Secret Lives of the Kudzu Debutantes (15 page)

“You missed a spot,” he said, pointing at the glass, and she couldn't tell if he was teasing her or if he was disappointed.

“Thanks,” she said. She was aware of the awkward silence that seemed to rise and flatten out between them like a bad odor. She barely knew the man. Why should she care that he hadn't come by to see her since that disastrous day in the park? She wished she was one of those women who could ramble on about nothing in particular, the kind who could make outrageous comments to men without feeling self-conscious or awkward. It didn't help that Joe Solomon looked so damn attractive, standing there in his blue shirt with his light brown hair and eyes the soft gray color of rain.

He cleared his throat. “So what's the deal with half-price cookie day?” he said gruffly, leaning his elbows on the top of the glass so Lavonne would have to stop wiping.

She stepped away from the counter and folded the cloth in a neat square, stuffing it down in the pocket of her apron. “Buy a dozen and get the second dozen at half price.”

“Oh yeah? What's good?”

She leaned over and tapped the glass in a professional manner. “The May Days are good,” she said. “But if you like chocolate, the Chocolate Walnut cookies are to die for.”

“I'll have a dozen of each,” he said. Again, that tone in his voice, not friendly, but brisk and stilted.

It probably has something to do with that day in the park
, she thought, leaning over to pick up the cookie trays. It probably has something to do with Fleshy Delights. As she stood up, she accidentally knocked the tray against the case and two of the cookies slid off onto the floor. She swung around, catching her apron pocket on the edge of the counter. It ripped open along one seam. “Shit,” Lavonne said.

The kitchen door swung open and Little Moses came out carrying two gift baskets. He set them down on the counter with a flourish and Lavonne said to him, not looking at Joe, “Okay, he wants two dozen cookies, too. Can you ring him up?” Her voice was curt and businesslike.

Little Moses glanced from one to the other. “Sure,” he said.

Lavonne took off her apron and fled to the back office. The door was open a crack and she heard them talking in low voices while Little Moses rang him up.
What in the hell is wrong with me
? she thought glumly.
I've probably just offended a paying customer
. A few minutes later she heard the bell on the door tinkle as he went out.

She put her elbow on the desk and covered her eyes with one hand. She could hear Little Moses's footsteps as he headed for the office but then the bell tinkled again, as another customer came in, and he went back up front.
Maybe I should take a class
, she thought despondently.
Maybe I should read a book on how to talk to men I find attractive. Or, hell, maybe I should just get Eadie to teach me
. She heard Little Moses's footsteps again in the hallway. A moment later he knocked lightly on the door. She dropped her hand and looked up.

Joe Solomon stood in the doorway. “I'm not very good at this,” he said.

“Good at what?”

“At asking people out. At dating. It's not something I do a lot of.”

“And I'm a regular Mata Hari, as you can tell.”

He grinned. “Mata Hari,” he said. “I like that.”

“My friend Eadie says flirting is nothing more than the ability to give a candy-coated insult, and that I should be good at it, given my sarcastic wit.”

“I can imagine your friend Eadie saying that.”

“You met her at the park. The pretty one with the long legs. Remember?”

“I remember,” he said. He shrugged and leaned one shoulder against the
jamb. “She's not really my type. I go for the pretty, awkward girls with the sarcastic wit.”

“Oh, thank you very much.” She smiled and drummed her fingers on the desk, enjoying this.

“So is it a date then?” He pushed himself off the jamb. It occurred to her he was as nervous as she was. “Friday night. Dinner. I'll pick you up at seven?”

“Sure,” she said. “Why not.”

He turned to go but then stuck his head back in the door. “By the way,” he said. “I've been in Chicago. Visiting my daughter. In case you were wondering.”

After he left, she sat there feeling like she had grabbed hold of a high- voltage wire. Her feet vibrated. Her hands shook. It occurred to her that she hadn't had a date in twenty-two years, if she didn't count the three years she was engaged to Leonard. Things had certainly changed since then. Twenty-two years ago a first date ended with a kiss and a handshake,
if
you liked each other. Now it seemed that pretty much anything goes.

She stopped at the grocery store on the way home and picked up a
Cosmopolitan
magazine trying to get a few tips on the modern dating scene. After dinner, she fixed herself a vodka martini and got halfway through the article “How to Please Your Man in Bed,” when she realized she wasn't going to be able to do this. Any of this. All the Kegel exercises in the world wouldn't fix a leaky bladder. Not to mention the fact that no one had seen her naked since 1982.

She sighed and tossed the magazine over the edge of the bed. It would probably be less humiliating for them both if she just called him and told him she couldn't make it Friday night, something had come up. But that seemed rather cowardly. The truth of the matter was, she was looking forward to the date. She still felt a little like she had this afternoon in the office, like she was harnessed to some kind of electrical current that was sending vibrating waves of energy through her body.

Not an unpleasant feeling, really.

N
OW THAT SHE HAD FINALLY GAINED THE UPPER HAND
over Redmon, Virginia set about planning her revenge with all the cunning and strategy of which she was capable. Gaining her granddaughter's affections was turning out to be easier than she had imagined. She made arrangements with Charles to pick up Whitney from school on his visitation days, and took the girl out to dinner on those days when Charles was working late. She took Whitney shopping every chance she got and made arrangements with Nita to take her granddaughter and some of her friends to Atlanta next month for an overnight visit. Virginia was careful to consult Nita in all things, implying that she and Nita were allies protecting a lovable but naive teenager. When she was with Whitney, however, it was a different story. Then she was all sympathy and unconditional approval.

Like most teenage girls, Whitney harbored an intense feeling of resentment toward her mother, a feeling she was only too happy to share with Virginia. Nita was a “control freak,” she was unfair and unforgiving, she wanted to force Whitney into being someone she was not. Nita was forty, her life was nearly over anyway, and she was determined that Whitney's life would be as drab and boring as hers was. The revelations were endless and
dramatic, accompanied by groans and gnashing of teeth and much rolling of her eyes. Virginia had only to listen and cluck her tongue in sympathy. She had only to tell Whitney that she, too, had dreamed of fame and glory as a young girl, but had been thwarted at every turn. Whitney sighed and nodded her head in acknowledgment of Virginia's struggles. The trap was set.

She took Redmon out to the island three times in the weeks following Nita's wedding. The first time, they spent several hours exploring the old Kelly place, which was in ruins now and covered in creeping vines. The kitchen wing had fallen down years ago and the windows across the front had all been broken so the rain had poured in and made a mess of the pine floors. There were still bits and pieces of furniture scattered throughout the rooms. Virginia's grandmother's grand piano stood in one corner, a nesting place for rats and swallows, its keys yellowed and blistered with age. In the dining room, someone had dragged in an old mattress. It showed recent signs of occupancy. Teenagers used the island as a place to hold parties and bonfires in the summer months, swimming across the narrow river or paddling over on rafts.

“It must have been a showplace, Queenie,” Redmon said, looking up at the vine-covered monstrosity.

“It was,” Virginia said. She had a daguerreotype taken not long before the War Between the States that showed the house in its prewar glory. It had, indeed, been a showplace.

“It would take more money than it's worth to fix it up though.”

“Oh, I'm not talking about fixing it up,” she said quickly. They stepped outside onto the porch. “We would have to bulldoze this old place. I'm talking about the property itself,” she said, lifting her arms and indicating the heavy forest, thick with sweet gum and cottonwood and wild pecan. “I'm talking about the island,” she said pointing at the tall trees where brightly colored birds chattered like monkeys. Out in the slow-moving river a herd of turtles sunned themselves on a cypress stump. Great herons fished in the shallow coves along the beach. “I'm talking about two hundred twenty acres of prime lakefront property.”

She had done her homework well. She had laid the groundwork as carefully and steadily as a mason building a foundation out of handmade brick. She had started in at dinner, several days ago, softening him up with tales of retirees who were flocking to the South in droves, noting various television shows that highlighted vacation home properties, lying awake in bed
and whispering about aging baby boomers who thirsted for second homes the way de Soto had thirsted for gold.

The first time she took him out to the island, he had done nothing but criticize, noting the island's remote wildness, the difficulty of providing adequate utilities to the home sites, the expense of building an access bridge. She had taken him out in the boat and shown him the old land bridge that still existed, although submerged several feet below the surface of the water. “Perhaps it wouldn't be as difficult to build a bridge as you might think?” she had suggested. The second time they went out, he had already worked out solutions to the problems of access and utilities in his mind. Now he rambled on about the costs of development; they would be astronomical. It would involve huge loans and risky leveraging. “Of course I don't know anything about business, dear,” Virginia had said, her eyes wide and angelic. “But would the fact that I own the property outright help with the leveraging?”

By the third visit, Redmon strode along the remains of the sandy road that ran the length of the island explaining where the utility lines would go, pointing out natural features that would need to be kept and walking off the potential lot lines himself. He figured, with careful planning, they might be able to carve three hundred home sites as well as a clubhouse and, who knew, maybe even a nine-hole golf course out of the property. Virginia followed behind him, saying things like, “Oh, I never thought of that,” or, “Oh, I wish I had a head for business like you do,” and once, her little hand resting on her cheek, “Of course I don't know anything about the development game, but do you think we could get Arnold Palmer to do the golf course?”

They reached the top of the Big Ridge and stepped out from beneath the tall trees into a clearing. Below them the fields, fallow now for years and covered in groves of Johnson grass and honeysuckle and wild chinaberry, hugged the river like a ragged crust. In the narrow coves, catfish as big as feed sacks rolled on their bellies like whales.

“Plantation Island,” Redmon said, standing with one leg cocked, his weight on the other, and his belly swaying over his belt like a sack of potatoes. He frowned. “Naw, that ain't it. Something Plantation. We need Plantation in the name because it sounds classy. Yankees like that shit.”

“My grandmother was a Culpepper,” Virginia said softly.

“Yeah,” Redmon said, squinting his eyes. “Something Plantation. And
we need one of those sayings that go along with it. You know, like

‘Wheaties, Breakfast of Champions.’ Or ‘Nike, Just Do It.’”

“You mean a slogan?”

“We need a slogan to go along with it.” He looked up into the trees, narrowing his eyes like he was trying to read something on a road sign.

“Southern graciousness. Down-home friendliness,” Virginia said.

“Something that makes people want to visit and settle down.” Redmon puffed out his cheeks and sucked in his lips, looking like a man trying to pass a rather large kidney stone. “Something they might read on a billboard or in an ad in the
Wall Street Journal
. Something that makes them want to come on down here and visit, and hell, maybe even stay.” Redmon scratched his head. He looked up at the blue sky. Then he looked down at the slow-moving river. “I've got it!” he said suddenly, his face relaxing into a wide grin. He put his hands up in front of her like a movie director trying to describe a scene to a dim-witted actress. “Culpepper Plantation,” he said. “Southern graciousness. Down-home friendliness.”

“Oh my,” Virginia murmured. “Now that is clever.”

“I tell you, Queenie, I think we can make a go of this.”

Virginia put her soft little hand on his chest. Her eyes were as wide and blue as saucers. “Do you think so?” she said.

“Oh, hell yes. Sometimes, when an idea comes to me, I just know if it's right. I just know if it's going to work or not. It's a feeling I get right here,” he said, touching his sternum. He picked her up in his arms and then put her down again, slapping her so hard on the rear end that she squealed. He kissed her before she could protest and then stood looking down at the river. Gradually, his expression changed. He chewed his lower lip in a manner she had come to recognize as worry. “Only thing is, I don't know who I'll bring in with me to do the work. Hell, I can't get nobody around here to do it. Not after that last shopping center deal and all those crybaby subs who lost their shirts. I might have to go all the way to Atlanta to get a contractor.”