ON A WEDNESDAY EVENING IN EARLY SEPTEMBER, LAVONNE and Eadie sat out on Lavonne's deck drinking Cosmopolitans. “I'm a little disappointed,” Eadie said, looking up at the soft purple sky. A pale sliver of moon rested on the top of Lavonne's garage like a scimitar. “I was really hoping we'd be able to come up with some way to get even with Virginia for stealing Nita's child.”
“‘Hope’ and ‘Virginia’ don't belong in the same sentence.”
“Yeah, you're right. Virginia sucks hope out of a room the way a vacuum sucks dust.”
“Nice analogy.”
“Thanks. I haven't talked to Nita this week. How's she holding up under the strain?”
“As well as can be expected,” Lavonne said. “She keeps busy working and visiting with her kids. She's substitute teaching, when she can. It keeps her occupied until the next custody hearing.” She'd given Nita a part-time counter job down at the Shofar So Good Deli so she could fulfill Judge Drucker's employment requirements.
“It sure has been fun being roommates,” Eadie said, tapping her fingers against the side of a citronella candle. “I've had a great time.”
“You say that like you're getting ready to leave.”
Eadie shrugged. “I've got to go home sometime. Before Trevor gives up and throws me out for good.”
“What about staying to support Nita? What about the Kudzu Ball?”
Eadie frowned and passed her finger back and forth over the candle flame. “When's the final custody hearing scheduled?”
“Sometime the first week of December. And you can't miss the Kudzu Ball. It's the third weekend in September and you can't miss it again this year. Come on, Aneeda. You know how much fun we always have.”
“Well, Ima, maybe I can go home and then come back for the ball and the custody hearing.”
Lavonne looked up at the glittering stars. “If you go home you won't come back,” she said.
She got up and went inside to get a sweater. Eadie sipped her drink and watched the moon rise over the yard. She wondered what Trevor was doing right now. He was off on the West Coast somewhere, at a writing conference, and she was supposed to meet him in San Francisco for the weekend. They were still meeting every other weekend at exotic places, where they holed up in various four-star hotels like a couple of adulterers, making love and arguing and living off room service. In between, they lived separate lives; Eadie working on her canvases, and Trevor writing when he could in New Orleans and jetting off to writers' conferences and speaking engagements. He was quickly losing patience with their arrangement and the only reason he hadn't pressured her to come home now was because his book was doing well, and he was traveling a lot. She had promised him, last time they met, that she'd be home by the middle of September.
Lavonne came back out carrying a sweater in one hand and a shaker of Cosmopolitans in the other. She handed the sweater to Eadie, and Eadie smiled, said “Thanks,” and put it on.
Lavonne sat down and poured two fresh drinks. “This is my new favorite cocktail,” she said, leaning back and putting her feet up on the empty chair in front of her. “I think I like it better than a martini. I like it better than a margarita.”
Eadie smiled and sipped her drink. “You're pretty fickle when it comes to alcoholic beverages,” she said. “You'll change your mind in a week or so and then Sex on the Beach will be your new drink du jour. Or maybe a
Tequila Slammer, Back Street Banger, Tahitian Tongue Tickler …”
“Wow,” Lavonne said.
“Test Tube Baby, Paralyzer, Tetanus Shot, Baltimore Blow Job.”
“You know, Eadie, if this art thing doesn't work out, you might consider work in the glamorous field of bartending.”
“Maybe,” Eadie said. She looked up at the sky with its dome of glittering stars. “Was that Joe who called earlier?”
“Yeah. He's in Boston on business but he's coming home tomorrow.” Joe was doing a lot of traveling for DuPont. It was his last-ditch effort to prove himself loyal to a job he didn't really want anyway. He figured he had about three months before the ax fell and then he'd be a man unencumbered by a job, free to set off for the south of France with his bicycle and his notebooks and Lavonne, too, if she'd agree to go. “Did you ask Trevor about his father and Virginia?”
Eadie shook her head. “He doesn't believe any of that is true. He says they may have dated, briefly, but he's pretty sure they didn't carry on an affair after their marriages. His dad died when he was small and he doesn't remember him too well, but he says his dad and mom went together from the time they were freshmen in high school.”
“Oh well,” Lavonne said. “I was hoping there might be something there we could use to help Nita get Whitney back.”
“I think it's all up to Rosebud.”
“I think you're right.”
At the house next door, a light came on. A door opened and then slammed, as Fergus, the neighbor's dog, was let out into the yard. He barked twice, a dry, snuffling sound more like a cough than a bark, and then went about his business. Winston, who was sleeping at Lavonne's feet, lifted his head, sniffed the air, and then went back to sleep.
Lavonne said, “I've been trying to talk Nita into going with me to the Kudzu Ball. She needs something to take her mind off Jimmy Lee and the custody hearing. She needs a good throw-down to take her mind off her problems.”
“Don't we all,” Eadie said.
“She thinks she'll be the only one there without a date, but I told her I'd go solo.”
“Hell, we'll all go solo,” Eadie said.
“Does that mean you're coming?”
Eadie sighed. She looked at Lavonne and grinned. “I suppose so,” she said.
Lavonne said, “Good. It's settled then. I'll call Nita and we'll go down to the Baptist Thrift Store tomorrow and see if we can rustle up some ball gowns.” She zipped the front of her fleece jacket and settled down in her chair with her drink resting on her stomach. The Cosmo had definitely gone to her brain. She was feeling happy and relaxed. There was a pleasant buzzing sound in her head, like a downed high-voltage wire. She lifted her glass and pointed at the garage. “How's the work coming along?” she asked Eadie.
Eadie had done her best to try to paint still lifes but that hadn't done a thing except give her insomnia. She had quickly gone back to her cherubs and goddesses, working with an intensity that bordered on mania. She worked from early morning to midafternoon and the canvases filled the garage like stone tablets, like bones in a catacomb, like firewood stacked on a funeral pyre.
“The work is going fine,” Eadie said. “I got a call from the gallery up in Atlanta and they said they'll take six or seven of my canvases in addition to the pieces they already have. They're talking about letting me have a show in the spring.”
“That's great, Eadie,” Lavonne said, lifting her drink. She sipped and set it back down on her stomach. “Actually, though, I wasn't talking about your art. I was talking about your interior work.” Lavonne had left a book on Jungian theory on Eadie's bedside table a couple of weeks ago. After their conversation that night in The Grotto, she figured it was the least she could do.
Eadie groaned and laid her head back on the chair, staring up at the wide starry sky. The moon dangled over her head like a fiery sword of Damocles. “If we're going to talk about unintegrated negative complexes and the collective unconscious then I'm going to need something a little stronger than vodka to drink,” she said. “If we're talking psychic crucifixion, then you better get out the tequila.”
“So you did read the book.” Lavonne was not discouraged by her attitude. Resistance before a breakthrough was common. “You're an extroverted sensate, Eadie, which means your neglected inferior function is intuition— a distinctly female emotion. I think anyone who knows you would agree that your animus is definitely more developed than your anima.”
“Your animus. Your male soul image. The hard-drinking, rational- thinking, warrior that exists in every woman.”
Eadie grinned and raised her glass. “You're a pretty hard-drinking warrior yourself, comrade.”
Lavonne pulled on her drink and set it down. “Whatever the ego resists will persist,” she said, wiping her top lip.
“Is this a free session or will you be expecting payment?”
“Your animus is highly developed but you've got to come to terms with your anima, your female image, your goddess image. She comes out in your work but you've got to accept her in yourself.”
“Hey, I love being a woman,” Eadie said, “and I can tell you why in two words.”
“Free drinks?”
“Multiple orgasms.”
They were quiet for a while, sipping their Cosmopolitans.
“I know you're trying to help but I can tell you right now I hate all this pop psychology shit,” Eadie said, running her finger around the rim of her glass. “Maybe the reason I can't work in New Orleans is because I'm bored. Maybe it has nothing to do with depression but everything to do with boredom. I hate weak, whiny women who blame all their problems on their shitty childhoods. Or their parents. Or even their husbands. Women need to stand on their own two feet and take responsibility for their emotional baggage.”
“I agree,” Lavonne said. She pulled on her drink, grimacing. “Jung said the same thing. But being female isn't all about being weak and whiny, Eadie. It seems to me you're projecting.”
Eadie poured herself another drink and topped off Lavonne's. “I mean, anyone can bitch and moan to some overpaid psychiatrist, but it takes a real hero to carry around his neurosis and shut up about it.”
“See, there you go again. Identifying with your animus.”
“You got any peanuts?” Eadie said.
Lavonne set her drink down. The buzzing in her head was louder now. She leaned forward and flattened her palms against the table like she was pushing down on some kind of antigravity force. “You can't keep ignoring this, Eadie. It won't just go away.”
“Look,” Eadie said, sticking her finger in her drink and then in her mouth. “How do you know this isn't just some physical problem? How do
you know it's not just my biological clock ticking down to doomsday?”
“Well of course, that could be part of it.”
“Maybe it's like that dancing baby on the TV show about the anorexic lawyer.”
Lavonne looked surprised. “Do you want to have a baby, Eadie? Do you see yourself as a mother?”
Eadie thought about it for all of two minutes. “No,” she said.
“Well then, at least entertain the idea that all this might be a shadow projection, your suppressed anima trying to break through to consciousness.”
Eadie snorted and stirred her drink with her finger. “Okay, Dr. Phil, and what am I supposed to do about it?”
“Listen to your dreams. Your mother is trying to tell you something important.”
“Like what?”
“I don't know. You have to figure it out. Maybe she's trying to tell you to forgive yourself. To let your anima flower. You can only bring forth the Divine Child by allowing both the animus and anima to flourish.”
“Look, Lavonne, let's just drop the inner-child shit. I told you. I don't want children.”
“Not the inner child. The Divine Child. The symbol of self.”
Eadie looked at her like she might have sprouted hair on her face, like she might have something black and slimy trapped between her two front teeth. “What in the hell are you talking about?”
Lavonne shrugged. She chuckled and shook her head. “I don't know what I'm talking about,” she said. “Pour me another Cosmo and let me see if I can figure it out.”
Eadie grinned and picked up the cocktail shaker. “I don't think the analyst is supposed to drink during sessions.”
“Neither is the patient.”
They raised their glasses and touched them lightly.
“To middle-age neurosis,” Eadie said.
TWO WEEKS LATER, EADIE AWOKE WITH A START. SHE HAD BEEN dreaming about her mother again, some dream about water, a lake or a river, or maybe the sea. Reba was sitting in the bow of a small boat wearing white gloves and a hat and she was calling to Eadie across the water, something faint and insistent. Eadie had turned her head and was straining to hear her mother's voice, which was like the rustling of dry leaves.
She sat up. Late-afternoon sun flooded the room. The clock read five o'clock. Across the room, in front of an opened window, a stack of papers flapped in the breeze. She got up and went into the kitchen, where Lavonne was sitting at the table reading the paper and drinking a cup of coffee. Looking up, she said, “What's wrong? You look like you saw a ghost.”
“I did.” Eadie picked up the phone and dialed Nita's house but there was no answer. Then she dialed Nita's cell phone.
“What's going on?” Lavonne said. She and Eadie and Nita had spent the afternoon at the Kudzu Festival where Loretta had taken first place in the Betty Crocker Cook-Off for her recipe “Elvis's El Wienie Mexicano.” They had hung around for the Hubcap Throw, Bobbing for Pigs Feet, and Hillbilly Jeopardy but had left before the recliner race, NASCHAIR, because it reminded Nita too much of Jimmy Lee. He'd taken fourth place two years ago with his blue velour Barcalounger, right behind the Pickett brothers with their plaid La-Z-Boy outfitted with a beer cooler, a remote control carry case, a crude steering wheel, and a drop-down table tray onto which had been glued a plate, a NASCAR beer coozie, and a fork on a chain.
Lavonne folded up the newspaper. “What in the hell is going on?”
“I think I may have figured out what my mother was trying to tell me.” Eadie held up one finger for her to be quiet. “Nita,” she said, when Nita finally answered. “Where are you?”
“I'm at my folk's house,” Nita said. “The children are here and we're having dinner.”
“Where's your notebook? The one you used to take notes about Virginia's tragic childhood?”
“It's at home. Why?”
“You're going home later to dress for the Kudzu Ball, right?”
Nita hesitated. “Listen, Eadie,” she said. “I've been thinking about that. I don't think I'm going to make the ball this year.”
“Oh yes you are,” Eadie said. “Come on, Nita. I stayed in town just for this. We've already bought our ball gowns.”
“I paid two dollars and fifty cents for mine so it's not a big loss.”
“Nita, you need to get out. You need to have some fun to take your mind off all the shit going on in your life right now. Don't make us come over there and get you.”
Nita sighed. “All right,” she said. “I'll go. Just a minute.” She put her hand over the receiver and then came back on. “Mama says she's coming with me. She says she's pretty sure you two will need a designated driver to get home. We'll meet you over there.”
“Don't forget to bring the notebook,” Eadie said.
“Tell me what's going on.”
“I'll tell you when you get there.” Eadie hung up and sat down at the table. She chewed her bottom lip and stared blankly at the wall clock. Her leg bounced up and down like it was attached to electrodes.
Lavonne watched her steadily. “Okay,” she said finally. “Spill it.”
“Not yet.” Eadie shook her head slowly. “I want to read the last few entries in Nita's notebook first. I want to make sure I've got this right before I say anything.”
“Does this have anything to do with Nita getting Whitney back?”
Eadie looked at her. “Maybe,” she said. “If I'm right. If we can figure out how to use it.”
Lavonne tapped her fingers against the table. A shaft of sunlight fell through the French doors, illuminating Eadie's face. “What time do you want to go to the ball?”
Eadie shrugged, her eyes still fixed on the wall clock. “I don't know. Maybe around nine. Grace won't be crowned until ten o'clock and I want to be there to see that.” Grace Pearson was this year's Kudzu Queen. She was going as Miss Velveeta Gritz. Eadie and Lavonne had decided to return in their roles as Aneeda Mann and Ima Badass.
“What do you say I make up a batch of Cosmos and we start celebrating a little early. We can take a taxi to the ball.”
Eadie slid her eyes from the clock to Lavonne's face. She grinned. “Damn, Miss Badass,” she said. “You're a mind reader.”
THEY ARRIVED AT THE BALL JUST AS QUEEN VELVEETA GRITZ WAS arriving in the Kudzu Kruiser. The Kruiser was the brainchild of Clayton Suttles, who covered his Bonneville convertible in chicken wire and parked it every year at the edge of a large stand of kudzu. At the end of the summer he went in with a metal detector to retrieve it, cutting away large clumps of trailing vine but leaving the car swathed in greenery. The overall effect was that of a long flat topiary on wheels.
A large crowd waited outside the huge striped circus tent set up in the Wal-Mart parking lot. Vernon Caslin, this year's master of ceremony, stood at the end of a long roll of red carpet covered in peanut shells waiting for the queen's arrival. His name tag read Hi, My Name's Spud Daddy, What's Yours? As the Kruiser pulled slowly into the lot, the crowd went wild. Vernon walked up to the Kruiser and gave Grace his hand. She stood up. She was dressed in a truly hideous white satin number covered in black polka dots. The dress was ankle-length and had a sweetheart neckline and leg o' mutton sleeves. She wore a white veil and a kudzu vine wreath that stood up around her head like a crown of thorns.
“Damn,” Eadie said when she saw her. “Where'd you get that Mother of the Bride of Frankenstein dress? It's hideous. Did you have it specially made or did someone else actually wear it first?”
“Salvation Army Store in Atlanta,” Grace said proudly. “I saw it and knew no one else could possibly have one as tacky. Although yours is close,” she said, appreciatively eyeing Eadie's puff-sleeve, white satin bodice with a ruched black velvet skirt cocktail dress. “And I love what you've done with your feet.”
“Thanks,” Eadie said, holding one leg out for her inspection. She was wearing combat boots and a white sailor hat sprigged with kudzu that she'd picked up down at the Army & Navy Store.
“And speaking of hideous, Lavonne, look at you.”
“It takes a lot of work to look this bad,” Lavonne said proudly. She'd found a floor-length, gold lamé, Grecian-style dress down at the Baptist thrift store in Valdosta. On the back of Lavonne's exposed shoulder, Eadie had drawn a tattoo in Magic Marker that read, Born to Party. Underneath it was a crude drawing of a grinning skull resting in a martini glass.
“The tattoo's a nice touch.”
“Thanks,” Lavonne said. She'd done her hair up in a Grecian roll with a headband made of kudzu vine. She wore bedroom slippers on her feet. They were spray-painted gold and had sequins and faux fur glued to the tops.
They followed Grace into the tent that had been strung with colored lights in the shape of shotgun shells. Round tables sporting camouflage tablecloths were set up on the left side of the huge tent and the buffet tables to the right. The Kudzu Ball was open to anyone with a sense of humor who understood that Southerners like to poke fun at themselves but don't much like anyone else doing it, by God. That being said, this year's theme was Trailer Park Cuisine. Each table sported a miniature trailer along with recipe cards for such delicacies as Pearl Purdy's Slutty Pups, Baptist Beans, Jethro's El Grande Sausage Balls, Sister Wahneeta's Old Rugged Cross Cake, and Flaming Possum. The buffet tables held samples of these and other trailer park favorites such as Engine Block Pork, Velveeta Fudge, Ima Pornstar's Hussy Dip, and Roadkill Potatoes. As Grace and Vernon entered the tent, the band, the Appalachian Groove Boys, launched into their hit single, “Talk Dirty.”
Eadie saw Nita and Loretta sitting alone at a table and she steered Lavonne in their direction. Nita was dressed in a high-waisted calico gown, the kind of thing a hippie bride might have worn in 1974. A bottled water rested on the table in front of her.
“Don't tell me you're drinking bottled water,” Eadie said to her, as she sat down. “Where's the Kool-Aid?” Kudzu Kool-Aid was the featured beverage of the Kudzu Ball and was rumored to be made from a number of ingredients, including various over-the-counter cold medicines as well as generous amounts of Curtis Peet's homebrewed whiskey. It was guaranteed to be strong enough to “suck the chrome off a bumper.”
“Y'all, I can't drink that stuff,” Nita said. “Last time I drank it, Jimmy Lee had to carry me home.”
No one wanted to talk about Jimmy Lee right now, so Eadie just nodded at Loretta and said to Nita, “Did you bring the notebook?”
Loretta was wearing a high-collared pink taffeta number and faux diamond studded librarian glasses. “What's this all about?” she said, leaning toward Eadie. Nita had told her about the notebook on the way over.
“First, I need a drink,” Eadie said. She waved her hand at Banks Hollowell who passed carrying a tray of drinks. He was dressed in overalls and a camouflaged baseball cap that read, A Mind Is a Fun Thing to Waste.
“Hey,” he said, smiling so they could see his plastic Billy Bob teeth, “do y'all need a drink?” He swung his tray down theatrically and Lavonne and Eadie each took a plastic cup. Banks had been an associate at Boone & Broadwell before it folded and Lavonne was surprised to see him here.
“Shouldn't you be over at the Cotillion Ball tonight?” she said, taking a sip of Kool-Aid. It burned like battery acid down the back of her throat. The first sip was always the worst. After that, you didn't notice much.
“Naw,” he said, grinning. “This is more fun.” He moved off into the crowd and Nita set the notebook out on the table.
“Whatever it is you have to say, say it quick,” she said to Eadie. “We're not staying long.”
“I thought you were our designated driver,” Lavonne said to Loretta. Her tongue stuck to her teeth like a sea slug. She was beginning to realize the preparty shaker of Cosmos might not have been such a good idea.
“I'll take Nita home and then come back for you,” Loretta said, squinting. “But from the looks of you girls, you might want to go easy on the Kool- Aid. I got a bad back. I'm not carrying anyone out of here tonight.”
“We'll keep that in mind,” Eadie said. She tapped her finger against the top of the notebook. “Read that last section,” she said to Nita. “The part where Virginia goes away after she finds out Hampton Boone is going to marry Maureen Hamilton.”
“He had too much sense to settle on Virginia,” Loretta said.
“Read it,” Eadie said.
Nita picked up the notebook and read, “When she went away in January I was crying, and her mama was crying, and her daddy was crying and saying, ‘Poor little Queenie, poor little Queenie,’ over and over, but her eyes were dry and hard as bone. She sat down in the bow of the boat and held on to the sides with her little gloved hands and looked straight ahead like a woman who knows what it is she has to do.”
“Okay,” Eadie said, her eyes flashing. “Now read that part right before. Where she's saying she needs to tell him something but only if he loves her.”
Nita frowned and followed the page with her finger. “You mean this?” she said, and began to read. “The week before he went back to school, I held her in my arms again and this time she was crying and saying, over and over, Leota, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? I love him. And I said, you have to tell him, and she said, I can't unless I know he loves me.”
Eadie grinned and slapped the table, looking from one to the other until Lavonne, losing patience, said, “What? What is it?”
“Don't you see?” Eadie said, grabbing Nita's arm and giving it a little shake, but Nita only looked annoyed. “Virginia had something to tell Hamp Boone that summer. Something important.” She picked up the notebook and read, “When she went away in January I was crying, and her mama was crying, and her daddy was crying …” She put the notebook down and looked at Lavonne but Lavonne only stared at her with a blank expression on her face.
“I don't get it,” she said.
“Virginia was pregnant! She was carrying Hamp Boone's child and that's what she had to tell him that summer, and that's why she went away in January. To have the baby!”
Loretta said, “What in the hell are you talking about?”
Nita and Lavonne looked at Eadie like she was crazy. “It doesn't say that,” Lavonne said stubbornly, picking up the notebook.
“Read between the lines,” Eadie said impatiently. “If she got pregnant in June, then she'd be about six months pregnant by December and probably showing. That's why she had to go away.”
“Who got pregnant?” Loretta said.
Nita frowned. “But why didn't Leota just say that? Why didn't she say Virginia was pregnant?”
“Maybe she forgot why Virginia had to go away. Or maybe she was trying to protect her.”
“Let me see that,” Loretta said, reaching for the notebook.
Lavonne shook her head slowly, still looking puzzled. “But Virginia was in high school. If she got pregnant, somebody would know.”
“She graduated early,” Nita said quietly. “She's always bragging about how she was smart enough to graduate from high school early and then went to work at Roobin's Department Store to save money for college. Only later she met the Judge, and got married instead.”
“Don't you see, it all makes sense,” Eadie said, throwing herself back in her chair. “Maureen Boone hated Virginia. And when I asked Trevor later, after his mother died, he said it was because of something that happened a long time ago. Some bad blood between them. His mother would never tell him what. He just assumed it had something to do with the law firm.”
“And that would explain why Virginia married the Judge in the first place.” Lavonne was beginning to catch on. “Because he was Hamp Boone's law partner and marrying him kept Virginia as close to Hamp as she could be.”
Nita's expression changed again. Her eyes widened and her lower lip trembled. “If it's true that Virginia had a baby with Hamp Boone, a baby that she gave up for adoption, then we could use that. If we could prove it. That's not the kind of thing Virginia would want to get around town. We could use it to bargain with her. To get Whitney back.”
“But how do we prove it?” Lavonne said.
“Easy!” Eadie said. “We go out to the nursing home and ask Leota Quarles.”
Nita's face fell. “Well, that might be a problem,” she said. “Seeing's how Leota is dead.”
Eadie said, “Shit.”
Lavonne said, “If Virginia had a baby out of wedlock and gave it up for adoption, it would be about forty-nine years old. If only we could figure out some way to find out who it is.”
Grace Pearson danced by in Vernon Caslin's arms. The Groove Band launched into a toe-tapping version of “The Walleyed Boogie.” Grace saw them and shouted, “Y'all get up and dance! If I have to make a fool of myself, you do, too!”
Eadie said, “Maybe we could get access to adoption records.”
“How do we get access to adoption documents that are probably sealed?”
“We start with the Internet,” Nita said. “We figure out where she might have gone to have a baby and then we narrow it down from there.”
Lavonne shook her head. “I'm pretty sure there are laws about that. I'm pretty sure only the birth mother or adopted child can access that information.”
Eadie was too excited about the prospect of exposing Virginia to let a few rules and regulations get in her way. “Hell, if we have to we'll hire a private investigator,” she said. “Maybe we should just do that to start with.”
“No,” Nita said grimly, shaking her head. “This is something I need to do.”
No one said anything for a few minutes. Lavonne stared fixedly at the camouflage tablecloth and then looked up. “Loretta, I've got a question for you,” she said.
Loretta stuck her finger on the page to keep her place. Her eyes, behind her sparkling glasses, were wary. “Shoot,” she said.
“In your day, if a girl got pregnant out of wedlock, where would she go to have the baby?”
Loretta frowned. “Listen, girls, I think you might be jumping the gun a little bit here. You got to remember these were the ramblings of a ninety- year-old woman who may or may not be remembering things correctly.”
“Humor me,” Eadie said. “There must have been adoption agencies up in Atlanta and some of the major cities,” she said, trying to encourage Loretta. “Places where a girl could go.”
“Well, sure there were. But those places kept records. If you were trying to keep it quiet, you most likely went to one of those homes for unwed mothers. They didn't keep too many papers. They didn't ask too many questions. I had a good friend who got knocked up and she went up to some place in north Georgia and had her baby.”
“What was it called?” Lavonne said, getting out her Daytimer. “The home, I mean.”
Loretta looked up at the strings of colored lights. She sighed and scratched her head. “I can't remember the name of the place, but it seems like it was run by the Catholics. There was another one, over in Valdosta, but it was run by the Baptists and you had to sign a paper saying Jesus was your Lord and Savior before they'd take your baby away from you.” She watched Lavonne write this down and then she said, “Hey girls, I don't want to rain on your parade, but it seems to me you're getting excited over something that might not be worth getting excited about.”
Nita shook her head slowly. “I've got a feeling about this,” she said. It was true, she did. Just when things had looked their bleakest, a thin shaft of light had broken through the dark clouds. She felt like she had that day in the car with Logan driving home from the custody hearing, that anything was possible, that hope was not dead. “I think we might be on to something.”
“I just hope Loretta isn't right,” Lavonne said cautiously. “I just hope all this reading between the lines is not a wild-goose chase.”
“Promise me something,” Nita said, looking around the table. “Promise me you won't say anything about any of this to anyone. I want to keep it quiet until I figure out how to go about checking this story out. I don't want Virginia to get wind of what's up. I want to be just as dirty and underhanded with her as she's been with me.”
“Now you're talking, girl,” Eadie said, sipping her drink. “We have to be careful though. Virginia's pretty wily. She's pretty subtle.”
“Virginia's about as subtle as the business end of a cattle prod,” Loretta said. “And just as dangerous.”
“Count me in,” Lavonne said. “I'll help anyway I can.”
“I still say you girls got the wrong dog by the tail,” Loretta said. “Virginia's too self-centered to have ever loved anybody but herself. She's too clever to have ever made a mistake as big as Hampton Boone.”
THE DAY FOLLOWING THE COTILLION BALL, VIRGINIA AWOKE early and hurried down to get the newspaper. She swung the front door open and stepped out onto the porch. The day was gray and overcast. Virginia picked up the newspaper, her hands trembling with excitement, and stepped back inside, flipping on the hall light. She always looked forward to reading about the Cotillion Ball, to seeing her photograph displayed so prominently among the cream of Ithaca society, some of whom had refused to speak to her in high school.
But today, looking down at the front of the Lifestyle section, Virginia felt a swelling sense of disbelief and outrage. The paper had covered both the prestigious Ithaca Cotillion Ball and the lowbrowed Kudzu Ball on the same page. And to make matters worse, the Kudzu Ball was listed at the top. Virginia stared down at the large photograph crowning the page, her sharp eyes glittering like spear points.
There, in all her glory, was the behemoth Grace Pearson, looking drunk and foolish in her kudzu crown and leg o' mutton–sleeved ball gown. Underneath the photograph, in large bold letters, larger than those captioning the Cotillion Queen, it read “Seventh Kudzu Queen Crowned—Miss Velveeta Gritz (a/k/a Grace Pearson) Takes the Throne.” Beneath this photo there were several others, fully half the page, as well as several interior pages that were devoted to coverage of the Kudzu Ball.
Virginia had been trying to get the Kudzu Ball closed down for years. It irritated her that people would make a mockery of the Cotillion Ball, would ridicule what had taken her years of scheming and hard work to achieve.
She recognized Lavonne Zibolsky and Nita and Eadie Boone, and also several prominent couples who, just a few years ago, wouldn't have been caught dead at the Kudzu Ball. They all looked drunk and ridiculous, decked out in tacky prom dresses and camouflage leisure suits and a couple of the men sported mullet wigs and Fu Manchu mustaches. By comparison, the Cotillion Ball Debs looked bored, the Queen looked less virginal than in years past, and the King looked dusty and ancient and maybe even a little senile. There was a larger photograph of Virginia and Redmon, and she noticed with dismay that the camera lights had accentuated her sagging cleavage, which her expensive dress did little to hide. Redmon wore his stunned-deer-in-the-headlights expression. He clutched his soda water and stared miserably into the camera and Virginia noted (again, those damn lights) that his tuxedo did not fit him properly and he needed a haircut.
She closed the paper in disgust. It would do no good to complain to the newspaper about their coverage of the Kudzu Ball. One of their own journalists had been named Kudzu Queen and most of the staff had, no doubt, attended, so they could not be expected to help her close down the ridiculous affair. Virginia felt sure the event would die out if the publicity sur rounding it stopped. She wondered if she might be able to talk Redmon into buying the newspaper. The first thing she would do, of course, is take over the editorial department, fire any left-wing writers, including the renegade Grace Pearson, and see to it that future coverage of the Cotillion Ball would figure prominently in the society pages, and coverage of the Kudzu Ball would cease entirely.
This thought, planted in the fertile soil of her imagination, took root and spread like the kudzu vine itself, until her mind was a veritable jungle of twisted vines and suffocating greenery and she could think of nothing but her desire to acquire the Ithaca Daily News and punish those who needed punishing.
She stood in the hall tapping her little slippered foot angrily against the parquet floor. When Redmon came downstairs later, she was still standing there among the scattered newspaper, lost in thought.