Good Christian Bitches (10 page)

“Somebody who’s solid and level-headed,” Heather said. “Somebody who’s been away from town for a while, and therefore didn’t get caught up in the whole crazy thing with Susie. Someone who is an insider and grew up in Hillside Park, and knows how
we
do things here, but someone who isn’t tainted by what went on last year.”

“ ‘We,’ Heather?” Amanda had to laugh at her undeserved ownership of the neighborhood. Suddenly it dawned on Amanda what they were asking her to take on.

“You want me,” she began slowly, “to be Chair of the Longhorn Ball?”

There was a smash in the background, and Amanda yelled to Will, “For goodness’ sake, Will! You nearly knocked over that mover! Okay, that’s it! I’ve had it! If I have to ask you one more time to stay out of these people’s way, you’re gonna be grounded until Jesus comes again, and I mean it!”

Her son glared at her. Heather studied her carefully. Sharon toyed anxiously with her flashy Pomellato ring, trying in vain to spin it around a pinky that had swelled from the heat.

Amanda shook her head. “I can’t do it. I can’t even begin to express how honored I am that you would ask, what with my being back in town just a couple of days and everything. But surely there have to be dozens of more qualified people than myself. I don’t know anyone anymore. I don’t know who runs what business. My ex-husband didn’t do business in Dallas. Thank God for that. But still. In fact, I can’t think of anybody less qualified to run the thing than me. Even if I had the time, which I don’t. I just have to say no.”

Heather and Sharon glanced at each other. They were expecting a rejection on the first ask, and, veteran salespeople that they were, they knew that selling only began when the customer said no. Someone once told Heather that she was such a good saleswoman, she could talk anyone into anything. Considering her natural expertise, she wasn’t too worried about Amanda Vaughn.

“For thirty-three years,” Heather began, in a speech that she had prepared, and in tones so ringing you could almost hear background music as she spoke, “the Longhorn Ball has been, like, the most important philanthropic event for the women of Dallas. We’ve raised close to forty million dollars for pediatric care and scientific research. I know we’ve improved the quality of life for many. You’re very fortunate in that you’ve got two healthy children right here. But you and I both know that we’ve seen a lot of people go through a world, just a world of pain—”

Amanda put her hand up.

“You’re killing me over here!” she exclaimed, laughing. “I know the Ball does a ton of good work, and I feel the same way you do. I’d hate to see it go away. But I just don’t have the time or the mental energy right now. I’m honored that you asked, but you’re going to have to ask someone else. I don’t even know if I’ll have time to serve on a committee, let alone be Chair. Especially in a year where there’s so much damage control and repair to do. I have enough of that in my personal life, as I discovered in Bible study yesterday.”

Now it was Sharon’s turn. They figured if the “sick children” thing didn’t get to Amanda, they’d have to try an alternate route.

“There’s another reason to think about doing it,” Sharon said, leveling her shoulders and ignoring as best she could the fact that Amanda had given them a big, fat, flat-out no. “You’re just getting reestablished here in Hillside Park. It’s tough. It’s got to be lonely. I’m gonna fess up and tell you the truth. A lot of women know you from growing up here—a lot have moved in and established themselves since you left and don’t know you at all. Some are gonna perceive you as a threat, because you’re pretty and you’re young and you’ve got your own money—you’re quite the catch, and you’re the newest single girl in the neighborhood. And this would just be a great way for you to show people here in Hillside Park that you’re here to contribute. You’re not after anybody’s husband, you’re not after anybody’s boyfriend, you’re who you are—a great lady with the same deep sense of community your family has.”

Amanda studied Sharon, and found herself realizing that she’d given Sharon the benefit of the doubt for way too long. How could they have been so close back then? Maybe they were both different then—or more alike. The marriage to Bill had definitely been a sobering experience and had helped Amanda get her feet on the ground in a way that she might not have been able to understand in the past. But this was a very strange selling point.

“Let me see if I’ve got this right,” Amanda said, trying not to sound curt or dismissive of the woman who had been her best friend all those years ago. “You want me to be Chair of the Longhorn Ball not just because it’s a good cause and somebody needs to rescue it from what happened this past year, but because it’s a way for me to prove to the women of Hillside Park that I’m not after their men? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Not exactly,” Sharon said, backpedaling furiously. “What I meant was—”

“I understand what you meant,” Amanda said, shaking her head wearily. “It’s exactly what you said. You’re saying people are going to perceive me as a threat. I’m saying not everybody thinks like that. Like you. And if people want to think the worst of me, let them. There is nothing I can do about that. I just don’t have time to worry about it. Ladies, I really appreciate the pie, the flowers, the hospitality, and the invitation, but it’s just not for me. Okay?”

Sharon and Heather looked grimly at each other. They had taken their best shots, and they had failed.

“Will you at least think it over?” Heather asked hopefully.

Sharon cut in to give it one more try. “Amanda, everyone just loves you so much and has always had so much respect for you and knows you to be a wonderful Christian girl from a nice Christian family. They know you’d treat people well, you’re organized, and you were quite the fund-raiser when you lived here before—always a good steward of the donors’ money. You have great leadership skills. It’d be a fun year for everyone coming out of that disaster.”

Amanda shook her head, but her mind was already on the movers. “Let’s have lunch sometime, girls,” she said. “I just have to turn my attention back to what’s goin’ on over here. Thanks for coming by. I appreciate the visit. I really do! Bye, y’all.”

She was irritated by the tactics of her unannounced and uninvited guests. Amanda never had been able to stand being ambushed, and this was a perfect example of why. She called out more orders to movers carrying in Sarah’s bed.

Heather and Sharon, dejected, said their good-byes and trudged down the steps toward the Jag.

When they got inside, they took a last look back at Amanda directing the movers. “The nerve of that girl,” Heather said, reaching for her tube of lip gloss as she started the car. “She’s gonna be much tougher than I thought.”

“I don’t know that we’d be able to get men to lose interest in her if she were running a small country,” Sharon said. “She’s so damn strong. She’s confident, and she looks great. She wasn’t even wearing any makeup.”

“She’s strong enough to stand up to the two of us,” Heather said with grudging admiration. “Time to figure out a Plan B.”

“I guess we’ll have to.” Sharon glanced down at her cleavage. At least she was superior to Amanda in that department. “You got one?”

“Nope. Not a one, not a single one. She turned down a free Mercedes. And she turned down being the Chair of the Longhorn Ball. I guess some people just can’t even begin to know how to be happy.”

“We’ll think of something, sweetie,” Sharon said consolingly.

“You got that right,” Heather said. “She’s not gonna get away with this, no way.”

“Ain’t no way in hell,” Sharon grumbled in determined accord.

They sped off to rethink Amanda’s demise.

D
inner for Amanda, Sarah, and Will consisted of pizza at a neighborhood Italian place that had been a favorite of Amanda’s while she was growing up. It felt comfortable and familiar, even though the décor was tacky and hadn’t been updated since it was opened. The place was reputed to be a mob hangout, but since crime in Dallas was more disorganized than organized, there was little evidence for that claim. It was more of a local joke than anything.

Amanda couldn’t help but notice the four older women seated at a nearby table who kept staring at her and talking to one another. They were all well-dressed and had beautiful faces, but each of them was slightly to considerably overweight and they all wore their hair much longer than was really appropriate for women their age.

About the same time she noticed the women, Nancy McRae, Amanda’s sweet girlfriend from high school, popped into the restaurant dressed in a simple but elegant Tory Burch tank and slacks.

“Oh, my gosh, Nancy!” Amanda exclaimed, rising from her seat.

“Amanda! Welcome home! I called your mom—didn’t she tell you?”

Amanda, who had just about decided that everyone here had either not changed a bit for the better, or left, was very excited to get reacquainted with Nancy. Nancy was drop-dead gorgeous, smart as a whip, and had a heart of gold. In addition to having a great sense of humor, she was a great wife and mother. Her husband was the ultimate good guy. He was handsome, successful, crazy about his wife, and a doting father. They were just the kind of people others felt good to be around.

“She told me,” Amanda answered, her tone apologetic, as she and Nancy hugged. “I’ve just been so busy unpacking.”

“I’m just so happy to see you. You look great.”

“No, you look great. As always.” Amanda dropped her voice to a whisper. “Do you recognize any of the women at the table behind me?”

Nancy glanced in their direction. “No, why?”

“They kept staring at me and talking about me and weren’t even the least bit discreet about it. They were so obvious, it was just rude!”

Nancy, taking a seat at Amanda’s table, waved her hand dismissively.

“Oh, honey, they probably just heard you were home. It’s all over town that you’re back. And I’m sure they were talking about you and have already decided they hate you, but who could blame them? Those women look like rejects from auditions for
Hairspray
. They represent the generation of stereotypical Texas women that you and I are so desperately trying to live down.” They both laughed, realizing they weren’t quite free from judgment, either.

Sarah and Will, who till now had remained uncharacteristically silent, giggled.

“You guys remember Nancy,” Amanda said by way of introduction.

“Hi, Ms. McRae,” the children chorused.

“Nice to see you two back where you belong,” Nancy told them. “Do you like this restaurant?”

Sarah said she liked the place well enough, but Will pronounced his two-word condemnation, “It sucks!” on everything from the décor to the waitstaff to the food itself.

“Well, he’s honest!” Nancy said, suppressing a grin. “Let’s talk, okay, sweetie?” She gave Amanda a kiss on the cheek and got up to leave. “Hang in there. Don’t let the gossips get you down.”

“I’ll call you,” Amanda promised.

Dinner and the remainder of the evening were trials for Amanda, thanks to the unfriendly stares and Will’s grumpy attitude. But then she drove by a skate park the town fathers of Hillside Park had thoughtfully provided for skateboard-addicted adolescents like Will. His eyes practically popped out of his head when he saw the ragtag collection of stoners, X Games wannabes, and other young people. Suddenly Will had a reason for living, especially when he noticed that some of the skaters were actually girls. Amanda promised they’d check it out next weekend.

The family had something of an adventure before bedtime, finally locating bedding in the thirtieth of the fifty or so boxes strewn across the living room floor. Amanda felt a measure of fear and depression as she imagined what her days would be like going forward. It would be getting the children up and ready for school in the morning, easy with Sarah and a nightmare endeavor with Will, followed by days alone in the massive house, unpacking boxes, and then angry evenings with Will, trying to get him to bed, so they could start the whole miserable routine all over the next day. For the first time since she had left Newport Beach, Amanda wanted to cry. After the children had gone to sleep, she came back downstairs to see if she could make some headway on the unpacking. The more boxes she unloaded, the more she felt as though she had gone to her own yard sale and overpaid for everything.

Her cell phone rang around nine p.m. It was her mother. “You still awake?”

“That’s a yes,” Amanda said, staring at the boxes everywhere. “I’m such an orderly person that the idea of going to bed with all these boxes half full just makes me crazy.”

“With all that stuff you’ve got,” Elizabeth said, “I don’t know what possessed you to go to Neiman’s and buy everything in the store. But you obviously did, because a bunch of clothes from Neiman’s was delivered to my house this afternoon.”

Amanda, puzzled, flopped down on a couch in the living room, realizing from the stinging pain in her behind that she had seated herself on top of Will’s Game Boy, which she removed and stared at disdainfully. Children have great eye-hand coordination and the strongest thumbs in the world, she thought, but if it weren’t for skateboards, they would probably get no exercise at all.

“Mom,” she said, turning her attention back to the phone, “I didn’t order anything from Neiman’s.”

“I don’t know whether you ordered it or whether you went there and picked it out, but you got a bunch of stuff, and that’s that. Want me to bring it over?”

Amanda sighed. She was about to tell her mother that she was exhausted, that it could wait until morning, and that the idea of bringing even one more material item into a house so overwhelmed with clothing, pots and pans, furniture that didn’t fit rooms, and rooms scattered with boxes would make her physically ill. But then suddenly she realized that her mother was actually trying to reach out to her, and that as tired as she was, a visit would be most welcome right now.

“If it’s no trouble,” she said, brightening for the first time that day. She was not normally a down or depressed person. But the divorce, the move, and above all, her constant run-ins with Will had begun to take a toll.

“Oh, it’s a bother, all right,” Elizabeth answered. “But I’ll manage it. Give me fifteen minutes.”

“I’ll need a hand,” she said, when she arrived at Amanda’s door.

“A hand? Is there a lot of stuff?”

Elizabeth gave her daughter a look that was both accusatory and bemused.

“You could say that,” she said without further explanation.

Amanda, intrigued, followed her mother out of the house, down the big lawn, and to her mother’s Range Rover. Its passenger and backseats were jammed with boxes. “What’s this?”

“You’re not serious! The back is full, too. And this is just the first load.”

“First load?” Amanda blinked rapidly. “What do you mean, first load?”

“It’s going to take at least four trips for me to get everything from my house to yours. Why they couldn’t have just delivered this stuff to your house in the first place, I’ll never know.”

“What the—” Amanda was all but speechless.

“Are you just gonna stand there,” her mother asked, placing her hands on her hips, “or are you gonna help me unload?”

For the next hour, mother and daughter unloaded boxes into the already overfilled living room. Every ten or fifteen minutes, Elizabeth went back home for another load. In all, thirty cartons of various sizes, shapes, and weight had arrived from the venerable Dallas department store.

Once it was all inside, the tired women surveyed the haul. “A little retail therapy?” Elizabeth asked.

“I swear to you, Mom,” Amanda said, staring awestruck at the boxes, “I’ve had no contact whatsoever with Neiman’s. Not today, not since I got back . . . frankly, not in the last ten years.”

“Then where do you buy your clothes?” Elizabeth asked, genuinely confused, as if there were no other place to shop in the United States.

“Neiman’s isn’t the only place to buy something to wear,” Amanda insisted with a roll of her eyes.

“Well, for me it is,” Elizabeth insisted regally. “And that’s blasphemy, coming from a Texas girl!”

They dug into the first box. It contained half a dozen Chanel dresses, each more perfect than the last. Both women gasped. This box alone had to contain twenty thousand dollars’ worth of clothes.

“Oh my God!” Amanda uttered.

“Un-f’ing-believable!” Elizabeth exclaimed, reeling. Amanda shot her mother a startled glance; she had never heard her mother use any expletive, in any context, ever. “Aw, for goodness’ sake,” Elizabeth said, sighing. “It’s only a word.”

They moved on to the second box, which contained eight pairs of Manolo Blahnik shoes.

“I’ll tell you what’s so bizarre,” Amanda said, shaking her head slowly. “All these things are exactly my taste. There’s not a single thing I’d return. And they’re just the right size, too.”

Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed as she studied her daughter. “You’re not sending all this back, are you?”

“All of it,” Amanda answered, in a tone brooking no argument. “It doesn’t belong to me. First thing in the morning, I’m calling Neiman’s. They can send a truck and they can get all of this out of here. In fact, I wouldn’t mind it if they took another ten or twenty boxes with them,” she joked, making a sweeping gesture at all the moving boxes scattered about.

“Amanda, are you out of your mind . . .” Elizabeth started to let her have it. But all of a sudden, she stopped. “Why am I not surprised?”

“No, Mother, I haven’t lost my mind, but Bill certainly did his best to try and take it. Was there a card?” Amanda asked. “I’m assuming this stuff is all from Mr. Black Mercedes.”

“If it is,” Elizabeth mused, “if you turn him down for dinner and he sends you all this stuff, what would you get if you turned him down for a weekend in Cabo? A new house?”

“I don’t need a new house, and I don’t need boxes of stuff from Neiman’s, no matter how . . . okay, no matter how perfect it all is. I just don’t get it.” She turned directly to her mother. “Mom. If a guy is so interested in me, why can’t he just pick up the phone?”

Elizabeth thought for a moment before, unable to resist, tearing into another box. “Maybe he’s in the CIA,” she said, removing half a dozen cashmere sweaters—and not the crummy-quality cashmere making the rounds in the last few years but the real thing, buttery soft to the touch. “And he can’t reveal his identity.” Amanda laughed. “Or the witness protection program.”

Then they both hit on the probable real answer. “Or maybe he’s still married,” they chorused.

The likely reality of the situation sunk in. They silently retreated to the couch, which Amanda scanned for Game Boys and other foreign objects before sitting down.

“The whole thing is a little over-the-top,” she said.

Elizabeth nodded, still cradling the half-dozen sweaters as if they were a small, multicolored, extremely soft child. “Surely he’s not married,” she said hopefully.

“He’s certainly got separate bank accounts if he is,” Amanda reasoned. “I can’t see any woman standing for her husband ringing up a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of women’s clothing and accessories at Neiman’s without an explanation.”

“On the other hand,” Elizabeth countered, “you do get the Neiman’s InCircle points. A hundred thousand points—you could really get something with that.”

“Yeah, like a tiny piece of Waterford, as I recall,” Amanda scoffed. “Is there a card?” Amanda asked again.

“Wait, I see one,” Elizabeth answered, producing a tiny card, which looked miniscule and ill-proportioned compared with the size of the bounty it accompanied.

It read, in a woman’s script: “Missed you last night. How’s Friday at Javier’s, eight p.m.?”

“Looks like a woman’s handwriting,” Elizabeth noted, scrutinizing the card. “Maybe that’s why I didn’t see a guy at the restaurant last night. Maybe there’s a woman interested in you!”

“Oh, great! I can already hear them praying for me in Bible study over that one!” Amanda said dismissively. “I’m sure it was just one of the salesgirls who wrote the card. He probably didn’t want his handwriting as an identifier.”

“Maybe he’s got his DNA on some of the clothes. We could take it to a lab.”

Amanda raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t mean in a Bill Clinton sense,” Elizabeth said, rolling her eyes. “I mean, maybe he just touched things. When he was picking them out.”

“I’ll tell you what’s so bizarre. He knows my taste in cars. He knows my taste in clothes. I don’t know whether to be flattered or just plain creeped out.”

“Can’t you just keep one itty-bitty sweater?” Elizabeth knew full well the answer was no.

“No, not just one itty-bitty sweater. And don’t you be thinking about keeping one for yourself. Before you leave, I’m going to frisk you, like you were a blackjack dealer in Vegas. What came from Neiman’s goes back to Neiman’s.”

“How did an unscrupulous woman like me ever raise such a sensible daughter like you?” Elizabeth tousled her daughter’s hair.

“I ask myself the same question every day.”

“How are your spirits? This move gettin’ you down?”

Amanda glanced at her mother warily. Throughout Amanda’s entire childhood, Elizabeth had been so self-involved that any awareness of her daughter’s feelings would have come as an outrageous surprise to Amanda—as it did now.

“To tell you the truth, Mom, it does have me down a little bit. All I have in front of me, really, is just taking care of the kids and unpacking all this . . . crap.”

“You need something to get you out of the house. Maybe you could get involved with some charitable thing. Get on a committee or whatever.”

Suddenly Amanda remembered the conversation she’d had earlier that day with Heather and Sharon. “Oh yeah . . . Mom, you’re not going to believe this,” she said. “But Heather Sappington and Sharon Peavy? They stopped by this afternoon. They want me to get involved with the Longhorn Ball.”