The Red Hat Society's Queens of Woodlawn Avenue (17 page)

T
hat Saturday afternoon, as I baked Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies for the Red Hat meeting that night, I spent as much time
angsting over the state of my life as I did sifting flour and transferring baking sheets from the oven to the hot pads on
the counter.

“I’m in way over my head,” I murmured to no one in particular. Talking to myself was probably another bad sign, as was avoiding
Henri’s phone calls for the past twenty-four hours, but I was feeling increasingly uncomfortable about the non-response to
the invoices I’d been sending to his office. Somewhere in the last few weeks, everything had become so jumbled. Business mixed
with pleasure. Social mixed with more personal concerns. On top of it all, I had experienced my first hot flash at the Harris-Teeter
the day before. Fortunately, the aroma of baking cookies soothed my soul somewhat.

At least, it did until the phone rang. I picked it up automatically, a reflex action, and regretted it immediately.

“Hello?”

“Ellie? It’s Jim.”

“I told you two weeks ago to quit calling me.”

“I know. But—.”

“No buts, Jim. We’re done. Leave me alone.”

I expected him to respond with some defensive, sarcastic remark. Instead, he whispered, “I’m sorry.”

“What?” I could barely hear him as I opened the creaky oven door and pulled out another sheet of cookies. I had made enough
to supply a good-sized Girl Scout troop—another sign of how unsettled I was feeling despite the gains I’d made in the last
few weeks.

“I’m sorry for the last year. I never meant to hurt you like this.”

“Ouch!” The cookie sheet scorched my hand around the edge of the hot pad. I dropped it with a clatter on top of the stove.

“Are you okay?” Jim actually sounded concerned.

“I’m fine.” I flipped on the faucet and ran cold water over my hand. “Look, Jim, if you need to assuage your guilt, I’m sure
you can get the name of a nice therapist.”

“It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

He paused. Then, “Never mind.”

“Gladly. Good-bye, Jim.” And I slammed down the phone, harder than I’d intended, but it felt good. The last thing I needed
right now was another complication, especially in the form of a remorseful ex-husband who I still hadn’t exorcised from my
heart.

* * *

I
was still feeling guilty about implicating Grace to Officer McFarland when I arrived at her house that evening, tollhouse
cookies in hand.

“There you are.” Grace greeted me at the door with a warm smile, and I felt like an amoeba on a flea on a rat. At some point,
I was going to have to confess that I’d spilled the beans about her three-time widowhood to the police.

“Sorry I’m late.” At the last minute, I hadn’t been able to find my hat. Grace would have let me borrow one, but I had begun
to feel the need to wear a hat of my own rather than borrow one from the other women.

“The others are already here,” Grace said, leading me to the dining room through the spade-shaped arch.

“Hello, ladies.” I greeted Linda and Jane, who were already sitting at Grace’s dining room table. “So, what am I learning
tonight?” I had come to expect that each of our sessions would be the next in my series of bridge lessons, and I was right.

“Doubling and redoubling,” Jane said with a smile. “For when things get really wicked.”

Since things in my life in general already felt pretty wicked, the topic seemed apropos.

“So what’s a double?” I asked as Linda began to deal the cards.

“Remember I told you the other day about stinky bidding?” Linda said.

“Yes,” I said, recalling our conversation at the Picnic Cafe about bidding simply to thwart your opponents.

“Well, instead of stinky bidding to keep your opponents from taking a contract, you let them have it and double them instead.”

“So it’s a bid?”

“Right. It says, ‘I don’t think you can make your contract, and if you don’t you get double the penalty.’”

“Then what’s redouble?”

Jane, who had been sipping decaf from a mug with her real estate logo on it, set her coffee on the table. “If your opponent
thinks she can make the contract, she redoubles. She gets even more bonus points if she does succeed.”

Near as I could tell, bridge seemed to be more about constantly upping the ante than anything else. In a way, it was nothing
but a more refined (and intricate) version of poker.

The other three ladies went on to demonstrate the different kinds of doubles (takeout and penalty), and I grasped the general
concept pretty quickly. In a way, it reminded me of my phone call earlier in the day from Jim. By refusing to let him hook
me in to whatever drama he was currently involved in, I was doubling him. Of course, the fact that he kept calling meant he
was redoubling. I took a bite of a cookie and savored the chocolate and butter on my tongue.

Clearly, Jim hadn’t given up on the game, and I felt a pang at the thought. A pang that I shouldn’t be feeling if I’d moved
on with Henri.

Doubling and redoubling. Definitely something to think about.

* * *

S
unday afternoon, almost two weeks after Roz had announced the date change for the Cannon Ball, I was searching the Internet
for other valet parking options when Linda appeared on my doorstep, every brunette hair immaculately in place per usual. I
invited her into the living room, but she declined my offer to have a seat. Instead, she crossed her arms and struck a militant
pose just inside the doorway.

“I just got a call from Roz.”

Great. Hers was the last name I wanted to hear at the moment. I had progressed beyond Nashville to services from Columbia,
Bowling Green, and Jackson, all to no avail.

“She wants to replace you as chair of the transportation committee.”

Ouch. Now that would be the social equivalent of the coach benching the third-string quarterback and sending the water boy
in to replace him.

“Can she do that now?”

“The chair of the ball giveth, and the chair of the ball taketh away.”

“Great.”

“She also added Jim and his hootchie mama to the guest list.”

“She didn’t.” I sank to the sofa, needing to sit down even if Linda preferred not to.

“What’s the deal with you two? Did you steal her high school sweetheart or something?”

I blushed, looked at the mantelpiece, the floor, the
ceiling, anywhere but at Linda. Her eyes widened. “You didn’t!”

I could only nod, mortified. I’d hoped to keep this particular piece of information from my new friends.

“Okay, maybe I will sit down. This I’ve got to hear.”

And so I had to confess to Linda, over coffee sipped on opposite ends of my sad sofa, that Roz Crowley (nee Smith) did have
some justification for the enmity she felt toward me.

“Jim?” Linda said, disbelievingly, distractedly stirring the cream into her coffee. “Jim and Roz were high school sweethearts?”

“I was on scholarship to Harpeth Hall.” It still pained me to remember my high school days when I had definitely been a poor
relation at the exclusive Nashville girls’ school. But my mother wouldn’t settle for anything less than the best for her daughter.

“Roz was president of everything and drove her mother’s old Mercedes to school. I took the city bus and sat in the back row.”

“And Jim? How did he figure in to things?”

“Jim was the star wide receiver at Montgomery Bell Academy.” MBA was the boys’ equivalent of Harpeth Hall. “He and Roz were
an item from freshman year on.”

“So what happened?” Linda leaned forward, ready as any woman worth her salt would be for some juicy gossip.

I sighed. “Roz went off to Auburn, and Jim stayed here to go to Vanderbilt. So did I.”

“Then you started dating?”

I felt my cheeks heat up again. Although I generally
thought of myself as a good person, I had a skeleton or two in my closet (or backyard) just like anyone else.

I sighed and set my half-empty cup on the coffee table. “I believe the old-fashioned expression is ‘setting your cap.’”

“You went after him?”

“Like a bee after honey.” They say confession is good for the soul, but I’d have preferred to keep my unflattering actions
a secret.

“Just because he belonged to Roz?”

I winced. “At first it was because of her. I pledged a sorority, thanks to my mother pulling some strings with mothers of
some of her patients, and Jim was in our brother fraternity. I got him to notice me, and then we started dating.”

“And Roz found out?”

“Immediately.”

“I hope you wallowed in your triumph appropriately.”

“Actually, I did something far worse than that.”

“What?”

“I fell for him.”

“But that’s good. Or it was good. You had twenty-five years of marriage and two great kids.”

I glanced at the portraits of Connor and Courtney on the mantelpiece. “And now I have no marriage and my kids have gone off
to find lives of their own.”

“Do you regret it, marrying Jim?”

The question pierced me to the core, and I answered it honestly. All the Henris in the world couldn’t make up for the loss
of what Jim and I had once had. “No. No, I never could.”

“Because?”

The sadness that I’d been covering up with Henri and Your Better Half and bridge and pulling weeds in the backyard welled
up inside of me. “Because I love him.”

“Because you
loved
him, you mean,” Linda said, emphasizing the past tense.

I shook my head, knowing that the truth wouldn’t go away just because I refused to acknowledge it. “That’s the hardest part.
I do still love him.” I grabbed one of the shabby throw pillows next to me and clutched it against my chest.

What could Linda say to that? We were silent for a long moment.

“Do you want him back?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know.” In the dark of the night, alone in my house and even more so in my bed, I still wanted Jim with an
intensity that scared me. And even the thrill of Henri’s attentions couldn’t change the fact that without Jim, I felt like
an emotional amputee.

“Wow,” Linda said at last. “I had no idea.”

“I’m not sure I did either.” I’d worked so hard to convince myself that I was moving forward, when in reality I was simply
killing time. Burying a memory box in the backyard wasn’t the same thing as letting go.

“So what will you do now?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know. Roz doubled me with this transportation committee thing.”

“So, will you redouble?”

I didn’t want to. High stakes games had never been my thing. But somewhere in all of this, I had to find
myself again. I had to come to terms with what had happened to my life and move forward. I had to get past Jim.

“Do I have a choice?”

Linda leaned over and patted my knee. “Good girl. I have faith in you. And we’re all here to help.”

“Thanks.” But I would have felt more confident if I’d had a tad more faith in myself than in the surrogate powers of the Queens
of Woodlawn Avenue.

I
wasn’t getting any farther with hiring security for the ball than I had with the valet parking. When I called the next place
on my list, the man actually laughed when I told him what I wanted and when.

“For an event that size? With less than a month’s notice?”

Well, at least I had given him his chuckle for the day.

The next place handled off-duty security for Metro police officers. Given the number of officers on the force, surely they
could help me out.

“I’m afraid we don’t have anyone available for that evening,” the woman on the other end of the line said in a regretful tone.
“Did you have another date in mind?”

Another date? How about the twelfth of never, I wanted to say, but I bit my tongue. It wasn’t this woman’s fault that my feud
with Roz was going to destroy Nashville’s most venerable charity benefit.

A third and final call left me scraping my hopes off the floor.

“No way, honey.” I could practically hear this woman’
gum popping over the phone. “You want a June date, you gotta plan like a bride—at least a year in advance.”

I had enough sense to know when I was licked. And when to polish off the rest of the Tollhouse cookies left from Saturday
night. I had just poured myself a big glass of milk to wash them down when the doorbell rang.

Great. I was so not in the mood for entertaining.

My ancient front door didn’t sport anything as modern as a peephole, and if I tried to peer out the living room window, whoever
was on the porch would spot me for sure and I’d be committed to answering the door anyway. So I took a deep breath, cast a
last, longing glance at the plate of cookies on the coffee table, and opened the door.

“Afternoon, Miz Hall.”

The ever-present Officer McFarland. Was it my imagination, or did he look younger every time I saw him? Although today no
hint of a smile played around his lips.

“Hello, Officer.”

“Would you mind if I came in?”

What was I going to say to that request? No? Besides, maybe he had come to tell me that he’d struck Grace’s name off the list
of suspects.

“Please, do.” I opened the door wider so he could step inside. “I was just going to have a snack. Would you care for some
milk and cookies?”

The mom role was certainly one I could handle. Heaven knew I’d fed similar snacks to Connor’s friends enough times over the
years to be quite adept at it.

“Milk and cookies?”

“Sometimes you have to go for the comfort food,” I
said with a forced smile. I could tell he was trying to decide if I was insulting him. “If you don’t help me eat them, you’ll
be responsible for at least a five pound weight gain.”

I didn’t mean that remark to come out as flirtatious as it sounded, but unfortunately it did sound coquettish and that interested
gleam in his eye reappeared.

Rats. All I did was offer the man some milk and cookies.