Secret Lives of the Kudzu Debutantes (46 page)

The antique clock ticked steadily on the mantel. Sun slanted through the
long windows and fell over the scattered wreckage of the pre-Thanksgiving party, on the roving cameramen, on the stunned guests who woke up and stumbled around like toddlers learning to walk, like drunks uncertain of their legs. Judge Drucker looked at his wife. “Mama, get your coat,” he said.

Whitney said, “This is embarrassing.” She said to Nita, “Can we go home now?”

Charles tried to put a good face on it. He rubbed his hands together and looked around the room. “Thank you for coming!” he said. “Coats are in the foyer closet!” He wondered if he still had the phone number of the accountant with the thick ankles. He could get it from his mother if he had to, later, after she sobered up.

Duckie snorted suddenly and clamped her hand over her mouth as if she was just now catching the punch line to a joke. Celia hissed like the brakes of a runaway Winnebago. She said loudly, “She should have charged admission to this party. This is better than opening night on Broadway!”

Grace picked up her purse and slid it over her shoulder. “How's Casey liking rehab?” she said to Celia.

Caught up in the wonder of it all, Virginia smiled at her daughter. Her
daughter
. She had thought of Grace for so long as an enemy, it was hard to think of her as anything else. But now, miraculously, she could feel something growing inside her, a small, glowing ember of maternal feeling, like a tumor, like an ulcer eating away at the lining of her stomach.

She grinned and raised her empty glass. “Bring Mommy another cocktail,” she said to Grace. “And let's see if we can't get reacquainted.”

V
IRGINIA AWOKE THE FOLLOWING MORNING TO A DULL
thumping headache and a vague persistent feeling of nausea. It was her first hangover and she found it to be unlike anything she had ever seen depicted on TV. For one thing, she didn't crave strange beverages concocted with Alka-Seltzer and raw egg yolks. For another, she could remember everything that had happened the day before with perfect clarity. She remembered the pre-Thanksgiving dinner down to its smallest detail; her own rambling confession; her guests' sly, amused expressions; the cold, steady eye of the camera lens; her son's stricken face as he fled her house, alone, like a man escaping a tsunami.

She rose groggily to her feet, finding that the headache seemed less pronounced when she stood. She looked down at her toes and frowned. It was only then that she realized she was naked. Redmon groaned and rolled over in bed, flinging one arm wide.
Oh God
, he appeared to be naked, too. He opened his eyes, blinked, and then sat up on one elbow, grinning at her.

“Damn, Queenie,” he said. “Who needs Viagra when we got Bloody Marys?”

Her ears got warm. It seemed there were some things she didn't re
member after all. She decided this was probably a good thing. She swung around and headed for the bathroom, sidestepping Redmon who lunged suddenly from the bed. “Hey, where you going?” he cried.

She stood in front of the bathroom mirror brushing her hair. It appeared from the love bites on her shoulders that it had, indeed, been a wild night. Suddenly, without warning, Virginia giggled. Two bright spots of color appeared in her cheeks and her eyes shone. She giggled again and clamped her hand over her mouth.

“Hey, baby, come here. I've got something to show you,” Redmon called on the other side of the door. She quickly put on her robe, opened the door, and walked past him with as much dignity as she could muster, given the circumstances.

Downstairs the kitchen was only partially cleaned. She had sent Della home soon after the
Gracious Southern Living
crew left. Virginia hadn't felt like spending the evening washing dishes. Instead, she had helped her grandchildren pack. Later, when they left with Nita, Redmon had said, “Well, I'm gonna miss the kids.” He added roguishly, “But now we got the whole house to ourselves.” He was standing with his back to the front door, grinning at her, and Virginia, seeing his expression had said, “Oh for goodness sakes.” He finally cornered her in one of the upstairs bedrooms, but when he started in on his impression of Maurice Chevalier singing “Thank Heaven for Little Girls,” Virginia realized further struggle was futile.

She made a pot of coffee and went outside to get the newspaper. The sun shone brightly across the wet lawn and she had to shield her tender eyes as she bent to retrieve the paper from the azalea bed. Back inside, she poured herself a cup of coffee, pushed aside a stack of dirty dishes, and sat down at the table, steeling herself for what was coming next.

She opened the paper and found she could look, without flinching, at the grainy photograph of Grace Pearson. She couldn't, of course, think of her as a daughter. At least, not yet, not sober in the cold hard light of day. She wasn't certain how long it would take to openly acknowledge their kinship, to call Grace directly and talk about their shared past, but surely the fact she no longer despised the woman meant something. Surely a lack of repugnance was the first step toward a promising mother-daughter relationship. Virginia took it as a hopeful sign.

She flipped the paper open to “The Town Tattler” column. The headline read,
Local Hostess Featured in TV Special
. The article was straightforward and informative, with Virginia featured by name, without the coy
use of initials usually favored by Lumineria Crabb. There was no mention of Virginia's breakdown. Grace had tactfully skirted that event, which Virginia took as another hopeful sign for the future of their mother-daughter relationship.

Not that this would stop the town gossips and scandalmongers who were at this very minute, no doubt, spreading rumors about Virginia's sad but bawdy personal history.
Oh, what do I care?
Virginia thought savagely. What was it Rhett Butler had said to Scarlett?
Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn
.

T
WO DAYS LATER SHE GOT A PHONE CALL FROM
L
EONARD
T
WO
- horses, the Creek Indian activist she had used to shut down the Culpepper Plantation project. It seemed that with the improvements made by Redmon and Jimmy Lee, the island was worth more now to the Creeks than just a burial ground. They had decided to buy the island from Virginia and turn it into a gambling casino called Tsali-wood. Although stunned, Virginia kept her cool. She had learned a thing or two about negotiation from watching Della Smurl operate, and in less than a week she had hammered out a deal that would pay her more than enough money to live on for the rest of her life. In addition, they agreed to pay Redmon and Jimmy Lee to waive their lien rights, an amount that would allow them to recoup a good portion, if not all, of their original investment money. Virginia did what she could to broker this second deal. She figured it was the least she could do.

For the rest of the week, she walked around the house like a tiny ballerina on point. She was so excited she couldn't eat; she couldn't sleep. With the money she'd receive from the sale, she'd be a free woman. She could travel. She could move to Atlanta or Savannah or West Palm Beach, shaking the red dust of this provincial town off her shoes forever. She could divorce Redmon. Although, oddly, now that she no longer needed to stay married to him for the money, she found she did not really want to leave him, either. After all, he was the only man she had ever shown herself to, the true Virginia, and the fool still loved and worshipped her anyway. What were the odds, at her age, that she'd ever find another man who actually loved her for who she was, and not some idealized version of herself? And then there was Grace. They had spoken, shyly and tentatively, by phone a couple of days ago and had made plans to meet for dinner the coming week. Did she really want to leave her long-lost daughter before at least at
tempting to establish a relationship with her, did she really want to abandon her now just as she had done forty-nine years ago? Virginia had a lot of decisions to make. But strangely, she did not feel discouraged.

On the contrary, she felt as light and buoyant as a box kite dancing on the currents of a high-flying breeze.

A
CROSS TOWN
, N
ITA'S LITTLE FAMILY WAS FINISHING UP DINNER.
She had cooked chicken tetrazzini and homemade yeast rolls, and she'd made a fresh spinach salad with portobello mushrooms and a raspberry vinaigrette. She'd gotten word today that her paper on domestic servants was going to be published by the
Journal of Southern Historical Perspective
, and they were celebrating. Jimmy Lee had come for dinner and brought a bottle of wine with him. Whitney and Logan had set the kitchen table with a bowl of apples and silver candlesticks, and they'd eaten dinner by flickering candlelight.

Outside the windows, dusk fell. A high-flying wedge of geese passed, flying in perfect formation against the darkening sky. Otis, who was sleeping on the rug by the door, lifted his head and whined as they flew over.

“Poor old Otis,” Whitney said fondly. “Don't you wish you could fly?” The dog looked at her and thumped his tail against the floor.

“He missed y'all,” Nita said. “He was lonely.”

Whitney leaned over and put her arms around her mother. “I was lonely, too, Mommy,” she said earnestly. Her life had changed that fall, in ways that went beyond simply changing schools and being the celebrity pawn in a high-stakes custody battle. She had discovered drama. At her old school, the drama coach was also the wrestling coach and the plays had always centered on halfhearted, poorly attended productions of
Our Town or The Glass Menagerie
. At the Barron Hall School, however, drama was a Big Deal. Whitney had won the coveted role of Katherine in
The Taming of the Shrew
, beating out Michelle Campbell-Jones, a junior who had played the lead in various plays for three years running. Whitney was only in eighth grade but she could have warned Michelle Campbell-Jones not to even bother showing up for tryouts. Whitney had the part of Katherine nailed. She'd been playing it for most of her adolescence.

The drama kids at school provided Whitney with a whole new peer group. They went out together after practice and sat at The Waffle House smoking cigarettes and drinking black coffee and talking about anarchy and
nihilism and Friedrich Nietzsche until it was time to climb into their big expensive SUVs and go home to their big expensive houses for dinner. There was something about being a prep school nihilist that appealed to Whitney's nature. She saw a bright future for herself at the Barron Hall School.

Whitney stood and began to clear the table. “I can't believe how spoiled the kids at Barron Hall are. I can't believe Sophy Shelton's parents bought her a brand-new Volvo for her sixteenth birthday. And Ashley Butler's bought her a
Range Rover
.”

Logan said, “Well, that's pretty funny coming from a girl who was trying to get her grandmother to buy her a brand-new BMW just a few short weeks ago.”

“I don't care about any of that stuff now,” Whitney said carelessly. “I'm not a shallow, superficial person. At least, not anymore.” She stood beside Nita and Jimmy Lee and put a hand on each of their shoulders. “Promise me you won't buy me a new car when I turn sixteen. Promise me you won't buy into all that bourgeois coming-of-age stuff like sweet-sixteen parties and gifts of expensive imported automobiles.”

“I promise,” Nita said.

“A 1976 Ford Pinto it is then,” Jimmy Lee said cheerfully. He was wearing faded blue jeans and a navy blue sweater and Nita was having a hard time keeping her hands off him.

“You can get
me
a new car if you want to,” Logan said. “I won't mind.”

“You're funny,” Jimmy Lee said.

“Materialism is the last refuge of scoundrels,” Whitney said, quoting Nietzsche. She patted her mother on the shoulder. “Thank you for
not
raising me to be a spoiled rotten yuppie. Thank you for teaching me the pleasures of a simple life”—she lifted her hands and indicated the crowded kitchen around them—“in a simple house with simple food and very few material possessions to speak of.”

“Now hold on a minute,” Jimmy Lee said.

“Thank you for taking me away from Grandmother with all her riches and wealthy enticements.”

“Listen.” Nita turned slightly in her chair so she could see both of her children. “I want you kids to understand something,” she said. “Whatever Grandmother did, she did it for the love of you two. I don't want you to blame her, or your daddy, either.” Here she looked pointedly at Logan. “Don't blame them for the way they are.” Logan scowled and looked at his feet but he didn't protest, which Nita took as a hopeful sign. “Daddy wasn't
the best father in the world and he knows that. But sooner or later you'll have to forgive him and just move on.”

“I don't really need a father,” Logan said.

“Everybody needs a father,” Nita said firmly. “You and your dad just need to figure out some way to spend time together without fighting all the time.”

“Charles just loves himself,” Logan said. “He doesn't care about anyone else. He doesn't care what I do.”