The Red Hat Society's Queens of Woodlawn Avenue (2 page)

“I’m Ellie,” I finally rallied enough to blurt out. “Ellie Johnston. I mean, Hall. Ellie Hall.” Another change that was going
to take some adjustment.

One of Jane’s perfectly waxed eyebrows arched. “It’s final, then, your divorce?”

A lump formed in my throat. “I signed the papers yesterday.”

“Hell of a birthday present.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the irony of it all. “Yes. Yes, it was a hell of a present.”

Jane stood up straight, all ninety-eight or so pounds of her. “So today’s the day you start over. New house, new life, new
you.”

That point of view had never occurred to me. I’d been so focused on what was coming to an end, I hadn’t given much thought
to what might be beginning. The very idea made me queasy, so I took a bite of pound cake.

A profusion of flavor exploded on my tongue. “Oh my God,” I moaned through the ecstasy melting in my mouth. “I can’t believe
this cake.”

Jane smiled. “Well, there’s more where that came from.” She reached down and sliced off another piece. “So, Ellie Hall, do
you have plans for your birthday?”

I sighed and leaned against the counter. “No. Not really. Since it’s Saturday, Oprah and Dr. Phil won’t be expecting me.”

“Good.” Jane took another paper napkin from the pile and brushed the crumbs from the counter into her hand. As casually as
if it were her house instead of mine, she opened the cabinet door under the sink and tossed them into the waiting trash can.
“We’ve been waiting for a fourth.”

“A fourth? A fourth of what?”

“A fourth for our bridge club.”

“Oh. I’m sorry, but I don’t play bridge.”

Jane smiled. “That’s okay, honey. I didn’t play either when I moved into my house. But I learned.”

The woman might bake heavenly pound cake, but she was clearly a bit loopy. “I’m sorry, but what does your house have to do
with a bridge club?”

“Follow me.”

Jane stepped around me and led me back through my dining room to the archway that separated it from the living room. The heart-shaped
arch had mocked me from
the moment my realtor had first shown me the house. But it had been one of the few in this rapidly gentrifying neighborhood
south of Vanderbilt University that I could afford. It was as close to Belle Meade as my budget would allow. In time, I could
channel my inner Martha Stewart to dry wall the offending arch into another shape. A dagger, perhaps, for sticking through
Jim’s faithless heart.

Jane ran her hand over the curve in the plaster, caressing it. “Didn’t you wonder about this when you bought the house?”

I shrugged, not wanting to reveal the depths of my pain or my sensitivity about the arch. “It’s important for some reason?”

“All four houses have them. One for each suit.”

“All four houses?”

“Built by the original members of the club.”

“Someone built houses based on a club?”

“Not just any club. Their bridge club. The Queens of Woodlawn Avenue.”

That drew a rare chuckle from me. “Queens of Wood-lawn Avenue? You’ve got to be kidding.”

Jane shook her head. “Nope. I’m the Queen of Diamonds. Grace on the other side of you is the Queen of Spades. And Linda, in
the Cape Cod on the other side of me, she’s the Queen of Clubs. We each have the dining room arch for our suit.”

Okay, her pound cake was sinfully good, but this woman was starting to frighten me a little. “Look, I appreciate the invitation,
but really, I don’t think I’d make very good company right now.” Not to mention my com
plete ineptitude with card games of any variety. While some of my sorority sisters in college had been bitten by the bridge
bug, I’d declined to be infected.

Jane waved away my words with a flick of her expensive manicure. “You’ll learn. We all did.” She stepped back into the living
room and I followed like an obedient puppy. “In fact, I think we should meet tonight. You need backup on your birthday.”

“Look—” Okay, I was starting to get perturbed. Couldn’t this woman see that I just wanted to be left alone?

“Seven o’clock at my house,” she said over her shoulder as she tugged open the obstinate front door. “And wear a red hat.”

“Wear a what?”

“A red hat.”

I sagged against the arm of the sofa. “I’m not sure I own a hat, much less a red one.”

Jane smiled, again blinding me. ’Then you can borrow one of mine. We never play bridge without our hats. Chapter rules.”

Chapter rules? Great. Not only had my husband thrown me over for a Hooters waitress, but I had spent all the money from my
divorce settlement on a house in a neighborhood of crazies.

“Bring a dish, too. That’s another rule.”

“A dish of what?”

“Hors d’oeuvres. Casserole. Dessert. Whatever you feel like.”

“But I don’t have anything in the house.”

Jane smiled again. “Then I guess you’d better run to
the grocery store.” Her eyes traveled over my sweatshirt and sweatpants. “You might want to change first. In this town, you’re
going to see someone who will report back to him.”

“Report back?”

’To your ex. He’ll hear about your every move. So you can decide what kind of report he’s going to get. Would you rather be
the spurned woman in scruffy sweats or the fabulous divorcee who embraced life and moved on?”

Truthfully, I’d rather be able to dial the clock back nine months so that none of this had ever happened. But she did have
a point. Jim was bound to hear about it if I schlepped to the grocery store in our son’s castoffs. When it came to demographics,
Nashville might be a major metropolitan area, but in all the ways that mattered, it was still a small town. I’d learned never
to say anything bad about anyone, because you could count on the fact that the person you were speaking to was somehow related
to the person you were disparaging.

“Seven o’clock?” I said weakly, and Jane beamed.

“Good girl. You’re going to be okay.”

I wanted to believe her, but reason and hard truth were not on her side. I was a fifty-year-old broke divorcee, living in
a run-down, eighty-year-old house and wondering how I was going to pay next month’s electric bill. But even at my lowest,
I still had my pride. It was about all I had, but for the time being, it was going to have to be enough.

Jane waved good-bye and disappeared through the front
door, leaving me alone with the pound cake. I straightened my spine, walked to the coffee table, and scooped up the Twinkie
wrappers and Coke cans. Whether I wanted it or not, two things were apparently going to happen.

With or without Jim, life was going to go on.

And much to my consternation, I was going to learn to play bridge.

CHAPTER TWO

I
had heard about those Red Hat Society ladies, had seen them at tea rooms around Nashville and traveling in flocks through
the lobby of the Opryland Hotel. I just never envisioned a scenario where I would actually contemplate becoming one. But desperate
times called for desperate measures, and, after all, the women I’d seen looked pretty normal, despite the purple outfits and
feather boas that went with the hats.

Surely it was just a harmless pastime. But as I discovered promptly at seven o’clock that evening, the petite Jane Mansfield’s
red hat collection made the number of shoes in Imelda Marcos’s closet look paltry.

“Veil? No veil?” Jane asked over her shoulder as she opened one large hat box after another. “Or flowers, maybe?”

They had their own room, her hats. She had not been kidding when she said the Woodlawn Avenue Bridge
Club only took two things seriously: their food and their headgear.

“A veil,” I murmured. “The better to hide behind.” That afternoon, I had girded my loins with crisp capri pants and gone on
an expedition to Harris-Teeter, the nearby grocery store. At first I’d been tempted to stock up on Hershey’s miniatures and
potato chips, but self-preservation had reared its head and forced me to spend some quality time in the produce aisle. I now
had enough fruits and vegetables to open my own stand. Way too much for one person, and I’d spent more than I should have,
but it had felt good to do something positive for a change.

“Voilà!” With a rustle of tissue paper, Jane pulled a red monstrosity from its nesting place. “Now
this
is a birthday hat.” She swooped over and plopped it atop my head before spinning me around to look in the mirror. “You can’t
help but celebrate when you’re wearing this.”

From beneath the numerous plumes, I nodded my agreement. Weird as it might be, I did feel marginally better with the thing
on my head. I felt a bit regal and, well, a little more powerful. But did I really have the panache to carry off meeting two
total strangers while wearing it?

“Don’t worry,” Jane said, as if reading my thoughts. “If anything, you’ll be the tame one in the crowd.”

And as it turned out, I was.

The other two women arrived in a flurry of red hats and hot dishes. Jane introduced me as she tended to the arrangement of
the food on the sideboard in her dining room.

“This is Grace, our Queen of Spades,” Jane said, deftly sliding hot pads under the dishes that required them. Grace had to
be eighty if she was a day and her towering confection of a hat would have been right at home in Marie Antoinette’s court.

“I buried three husbands,” she said as we hovered around the dining room table. “And every one of them died with a smile on
his face.”

“And this, of course, is Linda, our Queen of Clubs.”

Even with her hat’s full portrait brim dipped low over one green eye, I recognized Linda St. James. As always, her hair shone
like polished mahogany and her smile appeared gracious. We’d worked on several fund-raisers together through the years, and
were slated to be on the planning committee for the Cannon Ball, Nashville’s most prestigious charity event. Or should I say
had
been slated. The first meeting of the planning committee was in a few days, and my invitation must have been lost in the
mail, because I hadn’t heard a word about it.

“Yes, we’ve met.” I tried to smile graciously, too, but fear churned through my stomach. I hadn’t counted on one of the Queens
of Woodlawn Avenue being someone I knew. Nashville society could be as cutthroat as it could be caring, and I didn’t know
Linda well enough to determine which of the two she might be. I’d been deserted by enough of my so-called friends over the
last nine months that I’d grown wary.

“Welcome, Ellie,” she said, her eyes soft with compassion, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

“We’re glad you’re here,” Grace said, patting my hand. “
Now our Red Hat chapter is complete. Come on, girls. Time to get started.” She shooed us into our chairs.

How long had it been since I’d been surrounded by three people so determined to be kind to me? Jane sat across from me and
shuffled the cards while Linda, on my right, wrote something on the score sheet. I started to get nervous. Should I confess
my complete ineptitude with cards up front, or let them discover for themselves what they’d done by inviting me to join them?

“I’m afraid I’ve never played before,” I said.

Jane set the cards in front of Linda, who simply tapped the top of the deck. “Cut the cards and you cut your luck,” she advised
me.

“I’m going to deal this first time,” Jane said to me, “but we’re going to let you be the declarer and play the hand.” With
practiced movements, she picked up the cards and began distributing them with the efficiency of a Vegas pit boss. If her real
estate business ever went sour, she definitely had a skill to fall back on.

“We each get thirteen cards,” Linda advised me. “Sort them by suit, and then arrange them from highest to lowest. Ace is high.”

Okay, well that I could probably manage. I reached for the growing pile in front of me, but Grace stopped me with a wrinkled
hand. “Good bridge etiquette means waiting until all the cards have been dealt, honey.”

I flushed as red as my hat. And then I got a little mad. Because it’s not fair when people expect you to know the rules before
they’ve told you what they are. Sort of like how my husband told me he was leaving before he ever mentioned anything about
being unhappy.

“We won’t worry about bidding tonight,” Jane said as she flicked the last card onto my pile. She sat across from me. “That
can come later. Right now, we’ll just concentrate on the play of the cards.”

The other two nodded their hats in agreement.

“Grace will lead,” Jane continued. “All we have to do is follow suit. If she plays a spade, we play a spade and so forth.
The one who plays the highest card takes the trick.”

Well, that seemed pretty straightforward. Surely I could do at least that much.

Grace laid a jack of spades in the middle of the table. “Shouldn’t we start with a dummy?” she asked. “Let her learn to play
the dummy from the start.”

I snorted. Too late. I had recently acquired a great deal of experience in that area.

Jane must have seen my thoughts in my expression, or at least heard them in my snort, because she laughed and shot me a reassuring
smile. “In bridge, whoever wins the bidding is called the declarer. That’s you for now. Their partner, the person across from
them, becomes the dummy. The dummy—me—lays her cards down, and the declarer ends up playing both hands.”