Georgia Bottoms (8 page)

Emma Day was a morning person, in a morning-gardening outfit straight out of
Southern Living:
cute turquoise flip-flops, white pedal pushers, white cotton sweater with pink stripes, and a little more makeup than is advisable in broad daylight. Her hair was a blond ball of cotton candy. Her skinny white pedal
pushers bore not the first grass stain, not a mark of any kind. How could you garden in white pants and stay that clean? Perhaps she had run inside to change when Georgia called.

Here she came dragging a folded-up card table as if it was too heavy for a woman of her petite build. “Is one table going to be enough?” Emma Day said. “We have a couple more in the garage.”

“One is plenty,” said Georgia. “I hope you know you’re saving my life! I didn’t even know my card table had a bad leg till I went to set it up this morning. Talk about the eleventh hour! Hey, and this is a nice one, too. Much nicer than mine, I think Mama ordered it from Sears a hundred years ago. You better remember to ask for this one back, or I’m liable to keep it. Where’d you get it?”

“Let me think.” Emma Day looked pleased to be asked. “I think the Tar-jay.”

“The what?” Georgia said.

“The Tar-jay? You know, Target. In Mobile. Everybody calls it Tar-jay like in French. Cause it’s like a fancy Walmart.”

“I never even heard of it,” Georgia confessed. She prided herself on keeping up with the latest trends in retail, even if she did live in a hick town that didn’t have any better store than a half-sized Belk’s.

“Oh my God, Georgia, in that case we’ve got to go! They have the greatest stuff. It feels more expensive than Walmart, but really it isn’t.” Emma Day seemed excited by the notion of the two of them going off on a shopping trip. She’d sounded thrilled on the phone when Georgia asked for the loan of a card table for her famous September luncheon.

Georgia and Emma Day were friendly enough, but they didn’t socialize. Emma Day had more money; Georgia was more popular; on looks, Georgia probably would win. Georgia had to invite
Emma Day to the luncheon because she was best friends with Trisha, Krystal’s first cousin, who couldn’t
not
be invited.

“This coffee is delicious,” Georgia said. It was some kind of milky cappuccino, a sprinkling of cinnamon on the foam.

“Isn’t it good? Oh my God, Georgia, I never thought an expresso machine could change my life, but it absolutely has. Do you have one? You have to get one. It keeps me so wired I get twice as much done! Some nights I used to find myself pining for a double expresso after dinner… Now I just go in and make one! I can get the whole house clean before bedtime!”

Emma Day would make a great spokesmodel, Georgia thought.

On a pedestal in the corner of the Florida room stood a sculpture of a fawn, a rough-hewn bronze Bambi grazing in the bronze grass at its feet. To Georgia it looked tacky. But she didn’t know the first thing about art. Anything that came with its own pedestal and spotlights must have cost a fortune.

She wondered where Floyd Pettigrew got the money. His job with the highway department didn’t pay enough to buy bronzes of fawns, or fancy white wicker furniture, or his-and-hers Infinitis. If there was family money it must have come from Floyd’s side. Emma Day was a Windham from right here in Six Points. Nothing wrong with the Windhams but they never had any more money than anybody.

“If I drank coffee I’d never get to sleep,” Georgia said.

“I drink it all day and never have a problem,” said Emma Day. “I guess if you’re an addict like I am… I give myself a workout in the yard, with my roses and all. I really am kind of obsessed.”

“I work out sometimes too,” Georgia said, picturing herself snuggling onto Eugene’s lap. “But it doesn’t help me sleep. Sometimes it gets me all worked up, you know? The opposite effect.”

Emma Day laughed. Once you got past the cotton-candy hair, Emma Day was all right. Georgia had wondered if her hairstyle was ironic, the way some modern girls favor old-fashioned cat-eye glasses, or corny decoupaged purses shaped like steamer trunks. One look at the bronze Bambi and Georgia knew Emma Day did not have an ironic bone in her body. She should have guessed, from the two perfect children who sat between Emma Day and Floyd every Sunday, the only kids in church who actually seemed to listen to the sermon.

“You really do have the most beautiful flowers, Emma Day. How do you keep ’em looking so good?” To Georgia there was no more boring subject on earth. Who cares what grows in the dirt? The lowliest worker ant has a thousand times more brainpower than the smartest flower on earth.

Georgia smiled and cocked her head as Emma Day chattered on about coreopsis and clematis and the importance of natural rainwater and nitrogen in the soil.

From the bottom of all sound came a rumble so low it trembled the floor beneath Georgia’s chair. Outside, something large was moving—okay yes, here it comes, first the grille then the tractor of a huge moving van sliding out of the shade of the pecan tree, a long trailer with a cartoon cowboy on the side, wearing a crown, riding a truck that snorted and bucked like a bronco. Charlie Ross Regal Moving.

Georgia checked her watch: eight on the dot. The truck slid to a stop in a pool of sunshine at the end of the church driveway. The engine continued rumbling. Two men climbed down and went to drag open the sliding door. A third man tucked a clipboard under his arm and walked up the driveway to the parsonage.

Emma Day was chattering on and didn’t notice. Georgia had
the weird sensation that the truck was some kind of mirage, a piece of theatrical scenery that had been rolled into view. It was so big it didn’t look quite real.

She knew she couldn’t go on staring out the window. She locked her gaze on the tip of Emma Day’s nose.

Now came a small commotion, raised voices in the vicinity of the parsonage door.

Emma Day placed her cup in its saucer, and swiveled neatly on her wrought-iron chair. “What in the world?”

“I heard a rumor they were moving,” Georgia said. “I didn’t know it would be this soon.”

Emma Day was shocked. “Eugene and Brenda? They’re not moving.”

Georgia said, “Isn’t that a moving van?”

Now Brenda Hendrix was out in the driveway, hollering at the man with the clipboard. You couldn’t make out individual words, but it was easy to get the gist.

Brenda still wore her hot-pink chenille robe and slippers. Georgia detected the shadow of Eugene inside the screen door. Wasn’t it like him to stay inside letting his wife do all the yelling?

“My stars, Georgia! Did they make some announcement at church? Floyd tied one on Saturday night, as usual, so we had to miss.”

“I heard something,” said Georgia. “But not from Eugene. I forget who told me.”

“Well I was over there yesterday and Brenda didn’t say a word! You’d think she would… I mean, my gosh, we’ve been neighbors for years.”

“I heard he got transferred,” said Georgia. “To—I don’t know, Oklahoma? Arkansas? Somewhere like that.”

Now Eugene pushed open the screen door and stepped outside. He was moving so slowly it was obvious he didn’t want to come out at all. Teebo Riley had promised Little Mama he would call Eugene immediately with word of his new assignment. That meant the Hendrixes had had all night for the truth to sink in. Still, the moving truck at their door the next morning must have come as a shock. And Eugene was not a morning person.

For a time, Brenda seemed to be yelling at both Eugene and the clipboard guy, who had subtly backed up a few steps. The other men hung back at the truck.

Suddenly Brenda ratcheted up the pitch of that cutting voice so that everyone on the block could hear. “I don’t give a goddamn what he said, Gene, this is
not
the way people get a new assignment!”

Eugene said something—undoubtedly telling her to keep her voice down, don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.

“Oh God, I
hate
you!” Brenda slapped him across the face and charged into the house.
Bang!
went the door.

One of the men at the truck let out a whistle.

The bang of the screen door broke the spell. Emma Day turned to Georgia. “My stars. Did you see that?”

“I sure did.”

“Okay—I just—I guess I’m not believing my eyes.”

“Does she hit him like that a lot, you think?” Georgia said.

“Not that I’m aware,” said Emma Day. “Not that I’ve ever seen, anyway. But you never know what goes on behind closed doors.”

“I just don’t understand married people,” Georgia said. “Personally I wouldn’t put up with too much of that before I’d be out that door.”

“Well, you do what you have to, I guess,” said Emma Day.

The clipboard man motioned to his associates. They came warily up the drive, as if Brenda might fly through the door and set upon them next.

Emma Day gazed at Eugene, quietly conferring with the clipboard guy. “But Reverend Hendrix is such a sweet man,” she said softly.

Georgia shrugged. “Looks can be deceiving… although he has been a good preacher, he sure has. A little depressing sometimes, but good in his heart.”

She knew Emma Day couldn’t wait for her to leave so she could run across that yard and find out what was what.

Georgia had felt a swell of pleasure when Brenda slapped him, but after that she felt a little bereft. Something was ending, one chapter of her life closing for good. She would have no trouble finding someone to occupy her Saturday nights, but it would not be Eugene.

Here came a moving man out the door with an end table in each hand, and another bearing a stack of dinette chairs. The clipboard man wedged something in the hinge to hold the door open.

“It does feel like eavesdropping,” said Georgia. “As much as I’d like to stay and visit.”

“Oh, don’t go,” said Emma Day, without much enthusiasm. As pleased as she had been to improve her friendship with Georgia, the tableau across the lawn was much more interesting.

Georgia kissed the air by Emma Day’s cheek, picked up the card table in one hand, and crossed another item off her to-do list.

M
idnight Monday was the moment of transition from the well-thumbed pages of the to-do list to the crisply annotated timing chart. Once Georgia posted the chart on the fridge, she knew what she had to do every minute until the first guests arrived at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday to ensure that each dish reached the proper warmer or ice tray at the ideal serving temperature.

Georgia approached the luncheon with scientific attention to planning, execution, detail. Any ring of the doorbell before 11:30 was strictly ignored, a hard-line policy Krystal thought hilarious. “You really leave ’em standing on the porch until eleven thirty on the dot?”

“I only invite people who know how to read,” Georgia said. “The invitation doesn’t say eleven fifteen. If I didn’t draw the line, they’d show up the night before with sleeping bags. Besides, there are very nice rockers on the porch where they can sit while they wait.”

The chart allowed precisely five hours for Georgia to sleep. But putting her head on the pillow as scheduled at 1:50 a.m. didn’t stop her mind from whirling in circles, recurring images of Eugene stepping out from behind his screen door to face the consequences of his actions, dinette chairs going past in the
moving men’s hands, rank after rank of prosciutto-wrapped figs marching toward the horizon…

Georgia desperately needed a good night’s sleep, so everyone would remark on how wonderful she looked. She needed a pink, well-rested complexion to set off the gorgeous emerald-green Lauren by Ralph Lauren dress she had special-ordered from the big Belk’s in Mobile.

She smiled at the memory of how good she looked in that dress, and snuggled down in the soft warmth of her pillow.

Sometime after three a.m., Brother came stumbling in drunk, third night in a row. He thundered upstairs like a horse busting out of his stall, colliding with every wall and banister on the way to his room.

Georgia got up and went down to find the door standing open, inviting the whole world to come right on in.

Whizzy was standing guard. The sight of Georgia started his tail wagging. She bent down to scratch behind his ears, and shut the door.

It took a while to drift back to sleep. The next time she started awake, the digital clock was cheeping and it was dawn. She felt a pulse of excitement, like Christmas morning when she was a kid. She sprang out of bed without pausing for her usual sigh—God, how she looked forward to this day! She loved being the Perle Mesta of Six Points, her house overflowing with ladies oohing and ahhing at the excellence of the food and decor. She loved overhearing their compliments when they didn’t realize she was eavesdropping. Georgia was a long way from wealthy, but once a year she got to feel like the richest lady in town.

The phone was ringing when she stepped out of the shower.
She threw a towel around herself and dripped into the hall. It was Lon Chapman at the bank. He always called before his tellers got in if he needed to make some adjustment to their Tuesday night appointment.

Georgia was careful to maintain legitimate friendships with the men in her life. It was easier than sneaking around trying to hide their calls from Little Mama. Georgia kept her money at Lon’s bank, for instance, so he had a good reason to call.

“Hey there,” she said. “How’s the money business?”

“Come jump in, the money is fine,” Lon said with a laugh. “How’s the beautiful business?”

“Oh, you flatter me, Lon! And don’t let me stop you.”

Lon laughed. He was a fun guy—bushy steel-wool hair, wide homely face, a big booming laugh that went off at intervals like a cannon. He talked tough, like a TV detective. He wore swanky clothes (dark shirts, white satin ties) and fancied himself a kind of Six Points playboy, divorced twice when he was younger and single ever since. Several times a year he drove his flashy gold Cadillac to New Orleans for God knows what kind of lost weekend. A few times he’d invited Georgia along, but she’d told him she had no interest at all in New Orleans.

That was one of her biggest whoppers ever. She hadn’t been to New Orleans, but she knew it better than some people who lived there. She’d read all the books, studied the maps. New Orleans was Georgia’s favorite place in the world. She knew it was her destiny to go there. Every fantasy she ever had about her life ended up in New Orleans. Someday, somehow, when Little Mama was gone, and Georgia’s Six Points days were over, she would get down there. And then she’d never leave. She would cling to that place like moss to a tree. She would grow old there,
and die there. They would place her body in one of those elegant marble tombs that hold you up out of the damp.