Secret Lives of the Kudzu Debutantes (38 page)

That shut him up.

“That was more Eadie Boone's and Lavonne Zibolsky's doing,” Charles said, swinging around from the window. “Nita would never have done any of that on her own.”

Virginia snorted. “Well, if you want to believe that, go ahead.”

“You never liked her,” he said.

“I knew she wasn't the right girl for you.”

“She was the right girl then, and she's the right girl now,” Charles said, scowling.

“Don't be ridiculous,” she cried. “Nita's not going to come back to you just because you retrieve her children. Any idiot can see she's not in love with you.”

Charles chose to ignore this comment. He thought it best not to tell his mother he had invited Nita to Virginia's televised pre-Thanksgiving buffet and she had accepted.

Redmon picked up the shapely remote and turned the sound up on the TV. “Damn, Queenie, why don't you just drive a stake through the poor bastard's heart? Why don't you just cut off his legs at the knee and feed him to the hogs?”

Virginia took a long series of deep breaths. A commercial for Fast Eddie's Auto Sales came on the TV. “No credit, no problem,” Fast Eddie promised. Virginia panted like a rabbit caught in a trap. Her bosom rose and fell until it gradually grew still. Her top lip quivered and then lay flat. “I know it seems cruel, darling.” She let her eyes mist over for effect. The flapping in her head had subsided now to a mild fluttering. “But sometimes a mother's got to do what a mother's got to do.” She smiled gently at Charles. “Like a badger. She protects her young at all costs.”

“I thought badgers ate their young,” Charles said sullenly, but his mother had already turned away, and apparently didn't hear him.

S
OMEWHERE AROUND THE END OF
O
CTOBER
, E
ADIE AND
Lavonne began realizing just how hopeless their task of hunting down Virginia's phantom baby was. They checked and rechecked every lead revealed by Nita's magic spreadsheet, but nothing panned out. They were all dead ends. Eadie didn't give up easily but it was beginning to look like they'd have better luck finding the Holy Grail than hunting down a baby Virginia may or may not have had. But Nita refused to give up. She put her head down and proceeded with her county-by-county search. Lavonne and Eadie became steadily less encouraged.

And then, just when it seemed things were completely hopeless, Nita got a break. She was surfing through Internet websites featuring archival photos of long-defunct homes for unwed mothers, and she came across a photo that made her stop. It was taken at the Brainerd Home for Unwed Mothers in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and it showed a group of solemn- looking young women gathered around a long table. They appeared to be sewing. The photo was black and white and grainy with age. It was difficult to make out the faded background, but it was one of the young women's faces that had caught Nita's attention. She was in profile, and appeared to
be turning away from the camera when the photo was snapped. The date scrawled across the bottom of the photo was March 5, 1951.

A week later, Nita called Lavonne and Eadie. When they showed up thirty minutes later, she had already made a shaker of Cosmopolitans.

“What are we celebrating?” Eadie said, when she saw the shaker and three martini glasses in the middle of the kitchen table.

“This,” Nita said, handing her the photo she had printed. They huddled together under the overhead lights, studying the young women. Lavonne went to her purse and got her reading glasses. She put them on and peered at the photo again.

“What exactly are we looking at?” she asked.

“Here,” Nita said impatiently, jabbing the photo with her index finger. “Who does this remind you of?”

“She looks oddly familiar,” Eadie said slowly.

“Of course she does. She looks like Virginia.”

“No.” Eadie shook her head. “Not Virginia. Someone else.”

“Oh for crying out loud, can't you see?” Nita said. “That's Virginia. That's her.”

“You can't really see her face,” Lavonne said. “She's turning away from the camera.”

“Exactly.”

Eadie glanced at Lavonne and raised one eyebrow.

“Here,” Nita said, handing her a photo of Virginia and Charles as a baby.

Eadie compared the two. “I don't know,” she said doubtfully.

“Look at the date,” Nita said, jabbing again with her finger. “It fits.”

“Were you able to come up with a list of names?” Lavonne said, handing the photos back to Nita. “Of the unwed mothers, I mean.”

“They were only listed by first name and last initial,” Nita said, rummaging around in a stack of papers on the table. “From what I gather this wasn't exactly a legal operation.” She found what she was looking for and held it up. “Look at this. Jennie K.”

They both looked at her with blank expressions on their faces. The clock on the wall ticked like a metronome. “Jennie K,” she said, impatiently. “Virginia Kelly. It fits.”

Lavonne looked at Eadie. Eadie sat down at the table and poured them all a drink.

“But how do we prove this?” Eadie said reasonably. “Most of those places didn't even keep birth certificates, much less birth mother records.”

Lavonne sat down. “Eadie's right,” she said. “A shadowy photograph and a first name aren't proof.”

Nita sat down and crossed her arms on the table. “She's the only
Jennie
that was admitted the entire year of 1951.”

“That still doesn't prove anything,” Lavonne said.

Nita shrugged. “We're not going to have proof,” she said. “Not legal proof, anyway. Not anything that would hold up in a court of law. But we don't need legal proof to bargain with Virginia. Don't you see? Just the fact that we know her secret, just the fact that we can spread the rumor is enough.”

“Well, hell, then let's just make something up,” Eadie said. “If all we're trying to do is threaten Virginia with a scandalous rumor campaign, we could just make it up.” She grinned and touched her glass to Lavonne's.

“I've thought of that,” Nita said seriously. “But I don't think it'll be necessary. To lie, I mean. I think we'll find all the proof we need in Chattanooga.” Eadie and Lavonne stopped grinning.

Lavonne said, “How do you figure that?”

Nita pulled out another piece of paper and pushed it toward them. “They didn't keep birth mother records or birth certificates, but they kept employment records. This is a list of all the employees at the Brainerd Home for Unwed Mothers in 1951. I've been down the list and I've contacted everyone I could. Some are dead, and some I couldn't reach, but this lady here”—she pointed with her finger. “This Lorena Potter, she was a nurse at the home in 1951 and she remembers Jennie K well. And she still lives in Chattanooga. All I have to do is show her the photo of Charles and Virginia and ask her if it's the same woman she knew back in 1951.”

Eadie frowned. “But there are laws about protecting confidentiality,” she said.

“There are laws for legal adoptions,” Lavonne agreed. “But illegal adoptions are something else.”

“I told her I was a journalist,” Nita said. “I told her I was writing a book on sex in the 1950s and the shameful way they treated wayward girls. I told her I'd keep her name confidential, that I'd use her as an unnamed source.”

Lavonne and Eadie stared at Nita in astonishment.

“Damn, girl,” Eadie said, finally. “Look how you turned out.”

“We're so proud,” Lavonne said.

“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Nita said, gathering her papers. “Y'all want some supper? I can make some meatloaf sandwiches.”

Eadie shook her head in admiration. “So you're going up to Chattanooga tomorrow to interview this woman?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” Eadie said. “I'm going, too. I wouldn't miss this for the world.” She looked at Lavonne.

“I can't,” Lavonne said. “I've got payroll.”

“Oh come on, Lavonne, it's a road trip. How long's it been since we had a girls' road trip?”

“Believe it or not, Eadie, some of us have to work.”

“But not you. You've got employees. You've got a partner who can do payroll.”

Lavonne tapped her fingers against the table like she was playing a keyboard, and thought about it. “Okay,” she said finally. She lifted her glass and sipped her Cosmopolitan. “It's not every day a girl gets to act like a hero in a detective novel. It's not every day a girl gets to learn a lesson as big as this one.”

Eadie said, “Oh yeah? What's the lesson?”

“Don't fuck with Nita.”

“Y'all are crazy,” Nita said. “Pour me another drink.”

T
HE NEXT DAY THEY GOT AN EARLY START, LEAVING SOUTH
G
EOR
gia around eight-thirty. The day was cool and sunny. Hawks wheeled lazily in the blue sky, gliding above the trees and empty fields. On the CD player, Mary Chapin Carpenter sang about love gone bad.

“I love this song,” Nita said, tapping her fingers against the steering wheel. She had been telling them about how she and Jimmy Lee had started dating again.

Lavonne said, “That's great.”

Eadie said, “Dating? Is that a euphemism for that other word you don't like to use, Nita?”

Nita smiled but watched the road. “We've been dating since he got back from Kentucky and moved in with his cousin Montel. We never really had a chance to date before. I moved in with him right after the divorce.”

Lavonne said, “His cousin's name is Montel?”

Eadie said, “Yeah, we know all that. But what's all this shit about dating?” She was sitting in the back and had her feet propped up on the seat.

“You know. Going out to dinner, to movies, bowling, stuff like that. Courting the way we would have done in high school. It's called Recommitting to Virginity. I read about it in a book. You and your partner recommit to being virgins and then you rebuild your relationship based on communication instead of sex. It's a growing trend.”

“If you're going to read self-help books,” Lavonne said, “you might want to try some Carl Jung.”

“That's the stupidest thing I ever heard,” Eadie said. “Recommitting to Virginity. Hell, if it were that easy I'd recommit to being twenty-two again. I'd recommit to having my nipples point skyward and my thighs be hard as rebar. Who writes this shit?”

Nita watched her warily in the rearview mirror. “Dr. Lucy Cloud.”

Eadie snorted. “Dr. Lucy Cloud,” she said. “That sounds like a made-up name to me. I bet she's not even a real doctor. I bet she sent away for one of those Ph.D.s you can get over the Internet.”

“So you and Jimmy Lee have been celibate since he got back from Kentucky?” Lavonne asked. Now that her own sex life was so prolific, she found it hard to imagine anyone going without. Now that she was dating Joe Solomon, it was easy to forget that she had spent eight years as chaste as a cloistered nun. Only instead of committing to Jesus, she had been committed to Peach Paradise and Rocky Road ice cream.

“Well,” Nita said, appearing to consider this, “technically we're celibate.”

“You mean
technically
as in Bill Clinton's use of the word? As in
technically I did not have sexual relations with that woman.
”

Nita giggled. “Something like that,” she said.

“So what happened?”

Nita glanced at Lavonne and then back at the road. She giggled again. “Vodka,” she said.

In the backseat, Eadie was still fuming about Dr. Lucy Cloud and her self-help book. “Recommitting to Virginity, my ass. That's just another way of trying to make women feel guilty about enjoying their sex lives. I thought we got rid of all that shit with the women's movement.”

“Do y'all want to stop at the Cracker Barrel for lunch?” Nita said.

Eadie stared her down in the rearview mirror. “Quit changing the sub
ject and get back to telling us what happened between you and Jimmy Lee last night.”

Nita craned her neck, trying to see around a semi truck. “Y'all watch the signs and tell me when we get close to a Cracker Barrel.”

Eadie said, “You heard me.”

Lavonne kicked her shoes off and stuck her feet up on the dash. “So does this mean Jimmy Lee is moving back in?”

“No. I told him he can't move back in until after I get my kids back. As long as Charles thinks me and Jimmy Lee are separated, he'll help me with Virginia.”

Lavonne stared at Nita. She shook her head slowly. “Let me see if I have this right,” she said finally. “What you're saying is, you're shamelessly using your ex-husband to help you get back at your ex-mother-in-law. You're willing to use any trick necessary, no matter how dirty and underhanded, to get your child back?”

Nita slid her eyes over to Lavonne and then back to the road. “That's correct,” she said.

A pickup truck swung around to pass them. The driver honked and waved.

“All I've got to say,” Eadie said, “is keep up the good work.”

“Okay,” Lavonne said, “now you're scaring me.”

Nita shrugged. She glanced at the truck driver and then back at the road. “Sometimes I scare myself,” she said.

A
FTER LUNCH
, L
AVONNE DROVE FOR A WHILE AND
N
ITA CLIMBED
into the backseat to take a nap. By three o'clock they had entered the foothills of the Appalachians. The afternoon sun was a deep yellow and rode just above the dark tree line to the west. Purple mountains rose in the distance, cloaked in fog. Eadie played with the radio, trying to find a station, but finally gave up and pushed in Mary Chapin Carpenter.