Revenge of the Kudzu Debutantes (10 page)

Virginia took her little hands out of her lap and laid them on the table. She took a deep breath to steady herself. “You can’t seriously be thinking about going to the Kudzu Ball,” she said, frowning at Lavonne. “Surely this is just another one of your little jokes.” Virginia had been trying to get the Kudzu Ball closed down for years. It irritated her that people would make a mockery of everything she held dear, that they would ridicule what took her years of scheming and hard work to achieve. And what was even worse, younger members of her own social class appeared to be going over to the enemy. If this alarming trend continued, the old traditions would eventually die out and social equality and anarchy would not be far behind. Virginia had done everything she could short of bribery and extortion to close the Kudzu Ball down, but when you’re dealing with middle managers and college professors, what could you expect?

“When is the ball?” Eadie asked. She and Nita were not Cotillion debs. They had never been presented, Eadie because of her trailer-trash upbringing, and Nita because she was the last girl in the world Virginia had wanted Charles to end up with; she’d done everything possible to sabotage the romance between them, even going so far as to have Nita blackballed. Charles had gone as Lee Anne Bales’s escort.

“It’s the weekend our husbands get back from their little hunting trip.”

“I’ll go with you,” Eadie said, the flickering light of the candle illuminating her face. “I’ve always wanted to go.”

“Yes, well, what do
you
have to lose?” Virginia said, motioning for Little Moses to bring her another glass of wine.

“I don’t like your tone,” Eadie said.

“How about you, Nita?” Lavonne snapped her fingers but Nita wasn’t listening. She was staring into the candle flame and imagining Jimmy Lee Motes standing by her pool with the moonlight shining in his eyes.

“Nita has more sense than that,” Virginia said, squaring her little shoulders. “Besides, Charles would never let her go.”

Eadie yawned. She put her hands over her head and stretched. She was tired of making small talk. She had a husband to find, and a marriage to save. “So, where’s Trevor?” she said, finally asking the question they’d all been waiting for.

“I’m pretty sure he left,” Lavonne said quickly.

“He’s gone,” Nita said.

“He’s down at the garage behind the back fence,” Virginia said, sweetly pointing toward the gate. Lavonne looked at her like
Die, bitch, die.
Virginia smiled and patted her smooth hair. “With his date,” she added.

Nita couldn’t believe Virginia had mentioned the garage, disguised as a storage shed, where Charles kept his father’s old car—the Deuce. She and Virginia weren’t ever supposed to talk about the car. Charles had given strict orders, and to her recollection, Nita had never disobeyed one of Charles’s strict orders. For sixteen years she had followed all of Charles’s orders. She had been loyal and faithful as an old dog. She had cooked his meals, washed his clothes, bore his children, and loved him as best she could. She had been a good girl. Now she could not trust him. She could not bear to have him touch her. She hated the sound of his voice. She hated the way his ears stood out on either side of his head, hated the whistling sound he made when he slept. Good girls did not do things like that. Good girls did not hate their husbands.

Eadie said, “What garage? What back fence?”

Trevor and Tonya sailed suddenly into the yard, dragging the hapless Charles behind them like an anchor. He was speaking and gesturing wildly, and looking around for Eadie, and when Lavonne saw him, she shook her head in disgust. Here she was hoping he had convinced Trevor to leave and he hadn’t even managed to warn him that Eadie was here. It was up to her to keep Eadie and Trevor apart, to avert the inevitable tragedy that this party had been moving toward all evening.

Lavonne tried to think of something clever to say but her tongue went numb.

“Oh look,” Virginia said, smiling sweetly and pointing. “There’s Trevor and his date now.”

Lavonne imagined herself wrapping her hands around Virginia’s trim little neck and squeezing until her eyes popped. Her head felt swollen. She could feel her pulse in her temple. With her luck, it was an aneurysm and she’d be dead in ten minutes, facedown in a plate of kosher barbecue.

Eadie swung around to look, following Virginia’s pointing finger. Her eyes locked onto Trevor and she smiled and rearranged the front of her dress. Denton came up carrying a plate of food but she shook her head impatiently and stood up. “You know what to do,” she told him.

She started across the yard, but Denton just stood there holding the plate and watching her go. Eadie had warned him what to expect and he had agreed upon the price, but now that the moment was here he was having doubts. The truth of the matter was, he needed his face to make a decent living. Even one punch might break his nose, and then what was he supposed to do? Make ends meet as a personal trainer? Teach tennis for a living?

Trevor and Tonya stood with their backs to Eadie in front of a long buffet table. Charles watched Eadie’s approach with the dull, dazed look of a cow caught in the headlight of an oncoming train. The crowd around the pool stopped shagging and began to cluster around the tent. Queen sang about that “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” Guests began to spill through the kitchen door onto the screened porch. Some watched from the family room windows.

Eadie moved up behind Trevor and Tonya, who had stopped in front of the buffet table. “There you are,” she said.

Hearing her voice, Trevor swung around. Something flickered in his eyes and was quickly buried. Seeing this, Eadie smiled.

“Hey, Trevor,” Charles said, moving up behind the buffet table and trying to draw his attention. “How about them Braves?” His voice trailed off feebly. This party had been a disaster from the first, and it was fixing to get worse. He looked around wildly for his mother.

Tonya tried to take his arm but Trevor shook her off. “Why are you here, Eadie?” he said and his voice had a cold metallic ring.

“Why shouldn’t I be here?” Eadie said. “I’ve been here for the last fifteen years, except one. Why should this year be any different?”

Charles could smell tragedy the way a tethered goat smells a grizzly bear. It was coming and there was nothing he could do to stop it. “Can you believe what they’re paying that Chipper Jones?” His voice rose, hung for a moment, and then plummeted. He tried again. “Can you believe how much money those guys make?”

Trevor and Eadie stood facing each other like gladiators. The air was heavy with the scent of pine tar and citronella. Charles looked around desperately for his mother. He could see her now, standing at the edge of the crowd, her small pale face looking almost . . . pleased? Nita stood beside her, watching Charles with sorrowful, accusing eyes.

“Come on, Trevor, let’s go,” Tonya said, trying again to take his arm.

“Not now, Tonya,” he said.

“Do you mind?” Eadie said to her. “This is a private conversation.”

Tonya looked at Eadie the way she would something blind and slimy found under a rock.

“You’ve chosen a very public place for a private conversation,” Trevor said, tipping his head at the restless audience.

“Here’s as good a place as any.”

“Don’t blame me,” he said. “I wouldn’t have wanted it this way.”

Eadie didn’t give a shit about the crowd and the look she gave them told them so. “You left me no choice,” she said to Trevor.

“Now you’re starting to scare me.”

“Come home, Trevor.”

“I don’t want to do this here.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“Jesus!” Trevor shouted and banged his fist on the buffet table. Dishes bounced and clattered. In the middle of the table, the ice sculpture of Tara had begun to melt. Scarlett O’Hara had shrunk noticeably. Beneath her wide crystal hat she looked like a humpbacked dwarf. After a minute Trevor sighed and shoved his hands deep in his pockets. “Goddamn it, Eadie,” he began, and then stopped. Tonya looked nervously from one to the other. He pulled his hands out of his pockets and rubbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers. Dark half-moons swelled the skin beneath his eyes. Eadie put her hand up to touch his face, but he moved his head. “I’m trying to tell you something,” he said evenly. He studied her face a moment, and then sighed again. “I know I’ve been a shitty husband.”

She grinned. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. If he could admit he’d been a shitty husband, they could work from there. It was like one of those twelve-step programs. I am an alcoholic. I am a shitty husband. It was the same concept.

“Everybody makes mistakes,” she said, feeling generous.

Trevor put his hand up to stop her. “Let me finish,” he said. “Let me get this out. For once in your life, stop talking and just listen.” She smiled indulgently and he took a deep breath, and continued, trying to keep his voice low. “I’ve been a lousy husband, but I’m going to be better,” he said.

Eadie felt a sudden surge of hope and confidence. She could see Nita’s pale, sad face in the crowd and Lavonne’s sturdy one. Hadn’t she known in her heart that he still loved her?

“I’ve learned a lot about commitment in the past few months. I know I can do better. I know I can be faithful.”

She nodded and gave him a little smile, encouraging him to go on. She would forgive him. She knew already in her heart that she would. But he would have to fire Tonya. There was no other way she’d agree to take him back.

“I intend to start fresh. To be a good husband.”

He’d have to fire Tonya and he’d have to agree to stop practicing law and write.

“Tonya and I are getting married,” he said.

For a moment she didn’t understand him. She stood smiling foolishly into his tired face. Overhead the insect light buzzed and flick-ered. The truth of what he was saying settled over her gradually. The glittering lights, the throng of guests, the entire lawn had the sudden shimmering quality of an underwater scene. Eadie felt as if she were sitting at the bottom of a deep lagoon, looking up toward some brightly lit world on the other side. Lavonne moved just within the watery perimeter of her vision, followed by Nita, moving toward her like slow somber swimmers.

“You cannot possibly mean that after twenty-one years of marriage you intend to divorce me to marry that child,” she said in a distant voice.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

We’ll see about that
, Eadie thought grimly. She swung her head over her shoulder and looked around for Denton. There was no mistaking her expression. Denton put the plate down on the table and trudged across the yard like a condemned man on his way to the chair. Eadie swung around to face him. Following her cue, he stopped and began running his hands up and down her bare back, which her daring dress left fully exposed. He was facing her but he was looking anxiously at Trevor over her shoulder.

“Come on, Trevor, let’s go,” Tonya pleaded.

“Is that the personal trainer you’ve been wasting my money on?” Trevor said. He smiled but didn’t show his teeth.

“Oh, I wouldn’t call it a complete waste of money,” Eadie said, picking up a tray of stuffed mushrooms. She stood with her back to Trevor, feeding mushrooms to Denton, who stroked her mechanically, his cheeks plumped, his arm pumping like a compressor. Trevor watched him, his eyes the color of bone. Tonya held tightly to Trevor’s waist.

Behind them, Charles said desperately, “If I had known there was so much money in baseball, I wouldn’t have gone to law school—ha ha.”

Denton’s hand dipped and swirled and took refuge finally in the lower back of Eadie’s dress. Trevor stared at him like a man in the midst of a psychotic episode. Charles rambled on like a lunatic.

“Who’d have thought there’d be so much money in baseball?” he asked anyone who would listen.

Trevor gave his drink to Tonya to hold. Her face crumpled suddenly like she might cry. Trevor stood motionless with his hands down against his sides, but there was something in his expression, some warning in the set of his shoulders that caused Denton to step back. Eadie spun around, her eyes wide, as though surprised to see her husband crossing the lawn with long, violent strides. With his hand still plunged into the back of her dress, Denton looked like a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

“Don’t do anything foolish, Trevor,” Eadie said, smiling sweetly.

Denton finally managed to free his hand. He stepped back again, grazing the edge of the buffet table. Weasel picked up the punch bowl and moved it to safety just as Denton leaned into the table and went down, the table collapsing beneath him, leaving him spread-eagled on the ground while the remnants of Tara glistened around his head like a thorny crown. He lay there like a dead man, staring up at the big yellow moon.

Trevor pushed past Eadie and stopped, looking down at Denton. No one moved. The yard was quiet. Trevor snorted, a sudden, short, violent burst of laughter that shot up over the quiet yard like steam through a pressure valve. Hearing this, Charles began to giggle and slap himself, his frenzied laughter rising above the noise of the party as his guests joined in. He would later brag to his mother that this party could have been worse, that at least Denton and Eadie had been there to provide comic relief, that at least the whole affair hadn’t ended in a drunken brawl.

Wave after wave of laughter washed over the yard. Denton rose slowly and, brushing his pants off, made a bow and held his arms above his head in a victory salute. The crowd applauded. Lavonne swam her way through the throng, moving slow and dreamlike toward Eadie. Nita floated behind her, her face pale and delicate as a sea urchin.

Beneath the neon glow of the bug lights, Eadie Boone looked dazed. She watched Trevor like a long-distance swimmer watches the horizon. She was no quitter. Eadie reminded herself of this, the words sloshing through the waterlogged corridors of her brain.
I am no quitter.
She could hear the voice in her head like a drowning woman.

“You’ll never find a girl like me,” she said to Trevor; and the moment she said it, she knew it was true. In that same moment she became aware of the moon shimmering over the trees like a mirage, and she thought with a sudden yearning for something better,
I should paint that.
A change came over her, her face softened gradually, and it was then that Eadie realized that loving someone, and being loved by them in return, isn’t always enough.