Southern Living (31 page)

Despite Randy’s complaints, Margaret had been ignoring the story. There was good reason she had chosen to remain in the features department or, as news reporters called it, “fantasy island.” Most news stories inherently implied fault and guilt, and where there was guilt there was conflict, and what she loved most about her job with Chatter and the profiles was its relatively conflict-free character. If anyone deserved a life free of conflict, she reasoned, it was she, especially after all those years on the front lines of reproductive rights with her mother.

Margaret pleaded with Randy time and again to give it to a reporter on the metro desk, but he refused. “It’ll be good for your development,” Randy said. “Now get on it.”

For weeks, without lying, she could tell him there were no new developments in the case. Then, just yesterday, Margaret took a call from a veterinarian whose wife was a secretary in the sheriff’s office. The tests were in. They’d found the poison (antifreeze) and the source of it (canned dog food set out by someone living in the neighborhood), but for some reason no arrests had been made, no press conference called.

“Actually, Ms. VanDermeter, I think they’re close to finding out who’s responsible for all the killings.”

She laughed out loud. “Killin’s? Darlin’, we’re talkin’ about dogs here—sweet, dear things but dumb animals just the same.”

“I’ve heard they’re very close to making an arrest.”

She leaned back, folding her arms across her chest. “And what if they do?” she asked.

“I’m sure my editor will want a story.”

Every time Margaret had seen Madeline VanDermeter, both in person and on television and in the
Reflector
and in the colored snapshots on the “Smile!” society pages of
Selby Magazine
, she appeared to defy gravity, especially her face, which seemed to be held up at several points by marionette strings—the corners of the mouth, obviously, but also the active, high-arching eyebrows that reminded Margaret of cats stretching their backs. Margaret wondered how many calories this woman burned in an hour simply by having her face turned “on” at all times. It looked exhausting. Yet in an instant, just seconds after Margaret said “I’m sure my editor will want a story,” Madeline VanDermeter’s face collapsed, the strings all simultaneously severed, and everything that had pointed upward now pointed downward. Fascinated by this extreme, physical transformation, Margaret scrutinized her face. It reminded her of the before-and-after makeup shots she had studied in the window of Merle Norman at the Selby Mall.

“Would you excuse us, please?” the woman asked Donna. She gently took hold of Margaret’s upper arm and guided her away from the island, over to the entrance to the butler’s pantry.

“You do know, dear, that my festival’s the biggest in the South. It brings more money and people into this city than anything else—except the tobacco plant.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Margaret replied.

“I just shudder to think what would happen if y’all ran that story before the festival. We’d be the laughingstock of the whole wide world, and all that hard work, all that money and all those jobs … they’d just go right on down the drain. You wouldn’t want the
Reflector
to be responsible for that, would you?”

“It’s not right to suppress news, Ms. VanDermeter.”

“Please, call me Madeline. I’m not askin’ you to suppress the news. I’m just askin’ you to use good judgment.”

“It’s not my decision, Ms. VanDermeter. It’s the editor’s.”

“Mr. Whitestone,” she said.

“Yes.”

Madeline paused a moment, recalling the many unpleasant conversations she’d had with him. “Mr. Whitestone hates Selby,” she said. “He hates Georgia. Did you read his column about the Bulldogs? I mean, what’s wrong with likin’ a football team so much? That’s patriotism.”

“He’s a unique person,” Margaret said.

“He’s ugly,” Madeline VanDermeter said. “Between you and me, Margaret, there’s lots of people who’ve canceled their subscriptions because they don’t like the
Reflector
. They feel like it’s a friend who’s turned on ’em.”

“Ms. VanDermeter …”

“Listen to me, young lady!” she snapped in a whisper. “They know who’s been killin’ all those dogs, and let me tell you what—it would surprise a lotta people, and it’s gonna be just too juicy to ignore. Tommy’s agreed that we should just handle this on our own. Quietlike. All I’m askin’ is for you to do the same. I know you got a phone call. You know about this.”

“Tommy?”

“Tommy Barnes.”

“The sheriff?”

“Of course.”

Margaret looked over at Donna, who was stirring skim milk into the mashed potatoes. Margaret had tried to persuade her to use cream, at least half-and-half, but Donna wanted to keep the fat content down. “I can’t promise you anything, Ms. VanDermeter.”

“What is it about you people!” she shot. “Don’t you understand: sometimes … when you see somethin’ wrong goin’ on … you just gotta look the other way? Why make a big fuss and drag people through the mud just for a show? Sometimes you just gotta take care of things in a nice quiet way so people can keep their heads high. The
Reflector
used to do that, but let me tell you, those days
are gone. No, ma’am. That newspaper of yours has gone to the dogs.”

She stormed out of the kitchen, back to the living room, unaware of her comical choice of words that helped lessen the anxiety that was buzzing through Margaret’s body like a double shot of espresso. Margaret looked at the floor, noting the red blotches left by Madeline VanDermeter’s right shoe, evenly spaced and growing weaker with each step toward the door.

I
t was late night, just after midnight, and Boone was snoring in the guest room. Suzanne set her glass of chardonnay onto a mahogany end table then focused her attention on the oversized wicker basket at the foot of her ivory-damask recamier in the bedroom. It was heavy, the size of an ottoman, with a load of at least three hundred mail-order catalogs, but she pushed slowly, alone, lifting one edge off the carpet until that point when gravity abandons the enemy and, sensing defeat, runs over to join the other side. Together, they overturned the basket with a weighty roll, and
the catalogs, all cool and slick and shiny in the lamplight, flowed from the vessel like a load of freshly caught fish.

Happier in her marriage than she’d been in years, Suzanne was determined to make her man’s thirty-third birthday the best ever, and she was pleased with her final selection of gifts. From the Horchow catalog, which was at the very bottom of the basket, a double, automatic watch winder that featured not only two rotating orbs that twisted and turned at night with the watches attached, but also a glass-topped display area that held up to six other watches, a perfect match because Boone had exactly eight.

From The Sharper Image, two items, including the Turbo Groomer 2.0 that trimmed unsightly hairs not only from deep inside the nostrils but also the ears. Made of black plastic and chrome with a laserlike light on the end, it reminded Suzanne of a weapon from
Star Wars
. Yet even more exciting, because Boone had started grilling again for them at night, was the combination fork/thermometer with ultrasensitive “fish” option, a long, two-pronged spearing device whose tines were actually thermometers that measured the heat of the meat and displayed the temperature on a lighted panel on the handle.

Unlike birthdays of years past, which she scrambled to fill with friends and noise, Suzanne decided this year’s celebration would be an intimate affair. She had asked Donna to make beef filets with béarnaise sauce and to re-create the roasted asparagus with lime and garlic that had become a favorite of Boone’s at the Forsyth Room.

After dinner, he would want to talk of the baby again, and to plan and dream ahead. Suzanne didn’t mind this in the least because when he pondered the future of his son, Boone’s blue-gray eyes seemed to dance, reminding her of moonlight on rippling water … or spinning bicycle wheels. She would watch him as he wondered out loud if his mother still had his baseball mitt from Little League and if they should start participating this year in the
prepaid college tuition program at the University of Georgia. He was so animated when he talked of such things! He twitched with playground energy she hadn’t seen this late in the day for years, and Suzanne would fill to bursting and say “Kiss me.” And as she felt his hands gently cupping her face, Suzanne would think,
How can I give this up? How can I ever live without this again?

Suzanne got up, went into the kitchen and returned to the recamier with the Sugar Day directory and three felt-tip pens, one red, one blue, one green. Over the past month, she had been going through the roster of families, circling in red the ones she could count on to show up for her and Boone’s Dogwood party, circling in blue those traitors who would attend Marc and Jodi Armbuster’s party, and marking with green all the fence-sitters. These were the ones Suzanne had been scrutinizing the most, checking and rechecking the names to see if any of them had tottered to one side or the other. She based this on signs she observed throughout the week. For example, did someone choose to sit on the other side of the aisle from them that Sunday at Christ Church … or had she caught anyone wheeling their Kroger buggy directly to the checkout lane of the grocery store and then, after seeing Suzanne in line, suddenly but smoothly veer left, turning into the safety of aisle sixteen where they proceeded to read the labels on laundry detergent as if they were the backs of book covers.

Suzanne carried the Sugar Day directory with her as she went about town, and, like a politician on the stump, if she saw a chance to sway someone she would nab it. That Tuesday, Hal and Tiny Trane moved from blue to green. Emerging from the Aveda Salon, Suzanne saw that Tiny was searching for a rare, coveted parking spot, and as Suzanne pulled out she blocked a car with New Jersey plates long enough for her fellow native Selbyite to zip right in.

Tiny emerged from her bronze Cadillac sedan and waved. “Thank you, Suzanne,” she yelled.

“See y’all next month at Dogwood!” Suzanne yelled back.

P
ass that casserole, Dewayne,” Sonny Case said. “Your daddy’s gonna have some more of that.”

“I didn’t know grits could taste this good,” said his mother, Ronna. “You gotta give me this recipe, Dewayne.”

Dewayne looked at Margaret and smiled. “I didn’t make it,” he said. “It’s Margaret’s doin’.”

Margaret had made the entire meal in Dewayne’s kitchen, where she’d labored since five o’clock that morning. At daybreak she baked a batch of Dewayne’s biscuits. By noon she’d finished her homemade green-tea-and-lemongrass ice cream. She had planned on roasting a chicken in a Mediterranean marinade of citrus and bouquet garni but at the last minute was inspired by a piece of chorizo she found lying next to the cube of Velveeta in Dewayne’s meat drawer. For the longest time Margaret had shunned the rubbery processed cheese as an ingredient in squash casserole, but after numerous, greasy, gloppy attempts with the firmer cheeses she finally relented and embraced it.

Tonight’s popular casserole, now three-quarters gone, included layers of grits, four white cheeses, and a meat sauce of chorizo-infused ground pork with tomatoes, the tiniest hint of a chipotle pepper, cilantro, and adobo seasoning.

“What kind of meat is this?” Ronna asked.

“Pork,” Margaret answered.

“Pork?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Now we can’t have garlic. I hope Dewayne told you we can’t have garlic. This doesn’t have garlic in it, does it?”

Margaret looked at Dewayne for guidance on the question.

“No, Momma,” he said.

Margaret looked at him, surprised but secretly relieved that he would lie to his parents. Doing so put him on her side—for this evening, at least. She reached for and squeezed his hand under the table.

“Well, what tastes like garlic?”

“Probably the cumin,” Margaret answered.

All evening—and Margaret found this peculiar—both Ronna and Sonny avoided asking Margaret anything about her pre-Selby life. Instead, they talked about the
Reflector
and had many questions about a newsroom and how it works. Sonny shared his thoughts on Margaret’s dilapidating roof and gave her pointers on quizzing the roofers when she would call for estimates.

Ronna was a homemaker, and though Dewayne was twenty-four she still bought his underwear and socks and did his sewing. Sonny was the assistant supervisor of elections for Perry County and worked in the courthouse downtown.