got married instead.”

“Don't you see, it all makes sense,” Eadie said, throwing herself back in her chair. “Maureen Boone
hated
Virginia. And when I asked Trevor later, after his mother died, he said it was because of something that happened a long time ago. Some bad blood between them. His mother would never tell him what. He just assumed it had something to do with the law firm.”

“And that would explain why Virginia married the Judge in the first place.” Lavonne was beginning to catch on. “Because he was Hamp Boone's law partner and marrying him kept Virginia as close to Hamp as she could be.”

Nita's expression changed again. Her eyes widened and her lower lip trembled. “If it's true that Virginia had a baby with Hamp Boone, a baby that she gave up for adoption, then we could use that. If we could prove it. That's not the kind of thing Virginia would want to get around town. We could use it to bargain with her. To get Whitney back.”

“But how do we prove it?” Lavonne said.

“Easy!” Eadie said. “We go out to the nursing home and ask Leota Quarles.”

Nita's face fell. “Well, that might be a problem,” she said. “Seeing's how Leota is dead.”

Eadie said, “Shit.”

Lavonne said, “If Virginia had a baby out of wedlock and gave it up for adoption, it would be about forty-nine years old. If only we could figure out some way to find out who it is.”

Grace Pearson danced by in Vernon Caslin's arms. The Groove Band launched into a toe-tapping version of “The Walleyed Boogie.” Grace saw them and shouted, “Y'all get up and dance! If I have to make a fool of myself, you do, too!”

Eadie said, “Maybe we could get access to adoption records.”

“How do we get access to adoption documents that are probably sealed?”

“We start with the Internet,” Nita said. “We figure out where she might have gone to have a baby and then we narrow it down from there.”

Lavonne shook her head. “I'm pretty sure there are laws about that. I'm pretty sure only the birth mother or adopted child can access that information.”

Eadie was too excited about the prospect of exposing Virginia to let a few rules and regulations get in her way. “Hell, if we have to we'll hire a private investigator,” she said. “Maybe we should just do that to start with.”

“No,” Nita said grimly, shaking her head. “This is something I need to do.”

No one said anything for a few minutes. Lavonne stared fixedly at the camouflage tablecloth and then looked up. “Loretta, I've got a question for you,” she said.

Loretta stuck her finger on the page to keep her place. Her eyes, behind her sparkling glasses, were wary. “Shoot,” she said.

“In your day, if a girl got pregnant out of wedlock, where would she go to have the baby?”

Loretta frowned. “Listen, girls, I think you might be jumping the gun a little bit here. You got to remember these were the ramblings of a ninety- year-old woman who may or may not be remembering things correctly.”

“Humor me,” Eadie said. “There must have been adoption agencies up in Atlanta and some of the major cities,” she said, trying to encourage Loretta. “Places where a girl could go.”

“Well, sure there were. But those places kept records. If you were trying to keep it quiet, you most likely went to one of those homes for unwed mothers. They didn't keep too many papers. They didn't ask too many
questions. I had a good friend who got knocked up and she went up to some place in north Georgia and had her baby.”

“What was it called?” Lavonne said, getting out her Daytimer. “The home, I mean.”

Loretta looked up at the strings of colored lights. She sighed and scratched her head. “I can't remember the name of the place, but it seems like it was run by the Catholics. There was another one, over in Valdosta, but it was run by the Baptists and you had to sign a paper saying Jesus was your Lord and Savior before they'd take your baby away from you.” She watched Lavonne write this down and then she said, “Hey girls, I don't want to rain on your parade, but it seems to me you're getting excited over something that might not be worth getting excited about.”

Nita shook her head slowly. “I've got a feeling about this,” she said. It was true, she did. Just when things had looked their bleakest, a thin shaft of light had broken through the dark clouds. She felt like she had that day in the car with Logan driving home from the custody hearing, that anything was possible, that hope was not dead. “I think we might be on to something.”

“I just hope Loretta isn't right,” Lavonne said cautiously. “I just hope all this reading between the lines is not a wild-goose chase.”

“Promise me something,” Nita said, looking around the table. “Promise me you won't say anything about any of this to anyone. I want to keep it quiet until I figure out how to go about checking this story out. I don't want Virginia to get wind of what's up. I want to be just as dirty and underhanded with her as she's been with me.”

“Now you're talking, girl,” Eadie said, sipping her drink. “We have to be careful though. Virginia's pretty wily. She's pretty subtle.”

“Virginia's about as subtle as the business end of a cattle prod,” Loretta said. “And just as dangerous.”

“Count me in,” Lavonne said. “I'll help anyway I can.”

“I still say you girls got the wrong dog by the tail,” Loretta said. “Virginia's too self-centered to have ever loved anybody but herself. She's too clever to have ever made a mistake as big as Hampton Boone.”

T
HE DAY FOLLOWING THE
C
OTILLION
B
ALL
, V
IRGINIA AWOKE
early and hurried down to get the newspaper. She swung the front door open and stepped out onto the porch. The day was gray and overcast. Virginia picked up the newspaper, her hands trembling with excitement, and
stepped back inside, flipping on the hall light. She always looked forward to reading about the Cotillion Ball, to seeing her photograph displayed so prominently among the cream of Ithaca society, some of whom had refused to speak to her in high school.

But today, looking down at the front of the Lifestyle section, Virginia felt a swelling sense of disbelief and outrage. The paper had covered both the prestigious Ithaca Cotillion Ball and the lowbrowed Kudzu Ball on the same page. And to make matters worse, the Kudzu Ball was listed at the top. Virginia stared down at the large photograph crowning the page, her sharp eyes glittering like spear points.

There, in all her glory, was the behemoth Grace Pearson, looking drunk and foolish in her kudzu crown and leg o' mutton–sleeved ball gown. Underneath the photograph, in large bold letters, larger than those captioning the Cotillion Queen, it read “Seventh Kudzu Queen Crowned—Miss Velveeta Gritz (a/k/a Grace Pearson) Takes the Throne.” Beneath this photo there were several others, fully half the page, as well as several interior pages that were devoted to coverage of the Kudzu Ball.

Virginia had been trying to get the Kudzu Ball closed down for years. It irritated her that people would make a mockery of the Cotillion Ball, would ridicule what had taken her years of scheming and hard work to achieve.

She recognized Lavonne Zibolsky and Nita and Eadie Boone, and also several prominent couples who, just a few years ago, wouldn't have been caught dead at the Kudzu Ball. They all looked drunk and ridiculous, decked out in tacky prom dresses and camouflage leisure suits and a couple of the men sported mullet wigs and Fu Manchu mustaches. By comparison, the Cotillion Ball Debs looked bored, the Queen looked less virginal than in years past, and the King looked dusty and ancient and maybe even a little senile. There was a larger photograph of Virginia and Redmon, and she noticed with dismay that the camera lights had accentuated her sagging cleavage, which her expensive dress did little to hide. Redmon wore his stunned-deer-in-the-headlights expression. He clutched his soda water and stared miserably into the camera and Virginia noted (again, those damn lights) that his tuxedo did not fit him properly and he needed a haircut.

She closed the paper in disgust. It would do no good to complain to the newspaper about their coverage of the Kudzu Ball. One of their own journalists had been named Kudzu Queen and most of the staff had, no doubt, attended, so they could not be expected to help her close down the ridiculous affair. Virginia felt sure the event would die out if the publicity sur
rounding it stopped. She wondered if she might be able to talk Redmon into buying the newspaper. The first thing she would do, of course, is take over the editorial department, fire any left-wing writers, including the renegade Grace Pearson, and see to it that future coverage of the Cotillion Ball would figure prominently in the society pages, and coverage of the Kudzu Ball would cease entirely.