Secret Lives of the Kudzu Debutantes (3 page)

Already there were ominous signs. He had begun to hint at fatherhood although Nita had told him that, at forty, and with her own children nearly grown, she did not want more children. He said he understood, but she saw the way he looked at young mothers pushing babies in the grocery store. And lately he had begun to grumble about money, to insist, despite her assurances to the contrary, that a man with a family must do more to provide for them than work as a self-employed carpenter.

Nita, who was writing a college research paper on the histories of black women who worked as domestics in the South in the 1930s and 1940s, had begun to question how long her happiness would last. On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons she went out to the Suck Creek Retirement Home with her tape recorder and notebook and boxes of chocolate that she handed out to the women she interviewed. There she heard tales of social injustice and love gone bad, stories of the cruelty of nature and the capriciousness of fate. Immersing herself in the histories of these sad women made Nita realize how fleeting and illusionary moments of genuine happiness can be, and she could not shake the feeling that her happiness, too, was doomed to failure.

But then Jimmy Lee would come home from work and take her in his arms, and she would forget all that. Then her doubts would be nothing more than a slight gnawing sensation in the pit of her stomach. She would go about the small cabin planning her wedding and feeling like she was pushing something large and heavy up a hill, and if she stopped, it would
roll back down and crush her. She hurried through her days. The flowers were ordered. The menu was decided upon. She loved Jimmy Lee and she knew he loved her. But there was a part of her, a cynical part born of sixteen years of marriage to Charles Broadwell, which knew that a wedding ring is not always the blossoming of a love affair.

Sometimes it's the death knell.

O
NCE SHE HAD SWINDLED HER EX-HUSBAND
, L
EONARD, OUT OF
his dream home and embarked on her career as a small-business owner, Lavonne Zibolsky was amazed at how quickly success came. In a little over a year, she and her business partner, Mona Shapiro, had increased the revenue of their Shofar So Good Deli thirty percent, and had even turned a small profit in their first year. Which was pretty good considering the amount of equipment and advertising they had bought, not to mention the expensive website they had paid a company out of Atlanta to design. Leonard's participation in all this had, of course, been forced, which was unfortunate but unavoidable, given the circumstances. Survival of the fittest was applicable not only to Darwinian theory, it would seem, but also to matrimony. Lavonne was the only divorced woman she knew whose standard of living had
not
gone down after the divorce, and it was only because she had been willing to do whatever was necessary to protect herself
before
the first petition was filed. She had taken the steps necessary, however unethical, morally questionable, or potentially criminal they might be, to ensure that she didn't spend her golden years living in a mobile home eating Feline Delight for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Besides, Leonard had only gotten what he deserved.

She stood at the counter of the Shofar So Good Deli on a rainy Tuesday morning, contemplating this. Lavonne used to daydream about moving to the south of France with Leonard after the girls were grown. She used to daydream about writing a series of travel cookbooks. But perhaps a book on protecting yourself financially from bad husbands might be more timely.

The bell on the front door tinkled and Lavonne looked up and smiled at two tourists who entered carrying
I Survived Shopping in Ithaca
bags. The tourist trade accounted for most of the deli's sales. They drove down from Atlanta by the busloads to tour the quaint town and antebellum homes that Sherman had somehow forgotten to burn on his March to the Sea.

Lavonne said, “Can I help you?” Her business partner, Mona Shapiro,
was on a Caribbean cruise with a group of widows from the synagogue. It was her first vacation in nearly fifteen years.

“I think we'll have lunch,” the woman said, eyeing the menu board on the wall behind Lavonne. The man shook his umbrella out and put it in the stand and then took the woman's raincoat and hung it over the back of a chair.

“Let me know when you're ready,” Lavonne said. “The soup of the day is tomato artichoke.”

Little Moses came out of the back of the store. He had cleaned himself up recently, had cut his dreadlocks and now wore his hair short. He still sported a lip ring and the tattoo of a serpent on his forearm, but all in all, his appearance was much improved over what it had been when Lavonne first met him and the rest of his Jewish reggae band, Burning Bush. The band had moved away from their Jamaican roots and was more into the blues now. They were talking about moving to New Orleans. Eadie had offered to let them stay with her in her rambling mansion in the Garden District.

“Hey, can you cover for me up front?” Lavonne said. “I've got some work I need to do in the back.”

“Sure.” He grinned and went up to the counter to take the tourists' order.

Lavonne took off her apron and went into the small office to work on payroll reports. It was her least favorite thing to do but she was finding that success carried its own price. She worked fifty hours a week in the store, and an additional two to four hours on the weekend helping with the catering business. She had also begun contemplating possible franchise opportunities, and now she sat up late every night in bed alone with her laptop computer, researching the possibility of further expansion. She had bought a small house over in the Historic District of Ithaca, which she shared with her Jack Russell terrier, Winston, and, sporadically, with her daughters, Louise and Ashley. Leonard had moved to Atlanta to practice law soon after Boone & Broadwell went down in flames among rumors of shady real estate deals and something unsavory to do with the partners themselves. Louise was a freshman at Tulane and Ashley had graduated early from the Barron Hall School and had left home for the University of Georgia. All in all, Lavonne lead a somewhat fulfilling, if lonely, existence.

And there were advantages to being a workaholic. Her weight, for instance. After nearly twenty years as an obese housewife, she now weighed
seventy-five pounds less than she had when she was married to Leonard. Not that this had made much difference in her personal life. The truth was, she was forty-seven years old and she hadn't had a date in twenty-two years. The idea of having to hold her stomach in and shave her legs on a regular basis, not to mention the disturbing prospect of a bikini wax, was enough to make Lavonne contemplate permanent celibacy.

Still, there were times when she missed the companionship of having a man around. Then she would daydream of having someone to go to dinner with, someone who could take her to flea markets on the weekends or out to the Whistlin' Dixie Drive-In for the Friday-night double feature, someone who could appreciate her sense of humor and the fact she played a mean hand of euchre.

Lavonne had her nearly grown daughters, her successful business, her laptop computer, and Winston, and now, if she could only figure out something to do about the loneliness, her life would be just about perfect.

A
FTER LUNCH
, E
ADIE SHOWERED AND WENT OUT INTO
the garden to do yoga and try to meditate. The rain had washed the air and left it cool and clean and damp. Sunshine filtered through the branches of the live oaks and pooled in brilliant puddles across the bricked patio and the lush green lawn. She tried to imagine herself floating on a white cloud. She tried to concentrate on her breathing, but it was no use. Her mind jumped about from subject to subject. What was it the Buddhists called it? Monkey mind? Her monkey mind was loose and it was horny as hell. There was no use denying it. The scenes Eadie was conjuring in her mind had less to do with white fluffy clouds and more to do with the Kama Sutra. Being in love with her husband wasn't working out.

Being in love with Trevor Boone, the next literary golden boy, wasn't what she had expected. It was only a matter of time before fame found him and then she would lose him completely to an adoring public who would listen with rapt attention while he gave his opinion on everything from literary symbolism to the effects of global warming on emerging weather patterns. It wasn't too hard to imagine. He would travel the country on publicity tours and he would, of
course, offer to take her with him. But she wouldn't go, because what could be more depressing than watching Trevor fulfill a lifetime dream while she hadn't been able to work in over a year? When it was all she could do just to drag herself out of bed every morning? How pathetic and sad would that be?

Eadie wrenched her Monkey Mind back to the present. She tried not to think about loneliness and the delights of the flesh. On the sidewalk beyond the wrought-iron fence young mothers pushed baby strollers on their way to the park, and groups of Catholic school children in plaid uniforms straggled by on their way home from school. The distant streetcars whirred along St. Charles, clanging their warning bells at every block. Eadie closed her eyes and tried again to concentrate on her breathing. She had only recently taken up meditation and like so much else in her life, it just wasn't working out. It was too slow and sedate for Eadie, too introspective. And she didn't like the way her mind would suddenly veer off into strange dimensions, traveling down dark pathways she had long ago ceased to visit, and didn't want to revisit now.

She opened her eyes. Blinked. Dappled sunlight filled the garden. Above her the old live oaks spread their branches protectively, pushing their massive roots up through the bricked sidewalk, ancient veterans of hurricanes and floods and civil war.

She closed her eyes again and tried to concentrate on her breathing.
In, out. In, out
. But it was hard to do when hungry. She should eat something, she decided, something good, something healthy, but she wasn't sure what. Maybe some fish. Maybe a po' boy sandwich. She could walk down to the po' boy restaurant on the corner of Magazine and Valmont.

But walking down to the corner restaurant would have less to do with a po' boy sandwich, she knew, and more to do with the twenty-two-year-old art student who worked behind the counter.

His name was Richard Arcenaux, and Eadie had met him six months ago when she wandered in off the street. He called her “Ea-
die
,” putting the emphasis on the second syllable, in that soft, sexy New Orleans accent that made her feel like she was walking across the deck of a rolling ship.

Eadie sighed and opened her eyes. Monkey Mind had gotten the best of her. There was no use denying it. Somewhere in the house her phone was chirping again. She got up and went inside, finding it finally beneath a pillow on the library sofa. The house phone began to ring incessantly but Eadie ignored it, too, checking the voice mail on her cell. Trevor had called
for a third time but he hadn't left a message, which meant he was definitely going to be delayed in New York.

Fine. If he wasn't here, she'd use the next best thing. She'd do whatever she had to do, given the circumstances. Meditation sure as hell wasn't working. She stuffed the cell phone back under the sofa cushions and went upstairs to find her vibrator. She had named it Milton, which probably wasn't a healthy thing, she knew, but over the years, during two trial separations from Trevor, she had grown quite fond of the little machine. She rummaged around in the bathroom drawers for a while before finally locating it behind a stack of towels in the linen closet. Since she and Trevor had reconciled and moved to New Orleans, she hadn't had much need for Milton. It lay in its little box, patient and gleaming and ready for love.

Eadie lay down in her big empty bed and thought about Richard Arcenaux. She thought about his dark eyes and his full lower lip. She closed her eyes and imagined his arms around her. She imagined kissing his mouth.
Ea-die. Do you want a po' boy
?

Too bad meditation wasn't this easy.

She had just switched Milton on when she heard a sound deep within the house. The ghosts were back. She kept her eyes closed and imagined Richard climbing the stairs, two at a time, young and strong and eager. She heard a soft sliding sound but she refused to open her eyes, afraid she might see something otherworldly shimmering in the doorway.

“Eadie. What in the hell are you doing?”

Trevor stood in the doorway, looking tall and blond and handsome. His hair had grown shaggy around his ears and there was several days' growth of beard on his face.
That's what the Vikings looked like stepping off the long boats
, Eadie thought, shivering and pressing her knees together. She turned the vibrator off and sat up on her elbows.

“What does it look like I'm doing?” she said. “I'm pleasuring myself with Milton.”

“I thought I told you to get rid of that damn thing,” he said.

“You can't honestly tell me you're jealous of a mechanical object,” she said, but he was already striding across the room and before she could react, he had taken Milton and unceremoniously tossed it out one of the opened French doors. They heard a distant clattering sound as Milton landed on the bricked patio.