Georgia Bottoms (3 page)

“Of course Wednesday,” said Georgia.

He snapped shut his bag. “Go home and put your feet up. Read a book. Don’t do anything else today. That’s doctor’s orders. And tomorrow I’m getting that EKG. If I have to come over there and drag you to my office.”

She shook her head. “You just want me out of my clothes.”

He fixed her with a look:
I won’t dignify that
. He opened the door to reveal Brenda Hendrix’s ear more or less pressed against it.

“Oh hey, Dr. Horn,” she sang, bustling in. “How’s our little patient?” No one could have missed the note of fake concern in her voice.

“Much better, Brenda,” said Georgia. “Thank you for asking.”

Ted waved, and ducked out the door. Georgia’s mob of well-wishers had dispersed. Eugene was nowhere to be seen.

Brenda planted her fists on her hips. “You get up from that couch.”

Georgia felt a twinge of panic. She never intended to be left alone with Brenda Hendrix. “I beg your pardon?”

“We both know there’s nothing wrong with you. Physically, anyway.”

Georgia batted her sapphire eyes with the long, long Maybelline lashes. That would drive Brenda crazy with her squinty pink pig eyes and that pig nose on her face. Georgia wondered what could ever have attracted Eugene to this woman. Even fifteen years and four children ago, that would not have been a pretty face. “Brenda, is something the matter?”

“Don’t you play innocent with me. I know what you’ve been up to with my husband.”

“All this heat must have gone to your head,” said Georgia. “Bless your heart, you’re delusional.”

So Eugene spilled it all to his wife without a word of warning to Georgia? How typical!—to take for granted that Georgia would be standing by, ready to upend her own life to help him through his midlife crisis.

Every man thinks any woman would be lucky to have him. When it’s
always
the other way around.

“You didn’t fool anybody with that display out there,” said
Brenda. “You knew what Gene was going to say, and you wanted to stop him.”

“I did stop him.” Georgia maintained her smile. “You should be glad I did. Or did you want him to blab it to the world?”

“Oh, he has to tell,” Brenda said. “It’s the only way he can come clean with his Lord. Gene knows he got his own self into this mess. And he’s going to need the help of not just the Lord but his whole church family to get out of it.”

“That is really so interesting,” Georgia said.

“You didn’t stop anything,” said Brenda. “You just postponed it.”

Poor Eugene. To let himself be run over by this bulldozer—and for nothing! Georgia didn’t want to marry him anyway! He was a nice diversion on a Saturday night, but one night a week was enough.

He must have had to do some big-time confessing when he got home last night. Which is how he wound up in the pulpit with this gun to his head.

Georgia was tired of acting ladylike. She was ready to move on to the slapping and hair pulling. She was strong, she could take this tub of lard with no difficulty. “I don’t think there’s any need for a scene, do you, Brenda? You want your girls to hear?”

“How dare you. You leave my girls out of this!”

Georgia spoke softly. “That’s what I’m trying to do.”

“Damn it, Brenda!” Out of his holy robes, in khaki Dockers and a white shirt, Eugene Hendrix looked unmistakably mortal. “I told you I’d talk to her!”

Brenda whirled on him. “Where are the babies?”

“Outside. There’s plenty of folks out there to keep an eye on them.”

“You left them by
themselves?
Are you out of your mind? Have you forgot about JonBenét? You go back out there this instant! I’m handling this.”

Eugene looked relieved to have an order to obey. He turned to go.

“Eugene, don’t you move,” Georgia said. “You told her about us?”

He stopped. His face flushed red. “She found out.”

“He was calling you from our
home,
” Brenda wailed, “like I’m too stupid to listen in on the extension?”

Georgia turned to Eugene. “Dummy, if you wanted to leave your wife for me, don’t you think you could have discussed it with me first?”

She couldn’t quite decipher the look on his face—confusion and something oddly out of place. Sympathy? She plunged ahead.

“I did the only thing I could think of, Eugene. I couldn’t sit there and let you ruin my life—and your life, too! What were you thinking?”

“I have to come clean,” he said. “This sin is weighing so heavy on me. It’s pressing down on my soul. I’ve been living a lie, Georgia. I can’t go on like this.”

He didn’t sound at all like himself. He sounded like the guy who’d had to explain it to Brenda last night.

“Eugene, listen to me. I don’t
want
you to leave her. I don’t
want
to marry you. Do you understand?”

“Marry? That’s a hoot,” Brenda said. “What makes you think he would ever leave me? And our babies? For a tramp like you?”

“Now come on, Brenda,” Eugene huffed, “there’s no need for that kind of thing.”

Georgia said, “One of us is crazy, Eugene. Who is it? Her or me?”

“Tell her, Gene,” cried Brenda, “tell her what you were going to say when she put on her little fainting act.”

Eugene’s eyes didn’t make it all the way up to meet Georgia’s. He pressed his lips together, looked at the floor, and sighed as men do:
None of this is my fault.

That’s when Georgia understood the truth. Brenda was not the fool in the room. Georgia was.

Eugene was not leaving his wife. He was staying with her.

No doubt this was mostly Brenda’s doing, but Eugene had to be in on it too. They’d worked it out between them. In a desperate attempt to save their marriage, Eugene intended to denounce Georgia in front of the congregation as a home wrecker, a wicked woman. Never mind that he was the one skulking down the alley to Georgia’s garage apartment every Saturday night, it was always Eugene who came to see Georgia.
Never
the other way around.

Georgia didn’t know why she was attracted to men like this—the good-looking, nice-seeming, treacherous type. She vowed to start working on that as soon as she got the hell out of this church.

“What we did was just plain wrong, Georgia, you can’t argue with that.” That was Eugene, trying to convince himself.

“If that’s the way you want it,” said Georgia. “But you better not go making any public statements. There might be a few things you might not want told.”

Brenda made a face. “Like what?”

“Like that cowboy hat you wear when you’re riding the horsey, Brenda.” Georgia winked. “What is it you always yell? Giddyup? Go horsey?”

“Gene!” she shrieked. “You told her that?”

“You can’t make this stuff up,” Georgia said. “And if you think I’m too shy to go tell it on the mountain, you might want to think again.”

“Oh, now you’re threatening me?” Brenda cried.

Georgia said, “I’ve been coming to this church all my life. Y’all have been here what, five years? I’ll be sitting in that pew when the two of you are just a vague memory.”

“I don’t think so,” said Brenda.

“Brenda. You want your husband?” said Georgia. “Take him home. Good luck keeping him there, by the way.” A nagging voice said,
Get out of here, Georgia. Fix this later. Just go.

Brenda wasn’t quite finished. “You put on all these airs like some pillow of the community. Prancing around like you own this town. People ought to know exactly what kind of woman you are.”

Eugene winced at his wife’s misapprehension of the word “pillar.” He looked embarrassed that Georgia had this close-up glimpse of the woman he’d been married to for fifteen years.

Until this moment Georgia had felt mostly sorry for him, but that wince made her hate him thoroughly, all at once. How dare he look down his nose at his fat unattractive wife, who put up with his cheating and his endless wandering sermons, and gave him four lovely daughters! He must have known what a cow she was when he married her. How dare he wince at her now!

Georgia whirled on him. “You spent three hours at my house last night and couldn’t find a moment to mention this to me? What the hell is the matter with you?”

“Last night?” Brenda began squawking, flapping her wings. “But he—Gene, you were at Fellowship Circle last night!”

“Oh no, it wasn’t a circle,” said Georgia. “Although we definitely did have some fellowship. How many times, Eugene? Was it three? Look at that hickey on his neck, Brenda, did you even notice? Of course not. You really should pay more attention.” Georgia pushed up from the couch. “He spent half the evening lying to me, then he went home to lie to you. That’s the one thing he’s really good at. Believe me, honey, you do have a problem. But I ain’t it.”

Eugene looked horrified. His hand went to the spot on his neck. He must not have noticed in the mirror this morning, but his hand knew just where to go. “Now wait a minute,” he said.

Georgia sailed out the door. “Y’all have a nice day.”

F
our little Hendrix girls sat on the curb beside their father’s rust-colored Dodge minivan. They looked perplexed by the absence of anyone telling them what to do. Georgia started to call out,
Don’t worry, your parents will be out soon, get up off the dirt in those nice dresses—
but why should she trouble herself with those brats? Let them sit there all day. Who cares?

The nerve of some people! A good cloud of anger had built up in the back of Georgia’s head, a cumulonimbus with a broad purple base. She stormed over the heat-shimmering asphalt, thinking how little she needed a lecture on morals from the fat wife of Preacher Eugene, who stood by watching the confrontation with all the authority of the shriveling organ he had turned out to be.

Georgia climbed into her four-wheeled Honda oven, cranked the engine, turned the A/C to MAX. Anger would get her nowhere. She must not let it overpower her.

The hot air blasting from the dash began to pale into coolness. Georgia buried her face in the airflow, massaging her temples with the pads of her thumbs.

What was the name? A name from long ago. Friend of Little
Mama’s, a big man, used to come to town all the time to visit a cousin. Another Rolodex card coming up blank.

Jolly Santa Claus cheeks and a boisterous laugh.

She was still trying to visualize the letters of his name an hour later, as she lugged the sacks from Hull’s Market through the deep-freezer porch. Whizzy the white-spotted mutt whined, swatted his tail, and twisted around to put himself as much in the way as possible. “Get out of here, Whizzy, go on! Mama, who was that man from the Baptist convention?”

Little Mama looked up from the pan of purple hull peas she was shelling. “What man?”

“That friend of yours, Mr. Big Shot Baptist with the big gold knuckle rings. You said never trust a Baptist that wears that much gold.”

“Aw, you talking about old Teebo Riley,” said Little Mama.

“Teebo! That’s it!”

“His real name was Clarence, or Horace or something.”

Georgia kept her voice casual. “Wasn’t he some big to-do at the Southern Baptist Convention, in Montgomery?”

Little Mama nodded. “He’s the right-hand man of the one that runs the whole shebang.”

“I wonder whatever happened to old Teebo,” Georgia said.

“He’s still around, called me last year on my birthday. Least I think it was him. Might have been somebody else.” Little Mama’s memory was getting spottier, but she filled in the gaps with her imagination. She’d been working the same jigsaw puzzle for years, but if it didn’t bother her, so what?

“You still got his phone number, Mama?”

“I think so.”

Within minutes Little Mama was cackling on the phone with
ol’ Teebo. Georgia listened for a while at the edge of the conversation, to make sure Mama got the details right. Then she poured herself a fat glass of red wine and carried it into the chill of the sunporch to celebrate.

She looked forward to the smoothing effect of the wine. Her body felt achy and tingling, leftover trauma from the shock she had received at church—as if she’d touched a live wire, or had fainted for real. Eugene’s attempted betrayal was not only shocking, but humiliating. Georgia was not accustomed to having her private life dangled in a threatening way in front of the congregation. The first sting of rejection had been quickly replaced by a sense of resolve.

Either party in an affair should have the right to break it off at any time, Georgia believed. That’s one reason she never married—she liked keeping her options open. People are so naturally fickle that she understood why some might want a binding legal contract to enforce a promise of the heart. But Georgia’s life, at least, was too complicated to put in writing.

If Eugene wanted to break it off, okay—but to shout it from the pulpit for the whole town to hear? She simply couldn’t allow it. She conducted her affairs discreetly; no one had any idea what she was up to. Rarely did she have to bring the hammer down on anybody. It was nice to know she still could if she had to.

She sipped her wine and waited. Presently up the hall came the walker with split tennis balls mounted on the front legs for traction. “All done, baby.”

“Mama, you are a miracle worker. Remind me to buy you a mink coat for Christmas.”

Mama snorted. “I could use one, cold as you keep it in here. Ain’t your feet freezing? My toes are like niblets of ice.”

Little Mama never asked why her daughter might want her to make such a call. Simply did as she was told. Eugene and Brenda would never know what hit them.

Little Mama halted her walker at the sofa.

“Put on socks if you’re cold,” Georgia said. “Go around barefoot, no wonder.” Thumbing through the Montgomery yellow pages, she settled on “Charlie Ross Regal Moving” because she liked the cartoon of Charlie Ross wearing a jeweled crown as he rode and whipped his moving van like a bucking bronco. She appreciated a moving company with a sense of the ridiculous. She dialed the number and explained the situation to a pleasant woman called Shirley.

“And your name is?” said Shirley.

“Brenda Hendrix,” said Georgia. “I know this is awful short notice. Can you really get a truck here first thing in the morning?”